Justified by Faith: How God Can Be Just and Merciful - Sermon 28th December 2025

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Today's Bible reading is from Romans 3, verses 18-29.

Romans 3:18–29

There is no fear of God before their eyes,

knowing know that whatever the law says,

It says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced

and the whole world held accountable to God.

Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law.

Rather, through the law, we become conscious of our sin.

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

to which the law and the prophets testify.

This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

There is no difference between Jew and Gentile For all have sinned and,

fall short of the glory of God And all are justified freely by the grace Through

the redemption that came by Christ Jesus,

God presented Christ as a sacrifice of eternity.

Atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith.

He did this to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance he had

left the sins committed beforehand.

Unpunished, he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time so

as to be just and the one who justifies.

Those who have faith in Jesus.

Where then is boasting? It is excluded because of what law?

The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith.

What we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

Or is God the God of Jews only?

Is he not God of Gentiles too?

Yes, of Gentiles too. Well done, mate. Thank you very much.

On the drive here to church this morning, I told Jeremiah I'm on Bible reading and sermon.

I said, you're going to have to do one of them for me this morning.

I don't know if he chose correctly. I don't know. Usually at this time of year,

the cricket people, of which not everyone is, but there are some amongst us.

Looking at me like, this is good and all, but Boxing Day test is about to be day three.

Well, this year that problem has been taken care of.

So I thought, you know what?

Let's do it. Let's do Romans chapter three and justification through faith.

Let's just really go for it now this morning. I wonder if you'd be willing to

come with me this morning as we consider these great words in Romans chapter

three, these great truths, these pillars of our faith.

And I wonder this morning whether you could imagine with me for a moment.

Imagine with me for a moment that one day you come home to discover that everything that you hold dear,

every possession, every person has been taken from you forever.

And imagine with me that in your utter grief and despair, you also apprehend

the person that did this to you.

You discover that not only are they in their right mind, but they're in their right mind.

But they have no remorse. And they did this horrible thing to you simply because

it brought them joy to cause you unfixable pain.

And in your grief, you apprehend them. You somehow restrain yourself enough

to call the authorities instead of handing out justice yourself.

And the police turn up, they take the person away. And months later,

you sit in a courtroom where this person, this horrible person,

has been correctly declared guilty by a jury.

And you sit there as the judge presides over the adequate sentencing and punishment

for the person who has committed this grievous and devastating crime against you.

And finally, the judge sees these words.

I acknowledge the terrible acts of these crimes, but I am a kind judge.

My sentence is that this man may walk free today.

I am a kind judge, and my sentence is that this man may walk free today.

You would sit there, the words ringing in your ears, I am a kind judge,

I am a kind judge, I am a kind judge.

Sitting there in that courtroom, how many of us know that we would not be content

and satisfied to just hear that he is a kind judge?

How many of us know that in that moment now, our anger, our justified anger

would not be now just toward the criminal, it would now also be toward the judge.

The judge whose task and title is to be just, and the judge who has failed in

this, failed to deeply execute justice.

In Proverbs 17, verse 15, we find these words, The one who justifies the wicked is an abomination.

Proverbs 17:15

The one who justifies the wicked is an abomination.

And so, it is here that we have the great problem to which the gospel of Jesus Christ addresses.

Because if it is true that the one who justifies the wicked is an abomination,

question, how can we celebrate our God who justifies the wicked?

How can God be the justifier of the wicked, but also be a just judge?

That's our simple little question for this morning.

Jeremiah read for us from Romans 3, and these words that Jeremiah read,

the reformer Martin Luther was a very, very, very big fan of this text.

Luther called the words that were read for us, the chief point,

not just of Romans, but of the whole Bible.

Luther loved verses 21 to 26 especially, and what Luther saw in it were powerful

and corrective words that spoke into his context, his context that,

he was in, that he felt an internal resistance and struggle against legalism and religious abuse.

Into his context, these words were powerfully corrective, and it gave him a

confidence and a platform to go for it in terms of renewing and asserting doctrine

of justification by faith alone.

And it's true that in our reading today, in this Romans 3 text.

We do have a beating heart of so many of our core Christian beliefs.

And as followers of Jesus in a different age to Luther with different struggles,

although sometimes not that different, but different struggles,

these powerful and corrective words in Romans 3 do sort of in a way still have

a sense of being the chief point of.

And they do actually move us forward in being able to answer the question of

asked of how God can justify wicked people.

Verse 21 begins with, but now, but now, because you see from verse 18 of chapter

one in Romans until verse 20 of Romans chapter three, Paul has been outlining an argument.

If you open up Romans, Paul is constructing this very long and detailed and

deep argument about the great problem that humanity has.

And essentially, our great problem is our sinfulness, our incompleteness before a God who is holy.

And he says that whether you were Jewish or non-Jewish, whether you knew scripture

or didn't know scripture,

whether you were religious or not religious, he says all of us in our own ways

have had enough sin Information given to us, enough chances to be able to know good from evil.

And the verdict is in. We have not always chosen good.

Whether Jewish or non-Jewish, whether religious or not, there is,

as 3.10 tells us, no one righteous, not even one.

Back in verse 20 of chapter 1, Paul says.

That everyone is without excuse. For although they knew God,

they did not honor Him as God.

And that's our great problem, that in our ways, at different levels perhaps,

at different exposures, we all know God, but we don't honor him always as God.

That problem, Paul says in Romans is catastrophic.

He summarizes all of that in verse 23, when he says, for all have sinned and

fall short of the glory of God.

That word glory, it refers to the magnificent, holy, incomprehensible goodness

and presence of the Lord Almighty.

That presence that in a lot of ways we were made for, created for, and that we lost.

For although we knew God, we did not honor him as God.

In Psalm 50 verse 7, the voice of God speaks and says, listen,

Psalms 50:7

my people, and I will speak. I will testify against you.

I am God, your God.

God speaks. And sometimes when God speaks, he testifies against us.

He convicts us of our sins.

He doesn't let wickedness slide.

He makes sure that we know.

What parts of our life are not bringing Him glory, and what parts of our life,

are hurting and harming those around us.

And in fact, it's one of the most loving things that God does for us is when

He testifies against us.

Our biggest concern should be the day when we feel like God has stopped doing

this, that He's stopped convicting us of our sins. He stopped nudging us to

see those areas that aren't honoring him and that are harming other people.

He nudges us to show us what parts of our life we're treating God as plain and

ordinary and uninteresting and unworthy of our worship, affection, and attention.

In Isaiah chapter 6, we hear about God's holiness, His glory.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

And we see a sense, we get a glimpse of God's throne.

We see seraphim and angels whose sole function is to eternally proclaim,

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty. The whole earth is full of His glory.

Forevermore they proclaim holy holy holy is the lord almighty,

and in hebrew not that i am by any means pretending to know anything about that

but i read the words in hebrew,

the repetition of three words in a row was their version of putting the text

in bold in underlining it maybe throwing a handful of exclamation marks at it

it was their way of saying this is important this is to be emphasized.

The Lord Almighty is holy, holy,

holy, underlined, in bold, all the exclamation marks that you can fill.

Because what Isaiah sees in this scripture, in Isaiah chapter 6,

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

and what we need to be encouraged to know about our God is that He is immense, that He is glorious,

and that Our reaction to his presence, our reaction to getting even just a glimpse

of that is to be totally and utterly undone.

In Isaiah chapter 6, this is how Isaiah reacted when he got even just a sense of God's glory.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

He says, woe to me, I am ruined, for I am a man of unclean lips,

and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.

One of the things that happens when we just pause and we worship God is just

by worshiping God, just by having a moment where we put our attention on the

one who is holy, holy, holy.

And sometimes for me, it's when we do it in church musically,

or it's in a moment of prayer, just simply in an uncomplicated way,

I'm just going to focus my attention on God's glory and His holiness.

I'm just going to lift that up. I'm just going to give it my gaze and my attention.

It's interesting how many times when that happens, that it's also accompanied

by that little nudge of the areas of our life that we need to move,

change, that we need to move away from.

There's something about God's glory that brings to the fore a sense of those

things that are utterly non-glorious because God's name is hallowed.

And the really interesting thing about that is that we often think that if we've

drifted away from God or if we're in a season of life where things aren't going

well, if there are things in our life that are not good, that the order of events is this.

I need to clean myself up. I need to sort myself out.

And then once I have done that, then I can come and give God my attention.

Scripture reminds us over and over and over again, skip to that last stage.

Skip to that stage where you just simply give God your attention and with open

hands, you say, God, this is me, unclean, undone, a man of unclean lips who

lives amongst the people of unclean lips. I come with open hands.

It is incredible how often that when we do that, He is then the one who cleans

us up. He is the one that helps us to see what we need to change.

None of us, not a single one of us on our own has the sufficient amount of righteousness,

to stand before a holy God without being undone.

Not those, Paul said, who had the Old Testament, they didn't have it. They didn't have it.

There were some of them that thought simply because we possess the Old Testament

scriptures that that means that we have it.

And Paul says, no, actually the opposite.

Because what happens is the law testifies against you. The law was a great gift.

The scripture of the Old Testament was a great gift.

But what it did was that it served to reveal where they fell short.

There were so many different ways that God could say, well, if you look at this

scripture, you haven't been doing this. If you look at this scripture,

you haven't been doing this.

The law was not only a gift but it was a revealer.

Verse 21 says in Romans chapter 3, The righteousness of God has been disclosed.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

It's appeared. It's presented. But, and specifically to this context,

Paul was making sure they knew this, it didn't come in the form of the Old Testament Scriptures.

The righteousness that appeared was the Word become flesh.

It was the person of Jesus. And the way that we then obtain the sufficient amount

of righteousness to stand in God's presence is simply by placing our trust and faith in Him.

I wonder when you think of the word faith and trust, what is it that in your

mind happens as you think about that?

What is it that you think that you are doing? It's an interesting thing to think

about at this time of year. I am sure that you received at least one gift in the last few days.

If you didn't, Andy Reeves has some spare ones in his boot that he would love to give to you.

You perhaps at least saw someone get a gift. There's something about the gift

giving process that illustrates a lot, not everything, but a lot of what it

means to have faith and trust.

Because we can sometimes make the mistake of thinking that faith and trust in

God is simply like just something else that we have to do.

But when we consider the gift giving process, what we can understand,

what we can be encouraged by is that putting our faith and trust in God,

particularly about who the person of Jesus is,

is very similar to the mechanism of receiving a gift,

which is simply just to sit there with your hands like this and to have something

placed in your hands that's what it means to have faith in Jesus it's to treat

it like a gift that's being placed in your hands.

Romans chapter 3 says that it's through grace. Grace means God's,

Romans 3 · chapter mention

the way that he treats us with undeserved goodness, which in a lot of ways also

reflects the gift-giving mechanism.

He gives us something, and then we receive it through faith.

And one thing we need to understand is that in our salvation,

in our coming to God, in our relationship with Him, in our atonement or salvation,

theologically speaking, there are a lot of things going on at once.

There are a lot of different Bible words, theological words that are all happening

at once. We're regenerated, born again. That's one of the things.

We're on a path of sanctification whereby God conforms us to the image of His

Son. That's another thing that's happening.

But Paul speaks of another thing that happens during that.

He wants to make much of one of the things that happens in this process,

not to argue that it happens instead of those other things, but to highlight

as something that happens as well that we ought not to forget.

And that is that when we come to a saving faith in Jesus, he says,

in that moment, we are justified.

That's one of the things that happens when we come to God in faith.

We are justified, which doesn't mean that we are fixed straight away.

It doesn't only mean that God treats us as righteous,

but to be justified is to have a full legal reality before the holy judgment

of God that says, you're good, you're righteous.

It means to be acquitted of all charges that could be brought against you past,

present and future, but also declared legally in the sight of God's holiness and justice. as right.

And there's perhaps something amongst all of that that we need to hear this morning,

which is maybe next year could be the year where you finally stop working for

something that you already have.

Too many of us believe that we can somehow mess up this idea of justification.

So what we do is yet we receive it by faith.

But then what we do in actuality, in the way that we live our lives,

the way that we approach God, church, and everything, is that we receive.

But then we also, we just make sure, we just make sure with our performance,

with our goodness, with the way that we make ourselves indispensable,

with the ways that we do enough so that people praise us or at least don't criticize us, we do just enough,

so that we just make sure that that justification works.

And Paul says, stop doing that. Stop doing that.

He says, you are justified from God's grace through faith. That's it.

It's given to us as a free gift. God's grace towards us is undeserved, unmerited favor.

You don't, in a lot of ways, deserve to stand righteously before God.

But by receiving it in faith, it's 100% yours.

Don't go away and try and make sure of it. It's been made sure of.

Keep growing in righteousness. Sure.

Keep growing. Definitely. Keep asking God where you need to be nudged in different

directions. Absolutely.

But don't do it from an internal motivation to earn something that's already

been given to you as a gift.

A gift that is totally and completely free for the one who receives it.

But it wasn't free for the one who gave it. We are told that the gift was given

through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice

of atonement by his blood.

The gift is free for us, but it wasn't free for God.

And perhaps one of the things that you can see this morning is that sometimes

by trying to make sure of it by adding on top of that, like the bits that you

bring, the good that you bring to try and earn it,

is that in some ways we devalue or disrespect the price that's already been paid.

The acquitting verdict that's already been made on your behalf by the costly

means of God's one and only son.

This word redemption, which is what it says, the gift was given through the

redemption that's in Christ Jesus. Redemption in the Bible is a price word.

It's a money word in some senses. It means that something has been paid or given

so that something could be released via a price.

And in Paul's time, redemption was often used to describe a transaction where

prisoners of war, condemned criminals, slaves could purchase their freedom.

And this was not a cheap price. It was always costly. Redemption is always costly.

And we're told that God in Christ Jesus pays that costly price for us.

The gift of justification before our holy and righteous God,

was bought, it was paid for, by the sacrifice of his only begotten Son on our behalf.

And God proves, as it says in verse 26.

This is how, this is how, that he himself is righteous and that he justifies

the one whose faith is in Jesus.

He is just and the justifier of the wicked.

And this is how, because a costly price has indeed been paid.

At the cross, God's love and righteous wrath meet.

And we can't deny either of those. We can't compromise either of those to fully,

understand the full meaning of what it means for God to have given his one and only son.

How can God be the justifier of the wicked and be just?

His son on a cross.

And while that pretty horrific story that I opened my sermon with this morning,

which because no kids church, you got the PG version.

While that story was effective, I hope, to at least make you go like,

yeah, that is a dilemma, plus also why are you telling us this?

It falls short in a lot of ways of an adequate analogy.

Because in reality, God is the judge, but he's also the part he sinned against,

and he's the one who initiates the case, and he's the one who initiates sufficient payment of penalty.

And the payment was Jesus, born in a humble circumstance, a baby in a manger,

who then lived the perfectly righteous life, who died on a cross as a criminal,

the righteous one executed as if he was unrighteous.

And as we come toward the end of this year, I think there is sometimes something

instinctive in us that begins to take stock. We look back over the last 12 months

and we measure ourselves in a variety of criteria.

I hope I gave you some funner ones this morning than simply,

have I been good enough? Have I done enough?

Have I earned enough, been enough, achieved enough?

I hope either through my fun examples, but more powerfully through the reminder

of the fact that God pays it for us, that you might have been encouraged,

as you may feel to measure yourselves, to do so through the lens that God has.

We can ask, what kind of Christian have I been? How consistent has my faith been?

How disciplined was my Bible reading and my prayer?

How much have I grown? Where have I failed? And in one sense,

that kind of reflection can be good. We are encouraged in Scripture to examine ourselves.

Scripture doesn't forbid us to reflect and think about that.

It tells us to continue to repent, all of that.

But there is a danger as we come towards the end of a year, there's a danger

all the time in our life, without even realizing it, to turn these moments,

these transitional moments, into a courtroom,

where we place ourselves in the dock,

and we rehearse the evidence of our successes and our failures.

And we wait for a verdict about whether this has been a good year or a bad year,

whether spiritually, faithfully, all those things, whether it's been good or

bad, whether God is pleased with us or disappointed in us,

whether we can stand before him confidently or cautiously.

And I think this morning, why I've chosen Romans 3 for us to consider is because

I think Paul would stop us right there, because the verdict that matters most

has already been spoken.

And it was not spoken now in this moment, at the end of this year.

It was spoken long ago in the person of Jesus.

Our justification before God is not recalculated annually.

I assure you, it doesn't rise and fall with how consistent you are,

how obedient you are, with how many people like you, with how approved you are,

with how indispensable you are. It doesn't go up and down.

And this year it didn't go up and down.

If at the end of this year, you're encouraged by your growth,

you should be, but you do not stand justified before God because of it.

Or if at the end of this year, you're painfully aware of your sin and your weakness

and your failure, you need to know and believe this,

that you are not less justified because of,

The ground of peace with God in your life,

is not dependent on your moments, it's dependent on Jesus and it's dependent

on whether you just have received it.

Become empty-handed again, trusting not in what we have done,

not what we have done this year, certainly, but in what Christ has done once

and for all for us. Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you so much for the gift of your son, Jesus, for the baby in a manger.

Lord, we thank you so much that even though we constantly in our minds go to

all those different ways that we may or may not be enough, God,

we thank you again that you remind us of your grace.

You remind us of your goodness to us and i pray lord for those who may be holding

on to a sense of unworthiness a sense of incompleteness a sense of failure lord

i pray that you would bring into their consciousness and their attention,

you and your son jesus and what you have done for them may this morning may

the end of this year be an opportunity again to thank you for your son and to

accept it through faith and trust amen.