The Bible in 16 Verses: 15. Justification

Just to let you know we've gone a long way so far. We've gone through the whole

Old Testament as far as this particular book is concerned. It's the whole story of the

Bible in 16 verses. We've gone through creation, Adam and Eve, the fall, redemption promised,

Abraham, the Abrahamic covenant, Judah the king, the Passover lamb, King David, the suffering servant, the resurrection promised, and the promise of a new creation.

As we've come into the New Testament, so far we've gone through the fulfillment. Jesus is the fulfillment of all of those promises.

We get to the cross where we see the suffering servant die on behalf of his people. The resurrection,

Jesus is resurrected from the dead. And because we are in Christ, we too will be resurrected from the dead.

Today we're going to go through justification, which is a very important concept to understand as far as righteousness goes.

And then next week we'll close with glory, which is the book of Revelation. So today our scripture verse is

Romans 3, verses 21 through 26, which reads, But now the righteousness of God has been made manifest apart from the law.

Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

But there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, whom

God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. That is a glorious verse.

So what we want to do is unpack this verse, unpack the key statements found in the summary that Paul just gave us.

And we start, But now the righteousness of God has been manifest apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

Does anybody have an idea what it means when Paul says the righteousness of God?

Does anybody have an idea what that means? Right, exactly.

So he's going to talk to us about the righteousness of God. Is God righteous? Yes. Is he perfectly righteous?

Yes. Is man righteous? No, he's not even close to perfectly righteous.

Right? What kind of righteousness do we need to enter into God's presence? Perfect righteousness.

We need the righteousness of God. So after explaining the need for Christ and his identity as the son of God and power, which we went through last week,

Paul begins his summary of the good news in Romans by affirming that God's righteousness, particularly as it is on display in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, is revealed to us apart from the law and its stipulations.

However, the entire Old Testament, the law and the prophets, testifies about God's righteousness.

Jeremiah 23 says, And shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.

In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will dwell securely. And this is the name by which he will be called.

Jehovah Sidkenu. The Lord is our righteousness. Okay? And this is going to be the difference between Christianity and every other world religion or every other man -made concept of God, where we have to work and earn our own righteousness before God.

We need to be good enough based on our own performance versus Christianity saying,

No, the Lord is your righteousness by faith in Christ Jesus.

That's the good news. The bad news is you can never be good enough. No matter how hard you work, no matter what you do, you've sinned already and you cannot undo that by working it off.

Philippians 3 .7 is going to help us. Paul says, But whatever gain I had, remember

Paul was a Pharisee, right? A keeper of the law. Whatever gain

I had, I counted it as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing

Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish.

Now that word in Greek is not really rubbish, it's poopoo. Okay? So count them as poopoo in order that I may gain

Christ and be found in him. Right? So that word knowing, I underline that.

What does the word knowing mean here? It's intimacy.

It's not just knowing facts about something. Right? There's many people who know facts about Jesus.

Knowing Jesus and knowing facts about Jesus are two different things. Knowing Jesus is to be intimate with him the way

Adam knew Eve. Right? In Amos, God says about Israel, Only you have

I known. Now God knows everything and everyone. What he means when he says only

Israel have I known, he means he's only been in that intimate covenant relationship with the nation of Israel.

This is what Paul is talking about. Being intimate, knowing, in covenant Christ. Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law.

Here's a Pharisee, a keeper of the law saying, I don't have a righteousness of my own because I've failed to keep the law.

But that which comes through faith in Christ. Our righteousness, our right standing before God comes through faith in Christ.

The righteousness from God that depends on faith. It can't be much more simpler than this.

The right Jehovah Sikhenu, the Lord is our righteousness. We need the righteousness that comes from God through faith in Christ Jesus.

When you repent of your sins and place your faith and trust in Jesus, you now receive his righteousness.

And you're standing before God at peace. You now have peace with God.

That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible

I may attain the resurrection from the dead. So what he's saying is when Christ died on the cross, he died with him.

He died to the law. In other words, he no longer is going to try to keep the law in order to gain good standing before God.

He's going to trust in what Jesus has done for him. That doesn't mean we jettison the law.

And we'll talk about that in a minute. Isaiah 61 .10 So, Paul said that the law and the prophets testify about this.

So I'm going to show you an Old Testament verse that testifies to the righteousness of God in Isaiah 61.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation.

He has covered me with the robe of righteousness. This is not just a

New Testament novelty that Paul just discovered. This is how human beings from Adam all the way to Paul have been saved all along.

We've been covered with the robe of righteousness. As a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

So this is something that Isaiah talked about, being clothed with the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God from God.

Not the righteousness of man by man. You see the difference? That's huge.

If you think you're going to earn your way to heaven, you have a big problem. You need perfect righteousness and you don't have it.

You need to ask God, Lord, what do I need? I need your revelation to recognize that this is true and that my righteousness in and of itself is but filthy rags before you.

The righteousness of God through faith in Christ Jesus for all who believe. Now that word, believe, means to trust.

It doesn't mean, oh, I believe, easy believism, and now I can do whatever I want to do. When you trust in God, you're going to obey his word.

You're going to keep his law in the sense that the commandments are something that you live your life by.

Now you don't rely on you keeping that law in order to get into heaven. But that's,

God's law is a reflection of his nature. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift.

So first, when he says there is no distinction for all have sinned, what is he talking about? There's no distinction.

What does that mean? Say again? We all sin, but what is he specifically talking about here?

Jew and Gentile. Remember, Paul is speaking to the Jews and the Gentiles.

The Jews are saying, well, this is our plan of salvation. God is in covenant with us, not you Gentile dogs.

Paul says there's no distinction. The Gentiles are sinners, but so are you. Don't think that you're any better than a

Gentile, right? For all, Jew and Gentile, have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified, made right, declared innocent in God's sight.

We're going to talk about what the definition of that is. By his grace, what is grace? Unmerited favor, divine favor, getting what you don't deserve as a gift.

What's a gift? Is a gift something you earn? No. So righteousness from God is not something you earn.

It's a gift. No one enters God's kingdom based on race. It's grace, not race.

Right? That's the way it's been explained to me. It's grace, not race. Just because you're a

Jew doesn't mean you're entitled to salvation. You are not saved genealogically. You are saved

Christologically, in Christ alone. Just in case anyone misunderstands,

Paul emphasizes that the righteousness of God he has in mind here is that which comes to God's people through faith in Christ Jesus.

All are guilty. No one is righteous in and of themselves. As you hope in Jesus and trust in Jesus as the only substitute for your sin and cast yourself on him,

God righteously declares you not guilty and welcomes you into his kingdom. Don't forget the history of Israel and begin to think that you can somehow fix your sin problem or anyone else's.

You need the substitute, the suffering servant, to do it for you. Righteousness is not something you give to God.

It's something you get from God. Most people think, oh, I'm going to give my righteousness to God and he's going to accept me based on what

I've done. No. Righteousness comes from God. You need the righteousness of God by Jesus imputed to your account, given to you as a gift, not something that you earn.

This is why it's called good news. Jesus is Lord. He died in your place.

He rose in your place. He lived the perfect life that you needed to live but died the death that you deserve.

He is your substitute. This is what the whole old covenant was pointing to. This is justification.

I'm going to define it for you. Anybody want to give me a guess as to what justification means? Yes, that's what's called a pastorism, just as if I haven't sinned, kind of.

Yes, Ted? Just as if I didn't sin. Okay, good. Justification is the divine forensic act of God based upon the work of Christ on the cross whereby a sinner, all of us, is pronounced or declared righteous by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to that person.

All right? So that word forensic means legal. So when the judge smacks the gavel down and says, you're innocent, you're free to go, that's what

God did. You're declared righteous because Jesus' righteousness has been credited to your account.

Now, Romanists are going to say, that's illegal fiction. You're not actually righteous.

And they're right. We aren't actually righteous. We are declared righteous because the substitute earned it on our behalf.

They think by their works they can become perfectly righteous. And if they don't, at least they'll have purgatory to purge out the rest of the remaining sin in their life to get them in.

So they'll rely on the righteousness of Jesus, Mary, and the saints in the treasury of merit to be applied to their account when they die so that they get into heaven, which

I remind them is imputation. If you're relying on the treasury of merit being applied to your account, that's the same thing as me relying on Jesus and his righteousness to be applied to my account.

Only, I believe it's Jesus alone. You think Jesus' righteousness isn't enough. You need the righteousness of Jesus, Mary, and the rest of the saints.

No good. It's Jesus alone, yes. Like the prodigal son, he puts his robe on him, brings him in, slaughters the fattened calf.

My son has come home. He's now clothed in the righteousness of Christ. The doctrine of justification is developed most fully by the apostle

Paul as the central truth explaining how both Jew and Gentile can be made right before God on the exact same basis, that being faith in Jesus Christ.

No one is saved by what they do. You are only saved by what God has done for you in Christ.

Without this divine truth, there can be no unity in the body of Christ, hence its centrality to Paul's theology of the church and salvation.

Okay? So justification by faith alone, where have we heard that before?

What's that called? The five solas.

What's one of the five solas? Sola fide. Right? You're saved by faith in Christ alone apart from your works.

Now, we have to qualify what that means. That doesn't mean works aren't necessary.

If you've truly been changed by God, you are going to bear the fruit of the Spirit. That's one way we can check and see if somebody has really trusted in Christ.

Has your life been changed? Or are you still living the same way? If you're living the same way, all you've done is make a profession of faith without a possession of faith.

Your heart needs to be circumcised. You need to be changed. Here's how the Baptist catechism puts it.

What is justification? Justification is an act of God's free grace wherein

He pardoned all our sin and accepts us as righteous in His sight only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone.

The way the thief on the cross placed his faith in Christ while he was nailed to a cross.

And Jesus looked at him and said, Today you will be with me in paradise. Because it does not depend on what the thief did, but what the innocent man on the middle cross did.

It's the depraved heart of humanity that says, I need to add something to this in order for it to be right.

In other words, I can't trust in Christ alone because that means

I'm not good enough. I've done nothing to deserve this. The human heart says,

No, no, no, no. Self, I've done it. A long time ago, when Betty Crocker first started, they put together a cake mix and it was just powder.

You added water, you put it into the pan, you baked it, out came the cake. It was a total flop.

So they would do marketing and ask the person, Why was it a flop? Well, we didn't feel like we were baking a cake.

So what did Betty Crocker do? They changed the directions. Not only do you add water, you add an egg.

You have to mix it and then cook it. Where's Betty Crocker today? All because of the selfish heart of humanity.

See the cake that I made? You did the same thing, you just added an egg. This undercuts any pride in humanity.

You've done nothing. In fact, you've disqualified yourself. It's impossible to be saved apart from God's gracious gift.

That cuts the pride right from out under any human being. That's why

Christianity is spelled D -O -N -E, not D -O. What we try to do as human beings is satisfy

God's requirements and say, God, I've done everything you've told me. You owe me.

We try to put God in our debt, and we can never do that. We can never do that. Okay, so what does

Paul have to say about this? Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them, he's talking about the

Israelites, this is Romans chapter 10, for them, the Israelites, is that they may be saved. Now, most

Jews would tell you, well, we're saved because we're Jewish. Paul says, no, no, no. I pray that you be saved.

For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, for being ignorant of what?

The righteousness from God. What did they try to do? They sought to establish their own.

No, no, righteousness of God? Yeah, God's righteous, but I need my own righteousness. They did not see that righteousness was the gift that God would give them by faith in his promise.

They did not submit to God's righteousness, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

Christ is the end of the law. What does that word end mean? It's over? No more law?

He fulfilled it. The word in Greek is telos. It's the trajectory.

Jesus was the point of the law. He was the one that the law pointed to who would come and keep it on our behalf.

So the whole law and the prophets pointed to who? Christ. That word telos is also known as the word goal.

He was the goal of the law. So when you see Christ's life, you recognize that's a perfect fulfillment of the law.

He kept it perfectly. He is what the goal is. He's what the law pointed to.

All the scriptures were about Jesus. He is the focal point of all of it, not

Israel. Jesus is true Israel. Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandment shall live by them.

They will also die by them if they're relying on that to get them into heaven. They did not submit to God's righteousness.

They didn't recognize that this was a righteousness that would be given to them from God. Jesus is the goal, the telos, what the law was pointing to all along.

Of course they couldn't keep the law. That's why they had a sacrificial system. And that's what the sacrificial system was designed to show them.

They would continually need a sacrifice year after year after year after year, knowing that the blood and bulls and goats could never take away sin.

Galatians 2 .15. I love how many times Paul says that we're not saved by the law in this one verse.

Two verses. We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus.

So we also believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.

How many times can you repeat yourself in the same two verses, right?

And people still don't understand this because they're blinded. They need to add something to the finished work of Jesus.

Faith plus baptism. Faith plus knocking on doors.

Faith plus my obedience. Faith plus doing good works. Now doing good works and baptism and all those things, those flow from your faith in Christ.

You want to be identified. You want to be baptized, but it's not the baptism that saves you. It's Christ that saves you.

How many people are baptized who are not saved, who do not have God's Holy Spirit living inside them, changing their hearts?

Sure, it's an argument against baptismal regeneration. It's an argument against baptism for salvation.

It's Christ for salvation. Those other things will follow. Again, as a believer in Christ, you want to obey

Christ. Jesus says, whoever believes in me and is baptized will be saved, but he who doesn't believe is not saved.

He doesn't say he who isn't baptized isn't saved. The thief on the cross. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven?

I've done enough. That is to bring Christ down. Or who will descend into the abyss? I haven't done enough.

That is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you in your mouth and in your heart.

That is the word of faith we proclaim, because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is

Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

No mention of baptism, by the way. For with the heart, one believes, trusts, and is justified, declared righteous in God's sight.

And with the mouth, one confesses unto salvation. See what that's saying?

Your heart needs to be changed. In contrast to a legal earned righteousness is the righteousness that is by faith.

This is Douglas Moo. He wrote a commentary on Romans. Paul uses a figure of speech putting words from Deuteronomy 9 .4

and Deuteronomy 30 .10 through 14 on the lips of this type of righteousness. The general point he wants to make about the righteousness by faith is clear enough.

Through Christ being brought down to earth, in other words, his incarnation, and him being brought up from the dead, his resurrection,

God has made righteousness readily available. One does not have to ascend into heaven or plumb the depths of the sea to discover it.

All one needs to do to attain the righteousness is to respond in faith to the gospel as it is preached by faith alone.

You trust in what Jesus has done for you. That will change your life forever.

You need to repent, change the way you think about your sin, turn from it, and cling to the only thing that can save you.

Who's the Lord? Jesus. Jesus is who the whole Old Testament pointed to in fulfillment of the

Abrahamic covenant. So when we talked in the beginning about Adam and Eve when they fell, and God says,

I'm going to send one who's going to crush the head of the serpent, right? And I'm going to judge the world with Noah.

And then with Abraham, he says, your seed, through your seed, the whole earth will be blessed.

It's all pointing to him. This is the fulfillment of the

Abrahamic covenant. Through your seed, Jesus, all of the nations, not just Israel, all of the nations will be blessed.

Galatians 3, 6 through 9, Paul says, just as Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness, this is the illustration that Paul uses in Romans chapter 4 to tell us how somebody is made right before God.

Abraham, not a Jew, Old Covenant. He's not part of the New Covenant. He looked forward to the coming of the

New Covenant and trusted in the promise that it was coming. Know then that it is those of faith who are sons of Abraham, not those who were circumcised.

And the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel, good news, beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed.

So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

Is that making sense? Everybody tracking any questions to this point? Paul goes on in Romans 4, for what does the scripture say?

Abraham believed God and it was counted or reckoned to him as righteousness.

This is an accounting term. So we went from debits to credits. You had a big debt. Jesus paid that debt.

Now it gets credited to your account. You're good before God. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted to him as a gift, but his due.

So anyone who wants to work their way into heaven, that means salvation is not a gift. That means you've earned it.

That means you've done exactly what Jesus has done. And you haven't, just to let you know. Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as his due.

And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly.

He doesn't wait till you're good enough and then he justifies you, which is the system of Romanism. You have to wait to the end of your life to see if you're good enough.

Then he'll justify you. So you need to be good in order to be justified. Paul says, God justifies the ungodly and your faith is counted as righteousness.

Here's a beautiful quote by Steve Lawson. Eternal life is not a reward for the righteous. It's a gift for the guilty.

Praise God. Yes. If you're waiting to the end, you don't have faith in Christ.

That's the point. You have faith in you. Why? Because you're waiting to see how you did. All I do is read the scriptures and see how

Jesus did. I want that. I want that. The scripture over and over says, these things are written so that you may know you have eternal life.

When you tell a Romanist that I have eternal life, that's presumption. That's the sin of presumption.

That's what John wrote several times, mind you. That's a lack of faith.

I shouldn't say lack. It's a lack of faith in Jesus and a ton of faith in yourself. It's exactly where it shouldn't be.

Just as David also speaks of the blessing to the one whom God counts righteousness apart from works.

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man against whom the

Lord will not count them. You want to ask a Romanist or anyone else after reading that verse in Romans chapter 4, who's the blessed man?

Who's the blessed man whose sins are forgiven and whose deeds are not counted towards him?

Who is that man? I heard a Roman Catholic priest say, oh, that's Jesus. Really?

So God's not going to count Jesus' sins against him. You couldn't get further from the truth on that, right?

That's us. If your faith and trust is in Christ and you identify with his death, burial, and resurrection, you're the blessed man whose sins are not going to be counted against you.

Is this blessing then only for the circumcised? In other words, is this just for the Jews or also for the uncircumcised, the

Gentiles? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him?

Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised.

He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

Ah, so his salvation came before his circumcision. Circumcision is not what puts you into the covenant.

Faith is what puts you into the covenant. Circumcision is the sign that you are in the covenant. In the

New Testament, faith is what puts you in the covenant. Baptism is the sign that shows that you're in the new covenant.

The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised. Now, to my

Presbyterian brothers, it says without being circumcised. If you think baptism is a counterpart to circumcision, well, then how does this make sense?

The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being baptized, right? Oh, that's discontinuity.

Well, you can't have continuity and discontinuity on the same exact thing at the same time. That's a contradiction, okay?

The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised so that the righteousness would be counted to them as well and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father

Abraham had before he was circumcised. Clarity. Romans 2 .28.

For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly. In other words, of the flesh. Nor is circumcision outward and physical.

But a Jew is one inwardly. And circumcision is a matter of the heart by the spirit, not by the letter of the law.

In other words, not by you keeping the law. His praise is not from man but from God. God is the one who circumcises the heart, changes you from the inside.

Now you are in the covenant by faith in Christ. God circumcises your heart, draws you to his son

Jesus, grants you repentance and faith in his son. It's all the monergistic work of God.

Not synergistic. Man plus God equals salvation. It's salvation equals...

Salvation is just done by God alone. Nice and easy, sorry. Okay. The need for a substitute is universal.

We saw this in Exodus when both Israelites and Egyptians were under God's judgment. All have sinned,

Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, men, women, children. No one escapes the curse and everyone is robbing

God of the glory he deserves as our creator and king because of our sinfulness. This means that people are justified, declared righteous before God only by his grace, getting what you don't deserve.

Abraham did not earn the right to be the father of the promised one. The Israelites did not escape from Egypt because they were so much better than the

Egyptians. David did not merit God's favor when God promised him an eternal throne.

In the same way, neither you or I nor anyone you know deserves God's favor.

His grace is just that. Grace, unearned favor, unmerited favor.

God's kindness in the unfolding account of the Bible is amazing. When you see that it was grace from Adam and Eve to Abraham and now through Jesus Christ, what is it?

It is amazing grace. You've been saved by grace through faith. That, not of yourselves, it's a gift of God, not by your good works so that no one can boast.

Anyone who says, oh, it's because I did fill in the blank, that's not grace.

We should constantly ask ourselves, Lord, why did you choose me? Why me?

Here's the thing. If you can answer that question, it's not grace. Why?

He says, I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy. Never, ever, ever take your salvation for granted.

Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by how?

Baptism, good works, knocking on doors, keeping the sacraments, doing a mitzvah, doing a dance.

No, faith. It's not too hard. Faith. This justification,

Paul explains, is based on the work of the Messiah, the work of Jesus. He redeems us by his blood the same way like the

Passover lambs that purchased Israel's salvation temporarily so they would not have to face the judgment that they deserved.

But those sacrifices were not finally effective. They were not permanent. As we saw in Lesson 13,

Jesus came to finish those sacrifices and pay the debt once and for all permanently,

Romans 3 .24. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins.

It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be the just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

In other words, God passed over the sins, not counting them against the people who sinned in the

Old Testament, looking forward to the permanent solution in Christ Jesus, who would be the sacrifice for all.

That make sense? Paul says in Galatians 2 .15, we ourselves are

Jews. And I'm going to highlight this for a reason. We ourselves are Jews by birth and not

Gentile sinners. Yet we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.

So we, Jews, also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law.

Because by the works of the law, no one will be justified. That's real clear, right? But if in our endeavor, the

Jews, to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, then is

Christ a minister of sin? In other words, if we're Jews and we're trying to keep the law, is that what

Jesus wants us to do, to be sinners? Certainly not. For if I rebuild what

I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God.

I have been crucified with Christ. In other words, Paul is saying, if I rebuild a system of legalism,

I'm not going to be saved. I need to place faith in the provision of God on my behalf.

I'm not going to rebuild a sacrificial system that God tore down in the temple.

I'm going to trust in his final permanent solution for my sin. So Paul says,

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

You recognize you need to die to self and let God, let Jesus Christ live through you and do the works that he would do if he was here, do them through you?

Not my will be done, thy will be done. And the life I now live in the flesh,

I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

You've been bought with a price. Your body is not your own. Your life is not your own.

I do not nullify the grace of God for if righteousness were through the law, then

Christ died for no purpose. Why would God have to sacrifice his only begotten son on a cross if you could get to heaven by doing good things?

Right? That's why it's Christ alone. It's not Christ plus you.

Anything you add to the cross ruins it. My illustration all the time is if you went into the museum that the

Mona Lisa is in and you're looking at it, you're like, oh, that's great. Honey, give me a magic marker. I got to touch this up.

As soon as I put the magic marker on the painting, what happens? It's ruined. It's worthless.

I've added to the perfect Mona Lisa. You cannot add anything to the perfect cross of Christ and think you're making it better.

You can't make it better. It's perfect already. If you touch it, you ruin it. Paul calls this payment propitiation, and we've gone through this in earlier sessions.

This theological word simply refers to something or someone that appeases God's righteous wrath.

While many people don't like to talk about the wrath of God, we cannot really get around it without distorting the message of the

Bible. Sin is not just a minor inconvenience. Again, Christianity isn't easy believinism.

Oh, I believe in Jesus. Yeah, Jesus is my Lord and Savior. Now I go live the way I want. That's not the way it works. Even the demons believe.

And they tremble. You don't. They're a little smarter. When we sin, or worse, when we try to earn our own salvation, we're shaking our fists at the

God who made us to be dependent on Him, telling Him that we doubt that His payment is enough and don't believe that He can be trusted.

Part of God's righteousness is His wrath towards this insolence. When we put our sin in the proper perspective,

God would be unrighteous not to judge it. Remember, God is holy.

In fact, He's holy, holy, holy. It's the only thing counted three times towards God.

It doesn't say God is love, love, love. Although He is love, He's perfect love. Scripture says

He's holy, holy, holy. Here's a quick illustration. We need to recognize the need for justice in the worst of crimes.

In our world, the Nazis are almost a cliché, but the truth is they murdered more than 6 million people.

Actually, 12 million. From November 1945 to October 1946, the Allied forces held a series of military tribunals to prosecute the

Nazi war criminals for their part in this terrible Holocaust. During the trials, 12 prominent

Nazi leaders were sentenced to death. But imagine if the Allies had simply decided to pardon the masterminds behind the deaths of so many, give them a new start, and allowed them to walk free with no consequence.

You're free to go. No consequences. This would have been a travesty, a miscarriage of justice.

Likewise, when we truly understand the nature of our sin against God, we see that it cannot be simply swept under the carpet.

It's not, oh, I trust in Jesus, I'm good now. Jesus died a horrific death.

Your sin needs to be paid for. God's righteous wrath is not the equivalent of one of us throwing a tantrum because things didn't go our way.

Let's not make the mistake of thinking that God is like us. God hates sin.

We need to pray, Lord, help me to hate what you hate and help me to love what you love.

Let me not be conformed to the pattern of this world in loving the things that the world loves.

Instead, think about the way you feel when you see an undeniable injustice or hear of the exploitation of children.

Something wells up in us that says, this is not the way things ought to be. We see some horrific things happening in our world today that require true justice.

When we defy the God who made us to love Him, worship Him, and live with Him, His only just and proper response to us is wrath against our treason and our injustice when we sin.

So apart from the sacrifice of the perfect Lamb, of the one and only begotten

Son of God, the suffering servant, God would be unjust to welcome us into His presence.

It was at a great cost that our sin was paid for. Don't make light of it.

And this was to show God's righteousness. That's why He passed over the former sins. Because in His divine forbearance,

He passed over those sins of old. It was to show His righteousness at the present time so that He might be just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

So Paul concludes Jesus' death was absolutely necessary in order for God to accept us and remain truly righteous.

God could have immediately and decisively judged all of the sins committed from the Garden of Eden to the cross of Christ.

The moment Adam and Eve sinned, He didn't have to allow them to live. He could have wiped them out, not just spiritually, but physically.

There would be no more humanity. Or He could have waited until Cain and Abel and then wiped all of them out.

The reality is God would be perfectly righteous to strike down you or me and send us to hell the moment we envy our neighbor, lie to our friend, or doubt

God's kindness to us. We presume upon the mercy of God all day long and not recognize it was at a great cost that we received this mercy.

But in His divine forbearance, He has not struck you down. This is why Paul could say in the previous chapter of Romans, God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.

For year after year, with sacrifice after sacrifice, God was patiently passing over, forbearing the sins of old.

In truth, we all deserve death without mercy. But God, who is rich in mercy, has unfolded this amazing plan of redemption that He would put what was most dear to Him, His only

Son, in our place. Through Jesus, He has decisively defeated sin and death and has brought us back to what we were created for, living with God forever in the world

He created for His glory. We now have peace with God through faith in Christ Jesus.

This is where the Bible has been heading all along. This is the telos, the goal, the point of the whole story.

Back to the place we were created to live, back to paradise, back to the presence of God with us forever.

Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. But now the righteousness of God has been made manifest apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Christ Jesus for all who believe.

There is no distinction, all have sinned. We receive His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ, put forward by a propitiation in His blood to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness because in His divine forbearance He passed over sins.

That's a summary of the whole thing. This doesn't mean that God just winks at your sin and pardons it because you asked

Him to. What it does mean is that the consequence of your sin has been laid on Christ at a great cost and great pain to Him so that you could be declared innocent.

He suffered in our place and for our sin. Never, ever take that for granted.

Never get over the wonder and awe of your own salvation. In order for true justice to be satisfied, every sin in this world must be paid for.

If there's a sin that goes unpaid for, then there's injustice in the world. Either Jesus will pay for your sin or you will pay for your own sin, but all sin in this world will be reconciled.

Friends, you can refuse God's love, but you cannot refuse God's justice. You will face

God's justice. If you don't know the Lord, change the way you think about sin.

It's repentance. Turn from that and cling to the only one who can save you, the one who has been prophesied since Genesis 3 .15

on, the one who fulfills every single one of God's prophecies, dies as the suffering servant as a substitute for those who would put his faith and trust in Him.

So this week we learned three topics, justification, judgment, and substitution.

Justification is God's legal declaration of our innocence because of the imputed righteousness of Christ to our account.

We will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ and receive our rewards done in the body, whether good or evil.

If Jesus is our substitute, there's no condemnation in Christ Jesus. We won't be found guilty, but we will receive rewards for what we've done in His name.

All right, so this is the whole story so far. God created a very good kingdom of which

He is the King. He created human beings, His children, to represent Him in that kingdom, and they were responsible to expand it, same as us.

Through their sin, Adam and Eve rejected God's commission and rebelled against their Father and Creator, same as us.

Yet God proved His covenant love toward them despite their unfaithfulness. Very good did not turn into very bad, it just proved the character of who was always very good.

There will be ongoing enmity between the offspring from now on, but God promised a

Redeemer who will crush the head of the enemy and secure God's victory. With this promise, very broken turned into very hopeful.

Next, God chose Abraham, an idolater, to bring the seed through whom the covenant blessings would come to all the families of the world.

Despite the sinful lineage of Abraham's family, and specifically Judah's royal seed through David, God is still faithful to bring the covenant blessings to the world, which would be ruled by a faithful king.

Because all people were guilty and deserved death, the blood sacrifices of the Mosaic law revealed more clearly their guilt and ongoing need for a substitute, a permanent one, the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.

Through the servant and the work of the Spirit, God would establish a new covenant and give eternal life to His people as a free gift.

Jesus is the promised one, the anointed one, the seed of the woman, the true Israel and high priest, the suffering servant through whom all of these promises find their perfect and permanent fulfillment at the cross.

Jesus was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead and the only one through whom all of these promises find their fulfillment, first in His sacrificial death for sin and then in His victorious resurrection and reign as king.

Through the Abrahamic covenant, all those who exercise true faith in the seed, Jesus Christ, Jehovah Zakenu, the

Lord is our righteousness, become righteous by faith. Amen.

That's Sproul. He says, you are saved by God, for God, from God.

He is the one who is going to judge humanity, right? But He is also the one who will pay for your sins through His Son when you place faith in Him.

My goodness, how good and gracious is our God. Let's pray. Let's pray.