As you are, please take your copy of the Scriptures and turn to Romans chapter 3. My sermon text is Romans chapter 3, verses 21 through 26. I’ll be paying specific attention, particular attention to verses 25 and 26, but I’m going to take some time working my way there, so be forewarned.
Let’s give attention now to the reading of the Word of God as we have been doing so this evening:
“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.”
Let us pray.
O Lord our God, we have heard the Gospel already tonight in what has been read to us from the Scriptures and what we have confessed together from The Westminster Standards. We pray now that You would help us to take all that we have heard and this text here in particular and open it up to us and work in us by Your Spirit as only You can and as we need, that You would continue that work of saving grace that You have begun in all those who have called upon Your name. And for those who have not yet called upon You, that You would call them effectually into this grace in which we stand, that they, even tonight, might call upon You savingly. We pray, Father, that You would be with us, that You would bless us, that Your Spirit would work among us, that Your Son would be exalted, that we might see Him. And we ask it in Christ’s name and to the praise of His glory, amen
We live in troubled times. That’s not news; you hear that in the news constantly, all the time. And I don’t know what your perspective on this is, but my own perspective is that something took a turn somewhere along the way. The world has always been a troubled place. Our experience has always been full of suffering and misery in this world, to varying degrees, at varying times. But to me, it seems like there was a turn somewhere around the turn of the century, and since then it seems like there are sufferings, there are miseries, there are wars and rumors of wars; there is tumult, there is hunger, there is disease, there is poverty, there is a focus on injustice and so many other things that seem to be pressing in from all sides. And we seem to be so much more troubled by all of these things in certain respects.
Why should the nations ask, “Where is our God?” and yet they do. I remember listening to “All Things Considered,” a national public radio program that many of you probably know of, in 2004. And the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami had just devastated Indonesia. It had killed a quarter of a million people across 14 countries. This was back about the time that I began to feel at least personally like something different is going on in the world. That might just be me growing up and becoming more aware of those things; I don’t know. But NPR reported quite powerfully on the scope and the depth of this tragedy, about the many people who were crushed by collapsing buildings, survivors swept away by the sea that was angry and swept in on them, children that were ripped from the arms of their parents, spouses taken from their sides and lost to them forever, homes, businesses, schools literally wiped away. It seems familiar to us somehow at this point, but it was yet still shocking at that moment. An echo of the flood; a foreshadow of the day of the Lord.
And at the end of their report, they gave it over to Daniel Schorr, their semi-retired, senior news analyst at the time. I believe he was around 88 years old. And he used that moment and that occasion to take to the public airwaves and to challenge the existence of a just God. “Where is justice in all of this?” he demanded. “How can anyone believe there is a good and a sovereign and a just God in the face of so much indiscriminate suffering and ruin?” It’s the classic problem of evil. It’s a perennial, apologetic issue. It’s relentless, down through the ages. Each generation seems to raise it anew as a kind of protest against Christian faith by those who refuse to believe. And it’s a curious kind of protest, is it not? Unbelievers tend to pose this challenge as if it is news, as if believers have never thought through these things before, as if we have no personal experience of suffering in this world, in our own lives, as if our faith has never been tested by the reality of evil. Indeed, they raise it as if God Himself has no answer to this question, no explanation for His existence and reign over creation, as if He was somehow exposed by this question and embarrassed by all of it. But you and I know He is not. Far, far from it.
God Himself sets the problem of evil before us in His Word, and not just once or twice, but as a continuing, ongoing theme, and He calls our attention to it throughout the Scriptures. And yet, it is true, as far as I can discern, He never once bows to our demand for an answer, for Him to justify Himself to us in the face of evil. He never yields to our insistence that He owes us an explanation for these things. He did not even give such to His faithful servant, Job, as he struggled through great suffering. On the contrary, He puts the question to Job and to us – “Who are you? Where were you when I created the heavens and the earth? Did I ask for your advice? Did I seek your counsel or your opinion? Are you the one to question Me? Will the faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Will you condemn Me that you might be right in your own eyes? I am the Lord and there is no other. Besides Me there is no god. Our God is in the heavens. He does all that He pleases. Shall the pot protest the potter? Shall the creature question the Creator?”
This is not unloving of God. This is what we sometimes call “tough love.” It’s the kind of answer that fathers rightly offer their sons when their sons question them about something they’ve just been told that they’re supposed to do and their son demands to know, “Why?” before they obey. Any father has been there; any parent has been there. And every parent should know, and most parents do know the right answer – “Because I’m your father. Because I’m your mother, that’s why. Because I said so.” That’s the first and most fundamental lesson, isn’t it? It is reason enough. It’s the thing that our sons and our daughters, our children need to learn and need to know. After your son or your daughter begins to obey, you may go on and you may explain it out to them. You might explain why you have asked them to do the things that you are doing, but you are doing so not because you owe it to them, as a condition that you must meet before they offer their trust and obedience to you, but because you want them to understand. There’s more, so much more. You have loved them and that’s why you asked them to do this. But honoring authority – that’s the first lesson. Getting the parent/child order right is the cornerstone. Without laying that cornerstone and laying it well and laying it properly, nothing else useful can be constructed in all of your parenting.
And so it is for us when we, as a creature, demand answers from our God. What we need most in that moment is to be put in our place, to be reminded who God is and who we are in relation to Him. This is the lesson that Mr. Schorr still needed to learn at the end of his life. This is the lesson that our children need to learn at the very beginning of their life, and it is the lesson that we must remember and remind ourselves of every day of our life. It is the first and most basic lesson of Scripture. It is not only Theology 101, it’s Genesis 1:1 – isn’t it? God is the creator and we are His creatures, divinely blessed and favored creatures to be sure, gloriously dignified and privileged creatures, created in His image, called to know Him and to enjoy Him, but creatures just the same, all the way down. “Our God is in the heavens and He does all that He pleases.”
Moving a little closer to where Paul is here in Romans and the ground he has been covering up until verse 21, we are not just creatures, however, are we. We are like these obstinate children I’ve just been talking about, demanding answers as a condition of our trust and our obedience, seeking satisfaction from Him before we bow before Him. We are proud, defiant, rebellious creatures, abusing His patience and His longsuffering, which is the reason why we still have our existence as a space to shake our fists at Him and say, “How dare You! Who do You think You are? You owe us something here!” And we challenge His authority and His goodness. “Show us a sign, then we might believe. Prove Yourself to us, then I might trust You. Explain Yourself and explain Yourself fully, and then, then maybe I will consider and take your claims seriously.” This is a perversion of all that is good and true and right. This is the defiance of unbelief. This is the posture of all unbelief when you bore into it, and it is the defiance in all unbelief. However natural it may seem to us, we who have been born sinners, it is contrary to nature and to the glory of God. And we have all fallen short of the glory of God. Where is the fear of God in our demands? Is there any respect for His authority? Any trust in His goodness? Any honor of His majesty? Any fear and trembling, any awe before His glory?
There was no distinction – we’ve heard it read already – “For all have sinned and fall short to the glory of God,” and again, “None is righteous, no not one. No one seeks after God; all have turned aside.” Together we have become worthless, useless in His service in our sin, dead in our trespasses and sins. We are the unjust and we are utterly without excuse, without any justification for our sin. We know better, our conscience convicts, us, and yet we dare to excuse and justify ourselves before God and before others and even to ourselves, acting as if we are completely within our rights, as if God owes us something and we owe Him nothing, and as if all this suffering and evil in the world and in our own lives is ultimately His fault somehow, it’s somehow down to some sort of failure in Him and in His reign. We are like Adam, still standing in Eden, insinuating in that God is at fault for giving him this woman, and Eve, blaming the serpent as though she had no agency in this matter at all. We are willing to condemn the whole world, and God Himself to justify ourselves and our sin.
No wonder God never yields to our demands, never gives us an explanation, the one that we insist that He owes us. Indeed, the real question regarding God’s justice is not, “How can God be just in the face of so much pain and suffering?” or “How can a just God permit His creatures to rebel against Him as He has?” No, it’s “How can God receive and accept and bless sinners like us? How can He be just and the justifier of the unjust?” The question of the problem of evil belongs to unbelief, in a sense, and thus to apologetics, but the question of the problem of grace, if we’ll call it so, that belongs to faith and to the Gospel itself. This is a question worthy of our just and good and gracious God. When this question, this way of thinking, becomes the frame of our mind, the meditation of our hearts, we’re beginning to think rightly, we’re beginning to see grace for what it is, we’re beginning to see ourselves for who we are, we’re beginning to see God truly and rightly, we’re beginning to think Biblically, we’re beginning to see ourselves and the world around us as God does, to be honest, we’re becoming reformed whether we realize it or not. Nowhere in Scripture does He offer a justification to us for His decree to permit our rebellion or explain how He is just in the face of so much misery in the world. But the demonstration of His justice in graciously saving sinners, of justifying those who are unjustifiably unjust in His sight, of not treating us according to the wrath that we deserve but forgiving us all of our sins, blessing us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places and lavishing on us immeasurable kindness, now and throughout the endless age to come, on us, we who are dead in our trespasses and sins and rebellious at the very core of our being, pursuing our own sinful passions and desires, the passions and desires of our body and of our mind who are, by nature, or were by nature children of wrath, by grace we have been saved through faith. By grace alone, sola gratia, and through faith alone, sola fide. This is not our own doing, but the gift of God, Paul says.
And it is precisely this, God’s gracious way with us, that raises the question of God’s justice most directly and acutely – How can God promise deliverance to Adam and Eve? How could He accept Abel and his worship? How could He commune with Enoch and receive him into glory and bring Noah and his household through the flood and embrace and bless Abraham and Jacob and David? How could He forebear and pass over their sins and their sinfulness? How could He embrace them with His steadfast love and His faithfulness? How can God justify His gracious ways with sinners, His people? How can He be just and the justifier of the unjust? This is a question, the question I believe, that God has been pleased to answer, pleased to give a public account of how it can be so. And the answer is right here in our passage. It is Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, crucified for His people. Jesus Christ is what God has to say to us and to the whole world. The demonstration of His justice in justifying believing sinners, the fount of saving grace, the fulfillment of every promise that God makes in the covenant of grace.
How can God be just and justify the unjust? “Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith.” The key word here is “propitiation.” And there’s a great deal that has been said and is to say on this term, much more than I’m going to say here. I take this word as a pretty clear and direct reference to the day of atonement and to the blood of the goat, offered as a sin offering on that day. The goat was slaughtered for all the sins and sinfulness of the people and the blood of that goat was taken in and sprinkled over and before the mercy seat. That goat was put forward to represent the satisfaction of God’s just wrath against the sin of His people. By the blood of the redeemer, it pointed to the blood of the Redeemer who was yet to come. And then there was another goat as well that was also brought forward immediately after this one was slaughtered and its blood was sprinkled. And on this goat, all the sins of the people were place symbolically and then it was carried out into the remotest place in the wilderness and driven away, never to return or be heard or seen ever again. Representing the effect of the propitiation rendered by the blood of the first goat, the day of atonement was to be repeated every year because it was merely a symbolic ceremony.
It only pointed to what has now been fulfilled in Jesus Christ who was put forward as a propitiation, a sufficient and effective satisfaction of God’s justice, made for all the sins and sinfulness of His people, once for all without any need for repetition or supplement of any sort. This was to show, Paul writes, 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. Jesus Christ was crucified in our place and for our sins. He died our death under our condemnation and satisfied the just wrath of God against us by His own blood. And He was able to do so because He Himself was sinless. He did not die for His own sins; He was without sin. Death had nothing on Him; no claim to Him. According to the law, He deserved to live and to live on forever. The death He died, He died freely and voluntarily for others, for His people, for the sinless for sinners. The one perfect and love, full of grace and truth, who came into the world to be set forth as a propitiation for sins. The one who was obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross, offered up and crucified for us, to have our guilt imputed to Him that His righteousness might be imputed to all who believe.
Here is God’s answer to the question of His justice. His demonstration to us and to the whole world that He is just and the justifier of everyone who believes in Jesus Christ. The demonstration that justification by grace alone through faith alone is not contrary to divine grace, but according to it, precisely because our redemption is in Christ alone. “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to Your name give glory, for the sake of Your steadfast love and Your faithfulness. Why should the nations say, ‘Where is their God?’ Our God is in the heavens, and He does all that He pleases,” and He has been pleased to set forth His Son as a propitiation by His blood to redeem His people in Jesus Christ, a redemption that is to be received and can only be received by faith. Do you believe this? If you do, then all of this grace we have been reading of tonight belongs to you. You belong to Him and He belongs to you and nothing can separate you from the love of God for you in Jesus Christ. And if you don’t, then believe now, for the invitation is sincere and it is to each one of us. Believe and be saved. Soli deo gloria – to God alone be the glory now and forevermore. Amen.
Let’s pray.
O Lord our God, we do pray that You would take this Gospel that has so richly drenched our service tonight as as it does each week in the churches of this presbytery, and that You would drive it deep into the recesses of our soul that it would expose every dark place and that it would lead us into the light that we might know and rejoice in the greatness of Your steadfast love for us and of Your ever-enduring faithfulness. Grant us this faith to receive, to rest in, and to hold fast forever to Jesus Christ, we ask, in His name. Amen.