About this sermon
The law speaks so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world held accountable to God, for no one is justified by works of the law. Now the righteousness of God has been revealed apart from the law, through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. This good news comes by God’s own revelation in Scripture, and it is the foundation of faith for life, godliness, and salvation.
Sermon transcript
Let me invite you to turn with me to Romans chapter 3. Romans chapter 3. The passage we’ll be primarily considering is that paragraph verses 21 through 26. But we’ll get a small runway, running start with verses 19 and 20. Romans chapter 3, we’ll start reading at verse 19 and read through 26. Romans chapter 3.
This is the word of the Lord. 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. For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. 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. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 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. 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.
Let’s pray together again. Father, these are your words. We pray that you would make it effectual in our hearing. May the words of my mouth, collective meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Lord, our rock, our redeemer. Amen. The Bible, as anyone who has the slightest familiarity and acquaintance with it, is a massive book. Mine is 1,100 pages. It’s big. And most people I ask, Christian or not, if they’ve read it all the way through, say no. Because it’s so big, and it’s understandably daunting. It spans many millennia, many authors, and such that even Christians have a hard time holding it together.
Now thankfully, within the Bible, there are passages that actually give a snapshot, a summary, that are kind of a shorthand of the storyline, particularly the history of God’s saving actions and works, the history of redemption, that give us a snapshot and summary of it in brief compass. Paul here, this paragraph, verses 21 through 26, is one such place where the massive scope of God’s saving work is summed up in very dense terms. Three condensed terms here in five verses. And this is so dense and so rich.
You know, even a number of God’s servants throughout the centuries have cited this paragraph as the central article within the central section of all of Scripture. because of how important it is in summarizing what God is actually up to in redemption, in the history of redemption.
So it’s so thick, I think Lord Willing wants to just take it actually in two parts. Next Lord’s Day, Lord Willing. I’d like to conclude it, but we’ll start it today. Start some considerations of this rich passage. So if there’s a passage you want to give to someone who does not know the storyline of Scripture, apart from reading all of Scripture, suggest this paragraph. Take out Romans 321 through 26 and say, here, you want to know what the meaning of Christian salvation is? You want to see it summed up? Look at this paragraph, and then let’s talk about it. So this is a good little summary.
We’ll start with two considerations, a relegation and a revelation. The relegation of law and the revelation of righteousness, those two points. And we’ll dive into the meat of righteousness, the righteousness of God, and through redemption next week. Two points, the relegation of the law and the revelation or manifestation of God’s righteousness. We’ll pull those two strands out. First, let’s consider together the relegation of the law.
And I’m getting that from his first two words in verse 21 where Paul says, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested. He’s setting up with those two words, those two wonderful words that Lloyd-Jones says are the two most important words in all of scripture. That might be an overstatement, but it does heighten the importance of it. But now, he’s setting up a contrast between two eras, eras, E-R-A, not E-R-R-O-R, two eras or administrations or ways of relating to the righteousness of God.
One, verse 19, first part, relating under the law. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law. That’s one way of relating that was huge. That is set up against what 21 through 26 talks about, relating to God’s righteousness apart from the law. So we can relate, as God’s people did, to God fundamentally in terms of being under the law and all of its stipulations and its demands and everything. But now, we can relate in this other way, apart from the law. Two ways to engage God’s righteousness.
Some people divided this, you could say works and faith. Or relating to God according to law or gospel. Under the law, apart from the law. Law or gospel. And here, You know, Paul is so dense, so complex, it’s hard to sometimes know exactly what he’s getting at because he compresses so many things together.
But here, law is in all likelihood referring to Moses, the law given to Moses in Sinai, the contract at Sinai, the constitution of Israel, because he talks about the works of the law, those things that make Jews specifically and distinctly Jewish. So that was Sinai, Moses.
Now he isn’t here exalting or diminishing the law. He’s not lifting it up or tearing it down. He’s relegating it to its proper place and function. That’s why I say relegation of the law. He’s partially doing that, telling us how it actually works. in the history of salvation, in God’s working with his people and cultivating other people, defining them, and working out his plan of redemption throughout history, how did the law actually function then? He’s saying, we had this era, we had this period, this administration of being under the law, but now, but now, God has made known clearly the righteousness of God, which is by faith. There wasn’t this righteousness then, that era, that period of him working out his plan. But now, he’s worked it out and manifested it this way.
So they’re not completely discontinuous, because the law actually revealed the later plan of righteousness of God. But they are two distinct errors. Now, some of the differences between these two, call it law, gospel, works, faith, under the law, time, apart from the law, some of the differences can be seen in what he actually highlights about that under the law period, that under the law era in verses 19 and 20. He highlights some of the differences between these two errors.
Let me just name three, and we could name a bunch more. How does the law work? How did it function? It functions to indict, to reveal incapacity or inability, and to incriminate. And those are not mutually exclusive words. Those aspects of how the law actually functions are highlighted here. One, indictment. What’s verse 19 say? Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law. What does it speak? What does it say?
Here’s what it does. It indicts so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. This is the picture of the evidence of the plaintiff against the defendant in a courtroom being so massive and so overwhelmingly convincing and clear in its presentation that the defendant could do nothing but sit there in utter silence. It has indicted. It says, you have done this. And it is so clear to the courtroom that everyone is just silent and speechless. Left with nothing to say. The whole world is affected that way by God’s fault. we can say nothing in face of it.
It has clearly indicted us. The evidence is so clear. But it also reveals our incapacity, our inability. Paul goes on to say, in verse 24, continuing this thought from verse 19, by the works of the law, And that, you know, we won’t talk about that, it’s associated with God’s law. Works of the law, no human being will be justified. The law is such that it reveals our utter inability to make ourselves satisfactory before God’s divine ballroom of justice. It reveals how much we fall short.
No one will be justified. It works in such a way that we never measure up to what it demands. It can only judge us, never justify us. It can only make an accusation and judgment. that you do not measure up. You fall short, as Paul will later say. It speaks always, apart from the spirit, a word of condemnation, never justification. Because, why is that? Because it’s the third way it functions. It functions as the chief tool of our incrimination. It makes us criminals. Or it reveals us to be criminals. I’m sorry. It reveals us to be criminals, right?
What is Paul saying? The last phrase of verse 20. Through the law comes knowledge of sin. I talk with a lot of men who are in the legal system. And one of the things they always ask each other, when they’re in jail, what are you in for? And then they give their rap sheet. Well, Paul is saying the law works in such a way that it shows all of us our divine rap sheet. It reveals the knowledge, it gives us a knowledge of sin.
Here’s where you fail. Here’s where you’ve broken the law. This is your rap sheet. This is what you’ve done. Here’s where you’re guilty, all of us. We all have a prison number. We have a rap sheet. So if it indicts us, it reveals our inability and incapacity to keep it. And it reveals us to be criminals. But yet Paul says, not here but elsewhere, that the law is good. And it is good. But it reveals us to be bad. It reveals us to be bad.
And I think the theologians who say it actually makes our condition worse are right. Apart from the Spirit’s work of regeneration and renewal, The law is a source of fundamental aggravation, not regeneration. It makes demands for a certain life, but does not give the power to live that life. So apart from the Spirit, it actually makes our condition worse, because it aggravates us by constantly pointing out Inadequacy, insufficiency, inability, iniquity.
Constantly pointing it out that way. And this works not just at this large salvation historical level where Israel was just constantly being revealed to be not who God called them to be, the light to the nations, and just utter failures. such that God intended from all time history to accomplish it himself in Christ, the only true righteous law-keeping Israelite, Jesus. Such that God had to complete the terms and demands of his law that way because everyone else failed. Not only works at that kind of large salvation historical level, but it works at the individual level too. this way of aggravating, this inditing of us and incriminating of us, we go about life harassed constantly by various kinds of law demands. Standards of our own making, in addition to the clarity of God’s definitive standard and law, we go about harassed by it.
A counseling director at the church where I work read an article once, and she was just writing what many other people have noted, that January is actually the biggest month for counseling and therapy. It’s actually the month where counselors are overwhelmed. It’s also the biggest month for divorces. Someone else said it’s actually a big month for violence, even homicide, interpersonal violence.
It’s not hard to understand why that is. There’s this idealism during this time of the year, and it gets thrown in our faces, Facebook, the happy Christmas sweater-wearing, smiling families. Beautiful and nice. All this talk of peace, joy, good tidings, and cheer. All this is that time for that. And those who have no peace or little joy, who feel their tidings are bad, see that. And it becomes this kind of law of seasonal happiness.
Just accusing them. Reminding them of what they don’t have. It’s the law harassing them. They want happiness, but they just feel sadness. And happiness is being forced on them. And then of course happiness is good and peace and joy, these are Christian graces, gifts, virtues. Those are good things, but for many hearts, they function, for people who sense their own lack of peace, lack of joy, lack of cheerfulness or happiness, they function as a kind of law that harasses them and chases them around until they fall into a sort of aggravation and depression. And then they’re picking up the phone, calling their local therapist or counselor. That happiness, that idealism becomes a source of entitlement, of insufficiency, pointing out insufficiency, of incrimination. Look what you don’t have. Look what you don’t have. And this happens in all kinds of ways.
I remember my 20-year anniversary for high school graduation. And there was all these flurries of emails and things hunting down all the graduates of that year. And I remember one fellow graduate wrote this very poignant account on Facebook of how he drove up to the school where the reunion was going to be and literally sat in his car for about an hour and wanted to just turn around and go home. And what he was wrestling with was, and I totally understood this, he didn’t want to go in and see all these happy joyful, life going well graduates, and have it contrasted with his own sense of not doing well, of not flourishing in life. He didn’t want the law of success to harass him.
Because that’s what the law does. It aggravates us. It harasses us, right? It indicts us. It reveals us to be sinners. Through the law comes the knowledge of sin. And it’s such heavy, it’s so convincing that it makes us stop. Makes the whole world stop. And realize we are accountable to God. That’s how it functions. It aggravates us.
Someone told the account of a hotel where there was a window broken in the back along the beach coastline. And so the hotel manager put up a sign that said, I don’t even know if this is true, but it gets a point across. He put up a sign that says, please do not throw rocks. And then of course he goes away. And it comes back at some point later. And now, not only was there had been one broken window, there were many, many rocks were thrown this time.
It actually worsened the issue. Because the law aggravates people, stirs them up. It stirs us up in our unregenerate heart. It provokes us. Not only do we respond with accusation, but we often, out of irritation and aggravation, go ahead and just break it more. Those are just some. Paul goes on and on and on about it.
Yet, his point is to say, but now, but now, that’s one kind of righteousness that was revealed. But now, there’s a better way of dealing with righteousness. My righteousness. God’s righteousness. There’s that way. But there’s this way. There’s a way to righteousness that doesn’t come It doesn’t happen under the law in that way. It happens apart from the law. That’s why Lloyd-Jones says, there are no more wonderful words in the whole of scripture than just these two words. But now. I wonder why he didn’t say, but God, in Ephesians 2, which he’s well known for. But this rivals that. But now.
So there’s a relegation of law. And secondly, this good news is a matter of God revealing it to us, a matter of revelation. Look at verse 21 again. But now the righteousness of God. There was that error of law under the law, but now this, apart from the law, righteousness of God has been manifested. It has been manifested. It’s been revealed. Apart from the Law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it. Paul says here, if you turn, you could look at, you know, Romans chapter 1, verse 17 and 18. Verse chapter 1 and 17, which he’s basically expanding on, in many ways.
He says, the righteousness of God is revealed. That is, God is the agent of revelation. He is the one who shows, and he gets through. When God intends to reveal something, he gets through to us. So this righteousness that he’s about to expand on is a manifestation or revelation from him. And so is, according to chapter 1 verse 18, the wrath of God being revealed. That is the truth, scripture truth, the true story, the true account of salvation, of how mankind is rescued by God. is something that comes from God Himself. It’s a revelation from Him. What we need to know, the true story of salvation is something that comes to us from outside of us. And why is that important? Why emphasize what seems to be such a self-evident point for so many believers? Well, here’s why. Because there are various voices always vying for foundational authority. Always wanting to be the voice, the truth, that defines what is real and what is true.
There’s always a kind of assault. Just walking down The aisle, final aisle, right before you’re about to escape the craziness of the grocery store, you get to the register, you’re assaulted by this gum, by this magazine. We’re assaulted everywhere. There’s all types of voices and messages vying for our allegiance, wanting to be the authority in our life. And they usually come in threes. There is what John Calvin called our vain imaginations always at work. That’s the thoughts that come from our own heart. That’s our own inner voice, as some say. Self-talk. The things we tell ourselves.
I know a Christian teacher who not long ago, had a boy in her school announce to the dismay of his parents and teachers alike, he suddenly announced to them all that he’s a girl and he should use the girls bathroom. That was what he came to believe of himself. I’m sure there were other influences and things like that, but this was He thought the authority in those matters was, for him, what he thought, not what his parents thought, not what the school thought, or anything like that. I pastored a gentleman who was taking medication for paranoid schizophrenia. He told me he had voices in his head telling him to do violent things. Now, he was aware of them, but this was inner voice, this is inner talk, as it were. Something that was going on inside of his own head.
So there’s that kind of voice or vying for authority amongst us. Not from outside of us, but from within us, our own, the imaginations of our own heart. But there’s also The voice that’s not inside us, but beside us that speaks. Cultural voices. Our culture tells us certain things.
It has a weight. Societies are always at work influencing us. We all know something, this phrase, the American dream. What is that? That’s our culture telling us through various ways, movies, music, work, the marketplace, what kind of life we ought to have.
And we feel that pressure from outside us. That’s not just the inner workings of our heart, although it becomes the inner workings of our heart and mind, but it’s the voices around us of the culture of surrounding community telling us what we need to do. This is peer pressure. Vying for authority in our life. Not just our own thoughts, but the collective thoughts, the thoughts of the collective around us.
So the gentleman who heard voices telling him to act in inappropriate ways, in violent ways, the voices of the community around him, church, doctors, said, no, that’s inappropriate. You don’t do that. And he was prescribed some medicine to not do that. The culture, voices around him told him to do something else.
But neither of those are authoritative. Our main imaginations. that we’re warned against, neither the collective, the community, our families, our cult, our country, none of those voices tell us, have ultimate authority over us. They are not ultimate in terms of what is true.
For that, we look outside clearly to what God has revealed or manifest. And the story of salvation is something that God himself has revealed and made known. And that is authoritative. Not the voice inside us, not the voices beside us, but that voice that comes to us, that truth that comes to us from outside of us, through nature and scripture. That’s authoritative. What God has spoken.
And obviously that implies, you believe in this kind of divine revelation, that what God says is true and is foundational, then that assumes we will have postures, humble postures of listening to the truth and hearing. We will not make ourselves the center, or we won’t trust in communal consensus, but we will all assiduously seek to hear what is it that God is actually saying?
What has He manifested? And again, the importance of this is seen in very often the first step away from faithfulness, from the truth, is to question the source of the truth. The question, the authority of truth, which often becomes the pathway to the erosion of truth in our lives and the abandonment of it. What was the question the serpent asked? Has God said? It was a question of where the truth comes from.
Who is to be believed? And that question, that not so subtle question began the erosion of authority and then obviously ultimately disobedience. All trust. All trust. This is what God is clear, Paul’s clear here that this message, this story, this account, this summary statement, as well as all other truth is a revelation from God. It comes from, he’s the first cause, he’s the foundational authority. And we all have foundational assumptions about reality. We do. Most of them are not explicit. We have unproven assumptions that we believe out of which we operate and live in life. They’re just certain things we believe that we probably have not investigated.
And scripture here, in an indirect way, more direct than other places, is telling us that the truth to be believed for life, for godliness, for salvation, is the truth that God has revealed in Scripture. It’s the revelation of God, and that is the basis for our faith.
And what exactly is that revelation he sets up? It’s the revelation of the righteousness of God. The righteousness of God. That is what has been manifested and revealed. And he further describes the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. This justifying work of God. Which is a manifestation of his own righteousness. And we will expand on that. and the beauty of how that works. Next week, Lord will. Let’s pray together.
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