Advent of Jesus Christ

But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed; being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood... that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded... Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law... Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.

The coming of Christ is God's answer to an impossible question: how can a just God forgive the guilty?

The Lostness of All Humanity

For the last couple of months we have considered in depth the reality that all humanity is fallen, and therefore lost. Fallen because of sin, and desperately lost, walking in darkness at every level. We know the unbelieving hedonist is sinfully lost—their hedonism is clearly seen. But the moralist and the religionist are no better off. As we've seen in chapters 1, 2, and the beginning of chapter 3, all are guilty before God. Every single one of us.

Whether we want to admit it or not, none of us measure up. Our mouths are stopped, and we are guilty before God because of all that we have done. God's Law works to expose our guilt, for "by the law comes the knowledge of sin" (Romans 3:20). And even our good deeds, done according to the law of God, will not make us right in His sight.

The prophet Isaiah, speaking to a nation given a religion ordained by God at Mt. Sinai, said:

But we are all like an unclean thing, and all of our righteousness is like filthy rags before God. (Isaiah 64:6)

Even the good things we do in accordance with God's Law are tainted by our fallen heart. This is our desperate condition—completely lost.

"My God Is a Loving God"

Some, when confronted with this plight, respond, "But my God is a loving God, and because He is loving, He would never judge me or send me to hell." We see in Scripture, "For God so loved the world," and in the Old Testament, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." God's love is displayed many times. So we assume that because God is loving, He will not judge.

But we are processing the love of God through our own earthly, fallen mindset. The reality is that God is loving, but He is also just and holy. Because of His very nature, He cannot simply clear our guilt or pass over it. It is not that He merely loves; in His very essence He is love—but in His very essence He is also just.

Solomon speaks the truth in Proverbs 17:15:

He who justifies the wicked is an abomination to God.

To justify the wicked here means to clear over guilt—to release someone evidently guilty from a just punishment. It is repulsive that a wicked person would go unpunished. And because we are created in the image and likeness of God, we share this repulsion. We cannot stand injustice; we are disgusted by it.

The Great Dilemma

This creates a significant problem. If the law is unable to make us right before God, and if there is nothing we can do to make ourselves holy, and if God abominates the injustice of clearing the guilty—then how can we be made righteous? How can we escape the righteous wrath of God? How can a loving and gracious God, who is also just and holy, maintain His justice while at the same time justifying us, without becoming a self-abomination according to Proverbs 17:15?

This is what the Advent is all about. When we celebrate the birth of Christ—the coming of this Great One—we are celebrating the answer to that question. Now, it is highly unlikely that Jesus was born on December 25th; let's get that out of the way. We are merely celebrating His coming. Christmas, Christ-mas, means the celebration of Christ. The picture on our Christmas cards is not necessarily reality—when we sing "No tear did He shed," that's probably not true. Jesus came into the world as a little baby. But what we celebrate is the Advent, the coming, of the One who answers this great question.

We All Love Justice

It is right that God would pour out wrath upon sinful man—upon those who have committed injustice and wickedness against the character of God. And in our core, we recognize that justice must come. We all love justice. I can prove this by how we react when someone cuts us off on the freeway—every one of you has wished you had lights on top of your car. Why? Because we love justice and want that person to taste it.

Until we are the ones doing the cutting. Maybe you've "accidentally"—it's always an accident—gone through a red light, and then in your rearview mirror you have a minor panic attack, because you think you see justice. And immediately there's a cry in your heart for mercy. As it relates to ourselves, we want mercy; as it relates to others, we want justice. God fashioned us this way.

We see the effects of the fall all around us. I'm convinced crime is not necessarily increasing—there's just more of humanity and more availability to know about it. Be a student of history and you'll find wickedness has always abounded. And as Jesus said in Matthew 24, "As wickedness abounds, the love of many grows cold." This happens in us too. As we look out over a fallen world, we become cynical and lose love. When we see someone different than us, we get uptight, because we've been affected by the realities of the fall.

"But Now"—A Change of Course

So the problem is laid out with extreme clarity, and there is nothing we can do to make ourselves righteous. What can be done? Look at verse 21: "But now." I love those two words. We love the "buts" of the Bible. Something has changed; there is a change of direction. After we come to the recognition of our utterly helpless lostness, we read, "But now."

I like how the New Living Translation reads in Romans 5:6: "When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time." You know those suspenseful movies where everything seems to be falling apart, and you're on the edge of your seat, and then at just the right time Frodo comes on the scene, or Han Solo appears, and everything is okay. Now amplify that a million times. When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time. The law was given for the purpose of preparing the way for Jesus to come at just the right time, when everything seemed utterly lost.

The Righteousness of God Apart from the Law

How can we be made righteous? The Advent is the answer. How can a just and holy God maintain His justice and at the same time justify the wicked—and we are all wicked? The answer: "But now the righteousness of God."

We spoke of the righteousness of God earlier, in Romans 1:17: "For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, 'The just shall live by faith.'" Why must it be revealed? Because verse 18 says, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." So we need the righteousness of God revealed.

But this is the righteousness of God apart from the law, because by the law there is no righteousness. We cannot be made righteous by the deeds of the law, and God cannot arbitrarily clear our guilt because He's "a loving God"—He is just! So how does He make a way? "The righteousness of God is revealed apart from the law, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets." This isn't something the Prophets didn't foresee. The law was given not to make us righteous but to expose our error and reveal what is right to a holy God—and in doing so, to reveal that we are desperately lost. But the law bears witness of the Righteous One.

The Prophets Foretold His Coming

The Prophets foretold the coming of this One; they foreshadowed His momentous arrival. That is what Advent means—the arrival of a Great One.

In the Prophets we find it was prophesied 700 years before that He would be born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14). The Scriptures foreshadowed that He would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:1-2), that He would be a child of Abraham (Genesis 12 and 22), that He would descend from the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:10), and that He would be born of the royal line of David (Jeremiah 23:5-6). They foretold that He would receive gifts from kings and be worshiped by shepherds (Psalm 72:9-10). We could go on and on. "There is none righteous, no, not one," but He is the Righteous One who came—the Everlasting One, the Prince of Peace, the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God. The Scriptures revealed He would come onto the scene, and the gospels show us that He did.

Faith Must Have an Object

Romans 3:22-23 tells us this righteousness comes "through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference; for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Righteousness by keeping the commandments is impossible; the commandments were given to reveal our unrighteousness, and they do it very well. Therefore righteousness must come another way—the righteousness of God, which comes by faith.

But faith must always be attached to an object. It's not blind faith, like some people have about the Chargers winning a Super Bowl. Your faith must be seeded in a good object, one that is faithful and worthy of your trust. Saving faith is not a mere mental recognition—"Yeah, okay, I accept that." Many people make a mental recognition about Jesus. Saving faith is trusting that what He did 2,000 years ago on the cross is the sufficient payment for your sins. When you stand before a holy God as a guilty sinner, all you will say is, "What He did on my behalf is sufficient. My good works mean nothing."

This righteousness is "to all and on all who believe"—not a small select few. If both Jews and Greeks are under the power of sin, then all are in the same condition. There is no difference, because all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory. Even a descendant of Abraham, even one with the priesthood, the law, and the temple, is still a sinner who needs the Advent. We all do.

Propitiation: How God Remains Just

Verse 24 says we are "justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness... that He might be just and the justifier of those who come by faith in Jesus."

So God, who is holy and just, is able to maintain His justice while also justifying sinners. But that runs against Proverbs 17:15—God abominates those who justify the wicked. How can He do both? The answer is: in Jesus.

We are justified freely by grace—it's a gift. But it is not cheap; the gift must be purchased, and that is what redemption means. The purchase price is Christ Jesus Himself. God the Father set Him forth, purposed and planned that Jesus would be the propitiation—a theological term that simply means the atoning sacrifice. God the Father determined that Jesus would be the atoning sacrifice for us. We know He would be sacrificed because we read of His blood being shed in verse 25, and our faith in Him secures that for us. He paid it all.

God Demonstrated His Righteousness at the Cross

This demonstrates God's justice. At the end of verse 25 we read, "because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed." This doesn't mean He would not judge them; it means He tolerated, for a time, the sin of humanity, because He had a purposed plan. God has every right to obliterate us because of our sin. And He has poured out His righteous wrath—in the flood (Genesis 6-9), and upon Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 18). Yet in the midst of His wrath there was grace—upon Noah and his family, upon Lot and his daughters. God tolerated even their wickedness because He had a future plan to demonstrate His justice.

How is His righteousness clearly seen? Verse 26: "to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." God poured out His justice upon Jesus Christ. Jesus is perfect, holy, God incarnate, without sin, "tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin"—and yet He became sin for us. On the cross He bears all the sin of humanity, and God pours out His just wrath upon Him. So God demonstrates His justice in the shedding of the blood of Jesus, "for without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sins."

Where, Then, Is Boasting?

Verse 27: "Where then is boasting?" What can we boast of? It was our sin that caused His death. We have nothing to boast of. Paul writes this because the moralist boasts about his morality—"God would certainly not send me to hell, because I'm a pretty good person, not as bad as that wicked heathen." The religionist boasts about how well he's kept the tenets of his faith. But there is no boasting in Christ, because all have sinned and fallen short of His glory. "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus."

"For by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ for good works." Our good works come after salvation, as proof of it; we are not saved by them. Boasting is excluded. That grates against our natures—we cannot boast about earning salvation, because we've done nothing but sin.

The Law of Faith

Boasting is excluded "by what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith." There is another law—the law of faith. The Law of Moses spoke of works we ought to do, but it was given to show us that our works would never measure up. The law of faith supersedes the law of works.

A good illustration is the law of gravity. It works very well, and it's hard to overcome. But there is another law that supersedes it—the law of aerodynamics. Have you ever flown on a 747? It's a big thing, and as it hurtles down the runway, part of you wonders, "Is this really possible?" My wife would say, "This is just not natural." But as it lifts off, you overcome the law of gravity—as long as you stay in the 747. Step outside at 37,000 feet, and you'll have real problems. So it is with Christ. As long as you're in Christ, you're okay. "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law."

God of Jews and Gentiles—Establishing the Law

"Or is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also." This is not just for the descendants of Abraham. There is one God who justifies the circumcised by faith—not by circumcision, not by the law, not by lineage from Abraham—and the uncircumcised through faith. God is one and works this way with all.

"Do we then make void the law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law." The law was not given to make us righteous, so faith does not make it void. The law was given to show us our need for Christ, to expose our sin. By believing in Jesus we prove that the law is true—holy, just, and good—because "by the law is the knowledge of sin."

The Real Advent Story

Here is the Advent story; this is what Christmas is all about. It's not about poinsettias, however nice they look. It's not about presents under a tree or Christmas lights. It's certainly not about Nordstrom's and Macy's—though some shareholders would have you think so. It's about Jesus Christ the Righteous, who became a man for the purpose of dying to be the redemptive price for our sin.

The sad reality is that we live in a day when this has been relegated to myth. There is a four-story sign in Times Square right now showing Santa Claus with the words, "Let's keep the Merry," and a picture of Jesus on the cross with the words, "and get rid of the Myth"—courtesy of the Atheist Society in America, whose national day is April 1st. In the eyes of humanity, Jesus is a myth. But the Scriptures reveal that Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords, the only One by whom peace with God can come. He came to pay the price so we could receive the gift of grace. And if you've received that gift today, you have the awesome opportunity to give it to someone else. This world is in need.

Closing Prayer

Father, we pray that we would be those who are passionate about bringing that gift to others. As we exchange gifts with family and friends who may not know You this next week, give us a stir in our hearts, a passion to share the gift of Your grace. We thank You that we have a day set aside as a nation to rejoice in Your Advent. Help us to use it as an opportunity to share Your grace. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.