Boast Only in Christ Romans Series Part 1: Everyone Condemned New Life Assembly Romans 3:21-31 July 4, 2010 AM Main Sermon Idea: Because of Jesus work on the cross, we need not work through the law, but rather by faith. Introduction Throughout history humans have had many misconceptions. There s that one time we all thought that the earth was the center of the universe. There s that other time when we thought the earth was flat. Those are huge misconceptions! Sometimes we confuse two things, thinking one is the source of power rather than the other. Let me give just one example of this, because today s point by Paul is that while we thought working the works of the Law would justify us, it is actually faith that justifies us. There is a strong man in the Old Testament named Samson. Samson believed that because the Nazarite vow did not allow him to cut his hair, that this was the source of his strength, an outward sign of a vow he took. One night after many pleadings, his pagan girlfriend asked him about it and after toying with her, he told her about his hair and she cut it and he was captured. But all this time Samson thought the strength was because of his hair, it was actually a strength God gave him. At the end of his life, he asked God for the strength to kill more of his enemies than in his entire lifetime, and the strength returned even though his hair was cut! Why? Because he had mistakenly believed that the hair, not his God, was the source of his strength. We have the ability to confuse the engine of our justification with something we can do rather than what God does in us. Let s read Romans 3:21-31. I. Jesus did all the work for us (21-26). A. Jesus sacrifice provides God s righteous deed to humanity. 1.The law and prophets proclaim God s righteous deed. a. Originally, the law written by God was to show the Israelites how holy and righteous God is, and how wicked they are. That was the righteousness of God, to show humanity His righteousness and show the wide gap between Him and humans. b. The righteousness of God was seen in the Law, but it could not be duplicated by humanity. What is God s characteristic attribute humans lack completely. c. But yet throughout all of Jewish history, the people were commanded to follow the law to the letter, to do the works the law 1
demanded. And everyone fell short because we are not what God is. d. As time went on, the Jews put less faith in the promise and more attention on doing the law to be approved by God. It became a system of boasting in one s own works of the law instead of trusting in God s promises. e. Illustration: A perfect example of this comes in the time of Jesus as He tells about the Pharisee who goes to pray at the temple and thanks God about himself that he lives the way God prescribed, unlike the wretched sinner of a tax collector over there. The man s prayer is about himself, not God. The tax collector, on the other hand, knew that he needed God and could not fulfill the law and asked for God s mercy. f. Application: We must not look to our own works. We must look to God s works, because if God is the only one who is righteous, as we learned last week, then only His works can do anything righteous among us, not our own. God sent His Son Jesus. Jesus did a righteous work on the cross for us. That is the only work that justifies, not our work for God. 2.We are justified only by our faith in Jesus. a. The law and the prophets that witnessed this event refers to the many references to Jesus and His mission to die as the sinless sacrifice throughout the law and prophets. b. In the Law, the whole law system, along with the sacrificial system needed because no one was able to fulfill the law of God and be righteous at the same level as God. c. The law points to God s righteousness and our bankruptcy in righteousness. The sacrificial system foreshadows the ultimate sacrifice made by Jesus. d. Not only this, but the prophets are full of references to a Messiah who would come and save the whole of the earth. These many references are the witness of the law and prophets, two of the three categories the Jews put the Scriptures into. e. The point of verse 22 is that God s righteousness was seen through the Law in the Old Testament, and now God has given us an encore of His glory and righteousness in the work of Jesus on the cross. f. The moment of redemption shows God s ultimate righteousness. And it requires faith in Jesus to see God s righteousness come to pass in your own life. 2
g. Application: There is a new idea of respecting people who have some type of faith, no matter how vague it is. President Obama just referred to America being a place of faith and shared values. But faith in what? Everyone has faith. That s nothing special. But faith must have a foundation. It must be placed in something. Faith is just a religious term for trust. What is the basis of your faith? That s important. Not that you have faith. B. God demonstrated His righteousness throughout history. 1.God s first act of righteousness was passing over human sin. a. Romans 3:23 is so often quoted as part of the Roman Road to Salvation. It is a quite simplistic conclusion that Paul has been arguing for, that all of humanity, Jews and Gentiles, have fallen short or lacked God s glory in sinning. b. This verse is only a minor point that Paul has made at least twice already. I would like to see more of 3:24 quoted with it because that verse talks about the gift of God s making us righteous through His grace and buying us back from sin. c. Paul will take verses 25-26 and use a keyword demonstration twice to show the contrast between God s older demonstration of righteousness and the newer one. Many translations do not show this very well because it makes the English a bit choppy. d. In verse 25, Paul mentions that God passed over human sin in the Old Testament, showing His grace and righteousness to humanity. God ignored or allowed the sins of the past and passed over them, a reference to the Passover and its original meaning in the death angel passing over the people of God in the tenth plague in Egypt. e. God s righteousness is seen in not wiping out the human race for the many sins that we continually commit. A holy God would irradiate the sinner with the sin. But God is more righteous in that He gave us grace so that we would see the whole plan of God. f. Illustration: If you would imagine God s plan as a play that is enacted within separate acts, you would see what Paul is trying to show here. The first act of the play of human history was to show God s own righteousness by introducing humans to a law they could not follow that showed them God s glory. But that is not the final act, the final demonstration. The next demonstration makes God righteous not because He shows how unrighteous humans are, but because He gives them a way through Christ to be made righteous. That is the second, and greater act that crescendos and climaxes the whole of human history. 3
2.God s last act of righteousness was Jesus blood sacrifice. a. In verse 25, Paul talks about Jesus being the propitiation for sins. This is a huge word that is rare in the New Testament. But the idea comes right out of the Old Testament sacrificial system. b. One day a year, called Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the priest would go into the Most Holy Place and would sprinkle blood on the top of the Ark of the Covenant, called the Mercy Seat. c. The word propitiation is the word that the Old Testament translates Mercy Seat. Jesus is the Mercy Seat. He is the new place of sacrifice. His sacrifice is final. d. The blood of Jesus has more than the power of the past sacrifices. The blood of the sacrificed animals only appeased God s holy wrath against sin in the camp. Jesus blood not only appeases God s wrath and washes us from sin, but it brings us into the Kingdom of God and makes us righteous! e. So our trust must be in Jesus ultimate and final sacrifice, that His blood really does appease God s wrath for our sins and create a new creature that longs to serve the Lord and has the ability to please God. f. Application: Jesus is the rock of our faith. We trust that what He did on the cross in taking our place does exactly what God demanded of sinful humanity. Jesus became the Mercy Seat that brings mercy only when the proper sacrifice is made. Jesus was that proper sacrifice. His sacrifice extends to you and me today and to all who put their trust in Him alone. II. We must boast in His work alone (27-31). A. No longer can our works be worth boasting about. 1.Since Jesus work on the cross justifies us, no other effort is worth praise. a. The last paragraph talked about how God is righteous in his dealings because just as He dealt with sin through the mercy seat and sacrifices instead of cold hard law in the Old Testament, He now continues to be righteous in providing Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice. b. You and I did not do anything to become justified by God, to be made righteous in His sight. Jesus did that for us when He suffered as an innocent man on the cross. c. Since that is true, there is no need to boast in being able to accomplish even one law from the many laws of God. Even if we can fulfill just one small part, we still break another part. 4
d. We cannot be righteous in our own right. That takes the gift of God s grace and a trust in Jesus as our mercy seat. His work on the cross is greater in scope and ability than any work I will ever do on my own. e. So boasting in anything other than Christ is absolutely worthless. It doesn t have the power of Jesus blood or the perfection of His sacrifice. f. Application: We tend to be Do-It-Yourself people. America is built on individualism and entrepreneurial spirit. Even though with our minds we know that no work we do can justify and redeem us, we still look to other works for that very purpose instead of to Jesus. We look to being a good person or having others say good about us. We are deeply concerned with our impression upon others. But nothing that any of us can do can save or redeem us. Nothing you ever do on your own will be on the same par as God s righteousness. Don t deceive yourself. You re only in God s kingdom because He made the sacrifice for you. g. Illustration: How many of you have ever had someone else pay your way to do something? That is in a very small way what Jesus did on the cross for us. I could not have gone to college if it weren t for being legally blind. That provided government funds for me to participate in college and be able to keep up with my reading through technologies. In a very real sense, I owe any expertise I have in ministry to those who gave me scholarships and grants as much as to the wonderful teachers that taught me. Even today people pay my way for lunches and other things. All I can do is be grateful. But one thing I can t do is claim that I did it all by myself. h. When we trust in our own works for salvation, we are trampling on the sacrifice Jesus made, suggesting that our works are better than His! It is better to humbly accept the Lord s work for us and show our appreciation through obedience and love to Him. 2.The law of faith overrules the laws of works. a. When we trust in Jesus, we need not trust in anything else. Our boasting in ourselves becomes a moot point. We must focus on what Jesus has done and praise Him alone, not look to our own efforts. b. One thing that we as human beings do not lack is effort. We have tried so hard for so long. Some human cultures place great emphasis on effort. But as far as God s work is concerned, when 5
we put all of our works on the scale against Jesus one work on the cross, God gives us the grade F for effort. c. Our boasting is not excluded because we are incapable of trying or because we do not have a host of works and deeds to look at. It is excluded because you don t become justified through doing something. You become justified through trusting in Someone. d. We looked to the works of the law to put God s stamp of approval on us. But the only human being whose works God looked upon and put a stamp of approval on was Jesus. So we must trust in His work instead of our own. e. Application: I love the book of Ecclesiastes because it is so true of us when you think about life. He says that all of life is vanity. We strive and strive but we gain nothing. We work hard but have nothing to show for it. So why do we keep on working futility? Are you in a place where you are trying on your own? Have you ever looked to God to do the work for you? You can only do so much alone, and it s not enough. But what God can do if you would just trust Him in your situation is more than enough. B. Faith is the ultimate work of God to uphold the law. 1.Faith justifies both Jews and Gentiles under one principle. a. As Paul concludes his argument that every human being in every category fell short of God s glory, he brings everything together at the end of chapter three. b. Chapter four will produce the final tidbit of his argument, showing that even Abraham did not become declared righteous by his own works but had to trust in God s promises before the law even existed. c. Paul has argued, and finishes here, that both Jews and Gentiles in different ways violated God s righteousness and that God still was righteous because He passed over previous sins and then provided Jesus as the perfect atonement. d. Both Jews and Gentiles must come to faith in Jesus, to trust that Jesus can do what the law of God for Jews and the law of the conscience for Gentiles can not do. Those laws only convict us. They cannot save us. e. So faith is the only way to be justified by God. No works. No laws. Just trust in Jesus. That s the only way God sees you and me as righteous. And you must be righteous to enter the Kingdom of God. The best part is that Jesus does for us what we cannot do. All we must do is have faith in Him. 6
f. God is one. He is not a certain God to Jews and a different God to Gentiles. He does not wear two different masks. He is the same to both categories of humanity. God does not change and He is one, over all things and humans. g. Illustration: There is a certain method in music in which certain notes, although they sound exactly the same, are given different names indifferent scales. For instance. A Bb is also an A sharp. A G sharp is also named an Ab. These notes have at least two different names and functions, but they refer to the same sound. God is not like that. He is the same and is only one no matter what religion you are talking about. He does not change. He is one. h. Application: Aren t you glad that God is the same no matter who you are? We don t have to be Jews to know the God of the universe! We don t have to learn Hebrew or any of that. We just come as we are before God and put our trust in His Son. That s it. God is not a God of one culture or nation. Who here would rather be anything but American to have to be a Christian or to know God? We come to Him in simple trust and who we are is what He will make us to be! 2.The law and our consciences bring us to faith. a. When we do come to faith in God, it does not destroy the law or render it powerless. In fact, we will find that we are fulfilling the Law because that is what Christ came to do. b. Both groups of people, both Jews and Gentiles, must come to God through faith alone. It was one of the cries of the Reformation, that by faith alone can salvation come. c. You can t save yourself no matter what you do. It must be done for you. And we find that when we trust in Jesus, He fulfills the law by making us more like Him. d. This is how we uphold the law. We become more like Christ, who is righteous because He is God, whom the law shows us. So we are given righteousness. And our filthy rags are turned into white robes of holiness! e. Application: We tend to want to understand everything or seek to cover all of our bases. But we are rarely a people to rest in our trust. Even though we say we trust, we fear and live in anxiety. We never let things be. We think we can affect a change better than God. Let us learn to rest in our trust of Jesus, to let Him do His work not just on the cross, but in our hearts every moment of every day. If we trust Him, we will obey His word in us. 7
Conclusion We love to boast in so many things today. Everything from sports teams to how much money we make. Those things we boast in we rely upon. If that is true, I would much rather rely on Christ, because nothing I do in this world will ever last beyond me unless it is done for Him and in Him. So I challenge you today to give up working to please God. Just let Him take pleasure in how much like Jesus you are becoming! 8