Encounter the Truth

Jonathan Griffiths: How can a just and holy God pardon the guilty? Since we all fall on the wrong side of God's justice, how could he, the just judge, ever declare us guiltless? How could he spare us the judgment we deserve?

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths. You asked really big questions, Jonathan, right there. And I think we have to address those questions, gotta begin to answer those questions, at least begin to answer them right now. We're guilty. If we're honest with ourselves, we know that we're guilty of God's standard of perfection. So how do we get God to not judge us according to what we deserve?

Jonathan Griffiths: Well, the answer to that comes in the work of Jesus, of course. And it's something that the apostle Paul wants to unwrap for us here in this passage in Romans chapter three. But the heart of the message and the heart of the truth is this: that the Lord Jesus made himself available, offered himself in submission to the will of the Father, to be put forward as a propitiation. That's the big word that Paul uses in this passage.

Steve Hiller: Yeah, you gotta explain that a little bit.

Jonathan Griffiths: It needs some explanation, doesn't it? That's the big word that Paul uses here to describe what happened at the cross. Jesus was put forward as a propitiation, which means an anger-bearing sacrifice. Jesus died there to bear the just penalty that we deserve for the wrong we've done so that that penalty might be removed from us and that we might be forgiven, we might be accepted. That's the heart of the message, and we're going to explore that together.

Steve Hiller: All right, so let's do that. Grab a Bible, join us in the book of Romans. We're in chapter three, verses 21 to 26, as we begin a message called Guilt Removed. Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: The cross has sometimes been described as being like a multi-faceted jewel, which as you look at it from different angles, you see new aspects of its beauty and its wonder. And our plan over the next few weeks is to be looking at the cross from different angles and through different passages of scripture. And this morning we're beginning our series in Romans chapter three.

On Friday, the Ontario government published its famed sunshine list of the salaries of all public employees earning over $100,000 a year. It's a major event in the Ontario media calendar. Everyone seems to enjoy a nosy look at what other people earn. And inevitably, the days following the list's publication are full of public outcry at some of the information and indeed injustice it seems to reveal. How could such and such a person, doing such and such a role, who obviously deserves to earn less than me or you, how could they earn so much money?

The list always provokes the public sense of injustice. And it highlights the fact that we all have a deeply inbuilt sense of fair play. We all have that deeply inbuilt sense of justice from our earliest days. If you don't believe me, just stop by our nursery and watch what happens when one toddler snatches a toy from another. We all understand the concept of justice. We all care about justice. And we all want to know and believe that ultimately we live in a just world.

One of the most comforting truths of scripture is the truth that God is indeed a God of complete and perfect justice. The Bible promises a day when he will call all people to account for their actions and where he will leave no crime unpunished. And he will bring about perfect justice for mankind. Now, that's good news because it means we live in a world where actions matter, where criminals will be called to account, where crimes will be punished. It's great news, but it also presents a major problem for each one of us.

It presents a problem because you and I are not only the victims of wrongdoing, but we are so often the perpetrators as well. We may not be murderers or terrorists, but we all fall short of God's perfect standard set out in his word. No one, not even the most upstanding and sweet-natured person, has managed to keep God's moral requirements in his word perfectly. No one is perfectly honest, unfailingly kind, completely faithful, thoroughly good.

That's why back in verse 10, Paul insisted that there is no one righteous, not even one. And so if God is a God of perfect justice and if we are all wrongdoers, then actually we're all in a great deal of trouble. In verse 20, Paul tells us that no one is going to be declared righteous, guiltless, in God's sight by observing his law. We might manage to keep aspects of God's law some of the time, but we're never going to achieve a perfect record.

In fact, God's law, in verse 20, ultimately only has the power to make us conscious of our sin, of our wrongdoing. It has no power to remove our guilt. Well, that great reality leads us to the great problem at the heart of the book of Romans, the great problem at the heart of all scripture, and ultimately the great crisis at the heart of human history. And here it is: How can a just and holy God pardon the guilty?

Since we all fall on the wrong side of God's justice, how could he, the just judge, ever declare us guiltless? How could he spare us the judgment we deserve? That is the question above all questions, the crisis above all crises. And God's answer to it, his glorious solution, well, it is none other than the cross of Christ. In our passage this morning, a passage that one commentator has described as the most important paragraph ever written, Paul will show us how the cross answers this question and addresses this crisis. He will show us that at the cross, God is able to justify sinners while at the same time demonstrating his own perfect justice.

First then, at the cross, God justifies sinners. We all like to feel as though we can manage on our own and stand on our own two feet. That tendency of course begins in childhood with the insistence that we can feed ourselves or walk on our own or tie our own shoelaces. It continues in youth and adolescence when we insist that we don't need help with our homework or advice on what we're going to wear or where we're going to go at the weekend.

It remains in adulthood when we resist the boss's input into the big project. It's still there in old age perhaps when we insist that we can manage on our own and without help around the home. We all hate to feel dependent, weak, out of our depth. None of us enjoys that. It's a natural human instinct. But the fact of the matter is that there is one area of life where all of us are thoroughly out of our depth and unable to cope.

There is one area where we are simply unable to manage on our own. When it comes to securing our righteous standing before God the judge, not one of us is able to do the job ourselves. However hard we might try, whatever efforts we might put in, none of us can meet the requirements of God's perfect law. His standards are too high and our sin is too great. But the glorious good news at the heart of the Christian message is this, verse 21:

But now a righteousness, a right standing with God, apart from the law has been made known. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, we're all in the same boat, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We fail to meet his perfect standard and are justified, Paul tells us, freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Well, that is wonderful news. That is the best news that has ever been heard: justification for the sinful, a not-guilty verdict for the guilty. But how can this be? I mean, that kind of thing happens all the time in crooked courtrooms in lawless countries. But God's courtroom is no kangaroo court. How is this possible?

Well, verse 25 gives us the answer. It shows us the means by which God achieves this astonishing feat. Here is the heart of it: God presented him, that is Jesus, as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. The word translated here sacrifice of atonement used to be translated by a less familiar but more precise English word, the word propitiation. If you're using the ESV Bible as I know some are, you'll see that's the word they use in that translation.

Propitiation is a long and unfamiliar word that's difficult to say, and we don't tend to like long and unfamiliar words that are difficult to say. But I'd like to suggest we would all do well to learn this particular one. We do well to learn it because no other word conveys better the nature of Jesus's sacrifice at the cross. The word propitiation refers to something that addresses, satisfies, and turns away anger. That's what it means.

And so a propitiatory sacrifice is a sacrifice that addresses and turns away anger. It is an anger-bearing sacrifice. Paul tells us here that God the Father presented Jesus as a propitiatory sacrifice to address and to deal with human sin. That's what was happening at the cross at its very heart. Now this doctrine, this truth, is sometimes called the doctrine of penal substitution. You may have heard that term before. It's the doctrine that Jesus died as our substitute to bear the penalty of our sin.

It's a wonderful doctrine. It's a breathtaking doctrine that stands at the very heart of the Christian faith. But it's also proved to be a deeply controversial doctrine at the same time. Many people have taken offense at this truth, and many have sought to deny or to undermine it. Why do you think that is so? Why do so many people react so negatively to this idea, the idea that Jesus is the propitiation for our sin?

I think there are basically two reasons why this truth is so unpopular. It's unpopular because first of all, it implies something about God that we don't like very much. And it's unpopular secondly because it implies something about us and our sin that we don't like very much either. Think about God first of all. If Jesus needed to die as a propitiatory sacrifice for our sin, and an anger-bearing sacrifice, that means that there was indeed anger that needed to be addressed, that needed to be propitiated.

And of course, the anger we're thinking about here is God's own anger. He is the Creator and the Judge of all the earth who is rightly and justly angry at human rebellion that spoils his world, that damages his creatures, and that defies his rule. But of course, we don't naturally warm to the idea of a God who is angry with human sin and even angry with us. That's a deeply uncomfortable notion to reckon with.

We would much prefer to think of God as a doting grandfather in the sky who smiles on our foibles and chooses to ignore our wickedness. That may be the kind of God we like to imagine, but the God of the Bible is a God of perfect holiness, a God of uncompromising justice. And when it comes to evil and rebellion, yes, he is a God of righteous anger as well.

We need to say that God's anger isn't like our anger, unpredictable, driven by emotion, prone to flaring up. No, God's anger is justified and measured and controlled. But at the same time, his anger at sin is real and it must be addressed. The other reason we struggle with this doctrine of penal substitution is that it tells us something about ourselves and our sin that we'd rather not know and we'd rather ignore.

It tells us that our rebellion and our wrongdoing are far more serious than we'd ever imagined. Our sin isn't just the odd indiscretion, an amusing foible, a lovable little quirk. No, my rebellion and my sin, my guilt and your guilt, it's so serious that for it to be addressed and dealt with, a blood sacrifice had to be made. God the Son himself had to die.

I look at the cross and I realize that's how bad I am. That's how guilty I am. That's how serious my sin is. And as I look at the cross and I realize that, I'd rather not believe it. I'd rather not know. The doctrine of penal substitution may be unpopular, but it's a vital truth for each of us to know and to understand. It's a vital truth for the person who is just considering the Christian faith.

If that's you this morning, let me urge you to think through and to reckon with this doctrine carefully. It actually serves to highlight the urgency of your situation. It tells you that you are in grave danger because God is a God of justice who is rightly angry at human rebellion and human sin. And at the same time as highlighting your danger, it tells you that God himself has provided the means necessary to address his anger and to secure your safety.

It tells you both things. Now, if we miss out this core truth, the danger is that we'll see turning to Christ as more of a lifestyle choice than a means of survival. We'll get stuck wondering whether Jesus will make us happy or fulfilled. We'll end up shopping around for the right religion as we might shop around for the right new car.

But if we see that the cross is first and foremost an urgent rescue mission to save us from the judgment of God, then we'll have a realistic sense of urgency about the decision. You'll have heard in the news this week of the dreadful cyclone that hit Australia. The full toll of the storm is not yet clear, but it's clear that Cyclone Debbie has brought terrible devastation to parts of that country.

Mercifully, the weather predictions were very clear and timely and the warnings leading up to the storm were ample. But it was pretty heart-wrenching in the lead-up to the storm to hear government officials pleading with residents to flee low-lying coastal areas, to seek safety, to say that there would be nothing that they could do or the emergency services could do once the storm hit. And then to hear reports that some simply would not heed the warning and simply would not flee.

In one sense, the cross of Christ is our early storm warning. It is a demonstration in time and space in human history of the judgment of God. The ultimate day of judgment, that is yet to come. But the cross with its agony of bloodshed shows us just how serious sin is, just how seriously God takes sin, and just what is required to address the justice of God.

But the astonishing good news of the cross is that because Jesus died as our propitiation, as our anger-bearing sacrifice, if we belong to him and if we trust in him, we enjoy perfect safety before God the judge. Our guilt has been addressed fully and finally. The anger of God has been dealt with for us and we have nothing else to fear from the judgment of God.

Through the cross, God justifies sinners. But not only does he do that, at the very same time, God demonstrates his own justice at the cross. And that's the second key lesson of our passage. At the cross, God demonstrates his perfect justice. Right from the beginning, from the time of mankind's first rebellion against God, God has indicated his gracious intention to provide a means of salvation for his people.

As the Old Testament progressed, he laid out that intention in greater and greater detail. God didn't want his people to face judgment and he didn't want them to suffer eternal death. He intended to save them. But God's justice on the one hand and his desire to save on the other, that seems to set up a great dilemma. How could the God of perfect justice overlook or forgive the sin of his people?

In some ways, the legal framework of the Old Testament held out a kind of hope that God's people might be made right before him, might be justified if they would just obey and follow all the duties of God's law, of the law that he had given them. But Paul declares here in our passage that the law would never give salvation. It could never justify anyone.

And the reason for that, of course, is that no sinner would ever keep its requirements perfectly. There's nothing wrong with the law, but there's a great deal wrong with the human heart. The law actually simply makes us conscious of our sin. It highlights the problem without providing a cure. And so the upshot of that is that no Israelite had ever been made right with God through law-keeping. Throughout all the history of Israel, no one had ever been justified through the law.

That then raises a question: How could God relate to his Old Testament people as his own, as his saved people? Why didn't his judgment fall on them? How could they have a hope of salvation? Did God simply decide to make Israel a special case, simply to ignore the sin of the Israelites because he loved them so much? Is that how it worked? Was it essentially a case of favoritism throughout the Old Testament?

It's actually a fascinating question. I don't know if you've ever considered it, but follow the logic with me of Paul's response as he sets out to answer the question and to solve the riddle. Verse 25: God presented him, that's Jesus, 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 before him unpunished. 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.

Steve Hiller: Jonathan Griffiths here on Encounter the Truth and part of a message called Guilt Removed. Now, we're going to pause here, but we'll continue this broadcast next time, so hope you'll make it a point to tune in. If you ever miss a program, come to our website and listen online. Our website address is encounterthetruth.org. Encounter the Truth is a listener-supported ministry. It is your generosity that keeps Jonathan's teaching on this station, on the podcast platforms, and all the different ways you've connected with this ministry. So thank you for giving to and supporting Encounter the Truth.

And as you give a gift of any amount this month, Jonathan, you've picked out a book that is certainly timely for this time of year. It's Lee Strobel's The Case for Easter.

Jonathan Griffiths: One of the things we're really emphasizing this month on the broadcast is the historicity of Easter. The fact that the message of Easter is not just a fairy tale or a myth or a legend, but it is grounded in historical reality. And that's so important for us to grapple with. And one of the reasons I love our book offer this month is that it tackles the issue of the historicity of the death and resurrection of Jesus head-on. And I think we need to be convinced and re-convinced of the historicity of these events if they're going to change our lives and impact our hearts. So I'm so glad we're making this book available to our listeners this month. I'd love you to get a hold of it, read it for yourself, and give it to others to tackle this issue of the historicity of the events that we're discussing this month.

Steve Hiller: The book is called The Case for Easter, written by Lee Strobel. And it is our thank-you gift to you as you give a financial gift of any amount this month. You can give online at encounterthetruth.org or call 1-833-99-TRUTH. That's 1-833-998-7884. Or again, the website is encounterthetruth.org. You can also write us at Encounter the Truth, 2176 Prince of Wales Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K2E 0A1. Or in the US, at Encounter the Truth, 215 North Arlington Heights Road, number 102, Arlington Heights, Illinois, 60004. For Jonathan Griffiths, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening and I hope you'll join us next time.