“Big Words – Justification” – Romans 4:25-5:2

*Call on somebody to stand before the pulpit*

I have here a record of every sin you have ever committed in your whole life.  It starts with disobeying your parents, lying, stealing, cussing, gossip, slander, lust, idolatry, gluttony and even murder.  Unfortunately, that’s just page one.  It goes on to include every kind of sin imaginable and some I’ve never even heard of but I’ll get to the point.  Today is judgment day and this court needs to know how you plead on these charges.  These are serious charges and the punishment for these crimes is eternal death.  How do you plead?  Guilty or not guilty?

“I’m guilty as charged, sir.”

Then by the power vested in me in this court today I pronounce you…

*Another shouts out*

“Wait!”

Approach the bench.

Approaches and whispers unintelligibly.

I have no choice then but to pronounce you not guilty.  Your sentence has been paid for and the penalty has been paid in full and your record is clear.  You have been justified!  You are free to go.

Can you imagine being in that situation?  Can you imagine being guilty of a crime; caught red-handed and deserving of punishment because of your own bad choices but then at the last second declared not only not guilty but to be declared righteous and free?

On February 11, 2013 Randolph Arledge walked out of a Navarro County, Texas courtroom a free man after having spent 30 years in prison for a murder he did not commit and was only exonerated by DNA evidence that proved another man had committed the crime.  That would be an incredible feeling but some day Arledge is going to have to stand before another Judge for the sins he has committed and the only way he will avoid eternal death is by the saving blood of Jesus Christ.

Romans 3:23 says we are all sinners.  Romans 6:23 says that what we deserve for that sin is eternal death and separation from God and I have told you before that is bad news!  But I don’t want to dwell on the bad news today.  I want to talk about the Good News.  In fact, I want to tell you that there is even more good news in the Good News and that good news is that when we accept Jesus Christ to be our Lord and Savior and give Him all our sin – everything from disobeying our parents to murder, rape, incest, every horrible thing we have ever done – and we exchange that sin for forgiveness, we not only just get forgiveness, we get justification!  That’s really good news.

We continue our look at some big words that the Bible uses mainly in the book of Romans.  So far we have talked about election and predestination – I’m glad we all know exactly how that works now after last week.  We talked about propitiation and how Jesus paid the debt we could not pay and now there is no more debt between us as believers and Holy God.  We talked about redemption and how we have been converted into something of value to God when we accept Jesus to be our substitute.  Today’s big word is justification and it is a big, wonderful and glorious word that simply means to be declared not guilty.  I don’t know about you but being declared not guilty is very good news to me because unlike that Mr. Arledge I deserve to be declared guilty and I deserve eternal death and separation from God in Hell.

Let’s look at short passage of scripture in Romans 4 that will make you smile if you read it and really understand what it means because it is the Gospel, the Good News, but there is good news on top of Good News here,  Let’s read Romans 4:25-5:2.  It’s only 3 verses but it is packed full of good stuff.

Romans 4:25-5:2 says, “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.  5 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.”

The word “justified” often has negative connotations today.  Or maybe it’s just me because I heard my mama tell me more times than I care to admit, “Todd Blair (you know you’re in trouble when she uses both names, right?) you can try to justify anything.”  In other words, she saw right through my argument that whatever I did was ok because of such and such circumstances.  But just because I tried to justify something that was wrong didn’t make it right.

The good news on top of the Good News here is that God really can justify anything or more specifically anybody.  Verse 25 says He was delivered over to death.  He was first delivered by the Father to earth and then from one man to another; from Judas to the chief priests then to Pilate and then to the Roman soldiers but none of that happened against His own will.  He ultimately delivered Himself over to death because He was doing the will of the Father.  His life was not taken from Him.  He willingly gave it up.

John 15:13 says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends.”  Jesus didn’t die just to be a martyr or a good example or even just for the good of the world.  He died in our place.  All through the Bible the cost of any sin is death.  In the Old Testament they were able to sacrifice animals to cover over the sin by God’s grace but Jesus died to be the sacrifice to take away our sins and that’s the Good News or the Gospel.

But here’s the good news on top of the Good News.  Because Jesus died in our place and there is no longer any debt to be repaid, God the Father sees us just like He sees His Son; blameless, righteous and justified – just as if we had never sinned.  This is not just a pardon for sin.  A pardon would mean that we just didn’t have to pay for our crimes and that would be good news in itself.  But Jesus took the debt away and we, as believers in Him, are declared not guilty because there is nothing to be guilty of.  Boom!  There goes my head blowing up again from trying to take all that in.

While I don’t understand how deep God’s love for us must be that he would do that, I read verse 25 and I believe it.  He was raised to life for our justification.  That tells us what happened.  He (Jesus) was put on the cross to pay for our sins.  He died as the propitiation for our sins as the right and correct sacrifice and He was resurrected so that we (believers) could be declared not guilty of those sins.  Understand it or not; believe it or not; that is what happened.

Now, let’s see how it happened.  Let’s see how this justification takes place.  Let’s look at the verse that has the long list of all the things we have to do and all the things we have to be and all the magazines we have to sell and how much money we have to donate and how many good deeds we have to do to earn this justification.  Do you see it there?  See that verse?  No, you don’t because it’s not there.  Chapter 5 verse 1 simply says that it happens through faith.

Justification – the act of being declared not guilty – happens through faith.  All we have to do is believe.  It goes on to say that we can have peace with God through faith and that is a problem for lots of people.  That’s a problem because for some people that is just too easy.  They can’t believe that we can have peace with God without earning it.  There’s no free lunch.  You have to work for everything you get in this life, right?  Honestly, I think this is not as big of a problem for our generation as it has been for some before us.  Too many people think that society or government is obligated to pick up the slack every time they need something but that’s a sermon for another day.

Still for lots of people they can’t believe that all the joys of Heaven plus joy and peace in this life can be had without doing something to earn it.  So that’s a problem for them and Satan is thrilled with their problem.  It is also a problem for some other people on the other end of the spectrum who think that since now all is cool with God and they can’t earn it they won’t worry about doing anything good in return.  In fact, if you carry that thought out a little further then sin is not that big of a deal either.

If I can’t earn it and all my sin is forgiven and forgotten then this grace is pretty cheap stuff.  Well, Satan is thrilled with that problem as well.  Satan wants you to feel real comfortable with that.  I’ve told you lots of funny stories about my Uncle Bill and what a character he is and always has been.  He is a wonderful, godly man; an evangelist for longer than I have been alive but he hasn’t always been a Christian or even a good person.

In my mom’s vocabulary, he used to be a rounder.  If you don’t know what a rounder is, it’s not a good thing.  But it does make for some good sermon illustrations.  Sometime before Uncle Bill came to know the Lord he was out drinking and partying one night and on the way home he saw a man standing on the street corner so my uncle pulled over, got out and for no good reason except that he was drunk and mean, he punched the guy in the jaw and knocked him down.

He said he hit him hard and he knows he did some damage but he didn’t stick around.  He just drove off.  A year or two later Uncle Bill was working on an oil rig and somehow slipped and fell and broke his ankle.  They took him to the emergency room and when the doctor came in who do you think it was?  The doctor was the man he sucker-punched that night.  My uncle said they both recognized each other immediately too.  You could tell by the look on his face.  Neither said a word.

But that doctor went to work and patched Uncle Bill up and even went above and beyond to make sure the bone was set properly and that he would not be in any more pain than he had to.  It seems like he even gave Uncle Bill a brace or some pain pills or something for free.  He was very professional and never once brought up that horrible night when he had been assaulted.  He was a good doctor and showed great grace and mercy where it was not deserved.

Now, how do you think my uncle felt about that doctor?  Do you think he would see him on the side of the road and punch him again?  Do you think he would ever do or say anything to hurt that man ever again?  Or do you think he would tell all his friends about that great doctor down there at that hospital?  He would never bring up to most people the mean thing he did but he would still sing that man’s praises from now on.  He would forever feel like he was indebted to that man.

When I hear somebody try to make the argument that justification may lead to the cheapening of grace or that they think somebody might take advantage of the situation and say that because they are justified they can do whatever they want – I know that a person like that had never really met Jesus.  A person who would choose to sin and have no remorse is somebody that may believe that Jesus was a good person and maybe even died on the cross but that person doesn’t have a relationship with Him because a relationship with Jesus changes everything!

That’s not me trying to judge someone’s salvation.  That’s just saying that when you really know Who Jesus is and you understand what He did for you on the cross then sin is just as offensive to you as it is to Jesus and when you sin it pains you because you know it pains Him.  I don’t have to tell everybody all the mean and nasty things I have done in my past but I want everybody to know what a great and generous and merciful God we have and it’s not about trying to repay the debt because I know there is no debt.  I just want to make His name famous because I love Him and He loves me.

That brings me right to verse 2, the last verse we are going to look at today because I can’t take any more of this grace.  It’s just too much.  Look at it.  Verse 2 is talking about how we have a relationship with God through His Son Jesus and look what it says, “through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God.”

I read that and I say, “No, no, no!”  That’s too much!  I came asking for the doctor to set my broken ankle.  That’s all.  I don’t deserve for him to adopt me and build me a house and make me an heir to His kingdom.  I’ve done too many bad things.  I don’t deserve it.  But this Doctor takes me in and He sees me just like His own son and because of that grace I can boast in the hope of the glory of God!

Psalm 84:11 says, “For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.”  We have seen what justification is and how it happened and now we see the result of it.  I can boast in the hope of the glory of God.  I cannot boast in anything I did to earn it because I did nothing but I can boast in what God has done in the past, what He is doing now and what He will do in the future.

I can boast in the hope of the glory of God when good times come and I feel His grace and mercy because they are so obvious but I can also boast about my hope of glory when I can’t feel it because I know it is there because of the faith I have in God through His son Jesus.  If God took His hand of protection and provision off of me today I will still say He is the Great Physician, the Great and Mighty One; to Him be praise and glory forever and I can say that because of what He has done for me tomorrow.

It seems that there was a man in England who put his Rolls-Royce on a boat and went across to Europe to go on a holiday. While he was driving around Europe, something happened to the motor of his car. He cabled the Rolls-Royce people back in England and asked, "I'm having trouble with my car; what do you suggest I do?" Well, the Rolls-Royce people flew a mechanic over! The mechanic repaired the car and flew back to England and left the man to continue his holiday. As you can imagine, the fellow was wondering, "How much is this going to cost me?" So when he got back to England, he wrote the people a letter and asked how much he owed them. He received a letter from the office that read: "Dear Sir: There is no record anywhere in our files that anything ever went wrong with a Rolls-Royce." That is justification.

You may have Edsel faith but we have Rolls-Royce justification and all we have to do is believe.  Have you done that?  Have you accepted Jesus to be your Lord and your Savior and your Great Physician?  Ask Him into your life today and to forgive you of all those mean and nasty sins you have ever committed and then repent or turn away from those sins and when you do the Bible says He is faithful and just to forgive you of all unrighteousness.  Then to top it off He gives you justification.  He declares you not guilty and makes you free.  Do that right now.