Romans 3:21-28: A Conversation About Our All-Sufficient Savior

Introduction

Ranker.com - Most famous person from the past that you’d like to meet. 424K votes - 2. Jesus 1. Albert Einstein. You can never meet Albert Einstein, but you can meet Jesus because He is alive. Not only is He alive, He desires for you to meet Him, to know Him, to have a relationship with Him. https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/famous-role-models-we_d-like-to-meet-in-person

Jesus the most influential man in human history - Far more than a wandering rabbi or influential teacher - the eternal Son of God - God in the flesh.

The beauty of the Gospel: it’s about a person - not simply a system of beliefs or a rigid set rules you must follow. Christianity is not merely an “experience” or a way to make your life better. At the heart of the Christian faith is a person - a person who is fully God and fully man - The God man who fully knows you, who created you, and who loves you so much that He was willing to die for you. The Gospel is radical good news.

Maybe the reason why we do not share the Gospel very much is because we aren’t amazed by the person that the Gospel centers upon.

We started looking at this passage last week. This passage might be the most important passage in the book of Romans. Martin Luther on Romans 3:21-26: “The chief point, and the very central place of the Epistle, and of the whole Bible.”

Jesus is our all-sufficient Savior. Three truths about our sufficient savior and three suggestions for engaging people in conversations about our all sufficient Savior.

Only Jesus could live the life we could not live.

But now the righteousness of God is manifested apart from the law… (3:21) Romans 3:23 and Romans 6:23 - Because of your UNRIGHTEOUSNESS you stand condemned before God. What you need to escape the judgment of God is righteousness - to be perfect.

The problem: We can’t do what God requires! (3:10) Romans 3:23 – We’ve all fallen short of God’s glorious standard. God’s standard = His Law. Temptation to think if I just keep God’s law, then I can be good with God. BUT, you can’t live up to Gods’s standard.

Evaluate your life by the Ten Commands (for example), and you will feel the weight of your sin. Ten Commands are NOT this is what I must do BUT this is what I can’t do. (Romans 7:7)

We need righteousness, yet because of our sinful nature, we can’t obtain it on our own. God manifests righteousness apart from the Law. (3:21-22) He gives us a way to be righteous, and it’s not through our efforts but rather through the efforts of His Son.

God sent His Son to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. Matthew 5:17-19, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”

Can you imagine being perfect? Can you imagine never having a lustful thought, never speaking a word of gossip, never telling a lie. Jesus was perfect. He was perfect FOR you. He perfectly obeyed the Father for us. He completely fulfilled the Law on our behalf.

Glorious truths:

God’s plan for your salvation is that you do nothing and He does everything for you.

Salvation is not “Look at what I’ve done.” Salvation is “Look at what He’s done.” (Romans 3:27-28) When it comes to being right with God, you can’t achieve it by your efforts. God does the work for you! God comes to us in the flesh and He lives for us the life that we could not live. He fulfills the law on our behalf.

Robert Mounce: “What makes the “good news” news is that no one would have come up with a plan that excluded their own contribution toward a future salvation.”

Influenced by Tim Keller but won’t plagarize his sermons

Only Jesus could die for us the death that we deserve.

Jesus not only lived His life for us; He gave His life for us.

Because God loves us He does for us what we cannot do for ourselves, BUT God is also just. He cannot simply overlook sin. The good news gets even better. Not only does His Son live the life we could not live, but He also dies the death that we deserve.

These verses full of deep theological truths that are helpful to understand what Jesus accomplished through His death.

Propitiation. (ESV) God the Father put forth His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (Not a word we use much- mercy seat in the CSB.) God hates sin, and His demand for justice had to be satisfied. What kind of Judge would God be if He let sin go unpunished? No just judge lets criminals go free – a just judge makes sure that there is an appropriate punishment for the crime. Since God loves us, He allowed His Son to go to a cross and experience our penalty so that God’s demand for justice could be satisfied.

In the tabernacle/temple the Ark of the Covenant - mercy seat - (Picture?) blood of atoning sacrifice sprinkled on the mercy seat once a year. Jesus’ blood is the blood that satisfies God’s demand for a sacrifice to die in our place.

Think about it. Jesus not only lived the life we could not live – He went to the cross in our place. We deserved death for our rebellion, but He took death for us. He experienced the punishment that we deserve.

2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Jesus lived a sinless life for us because we could not live a sinless life. But, Jesus also lived a sinless life so He could go to the cross as our unblemished, perfect sacrifice; our substitute.

What if Jesus had sinned? His death would have been in vain. If He would have sinned He couldn’t have been our Savior because He would have needed a Savior.We needed a Savior who was human like us, but who could do what no other human could do – live sinless before God. His sinless life qualified Him to be our Savior.

As a result of His death we are:

Redeemed – We were slaves to sin. It controlled us, but Christ paid our ransom. “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45) In your sin, you sold your soul to sin and death. You made yourself a slave to sin. It was your master. We have been bought out of the bondage and slavery of sin and bought into Christ. We have a new master. We are not controlled by sin but controlled by the Spirit. Sin does not rule us, and we do not have to walk in it.

Justified (Paul loves to use this word! This word gets to the heart of our faith.) A legal term – to be declared righteous. “Justification is an instantaneous legal act of God in which he (1) thinks of our sins as forgiven and Christ’s righteousness as belonging to us, and (2) declares us to be righteous in his sight” (Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology)

We are not righteous. We are guilty. But God declares us righteous not based on what we have done but based on what Christ has done for us. Christ’s perfect life is applied to our lives. His shed blood pays the penalty for our sin so that we might be forgiven of all sins and made right with God.

All of this is a free gift that we receive by faith! It’s there for the taking – for all people! (Staci’s 2 free cars!) Receive it by faith. Believe the truth about who you are, and believe the truth about who God is and choose to trust Him rather than yourself. That trust involves turning from everything that is destroying you and turning to Him.

Only Jesus could defeat the enemy we could not defeat.

Jesus paid the price for our sins by dying a horrific death. Tortured and crucified. His disciples fled. The justice of God - placed the penalty of our sin upon Jesus.

But, Jesus did not stay dead. If Jesus would have stayed dead His entire ministry would have been in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:13-14) Three days after His death He rose from the dead proving that He was indeed the Son of God who had the power over death. Proving that He had the power to set us free from the consequences of our own sin.

He has defeated death for us so that every person that turns to Him will never taste separation from God. Instead, through faith, we experience unbroken fellowship with the Father. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead…” (1 Peter 1:3) Our hope is in the resurrected Lord who is alive right now. No other religion on earth claims a Savior who died for the sins of people and rose from the dead triumphantly. This Gospel is what makes Christianity unique.

Because of His work, we cannot boast about ourselves because we see the truth. We cannot save ourselves, but we do boast about Him! Because He is the One who saves us from our sin and gives us life!

Three suggestions for engaging people in a conversation about our all-sufficient Savior.

1. Intentionally talk about the person of Jesus.

(Show all three circles and walk through briefly)

Sharing the Gospel is NOT sharing your testimony, inviting to church, etc. It’s sharing what a real person has done for us. It’s not sharing your experience, but a historical reality grounded in the truth of the Bible.

Don’t make assumptions that people actually have a relationship with Jesus. We’ll ask someone if they attend church, and if they do attend church, we’ll assume they are a Christian. Quite a few people who are religious or who attend church who’ve never embrace the Gospel.

What if you assumed that everyone you met was lost (even if they say they go to church?) If you assume every person is lost, then you will point them to Jesus. While your testimony is not the Gospel, Tell your story as a bridge to the Gospel.– about how you were saved from your sins by the blood of Jesus. Ask people about how Jesus has changed them or what they think about Jesus.

The point – Let’s talk about Jesus. You have not had a Gospel conversation if you have not talked about how sin has separated us from the Father and if you have not talked about how Jesus is the solution for our greatest problem.

2. Intentionally talk about the love of Jesus. Our greatest need is to be loved – to feel accepted. Christianity is not a religious system of things to do to earn salvation. The story of the Bible is the story of a Savior who loves you, who desires a relationship with you. The Gospel shows us how much God loves. Why wouldn’t we talk about that? It’s humbling to know that Jesus went to the cross willingly and not grudgingly. It’s humbling to know that He desires to save us regardless of who we are. Make the love of Christ central in conversations. Do people see how amazed we are at the love of Jesus?

3. Intentionally talk about the uniqueness of Jesus. How could Jesus do all this? Because He was fully man and fully God. Jesus is fully man. We needed One who was like us to redeem us. We needed a perfect representative who would be able to fulfill the requirements of God’s Law on our behalf. Jesus is fully God. If He were just a man, He would have given into sin. If He was just a man, He could not have risen from the dead conquering sin and death. He was fully man but fully God – able to live the life we could not live – able to take the sins of the world on Himself – and able to rise from the dead. Our belief about the uniqueness of Christ is what makes Christianity unique from every other world religion.

Invitation – Do you know Jesus? Trust Him today. Turn from sin and turn to Him. Believers, ask God to forgive you of not beholding the beauty of Jesus - of taking for granted the relationship that Jesus desires with you. Ask God to help you keep Jesus at the center of your conversations.