Justice & Mercy Meet - Romans 3:19-26 (04.05.2026)

Romans 3, verses 19 through 26.

Romans 3:19–26

I invite you to read along in your Bibles or on the screens.

And when I'm done reading, I will say this is the word of the Lord if you will

respond with thanks be to God.

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 the knowledge of sin.

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law,

although the law and 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 Jesus Christ,

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 had

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 the word of the Lord.

Well, good morning. Happy Easter. My name is Ben and married to Tiffany and

she's back in the kids right now.

We have five kids ages seven to 18.

And we are from Gwinnett County originally and spent the last 12 years in Vermont,

a church planting there.

And then God called us back here to plant in the Metro Atlanta area.

And as Nathan said earlier, we started meeting in October.

So six months ago, we had our grand opening in January.

So we're a brand new church and we are glad that you're here this morning.

We are excited for all of our firsts and this is our first Easter.

And so it's a really exciting day for us.

If you have not already done so, I'd love for you to find Romans 3 in your Bible.

If you didn't bring a Bible, don't have a Bible with you, that's okay.

You should have gotten a bulletin on your seat, and inside that bulletin,

you're going to have the scripture printed out so you can follow along with me there.

As you're finding your way to Romans 3, let me just pray for us one more time. Father,

Thank you so much for the opportunity and the privilege that it is to open your word, to declare,

preach the good news of the gospel that we celebrate today, the empty tomb that

we celebrate today on Easter.

I do pray that you would encourage the hearts of every single person here,

that you would open up our eyes to see and believe what's true.

And we pray it in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. If I break into a coughing fit, I apologize.

I've been battling pollen especially bad this last week, so doing the best I can.

So Easter, going to assume that you know a little bit about Easter,

that maybe some of you know a whole lot about what it is that we're celebrating.

Easter is the celebration that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

It's like the exclamation point on the gospel.

The gospel, we might know, we might be really familiar with,

or we might be just a little bit familiar with.

And the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the clarification,

the declaration from God that Jesus Christ is, in fact, the Son of God.

He is, in fact, who He said He was, and He did, in fact, do what He said He would do.

I grew up in church, and so I was pretty familiar with the gospel growing up,

you know, I was taught from a very young age about who Jesus was.

So I knew the stories, the big stories in the Bible, and I understood the gospel

in the sense that it is the life, the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ for sinners.

I understood that those things intellectually.

But you understand this, that there's a way of knowing things,

and then there's a much deeper way of knowing them.

And I knew the gospel, but it didn't ever transform me, not until I was in college.

And so I remember very, very distinctly a year in my life that was tumultuous,

where because of conviction of sin, I began to really explore what is the gospel?

Like, what is it that the Bible really says? I'd never really studied it for myself.

I was really, really convicted by this passage in James chapter two that talks

about how even the demons believe.

There's a sense in which the demons believe and even shudder before God,

and yet they don't have saving faith.

And that really, really convicted me until one day I finally saw clearly the

truth of the gospel. I saw who Jesus was truly.

I saw who he was for me and I believed in him.

I raised the white flag of surrender in my life.

I said, I'm done kicking against the goads. I'm done fighting against this.

I believe this. I want to give my life to Jesus.

And from that day on, the gospel radically transformed my life because I went

from just knowing it to really knowing it.

And so this morning, as we dig into Romans chapter three, this is what we're

going to be talking about is we're going to be talking about the gospel.

And whether you have been a believer for 20 or 30 or 40 years,

or you are just now exploring the faith for the first time, this is going to

be a really important thing for us to think about on Easter.

We all need, Christians need this as much as any, we need to meditate on and

chew on the truths of the gospel.

So that's what we're going to do. We don't even realize how much we have all

been influenced by secular humanism.

Secular humanism, it's the air that we breathe. It's a way of building a worldview apart from God.

And it puts human beings, it puts man at the center of the universe.

It makes human beings the deepest and most profound reality in the universe.

That's the air that we breathe, secular humanism. And all of us have been impacted by it.

If that is our worldview, then when we hear the gospel or the good news that

God has offered forgiveness to us through his son, Jesus Christ,

we might sort of shrug our shoulders.

We might say, well, that makes sense to me. I would forgive me too if I was God.

And that is the way we might think if we have a secular humanist view of the world.

That kind of response isn't all too uncommon.

Or maybe we think, you know, I kind of feel like God should just forgive everyone

regardless of what they believe.

That's also based on a secular humanist worldview.

Or we may think, you know, I'm not really sure why God had to go through all

the trouble of sending his son Jesus to die on the cross. Like,

is that what had to happen?

Couldn't he have done it some other way?

And this morning, I hope that we walk away realizing that there was no other

way, that this is exactly what had to be done.

And it was the only way that God could have rescued us.

So my message is really simple this morning.

It's in two big parts. And you'll

see there's a little outline in your bulletin if you want to follow it.

And then the first part is man's greatest problem.

We're gonna have to start here so that we can rejoice in what God has done to solve it.

We have to begin with the bad news before the good news can be good news.

And then we're gonna look at what God has done to solve that problem.

So look with me at Romans 3.19.

3.19 says, 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.

Let's just zoom in on a few key

phrases in this verse. Notice it says the whole world, the whole world.

Will be accountable to God. That means every single man, woman,

boy, and girl will be held accountable to God.

People from every tribe, every nation, every language, every culture,

people of every religion, people who have gone to church their whole lives,

and people who have never heard the name of Jesus before.

Muslims and Hindus and atheists and agnostics, people from all times in all

of human history from Adam until the end of the world.

That includes every single one of us in this room, doesn't it?

You will personally, individually stand before God and give an account.

You'll be held accountable to God. That's what this verse says.

For every action, every word spoken, every thought that you've had,

every deed that you've done and every deed that you've left undone that you should have done.

The whole world will be held accountable. Accountable to who?

It says the whole world will be held accountable to God.

Who is God according to scripture? Well, first of all, we know that God is our maker.

This is why we're accountable to him. He's the one who made us.

He's the one who gave us life.

He's the one who formed us. And as our maker, he has every right to tell us

what to do and how things ought to be done.

He has all authority. He is the authority on what's right and what's wrong,

what's true and what's a lie.

He is our maker. God, secondly, is holy.

The Bible goes to great lengths to describe the holiness of God.

Isaiah chapter 6 paints the scene of the throne room and there are seraphim,

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

holy beings that cover their faces because this created holiness cannot even

look upon uncreated holiness.

And they cry out in the presence of God, holy, holy, holy. God is holy.

In our passage, we see again and again the phrase, the righteousness of God.

That God is holy means that he is righteous. It means that he is morally blameless.

He is pure through and through. There is no evil or darkness in him at all.

God's holiness is so essential to his nature that he cannot ever do wrong.

He cannot ever go against his holiness. So God is our maker and he is holy.

And thirdly, God is a just judge, this God to whom we give an account.

The Bible says in Isaiah 5, 16, the Lord of hosts is exalted in justice and

the holy God shows himself holy in righteousness.

These ideas of holiness and justice are, they're linked.

You You see, throughout Scripture, God is referred to as the judge of all the earth.

And His holiness demands His justice.

It demands that He be a judge who is committed to upholding perfect justice.

That means, and this is so important for us to understand as we lay the foundation

for our greatest problem, man's greatest problem, that means that all evil must be punished.

That is what it means, that he is perfectly holy and perfectly just,

that his holiness must always uphold justice.

All rebellion against him, every wrong committed, every sin must be punished

according to his holiness, according to justice, and according to what standard?

Look at verse 19 again. It says, whatever the law says, whatever the law says,

It speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped.

God will judge each and every person according to the law.

The law commonly in scripture refers to the 10 commandments,

which each and every one of us have failed to live up to.

James also talks about the fact that if we have broken any of the commandments,

that we are guilty of breaking the whole law.

God will judge us according to his perfect standard, the law.

We have all had other gods before the one true God. We have all used his name

in ways that do not honor him.

In other words, we've taken his name in vain. We've all lied.

We've all deceived. We've all stolen, cheated, dishonored our parents,

committed adultery in our hearts through lust, murdered in our hearts by hating

other people, coveted what God has not given to us.

And Jesus summed up the whole law in saying this, that we should love the Lord

our God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbor as ourselves.

We continually fall short of this.

So when people stand before God to give an account to Him, according to the

righteous standard of His law, every mouth will be stopped.

That's what this verse says. It says that no defense will stand in the court of the Lord.

He's our maker. He's holy. He's a just judge. He uses his perfect law as a standard for judgment.

And whether we modern people realize it or not, whether we ever stop to think

about it, we are all accountable to God.

But what do we do because of that? What do most people do?

We convince ourselves that it's not that big of a problem, that probably when

we stand before God, our good deeds will outweigh our bad deeds,

that God will look upon us and say, well, yeah, you made some mistakes.

Yeah, you sinned some, but your good deeds, those are what I'm concerned with. But that's a lie.

That's not true, according to Scripture. Look at what verse 20 says.

For by works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight.

To be justified, that means to be declared righteous in the courtroom of heaven.

It's what all of us desperately need when it comes time for us to give an account

to God by your works, by your deeds.

You will never be justified in God's sight. That's what verse 20 says.

You might be able to justify yourself in your own eyes, but you'll never be

justified in the sight of the only one who truly matters, the one to whom we must give an account.

So no amount of good deeds, kindness, serving, loving, sacrificing,

or giving will justify us before a holy God.

No amount of religious commitment or penance or Bible knowledge or zeal will justify us.

Pile up your good works as high as a mountain and it will not justify you before

God. That's what this verse says.

No human being will be justified by works of the law.

Why? Look at verse 23. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Here's how scripture defines our problem is sin, is sin.

We have all sinned. We have all fallen short of the glory of God.

Falling short, that doesn't mean, don't picture in your mind that like, we're almost there.

We're almost good enough, but we just barely fell short of being good enough.

That's not what this means. It means that we are nowhere close to meeting God's standard.

We might say everyone makes mistakes or I slipped up or no one's perfect,

but the Bible doesn't talk that way.

The Bible is very, very honest about the wickedness of our hearts.

The Bible doesn't say that we just make mistakes. It says we're sinners.

Sin is serious. It's rejecting or ignoring God in the world He made. Think of the audacity.

It's failing to be and do what he requires in his law. That's sin.

That's what it means to fall short of the glory of God.

Why is this so serious? Why don't our good deeds make up for our sins?

We've got to understand this in order to understand and appreciate and rejoice in the gospel.

And the reason is rooted in the character of God, in His holiness and justice.

As I said earlier, His holiness demands that God always uphold perfect justice.

As the judge of all the earth, in order to uphold perfect justice,

it means no evil deed can be overlooked or swept under the rug.

Try to imagine with me the terrible, the horrific situation that the person

that you love most is killed, that someone takes their life. Try to imagine with me.

And then imagine that that person stands in the courtroom and says,

you know, judge, I admit it, I did it.

But if you take a look at my life. If you look at the majority of my life, it's been good.

It's just that I, in a rage in this moment, or I was desperate or whatever it is, I did this.

No just judge would look at that person and say, yeah, you got a point.

You got a point. You've done mostly good. And so we'll let this one go.

That would be wicked. That would be evil. We would say that is a wicked judge. That's not justice.

In fact, if that's our loved one, we would say, you have cheapened the life of this person I love.

You've looked at the value of this person that I love and you've said,

they're not worth anything, right?

We can wrap our minds around that.

But perhaps you protest. Perhaps you would say, I've never done anything so terrible as that.

But you see, that comes from our secular humanist worldview.

When we think that way about our sin, we prove that we are center most in our view of reality.

We prove that we don't have a biblical worldview that puts God and his concerns

and his glory and his honor at the center of the universe.

Here's the truth about sin. The truth about sin is that you and I have committed

treason against the Almighty God, who is infinite in holiness and honor and glory.

For God to sweep sin under the rug and say, okay, we'll just forget about it,

would be for Him to cheapen His own glory.

It would be for Him to say, you know what, I'm really not worth anything.

You know, yes, you despise me. Yes, you ignored me and rejected me in the world that I created.

Yes, I gave you life, but you mostly ignored me throughout the entire time. But it's okay.

That would be to cheapen his own glory, his own worth.

We're guilty of unthinkable wickedness because of the immeasurable worth of

the one our sins are against.

Until we wake up to that reality, we can't understand and comprehend and appreciate the wonder of Easter.

And so we have to start here. We have to start with all of this bad news because

that's what the Bible does.

That's what Romans 3 does. That's actually what Romans 1 and 2 have been doing leading up to this.

It's just saying, here is our problem and it's bad.

None of us fear God.

That's how bad the situation is. And that brings us to the dilemma. That brings us to the.

The gospel. The dilemma is this.

How can God justify wicked people? That's the dilemma.

And that's what Paul is addressing, the writer of the letter to the Romans,

he's addressing in this passage.

How can God justify wicked people?

So if we've established, we must all give an account to God, our creator.

If he is to judge us by his law, if all of us have broken it in countless ways,

if our good deeds will never erase our sins against God, if he is holy and just

and therefore cannot overlook the evil that we have committed,

how can we be anything but guilty before the God of the universe?

Or to put it another way, given these immutable truths, is there any way for

sinners like us to receive anything other than judgment?

We have to face that. We have to get to the point to where we see this dilemma.

How can God forgive people and reconcile people to himself without compromising

his holiness and justice?

This question hangs over the entirety of the Old Testament.

Exodus 34, a famous passage where God describes himself to Moses on Sinai,

says, The Lord passed before him and proclaimed,

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding

in steadfast love and faithfulness,

forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.

Do you see it? How can God both forgive sin and by no means clear the guilty?

How can he be merciful and just, in other words?

And this dilemma is addressed directly in our passage in Romans 3,

beginning in the second half of verse 25. You can look at it.

It says, this was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance,

he had 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.

In his divine forbearance, God passed over former sins.

The apostle Paul is talking about Old Testament saints, men and women who walked

with God before Jesus came.

He's talking about Moses. He's talking about Noah. He's talking about Abraham.

He's talking about Esther. He's talking about Sarah.

He's talking about people who were declared righteous.

How? How can he be the God who forgives iniquity and transgression and sin,

but who will by no means clear the guilty?

How can he be just and the justifier?

The one who has faith in Jesus. Paul's saying that Jesus' death on the cross

showed that God was in fact still righteous, even though he passed over or had

forgiven the sins of the Old Testament saints.

He was in his divine forbearance. He was looking forward to something.

He was looking forward to what he was going to do.

What was he going to do?

We have to look back up just a little bit in our passage to see it.

Verse 23 through 25 again.

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.

Paul, having told us what will never justify us before God, our works can never

be enough to justify us, now tells us what can justify us before God.

Our justification comes through Jesus Christ, whom God put forward as a propitiation.

Some versions might say sacrifice of atonement by His blood.

And here we get to the genius of God in solving this dilemma.

We see how God satisfies both His justice and His mercy.

God provided a propitiation. What's a propitiation?

It's an offering that appeases the just wrath of God for sin.

God's holy justice demands that evil be punished.

So, the Son of God became a human being in order to be our representative.

He lived a sinless life so that he did not have to die for his own sins.

And then he took our place by taking the sins that we have committed onto himself

and suffering the punishment for them.

700 years before Christ, Isaiah, the prophet, saw a vision of the cross and

he wrote this, Isaiah 53, 5-6.

He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and

the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

This is how God can be just while also justifying sinful people.

His justice is satisfied because the sins are still punished.

They're not swept under the rug.

His mercy is satisfied because He takes the punishment for us.

R.C. Sproul would say it this way, God provides what God demands.

The justice of God required a payment for sin.

The mercy of God provided that payment.

Jesus, the sinless son of God, was the propitiation. He was the atoning sacrifice.

He took our place. He took the wrath of God for every single one of our sins.

How does that payment, that propitiation, how does that count toward me?

How do I receive this gift as this passage puts it? We cannot earn it.

We cannot be good enough to deserve it. So how do we get it?

Look at verse 25 again. God put Christ forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.

It is a gift to be received by faith.

The Bible describes faith over and over again as turning away from our sins to God and trusting him.

That's how you and I can be justified.

We believe. It's not a work that we can boast in.

It's simply saying, I believe this. I trust you.

I trust you. When we turn to Christ in faith, believing that truly he has paid

the excruciatingly high price for our rebellion against God,

by taking our sins to the cross, we are justified.

And Easter is the day we celebrate the reason that we can be sure that we can trust him.

Christ's resurrection is the reason we can be positive that Jesus really did

accomplish our justification.

If Jesus had stayed in the grave, we would have to wonder whether or not the

cross really did satisfy the just wrath of God. But we don't have to wonder.

If you've got a Bible open to Romans chapter three, look one chapter over to

Romans chapter four in verse 25.

Look at what it says. It says that Jesus was delivered up for our trespasses

and he was raised for our justification.

Flip back over a couple of chapters, Romans chapter one,

verse four tells us that Jesus was declared to be the son of God in power,

according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

Christ is risen. And so we can know with absolute certainty that Jesus is the

son of God and has accomplished justification for all those who believe in him.

God's holy justice and his mercy meet at the cross.

As a junior in college, alone in my apartment, I realized I really did deserve the just wrath of God.

But I also realized in that moment that Jesus had taken that wrath for me to

the grave and he was raised in victory.

Do you see it this morning? Do you see what Christ has done for you?

Maybe for the first time or maybe for the thousandth time.

Either way, run to him. If you see it, run to him, cling to him,

trust him, believe in him, follow him. He is worthy.

He's worthy of our lives. He's worthy of our worship because he has justified

us before a holy God. Let's pray.

Father in heaven, thank you. Thank you for the cross.

Thank you for the cross where your justice and your mercy meet.

Thank you that you didn't leave us in our sins, that you didn't leave us without hope.

Thank you that you raised Jesus from the dead.

Thank you that we can know that we have justification through him when we believe.

I pray you would help us to believe.

In Jesus' name, amen.