©2000 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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8/20/00
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An Old Friend We Never Knew
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Romans 3:31
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8/20/00 An Old Friend We Never Knew
We have spent most of the past several months
studying eleven verses in the book of Romans,
the last eleven verses
or Romans chapter 3.
We have taken as long as we have on this passage
because it forms the foundation
for everything else Paul says to us
throughout the remainder of the book.
After beginning the book with a terrifying picture
of what the human race looks like without
Christ,
bringing us to the point where we are forced
to acknowledge
that the entire human race
stands justly condemned before God
on the basis of His revealed moral law,
Paul then reaches the first
and most significant transitional statement in
the entire letter
in verse 3:21 with the phrase,
"But now apart from the Law ...".
From there he goes on to reveal to us
what he calls "the good news of God" -
the offer of the removal of all our sin,
and the restoration of our friendship with
God,
and the recreation of our lives
through faith in Christ.
The concept of faith
is a tricky thing for the human mind to get a hold
of, though.
It is one of those words
that can be used to mean
almost anything we want it to mean.
And remarkably
we rarely if ever require a person using the word
to explain what they mean by it.
In fact,
to do so seems offensive.
We can hear a person
describe a friend of his as being,
"A real man of faith.",
or "A real woman of faith.",
and we accept the description without question.
We will hear someone
share with another person who is going through
a difficult time,
"My friend, you just need to have faith.",
and we don't challenge them on the statement
or ask them what they mean by it.
To do so would seem tasteless and rude.
The truth is,
in our world today
we are completely comfortable
using the word "faith"
and allowing others to use it
without ever requiring the word
to have any logical, concrete meaning.
We can have a friend
who, by all reasonable, logical standards of
evaluation
is choosing do something
that is really stupid,
but if they describe the move as,
"A leap of faith"
all of the sudden
stupidity and ignorance
are transformed into courage and
wisdom.
Of all the religious words in existence
it is surly the most vague
and difficult to define of all.
And yet, here we are,
reading Paul's words to the Romans
and discover him using this word
a total of 8 times in these 11 verses.
And not only does he use the word,
but he ties his whole message to us
to our understanding
of this word
and what it means.
He begins by telling us
what God is offering us is the
"...righteousness of God through faith in
Jesus Christ".
He tells us that we are able to share in the...
"propitiation in His blood through faith"...
Paul tells us that the goal,
the intention of God in this whole thing
is that He Himself will become both...
"just and the justifier of the one who has
faith in Jesus".
He talks about what he calls "a law of faith",
and then tells us that "a man is justified by
faith apart from works of the Law."
He makes sure we understand
that this faith thing he is talking about
is equally accessible to every human being
when he tells us that God "will justify the
circumcised (or Jewish believers) by faith
and the uncircumcised (or non-Jewish
believers) through faith".
And given the central importance
of this single concept
two things have taken place
that should not be surprising to us.
First of all,
it should not surprise us
that Satan has worked so hard
to confuse,
and muddle,
and blur this whole faith thing.
The more effectively he can twist and distort
the true meaning of faith,
the more successful he will be
in undermining the work of God among
us.
EX.
I picture Satan's efforts a little bit like this.
Picture two fierce competitors
engaged in a snowmobile race across Alaska.
Each competitor has mapped out his course
and gone ahead before hand
and stashed a supply of gasoline
at certain points along the way.
By the rules of the race
neither competitor
can remove the other competitor's stash.
But when one man arrives at his supply,
rather than finding just his bright red 5 gallon
can of gas waiting for him,
he finds 10 identical bright red cans,
all labeled gasoline,
all containing liquid,
but only one of the liquids is gas.
The religious landscape in which we live
has a whole bunch of stuff
wearing the FAITH label,
but most of it isn't the real thing.
And, second,
it should not surprise us
to find that God has carefully woven into
His communication with us about faith
several protective safeguards
so that we don't get confused.
He is not playing games with us.
He is certainly not trying to trick us.
The words He uses
are words He very much wants us to
understand.
And in this crucial passage
here at the end of Romans 3
Paul has done two things
to guard us against
the faith counterfeits that flood our world.
The first we have seen already,
although I didn't point it out
as we moved by it.
One of the huge differences
between true Biblical faith
and many of the counterfeits floating around
us
is that the real thing always has an
object,
whereas the counterfeit is often presented as an
end in itself.
Let me explain what I mean.
When God calls us to faith
He makes it clear
that He is calling us to faith
either in Himself personally,
or faith in something specific
that He has done or has said He will do.
Twice in these 11 verses in Romans 3
Paul makes it clear
that he is talking with us about faith in
Jesus Christ.
He is calling us to choose to trust
that He really did do for us what He says He
did,
and that, because of what He did,
our debt is now paid in full.
The counterfeit crud floating around, on the other
hand,
frequently seeks to turn FAITH
into an end in itself.
Let me put the two side-by-side.
God says to us,
"Have faith in ME."
The Satanic counterfeit says,
"Just have faith."
Faith in what?
There is no "what".
It is faith in faith.
It is nothing more than choosing to believe
that somehow things are going to work out OK.
That clear, specific object of our faith,
"faith in Jesus Christ",
is the first major guard against the
counterfeits
built into this passage.
But there is a second protection as well,
one that is reserved by Paul
for his summery statement in these 11
verses.
In Romans 3:31
Paul concludes this crucial passage by saying,
Do we then nullify the Law through faith?
May it never be! On the contrary, we
establish the Law.
Now there are several things going on in this
statement,
but one of the most important
is the test he is giving us
of whether or not our faith is the real
thing.
And before I go any farther
I will say right up front
that this is dangerous ground for us.
There are two equally destructive chasms,
one on either side,
that we can fall into if we are not careful.
One of them is believing
that true Biblical faith
delivers us from any obligation to keep the
moral law of God.
The person who has believed this lie
will say to themselves,
"Oh, I know that what I'm doing
doesn't exactly line up with all those
commandments,
but as a Christian I have been freed from the
law,
and I just have faith now
that God understands where I'm at
and will make it all work out fine."
The other chasm is believing
that true Biblical faith
is the same thing as approaching God on the
basis of obeying His moral law .
This is the great lie of legalism
and man-made religion.
The person who has accepted this lie
begins his thinking
not with the Person of Christ,
but with THE LIST
and then draws his sense of security with God
and his peace with himself
from how well he keeps that list.
Neither one of those is correct.
Neither one is true Biblical faith.
True Biblical faith
does not throw out the moral law of God
as no longer relevant to the life of faith,
nor does it approach God
through obedience to His moral law.
True Biblical faith
will lead the Christian
into a whole new relationship with the moral
law of God
by coming first to the Person of Jesus
Christ Himself,
and then by allowing Him
to lead us into His moral law.
And Paul's wording in this 31st verse
is truly remarkable.
He starts with the first of those two lies
when he says, Do we then nullify the Law
through faith? May it never be!
Does true Biblical faith
remove our calling to live a moral life?
Paul says, "May it never be!"
The means by which we pursue that calling has
changed dramatically,
and if we are hearing what our God is saying to
us about His law,
we will also find that our attitude toward that
calling has changed dramatically.
But the calling itself remains unchanged,
and it remains unchanged
because our God's love for us
could never motivate Him to do
otherwise.
There is something I urgently want us to see right
here,
and I do pray my Lord will give me the words
to help us see it.
You see,
there is something remarkable that will happen in
the Christian's
relationship to God's moral law
if our Lord's healing program within us
is progressing as God intends.
That remarkable change is this -
the more we grow in true Biblical faith
the more we will discover
that true faith
and true morality are the same thing.
EX.
I once had a pair of binoculars
that I left outside all winter.
They froze,
and thawed,
and froze,
and thawed,
and sat buried for months under the snow.
When I retrieved them in the spring
when I first looked through them
everything was a confused muddle.
The lenses were still clear,
but somehow the frame had twisted
so that the two sides were viewing
from slightly different angles.
At first I couldn't figure out what had happened.
All I knew was that looking with both eyes was a
confused mess.
Then I tried closing one eye at a time
and everything was clear.
Not only was it clear,
but I was seeing the same thing
through each lens
through a slightly different angle.
I think the Christian's relationship with faith and the
moral law of God
is a little bit like those binoculars.
When we look through the lens of faith
we see our Lord Jesus Christ.
But then, when look through the lens of His moral
law
we suddenly realize
we are once again seeing our Lord
from a slightly different angle.
Let me try again.
Prior to our union with God through Christ
our spirits lived in a hostile relationship
with the moral law of God for two obvious
reasons.
First of all,
the very nature of the law's unbending demands
of THOU SHALT NOT
enraged our rebellious spirits
and made us want to fight against that
law all the more
just to prove to ourselves
and to our God that we were in charge of our
own lives.
And second,
when we dared to look honestly
at the moral law of God
we were forced to admit that we did stand justifiably
condemned before God
on the basis of that moral law.
We were guilty!
The law was both that which goaded us into sin
and that which then turned around and become
our judge,
condemning us to death.
But once we were reunited with our God
through the work of Jesus Christ for us
He did two things
that, for the first time in our lives,
allowed us to look logically at His
moral law.
1. He paid our sin debt in full for eternity
so that the moral law
could never again stand over us as our
condemning judge.
2. And He replaced the moral law with Himself
as the doorway through which we reach God.
Rom. 7:4 Therefore, my brethren, you also
were made to die to the Law through the
body of Christ, that you might be joined to
another, to Him who was raised from the
dead, that we might bear fruit for God.
Rather than our trying to earn our entrance
into the presence of God
through our obedience to His law,
through Christ "... we have obtained our
introduction by faith into this grace in
which we stand..." (Rom. 5:2).
Once these two truths take root within us and begin
to grow
we will discover within us
a radical change in our perspective on the
moral law of God.
Once it no longer has the authority
to separate us from our God
and once we no longer have to keep it
in an attempt to earn God's acceptance
for the first time we can look into it
and see there
God's hidden treasure for us -
the revelation of the way life really works.
When Paul says to us,
Rom. 3:31 ¶ Do we then nullify the Law
through faith? May it never be! On the
contrary, we establish the Law...
he is telling us that, if we have received the true
message of faith
it will take us where the moral law of God
pointed us
but could never have taken us itself.
He is telling us that
though the moral law of God
could never have lead us into the love of our
God,
now the love of our God
will lead us into His moral law
and through it show us His love
in even deeper, richer measure
by providing us with the perfect blueprint
for an approach to life
in which all of our deepest needs
are met in fullest measure.
Legalism replaces the Person of Christ
with the moral law of God
and seeks to once again
lead us to God through obedience to the
law.
True faith, on the other hand,
leads us to our Lord Jesus Christ,
and then frees us to say to Him,
"My Lord, because I trust You
I will take your hand
and let You lead me back into Your moral
law."
My best attempt at illustrating
what Paul is saying in this statement
about the way in which God establishes His
law in our lives
through faith in Christ
is the fishing lake story
from the 2nd chapter of The Grace Exchange.
To help pull all of this together
I can't resist the urge
to share it with you once again.
Imagine, for a moment that you are an avid
fisherman on a perfect summer afternoon. The sun is
shining, a gentle breeze is blowing, and there is not
even a mosquito to mar the day. You have your pole
and tackle box in hand, and you are hiking down a
little trail in the woods.
As you round a bend in the trail, suddenly you
run into a fence about three feet high. On the fence is
a sign. Bold block letters proclaim: BEWARE!
DON'T YOU DARE CROSS OVER THIS FENCE!
On the other side of the fence is a sandy beach and
the prettiest little lake you have ever seen. Huge trout
are jumping out of the water.
You stand there for a few minutes wondering
what to do. Finally, the pull is too much. Obviously,
whoever put up that sign did it simply to deprive you
of the best fishing lake in the world. You toss your
pole and tackle over the fence and then climb over
yourself. You start walking toward the lake, but
before you have taken a dozen steps, the ground
gives way and what looked like a solid path turns
into a mire of quicksand that begins to suck you
down. Frantically you fight for your life and, after
several minutes of clawing and grasping at bushes,
branches, and weeds, you finally drag yourself up
onto solid ground. Your hands are badly cut and
bleeding, you have lost all of your equipment, and
you are filthy and exhausted.
This is an accurate picture of our battle with sin
prior to coming to Christ. Satan seeks to convince us
that God's commandments are really barriers that
wall us off from those things we are certain we must
have. We don't trust the commandments, and we
certainly don't trust the One who gave them. Too late
we discover that violating those commandments has
highly destructive consequences.
How does our situation change when we come
to Christ? First of all, when we walk down that trail
as a Christian, we do not walk alone. Our Lord
Jesus Christ now walks with us. He shares the
afternoon with us, and His presence gives us a
heightened appreciation for the beauty surrounding
us.
When we round that bend, the fence is still
across the trail and we can still see the fish jumping
in the lake in the distance. But now no sign hangs
on the fence. As we watch the fish jumping in the
distance, our Lord says to us, ``My child, I want
you to know that I was the One who built this
fence. I did it to protect you. From here, I know
that lake looks inviting, but all is not as it seems. I
want you to trust Me and stay on this side of the
fence."
Just being freed to approach moral obedience
through the Person of Christ rather than through the
harsh, demanding written law does much to free
believers to make right choices - choices that were
impossible for us to make prior to our coming to
Christ.
Still, what if we decide not to listen to the voice
of our Lord? What if we look at the lake, see those
fish, and say to our Lord, "I know You mean well,
but I just have to give it a try. I won't fish long. I'll
be right back, OK?" What happens if we hop over
the fence and head for the lake?
Those times when we jump the fence are
always filled with a great deal of tension within us
because we know this is not what our Lord wanted.
Typically, we handle that tension by keeping our
eyes fixed on the lake, telling ourselves it will all
work out. In our mind we imagine our Lord
standing on the other side of the fence, His arms
folded, a bit of a scowl on His face as He waits for
us to come back to Him.
This just isn't so! Our attention is so focused
on the lake, we do not realize that when we crossed
over the fence, our Lord climbed over with us. He
is still there, walking with us. There is no scowl on
His face. If we could look into His eyes, we would
see only pain-the kind of pain He always feels
when someone He loves is about to be hurt. His
death on that cross has made it possible for Him to
never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5), even
at those times when we harden our will against
Him. Our sins can never again wall us off from our
Creator.
We still fall into the pit, just as when we were
nonbelievers. But now our Lord stands by the edge,
His arms outstretched. When we finally stop
thrashing around long enough to realize He is there
and reach out to Him for help, He takes our hand
and pulls us out of the filth. Then, as He cleans us
up and bandages our wounds, He says, ``Now, my
child, I want to talk with you once again about why I
built that fence."
Rom. 3:31 ¶ Do we then nullify the Law
through faith? May it never be! On the
contrary, we establish the Law.