Meditations

Read Romans 3:1-31

Even A Caveman Can Get It

“Everyone has sinned and is far away from God’s saving presence. But
by the free gift of God’s grace all are put right with him
through Christ Jesus, who sets them free.”
(Romans 3:23-24, TEV)

Digging Deeper: A lot of people are overwhelmed by the complexity of religion. They are intimidated by it, they don’t get it, they don’t want to talk about it—and even if they do want to talk about it, they just can’t wrap their brain around it enough to be able to string enough cogent thoughts together to carry on a stimulating conversation.

But that is absolutely not true about true Christianity. I know, “true Christianity” is a redundancy—but I want to distinguish authentic faith from the messed up stuff that some misguided folk have turned our faith into.

Christianity is simple—so simple, even a caveman can get it. God made sure of that. Romans 3 provides it in a nutshell. Here the Apostle Paul, master theologian, who sometimes is not all that easy to grasp, probably foresaw the need for a “Christianity for Dummies” (he was thinking of me!), so he simply, clearly and briefly spelled out the real condition of humankind, God’s offer of salvation, the essence of faith, and the core beliefs of Christianity in this chapter.

I would highly recommend, as a reaffirmation of your faith and as a great refresher for evangelism, that you to go back and re-read Romans 3 in a modern translation, like The Message” or The New Living Translation. You’ll be amazed at the profound simplicity of our Christian faith.

Or I can give you the CliffNotes version:

1. The truth about you and me—Romans 3:9-12

“Basically, all of us, whether insiders (Jews who have the Law) or outsiders (Gentiles who live as a law unto themselves), start out in identical conditions, which is to say that we all start out as sinners. Scripture leaves no doubt about it: There’s nobody living right, not even one, nobody who knows the score, nobody alert for God. They’ve all taken the wrong turn; they’ve all wandered down blind alleys. No one’s living right; I can’t find a single one.”

2. The bad news—Romans 3:20

“For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are,” i.e., we’ll never attain God’s favor in this life now or in the life to come by being good enough.

3. The good news—Romans 3:21-22

“But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him [without our futile effort to be good enough for God]. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.”

4. Say What?—Romans 3:23-24

“Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners and proved that we are utterly incapable of living up to the standards God demands of us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ dying on the cross to pay for our sins.”

5. How cool is Christianity—Romans 3:25

“God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world—you and me—to clear that world—you and me—of sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.”

That’s it! That’s the Good News—and that news really is good! Religion is complex; Christianity is simple. Religion is about what you have to do; Christianity is about what God has done! Religion requires you to sacrifice to appease your god; Christianity required God to sacrifice his Son to appease himself. In religion, you pay; in Christianity, Jesus paid it all. Religious faith is about works; Christian faith is about belief. Religion leads to death; Christianity leads to life.

Need I say more?

Now I’m not all that bright—on par with a caveman—but I think I’ll take Christianity!  How ‘bout you?

“At last meditating day and night, by the mercy of God, I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith. Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open.”

~Martin Luther

Read Romans 3:21-31

Just As If I’d Never Sinned
 
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
~Romans 3:23-24

Digging Deeper: As a young man, I heard a simple preacher offer this definition of justification:  It is just as if I’d never sinned!  When you study what the Apostle Paul meant by the word, it turns out that is a pretty good explanation to a highly complex theology construct.

Paul uses the verb, justified, and words derived from its root, thirty times in Romans alone.  Obviously this is an important theme with Paul, and the critical core of our Christian faith.  Along with “gospel” and “faith” (see chapter 1), this is our theology.  The “good news” revealed in the New Testament is that through “faith” in Jesus Christ’s person, and his work on the cross, sinners can now stand before the holy and righteous God “justified”—just as if they had never sinned.

Now don’t miss the beauty of this!  Our justification, which was a legal concept, by the way, happened only by what Jesus did on the cross.  There he paid the penalty that you legally owed as one who had transgressed God’s law.  But not only were you pardoned from receiving the just punishment reserved for all lawbreakers, your guilt was removed as well.  So not only were you set free, you were totally cleansed—your sin record was expunged.  You now stand before God just as if you had never sinned.

Now how can that be?  Well, part of the justification package included that not only were you pardoned from punishment and declared not guilty, you were literally infused with Christ’s very own righteousness—“everything Jesus” was imputed, literally and spiritually, to you.  But that’s not all!  As beautiful as that is, it is even more stunningly beautiful that to be imputed with Christ’s righteousness meant that Jesus had to have both your sins and your sin nature imputed to him on the cross—“he became sin on your behalf so that you could become the righteousness of God.” (II Corinthians 5:21)

All of that was legally necessary for you to be made right with God.  You owed a legal debt that you could not pay to the Judge of all creation.  He loved you so much he sent his one and only Son—perfectly sinless—to pay the full legal price for your redemption by becoming sin and taking the punishment into his own being as he hung on the cross and shed his blood.

And you receive this free gift of God’s grace by faith (saving trust) alone—not by your own works of righteousness or inherent merit.  Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!  You stand before God just as if you had never sinned.

I don’t know about you, but the only response I have to such amazing and undeserved love is to offer the rest of my life as one unending thanksgiving offering to God.

“This is the mystery of the riches of divine grace for sinners, for by a wonderful exchange our sins are now not ours but Christ’s, and Christ’s righteousness is not Christ’s, but ours.”

~Martin Luther

This Week’s Assignment:

• Memorize Romans 3:10 and 3:23-24: “As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one’ … for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

• Meditate on the contrasting horror of universal sin and the hope of eternal redemption that Paul speaks of here in Romans 3.

• Write out a prayer of gratitude to God for the undeserved righteousness that was imputed to you through Christ’s work on the cross. If you are open to it, post your prayer as a comment on this blog.

 

Read Romans 3:1-20

We’re All In The Same Boat

What shall we conclude then? … We have already made the charge that
Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one…”
~Romans 3:10

Digging Deeper: The problem with the whole of the human race—Jew and Gentile, religionist and pagan, you and me—is that we are all horribly infected with sin.  Not hopelessly…I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Though it’s not too popular to talk about sin these days—particularly personal sin—that, nonetheless, remains what is wrong with the human race. We are all in that same sin boat, headed for an eternal maelstrom of deserved destruction.  At the core, sin has separated us from our loving and righteous Creator.  He made us for himself—a loving, intimate, unfettered moment-by-moment relationship between Creator and the highest of his creation—mankind; a relationship where we would not only literally live in his presence, but we would truly know his person and personally experience his Divine power as our very own.

But we blew it!  The father and mother of our race, Adam and Eve, deliberately chose to walk away from the deal of a lifetime in order to be like God, to be equal with God, to be their own god. And in that sad moment, the genetic code of the human race was horribly corrupted by sin.  Not hopelessly…I’ll get to that in a moment.

Moreover, as a race, we willfully and inexorably plunge forward down that same road the proto-couple chose, insisting on being like God, being equal to God, being our own god. And compounding our tragedy, we don’t seem to get it. (Romans 3:11)  Or even worse, we do get it (which is more likely the case; see Romans 1:20-23), and we still knowingly insist on doing our own thing:

“All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:12)

And it gets worse…just read on in Romans 3:13-18.  But enough of the bad news—we’ve already dealt with that in Romans 1-2.  Let’s just cut to the chase of what results from our insistence on going it alone without God, which Paul sums up in Romans 3:16-17:

“Ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.”

Yes, we have been horribly infected with sin.  Our genetic code is horribly corrupted with willful disobedience to the God who created us for intimacy with him. Horribly infected! Horribly corrupted!  Yet all is not hopeless.

One word changes that tragic equation, interrupts the inexorable plunge and trumps our sin: “But…” Paul pens one word that delivers the death blow to sin, splits the wide road to destruction with an off-ramp to redemption, throws a life-saver to a sinking human race so we can get out of the proverbial boat we’re all in: “But…”

Though it is not in our reading for today, take a look at the first word of the next section; venture a sneak peak at this grand verse, Romans 3:21, along with its cousin verses in Romans 3:22-26, and let your heart be lifted yet again by the unstoppable power of our Gospel.  Take a moment to read these amazing verses in the horrible context of the first twenty verses of this chapter, and just let the deep, deep love of the Father who lavished on sinners like you and me wash over your being.

Yes, the condition of humanity is horrible, “but” thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, it is not hopeless!

“The law works fear and wrath; grace works hope and mercy.”
~Martin Luther

This Week’s Assignment:

• Memorize Romans 3:10 and 3:23-24: “As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one’ … for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
• Meditate on the contrasting horror of universal sin and the hope of eternal redemption that Paul speaks of here in Romans 3.
• Write out a prayer of gratitude to God for the undeserved righteousness that was imputed to you through Christ’s work on the cross. If you are open to it, post your prayer as a comment on this blog.

Christianity for Dummies

“Everyone has sinned and is far away from God’s saving presence. But by the free gift
of God’s grace all are put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free.”
~Romans 3:23-24 (TEV)

Soul Snacks:  So many people get freaked out by the complexity of religion. They’re intimidated by it, they don’t get it, they don’t want to talk about it—and even if they do want to talk about it, they just can’t wrap their brain around it enough to be able to string enough cogent thoughts together to carry on a stimulating conversation about it.

But that is absolutely not true about true Christianity. I know, “true Christianity” is redundant, but I want to distinguish authentic faith from the junked up, messed up stuff that some misguided folks have turned our faith into. Christianity is simple—so simple, even a caveman can get it. God made sure of that. Here it is in a nutshell in Romans 3. Here the Apostle Paul, master theologian par excellence, who sometimes is not all that easy to grasp, probably foresaw the need for a “Christianity for Dummies” (he was thinking of me!), so he simply, clearly and briefly spelled out the real condition of humankind, God’s offer of salvation, the essence of faith, and the core beliefs of Christianity in this chapter.

I would highly recommend, as a reaffirmation of your faith and as a great refresher for evangelism, that you go back and re-read Romans 3 in a modern translation, like The Message” or The New Living Translation. You’ll be amazed at the profound simplicity of our Christian faith.

Or I can give you the CliffNotes version:

1. The truth about you and me—Romans 3:9-12

“Basically, all of us, whether insiders (Jews who have the Law) or outsiders (Gentiles who live as a law unto themselves), start out in identical conditions, which is to say that we all start out as sinners. Scripture leaves no doubt about it: There’s nobody living right, not even one, nobody who knows the score, nobody alert for God. They’ve all taken the wrong turn; they’ve all wandered down blind alleys. No one’s living right; I can’t find a single one.”

2. The bad news—Romans 3:20

“For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are,” i.e., we’ll never attain God’s favor in this life now or in the life to come by being good enough.

3. The good news—Romans 3:21-22

“But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him [without our futile effort to be good enough for God]. We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.”

4. Say What?—Romans 3:23-24

“Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners and proved that we are utterly incapable of living up to the standards God demands of us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ dying on the cross to pay for our sins.”

5. How cool is Christianity—Romans 3:25

“God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world—you and me—to clear that world—you and me—of sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.”

That’s it! That’s the Good News—and that news really is good! Religion is complex; Christianity is simple. Religion is about what you have to do; Christianity is about what God has done! Religion requires you to sacrifice to appease your god; Christianity required God to sacrifice his Son to appease himself. In religion, you pay; in Christianity, Jesus paid it all. Religious faith is about works; Christian faith is about belief. Religion leads to death; Christianity leads to life.

Need I say more?

Now I’m not all that bright—on par with a caveman—but I think I’ll take Christianity!  How ‘bout you?

P.S The great reformer Martin Luther wrote of his revelation that salvation is by faith alone, “At last meditating day and night, by the mercy of God, I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith. Here I felt as if I were entirely born again and had entered paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open.”