Introduction

21 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: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 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.

Romans 3:21-26

Let’s pray together-

Father, I am aware that this passage that is before us this morning is a glorious, mountain-top view of your character and of what you have done to save sinners like us from your holy wrath. And yet there is a risk that I, and others in the room, might be tempted to treat it as ordinary. These are words and ideas that perhaps we’ve heard many times before. I ask that your Spirit would not let that happen. Please stir us up. Give us tender hearts to receive your word. Fill us with a Spirit of thankfulness and confidence because of what you have done. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Over the last four weeks we’ve been slowly working our way through this paragraph in Romans 3 that some people have called the most important paragraph ever written. These six verses describe the beating heart of the gospel more clearly and profoundly than any words ever written. Our focus this morning is on the end of the paragraph, verses 25 and 26. Someone once referred to these verses, and this doctrine that they describe, as “the acropolis of the Christian faith.” If verses 21-24 describe the “what” of our salvation - the righteousness of God given as a gift - then these last two verses deal with the “how” and even the “why.” Here we are at the very root of the matter. How can man be made right with God?

As we’ve seen these last few weeks, there is no single word or idea that can fully express what happened with the death and resurrection of Jesus, so the Bible describes the various features of the gospel using different word pictures. We have several of them here in this paragraph. Last week we thought about justification and redemption. This week we’ll consider a third word picture, that of propitiation.

 If you sometimes feel like we’re throwing words around like justification, redemption, propitiation, and they all seem to mean almost the same thing, there’s a reason that you feel that way. They don’t all mean the same thing, but they’re all circling around the same thing. They’re describing different aspects of the same thing. It’s as if you had a perfectly-cut, thousand carat diamond, and you held it up in the light. As you turn it in your hand, the different facets of the diamond reflect the light differently, and each facet of the diamond is beautiful and significant in its own way. But it’s all the same diamond. The Bible does a similar thing with the gospel. How does the Bible describe our salvation? Is it justification, redemption, propitiation, reconciliation, sanctification? It’s all of these things. Each is a different facet of the diamond. It’s worth doing the work to understand what each of these words mean, because they are all describing something true and wonderful. But rest assured, you can experience them all without knowing exactly what to call them.

Today we’re going to turn the diamond a little bit and consider this other facet of the gospel called propitiation. We’ve seen throughout our Romans series that before the news can be better than you think, it has first got to be worse. Before you can taste the sweetness of God’s mercy, you must first understand the bitterness of his righteous judgement. Perhaps nowhere are those two pillars of truth more tightly joined together into a single structure than they are in this word, “propitiation.” 

Propitiation deals specifically with the issue of the righteousness of God, and his righteous wrath against sin. In verses 23 and 24, Paul proclaimed that glorious and, as we’ve seen, really scandalous truth that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Remember that justification is an image taken from the courtroom. It captures the fact that God, the judge, declares unrighteous sinners to be righteous, not on the basis of anything that they have done, but as a gift. The very righteousness of God is given to us as a gift. The righteousness of God has been the theme of the book of Romans so far. His righteousness has been revealed in the law and in his wrath against unrighteousness. “But now,” Paul says, “his righteousness has been manifested apart from the law” as it has been given to us as a gift. That’s glorious, but it raises a massively important question. Daniel described the problem last week. The question is, “How can this be so?” How can both of those things be true at the same time? How can God give righteousness as a gift, and still be righteous? Daniel cited for us, Proverbs 17:15, “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the LORD.” So there’s a problem. Paul spent the last two and a half chapters describing in excruciating detail how the wrath of God is poured out against the unrighteousness of men, and that none of us - no not one - is righteous. So how on earth can it be that God simply declares us to be righteous, when in fact we are not? What happened to his wrath? What happened to his righteousness? It raises the possibility that God might not, himself, be righteous. It’s an enormous problem that demands an answer. Once again, the fundamental question that the gospel answers is this: How can God be righteous when he declares unrighteous sinners to be righteous? How can he be just in justifying the unjust? Daniel outlined part of Paul’s answer last week, when he described the removal of our sins, and the giving, or imputing, of righteousness to us. But there is still this issue of the wrath of God against sin. There has to be some accounting for it if you’re going to say that righteousness is simply given to us as a gift.

Paul’s answer to that problem is given in this wonderful word, “propitiation.” “Whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood.” The word “propitiate” means “to appease or pacify someone’s anger.” The doctrine of propitiation says simply this; that apart from the gospel, God is angry with us because of our sin. But that rather than punishing us as we deserved, God poured out his righteous anger on his own Son, Jesus, in our place, and satisfied his wrath against sin. Put simply, Jesus suffered the wrath of God in our place. That’s the doctrine of propitiation. It is a precious truth.

I. The Wrath of God

We have to do a bit of groundwork here at the start. This won’t be new to you, but it’s important. When you hear those words, that “Jesus suffered the wrath of God in our place,” some questions should come to mind. The first one might be this: Is that really what God is like? Is God really so angry that he requires a blood sacrifice to appease him? That feels like something that you’d say about one of the pagan gods like Baal or Molech. Is that what the God of the Bible is like?

We’ve seen this in the first two chapters of Romans, but we need to hear it again for these verses to make sense. All of mankind shares a fundamental problem. What is it? If your answer is “sin,” then you only get partial credit. Our most fundamental problem is this: Romans 1:18 - “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” Mankind’s big problem is the wrath of God against our sin. God is righteous. We are unrighteous, and the wrath of God is poured out from heaven against the unrighteousness of men. That’s an enormous problem. All other problems pale in comparison. In order for the doctrine of propitiation to make sense, and more than make sense - to be precious to you - you’ve got to have a solid grasp on the reality of God’s wrath against sin. It’s one of the foundational pillars of truth in this world. It’s one of the foundation stones that we discussed a year ago when we studied the book of Genesis. Remember the lesson of the flood. God saw that the earth was corrupt, and he told Noah “I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth.” And so he did. “He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth.” Sin is the cause of our problem. But it wasn’t sin that killed every living thing on earth except for Noah and those with him in the ark. It was God. It was the wrath of God being poured out on the world. The flood was the great demonstration of the God’s wrath against sin that set the pattern for the rest of human history, and his wrath is a recurring theme throughout the rest of scripture.

You can just follow the history of God’s people, Israel, and see how many times the Bible describes God acting in wrath against their unrighteousness. Moses said that God’s wrath “burned hot” at Mt. Sinai when the Israelites built the golden calf. It was in his wrath that he caused the earth to open up and swallow the Korahites after their rebellion in the wilderness, and then in his wrath he sent a plague on the people when they grumbled about it. King Josiah said that God’s wrath burned against Israel in the days of the unfaithful kings, and it was his wrath that destroyed Jerusalem and cast Israel into exile in Babylon. The prophet Nahum gave a terrifying tribute to God’s wrath.

The Lord is a jealous and avenging God;

the Lord is avenging and wrathful;

the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries

and keeps wrath for his enemies.

The mountains quake before him;

the hills melt;

the earth heaves before him,

the world and all who dwell in it.

Who can stand before his indignation?

Who can endure the heat of his anger?

His wrath is poured out like fire,

and the rocks are broken into pieces by him.

Some might foolishly say, “That was the God of the Old Testament. Jesus came and showed us what God is really like. He’s a God of love and forgiveness.” That’s true. He did, and he is. But what did Jesus have to say about the wrath of God against sin?

Just as the weeds are gathered and burned with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Some of the most terrifying things ever said about God’s wrath, especially about his wrath poured out eternally in hell, came straight from the mouth of Jesus. So don’t make the mistake of thinking that the God of the New Testament is somehow different in character, or more tolerating of sin, than the God of the Old Testament. He is the same God, and he is a God of wrath.

We have to say, of course, that God’s wrath is not like ours, nor is it like the pagan gods. God’s wrath is never impulsive. God doesn’t fly off the handle or lose control. He’s also not unpredictable, or inconsistent. It surely isn’t possible to define God’s wrath, but we can say some things about it. Someone described it as God’s “strong and settled opposition to all that is evil, arising out of his own nature.” That’s pretty good. We might also say that God’s wrath is his righteousness acting against unrighteousness. It is his righteousness in action. We could also say that it’s his righteousness on display. That idea will be helpful for us in these verses that we’re considering today. God’s wrath is his righteousness on display. The point is that it is in God’s nature to be opposed to sin. The apostle John tells us that “He is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” And if God always acts according to his nature - and he does - then that means that he always responds to sin with revulsion and righteous anger. That’s a frightening thought, for sinners such as you and I.

J.I. Packer said this: “Here, then, is every man in his natural state, without the gospel; the final controlling reality in his life, whether he is aware of it or not, is the active anger of God.” “The final controlling reality in his life … is the active anger of God.”

The Forbearance of God

That’s the backdrop for these verses in Romans three. In Paul’s mind, if the wrath of God is his settled opposition to sin, arising out of his very nature, then the shocking thing is not that God would judge our sins. The really scandalous thing - the thing that requires an explanation - is how God could ever overlook a sin. “God is perfectly just,” you say. The prophet Habakkuk says that “He cannot even look upon sin.” Then the obvious question is, “why are we still here?” In the flood, God wiped out all of humanity as a punishment for sin, and that’s exactly what his justice demanded. The question is, why hasn’t he done it again?

As Paul considered God’s character and human history, he wasn’t surprised by how wrathful the God of the Old Testament was. On the contrary, he was shocked at his patience and forbearance. That’s what Paul is suggesting in our passage at the end of verse twenty five when he says, “This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.” What’s this about? Paul is looking back at the history of the world and saying that God seems to be open to a criticism. The problem is not that God had punished sins. That’s not surprising. The problem is that God would appear to be unrighteous if he were ever to overlook a sin. And he clearly has overlooked a countless number of sins. The Old Testament is full of examples of God’s wrath against sin, but it is just as full of examples of his patience and forgiveness. If it’s true that God’s righteousness always acts against unrighteousness, then how can it also be true that God forgives sins? Perhaps Paul is thinking back to someone like King David. Remember the story, how David stayed at home on his couch while his men went off to battle, then when he saw Bathsheba bathing on the roof, he took her for himself. Then to cover it up, he had her husband killed. David was a flagrant law-breaker. He was an unrighteous man. And yet, the prophet Nathan said to him, “The Lord has put away your sin; you shall not die.” How can that be, Paul? I thought the punishment for sin was death.

The entire history of Israel is an example of God’s wrath, yes, but also his inexplicable patience and forbearance. Remember Nehemiah’s prayer:

But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them. Even when they had made for themselves a golden calf and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed great blasphemies, you in your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness.

We read that and we say, “Thank you, God, for your great mercies.” But in Paul’s mind, it presents this problem. It appears that God, the righteous judge of all the earth, has been letting men off the hook. Because we’re Christians who have experienced forgiveness, we have an instinct to expect forgiveness. But the standard for any judge is justice - perfect justice. We have a category for this. Imagine yourself as Uriah’s father, or Bathsheba’s. What would you think about the fact that the Lord put away David’s sin? “Wait a minute, that’s not right.” You might pray as Abraham prayed, “Shall not the judge of all the earth do what is just?” What do we think about a judge who lets the guilty off the hook without any punishment? It isn’t right. He’s a corrupt judge. Paul is saying that God appears to be open to this charge. You see the problem. If God is perfectly righteous, then he always does what is right. So God cannot simply overlook man’s sin - any sin - and at the same time be perfectly righteous.

Maybe you’re thinking, “God didn’t overlook the sins of Old Testament saints. What about all of the sacrifices that he required? The Israelites were constantly sacrificing animals to God as payment for their sins.” Again, you’re partly right. The old testament sacrifices had everything to do with sin, but remember what the Bible tells us about the sacrifices. They never truly did away with sins in any permanent way. Hebrews 10 says,

For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Do you get what he’s saying? The blood of bulls and goats didn’t really take away sins. You’re going to be right back here again next year, doing the same thing. The bulls and goats didn’t truly satisfy God’s wrath against sin. God commanded Israel to make those sacrifices, and when they obeyed, he accepted their offering and overlooked their sins. But that’s just what God was doing - he was overlooking their sins. He was being patient with them. Justice hadn’t been served. So, come back to Romans, and God is apparently still open to the charge of being unrighteous. The question is still unanswered. If God is perfectly righteous, and always responds to sin with the appropriate amount of righteous revulsion and anger, then how could he overlook the sins of his people for thousands of years with nothing more than some dead goats to show for it? And how can he now simply declare unrighteous people to be righteous?

II. A Demonstration of God’s Righteousness

The problem was that God appeared to be unrighteous. So what was necessary was a public demonstration of his righteousness. God’s glory is at stake. Is he righteous or is he not? One possible demonstration would have been another flood, or something like it. God could have just killed us all, and that would have solved the problem. That would have been perfectly just, and it would have demonstrated his righteousness. But the gospel that Paul preached and that we believe is this, that God determined to demonstrate his righteousness in another way. He put forward his own Son, Jesus, as a propitiation - as a wrath-appeasing, righteousness demonstrating, sacrifice, in our place.

There is a risk, maybe, when we describe propitiation as the satisfying of God’s wrath, that we think about it as something that happens entirely behind the curtain, within the godhead. God’s righteousness demanded a certain sacrifice, Jesus offered himself as that sacrifice, and now God is satisfied. That’s true enough. But this is a good reminder that the gospel isn’t primarily a math problem. It isn’t primarily about some behind-the-scenes accounting of debits and credits. The gospel is a many-faceted thing, so I’m not saying that there is none of that going on. But this passage reminds us that sin is first and foremost a personal and public offense against God. It is a public attack on his glory. So what was required to set things right was a public vindication of his glory. God’s righteousness was being called into question, and so a public demonstration of his righteousness was called for. That’s exactly what the cross was. The cross was, perhaps more than anything else, a public demonstration of the righteousness of God.

Paul draws our attention to that fact in a couple of ways. First subtly, then explicitly. First, he says, “whom God put forward.” To “put forward” in this context means “to show” or “to set forth publicly.” God publicly set forth his Son as a propitiation - as a demonstration of his wrath.

Then he makes the point explicitly at the end of the verse. “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.” We’ve already talked about the problem that Paul is alluding to. The fact that God had simply passed over former sins calls his righteousness into question. But something has now happened that settles the issue once and for all. That phrase “at the present time” has the same feeling as the “but now” in verse 21. Something has changed. They had arrived at the hinge point in history. Things appeared to be one way, but now the truth has been revealed. Paul had a similar message for the men of Athens in the Areopagus. He told them, in Acts 17, that “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” There was a question that hung in the air, unanswered for thousands of years. But now, at the present time, the question has been answered. God’s righteousness has been vindicated. What kind of demonstration would it take to vindicate God’s righteousness? The goats could not do it. Behold, his Son upon the cross.

Next, don’t overlook the crucial fact that it was God himself who put forward the propitiating sacrifice. “Whom God put forward as a propitiation.” That’s the staggering fact that makes the gospel completely unique. If one of the pagan gods was offended, it was up to the offender to offer the propitiating sacrifice. The gods were angry and it was up to you to make it right. In reality, God is angry, but there is nothing you can do to make it right. You have nothing to offer to God, and no public display that you can make, that will satisfy the requirements of perfect righteousness. But, glory to God, he has done what was required. God, himself, in his love, put forward the sacrifice to satisfy his own wrath. John Stott put it this way in his book, The Cross of Christ:

So then, God himself is at the heart of our answer to all three questions about the divine propitiation. It is God himself who in holy wrath needs to be propitiated, God himself who in holy love undertook to do the propitiating, and God himself who in the person of his Son died for the propitiation of our sins. Thus God took his own loving initiative to appease his own righteous anger by bearing it his own self in his own Son when he took our place and died for us.

One other thing about this little phrase, “whom God put forward.” It also helps us to avoid the mistake of thinking that God the Father is the angry one who needs to be propitiated, and that Jesus lovingly stepped in on our behalf and assuaged the Father’s anger. That’s wrong on two front. First of all, the Bible is clear that Jesus, the Son, is the one who will judge the living and the dead. It’s his wrath, especially, that we should fear. And secondly, by distinguishing between God and Jesus in this verse when he says “Christ Jesus, whom God put forward,” Paul seems to be suggesting that it was God the Father who took the initiative in putting forward his Son on the cross as a demonstration of God’s righteousness. That idea is confirmed by what Jesus said in John six, that “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” We should always work hard to think rightly about God. This is an area where modern cultural tropes about angry, overbearing fathers might sneak in and distort our thoughts about God. Let’s avoid that. All of God is full of wrath against sin, and all of God is active in everything that God does, but the Bible describes the Father as the initiative-taker in the matter of our salvation.

To summarize this point, God wrath is his righteousness on display. His righteousness was called into question by the fact that he had formerly overlooked sins, and so a public display of his righteousness was called for. The cross of Christ was the ultimate, indisputable display of God’s righteous wrath for all the world to see.

III. A Propitiation, By his Blood

Let’s continue now and look at this word, propitiation, a little more closely. “Whom God put forward as a propitiation.” We’ve already talked about it, but once again, propitiation means that God poured out his righteous anger on his Son, in our place, and satisfied his own wrath against sin.

There’s something else that you should know about the word that adds an additional layer of meaning to it. Remember how once per year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest brought two goats before the Lord. One of them was killed, and its blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat, inside the holy of holies. The mercy seat was the golden cover on the arc of the covenant. That blood sacrifice was meant to atone for the sins of the people. Atonement and propitiation are closely related ideas. To atone just means to “make things right.” When some wrong has been committed, to atone for that wrong means to do something to set things right again. So the blood that was sprinkled on the mercy seat atoned for the sins of the people. Hebrews tells us that the blood of goats didn’t atone for sins in any permanent way, but God accepted their sacrifice and overlooked their sins.

Well this word, “propitiation,” in Greek, is exactly the word for “mercy-seat,” the place where the blood was sprinkled. It’s the same word. The verse essentially read, “whom God put forward as a mercy-seat by his blood.” So, for Greek-speakers, the connection between Jesus’ death and the old covenant sacrifices would be immediately obvious in the word, “propitiation.” It’s right there on the surface.

Lest there be any doubt that what Paul is talking about is the death of Jesus on the cross, he adds this phrase “by his blood.” “Whom God put forward as a propitiation, by his blood.” There are folks who are squeamish about this doctrine, who will try to say that it was the life and obedience of Jesus that God found to be acceptable. Paul will have nothing of it. It’s true that the life and obedience of Jesus are counted as being ours. But that’s not what this verse is saying. It was the shedding of Jesus blood that made atonement for our sin. Hebrews says that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” That was exactly the lesson of the old covenant sacrifices. It was to teach God’s people that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”

There’s another phrase that we sometimes use to bring all of these ideas together. We sometimes speak of “substitutionary atonement.” We’re piling up words again to get a picture of what’s going on. If you turn the diamond just slightly, the facet right next to the one called “propitiation” is this one that we’ll call “substitutionary atonement.” They’re almost the same thing.

That was another lesson that God’s people learned under the old covenant. Blood was required in order to atone for sin, but God always provided a substitute. Remember the story of Abraham and Isaac. God provided a lamb, caught in the thicket, which Abraham sacrificed in Isaac’s place. That’s the lesson of the entire sacrificial system. On the Day of Atonement, the priest put his hands on the goat and confessed the sins of the people, symbolically placing their sins on the goat. Then one goat was killed and the other was sent away into the wilderness. The goat provided a substitutionary atonement for the people.

What Paul is saying, of course, by connecting the death of Jesus to the mercy seat is that the blood of Jesus accomplishes what the blood of bulls and goats only foreshadowed. Remember what Hebrews 10 said, “the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities.” Only the blood of Jesus can atone for our sins. His blood atones for our sins, and it atones for the sins of Moses and Aaron and David and all of God’s old covenant people who believed the promise of God. This is something that Christians often get mixed up about. Remember this. The old covenant saints are saved from God’s wrath exactly the same way that we are. The author of Hebrews, again, says that Christ “entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.” Then a few verses later, “Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.” Did you get that? A death has occurred (that’s the death of Jesus) that redeems them (those who are called) from transgressions committed under the first covenant (that the old covenant).” Again, the goats couldn’t do it. It’s the blood of Jesus that redeems those who sinned, even under the old covenant. Those sacrifices of bulls and goats were an act of obedience that pointed forward to the one whose death could truly take away sins. That’s really important. The question is, who does the atoning? Is it man or God? If the blood of bulls and goats could truly atone for sins, then man can atone for himself and Christ’s death wasn’t necessary. But no, it is God who provides the atonement that satisfies his own wrath, and he did it by the blood of his Son, Jesus.

Over and over in scripture, it’s the blood of Jesus that is given as the thing that accomplishes each of the different facets our salvation. That diamond of our salvation that Paul is holding up in the light, is blood red, all the way through. In Romans 5 Paul says that, “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” In Ephesians 1 we are redeemed by his blood. In Colossians 1 we are reconciled to God by his blood. By his blood we are brought near in Ephesians 2. By his blood we were set free in Revelation 1. And by his blood we are purified in Hebrews 9.

We sing about the blood of Christ. We drink the blood of Christ every Lord’s supper. His blood is everything to us. His blood means life for us, instead of death. Christians have been accused for centuries of being too obsessed with the death and blood of Jesus. It’s grotesque, they say. So be it. His blood is our life. It isn’t cute or pretty. It’s even offensive. But it is our life.

IV. To be Received by Faith

The next important question is, “who is the propitiation made for?” Did the death of Jesus propitiate God’s wrath everywhere and for everyone? Did it remove the wrath of God as an operating force in the world? Apparently not. Paul calls it “a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” So Apparently this substitutionary atonement isn’t universal. It’s something that must be received by faith. That means that there are still some who remain under the wrath of God. For those who have not received the gift by faith, it remains true that “The final controlling reality in [their] life … is the active anger of God.” That’s why we preach the gospel to the lost. I think that sometimes - I know this is true for me - we become lazy in our evangelism because we forget, or even start to doubt, how deathly serious it is to be under the active anger of God. This isn’t the only motivation for evangelism, but if we believe what the Bible teaches about the wrath of God against sin, it should be like a fire under our feet, pushing us on to more and more boldness in proclaiming the gospel to the lost.

The gospel that we preach is a gospel of faith in Jesus Christ. Paul mentions two facets of the gospel in these verses and says that they are both received by faith. He says that this propitiation is received by faith. Then at the end of verse twenty six he says that God is both “just, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

We’ve seen already that the grounds of our salvation - our justification and the propitiation of God’s wrath - is nothing but the blood of Jesus. The means, however, by which this salvation become ours, is faith. There are two points to remember. The first is that faith is only a means. It isn’t our faith that pacifies the wrath of God. Faith doesn’t contribute to the propitiation of God’s wrath, just as, if someone gives you the priceless diamond, you don’t add anything to its value by receiving it. John Stott said that “The value of faith is not to be found in itself, but entirely and exclusively in its object, namely Jesus Christ and him crucified.” It was the death of Jesus that demonstrated and satisfied the righteous wrath of God against sin. Faith simply rests in his finished work.

But while faith is only a means, it is the only means. Faith is the only means by which these gifts become ours. To receive this gift of salvation, you and I must give up any hope of ever doing anything that could put God in our debt. The only thing that God owes us is wrath, and there is no work that we could ever do to turn it away.

The heart of this paragraph that we’ve marinated in for the last month is that salvation is entirely a gift. The priceless diamond can only be received. It cannot be earned. It’s all a gift. Agan, when one of the pagan gods was angry, it was up to the offender to offer up sacrifices and hope that the gods would be appeased. Aren’t you glad that isn’t what God is like. How could you ever know if what you had done was enough. What a relief to know that there’s nothing that you and I can do to satisfy the perfect, righteous wrath of God. All that we can do, and all that he commands us to do, is receive what he has done. Faith simply says, “I know what my sins deserve. But I also know what God has done to save me from his own righteous anger. I trust myself entirely to his grace.”

That He Might Be Just and the Justifier

Paul then concludes this great paragraph with a precious insight into the mind and character of God. Why did God do it this way? A demonstration of his righteousness was required. Ok, but why like this? Why did he choose to put himself in our place? There were other ways that he could have demonstrated his righteousness. He had done it before. Why this way, now? Paul’s answer is so simple and so profound. These few words tell us more about what God is like than almost any other words in scripture. He did it this way “so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”

Why this way? What more can we say than that this is what God is like. God is righteous and wrathful, and he is also love. He is severe, and he is also kind. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish [should not perish … in his wrath], but have eternal life.” Why did he do it this way? Because he loved us. Before the foundation of the world, he loved us. Before there was anything in us that was worth loving, he loved us. It was God’s love for us that put forward his own Son to satisfy his own wrath against sin. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The cross of Christ is God’s great mouth-stopping demonstration of his character for the world to see. What is God like? He is righteous, and he is love.

Conclusion

We started with the question, how can God be righteous while declaring unrighteous people to be righteous. How can he be just and the justifier of sinners? The cross is God’s answer. Because God has publicly demonstrated his righteous anger against sin by killing his Son on the cross, in our place, he remains perfectly righteous when he forgives us for our sins, gives us a gift of righteousness, and declares us to be righteous in his sight.

In a minute we’re going to sing, “We stand forgiven at the cross.” What this passage and this doctrine tell us is that our sins are forgiven in Christ, but they are not merely overlooked, the way that God overlooked the sins of the old covenant saints for so long. They are paid for. Because of his great love for us - his great and undeserved love - God placed our sins on his own Son, and then he poured out his righteous anger on him, nailing him to a cross. And Jesus drank that cup of God’s wrath, down to the dregs. None of us can know or imagine what the Son of God suffered on our behalf, so that God might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in him. This is the gospel of propitiation. Having been justified in his sight, we have also been saved from his wrath. This is the confidence that we have in Jesus. The cross doesn’t only make it possible for God to forgive your sins. If you have faith in Jesus, it guarantees it. Without the cross, it would be unjust, and therefore impossible, for God to forgive us. But because of the cross - this is shocking, but it’s true - it would be unjust, and therefore impossible, for God to punish us. God’s righteousness has been demonstrated. The demands of justice have been met. There are no longer any grounds for punishment. “God, the just, is satisfied.” What a glorious gospel!

Stand with me as we pray.

Father, what can we say but “thank you.” Thank you for the gospel. You are perfect in your righteousness. You are worthy to have your righteousness worshipped and declared by every mouth under heaven. And yet we have sinned and fallen short of your righteous standard. We know what we deserve. But Father we rest, and rejoice, in what you have done. We rejoice in the gift of righteousness that you have given to us. We rejoice in the demonstration of righteous wrath that you put forward in your Son, in our place. Thank you for the blood of Jesus. Spirit, please inscribe this word on our hearts as we go. Amen.