‘I can do it I can do it! I want to do it myself! I don’t need your help.’ I’d bet you’d like a dollar each time your kids or grandchildren have said that. So would I. ‘I can do it!’
But it’s not just children who say that. It reflects deep-seated desire in us, particularly us men. We want to be independent, to stand on our own two feet, to say, ‘I’m not a charity case. I’ve provided for myself, my family. No-one needed to help me.’
And that is a good thing, no necessary, in many areas of life… except one. And that area is righteousness.
We saw last week, didn’t we, that ‘there is no-one righteous, not even one.’ We saw that ‘No-one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by observing the law.’ (Romans 3:10-12) And in our passage again today, verse 23, we read ‘for all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God’. (NIV)
For those of you who have sat through my last 4 sermons on Romans 1:18-3:20, let me congratulate you. You’ve made it through those 4 dark weeks, when God has told us the bleak truth about ourselves. That was the black, horribly bad ‘bad news’ of chapters 1:18 to 3:20. And I hope you see that it was worth it, because God has got some incredibly good news to give us.
Today, God is going to reveal something special. If Romans were a stage show, now we’d get the drum role. The lights would dim. The spot light shines. The curtain comes back. The fireworks go off. And through the smoke, God steps on to center stage in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ. Verse 21:
But now a righteousness from God apart from law has been made known, to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness of God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. (NIV)
‘But now’ tells us God has done something about our great problem. ‘But now’ marks a fundamental change in the universe. After verse 21, life cannot be the same. Things can only be different.
The phrase ‘righteousness from God’ is literally ‘the righteousness of God’. It is a rich phrase. It speaks about God, and his character, the righteousness that God possesses, that God is just and saving. And it speaks about God’s actions, that God acts in a just way and in a saving way.
But the NIV is also right to translate it as the ‘righteousness from God’. For righteousness is also a gift of a righteous status (Romans 5:17). This is a righteousness originating outside of us, from God. It has to be ‘from God’, because we are bereft of righteousness, and we need righteousness to stand before God at the judgment. And so this righteousness comes to us from God in heaven. This righteousness is not our own that comes from law, but that which is through faith in Christ[1]. Martin Luther was right to call it an ‘alien righteousness’, a righteousness outside of us but coming to us, descending upon us. It comes from God and is received by faith. We have no righteousness of our own. That’s what Romans 1:18-3:20 said. But now God’s righteousness has been made known.
And because it is God’s righteousness, not ours, it must be apart from law. We will not and cannot be saved by the works done in holiness of heart (Titus 3:4-7; 1 Clement 32[2]). It is not by works, not by human effort, not by us being good, no matter how you define ‘good’.
But while this righteousness that comes to us is ‘apart from the law’, nevertheless ‘the law and the prophets testify’ to it. The Old Testament prophesied about this righteousness. Thus, the prophet Isaiah in chapter 59 verses 15 to 16:
The LORD looked and was displeased that there was no justice. He saw there was no-one, he was appalled that there was no-one to intercede; so his own arm worked salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him. (NIV)
So none of us in this matter can say, ‘I can do it myself. I’m a self-made man. I don’t need you, God, and your righteousness. I can stand on my own two feet.’
No, in this matter, in the matter of justification, we need to be charity cases. We need to be bludgers, relying on someone else’s righteousness, and sponging on the righteousness of God.
Look with me at Verse 22,
‘This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe’. (NIV)
We cannot be justified in God’s sight by the law. Because there is no-one righteous that way! But now, there is a righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ. It is by faith in Christ, not God’s good law, summarized in the 10 commandments. We need a righteousness that is ‘by faith from first to last’, a righteousness we receive by faith, and which we continue in by faith, and at the end of our lives, we only hold on to this gift of righteousness by faith. We can only trust someone greater than us, richer than us, better than us, for this righteousness. We must look outside of ourselves, beyond ourselves and our own resources, and we must look to Jesus Christ. And as we put our trust in him, we receive God’s righteousness. And as we continue in him, we remain in God’s righteousness. For Jesus is our righteousness. (1 Corinthians 1:30). And we become the righteousness of God in him by faith. (2 Corinthians 5:21), as God no longer counts our transgressions against us. Because we are hidden in him, who is our life, united to Jesus Christ by faith, and safe from God’s anger in him.
This forgiveness comes free to us. See that phrase in verse 24, ‘For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace…’.
This justification, this forgiveness, or acquittal, and being counted righteous, is free. It is without cost. It is gratis.
Now, I love free stuff. But the things is, some times free stuff is cheap rubbish. ‘Of course it’s free, it’s not worth anything. Who’d pay for that!’
But this righteousness, this justification, while it’s free to us, it’s not free to God. It is given to us as a gift, yes, but God gave up everything to earn it and purchase it. It’s free to us, not to God. It comes from God at the cost of his only dear Son. It is not free to Christ, who by his obedience, whether in life or death, won for us a righteousness we neither earn nor deserve.
We rejoice in this righteousness from God. But should notice in the ‘free justification’ of sinful people like you and me a problem for the righteousness of God.
And we see that God has a big problem. I say this respectfully.
You see, it is not just that God gives us unrighteous people righteousness as a gift. But it is that God is righteous. God is a righteous God. That’s his character. Another way of saying this is ‘God is just’. And because God is just, he cannot allow a guilty person to go free. If you like, it is hard for God to forgive, because God is just.
Some people don’t understand that it is hard for God to forgive. ‘Of course God should forgive’, they say, ‘that’s his job!’ But think about it a moment. Is it hard for you to forgive! Is it hard outside the Court for the murder victim’s family to forgive when the killer receives only 4 years jail? Does 4 years jail adequately pay for the life taken by an unprovoked king hit on an unsuspecting man by a drunkard? The victim’s family are not vengeful savages to ask the DPP for an appeal, are they? No, we are hard wired for retributive justice, ‘an eye for an eye, a life for a life.’ It is always hard to forgive, for the victim who forgives has to absorb the pain of a justice not meted out.
This cost of forgiveness is reflected in a deep truth about God’s character. In Exodus 34:6-7 God reveals the sort of God he is.
The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness. Maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation. (Exodus 34:6-7 NIV)
There is the heart of God: forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin, yet punishing wickedness, rebellion and sin; not leaving the guilty unpunished; yet justifying freely by his grace.
How can God do this? How can God forgive my wickedness and rebellion, and yet not leave me unpunished?
Well, verses 24 to 26 passage presents God’s solution and solves the puzzle. It show us what God did to save us in a just way, and how he was just in a saving way.Let me read from verse 24 to 26:
‘…and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished – he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (NIV)
In verse 24, Paul talks about ‘redemption’. The image is from a slave market. Redemption was buying or purchasing a slaves freedom. And Paul says that Jesus is the one through whom redemption comes. Redemption comes through Jesus because Jesus’ life is the price. Jesus and his death is the costly price God himself paid for our sin.
In verse 25, Paul talks about ‘God presenting Jesus’, publicly displaying him ‘as a sacrifice of atonement’. Jesus, lifted high up on a cross, the exposed, naked, battered sufferer, held up for the world to see, Jesus was the sacrifice of atonement. More literally, Jesus was the propitiatory sacrifice that turned God’s anger away from. Jesus’ death was the sacrifice by which God turned aside his own anger. Under the Old Covenant, the High Priest would sacrifice prize farm animals for his own sins and the sins of the people. But now, God has publicly offered up his Son, his only Son, the Son he loved, the Lord Jesus Christ. What God prevented Abraham from doing (Genesis 22), God himself did.
Isaiah 53 tells us that Jesus as the suffering servant was struck by God. He was smitten and afflicted by God. Jesus was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him. (Isaiah 53:5) That it was by his wounds that we are healed. And it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer. And through his suffering the righteous servant of the Lord will justify many and will bear their iniquities.
Jesus paid the penalty for our sin. We should have died under God’s curse. But Jesus died instead of us. So we can go free. God punishes our sins. But he punishes our sins in Jesus.
God presented Jesus as a sacrifice because God’s integrity is at stake. In verse 25, ‘He did this to demonstrate his justice’ with regard to past sins. In verse 26, ‘He did this to demonstrate his justice at the present time’, with regard to sins committed now. God must show himself just in the way he forgives.
How did God forgive the sins of people who lived before Jesus came? Well, he left them unpunished, and he patiently put up with them until Jesus came. Noah’s sins, Abraham’s sins, Isaac’s sins, Joseph’s sins, Moses’ sins, David’s sins, all went unpunished until Jesus. But at the cross, Jesus dealt with all of them.
And it’s the same at the present time, for us who live after Jesus’ death and resurrection. For in Jesus’ death, God displays his is both just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. God is just because God gave sin what it deserved. He condemned and punished sin. God did this by condemning sin in Jesus. Jesus, made like us in every way (Hebrews 4:15), made in the likeness of sinful flesh (Romans 8:3), but who knew no sin (2 Corinthians 5:21), bore the curse of our sin and God’s anger against our sins.
Someone might say, ‘Then God is not just!’ How is it just to punish Jesus, the innocent one, instead of us. And God would be unjust, were not Jesus himself God. In Jesus, all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily (Colossians 2:9). In Jesus, God took the punishment for sin on himself, and exhausted all its demands, just as when you are hurt by someone, but forgive them, you have to absorb and extinguish the consequences of their sins against you.
All this means that God can offer us a full pardon. He can forgive all our sins and still punish sin.
So God offers us a full acquittal, and complete forgiveness. Look at verse 24 again, and are justified freely by his grace. God offers us a free pardon by his grace through faith. The bible teaches it. The Anglican church teaches it. On your handout I’ve put our Articles that teach it[3].
But it is possible to refuse a pardon. Let me tell you about George Wilson. George Wilson lived in the 1830s in Pennsylvania, in the United States. He ran a lucrative small business – robbing the US Mail. Not only was it lucrative, but high risk. George Wilson was caught and tried. He pleaded guilty to a web of crimes and was sentenced to be hung for one of them.
But US President Andrew Jackson pardoned him. Great news, you would think. But George Wilson didn’t. He refused to accept the pardon. He said: ‘A pardon is not a pardon unless I accept it!’ And I refuse to accept it.
Refuse a pardon! No-one in US history had refused a presidential pardon. The question was, ‘Could George Wilson legally refuse the pardon?’
The Chief Justice, John Marshall, gave the following decision.
‘A pardon is a paper, the value of which depends upon its acceptance by the person implicated. It is hardly to be supposed that one under sentence of death would refuse to accept a pardon, but if it is refused, it is no pardon. George Wilson must be hanged.’ Chief Justice John Marshall in US v Wilson, 32 US (7 Pet) 150 (1833)
A guilty criminal may refuse a pardon! We might think, ‘Who would be that stupid?’ Who would choose death when life was freely offered them?
Who would be that stupid? Well, maybe some of us! Maybe you would refuse a pardon. We all need to say ‘pardon me’ to God.
Do you know why George Wilson refused the pardon? He did not accept he was guilty. He originally pleaded guilty. But then he changed his mind. Accepting the pardon means accepting your guilt.
Perhaps that’s you. Perhaps you reject the pardon because you reject your guilt. Can I say, if that’s you, please don’t do that.
And God himself beckons us, commands us, and pleads with us, ‘Please accept my pardon.’
And the way to accept the pardon is faith. We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ. It is by faith from first to last. By looking away from ourselves and looking to Jesus, lifted high on a cross, and now exalted high, resurrected, we receive God’s pardon.
Perhaps you’ve been coming to church for many years here at Mulgoa/Waragamba. But perhaps you’ve never thought about yourself as needing a pardon. Why not today? Today is a great day to accept God’s pardon by faith in Jesus Christ. Or perhaps you’ve asked God for pardon many times before.
Either way, I will pray a prayer that will recognise our need for pardon, thank him for providing it for us, and ask God to change us so we accept God’s pardon by trusting Jesus. If you want to make this yours, listen to the prayer and agree with it in your heart.
Lets pray
Dear Father I agree with you. I have broken your law I deserving your justice. I need your pardon.
Thank you so much for sending Jesus to die on the cross. Thank you that by his costly death you bought us back. Thank you for presenting him a sacrifice for us, bearing our punishment. And thank you for your free pardon
Please change me that I might trust Jesus and receive the pardon found in him. Please enable me to continue trusting Jesus, that I might live a pardoned life. In Jesus name.
Amen
Can I just say, God loves to hear that prayer. And he loves to answer that prayer. So if you’ve asked, know God has heard and answered positively. For he desires all people to be saved and come to him.
Can I finish with the words of Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093, in which he directed priests what to say to sick and dying people. This is an ancient answer to the question, ‘If you were to die tonight, and God were to say to you, “Why should I let you into my heaven?” what would you say?’
‘And now, imagine God were to judge you. If he were to judge you, say to him: “God, I place the death of Jesus between me and your judgment; otherwise, I would not be able to stand before you.” And if God were to say to you, “You are a sinner” Say to him, “I place the death of our Lord Jesus between me and my sins”. And if he were to say to you, “You deserve to be sent to hell”, then say “God, my make and my judge, I put the death of Jesus my Lord between you and all my sins. I offer his obedience instead of my own, which I should have but do not.” “And if God was to say to you, “I am angry with you”, Then say this: “Lord, I place the death of Jesus between me and your anger”.’
[1] ‘And we, too, being called by His will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom, or understanding, or godliness, or works which we have wrought in holiness of heart, but by that faith through which, from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men, to whom be glory’
[3] “We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings” (Article 11)
“The offering of Christ once made is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction, for all the sins of the whole world” (Article 31)