Raised for Our Justification

Raised for Our Justification

Readings: Matt 28:1-10, Romans 4:16-25,

The meaning of life is tied up in Christ’s death and resurrection.

Our reading from Matthew records the historical fact of the Resurrection. Our reading from Romans 4 explains its meaning.

The first three chapters of Romans argue that we are justified by faith alone.

The fourth chapter of Romans then pivots to defend this truth from the OT. Paul points out that the founder of the Jewish faith, Abraham, was declared righteous because he believed. God declared him righteousdespite repeated failures to trust God and the disobedience that ensued. Abraham believed and God credited his faith to him as righteousness!

At the end of chapter four Paul sums up this principle for us in two verses.

(Romans 4:24–25) "24b It [righteousness] will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, 25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”

Verse 25 presents the gospel in one very short, condensed sentence. Speaking of Jesus Christ Paul writes “Who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.” Today is Easter. Today we celebrate the truth that lies at the heart of the Christian faith: Jesus was raised for our justification! Today’s sermon is an attempt to explain this concept.

Billboard.

A.Definitions

1.Righteousness

In my youth righteousness had a negative connotation. The only time I ever heard the word was in the expression “self-righteous.” There was a 1960s singing group called The Righteous Brothers. Their name so greatly bothered me that I was never able to trust them or enjoy their music.

The biblical connotationof this word, however,is different. It is positive. In the NT a righteous person is one who conforms to the moral demands of God’s law.[1] In other words, righteousness describes the person who meets all of God’s demands, who obeys his law perfectly. Christ is the only righteous person that has lived. That is why Peter called him the “Holy and righteous One” (Acts 3:14).

By contrast, we are all unrighteous. Righteousness is moral perfection, and of one thing we are all convinced, “No one is perfect!”

This presents a huge problem: In God’s sight you must be righteousness to get into heaven. Therefore, when it is all said and done, righteousness is the one thing everyone must have. If this is true, the pursuit of righteousness is the most important thing in life.

There are two sources of righteousness—self or God. Self righteousness is the attempt to earn God’s favor by being good. It is performance based acceptance (PBA). However, for anyone who understands the nature of God’s righteousness, PBA is like spitting into the wind. The Pharisees gave their entire lives to memorizing and obeying God’s law, to keeping every period and comma of God’s demands. They were extremely disciplined. They practiced the spiritual disciplines methodically, tithed scrupulously, and paid great attention to the Bible, yet Jesus tells us their efforts were not good enough. You must be better! Jesus warned us, (Matthew 5:20) “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

The other source of righteousness is God. In Romans 3 Paul tells us that “none is righteous, no not one” (Rom. 3:10b). Since you are not perfect you cannot merit righteousness through human effort. Therefore, if God is ever to consider you righteous, it must be a Gift.

That brings us to justification.

2.Justification

Justification is a forensic term. It means to declare one righteous.[2] A person is justified when the jury foreman stands up and says, “Not Guilty your honor.”

The opposite of justification is condemnation. Therefore, negatively, to be justified is to be free from God’s condemnation.

Positively, justification is a declaration of righteousness. It means that I am righteous in God’s sight. Since God is inflexibly just, he must reward me according to my righteousness.

The term self-justification helps us understand this term. Self-justification is the personal proclamation of my moral innocence. When mom asks the kids, “Who spilled the milk on the kitchen floor?” and they all answer, “Not me mom. I didn’t do it!” They are all practicing self-justification.

As with righteousness, there are two sources of justification. I can either justify myself, or I can let God justify me. Any attempt to justify self, i.e. to declare my righteousness, before God will incur his just and fierce displeasure.

B.The Hand that conveys Righteousness—Faith

Our text reads, 24b “It [righteousness] will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord.” The idea is simple. Faith is the hand that conveyed righteousness to Abraham. It was not performance. In the same way, the hand that conveys God’s righteousness to us is faith. It is not our best efforts. The hand that does this work is not a general faith in God’s existence. It is faith in something very specific. It is faith in Christ’s atoning death and his bodily resurrection from the dead.

Unless one believes that God raised his Son bodily from the grave, there is no hand to convey the righteousness that we so desperately need. Therefore, there is no gift of righteousness, there is no justification, and there is no salvation. There is only condemnation, i.e. eternal damnation. The hand that delivers righteousness (faith) has been removed.

Many try to get around this by working. They believe that God accepts those that are sincere and try hard. They assume that God grades on the curve. If I am at least as good as average, God will receive me. The presumption is that God is OK with imperfection. They assume that theneeded righteousness is a human righteousness, and the hand that delivers it is my best effort.

But as we have seen, trying to be just a little bit better is a waste of time. God doesn’t grade on the curve. Perfection is the standard. Therefore, confidence in our best effortis futile. It denies God’s standards. It denies our unrighteousness, and it denies the need for the gospel. It confesses pride, and God always resists the proud. Reliance on PBA will not merit God’s acceptance. Instead, it will provoke his awful condemnation.

C.The Ground of our Justification: Christ’s death and Resurrection

Today’s text gives us two grounds upon which our justification rests—Union with Christ in his death, and union with Christ in his resurrection.

(Romans 4:25 Who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”

1.Christ was delivered up for our trespasses

God the Father loves us. He longs to forgive us. He longs to justify us, to declare us righteous. But he has a problem. We are sinners, and God is absolutely and inflexibly just. God’s justice is righteous justice. This means that he cannot act unjustly. He cannot sweep justice under the rug. He must punish all sin before he can forgive it. Here is a problem of divine proportions. He must forgive us before he can justify us and declare us righteous. But he cannot forgive at the expense of justice. How can God forgive in a way that satisfies divine justice?

God’s wisdom provided a solution. He sent his Son as our substitute. Jesus lived a perfect life. As we have seen, He is the only righteous man that ever lived. Faith in the gospel unites you with Christ. We get his righteousness. He gets our sins transferred to himself. Jesus then joyfully goes to the cross to be slowly tortured to death in our place. He does this joyfully because He loves us.In the meantime, our sins are completely punished. God’s justice is completely satisfied. It is exhausted. This is what Paul meant when he said in verse 25. “He was delivered up for our trespasses.”

But that is not the end of the story. He was also raised for our justification, and that is the truth that we gather to celebrate today.

2.He was raised for our justification

For years I read this little clause and was perplexed. What does Paul mean by “raised for our justification?” What is the connection between Christ’s resurrection and our justification? (Remember, righteousness is our need. Justification is a declaration of righteousness).

To understand the answer we must remember that Jesus died a criminal’s death. In fact, he experienced one of the most heinous forms of capital punishment ever devised by man. What was his crime? His contemporaries thought he was a liar. He claimed to be king of the Jews. The Jews and Romans were convinced he wasn’t. The plaque on his cross read “King of the Jews.” In other words, his crime is this: He claimed to be King of the Jews.

Three times he claimed that he would raise himself from the dead. His contemporariesknew this was impossible.

He talked more about hell than anyone in the Bible, and said those that tried hardest to please God by being good, the Pharisees, were most apt to go there. His first century contemporaries believed that God would never send a sincere person to hell. In that assumption they are just like us today.

Last, he claimed to be God. He said he was one with YHWH. “I and the Father are one.” “Before Abraham was I AM!”Men worshipped him, and he did not stop them. He commanded the winds. and they stopped. His disciples prostrated themselves in worship.

He commanded demons and they fled.

From birth every Jew learned that death was the penalty for sin. When Jesus died on the cross their worst assumptions were confirmed. He was a liar and imposter. Had he been sinless death could not have taken him. He was the sinner they thought he was. He was certainly not God. He was not the Messiah. His statements about Hell, judgment, and the futility of PBA were obvious exaggerations. Now they could dismiss him.

In other words, the Jews and the Romans crucified Jesus because they thought he was unrighteous. His death confirmed their suspicions.

That is one crucial reason that God raised Jesus from the dead. Godraised Jesus to justify him, to declare his righteousness. This is what Paul meant when he wrote his disciple, Timothy, (1 Tim. 3:16) “He was vindicated by the Spirit” (1 Tim 3:16). It is also what Paul meant whenhe opened the letter to the Romans, Jesus " was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead"(Rom. 1:4).

In other words, Christ’s resurrection was his justification. It proved his claims. Because Jesus did not sin, the grave could not hold him. “God raised him up,” declared Peter, “loosening the pangs of death, because it is not possible for him to be held by it” (Act 2:24). Jesus resurrection was a declaration by God the Father, “This man is innocent. He is righteous. He obeyed me perfectly. All of his claims are true. All of his statements are absolutely true. Believe in him! Submit to him! Worship him!”

Christ’s resurrectionmeans that his claim to be King of the Jews was true. He is Lord of Lords and King of Kings!

It meanshis claim to Messiahshipis true. He fulfilled all the OT prophecies.

It means his claim to deity was true.

Jesus’ resurrection means that all of his words were true. If he was absolutely righteous, then his every word must be correct. His threats about final judgment weretrue. His warnings about Hell were true. His offer of salvation was and is completely reliable. His declaration of love for the common man is true and trustworthy. You can bank your life on it. His statements about the exclusivity of the Christian religion were true. “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through by me” (Jn.14:6).

Last, God raised his Son to confirm that his life and death were sufficient to atone for our sins.

3.Raised for Our Justification

Most importantly, Christ’s resurrection was our justification. Faith not only unites us with Christ in his death, it also unites us Christ in his resurrection.

Here is the Good News. Not only does faith unite us with Christ in his death. It also unites us with him in his resurrection. That means Christ’s justification is our justification. It means that when God raised his Son to justify him, we get justified also.Despite our sins and failings, God declares us “not guilty” because we are raised with Christ in his justification. His righteousness becomes our righteousness. His justification becomes our justification.

This is what Paul meant when he said, Jesus “was raised for our justification.”

Sea-Perch anecdote.

D.Application

Belief in the resurrection changes everything. If this is true we are duty bound to believe and submit to every word of Christ. The resurrection convinces us that Christ is who he claimed to be. It closes all of our doors of escape.

If we really believe that God raised his Son, then we must believe that Jesus is God. We must also believe that PBA is futile. We must believe that Christ is King and Lord. We must believe in a literal heaven and hell. We must believe in the judgment to come. In sum, we must surrender to the gospel.

On the positive side. If we believe in the resurrection we are completely and totally justified. The resurrection was God’s confirmation that his Son’s work of atonement was sufficient to atone for all of our sins—past, present, and future. We have been declared righteous with Christ’s righteousness. If there is no resurrection, there is no justification and no righteousness.

So the great question is this: Did Jesus really rise from the dead? (Anecdote: Gerry Anne).

Jesus gave us two sacraments—Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Both proclaim this message. Both re-enact the gospel. Today we are going to celebrate the first—Baptism.

Baptism does not save us. We are saved by faith alone. However, baptism is the first act of obedience to which a true Christian submits. Baptism is a public identification with Christ’s death and resurrection. When the convert descends into the waters they are descending into Christ’s death and burial. When they are lifted out of the waters they are identifying with Christ in his resurrection. They are believing that they are justifiedon the basis of Christ’s righteousness.

The person baptized is saying, “I believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead. My faith has united me with Christ. In God’s sight I am righteous with Christ’s righteousness. I am justified with Christ’s justification. My sins past, present, and future, have all been transferred to Christ and punished. God’s justice has been satisfied. When Jesus rose from the dead I rose with him. His justification is my justification. God the Father has justified me on the basis of his Son’s righteousness.”

Romans 4:25. “He was raised for our justification.”

Why has God gone done all this? He loves us with an infinite and holy love.

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[1]New Bible Dictionary, pg 1020-21, Article on “Righteousness.”

[2]New Bible Dictionary, Pg 636, Article on Justification