The Justification of Sinners

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. So far, we've been looking through the Book of Romans and we realize that the best place to start is actually at the end of the letter to see where it's going. It's kind of like getting a sneak peek at the end of a whodunit novel to find out whodunit. And then when you come to the front, you understand all the clues along the way that point you in that direction. And so the first week we looked at that and we found the issue of power and privilege in Roman society, in Jewish society, was really behind this letter. That actually in Romans, the weak and the strong, how Paul talks about those two groups, were kind of divided in the Roman church. The divisions were happening. How men and women were basically put in a hierarchy in Roman society. How the free from the slaves and how the patricians and those at the top and the elites and the wealthy were really stratified above others. And how all those divisions that society and all the rivalries that society had caused in the Roman world were being brought together and united in Jesus Christ. That there is no male nor female, slave or free, Gentile or Jew, but all are one in Christ. That comes from the book of Galatians, but the theme in Romans is very similar. Also, we discovered that the whole point of how this mending takes place is in the word called the gospel. That was our second week as we looked at the passage, for I am not ashamed of the gospel. It is the dynamite, the power of God for salvation. And so it's the gospel that doesn't just give or doesn't give advice on what you better do, but actually gives good news, a proclamation of what God has done for you. And then last week we looked at, you got to start with some of the bad news first as Romans 2 does. And once you understand how everyone, whether you're religious or irreligious, whether you think you're spiritual, whether you're more of a scientific base, no matter who you are, we all fail. We all need, we all don't even meet our own standards, let alone God's standards. We're all inconsistent and broken, and therefore we need the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Today, we're going to look at this passage, as I mentioned, was more or less the foundation of the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago. Because it tells basically the grand story of the entire Bible in a very short section. And I don't know if you realize this, many people don't. When I was in Sunday school, I didn't. When I was growing up, I thought we had one little Bible story, then the next Bible story, then the next Bible story. And these little stories, these little snippets of the Bible, we thought they were just good advice or good moral teachings, kind of like Aesop's fable, but actual real-life historical examples of wisdom sayings. And so what you're supposed to learn from the Bible is just a bunch of virtues and wisdom and practical knowledge and be-a-good-person stuff. And that is not the story of the Bible, that's not even the little stories of the Bible. But the Bible has one great grand story of justification, or how we are justified. That God knows we've broken this world, and we've broken our hearts and our relationship with Him and with each other, and how God is coming about to mend it. And that's the grand story that we see throughout. The Bible isn't a set of disconnected moral truths, but one great story of what God is doing to rescue human beings. And we see that in this passage of Romans 3 today, Romans 3, 21 to 28, if you want to follow along. But now the righteousness of God has been manifest apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and 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 the 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. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. But what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. So Paul is not just claiming that the story that the Bible has, this great grand narrative that he kind of summed up in this passage. He's not saying that this is just the story of the Bible. He's saying this is the story of all reality. That this is the story everybody's a part of whether they recognize it or not. And it's a story that they need to understand to become a part of because of what God is doing in this world. It's the grand narrative of explain...