We're going to be reading from
Romans chapter 3 and verse 21. Romans chapter 3 and verse 21. But now the righteousness of
God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and
the prophets. even the righteousness of God,
which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that
believe. For there is 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 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. Where is boasting then? It is
excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay, but by the 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
uncircumcision through faith. Do we then make void the law
through faith? God forbid. Yea, we establish
the law. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. I was remarking to Shane as we
were making our way up the road a little earlier, a few minutes
ago, that this is such an important passage of Scripture that we
have before us this evening. And it's my joy that you're here
to share this with me because we've been building up to this
for several weeks we have been looking at the way in which Paul
has established his argument, he has set in place the way in
which we are to understand the movement of the revelation of
God as far as our lives are concerned and our sin is concerned and
that breach which has taken place between us and God which has
rendered us condemned before him because of our sin. And Paul has said it really doesn't
matter if you're a Jew or a Gentile. because all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. You know what you've sinned against
because I've given you the law, you Jews, and you don't know
what you've sinned against because all you have is that limited
understanding of a natural law which comes from an acknowledgement
that there must be a God and we must be answerable to him.
And yet whether we are Jew or whether we are Gentile, there
is a condemnation which reaches to us all, and there is a sinfulness
which is part of all of our lives and experience. We are sinful
because we were born of sinful parents, and we are sinful because
we have practiced sin in our own lives, and we have proven
ourselves to be opposed to God. And Paul has been working up
in the last couple of chapters to show us that there needs to
be something new, something from outside of ourselves which comes
to us by which God is able to reckon us without guilt before
him and justified in his sight. And so here we come to this 21st
verse of Romans chapter three. Paul has come, as it were, to
the principal theme of his message. the heart of the gospel. And we do say that gospel means
good news, and I guess we sometimes think about it or say it flippantly,
yes, the gospel's good news. Like, I don't know, Walmart have
got 25% off their groceries. That's good news, right? But
we need to know that when we talk about the gospel, we're
talking about something that is so great, so glorious, so
astounding, so beyond anything that ever we could do for ourselves,
that it ought to stop us in our tracks. This is the gospel of
God. This is the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. This is good news. to men and
women who understand themselves to be sinners and Paul has proven,
he has gone to great lengths to show the logic of his argument
that we all are guilty before God and therefore all of us need
to know this good news. It's an important message for
you tonight. It is an important message for me to understand
where our standing before God comes from and how it has been
accomplished. So here is the heart of the gospel
in these words that Paul has written and that we have read
together this evening. He's proved the impossibility
of sinful man ever to free himself from his sinful condition. Nothing
that we can do of ourselves. Anything we try to do, we will
simply be beaten down because the law demands perfection and
none of us ever will be able to fulfil perfection before a
holy God. So he has shown us that we are
all rendered guilty before God. There is nothing that we can
do to rid ourselves of that just condemnation in which God regards
us. He sees us with holy eyes. He views us from a position of
purity and perfection, and he sees that we are a fallen people,
we are a sinful people, and there is nothing in us which he desires. So whether we have had the law
or whether we haven't had the law, whether we're Jews with
a long tradition of religion, or whether we're Gentiles with
all of the heathendom and idolatry which characterize that people,
it really doesn't matter. God views us as sinners and there
is a need for us to hear the message of the gospel. And this is Paul's argument. This is what Paul has to say.
He is telling us here that there is a righteousness. For a people
who have forgone righteousness, for a people who know no righteousness,
for a people that have never been able to stand in the presence
of the righteous God, God has done something. God has prepared
and provided a righteousness that is complete in itself, that
is sufficient to justify us before Him, to make us right before
Him. And that word righteous and right
are obviously connected. And here is God looking upon
sinful creatures and yet finding a way to justify, to make us
righteous. And Paul is now telling us how
God has done it. Here is a justifying righteousness
which is acceptable to God. Now we can try to be acceptable
to God. We can live to the best of our
abilities. We can do this, that. We can
follow one man's advice or another man's advice. We can go to the
scriptures. We can go to religious books.
We can go to the traditions and the histories of churches. Denominations are plenty. And
they will tell us what we need to do to please God. And they're
wrong. because there is nothing that
we can do to please God. We are all condemned before him. And even if we were to live a
perfect life from now on out, yet we still would be building
that upon an imperfect history. And so we need to be justified. We need a righteousness given
to us which allows God to say, these people are just before
me. These people are cleansed before
me. These people are righteous before
me. And where are we to get such
a righteousness but from God himself? It must be thus. So here is a righteousness that
is acceptable to God. And he goes on to tell us that
it now has been made manifest. It's been revealed. This righteousness
of God has been revealed. And he tells us that it has been
revealed to sinners apart from the law, that is without the
law. So there is a revelation of righteousness
that comes to sinners that isn't connected to the law. This is a divine righteousness.
This is the righteousness of God, not a legal righteousness.
If we had been able to live perfect lives, then the law would have
said, yes, I don't have any condemnation to lay against that person. But
we're not. We've breached that law. We've
sinned against God. We've manifested in our own lives
our shortcomings and our transgressions. And the law must condemn us.
Such is its nature. It must condemn us. There is
no grace in the law. There is no forgiveness in the
law. There is simply the cold, hard
steel of condemnation. And the law must condemn wherever
it finds an iota of sinfulness or shortcoming. And that's what
it does. But Paul says there is a righteousness
apart from the law. There is a righteousness which
men can possess. There is a righteousness which
comes from God himself. And this is the substance of
his message to us this evening. This is his good news to us. This is the gospel that he would
have us hear. He's going to more fully explain
something that he hinted at in the introduction of this letter. So we're now, we're coming to
the end of chapter three. Right at the beginning in chapter
one, he hinted, he gave a nod, as it were, to the fact that
he had something important to say to the men and women at Rome. And now he's going to explain
what that is. He's going to show them what
his motivation is. One, for writing the letter,
and two, for going to Rome, because that was what he says in the
introduction, that I'm looking forward, I long to come to Rome
so that I can preach to you, preach this gospel, preach this
message. But until I can, I'm going to
write it down in this letter, this epistle, a letter, and I'm
going to send it to you so that you'll know what I'm going to
say when I get there. I just am so pleased that the
apostle didn't manage to get to Rome as quickly as he wanted
to because it means that he's left us this letter that we can
read and hear his gospel for ourselves. And this is what he
said in the opening verses. He said, I am not ashamed of
the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to the
Greek or the Gentile. For therein is the righteousness
of God revealed. In the gospel of Christ, the
righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is
written, the just shall live by faith. Now he nodded at that. He said, this is what I'm going
to say to you. And then he went on to build
the stage, as it were, upon which this great glorious truth of
the gospel would be presented. And now he comes with that presentation. And this is the message which
all men everywhere need. Would that this place was full
tonight of men and women who had an anxiety for their eternal
souls. This is the difference between
heaven and hell. This is the difference between
being lost and being saved. This is what makes a person understand
the true nature of their own souls and the need that they
have for a redemption, for a peace, for a reconciliation between
God and them. This is the message, and we would
delight to preach this message to all the people who would care
to hear it. And yet we discover that men
and women are careless as far as these things are concerned.
Too many more important things to do than look after the well-being
of their eternal soul, such as the blindness of the natural
man. This is the great need of men
and women everywhere, And in this respect at least, there
is no difference between us. It doesn't matter if we're male
or female, black or white, if we're old or we're young, if
we're rich or we're poor, if we're educated or if we're uneducated. All the world over, The testimony
of the Word of God, the testimony of Paul is this, that we are
all sinners and we all need the righteousness of God. Where is
that righteousness to be found? How is that righteousness manifested? Because everyone needs it, the
righteousness of God and the righteousness with God. And yet,
by ourselves, not one of us is able to procure it. Not one of
us is able to get it or attain it for ourselves. So what I'm
going to do this evening is I'm going to give you four things
that the Apostle says with respect to this righteousness of God.
And I'm going to be quick because there's no value in multiplying
words. when we come to these things.
This will just be straightforward, working through the verses in
this part of the chapter, just 10 or so verses, and to think
about what Paul says. This is Paul's argument. All
I want to do, as it were, is repeat it to you this evening,
with perhaps a little bit of commentary as the Lord enables. The first thing I want to point
out is this. This righteousness of God that Paul says is now
manifested apart from the law or without the law, it is by
faith of Jesus Christ. This righteousness of God is
by faith of Jesus Christ. The faith of Jesus Christ is
here brought to the fore, to our attention. And I think that
this is an immediate point of note. I think that this is important
to see what Paul has, as it were, initiated this section of his
writings with. It might have been expected for
Paul to say that the righteousness of God is by the works of Jesus
Christ. But he doesn't say that. He says
that the righteousness of God has been revealed by the faith
of Jesus Christ. Now, this is an important point
because there are those who will tell us that the righteousness
which we possess as believers comes from Christ's obedience
to the law of Moses. That Christ was obedient to Moses'
law, that he fulfilled it all, he proved himself righteous,
and that his righteousness was then imputed to us so that we're
now righteous because the Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled Moses'
law on our behalf. Man, that has got such a long
heritage as far as the Christian doctrine is concerned. And I'm
sure you've heard that before. But that's not what Paul says.
He doesn't say the works of Christ. He says the faith of Christ.
Now that is called the active obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the theologians over the years have split the obedience
of Christ into passive and active. The passive obedience of the
Lord Jesus Christ was what happened to him on the cross. when, as
it were, men took and nailed him to the cross and then God
judged him on the cross. And the idea there is that Christ
was passive and he was obedient and he was passive on the cross.
But there was an act of obedience also which was his perfect life
in which he was obedient to the law of God. And the suggestion
is that our righteousness comes from the act of obedience of
Christ. All I'm saying is that that's
not what's here in the passage. It's the faith of Christ rather
than the works of Christ that is the revelation of the righteousness
of God to us. And here righteousness comes
by the faith of Christ And Paul seems to emphasise it. He's kind
of laying this on with a trowel at the moment. He says righteousness
is by the faith of Christ apart from the law or without the law. But now the righteousness of
God, which is what we all need. This is the point. We're all
sinners. We all need the righteousness of God. Now the righteousness
of God without the law is manifested. It's been revealed, being witnessed
by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness of God,
which is by faith of Jesus Christ. unto all and upon all them that
believe, for there is no difference. So here's the first thing that
we can see with respect to this righteousness of God. It comes
to us by the faith of Jesus Christ. Righteousness of God is separate
to, unconnected with, detached and distinct from the law of
works. That's what Paul is saying here.
This is the Lord Jesus Christ's own righteousness. This is the
righteousness of the God-man by his faith, not by his works. And the worthiness of that righteousness
is acknowledged by the law and by the prophets. The law recognizes
that it has nothing to say to the Lord Jesus Christ because
he is perfectly righteous. And so it's acknowledged by the
law as a suitable righteousness. Similarly, the prophets throughout
the Old Testament, they recognized that in this one, in the Messiah
that was coming, there would be a perfectness. And they testified
also, for example, where we read in Ezekiel of the Lord, our righteousness,
the Lord Jesus Christ himself being the righteousness of his
people. Here's the second thing that
I want to draw your attention to. First of all, we've said
this righteousness of God is by the faith of Jesus Christ.
Second is this, the righteousness of God is secured by the blood
of Jesus Christ. And we read this in verse 24.
Being justified freely by his grace, God's grace, through the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus. It's by the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ that this righteousness of God comes. Sinners are justified. That is made righteous. Okay? Made holy, if you like. Made
perfect. Made acceptable to God. Made
fit to stand in the presence of God. All their sin is taken
away. They're cleansed. They're purified. They're sanctified. They're justified. We are made holy. Sinners are
justified, made righteous freely. That means liberally, that means
unconditionally. It's not predicated on something
that we've got to do or merited by us. It's freely, we're justified
freely by His, that's the Father's grace, His grace towards us,
His mercy towards us. The righteousness of God being
given, salvation being given is an act of God's mercy because
of the shed blood of Jesus Christ. He is willing to receive the
blood of Christ that our sins may be atoned for. that our sins
may be remitted and that we might be brought into the presence
of His holiness, fit to stand before Him. And so it is by the
redemption of the atoning blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that
the righteousness of God is to be seen. And here, Paul speaks
of propitiation. It's another one of these theological
words which has an importance. It has a meaning which sheds
another light, as it were, upon the work of our salvation. And propitiation, it means that
there is a restoration of peace because the problem has been
removed. And that's what happened in the
cross. The problem of our sin was removed so that God could
be at peace with us. The Lord Jesus Christ took upon
Himself our sin. He propitiated. God's wrath against
our sin by taking it upon himself and leaving us without that guiltiness
before God. Thus the blood of Christ is seen
as the source of that righteousness coming to sinners, because the
Lord took our sin and paid the price for it. There's also another
sub-meaning to the word propitiation, which has reference to the mercy
seat. And this reminds us that the
gospel was always there. It was always there, whether
it was declared by the prophets or whether it was hinted at by
the Old Testament symbolism. of the temple and and the tabernacle
but it means the mercy seat and remember what happened in the
tabernacle how that the priest the high priest would go in and
he would sprinkle blood upon the mercy seat for the sins of
the people there always had to be that blood And there on the
mercy seat, we find that the blood was the source or the cause
of that taking away of the sins of the people. Not that the symbols
effected that, but in the sight of God, it was a picture of what
the Lord Jesus Christ would accomplish when he came to the world and
died for his people. And that's what we find in Paul's
letters when he wrote to other churches also. He wrote to the
church at Colossae and he said in chapter one, verse 20, he
said, and having made peace, that's that propitiation again,
having made peace through the blood of his cross, By Him to
reconcile all things unto Himself. By Him, I say, whether they be
things in earth or things in heaven. So this propitiation,
this mercy by the shedding of blood is the reason why the righteousness
of God can come to sinners. So Christ is properly our propitiation. and that from eternity because
he was set up in the covenant of grace as being or the covenant
of peace as being that one by whom the righteousness of God
would be secured for those for whom he died on the cross. That's the second thing. So the
first thing was that the righteousness of God comes by the faith of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Secondly, it is secured by the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And thirdly, it comes to us,
the righteousness of God is experimentally received and experienced by believing. Okay, that's quite a mouthful.
Let me unpack that for you a little bit. When we were at school,
I guess, I always liked the experiments at school because they were pretty
much the only thing I could understand. I liked to see the purple dye
in the test tube turning green, and I always thought that was
impressive. These were the experiments, and the science teacher would
show us And by showing us, we understood better what was happening. And that's, in a sense, what
experimental means. It means that we feel it, we
understand it because it's more than just addressing our head. It's something that's experienced. And here we're talking about
faith. bringing the benefits of the
righteousness of God to our personal experience. Right, so far in
what we've heard from the Apostle Paul, we have seen nothing of
man in this work of the righteousness of God being manifest. We haven't
seen man appearing at all, okay? We have said that the righteousness
of God is manifested apart from the law by the faith of Jesus
Christ. Well, man didn't have anything
to do with that. That's God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
okay? We have said that the righteousness
of God is secured by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
again, man hadn't anything to do with that. That was the second
person of the Godhead, the God-man, willingly sacrificing himself
on behalf of his people, going to the cross for those for whom
he died, and taking their sin on his own body, on his own shoulders,
and placating God's anger against our sin by the shedding of his
blood. No people in there. No Peter
in there. He's not mentioned at all in
there. But now we see that the righteousness
of God comes to individuals. It comes to us. And that's what
we mean when we talk about experiencing the benefits of God's righteousness
experimentally. It has to do with us now. It's coming to us. And there's
nothing of us in justification being secured. because it is
all the work of God. We could never, by our obedience,
discover righteousness with God. We're condemned. Our own nature
condemns us. Our actions condemn us. Our thoughts
condemn us. Our talk condemns us. Pretty
much everything that comes out of our mouth condemns us. And
even when we try to be as good as we can be, you know what the
Bible says about our best works? You see, you all know, don't
you? You all know what the Bible says. Filthy rags. so that you would hold your nose
in the presence of those filthy rags. Actually, it's more than
just like dirt. It's soiled. It's a stench. That's the idea behind those
filthy rags. And that's the best that we can
do. That's the best that we can be. and it is so far short, it is
so inadequate, that there needs to be a righteousness of God
apart from the righteousness of the law, apart from the righteousness
of man. There needs to be, it must be
so. And we need it, we need to have
it. There's no use us saying, well,
there is such a thing, theoretically, as the righteousness of God.
What we're interested in knowing is how can I get that righteousness
of God? Because I know I can't earn it.
I know I can't deserve it. I know that it can't be merited,
it can't be bought, it can't be won. How am I going to get
it? And now we come to see where
man gets involved. How is it that we're involved
in this? Because the righteousness of God, justification with God,
it is given by God as a free gift to whomsoever he will. It's given to him because he
loves, because he has mercy, because he has grace. And that
righteousness of God is received as a free gift to individuals
in this world. And it is experienced by faith. It's experienced by believing. That's all we can do is just
believe the promises of God. Believe what God has said. Believe
what God has revealed. Believe that in this book, believe
that in the apostles' message, believe that in the gospel, all
that God has said is true. And that he has provided a righteousness
which is acceptable to him, which he calls the righteousness of
God, which is apart from the law, and he is giving it to those
upon whom his love and his grace and his mercy lies. And we can't even take any merit
in our believing. because the apostle tells us
later that even the faith that we have in God and in this righteousness
and in the work of salvation is God's gift to us. He gives faith. By grace are
you saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the
gift of God. Even our faith is God's gift
to his elect and his chosen people. And it is this faith, it is this
believing, it is this, as it were, spiritual enabling, which
God gives through the Holy Spirit. So here we see the Father, the
Son and the Holy Spirit combining together as a triune God to accomplish
the redemption of sinners. Our righteousness granted, apart
from the law, obtained through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ
and applied by God the Holy Spirit as he gives the gift of faith
and quickens and makes alive those for whom this righteousness
is provided. Faith brings the believer into
the experience of the gospel privileges of our salvation,
the blessings that God has for his people in this world. And
we experience those things. What are those experiences? The
peace of knowing that our sins have been forgiven. That can
be experienced. That's an experience. That's
a gospel blessing. That's a gospel grace. By knowing
what God has done, by seeing this work enacted before us in
the preaching of the gospel and in the historical records, we
see this was the way by which redemption and reconciliation
was secured. And the question is this, simply,
do you believe it? Do you believe that the Lord
Jesus Christ took your sins on His shoulders there before God
and that the righteousness of God apart from the law is now
made available by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the
cross, His passive obedience, if you like? Do you believe that? then you
believe that your sins have been dealt with. Your sins have been
taken away. Your sins have been laid upon
the shoulders of a substitute. That means that you're not accountable
for them anymore. That means that they're not imputed
to you anymore. It means that you are free from
those sins and the condemnation of those sins and peace is granted
to your conscience. Peace is granted to your soul
and you see what a reconciling God we have and the effects of
this propitiation and the sprinkling of the blood upon the sacrifice,
upon the mercy seat. pardon for our sins. We see that
the judge has looked at the catalogue of our transgressions. He's had
the report, the court clerk has set the document in front of
the judge and the judge has read down it and he said, whoa, whoa,
whoa, look at the length of this charge sheet. And whose name
is at the top of this? Peter Many. And these are all
the crimes. And what do we say? We confess
that it's right. We confess that it's true, that
those are the crimes that I've committed. And yet we discover
that one has taken our place, one has stood in our place, and
that the Lord Jesus Christ has taken those sins to himself,
to his own account, and paid the price of those sins on the
cross. What does that mean? I'm pardoned.
I'm pardoned. And we have the benefit, the
blessing of experiencing that sense of pardon because the Lord
Jesus Christ has taken our sins. Do you believe that? That's a blessing of the gospel.
That's the experience. That's the experimental receipt
of the blessings of the gospel in our souls as the Holy Spirit
applies the reality of these things to our hearts and to our
minds. a sense of forgiveness in our
conscience that the condemnation is gone and that mercy has been
granted to us. Okay that was the third point. That is We have seen that we
can experience the benefits, not that we've contributed anything
to it. No, the righteousness of God comes by the faith of
Christ. It was received or accomplished by the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ on the cross. It comes to us in our experience
as a gift from God for which we can do nothing as far as earning
it. And all that we can say is I
believe it and thank you. And here's the fourth thing that
I want to point out from these verses that the Apostle has set
before us. That the justification that comes
or the righteousness which comes from the righteousness of God,
this revelation or manifestation of the righteousness of God for
our justification before Him, it glorifies God. It glorifies
God. It glorifies God the Father.
because it shows us that He can be just while justifying sinners. It glorifies God the Son because
it shows us the Lord Jesus Christ being raised up between heaven
and earth upon the cross and taking our sin upon Himself. And it glorifies God the Holy
Spirit as he brings the benefits and the blessings to the experience
of the elect, those for whom the Lord Jesus Christ died, those
that were committed into his care and keeping in that eternal
covenant of peace. And we see the beauty of the
entirety of the way of salvation set out before us in the gospel. God is glorified. in this great
work of redemption and salvation. Paul says it declares his righteousness. It declares the glory of God.
It declares the rightness of God. and it also declares His
grace and mercy. If we were talking about the
rightness of God, if we were talking about the holiness of
God, we would have to say that God is right to judge our sins. God is right to enact a condemnation
and a punishment upon us and that God would be absolutely
justified to separate us as far as the east is from the west
into the very pit of hell and there to keep us eternally bound,
everlastingly bound, out of his sight, out of his presence. He
would be absolutely right to do so if it was only his righteous
holiness that was in view. And God is righteously holy.
Absolutely he is. And yet this plan, this gospel,
makes God, or reveals God to be both just, right, holy, and
the justifier of those that believe, because it shows the Lord Jesus
Christ, the God-man, coming and taking our place. And this, says
Paul, glorifies God. It glorifies His righteousness
and His holiness and it glorifies His grace and His mercy. These
various attributes of the divine person are lifted up together
and they are shown in all of their splendor and majesty. It declares God to be both just
and merciful. It declares him to be upright
and gracious. It shows him to hate sin, to
love purity, and yet to justify and make righteous those who
are sinners in their substitute. So Paul says in 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. So that's the message of Paul's
gospel. That's what he has to say. And
there are a couple of consequences that he draws from that message
of the way of salvation. He says, these are some implications
of what he has just said. He said, where then is boasting? What ground have we got for boasting? If the righteousness of God is
by faith of Jesus Christ. If it comes to us because of
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, if it is granted to us as a free
gift by God the Holy Spirit, what have you got to boast about?
What have you got to say, well, I've done this part. I'm responsible
for this part. Well, I was able to earn this,
or I was able to show myself worthy to get this. There is
nothing. This is God's work. That is why
in the book of Jonah, it says, salvation is of the Lord. Not salvation is of the Lord
and man. Salvation is 95% God and 5% man. No, it's 100%. It's all or nothing. If it isn't, then it's merited
and it's worse. And it's no longer salvation
by grace and mercy. But this is a mercy that flows
by a righteousness apart from the law, and it is by God's free
gift to his people. So there's no ground for boasting.
Are you a Jew? Nothing to boast in as a Jew.
Were you a Gentile? Nothing to boast in as a Gentile. Were you better than the next
man? Nothing to boast in in your betterness because you've both
fallen short of the glory of God. And God's perfect standard of
holiness was breached whether you breached it 10 times or one
time. Breached is breached and we are
all condemned. So there's nothing to boast in. Furthermore, he says, there's
no difference in the blessing. What does he mean by that? All we have is ours in the Lord
Jesus Christ and the Lord Jesus Christ is the same to us all.
A perfect righteousness, a perfect holiness, a purity that God gives
freely and he makes no difference. You know, he doesn't make one
person holier than another. Oh man, we have made so much
mileage out of laying on one another the idea that somebody's
better than somebody else. Oh, Mother Teresa, what a wonderful
saint she was. Oh, the Pope in Rome, what a
wonderful man. If only I could touch his hand.
If only I could just get a glance from him or a little smile. Oh,
my minister at church, what a lovely man he is. What a godly man he
is. Somebody's sick, he takes them
in his car to the hospital without even asking any questions. And
that's holiness, is it? That's righteousness, is it?
That's gonna be acceptable to God, is it? When we stand before
him someday, oh yeah, I took my car out and I never even asked
for any money. How foolish we are. This righteousness
of God is his gift to us and it comes unstintingly. It comes
without holding back. He gives us all and that's why
we all stand. And we might be old or young,
we might be again educated or uneducated, we might have good
jobs or no job or whatever, it doesn't matter what our background
has been, what our history has been, where we've been, what
we've done, what we've said and everything that goes against
us as far as the comparisons in this world is concerned, God
looks upon us all and he sees us all as absolutely perfect,
absolutely holy recipients of the unadulterated, undiluted
righteousness of God as a free gift bestowed in its entirety
and completely in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no boasting
and there is no difference of blessing. And here's the third consequence.
There's no alternative to believing. No alternative to believing.
Don't, don't try to earn this. Don't try to win this. Don't
try to live a better life so that you can get God's blessings
because that's not... It's apart from the law. That's
the whole point of the righteousness of God. It's apart from the law. It's nothing to do with the law.
The law will only ever condemn you. You try to live a good life
before God and the law will say, now I've got him. But we believe. We have faith
in the work of Christ. We have faith in the faith of
Christ. We have faith in the willingness
of God to look upon Christ as our substitute. And we say, thank
you, Lord. And that's it. That's the gospel. And we believe it. And we take
God at his word. And we take God as being faithful
to his word. And there's no alternative to
believing. Not for salvation. Not for peace with God. Not for
pardon for our sins. No alternative. If you choose
to go another way, well then you're a fool. Because the way
of salvation has been set clearly before you. Paul has just given
it to us in 10, 12 verses. And you want to find another
way? It's not good news. This is the gospel. This is the
good news. This is the righteousness of
God. If Jesus, hear me, if Jesus be the only way of righteousness
for his people, either his is my righteousness,
or I've got none at all. It's either the righteousness
of God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, or I've got nothing
at all. Paul says in Romans 3 verse 28,
last couple of verses in this passage here, therefore we conclude
that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. That's the conclusion. That's
the end of what I've got to say tonight. That's what Paul's conclusion
was as far as the gospel was concerned. That's what he has
been working up to. Here's the conclusion. Now, there's
actually, what, 16 chapters in Romans, so we're not at the end
of all the things that he has to say, but this is the gospel.
That's it. That's where salvation is gotten. And he knows that a lot of the
people that he's writing to in Rome are Jews. So he adds on
a little bit at the end here and he says, do we then make
void the law through faith? Because he knows that that's
going to be their immediate reaction. Well, what's the good of the
law? We can live as we like. If you're
saying that this righteousness of God comes to us apart from
the law, then let's go out and Do whatever we want, let's go
out and steal, let's go out and kill, let's go out and live the
way that we want to live. Everybody's got the righteousness
of God apart from the law, and the law is going to find an answer
because Christ has taken all, let's go and sin. And Paul says, we don't make void
the law through faith. God forbid, yea, we establish
the law. What does he mean by that? Well,
simply this. It shows us the high standard of God's holiness.
It shows us our continuing need for grace and mercy. It shows
us the suitability of the Lord Jesus Christ because he was the
only one who was able to be that perfect substitute. and it proves
to be a suitable examiner for men who are yet to be brought
to the knowledge of the gospel. The law still has a continuing
role as far as the gospel is concerned because the law condemns
man and men and women have to come under a sense of their need
of a saviour. But once that saviour is seen,
once the Lord Jesus Christ is seen, then we are free from the
law and we long to serve our saviour. We long to show our
gratitude and our thanksgiving to him for all that he has accomplished
for us. And that's the gospel. And that's
where we're concluding this evening. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us. For Jesus' sake. Amen.