Message #4 (Morning) - Redemption

Passage: Romans 3:21-30

So, in any story, we have a problem.

Sometimes, stories don’t have a resolution. There’s conflict and tension being built up, but sometimes, things don’t get resolved. For instance, you may have all the main characters dead at the end of the story. It’s known as a sad ending.

Most of the time, there’s a resolution to any story. This is usually known as the climax. But, to get to the climax of the story, there’s the rising action.

Question: What should we do about this problem?

Here’s the problem. Because of our sins, God responds to our sins with righteous judgement.

So, the question is this, “How can I, as a sinner, be made right with God?”

In order for you to be made right with God, you have to be righteous.

However, as we have learned from last night’s lesson, that’s impossible.

God’s verdict is that no one is righteous.

It says in Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

More importantly, how does God address the problem of our sin? How can sinners be redeemed and saved?

Throughout the story of the Bible, God is on mission to save His people for His own glory.

For example: The book of Exodus

Verse 21 - God is declaring that the righteousness God gives to believers is entirely apart from obedience to any law, even God’s own revealed law.

God’s righteousness is in no way based on human achievement, on anything that man can do in his own power.

God holds before men the standards of His righteousness in order to demonstrate the impossibility of keeping them by human effort.

So, we’re not to be proud. We don’t earn our salvation or redemption.

It’s God who has the resolution to our sin problem.

In verse 21, this solution was prophesied in the Old Testament. The Laws and the Prophets pointed to Jesus as the Messiah. He is the One who would provide the righteousness that God demands of men.

It was impossible for sinful men to fulfill the standards of the law.

However, it was Jesus - the sinless man - that fulfilled the righteous standards of God’s law.

In order for sinners to be made right with God, we need to be righteous. And righteousness can only be acquired by faith in Jesus Christ (v.22).

Saving faith is a placing of oneself totally in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ, and it has certain indispensable elements that the New Testament clearly teaches.

Saving faith in Jesus Christ involves the exercise of will. Paul told the Roman believers, “Thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed” (Rom. 6:17). Salvation begins (from the human standpoint) with a person’s willful obedience in turning from sin to follow the Lord Jesus Christ.

Saving faith also involves the emotions, because, as in the verse just mentioned above, it must come from the heart as well as from the mind. A person cannot be saved by good feelings about Christ, and many people throughout the ages and in our own day have substituted good feelings about Christ for saving faith in Him. But on the other hand, a person whose life is transformed by Christ will be affected in his emotions in the deepest possible way.

Saving faith also involves the intellect. No one can think his way into heaven, but neither can he receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior without some comprehension of the truth of the gospel (see Rom. 10:17ff.)

Furthermore, in verse 24, we can be justified (i.e. made right) with God by His grace.

Dikaioō (justified) means to declare the rightness of something or someone.

Justification is God’s declaration that all the demands of the law are fulfilled on behalf of the believing sinner through the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

Justification is a wholly forensic, or legal, transaction. It changes the judicial standing of the sinner before God.

In justification, God imputes the perfect righteousness of Christ to the believer’s account, then declares the redeemed one fully righteous.

Justification must be distinguished from sanctification, in which God actually imparts Christ’s righteousness to the sinner.

While the two must be distinguished, justification and sanctification can never be separated.

God does not justify whom He does not sanctify.

Notice that it says that it’s a gift. It’s a free gift offered to sinners.

By definition, a gift is something given freely, unearned, and unmerited by you.

This gift was given to you by grace.

Grace by definition means unmerited favour from God.

Grace is a gift given to you even though you don’t deserve it and you didn’t earn it.

The cross of Jesus exalts the grace of God.

That gift is redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Salvation in the Bible has always been a free gift from God.

Every religion has a story to tell. Every religion has a solution to the problem in the world.

The greatest lie in the world, and the lie common to all false religions and cults, is that, by certain works of their own doing, men are able to make themselves acceptable to God.

The greatest error in that belief is its sheer impossibility.

But the greatest evil of that belief is that it robs God of His glory.

In verse 25, we are told that God put Jesus forward as a propitiation or atoning sacrifice by his blood to be received by faith.

And throughout the rest of verses 25-30, we see that faith is repeated numberous of times.

Faith in Jesus is what makes us right before God.

Faith in Jesus should humble us because it is not what we do that saves us (i.e. the law of works). We don’t boast in our redemption and salvation because - in God’s story - it is ultimately His work.

So, whether you are a Jew or Gentile, young or old, male or female, rich or poor, God justifies (or saves) the one who has faith in Jesus.

That’s the story of God’s redemption.

He sent His Son Jesus to be the solution to the sin problem by dying on the cross for sinners and be raised from the dead.

Only Jesus can save.