Sermon: “But now…”

TEXT:  Romans 3:21-26

REVIEW

1. All the world is guilty before God: Everything that Paul has said up to this point in Romans has been written to convince you of this.  You need not evade this truth any longer.

2. By the deeds of the Law no flesh will be justified: The way out of guilt for you will not come through your own obedience to the Law of God.  From your efforts to obey the Law comes the knowledge of your own sin.  Righteousness is still absolutely required of you if you are to have fellowship and peace with the God who created you and loves you and knows you by name.  How will you get to Him?  The way of your own partial obedience of God’s Law will not be the answer for you.

TODAY’S PASSAGE:

²¹ But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed,

being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, 

²² even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.

For there is no difference;  ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 

²⁴ being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 

²⁵ whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith,

to demonstrate His righteousness,

because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, 

²⁶ to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness,

that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

1. The righteousness of God apart from the Law

            BUT NOW… Now at the fullness of time, at the coming of Messiah, at the giving of the Messiah in His atoning death, at the resurrection of that One Messiah, at the preaching of that Messiah through the church to all the world… But now, even now today, another way of righteousness has been revealed.  And it is my hope that you are always thrilled to hear of it.  This way of righteousness is NOT the righteousness of your own best efforts, however good you may be by God’s grace, or however good you or anyone else imagines you to be. It is the perfect righteousness of God, and it is apart from your obedience to God’s law, to anyone else’s law, or to your own laws of choice.

            This righteousness for us from God is well-known to the Law and the prophets.  This term “the law and the prophets” is used to refer to the whole Old Testament.  The Hebrew Scriptures repeatedly witnessed to a righteousness of God apart from the Law. When did this happen?  Every time the Old Testament said anything about Christ, this was a witness to the righteousness of the God/man who was to come, the Lord Jesus Christ.  His is the perfect righteousness of God, the righteousness that God requires.

            To understand this word righteousness correctly, you cannot be at the center of your own universe.  Everything in life cannot be about you, and you choices, and your goodness – which is a tremendous challenge to us.  Come along with me now, and walk with me to this righteousness that you need to receive and embrace as a gift.  There are at least four starter-steps that we need to take on our walk: 1. God is.  2.  God has a law.  3.  You must be subject to Him.  4.  You have to answer to Him.  These are radical thoughts to us.  You may think that you believe in God, but if you are still supposing that your choices in life are first, then it is no surprise that you find yourself unstable and insecure in your walk of faith.  You need to take that four starter-step walk again that brings you to your knees.  Then you will be able to say, “Yes, God, You are right to demand whatever You demand of me.  You require perfect righteousness.  You are right to require this.  I cannot give you what you require.  HOW MERCIFUL OF YOU THAT YOU HAVE SUPPLIED THROUGH YOUR OWN SON WHAT I ABSOLUTELY NEEDED, AND WHAT I ABSOLUTELY COULD NOT PROVIDE. 

The way of God’s provision is through faith in Jesus Christ (John 6:28-29). In the words of Paul, righteousness is given to all who believe as a free gift from God, and righteousness is on all who believe as a protective covering without which we can never survive in the presence of an almighty and holy God.

2. All have sinned.

There is no difference among people concerning what we need.  As we have already seen so persuasively in earlier passages of this book, all have sinned and fall short of the glorious righteousness that God requires.  There are these two great universals among all human beings: 1. All have been created in the image of God, and have an inherent dignity and a certain freedom that comes from God’s creation of us, and  2.  All have sinned, and have a certain slavery that comes from sin, and all need righteousness that they cannot provide.

            BUT NOW, this morning, there is another way of righteousness that is being presented to each of you.  It is a righteousness that comes to all who have the gift of faith.  It brings new freedom and life-changing assurance to those who embrace it and grow in it.  Let me be more specific about this way of righteousness, since Paul tells us some very specific things about it in this passage. 

This righteousness is only through redemption.  “Redemption” is a word that is used to talk about prisoners or slaves who are bought back from their bondage by the payment of some price.  The only way for you to have the righteousness that you need is to be redeemed.  There is only One man in whom you can have that redemption.  You cannot have redemption by being connected to your father or mother.  You cannot have redemption by being a smart, successful, athletic, fun, popular, or a kind person.  You cannot have that redemption by being in Buddha, or Mohammed.  That redemption is only in Christ Jesus.

            Why only in Christ Jesus?  Because His God and Father set Him forth as something called a “propitiation.”  That’s a big word that we don’t use a lot, but the idea is easy to explain.  Propitiation is a certain kind of blood sacrifice that turns away the wrath of God that was coming against you for all your sin.  The wrath of God is headed toward you like a powerful and deadly locomotive.  God set forth His son, lifting Him upon the cross, to be the blood sacrifice.  Jesus is the only one who can take the force of that locomotive of wrath and save you from death and hell.  God sends His Son to face not only the physical brutality of torture and death, but also the spiritual eternal torment that you deserve.

            How can you access this redemption that is in Christ.  You access and receive all His righteousness through what Paul calls “faith.”  Faith is a complete resting in Christ for all of your life, your death, and beyond your death.  Faith is the courage to stand on the solid ground of Jesus Christ every day, rather than the shifting sands of your own bad choices.  Faith says, “Speak Lord, your servant listens.”  It is a gift from God.  You know you have it by exercising it.  You know you have it by yielding your life to the solid truth of God and His Word.  It comes by hearing as God gives you ears to hear and receive the message that is preached, and this hearing comes by the Word of God.  That’s why I preach to you from the Bible.

3. To demonstrate His righteousness…

Why did God decide to do righteousness for you this way?  That’s the last thing Paul speaks about here, and it is very important.  He did righteousness this way to display all His glorious justice and His glorious mercy.  He had passed over previous sins in such a way that some might have thought that there really was no great need for righteousness.  “God must be an easy god,” they could have thought.  “He says He punishes sin, but He really doesn’t.”  But now there can be no doubt.  On the cross, Jesus took the wrath of God for us – for all who would believe.  He took God’s justice against sin and demonstrated God’s righteousness and His mercy to us who would believe.  This is important because it shows us that life is first about God and His display of His own glory, and not first about us.

APPLICATION:

About ten days ago, Candy, Jeff, Kristin, and I were walking out of the subway system in Bucharest.  As we climbed the staircase we saw some kids on the stairs breathing glue vapors out of a bag.  They do this to deaden their minds.  They beg during the day, and use part of what they get to buy glue at night.  It was an ugly thing to see, not only because of the danger and sadness of the activity, but also because of the place that the kids chose to do this.  Someone under the influence of these bad vapors cannot walk in a stable way.  The thought of a child falling down a long subway staircase was frightening.

            All over Exeter and throughout the world, people are breathing in bad spiritual vapors.  They imagine that they are safe in the throne of their own lives.  They imagine that God needs to answer to them for what He has done or not done in their lives.  They imagine their evil to be a very small matter, and there own goodness to be more than plenty in order to assure their own eternal peace, if there should turn out to be an eternity.  But this is a bad bag of spiritual glue that they are breathing in.  The person who sniffs those deadly vapors needs to throw away that bag and to run to the mountain of Christ’s solid righteousness and His atoning mercy.  Let us go then, you and I, all of us.  Let us get down from the dangerous throne of me-first living, and let us walk together to the mountain of the Lord, and kneel before Him, and worship Him through Christ our propitiation.