Episode Transcript
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Well, if you are able,
please remain standing, and let's give our
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attention now to another portion of God's
word in Romans. This is Romans Chapter
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Three, Verses Twenty One through twenty
six. This is God's word, but
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now the righteousness of God has been
manifested, apart from the law, although
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the law and the prophets bear witness
to it. The righteousness of God through
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faith in Jesus Christ for all who
believe, for there is no distinction,
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for all have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God and are justified
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by His grace as a gift,
through the redemption that is in Christ,
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Jesus, whom God put forward as
a propitiation by his blood, to be
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received by faith. This was to
show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance,
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he had passed over former sins.
It was to show his righteousness at
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the present time so that he might
be just and the justifier of the one
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who has faith in Jesus and God
bless his word to us. You may
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be seated. Well, if you're
at all unfamiliar with the Bible, a
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passage like this is no doubt going
to be a little overwhelming, even if
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you are familiar with the Bible,
even if you've read Romans a number of
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times, no doubt some of this
passage, even as you hear it,
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will go feel a little bit in
one ear and out the other. It's
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the kind of thing that you can
track with, maybe for a few verses,
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but then, at least for some
of us, feels a little bit
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much. I'm even just a little
bit in that's partly because there's a lot
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of big ideas that Paul is bringing
up here all in one place. He's
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describing Jesus and all of these powerful
ways, very deep and meaningful ways,
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and he's piling them up one after
another after another. And if you hit
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any one of those terms and you
feel like you're not entirely sure what it
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means, righteousness, Glory, redemption, propitiation, if you feel a little
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bit unsettled, or not necessarily unsettled
but just a little ignorant, then soon
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it can feel like you don't really
understand what's going on here. Well,
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I want to help with that this
morning, because what we have here is
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not a bunch of sort of abstract
truths cobbled together and a kind of random
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way, but we have some of
the most important, some of the deepest
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and riches truths in the scriptures,
all focusing our attention on Jesus. Words
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like I've mentioned righteousness, redemption,
propitiation, sacrifice, glory. Now it
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might be nice if we had shorter
or easier, less abstract words to help
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us remember these things, but we
don't. This is how God has spoken
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to us and we don't need to
be afraid of it. And now,
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of course, this doesn't mean that, though these cont that these are big
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ideas, that they lack concreteness and
earthiness. These aren't ideas that just float
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around. Their true truths, truth
that really matter, truths that affect our
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lives. They affect us in how
we feel our guilt about the past,
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about our actions and the present,
about our hopes and our fears for the
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future, even the afterlife. The
discuss this is so this discussion doesn't have
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to be overly complicated or philosophical,
because ultimately what we're talking about are not
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ideas but about a person. Ultimately, we're talking about Jesus and what he
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did on the Cross. And when
you think about Jesus on the Cross,
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a crown of thorns, blood running
down his side people mocking and jeering.
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Well, there's hardly anything abstract about
that, is there? Well, the
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first big idea I want to bring
your attention to is the glory of God.
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It's something this portion of scripture that
God says we have fallen short of
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it. All have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God. Now,
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I suspect you can all fairly easily
define what it means to sin,
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but what does it mean to fall
short of the glory of God? To
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fall short of the glory of God? What is the glory of God?
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How would you describe that? How
do you express it? The Glory of
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God is that Great Quality of God's
Majesty, His honor, his praise that
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is internal to God, that is
part of him in his nature, but
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is also externally evident in the things
he's made, in the works that he
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has done. One recent theologian,
James Hamilton, is expressed it in this
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way. The Glory of God is
the weight of his majestic goodness, who
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God is and the resulting name or
reputation he gains from his revelation of himself
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as Creator, sustain or judge and
Redeemer. Another Biblical theologian, Thomas Shriner,
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has said that the word glory is
used in scripture to broadly capture the
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supremacy of God in everything. You
might imagine an earthly example. Imagine a
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King, a king who is glorious
because, well, he's the king,
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but nevertheless who demonstrates that glory in
various ways, the immensity of his palace,
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the vast store houses of his treasures, the powers of his rule.
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Now, human kings, we see
them in this way, and yet we
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recognize that they themselves fall short of
their own glory, don't they? But
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here it's not the king who falls
short of his glory, it's the people
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who fall short of the glory of
the king. This is both a remarkable
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and a depressing thought, I think. On the one hand, it means
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that the glory of God not only
belongs to him in his divinity, but
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the glory of God also belongs to
us in our humanity. That's the amazing
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thing, that's the remarkable thing,
that the glory of the King Somehow also
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belongs to the people, that they
can share in that, that they share
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in that wealth and in that treasure. In other words, as Paul Puts
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It, in First Corinthians, eleven
seven. We are those who have been
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made in the image and glory of
God. This is this remarkable fact.
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We have been created to be so
close to him as his creatures, children,
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servants, that God manifests his glory
in us. It's kind of like
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if you if you there was a
king and you got a job serving in
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his courts, it would be a
promotion right as opposed to just slaving away
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on your farm. You get to
share in the glory of the King,
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even as a servant. You are
part of the palace, you're part of
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the staff. Perhaps you even get
to wear nice clothes and do nice things.
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You could think of it another way. When you shine a light on
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a mirror, the mirror is very
bright, isn't it? It's maybe even
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blinding. Perhaps you've been driving one
time and a mirror has been shining so
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brightly that it blinds your eyes.
When a mirror shines brightly, though,
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it's shining because it's reff of its
reflective power, and we're like that in
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terms of God's glory. We shine
with the glory of God because his glory
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is shining on us and we reflect
that. That's what we were made to
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do. It reflects back to him, and this is how we are by
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nature. And it was to be
consummated in an eternal way, in an
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in a glorious sharing and shining of
God and for God forever and ever and
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in Christ this is what we achieve. John Seventeen, twenty two, Jesus
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says this amazing thing. He says, I have given them, speaking of
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his disciples, I have given them
the glory that you have given me.
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Jesus himself is talking about his disciples
receiving this glory that the father has given
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to him. That's the remarkable thing. The depressing thing is that is that
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in all of this, or in
or despite all of this, we've fallen
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away from it. Adam lost at
all. This sharing and shining of the
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glory of God was lost. The
image of God remained, but it becomes
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darken and broken. The Mirror,
so to speak, turns inward and begins
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this quest of self, glorification,
of self shining, of sharing in one's
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own glory. And what kind of
mirror does that? A broken one,
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sinful, dark, dirty. These
are the things that happen when those who
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are made to reflect and the glory
of God to shine and share and the
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glory of God, begin focusing on
their own glorification. Remember what Paul said.
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In Romans One, twenty one and
twenty three, they exchanged the glory
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of the immortal God for images made
to look like mortal things, worshiping the
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creature instead of the Creator. Our
shorter catechism says that our chief end is
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to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But because of sin we fail to
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meet that end, we fail to
obtain our God given goal, a glorious
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goal, a blessed goal. Because
we sin, we fall short of the
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glory of God. You can see, then, why God says that he's
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just in condemning our sin. In
Verse Twenty Six, we read that God
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is just. Earlier in that same
passage we read in Verse Twenty Three.
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All have sinned and fall short of
the glory of God, every single one
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of us, educated uneducated, whatever
the color of our skin. Here Paul
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puts it in the categories of Jew
and gentile. Everyone, everyone has sinned
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and fallen short of the glory of
God. When our first parents sinned,
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they took all that was glorious about
God, all that was glorious about their
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place in creation, all that was
glorious about them, and they threw it
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away, they spat on it,
they despised it, they took his gifts
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and wasted them. They denied the
all glorious God the worship he deserved and
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gave it to themselves. They refused
obedience to his laws and they made themselves
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sovereign over and against him, against
the one who had made them, against
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the one who had caused them to
be these kinds of creatures, glorious creatures.
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The horror of this is expressed in
earthly and common terms in the story
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of the Prodigal son, the beginning
of the story. This is a story
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Jesus tells about a son of a
wealthy man who disrespectfully demands his inheritance even
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before his father has died. He
then takes that inheritance, despises his father
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and leaves him. Wastes the money
then on his own sinful lusts and desires
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and plunges him into such a state
of poverty, in despair, that he
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longs for the food of Pigs.
We hear stories like this and we shake
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our heads. What a waste,
what a fool, but this is our
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story as those who have sinned and
fallen short of the glory of God.
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This is exactly what we did,
only far, far worse, because it
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wasn't just the wealth and in the
inheritance of a earthly father, but it
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was all the blessings and glory of
God that we despised. When Adam and
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Eve fell, they took all the
God had given to them and demanded it
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for themselves and dishonor and disobedience.
It wasn't just foolishness, it was treason,
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it was sin. And, as
one commentator puts it colorfully, God
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is never to be accused of moral
flabbiness. He is vigorously opposed to evil
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in every shape and form, and
so when God came up against the sin
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of his creatures, he did not
wink at it, he did not excuse
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it, he did not ignore it, but he was just and he condemned
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them to death and through them out
of the garden and barred the way to
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that glory. The present glory that
is theirs and is ours now was diminished
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and the future glory that would be
there as was lost forever. This means
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that falling the short of the glory
of God is worse than not getting an
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eternal reward. It means earning and
eternal punishment. It means in our sin
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we stand before God and he is
a just judge and he condemns us for
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our sins. It means that because
we fall short of the glory of God,
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we also fall under the wrath of
God, and God is justines.
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This is what God has been explaining
to us in these first two chapters,
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over and over and over again,
in various ways, impressing on our hearts,
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reminding us of the things that we
know, that his wrath has been
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manifested against all unrighteousness, a fact
we cannot ignore. But here we are
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reminded that God has not only just. Verse Twenty Six also tells us that
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he is the justifier. He is
not only just, but he is the
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justife fire. What an interesting way
of speaking. It's a way of saying
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God not only wants to declare the
guilty guilty, he also wants to make
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the guilty innocent. Well, how
does one do that? Usually, when
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we talk about someone, a guilty
person, becoming innocent before the judge,
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were usually talking about a bad judge, right one who has taken a bribe,
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for example, and said okay,
I declare you innocent, or someone
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who somehow ignores the sin or is
it or is just incapable of judging,
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sees the problems and then just mishandles
the whole case. But none of those
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things could be true of God,
because God is perfect and everything that he
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does, our justice is always,
I'm broken and and struggling and incomplete and
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imperfect. But not so with God. God knows our hearts, he knows
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our minds, he knows everything perfectly. He knows exactly what sin deserves,
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what his glory really is. So
God is perfectly just. So how does
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a guilty person become innocent? Well, because God exercises not only the role
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as judge, but he also becomes
a justifier. With God, he does
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something different and he doesn't hide the
evidence or discount the sin or ignore the
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evil. He doesn't change his judgment
by finding some error or mistake in himself.
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No, God declares innocent people innocent
because he makes them innocent in Jesus,
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first by this act of justification,
second by an act of sanctification and
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then finally and completely, in as
an act of joy, of glorification,
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in justification. He declares us as
righteousness he did, or he declares us
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as righteous by IMPUTING TO US Christ's
righteousness. He gives to us what someone
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else has earned. You could think
of it in terms of money. For
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example. Let's say you owed a
great debt, a great debt. Here
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someone comes, this someone is Jesus, and he pays off the debt.
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The money that is belongs to him
is credited to your account and you are
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declared righteous and perfectly righteous. You
and in that you are declared innocent.
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God continues to make us righteous in
his act of sanctification, this purifying of
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US inwardly, so that it's not
only our standing before God, this legal
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standing before God, but personally,
he subjectively, he's making us who he
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wants us to be, an act
that's completed and consummated in our glorification when
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one day we stand before God without
any sin, because it's all been removed,
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personally, legally, in every single
way. As far as the East
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is from the West, God is
forgotten. Our Sin, it is gone,
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it is no more, it has
nothing to do with us. Because
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of Jesus, because of his sacrifice. In this God is the justifier and
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he does all of this through Jesus, this one who has been manifested apart
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from the law in a different way. The law, particularly as it comes
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to us in in Moses, particularly
as it comes to us in nature,
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bears down on us and tells us
and reminds us that we are incapable of
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doing the things that God commands,
incapable, and our sinful selves are constantly
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being stirred up to other sins,
sins that surprise us, since that that
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surprise other people. How could this
thing be in me? But there it
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is, and through the law we
comes knowledge of this sin. That's what
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all we read last time in verse
twenty. For by the works of the
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law no human being will be justified
in his sight, because through the law
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comes knowledge of Sin. But apart
from the law, although the Law of
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Moses and the prophets bear witness to
it, the revelation of g of another
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kind of righteousness has come, not
a righteousness that we earn and not a
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righteousness that we can please God by, but a righteousness that is given to
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us as a gift. God righteous
manifests makes known this righteousness apart from the
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law, in a sacrifice and it's
helpful to remember the sacrifices in the Old
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Testament in this regard. Paul says
that the law and the Prophets Bear Witness
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to this righteousness of God. Well, it's in the sacrificial system that it
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will one place which witness is born, one place in which the righteousness of
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God that comes apart from the law
is manifested. You remember those sacrifices in
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the Old Testament? Right. There's
all different kinds, but they all involved
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this kind of identification, a kind
of offering of something to God that his
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wrath might be turned away, a
saying here, I put my my sins
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on this animal, for example,
in the hopes that you will see my
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sins, not on me but on
it, that that animal would be put
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to death because of the sins and
that your wrath would be turned away.
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That's what propitiation is. It's God's
turning his wrath away because of this gift
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that is given, this sacrifice that
is given. Now, that's all made
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possible because of God. It's not
like human beings invented this thing and said,
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I know what we can do.
We can take all of our sins
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and we'll put them on an animal
and then God will be pleased by that.
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Right. That's nonsense. That doesn't
make any sense that that would work.
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What did the Animal Do? How
could my sins ever belong there?
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It only works because God has given
it in that way, because God made
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the sacrifices affective for that, not
in and of themselves, but because they
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pointed forward, because they were connected
to the once and final sacrifice that Paul
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is speaking about here, the sacrifice
of Jesus. The sacrifices were effective in
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the old testament because the sacrifices were
essentially Jesus being sacrifice fast. They were
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that intimately connected by the promise,
by the design, by the will of
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God. So when the people gave
their sacrifices, they came in faith,
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not that the animal was somehow special
in itself, but that God had made
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a promise that he would take care
of their sin, that he, by
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his own promise, would turn away
his wrath and would consider a person forgiven.
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They went not in the promises of
a lamb but in the promises of
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the lamb, in the promises of
God. It worked because this was God's
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will. The righteousness of God therefore
was manifested in that way to show his
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wrath against sin and to point forward
to this final sacrifice of Jesus. And
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that's exactly what happened on the cross. Paul uses these terms redemption and propitiation
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to describe what Jesus did. Redemption
refers to a kind of buying back or
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a bringing something, paying for something
to be rescued, redeemed. You remember,
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this is a something that can as
spoken of in terms of slaves,
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slaves being brought out, and we
are very much like this. Under the
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law, we find ourselves in a
kind of debtors prison. God redeems as
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though he brings us out of slavery. Under the law, we also find
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ourselves condemned because of our sin.
Under God's wrath and in his propitiation,
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he looks at that sacrifice and he
turns it away. Now, the sacrifices
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of a lamb or a dove or
something like that wouldn't seem to accomplish that.
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But what about the sacrifice of the
son of God? Do you think
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that might be enough to cover for
your sins, if God himself died on
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the Cross in your place? Well, indeed it is. Indeed it was.
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And when Jesus, God's beloved divine, all glorious, all powerful,
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eternal son, died on a cross. A sacrifice for sin was made in
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his blood. Propitiation happen? God
puts forward a sacrifice. Jesus presents himself
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as a sacrifice for his people and
says the lamb says, put the sin
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is on me so that they can
be forgiven. And in Verse Twenty Five
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Paul Says Exactly this, that in
Sin Jesus Christ, whom God put forward
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as a propitiation by his blood.
And so when God, when we put
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our faith in Jesus Christ, we
are trusting in him, whom God looks
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at and turns his wrath away from
us. This is why we don't fear
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the Judgment Day, this is why
we don't struggle and and despair of God
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judging us for our sins, because
we know that all judgment has passed for
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us in Jesus Amazing Grace. When
we look for salvation, therefore, when
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we feel the weight of our sins, you see how foolish and sinful it
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is to look anywhere other than the
cross, to believe in anything other than
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the cross. In our sins we
fell short totally missed the mark and failed
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to obtain the glory of God.
But we not only felt short of his
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glory, we also fell under his
wrath. We deserved nothing more, and
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God would have been glorified in punishing
us. He would have been glorified in
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the exercise of his judgment, and
he will be on the last day,
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when those who are judged from their
sins are judged for their sins. He
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would be glorified and will be glorified, as any king would be and is,
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in conquering his enemies. But out
of the goodness of his will and
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His grace, God also glorifies himself
in salvation. He gives to US something
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else, freedom from the dead of
our sins, the joy of seeing his
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wrath turn away from us and see
his fatherly smile of love turn toward us.
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We received the heart pounding joy of
belonging to Christ and knowing that we
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are those who are declared righteousness.
And that's how things, miraculous, things
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begin to happen, like light shining
out of darkness and the darkness not overcoming
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it, not only in Jesus,
but also in us. How is it
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that ungodly, sinful people like us
can be bright and shining lights of the
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glory of God in the world.
It happens because of the power of the
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light, because of the change is
that happens in US according to the promises
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of God. So when we think
of Jesus on the Cross, or when
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we think of our sins and then
think of Jesus on the Cross, let's
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consider the things that God puts forward
here, that God tells us here.
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Jesus isn't just a story to remember. He's not just an idea that we
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hold onto or believe in some kind
of way. He is our life.
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He is the thing by which we
do not experience the wrath of God.
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He is the one who justifies us, who makes us righteous and makes us
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the people that God has saved us
to be. So let us put our
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faith in him. Let's not go
bow before God and make excuses or accusations,
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but freely admit what he says about
us. Freely admit what is obviously
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true, that we have fallen,
we have sinned, we have come short
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of the glory of God, but
in the grace of God we are being
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conformed in the image of his glorious
son. Now and unto eternity. This
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is his promise to us. Let
us pray.
