Kalamazoo Mennonite Fellowship
Will Fitzgerald
May 24, 2009
Passage: Romans 3:21-31
This is our fourth teaching on Romans. We first discussed the idea of “the obedience of faith,” which (according to Stephen Metcalf-Conte) is “the behavioral aspect of a complex motion of the soul that includes trust, conviction and fidelity.” We then discussed how humanity’s response to creation is not to give honor to God or to give thanks to God, but to choose to honor and thank other things instead: so-called “gods,” or animals or human beings. As a result, God gave us up to our own desires, and we fell into a cesspool of sexual degradation, foolishness, and “every kind of wickedness.” We no longer trusted God, nor were convinced of God’s truth, and we fell into great unfaithfulness. And finally, last week, we read the bad good again which we all know so well: though none of us is as bad as we could possibly be, none of us is as good as we need to be. In the great biblical words: “There is no one who is righteous, not even one.” And this leaves us in a sad, godforsaken place: God has graciously given us (more or less explicitly) a recipe for the good life, but we have consistently left ingredients out, mixed in the wrong—and even toxic—ingredients.
Romans 3:21-31 tells us of the way out.
21 But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christfor all who believe. For there is no distinction, 23 since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonementby his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; 26 it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.
27 Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. 28 For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. 29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, 30 since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. 31 Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.
In Romans, the world is divided up into two kinds of people: those who had been given the Scriptures, specifically, the Old Testament, and those who had not. Those who didn’t have the Scriptures didn’t know the whole of what they needed to know, and so could not live as well as they could. Those who had the Scriptures knew what they needed to know, but didn’t act on it. And those very same Scriptures point out their failure to do so.
So, in the end, there is “no distinction” with respect to how good these two kind of people are. They arrive at the same place through different routes: short of the glory of God. Knowing what and knowing how are not the same as doing. But the scriptures—the law and the prophets—hint of another way, another one, a Messiah come to reveal the way to a godly righteousness. This Messiah is Jesus, of course.
Is is by the faith of Jesus we can be save. Jesus comes as the one fully aware and fully convinced of who God is. Jesus comes as the one who completely trusted in God to uphold his life. Jesus came as the perfectly faithful one, “spotless and without blemish.”
The Messiah comes not apart from Israel, but as Israel’s representative: the part standing for the whole. NT Wright says, “It is because Jesus, as Israel’s representative Messiah, was therefore the representative of the whole human race, that he could appropriately become its substitute.”
Surely Paul is remembering passages such as Isaiah 53:
1 Who has believed what we have heard?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him like a young plant,
and like a root out of dry ground;
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by others;
a man of sufferingand acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him of no account.
4 Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
9 They made his grave with the wicked
and his tombwith the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him with pain.
When you make his life an offering for sin,
he shall see his offspring, and shall prolong his days;
through him the will of the Lord shall prosper.
11 Out of his anguish he shall see light;
he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge.
The righteous one,my servant, shall make many righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great,
and he shall divide the spoil with the strong;
because he poured out himself to death,
and was numbered with the transgressors;
yet he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
Jesus comes as the suffering servant. Jesus comes as the sacrifice that makes us one with God.
Paul uses an interesting turn of phrase in verse 25: he writes that God put Jesus forward as a “hilasterion.” “Hilasterion” is the Greek word used to translate the “Mercy Seat,” or place of propitiation as it was found in the Hebrew Bible. The mercy seat is (according to the Tyndale Bible Dictionary):
[The] gold slab placed on top of the ark of the covenant with cherubim attached to it on either end, termed the “mercy seat” in many English versions of the Bible (cf. Ex 25:17–22). The Hebrew word for which “mercy seat” is the translation is technically best rendered as “propitiatory,” a term denoting the removal of wrath by the offering of a gift. The significance of this designation is found in the ceremony performed on the Day of Atonement, held once a year, when blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat to make atonement for the sins of the people of Israel (Lv 16)
Now, it is likely be that Paul is merely using a metonymic turn of phrase, like saying I’m going to school to mean I’m going to learn something; I’m going to “hilasterion” in order to sacrifice something (this is how the New Revised Standard Version translates it, for example).
But still, in Romans 8:3, it is written that God “condemned sin in the flesh.” The Mercy Seat is no longer made of gold, but of the flesh of Jesus Christ, broken for us.
Scripture is rich with these images—for example,
This just goes to show (says Paul) that Jesus is very righteousness of God, and Jesus’s life and death somehow justifies those of us who are convinced/trust/remain faithful to Jesus.
One implication is that we can’t boast of our ethnic background—being a Jew is not better than being a non-Jew, or vice-versa. We are “justified by faith apart from our own works. It is the act and very being of who Jesus is, not we ourselves, that saves us. “God is one,” (says Paul, echoing the Shema of Dt 6:4 — “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.”). “God is one,” and all humanity may come to the one God through one way, Jesus Christ who is the way.
A description of how this works is the theme of the next section of Romans, to which with will return next week.