The Gospel Revealed in Jesus Christ: 3:21-31

Romans S1 - E9 Transcript

Background and Recap

Welcome back to Episode 9 in Series 1. In the last episode, we reached a milestone; Paul reached the end of a very important part of his explanation of the gospel. He introduced that section by announcing the gospel for the first time. As I have said in several previous episodes, that section is really important.

“For I’m not ashamed of the gospel because it’s the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first for the Jew and then to the Gentile, for in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed - the righteousness that is my faith from first to last, just as it is written, ‘the righteous will live by faith.’”

Romans 1:16-17, NIV

That was the first declaration of the gospel. From that moment onwards, Paul has taken a step back to explain in great detail why the gospel is needed. He has gone into the nature of sin: has explained how people of all types have failed to live up to the revelation that God has given them, whether it came through creation - the natural world, through their inner conscience which we discussed in an earlier episode, or through the Law of Moses and all the revelation that God had given to the Jewish people. That explanation has come to an end and he has clearly stated that no person has any excuse for their actions before God. In some way or another, everyone fails to live up to the revelation that has been received.

His conclusion, in the last episode, can be found in Romans 3: 19.

“Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.”

Romans 3:19, NIV

The Jews and the Gentiles are both held accountable to God and are in need of his help to find salvation and eternal life. That is Paul’s argument and in the process he has described the power of sin as a spiritual power that controls every person. Sometimes it is unseen, invisible and hard to detect; sometimes it is very obvious. In all of us, it is that tendency to live independently of God and the failure to live up to God’s standards.

Failure to Reach God’s Standards

Let me illustrate this failure to live up to God’s standards: Imagine that I am an Archer with a bow and an arrow and am aiming at a target about 600 metres away. Imagine I am a very good archer, good with my bow and arrow and I have practised a lot. I want to hit the target at 600 metres away. But I have a problem: the maximum range of my bow and arrow is 500 metres; that is the maximum range of the best bows and arrows that can be made in the world today. I am going to aim at that target. I might shoot very straight but I can’t shoot far enough. The arrow will always miss the target, however hard I try. In fact, it will always fall short of the target. It will hit the ground in front of the target. That is exactly how Paul describes sin in this coming passage, in a famous verse, Romans 3: 23,

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

We don’t have enough capacity within us to fulfill everything that God demands of us. My bow and arrow don’t have enough physical capacity and strength in them to hit the target at 600 metres; no archer in the world could achieve that goal. We fall short of God’s standards, leading to three main things: a sense of guilt, a sense of shame, and a sense of fear. Many people fear God; they genuinely are afraid of the living God because they know there is something wrong in their life and they don’t know how to deal with it. Many people fear evil spirits and other Idols in this world; people can also fear God. We can be ashamed of what we have done; we know that we have caused shame to God, and we can have a sense of guilt.

The New Era

What is the solution? We come to one of the most important passages in the New Testament in terms of explaining the Christian gospel. What Paul said in a few words in Romans 1: 16 and 17, he now expands. He is going to explain that statement to us in much more detail.

“But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the prophets testify.”

Romans 3:21, NIV

A new era has come. When Christ came, the spiritual situation of the whole world changed for all the peoples of the world; a new opportunity was opening up. It was a fundamental change symbolised very powerfully when Jesus died. In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ death, which we dealt with in The Life of Jesus in Word Online, one of the things that Matthew noticed, at the time of Jesus’death a curtain in the Jewish Temple near to where Jesus died, was torn in two. The curtain hid the inner sanctuary so that people were not allowed in, except the High Priest once a year. The presence of God was supposed to reside in this inner sanctuary. The curtain was torn from top to bottom which symbolised that the way to know God was now open. It had been closed but was now open - a new era. When Jesus came, everything changed. Some of us will have had experiences of new eras in our lives: when you get married or if you become parents for the first time. There is a feeling of something totally new happening. There could be a new era in your country if a military dictatorship is replaced by a democracy, for example. You feel as though, at that moment, something fundamentally changed in the country. We have many experiences of entering into a new era but this is the greatest new era that ever came, because this is the opportunity for all peoples in the world to be saved, through Christ. Paul says, ‘We don’t need the Jewish law anymore. If we come to Christ, we don’t have to go through the Jewish law, the Law of Moses. We can come straight to Christ through faith, justification by faith - the righteousness of God has been made known’. When I spoke on Romans 1:16 - 17, I defined the ‘righteousness of God’as the act of God in saving people by putting them right with him; putting them into a right relationship with him. That is what God offers to us.

Paul says in this verse, that it was ‘testified by the law and the prophets’- in other words the Old Testament predicted that this time would come. In previous episodes, we have looked at a key prediction which was the promise that God gave to Abraham and recorded in Genesis 12: 2 and 3, which describes how Abraham would receive not only a son, not only a nation but that his people would be a blessing to all the nations of the earth. That takes place through the coming of Christ when the gospel reaches all ethnic groups in the world; the righteousness of God has been revealed. He can put you in a right relationship with him; he can save you from the power of sin, where nothing else can save you. That is the amazing power of the gospel.

Rescue

Imagine you are at sea, in a small fishing boat, just off the coastal waters of a fishing nation. Something happens, and your boat sinks! There are three or four of you swimming in the water; you are in danger of drowning and will not be able to survive very long. Another boat comes alongside, a bigger boat, and the captain issues the order to throw over a lifeline. A rope comes in your direction with a ring tied to it. The captain tells you to catch hold of the ring and they will pull you in. All the people in the sea have a choice: to get hold of the ring or not? They reach out and grab the ring and they are saved. That is basically what happens when we become a Christian; we don’t do it by our own achievements. The only thing we have to do is get hold of the ring. There is a choice: you could ignore the ring. It is your conscious choice - am I going to believe in Christ? All the power to save you comes from the boat; it doesn’t come from you. You are too tired to swim; you haven’t got the strength to haul yourself up onto the side of the boat; the waves are tossing you backwards and forwards and you just need to catch hold of the ring, and then the sailors pull you in. The captain is the one who has rescued you by sending his help to you through the rope that comes over the side of his boat. That is what it is like with Christianity. Jesus is, as it were, the captain of the ship. He offers you the lifeline. You can get hold of the ring; you can be saved. You can make that choice, and experience the righteousness of God, being in right relationship with him. What a miracle this is!

This was Paul’s actual experience. He went through such a dramatic conversion on the Damascus road. He speaks from personal experience. Although he is explaining this in theological terms, he is explaining an experience he has had himself. He felt that change inside him and he was so excited by it, and so motivated by it, that he wants to share this with other people.

Becoming a Believer - Law Court

There are different ways of describing what it means to become a believer.

“This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There’s no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood - to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he’d left the sins committed beforehand unpunished - he did this to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”

Romans 3:22-26, NIV

There are three ways here that Paul describes the experience of becoming a Christian. First of all, he uses the example of the law courts (verse 24). ‘Justified freely’: this is a very important way of explaining the Christian faith. Imagine that a young boy goes down to the marketplace and starts to steal goods, putting them in his pockets, and he is caught. He is brought before the magistrate in the community. He hangs his head in shame; he knows that he is guilty, and he knows that his family are going to be punished. He is shamed by his actions and then a fine is going to be issued. Somebody steps in and says, ‘I’ll pay the fine.’That is the experience of becoming a Christian. The boy is released because somebody pays the fine; it is as if God has paid the price himself through Jesus Christ. The moment of becoming a Christian can be like that exhilarating experience when the judge looks at you in the law court - you are guilty of some crime, and he says you have been acquitted; you are going to be set free because the price has been paid by another person. When Paul uses the term ‘justified’, he is thinking of the law courts, and the experience of being set free rather than condemned, or put in prison, fined, or punished in some other way.

Becoming a Believer - Slave Market

Also in verse 24, he uses another expression ‘redemption that comes through Jesus Christ’. What Paul has in mind when he thinks about redemption is something that took place in every Roman city - the slave market. Human beings were bought and sold in the marketplace in every major city in the Roman world. Slavery was lawful. People were enslaved for different reasons. It wasn’t based on race or the colour of your skin; it was based sometimes on being prisoners of war, or having committed crime and being condemned to slavery, and many other circumstances. Many people became household slaves; they worked as domestic servants. Richer citizens would go down to the marketplace when the slave market was taking place on a certain day, and they would literally go and and inspect the men, women, boys and girls who were bought there. Often they would be stripped naked and physically inspected. They were humbled; very often they would have a name tag around their neck, sometimes they were in chains. It was the most utterly humiliating experience. Someone picked one out and said, ‘I’ll have that one; I’ll have that one’, and negotiate for the price and take them back. Then, for the rest of their lives, they had to obey the husband and wife who led the family that they lived with. Sometimes they were treated reasonably well; sometimes they were treated terribly. Sometimes they were exploited; sometimes sexually exploited; sometimes they died of the hard work that they had to do. Many of them were not permitted to have families when they became adults. Slavery was a terrible thing. Often slaves would wear iron collars around their neck or were branded on their skin with their name, and the name of the owner of that slave.

Imagine yourself as a slave in a slave market, waiting to be sold. A rich man comes in and says, ‘I’ll have that one and I’ll set him free. I’ll pay for him but he is not going to have to be a slave anymore. We will take his chains off and we will find him a job and will give him an independent life’. That is redemption - no longer a slave. That is how Paul felt about slavery to the sin he has described, in the earlier episodes, which controls you in all sorts of different ways, and you just can’t escape from the control of sin. But Christ can break that power and make you a different person.

Becoming a Believer - Temple Sacrifice

So Paul speaks of the law court, he speaks of the slave market, and then he speaks of the Temple sacrifice (verse 25.)

“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith.”

In the Jewish religion through the Law of Moses, God had set up a system of animal sacrifice conducted by the priests in the Jewish Temple, in the city of Jerusalem. The Jews knew that there were certain religious sacrifices they had to make on behalf of themselves and their families on a regular basis. They would go to the Temple, bring the animal, present it to the priest, who would then sacrifice it on an altar, take the blood from the animal, and pray over the animal, and pray over you and your family. The animal was sacrificed instead of you; it was a substitute. Particularly sheep and lambs were sacrificed. When you took the animal, it was almost as if you imagine that the sins of you and your family go onto the animal and the animal dies under the weight of those sins and you then are free. It was symbolic. But when Christ came, Paul understood that he was the ultimate sacrifice. He fulfilled that sacrificial reality. God had already decreed in the Old Testament that forgiveness of sins was going to come through sacrifice; that was the way that God was going to forgive sins. We find this going all the way back in the Old Testament, for example: Leviticus 7: 11, describing the process of animal sacrifice says,

“For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I’ve given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar. It is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.”

Leviticus 7:11, NIV

So the blood that comes from the animal who has been killed represents the life of that animal and is the symbolic representation of the process of paying the price for somebody else’s sins. The animal suffers for you. Paul saw that Jesus’ death functioned in exactly the same way; it was the ultimate sacrifice. He was the ‘lamb of God’as John the Baptist had said. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement. God himself wanted Jesus to die on the cross, to fulfill the sacrificial element - to be the substitute and the sacrifice so that we don’t have to suffer the price for our own sins.

Justification by Faith

Paul uses three images: the law courts, the slave market and the Temple sacrifice. What a wonderful explanation of the gospel, what wonderful images that help us to understand what happened when Jesus died for us.

“Where, then is boasting? It’s excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith for we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there’s only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law.”

Romans 3:27-31, NIV

What Paul is saying here, is that ‘justification by faith’creates equality between all people - the Jews and the non-Jews now come to God on an equal basis. That is wonderful isn’t it? There is no distinction between races when it comes to Christian faith. There was no distinction between the Jews, the privileged community of those days and the rest of the Gentiles. Today there is no distinction between any races concerning salvation in Christ. We all come on an exactly equal basis.

This is a wonderful statement of the nature of Jesus’death on the cross. If we

preach and teach, we can use these stories and these examples: the law courts, the marketplace slavery, and the sacrifice in the Temple, as ways of explaining the Christian message to different people.

Reflections

Here are some final reflections. This passage I like to describe as the second great summit, as we walk along the road of Romans. Romans is like walking along mountain ridge; you go up to a summit and then down a little, and then up to another summit. There are a number of beautiful summits along the way. The first one was Romans 1: 16 and 17, the second one is Romans 3: 1 - 26 which describes in beautiful detail how the gospel works.

The death of Jesus was a sacrifice for us and a substitute. That is tremendously important. He stood in our place so that we don’t have to pay the price of our sins. Paul explains here very clearly that faith is the key. Justification comes through a living faith - putting your trust wholly in what Christ has done for you. People find that difficult to do and some of you viewing this may think, you want to do that for the first time. Let me encourage you to take a step forward, to follow Christ. Some of you may have some religious background and you are not that clear about the fact that he paid the price for you, you can’t achieve it yourself. Can I encourage you to trust wholly in the death of Jesus and his atonement? God is fully able to save you by what Christ has done for you.

I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.