“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. There are 6 million-plus Jehovah’s Witnesses in the world, so that’s not great news for almost all of them (they get eternity on earth, according to Watchtower teaching, which I suppose isn’t a terrible consolation prize). Further, their salvation plan is based upon the doing of good deeds. And thus I say, “pity poor #144,001!” “If only I had rung two more doorbells! Three more minutes of prayer, and I’d have beaten out #144,000!” “That one Sunday where I blew off church to watch the Braves!” 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?”
“Boasting is the language of our fallen self-centeredness”, wrote John Stott; it’s endemic to who we are as human beings to think more highly of ourselves than we ought, and to find ways to tell other people about it. I’m reminded of the preacher who was really burnt out from ministry, and one Saturday afternoon, despairing of having to stand up and preach again the next day, he decided that he’d tell a little white lie and call in sick, having his associate pastor preach for him. He, instead, would spend that Sunday morning on the golf course. Sunday morning dawned and the day was absolutely gorgeous, perfect for golf. The pastor arrived a little early for his tee time, and on the driving range, he was long and straight; his practice wedges were accurate; everything seemed right for a great day of golf. But things got better on the first par 3 he approached; hitting a gently-arcing 7-iron, the ball landed on the green, took two bounces, and plunked dead into the middle of the cup, a beautiful hole-in-one if there ever was one. Observing all of this from on high were a pair of archangels, Gabriel and Michael.
“Can you believe that”, asked Gabriel; “that scoundrel of a preacher lies about being sick, skips church, heads to the golf course, and promptly cards a hole-in-one. How can God allow that? That is so wrong!”
“Oh, I think God knows what He’s doing”, said Michael.
“Yeah? How’s that? God lets this skunk get a hole-in-one playing hooky from church? Why would God do that?”
“Easy”, replied the wise angel, “who’s he gonna tell?”
Michael understood human nature; the fun of getting the hole-in-one isn’t so much in sinking the ball in the hole, but in letting everybody know that you sunk the ball in the hole! Why? Because 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.
And our boasting isn’t limited to what we say; sometimes we boast quietly, with the proud look, the condescending attitude, the vain imagining of oneself to be smarter or better than another. We demonstrate pride when we cling to our opinions in spite of the evidence, merely because those opinions are “ours”. We can even boast in our humility, if we’re not careful!
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).
Why is boasting out of place? Because it is on the basis of faith, totally apart from our good works, that we are justified; we contribute nothing but sin to the equation; God does the saving apart from anything we do. 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.
Note something else: we are not justified because of our faith, but by/through our faith. In other words, God doesn’t look at the great level of faith you’ve managed to achieve and say, “wow, what faith! He’s worthy of salvation!” Sure, “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11), but the quality of our faith, or the depth of our faith, or the level of our faith, isn’t what’s important; what matters is the Object of our faith. I referenced this several weeks ago, but this idea that we need to “have faith in our faith”, taught by some popular TV preachers, is a bogus gospel. Faith is itself a gift of God; He enables us to place our trust in Him, for He is working behind the scenes to accomplish His purpose. Now, if that’s true, how can there be any room for boasting or bragging as though we’ve somehow achieved salvation via our own efforts? And this also
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. I read this news, though, this week about the current state of affairs in “religious America”:
Pew Survey Finds Surprising Flexibility in American Religious Tolerance – ABC 6/23/08
Mary Burrell, a St. John's Episcopal Church member in New York City, accepts that believers of other religions can also be saved. "I believe in every religion. It's hard for me to be just nailed down to Christianity," she shared with ABC News.
Christopher Scott, a member of Burrell's congregation, echoes her inclusiveness: "I don't think there's any doubt that that's possible. ... Anyone can find their way…I picture the universe -- speeding through the galaxies," Scott explained. "If I'm imaging God, that's what I imagine. It's an all-powerful force."
John Green, who conducted the poll, was genuinely surprised by the results. The findings show that 83 percent of mainline Protestants, 79 percent of Catholics, 82 percent of Jews, and 56 percent of Muslims concur that eternal life is not exclusive to their faith. "I didn't think it would be that high," Green remarked, "and I didn't think that the figures would extend to so many different religious communities." Fifty-seven percent of Evangelicals, a group which often speaks the loudest in faith-fueled debates, also takes a non-dogmatic stance.
57% of evangelicals—aren’t evangelical!
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. Now, fuzzy thinking is popular these days, and thus some folks want to imagine God at the top of a mountain, and the Muslim climbing one side, the Buddhist another, the Hindu a third, the Christian via another path, but when they converge at the top, they find that they’ve been seeking the same God all along. There are so many levels upon which that analogy is wrong; suffice it to say that the many, not just different but contradictory, understandings of Who God is makes this idea illogical, indeed impossible. But it’s sure a popular thing to profess these days, is it not? The gospel of Jesus Christ excludes, but it also includes as well; it’s critical that we understand what that means.
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 said that salvation was narrow, when it was broad; the spirit of this age says that it is broad, when it is narrow. This is a gospel for the whole world; this is a gospel only for those willing to bow before the Lord Jesus Christ and confess Him by faith alone. The Jews to whom Paul is writing 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
The gospel is exclusive, but it is inclusive at the same time (Romans 1:16). The gospel excludes all boasting; it also excludes all elitism and classism and racism and illegitimate discrimination. The different ways we classify ourselves neither gain nor lose us God’s favor, and they do not, should not, come between us when it comes to fellowship in Christ. We all belong to the same family and eat at the same table. God is God over all, and Father to all who come to Him through faith in Christ. Third,
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
If it’s about me, then it’s not about God. And it’s not about me!
o Boasting of our works ignores their inconsistency and imperfection
The best of men are men at best. The best of our works are inconsistently performed and imperfectly done. Pride has no place in the life of the Christian; to the contrary, Scripture tell us that it is when we humble ourselves that the Lord will lift us up.
• No discrimination
If the gospel is inclusive for all, I will share it with others, and it won’t matter my esteem of their person, or their worthiness, or whether I believe they will respond favorably. That’s not in my hands; my role is to be the sharer of God’s truth, not the Holy Spirit Who brings conviction and regenerates the sinner.
• 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.
Holy living is the natural result of being born from above; if we have been purchased by God as His own—which we talked about when we spoke of redemption—then doing His bidding is our goal, not living for ourselves as though holiness didn’t matter. In fact, the Bible tells us that without holiness, no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14); when Christ truly saves us, it will begin the change in our lives that brings about holy living. Yes, I am free, but
o I will use my freedom in Christ to serve others.
Galatians 5:13-14 says, “do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Yes, in Christ we live free; the purpose of our freedom, though, isn’t to indulge ourselves by flaunting the law, but rather it is to serve God and others with a motive of love. I can love without expecting in return; I can serve without worrying about being taken advantage of; I can live as one who chooses to serve others, and to find my joy, not in the fleeting pleasures of sin, but in the good of 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.
Table Talk
Look at I Corinthians 3:10, then at I Corinthians 15:10. Paul isn’t boasting, and yet he declares some of the things that he had done, and seems self-content in doing so. Where’s the line between boasting, on the one hand, and an ability to be content with one’s spiritual progress, on the other? How do we know if we’ve crossed it?
