Pity Poor #144,001

Romans 3:27-31
November 16, 2008

Pity poor #144,001. Jehovah’s Witnesses are sincere people, but part of their aberrant belief system is the idea that Heaven will be populated by 144,000 people. Wouldn’t you hate to be #144,001? We can imagine Maxwell Smart wistfully saying, “Missed it by that much!” How silly—and yet in a system based upon good works, wouldn’t that be something like the way it worked?

Think about it: what if the gospel were about works, and not about faith? What if a person were convinced that his good works played into the salvation equation? What are some things that would be true?
• How would I ever know if I’d done enough good works, or if the good I’d done outweighed the bad?
• Why would Jesus have had to die on the cross?
• What kind of place would Heaven be like?
o “Here’s what I did to make it!”
o Lots of bragging; think about the egos!
o Would God receive the glory, or would we get some?
• Faith would become irrelevant

By contrast, we believe that because of our indwelling, innate sinfulness, there is nothing that our good works can accomplish when it comes to the achievement of our salvation. Paul lists several key truths about the faith-alone gospel:

I. Excludes boasting – :27-28
Paul goes back to his “diatribe” form of teaching, that of imagining a conversation between two individuals. He asks three questions: first, “what becomes of our boasting?”

We love to boast about ourselves! Some of us may do it in a more modest fashion, rather than in a boisterous way, but we all naturally want other people to like us, to think highly of us, and frankly, we want to think highly of ourselves, and so one of our bad habits is boasting. Paul betrays the fact that he himself was a religious braggart; in Philippians 3, he lists the credentials of which he’d have boasted in his days before Christ. But for the Christian, the fact that we are believers is never cause for boasting in ourselves. Our problem is our focus on ourselves, but the cure is focus on Jesus, and Paul says that those who boast ought to boast in the Lord (Galatians 6:14).

Paul in verse 28 sets two possible paths to salvation alongside one another. One is the way of faith; the other is the way of works. The two are mutually exclusive. The person trying to earn his way to Heaven through the performance of good works will never have any certainty that he’s made it, that he’s done enough, that God has accepted him as His child. This person is constantly looking at himself, asking, “am I good enough?” Contrast that with the faith-walking follower of Jesus: we look to Him, for we know both that we have nothing in ourselves to offer Him, and that He alone has made the way by which we can be redeemed.

II. Establishes God as God over all – :29-30
Note Paul’s second question: is God the God of Jews only, or of Gentiles, too? Paul has been arguing for the exclusiveness of the gospel, that it is the only way, the only path.

Let’s put it this way: man-made religion might say, “Jesus and…” The spirit of this age says, “Jesus or…” The gospel says, “Jesus only!” Paul now uses the argument of the exclusiveness of the gospel to make a different argument, one for the inclusiveness of the gospel. Since there’s one God, there must be one way of salvation, and the deciding factor is faith, then if the Jews come by faith, so must the Gentiles be able to. The dividing line is not between circumcised and uncircumcised, between clean and unclean, between Jew and Gentile, between moral and immoral, between good and bad, whatever that means; the dividing line is between faith alone in Jesus alone and any/every other system in the world.

Paul puts the Jews on the horns of a dilemma. They prided themselves, of course, on being God’s chosen people; “hear, O Israel, the Lord is One”, and that One was their God, Yahweh. They also prided themselves on confining to themselves salvation, that Gentiles did not possess salvation, indeed only could come to God through coming into Judaism. But if there is only one God, then who is the God of the Gentiles? Must it not be this same God, Yahweh, the God of the Jews? The same God Who justified the “circumcised” Jews by faith will justify the “uncircumcised” Gentiles by faith as well.

The Jews had forgotten God’s promise to Abraham, recorded by Moses, that He would not only make of Abraham a great nation, but that through Abraham’s seed, all of the nations of the earth would be blessed. The benefits and privileges of salvation were for the blessing of the Gentiles, not for the exclusion of the Gentiles. Do we ever make the same mistake? The point of our salvation is the blessing of others, not merely our own blessing! We make that mistake
• Every time we extend to sinners the pointing finger of judgment instead of the hand of love
• Every time we make of some “opposition group” an object for our hatred
• Every time we show a blithe unconcern for people without Christ

III. Explains the purpose of the law – :31
Paul asks his third question: do we overthrow the law by this principle of faith? Paul has already tackled the fact that the law does not produce a right standing before God, the righteousness of God. Now, he answers the opposite objection: there was a philosophy that took root in the early church called antinomianism. From the Greek words meaning “against” and “law”, this term is the opposite of legalism, which is the attempt to use obedience to the law as a means of salvation. This philosophy said, basically, “since we’re saved by grace through faith, and keeping the law plays no role in our salvation, we are now free to pitch the law and live as we please, indulging whatever desires we see fitting.” Paul says that this kind of thinking is not consistent with the gospel, though some try to make it such.

A fair question is then raised: what do we make of the OT law? Is it of value, or is it rendered null and void by the gospel? Paul says emphatically that the law is still of value, that we “uphold the law”. What does this mean, though? Douglas Moo suggests there are several ways we could possibly interpret Paul’s emphatic statement that the law, far from being undermined or rendered useless, is upheld by the gospel. All of these possible interpretations are true; the only question is “which does Paul have in mind?”
• The law is a testimony to the gospel (ch. 4).
• The law brings conviction of sin (3:19-20).
• The law is a source of guidance for the Christian life (13:8-10).
• The law is God’s standard for holiness, and has been perfectly fulfilled in Jesus (8:4).

Moo opts for the last option on the list, that it is Christ Who fulfilled the law’s demands. Stott has a variation of this, believing, from the same passage in 8:4, that it is believers who themselves are seen to fulfill the law by virtue of being in Christ. Christ Himself said that He had not come to do away with the law, but to fulfill it, and then He did, living a sinless life and dying a sacrificial death to demonstrate the truth of what the law was pointing to all along.

What’s the upshot for us? Practically speaking,
• No boasting
o Boasting stifles worship

o Boasting of our works ignores their inconsistency and imperfection

• No discrimination

• No lawlessness
o I will remember that while Christ fully met the demands of the law, I am one who has been bought with a price, to glorify Him.

o I will use my freedom in Christ to serve others.

Romans 3 is arguably the most essential chapter in the most essential book in all of the Bible, because it articulates in such clear terms the way God has worked to provide salvation to sinful man. We come to its conclusion today in our study, but again I would stress that the important thing is not that we understand its truth intellectually, but that we by faith alone confess as our Lord and Savior the Jesus to Whom Paul’s great teaching points.

Taking it Home
• Galatians is the “companion” book to Romans; Paul there tackles the problem of false teachers who try to add law-keeping to the gospel of grace. Read Galatians 6:12-14, and answer the following:
o What does Paul say are the motives of these teachers?
o What do they fail to do themselves?
o Where does Paul place his “boast”?
o What do you think he means by the second phrase of verse 14?
• The gospel of Christ is both “exclusive” and “inclusive”. In what senses are these things true?
• The Jews forgot that one key purpose of their being blessed was to be a blessing to the nations (Genesis 12:3). How do Christians today sometimes make the same mistake?
• Antinomianism (lit. “against law”) was a prevalent misunderstanding of the gospel of grace, suggesting that a plan of salvation that did not require good works in order for a person to be justified would encourage the saved person to live a lawless life.
o Why is this teaching wrong?
o Why is this teaching dangerous?
o What would you say to the person today who would espouse that kind of thinking?