05-16-10 Look Who’s Offering The Sacrifice!

We return this morning

to our study of the book of Romans.

We are studying the last 11 verses of the 3rd chapter,

which are also the first 11 verses

of the second major section of this remarkable letter.

In the first section of the book

we saw Paul paint for us

a portrait of the human race without Christ.

It was a bleak, terrifying portrait

revealing to us a picture of humanity

standing justly condemned before God

on the basis of our offenses

against His clearly revealed moral law.

It was a portrait painted for us by Paul

as his way of preparing us for his revelation

of what God has done for us through Christ.

Then, in the second section of the book,

the section we have just begun studying,

Paul begins with the words,

‟But now, apart from the law...”.

And, as he explains what it means

for a person to enter into a friendship with God

on the basis of faith in Christ Jesus,

he wants it clearly understood

from the very beginning of his message

that this agreement is founded

not on our ability to perform up to a certain standard

as measured by the moral law of God,

but rather it is founded upon God’s ability

to perform both for us

and in us

those things we could never have done for Him.

I love the way Paul said it

in Acts 13:39.

‟...and through (Jesus Christ) everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses.”

We are in the process of walking through

this section of the 3rd chapter of Romans.

Paul begins in 3:21 by saying,

But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets...

And when he tells us that this righteousness being given to us

is witnessed by the Law and the Prophets,

it’s simply his way of saying

that the righteousness our God offers us through Jesus Christ

is exactly the same righteousness

we would have achieved

if we would have kept the moral law of God perfectly

from the day of our birth

until the day of our death.

Whatever it is that our God is giving us

literally enables us to become as holy as God Himself,

to stand before God not just forgiven,

not just pardoned,

but absolutely sinless, pure, holy.

More than 50 times in the New Testament

God addresses true believers as His “holy ones”,

and the word “holy” used in that title

is exactly the same word used to describe God Himself.

This will make more sense to us as we continue to move through this letter,

but I mention it now

just so that we don’t fall into the deception

of believing that what God is offering us through Christ

is just His forgiveness.

Then, in 3:22-24,

Paul goes on to explain how we receive this righteousness.

Rom. 3:22 even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction;

Rom. 3:23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Rom. 3:24 being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus;

And here again I’ll tell you that we are going to be given a lot more information in the future,

but for now I’ll state this as simply and clearly as I can.

God has told us that when Christ chose to allow Himself to be nailed to that cross

He was taking on Himself

all the sins of all the world,

paying the debt for that sin

through His own death.

What that means

is that the debt for our sins - all of our sins - has already been paid in full.

And what He asks from us now

is that we recognize we have sinned against God,

and then simply choose to believe Christ really did pay our debt in full.

That’s it - simply believe our debt has been paid in full by Christ Himself.

And if we do that,

when we do that,

in response to our faith in Christ,

God literally creates within us

a new heart,

a holy, pure, new spirit within us,

a spirit that loves God and longs to please Him.

And your spirit is born all over again...

Now this morning

I want us to move on in this passage

to the 3rd step in Paul’s presentation

of this good news from God.

It is found in 3:25-26.

After assuring us that the holiness being offered to us through Christ

is in fact the real thing,

and then telling us that it is being offered to us

simply in exchange for our faith, our belief in and acceptance of

what God has done for us through Christ,

the next thing Paul does

is to explain to us

why God is able to do this.

Here we are,

obviously flawed,

broken,

sinful created beings of God,

hearing our God offer us

total forgiveness,

and a recreated inner spirit,

and entrance into an eternal love union with Him.

The natural question that must come up

is how this can possibly be.

In verses 25-26 Paul gives us the how.

And at the same time

he gives us a remarkable glimpse

into the very heart of God Himself.

He allows us to see something about our Creator

that, on our own, we would never have guessed was there.

Speaking of Jesus Christ,

the passage reads as follows:

Rom. 3:25 ...whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed;

Rom. 3:26 for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Now, before we move into this passage

I need to prepare you a little

for what we’ll be doing

during the next few minutes.

When our God communicates His truth to us

He does so in ways that reach

every aspect of our humanity.

If you were here last week

you will remember I shared with you

a story designed to help us relate emotionally

to some of the truths we’ve been studying.

There are many examples of this same kind of feeling-oriented communication

throughout the Bible.

The parable of the prodigal son

is just one of many examples.

Even though most of us have heard that little story countless times,

the mental image of that father

standing on that road

watching, waiting for the return of his son

and then running to meet him

carrying a robe to cover his rags

and a ring to place on his finger,

that image cannot help but touch us deeply,

and all the more

when we realize

that this is our God describing Himself

and His attitude toward us.

Or how about that other story

about the shepherd

and his one wayward sheep,

lost and alone.

When Jesus talked about that shepherd

searching until He finds the little sheep,

then carrying it back to safety in His arms

it communicates to us at the feeling level

what our God wants us to know about Himself and His attitude toward us.

Such passages are designed

to bypass our confused and distorted intellectual concepts of our God

and to reach out to us at the feeling level,

providing us with a doorway into our discovery into the truth about our God.

But then there are other passages

given to us by our God

to communicate His truth

not to our emotions

but to our intellect,

to our logical reasoning processes.

That doesn’t mean the truths we look at

will not affect us emotionally,

because they certainly can

and in fact at times do in a powerful way.

In fact, some of the most powerful emotional responses we will ever feel

in our growing discovery of our Creator

come as the result of understanding

some previously unknown truth

about Him and His relationship with us.

Take, for example,

those remarkable words of John

in his first letter.

1 John 5:11 And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.

1 John 5:12 He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

1 John 5:13 These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.

Those words were written by John

to communicate a piece of truth to our intellect.

He wants us to know that if we have Christ,

with Him we also have eternal life.

No chance,

no doubt,

no fear,

no confusion...that you may know!

But when that truth becomes a part of our thinking,

it will also impact our emotions,

giving us an emotional sense of peace and security.

I bring all of this up right now

because I want you to know

that our relationship to the verses

we are studying right now

begins not in our emotions

but in our mind,

in our logical reasoning processes.

Paul wants us to know

certain critical aspects of truth

in our interaction with our Creator.

Now, with that background,

let’s take a look

at how God was able

to make to us

this remarkable offer of forgiveness and righteousness,

requiring from us in return

nothing more than our faith,

our belief in and acceptance of

the truth of what He has done.

In the first phrase of this 25th verse

Paul tells us that God publicly displayed Jesus Christ as a propitiation in His blood through faith.

And for this phrase to make any sense

we need first of all to make some progress

with that strange word ‟propitiation”.

And here again,

I believe the first readers of this letter

would have reached this point in the document

and stopped reading in shocked amazement.

You see,

prior to Paul’s use of this word,

in this letter,

in this way,

propitiation had been used in the first century culture in a very different context.

It was used to describe

the offering or animal sacrifice

that a man or woman would bring his or her god

with the hope that it would cause that god to look favorably on the one bringing the sacrifice.

In the most extreme case

this is the young virgin

tossed into the mouth of the volcano.

The propitiatory sacrifice

was man hoping to appease the wrath of an angry god

and win his favor

through bringing him a gift.

Now, look what Paul does with this word.

He takes this word

and uses it to describe

not an offering brought by a man to his god,

but rather to describe

an offering brought by God to man,

and even more amazing,

the sacrifice God is bringing

is the offering of His own blood,

His own life sacrificed for us.

This is not us offering our god a sacrifice,

hoping through it to win God’s favorable response to us,

this is God offering Himself as His sacrifice for us

hoping through it to win our favorable response to Him.

I mentioned a few minutes ago

that this passage right here

offers us a truly remarkable glimpse

into the mind and heart of our Creator.

I don’t know what any of you here this morning think about God.

I don’t know how you view Him.

I know many people in our world

view Him as a wrath-filled deity

deeply displeased with His creation,

demanding from us what we can never deliver.

There was a movie that came out in 1972.

I think I remember it so well

because I saw it at a time

when I was deeply involved in building the intellectual foundation

in my own relationship with God.

It was called The Poseidon Adventure.

There’s been a remake of it in recent years,

but it was the 1972 version that affected me so deeply.

It told the story of a group of people

trapped in a huge ocean liner

that had been turned upside down.

As I recall, this massive luxury liner

was flipped over

as a result of a huge storm.

Anyway, these people

were trying to make their way

up to the bottom of this ship

with the hope of then somehow boring through the hull and being rescued.

The leader and hero of the group

was a very modern young priest

who was leading the group on to safety.

And there was a scene

near the end of the movie

where a steam pipe had burst

and the only way for the people to make it to safety

was for someone to jump out over this great chasm, clinging to the valve while he turned it off

so that the group could then make it through.

But once he jumped out

there was no way for him to get back.

In this great, dramatic scene

the young priest flings himself out to the valve,

turns it off so the others can pass safely,

and then, just before he drops to his death he says in this really bitter voice,

‟Alright, God - here’s one more sacrifice for You.”

I don’t know what priest school that sad little man supposedly attended,

but obviously the Bible was not required reading.

You see, the truth is

God is not asking for the sacrifice,

He’s offering it,

He’s bringing it,

and that sacrifice is Himself - His own body in the Person of Jesus Christ.

There is a subtle

but powerful misconception floating around the Christian world

that man’s sin made God angry with us,

it made Him not like us any more,

and that the blood of Christ,

the death of Christ somehow changed God’s attitude toward us

so that He started liking us again.

I want you to listen closely

to what I’m going to say right now,

because it is a truth

that is deeply imbedded in the passage we are studying this morning.

The problem our sin created for God

was not that our sin made it

so that God didn’t like us any longer.

The problem our sin created

was that it made it so that He could not be with us

and we could not be with Him any longer.

His attitude toward us

has never changed since the day He created us.

He loves us.

Our God,

our Creator loves us.

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world...

But our determination to eject Him from our lives

and declare ourselves independent from Him,

our willful sin against Him

made it impossible for Him to communicate that love to us personally.

And then,

having once entered into our rebellion against Him

and created for ourselves

an approach to life that is in every way offensive to Him

and even seeks to deny His existence,

it was only natural that we convinced ourselves

there is no way He could still love us.

If it helps,

picture a 16 year old boy,

filled with a heart of rebellion

against a father who loves his son more than life itself.

The son, determined to take total control of his own life,

leaves home

and enters a life-style and a world

that is in every way opposite

to his father’s value system.

As the boy lives on the streets,

drunk and drugged day after day,

when he thinks about his father

he tells himself,

‟I know he hates me now

for everything I’m doing.”

That’s the human race

in its relationship with our Creator,

separated from Him,

unable to hear His love,

knowing that so much about our lives

must be so very offensive to Him.

It is natural for us to assume

He certainly doesn’t like us very much anymore,

given the fact that our behavior

is completely inconsistent with the value system He has clearly called us to obey.

But once again we got it all wrong.

For you see, God so loved the world...

that He gave His only begotten Son...

Now picture this teenager in jail,

picked up for theft and drug possession.

All his friends have deserted him,

he has no bail,

no money for his defense.

In one final desperate hope

he calls his dad,

and to his utter amazement

finds his father immediately at his side,

paying his bail,

paying his fines,

providing his legal defense,

and bringing his son back home.

John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Our sin did not alter our Creator’s love for us,

it just made it impossible

for us to hear it, believe it, receive it.

The death of Christ

did not change the Father’s heart toward us,

it simply freed Him

to be able to express

the love He has always had for us.

And just another reminder here

that may help disarm

some of the lies Satan flings at us.

Every one of us who has ever come to God through faith in Christ

has at times looked with disgust

at our own sins,

knowing there must be some payment,

some accountability for those sins.

Never forget that there has been

true wrath,

true judgment,

true condemnation and payment

required by God for our sins.

Christ truly did take our sins upon Himself

and as He bore our sins

He accepted the wrath,

the judgement,

and the condemnation they deserve,

and He willingly made the payment required.

God did not overlook our sins,

He personally paid the price for them Himself.

So, God the Father publicly displayed Christ

before the entire world

as the offering He Himself was bringing

for OUR sin.

And that’s not all -

This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed...

Do you see what’s happening here?

Do you think your Creator is out to get you for your sins?

If He was out to get us,

none of us would live a day.

And here again we see

into the heart of our God.

He passes over the sins previously committed -

He postpones the natural consequences we deserve

so that we have time to hear His voice

and He can call us to Himself.

...that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

That’s Paul’s way of telling us

that our God did not lower Himself to our level -

He in no way compromised Himself

or His perfect moral character,

but rather He found a way

to raise us up to His level,

allowing us to share in His holiness

and live in the presence of His love forever.