Satisfaction

When Jim's talking like that, I think, no pressure. No pressure. Actually, these verses are, Chester McCauley calls them the very heart and the center of all the Bible has to talk about. Old Testament through the end of Revelation. This is it right here.

So, it's interesting and I feel privileged, I guess, to be able to talk about them. I probably, as the teacher, learn more than you as the hearers do. And I think it's probably just that way, you know. So if you aspire to be a teacher, do it, because you learn a lot that way. So I had Jim read all five verses. so that we would get the flavor. And we've talked about, apart from the law, God demonstrated His righteousness. I talked about it in Sunday school. If you capitalize it this way, God has taken every human being and put them under sin. Every single one of them. He says all are under sin. So here they are, sitting there, all under sin.

And the second thing is, they have nothing to say. He shut all of their mouths. So they're sitting there, waiting for judgment. But what do they get? They get the revelation of God's righteousness. They find out, because they're quiet, and they're sitting there, that God really is a God of love. And He's a God of grace.

And they've fallen short of that. He's not condemning them for their sins. And so you take that theme that men have fallen short of God's glory as a lover. That's His basic character. He's a lover. God so loved the world. That's why He does everything. And so all of these human beings, all of us, who are quiet, waiting for condemnation, find out that the one in charge is really a lover. And so that's basically what a lot of these verses, as we go through these, are really about.

So we find in verse 24 that being justified is a gift by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Newell says being declared righteous is a gift by his grace through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. So God had brought the whole world into his courtroom and pronounced them guilty. They're all under sin. He now shows himself in absolute sovereign grace towards the guilty. being declared or accounted righteous. Believers, those who believe, are justified. Justification is an accounting righteousness, righteous.

It's God saying to one who believes the whole work and the whole effect before him of the Lord Jesus Christ in perfect redemption. I'm going to give it to you for free. only because you believe Me." So justification doesn't really change anything internally about a man, so far as we know, but it's a change in our relationship to God.

He has said, you are now righteous. You are now accounted righteous before Me. The whole work of the Lord Jesus Christ, His perfect redemption is now accrued to you. But make sure you understand that this word does not mean that the one made righteous becomes holy unto himself, but he's accounted righteous. Justification is not a change worked by God, but it's a change of relationship.

Maybe it's a better way to say it. So being justified is a gift. This Greek word, dorion, means he did it for gratuitously, a free gift. And he freely is what this word means. It's a pretty interesting word. It just means I didn't do it for anything. I did it gratis. I did it without any cause in you. which tells us that when we believe that our faith is not a meritorious act.

It's just as God says, if you believe me, I will accrue to you righteousness. So what's the motive? What makes God like that? It's this thing called grace, I think. Grace, which signified, if you look at the history of the word, It's a favor done out of a spontaneous generosity of the heart without any expectation of return. That's what the word charis means. And so it happens, and grace is a word that's used in Greek writings.

But when it comes to the New Testament, it takes on an infinite leap forward. For the favor that God did at Calvary was for those who hated Him. The favor done in Greek literature, or grace done in Greek literature, was done for those that you cared about and cared about you. But God grants it to those who hate Him. Never to an enemy. The Greeks would never do that.

So Christ comes into the New Testament. He takes an infinite leap forward, and the favor of God did at Calvary was for those who hated him." Okay, that's an important part. I mean, we think that these people are wishy-washy. No, they hated. Study the Gospels, the crucifixion of Christ, and you find out that the hatred was tremendous. So, there's no strings attached to the idea of grace.

This word, Dorian, which means gratuitously, of course, is grace in the form of salvation. But it has an effect. It's so adjusted that one who receives it turns from sin to serve the living God and live a holy life. And grace includes all of that. Not only is the declaration of a righteousness, But the inward transformation consisting of the power of the indwelling sin broken and the divine sin nature implanted.

We talked this morning in Sunday school about how gracious God is and how He persuades through His Spirit a believer to, that dreaded word, obey Him because he wants to, not because he has to. We had a discussion about Lordship Salvation and how Lordship Salvation is a requirement for you to be saved.

But what God does through his Spirit is he liberates a believer from the compelling power of sin. And he makes him hate sin. And he makes him love holiness. And when a believer comes into the understanding that God loves me, and I can love him back, then what does he do? He slowly, he's implanted the life of the Lord Jesus in me, but he slowly conforms me to that life. And that life makes me a lover of God. That's the work of the Spirit. So His grace is shown the believing sinner. How is His grace shown the believing sinner made possible?

Paul says it's through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus. Now, redemption is an interesting word. Apollutrosis, I think is how you say it in the verbal form, Apollutruo, to redeem by paying the lutron, Greek word, price. So you can say there are three words primarily translated in the Greek, in the New Testament, about redemption. The one is agorazo, which means to buy a slave out of the slave market. Christ bought us. I'll put it this way. Christ went into the slave market. The slave market is the slave market of sin. And He took His own blood with Him, and He used that commodity to buy us out of there. That's what agaradzo means. And then there's ex-agaradzo, which means to buy out of the slave market but never, ever have to return. That you don't ever have to go back. You don't ever get put up for sale again. You don't ever lose your status as a free person in Christ. And that Le Truo, which is the price that's paid, Lutron, to set free by paying a price. The believer is set free from sin. and free to live a life that's pleasing to God in the power of the Holy Spirit. That's what the freedom really means. So the redemption price, obviously, there's one commodity in the whole world that's priceless. You know what it is? It's the blood of Christ. There's nothing more valuable than the blood of Christ.

And it makes it possible for a righteous God a holy, loving God, to redeem those who believe Him, and to justify them, even though they were a sinner. And he bases it, or he does it on the basis of his own justice being satisfied. He's satisfied about what Christ did.

Now, see the little word in up there in red? Really interesting little word. It means, it's a preposition meaning denoting a fixed position. You and I are fixed in the position, we're fixed in the position of sin. We couldn't get out. Now we are fixed in the position of the glorified Christ. We can't get out. Permanent.

Really interesting. cruising through this verse, being justified as a gift by the grace of God through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus. This in has a huge impact on what he's saying. Verse 25, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness. Because in the forbearance of God, he passed over the sins previously committed.

So what he's saying here, that he has set forth the Lord Jesus, put him out there in a place before for everybody to see. He exposed him to public view. Vincent says, publicly open correlated with to declare. He brought him forth and put him before the public.

Bengal says he placed before the eyes of all unlike the Ark of the Covenant was veiled Was veiled and approached it was only by the high priest Christ is portrayed publicly and openly The word translated propitiation here is we want to talk about now It's it's an interesting word and it's important to the discussion and the Greek word is a Halasterion. The classic form was used of an act of appeasing the Greek gods by a sacrifice rendering them favorable towards the worshiper. In other words, the sacrifice was offered to buy off their anger and to buy their love.

That's why they did it. And if you read Old Testament books like Exodus, and you start to understand how these cultures, what they were willing to sacrifice to whoever their God was, that was really what they were doing. They wanted to, they knew somehow instinctively, as we talked about a few weeks ago, that God wasn't real happy with them. He was angry. And they wanted God to love them. What better way for God to react to us as if we sacrifice a life to Him? And then you get down to the Mexican culture in Mexico City, and of course they thought, well, if that's good, maybe we ought to sacrifice human beings. And some cultures sacrifice babies to God to get God to love them. But here's the problem.

Such a use is not brought over into the New Testament, for our God does not need to be appeased, nor does it is his love for sale. The word hysterion is used in Leviticus 614 to refer to the golden cover on the Ark of the Covenant. I would say this, that it's not a correct word. to use when translating the New Testament meaning of this word which has accrued by its usage in the context which is found. The word is used in the Greek to translate the Old Testament Septuagint word in the sense of atonement or reconciliation.

It refers to the act of getting rid of sin which has come between God and man. Canon Westcott says that the scripture conception of this word is not that of appeasing one who is angry. With a personal feeling against the offender. But of altering the character of that which from without a without an occasion, a necessary alteration and interposes an inevitable obstacle to fellowship.

The word refers to the, and maybe I got a picture of the ark there, the picture of the ark. You see the cherubim and right on as part of the lid. And really the Ark of the Covenant is a box. That's really what it is. And it has a cover and a lid on it.

And on top of it are these two cherubim with their wings out and the two poles. were in there so that they could carry it around because they couldn't touch it. If they did, they died. What's most important about the Ark of the Covenant is what's inside of it. The tables of stone upon which were written the Ten Commandments which Israel had violated. The law was there.

So on the Day of Atonement, the high priests would go in there with the blood of a goat, and we'll talk about that in a minute. And he would seven times each sprinkle blood on the lid. And the lid was referred to as the mercy seat. When the sacrificial blood was sprinkled on the cover, it ceases to be a place of judgment. And it becomes a place of mercy.

The blood comes between the violated law and the violators, the people themselves. So the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ satisfies the requirements of God's holy law, which mankind broke and pays the penalty for men. He stands in our place and thus removes that which is separated between a holy God and sinful man and the guilt and the penalty that's incurred with that. So, this is a long way from the pagan idea of propitiation, which appeased the anger of a god and purchased his love. So, whom God displayed as propitiation.

One of the men I read used this term. The word is ex-propitiation. I can't even say it, expiratory satisfaction seems to be the words rather than propitiation. It's an adequate translation. It isn't just God is satisfied, it's the place of satisfaction. That which provides the satisfaction of the broken law.

Therefore God Therefore, the Lord Jesus is both the mercy seat and the sacrifice, which transforms the former from a judgment seat to one in mercy as offered of a sinner on the basis of justice. The cross of the Lord Jesus did that. I'll give you an example that I thought T. McCauley used that was really a good one. You notice that the angels are looking down, and the Shekinah glory was above the angels.

So God would look down and he'd look through the lid into the box and he'd see the law and he'd see all of the laws have been broken. But the high priest goes in there and puts the blood on the cover. And he doesn't see past the blood. He doesn't see past down to the sinner because the blood satisfied him. It's the same thing with Christ. When Christ looks at you, he sees you in Christ. When God looks at you, he sees you in Christ and he sees the blood. And he doesn't see who you were in Adam.

So Macaulay lays out three elements here. He said, God demands, and there are two, He demands of God the Father, necessitated by His righteousness and justice, and demands holiness from man, and it demands sin be punished. So God's got three things going here.

He's got His righteousness. You know, we've talked about His righteousness in the past. It's who He is. And anything that's not of God is not acceptable. Righteousness is who He is. And because of that righteousness, His justice demands holiness from man. In order for all of us to spend eternity with the Holy God, guess what we have to be? We have to be holy. We have to be like Him. Because that's the way He set it up. I will make man in my own image and my own likeness. Why? So they can be with me. That's what I want. I want them with me. But in order to be with me, they've got to be like me. And the second thing is, oh yeah, they do sin, so we've got to punish the sin. My righteousness demands the punishment of sin.

So what did the cross of Christ do? Number one, Christ took our place. He took the punishment. So you and I don't have to. And it satisfied the demands of His righteousness and the demands of His holiness because the Lord Jesus is the God-man. So what do we do about all of that? Faith of man and of the sinner is effective.

The only way all of this ever becomes effective for you and me is to believe it. It's already done. It's already there. But it doesn't accrue to you unless you believe it. God is totally satisfied about the sins of the world, and he's totally satisfied about his righteousness. But you don't get to partake in it unless you believe him. If you want it effectively applied to you, you have to believe Him. The cross of Christ is the reason why God does not execute punishment on this believing sinner.

So let's talk a little bit about the two goats. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest presented before Jehovah these two goats. One of them was slain. His blood was brought in by the high priest into the tabernacle, through the holy place, and passed the second veil into the Holy of Holies. He was the only man that could go in there once a year, and he had to go in there with blood. And then he would high The high priest would sprinkle the blood on what now, with the blood on it, becomes the mercy seat.

But it's the covering of the ark where the Shekinah glory of God's presence was above the cherubim and also before the mercy seat. And he did it seven times. This was the blood of the goat upon which the lot fell for Jehovah. This was Jehovah's goat. Therefore, we have here first the holy and righteous claims of the throne of God as to sin completely met. The blood meets them.

Now whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith, So Paul's really careful here to explain that the benefits of Christ's sacrifice are only available to those who places their faith in him, in the worth of the blood which was shed.

That's really what we do. Our faith is that one, an act of the heart and the will that appropriate the work of Christ to us. And we stand by virtue of that work alone in the immediate presence of an infinite, holy, righteous God. That simple act of faith puts us in the presence of a righteous God. It is the bold believing use of ourselves of the scripture we learn that God desires and not merely the knowledge of scripture. I got this quote out of Newell's Romans and it just sort of grabbed a hold of me because it We believers sometimes are enamored with the knowledge we have of scripture.

But the issue is, do I believe what I read? Do I make it my own? Is it really true? Or is what my circumstances, my feelings, my emotions, my things that happen, are those a bigger deal to me than what God's Word is, which isn't. So Paul, I think, is careful to say to us, bold believing, when God says it's so, it's so. I believe it. I leave the rest of it up to God. If I don't experience it, so what at the beginning? It's up to God to show me. And so I learn over time in the work of the Holy Spirit that just by resting in God's facts, things begin to change circumstantially.

Now, in this part of the verse where he says, this was to demonstrate his righteousness, God set forth our Lord to declare his righteousness. How does he do that? It looks back. This verse looks back at the cross and it sets forth our Lord to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past. sins previously committed.

And this verse says that God was forbearing. And this creates a problem if you're a logical thinker. How could God forgive the sins of the Old Testament saints before the cross of Christ. His righteousness hasn't been demonstrated yet. But he says here he was to demonstrate his righteousness because in a forbearance he passed over the previous sins.

So like one guy I read said, well this is kind of scandalous for God. So the verse looks at the whole history of human sin before it was judged at the cross. The vast scandal, so to speak, of the universe. A holy God letting sin pass for four or five thousand years from Adam to Christ. Problem. God cannot overlook sin. His righteousness shows the impossibility of passing over sin. Yet what's he doing?

He's declaring or demonstrating his righteousness to prove that he is righteous. It was to prove this, to demonstrate to the human race that God is righteous in the remission of the sins before the cross, before they were actually paid for. The righteousness here is God's righteous character as seen in his antagonism against sin. The cross itself is an eternal fact in the reckoning of God. It's not limited to time-space. Of course, the cross had to come, for the righteous God could not pass by sin, but must require that sin be paid for. His justice must be satisfied.

So this verse gives us relief, but it also answers a question, maybe a question that Paul anticipates or has heard. Well, how can God forgive sins before the cross? How does he do it? So he passed over the sins. This word passed over is an interesting word.

It means, the old authorized version used the Greek word parison, two words which closely ally. Ephesus, the former, means literally to put it off or to put it away, and it's used in such places as Matthew 26, Ephesians 1-7. Ephesians 1-7 says, We have the redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace, the forgiveness of our trespasses. That's this word.

In Colossians 1.14, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. That's Ephesus. This word, parasis, is only used here in the New Testament. It's the only place.

And it means passing over or letting it pass. Or we could say it was left undone. That's what this word means. A man named Trench defines and explains the uses of the word this way. The pretermission or passing by of sins for the present leaving it open in the future, either entirely to remit or else adequately punish them, as may seem good to him who has the power and the right to do one or the other.

It was this passing of sin before the cross in the sense that God saved believing sinners then without having their sins paid for, thus bestowing mercy without having justice satisfied, which would make God appear as if He condoned sin. That had to be set right in the thinking of the human race.

The matter is always right in God's eyes. It wasn't a problem in His eyes, for He looked forward to the satisfaction of the broken law at the cross. It doesn't make any difference to God, I think, whether He saves a sinner before or after the cross. We've used the term He forgave on credit. He knew it was coming. And so He could do that. So the cross not only exonerated God from the charge that He passed over sin before the crucifixion, but it also demonstrated that when He declared a believing sinner righteous, He all the time maintained his perfect righteousness.

It was a just as well as a merciful act of God to save a sinner. For mercy was bestowed upon the basis of justice being satisfied. The demands of a broken law were satisfied, sin was paid for, it wasn't condoned. Consequently, the believing sinner is saved not only by the mercy of God, but by his righteousness. For his salvation rests upon the fact that the sins are paid for and his justice has been maintained.

Thus, God is just and at the same time, the one who justifies the believing sinner. for the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at this present time, so that he would be just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. So at the present time, God directs his gaze back to the cross, where Christ was publicly set forth and judged for our sins, and also he covers the whole season of grace in the present dispensation now. Old Testament believers look forward to, and they were forgiven on credit as we said. But the present time is better. It is characterized by a righteousness already displayed in God's judging over sin at the cross, and therefore by God as a righteous justifier of all who believe. So if you look at both verse 25 and 26, It is the effect of Christ's sacrifice that's displaying divine justice that's sitting out before us right here. For Adam, from Adam to Christ, God had passed over. He didn't judge or put him away.

The word translated Passover, as we talked, is not a word of remission. which is used 15 times for the active pardon of sin, whereas the present word, paresis, is used in Romans 3.25 only. It carries a sense almost the same thought as the word overlooked.

So, before the cross, the righteousness of God was not so apparent. for he seemed not to be so exacting with sin as he really is, but to leave the sinner to himself to regard it not. Nevertheless, God did not take up man's sin for judgment according to his own being until the cross. So at the cross he held a public judgment of human sin. displaying his absolute righteousness and not sparing his own son. The cross of Christ resolved two problems. The challenge to God's character of righteousness.

That he might be just. And What he did at the cross allows him to be the justifier. All we got to do is believe. So in closing, I would say the atoning death of Christ, God's righteousness was fully exhibited. And God's wrath against sin was fully exhibited in everybody's sight. He was shown to be righteous at the very moment he was in love, working out the deliverance of the sinner from the wrath that was due the sinner. He was the justifier and yet he was just. So now our faith is the one act of our hearts that appropriates the entire work of Christ on the cross.

So let's pray. Father, how thankful we are for your son. We're thankful for your righteousness. We're thankful for your character. We're thankful for all that you are. and that you have done a work that's totally complete and satisfies you from time immemorial and on into the future so that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ. And we thank you. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.