The Righteousness of God Through Faith in Jesus Christ

Pray with me one more time as we come to God’s Word.

Gracious heavenly Father, we ask that our hearts might be good soil. We would not be like those for whom the seed of the Word is snatched away by the work of the evil one. It would not be swallowed up by suffering. It would not be stolen away by the cares of this world and choked away by the deceitfulness of riches, but it might be good soil, each one of our hearts. Help me to be a faithful sower, now, of the seed of your Word, and may it land in our hearts and bear fruit 30, 60, 100-fold. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

If you look all around the world, it’s not hard to see that the wrath of God is now being revealed against all unrighteousness and wickedness of men. And when I say the wrath of God, don’t understand that God’s anger is like your anger or my anger, which is so often uncontrolled, capricious, flares up, petty. God’s wrath is not some unbridled passion that takes over God’s personality. God’s wrath is his righteous, implacable opposition to everything that is unholy. It is his hatred for everything that is evil in the world. And how is the wrath of God being revealed? It’s revealed when the Word of God is faithfully proclaimed, hopefully in sermons from this pulpit, and you hear about the wrath of God warning sinners against the judgment to come. The wrath of God is revealed in the proximate judgments of the world. Civil magistrate bears the sword, and the elders of a church wield the keys of the kingdom, and God’s wrath is revealed day by day in death itself. The wages of sin is death.

But even more, the wrath of God is being poured out, not so much upon sinful people, but in allowing sinful people to keep doing what sinful people want to do. One of the worst things that can happen to you or to someone you love is that God gives you over to yourself. And that’s what’s happening in the world. God is giving people up. You ever look around, and you say, “How did we get into this mess?” Because God, in a just display of his wrath, will lift the restraining grace and give people over to the lusts of their impurity, giving them up to dishonorable passions, women defiling themselves with women, men with men, giving people up to a debased mind so they do what ought not to be done. So, you look around, and you can see that people are filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, everywhere you look. You can see it on your phones. You can see it in the news. You can probably see it in your own life. There’s envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. People are gossips and slanderers. They hate God. They disobey their parents. They are foolish and faithless. And when they run out of the usual evil things to do, they invent new ways to do evil. That’s what the world is like. That’s what people are like apart from God.

And we cannot let them off the hook as if God has not spoken to them. It’s not as if the people who act this way know nothing about God. Actually, they know a lot, and they suppress that knowledge in unrighteousness. They can see God, if they had eyes to see, in what has been made. They know from their own judgments upon people. Every single one of us has been critical of someone else this week, and we have laser focus upon the sins of others, testifying that we do know right from wrong. We have that nagging voice of the conscience. And yet, men and women in the world, they know the truth and they bury it in distractions and doomscrolling. They hide in the dark. They swallow it up with their own intellectual defenses. And really, they just want to live the way that they want to live, like animals consumed by whatever desire is in front of them. They want to eat. They want to breed. They want to satisfy their desires. And God is set against all of this. He is implacably hostile to all that is evil.

And we ought not pat ourselves on the back to think, well, that’s right, pastor. That is what the pagan people of the world are like – the liberals, the secular humanists. They are storing up wrath for themselves for the day of judgment. It’s religious insiders, too. It’s conservatives and Republicans and churchgoers and everyone who sits in judgment upon what the world does, and they do the very same things. There are people trusting in their religious heritage; people who think that as long as they have the right spiritual label, it doesn’t matter what’s in their hearts; people who think it’s more important to tell other people the truth than to actually live out the truth themselves. There are people, probably thousands of them in our city, who think that because they go to church or have a Bible or got baptized or know the right doctrine that they are better off than other people or at least good enough to leave God just a little bit impressed. Of course, there are advantages to being in church. This is a great place. This is where you ought to be, just like there were advantages for the Jews. Being around the Bible is the biggest advantage, just like the oracles of God were the chief advantage for the Jews. If you think of what Jesus tells us, to be close to the kingdom of God is not the same as being in the kingdom of God. And when you have to stand before God someday, it will be of no advantage to you that you were a male or a female, that you were American or Canadian or Mexican or anything else, that you were rich or that you were poor, that you were a Jew or not a Jew, that you were an irreligious person who failed to live up to God’s standards, or that you were a religious person who failed to live up to God’s standards.

The Old Testament tells us the grave predicament we are in. It says no one is righteous. No one understands. No one seeks for God. No one does what is good. Anyone? No. Not one. We have all turned aside. We have all become spiritually worthless. There is no fear of God before their eyes. That’s the indictment on the world. That’s God’s verdict on the fallen human condition: helpless, hopeless, heartless, under the power and the guilt and the dominion of sin, so that if we could see God right now in the fullness of his glory, every mouth would be stopped. Every man and woman on their own would be found guilty before God, because God is holier than you and I imagine. And your sin and my sin is worse than we have conceived. The wrath of God has been revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, and justly so, for by our works, no one will be justified in in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and prophets bear witness to it: the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

You will scarcely find two better words in all the Bible or in your life than those two words: but now. It’s the turn. It’s riding your bicycle uphill with the wind in your face, and then you turn around, and you come with the wind at your back down the hill. It’s canoeing upstream, going around, and coming back the other way. It’s having a long journey and finally the plane touching down on the tarmac back where you live. It’s like being in the hospital for weeks and months, but finally, amazingly, you’ve gotten better, and your car pulls into the driveway, and you get to be home again. But now.

The thesis statement for the book of Romans is way back in chapter 1, verse 16 and 17: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. As it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” So, there we had it: the good news of the gospel, the solution for which Romans 1:18-3:20 is the problem. And you can see it right there in verse 17 of chapter 1, “the righteousness of God is revealed,” and then 3:21, “now the righteousness of God has been manifested.” So, we’re picking back up with the theme from chapter 1, verse 17. And what did we have in between? Chapter 1, verse 18: the wrath of God revealed. You can see that. The righteousness of God, the wrath of God, and now we have finally come back to pick up this great theme, the righteousness of God, which is revealed from faith for faith.

It is hard to overstate the importance of this paragraph – you see it in your Bible, verses 21-26. Martin Luther said, “The chief point and the very central place of the epistle is found in these verses and of the whole Bible.” Commentator Tom Shriner says, “This paragraph is probably the most important paragraph in the letter.” Another commentator, Charles Cranfield: “This is the center and the heart of Romans.” Leon Morris: “This is possibly the most important single paragraph ever written.” Sinclair Ferguson calls it “the heart of the gospel and a Bible within a Bible.” James Montgomery Boice said, “We are dealing with themes that are the very heart not only of Paul’s letter but of the entire Bible and therefore of reality itself. In all of life and history, there is nothing more important than these teachings.” Aren’t you blessed to be in church this morning for this? The most important paragraph. Maybe there’s some tied paragraphs, but nothing in all the world. I wonder if you really believe that. Do I really believe that? You got a lot of other things. You’re waiting on a diagnosis. You’re starting school. You’re going to check your email. You’re watching the news every day. You’re looking to November and really dialed into the elections. You have all sorts of things you care about. We should care about lots of things. Do you realize that this paragraph is the most important reality in the universe? Nothing you can know is more important than knowing what’s in this paragraph, verses 21-26. So yes, we are going to move slowly through this paragraph, probably more slowly than any other section of the book. Some of you were doing the math and saying, “Hey, I mean, I like Romans, pastor, but if we’re going to one sermon a verse, it’s like 433 verses or something. This is going to be a long – no, this is probably the slowest we’re going to go, because if you look – just glance your eye at this paragraph, verses 21-26 – the most important words in the Bible are here. Law, righteousness, faith, God, glory, grace, redemption, propitiation, blood, just, justified, justifier, Jesus. There are a lot of important words here, so we’re going to move slowly.

It starts, as you can see in verse 21, with that wonderful phrase. This is better than hakuna matata. “But now.” This was Paul’s own story. This was Paul’s story. He was a persecutor of the church. He was there collecting the cloaks when they picked up stones, and they murdered Stephen. He was giving approval to it. He went around to persecute God’s people, and then the blinding light on the road to Damascus – “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” – and there redirect his life, convert him. This was Paul’s story. But now. I’m an apostle and a teacher and a preacher, and though the chief of sinners, I have been saved. Or the man born blind. Can you give us a theological discourse, man born blind? No I can’t, but this I know: I was blind very recently, for my whole life, and now I see. But now. Maybe that’s your story. Maybe in some ways as dramatic as the man born blind, Paul on the road to Damascus, or maybe it took many, many years, or maybe you grew up in the church, and it was rather seamless, but you can look back now and realize the sort of person you were and by God’s grace and forgiveness, the sort of person that you have become. For all of us, at some level, that’s our story. But now. And if that’s not your story, it can be your story. This is who I was. This is what I did. This is how I squandered God’s gifts in my life. This is how I chased after all of these things. You don’t need to summarize Romans 1, 2, and 3 again, pastor. I know what I’m like. But now. The righteousness of God has been revealed.

It’s a logical turn that Paul is doing – certainly, that’s part of it – but it’s more than just a stylistic choice for Paul to say, “I’ve been talking about this, but now let me introduce you and remind you of the theme that we left off in chapter 1, verse 17.” It’s more than just a logical term. This is a temporal indicator – that is, the phrase “but now” indicates that God has done something new in Jesus Christ, in the incarnation, in his suffering and death and resurrection and ascension and the giving of the Holy Spirit, then the promise of his return. In all of this, God has inaugurated a new era. The contrast that Paul means to make with the phrase “but now” is with the life of condemnation under the law (look up at verse 19, “We know whatever the law says, it speaks of those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped.”) The implied argument there is the Jews had the law, and they failed; therefore, all of you without the law will also fail. So, the contrast is the condemnation that rests upon those under the law with the possibility of standing righteous before God apart from the law. Look at verse 21.

Now, in English, we need to do a lot with – in order to make sense of things, word order matters a lot. Can’t just throw words around wherever you please. The word order tells you how things fit together. Many of you know other languages aren’t like that. They have endings for their nouns, which tell you how the nouns relate to other nouns and how they relate to the verbs, which allow other languages like Greek to place emphasis upon certain things by putting them earlier in a sentence or at the end of a sentence. And so, here in the Greek, if you’re looking at it, you would see that it says, “But now, apart from the law” – that goes in the middle of verse 21, but in the Greek it’s right at the front after the “but now,” because this is the point of emphasis. This is the demarcation Paul does not want us to miss. He said everything about the judgment that comes to the Gentiles and even is there for the Jews, because they have failed to keep the law, “but now apart from the law” – that’s his emphasis. Now, this is perhaps something of a repetition of verse 20. Look at verse 20, “For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight.” And Paul is going to pick up this theme again, verse 28, “For we hold that no one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” Verse 28, verse 20, making that important statement about our works before God. But notice the language in verse 20 and verse 28: “works of the law.” Here in verse 21, it is simply the word “the law.” Now, they’re hitting upon the same kind of idea, but it’s not identical. We’ll come back in the weeks ahead to verse 28, and we’ll hit that point once again, that this is a justification apart from the works of the law, but here in verse 21, he’s saying something slightly different. Think about what is he saying? What is the “but now”? What’s new? Because if you say, “Well, what’s new is we’re justified by faith.” Careful, that’s not new. When Paul gets to chapter 4, he’s going to anchor this teaching about justification by faith alone in the person of Abraham, that he was justified by faith alone. So, it’s not new. This is not God saying, “Well, in the Old Testament, you had to work, work, work, work, work, but now Jesus has come justified by faith.” No, justified by faith is the way and the only way that God’s people have ever been made right with God. So, the “but now” cannot mean now you get justified by faith.

What does it mean? What’s new is that the Mosaic law as a system, as an administration in God’s unfolding plan of redemption, has been rendered obsolete, that the Mosaic law was temporary. You see that in 2 Corinthians 3. You see it several times in Hebrews. You see it in Galatians. It was a tutor. It was a teacher to teach us something. And like a tutor, you’re not meant to have a tutor for your whole life. It’s good to have one. It’s good to have someone helping you learn, but the point is then that you learn, and then you graduate. So, the law was a tutor to hold God’s people by the hand, to teach them all sorts of things, but then at some point you have your commencement ceremony, and you leave the tutor behind. The law as a system has become obsolete. Now immediately in your head you have all sorts of questions. Well, then does obedience not matter? It does matter. Paul will come back to that. What about the Ten Commandments? We’re going to study those on Sunday evening. Yes, we still believe in the Ten Commandments, and Paul will talk about those later in Romans. Does this mean that the law was bad? No. Romans 7, the law was holy and righteous and good. So, there’s lots of questions that Paul knows as he begins to make this argument that he’s going to have to circle back to, lest you misunderstand and you think laws are bad, obedience doesn’t matter. That’s not the case. But here he wants to make plain that the Mosaic law as a system, as a covenant – we are not under the Mosaic covenant. That’s the old covenant. We are now under the new covenant. As an administration in God’s unfolding plan of redemption, it has passed away. So, we now have a different way to live. We inhabit a different realm. We have been given a new, a complimentary, but a superior revelation. So that’s what he’s saying. He’s saying more than you can be justified apart from your works. That’s true. He’s saying, “but now this whole way of God establishing a covenant with his people has become obsolete, has been abrogated.” This one covenant thread of grace continues. It’s like a puppy growing up into a dog. Puppies are nice. That’s not a good analogy, because you like puppies better than dogs. But you know, you have a moped into a Bentley. Is that better? They’re both modes of transportation, and when you get the second, you don’t need to hold on to the first. That was inferior. This is superior.

So, a righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Now what does he mean about the righteousness of God? We saw this phrase 15 sermons ago – that’s how many sermons we had about sin – in chapter 1:17. I want you to notice he’s talking about God’s righteousness. God has done something. In the very first verse of Romans: “set apart for the gospel of God.” This is God’s gospel, God’s plan, God’s righteousness. I was reading through Martin Lloyd Jones sermons from 75 years ago, and even then he worried that there was a tendency to leave God out of the gospel. Very happy to talk about Jesus, but this is God’s gospel, and we certainly don’t ever want to conceive of or describe the gospel in such a way that makes it sound like you got God, he’s really mad at people, but you got Jesus, so let’s talk about Jesus. There is no fissure among the persons of the Trinity. This plan of redemption – this gospel is God’s gospel. He planned it, he initiated it, and he appointed it to be carried out through his Son. So, what is meant by this all-important phrase “the righteousness of God”? The two most disputed phrases in Romans are probably “works of the law” righteousness of God.” Dikaiosune (the word for righteousness) theou. It’s a genitive, usually translated with an “of God.” The righteousness of God. It appears nine times in Paul’s letters – eight times in Romans and then once in 2 Corinthians 5:21. As I said months ago, we can think of three main options when we talk about the righteousness of God. And this is why we slow down, because it’s very easy, especially in a book like Romans – there’s lots of dense arguments, there’s lots of Christian-y words that you just fly over. You got righteousness and redemption and grace and propitiation and justification, and it all just sort of lumps together, and you don’t understand the nuance of what Paul is saying.

What does it mean when he says “the righteousness of God has been manifested”? You can think of three main options. One, we could think of this as an attribute: God’s righteousness is his unswerving commitment to do what is right. We could think of it as an activity: God’s righteous action in the world. Or we could think of it as an acquisition: that is, God’s gift of righteousness. And it’s that last that is most clearly in view. Now, we don’t have to totally reject the first two. We could say the gospel reveals that God has been true to himself in how he carries out his plan of salvation, that righteous plan of salvation. But the main point in verse 17 and here in chapter 3:21 is to introduce the righteousness of God as that gift that is ours through faith. Dikaiosune theou refers to the righteous status which is the result of God’s righteous action, in keeping with his righteous character. That sort of brings them together: attribute, activity, acquisition. But that acquisition is what is front and center.

You see what Paul is doing here? For paragraph after paragraph, page after page, he has made the argument, God is storing up wrath, wrath, wrath. He has wrath for you. He has wrath for you. But now let me tell you how he has righteousness for you, that you can be the receiver not of the wrath of God, which you deserve, but of the righteousness of God, which you do not deserve. And one of the central problems in this configuration, which Paul will come back to, is how then can God be just? How can he give us a righteousness we don’t deserve, and yet God be righteous in himself? That seems like God, who is always just, is administering injustice. Well, there’s a little teaser just to stick around for the next month or so. Now, Paul – this is where you read carefully, you understand Paul, you start to understand Paul’s mindset. You start to think some of Paul’s thoughts after him. So, you can almost see the wheels turning in Paul’s mind as he does this thunderous acclamation (like the thunder you heard the other night) “apart from the law.” You can almost see the wheels turning: wait a minute, Paul. So, we just get rid of the law? That’s why he quickly says, “although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.” Paul doesn’t want anyone to be mistaken that you hear all this talk about righteousness apart from the law and you say, “Well, that’s good because the Old Testament’s four-fifths of my Bible, and I can get through the Bible every year a lot easier if I don’t have that part, and it’s kind of strange, and there’s a lot of weird things, so goodbye to the law.” Paul says, “No, no, no. The law and the prophets, the Hebrew Scriptures, what we would call the Old Testament – they bear witness to Jesus Christ. They bear witness to the work of Christ in the gospel. Genesis 3:15, the seed of the woman in conflict with the seed of the serpent, and that offspring of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. Genesis 12, we see the promise to Abraham and then the promise of Isaac and then the almost-sacrifice of Isaac. So much so is this a foretelling of the gospel that Jesus can say in John 8, “Abraham rejoiced to see my day.” Abraham saw Jesus’ day when he received these promises. In Genesis 49, the Messiah will be a descendant of Judah. We have the whole sacrificial system of Exodus and Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy teaching us about how our sins can be forgiven and how an unholy people can dwell in the midst of a holy God. In Numbers 24, we’re told he will be a star from Jacob, a scepter from Israel. In Deuteronomy 18, he will be a prophet like Moses. In Psalm 2, he will be a royal Son. In Psalm 22, we have the description of his cruel death and that cry of dereliction, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” We’re told in Psalm 132 he will be a descendant of David and that David will never fail to have one of his sons on the throne. Isaiah 7 tells us he will be born of a virgin. In Isaiah 9, a light to the Gentiles. Isaiah 11, a stump of Jesse, anointed with the sevenfold Spirit of God. Isaiah 40, he will be the comforter, a revelation of the glory of God, and that great passage, Isaiah 53, the suffering servant, stricken, smitten, and afflicted, pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. Micah tells us he will be born in Bethlehem. Zechariah 9 that the king will come to Jerusalem riding on a donkey. Zechariah 11 he will be a good shepherd betrayed by 30 pieces of silver. Zechariah 12 they will look on him whom they have pierced. Malachi, that the God of justice and the Lord will come to his temple. It’s no wonder that in Luke 24, on the road to Emmaus, Jesus told the disciples and explained from the Scriptures that all of them had to do with him. Witnessed to in the law and the prophets. If you love Jesus Christ, you’ll love the Old Testament.

This righteousness of God, how do we come to possession of it? There will be much more about this in the verses ahead, but we see in verse 22, the same as we saw in chapter 1:17, that the righteousness of God comes to us through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. Some translators in recent years have tried to argue that this is a reference not to our faith in Jesus but to the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, and you could translate it that way from the Greek. But the fact that Paul in chapter 4 is going to give Abraham as an example of what he’s talking about here in chapter 3 tells us that, no, this is talking about not Jesus’ faithfulness to God, though that’s certainly true, but our faith in Christ, of which Abraham is going to be the singular example from the Old Testament. Through faith – and notice it’s through faith with an object, faith in a person, not merely understanding and ascent to the right doctrines. We love all the right doctrines. We want to love all the right doctrines. We’re always learning, so we love that. But it is possible that someone could have an affirmation of the right doctrines without putting a personal faith in Jesus Christ. And I would hold out hope that it’s even possible that some people, as Whitefield said, “Some people have better hearts than heads.” Praise God. Some people may have a formal theology that is not as good as the deep, heart-level trust that they have in Jesus Christ. This is not a generic faith. We talk about, “Oh, he’s a person of faith. My faith has really carried me through. Such strong faith. This is my faith community.” None of that matters anything. People believe in horoscopes. People believe in a lot of stuff. The faith that justifies must have Jesus Christ for its object. And we will have much more to say about this faith in future sermons. Only to note here that it is not a generic faith in faith, just to believe in something, as if God would be impressed to say, “Look at all these religious people in the world. They believe in stuff. Way to go. They really, really believe in stuff.” It’s faith in Jesus Christ. That’s why the technical language is that faith is the instrumental cause of our justification – that is, the means by which the blessings of Christ become ours. Don’t think of faith as that tremendous work. So, our works aren’t anything. They’re bad. They’re not good enough. But faith is the big boulder that you place on the scale that then tips it in your favor, and God says, “Well, I don’t have any works, but I sure love that faith.” Faith is not the meritorious ground of our righteous standing. It is only the instrument. It is the straw through which you sip your sweet tea. It comes to you. It’s the instrument.

And you notice “for all who believe.” Now, some people say, “Why that redundancy, Paul? Through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” You just said the same thing twice. Well, not exactly. He’s emphasizing that this righteousness that comes by faith is open to everyone, because that last phrase is indicating, “No this is not just, well, maybe the Jews can have this sort of faith, or maybe certain special people can have this option.” Well, wouldn’t that be nice? A lot of people have to do the works thing, and that never works, but some people get the faith option. He says no, righteousness of God comes to us through faith, and who can do this? Who can have this righteousness? Everyone. Everyone who believes. God shows no partiality in judging sin, and he shows no partiality in offering pardon for sin. He will not look upon you and give you a special shortcut because of who you are, and he does not make you do a long end-run around because you haven’t been a religious person or because you have really, really bad sins, it seems to you. This is for everyone who believes. It is to stress not only that righteousness comes through faith, but that it comes to everyone who has faith. Faith is the necessary, and the necessarily exclusive, instrument by which we receive righteousness. Or to put it more simply, faith is the only way, and it is, without fail, for everyone, an effective way.

Can you understand, then, why we have had such a long section on sin? As I mentioned, 15 sermons on sin, as it turns out. Why so much? Because 1:17 can go really seamlessly to 3:21. “In it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. The righteous shall live by faith. The righteousness of God has been manifested.” Just do that, Paul. Or maybe a verse. But you’re going to say in verse 23, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Isn’t that your whole argument? Why not just do that? Why such a meaty section on sin? Well, because there’s a lot of arguments he has to make. There’s lots of twists and turns. He wants the Gentiles to be convinced. He wants the Jews to be convinced. He wants the religious outsiders to know they don’t have any excuses. He wants the religious insiders to know that they don’t have a leg up. And he wants all of us to understand this is our problem. If you were to ask most people, one of those man-on-the-street interviews, what’s the big problem out there? You’re not going to get from most people anything like Romans 1, 2, and 3. You’re going to get it’s the lack of good leaders, it’s the lack of education, it’s the lack of affordable housing, it’s what our parents have done, it’s our screens, it’s that political party, the other political party. And well, all of that has a bearing. We don’t live up in the clouds. And yet, Romans is telling us this is your problem and my problem and the human problem in the world. You think you have a lot of other problems. You think you know what’s really wrong. Remember the famous line from G.K. Chesterton when they had, in London, some essay contest to write in what is wrong with the world, and he wrote in the shortest response in response to your question, “what is wrong with the world?” – I am. Sincerely, G.K. Chesterton.

Romans teaches us this is the problem – the wrath of God revealed against sin – so that we might, in the face of God’s holiness, feel something of the weight of his glory. That’s what the word glory means – kavod in the Hebrew means something like a heaviness or a weight – that we might feel the weight of glory. And 15 sermons so that we might feel the weight of sin so that now, and praise God for a lot of weeks to come, you might feel the weight of the gospel. You know that phrase, “What a time to be alive”? We usually say it sort of tongue in cheek, ironically. You get into a self-driving car, “Wow, what a time to be alive.” I go to the gas station, and I get my energy drinks – not too many of them, don’t worry. I put it right at that little square there, and that little box just counts up everything. I don’t have to talk to anyone. Just right there, and you take out a card. What a time to be alive. You can get Chick-fil-a sauce in the grocery store. What a time to be alive. That’s how we use the phrase. But now. What a time to be alive. Yes, they were saved by faith in the Old Testament, but something dramatic, world-altering, irrevocable has taken place through the work of Jesus Christ. As one commentator puts it, “The old era of sin’s domination has given away to this new era of salvation in Christ Jesus. If the wrath of God dominated that old era, the righteousness of God for sinners through faith in Christ by grace alone dominates this new era.” What a time to be alive, that you have a Bible, that you get to hear the gospel, that you have hundreds of churches that you could choose from, that you can punch a button on your phone and have the best stuff that ever been written on your doorstep by tomorrow morning about the good news.

If you have never heard this news before, you can give your life to Christ today. You can say, “I want to be a Christian. Jesus, I’m this sinner. By faith alone, would you save me?” And if you have heard this news before, as most of you have, how can we not give thanks? How can we be – some of us, including your pastor – too often complaining, crusty, curmudgeonly people? What a time to be alive. My hope is built on nothing less – and nothing else – than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ the solid rock I stand. All other ground is sinking sand. Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, would you work in us in the weeks ahead, Lord willing, that we might see and savor these many precious truths. Truly, there is nothing more important than this reality that is trumpeted to us in these verses. May our hearts sing, may our voices sing, and may we be satisfied in our Savior, in whose name we pray. Amen.