The Wonders of the Gospel

This is the gospel: The holy God we’ve offended is the One who delivers us from sin’s condemnation and clothes us in Christ’s righteousness through faith. Today, Sinclair Ferguson surveys the staggering message of Romans 3–8.

This week on Things Unseen, we’re taking a quick helicopter tour of Paul’s massively important letter to the Romans, and I said earlier in the week that it divides fairly neatly into four sections. Yesterday, we traced his argument through 1:1–3:20. Its conclusion: we’re all guilty before a holy God. We stand condemned, and there’s nothing we can say in our defense. Our mouths are shut. We are hopeless, and we are helpless. And then, although our mouths are shut and we want to look down in shame, we see these glorious words of 3:21: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law.”

Incidentally, you’ll never feel the wonder of these words just by memorizing this one text, but if you meditate on 1:18–3:20, then you will see what overwhelmingly wonderful good news these words really are. The righteousness that is lacking in us has been provided by God. It’s absolutely staggering. The holy God we have actually offended to the point of our condemnation is the very God who delivers us from it. He now, in Jesus Christ, counts us righteous through faith, and He does this without compromising His own righteousness. It’s absolutely staggering. This is what makes grace amazing to us.

Don’t you sometimes think that when John Newton’s “Amazing Grace” is sung so heartily by people who are really quite indifferent to Jesus Christ that what they really mean is that what’s amazing is that they really, deep down, deserve it? But as long as you think that, grace will never be amazing to you.

The big question of course is, How can God be just and at the same time justify ungodly sinners? Well, Paul’s answer is found in Romans 3:21–24. It’s often called the gospel in a nutshell. In Christ’s death for our sins, God’s wrath is propitiated. We are justified. The price of our redemption—our liberation from bondage to sin and Satan—has been paid. And Paul then works out in detail what this means for us in chapter 3:22–8:39.

First, he says it means there’s no boasting. Second, he says it’s consistent with the teaching of the Old Testament, with the experience of Abraham and David, and he does this through chapter 4. And then in 5:1, he goes on to explain that the blessings that flow from this new relationship with God, this justification, mean that we now rejoice in the hope of glory, and we can rejoice even in our sufferings. And best of all, we learn to rejoice in God Himself, although we once hated Him. And all of this, he says in 5:12–21, is because we’re no longer united to Adam as we were by nature, but we are now united to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it’s this that leads him to the wonderful teaching of chapters 6, and 7, and 8. In simple terms, what he’s teaching us here is that our union with Jesus Christ has staggering implications for our lives. In chapter 6, he tells us we have died to sin in union with Christ, although sin has not yet died in us. But because we have died to its dominion, we’re now in a position to resist it and, by God’s grace, seek to overcome it.

In chapter 7, he says we’ve also died to the law in Christ, and we’re set free from guilt and from the condemnation of sin, even although we are not yet made perfect according to the law’s standards. And as long as that is true, we will still be conscious of sinfulness within and long for the final deliverance, which only Jesus Christ can bring.

And then in chapter 8, he reassures us we’re no longer living in a state of condemnation as the result of sin. That is to say, the Christian life isn’t a prison sentence. No, instead, in Christ, we live in the power of the Spirit and in the joy of knowing Him as the Spirit of adoption. But, says Paul, the Spirit has not yet completed His work. And until He does, we will experience a kind of ache, a groaning within, as we await the day when our salvation will be consummated. But in the meantime, we know that nothing can overcome our faith, for we are more than conquerors through Him who has loved us with a love from which we can never be separated.

Well, trying to summarize five and a half chapters of Romans in a few minutes may leave us all feeling a bit breathless. But Paul’s explanation of the gospel, the sheer wonder of God’s way of salvation in Christ, should leave us breathless, don’t you think? If Romans 1:18–3:20 shuts our mouths permanently, Romans 3:21–8:39 leaves us feeling: “What can I say? The glory of the gospel leaves me almost speechless.” But then, of course, we remember Paul says that we do have something to say, and here it is: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave him up for us all, how will He not also graciously give us all things?”

So here’s the message: righteousness is lacking in us, but righteousness has been provided for us in Jesus Christ. That’s Paul’s gospel. That’s the gospel. That’s our gospel. Praise God today, and join us on this helicopter ride again tomorrow.