Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, Jew, Christian—“the whole world [is] held accountable to God” (3:19).  It’s God’s world.  Christians aren’t the only ones living on God’s earth nor the only ones receiving God’s blessings.  It’s God’s standard under which all live and by which all shall be measured.  That standard isn’t for Christians only.  Through much of this part of Romans, Paul is making his argument against fellow Jews who want to claim that, because God gave the law, the promise, and the blessing to the Jews, therefore all Jews are already fully righteous in God’s sight; any and all Jews, passive or active, faithful or without faith, are saved.  We’re familiar with that sort of thinking, that sort of wishing.  As though the name or title Jew (or Christian, for that matter) were some magic talisman or password.  It’s not calling oneself a Christian or thinking of oneself as vaguely Christian-ish that makes one a Christian, beloved.  The only name that saves is Jesus, and unless we call out for him who calls us, we’ll never be right with God.  God will settle all accounts.  We are all accountable; we will each be required to give our account.

God gave something precious to Abraham and his descendants.  Have you ever been given a gift, and, though you didn’t have much use for it, you weren’t ready to donate or toss it?  So, you find someplace to stash it—a back closet, an attic.  I mean, maybe the one who gave it to you will come for a visit, sometime, and you’d hate for this person to be sort of looking around for the gift and it’s not there.  And it’s not like you’re going to have it out and ready to return when the giver comes again—here, I want you to have it back; I didn’t ask for it, and I didn’t really need it; it’s not really my style.

We each matter enough to God that He wants to take some time at the end of time and sit down and have a review with us.  “Let’s take a look at how you used this life I gave you in this world I made.”  Now, you and I are supposed to know this is coming.  We may be banking on all the food donations we brought for the food pantry, or the pencils and erasers we bought year after year for those shoeboxes; the two bags—two!—we bought for the Christmas food drive every year for years.  We might bank on how we showed up for church, nearly every Sunday.  We never raised our voices in anger, much.  We didn’t do drugs, mostly.  We didn’t cheat on our spouse.  (Does looking count?  Poor Jimmy Carter, lusting in his heart.)  We never murdered anybody!  So, is that like a pass, for us?  Years ago, when I asked students to grade their own work, oh, I’d have a handful who would give themselves a B.  No one that I can recall ever gave him or herself a C.  Most were quite sure that an A was the correct, fair grade for what they had done.  After all, they followed the directions!  Nailed it!

“Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin” (3:20).  Sin, sin, sin—Good Lord, can we just stop talking about sin?  Just for one Sunday?  Can’t we just hear about Jesus, or at least love?  Here is a major point.  Throughout Romans, Paul is wrestling with the law: why is there any God-given law, if obeying it won’t make anybody righteous?  You said take two of these, daily, and I did!  So, what do you mean, I’m not any better than before?  No matter how badly we may want to keep the law, check off each item of the law, we won’t.  The law wasn’t given to be our checklist, our list of tasks for this life: get the list done, daily, and whatever time you may still have is like recess.  The law was given as a measuring rod, a standard.  It isn’t having the yardstick in your toolshed that matters but using the yardstick: using it properly and often.  And even then, all the yardstick will show us, time and again, is that we don’t measure up.  So, that’s frustrating, and no thank you!

But when we find ourselves frustrated, let’s do something.  What do we do?  Well, if you’re anything like me, frustration drives you to the chocolate bars and soda pop—you know, sanctioned, fun poison.  Other people, sadly, will go to the bottle, pills, unsavory places on the internet.  Others will take their frustrations out on whoever happens to be available and not likely to hit back—not hard, anyway.  But God gave the law because God wants us to do something when we find, again, that we don’t measure up, when we become conscious, again, of our sin.  What shall we do, God?  God says, remember Me, turn to Me, pray to Me, rely on Me.  Get into a right relationship with Me.  I can help you; My grace is sufficient for you.  (We’ll hear that, again.  Let’s hear it in our hearts, many times.  Daily.)

God shows us conclusively, and yes maybe maddeningly, that we do not measure up, because God wants to drive us to Him, back to Him, because He is the only one who can help, the only one who can do anything about it.  And we have such a hard time getting that through head and heart.  The law—what God expects of everyone and particularly those who call themselves by His name—the law is righteous but it cannot make righteous because the law does not make.  A tool makes nothing.  Only God can make righteous, and life, for us, is in finding out how God makes righteous, and how we can become righteous in God’s reckoning.  And if we care enough to look into that, we’ll also need to be mindful of why this righteousness matters so much to God and why it’s not something we can make for ourselves.  DIY salvation is no salvation at all, just our special place we make for ourselves in the woods as we slowly perish of hunger and exposure.

Paul writes that, “now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify” (3:21).  The Law and the prophets—those proclaiming God’s Word—do not point to themselves but to God, the righteousness of God.  God has the power to bring people into right relationship, vital relationship, with Himself.  This righteousness is available, for us, and we need it.  Paul is encouraging everyone, not just fellow Jews, to look less at the law and more at the righteousness, less at the letter of the law and more at the Spirit.  Shift the focus from earning, meriting, deserving, to receiving; to receive is to welcome.  God has revealed His righteousness for us—His way into restored, vital relationship with Him.  We must go to God to have that relationship; we’ll need to get to a place where we value that relationship, the real thing, not just some convenient illusion of a relationship, the veneer of a vital relationship.  God has the righteousness market cornered—we must go to Him, on His terms.  We go to God through Jesus Christ, who is in perfect, perfectly blessed relationship with God; Jesus came to bring us to God.

So, what does God want, in exchange for this righteousness without which we must perish, without which we are all exposed to God’s condemnation?  He wants our lives—changed; our lives—redirected, reshaped, reformed.  The price of life is life.

Righteousness is to be in right relationship with God: to have a real, vital relationship.  No, not perfect; yes, a bit rough, but a relationship that actually means something to us, that matters to us enough that we won’t willingly mess it up.  He wants us to be vigilantly, diligently invested.  There have been those who have made the attempt to begin a relationship, a friendship, with us.  We were not interested.  Jesus encountered that.  It is the Spirit who prepares people to be interested in a right relationship with God; the Spirit gives the ability.  None of us, by our own efforts, will, or intention, can get ourselves into that right relationship.  Our default condition is zero interest in God.  We wouldn’t will right relationship, work for it, or want it, except for the Spirit of God, already working in us.  And even then, we keep slipping into factory mode: bitter, angry, envious, resentful, more concerned with satisfying our appetites than in glorifying God or noticing or doing much to help the others wandering lost and hungry around us.

Only one man is always perfectly in right relationship with the Father: Jesus Christ, the eternal, beloved Son, with whom the Father is well pleased.  Well, we can’t be Jesus, but we can have Jesus, because God sent him in order to give him to us, to be given for us.  “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” (3:22).  Not earned—no duration or intensity of our sweat and labor will obtain it.  Given.  Not a reward.  A gift.  Gifts are signs of love, affection, and a desire to grow a relationship: that’s why receiving and giving thoughtful gifts is one of those five love languages we hear about.  And guys, remember—Valentine’s Day is nearly here.  Don’t be that guy.

Given to us, for us, through faith; received only through faith.  Faith is the conduit.  Faith is many things, among them a pledge of enduring devotion.  We maintain and guard our faithfulness to another because the relationship matters to us.  We also maintain faith in the one whom we love, the one who loves us.  That is trust, consequential trust, even life and death trust.  Or, in the case of Jesus, should I say death and life trust?

When we entrust our life to Jesus Christ, acknowledge him as our Savior, and Lord, we receive the gift of his righteousness.  The Son of God is righteousness.  His righteousness will faithfully guide us into all holiness.  Holiness is life for us.  Jesus is life for us.  The bumper sticker says Jesus Saves; we nod because we believe he really does.  Why do we believe that, though?  Because we just know it’s true?  That’s nice, of course, but how do we know?  Well, to get to it, briefly, we know, believe, have faith, because all this, also, is a gift.  All gift, God’s gift.  God’s initiative.  Christ, given.  Righteousness given.  Faith given.  Not given in wrath but from love, mercy, and grace.  I can love righteousness, but my love of righteousness cannot all by itself get me to do righteousness, let alone remain in righteousness.  I can think the law is a good thing, but thinking so won’t cause me to obey the law, let alone love the law.  Belief and action are not identical.

Paul returns to what, by now, will be one of the most familiar claims he has been making: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (3:23).  Accepting or not accepting this will shape how we receive everything else Paul has to share in Romans, not to mention all that God has to give.  I hope we will freely admit and accept Paul’s point.  Apart from Jesus, there is no one who has not sinned at some point.  But agreement pretty much ends right there.  For example, just because a person sins, that does not make that person a sinner.  That’s refusing to take responsibility, and we see and hear a lot of that.  Over the history of the church, many have taught that people are responsible for their salvation: they must choose what God offers.  And that sounds right, in a sense, but what Paul has been telling us is that, left to ourselves, of our own resources, no one will choose what God offers.  No one is able to.  That ability was lost, entirely.  God has to take the initiative, open eyes, open ears, open minds and hearts, and bring to life again those as good as dead, through putting His Spirit into them.  Without God at work in us, we will never choose God.  So, if we find ourselves choosing God—that’s a gift of God.  If we were naturally good and really could choose righteousness, God would never have had to send Jesus Christ.  Christ is God’s testimony that no one is good, no one can save him or herself.  Christ is all the salvation we have and all the salvation we need.

“[A]nd all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (3:24).  Justified—declared innocent at God’s tribunal.  Not merely not guilty.  Innocent.  That innocence is the gift we have through Christ redeeming us.  That redemption—the astounding, amazing revelation of God’s grace—makes that judicial declaration of innocence possible for anyone, for all, freely.  No one needs first to accumulate so many points to obtain this justification, this forgiveness.  People work not just because we like to have something to do, something we enjoy doing, but so that we have an income, and so can support ourselves, our family, and build enough wealth hopefully to secure a fulfilling retirement.  What, by the way, counts as a fulfilling retirement?  We aim for self-sufficiency.  We earned our earnings, and we want to use them to obtain what we want as well as what we need.  Justification doesn’t work that way; getting into God’s good graces doesn’t work that way.  No one can buy or work their way out of God’s judgment, or into His favor.  Redemption—the blood price—is only through Christ.  Grace is God supplying the price, supplying the blood, supplying the life, for us: free to us, cosmically costly to Him.

“God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith” (3:25).  Now, Paul is getting to the heart of the matter.  Next Sunday is Transfiguration Sunday on our church calendar, inaugurating our annual journey to Easter.  That journey goes to, and through, the cross.  In our churches, there’s no body on the cross.  We’ve got plenty of images of Jesus all around—that gentle, delicate, lovely face!  But there’s no body on our cross.  In seminary we were told this is because we are a Resurrection people, which is true and sure sounds nice, but I mostly think it’s because a body on the cross is sort of depressing and just too Roman Catholic.

But I think, and I’ve said this many times, there at least ought to be some blood on that cross, some red stain, just as a reminder.  That cross, so many of the crosses—yes, they’re rather dusty . . . no signs of use—we’re not taking them off the shelf and using them!  Our crosses are so pretty, elegant, artistic, ornate.  They’re ornaments, decoration.  Where are the splinters?  Shouldn’t the criminal’s gallows be a little more roughhewn, at least?  We like our crosses . . . Crosses were where criminals were sent to die, publicly, shamefully, painfully.

The ancient world knew all about sacrifice and blood: the blood of lambs and oxen was poured out by the barrel.  Sacrifices of atonement were very familiar, a common feature in ancient religious practice: no getting right without blood, without cost.  The price of life is life.  This was understood.  It was also all preparation for the one truly, perfectly, perpetually effective sacrifice.  It wasn’t the blood of animals that somehow, magically, cleared people of the sins they had committed, the ways in which they had knowingly banged up their relationship with God.  The blood was to remind everyone that our bang up job comes with a cost, and that forgiveness was with God.  Even the offerings we bring to this day are part of our expressing our desire to have and maintain vital relationship with God.  But no offering of ours can clear our sin, because we are sinners.  We are what we are.  Christ can make us more.  We need a new life, another life, in place of the life sin has cost us.  Life for life.  The blood is the life.  Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

But that blood, even the blood of Jesus, can do no good if a person does not receive what Jesus did for us.  Being the child of Christian parents, or grandparents, won’t make that happen.  Being known as a kind, decent person in your circle of friends won’t make that happen.  Faith is the key to Jesus; Jesus is the key of faith.  I can’t have faith for you.  I don’t do faith on your behalf.  You can’t have faith for me.  No proxy faith, only personal faith.  Faith is the conduit for receiving God’s grace.  God’s grace makes it possible to have faith.  Faith comes by grace, and grace is of God.  Everything always pointing to God.

Paul speaks of God’s forbearance: His long-suffering patience, refraining from immediately giving people what their lives have merited from Him.  Each day, God shows astounding tolerance of all that defies Him in disregard of His Word, which is His love for us.  God’s love, daily, is ignored, abused.

Paul tells us that God sent Jesus to be a sacrifice, his blood to be shed, “to demonstrate his righteousness” (3:25).  Paul repeats this: “to demonstrate his righteousness,” so this is another key point to bear in mind.  When judgment comes, who will be the judge?  Jesus says he will be the one to come and sit in judgment.  It is this same Jesus whom millions have rejected, are rejecting, and will reject.  Yet millions argue it is possible to live a good life without reference to God.  And when they come before the judgment seat, let them then argue their case before Christ.  God is giving everyone more than time enough to correct his or her course; He provides the resources by which to do so.  God does not refuse to call out to anyone.  He calls to everyone—most clearly through Scripture.  Paul also tells us that every human being has the opportunity to become acquainted with God even without the benefit of Scripture, because all creation attests to its Creator.  A world of life in a universe of wonders.  Know the Lord.

God is a God of justice.  He does not reward what is wrong.  He does not overlook what is right.  No one will be sent to eternal condemnation who does not fully deserve it.  No one who shouldn’t be there will be consigned to hell.  God justifies “those who have faith in Jesus.”  It’s not a perfect record or a soft heart that makes anyone acceptable to God.  Faith justifies, making us acceptable to God.  The only ones in need of faith in Jesus are sinners; that’s all there are in this world.  When God raises Jesus from the dead, He is showing everyone exactly what He can also do for them.  We want to trust in ourselves, rely upon ourselves.  Trust God, who entrusts you with salvation.