Reformation
Rom
3:19-28
10/26/25
“Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a
sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by
my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I
hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not
blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, ‘As
if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through
original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the
decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the
gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!”
In 1545, the year before he died, Martin Luther finally acquiesced
to requests for an authoritative edition of his Latin works to be published. He
wrote a preface to that volume in which he described his journey in the
Reformation. In the words that I just quoted, we hear how he feared, and even
hated, the righteous God who punishes sinners. For him, the phrase “the
righteousness of God” was a source of dread because it described how the holy
God righteously judges and condemns all who sin.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the theology that came
from the medieval Church had turned God’s saving work in Christ into something
in which man had to do his part. It was the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ that made it possible. God’s grace was the cause of the individual’s
salvation. But this grace was a kind of supernatural substance that equipped a
person for the role he had to play in being saved. The Church described faith
as “faith formed by love.” Saving faith was not trust and belief in Jesus
Christ. Instead, it was the work that faith did.
The Christian life was defined by penance. Since the time of Anselm
in the twelfth century, the Church had said that absolution forgave the guilt
of sin, but not the penalty. Sin was forgiven, but the person had offended God
by sinning and so he owed God a debt that was paid by penance. This debt was computed based on earlier
systems that spoke of years of penance. The priest assigned a penance to the
person. But since the penitent had to perform the assigned penance or suffer
serious consequences, the priest assigned a light penance that a person could
perform – perhaps even before leaving church.
However, this light penance did not exhaust the penalty that was
owed to God. Instead, it was a system in which people accumulated thousands of
years of penance. The penance was owed to God, and if it had not been paid at
the time of death, then the person went to purgatory. This was described as a
place of fiery suffering where people would endure thousands of years until the
penalty was paid and they could enter heaven.
No one wanted to experience this. And so the faithful did all kinds
of things to gain merit and pay off their penance. They paid for masses to be
said, and went on pilgrimages, and bought indulgences. If you were really serious about your
salvation, then you embarked on the “religious life” – you became a monk or a
nun – because this was itself a whole life of penance.
Martin Luther was indeed very serious about his salvation. He
became an Augustinian monk and engaged in this religious life with a fervor
that permanently damaged his health. Luther knew that he would face God’s
judgment on the Last Day. As Paul told the Romans, “For we will all stand
before the judgment seat of God.” He believed that he had to have a faith
formed by love – a faith that had done enough. He believed that he had to do
enough penance. Luther knew that God is the just God who judges by what we have
done. Paul says in the chapter before our text, “For it is not the hearers
of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be
justified.”
But Luther found that when salvation involved his actions,
he could never do enough. Sin was
instead, a constant presence in his life.
If salvation involved his faith formed by love – what he did – then he
could never know if he had done enough because all of his actions were tainted
by sin.
Luther was experiencing what St. Paul describes in our text. There
the apostle says, “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to
those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped,
and the whole world may be held accountable to God.” Paul says that the Law – the way of doing –
shuts every mouth and makes the whole world accountable to God. Then he added,
“For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his
sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”
The act of doing can never provide the verdict of “not guilty” on
the Last Day. It can’t because as Paul
says earlier in this chapter, “For we have already charged that all,
both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.” Sin is a power that
controls us from the moment of our conception. It has since the original sin of
Adam. Because of our sinful condition, our actions can never be involved in
giving us a righteous standing before God.
As Paul says in our text, “For there is no distinction: for all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Instead, through the law –
through the way of doing – comes knowledge of sin. The law reveals all the ways
that we put other things before God. It shows how in thought, word, and deed we
do not love our neighbor has ourselves.
This is true. But Paul wants us to know that God has done something
about it. He says, “But now the
righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law,
although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it.” Paul refers to the
“righteousness of God.” This righteousness of God – this saving action of God
to put all things right – has been manifested – it has been made known. Earlier
in the letter, Paul had described how it had been revealed in the world through
the Gospel. He said, “For 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. For in
it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as
it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’”
Paul says in our text that this righteousness of God is “through
faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” When Paul talks about faith here,
it has nothing to do with our actions. That is why he says we “are
justified by his grace as a gift.” God’s grace is his attitude toward us –
his unmerited loving favor. This
justification – this status of being declared not guilty on the Last Day is a
gift. It is not something that is earned in any way.
Paul tells us that it is a gift made possible “through the
redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
Redemption is to free from slavery. God redeemed us from the slavery of
sin. And Paul tells us that God did this
in Christ “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood,
to be received by faith.” The word
translated here as “propitiation” has its background in the sacrifices of the
Old Testament by which Israel received atonement for sin.
God is the just and holy God.
He is the One who judges sin in his wrath. God judged our sin in his wrath. He did it on Good Friday as Jesus hung on the
cross. Christ the holy One had no sin.
But he took our sins as his own. He received the judgment of God in our place. He was the sacrifice by which we now have
forgiveness before God. And then God the
Father demonstrated that the cross had been his saving action when he raised
Jesus from the dead.
God is just, and holy, and wrathful. He is also gracious, merciful, and loving. In
the cross God was true to himself as he acted to save us. Paul says that “It 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.” God
was just as he judged sin in Christ. But he is gracious and merciful as he
justifies all who believe in the death and resurrection of Jesus. This
justification – this status of being holy before God and knowing the verdict of
the Last Day – is something that is received through faith alone. It is
something that is already true now. Paul says later in Romans, “Therefore,
since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
This is what Martin Luther came to realize as he studied God’s
Word. The righteousness of God doesn’t describe his action to judge us.
Instead, it is his action to save us. Luther went to say in the preface to his
Latin works: “At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave
heed to the context of the words, namely, ‘In it the righteousness of God is
revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’
There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the
righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the
righteousness of faith is revealed by the Gospel, namely, the passive
righteousness which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, ‘He
who through faith is righteous shall live.’ Here I felt that I was altogether
born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.”
This is the Reformation truth of God’s Word by which we live. We
are saved by grace alone. It is God’s unmerited gift. We are saved by faith
alone. We receive this gift purely through trust and belief in the death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ, and not through anything that we do in any way. This
faith itself is a gift of God worked by the Holy Spirit. And all of this means
that we are saved by Christ alone.
This truth of the Reformation is just as relevant today as it was in
the sixteenth century. Luther thought that the Church would rejoice in hearing
the clear message of the Gospel. And while many did, what has become the Roman
Catholic church responded by doubling down in rejecting the biblical truth of
the Reformation. Today the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that grace “is
needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through
faith, and in sanctification through charity.” Do not allow Roman Catholic
apologists on a podcast or YouTube to tell you otherwise. The Roman Catholic
church continues to teach that your works are part of the reason you are
saved.
But it’s not just the Roman Catholic church that continues to place
the focus on works. It also happens in those who claim to be embrace the
Reformation truth. At the end of the sixteenth century the Dutch theologian
Jacobus Arminius reacted against John Calvin’s false teaching of double
predestination by saying that all people have free will to choose to believe
in Christ. This Arminianism became
the dominant view among Methodists, Baptists, and so called non-denominational
churches.
Here the certainty of salvation becomes the result of my choice
to believe. Faith becomes the work that I have done. And so in the search
for assurance a person returns to that act of decision again and again. It
becomes the testimony that is repeated over and over. Or it becomes something that is done again in
repeatedly going forth in altar calls, or even being rebaptized.
The emphasis on works is also found in the theology of John Wesley
as it is present in Methodism and the Holiness movement. Here the true purpose
of faith is sanctification – holiness of living. The proof and assurance of faith that is
person is saved is found in how a person lives. And so works become the focus
of the Christian life as an individual seeks assurance.
However, God’s Word teaches that you are saved by grace alone,
faith alone, and Christ alone. You do not look to your works as part of the
reason you are saved, or as the reason that you have assurance. Instead, you trust and in believe in Christ. You
find assurance in those means by which he continues to come to you and gives you
forgiveness. You find it in his Word. You have it in our baptism for there you
shared in Christ’s saving death. You hear it in absolution as the crucified and
risen Lord forgives your sins. And you receive it in the Sacrament of the Altar
for there the incarnate Lord gives you his true body and blood, given and shed
for you. Through these means God declares that you are justified on account of
Christ. And if God says it, then it is certain and true.
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