Series:
Romans
Title: Man’s
Objections, God’s Answers
Text:
Romans 3: 1-31
Date:
June 3, 2018
Place:
SGBC, New Jersey
When God
begins to work in a sinner’s heart—one-by-one God strips away every vain,
self-justifying, objection we have. My purpose in preaching the gospel to you
is in hope that God will take away every objection you have to salvation by
God’s grace
Today, I
want to show you: Man’s Objections and God’s
Answers
Proposition: For the child God saves, he makes all our objections vain,
that he might shut us up to Christ alone.
Paul just
declared that God’s salvation is not by the works of the law but that God saves
Jew and Gentile by sovereign grace, by circumcising the heart, by which, we
worship God in spirit, not in the letter, not in the works of the law. So…
WHAT ADVANTAGE?
Romans 3: 1: What advantage then hath the
Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? 2: Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were
committed the oracles of God.
The
profitable thing about being a Jew is that God gave Israel the law and the
prophets which declared the truth of God’s righteousness and salvation through
the coming Messiah.
God has
sent his word to you giving you even more advantage than Israel. We see in Christ himself what God taught them
only in ceremony and type. This is the advantage God has given us.
What
profit is there in being Jew, in having the oracles of God? Much every way! What advantage do you have? Much every way! You have the gospel of God declared unto you while many
around you—like those around Israel—do not have this advantage. No sinner will be able to plead ignorance in
the day of judgment. (Romans 1: 20) But especially not us to whom God has sent
his gospel. The day of judgment will be
far worse for those to whom God has sent the truth, who yet hardened their
heart and refused to heed his word. Use
the advantage God has given you!
WHAT IF SOME?
Romans 3: 3: For what if some did not believe?
shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? 4: God forbid: yea,
let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be
justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged.
God fulfilled
every promise to Israel, he took them right to the promised land and they spied
it out. But after all that God did, they entered not in because of their own unbelief.
But did their unbelief make the faith of
God without effect? If some do not believe, does it mean God is not able to
bring to pass what he promised?
Does it mean
Christ’s blood was not effectual to put away sin? Does it mean that God the Holy Spirit is
unable to effectually quicken and call his children? “God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is
written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome
when thou art judged.”
Man’s
unbelief declares that man is a liar in the hardness of the natural heart. A
sinner’s unbelief declares the necessity for God to choose us from the
foundation of the world because we, by nature, will not choose God.
John 15:16: Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,
Our
unbelief reveals the necessity for God to love us and send his Son to make
satisfaction for our sins.
1 John 4: 10: Herein is love, not that we loved God, but
that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Christ
knew who he came to die for. He died for
them and no one else. He made satisfaction for their sins and no one else.
Man’s
unbelief reveals the necessity that God come to each one Christ redeemed by his
grace and give us life and faith in the new birth, because we will not come to
God.
John 5: 39:
Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are
they which testify of me. 40: And
ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.
John 3: 5:
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water
and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. 6: That which is born of the flesh is
flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
John 6: 43:
Jesus therefore answered and said unto them, Murmur not among yourselves. 44: No man can come to me, except the
Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day. 45: It is written in the prophets, And
they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath
learned of the Father, cometh unto me.
Those who
do not believe, do not change the faithfulness of God. They merely prove they
are not the elect of God.
Romans 9: 6: Not as though the word of God hath taken
none effect. For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel: Neither,
because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In
Isaac shall thy seed be called. 8: That is, They which are the children of the
flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the
promise are counted for the seed. 9: For this is the word of promise, At
this time will I come, and Sara shall have a son. 10: And not only this;
but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; 11:
(For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or
evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works,
but of him that calleth;) 12: It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the
younger. 13: As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. 14: What
shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. 15: For he
saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have
compassion on whom I will have compassion. 16: So then it is not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.
BUT IF OUR UNRIGHTEOUSNESS?
Romans 3: 5: But if our unrighteousness
commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous
who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man) 6: God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? 7: For if the truth of God hath more
abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged as a sinner? 8: And not rather, (as we be
slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that
good may come? whose damnation is just.
Natural
men hear us say “where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound” and they object “if the truth of God has more abounded through my lie unto his glory;
why yet am I also judged as a sinner? Why not do more evil, that good may come?”
Paul answers, “whose damnation is just.”
Sinner, never
flatter yourself that you and I do one thing by our rebellion to add to God’s
glory or to diminish it. When a diamond is laid against a black back drop the
black back drop does nothing to the diamond.
The diamond’s beauty is in itself.
God’s
glory is his own. God declares his righteousness by his Son. Man’s
unrighteousness does nothing to add or diminish the Righteousness he is and the
righteousness he accomplished at Calvary for his people. The truth of God shines forth of God himself.
Man’s lies do nothing to further the truth of God or take from it.
But such
objections will bring upon a man God’s just damnation! God’s judgment is
righteous and just because God gives the sinner exactly what he earned by his
own disobedience—“the wages of sin is
death.”
WHAT THEN?
Romans 3: 9: What then? are we better than they?
When you
preach divine election the question the natural man asks is, “What then? Are
God’s elect just better than others?”
You can declare plainly that God’s election is not based on anything in
the sinner. Still, the natural man only
thinks we are saying the elect are better than the non-elect. No the sinner is not better than the elect, we
all are totally ruined in sin.
Romans 3: 9:…No, in no wise: for we have
before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin; 10: As it is
written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11: There is none that
understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12: They are all gone out
of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth
good, no, not one. 13: Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their
tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
14: Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: 15: Their feet are
swift to shed blood: 16: Destruction and misery are in their ways: 17:
And the way of peace have they not known: 18: There is no fear of God before
their eyes.
The question
we need to ask is, “How then can a man be just with God? How can a sinner establish the law in
righteousness? How can God slay us as
his law demands he do to sinners, and at the same time, show us mercy?”
Since we
are all sinners it is certainly not by our works under the law. The law was given to give us a
knowledge of our sin to shut our mouths in guilty.
Romans 3: 19: Now we know that what things soever the law
saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped,
and all the world may become guilty before God. 20: Therefore by the deeds of
the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is
the knowledge of sin.
Righteousness
is by the faith of Christ himself, apart from our law-keeping.
Romans 3: 21: But now the righteousness of God without
the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22: Even
the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and
upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 23: For all have
sinned, and come short of the glory of God;
Those
whom the righteousness Christ is upon are justified freely by grace through
faith in Christ’s blood.
Romans 3: 24: Being justified freely by his grace through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25: Whom God hath set forth to be
a propitiation through faith in his blood,
The first
reason God saves this way is that he might get all the glory in being just and the Justifier of
those he saves.
Romans 3: 25:..to declare his righteousness for the
remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26: To
declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just,
and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
The
second reason is so that no man can boast.
Romans 3: 27: Where is boasting then? It is
excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. 28: Therefore we
conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. 29: Is
he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of
the Gentiles also: 30: Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the
circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.
Paul
proved throughout this second chapter that no sinner can be justified by his
works. God freely gives us the
justification accomplished by Christ through God-given faith so that we have no
room to boast of anything.
DO WE THEN?
Romans 3: 31: Do we then make void the law through faith? God
forbid: yea, we establish the law.
When self-righteous,
self-sanctifying sinners hear us declare the gospel, they call us antinomian—anti-law! They say we make void the law. So God uses
Paul to answer. God forbid!
Christ
fulfilled the law in every jot and tittle for each one who he shall bring to
believe on him. The law is not made void through faith. It
is only through faith in Christ that the believer can and has established the
law. The law is established not by our
obedience but by Christ’s!
Remember that
chapter divisions are added by the translators. Paul does not change the subject
in the next chapter. No, in the next chapter he proves this point. He proves it
so well by declaring this is how Abraham established the righteousness of the
law before as yet the law was ever given.
What? Can
a sinner establish the law when he does not have the law? Can a Gentile without the law establish the
law? Indeed, he can. Abraham did.
Romans 4: 1: What shall we say then that Abraham our
father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? 2: For if Abraham were justified by works, he hath whereof
to glory; but not before God. 3:
For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him
for righteousness. 4: Now to him
that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. 5: But to him that worketh not, but
believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for
righteousness. 6: Even as David
also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth
righteousness without works, 7: Saying,
Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are
covered. 8: Blessed is
the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.
I pray God make you to stop hearing the gospel
of God as aggravating, bad news and so that you believe on Christ! We have got
to be made guilty! This gospel is only
good news to the guilty. Are you guilty?
Is a perfect righteousness wrought by another good news to you? Is justification freely given by grace good
news to you? Is being wholly accepted by
God through the Righteous Person of his holy Son good news to you? Then Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and confess
him in believer’s baptism and thou shalt be saved. May he make it so.
Amen!