In Sight of the Promised Land

Very much alone, an incredibly old man made the slow, labored climb to the top of the mountain. Moses was 120 years old—way too old to be climbing mountains. While the summit of Mt. Nebo was only 2,631 feet above sea level, making it more a big hill than a mountain, Moses’ starting point on the Plain of Moab was 1,200 feet below sea level, which meant the hike to the top involved a climb of nearly 4,000 feet over rugged, rocky terrain through hot desert air. Exhausted, Moses rested a few minutes to catch his breath in the shade of a big rock (there were no trees here). Wiping his brow, he downed the remaining contents of his water skin. He needn’t save any for later. There would not be a return trip. God was granting him only a distant look into the land of promise. It would fall to Joshua to lead Israel on the next stage of a journey that began over forty years earlier in the court of Pharaoh. Moses’ work was over. He would die on this mountain, alone with God. 

He gathered his remaining strength, stood, and looked to the southwest, back toward Israel’s encampment. In spite of his many years his eyes were still clear, his vision sharp. But the rising heat from the valley floor rippled and distorted the view. He thought he could just make out dust rising as the people and their herds began to stir. They’d soon be on the move. Beyond the Plain of Moab, sunlight glistened off the waters of the Dead Sea. And though he could see no further in that direction Moses knew that far beyond those lifeless waters lay the blistering Sinai—Israel’s prison for a bitter forty-year sentence and Moses’ home for even longer, thanks to his years of sojourn among the Midianites. Somewhere out there Zipporah was buried in the desert sand, as was her father, Jethro. And Aaron… And Miriam…  And so many others… so much death. Not everything about a long life was a blessing. 

Below him to the west lay the great rift valley of the Jordan. He could just make out a thin, twisting, green, line snaking its way along the desert floor. That would be the Jordan River. Like the Nile of his youth, the Jordan’s muddy waters offered vegetation along its banks a place to flourish in a land with precious little rainfall. Moses briefly wondered how Israel would manage the crossing. It was early spring; the river was in full flood from the winter rains. Suddenly very tired, he set the question aside. It was no longer his concern. Joshua would have to deal with that one. 

Leveling his gaze he looked to the western horizon where he saw another thin green line rising above the barren slopes of what would come to be known as the Wilderness of Judah. That would be the central hill country of Canaan, in full flower from the rains. Due west of Nebo and just out of sight beyond the horizon was another summit: Moriah, the place where Father Abraham was once ready to offer up Isaac. And though Moses couldn’t have known it, almost 500 years later another leader of Israel would build the temple on that very same spot. 

His eyes followed that line of green hills north until they disappeared in the hazy distance. Finally, he looked due north. There, barely discernable on the very edge of sight over 100 miles away, the land rose to a lofty 9,232’ above sea level. This was a real mountain. In time it would be known as Mt. Hermon. Over fourteen centuries after Moses climbed Mt. Nebo he would stand on that other mountain. This time, appearing in his heavenly glory and accompanied by the prophet Elijah, he would wait in attendance on the Son of God at the occasion of Jesus’ transfiguration. 

But that was far in the future. For now, as his time on earth drew swiftly to a close, he caught a glint of white on that distant peak. Moses was a man who had spent his entire life in subtropical deserts. On the very day of his death, just maybe, he got his first and only glimpse of snow.

MOVIE REVIEW: SON OF GOD

A few weeks ago I was one of the Lynchburg area church leaders who attended a private pre-release screening of the new movie Son of God which officially opened today. Son of God was produced by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, the husband and wife team who were the executive producers for The Bible, the 10-hour TV miniseries that premiered on the History Channel in March of 2013. Footage from The Bible was edited to create this new feature-length motion picture about the life of Christ, the first major motion picture about the life of Jesus since Passion of the Christ was released ten years ago. 

Mark Burnett and Roma Downey have impressive resumes both individually and together. Five time Emmy Award winner Burnett is one of the pioneers of the “reality TV” genre with such shows as Survivor and The Celebrity Apprentice to his credit. Downey has been nominated for an Emmy of her own. She is best known for her recurring role as a tender-hearted angel in the series Touched by an Angel. In addition to co-producing Son of God, she also appears in the film in the role of Mary. 

I only saw the first installment of The Bible when it came out last year so this was my first look at their portrayal of Jesus. The excessive artistic license in that first episode of The Bible turned me off. (I think they lost me when Moses was shown engaged in a sword fight with young Prince Ramesses.) So I went to today’s screen with very low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised. This is a compelling film. 

The issue of artistic license is still in play. As a serious student of scriptures I found myself regularly annoyed by the writer’s ignorance or at least indifference to the chronology of events as recorded in the Gospels. For instance, in the gospel account of Jesus reading from the book of Isaiah in a synagogue, the event took place in Galilee at the beginning of his public ministry. In the movie it happened near the time of his arrest at an unspecified location but apparently somewhere in the vicinity of Jerusalem. But since gospel chronology is a matter that even the scholars debate, I’m willing to cut the production team some slack. What they did capture admirably was the spirit and thrust of the gospel story. The viewer is offered a compelling and reasonably accurate account of the life of Christ and the meaning of that life for you and me. And I must say that Diogo Morgado, the young Portuguese actor who portrayed Jesus, did a marvelous job in presenting a winsome Savior. 

Son of God is certainly no substitute for reading the Gospels for yourself. But it does offer a moving and visually satisfying artistic portrayal of the greatest story ever told, one that people who would never open a Bible would watch with interest. As a pastor I will encourage my members to use this film as a non-threatening evangelist tool, something that you could invite an unchurched friend to watch with you and that will offer you easy and natural opportunities for further sharing of the Good News.

Boreas

I had somehow forgotten about the cold. 

For the first time in nearly four years I’m experiencing an Upper Midwest cold wave. I knew back in Virginia during the wee hours of December 29 when Joyce and I piled into the van, pointed it northwest, and drove off into the rainy early morning darkness, that I was headed back to the once familiar world of winter in Wisconsin. What a way to mark my 60^th birthday. Drive 938 miles. Long hours of cold rain across Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio (it was a miserable trip), was followed by a brief bout of freezing drizzle in northwest Indiana—thankfully no more than a minor nuisance. For some miles I watched the car thermometer mark time to falling outside temperatures. It went from the low 40s around Dayton to the upper 20s as we entered Chicago. But it was when we stopped off at the Forest Oasis of the Tri-State Tollway north of O’Hare that the first real blast of arctic air hit us. 

It is amazing how quickly one can move across a frigid expanse of wind-blown asphalt from warm car to warm rest stop. You just need to be appropriately motivated. The cold was already threatening cardiac arrest and it had not jet cracked 20°F. But the wind! Ugh. Yet as bad as this was, I knew that just beyond the northern horizon loomed conditions far worse. By the time we arrived at our daughter’s apartment in Kaukauna, Wisconsin—just 22 miles southwest of Green Bay—the temperature was down to zero and the windchill was too bad to discuss in polite company. 

That night it got down to -15°F. The windchill hit -31°F. The following day the high was 0°F. 

I’ve experienced worse. Back in the early ‘90s shortly after we first moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, we had eight straight days when the temperature never made it up to 0°F. Two successive nights it dropped to -30°. That’s what the mercury actually recorded, not windchill. The windchill was down around -65°F. One day the HIGH was -20°F. We actually had a window crack due to the house’s contractions. But that was a long time ago. I was 39, not 60. Maybe I was tougher then. Or maybe today I’m just missing that insulating layer of 25+ pounds of fat that I starved off last spring. In any event, there are things about life in the deep freeze that I had allowed myself to forget, such as… 

·         The sensation almost akin to physical assault that you experience when you step out into wind-driven cold inadequately clad. I gave away my faithful old down parka years ago. I could have used it this week.

·         The way cold burns, especially unprotected ears. This is followed by that weird hot redness that those ears experience hours later in a warm room.

·         Icicles on my mustache.

·         Frosted mucus in my nostrils (yes, that is every bit as disgusting as it sounds).

·         The dry skin. Cold air is unable to retain much moisture. Heat up that already dry air, and the relative humidity drops drastically. With an indoor/outdoor temperature differentiation of 70 to 80 degrees, without some kind of humidifier the indoor air on a cold day has the moisture content of the Gobi Desert. Static electricity creates painful shocks. Your nostrils dry out worse than on a transoceanic flight. You find yourself constantly reaching for the hand lotion. Your throat gets dry. You become more susceptible to colds. For the last 24 hours I have had a dry, scratchy throat and an annoying cough.

·         The way cold penetrates. Physicists will tell you that this is an illusion. The problem is not cold coming in but heat escaping. But any Upper Midwesterner will tell you that those physicists have never spent a winter in Green Bay. The cold up here has a malevolent will. It is reaching out for you. It will find any crack, any gap, any opening that would defeat a determined cockroach in order to enter your place of refuge. So determined is the cold that denied that crack it will just force its way through wood, rock, concrete, or steel. It comes through solid walls. It comes through triple-paned glass. Sit near an exterior wall in an otherwise warm room and you will feel the chill of its icy fingers tickling the back of your neck, your wrists, your ankles. And like an army laying siege to a city of old, the longer the cold encamps outside your door, the more effective it becomes in finding a weakness in you defenses.

·         I had forgotten the glossy sheen of snow banks that have thawed, refrozen, and become petrified—little embryonic glaciers.

·         I had forgotten that thin narrow band of iron-hard ice that forms along the edge of city streets, the result of snowmelt that has refrozen in temperatures so low that road salt is rendered useless.

·         I had forgotten the stony-faced stoicism of people forced out of warm homes and cars on some unavoidable errand. They move with all possible dispatch from Point A to Point B, finding the straightest, fastest route through the cold, like some hapless trapper being forced to run a gauntlet of tomahawk-waving Sioux warriors. They move with the efficiency of water finding its way downhill. Eyes are narrowed to slits. Focus is dead ahead. Misguided Southerners think Yankees are unfriendly. Southerners just don’t know what it is to be really cold. 

The ancient Greeks had a name for the cold. Boreas was the Greek god of the cold north wind and the bringer of winter. His name meant “North Wind” or “Devouring One”. Boreas was very strong and possessed a violent temper. Boreas is in a particular foul mood as 2013 gives way to 2014. The last week of the dying year brought record cold to much of Wisconsin. We are warned that even colder air will arrive before the first week of the new year is behind us. The forecast HIGH for Monday is -10°F. By then I should be back in the gentle latitudes of the Virginia Piedmont. But my wife, my children, my grandsons, and millions of other unfortunates will have to face the rage of Boreas. 

Climate scientists inform us that the tipping point for the formation of those massive glaciers of the last ice age passed quickly. It was only a matter of a few years, not centuries, that transpired before those continental ice sheets began their inexorable push south. Thousands of years later the scars of that glaciation are visible across the Upper Midwest. Only a blink of geologic time has passed since ice stood a mile deep over the very spot where I type these words. Just a few bad winters in succession…

Thank God for global warming.

Just 12 Minutes a Day…

Most Western Christians have never read their Bible through from Genesis to Revelation. 

Most Western Christians don’t ever read the Bible outside of church except perhaps in a moment of desperation during a personal crisis. 

Not surprisingly, most Western Christians are shamefully ignorant of the contents of Scripture. Their Bible knowledge consists of a few disconnected stories and random verses picked up along the way in Sunday school classes or while listening to sermons. That knowledge is second hand—not personal. It has been widely acknowledged that the Bible is the least read bestseller in American publishing history. 

Contrast this sad state of affairs with what is typically the case with Muslim Background Believers (MBBs). MBBs are Christians who grew up Muslims and then converted to Christianity. On average, by the time a Muslim man has made the decision to follow Christ as a baptized believer he has already read the Bible through not once, not twice, but FIVE times. 

Five times… 

What about you? Have YOU read the Bible through five times? Are you a regular Bible reader at all? Are you a serious student of Scriptures? Have you ever read your Bible from cover-to-cover? If not, why not? 

We are busy, busy people leading busy, busy lives. One of the frequently offered excuses for our failure to read our Bibles is a lack of time. But let’s look at this scientifically. Just how long would it take you to read your Bible through? 

We know the answer because somebody took the trouble to time it. There are about 807,361words in the Bible (depending on the translation): 622,771 in the Old Testament and 184,590 in the New Testament. That means about 77% of your Bible—almost 4/5ths—is Old Testament, the part that Christians are most ignorant of. It takes just 70 hours and 40 minutes to read the Bible through—just under three full days. And that’s out loud. 52 hours and 20 minutes to read the Old Testament, 18 hours and 20 minutes to read the New Testament. The longest book, Psalms, will take just 4 hours and 28 minutes. It takes a mere 2 hours and 43 minutes to read the Gospel of Luke. 

You can read the Bible through in a year in less than 12 minutes a day. 

Can’t you commit to giving 12 minutes a day—30 seconds out of every hour—less than 1% of your day—to reading God’s word? Millions do so every year. My wife has done so every year for nearly 30 years. And it shows. She KNOWS her Bible. On January 1, 1987, when our son, Joshua, was 8 years, 8 months, and 13 days old, with no prompting from Joyce or me he took it upon himself to read the Bible through that year. Each night he set his alarm so that he would be up 15 minutes early so that he could do his Bible reading before school. On December 31, 1987 he closed his Bible after reading Revelation 22:21. Mission accomplished. A few years ago there was a TV game show called, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? My question to you is, are you as committed to discipleship as this fourth grader? 

I suppose it is a consequence of our fallen natures that good habits are hard to cultivate while bad ones get started all too easily. At Rivermont Avenue Baptist Church where I serve as senior pastor I want to help my members develop the habit of daily Bible reading. Here’s how: 

First, beginning January 1, 2014 I am encouraging all of my RABC family to start a daily Bible reading program. While there are many ways to approach this, I’m suggesting the easiest approach: Reading the Bible straight through from Genesis to Revelation, about 3 chapters a day. 

Second, daily Bible reading guides will be published in the newsletter and on our website at http://www.rivermontavenue.org/. 

Third, beginning Wednesday, January 8, I will lead a weekly Bible based on these readings. The Scripture passage for each study will be selected from among the chapters that we read the previous week. For example, since we will have read Genesis 1-24 during the first week of the year, my study on January 8 will be a passage selected from those chapters. Each session will be a stand-alone unit so you are not penalized if you can only attend sporadically. Each class session will be videotaped and posted on our website. 

Fourth and finally, daily Bible reading is not intended to be in-depth study. But as you read, questions will naturally arise. If you find yourself puzzling over a question generated by your reading, I invite you to post those questions on this blog and I'll try to help you find the answers.

We are trying to raise our congregation’s biblical literacy in 2014! I encourage you to spread the effort in your own church. 

It takes just 12 minutes a day. 

Pastor Glen

Comparative Thankfulness

Thanksgiving Day will soon be upon us.

What does it take to make you thankful?

That might seem like an odd question. But thankfulness is relative. It varies from person to person and from time to time. Just as one man’s junk is another’s treasure, that which stirs gratitude in one heart may dissatisfy another. The same thing which brings us joy and thanksgiving at one point in life can lead to disappointment later on.

One of the ironies of life is that the more we have, the more it takes for us to feel grateful.

Consider the case of Saudi Prince Alwaleed. In 2006 Forbes estimated that the prince was actually worth $7 billion less than the prince believed. The day after the list was released Alwaleed called the person responsible for the rating at her home, almost in tears. Never mind that he has his own 747, complete with a throne. Never mind that his “main palace” has 420 rooms. Never mind that he possesses his own private amusement park, his own zoo, and a reported $700 million worth of jewels. Never mind that he's the richest man in the Arab world, valued by Forbes at $20 billion. None of this was enough. As the late Texas billionaire, H.L. Hunt, once famously said, “Money is just a way of keeping score.” The Saudi prince was not grateful for his score.

But one need not be a prince to allow your possessions to diminish your sense of gratitude.

For most of our first ten years of marriage Joyce and I had a regular routine when we bought groceries together. Joyce would prepare a shopping list organized by relative importance with the “must-have” things listed first and those things wanted but not essential, last. She would then figure out how much money we could afford to spend on food that week. I would bring a calculator. As we wandered back and forth across the store, working our way down the list, I would keep a running total of how much we had spent. When we reached the amount that was budgeted for food (having made an allowance for sales tax) we headed to the checkout. Back then we were thankful when the money lasted longer than the shopping list. It’s been a long time since we had to take a calculator to the grocery store. Our expectations are now greater. We take more for granted.

Tennessee Williams once said, “You can be young without money, but you can't be old without it.” I think old Tennessee was on to something. You can delight a young child for hours with nothing more than the cardboard box that a refrigerator or washing machine was shipped in. What parent has not watched a toddler find more amusement with torn wrapping paper than the gift it once enclosed? Why must the day come when we open that package and ask ourselves, “I wonder how much this cost?”

Our accumulations, our expectations, and our sense of entitlement all color our sense of gratitude and thanksgiving. But so does loss.

Few of us think to daily thank God for our health until our health is in jeopardy. We are not likely to offer up a prayer of thanksgiving, “Thank you, Holy Father, for my healthy heart, lungs, breasts, prostate, liver, ovaries, __________ (fill in your favorite organ) until you are shaken by the fear that good health may not be something you can take for granted. But having once known that awful dread, only to be reassured that good health is indeed still yours, you suddenly find yourself face down on the ground thanking a merciful God for sparing you disease and maybe even death.

But lost health is not the only thing that can change our perception and alter what constitutes thankfulness. For years on end we may take for granted the presence of our children or grandchildren as we celebrate holidays, birthdays or the like. Then life’s circumstances change. Once familiar faces at our holiday table are suddenly far away. And too late, we are aware of what we should have been thankful for all along but only in retrospect—made finally conscious by its loss.

Between now and Thanksgiving Day our Rivermont Avenue family will be deeply involved in collecting, wrapping, and shipping Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes. We have all been moved by the stories of the profound gratitude that these simple gifts generate in the hearts of poor children around the world. Gifts that our own kids would take for granted fill these children of the Majority World with joy, wonder, and profound thanks. We will bless them by these gifts. May they, in turn, bless us with their example of thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Day will soon be upon us.

What does it take to make you thankful?

Glen Land’s 10 Rules for Avoiding Personal Disaster in Pastoral Relations with the Opposite Sex

1. Always remember what your primary role is: you are first and foremost a pastor. You are not primarily a counselor, though you will be called upon to offer counsel at times. Your expertise is in spiritual matters, not psychology. Consequently, do not get involved in long-term counseling situations of any kind. If you cannot deal with the issue in 2-3 sessions or if the issues are beyond your training or comfort level, refer.
2. Never initiate a hug with a female to whom you are not related and who is not old enough to be your mother—and seldom even then. Only accept hugs in public or in the presence of the woman’s husband. Physical contact is just too easily misconstrued. Even if your intentions are as pure as the driven snows of Antarctica, you have no control over what that other person may infer from what you intend as an innocent gesture.
3. Keep your study door open when meeting alone with a woman. If matters of confidentiality require the door to be closed, make sure the blinds are open and that the secretary is in the next room. NEVER meet a woman alone after hours.
4. You can never know with certainty what that woman is thinking—much less what her fantasies involve. You are paid to listen attentively and smile with understanding, even when you would prefer to be home watching TV with your shoes off and your feet up. You may be the only man in her life to treat her with even polite respect. What you intend as professional courtesy may be misunderstood as implying far more. You can never know for sure what she is hearing or how she is processing what you say and do.
5. If a conversation or other interaction with a female takes an uncomfortable turn, terminate the interaction at once and inform Joyce (my wife of 40 years) before the sun goes down.
6. If you find yourself wanting to spend more time with a woman than your ministry responsibilities ought to require, interpret that as an alarm going off: “Lane Encroachment Alert!” Get some physical and emotional distance between you and the woman—fast.
7. Never engage in any conversation or activity with a woman not your wife that you would not be glad to do in Joyce’s presence.
8. It is sometimes unavoidable that ministry responsibilities will encroach on personal/family time. If it does happen, make SURE it is truly unavoidable. Never make it a habit to put parishioners of either sex over Joyce.
9. Of course adultery can be physical. But it can also be emotional. You are not immune to flattery. If some attractive female is constantly telling you what a wonderful preacher/teacher/listener/etc. you are, it may well turn your head. Believing that every compliment you hear represents brilliant and unbiased analysis of what you say and do is the first step toward becoming a damn fool. Always remember that the people at church generally only see you at your best. They don’t see you unshaven, sweaty after mowing the lawn, or with that scary face that first greets you from the bathroom mirror in the morning. They don’t have to put up with your bad moods, bad attitudes, or bad breath. Joyce does. They get the “Main Street U.S.A. at Disney World” version of you—not the version with the cracked sidewalks and potholes.
10. Be prepared to sacrifice any relationship with any church member—regardless of how innocent it may seem to you—if the alternative is harming your marriage. Some women may see you as a surrogate father. Some may see you as a surrogate husband. You CANNOT, DARE NOT fill either role, even if only in the most platonic sense. Down that path lies personal disaster.

Some additional thoughts:

First, this list is my own. It reflects my own life circumstances and my own weaknesses and temptations. I think that most of this would apply equally to any man in ministry, and probably to any woman as well. But I would encourage you to develop your own list tailor-made for you. Feel free to appropriate any or all of my list without attribution, but change it around as needed to fit your own circumstances. For example, some of you may be trained and certified counselors. In that case you would probably wish to rethink item #1. But even in that case carefully consider if the roles of pastor and clinical counselor are truly compatible. It’s a debatable point.

 

Second, while I don’t claim that any of this is original with me, I cannot identify any specific sources. This is more practical wisdom than research. It represents conclusions arrived at from forty years of pastoral ministry experience. I wasn’t taking notes. I was learning—sometimes the hard way.

 

Third, I am grateful that God, in His providence, spared me the pain of great personal moral failure. I’ve seen too many ministry colleagues fall by the wayside, including some dear friends. Only a fool believes he is immune from temptation. In my case I suspect that some of my “obedience” was mostly a matter of good luck.

 

Finally, living by these rules may cost you. Over the years it led to two women leaving churches I served. One wanted me to be her father. One wanted me to be, in an emotional support sense at least, her husband. I was a disappointment to both. – GL

Paid in Full

  Paid in Full

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Rivermont Avenue Baptist Church, Lynchburg, Virginia

Reverend Glen A. Land, Senior Pastor

 

Romans 3:21-26 (ESV)

²¹But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— ²²the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. ²⁶It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

 

INTRODUCTION

·        John Piper pronounced it the greatest letter ever written.

·        John Stott called it, “…the fullest, plainest and grandest statement of the gospel in the New Testament.”

·        Martin Luther once said, “This epistle is in truth the most important document in the New Testament, the gospel in its purest expression.”

·        John Knox declared, “It is unquestionably the most important theological work ever written.”

·        According to Calvin, “When anyone gains a knowledge of this Epistle, he has an entrance opened to him to all the most hidden treasures of Scripture.”

·        It was Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the English poet, philosopher, and literary critic of the late 18^th and early 19^th Centuries, who perhaps best summed it up: “I think that the Epistle to the Romans is the most profound work in existence.” 

It was reading the Book of Romans that directly led to the conversion of such theological giants as St. Augustine, Martin Luther, and John Wesley. The impact on Christian history of Paul’s longest and most important letter cannot be exaggerated. It contains the clearest and most complete expression of the gospel in the Bible. It’s not by chance that the plan of salvation has often been called “The Roman Road.” 

If this were not impressive enough, consider the fact that my text this morning, Romans 3:21-26, is often viewed as the very heart of the letter:

·        C.E.B. Cranfield, author of what many regard as the finest commentary on Romans in print, calls these verses ‘the centre and heart’ of Romans.

·        The late D. Martin Lloyd-Jones, long-time pastor of Westminster Chapel in London who for years preached to standing-room-only crowds, called Romans 3:21-26  “… the acropolis of the Bible and of the Christian faith.”

·        Another preeminent New Testament scholar, Leon Morris, described it as “…possibly the most important single paragraph ever written.”

·        And finally, pastor and popular Christian writer and conference leader, John Piper, declared this passage to be “… the Mount Everest of the Bible…. There are great sentences in the Bible, and great paragraphs and great revelations, but it doesn’t get any greater than this paragraph in Romans 3:21-26.” 

I trust I have your attention. Today’s message deals with the very heart and essence of the Christian faith. How you choose to respond will determine your eternal destiny. It doesn’t get any more important than this. So open your bibles and follow along closely as we consider what the Apostle Paul wrote from Corinth to the church in Rome, sometime during the winter months of AD 56-57. 

The Context of Romans 3:21-26 – God’s Righteous Wrath toward the Sinfulness of the Human Race (Romans 1:16-3:20)

 

A basic principle of sound Bible study is to know your context. 

After a few introductory comments, in Romans 1:16-17 Paul spells out the theme of his letter, the righteous shall live by faith: 

¹⁶For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. ¹⁷For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.” 

From this point on through chapter 3, verse 20 Paul unpacks the sad, sorry litany of a sinful human race in rebellion against a holy God, a God whose righteous wrath is quite properly directed against sinners. 

1:18 – For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 

1:28, 32 – ²⁸And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. . . . . ³²Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

2:1, 5 – ¹Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things . . . . . ⁵But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. 

3:10-12 – ¹⁰as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one; ¹¹no one understands; no one seeks for God. ¹²All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” 

3:20 – For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

 

Romans 3:21-26 – The Path to Justification: The Story of God’s Costly Forgiveness

 

Paul has painted an utterly desolate picture of the plight of the human race. Without exception from Adam onward, we are judged to be uniformly evil, hopelessly lost in our sin. No matter how earnestly we try, we cannot, through own efforts, keep God’s law. Nor can we earn our own justification in his sight. 

We are the objects of God’s righteous wrath. We’re an affront to his divine holiness and stand even now under his condemnation. Yet while all hope seems lost, Paul declares that there is good news after all! Beginning with Romans 3:21, he tells the story of God’s costly forgiveness. He shows us the path to justification and peace with God. And it starts with two little words… 

“But now…” (vs. 21)

Just two little words, but on them swings the hinge of history. How many times have we seen a conversation or a relationship pivot on one tiny word? “I still love you but…” “I like your work however…” “I’ll buy your house if…” Too often those conjunctions work against us. “I still love you but I love someone else even more.” “I like your work however your co-workers despise you and want you dead.” “I’ll buy your house if you install a new kitchen and drop the asking price by twenty grand.” 

But sometimes we catch a break. Sometimes a little word works to change things in our favor. With verse 21 something significant has changed. More than a new paragraph has begun. A new approach to the Living God has been opened up to us. Before righteousness meant perfect obedience to the law—and no one was able to live up to that lofty standard. ^“But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law…” Those two little words, but now, have introduced the first fundamental change in the relationship between God and humanity since The Fall. God is offering us a way forward, a way out of sin and into his righteousness, but without the impossible challenge of living up to the Law’s demands. 

The words point backward to an event in history. When Paul wrote this he was describing something in the still recent past. Many living eyewitnesses could testify to its truth. In contrast to the impossibility of justification by good works, we’re now offered justification as a free gift—God’s free gift to us. 

“…the righteousness of God…” (vs. 21)

This refers to a new status of righteousness before God for you and me, a status that is God’s gift to us. This is critical if we are to understand what Paul is saying.  That God is righteous or that God’s righteousness is evident is hardly news. But that you and I can stand before God and be declared righteous… that we can come under the protection of God’s righteousness… that’s huge. This is a new thing in the relationship between God and humanity. It’s kind of like being allowed backstage to meet your favorite performer, not because he knows you but because some else has vouched for you and says your OK. But my analogy is flawed. God does know you. And he knows you’re not OK. But he has found a way to let you into his glorious presence for all eternity anyway, and in a way that still satisfies his justice. 

“…the righteousness of God has been manifested…” (vs. 21)

The Greek verb for has been manifested is in the perfect tense, describing a completed action that occurred in the past but which produced results that continue into the present. The emphasis of the perfect tense is not the past action so much as the present “state of affairs” resulting from the past action.  This gift of righteousness that God offers is a lasting inheritance. Once given, it’s forever. 

“…the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—” (vs. 21)

Paul is making a very important point here on a topic he feels strongly about. He is asserting that both the Torah—the books of Moses, first five books of the Old Testament—and the writings of the prophets affirm the truth that even before the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the gospel of salvation by grace through faith was anticipated. This is a recurring theme in Romans beginning in the first two verses of the letter:

 

¹Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, ²which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 

There is a widespread, serious error in the thinking of many Christians. It is the mistaken belief that while Christians are saved by grace through faith, the Jews of the Old Testament were saved by following the law. Even a hurried reading of Romans ought to put this notion to rest. As Paul states clearly in Romans 4:2-3:

² For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. ³ For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” 

In verse 22 Paul expands and clarifies what he said in verse 21. 

^22”…the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:”

The promised righteousness of God comes to us through faith in Jesus Christ. This is the first point in Romans where Christ is explicitly identified as the object of saving faith. This salvation is available to any and all who believe—Jew and Gentile, male and female, black and white and yellow and brown—all stand level at the foot of the cross. All are equally in need of salvation. All are equally welcome. But, and this is critically important in a day when many different paths to God are being promoted, while the righteousness of God is freely available through faith in Christ it is only available through faith in Christ. As Peter made emphatically clear on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 4:12: 

“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” 

There is only one antidote for the sin poison in your soul. There are a lot of snake oil salesmen out there feverishly pitching other remedies. Please understand that the sincerity with which you embrace a lie will count for nothing in eternity. If you have bacterial pneumonia you need an antibiotic. A mustard plaster will not help. Neither will Pepto-Bismol, Rolaids, or E-lax. Without the right medicine you may die. 

Sin is a terminal genetic disease of the soul. It is always fatal.  There is one and only one known cure: the grace of God received through faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the antidote. Accept him and you will live. Refuse him—look for a cure elsewhere—and you will die.

 

²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

You have no claim on God. He owes you nothing. Your best efforts to live a good life have earned you exactly…zilch. We are all members of the fellowship of sin, and it’s a big club.

We all know what it is to be disappointed by another. Even those we love best, those closest to us, let us down. And we, in turn, disappoint others. But our disappointment with one another pales beside God’s profound disappoint in us. 

Paul tells us that we all fall short of the glory of God. That’s a phrase easily misunderstood. Paul’s not suggesting that we’re under judgment for failing to achieve divinity.  Quite the contrary, it was Satan tempting Eve with the promise that “…you will be like God…” that got us into this mess in the first place. Our falling short of the glory of God speaks rather of lost potential. It takes us back to Eden and reminds us of just how far we have fallen. 

In The Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis uses a memorable phrase to describe human beings. He calls us “sons of Adam and daughters of Eve”. Have you ever paused to consider what it would be like to encounter that first man and woman in Eden as they existed before the Fall? To meet the parents of our race in all their sinless perfection? Were they to walk into this sanctuary right now, we would easily mistake them for gods, like characters out of Greek mythology only better. For they would be more than beautiful; they would be pure. They would be holy. Remember what it said in Genesis 1:27? 

So God created man in his own image,

    in the image of God he created him;

    male and female he created them. 

When Paul tells us that we fall short of the glory of God he is lamenting the lost glory of paradise. He is weeping over our lost inheritance. God created us in his image, an image that has been stained and distorted by our sin. How far we have fallen! 

What’s more, a careful study of the Greek grammar clearly implies that not only unbelievers but Christians as well still lack this glory of God. We can take comfort that we are once again heirs of the glory that was Eden. With saving faith comes justification. We are declared “not guilty”. Over a lifetime of discipleship comes a process of sanctification as we become daily more and more like Christ. But only when we are freed from this body of sin and stand at last in the presence of our Lord will the full glory that God intended for us be restored. 

²⁴and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

What does it mean when Paul says that we are justified? In a purely legal sense it means to be declared “not guilty”. But the courtroom is a poor metaphor for what God does for us in Christ. Let’s go back to Eden. We were created to be in fellowship with God. Sin destroyed that fellowship. In Christ that broken fellowship is restored. When we talk about the Old and New Testaments we are using a word that means covenant: the old and new covenants. To be in right relationship with God is to be in covenant with him. Our sin broke the covenant. Christ’s sacrificial death has restored it. When we are in covenant with God we are in communion with God. Hence the imagery of the communion service where we celebrate the new covenant in Christ’s blood. 

When we are justified a right status with God is restored and a process of moral regeneration—sanctification—is begun so that we will ultimately become what we have been declared to be. 

“…by his grace as a gift…”

Our justification comes as an undeserved grace gift. We are not saved so that God will love us. We are saved because he loved us when we were still unlovable. 

“…through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,”

The word translated redemption in the ESV can have several different meanings. It can simply mean deliverance or emancipation. But it often carries with it the idea of deliverance by paying a ransom. I’m strongly in favor of interpreting this passage with the sense of a ransom paid in light of statements such as Jesus made in Mark 10:45: 

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” 

Then there’s Isaiah’s prophecy quoted in Luke 4:18: 

¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,” 

It was by offering as a ransom his own life that Jesus purchased our freedom from slavery to sin while also freeing us from the consequences of sin: God’s condemnation, God’s wrath. 

This was achieved through Christ Jesus. It was through the Person and Work of the Son that the Father accomplished His redeeming action. 

And now we come to verse 25…

²⁵whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 

“…whom God put forward…”

Better translated, “whom God purposed.”  This means that it was the eternal purpose of God’s grace to offer His Son for our redemption. The cross was not some hastily conceived Plan B. It was always God’s plan for our redemption. 

“…as a propitiation by his blood…”

Propitiation is one of those scary-sounding theological words that over-simplified bible translations and preachers of feel-good sermons try to avoid. It’s not a word you’re likely to encounter outside a seminary theology class. That’s unfortunate, because as used in the New Testament, it’s a VERY important word that describes a critical aspect of our salvation.  

Propitiation comes from the Latin word propitiat-, meaning “made favorable.”

It is the act of placating and overcoming distrust and animosity; of appeasing or atoning for sin or wrongdoing (especially in the case of appeasing a deity). Propitiation is an act meant to regain someone's favor or to make up for something you did wrong. It’s a two-part act that involves appeasing the wrath of an offended person and then being reconciled to them. The process typically involves an offering. In relation to the Christian theology of salvation, propitiation means placating or satisfying the wrath of God by the atoning sacrifice of Christ. 

The Greek word sometimes translated propitiation only occurs 4 times in the New Testament: Hebrews 9:5, 1 John 2:2; 1 John 4:10, and here in Romans 3:25. Its Hebrew equivalent is the word translated mercy seat in the description of the Ark of the Covenant in Exodus 25:21: 

And you shall put the mercy seat on the top of the ark, and in the ark you shall put the testimony that I shall give you. 

So what does my salvation have to do with the Ark of the Covenant, an object from antiquity that most people today associate with Indiana Jones? I’m glad you asked. 

If you saw The Raiders of the Lost Ark you will remember the big gold box that was the focus of all the excitement, the long lost Ark of the Covenant. Steven Spielberg actually did a very good job in creating a replica of the ark as it’s described in Exodus. The Ark was the most important object in the religion of ancient Israel. It was a box made of acacia wood, gilded inside and out with hammered sheets of pure gold. Once completed, on pain of instant death it was never to be touched by human hands. It was holy, sacred, set apart. Two long poles were used to carry it and only the priests were allowed to touch them. Inside the Ark were some very special and sacred objects: the tablets of stone on which the Ten Commandments had been carved by the very finger of God, and five parchment scrolls on which Moses transcribed the books of the Law—what we now know as Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—the first five books of the Bible. Aaron’s rod—a staff made of almond wood that miraculously sprouted branches and bloomed, and a clay jar of manna—the “bread of heaven” as it was called that God provided as food to Israel during their desert wanderings, may have also been stored in the Ark. More likely, however, they were kept outside, in front of the ark. Resting on top of the Ark was a covering. It was not gilded. It was solid 24 carat gold, as pure as the refiner’s art could make it. Though it rested on the ark it was not actually part of the ark. On both ends of this covering were images of cherubim. These were not the smiling fat little angelic nudes associated with Valentine’s Day. Far from it. They were fearsome-looking creatures with the faces of men, the bodies of lions, and the wings of birds of prey. They are described as facing the center of the covering with their wings outstretched over it. It was this covering over the Ark that was called the Mercy Seat. Before the Mercy Seat sinful man met Holy God. Out of the seemingly empty space just above the Mercy Seat, between the protective wings of the attending cherubim, the voice of God would issue forth in conversation with Moses. 

During Israel’s 40 years in the wilderness, when the people traveled from place to place the ark went before them as a symbol of God’s presence. When they camped it was kept in the Holy of Holies, the innermost room of the tabernacle. The Jews regarded the Holy of Holies as the most sacred spot on earth. Not even the High Priest entered it except for one day each year, The Day of Atonement—Yom Kipper. 

Yom Kipper is the holiest day in the Jewish year. On our calendar it falls between mid-September and mid-October. In ancient Israel it was the start of their new year, the day on which the high priest offered a sacrifice for the sins of Israel. As part of that sacred rite, after a careful ritual cleansing the priest would enter the Holy of Holies to burn incense and to sprinkle the blood of the sacrifice upon the Mercy Seat, offering it as close to the presence of God on earth as possible. Thus the blood of a sacrificial animal was offered as symbolic propitiation for the sins of the nation. 

The linguistic support for propitiation as the best translation of the Greek word found in Romans 3:25 is strong. But over the years some people have raised objections. They’re uncomfortable with the doctrine of divine wrath. They argue that the idea of having to appease an angry deity is beneath the dignity of a modern understanding of God; that this is some kind of throwback to paganism—on a par with tossing a virgin into the mouth of a volcano to appease the mountain god. So instead of propitiation, they translate the word in question as expiation. The controversy has even affected the choice of hymns that are approved for inclusion in church hymnals. 

Earlier in the service we sang the modern hymn, In Christ Alone. It has become one of the most popular and beloved hymns in the country. It’s definitely one of my favorites. Yet just last month the hymnal committee for the Presbyterian Church USA refused to include In Christ Alone in their new hymnal. Why? Because the song’s authors refused to remove the line, “on that cross, as Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied.” 

Where the literal meaning of propitiation is to make favorable and specifically includes the idea of dealing with God’s wrath against sinners, expiation means to make pious and implies either the removal or cleansing of sin. The idea of propitiation includes expiation; but not the other way around. Expiation alone does nothing to quench God’s righteous anger. 

The difference in meaning may seem subtle, but it’s very important. The object of expiation is sin, not God. One propitiates a person, one expiates a problem. 

Perhaps this will help you see the difference. You may have watched the TV commercial where a man foolishly saws off the limb of a tree in his yard and drops it onto his neighbor’s car—just a stupid mistake, no malice intended. In real life, chances are if he apologizes profusely for his carelessness and quickly makes good on the repair or replacement of the car, all will be forgiven. His sin will be expiated. 

Now let’s imagine that instead of accidently dropping a limb on his neighbor’s car, in a fit of anger he deliberately slashed all the tires on that car. Even if he immediately regretted the act and bought four brand new replacement tires—the best tires that money can buy—all will NOT be forgiven. The outward evidence of the sin may have been removed, but the relationship is not healed. Why? Because the righteous anger of his neighbor will not have been propitiated. This guy’s not just destroyed four tires. He’s destroyed a relationship by an attack on the honor of his neighbor. He has added insult to injury. And the insult is harder to correct. 

We intuitively understand about the need for propitiation—at least when we’re the victims of another’s sin. We demand justice. And when justice is denied we experience moral indignation. We are outraged. 

Many Montana residents are outraged right now and are calling for the removal from the bench of District Judge, G. Todd Baugh after he sentenced a 54-year-old former high school teacher to only 30 days in jail for raping a 14-yr-old girl. The girl later committed suicide. Justice has not been served. The scales have not been balanced. Of course, when we’re the sinners in question, we change our tune. Then we cry for mercy, not justice.

And here we come to God’s dilemma. For he is both righteous and loving. He is holy and he is merciful. His holiness is outraged by sin. His perfect sense of justice demands that those scales be balanced. If some Montana voter is outraged by injustice, how much more so is God? 

There is a dualism of holiness and love … of mercy and wrath in God’s nature that cannot be dissolved. The sacrificial death of Jesus is at the very heart of justification. Because God is holy, he must punish sin. By definition sin is belittling God’s glory. If God chose not to punish sin he would be declaring that his glory is not worth defending. We read in the Psalms, “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.” But how can God just simply overlook our sins? Unless we affirm that people really deserve to have God visit upon them the painful consequences of their wrongdoing, we empty God’s forgiveness of its meaning. Romans 3 tells us that God put forth Jesus as a propitiation—a wrath-absorbing sacrifice. That is, on the cross Jesus paid in full the penalty for our sin. God’s wrath was poured out on his own son. Jesus’ death on the cross justifies the sinner and it also justifies God. It justifies the sinner because those who place their faith in Christ are declared righteous based on Christ’s righteousness, and it justifies God the Father because it vindicates his glory and it vindicates his mercy. 

Remember that Old Testament passage Paul quoted earlier regarding Abraham? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Abraham was not alone. Before Christ was nailed to that cross, millions of people lived and died having placed their trust in God’s mercy. And God was merciful. As Paul just reminded us in verse 25, God “…had passed over former sins.” But each one of those sins represented a debt that God’s mercy owed to God’s justice. Generations of high priests sprinkled blood on that Mercy Seat and mercy was granted. But no sacrificial lamb every saved anybody. A huge debt against justice accumulated year after year, like a massive credit card debit hanging over the head of God. The bill finally came due. Jesus paid it in full. John Stott writes that propitiation “…does not make God gracious. God does not love us because Christ died for us, Christ died for us because God loves us.” 

In his book Knowing God, J.I. Packer makes a distinction between pagan and Christian propitiation: “In paganism, man propitiates his gods, and religion becomes a form of commercialism and, indeed, of bribery. In Christianity, however, God propitiates his wrath by his own action. He set forth Jesus Christ... to be the propitiation of our sins.” 

Christ's death was both an expiation and a propitiation. By expiating—removing the problem of—sin God was made propitious—favorable—to us. 

I agree with Leon Morris. Romans 3:21-26 is the greatest paragraph ever written. Its greatness lies in its subject. It attests to the wonder of the gift of righteousness, the marvelous story of God’s costly forgiveness.