Righteousness is Right Here in Christ
Romans 10:4 · Mike Doyle · Sep 22, 2024
Romans (2022-25), No. 091
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261936423663

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

So I begin another assignment by Courtney. I have to remember what to pray for. Now, let me tell you how good my memory works. Bob Wilford said to me, boy, it's a cool thing that you, every once in a while, remember to go to the Lord right before you teach. It's a good opportunity. So he said, here, I'll help you out. You just look at me and I'll give you one of these and you'll remember. So I'm looking at him and I'm remembering. But now at the end of the sermon when I have to pray, do I look at Courtney and say, and he's gonna go like this. Anyway, okay. So interesting verses today. Interesting, for me, a real treat to study them. And so I sort of backed up a little, which is kind of okay, I guess, to verse one.

This gives Paul what's going on in his heart. He's talking to Jews. He wants them to be saved. And he says, my heart's desire and my prayer to God for them is their salvation. That's the thing that he's after. So imagine in his heart, when he says, I'm praying continually for you, that this is what is happening. Having touched on this subject, Paul, who deeply loved his nation as a people of God, pours out his heart with respect to the doctrine. which was a stumbling stone to them. Imagine that. God gave them this wonderful doctrine, and they stumble over it.

His desire and the aim of his heart was for them to be saved. So, you know, I have to stop right here. I just talked to you about memory, and I started, and I never said, let's take a minute. Let's take a minute. Okay, so Paul's desire was for their salvation.

Being ignorant of God's righteousness, and we're gonna talk quite a bit today about righteousness and what it is, they sought in their own zeal. Lots of people have lots of zeal. You know, I live in a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood. These guys are zealous. I grew up in a Catholic environment and there's some people in the Catholics that are really zealous.

Problem is they seek their own righteousness and they don't submit themselves to God's righteousness. And so we talked last week about verse four that said that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes. And I hope that got... got through, we'll talk a little bit more about it. God's righteousness in Christ was the stumbling block. The stumbling block was God's righteousness, not yours, okay?

So Romans 3.20 and 21 tell us that because of the works of the law, by works of the law, no flesh would be justified in the sight of God. Boy, what a statement to say to a Jewish person.

For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. That's what the law was designed to do. So the knowledge they had was of sin, but they didn't have any knowledge about God's righteousness. But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, shown, it's out there. And it's witnessed to by the law and the prophets.

Every religion in the world, everyone is focused on this issue of righteousness, isn't it? You think about, well, no matter what you are, what's the first thing you think about? Well, I have a God in front of me, and I have to somehow be pleasing to him, and I know I'm not. Righteousness. Righteousness, so what do I do? Well, I look around and see what other people are doing, or I come up with my own methodology, or I, in our Christian world, we, oh, well, the law must be the answer.

Just tell me what to do, God, and I'll do it. Every other religion in the planet demands righteous works from its adherents. The gospel of the glory of Christ, however, is not one gospel among many. It is the only option that provides God's righteousness. If I said to you, you want to go to heaven?

Yeah. Well, here are the 31 things you need to do to get there. And you say, okay, you look over the list, you say, okay, I'm in. And I get all 31 of them done. And you come to me and say, well, I'm ready. And I say, well, I'm sorry, you can't get in. Why not? Because you can't get in on your own works. You can't get in on your own righteousness. It has to be a righteousness that is equal to God himself. Oh, well, how do I do that? Oh, you have to work harder. Maybe we'll add a few more.

The issue is here, the Jewish mind of salvation was really entrance into the kingdom. Salvation in the kingdom, not heaven. That's what we think about heaven, they think about the kingdom. In order for a Jew to be saved or physically delivered from his enemies and gain entrance into the promised kingdom, what does he do?

He must individually possess a righteousness equal to God's righteousness. not equal to my righteousness because I obeyed. It's gotta be God's righteousness. It's gotta be him, his character. So they knew they needed God's righteousness, and that's the amazing thing. The Old Testament says that over and over again, but they were pursuing it the wrong way. They thought that at the end of the day, they would have enough of God's righteousness that they would get entrance into the kingdom.

Romans 10.3 that we talked about last week said, not knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they didn't subject themselves to the righteousness of God. I said last week, ignorance is not bliss when it comes to salvation.

Romans 10.4 says, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes.

In other words, It's actually pretty simple, pretty simple equation. When the Lord Jesus died, he was our substitute and he fulfilled by dying every consequence that the law demanded. So now law works is not part of the game. It's not what we need to do. Christ ended that by his death. Same way for us, just like the Jews. We must trust in Christ's work and his person. And when you do that, what do you get? You get God's righteousness because you're in Christ who is the righteous one. And what did you do? Believe that was it.

So let's talk a little bit about righteousness. I spent a little time this week, and most of this next part I got from Louis Ferry Chafer, I thought it was really good. The word for righteousness is, I'm not gonna pronounce it. It's up there, you can see it. It becomes an absolute term when it is applied to God.

There are four general aspects, he says, of righteousness. One is God's righteousness, which is respect to character. God is transparently holy. He's righteous in all of his acts. When combined with love, his righteousness results in this thing we call grace. God's righteousness is ever absolute, it's perfect to infinity. And a great verse for that is, in Christ there is no darkness at all, none. God's righteousness is seen in two ways. His righteousness, he's a righteous person. Everything he does winds up with who he is. And he's righteous in all of his ways, all of his ways. Okay, so the next is man's righteousness.

This kind of righteousness is recognized only to show its inadequacy and ripeness for condemnation. And lots of words there, four kinds. And I've got a note out of Merriman that I'll read to you. He says, there are four kinds of righteousness among the human race. One is cultural righteousness.

A standard as a specific culture, as per dietary laws in Islamic or Far Eastern cultures, cultural righteousness is always relative, it's never absolute. Every culture on the planet Earth has its various culture, nays and yays, do this and don't do that. Then there's religious righteousness, which we all know about those. The standard is a specific religion as per religious codes for dress, hairstyle, rituals, et cetera. Religious righteousness is also relative and it's never absolute. having grown up a Catholic and going through the rituals of, what did they call them?

You have to be baptized, you have to do a first communion, you have to go to confession. I remember my first confession, I made it all up because I didn't know what to say. And if you want to be a priest, you get ordained, and that's one of them. And then the last one, I think there's seven of them, and the last one is what they call extreme unction, and it's something, a little oil on your head, and somehow you get a break from a lot of time in purgatory.

So who knows? But that's religious righteousness. And then there's personal righteousness. It's a standard. is of individual norms and standard which are in your conscience, such as always relative, and they're always relative and they're never absolute. We all know each other. We all know that we have, we all have a personal righteousness about how we live our life. And if you don't live it like I live it, Well, you're not righteous, culturally.

And then there's God's righteousness, which we just talked about. The standard is God himself. especially as he is revealed in Christ Jesus, and it's absolute. So righteousness is kind of a cool subject when you, how much it influences how we behave. Then there's such a thing, Newell, or Chafer says, as imputed righteousness, and this is an interesting One, because imputed types of righteousness is not God's attribute as if that were bestowed on man nor human goodness in any form.

God doesn't lend you his righteousness. It is that which the believer becomes in virtue of his being in Christ. Does that make sense? God isn't handing out righteousness to you. He takes you and me and puts us in Christ and we have what he is, which is God's righteousness. That's how it works. Jesus Christ represents the righteousness of God and the believer becomes what Christ is at the moment of believing. Okay.

Righteousness was imputed, however, to the Old Testament saints. And the reason you say that is because it never says that Abraham was in Christ, but he was accounted righteous by God because of his faith. It all has to do with location and position.

Now, imparted righteousness presents a righteous conduct as being possible on the part of each believer which is not the result of his own efforts, but on the contrary, that of the Spirit of God. This righteousness is produced not by the believer, but in him. In him. And that, you know, we can say that, we can understand it, but in everyday walking around life, in him is the issue.

Remember, Paul is contrasting in these verses law righteousness, in other words, performance righteousness, with faith righteousness. That's the contrast. For his Jewish countrymen to show them the futility of law righteousness. You can work as hard as you can, you can stay up 24-7.

One of the examples that as a young believer, not really understanding about righteousness, but I was in a mission downtown and there was another outreach a few blocks away called Coffee and Council. And if you were a street person and you wanted counsel, you could go there. And the guy that ran it was a law-based Christian guy. And we used to have a Bible study down there.

He came to the Bible study one day, and I said, how are you doing? He said, oh, I'm doing really good. He said, the Bible says I'm to pray without ceasing. I'm up to 65% of the time. Even I, being an ignorant new Christian, thought, wait a minute, that doesn't sound like grace to me. 65% of the time, when do you sleep?

Man could never achieve a righteousness to be qualified for salvation. I don't care what you do. I don't care what kind of uniform you wear. I don't care what country you're from. I don't care what your nationality is. I don't care if you're type A, type B, or you're not a type at all.

You can't achieve it. God supplied a savior. The great news of the gospel is the great news of God's righteousness. So when we talk about Christ being the end or termination or completion, in respect to time, respect to time, to any type of law of righteousness, there shouldn't be any confusion about that for God's solution. Shouldn't be. But in our society today with Reformed theology, there's a lot of confusion about that. Because that's really what Reformed theology is, is you trying to become righteous before a holy God.

Christ's incarnation and death on the cross is the final proof that mankind's failure at law keeping for righteousness. Because if you could have done it, he wouldn't have had to do what he did. Christ had to come because Christ had to die and rise again. It clearly shows that mankind needed a savior and a solution outside of himself for his righteousness or his entry. Christ is the end of righteousness for everyone who believes. The Christ of God has made unto us righteousness.

I know I'm repeating myself, but I think I need to repeat myself about this issue a lot. The law only gives us one thing, and it's the knowledge of sin. That's it. That's it. God's righteousness cannot be had through law. The believer is justified. It belongs to every believer. Another story.

Across the street, a few years ago, a set of Jewish people moved in my neighborhood, and the assistant rabbi moved in across the street. And he and I became friends. He was the one guy of all this group that actually was pretty friendly, because they were kind of separatist thinkers. So I thought I had him one day.

We used to talk about religious things. I said, his name was Zev Pomerantz. I said, hey Zev, I've been studying Abraham lately. I think I've told this story before. And that perked him up, you know, Abraham is their guy. I said, you know, he was righteous before God. He said, I know. I said, he was righteous before he got circumcised. How does that happen? We changed the subject right away. He didn't have an answer. He did not have an answer. That was the epitome in my mind of zeal without knowledge.

Abraham was righteous a long time before he was ever circumcised. He was accounted righteous, so. Verse five, for Moses writes, and these are the verses for today, that the man who practices righteousness which is based on law, he shall live by that righteousness. So he's gonna contrast these two systems, righteousness of law and righteousness of faith.

First then, if you look at Leviticus 18.5, and by the way, while you're sitting there with your Bibles, stick your finger in Exodus 30, or Ezekiel 30. I think Ezekiel 30, because we're gonna go there. But Leviticus 18 says, so you shall keep my statutes, In my judgments by which a man may live, if he does them, I am the Lord." So in that economy, here the Lord is saying, this is the way it is.

You will keep my statutes. It's a general recognized principle of the law. You keep them. The requirements, a continual doing, a continual performing of the law's demands. If one does not perform, one would not be able to obtain the necessary righteousness for, in a Jewish sense, the kingdom or eternal life. And you couldn't make one mistake, not one. So, as simple as it gets, righteousness which comes from law keeping is unforgiving, has stringent requirements and you must do it, no exceptions. No exceptions.

And it's designed to bring about, I think the best word I could use here is self despair. If you're honest before God, you have to say to him at some point, I can't do this. I just can't do it. And once the law is broken, it asks and demands immediate condemnation. There's no future opportunity to make it right. How do you take a tempered glass window when you break it and put it back together? You can't do it.

In order to live eternally, one needs a righteousness equal to what God's righteousness is, which comes through a perfect obedience of doing the law And if you could do the law, who would be righteous? You would stand before God and you would say, I did everything you told me to do. And he would say, that's nice. I'm glad you're righteous in yourself. But you don't get in because you don't have my righteousness. All right, Deuteronomy 29. And this is kind of a side thing I took was kind of cool that I think it's cool and hopefully you'll see it.

Imagine Moses saying, the secret things belong to the Lord, our God, but the things revealed belong to us, to our sons forever that we may observe all the words of the law. So I got fascinated with the secret things. What are they? The lawgiver had said, they belong to our God. but those who are revealed belong to the people. The law was given as a condition for the enjoyment of the blessing plainly and positively. What God might do in grace when Israel should be under consequences of a broken law, that's what remained the secret of his supreme will. He never told them what I'm gonna do if you break the law, I'm not gonna tell you about grace, although I'm acting graciously. The principle is distinctly revealed, name that.

When the fulfillment of the law was impossible, the Jewish nation gets taken out of the land and put somewhere else, they can't keep the law there. You see that? There's no temple, there's no Jerusalem. So when it's revealed the fulfillment of law is impossible and Israel had been driven out of their land for having broken it, If then their hearts turned to God in the far country, he would accept them. Think about that. How many Jews do you think understood that? Not a lot of them. The ones that brought the nation back were the ones that did understand it.

It was all over with the laws, the condition of relationship with God. Israel had been driven out according to Deuteronomy 30. They no longer were God's people. That's pretty chilling. The testimony of God was nevertheless addressed to them that they might turn to Him in spirit and by faith. Even then, if they would turn to Him in faith, He would rescue them.

Now, Deuteronomy chapter 30, first five verses. I think, catch up here. I wanna read them because I think it'll help us understand. In the first five verses, Moses says, so it shall be when all of these things have come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you and you call them to mind in all the nations where the Lord your God has banished you and you return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and soul according to all that I've commanded you today and your sons. Verse three, then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity and have compassion on you and will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you. If you're an outcast at the ends of the earth, For there the Lord your God will gather you and from there he will bring you back. The Lord your God will bring you into the land which your fathers possessed and you shall possess it and he will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers." So what's he saying to the Jewish nation? If you will turn to me in faith and not law, I'll restore you. Even then, If it's not a faith, then it can't be done.

And why could God, what gave God the opening to do it? He knew his son was gonna come and take care of every violation of the law. He knew that. So it's no longer the law, it's now by faith. If it's a faith, it is Christ who is the object, the Savior, the Messiah, no Jew, would have denied that the testimony of God was the hope of every true Israelite when all else was ruined. Where else was a Jew gonna turn? He had to go back to God. So, verse six.

But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows. This is from Deuteronomy 30, kinda. Do not say in your heart who will ascend to heaven, that is, to bring Christ down. He says, don't say that. Remember, Paul is contrasting law righteousness with faith righteousness for his Jewish countrymen to show them the futility of law righteousness. So why Deuteronomy 30? Why would he quote this verse?

It is a final reminder. Think about what's going on here. It's the final reminder for the generation of Israelites going into the Promised Land. Moses is about to die. He's not going to go in. They're going to go in. And he's given them final instructions. And we'll see the capacity of those instructions in a minute.

Moses' death meant Who now is gonna go to God and talk to him about us and come back and tell us? Moses is gone, he's gonna die. Moses is giving us final instructions and exhortations. The Israelites to respond to and obey God's law before he dies and before they go into the promised land.

So that's kind of the scene here. But if you look at, Deuteronomy 30. Here's what verse 11 says. For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach. What's he telling them? It's not hard. And it's right there. It's not in heaven. that you should say, who will go up to heaven for us to get the law for us and make us hear it and make us observe it? Deuteronomy 30, 12. Main point, it isn't too hard to understand. It's not beyond comprehension. The law wasn't. The instructions should be no surprise to them and They've got access to it.

Who else did God write and give the law to? In other words, how are we gonna understand what God wants us to do now that Moses is dead? We need Moses to go to heaven so that we can go and get directions. So Moses tells them in Deuteronomy 15 and 16, See, I have set before you today life in prosperity and death in adversity, in that I command you today to love the Lord your God and to walk in his ways and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments that you may live and multiply and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. They have a choice. Life or death. That's what he's telling them. And this specifically relates to their enjoyment of and possession of the promised land.

Now, why do you think he compares the Deuteronomy verse about going into the heavens with going in to bring Christ down? The reason is that Christ has already come down. He's already here. You don't have to go up there to get him to come down. He's come. That's what he's telling them.

You don't need Moses to go find out the law. What you need is the Savior, the Messiah, Jesus, the Christ, who's already come down. And then he says to them, oh, or who will descend into the abyss? That is, to bring Christ up from the dead. It's not in heaven, at an inaccessible place, nor is it, as he says in Deuteronomy, nor is it beyond the sea. This, who will descend into the abyss, it means this. It doesn't mean going down as far to the center of the earth or to hell or any place like that. It's not a long way away.

In other words, you know, we live in a society, everybody know what the expert from afar syndrome is? If someone calls you up and invites you to speak at their conference, and the farther you come from, the bigger expert you are, that's what he's telling them. This is not an expert from afar syndrome. It's right there. Who will cross the sea for us to get to us and make us hear it? that we may observe it beyond the sea. In other words, you don't have to go to North America to come back. It's an untainable distance at the end of the world.

Notice that the emphasis in Deuteronomy 12 through 14 on both hearing the law and doing the law. So if this is his emphasis, then why does Paul quote this passage to show faith righteousness? Romans 10, four, the end of the law, the end of law for righteousness sake is to everyone who believes. Do you believe? Then your works for righteousness are over.

Christ himself is the righteousness contained and required by the law perfectly. He was the only one who heard it, and did the law perfectly. He never sinned. So the whole sacrificial system that they had was designed to show Christ himself as the righteousness contained and required by the law.

The word it in 30, 12, and 14 refers to the commandments. And they require you to do something. Paul's adjustment is, it is no longer something for you to do, but now it's something for you to believe in. That's the difference. That's why there's a change.

Just like the law was near them, not too hard to understand, easy to access, God's righteousness by faith is near them. It's easy to understand. It's accessed via faith in Jesus Christ because he has done it. what He has done. Notice the shift. Not what they could do, but what He has done. That's the change in the verses from Deuteronomy to Romans 10. He drops the phrase that we may hear it and do it.

Why? Because God's righteousness does not require us to do anything. Christ has already done it. He changes it to who will go over to the sea for us, to who will descend into the abyss, why? Because faith righteousness is dependent upon the resurrection of Christ, which is not something that needs to be done, but something that has already been accomplished in resurrection. It's already done.

Paul had to show the Jews that the Messiah had to suffer and die and rise from the dead Jesus is the one, that is, to bring Christ down. The Jews were waiting for somebody to fix their problems rather than the Messiah who solved the relationship between them and God himself. So Paul adds two phrases to the commentary to be repeated in Deuteronomy 30. That is to bring Christ down from above, referring to his incarnation, and God making faith righteousness available to all. And two, to bring Christ up from the dead, referring to Christ's resurrection, which secured righteousness for those trusting in him and his finished work.

Romans 4.25 says, he who was delivered because of our transgression, he was raised because of our justification.

Romans 7.10, this is Paul the apostle.

And this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me. For the law, salvation meant being physically delivered from their enemies, for the Jew, being physically delivered from your enemies during a time called Jacob's trouble, tribulation, and being delivered into their promised kingdom. What we learn from Paul is that the Jew must possess a righteousness equal to God's to experience salvation into their kingdom. They must obtain righteousness from God through the gospel or they will not enter or be saved into the kingdom.

Man can only obtain righteousness equal to God's righteousness if they put their faith in Jesus Christ and his cross for them. So, I hope those verses are clear. Man could not do either one of these things. Man couldn't go up to heaven and bring Christ down. And man could not descend into the abyss and bring Christ up from the dead. Couldn't do that. Had it been possible, neither still would have suited the glory of God.

God's grace meets man where man is. God so loved the world that he gave his son that whoever would believe in him should not perish but have eternal life. It was the father who sent the son into the world. It was by the glory of the father that he was raised from the dead. So, a couple observations. It is Christ's death on the cross that alone satisfies all the demands of the law of Moses, all of them, none of them left. God's purpose in giving the law on Mount Sinai was to convict individuals of sin and accept God's remedy for forgiveness.

Romans 3, 19 and 20, now we know that whoever, whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law. Why? So that every mouth might be closed and all the world may become accountable to God, because by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified in His sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. I particularly like the phrase, so that every mouth may be closed.

What is that designed to do? It's to get everybody to be quiet and listen. Listen to what? the presentation of God's righteousness for salvation. He had to get them to be quiet so they would listen. Righteousness by faith does not ask the impossible. Rather, it is near you and it's actually accessible. It's not too hard to understand. It's not beyond comprehension. The instructions shouldn't surprise any of us. They, we have access to it all.

So I'm going to close. Who am I supposed to pray for? I'm going to pray for Roger and Gail. All right, let's close. Father, how we thank you. You're so gracious. In your sovereignty, you have solved every single problem that ever existed between us and you. And your only requirement is that we believe you. And we thank you for that.

Today, as we close, we pray for Roger who has an injection in his back tomorrow and pray that it will be successful and help relieve the discomfort that he has. And we pray for Gail who has some heart issues and going through some tests that you would comfort her as she goes through those tests and she would rest in your faithfulness to her. So Father, we thank you. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.