Introduction: Grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ. Our text is the Epistle Lesson from Rom. 3. We begin with prayer.
Dear fellow disciples of our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ:
- The reality defies all human common sense, including our sense of what is just and right.
- The reality defies the basic principle that makes the world go around – that of earning our own way, deserving what we get and have merited.
- The reality defies the basic teachings of every other religion in the entire world – all of which teach that we commend ourselves to God and gain standing and status in His sight on the basis of our “morality” and “goodness.”
- The reality defies what the institutional “church” of the Middle Ages taught and adhered to, both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy – that we must somehow earn and merit God’s grace and favor by our attitudes and actions.
- The reality defies our deepest and most cherished hope – that we are able to dictate and determine our eternal blessedness by our own choices and decisions.
- The reality is that all human beings are in a dark, dismal, and [if we are left to ourselves] in a hopeless circumstance – and that there is “ONLY ONE REAL HOPE.” And that hope is God, and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
- This is the truth. And as Jesus taught, only the truth can set us free. He is “the way, the truth, and the life” – and if He sets us free, we will be free indeed! So in our text the apostle makes clear that:
I. There Is No Hope In Our Own Righteousness, That Of Keeping God’s Law
A. For All People, All Mere Human Beings, Sin And Fall Short Of The Glory Of God
Text: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
Text: “By works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin.” [our sin, that we have sinned and cannot keep ourselves completely from sinning]
B. So It Is That Every Mouth Is Stopped And Every Person Stands Accountable And Guilty Before God
Text: “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.”
C. Therefore All Ground For Human Boasting And Self-Confidence Is Utterly Excluded
Text: “What then becomes of our boasting? It is excluded.”
Statement: No one wants to hear that the “game is over,” that there is no hope, no possibility of changing the reality and the outcome. There is an old saying, “hope springs eternal,” and the human spirit’s quest and endeavor to overcome, to surmount all odds, is indefatigable. In nothing is this truer than mankind’s certainty that we can still find a way to dictate to God how He must find us “acceptable” and “worthy.” But the reality is what it is and all efforts to deny the reality are in essence a grotesque effort at “self-delusion,” then hypocrisy and self-righteousness. We may be able to fool other people – who suffer the same delusion, but we will never succeed in fooling God. He is the Truth.
Application: There is no “truthful” and honest option for us other than to despair of our circumstances and our inability to “heal” ourselves. This seems dismal and painful to us – and we don’t want to give up what we have deceitfully claimed as our prerogatives and capabilities. But only when we have stopped looking to ourselves are we able to see “OUR ONLY REAL HOPE” – which is not ourselves but God. So, if we are willing to acknowledge our sin, to “stop our mouths,” and to cease our “boasting,” what appears to be horrible news actually prepares us for the greatest good news!
Transition: And this is “the truth that sets us free,” the truth about God’s Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. For:
II. Our Only Hope Is God’s Good News – The Gospel Of God’s Redemption In Christ Jesus
A. The Good News Is That God Has Provided Us With A Righteousness Apart From His Law – One Not Based In Our Performance But In What Christ Has Done For Us
Text: “Now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law.”
1 Cor. 1:28-31 “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of Him you are in Christ Jesus, Who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
Text: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified [declared righteous and innocent] by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
B. This Righteousness And Salvation Is Given To Us By Grace, As A Gift, And Is Accounted To Us By Faith In Christ Jesus – And Is Meant For All People, And Is Received By Those Who Believe This
Text: “They are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by His blood, to be received by faith – that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
C. The Righteousness We Need Is In Christ, In The Sacrifice Of Atonement He Made For Us With His Blood
Text: “Whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by His blood, to be received by faith.”
D. This Reality – Both Of Our Sin And Helplessness, And Of God’s Gracious Gift Of Righteousness And Salvation In Christ Jesus – Is All Sure And Certain, Witnessed To In All Of Holy Scripture, God’s Own Word
Text: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the Law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it – the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.”
Statement: So from the side of mankind, our side, there is absolutely no hope and no good news for us – only the utterly dismal condemnation of God’s Law, shutting every mouth and destroying any ground for human boasting. But from God’s side there is absolutely no bad news – only grace, mercy, forgiveness, redemption, atonement, salvation, our having been already accounted to be righteous in Christ Jesus, having the very righteousness of God! It is all held out to us – “to be received by faith” if we are willing to humble ourselves and place ourselves totally and completely into His gracious and loving hands in Christ Jesus. This is “OUR ONLY REAL HOPE,” the only hope any human being has. But it is a sure and certain hope, guaranteed by God’s own Word!
Application: We understand how difficult this is – to close our mouths, to shut up our arrogant feelings of self-superiority, to stop justifying our denunciation of others by comparing ourselves favorably to them, to not feel smug in commending ourselves to God because of some “good” we have done, to utterly humble ourselves and acknowledge that we have no hope except in Christ, in what He has done for us. But this is reality, this is the truth, and only the truth can make us free! This is what Jesus came for, what He accomplished for us in His suffering, death, and resurrection, and this is what He offers to all – “to be received by faith.”
Conclusion: For those who “know the truth” and appreciate what God has done for us in Christ, it is not that difficult to say goodbye and farewell to our common sense, to our corrupt and fallen sense of justice, to our proud sense of earning and meriting what we have and get, to all other religious and churchly hypocrisy, and to all our most cherished hopes of self-determination.
We say goodbye and good riddance to all these things that we “may have Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of our own that comes from the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” [Phil. 3:9]
This is the righteousness and salvation offered by Christ, that hope received and trusted in by all the prophets and apostles, and by all Christians of all ages. This is “OUR ONLY REAL HOPE,” and what we too – by God’s grace and mercy – have also received and trusted in. God grant this blessedness to all of us, Amen.
Votum: And the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds in the true faith, which is in Christ Jesus, even unto life everlasting, Amen.