Romans 3.25b-The Spiritual Death of Jesus Christ on the Cross Demonstrated the Righteousness of God
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Tuesday November 27, 2007
Romans: Romans 3:25b-The Spiritual Death of Jesus Christ Demonstrated the Righteousness of God
Lesson # 103
Please turn in your Bibles to Romans 3:19.
We are currently engaged in a study of the third major section in the book of Romans, which appears in Romans 3:21-5:21.
This section is divided into four parts: (1) Divine righteousness is imputed through faith in Christ (Romans 3:21-26). (2) Divine righteousness is available to both Jew and Gentile (Romans 3:27-31). (3) Justification by Faith: The Example of Abraham (Romans 4:1-23). (4) The Results of Faith (Romans 5:1-21).
We are currently studying the first part and on Sunday morning we studied Romans 3:25, which teaches that God the Father offered publicly at the Cross of Calvary His Son Jesus Christ to sinful mankind as a propitiatory gift and which gift of His Son is appropriated by faith in His Son.
This evening we will study Romans 3:25b, which teaches that the spiritual death of Jesus Christ on the Cross demonstrated the righteousness of God.
Romans 3:19, “Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God.”
Romans 3:20, “Because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.”
Romans 3:21, “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets.”
Romans 3:22, “Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe for there is no distinction.”
Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Romans 3:24, “being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.”
Romans 3:25, “whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed.”
“In His blood” is composed of the preposition en (e)n), “in,” which is followed by the genitive 3rd person masculine singular form of the intensive personal pronoun autos (au)tov$), “His” and the articular dative neuter singular form of the noun haima (ai!ma) (hi-mah), “blood.”
The prepositional phrase “in His blood” depicts the substitutionary spiritual death of Jesus Christ on the cross, which was the payment for our sins.
The blood of Christ does “not” refer to the literal blood of Christ but is part of a “representative” analogy between the physical death of the animal sacrifice in the Mosaic Law and the spiritual death of Christ.
A “real” analogy would be a literal death compared to a literal death, thus, the physical death of the animal would be compared to the physical death of Christ.
However, a “representative” analogy is the physical death of the animal on the altar representing the spiritual death of Christ on the Cross.
“Spiritual death” is separation from God.
Our Lord’s spiritual death is recorded in Matthew 27:46.
Matthew 27:45-46, “Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?’ that is, ‘MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?’”
When the Lord Jesus Christ cried out “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? He was experiencing spiritual death meaning that in His human nature he was separated from His Father.
Our Lord was still alive on the Cross-when He finished making the payment for our sins (John 19:30) and did not bleed to death like the animals in the Mosaic sacrifices.
He didn’t pass out on the Cross-from loss of blood, but in fact was in total command and was totally alert when He said, “It is finished.”
He didn’t die like ordinary men who die involuntarily, but instead, He did voluntarily (John 10:17-18).
The fact that our Lord’s spiritual death was the payment for our sins and not His literal blood is illustrated in Isaiah 53.
Isaiah 53:10-11, “But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities.”
“Anguish of His soul” refers to the intense suffering of our Lord’s human soul as a result of being separated from the Father on the Cross and experiencing spiritual death as a perfect sinless human being.
Notice that Isaiah says that the anguish of the Son’s soul while experiencing spiritual death “satisfied” the Father, which refers to propitiation.
The anguish of the Son’s soul was valued much more than His blood since blood is inanimate but the human soul is created in the image of God.
Our Lord’s loss of fellowship with His Father in His humanity during those last three hours in darkness on the Cross was valued infinitely more by the Father than the shedding of His literal blood or His physical suffering.
This is not to say that the Father did not value the physical suffering of His Son, or His literal blood, which was sinless, He did, but literal blood though sinless cannot resolve man’s problem of separation from God under real spiritual death.
The separation from God of a perfect human being whose soul was never contaminated by sin was the penalty that had to be paid in order to redeem human souls from the curse of Adam’s sin of disobedience and real spiritual death.
Our Lord died spiritually and was separated from His Father during those last three hours on the Cross so that we might never be separated from God for all of eternity due to sin.
The root problem of the human race is spiritual death from which the problem of physical death arises.
Therefore, the Lord Jesus came to deal with the problem that the entire human race had with spiritual death, which could only be dealt with through His own spiritual death.
During the last three hours on the cross, God the Father imputed every sin in human history-past, present and future to the impeccable humanity of Christ in hypostatic union.
Consequently, Christ voluntarily suffered the penalty for this imputation as our Substitute, which was spiritual death.
2 Corinthians 5:21, “He (Christ) who never knew sin experientially (Christ was impeccable), on behalf of us (as our Substitute), was made (the representative of) sin in order that we might become the very righteousness of God in Him.”
Imputation is the function of the justice of God in crediting something to someone for cursing or for blessing.
Sin is any thought, word or action that is contrary to the will and holy character of God and is thus disobedience to the commands and prohibitions of God.
Therefore, during the last three hours on the cross, God the Father credited to the impeccable humanity of Christ something, which did not belong to Him, namely the sins of the entire world-past, present and future!
When the sins of mankind were imputed to the impeccable humanity of Christ, the justice of God took action and pronounced a guilty verdict.
Therefore, when Christ was receiving the imputation of the sins of the world, God was not projecting into the soul of the human nature of Christ the sins of the world, nor does imputation put Him into contact with sin.
This imputation made the Lord a curse for us and set Him up to receive the penalty for our sins, which is spiritual death, i.e. separation from God.
When Christ cried “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?” He was suffering the “consequences” for our sins, which was separation from the Father and was “not” coming into contact with our sins, nor was He becoming literal sin.
Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is (spiritual) death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Christ could not experience or come into contact with sin unless He Himself chose to sin.
You cannot experience or come into contact with sin unless one chooses to sin.
Therefore, there is no way possible that the Lord could come into contact with our sins or experience them.
Furthermore, the imputation of every sin in history to Christ does “not” mean that Christ became literal sin, which is a heretical statement.
If the Lord did become literal sin then He would no longer be qualified to be our perfect Substitute.
Romans 3:25, “whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed.”
“In His blood” is composed of the preposition en (e)n), “in,” which is followed by the genitive 3rd person masculine singular form of the intensive personal pronoun autos (au)tov$), “His” and the articular dative neuter singular form of the noun haima (ai!ma) (hi-mah), “blood.”
The preposition en is a marker of marker of “means” and the noun haima, “blood” functions as a “dative instrumental of means” indicating that Christ’s spiritual death on the Cross was “the means” the Father used to offer His Son publicly as a propitiatory gift to sinful mankind.
Therefore, thus far in our studies of Romans 3:25, we can see that the Father offered publicly His Son Jesus Christ as a propitiatory gift to sinful mankind “by means of” His Son’s spiritual death on the Cross and which gift is appropriated through faith in Jesus Christ .
“This was” is the preposition eis (ei)$) (ice), which is a marker of purpose indicating that the purpose of the Father offering His Son Jesus Christ publicly at the Cross of Calvary as a propitiatory gift to sinful mankind by means of His Son’s spiritual death on the Cross was to demonstrate His righteousness.
“To demonstrate” is the noun endeixis (e&ndeici$) (en-dike-sis), which indicates that the purpose of the Father offering His Son Jesus Christ publicly at the Cross of Calvary as a propitiatory gift to sinful mankind by means of His Son’s spiritual death on the Cross was to “demonstrate” His righteousness.
“His” is the intensive personal pronoun autos (au)tov$), which refers to God the Father since He offered the Son publicly as a propitiatory gift to sinful mankind by means of His Son’s spiritual death on the Cross.
As we have noted many times in our study of the book of Romans, the noun dikaiosune, “righteousness” was used in classical Greek and the LXX (Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible) as a general term for “virtue” and “integrity” of character.
Therefore, in Romans 3:25, the offering of His Son Jesus Christ publicly at the Cross of Calvary as a propitiatory gift to sinful mankind by means of His Son’s spiritual death on the Cross demonstrated the Father’s righteousness in the sense that it manifested His perfect virtue and integrity.
It demonstrated His perfect virtue and integrity since God perfectly adhered to His own perfect holy standards expressed in His Law, which demanded that sin be judged.
Also, it demonstrated His perfect virtue and integrity in the sense that it fulfilled the promises of a Savior that He made to the human race that are recorded in the Old Testament Scriptures who would provide salvation through His sacrificial death.
The noun dikaiosune also refers to the fact that God always does right by man or treats man fairly.
Thus, the offering of His Son Jesus Christ publicly at the Cross of Calvary as a propitiatory gift to sinful mankind demonstrated the Father’s righteousness since although He is holy and man is a sinner, He has been gracious to man by withholding judgment and providing them salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.
The spiritual death of Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary demonstrated God’s righteousness in that it manifested God’s conformity to His own perfect standards that sin must be judged and thus it manifested His hatred of sin.
Also, the spiritual death of Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary demonstrated God’s righteousness in that it manifested that God keeps His promises to mankind that He would provide them salvation through a Savior.
Lastly, it demonstrated the righteousness of God in that it manifested that God always does right by mankind even when mankind is antagonistic to God.
Therefore, the offering of His Son Jesus Christ as a propitiatory gift to sinful mankind by means of His Son’s spiritual death on the Cross was in keeping with the Father’s righteousness, His holy character.
It demonstrated His love for sinners and hatred of sin.