Deo Gloria
Sermon for June 21, 2020
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Romans 4:18-25
Theme: Righteousness
- Yours by faith
- Yours because of Jesus
Dear descendants of Abraham, it isn’t too often that you see a credit on your bank statement. More often than not it’s nothing more than the interest that has accrued on your account–$.78, $1.33—hardly anything to get excited about. But what if you opened your bank statement one month and noticed a credit of over a million dollars? What would you do then? Would you fall out of your chair? Would you go to the bank and withdraw the money and immediately leave the country? I think most of us would assume it was a mistake. In fact, we’d probably call up the bank that very day and say something like, “Yes, I was looking over my bank statement today and well, there must be some mistake. You see, there’s a credit on my statement for over a million dollars and well, it can’t be right. I’ve never had that much money.”
As we open the pages of Scripture this morning, we discover something just as unusual, something just as incredible. In Romans ch. 4 the apostle Paul tells us about something that God credits to us, something worth more than a million dollars, worth more than even a billion dollars, something called righteousness. It has to be a mistake, right? Actually, that’s the good news Paul has to share with us this morning. It’s not a mistake at all. Righteousness is God’s gift to you and to me. It is ours by faith, and it is ours because of Jesus.
Righteousness is one of those big words you learn about in catechism class. It has the basic meaning of “being right with God.” Naturally, then, it also has the meaning of “being holy” in the eyes of God, so it also can be used as a synonym for holiness. Think, for example, of the words Jesus spoke in Matthew ch. 5: “Unless your righteousness (that is, your holiness)—unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven”(v. 20). Whether or not a person goes to heaven depends on whether or not he possesses righteousness.
The Bible is very clear on how a person obtains righteousness. It tells us that it is ours by faith. Unfortunately many people now days don’t believe that. They have their own ideas about righteousness and how it is obtained. Some don’t believe that righteousness is even necessary, that you don’t need to be righteous or holy in order to get to heaven. They share the same view Michael J. Fox expressed on an episode of Family Ties years ago. A few weeks before the show Michael J. Fox lost one of his best friends. The show itself portrayed the emotional difficulties he was having dealing with the loss. Toward the end of the show he started talking about God, and what he said went something like this: “I believe there is a God–yes, but not an angry God. I believe he is a kind, loving God, kind of like a warm-hearted grandpa, or like your best friend. And I believe he is a God who accepts people just the way they are.” Some of what he said it true, of course. God is a kind and loving God, a God of infinite mercy and love. But he is also a holy and just God, which is something they tend to forget. God can’t just overlook people’s sins or fail to punish people for their sins. That wouldn’t be right. That wouldn’t be just on his part.
Another popular misconception people have about righteousness is that you can acquire it on your own, that you can make yourself righteous in God’s sight by living a good life and by doing good things. In fact, that’s just what an elderly lady told me once. When I asked her if she was sure she would go to heaven when she died, she replied, “Yes. All in all I’ve lived a pretty good life. And I’ve always tried to help other people when I could. And I can’t imagine that God wouldn’t let me into heaven.” Her comments weren’t surprising. It’s what we all like to do, right? We like to focus on the good things we have done. And we think God should do the same, that he just look at the good things we have done in our lives, all the times we have been kind and loving and helpful to others. But what about those other times, the times we don’t like to talk about, the times we weren’t very kind or loving or patient or helpful to others?
The truth is righteousness is necessary in order to get to heaven. God is holy. And if we’re going to live with God in heaven someday, then we need to be holy too. The problem is were not. The problem is we are sinful. It’s the way we were born. And it isn’t hard to see if we take an honest look at our lives. Remember that fight you had with your spouse and some of the nasty things you said? Remember that fight you had with your brother or sister and the names you called each other? Remember that party, the graduation party you went to with your friends? You weren’t old enough to be drinking, but that didn’t stop you, did it? Yes, you and I sin all the time. So how could we claim to be righteous? How could we even imagine that we could obtain righteousness on our own? It’s simply not possible. And that’s precisely Paul’s point in the previous chapter where he says:
There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.(vv. 10-12)
“So how does one obtain righteousness?” you might ask. “How do you acquire the holiness you need in order to be able to live with God in heaven?” There is a way, God’s way; and that’s by faith. As Paul states in v. 28 of ch. 3, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.” Righteousness is not something you earn or acquire on your own. It’s something God credits to you, something he gives to you through faith.
As proof of that Paul cites the example of Abraham, which brings us to ch. 4. Here Paul talks about the promise God made to Abraham, the promise that he would have a son, and through that son many, many descendants in the future. Paul also points out the various reasons Abraham had to doubt God’s promise. For one thing, Abraham was nearly 100 years old and his body was as good as dead. For another, his wife, Sarah, was already 90 years old. Not only was she well past the years of child-bearing, she had never had any children. And yet, as Paul tells us, Abraham was not filled with doubt. Instead he believed. He continued to trust that God would keep his promise and that he would have a son. And so Paul says in v. 22, “This is why ‘it was credited to him as righteousness.’” Through faith Abraham obtained righteousness. Through faith Abraham was right with God and he had the righteousness or holiness he needed in order to live with God in heaven.
The same is true for us. Notice what Paul says in the next two verses: “The words ‘it was credited to him’ were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.”(vv. 23+24). You and I acquire righteousness the same way Abraham did, not by working for it, not by buying it, but by faith, faith in God and his promises.
The Bible is equally clear about the cause of our salvation, why righteousness is ours. It’s ours because of Jesus. Righteousness is not ours because of the good life we have lived. Righteousness is not ours because of our stellar, moral character. No, righteousness is ours because of Jesus.
He is the one who earned it. In v. 25 Paul reminds us how: “He [Jesus] was delivered over to death for our sins….” The reason Jesus died on the cross was not because of some terrible crime he had committed. The reason he died on the cross was because of the crimes we had committed, all the times we have broken God’s commands and sinned. By suffering the penalty for our crimes, Jesus made it possible for God to forgive our sins. If Jesus had not died on the cross, God could not have forgiven our sins. If he had, he would be unjust because our sins would not have been paid for. But that’s precisely the point: Our sins have been paid for, completely, fully by Jesus. So God can and has forgiven them.
Jesus also obtained righteousness for us by living a holy life. He never got in a fight with his brothers or sisters. He never made faces behind his parents’ backs. He never said mean or nasty things under his breathe when some guy on a camel cut him off on the freeway. He always did the right thing. He always said the right thing. He was sinless and holy. And this is the holiness or righteousness that God credits to us, to those who believe in Jesus as their Savior. One of our hymns puts it like this: “Jesus, your blood and righteousness my beauty are, my glorious dress; mid flaming worlds, in these arrayed, with joy shall I lift up my head”(CW 376:1). You know, that sounds almost too good to be true, doesn’t it: that God has taken Jesus’ righteousness and credited it to our account? Can we be sure of that? Can we be certain that God really considers us to be holy and righteous because of Jesus?
Sure can. You see, Jesus not only obtained righteousness for us, he also provided assurance that righteousness is really ours. He did so by his resurrection from the dead. Take another look at what Paul says in v. 25: “Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.” In order to understand what Paul is saying you have to remember that the word “for” means the same thing in both halves of the sentence. So when it says that “Jesus was delivered over to death for our sins,” it means because of our sins. Our sins were the reason Jesus suffered and died. The same is true in the second half where Paul says that Jesus “was raised to life for our justification.” It means because of our justification, because we have been justified, because we have been declared “not guilty” by God.
That’s one of the reasons Jesus’ resurrection is so important, so vital to our Christian faith and such a tremendous comfort. If Jesus had failed in his work as our Savior, or if God had not accepted his payment for our sins, Jesus would have stayed dead. He never would have come back to life. But he did. On the third day he rose from the grave, proving that he had won the victory, proving that God had accepted his payment for our sins, proving that God had declared us to be guiltless in his sight, proving that we are indeed righteous before God.
I know the economy has been pretty tough on farmers in recent years and a lot of farmers have been struggling. So let’s say you were one of those farmers. And let’s say you still owed something like $250,000 on your farm and you hadn’t been able to make a payment in months. You were getting letters from the bank. You didn’t know what to do. You were afraid they were going to foreclose on you. And then out of the blue a friend of yours came along and gave you—not loaned you, but gave you the money, the entire $250,000, all the money you needed to pay off your debt. You’d be grateful, right? I imagine you’d do whatever you could to thank that person for bailing you out, right? You and I feel the very same way toward God. Each day we live is another opportunity. Each day is an opportunity to thank and praise our gracious God for bailing us out, for crediting to us what we could never acquire on our own so we could live with him in heaven: righteousness. It’s yours by faith. It’s yours because of Jesus. Amen.