Romans 3:9-20
There was a look of shock on the faces of the congregation last January when I announced that we were beginning a series of sermons on Romans that would last six or seven years. That look of shock was replaced by a sigh of relief when I said that we would focus on Romans only in the period each year from January up to Lent. So we had nine sermons last year that took us up to Romans 3:8 and we will have seven sermons this year that will take us into chapter 5.
Paul’s letter to the Romans is his greatest epistle, written in 57AD at the end of his third missionary journey. He wrote this letter during his three months stay in Corinth. Paul was intending to make a visit to Rome to use this as his base of operations in reaching out to what is today Spain so he poured himself into this letter. It was important to him that the church in Rome knew who he was and what he believed. As a consequence, this letter is a bold declaration of our faith and caused Martin Luther to describe it as really the chief part of the New Testament and … truly the purest gospel.
In C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis tells the story of a boy and girl who are trapped underground along with the prince of Narnia and a creature named Puddleglum. A witch who ruled that underground world was casting a spell. She softly and sweetly chanted to them that there was no sun. There was no sky. There were no trees. There was no kingdom of Narnia. These were just part of their imagination. As they sunk under her spell, Puddleglum put his foot on the hot coals of the fire and the pain and odor of burnt flesh brought clarity to their minds and he declared what was true, that even if the world they remembered was a dream, it was far better than the underground world in which they lived and the spell was broken, the witch was killed and they returned to the kingdom of Narnia.
There are times when we become discouraged in our Christian lives and it seems that there is no hope. We are determined to plod along but we are overwhelmed by the obstacles in front of us. We see the news and are discouraged because it seems that all that is evil is advancing and the church is becoming more and more impotent. The church itself is becoming corrupted. We plod along without hope, without optimism, without expectation that things will improve or ever be different.
Paul’s letter to the Romans is like Puddleglum’s foot in the fire. The declaration of the truths of Paul’s letter to the Romans wakes us up, snaps us out of the spell we are in and reminds us again of the hope we have that will persevere despite any and all obstacles.
It is my prayer that these next seven sermons on Romans will energize us to live our Christian lives with confidence, boldness and eager expectation.
Let me give an overview of what we looked at last year and then turn to the passage for this morning. After seventeen introductory verses, Paul begins his letter to the church in Rome with a lengthy discussion of the wrath of God. And he continues with this discussion for the rest of chapter 1 (15 verses), all of chapter 2 (29 verses) and the first 20 verses of chapter 3.
Why did Paul spend so much time at the beginning of his letter, talking about the wrath of God?
There is a wonderful Christmas movie filmed in the US in 1946 titled It’s a Wonderful Life. In this film, George Bailey is stuck in a small town that he has repeatedly tried to leave. His heart’s desire is to see the world but he keeps making sacrifices to help out the people of his town. All his work for the Bailey Building & Loan seems to be for nothing on one Christmas Eve when it appears that a large sum of money has been lost and he could be sent to jail for fraud.
So he wishes he had never been born and Clarence, his guardian angel, grants him his wish. George and Clarence go back into town, a town in which George has never existed, and he sees how his life made a difference. George sees some of the ways his not having been born made the lives of many people more miserable. A druggist is now an alcoholic bum because George was not there to prevent him from accidentally sending a poisonous medicine to a customer. People are living in squalor because George was not there to offer low cost housing to them. His brother died as a young boy because George was not there to save him from drowning.
As George sees more and more of the world in which he never lived, he becomes more and more eager to return to the world that had caused him so much despair he had tried to end his life. And in the end George Baily is granted his desire to return and the film ends with a celebration of all the things that really matter.
The same world that made him miserable and filled him with despair, now fills him with hope and optimism. And why? Because he had seen the alternative.
The first big turning point in Paul’s letter to the Romans comes in 3:21
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.
We read that verse and say, “That’s nice,” and go on reading. Part of the reason we do not fully appreciate that verse is that we have not fully understood the alternative. We know about the grace of God. Many of us have grown up hearing about the love of God. Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. God forgives us our sins. We have grown up with this and so we miss the power of 3:21
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.
What would the world be like without the grace we experience? What would the world be like if Jesus had not died for our sins and risen from the dead? What would our future be like in that case?
And so Paul makes ever so clear to the readers of his letter the difference Jesus makes to us by talking about the wrath of God.
Imagine that you are on trial. You stand before the throne of God, accused of being unrighteous, undeserving of being brought into the presence of God for eternity. Paul presents the possible defenses people might make and demolishes those defenses one by one.
He begins in 1:18-32 to talk about the wrath of God against depraved Gentile society. This is an exploration of the wrath of God against those who do not care what God thinks about what they do. Their focus is not on any god but on their own pursuit of pleasure, power and wealth. These people live not for eternity but for the moment.
Paul says about these people:
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
Except for those who are engaged in such a headlong pursuit of pleasure, there is not a lot of disagreement that this kind of behavior is not good.
So as you stand on trial, you say, “But I am not like that. I did not pursue pleasure without abandon. In fact, many times I denied myself a pleasure because I knew that it was not right. Why am I on trial here? What about all those who were just described? Shouldn’t they be the ones standing here? What am I doing here?”
Then Paul takes on a second group, critical moralizers, whether Jew or Gentile, who apply high moral standards to all but themselves. This is precisely the group that makes the defense I just read.
These critical moralizers are disgusted by sinful behavior because they don’t see that in themselves there is at least the potential to do the same things others do. And they don’t see in themselves their own disobedience. They claim to be good moral people because of their upstanding character but are blind to the moral flaws in themselves. They self-righteously criticize adulterers and thieves and drunkards but excuse their own lies calling them misstatements. They do not view their own sexual missteps as adultery but rather as momentary weakness.
And Paul says to them:
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.
5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 God “will give to each person according to what he has done.”
It is a bit like the teachers of the law and the Pharisees who brought to Jesus a woman caught in adultery. In response to their accusations of adultery against this woman, Jesus said to them, If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her. And one by one, they left until Jesus was alone with the woman.
This is the plight of those who have such disdain for immorality but are blind to their own immorality. So as you stand before your judge you cannot any longer claim to be a good person, better than those other sinners. You stand condemned – until you think about your religious training.
Paul’s audience might say, “But we are Jews. We are God’s chosen people. Because my mother was a Jew and my father a Jew and because we observe Torah, the Jewish Law, we do not need to suffer the wrath of God.”
In our day we might say, “ But I am a Christian. I believe God loves me and that Jesus is his son. I have gone to church all my life and I read my Bible and pray and give a tithe of all I earn to the church. This is why I do not need to fear the wrath of God.”
To this Paul says:
21 you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? 22 You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?
23 You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? 24 As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”
He brings the point home once again. It does not matter that you are a Jew or not a Jew. It does not matter what your tradition is. What matters is what you do. And what we do, all of us, is break the law. We all, in one way or another break the law of God.
Paul continues:
25 Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised.
28 A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly,
I talked with a man yesterday who became a Christian here in this country. And he talked about how much more difficult it became for him once he became a Christian. The list of behaviors that were acceptable and unacceptable came from the outside into his heart. Smoking hashish or going to prostitutes was no longer an external ethic but became an internal ethic and he could no longer do the things he used to do.
It does not matter whether you are a Jew, Muslim or Christian. What matters is obedience to the law in your heart. So Paul says, “A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly. Salvation does not come from the outside but from the inside.
If it were possible to keep the law in your heart, then you could be saved. But no one can keep the law perfectly. All of us break the law in one way or another so being a good Christian does not help us. Being a good citizen does not help us. Being better than others does not help us.
As you stand before the judge and make your case, one by one your defenses are cut down. The truth is revealed and you are not saved by ignorance, by high ethical standards or religious participation and beliefs. And then if you still had some shred of hope of a defense, Paul concludes his argument about the wrath of God by making a case for universal condemnation.
What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.
Who is the we to whom Paul refers in the beginning of this morning’s text? When he asks, Are we any better? To whom is he referring? I think we refers to Paul himself and the church in Rome?
If Paul came to stand before his eternal judge and make his case why he should be permitted to enter into the presence of God, could he say, “Well you know about all the work I did for you and all I suffered on your behalf. I started a lot of churches and wrote a lot of good letters. You know that I deserve to be with you in heaven.”
No! Absolutely not! There is no one, not one, not even Paul who deserves anything except the wrath of God. Are we any better? asks Paul. Not at all! We are all alike under sin. Paul makes this point later in this chapter in next week’s text, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
And then Paul presents what I call a pearl necklace of condemnation. How can condemnation be a good thing even if it comes in the form of a beautiful necklace of pearls? Paul uses a Pharisitical form of argument, stringing together seven verses from Scripture to make his point. He quotes one verse from Ecclesiastes, five from the Psalms and then one from Isaiah, pearls of scripture that make his point that we all stand condemned. As I read these verses, hear the repetition. Four times the scriptures say no one, making the point that no one, not even one can escape the wrath of God.
As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”
13 “Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and
bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their
eyes.”
It does not matter if you are ignorant of God pursuing only your own pleasure. It does not matter how wonderful and magnificent your ethical standards are. It does not matter how religious you are or from which religious tradition you come. It does not matter because every one of us, including Paul himself who wrote these words a couple millennium ago, every one of us stands condemned and deserving of the wrath of God.
As Jonathan Edwards described it in his famous sermon Sinners in the hands of an Angry God, we all are in the position of the spider being held by the slender thread of his web over an all consuming fire.
We will stand before God and have no defense. Paul says to us:
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.
We will stand speechless before God having nothing to say, no argument to present in our favor. We will stand completely and absolutely helpless in his presence. You sit in your pew this morning condemned to eternal death. It is like being in a dark cell with no light and you search desperately for some way of escape. You search desperately for some crack you can exploit to make a hole to escape. You look desperately for some way out and there is no way out. You are stuck. You are powerless. There is nothing you can do. You will die an eternal death and you are without a shred of hope.
It is in this light that we conclude looking at Paul’s discussion of the wrath of God and move to a most glorious truth. After the long dark night the sun has risen, a new day has dawned, and the world is flooded with light. This verse comes to us as water in the desert, light into absolute darkness, an open door in a closed cell. This verse brings hope into a world of total and absolute despair.
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.
This is our hope when we stand before our judge at the end of time. We have no defense. But we have hope of eternal salvation. This is not because of what we have done, not because of what we have believed but because of what God has done for us and offered to us.
How can a pearl necklace of condemnation be good news for us? It can be good news if it helps us realize how completely and totally we depend on Christ.
God’s grace is given to us, offering us what we do not deserve so we can enjoy what we have not earned. This will be the focus of the sermons over the next six weeks. If you have depended on your own sense of goodness or respectability; if you have depended on your solid religious upbringing; if you have depended in any way on your own efforts to reach God, then drop that insufficient and inadequate defense this morning. Stand before God in absolute dependence and cry out for his mercy in your life. He will hear you and he will enter into your life and give you what you have always needed, do not deserve and cannot earn or repay. Accept this morning God’s free gift of eternal salvation.
Today and over the next six weeks, soak up the good news of the gospel. Let the good news of God’s grace renew you, energize you to do good works, enable you to persevere with hope for the work to which God has called you.
