Notes on Romans 3

Liberty is not an excuse for license.  There are those who say now, just as they did in Paul's day, that the security we have in Christ allows us to do anything we want, knowing we still have eternal life.  The major problem with that is, once we belong to Christ, we no longer want to do the same things we did before, to gratify the lusts of the flesh.  If we do, we never truly repented to begin with.  Repentance means a change of direction; if we want to continue acting as we did before, we're still going in the same direction, towards damnation.

Left to our own devices, none of us would behave in ways pleasing to God.  It is our nature to be sinful; we inherited it from Adam.  God's definition of righteousness doesn't match ours; we often see unsaved people around us whom we label as "decent" and "good", but in God's eyes, their righteousness is as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).  That's because, first of all, we all carry the stain of original sin to begin with.  Beyond that, if we're not cleansed by the blood of Christ, every sin we commit, large or small, leaves a stain, that is never washed off.  It's like wearing clothes that are dirty to begin with, then working around dust or mud day after day that just keeps accumulating.  The standard of righteousness that God expects is impossible for us to attain, which is why none of us can expect to please him without faith in Christ.  When we're born again, we receive new, clean garments, and they're kept clean by the blood of the Lamb, not by our good works.

The description of fallen men here is full of graphic images.  Their truth can be seen by watching the daily news, and just by watching and listening to the people around us.  Obscenity is so much a part of common entertainment fare that we hardly notice its use, while the most successful TV shows and movies are those with the greatest amount of graphic violence.  Our entertainment is only a reflection of our daily lives; some of the tales of violence we hear, like a mother's throat being cut to steal her baby, rival what appears on movie screens.  God's nature is to build up, to create, to bring joy; man's is to tear down, destroy, and bring misery.  The flood of human misery that assaults us daily is so massive that we often tune it out, simply because we can't or won't face the reality of it.

Sin knows no national or ethnic boundaries.  The idea that the United States is any longer a nation "under God" is laughable; we are easily the most materialistic and self-preoccupied people on the planet.  The majority of our citizens give at least tacit consent to a relentless and widespread assault on the beliefs, institutions, and values of Christianity.  In Europe, Satan's assault on the church has had almost total success; we're not far behind.  The kind of society that results can easily be seen by looking at France, or England, or, for that matter, Japan.  A society without God can even be religious; the Muslim countries are the best example.  The point is still the same; man without God is utterly depraved and wicked.  There are no exceptions.

The good news, the answer to the certain death of sin, is Jesus Christ.  Without him, no one measures up, no matter how good they are in their own eyes or the eyes of those around.  The law of the commandments, handed down through Moses, helped define sin, and made power aware of it in their lives, but it could not save anyone from the sin it identified.  God is still righteous, and whether there is a set of standards, the law, available to people or not, he still hates sin.  Without Christ Jesus, and his sacrifice for us, there is no hope of being saved from the penalty of sin.

Sin declares us guilty in the eyes of God; faith in Jesus Christ absolves us of guilt.  It's not that we aren't still guilty, but we are pardoned, and our record is wiped clean.  That's what justification means; one old saying is that it's "just as if we had never sinned at all".  It also means we are free; as long as we're under sin, we're under bondage, imprisoned by our own bent to sinning, which none of us can overcome.  When we're saved from sin, we're purchased out of bondage, or redeemed.  Redemption is free to us, but it is not without cause; the price paid for it was the blood of Christ.

Some people, some professing Christians, say that Christ "did away with the law".  They call themselves "New Testament churches", and turn up their noses at the very idea of studying Old Testament law.  Christ himself denied that this was the case (Matthew 5:17), like Paul affirms here.  God's standards of behavior do not change, because he himself does not change.  Being Christians does not give us liberty to steal, covet, or lie; what was wrong under the law is still wrong now.  There are, to be sure, many aspects of the old sacrificial system rendered obsolete by the sacrifice of Christ, but our obligations to man and God, the requirements of righteousness and holiness, have not changed.  What has changed is that we no longer have to try to meet those obligations by our own efforts; we have the power of the indwelling Spirit to sustain and direct us.  We stand or fall, not on our own, but through the faith we have in Jesus Christ.  What we strive for is to be ever more like him, with each passing day and year.  When we have faith in him, we live in him, and his words abide in us (John 15:17).  We have life in him, and in him alone.