02 How to Be Declared ‘Not Guilty’ Before a Holy God

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for downloading the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta. This is the second talk in our series on what is the gospel. In this series, we aren't looking at a specific passage, but all of my understanding comes from Romans chapters 1 through 8, and we will be looking at parts of Romans today. If you'd like to follow along with lecture notes, you'll find those on our website. They will contain links to everything mentioned in the talk. You'll find those at wednesdayintheword.com slash gospel two. Thanks so much for joining us. Well, last time we started this series by looking at the bad news of the gospel, and we defined what the Bible means by life and death. And I'll review that briefly before we move on to what is justification, which we're going to talk about today. As we talked about last week, when Paul says, for instance, that the wages of sin is death, he means something more than the end of biological viability. He means this phenomenon of human existence where everything physical and spiritual breaks down. The tendency, the inevitability of things in this world are to break down, fall apart, and decay. So relationships fall apart, buildings fall apart, everything breaks down despite our best efforts. And that's death. And Paul tells us we live with that death every day because we are prisoners of sin, because we rebelled against God. Life is the opposite of that. The eternal life, the kind of life we will have in heaven, is a life that is free from all of that sin and death and decay and futility and corruption that we talked about last week. So life is a tendency toward good or holiness or righteousness, all that is right in human existence. And it is the promise of the gospel. We also saw last week that death inevitably results from sin, and holiness inevitably results from life. So just like the law of gravity, if you sin, you will experience death in some form. And if you want to have life, as we've defined it, you have to have holiness. You can't get one without the other. If we want to have life, we have to have this problem of our sin solved. We saw last week also that God is the sole source of life because He alone can give holiness. We don't have it within ourselves. We are prisoners of sin and death. There is no corner of our being unmarked by sin. There is no divine spark that's left pure inside us. We are totally and completely under the control of sin and death. The problem is we rebelled. We were born saying, Thanks, God, I don't want to acknowledge you as God. I don't want to follow you. I'd rather do it myself. And so we look to ourselves for the source of life, and God is the only source, so we won't find it there. We can't find it in ourselves because it's not there. So there are two consequences to our rebellion. We looked at the first last week, and that is we have cut ourselves off from the source of life, and we are stuck with death. That's the logical, natural result, like the law of gravity. If you drop a book, it will fall. If you rebel against God, you become a prisoner of sin and death. And the problem we left off with was how do we solve that? How do we solve this problem of our sin? And that's where justification comes in. So there were two consequences to our rebellion. The first we just talked about that we have cut ourselves off from life and we're now prisoners of sin and death, but there is a second consequence of our rebellion, and that is that the rebellion itself is wrong and deserves punishment. It's not just unfortunate that we sinned, it's a crime. And justice demands that that crime be paid for. There is a judicial penalty to our rebellion. So the analogy I like to use is with my hands because it's very visual, it's easy to grasp, and I will put pictures of this on the website. You can find those at wednesdayintheword.com slash gospel to. But let's say that my left hand is us and my right hand is God, and before any fall or rebellion, we start out face to face. So I have my two hands facing each other. When we rebel, it is if we turn our back on God. So I turn my left hand away to face away from my right hand. And when we do that, when we rebel and turn our back on God, we experience everything we talked about last week. The first consequence of that rebellion is that now we have cut ourselves off from the source of life and we are stuck with sin and death as we defined it. But there is a second, more devastating consequence of our rebellion, and that is God turns his back on us. So now I turn my right hand away. Because what we did was wrong, and justice has been violated, and now justice needs to be satisfied, God in his wrath turns his back on us. Until his justice is satisfied, he will not grant us life. And in Romans 1, when Paul talks about the wrath of God, I think it's this second consequence of our rebellion that he means, this God turning his back on us, giving us over to our sin, justly and righteously, responding to our rebellion with now the penalty must be paid. And that's a different consequence. While my back is turned, yes, I experience death in all its horrible forms that we talked about last week. Bitterness, tragedies, brokenness, futility, corruption. I experience all that because I lack life and holiness, because God is no longer granting it to me. That's the natural consequence of my rebellion. But the wrath of God is the second, graver consequence that even if I turn back to God and beg for mercy, the answer is no until the problem of my crime, my judicial penalty has been paid. Left to ourselves, I don't think we turn back. I think God draws us, and that apart from His grace, we don't turn back on our own. But if we could, it wouldn't work because we have to have this problem of our justification solved. We have to have this judicial penalty paid. And this is where justification comes in. Let's look at that. We're gonna look at Romans 1, and I'm gonna start in verse 18, and we're gonna kind of bounce around into chapter 2 and chapter 3 before we're done. But we're gonna start at Romans 1, 18. And notice as I read this, Paul's talking about the wrath of God, and he talks about how we turn our backs on God, and then God turns his back on us, and he uses this language God gave them over. So listen for that. This is Romans 1, starting in 18, I'm reading from the New American Standard Version. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened, professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and of four footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore, God gave them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions. Now Paul's making three claims in this section that mankind rebelled, the consequence of that rebellion is death, as we defined it last week, and God's response to our rebellion, in his wrath, he abandons us to that state of death. So he uses this phrase, God gave them over. That's a legal term. It means he hands us into the custody. It's the term used for what Judas did to Jesus in the garden when he handed Jesus into the custody of the Roman guard. So he gave us over, he made us prisoners of sin and death. And you can see he repeats this throughout the section. So in 21, he says, We rebelled, for they knew God, but they did not honor him as God. Then in he says, the consequence of that is death, they became futile in their speculations, their heart was darkened, and then God turns his back on us. Verse 24, therefore God gave them over. He repeats it in 22, 23, professing to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of God for corruptible images. We experience death. 24, their bodies are dishonored. 26, for this reason, God gave them over. And then again in 25, they exchanged truth for a lie, that's the rebellion. And then he again talks about we will now experience death, and God gave them over to a depraved mind to do things which aren't proper. So he's making those three claims. You sin, you experience death, but there's also this judicial penalty of God giving you over into the custody of sin, and that's the problem that we have to solve. He concludes then this is picking up in one twenty-eight, and just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper. And then he gives this list, which is everything we talked about last week. This is death. So one twenty nine, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful, and although they knew the ordinance of God that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them. So in that long list of evils, you see the relationship between the wrath of God and the natural consequence of the rebellion. If you cut yourself off from God, who is the source of life and holiness, these are the kinds of things you experience in that long list. That is the natural result. So the natural consequence of our sin is death, but the wrath of God is that judicial decree against us that not only will we experience death, we are going to be slaves to death. We are going to be cut in its custody. There's no way for us to get out. So that brings us to justification. Justification is the forgiveness of our debt to justice, which qualifies us to once again receive God's life. To be justified is to be in a position where God's justice is satisfied. So in order to gain God's blessing, we have to have this problem of God's wrath solved, we have to have this problem of his back being turned and be in right standing before him because we are guilty and we have a judicial penalty that must be paid. So to be justified is to be in a position where we no longer owe any debt to justice, our debt has been paid, and we are qualified to once again receive God's blessings. Now the Greek word Paul uses for this in Romans is dechiosune, and it's almost always translated righteousness. And we talked about this last time, but just to review that word righteousness is used two different ways. It can mean right standing before God because we are free from sin and death. In other words, we are holy, we are no longer sinful. Just to be clear, I'm going to call that holiness, that character of perfect moral integrity unflawed by sin and death. But there's a second meaning, which is the one we've just been talking about, that we are right standing before God because our debt to justice has been paid. We are still sinners, but our debt to justice has been paid, and in that sense we are right standing. And that's what I'm going to call justification. And I think that's the way Paul is using that word in Romans 2 and 3. So when he we read through these passages and you see the word righteousness, it is in the sense of being justified, where I am in a state that I no longer have an outstanding debt to God's justice, and I am now qualified to receive his blessing. The question then is how do we get there? How do we get that debt, our debt to justice paid? How do we satisfy God's wrath? Well we have to be justified, but how? And that's what Paul goes on to discuss in Romans chapters 2 and 3. I'm not going to cover that discussion in detail, but I am going to summarize some of the main points he makes there. First, he argues that if justification comes by keeping the law, no one's going to make it. Old Testament Jews would have said, Oh yeah, you can do that. You're justified by obeying the law. God says, do these things, don't do the do these other things. And if you make a sincere, noble, reasonably successful effort at doing that, you will be granted justification. And Paul argues, that's not it. The law requires you to be holy and righteous. And the only way you can meet that requirement is if God imparts righteousness to you. But God had his back turn because of our rebellion, metaphorically, he has his back turned, and he is not imparting righteousness anymore. We can't keep the law because we are sinful people. It is theologically, metaphysically, intrinsically impossible. Only God can impart what's necessary to keep the law. He's not doing it any longer, so you will never be able to justify yourself by keeping the law. Then he argues that doctrine doesn't justify you. It's not knowing the law. Understanding the law, studying the law is not enough. Holiness requires more than knowing and understanding what the law contains, holiness requires you to be the kind of person who naturally and inevitably obeys and keeps the law. And I think in this section, Romans 213 is the key verse, he says, For it is not the hearers of the law who are just before God, but the doers of the law will be justified. So it's not those who just know what the law says and understand it who are justified, but those who can actually keep it. And he argues none of us left to ourselves can keep it. Now that's easy for us to deceive ourselves. We think if we do all the right things, and it varies from decade to decade what the right things are, but they're usually things like go to church, pray regularly, study the Bible, avoid hedonism, avoid materialism, and advocate for social justice causes, something like that, then you're okay. If we can recognize sin and we have this impeccable doctrinal understanding that we we get it, then we're okay. And so we we deceive ourselves. And Paul argues in Romans 2 wake up, think about your lives. Do you think God wants you to know every minute detail of the law, or does He want you to be the kind of person who can keep it? Because the problem is we have to keep all of the law. Sixty percent is not good enough, ninety-nine percent is not good enough. Holiness requires that we obey all the law all the time, inside and outside. There's no sliding scale, you can't pick and choose which laws to obey and which to ignore. This is a one strike and you're out situation. He talks about you who know how to judge, how do you measure up? Judge yourself. You who teach the law, teach yourselves. You say do not steal, and so on, but what kind of person are you inside? Then in two fourteen and fifteen he argues, for when Gentiles who do not have the law do intrinsically the things of the law, these, not having the law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them. So I think he's speaking hypothetically there and he's saying, You know the law, but do you do it? Well, what about Gentiles who've never read the law, but they are living the law? So I don't think he's saying there are righteous Gentiles out there. He's speaking hypothetically to make a point. Which would be more pleasing to God? The person who never read the law but lived in accordance with its precepts and teaching, or the person who read and studied the law but ignored it and lived totally against it. And he expects the answer, the one who keeps the law. It's the doer of the law who would please God, not the one who hears it. And he's trying to undercut the way we deceive ourselves by saying, Well, if I do do these things, whatever, however I define them, if I keep the law, if I memorize the law, if I hand it down, I teach it, if I understand it, then God must be pleased. But Paul's arguing if we're justified by keeping the law, then nobody on earth is justified because it only takes one strike and you're out. If we understand the requirement of the law and we get an accurate picture of how sinful and rebellious we are inside, we will realize no one has the ability to keep the law. We just can't do it left to ourselves. This is where justification comes in. Justification is a gift of God. Paul goes on in this argument in Romans 3 23, and he says, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. So we all fall short of the glory of God, none of us can keep the law, none of us is the kind of person that the law describes, but we can be justified as a gift by God's grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. So it's not earned, we can't achieve it, neither Jew nor Gentile can achieve it. The whole point in this section is our inability to keep the law. We can't do it ourselves because God gave us over to the custody of sin and death. We are slaves and prisoners of sin and death. So justification is having our debt to justice paid. It is a gift of God based on his mercy and is made possible by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. Paul goes on to make this point in Romans three. This is twenty-five and twenty-six. He's speaking of Jesus Christ, and he says, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed for the demonstration of his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. There's a lot in there we could talk about, but for our purposes for this talk, we are justified because God is profoundly merciful and gracious. We are not justified because we have done anything to deserve it. Jesus' death is the substitute for the death we deserve. It pays the penalty that we need to pay. And God is so profoundly merciful that he wanted to provide a way for us to escape his wrath, but he is also just and he knew that debt to justice had to be paid. So he took our place. He sent his son Jesus to die in our place in order that he might both be just and merciful, or as Paul says, just and the justifier. So the the way we get the problem of God's wrath solved is we have to have the penalty for our sins paid, and we see that that is done for us by the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. The question then is how do we gain justification? Is justification granted to everyone or anyone? How do we get it? And what we're gonna see is that justification is granted to those who have saving faith. And we're gonna define saving faith in our next talk. Thank you for listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. This is a podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also tries to show you how to figure that out. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please do me a favor and take two minutes and leave a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. Every five reviews makes it easier for people to find the podcast, and I really appreciate your support. Our theme music is graciously provided by my favorite musician, Reggie Coates of Heartfelt Music.org. I'm Krisan Marotta, and you can hear more and listen to previous episodes on wednesdayintheword.com.