Our Lives' Greatest Need

"For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is He not also the God of Gentiles? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one. The one who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith."

"Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means. On the contrary, we uphold the law." Now there's a lot happening in that passage. What we're gonna focus on really is, I think, the key of this passage which we find in verses 23 and 24.

So if you do have your Bible, keep them open to verse 23 and 24. Well, I'm sure you agree with me that over the last few weeks and months we've been experiencing some incredible things. We've been witnessing some incredible things. Things that we haven't witnessed or experienced in, I dare say, many years, if at all in our lives. We've seen, we've witnessed countries that were examples of law and order turned upside down as riots broke out. Places like police departments, the epitome of law and order, burnt down.

We have hidden away in homes from viruses that have taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, turned entire economies upside down. We have fought bitter battles over politics and presidents in the name of peace and unity. We are living in interesting times. But I want to ask you today, in the midst of all of these things, and as we reflect on why they are happening, what it means for us, I wanna ask you: what is the greatest threat in all of these things? What is the greatest threat that we will be experiencing in all of this?

Well, I'm here to tell you this morning that your greatest threat is not the president of the United States. It's not a virus that can make you sick. Your greatest threat is yourself. We read this morning a very important passage in the understanding of the message of Christianity. It is one of those chapters, it's one of those passages that forms a core of the Christian good news, the gospel.

The gospel is that Jesus Christ came to the earth to save us, to reconcile us back to God. That is the gospel in a nutshell. And Romans 3:23-24 is the key to this message. Paul writes, verse 23: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Some of us won't understand the necessity of Christianity's primary message, the thing that is called the gospel.

We don't understand the message of Christianity because we don't understand the problem that we are faced with. And the problem is ourselves. The great challenge of our day is the current philosophy in which we live, especially in places like Australia or the modern West, and that is that wrongdoing, a thing that the Bible calls sin, well, we don't accept that anymore as an objective reality. Something that actually exists. In other words, more than any other time in human history, people don't feel comfortable saying that something is objectively wrong, or alternatively, objectively right. This is one of the big challenges of trying to explain the gospel to my friends when I try to share with them what Jesus came to do.

I'll explain it this way. The world in which we live is what philosophers and social historians call post modernism. Perhaps you've heard of that word: post modernism. Post modernism is the world view that has been attributed to at least the Western world. We've moved past the era of enlightenment, the pursuit of science and truth, you know, the era that sort of started by Charles Darwin and Victorian England that promoted and hunted down scientific truth.

We've moved past modernism and we've moved into post modernism. You can go and Google post modernism, you can read all the articles about that. There's a lot of traits associated with that thought. But what is relevant for us is the post modern mind has also been taught to think that everything we do in terms of morals is relativistic. Morality is relative.

Everything operates on a scale of grey shade. What one person calls bad, another person may call good. What one person hates, another person may love. And in this sort of setting, as long as we're not forcing our values on the other, trying to persuade one that that is good instead of bad or vice versa, the idea or the hope of post modernism is unity. Modernism pursued truth at all cost.

Yes or no. Right or wrong. That created lots of pain. We've decided to move on from that to say, in some sort of way, everyone can be right, or everyone has pieces of the truth. And as long as you're not forcing your value on me, we can get along.

So modern or post modern morality is decided therefore simply as this: continue doing what you think is right until someone tells you that is hurting me. That is hurting me. Then it becomes, I guess, what society may call a sin. Now, this also means that what is classified as wrong is simply an agreement that is made between two people. So what is wrong between me and Marais can be okay between me and Rob.

We have to have those negotiations and then decide on that. And so what you get, the downside of this, perhaps we're trying for a lot more unity and peace, the downside of this is a post modern Australia, a post modern America that is constantly in a state of flux, constantly in a state of acquiring information, trying to decide at every moment what is right, what is wrong. Morals ebb and flow. There may be some things that we've sort of locked in a little bit, perhaps we've locked it into law. Those laws can change, but we've locked it in. So murder, we've generally accepted as wrong.

Stealing, I mean, here and there we may, you know, debate what is stealing, but stealing we can say generally is wrong. But a lot of morality, a lot of ethics is now open for negotiation. Paul is getting into here in Romans 3 as he says that there is a law. There is a universal law by which we are to live, by which God has created us to operate under. And so the view of the Bible is very different to the post modern understanding.

It states that sin or wrongdoing is an objective reality. Sin is therefore something that is measurable, something that can be seen and identified. And the reason we know then what sin is, Paul is going to argue in verse 23 that we read, is that the reason we know what sin is is because we know who God is. For all have sinned, he says, and fall short of the glory of God. Paul says sin as an unchanging absolute reality can only be understood in relation to the absolute entity in the universe, which is God.

Sin is therefore falling short of the perfection which is God. God is the one that is morally perfect. In other words, the Bible argues God is like our magnetic north. He points our compass always in the same direction. This is what morality looks like.

This is what ethics look like. And He becomes that north that sort of guides us, and we can orientate ourselves along that. We fall short of that glory, Paul is saying here. Part of God's glory is His moral perfection. And so the Bible says, therefore, that our greatest need, our greatest problem, is not an enemy out there that we need to conquer.

It's not some dragon we have to slay. It's not a government that needs to be overthrown, a bad president who needs to be voted out, or a bad employer who must pay us better, or a bad society that must be taught to treat me better. Those things may be true, but our greatest problem is closer to home. GK Chesterton once read an ad in the newspaper for people to write in to that newspaper to give them their thoughts on what was wrong with the world they were living in. GK Chesterton is an author and an art and music critic, and he lived about in the early nineteen hundreds.

He wrote to the newspaper in response to this with simply these words. To the question, "What is wrong with the world?" he writes, "Dear sirs, I am. Sincerely yours, G K Chesterton." What's wrong with the world?

I am. The reason we know what sin is is by knowing what sin is not, and that is God. For example, we know that stealing is wrong because God isn't a thief. God in His absolute perfect morality is the opposite. He is a generous giver.

He gave when there was no expectation. He created when there was nothing to ask to be created. He gives life, He gives existence, and then He sustains that existence. Another way to argue, another example, we know what adultery is and that it is wrong. Why?

Because God doesn't cheat. Adultery, the act of betraying someone's loving commitment and trust, we know that that is a sin because God remains faithful forever. Like we read in Psalm 73, He is our portion forever. If you read the Old Testament laws, the Ten Commandments, often you will find them being stipulated, being commanded to God's people in relation to God. Leviticus 11:45 says, "Be holy, God says, as I am holy."

In Deuteronomy, over and over, God will make statements like this: "You shall love the resident alien living within your gates, the sojourner, the wanderer. You shall love this stranger living with you because you were once a refugee, an alien, a stranger in Egypt. And I loved you, and I brought you out." We know what we are to do because we know who God is. And so the first point is that sin is an objective reality that exists in us, in our hearts, in our minds, and we all have fallen short of the glory of God.

So the next question may be, fair enough, we might be fallen creatures. In fact, we probably know that. We say that often, don't we? "I'm only human. I'm not perfect.

I'm imperfect." So my understanding of being a fallen creature may not really do much. A sense of urgency within me. I may just know that as a truth. I wanna tell you, it should create a sense of urgency in us because of the second point, which is what sin does. What sin results in.

According to the Bible, sin is not only an action, like you do something wrong and that is sin. According to the Bible, sin is a state of condition. In fact, the action of sin is actually just a symptom of the state of sin. And so what our passage points out to us is that when it says we all fall short of the glory of God, it is highlighting the sad reality of our state of existence in sin. We are separated from God.

When you fall short, you don't reach that end, that goal, right? You fall short of it. We have been separated from God in falling short of His perfection. He holds perfect power.

He holds perfect morality. And again, it's really important for us to understand this concept. We can only know what is wrong by knowing what is right. We only know what power looks like, what power is, by comparing it to more power or to less power. We only know how bright a light is.

We've got some spotlights here this morning. We only know how powerful these spotlights are when we measure it to what is called candle power. We can say these lights are x amount of candle power. It produces that much light that it could be compared to 20 candles or a hundred candles. We talk about horsepower in cars.

We only know how fast and how powerful a car is by comparing it to the power or the force that a horse could generate. So a car that's 250 horsepower, how amazing! This thing generates what 250 horses could generate. We know what power is by comparing it to power. When we talk about perfect knowledge, we only know what knowledge is by comparing it to more knowledge. I know what knowledge is by looking at what I know, and then comparing it to what someone smarter than me knows, and I realise, wow, that is knowledge.

What I have is not much. The Bible says sin is a separation from the perfect. Sin is a separation from that full knowledge, from that full power, which is God. And I think we understand this as well innately. Most human beings know this.

We know that there is something imperfect in our lives. Otherwise, why do we work towards anything? Why do we get up in the morning to practise our skill in playing music? To practise our ability to programme programs, products. Why do we get up in the morning?

It's because there's stuff to do. Stuff that is imperfect, needs to be worked on. And we know that perfection is something that we can be striving for. So why do we care about progress? Well, before we believe in the good news of Christianity, or the good news that Christianity rather expresses, perfection is something we long for, even if we don't know Jesus yet.

Perfection is something we know, even though we don't know exactly how to find it. And then even as Christians, when we go through suffering and we say that we feel distant from God, we realise that our suffering is somehow tied in our feeling separated from God Who is perfect. But the reason we even ask this question is because we sense a real separation between how things are and how things should be. Saint Augustine famously put it this way. He said, "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God."

That is a statement for all humanity. Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God. Paul says in Romans 3:23, "All have sinned. It's all in us all. And we have all fallen short of the glory of God, the perfection of God."

And so the deadly result of sin is existing in a state of failing to do, or failing to be that which we should have done, or should have been. Sin can take many expressions then. It's then not simply an overt act, a visible act. Sin can be functionally active, like betraying someone's trust. Or sin can be passive, like harbouring hatred in your own heart towards them.

There are, therefore, sins that theologians call sins of commission, sins that are made by choice. And then there are sins of omission, sins that are made by indifference. I don't care enough to do something. Sin is the state of failing to do or to be that which we should have done or should have been. So sin is a separation from God.

But it's not simply from God, it's also separation from our community, from our neighbours, from those around us, families, communities, friendships. And then not only that, there's a separation that happens inside of us, a separation from ourselves, our own heart, our own mind. We are split and at war with ourselves. Sin prevents us from loving ourselves sometimes. Sin leads to self harm or self harm is the symptom of that.

It leads to self destruction. And Paul understands this. And he actually later writes exactly these sort of words in Romans 7. "For I do not do the good that I desire, he says. I rather do the evil that I don't desire.

If I do what I do not wish to do, he says, it is not I that do it, it is the sin dwelling in me that is doing it." And so you see, the horrible effect of a separation is happening at all levels, in all relationships, in all things that make us us. We are starting to disintegrate. Sin separates us from the perfection that is God, and that in turn starts separating us from each other and even ourselves. But then also in this verse, thankfully, verse 24.

We don't have to end at verse 23. We go to verse 24. Thankfully, Paul hasn't stopped and said, "We've all fallen short. We've all sinned and fallen short of God's glory." That would have left us in a horrible situation. Paul says that is what has happened, but that is why Jesus had to come.

Sin is the reason that Jesus had to come. Paul writes, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But then he continues, verse 24: But all are justified by His grace. All are justified by His grace. This grace, he calls a gift.

And that has been brought through by the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. All are justified by grace as a gift through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. So the answer to the problem of the objective reality of sin is the other objective reality, which is God's grace. God's grace is not something that we imagine as Christians, we hope for, we think, I really hope that it exists. It is an objective reality as much as sin is an objective reality.

God is extending His forgiveness. God has a plan for reconciliation. If it is true that sin has caused us a separation, then someone and something has needed to deal with this separation. According to the universal laws of justice, someone has to pay a price for what has been broken. Either we pay the price by remaining lost to God, separated from God, or someone else will pay that price on our behalf.

And the good news of Christianity, the crux of the gospel, is that this is exactly what happened in Jesus. Jesus had to go to the cross. On the cross, it could have been any place, it could have been any moment of death, I suspect. But two thousand years ago, on that Roman torture device, the wrath of God, the spiritual force of His judgment, of having to pay for the separation, of being separated, He absorbed. And the amazing thing is, that was for me.

It was for you. There's an article I read in a newspaper many years ago now. I think I've used it at church once or twice. I've read it before. But it's such a powerful illustration of the exchange that happened on the cross.

Christ's life for my life. Christ's separation from God for the separation that was mine. The article amazingly read like this. An instructor and five people died when their plane hit a power pole soon after takeoff from an airport in the US state of Missouri. Investigators believed the plane had suffered engine failure after takeoff.

A 21 year old Australian tourist named Kimberly was seriously injured, but survived. When reporters interviewed Kimberly's father here in Australia, he told the incredible actions that a 22 year old skydiving instructor by the name of Robert Cook took in the final moments of the accident. Kimberly's dad said, "It was utterly amazing. When Robert realised the plane was going to crash, he grabbed Kimberly, and he calmly talked to her and told her what was going to happen. He told her what to expect, told her to keep calm, and focused her attention on him and what he was saying, rather than what was happening around them."

Kim was planning to do a tandem jump with this Robert, and she had only met him that morning. But as the plane was struggling, she says Robert clipped his harness together with hers on the plane, and as they hit that power pole, she said he put his arms around her and he pulled her close to him. As he pulled her close, her head rested on his shoulders and he put his head against hers in order to stop it from bouncing around. He said to her, as the plane is about to hit the ground, "Make sure that you're lying on top of me so that I will take the force of the impact." Kimberly's dad said the plane actually hit, they believe, a power pole or a power line. It went into a vertical situation.

And she went, became a little bit disoriented, but she said she could feel Robert actually twist his body around until Kim was lying on top of him. And then the plane hit the ground. And he took the full force of the impact. Kimberly suffered pressured vertebrae, severe muscle tears around her spine, a broken pelvis, a broken collarbone, and many cuts and abrasions. But she survived.

Robert Cook died on impact. This is the message of the gospel. This is why Jesus is so central to the proclamation of Christianity. This is what is meant by the grace of God. We know what grace is when we listen to that story.

Robert Cook did not need to save Kim's life. In that situation, we think all men fail themselves. Do whatever you can do to try and survive this. But there's an almost divine sense of appreciation for something so selfless. Well, the Bible says that on the cross, Jesus died bearing the full impact of God's righteous, unrelenting punishment for our sin.

Jesus didn't come to earth to make things a little nicer. Even as these riots are going and there's plenty of Christians talking about that, Jesus didn't come to set slaves free, to end hatred amongst different races. That may be the result, but that is not why Jesus came. Jesus didn't come to teach us a few nice morals. The reason Jesus had to come was so that He would experience the separating loss, the hell of being removed from God for eternity.

And the amazing thing is, it was for me. The truth is, we have all sinned. Sin is the reality in which we are born into from the moment we open our eyes and breathe. We are the problem in this world. Those choices that we make have consequences, and those consequences separate us from the only good that is in this universe, which is God.

For our whole lives, we are restless until we find our rest in God, separated from Him, separated from ourselves, separated from others, and we are so hopelessly incapable of saving ourselves. So hopelessly incapable that God would come to earth in the person of Jesus to experience on the cross the very real separation from God on our behalf. So what is left? What is left from this understanding? What is left from understanding that this is what has happened?

The objective reality of sin and grace. But Paul also says that in these verses, doesn't he? Verse 24: all are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ, whom God put forward as a propitiation, as a payment by His blood, to be received by faith. That is what is left. That is what we need to do.

We need to believe it. We need to receive it. We need to be transformed by it. That is the power and the wonder of the Christian message. We cannot save ourselves.

We needed Jesus Christ to come, and the only thing we can offer is to receive the offer. Will you accept Jesus as your Saviour? Will you accept Him today? Because that is the offer that is given to you again. We need Him to be that Saviour for we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But we are also justified by His grace as a gift to be received through Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, there is so much in our lives, in our world, that we see, that we experience, that can cause so much anxiety and such an impending sense of threat. And in our natures, we try and fix all those problems. We look around us and we say, the problem lies out there.

And the people with the real power, the people with the real knowledge, they're the ones that can fix this. But this morning, we realised that we are the problem. We have all sinned and fallen short of the perfection found in God. And so Lord, we thank you this morning that we can hear the simple, true message that You have made a way for us. That You are offering us power to be forgiven, to be washed clean, to have every spot and every blemish taken off our record.

But then also, the incredible knowledge that You will continue to correct and train us as we move closer to the God Who is perfection. If that separation has been removed in Jesus, for those of us who believe, we are also encouraged that there is nothing standing in the way of growing in our faith, of developing into maturity because our God has given us all access. And so we also thank you for the ability that we have. We thank you for the promises that we have that we will grow, that we will develop. For those of us listening here this morning and we know that we are not right with You, we know that we have either ignored this free gift of grace. We have not believed it for whatever reason. Perhaps this morning, the first time, we know it is real for us.

Lord, I pray for them that they will give their hearts, their lives to You, Lord Jesus, that they will receive You as their Saviour, their personal Saviour. And then, Father, for the rest of us, may we be encouraged in our walk with You in times that are so dramatic and strange that we will keep our eye firmly on You, that the things happening around us will just be secondary noise, that we will do what is right in Your eyes always. And then perhaps, in some small way, we may change our world. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.