In Christ, God has turned aside His own wrath, punishing sin in the person of His Son who died for sinners. We deserve to die. The wages of sin is death, and we have sinned. Nevertheless, God sent Jesus to bear the punishment of death in our place. He experienced the wrath of God for us.
In Christ, God has turned aside His own wrath, punishing sin in the person of His Son who died for sinners. We deserve to die. The wages of sin is death, and we have sinned. Nevertheless, God sent Jesus to bear the punishment of death in our place. He experienced the wrath of God for us.
We need to see how desperate our situation is, because it is only when we see this that we can begin to appreciate the magnitude of the grace of God. So long as we think that at the worst we only have a few flaws, we believe that insofar as salvation is concerned all we need is for God to make up the deficit, plug the hole in the dike, or rub off the rough edges. But that is not the situation.
Verses 10 and 11 capsulize Paul’s whole theology on this subject when he writes, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.” When Paul says there is no one righteous, he is talking about the moral dimensions of our being. When he says there is no one who understands, he is talking about the intellectual dimension of our being. When he says there is no one who seeks God, he is talking about the volitional dimension of our being. Together these mean that things are so desperate that our state is actually hopeless unless God intervenes to do what needs to be done.
Somewhere in my library I have a pamphlet by Donald Grey Barnhouse entitled How to Mark Your Bible. This pamphlet contains suggestions for using Bible markings as an aid to Bible study, and it contains sample pages from a Bible Barnhouse used and marked thoroughly. I think of this now because at Romans 3:21 and following, Barnhouse had written the picture of a heart in the margin of his Bible. That was to remind him, as he came to this passage, that Romans 3:21-27 is the heart of the Word of God.
The last point I want to make is that the Word of God makes Christians strong, strong enough to resist the idols of their culture and go God’s way.
Third, the Bible is where we learn the will of God for our lives. We have many questions in this area. We say, “Here I am living in this particular time, in this particular place, with these particular talents. What am I to do? Which direction am I to go in? Am I to do this or that? Am I to move here or there?” We have no specific answers to these questions in the Word of God, but we do have great principles that will guide us in ninety-nine percent of the circumstances.
Over against the way of the ungodly, the psalmist sets the way of the righteous. And everything that is said to be lacking in the case of the one is present in the other. Is it true that the wicked will not stand in God’s judgment? Yes. Then, the righteous will stand; he will be justified by the work of Jesus Christ. Is it true that the wicked will be like chaff that the wind blows away? Yes. Then, the righteous will not be like chaff, but rather like grain.
Canadian Committee of The Bible Study Hour
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