21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Thankfully it's time for some good news!
MacArthur...
salvation is not a matter of maintaining some religious law in the flesh but rather righteousness, or salvation, is apart from the law... it is revealed in the Scripture. ...No difference between Jew and Gentile as we’ve seen in chapters 1, 2 and 3....
So, the point of all of this is that you can’t get saved by keeping the law. The Gentile cannot become saved by a fleshly effort to maintain the law of his conscience. The Jew cannot save himself by a fleshly effort to live up to the written law given to him through the Old Testament. The law has the effect of showing us our sin, but we cannot keep it to the satisfaction of God and thus be granted salvation. Redemption, salvation, justification, righteousness is apart from the law. It is given to us as a free gift, verse 24, through grace granted in Christ Jesus....
salvation occurs apart from some human effort to live up to the divine standard. You can’t do it. All have sinned and come short, so we’re all left incapable of reaching the standard and salvation therefore must come another way and it comes through grace in Christ.
We have all sinned. We are under obligation to the law, but there is no way that we can live up to it. We are totally unable to make things right with God on our own effort. Only God can make things right with man. Only God.
How? How can we be made right with God.
It's apart from legalism (v21). We've already established that we can't keep God's law, we can't earn our way into God's good graces.
But it is built on the revelation of the law and the prophets - on the OT (v21b). We needed to know God's standard in order to know we could never keep it.
Because we can't reach God by our own righteousness, He has brought us His righteousness through Jesus Christ, as the fulfillment of the OT (v22).
It's acquired by faith, not works (v22).
And it's provided to everyone who will believe (v22b). Anyone. We're all the same. We're all in the same boat together - the murderers, the child molesters, and the "good" people (v23).
MacArthur explains it this way....
you're just the same as a child molester and a rapist and a murderer and an irreligious, God-hating Christ cursing, hell-bound sinner.
Well, that's very hard for people to understand. But that's what it says. You see, because they think good is relative but good is not relative, it's absolute. But evil is relative. I mean there are some people technically worse than others but they're all so bad that they're infinitely far from God. And we're included too, aren't we?--before we come to Christ. There's no difference....
Any human being on the face of the earth who comes short of the glory of God is in the same boat as everybody else
You see evil is evil is evil and everybody is in the same boat--infinitely separated from holy God. So salvation is provided for all because everybody is in the same category. Not only does everybody need it but God is able to save everybody who believes. Tremendous truth.
So, God's righteous is apart from legalism, it's built on revelation, it's acquired by faith, it's provided to everyone who believes and it is given freely through grace (v24). God doesn't pretend that we're now righteous. We are made righteous by His righteousness being imputed to us on our behalf.
we are saved freely by grace and grace is undeserved love granted to the guilty.
Grace is free for us, but not for God. It cost God a lot. It cost God redemption through Jesus Christ.
man's a slave to sin. Man cannot be righteous on his own. God provides a righteousness by faith. The only way God can do that is for Christ to pay the price to free that man. The man is a prisoner. He is sentenced to die. Somebody's got to pay his penalty. And that was the redeeming price paid by the blessed Lord Jesus Christ. He paid the price to set us free.
Redeem means to ransom by the payment of a price. God said the price for sin was death. Jesus paid our ransom. He died the death that was meant for us, the price we were meant to pay. He paid it with His blood shed on the cross for us (v25).
God could not just forgive you and me and not deal with justice. Love could forgive but justice had to be met and justice required a penalty and the penalty had to be paid. And so, literally, Jesus becomes the covering....
God's righteousness couldn't come to us apart from the cross. Jesus died in our place. Beloved, I hope you hear with the Scripture's saying. You were hell bound; the first three chapters of Romans describe you. And we're all the same, there's no difference. And we could not be right with God on our own and so God came down and He had a plan to make us right. And He gave us His righteousness. You say, "How could He do that?" He had to deal with our sin first and the penalty had to be paid and it was paid in the death of Jesus Christ. And then again it says in verse 25, and this is the final word, "This is appropriated through faith," through faith. And there we are again back to that most important of all truths that we saw also in verse 22, that salvation comes by faith, by believing, not by anything we do. It is God; it says in Colossians 2-12, it is God who has done this for us.' It is buried with Him in baptism. It is risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God. Faith is God operating....
It's not what we've done. It's what He has done for us.
Christ's death accomplished so many things. His sacrificial death saved us from our sin and therefore, from God's wrath, from death and from eternal hell. Christ's death and resurrection destroyed Satan's only weapon - death. Christ gained the power to take us from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. Christ's death and resurrection also enabled Him to once again experience a face to face relationship with God the Father, His humiliation ending, His glory returning. His death verifies His promises and demonstrates His love of the Father.
Here's another incredible thought. Yes, Jesus died for sinners. But He also died for God.
Christ's death declared God's righteousness. God had tolerated sin in the past (v25b), He had allowed it to go unpunished for a time - but sin cannot be excused, it cannot just fade away, it has to be paid.
MacArthur says....
God vindicates His righteousness by putting to death His Son as a substitute and in a divine miracle, He gathers up all the sin of all the ages in terms of its guilt and its deserved penalty, He puts it on Christ and Christ becomes the sacrifice paying the price for all that sin so that God is a just God. He will not pass by sin without its penalty being met....He had to find that absolute balance between His love and His justice. And the balance was found in the full execution of the penalty but on a substitute so that those who believe in Him can go free, but the penalty was paid.
Christ's death maintains God's righteousness, it satisfies God's justice.
And once again, it only applies to those who accept this sacrifice, by faith.
Tomorrow's scripture focus: Romans 3:27-31
1 comment:
Wow, there is a lot in those few verses!
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