Just and the Justifier

Let’s pray as we come to God’s Word.

Our Father in heaven, our prayer now is very simple. I ask that you would give me the right words to say from the right heart, anointed by the power of your Spirit, faithfully proclaiming your Word. And give to each one here the ears to hear and to believe, that we might be before your sight and forever declared justified. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Our text this morning is Romans chapter 3, the second half of verse 25 and verse 26, though I’ll pick up at the end of verse 22. Romans chapter 3:

“For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith”—and then our sentences for this morning—“This was to show God’s righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

This is, according to many preachers and commentators and Christians throughout history, the Mount Everest of the Bible. Romans 8 will come later, so maybe there’s a few Mount Everests, but we are certainly in the Himalayas. This whole paragraph is one of—if not the most—important paragraphs in the Bible and therefore most important and essential for each one of us. And we come at the end of this paragraph to see that Paul means to solve one of the great moral problems in the universe—one of the greatest ethical, theological, metaphysical, cosmological problems in the universe—and it’s a problem that none of you are thinking about, likely. It’s a problem that likely none of us have been losing sleep over this week. No one in the tall buildings, working for the banks uptown, is thinking about this problem. Most Christians are hardly ever thinking about this problem. As you roam to and fro, walked up and down the sidelines of some child’s sporting event yesterday, you were not thinking about this problem. When you stay awake at night, as some of you do – perhaps you’re anxious, or perhaps you’re thinking about many difficult and other important things – yet, I would wager to guess that none of us are staying awake thinking about this problem, which is how can God be just and the justifier of the ungodly?

Now you see in verse 26, it says that he might be just and the justifier of “the one who has faith in Jesus,” but if you look over to chapter 4:5, “to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly.” So this phrase in verse 26, “the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus,” we see in 4:5 the one who has faith in Jesus is nevertheless still ungodly. Luther’s famous phrase simul iustus et peccator—simultaneously, at the same time, justified and a sinner. So, when it says “those who have faith in Jesus” at the end of verse 26, we can relate that again to faith in chapter 4:5, and we are told that those who have faith in Jesus are nevertheless ungodly. How does this work? This is the problem that Paul means to solve. Now, there are other problems—human sin—but the conclusion of this great Mount Everest of a paragraph is to help not only justify us, but justify God. And it’s just a measure of how far we can be away from the way in which the Bible thinks and the problems that the Bible means to solve that we don’t lose any sleep over this. And I’m not commending the loss of sleep, but clearly this is uppermost in Paul’s mind. How can God forgive sinners? I think it’s safe to say that almost everyone that we encounter, if they ever think about those things, is thinking about the exact opposite. They have no problem with God forgiving sinners. They think, “How could God be angry with sinners? How could a loving God have a hell to punish sinners?” Those are the questions that our neighbors are asking and many of you might be asking. They’re not unimportant questions. But the question uppermost in Paul’s mind is quite the opposite. How can God be just and the justifier of the ungodly?

Proverbs 17:15 tells us, “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord.” Both of those. So, if there were a judge who condemned the righteous, Proverbs said, that would be an abomination. Someone who comes before the court and stands before the judge, and the eyewitness testimony against him does not corroborate, and the video testimony does not support a guilty verdict, and there’s even DNA samples to draw from and you could say no, no, no, that is not his blood at the crime scene, and you could go one step further and say even those who have brought the charges have now recanted of those charges and said, “No, no, no. This is not the guilty one”—if such a person stood before the judge, clearly and obviously innocent, righteous, and that judge banged the gavel or the jury came back with their verdict and said, “Guilty, he ought to be condemned”—we would all say that’s an abomination that you would condemn an obviously righteous man or woman. And we know it in just the opposite. If all of the evidence was there, and there’s video surveillance camera, and it’s come back from the lab and the DNA, it’s your blood, and they got a hair follicle, and it’s your fingerprints all over the crime scene, and there were multiple eyewitnesses, and everyone says you did it, and you don’t even have a good defense for yourself. Your mouth is shut and silent. You say, “I have nothing to say to defend myself,” and all of the world can tell that that is an unrighteous person, a guilty person—and yet the judge in his robes bangs the gavel, or the jury comes back with its verdict and says not guilty. Proverbs said such would be an abomination.

Whenever there are these very public trials, you can think of when I was growing up in the ’90s, and I’m not making a—you know, not on the jury to know, but I think it’s safe to say most people thought that—there were the Rodney King riots, and people thought somebody got off—they were guilty—innocent, or later O.J. Simpson, or just in the past few weeks in our own public consciousness, probably many people thought that the mistrial should have been guilty. Well this isn’t a statement on particular trials—that’s not my expertise—but it is to suggest that people, though they do not stay awake thinking about how God can acquit the unrighteous, yet this is something very strongly felt. That’s why everyone gets glued to their TV, and everyone has a hot take when it looks as if someone who is guilty has been declared innocent—someone whom all of the evidence is stacked against and ought to be given some sentence of condemnation, and yet the judge or the jury says not guilty. Well, we feel that. People say that’s not fair. How can a judge let go free and innocent someone who is wicked? That’s what Proverbs 17:15 says. He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord. So, this is the moral universe that Paul inhabits. How can that proverbial maxim be true, and yet God justifies the ungodly? He is the judge who comes in his royal robes and bangs the gavel and says with those who are so obviously guilty—sinners, their mouths shut, nothing to say—and yet he declares innocent. And more than that— not simply that the verdict is not guilty—but innocent, vindicated, justified. You may be free. Paul wonders, how can God be God and do that?

Take the three terms of that equation. The one who is just justifies the ungodly. If you are to turn any one of the three terms in that equation, it easily works. That God, the one who is just, justifies the godly. Oh, well, that makes sense. That’s what you ought to do. You justify the godly. So, if we could make the case, well, we’re really, basically, pretty good people; if you weigh—we’re not perfect—but if you weigh the good and the bad, there’s more good that comes out. Or maybe it’s by some cooperating grace, as other Christian traditions say, or some infusion of grace, so that I actually do have something good to put before God, and I actually am, in my person, godly. Well, then of course a God who is just will justify the godly. Or if you change the middle term of that equation, and he does not justify the ungodly, but he condemns. Well, that’s what a just judge should do. He looks, and he sees the human race. He sees with all that he has marshaled out in Romans 1-3 that your conscience accuses you, and the law written on your heart accuses you, and you can look at what other people do and you condemn them and you do the very same thing yourself, and you have been given a revelation of God in nature and in the image of God around you and in your own heart and from the Scriptures, and yet you don’t do it. So, of course, God would condemn the ungodly. Or – this would be blasphemous – you could change the first term of the equation so that God justifies the ungodly, but he’s no longer just. God somehow is at cross purposes with his own righteousness and his own holiness. To change that term of the equation would be to make God something other than God. It would be the very de-Godding of God, that he’s no longer entirely holy, entirely righteous, entirely just, that he can shed himself of one of his immutable attributes. Such could not be the case, and everyone knows that in Paul’s audience.

So, how can it be that these three terms in the equation are all true? God is just, and he justifies the ungodly. That’s the problem that Paul has been solving in verse 24, having established that all sin and fall short of the glory of God and are justified—he’s not saying everyone in the human race is justified, but rather he’s thinking about those through faith in Jesus Christ who have the righteousness of God (verse 22)—they are justified how? By grace as a gift. We saw these two massive theological terms: by Christ who is our redemption (that is, the purchase price to set us free from bondage) and our propitiation (that is, the one who makes a loving God able to be pro-us, propitious toward us, turning away the wrath of God, assuaging the wrath of God). Because of that redemption in Christ Jesus and the propitiation by his blood—notice what Paul says here in verse 25 and 26; he repeats the same phrase twice—this (what’s the this? Everything he’s just been saying, how we are justified freely as a gift by grace, redemption in Christ, propitiation by his blood. All of that, that whole way of salvation) was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. And now verse 26, notice he repeats the same phrase. It was to show his righteousness at the present time. These two instances of God’s righteousness I don’t think are referring to the righteousness that he gives to us, though that’s certainly a true doctrine, but rather speaking about God as the righteous one, which is why the end of verse 26 refers to God as the one who is just. So, his righteousness is shown forth, and notice there is a past and a present dimension. So, verse 25, we’re looking to the past. “This was to show” (so, this work of Christ as our redemption and our propitiation was to show) “God’s righteousness”—now look to the past—“because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” Similar language in chapter 2:4, “Do you presume upon the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience?” So, this is the patience of God, to not give to sinners the just judgment that they deserve.

And I think this works on two different levels. One thing Paul probably has in mind—he’s thinking about the nations. In Acts 14 and Acts 17 in Paul’s preaching, it talks about the times of ignorance and how God had overlooked. He had not fully judged the sins of the nations, that the Moabites and the Ammonites and the Egyptians and the people of Canaan around Israel might have thought as they went around their merry way, and they saw all the difficulties that came to Israel. It often seemed like Israel received more judgment than the nations. They may have concluded to themselves that there wasn’t a God who would judge their sins, or as they would have thought in that time period, well, we all have our individual, regional gods and well, the God of Israel is one who judges Israel. But the Old Testament always said that no, this is the God of all the nations, and he holds all of the nations to account. And so, how can it be that those nations do not seem to have gotten what they deserve? And that’s not an irrelevant question in our own day, for this country, for every other country. We deserve—and we have so many blessings here—but we deserve all sorts of judgment that we have not been given. And there are nations around the world who are far from Christ, completely alien, hardly any Christians, hardly any Christian influence or church. And yet they may have economic prosperity. They may have relative peace and harmony. And they may have the conclusion that God is not angry with sinners. Paul says one thing that God was doing by crucifying his Son on the cross was to show that he will not exercise his forbearance on the nations forever. Think of what the hymnwriter says, “Ye who think of sin but lightly nor suppose the evil great, here may view its nature rightly; here its guilt may estimate.” That’s the cross.

Now we think of the cross as an expression of God’s love. It certainly is. It’s also an expression of his justice. If you have a low view of sin—and Paul says to the nations who think that God will overlook sin—how could God overlook sin when he crucified his own Son? No greater cost could have been paid for sin. And if he would not spare his own Son, how will he spare the ungodly? It was to show his righteousness, lest—in the Old Testament, it seemed as if God was just letting the nations off the hook. They went about their merry way. He says, “No, no, no, God will give to the nations their due.”

But perhaps even more than that, this look to the past about forbearance, not only about the nations, but it’s about God’s people. We read in Hebrews 10:4 that it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to atone for sin. Now, people really were forgiven in the Old Testament. Blessed is the man whose transgressions are not counted against him. There really was mercy and grace and forgiveness in the Old Testament. And there was, graciously by God’s design, an entire sacrificial system with atoning sacrifices. But what we see here from Romans and in Hebrews is that that by itself was pointing to something. And if that’s all that there ever was, those sins could not have been forgiven. Needed a punishment and not a bleeding animal or a pigeon or a turtle dove or a lamb or a bull, but in the Son of God. Think about Abraham—Father Abraham. Now, we’re going to hear in chapter 4 that he’s the example of faith. Abraham believed God, Genesis 15, and it was credited to him, reckoned to him, imputed to him as righteousness. Wonderful. He’s the example of faith. Remember chapter 12 when he’s called, he’s in Ur of the Chaldees; he’s an idolator; he has up to that point in his life been worshiping nothing but the false god. And even when he moves his family, and he comes to the promised land in Genesis 12 after this great act of faith and believing God’s promises, he comes and with a moment of utter faithlessness he lies to Pharaoh in Egypt and lies about his wife because he’s afraid, and it almost leads to the destruction of all of Pharaoh’s household. So here you have an idolator until very recently, you have just very recently he’s a liar, and then God can say well you believe—righteous. How does that work? How is that fair?

Or here’s an example that packs much more of an emotional punch. King David, man after God’s own heart. Most of you know the tragic story in 2 Samuel 11 of David with Bathsheba. He should have been out at battle when kings go to war, but he wasn’t. He was back home. And he spies out, and he sees a beautiful woman, Bathsheba, bathing. And he sends his servants. We don’t know all the details, but it sounds real bad for David. Just says, “And they took her.” Don’t get the sense that she had any choice in the matter. They went and probably said, “The king has seen you, and he wants you. You need to come with us.” And he sleeps with her. And then, you know the story, her husband Uriah, who’s fighting David’s wars out at the front lines, he comes, and he tries to get Uriah and Bathsheba to sleep together for one night so that the child that is David’s that Bathsheba is bearing that no one will know that that was his. And when it comes out, and it looks a lot like David, maybe people will just pass by and say, “Well, that’s curious. Maybe Uriah had some recessive genes.” But Uriah won’t do it. He’s noble. He says, “No, this is what the Torah calls us to, to keep ourselves from women when we are out at holy war.” And so then by the hand of Joab, his military servant, he gives this letter, his own death warrant. Joab reads it, who now must be an accomplice in David’s scheme of murder. And so, the men draw back when the fiercest battle is there, and Uriah the Hittite, Bathsheba’s husband, is killed. He’s a coward, King David is. And he’s a liar, and he’s a schemer, and he’s an adulterer, and he’s a murderer. And Nathan the prophet comes, and he tells this little analogy about the man who had all the sheep in the world, and this other poor man who had one little ewe lamb, and the rich man with all the sheep stole the little baby sheep from that man, and David has his eyes opened to see his own sin and realize, as Nathan says, “You are the man,” that he has been guilty of great sin before the Lord. And here’s what Nathan says. Now David’s going to bear consequences—the child that Bathsheba is holding will die. The sword will not depart from David’s household. His kingdom from that point on will be a royal mess, and yet he will not die. And Nathan says this to David, “The Lord has put away your sin.”

And we may have in our mind Psalm 51 and such a great prayer of confession. What a wonderful example of the Lord’s mercy, that even this murderer and adulterer, the Lord put away your sin. But you ever put yourself in the position of Bathsheba’s family, Uriah’s family? Wait a minute. Just like that? His sin—that’s it? Uriah’s parents are like, he killed our son. Or Bathsheba’s family, do you see what he did to our daughter? Or the people who are looking on and know what happened, or Joab said, “How could you do this, make me an accomplice in your murder?” It’s as if David—of course, they didn’t have a Senate—if they brought King David, who’s brought up on impeachment charges, and he’s got the whole litany of being a liar and a thief and a murderer and an adulterer and all of it, and he stands before the assembly who’s trying the charges of his impeachment to dethrone him, and he says, “You’re absolutely right. I have sinned. I am so sorry.” And then they were to give him a standing ovation. We would say, “What? What justice is that?” that David can simply confess and say, “I’m a sinner, and you’re right, and I’m sorry from the very depths of my being,” and there’s consequences—he faces earthly consequences—but Nathan can say in the next breath, the Lord’s put away your sin. That’s what Paul is thinking about. Something like that. How can God be just to have just in an instant said to David, you know what? Your sins are forgiven. If we were there to see it, we would have all said, David deserves more. He deserves punishment. He’s a guilty man. He deserves some condemnation. These are heinous crimes that he has committed, and Nathan convicts him, and he says he’s sorry, and the Lord says, “You’re forgiven.” How is that just?

That’s the problem. And Paul says, that’s a problem that ought to have been felt. And one of the things the cross is doing is to show God did not give a wink and a nod to David’s sin. He did not simply say, “Well, you’re David. You’re the king. You’re special. You feel bad. No big deal.” Paul says it was an absolutely eternal deal with David’s sin that required the eternal Son of God to suffer to show—lest for all of those years that it was just really a bull, a goat, a bird—all you have to do is bring it to the priest, and he slays it, and he sprinkles some blood. Is that really all it takes, and our sins are forgiven? This seems an easy thing. This seems hardly a just God who just with birds and bulls and lambs can just forgive it. And Paul says, “No, here is the display of God’s righteousness.” That was the system he set up, all pointing to this. It had always been his intention that those sins, though typologically forgiven there in the types of the sacrifices, would only be ultimately forgiven because his Son would die, so that no one could look and say, “Well, David’s sin wasn’t really paid for.” And Paul says, “Do you know about the cross? Do you know about the Son of God who hung there? And you don’t think God cared about David’s sin, when he had to do that, to send his Son in the likeness of human flesh, joined to a human nature, to die? That is to display the righteousness of God and why he could for centuries look with patience and forbearance, because he would deal once for all with that sin.

And then you notice verse 26, we move from the past to the present. It was to show—same phrase—his righteousness at the present time. You think of verse 21, “But now”—so this is not just something that alleviates the moral dilemma and the cosmological problem from the Old Testament. This is now. How can God at the present time—because David wasn’t the last person to have heinous sin in the world. The Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. The covenant of redemption, purposing Father and Son for this plan. This was always the plan, to display God’s righteousness through the redemption in Christ and the propitiation by his blood, so that when the ungodly are justified, no one can say that is a legal fiction. That’s the charge often against a Reformation doctrine of justification. Our Roman Catholic friends may say that’s a legal fiction. How can you do that? No, there must be some good works on the side of the justification equation. Otherwise, it’s a legal fiction. It’s God just sort of with a with a magic wand just saying, “Bippity boppity forgiven.” He just waves his hand. God just had a really good morning, and he was feeling all of the loving, tender mercy of God. And so, he said, “I know you’re ungodly, and you’re utter deserving of judgment and condemnation, but I’m having a good day. Forgiven, innocent, acquitted.” That would be a legal fiction, as if justification happened by the setting aside of the law of God. But your justification, if you are in Christ, is not God’s declaration whereby he set aside his legal demand. It’s his declaration that that legal demand has been satisfied, has been paid. That’s Paul’s whole argument with redemption and propitiation, that the requirement has been met such that God is not a lawbreaker in saving lawbreakers, that God is not that abominable judge of Proverbs 17:15 for acquitting the wicked.

Brothers and sisters, you need to know this about your justification, whether you’re hearing these truths for the first time or you’ve had 40 years of justification lessons and sermons, because some of you come on a Sunday, and it’s true, you need a slap upside the head to wake up even now or to kind of alright, focus. Get your act together. We need a little bit of that, but that’s not how all of you come on a Sunday. A lot of you come with this very long distance from your head to your heart about what you know to be true yet doesn’t feel to be true with the sins that you know you’ve committed in your past and the sins you know you have committed this week, today. And you come, and you know that those three terms—just, justifies the ungodly—you know you have no hope of changing the last term. You know, and you feel deep within your heart, that you are a sinner and that you’re ungodly. And maybe you’re not even a Christian. You didn’t have the right categories, but you just knew something was not right with you. You don’t feel at peace with yourself and at peace with the world. And you need to know that when God justifies people in Christ, it is not with a magic wave of the hand simply out of his loving kindness, but by the fulfilling of his justice, so that everything within you that says, “My sin deserves to be punished. I deserve to be flogged and spat upon. I deserve chastisement” – the world tells you, “No, no, no, no, no. Don’t be so hard on yourself. The gospel actually says you’re absolutely right, that this is what you deserve, but a payment has been made. This is abundant, amazing, astounding good news. That’s why this may be the most important paragraph in the world.

How should we understand the doctrine of justification? Justification is forensic – that is, it’s pertaining to a court of law. Justification is about our guilt. It’s about our guilt before a holy God. And justification is about God’s righteousness. You notice how this has been a key theme with various overlapping meanings: the righteousness of God displayed in his wrath, the righteousness of God imputed to us by faith, and the righteousness of God as his own self-vindication. How do you know God has really forgiven you? That he might not decide tomorrow that he was wrong to look past your sins? How do you know that he loves you now and will always love you, as you belong to Christ? How can you be confident of that? It’s because you know that the law was not set aside, but it was fulfilled.

I’ve encountered this story before. It’s one of those stories if not true, it ought to be. I’ve read it in various forms, but it goes like this. I think it has bearing in some event at some point. There’s a man and his daughter walking across the vast expanse of the Canadian prairies. It’s the heat of summer, and the grass all around them is dry and brittle. And as they’re walking this vast expanse, no trees around, just nothing but open fields and plains, and they look behind them, and they see as the wind gusts come at their back that there’s a fire, a wall of fire coming behind them, burning up all of the tinder that lies around them, all of this combustible kindling all around them in this dry, dusty grass. And they look, and there’s nowhere to hide. There’s no way to run through it. There’s no way to run around it as the fire blows and blows at their backs. And then the Father remembers he has a match. He goes down to the ground, and he strikes that match, and making a line in front of him, he starts a fire. And as the wind at their backs pushes that fire forward, it burns to a black crisp all of the grass in their path, and they continue to march on, even as the fire is roaring at their backs. And the daughter says, “Daddy, I don’t understand. How can we be safe?” And he says, “We can be safe because we now walk in the path where the fire has already been.” The fire of judgment to come cannot burn the grass that has already met the fire’s scorching heat, and so it is with the justice and the judgment of God.

1 John 1:9, “If we say we’re without sin, we deceive ourselves, but if we confess our sins,” you know the rest. We’re faithful in what? Faithful. He is faithful, rather. And just. Why would it not say he’s faithful and merciful? He’s faithful and loving. He’s faithful and gracious. But it says he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, because that act of confession in 1 John 1:9 is just the flip side of faith in Romans 3 and 4 – the faith of repentance and a repentant faith – so that that faith renders God propitious toward us as it joins together redemption accomplished becoming redemption applied, so that God’s forgiveness of you in Christ is an act, yes, of his mercy but also of his justice. You think of those three terms. God the just, the justifier of the ungodly. It’s as glorious and as simple as that. Do you have a right view of God in all of his holiness and splendor and majesty and implacable holiness and righteousness? Do you have such a God in your view? Do you understand who you and I are as ungodly sinners, never can contribute one iota to a righteous standing with God? And if you have a right view of God and a right view of your own sin, how can we not be the happiest people on earth to know how that just God justifies us ungodly sinners through the redemptive propitiating work of Jesus Christ? And the declaration is not just that you are not guilty but that you are innocent, that you are vindicated. You are righteous, so that we can be grateful, glad, and free. Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, we give thanks for this, your holy Word. Bless the reading and the preaching of it to our hearts, not just now, but throughout this week, and whenever we need to be reminded of the great gospel of our great savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, for we have no hope except in his blood. In Jesus’ name. Amen.