In our last study we looked at Romans 3:21-26; these verses are the clearest statement of the Gospel to be found anywhere in your Bible.
On Romans 3:21-26:
Martin Luther: “...the chief point, and the very central place of the epistle and of the whole Bible.”
John Calvin:
“... there is not probably in the whole Bible a passage which sets forth more profoundly the righteousness of God in Christ.”
“... there is not probably in the whole Bible a passage which sets forth more profoundly the righteousness of God in Christ.”John Calvin: “Justification is the main hinge upon which religion turns.”
“Justification is the main hinge upon which religion turns.”What then is justification?
Justification is a judicial act by God in which the one who is actually guilty is declared not guilty!
In this study we will conclude Chapter 3 with vs 27-31
There are three main ideas in vs 27-31 that are based on vs 24-25:
“being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation by His blood through faith....”
The phrase “by His blood,” argues for at least three things that cannot be successfully refuted, at least from Scripture.
1. No boasting in anything that you may do or think {27-28}.
2. No difference in Gentile and Jew {29-30}.
3. This way of salvation establishes the law {31}.
But Blood? Why blood and not just the death of Christ?
You must understand the Sacrifice of Christ in the context of the O.T. sacrificial system. Christ did not go to the cross only to be a public spectacle.
Christ is on the cross as the fulfillment of everything that the law demanded.
Acts 20:28 Here Paul is saying farewell to the elders of the church at Ephesus: “Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.”
There is one way and only one way of salvation in both the O.T. & N.T.
Abraham was justified by faith; the Christians in the N.T. are justified by faith.
Romans 5:9 “... having now been justified by His blood, ...”
Ephesians 1:7 “In Him we have redemption through His blood...”
Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been made near by the blood of Christ.”
Hebrews 9:12 “Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctfies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ,...?”
What happens in the symbolism of the animal sacrifice?
Hands placed on the head; sin imputed to an innocent substitute...
The satisfaction of the O.T. sacrificial system demanded the blood of a sufficient sacrifice. All the sacrifices that were offered before Christ were types. A type in Scripture stands for the real thing.
Adam was a type of Christ. There were things about Adam that were true of Christ. Adam was a representative person; so was Christ. {Chapter 5}
Adam joined his bride in sin; Christ took the sin of His bride, the church.
Melchizedek was a type of Christ as a priest and a king.
But types are not sufficient to serve the purpose of propitiating the holy wrath of God.
That is what is so wrong with the teaching that God actually saved anyone other than through the Gospel of redemption in the blood of Christ. The teaching that God saved the Jews under the law in O.T. times is exactly what Paul has proved to be impossible.
“Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” {Romans 3:20}
God did not change the way of salvation, He fulfilled it!
And He fulfilled it with the precious blood of Christ.
In the N.T., the death of Christ is always expressed in terms of the fulfillment of the O.T. prophets. That is why any interpretation of the O.T. must be in terms of the N.T.
When the N.T. begins, Matthew repeatedly states, “That it might be fulfilled...”
“And she shall bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins. Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: ‘Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which is translated, ‘God with us.’ ” Matthew 1:21-23
John the Baptist pointed to Jesus as He came away from the temptation in the wilderness, and what did John say?
“Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” John 1:29
That immediately takes us to the O.T. sacrificial system.
What can that mean other than the fulfillment of the types has come.
The O.T. Levitical system is fulfilled in the blood of Christ.
Point One: No boasting in anything that you may do or think {27-28}.
vs 27-28 “Where is boasting then? ...” “glorying”
What can we possibly have to boast of in ourselves? The “righteousness of God,” appropriated only by the gift of faith, excludes all boasting.
All efforts to be justified by “deeds of the law” are excluded because we are “Justified freely by His grace.” Wherein is there any ground for boasting?
In Chapter 4, Paul will explain in more detail what he introduces here:
3:27Boasting is excluded
Boasting is excluded4:1-2 Abraham had no right to boast
3:28because justification is by faith, not by deeds of the law
because justification is by faith, not by deeds of the law 4:3-8 Abraham was justified by faith, not works
3:29-31 Circumcised {Jews} & uncircumcised {Gentiles} must have the same faith 4:9-17 Circumcised & uncircumcised are children of Abraham though faith
There is no basis for boasting in anything that you can do.
The Jew was known for his boasting in the law and circumcision.
Paul has already destroyed any hope in these outward signs that belonged to the Jew. Besides, a true Jew is one who is circumcised in the heart {2:29}.
Everyone will be judged by the law that they have, even those who never hear the Ten Commandments or the Gospel will be judged by the law written on their heart. Men, ever since Cain, have tried to propitiate the wrath of God by their own inventions.
Righteous Abel brought a substitute that required the shedding of blood, but Cain thought he had a better way. Cain didn’t want the same old way that denied to him any basis for boasting.
Cain’s thoughts:
I tilled, planted, weeded, watered, sweated, harvested, I did it!
And so it is even now. The gospel says “trust the righteousness of God.”
Man says, “No, you must also belong to this or that church; you must be baptized in order to be saved; you must follow this or that list of do’s and don’ts. The same with the Judaizers in Acts 15 and Galatians.
Natural man thinks, Salvation can’t be as simple as trusting in Christ alone.
How can man take any credit in that?
So they choose to follow what Jude called, “The way of Cain.”
In the Gospel, Boasting is excluded!
As we are learning in our studies of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, it is not the outward keeping of the letter of the law that meets the intent of the law. The law must be responded to by faith. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.” Matthew 5:6
The believer does not boast in his obedience, but has a desire in his inmost being to please God.
The statement of the doctrine of justification is plainly stated in vs 28:
“Therefore we conclude that a man is justified {declared righteous} by faith apart from the deeds of the law.”
If a person understands that justification is a declaration that a person is righteous and that Justification is granted freely by grace, what then can they boast in?
Dr. Timothy George, Dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University, autographs his books with 1 Corinthians 4:7, “For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you glory {boast} as if you had not received it?”
And so, Point One:No boasting in anything that you may do or think.
Point Two: No difference in Gentile and Jew {29-30}.
vs 29-30 Paul has already established that there is no difference between Gentile and Jew: everyone is under the wrath of God. Now he shows that the propitiation of God’s wrath is the same for Gentile and Jew.
There is one God so He must be the God of Gentile and Jew.
If it were true that a person {the Jew} could be saved by the law, then the Gentile would have no hope of being saved. Why? Because the Gentile did not have the law. There is only one God and only one salvation and that is in the gospel of God, the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ.
What disturbs me the most about these liberals who allow that there is salvation in other religions, is that if that could be true, then the sacrifice of the blood of Christ would have been unnecessary. “Ah,” they say, “You can believe the Christian Gospel if that’s what you choose to believe, we are more sophisticated than that, we are not so narrow-minded, surely other sincere religious beliefs will be accepted by God.”
In the Day of Judgement they will have to tell the Lord Jesus that He went to a lot of trouble, but it was not, after all, the only way to be right with God.
He will say to them, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.” Mathew 7:21
I am well aware that the context of that verse is false professors of Christ, but He will say the same to others who deny His uniqueness and sufficiency as the Christ.
“It is hard to see how by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Paul could have expressed the “no distinction” truth in clearer language. It takes but little imagination to sense how the entire Roman congregation, gathered for worship in one meeting place or in several, must have rejoiced when this epistle, with its emphasis on unity
{cf Ephesians 2:11-17} was read. The notion according to which even today God recognizes two groups in which He takes special delight - the Jews and the church - finds no support either here or elsewhere in Scripture. What does find support is Paul’s passage found in Ephesians 4:4-6.” Hendriksen
A brief comment on vs 30: “... circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith...” Is there a subtle point to be made in the two different words? I will trust the scholarship of Martin Lloyd-Jones who says that there is no material difference.
And so, Point Two: No difference in Gentile and Jew which means every person in the world. There is One God, therefore there can only be one way of justification.
Point Three: This way of salvation establishes the law {31}.
vs 31 Has the law been abolished? Does faith nullify the law?
Some people, might conclude that since the law plays no part in justification, then the law has no place in salvation. To the contrary, faith fulfills the law!
Since by law-works no mortal will ever be justified {3:20}, and since it was apart from the law that a righteousness from God has been revealed {21}, and since, therefore , a person is justified by faith, apart from the works of the law {28}, are we depriving the law of its value? Do we invalidate the law through our insistence on faith? Paul’s answer is abrupt and decisive:
“By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law.”
There were those to whom Paul is addressing then, as there are now, saying,
“Let us do away with the law.
All we need is faith. “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound.” “God forbid...’
In verse 31, “...we establish the law,” is contrasted with the “law of faith” in versse 27. The “law of faith” means the “principle” of faith; faith principle as opposed to law principle.
In what way, Paul, do you uphold the law by your emphasis on justification by faith? (Cf. Romans 3:30; 7:7-13; Galatians 2:19; 3: 21, 24)
How then has the Gospel established the law? In seven ways: {Lloyd-Jones}
1. It satisfies the holiness and righteousness of God that the law demanded.
2. The cross confirms everything that God said in the law about sin.
3. The cross satisfies the wrath of God through propitiation.
4. The Gospel answers our utter and complete helplessness to satisfy the law.
5. The Gospel shows that the O.T. sacrifices were only types that pointed to Christ.
6. The blood of Christ satisfies the law which says without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.
7. The Gospel proves that the law was essentially spiritual;
“To love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, ....”
not with “deeds of the law,” but with my heart.Nothing establishes the law more than the gospel of God. God has given the moral code to men, first in their hearts, and then to Israel through Moses.
And so the law is established in a Man who actually did keep the law.
Not for Himself, but for those given to Him by the Father from before the foundation of the world.
And if, by God’s grace, you are able to believe that, Boasting is excluded!
“NEW COVENANT THEOLOGY”
In order to instruct you on how relevant this notion is of setting aside the law, there is a movement that I have been reading about now for about a year called “New Covenant Theology.” And I agree with much of what they teach. But ....
There is a New Covenant in the Bible, but it is expressed in terms of the blood of Christ.
I will not try to go into all the ramifications of this new system of theology, but I will tell you what I have come to understand about it.
The basic presupposition of New Covenant Theology is that the Decalogue, or the Ten Commandments have been replaced by a new law of Christ.
They base much of their theory on an interpretation of Jeremiah 31: 31 which they say teaches that the Old Covenant will be abrogated and replaced by the New Covenant. With the New Covenant comes a new law, which is a higher and more spiritual law than the Law of Moses.
I will not take the time to go into the pro and con arguments. I will give you one example, which is enough to make me disregard so-called New Covenant Theology as a novelty that will soon die of its own lack of consistent comparison of Scripture with Scripture.
They teach, for example, that when Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, says,
“You have heard it said by them of old, ‘You shall not murder,’ But I say unto you ...” They say that Jesus is establishing a new law that replaces the law of Moses.
What is especially disturbing to me is a statement by one of New Covenant Theology’s leading proponents: “Christ did say most clearly, that His law is infinitely higher and more spiritual than anything Moses ever wrote. Contrasting the Sermon on the Mount with the Tablets of Stone is like comparing the sun to a candle. Making the Sermon on the Mount to be only the true interpretation of Moses is to effectively deny Christ as a lawgiver and make him to be merely a rubber stamp of Moses.”
Do they forget that Jesus said, “Moses wrote of Me.”
Theologians try to pit Paul against James; here they try to make Jesus oppose Moses. To me that is a wrong view of the inspiration of Scripture.
I am continuing to study New Covenant Theology but what I quoted above is enough to make me disregard it as misguided and shallow.
Comment on expository preaching: With topical only, you never learn more than the preacher knows, and he never learns anything new.
It is significant, at least to me, that I am at this same time preaching through Matthew and we are right now dealing with Jesus’ exposition of the law of Moses. The law is not a code that Moses devised, Moses was the instrument that God used. New Covenant Theology makes Jesus oppose Moses.
The fallacy of their argument is that the essence of what Jesus says about each of the six illustrations {murder, adultery, divorce, the oath, retaliation, love} is found in the O.T. So, Jesus is not abrogating, amending, or adding to the original commandments of the law. He is, in fact, reminding the scribes and Pharisees of what was the intent of the law from the beginning.
Let’s return to our message on the text:
The doctrines of
(a) Justification by faith, hence salvation, by faith and
(b) that of the usefulness of God’s law, coinside beautifully; for “through the law comes consciousness of sin.”
When this consciousness of sin is sanctified by the Holy Spirit, it causes one to cry out for mercy and deliverance. That deliverance is fully supplied when the sinner surrenders his life to God; that is, when by genuine God-given faith, he welcomes into his heart and life the Lord Jesus Christ, and can say:
“Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.”
When John Bunyan read Romans 3:24, it was as if he heard God saying to his deeply troubled, guilt-stricken soul, “Sinner, thou thinkest that because of thy sins and infirmities I cannot save thy soul, but behold my Son is by me, and upon Him I look, and not upon thee, and I will deal with thee according as I am pleased with Him.”
Is it possible that we have become so accustomed to the expression “forgiveness of sins” that it has lost most of its meaning for us? Do we meditate at times on the fact that our sins are infinitely more heinous in the sight of God than they are to us? That He nevertheless blots them out out once and for all, lovingly asssuring us, “I will forgive your iniquity, and your sin will I remember no more?” But to do this He had to punish those sins in His Son, the One whom He loved as God alone can love!
The ground of justification is not our own merit, nor faith, nor evangelical obedience, nor the work of Christ in us, but His work for us.
But justification is much more than forgiveness. The heavenly Father, having canceled our sin debt, then as it were lovingly throws His arms around us {cf Luke 15:20}, and tells each of His pardoned and justified ones, “You are my son, my daughter, my very own. And being my child, you are also My heir {8:17}.” God treats each one of His children as thought they were an only child.
Think of it, “Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it.” {Ephesians 5:25}
As we discussed in the last lesson, the heavy penalty for sin was not paid by Christ immediately upon the entrance of sin into the world, and that throughout the period of the O.T. people were justified by faith, and the punishment of their sin was passed over.
But the indulgence of God of the sins of His people could not be suspended indefinitely. Divine justice had to be satisfied. There was the charge that God Himself was not just. Adam and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Rahab and Esther and David and countless others were dead and yet were at peace with God and their sin had not yet been punished, either in themselves or in an acceptable Substitute.
But now, God has done it! The Christ has come, the law has been satisfied, the Christ has died! “God did not spare His own son but gave Him up for us all” {Romans 8:31}. God did this “to demonstrate His justice in the present time, that He might be just and the One who justifies the person who has faith in Jesus” {3:24-31}.
The atonement does not consist only in a display to others of the divine justice. This is one of its results; but it is such a display only by being a satisfaction to the justice of God. It is not a symbol, an example, or an illustration, but an actual satisfaction. {26}
All true doctrine tends to humble men and exalt God; and all true religion is characterized by humility and reverence. {27}
We need to remember our points in this study:
1. No boasting in anything that you may do or think {27-28}.
2. No difference in Gentile and Jew {29-30}.
3. This way of salvation establishes the law {31}.
Amen
