Dr Greg Bahnsen - Paul's View of the Gospel: Law and Gospel - Romans 3:31 (Part 3)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

Please turn with me in your Bibles to Romans the third chapter. As we complete our series on Romans 3 this morning, looking at the subject of Law and Gospel. Law and Gospel, Romans the third chapter. Let's read all of it, beginning at the first verse. Hear now God's word. What advantage then hath the Jew, or what is the prophet of circumcision? Much every way. First of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God. For what if some were without faith? Shall their want of faith make of none effect the faithfulness of God? God forbid. Yea, let God be found true, but every man a liar. As it is written that thou mightest be justified in thy words, and mightest prevail when thou comest into judgment. But if our unrighteousness commendeth the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous, who visiteth with wrath? I speak after the manner of men. God forbid. For then how shall God judge the world? But if the truth of God through my lie abounded unto his glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner? And still. And why not? As we are slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say, let us do evil, that good may come whose condemnation is just. What then, are we better than they? No, in no wise. For we before laid to the charge, both of Jews and Greeks, that they are all under sin. As it is written, there is none righteous. No, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They have all turned aside. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good. No, not so much as one. Their throat is an open sepulchre. With their tongues they have used deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways and the way of peace. Have they not known there is no fear of God before their eyes? Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it speaketh to them that are under the law. That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be brought under the judgment of God. Because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight. For through the law comes the knowledge of sin. But now, apart from the law, a righteousness of God hath been manifested, being witnessed by the law. And the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ unto all them that believe. For there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to show his righteousness because of the passing over of the sins done aforetime in the forbearance of God. For the showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present season, that he might himself be just and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus. Where then is glorying? It is excluded. By what manner of law? Of works? No, but by a law of faith. We reckon, therefore, that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also. If so be that God is one, and he shall justify the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith. Do we then make the law of none effect through faith? God forbid. Nay, we establish the law. Thus far, the reading of God's word. If a cultured Jew had been listening to what Paul said in Romans the third chapter, or maybe to what I've been preaching the last couple of Lord's days here in this pulpit. If a cultured Jew had paid attention to to Paul's declaration that the law silences the entire world before God because of guilt, and the only hope of a right standing before God comes by faith. If a cultured Jew had been listening to these words, I think he might have one question burning in him. Doesn't Paul's doctrine of justification by faith then nullify the teaching of the Old Testament? Hasn't God completely changed his mind? Hasn't he changed course? Hasn't he altered his manner of dealing with people? A cultured Jew of Paul's day would have indeed did ask that question. How, Paul, can you declare justification by faith when we know as cultured Jews that justification, a right standing with God, comes through obedience to the law? Paul, you have actually declared war on the Old Testament. Now I say a cultured Jew, not a faithful one, by a cultured Jew. What I have been getting at is someone who had been raised in the culture of Jewish religion, had been raised in the mindset and with the outlook and perspective of the Jews of Paul's own day, a person who had imbibed that particular conviction about God that the Jews represented before the gentile world. A person who embodied the hopes and the fears of a right standing with God. That would have been common to all the Jews of Paul's day. Most people grow up in their culture assuming the outlook, the general perspective, the values and priorities of their culture without even knowing it. Francis Schaeffer once said, we get our worldview somewhat like people catch the measles. You don't think a lot about it and this kind of infects you. And so people growing up in a particular cultural frame of mind are going to think in many ways alike. They're going to have a framework through which they look at the world, a worldview that is going to be something they didn't self consciously assume. They didn't go through all the options and debate the pros and cons and say, okay, I choose this one. We just kind of come with these glasses cemented to our face to adulthood, and we kind of think in the way that our culture has brought us to think. That's true of us today. And it was true of Jews in Paul's day. The Jew of Paul's day would have just taken for granted that what Moses taught is that we're supposed to get out there and do good works and please God. We're supposed to be experts in the law. Tell you something kind of interesting. When I use the word or when anyone from this pulpit uses the word Pharisee or you read the word Pharisee in the Bible, automatically some kind of negative response goes off inside you. I mean, if you're familiar with Christian terminology or the literature of the Bible at all, you know that Pharisees were bad people, self righteous people. You see, we have been brought up in our own church ghetto with our own ways of responding to, to terms and the term Pharisees, a bad one. But not in Paul's day. You need to understand it's so hard to believe. To be a Pharisee was a high, the highest really compliment to be part of those who stress the purity of following of the law. You could not have complimented a person more. That's why, as we'll see in a few moments, Paul spoke of himself as Pharisee of Pharisees. He took the law seriously. Purity was on his mind. He was a zealot for righteousness. In Paul's day, to be a Pharisee was a good thing because it was taken for granted that we should be trying to be good Jews living according to the culture and the ceremony, the ritual laid down by Moses. And we are to Honor the law of Moses in our lives, even to the point of having all these man made traditions built up around the law. So there'd be no way that you could finally get to the law and break it. All these hedges would be there as kind of a buffer and a protection and a curve against you ever coming to the law of God and transgressing it. And so it was in a Jewish perspective a good thing to try to obey, to gain favor with God. And now this cultured Jew of Paul's day reads Romans 3, or here's the declaration of Romans 3, that justification does not come by law works, but comes by faith. Justification does not come by your own righteousness, but by the alien righteousness of Jesus Christ. Justification is not something that you can accomplish, it is something you can only receive. And you've been convinced, though you are a cultured Jew, you are convinced that Paul is right. This makes sense. The Holy Spirit has opened your heart and has driven home that message. But now as you're getting ready to leave, having believed the gospel, you say but, but Paul, you are disagreeing with the Old Testament when you say that. Of course, right? I mean this is plan B. God had Plan A in the Old Testament, now we've gone to Plan B. And I'm really grateful for Plan B because I could never have made it on plan A. But you have to admit, Paul, this, I mean God's really changed years here, hasn't he? And that's why Paul adds this. Of course the chapter breakdown is artificial, but what we would call the last verse of chapter three. That's why Paul adds this last verse to answer that question. The cultured Jew of Paul's day assumed that the Old Testament taught that we were to do works of righteousness, to be right before God. But the Old Testament did not teach that at all. It was incredible pride. Indeed it was self deception which caused the Jews, as Paul says in Romans chapter two, to rest upon the law. And I want to look at that in verse 17 of chapter 2 they rest upon the law to be confident that they possessed in the law the form of knowledge. Honorable woman.

The doctrine of justification is God's Dulcinea to us.

I don't understand why God would give.

His Son for me.

I'm not worth it.

And I don't see how God can be just and still forgive me. I don't see how he can declare my record to be innocent, how he can declare me to be righteous because I'm not. It's as though he sings the Dulcinea to me. And he says, but I only see you as righteous for the sake of my son. Life and death rest upon your understanding that. That you will have faith that God will see you for the sake of Christ for something that you're not. That he might then in his power, change you into the image. Oh, we thank you. We don't have anything to say, but thank you that you will not look upon us as common whores today and not see our dishonor and not account our unrighteousness and our pollution before you, but rather see us completely in Christ and therefore as righteous. We thank you that you see us in Christ and not in ourselves. We thank you that you look upon a righteousness which is apart from the law and apart from any effort that we can offer, apart from any attainment or any accomplishment which is ours. And therefore you can see righteousness because you see Jesus. We do pray that you would unite us to Jesus by faith. That we would trust him and him alone and not offer anything to you. No brownie points, no extra credit, but offer you only hearts that trust in your provision and your righteousness. God, we don't know why you provided the propitiation, Jesus. We don't know why you would be willing to shed your blood. But we know that if you had not, we would be without hope in this world and the next. And so we thank you. But having silenced us because of our guilt, you have declared the wondrous truth that we are justified by faith. We pray in Jesus name.

Amen.

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bahnsen Institute. Duplication sharing and distribution is encouraged. For more information about the life and Ministry of Dr. Greg L. Bonson, visit our website, bonsoninstitute.com where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.