Just and Justifier :: Romans 3:19-28
You can’t have it both ways. How many times have you heard this? You have to pick one or the other. Either Option A or Option B. That you can’t have your cake and eat it too. When someone says you can’t have it both ways, they are telling you how black and white your decision must be. We face these choices all the time.
But what if I were to tell you today, you can live your life both ways.
This idea can be difficult for us to believe. Before the Reformation, it tormented Luther. We tend to see things as “either ... or.” If I don’t obey the law, I will feel the wrath of God. But in our text today, Paul reminds us that sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too. Because our text today declares that
GOD IS BOTH JUST AND JUSTIFIER OF THE UNJUST
I. To be clear, God and his Law are both just.
That is to say, God is holy and righteous. God is without sin and he hates sin and will punish sin. God is not the author of sin or death. He is the author and renewer of life. Paul’s argument throughout the first couple of chapters of Romans assures us of this truth ... God is holy and righteous and just.
In fact, the whole Bible, that is all of scripture, both testaments, testify to God’s righteousness in this regard.
In the song of Moses, we sing, For I will proclaim the name of the Lord; ascribe greatness to our God! The Rock, his work is perfect, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is he (Dt 32:3–4). The psalmist reminded us today that the Lord knows the way of the righteous (Ps 1:6). Even pagan King Nebuchadnezzar, who wrote part of our scriptures, recognized that all (God’s) works are right and his ways are just (Dan 4:37). Finally, our Gospel reading shows us this truth when Jesus says wisdom is justified by her deeds.
Scripture also reiterates the point that God alone is the righteous judge. That he will punish sin. Earlier in Romans, Paul writes that those with unrepentant hearts are storing up wrath for themselves on the day ... when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed (2:5). Therefore as our epistle reading from Revelation 14, we are reminded to Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Sin must be punished. If it is not then God would be proven to not be just.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, God being just has implications for us all. The Creator created us to be like him.
He is righteous, and he expects you to be righteous.
He is holy, and he expects you to be holy.
It should be no surprise then that a just God would give just Commandments, and that he would create knowledge of what is just. Paul uses this truth in Romans to show that both those who have the written Law ... namely, the Jews ... and those who do not have the written Law ... namely, the Gentiles ... have the same standard of justice.
Although the Gentiles ... that’s you ... did not have Moses and the Ten Commandments, you have what we call the moral law that is written into the very fiber of your being. In fact, all people of all time have this knowledge. Or in the words of Paul, they by nature do what the law requires. ... We show that the work of the law is written on our hearts (2:14, 15).
This law cannot refer to the ceremonial rites given to the Jews, for ceremonial rites are not written on the hearts of men. Ceremonial rites ... like the order of worship we are using today ... were created for good order, not so that we can be declared justified.
No one knows God’s law by nature. Indeed, Paul asks the Jews in his discussion specifically whether they steal or commit adultery, things clearly not ceremonial in nature (2:22). Yes, Paul says that it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified (2:13). But Paul also notes that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin (3:9), and in our text he says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (v 23).
II. The problem is we, sinful mankind, are unjust.
It seems silly to have to argue the point that God is just. However, there are times when we doubt that. This is because sinful mankind is unjust, that is, none of us is perfectly just, righteous, or holy. We are all sinners who sin. You were born a sinner. And you continue to sin. And your body will die because of your sin ... unless the Lord Jesus Christ returns to judge us all first.
There is nothing you can do to make yourself sinless. As Paul reminds us from Psalm 14 ... we all share in this same predicament of being “ungodly” or “sinful.” None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one (3:10–12).
Did you hear the all-inclusive, all-embracing language? “None,” “no one,” “not even one,” “all,” and “together.” It isn’t just your brother or sister ... your son or daughter ... your friend or neighbor ... who walked away from the faith, who left the church, who turned to drugs or alcohol, who became an adulterer, or who lives with someone outside of marriage. It is not just the drunkard or the addict.
It includes you. We are all sinners. No one does good.
Paul hammers the point home by turning to Psalms 5, 10, and 140; and Isaiah 59. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. ... The venom of asps is under their lips. ... Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.
The whole of scripture shows us this truth. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves. This is the terrible result of human sin ... your sin.
Are you beginning to understand what your sin is doing to you yet?
Sin infects even the parts of our body that produce speech: our throat, tongues, lips, and mouths. Not only this. Because of our sinful nature, our feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.
Paul concludes by citing Psalm 36:1: There is no fear of God before his eyes. And all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (v 23).
And that’s a deadly problem!
If God and his Law are just and we’re not, if the doers of the Law will be justified, and yet no one does the things of the Law perfectly, how can anyone be justified?
Or, on the other hand, how could God be just if he does justify the sinner, the unjust?
The only two options that immediately seem apparent are that God is just and therefore he must punish the unjust, or that God does not punish the unjust and therefore he isn’t just.
How can there be justice if sinners get off scot-free?
III. Well, the just God devised a way to justify us while still being just.
You see, God can’t be unjust. He not only is just, he also wants to be the justifier of the unjust ... he wants to justify you. So our loving God who can’t be unloving devised a way to be both just and justifier and that we could be both unjust and justified.
The answer is the faithfulness of Jesus. Paul explains it this way.
We are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 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. 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 (vv 24–26).
Brothers and sisters in Christ, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, you have been justified. You couldn’t justify yourselves, but our Just God has reconciled himself to you through the blood of Christ. Your sin deserves the full wrath of God. Your sin can have no part with God. So God did not let your sin go unjustly unpunished.
God demonstrates, or shows, his own just nature by demanding payment, by punishing sin with eternal pains.
But he fulfilled his longing to be the justifier by himself becoming the payment.
Jesus the Just One faithfully lived under the Law, fulfilling it perfectly, and then offered his perfect life on the cross as a payment for our sins. The Just one died for the unjust.
There, on the cross, the penalty for our disobedience fell upon Christ. On the cross, he became everything that is “unjust.” He quite literally “became sin” for you on the cross. There, your sin is justly punished. Then in what Luther calls the “happy exchange,” Jesus’ faithfulness is applied to us. The Just One makes us just in God’s eyes.
Now you know the truth that sets you free ... and understand how wisdom is justified by her deeds. By abiding in his word, you see how the wisdom of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, lived for you, died for you, rose from the dead for you, ascended into heaven for you to prepare a place for you.
This is the eternal gospel being proclaimed to you.
Christ’s work allows God both to justly punish sin and graciously forgive sinners. Since this justification is, according to Paul, by his grace as a gift, it can only be received by faith (vv 24–25). And this faith is specifically in Jesus, for Paul states that Jesus’ substitutionary work allows God to be the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (v 26).
This is the joyous Gospel that changed the world for Luther and sparked the Reformation. Luther had once been taught to think of God’s justice as demanding more than man could take. But then he discovered the truth that set him free.
Jesus suffered once for all so that the righteous one could give his righteousness to the unrighteous by grace through faith in Christ. It was, he said, as if he was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.
Now we can joyfully return to our baptism and receive the Lord’s Supper as often as we can with joy. In these sacraments God forgives our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. Yes, God’s righteousness is seen in the fact that God is both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
And for this “both,” we can all be thankful.