A Problem Requiring God To Solve

What was God to do about Sin?
(Romans 3:21-31)

The existence of evil and injustice is often viewed as an objection to belief in God. The Bible, however, approaches this as a problem which God himself takes the initiative to solve. In his eighth message on Paul’s letter to the Romans, preached at Greyfriars’ Classical Service on 29 April 2007, Rob Yule explains how the death of Jesus as humanity’s representative and substitute perfectly satisfies the claims of God’s justice, enabling those who believe in Jesus to be justly acquitted of guilt and wrongdoing.

The Roman poet Horace once laid down guidelines for writers of tragedies. He criticises those who too quickly bring in a supernatural solution — a deus ex machina, a god from outside the action — to solve irresolvable problems in the plot. ‘Do not bring a god onto the stage’, he advises, ‘unless the problem is one that deserves a god to solve it.’ (quoted by F. F. Bruce, Romans, rev. ed., p. 96).

The reformer Martin Luther took up these words of Horace and applied them to the forgiveness of sins. This, he said, is a problem which needs God to solve it. We sinful human beings can’t solve it, even though it’s our problem. We desperately need a solution: we need forgiveness. But it’s not in our power to do it. Once the cloth is dirty, you can’t use it to wipe the slate clean.

In this section of Romans Paul tells us that this problem has been worthily and rightly solved by the intervention of God, through the death of his Son Jesus Christ. Jesus’ death satisfies God’s justice, so that God can forgive sinners not just as an expression of mercy but as an act of justice. Moreover the divine solution hasn’t been introduced too early in the plot. It follows a long period of divine ‘forbearance’ when God refrained from punishing sins previously committed (3:25-26).

Scenes of the atonement

God’s solution to the problem of human sin is the atonement — the just satisfaction for sin accomplished by the death of his Son Jesus Christ on the cross. Paul uses three images or scenes to describe the atonement:

1. A law court

The word ‘justify’ (3:24a) is a key word in Romans, appearing fifteen times. In Greek it originally meant to ‘show justice’ or ‘do justice’ to someone. In Paul’s usage it means to ‘pronounce righteous’, ‘declare righteous’, or ‘treat as righteous’ — hence ‘to acquit’.

So ‘justify’ is a legal term of acquittal. To pardon someone is to forgive that person, even though they have been found guilty of a charge. To ‘justify’ or ‘acquit’ someone is to find them not guilty as charged, to dismiss the charge altogether. An example would be if you were liable for a taxation offence, and some kind and wealthy friend hearing about it paid the arrears for you, so that there was nothing owing in your tax account. ‘Justification’ means: ‘just as if I had never sinned.’

2. A slave market

‘Redemption’ (3:24b) is a term used for ‘buying back’ a slave, ‘making a slave free by payment of a ransom’. It suggests the picture of God buying back our freedom from the slavery of sin, just as someone might buy a slave in a slave market in order to liberate the slave. For Jews this was a vivid image since it evoked memories of the Exodus, their deliverance by God from slavery in Egypt.

3. The temple worship

The Greek term translated ‘sacrifice of atonement’ (3:25, NIV, NRSV) is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to translate the Hebrew word for the ‘mercy seat’ or ‘atonement cover’ in the tabernacle or temple. It referred to the golden lid which covered the ark of the covenant in the Holy of Holies. Between the wings of the cherubim on the ‘atonement cover’ was the one place on earth where God dwelt — the place of God’s personal presence and revelation to human beings.

Once a year on the Day of Atonement (as described in Leviticus 16), the Jewish high priest would wash himself, make sacrifices, enter the Holy of Holies and sprinkle the blood of a bull as a sin offering on the atonement cover, to atone for the sins of Israel. This was a very solemn action. On pain of death no one was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies. Such was the holiness of God that when the high priest entered the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, he had to make a cloud of incense so he didn’t look at the atonement cover, the place where God dwelt.

Paul says God has ‘set forth’ or ‘presented’ his Son Jesus Christ as a ‘sacrifice of atonement’ — suggesting a contrast between the hiddenness of what took place in the Holy of Holies, and the public nature of Jesus’ death on Skull Hill. Jesus’ blood was shed in a public execution to atone for the sins of all humanity.

So Jesus Christ is the person through whose sacrifice we sinners can find mercy. When the blood of the sin offering of the righteous Son of God was sprinkled, the place of God’s awesome dwelling and holy presence became a place of mercy rather than condemnation, of justification rather than judgment, of life rather than death.

The scope of the atonement

The atonement is God’s perfect solution to the problem of human sin. It was introduced at just the right time, and resolves all sorts of problems in the human tragedy:

1. The atonement and history

Paul tells us that Jesus’ death deals with all sins in human history: past sins (3:25b) as well as present and future sins (3:26). Whoever has sinned in all of human history, whatever sins have been committed throughout human history, Jesus Christ has atoned for them all. Like retrospective legislation, Jesus’ death applies to the past as well as to the present and future.

2. The atonement and theodicy

Theodicy is the problem of vindicating God’s justice in face of evil and injustice in the world. The death of Jesus perfectly satisfies the problem of theodicy — how God was to deal with the problem of evil and injustice.

What was God to do about sin and wickedness?

• Was he to punish it immediately? This would be a just solution. But it would not demonstrate God’s mercy; it would leave God open to the charge that he is unloving and uncaring.

• Was he to overlook or condone it indefinitely? This would be a merciful solution. But it would leave God open to the accusation that he is unjust, and wouldn’t demonstrate his justice.

This then was God’s dilemma. What was he to do? Condemn, or condone? Be just, or be loving? Deal with sin, or deal with sinners? How was he to do both — to be both just and loving, to punish sin yet save sinners?

God’s answer was to be ‘both just and justifier’ (3:26). God’s answer was to present his Son Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for sin, to die in our place and be judged for our sins. So God shows his justice, because he takes sin seriously: it is punished and dealt with in the death of his beloved Son. And God also shows his mercy, because having dealt seriously with sin he can have compassion on sinners: he can justly ‘justify’ or ‘acquit’ them, because the penalty for their sin has been fully paid by his Son.

Forgiveness is no light thing. It was achieved at the cost of Jesus’ life, dying for sins in our place.

3. The atonement and rationality

It is common among modern liberal theologians to deny thatJesus’ death was substitutionary in nature — that Jesus died as our substitute, in our place. They say that the true significance of Jesus’ death was as a demonstration of God’s love — an appeal to our emotions, to move our hearts and influence us to love God in return.

A little reflection, however, shows that such a view removes any connection between the atonement and our sin. It takes away the reason why Christ had to die. Scottish theologian James Denney makes this clear in a simple illustration:

‘If I were sitting on the end of a pier, on a summer day, enjoying the sunshine and the air, and someone came along and jumped into the water and got drowned “to prove his love for me”�, I should find it quite unintelligible. I might be much in need of love, but an act in no rational relation to any of my necessities could never prove it.

‘But if I had fallen over the end of the pier and were drowning, and someone sprang into the water, and … saved me from death, then I should say “Greater love hath no man than this.”� I should say it intelligibly, because there would be an intelligible relation between the sacrifice which love made and the necessity from which it redeemed.’ (The Death of Christ, 3rd ed., 1903, p. 177).

The atonement is not just a demonstration of God’s love to move our emotions; it is God’s practical response to meet our greatest human need and problem — the problem of our sin and guilt. Jesus’ death on the cross provides the rational basis for our salvation.

Salvation and the atonement

Paul says that ‘a person is justified by faith apart from observing the law.’ (3:28). We receive this salvation by faith alone. Faith is how we personally appropriate the salvation that has been achieved for us by Jesus’ death on the cross.

Faith is simply ‘trust’ — trust in Jesus, not in anything we have done. That’s why Paul says faith excludes all ‘boasting’ in human effort — in moral achievement, ‘good works’, or personal piety (3:27-28). God justifies the believer, not because our belief is worthy, but because Christ whom we believe in is worthy. Faith is spelt F-A-I-T-H: ‘forsaking all, I trust him.’

God offers salvation from sin to the undeserving, simply through faith. This is a wonderful, utterly unique, message of grace. As John Stott says: ‘No other system, ideology, or religion proclaims a free forgiveness and a new life to those who have done nothing to deserve it.... Christianity… is not in its essence a religion at all; it is a gospel, the gospel, good news…that God has mercy on the undeserving, and that there is nothing left for us to do, or even to contribute.’ (Romans, p. 118).

Rob Yule, 29 April 2007
© 2007, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church