Romans 9:30-33 "The Pursuit of Righteousness"

Introduction:

Salvation is truly a miracle that is initiated by the sovereign grace of God. To stop and really reflect on this truth and to see God at work in your own heart is truly a humbling reality.

God didn’t initiate our salvation Christian because we were good. We all should know better than this. Our own hearts condemn us even though we may hide it well before others.

The biblical doctrine of sin reminds us that we are spiritually dead in our sins and every aspect of our being has been tainted by sin.

We all fell in Adam and our sinful nature has brought about the imprisonment of our wills and as a result we are slaves to our sin. Everyone is, Jew and Gentile both have the exact same problem.

This is why Isaiah 64:6 tells us: “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”

This is true for all of humanity and therefore man’s dilemma is Universal. Everyone lacks in and of themselves the righteousness that God requires to be counted as righteous before Him.

The dilemma is Universal but the human initiated pursuit of righteousness is a fools errand and it always comes up short in the end.

This is why we see here in our text that the Apostle Paul sets the gospel transformed Gentiles and the law pursuing Jews in contrast so that he can make a distinction between them. And then he uses that distinction as a way of emphasizing the righteousness of God in Christ as a basis of the believer’s standing before God. Look back at your text to verses 30-31:

I. The Distinction (30-31).

Notice that he says that Gentiles did not pursue righteousness but they attained it by faith (30).

Gospel transformed Gentiles who were outside the ethnic identity of Israel have attained righteousness by faith in Christ alone by God’s work of sovereign grace.

That word attained literally means to “make something your own” (BAGD). And in this case it is a righteousness that is by faith (an alien righteousness).

Then he makes a contrast with the law pursuing Jews who attempted to earn a righteous status through obedience to the law.

He points out that, that Israel who pursued righteousness by obedience to the law did not succeed in reaching that law (31).

They could never fulfill the demands of that law. Why would God have law commands if God knew man would never be able to be righteous through law obedience? Or we may want to ask another set of questions from a different angle.

Why in the end would pursuing righteousness through the law not be a valid pursuit of satisfying the righteous standards of the holiness of God? Why would it be so spiritually detrimental for fallen men and women to pursue? Look back at your text to verses 32-33:

II. The Detriment (32-33).

Because it is a righteousness that is not not pursued by faith. Instead it is the prideful attempt to establish a perceived self-righteousness before God. This is nothing more than expression of human vanity. (Marriage)

And it is an offense to God because it denies His standard of righteousness while insisting on your own standard as the means of salvation. It is an attempt to obligate God to abide by something other than His eternal decree of redemption in and through Christ alone.

Charles Spurgeon said: “The greatest enemy to human souls is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation”

This is why fallen man creates religions that are based on good works. It is also the basis by which men tend to measure one another in a system of moral relativism.

Not hard to find people that are good in this sense from any of the world religions. The problem is that what God calls righteousness is infinitely above what humans perceive to be righteous. Fallen man only calls something righteous if it falls into the upper tier of the moral category of human perception.

I love a good hot dog made Chicago style with the mustard, relish, onions, peppers and all the other fixins. I know some mothers don’t let their kids eat them but growing up when I was a kid everyone ate hot dogs.

But recently I watched one of those YouTube videos where they took a hot dog and put it under the microscope. And you wouldn’t believe all the creatures living inside a hot dog. And they talked about some of the kinds of meat that are in a hot dog.

I mean you can’t tell by just looking at a hot dog fixed up with all the Chicago fixins on it. We see hot dogs at the superficial and practical level not the microscopic level.

Fallen man sees his sin the same way. He measures it from what he sees and perceives at the practical and experiential level as relative to himself. God sees our sin from the microscopic level as it is embedded in our nature as we live it out before Him. And He uses His law to expose us to what is really there and it is why law is so offensive to us.

But this comes into full view in the person and work of Christ because sin put Christ on the Cross. All the horrific aspects of the crucifixion tell us of God’s hatred of sin.

This is why the the Jews who pursued righteousness by the law stumbled over the gospel. The gospel is the cornerstone of Zion, the house of God, the Holy City of God. And it shall never be moved. All of this in verse 33 Paul takes from the prophet Isaiah.

It is offensive and a cause for stumbling because it is the quintessential declaration of fallen man’s inability to establish his own righteousness before a Holy God.

Everything else is a cause for shame. And many will be ashamed on that final day because they will stand before a Holy God with no righteousness before Him.

God laid the stone and His righteousness is the standard and Christ is the only means by which one can have such a righteousness. And once He works that truth into your life by sovereign grace then there is no shame because your sin has been paid in full and you are in a state of grace and Christ has paid your debt once and for all time.

Conclusion:

Unbeliever you need righteousness that goes beyond any human standard. Because it will not be another human being with a sin nature with fatal flaws setting on the throne in heaven exercising final judgement over you.

It will be the eternal Holy God who made heaven and earth who commands your allegiance to Him but like everyone else you have committed cosmic treason. You need a savior!

You need one who can take your sin upon Himself and pay your penalty as a substitute in your place. God has put His own Son forward as our redeemer to ransom us for God. Believe the gospel.

Believer we come to this table today to remember Christ and the payment made but also to once again fellowship with Him. We need this because for some of us it is so easy to find our security and our hope in our good works instead of Christ.

For others we have been spiritually feasting on the impurities of this world instead of feasting on Christ. And it is time to get right with God and to dine at His table.

His grace is spread before you in Christ. Let us examine our hearts before Him in preparation for this table.

Scripture warns us against approaching the Lord’s table in an unworthy manner. Confess your sin and know that He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us of all our unrighteousness.

Let’s Pray!