Bible passage: Romans 3:21-30
[1]
“How dare you! – What right have you got to say I need God?” –
- That’s a reaction I occasionally get when I’m talking about Christian faith
- “You Christians” they say – “You’re so arrogant, claiming that mankind needs God”
And yet that’s exactly the claim that the Bible is making in Romans 3. So let’s unpack why we might, unfortunately, come over as superior that. A couple of possibilities:
Firstly, we may actually be saying it arrogantly.
We may be coming over as stuck up in our tone or preachy with our words. Sadly some Christians go into a conversation about Jesus like a bull in a china shop!
- They have the compassion of a sledge hammer!
- And a useful workaround for this is to ask yourself the question “What does it feel like to be on the receiving end of our evangelism?”
Secondly (and more commonly) our message may be interpreted as arrogance
Even though that was never the intention
- Take a piece of arithmetic for example. I can say that 121 times 119 is 14,399. That is a simple truth. It’s a truth that woven into the universe in which we live. So no matter what number system you use or however you perform the calculation, the result is always the same. So when told, this truth will rarely be met with a claim of arrogance.
- So what makes the gospel different? We’re just imparting simple truth, aren’t we? Why might my friend feel that I’m being arrogant by sharing with them a simple truth that is woven into the universe in which we live?
- In my experience it’s most often because the friend I’m talking with is making an assumption that if he or she was to accept that they need God it would tamper with their approach to life at a very basic level.
For a start it would mean that I am not good enough of myself to get anywhere with God.
- Fundamentally it would mean that what God says about me (whether or not I have a relationship with him) would be true and I would have to change as a consequence.
So as Christian, do I have any right to give away the gospel to my friends and colleagues, or to society as a whole? Yes we do and the reasons are embedded in Romans 3 that we have just read Reason 1 – We have the right to give away the gospel because:
The gospel was first given to us – as a gift
It was a gift, not something that I earned or deserved! Just do a brief mind experiment.
- Just compare God’s pattern for human life with the way we actually live it!
- By any reasonable reckoning there’s a gap between the two! And all the Old Testament law does is make me aware of that difference. It reminds me that I’ve broken it, it can’t help me to be any better!
Take, for example almost any piece of legislation. The law says “you must file your tax return by a certain date” but that piece of legislation can’t stop me from being late – I have to do something to make sure I observe the Law British law can’t change my behaviour, it just tells where the limits are and shows me where I’m in danger of going wrong. God’s law can’t change my behaviour either!
- By itself it is powerless to change my actions. It just shows me where I’ve failed.
- I have to do something to keep myself inside God’s law.
And we know enough about God’s law to know that none of us can achieve total compliance with it.
- We only have to read the ten commandments or the sermon on the mount to realise that every one of us has missed a mark somewhere!
So look at verse 21 – and drink in this liberating concept!
- 3:21 BUT NOW – a righteousness from God, that is different from the law, has been made known to us!
There’s another way of being right with God! There’s an alternative route into righteousness! <ppt> And it’s a gift to be received, not a law to be kept! We have the right to give away the gospel because the gospel was first given to us Reason 2 – We have the right to give away the gospel because:
God’s righteousness has been revealed
At one tie we didn’t know and experience the gospel, but now we do.
- Righteousness is being in the place of being right with God
For example – suppose you are a member of a particular web site – and you have a password for that site. The trouble is you set up this access way back in the dawn of time.
- Most of us at some point have had the experience of logging in and coming to that little white box “Enter Password” and thinking – “doh – what was it?”
- So you go through the rigmarole of re-authenticating with the site. Answering your special questions, giving your birthday, your mother’s maiden name, shoe size, inside leg measurement and what brand of dog food you pooch eats (!) and all with one motive – to have your password made known to you! Then you can enjoy access to the site once again
Mankind is rather like that web site. Way back at the dawn of time God set it up that we had righteousness before Him.
- We once bore the unmistakable image of God. It was stamped on our being at creation. But as a consequence of wrong-doing, that image was tarnished and with it went our righteousness before almighty God.
In the same way that your password was made known to you so you can enjoy access to the site again, so righteousness was made known to us by God so we could enjoy access to Him once again. So how do I get it?
- V22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe – regardless of who they are.
We’re all in the same boat (initially)
- v23 for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
We give away the gospel because God’s righteousness has been revealed. Reason 3 – We have the right to give away the gospel because:
We are both justified and forgiven <ppt>
[they’re different <ppt>]
Some people say that Justification is the same as forgiveness but that can’t be the case.
- Forgiveness means the removing of a debt or setting aside a conviction. It’s essentially a negative thing – something is removed.
- But justification is more than that – it’s the declaring of a person to be right in God’s sight – that’s a wonderfully positive thing. To be sure, forgiveness is given to me in the process, but the two are different.
Forgiveness is God saying ‘I no longer hold these sins, these misdemeanours against you’ and justification is God saying ‘Now you are right before me, my son, there is no longer a barrier between us!’ Your heavenly Father wants to do this because he knows we’ve fallen short
- That word ‘fallen short’ is the word an archer would use if his arrow fell short of the target – That’s what sin does. It’s not just a missing of the mark by a few inches, it’s not even reaching the target at all!
And that’s where we were However (but now!) v24
- 24 … “We are justified freely by God’s grace”
it’s free – It’s without cost to us. (Like the NHS – free at the point of delivery!)
- and it’s by God’s grace. God’s grace is his generosity that is almost unbelievable in its scope and application for us.
And it is so easy to receive and to live in.
- Faith is simply saying ‘yes’ to God’s offer of forgiveness and justification and then living (consciously) on the assumption that it’s yours. And you quickly discover it is.
I’m sure I’m talking to someone who hasn’t taken an initial step yet. You may say to me “Is it really that straightforward?” – yes. You simply accept God’s offer of forgiveness and justification and then live (consciously) on the assumption that it’s been give to you. And you discover it has been!
- I’ll give you an opportunity to do this later on.
We can give the gospel away because we are both justified and forgiven. Reason no 4 – we can give away our faith because
Guilt is something we can deal with
How we handle Guilt
Mind games
Guilt is such a powerful force that we seek many different ways of coping with it. Some of us play mind games with ourselves to suppress guilt. We tell ourselves that guilt is nothing more than a reaction to an expectation that was a bit too high. so we need to be kind to ourselves and ignore most of it. I once saw a sticker on the back of a hugely ostentatious motor cycle.
- It said “Screw guilt” – I’m assuming that the owner of the bike felt guilty about spending so much money on this gleaming piece of engineering and he wanted the world to know that was going to suppress any lingering pangs of guilt about owning such a beast!
It’s a mind game.
- So if I break a speed limit or look the other way when something doesn’t get scanned in the supermarket – I don’t worry too much. Well nobody has got hurt and we’re all human anyway and it is unreasonable to expect so much of myself all the time.
We play mind games to lower our sensitivity to guilt.
- However, even though we have an astonishing array of intellectual strategies to solve the guilt problem, the old-fashioned physical ways still predominate.
Some of us play
Body games
For those who don’t have enough capacity to think themselves out of guilt feelings, there is always alcohol to fall back – or legal and illegal highs.
- I think a bad conscience lies at root of many addictions.
A man may say it was stress that drove him to drink or a woman that it was grief and loneliness that drove her to the bottle.
- But guilt is often there in the mix somewhere.
Some people devote themselves day and night to games and hobbies and sports. Some people keep the television on all day for a constant barrage of sound and sight on their minds to guard them from what Simon and Garfunkel called the unsettling “sounds of silence.”
Faith games
But the oldest and most revered tactic for avoiding the misery of guilt is religion.
- This tactic may be the most deceptive because it comes closest to the truth.
- It recognizes what the mind games and the body games generally ignore: that the ultimate cause of guilt is that there is a righteous God whose will for his creatures is ignored or defied.
It acknowledges that underneath every twinge of conscience in the human soul there is the silent, often unexpressed conviction, “I have gone against God.” The means that religion has developed to deal with this guilt is to try to placate or appease God with good works or religious ritual. Religious people know they owe God a great debt. But they often make the terrible mistake of thinking they can pay it back through good works and the performance of religious duties.
God’s Way of Dealing with Guilt (v25)
So what did God do? The answer lies in verse 25
- 25 God presented Jesus Christ (to us) as a sacrifice of atonement
Behind that word is propitiation => carrying away God’s wrath.
And we ought to know, who have heard the gospel of Jesus Christ, that the debt we owe to God cannot be paid off by our paltry virtue.
- We are not just – but we have someone who justifies us!
- We are not all-right but we have someone who gives us righteousness!
- We are not free from sin, but we have someone who gives us our freedom!
And by saying – daily – ‘thank you Lord, I’ll receive that from you’ you discover you’re at peace with God and have received the gift of righteousness he promised.
That’s the gift we’re giving away!
[1]