If you've got your Bibles, I invite you to turn to Romans chapter 3. We are continuing in our series in Romans, and today we are in the last half of Romans chapter 3, Romans 3 verses 21 to 31. This is all right around page 940 of the black Bibles that are provided for you. One writer in describing this particular passage made the statement that this may be the most important paragraph ever written. So beyond just the most important paragraph in Romans, Although it is that, this is definitely the explanation of the theme of Romans. But this writer would go so far as to say this is the most important paragraph ever penned. In this paragraph, Paul finally comes to answering the question that, in truth, the entire Bible is about answering. can a sinner be made right with God? In one sense, that is almost the simplest way of explaining the word justification. How can a sinner be made right with God? Upon what, on what basis does a just God justify unjust sinners and yet not give up his justness, not forfeit that he is just. Can a just God justify unjust sinners without himself becoming unjust? That is the question of Scripture. How can a sinner be made right with God? This question of justification actually raised the most serious controversy that the Christian church has ever faced. It is the foundation, the basis of what we call the Reformation. where studiers of Scripture came to God's Word and rather than trusting in human tradition, even church tradition, said, well, what does Scripture say about how can a sinner be made right with God? Martin Luther, the German monk, said that justification by faith alone is the article upon which the church stands or falls. And if the church does not get this right, the church ceases to be an authentic church. So to get this wrong, at least in Martin Luther's mind, is to get everything wrong. John Calvin, a little bit geographically removed, but in the same time period as Martin Luther, also a father of the Reformation, said that the doctrine of justification is the hinge by which everything else turns. How can a sinner be made right with God? The answer to that question is the hinge on which everything else turns. forward 1,500 years or so to J.I. Packer, a teacher and professor and preacher, said that justification, to use yet another metaphor, justification by faith alone is the atlas that carries the whole of the Christian faith on its shoulders. And if justification by faith alone stumbles, then the whole Christian faith comes crashing down. Now, growing up here, not growing up here, now having moved here to Northern Virginia, I have learned a lot about speaking in sort of shorthand. A lot of people that I hang out with speak in letters. They talk about TADs PCSs and PTs and it is like being bombarded with alphabet soup. And every once in a while, I'll be sitting with a crowd of them and they know that I'm not from round here, as you might say. And so one will lean over to me and interpret for me what these letters mean. And I am always grateful and always make sure that I am verbally grateful so that everyone remembers they are speaking a foreign language to me. Shorthand is helpful. when everyone knows the shorthand. But shorthand is confusing and maybe even misleading. when the people don't know the shorthand. And so we say justification is by grace alone through faith alone. And we stop there too often. And it's shorthand because those who know, know the rest of the phrase and know that what we mean by that, but it's too important to stop there. Lest we think that your faith is what saves you. People were willing to die for this teaching. Because they said it was. Justification by faith alone, by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. And it's OK to use shorthand when all of us know. That we're talking about faith alone in Christ alone, but it becomes dangerous to use shorthand if we are not, if everyone we're speaking to is not aware that we are shortening the sentence just to make it flow more easily. From chapter one, verse 18, through chapter three, verse 20, Paul has been establishing one point. Everyone, whether you are a Jew or a Greek, whether you are religious or irreligious, Whether you are morally conservative or morally liberal, everyone sins, and all sin deserves God's wrath. God is good and loving and holy and just. These are not things that are contradictory to one another. but they are all complimentary to one another. God is good and loving and holy and just. He is so good and loving that He never turns a blind eye on the ways that we sin against Him and against each other. He is too good and loving to ignore the ways we sin against Him and the ways we sin against each other. He does not just shrug his shoulders and say, boys will be boys, girls will be girls. All sin deserves God's wrath, and all sin receives God's wrath. Paul finishes his section with the condemning thought. By works of the law, in verse 20, no human being will be justified in God's sight, since through the law, comes knowledge of sin. Would you stand with me for the reading of God's Word? The righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift. through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one 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 God is one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, We uphold the law. The grass withers and the flowers fade, and yet the word of the Lord remains forever. Please be seated. There are so many places in scripture, especially in the New Testament, where if it did not sound slightly blasphemic or at least disrespectful, one of the best sermon titles could only be God's Beautiful But. But, single T, but, the conjunction. It's a simple word. It's a transitional word that reverses Your course, it reverses direction of the sentence or the thought. It qualifies a statement so much that it changes the direction of the statement. The purpose is to say that what I've said first doesn't matter as much as what you're about to hear. We can do it with compliments. She's clever, but mean. What we're saying is her cleverness is not what you should be focused on, it is that she is mean, be wary. He's strong, but dumb. He may have great strength and ability to move large masses, but he's got the IQ of a box of rocks, and so that's what I want you to know most about him. We can do it with critical statements too, where we don't want the critical Part B, what you focus on. It was a long sermon, but good. Or maybe speaking about your marriage. It's exhausting, but invigorating. What you're saying is, yes, what I'm telling you is this, but reverse course, I want you to understand that's not actually the direction I'm heading. Incidentally, you can do it with your apologies as well. Any apology with a but is no apology at all. I'm sorry, but I was tired. Oh, you're not sorry, you just needed more sleep. I'm sorry, but you irritated me. Oh, I forgive you for how irritating I am. Try offering forgiveness for those kinds of apologies and you begin to see immediately that was not an apology. God, through Paul's writing, has laid it on as thick as he possibly can. We are all sinners, and we deserve God's wrath. There is no getting away from it. In fact, the very law that he gave us does nothing for us because our hearts are so wicked that all we can do when we come to the law is be even more condemned for our sins and feel the weight of God's wrath. And he says, but now, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. And in fact, in chapter four, he'll go into just how the law and the prophets, how do the Old Testament bear witness to this truth, that the righteousness, the righteousness that Paul spoke of in Romans 1, 16, and 17, when he first started writing, he thought, this is gonna be such a happy letter. And he says, I am not ashamed of the gospel of God, for it is the power of God for salvation, for everyone who believes. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed. You think this is so great, and he says, because the wrath of God is being revealed. And then for two pages, he goes into the wrath of God, and now he returns the righteousness of God or the righteousness from God, a righteousness that is both displayed and granted. A righteousness of God that we see and a righteousness from God that we receive. It's not ours, it is granted to us through faith in Jesus Christ. It is not earned. It is for all who believe. It is not limited. In Greek, which is the language that Paul wrote, righteousness and justness are the exact same word. So you could go through this and read all of it and replace everywhere you see righteous or righteousness with justness or justify or justified or and read all of them that way or go back and read wherever it says justified or just read it as right or righteousness or made right. And you get the sense for what Paul is saying here. What is righteousness? What is, what does it mean to be justified? Righteousness or justification is a validating performance record that opens doors. So to have a righteous record, you have a validating performance record that opens doors. You could say that this is a simple way of explaining righteousness or explaining justification. It's a record that says, accept me. You write a job resume. You send it into a company. You're presenting them with your record, and you're hoping that that record opens doors and that they will accept you because of your record. You would not put anything on your resume that would invalidate their accepting of you, or at least not if you know how to build resumes. College applications are the same. You put together your college application. You write your essays. You are presenting them with a record of validation that will open doors, you hope. You hope that you will not get the cleverly written letter that, in its essence, says you have been weighed and found wanting. But they never say it that way. They just say something like, you know, not at this time, no thank you. We have put your resume on file. Thank you. This is what we do. We understand this idea. You are putting forward a record, and based upon that record, you're saying, accept me because of this record. That is what righteousness is, being accepted based upon a record. All religions, all philosophies of life teach that that record is up to you to maintain. You must maintain your record of righteousness through some form of self-salvation, through some form of good works. Whether the religion says those good works are religious good works or rituals, you have to do the right rituals, you have to do the right things, so perform the right kind of worship activities and then you will be right. the religion or philosophy says that they are actual works of righteousness. You have to do the right things in your life. You have to act the right way. You have to not drink or smoke or chew or go with girls who do. And that is how you know you're right. And that's how you know your record is stellar. Or perhaps it's more philanthropic. Maybe it's more with how you treat others. You have to have a right heart toward your stuff and toward others and the relationship between those two. Or maybe it's just a combination of those all. You have to have the right rituals and the right works and the right heart attitude toward your stuff and you mix it all together and now you have a right record and you'll be okay. But Christianity is different. Christianity, it's why so many say, And explain Christianity is not a religion because religion is asking the question, what do you need to do to be right with God? Christianity answers the question and says it is a gospel. It is the gospel. It is the good news that God's grace has turned away his wrath. that God's Son has died your death and born your judgment, that God has had mercy on the undeserving, and that there is nothing left for you to do or to contribute to your salvation. Faith's only function is to receive the grace that God offers. This passage, we could say, breaks down justification in three ways for us. First, it tells us the source of our justification or the source of our righteousness. Second, it tells us the ground of our justification or the grounds of our righteousness. And then third tells us the means of our justification, the means of our righteousness. First, the source of our justification. Because Paul has laid it out so clearly, He comes back and summarizes it in one simple, actually, I was going to say sentence, but it's half of a sentence. But so many of us who memorize scripture as children may have memorized this thinking it was the full statement. I memorized Romans 3.23 as an elementary school student. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And even up until my adult days thought that was the whole sentence. It's not the whole sentence. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. That's the sentence. The source of our justification is God's free grace. justified freely by His grace or justified by His grace as a gift. Fundamental to the gospel of salvation is that the initiative is all from God, from beginning to the end. No gospel message is even biblical that would remove or alter that initiative. that would say that the initiative rests on you is no biblical gospel message. In fact, even to say that the initiative rests on Christ apart from God the Father is an unbiblical message. Sometimes we get the sense that the gospel was brought to us by Jesus And he sort of had to convince a reluctant and angry God, the father, to just go along with his plan. But the death of Jesus Christ was God's plan from the beginning. The sacrifice of the son of God to pay the penalty for our sins was God's plan. Yes, Christ willingly went along with it and obediently submitted to it, but it was God's plan. It was God's initiative. It was God's grace. God's grace is the source of your salvation. Grace is unmerited favor. Grace is God loving, God stooping, God coming to your rescue in and through Jesus Christ. The source of our justification is God's free grace. The ground of our justification is Jesus Christ and the cross. as we've seen already in verse 24, through the redemption that it is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Just understanding that the source of justification is God alone doesn't answer enough questions for us, because we need to still know how. How does God justify sinners? How can God justify sinners and remain just? Because without the cross, the justification of the unjust would itself be unjust. would be immoral and therefore impossible for God to do. Paul explains in three ways how the cross of Christ, the death of the Son of God in your place accomplishes your justification and therefore your salvation. Paul says through the cross or in Jesus you have been redeemed. Paul says at the cross Jesus put forward is put forward as a propitiation. And third, Paul says that the cross is a demonstration or a display, a show of God's justice and justifying power. First, the cross is your redemption. To be redeemed is an Old Testament concept. In the agricultural society that Israel was, It did not take very much for you to get yourself so deep into debt that you would have to actually sell yourself into slavery to attempt to pay off your debt. You would actually become an indentured servant of the person to whom you owed the money. And though it didn't take much to get into debt, it took a lot to get out of debt, and sometimes even a lifetime of servitude, but God had provided a means of actually being delivered from that situation. You could have a goel is the Hebrew word, a kinsman redeemer. Someone who would purchase you out, pay your debt and buy your freedom. You would be redeemed by this person. This person would be your redeemer. In Exodus, God calls himself Israel's redeemer. They were in slavery. They could not get out of slavery on their own. And God says, I have come to redeem you. bought you out of that slavery at the cross. God buys you and me out of our debt that we have run up through our sin, and he pays for it with the blood of his son. God is our redeemer, the grounds of our justification. The cross shows Christ as our redeemer. Now, if redemption is an old timey Old Testament religious word, then propitiation is a from another planet religious word, because rarely do we use the word propitiate in regular everyday language. In fact, it is such a foreign concept that many English translations of the Bible stop using it. with the concern that it's such a 50-cent word that people just don't understand it, and so they might replace it with sacrifice of atonement, which is funny because that's just replacing one old-timey word with another old-timey word, and you still have to explain it, but they try to use smaller words. But propitiation is a very important truth of the gospel. In fact, if you have one of the English translations that has anything other than propitiation in that verse, in verse 25, whom God put forward as a propitiation, you have my permission to take a pen and scratch out whatever has been replaced and replace it, re-replace it with propitiation. It is that important. Our five-year-olds should understand propitiation. They don't have to know how to pronounce it. They don't even have to use it. But when asked what propitiation is, we all ought to know what that means. To propitiate someone is to placate his or her anger. which you start to realize why maybe people hemmed and hawed over this notion of propitiation. We need to placate God's anger because too often we associate God with those Greek and Roman gods who were temperamental, who were moody, who were unpredictable. And so in order to placate their anger, you had to propitiate But it was because you never knew what kind of mood they were in. But with God, it is only evil that rouses God's wrath. And evil always rouses God's wrath. Why do we need propitiation? Because evil raises God's anger. always, and we need His anger to be propitiated. Who does the propitiating? You know, religion would say that the offending party does the propitiating. You have to appease the angry God. But the Bible says we can't propitiate for ourselves. You can't appease God's wrath over your sin. You have nothing to offer that would satisfy God's wrath. God alone can satisfy God's wrath. 1 John 4.10 says, God loved us and sent his son as a propitiation, as an atoning sacrifice for our sin. How is propitiation accomplished? Well, religion would tell you, essentially, through bribes and sweets and sacrifices and bargaining. You would bring bribes, you would try to buy your way out or promise your way out, I will do better, I will try harder. But the gospel says that it is only God's love that can propitiate His wrath. It's God's own love that placates God's holy wrath through the gift of his own dear Son, who took our place, bore our sin, and died our death. God himself gave himself to save us from himself. This is propitiation. It is a sacrifice that turns away or satisfies the wrath of God. How can a righteous God call unrighteous people righteous without compromising His own righteousness? It is only through a propitiation, only through a sacrifice that would satisfy His wrath. Because if God forgave us by simply setting aside His justice, He would in essence be forgiving us by setting aside or overlooking sin. And that may feel good to us, but it's not very loving toward the person against whom you've sinned. If you are the victim of someone else's sin, A third party saying, well, let's just let bygones be bygones. That's not a loving act. The only way for sin to be dealt with and sinners be declared righteous is through a propitiation, through a sacrifice that actually satisfies the wrath of God. God does not set aside his justice. God turns his justice on himself at the cross. The cross is a propitiation for our sin. And third, the cross is a demonstration. It is a display. Twice, in verse 25 and 26, we're told that the cross is described as a demonstration or a public display of God's righteousness. Verse 25, this is to show, to demonstrate God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. And then again in verse 26, it was to demonstrate, to show God's righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. How was the wrath of God satisfied in the Old Testament before Christ came to the cross? The same way it is satisfied today through Christ on the cross. The sacrificial system in the Old Testament was never put in place to placate, to satisfy the wrath of God, but to delay the wrath of God. Their sins were passed over until such a time as their sins could be fully paid for by a propitiation. And so the answer to the question, how can God remain both just and a justifier of the wicked, is only through the cross. At the cross, the wicked are justified. Through Christ's work, through His life and His death and His resurrection, God declares the wicked He imputes Christ's righteousness. He counts Christ's righteousness as their righteousness, as Christ himself takes on their sin. As our assurance of pardoning grace stated, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. The source of our justification is God's free grace. The grounds of our justification is the cross of Jesus Christ. And the means of our justification is faith in Jesus Christ. Verses 27 to the end, then, what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith, apart from works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one who will justify the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcised by faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law. Now, I want you to listen, and then I'll explain it. You are not saved by your faith. You are not saved by your faith. You're not saved by the strength of your faith, you're saved by the strength of your Savior in whom your faith rests. Faith is not a replacement work. Faith is not something that you must muster up enough of in order to be saved. Faith is simply trusting in God and Jesus Christ and His work, the work that He has done for you on the cross. Nobody is saved by the strength of their faith. You are saved by the strength of the object of your faith. It's clearer in Greek because Greek is such a horrible difficult language to understand because of all of its tenses and such, but the word for faith in Greek requires an object. It is a word that sort of ends with belief in. It assumes that there is an object. It's not, it doesn't exist on its own without an object of faith. You are saved by the strength of the object of your faith, not by the strength of your faith. Let me illustrate for you. Two men fall off the edge of the Grand Canyon. One man on his way over the edge confidently grabs a hold of two eagle feathers and begins flapping confidently with all of his might. The other man desperately grabs a root as he falls over the edge and hopes against hope that the root might hold. Which man will be saved? Which man has the stronger faith? You would have to admit the delusional man, flapping confidently, has stronger faith. He knows he'll be saved. He saw an eagle fly over just the other day. This is all it takes. Couple feathers, flap hard, off you go. Great faith, horrible object. Not gonna work out very well. The man holding onto the root may cling to that root and the entire time he's clinging say, this is not gonna hold, this is not gonna hold, this is not gonna hold, this is not gonna hold, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die. But he doesn't let go. Does he trust the root? Not very well. Pretty weak faith. Even the testimony of his mouth is a horrible testimony. No one would then grab the root based on his words. But he's saved. Not because of the strength of his faith, because of the strength of the object of his faith. You know, we were in Exodus, and if you remember, the parting of the Red Sea, and we always read that passage, and we think, oh, they were all like, ha ha, take that, you scoundrel Egyptians. And they're like, look at what our God did, that guy's awesome. There were a million of them. Don't you think that a couple of them walking through an aisle of ocean going, we're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're gonna die. They were saved, not by the strength of their faith, by the strength of the object of their faith. You are not saved By your faith, it is not even a cooperation of God's work and your faith. Your faith is to trust God did it. God accomplished it. You are saved through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. The justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. God justifies the believer, not because of the worthiness of his belief, but because of his worthiness who is believed. Often we get through sermons and we think, we need some application questions. It's wonderful because Paul lists out the application questions right here for us. And if this is all true, then what happens to our boasting? And Paul, like Fonzie, would say, correctamundo, it's useless. How does this affect our boasting? In other words, how should this affect my heart toward myself? What is it that we boast in? Our family, our background, our achievements, our education, our morality, our religiosity. All boasting leads to prejudice and hostility and condescension and arrogance, unless we're boasting in what Christ has done for this weak sinner. The cross frees us from denial and anxiety because I can handle even bad evaluations. I can handle difficulties because I know I'm redeemed. I've been bought. I know what my God has gone through. He has gone through hell and back to save me. And if He would go to those lengths to save me, surely He will not abandon me now." How does this affect our heart towards ourselves? Second question, how does this affect our heart toward others? Was God then the God of the Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles? Of course, He's the God of Gentiles. There's only one God. The circumcised are saved by faith, the uncircumcised are saved by faith. Do I have a heart toward the lost that God has toward the lost? Toward the sinners in my life, do I have God's heart toward the sinners in my life? Or do I think they need to try a little harder, work a little more, show a little bit more before I show them any of the grace that God has shown me? Justification by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone, changes my heart toward others. And finally, it changes my heart toward God, toward myself, toward others, toward God. Well, so do we overthrow the law by this faith? Paul says, of course not. In fact, the gospel shows how important the law is. The Son of God had to fulfill the law perfectly for you and still offer a propitiation on your behalf because of your law-breaking. Law-breaking is so serious that it brings death and judgment. It always brings death and judgment. Will it bring your death and judgment, or has it brought the Savior's death and judgment? And law-keeping is so serious that you cannot pass through judgment without it being kept, either by you or for you. It's not a matter of skimming some information off your resume and hoping you get hired. You need a perfect record, and it is either on your shoulders or on Christ's shoulders. But if Christ imputes his righteousness to us, doesn't that mean that the law is null and void? Not at all, Paul says. Now, in chapters 6 through 8, he'll go into greater detail, but here he simply tells us that because of the gospel, we uphold the law. Paul is speaking against, as long as we're throwing out 50-cent words today, antinomianism, which is against law or no law-ism, this antinomian view of the gospel. If Christ fulfilled the law, then we need not seek to live obedience to God anymore. Now, we might do this in just crazy licentious living, but more often than that, we simply do it by changing the requirements. The Bible says, love your neighbor as much as you love yourself, and we don't really like that, so we change it into, well, just don't drink alcohol and go to Sunday school, and then you'll fulfill the law. Paul says the bottom line is that only in Christ, only through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit can you even obey the law. See, the gospel isn't just good news for your past and good news for your future. It is that It is good news that your sins do not affect you anymore. It is good news for your past. You have been delivered from your past. It is good news for your future. You have hope. that Christ who began this will come back and complete it and take you home and you will be with him forever. You have hope for your future. The gospel is good news for your past and it's good news for your future. But what about today? Does the gospel have any bearing on today? Paul says, of course. It is the power of God for you today. Christ, who began a good work in you, will be faithful to complete it. He will continue that work. It's why Paul can say in Philippians both statements of work out your salvation with fear and trembling, and because it's God who's at work in you. Because God is working in you. Submit yourself to the Holy Spirit. Say, I want to love what you love, God. Would you continue to change my heart, continue the deliverance from my sin that you have done in Christ at the cross? Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you. We pray that these just wouldn't be academic theological truths, that You would bind these truths to our hearts, that we would be humbled, that so deserving of Your wrath is our sin that the Son of God had to die in our place, that we would be so comforted to know That so loving are you of sinners that you willingly died in our place. Holy Spirit, apply these truths to our hearts that we might love to live for you. In Jesus' name, amen.