“Witness to God’s Grace”
Romans 3:21-26
I want you to learn Greek today.
I want you to
look at the alternate translation of Romans 3: 22
“the righteousness
of God through faith of Jesus Christ
for all who believe.” (footnote k in pew Bibles)
The Greek is
“dikaiosuna
(righteousness) theo (of God)
Dia (through) pistis (faith or
faithfulness)
Iesou Xristou (the
objective genitive tense
which means “of
Jesus Christ).
I learned that in my second year of seminary in a
Greek class
with Dr. Gillespie the President of
and it was eye opening and made sense to me.
Instead
of having our righteousness depend on my faith
Which I knew was flawed and undependable,
Paul
was saying that Jesus faith pre-empted and
Preceded
my faith with his faith-
Which was perfect and obedient to God.
It is
his faith, not mine, which is a saving faith.
And
it made more sense in the sentence as well.
Why
would Paul have added the phrase
“for all who believe” is he was already
talking about
“our faith”.
I was at a theological conference this week with a
professor
Of
theology from
Andrew
Purves and he challenged us to grapple
With
these concept in the writings of Paul:
When
Paul says “The righteousness of God comes through
Faith in Christ or the faith of Christ.”
Purves argued that if our righteouness
comes
Through our faith in Christ then it is
our work
But
if our righteousness comes through
Faith
of Christ then it is God’s
Redemptive work that saves.
Who
would you rather trust? Yourself or God?
Reformer
John Calvin would rather trust God.
Purves went on to ask the young theologians
gathered
When
they went into a hospital room to visit
Did
they bring Christ with them into that room?
The
overwhelming response of the class was “Yes”
And Purves response was an
exasperated
“No,
Christ is already there, ministering to that person.
Our
purpose in visiting is to bear witness to Christ.”
Purves said that too often in our contemporary
Christianity
we treat of faith as another
Self
help station in life.
And
our struggle in ministry is that
when we imagine
that it depends on us
we develop a
Messianic complex
and ultimately
we get burnt out.
Because we aren’t the Messiah,
Jesus is!
All ministry is God’s
ministry
and we
participate in that ministry
in our union
with Christ. (example of arms up)
It is
not our faith in Christ
But
Christ’s faith in the Father
And
God’s faithfulness to us
That
redeems us so that we can minister
In
joy and thankgiving in
It was amazing to see the light bulbs go on in the
students
And to
hear them asking to learn more about this
Expression
of the Christian faith that is so
Christ centered and scripture based
And freeing up.
And as I listened to him talk to the students
I was
thinking with a smile:
“This is our faith, the Presbyterian Faith,
That
we preach and teach and live out in mission
Every week at Covenant.
It
didn’t start with a professor in
Even
It started with the Apostle Paul
And it
was rekindled and interpreted through
In the Reformation of the Christian Church.
Three men tackled these questions 500 years ago that
We might
live freely, forgiven lives of discipleship today.
They
were Martin Luther, John Calvin & John Knox.
And of course they were only three of a
whole
Cloud of Witnesses who
comprise the early reformers.
But
they are the ones we know and they are the ones
On
whose shoulders we stand today.
Martin Luther was a young Monk 1500’
s struggling mightily
To be
good enough
to deserve to
stand as a priest before God.
He continually asked himself:
“How one
could stand in holiness before a
righteous and
demanding God.”
Luther
confessed his sins so often that
his fellow monk
actually became annoyed at him.
It was finally
his reading and teaching and preaching
on Paul’s
letter to the Galatians and Romans
that changed him
and freed him from the
burden of trying
to be perfect:
“We know that a person is justified not by
works
of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.”
Galatians
2:16
Martin
Luther came to the conclusion
in his
Commentary to Galatians that:
“Faith is not something dreamed,
a human illusion…
faith is something that God effects in us.”
Building on Luther’s work in
French Reformer John Calvin in
Calvin
is the Father of the Reformation for
Presbyterians
and a firm believer in
The sovereignty and saving grace of God.
Calvin also wrote a commentary on Romans.
Calvin
reinforces the notion that we cannot save ourselves
But
that we rely fully on God.
(Like
the F.R.O.G. that Glenda hands out)
Calvin
comments on today’s passage:
“It is necessary that Christ should come to
our aid;
who, being
alone just, can render us justified by
transferring
to us his own righteousness. You see how the righteousness of faith is the
righteousness of Christ.
When
therefore we are justified, the efficient cause is the
mercy
of God, the meritorious one is Christ, the instrument
is the Word in
connection with faith.”
Calvin goes
on to say:
“We
are justified freely and further by his grace;
and Paul thus repeats the phrase ‘righteousness of God’
to show that the whole is from God and nothing from us.”
Calvin thought it idolatry to think that
we could save ourselves
And that the work of salvation belongs to God in Christ.
Neither
Calvin, nor Paul, were into self help Christianity.
They we both profoundly Christological.
“It is not I who live but it is Christ who
lives in me.”
Galatians 2:20
Some may ask why Presbyterian Christians
don’t just sit back
Since
the saving work is all done in Christ.
Why
do we need to do any works of faith at all?
We
do our works of faith as fruit of the Spirit.
We
do them not as duty to God or in an effort
To
try to earn our salvation but rather as
Thanksgiving
for everything that God
Has done for us in Christ.
I
was talking to one of the men who worked on a
Wheel
chair ramp that we recently built
For
a family in need- the person said
“It
didn’t seem like work is seemed like fun.”
“It was hard. We worked hard.
But it was
fun being together and working together.”
That is the essence of Christian
labor,
It grows out of thanksgiving
to God.
It is our
participation with God in
The
ministry Christ is doing.
When we
knock on a hospital door we are not bringing
Jesus Christ to the hospital, we are
joining Christ
Who is already at work in the
patient
And our job is to
bear witness to
The grace of Christ at the moment.
John Knox is our third and last Reformer
today.
He was a
leader of the Church in
And he
served as a galley slave for over a year
Yet he never
lost a sense of the joy and
Satisfaction
in doing God’s work.
He
wrote in Chapter 8 of the Scots Confession
About the work we do in God’s spirit:
“The cause of good works, we confess,
is
not our free will, but the Spirit of the Lord Jesus,
who
dwell in our hearts by true faith, and brings forth
such works as God has prepared for us to walk in.”
And that’s the legacy we live in,
believe in and walk in today.
As
we celebrate the Reformation we are remembering
That
it is God and not our work or even our faith
That
saves us in Jesus Christ.
Jesus
Christ is God’s Word of hope to us
and Jesus
Christ is our word of service and obedience
back to God.
And we
participate in the saving work of God
As we witness to the grace of God in
Jesus Christ.
Amen