05-30-10 An Old Friend We Never Knew

We have spent most of the past several months

studying eleven verses in the book of Romans,

the last eleven verses

of Romans chapter 3.

We have taken as long as we have on this passage

because it forms the foundation

for everything else Paul says to us

throughout the remainder of the book.

After beginning the book with a terrifying picture

of what the human race looks like without Christ,

bringing us to the point where we are forced to acknowledge

that the entire human race

stands justly condemned before God on the basis of His revealed moral law,

Paul then reaches the first

and most significant transitional statement in the entire letter

in verse 3:21 with the phrase,

‟But now apart from the Law ...”.

From there he goes on to reveal to us

what he calls ‟the good news of God” -

the offer of the removal of all our sin,

and the restoration of our friendship with God,

and the re-creation of our lives

through faith in Christ.

The concept of faith

is a tricky thing for the human mind to get a hold of, though.

It is one of those words

that can be used to mean

almost anything we want it to mean.

And remarkably

we rarely if ever require a person using the word

to explain what they mean by it.

In fact,

to do so seems offensive.

We can hear a person

describe a friend as being,

‟A real man of faith.”,

or ‟A real woman of faith.”,

and we accept the description without question.

We will hear someone

share with another person who is going through a difficult time,

‟My friend, you just need to have faith.”,

and we don’t challenge them on the statement

or ask them what they mean by it.

To do so would seem tasteless and rude.

The truth is,

in our world today

we are completely comfortable

using the word ‟faith”

and allowing others to use it

without ever requiring the word

to have any logical, concrete meaning.

We can have a friend

who, by all reasonable, logical standards of evaluation

is choosing do something

that is really stupid,

but if they describe the move as,

‟A leap of faith”

all of the sudden

stupidity and ignorance

are transformed into courage and wisdom.

Of all the religious words in existence

it is surely the most vague

and difficult to define of all.

And yet, here we are,

reading Paul’s words to the Romans

and discover him using this word

a total of 8 times in these 11 verses.

And not only does he use the word,

but he ties his whole message to us

to our understanding

of this word

and what it means.

He begins by telling us

what God is offering us is the

‟...righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ”.

He tells us that we are able to share in the... ‟propitiation in His blood through faith”...

Paul tells us that the goal,

the intention of God in this whole thing

is that He Himself will become both...

‟just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus”.

He talks about what he calls ‟a law of faith”,

and then tells us that ‟a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.”

He makes sure we understand

that this faith thing he is talking about

is equally accessible to every human being

when he tells us that God “will justify the circumcised (or Jewish believers) by faith and the uncircumcised (or non-Jewish believers) through faith”.

And given the central importance

of this single concept

two things have taken place

that should not be surprising to us.

First of all,

it should not surprise us

that Satan has worked so hard

to confuse,

and muddle,

and blur this whole faith thing.

The more effectively he can twist and distort

the true meaning of faith,

the more successful he will be

in undermining the work of God among us.

I picture Satan’s efforts a little bit like this.

Picture two fierce competitors

engaged in a snowmobile race across Alaska.

Each competitor has mapped out his course

and gone ahead before hand

and stashed a supply of gasoline

at certain points along the way.

By the rules of the race

neither competitor

can remove the other competitor’s stash.

But when one man arrives at his supply,

rather than finding just his bright red 5 gallon can of gas waiting for him,

he finds 10 identical bright red cans,

all labeled gasoline,

all containing liquid,

but only one of the liquids is gas.

The religious landscape in which we live

has a whole bunch of stuff

wearing the FAITH label,

but most of it isn’t the real thing.

And, second,

it should not surprise us

to find that God has carefully woven into His communication with us about faith

several protective safeguards

so that we don’t get confused.

He is not playing games with us.

He is certainly not trying to trick us.

The words He uses

are words He very much wants us to understand.

And in this crucial passage

here at the end of Romans 3

Paul has done two things

to guard us against

the faith counterfeits that flood our world.

The first we have seen already,

although I didn’t point it out

as we moved by it.

One of the huge differences

between true Biblical faith

and many of the counterfeits floating around us

is that the real thing always has an object,

whereas the counterfeit is often presented as an end in itself.

Let me explain what I mean.

When God calls us to faith

He makes it clear

that He is calling us to faith

either in Himself personally,

or faith in something specific

that He has done or has said He will do.

Twice in these 11 verses in Romans 3

Paul makes it clear

that he is talking with us about faith in Jesus Christ.

He is calling us to choose to trust

that He really did do for us what He says He did,

and that, because of what He did,

our debt is now paid in full.

The counterfeit crud floating around, on the other hand,

frequently seeks to turn FAITH

into an end in itself.

Let me put the two side-by-side.

God says to us,

‟Have faith in ME.”

The Satanic counterfeit says,

‟Just have faith.”

Faith in what?

There is no ‟what”.

It is faith in faith.

It is nothing more than choosing to believe

that somehow things are going to work out OK.

That clear, specific object of our faith,

‟faith in Jesus Christ”,

is the first major guard against the counterfeits

built into this passage.

But there is a second protection as well,

one that is reserved by Paul

for his summery statement in these 11 verses.

In Romans 3:31

Paul concludes this crucial passage by saying,

Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.

Now there are several things going on in this statement,

but one of the most important

is the test he is giving us

of whether or not our faith is the real thing.

And before I go any farther

I will say right up front

that this is dangerous ground for us.

There are two equally destructive chasms,

one on either side,

that we can fall into if we are not careful.

One of them is believing

that true Biblical faith

delivers us from any obligation to keep the moral law of God.

The person who has believed this lie

will say to themselves,

‟Oh, I know that what I’m doing

doesn’t exactly line up with all those commandments,

but as a Christian I have been freed from the law,

and I just have faith now

that God understands where I’m at and will make it all work out fine.”

The other chasm is believing

that true Biblical faith

is the same thing as approaching God on the basis of obeying His moral law .

This is the great lie of legalism

and man-made religion.

The person who has accepted this lie

begins his thinking

not with the Person of Christ,

but with THE LIST

and then draws his sense of security with God

and his peace with himself

from how well he keeps that list.

Neither one of those is correct.

Neither one is true Biblical faith.

True Biblical faith

does not throw out the moral law of God

as no longer relevant to the life of faith,

nor does it approach God

through obedience to His moral law.

True Biblical faith

will lead the Christian

into a whole new relationship with the moral law of God

by coming first to the Person of Jesus Christ Himself,

and then by allowing Him

to lead us into His moral law.

And Paul’s wording in this 31st verse

is truly remarkable.

He starts with the first of those two lies

when he says, Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be!

Does true Biblical faith

remove our calling to live a moral life?

Paul says, ‟May it never be!”

The means by which we pursue that calling has changed dramatically,

and if we are hearing what our God is saying to us about His law,

we will also find that our attitude toward that calling has changed dramatically.

But the calling itself remains unchanged,

and it remains unchanged

because our God’s love for us

could never motivate Him to do otherwise.

There is something I urgently want us to see right here,

and I do pray my Lord will give me the words

to help us see it.

You see,

there is something remarkable that will happen in the Christian’s

relationship to God’s moral law

if our Lord’s healing program within us

is progressing as God intends.

That remarkable change is this -

the more we grow in true Biblical faith

the more we will discover

that true faith

and true morality are the same thing.

I once had a pair of binoculars

that I left outside all winter.

They froze,

and thawed,

and froze,

and thawed,

and sat buried for months under the snow.

When I retrieved them in the spring

when I first looked through them

everything was a confused muddle.

The lenses were still clear,

but somehow the frame had twisted

so that the two sides were viewing

from slightly different angles.

At first I couldn’t figure out what had happened.

All I knew was that looking with both eyes was a confused mess.

Then I tried closing one eye at a time

and everything was clear.

Not only was it clear,

but I was seeing the same thing

through each lens

through a slightly different angle.

I think the Christian’s relationship with faith and the moral law of God

is a little bit like those binoculars.

When we look through the lens of faith

we see our Lord Jesus Christ.

But then, when we look through the lens of His moral law

we suddenly realize

we are once again seeing our Lord

from a slightly different angle.

Let me try again.

Prior to our union with God through Christ

our spirits lived in a hostile relationship

with the moral law of God for two obvious reasons.

First of all,

the very nature of the law’s unbending demands of THOU SHALT NOT

enraged our rebellious spirits

and made us want to fight against that law all the more

just to prove to ourselves

and to our God that we were in charge of our own lives.

And second,

when we dared to look honestly

at the moral law of God

we were forced to admit that we did stand justifiably condemned before God

on the basis of that moral law.

We were guilty!

The law was both that which goaded us into sin

and that which then turned around and become our judge,

condemning us to death.

But once we were reunited with our God

through the work of Jesus Christ for us

He did two things

that, for the first time in our lives,

allowed us to look logically at His moral law.

1. He paid our sin debt in full for eternity

so that the moral law

could never again stand over us as our condemning judge.

2. And He replaced the moral law with Himself

as the doorway through which we reach God.

Rom. 7:4 Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit for God.

Rather than our trying to earn our entrance

into the presence of God

through our obedience to His law,

through Christ “... we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand...” (Rom. 5:2).

Once these two truths take root within us and begin to grow

we will discover within us

a radical change in our perspective on the moral law of God.

Once it no longer has the authority

to separate us from our God

and once we no longer have to keep it

in an attempt to earn God’s acceptance

for the first time we can look into it

and see there

God’s hidden treasure for us -

the revelation of the way life really works.

When Paul says to us,

Rom. 3:31 Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law...

he is telling us that, if we have received the true message of faith

it will take us where the moral law of God pointed us

but could never have taken us itself.

He is telling us that

though the moral law of God

could never have lead us into the love of our God,

now the love of our God

will lead us into His moral law

and through it show us His love

in even deeper, richer measure

by providing us with the perfect blueprint

for an approach to life

in which all of our deepest needs

are met in fullest measure.

Legalism replaces the Person of Christ

with the moral law of God

and seeks to once again

lead us to God through obedience to the law.

True faith, on the other hand,

leads us to our Lord Jesus Christ,

and then frees us to say to Him,

‟My Lord, because I trust You

I will take your hand

and let You lead me back into Your moral law.”

My best attempt at illustrating

what Paul is saying in this statement

about the way in which God establishes His law in our lives

through faith in Christ

is the fishing lake story

from the 2nd chapter of The Grace Exchange.

To help pull all of this together

I can’t resist the urge

to share it with you once again.

OK, imagine for a few minutes

that you are an avid fisherman,

something that obviously many of you will not have to imagine at all.

It is a perfect summer afternoon,

the sun is shining,

a gentle breeze is blowing,

and there is not even a mosquito to mar the day -

which means, of course that this particular fishing trip is not in Alaska.

You have your pole and tackle box in your hands,

and you’re hiking down a little trail in the woods.

As you come around a bend in the trail,

suddenly you run into a fence about three feet high.

On the fence is a sign - In bold block letters it says; BEWARE! DON'T YOU DARE CROSS OVER THIS FENCE!

On the other side of the fence you can see a sandy beach

and the prettiest little lake you’ve ever seen.

Huge trout are jumping out of the water, taunting you.

You stand there for a few minutes wondering what to do.

Finally, the pull is too much -obviously, whoever put up that sign

did it simply to deprive you of the best fishing lake in the world.

You toss your pole and tackle over the fence and then climb over yourself.

You start walking toward the lake,

but before you have taken a dozen steps,

the ground gives way and what looked like a solid path

turns into a mire of quicksand that begins to suck you down.

Frantically you fight for your life and,

after several minutes of clawing and grasping at bushes, and branches, and weeds,

you finally drag yourself up onto solid ground.

Your hands are cut and bleeding,

you’ve lost all of your equipment,

and you’re filthy and exhausted.

That’s the way it is in our battle with sin before we come to Christ.

Satan is a master at convincing us

that God's commandments are really barriers that wall us off

from those things we just know we have to have to be happy.

We don't trust the commandments,

and we definitely don't trust the One who gave them.

Too late we discover that violating those commandments

messes up our lives in ways we could never have imagined.

What looked so good going in

looks so bad once we get there.

OK, but how does our situation change when we come to Christ?

Well, first of all, when we walk down that trail as a Christian,

we don’t walk alone.

Our Lord Jesus Christ now walks with us

and He shares the afternoon with us,

and His being with us just makes it all that much better.

And when we round that bend, the fence is still across the trail

and we can still see the fish jumping in the lake in the distance.

But now no sign hangs on the fence.

As we watch the fish jumping in the distance,

our Lord says to us, “My child, I want you to know

that I was the One who built this fence.

I did it to protect you.

From here, I know that lake looks incredible,

but all is not as it seems. I want you to trust Me and stay on this side of the fence.”

And just being freed to approach moral obedience through

the Person of Christ rather than through the harsh, demanding written law

does lots to free us to make right choices - choices that were impossible for us to make before we came to the King.

But what if we decide not to listen to the voice of our Lord?

What if we look at the lake,

and we see those fish,

and we say to our Lord, “Look! I know You mean well,

but I just have to give it a try.

I won't fish long. I'll be right back, OK?”

What happens if we hop over the fence and head for the lake?

Those times when we jump the fence

are always filled with a great deal of tension inside us

because we know this isn’t what our Lord wanted.

Typically, we handle that tension

by keeping our eyes fixed on the lake,

telling ourselves it’ll all work out fine.

In our mind we imagine our Lord standing on the other side of the fence,

His arms folded,

a bit of a scowl on His face as He waits for us to come back to Him.

Folks - that isn’t what happens.

Our attention is so focused on the lake,

that we don’t realize that when we crossed over the fence,

our Lord climbed over with us.

He’s still there, walking with us.

There’s no scowl on His face.

If we could look into His eyes,

the only thing we’d see is pain-

the kind of pain He always feels when someone He loves is about to be hurt.

His death on that cross has made it possible

for Him to never leave us, never forsake us (Hebrews 13:5),

even at those times when we harden our will against Him.

Our sins can never again wall us off from our Creator.

We still fall into the pit, just as when we were nonbelievers.

But now our Lord stands by the edge, His arms stretched out toward us.

And when we finally stop thrashing around long enough

to realize He’s there and we reach out to Him for help,

He takes our hands and pulls us out of the filth.

Then, as He cleans us up and bandages our wounds, He says, “Now, my child, I want to talk with you once again about why I built that fence.”

Rom. 3:31 Do we then nullify the Law through faith? May it never be! On the contrary, we establish the Law.