Fr. Stephen De Young: So now, chapter 3, verse 1: “What advantage, then, has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision?” Well, this is the natural question. So if we’re no better off… in fact, if we’re possibly worse off, for having had all of this extra knowledge, then what does it mean? We’re God’s chosen people, right? [Laughter] God loved Israel and chose them. That doesn’t seem to make sense.

St. Paul answers that: “Much in every way, chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God.” So he says, big A, number one, not just the Torah, but all of Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, all the oracles of God were given to you. That’s a very big benefit. This is a very big benefit.

“For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect?” So he says, sure, there are a whole bunch who have not believed, and he’s referring to two things here. One of them, again, is historical. You go back through the Old Testament, you see the people who received the Torah and their track record—the vast majority weren’t faithful! Where he talked about that word “believe,” it’s about faithfulness and loyalty to God. They weren’t faithful, they didn’t stay loyal to God, they didn’t seek after God. He’s saying: Does that invalidate God’s faithfulness? Does that mean God somehow failed? because all of these, this vast swath of his people, turned against him.

So that’s the first reference, but he also has in mind what’s going on right now, because what’s going on right now? The vast majority of the Jewish people at this point have not accepted Jesus as the Messiah. So this isn’t just a past thing; this is a present thing. In this idea, “Did God somehow fail?” is also “Has Christ somehow failed now?” because most of his people did not receive him, and rejected him.

“Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true and every man a liar. As it is written: That you may be justified in your words, and overcome when you are judged.” That’s a slightly different translation, but at least you know what psalm that’s from, I hope [Laughter]—because you read it every week.

C1: Yes, but I don’t know its number.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] It’s… in most of your English Bibles, it’s Psalm 51. It’s Psalm 50 in the Greek numbering, in the Orthodox Study Bible in the Greek numbering, Psalm 50, which is David’s psalm of repentance. It’s David’s psalm of repentance after committing murder, adultery… So, after his sinfulness. And do you remember the words that come right before that, or some approximation of them?

C1: I’m too on the spot…

Fr. Stephen: “The hidden truths of your wisdom you have made clear to me. Against you and you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged.” So what is David saying there? David’s saying: You gave me all of your truth; you revealed it to me—just like the Jewish people who received the oracles of God, whom St. Paul is talking about. He says: And yet, David says, I decided to sin against you. He’s saying this is 100% my doing.

Say: when is God judged? This is an image of like a court case. And remember, court cases in the Old Testament, in the Torah—you can look this up and double-check me—they were not like criminal cases. They were like civil cases. So it wasn’t “this person is accused of this crime; this is the penalty under the law”; there was no law code like that. It was “this person says this other person has wronged them,” and the judge attributes this party is the party in the right, this party is the party in the wrong.

C1: So it’s more between the two people.

Fr. Stephen: In this dispute. So if we’re judging between David and God? God wins. God is in the right, and David is completely in the wrong. That’s what David is saying. He’s saying: God, you are completely in the right; I am completely in the wrong. And that’s why St. Paul quotes this here, because he’s applying that to the whole nation.

C1: I read that… Those two lines raise this question of, “Okay, who’s judging God?” That helps clarify that.

Fr. Stephen: Right. That’s what that is saying. And St. Paul is applying that to the whole nation of Israel, saying God revealed—gave them the Torah, gave them the rest—and when they sinned, they were choosing to sin, so they were completely in the wrong; God is completely in the right. God by no means failed. He gave everything to them, and they made their decision.

“But if our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say?” David says this: See, God’s in the right. So, you know, us, when we sin, when we fall, it helps us realize how great and faithful and true God is. St. Paul says: Is that what we’re saying, that the sinfulness of man just shows how great and glorious God is?

And if so: “Is God unjust who inflicts wrath?” Well, then why is God upset about sin, then? It brings glory to him. [Laughter]

C1: That’s pretty sophist.

Fr. Stephen: You say it’s sophist. Our Calvinist friends assert exactly this.

C1: Oh, that’s true. They do.

Fr. Stephen: They say exactly this, that God creates some people to be sinful and wicked, to condemn them to hell, for his glory, so that he can reveal his wrath and his justice to human beings. So it may sound like sophistry, but there are still people among us who believe this.

C1: I mean, it’s sophistry in the modern day.

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] Right? Now, notice he says, “I speak as a man.” So he’s even sort of acknowledging: It doesn’t really make any sense. [Laughter] But as someone might say, some person might try to make this argument—in the 16th century.

“Certainly not! For then how will God judge the world?” How will God judge the world, if everything brings him glory, if everything just magnifies him regardless of… Then how is he going to restore justice and order? By saying that, you’re saying that everything is already in good order, everything is already the way God wants it.

C1: God just happens to want…

Fr. Stephen: He wants this sin to be there, so that he can display his wrath. He wants unrighteousness to exist so he can display righteous mercy. [Laughter]

C1: That’s the basic Calvinist idea. God is all-powerful, so everything is according to plan.

Fr. Stephen: Right. God is the only agent. Everything that happens is God’s doing and his plan, which means there is not a situation on this earth to be corrected on the day of the Lord. Everything is always and already exactly the way God wants it to be. And they will go so far to say that it’s sinful for us to then question that, for us to dare to question that. [Laughter] But St. Paul is saying that’s ridiculous.

C1: Isn’t there a Muslim…?

Fr. Stephen: The very idea that God is going to come and judge the world—what judgment means: remember mishpat—the whole concept of judgment in the Hebrew Scriptures is that God is going to set things right, to put them back in order the way they are supposed to be, which means they’re not the way they’re supposed to be now; they’re not the way he wants them to be now. But he’s allowing them, as St. Paul already said, and he’s going to talk more about this later; God is allowing things to remain out of order for now. Why did St. Paul say that was? To give time, in his patience and in his mercy: to give time for repentance, so that the wicked will have time to repent. Because as he says in Isaiah, God takes no delight in the death of the wicked man. God desires that none should perish, but they should turn and live. So he bears with them in his patience. That’s what St. Paul’s been arguing here all along.

So what St. Paul is saying here is: The very idea that God is going to come and judge the earth, if we understand what judgment means—that it’s not some kind of criminal trial; that it’s God restoring correct order—the fact that he’s going to do that means things are out of whack now. So you can’t use “well, God wants me to sin so he can display his righteousness” as an excuse.

“For if the truth of God has increased through my lie to his glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner?” So he’s continuing the same idea. I go and lie, and based on my lying, you come to understand God’s truth, in contrast.

C1: And God wanted me to lie.

Fr. Stephen: And God wanted me to lie to display this, to bring glory to him. So then why would you judge me to be a sinner, right? I’m doing…

C2: What he wants.

Fr. Stephen: What God created me to do! I’m bringing glory to God, by being who I am and doing what I am.

“And why not say: Let us do evil, that good may come, then?” [Laughter] “—as we are slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say. Their condemnation is just.” So he says some people are saying that that’s what we’re saying, because remember what the slander against St. Paul was in Acts: he’s telling everybody not to worry about the Law. He’s telling everybody it doesn’t matter what you do; just go and sin. [Laughter] And he, of course, is saying, “Their condemnation is just,” kind of soft-pedals what he’s saying. People have to minorly pardon my French; he’s basically saying they can go to hell. [Laughter] That’s what “their condemnation is just” means. That’s the kind of condemnation we’re talking about, because he’s just been talking about Christ judging the earth. Condemnation is the… So they’re claiming that this is what St. Paul is teaching.

He goes on: “What, then? Are we better than they?”

C1: The people who are…?

Fr. Stephen: That’s right: Are we better than those people whom I’ve just said could go to final condemnation? Am I saying that because I think I’m better than them, and you, whom I’m writing to, are better than them? He says: “Not at all, for we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks”—and “Greeks” here doesn’t just mean Greek people; it’s referring to Gentiles—“that they are all under sin.”

That phrase is interesting, too. Notice that he doesn’t say that they have all committed sins. You’ve got to watch, because St. Paul—we gloss over it very quickly—St. Paul will talk about sins, and he will talk about sin. These are two different ways. A lot of times when he talks about sins, a lot of English translations will translated it as “trespasses,” because sins, trespasses: the idea there is that there’s a law, there’s a commandment, and you’re breaking it. He’s talking about sin.

Sin is first talked about that way way back in Genesis, when Cain and Abel bring their offerings to God, and Abel’s is accepted and Cain’s isn’t, and Cain’s mad. God comes to Cain, and he says, “Sin is crouching at your door.” He’s talking about it like it’s an animal; it’s crouching, ready to pounce. “It seeks to master you; you need to master it.” It’s going to come and try and take control; you need to fight. You need to fight back. Of course we know Cain doesn’t. He gives in to his hatred, and he goes and he murders his brother.

But this is the concept of sin that St. Paul’s talking about. Remember he talked about being obedient to unrighteousness. So it’s not just: Well, whether you’re a Jew or a Greek, at some point in your life you’ve messed up and made a mistake, or at some point in your life you’ve committed a sin, at some point in your life you’ve been disobedient. He’s saying: Everyone has now come under the power of sin. This is the problem. He’s saying all of us have a common problem. Remember, he’s talking about the unity of the Church in Rome. Whether you’re a Jew, whether you’re a Gentile, we all face this common problem. It’s not just the Gentiles who are out there, idolatrous, no-good sinners, and then we Jews, we’re good and holy and following God. No, both. All are under the power of sin.

So then he quotes from a whole series of psalms. These are all psalm verses. This is not one continuous psalm. And he even throws in a little Ecclesiastes there at one point, what seems like a reference to Ecclesiastes.

He says, “As it is written…” Just a note on that phrase, because I think it’s been a while since I talked about it. We see that in the New Testament, and we think: Oh, that’s just what you do before you quote Scripture. But some of the force of the phrase “as it is written” is lost on us because we write things all the time. We jot notes, we type things into our phone, we type tablets. Remember, at this time in history, writing something down is a big deal. We talked about how getting a copy of a book the length of Romans would cost the equivalent of about $5,000 to get that copy made, in today’s money.

C1: Not this copy!

Fr. Stephen: [Laughter] So there was no printing press. You couldn’t just “jot.” There were no photocopiers. So this was a major thing. We do have the equivalent of scrap paper in the ancient world; it’s mostly pottery shards, like scratch notes into pottery shards and things. But for something to be written in a written document like a book, it had to be very important. So “as it is written,” the fact that the word that we translate as “scriptures”—well, transliterate, because that’s literally from a Latin word—is from a word: just things that are written down, because writing something down like this sort of enshrined it and made it permanent, as opposed to all the other knowledge and things that we pass on by word of mouth, through storytelling and oral tradition in our communities, that we all teach each other.

Certain things are written down because they’re seen to be especially important and we need to preserve this just the way it is. So whatever Scripture is quoted—and it’s not always quoted this way, but whenever it’s quoted this way, “as it is written”—that’s an appeal to its authority. This was written down and enshrined for all time. This is important and true.

As I said, it’s a whole series of these psalm verses.

“There is none righteous, no, not one;
There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one.”
“Their throat is an open tomb;
With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;
“The poison of asps is under their lips”;
Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
Destruction and misery are in their ways;
And the way of peace they have not known.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Now he’s presenting this… You have to remember this is why that view of sin is important. This is not, for St. Paul, an accusation of guilt. He’s not saying: These are the crimes I charge each and every one of you with. He’s describing a state of being; he’s describing what it is like to be under the power of sin. This is what life is like when you are under the control of sin, and this is a horrible state to be in.

So when he talks about, as he’s about to, the solution to this problem, he’s not talking about: Here’s how you get off the hook for the guilt of the horrible things you’ve done. He’s talking about: Here’s how you escape. Here’s how you are set free from this sort of life under the power of sin. This is how you become free to seek after good, to seek after God, how you become free of this poison that’s in your mouth, and how you become free of the violence, all the sins he described in chapter one. These are things that have taken control of you, that have taken possession; you’re living under them. This is an oppression that’s upon you. This is something horrible that’s happened to you.

C1: This is what you seek salvation from.

Fr. Stephen: Right. From this state. And condemnation, then—if salvation is being saved from this state, then condemnation is remaining in this state forever, because you choose to remain in this state. So this is also a picture of what condemnation is, of what wrath is, of what it is to live in that way.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may be guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

He’s going to go into this a little more, but I’ll start talking about it here. This gets into what the purpose St. Paul believes the Torah serves is, and it’s not, as he says here: No one is made righteous by the Law or by keeping it. What does it mean “made righteous”? That means that’s not how you get to the right side on the judgment. There’s people on the right and left, sheep, goats. You don’t become a sheep by keeping the Law. That’s not what it’s for. What he says is that by the Law is the knowledge of sin. So through the Law everyone’s mouth is shut. [Laughter] And everyone stands—I don’t know that the word “guilty” is the best, but everyone stands on the condemned side before God.

C1: Because the Law tells you that’s where you are.

Fr. Stephen: Because the Law reveals that to you. The Law reveals that to you, and the Law, as we mentioned before, contains a means for managing that. It contains a means for managing that. This is what happens on the day of atonement. God has come to live in the midst of his people. So when they’re in the wilderness, they have this camp; the tabernacle is right in the middle of it. God is living there; he’s dwelling there in the midst of his people.

Here’s the problem. God is holy. God’s holiness is a consuming fire. The people he’s living in the midst of aren’t so holy. They’re not very holy, and so… The phrase that’s usually used in English translation is that God will “break out,” like out of the tabernacle, and destroy them: they’ll be consumed with their sins. So either that will happen or God will have to leave. He’ll have to leave because of their sinfulness.

So the day of atonement ritual, this practice every year—and we’ll talk more about this in Hebrews, because it goes into it in more detail—they take two goats, no sheep. So when Christ is called the Lamb of God, it’s not talking about atonement; it’s talking about Passover, but that’s a sidenote. One of those goats the high priest comes and places all of the sins of the people on that goat. That goat is then not killed. That goat is not sacrificed. You can’t sacrifice that goat, because now it’s unclean because it’s got all the sins of the people on it; it’s bearing all the sins of the people. It can’t be a sacrifice now. That goat’s driven out into the wilderness, to take those sins out into the desert, away from the people, out of the camp.

C2: The scapegoat.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, that’s why it’s referred to as the scapegoat, because it’s the goat that’s sent out. It gets sent out into the wilderness.

The second goat, that does not have the sins on it, gets sacrificed, and its blood gets taken into the most holy place. And the blood is used… The word—if the verb is kefir and the noun is kippur; that’s where we get Yom Kippur, the day of atonement—the word means to wipe. The idea is that the sins are now gone, but the sins have left a stain on the camp, and things that people have done. God says to Adam, “Cursed is the ground because of you.” As God says in Leviticus, certain sins will taint the land, so that the land will vomit you out to get rid of you, because of the abominations you’re committing. There’s this taint now in the camp, this uncleanness. That also has to be purified; it has to be washed away. So there’s those two elements. The sins are taken away; sin is taken away, and the damage is purified and cleaned.

So what does this do? This manages the sins of the people.

C1: It doesn’t get rid of it, but it manages it.

Fr. Stephen: It doesn’t get rid of it, but it manages the situation. They’re still going to keep sinning. We have to do this every year. And the same thing with the sin-offerings. The same thing with: every day, we’re having to do the sin-offerings. And the priest has to go in and offer it for his own sins and for the people’s sins, because he’s sinning, too. It’s just this management system that reveals sin and then manages it.

Until what?

C1: Until Christ.

Fr. Stephen: Until it’s dealt with. So God adds this, the Torah as this sin management system for his people so he can continue to dwell with them and be in their presence, until the time comes when he comes to dwell with them in the Person of Jesus Christ and then takes care of it once and for all.

But that means it was never salvation. It’s Christ, through his death and resurrection and ascension into heaven, that removes us from being under sin, who frees us from sin, who frees us from this state, who moves us over into the righteous column from the condemned column.

C1: We become sheep.

Fr. Stephen: Sheep from goats, yeah. The Torah never claimed to do that. It never said it was going to do that. It was never meant to do that.

So when St. Paul says that no one is justified by the Torah, it’s not because no one ever kept it perfectly; it’s because even if you keep it perfectly—because, remember, it includes the sacrifices… You don’t have to never sin to keep it perfectly. In fact, God says, when God comes to Jeroboam, when the kingdom is divided into the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, and Jeroboam, son of Nebat, becomes the first king of the northern kingdom—he gets ten tribes—God comes to him and says, “I made a covenant with David that a son of his body”—a son of his flesh, a son of his loins, one of his descendants—“would sit on his throne forever.” He says, “I will make the same covenant with you, Jeroboam, if you, like David, keep every one of my laws and follow every one of my commandments.”

Was God not aware of Psalm 50 that we were just talking about? [Laughter] No, because David repented. David repented. David followed the means that God had set for managing his sin after he had committed it, through repentance, and so he had kept the Torah. St. Paul at another point is going to say that he’s blameless in terms of the Torah. He’s going to say that was true back when he was a Pharisee, before he met Jesus. He’s not being facetious! [Laughter] He followed it. But the point is: that doesn’t get you… that manages your sin.

C1: It’s a band-aid.

Fr. Stephen: It doesn’t set you free from sin. It’s like if you go to a doctor, and the doctor, rather than curing the disease, just sort of manages your symptoms. “Well, I’ll give you something that’ll take away the fever, and I’ll give you something that’ll take away the headache. You’re still going to have a sinus infection, but you won’t notice so much.” That’s not dealing with the problem. It may make you able to continue to function while you have a sinus infection, but it’s not curing the problem. It’s Christ who comes and cures the problem, and Christ was the plan all along. So until Christ we have this sin-management system to allow God to dwell among his people during that time, to prepare that people to produce Christ, because Christ comes from that people.

So that’s background now to what St. Paul’s about to say. He says, “But now—” because before was the Law; that’s what the Law did; that’s what the Torah did. “But now the righteousness of God apart from the Law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets.” So what God has done in Christ isn’t part of the Law, but the Law and the Prophets bore witness to it, spoke to it. It’s the fulfillment of what the Law and the Prophets were aiming at.

“...even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.” This is the beginning of him arguing: I’ve just argued everyone has the same problem, being under sin; everyone has the same solution. Whether you’re a Jew or a Greek, the solution to being righteous before God, being on the right side at the judgment, is in Jesus Christ and found through belief, remember, which is faith, which is faithfulness, loyalty, to Christ—which includes, of course, believing that the Gospel that’s proclaimed to you is true, but then goes beyond that, beyond just saying, “Oh, yeah, true, false.”

“For there is no difference”: again, no difference between Jews and Greeks. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified,” being made righteous, “freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Now there’s a whole bunch of stuff packed into there, and St. Paul’s going to spend a lot of the rest of Romans sort of [unpacking]. You’ve probably noticed that already. When we started chapter one, there was a whole bunch of stuff packed in, and then he sort of unpacked it. We’re getting the same thing here now in chapter three: a whole bunch of stuff packed in to what he just said, and now he’s going to kind of unpack it.

“For all,” meaning everybody, “have sinned.” Now notice, this is not just… We talked about the difference: “under sin,” “have sinned.” Everyone has committed sins; “all have fallen short of the glory of God,” which again implies the glory of God does not come from people’s sinning, but that’s a slight digression. [Laughter]

“...being justified freely by his grace,” meaning… What is grace? Grace is the action of God. That’s what grace means. It means God does it. We’re justified by the action of God.

C1: So “by the grace of God” means “by the action of God.”

Fr. Stephen: That God did it, right.

“...through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus…” What is redemption? What does it mean when you redeem a coupon?

C2: You cash it in.

Fr. Stephen: Redemption, the idea of redemption, is related to the idea of slavery. It’s related to the idea of manumission. If you’re a slave, you belong to someone or something. In this case, we’re talking about sin, because St. Paul said everyone is under sin. You’re under sin. Christ has redeemed you; he’s purchased you out of slavery. Remember, in the ancient world, you became a slave because you had a debt you couldn’t pay, so you were going to go work it off, basically. Well, if someone came and paid that debt, you’re now free. You’re now free.

So everyone, by sinning, came to be under sin, came to be enslaved by sin. You start out making choices. After a while, you’re not making choices any more, when you’re sinning. I talk about it in terms of addiction in the modern world; I think it’s a good example. The first few times you take the drink or do the drug, you’re choosing to do it. After a while, you’re not choosing any more, because it’s controlling you. All sins are that way. You may decide to lose your cool and get angry the first couple times, but after a while that anger is running you. You’re not choosing to get angry any more.

So we’re under sin, but we become righteous not through keeping Torah; we can become righteous through the action of God who, in Jesus Christ, has redeemed us, who has bought us back, who has redeemed us from that slavery.

“...whom God set forth…” Oh, here we go! “...whom God set forth…” This is one of the places where they didn’t change the New King James. “...whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood, through faith, to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed.” Okay, so the word there that’s translated “propitiation” is a Greek word, ilasterion, which is the word that’s used in the Old Testament for the cover of the ark of the covenant, sometimes translated into English as the “mercy-seat.” But that is what was purified on the day of atonement. So this is a reference to atonement. Rather than “propitiation,” “atoning sacrifice” would probably be a better translation, because what St. Paul is doing is he’s paralleling what Christ did to the day of atonement.

C1: “Propitiation” bothers me, because it sounds like God’s anger has to be appeased.

Fr. Stephen: Right, which is the pagan use… Yeah, I guess I’ll go into it. [Laughter] This is the way a number of our… Okay, again, those who follow Martin Luther, those who follow John Calvin—the way they take this, rather than basing their interpretation of this word on the way it’s used in the Greek Old Testament and the Hebrew words that it’s related to, they choose to base it on the pagan use, and the pagan use of this word is for a sacrifice, basically when a god is angry with you. You’ve done something—and you didn’t have to do much in the pagan world—you’ve done something to upset some pagan god or spirit or other, and so you go and you offer it the blood of some animal in order to appease it and get it to lay off and not kill you, basically, not destroy you.

There are a bunch of problems with that, trying to import that here, but let me tell you one of the most obvious ones. What has St. Paul just quoted? What psalm has he just quoted?

C1: The fiftieth.

Fr. Stephen: Psalm 50. How does that psalm end? With David saying, “You do not delight…”

C1: “...in burnt offerings.”

Fr. Stephen: “...in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifice, but a contrite and humble heart you will not despise.” So the psalm that St. Paul has just quoted says that God doesn’t work that way. How would St. Paul quote that psalm and then turn around? All along here St. Paul is quoting the Old Testament, but now when he uses this word, he’s not referring to the Old Testament any more; he’s comparing God to Zeus? It doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s very clear St. Paul is referring to the day of atonement, that he offered Christ as an atoning sacrifice.

What does that mean? That means Christ’s blood washes away the taint that’s left by—remember, this was “sins, have sinned”: the taint that’s left by those sins. It’s gone completely, permanently. So it’s not just that we’re deposited over in this righteous category—God picks us up over here and drops us off over here, but there’s no change. This is again contra our Lutheran and Calvinist friends. It’s not that God just changes the category he looks at us in, but that we’re actually purified by Christ’s blood. We’re actually purified by Christ’s blood.

The word “justify,” the word that’s translated here “justified,” actually contains that idea. The Aramaic word that it’s covering is used in Daniel. Daniel talks about how, after the time that the Temple has been trampled by the Gentiles, referring to Antiochus Epiphanes, the Maccabean revolt, when that time is over, the Temple will be justified. What does that mean? The Temple will have its sins forgiven? The Temple will have the imputed righteousness of Christ applied to it?

C1: The desecration will be undone.

Fr. Stephen: Right. It will be cleansed; it will be purified. That’s what happens. That’s what Hanukkah celebrates. It will be purified again. So this idea of purification is contained in the word “justified,” too. But just in case you’re not going to pick up on that, because the Greek doesn’t necessarily contain that idea, St. Paul adds this imagery of the mercy-seat to cover the ark of the covenant, where, on the day of atonement, the high priest goes in and takes the blood and wipes it to purify the altar, or the cover.

So, again, this is going to be further impact, but he’s saying Christ is the means, whether you’re a Jew or a Gentile, that this is taken care of, that we’re not only moved over to this category but that we’re purified of our sins and that we’re then, by being purified of our sins, we’re no longer under sin. We’re no longer living in the way those psalm verses described, so now we can seek after God. We can do these things that then God rewards with eternal life. God gives it to us in the first place, and then he rewards it. [Laughter]

And he does this why? It says, “to demonstrate his righteousness,” to demonstrate God’s justice, because in the past, as we mentioned, he passed over sins. He’s been showing this patience and this forbearance. He’s been showing it with the Gentiles in not punishing their sins. He’s been showing it really with Israel, too, by giving them the Torah to sort of manage the sin problem all this time. God’s been doing that for X-thousands of years, and St. Paul says now he displays his justice, that he is a just God, because he deals with the problem. He solves the problem. He’s not just bearing with it any more, but he solves it.

“...to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier in the one who has faith in Jesus.” So this shows that he’s just in that he deals with the problem, and he deals with it by justifying, by making righteous those who have faith in Jesus, who are faithful, who are loyal to Christ; who believe and who follow Christ, he justifies them. This displays his justice: he solves the problem by purifying, forgiving, cleansing those who believe in Christ.

“Where is boasting, then? It is excluded.” Can anybody come and brag about the fact that… [Laughter] Anything? No, because we were all under sin, we were all enslaved, and Christ came and set us free. Any more than the Israelites on their way out of Egypt can brag. They didn’t do anything. God doesn’t come to the Israelites in Egypt and give them the Torah and say: When you guys follow this perfectly, when you guys become really righteous, I’m going to set you free and give you a land. No, the exact opposite. He comes—they didn’t do anything. He comes, redeems them, brings them out, and then he gives them the Torah for this other purpose. Deuteronomy 9, he says to them in the wilderness, “Do not think that it is because of your righteousness that I brought you out of Egypt and brought you here, for you are a stiff-necked people.” [Laughter]

“[Where] is boasting, then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.” I’m going to continue, because we have to understand what’s being said here. “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the Law.” That’s important here, because he’s not just talking about works in general. We already saw Christ was going to judge everyone according to his works. We already saw from his quote in Habakkuk that works are involved here as the product of faith. So he’s talking about the works of the Law, the deeds of the Law. By keeping the Law, that’s not how you get from one category to the other.

What would the works of the Law be in particular, in terms of his audience now? Circumcision… What are the things they would be arguing the Gentiles should do, for example? Circumcision, keeping kosher in terms of the food laws, etc., etc. What do all those things have in common? All of those things… Remember when we talked about Acts 15? and we talked about how there were only certain commandments that applied to the Gentiles, that that went back to Leviticus, that in Leviticus, out of the whole code, there’s only a couple of things that it says, “This applies to you and to any Gentile you have living among you.” And it wasn’t the food laws, it wasn’t circumcision—it wasn’t any of these things.

Those commandments were only given to the people of Israel, and God never said, “I want you to go out and enforce these rules on the other nations. I want you to go out… contra Islam. I want you to go out and force the Hittites to keep kosher. I want you to go out and force the Hittites to be circumcised.” He never said that; he didn’t give those laws to them. In fact, you look at Naaman the leper, who’s Assyrian. He comes, he’s cleansed, he says, “From now on I worship only Yahweh,” he goes back to Syria. He’s not told, “Oh, by the way… You need to be circumcised and you need to keep kosher and you need to celebrate the Passover…” None of that. It’s: You worship no other God but Yahweh, and then sexual morality, and you follow God and live a moral life.

These works of the Law he’s talking about were part of this sin-management system and part of their identity as people of Israel. They have nothing to do with—they just argued circumcision in particular has nothing to do with how you’re judged on the last day, whether you’re one of the righteous or one of the condemned. If you’re uncircumcised and righteous, you’re on the righteous side. It’s perfectly possible to be circumcised—and condemned. It’s perfectly possible to never eat pork, but to be wicked and to be condemned. That was never the purpose of these things. So that means that the Jewish person is not somehow better in the eyes of God for doing these things than the Gentile sitting next to him at the Eucharist. It’s not by doing those things, but it’s by faith: by faith, by faithfulness, by loyalty to Christ.

He’s going to go on—we’re not going to get into chapter four tonight, but in chapter four he’s going to go on and argue: by the way, it was always that way; the Law was never about that. It’s not that something changed, like: “The Law was the way to do that; the Torah was about that, but now it’s not.” No, it’s: The Torah was never about that. It was always—because he’s going to go back to Abraham—It was always about faithfulness, loyalty, believing God’s promises. That’s always what it was about in terms of being on that righteous side. And the Torah was added later for this other purpose, but that’s where he’s going to…

So he says, “Or is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also.” He’s only the God of the Jews? Are there some other gods? To his Jewish audience. Well, no: he’s God. He created the heavens and the earth; he created all the nations. He scattered them at the tower of Babel, but he’s the God of the whole universe. The things they worship aren’t gods.

“...since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.” So God doesn’t justify the Jews through circumcision and the uncircumcised by some other means. Circumcision has nothing to do with it.

“Do we then make void the Law through faith? Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the Law.” So he’s saying: What are we saying? Are we saying the Torah is void? It’s abolished; it’s done? And he’s going to expand on this more, but what he’s saying is no, we establish it. We establish it, because we make its true purpose clear. We make its true purpose clear so that it can serve the function it was intended to serve, which wasn’t to make people righteous. [Laughter] It never was.

We went longer than I intended to, but we’ll go ahead and stop here. Thank you, everybody.