Dr. Victor Frankl was a bold and courageous Jew who became a prisoner during the
Holocaust. He endured years of indignity and humiliation by the Nazi's before he was
finally liberated. At the beginning of his ordeal, he was marched into a Gestapo court.
His captors had taken away his home and family, his cherished freedom, his possessions,
even his watch and wedding ring. They had shaved his head and stripped his clothing off
his body. There he stood before the German high command, under the glaring lights being
interrogated and falsely accused. He was destitute, a helpless pawn in the hands of
brutal, prejudiced, sadistic men. What would he do? How could he survive? He suddenly
realized there was one thing no one could ever take from him - just one. He realized that
he still had the power to choose his own attitude. No matter what anyone would ever do to
him, regardless of what the future held for him, the attitude choice was his to make.
Bitterness or forgiveness. To give up or to go on. Hatred or hope. Determination to endure
or the paralysis of self-pity. This was a turning point in his life.
There are turning points for all of us. There have been turning points throughout the
history of civilization, points in time that changed the future. Saratoga was a turning
point in the Revolutionary War. Normandy was a turning point in the Second World War. No
doubt you could trace moments in time that were turning points in your life.
In his book Loving God, Charles Colson writes of a turning point in his
life:
In January 1973, Watergate began to take on new implications. Howard Hunt, fearing imprisonment, sent his lawyer to see me. As the attorney demanded assurance of clemency for Hunt (which I refused to give him), I learned that the Watergate burglars were being given funds for support and legal fees. This was dangerous business. I told Haldeman so later.
Following the visit of Hunt's lawyer, I consulted my law partner, Dave Shapiro, a two fisted trial veteran who had scrapped his way up from the streets of Brooklyn. Together we broke out the law books. In late January 1973, as we reviewed the tight columns of fine print in the criminal statutes, I began for the first time to understand the possible criminal implications for the White House.
This point in history had significant implications for Charles Colson. He would
eventually plead guilty to charges made against him and serve a prison term. No doubt
there have been certain moments in our lives which changed us forever.
Trend watcher, Alvin Toffler, sees our society at a turning point in history. Basic to
Toffler's forecast is the conviction that we are in the process of a great transition,
indicated in part by the great chaos that seems rampant around the world. He sees us
entering into a new society he calls the third wave, with the agricultural
and industrial societies being the first and second waves. Toffler believes that we are at
a great turning point in history.
We come now to a passage in Romans which is a turning point in the book. It describes a
turning point for the possibilities of humanity. It reveals the intervention of God to
reach out to lost humanity and provide a way out for us.
Up to this point in the book of Romans, we have seen how every human being stands
condemned before God. The picture has been painted of a humanity that is utterly and
totally without any hope. All of us stand before God guilty as charged. And there is
absolutely nothing that any of us can do about it.
But that is not the final word. If it were left at that, we would have no choice but to
live in despair, without any hope for deliverance. Thank God that He provides a turning
point.
This turning point is symbolized by the first two words of verse 21 - But now.
The contrast is between "then" and "now." It is a great transition. Then
we were lost in sin, but now something has changed. Knowing the truth that follows
will change our lives. We will be able to say, like the blind man who had been healed by
Jesus, "One thing I know. I was blind but now I see!"
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 (Romans 3:21-23)
Humanity stands condemned before God, but now something has happened that may
change the verdict. God has intervened. He has taken action. Paul tells us that the righteousness
from God, apart from law, has been made known. And what is this righteousness? It is
the righteousness from God which comes through faith in Jesus Christ. It is
not our righteousness. It is God's righteousness. It is the righteousness which comes by
believing in Jesus Christ alone.
What is in view here is our salvation. God is revealing how He saves us. He is
revealing how we are made right with Him. We call this justification. It is how we are
made righteous before God.
The first important principle we need to see is that justification is predicated
on the gravity of sin. The case that Paul has been building in the previous
chapters of Romans is stated again very succinctly in verse 23: For all have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God. This is our position. And it is precisely because we
are in this predicament that God must act. If God does not act, then we have no hope.
Because of the gravity of our sin, which we call human depravity, there is absolutely
nothing that we can do to save ourselves. Try as we might to be righteous, our
righteousness is never enough. The best we can do to be righteous is compared by Isaiah to
filthy rags. If R stands for the righteousness that we must achieve to be pleasing to God,
then all the righteous deeds we could ever do would always add up to -R. The reason it
always adds up to -R is because righteousness means that there can be no unrighteousness
mixed in. No unrighteous deed, thought, action or inaction can be included. God's standard
for righteousness means perfect righteousness. And none of us attain that righteousness.
So God provides a righteousness that is quite apart from anything we can do. It is the
righteousness from God that is in view here. It is the righteousness that is provided
by Him to us as we believe through faith in Jesus Christ. It is not our
righteousness. It is God's righteousness which is made available to us through Jesus
Christ.
And it is all predicated on the depth and gravity of our sin. Because of our sin God
had to act. And because of his love for us, He did act.
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. (Romans 3:24-26)
The eighteenth century English Poet, William Cowper, had a miserable childhood. Only
six years old when his mother died, he was put in a boarding school where he was bullied
and beaten mercilessly by the older boys. He tried to study law but was overwhelmed by
terror. He felt he was losing his mind. He tried to commit suicide twice, and finally the
twenty-five year-old Cowper was committed to an asylum.
Cowper came under the care of a man named Dr. Cotton. Cotton was a Christian and
introduced Cowper to salvation through Jesus Christ. Cowper himself tells of turning to
the Bible for comfort. The first verses he saw were Romans 3:24-25. After reading them he
said:
Immediately I received strength to believe, and the full beams of the Sun of Righteousness shone upon me. I saw the sufficiency of the atonement he had made, my pardon in his blood, and the fullness and completeness of his justification. In a moment I believed and received the Gospel.
This was Cowper's turning point. His life was immediately transformed. He had
experienced an encounter with God's grace. Because of this he would later write:
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins:
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.
The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there have I, though vile as he,
Washed all my sins away.
E'er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.
Cowper could write these lines because he had experienced the justification made
possible because of the greatness of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross. Paul calls this a
sacrifice of atonement. You see, it is only through the atoning sacrifice of Christ
that our sins can be forgiven.
Because of our sin, we have offended a Holy God. We have disobeyed Him, and violated
His law. Our lives have been corrupted by sin. Could God just ignore that? No! To do so
would be to make Him unjust. The penalty for our sins had to be paid.
God had held off judging our sin because of His mercy. Paul says that because of his
forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. Then God sent His
Son Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for our sins. He died on the Cross in our place. He
bore our sins and the penalty for our sins there. He offered the greatest sacrifice anyone
could offer. He laid down His very life for us.
And because of that great sacrifice, God would demonstrate his justice at the
present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Because of God's love for us, His justice is upheld by the sacrifice of Christ. The price
for the penalty of our sin is paid in Christ. Now God is able to freely justify those who
believe in Jesus. Our justification is made possible by the greatness of Christ's
sacrifice. We are not justified by our own works, they are not enough. We are only
justified because of the death of Christ on our behalf. We are only justified as we trust
in Christ alone for our salvation.
27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that
of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. 28 For we maintain that a man
is justified by faith apart from observing the law. 29 Is God the God of Jews
only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, 30 since there
is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through
that same faith. 31 Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all!
Rather, we uphold the law. (Romans 3:27-31)
The final major principle we should understand from our text is that justification
precludes the glorification of self. Since our salvation depends upon God and God
alone, We have no room to glorify ourselves. We are not saved because we are good, or
because we have done righteous works, but because God has intervened on our behalf out of
His mercy.
Where, then, is boasting?, asks Paul. It is excluded, he goes on to say.
In other words, how can anyone boast of his salvation if he had nothing to do with it? You
see, the principle on which boasting is excluded is not that of observing the
law. All of our attempts to keep the law have ended in failure. The principle by which
we were saved is that of faith. We must understand that our salvation comes as we
are justified by faith apart from observing the law.
It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter whether you are a Jew or Gentile. God
is not a God of only some people. Since there is only one God, He will justify
everyone by faith. The only way a person can experience salvation is by faith. It
can never be earned by works of the law. Not that there is anything wrong with the law.
The law is still God's standard for righteousness. Paul goes on to say that God is not
attempting to nullify the law by this faith. God's purpose is to uphold the law.
And by the death of Jesus Christ in payment for our sin, He does just that.
So we have seen that in the midst of our hopeless sinful condition, God has acted to
intervene. The then has been changed to a now. God's
righteousness has been revealed through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And that
righteousness has been made available to us by faith. We can't take credit for it - there
is no room for boasting in ourselves. Our boast now is in what God has done through Christ
on our behalf.
This is not only a turning point in the book of Romans, this can be a turning point in
your life, if it is properly understood. It can be a turning point in the lives of people
you meet, if you share this good news. What was then does not have to be now.
Because of His death on the Cross for us, Christ can set us free.
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