Paul Reveals the Only Way for Sinful Man to be Right
with God
Romans
3:21-31 But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being
witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through
faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no
difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being
justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom
God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to
demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over
the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His
righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith
in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works?
No, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by
faith apart from the deeds of the law. Or is He the God of the Jews
only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also,
since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the
uncircumcised through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith?
Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law. NKJV
We last left the beloved Apostle Paul emphatically
putting every person under the conviction of being absolute guilty sinners
before a Holy and Righteous God. Paul closed the last section of this Chapter 3
of Romans with a loud thunderous claim of truth and that is that the Law of God
only serves to show every human being (who will be honest and truthful with God
from their heart) their guilt of sin. The Law of God was given by God to the
Jews to be their guide and to set them apart from all the other Nations. God
knew with complete foreknowledge that they would never be able to keep His Law.
He did not give them His Law to perfect them but as the Holy Light it was to
guide and govern their daily lives. The Law of God only serves to show every
soul of man their sinful state or condition (Galatians 3:22-25).
Paul now unveils for all humanity the way sinful
people can be brought into an eternally pleasing and right relationship with
Holy God. As we learned from the previous study, God is of such pure Nature
that He cannot even look upon sin without rendering His condemnation and
judgment against it. However, He created humanity and loves the human family
despite our sin and rebellion against Him. Therefore, because again of His
foreknowledge of our sin and rebellion against Him, He had already prepared a
cure or remedy for our sin, a way for us to enter into relationship with Him, and
a means by which any sinful human being could be declared just or innocent of
all their sinful crimes against His Person and Holy Law (1 Peter 1:10-12). As Paul has already clearly stated that no person
will be justified before God by their woeful attempt to keep the Ten
Commandments (because none did or ever would), so God so loved this human
family that He became a Man (in the person of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 5:19)) and kept His own
Law perfectly in word, thought, and deed (Matthew
5:17).
This is the place where 99.99 % of all humanity
completely fails because it is drummed into all of us from the moment of our
earthly birth into the human family that we must achieve, attain, and
accomplish on our own and in our own strength to be successful in our earthly
life. This reality is rolled over into whatever a person thinks or believes
about God or spiritual things. All of the man-made religions have things for
people to do that will assure or guarantee them to be right with God or the
Divine or a Higher Power as some refer to God. It is this mentality of earning
our own way or paying our dues that has caused many human beings to not see
themselves as God sees them being bankrupted, broken, and brutal sinners. As we
quoted Dr. Adrian Rogers in a recent study when he said, “The worse form of badness is human goodness when it is substituted for
the new birth”, the reality is that none of us can see ourselves in truth as
clearly the Ten Commandments reveals to all the human family our dreadful sin
condition. Paul again drives home this truth of every person being totally
guilty sinners before God by again saying, Romans
3:23 “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” NKJV
Here is the explanation my Lord Jesus Christ gave me
to write of this passage of Scripture in the Book entitled “Silent Assassins of
the Soul” Chapter 6: Who Our Enemies are in this Battle “The Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul says in Romans 3:23 that every human being (i.e., all humanity) born into
this world after Adam’s fall holds sin as a possession, a condition, and a
relation. We are united to sin by the result of our fallen nature. We are,
therefore, incapable in this spiritual state and condition to praise, worship,
honor, and glorify God (which is what we were created to do).” Here
is what Charles Spurgeon said about man’s nature: “It is an old maxim that nature can never rise above itself. Water,
coming from the top of a hill, will rise as high as its source; but unless
there is some extraordinary pressure put upon it, it will never rise higher. So
of human nature, Scripture says it is exceedingly vile; we cannot expect good
works out of an evil nature. Can a bitter well send forth sweet water? As
poison groweth not on healthful trees, with healthful fruit, so cannot healthy
fruit grow on poisonous trees? We must not look for good works in an evil
nature any more than we should look for the grapes of Sorek on the vines of
Gomorrah. We cannot expect to find good works coming from nature; truly it is vain
and idle to think that good works can arise from the natural man.” From these two comments we can see that the nature all human beings are born with is completely incapable of ever performing anything out of it that is pleasing to Holy God, therefore, the only way for any human being to be reconnected to God and capable of being pleasing in His Sight is for us to receive from Him His very own Nature into us and this can only be accomplished when the sinful person sees themselves in the full true light of Romans 3:23 and cries out to God for mercy (Ephesians 2:8). The gift of grace and faith will be received by every confessing sinner and redemption that is only found in Christ Jesus will be theirs immediately and forever. There are no rituals to be performed daily, no praying 5 times a day, no acts of contrition or so called good works need to be performed, no doing good things to gain good karma, no chants or mantras to do daily, no transcendental meditation needs to be practiced, no incents lit to send prayers to heaven, no magic potions or spells are needed or will work to appease the gods, or no other futile acts such as these and many others practiced by miss-guided confused sinners all over the world. Paul says that God has now through our Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated for all the human family His Only Righteousness that He will accept for our sinful rebellion against Him (Hebrews 9:11-15).
God the Father made our Lord Jesus Christ the “propitiation”
by His Blood for our sins (Colossians 1:19-22).
That word as Paul uses it here literally means Christ was made an atoning
victim for you and me. Put in another way our Lord Jesus Christ became a
willing victim of God’s Wrath to make amends or set things straight and right
and paid for our wrong doing against Holy God that we might be released from
the sentence of death and hell and made adopted sons and daughters of God the
Father (2 Corinthians 5:21 & John
1:12-13). God has shown self-restraint against humanities sin and rebellion
continually performed against Him millennium after millennium and tolerated and
overlooked our willful disobedience, but now He has in these last days (before
rendering judgment on humanity) spoken by His Son Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:2) commanding all men
everywhere upon the earth to repent (turn from sin and rebellion) to Jesus
Christ for the forgiveness of sin (Acts
17:30-31).
Paul now turns again to the Jew and ask and answers
his own questions, Romans 3:27 “Where is
boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of
faith.” NKJV You see it was clear to Paul (by his own actions before his
conversion to Christ) that most of the Jewish Nation and especially those of
the Pharisees and Sanhedrin (as Paul was before he knew Christ Jesus our Lord)
were still displaced to boast that their supposed works of obedience to the Law
of God placed them in better stance before God than any Gentile. However, Paul
by inspiration of God the Holy Spirit, has been determined from the beginning
of the letter to the Jews in Rome to squash that false notion in their hearts
and show them how God will treat them and Gentiles in the same guilty manner
before His Throne. Paul so desperately wants their eyes to be opened to the
reality of their hopeless, horrible, and helpless condition in sins enslaving
grip just as every Gentile was in like manner. Paul knew this reality only
after he was born again of the Spirit of God and grieved over every Jew that
was still blinded in their self-diluting, self-deceiving, and self-declaring
ability to please God by the works of the Law (Romans 9:1-5). Paul here reiterates to every Jew that God is not
going to justify any person by their supposed works of the Law or their assumed
keeping of the Ten Commandments, but His righteousness to sinful humanity is
apart from or separated in place and position entirely from the deeds of the
Law.
The Jew was so trained from their youth generation
after generation (as Paul was) to observe God’s Law with the understanding that
this is what made the Jew right with God (different from all Gentiles) and
because of their rejection of our Lord Jesus Christ they were blinded to their
true sinful spiritual condition. Paul now places an emphatic period or
conclusion to the question he knew was on the mind of every devout Jew
(especially the ruling Jews of the Sanhedrin). The Jews were sure that faith in
Jesus Christ would do away with God’s Law or make it now null and void,
abolished, or destroyed and this no true Jew could or would ever except. Paul
knew this because this is one of the things that so fueled his miss-guided zeal
against Christians before he was himself saved by our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul
again for the 3rd time in this Chapter 3 of Romans uses his most
coveted phrase of “God Forbid” that faith in Jesus Christ should nullify God’s
Holy Law. It is not God’s Law that was unjust to man, but it was man’s broken,
corrupt, and vile nature which rendered him incapable of living up to God’s
Holy and Pure Law (Romans 7:7). Paul
concludes by saying that through faith in Jesus Christ is how God’s Law is
established, upheld, confirmed, and stands in all its purity, truth, and
holiness in the individual lives of every person that is truly born again.
Through faith in Jesus Christ comes regeneration and new birth and with that
comes Colossians 1:27 “Christ in you the
hope of glory” NKJV and the ability through becoming a partaker of God’s
Divine Nature to obey God’s Law from a heart of love for Jesus Christ our Lord
by the Power of God the Holy Spirit (2
Peter 1:3-4).
“The true confidence which is faith in Christ, and the true diffidence which is utter distrust of
myself--are identical.” Alexander MacLaren“It is never on account of its formal nature as a psychic act that faith is conceived in Scripture to be saving. It is not, strictly speaking, even faith in Christ that saves, but Christ that saves through faith. The saving power resides exclusively, not in the act of faith or the attitude of faith or nature of faith, but in the object of faith.” B. B. Warfield
“The soul is the life of the body, faith is the life of the soul, and Christ is the life of faith. Justification by faith in Christ’s righteousness is the golden chain which binds the Christian world in one body.” James H.
Aughey
“Any church which puts in the place of justification
by faith in Christ another method of salvation is
a harlot church. It is not faith in Christ
that saves you (though faith is
the instrument) - it is Christ’s
blood and merits.” Charles Spurgeon
“Faith
in Christ makes one a
regenerated believer; obedience to the Holy Spirit makes him a spiritual
believer.” Watchman Nee
“True repentance is no light matter. It is a
thorough change of heart about sin, a change showing itself in godly sorrow and
humiliation - in heartfelt confession before the throne of grace - in a
complete breaking off from sinful habits, and an abiding hatred of all sin.
Such repentance is the inseparable companion of saving faith in Christ.”
J. C. Ryle
If
you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and His amazing healing power, pray this
from your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ (you speaking directly to Him), Dear
Lord Jesus, I confess to You that I am a sinner and I need Your forgiveness. I
believe You shed Your Blood and died for my sins. I believe that You rose from
the dead proving that You alone are God. I repent of my sins. I want to turn
from my sins. I ask You Dear Lord Jesus to come into my heart and take control
of my life. I want You to be my Lord, Savior, and my God. Amen...
Sincerely in Christ,
Author of “Silent Assassins of the Soul - Are you
Broken by Pornography and Masturbation? You can be Restored by the Lord Jesus
Christ and brought into Deliverance, Freedom, and Victory! A Guide for Men and
Women in the Enemy’s Crosshairs” e-book available now @ Amazon Kindle, @ Apple
I Bookstore for IPod, Barnes and Noble for Nook, Reader Store for Sony Reader,
Kobo, Copia, Gardners, Baker and Taylor, and eBookPie…
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