3:22-27
In the first two chapters of the book of Romans Paul has delivered the bad news about the sinful and helpless condition man is living in under God’s condemnation.
Paul has showed that there is no salvation through the keeping of God’s laws…because sinful man is utterly incapable of…or…inclined not to obey God.
In verses 19, 20, and 23 of chapter 3 Paul sums up the first two chapters of Romans:
Verse 19 – “…so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.”
Paul has declared “every man a liar”. The entire world stands silent and guilty before God.
Verse 20 – “For no flesh will be justified in His sight….”
From Romans 1:18 to 3:20 Paul has expressed and exposed man’s condition as a helpless sinner…under wrath…under judgment…unjustified…guilty…and condemned before God.
Verse 23 – “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
All people…universally…without distinction are equally deserving of God’s wrath.
Paul has demonstrated with reason and proven with Scripture that we’re all a bunch of guilty sinners who deserve God’s wrath…Paul has concluded his description of what humanity is like as God sees us and concludes with the question: …what could possibly give us hope???
Starting in verse 21 Paul begins to give us hope…revealing the good news that the forgiveness of sin is not through the Law…or by man’s good works…but by the one great declaration of the gospel: [21]
But now a righteousness from God, apart from (the) law, has been made known.
Paul says “But now…” [21] there is hope….Paul shows what God does about the whole….sick…pitiful condition of man…having shown that man cannot be right before God by works…nor…by the Law…nor even by what Jesus taught.
In verses 22, 24, and 25 we see that God has given us a reprieve.
22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe…24 being justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He passed over former sins.
In these three verses Paul begins to elaborate on what some consider to be the pillars of the gospel…words that are the core of the Christian faith—justification
—grace—redemption—propitiation—faith—and forbearance…these verses are at the heart of the Gospel message.
These words represent the promises of God…as Christians we have the assurance that every promise God made in Scripture is available to us…a misunderstanding of these key words is part of the reason there are so many different kinds of religions and the reason people are confused about salvation.
Regardless of their name…every religion except Christianity is man-made and is works-centered…for that reason none of them can succeed in leading a person to Christ because they fail to see the importance of Jesus’ substitutionary atonement on the Cross…these words explain how that is possible.
I want us to look at some of these key words from verses 22, 24, and 25 because they define how God works in the life of the believer…we should all have an understanding of what these words mean because they are directly tied into how God deals with us as individuals.
Paul begins in verse 22 by stating it is the righteousness of God.
3 Things to Know about the Righteousness of God
1 – The Righteousness of God is Not Earned, It’s Given Through Exchange
Here is how the exchange works…God is able to declare a person righteous who is clearly not righteous…God does this making an exchange… whereby He exchanges one thing for another.
That is actually the intent of chapter 4…God IMPUTING Christ’s righteousness to us…God takes our sin and imputes it to Jesus…“For our sake He [God] made Him [Christ] to be sin who knew no sin” [2 Cor. 5:21].
God takes our sins and puts them on Jesus…the reason that Jesus asks God while on the cross…why have you forsaken me…because God cannot look at sin…on the Cross Christ took on our sin and in exchange for our sin we receive His righteousness…Jesus’ righteousness is imputed to us.
We are given the righteousness of Christ so that when God looks at us, He sees the very righteousness of His Son.
2 – The Righteousness of God is Not Bought, It’s Paid For
Another aspect of God’s righteousness is that it really doesn’t cost you anything, but it did cost Jesus everything…you are bought with a price…you are paid for.
3 – The Righteousness of God is Not Temporary, It’s Eternal
Why is this such a difficult issue within the church? …God’s declaration of righteousness over your life has made you right in God’s sight both now and forever…it’s not just for today and lost tomorrow.
SECURITY OF THE BELIEVER–
who will also sustain you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. [1 Corinthians 1:8]
“who will also sustain you” – (βεβαιώσει) —meaning to secure…to establish…to guarantee—amidst the trials in your life that shake your faith and maybe cause you to doubt God’s promise of eternal life…this verse says…it’s not going to happen.
One of the most important things to know about the righteousness of God is that
your problem of sin has been dealt with and you are His special possession…in
short, you belong to Him both now and forever…you will not fall away and
perish. (Phil. 1:6).
Paul says that the righteousness of God (is only) through faith in Jesus… twice in three verses Paul uses the word ‘faith’…without faith none of what Paul is talking about can become a reality.
This is the difficult part of Christianity…because it is asking you to believe in something you can’t see…feel…or touch…it seems so elusive…but without faith it is impossible to please God [Heb. 11:6] …that’s really the definition of faith…being certain about realities we believe are true but we cannot see with our physical eyes.
Then Paul says…because of our faith in God and His Son…even though we can’t see either one we believe…as a result… we are ‘justified by His grace’.
Justification by faith is what separates biblical Christianity from all other belief systems…Justification is an act of God where He pronounces a sinner to be righteous…only in true biblical Christianity is a person saved as a result of grace through faith because of the sinner’s faith in Christ.
These two verses answer the question: How can God declare us to be righteous when we are in fact unrighteous?
A believer is declared justified—without sin—and righteous—being spiritually equal with Christ–through faith in Jesus because of God’s grace… Paul goes on to say that as a result of being justified and righteous we are now redeemed.
So…What does it mean to be redeemed? …the very definition of redemption is seen in Jesus’ sacrifice of the Cross… it’s “the sinner’s release from bondage by means of a ransom payment.”
People are born in bondage to sin…BUT…on the Cross we see Christ’s work of redemption…He paid the price to buy us back…In order for me to live, something else must die…Jesus’ death was the ransom payment.
There are three basic elements to that definition regarding a sinner’s release from bondage
…First, the state of bondage…what is meant by “bondage.”
The reason sinners are not righteous and can never be righteous is because of the sin in our lives…sin enslaves all people–no exceptions…we are all under the bondage of sin.
Every baby born into this world is enslaved in bondage to sin because of the sin of Adam imputed to them…we all have Adam’s sin nature.
Sin holds people in bondage three ways:
Sin enslaves through its guilt and penalty
Sin enslaves through defilement…the act of disrespect toward God or others
Sin enslaves through its power to dominate and control people’s lives.
To redeem means to buy back or to reclaim something that was previously owned …originally, we belonged to God but that was lost when sin entered the world and separated us.
This is where the second element of redemption comes in…the price paid to get us back…through Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross God bought us back… you were bought with a price [1 Cor. 6:20].
The price is found in [Matthew 20:28]. The price to buy us back was that something or someone had to die… Jesus came to give His life a ransom for many…the ransom payment was paid for us by Jesus when He offered Himself as the ransom payment to appease God’s anger.
Jesus died for us so we could live and not die [II Corinthians 5:14-15]. That removes any satisfaction in thinking that we played some part in our own salvation…we didn’t.
That’s why the Bible talks so much about the old self must die for the new self to live….there is no way to move on to the “next level” of maturity in the Christian life while clinging to the old one.
Just a word about being bought with a price…on the surface it sounds like God had to ‘buy’ us back…No way! No way was the death of Jesus a payment to Satan…no thought in the Bible about God owing/paying the devil a ransom.
Paul says regarding Jesus’ death…that besides being a ransom….it also served as a propitiation.
It’s important that we understand what this means because it is the act of propitiation that keeps God from destroying every one of us.
Propitiation involves appeasing the wrath of an offended person…in this case God…God is offended when we sin.
Sin angers God…in fact…God hates sinners [Psalm 5:4-5 / 11:5] dispels that old saying…God hates the sin but loves the sinner…no He doesn’t…He hates both.
‘God hates the sin but loves the sinner’ is a Christian myth or generally accepted oral tradition that functions the same way fairy tales do…provides comfort while glossing over the truth…accepted as truth but in fact, is not truth at all.
The word propitiation is another word to explain what Jesus accomplished through His death of the cross…goes back to verses 24 / 25:
24 being justified by his grace…through the redemption that is in Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood.
That’s confusing right? …justification…grace…redemption… propitiation…all are important because all explain how God works in the life of a believer.
Justification…God accepting me just as if I had never sinned…it’s God pronouncing a sinner to be righteous.
Grace…God not treating me as I deserve to be treated.
Redemption…sin separated us from God but Jesus’ death paid the price to buy us back.
Propitiation is the turning away of God’s anger…wrath…and condemnation of sin which we rightfully deserve.
An important part of Jesus’ death involves the deliverance from God’s anger against us…propitiation is the turning away of God’s anger…and wrath…which we rightfully deserve…without that there would be no justification …redemption…or forbearance.
Because in His divine forbearance He passed over former sins…here we see the patience of God…forbearance refers to God’s patience toward us by passing over our former sins.
After listing all the God-centered attributes that contribute to our salvation—justification—grace—redemption—propitiation–faith—and forbearance…that all takes place when we trust Jesus as Savior.
Knowing how God treats us…knowing what He does for us should cause us all to fall to our knees in gratitude…all these things God does for us…and we do nothing…this brings up the question [3:27] that Paul concludes this portion of the gospel with by asking a simple rhetorical question… ‘where then is the boasting’ [3:27].
This goes back to Paul’s imaginary Jewish friend who asked Paul…what was the advantage to being a Jew…the Jews thought having the law of Moses… circumcision…and keeping the sabbath gave them a reason to boast in their relationship with God.
It was these things that they believed justified them in the sight of God…Paul says you are wrong… there is no advantage to being a Jew any more than there is with being a Gentile.
We’ve looked at all the reasons why we have nothing to boast about…SO, the immediate answer is: there is none…boasting is excluded [27].
Meritorious works are excluded…kindly deeds…humanitarian actions… financial contribution…and everything else that man may contrive to secure his salvation is excluded.
Salvation is from the Lord so what makes you think you can boast about your salvation or that you somehow played a part in your own salvation…because you can do nothing to make it happen.
The one and only way to God is by faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus…Salvation is in Christ and Christ alone.