ROMANS 3:9-4:25

LESSON 5     JUSTIFICATION AND FAITH

ROMANS  3:9-4:25

The human predicament is described in Romans 1:18-3:20: the whole world is held accountable to God. But now in Christ God himself has intervened. The light of a new day has dawned. Over against God’s judgment Paul sets God’s grace to sinners who believe. Over against judgment, he sets justification.

1. God’s righteousness revealed in Christ’s cross (3:21-26). Verses 21-26 are the center and heart of the whole main section of Romans and may possibly be the most important single paragraph ever written. Justification by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

Justification is a legal or forensic term, belonging to the law courts. Its opposite is condemnation. Both are the pronouncements of a judge. When God justifies sinners today, he anticipates his own final judgment by bringing into the present what belongs properly to the last day. It is not just forgiveness. Pardon is negative, the remission of a penalty or debt; justification is positive, the bestowal of a righteous status, the sinner’s reinstatement in the favor and fellowship of God.

What God did through the cross, that is through the death of his Son in our place, Paul explains by three notable expressions. The key words are redemption, atonement or better propitiation, and demonstration. Associated with the cross, therefore, there is a redemption of sinners, a propitiation of God’s wrath and a demonstration of his justice.

• Redemption (24). It is a commercial term borrowed from the marketplace. We were slaves or captives in bondage to our sin and guilt, and utterly unable to liberate ourselves. But Jesus Christ ‘redeemed’ us, bought us out of captivity, shedding his blood as the ransom price.
• Propitiation/sacrifice of atonement (25). To ‘propitiate or atone’ somebody means to placate his or her anger. This seems to many to be an unworthy concept of God. Paul is describing God’s solution to the human predicament, which is not only sin but God’s judgment upon sin (1:18;2:5;3:5). We should not shy of using the word ‘propitiation or atonement’ in relation to the cross and more than we should drop the word ‘judgment’ in relation to God. First, why is a propitiation/atonement necessary? God’s holiness opposes evil. Secondly, who undertakes to do the propitiating/atoning? God in his undeserved love has done for us what we could never do by ourselves. Thirdly, how has the propitiation/atonement been accomplished? God gave his own Son to die in our place, and in giving his Son he gave himself (5:8;8:32
• Demonstration (25,26). The cross vindicated the justice of God. God left unpunished the sins of former generations, not because of any injustice on his part, or with any thought of condoning evil, but in his forbearance, and only because it was his fixed intention in the fulness of time to punish those sins in the death of his Son. This was the only way in which he could both himself be just, and simultaneously be the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

2. The means of our justification: faith (22,26). Justification is by grace alone, in Christ alone, through faith alone. The value of faith is not to be found in itself, but entirely and exclusively in its object, namely Jesus Christ crucified. Faith is the eye that looks to him, the hand that receives his free gift, the mouth that drinks the living water. Justification is the heart of the gospel and unique to Christianity. All other systems teach some sort of self-salvation through good works of religion, righteousness or philanthropy. Faith’s only function is to receive what grace offers.
3. God’s righteousness defended against criticism (3:27-31).

Question 1: Where, then, is boasting? (27-28). Jewish people were proud of their personal righteousness. The Gentile world also was ‘insolent, arrogant and boastful’ (1:30). In fact, all human beings are inveterate boasters. Boasting is the language of our fallen self-centeredness. All boasting is excluded except boasting in Christ.

Question 2: Is God the God of Jews only? (29-30). Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Christ is Abraham’s ‘seed’, and through him the blessing of salvation now extends to everyone who believes, without exception or distinction. The gospel of justification excludes all elitism and discrimination.

Question 3: Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? (31). Faith upholds the law. What he means, and will later elaborate, is that justified believers who live according to the Spirit fulfil the righteous requirements of the law (8:4; cf.13:8,10).

4. God’s righteousness illustrated in Abraham (4:1-25).

Romans 4 occupies a very important place in the letter for two reasons. First, Paul further clarifies the meaning of justification by faith by reference to Abraham and David. Secondly, Paul wants Jewish Christians to grasp that his gospel of justification by faith is no novelty, having been proclaimed beforehand in the OT and he wants Gentile Christians to appreciate the rich spiritual heritage they have entered by faith in Jesus. Abraham and David show that justification by faith is God’s one and only way, first in the OT as well as in the New.

1. Abraham was not justified by works (1-8). Imputed righteousness: it was credited to his account. “Clothed in the spotless robe of Christ’s righteousness.”
2. Abraham was not justified by circumcision (9-12). His justification is recorded in Genesis 15 and his circumcision in Genesis 17. Abraham’s circumcision was justification’s sign and seal. First, we are justified by faith, and then we are baptized as a sign and seal of our justification.
3. Abraham was not justified by the law (13-17a). The law was given centuries later.
4. Abraham was justified by faith (17b-22). “God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that are not.” Nothing baffles us human beings more than nothingness and death. Death is the one event over which in the end we have no control, and from which we cannot escape. But nothingness and death are no problem to God. On the contrary, it is out of nothing that he created the universe, and out of death that he raised Jesus. The creation and the resurrection were and remain the two major manifestations of the power of God.
5. Conclusion: Abraham’s faith and ours (23-25). In this chapter the apostle gives us instruction about the nature of faith. He indicates that there are degrees in faith. For faith can be weak (19) or strong (20). How then does it grow? Above all through the use of our minds. Faith is not burying our heads in the sand, or screwing ourselves up to believe what we know is not true, or even whistling in the dark to keep our spirits up. On the contrary, faith is reasoning trust. There can be no believing without thinking. We today are much more fortunate than Abraham, and have little or no excuse for unbelief. For we live on this side of the resurrection. Moreover, we have a complete Bible in which both the creation of the universe and the resurrection of Jesus are recorded. It is therefore more reasonable for us to believe than it was for Abraham.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR LESSON 5

ROMANS 3:21-4:25

1. How can you fully appreciate the nature of justification by seeing it as more than forgiveness but restoration to fellowship with God?
2. How does Paul describe the nature of the cross in terms of redemption, propitiation and demonstration? What does each term emphasize?
3. What is the nature of saving faith? How can you explain it as different from a leap into the dark?
4. How does the example of Abraham help you to understand the importance of faith?
5. When you have come to the end of your hopes for the future and you are facing death or life-threatening diagnosis how can Abraham’s faith help you?
6. How important is the promise of the resurrection to you?