Romans 3:21 - 3:26

Romans — Steve Gregg

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Romans 3:21 - 3:26

RomansSteve Gregg

This text explores the central ideas in Romans 3:21-26, where Paul argues that righteousness comes from God as a gift and is not determined by external deeds. The concept of the "glory of God" is central to Christian theology, with believers called to bear the image of Christ in their lives. The text also discusses the atonement theories, the significance of the propitiation for sin, and the importance of faith in Jesus for salvation. Ultimately, the text emphasizes the role of Jesus in providing redemption, reconciliation, and justification for imperfect, fallen humanity out of God's love for humanity.

Transcript

Last time we left off, we had not finished chapter 3, and that was kind of deliberate, because chapter 3, there's a good chance the chapter divisions here are infelicitous, should have been done differently, because really, chapter 3, verse 20, comes to a logical turning point in Paul's argument, and chapter 3, verse 21, where we start today, turns a corner, which continues through chapter 4. So obviously, the place where chapter 4 has been inserted could have been better done earlier. Probably chapter 3, verse 21, should have been chapter 4, verse 1, but we can't change that now. We shouldn't cry over spilled milk, but we might observe that when it comes to the content, or it's spilled coffee, for that matter, and when it comes to the content of the argument, we really have come to a point where we can't change that.

So, we're going to turn to a new chapter, when we're at chapter 3, verse 21. And of course, in chapters 1 through 3, Paul was spending most of that space trying to point out that the Jews, who think that being a Jew is, in itself, a badge of superiority that God acknowledges, largely because of the emblem of circumcision, which sets them apart from Gentiles, and they believe that circumcision, by itself, put them in a different class in God's dealing. Paul has spent three chapters pointing out that that's not really a reasonable thing to say, because those who are circumcised sometimes are just as wicked in their behavior as those who are not circumcised.

On the other hand, some people who are not circumcised, namely Gentile Christians, actually keep the law from their hearts in a way better than many Jews who are circumcised do. And so, Paul's argument is circumcision is sort of a non-issue with God. You may be circumcised or not, but you're not judged by whether you heard or grew up knowing the law, like the Jew did.

But whether you're a doer of the law, whether your behavior is conforming to God's standards. And so, at the end of chapter, well, by chapter 3, verses 19 and 20, he has concluded, especially in verse 23 and 24, by the deeds of the law. And I mentioned, I think deeds of the law, with Paul, in this particular kind of argument, means the ceremonial deeds.

Circumcision, kosher diet, Sabbath, and those kinds of deeds of the law. Rather than abstaining from murder and adultery and theft, those deeds of the law. Of course, Paul would never disparage the value of the moral standards of the law.

Paul affirmed them always. But what he was trying to undermine was the idea that these ceremonial things, which only Jews did, and Gentiles did not do, that these would, in any sense, count toward a person's being right with God or being better off with God. The deeds of the law here being, I believe, the special ceremonial deeds that the law prescribed for Israel.

No one is justified by being Israel and having these special ceremonies that they perform. The law, in fact, only provides more of a stark awareness of sin, which is the opposite of justifying you. It condemns you.

So if you're trying to be justified by the law, you're actually using the law for the wrong thing. It's not there to justify you, it's there to condemn, to identify sin, to point out where you've done wrong. It is not there in order to change your life, although it does provide a code that describes the way your life needs to be changed.

The law, especially the moral law, is a very valid code that should be the target, the bar to get over, but the law doesn't provide any way of helping you get over that bar, nor does it give you any encouragement that you are getting over it. Therefore, there needs to be some other means of justification. That's where the argument turns.

In chapter 3, verse 21, Paul says, But now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ, whom God set forth to be a propitiation by His blood through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at this present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Now this is really an unpacking somewhat of what he hinted at and teased us with at the very beginning of his argument in chapter 1, because he said concerning the gospel in chapter 1, verse 17, he said, For in it, meaning the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith.

Now the righteousness of God being revealed is what he comes back to here in chapter 3, 21. There is a righteousness of God revealed, apart from the law. And he goes on to explain what he means.

And as I said when we considered that phrase in a previous lecture, the righteousness of God, there is ambiguity in it because it could mean the righteousness that is a description of God, God's own character, His own righteousness, a description of what kind of God He is. He's a righteous God. And talking about the righteousness of God might be similar to be talking about the faithfulness of my wife.

We're talking about a character trait of the person being talked about. So the term righteousness of God can simply mean God's own goodness, His own justice, His own rightness. On the other hand, there are verses, including some in the passage we just read, that seem to point to the idea that it is a righteousness that proceeds from God, that is a gift from God.

It is of God in that He is its originator and source and giver. Of can mean from. And this is sort of an ambiguous genitive here.

It could mean the righteousness that describes God or the righteousness that comes from God to us that we now possess because He has provided it for us. We are now righteous, but not of ourselves. We didn't generate this righteousness.

God generated it. God imputed it to us. And so the term righteousness of God actually has the possibility of meaning both.

And I suggested that this passage we just read suggests both. In other words, it's not either or. The Reformed theology has typically focused entirely on the righteousness from God.

The idea that we can't be very righteous and that what Paul is talking about is that we get an imputed righteousness that comes from God by faith. And I believe that is true. I believe that is the meaning of the term.

Apparently it is the meaning of the term as Paul uses it in verses 21 and 22 because he talks about a righteousness of God that is on all and in all and to all who believe. So I have received righteousness, which is from God. On the other hand, in verse 25 and 26, it talks about him demonstrating his righteousness.

That is that he was righteous as a judge, acquitting people who were not really innocent. And the gospel allows for a righteousness to be, as it were, imputed to the defendant. An unearned righteousness that comes from God, that's a gift from God.

So we have, it would appear in verses 20 and 21, the righteousness of God seems to point to that righteousness that we have by faith, whereas verses 25 and 26 seems to be the righteousness that God has in justifying those who believe in Jesus. God can justify himself. He can be righteous and do this.

A judge who lets bad people go free is not usually a righteous or good judge. Judges are supposed to do justice. They are supposed to punish criminals and exonerate innocent people.

But the point here is that Paul has spent three chapters showing that no one is really innocent. And if God's going to exonerate anyone, he's going to have to exonerate people who are not innocent. That is not, generally speaking, a just thing for a judge to do.

But Paul is saying God is nonetheless just. He can be just and the justifier. That is, he can be the acquitter.

He can be the judge that passes down a sentence of acquittal to those who believe in Jesus and without compromising his own integrity, his own justice. How? Well, that's what this paragraph is talking about. And there's some depth to it that I believe will be, again, unpacked later.

I told you at the beginning when we were talking about outlines in the book of Romans, my belief is that Paul's essential message is given in chapters one through five. I think that's essentially the purpose of his writing. He has summarized his message in one through five.

But from chapter six on, I believe he begins to revisit points that he made briefly. In order to keep the flow of his argument in the first five chapters, he could not detain himself as he might have on some points that really need some further elaboration. So he passed quickly over certain points in the first five chapters that he revisits in chapters six through eleven, really, and expounds upon further.

We might even, if this were a modern book, think of it as the main body of the book is chapters one through five, and then it's got these appendices, appendix on this subject that I mentioned, appendix on that subject that I mentioned. That may be an oversimplification of the outline of the book, but that is how I tend to see what we find here. He is even here, in his main part of his argument, going to introduce very pregnant ideas without delivering the baby fully.

That's going to be expounded on further on down in some of the later chapters when he revisits this and other subjects. But we have it here summarized, and because he does revisit it later, and we've read the book, we've read the last chapter, we know how it goes. There are some things we can observe, even about these statements that are not fully expounded in this passage.

He says, now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed. This is the same line that we had in chapter one, verse seventeen, with the exception that he adds the phrase, apart from the law. He had already told us that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel in chapter one, verse seventeen.

Now he repeats, the righteousness of God is revealed, but he emphasizes apart from the law. Why? Because that's part of a summary of what he's been saying, that the Jews had the law, but it didn't justify them. It didn't even make them better than people who didn't have the law.

So the righteousness of God is not something provided by having the law. There must be a righteousness of God that's independent of the law, since after all, Gentiles who don't have the law sometimes do by nature the things contained in the law. The law is a non-issue.

It has no real contribution that it makes to justification. So the righteousness of God that is revealed, he now points out, is a righteousness that's independent of the law. You can be under the law or not.

You can be circumcised or uncircumcised. You can eat kosher or not eat kosher. It won't change anything.

The righteousness of God is unrelated to that. Those are non-issues. They are areas of personal liberty, as he will point out in chapter fourteen when he comes back to that point.

But this righteousness of God is revealed apart from the law, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Now when he says it is witnessed by the law and the prophets, he is again pointing out that he's not coming against what the Jews hold sacred. He has been rather harsh on the Jews in the first three chapters.

They might think he's been dissing the law, that he's been kind of taking that which is sacred to the Jew and saying this is nothing. He's not saying it's nothing. He says it isn't nothing.

It was a witness. The law and the prophets were valuable as a witness to this very thing. Now he had pointed out already, as we saw in chapter one, verse seventeen, that the righteousness of God was revealed according to a prophet, he had quoted Habakkuk, chapter two, verse four, the just shall live by faith.

And he's going to, before the end of chapter four, quote from the law and from the Psalms to support the same view. The law, the prophets, and the Psalms were the three divisions of the Tanakh, the Old Testament, as we call it, the Jewish Bible. And Paul selects samples from the law, which will be in Genesis, from the prophets, which was Habakkuk, and from Psalms, which will be Psalm 32 that he's going to quote in chapter four.

And so he's saying that this righteousness of God, though it is apart from the law, it may seem to you like we're destroying the law, but as Jesus said, we didn't come to destroy it, but to fulfill it. It was witnessed to, it was anticipated, it was predicted. What I'm saying is in fact different than what you Jews have been hearing with reference to the importance of the law, but I'm not taking away from its importance.

I'm just telling you what it was there for. It was not there to justify you. It was not there to guarantee that you'd be better people than other people.

It was there to tell you you should be, but it didn't make you that way. The law does not justify, but it does witness to. It bears witness to a justification that God has always had and known.

Now, in this particular verse, the righteousness of God seems to be a reference to the imputed righteousness by faith because he speaks of a righteousness apart from the law. And that seems to be focusing on humans being righteous apart from keeping the law. And so the righteousness that we possess is not related to our keeping the law.

It is related to something else, which he says in verse 22, is even the righteousness of God, which is through faith in Jesus Christ. That is to say, it's not through keeping the laws, it's through believing in Christ. And again, we need to return to the idea of what faith is because it has been mentioned again previously in chapter one.

We come back now and realize that faith is really the issue. But what is faith? What is it? It is more than simply believing something. It's even more than simply trusting somebody.

It is a relational connection between oneself and someone else, in this case, Christ, that is defined covenantally by mutual trust and faithfulness. We trust Christ because he's clearly faithful. But our faith, remember the word pistis can be translated faithfulness.

It was translated that way in chapter 3, verse 3. God's faithfulness is mentioned in Romans 3, 3, and that's the word pistis also. And even in Habakkuk 2, 4, which Paul quotes as the just shall live by faith, in Habakkuk in the Hebrew, it means faithfulness. It was the Septuagint translators that selected the word pistis to translate Habakkuk 2, 4, and they translated a Hebrew word that meant faithfulness.

So very clearly the Septuagint translators who are very fluent in Greek and Hebrew knew that pistis carried this meaning of faithfulness. That's why they chose it to translate the word faithfulness from Habakkuk. We think of faith only usually in terms of believing something.

But being faithful to it is part of what is implied in the word. And I mentioned this is even found in some of the older English in legal terms like in good faith. I made this promise in good faith.

And good faith doesn't mean I was believing, it means I was giving you reason to believe me. I was faithful, I was honest. So faith is a much richer word even in the older English language.

It has come to be thinned out in certain theological systems to mean only believe in Jesus, say a sinner's prayer, accept the Lord into your heart, you're in. Whereas in fact the word even in English and much more so in the Greek and even more so in the Hebrew of Habakkuk had the very profound content in its meaning of faithfulness as well as faith. You're not saved just by believing something, you're saved by entering into a good faith relationship with the faithful God.

You trust him and he trusts you just like husbands and wives. That's what covenant require, mutual trust. And mutual trust requires mutual trustworthiness.

Now again as I pointed out earlier and I always feel I have to say this because people so often misunderstand, to say you have to be faithful to God is not the same thing as saying you have to be perfect. It's not saying that you cannot have human weakness. And Paul gets into that in Romans 7 of course.

But what it means is that your commitment to Christ is steadfast. That he can count on you that tomorrow you're going to be committed to him too and the next day and 10 years from now and 50 years from now. When God looks at you he'll see someone who's still committed.

Committed yes, performing well hopefully better 50 years from now than now, but never perfect probably. It's not perfection of obedience. It is faithfulness, meaning I'm still committed to my wife even if I'm not a perfect husband.

I'm still committed. I'm faithful to my vows and being faithful to God is part of that relationship that says okay God says I see you have faith, pistis, faithfulness. You have this commitment to me where you're trusting me and you plan to be faithful to me.

You're planning to be in this relationship for life. You're mine now. I'm just going to count you righteous because of that.

Because that matters more to me than most anything else. You know as you read the Old Testament assessment of the different kings of Israel and Judah. All the kings of Israel were bad but some of the kings of Judah were said to be good.

They were faithful. They followed God like David their father had and others were badly evaluated because they didn't follow the Lord as David had. The interesting thing is that the faithful kings who are given a good eulogy, they weren't all good.

Even David wasn't all good. We know that. David did some really bad things.

Hezekiah made a serious mistake. Josiah made a serious mistake. These are some of the best kings Israel had and they are remembered as good.

God saw them as faithful even though they did wrong things. Why? They were judged on the basis of whether they tolerated idolatry or not. Why? Because idolatry among God's people is adultery to the marriage.

Nobody's a perfect husband or wife but it's not impossible for anyone to be faithful to their husband or wife. To worship idols for Israel would be to be unfaithful to God. To succumb to temptation was not a good thing and it often had horrible consequences but it was not the same thing as being unfaithful to God.

We would just assume every time I fail God I've been unfaithful. Every time I slip and fall I've been unfaithful. God can never trust me.

How can I even know I'm safe because I just keep making mistakes? That's not the issue. It is an issue but it's not the defining issue. What defines you as a Christian or not a Christian as being justified and in God's family and in Christ is whether you have that commitment to Christ that you have not released and will not release.

You're not leaving him for someone else. You're an Israelite king who does some things wrong but is not tolerant of idolatry. Not leaving God and the covenant for some other God.

And this is how apparently God thinks. We don't often have all of that brought out when we're told that we're justified by faith. But we're justified by pistis, faith and faithfulness which are both sides of the one coin.

And that one coin is simply involvement in a relationship characterized by mutual trust. God has to in some respect believe you when you say you're following him and that you're committed to him. If he doesn't believe you, if he can't believe you, you're not a Christian.

If you're credible, if he says, you know, I heard that testimony, I heard that promise you made when you were baptized, I heard that and I believe you. I trust you and you trust me. So we have a relationship.

We're in a covenant. And that's what I believe is if we would unpack this word faith as Paul understood it as a Jew and even as the Greek language itself would carry the connotations, I believe. Then when he says this is a righteousness that God bestows on those which comes through faith or pistis, this relationship, this faithful relationship with God, with Christ, verse 22 says, to all and on all, thus the older manuscripts I think leave out the term on all.

So if you have a newer translation that might not be there. But to all and on all who believe. So I believe Jesus and therefore I'm saved.

What do you believe about Jesus? Everybody believes in Jesus except a very small number of people who believe in some myth, that Jesus was some myth borrowed from Egyptian or Parthian religions and that Jesus is just a makeshift of traits from the gods of these pagans. That's a very small percentage of human beings have such a ridiculous view as that. There's not a serious historian on the planet who doubts that Jesus existed.

And in a land like ours, most people not only believe he existed, but they believe he was special. Maybe even from God. They might even go so far as to say he was the son of God.

They might even say all the things about him that Christians say. And at some level they might believe they're true, but that's not belief by itself. Believing is the exercise of faith.

It's trusting him and being trustworthy to him. That's what believing implies in this text because he's using the word those who believe to describe those who have faith. There's more than just having a mental agreement with the facts.

Saying, I believe. Well, you want to know what you believe? You believe what you do. That is, what you do will show what you believe.

If I told you there's a bomb under the table here ready to go off in about five minutes, do you believe me? If you said, yes, I do, then I could tell if you do by what you do, by your actions. If you say, yeah, I believe you, and then you went on with your business, paid no attention, I'd say, you don't believe me. Talking about believing is one thing.

What you believe will produce action. Faith without works is dead. James said, you say you have faith and I have works.

Show me your faith by what you do. Or he said, show me your faith without what you do, and I'll show you my faith by what I do. So faith here isn't just believing.

As Paul said elsewhere in Galatians 5, 6, he said it's a faith that works through love. We have love for God. This motivates us to work in ways to do things that are consistent with that love for God.

And it's the faith we have in God that generates those works of love. So very clearly, faith generates behavior of a certain kind. And Paul knew of no saving faith that did not.

And James clearly knew of no saving faith that did not, obviously. Now it says, for there is no difference, verse 23, end of verse 22, but the sentence goes into verse 23, for there is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Now there's no difference here, in view of what's gone on before, makes it very clear, there's no difference between a Jew and a Gentile.

He's comparing two different things and says there's no difference. They're pretty much the same. There's no difference between Jew and Gentile, and that was certainly counterintuitive from the standpoint of a Jew.

The Jews certainly thought there's a huge difference between him as a circumcised, kosher living individual, on the one hand, and the Gentile who was none of those things, and came out of paganism, and may now be a believer in some sense in the Jewish Messiah, but still lives on kosher, still is uncircumcised, still has all the things that Jews found disgusting about Gentiles. And he says, no, it looks to you like there's a difference, but I've just explained through the past three chapters, there is no difference. All have sinned, Jew and Gentile, and come short of the glory of God.

Now, we are so familiar with that verse. If you've been a Christian for very long, that's one of the verses that you've memorized, even maybe without trying. We hear it so much, it's just kind of in your head by default.

When a verse becomes that familiar, there's always the danger that we will not even be thinking about the words. We think we know what it's saying. Every time we've heard it quoted, it was quoted to make a certain point, and when we hear the verse, we hear that point.

It's like a conditioned response. That this is Paul's way of starting off on the four spiritual laws. This is Paul's way of starting out on the Roman's road.

This is Paul's way of telling people how to get to heaven. And it may be a surprise to us the first time we really think about the verse, he doesn't say, all have sinned and fallen short of heavenly destiny. But, of course, Christians very seldom think about what the word glory of God means.

They almost think of heaven and glory as the same thing. Ah, he died, he went to glory. Do you mean heaven? I guess you do.

Glory, you're using as a synonym for heaven, right? And how is this justified biblically? The word glory is not a synonym for heaven. What we have fallen short of is not our right to go to heaven per se. That is involved.

That's in a sense a secondary result. The glory of God, why would Paul say it this way? Why doesn't he say, all have sinned and fallen short of heaven? Well, some people just assume he does say that, that glory means heaven. But glory is never a reference to heaven in the Bible.

I've never found the term in any text that referred to heaven as glory. Now there is a glorious kingdom. There is glorification of our bodies in the resurrection.

And this, of course, does speak of eschatological glory. And in 1 Thessalonians, Paul talks about how we've been called to glory. And we might mistakenly think that he means we're called to heaven when he says that.

Now I believe we are called to heaven, but that's not what I think he's saying. In 1 Thessalonians 2, in verse 12, Paul says that you would walk worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. God calls us into his kingdom and glory.

Now notice, kingdom and glory are both terms that Christians have popularly just assumed means heaven. The kingdom of God, I guess that's heaven. Glory, I guess that's heaven.

But of course, when you actually make an effort to find out what these words mean in their actual usage in Scripture, you find that the kingdom of God is in no sense a synonym for heaven. And glory is not a synonym for heaven either. It may well be that when you die and go to heaven, that you continue to be a participant in the kingdom and in glory.

But this is not a particular focus on postmortem destinies, but rather what God has called us to in this life. We've been called to glory. Peter says the same thing.

In 1 Peter 5, in verse 10, he said, But may the God of all grace who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you've suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. So God has called us to glory. What is the Christian calling? Well, if glory is heaven, then we're called to go to heaven.

And that's, you know, just set your sights there and just dig in and try to stay faithful until you die. Then you'll reach your calling. But the Bible is very clear that when Jesus said the kingdom of God is at hand and called people to be a part of his kingdom, he was not talking about come quickly and die so you can go to heaven.

He's talking about participating in a movement led by a king. Him. And that was a kingdom.

Any movement that has a king as its head and subjects following it is a kingdom. And Jesus said, it's right here. It's in your midst.

It is overtaking you. You can't see it, but it's within you. The kingdom of God, therefore, is a movement that began when Jesus was here and which every Christian is to be born into.

You will not enter the kingdom of God unless you're born again. But entering the kingdom of God is not referring to dying and going to heaven. It's referring to embracing Christ as your king, transferring your loyalty from the kingdom of darkness, so that it says in Colossians 113 that God has translated us out of the power of darkness into the kingdom of his own dear son.

This has already happened. It's past tense. God has taken us where he found us under the power of darkness and translated us into some other reality, the kingdom of God.

That's what we're called to. We're called to have Jesus be our king is really what that means. But what does glory mean? We're called to glory.

Well, Paul says that's what we've fallen short of when we sin. When we sin, we fall short of the glory of God. What is behind this, I believe, is that God is to be glorified in us.

Our lives are to glorify God, and the Bible in no sense suggests that this is to be happening in heaven, merely. Jesus said in Matthew chapter 5 in the Sermon on the Mount, he said, Let your light shine before men, so men will see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. In other words, your behavior now is supposed to result in God's glory.

Now, I believe, that God is glorified in my life. This is the goal. This is the calling.

God was not glorified in my life of selfishness and sin, but he can be glorified in a life of obedience and good works and righteousness and Christlikeness. The point here is that our behavior is supposed to bring glory to God. Sinning does not.

Sinning is the wrong kind of behavior, and it doesn't glorify God. But doing righteous things glorifies God. All have sinned and fallen short of their duty to glorify God.

The glory of God is the goal of the Christian. Remember Paul said in 1 Corinthians 10.31, 1 Corinthians 10.31, Paul said, Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God. That means when you decide to do anything, even the most mundane things, like eat, which you do several times a day, your motive for all that you do, even such things as that, should be governed by your concern to glorify God.

Now, in that context, of course, he was talking about whether you choose to eat, meet sacrifice to idols or not. If you do in certain settings, that may stumble your brother, and that doesn't glorify God, certainly. You need to make your decisions about whether you eat or not and what you eat.

And every other decision in your life, to ask, is this going to serve the purpose of God's glory? Will God be glorified? Now, the glory of God is spoken of in Scripture as something that was seen in Jesus. The word was made flesh and we beheld his glory. John 1.14 says, we beheld his glory.

In Hebrews 1.3, it says that Jesus Christ is the bright shining of God's glory and the express image of his person. Hebrews 1.3, Christ is the bright shining of God's glory, the express image of his person. Interestingly, Paul says in 1 Corinthians, I guess it must be 11, he says that man was made the image and glory of God and the woman is the glory of the man.

But he uses the word glory and image as very closely interchangeable terms. So that when we read 2 Corinthians 3 and verse 18, Paul says, we all with unveiled faces beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are changed from glory to glory into that same image. What am I beholding? The glory.

That's the image that I'm changed into from glory to glory. The glory of God in Paul's writing often is essentially a synonym for being like Christ, bearing the image of Christ. Adam was the image and glory of God.

He bore the image and therefore the glory of God. Image and glory, being like God, glorifies God. Being like Christ, glorifies Christ.

And we're changed as we behold Christ. We're changed from glory to glory. I presume that means that from one degree to another degree of likeness to Christ as we grow.

2 Corinthians 4 tells us that our light afflictions, which are but for a moment, work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. This is 2 Corinthians 4, 17. Our afflictions are working for us something.

What is it? It's working glory in us. Romans 8, 18, we have not yet come to, but Paul will say, I am persuaded that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that should be revealed in us. You see, there's something happening in us.

We're becoming more like Christ. That's the glory of God. Christ has been formed in us, as he says in Galatians 4, 19.

So there's a transformation from glory to glory into that image. That is the norm for the Christian life. Adam was already in the image and glory of God, but he lost it through sin.

He stopped being like God. He became his own rebellious autocrat. He ruled himself and he basically lost that glory that he was created with.

And we are called to glory. God has called us to eternal glory, which means he's called us to become like Jesus. And our lives, when we do good works, bring glory to God.

You see, to glorify God means I want everything I do to make God look better to the world. If I'm trying to glorify myself, that means I'm trying to make myself look better in the eyes of the world. I want them to think well of me.

I'm trying to get honor for myself. I'm trying to glorify myself. I'm a glory hog.

I'm trying to get attention and praise and respect for myself. Now, if I'm doing the same thing for God, if I'm trying to glorify God, it means I'm trying to make sure that he gets proper respect and honor and all that. That God has made us for his glory is stated in, I think it's Isaiah 43, 7 if I'm not mistaken.

But the point is what man has fallen short of is not simply having a ticket to go to heaven when he dies. What he's fallen short is a much more exciting destiny even than that. I mean, some people don't think of heaven as that exciting.

They just think it's better than the alternative. There's a lot of people who really suspect they're going to be bored in heaven. Honestly, I've heard it many times.

Of course, sometimes that's because they think of heaven as a place where you sit on a cloud and play a harp. And that does get old, especially after the first four billion years. And you've got more than that to come, you know, unless you're learning new songs all the time and you really take a liking to harp music, which I don't particularly have right now.

But no wonder they think heaven is going to be boring. But even if they don't think of it in such crass terms as playing a harp on a cloud, they still, you know, what if we take Revelation 5 where we're just falling on our faces worshiping God continually for eternity. That could get old, couldn't it, for somebody if they don't love God very much? Yes.

You see, the point is, heaven is not really itself exciting unless there's something about heaven that is attractive. And that would be God. If you love God, being with God is not something that you're going to say, well, I don't know if I'll be happy there.

When you're in love with somebody, the idea of being with them all the time and never having to stop being with them is really the most fulfilling thought in the world. But the most exciting about it is not that we will just be with him, but we will be like him. It says in 1 John 3, Beloved, now we are the children of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be.

But we know that when he shall appear, we will be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Right now we're seeing him not exactly as he is because we can't see him face to face. We're seeing him as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord.

But even that causes us to change from glory to glory into the same image. But then we will be actually like him because we'll see him as he is. This is the thing.

I will see him and I will be transformed, glorified, made entirely like him. But that's eschatological. That's after this life.

But we don't just camp out here and say, well, I can't wait till that happens. We're supposed to be advancing on that. We don't have to just be transformed suddenly when we die.

We're supposed to be glorifying God, bearing the glory of God in our actions, in our lives, looking more like Jesus all the time. It says in Proverbs chapter 4, The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn that grows brighter and brighter until the perfect day. The perfect day is when we're going to be perfectly like Jesus.

The full day, when the sun is shining in its full strength. In the meantime, the day is dawning. And our path is getting brighter and brighter.

We are becoming more and more like Christ if things are going as they should be. This is the Christian's goal. Paul knew this.

Paul stated it on several occasions. And here it alludes to it. All have sinned and fallen short of what they're supposed to be.

What is that? People who glorify God. We fall short of glorifying God. We've fallen short of the glory of God in our lives.

We don't look like Jesus as much as we should. And Adam did, but he failed. And he lost it.

Sin blurred or obscured or damaged the glory of God in us. So that now God has not always glorified us. But that's what the goal is.

And certainly the gospel calls us to that. All have failed. Jews have failed.

They had the law, but they still don't act Christ-like. Killing Jesus is hardly acting Christ-like. And so, he says, we've failed, we've sinned, we've fallen short, but the sentence is not over.

In verse 24, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ. In other words, in stating that we've all sinned in verse 23, he's not trying to dwell on that. He's trying to say that we have established.

That is our starting point from what I'm about to say. Yes, we've all sinned. We've spent enough time proving that point.

Now, what you need to understand is, in spite of that fact, there is justification. We are justified freely. We don't have to buy it.

It's a gift. Freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. So, Paul has earlier said that we're justified by faith, and now he says we're justified by grace.

This is not, of course, conflict at all, any more than saying God moved David to number the people, or Satan did. God did through Satan. Satan was the tool.

So, also we're saved by grace, we're also saved by faith, because it's by grace through faith. We know Ephesians 2.8 well enough, I would assume. By grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves.

So, we have then grace, which is the graciousness of God. His mercy, but more than mercy. It's all of His bounty bestowed freely, without cost.

That's what grace is. He's going to say later on in chapter 4, if you have to work for it, it's not grace. It's a debt.

Grace is the opposite of debt. In other words, if someone gives you something because they owe it to you, or if they give it to you by grace, those are polar opposites. Grace is a free gift, and he says that.

We're justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Now, here he begins to introduce the features that tell us how he can be just in doing this. It's one thing to say God has passed over our sins.

He's been very nice about that. He's been very forgiving. But how to say that is true, and at the same time say that God is uncompromising in His justice as a judge.

And He has not ceased to be righteous in doing this Himself. This is where we need some explanation, and this is where the explanation starts to come. It is through the redemption that is in Christ, whom God set forth to be a propitiation by His blood, through faith.

Now, redemption is a word that refers to a price paid. Redemption is buying something, normally buying somebody out of slavery, or something that you've lost but you're reclaiming. You know, there are pawn shops where you can go pawn something when you need the money, and if it's still there when you've got enough money to get it back, you can go and redeem it.

You go buy it back. It was yours once. You've lost it, but now you're reclaiming it at a price.

That's what redemption means. Likewise, to buy a slave out of slavery and owning the slave, that was redeeming. That was a very common term.

When God brought Israel out of Egypt, and even more so when He brought them out of Babylon, this was referred to as His redemption. And now He's buying His people out of the slavery to sin. And He pays a price, and that price is said to be the blood, because it's the blood of Jesus whom God set forth to be a propitiation by His blood.

Now, propitiation is a word that very few of us have ever used unless we were reading it in a passage of the Bible. And some Bible passages have removed it and given a different word. The word propitiation that Paul uses is the Greek word hilasterion.

Hilasterion. H-I-L-A. Hilasterion.

S-T-E-R-I-O-N. In the Septuagint, this particular word is used to refer to the mercy seat. The mercy seat, which of course is called by a Hebrew term in the Old Testament, when translated into Greek, hilasterion, was the Greek term the Septuagint used for the mercy seat.

And it is not impossible that Paul is using it that way here. That Christ is the mercy seat. What was the mercy seat about? Well, that was in the Holy of Holies.

That was where the high priest went once a year to sprinkle blood on the mercy seat, and that acquired forgiveness of sins for another year for Israel. The mercy seat was the place of forgiveness. The word hilasterion can refer to the place of forgiveness, but it can also mean, and sometimes does mean, the thing by which that forgiveness is obtained, a sacrifice.

There are many translations that have translated hilasterion in this place as the atoning sacrifice. There are some translations you'll find that says that God has set forth Christ as the atoning sacrifice. Well, the word hilasterion can mean that too.

It is used both ways. It could be saying Jesus is put forth as the atoning sacrifice, which would do no violence to any of our theology, or that Christ is set forth as the mercy seat, which again does no violence to our theology. Either way, it is clear that Christ is the one through whom mercy comes.

Now, to see him as the sacrifice of atonement is probably the way to look at it here, because of the word of redemption in the previous verse. There is something said about the payment made, and a sacrifice of blood makes something of a payment. Not in a literal financial transaction, really, but it is a required thing.

In order to acquire some result. The word propitiation is a King James word, a New King James word. There was a controversy, especially in the earlier part of this century among translators, whether this word here should be translated propitiation or expiation.

The problem was this. Well, one thing, modern readers hardly know what either of those words mean. If I use the word expiation in a sentence and said, would you please define that for me? You would have a hard time, probably.

Likewise, the word propitiation. Neither of these are very common words in common speech, but to make it clear, expiation is the removal of guilt. Propitiation is the appeasement of somebody who is angry.

So, you propitiate a person. You expiate guilt, okay? The reason that so many Christians of a more liberal bent preferred expiation was because they had no problem with Jesus removing guilt, which expiation would suggest. But propitiation suggests there was an angry deity to be propitiated, to be appeased.

And the concept of God being an angry deity appeased by a sacrifice seemed to many modern scholars to be rather barbarian, rather ancient ideas, unworthy of our modern conceptions of God. God's not like Zeus or like the pagan gods who had to be, their wrath had to be placated by bloody sacrifices or the volcano God that the Mayas had to throw virgins into or something. I mean, the idea that God was angry and had to be placated by a blood sacrifice, they felt was unworthy of modern appreciation for the character of God and to think that way is simply a relic of very ancient, primitive, unenlightened thinking.

And so, many liberal theologians felt that to talk about God as being angry is totally to misrepresent God. And if He's not angry, as they said, then to propitiate is unnecessary. And if Paul is saying that Jesus is a propitiation, that means he's a propitiating, he's propitiating God.

He's appeasing God's anger. Now, whatever connection that may sound like it has to more primitive views and pagan views of an angry God being appeased with sacrifices, it nonetheless is a biblical concept. There's no question that Paul, in the previous chapters, has been talking about God's wrath as a reality.

In fact, he began in verse 18 saying, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. So, Paul has no qualms about the idea of God having wrath and the idea that Christ's sacrifice appeased that wrath in some way would not be out of place in view of what Paul's been saying all along. Many people do have problems with it for this reason.

They say it sounds then that God was angry and Jesus had to come and make God not be angry anymore, which sounds like God and Jesus were not exactly on the same beam, not on the same page. God was angry and wanted to kill sinners. Jesus said, No, Dad, let me fix this for you.

Let me give him a break. I kind of like these people. I feel sorry for them.

Give me a chance to save them, please. And God said, Well, just because it's you, I will. It's like God was the one who was indisposed toward forgiveness and Jesus is the one who came and appeased his anger.

Certainly, the language of appeasement seems to convey that notion and many people think it's a biblical notion. But, again, remember, Romans is using quite a few analogies from different things. Law, court, slave market, marriage.

There's a lot of analogies, metaphors he's using that are not to be pressed too far. The truth is that man was in trouble with God and what Jesus did came and removed the need for us to be in trouble with God. It doesn't mean that God was reluctant or that because he was angry he didn't want to forgive.

The Bible says it was God who so loved this world that he sent his only begotten son. It was not Jesus who was on our side and God who was against us and therefore Jesus and God were somewhat at cross purposes but God had to sort of defer to his son about this. But it was God who loved the world and was not willing to let them perish.

And so he sent Jesus and Jesus came on his father's mission. Jesus wasn't here on his own mission. So even if we allow that God's wrath is against sin it does not mean that God who had this wrath was not interested in saving us.

If my children act up really badly I could be angry at them about that but that doesn't mean I'm not committed to making things better for them. Parents are that way. Parents love their children.

They hope the best and when children go wrong it's aggravating, it's frustrating. You have anger that this has happened. But I think God's wrath although it is manifest in judgment on people his wrath is really on sin itself because it destroys.

It's like a cancer. He loves people but they're being eaten alive and killed by sin and that makes him mad. The fact that it's sin he's mad at doesn't prevent doesn't change the fact that the people who die in sins lose.

That's why he hates sin because they do. But he came to put an end to sin and Paul is going to describe that more in Romans 5. The point here is God being angry and needing some just way to settle the score is what the propitiation seems to be about. And he set forth his son Jesus to be that propitiation so that he could himself forgive.

It was not because he was reluctant to forgive as some people try to make it out. It's because he wanted to be just and the justifier of those who believe in Jesus. Something had to be done.

It was impossible for God as a just judge to do absolutely nothing about crime in the universe. So he did something. It says in 2nd Corinthians 5.21 It says of Christ he who knew no sin became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

That is Jesus then took on sin. In Isaiah 53 and verse 6 famous chapter about Jesus Isaiah 53.6 says All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and God laid on him the iniquity of us all.

We're the sinners. The sin was laid on Jesus. And he of course then was he took the punishment for it in some way.

Now I don't want to go into great detail about the atonement and all the theories of the atonement because they are numerous and because I think each of them gathers a little bit of the truth about it and that none of them alone fully grasps it. And I personally don't believe that I fully grasp it. If someone says well how could God allow one person who's innocent die so that someone who's guilty is no longer considered guilty.

You'd never have any parallel to that in a court of law. Though in a court of law you might have somebody who owes a debt and can't pay it. It is paid by some benefactor and settles that score.

Exactly which metaphor the law court metaphor the redemption metaphor slave market metaphor which one is closest to the heart of what happened in the atonement is greatly debated. And it stumbles certain people because they don't like the ramifications of this or that metaphor. But the point is we don't fully understand all that went on in the counsels of God.

There are things in this that are mysterious. There are things that are not fully explained. They are hinted at through metaphors but we don't know them.

We don't have to. As C.S. Lewis said people ate food and benefited from it for centuries before they had any theories about vitamins and nutrition. Modern science has told us some reason why food nourishes us but people ate it and were nourished long before they had any theories about that.

It's not the theories of the atonement that make it work. It's the fact. People have been forgiven and justified by faith long before the doctrine of justification by faith was ever contemplated.

God can justify people with faith because He understands it. That He understands the atonement is all that really matters. If we come to understand it some way more power to us.

But unnecessary. What's necessary is that we actually are justified by our faith in Christ and God knows why. But what He did through Christ managed to cover the demands of some kind of justice so that He could not compromise His justice and still do what otherwise would seem unjust.

He takes the criminal and transfers the criminal's guilt to something else and it dies. And that's what the whole sacrificial system in the Old Testament was typifying. For centuries the Jews laid hands on an animal, confessed their sins and symbolically that animal became the sinner and it was sacrificed.

Why that would work, who can say? But God instituted that so that we would understand that's what Jesus would do. He'd be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. 1 Peter 2 Near the end here it speaks of Christ.

It says in verse 24 Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree that we having died to sins might live for righteousness by whose stripes you have been healed. This verse contains some information that Paul is going to talk about in Romans later on. But notice Jesus bore our sins in His own body.

God laid on Him the iniquity of us all and therefore He could justify forgiving us. He didn't overlook sin. He took out the full weight of its penalty on a substitute.

And in some way that satisfied justice so that we now in Him, in Christ can be justified. Now we'll come back to this after our break. We've run out of time for today.