Romans 3:21-31 Saved by Grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone

Romans 3:21-31

“Saved by Grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone”

There is something right and proper about earning your way in life.

Paying your way!

We have probably all heard the stories of those people who never worked a day in their life. Those people who were born into wealth and were spoon fed, all they ever needed or all they ever wanted. Those people who never worked, never strived, never suffered, but somehow lived a life that most would dream of.

Then we have all heard of those stories of people who have earned their way in life, they dragged themselves from rags to riches. They worked, they sacrificed, they suffered, they achieved what they set out what they wanted to do from sheer determination and will power.

And there is something sweet about earning your way in life, there is a sense of satisfaction, a sense of achievement, and these things should be and are celebrated.

This philosophy of earning your way in life, also spills over into religion also.

For example, Buddhists and Hindus hold to a philosophy, that if you live your life well, that is you have spread the peace and love, then when you die and are re-incarnated, you may come back as a beautiful butterfly or a roaring lion or some other magnificent creature.

And as you keep achieving excellence in your current life, eventually you will be rewarded with a blissful state of Nirvana.

And if you ever reach nirvana, then you can really celebrate, because you earned it, you emptied your mind, you squashed all desire, you earned it.

Muslims, also operate on this earning philosophy. Their philosophy teaches that when you die and face your creator, the scales of your good and bad will be weighed, and if your good outweighs the bad, then you have earned your way into paradise.  You have kept the tradition of Ramadan, you said your prayers 5 times a day, you earned it.

Jews also operate on the same philosophy. If you keep the law of God well enough, then you will have earned your way into heaven. You have kept the sabbath, you have celebrated Yom Kippur, you have been circumcised, you have memorised the Torah- you have earned it.

And so there is something about earning your way in life, which is engrained in all of us.

After all God created us humans to work, to worship and to be creative!

In the scriptures, it also speaks about humans earning their way in life……However, not in a good way….the scriptures make it clear that we don’t earn heaven, we don’t earn life with God forever, NO, Instead, we earn our own death sentence.

We don’t earn our way into heaven, we don’t earn paradise, we don’t earn being with Jesus forever…..NO…..what we truly earn is death.

Look at Romans 6:23 with me:

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now, we will get on to the good part a little later, the eternal life bit…. but let us just think about the first part of this verse.

For the wages of sin is death

Brothers and sisters, when you work and you receive a wage, you have earnt that wage, you have earnt that money, you deserve it, because you worked for it.

What Paul is saying here, is that when we sin, when we sin……we earn death, for the wages of our sin is death.

God made it clear to Adam and Eve in the beginning that if they were to sin, if they were to disobey God, then they would surely die. They would have earned death through their sinful actions.

Now, I think, this is one of the more reformed teachings that many people struggle with, but it is a crucial teaching, because it helps us grasp the better news, it helps us understand the Gospel.

The simple fact is this brothers and sisters:  we all deserve death because we are all sinners.

And so when people ask me how could a loving God send people to hell, my initial response is: “it is only because of his grace that he doesn’t send us all to hell, since we all deserve it. “

And the moment we start trying to deny that, the more we plead our case that we are generally a good person, who does good things, who pays their taxes, gives money to charity. The more we plead we are a person who has never harmed a fly, and we even plead that we go to church once a month…..that is the moment our hearts close tighter and tighter to the freeing truth of the gospel.

That is the moment we try and earn our salvation and by doing so, we close ourselves to the free gift of God.

The apostle Paul in his letter to the Roman church spent the first three chapters making this very point, which he summed up in Romans 3:23, look at that verse with me:

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

Now when Paul wrote ALL have sinned, he wasn’t using hyperbole here, he meant every single human being….this is made clear in Romans 3:10, where he wrote,

“No-one is righteous, no, not one”

Emphasising the one!

It is also made explicitly clear in Romans 5:12 which says

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men^[e] because all sinned— 

When Adam disobeyed God, Adam earned death and ever since that fall of Adam, all have been effected by sin, all have sinned, we cannot escape that.

We must understand that we don’t start on an even keel before God, we are not born innocent, we are born sinners, we all deserve death, this is the price of justice- death.

We all earn death because we are all sinners.

Now, if we get that truth, let this truth sink into our hearts….

It will help us stop playing the comparison game.

We cannot earn our way into heaven, we cannot earn eternal life, we cannot earn a life with Jesus forever….NO….the truth is, we are given eternal life, we are given heaven, we are given Jesus and there is nothing we can do to earn that-otherwise it wouldn’t be a gift!

This is what the second part of Romans 6:23 tells us.

Look at that verse again with me:

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord

Those words should be the most freeing words we can hear and yet so many of us find it hard to accept, because we are people who like to be in control

There is something in us, that wants to sing that song, “I did it my way”….”I did it….I earned it….it was all me”

We find it hard to accept that free gift.

Perhaps we have been tainted by the world’s definition of free.

As soon as someone tells me something is free, the first thing I ask, is,…. what is the catch?

We know that nothing is free in this life.

Free things always come with strings attached, expectations, and so on…..

It may affect us when we give….we may say we give freely, but secretly we keep accounts, we remind people now and again of our generous giving….

Sadly, many of us may believe that eternal life is free gift given by God, which has been given to us though the death and resurrection of Jesus, but then we live as through we need to keep earning it.

In the apostle’s Paul day, in the first century, the Jews, who had put their trust in the Messiah, -Jesus, their Messiah and our Messiah, the Messiah of the world, they had trouble in this regard. They accepted Jesus as their Lord and saviour, they had accepted he had given them life through his death and resurrection, but then they continued to try and earn that free gift of salvation through their own works, such as circumcision and law keeping.

For centuries, God had shown his righteousness, that is: his way to live the right life on this earth, through the prophets such as Moses and Elijah , and through his law, the 10 commandments and the Torah……and then in the year 1, a pivotal moment for human history, God showed his righteousness, not through the law, not through a prophet, but through his own son- Jesus Christ, who lived the perfect life, who showed the perfect way to live.

This is what verses 21 and 22 say, look at those verses with me:

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— ²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction

This is amazing.

The law which showed the righteousness of God, the right way to live with God, pointed to Jesus, the one who showed by his life, the perfect way to live.

The prophets who showed the righteousness of God, as they spoke the words of repentance and believe, also pointed to the person of Jesus, the righteousness of God.

And here is the best news of all.

God’s righteousness is now given to all who believe in Jesus Christ.

That means, we don’t earn our righteousness, we don’t earn our right behaviour before God, we don’t tick off the list as the rich young ruler did,

we don’t tick off the not murder box,

we don’t tick off the honour our parents box,

we don’t tick the kept the sabbath box,

we don’t tick off the “done mass” box,

 we don’t tick off the water baptism box,

we don’t tick off the circumcision box,

we don’t tick the all the boxes and present them before God and say, look, I have earned this, I am good enough……NO….that is not the message of the gospel…..

No, the message of the gospel is this…..I can’t tick these boxes, but Jesus, but Jesus, my Lord and saviour, he has ticked all the boxes and he has given me his check list, it is Him, and all he has done it all for me.

There is no currying God’s favour, there are no favourites with God.

We all earned death because we are all sinners, and we all receive life through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Just look at verses 24-26 with me:

²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. ²⁶ It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Now there are a lot of theological words in there and so let me put it like this.

God has justified sinners like us without compromising Justice.

God didn’t just sweep our sin under the carpet and look the other way, NO, he sent his son Jesus, the perfect one to die on a cross, to take the penalty for our sins. To take the death that we earned, and die in our place. As Jesus died on the cross, God put him forward as a propitiation by his blood, which means God washed away our sins through the shedding of his sons blood and God’s anger was appeased, his wrath was absorbed.

You see friends, when we sin, it stirs up a righteous anger in God our father, and yet instead of God rightfully punishing us, he punished his own son for us.

Not only did Jesus give us his perfect law keeping record, but he also took the punishment we earned for our sins.

And it is only the blood of Jesus, only the blood of Jesus which can perfectly atone for our sins. And so, this means that all those animal sacrifices that were made in the tabernacle and temple, could not fully atone for the sins of the people, they could only partly atone, this is why it says that God passed over their sins, until their sins were also paid by the blood of Jesus.

It is amazing to think, that the blood of Jesus even paid for the sins of those who lived before Jesus came to this earth.

When Moses killed that Egyptian, it was the blood of Jesus that atoned for his sin.

When David committed adultery, it was the blood of Jesus that atoned for his sin.

When Abraham lied that his wife was his sister, it was the blood of Jesus that atoned for his sin.

Friends, we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone…..but what does that mean for us now……do we ignore God’s laws, do we live however we like…..?

We know that the thief who died on the cross next to Jesus entered paradise with Jesus that day, because and only because he believed in the man who died next to him on the other cross. He had not lived God’s way, he had earned death by his sin and yet he had put his faith in Jesus and so he was given eternal life.

And so yes, there could be a temptation to think, now we have received this gift of salvation, eternal life, now we can just throw the law of God out and keep living in sin-since Jesus has paid for it all.

And yet, the apostle Paul was quick to dispel that warped way of thinking, look at verse 31 with me:

Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

Paul says, that we are not saved by keeping God’s law, but we still uphold the law, but why?

If the law doesn’t save us?

As believers in Christ, we are now free to live by God’s law.

We keep God’s law because it is living life to the fullest.

I was blessed to grow up in a Christian family. Both my parents are still believers- praise God.

And yet I remember as a believer at the age of 13 thinking that God’s way was just “boring, restricting, life sapping”. I remember thinking that all my friends where having the time of their lives, partying and so on. And so I made a conscious decision at 13 to live my own way, thinking that God’s way was restricting.

After 7-8 years of living my own way, I realised that God’s way truly was the best way.

God in his mercy open my eyes to the beauty of his law, the beauty of his word, the beauty of life that is found in Christ.

Friends, when we live by God’s law, we live in true freedom. We are people who freely forgive, we are a people who freely bless our enemies, we are people who give, give, give without keeping accounts, we are people who are pure in thoughts and deed, we are people who others just love being around, we are people who are full of life, because we live upholding God’s law.

And as we live by God’s law, we also live knowing that when we fail to keep God’s law, and we do every day, we have forgiveness, redemption and restoration in Jesus who has already given his perfect law keeping record to us.

Let us pray