The Righteousness of God

Well, this morning, as we continue our series that we began last week, focusing our hearts on the upcoming celebration of the resurrection of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As we gather to come to the word of God, we find ourselves picking up right where we left off last week.

And so hopefully you will recall that at the end of our time together last week, we were left with the weighty reality of sin in our lives.

As we looked through verses 19 down through 20, Paul reveals to us nothing short of the absolute perfect, pure, right truth regarding all of humanity and the reality that we are sinners and that as sinners, we have no desire for God.

We do not seek him. We do not understand him. We do not desire to know him.

And that even in those times where we seem to be searching for something, we are doing it in our own efforts.

And those works of ours, those efforts of ours will never achieve enough to bring us into a right standing before God.

This leaves us with a question. It's not a new question.

In fact, it's a question that is asked over and over in scripture. Job asked it in Job nine, verse two, when he says, in truth,

I know this is so, but how can a man be in the right before God?

The multitudes asked it in Luke chapter three, verse ten, and where it says in the crowds were questioning, questioning him, saying, then what should we do?

The the five thousand that he had just fed in John six, twenty seven through twenty eight.

Jesus says to them, do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give to you for the for for on him, the father,

God set his seal. Therefore, they said to him, what should we do so that we may work the works of God?

The rich young ruler approached Jesus in Matthew verse chapter 19, verse 16, and came to him and said,

Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life? The crowd standing before Peter witnessing his first sermon on the day of Pentecost came to him in Acts two, verse thirty seven, and says now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the disciples, men, brothers, what should we do?

Saul himself put on his face on the road to Damascus in Acts twenty two and ten says, and I said, what should

I do, Lord? The Lord said to me, rise up and go on into Damascus and there you will be told of all that has been determined for you to do.

The Philippian jailers that held Paul and Silas cried out to them in Acts 16 and 30, saying, sirs, what must

I do to be. Say the truth of last week's text that brings us to the point of understanding that we are absolutely without question sinners with no hope found in ourself.

Leave us with the question, what then shall we do to be saved?

Thanks be to God that the Holy Spirit. Working and guiding.

Paul. Influencing him brings us to this exact question.

And then gives us the response. And so our text this morning.

Beginning in verse twenty one down through verse twenty six provides that response for us.

However, in order to properly prepare, we are going to read beginning in verse nine, so we're going to pick up last week's text and also read this week's text so that you see that it is a flow that occurs.

So if you will, please stand with me for the reading of the holy, inerrant, infallible, sufficient and authoritative word of the living

God. We begin in Romans chapter three in the ninth verse.

What then? Are we better? Not at all, for we have already charged that both

Jews and Greeks are all under sin. As it is written.

There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands.

There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside together. They have become worthless.

There is none who does good. There is not even one.

Their throat is an open tomb with their tongues. They keep deceiving the poison of asbestos under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths and the path of peace.

They have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are in the law so that every mouth may be shut and all the world may become accountable to God.

Because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight. For through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.

Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ. For all those who believe.

For there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus.

Whom God publicly displayed as a propitiation in his blood through faith for a demonstration of his righteousness.

Because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed for the demonstration of his righteousness at the present time so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Gracious Heavenly Father, blessed be the name of your son,

Jesus Christ, before whose cross we kneel. Before whom we see the heinous nature of our sinful flesh, our iniquity that calls

Christ to be made a curse. The evil that excites the severity of divine wrath.

Father, show us the enormity of our guilt by the crown of thorns. The pierced hands and feet, the bruised body, and the dying cries of Christ.

His blood is the blood of the incarnate God. Infinite in worth, value beyond all fault.

Sin is our malady, our monster, our foe, our viper. It is born in our birth, alive in our life, strong in our character, dominating our faculties, following us as a shadow, intermingling with our every thought, the chains that hold us captive in the empire of our soul.

Lord, sinners that we are, why should the sun give us light, the air supply our breath, the earth bear our tread, its fruit nourish us, its creatures serve our needs, yet your compassions, oh

Lord, your compassions yearn over us, your heart hastens to our rescue, your love manifested through Christ endured our curse and bore our stripes.

Father, let us walk humbly in the lowest depths of humiliation, bathed in the blood of Christ, tender of conscience, and triumphing gloriously as an heir of salvation.

We ask all of these things in the precious name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, amen.

I do want to mention briefly that if you have not or are not aware, over the last several months, our morning prayers between the text and the message come from the

Valley of Vision. The Valley of Vision is a collection of Puritan devotions and prayers, and to me it is a small book that if you do not have a copy of it, you should go home today and get a copy of it.

It is one of those books that pulled together back in 1975 from various Puritan writers that just absolutely will remind you both of who you are and who

God is. And it does so over and over. It is a absolute treasure trove to be used in your daily prayer life and in your study.

But as we come to the verses that we are going to deal with this week, coming out of where we were last week, we are going to encounter immediately a small phrase that creates a massive shift.

It is a very simple statement. It is a very short, small word, but the meaning and the importance of what they signify is absolutely earth -shattering because it literally flips everything that we, as people, think and believe and know about ourselves prior to coming to Christ on its head.

In other words, the natural man, the sinner who, hearing these words, will not understand them apart from the work of the

Spirit of God in their life because it is that foreign to our ears.

But he takes us to a place where, after bringing us to the very depths of humanity, the darkest part of who we are, he then uses a contrasting conjunctive to help us understand a great truth.

What is seen in the next few verses, indeed through the rest of Romans, quite honestly, but specifically in the next few verses, is a reality that has not once but at least twice turned the world on its head.

The first time it did it was when Christ himself walked the earth. The second time was when the gospel was awoken in Martin Luther and it turned the world on its head again as we walked through the work of the

Reformation and came to a proper understanding of the Word of God. And it is this foundation, it is this place where Paul begins to build for us exactly what it means to be in Christ.

He has demonstrated the vain efforts that we have gone through.

He has demonstrated for us the place of deep sorrow, deep despair in which we find ourselves.

And now he offers a small glimmer of hope. Verses 9 through 20, as we discussed last week, brought us to the foot of the mountain.

But as we stared up that mountain, it seemed as if it was an impassable incline where we were not capable of moving forward, which is exactly what the text taught us.

You, I, all of us are incapable in and of ourselves to move forward, yet what we see here is a small but powerful transition in the words, but now.

Now as we come to this, I want you to understand, this text is a little hard to deal with in little small chunks, even though that's how you got to deal with it.

So I want to make some things clear and then we'll back up to but now in just a little bit. So first of all, if you'll notice in verses 19, 20, and 21, and then some following, you will see the word, the law.

Possibly in your copy of God's word, the word law is capitalized. Now when we come to the word law in the

New Testament, one of the things that we have to make sure that we understand is that word, the word law, is used in a multitude of different ways.

It is used to describe everything from the pharisaical law, which is the law that they interpreted out of what was given to them and all of the things that they did to write and elaborate, which is actually what they were living by, by this point.

To give you an example of that, this was the law that would, where Jesus says in the Ten Commandments, not that we rest on the

Sabbath, this law, the pharisaical law, expounded on what it meant to work and defined, or sought to define, every single aspect of it.

And so we ended up with things like you couldn't, you could write as long as it wasn't permanent on the Sabbath, or you could only walk 99 steps, but that 100 wouldn't put you in work, or if you carried more than a certain amount of weight, you were working.

That's one use of the term law. It's also used to describe for us the ceremonial law, specifically.

It's used to describe the moral law. It's used to describe the entirety of the Old Testament. There are multiple ways in which it is used, and it is imperative that as we approach the word law, we seek to understand, as best as we possibly can, exactly how it's being used, and we do that by the context that surrounds it.

Now, this should not be anything new for anyone sitting here today because we talk repeatedly about the fact that we have to take in the context of what we are reading to understand what we are reading.

It's imperative that we know. We've got to know who it was written to. We've got to know why it was written. We've got to know who it was written by.

All of these things are important in understanding the meaning. And so the translators of both the

New American Standard Version and the LSB, which is what I read from this morning, see this word as referring directly to the

Old Testament. They use the capital letter law. It refers to the entirety. In the narrow sense, it actually refers to the moral law, the mosaic law given, and then in a broader sense, it refers to the entire

Old Testament. However, there is a second sense that this word is being brought into play here, and that is the sense of legalism.

And so it's being brought into play here in this idea or understanding around us as individuals seeking to attain that salvation, that righteousness, that right standing before God.

And so what he says is, but now, apart from the law, right? So in other words, away from what the law says, but now.

So we're drawing a contrast between what we have already been talking about and what's coming behind.

Now, what is in view here, again, is not only the moral sense, but also the legalism, the human effort.

Remember, there are two groups of people Paul is addressing here. He is addressing the Jews, and then he's addressing everybody else.

What I find so fascinating about when people read God's word as they go, like we talked a little bit about last week, well,

I'm not a Jew and I'm not a Greek, so obviously it doesn't apply to me. What they need to understand is that in Paul's day, when you said

Jews and Greeks or Jews and Gentiles, you literally meant everyone. Because in their eyes, there were two types of people, those that were chosen and those that were not.

Those that were Jews, they considered to be the ones that were chosen, and the rest of the world. Not much has changed, has it?

The reality is there's two types of people in this world, those who are

God's people and those who are not. What separates us is nothing of ourselves.

That's what this whole passage has brought us to. John MacArthur elaborates.

Scripture makes it clear that there is indeed a way to God, but that it is not based on anything men themselves can do to achieve or merit it.

Man can be made right with God, but not on his own terms or in his own power.

In that basic regard, Christianity is distinct from every other religion.

As far as the way of salvation is concerned, there are therefore only two religions the world has ever known or will ever know.

The religion of divine accomplishment, which is biblical Christianity. In other words,

God did it. Or the religion of human achievement, which by very definition includes all other religions, even some who would call themselves

Christians, because they are relying not on the work of God, but on the work of man.

So when Paul says here, but now he is tying together what we have seen, what he concludes in verse 21, excuse me, in verse 20, where he says, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin, or by the works of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight.

The reality is that's the situation, but now because of what comes next, we are in a different situation.

Paul then says to the church, the righteousness of God has been manifested.

So now picture yourself for just a moment. The picture that we have painted for us in verses 9 through 20 is the picture of you before faith.

The picture of you before regeneration. The picture of you before the

Holy Spirit got a hold of you. The picture of you before the Father called you as one of his own.

Even though all of those things happened for him before the foundation of the world, it happened for you at a specific time.

That's who you are, verses 9 through 20. Then Paul says, but now righteousness has been manifested.

Not just any righteousness, but the perfect, pure righteousness of God.

It has been made known. Paul says there is hope, but that hope is not found in the law.

That righteousness has been manifested, but it has been manifested apart from the law, separately from the law.

Now you've got to stay with me for a minute because it gets a little tricky here in just a moment. But righteousness has been manifested, made known to mankind, apart from the law.

The hope is not found in the law. Mounce is helpful when he says from a human standpoint, and by nature, people are legalists.

That's who we are by nature. How do you obtain anything in life? You work for it, right?

That's how we're raised. That's what we know instinctively. If we want something, we have to go after it.

We have to put effort into it. By nature, people are legalists. The plan was radical.

God's plan is right. This is not anything, again, that we would ever conceive of our own.

If we were going to do it, it would be on our effort. We want to earn it.

It excluded anything and everything that people by themselves might do to attain righteousness.

All of those things were excluded. The righteousness God provides has its origin in what

God did, not in what people may accomplish.

Let me repeat that piece for you. You need to make sure you hear it. The righteousness that God provides has its origin in what

God did, past tense complete, not in what people may do, future tense incomplete, completely uncertain.

It depends upon faith, not meritorious activity.

God justifies the ungodly, not the well intention.

All the way back in the introduction to the letter to the people of Rome, Paul writes in verses 16 and 17, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, but the righteous will live by faith.

Coming out of this statement, coming out of verse 17, beginning in verse 18 of chapter 1, we descend into a depth of despair until Paul brings us here to the work of the

Spirit. In fact, he concludes for us the same thing he concluded for us in Ephesians chapter 2 verses 1 through 3.

We could really just stop at verse 1, but verses 2 and 3 are helpful as well, and you were dead in your transgression and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world.

In other words, the entire world is walking in this path. You used to be that way. You were dead in your transgression and your sins.

It was according to the rule of the power of the air, the Spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all also formerly conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.

You may be familiar with what comes next. Hopefully you are, because what comes next is nearly the same thing that Paul writes here to the church at Rome.

He says, but now in the church at Rome, and he says, but God in his letter to the church at Ephesus.

Either way, it is something apart from what we expect. It is a transition that moves us from A to B, and it is not of ourselves.

It is a gift of God. As desperately as we need to understand the truth of our condition, we should also rejoice in this understanding.

Maybe this will encourage you a little bit. I don't know. We'll see. I meet brothers and sisters all the time who struggle with what they used to be.

But let me, it is exactly because of what you used to be that God's grace is so amazing.

Because that constant reminder, even when the enemy, even when Satan wants to throw that back in your face, the good thing is you can look at it and go, yeah,

I was. You can take verses 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18.

You can learn them by rote, and every time Satan tries to throw it at you, you can say, you're exactly right. I was not righteous.

I was not seeking after God. I had turned aside. I was worthless. I was detestable.

I had vile poison in my lips. I sought blood. I had no fear of God.

And then you can get down to verse 20 or 21, and you can say, but now, apart from the law, apart from that very thing which condemns me, the righteousness of God has been made manifest.

Because the beauty of this is God brings his people to this point so that we understand our condition, but God does not leave his people there.

He didn't leave Abram and Haran. He called him out.

He didn't leave the Israelites in Egypt. He called them out. He didn't leave

Paul in his former ways persecuting the church. He put him on his face on the road to Damascus and called him out.

God doesn't leave his people there. He brings them out.

The next set of verses, or actually this whole set of verses, identify for us seven truths regarding righteousness.

The first of those we have already addressed, that it does not come according to the law. It comes apart from the law.

But as we look at each one of these remaining six, the picture that we see becomes more beautiful by the moment.

So first of all, again, we have seen that righteousness comes apart from the law. But here's the amazing and beautiful part of that.

Although it came apart from the law, although it did not come through the law, it was revealed in the law and the prophets.

Look at verse 21. From the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, made known, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.

In other words, being testified about in the law and the prophets.

In other words, the very righteousness that Paul is discussing here has been talked about in all of the

Old Testament. It's so amazing. People want to miss the reality that it is here.

Now we need to be clear on a couple of things. Let me pause for a second. Because if not,

I'll get ahead of myself in this. The first thing we've got to do is make sure that everyone sitting here, everyone hearing, understands the difference between man's righteousness and God's righteousness.

In the context of this passage, we've already unpacked some of this this morning. Man's righteousness stems from our personal efforts.

So whenever we talk about righteousness and we're talking about man's righteousness, that's the effort that you do.

Isaiah tells us that that is, well, like filthy rags. God's righteousness, on the other hand, is a term that is used to denote an action taken by God to bring people into a right standing before him.

A .M. Hunter defines it this way. For Paul, it was a divine activity whereby

God confers on men a new status or standing with himself.

Now, for those of you that are like super theological, the first thing you heard when

I said that was the term justification. Understand justification is encompassed in all of this, but the two are not the exact same thing.

We'll talk more about that in just a few moments. But the entirety of this righteousness is

God's working, the entire process to bring us into a right standing of ourselves.

If you go back to Genesis 1 -1 and you just begin working in earnest through the Old Testament, what you see is that you are continually pointed forward to the righteousness that comes in Christ over and over and over again.

He demonstrates that our efforts are in vain and points towards this future righteousness.

Even the law was given in such a way so that it was understood that nothing you did through the law could ever attain you righteousness.

I want you to think about something for just a minute. God gives his people the whole law, right, all of the law, but then he gives them the sacrificial system.

If the law could attain righteousness, why give the sacrificial system? Why input it in the first place?

Why bring it into being? Because he knew it was necessary. Because you can't keep it.

The law will not bring righteousness because you cannot be obedient through human effort to the law.

Ultimately, even the sacrificial system that was put in place simply pointed us towards Christ, Jesus himself.

In John 5 -39 says to the crowd, specifically to the

Pharisees and the Sadducees, you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life.

In other words, you are digging through the law and the prophets and your rabbinical teachings and your traditions, and through those things you are desiring this eternal life.

You think it's found there, and listen to what he says. He says, it is these, being

Scripture, being the law, being the prophets, it is these that bear witness about me.

John MacArthur writes, in other words, the law and the prophets did not show men how to achieve their own righteousness, but pointed towards the coming

Messiah, the Savior, the Son of God, who himself would provide the righteousness that God demands of men.

Although the full revelation of salvation through Christ was not given in the Old Testament, there had always been the way of salvation to which the

Testament pointed. All of the law, all of the sacrifices, all of the commandments, everything contained within the

Old Testament does nothing short of point us forward to Christ, the incarnate Word, God made flesh, the second person of the

Trinity. The one who, 2 Corinthians 5 -21 says, He made Him, being the second person of the

Trinity, Christ, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God.

God's righteousness has been revealed. Then we get to verses 22 and 23.

Now there are some theologians out there who throw out the idea that these are not

Paul's original words, that they're parenthetical words added for notes later.

The reality, however, is that these fit right along with everything Paul's writing.

The preponderance of evidence that these are Paul's words given to us through the Holy Spirit. But what is contained within these words is even more evidence in and of itself, and that is that the righteousness of God, first of all, he repeats in verse 22, look at verse 22, he says, even the righteousness of God.

Now Paul wants to make sure we're being clear here. Paul didn't forget that he just said the righteousness of God.

This is not a mistake. This is not a oopsie. This is not a place where he is stuttering, trying to find the words.

Paul wants to narrow our focus down and enlighten our minds and our emphasis and focus our brains and our hearts that the truth is not only this righteousness is revealed, but the means by which this righteousness is attained is also revealed.

It is revealed that this righteousness, not available through the law, comes by faith and faith alone to all who believe.

That this is perfect, certain righteousness. That saving faith is the only means by which to attain righteousness is demonstrated throughout all of Scripture.

In the letter to the church or to the Hebrews, the author writes in chapter 11, dedicating it to bringing us to this understanding that all of these men described for us in the

Old Testament, all of this salvation that occurred was done by faith, not works.

In fact, chapter 4 and 5 of this letter to the church at Rome continually bring us back to that same truth.

The same truth that points back to verses 16 and 17 in chapter 1 of Romans, where Paul concludes that the righteous will live by faith.

It was this verse that brought the great reformer, Martin Luther, where he found true solace and true peace with God.

It was here Paul is quoting the prophet Habakkuk. This text, the righteous will live by faith, comes from Habakkuk chapter 2 verse 4.

Behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith.

Notice the contrast right there in that verse. We have two separate people. We have two types of people.

Same two types of people we have in all of Scripture. The first set we have, the proud one, the one that is seeking to stand on his own accomplishment, to boast in something.

And then we have the one who is living by faith, who is deemed righteous.

The late A .W. Tozer wrote in his book entitled The Root of Righteousness, something has happened to the doctrine of justification.

The faith of Paul and Luther was a revolutionizing thing. It upset the whole life of the individual and made him into another person altogether.

It laid hold on the life and brought it unto obedience to Christ. It took up its cross and followed along after Jesus with no intention of going back.

It said goodbye to its old friends as certainly as Elijah, when he stepped into the fiery chariot and went away in the whirlwind.

It had a finality about it. It snapped shut on a man's heart like a trap.

It captured the man and made him from that moment forward a happy servant of his

Lord. Distinction is clearly made in God's Word between those who believe and those who do not.

But even more so, it is made between those who have belief and those who actually have saving faith.

Now if we simply define faith, it is to believe in something. But you can believe in something without having faith, true saving faith in it.

Repeatedly we are shown that there are people who have a belief that is not salvific. It will not save them because they are not placing all of them on Christ.

It does not lead to righteousness of God because it does not entail the total submission to Christ.

For those who have saving faith, a saving faith that is made possible only by the gift of God's grace and therefore is a gift in and of itself, by the way.

I love people who try to say faith is not a gift. Faith is a gift given through the grace of God.

There is evidence or there is fruit in the life of the individual.

Our will becomes obedient to God. Our capacity for love is increased. We grow in our knowledge and our understanding of Christ.

The next thing is that the reality is that the righteousness of God is granted, get this, to all who believe.

Now that's a hard thing here because that word all gives people problems.

On the one hand, there are those people who desire that this word always applies to all people everywhere at all times.

And then anytime you see the word all in Scripture, it means everybody regardless of their standing before God, regardless of their sincerity of faith, regardless of anything.

It literally means all people everywhere all the time. Then there's the other side who never want to use the word all because they are scared that they may be a little too inclusive.

And so they want to use different words. But the reality is what Scripture teaches is all.

Look at verse 22, second part. Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe.

For there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

This is the whosoever believeth of John 3 .16.

You see, the reality of what Scripture teaches is very clear. We get caught up in some words sometimes that we probably ought to stay away from until we have a really good understanding of them.

But at the end of the day, all who call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

All who believe will be saved. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believeth in him should not perish.

That doesn't mean everybody in the whole world. That only means those who believe. This passage only means those who believe.

It doesn't say everybody everywhere all the time. It specifically says all those who believe.

And then it says for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Meaning that all those who believe are also those who have fallen.

Not all who have fallen everywhere all the time, only those who believe. It's the same in Acts 13 .39.

And then in him everyone who believes is justified from all things which you could not be justified from through the law of Moses.

John 6 .37, Jesus' words himself, all that the Father gives me will come to me. And I will not cast any of them out.

So which ones will he cast out? None of them. Which ones will come to him? All that the Father has given to him. Which means all who believe will come to him.

They will believe. They will have faith. He will not cast them out. The certainty is here. 1

Timothy 1 .15 is a trustworthy saying and deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners among whom

I am foremost. It is not that the all here is to teach us that all people everywhere will be saved, but that all who believe, regardless of their position prior to faith, will come to Christ.

In other words, the best person you can think of who has saving faith will come to Christ and be saved.

And the worst person you think of if they experience saving faith and come to Christ will be saved.

People ask. Every time we talk about this, there's usually a couple people that they bring up.

One of them is, and this is kind of passing out because people don't believe this even happened anymore, but one of the questions is, so you mean

Hitler? Well, number one, there's no evidence ever that Hitler ever had saving faith.

However, if he had been chosen of God, if he had been called by God, if he had experienced regeneration through the

Spirit, and if he had saving faith, then yes. That's exactly what the word teaches.

All who believed are saved. It goes so far as to say and remind us that there is no distinction.

Now specifically, again, he's talking to Jews and Gentiles, the whole church. And he's reminding them because at this day there were a group of folks who said, well, but you need to be a

Jew. You got to be a Jew first. Or you can believe in Jesus, but you need

Jesus and obedience to the law. They were called Judaizers. By the way, there's a big group of those out there nowadays.

If you don't believe me, just Google it on the Internet. You'll find them. But the reality is that what they teach is that, okay, well, as we

Jew, we're in a better position. What Paul says here is there's no better position. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Every human ever is in the same position, utterly without hope, apart from the righteousness of God through Christ Jesus.

That righteousness, by the way, given freely.

Verse 24, being justified as a gift by His grace. The grace of God.

Now justification. We have previously defined justification and should properly define justification as God declaring that the demands of the law have been met or fulfilled on behalf of the believing sinner.

In other words, you are found not guilty. Verses 24 through 25 will elaborate on this a little bit.

C .H. Dodd writes for us that there are three metaphors that are used in these two verses.

He says in the first, God takes the part of the judge who acquits the prisoner. In the second, he takes that of the benefactor who secures freedom for the slave.

And in the third, he takes that of the priest who makes expiation or who makes payment.

This is what the term justified means in plain language, the work of Christ on the cross which results in an acquittal in those who believe.

But beyond that, this verse demonstrates that there is something far greater happening through grace.

Mounce defines it this way, God's grace is God acting in Christ for the benefit of sinners.

Our justification stems from the unmerited favor shown to us in the gift of God's son.

MacArthur writes, yet God justifies believers as a gift by his grace, not because of any good thing in the one who is justified.

By definition, it is a gift. A gift is something given freely, unearned, unmerited by the recipient.

God's greatest of all gifts is that of salvation through his son given completely out of his divine grace.

Galatians 2 .21, if righteousness comes through the law, that is through human fulfillment of God's divine standard,

Paul declares, then Christ died needlessly. There was no reason for him to die if righteousness comes through our efforts.

The law reveals God's righteousness and exposes man's unrighteousness. Grace, on the other hand, grace, on the other hand, not only reveals

God's righteousness but actually gives his righteousness to those who trust in his son.

That gift of grace that costs God the suffering and death of his own son on the cross so that for the believer, there is nothing left to pay, which demonstrates for us that God's righteousness was accomplished by the redemption of Christ.

The second metaphor that God pointed back to was the benefactor who secures freedom for a slave. This is the second part of verse 24 where it says, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, that word redemption.

It's a word that we see that is used regarding the redeemer, someone who purchases something for a price.

In this case, the price was so high that the only one who could pay was the pure righteous lamb of God, only through his work on the cross, only through him bearing the wrath of God in our place, was this righteous or this redemption able to be paid.

But the price for this redemption, verse 25, whom

God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith for a demonstration of his righteousness because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed.

I want to deal with a couple of things first, and we'll come back to the beginning. First of all, the last clause in this paragraph simply means

God's patience overlooking the sins that had already happened. In other words, what he is saying is that I didn't decide to punish sins in the beginning.

Remember, his statement to Adam was, as sure as soon as you eat the fruit of the tree, you will do what?

You will die. God would have been just and righteous in the moment that they consumed of the fruit of the tree to strike them dead and end the human race for all eternity.

What he chose to do, however, was to continue his plans from before the foundation of the world and demonstrate his love, his mercy, his redemption through the cross, the demonstration of his righteousness is this public display.

There is a penalty that is demanded by sin. We'll get to that later,

Romans 6, 23, but the wages of sin is death. There is a wage that has to be paid.

What verse 25 teaches us is that God paid it through Christ on the cross in a public display.

Now, there's some disagreement here. First of all, understand, hopefully all of you do, that the price that is paid is the blood, in his blood, through faith.

He did it through his blood. That is the price that was paid. Where people get hung up is this word propitiation.

Now, the actual language, and here's why people get hung up on this, the actual language here is the same

Greek word that is used in the Greek Old Testament to translate mercy seat.

Okay? So hopefully you remember, as we were studying through Exodus, looking at the stuff in the tabernacle, hasn't been all that long ago that we talked about the mercy seat.

And you remember that the mercy seat is where the priest would sprinkle blood on the day of atonement to atone for the sins of the people.

But he had to do that yearly. And so in some people's mind, when they come to this word in Paul's writings, what they see is a temporary payment.

The way it comes out is that he has paid for the sins of the past, you've got to pay for the sins of the future.

In other words, it is his justification of the sins of your past, plus your work regarding the sins of the future.

Where this leads us to is places like you live a life, and if you cannot live and earn grace enough by saying penance, by taking sacraments, by getting married, by doing confession, by doing all these things, if you cannot earn enough grace to get yourself into heaven, then you hopefully will go to purgatory, and maybe your family can either pray you into eventually, or has enough money to donate you into heaven.

So what we get back to is exactly the same thing that Paul is fighting against. This is right back to a works -based situation, which puts us right back at verse 20.

Paul writes about this when he writes to the church in Galatians 5, 1 through 6, he said it's for freedom that Christ set us free.

Therefore stand firm and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery. In other words, don't put yourself right back where you were.

Christ died to set you free. Don't see that as, oh, okay, well he paid the past penalty, now

I have to take care of the future, and thereby put yourself right back under the demand of the law. He goes on to say,

Behold, I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be of no benefit to you.

And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision that he is under obligation to keep the whole law.

You have been severed from Christ, you who are being justified by law, you have fallen from grace, for we through the

Spirit, by faith, are eagerly waiting for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus there is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything but faith working through love.

When we rightly understand this passage, and when we rightly understand verse 25, what we understand is a full and final payment is well covered.

The context of this passage drives us to a full and final payment.

Morris points out that the term literally means the removal of wrath.

And that when you take that term and that meaning in the context of verses 18, 19, and 20, what you see is that anything less than a full and complete removal of wrath, then we are all still lying under it.

Because we, one, are all sinners, two, have no fear of God, three, the law itself cannot save, all it can do is condemn.

So if verse 25 does not mean full payment, full removal of wrath, then we back back up and are right back in the situation we began.

What a dismal place. Furthermore, this action was carried out in the full view of the public on a hill just outside of Jerusalem.

It was there on that cross God poured out His wrath, His full wrath on His Son, so that all who believed would not perish, would have everlasting life, to the effect that the centurion, who had only moments before been mocking, probably one of those who scourged him, threw rocks at him, chased him up the hill as he moved from Jerusalem to Gaddafi, had no choice, was left with no alternative but to recognize that truly this man was the

Son of God. Now over the last two weeks, we have journeyed from the depths of man's sinfulness to the summit of God's redeeming salvation.

Romans 3, 9 -26 is a theologically rich, spiritually sobering, yet eternally hopeful passage.

Some would argue that it is the most in all of Scripture of those things.

I'm not sure I'm there. It's hard to put one part of Scripture above the other part, right?

It's all the Word of God. But through this, the Holy Spirit speaking through Paul, with clarity, with force, first of all dismantles any notion of our self -righteousness, completely tears us down that we cannot earn this righteousness, but then it also demonstrates for us this replacement righteousness, this righteousness of God that is received in us by faith in Christ.

So that we're clear, let's tie everything together in a nice little bow. Remember verses 9 -20 gave us an unrelenting indictment.

Paul pulled from various Old Testament texts, strained together a devastating litany of our depravity.

He said, This is a courtroom declaration and the gavel drops.

Man is guilty. Humanity, Jew, Gentile alike, all stand guilty before a holy and just God.

That's where we stand. Every mouth shut. Every heart laid bare.

The law, far from being a ladder that we can climb to attain God, has become the very thing that exposes our inability, our impotence, our utter ruin.

It brings knowledge of sin, not power to overcome it. It declares you are condemned, but yet offers no hope for rescue.

And then we get to verse 21 and we encounter these two words, but now, signifying a massive transition in human history.

The history of those who believe, two words that carry us across the chasm of our despair, set our feet upon the solid rock of salvation.

But now God has done something. But now God has spoken. But now God has moved in power, in mercy, and in grace.

What follows, what follows but now, delivers the very heart of God's redemptive plan.

Righteousness has been manifested. It has not been earned. It has not been achieved. It has not been discovered.

It has been revealed that it is God's righteousness, not our imitation of it.

This righteousness is not tethered to the law.

It is not the reward of the religious. It is not the prize for the pious. It is apart from the law, yet it is not disconnected from the law, for it was witnessed by the law and the prophets.

The Old Testament breathes out the promise that is fulfilled in the New. That promise that we are justified by faith in Christ.

That we are declared righteous.

That we are declared right before God, by God, because of the work of Christ.

This righteousness is through faith for all those who believe.

The condition is not heritage. You can't get it by lineage.

You don't earn it through ritual. You don't obtain it by merit.

It is only available by faith, by trust, by surrender.

It is by believing the promises of Christ and casting yourself wholly upon the finished work of Christ.

Faith alone. We have the universal diagnosis for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But we also have the universal cure that all those who believe will be saved.

Again, all those who believe are justified by faith as a gift of grace.

A gift, something unearned, something undeserved, something unrepayable. Grace, God's unmerited favor freely given.

How? Through the redemption which is in Christ. Redemption, speaking of the slave market where one stands chained and helpless and a redeemer enters, pays the price, sets the captive free.

That was us. Enslaved to sin.

Shackled by guilt. Condemned by the law. And Christ walks in and pays the price, not with gold, not with silver, but with his very precious blood.

But Paul goes deeper. He demonstrates first and foremost that that wrath of God is completely satisfied.

Again, that word propitiation is critical. It is the full, final satisfaction of the wrath of God.

His justice must be satisfied. He does not and cannot overlook sin.

He cannot ignore rebellion. His justice demands that a price be paid, but God in his mercy did not pay that price or did not pour his wrath out on us, although we were the ones that deserve it.

He poured it out on Christ. Christ became our substitute.

Christ bore our guilt. Christ absorbed our punishment. Christ satisfied divine justice so that we could be declared righteous.

Why? So that God could demonstrate that righteousness. He waited to deal with all sin on the cross.

He has shown himself, verse 26, for the demonstration of his righteousness at the present time so that he would be just and the justifier.

He is just. He does not compromise his holiness. God is just.

Nothing changes that. There is no injustice. You either receive justice or you receive mercy.

The demonstration on the cross, a calvary demonstrates that he is just, but then he is also the justifier.

He is also the one that made righteous those who trust in Christ. That is the glory of the gospel.

The glory of the gospel is that God remains righteous even as he declares the unrighteous righteous.

Nothing changes in him. He does not bend his law. He fulfills his law. He did not break his law, as some modern -day people are stupidly saying.

He fulfilled his law. He poured out the punishment that was due.

He did it on Christ. He did not lower his standard. He raised us through imputation, the gift of righteousness.

He does not ignore our sin, but he removed it completely in Christ. The question is, how can we remain unmoved in light of this truth?

How can we cling to our pride? Even those who are saved by the grace of God, we still cling to our pride.

We still cling to our works. We still cling to our efforts. Scripture has made it abundantly clear that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone.

This passage annihilates legalism. It lays waste to every attempt to earn

God's favor. It humbles the religious. It exalts the broken. It leaves no room for boasting, no ground for arrogance, no credit to man.

In fact, if you go down to verse 27, the next thing Paul says is, where then is boasting? His answer, it is excluded.

In other words, you have no boast. He proceeds to say, by what kind of law is this happening?

Is it something of works? He says, no, but by a law of faith. But the other thing that happens here is that we crush something called antinomianism, which is this idea that we can be saved and live however we want to live.

It doesn't teach us that. When we read Scripture, when we understand salvation costs the blood of the

Son of God, how can we treat it so lightly? How can we ignore, how can we presume upon that grace?

Listen, if you are justified by faith and let that faith bear fruit in repentance, in holiness, in love, which means you're left with one question and one question alone.

What will you do with this righteousness?

You've heard the truth. You've seen the hopelessness of your own condition, the sufficiency found only in Christ.

You cannot unhear it. We can't unring the bell. Proclamation has been made.

Truth has been outed. We cannot pretend ignorance. So with urgency, each of us must deal with this question.

Have you truly believed upon Christ? Not merely assented to the facts.

Not merely said, oh yeah, Christ lived, died, he was a real man, I believe that. Not merely participated in religious rituals, not just shown up for church when it was time to be at church.

Not just read through your Bible in a rush to get it off of your checklist for today. Not just took those 20 minutes because, well, some preacher somewhere sometime told you 20 minutes a day was all you needed.

It's kind of like those apps I keep seeing about working out. Only five minutes. Make you look like, hey man,

I don't think so. Have you by faith received the righteousness of God and Christ?

Has your life been gripped by grace? Have you been made new?

Has your old man been crucified? Has the Spirit born witness in your heart that you are a child of God?

If not, if not you are trusting in your goodness, your morality, your traditions, and you are still under wrath.

The law has shut your mouth. The courtroom is silent. Unless you come to Christ, you will bear the penalty.

For those who believe, if you have received the gift of justification, if you are righteous in the eyes of God by imputation, then rest.

Rest in Him. Rejoice. Rejoice in Him. Worship Him. Walk in obedience of faith.

Live in light of the righteousness that has been freely given. As we prepare our hearts to celebrate the resurrection of our

Lord and Savior, as we come to this time in the year, let the cross be your boast.

Let it be your peace. Let it be your joy. Let it be your anthem. Let us not forget this gospel.

The gospel is not just for the lost, brothers and sisters. The gospel is for the church.

This is not a you hear it one time, you believe it and you're done. This is a you should hear it every day. You should preach it to yourself.

You should rehearse it in your heart. You should sing it in your home. You should share it with the entire world. That's living out the gospel.

Do not be ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power, the power of God unto salvation to all who believe.

Let us pray. Gracious and merciful

Father, Father, we bow before you.

Overwhelmed by the depth of our sin and the height of your righteousness. Lord, your word clearly illuminates the truth that we in ourselves are utterly condemned, that we have no righteousness, that we have no excuse, that we have no merit.

But thanks be to God, through Christ, we have been declared righteous, justified by grace, bought by the blood of Christ, through the redemptive work that by your grace we have faith, and faith, faith alone, and Christ alone justifies.

Thank you for the cross. Thank you for the blood of Christ that was shed, the blood of the perfect, sinless

Savior, the Lamb of God. Thank you that he bore our wrath, that he became our propitiation, that he now sits at your right hand as our advocate, as our intercessor.

Oh Lord, we confess that we are often forgetful of the weight of this truth. Even we who believe and have received the righteousness of God presume upon your grace.

We minimize our sin. We live as if we earned what we have been freely given.

Father, humble us. Forgive us. Restore to us the joy of our salvation.

Father, we ask that this gospel would not just be heard today, but planted deeply in our hearts, taking root, transforming us, bearing fruit moment by moment, bringing us into the image of Christ.

Father, that we would be a people marked by repentance, by faith, by love, declaring the righteousness of God.

Father, if there be any among us who have not yet believed, who stand even now under condemnation, we pray that your spirit moves in their life, that they are regenerated,

Lord, that they would have faith, that their eyes would be opened, their hearts would be pierced, that through the gift of faith they may be justified, not by works, but by your grace.

Father, we give you all of the glory for you alone are worthy, you alone are just, you alone are the justifier.

We pray all of these things in the blessed name of Jesus Christ, our

Savior, our King. May our lives, both now and forevermore, declare

His righteousness in all things. Amen.