Real Grace for Real People Series
Real Grace in Romans 1-3

Being Justified freely by His grace through the redemption that in Christ Jesus

Note: This is one sermon from a multi-message series. The various parts are at the following links:

Grace -- one of the most misunderstood teachings in the Bible. Some suggest that Seventh-day Adventists don't understand grace; that we have an unbiblical understanding of it; that we place ourselves under the law instead of under grace. Is it true?

Although grace is spoken of first in Genesis and finally in Revelation, the individual Bible writer saying the most about it is Paul. Therefore, we will walk through his writings verse by verse and see what they say about grace. Let's start in Romans 1:5.

Consider these first four verses of Romans chapter one. What do we learn in them? Paul is called an apostle; that he was separated to the gospel; that this gospel was promised in the time of the Hebrew Scriptures; that it concerns God's Son Jesus Christ, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; that He was declared to have power and rose from the dead. The passage next arrives at the fifth verse where we read:

By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for His name: among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ. Romans 1:5-6.

Hear the teaching of Paul: "By whom we have received grace and apostleship." From whom has grace and apostleship been received? From Jesus -- the Son of God with power, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh. Notice that "grace" has been received. What purpose was this grace received for? The following clause says "for obedience to the faith among all nations, for His name." Paul received grace and apostleship for the purpose of leading believers of every background into "obedience to the faith."

The same phrasing occurs in Romans 16:25-27:

Now to Him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith: To God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen.

The underlying Greek is the same phrase, literally, "obedience of faith" (hu-pa-koh-ayn pis-te-ohs). The noun "faith" here is a genitive of source. The phrase speaks of the obedience which has its source in faith. God sent Paul on His mission -- a mission to help all nations live the obedience which has its source in faith in God.

In the close of the epistle, Paul brings the idea to the forefront again. Like two covers on the front and back ends of the book of Romans, he iterates and reiterates the purpose of the gospel "promised afore by His prophets in the Holy Scriptures" (Romans 1:2). Breaking into doxology at the end of Romans, he again points "to Him that is of power to stablish you." The mystery of the incarnation has now been made manifest. Jesus has come. He has come "of the seed of David according to the flesh." The gospel is given that all nations may know of His coming and His condemning of sin "in the flesh" (Romans 8:3), that they themselves might personally experience the "obedience of faith." And all this is linked by Paul directly to grace.

We shouldn't forget that.

In Romans 1:7, Paul offers the customary greeting, "grace to you and peace," that launches so many of his epistles. But let's look again at this verse in Romans. What is it that Paul says there? "To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ."

This is more than a hello. Paul is asking a blessing upon the Christians in Rome. Notice what is linked together here in this verse: (1) God loves His people, (2) God calls them to be saints, and (3) He gives grace and peace to them. You know that the underlying word for saints has the literal meaning, "holy ones." God loves people and calls them to holiness, and gives them grace. Holiness and grace and love go together! And what God hath joined together, let man not put asunder.

Grace is not here a blanket to wrap sinners in. It is a light that former-sinners live out. Grace inside empowers saintliness inside and out. God's love gives unto us "all things that pertain unto life and godliness" (2 Peter 1:3). And among all things necessary for godliness, is grace.

Empowering grace.

The next passage in the book of Romans where we find the word "grace" is in Romans 3:24, which reads:

Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Some say here that because we are "being justified freely by His grace," obedience is no longer an issue for the Christian: that we are saved apart from obedience. But let's get some context, more of the surrounding passage (Romans 3:19-31):

Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Is He the God of the Jews only? is He not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.

Friends, now we have some context to work with. Let's work through the whole section, and see what is being said about grace.

The Role of the Law

Starting in verse 19, what is Paul presenting? He states that whatever the law is saying, it is saying to those who are under law. And why does it say what it says to those under law? "That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." Interesting. Let me ask you a question now. Does the law condemn sinners, or non-sinners? The law condemns sinners. If you don't break the law, the law does not condemn you.

Let's get this clear in our minds. The law represents a boundary line between good and evil. It is a divider between righteousness and sin. The law illuminates the fact that we live within the domain of God's moral values. We have been made in His image, granted the power of free choice. We -- by God's design -- have agency. In His law God sets before us "life and good, and death and evil" (Deuteronomy 30:15).

Although we have free choice, we lack the inward power to follow up on the choice of our mind. Thus, Paul says "with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin" (Romans 7:25). That is, when the human mind is indwelt by the divine Spirit, we can obey. When we choose to follow the downward pull of our fallen nature, we place our lower nature in charge of our choices, resulting in moral failure. Adam and Eve sinned. They fell. Their nature was changed. Now, we cannot obey -- not apart from an empowering by God.

What does the law say to those under the law? That the world -- that each one of us -- is guilty. We all have chosen to follow our lower nature. We all have chosen to sin against God. The function of the law is not to save us, but to show us what is right and what is wrong. In fact, it is to show us what Jesus thinks about moral behavior. That's what the law is about. In the salvation process, we are a race of persons who "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

It is rather important that we understand this. So God gave a law. Not Ten Suggestions. Ten Commandments: what Jesus thinks about moral behavior.

To be "under the law" in this passage, means to be under its authority, under its condemnation. If you are, through the power of God obeying the law, then you are on the other side of the law. If you are letting God's Spirit dwell life-changingly inside of you, then His strength is given in response to your plea for help. He changes you through and through, both the more outwardly items and also the more inward issues. He changes your very motivations. He pours His love into your heart (Romans 5:5), and in God's love there is no hidden selfishness, no false motivation. He empowers full obedience. Can the sinful heart produce any healthy obedience on its own? No. But the sinful heart subdued by the Holy Spirit pours forth holy works. Do even those works save you? No. But they are works that are on the law's good side. They are works of faith. They glorify our Father in heaven. Such works are not produced "under the law;" they are produced "under grace."

When Jesus points to His end-time people in the book of Revelation and announces "Here are they that keep the commandments of God," He isn't kidding. He's being completely lucid, completely sober. They are not a band of grim-faced people in bondage. They are a little flock of commandment-keepers by the power of Jesus, having great peace. After all, "Great peace have they which love Thy law, and nothing shall offend them" (Psalm 119:165). Far from being under law, it is Seventh-day Adventists who would free people from being under law -- under the bondage of sin.

God's design for His people is that we would be freedom-bringers. What are you?

Verse twenty continues to clarify the role of the law: "Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin." Paul here states that "the deeds of the law" do not justify -- they do not make one right with God.

Don't forget what Paul is dealing with. In Romans chapter one he points out the general wickedness of the non-Jews, and in Romans chapter two he points out the fallacy of people being saved by their Jewishness, particularly in light of their sinful behaviors. The people who are "justified" in the book of Romans are not the hearers of the law, but the doers (Romans 2:13). The Jews had been led to make the assumption that they had an easy-in on this salvation issue. Paul is trying to shake them away from it. He points out that their deeds--their deeds considered in an unqualified manner (apart from empowering by the Holy Spirit for example)-- cannot put them into a guiltless relationship with God.

Another Witness to God's Righteousness

Verse twenty-one then says "But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe." In verse 28 we read, "without the law" (kho-ris no-moo), literally perhaps better translated as "apart from law," is here given as how the righteousness of God is manifested. It is testified to "by the law and the prophets."

The law itself has been a witness to what the Father and what Jesus think about moral behavior from the beginning. It could define what God's requirements were by telling, but Jesus came to demonstrate what God's requirements were by showing. And He did. He lived out to the fullest expression in fallen flesh, what He had written by divine impression on tables of stone. He was the law enfleshed, just as the Ten Commandments are God's character concisely transcribed.

In this passage Paul shows the necessity of God having a living witness for what He thinks about moral behavior. Don't forget that the Jews had surrounded the law with layer after layer of tradition, greatly obscuring its real meaning. So God came to show it to them in action.

That's what Jesus did.

In verses 22-23 Paul shows that since all are condemned before God, His faith is necessary for both, Jew and gentile alike. All fall short. All are condemned by their own behavior. But through faith, God's righteousness is available "unto all and upon all them that believe" (Romans 3:22). Don't forget, the main issue at hand is our making sure that we have a biblical grip on what grace is. Notice here that grace involves not our own but God's righteousness being "unto all and upon all them that believe."

Now we finally come back to Romans 3:24. All who have sinned but return to God in belief are, this verse says, "justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

"Freely" tells how we are justified. Literally, as a "gift." "Being justified as a gift," or "being made right with God as a gift" by His grace. But let us not confuse this with the cost of redemption. We are purchased with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), a very steep one indeed. Jesus died on the cross for us. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him might not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). "Freely" here is not in reference to the cost of salvation. It was the most expensive thing ever purchased. That's why no grace that's cheap is valid. Grace is costly.

"Freely" here is in reference to whether we contribute to the cost, whether we add any of our feeble merits to the perfect merits of Christ. To that, the answer is resounding.

No.

But here comes the monkey-wrench. Turn to James 2:24:

Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.

James had noticed how some were saying they were made right with God apart from obedience to Him and He pointed out what? Yes, that's right. That "faith without works is dead" (James 2:26). And I say to you that while it is true that God doesn't add our deeds into the purchase price of our salvation (for He has wrought that out freely for us), still it is true that "faith without works is dead." Still it is true that "by works a man is justified, and not by faith only." That is, there is a co-operative part we play in the salvation process, although not a meritorious part.

Don't misunderstand me now. What does the Scripture say? It calls this "the redemption that is in Christ Jesus;" not the redemption that is in me or you. There is no redemption in us. It is in Christ. But he wants to put His righteousness "unto all and upon all that believe."

Let's keep moving. Let's make sure that Paul and James agree. Romans 3:25-27:

Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith.

Christ our Propitiation

Jesus is set forth to be a propitiation--a penalty-payment. His life given in our place, His sacrifice received by faith in His blood, faith in the life He lived-out and offered up, is set forth to declare His righteousness. The declaration of His righteousness is at the same time a declaration of the fairness and appropriateness of His forgiving, literally "passing over" sins.

But God didn't pass over any sins at all. Payment for every sin has been exacted through the sacrifice of Christ. The penalty has been met in the Penalizer. The written law defined what sin was. The living-Law showed what righteousness can do. He can save. The written law gave no life for the sins of the world. The living-Law did. Because of His life offered up for man, God passed over the sins of men, waiting for the arrival of Christ to carry out the penalty for our sins upon the sinless One. This was a part of grace.

But consider the next line: "To declare I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." The end result of all this isn't that God just forgives us while covering over our sins like rust under primer. Nay. It is so much more! Grace as biblically operative is such that through it, "He might be just, and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus." That is, He can be absolutely fair -- He can legitimately operate under the same principles as all His creatures do, continuing to think what He thinks about moral behavior, and at the same time He can justify the person who believes in Him. Authentic Bible grace covers both bases: God's justice and His mercy. Neither principle suffers at the expense of the other. Grace isn't a cheap cover-up. It's an expensive restoration. And it is operational now.

Jude's Timely Warning

Does grace destroy the law? Cheap grace does. Jude warned about the cheap-grace proponents who would present their destructive rationalizations in his and finally in our closing age. What was his warning? Hear Jude 4: "For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ."

When we put grace on sale, we cheapen it. Contemporary theology on grace differs little from the old Roman Catholic lie of the "indulgence." Christians today are being sold a version of grace that is the very thing Jude warns us of. It turns the grace of our God into lasciviousness, into an obscenity--a justification for lustful behaviors. It turns grace into a license for disobedience.

What did Paul think? He closed out this section of Scripture with the following words.

Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Is He the God of the Jews only? is He not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith. Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.

Paul says we can't boast. We have nothing to boast of under grace. Grace gives us no license to sin. We are not to boast. We are not to claim that we can sin lightly and He will lightly forgive us. We are to conclude that we are justified by faith, and that "the deeds of the law" play no salvific role for us. Our merits cannot save us, only condemn. All are justified through faith. Do we then make void--make empty--the law through faith?

God forbid.

We, after all, establish the law. How do we establish the law? Through faith. How do we operate under faith? Believing in Christ, we permit Him to put the righteousness of God "unto all and upon all that believe." That means co-operating with Him, permitting Him to put His righteousness into me and upon me. He justifies me by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Awesome. Biblical. Authentic grace. Historically Adventist.

Some people suggest that the much of the current thinking on grace in the Seventh-day Adventist church is different than that of the Adventist pioneers. They are correct.

Some suggest that the Adventism of our spiritual pioneers was lacking in grace. They are incorrect. There is no disagreement between what has been above presented and that which Ellen White, A. T. Jones, E. J. Waggoner, or other pioneer Adventists believed. So what is the difference?

The pioneer understanding of grace saw that the ark of the covenant was opened in Revelation 11:19. God's law was exposed. That was His plan, too. He purposed that His last generation of believers would be persons who through His empowering grace kept the commandments of God and the faith if Jesus. But today Adventists are confused. Many of our teachers are discovering that the law is an enemy, but only because their concept of grace makes it such.

Seventh-day Adventists need to recover their understanding of grace. They need to see the value of the law. They need to see the blending of God's glory. They need to keep in mind what Romans 1:7 showed us. That His love, His holiness being put upon His people, and His grace all fit together perfectly well. If obedience is today being pushed entirely out of the salvation experience, it is because we are drifting into theological friendship with those who historically rejected our understanding of Scripture for the very same reason. They couldn't see a harmonization between what they thought grace was, and the remainder of the Scripture.

They left their first love and were declared fallen by heaven.

Friend, there is enough grace to give you victory. You needn't fall. Look and live. Look and love. Look at Jesus. Receive His power. Go on to glory. There will never be a better time than now, to study out from the Scriptures what grace is, and let it be in you all that God would have it to be. Seventh-day Adventists are not under the law. We are freedom-bringers. The Spirit of the Lord is upon us, because we've been annointed to preach the gospel to the poor. We are sent to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind. We are called to set at liberty them that are bruised. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. Luke 4:18.

Now is the accepted time. Now is the day of salvation.