Sanctified Law
Moralism and legalism make for a pretty miserable life. Whether it’s the Law or any laws that we make for ourselves, a standard is held up that we don’t stand a chance of attaining to. And when we fail, we’re left to either ignore our failures or simply despair. In Romans 7, though, we start to see how sin within us uses the Law, but also how the Law makes the Gospel good news. We are freed from the Law to serve in the Spirit. The Law breaks us down and shows us the depths of our need, driving us to the Gospel that makes it possible to meet God’s standard through His Son.
Freed for a Savior
On the Tri-Village Campus’s one-year anniversary, it would seem odd that we would celebrate by remembering that we’re slaves. We are all slaves to something; we can’t just float along “freely” on our own. We were all, at one point, enslaved to sin. The good news of the Gospel is, though, that we have been freed from sin! But we haven’t been freed to just do our own thing and live on our own. We have been given to a new Master (a Master who became a slave for us), a new Mission (presenting ourselves to God for righteousness), and a new Motivation (our new Master is the only one who can live up to His promises of life and joy).
Justification’s Foundation
As we reach the end of several weeks on justification we ask the question, “Is this really possible? Can Jesus really save so many people—even me?” Paul’s answer is “Yes. And much more…” Detailing how Adam’s sin brought condemnation to everyone, Paul lays out how Jesus not only offers the gift of justification, but redeems all of creation greater than it was before Adam’s sin and restores us to reign in life through Him.
Justification’s Fruit
We’ve spent the past several weeks studying what justification is, where our justification comes from, and how we try to replicate that on our own. But now we have to ask ourselve, “So what?” What does it matter? What should our response be? In Romans 5, Paul shows that our response to our justification should be to rejoice! Because we have been justified, we rejoice in our hope. Because we have hope, we rejoice in our sufferings. Because Christ has died for us, we rejoice in God.
Justification Proved III
We all recognize to some degree that we don’t measure up, but we all still desire to be accepted. We see that in the way people seek after prosperity and the approval of others as well as through attempts to justify ourselves before God and find His approval. But the truth that we see in this text is that the fact of our justification frees us from the tyranny of those circumstances by assuring that we are secure and accepted and that that will not change because God is faithful.
Justification Proved II
Let’s face it, this passage is weird. Paul is arguing for our justification being rooted in no action of our own, but solely in God’s grace and His finished work by referencing the timing of an old man’s circumcision. What does it matter that God called Abraham righteous and gave Him a covenant and then gave him circumcision? Was circumcision given as a means of justification or as a sign and seal of it?
Justification Proved I
We all want to be accepted and we have two ways to get that acceptance. We can either earn our acceptance through our works or it can be given to us. Here Paul shows us that our way has always been to choose to justify ourselves while God’s way has always been credit faith as righteousness. David tried to cover his sin on his own, but he says that he wasted away under the burden of keeping his unrighteousness secret. Abraham was given a covenant from God that God Himself would bear the curse of His unrighteousness and he chose to live in that.
Justification from Man
Boasting is one of the most obnoxious things that happens in conversations. We all hate it when others do it and we all do it ourselves. We laud ourselves over others thinking that we can prop ourselves up enough to the point where we feel that we matter, but everyone else’s boasting stands in opposition to our own and to us. Their boasting reminds us of the failures of our own boasts and our own identities. But what if we were to boast in someone other than ourselves—someone who could live up to our boasting? What if our boast didn’t destroy us, but actually gave us life?
Justification from God
It’s really easy for us to get bored with the cross. We tend to think that (even after the past two chapters) we are pretty decent people on our own and Jesus was just giving us an extra little boost into heaven. We can grow apathetic to the cross because when we look at it like this, it just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal because we did most of the work of getting to heaven by simply being intrinsically awesome. Paul crushes both parts of this by reminding us that we fall so short of God’s glorious standard and then packaging for us all that Christ did accomplish for us on the cross.
Sins of All People
At the close of these two chapters talking about our sinfulness, Paul makes his final assertion of our need for Christ. We are more sinful than we could possibly imagine, our sin is more dangerous to us than we would ever admit, and there is absolutely nothing that we can do about it. After Paul’s relentless arguments, we are left without excuse and without defense. Paul has brought us exactly where we need to be: the place where the only thing that we can do is look to Christ.