Reading… and Thinking

Paul’s letter to the Romans has a lot in it. You can profitably spend weeks on it. Among other things, it is one of our major sources of information about the atonement. That is, God working through Jesus Christ to bring about reconciliation between Himself and us.

The essence of the atonement is distilled into these few verses. Look at what is here:

• All of us are sinners, therefore all of us need help.
• The Law bears witness, but is not the source of true righteousness.
• Justification (acquittal, being declared not guilty) comes by grace, as a gift.
• This is styled as a “redemption”, that is, buying back something. God lost us to sin, but went looking for us in order to buy us back.
• The blood of Jesus is a “propitiation” (or “expiation” in some versions), that is, a conciliation, a bringing together of two parties that are at odds.
• This has to be received by faith. We do have a part to play! It took God’s grace, it took Jesus’ sacrifice, but it also takes our faith. All three ingredients are necessary.
• The effect is that former sins are treated as though they did not exist.
• All of this declares the righteousness of God.

It would be possible to spend considerable time on each of these aspects. But we’ll focus on just one: God’s righteousness being declared.

God was righteous in condemning mankind to death, due to sin. In fact, He would have been unrighteous not to do so! He Himself is absolutely righteous, and cannot share His immortal nature with beings that are not also righteous.

But God had a purpose in creating mankind. He wanted a race of beings who loved Him and obeyed Him voluntarily. He wanted fellowship with us. Our sin has made complete fellowship impossible. So then, has our sin thwarted the purpose of God? It would not be righteous of God to allow sinners to overthrow His purpose! So it was righteous of God to provide a way of reconciliation.

However, it would not be righteous for God to just say “Oh, that’s OK” to sin. Sin must be condemned, and must be seen to be condemned. The sinful nature itself must be condemned. Hence, the provision of Jesus. In him, we have a man who bore the sinful nature, but never sinned. Sin was defeated completely. But Jesus was still afflicted with the sinful nature. So he was put to death. At first this seems unrighteous of God. If the wages of sin is death, then righteousness shouldn’t also result in death. But digging deeper, we see that the death of Jesus destroyed the devil, the sinful nature. (Hebrews 2:14) It would have been unrighteous for God to let Jesus remain in the grave (Acts 2:24), so He raised him up, now freed forever from the sinful nature. Sin was condemned in the life of Jesus, the sinful nature was destroyed in his death, and death was defeated in his resurrection.

In Jesus, all the barriers are destroyed! There can now be reconciliation, without compromise of God’s righteousness. If fact, not only was His righteousness not compromised, it was displayed for all to see! The redemption in Jesus Christ is the perfect, the only way to save us and still demonstrate to all mankind that God is unalterably righteous.