No Boasting

[audio]

Romans 3:27 - 31

Preached 10/20/2019  (previous)

INTRODUCTION

In our walk through the Sermon on the Mount several years ago, I proposed that religion, by which I meant all human religion, generally had three common elements that define and animate it, namely:

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.

 

The gospel of Jesus Christ stands completely apart from human religion, but we can very easily fall into a “religion” of “Christianity” (which might better be called “Churchianity”) which fulfills these three basic needs of our flesh.  In the end, each of these “features” of religion feed one particular vice, which is pride.

Pride has been called the “Queen of the Sins”, but it might just as well be called the “King” of sins, because it knows no bounds.  It is common to all of the seed of Adam and is not limited by male or female, or nationality, race, economic status, education level, upbringing, intelligence, physical strength, political persuasion, age, religiosity, personality, piety or any other human distinction.

More recently we have been going slowly through the beginning of Romans, and the last three times I was up here we examined the Atonement of Jesus Christ, where He paid the full penalty for our sins on the cross, completely absorbing the wrath of God against us and giving us his own righteousness so that we can stand before God “holy and blameless, lacking nothing”.  In Romans chapter three Paul finishes his great prosecution of the sinful human race, leading to the statement in

Romans 3:23-25a  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, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

The entirety of the gospel is summed up in those two and a half verses.  And to this day when sharing the gospel we use Romans 2:23 as the proof verse that the need for salvation is universal.  The problem of sin and its subsequent judgment by God is one that every human being is heir to.  And the next two verses tell us that salvation is an undeserved gift from a loving God who would so much rather save than judge that He went through extraordinary means to do so, at his own expense.

Furthermore, Paul reveals here that it was only by the punishment of a willing substitute in our place can he can be, as verse 26 says, “just and the justifier of those who has faith in Jesus.”  This is the capstone of Paul’s treatise on justification.  Through the substitutionary atonement of the Son of God for us God can declare us righteous in his sight without compromising his own righteousness, which is why Paul starts and ends his presentation of the gospel by saying that in the gospel “God displays his own righteousness.”

Now the layout of the book of Romans is very straightforward.  The first part of this long letter to the churches in Rome (which came to be divided into the first eleven chapters that we have in our Bibles) teaches us in great detail how lost people are saved.  The second part of the letter (which became chapters 12 through 16) teaches us how saved people should act.  In addition, the first section is also divided into two parts.  The first part goes from the beginning of the letter to verse 26 of chapter 3.  The longer second part starts at today’s passage in verse 27 and goes through the end of chapter 11.  In this second section he fleshes out the doctrine of salvation more fully.  For most of this section he does so by proposing a series of questions from a hypothetical person that challenges various aspects of the gospel which allows Paul to then explain the gospel more fully.  In the next six verses we actually see four questions, though they are linked together by the first question in verse 27, which is deceptively simple:

Romans 3:27a  “Then what becomes of our boasting?” (to which he gives the answer) “It is excluded.”

The gospel is the only system that completely nullifies human pride.  James Montgomery Boice writes of this statement: “It is appropriate that the first implication of the doctrine of justification by faith concerns boasting.  For boasting is related to pride – it is an expression of it – and pride is the greatest of all sins, according to biblical Christianity.  If pride is the greatest of all sins and  God’s plan of salvation does not destroy pride – rooting it up, casting it out, and even dusting off the place where it stood – then it is not a good plan. It has failed, and we need a faith other than Christianity.” [Boice, Romans p404] He goes on to state that “the sphere of life in which people show the most pride is religion.” [ibid, p406]  But in contrast to human religion the gospel is the destroyer of human pride.  Why?  Because the gospel says that:

1. NOBODY deserves salvation,
2. There is NOTHING we can do to save ourselves, and
3. Only by a totally undeserved gift from God will save us.

 

Think of another of the verses we use in gospel presentations that is found in the letter to the Ephesians:

Ephesians 2:8-9a  ⁸ For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, ⁹ not a result of works

Where is the human pride of accomplishment in that verse?  Nowhere.  There is nothing to hang your hat on that gives you any credit at all, especially since Paul seems to be saying that even the faith through which you are saved IS A GIFT!  For those who have learned that verse you are probably saying to yourself: “wait, you left off the last part!.”  Yes, and Paul explains the very point we are discussing – it is not our own doing – why? – “so that no one may boast.”  Boasting is excluded!  Every aspect of our salvation gives all of the glory to God and none of it to us.  That is his plan.

So Paul now asks three questions to explain this concept to his readers.

 

I. No Merit (27b – 28)

For his first question, Paul asks what the principle is by which boasting is excluded, and he uses this to explain how the gospel gets rid of human pride.  He asks:

Romans 3:27b … By what kind of law [is boasting excluded]? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith.

The word for “law” in these verses is translated sometimes as “principle”, and I think that is appropriate here.  The Old Testament, especially the five books of Moses, are usually what the Greek word nomos refers to, but here Paul is saying “what is the principle that excludes boasting?  Is it excluded by the principle of observing the law?”  Obviously the act of human achievement is not going to exclude pride, and Paul gives the answer: “No, but on the principle of faith.”  We have already seen why this is important, but it deserves a bit more consideration here.

If we think about the kind of answers we might get from people who are operating under the “principle of works” as to why God should allow them into heaven, we will probably get various answers, including “I keep the ten commandments” (no you don’t according to Jesus), “I do more good than bad overall”, “I am nice to good people”, “I have a great reputation - ask anybody”,  “I am better than many other people” or “I am not doing anything that everyone else isn’t doing”.  In general these types of excuses fall into a few categories (I borrowed this list from JM Boice): [Boice, Romans p407-410]

1. Morality.  We say “I am good enough”.  But Paul has just spent three chapters demolishing that view.
2. Religious feelings.  I have had discussions with people who insist that a particular religious must be true because they know people in that religion that “are very happy”.  Charles Spurgeon scathingly addressed this point with these words: “Souls, souls, this is work-mongering in its most damnable shape, for it has deluded far more than that bolder sort of work-trusting, which says, “I will rely upon what I do”.  If you rely upon what you feel, you shall as certainly perish as if you trust to what you do.”  Paul also addressed this in 3:11 with “[There is] … no one who seeks God.”
3. Knowledge. Of course the devil knows more than all of us about God and he is not going to heaven.  And what is the most defining characteristic of the devil? Pride and boasting.  The lure of pride in knowledge is strong.  “…we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up…” 1 Cor 8:1
4. Faith.  Even as evangelicals who know the gospel, we can come to the point where we think that we are special because we were smart enough to respond in faith to the gospel while others weren’t.  This is a danger when our theology is based on a trivial understanding of the gospel.  If faith is something we do, then it becomes a work in itself. But that would corrupt the message of the gospel completely.  Boice quotes D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones here and I think he said it so well I don’t want to re-word it:

“Faith is nothing but the instrument of our salvation.  Nowhere in Scripture will you find that we are justified because of our faith; …. The Scripture never says that.  The Scripture says that we are justified by faith or through faith. Faith is nothing but the instrument or the channel by which this righteousness fo God in Christ becomes ours.  It is not faith that saves us.  What saves us is the Lord Jesus Christ and his perfect work.  It is the death of Christ upon Calvary’s Cross that saves us.  It is his perfect life that saves us.  It is his appearing on our behalf in the presence of God that saves us.  It is God putting Christ’s righteousness to out account that saves us.  This is the righteousness that saves; faith is but the channel and the instrument by which his righteousness becomes mine. The righteousness is entirely Christ’s. Muy faith is not my righteousness and I must never define or think of faith as righteousness.  Faith is nothing but that which links us to the Lord Jesus Christ and his righteousness.”

So how much of our salvation is related to our works?  Paul makes that clear as he finishes the answer to his question:  

Romans 3: 28  For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.

The way I would summarize this would be “No Merit”.  We bring no merit at all to the equation, and therefore all boasting is excluded.  Any so called Christianity that ascribes any human merit to our salvation is an anti-gospel that exalts human pride.  But we fall into it so easily.  I remember hearing a friend who claimed to be a Christian say about an unbelieving person he knew “I know that nobody can be saved by works, but if anybody deserved to go to heaven by good works, it would be her.”

One of the Solas of the Reformation was “Solus Christus”, which means "Christ alone".  This was partially in reaction to the doctrine of Merit within the Roman Catholic church.  In the biblical gospel, the entire human race is hopelessly lost and can only be saved by a gift of the righteousness of Christ through faith in Him.  When we get to heaven, no saved person will have any grounds for boasting because we are all debtors to God for his undeserved gift. The scriptures make it clear that even as Christians we still sin and need to confess our sins to God, who “is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9).  In the end it is God who brings us all the way to heaven by his own actions and faithfulness, as Paul wrote to the Christians in Phillipi: “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Phil 1:6).  In contrast to this, the Catholic church has an entire economy of human merit.  Yes, they believe that Christ died to save us, but also that he continues to die for us in the mass to produce more merit.  But that merit received through faith is evidently not enough, because if we sin we must confess to a priest, who then doles out merit from a “merit bank” that the church maintains.  But it gets worse.  If I understand this correctly, this “merit bank” that the church manages contains Jesus’ merit, but added to this is the merit of certain Christians who were so good that they produced more merit than they needed to go to heaven and therefore deposited it for the priests to give out.  When you sin and confess to the priest he may give you penance, which is some sort of work to earn what is called “congruous merit”.  This merit is a minor type of merit that makes it fitting for God to restore you to a state of grace.  There are higher levels of merit, including “condign merit”, which is merit so meritorious that it demands a reward from God.  In other words, if you do a work of condign merit, God would be unjust if He did not reward you for them.  Above congruous and condign merit is what they call supererogatory merit, which is merit which is obtained by doing more than what God requires.  This is the type of merit that goes into the church’s treasury which is then dispensed by the priests to penitent sinners instead of requiring penance.

To all of this, Paul throws down the statement that boasting is excluded.  There is no saint who is an exception to this rule.  Nobody exceeds the standards set by God, and nobody gets to heaven with any righteousness in his bank account other than the perfect righteousness of Christ, who died “once for all”.  Any other doctrine is a heresy that completely dishonors the Son of God and his sacrifice.  When Paul wrote in verse 28 “one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” The word translated apart here (chōris) means separate, apart, besides, or “without any”.  We are justified “besides” the works of the law.  We are justified “without any” works of the law.  Period.  No Boasting.

 

II. No Exceptions (29-30)  

Another false idea is embodied in the statement “oh, that’s good for you. I believe that you are saved by the sacrifice of Jesus.  But there are other ways to God that other people use that are just as valid.”  So Paul anticipates this by asking another question:

Romans 3:29a  Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also?

Is the God of the Old Testament, who sent his Son, just one picture of God?  Is there a God at the top of a mountain and people all around the mountain climb to the peak by different (but just as valid) paths?  Can people who believe differently or who do not have the traditions of the Hebrew Scriptures still be saved by works?

Romans 3:29b-30a  ²⁹  Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, ³⁰ since God is one

On its face the statement that “all religions are true” is nonsensical.  Just a modicum of logic would tell us that if two people make conflicting claims, both of them cannot be true.  If one person says that gravity pulls us down toward the Earth and one says that gravity pushes us up from the Earth, only one of them can be true.  So why do people make this ridiculous claim?  They do it to avoid controversy.  But making up stories to avoid conflict does not bring us to the truth.  I read last week that some school in the state of Washington was teaching that the rules of math were racist and people should be allowed to “follow their own traditions” of math truth with equal validity.  We could ask where will our space program be with that kind of doctrine?  Would we be able to thread the path of a space probe by several planets to an exact point in the solar system several years later if the engineers at NASA were able to make up their own reality?  Of course not!  In fact just 20 years ago the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter was lost when the engineers forgot to convert data from English to metric measurements before launching the craft.  And a much worse disaster than that awaits anyone who decides to make up his own plan of salvation just to avoid conflict.  Paul finishes answering his question from verse 28 with a clear claim of the universality of the gospel

Romans 30  ^… God is one--who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.

This salvation is the same for all people, not just for those in the Judeo-Christian culture.  And Paul was not afraid to preach that message.  Once during his second missionary journey he was invited to speak to the important philosophers in Athens, Greece.  We read his message in Acts 17:22-31:  (read here)

His message was simple: There is one God. You do not know Him.  He made all people, including you.  He should be sought by all people, including you.  He commands all people (including you) to repent because He will be judging all people (including you) through his Son that He raised from the dead.

There is one God and one plan of salvation.  No exceptions. No Boasting.

 

III. No License (31)

The next question Paul asks deals with a common misconception.  He actually asks this question in different ways again in the following chapters, because it deals with a common objection to the gospel, especially by the Jews who had the law from God. But as I said before, the “free gift” part of the gospel is highly offensive to the human intellect and sense of fairness.   The third question is this:

Romans 3:31a  Do we then overthrow the law by this faith?

It is a pretty simple question. The word translated “overthrow” is the word katargeō which means to render idle, to deactivate, to deprive of force or influence, or to cease or be annulled. Paul will state that Christians are no longer subject to the law, so we would expect him to answer yes to this question.  But before looking at his answer, what is really being asked here?  There are two false ideas contained within this question:

The first is this: If I am saved now apart from my works, doesn’t that mean that I can get away with anything and still go to heaven?  So if people “accept Jesus” and live like the devil, they can go to heaven while others who are diligently trying to follow the laws that God gave us and said “Do These Things” will punish them and take the bad people to heaven on a technicality?  That is unfair!

The first of these ideas is dealt with later in Romans when Paul asks “shall we continue in sin that grace may increase?”  The answer is of course “no”, which Paul gives, but it exposes a heretical error in theology.  The doctrine of justification is inseparable from the doctrine of the new birth.  Justification is a judicial declaration of our righteousness, but scripture also tells us that

2 Corinthians 5:17 … if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

As Jesus told Nicodemus, salvation involves being “born from above”.  All through scripture we are informed that salvation is the beginning of a process that starts with being given a new life – an entirely different type of spiritual life.  Then we proceed through an inevitable process of being made more like Christ until when we get to heaven we see Him as He is and become like Him in our final glorification.  All over the New Testament there are warnings that true salvation will always be accompanied by a change in character and behavior and that if there is no change externally there probably was never a change internally. So if a person uses his supposed salvation as a “license to sin” then he is not a contradiction to the gospel but a negative proof of its truth.

The second point is this: Since the law could not save us, it has no value and it was just something God He tried but it didn’t work so He had to try something else.  It is worthless and should be dumped.

Anyone saying this is also lacking in understanding of the gospel as related by Paul in chapters 1-3.  The law had and still has a purpose, as described by Paul to the Galatians:

Galatians 3:21-24  ²¹ Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. ²² But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. ²³ Now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. ²⁴ So then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.

Paul also wrote in Romans 7 about the purpose of the law.  Until encountering the law he was spiritually blind about his own condition:

Romans 7:9   I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died.

Actually the law pointed out specific items as examples of his sin nature:

Romans 7:7b-8a  … if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness.

The law ended his blissful ignorance.  Suddenly he was seeing sins in himself all over when previously he thought he was a “righteous dude”.  Now he realized his terrible mistake.  So the law was very good indeed, as he concludes:

Romans 7:12  So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

It is not nullified at all.  In fact being freed from the condemnation of the written law is only to call us to a holy and pure relationship with God in Christ:

Romans 7:6   But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

And to conclude our passage, Paul gives this very answer:

Romans 3:31b  By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

There is a phrase used here which is used at least ten times by Paul in Romans. It is a term of strong negation, translated as “May it never be” (NASB), “By no means!” (ESV)  “God forbid!” (KJV) “Certainly not!” (NKJV), etc. - the Greek term “mē genoito”.  Paul uses it to make it clear that the answer is NO!  To uphold is to confirm, to make stand.

So the gospel does not contradict the law, it confirms it. It leaves us with … you guess it… NO BOASTING.

Conclusion

Where does that leave us?  That’s easy.  It leaves us all in the same boat.  The doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Christ’s work alone leaves us all at the same level – level zero.  The bad side of this is that the gospel is a stumbling block for mankind, because

• We all want to have significance that comes from ourselves being great.  In the gospel, Jesus Christ is great.
• We want salvation to be easy for us to earn and don’t like the idea of a moral authority that does not approve of us.
• We want to get along with everybody, and the easiest way to do that is to say everybody is right.

On the other hand, if everyone is at zero

• Unity in the church will be assured because nobody can look down on someone else as less deserving to be here.
• We are free to worship God wholeheartedly because there is no reason any more to worship ourselves.
• Our spiritual pride should not be able to be provoked because all we have is due to God’s grace, not our own awesomeness, and
• Since God humbles the proud and exalts the humble, there is nowhere to go but up!

That’s why it is very good that the gospel excludes boasting!

 

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