"Justified by the Resurrection" Romans 4:25 Sunday Morning Worship Service

You can make your way in your Bibles to Romans chapter 4.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

Verse 25 is where we'll be this morning.

Often on Easter, we'll look at one of the gospel accounts of the resurrection.

But this morning I wanted to go to Romans 4, verse 25, one of my favorite passages on the resurrection of Christ.

Romans 4:25

And we'll have our study there.

Romans 4, verse 25.

Romans 4:25

The last verse of Romans chapter 4.

Romans 4 · chapter mention

Floyd Collins is a name you may not be familiar with, but he was an American cave explorer in the early 1900s.

He had devoted his life, his life goal, so to speak, was to discover a cave and turn it into a tourist attraction to make lots of money for himself.

It's like the American dream right there.

He'd grown up in a farm in that part of the country, and they had a cave on the farm, and he thought, you know what, people would pay to see this.

But his cave wasn't big enough to get the job done.

And so in between World War I and World War II, he set out to find a cave to turn into a tourist attraction.

He was unsuccessful.

So he entered into a series of agreements with farmers all over Kentucky and Indiana, West Virginia, where he made a deal with them.

If I find a cave on your property, then I can work on it and turn it into a tourist attraction, and we'll split the money 50-50.

And all kinds of farmers agreed because it cost them nothing.

And lo and behold, he eventually did find a cave, a massive cave, and he did open it up as a tourist attraction, and nobody came.

It was way too far away from any town, way too far away from any major road.

And so it was just meagerly attended, and this was disappointing, of course.

And so he then thought, you know what, I bet this cave, he hadn't found the end of it.

I bet it can go back and go back and go back, and I bet I'll eventually find where it opens up to a major highway somewhere.

And so he started off on his journey.

And the journey ends as, you know, who would have seen this coming?

He died in the cave.

Um there was a cave in and he got uh collapsed and traps.

People knew that he was alive for a while.

They went looking for him and they could hear him shouting through the ground, and they tried to build, you know, little uh it was a massive rescue effort, uh, but it failed.

And what is remarkable about it though, why people some of you may even know this story because of this, he failed at connecting the cave.

But because it was so remote, this is the era of radio, this was the f the first event in world history that was covered live on the news by radio.

News stations sent out reporters with radio equipment out there into the middle of rural Kentucky where they broadcast the rescue efforts, which lasted several weeks.

And that made it so famous that thousands, tens of thousands of people came to watch the radio broadcast of his failed rescue.

So, in a sense, he succeeded, right?

I mean, he made it famous.

They opened up carnival rides there, food vendors came out there.

It became like the county fair to watch the radio broadcast.

I know that's not how the medium is supposed to work, but that's what happened.

After several weeks, they gave up and considered him dead, and the government declared no more rescue efforts, just consider him buried in the ground there, game over.

That was burial number one for Mr.

Lloyd, for Mr.

Collins.

Burial number two came two weeks later when his brother, who was not content with leaving him in the grounds, got some friends and decided to come at it from a different cave, and lo and behold, they found the body and wrestled it out of the grounds and brought it back to the cave where our our our boy Floyd Collins grew up and buried him on the family farm.

That was burial number two.

Eventually the family sold the farm, and a new investor bought the farm and discovered the cave on it with his body in it, and remembering the story, thought, you know what?

I bet this'll be a tourist attraction.

And so he got a glass coffin and propped it up in the cave and started selling tickets for people to come see the body of Floyd Collins.

And people did come pay to see the body of Floyd Collins.

That was burial number three.

Some people were upset about this and dug the body out of the uh glass coffin and abandoned it in a field.

It took the farmer several days to find it, which he did.

He put it back in a different glass coffin, suspended it from the ceiling, and chained it to the back wall.

Burial number four.

Eventually, the U.S.

government seized the farm and uh turned it into what is now Mammoth Cave National Park and uh moved it to a different cave and put it on display there.

Burial number five.

The family was upset about this and protested the government, taking him to court and all manner of different things.

Finally, the government, 25 years later, in 1989, caved in.

They did not give the body to the family because they were so at work to the family at this point, but they gave the body to the local Baptist church, Mammoth Cave Baptist Church, where it remains interred on the Baptist church property to this very moment, burial number six.

Interestingly, he is more famous in death than life because of the irony of how many times he was buried.

Every single one of those times he was still dead.

Now, this becomes the Jesus juke here, over to our Lord.

Jesus was famous in death for the opposite reason.

Not because of how many times he was buried or the irony around his burial, but Jesus becomes famous in death because of how ironic it is that he was not buried.

He had testified over and over and over again that he would resurrect from the grave.

Of course, they did bury him on the Friday that he was crucified.

On the Saturday, between Friday and Sunday, he remained in the grave with the stone rolled in front of it.

But on that Sunday morning, he resurrected from the grave, becoming more famous in death than in life.

This is what is in the background of Romans 4, verse 25.

Romans 4:25

Let me read it for us.

He who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

There are two prepositions in this verse I want to draw your attention to.

Two fours.

I'll give you an outline this morning to follow along.

Two fours that give Easter meaning.

Two fours.

The fours here, he was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

This word for is what everything hinges on.

A lonely short preposition, but it's what gives this verse its consequential meaning.

The word delivered up is the first for here.

He was delivered up for our sins.

He died for our sins.

And that's the theological word, imputation.

Imputation means where something is credited from one person to another.

The word delivered up here in the Greek, it is a legal term.

It's a word that means convicted and sentenced all in one, that the person is found guilty and sentenced.

That's what the word delivered here means.

He was delivered up.

He was convicted of sin and sentenced to pay for that sin.

The thing with Jesus is that, of course, he was sinless.

He was the Son of God, truly God, in human flesh, truly man, who led a sinless life.

And at the end of his life, he was delivered up, and delivered up means put forward to die.

That's the language earlier in Romans 3.

He was put forward to die.

He was delivered up to die.

He was betrayed by Judas.

He was convicted by the Jews in a sham trial.

He was ultimately executed by the Romans, but he was delivered up, not by Judas or the Jewish leaders or the Roman government.

He was delivered up by God himself.

Romans 5 says it was the Father who delivered him to death.

Jesus himself in John chapter 10 says that no one would take his life from him, but he would lay it down on his own.

John 10 · chapter mention

And the Spirit, of course, ministered to him through his death and his descent into the grave.

And the Spirit energized his body and brought him back to life.

So the Father, Son, and Spirit, God Himself is the one who delivered Jesus over to die.

Jesus was delivered to death.

He was sentenced and convicted for not his own sins, but he was sentenced and convicted for our sins.

This is what it means to be delivered over to death.

He was found guilty of our sins.

He was sentenced for our sins.

This is the concept of imputation.

Now, it sounds odd to say that somebody could be found guilty of somebody else's sins, doesn't it?

If somebody breaks into your house and steals your jewelry and your cat or whatever and does, you know, terrible things to your house, and they get hunted down by the police and arrested and put on trial, and what would what would your response to if the judge said, okay, I know this person did it, I find them guilty, but I'm going to sentence that person to jail instead?

That'll teach everybody a lesson.

That would be a miscarriage of justice.

You wouldn't be satisfied that this person was sentenced to jail because that's the person who did the crime, not that person, even if it was the judge's own son.

If the judge said, Oh, this sounds terrible and horrible, what happened to your house, so I'm going to sentence that person to jail.

No, there's no actual transference of guilt.

A judge can't transfer the guilt from the person who did it to that person over there.

So that would be a miscarriage of justice.

But when the Bible describes Jesus as being delivered over for our sins, there is a transference of guilt.

This is imputation.

That God actually does take our sin and in a very real and legal way transfers our sin to Jesus.

He imputes it to Jesus.

Our sin becomes his sin.

And he's sentenced for it, convicted of it, where he stands before God for justice, and God finds him guilty of our sin because our sin was truly transferred to him.

My oldest daughter is babysitting now, and sometimes people pay her for her babysitting by Venmoing her money, except they Venmo it to me, so I receive her money.

I have set up a bank account for her, so the Venmo comes to me, and I then send it from my phone to her bank account.

She has to be a witness of this to see that it actually see there it is.

Click, boom, magically in her account.

Then she wants to buy something, then I can buy it for her by Venmo or you know paying on my phone, but drawing it out of her account.

And I suppose it's conceivable she could even buy something from the family she's babysitting for.

In which case, I would Venmo it back to them.

There's a m the money goes full circle from them to her to me, back to her, back to them.

The money's going every which way.

And at no point does any actual money change hands.

In fact, our country doesn't even have the gold standard anymore.

Is money even a thing?

It's all a fiction, you know?

They're lying to you.

I'll dial it down.

The money is transferring and moving around in a real way, though.

I mean, my daughter could go to the bank and give her a little student ID, I suppose, and persuade the teller that she is, in fact, Madison Johnson at so-and-so address, and she could get the money out of the account, I imagine.

She has no need to actually do that though, because she can pay for everything on my phone.

That's imputation.

In a really and true way, the money goes from them to me, me to her, and then back wherever.

And that's it's not a fiction.

It really is going those places.

This is what happens with our sin.

God has the authority and the capacity to take our sin from us and transfer it to Jesus.

And to find Jesus guilty of our sin.

And to sentence him to death for our sin.

And it's more than a physical death.

There's an eternal punishment.

Your sin is against God.

If your sin was against some, you know, local government leader, you might have some kind of fine, or a bigger leader, a different kind of fine, or, you know, a bigger leader, a different kind of fine.

Like it ramps up depending on the severity of who you sinned against, of course.

You sin against God.

There's no amount of 30 days in jail that can take away a sin against God.

But by our sin becoming Jesus' sin, Jesus, by virtue of his sinless nature, becomes sin for us.

Our sin becomes his.

He can pay for our sin.

We wouldn't have the capacity to atone for our own sin.

But Jesus, because he is also truly God, can atone for our sin because he's an infinite person.

God can forgive sin against God.

And so Jesus suffers and bears the punishment for our sin, and he can do so in that one day on the cross, because he is an eternal person, and he truly pays for our sin.

That's what it means.

He was delivered up for our trespasses.

Here's how Paul says it in Colossians 2.

You who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh were made alive together with him, having your free trespasses forgiven by the canceling of the record of your debt that was nailed to the cross.

So it's as if your sins were written down and nailed to the cross of Jesus.

So oftentimes criminals, when they died, would have their crime above their head.

Jesus, as he sentenced to death, his sign might say he claimed to be king of the Jews.

But the reality is he suffered and died.

The sign truly said, your sins.

He suffered and died for your sins.

This is imputation.

There's a real exchange on the cross.

You know, Thursday, before Jesus was betrayed and the soldiers arrested him, Jesus was in the garden praying and even prayed that this cup would pass from him.

Mark says that he was overwhelmed with sorrow.

Overwhelmed is a word that means he was he was laid out.

He was he he couldn't stand because of the sorrow over what was going to happen to him.

He was not afraid of dying.

He knew where he was going.

He was not afraid of the cross.

He wasn't afraid of the pain.

What Jesus was overwhelmed with sorrow about was the notion of our sin becoming his.

The holiest person who ever lived took on our sin.

The holy person doesn't want anything to do with sin.

And Jesus had our sin transferred to him.

And this paints a little bit of a logical problem.

When Jesus was crucified in 33 AD, give or take, a few years.

I was born in 1976.

1,920 some years.

Don't do the math, by the way.

1921 years or so later.

I was born into sin.

I was born loving sin and running from God.

How, if Jesus paid for my sin 1,920 plus years before I was even born, could I then be born into sin and live in sin if he had already paid for my sin?

If he'd already been tried, convicted, sentenced, and paid for my sin.

This is what the whole of Romans 4 is about.

I won't take you through all of Romans 4 this morning, but it's about Abraham.

And Abraham, of course, was told that he would have a son, that he would have an heir, but then Abraham lived for a long period of time without that heir.

And he had faith in the coming of the heir.

But there was a period of time between when the promise came and when he actually experienced Isaac's birth.

That period of time is kind of what we're talking about here.

Jesus was delivered for our sins, but it's a long period of time later that you experience that forgiveness.

I was born into sin, loving my own life, living for myself, rebelling against God, until at some point in my life I was converted.

I gave my life to the Lord.

I believed the gospel.

I trusted that Jesus died for my sins.

And when I say he died for my sins, he died for all of my sins.

He died for the sin of unbelief, the sin of lust, the sin of pride, the sin of covetousness, the sin of greed, the sin of anger, of boasting.

And I mentioned this earlier, but of unbelief.

The years I spent in unbelief, Jesus paid for those sins.

So the totality of my sins were paid for by Christ.

But I didn't know that.

So I went my own way, accumulating the very sins which Jesus had already paid for.

And then at some point I become convinced of the truth of the gospel, and I'm converted.

I give my life to the Lord, and I now receive and experience the forgiveness that had been procured so long before.

Forgiveness broke into time in my own life when I became a Christian.

And I experienced the forgiveness that was accomplished by Jesus on the cross as he was delivered up for my sins so long ago.

Abraham would have looked at Sarah and wondered, Isn't she too old to have a child?

Abraham would have looked at himself and thought, Am I too old to have a child?

And yet he had faith that the child would come.

We spend years in vanity and pride wandering around, running from the Lord, but then through faith we receive the forgiveness.

A human judge can't transfer guilt from one person to another, but God can, and he does, for all who would ever believe, he takes their sin and gives it to Christ on the cross so long ago, so that Jesus dies for their sin, even the sin of unbelief, and pays the eternal penalty that we deserve.

That's the first four.

He died for our sins.

That's imputation.

Our sin becomes his sin.

The second four, he was raised, it says, for our justification.

He was raised for our justification.

It's spring break time right now.

Some of you might read this justification.

No.

Justification.

There's no joke like a pastor joke.

Come on.

We are justified.

Justified is another legal term.

It means to be declared righteous.

The previous legal term was to be tried, convicted, and sentenced.

This legal term means not just to be acquitted, but it's more strong than that.

Not just to be found not guilty, it's even stronger than that.

But to be acquitted, found not guilty, and declared actively righteous.

We don't really have that concept in our legal system, you know, that's the preponderance of evidence or beyond a reasonable doubt in our legal system.

And you know, a judge could even say, yeah, that guy could have done it.

We don't know though, so not guilty.

That's not this word.

This is the word for not only did this person not do it, but they have all kinds of merit in them.

They have all kinds of active righteousness in them, they have all kinds of positive virtue in them.

So it's not just that they're not guilty, they're actually good.

They're actually righteous.

That's this word.

It's justified, it's being declared righteous before God.

In this sense, Christians are made righteous, as God declares us to be righteous.

It's often to say, you know, people often say nobody's a good person, and that is true in a sense, but Christians could say they're a good person because they are declared righteous by God.

The difference is they're a good person not because of anything they've done, but because of the righteousness that's outside of themselves that's given to them.

This is all over Romans 4.

The key word in Romans 4, and again, I won't go through the whole chapter, I promise.

But the key word in Romans 4 is the word counted.

It's nine times in this chapter.

I'll show you a few of them.

Look at Romans 4, verse 3.

Romans 4:3

Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

Abraham heard that he was going to have an heir.

He believed the promise, and that was counted to him as righteousness.

God credits Abraham as righteous because of his belief in God.

Or verse 8 of Romans 4: Blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.

So that's a negative use of the word.

Positively, Abraham believed God and that was counted to him as righteousness.

Negatively, blessed is the person whose sins are not counted against them.

And you think, how can that be?

How can someone's sins not be counted to them?

And the answer is because these sins are taken from you and given to somebody else, namely the Lord Jesus Christ.

So blessed are you when your sins are counted to somebody else.

That just leaves you with a blank page, though.

That leaves you with zero dollars in the bank account.

That's not good.

But blessed are you when your faith is counted to you as righteousness.

That fills up your bank account.

That's what justification means.

Now, normally justification is associated with the cross, isn't it?

This is the only New Testament verse.

This is why I love this verse.

This is the only New Testament verse that ties justification to the resurrection.

Everywhere else in the Bible, justification is connected to the cross.

That your justification.

When Jesus paid for your sins on the cross.

He atones for your sins, he pays the penalty, he was delivered up for trespasses.

We just talked about that.

So your justification is accomplished right then.

You don't experience it until later, of course, but it was accomplished on the cross.

So Jesus could stay on the cross to telest died.

It is finished.

It is over.

Sin is paid for on the cross.

So what does this mean when it says we are justified by the resurrection?

That he was raised for our justification.

Well, here's an example I think might help.

I grew up, part of my time growing up, was in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, where my mom lives.

It's kind of a small town.

It was a smaller town when I was a kid, but even at this very moment in Steamboat, locals are allowed to pay with checks at places, like restaurants or gas stations or grocery stores.

Locals can pay with checks.

Not tourists, no, no, no, no.

But locals can.

It's a mystery.

Like, why would a local want to pay with a check if you have a credit card kind of world?

But whatever.

Some people like paying with checks.

More power to them.

What happens if the check doesn't clear?

If the check bounces.

You go and you buy ski gloves or whatever with your check and you give it to the ski house and the check bounces back.

Well, this is why only locals can pay with checks.

What they do, what just about every restaurant, gas station, grocery store does, is they make a copy of the bounced check.

They blow it up and they hang it on the wall.

So the tourists traveling through, they have, you know, they're like, oh, you know, so-and-so bounce a check.

They don't care.

But the locals, there's a real big, you know, shame factor here in this.

You don't want your check to bounce.

So, you know, the ski gloves become yours when you write the check.

But there's a little bit of nervousness in you until the check clears the accounts, and you're like, and they will leave that thing up on the wall until you go give them their money, by the way.

That thing will be up there forever.

This is what happens with the resurrection.

That Jesus pays for our sin on the cross.

But we are justified at the resurrection because that's our confidence that the check cleared.

When Jesus rises from the grave, this is how we know that the penalty for our sin was truly paid for.

Without the resurrection, you would wonder, wouldn't you?

Without the resurrection, you would wonder, is my sin truly atoned for by Jesus?

What if I sinned more than he paid for?

What if I do a sin that he didn't know about?

What if I sinned in some other way?

Then he paid for most of my sin, but not that sin.

You wouldn't know.

But by virtue of the resurrection, it was for our benefit, not God's.

God knows the check cleared.

It was for our benefit.

It's a way of demonstrating to us that Jesus perfectly and truly and really and honestly and legally and completely paid for our sin.

Because he rose from the grave.

Again, the example from Isaac and Abraham is helpful if you look back up in verse 18.

In hope, Abraham believed against hope that he'd be the father of many nations.

He didn't weaken, verse 19, in faith, when he considered his own body, which was old, of course, or Sarah's old womb.

Verse 20, no distrust made him waver.

Verse 21, he was fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

You read about this and you think, and I've read the book of Genesis.

It seemed like Abraham was doing a lot of wavering, huh?

And here Paul says, he never wavered.

How do you reconcile this?

Well, what did Abraham's wavering look like in Genesis?

He was wavering about how to accomplish the promise.

He never wavered that God was going to give him the promise.

God said, You'll have an heir.

Abraham tried to take matters into his own hands.

He tried to, you know, have a child with that person.

He tried to borrow that person's kid.

He did all kinds of crazy things, but he never doubted that it would actually happen.

That's what Paul means here.

And decade after decade went by, year after year after year after year after year after year went by where Abraham had faith in God but didn't have Isaac.

Abraham believed God, but his faith in God was not vindicated until Isaac was born.

This is how the resurrection functions for us.

We have faith in God that our sins are forgiven.

The resurrection vindicates that faith by showing us that Jesus truly died for our sins.

He was raised back to life for our justifications.

Our sin was atoned for on the cross.

It was atoned for when Jesus descended into the grave.

It was atoned for when the angel rolled away the stone.

But the women entering the tomb, looking in and not seeing the body, Peter and John running into the tomb, the angel saying, See his grave clothes where they were.

That has the effect of sealing it in their minds.

Thomas, who wasn't there when Jesus appeared to them in the upper room, Thomas doubted, of course.

And is presented Jesus, and Thomas sees the nail holes and touches the body of the Lord and then believes.

That's what the resurrection does for us.

It seals our faith.

It shows us that he was raised for our justification.

So you take the full picture together.

The full picture together.

You're born into sin, living your own way, living for yourself, and accumulating debt towards God.

Because every time you sin, you're sinning against God.

It says the word trespasses here in verse 25.

Trespasses seems like a diminutive term, but it's every sin is against God.

It's trespasses, meaning you're trespassing on God's glory, which is not a minor thing.

You know, trespassing in your neighbor's yard is one thing, trespassing on like a top secret base, another thing.

You're trespassing on God's glory, every one of your sins.

So you're living your life filled with sin, running your own way, trespassing all over God's glory, building a house on his property, you know?

And then God, because he's rich in mercy towards you, takes your sin and your trespasses and transfers them to Jesus before you were even born.

Jesus then suffers the penalty for your sin and dies in your place on the cross, bearing the penalty for your sin and paying it completely.

So much so that God can cancel the record of your sin, rip up the bill, throw it away, it is paid for because of Jesus' death.

Three days later, Jesus rises from the grave.

So you know the check cleared.

You know your sin was truly paid for.

You in your own life, fast forwarding to present tense here, are living your own life, going your own way, doing your own stuff, and then you hear the news about what Jesus did for you.

And then you have the choice to make.

Do you put your faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ?

Do you trust that?

And it's that act of putting faith that is credited towards you as righteousness.

That's where your righteousness comes from, is you putting your faith that Jesus died and rose from the grave in your place.

That's where you gain righteousness, right there.

Or you reject it, in which case his death was not for you, and you go on accumulating the own wages of sin that will ultimately be paid by you in hell forever, because there is no way that you, a mere person, can atone for sins against God.

It's my prayer that if you're here today, if you're invited by a friend, a neighbor, a coworker, that you would trust the gospel of Jesus Christ, that you would hear the news of what Jesus did for you, that you would even picture your own record of sins, that you would understand that it was given to Jesus, that you would put your faith in the death of Jesus, who died in your place, that you would believe he resurrected from the grave, and that you would have confidence that your sins are forgiven based upon that.

When you give your life to the Lord through faith, your sins are removed, and the righteousness of Christ becomes yours as a gift.

God, we're grateful for the resurrection.

It didn't produce our justification, but it was the picture of it.

It was the logical consequence of it.

So much so that we can say we are justified by the resurrection of Christ.

I pray for anyone here this morning that has never given their life to you.

I pray that today they would give their life, they would stop their running from you, they would confess their sins to you, they would believe the gospel and receive the forgiveness that comes through faith in Jesus Christ.

It's in his name we pray.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to ibc.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.