What the Gospel Tells Us, Part 2 (Rom. 3:24-26)

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

What is the gospel?  The gospel is the good news that God justifies sinners.  What is justification?  It is the declaration by God that the believing sinner is now righteous because his sins have been pardoned and the righteousness of God in Christ has been credited to his account.  

Now this begs a very important question, and the question is this: how can God remain just and righteous in himself while doing all this?  How can the Judge of the universe declare the ungodly to be righteous?  It is an abomination when a human judge justifies the wicked.  But we see that the gospel says that this is exactly what God does to those who put their faith in Christ (cf. Rom. 4:5).

This passage, Rom. 3:24-26, tells us how God does this.  Note how it ends: “that he [that is, God] might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus.”  That statement is a conclusion to the previous verses which show us just how God can justify the unjust while remaining just himself.

The answer is in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  There are three words, one in verse 24 and two in verse 25, that are extremely important which help us to understand the conclusion in verse 26 of how God can be just and the justifier of the one who believes. Those three words are “redemption,” “propitiation,” and “blood.”   These three realities provide the basis upon which God makes his pronouncement of justification.  And they show us how the sinner can be justified in a gracious way (24) and in a just way (26).

But before we get into the details of the text, I want us to step back and remind ourselves first what this is all about.  This is about God reconciling sinners to himself.  This is about how God does this.  This is about how those who have sinned and come short of the glory of God can be accepted with God, so that his throne becomes for them a throne of grace instead of judgment.  Now we either believe this is true or we don’t.  There are a lot of things that can conspire to keep us from believing this.  You might be kept from believing it because your heart is hard and cold to the things of God, and you just don’t care about him.  You don’t care whether he accepts you in friendship or not.  You find all this boring, and maybe even disgusting.  Maybe you don’t want this to be true.  There is that.  

Or, you might have a hard time believing it because you just like other things more.  Video games or the stock market and the business world or politics or sex.  You are too busy to think about the gospel and God and Christ.  They seem unbelievable to you, and there are just other things more important for you to invest your time in.

Or you might have a hard time believing this because you are a sufferer and right now you don’t like God.  As one person put it: it’s hard to be a Christian when your head is in the toilet.  Or perhaps you are reeling from personal tragedy, and you are really struggling with why God would allow this to happen to you or to someone that you love.  

But let’s imagine for a moment that this is true.  I believe it is.  I think that there are good reasons to believe it.  Not just because I want to believe it (I do), but because there is compelling evidence that Jesus Christ not only existed but that after he was crucified by Pontius Pilate, he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.  What Paul is writing about here is not based on the whims of a mad philosopher but upon historical realities.  This is sober truth.  Jesus did rise from the dead.  The gospel is true.  And millions of people have been transformed by it.  The church is a two-thousand-year witness to its reality.  

If this is true, then what does it mean?  It means that it is possible for you to have a real, bone fide relationship with God, not one mediated to you through some religious institution, but directly by faith in Jesus Christ.  It means, as the apostle John put it, “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full” (1 Jn. 1:3-4).  It means that all the promises of God recorded for us in the Bible are yes and amen in Christ (2 Cor. 1:20).  It means that God the Father, Son, and Spirit loves you, loves you personally and knows you and cares about you.  It means that he thinks about you and the thoughts of God for you are thoughts of love and compassion and faithfulness and devotion and grace.  It means that he will never leave your or forsake you.  It means that he is working all things for your good, even (maybe even especially) the things you don’t understand.  It means that he has an inheritance for you that doesn’t fade away, reserved in heaven for you.  It means that one day you will see the glory of Christ in heaven.

I’m not sure we really do believe this as we should, even those of us who call ourselves Christian.  For if this is true, should not our lives be characterized by a burning love for Christ and “joy unspeakable and full of glory”?  This is what the apostle Peter says should be the result of knowing and believing these things.  It’s how the early Christians responded to these things: “Whom [that is, Jesus] having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet. 1:8-9).  Should not our lives be characterized by this undying love and unspeakable joy and unshakable peace and unbreakable courage?  

So I’m preaching this not just to help us understand the gospel.  That’s of first importance of course.  But I’m preaching this to you and to me to help us fully embrace the gospel, to believe it with all our hearts.  Someone asked me at the end of last week’s message about faith.  Faith is the instrument by which we receive what Christ achieved.  But what is faith?  What does it look like?  

Theologians say that there are three elements to faith: knowledge, assent, and trust.  In Hebrews 11:13, you see all three elements: “These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them [there is knowledge] afar off, and were persuaded of them [there’s assent], and embraced them [there’s trust], and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”  I want you to see these things, but I also want you to be persuaded of them and to embrace them.  I want your affections and your will as well as your intellect to be engaged by these truths.  May the Lord make it happen!  Lord, increase our faith!

So here is what I want to do in this message.  First, I want us to see how Christ’s death is the basis of God’s declaration of justification, and to look at it through the lens of those three words: redemption, propitiation, and blood. As we do so, I want us to see how this makes the justification of the sinner both a gracious thing and a just thing.  Finally, we will back and look at the role of faith in all this.  And as we see this may the Lord make our minds and affections and wills embrace them with a firm knowledge, with full assent, and with fervent trust.

The Basis of Justification in the Death of Jesus Christ

Paul’s goal here is to show that God is just and the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus.  But those who believe are not in themselves righteous, “for there is no difference: for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:22-23).  So something must happen to the sinner in order for the sinner to be justly declared to be just by God.  Now there are some who think that the reason God declares us to be just is because he makes us just.  But that is not what Paul is saying here.  Of course God is making us just (this is the process of sanctification), but this can never be the basis of our relationship with God.  This side of heaven, we will always be struggling with sin, so that if our own personal righteousness is the reason for our hope that God is our friend, we will always be in doubt, won’t we?  There is no assurance of salvation if assurance is anchored in personal sanctification.

Instead, we see that the basis for our justification is nothing in ourselves.  Rather, it is found in what Christ has done for us.  Christ has done something that can take away the guilt of our sin and that can make a way for the righteousness of God to be imputed to us.  There are three words that help us to see that.

Redemption

We read in verse 24, “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”  We are justified “freely by his grace,” which means that we are not justified by any personal merit in ourselves or because we worked for it.  So this is not about something we do, especially when we not only cannot merit salvation but have a bottomless bucket of demerits against us!  The reason can be found in that word redemption.  This word means deliverance from slavery or bondage by the payment of a ransom.  Literally, the word means to be ransomed from something, and that something is sin and the bondage of sin.  

Sin brings us into bondage, into slavery, as our Lord reminds us: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (Jn. 8:34-36).  Bondage to sin in turn leads to the bondage of fear (cf. Rom. 8:23), specifically the fear of death and the judgment that follows it (Heb. 2:15).  Christ delivers us from sin and the consequent bondage and fear.

Though some have denied that there is any real ransom aspect to the death of Christ, the entire Bible tells us otherwise.  The idea of blood and sacrifice points us to the OT sacrificial system, which we will look at in a moment, and it all points in this direction.  But consider our Lord’s own words.  He said, “the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mt. 20:28).  Here we have our Lord’s own unmistakable self-assessment of his mission.  It was to give his life as a ransom for many.

We’ve see the Biblical witness that we are in bondage to sin and death and the fear that follows it.  We cannot free ourselves from it.  But the Son of Man, the Son of God, Jesus Christ is able by his death to deliver us.  His life is the price paid for our ransom from the penalty that our sin deserves.  The apostle Peter put it this way: “ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 1:18-19).

To whom was this ransom paid?  It was paid to God, not to the devil.  The blood is offered to God.  The propitiation is with respect to God.  No OT sacrifice or atonement had anything to do with devils as the object of the offering (cf. 1 Cor. 10:20).  God is the object of the redemption, propitiation, and sacrifice.  The reason is that it is God’s law that demands that sin be punished.  The penalty for our sin against God is death, not just physical death, but the eternal separation from God that Paul describes in 2 Thess. 1:8-9 when we writes that our Lord will come again “In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.”  What Paul is telling us in Rom. 3:24 is that Jesus Christ took our place, substituted himself by the eternal appointment of God, in the place of sinners.  He paid the debt we owe to the demands of justice.

What kind of redemption is it?  Well, in order for the sinner to be justified freely by grace, it means that the price our Lord paid had to be the full price.  He had to have taken the entire punishment due to our sin upon himself.  There is nothing left for us to pay.  The payment has already been made in Christ.  Here is how the author of Hebrews describes the redemption purchased by Christ: “But Christ being come an high priest of good things to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this building; Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:11-14).  It is eternal redemption, which just means not only that all our sins have been purged but purged forever.  It is what the book of Hebrews had been getting at earlier when we read of our Lord, “he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (7:25).  Saved to the uttermost, because all our sins have been paid for.  Hence Paul writes to the Ephesians, “In whom [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:7).

Propitiation

Then our Lord’s work is described in terms of this word, “propitiation.”  Look at verse 25: “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God.”  I think what Paul means by “God hath set [Jesus] forth” is that he ordained him for this role and then in fulfilment of that purpose our Lord was manifested in the theater of history to be a propitiation for us.  The apostle Peter gives us a perfect definition of it in his first epistle when he writes, “Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you” (1 Pet. 1:20).

So the Lord Jesus Christ was “set forth” in the sense that he was foreordained and manifested to be a propitiation.  But what is that?  It’s not a word we use very often today.  Interestingly, the specific word Paul uses here is used only one other time in the NT, and that is in Heb. 9:5, where it is translated as “mercy seat,” a reference to the lid that covered the ark of the covenant.  But this gets us there, doesn’t it?  What was the mercy seat?  Go read Lev. 16.  It was the place where, once a year, the high priest sprinkled the blood of atonement for the sins of Israel.  

Now the author of Hebrews is telling us in his letter that what happened at on the Day of Atonement could only atone for sins in a ceremonial sense.  It could not literally take aways sins.  But this is what Jesus Christ has done.  He is what the mercy seat of old could only typify.  He really does atone for our sins.  He really does expiate them and turn away God’s holy and just wrath from us.

This idea of God’s wrath against us is part of the meaning of propitiation.  It means to appease, to turn away wrath.  You see this in John’s letter, when he writes, “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: and he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 Jn. 2:1-2).  When we sin, God’s wrath is against us.  Isn’t this what Paul has been saying all along?  “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven” (1:18).  This is the problem.  The solution to this problem therefore has to involve the turning of God’s wrath away from us.  And when Paul says that Jesus is a propitiation, he is saying the Lord is the place where God’s wrath is turned away.  It is what John is saying in his epistle.  Christ is our Advocate for us when we sin.  Why do we need an advocate, an advocate with God?  Because though “the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear,” nevertheless our “iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear” (Isa. 59:1-2).  What makes his advocacy for us effective is the fact that he is a propitiation for our sins, and has turned away God’s just wrath away from us by taking the punishment of sins upon himself.

Now some folks object to this and say that the cross had nothing to do with God’s wrath, but that it was all about his love.  But this is to present us with a false choice.  Because God is holy, his just and holy wrath must be propitiated.  Our sins must be dealt with, punished.  There is no other way.  But the provision of Christ as the propitiation is a provision of the love of God.   Later, the apostle John will write, “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 Jn. 4:9-10).  It is God’s love that propitiated God’s wrath.

In fact, unless we are willing to come to grips with God’s wrath, God’s love in the cross doesn’t make any sense at all.  Why would Christ go to the cross if it weren’t in the end necessary?  But if there is no wrath of God to be propitiated, then it’s hard to see how the cross is necessary.  People say that God was just showing his love to us on the cross.  But that is like saying that a man should rush into an empty burning house to show his love for his family.  That makes no sense.  No, we were in the burning house, and Christ went in there and rescued us from the flames of God’s wrath.  This is the only way to make sense of the cross.  And Paul is saying that this in fact is what has happened.

Blood

We must not skip over this other word, though, also here in verse 25: “a propitiation through faith in his blood.”  Now there is some debate as to how these phrases should be taken.  Is “in his blood” describing the object of faith (this appears to be the way our translators took it), or does it modify “propitiation . . . in his blood”?  Good arguments can be made for both positions, and in the and I don’t think it makes much difference.  Either way, blood is either directly or indirectly a reference to the propitiation that Christ became.  It shows us that the redemption and the propitiation were effected through sacrifice.

And this points us to the entire edifice of the OT sacrificial system.  And the way to describe that system is by the words substitutionary sacrifice.  There is a transfer of guilt from the offender to the sacrifice.  Here is how it is described on the Day of Atonement: “And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness: And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness” (Lev. 16:21-22).  In the first several chapters of Leviticus the offeror puts his hands on the beast to be killed: “And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him” (Lev. 1:4).  This is what happened on the cross.  There was a transfer of guilt that took place.  Our sins on Christ so that we might have the righteousness of God in him (2 Cor. 5:21).

For us to have the righteousness of God, our sins first have to be dealt with.  This is what happened on the cross.  That is why God is able to freely justify sinners and yet remain just himself.

It had to happen this way.  This is why Paul says what he says in Rom. 3:25-26: “to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness.”  What is Paul saying here?  The “sins that are past” are a reference to sins committed before Christ came, in the period of the Old Testament, but sins which were nevertheless remitted and forgiven and passed over.  Adam’s sins, Abraham’s sins, David’s sins.  God did this through his forbearance, which I take to mean that he put up with this for a time, because the sins were not actually atoned for yet.  That had to await the coming of Jesus Christ.  Christ had to die, had to render redemption, had to become a propitiation by the shedding his blood, in order for the passing over of these sins to be consistent with the justice of God.  The apostle is saying that in the cross the righteousness of God – which here means his attribute of justice – was demonstrated and proved.  How can the righteousness of God which is given to sinners as a gift (21-22) be consistent with God’s character as just (25-26)?  This is how it happens: it happens through the cross and only through the cross.  On the cross, God’s righteous character was vindicated and proved, not only in the passing over of sins committed before the cross, but also in the forgiveness of sins through Christ since his death: “to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness.”

“That he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (26).  The atonement was necessary.  It was the only way God could freely forgive sinners and justify them without compromising his righteous and holy and just character.  

The Role of Faith

It’s important that we see, once again, both the importance of faith in all of this, but also to keep from making it more than it is.  The propitiation is received by faith (25), and God is “the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (26).  So on the one hand, we see the importance of faith.  Who is justified?  Who is declared righteous in God’s sight?  It is the man who believes in Jesus.

And yet, let’s not think that God justifies us because of the quality of our faith!  It is not the quality of our faith but of the object of our faith that justifies us.  The blood of Christ is the object of our faith.  It is his work that we look to.  Last time, we said that faith receives what Christ achieves.  That is a good way to look at this.  Faith is not the righteousness that saves us.  Christ is the righteousness that saves us (1 Cor. 1:30).  It is his redemptive, propitiatory death that purges the guilt of our sins and makes a way for the righteousness of God to be imputed to us.  

The gospel does not call you and I to have faith in our faith.  It calls us to put our trust in Jesus Christ and to find refuge in him.  It calls you to look to Jesus and to him alone for the salvation from your sins.  And the thing is, no matter how little or big your faith is, or how long you have believed, if it is true faith in Jesus Christ, a faith that not only sees him as the only Redeemer of God’s elect, but is persuaded that he is so and embraces him as such, then the promise of the gospel is that you are justified.  You are right with God.  All your sins are forgiven.

There are a lot of Christians out there who live their whole lives in spiritual paralysis, because they are always looking inward.  Now, I’m not saying that you never do that.  I’m not saying we don’t make our calling and election sure. I’m not saying that we don’t ask God to investigate our hearts and lead us to repentance.  Yes, yes, do that!  But there is a difference in wanting to change and looking to that change as the basis of our relationship with God.  Do you see that?  The basis of your hope is not in your righteousness which will always be imperfect, as least this side of heaven, but in God’s righteousness, which is eternally perfect.  What are you resting in?  Rest in Christ!  Come to him and find rest!  

As I close this morning, let me share John Bunyan’s experience, and may the Lord in his grace make this all our own experience too.  This is from his Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. 

One day, as I was passing into the field, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul: 'Thy righteousness is in heaven.' And I thought that I could see Jesus Christ at God's right hand. Yes, there indeed was my righteousness, so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say about me that I did not have righteousness, for it was standing there before Him.

I also saw that it was not my good feelings that made my righteousness better, and that my bad feelings did not make my righteousness worse, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, 'the same yesterday, and today, and forever,' (Heb. 13:8).

Now indeed the chains fell off my legs, and I was loosened from my afflictions and irons. My temptations also fled away so that from that time forward those dreadful Scriptures terrified me no more. Now I went home rejoicing because of the grace and love of God, and went to my Bible to look up where the verse was found that said, 'Thy righteousness is in heaven.' But I could not find it. And so my heart began to sink again, until suddenly, there came to my remembrance, (1 Cor. 1:30), 'Who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption.' From this, I saw that the other sentence was also true.

I lived here sweetly at peace with God through Christ for a long time. There was nothing but Christ before my eyes. I was not thinking of him now only as concerning His blood, His burial or His resurrection, but I was thinking of Christ Himself, and that He sat there on the right hand of God in Heaven.  

My friend, this is what Paul is saying here.  For those who look to Christ by faith, your righteousness is in heaven.