God’s Righteousness Apart From the Law

If you're using your pew bibles you'll find that on page 1001. We'll read verses 21 through the end of the chapter to give us some context of what we're looking at. Romans chapter 3 beginning at verse 21, hear now God's perfect word, 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 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.

And here comes our sermon portion. 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 would justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith?

Prayer for Illumination

Certainly not. On the contrary, we establish the law. Let's pray. Father, we thank You that Your Word is true and perfect altogether. And by Your Word, You make us wise. So Father, we pray that as we read Your Word, that Your Spirit would be working in us. Father, we pray that we might not just have an intellectual knowledge about who You are or have right categories theologically, but Father, we pray that Your Spirit might work in our hearts, that we might truly be united to Jesus, have a relationship with our Lord, a covenantal union with Him, that we might know You and love You and be found in Your Son. Lord, we need Your Spirit to help us to soften our hearts, to open our ears, that we might live. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. It's amazing.

Sermon

If you ever think about people, maybe you don't have these types of friends, but I have a few of them every time the Cardinals win the World Series. All of a sudden, they like to boast about all their winning. And you like to forget about the bad years. People love to boast about things that they can take pride in, even though it may not be them doing the things. People like to brag about how good their job is. People like to brag about their children. People like to brag about their income. People like to brag about their houses. People like to brag about all sorts of things.

Some people even like to brag about how good they think they are. You might say, come on, really? Yeah. Yeah, some people will tell you they're the best at everything. They won't hide it from you. Oh, I could do that better. Oh, everybody knows that I'm the best at that. I got to tell you what Romans chapter 3 has been showing us is that we're the only thing that we can brag about saying, yep, that's me. I can brag about my sin.

I am as bad as what God says, but that we get to boast in Jesus. Our boast, our brag, our glorying is in Jesus. And that's what I hope you'll walk out of the doors today when you come to the Lord's Supper today. I hope that you won't come with any of your self-glory, but that you will look upon Jesus. And I hope that when you walk out of the doors today, I hope that you will brag and boast about Jesus. And I hope that when you go and you feel the urge that you're going to tell somebody in a conversation about Jesus, it's not out of a sense of law, legalism, but it's because you want to brag about Jesus.

First Point

Because He's that great. And so how do we get there? Well, notice in verse 27, our first point is that the heart naturally wants to pridefully boast. Look with me at verse 27. Where then is boasting? Why does Paul have to say that to start off with? Where is boasting then? Why is he saying, you don't get to brag?

Because some people are inclined that way. Right, some people are inclined about boasting in their law keeping. Especially in the Jewish community, we are the people who are the inheritors of the promise. We have God's law, we keep God's law, and we know that God loves us because we have His law.

In Romans chapter 2 and 3, we're meant to just tear down that wall. No, no, no, no. Circumcision means nothing if you're a breaker of the law. And Newsflash, we're all breakers of the law. We are all equal opportunity sinners. So there's no boasting. We don't get to boast about our morals. We don't get to walk before God and say, but look how I raised my lovely family.

Look at how I have kept the Sabbath every week. Look God, I can show you my bank ledger, I can show you the statements that the bank sends me that I never read, but they say I wrote a check to the church every month. That was my ransom, right? God, I get in because I did these things, right? God, look, I got baptized. I made a profession in front of everybody. I became a Communicant member. That gets me into your right standing, right? No. No. No. Not all those things are bad, but there's... Bad if it's your self-glory. If it's your boasting before the Lord. It's interesting, there's a story that the Gospels give us of Jesus with an interaction with a rich young ruler. Do you remember how that story goes in Luke chapter 12? The rich young ruler comes to Jesus and he asks a simple question.

What must I do to inherit eternal life? Notice how he frames it. What must I do to inherit? I gotta tell you, if you have the type of parent that you don't get to inherit unless you're good enough, that's a sad relationship. Do you get to receive the things that your parents are passing down to you? Are their good gifts dependent on your good behavior?

That's what Jesus says. Interestingly, he says in Luke chapter 12, why do you call me good? No one is good but one. That is God. But if you want to inherit eternal life, keep the commandments. Now notice how the rich young ruler responds. Which ones? Alright, so give me the qualifications. I need the checklist. What can I do to inherit eternal life? So he's got to have something to do here. Okay, so Jesus is going to say, fine, if that's the way you want to go, if you want to go down that way, fine.

You shall not murder. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. You shall honor your father and your mother. We read that today in the catechism. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. And notice, there's a sense of pride, how the rich young ruler responds.

All these I have kept since my youth. I don't think I could say that about me before my parents, because I'm sure that they could say, he didn't always keep that. What do I still lack? Jesus' answer here is powerful. disarming, could be disheartening. If you want to be perfect, if that's your desire, you want to be perfect, it's like Jesus sees into his soul and he knows where the idols are, he knows where the secrets are, and he goes ahead and opens up the closet and he says, go sell all that you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come. Follow me. All right. You really want to know what you're still lacking? You want to know what you need to do to be perfect?

Give everything up. Give it up. Give up everything you've worked hard for. Give up your prestige. Give up your reputation. Give up your office. Give up your place. Give everything away and show me that I am the most valuable thing in all the universe to you. Follow me. Come, follow me. The text tells us of the rich young ruler. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful because he had great possessions.

What is your hope? How do you know that you will inherit eternal life? When you stand before God, what will be your boast on the judgment day? What is your confidence? What will you glory in? Make no doubt about it. If you look at the book of Revelation, there are people in heaven and they're glorying in something. They sing songs about something. What do you glory in? I hope it's the lamb who was slain. We boast in the Lord.

And so when you feel like maybe tomorrow morning, you're like, yeah, I feel good, I've got this, the day's gonna go well, and then you fail, welcome to being human. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You need Jesus today and you'll need Him tomorrow. There's never gonna come a point in your life where you're gonna say, yes, I am perfect, I am complete, I've done it all. No, we will regularly have to lay down our lives, pick up our cross and follow Christ. The rich young ruler sadly turned his back on Jesus and walked away sad. You don't have to. If your only hope, if your ultimate value is in the Son of God.

Notice though, I want to lean in a little bit more into this, verse 27. We'll move past the first four words and go into the next few words. Verse 27, we're going to talk about boasting and it's not invited. Verse 27, where is boasting then? It is excluded. Excluded. Shut out.

I was amazed when I was just reading this a few times this week and translating it and There's a word for, did you know the word church isn't actually a real word in Greek? It's not like a building. The word is ekklesia, it's the assembly. And this is ex-ekklesia. This is, there's been an assembly and you're not invited. This is outside of the assembly. This is in the church.

We don't get to boast. It didn't receive the call to worship. Your boasting in yourself didn't get invited by the text message or phone number. Your boasting in yourself is totally excluded. It's not allowed here. It's not allowed. It's just not allowed.

I gotta tell you, in the church, sadly, one of the things that you will see in churches is that, especially when people get puffed up and prideful about themselves, it is one of the death nails to the congregation. When boasting is invited into the assembly, it takes people's eyes off Jesus. and pride and personality get puffed up and built up and eventually the body of Christ rips apart because the assembly starts to be about each other and about big personalities and power rather than about Jesus and humility and love. Boasting here is in this sense of self-glory, not being invited to the party. And the Holy Spirit thunders from heaven, shutting the door entirely to boasting. Not allowed here. In the assembly, not allowed.

This is why Jesus said that when the servants of him will come at that last great day, and they've been shown everything they'll do, they'll say, we were just servants. We did our duty. Can we boast in you? Because we know what you did. We know your love for us.

Chapters 1 through 3 of Romans showed us that the law is like a spotlight on the filth that we wallowed in. And so we don't get to come to the end of chapter 3 or definitely not to chapters 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 where we start talking about the renewing of the mind and the Christian life. If we get to the second half of the book of Romans and forget that there's no boasting, If we get to all the sanctification stuff in the second half of the book and forget the end of chapter three, we will have failed. And we will look like the Pharisees, full of self-righteousness, without love for Jesus. So we boast in Christ. Look with me again at verse 27. Where is boasting then?

It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No. but by the law of faith. You get to boast in the law of faith. You get to brag about the law of faith. But what does that mean, right? By the law of faith. Paul is really saying that there's two principles here, right? Two starting places, two foundations that you can go with. Either you can go with the law, meaning your works, Or you can go by faith. So you've got these two principles, two laws, two starting places, two foundations, the law of works and the law of faith.

And Calvin points out when God says this, it's indiscriminate. It's all things of works and all things of faith. And when he's talking about works, Calvin specifically says, this law of works includes all the merit of works which can possibly be imagined. You're boasting and all of your law, all of your good deeds, all of your works, if that's your right standing before God, if that's what makes you think you're going to be righteous before him, it's all excluded. Doesn't matter what category, doesn't matter what it is, If that's your boast before God, thinking that you're perfect, you're complete, you're righteous, you've missed it.

But on the other side is the law of faith. And what Paul means when he talks about the law of faith, this is a way that he's speaking of the gospel itself. You can either believe the law of works that I'm good enough to get myself into heaven and be righteous enough to stand before the holy God on the judgment day, or you have the law of faith, the gospel that says, I am a sinner, God knows I'm a sinner, but I have a righteous, I have a righteous savior and his name is Jesus. And the only reason why I have any right standing before God is because my righteousness is given to me by Jesus. So there are two principles, the law of faith, or the law of works or the law of faith. What are you walking in? What are you holding to? What must you do to inherit eternal life?

There's only one way that we will be able to stand before the holy presence of God and that's in the righteousness of Jesus. To recognize that our clothes or as even all of our good deeds are as a filthy rags. but that Jesus takes his robes of righteousness and clothes us, gives us his robes of righteousness to wear.

And this is an indiscriminate blessing. By indiscriminate, I mean it's given to all sorts of people. This law of faith, just like everybody in the world wants to justify themselves, thinking that they're good enough to stand before God, Even though that's a self-deception, the law of faith is open to all sorts of people. Look with me at verses 29 and 30. Therefore, we can conclude, sorry, I missed, I got ahead of myself, verse 28.

Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. Our boasting comes in the righteousness of Jesus. not in the works of law. Romans 3 20 says, by the works of law shall no flesh be justified. We boast in Christ because God has saved us in Christ. God has purchased us from the slave market of sin and death by the price of his own son.

God has declared us righteous, that word justified. I've been saying this over and over and over again. We'll have to be gone through the book of Romans. The word justified means being legally declared righteous. In the courtroom of God's justice, you should be declared guilty, but in Jesus, you are declared righteous. God's face smiles on us in Jesus.

Now, I am somewhat worried about when we come to verse 28, therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law. I'm a little bit worried for two reasons when I read verse 27 and 28 to you with modern ears. One is an ancient fear, and that ancient fear is, well, then what do we need the law for?

We could just go on and keep sinning. As we're gonna find, Paul will say, may it never be. No, don't even let your mind go there. That's not true. We're not saved for lawlessness. We're not given Christ's righteousness that we could pollute ourselves even more. No, we're given Christ's righteousness that we might walk in his righteousness. But on the other side is a modern danger, and the modern danger is you shouldn't hear things that make you feel something called shame. You shouldn't feel bad about yourself.

You shouldn't come to Romans 1, 2, and 3. Actually, just a fun side note, I was trying to clean up all my ugly handwriting so I could have it here, and as I was writing about Romans chapter 1 from my notes, one of the A.I. specifically wouldn't type out my notes, because it said it's against our policy. I had written down the words of Romans chapter 1 in my own handwriting. That is the world you are living in that you shouldn't feel bad about yourself.

You shouldn't feel shame. But there is a type of godly shame that looks like sorrow, a true contrition. And I'm not talking about the shame where there's no way out of it or a toxic shame where it's even heaping up guilt on yourself that's not biblical, that you shouldn't be dealing with. What I'm talking about is when the scriptures tell us that we're sinners and we say, I don't want to feel bad about that. I'm going to keep on doing it.

If there's no shame, then inherently we're saying, I'm not worried about sin. If you're not worried about sin, there's no place in your heart or your mind for Christ. Because Jesus Christ came to save sinners of whom we are the worst. So we don't brag about ourselves.

We're honest about who we know we are, what the Bible says, how we behave and how we act, but we also get to brag about who God says He is and who Jesus is. Jesus is the righteous one we look to. And Jesus saves Jews and Gentiles indiscriminately. Look with me at verses 29 through 30. Now we're back on track. Verses 29 and 30.

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. Is God the God of the Jews only? No, not just the God of the Jews. Certainly He is the God of the Jews.

We saw Him give the promises to Abraham in Genesis chapter 15 today. He is a God who chose a covenant people to be his people, to show his grace and display his mercy. But when Paul is writing to Jewish people in the church of Rome, he's reminding them what he had started in Romans chapter one, verse 16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile. Yes, of course he is the God of the Jews, to those who truly believe. Not just who are circumcised outwardly or externally seem like they're keeping the law, but those who are ones inwardly truly living by faith.

But notice what he said, is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also the God of the Gentiles? Now every Jewish person would have to wrestle with that. Is he really also God of the Gentiles? And you might find them trying to, the rabbis trying to split some hairs there. Well, yeah, he's kind of like their God, but he's not a good God to them.

Yeah, yeah, he's God over them, but just as the judge, right? That's what Abraham even says in Genesis chapter 18. When he's, yeah, Genesis 18, when Sodom and Gomorrah is going on, he says that God is the judge of the world. Well, how can he be judge of the world if he's not God of all the world? Why is he able to judge the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, and all the other ites? Because he's the judge, he's the God over all of them. Just like he was the judge and God over the Jews.

And why this is good news is that the word Gentile is ethnoi, right, so it's where we get our word for ethnicities from. It's all sorts of people groups, all sorts of language groups, God saves. And so if you are of Jewish lineage, you get to boast in Jesus. And if you're a Gentile lineage, whatever lineage that may be, maybe it's Russian, maybe it's Scottish, maybe it's Irish, maybe it's Italian, maybe it's German, maybe it's Colombian, or Bolivian, or any other in, maybe it's an E's, maybe it's Sudanese, or maybe it's an E and maybe it's Mexican, right? I don't, whatever nationality you are, whatever ethnicity you may be, the point is, Jesus is the God even of the Gentiles. This is the amazing thing of the Great Commission. When Jesus sent the disciples to go and make disciples of all the, now here he translated nations for some reason, of all the Gentiles, of all the ethnoi, of all the ethnicities.

Go to all peoples, tell them the good news, baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Circumcised or uncircumcised, The dividing wall has been torn down and we're united in Christ and we get to rejoice in Christ and boast in Jesus. He is the Savior held out to you today.

Our faith doesn't undercut the law, our faith establishes the law. That's what this gospel does. Look with me at verse 31. Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not. On the contrary, we established the law. Faith in Jesus lets us use the law as God intended the law. The letter brings death, is what Paul will say. You go to Mount Sinai, You open up the scriptures, you see the laws, you can't look at them and go, ha, done all of that, perfect.

If you can, you're better than Moses, better than David, better than Solomon, better than Isaiah, woe is me, I'm a man of unclean lips, better than Jeremiah, better than Ezekiel, Better than Hosea? Do I need to keep going? Are you better than? Are you better than? Are you better than? If you really think that you are better than, better than, better than, I hate to tell you, you may be boasting in yourself and your ability to keep the law.

If you come to the Old Testament and you pick up the stories of all the Old Testament kings and you sit there and go, what dummies? I cannot believe that these idiots would do such a thing. Really? Would you really look down your nose at people? Would you really puff up your chest so large? Could you never imagine yourself falling into such sin? Take heed, you who stand, you who think you stand, lest you fall.

We learn from the stories of the past. but not so we can look down our noses at others, but that we might look into our own hearts and say, God, you know the same seed of sin exists in me. We use the law as the law was intended to show us the putrid stench of sin and death in our own souls and our guilt for it, but we also use the law because it points us to Jesus. All the tabernacle, all the sacrifices, all the blood, all the holiness code was meant to point us to our great high priest and sacrifice in heaven, Jesus. So when you come to the Old Testament, when you look at the law, lift up your eyes to Jesus and boast and brag in Jesus. Because when you go from the beginning of the story in Genesis through the book of Deuteronomy and throughout the rest of the Old Testament, through the Law and the Prophets, they're boasting about Jesus and their culmination is when we go to Revelation.

We go and we see what are the people boasting and bragging in heaven. They sit there and go, look at our good white robes. Man, we are hot, aren't we? We are just perfect. No. No, do the elders in heaven with their crowns go, you see mine? I got that one because I was righteous enough. Mine looks great, doesn't it? It's bigger than yours. It's got more jewels than yours. What do the people in heaven boast and brag about? Worthy is a lamb who is slain, who sits on the throne and should be receiving all glory and honor and praise and majesty. They take off their crowns and they cast them at the feet of Jesus. What is your boast? What is your hope? Who do you rejoice in?

Closing Prayer

Faith, with an empty hand, holding on to Jesus. Receiving and resting in Jesus. So I hope that when we come to the Lord's Supper today, even when we fence the table, that you come with thankfulness, that you don't come in your own self-righteousness, but willing to say, I am a sinner in need of this body and blood, and that God is good and has proven it in his Son. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that we get to boast in Jesus. Lord, we pray that your Holy Spirit might help us Lord, disarm us of our own self-righteousness. Thank you that your face shines on us in your Son, Jesus. God, if there are sinful or wrong things I have said this morning, and I'm sure there were things that were overboard or misspoken or ill-spoken or not full of the grace that was meant to build people up, But I pray that you would please let your Holy Spirit blow those things away like chaff in the wind. And let the gold of the gospel remain in our hearts. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.