Righteousness through faith alone November 19, 2017 PRAY PRAY PRAY PRAY PRAY PRAY PRAY PRAY PRAY PRAY Our text for this morning is Romans 9:30, continuing through Romans 10:4. The chapter break here is unfortunate, and somewhat inappropriate, for the apostle Paul is continuing on the same subject, although now he is looking at it from a different viewpoint. What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame. (10:1) Brothers, my heart s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. It is practically impossible to read this section of Romans without noticing that the apostle Paul is sensing an uneasy irony concerning the people to whom he has been sharing the gospel. He comes away from this realization with very mixed emotions. On one hand, this missionary and apostle to the Gentiles is delighted that so many Gentiles, who have almost no understanding of God s plan of salvation, for whom the God of the Bible has been a total stranger, an almost alien being, have come to saving faith in Jesus Christ. On the other, though, Paul has a profound sadness that he s trying to come to grips with because he s a Jew and most of his fellow Jews have refused to believe in Jesus. One of the definitions for irony is an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected. 1 Like most other words, there are what I call bumper-sticker definitions that help us to grasp the concept. Life is so ironic. It takes sadness to know what happiness is, noise to appreciate silence, and absence to value presence. Irony the opposite of wrinkly. (Take a moment to let it set in) Two words leap from the page as we read these verses: righteousness, and faith. The word righteousness appears six times in these eight verses. Faith, or the corresponding word believing, shows up three times. Both faith and righteousness are salvation words, reminding us that this is salvation that Paul is writing about. Paul s talking about his kinsmen in the flesh, the Jews. This isn t just a theological discussion for Paul; it s part of his life. These are his people. We re reminded by Pauls example that we need to be concerned and burdened for people that we care about. Though there are exceptions, Paul himself being one of them, the Jews have largely have rejected Jesus. That s tearing his heart out. We saw that in Romans 9:2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish 1 From www.dictionary.com.
in my heart. And we see it again in Romans 10:1 Brothers, my heart s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. He can t stop thinking about them, and he won t stop praying for them. So this is about salvation. That s the big picture of these two chapters, and in a sense they come at the subject of salvation from different perspectives. In Romans 9, Paul takes great pains to show that salvation is a matter of God s sovereign prerogative. We are saved because the God who rules over all things has seen fit to save us. Salvation is of the Lord s choosing and doing. In Romans 10, we re going to see that Paul says salvation comes by faith. The landscape of Romans 10 is dotted with words like faith and believe and call on Him. Now, we must put those two things together, because Paul is showing us that in terms of salvation, God s sovereignty in election, and the human responsibility of believing in the gospel of Jesus Christ, Savior of sinners, go together, like two sides of the same coin. These two things are complementary, not contradictory, though it is sometimes difficult for us to grasp that. Someone once asked Charles Haddon Spurgeon how he reconciles divine sovereign election and human responsibility. Spurgeon s answer: I never try to reconcile friends. 2 Here in our text, Paul connects salvation to righteousness and to faith. So this morning our focus needs to be where Paul s is: on salvation. On righteousness. And on faith. And so I d like to ask three questions, all of which highlight the irony we see in what Paul shares about Gentiles and about Jews: What kind of righteousness is Paul talking about here? How did the Jews, with all their privileges and advantages, fail to attain this righteousness though they pursued after it? How did the Gentiles, who were not pursuing righteousness, find it? 3 In one way or another, no matter who you are, you fit into this discussion in terms of the condition of your soul. This begs you to take stock of your own spiritual condition. What kind of righteousness is Paul talking about here? Righteousness is a word that we see frequently in Romans more than 30 times in this letter. Eric Alexander says, Righteousness is the one word which summarizes the whole message of the epistle to the Romans. 4 But we need to understand that there are several aspects of this thing we call righteousness. First, and perhaps foremost, is righteousness as part of God s character. It s what God is in His person. He is righteous. Righteousness has to do with God s holiness, but it also has to do with God s actions. He always acts rightly, and justly. He always acts with goodness. No one will ever be able to accuse God of being unjust, or unfair, and have their accusations confirmed or validated. They may accuse, but that s a case they will never win. God will always be acquitted of any accusations of injustice levied against Him. He is a just God! 2 Charles Haddon Spurgeon quote accessed from Warren Wiersbe, Be Right (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2008 ed.), p. 119. 3 The principle for these outline questions owes a debt of gratitude to Ian Hamilton from a sermon preached at Cambridge Presbyterian Church in Cambridge, UK on March 28, 2004. 4 From sermon preached on Romans 10 by Eric Alexander at St. George s Tron, Glasgow, Scotland.
But righteousness is not only part of what God is; righteousness is also what God demands. If we are to be able to come into the presence of a holy God, we can only do so under a status of righteousness. And therein lies the very great problem that each and every person who has ever lived must answer. For the only way we can come into God s presence, and enjoy fellowship with Him who is holy, holy, holy, is by possessing a righteousness that is akin to God s own righteousness. But as we ve already seen in Romans, and we don t need Scripture to tell us the truth, because we feel it in our bones, we do not possess native righteousness. Remember Romans 3:10? None is righteous, no, not one. Horatius Bonar wrote, How may I, a sinner, draw near to God in whom there is no sin, and look upon His face in peace? This is the great question which, at some time or other, every one of us has asked. This is one of the awful problems which man in all ages has been attempting to solve. 5 Many of you, to this very moment, are crushed under the weight of guilt that you re feeling, because you know that there is nothing righteous about you in your being, in your nature. And so we must understand that by the word righteousness, Paul means more than just God s own righteousness. It means here what God requires of us. Here righteousness needs to be understood as being in right standing with God. That is very much a bad news-good news proposition, according to the verses we re studying this morning. Bad news for many, but wonderfully good news for others. And it s also a matter of irony, because righteousness is something the Gentiles have, but it s something that most of Paul s fellow Jews missed out on. So here s the irony: the Gentiles weren t looking for righteousness, but they found it. The Jews were actively pursuing righteousness, but because they were pursuing it in the wrong way, they ve missed it. To use the words of Sean Lucas, a pastor in Hattiesburg, MS, the outsiders have come insiders while the insiders became outsiders. 6 How did that happen? Paul knows what s at stake here. Salvation or condemnation. On one hand, he s reveling in the fact that Gentiles are coming to salvation. On the other, he knows that most of his kinsmen are not right with God. And that s producing anguish. His heart s desire and prayer to God [Romans 10:1] for them is that they may be saved. Paul s heart ought to be our heart, too, and it ought to draw us to a consistent, constant sharing of the gospel, for as we re going to see more than once in Romans 10, it s all about faith; faith is required for anyone to be saved. Without faith in Jesus Christ, no one will be saved. And faith in the gospel is connected with the sharing of the gospel. For the most important question in this life, for every person, is Are you in a right standing with God? Are you in a right standing with God? On what are you basing your confidence in your standing? Please, I beg you, follow along. And be honest: do you more closely identify with the Jews in this text, or with the Gentiles? The answer to that question will provide you with an answer as to your own standing with God. How did the Jews, with all their privileges and advantages, fail to attain this righteousness though they pursued after it? 5 Horatius Bonar quote drawn from The Everlasting Righteousness, written in 1874. 6 From sermon preached by Sean Lucas at First Presbyterian Church in Hattiesburg, MS on June 5, 2016.
Paul has never denied that he and his fellow Jews have had all sorts of advantages in terms of learning about, and attaining, righteousness. We saw that in Romans 9:4-5. The Jews were adopted into a special relationship with God. They witnessed God s glory. They had the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and God s many promises, the greatest of which is that He would provide a Savior. This is a sobering reminder that you can have all sorts of advantages and privileges, and still remain in a lost condition where eternity is concerned, for privileges don t automatically produce salvation. But as we see in our text, many who have absolutely no advantages can be and are saved through faith in God s perfect Son, who provided a sinless sacrifice on the cross for sinners. Beyond that, the Jews were a people of religious zeal, as we see in Romans 10:1. Paul says they have a zeal for God. He s absolutely right. They were very concerned about righteousness. He s presenting us with a picture of people who are absolutely committed to living in a certain way so that they might be pleasing to God. There are a lot of religious people who live that way today. Mormons and Jehovah s Witnesses are very zealous people. In some ways they put many of us to shame, because they re more zealous in the pursuit of a flawed faith than we are for what we know to be true. But we don t have to talk just about the cults that way; many go to church today Catholic churches, Protestant churches, all sorts of churches and they wouldn t think of missing a Sunday. Whenever the doors are open, they re there. But they re still lost, because they lack the things that Paul says are absolutely necessary for a right standing with God: personal faith in Christ. Paul credits the Jews for being zealous, but he says their zeal for God and for pursuing righteousness was misplaced because it was not according to knowledge 10:2 and it was ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God 10.3. You think, How can that be? The Jew had God s Word. He had the law. But he missed the whole point of what God designed the law to accomplish. That s what we see in Romans 10:4 that the law s final stop, if you will, is Jesus. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. That s not saying that Jesus has put an end to the law. I would submit that the one who has trusted in the right Savior by faith, as God has intended, will be a more eager, joyful obeyer of the Ten Commandments and the other elements of God s law because, though she is still a sinner and imperfect on this side of eternity, she has a changed heart and now wants to live a life that is pleasing to the God who has graciously saved her through Jesus Christ. No, v. 4 is saying that Jesus Christ is the goal. He s the final destination of the law. He s what the law was pointing to even before there was officially a law given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai, for we can go all the way back to the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3:15 and hear God s message to Adam and Eve, that a Savior would come from the seed of the woman. And that Savior would be bruised think the cross but in turn He, Jesus Christ, would crush the serpent s head, thereby making acceptable every man, woman, boy, or girl who trusts in Him. How did the Jews fall short, even though they were zealous in their pursuit of the law? Paul tells us that they pursued righteousness, but failed to attain it, because Romans 9:32 they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. What Paul is saying is that they completely misunderstood the law s purpose. Let me provide an illustration that hopefully will make this point clear.
If any of you have a dog, you know you can play fetch with him. At some point, your dog will lose sight of the ball that you ve been throwing. So what do you do? You point to the ball. You say, It s over there. Go get it. And what will your dog do? He ll look at your finger and focus all his attention, not on what you re pointing to, but on the very pointer itself. That s what the Jews were doing with the law. For the law was supposed to point them somewhere to Jesus. Instead, the Jew looked at the law and determined that it was an end in itself, and if they could just obey it, they would be righteous. God would look at them with approval. But no one, save Christ Himself, has ever perfectly obeyed all the law s provisions. All it takes is one sin, transgression, or trespass to make you a law-breaker. So what did they do? They started grading on the curve. Instead of coming to the correct conclusion that God never gave the law to make anyone righteous by perfect obedience and that instead we must turn to the only perfect law-keeper, Jesus, whose own perfect obedience can be our righteousness because wonder of wonders! His righteousness can be transferred to our accounts by the transaction that took place on the cross (our sins transferred to Him, His righteousness imputed to sinners like us!) the Jews started seeking to attain righteousness by their own efforts, knowing that it was an unattainable goal. So righteousness became a comparative matter, and some, who considered themselves more righteous than others, thought themselves acceptable in God s sight. They said, Look how I live I must be right with God. Paul knows this to be true because he himself had devoted his whole life, prior to conversion, at being righteous. He could count a long list of credits to his own account. Listen to Philippians 3:4-6 If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness, under the law blameless [by man-made standards, not by God s]. But he got to the end of the road and Paul found that the final destination was death. He knew he wasn t right with God by his own efforts they fell far short. And so, by God s gracious intervention, Paul saw the light on the Damascus Road. Yes, Paul s salvation was by divine intervention. But don t think for a moment that Paul was a mindless drone or a puppet whose every string was being manipulated by God on some great cosmic stage, for that s not what Paul tells us in Phil. 3:9 as he rejoices in being found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness that depends on faith. On what do you base your confidence in having a right standing with God? Paul puts his finger on the Jews failure. He uses Isaiah 8 and Isaiah 28 to do so. He uses a familiar Old Testament metaphor, the metaphor of the stone, the stumbling stone and the rock of offense, to show that the Jews were like dogs pointing at God s finger instead of seeing what the finger was pointing toward. Yes, the law reveals that right standing with God is available through perfect obedience. But no, you re not perfectly obedient, so why are you trusting in your own efforts? Trust in the One who alone was perfectly obedient and provides a righteousness for you that you cannot provide for yourself. The phrase in Romans 9:33, whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame, is also drawn from Isaiah. It s analogous to another stone-picture that first appears in Psalm 118:22 but then is repeated in the New Testament, where it is applied to Jesus. The stone that the
builders rejected has become the cornerstone. If you try to achieve righteousness on your own, you will stumble over the Stumbling Stone. But if you will trust in Him, you will see Him as the precious Cornerstone, and if you will believe on Him, you will not be put to shame when you stand before God. You will stand before Him clothed with the knowledge and assurance that you are right with God, and you will never be humiliated, as many will, when they go before God, trusting in their own righteousness, and will instead hear, to their eternal shame, Depart from Me; I never knew you. What are you doing with Jesus Christ? The stumbling stone analogy carries with it a picture of walking along the road, and suddenly in the middle of the road, there s this big rock. What to do? So many try to walk around it. But you have to deal with it. And the Stumbling Stone for many is the cross. It is, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:23, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. The idea of God s Savior dying on a cross as a common criminal? Most of Paul s countrymen couldn t come to grips with it. Stumbling stone is skandalon in Greek. The cross of Jesus Christ was, and is, what it s always been for many: a scandal. But Paul adds in 1 Corinthians 1:23, but to those who are called [by God], both Jews and Greeks, [the cross of Jesus Christ is] the power of God and the wisdom of God. Salvation is found in beautifully simple truth the truth of the gospel! How did the Gentiles, who were not pursuing righteousness, find it? By faith. That s the answer Paul provides for us. What a marvelous thing salvation by faith is. Once again, look at the irony. The Gentiles, in general, were not looking for righteousness. Some led moral lives, but Paul has already given us a broad picture of the Gentiles in Romans 1 a picture of idolatry, perversion and exchang[ing] the truth about God [what they could observe from creation] for a lie (Romans 1:25). So how did they attain what most Jews, with all their privileges, did not? By faith. When presented with the simple gospel that Jesus Christ has provided a way for sinners to be made right with God, by dying in their place, they believed it. They didn t know about the law. They didn t try to establish any kind of righteousness based on works. They just believed. And they discovered, as Paul tells us in Romans 10:4, that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. That means you; if you believe, you will be made right with God. Now, understand something: faith isn t just a general belief that has no impact, otherwise, on life as we live it. Faith in Christ is everything. It affects all of life. Jonathan Edwards said, A true faith includes more than a mere belief. It is accepting the gospel It is something more than merely the assent of the understanding, because it is called an obeying [of] the gospel It is obeying the doctrine from the heart. 7 Martin Luther said, Faith is a living, bold trust in God s grace, so certain of God s favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. 8 Faith is not easy-believism, but true biblical faith is freeing. The thought that we can be saved through no efforts of our own, because we know that there s nothing that we can do that will have any merit before a holy God who judges sin, but God declares us righteous because 7 Jonathan Edwards quotes from www.monergism.com. 8 Martin Luther quote taken from Luther s An Introduction to St. Peter s Letter to the Romans. Accessed at www.ligonier.org, entry dated April 24, 2015 and entitled, Martin Luther s Definition of Faith.
have trusted in Jesus blood, and because we in faith claim Jesus own righteousness, that s freeing to us. It brings joy to our souls, for we correctly understand that though there is nothing righteous in me, in Jesus there is perfect righteousness, and His sacrifice provides it for me. Paul had seen this again and again, Gentiles believing in Jesus Christ. He saw it in Galatia, in Corinth, in Ephesus, and in Philippi. In a Philippian jail, as he observed the chief jailer about to kill himself when an earthquake opened the prison cells, Paul heard the jailer s earnest cry, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And he heard Paul answer, Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved (Acts 16:30-31) That s what the Gentiles did in droves. They had not pursued righteousness, but they found it through Jesus Christ. And when they stand before God, they will not be put to shame but will instead experience the unspeakable amazement of being welcomed into eternal joy. The same promise is available to you so will you believe in Jesus?