When you’re four years old, and you spend all afternoon drawing a house and lake and mountains, what do you do next? Take it to your mom. Why? Because you want her to say, “How beautiful!” When you’re twenty-four years old, and you go for a job interview, what do you want the interviewer to say? “What an impressive resume!”
When you’re four, you want to be affirmed in your mad art skillz. When you’re twenty-four, you want to be affirmed in your knowledge, experience, and abilities. Another word for affirmation is “justification.” It’s something we all want.
When I come to God, I want him to say, “Matt, you are sooooo…. awesome.” I want him to sing me a Bruno Mars song: “Matt, you’re amazing, just the way you are.” But he doesn’t. Paul says in Romans 3 that because of our sin, no human being will be justified in his sight.
We say, “OK, Paul, I understand that. I’m a sinner. Everyone’s a sinner. So give me three things to put on my to-do list. Give me a 10-step program to complete. Give me something to do that will make God like me more.”
Paul’s says, “You mean, like a law to follow?” … “Sure, if that’s what you want to call it, Paul. A law.”
Paul’s reply? “By works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Rom 3:20). It will never happen, no matter how great your art skills, resume, or church attendance might be.
But that’s not the end of the story. He continues, “But now (two of the best words in the whole Bible!) the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it” (Rom 3:21).
So the way I can be justified is to stop trying to justify myself. The way I become righteous is to stop trusting in my own righteousness. To stop putting my faith in my own knowledge, abilities, wisdom, work, and morality. I can receive my righteousness from God!
No other religion or philosophy or worldview has ever said that. Nobody else has ever offered that. Your professor says, “You want an A in this class? You’re going to have to work for it!” Your boss says, “You want a raise? You want a promotion? You’re going to have to prove yourself!” Only God gives away his own righteousness instead of demanding our own righteousness.
We say, “Sounds great! I’m in! So … how do I sign up? How do I receive God’s righteousness?”
Paul says, “the righteousness of God comes through faith.” And we say, “Sounds good. Have faith. I can do that. I was raised on Disney movies. They all taught me to believe, and magic can happen. And my basketball coach kept telling us to have faith in ourselves. I can have faith!
But Paul says, “Actually, I wasn’t finished yet.” Here’s the complete sentence: “The righteousness of God comes through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe” (Rom 3:22). You can put your faith in a lot of different things, but Paul says you can only experience the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ. He is the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through him. It comes “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith” (Rom 3:24-25). Only the blood of Jesus, which redeemed us by paying the debt we owed to God for our sin, could bring us the righteousness of God. That affirmation we’ve all been seeking comes as a free gift through Jesus.
Who could ever turn that gift down? Only people who don’t think they need it. Which is why Paul reminds us again: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). You might be the best swimmer in the world, but if you try to swim from Waikiki to Australia, you’ll still fall thousands of miles short.
Praise God for the gift of a rescuer who will swoop down in his orange Baywatch helicopter to scoop us up. 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.”