I invite you to turn with me to the Word of God as it comes to us in the letter to the Romans, Romans chapter 3. Romans chapter 3, starting at verse 9, 9b, meaning we're going to begin in the middle of verse 9 to the end of verse 26. Hear the word of God. We have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin. As it is written, none is righteous, no, not one. None understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness, their feet are swift to shed blood, and their paths are ruined in misery and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now, 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. So far. Now we turn to the book of Proverbs, chapter 17, verse 15. 17, verse 15 of the book of Proverbs. He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord. Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, imagine that you've been standing in a queue for 10 minutes. Right before you get to the end, someone cuts into a line ahead of you, and a clerk serves that person first without apologizing to you. Would you be annoyed? We probably all would be. Why? Because we have an inherent sense of justice, of fairness, and that's unfair. A sense of justice is the one thing that we have in common, one of the things that we have in common with unbelievers. It's the last remnants of the image of God that still exist in them. The Bible says that God is a God of justice. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne. Those two go together because righteousness is to live up to God's standard. God's standard is His law. Justice is when He punishes lawbreakers. So when it says that righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne, it's telling us that God punishes sin. Righteousness is to live up to the standard. Justice is to punish those who deviate from it. That's why our text comes as no surprise. He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord. Abomination means that he detests from the bottom of his heart. To justify the wicked means to declare that they are right. To condemn the righteous means to declare that they are wrong and to punish them. Now, there are many examples of this behavior in the Bible. Probably the best example is what happened to Naboth. You remember the story of Naboth's vineyard. Naboth was a righteous man. King Ahab wanted to have Naboth's vineyard. Naboth refused to sell it to him. So Ahab's wicked wife, Jezebel, brought Naboth to trial, publicly accused him of blasphemy. and then had him stoned to death. That was a righteous man who was condemned. God promised he would punish her for that, and he did when the time was ripe. But now consider our own life. Righteousness is to live up to God's standard. God's standard is his law. But God's law has never merely been a list of things that we ought and ought not to do. In a sense, the law just shows us what a good life is supposed to look like. It says if all is well between you and God, this is what it's supposed to look like. This is what you should expect. But God's law cannot exist separate from love. We are to love the Lord God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind and all our strength. That's what righteousness true righteousness looks like. Now by that standard, all of us fall short. And you might disagree with that. Maybe you've kept every one of the Ten Commandments perfectly this past week. On the outside, you were faithful to your wife, you didn't blaspheme, you were totally honest with everyone, but did you love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, all the time. Was there really no point anywhere where the focus of your devotion shifted? And did you love your neighbor as yourself? Your neighbor is not just the person across the road. Your neighbor is those that were closest to you. That includes your family members, your wife if you're married, or husband, children maybe. Did you really love them? And if you really loved them all the time, did you do it for the right reasons? Now if you start looking at it to that level of depth, then all of us fall short. And that makes us guilty in the eyes of God. We are not inherently righteous. It is not a part of the fabric of our being, so to speak. We do not have the righteousness that God requires. And he is not going to change the standard for us. Think about this from the perspective of the trades, if you want to have an analogy. Let's pick electricians, sparkies, as an example. Imagine that you're a sparkie and you have an apprentice who just can't get the details right. And probably some of you have had that apprentice at some point. Are you going to change the standard of your work just to accommodate your apprentice? Should the WA electrical requirements be changed just because some apprentices can't meet the standard? Of course not. Electricity does not change its properties just because we are incompetent. And God does not change his law just because we are unrighteous. Why should he? The law is an expression of His character. Why should He have to change because we don't want to? So we're at an impasse. How then do we become right with God again? He won't ignore sin. He who justifies the wicked and He who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord. God is consistent. This is a fundamental principle that underlies all of life. He won't change his law, and we cannot change ourselves, and God is consistent. What hope can there then be for us? And yet, says Paul in Romans 3 verse 21, 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. God put him forward as a propitiation. A propitiation is something that turns aside wrath. Christ was put forward as a propitiation. How? Because he died for sinners. He died instead of sinners. So imagine this from the perspective of this text that we just read in Proverbs. At the moral core of the universe, there exists a fundamental contradiction. It is greater than anything that you could imagine. At the moral core of the universe is a God who justifies the wicked and who has condemned the righteous and who can do these things while still being true to himself. How is this even possible? Well, it could only ever work if Jesus is not just true man, but also true God. If God were to punish an innocent third party, he would be evil. He would simply become a tyrant like so many earthly rulers have been. He would have become an abomination to himself. And God will never do that. God will never deny himself. He will never change the standard. He will never be someone other than who he has revealed himself to us to be. That's why Jesus had to be true man and true God. The Catechism still puts it best. He must be true God so that by the power of his divine nature, he might bear in his human nature the burden of God's wrath and might obtain for us and restore to us righteousness and life. Christ took our sin upon himself. Now all of that is depicted in the Lord's Supper this morning. God showed his dreadful verdict over sin in the death of Christ. The broken bread, the outpoured wine show the totality of his judgment. You could not punish sin anymore than it has been punished in Christ. He went through hell, body and soul. God showed that he is just, but he also showed that he is the justifier. That means he makes sinners righteous through faith in Christ. Now how can that be right? Because God didn't just acquit the wicked. He actually makes them righteous. He imputes, that means He credits the righteousness of Christ to them. Again, the catechism, God without any merit of my own, out of mere grace, imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ. He grants these to me as if I never had nor committed any sin, and as if I myself had accomplished all the obedience which Christ has rendered for me, if only I accept this gift with a believing heart. Faith means more than just that you acknowledge these things to be true on a factual level. It means that you also believe them to be true for yourself. The form admonishes us not to doubt. God is very thorough. That same thoroughness which guarantees that the wicked will be punished in this life or the next also guarantees that all of our sins are truly taken away. This morning we celebrate the Lord's Supper, and as we do so, we are reminded of the principle in this text. God is a God of justice. God is thorough on a level that we cannot even imagine. The broken bread, the wine that was poured out, remind us of his verdict over our sins, but they also remind us of the very real fellowship that God has with us. That is why we sit at a table. As He restores us, He also renews us. And that means that His image does begin to take shape in us again. And that means that we can maybe also lose our own edge. We can be less sensitive about our own rights. A bit less insistent when people cut in line ahead of us. More gracious toward each other. Because we have the complete forgiveness of all our sins. Let us therefore also forgive each other. Amen.