What’s The Good News?
Over the years it has not been uncommon for Orcas or Killer Whales to find themselves trapped in Puget Sound in Washington State. When that happens, rescuers in sometimes hundreds of boats actually try to herd the whales out into open water similar to the way cowboys herd cattle. One of the keys to effectively moving the whales back into open water and thus safety is using the boats to actually funnel them into a very narrow pathway that will eventually lead to open water. But to do this the boats have to constantly be cutting off the whales’ potential avenues of escape so as to keep them in course and eventually in the funnel of boats and nets until they are forced by this artificial and makeshift channel into the Pacific Ocean. And this is a good picture of what the Apostle Paul has been doing in the Book of Romans beginning in Romans 1:18 all the way to Romans 3:20.
You see, Paul has been funneling us to the only avenue of escape for sinners who are under the wrath of God and he has been doing that by cutting off all our imaginary avenues of escape. In Romans 1:19-32, he cut off the escape route of ignorance in which people think they’ll be able to plead their ignorance before God by saying—well I never knew there even was a God because I believed in evolution. In Romans 2:1-16, he cut off the escape route of the moral goody-goody who thinks they have never done anything bad enough to offend God and be sent to hell.
Then in Romans 2:17-29, he cuts off the escape route of religion in which people think that they’re in good shape with God because of their church attendance and religious observations. And then in Romans 3:1-20, he cuts off the escape route of people who think they are able in and of themselves to earn salvation either because they think they are righteous, have spiritual understanding, are seeking God, are good people, and do a pretty good job of keeping the ten commandments.
You see, in cutting off all these false avenues of escape from the wrath of God—Paul is essentially funneling sinners toward the only avenue of escape for sinners under the wrath of God there is—and that is to run to God for the salvation He offers to every sinner who will trust in Christ.
Now when you boil the unbeliever’s problem down to its most basic element what you have is a person who lacks the righteousness required to be made right with God and thus saved from His wrath for their sins. And not only do they lack this required righteousness—they have no way of producing it. And this is bad news for sinners. But the good news is that God saves sinners—and the way that He saves them is by giving them the very righteousness He requires them to have when they believe in Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
And in our passage this morning, which is Romans 3:21-24, Paul wants us to see that:
The Good News of the Gospel is that God has provided all sinners who believe in Jesus Christ with the gift of His own righteousness so that they can be declared righteous and saved from the wrath of God for their sins.
This is really the message of the rest of the Book of Romans. You see, God has provided a way for sinners to be made right with Him so that they do not have to go to hell and pay the penalty for their sins. And God has provided this great salvation as a free gift of His grace alone and for His glory alone to the sinner who will trust in Christ alone. But in order for God to save the sinner from the just penalty for his sins—He has to declare him judicially righteous in His sight.
You see, to simply declare a person as “not guilty” is not enough for the simple reason that one can be not guilty of particular sins and still not be righteous.
There are plenty of people who stand before judges in our courtrooms every day who while being found “not guilty” of a particular crime or series of crimes are still not positively righteous people. Thus, it is not enough for God to declare a person “not guilty” or even “innocent”.
No—the only thing that can make sinners right with God and thus save them is for God to declare them righteous and perfectly and divinely righteous at that—in fact the only way a sinner can be made right with God is to be declared as righteous as God—but that sure takes some doing. You see, before He could declare any sinner to be that righteous—God had to do a couple other things. First, He had to remove their sins from them and ensure they were completely paid for and two, he had to provide the sinner with a righteousness not his own that would be completely equal to His own personal righteousness. That way—He could truly be just and still declare the sinner righteous so that he could be reconciled to Him and saved from the due penalty of his sins and his unrighteous condition.
So—God in putting this plan into action—sent His Son Jesus to the cross—where Jesus took upon Himself the sins of every person who would believe in Him and then He paid for these sins—every single one of them—committed from the day they were born until the day that they die.
But not only did Jesus take their sin upon Him—the Bible tells us that He also gave them His righteousness so that God the Father would be able to look at them and see that their sins had been removed from them and paid for by Christ as well as see that Christ’s very own righteousness was now theirs because it had been applied to their account the very moment they believed in Christ for salvation. Thus, the moment a sinner places faith in Christ—the Bible teaches he or she is declared righteous by God and is thus saved from their sins. And this declaration of righteousness which is necessary for the salvation of any person is called “justification” in the Bible. And those who have been given Christ’s righteousness are called “justified”.
And what I want us to see in our passage this morning are five principles regarding the righteousness that is necessary for our salvation.
1. The righteousness that saves sinners is a righteousness apart from the Law and their own personal merit. (21)
The reason why Paul needs to drive this truth home again and again in the Bible is because of our inflated and incorrect sense of our own personal goodness and righteousness. Many unbelievers are simply not convinced that they are as bad as God says they are and thus they have the idea that they through their own personal merit can attain to the righteousness God requires for salvation by simply doing good things and not doing bad things. These kinds of people believe that God gave the Law for them to keep so as to earn their acceptance with Him by proving how righteous they are. And that is why Paul made the point in verses 19-20 that the Law’s purpose was never to save anyone but rather to condemn everyone.
The Law will save no one—thus no one can earn the righteousness required by God to get into heaven by obeying God’s Law—it is simply impossible. And even if you could obey the Law of God perfectly—you would still not be as righteous as God because God transcends His Law. Now it is true that only God Himself could keep the whole law perfectly—which is exactly what Jesus did. But, Jesus is far more righteous than the Law.
The Law does not authenticate Jesus’ righteousness—rather Jesus authenticates the Law as a standard for man to measure his own lack of righteousness by. Thus, to think a man could prove He is as righteous as an infinite God is infinitely righteous by obeying a finite law code is utterly ridiculous. You see, God is above and beyond the Law in terms of righteousness. To think that you would be like God and thus as righteous as God because you simply keep a list of rules and regulations is paramount to saying that an ant is like me in every respect because it obeys the ten commandments for ants.
The Law is not for God—it is for man—thus no one will be saved by keeping the Law even if they could because keeping the Law does not mean you are as righteous as God and that is the requirement for Heaven according to Jesus in Matthew 5:48. Thus, the righteousness needed for salvation comes apart from the Law because it exceeds the requirements of the Law—as it must be the very righteousness of God Himself.
One other point to note before we move on to verse 22 is that this righteousness of God that is required for salvation is not something new and unique only to the New Testament.
Look at verse 21 again. The righteousness of God which He has given to sinners who believe in Christ is a righteousness that while apart from the Law was witnessed or attested by the law and the Prophets.
In other words—God’s means of saving sinners in the New Testament is the same as His means of saving them in the Old and this is attested to by a correct understanding of the Law and the Old Testament Prophets, which according to Luke 24:44 were all talking about Jesus.
The Bible does not contain two ways of saving sinners. It is not true that the Old Testament sinner was saved by law whereas the New Testament sinner is saved by grace. Everyone who has been saved and will be saved has been saved by grace through faith in God’s promise of salvation and we’ll see that in Romans 4.
2. The righteousness that saves sinners is a righteousness that comes through faith in Jesus Christ alone. (22)
The righteousness that God requires for a person to be declared righteous and thus saved and thus granted entrance into Heaven is accessed by only one means and that is the means of faith in Christ Jesus alone.
Note that there are no qualifiers in this phrase so that it says: “through faith in Jesus Christ and by performing good works, or going to church, or observing certain religious ceremonies, or by doing anything.” In other words, the righteousness required for salvation comes through faith in Christ and Christ alone. Salvation is not through works or through Christ plus our works—it is through faith in Christ alone!
And this was the major problem in the Roman Catholic Church that the Reformer Martin Luther identified in 1517 when he really inadvertently began the Protestant Reformation—whereas the Catholic Church believed that salvation was by grace through faith in Christ—they left out the word “alone”, because they believed that a person was justified by Christ’s righteousness and their own meritorious works. But as Luther maintained and the Apostle makes perfectly clear here in Romans 3:22, sinners are justified by faith in Christ and that’s all—there is nothing to add. We are either justified by faith in Christ alone or we are not justified at all.
3. The righteousness that saves sinners is God’s own righteousness imputed to the believing sinner’s own account. (22)
Note that what comes to the sinner who trusts in Christ is the “righteousness of God”. And don’t miss the fact that the act of justification, in which God’s righteousness is imputed to the sinner’s account so that God declares him or her righteous, occurs the moment the sinner first believes. Now it is important to understand that when a sinner is justified he is not made experientially righteous—he is simply declared righteous. Thus, he is not made sinless—he is simply declared by God to be righteous in God’s sight because God has imputed His own righteousness to that sinners account.
Justification is a judicial verdict in which God acting as the Judge declares the believing sinner righteous and thus acquitted of all charges that could ever be possibly brought against him. Becoming experientially righteous is the progressive work of sanctification in which God the Holy Spirit after a person is justified begins the work of making them holy and righteous.
Thus, what is happening in every true believer’s life is that they are becoming in their experience through sanctification what God has declared them to be in justification. They are becoming what they are in God’s sight.
4. The righteousness that saves sinners is for all who believe regardless of how badly they have sinned and continually fall short of the glory of God. (22-23)
Notice that the righteous of God is given to all sinners who believe—without distinction. And then in verse 23, Paul makes the point that everyone without distinction who believes in Christ and thus is given the very righteousness of God has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And thus, your sin or how badly you have sinned or how much you have sinned has no bearing upon whether or not you can be saved—it simply is not an issue when it comes to who can be saved and who can’t be. The issue—the only issue—is whether you believe in Christ Jesus.
Paul also mentions that everyone who has believed and thus given the righteousness of God has also fallen short of the glory of God and in fact is continually falling short of it right now. But even that has no bearing upon your salvation or you keeping your salvation. You are justified not because you have not sinned or not fallen short of the glory of God—you are justified by faith alone in Christ alone.
I find it also interesting that just as the phrase “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” is in the present tense in the original language so that it should read “and continually falls short of the glory of God”. The phrase, “being justified as a gift” in verse 24 is also in the present tense so that you could render it, “being continually justified”. Translated literally, the two phrases together read—“for all have sinned and continually falling short of the glory of God are continually being justified as a gift . . .”
Now it is not saying that every time we sin and thus fall short of God’s glory as believers we need to be justified again because we are only justified once for all time. What it is saying is that as believers we still sin and thus are continually falling short of the glory of God but that our status as being justified does not change. Sinning and falling short of the glory of God as believers does not change our continual and unchanging status of “being justified”. Thus, we are as the Reformers put it—“justified sinners” who still are continually “falling short of the glory of God”.
5. The righteousness that saves sinners is a gift that comes through grace alone. (24)
Finally look at verse 24. Paul writes that the sinner who is justified—that is declared righteous by God and thus saved from his sins is justified as a gift by God’s grace. The word “grace” simply means “God’s unmerited and unearned favor toward sinners who don’t deserve it and won’t ever deserve it.” The justification of a sinner is always by grace. It is never earned or merited. That would be impossible. And note that this justification comes through or on the basis of “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
God did not merely wish our sin away or sweep it under the rug. A price had to be paid for our sins to be removed from us and us from them and the price that was paid was Jesus Christ Himself. He, the God-Man died for our sins as our sin penalty in order that we might go free. And note that this redemption or freedom from being under the penalty for our sins is “in Christ Jesus”. In other words, the redemption that leads to justification that leads to salvation is found only in Christ Jesus.
There are not many roads to Heaven—As Jesus told his disciples in John 14:6, “I am the way. . . no one comes to the Father but by me.”
CONCLUSION
The only Killer Whales that are ultimately saved from dying a slow and painful death trapped in Puget Sound so as to enjoy life in the wide expanses of the Pacific Ocean are those who being funneled toward the narrow channel leading to the Ocean swim through it to safety.
And the only sinners who are ultimately saved from eternal death so as to experience eternal life are those who being funneled by God toward the narrow way—go through it by faith in Christ alone.
As Jesus Himself said in Matthew 7:13-14,
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life and there are few who find it.”
So, upon which road and through which gate are you hanging your hope?
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