Righteousness by Faith Apart from the Law

Well, as we continue to journey through the Book of Romans, and particularly here through Romans chapter three, I consider myself quite privileged to have had this middle section. Here, these middle sections where we make the transition from the bad news to the good news. Amen, because there has been mounting bad news in the Book of Romans since chapter one and verse eighteen, ever since that proclamation was made. Let's look at it. In fact, in Romans chapter one and verse eighteen, that's where things went downhill. Let's back up to sixteen. For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the jew first and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. That's the last time we heard some good news, folks, was there in verse seventeen. It just went downhill rapidly, beginning here in verse eighteen, For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. Since then we have seen from thereon in chapter one the guilt of the gentile world because of the fact that they have general revelation, yet do not respond appropriately to the general revelation and take general revelation and turn it into the worship of idols and the worship of self, which ultimately is idolatry. After that we turned to chapter two, and in the second chapter we saw that those with the law were no better off, in fact, perhaps worse off, because their condemnation is great in that they have the law, know the law, are striving for and toward the law, and still breaking the law, and are therefore guilty and condemned. And in case we didn't get it from the end of chapter two, or from the end of chapter one, or through all of chapter two, in chapter three we have a summary, and we've seen that summary in chapter three, verses nine through eighteen, with the Guilt of all men, the guilt of every man, we saw a picture painted of man's total depravity. We also looked before that at our need for unconditional election has to be unconditional, because we're totally depraved, radically depraved. So we have all of this bad news lingering. Well, I want you to understand something. That news is not bad for those of us who get what comes next. Amen, that's merely news. That makes the good news good. If you used the illustration before of you know, going to the jewelry store, and when you walk into the jewelry store, and especially if you're looking at diamonds, one of the things that they do when you're looking at diamonds is they put down a piece of black felt and place the diamond on top of it, so that in the contrast you can see the brilliance of the gym. That black felt is not bad news. That black felt is only bad news if the diamond is bad, because the diamond is then exposed. But if the diamond is good, the black felt merely serves to show how good it is. We've laid down the black felt, folks, it's time to see how brilliant the gem actually is. And we begin here with the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. Those are wonderful words. Penal substitutionary atonement. Penal there is a penalty that is paid. Substitutionary or vicarious atonement means that there is one who receives that penalty on behalf of another. The atonement is the process whereby we are made right with God because of the penalty that was paid on our behalf. It is the lynchpin in the message of the Gospel, penal substitutionary atonement. And that is the doctrine about which we read in our text today, beginning of verse nineteen. 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 verse twenty one. But now there it is amen. 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 falls 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 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. Amen. Just reading that feels better than the rest of the stuff that we read up to this point in the Book of Romans. Amen, just reading it is good. But there is so much there that needs to be unpacked. Here's what you need to understand. The doctrine of penal substitution is an essential doctrine. We've heard this before. There's essentials and there's non essentials. You know what are those essentials. There are things that we can disagree on but not necessarily divide over. This is one of those things that we divide over. Amen, This is one of those things that we divide over. This is not one of those areas where we can go along to get along. This is an essential doctrine. We must hold fast here. Listen to this from Mark Deveron. At Stake is nothing less than the essence of Christianity historically understood. Christ's atonement gives hope to Christians in their sin and in their suffering. If we have any assurance of salvation, it is because of Christ's atonement. If any joy, it flows from Christ's work on the cross. The atonement protects us from our native tendency to replace religion with morality and God's grace with legalism. Apart from Christ's atoning work, we would be forever guilty, ashamed, and condemned before God. It is ending essential may be properly understood as the essential, because ultimately, the story of Scripture is the story of God's redeeming work, the story of God's glory being manifest in his dealing with mankind, and the crux of the matter is the redemption in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We begin the Bible with creation in chapters one and two. There's fall in chapter three, and by chapter three and verse fourteen, there is this promise of redemption, this promise that God will put enmity between the woman and the serpent, and between her seed and his seed, and the seed of the serpent will his heel, but the seed of the woman will crush the head of the snake. And what we read from thereon is the story of God bringing that about. And we get to the New Testament, and we are introduced to the seed of the woman. His story plays out, and most assuredly, the serpent bruises him, but the serpent's head is crushed. And we continue to read on to the end of the Bible, and when we come to the last book, and when we come to the last refrain, what we see is the consummation of all things, as the glorious Lamb of God has been victorious over sin. This is not just n essential, it is the essential. All other doctrines that are essential doctrines are essential doctrines because of their connection to this doctrine. So when we ask ourselves, what are those things that are essential, here's what we ask, How, if at all, is this connected to this picture of penal substitutionary atonement of God's redemptive work. If this is a doctrine that touches on the issue of substitutionary atonement, and we are wrong on that doctrine, we are wrong, period. And yet there are those who, in spite of the essential nature of this doctrine, are at odds with it. Listen to this from the very reverend doctor Jeffrey John by the way, that is his title. He is the Dean of Saint Albans he believes that the church is traditional undersh standing of the Cross of Christ is both repulsive and insane. What does this high ranking minister in the Church of England believe about the doctrine of penal substitution? You ask, I'm glad you asked, he says, and I quote. The explanation I was given was something like this. God was very angry with us for our sins, and because he is a just God, our sin had to be punished. But instead of punishing us, he said his son Jesus as a substitute to suffer and die in our place. The blood of Jesus paid the price of our sins, and because of him, God stopped being angry with us. In other words, Jesus took the rap and we got forgiven provided we said we believed in him. He continues. Well, I don't know about you, but even at the age of ten, I thought this explanation was pretty repulsive as well as onsensical. What sort of God was this getting so angry with the world and the people he created, and then to calm himself down demanding the blood of his own son. And anyway, why should God forgive us through punishing somebody else, it was worse than illogical. It was insane. It made God sound like a psychopath. If any human being behave like this, we'd say they were a monster. According to the right Reverend Doctor John's, the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement is the equivalent equivalent of cosmic child abuse. He rejects it outright. And there are many who join him in his rejection of this cardinal, central, central, essential doctrine. Who don't buy it because they don't like it, who don't buy it because it just sounds wrong, who don't buy it because if a man did it, it would be inappropriate. I want to say that again, he doesn't buy it because if a man did it, it would be inappropriate. In other words, there is a standard by which God is to be judged, and that standard by which God is to be judged is the standard of fallen man himself. And unless and until God can be seen in accordance with and as being right with that standard set by man in his own understanding, God is deemed to be unjust. Les go back again to chapter one and read just a little bit further. After verse eighteen, this wrath of God is being revealed because man, in his unrighteousnessuppresses the truth. Well, what does that look like? Verse nineteen. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived over sense the creation of the world and the things that have been made, So that we are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became feutile in their thinking, and in their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, and birds and animals and creeping things. In other words, God has revealed himself, and man has chosen to worship man or creeping things rather than God. To look at God through our lens as opposed to looking at us through God's lens. The question is not would this action be appropriate if it were done by a man, But the question is is it what God did? Because if it's what God did, it's right. Amen. If it's what God did, and God, by definition is holy and righteous and transcendent, and His ways are not our ways, and they are beyond our finite minds. Then who are you? And who am I? And who is the right? Reverend? Doctor John's to question the Almighty the doctor? And of the penal substitution we see in this text today is apart from, but not foreign to the law. That's important. It's apart from, but not foreign to the law. It's not a new doctrine. It's not a new concept. Look at verses nineteen through twenty one again. 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 accountable to God. For by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. By the way that line, there is a line that Paul uses again, for example in Colosson, chapter two and verse sixteen. By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. Now, our tendency is to think that because the law can't justify man, that somehow the law is a bad thing. The law was planned A, and then God needed plan B. Look at verse twenty one. But now the righteousness of God, that's God's saving righteousness. The righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although very important phrase, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. So this righteousness, this saving righteousness of God, is something that is not achieved through the law. It is apart from the law, but it is not foreign to the law. Turn with me, if you will, to the left and look at the book of Isaiah. It's not foreign to the law or the prophets. Let's listen to one of the prophets, Isaiah, chapter fifty three. Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. Isn't that ironic? Scripture says Christ had no beauty that we would admire him. But every picture of him, he's one of the most beautiful men that the world has ever known, one of the most attractive figures that you've ever seen. But the text says that wasn't the case. Verse three. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and one from whom men hide their faces. He was despised, and we esteemed him not surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And by his stripes we were healed all, or we are healed all. We like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us. All it is apart from the law and the prophets, but not foreign to the law and the prophets. We see here that the prophet Isaiah clearly foretold what would come to pass in the form of penal substitutionary atonement. Not only that, but the law itself and the sacrificial system it's self points forward to what God is going to do in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Listen to this from Louis Burkoff. God might have demanded a personal atonement of the sinner, the latter would not have been able to render it. In view of this fact, God graciously ordained that Christ should take the place of Man as his vicar or substitute. Christ is our vicar atoning for the sin of mankind by bearing the penalty of sin and meeting the demands of the law, and thus wrought an eternal redemption for man. For that reason we speak of the atonement as a vicarious atonement. The offended party himself made provision for the atonement in this case. The Old Testament sacrifices prefigured the atoning work of Christ. Leviticus one, Leviticus four, Leviticus five, Leviticus sixteen, Lividicus seventeen, and on and on and on. Jesus shows up on the scene in the Gospel of John. And what do we hear said of him? Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. The righteousness of God, the saving righteousness of God, whereby he makes the sinner righteous, is something that is apart from the law, but not foreign to the law at all. Colossians Chapter one verse nineteen. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell verse twenty and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross Mark ten, verse forty five. For even the son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many two Corinthians five twenty one. For our sake, He made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. One Peter two, Verse twenty four. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed, a direct reference to Isaiah chapter fifty three. This is not plan B, it's plan only. This is it That man, in his sin has no hope apart from another outside of himself, who will atone for him, who will redeem him, who will make him rite with God. There is no hope beyond that, and how descripture referred to it. Look with me, if you will, in verse twenty five, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith, and that was to show God's righteousness. So in chapter one and verse eighteen we see that the wrath of God is being revealed from Heaven. From then on what do we read? That the wrath of God being revealed from Heaven is revealed justly, so that God's wrath is being poured out. That temporarily we see God's wrath, but eschatologically we anticipate in the day when God's wrath will be full and fully vindicated. Then we see the guilt of the gentile. Then we see the guilt of the jew and all of a sudden we realize that there is no man who can stand before God. There is no man who can escape God's wrath. The question then must come, how can God's wrath be quenched and yet escaped? The answer propitiation. When I find Bibles that don't contain this word in verse twenty five, I just don't even read them. It's too important. This word propitiation means that the death of Christ fully satisfied the wrath of God on behalf of those for whom he died. Christ was put forth as a propitiatory sacrifice by his blood shed on behalf of sinners, and in his death on behalf of sinners. He who knew no sin became sin for us, and the fo pours out his wrath on his son. Do I like this? No, I don't like this. I love it. I praise God for it because it is my only hope. I have no hope apart from the propitiatory sacrifice, the blood of Christ offered on my behalf. I have no hope, nor do you. There is a righteousness, a saving righteousness of God, and it is apart from the law. It is not because I keep the law. It is in spite of the fact that I cannot keep the law. But it's not foreign to the law. In fact, I can only understand it when I understand God's law. I see God's righteousness in his law. I see my guilt in his law, and I see the glory of Christ in the law of God. He kept the whole law and yet experienced in his body that which no lawkeeper should ever experience. But he experienced it on behalf of those who did not, would not and could not keep the law. Not only that penal substitution unites both jew and Greek. Look at what he says here in verses twenty two to twenty four. There is a phrase that's been repeated over and over. We go back to chapter one and verse seventeen, and we hear this phrase, I'm not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to everyone who believes. Now listen to what he says to the Jew first and also to the Greek. To the Jew first, and all so to the Greek. Then he goes and demonstrates that the Jew and the Greek are both guilty before God. We finally get to our passage and we read verse nineteen or verse yeah. Beginning of verse nineteen, 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. Now this phrase here, the whole world is divided into two categories, the Jew and the Greek. That the whole world both the Jew, who has the law it's part of this covenantal community, and the Greek. Next verse, for by the works of the law, no human being will be justified. Now you get down in verse twenty two, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, which goes directly back to verse seventeen of chapter one. All who believe, for there is no distinction, no distinction between whom the Jew and the Greek Verse twenty three. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, who's all the Jew and the Greek, and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. In other words, the people who are hearing this have understood that there are two worlds and two ways. There is the one world that is the world of the Jew. And in this world of the Jew, there is the law, there is circumcision, there is coming to God and standing before God and being justified before God because of something that someone did to you on the eighth Day. If you were a boy and you just kind of got into if you were a girl, then there's the Greek world, the dogs, everybody else, the pathetic lot who did not get in on this promise that was made to Abraham, the hopeless ones. And what Paul does here is say there's not two worlds in two ways. There's only one way, and that one way is through faith in Jesus Christ. By the way, you understand that there are two worlds, the jew and the Greek. That's wrong, there are two worlds, those who believe and those who do not. Our distinction is not an ethnic one. Listen to this beautiful picture found in the Book of Ephesians. Ephesians chapter two, beginning of verse eleven. Is that famous passage in Ephesians chapter two, verses one through ten. Really, verses one through nine is that famous passage that echoes this idea of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. But right after it there is a beautiful picture that is painted to which we need to pay much attention Verse eleven. Therefore, remember that at one time you gentiles and the flesh call the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. That's one this in Christ. That's one this in Christ. The Jew and the Greek both shut up under the law and completely guilty. The Jew and the Greek both utterly dependent on penal substitutionary atonement. The Jew and the Greek both called to the same place. And we read it again and again and again. By faith. By faith, by faith is a gift of God's free grace. By faith, that's how we enter in. You ask someone if they're a Christian, and they immediately begin telling you about things that they used to do that they don't do anymore, or things that they're better at than other people. Chances are you're dealing with somebody that doesn't understand penal substitution. It is true that the Gospel produces that in the life of the believer, but we're saved by faith, by faith, and by faith alone. That is our only access, not by the family into which we're born, not by rituals performed on our behalf, but by faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, which is why we'll learn hereafter that boasting is excluded. Finally, penal substitution solves the justice justification dilemma. Hey, there is a dilemma. And here's the dilemma. How does God save anyone? People often ask the wrong question. Have you ever been in this question in a discussion where somebody's asking, you know, I just don't understand how if God is so loving that he could let you know bad things happen to good people. The fundamental flaw and your reasoning, and the fundamental flaw is you believe there are good people? Amen, there is none good, no one who does good. We read that in the last paragraph. Or how is it that so many people are outside of the camp? How is it that so many people don't have an opportunity to come to Christ? Or how is it that so many people all? Right? Wrong question? The right question is if what we find in Romans chapter one and Romans chapter two and the beginning of Romans Chapter three is true, and it is. The question is how's anybody saved? How does it just and holy and righteous God save any one of us? That's the question. If that's not your question, you don't understand the gospel. If that's not your question, you don't understand your guilt. If that's not your question, you think way too much of yourself. My question is not I wonder why there aren't so many other people out there like me who found their way into the camp. My question, more often than that, is God, you sure, amen? Why me to the glory of God? Penal substitution. Reconcile that dilemma. Look at verse twenty six. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the just, the fire of the one who has faith in Jesus, that he might be just on the one hand, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Jesus paid it all all to him. I owe sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow. There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath the flood lose all their guilty stains. God's wrath was poured out on his son as our vicarious substitute. So God the just did what a just God must do, and God the Justifier did what only a gracious God can do. There is another point that is raised here, though. The point is this, there is another doctrine here, and that is the doctrine of particular redemption or limited atonement. Here's the question. There are some who argue that what Jesus did was Jesus paid for everyone's sin so that everyone, depending on their choice, could take that or leave it. The doctrine of particular redemption or limited atonement says this Christ came to give his life as a ransom for many, to lay down his life for his bride, the church. Jesus didn't come to lay down his life in the hopes that some would take him up on his offer, but he came to pay a specific price for a specific people. This point of God being just and the justifier goes to the issue of particular redemption, because here's the problem. If we believe, by the way everyone believes in limited atonement, the question is who limits the atonement, man or God? If you don't believe in limited atonement. You believe every person is going to be saved and go to heaven. So everybody believes in limited atonement. But there are those who, on the one hand, believe that the atonement is limited by man. Man determines how many are going to be saved. There are others who believe that the atonement is limited by God. God determines who's going to be saved, and that Christ laid down his life for those whom God will, for those whom the Father had given to him before the foundation of the earth. Now here's the problem. If we don't accept that second form of limited atonement, we believe that Jesus Christ paid for the sins of people who are going to die and go to Hell and pay for them. Again, that's simply not the case. Christ laid down his life for his elect He laid down his life for those whom the Father had given to him. He laid down his life for his bride, the Church. He laid down his life as a specific ransom for many, not in hopes that some would perhaps come, but knowing full well that in his death he is assured that they will. We don't get that. We don't really comprehend this doctrinal penal substitutionary atonement. How do you believe in substitutionary atonement? If Christ one doesn't know whom he's the substitute for, and two becomes the subs or two becomes the substitute for everyone. Again, follow this. If Christ on the cross becomes the substitute for every human being who will ever live in hopes that some of them will get in on it, then what we've said is that when the Father pours out his wrath, he actually pours out his wrath on Christ for every human being that would ever live and forever sin that would ever be committed. And yet there's still this place called hell where he's going to continue to do it for individuals who sin had already been punished in Christ. No, the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement holds that Christ was a substitute for those whom he came to save. They had been given to him by his father, and he redeemed them in his blood so that God might be just, and as a just God pours out his wrath on sin, and that he might be a justifying God who receives those and embraces those whom he had given to his son, whom his son had come to redeem, and whom his son gave back to the father. Which is why Peter reminds us God's not slow, as some count slowness. He is patient, and he's not willing that any should perish. A lot of people, by the way, use that to try to argue against particular redemption. They say, see, God's not willing that any should perish. Really two possibilities there. One, it is God's will that none perish, but his will is thwarted every day by sinful men. Two, it's not God's will that any should perish for whom the son came to die. Therefore we have to wait for the consummation of all things, until all the elect have come into the camp. One has God in heaven twiddling his thumbs with no idea when this thing's going to end. The other has God enthroned on high saying you wait, I'm not done yet, and I'm not at all impatient. You don't understand time the way that I do, this thing will be done. It will be done right, it will be done justly, And all of those for whom my son laid down, his life will be redeemed. That's the glorious goodness of the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. Is that what you have embraced, or have you like many come all the way through Romans chapter one, all the way through Romans chapter two, come all the way to Romans chapter three. Now read about penal substitutionary atonement, and still you're still holding onto the idea that one day you're going to stand before God and your answer is going to be I went to church regul Is that you or that you'll stand before God and your answer is going to be there are people who were worse sinners than I, Or that somehow you will stand before God and your answer will be my mother's in your kingdom, my grandfather's in your kingdom. Certainly they saved me a place. Or that perhaps you'll stand before God with a list five, six, twelve, ten, six hundred and thirteen rules that you've done your best to keep. That is a disgrace. The blood of Christ shed on behalf of his elect Your only hope is the hope about which we read in Colossians chapter two. And you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, naeling it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, triumphing over them in him. That's your only hope. That your sin is nailed to the cross, that everything that God's got on you is nailed to the cross. And at Christ stood in your stead received God's wrath. Because of his active obedience and his passive obedience, he can take your penalty on the one hand and impute righteousness to you on the other. And that you, believing that, reach out to Him by faith, confessing and acknowledging that you are everything that you read about from one eighteen to three twenty and pleading with the maker of heaven and earth that you can be found in that exchange. In three twenty five,