Faith Alone

We’re continuing our series, called Non-Negotiables, which focuses on 5 key doctrines that were emphasised during the Protestant Reformation, and these remain key doctrines for reformed churches today. Now, it’s probably worth me double-clicking on what it means to be a reformed church because I think that this is often misunderstood. Often, when people hear the term ‘reformed’ they think it means ‘traditional’ or ‘socially conservative’, ‘out-of-date’ or even ‘Euro-centric’! But when the reformers of the 16th Century used the word reformed, they mean what today we would mean by the word renewed. They wanted people and churches to be renewed by the Word of God. And so to be a church in the reformed tradition means that we want to be constantly renewing ourselves by the Spirit, through the Word of God. Being a reformed church actually helps us to better contextualise our faith and ministry practices because we need to keep asking ourselves, in light of what’s going on in the culture, and in view of what previous generations of Christians have said, what does it mean for us to be renewed by the Bible? The disney princess Moana is a good illustration of what it means to be reformed. Moana is a Polynesian princess, but her island is in a state of decay. There’s pressure on her just to maintain the status quo, but with the help of her grandmother, Moana delves into the past. Through going back into her people’s history, she is able to learn things that bring renewal into the present. It’s not that Moana was becoming antiquarian, but she was drawing on the riches of the past in order to bring renewal in the present. She went backwards in order to restore a trajectory that should never have been lost. And that’s what reformed churches do—we constantly go back to the Bible, constantly renewing our faith and ministry practices so that we might more fully conform to the teaching of the Scriptures. Being reformed is about ongoing renewal.

And as a church, our desire is to renew Cape Town. So if we’re going to renew Cape Town—socially, spiritually, culturally—then we are going to need to experience renewal ourselves.

Now the area of renewal that was under focus during the reformation was that of salvation. How can a righteous God be at peace with an unrighteous human? How can an unholy sinner experience reconciliation with a holy God? Simply put, how can I be saved? And that crucial question, with its eternal implications, is what we will be considering today; under three headings: the human dilemma, the divine response, and the only requirement.

The Human Dilemma

Everyone is unrighteous and under the wrath of God

Read . From vv. 19-32, Paul paints a dismal picture of the situation of all human beings who refuse to worship the true God in order to worship counterfeit gods; idols of their own making. God reacts (note the threefold “God gave them over” in vv. 24,26,28) by giving people over to the sins they have chosen; this is an expression of his wrath (v. 18).

Now, it’s possible to read and agree that God’s judgement is just! Yes, those bad people who do those bad things deserve to be under God’s wrath. Those nonconformist, unconventional people! But then Paul writes , and in this chapter he shows us that even polite religious people are just as bad. Now, they may look nice on the outside, but the religious people have a double-barreled problem: judgmental-hypocrisy. Religious moralists judge others but then do the same thing (albeit in a more covert way). A recent example of this is the new book by investigative journalist Jacques Paws, The President’s Keepers. It’s an explosive account of corruption and state capture. Ironically, though, there’s a pirated copy of this book going around! So people, concerned about theft, are reading a stolen version of the book! They’re doing the same thing! Now, of course, not to the same degree but theft is theft is theft. Some sin is overt, and some sin is covert. And in Romans, Paul is telling us that there are two kinds of sinners: sinners who are overt, and sinners who are covert; public sinners and private sinners; people who sin and know it, and people who sin but live in denial. And it is good to know how to recognise these two types of sinners.

Public sinners are easy to recognise because they are the ones swinging from the chandeliers while singing the chorus of “Despacito”! Private sinners are a bit harder to recognise but they do have a characteristic trait that they cannot hide: being judgmental. The hallmark of a private sinner is that he or she is always telling other people that they fall short of the standard; their trademark is criticism. And it’s because they are self-righteous; they are “Extra-Super Holy People”. And the thing about “Extra Super Holy People” is that they have to tell others that they are not “Extra Super Holy” and so they constantly criticise others. So the self-righteous sinner is actually just as destructive as the public sinner because their words and actions destroy relationships and people.

So which are you? Are you more like the public sinner? Are you tempted by sex, drugs and music? If so, you will be helped my meditating on (read). Or are you more like the private sinner, are you an “extra super holy” person? Do other people feel like you are constantly criticising them? If so, you will be helped my reflecting on . All of us would do well to ponder (read).

Paul’s point in the first section of Romans is to help us see that we are all sinners under God’s righteous wrath. But the problem goes even deeper. Because, in addition to us all being sinners, we’re also unable to stop God being angry with us. We’re unable to appease His wrath. Even our efforts at being good end up in self-righteousness, and add to God’s anger at us. We’re all under God’s wrath, public sinners and private sinners alike, and we cannot do anything to stop it or change it.

Not the labor of my hands Can fulfill Thy law’s demands; Could my zeal no respite know, Could my tears forever flow, All for sin could not atone; Thou must save, and Thou alone.

Illustration: being a hostel boy. Within the hostel, there were a variety of social cliques. It was a very sophisticated sociological ecosystem. We had our jocks, we had our nerds, we had groups of friends that had all come from the same junior school or town, whatever. It was a complex social ecosystem. But, at the end of the day, a hostel boy was a hostel boy. And when you were out on the school grounds, you always had each other’s backs. Because we were fundamentally united as hostel boys. And Paul is telling us: there are different kinds of sinners. Big sinners and small sinners, public sinners and private sinners, flamboyant sinners and sanctimonious sinners—but at the end of the day, they’re all sinners! And we’re sinners under the wrath of a righteous God.

It is like the worst kind of Day Zero imaginable. As you know, Day Zero refers to the day that Cape Town will run out of water. And so we’re starting to get public broadcast messages from the Mayor. In the one I heard this week, Patricia De Lille told us that the City is doing everything it can to save water and bring more water online. She also said that citizens need to do everything they can to save water. And if we all do our best, and if we all get to under 87 liters a day, then we might just avoid Day Zero. But in Romans, the apostle Paul is telling us that there is another Day Zero coming. A day of judgement. And it doesn’t matter how good you’ve been because your good will never be good enough for God. Our goodness always turns into pride and hypocrisy. And using your pseudo-righteousness to bargain with God just increases His wrath. You cannot stop this Day Zero from coming. Nothing you do can prevent its arrival; as sinners, we are under God’s wrath. The situation is humanly irreparable.

Let me try to illustrate

If you have correctly understood the first three chapters of Romans, you will be able to say that: God is rightly angry with all people. It is right for God to be very angry with the unrighteousness of sinners. Furthermore, I cannot stop God from being angry with me. Nothing I do can prevent God from being very angry about my unrighteousness. It doesn’t matter how often I attend church, how regularly I read my Bible, or how much money I give to the poor. In our natural condition, we are all under the righteous anger of God. And we cannot do anything about it. That is the human dilemma.

If you have correctly understood the first three chapters of Romans, you will be able to say that: God is rightly angry with all people. It is right for God to be very angry with the unrighteousness of sinners. In fact, God would be unrighteous if he wasn’t. Furthermore, I cannot stop God from being angry with me. Nothing I do can prevent God from being very angry about my unrighteousness. It doesn’t matter how often I attend church, how regularly I read my Bible, or how much money I give to the poor. In my natural condition, I am under the righteous anger of God.

The Divine Response

The human dilemma is that we are unrighteous and under wrath.. But there is a divine response to this human dilemma. Amazingly, the righteous God has made a righteous way for unrighteous sinners to be declared righteous. So how did God do this? Well, this glorious passage unpacks how God did this by using three important terms.

Justified (law court)

Read 3:21-24. Sinners are “justified freely by his grace”. In other words, when we place our trust in Jesus, we are ‘declared righteous’ by God. We are made right with God. This refers not to a moral change but to a change in legal standing before God. This is the image of the law-court, and in God’s courtroom we are declared righteous. We were unrighteous, we could rightly be condemned. But now we are declared righteous. This righteous declaration comes freely by grace, and is therefore not connected to anything we do. We are justified by faith.

The debate at the time of the reformation went something like this: “God will not deny grace to those who do their best”; God will not condemn you if you try your hardest. That’s a sentiment that’s still with us today. But the problem Luther had, and the problem any thoughtful person should have is, “how do I know that my best is good enough?” Of course you don’t know. And the Bible doesn’t want you to have this lack of clarity. So this passage is crystal clear: you are justified, verse 24, by grace (read verse 28 [‘alone’—Luther]). Apart from any moral exertion, God declares believers righteous. He bestows a righteous standing on you, without you lifting a finger.

It is true that we deserve condemntation.

And God can do this, God can declare sinners righteous, in a righteous way, because He condemned Jesus. Because Jesus was condemned, because God the Father condemned sin in Jesus, you can be justified.

This leads us to our second image, we move from the courtroom to the marketplace, from justification to redemption.

Redemption (marketplace)

Read 3:24. Redemption is a marketplace word that, in the culture at the time, meant to purchase something; to buy something back; to redeem something is to ransom it. We see this in the OT multiple times: it was used to talk about freeing property, freeing animals, freeing individuals, and even freeing the nation. And if we had the time to study all of these instances, we would see that redemption always involves ransom. Redemption always requires the payment of something. The image here is that we are enslaved, and we need to be ransomed. We are in the bondage of sin, and the only ransom is the life of Jesus. Jesus, we are told, came as a ransom for all (). In Jesus tells us that he came to give his life as a ransom for many. In other words, Jesus becomes our substitute. He takes our place. He pays our debt. Jesus bought us back with his blood. He paid for you with his very life. Your debt is paid, in full, by the precious blood that Jesus spilled. The curse of sin has no hold on you, the Son has set you free and you are free indeed!

). In Jesus tells us that he came to give his life as a ransom for many. In other words, Jesus becomes our substitute. He takes our place. He pays our debt. Jesus bought us back with his blood. He paid for you with his very life. Your debt is paid, in full, by the precious blood that Jesus spilled. The curse of sin has no hold on you, the Son has set you free and you are free indeed!

You are justified, not condemned. You are set free, not enslaved. How was this all possible? Paul now gives us the deepest answer to that question. In a word, the reason is propitiation.

Propitiation (temple)

Verse 25a. The phrase “sacrifice of atonement” (or if you have the ESV you’ll actually see the word “propitiation”) brings us from the marketplace to the temple altar. The word “propitiation” is archaic but worth using because it implies two vitally important truths. Firstly, propitiation implies the diverting of wrath. There is righteous anger that needs to be appeased, a just judgement that needs to be satisfied. To use language of the courtroom and marketplace, sin must be condemned and payment must be made. God cannot, does not, will not, ever ignore sin and evil. It must be punished. Holy wrath must be appeased and satisfied; propitiation includes the concept of satisfaction for sin. God’s wrath must be averted! Secondly, propitiation here is something done by God (not humanity). In various other religions, people offer sacrifices in a desire to appease God; in Christianity, God presents Christ as a sacrifice of atonement. God averts his wrath by sacrificing his Son. Jesus experienced the full weight of God’s fierce anger at human sin and evil.

“It is God himself who in holy wrath needs to be propitiated, God himself who in holy love undertook to do the propitiating, and God himself who in the person of his Son died for the propitiation of our sins. Thus God took his own loving initiative to appease his own righteous anger by bearing it in his own self in his own Son when he took our place and died for us.” John Stott

This was God’s righteous way of declaring the unrighteous righteous. God punishes sin, and God justifies the sinner. Verse 26: God did this to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Remarkably, the righteous God has made a righteous way for unrighteous sinners to be declared righteous.

An old hymn captures the beauty and glory of this so well:

On the mount of crucifixion, Fountains opened deep and wide; Through the floodgates of God’s mercy Flowed a vast and gracious tide. Grace and love, like mighty rivers, Poured incessant from above. And Heav’n’s peace and perfect justice Kissed a guilty world in love.

God’s righteous response to human unrighteousness is to justify the condemned, to liberate the enslaved, and to atone for the guilty. Have you realised that Jesus is not primarily your good example? Jesus is primarily your Saviour; your sin-bearer. If you were saved by a good moral performance, then you probably would need a good example to learn from. But we’re saved by Jesus’ moral record, and so we look to him not as our example but as our Saviour, substitute. We didn’t do anything—it was all Jesus; he got condemned in our place for our justification, he was ransomed for our redemption, he became our sacrifice of atonement. God’s response to the human dilemma was Jesus.

We didn’t do anything—it was all Jesus; he got condemned in our place for our justification, he was ransomed for our redemption, he became our sacrifice of atonement. God’s response to the human dilemma was Jesus.

Have you realised that Jesus is not primarily your good example? Jesus is primarily your substitute; your sin-bearer. If you were saved by a good moral performance, then you probably would need a good example to learn from. But we’re saved by Jesus’ moral record, and so we look to him not as our example but as our subsititute.

So what should we do? How should we respond?

The Only Requirement

Faith

Read 3:22, 25b, 26. We don’t earn our righteousness, we receive it by faith. We don’t try our best to be righteous and then get rewarded; we place our trust in the Righteous One. We are not saved by working hard but through faith. Faith is, simply, reliance upon God. Faith is trust in God; it means abandoning all trust in one’s own resources and casting oneself completely on the mercy of God. Faith means laying hold on the promises of God in Christ. Faith means that God doesn’t reward those who try their best, he justifies the ungodly!

[1] Nijay K. Gupta, “Faith,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).

[2] L. L. Morris, “Faith,” ed. D. R. W. Wood et al., New Bible Dictionary (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 360.

But this isn’t probably new to many of us so I want to help you think about whether you really are trusting in Jesus because living by faith should produce obvious changes in your life. Faith produces fruit, and the apostle Paul immediately gives us two implications of being justified by faith. He says, firstly, that faith excludes boasting and, secondly, that faith excludes racism.

Faith excludes boasting

Read 3:27-28. Basically, because you cannot rely on your performance as the basis of God’s love for you, you cannot boast about yourself. What do you have to boast about? You did not contribute at all to your salvation! Because you’re saved by faith alone, we have absolutely no reason to ever be proud, smug or self-righteous. If anyone in the world has intellectual and existential reasons to be humble, it is the Christian because we believe that we are so bad that God himself had to come and die for us! Faith alone means no pride, no boasting, no superiority complex!

So it’s good to ask ourselves: do I boast? Do I brag about how clever or holy or busy I am for God? Do I want other people to notice how spiritual I am? Do I need to justify myself in the eyes of others? Do I need to prove to others that I am really something? Or can I be content, knowing that I am justified by faith? So often, we have these internal voices shouting: “Notice me! Applaud me! Tell me I am significant!” And that’s really a sign that you aren’t living by faith enough. When you believe that you are justified by faith alone, you stop caring about whether others notice you, or applaud you, or praise you. You start to experience genuine humility. Faith excludes boasting.

Faith excludes racism

Read 3:29-30. If all people have sinned and if all people can be justified by faith, then it follows that God isn’t just the God of the Jews but the God of all people. And it also means that we are siblings in the same spiritual family. So how could I ever be better than someone else? You see, there’s often a connection between nationalism and legalism. Racism is usually a form of works-righteousness. The racist thinks that because they belong to a certain people group, they are somehow inherently more righteous. But the gospel undercuts that; we know that we’re all justified only by faith in Jesus; faith excludes racism.

So, again, can I ask you: do you struggle with racism? If so, one of your problems is a failure to really understand the Gospel. A racist is a person who thinks their ethnicity makes them better; that their ethnicity can be a basis for boasting before God; but the Gospel tells us that none of us can boast before God, that we all have fallen short of His standard and we all need to access His grace by faith.

Genuine faith excludes boasting, and genuine faith excludes racism. I really want to emphasise how the fruit of faith is humility and inclusivity. Because we can easily say that we are saved by faith alone and yet these everyday patterns of our lives remain unchanged. This truth, that we’re saved by faith alone, should make you both humble and inclusive.

Conclusion: The Roman poet Horace, laying down some guide-lines for writers of tragedies in his day, criticizes those who resort too readily to the device of a "God solution” to solve the knotty problems which have developed in the course of the plot. ‘Do not bring a god on to the stage’, he says, ‘unless the problem is one that deserves a god to solve it’ Well, the forgiveness of sins is a problem which needs God to solve it. Sinful humanity cannot solve it, though we desperately need a solution to it: We are unrighteous and under God’s wrath. But what Paul tells us here is that the problem has been worthily solved by the grace of God, who has presented Christ as the solution. All that is required of sinful men and women is that they should embrace by faith what God’s grace has provided. God has graciously provided Jesus for our justification. Let’s place our faith in Him. And to the degree that we place our trust in Him, to that degree will we experience personal humility and relational inclusivity.