21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
I have heard people say that this passage is possibly the most important passage of all Scripture. I happen to disagree, but not because I think there are other more important passages. I believe that unless we have the context of the whole Bible story, this passage doesn't make sense. The freedom we have in Christ isn't an issue that we find strictly in the New Testament. From the very beginning God stirred the creation into more and more manifestation of order and light.
It is from the foundations of the Earth that we find a God who is not content to simply speak over the creation in order to bring it into fullness. He gets down into the nitty-gritty. He isn't satisfied with being afar off; God comes into the darkness and chaos. So it is in the sinner. God isn't content to speak over the sinful heart, "Be clean." God comes into that unclean heart to purify and to make new. Jesus had a similar experience with a leper. The leper approached our Lord and said, "You can heal me if you are willing..." Jesus wasn't going to allow that mentality to last another minute. He didn't only say, "I am willing." Jesus actually reached out His hand and touched the unclean thing.
The Gospel isn't so much about the cross and resurrection as it is what these things symbolize. The Gospel is the proclamation of a God who came into His creation to rescue it from the darkness and death that binds it. The cross and resurrection are the medium by which God brings deliverance. It is not a one time moment in history, but an epoch of all God's moments in history. This is the crux of God's character. He has always been one who suffers for the betterment of His creation. It is not sufficient to say that God died upon the cross and that is it. He is the Lamb slain from the foundations of the Earth, and indeed God's character is and always has been to live in the reality of the cross and resurrection with His people.
It is by this that we are justified freely by grace. It is all about the blood of Jesus, and it is not limited to the one time event. Jesus' blood is eternal. From the beginning, all the saints have pleaded upon the mercy of God. God could only have justified them by the blood of Christ that had not yet come. It was through their faith in the character of God that saved them. Jesus hadn't died for forgiveness to come to David after he sinned. How can God forgive him?
So please understand that I don't mean to diminish the cross and it's importance. On quite the contrary, I'm trying to establish the importance. It is in the context of understanding that God is and always has been the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world that we can fully embrace the cross of Jesus and plead His blood for the redemption and remission of sins. God's plan of salvation has been established from the very first.
I think this is why Jesus rebuked the two saints on the road to Emmaus. It has always been the character and pattern of God to suffer before the glory. The cross was laid out in the prophets, but also in the stories of the Torah and historical books. It has always been God's character to embrace suffering and not reject it. God isn't a coward to flee from suffering. He embraces it.
And so we can approach the cross of calvary as an event that effects all of history because it is a culmination of all of God's events in history. Every time God interacts with humanity is a cross and resurrection. His character is displayed through every word, action, reaction, judgment, and mercy.
Thus we conclude that it is upon that cross that God was able to be both just and the justifier of the wicked. But why is this a problem?
How can God forgive the wicked and appease justice?
Those who break the law demand the punishment required. This is the set up for the next few chapters. We'll dive into further detail, but for now let us consider a general overview to chew on.
When we ask God to forgive us of sin, we are asking that He would break the law. The law demands punishment. How can God both exact punishment and give grace to the repentant heart? God took upon Himself that punishment of death. He took upon Himself the full wrath and punishment that deserved to go to we that call upon Christ Jesus' name. It is by grace that we have salvation, and of works lest any man should boast.
But the requirement of repentance is not simply a prayer of forgiveness. Repentance requires that we have a change in mindset and heart. It takes a death. Jesus is our sacrifice of atonement, but the wages of sin is still death. There must be a death in the believer in order for there to be freedom from sin. Anyone who has tasted of death and come out victorious by the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is now free from sin (examine Romans 6). Christ is our atonement, and we willingly go to death with Him that we might also be raised with Him to life eternal.
This is how God is able to be both just and the justifier of the wicked. All wickedness is put to death so that resurrection life might come to wholeness within the believer. Little wonder, then, as to why the next statement out of Paul is about the Law and how there is no boasting:
27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. 28 For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, 30 since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. 31 Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law.
We are freed from the Law in the same sense that the married man is free from the law that tells us to remain obstinate. While I were single, it would be sin for me to have sexual intercourse. But now that I am married, this no longer applies. It is still sin, however, to commit adultery. So the Law hasn't been abolished, but has been transformed. It is all the more imperative now that we have been made new. Law hasn't been nullified nor made an object of ridicule. Law is now inescapable - for the law has been written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit.
So then we conclude that all who are free from Law are free from death and sin. There can be no death nor sin where there is no Law. But this statement doesn't mean that we no longer have to hold up to a moral standard as some in the hypergrace movement have claimed. Should we continue in sin now that we are free from it? No - if you have died to sin, then how can you live in it any longer? Our very conduct has changed to that of us no longer desiring sin. If we no longer desire to perform wickedness, then why bind ourselves to unnatural habits?
As we continue through Romans, we'll continue to deepen this mentality of freedom and faith and how to walk it out. And we'll also start to look at some practical implications this has as we get into some of the later chapters in Romans.
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