Man is Humbled by Gods Grace in Salvation
Romans 3:27-28 · Roger Henderson · May 7, 2023
Romans (2022-25), No. 22
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261931147223

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, good morning. Well, Jim's right. Actually, we're going to do something a little bit different this week. I'm going to actually repeat the same verses that Mike taught with a little different focus this time. So I'm hoping that will be instructive. And actually, I'm going to read some quotes by different men who we regard highly about the verses we've been studying. And it's pretty amazing. Actually, I don't have the... Here we go. I thought, how do I move these slides? Slides move, change. They have something to do with it.

The new verses for today are going to be verses 27 and 28. Man is humbled by God's grace and salvation. But before that, I want to go back and look at especially verses 21 through 24. And we'll talk about that, and then we'll kind of go into these verses. But this section of scripture is pretty remarkable, and I'll show you some quotes about different men who've studied this. But let's just look at these verses again. I want to include, you know, there's a tie-in back in chapter 1 in Romans 117.

For in it, speaking of the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. So this expression, the righteousness of God, shows up back in 117 we see it in 321 speaking about the righteousness has been manifested and then we see it in 322 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ and then Paul skips a few verses but then he kind of picks back up again in verse 25 the idea of demonstrating his righteousness And then in 26 he talks about, I say, of his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just. You know, the core word between just and righteous is the same Greek word. It's interesting, sometimes it's translated just, sometimes righteous, depending on the translation. And then the last part is the justifier, declaring righteous to one who is of faith. So righteousness is a key aspect of these verses, the righteousness of God.

So let's see if we can kind of get a hold of what that means. So here are some comments about These verses we're studying. This is the last 10 verses in chapter 3 21 through 31 so here's and both Mike and I you know, it's funny maybe our our Exposure is limited. But both both of us were kind of amazed by what people said about these verses. So here's Macaulay Which we look at quite a bit.

So Macaulay says that 21 through 31 is the heart of Romans the New Testament and the entire Bible and He says, give me 324. He would be one, that's the key verse he believes in the entire Bible, Romans 324. And we're going to see, and then, okay, let's go to Chafer.

He says, the Apostle Paul, he kind of narrows it in verses 23 through 26, describes the divine undertaking, which is a complete and final salvation, and in a manner which is without doubt the most perfect and all-inclusive proclamation of it." Wow. Then Newell, this is another amazing statement.

He focuses on verse 24 here. We now come to the greatest single verse, verse 24 in the entire Bible on the manner of justification by faith. We entreat you, study this verse. We have seen many a soul upon understanding it, come into peace." Just some amazing statements. You know, I had to go back and look at these, and I'm actually thankful that we're taking quite a bit of time on these verses. They're really outstanding. I would add one little caveat, and I mentioned this to Mike this morning, that I would agree, I think Newell has, these are the greatest single verses on justification by faith, but we're going to get into the greatest verses on our Christian walk, sanctification in Romans 6 7 & 8 so I agree with our brothers here that these verses are the best verses in justification by faith hopefully we can see that and that's why we're going to repeat them again here and then also kind of I want to show you so so here's a Macaulay you know Macaulay is just amazing I really appreciate listening to him that we have a chance to listen to him as we study God's Word and he's a great outliner he loves to To outline scripture, so he outlined these 10 verses. I thought this would be helpful in our study as well. So here's his outline on these 10 verses. Okay.

God's method of salvation is nature. Salvation is apart from works. It's by faith alone. Salvation is to all men. Why? Because all have sinned. The basis of salvation is in 24 and 25. salvation's basis is redemption and also propitiation it's purpose to demonstrate the righteousness of God that phrase the righteousness of God is is a key phrase in this whole picture and you got to get you know you think that sounds that's too big a word Roger that's too big a word I can't I can't make it my own it's just a big word and I can't You know, faith is a small word. Righteousness is a big word. And it's of God. How do you understand righteousness?

Anyway, hopefully we'll take a crack at that. And then lastly, the results, which we'll talk about today a little bit. It humbles man. It glorifies God. It confirms the law of Moses. So that's Macaulay's outline. I thought it was just outstanding. Kind of giving you a grasp of these ten verses. So now we're not finished here. I went back and I thought about Marchbank. I thought, man, Marchbank is taking a crack at salvation, but he does it in 16 points. I said, well, wait a minute. What are the points in common?

We've got redemption, justification, propitiation, and we've got the gospel and salvation. So these 10 verses will encompass redemption, justification, propitiation, the gospel, and salvation. So these 10 verses are a goldmine, if you will, of God's plan of salvation. And what we're going to find is, spoiler alert, God has done it all. He asked us to trust Him, believe Him by faith. He has accomplished our salvation. And He's going to explain to us how He's done that.

Okay, so let's take a crack at the righteousness of God. So I went back to a chart that I shared with our brother Hal from 2006 or so. So the attributes of God are his essential qualities and in this particular chart I was focused on the triune God and it's basically who God is. His attributes or his glory or his essence are who God is. This is what God is about. And God is about kind of right off one of the key aspects is his holiness.

His holiness is described in scripture in two ways Righteous and just and we're going to talk about those today. It's also he's infinite omniscient omnipresent omnipotent He's self-existent He's love Grace and mercy. We're going to talk about his grace a little bit today He's immutable faithful and true. I'm going to talk about truth a little bit and then finally he's spirit and he's sovereign. I So what I did for this particular chart, I'll just do it for this time as well.

If you take any of these attributes, you can go into scripture and you can find verses that will show that the Father is truth, the Son is truth, and the Spirit is truth. So here's an example of that. The Father, 728, He, Christ is speaking, He who sent me is true. And then the Son says in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And the Spirit in 1 John 5, 7 is the Spirit who bears witness because the Spirit is the truth. So the entire triune God attributes are listed here as described in scripture. But our focus today is going to be on His holiness, His righteousness and justice. So here's another way to look at this thing. I borrowed another HAL chart. I think Sue typed this up. I don't know how she typed on the... or maybe he wrote it. I don't know how he did this. How did he write in the curve? You can do that with a graphics package, but you can't do that in some packages. Anyway, so I decided not to try to redo it.

So here's that same picture, but showing His holiness in the center, His righteousness and His justice. So, first of all, That aspect, His holiness, His righteousness and justice, is the center of who He is. And that's why it's so important we talk about the righteousness of God. It's like a jewel. There's two aspects to this. The aspect we studied for a good part for the last several months is His judgment of sin. God must judge sin. He's a holy and righteous God. He must judge sin.

And we found out, like in Romans 3.9, The whole world is under sin. Man is rightfully judged by God. But the other side of his righteousness, he had this one single aspect of his character. He's righteous, but he judges sin, but he also is gracious. this righteous God also reveals His grace in the gospel. That's what we saw just in Romans 117. So this righteousness of God is described at least in two ways, in terms of the judgment of sin and its revelation of His grace through the gospel. Okay, so now let's go back and do a little reviewing.

So now apart from the law, and the article's not there, so it's a law system, apart from a law system, Apart here is the idea without or separate from And I have a couple of statements here God will not use a law system with mankind and you're going to say wait a minute Roger What about the Ten Commandments? What about the 613 laws God used the law system? But he didn't he didn't use it to save men he used it to show their need for salvation so God is not about a having a set of rules. God doesn't want us to keep a set of rules or a set of laws to gain salvation.

That's not what He's about. He's about a righteousness of God that's being manifest. He talks about that. So, the gospel says the righteousness of God refers to God's method of bringing people into a right relationship with Himself. And that's what it's about. Amazingly enough, every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has the very righteousness of God. But he also has a sin nature. So that kind of muddies up the works. But he has this wonderful righteousness of God. And it's come to him not by anything he's accomplished by works, but only by grace. So we're going to see next this manifestation of that. And it's a past completed action. It's Aristem's. So we're going to see about that in the last part of the verse.

So what's interesting is this phrase, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets. And that phrase, that little, by the Law and the Prophets, kind of is like a little sign that says, that's kind of speaking of the Old Testament Scriptures. And our brother Mike's going to be talking about this in the coming weeks. We're going to see Abraham and David's witness about this justification by faith. Here's a couple of verses from that. A little preview.

Romans 4.3. For what does the scripture say?

Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Then David, just as David also speaks of the blessings on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works. So we're going to see those two men testifying, witnessing about God's righteousness, achieving salvation.

Okay, so let's go on that was verse 21. So this is just a short review Okay, so even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe God's righteousness becomes man's possession and Begins to operate in his life through faith in Christ Jesus So here and I hadn't thought about but this is the first time we see that Paul introduces the object of What's the object of our faith? And the object here is stated very clearly. The object of our faith is Jesus Christ.

And Macaulay makes another kind of interesting statement. Understanding God's way of salvation demands a complete break with man's way of thinking. You know, man's way of thinking, and I tried to just jot a few things, man's way of thinking is, you talk to the man in the street, and the typical man in the street always says, let's talk to the man in the street. You know, he thinks, you know, I gotta, you say, you need to have a relationship with God.

And he'll say, yeah, okay, I'll try to be better. I'll do better. I'll do some good deeds. I'll be more loving. I'll be more self-sacrificing. I'll give back. Isn't that, well, I gotta give back. Everybody says, I gotta give back. I made a billion dollars. I gotta give some back. They're all about, and they're all about works. I gotta do something. I gotta do something. Well, that's totally counter to what God's about. Man can't do anything to gain God's favor. Because God's favor is absolute holiness. And man is a fallen creature and cannot attain that.

So that's why your thinking has to change. And this verse, Mike gets to do all the cool verses. I've got cool ones too, but anyway. 4.5 is just amazing. It talks exactly to this point. But to the one who does not work, You go off to, well, mom, I'm going off to work. I'm not going to do any work. I'm just going to believe. That's what God says. You say, wait a minute, that sounds kind of strange.

But the one who does not work, but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. So as strange as that may seem, that is the way God operates. And we know that. It's not strange to us who know the Lord. Okay, back to my target here again.

So to explain this verse, actually this verse, the last part of 22 after the semicolon is, For there is no distinction, and it's the idea that there is no distinction between men, because all men need this. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So we see two things here, two problems that man has, unregenerate man has. He sinned, and he's fallen short. Well, first of all, he sinned. This is an Aorist tense again. It's an event. He sinned. When Adam sinned, he sinned. His sins, the sins of Adam, explain the sins of his descendants.

And we will see that down the road here in Romans 5.12. And then we have the rest of Hal's picture here.

It shows that this sin, which is actually sin is harmatia, to miss the mark. Man has missed the mark because Adam missed the mark. He misses the mark. And he's come short or he's turned around. You also can say, the verb tense here, it's a present tense. You continually fall short because you have Adam's nature. You have a sin nature. So man has two strikes against him. He sinned in Adam and he continually comes short of God's glory. He can't hit the bull's eye. He can't hit the glory of God.

He can't hit his righteousness. okay so going on to 24 being justified as a gift so God will now so here's it here's our verse this is a verse that people put all their they said this is the verse and you read it and you think boy it seems like there you should say some more it says a lot but there's no you could say some more it says being justified so you could translate that being justified you could translate all are justified so there's not every person that becomes right with God is justified in this way you could say justified is to either be declared righteous and I liked I don't often look at Robertson A.T. Robertson but he had a pretty cool literal translation to be set right before God so man are justified or set this is how man is set right before God Present tense, continuous action.

God's doing the action. He's setting right man before himself. And it's this family of words. Right, righteous, just, etc. All this core word about the character of God. So now the rest of the verse is going to tell us the how and the why. How did God do it? How did he set man right before himself? It starts off, it's a gift. Man didn't deserve it freely, gratuitously, without cause. There was really no cause. Nothing other than His love and His grace, which we're going to see shortly. It's a gift and it's freely. And it's by His grace.

So grace, this is a tremendous word, charis, in the original. And I'd like to, McCauley has several, he has a wonderful definition, which I'm going to quote here in a second, but he has some other great statements about grace, so I want to repeat those for you here. So I hope I have this right. If I have it wrong, talk to me later. Grace is the unlimited and unmerited blessings of God based upon the totally adequate work of Christ. But you could say some more about it even with that. Grace is a single principle by which God operates in the realm of salvation. And I would add, in all of his dealings with man, he operates in grace. Grace is a principle that demands the meritless act of faith to appropriate its blessing.

Think about faith. What is faith? You could say trust, belief. You know, God doesn't, that is not an act that you're trusting another. You're trusting what He's done. You're not trusting yourself, you're trusting Him. When we were overseas in England, and I told this story many times, I heard the expression, faith and faith alone. I scratched my head, faith and faith alone. What is the world is faith and faith alone? I have faith and faith alone.

What does that mean? Faith has to have an object, and the object is our Savior. Grace is inexhaustible and embodied in Jesus Christ. Grace is free to us at the incomprehensible cost to God. And that was His Son. So, you know, we could go on for, you know, many, many days and hours and weeks about grace. Marvelous.

So that's part of being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. And redemption is found only, and it's in Christ Jesus. It's in this living union with Christ Jesus on the basis of our faith. And it's this neat word that Mike went over this really well. It's apollutrosis, a release on payment of ransom. And the picture here, I really love the picture here. It's a picture of a slave market. Slaves are for sale. And the slave is every person, every human being.

And his debt, he owes a debt of sin. His debt is sin. And he can't possibly pay for it. He can't pay for that debt. Christ bought us in the slave market of sin, and it required his blood, his own blood to do that. Believers are his bond servants, and that's that word to buy out of the slave market and are never to be put up for sale again. So Christ by his blood bought us out of the slave market of sin. So this verse, you know, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. It describes the entire workings of God on behalf of the believer. Okay, so finally, today's verses.

Only two. We'll cover the rest of the chapter next week. Where is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Where is boasting? So the interlinear, pretty close to the, where is is not there. Where is the boasting? Boasting is the idea to glorying, proclaiming oneself, goodness and merit. You're self-proclaiming. You're boasting. You're saying, I'm good. Look at me. I'm good. I'm what it's all about. The reference here is to the act of boasting is self-congratulating. You're congratulating yourself how well you're doing. And that's typically man in this world.

He's always having award ceremonies to congratulate himself, right? Just think about how many awards, even, and it starts young, right? I don't want to pick on Courtney, but for soccer, they have ceremonies, they give them little trophies, little guys, maybe they're seven or eight, and they're running around. You get a trophy today because you tied, or you maybe lost, but you get a trophy because you came out for soccer. And so, anyway, I'm not sure Courtney did that, but it happened in my, he probably did, he's smiling.

So, anyway, boasting is self, you congratulate yourself. It boasting was excluded. The idea of excluding is to shut out, to rule out entirely. So the verb tense here is eris. It's an event. It's indicative. It's a fact. And this was God's plan. And here's a quote by Weiss, which I really liked, but it caused me to think for a second. It boasting was excluded by the coming in of the righteousness by faith. And I was trying to think, when did righteousness by faith come in?

When is that? Well, let's see. We've got Abraham. Abraham believed God and was reckoned to him as righteousness. But then I thought, well, what about righteous Abel? Hmm. He obeyed God, right? He brought the proper sacrifice. Hmm. Then we've got Abel. Can I go back farther? So I stopped there. So if you can go back. Think of another example. Anyway, so basically what he's saying here is that it's excluded because God's plan is righteousness by faith. Faith allows us to enter into God's righteousness and there's no other way that can come than that.

Okay, so then Paul talks to himself. You notice in Scripture he'll talk to himself. So here he's going to talk to himself. and it says by what kind of law and it's actually there's no article so you could say principle the interlinear I was kind of surprised interlinear translated that way through what principle and so there's only two principles that are shown here in this verse man's answer of works that's his principle that's man's answer so Paul Scott again talking to himself of works question mark Man desires from his Adamic nature, his sin nature, to show what he's done for God.

This is what I've done for you, God. Look how great I am. You've got to bless me. I've done all these wonderful things. Paul's answer is, not at all, but through the principle of faith. This principle is that salvation becomes ours by faith in Jesus Christ. Faith is what God requires, not works. So if you learned nothing else today, I hope you've learned that God requires faith. That's what pleases Him. He directs it in a person, in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what God requires. And this is kind of like a summary statement. This is His summary of this topic, if you will.

For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. So you could at least translate this and you'll see why in a second. For our reason conclusion is as follows. So why do you say reason conclusion? Well, the reason he said that is the Greek word behind reason conclusion is this word logitsimae to take into account. It's an accounting term. and you may be familiar with it.

To put it down as true, if you remember Romans 6.11 Can you guys quote Romans 6.11? My mind went blank here all of a sudden. I can't quote it. Just a second here. I wrote it down. Okay, roger. Alright.

Remember Romans 6.11? Reckon yourself. Consider yourself. Dead to sin, but alive to God, okay?

So this word, reckon, logizimai, is what, so Paul's, this is not a casual conclusion, this is a thought out conclusion. He's thought it out like an accountant would. He says, I got the, the math backs it up. The math, check the math. It's a done deal. I've reasoned this out. So this is what he's reasoned out. So this is what he reasoned out about faith.

A man is justified by faith apart from the works or the principle of law. Man is declared righteous by faith, this righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Faith must have an object. This righteousness is only possible apart from man's works. No set of rule keeping can achieve a right standing with God.

So to cement this contrast between man's works and faith, I borrowed a chart from Macaulay. I have to listen to it. Both Mike and I listen to him and write things down. So hopefully we got it accurate here. So here's this chart on a comparison of works versus faith. So we have justification by works and justification by faith. So here's the contrast and comparison. Justification by works looks at yourself, what I've done. Justification by faith looks outside yourself. Justification by works is self-congratulating, boasting. Oh, look what I've done. I've done all these wonderful things for God. Justification by faith is self-renouncing. That's the first step in coming to know the Savior, to see that you have a need for Him. You say, I can't do it. Woe to me, I'm a sinner.

Justification by works looks at what I have done. Justification by faith looks at what God has done. Justification by works, its grounds are in man. And justification by faith, grounds are in God. Justification by faith glorifies man. I said it wrong. Justification by works glorifies man. Justification by faith glorifies God.

And finally, justification by works results in a man-centered life, and justification by faith results in a God-centered life. OK. Well, to close out here, and I always struggle all the time, what am I going to do for my final thought? And this one was a no-brainer.

Our brother, Dr. Schaefer, He took our key verse, Romans 3.24, which is the verse, and he said, let's look at it in a different way. So here's what he says. If verse 24 is traced backward, it is seen that. So he's going to go through that verse that we covered, and he's going to go take the truths and start working backwards. So hopefully this helps. If it makes it more confusing, I'm sorry.

Okay, so here we go. His first statement, you know, Vani was saying, you know, this guy, you know, he lived, his lifetime was, I think he died in the 50s maybe, 40s, 50s, something like that. So he lived, you know, anyways, somewhat contemporary. But anyway, his language is pretty hard to understand sometimes.

He starts off, because of Christ's death, which satisfies the holy demands of God, against sinners. So he's saying basically that Christ's death has satisfied a holy God. That's what he's trying to get across in his first point. Then God's grace, the unrestrained expression of His love, His infinite love, is released toward those who believe. And that love will never stop short of bestowing of the fullness of Christ and itself the fullness of the Godhead. So man will receive the total fullness of God based upon his faith. Since a believer is thus invested with all the infinite holiness can require, then God, apart from all merit or demerit in the believer, proclaims the one thus invested will be justified forever.

Pretty interesting. So basically, God is satisfied with Christ's death on the cross, His grace, is released toward the believer. His love never stops toward us. He gives us the fullness of Christ. And then we get all of Christ. Not just a teeny little bit. We get all of Christ. Which is the allness of God. And the believer is thus invested with an infinite holiness. Then God, apart from all merit or demerit in the believer, proclaims that that one is invested and justified forever.

So let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for your marvelous word. We thank you for these wonderful verses, Lord, that just encapsulate your plan for man's salvation, that you desire that we be able to communicate with you on your level, to interact with you, and you give us your very righteousness, Lord, that we don't deserve, we don't merit in any way. It's based wholly upon Christ's death on the cross and we thank you for that. We ask it in his name. Amen.