Today we come to the end of our exposition of Romans 1-7. My aim
today is to venture the impossible: a summary of the first seven
chapters of Romans and of 104 sermons that began April, 1998. My
prayer and my longing is that the structure of truth – the
vision of reality – in this book would become the structure
of your mind and your vision of reality. That you would
think about God and sin and Christ and life the way the apostle
Paul does – the way God does. And that you would thus become
a humble lion-hearted alien and exile in America, ready to lay down
your life for the glory of Christ and the salvation of sinners.

A Summary of Romans 1-7

Romans teaches that the most fundamental problem in the universe
is that God's human creatures – all of us – have sinned
and fallen short of his glory and are now condemned under the
omnipotent wrath of God. There is the problem of our condition
called sin. And there is the problem of its consequence called
wrath. Another way to say it is that there is real guilt on every
person because of sin, and there is real condemnation over every
person because the Judge and Maker of the universe is just and
holy.

Paul's conclusion after two chapters of as acting the
prosecuting attorney is Romans 3:9, "What then? Are we better than
they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and
Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, 'THERE IS NONE
RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE.'" Romans 3:22-23, "There is no
distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God." And there's a good definition of what our sin is and why it
has mainly to do with God, not man.

When he describes the sins of his own people in Romans 2:24, the
climax of the indictment is this: "The name of God is blasphemed
among the Gentiles because of you." What makes sin sin is not first
that it hurts people, but that it blasphemes God. This is the
ultimate evil and the ultimate outrage in the universe.

The glory of God is not honored.
The holiness of God is not reverenced.
The greatness of God is not admired.
The power of God is not praised.
The truth of God is not sought.
The wisdom of God is not esteemed.
The beauty of God is not treasured.
The goodness of God is not savored.
The faithfulness of God is not trusted.
The promises of God are not relied upon.
The commandments of God are not obeyed.
The justice of God is not respected.
The wrath of God is not feared.
The grace of God is not cherished.
The presence of God is not prized.
The person of God is not loved.

The infinite, all-glorious Creator of the universe, by whom and
for whom all things exist (Rom. 11:36) – who holds every
person's life in being at every moment (Acts 17:25) – is
disregarded, disbelieved, disobeyed, and dishonored by everybody in
the world. That is the ultimate outrage of the universe.

Why is it that people can become emotionally and morally
indignant over poverty and exploitation and prejudice and the
injustice of man against man and yet feel little or no remorse or
indignation that God is so belittled? It's because of sin. That is
what sin is. Sin is esteeming and valuing and honoring and enjoying
man and his creations above God. So even our man-centered anger at
the hurt of sin is part of sin. God is marginal in human life. That
is our sin, our condition.

And the consequence of this condition is the wrath of God.
Romans 1:18, "The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in
unrighteousness . . . . (21) For even though they knew God, they
did not honor Him as God or give thanks." The failure to make the
goodness and glory of God the center of our lives brings the wrath
of God upon us.

Romans 2:5, "Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart
you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and
revelation of the righteous judgment of God." In Romans 2:8,
"[Those who] do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, [will
receive] wrath and fury." When we hear words like this – that
we are all "under sin" and that sinners will receive the "wrath and
fury" of God – we need be still and let that sink in. These
are terrible words. When the omnipotent God has wrath and fury, no
greater negative force can be conceived. We speak of the fury of a
hurricane that flattens buildings or the fury of a tornado that
snaps off trees like toothpicks. But these forces are as nothing
compared to the fury of the wrath of God.

In Revelation 14:10-11 John gropes for language to describe the
length and depth of hell. He says that sinners "will drink of the
wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the
cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone
in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.
And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever; they have
no rest day and night." There is nothing more fearful in reality or
in imagination than the prospect of everlasting, never-ending,
omnipotent, unimpeachably just and righteous divine wrath and fury.
And that is the consequence of our sin.

Unless we get this clear in our heads and powerful in our
emotions, the love of God will be reduced to sentimentalism or to a
mere assistance for our self-help improvement and recovery plans.
It will not be to us the infinitely precious, tremblingly embraced
treasure that it really is.

The Turning Point: The Law of God Cannot Justify or
Sanctify

Now comes to major turning point in the book. When Paul, the
prosecuting attorney, has done his job, he ends in Romans 3:19 with
the words that "every mouth [is stopped] and all the world [has
become] accountable to God." Then he adds, in essence, Don't even
begin to think that you can take God's commandments – God's
law – and make them a means of getting right with God. "By
the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for
through the Law comes the knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3:20). And not
only that, Don't even begin to think that you can take God's
commandments and make them the means of becoming a new person. You
can't be acquitted by the law, and you can't be transformed by the
law. The Law of God cannot justify you and the law cannot sanctify
you.

On the contrary, the message of Romans 3-7 is that God sent his
Son, Jesus Christ into the world to live and die and rise again to
be the ground of our justification and the power of our
sanctification. If anyone anywhere in the world is going to get
right with God or bear fruit for God, it will be through Jesus
Christ alone. And he alone will get the glory. He is the great
ground of our justification, and the great power of our
sanctification.

Let's take these two great works of God (justification and
sanctification) one at a time and see how Christ is God's remedy
for our condemnation and how Christ is God's remedy for our
contamination. How we escape the wrath of God into his favor, and
how we escape the power of sin into lives of holiness and love.

Justification: God's Remedy for Our Condemnation

Before there can be any talk of changing the way we live –
fixing our minds, fixing our families, fixing our churches, fixing
our society – before any of that, and as the indispensable
foundation for all of that, we must first escape from the wrath of
God and be counted by him as righteous. Before there can be any
God-honoring transformation there has to be the removal of God's
condemnation. Which means justification must precede and provide
the foundation for sanctification.

So Paul deals with it first. The central text is Romans 3:24-25.
Guilty, condemned sinners are "justified as a gift by His grace
through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed
publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith." Every
phrase is precious to guilty sinners tottering on the brink of
hell.

"Justified" is precious because it means God declares
us to be just and righteous in his sight even before we escape from
the power of sin.

"As a gift" is precious because it means we can't earn
this. It is free. We don't deserve it. We don't get fixed before we
have it. It is the basis for getting fixed.

"By His grace" is precious because it means that behind
the wrath of God there is another mighty impulse in the heart of
God toward us, grace, moving God, in complete freedom, to save us
from his own anger.

"Through the redemption" is precious because it means
our sins are forgiven and we are set free – redeemed –
from condemnation.

"Which is in Christ Jesus" is precious because it means
that Jesus himself and not us and not the law is the foundation of
our justification. He is a much more solid rock to stand on than my
law-keeping ever could be.

"Whom God displayed publicly" is precious because this
great transaction of redemption was not done in a corner, or in
some mythological story, but in history under a Roman governor
before many witnesses.

"As a propitiation" is precious because it means that
the wrath of God that we deserved was removed. Christ absorbed it,
and took it away. He became the curse for us and took away the
judgment of God. God was propitiated.

"In
His blood" is precious because it means that Christ
died for me. He poured out his life-blood in my place and did what
I could never do to save me. Only the death of the Son of God could
save a sinner like me.

"Through faith" is precious because it shows how you
and I become beneficiaries of all this grace. We don't work for it,
we receive it as a gift by faith. Paul underlines it in Romans 5:17
with the words, "Those who receive . . . the gift of righteousness
will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ." By faith alone
we receive the pardon and the imputed righteousness of Jesus.

So justification is God's act of counting us to be righteous,
even while we are yet sinners by grace alone, through faith alone,
on the basis of Christ's work alone, for the glory of God alone.
This is the greatest thing in the world – to know God without
wrath and full of grace because of Christ.

That is God's remedy for our condemnation and how we escape the
wrath of God into his favor. We call it justification.

Now, how is Christ God's remedy for our contamination? How do we
escape the power of sin into lives of holiness and love?

Sanctification: God's Remedy for Our Contamination

Justification is not a process of transformation. It is a
declaration that before God we have a right standing, acquitted and
righteous. It happens in the twinkling of an eye when we first
believe in Christ. Sanctification is a process of transformation.
It goes on through life and is based on the fixed, firm, unshakable
ground of justification. That's the key difference.

And Christ is the key to both, not law-keeping. And faith in
Christ is the means for both. We've seen it with justification. Now
let's just remind ourselves what we have seen about sanctification.
Paul says in Romans 6:19, "Yield your members to righteousness for
sanctification" (rsv). In other words, give yourselves to this
process of change. But how? How do justified sinners change into
fruit-bearing followers of Christ? Romans 7:4 has proved to be a
key verse for us: "Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to
die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be
joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order
that we might bear fruit for God."

We who are justified want to bear fruit for God – we want
to bear the fruit of "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Gal. 5:22-23).
We want to become humble lion-hearted aliens and exiles in America,
ready to lay down our lives for the glory of Christ and the
salvation of sinners.

How does it happen? Not by preoccupation with the law but by
dying to the law and belonging to another – Jesus Christ,
risen from the dead. You embrace Jesus. You hold fast to Jesus. You
trust Jesus. You treasure Jesus. You fellowship with Jesus. You
love Jesus. Jesus becomes the passion of your life. That's what
Romans 7:4 implies: Die to law-keeping and give yourselves to your
all-satisfying marriage union with Jesus Christ.

So that's where we are now as we come to the Great Eight. No
condemnation, because of Christ. And deep transformation because of
Christ. One is called justification. One is called sanctification.
We take our stand daily by faith on the once-for-all, unshakable
rock of our Justification in Christ. And then we give ourselves
daily by faith to the sanctifying work of Jesus in our lives. Oh,
come and trust him. Unbeliever, come to him and put your faith in
him, and receive him as your righteousness, your pardon, your
treasure. Believer, come to him, again and again and again and take
him as your treasure, the rock of your righteousness before God,
and the power of your love toward men.