[Romans Study 8-2]
Justified Freely By His Grace Through The Redemption In Jesus Christ [Romans 3:9-26]
9 What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. 10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” 13 “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” 14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” 15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 ruin and misery mark their ways, 17 and the way of peace they do not know.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
What Is Grace?; The Story of the Prodigal Son And Unconditional Love and Forgiveness
If the law can be characterized as sin and punishment, then the Gospel can be seen as sin and forgiveness. Forgiveness is the highest form of love. When you truly love, then you can truly forgive. Unconditional love—it is the righteousness of God revealed to us by Jesus Christ. It was something very striking and shocking to the Jews, and to us as well. But Jesus came to tell us about this striking love of God. He told us about this love of God ever so clearly in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, recorded in Luke 15.
“Jesus continued: “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them. “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.” (Luke 15:11-13)
The story begins like this. Originally the father and the son were one but the son left the father. It is the story of how Adam fell as he left God. The gospel comes to us and makes us see that by living a life apart from God and apart from Christ we are going against the original position that God intended for us to be in. Man is meant to be a living soul in communion with God, and the gospel makes us see that.
The prodigal son suffered much after losing the protection and loving care of his father. He squandered his wealth in wild living and tended pigs to survive.
“”When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’” (Luke 15:17-19)
Only after experiencing extreme misery and destruction, did he finally realize his sin.
But how does the father receive this sinful son of his?
“So he got up and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20)
Though the son deserved to be punished, the loving father runs to his son from a long way off, throws his arms around him and kisses him. The father does not look at the sinner as a sinner. He does not repay his sin with punishment but covers his mistakes with his love. Knowing the guilt in the son, the father is filled with compassion, and runs to him and rejoices! This is the heart of God. This father is the God we serve. And this is the kind of father Jesus wanted to introduce us to: Father who calls the sinners before the “righteous” and who embraces their guilt.
Paul Was Driven by Grace
The same story is shared by Apostle Paul. The Lord came to him first even while he was persecuting Christians and the church of God. The Lord did not ask Paul of his sin but embraced him with surprising and unexpected love. In front of this love, Paul completely broke down. It was a righteousness that he never experienced or known of.
This grace that made Paul a preacher is the same grace that drove him across seas and continents. It made him preach day and night with tears and prayer. It was the most vital force in Paul’s life. This was the thing that ‘constrained’ him, and made him say, ‘Woe is me if I preach not the gospel!’ He was driven by the riches of God’s grace and the ignorance of men and women concerning them.
24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Three Metaphors About The Redemption Of Jesus Christ
Now Paul tells us of “redemption,” a new way that has been open by Christ Jesus to all sinful men. To show what he means he uses three metaphors:
1. Metaphor of a Court of Law
First, Paul uses a metaphor from a court of law. That is the metaphor we call justification. It means that God treats an utterly guilty man, convicted of sin, as if he were someone innocent and good man in His courts of mercy.
This defies logic, which instead would say: “God is just, and, therefore, condemns the sinner as a criminal.” But here, somehow, in that incredible and miraculous grace that Jesus came to bring to me, He accepts the sinner, not as a criminal, but as a son whom He still loves.
2. Metaphor of Sacrifice
Paul also uses the metaphor of Jewish ritual sacrifice.
Leviticus 16 records the sin offering rituals that the Israelite community practiced. On the day of atonement, the Jews would impute their sin on a scapegoat and send it into the desert where ferocious wild animals await to devour it. The scapegoat would shed its blood for them and this way they could make atonement for themselves and their households.
According to Paul, such a ritual can be equated to the death of Jesus in both its form and effect. “And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.” (Hebrew 13:12) He took our iniquity and suffered outside the city gate shedding his precious blood, which atoned for the entirety of man’s sin, in the past and in the days to come. His death was the death of redemption. John the Baptist said of Jesus: “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29)
In fact, Jesus not only carried the atoning cross of sacrifice at Golgotha but during his entire life. Jesus lived the life of the scapegoat, carrying the world’s sin and redeeming them.
In summary, Paul is saying: “Jesus Christ, by His life of obedience and His death of love, made the one sacrifice to God that atones for sin once and for all.” Paul insists that the event of the cross opened the door to the right relationship with God, a door which every other sacrifice was and is powerless to open.
We ought to remember: God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith.
3. Metaphor of an Emancipated Slave
Paul continues his discourse using a metaphor from the world of slavery, which was common in his time. He speaks of a deliverance brought about through the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
“Deliverance” was a commercial term. It is a term used when freeing a slave after paying ransom for his life. Paul says that Jesus became that ransom and shed His blood in order to free us who were slaves to sin. In Acts, Paul referred to the church of God as one that was “bought with Jesus’ own blood.” (Acts 20:28) Christians are those liberated by the price of Jesus’ blood and who have gained new life by his sacrifice. “You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men.” (1 Corinthians 7:23)
Aren’t we, as God’ ransomed children, so precious then? I was bought at a price–the priceless blood of Jesus. Though he was rich, Jesus became poor so that we might become rich through his poverty. (2 Corinthians 8:9)
Though the Cross of Jesus Christ, the way to righteousness has opened. When we believe in what the Cross of Christ has done for us, and receive the love manifested on the Cross, then we can receive this righteousness.
Salvation Eternal
“Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” (John 1:12) Once we truly receive Jesus, we become the children of God, and this is a status that cannot be changed. As if wine cannot turn back to water once water has turned into wine, God’s calling is irrevocable. Once we have received salvation, it is salvation eternal.
You cannot go in and out of grace; you cannot be saved one day and not be saved the next, and go back and forth. You are either under the dominion of sin and Satan, or you are under the dominion of grace and of God.
When God declares: You are righteous in my sight, you are my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, then man believing this is no longer the same man as he was before, but he becomes a new creation.
Republished with permission from Dr. Christy Tran, the author of “The Epistle to the Romans: Paul’s Love Letter from God.”