Introduction
Paul has reached a low point in Romans 3 in verse 20. All of mankind is under the wrath of God. Man can do nothing to deliver himself from God’s wrath. The law demands that we love God with all our hearts, our mind, and our soul, with every part of our being and our fiber. At every point in our lives we are to have God in front of us, we are to do what God wants us to do. We should act for God’s glory, at every moment of our lives, right from our youth. But we cannot do it.
The Jews who had the perfect light in the scriptures had not lived up to it. The Gentiles who in their conscience knew something of God’s ways had not lived up to the light of God that they had received. The result is that all of mankind is guilty before God and under God’s wrath. Man is totally powerless to save himself.
The Righteousness Of God That Exists Apart From The Law
If that was the only message, every human being would be condemned to hell for all eternity. But then Paul brings in that there is another way, not through the law, not through trying to be good or decent, not through trying to be obedient to what we think we should do, but there is another way whereby we can be innocent before God.
The Righteousness of God
“But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.” Romans 3:21
There is a righteousness of God that is available to mankind. What do we mean by righteousness? It is the perfect fulfillment of God’s law, a perfect conformity to all of the demands of God’s law which is in keeping with the just nature of God Himself. Paul states that this perfect obedience can be transferred to us. One commentator puts it this way on God’s righteousness.
“The righteousness of God which is received by faith denotes something that becomes the property of the believer.” Robert Haldane
We can have it. We can be viewed as if we have fully obeyed God’s law at every point. To this fact, the prophet of Isaiah testified, we read in Isaiah chapter 61 verse 10.
“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; For He has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness.” Isaiah 61:10
The Righteousness of God Created During Christ’s Incarnation
So there is a way where a perfect obedience of God’s law can be transferred to the believer. Immediately, we need to ask two questions. Where does it come from and how do we get it? This righteousness, this perfect obedience of God’s law came from the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. It is and in effect, a created righteousness, that the Lord Jesus Christ wrought out when He lived on the earth. He came as a man, born under the law, and for those 33 years that He lived on this earth, lived in perfect obedience to God’s law. He produced this righteousness through His perfect obedience, and it can be ours. He has created this righteousness that can clothe us. Again, the same commentator says this concerning our Lord Jesus Christ coming into the world:
“Before that period, the Lord Jesus Christ was perfectly holy, but that holiness could not be called obedience. It might rather be said that law was conformed to Him than that he was conformed to the law. His holiness was exercised in making the law, and by it governing the world. But in his latter condition (when our Lord Jesus Christ came onto this earth), it was that law by which He Himself was governed.”
Robert Haldane
As a man, He rendered perfect obedience to the law. Before He came, the law was conformed to Him because He gave it as an expression of Himself to mankind. When our Lord Jesus Christ came as a man, He conformed Himself to the law, the other way around. He lived in perfect obedience to God’s law. That is where this righteousness has come from. Our Lord Jesus Christ created it as He lived upon this earth. How important God’s law is shown in that our Lord Jesus Christ rendered full obedience to it. It is the highest honour that we can give God’s law is to read it, believe it, and obey it. That’s exactly what the most exalted being in this entire universe did, the Lord Jesus Christ, He conformed Himself to it at every point.
The Law and The Prophets Testify To This Righteousness
“But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets” Romans 3:21
Jeremiah writes clearly about the righteousness given to the Lord’s people from the Messiah.
“The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will raise up to David a righteous branch, a king who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days, Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which He will be called. ‘The Lord our Righteousness’” Jeremiah 23:5,6
The law and the prophets all testify to this. Jeremiah could say that the Messiah, the son of David will be called “The Lord our Righteousness”. We will have His righteousness, His perfect obedience to God’s law transferred to us. We will be clothed in His righteousness. We cannot get this righteousness our by obedience to the law. The Lord Jesus Christ created it when He lived that perfect life under the law. It can be ours.
The Righteousness Of God Obtained Through Faith In Jesus Christ
Faith in Jesus Christ is Essential in Obtaining This Righteousness
“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, through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe.” Romans 3:21, 22
We obtain this righteousness by faith in Jesus Christ. This righteousness is not transferred to all human beings. But it is transferred to those who have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is not religious faith in general, not “Oh I believe in a God. I believe there is a means of how we can know God.” It is faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Saviour of the world. Our Lord Jesus Christ and the apostle John describe this as follows:
“If you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you indeed will die in your sins.” John 8:24
“Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.” John 1:12
It’s not believing in a man Jesus Christ and thinking He was a nice chap, but didn’t actually die on the cross taking God’s punishment for our wrongdoing. Jesus says, “If you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.”
“A man may believe what else he may, unless he receives and rests on Christ alone for salvation, receives Him as the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself for us, he has not the faith of which the apostle here speaks as the indispensable condition of salvation.” Charles Hodge
It has to be faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. So in one sense, there is a narrowness, there is a restrictedness in this offer. Believing in anything else is insufficient and will damn your soul to hell for all eternity as you will not have this righteousness transferred to you. You will stand guilty before God on the last Day and He will punish you for all eternity.
The Wideness in The Gracious Offer
This righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. The condition now is not your IQ. It’s not how much money you have in the bank. It’s not how good or otherwise you’ve been. The condition is, do you believe? Any individual who has this faith can receive God’s righteousness, whether Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, morally upright or the vilest offender who has cast off all restraint and gone into all sorts of immorality. It doesn’t matter. Do you believe? Do you now have that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? The only condition required is that you believe. All mankind is under God’s judgment. All have sinned and fall short to the glory of God. All are in need of this righteousness, but all could have it if they believe. As we would expect from something given through faith, this righteousness is given by grace. It is unmerited.
“For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace and through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Romans 3:22 – 24
It is God’s undeserved favor. If individuals are not fully resting on the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, if they do not believe in what he has done for them on the cross, taking God’s punishment for all of our wrongdoing, it’s not grace. If they are trusting in themselves that God would never cast off a good person, if they are resting on anything else for acceptance with God, other than the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, it’s not grace, it’s not the faith that God wants.
This is a righteousness that is separate from the law and separate from us. It is not what we have produced, it is that which the Lord Jesus Christ created as He lived under the law for those 33 years.
How is The Offer Possible?
How can we who are guilty be declared innocent? There are two important concepts here which we need to look at. Redemption and Propitiation and we’ll step through each of those in turn.
“being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith,” Romans 3:24,25
Redemption
Redemption is the idea of buying back, as used in the Old Testament something or someone would be bought back out of service or slavery, buying something back into freedom. There was a price that had to be paid, which when paid released the object or individual.
What is offered freely to man by faith, at no cost to us, is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. We can have this righteousness transferred to us from God, but it was costly for God to obtain. The Lord Jesus Christ stated that He had come to give His life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). The Lord Jesus Christ said He had come to pay a price that we might live. He give His life as the price to redeem us.
Humanity, due to its sinfulness was condemned to death, the second eternal death. And a price had to be paid to release God’s people, to redeem us, to give us freedom. That price is stated in verse 25. It is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness (Heb 9:22). We had to be purchased back as it were, from God Himself. We had sinned. We had broken His law. God had to maintain His justice and the integrity of the law but it demanded that a price should be paid. A punishment had to be given out, God’s wrath should be upon those that break His law. That was the price the Lord Jesus Christ paid to set us free, on the cross He took God’s wrath for our sin. This leads us to the idea of propitiation.
Propitiation
Verse 25 describes the price paid for our redemption. The verse talks about the Lord Jesus Christ as a propitiation, and the heart of propitiation is satisfying God’s anger. You can’t just wave a magic wand and God’s anger disappears. We can’t just say it would be nice that yes, we know we’ve broken God’s law but God wants to be friends with us so we can just make God’s wrath disappear. It has to go somewhere. God’s anger is His settled disposition, His settled response to sin. It’s not on the spur of the moment. It’s not a capricious or a jealous anger. It is His settled response to somebody breaking His law and that anger from an infinite God has got to go somewhere.
Atonement has the idea of a covering. Atonement states that the sins of the individual are covered and are hidden, but it doesn’t actually say what’s been done about those sins.
Propitiation says God’s anger needs to be satisfied. It is poured forth onto an individual and God’s anger is fully satisfied. That’s propitiation. This is the redemption price that had to be paid. The just laws of our God had been broken. Justice demanded the penalty was paid and God’s wrath was poured out upon the lawbreaker. However the Lord Jesus Christ took God’s wrath in our place, He had no sin, He took God’s wrath for our sins. His death was a propitiatory sacrifice, satisfying God’s anger.
The Uniqueness of Christ’s Sacrifice
No Individual in Hell Will Ever Say “It Is Finished”
While our Lord Jesus Christ was on the cross, He could say “It is finished”. He had taken the full weight of God’s anger from man’s disobedience to a Holy God’s law and He could say, “I have fully taken My Father’s penalty for that disobedience”. He could say, “It is finished”.
No individual in hell will ever be able to say, “It is finished”. Hell goes on for all eternity. If human beings choose to reject God’s righteousness and stand before God in their sins, God’s response is to pour forth His anger upon the individual for all eternity. They will never be able to say, “It is finished”. They will be in torment forever. It seems that when we break an infinite God’s laws a response of infinite anger comes forth from Him. A finite individual will never ever fully satisfy that infinite wrath from a Holy God. They will never in hell be able to say, “It is finished”.
No Created Being Will Both Keep The Law and Take Its Penalty
No created being will ever both keep the law and take its penalty. For us, it’s one or the other. If the law is kept, the individual merits eternal life, as the apostle mentioned in chapter 2. There is only one individual who has perfectly kept the law. That is the Lord Jesus Christ. If the individual breaks the law, then they merit punishment. It’s one or the other.
The Lord Jesus Christ not only fully kept the law and took its punishment; indeed He did the two at the same time on the cross, He had perfect obedience to the law. He fully loved His Father at every point while He was on the cross. Simultaneously, He took God’s anger for our sin. It was poured forth onto Him. This is perfectly summed up by the opening phrase in Psalm 22.
“My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Psalm 22:1
“My God, My God,” that is His love for His Father, “why have You forsaken Me? “ that is the Lord under His Father’s wrath and being judged. Perfect love, perfect obedience, and yet taking the full weight of the penalty for lawbreaking at the same time.
Only The Lord Jesus Christ Could Redeem Mankind
Are we now beginning to see something of the uniqueness of our Lord Jesus Christ? Our salvation depends solely upon Him as God and man and His work upon the cross. It had to be a man under the law to earn the perfect righteousness required to clothe us. All of Adam’s posterity were guilty before God, we had sinned. Even if a created angel could have become a man, would a finite being be able to take the wrath of an infinite God? There is no other person who could save us. He had to be fully man to live unto the law. He had to be fully God to render obedience to the law and to take the wrath of His Father upon the cross. The Lord Jesus Christ is absolutely unique and the only one who could save us in all of creation, there is nobody else.
There could be no substitute for the Lord Jesus Christ. Had He decided that He wasn’t going to do redeem His people, if He didn’t love us enough, there was nobody in all of creation who could stand in for Him, who could be that substitute. Let us give thanks and praise to God that the only one who could redeem, us loved us enough to redeem us and to pay the price to set us free.
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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