Title; Standing condemned In God’s Courtroom
Text: Rom 3:9-
Date: 9-9-07.am
Introduction:
Have you noticed that the Bible is not always if ever politically correct? Here’s what I mean, much of modern thinking and teaching stresses the fact that mankind is basically good that we have, to use a religious term, a righteous within ourselves. “I’m okay, your okay.” The Bible on the other hand gives us a different picture. It tells me that I have a problem. It is a problem that won’t go away by positive thinking, by benevolent activity, nor by ritualistic worship, although all of those things are important and are taught in the Bible. It is a problem that won’t go away by therapy or counseling although those things can be beneficial to us as well.
The problem is sin. But as we saw last week there is one who knows and one who will ultimately judge the hearts of men and before whom we will all stand and give an account. Even now, in God’s court room we find that all humanity stands before Him condemned.
Paul concluded chapter two by talking about how everyone would face God’s judgement. The Jews readers wouldn’t like what they read and Paul anticipated their objection and their question of what advantage then do we have in being Jewish. They were God’s people after all. Paul says have an advantage because God gave you his written Word. But having His word doesn’t excuse them because just as with the Gentiles when we stand in God’s courtroom all stand condemned.
I. All Condemned
Beginning with 1:18 all the way through 3:30 Paul painted a bleak picture of the human condition. All humans, every race, nationality, culture and social position, Jews and Gentiles, the moral, the immoral, and the amoral, the religious, and the nonreligious, all stand guilty before God. In verse 10 Paul explains why we are condemned. (But see Rom 8:1)
In our court system when we are charged with breaking the law we come before a judge and we have the opportunity to plead either guilty or not guilty. If you plead not guilty then the prosecutor has to prove the state’s case against you. Even if you were caught in the act or there was an eyewitness or many eyewitnesses. And you can ask for a trail by a jury of your peers or by a judge who listen to the evidence and then decide if your guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, or if there has been a technical error made. That’s not the case when we go before the Lord there will be no jury He isn’t going to ask how do you plead. He will know all the facts and there will be no technical errors, and you will stand before Him guilty and condemned.
That’s not what we like to hear or what we want to hear. I want to hear how good I am and how I can and should feel better about myself. That’s why sin is almost a forbidden word in churches anymore. It is bad news, it’s not pretty it’s not uplifting. And, yet this is the point Paul has been driving this home so far in this letter to the Roman church. We are all sinners. To the church in Rome and to every church through out history and to Bethel Baptist church this morning Paul, using the picture of a court, lays out God’s indictment or list of charges to show why we are condemned and why we need His perfect righteousness for salvation.
The Indictment of humanity v.v. 10-18
1. The first charge is the message is there are none righteous. Wait a minute I do some pretty good things I treat people with respect most of the time I obey the law and most of the time God’s commandments. Paul doesn’t mean we can’t or don’t do righteous acts. But the ultimate standard of righteousness is God Himself whose righteousness is perfect and by that standard there is no one righteous Isa 64:6 For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; NAS. No one possesses the within themselves the innate righteousness of God. None of us are naturally right with God or lives a completely upright life.
2. Not only that he says there are none who understand. That can’t be right I have a computer and all kinds of Bibles and I understand a lot of things. Paul is talking about not just mental understanding but moral understanding. Apart from the Spirit of God no one understands their own moral condition. With some excepts most people think they are ok and deserve to get into heaven.
3. He says there are none who seek after God. What does that mean sure there are. I mean we build churches now we call seeker sensitive church. Left to himself man and women will not seek God for salvation. Jn 6:44 "No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; NASB Jn 6:65 65 And He was saying, "For this reason I have said to you, that no one can come to Me, unless it has been granted him from the Father." NASB
Ro 8:7 because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so; NASB
4. The fourth charge in vers 12 all have turned aside. We have gotten off track. One of the words the Bible uses to describe sin means perverting the path. We were talking last week about mathematical rules and calculations being different from rules of grammar. If you plot a course mathematically and miss a calculation by just a fraction depending on how far you travel you could be miles or millions of miles from your destination. And that’s where mankind is because of sin way off course.
5. We have become useless or of no benefit. Again not that you can’t be of benefit to me or someone else but because sin has marred our lives we are not profitable to God apart from His Spirit’s presence to make us holy because god only uses holy vessels.
6. There are none who do good. Not that we can’t do good things but the good things we do can never negate the corruption and destruction and separation sin has caused between us and God.
The list continues in verses 13 - 18. And I won’t take time to elaborate on these
7."Their throat is an open grave,
8. With their tongues they keep deceiving,"
9. "The poison of asps is under their lips";
10. "Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness";
11 "Their feet are swift to shed blood,
12 Destruction and misery are in their paths,
13 And the path of peace have they not known."
14 "There is no fear of God before their eyes." [This wraps is all up]
There are 14 charges in this indictment against mankind. We could spend all day talking about each of them but I think you get the picture. All mankind is condemned before a righteous God. That certainly is a bleak picture.
The good news is that the problem of sin and the condemnation it brings to mankind has a solution. The problem has been dealt with and resolved at the highest level. God himself, the Righteous Judge before whom we stand, has intervened, The verdict has been given the penalty has been set.........But!
Against the condemnation of all humanity and the judgement of God that falls on all who are condemned, Paul reveals the message of God’s grace to those who believe. He explains God’s righteous intervention through the cross of Christ..
II. God’s righteousness is revealed and available through the cross of Christ 3:21-26
Dr. Leon Morris suggested that these 6 verses may possibly be the most important paragraph ever written. I think I’ve said that about the previous chapters too. This passage, however, is of great importance because it proclaims the righteousness of God or a righteousness from God.
Righteousness is used in a number of ways in the Bible. We said earlier the righteousness of God is a divine attribute - something God is, referring to His character as in Jn 17:25. It is also a divine activity – His saving intervention on behalf of unrighteous humanity and a divine achievement – something completed on the cross. It can also refer to standards for right living as Paul uses it in 6:18. The righteousness Paul is talking about here emphasizes the saving initiative God has taken to give sinners a righteous standing before Him. Paul said 1:17 this righteousness is made known in the gospel which is apart from the Law.
The Greek construction suggests that Paul is referring to the crucifixion and resurrection and the eternal consequences of that historical event. This concept or understanding of righteousness is revealed whenever the crucifixion and resurrection are proclaimed.
Paul shared two other aspects of God’s righteousness.
Revealed v. 21
It is a righteousness that has been made known. Paul talked about general revelation, the knowledge that there is a God that has been revealed through creation. Here he is talking about Special revelation. God’s righteousness has been revealed. It has been made known, or has been made manifest. In verse 9 he uses the phrase as it is written. In verse 21 law and prophets refers to the Scriptures of the Old Testament, the Torah. In 3:1the oracles of God refers to the writings of the Old Testament and in verse 9 Paul used the phrase “it is written” to emphasize the writings of Scripture. To the Jews in particular God revealed Himself through His written word.
But even more so God’s righteousness was revealed through Jesus Christ. In verse 22-25.
Available
Not only has it been made know it is has also been made available. God’s righteousness is available to everyone through faith in Jesus Christ. That gives us something the world needs desperately – hope. Without hope life becomes futile, empty, and meaningless. And when life is meaningless and hopeless people act in bizarre ways and do bizarre things. I think all you have to do is pickup a newspaper and you can see the results of hopelessness.
The hope available in Jesus Christ Peter calls a living hope. A living hope available to everyone. Paul says there is no distinction. This hope is available to the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, the young and the old. It is also available to the thief, the drunk, the prostitute, the drug addict, the adulterer, the liar, the murderer and the homosexual. It is available to all who have sinned, and all have sinned. It is a free gift from God to all who believe. Those who believe are justified by the righteousness of God.
III. God’s righteousness justifies the believer 24 -
Paul wrote, those who exercise faith in Christ are justified. The person who comes to God I faith is “born again,” regenerated, forgiven, justified, and sanctified. Justify is a legal term it is the opposite of condemnation. We stand before God condemned and as we saw last week all of us will face God’s judgement for those of us who have trusted Jesus for our salvation will face Him to give account of our stewardship of His grace. I don’t fully understand all that will mean in relationship to eternity. I know when I stand before Him and all of my sin is revealed it’s not going to be a pretty picture. It will be humiliating
There are those who say that Michael Vick has already been punished by the humiliation of what he’s done and what he’s lost financially and personally because of it. He stood before the judge who had his agreement where he acknowledged what he was guilty of and the judge asked if he was pleading guilty because these things were true and he said yes. But from what I understand there were some other things he was accused of he didn’t have to admit to in this deal he got and those who know him say he was humiliated by that. But because of his agreement to plead guilty there were a lot of things that wouldn’t come out during a trial. When we stand before Jesus everything will come out and be exposed to the light and that will be punishment in itself. But when it comes time to render the final verdict I will be justified by faith in Christ. Justification is the legal term Paul uses to describe our salvation.
Some say that justification simply means pardon or forgiveness, but justification is more than just forgiveness. When we exercise faith and come to Christ we do find forgiveness (1 Jn 1:9). Forgiveness can be understood as the negative aspect of justification, in that it is the taking away of the penalty of sin, while the positive aspect justification is the bestowal of righteous status before God. They can be viewed as two sides to the same coin. You may have heard it explained this way justification means just as if I had not sinned. I think that understates the greatness of justification.
Paul emphasizes the greatness of justification in three ways. The first of these is the source of our justification.
The source of our Justification – God’s grace v. 24a
The Bible is abundantly clear in verse 24 the source of our justification is God’s grace. Fundamental to the gospel proclamation is the truth that the initiative in salvation is always with God. There is nothing in us or about us that can justify us or make us worthy of justification. Justification is free and is undeserved and that’s grace. “It is God loving coming to the rescue. It is God giving Himself generously for our justification. He alone is the source of our justification. What is the basis of our justification?
The basis of our justification – Jesus Christ and the cross 24b -25
How does God give of Himself and how does he justify us when we stand condemned without compromising His righteousness, or condoning our unrighteousness? The basis of our justification is Jesus Christ and His cross. We stand before God condemned, the penalty has been given (death) but justice has been served, just not by us.
The only reason God can justify sinners is because Jesus shed His blood in our place on the cross. Three terms Paul uses to explain what happened through Jesus Christ and the cross.
1 Redemption
The first is redemption. While justification is a legal term, redemption is a term of the market place. In the 0. T. it refers to slaves that were bought by a blood relative for the purpose of being set free. They were redeemed. It also is used metaphorically of the people of Israel who were redeemed from bondage in Egypt in Ex 15:13, and again from Babylon in Isa 43:1.
In the same way we are in bondage and slaves to sin. We are unable to liberate ourselves. Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, through the shedding of His blood as a ransom-price has redeemed us from our bondage. He hasn’t paid this ransom price to Satan some mistakenly make that assumption. Satan hasn’t kidnaped us though we are in bondage to sin he is in now way our owner. The ransom price paid on the cross is not paid to him. Rather it is the cost or price set by God for sin. Jesus on the cross isn’t buying us back from Satan He is paying God’s price for sin.
2. Propitiation
The second word translated propitiation is used 25 times in the LXX to designate the golden cover of the ark or the mercy seat. The only other time it occurs in the New Testament in Heb 9:5 where it is translated mercy seat.
The mercy seat is where God manifested His presence with His people, it is also where His glory was manifest on the day of atonement and it is where on that day the High priest sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice 7 times to make atonement for the sins of the people and turn away God’s wrath (Lev 16:14ff).
In the death of Christ the demands of God for justice against sinful man are fully met. Christ is our mercy seat. It is in and through Jesus Christ that righteous God and unrighteous man find reconciliation.
3. Demonstration
The third term is not a theological term, but Paul uses it to explain why God did what He did. Why Christ came into the world and died on the cross and rose from the dead. It was to demonstrate His justice. Simply put in the past God did not pour out his full wrath on mankind for their sins. Instead He was patient and merciful.
However, in Jesus atoning sacrifice on the cross God demonstrated or gave evidence of not only His grace toward man, but also His wrath towards sin. He directed the full force of His wrath which we deserved, towards Himself, in the person and work of Jesus on the cross, that he might be just in not compromising His righteousness or condoning sin and also justifier, the one who makes sinful men justified.
The means of our justification: Faith v. 22, 25, 26
Three time in this passage Paul has pointed out the need of faith; in w. 22, 25, and 26. This was the heart of the great reformation, justification by faith alone, in
Christ alone.
John Stott says, “faith is the eye that looks to Him, the hand that receives His free gift the mouth that drinks the living water.”
I heard this definition years ago but I often repeat it. Faith is the leaning of your entire human personality on Jesus in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom and goodness.
If you haven’t received this gift of righteousness, now is the time. It is a simple process, agree with God that there are none righteous, for all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory, that’s where you are, but that there is a righteousness apart from the works of the law. It is the free gift of God through faith in Jesus. Tell God that you are placing you faith in Christ Jesus alone who died for your sins that the righteousness of God might be revealed and made manifest in your life. Give thanks to God for His cleansing, and come forward to publicly profess Jesus as Lord, surrendering your life your all to Him.