Cross Examined—The Courtroom

But it's it's a complicated situation because it's not like God can just, like, tear up the grand jury indictment and blow. It's just like pretend like nothing ever happened. I mean, he is loving. Yes. He wants to forgive us, but he's also holy, and he's concerned with justice. He's a just God, and we are absolutely guilty of breaking the law. We stand condemned. So so what is what's the way forward? How can a holy god forgive guilty people without compromising his justice? After all, forgiveness doesn't mean just overlooking the wrongdoing. Make sure let's just pretend like it never happened. Because if God really is just, then you can't ignore the sin. [00:34:15] (35 seconds)

So this image, this understanding of what Paul of what God did on the cross, it's often described as the penal substitutionary model of atonement. Penal in the sense of, like, you know, the penalties and the law code and the legal consequences. And substitution because Jesus Christ willingly took our place. On the cross, Jesus substituted himself. He he took our place. He absorbed the judgment that we deserved. And in that moment, something incredible happens. Our guilt is covered up by his blood, and his righteousness opens up a way for us to come back to the God who loves us. [00:37:20] (34 seconds)

So and we're about to see what I think are are two of the most exciting words in the entire bible. You see it different times where it shows up. But it's the phrase, but now. Because with these two words, Paul begins to describe one of the most significant things that ever happened in human history. So in verse 21, he says, but now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been made known to which the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. [00:30:55] (28 seconds)

So we all stand guilty under the words of the law. But now, God chooses to intervene in his grace. So the law couldn't save us, but now what we see is that has shared the righteousness of God with us in a way that is apart from the law. And then next, in kind of a nod to his Jewish readers, he throws in this phrase, you know, the law and the prophets. That was a shorthand way of referring to the entire Hebrew scriptures, what we know as the Old Testament. He's saying, you know, the law and the prophets, they've been pointing to what God was gonna do all along. This righteousness has now been given to us, not because of what we did, but through faith in Christ Jesus. [00:31:26] (37 seconds)

So anyone who believes in him, Jew, Gentile, you now have access to God's grace and his forgiveness and his mercy. And and look what Paul goes out of his way to point out and remind us of here. He says, this righteousness is something that we have received. It is not something that we have achieved. It comes apart from the law, apart from our striving to dot every I and cross off every t. It comes through faith, not our own effort. And it comes because of the work of Jesus Christ. [00:32:03] (27 seconds)

So stop and think about where that leaves everybody for a second. So if everybody's guilty, what do we do? Right? If everybody's gotta go into this courtroom and we we don't have a leg to stand on in our own defense, but none of us wanna be found guilty. Right? All of us, we don't we wanna avoid the judgment and the sentence that's coming. But if we can't live up to the law's standards on our own, where's our help come from? I mean, if every one of us is guilty, then the salvation, the rescue we need, it has to come from outside of ourselves in some way. And because we can't generate that on our own. And that's that's exactly where Paul goes next in his argument. [00:30:22] (33 seconds)

Right? So nobody is able to keep God's laws perfectly. So there's nobody who could come into this courtroom and stand on the merits of their own record, and they would be declared righteous. They would be declared not guilty. And in that sense, Paul says, but the law is like the law is like a mirror because it shows us who we really are. It highlights our sins, our weaknesses, our failures. That's what Paul is getting at when he says, through the law, we became conscious of our own sin. [00:29:56] (26 seconds)

Right? Because of Jesus' work on the cross, the penalty for our sins, it has been paid. Like that verdict is done, it's been rendered, and we have been found not guilty. And God is not gonna drag us back into court and try us all over again. Like you don't have to worry about double jeopardy in God's courtroom. So no matter how long we've been following Jesus, we need to remember that we never get to the point where we start earning our salvation or we start maintaining our salvation through our own works. After we make the decision to follow Jesus, we're not condemned if we mess up, [00:49:23] (31 seconds)