What you believe pt 5

It was a few years ago, back when I had the discipline of reading through the Bible once per year, and I was in the book of Romans. I had read through about 20 times by then, and had reached that point you get to when you repeat something over and over and you often find your mind wandering. It's like driving somewhere and realizing you were on automatic and being amazed that you did not crash because you can't remember actually doing the driving? I get that way sometimes when reading - I can read an entire couple of pages before I realize that I wasn't paying attention. (Sometimes I have to read to myself out loud now to keep my mind in one place, my mind wanders around so much).

Anyway, I reached the third chapter of Romans one day, and the phrase from v26 jumped out at me: "so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus". It was like a spotlight had suddenly shown down on the page and I realized that I had just read something momentous. All of us evangelicals are familiar with many verses in Romans - there are many good verses about salvation that we learn for evangelism and teach kids in sunday school and other church clubs (1:16, 3:23, 5:8, 6:23 and others come to mind) but I had never noticed this one nor had I ever heard it preached on. What was this "just and the justifier"? It's actually a marker for the place where God's seemingly irreconcilable attributes come together. How so? Let's look at it and hopefully you will agree with me that this is amazing.

Remember that we established that there is a problem philosophically with the seeming conflict between God's love/mercy and his holiness/justice. The problem is this: If you have a judge, and he looks down at the person who, say, murdered your family in cold blood or some other heinous crime, and says "I'm feeling like I should be nice today so you are free to go", you would undoubtedly cry out that the judge was not doing his job. If you were to ask "why did you just let this guy go away without any penalty" and he were to answer "I just want to show love to everybody" you would question the qualifications of the judge. However you felt about "loving everybody", the inescapable fact is that this judge was not doing his job of restraining evil. Now think of a world filled with evil deeds and injustices, and look at the judge of the universe. If (as is made clear earlier in Romans) all people are guilty of sin and therefore deserving of hell, a just God has a problem. If He choses to 'forgive' the sins of some and does not punish them, then He is open to charges of injustice. The universalist (those who believe that everyone is going to heaven) has the same problem. If God looks down at evildoers and says "oh gosh, it's okay, come on up here and we'll call it even" then He is not just, and he is an evil judge because he excuses or tolerates evil.

On the other hand, if God looks down and sees the whole world given to evil and just closes up heaven and says "sorry guys! I guess you are all going to hell. My hands are tied because I am a holy, righteous judge", then we might be tempted to question his love. There is the dilemma. How to reconcile "God is Love" with "I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me"?? If God justifies sinners, He would be unjust. If He punishes all sinners, He is unloving. Now we get to Romans 3:26. Let's look at the context: vs23-26 "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus."

There is a progression in these verses. The way that we are justified actually demonstrates the righteousness of God, rather than causing Him to look unrighteous. Once there is sin, a just judge must punish it. How to get rid of it? Sin will not go away. And there is nowhere to put it - even if another person agrees to take the punishment for you, he is also a sinner and has his own guilt to die for. It's like the pink spot in "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back". They just sweep it from place to place but that only makes the situation worse. Well, the next part is the gospel. vs 8:3-4a say "For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us...". God provided a sinless substitute, hence the "lamb of God", to be sacrificed as a fitting substitute in our place to take the full wrath of God on evil for us that we might be with him in holiness forever. Really God Himself looked down, saw that we could not be redeemed by our own efforts, came and lived a human life without sin, and offered Himself up to pay for our sins against Him. Remember that the definition of "just" that I previously used: "every sin must be paid for, period." Several things must be true for a righteous substitute:

1. Must be sinless himself (or he will have his own punishment)
2. Must be like us (a moral, sentient being - you could not have a rock sacrificed for you, for instance)
3. Must be willing. It would be evil to just grab some innocent person and kill him for your sins. (If Jesus went unwillingly like in J.C.S. it would be divine child abuse rather than a righteous sacrifice).
   

Jesus Christ fulfilled these things, allowed His life to be taken, and he was "displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood". Now we can turn to Him in faith and be saved, by accepting the gift of salvation given by God in his grace. In this way, he "demonstrate[s] His righteousness" and can be "just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." This is very heavy. When I realized that this had been there all along and I had never really noticed it my jaw dropped. Wow. So, in a way, though others have chosen many different key verses for Romans, in my view the entire book rotates around 3:26. This is really foreshadowed in verse 17 where Paul is describing the gospel and says "For in it the righteousness of God is revealed". So, God can justify us without being unrighteous or unjust.

Anyway, when you see a paradox in scripture, especially where it concerns the nature of God, look closely and you will see the most amazing, dynamic truths ever. It's like an earthquake fault between two tectonic plates. Where they grind together you can get huge energy released or Mt. Everest. Look at the seeming contradictions and you will soar to heights unimaginable! Praise God!