food4thought

How do we get in the right with God?

How do we get on the right side of God?

How do we reckon we get in God’s good books and stay there?

It’s that issue that dominates our passage this morning. Every religious system proposes that there is something we must do or something we must be. The Bible gives a different answer.

If we understand what Paul is talking about this monring it’s going to be possible to leave knowing that we’re in the in God’s good books. But it’s not going to happen the way we expected.

The second word of verse 1 makes us realise that these words follow on from what has come before. What has come already is the revelation that the saving righteousness of Christ is available in the gospel. In other words, the gospel tells us where to find the personal righteousness that we need to be saved.

Why that’s necessary has been explained in 1:18-3:20. The whole world needs the saving righteousness of Christ because every human being is unrighteous. This leaves us facing God’s justifiable anger.

How we can gain the saving righteousness of Christ has been explained in 3:21-26. We can be saved through faith in the work of Jesus Christ upon the cross. In his death he has liberated us from God’s wrath by taking it upon himself. Jesus took our place. It’s a swap.

It’s like Clint Eastwood in the film ‘In the Line of Fire’. Do you remember that film from the early 90s, I think? Clint was portrayed as an embittered old timer whose best days as a bodyguard on the President’s Protection Detail were behind him. His warnings that the character played by John Malkovich presenetd a real and rpesent danger to the President’s life were dismissed. But at the climactic moment in the film Clint throws himself in front of the President and takes the bullet to save the President. In some small and imperfect way that illustrates what Jesus Christ did for us. He stood where we should have been and got what we deserved. He took the hit.

In the immediately preceding section Paul affirmed the idea that the saving righteousness of Christ really is available by faith and not by works and it really is available to all types of people and not just Israel. In chapter 4 Paul now appeals to the biblical and historical precedent of Abraham to support his case. It’s a stroke of genius because Abraham was regarded as the father of the Jewish people and so was held in the highest esteem.

In this short passage we’re going to learn that the declaration that we possess saving righteousness, known as justification, is for two groups of people that we never would have expected.

• In (1-8) it’s not for the ‘do gooders’ who work at godliness, it’s for the ungodly.
• In (9-12) it’s not for the religious who go through all the right ceremonies, it’s for the outcasts.

That’s surprising. It’s not what many of us would have expected. But the great news of biblical Christianity is that God justifies ungodly outcasts. If you’ve come to church today and you’d reckon yourself ungodly and an outsider you’re about to listen to some of the best news you‘ll ever hear. Paul makes two points. The first point is longer than the second.

1. God credits righteousness apart from works (1-8)

The first issue was whether Abraham was justified by faith or by works. Paul begins with a question in (1) which he then proceeds to answer in (2).

4:1 What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

In other words, what was the deal with our forefather Abraham on this issue? Was he justified by works or by faith? If he’d been declared right with God because of his own track record he could sing his own praises and blow his own trumpet. But Paul wouldn’t have any other that. We might think that Abraham could show off amongst his peers but there was nothing he could bring before God to inspire such self confident pride. But how does Paul so easily dismiss the righteousness of one of the world’s leading religious figures? This guy has a significant role in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. He takes us to the Bible. In (3) he asks what has been written about Abraham’s own life.

3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

Quoting Genesis 15:6, Paul explained that God credited Abraham with righteousness because Abraham exercised faith. I’m aware that’s quite a mouthful. It’ll be helpful to explain a few terms.

• Faith or belief is not really a religious word at all. It means trust, dependence or reliance. Christian faith is simply taking God at his word and trusting what he says. Abraham exercised this dependent trust.
• Righteousness is a right standing with God. It’s being in the right with him. The word justification describes the declaration of being counted righteous.
• Counted translates the Greek word ‘logizomai’ which means credited or reckoned. It’s used in a commercial or business setting to signify that something has been put to someone’s account.

What’s in our account is sadly a contemporary issue this week. There’s perhaps a few of us who’ll be paying closer attention to what’s in our credit column since the Government’s loss of the personal details of 25 million people.

When God credits people righteous he puts righteousness in their account. Paul explains that the Bible teaches that God regarded Abraham as being in the right with him because Abraham took him at his word. The point is not that in the absence of righteousness Abraham exercised faith and God decided to reward that. That would make faith a meritorious act and he’s been arguing that we have no merit, spiritually speaking. No, the point is that Abraham had nothing to bring before God and his only course of action was to accept and trust what God provided. In order to make this abundantly clear Paul then explained the fundamental difference between the two types of crediting, crediting by works and crediting by faith. Look at (4)

4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due.

There’s a way that things can be credited to our account that’s called earning a wage. The wage is the deserved payment for service rendered. It’s what we’re owed. The debtor is obligated to settle up. But God is no man’s debtor. He doesn’t owe anything to anyone precisely because, as Paul has made painfully clear in 1:18-3:20, no one has ever done what God requires. Wonderfully there’s another way of being credited. Look at (5)

5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness,

This way is crediting by faith. God is in the habit of crediting righteousness to people who do no work and have no right to payment simply because they put their trust in Him. That’s outrageous but it’s also true. Once again Paul appeals to the scriptures for evidence of his position. He quotes Psalm 32:1&2 where David says the same thing.

6 just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: 7 “Blessed [or really fortunate ones] are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

Three times David refers to human wickedness. Three times we’re told what God has done with our wickedness. He has forgiven it, covered it over and will not count it against us. Unlike Giles, I’m no accountant but as I understand it this is a win-win! Without Christ this is how things stand. In the debit column there are my sins. In my credit column there is absolutely nothing. With Christ the record of my sins is wiped away and God credits me with righteousness.

Some of us still doggedly hold onto the conviction that our good works will gain God’s favour. But it’s fanciful nonsense. When we think about it and we weigh up what we’ve just heard the logical conclusion is that it’s groundless arrogance. It’s groundless because God has stated explicitly in His word that he will credit righteousness apart from works. And it’s arrogance because we’re still under the mistaken impression that we can be good enough for God.

This is a matter of eternal significance. We’re not talking here about a minor ecclesiastical dispute. We’re talking about what God thinks of us and where we spend our existence beyond the grave. If we retain our confidence that we’ll be justified by our works we’ll face God’s eternal condemnation. But if we rely on the fact that we can be justified by faith we’ll enjoy God’s eternal commendation. Which is it to be? This is great news for those of us without a track record of good works. Which, if we’re to believe the Bible would be all of us. The second and much briefer point is

2. God credits righteousness apart from circumcision (9-12)

What, we may wonder, are we doing on a Sunday morning discussing at length the surgical procedures of an old man! The first issue was whether Abraham was justified by faith or by works. The second issue was whether justification was available for those who hadn’t submitted to the Old Testament practice of circumcision. Once again the section begins with a question, which Paul then answers.

9 Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? We say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness.

The grounds for Paul’s confidence that justification was available to the uncircumcised lay in the chronology of events. The key thing to determine in answering this question was to locate the precise moment at which God had justified Abraham. Look at (10).

10 How then was it [righteousness] counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised.

Abraham was declared to be righteous by God in Genesis 15. Abraham was instructed to be circumcised by God in Genesis 17. That’s a gap of about 14 years. And so, since Abraham’s justification preceded his circumcision it’s possible to be justified without being circumcised. This, I assume, is good news for most of the blokes here this morning! So what was his circumcision all about?

11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, 12 and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

Circumcision was a sign which signified that Abraham had been counted righteous and it was a seal that authenticated him as one of God’s people. But the purpose of that was to make Abraham the father of all believers regardless of whether they’d been circumcised or not.

No amount of religious ceremonial observance makes a jot of difference in or standing with God. Justification is by faith not by religious activity. None of us thinks we’re in the right because of our circumcision because few, if any, have undergone the surgical procedure. So what are the implications for us? The New Testament equivalent of circumcision is baptism. And here there might be something to learn. Baptism makes not a jot of difference in our standing before God. God doesn’t look upon us any differently because we’ve got wet. And so James is not in the right with God because he’s been baptised. James, like every one of us will need to share the faith of Abraham if he’s to share in the righteousness that God gave Abraham. If there are some of us who still cling to the conviction that we’re in the clear with God because we’ve undergone some religious ceremony I trust that we’ll be prepared to lay that to one side. God will not be won over by baptism

Conclusion

The question we posed at the start was ‘how do we get in the right with God?’

We’ve learnt two things this morning about justification

• In (1-8) it’s not for the ‘do gooders’ who work at godliness, it’s for the ungodly.
• In (9-12) it’s not for the religious who go through all the right ceremonies, it’s for the outcasts.

It’s especially good news for irreligious moral failures but it’s good news for anyone who is prepared to exercise faith in Christ.

Most people come to church expecting to be told that they’re bad and that they need to do something about it. If this is your first time at church then you’ve timed it to perfection. We’ve been hearing for the last four weeks that we’re bad. And that’s it for a while! But we’re not about to be told to do something about it. We’re about to discover what God has done about it. This is good news. You’ve come on a great week!

The verses we’re going to look at this morning form one complex sentence in the original Greek. But such is the significance of what Paul writes that it’s led at least one scholar to suggest that what we’re about to study is ‘possibly the most important single paragraph ever written’. That’s some claim. But it would be fair to say that until we’ve understood this sentence we’ve not understood Christianity.

The sentence picks up the argument of 1:17 before we were waylaid by Paul’s extended excursus on the unrighteousness of humanity. Don’t get me wrong. He needed to do that. In 1:17 he announced that the gospel reveals God’s saving righteousness. But why would we bother with that unless we’re prepared to accept Paul’s diagnosis of universal human unrighteousness. We won’t. And so from 1:18-3:20 Paul has meticulously exposed the human predicament before God. The last four weeks have been pretty painful listening. It’s not been easy stuff to hear. Paul has made it unmistakably clear that humanity has rejected God, attracted God’s personal hostility and been given over in judgement to a sinful godless lifestyle. No one has any grounds for thinking that they’re the exception to the rule. Whether we’re pagan man ignorant of the law, moral man with high standards or religious man with pious habits we’re all in the same boat, in the same creek without a paddle! But all the way through we’ve been hoping that there might be some light at the end of this very dark tunnel. Wonderfully, the opening two words of this passage signal a seismic shift in the argument. The key expression throughout is the phrase ‘the righteousness of God’. Paul makes three observations about this saving righteousness.

a. The righteousness of God has now been revealed (21)

21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it

As a result of the historical accomplishment of Christ’s death on the cross the saving righteousness of God has now been made known. This righteousness is available independently of the system of religious law keeping. That was always going to be the case since God had made it plain in the Old Testament law and prophets that righteousness would only come by faith.

b. The righteousness of God is necessary for everyone (22&23)

22 [what I’m talking about is] the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

The righteousness of God is offered to everyone because everyone needs it. Paul summarises the argument of 1:18-3:20 in one sentence. ‘All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’. In this one respect there’s no distinction between us. We’ve all rejected God. We’ve all failed to live up to the standards that He requires. That’s why we all need this righteousness.

c. The righteousness of God justifies sinners (24-26)

The righteousness of God is a phrase that expresses God’s righteous character which leads to His righteous activity in conferring a righteous standing before Him on others. It is His righteous way of granting righteousness to the unrighteous. The declaration that we possess righteousness is known as justification. It comes from the same Greek word but it’s obscured in the English. It’s a legal term from the law court. It’s the pronouncement of a judge who gives his considered legal verdict. It means the opposite of condemnation. But it’s more than simply being declared ‘not guilty’ or pardoned. It’s being declared innocent and righteous. It’s not ‘just as if I’d never sinned’ but ‘just as if I was righteous’. Imagine going before a judge on charges of which you know you’re guilty.

Let’s take something topical, something like speeding! I think everyone feels included now! You’ll have read this week that there are plans to double the number of points for speeding offences. Imagine for a moment we’ve been accused of speeding and we’re up before the judge. As he lowers his gavel, silence reigns in the courtroom. He speaks. It’s a single word. We’re all expecting ‘guilty’. The evidence is compelling. It’s an open and shut case. It’s got to be the easiest decision he’s ever had to make. But out of his mouth the verdict comes and he says, ‘justified’. That is not what we were expecting.

The legal pronouncement ‘justified’ comes straight from the mouth of the divine judge. It comes from the eternal court room on the judgement day. It means we can know in advance what God will say to us on the day when we come before Him and He assesses our life. Ahead of the game we can know where we stand with God. Paul teaches three essential truths about this justification. I’ve put them on the sheet.

1. The source of justification is God’s grace

Justification originates in God’s gracious determination to give us what we don’t deserve. Look at (24)

For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift,

God’s grace is His absolutely free and utterly undeserved favour. It’s His generosity in giving us what we don’t deserve. What we don’t deserve is justification. But that’s what we get. If we’ve believed what we’ve read in 1:18-3:20 we should be under no illusions. God is not obligated to do anything good for us. But He does. And it comes without strings attached.

We often say that there’s no such thing as a free lunch because we know that there’s a hidden extra, the small print, the undisclosed demand. But that’s not true with justification. It’s a gift. It’s something that God gives for free because He loves being generous.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of a surprising, unexpected and lavish gift. It’s wonderful when that happens. But it’s slightly bewildering. And often one of the first questions we ask is ‘what have I done to deserve this?’ To which the answer is an undoubtedly heartfelt but usually sentimental affirmation of the other person’s value to us. But that’s not how it is with God. His answer were we to ask Him why He’s given us His saving righteousness would be, ‘because I love being generous’. Whatever our view of God up until this stage we cannot continue to think of Him as a mean-spirited, condemnatory aloof critic of all that we do. God is a generous, lavish provider of our greatest need. You see, the saving initiative from beginning to end belongs to God. It wasn’t our idea to seek justification. It was God’s to provide it. He took one look at us and realised what we needed. And He made the first move.

2. The grounds of justification is Christ’s death

Justification rests on the cross work of Jesus Christ. And what God accomplished through the death of His son is explained by three expressions; redemption, propitiation and demonstration.

a. The redemption of sinners

24 We are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

Redemption is a word taken from the market place. Imagine the hustle and bustle of the Old Testament bazaar with a collection of slaves ready to be sold. Redemption describes what happens when a slave was purchased though the payment of a ransom price in order to be liberated. It was also used of God’s liberation of His people from slavery in the exodus from Egypt and from the exile in Babylon. The metaphor stresses the powerlessness of the one in captivity, their need to be rescued and their indebtedness to the liberator. Paul says that Christ is the one who liberates sinners. We’re in need of redemption and Christ is the only redeemer there is. We need to be liberated from our enslavement to our sinful pattern of life and the consequent guilt that we face. Christ’s death has done just that. In his redemption we have been set free from God’s condemnation. Since Christ has paid the ransom price through his death we belong to him, we’re his property.

b. The propitiation of God’s wrath

25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.

The word ‘propitiation’ means to placate someone’s anger. Christians can lose their nerve on this one because we think it’s such an unworthy characteristic to attribute to God. But if we’ve been listening at all to Paul’s argument so far we’d be more appalled if God had not got angry. He can’t be indifferent to sin and claim to be holy. Paul has made it clear that God is righteously angry with our sin. And so a solution had to be found to avert God’s wrath. That’s propitiation. People often compare it with pagan superstition. But there’s a world of difference between the two. In pagan religion the gods are capricious, volatile and thoroughly unpredictable. The pagan worshipper must take the initiative appease the gods and get them back onside. And so they attempt to bribe the deity with a range of sacrificial offerings involving vegetables, animals and sometimes people. It’s profoundly distasteful. But that’s not what Paul had in mind. God’s wrath isn’t unpredictable; it’s his principled and controlled opposition to wickedness. We’re not the ones who can assuage His righteous anger; we need God to do through Christ what we can never do for ourselves. The sacrifice that’s offered isn’t something we find but something God provides. And so because of God’s great love for us His own Son willingly propitiated His own holy wrath against sin when he died in our place.

c. The demonstration of God’s justice

The cross was a public demonstration that vindicated God’s justice. Look at the contrast Paul highlights in (25).

This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

In the past God had passed over sin. He’d postponed His judgement and leaving sin unpunished. He’d done so not because He was being unjust, not because He condoned evil but simply because the ultimate resolution of the issue lay in the future. But now through Christ’s death for sin God had exacted justice. Through the cross God has demonstrated that He loves sinners very much but that He takes sin very seriously. There’s been no miscarriage of justice. The guilty have not gone free. The guilty one was punished, in the place of sinners. He took their place.

And so through the death of Christ, God has redeemed His people, He has propitiated His wrath and He has demonstrated His justice. There can only to be one response to this. John Stott put it like this, ‘we can only marvel at the wisdom, holiness, love and mercy of God, and fall down before him in humble worship. The cross should be enough to break the hardest heart, and melt the iciest’. Has it?

3. The means of justification is our faith

Justification is received by faith. Three times Paul signifies the importance of faith. In (22) righteousness comes through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. In (25) the redemption from condemnation won by Christ is received by faith. In (26) God justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Justification is by faith alone. There’s no other way to be made right with God. We’re not being told to be good, we’re being told to have faith.

Faith is not gullibility. It does not believe something in spite of the evidence. It’s not wishful thinking. It’s trust, it’s reliance, it’s dependence. It takes God at His word. It’s the open hand that receives God’s gift. But most importantly, faith is the difference between condemnation and justification. We cannot be justified apart from exercising faith. We can understand justification. But until we exercise faith it profits us not a jot.

Conclusion

• Justification comes from God and His gracious decision to be generous to the undeserving
• Justification is possible only through the death of Christ who has redeemed us from God’s judgement
• Justification is granted to those who repudiate self effort and recognise that what we need is available in

There is nothing else like this out there. In the supermarket of religious and philosophical ideologies Christianity is unique. That doesn’t make it true. There are other arguments to establish that. But it does stand alone in this one respect. Everything else is religious. It makes demands on us and requires us to do something. Christianity is not a religion at all. It tells us not what we must do but what God has done. That’s why Christianity is such good news.

There’ll be some here for whom this is new news. Perhaps we’ve never hear anything like this before and we feel this is something we can’t just leave alone. We run a Christianity Explored course every term to help people investigate these things further. This term’s course has only just begun and so it’d be a great time to sign up.

There’ll be some here for whom this is old news. But it could be that some of us have forgotten it and forgotten to rejoice in it. Away from the transient and superficial concerns of this world there are eternal, deep and wonderful realities to ponder and appropriate.

There’ll be some here or whom this is familiar news but for whom it’s never become personal news. Can I just say a word to you? If you understand justification, why wait? What kind of twisted logic has led us to think that we should put this on a ‘to do’ list? We can know what God thinks of us ahead of our eternal appointment in His divine courtroom. Why wait?

Found this on the Times website, worth visiting and scrolling through

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2884585.ece.