Victory in Christ - Part 10

This is the next installment of a series I am writing concerning what Romans 6-8 teaches about our sin problem and God's plan for victory. To find previous installments do a search for the title: Victory In Christ. You can find the first installment here.

⁷ What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “You shall not covet.” ⁸ But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead. ⁹ I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. ¹⁰ And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. ¹¹ For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. ¹² Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.

You can read this whole section for yourself. In essence he wants to make sure we understand that the law is not sin, but it did bring death. The law is holy and just and good. What is the problem then? The problem is that sin is deceitful and in it's deceitful way took advantage of the commandments and stirred up all manner of evil desire in Paul. It does the same thing to us. Sin is kind of personified in these verses as though it is an entity in itself. Paul says that apart from the law sin was dead. But when the commandments of the law begin to be understood, sin starts to wake up and brings about death in us. That's why he told the Corinthians that the letter kills. There's no transgression unless there is a law to transgress. And the punishment for transgression is death.

So as the argument here is being developed, we find that it's necessary to remove us from the jurisdiction of the law so that sin can't use it to have that deadly impact on us anymore.

Principle 12: The law gives sin its power.

¹³ Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.

Paul reiterates the fact that the law is not the problem per se. It is sin that used the law as the excuse to produce death in me. In so doing sin can be seen for what it is as exceedingly sinful.

Principle 13: Sin in me is the problem.

God's Power to Save - Even Me

The book of Romans in the Bible is one of my favorite portions of Scripture because in it the gospel of Jesus Christ is so clearly and logically laid out.  This article today is based on a study I call Truths for Meditation and comes from Romans 1:16-17; 3:21-27. So what I'm hoping to accomplish here is not so much to go through this passage as a lesson to be learned, but as truth that will build us up and sustain us in our walk of faith. It would be helpful to have your Bible open to this passage since I won't be quoting it in its entirety.

Paul writes that the gospel is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. One has to almost stop at each word in order to grasp what this is saying. The basic hunger of the human heart is for salvation. Death is seen by most people as an enemy and even life has so many challenges that people want to be assured of a rescue, if not now then certainly after death. Where is that rescue to be found and who is eligible? What the Bible is saying is that the power to save us is found in the good news of Jesus Christ. This saving power is available to everyone, everyone who believes. There's no limit.

The reason that the gospel is the power of God for salvation is that the gospel reveals the righteousness of God. This phrase, "righteousness of God" is repeated several times in this passage. God is perfect and perfectly righteous. That means that He never does anything wrong. All of His motives are perfectly right. All of His decisions and actions are perfectly right. In comparison to God we fall way short of His perfections. The Bible calls that sin.

How does the gospel reveal the righteousness of God? Let me explain it this way. If I can say it respectfully, God has a "problem". He loves us. God does not want any of us to perish. But on the other hand He is so perfect and righteous that He cannot just overlook sin. He can't be like a kind, gentle grandfather who simply overlooks his grandson's misbehavior. He must punish sin. So what the gospel shows is that God is so loving and yet so intent on punishing sin that he entered the world Himself in the person of Jesus Christ and took the punishment that His righteousness demanded so that He would be "free" to justly release sinners from their death sentence. That is what verse 3:26 is saying.

The gospel is the good news that God is righteous, but He applied that righteous judgment on Himself rather than on His creatures. But the gospel is also the message that God gives His righteousness to all who believe. In other words, it's not enough just to have our punishment taken by someone else. We also need to be positively righteous. God is basically saying, "I've taken the punishment you deserve. The condemnation has been removed if you will believe me and trust me.  In addition, I will give you my righteousness, my perfection as a gift if you will accept it." Here's the way Paul puts it in the passage we are looking at:  "But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe." Romans 3:21, 22






In 2 Corinthians 5:21 he says it this way, "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."



It almost sounds too good to be true doesn't it?  To think that on judgment day, God would look up your record and on it He would find no sins, and then as He looks more closely to see what good things you have done He would find that you have been perfectly loving, perfectly others-focused, perfectly thankful, and so on. Why?  Because your sinful record has been replaced by God's perfect righteousness.  Believing this is what saves, not just believing in general. We are asked to believe the record that God has given of His Son, and trust His method of salvation. In doing so, all of the benefits of the power of the gospel will be ours.