Justified (Romans 3.9-26)

Introduction

Did you hear about the man who worked for the bus company and who got struck by lightning? Well, it turns out he was a conductor...  Sorry, that’s an old one.

Have you, or has anyone you know, ever been struck by lightning? You wouldn’t want to be. The electrical charge of a bolt of lightning can exceed a billion volts. That wouldn’t be much fun.

On 2nd July 1505, a young German student was travelling by horse to his university. On one part of the journey, he rode through a severe thunderstorm and, as the rain pelted down, suddenly a bolt of lightning struck the ground just a few feet away from where he was. He was terrified of death and divine judgment and as the bolt struck the ground he was filled with dread, and he cried out, “The righteousness of God! I’m damned!”

That man’s name was... does anyone know..? Martin Luther. And that thought of God’s wrath and fearsome judgement consumed him for years. He became one of the most zealous and disciplined monks in the monastery but he was still gripped with his obsession about the righteousness of God. As he celebrated mass his thoughts about the unimaginable heights of God’s infinite glory filled him with fear. It seems he physically trembled and had panic attacks just thinking about God’s ominous awesomeness.

So aware was Martin Luther of the deep darkness in his heart, of his utter unworthiness, that he was sure he could never stand before God and live.

Until one day, wrestling with his fears and tormented by his sharp sense of sinful unworthiness, his world was rocked to its core. It’s no exaggeration to say that the discovery he made that day changed the course of European and indeed world history.

Out of the blue, he came to realise that the righteousness of God is not that terrifying divine rage that could damn him in an instant.

No! The righteousness of God is the unblemished holiness and the sheer goodness of Jesus Christ that God wants to give you. And Luther made that discovery right here in Paul’s letter to the Romans.    

So let’s take these verses one by one and unpack them.

No One Righteous

Verse 9: “What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin.”

Basically, Paul sums up here what he’s been saying throughout chapters 1-2. Everybody, both religious people (Jews) and irreligious people (Gentiles) everyone is in the same boat. 

We are all subject to a kind of inescapable downward tug in our soul. Everywhere you go in the world, whatever the continent and whatever the time in history, you find the same phenomenon. There is not a human being on Earth who is able to live a perfectly moral and upright life.

So in v10-18 Paul shows from 8 different Old Testament sources that, God already knows none of us really has a heart for him. In fact, from head to toe, our default position is to rebel against God’s ways.

Question: Has my life been filled with gratitude and trust toward God in proportion to his overwhelming generosity towards me? Answer: No.

So in v19-20 Paul makes this conclusion: nobody can stand up and proudly say “I’ve kept all God’s law.” Nobody.

Think about this with me: God made it easy for you and me to be good by giving us ten clear, basic and simple rules to live by; the Ten Commandments. But the truth is that not one person here - or anywhere - has even managed rule number 1.

The first commandment – what does it say? “You shall have no other gods before me.”

Let’s put that to the test. Is there anybody here this morning who has never, not once, ever considered anything or anybody in their life more important to them than God?

No one? No surprise there. Nobody, not even the most devout and saintly person on Earth can even get past Number One of God’s ten clear, basic and simple rules. This is the point Paul is making here and we’ve just demonstrated that he is spot on.

So Paul says (v20) “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by observing [God’s] law.” Why not? Why will no one be declared righteous by keeping the Ten Commandments?

Because no one has ever managed it. God is never going to say to someone, “Well done! You succeeded in keeping all the commandments. That’s amazing. For that, I’m declaring you righteous.”

Up to this point Martin Luther would have agreed. That’s why he was so full of dread. He knew he had royally messed up already many times. How could there be any hope for him when he died?

But Now…

And then he read the next bit…

Verse 21: “But now…” Here is the major turning point. “But now, apart from the law…” [in other words forget about never being able to live a perfectly holy life, you’ve already blown it – stop thinking about performance]…

“But now… the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.” [In other words, the Old Testament always said that something new was going to come along and change everything, and now it has.]

Verse 22: “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” There it is, right there. God’s righteousness is not about his wrath against sinners. It is his gift to anyone who accepts it – through faith in Jesus.

Verse 23-24: [Religious people and irreligious people,] they’ve 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.”

Verse 25 tells you how he did it; it was through the cross. That’s why Jesus died. That’s why we make such a big deal of the cross.

And then Paul goes on to say three times that people are justified by faith.

"Justification" is a word taken straight from the magistrate’s courts.

It means that you are standing in the dock, and you know you are guilty on all counts.

And, as you stand to have the verdict read to you, as your family brace themselves for the inevitable, as the judge sums up all the evidence of your undeniable guilt, and just as the death sentence is about to be pronounced and swiftly carried out, inexplicably and wondrously, all the charges against you are dropped.

The gavel hits the desk in front of the judge and he shouts “Not guilty! You are free to leave the court.”

The police take you handcuffs off. Even he is shaking his head and smiling. He can't believe it either. Your friends cheer. Your dad bursts into tears. Your mum faints. You are instantly released.

If you have faith in Jesus Christ, you are found not guilty by heaven’s jury, you are declared innocent and set free by the judge of the living and the dead and you are acquitted with a royal pardon.

Justification is a verdict. When God justifies you, he actually says, “as far as I am concerned, you are cleared of all the charges. The case has collapsed.”

That’s good news. What a God we have!

There’s a Pidgin English translation of the Bible they use in Papua New Guinea. The word for justification apparently, is “God ‘e say ‘im all right.”

Isn’t that beautiful?

So how do you get to a place where God looks at you straight in the eye and says “I say you all right”?

There is only one way; by faith alone. You get there by believing that God is who he says he is, in Christ, and then by acting upon it.

I sometimes find myself thinking, “When I compare myself to some others, I’m not all that bad.” And I have to stop myself. Because that’s not the gospel. The good news of Jesus is salvation for sinners who know they have nothing to offer God.

People are suspicious of a free offer. I once got a nice colourful envelope in the post. Inside there was a letter which read something like this:

‘Congratulations, Mr John Lambert, you have been specially selected for a unique prize draw. You have won a prize, Mr John Lambert. What is it to be Mr John Lambert, a Caribbean cruise, a Ford Mondeo or this key ring, made in China?’

I didn’t think “Wow, my lucky day!” We’re so used to this kind of junk mail that we miss the sheer majesty of the grace of God. We’re inoculated against free gifts. We just go, “Oh right, God’s free grace, cool…”

But hear this; if you have faith in Christ, God says you’re made right with him. You’re snatched from the pit of hell. You’re spared a fate worse than death.

The moment Jesus died, he settled a debt that you and I could never pay. The moment you and I believe in him that debt vanishes from our account.

But that isn’t all. Justification isn’t just a declaration that my unrighteousness no longer counts against me. Justification also means that Christ’s pure, spotless righteousness is reckoned to be mine.

In Philippians 3.9, Paul talks about “not having a righteousness of my own… but that which is through faith in Christ – the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.”

In other words, if you live by faith in Jesus, when God looks at me and you on Judgement Day, he will see Christ’s faultless obedience, his perfect blamelessness, his untainted innocence and he will count them as yours.

Ending

So, as I close, are you living under a cloud of condemnation? Don’t. Are you bowed down by failures? You don’t need to. Are you fearful of God’s judgement? There’s no need. Don’t live as if your justification were by works. Come back to the cross and marvel once again at the grace in which you now stand!

Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 28th April 2013