I believe Romans to be the greatest piece of writing
that's ever been written in the history of this world. I really
believe that. And this chapter 3 is so vitally
important. Let's read verses 25 and 26. Christ is he whom God hath set
forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare
His righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through
the forbearance of God. To declare, I say at this time,
His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of
him which believeth in Jesus. Let's go to the Lord. Our gracious God and our Father,
we ask you this morning, if you'd bless these words to our heart,
open our understanding, clear our minds from all things carnal,
make us focus our affection on Christ and hear your word in
power. Lord, we thank you for this privilege.
Forgive us, Lord, our sin. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. My prayer is that as long as
God's pleased to have this congregation assembled, that the Gospel of
Christ and Him crucified would be the one message preached.
That's my desire. The person and work of the Lord
Jesus Christ, that He might be declared every time this message
is preached, Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is the Son
of God. He is the one that Scripture
says, in Him God the Father hath blessed us, speaking to those
who were brought to faith in Him, He said, in Christ God hath
blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places,
according as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the
world. that we should be holy and without
blame before Him in love, accepted in the Beloved, in Christ. That's
God the Father's good will. That's His pleasure. He chose
His people in Christ. Jesus Christ is the Son of God
who is heir of all things. The Hebrew writer said, He hath
appointed Him heir of all things. By Christ He made the worlds.
He's the brightness of His glory, the express image of His person. This is the Son of God, this
is Christ. He upholds all things by the
Word of His power. And when He had by Himself purged
our sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on
high. You see why God will have us
preach His Son? He's the Word who was made flesh
and dwelt among us. made of a woman, made under the
law, made like unto his brethren in all points that he might redeem
his people, that he might make us the righteousness of God in
him, that he might reconcile his people to God. Jesus Christ is the one high
priest. He's the one sacrifice God's
pleased with. The one sacrifice God's pleased
with is His Son. The one righteousness God will
receive is His Son. The holiness God's pleased with
is His Son. Why I preach Christ crucified
and Him alone? Because He's salvation. He is salvation. He is the righteousness
of God. He's the one that God will have
glorified. The father will have his son
glorified. It's this message, it's him,
the message of Christ that he blesses to our hearts and saves
us beginning to end, from beginning to end. He's the power and wisdom
of God unto salvation. It's this message by which God's
going to show us our sin, He's going to show us His righteousness,
He's going to keep us walking by faith, He's going to keep
us strengthened in Him, He's going to keep our sin nature
subdued. This is the message. God said He'll have His Son to
have all the preeminence, that in all things He might have the
preeminence, for it pleased the Father that in Him should all
fullness dwell. Now, verse 25 says, God had sent
him forth. God sent His Son forth. He foreordained
His Son and sent Him into this world. He sent forth His only
begotten Son. God the Father sent Him forth.
And He did it that He might be a propitiation through faith
in His blood to be the mercy seat, to be the place God will
meet with guilty sinners. Christ Jesus. You know, Abel
came how? He came with the blood of a lamb.
He came acknowledging his sin, his inability to make himself
righteous and accepted of God. He came acknowledging that in
him was no good thing in his flesh. And all his acceptance
with God was in the blood of Christ. And God had respect under
Abel and to his offering. Because he came through faith
in the blood of the lamb. He came in the mercy seat. He
came in the propitiation. From the beginning, that's who
God set forth. Throughout all the old covenant,
throughout all the sacrifices and offerings, it was Christ
God the Father set forth. There was one way Israel could
come to God and one way the holy and righteous God would meet
with Israel. One way. Through the high priest
God chose. That high priest is Christ. through
the lamb that was slain in the place of Israel. That lamb slain
in the place of God's Israel is Christ. Through the blood
sprinkled on the mercy seat which covered the law, that mercy seat,
that propitiation is Christ. God set him forth from the beginning. All through the scriptures it's
been declaring Christ Jesus is the one place God will meet with
a guilty sinner, just in Christ. And why did God set him forth
to be a propitiation through faith in His blood? What's God's
purpose in this? You ever wondered why we preach
so much about blood? Why we preach Christ and Him
crucified? Why is it God says Christ is
the one way He'll meet with a sinner? Why is this? Verse 25 says to
declare His righteousness. for the remission of sins, for
the pardon of sin, the putting away of sin, the atonement for
sin. He declared His righteousness.
What is that? Verse 26, to declare I say at
this time His righteousness that He might be just and the justifier
of him which believeth in Jesus. In Christ crucified. is the righteousness
of God manifest. Here is how God is just and how
God is the justifier of them that He brings to believe on
Christ. This is how He is just and how He is the justifier.
Now first of all, we need to understand this, God is holy,
He is righteous. God is holy, He is righteous.
What He does in saving a sinner is going to be done in righteousness. He's the just judge of heaven
and earth. Everything He does is in perfect
justice, in perfect holiness, in perfect righteousness. This
is the only way God does anything. Especially saving a sinner. He
will not spare a guilty sinner. He will not spare a guilty sinner. And here's the thing. We're all
guilty sinners. We're all guilty sinners. Look
back up at Romans 3 and look at verse 9. Paul had talked about
the Gentiles in chapter 1, then he talked about the Jews in chapter
2, and now here he says this, what then? Are we Jews better
than they, better than those Gentiles? No, and no wise, for
we before proved both Jews and Gentiles that they all understand. Paul included himself in this.
He said, are we better? Both Jews and Gentiles, they
are all under sin as it's written, there is none righteous, no,
not one. That's so of every son of Adam.
Every son of Adam. That's so of us all our days
as far as just us. Unless we be found in Christ,
unless we be trusting Christ alone, we're going to be found
guilty, unrighteous in ourselves. Believers have but one righteousness,
Jehovah Sidkenu, the Lord our righteousness, Christ Jesus our
righteousness. Well, what about God's law? Can
I come to Him in the law? Can I work out something for
myself? Look at Romans 3 and verse 19.
Now we know what things soever the law saith, it saith to them
who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all
the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of
the law there shall no flesh be justified in its sight, for
by the law is the knowledge of sin. So God will not spare the
guilty sinner. All are guilty. And no man by
his person or by his own works can make himself righteous and
justified and accepted of God. It's an impossibility. No sinner
can make himself accepted of God. This is what sinners, this
is what brings out the enmity of the natural heart right here.
Men say, no, no, no God. I'm gonna take a part in this. I'm gonna have some glory in
this. God says, no, it won't happen. Now if I cannot depend
on my person because I'm sin, all I do is sin, if I can't look
to the law because the law was given to declare me guilty and
shut my mouth, then how can a guilty sinner be just with God? How
can God receive me? That's the age-old question.
How can a sinner be just with God? Well, God by His own good
pleasure chose to be merciful to some sinners and save us by
His grace. That's what He did when He chose
us in Christ and blessed us with all spiritual blessings. You
know why He blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ
or how He did that? He put it all in Christ's hand.
so that he cannot fail, it is an utter impossibility for Christ
to fail, so that he shall give all those blessings to his people.
He will not lose one. But you see, even those elect
chosen sinners that God is going to save, They're still sinners
in ourselves. He didn't choose us because of
merit in us. He didn't choose us because He foresaw something
in us. The Scriptures are clear. He has to work everything in
us to bring us to believe Him. So it wasn't that He saw we were
going to believe Him. It was no merit in us. It was
free grace. It was sovereign grace. Choosing
whom He would. But even those He chose came
forth into this world guilty sinners. So how? How? Can God have mercy on us and
declare us justified and be just? His law's got to be honored.
He's got to pour out justice on us. We've got to die because
we've sinned and God's law demands death to the sinner. How then
can God be just and execute us and at the same time justify?
Justify His people. How can He do that? How can he execute justice and
justifies? This was Darius' dilemma concerning
Daniel. They bring Daniel to him and
Daniel had broken the law that Darius had made. And the law
of the Medes and Persians had to be honored. But Darius loved
Daniel and wanted to have mercy on Daniel. But he couldn't figure
out how can I have mercy on him and uphold the justice of the
law. So he ended up throwing him in the lion's den. Well,
brethren, with man it's impossible. We're either going to rejoice in judgment or rejoice
in mercy at the expense of the other. Except, except we know
God's already justified His people. And the only just thing for God
to do and for us to do is to be merciful because justice has
been honored. Justice has been honored. There's
one way God can be just and be the justifier of the guilty.
God must do the saving in righteousness. That's why he sent his son. His
son is the one who came forth to honor that law by taking the
place of his people and bearing the justice of God and by that
divine act of perfect love and righteousness justifies people
from all our sins. So that God is both just and
God is the justifier. He gets all the glory. He sent
his son to do this work on behalf of his people. This is the gospel,
brethren. This is not just some aspect
of the gospel, it is the gospel. Miss this, miss the gospel. Don't
preach this, don't preach the gospel. I would hate to know
a sinner came in here to hear the gospel and he only got to
hear the gospel one time in his life and I didn't preach this
to him. This is why I want to declare
this every time we stand here. We want to declare the gospel.
It's the power of God. It's how He's going to make us
humble before Him and make us look to Christ only. And it's
how He's going to chasten and correct and strengthen and make
us walk by faith. It's how He makes us merciful.
It's how He makes us loving. It's how He continues this work
beginning and end. It's how He grows us up into
Him by constantly hearing of what He has done for us, despite
us. Well, secondly, look here, Christ
is the Son of God, the one who manifests God's righteousness
as He justified His people. Now look back at verse 21. He
said, now, we're all sinners. He said, the law shuts her mouth,
declares us guilty. But then he said in verse 21,
but now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested. He means the righteousness of
God without you and I keeping the law, without us doing anything. Where is it manifested? Well,
it's witnessed by the law and the prophets. As I said, this
is what God's been declaring throughout the Old Testament
Scriptures. The law and the prophets bear
witness to one, just one. The end of all is this one right
here. Here's where the righteousness
of God is manifest. Even the righteousness of God,
which is by faith of Jesus Christ, by His faithfulness, by His doing,
by His dying, and His righteousness is unto all and upon all them
that believe on Him. But it's by his faith that this
righteousness is manifest. God set him forth to manifest
his righteousness. And it's in him. This is what
faith believes. Believes on him. He is the righteousness. It's by His faithfulness. Why
does it have to be so? For there's no difference in
us. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. We're
justified freely by His grace through the redemption that's
in Christ Jesus who God has set forth to be a propitiation through
faith in His blood to declare His righteousness, to declare
how that God is just and the justifier of him that believes
in Jesus. Now God made Adam the head of
his race. Adam's the head of all Adam's
race. Everybody who would be born of
Adam, he's the head of them. That means what he did, all his
children did in him. That was to typify Christ who
is the head of God's chosen race. Go to Romans 5. Romans 5. And see in verse 12, as by one
man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. So death passed
upon all men, for that all have sinned. In Adam all have sinned. Now look down at the end of verse
14. It says at the end of the verse
there, Adam is the figure of him that was to come. He's the
type, he's the figure. How so? In headship. in headship
just as Adam represented all his children and by his one offense
all died in him. That's me, you, and everybody.
So Christ is the head of all his people and all his people
did what Christ did. That's the one way we made righteous. Look down at verse 16. He says, Not as it was by one that sinned,
so is the gift. The gift is not the same as the
fall. For the judgment, the curse was
by one man's offense resulting in condemnation. But the free
gift is of many offenses unto justification. Many offenses. Can you think, you know, if you try not to sin
just for a minute, You are going to sin. You find you sin. Just within a minute. Imagine
how many offenses from the beginning of your conception, conceived
in sin, all the way to the last breath. Imagine how many. And
then imagine how many offenses of all this great multitude that
God chose for Christ to redeem. You see, it is many offenses
that Christ came to put away. And that's what he did. Look
here, verse 17, for if by one man's offense death reigned by
one, much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the
gift of righteousness. Righteousness is not earned,
it's a gift. They shall reign in life by one
Jesus Christ. He says in verse 19, for as by
one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience
of one shall many be made righteous. This is why the Hebrew writer
tells us, in all things it behooved Christ to be made like unto His
brethren. If He is going to make us like
Him, He had to come and be made like unto His brethren to deal
with this issue of our sin and uphold God's holy law. His brethren
were flesh and so the Son of God came down, born of a virgin. so that he was not corrupt like
every other sinner that comes into this world. We're born of
Adam's corrupt seed, not Christ. He's holy, harmless, undefiled,
separate from sinners, so that he could be the spotless lamb,
fit to bear the sin of his people. His brethren were under the law,
he was made under the law, that he might fulfill it for his people,
that he might honor it and magnify it in perfection, because we
could not do that. It wasn't that there was anything
wrong with the law, it was our weakness, our sin. We were already
guilty. You think about it, when Moses
was in the mount receiving the law, it's obvious God wasn't
giving the law for men to try to come to God, but because while
he was there receiving the law, Israel was down below worshiping
an idol. We'd already sinned when God
gave the law. We sinned way back there in Adam. He gave the law
to make the offense abound, to make us see what sinners we are
and shut our mouth to Christ. His brethren were sin, Scripture
says, the spotless Lamb laid down His life, the just for the
unjust. He went to Calvary's cross and
He made Him sin who knew no sin. Sin for us, for His people. This one who knew no sin, that
we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. His people were
made a curse by the fall. Christ Jesus was made a curse.
He redeemed us from the curse and condemnation of the law by
being made a curse for us. His brethren were separated and
shut out from God by our sin. Christ Jesus is made higher than
the heavens. He came out of the grave. He
arose and sat down at the right hand of the Father. And all His
people arose and sat down in Him. He had to be made what we
are to make us the righteousness of God in Him and to uphold God's
law in the process. He declared God righteous. He showed the righteousness of
God. This is how strict God is concerning our sin and our guilt. God, in His great love for His
people, spared not His only begotten Son. He won't spare us. Without thinking a thing, without
doing a thing, we're sin and we gotta die. If we could just
see how vile we are, how wretched we are, how unholy and other
than God we are in this sinful flesh of ours. That's what we
have to see. You know where we see that? You
look to Calvary's cross and you see that God spared not His only
Son. He sent Him and made Him to bear
the sin of His people so that God's justice could be poured
out on Him and His law magnified and all His people die in Him.
Justice executed to the full. Do you believe you're dead to
the law? Do you believe that you really
died before God so that God says, Your sin does not exist anymore.
There's no condemnation. The law will not condemn you.
God will not condemn you because Christ died in your room instead. What am I saying when I pull
out the law and I start demanding something of sinners with the
law and trying to condemn one of God's believing children with
the law? What am I saying? I'm saying Christ is not enough!
What blasphemy! What offense to God! Christ really bore everything
we are. He became His people and went
to that cross and put away our sin, the body of our sin. We died in Him. Christ bore the shame of our
sins. Sin is a shameful thing. We're
going to see in a second how we've never been shameful enough
for that to gain us any acceptance we got. Never. We ought to be
totally ashamed of what we are. Every sin of omission. We haven't loved each other as
we ought. Never. We ought to be so ashamed of
that. And we can't be ashamed enough
to gain acceptance with God. But He bore the shame of our
sin in perfect sorrow and perfect suffering. My soul is exceeding sorrowful,
even unto death, he said. The sorrows of death compassed
me about. The pains of hell got hold upon
me. I found trouble and sorrow, then
called I upon the Lord. O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver
my soul. That's the perfect suffering
of our Redeemer and His perfect faith. We shall sorrow due to
sin. We will be ashamed of our sin
by God's grace, but we can't find any acceptance in our sorrow. If we find any confidence in
our repentance, we're in bad shape. Christ Jesus. Christ Jesus. He will not let
us be ashamed for trusting Him to have borne all our shame in
perfection for us and satisfy God for us. Christ bore being cut off from
God in righteous judgment. He cried, my God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me? And he promises he'll never allow
one of his believing children to be cut off. He says, I'll
never leave you, I'll never forsake you. He bore that cutting off. He's not going to allow it to
happen to his children. He will not allow it to happen
to his child. He won't cut you off, believer. He died under
sin one time. And doing so we perfectly fulfill
justice. Now you and I are going to die
in the sin as far as these bodies are concerned because they have
to go back to the dust. But he promises his people, he
that believeth on me shall never die. He'll never die. Why? He died our second death
already. And His glorious person accomplished
eternal redemption. He's fully God and He's fully
man and everything He did is eternal and it's eternally accepted
of God. And that means when He gives
you this life and He brings you to believe on Him, you have eternal
acceptance with God. Now by Christ Jesus, God is just
and He is the justifier of him which believes on the Lord Jesus. That means He gets all the glory. He gets all the glory. Can you
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? Do you believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ? Well, I can assure us of this.
God didn't leave this in the hands of sinners to do with His
Son what we would. Because we'd have never called
on Him. We'd have never believed on Him. We'd have never given
up this glory that belongs to Christ alone. But our Lord sends this Gospel. And Christ has the glory of doing
this. He's risen and the head and the captain and the filler
of all things and He sends this Gospel. You're under the Gospel
today. You're hearing the Gospel of
God's righteousness. This is how He's going to save
His people. Bring them under the sound of this Gospel and
He's going to plant the Living Word in the heart and cause a
new baby to be born within these bodies of sin and death. And
we're going to start growing up into Him through the Word,
through this Gospel, through hearing of His glorious person
and His finished work. And that's going to bring His
child to cast it all on Christ and keep casting it all on Christ
and keep casting it all on Christ. Because He's going to keep speaking
in the heart. He's going to keep showing us. Our sin. He's going to keep showing us
we can't trust us. He's going to keep showing us
we don't have a righteousness of ourselves. These works of
these hands are not going to be what's going to make us accepted
with God. It's Christ and His work. All who He justified in Christ
shall hear this gospel and they shall be called. Now, if He's
done that for us and He's brought us to believe Him, brought us
to believe that we really died when He died, so that our judgment
has been settled before God. Do you know what peace of conscience
that is to know your judgment is settled with God? When the
Spirit comes, He convinces you of sin. What is that? It's all
these works I'm doing. It's all this righteousness I'm
doing. Well, yeah, that's all sin. But this is what it is. He convinces you you don't believe
on Christ. There's your sin. Because if
you believe on Him, there is no sin. He is going to convince
us of righteousness, that Christ has come and established His
righteousness, and He is the righteousness God received. And
when He does that, He convinces you of judgment. Judgment was
settled at Calvary for His people. And there is nothing else you
can do but cast your care on Christ and believe Him. That's
all you can do. That's all you want to do. And
by His grace you can't do anything else. Oh, you're full of unbelief
and we're full of it, we're full of unbelief. But He keeps sustaining
faith in Him so that we cannot not believe on Him. And this is what He says to us.
He that is dead is freed from sin. Before God, you're freed from
sin. If you believe on Him, that you really died in Him, you're
freed from sin. If we be dead with Christ, we believe we shall
also live with Him, knowing that Christ being raised from the
dead dieth no more. Death has no more dominion over
Him, for in that He died, He died unto sin once, but in that
He liveth, He liveth unto God. Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves
to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. What does that mean? I'm dead
indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ my Lord."
What does that mean? It means you're accepted in the
Beloved. Think about that. Accepted of
holy God. Accepted of God that will not
look upon sin. Accepted of God. in His Beloved
Son. And in His Beloved Son, you know
what Christ our Beloved says of His bride, His people? He says, Thou art all fair, My
Beloved. There's no spot in Thee. All
I see spots in Me. He says, Reckon it to be so. Impute it to be so. You're dead. And your life is in Christ. And you're righteous in Him.
Righteous in Him. He says, and I get all the glory.
And that's what you want. You want Him to get all the glory.
He said, I even I am He that broughteth out thy transgressions
for mine own sake, and will not remember. Will not remember thy
sins. There's therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus. Born of His Spirit, walking not
after the flesh, but after Him. I see myself walking after my
flesh every day. Never again. Christ won't allow
it. He's going to keep us walking
after the Spirit, by the Spirit, and make us know there's no condemnation. Oh, that's good news. That's
good news. Father, we thank you for this
Word. We thank you for your precious only begotten Son. Thankful,
Lord, that you have manifest your righteousness in Him and
made us to behold Him, made us to believe on Him. Lord, would
you be willing, bless the Word to one of your lost sheep today,
make them hear this and know just how ruined we are How needful
we need Christ alone. Lord, don't let us look back
to the works of our hands. Make us look to Christ. Make
us depend upon him. Use this gospel to make us see
our sin. Lord, we ask you to make us see
the foulness we are. And keep us turned to Him. Keep us repentant, hating our
sin, seeing what we are as nothing. And keep Christ our all. Keep
us believing on Him. Lord, we ask You, bless Your
Word. Bless Your Word. Save us. Save us, Lord. Keep us in Christ and save us
for His namesake. Thank you, Lord, for this day.
Thank you for this word and this gospel and this place and our
brethren. Help us to remember Him and look
to Him. In Christ's name we ask it. Amen.