A Savior Just For Me: The Rule-Breaking Messiah

Passage: Romans 5:6-11

Main Idea: Justification is God’s public declaration of the believer’s being in the right.

Message Goal: Seek the Savior that justifies!

Introduction

GI’ve the amount of time I have invested teaching, I feel good about preaching this message to you knowing you are mature enough to handle the things that will be said. Our text is deeply rooted in Paul’s message about justification. Justification is one’s judicial acceptance by God as not guilty because his sins are not counted against him.

The Preacher’s Notebook: The Collected Quotes, Illustrations, and Prayers of John Stott The Reformers’ View of Justification

“Justification was not in [the Reformers’] view, any more than in the Apostle’s, the simple setting aside of the claim of the law upon the sinner, but was the declaration that the claim had been satisfied, and that the law had no more any charge to bring against him.”

The Preacher’s Notebook: The Collected Quotes, Illustrations, and Prayers of John Stott Richard Hooker on Justification

“God doth justify the believing man, yet not for the worthiness of his belief, but for His worthiness who is believed.”

SOURCE: Richard Hooker, Definition of Justification, ch. XXXIII.

The Preacher’s Notebook: The Collected Quotes, Illustrations, and Prayers of John Stott Luther’s Journey toward Justification by Faith

Luther was brought up, at home and school, in the fear of God, death, judgment, and hell. So was everyone else in medieval Christendom. Because [the] smartest way to gain heaven was to become a monk, in 1505 aged twenty-one, Luther entered the Augustinian cloister at Erfurt. He prayed seven times a day, fasted sometimes three days on end, and adopted other extreme austerities.

Later: “I was a good monk.… If ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it was I” (p. 45). Even his crawling up [the] twenty-eight steps of Scala Sancta in Rome in 1510, on [his] hands and knees, brought him no relief. “Luther probed every resource of contemporary Catholicism for assuaging the anguish of a spirit alienated from God” (p. 54). But nothing pacified his tormented conscience until [he was] appointed professor of Bible at [the] University of Wittenberg and from 1513–1516 he studied and expounded first Psalms, then Paul’s Epistle to the Romans.

From Psalm 22 Luther learned that Jesus was not only [a] terrifying Judge but [a] most merciful savior. [He was] godforsaken on [the] cross because of our sins. And from Romans 1 he learned that God’s “righteousness” was not his justice punishing sinners but his justification, pronouncing them righteous, and that by faith alone.

SOURCE: Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther (Hodder and Stoughton, 1951).

The believer learns to give their wretched souls to the one who can truly help them—knowing they can’t help themselves.

The Preacher’s Notebook: The Collected Quotes, Illustrations, and Prayers of John Stott “Your Best Is to Get Me”

[In a] weaving factory, [a] new and inexperienced hand managed [to] get his machine into [a] terrible tangle. Afraid [to] tell [the] foreman, [he] tried hard [to] unravel it, but [it] only got worse. In desperation [he] fetched [the] foreman [and told him], “I did my best.” [The foreman responded, “Your best is to get me.”

We chose this text, because we want to convey the extent to which Jesus went to save us and make us friends with God. Therefore, we want to examine the life of Jesus to see how Jesus maintained a life of justification.

Opposing Bad Shepherds

Jesus denounced the religious rulers because they heaped an impossible burden on ordinary people like you and me.  To even attempt to allow all the rules you would have to devote your life, become a pharisee.  The problem was that in keeping to the letter of the law they omitted to do more important things like caring for other people and promoting justice and mercy.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices – mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law – justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.”(Matthew 23:23 NIV)

In denouncing the religious rulers he deliberately set himself against them so he could teach, and demonstrate a better way.

Reaching the Unclean

A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”  Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately he was cleansed of his leprosy. (Matthew 8:2-3 NIV)

According to Jewish law, if a person touched someone who was leprous, they would become unclean. Why did Jesus touch this leper?  Jesus realised that this man’s needs were emotional as well as physical.   This man mattered far more than rules and he needed touching! Jesus didn’t disobey rules to be rebellious but to demonstrate that love makes the rule redundant.

Healing the Sick

The law said that for one day each week, no work should be done.  This was basically good because it avoided employers exploiting their workers.  But the rules and traditions had made the law difficult to keep.  Jesus pointed out that they were quite willing to save an animal on the sabbath, therefore it was quite reasonable to heal somebody on that day.  This really infuriated the religious rulers who sought to kill him.

And a man with a shriveled hand was there. Looking for a reason to bring charges against Jesus, they asked him, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” He said to them, “If any of you has a sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will you not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” Then he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus. (Matthew 12: 11-13)

Bringing balance to the Religious Life

Religious rules, carried to the extreme, can just be plain silly.  To equate picking a few grains of corn with the act of reaping a harvest is ridiculous.  The sabbath day, and the principle of not working that day, was instituted by God for man’s benefit.  The religious teachers had tried to define “work” to the nth degree.  Rules dictated exactly what you could and couldn’t do, but Jesus was quite content to let his disciples break with rules and traditions to satisfy their hunger.

One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grain fields, and as his disciples walked along, they began to pick some heads of grain. The Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”  —  Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. (Mark 2:23-24, 27 NIV)

Removing the Marginalization of Women

In Jesus’s day it wasn’t considered right for a man to speak to a woman who was a stranger and certainly not one of doubtful character and of another ethic race.  But again, Jesus wasn’t going to be tied down to convention when he met a woman at a well in Samaria.  They had quite a discussion which resulted in many of that town believing in him as ‘the Savior of the world’.

Samaritan woman at the well

Adulterous woman

Other Examples

Overturning the money tables at the temple.Eating with “sinners”, people of dubious reputation.Not ritually washing hands before eating.Jesus’ commitment to non-violenceForgiving people’s sins and thus bypassing the temple sacrifices.

A Way of Love

The trouble with laws is that they can only try to do away with negatives.  “Thou shalt not kill”, “Thou shalt not Steal”, etc.  Love is the opposite to law in that it deals with the positives.  You cannot legislate for love or define degrees of love.  You cannot pass a law that forces people to love.  You cannot define degrees of generosity.

Why did Jesus break all these rules?

The old testament law was not possible for man to keep.Religious rules and traditions only placed burdens upon people.Jesus came to abolish the idea of trying to please God through (any) religion.When religious rules get in the way of mercy, compassion and justice they should be overridden.Jesus didn’t break rules to be rebellious, he broke rules to show that people mattered more than rules.

Conclusion

Paul states in Romans 5:11 “11 And not only that, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received this reconciliation.” The NLT replaced the word “boast” with “rejoice.”

The word means to show off verbally.

Be confident in the thing you are boasting of.

Speak loudly.