Satisfied
Notes
Transcript
INTRODUCTION:
Today is Easter, and I know many of you treasure this day and what it represents. I also know that for some the idea that we are not gathered on Easter as a church is disappointing and discouraging.
But I also want to challenge you today to consider why we gather regularly on Sunday to begin with… see, Easter is essentially a holiday of redundancy.
What I mean is this… we, as Christians celebrate Easter because of the resurrection. Hence why some refer to it as Resurrection Sunday. B/c it marks the actual day of Christ’s resurrection.
Yet, this is the thing… every Sunday we do this… granted not every Sunday is the day of the resurrection, but there is no special power in this particular day. There’s power in the event that has happened yes… but that is not restricted to a particular day.
The joys and motivations we have for gathering as a body on Easter ought to be the same every Sunday.
If we get excited for church only once or twice a year on Xmas Eve and Easter, we don’t know the Gospel.
This morning I want to take us through a few places in the letter of Romans which was written by the Apostle Paul.
I want us to understand more thoroughly the implications of the work of Christ and His resurrection.
We’ll see that apart from Christ we stand condemned before God, but through Christ we are atoned, and as such we are freed to live as we are called to live.
In other words, what are the implications of Easter for us as believers?
Let’s begin by looking at what it means to be condemned…
Condemned
Condemned
When we speak of being condemned what do we exactly mean? Let’s read Romans 1:18
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people who suppress the truth by their unrighteousness,
Essentially, to be condemend in the Biblical sense is to be “Under God’s wrath or judgment”
Romans 1:18 is a summary verse of what follows in verses 19 all the way to Romans 3:20...
Now most people do not like to talk about the wrath of God…
2nd century heretic Marcion denounced the OT b/c of the acts of God’s wrath that it records. Here in verse 18, Marcion removed the words “of God” in his readings.
Our Wednesday night study through the Prophets has and will continue to reveal the gravity of God’s wrath as He deals with sin and protects His holy name.
We need to understand that God is wrathful not because He is moody, or some sort of evil deity… but rather due to His perfect and absolute holiness, that is beyond our understanding and comprehension, His wrath is necessary.
One commentator states it as such: “As long as God is God, He cannot behold with indifference that His creation is destroyed and His holy will trodden underfoot. Therefore He meets sin with His mighty and annihilating reaction.” Moo’s commentary on Romans p. 100
Jonathan Leeman put it this way - “Wrath reveals worth.”
Think of it like this… two brothers fighting over a toy… small consequence… a boy that lies to his dad or mom… bigger consequence. Why? B/c of the value of what is at stake… the penalty of crimes is in part based on this truth.
Now, here in verse 18 Paul speaks of God’s wrath in the sense of it being a present reality. He says “the wrath of God is revealed.”
In what way though is God’s wrath presently revealed?
The German poet, Friedrich Schiller eloquently wrote once… “The history of the world is the judgment of the world.”
Essentially, we ought to consider the state of things… as they have been, as they are, and as they will continue to be until the final day of all things before we are ushered into eternity.
The wrath of God is revealed to us in part through the curse.
Think back to Genesis 3… when mankind in Adam, as the head of all creation, rebelled against God by disobeying the Word of God as ate from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
The consequences of that action have reverberated ever since… leaving mankind severed from a rightful relationship with their Creator.
But not only has mankind suffered through domestic upheaval of the roles of men and women, the pain of childbirth, and the toil of working the fields.
Which by the way… are the three areas of which Adam and Eve were initially blessed and commanded to do… Eve to help Adam as they both reproduce and fill the Earth, while subduing it… now all those things will be difficult.
But we see the consequences beyond that… we see it in creation… as creation groans with its earthquakes, plaques and natural disasters… this is what Paul speaks about in Romans 8, as creation anxiously awaits for the redemption of all things.
Going back to Romans 1, in verses 20-24...
Romans 1:20-24
For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made. So people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give him thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts and their senseless hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.
Paul explains that mankind has always known of God to some extent, yet through their rebellion they suppressed the truth.
When we sin, we suppress the truth in some form… it’s why we sin.
So the wrath of God is revealed to us now… and it remains on those who refuse the Son of God.
John 3:18
The one who believes in him is not condemned. The one who does not believe has been condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.
Before we believed in Christ… we were already condemned… already under the wrath of God… that’s the curse. Those right now who do not believe are currently condemned…
And their continued refusal to believe is increasing their condemnation… look at what Paul says in Romans 2:5-8
But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourselves in the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment is revealed!He will reward each one according to his works:eternal life to those who by perseverance in good works seek glory and honor and immortality, but wrath and anger to those who live in selfish ambition and do not obey the truth but follow unrighteousness.
Right now the experience of God’s wrath is in part, not in full… just as we experience His grace in part, and not in full.
Yet, as Paul says, when the day of judgment, of wrath comes… the fullness of God’s wrath will be revealed… and will be given to each person accordingly.
But praise be to God that He is just a merciful God. A good and holy God...
Though while we deserve the wrath of God and deserve to experience it for all eternity in Hell…
God has made a way to satisfy His wrath, so that we may experience for all eternity His grace in His presence.
And this is done through the propitiation of our sins… let’s look at Romans 3:24-25
Atoned
Atoned
Romans 3:24-25
But they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God publicly displayed him at his death as the mercy seat accessible through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because God in his forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed.
When discussing these verses we must first address who the “they” are… so let’s back up 1 verse to Romans 3:23
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Following verse 18 in chapter 1, Paul goes on to describe how all of mankind is guilty.
He speaks of the condemnation of the unrighteous, followed by the condemnation of the moralist, followed by the condemnation of the Jew, and wraps it all up by speaking about how the whole world is condemn and no one is righteous before God, not even one… in verse 10 of chapter 3…
Then here in verse 23 he hits on it again… ALL have sinned… and ALL fall short of the glory of God.
So, the “they” in verse 24… is the all of 23...
But let me be clear here… the “all” does not mean “everybody” rather it means “anybody”.
In other words it is not speaking in the sense of universalism, that the “being justified” of verse 24 applies to everyone… rather that the “being justified” is available to “anybody” within that group… granted they meet condition mentioned by Paul back in verse 22...
Faith in Christ Jesus - which is the medium of which that the righteousness of God is imputed (that is passed on) to us who believe in His Son.
This is why Paul speaks of “being justified” as a gift of God.
Now, let’s speak about this “being justified”… what does Paul mean by this?
Quite simply.... that all counts of our sins are no more. That in court, we once stood condemned before the judge as the charges were brought before us. The evidence was there, not only did our actions condemn us, but our words, and our very nature condemned us.
For what is already corrupt can only produce what is corrupted. My offspring shares my nature… when sinful depraved DNA that has been passed down from Adam, bonds with another person’s sinful depraved DNA, the life conceived at conception is sinful and depraved and under God’s condemnation.
But by God’s grace… through faith in Christ Jesus… those counts, those charges are no more held against us.
We have been legally declared justified before the one Judge and the one Lawgiver.
And here is the thing… the case has not been dismissed, the charges have not been dropped.
Our God is a holy and just God. He cannot look the other way with sin… He cannot let sin go unpunished...
The fines must be paid, the time must be served. The justice of God must be satisfied. Our Lord our God is Holy.
So, we may be declared justified, declared free from penalty… but only at the cost of someone else.
Paul tells us of how this gift of justification comes and it comes by the redemption that is Jesus Christ.
And by redemption we mean… liberation through payment of a price.
How was this price paid exactly by Christ?
Verse 25… Romans 3:25
God publicly displayed him at his death as the mercy seat accessible through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because God in his forbearance had passed over the sins previously committed.
God publicly displayed Christ… at His death… at the Cross as the mercy seat… which is accessible through faith.
Now, what is meant here by mercy seat?
Most good translations translate “mercy seat” as “propitiation”...
Propitiation - means to avert or to turn the wrath of God away from a person or people
So, verse 25 would read like this instead as the ESV translates it… “whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith.”
The reason the NET translates it as “mercy seat” is in part b/c the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the OT, uses this particular Greek word, 21 different times out of 27 uses, to speak of the “mercy seat”.
Now, if you remember your OT, specifically Leviticus 16, the mercy seat is the cover of the Ark of the Covenant where Yahweh would appear and upon which sacrificial blood would be poured or sprinkled on the Day of Atonement.
The day of which the priests would take two goats as sacrifices to atone for the sins of the world by sacrificing one goat, sprinkling his blood on the mercy seat… and the other goat, the scapegoat, would be let go… being set free by the blood of the other.
So, when we think of the mercy seat, specifically Christ as the mercy seat, we think of Christ as the place of atonement… or the atonement lid.
There are some credible objections as to whether or not “mercy seat” is the best translation… but the point remains whether we use “mercy seat” or “propitiation”.
That the wrath of God, the justice of God, has been satisfied by the blood of Christ. B/c Christ has stood in our place of condemnation and suffered the penalties rightly due to us, so that we may be atoned before God.
By God sending His Son to die on the Cross, God was able to demonstrate His righteousness… both His perfect justice and His perfect mercy.
And let me speak to this often mentioned objection about God sending His Son to die on the Cross being a form of cosmic child abuse.
Jesus went willingly. It was not forced… and it was done out of love and obedience and to the glory of the Father. Jesus Himself says that is Himself who lays down His life and does so of His own free will… no one takes it from Him. Child abuse would imply it was done against His wishes… the cross was ordained before the foundations of the world were laid.
The Cross is necessary, with God’s Son as a sacrifice if God’s wrath is to be satisfied for humanity.
To think that God is overreacting to what we might think are minor irritations is not to take sin seriously as we ought to. Consider Numbers 15 when we read of the man stoned to death for gathering wood on the Sabbath.
When we minimize sin or think God is overreacting we also think that God is not that holy… sin is as serious as God presents it to be in Scripture because God is as holy as He says that He is...
This is a key purpose of the Law… to show us our sins and to cause us to reflect on His holiness.
The work of Christ at the Cross also satisfied the penalty of the sins committed beforehand...
That is beforehand in history… for those who went before in the OT...
Remember, salvation in the OT did not come via the Law as Hebrews 10:4 says...
For the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sins.
Salvation came via faith in God that He would provide a way...
Thus Paul is able to go on in verse 26 here in chapter 3 and say what he says, Romans 3:26
This was also to demonstrate his righteousness in the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who lives because of Jesus’ faithfulness.
God who is just is also the justifier b/c of Christ...
And we can trust this b/c of the resurrection. Our entire faith is rooted in the resurrection. There is no good news without the resurrection. There is no hope with no resurrection.
As Paul writes in 1 Cor 15:12-19
Now if Christ is being preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is futile and your faith is empty. Also, we are found to be false witnesses about God, because we have testified against God that he raised Christ from the dead, when in reality he did not raise him, if indeed the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless; you are still in your sins. Furthermore, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished. For if only in this life we have hope in Christ, we should be pitied more than anyone.
So, it all comes down to the empty tomb… what do we do with it… if it is not empty then we have no reason to listen to any of this.
But, if it is empty, and praise God it is! Then we have every reason to listen and to dedicate our lives to what God has spoken through Moses, the prophets, and the Apostles.
Freed
Freed
Now, what are the consequences for those who have been declared justified in Christ?
If we keep going through the letter of Romans we get to a climatic chapter halfway through… chapter 8… where we also get a climatic verse as well in verse 1 of chapter 8. But before we get to it let’s look at what precedes chapter 8.
In chapter 4 Paul dives into what justification looks like by speaking of Abraham’s faith and how it was credited to him as rigtheousness.
Then in chapter 5 Paul speaks about the expectation of justification… what are the results? Romans 5:1-2
Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory.
We have peace, we have shalom… a peace that cannot be lost. This is our source of joy, this is our hope of God’s glory… this is why the resurrection is so significant!
B/c we have peace with God! Death will come… and when it does we have no fear of it for we no longer need to fear the judgment of God.
Paul expounds on this reality even more throughout chapter 5 and even explains how just as sin entered through one man into many, the righteousness of God has been given to many as well so that grace will reign through righteousness to eternal life.
Then in chapter 6 he poses a question… should we sin then so that grace may increase? Absolutely not!
Why? B/c we have died to it. Since we have been baptized into Christ, we have been baptized into His death.
So that we may be raised from the dead as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father… in order that we may live a new life.
A new life given to righteousness… not to sin.
We have been freed from the bondage of sin and now we are enslaved to righteousness… Romans 6:18 [Don’t Read]
and having been freed from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.
Yet, a struggle remains… and Paul speaks of this in Chapter 7…
And at the end of Chapter 7 he writes this in verses 24 and 25… Romans 7:24-25
Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Why is Paul giving thanks to God through Jesus Christ?
B/c before Christ Paul could not find salvation in the Law… the Law only produced more sin.
But God, who is just, has made a way… and He has justified Paul, He has justified us, through Jesus Christ!.
And because we have been declared justified before the Almighty… before our Maker… Paul can say what he writes in Romans 8:1
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
This means that we are free!
But we must understand that with freedom comes great responsibility.
This does not mean we can live as we want… rather in this freedom from sin, from condemnation we are led by the Spirit (Romans 8:14)
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God.
And we will live as children of God are expected to live. I won’t go in length on that today as we spoke on that quite enough going through 1 John which we just wrapped up last week. Read John 14 if you want a summary.
But I do want to focus on this sense of freedom and peace we now have with God...
For this truth is what today is all about… it is this truth that compelled Paul to write Romans 8:18
For I consider that our present sufferings cannot even be compared to the glory that will be revealed to us.
A claim he makes because we are children of God, heirs of a great inheritance b/c we have been justified by the name of Jesus Christ.
Easter, and every Sunday when we gather and recall the resurrection, ought to point us to the reality of victory over death and that by the blood of Christ on the Cross you and I stand before God justified.
Clear of all charges against us… forever!
No more do we need to fear death for we have peace with the Almighty.
This means we can live in ways that the world cannot.
This means when the world is panicking during a pandemic we can be a strong and stable anchor to minister to the world. Even at great risk to our own lives.
What does the life of a person look like if that life is eternal?
If God is for us, who can be against us?
Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies.
Who will condemn us? Christ is the one died and was raised, and is now at the right hand of God… He is the one who will condemn… and yet now, right now, He intercedes for you and I. He pleads for us… for we have one mediator between God and man.
So, who can separate us from this love of God? This love of Christ?
Can any trouble? Any distress or any anxiety? Can hostility against our faith keep us from Him? If we are poor and starve or if we are humiliated are we kept from God? Can threats and physical harm stop us from being declared justified in God’s eyes? Can a pandemic of immeasurable suffering prevent us from enjoying the riches of those who can call themselves children of God, heirs alongside Jesus Christ?
Of course not… in all these things and more! We have victory… total, absolute, everlasting victory through Jesus Christ our propitiation, the one who suffered the wrath of God in our stead.
This is why Paul can end chapter 8 as he does… b/c the tomb is empty… Jesus Christ has been raised… the wrath of God for our sins has been satisfied! Payment made in full!
And an eternal decree from Heaven has been made that all who believe in the name of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, have been made righteous as they are declared justified!
Nothing can separate us from this! Nothing! Paul writes Romans 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor heavenly rulers, nor things that are present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.