Romans 3:19-28                                                                       Reformation Day, October 27, 2019

“Both Ways”

There are times when I wish I could have it both ways. I wish I could eat whatever I want and as much of it as I want – especially Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and Mexican food (tacos, burritos, enchiladas) – but still lose weight or at the very least not gain any. I wish I could stay up late and watch movies, but not have to face the consequences of being dead tired in the morning. I wish I could buy as many Legos sets as I can, but not go broke. But as they say, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

But in the second reading today for Reformation Sunday, Paul reminds us that in one particular case both ways can be had. God can both be just and the justifier of the unjust. God can have it both ways – and this, of course, is a great thing for us.

Today is Reformation Day. Today we commemorate the beginning of the Reformation when Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses to the door of the Castle church in Wittenberg on All Hallows’ Eve (Halloween), challenging the sale of indulgences. Why do we commemorate the beginning of the Reformation every year? Two reasons: 1) One, it’s a reminder that the church continues the need to be reformed, because – even though we’re forgiven and restored children of God – we have a tendency to stray from God’s Word. 2) Two, to celebrate the grace of God we have in Jesus. It was by God’s grace that he used a little-known German monk to redirect people to the Gospel instead of their own works for salvation.  The Gospel – the good news that your sins are forgiven and you have salvation through the cross and resurrection of Jesus – is what Luther pointed to. So the point of the Reformation and what the church continues to do to is point people to Jesus.

As early as 1522, some of Luther’s supporters began identifying the Gospel-bearing angel in Revelation 14:6–7 – the first reading today – with Luther himself. The connection was drawn most famously at Luther’s funeral. Although Luther was no longer with them it was said, “the mighty, blessed, godly doctrine of this precious man still lives most powerfully. For he was without doubt the angel concerning whom it is written in Revelation 14, who flew through the midst of heaven and had an eternal Gospel.”

The simply definition of the word “angel” is messenger. And Luther would certainly fit that description. He was a messenger pointing to the Gospel. But as great as angels are we don’t worship them. We worship the one who they point to. So today isn’t really about Luther. And Luther wouldn’t want it that anyway. It’s all about God and what he has done in Jesus.

And what exactly God has done is be just and the one who justifies. God is just. That is to say, God is holy and righteous, without sin and hating sin. Paul’s argument throughout the first couple of chapters of Romans assumes that God is just. The whole Bible, both testaments, testifies to God’s justness and righteousness.

The Bible also makes the point that God is a righteous judge. Earlier in Romans, Paul writes that those with “unrepentant hearts” are “storing up wrath” for themselves “on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” (2:5). The phrase “judgment of God” occurs elsewhere in chapter 2, leading up to our text. Not surprisingly, then, in Revelation 14:7 we are told, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come.” God being “just” has implications for us. The Creator expected his creatures to be like him. He is just, and he expects us to be just. He is holy, and he expects us to be holy.

Naturally, then, God’s Law is also just. This truth permeates everything Paul says in our reading. God’s “justness” is reflected in his Commandments. It should be no surprise that a just God would give just Commandments, and that he would create knowledge within his creatures of what is just. Paul uses this truth in Romans to show that both those who have the written Law, the Jews, and those who do not have the written Law, the Gentiles, have the same standard of “justness.” For although the Gentiles did not have Moses and the Ten Commandments, they had what we call the moral law, written not on stone, but into the very fiber of their being as God’s creatures. In fact, all people of all time have this knowledge. Or in the words of Paul, they “by nature do what the law requires…They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts” (2:14, 15). In other words, we have the basic knowledge of right and wrong. We know murder is wrong. We know that taking what doesn’t belong to us – stealing – is wrong.

The Law is so “just” that Paul says the “doers of the law who will be justified” (2:13). But Paul also notes that “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin” (3:9), and in our text he says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (v 23). He then cites six Old Testament texts that make this point. First, he cites Psalm 14:1–3, which clearly hammers home the idea that “all” share in this same predicament of being “ungodly” or “sinful.” “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (3:10–12). He follows this up with Psalms 5, 10,  140, and Isaiah 59:7–8. “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.” “The venom of asps is under their lips.” “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.” Each of these describes the terrible results of human sin. We call this “original sin.” It infects even the parts of our body that produce speech: “throat,” “tongues,” “lips,” and “mouths.” Not only this. He states that, because of our sinful nature, “their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.” He concludes by citing Psalm 36:1: “There is no fear of God before his eyes.” Later, in the next chapter, Paul will call us “ungodly” (4:5). It’s clear – “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (v 23). God is holy, and we are not. God is righteous, and we are not. God is just, and we are not.

And that should be terrifying! It was certainly terrifying to Luther and was why he struggled so much to make himself acceptable to God. Now, if God and his Law are just and we’re not, if the doers of the Law will be justified, and yet no one does the things of the Law perfectly, how can anyone be justified? How can anyone survive God’s judgment? How can anyone survive the wrath to come? Or, on the other hand, how could God be just if he does justify (declare innocent) the sinner, the unjust? The only two options that immediately seem apparent are that God is just and therefore he must punish the unjust – which is everyone, or that God does not punish the unjust and therefore he isn’t just. How can there be justice if sinners walk free? How can God have His cake and eat it too?

The answer is Jesus. It’s all about Jesus. We “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 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. 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” (vv 24–26).

Christ’s sacrifice paid the price for all those sins, indeed for past, present, and even future sins. God did not let those sins go unjustly unpunished. God demonstrates, or shows, his own just nature by demanding payment, by punishing sin with the eternal pains and suffering of hell that sin deserves. But he fulfills his longing to be the justifier by himself becoming the payment. The payment was Jesus. God provides a substitute for us. Jesus faithfully lived under the Law, fulfilling it perfectly, and then offered his perfect life on the cross as a payment for our sins. There the penalty for our being unjust, those very sufferings of hell, fell upon him. On the cross, he became everything that is “unjust.” He “became sin” on the cross. There sin is justly punished. Then in what Luther calls the “happy exchange,” Jesus’ faithfulness is applied to us. We are made just – just as if I’ve never sinned – in God’s eyes. That’s the Gospel.

The work of Jesus allows God both to justly punish sin and graciously forgive sinners. Since this justification is, according to Paul, “by his grace as a gift,” it can only “be received by faith” (vv 24–25). Gifts are not earned; they are received. That’s the nature of gifts. Thus, Paul states, “we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (v 28). And this faith is specifically in Jesus, for Paul states that Jesus’ substitutionary work allows God to be the justifier “of the one who has faith in Jesus” (v 26). God justifies the unjust through faith in Jesus.

This is the joyous Gospel that changed the world for Luther and gave him joy – it is the eternal Gospel that was rediscovered and will continue to be proclaimed until the end of days. We celebrate the past – over 500 years of the Reformation! – to celebrate and recall how the Gospel will remain, despite advances against it, for all time.