Justification is STILL Good News

Please be seated.

It's good to be with you all again today.

My name is Jonathan.

I've been with you all the last three weeks.

This is our fourth week.

We've been looking at the topic of evangelism,

and we're really, I'm pleased that you're here.

I'm thankful that you're here.

If this is your first time,

welcome to Cheyenne Mountain Prez.

We are really glad that you are here,

and we hope that you'll come back

or that you'll meet somebody new.

I would love to interact with you,

especially afterwards,

if you have thoughts or questions.

Please come up and introduce yourself.

That's one of my favorite parts about this

is getting to talk to people

who are exploring church again or for the first time,

and so we're really glad that you are here.

As a personal, before we get started,

as a personal word,

thank you all so much for your hospitality

the last four weeks as I've been up here

in a lot of ways experimenting,

putting down things that I've been applying

on the college campus for the last seven years,

eight years,

and been beginning to think about

how would we systemize what I've been exploring,

and so in a lot of ways,

you are my guinea pigs

for things that I've seen work

and on a college campus,

but begin to actually train and teach others in it.

It's been really, really, really helpful

and encouraging to me,

and I hope it's been encouraging to you.

If you have had thoughts or questions

or would like to refresh,

someone asked me to remind you all

that everything that we've done

the last three weeks is on YouTube,

so you can go to the Shine Mountain YouTube channel

and re-watch them.

Also, you can find me.

I've told you before,

I hope you know,

that I care so deeply about evangelism.

It's one of my,

it's what gets me out of bed in the morning.

So my,

you can look up RUF Jonathan Clark.

You can find my email address.

You can get it from anyone on the session

or from Pastor Matthew.

Don't reach out to him right now.

Let him rest.

But I'd love to think more with you

when you come up afterwards

and say,

what do I think about this situation

or how do I do this particular case?

I love that.

And so please keep those questions going.

I also encourage you to stick around

and listen to David.

David and I were in seminary together,

which is really a treat.

So I'm thrilled to,

I haven't seen him since seminary,

but it's really a treat to have him here with us today

and to hear about his ministry.

So stick around for that.

I was reflecting,

it's amazing that David's doing ministry in India

and knew him in seminary.

Matthew and I were roommates in seminary

and here we all are trying to follow Jesus

and welcome others into that as well.

We are looking at a passage in Romans today.

I know that Matthew has been preaching

through the book of Romans.

So you've heard this passage preached to you recently

in the last few months

and I am aware of that

and I still chose that we need to do it

because it is,

as we looked at our confession today,

it's about justification.

And this is the most,

I mean,

as Andy said,

the without which nothing of our faith.

And if we cannot communicate this in evangelism,

then what are we doing?

What are we doing?

And so this is,

we will be looking at a famous passage again.

Again, you've heard this before,

but I promise that you have not heard it

the way I'm gonna talk about it today.

So stick with me as we do it.

So if you have a Bible,

turn to Romans chapter three

or you have it printed in your bulletin

and I will read it

and then we will look at it.

So this is Romans chapter three,

we're starting in verse nine.

What then?

Are we Jews any better off?

No, not at all.

For we have already charged

that all both Jews and Greeks are under sin.

As it is written,

none is righteous.

No, not one.

No one understands.

No one seeks for God.

All have turned aside.

Together they have become worthless.

No one does good,

not even one.

Their throat is an open grave

and they use their tongues to deceive.

The venom of asps is under their lips.

Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood.

In their paths are ruin and misery.

The way of peace they have not known.

There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Verse 19.

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.

For by works of the law,

no human being will be justified in his sight

since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

But now the righteousness of God

has been manifested apart from the law,

although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ

for all who believe.

For there is no distinction.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

and are justified by his grace as a gift

through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,

whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood

to be received by faith.

This was to show God's righteousness

because in his divine forbearance,

he has passed over former sins.

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.

This is God's word.

Would you pray with me?

Lord, as we look one more time at your word

and consider how to speak it persuasively and gently

and yet with courage and truth to our friends,

would you do it to us first?

Would the gospel shine into our hearts?

Would you illuminate our minds and our hearts

to receive the good news of justification by faith alone?

And would you give us the words and the wisdom

and the courage to take that with compassion and bravery

to our friends and neighbors for your glory and for our good.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Okay, so I'm going to start off by telling two different stories,

describing two different people for you.

The first person I want you to picture

is a person who lives in the year 1519.

1519.

And this person is a highly religious person.

This person has taken a vow to devote their whole life

to serving God and to obeying God.

And he is so religious, so committed to God's law

that he would beat himself up whenever he failed.

If there was a moment where he realized

that he had lapsed in his obedience to God's law,

he would beat himself with a whip or with a stick.

And he was so zealous that his spiritual mentors

would regularly tell him,

hey, ease up on yourself, all right?

Don't go so hard on yourself, right?

You're going a little hard on this spirituality thing.

And yet as hard as this person worked,

his conscience still plagued him.

He had this deep, deep sense of I am wicked.

There is something wrong with me.

There is a black spot in my being,

in my heart that I cannot get rid of.

And he had this nagging feeling

that I am a wretched sinner before God.

And no matter how hard I try,

it is not enough.

This person wrote in his spiritual biography,

he said,

though I lived as a monk without reproach,

a monk, a man who has taken vows of holy living,

a monk above 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 raged with a fierce and troubled conscience.

That's this person.

This is a person who is acutely aware

of the demands of God's law for his life

and painfully aware of his own sin,

knowing that he deserved punishment,

God's wrath for his sin.

And sometime in 1517, 1519,

Martin Luther realized the good news

of the gospel of justification

by faith alone in Christ alone.

That God had imputed,

that had injected or placed onto his account

righteousness from outside of him,

that it was not by his works,

but simply by trusting in Jesus Christ.

And that good news,

that gospel became to him

a source of relief and of hope and of salvation.

And he was transformed

with joy and peace and hope.

And he starts the air,

he's the air of the tradition

that we are now in today,

the Protestant Reformation.

That's the first person in 1519, 1517.

Second person I want you to picture.

I had this conversation,

this very conversation this last week.

It's a college student.

She attends UCCS.

She grew up with a very vague understanding

of Christianity,

did not grow up in a Christian environment,

knows the very bare minimum about Christianity,

has a limited view.

Essentially, her view of faith

is that God is out there.

He's out there.

And he punishes bad people.

And he wants us to live a good life.

But basically, God is loving.

That's Christianity.

God is out there.

He punishes bad people.

He wants us to live a holy life.

And I'll do my best.

And I was talking with her this last week,

describing to her the basics of the Christian life.

And I was describing,

I said, God condemns all sinners

to eternal punishment,

but offers salvation to anyone

who just trusts in Jesus.

All you do is trust in who Jesus is

and what he has done for you.

Isn't that good news?

And she goes, okay.

Okay, so what?

Okay, so what?

And right there, friends,

is the urgency,

the urgency of evangelism in 2025.

Because right there,

we see revealed to us

something seismic has happened in our world

to where one man, Martin Luther,

feels this dreadful sense of his own guilt,

his own spiritual demise,

that he stands before a holy,

wrathful,

judging God,

and he knows his own deficiency

and his own sin.

And the college student in 2025

who just says,

okay,

so what?

So what?

I don't see the urgency of this.

And what I hope to do today

is to try to remember together

how justification by faith alone

remains the heart

and the goodness

of the Christian gospel.

And most importantly,

how do we tell our friends that?

How do we tell our friends,

how do we tell our neighbors

that that is true

in what we could call,

what we will call,

a secular age?

And I'll describe that in a minute.

So how do we communicate

to a secular person

that justification still is good news?

That's our task today.

The way we will do it

is we'll look at this in three ways.

First,

why is justification hard

to communicate in 2025?

Why is it hard?

Second,

why does it still matter?

How does it still matter?

And third,

how do we do it?

How do we do it

with our friends and neighbors?

So let's look at this.

The first thing I want us to consider

is why is justification hard in 2025?

One of the background assumptions,

and I said this the day,

the first day that we started looking

at the topic of evangelism

the last few weeks,

is that one of the background assumptions

is that something seismic has happened

in our world,

in our culture,

in the lives and hearts of your friends

that do not know Jesus

that has made evangelism really hard.

Evangelism has always been hard.

But something has shifted

in the last 500 years,

in the last however you want to date it,

to where Martin Luther feels,

the average person says,

how am I made at peace with God?

How do I live at peace with God

to today where it is just

not a pressing urgent need

in most people's minds?

They just don't care.

They don't feel the need of it.

Scholars have called this shift

secularism.

Secularism.

Actually,

Cheyenne Mountain

is going to be hosting

a seminar in a couple of weeks

on ministering and secularism

for chaplains at the academy,

I mean,

at the fort,

which I'm thrilled by

that y'all are,

you know,

that they're continuing

to think through this

because this is easily

the most urgent missionary need

in our world today.

Secularism.

Now,

here's what it is.

For our main purposes,

our main point here,

we could go on

for a long time about this.

It's this,

that most people

do not have categories,

do not have categories

for the basic movements

for the progression

of the Christian faith.

Concepts such as sin

and righteousness

and faith and grace.

They just don't have categories

for it.

They do not,

the average non-Christian

college student,

the average person

who grew up secular,

doesn't understand

what those are.

And even if they have grown up

in the Christian faith

and have either moved away

or openly rejected it,

they don't feel

a sense of urgency.

In fact,

I would wager

that if you're a non-Christian here

and you're considering Christianity

and you stumbled into the church,

you're like,

I don't frankly know

why I'm here.

I could be doing

a whole lot of other things

on my Sunday morning

rather than coming to this place

and spending two hours here.

Categories of the Christian faith

don't feel urgent

in our world.

And here's the problem.

When we do evangelism,

depending on

or hinging on

the historic Protestant message

of justification

by faith alone,

the way that we have

historically understood

and done it,

we are solving a problem,

A, that most people

don't see as a problem,

and B, with a solution

that most people

don't really feel is helpful.

When we offer

justification by faith alone,

the way that you and I

often intuitively

think through it,

we are solving a problem

that most people

don't really think

is a problem

with a solution

that doesn't feel helpful.

Does that make sense?

So think of it this way.

If you were to have

a flat tire,

you're driving down the road

and you feel that you have

a flat tire in your car

and it's in the middle

of a blizzard

and some guy pulls up

to you to help you

and you say,

oh, thank heaven,

and he offers you

a pet snake

and a protein shake,

you would say,

uh,

not what I need

right now.

Not what I need

right now.

that's what happens

when we offer

the gospel

to our friends

in a secular age.

They go,

okay,

so what?

So what?

I don't understand.

Prior to secularism,

for hundreds of years,

human beings felt

like Martin Luther,

where there was

a pressing need

to be reconciled

to God.

They knew that God

was really involved

in the human life

and that he was holy

and they were not

and they sensed that

and they said,

we must be reconciled

with our God.

There is this thing

called sin

and it is a gap

between me

and God's holiness.

And evangelism

during this season

was basically

persuading people

of things that they

already knew

were true

and they accepted.

It was persuading people

to believe

what they culturally knew

and today,

all of those categories

are gone.

Does that make sense?

Do you see

what the problem is?

Often the gospel

feels like superfluous news

for a non-existent problem.

It is superfluous news

for a problem

that people don't feel.

Justification by faith alone,

that is God reconciling to us,

simply by us trusting in Jesus,

it feels unnecessary.

It feels not urgent

to most of our friends.

Now, how do we share

the gospel in that world?

How do we make it urgent again?

How do we make it relevant again?

How do we evangelize in this?

Well, I hope to show you.

But that's the first point.

And that's why,

often,

when you share your faith

or as you think through it,

it falls on deaf ears.

People think,

I don't see the urgency for this.

So let's look at part two.

Why does justification matter still?

Or how is it still relevant?

And this is where things get tricky

and this is where things get really exciting.

This is where I come alive

because this is where,

because we can actually begin

to communicate to our friends

that it is relevant.

But it takes a little extra steps.

It takes some work.

And here's the first thing

that we must do.

The first thing that we must do

is pay attention

to the felt needs of our friends.

Watch our friends,

watch our neighbors,

watch our family members,

and just put up your spiritual radar

and pay attention

to their felt needs.

What are they aware of?

Where do they feel a gap in their lives?

We talked about this

when we looked at Revelation 21,

where most people are asking,

remember what I asked?

Does the story end happy?

Does it have a happy ending?

People are asking that question.

Does it have a happy ending?

There's this sense of,

I need a happy ending

in my life or my story.

Where are the gaps

in our friends' lives?

If they don't have this gap

between their lives

and God's holiness,

where are there those gaps?

And I would like to single out

two for us.

There's lots of different options,

lots of places,

but I would like to single out

two that I think

are particularly common today.

Two places where the average

non-Christian secular person

does feel an incompleteness

or a need in their lives.

You with me?

Okay, so the first one is shame.

The first place is shame.

Most people today

have an acute sense

of personal shame

for some reason,

from something,

and where that can come from,

my gosh,

there are infinite options.

But what that is,

is shame is an internal voice

that humiliates

and denigrates

and denies self-worth.

Most people have a sense

within them

that there is something

deeply flawed

about their deepest self.

And it could come from

something that they did,

that you did.

Perhaps this is you.

As soon as I bring up

the word shame,

people go,

whoo,

and they start looking inside

and they begin to feel it.

Something that you did

a long time ago

or recently

and you feel guilty,

dirty,

something's wrong

within yourself.

It could be something

that happened to you,

some kind of abuse,

something that someone else

did to you

that made you feel unworthy.

Either way,

most people

are carrying around

in their heart

a list

or an event

or a thing

that makes them feel

deficient,

dirty,

or unworthy.

And I recently

talked with a student

who felt like

no matter how hard

he worked,

he would never be

enough for his dad.

No matter how hard

he tried,

no matter how hard

he worked

and his grades

and all that,

that his dad

would never value him.

And he felt

tremendous shame

about this.

Now notice,

he feels no need

for God in his life.

He feels no urgency

to have peace

with God,

but he does feel

a lot of shame

in his relationship

with his dad.

We can work with that.

Talked with another friend,

he's a peer of mine,

he's a former soldier.

This is particularly

relevant for the base,

for the Cheyenne Mountain.

He felt an incredible

amount of shame

over things that he did

while he was deployed.

He had done things

in war,

he never told me.

He said,

how can I possibly

breathe another breath

after the things

I've done?

doesn't feel

a sense of

wrong before God,

just,

I'm bad.

There's something

wrong with me.

Now,

what is the secular

solution

our non-Christian

world's answer

or solution

to shame?

For the non-Christian,

for the secular,

the solution

to shame

is,

hey,

you just need

to forgive yourself

and accept yourself.

That's what it boils

down to.

So,

for example,

college students

will go to

the counseling center

at the college

that I work at

and the school counselors,

very well-meaning people,

will say something like,

hey,

healing is learning

to love yourself

and just accept yourself.

That's what you need to do.

Just learn to accept yourself.

Some version of that.

Do some deep breathing

and some mindfulness exercises

and learn to love yourself again.

And that's well and good.

There's a place

for something like that,

but it doesn't work.

It does not ultimately work

and our friends know that

because they've tried.

They've tried to heal

their shame on their own

and it doesn't go away

and it continues

to gnaw

and eat at their hearts

and they feel,

though they feel

absolutely no spiritual guilt

before God,

they feel deep angst

within themselves

about who am I?

Do I deserve

to take up the air

that I breathe

on this planet?

So that's the first felt need

that many of our friends have

and we can work with that.

Let me tell you.

I'll show you in a minute how.

Here's the second felt need

that many of our friends have.

It's the reality,

the acknowledgement

of injustice

or oppression

in our world.

Our non-Christian friends

will look around their world,

they will look around

their neighborhood,

they'll read the news

and they'll say,

something is wrong

with our world.

People with dark skin

have it harder

than people with light skin.

Women have it harder

than men.

Something like this.

They'll look at something

in our world

and say,

that is unjust.

This is oppression

and it should be fixed.

The rich are getting richer

and the poor are getting poorer

and that's not good.

Something terrible

happens on a social level

or on an individual level.

If you're a woman

under the age of 25,

statistically,

the chances of you

having something tragic

happening by a man

is almost 100%

and they are deeply aware

of that injustice.

They are deeply aware

of the oppression

that happened.

A miscarriage of justice

or an unreprimanded

and unsolved oppression.

And again,

for the secular person,

for the non-Christian,

the secular solution

to justice

is either

to have solidarity

to create

a new group

with power

who can go fight

those bad guys

or to just get revenge.

That's what they want.

They'll say,

well, there's injustice

out there

so why don't we just

raise awareness,

create solidarity,

create a new group

that we can then

go fight them

to the point

of maybe getting even.

And this can take

several forms.

We can have cancel culture

or it can be

as simple as gossip

and character assassination

or it can reach

the level of violence

to use power.

And the problem

with this

is it sets up

a new power struggle.

It sets up

a new us versus them.

My tribe versus your tribe.

And it never actually

heals the injustice.

It never actually

deals with the oppression.

It just keeps

the spiral going.

You see that?

Okay, now,

I want to zoom out.

Justification

is not important

to our non-Christian friends.

They don't care about it.

They don't feel

a need for it.

But shame

and injustice

are highly important.

They are deeply aware

of those things

in their lives.

And so what we need

to do

is pay attention

to the felt needs,

to the things

they do care about

in our friends.

And then,

here's the next move.

Pay attention here.

The next move

is to show them

that Christianity

offers

a better explanation

of what went wrong

and a better solution

of how to fix it.

It's to show our friends

that Christianity

offers a better explanation

of what's wrong

and a better solution

of how to fix it.

What we need

to show them

is that their diagnosis

of what is wrong

in their lives

and in their world

does not go deep enough.

A few months ago,

I had a friend

who had a car.

His car was,

well, he still has a car.

He was having some car trouble.

He's driving his car

down the road

and he starts to feel

the gunk, gunk, gunk, gunk, gunk, gunk,

the wump, wump, wump,

you know,

and he starts tinkering with it.

He's not a mechanic

nor the son of a mechanic.

And he thought,

well, maybe the air pressure's low.

And so he puts some air

in his tires.

And then he tries driving again

and all the tires

are perfectly inflated

and he still feels

the gunk, gunk, gunk, gunk

as he's driving down the road.

And he takes it

into the mechanic

and the mechanic says,

no, it's not your air pressure.

Your CV joints are off.

Something deeper is wrong.

And my friend thought

he knew what was wrong.

He thought he understood

what was wrong,

but his solution

didn't go deep enough.

It didn't go deep enough

to what was wrong.

And the same is true

with our non-Christian friends.

They know something's wrong,

but their diagnosis

can't go deep enough.

We get to show them

that Christianity

explains the deep level

brokenness of the world.

And that's where Romans 3 comes in.

That's where Romans 3 comes in.

Verses 9 through 10,

or verses,

well, it's 9 through 18

in a lot of ways.

We have already charged

that all,

in this context,

Paul means every person

who takes up oxygen

on God's green earth.

All are under sin.

As it is written,

none is righteous.

No, not one.

No one understands.

No one seeks for God.

They have all turned aside.

Together,

they have become worthless.

No one does good.

Not even one.

No one is righteous.

The word righteous,

of course,

is a crucial phrase

in the book of Romans

and in the Bible,

in the Christian faith,

because it means

spiritually accepted

before God.

When it says

no one is righteous,

it means that

no human being

has right standing

before and in the presence

of God.

There's a genre

of TV shows

that are particularly

popular,

well,

they have been for a while.

Shows like Breaking Bad,

a new one just came out

called American Primeval.

It's on Netflix.

Cannot recommend it.

It's brutal.

Breaking Bad is another one.

Yellowstone is one.

Ozark.

These shows that come out,

and the thing about these shows

is that everybody's a bad guy.

Everybody's a bad guy.

You know,

there are shows

where there's good versus evil.

We love these kinds of shows.

But what these shows do,

things like Breaking Bad,

is it basically creates

a set of characters

who are all bad guys

and lets them loose

and just lets them

go do their thing.

And there's no good guys.

And I think we love to,

they're very popular shows.

We love to watch them

because we like to imagine

the reality that it's out there,

but not actually here.

But the terrifying reality

of those shows

is when you really encounter them,

when you actually

really sit with it,

you go,

oh man,

that might actually be true,

which then implicates me.

It implicates all of us.

There's no good guys.

Verse 15,

they are swift to shed blood.

These shows will create characters

who are all selfish,

all willing to sacrifice others

for their own good.

And they're deeply unnerving

because we are faced

with the possibility

that no one is a good guy.

Everybody's a bad guy.

And Paul tells us

that those shows

are actually reality,

spiritually.

He's talking about

what we call natural humans,

natural man.

And he says,

natural man,

separated from Christ,

without God doing something,

restraining

or saving in our world,

in our hearts,

we would only deteriorate

into worse and worse,

selfishness,

sin,

rejection of God,

and harm of man.

No one natural man

that seeks God.

No one does what is good.

And in evangelism,

what we need to say

is say,

yes,

you are on to something

with shame and injustice.

But your explanation

can't go deep enough.

You're looking at tire pressure

when there's a CV joint problem

under the hood.

And the doctrine of sin

that the Christian faith offers

cuts underneath it

and offers a problem

that is deeper,

that's more systemic,

that explains what's broken

in my life

and in our world

far more accurately,

far better

than shame

or injustice

or anything else.

Let me try to show you how.

For shame,

shame says,

sin says that

there actually is

something wrong with me.

You know,

the great fear of shame

is that there's something

actually wrong with me,

so bad that I cannot

just accept myself.

The secular counselor

just says,

well,

just accept yourself.

And you say,

I can't.

There might be something

wrong with me.

What does sin say?

Your worst fears

are more true

than you ever thought.

There actually is

something wrong with you.

There actually is

something deeply,

deeply wrong with you.

You actually ought

to be ashamed

on a level.

There's godly shame.

I am right

to feel it

because I am guilty.

What about for injustice?

Sin says,

yes,

there actually is

something dreadfully

wrong with our world.

Yes,

there actually is

oppression,

but it's all of us.

What it says,

their feet are swift

to shed blood

and their paths

are ruin and misery.

And what it does

is it implicates

all of us.

What does he say

later on?

For all have sinned

and fall short

of the glory of God.

Rather than what

injustice systems

of our secular world

would do,

which would create

a good guy

and a bad guy

and us versus them

where we just

fight it out.

It says,

no,

everybody's broken.

We're all in this

reality show

of broken characters

together,

fighting it out

together,

fighting out

against each other.

That explains

the world better.

Our world is not

an us versus them

problem.

It's an all of us

are part of the problem.

And sin explains

the problems

that your non-Christians

have more realistically

with a better solution

than what they're

trying to explain it with.

And we must show

our friends

that their answers

and their explanations

that are wrong

with the world

don't go deep enough.

Only sin,

only total depravity

actually gets

to the root

of what's wrong.

And so watch

for how do they

explain what's wrong

with our world.

If you're not a Christian,

I would ask you,

how do you?

And I would challenge

you to say,

does it go deep enough?

I don't think it does.

Whatever it is.

If you want to challenge me

on that,

I'd love to buy

a cup of coffee

and listen to hear

what you're thinking.

I would love to do that.

The last move.

The last move

is to make justification

good news again.

To show them

that the solution

goes deep,

as deep,

even deeper

than the problem.

If sin goes

to the very deep,

we show them

that the gospel

goes deeper.

verse 21.

But now

the righteousness

of God

has been manifested

apart from the law.

The righteousness

of God

through faith

in Jesus Christ

for all who believe.

The righteousness

of God

has been manifested,

Paul says.

Manifested

is the word

for uncovered

or revealed

or exposed.

What he is saying

here is that

in contrast

with the unrighteousness

of man,

we have God's

righteousness

coming down

and uncovering,

exposing,

punching down

into our world

to do something,

to fix

the sin problem,

to deal with it.

The righteousness

of God

is God's perfection

coming to make

us perfect.

It is God

offering us

righteousness,

which is what?

A perfectly right

relationship with God.

It's God beauty

coming into our lives

to make us beautiful.

It's God's light

invading our darkness

and shining forth.

It's God's antidote

to the poison

that lies

at the heart

of every person.

It's God's love

burning away

all our love,

our unlove

and all our hate.

It's God's righteousness

giving us

God's capacity

to follow him again.

That is what it is.

Now how does this happen?

How does God

make us righteous?

Verse 22,

it's through faith.

It's by trusting

simply and only

in who Jesus is

and what he has done.

This means that

God makes us righteous

or he gives us

standing before him

the minute

that we trust in him.

We trust in what

he has done.

Verse 23,

for all have sinned

and fall short

of the glory of God

and are justified.

English fails here,

but it says

and are made righteous.

and are made righteous

by his grace

as a gift.

So in this

broken world

of shame

and injustice

and sin,

God comes in

and as a free

undeserved gift

makes sinners

righteous.

How?

Through the redemption

that is in Jesus Christ

whom God put forward

as a propitiation

by his blood.

As a propitiation

by his blood.

Paul tells us

that God is the one

who restores

our standing before him

and the tool,

the instrument

that he uses

is Jesus

and he tells us

that Jesus

is the propitiation.

That word means

wrath deflection.

If God's wrath

is hurtling,

zooming towards us

and we deserve it,

Christ comes

and stands in our way

and deflects God's wrath

off of us

and onto himself.

And the moment

we trust that,

that becomes

spiritually true of us.

We said it today

that it's an act

of God's free grace.

The moment we trust

it is true

that we are justified.

Now,

this is where it gets fun

in evangelism.

Pay attention here.

Justification by faith alone

in Christ

solves

both

the felt need

and the deeper

spiritual need

of every person

and of the non-Christian.

It solves

the felt need

and the deepest

spiritual need.

And when we begin

to solve the felt need,

the thing that they are aware of,

it becomes good news again.

It becomes something

that they want

and they desire.

Remember,

how does this happen?

Remember that most of our friends

feel an overwhelming

sense of shame.

What does justification do?

What does justification mean?

It means that God

imputes to us,

injects into us

an alien righteousness,

that was Martin Luther's term for it,

righteousness that comes

from outside our world,

outside of us,

and injects it into us.

What does that mean?

It means that he cleans us,

he washes us,

anything that could

or would make us dirty,

shameful,

the thing that we say,

what if it's actually true

and sin says

it actually is true?

Justification says,

and it's gone.

It's placed on Christ.

You are justified.

The secular counselor

just says,

accept yourself

and it doesn't work.

It does not work.

But the gospel says

the most judging person

in the universe

has judged you

and he loves you now

because of your faith in Jesus.

He accepts you.

That has the power

to deal with shame.

Do you see that?

That has the power

to deal with shame.

Now what about injustice?

If sin makes injustice

and oppression

a human problem

and implicates all of us,

we are all oppressors.

We are no longer

into just an us-them system

but what does it say?

Justification says

that God is our propitiation

through Christ.

He is the one

who bears our wrath.

Rather than injustice,

we say,

well, let's just go judge them.

Let's bring our wrath

down on them.

But then sin says,

no, you're part of the problem too.

You deserve wrath too.

But what is Christ?

He is the one

who bears the wrath

that we deserve.

He is the one

who takes the injustice

of sin onto himself.

He was canceled.

He was killed.

He was judged.

He was obliterated

in the place of mankind

and it solves

the felt need

of the person

looking to solve injustice

with the perfect justice

of Christ.

26,

to show that his righteousness

at the present time

that he might be what?

Both just

and the justifier

of the one

who has faith in Jesus.

You see what it does?

You see what justification does?

Our goal is to show our friends

that justification

offers a better solution

to the deeper problem.

But the way that we must do it

is through what they are aware

is the problem.

It shows us

that our worst fears

about ourselves

both as individuals

and as a human race

are more true

than we dare to imagine.

We are actually bad.

And then

the gospel shows us

that God knows this

and he still loves us

and he deals with it

and he does something

to us,

for us,

and in us

through the redemption

that comes through Jesus Christ.

God demonstrates

his love towards us

in this.

While we were still sinners,

Christ died for the ungodly.

this passage shows us,

the gospel shows us

that the most loving,

the most just,

the most wrathful,

the most discerning,

the most gracious,

the most gentle,

the most caring person

in the universe

judges,

evaluates,

and then accepts,

loves,

and cherishes

me,

you,

despite your shame,

despite your guilt,

but based on Jesus'

perfection given to us.

And that ministers

to our deepest needs

and it becomes good news.

It becomes something

that our friends

desire to hear again.

It marks us with love.

Really,

that's what this passage

shows us.

It shows us

what the whole gospel

promises,

which is that God

loves us a lot.

as simple as that.

If there's anything

you hear from this,

it's that God

loves us a lot

and he marks us

with love.

I just finished reading

the first Harry Potter

with my daughter.

We reach the climax

of the Sorcerer's Stone

when Professor Quirrell,

who's a dark agent

of Lord Voldemort,

attacks Harry.

But when he attacks Harry,

he immediately,

his skin starts burning.

He cannot touch Harry.

Why?

Well,

Professor Dumbledore

explains it at the end.

He says,

your mother died

to save you.

There's one thing

Voldemort cannot understand

it is love.

He didn't realize

that love

as powerful

as your mother's

for you

leaves its own mark.

To have been loved

so deeply,

even though the person

who loved us

has gone,

will give us

some protection forever.

It's in your very skin,

Dumbledore says.

Quirrell full of hatred,

greed,

and ambition.

Sharing his soul

with the dark Lord Voldemort

could not touch you

for this reason.

It was agony

to touch a person

marked by something

so good.

And in the world

of Harry Potter,

Harry's mother died

to save him.

She sacrificed

herself for him.

She bore

Voldemort's wrath

sacrificially

and marked Harry

with love

to protect him.

Her sacrifice

saves Harry.

J.K. Rowling

understands this.

She knows

that it points us

to something

far greater,

to the one

who marked

all of us

with love.

The minute

that he died,

he justifies us

and it marks

you with love

so that the minute

you believe that,

you can say,

I am a Christian,

one who is justified

before my God

and there's nothing

that you did

to receive it,

nothing you do

to earn it,

all you do

is receive it

by trusting in God.

And apart from God,

we are all unrighteousness.

That's what this text says.

But through Jesus,

God comes close

with righteousness

outside of this universe

and all we do

is trust.

It's as simple as that

and we are marked

with his love.

This is an ambitious sermon.

I know I pushed

a lot of you

and that's okay.

Thank you for staying

with me.

What's the point?

The point is this.

Justification by faith alone

is still good news.

It will always be good news

because it will always

solve our deepest problem,

which is sin.

Our task

is to show our friends

that the way

that we do that

is by paying attention

to what they are aware

of that they need

and then to show them

that their solution

isn't deep enough,

but the gospel solution

is far deeper.

When we do that,

as we do that,

then justification

becomes what it was

for Martin Luther.

It becomes good news

and no longer

does a person say,

okay, so what?

But they say,

this is what I need

in my life.

This is what I've always needed.

And you say,

let me show you,

follow with me

the Jesus

who justifies the faithful

because he loves me

and he loves you.

Evangelism is that.

That's all we're doing

is saying,

come follow the one

who has marked me with love.

He loves you.

He's the one

who justified you

and it's really good news.

Let me pray.

Lord in heaven,

thanks that the gospel

is timeless.

Thanks that your grace,

despite the coming

and going

of different cultural moments,

is always been

and always has been good news.

We pray that you would

give us wisdom

on how to apply that

to the people

in our lives

who need it.

We can talk about

culture all day long.

We can talk about

theology all day long.

At the end of the day,

we need your spirit

to make the gospel

sweet to us

and to give us wisdom

on how to make it

sweet to our friends.

Give us all that grace

and we will give you the glory.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.