God’s Righteousness Through Faith
21 But now the righteousness of God
apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the
Prophets, 22 even the righteousness of God,
through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For
there is no difference; 23 for all have sinned and
fall short of the glory of God, 24 being justified
freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His
blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in
His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously
committed, 26 to demonstrate at the present time His
righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who
has faith in Jesus.1
WHERE DOES SINLESS PERRECTION GO IN THIS PASSAGE? GOD
TAKES YOUR SIN AND GIVES IT TO jESUS. I GET THE RIGHT STANDING IN
CHRIST AND HE TAKES MY SIN AND PAID FOR THEM ON THE CROSS. JESUS IS
THE PAYMENT FOR SIN AND WE ARE FORGIVEN BY GTRACE.
Romans 3:24 (NLT)
24 Yet
God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this
through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.
Romans 3:24 (NLT)
24 Yet
God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this
through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.
3:24 all are justified. “All” is not in the
Greek text but is carried over from v. 23. Justification is an
important Pauline theological teaching. Paul uses the verb for
“justify” (Greek dikaioō) 25 times, primarily in Romans
(15 times) and Galatians (6 times). In addition, many of the
occurrences of the related word for “righteousness” (Greek
dikaiosynē) relate to the doctrine of justification (Paul
uses this noun 56 times, 32 times in Romans and 4 times in
Galatians). “Justify” language is taken from the world of a court
of law and refers to a declaration of status, not to moral
transformation. Justification has a negative and a positive side: God
no longer holds our sins against us in his judgment (4:8), and he
gives us a righteous standing before him. freely by his grace.
Whatever God does for us is done in grace (4:4–5; 5:1). grace.
“Grace” is a thread that runs throughout Romans. The display of
God’s grace in the gospel is rooted in the character of God
himself. As 4:4–5 makes clear, no human can ever make a claim on
God because of anything they have done (11:5–6). A holy God can
never be indebted to his creatures. Whatever he gives us, therefore,
he gives “freely” and without compulsion (4:16). Not only is
grace needed at the beginning of the Christian life, but believers
“stand” in grace (5:2): we live in the realm in which grace
“reign[s]” (5:21; see 5:15, 17, 20). That reign of grace, Paul
hastens to clarify, does not absolve us of the need to live
righteously before God; rather, it gives us the power to do so (6:1,
14–15, 17). So interwoven is grace in this new era of salvation
that Paul can even speak of his own ministry (1:5; 12:3; 15:15) and
the ministry of believers generally (12:6) as a matter of “grace.”
It is quite appropriate, therefore, that Romans is framed by prayers
that God’s people might fully experience this grace of God (1:7;
16:20). redemption. In Paul’s day referred to paying money
to secure a slave’s freedom. In Christ, God has paid a price to
secure the release of every believer from sin’s slavery (v. 9). The
OT uses “redemption” to refer to the exodus: God intervened to
release his people Israel from their slavery in Egypt (Ps 111:9; cf.
Ex 6:6; 15:13). Christ’s death provides a new, spiritual “exodus”
for the people of God.2
PENAL
SUBSTITUTION
After the rubric of obedience to the Father, the most
fundamental description one can ascribe to the atonement is that it
is a work of penal substitution. That is to say, on the cross, Jesus
suffered the penalty for the sins of his people (hence penal)
as a substitute for them (hence substitution). When man sinned
against God, his sin erected a legal and relational barrier between
him and God. The divine law was broken; man thus incurred guilt and
is required to pay the penalty of spiritual death. The holiness of
God was offended, and thus God’s wrath was aroused against sin.
This leaves man alienated from God; broken fellowship and even
hostility mark the relationship between God and man, who is in
bondage to sin and death. If there is to be any redemption from sin
and reconciliation to God, man’s sin must be atoned for. And yet
man’s spiritual death and depravity leave him unable to pay the
penalty for his sin. However, God in his love has appointed the Lord
Jesus Christ to stand in the place of sinners to bear their sin,
guilt, and punishment and thereby satisfy God’s wrath on their
behalf.
For this reason Isaiah characterizes the suffering
servant as the one who “has borne our griefs and carried our
sorrows” (Isa. 53:4), who “bore the sin of many” (Isa. 53:12).
“The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa. 53:6),
and so “he shall bear their iniquities” (Isa. 53:11). Thus, when
Jesus comes into the world, John the Baptist announces him as “the
Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29)—that
is, by taking sin on himself. The apostle Paul declares that “for
our sake [the Father] made [Jesus] to be sin” (2 Cor.
5:21a), which cannot mean that the Father turned Jesus into
sin in any ontological sense but rather that he made him to be sin in
the same sense in which he makes us to become the righteousness of
God (2 Cor. 5:21b): by imputation—that is, by counting our guilt to
be his. The curse of the law that we were under was borne by Christ,
who became a curse for us (Gal. 3:13). The apostle Peter says, “He
himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to
sin and live to righteousness.” Then, quoting Isaiah’s account of
the suffering servant, he adds, “By his wounds you have been
healed” (1 Pet. 2:24; cf. Heb. 9:28). The Lord Jesus Christ bore
the punishment of the sins of his people and thereby brought them
blessing: “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed
for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us
peace” (Isa. 53:5).
In addition to these clear statements, the New Testament
attaches the concept of penal substitution to the cross of Christ by
using four Greek prepositions that all have a substitutionary force:
peri (“for,” “concerning”), dia (“because
of,” “for the sake of”), anti (“in place of,”
“instead of”), and hyper (“on behalf of”). First,
Christ “suffered … for sins” (Gk. peri hamartiōn, 1
Pet. 3:18) and thus is “the propitiation for our sins” (Gk. peri
tōn hamartiōn hēmōn, 1 John 2:2; 4:10). These texts teach
that our sins demanded that we suffer under the wrath of God yet that
Christ has done this in our place. Second, Jesus is said to have died
“for your sake” (Gk. di’ hymas, 2 Cor. 8:9; cf. 1 Cor.
8:11), another clear indicator of substitution.
Third, the preposition anti is perhaps the
strongest indicator of substitution, literally signifying “in place
of.” This sense is clearest in Matthew 2:22, where it speaks of
“Archelaus … reigning over Judea in place of [anti] his
father Herod.” Matthew 5:38 also uses anti to translate the
lex talionis—“An eye for [anti] an eye and a tooth
for [anti] a tooth”—which mandated that an offender be
deprived of his eye or tooth in place of the eye or tooth of which he
deprived someone else. Jesus uses this phrase with respect to his own
death when he says, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served
but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Gk. anti
pollōn, Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45). That is to say, while sinners
deserved to die because of their sin, Jesus laid down his life as the
ransom price in the place of the lives of his people, so that they
might go free.
Finally, while anti has the strongest
connotations of substitution, hyper is a close second, meaning
“on behalf of.” It is also by far the most common preposition to
signify the substitutionary relationship between Christ and his
people. The body of Christ is “given for you” (Gk. hyper
hymōn, Luke 22:19; cf. 1 Cor. 11:24) and “for the life of the
world” (Gk. hyper tēs tou kosmou zōēs, John 6:51), and
the blood of the new covenant is poured out “for many” (Gk. hyper
pollōn, Mark 14:24) and “for you” (Gk. hyper hymōn,
Luke 22:20). That is to say, Christ’s body and blood are given as a
substitutionary sacrifice on behalf of sinners so that they might
avert wrath and punishment. As the Good Shepherd, Jesus lays down his
life on behalf of the sheep (Gk. hyper tōn probatōn, John
10:11, 15; cf. 1 John 3:16), and he died on behalf of us, the ungodly
(Gk. hyper asebōn, Rom. 5:6; hyper hēmōn, Rom. 5:8;
1 Thess. 5:10). He gave himself for his bride, the church (Eph.
5:25), which Paul describes both collectively (Eph. 5:2; Titus 2:14)
and personally (Gal. 2:20). On our behalf (Gk. hyper hēmōn)
he was made sin (2 Cor. 5:21), became a curse (Gal. 3:13), and tasted
death (Heb. 2:9). The Righteous One suffered the penalty of sin on
behalf of the unrighteous (Gk. dikaios hyper adikōn) so that
he might reconcile those sinners to God (1 Pet. 3:18).
As the above passages show, there is no more
well-attested doctrine in all the New Testament than the vicarious
suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ on behalf of his people.
Penal-substitutionary atonement is woven into the fabric of new
covenant revelation from beginning to end, for it is the very heart
of the gospel message. In free and willing obedience to his Father,
the Lord Jesus Christ has stood in the stead of sinners, has died as
a sacrifice for their sin and guilt, has propitiated the Father’s
wrath toward them, has reconciled them to the God for whom they were
created, has redeemed them out of the bondage of sin and death, and
has conquered the rule of sin and Satan in their lives. Each of those
themes—sacrifice, propitiation, reconciliation, redemption, and
conquest—is a different facet of Christ’s substitutionary work
and deserves further examination.3
1
The
New King James Version. (1982). (Ro 3:21–26).
Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
2
Moo, D. J. (2015). The
Letters and Revelation. In D. A. Carson (Ed.), NIV
Zondervan Study Bible: Built on the Truth of Scripture and Centered
on the Gospel Message (p. 2297). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
3
MacArthur, J., & Mayhue, R. (Eds.). (2017). Biblical
Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Bible Truth
(pp. 522–524). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.
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