His Perfect Love

Matt VanderVen: God is both just and the justifier. We'll explain next on His Perfect Love.

God could have easily just been just and simply sent every guilty sinner to hell, couldn't he? That would have been the just thing to do. We deserved that, didn't we? He could have easily just been the justifier and said, "Hey man, I'll be a respecter of persons"—the book of James says don't do that—"I'll be a respecter of persons, but I'll just say you're not all guilty. Go ahead and do whatever you want to do."

We already saw how that worked out for the skeptic. But only God could find a way to be both the just and the justifier. Circle that in your Bibles. This is very important. It's for the one that has faith in Jesus Christ. He didn't compromise his judgment; rather, grace was extended to those alone that placed their faith in Jesus Christ. That's quite remarkable.

Guest (Male): When the book of Romans was penned, there was a large number of people with a skewed view of salvation. They believed that salvation came through circumcision and living by the law of God. In Romans, the Apostle Paul makes it abundantly clear that we are saved by grace through faith.

It's a message that needs to be heard today as countless people think they can get to heaven through self-effort or living by the law. We're talking about being justified by faith today on His Perfect Love. Here is Pastor Matt VanderVen in Romans chapter three.

Matt VanderVen: Verse 23: For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. People love to quote that. It's the Romans Road. I wish people read verse 24 when they gave that. If you do that, give verse 24 please, because it says: Being justified freely. Don't leave that out. If you give them half the equation, they're going to end up in a denominational struggle thinking they have to work their way through this.

I was there at one time. I thought I had to do certain things for my salvation. What I didn't realize is it was already done for me and it was a free gift. All I had to do was receive it. And James will talk about what I do once I receive it. I'm not off the hook, by the way. But we're talking about salvation. He says, "Being justified freely by his grace." Circle that. I love that. It's by his grace. We're getting an education on grace here. Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Being justified. Paul develops in his teaching here about salvation really three themes. And it really builds into verse 25 too because he uses the word propitiation. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that as well. Justification. That's a picture of what? It's a picture borrowed from a court of law. It was a legal term. You were justified. You were free, no guilt. The judge met, you were found innocent. You were free to go freely. Just as if you had never sinned before. Justified.

What about the word redemption? That's a picture borrowed from the slave market, believe it or not. It's foreign to us today, but there was a slave market. You had debtor's prison and things like that. You'd work off your debt and different things like that. And so with this idea of not being your own, under sin. Remember he talked about that already, that we were under sin, and what did we relate that to? Being in bondage. He's already used that similar picture for us to understand that we were in bondage. And so what that redemption is, it's being borrowed from that slave market because we're being set free.

That's why we're not under the law. Do you see the theological underpinnings here? This sets everything off. Understanding this passage in Romans is foundational because from here you begin to understand everything else. That is why not only did the Jerusalem Council meet in Acts chapter 15 and determine there was nothing but those three things—we didn't need circumcision, we didn't need Judaizing, we didn't need anything like that—it was always having a circumcised heart that mattered to God.

And then what was the last thing? A propitiation. Verse 25 shows us. What's that a picture of? Well, that actually comes from the worship of idols. The idea was a substitute, and it means that. But in that day, that picture was borrowed from the world of religion: appeasing a god through sacrifices. As you know, they had temples back then, and they would bring sacrifices to those temples. They had horrible things, temple orgy, all types of terrible things, and they would sacrifice to these gods. And it was considered a substitute, a propitiation. Who is our propitiation? Jesus Christ.

Now, what's so cool is we're going to talk a little bit about that term *hilasterion* in a little bit. That's the term in the Greek, *hilasterion*. And how we see that used in the Old Testament. If you take a Septuagint and you go and study the entire Bible in Greek—which we do often because we want to know the words, the connotation or meaning, and how they would have been used—that same word was used for mercy seat, atonement, propitiation.

Justification. What does that solve? It solves the problem of man's guilt before a righteous judge. We all agree we're guilty. We all agree we're sinners. That's what justification solves. What about redemption? Well, that solves the problem of man's slavery to sin, the world, and the devil. What about propitiation? That solves the problem of a spiritual divide with our Creator. We have a new nature. We're no longer divided from God. Through Christ, we're united with God forever, eternally.

Do you see that? And he's going to build on this. Verse 24 says we are justified freely by his grace. It's open to everyone who will do what? Work really hard? No. What does he say? Believe. Remember? It was belief, just belief. It's open to everyone who will believe. Being in such a sinful state, the only way we can be justified is to be justified freely. It had to be a free gift. We couldn't purchase it with our good works at all. If it isn't made free to us, we can't have it, actually.

Just think through that for a minute. So we're justified freely by what? His grace. It comes back to his grace, his unmerited favor given to us without regard to what we deserve. We're going to read later on he's the just and the justifier in verse 26. We're going to come back to this point. He is just. He's a righteous judge. But he's also a justifier. Just think about that.

Because we are justified by his grace, we know that it's freely. And that word there, *dorean*, in the Greek, it means freely. When we look at this word, it's used in other New Testament passages. What's the best way to interpret the Bible? The Bible. Look at Matthew 10:8. You can see it was "freely you have received, freely give." Okay. Well, what about another one? Revelation 22:17. "And whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely." *Dorean*.

Both of these examples demonstrate that the word means truly free. It doesn't mean discounted. It doesn't mean inexpensive. It cost Christ everything. It cost God everything. So it's through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. That's what we have to be careful about because when we start adding works, we end up doing all these other things. What we end up doing is we cheapen or we lessen the gift of grace. And you've got to be careful when you handle that.

When you begin to do that, it's not intentional, but you begin to take that gift that was given and you no longer see it as a gift. You begin to see that it's something that has to be balanced between faith and your ability to somehow work to appease God in salvation terms. If it's a gift, he's not an Indian giver. If it's a gift, it's a gift. If I give you a gift, am I expecting anything in return? What did he expect? For us to believe that he gave us a gift. That's what he asked.

He didn't say, "Hey, you really got to study the gift." He said be able to give a defense for why you believe what you believe. Certainly, he's told all of us that. But it's interesting here. I hope everybody's getting free here. I hope the shackles are falling on the ground and grace is just filling you. And you're sitting there going, "Man, I never saw this." That's why we study it. It's amazing. It's miraculous.

Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Again, Paul's gospel centers squarely on Christ Jesus. Salvation is possible because the redemption found in him and him alone. There's no other way, friends. There's no other way to be justified apart from Jesus.

What is redemption? We talked about that idea from the slave market. It's the idea of buying something back, and it does involve a cost. In the Greek, that's what it understands. God paid the cost. We couldn't pay it ourselves no matter how hard we tried. We needed help. And the only way we could be helped was to be given justification. And the only way it could be given was to be given freely. And we call that grace. And that's why we could say assuredly we're blood-bought.

Paul expressed this thought in another letter. 1 Corinthians chapter six, verse 20. Paul said, "For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." Whose are they? God's. Amen. Amen. We belong to God. We're no longer our own. Just lay it down, man. There's no confusion of competing with the world's interests and the kingdom. Just lay it down. Let it go.

Verse 25: Whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed. Some of you are going, "Wait a minute." Those that have been with us on Wednesday nights in Leviticus: sacrificial covering, not removal. Important. To demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

So he says, whom God set forth as a substitute, a propitiation. Jesus by his what? What's it say there? By his blood. He was a propitiation, a substitute, a sacrifice. Communion. We celebrate communion, don't we? Monthly on Sundays. His shed blood for the remission of sin. Every month we celebrate. Bring your friends to communion. I know they can't receive communion if they're not born-again believers in Christ, but bring them because it's a picture. It's a picture they can see if it's explained. It's a picture of remission of sin that God has done this work for us.

Whom God set forth as a propitiation through his blood. He was judged in our place, and the Father demonstrates his righteousness in judgment against sin while sparing those who deserve the judgment. This propitiation, again, this word *hilasterion* in the Greek, it's used in the Septuagint for the word mercy seat. Go back and check this. It's for the word mercy seat. Now, you remember what that is. That was the lid that was covering the Ark of the Covenant upon which what was placed?

What did the priest do as he would enter into the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur? Atonement, that word. As he would enter in, what happened? He went into the Holy of Holies twice. He went in once for himself, once for the people of Israel. What did he do? He took something in his hand and he sprinkled blood. I hope some of you are just blown away. Every time I study it, I go, "Wow."

What are we seeing? What are we learning here? He's showing us that the sacrificial blood was sprinkled as an atonement for sin. Jesus, a propitiation, which is what he was for us on the cross by his blood. God was showing them as a picture: the high priest as he would walk in, Aaron, every year he would walk in to do this. His sons as they would walk in, and they would see the mercy seat, the Ark of the Covenant, and they would take the blood and see that it was an atonement, and an atonement was needed for a covering.

But it really needed a removal. What did Jesus say on the cross? Did he say, "It's all been removed, have a good day"? He said, "It is finished." What is that word in the Greek? *Tetelestai*. And what was he saying? It's an accounting term. He was saying, "Paid in full."

Why did he say paid in full? Because all that was being done was a forbearance. That work in the sacrificial system couldn't remove; it covered. And then remember what happened? You had the goat. One goat would be sacrificed, the other one would go free to show the removal of sin. But the goat didn't cease to exist, did it? The goat was running around somewhere out there in the wilderness doing what goats do. But it still existed. It was removed, it was covered.

Only Christ. *Tetelestai*. It is finished. That sin debt is paid in full. He passed over the sins. God in his forbearance passed over the sins of the Old Testament saints who trusted in the coming of Messiah. At the cross, those sins were no longer passed over. They were paid for. That spiritual transaction—there was a transaction that took place on the cross that we could not see. Sin past, present, and future was laid upon our Lord and Savior. He who is without sin became sin for us that we may become the righteousness of God.

It's all there, black and white. It's beautiful. It's paid for. That's what he's showing us. And this is important because it builds up to the point that he can say that he might be the just and the justifier. Doesn't that sound like they'd be mutually exclusive? Or you'd favor one or the other?

Let's talk about what this means. The one who has faith in Jesus. At the cross, God demonstrated his righteousness because what did he offer man? He offered man a legal term called justification. He gave us a legal verdict. And what was that legal verdict you and I got? By the way, we got it already. It was already given to us. When you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you received it already through him in faith.

You received a legal verdict. That's why we don't go through another judgment. Our judgment is what? Where do we go? We go to a judgment, but what kind of judgment is it? Bema seat judgment. When we're at the Great White Throne Judgment, we're not in that judgment. We've come back with Christ for that thousand-year millennial reign. Study Revelation 19, 20, and 21.

We're present. And as he's there and we're present, he says the dead are given up—the seas, Hades, death—they're all being brought up. Well, who are those people? Those are people that rejected Jesus Christ. That's not you and me. We already received it. And then he did something even better for us. He gave us a down payment.

You go to get something, somebody gives you a gift, do you turn around and say, "Well, where's the down payment on the gift you just gave me?" No. You say thank you for the gift. What did he do? Because you just can't out-give God. He gave us a gift. What was that gift? Not only grace, but what else? He said, "I must go that I can send the Helper, the Comforter." He's proof, he's a down payment. He's the Holy Spirit. Not an "it," it's a "he." He has a pronoun. He's a "he." He's one-third of the Trinity. He's God. He is who we received. He was our down payment. He is why we were sealed.

When you're sealed, if I take an envelope and it's sealed like that, it's not opened. It's sealed, it's done. Now, you and I can seal something and I can come through and break the seal. Can you break God's seal? I would say no. No one can. We are sealed. We're blood-bought. We can't lose our salvation. You see, when you start talking about being able to lose your salvation, you start monkeying with the equation. Because if that's possible, then what you're saying is you can undo what only God could do and gave freely.

Now, is it possible someone wasn't really saved and they walked away? Oh yeah, that unfortunately happens. But that's different. You can't lose your salvation. It's sealed, it's done. So what did he do? He gave us a legal verdict of not guilty while remaining completely just. This is what's crazy about it. He's the justifier. He did what nobody else could do. He remained just. Why do we say he had to remain just? Because what does that mean? He didn't compromise.

He didn't compromise because he still had sin to deal with. Remember, it was covered but never removed until the cross. That means that sin was still due. And if he was not going to judge that sin, that would make him an unrighteous God. He had to judge the wrath, and he has to judge the wrath to come.

In chapter six of Revelation, whose is the wrath that comes from? Is it from the Antichrist, or is it from Jesus? It's from Jesus. Wrath has to come for those that reject Jesus Christ. First of all, Paul told us already in chapters one and two that it was that they would repent and return. That's the purpose of it. But he also said what? That the church would not be given unto wrath. We're not going to be here for it. That's where we call the *harpazo* or the rapture.

But in the great tribulation of Revelation chapter six, for those that are still here—you and I, we're looking down from the mezzanines, man—there are people that are going to go through that great tribulation. And as they go through that great tribulation, there will be the wrath. And the author is Christ, because he's just, because the righteous penalty of sin has to be paid, and it had to be paid on the cross.

God could have easily just been just and simply sent every guilty sinner to hell, couldn't he? That would have been the just thing to do. We deserved that, didn't we? He could have easily just been the justifier and said, "Hey man, I'll turn a-- I'll be a respecter of persons"—the book of James says don't do that—"I'll be a respecter of persons, but I'll just say you're not all guilty. Go ahead and do whatever you want to do."

We already saw how that worked out for the skeptic. But only God could find a way to be both the just and the justifier. Circle that in your Bibles. This is very important. It's for the one that has faith in Jesus Christ. He didn't compromise his judgment; rather, grace was extended to those alone that placed their faith in Jesus Christ. That's quite remarkable.

Guest (Male): Remarkable indeed. Well, the big takeaway from today's lesson in Romans chapter three is the law saves no one, but it points to our great need for Jesus Christ, who is willing and able to save everyone through faith. Thanks for joining us today on His Perfect Love. Don't go away; Pastor Matt VanderVen will be right back.

You can hear this study again at HisPerfectLove.org. That's HisPerfectLove.org. We're also at OnePlace.com, and look for us wherever you get your podcasts. We also have a mobile app. This is a great way to take Pastor Matt's teachings with you at the gym, in the car, on your way to work, or as you're getting ready in the morning. You can learn more about the mobile app and start your download when you visit our website, HisPerfectLove.org.

And thank you for your prayers and financial support. You can make a donation to this ministry and send us your prayer requests through the website, again at HisPerfectLove.org. Now back to Romans chapter three. Here is Pastor Matt to wrap things up.

Matt VanderVen: Look at verse 27 for me: Where is boasting then? It is excluded by what law? Of works? He's bringing it right up. He couldn't be more matter-of-fact about it. Of works? No, but by the law of faith.

Where's boasting? He first deals with that. He's already said you're justified freely by grace. By what law? Boasting and pride are excluded then because it's nothing of our own work. It actually says it's the law against them. Instead of pride, he's telling us that it's incompatible with salvation. Pride is incompatible because it's through a gift of grace through Jesus Christ. They're not congruent; they're incompatible that way.

And that's why the natural man hates it. That's why the natural man finds offense to Jesus Christ. If there was something that could bring his ego or "I" in philosophy—the Greek "I"—if there's something that could bring you some type of satisfaction or feeling better about yourself because you could do it, guess what? You'd see people that would accept Christ for them. But Jesus made it of no account that way, that it's only by free gift of faith for those that believe. Because we don't recognize the merits of the individual receiving the gift, nor should we.

Guest (Male): Well, we've made it through the first three chapters of Romans here on His Perfect Love. Next time, we'll see the Apostle Paul use the life of Abraham, the father of Judaism, as an illustration. We're told that Abraham was saved by faith before he was circumcised and before the law was given. We hope you can join us as Pastor Matt VanderVen continues through Romans.