The Gift
Notes
Transcript
I invite you to open your copy of God’s Word to the book of Romans 3. We’re continuing this morning in the book of Romans, chapter 3. And as we get started together today, We’re picking up right where we left off last time. You’ll remember that, last week, we were talking about the fact that there is no such thing as a good man, that since the day when we chose death over life in the garden of Eden, that you and I choose what is wrong over what is right. And we were struggling with the fact that, in our heart of hearts, each and everyone of us is a liar and a murderer that fears everything but God.
God created you with a purpose. He created you to Know Him and to make Him known in the world around you. God created you to do good works for His Kingdom that would be glorifying to His name. You were made to worship the King in the way that you live your life out before Him. But that isn’t what we do. In fact, since the beginning of the book of Romans, we have talked about the fact that we are not righteous. Whether you are a Jew or a Gentile, whether you have grown up in church or you have never darkened the doorstep of one; whether your great great grandparents were Christians, or no member of your family ever has been, each and everyone of us are in the same boat. All of us stand condemned. All of us have broken God’s law. None of us have done what we are supposed to do. We have no righteousness of our own, and there is nothing that any of us can do about it. And so, as we continue today, we’re going to pick up right where we left off, in verse 21. And as we read together from God’s Word, I invite you to stand with me wherever you are:
But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,
even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction;
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;
whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed;
for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith.
For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.
Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also,
since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one.
Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.
Would you pray with me? Lord, Jesus, we thank you for this day, and for the privilege of calling You Lord. Thank You for giving us the ability to gather here together to worship you, and to study Your Word without fear of any punishment or rebuke that may come from it. Lord, would You help us to take full advantage of this blessing today. Would you help us to worship You in Spirit and in truth? As we turn our attention to Your Word, we ask You send Your Holy Spirit to be our teacher, that by His power we may understand what it says, and As He fills us, we may be emboldened to do what it says. Would You mold us today, as clay in Your hands, to be better reflections of Your Son, Jesus. It is in His Name that we ask these things, Amen.
Thank you, you may be seated, and as you take your seat, you may want to go ahead and get your listening guide out, or to open that up if you are following online, you can find that on our website and on Facebook.
As we come into this passage, as we reach the end of chapter 3, we do so feeling a little beat up. Last week, it was clearly and definitively demonstrated by God in our text that none are righteous. All of us deserve judgment. We deserve the suffering and punishment of an eternity in Hell. We deserve the death that our sin brings to us, because there is no such thing as a righteous man. Everyone of us deserves it, because everyone of us is unrighteous. At our heart of hearts, we are a group of idolatrous, lying murderers who do not fear God and do not obey His statutes. . .
That isn’t a pretty place for us to be, is it? And what is worse is that many of us have convinced ourselves that it isn’t true. We claim to be saved because we walked down an aisle, and we got dunked under water, but there is no evidence of transformation in our lives. There is no fruit in our lives. Sure, we go to church. Sure, we know the hymns. Sure, we own a Bible. We even read a little of it sometimes. Sure, we pray at mealtimes. Sure, know the Sunday School answers. We even try to follow the ten commandments, or at least we claim to. You see, we just talked about the fact that we break those all of the time, and they are just the very most basic of the rules that pertain to the Law of God, but never mind that. We do all of these things, and we hang our hat on them. And somewhere along the way, you and I got confused.
You and I started believing, somewhere along the way, that these things are what save you, that things are what it means to have faith in Jesus. We actually believe that the prayer we prayed when we walked down that aisle is what saved us. There was magic in the words of that prayer, and that is what saved me, and I’m saved now forever. Now, apart from these things, there is nothing in my life that would point others around me to the fact that Jesus is the love of my life. At my funeral, the preacher can talk about how sweet I was, and how much I loved my family and my motorcycle, because there isn’t really anything else to talk about. And, friend, if what I’m sharing right now is your story, you are in a dangerous place, because if there is no transformation in your life, you are not saved because you are not righteous. Look with me, if you will, at verse 21
But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,
This passage that we are studying today is one of the greatest passages in the whole of Scripture. There is a depth of understanding in these verses that we could spend a lifetime unpacking, and today, I fear that we are barely going to be able to scratch the surface. However, let me just say that the first word in this passage is probably the greatest word that you and I could ever hope for: but.
Your are a sinner, but... You are wicked, but... You deserve death, and judgment, and hell fire, and brimstone, but... God couldn’t find 10 righteous men in Sodom and Gomorrah, and he can’t find one in this place this morning, BUT...
If you’ve got your listening guide this morning, The first thing that I want you to write down is also the key to our understanding, and that is that
I am not righteous, but God is
I am not righteous, but God is
God is righteous. He is good in everything and in every way. He always has been, and He always will be. Why does the law point us towards righteousness, even though we are unable to be righteous ourselves? It is because God is righteous, and He is the author of the Law. Why does the testimony of the prophets point us to the righteousness of God? Because that is who He is.
You have to remember that when you read in Scripture, and you see the phrase,“the Law and the Prophets,” what that means is the Word of God.” This is how the Jews referred to what we know as the Old Testament. They called it the Tenakh, and it is organized into three basic sections: The Torah, the book of the Law, the Prophets, major and then minor, and the Writings, such as Psalms and Proverbs. But the Scriptures were often called the Law and the Prophets.
God’s Word is His clearest revelation of Himself to us. Yes, we see Him in nature, creation testifies to His goodness and who He is, but we know Him through His Word. And what Paul is saying here is that everything that you and I know about God, everything that has been revealed about God stands in witness to the fact that He is righteous.
The God who made us in His image is righteous. The One who holds the stars in place is righteous. We are not righteous, BUT God is! We deserve nothing that is good because there is nothing good in us, BUT God is everything that is good and deserves all of the honor and glory creation can muster. This is the great conjunction of Scripture, because of what this but means for us. Look at verse 22:
even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction;
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Why is this “but” so important? Why is it so important here for us to emphasize that God is righteous when we are not? Why is it so critical for us to understand the righteous nature of who God is? Well, friend, it is because my only hope, your only hope depends upon God’s righteousness.
What do these verses that we just read tell us? They tell us this, and this is the next thing I want you to write down this morning, that
Even though no one is righteous, anyone can have become righteous through Jesus Christ
Even though no one is righteous, anyone can have become righteous through Jesus Christ
Your inability to be righteous on your own does not surprise God. The Law was not a test case to see if we could make it, it came to show us that we couldn’t. We’ll talk more about that in a moment, but what I want you to see here is that Paul starts verse 22 by saying the word “even.” And what that means is that what he is about to say is related specifically to what he just said. And what he just said is that the Old Testament is witness to the righteousness of God, even that which comes to believers through Jesus.
In other words, God’s plan has always been for you and I to find our righteousness in the blood of Jesus Christ. You are not righteous, I am not righteous. We are among those that fall short of God’s glory. If you can imagine that you were standing on the edge of a cliff. There is nothing in front of you but a giant, dark hole with no bottom. And God is standing on the other side, This is where you and I stand. And try as we may, there is no way that you and I could cross the gap. There is no way across it for us on our own.
I used to picture this image, and I would imagine trying to jump it and just falling a little short. I would almost make it, but not quite. And yet, the longer I have walked with Christ myself, the more acutely aware I become of just how far short of His glory I fall. I realize that if I were, in fact, to try and jump this cliff, I would not merely fall short, but that thousands of miles of distance, millions of miles of distance, even billions of miles would lie between me and the point that I would have to reach to cross the gap.
I cannot cross it. You cannot cross it. The gap of our sin, of our unrighteousness is too vast. BUT. BUT, Our righteous God loves us. He knew that this was the case. And that is why Jesus came and died on the cross to pay the death price of sins. Jesus came so that through faith you and I can have access to the righteousness of God that achieves for us what we could not achieve for ourselves: it makes a way for us to be with God. Look at verse 23 again:
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;
whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed;
for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Jesus, friends is not an add-on to the story of God: HE is the story of God. Jesus was always God’s plan to bring us to Himself, because He knows we cannot do it on our own. The gap of sin in your life is too great for you to cross on your own. There is no way for you to have or to experience the love and blessing of God on your own because you are incapable of being good enough. No one is. And we really need to understand this, not as an excuse, but as a foundation, because, as you write down our next point, what you and I find is that
The righteousness I find in Christ is a gift I don’t deserve bought with blood that should have been mine
The righteousness I find in Christ is a gift I don’t deserve bought with blood that should have been mine
Let’s unpack that for a moment. We have established that you and I are not righteous, not even a little bit. We don’t do what is right. We don’t do what is good, and despite the best efforts that we could possibly make, we will never be good enough, because we sin.
When you go to court, a judge doesn’t judge you for the things that you’ve done right-they judge you for the things that you’ve done wrong. And today, you and I stand guilty before the court. We have sinned, and we can’t change that, I think that we have established that.
And you have heard that God loves you, that He wants you to be with Him, that He doesn’t want to condemn you to Hell and suffering, and you say, “why doesn’t God just forgive me.” And God wants to do exactly that. He wants to give you the gift of forgiveness. In fact, more than forgiving you, God wants to make you righteous. He doesn’t just want to declare you forgiven, He wants to look at you and call you good. He wants to be able to see a reflection of Himself in you.
And He is God, so why can’t He just do that? Why couldn’t He just forgive you and move on? But the problem with that is that it isn’t just. It isn’t righteous. I can’t say that you deserve death, and not give you the penalty you deserve and call myself a good judge. Those pieces don’t fit together. BUT.
There are two words in these verses that I want us to remember: Redemption and propitiation. First redemption. Verse 24 says that our redemption comes as a gift of God’s grace through Jesus Christ. Redemption means to save from error or evil, or to buy back from slavery. Another way of looking at it is to give something worth and value it had lost.
I’m sure that there are many in this room today that have gift cards at home. Restaurants and stores love gift cards. Do you know why? They are worthless. They cost almost nothing to make, and you can sell them for massive amounts of money. And they sell them to us under the guise that we haven’t lost anything. But, their secret is that they know most of those gift cards will never be used. In fact, research suggests that in the U.S. as much as 3 BILLION dollars in gift cards go unused each year. That is 3 Billion dollars in free money for merchants, because the great secret of a gift card is that it is useless unless it is redeemed.
You and I had lost our wealth before God. We are unrighteous and deserving of death. We are useless and destined for fire. But Jesus. In the blood of Christ, Jesus offers us redemption. We are unrighteous unless we take on the righteousness of God through the Gift of God. Through Jesus Christ, we are not only forgiven, we have value and purpose in the righteousness of God for His Kingdom’s glory.
The other word that I want you to remember is propitiation. Propitiation means a blood sacrifice to appease the wrath of God. Jesus Christ came and died as a sacrifice. His blood was spilled on the cross to satisfy the wrath of God. God’s wrath burns against sin. God hates sin, and He will ultimately destroy it forever.
You will remember that a moment ago we were saying that God couldn’t simply forgive us and move on because He is righteous and He is just. This should make sense to us, right. We don’t just say, “oh, sure, you’re a murderer, but we like you so you’re forgiven! Oh, you stole that car, but you’re a good guy, so just don’t do it again!” No! There is punishment when you commit a crime. The wrath of the court must be appeased through the given penalty.
There is no partiality with God. Every sin will be paid for before God. Every debt of evil works will be paid. God’s wrath must be satisfied because He is just. And so, for you to be forgiven, your debt had to be paid. Someone had to take that punishment. If you are a follower of Jesus, it isn’t that your sins will go unpunished, it is that Jesus was punished in your place.
This is why your righteousness is both a sacrificial gift. It was given to you, not earned, and it was costly because Jesus had to pay your debt in order to give it to you. And through it, Jesus is both the One who is Just and the One who justifies. He is just as our judge, punishing sin as it deserves to be punished, and He justifies by taking our death penalty on Himself. For on the Cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied, for every sin on Him was laid, her in the death of Christ, I live.
Let’s look at verse 27 to the end
Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith.
For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.
Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also,
since indeed God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith is one.
Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.
I know this is a big chunk, and it is kind of confusing, but what is he saying?
Paul is saying that because God is righteous and has appeased His own wrath through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ, to pay for our sins, anyone can be made righteous before God. The righteousness we receive in Him isn’t our own righteousness; but rather it is a gift of God, as Christ both justifies us and is the One Who is Just in our judgment. We cannot earn it, but we can receive it as a gift from God. And as you write down our last point this morning, the key to receiving God’s gift of righteousness is this:
The only way to be righteous before God is to put my faith in Jesus
The only way to be righteous before God is to put my faith in Jesus
Now I want to be very clear here. I don’t want there to be any question here. This text DOES NOT say that works don’t matter. This text DOES NOT say that you can keep on sinning. It does not say that you can keep on living your life however you want to. It DOES NOT say that works aren’t necessary in the life of a Christian.
What it says is that those works cannot SAVE you. What it says is that you and I don’t have any righteousness of our own. What it says is that as you and I learn of the law and know what God requires of us, that more and more we see that we can’t do it on our own, and that we have NOTHING that we can brag about. What God’s law does, is it shows us that we can’t do it. It shows us that we fall short. It brings us to a place of conviction, where we realize that we need God’s grace and we are ready to receive it.
There isn’t anybody in here that deserves to be here. There isn’t anybody in here that DESERVES to go to heaven. There isn’t anybody in here that has any righteousness of his own. God’s purpose in His Law was to show us that we have no righteousness of our own, that on our own we stand condemned, so that we could see our need for Jesus. Any righteousness you have is a gift of God through the blood of Jesus Christ, and the only way that you can receive that gift is through faith! Make no mistake, salvation is a gift that believe, and trust in Him by faith.
But we need to understand something about faith. Faith is applied belief. In other words, I can say I believe, I believe, I believe, all day long. But if my life does not reflect that belief, I have no faith. We’re putting a new roof on our house. And we’ve been shown more types and colors and styles of roofing materials than I can think about. But one thing I know is true. A roofer can stand in my front yard and tell me that a roofing product is good, and that he believes it is of the highest quality, and that he has faith in it. But unless he puts that material on his own roof the same way he wants to put it on mine, all of that is just talk, because believing is concept, but faith is action.
Why is it that Paul says that we are saved by faith? Because if you truly have faith, you are trusting. If you truly have faith, you are depending on your belief. You are acting on it. Faith will change your life, because it will change what you do. If you truly believe something is true, it will change how you live your life. Your works will not save you, friend. We have nothing to boast in before God. He has done all the work to save us from our sins, to make us righteous before God. If you want to be saved from your sins, you have to choose to receive His free gift of salvation as an act of faith.
But that act of Faith will change everything about you if it really is faith. You can’t have faith in Jesus and stay the same as you were before. Because if you are saved by faith, that faith will bring about works! You will do righteous works. You will live a more righteous life, each and every day more righteous than the one before. And when that righteousness appears in your life, you will not boast because you have no righteousness of your own, and you will know that it is merely proof of true faith in Jesus. You will see that righteousness, and you will know that your faith is true.
In other words, Paul is saying that doing works can’t save you, obeying the Law can’t save you, and you can’t boast about anything in your life because your works are merely proof of the faith that saves you. In other words, you do good because Christ is in you. You obey God because Christ is in you. And those that truly believe, will bear the fruit of that belief in their life, so that the evidence of their faith can be seen in their works before the Lord. And they will see the good that they do, and they will know that they have no good in themselves, so that there is no doubt that Christ is in them.
But those who claim to believe in name only, whose belief is an act of lip service and empty rituals, their lack of faith will be evident as well, because there is no righteousness in those whose faith is not truly in Christ.
Where is your faith this morning? No one is righteous, but anyone can be through the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ because our righteous God has given us the greatest gift ever given in the blood of His Son. Anyone can find salvation from their sins, if they truly put their faith in Jesus Christ. And this morning is your chance to truly come to Him. This morning, if you are ready to truly believe, and you are ready to put that belief into action, if you are ready to start stepping out in faith by making it the foundation of everything that you say and do, then let this morning be that day when you truly come. Come meet with Jesus this morning. Let me lead you to Him, not as some empty ritual, but as a humble act of submission in faith.
Step out this morning, and make a decision that from today forward faith will be the motor that drives everything that you do, be covered in His righteousness forever. Let today be the day that you are truly saved by grace through faith.
Let’s go to the Lord in Prayer: Lord, Jesus, I am here today to throw myself wholly on Your grace and mercy. I know that I have no righteousness of my own, and I fully deserve the punishment for my sin. I’m sorry for treating You like You are a box to check off and a tool to get me out of trouble. Thank you, Lord, Jesus for the gift of Your righteousness. Thank you for dying the death that I deserve, for satisfying the wrath of God stored up against me, so that I wouldn’t have to. Lord, Jesus, let me receive your grace and mercy by faith this morning. I believe that You are the Son of God that died for my sins and rose from the dead to destroy death forever. I believe that Your promises are true, and this morning, I’m ready to build my life on that truth. Lord, I ask for Your help to make in obeying You, that everything I say and do would be a reflection of my trust in You. In Jesus’ Name I pray, Amen.