The Scandal of Salvation Part I

Scandal on Earth [audio]

Romans 1:1-3:23

(Preached 10/1/2017)

INTRODUCTION

We live in an age where one of the main topics of the day is the legitimacy of our rulers.  Whereas at one time we would have argued whether a leader’s views or policies were the most useful, now we argue over past sins, birth certificates, and even things like Russian interference.  But all authority in the end comes from God.  Jesus even responded to Pontius Pilate to that effect

{John 19:10-11a ESV  ¹⁰ So Pilate said to him, "You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?" ¹¹ Jesus answered him, "You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. …"}

People often defiantly say “Only God can judge me!”, but in reality it is usually pretty obvious that the very authority to judge that they are questioning is God’s.  And questioning God’s authority to judge is something that everyone, including you and I, do all the time (usually without even realizing it).  We do this because that was the very first sin, and the basis of all sin, and it is the foundation of all of the thinking and attitudes of our old nature.  The serpent told Eve “Has God said??” and then questioned the motives of the Almighty for his first prohibition of eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  There would have been no fall if Eve (and then Adam) had not decided that maybe God did not have the right to make the rule over them.

Our own tendencies can be obvious but they can also be subtle.

·         When we get angry over something that happens to us – what we call an “act of God” – we are questioning his rule in our hearts. 

·         When we ask “what if” questions about biblical rules, trying to find cases where they don’t seem fair, we are showing it.

·         If we can spend a lot of time trying to make the gospel palatable to modern societal norms so that people will accept it, we are playing right into it. 

But compassion is not synonymous with watering down the truth – it is actually uncompassionate to try to water down God’s authority and expressed will so that people will feel comfortable staying in rebellion against God while getting free stuff from Him.

Well it turns out that salvation DOES cause some thorny philosophical problems.  The very act of saving sinful humans has created a scandal greater than Teapot Dome, Chappaquiddick, Presidential infidelities, Watergate, Russia-gate, and all the other “gates”.  It has been referred to as “the scandal of heaven”.  The Bible says that before the coming of Christ, the resolution of this scandal was causing great interest even among the angels:

1 Peter 1:10-12 ESV  ¹⁰ Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, ¹¹ inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. ¹² It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, in the things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look.

If for thousands of years the angels who stood in the presence of God endured long waiting to see the problem resolved, we should also find it of interest. (The word that Peter used here, epithymeō, refers to intense longing, lust, or even coveting – they really wanted to know!.)  What is the problem?  It comes from a full understanding of God’s moral attributes.  On the one hand God is described as loving and good and compassionate.  But on the other hand, God is said to be holy, righteous and just.  We like to talk about these but we might not realize the huge problem that this creates.  Let me boil it down to a simple proposition:

1. If God is perfectly (and infinitely) loving, everybody would be forgiven for everything and everybody gets eternal life and free candy for eternity!  Yay!  Grandpa God would never stay angry at his wonderful children.
2. BUT If God is perfectly Holy He would never have anything to do with sinful man and would never let them into heaven with Him.
3. AND If God is perfectly just he must never let a single sin go unpunished, and sins against the infinite, eternal God would require infinite, eternal punishment.

To sort of sum it up, we can think of God’s Righteousness and express it like this:

If God is perfectly righteous He must never call evil good and good evil.  He must never be caught opening up a back-door into heaven for those that He is obligated by His justice to condemn, no matter how much He might love them.

To be sure, human religions have dealt with this in various ways, but only by limiting God in some way.  Either He is not really that good, or He is not that loving, or He is not really in charge, or He doesn’t know everything, or He is not a person but is just sort of a semi-aware force of nature.

But true Christianity does not compromise on any of these things, so the problem remains for us to explain.  Since the entire message of the Bible is the story of human redemption, from the fall at the beginning of Genesis through the promises of a Savior, right through to the gathering of the redeemed in heaven for all eternity, we have the problem. Can you see it?  The angels certainly did.  Satan and his rebellious angels did.  And many of the unbelievers that you will present the gospel to are aware of it.  How can God maintain his moral legitimacy and save us?

Now you may immediately respond that we have no business holding God accountable, and you would be right.  But God himself has specifically addressed this issue in the book of Romans.  The apostle Paul starts the first section of the book with this:

Romans 1:16  For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

In this straightforward declaration, Paul makes it clear that it is the gospel, and the gospel alone, that saves everyone.  But how does this tie into the “scandal of heaven”? 

From the next verse up through the end of chapter three Paul makes a masterful case for the gospel. We often think (rightly so) that the book of Romans is a book that shows mankind on trial, finds them guilty, and which then shows the way of salvation.  It definitely does all this.  We rightly use verses from this book (called the “Romans road”) in evangelism to lead people to Christ.  And it is right that we do so, because Romans is the closest thing we have in scripture to a systematic theology of salvation (soteriology).

But is the book of Romans really about man in the long run?  No!  Though man is certainly on trial in scripture, the book is actually a defense of God and his righteousness.  It is God’s answer to the “scandal” of salvation.  We see this repeatedly and explicitly stated at the beginning and end of this part of Paul’s argument:

Romans 1:17  For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith."

Romans 3:25-26a   ²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. ²⁶ It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

So in a manner of speaking, God is the one on trial in Romans 1-3, and the gospel is revealed as not only God’s loving plan to save humanity from their sins, but it is also the long-awaited solution to the biggest question in the universe from the creation of man until the resurrection of Christ.

More specifically, Romans 1-3 deals with two big questions, which will comprise the sermons for this week and next:

1. Is it right for God to condemn everybody (or anybody for that matter)?
2. If all have sinned, how can the ultimate judge save anybody?

Note: the later chapters in Romans also exonerate God in other areas, but these two sermons will deal with these two specific questions, which are huge problems with the gospel, but which God worked out in an amazing and totally unique way.

BODY: The Case for Condemnation

Last year we finished a three-year project going through the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew.  We saw that the SOTM was not just a how-to-live homily, but a precursor to the giving of the gospel.  The nation of Israel was spiritually complacent about their own righteousness and needed a spiritual diagnosis from a loving doctor or they would go on to eternity in their sins, without turning to the Lamb of God for true forgiveness.

Then, as now, the first part of any gospel response is a heart-felt conviction of sin.  Jesus and John the Baptist both started their ministries with the call to repent of sin.  But how do most people respond to this call?  They say “that does not apply to me because I am not one of those bad people.”  So (as we saw last year) Jesus demolishes at least nine of the types of spiritual and moral self-delusion that people indulge in:

5:1-16	I am a nice person (at least to my friends - but I get even against jerks and lament their existence)
5:17-19	Those are old-fashioned puritanical rules - we are more enlightened now!
5:20-48	I keep the ten commandments; I do more good than bad. God owes me!
6:1-18	People think that I am great
6:19-34	I am the master of my destiny - self reliance is the key to happiness
7:1-6	That guy is much worse than I am!
7:7-12	Eh - I am fine. I have need of nothing.
7:13-20	But everybody does it!
7:21-29	Sure I am going to heaven! I feel I am at least.

Here in Romans, Paul paints with a broader brush.  Rather than address people directly and saying “these are the lies you are telling yourself”, Paul defends God’s right to judge us and condemn us by covering the three basic types of people in the world.  To this day I still like best the outline from our old AWANA Scholarship Camp Jr High devotions on Romans:  The Really Bad Sinner, the Really Good Sinner and the Really Religious Sinner.  Let’s follow Paul’s arguments closely – but remember to look at this from the viewpoint of the vindication of the righteousness of God rather than as a man-centered diatribe.

I  The “Really Bad” Sinner

In the first part Paul declares God’s position on the human race that makes the gospel necessary and warns of God’s judgment:

Romans  1:18a  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men…

The Greek word orgē conjures of the image of violent passion, indignation and fury. 

Jesus used it to warn the self righteous religious leaders of his day:  (Matthew 3:7)  But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to used his baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

To the teacher Nicodemus Jesus said (John 3:36)  Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.

Later in Romans Paul warns people who want to play God by taking their own revenge: (Romans 12:19)  Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord."

And in Ephesians Paul tells Christians that before they were saved they were “by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” (Ephesians 2:3b)

Going back to Romans 1:18, note that Paul says that the wrath of God is “revealed from heaven”.  It is not argued through philosophy – it is not decided by committee – it is not figured out by the wise – and it is not from the mind of Paul. 

We also learn that this wrath is revealed against “all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men”.

·         It is NOT against “just the most egregious evils of men”. 

·         It is NOT just the unrighteousness of certain races or nationalities.

·         It is NOT just against those sins that you agree should be punished. 

·         It is NOT just against lists determined by committees, governments, town councils, advisory boards, churches, or groups of celebrities in slickly produced but condescending videos. 

·         There is no freedom from the wrath of God because the sins seemed minor to us, or because we found someone who did worse, or because we think we had good motives, or because we were having a bad day, or because we did them in the name of “religion”.

All means all, and God’s wrath is revealed “against ALL ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.”

God’s wrath is not fuzzy and fun.  All through the Bible we are warned against the day of wrath, and its description is terrible:

Rev 6:12-17  ¹² When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, ¹³ and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. ¹⁴ The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. ¹⁵ Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, ¹⁶ calling to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, ¹⁷ for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?"

So two questions immediately come to mind:

1. what is God so angry about, and
2. is it fair and right for his wrath to include the entire human race (especially me)?

The reason for God’s Anger

So, what is God so angry about?  He reveals it in the rest of the verse:

Romans 1:18  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

The image here is that the truth is trying to spring forth or bubble up but we are sitting on the lid, keeping it from getting out.  It is a picture of a deliberate act – the act of someone trying to keep something from getting out which otherwise would act on its own. We are suppressing the truth by our unrighteousness.  But what is the truth that the human race is suppressing?

Romans 1:19-23 ¹⁹ For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰ For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹ For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²² Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

So the first group is defined by a denial of God or by a replacement of the eternal, omnipotent creator by an object of our own creation.  It is idolatry.  But what is idolatry?  It is basically described in verse 21: refusing to honor God as God.

Who is an idolater?  I once heard Bob Newhart on television making fun of the commandment not to worship idols as being out of date and obsolete, saying something about how he could drive all day through L.A. and not see an idol.  The audience laughed, but the joke showed a profound misunderstanding of the commandment.  Yes, we do not often see giant ugly statues like in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but even we use the word idol all the time in our own culture.  We even have a popular TV show with Idol in the title.  Do a thought experiment:

• How much more time is spent in our country reading articles from magazines in grocery store checkout lines about every facet of the lives and opinions of some rich (but often morally bankrupt) Hollywood star or sports figure or musician or singer or politician than is spent reading God’s word with a view to keeping it? 
• How much more time is spent on attaining more riches or popularity or sex or possessions or even friends than in pleasing God or seeking his will?
• How many hours of how many seasons of how many TV series have we spent staring at often godless entertainment compared to how many hours have we spent in prayer, worship, evangelism or study of God’s word?
• How many times, when confronted by what God says about Himself or us in his revealed word, do we reject it out of hand with the idea of “my God would never do that”?  This is straight idolatry, but now the image you are worshiping is literally a creation of your own mind, and you are setting that up as a replacement of the true God.

Verse 23 certainly describes the literal worshiping of created images rather than the invisible God, but could it also represent any worshiping of nature or parts of nature rather than the Creator behind it?  It seems to me that even refusing to acknowledge God’s role as creator of the universe (instead believing that it just appeared without any divine power behind it) is an ultimate fulfillment of this verse.  Note that Paul describes those people as “claiming to be wise”, so the worship of human intellect seems to be bound to this idea also.

So the sin defined here is once again the oldest of all – setting up the self as the arbiter of life rather than God.  Kicking God off of the throne and saying “we’ll take it from here, thanks” and “we’ll be our own gods now”.  And our modern era of science and technology doesn’t free us from responsibility.  Note Paul’s three three statements:

• First, he says the knowledge of God is readily available because God has made it so (v19)
• Second, he says that we can deduce his power from vastness and intricacy of the creation itself. (v20)
• Third, he says that we can deduce his divine nature from creation.  This can be seen in our own natures (NASB translates v19 a “because that which is known about God is evident within them”) where we have consciousness and a conscience, which argue a conscious and moral source to our being.

The next part of the chapter reads like a "who’s who" of wickedness, but Paul is not saying that only sexual sins send people to hell, nor is he saying that sexual sins are somehow worse than others.  Three times in the rest of this section Paul indicates that the lists of sins here are the result of the big sin of not worshiping the true God as God:

Romans 1:24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity,

Romans 1:26  For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions

Romans 1:28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind

In the interest of brevity I am going to skip the lists of specific sins, since they are not given as the reason for God’s wrath (though I am sure they contribute).  But they are not the base sin of all mankind, and the list is not complete.  Anyone reading a list can justify themselves by proving that they are better than the people listed.

But this list DOES show that all God has to do is remove his hand of grace and we go downhill very rapidly.

Either way, there are still a lot of people who believe that they are not condemned.  Paul continues in the next chapter with:

II The “Really Good” Sinner

So what about those people who try to be good?  Those who have relatively well-trained consciences and “do more good than bad”?  That sainted Grandma who never spoke ill of anybody, or that “good old boy” who “didn’t smoke, didn’t chew, and didn’t go with the girls that do”?  That is the big problem with presenting the gospel to people who are decent human beings.  They have spent life trying more often than not to be nice people, to be good people, to be law abiding citizens.  They have a moral code and (again, more often than not) they follow it.  You would want to have them as friends and neighbors, and you would trust them to not do you harm.

But Paul makes an interesting point.  It is the very fact that we have a sense of morality that leaves us “without excuse” before God.  How?  Let’s look at Paul’s argument here, which is best read in its entirety:  (Read Romans 2:1-16)

Note that this is the second time that Paul has said that we are “without excuse”.  Why?  Because we judge others.

Romans 2:1  Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

“But wait!”  you say, “I don’t judge anybody! – in fact my favorite verse (that I quote at everybody else) is Matthew 7:1 “Judge not lest ye be judged”!  Oh, really.  While a lot of people claim this, it is manifestly false.  First of all, there are very few people who, if asked if Hitler’s cold blooded and methodical extermination of millions of people he thought of as undesirable was evil, would not answer “of course”.  Well, you have judged others.  But you show this every time you get angry at somebody.  Anger is a result of believing that the other person has done something wrong.  How many times have you railed against somebody going 20 MPH over the speed limit while you were only going 9.99 MPH over the speed limit?

The truth is that we all judge others even as we try to do right ourselves.  And the really condemning thing is that (unless you are a complete insane psychopath) you never even keep your own list of “dos and don’ts” over your lifetime.  So even if God’s standards don’t come into play (and they do), you would be condemned even by your own moral code, which you do not keep:

Romans 2:2-3 ² We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. ³ Do you suppose, O man--you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself--that you will escape the judgment of God?

Down in verse 11-16 Paul says that the same standard is applied to all – whether they were exposed to a good moral code or not (using the law of Moses as an example).  If you know the law, you will be held to it.  If you do not (remember the question people always ask about – “what about the heathen that don’t know the Bible”?) you still have a conscience, and you don’t even obey that yourself.  Everyone has had a moment where they have felt guilty because they know that they did not do the right thing.  Everyone sins and everyone knows that they have sinned.    The last two verses of this section describe how the conscience works and point out that God will only need to use the secrets in our own hearts to show that we deserve condemnation:

Romans 2:15-16 ¹⁵ They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them ¹⁶ on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

So in a way, those with better morals have less of an excuse than those who are really messed up – they have more light and their own self knowledge is all that is necessary to demonstrate their need for salvation. Only pride could keep them from admitting it (which is the real reason it is in the list of 7 deadly sins).

III The “Really Religious” Sinner

As we run low on time here we must cover the last of the three groups that Paul describes here – the Religious Sinner.  In scripture we God reaching out to us – Paul says in the next chapter that “no one seeks after God” – so God had to do the work to reach us.  But humans have taken this relationship with God and formalized it into a structure by which man can reach out to God instead.  Back when we were in the SOTM I proposed the following description of human religion:

1.       It is the system by which we distinguish between “us” and “them”, where “us” is the “good” people and “they” are the “bad” people.

2.       It is the set of special rules, that if we follow them God is made our debtor.  In other words, we “earn” our way to heaven, which then God is obligated to give us as our reward for following them, and

3.       It is the framework that we can use to feel good about ourselves and whatever we choose to do in life.

When God gave the law, it was to remind us of his character and to keep us aware of our own moral state (and drive us to Christ for forgiveness).  The law is good, as Paul says later in Romans, but it must not be understood to mean that we can somehow do some work ourselves that will give us enough brownie points that we are no longer guilty of sin before God.  A person who is condemned for murder does not get his sentence overturned by bringing coffee and donuts for everybody in the courtroom.  The guilt remains.

In this vein, Paul speaks to his fellow Jewish believers about their own standing before God in the remaining verses of this chapter.  The argument for the religious is the same as for the moral, but even more stringent.  (read 18-29).  Verses 17-20 list all of the benefits of religion that could be cited by someone believing that they are in themselves on the way to heaven because of their religious observances:

• Membership in a church                                    ● Ethnic background
• Openly religious                                                ● Morally trained and upright
• Go to Bible Studies                                            ● Teach others about morality
• A guiding light to others,                                   ● Teacher of wisdom
• Work with kids                                                   ● Having the word of God

But these people have the same problem as the moral people Paul has already mentioned (21-23)

Roman 2:21-23  ²¹ you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you steal? ²² You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? ²³ You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law.

The argument is that the more light and virtue you claim for yourself, the less you should think of your own chances to make it to heaven without help.  Jesus zinged the Pharisees with this concept in John 9, when they had been condemning the healed blind man for believing in Him:

John 9:39-41  ³⁹ And Jesus said, "For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind." ⁴⁰ Those of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these things and said to Him, "We are not blind too, are we?" ⁴¹ Jesus said to them, "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but since you say, 'We see,' your sin remains.

Paul finishes up the chapter saying that the only good religion is not a professed one, but one that expresses a righteous heart.  If we could be perfect without help, we would really earn praise, as verse 29 makes clear.  If we could be perfect because of religion, none other than God himself would give us praise for our righteousness – because that would be the right thing.  But in reality, the religious man is always in the end guilty of hypocrisy, and therefore rightly condemned by God.

Conclusion

This argument continues in chapter three, and tomorrow we will finish the scandal on Earth and continue to the scandal in heaven.  But hopefully you can already see what a terrible problem is presented by our redemption.  Scripture does not white-wash it – if we are to go to heaven instead of hell, something impossible must happen.  To make the line of Holiness and Goodness meet with the parallel line of justice and holiness seems logically impossible.  To do it (according to man’s limited reasoning) God must be lessened in some way, giving up the title of loving Father or the title of just Judge.  But He did it somehow, and I suspect all of you know the whole story.  But we will leave it as a cliff-hanger anyway, because that is the flow of Romans 1-3 and the way Paul wrote it.  But here is what we know so far:

• All of the human race is condemned as sinners before God, and his wrath is revealed against us.
• The main sin of man is idolatry in one form or another – the rejecting of God as He is and replacement with something in nature or of our own devising.
• Idolatry can be just representing God as different than He is by worshipping the god in our imagination – sort of our own version of God who does things in a way more to our liking.
• Human excuses do not work.
• When God removes His hand of influence for good, our true sinful nature shows as more and more sin comes out naturally.  He does this progressively as we reject Him and replace Him, so that our sin will become more obvious (and hopefully shake us out of our self-justification and self-worship).
• When we judge others we condemn ourselves.  Even our own morality condemns us so we can’t allow ourselves to think that God has lower standards than we do!
• Being religious by itself will not cause us to be justified as righteous before God.  True religion should drive us to God for his love and mercy.
• Finally, we can see pretty clearly that God is completely justified in his righteous wrath toward all humankind and we are ALL in need of salvation.

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