Romans 4.25-Christ Died Because of Our Sins and Was Raised Because of Our Justification
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Sunday March 9, 2008
Romans: Romans 4:25-Christ Died Because of Our Sins and Was Raised Because of Our Justification
Lesson # 140
Please turn in your Bibles to Romans 4:23.
This morning we will complete our study of Romans chapter four by noting verse 25, in which Paul declares that the Lord Jesus Christ died because of our sins and was raised from the dead because of our justification.
Romans 4:23-25, “Now not for his sake only was it written that it was credited to him but for our sake also, to whom it will be credited, as those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.”
“Who” is the relative pronoun hos (o^$) (hos), which refers to the Lord Jesus Christ since it agrees in gender and number with its antecedent, the masculine singular form of the proper name Iesous, “Jesus.”
“He was delivered over” is the verb paradidomi (paradivdwmi) (para-did-omee), which is composed of the preposition para, “alongside” and the verb didomi, “give,” thus the word literally means, “to give alongside.”
In Romans 4;25, the verb paradidomi means, “to deliver a person into the control of someone else, involving either the handing over of a presumably guilty person for punishment by authorities or the handing over of an individual to an enemy who will presumably take undue advantage of the victim.”
If we paraphrase, this definition, we would say that the Father delivered His Son Jesus Christ into the control of the Jewish authorities who were His enemies who took undue advantage of Him and condemned Him to death when He was innocent of any wrongdoing and then in turn delivered Him over to the Roman authorities in order that He might be executed by means of crucifixion.
In Romans 4:25, the verb paradidomi is used of the judicial act of God the Father in delivering His Son Jesus Christ over to the Jewish and Roman authorities in order that He might suffer spiritual and physical death.
His spiritual death dealt with the problem of the sin nature, personal sins, the devil and his cosmic system, sinful mankind’s inability to obey the Law perfectly.
However, his physical death was necessary in order that He might be resurrected from the dead in fulfillment of prophecy, to demonstrate that He was who He claimed to be, the eternal Son of God and to effect our justification.
Matthew 27:45-36, “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?’”
The reason why our Lord’s spiritual death was the payment for our sins is that spiritual death is the root of the problem with members of the human race.
The penalty of sin is spiritual death, which means the inability to experience fellowship with God in time.
Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Spiritual death originated with Adam in the Garden of Eden when he chose to disobey the command of the Lord not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen. 2:16-17), which resulted in Adam and his wife losing fellowship with God (see Genesis 3:6-8).
Adam and his wife did “not” die immediately physically but rather they died immediately spiritually when they disobeyed and this is demonstrated by their actions after their disobedience when they hid themselves from the Lord.
Since then, every human being past, present and future receives the imputation of Adam’s sin in the garden, which makes every human being physically alive but spiritually dead.
Romans 5:12, “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned – when Adam sinned.”
The reason why God did this is found in two passages.
Galatians 3:22, ‘But the Scripture has shut up everyone under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.”
Romans 11:32, “For God has shut up all in (Adam’s) disobedience so that He may show mercy to all.”
In John 19:30, the Lord triumphantly said “It is finished” while He was still physically alive and which statement refers to the payment of our sins, thus indicating that His physical death did not pay for our sins but rather His spiritual death.
Isaiah 53:11 records that the Father was satisfied by the anguish of the soul of the sinless human nature of Christ on the Cross caused by His spiritual death as the payment for the sins of the entire world.
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 which suffering no angel or man will ever be able to identify with since no angel or man has kept themselves experientially sinless.
Isaiah 53:12, “Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors.”
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 3 hours in darkness on the Cross was infinitely more painful to our Lord than the physical suffering He had endured and was enduring.
Our Lord’s loss of fellowship with His Father in His humanity during those last 3 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.
In Romans 4:25, the passive voice of the verb paradidomi means that the Lord Jesus, as the subject, received the action of being delivered over to the Jewish and Roman authorities to suffer spiritual and physical death by the unexpressed agency of God the Father.
Although the Father is not mentioned as the agency in this delivering over of Jesus Christ to the Jewish and Roman authorities for judgment, the Scriptures make clear that He was the member of the Trinity that performed this act.
Paul teaches that the Father delivered over His Son.
Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?”
John 3:16-18, 1 John 4:9 and 14 also teaches that God the Father delivered over His Son to death because of His love for sinners.
1 John 4:9, “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.”
The Father delivered over His Son to be the Savior of the world.
1 John 4:14, “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.”
Peter declares on the day of Pentecost that it was according to the Father’s plan from eternity past and His foreknowledge that His Son was delivered over to sinners to suffer spiritual and physical death (Acts 2:22-24).
It was the will of the Father that His Son might suffer spiritual death as our Substitute in order to rescue us from the cosmic system of Satan (Galatians 1:3-5).
Also the Scriptures teach that the Lord Jesus Christ chose to give Himself up for sinners (Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 5:1-2, 25-27).
Romans 4:25, “He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.”
“Because of our transgressions” is composed of the preposition dia (diaV) (dee-ah), “because of” and the noun paraptoma (paravptwma) (para-ap-to-mah), “transgressions” and the genitive 1st person plural form of the personal pronoun hemeis (h(mei$), “our.”
In Romans 4:25, the noun paraptoma is in the plural and refers to deliberate violations of the will of God, which is revealed by the Spirit in the Word of truth.
The preposition dia marks the believer’s transgression as the cause or reason why the Father delivered over His Son Jesus Christ to the Jewish and Roman authorities in order to suffer spiritual and physical death on the Cross.
“And” is the “adjunctive” use of the conjunction kai (kaiV), which is used to connect the previous judicial act of the Father with an additional one.
The previous judicial act was that the Father delivered over His Son Jesus Christ in order that His Son might propitiate the Father’s holiness that demanded that human sin be judged.
The additional judicial act was that He raised the impeccable human nature of His Son Jesus Christ from the dead in order that the believer might be declared justified through faith in His Son.
Thus, the word introduces an additional act of the Father on behalf of the sinner who exercises faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior.
The conjunction kai also demonstrates the connection between the death of Jesus Christ and His resurrection.
The resurrection provided evidence that God the Father had indeed accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross as the propitiation of the sins of the entire human race-past, present and future.
Therefore, the Father could maintain His perfect integrity when He declared the sinner justified through faith in Jesus Christ.
Romans 4:25, “He who was delivered over because of our transgressions, and was raised because of our justification.”
“Because of our justification” is composed of the preposition dia (diaV) (dee-ah), “because of” and the noun dikaiosis (dikaivwsi$) (dik-ah-yo-sis), “justification” and the personal pronoun hemeis (h(mei$), “our.”
In Romans 4:25, the noun dikaiosis means, “justification,” which by way of definition, is a judicial act of God whereby He declares a person to be righteous as a result of crediting or imputing to that person His righteousness the moment they exercised faith in His Son Jesus Christ.
Consequently, God accepts that person and enters that person into a relationship with Himself since they now possess His righteousness.
The mechanics of justification are as follows: (1) God condemns the sinner, which qualifies them to receive His grace. (2) The sinner believes in Jesus Christ as His Savior. (3) God imputes or credits Christ’s righteousness to the believer. (4) God declares that person as righteous as a result of acknowledging His Son’s righteousness in that person.
Romans 3:24 teaches that justification is a gift of God’s grace and is made possible by the voluntary, substitutionary spiritual death of Jesus Christ on the Cross.
Romans 3:23-24, “For each and every person has sinned consequently, they are always failing to measure up to the glory originating from God with the result that they might, as an eternal spiritual truth, be undeservedly justified based upon His grace by means of the redemption, which is by means of the spiritual death of Christ who is Jesus.”
The Scriptures teach that the only way that a member of the human race can ever be declared righteous by God is through receiving the gift of divine righteousness by grace through faith alone in Christ alone.
Galatians 2:16, “nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified.”
In Romans 4:25, the preposition dia marks the believer’s justification as the cause or reason why the Father raised His Son Jesus Christ from the dead.
Christ’s spiritual and physical death are meaningless if He isn’t raised from the dead since His resurrection demonstrates who He claimed to be all along, the Son of God (See Romans 1:3-4).
Therefore, since He has been raised from the dead demonstrating He is the incarnate Son of God, His command to believe on Him for eternal salvation must be obeyed.
Furthermore, since He has been raised from the dead, without compromising His perfect integrity, the Father can declare the sinner justified who exercises faith in His Son.