The Scandal of Salvation Part II

Scandal in Heaven  [audio]

Romans 3:1 - 26  (Part I)

Preached 10/8/2017

INTRODUCTION

For these two weeks we are investigating a scandal – one that reaches all the way to heaven.  And it is all important – it is life-or-death for us and it calls into question the moral legitimacy of God.  It is absolutely crucial to us because it determines the meaning and destiny of our life and of our afterlife.

One of the marks of a coherent and, frankly, honest philosophy is that it acknowledges its own difficulties and objections.  This does not mean that you have all the answers, but if you pretend that they don’t exist you reveal yourself to be a fraud.  We see this all around us every day, especially in some of the political debates and protests that have gone on lately.  But the truth is that a lot of Christians do the same thing.  No, we don’t generally do the violence and screaming thing (though 500 years ago there were plenty of examples in the organized church), but how many of us just give up and say “that is really not my expertise” or “that’s too hard”?  Or maybe we just righteously shake off the dust from our feet and walk away after telling them that their question is “just too stupid”?

Well it turns out that salvation DOES cause some thorny philosophical problems.  As I mentioned last week, the very act of saving sinful humans has created what has been called “the scandal of heaven”.  The Bible says that even the angels wanted to see how it would work out – so maybe we should cut people some slack and do our homework.  Peter, just two chapters after speaking about how the angels longed to look into how God would solve this problem, told us this:

1 Peter 3:14-15  ¹⁴ But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, ¹⁵ but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,

Here is the problem in a nutshell, and it’s not just a philosophical conundrum, fit only to be bantered about by wise hermits in a cave up in the mountains.  It is at the center of everything, and if it is not solved, there is no hope for anybody, because God himself would be powerless to do anything to help us, or He would be an evil God (as some actually have accused). 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.  So, logically:

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.

So the question is: how can God maintain his moral legitimacy and save us?  Therefore, 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:

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?

The question is – do you like cliffhangers?  Because Romans chapter three is a doozy.  Right of to the end of verse 26 Paul builds up the suspense until his big reveal.  And if you are like me you have never really noticed how big the reveal is and how much it means.  But that is what I hope to pass on to you today.

BODY: The Questions, the Crisis and the Cliffhanger

So, as we saw last week in chapters 1 and 2, Paul has left the entire human race under the wrath of God.  He has covered the entire human race in three groups:  The immoral (bad) people, the moral (good - at least according to human standards), and the religiouspeople. 

His entire premise is given in chapter 1 verses 16-19. In 16-17 he introduces the solution to the problem, but without giving any details:

Roman 1:16-17  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. ¹⁷ For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith."

So in these first two verses Paul introduces the solution to the problem, but without giving any details.  All we know is that there is something Paul thinks is cool called the Gospel, which means good news (hey, sounds good so far.  It evidently has something to do about saving people who have faith, and it reveals the righteousness of God.  But what are these people with faith saved from, and who will need this “salvation”??

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.

So God is very, very angry, with a righteous anger, against “all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men”.  NOTE:

·         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.”

As we saw, Paul went on to explain that the one sin behind all sins that God condemned was that the entire human race 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.   

The rest of chapter one revealed the results of this sin – God “giving people over” to … “what comes naturally”.  At the end of chapter one the average person sees a list of depravity and degradation and says “well of course God should punish those guys, they obviously deserve it”.

In chapter two, however, Paul shows how the rest of the human race, first the moralist then the religionist, are actually more fit for hell than the immoral creep down the street.  Why?  Because they make moral distinctions they are “without excuse”.  They might not sin as much or as obviously, but they know better.  They say so.  In fact, nobody even keeps their own moral code all the time. Everybody knows what it is like to feel guilty because we all remember many times in our lives when we knew good and well that we had done a bad thing.  Finally, using his own people, the Jews, Paul lays into them for their hypocrisy.  They were even teaching other people how to be good and yet not following the law perfectly themselves.  This theme is borne out very clearly in the life of the Lord Jesus.  To the downtrodden sinner who repented of his sin, Jesus always spoke gently and encouragingly (though always telling them to not sin any more), but to the self-righteous religious leaders he loudly and firmly vented his disgust, because they condemned others but justified themselves, and they not only would not repent, but they got very angry when they thought that Jesus was “talking down to them” when He pointed out their sin.

This is the great paradox of being a person who is acceptable to society due to generally good behavior.  Those people are the most in danger of hell because they have surrounded their consciences with a wall of human works and even the law is not enough to convince them that they need a Savior.  But by the end of chapter two there is no doubt.  The entire human race stands condemned before God and the situation seems grim.

I  The Questions

So now we turn the page to chapter three, where Paul takes a break from his first argument to deal with other anticipated questions.  But these questions are related to the other ones he has been discussing because they also deal with the vindication of God and the defense of his moral virtue.  The first eight verses are in two sections, and the second flows from the first.  In verses 1-4 Paul defends God’s faithfulness (and trustworthiness) and in verse 5-8 Paul mentions direct attacks on God’s righteousness.

Remember that one rhetorical technique the apostle Paul loves to use is to pose a question (as if from an opponent) and then answer it.  In the next several chapters there are many examples of this.  We can be pretty sure that these questions are based on Paul’s extensive experience in preaching the gospel, just as anybody who witnesses to others will notice that the kinds of questions that you hear are generally repeated almost ad infinitum by various people over the years.  Paul, you remember, had a particular routine in which when he came to a town he would first go to the local synagogue and “reason” with his own about the Messiah.  If (well, when) they rejected him he would then to the gentiles and preach the gospel to them directly.  But he is always described as “reasoning” with people.  From the lowliest slave to the lofty philosophers at the Areopagus in Athens, Paul was always available to anyone who had objections or questions, and he would always try to answer them.  Over the years he had heard many objections and he quotes some of them now.  In each of these questions we can hear echoes of things he had heard from others over the years, and we can also see that many of them were basically insults hurled at Paul personally. 

The first question basically follows from his previous argument that even the religious members of his own race needed a Savior:

Romans 3:1  Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision?

“So Paul”, they say, “if what you say is true, what’s the point of all that stuff about Moses and our national identity and being chosen by God and everything?”  It’s a good question, but it misses Paul’s point, which is often the point of objections that we raise to the gospel.  But can you see the hidden danger of this question?  It is really a question about God, because if Paul tears down Judaism in general, then God cannot be trusted, and then why should we trust your new revelation?  But Paul has an answer for them:

Romans 3:2  Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.

So Paul affirms that the gospel is not at all taking away the value of what God has done, but he steers the argument back to the ideas in the previous chapter.  And there is a warning in this for us, too, if we can see it.  The “oracles of God” here is a term that refers to the Old Testament.  Nobody else in the world at that point had ready access to the actual Word of God.  Not only were all of the prophets given to this special nation, they were the keepers and guardians of the words of those prophets.  They could study them, and teach them, and lovingly learn from them, and discern some of the very thoughts of God.  They contained moral guidance which uplifted the nation (when they obeyed at least), and they contained definite promises that they could rest on.  But having God’s word is a two-edged sword:  The very words that uplift you call you to account when you disobey them, and they will be condemn you if you disregard them.

As Christians, are we not in the same situation?  We have “the word made perfect” – we sing about “wonderful words of life”.  But just as Paul said to his fellow Jews in the previous chapter “you who teach others, do you teach yourself?”, James in the NT writes

James 3:1 Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

Every blessing carries a responsibility with it.  For example, having children is a blessing, but it is also a solemn responsibility, for which God will hold us to account.  Being blessed with riches we are expected to help the less fortunate.  But to anyone who is given God’s word, there is an accounting to God beyond everything else.  And if we teach others (as experts ourselves) we condemn ourselves through our own hypocrisy.  The mishandling or neglect of God’s word should be a terrifying subject to every one of his people.  But the blessing outweighs everything, if we only would honor it.

The real agenda of the question comes out in v 3-4:

Rom 3:3-4  ³ What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? ⁴ By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, "That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged."

Just note here that the fact that the Israelites were unfaithful did not mean that God had somehow been dishonest when He promised to bless them.  Back under Moses they had recited the “blessings and curses” that would come upon them when they obeyed or disobeyed.  And Paul is going to deal with this question later in the letter (ch 9-11).  For now it is enough that he declares God’s truthfulness and faithfulness, upon which all judgment AND redemption hang.

The next few verses have objections that he will answer later in the letter.  He mentions them here to reiterate the character of God and to uphold his right to judge.  Note that the objections are presented so that they are sillier and sillier:

Romans 3:5-8  ⁵ But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) ⁶ By no means! For then how could God judge the world? ⁷ But if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? ⁸ And why not do evil that good may come?--as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.

Since we are doing a high-level overview and racing toward the latter part of the chapter, I will not say too much about these except that they probably represent the caliber of some of the arguments made toward Paul.  People misunderstand what the gospel means (for reasons we will see in the next few verses) and twist and turn the clear message of the good news in all sorts of ways in order to avoid dealing with God in the way that He demands.  The basic argument is “if I am fulfilling a plan which shows God righteous, how can you call it sin at all?  But Paul makes it clear that this very thought would be a violation of the paradox that he is trying to avoid, and condemns the line of thought altogether.  Also, since the implication is that this is what he means by his explanation of the gospel, he calls it “slander”.  “Of course that is not what I am saying”, Paul says.

II The Crisis

With those questions out of the way, Paul goes back to building his case for the righteousness of God.  Having defended God’s faithfulness and righteousness against some objections, Paul reiterates that all people need a Savior to escape God’s judgment:

Rom 3:9  What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin,

So there it is, the main premise.  Remember that the church of Rome had both Jewish and Gentile believers in it.  The Jewish members had just come back from exile by a previous Caesar and had re-integrated back into the church.  Paul places everybody on an even level before God with respect to salvation.  For the next several verses Paul finishes his case. The next section unleashes a torrent of accusations against the human race, in case there was any doubt left after chapter 1 and 2.  But he is not just making up a list of his pet peaves.  Every one of the following statements from v10-18 is quoted from the Old Testament.

First he states five universal principles that apply to everyone – note that each uses “none” or “all”, not “some”:

Romans 3:10-12 ¹⁰ as it is written:

• “None is righteous, no, not one; by God’s standard of perfect righteousness, our lives are full of sin
• ¹¹ no one understands; as we read in 1 and 2 Corinthians, the heart of man is spiritually darkened.  “the natural man does not accept the things of the spirit” and “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,” Our natural tendency is to reject the things of God
• no one seeks for God. ¹² All have turned aside; people seek religion but they do it to shield themselves from God, not to actually get closer to Him.
• together they have become worthless;  the word Paul uses here actually means to be spoilt or useless or unrepairable.  This is not going to be a mild tune up – man needs a full rework by God.
• no one does good, not even one."  Solomon wrote in Proverbs that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death”.  We try to make deals with God to cover our sin with our own version of good deeds, but our sin is still in the pot with the other ingredients.

In the rest of the section, Paul deals with two areas: our speech and our violence.  First, our speech is described in 13 and 14 as corrupt, hurtful, dishonest and deadly.  Solomon wrote thousands of years ago (Prov 12:18) “There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.”  Paul quotes other verses (note the word picture at the end):

Romans 3:13-14  ¹³ "Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive." "The venom of asps is under their lips." ¹⁴ "Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness."

People use their words to hurt one another all of the time.  And it happens quite naturally – we have to constantly guard against it or we will be constantly needling and angrily yelling at even our most loved ones.  We all snap annoyingly at others, or speak curses at them under our breath behind their backs.  Who hasn’t told off an anonymous driver in another car on the freeway?  Yet we tell ourselves that we are good because we have never carried out our threats.  But we have left someone in tears with our words at some time in our lives.  And Jesus said that all of our words flow “from the abundance of our hearts”.  But alas, the record of mankind is not just one of hurtful words:

Romans 3:15-17  ¹⁵ "Their feet are swift to shed blood; ¹⁶ in their paths are ruin and misery, ¹⁷ and the way of peace they have not known."

The ironic thing about this is that we have 2000 years more history behind us now than when this was written, and the situation has not gotten better.  Mankind thinks he has become enlightened through science and philosophy, but our internal nature has not changed at all with our technical knowledge.  The 20^th century was the bloodiest century of all human history, and for the first time we gained the ability to kill millions of people at one time with the slight movement of one finger.  Progress…. But not in the right direction. Now, less than a week after a real estate multimillionaire decided to attempt to kill hundreds or thousands of people from a hotel room, can we even offer a weak rebuttal to Paul’s accusation? 

But the final summary is in v18, as Paul comes back to the original and only real sin in the world:

Romans 3:18  "There is no fear of God before their eyes."

III The Cliffhanger

Now we come to the cliffhanger.  Paul starts by restating the premise that he has now proved in no uncertain terms:

Romans 3:19-20  ¹⁹ Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. ²⁰ For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

The entire human race is now left literally speechless.  There is nothing more to say.  There is no excuse, there is no explanation we can give, there is no offer “to do better”, and there is no hope.  The sinner, the moralist, and the religious person are all silent before God.  The walls are closing in, judgment is imminent, and we feel the weight of God’s wrath.  And over all there is a profound silence that stretches to the far off ends of the universe.  All… is…. Quiet.

The sense of quiet is suddenly broken by a single word:  “But”.  Everyone leans forward with sudden hope and anticipation.  But what can follow?  Our condemnation is so assured and so deserved that there can be no expectation of rescue.  But Paul says:

Romans 3:21  But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it--

Here is that righteousness of God that Paul mentioned in chapter one.  That’s right!  He said that the gospel revealed God’s righteousness to those who had faith, right?  Paul makes two things clear about this righteousness and the law:

1. it does not come from keeping the law
2. it was revealed to us in the law.

The word translated manifested is the same as in 1:19 where he wrote “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.”  In other words, we would not know about this if it were not from the prophets.  Saving faith comes, as Paul writes in chapter 10 “from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”  But WHAT is this righteousness of God?  How does it work?  What does it consist of?

Romans 3:22-24  ²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

Now it comes into more focus.  Just like the condemnation, this “righteousness of God” is available to anybody, regardless of background, past sin, ethnicity or any other human distinction.  What do we see about this redemption?

1. it is through faith.  We must trust God to provide it for us
2. it is for “all who believe”.  Again it is a potentially universal solution
3. everybody needs it equally, because all have fallen short of the glory of God (pier jump illustration here?)
4. it is completely undeserved by the recipients (that is the meaning of grace)
5. there is no payment we can ever give for it or any payment required – it is described as a gift
6. it is a redemption – we are purchased back from our sin with a price that is paid for by someone besides us (manumission)
7. and it is in the Messiah, Jesus.  We will not find it anywhere else.

As we exult in the seeming good news, however, we suddenly see the problem.  Wait a minute!  What about the holiness and righteousness of God??  Our hearts sink as we helplessly remember the problem that brought us here.  If God just gives us “free candy” of forgiveness - when we are now manifestly proven to be deserving of only judgment, then God himself is a devil and heaven is going to be a hellish continuation of misery under a morally corrupt Sovereign for all eternity.  Just believe and receive a “get out of jail free card”?  It suddenly seems like a joke – a bad joke played on us at that.

But now, at the final cliffhanger – the music builds to a crescendo and Paul finishes the good news and reveals the solution of the the most difficult problem in the universe:

Romans 3:24-25a  ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith

Paul reveals that God himself has solved the problem – in a way that we could never have conceived of.  And even if we had thought of it, it would be absolutely impossible to ever ask for it.  But God did it anyway!  The key word above is “propitiation” – a strange word indeed, and one that we probably have never heard outside of scripture.  But it is very crucial in the solution.  Jesus Christ, who (a) never committed a sin and alone out of the entire human race was the only one not deserving of God’s wrath, but (b) who was also God in the flesh, died the death that we were supposed to receive. 

Galatians 4:4-5  ⁴ But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, ⁵ to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.

The sins of everyone who would trust in Him for salvation through all time (and those who had in faith looked forward to God’s promised redeemer) were placed on Him on the cross.  The full wrath of God fell on Him while He was dying, and his death completely satisfied all of God’s justice.  Another translation of propitiation would be that the sacrifice of Christ exhausted the entire revealed wrath of God.  That’s why he said “it is finished” before giving up his spirit.  The word was used in banking and literally signified “paid in full”.   That is why John the Baptist introduced Jesus as “the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”.  As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians:

2 Cor 5:21  For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Why is this significant?  Because God himself solved the problem.  Now He had been planning this all along, but the full story of redemption was kept a mystery.  The angels wanted to look into it.  After thinking about it, I think that it is entirely conceivable that this is part of what caused the rebellion by Satan and his angels back in history.  Obviously we can only speculate, but note that Satan is referred to as “the accuser of the brethren”.  In Job we see him coming to God and bringing stories about the evils that the human race did.  Did Satan decide that since the human race was practicing all kinds of evil and he was unable to figure out how God was going to redeem humanity that he decided that he was more righteous than God?  Who knows – we can only speculate.  But Paul makes it clear that this plan of God’s solved a long-standing dilemmna.

Romans 3:25b This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

As long as God let the human race live and kept extending mercy, it opened Him up to charges of injustice or favoritism.  But the gospel demonstrates (the word for “show” means to demonstrate or prove by a sign or evidence) once and for all the righteousness of God.  Remember what Satan did when Jesus came to earth and God’s plan was finally revealed there by John at the Jordan, what was Satan’s first move?  He immediately took Jesus aside and tried to get Him to sin – to thwart the solution.  If he had succeeded, he would have proven that God was morally corrupt and any hope for redemption of the human race would have ended.

Now to the climax of the entire passage – the payoff of the entire argument:

Roman 3:26  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.

The only way that a loving but just and holy God could save us was the way that He chose to do.  The result is that all of his moral attributes are satisfied and unassailable.  He is demonstrated to be righteous when judging us and therefore not obligated to save anybody.  But contrarily He is also free to offer salvation to anybody.

 

[next]

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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