Romans 3

• In Romans Chapter 1 the Gentile world is guilty before God. God has revealed himself through creation and nature.

• In Chapter 2 Paul explains that the Jews and the Moralists are guilty too.

• Whether we are the unrighteous or tend to be self righteous, we are all guilty.

• Last week, Paul showed that the religious person is not justified by keeping the law because no one ever keeps the whole law.

• We all fail to keep the Law, especially because our heart covets.

• All of us have coveted and lusted in our hearts and thus, we are all guilty of sin.

• Sin is according to degrees, but guilt is not.

• You’re not guilty by degrees! You’re either guilty or not. If you’ve sinned just one time, you are guilty.

• Ex. If you get caught speeding, you can’t say to the cop, “Everyone else was speeding too; I had to.”  It may have been your first time speeding, but you are still guilty.

• We concluded last week: God looks at our heart, not the outward ceremony! God wants our heart, an inward heart change.

• In light of what Paul has said in chapter 2, the question is posed:  What is the advantage of being a Jew? Of being circumcised?

• Much! God had revealed His Word to the Jews.

• The Jews had a privileged position of having the Word of God.

• We in America are a people of special privilege; we have the Bible.

• We can meet freely because God has blessed us with the opportunity to study His Word.

• It is an advantage if you keep the Word, but it is not an advantage if you don’t keep it.

• We have a greater responsibility because we have the Bible.

• Here is an interesting concept: If I say I don’t believe, does that make it so? For example, if I say I don’t believe that 2 + 2 = 4, does that make it so? What if I don’t believe in gravity, does that make it so? Of course not. It just proves that you are a fool.

• So, just because some don’t believe, doesn’t make the faith of God of no effect.

• The facts are not altered! Facts are facts!

• “Certainly not!” in the Greek means “Banish the thought.”

• God’s truth stands. Believe it or not, the truth still stands.

• If no one believes it, it is still true!

• Within this verse is a quote from Psalm 51, when David was faced with his sin with Bathsheba, and David prayed for forgiveness.

• God is justified in what He says, but men challenge God about judgment, about heaven and hell or the fairness of God. For example, “How could a God of love allow a child to be born with an impediment?”

• These questions are almost always about the fairness or justice of God.

• We want to blame God for every calamity, but we don’t give Him credit for all the good He does.

• Our world is living in rebellion to God, and we love to blame God when bad things happen.

• But we are reaping what we have sowed. God told us that we would reap the consequences of our sin, and then when that happens we want to blame God, when in actuality, we are the blame.

• Ex. If you go up on the roof of our church and jump off, you can’t blame me if you’re hurting real bad afterwards. It is not my fault if you were that dumb. You broke the Law of Gravity, and so it is with God’s Law.

• Even so, God can’t be blamed either. He has warned us, and yet we go ahead and do these things and think we can blame Him.

• Who do we think we are in blaming God?

• But, in verse 5 is their argument.

• God said the Jews would fall into sin and yet He hasn’t destroyed Israel yet. We still exist don’t we? We have the Bible still, don’t we? 

• God shouldn’t judge us because we are the ones who have the Word. He certainly wouldn’t destroy us. That would be unfair.

• In other words, what if I told people this big lie, and everyone just loved it and many got saved!! Man, it would be great.

• But, it was a lie, yet I convinced everyone that God is wonderful.

• This is irrational logic.

• Does that mean that I should just go out and do whatever I want and sin, and since I’m saved God will still be glorified with my life?

• God’s love, grace, and comfort can’t be tampered with.

• Don’t mistake the patience of God as His approval!  You see, men often make the mistake that if God hasn’t judged them in their sin, then He is approving of it.

• But, that is not so!

• It is glorious to see the grace of God transform people miraculously. It is wonderful to see someone who has lost everything, who is at the bottom of the barrel, come to know Christ and have his or her life completely turned around.

• They are trophies of His grace!

• So many of you have been rescued from the junk pile.

• God gave the Jews the Law and He told them the consequences if they disobeyed Him, but the advantage is gone because they did not keep the Law with their hearts.

• But the Gentiles don’t have a greater advantage either. The Jews are not better than the Gentiles and the Gentiles are not better than the Jews.

• Both the Gentiles and Jews are under sin.

• We are all guilty before God. No one is righteous!

• There is no such thing as a “seeker”! No one seeks God.

• Death, destruction, poison, misery, feet running swiftly to murder…What an indictment!

• The law or keeping rules doesn’t make you righteous.

• Ex. We tend to think that if we do all the right things on the outside that we are righteous. It is a “righteousness of rules.”

• This is not to imply that our outward behavior does not matter.  It does matter, but that is not what makes us righteous.

• We tend to look to God for blessing because of the outward rules that we are keeping.

• This is what the Pharisees and Sadducees were doing!

• If you have broken one rule, just one rule, just one time, you are guilty!

• All that the law does is point out our guilt. The law makes us guilty, so we will not trust in our own righteousness.

• Jesus told a parable:

• All that the law can do is show us our sin and then drive us to Jesus for salvation.

• So many churches have set up rules for righteousness and all that does is set us up for “self righteousness”, which will not save us.

• In the next chapter Paul will use Abraham as an example for faith, for believing in God as the point for righteousness.

• God will take Abraham outside and show him the heavens (this is pre-pollution days).

• Out in the desert looking at the myriads of stars, God said to Abraham: Just like the stars of heaven, so will your sons be.

• Abraham believed God! He was immediately righteous.

• Abraham believed that the Messiah would come from his seed.

• In other words, Abraham believed in Jesus Christ.

• If you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior of all of your sin, you will be immediately saved!

• We are all sinful.

• Ex. In olden times an archer would shoot his arrows at a target and a judge would stand near the target and call out either “Bullseye” or “sin”…Sin 1; Sin 2; Sin 3 meaning “missing the mark.”

• All of us are missing the mark with our lives; we come short.

• Ex. Now admittedly, some are better than others, some are kind of mean, some are more soft and tender, but we all miss the mark.

• Ex. If we are in a boat going to Hawaii and the boat goes down and we all start swimming, some are stronger than others and maybe I can only go one mile and you can go three miles, but neither of us can make it to Hawaii. We are both going to drown.

• Someone may be closer to the mark, but the consequences are the same!

• Grace from God is freely given! You are not only going to heaven because of God’s grace, but you can experience His kingdom blessing now on earth.

• The justice of God is mentioned 30 times in Romans. This legal term comes from the word “righteousness.” It means to “be declared righteous.”

• Justified: Just As If I Never Sinned, through the redemption in Christ.

• When you believe in Jesus and His finished work on the cross, you are declared righteous because you receive all of the righteousness of God.

• You cannot earn righteousness, and you do not deserve it.

• You get His blessings, His favor, His power.

• There is a death sentence against all who sin.