But Now

Scripture Reading

May we be seated, be seated. Will you please turn in your Bibles with me to the Book of Romans, Romans chapter 3. Romans chapter 3, if you're using the Pew Bibles, the New King James Pew Bibles, where you'll find that on page 1001. And this morning we will read verses 19 through the end of the chapter, but the sermon is going to specifically come from verses, right about verses 20 through 22. So Romans chapter three.

I do need to warn you, this morning at about eight o'clock I walked out of my office and I had some over 25 pages of notes, and I thought, that ain't gonna fly. So this is going to turn into one of those multi-part sermons. The point is, one of my mentor's mentors used to say, the heart can absorb what the seat can endure. And I don't want you to hate the gospel because I just keep flapping my lips. So we're going to go ahead and look just a smaller portion this morning, but I hope that you'll be patient with me as I think it will help our hearts cherish the good news of Jesus from week to week as we slowly unpack this portion of the scripture. So please turn in your Bibles with me now. Romans chapter three verses, like I said, we'll read verses 19 through the end of the chapter.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.

Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. Or is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not. On the contrary, we establish the law.

Prayer for Illumination

Brothers and sisters, the grass withers and the flower will fade, but the word of our God endures forever. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word, and we pray for your Holy Spirit's illumination of it this morning. Lord, we pray that you would please help us to understand your word, We pray that your spirit might not just let us have big heads, that we might not just be a theological society, but Lord, that your spirit might transform our hearts to truly rest in your son. Lord, please give us ears to hear, eyes to see, hearts of flesh and not of stone. Please let us live. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Sermon

And there's a certain amount of, especially as I have interacted more and more with y'all Midwesterners, a lot of self-sufficiency. I can do this. And that's a good attitude a lot of times, but not when it comes to our own righteousness. We want to be able to do something that just have a little part in saying, I get some credit here. But when it comes to salvation, that's not at all. The problem is we don't have any credit. Actually, we're credited with what's wrong in the situation.

And so what my hope is for you this morning is that you will find your only hope for righteousness in Jesus himself. I hope that you will find your only hope in Jesus's righteousness alone. For believers, I want you to walk out of these doors today, resting fully in Christ's righteousness. For those of you who are struggling with your faith, I hope you'll walk out of these doors with more assurance, knowing where you can find rest for your soul. And for those of you who have not yet rested in Christ, my prayer this morning is that the Holy Spirit might bring you to your knees, that the only hope you have is in Christ.

As some people maybe have gone through, you've listened through these sermons in Romans chapter 1 and 2 and the first part of 3 and you've felt like sledgehammered that there is none righteous, no not one and you've been beat down with all your sins, you may still even ask yourself, is God angry with me still? Does God just tolerate me like an annoying cat? Is God really righteous and condemning all humanity? Or maybe you missed the point of the last four sermons through Romans 1, 2, and 3, and you've thought, can I ever be good enough to have peace with a God who is this righteous? Who is angry at sinners? There's a hinge in the book of Romans And it's in verse 21. Some of the most beautiful words in the whole Bible. But now. But now.

Do you see, God gave us Romans chapter one, two, and three so that we would have no hope in ourselves. That as we read and we saw that there is none righteous, no, not one. That as we read that they have all turned aside, they have together become unprofitable, there is none who does good, no, not one. And described us with throats like open tombs and tongues like biting vipers. And yet, We look at the law and the law tells us we're sinners. The law exposes our guilt and our misery and our helplessness to sin, our natural depravity to turn towards in our hearts all things that are destructive. There's no justification. There's no righteousness we have. There's nothing we can bring to God and say, look, I'm clean. I'm totally pure. You can't judge me. So what hope do we have?

First Point

Well that's where verse 21 comes in. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed. And that's what I, the first point is the great contrast. The great contrast here in verses 20 through the first part of 21. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight. For by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed. The law's purpose was never to save you by your law keeping. No, the law's purpose is to be like a flashlight, a floodlight on our hearts to show us just how sinful we are and how desperately we need rescued.

And there are those who may even have read through Romans 1 and 2 and first part of 3 and thought, man, if no one can be justified by their own righteousness, if nobody is righteous, why did God even make us? Is God even righteous? Is God even fair? Is he just an unjust judge?

And God's character is vindicated here. God is righteous and reveals his righteousness. Because He provides another way for us to be righteous, a righteousness that is not our own. This isn't just bait and switch, this is God from heaven rescuing us.

Imagine if you would, there was a judge and you were put on the stand. You go through all the Ray Comfort type questions we asked last week, and you find out that you're a liar, an adulterer, a thief, a blasphemer. You find out all these horrible things when we're honest about who we are. But instead of the judge throwing down the gavel and saying, guilty, instead, he walks down from the judge's bench. takes off his robes and says, yes, you are guilty, but I will give you another righteousness.

Takes the punishment that you deserve for your guilt and puts his robes on you. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Father is the one who suffered on the cross. That's an ancient mistake called patri-passionism. It's not, but... This is God who provides another way of righteousness even though we really are guilty. This is the judge who shows both justice and mercy together. Grace and truth at the same time. Justice really is satisfied because he poured it out on his son.

And so I need to ask you, are you still trying to work yourself into a perfect righteous defense before God? Are you still on the witness stand and every time there's pressure put on you, you try to explain away your sin or minimize your sin? In your life, are you honest about the areas of your sin where you're guilty, and are you still holding off, thinking, no, no, no, no, no, I can't just be that bad? Or have you been brought to your knees where Romans 1, 2, and 3 were meant to bring us to, that we might willingly say, you're right, Lord. I am guilty. Save me. Stop trying to work your way out of the courtroom and throw yourselves into the arms of the judge himself. And notice that God himself is the one who made this possible. And it wasn't just the day Jesus died.

Notice the divine revelation that happens in the second part of Romans 3.21. But now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed. Now I have a little bit of beef with the translation there, because this is in Greek a perfect, and so I would translate it, has been revealed. It has been revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.

What is Paul getting at here? Paul is saying God's had a plan for a long, long time. Jesus dying on the cross was not plan B. It wasn't his backup card in his pocket. But God revealed in the Old Testament through the law and through the prophets What his plan was going to be now is shrouded in mystery.

This is what, by the way, if you ever hear theologians, reform people talk about the covenant of grace. What we're saying is that, look, there was a covenant of works in the garden. Adam and Eve, if you keep my words, you'll live. But if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of the fruit of good and evil, guess what's going to happen? The day you eat of it, you shall surely die. They eat, and there's judgment.

But in Genesis 3.15, God gives a specific veiled promise, a mysterious promise, the beginning of the covenant of grace. That somehow the woman would have a seed, and that seed someday would crush the head of the serpent, even though the serpent would bruise his heel. And as the story goes on in the Old Testament, you flip through, you find that even though God is expelling them from the garden, He still provides. The first picture of death in the Old Testament is God Himself clothing Adam and Eve with animal skins.

And then we find God being gracious even to the family of Noah. And then we find God appearing to Abraham and making a covenant with him. And God telling Abraham that he was going to become a great nation. And God blessed Abraham and justified him because Abraham believed. And then you get to David. And you find David in the Old Testament somehow writing the words that we sang this morning in Psalm 32.

Knowing that the law condemned him to die as an adulterer. and yet having hope that somehow he could still be made right with God. How? How? He gave them the whole tabernacle and all the sacrifices and everything that was meant to point them to the blood that would finally take away sin. A sacrifice that would finally be enough. See, Jesus wasn't plan B. He knew this all along.

This is why when Elder Smith just read Isaiah chapter 53. It is hard not to see Jesus as you read Isaiah 53. You have to work to not see Jesus. There are Jewish people I personally know who never read Isaiah chapter 53 and then read it and said, don't give me any of that New Testament stuff.

And then the person who read it to him said, that's Isaiah 53, and they were saved. Because Jesus wasn't plan B. He was revealed in the law and in the prophets. The sacrificial system and the prophets, they all pointed to Jesus. And this is why in the book of Acts, when Jesus appears on the road, or sorry, in the book of Luke chapter 24, when Jesus appears on the road to Emmaus, he opens up the scriptures with the disciples and he goes through the scriptures and he shows how all of the scriptures were pointing to him.

Now there are some people who will hear this and will think, well doesn't that kind of make the Old Testament obsolete then? No, the exact opposite. Because the more and more we listen to Jesus' teaching, the more we soak in the words of Jesus and the prophets, and we soak in what He has said in the New Testament, you can't understand the Gospel in its fullness Without the Old Testament, how do you understand the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world? How do you understand the book of Hebrews? The whole point of the Old Testament is that it was types and shadows and pointing to Jesus himself.

Because that is how God was revealing his righteousness. He had revealed it. This is why I was saying it in verse 21. That the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed, or has been revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. The Old Testament isn't a vacuum without Jesus. The Old Testament is seeping with Jesus. It's like a sponge full of water. All you have to do is squeeze it a little bit and you'll find Jesus. Or just drip out.

And so how do you read the Old Testament? Some of you are in your Bible reading plans right now, and it's May. And if you're doing the Bible reading for a whole year, you're going to read through the Old Testament, or through the whole Bible, you're still in the thick of the Old Testament.

Are you reading it as a pathway for your own law-keeping? Are you reading it as, oh, I need to do these things and I'll finally be righteous? Oh, if I learn from these lessons of the Old Testament kings who were just these buffoons, who just these stiff-necked guys and apostate, then I'll finally be acceptable to God? Or when you read the Old Testament, do you see yourself in the stories? Do you see how slippery your own heart can be? And do you cry out for Christ? Because that's what the books, all the books of the Old Testament were meant to display. If we were just to flip in our Bibles, that's the New Testament. That's it. Keep going. That's the Old Testament.

And its pages reveal a righteousness apart from the law and that righteousness is displayed in the person of Jesus. So how are you reading your Old Testament? Is it with self-righteousness or looking for the grace found in Jesus? Because that's what this is all meant to point us to. Is that we can look to a righteousness that has been revealed in the person of Jesus apart from the works of the law.

And that's what verse 22 is going to point us to. And we're going to keep on working through until the end of the, really of the end of the book. There is a personal means by which we get to know this righteousness that's revealed. Look with me at verse 22. The personal means. Even the righteousness of God through faith in Christ. The righteousness which God has revealed in Jesus is accessible.

Meaning you can actually have it for yourself. You can have freedom both from your self-condemnation and your self-justification. You can have freedom from your anxiety before God that maybe your faith isn't strong enough or good enough. As well as freedom from thinking you are good enough. Because we have the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Righteousness is not just something announced to you, but God's righteousness revealed in Jesus is something for you. And you access it by faith.

I'm gonna mess up this quote, but Spurgeon at one time was writing to his students. his whole three-volume things, lectures to his students. And as he was writing to his students, one of the things he said is, accept the critiques of what people say to you, but not always. He said, as he was preaching, he would use this phrase, there's this guy in the congregation who would keep track on his bulletins. I'm not saying do that with me, I'm just saying that's what this guy did. But he would keep track in his bulletins of all the little things that Spurgeon would say that were repetitive or kind of annoyed him, or were just speaking blunders. And one of the things that he would commonly say is this guy came up and he said, you said it again, nothing to the cross I bring but only with an open hand I cling. Spurgeon wouldn't ever drop that phrase.

His point was we don't bring anything to our salvation, we with an open hand cling to Jesus. We receive the free grace that we find in Jesus by faith. Faith is an empty hand that receives Christ, receives Jesus and his righteousness. Jesus is the object of our faith.

I need to warn you, there's a picture in some people's mental model of faith that this is a work that you do. Somehow you actively choose from your own volition, from your own heart, out of nowhere, you work yourself up into an emotional or spiritual state where you can just grab onto Jesus and then you hold onto, but I grabbed onto him. That's the opposite of the picture here. Paul will go on in Ephesians chapter 2 and say, no, no, no, you were dead in your trespasses and your sins. But God made you alive. We don't have a place to boast or to brag.

Faith is a gift. Faith isn't a work, it's trust in a person. That's why the Westminster will say that faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace whereby we receive and rest on Him alone for salvation. We learn truths about Jesus and His righteousness through somebody telling us the good news. And then we ascent in our minds and our hearts because God has regenerated us and he's made us alive. And when we hear that news, his spirit is at work. And we go, yes, that is my Lord. That is my salvation. That is my only hope. And then our hearts cling to him. We trust him.

So how much of this resting or this receiving do you need to have? How much faith do you need to have? Congratulations. It's not like your retirement account where you have to have a certain amount before you can finally rest and retire. You don't have to have your faith IRA at a certain level before you can finally rest.

I know that for some of you, you are struggling and fighting. At times, God just seems so far away. And you're like the person who comes to Jesus and you say, Lord, I believe, help me in my disbelief. It is not in the strength or the quantity of your faith, but the presence of your resting in Jesus. Some of you are going to go through periods and struggles in this life where your faith will be strong, and you will be a hero to everyone around you. And at other times, you will have to desperately cry out to the Lord, God, I am so weak in the faith. I can't carry myself. And then you realize you were never carrying yourself. He's the one who is carrying you.

So if your faith is weak, that's OK. Because our champion is Jesus. We rest in his strength. So if you find yourself as one who is self-righteous, just stop trusting your own performance. Give up the ghost, man. Rest in Jesus. You know it and everybody else knows it, and the Lord certainly knows your heart, that you're not good enough.

But Jesus is, so rest in him. For those of you who are doubting, Rest in Jesus. He is strong enough and He is good enough and He is righteous enough. But notice who Jesus is for. Jesus is for everyone. Look at me at the second part of verse 22. Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

For there is no difference, spoiler into verse 23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We are all equal opportunity sinners. Whether you got Jewish heritage or whether you got Gentile heritage, that's what Paul established already. There is none righteous, no not one. Doesn't matter if you're a Jew, doesn't matter if you're a Greek, all are under the condemnation of the law.

And we can either get bogged down and beaten down and just miserable about that, or we can go, thank the Lord somebody tells the truth. Because it means whether I'm a Jewish person or a Gentile person, we have one Lord, one Savior, one baptism, one hope.

We're baptized in the name of Jesus. We have a hope in Jesus. We rest in Jesus. We have a righteousness in Jesus. Now, I'm just gonna warn you that people of Paul's day in Rome, this is like a bombshell going off to their Jewish theology. We're the covenant people of God. We have the circumcision. We have the law. We have the promises. We have the oracles. We have the traditions. We have, we're God's chosen people. And Paul says, yeah, congratulations.

You have a lot of benefit, but if you're not trusting in Jesus, it means nothing. Actually worse than that, your condemnation is even more. Because you should have known that this was pointing to Jesus. Anyway, Paul in Ephesians is going to say that Jesus is like a wrecking ball.

There's a wall of separation. Jewish people on one side and Gentile people on the other side. And Jesus in his death, in his sacrificial atonement for all types of people, demolishes that wall. By the way, I'm just gonna warn you, in our day, people keep trying to rebuild that wall. Don't be duped. Everybody needs the gospel. Everyone, no matter what. Yeah, Jewish people had a certain blessing.

And Paul's going to get in that, especially in Romans chapter 4. And then he's going to develop three whole chapters more to it. Chapters 9, 10, and 11. So we're going to get there. Hopefully not in like five years, but we're going to get there eventually.

My question for you this morning, if the gospel, if the righteousness of Jesus has been revealed, that Jesus is the only one who lived a perfect life, that he was tested in every way as we are, and yet never sinned, If Jesus truly is the Lamb of God, unspotted, unstained, perfect and pure, if He lived His life always doing the will of the Father, if He never displeased His Father, if that righteousness is held out for you, and the question is, what are you holding on to? Your own righteousness or Jesus? Do you find your life hidden in Christ? Is Jesus your only hope?

If you think that you're a moral person, that maybe you have a head start because you had some type of religious upbringing, or you take your Bible study seriously, or you've memorized the Ten Commandments, do you have some type of pride in your own self-righteousness? You're measuring yourself on a curve. but the measurement is God's holiness.

As we'll find out next week, we all fall short. But for those of you who find yourselves terrible sinners, just beating yourself up, right? You remember your past sins. You remember the times in your youth where you were just rebellious and sinful and driven by a sense of pleasure and of not taking God seriously. there is peace to be had Jesus knew and the Father knew and the Spirit knew every secret hidden thing in your heart and the things that you had done in your life that were sinful and yet still loved you maybe that's why you've been holding off so long maybe Maybe there's one of you who, and I don't have born again goggles, I can't see into your soul. Maybe there's some of you who have just held off from embracing Christ because you've thought, I'm just too much of a horrible sinner.

God demonstrated his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. God's not waiting for you to be righteous because you'll never be righteous. God loves you and provides a righteousness for you and has demonstrated his righteousness in Jesus. So you can rest in him today. So again, I hope that you will walk out of this room today and you will find your only hope for righteousness in Jesus himself.

And then if you're a Christian, if you're a believer and you're struggling with assurance, Asking yourself, am I good enough? I beg you to rephrase that question. Every time your conscience condemns you, am I really good enough? Am I really good enough to be saved? Am I really good enough to be his child? Ask yourself, is Jesus good enough? Was Jesus good enough? Was Jesus' sacrifice enough? Is Jesus' righteousness enough? The answer is what God said. The Father said at Jesus' baptism, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. In Jesus, God's face shines upon you if your life is hidden in Christ.

If you're a believer still trying to contribute with your own works, you're already saved. Your good works don't add anything to your salvation. Thinking that your works add to your salvation only leads to more misery. It's going back to the vomit. No. Rest in Jesus. Go to Christ, your only hope. And again, if you're an unbeliever, and you keep looking for righteousness in all sorts of places, whether it's externally or internally, I'm begging you to run to Christ. Place your only hope in Jesus.

Closing Prayer

The God who is righteous is the one who, in Romans chapter 1, told us that all the Gentiles are unrighteous. He exposed all of our sins in Romans 1, 2, and 3. But the God who is righteous has also demonstrated His righteousness in providing for us our Savior, Jesus. God's not your enemy if you're in Christ. God's face shines upon you in Christ. And so I just have to ask you, are you in Christ? Do you rest in Christ? Or are you outside of Christ? Flee to Him. Rest in Him. Let's pray.

Father, you have given us the hope of righteousness, your righteousness displayed. And you are a good God. Father, we pray that we would trust in you and follow you. Lord, we pray that the good news that you have given us would so seep into our hearts, so take hold of our minds, and so stir up our affections that nothing, Lord, might shake our peace. For Lord, we know that if we are in Christ, nothing can separate us from your love. So Father, we pray that you would give us the peace that our souls have been thirsting for. that we might come to the well and drink of the living water and thirst no more because you give us your Son. Lord, we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.