How God Justifies by Faith

PRAY & INTRO: Are you ready today for some deep theological truth that will rock your world and make you see God more clearly and therefore love and worship Him more fully? Are you ready for God to sharpen your affections and command your allegiance, such that you will joyfully submit to him and eagerly obey his will?

That may sound like quite a setup, but this text of Scripture, and the God who authored it, deserves nothing less. I have complete confidence in the power of God’s word through the Holy Spirit, that his own truth in Romans 3:21-26, which is the fulcrum of Paul’s letter and which explains the very heart of the gospel and God’s eternal plan of salvation, can pierce your mind and heart and obedience in new ways if you will strive to understand its meaning and wholeheartedly submit to it.

Romans 3:21–26 ESV

21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

In verses 21-24, we emphasized that this teaching from Paul is absolutely essential to a right understanding of the gospel and a right response to God.

“But now” marks a turn in Paul’s argument and a paramount revelation in God’s saving plan. (21)

Paul here begins his explanation that justification (being acquitted and placed in right standing with God) is only possible by faith (not by works of the law), and it is a gift of God’s grace, accomplished by the Lord Jesus.

God’s saving righteousness is available through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. (22a)

Just as all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, so any who put their faith in Jesus are justified by God’s grace as a gift. (22b-24a)

Being righteous is not something we can merit (or earn), nor is the means or access to this God-given righteousness different for any people group over another. All are sinners who fall short of giving God the glory he deserves, and any of those same sinners can be justified in God’s sight only by faith in the Lord Jesus and not by works. This is a free gift of God’s grace, to be received by faith.

Justification by Faith: Paradigm-Shifting Truth

This teaching from Paul that justification is by faith alone and not by works is essential to understanding Paul’s letter to the Romans, and it is essential to our grasp of the gospel itself and to the central theme of God’s self-revelation in his Scriptures.

Do you grasp that Jesus is promise-fulfilling, history-changing, worldview-shaping, and life-altering?

Now at the end of v. 24, the Apostle’s ongoing flow of thought turns to how Christ accomplished what was needed on our behalf (by God’s grace as a gift), that we might receive his righteousness by faith, this justification of acquitting our sin and granting us freedom in Christ’s righteousness.

In Christ, God pays the price to redeem his people, securing their deliverance from slavery to sin. (24b)

We noted that this redemption has two key points of contact for the Apostle Paul. A key emphasis of redemption reaches back in connection to God freeing his chosen people group (based on his choosing of Abraham and covenant promises to him)… freeing this people group from slavery and bringing them up out of Egypt to go on and establish them in the promised land. And another emphasis of redemption is on the payment of a ransom price for a slave to be set free (a concept pronounced in the Roman empire of Paul’s own day), which is a cost that God himself absorbs (or pays) through the willing sacrificial atonement of the Lord Jesus. (This concept is more fully developed in v. 25, to which we come now momentarily.)

But with this emphasis on redemption, the apostle Paul here teaches in brief the theme that is picked up by the author of Hebrews as his overarching point: Jesus has secured for us (for all who believe) a better redemption from our slavery to sin, leading to a better exodus, and he has enacted a better covenant by his once-for-all sacrifice that is truly sufficient to atone for sin. And he is a better prophet, priest, and king, who is leading us to our eternal rest with God, the better and perfect promised land in the presence of the Triune God. (Again, do you grasp how monumental this is?)

As we focus on verses 25-26 [title slide again], Paul fills out even more just how Christ’s sacrifice fully satisfies God’s justice, thereby enabling God to graciously justify undeserving sinners by faith while still remaining just (righteous).

Romans 3:25 ESV

25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

When Paul says, “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood” (or as a mercy seat, or an atonement cover), Paul draws back on the imagery of the ark of the covenant that God instructed Moses to have made, that would go in the holy of holies (innermost sanctuary) in the tabernacle and eventually in the temple. That ark (or chest) held the stone tablets of the law (the 10 commandments in our vernacular), a golden pot of manna, and Aaron’s staff that God had caused to sprout and produce almonds. (That’s a story you can review in Numbers 17… but not right now! Stay with me.)

God had them make a golden cover for this chest, with two cherubim on that lid facing each other and with wings overshadowing the cover. The ark was a symbolic representation of a throne for God, and his presence would come and rest on it in a cloud (just as a visible representation, for their benefit). Now that lid was termed the propitiatory, or mercy seat, or place of atonement, because (by God’s own instruction) once a year the high priest would enter this holy of holies on the Day of Atonement to sprinkle the life-blood of a sacrificed animal, to symbolize a temporary atonement for the people’s sins before God that would satisfy his righteous wrath, because God’s justice is perfect.

But if God’s justice is perfect, then surely this yearly ritual (of God’s own design) was insufficient and incomplete, and that the blood of bulls and goats could not really satisfy God’s justice in the ultimate sense. Surely this is but a placeholder and a shadow for something greater that God was preparing. “This was to show God’s righteousness” (our text says in v. 25) “because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” In other words, he hadn’t yet dealt with those sins completely, but had patiently passed over them for the time being, through this other arrangement he made, which also anticipated a greater and perfect atonement still needed.

That’s exactly what Paul is getting at: God has made Jesus to be the true propitiatory (place of atonement, mercy seat) “by his blood” … in other words, by his atoning death, which is what blood represents—giving his life.

God has made Jesus to be the true propitiatory (place of atonement, mercy seat) by his atoning death, which is accessed through faith. In Christ’s sacrifice God displays his perfect righteousness, completing the true payment of sins previously passed over. (v. 25)

Previous generations of Jews would have put their faith in God’s promise of salvation, obediently participating in these temporary atoning sacrifices, not fully knowing that the true atonement that could achieve their salvation was still to come, at the cross of Christ. We now know, Paul is saying, that this is accomplished by the Lord Jesus, and must receive it by faith. Like previous generations, we must place believe God by faith in his promise of salvation… only now God has more fully revealed the substance of the previous shadows. Now we know that God’s promise of salvation is more fully fulfilled in the Lord Jesus and what he accomplished, so by faith in Jesus we demonstrate that we believe the he is God’s promise of salvation.

For many of us, the faith part is not the part of this verse where we get hung up. It’s the central explanation from Paul of what Christ does on our behalf that creates intellectual conflict:

God’s justice and righteous wrath is satisfied by the payment of a perfectly righteous life given on behalf of us sinners, and his righteousness now allows us access to living in God’s presence… without fear of wrath against our sin.

As we said, Hebrews develops these themes further and from even more angles, and you can see that especially in Hebrews 9 & 10. But here in Romans 3:25, we have some modern arguments claiming that this should be translated only as expiation (wiping away sin) and not propitiation (satisfying righteous anger), although thankfully you will still find propitiation or mercy seat or place of atonement in most of your good English translations. This is right and necessary, because the single word for this in the Hebrew and Greek and even Latin (Vulgate, propitiatorium) “are all connected with the idea of propitiation.” (The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church) Or as the Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible states, “The Hebrew word for which “mercy seat” is the translation is technically best rendered as “propitiatory,” a term denoting the removal of wrath by the offering of a gift.”

Although the concept of expiation of sin through Christ also exists in NT theology (and may be hinted at here as well), the point is that this specific word and concept being propitiation is not only the best translation of what the object (covering) and adjective are getting at—propitiatory—but it is clearly Paul’s thrust in Romans, that God’s just and righteous character burns with wrath against our unrighteousness. Paul set this train in motion at Rom 1:18 with…

Romans 1:18 ESV

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

And at Rom 5:9 Paul will say…

Romans 5:9 ESV

9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.

To get there then, here at Rom 3:25 Paul says that God has publicly made Jesus the propitiatory which can truly satisfy God’s necessary and righteous anger against sin, because God is righteous. And this justification can only be appropriated by faith and not by works. Even the previous sacrifices couldn’t truly justify, but were placeholders for this justification made possible through the Messiah, the Lord Jesus.

No matter how we translate this word, we must not take away the propitiatory aspect of the atonement intended in Paul’s meaning. Satisfaction of God’s wrath (fully and completely) is the right concept here. Wanting to change it and soften it stems from our own faulty thinking that appeasing God’s wrath is somehow problematic with God’s character. So let me address now an application that we must make as we seek to understand God as he presents himself.

Our emotionally charged intellectual struggle with Christ satisfying God’s wrath stems from our limited understanding and acceptance of God’s triunity and the complementarity of his perfections.

The Holy God is righteous in his being and righteous in all his ways. It is a good thing for God to be angry with sin. If God were not angry with sin, he would not be the One True God—truly holy, truly just, truly righteous. … even truly loving. It would be unloving of God to leave us to our wickedness when he knows there is something far better, for our own good and his glory. 

Contemporary complaints against Christ’s atoning sacrifice satisfying God’s righteous wrath concerning sin, calling it cosmic child abuse, are incredibly short-sighted and ignorant of this deeper understanding of God. The activity of the Triune God at the cross is in fact the supreme display of God’s love within the Godhead, and his love for his creatures.

So too, God knows that the supreme means to elevate the Son and show forth his glory is through this willing suffering and sacrifice. The Triune God decreed this plan knowing the full details and the completed outcome. The Son was not coerced into doing something terrible that he did not desire to do, nor was the Father coerced into letting his Son suffer thus. Instead, the Son willingly became man, and even though in true human form it was sincerely difficult to fulfill this plan through suffering, he entrusted himself to the Father and by the Spirit he completed this redemptive act, knowing it was to glorify the Father, that the Father would also glorify him.

You see that our gripes against God being God are short-sighted and deeply affected by our limited comprehension of God and of all things. But the better we come to know and embrace the God who reveals himself in the Scriptures, and who reveals himself supremely in the Lord Jesus Christ, the better we understand the true holiness and true worth and true power and true love of the One True God.

It is really in this same vein that Paul continues in v. 26, where his emphasis is to conclude, that…

Through Christ’s atoning sacrifice (at the present time), God proves his perfect justice against sin and makes possible the justification of those who have faith in Jesus. (v. 26)

Through the sacrificial death of Jesus, God can justify sinners by faith while he remains perfectly just.

Paul repeats, “This was to demonstrate his righteousness,” this time adding, “at the present time.” What Paul is saying is that at the present time God has shown his complete righteousness, that his passing over of former sins was merciful but yes also planned because they would ultimately be paid for at the cross. God’s passing over of former sins could create the perception that he is not perfectly just if he failed to punish sins with the wrath they deserve. But in God’s plan he had already solved this dilemma, and in his salvation historical timeline, Christ’s sacrificial death on behalf of all of God’s people is the answer. God’s righteousness, here understood particularly as his perfect justice, is met through the sacrificial atonement of Christ on the cross.

There is no rift in God’s character, as if one attribute of his triumphs over another—like his mercy trumps his justice. For God to acquit the guilty is indeed merciful, but to do so without payment creates a problem of injustice. God, who is completely righteous, cannot be unjust. Therefore, God has both satisfied his justice and provided for the forgiveness and justification of sinners through the perfect payment of Christ, when he took all our sin upon himself and suffered the righteous wrath of God toward sin. Or as the Holy Spirit says through the Apostle Peter, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.” (1 Pet 3:18a)

The Triune God himself created a means to justify saving sinners by his grace, through the Son becoming man and becoming a perfectly righteous sacrifice to atone for sin. And when we begin to realize that God’s grace and mercy comes at such a high price to God himself, we finally begin to see the true depth and purity of that grace.

And once again, Paul emphasizes that it is through this atonement of Jesus that God justifies (declares righteous) “the one who has faith in Jesus.” What is the only way to be right with God? Faith in Jesus, who is God’s promise of salvation.

You see, Paul will go on to show (in ch. 4) that justification, being “counted as righteous,” has always been by faith in God and in his promise, and not by some merit of works. And even though previous OT believers did not know the precise details of how God would fulfill his promise, they were saved by faith in the spoken promise of God to bring about salvation. How that salvation was ultimately accomplished is the same for them as for us—the plan of God through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Conclusion:

We cannot soften or subdue the significance of the cross of Christ, because it is central to our saving faith, central to our understanding and acceptance of the very character and activity of God, and consequently central to the right worship of God.

This is all so critical because we must not belittle the true righteousness of God, nor the severity of our sin, nor the complete and essential work of Christ by his atoning death and vindicating resurrection.

The atonement Christ accomplished at the cross is central to the gospel (what the good news actually is) and central to the very character and activity of God. Our understanding and our appreciation (and therefore our worship) are greatly depleted by seeking to do away with atonement and propitiation, or even trying to soften them to appease our own sin-tainted sensibilities. Would we know God as he truly is, or as something of our own making, which is the very definition of idolatry, which God rightly hates? Don’t we long to have fuller understanding and deeper appreciation of the truth about God, in order that we may worship him as he truly is?

[Any further application]

PRAY

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