If you would turn to Romans 3,
this got dangerously close today, but we're OK. In fact, it's a perfect dovetail. I wanted to cover Romans 3, 21
to 31. So it'll fall right as the second
part of Romans 3. What I want to address today.
is a whole subject of right versus wrong. And the reason for that
is that in the Greek, and in fact in the Hebrew, there's very
close association with the word right, righteousness, judgment. and to justify, and Romans 3
is all about justification. And so I thought we would look
at this topic. The way I'd like to do it is
to first examine the word, or the different words, mainly in
the Greek, that refer to this, and then we'll go from there.
You know, much of life is about what's right and what's wrong.
And society has a notion of what's right and what's wrong, different
societies in the world, but we've got the perfect answer to what's
right and wrong in the Bible. And so let's just examine that
and then see how that leads through the thoughts of judgment, righteousness,
and ultimately justification, or declaring someone righteous.
The root word in the Greek for all of these different words
is dike. I guess you would say in English,
D-I-K-E, dike, or E. And what it means in the root
of the word is custom, right as dependent on custom or law. It was used by Plato, Sophocles,
Homer, and thus trial or penalty. You know that the world, in their
philosophy believes that right and wrong come from the culture
we're in, and that different parts of the world having different
cultures would evolve different rights and wrongs, and a lot
of them have similarities. But we who are Christians know
that there's a lot, something a lot deeper to right and wrong
than just one's culture and one's conscience and what you build
up as you grow up in a culture. The root word does mean that.
It means custom or right as dependent on custom or law. Then you have dikaios, taken
from that, which means observant of custom, civilized, now you
see this starting to develop, observant of right, righteous,
right, lawful, or just, real, genuine, or true. So you have
that from dikaios. So that's an adjective that describes
people as righteous. Then dikaiosune is the word for
righteousness or justice. Righteousness or justice. Dikaioma,
it means judgment. punishment or penalty. And you
can see how that's related because if you've got right and wrong,
you've got to judge the wrong. Well, first of all, you've got
to judge to determine what, if a person is right or wrong, and
then you punish those who are wrong. So that's another word
that comes from this. Now you move into the verb, the
kayao. And this is where it gets very
interesting, because one set of the meanings means to set
right, or to do a man right, therefore to judge, dikayao can
mean to judge, so you are setting the case before you of a right
and wrong thing, and you're judging which is right and which is wrong.
You're coming to that conclusion. Then, in other words, in a trial,
What happens is, whether it's just a judge or whether it's
a jury and a judge, all the facts are presented and all of these
things go on, and then the judge or the jury has to pronounce
the person or they have to administer justice. Justice is another word
related to this. So they deem or they declare
the person right or wrong. They judge and they decao that
person and they say whether, from the facts, that person is
deemed to be right in the case or wrong. And that's all fine
and good, and what happens as a result is diakaiosis, which
is punishment, justification, that is declaring someone just,
but what is the ultimate use of this word in the New Testament?
We know that it is not declaring us just from the right we've
done within ourselves, but it is, now we've got to coin another
word, it is deeming us, or you could still say declaring, but
not because of inherent rightness or justification, But God justifies
us because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He imputes that
righteousness to us. It's nothing. The judge is not
saying, I've looked at you and I see that you are just. But
he's saying, I've looked at you and because of Jesus Christ dying
for you, I declare you just. I declare you righteous. And
this is the meaning that the world can't understand. that
Christians are declared righteous, not because they are inherently,
but because of the sacrifice, the propitiation of Jesus Christ. So when we finally get to Romans
3, 21 to 31, we'll see that so vividly, but I kind of want to
build up to it first. So, this whole word has the meaning
of to judge. Instead of to judge, what we
are interested in is to deem or declare righteous. You know,
Romans is a fantastic theology, the closest thing to systematic
theology we have in the Bible, and what Paul does is he builds
up through the eight chapters of Romans that are doing the
theology. Then you've got 9, 10, and 11
about the Jews, and then you have the rest of the book, which
is practical things. If you take Romans 1 through
8, what you do is you start out with Romans 1 and 2 talking about
guilt, condemnation, and hypocrisy, how we're all guilty. Then Romans
3, as the pastor did this morning, all have sinned, everyone has
sinned, and the back part of Romans 3 is justification, because
the need is that we've all sinned, so we need to be justified. Then
Romans 4 is the example of Abraham, and that the answer is not law
and works to get us out of this predicament, but it's justification
by faith. Romans 5 is Adam versus Christ,
as what each of those did for the race. Romans 6 is a wonderful
chapter that asks the question, okay, since this is all true,
shall we just go on sinning? Why not? You know, that we've
been justified from nothing we did ourselves, shall we go on
sinning? And Paul says, of course not.
If, indeed, you've been justified, then you are servants of righteousness
instead of servants of sin. Not that it's perfect, but that's
what we are. Romans 7 is the indwelling sin
still in us, and Romans 8 is victory in the spirit. Wonderful
string of chapters that lay this whole thing out so vividly for
us. So, in Romans 3, Verses nine to 18 state that all Jews and
Gentiles have sinned, everyone. And verses 19 and 20 say that
the law, the purpose of the law in all of this, and that is to
reveal sin. That's the only purpose of the
law, is to reveal sin. And then verses 21 to 31, justification. Before we go to those verses,
I'd like to point out a few uses of the word dikaiosis, or the
different forms of it, in the Old Testament. The way that you
do the Greek is through the Septuagint in the Old Testament. There is
a Hebrew word, tzaddik, for righteousness, which parallels this word dikaios
in the Greek. Let's look at a few verses in
the Old Testament. get our thinking cap on for righteousness
in the Old Testament. Turn, if you would, to Genesis
6-9. We all know that there's only
been one way of salvation or justification in all of history,
man's history. It wasn't different in the Old
Testament. They didn't work for their righteousness. And then
in the New Testament, we give ours handed to us. It's all the
same throughout the Bible. And sometimes it's hard to see
through that in the Old Testament. For instance, Romans 6, I mean,
Genesis 6, 9. These are the generations of
Noah. Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and
Noah walked with God. You've heard that verse a lot.
You know, and you've had explained to the fact that perfect in this
Hebrew word It doesn't mean perfect perfect, it just means mature,
well advanced, and very, very good. But it doesn't mean absolute
perfection. So how do you take that verse?
Has that ever given you a problem? It has me. Well, I think the
way that you take that verse is you look at verse eight first. But Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. Now how could Noah find grace
in the eyes of the Lord if he was a perfect man? He didn't
need grace. Well, obviously he was not a perfect man. He was
a sinner like the rest of us. And first things first, he found
grace in the eyes of the Lord. And when you find grace in the
eyes of the Lord, you're justified by faith. The Lord starts imparting
some righteousness to you. And then we can have verse nine,
Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations and walked
with God. Why did he walk with God? Because
he decided I'm gonna walk with God and be a good guy? No, God
got into his life first, saved him, gave him grace, and then
Noah was a righteous man. It's that order. And then let's
look at Abraham, Abraham's The next one we think about, Genesis
15.6, and you know the answer to this one, because it's quoted
all through the New Testament. You know some of Abraham's sins. Abraham did his wife real dirty
a couple times by saying, hey, say you're my sister, because
I'm afraid of this guy. And not a whole lot of ethics
or courage there. So Genesis 15.6
says, and he believed in the Lord and he counted it to him
for righteousness. So here is the first look we
have at the fact that even in the Old Testament, God justified
people freely by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the way
that it came to them was through faith. We're going to talk in
a minute about the fact that faith is not another work that
all of a sudden earns you righteousness, which Armenians are taking it
to be. They just make faith into another
work. Faith is a gift of God itself. So faith is just the
channel through which we realize our justification. So Abraham
Believed in the Lord and he counted it to him for righteousness.
So that's how Abraham got his righteousness. Same way Noah
got his righteousness. They were not good people inherently
who God recognized as the judge and he, in the trial, he's saying,
okay, he did right and I'm judging him as righteous. No, he deemed
him righteous by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Then let's look
at Moses, Exodus 33, 12. And Moses said unto the Lord,
See, thou sayest unto me, bring up this people, and thou hast
not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said,
I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight. Moses was not an inherently good
person. He was saved by the Lord. And the whole rest of the chapter
mentions this grace repeatedly in Moses' life. And you can read
the rest of that. So Moses was the same as these
other patriarchs in that he was justified by faith also. Look
at Exodus 23 seven. I'll show you one. appears to
be a contradiction. Exodus 23-7, this is in the passage
about the law, the giving of the law. Exodus 23-7 says, keep
thee far from a false matter, and the innocent and the righteous
slay thou not, for I will not justify the wicked. He says,
I will not justify the wicked. Well, we're all wicked, Romans
1 through 3, and he justified us. So how does that fit? Well,
this is in the context, obviously, of apart from atonement. And
apart from propitiation, apart from the sacrifice of Jesus Christ,
obviously God is just, and he will in no way, this is stated
in Proverbs, all over the Old Testament, there's no way he
will justify the evil. He's not a wishy-washy God, he
knows right, he knows wrong, and he will not cross that line. But through Jesus Christ, we
have propitiation. that makes it different, that's
the only way. Similar passages in Deuteronomy
25.1, let's read that. So really these verses are the
verses that the lost are dependent on, and that's pretty scary. Deuteronomy 25.1, says, if there
be a controversy between men and they come into judgment,
that the judges may judge them, then they shall justify the righteous
and condemn the wicked. There you go, there's judgment,
there's the trial system, there is that decay in culture. You have a case, you have a question
about right and wrong, and the judges are supposed to judge
them, and they're supposed to justify the righteous and condemn
the wicked, and that's exactly what God will do at judgment
to the lost who do not have Christ. There will be no doubt about
the justice of that. 1 Kings 8.32 says, Then here
thou in heaven and do, and judge, this is Solomon's
prayer, and judge thy servants, condemning the wicked, to bring
his way upon his head, and justifying the righteous, to give him according
to his righteousness. That's what will be done at the
Great White Throne Judgment to the loss of the world. And of
course, no one will make it into that first category of justifying
the righteous, because nobody will be righteous. What do most
of our co-workers, neighbors, and the people we rub elbows
with in society believe about this whole thing, when you really
press them? Well, I've done so many good works, and I've done
so many bad works, and I'm just trying for the first category,
if you've had algebra, to be x plus one over the second category,
and then I'll make it. That's not the way, because God,
as a righteous judge, will judge the entire package as either
righteous or wicked. Then let's turn to, well let
me just say this one to you, Ecclesiastes 7.20. For there
is not a just man upon earth that doeth good and sinneth not. So that's similar to the passages
quoted in Romans three there about all of us having So that's
the natural state of all of us. There's not a just man upon earth. Nobody is going to get into that
group at the judgment apart from Christ. Ecclesiastes 9.1. Now, the rest, okay, the rest
of Ecclesiastes talks a lot about righteous people versus the others. And you could see that as a contradiction
because there aren't any righteous people. Well, what it's talking
about is just relatively, that in our day-to-day workings, you'll
see righteous deeds and you'll see unrighteous deeds, and that's
what a lot of Ecclesiastes is. Habakkuk 2.4 is the famous verse,
but the just shall live by his faith. And we'll get to that
in Romans 3. Now, Job, don't you love Job? I have been reading Job, and
it's new every time I read it. Let's read a few verses in Job.
Now, you can't take your theology from Job. You've got to be careful.
You've got to be careful who you're reading. And Job doesn't
get it right a lot of the time. His three friends, or four, definitely
don't get it right, although they get some things right. The
only person who gets it right is God in the end, and that's
the best part of Job. So you gotta watch Job, but there's
some interesting ones here on the lines of righteousness. Job 9, 1 through 3. You know, a lot of what Job is
doing is he's trying to justify himself. That's a lot of what
people try to do, is they justify their actions in themselves.
And so in Job 9, one through three, Job answered and said,
I know it is so of a truth, but how should man be just with God? If he will contend with him,
he cannot answer him one of a thousand. So he, a man, excuse me, I skipped
a verse. No, that's it, okay, so, Job
was saying, after all of these discussions and trying to justify
myself, I realize the fact that nobody can be just in God's eyes. And then verse 20 of that chapter,
Job 9, 20, if I justify myself, mine own
mouth shall condemn me. If I say I am perfect, it shall
also prove me perverse. Then look at Job 15. For 1514, what is man that he
should be clean, and he which is born of a woman that he should
be righteous? So what were Job's friends telling
him? Well, they had very simple theology. It's this, and that's
what a lot of people have. If you do bad, God'll judge you
and bad things will happen to you. If you do good, God'll judge
you and good things will happen to you. And obviously, Job didn't
know what was going on behind the scenes. His friends didn't
know what was going on behind the scenes, where Satan had asked
for a chance to test Job in God's counsel, that God actually said
he's a righteous man, so he must have been justified at this point
somehow. Well, it's not somehow, it's
through Christ. And yet, so these things that
happened to Job weren't because he had done anything wrong, They
were tests. And so that's what's going on
here. So in 1514, what is a man that he should be clean, and
he which is born a woman that he should be righteous? He's
starting to get it. Job's starting to get the fact that he's not
inherently righteous. 22.3, is it any pleasure to the
Almighty that thou art righteous? This is Eliphaz, he actually
said a good thing here. Or is it gain to him that thou
makest thy ways perfect? Is it to God's benefit that we
do right instead of wrong? Does that make God all happy
and make his day for him? Of course not. God is above all
that. And so we don't affect God in
what we do. And so it's not a pleasure to
the Almighty if I do what's right. In 25.4, How then can man be justified
with God, or how can he be clean that is born a woman? So this
is Bildad saying it. And then chapter 40 verse eight. I think we're finally into God's
speech here. 40 verse eight says, wilt thou
also disannul my judgment? Wilt thou condemn me that thou
mightest be righteous? That's what a lot of the world
is doing today, too, isn't it? They condemn God to make themselves
appear righteous. Elihu in Job 32.2 said an interesting
thing. Let's go back to that one. Job
32.2. Then was kindled the wrath of
Elihu, the son of Barakel the Bozite, of the kindred of Ram,
against Job with his wrath kindled because he justified himself
rather than God. So it made Elihu mad what Job
was doing. And then 33, 32, if thou hast anything to say,
answer me. Speak, for I desire to justify
thee. That's God speaking to Job. That's
an interesting one. So, Job goes into these fits
of trying to justify himself, saying, at first he got very
depressed, said, just kill me, Lord, I just can't take all this. But then he goes into these soliloquies
of defense to God, and wanting God to make himself known to
Job, and why are you doing this to me? And, you know, pity parties
and all of that, but he comes to the conclusion in the end
of what's really going on. Isaiah 5311 is the answer that
we want to get to in Romans. Isaiah 5311 says, and this is the great Messianic passage, Speaking of the Messiah, he shall
see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied. By his
knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for he
shall bear their iniquities. So there you go. The only way,
and Job said it himself, didn't he? He was looking for a mediator.
The only way that we can be justified is for someone to bear our iniquities,
these wrong things we've done and continuously do, in order
to be declared righteous. This is the great revelation
of the Reformation, is to be declared righteous, not truly
made righteous. Now, let's go to, well, in Genesis
15, six, Abraham's faith was counted to him for righteousness. But you have to be careful about
that passage because people go to seed on faith. And faith is
not just another work. And we'll see that in Romans
3. So now let's go to Romans 3. We'll end up just reading
verses 21 to 31 with a few comments. The great definitive passage
in the whole New Testament on justification. 21 through 31. But now, And these are all that root word
of one form or another, decay. But now the righteousness of
God, without the law, is manifest, being witnessed by the law and
the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of
Jesus Christ, or in Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them that
believe. For there's no difference For
all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified
freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation It's the
word of Hilosterion. 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. So whenever you see
the word righteous or righteousness, and then I'll ride along with
it, just and justifier sounds like different words, R and J,
they're the same root word in the Greek. Where is boasting
then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay, but by a law of
faith. Therefore we conclude that a
man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Is he the
God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles?
Yes, of the Gentiles also, seeing it is one God which shall justify
the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith.
Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid, yea,
we establish the law. So some key things in this passage
is that first of all, in verse 21, righteousness is revealed
to us apart from the law. And so what we're going to be
seeing is that, yes, the law sets down the commandments of
what's right and wrong, but it doesn't get you out of the problem. It does nothing more than show
us that we're sinners. It's very effective that way
because we've got this law and we see we don't meet it and we're
convicted by sin. But it doesn't get us to righteousness. Verse 22, which mentions faith,
but faith is not the cause of righteousness. What is the cause
of righteousness in this passage? The righteousness of God, which
is by faith in Jesus Christ, which means it comes to us through
that means, or it's revealed to us through that means, unto
all upon that believe, for there's no difference for all, and keep
reading on down, being justified freely by His grace, we didn't
earn it even by faith, faith doesn't earn it. through the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus. There's the first key
word, redemption. So we had to be redeemed. That's the cause
of justification. And the other cause of justification
is in the next verse, whom God set forth to be a propitiation,
which is a payment. It's a payment, elastereon. Elastereon
is only used a couple of times in the New Testament. One of
them, it's used quite a bit in the Old Testament, 10 or 15 times,
of the mercy seat, thelosmos. It's the mercy seat on top of
the ark. And what happened on that mercy
seat? Once a year on the Day of Atonement, they would sprinkle
the blood of the sin sacrifice on that altar for the sins of
the nation. And so that is related to blood. It's the covering of
the death, by blood of Jesus Christ to cover our sins. That's the mercy seat. And so,
whom God set forth, Jesus is whom God set forth to be a propitiation,
to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins through
the forbearance. So, the two key words for the
reason for justification in Romans 3 are this word propitiation
and the word redemption. But faith is the means by which
we even understand our justification. And that's given to us from God.
Now, back to verse 23 and 24. I want you to get the tenses
of these verbs. For all have sinned, that's hematone,
that's an aorist tense in the Greek, which just is looking
at it as a past tense point action, just kind of looking at it as
an overall activity in the past. For all of us have sinned in
the past, and come short, it's not real clear in the King James,
but that is a present tense, and are coming short. Right now,
every day. of the glory of God." Now we
have, being justified, that is a present passive participle.
It talks about completed action with ongoing results. Dikaiomenoi,
having been justified freely. by his grace. So you have the
picture of we sin in the past, we are continuing to come short,
but we have been justified, clear back to there, and ongoing through
this propitiation. It covers the whole scene through
the redemption. And then the word freely, that's
grace, nothing we earn. We already talked about hilosterion,
meaning propitiation, it's the mercy seat over the ark, Through
faith in his blood, blood is another key word for what happened
here in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Past sins and the forbearance
of God, and then verse 27, there's not to be any boasting, because
it's all by grace that we have received this justification.
So, in short, there are some wonderful words in the New Testament
and Old Testament for justification, right, righteous, judge, to declare
righteous. They all come together in the
death of Jesus Christ for us and the propitiation that he
offered. Nobody in any part of history
has ever earned the justification of God. Nobody in history has
ever been righteous on their own. None of the patriarchs,
nobody except the God man, Jesus Christ.