When a lady by the name of Eva Reitzel turned 103, she was interviewed by her local radio station. After discussing all the things she'd seen in her life, the interviewer asked her what her prescription for a long life was. Her answer was nine words long: “Stay away from doctors and stay away from men!”
God has a simple prescription for eternal life as well. We find it in many places in the Bible, and we do so today in Romans 3 beginning in verse 20.
WE ARE SAVED BY GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS :
In verses 20-23, Paul tells us we are saved by God’s rightness:
For no one will be justified in His sight by the works of the law, because the knowledge of sin comes through the law. But now, apart from the law, God’s righteousness has been revealed—attested by the Law and the Prophets —that is, God’s righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ, to all who believe, since there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
From the before the time of Paul even until today, people have looked to many different sources to save them. These have included money, power, prestige and politics. People have also looked to institutions like education to save them as well.
One of my prized possessions is my grandfather’s high school diploma from the early 20th Century. The inscription in his diploma reads, “Public Schools, Hope of our Nation.” I am a graduate of public schools and I am very grateful for them. My wife is a retired teacher from public schools, but we both know that as good as our public schools are, they have their limitations, particularly in the spiritual realm.
The problem with all these things is that we can do nothing to save ourselves. The Bible tells us our righteousness is like filthy rags before God. Let me illustrate that.
I once served alongside a member of the Louisiana Army National Guard who had been tasked one day with using a bulldozer to help clear up the site of a school building that had burned. After a long, tiring, but ultimately satisfying day of work, at quitting time my colleague had parked the dozer and jumped off of it.
As soon as his feet hit the ground it opened and swallowed him up. He had parked on top of the school’s septic tank, and his weight on the ground was just enough to collapse the roof of the tank, and down into the muck and mire he went.
Members of his team pulled my colleague out of the septic tank to safety, but they made him ride in the pickup truck bed and his wife would not let him into the house until she had hosed him down in their backyard. This is a graphic expression of our righteousness before God!
The truth is that the Law shows us our flaws, it doesn't correct them. This is just like how the bubble of a level shows the slope of a board but can’t change it.
Nothing we do can match God's perfection.
What then can save us? If our heritage, our church attendance, our good works, our education, our intelligence, our good looks can't, what can? Paul tells us what he discovered about this problem in Romans 7:24-25a:
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this dying body? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Only God can do this work! Only God can do the impossible!
WE ARE SAVED BY GRACE THROUGH FAITH :
In verses 24-28, Paul tells us we are saved by grace through faith:
They are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a propitiation through faith in His blood, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His restraint God passed over the sins previously committed. God presented Him to demonstrate His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be righteous and declare righteous the one who has faith in Jesus. Where then is boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By one of works? No, on the contrary, by a law of faith. For we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.
What is faith? It is placing our trust in something and relying solely upon it.
When we board a passenger jet, we are placing our trust in the airplane, the pilots, the mechanics, and air traffic control. We simply sit on our seat and trust that everyone responsible for our safety have done their job and that they will continue to do it. This is faith.
In this case of our salvation, it means believing that Jesus is the remedy for our sin illness! It means placing our lives and future in His hands with no “Plan B”.
I remember a time when my dad used a ladder to climb up on the roof to do a repair job. I climbed up after him and had a great time “helping” him, and also looking around our neighborhood from a new perspective. I had a totally different perspective, however, when it came time to climb back down the ladder!
From the edge of the roof, I could not see the top step of the ladder, and I froze in place. My dad, who had scrambled down the ladder with the ease of a gymnast, climbed back up and told me to hang my leg off the roof. When I hesitated, he told me to trust him, and I did. He took my foot, and placed securely on the ladder, and I was able to descend safely.
We need to trust Jesus in the same way!
What is justification? It is to be made whole in God's sight. It is “Just as if I'd never sinned.” When God looks upon our sin, He sees the Blood of Jesus covering it.
A story I heard illustrates this very well. A man and his son were in a shop when a unit of red-coated soldiers came into view as they marched down the street. As they marched by, the boy exclaimed, “My what bright white uniforms they are wearing!” His father was stunned, because he could clearly see the red coats, until he stooped to match his son’s point of view. The boy was watching the soldiers through the red stained-glass border of the shop window. The red glass filtered out the red color of the coats, and they appeared white to the boy.
Again, when God looks upon our sin, He sees the Blood of Jesus covering it.
What is redemption? It means to exchange one item for another, like for example exchanging a voucher for a meal or a book, or exchanging a ransom for a hostage. We are sin's hostages, and God has exchanged Jesus for our freedom!
What is “passing over sin”? In this case it is a total, permanent solution to a problem. God puts our sin as far as the east is from the west and we are offered a complete, total pardon in Christ!
WE ARE SAVED LIKE ANYONE ELSE CAN BE:
Finally, Paul tells us in verses 29-31 that we are saved just like everyone else can be saved:
Or is God for Jews only? Is He not also for Gentiles? Yes, for Gentiles too, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.
The ancient view of God was very exclusive and very discriminatory. People believed in territorial gods, ethnic gods, functional gods. It was a world of confusion, superstition and fear. Some still have such views today.
One of the pillars and also problems of post-modern thinking is the lack of belief in universal truth. My truth is good for me, and your truth is good for you. This is not the way that truth and God are revealed in the Bible.
The proper, Biblical view of God is there is only one God, one creator. There is only one source of wisdom, and there is only one author of truth, and that is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As He told Moses to write on the tablets, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery. Do not have other gods besides Me.”
This one God created an orderly world, with orderly rules. This God gives us one way by which life begins, and one way by which it should be lived. Ironically, the fact that God created the world in an orderly fashion to work by observable rules and principles spawned modern science, which has often turned its back on the God who created it.
One God provides salvation for one creation: for Jews, for Samaritans, for Gentiles. As the old saying put’s it, “What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander” for, as Acts 4:12 says, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” and as Paul himself said in Romans 10:13, “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
CONCLUSION:
There is one God, on Savior, one Salvation, and one prescription for our sin. Have you taken the cure yet? If not, why not?
Every blessing,
Dr. Otis Corbitt
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