Outreach Sermons: "How to Stand Righteous Before God" from Romans 3:19-28

In this episode of the Witnessing Christ Podcast, Pastor Mark Parsons delivers a compelling sermon on Romans 3:19–28, diving into one of the most foundational questions of the Christian faith: How can a sinful human being stand righteous before a holy God?

This passage—hailed by Martin Luther as the heart of the gospel and the center of the Bible—draws a clear distinction between law and gospel. Pastor Mark brings it to life by exposing modern distortions of both and unpacking the four theological "views" that shape our beliefs: our view of God, humanity, the law, and the gospel.

Through engaging illustrations—from Reformation history to Santa Claus and even Taylor Swift—Mark shows how false gospels, whether from 16th-century Rome or today’s culture, all fall into the same trap: mixing God’s free gift with our flawed efforts. He contrasts the popular idea of "doing your best and God will do the rest" with the biblical message that salvation is entirely by grace through faith—apart from works.

Drawing from the Day of Atonement and the imagery of the mercy seat, Pastor Mark explains how the righteousness we need isn’t infused or earned—but imputed, gifted freely through the shed blood of Jesus. Our sins aren’t polished—they’re covered by the perfect sacrifice.

Listeners will leave not only with a clearer understanding of Romans 3, but also with renewed confidence in the gospel that sets hearts free. Whether you’re engaging with someone who believes in works-based righteousness or struggling with your own conscience, this episode provides gospel clarity and witnessing encouragement.

Key Takeaway:
You don’t need to stay up at night wondering if you’ve done enough. You haven’t—and that’s the point. Jesus has. Stand righteous before God not by your effort, but by his finished work, given freely by grace through faith.

Transcript

Welcome back to another episode of the Witnessing Christ podcast. In this episode, we will be sharing another sermon that I preached from Romans chapter three verses nineteen through twenty-eight Take a listen and be blessed as you go out and speak the truth in love.

Speaker 0 our second reading from Romans three Paul answers the fundamental human question, how can we find peace with God, be right with God? And so Paul preaches a clear distinction between the law and the gospel. Makes it clear that we cannot be right with God by obeying the law, by trying to do what God says, but rather the good news of the gospel simply announces that we are right with God, righteous because of the work of Jesus Christ. Given to us as a gift through faith. Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law. Rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. 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. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Where then is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No. Because of the law that requires faith. For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. The portion of God's Word that we are going to take a look at this morning from Romans chapter three is probably a Lutheran preacher's at least top ten favorite text to preach on. it's filled with so much gospel goodness. Martin Luther himself called Romans three the center of the gospel and really the center of the whole Bible. For him and the people at the time of the Reformation, these words became so important because it taught them something very different from what the church of their day had been teaching them. Today as we study Romans three we're going to wrestle with a question that folks back in Luther's day wrestled with. How does a sinful human being stand before a holy God on judgment day with anything other than fear? And at the time of Luther, they were answering that question in a way that had distorted the truth of both the law as well as the gospel. We may think, well, that was 500 years ago, and pastor, you should start talking about something different now. That was a problem they had back then. Let's talk about problems we have now. And we will. Because the same problem that they had back then of having a false view of the law and a false view of the gospel is just as prevalent in this valley today as it was 500 years ago. It really revolved around this idea that we human beings today, we have a problem when it comes to the truth of God's word. We are constantly distorting four different things with our view of it. Today I want you to think about four questions and do you have a high view or a low view of these and why does it matter? The first is do you have a high view of God or a low view of God? Some would call that your theology your view of God your understanding of God Is your view of God high that he is so much greater and mightier and more perfect than you or is your view that God he's pretty all right But he's not that much greater than we are and eventually we could actually become like him as long as we try hard enough. So do you have a high view of God or a low view of God? Is God like your best friend or is God your king? High view or low view? The next high or low view question has to do with your view of humanity. Some refer to this as our anthropology, our view of humanity as it exists. Do you have a high view of humanity or a low view of humanity? Do you look at the world and everything and say people are generally good? Maybe there's a few problems in the world that cause them to do evil things, but for the most part We're pretty high. We're pretty good. Or do you have a low view that says by nature we are sinful? We are enemies of God, children of wrath. Again, your high view or your low view is going to dictate your doctrine. The next one is do you have a high view of the law or a low view of the law? This one's kind of a fascinating one because sometimes Lutheran preachers like myself Have been accused of having a very low view of the law. People listen to us preaching or teaching or doing evangelism work and say, well, when you talk about the law, you act as if we're not able to follow it. So you stop talking about it and you start talking about the gospel. I say you're absolutely right. That's because I actually have a high view of the law. I view the law in such a way that I don't view it as like a step that I can step up onto and eventually walk over or a ladder that I can climb. I view it as an unattainable mountain that no one would ever be able to scale. So do you have a high view of God's law or a low view of God's law? The final low or high view question revolves around the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ found in the Bible. Do you have a high view of the gospel that it does everything that is necessary to make you right with God or Do you have a low view of the gospel that it does part of the work? And you must fill in the rest. God will do some, but as long as you must do your best, and then God will do the rest for you. Do you see the problem? It's very simple when it comes to high view or low view. Almost every false doctrine that has ever existed Has to do with one of those four issues with a high or a low view. In Martin Luther's day it really had to do with all four of them. People had a wrong view of God, a wrong view of man, a wrong view of the law, and a wrong view of the gospel that completely distorted the truth of God's word and in a sense made them slaves. Rather than free sons and daughters of God. Today as we look at that question, What does it take for a sinful human being to stand before a perfect and holy God and have peace Is going to be answered today in a rather strange way. We're going to answer it today as we listen to songs by two different songwriters. One is Paul Spiritus, a Lutheran songwriter. The other is Taylor Swift, a not-so-Lutheran songwriter. And then we're going to learn from two Latin phrases and from Santa Claus. First, those two Latin phrases. At the time of the Reformation, the church of Luther's day was teaching that the law was something that man could actually attain. They were teaching that really the problem that we have was we just needed to be pointed in the right direction. That the gospel or the grace of God would be infused into people and it would kind of give them an adrenaline shot That would allow them to start doing what was required by God. They really had this idea. It was this Latin phrase For those of you that weren't able to translate that on the fly, it really meant you just need to do that which is in you. The idea at Luther's time was in order to be able to stand before a perfect and holy God, all he's really looking for you to do is to do the best that you individually are capable of doing. You just need to follow your conscience and as long as you follow your conscience correctly and do what it told you to do, then you could stand before God in peace. This was leading some of their teachers to say that you could even find peace with God outside of the Christian gospel and outside of the church as long as you followed your conscience. Well, Luther tried that and his conscience kept him up late every night. He really wrestled with that question. What does it take for man, sinful man to stand before a holy God? And as he was being taught that, well, just do what's in you. Do your best and God is gonna do the rest. That didn't jive with what he was reading in scriptures. As he was starting to wrestle with us and they said, you know what, God is gonna do part of the work and you're gonna do a little bit of the work and then God will give you more grace and you'll do more work and God will give you more grace He started to wrestle with how do I know if I've ever done enough? And some people he said that their consciences didn't bother them as much. They were able to sleep at night. But not Luther. This identity problem, this problem of righteousness, how does one stand right before a holy God kept him up at night? At the time of Luther, there was this other Latin phrase that was very popular. Well, it's not so much popular, but this idea was that the law could save you. It was this idea that luther really coined this phrase the opinio legis it's the idea that the law is the thing that is going to make you right with god And as people looked at the law, they said, well, we can keep these eventually as long as we're trying hard enough, we can go through all of God's commandments and kind of check them off of a list. Think about the story that you listened to last week of that rich young man that came to Jesus and said, Lord, what does it take for me to inherit eternal life? He thought that he was keeping all of the commandments and therefore would be able to stand before God based on what he had done. Do you remember the gospel lesson last week? How Jesus proceeds to rattle off five of the ten commandments? The ones that might seem a little bit easier to keep? And the man, do you remember what he said? All of these I've done since I was a small child. The man felt as if God's law was an attainable checklist. Do you remember what Jesus said to him? He said, well then go and sell all of your great wealth and give it to the poor. And do you remember what happened then? The man turned away because he had great wealth. Jesus was really exposing the sin in this man's heart. He was causing the law to serve its appropriate purpose. Not that of a ladder in which we can climb to, which we can use to climb to God, but a mirror to expose us to our sins. We live in a world today where sin is a very unpopular topic. Where this man has this idea that all we need to do is kind of polish ourselves up, try a little bit harder, and we're going to be able to improve enough To receive the best gifts that God has to give. Do you know what that really sounds a lot like? That sounds a lot like the Christmas gospel that the world preaches according to Santa Claus. It's this idea that God will give things to those that are trying. A few weeks ago a Christian pastor gave me this new children's book called When Santa Learned the Gospel. The book itself is rather fascinating. It's kind of cute how Santa learns that he is preaching a false gospel. But I really like the author's inspiration at the back of the book. He says this. He says, the inspiration for this book came around Christmas 2013 after I witnessed an amusing moment during a local community carols event. After we'd sung everything from O Holy Night to Santa Claus is Coming to Town, I like how that's a community carol, um, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, the time came for Santa to come out. As expected, he asked the crowd of excited children, so who's been a good boy or girl this year? Me! They all screamed. Then he asked cheekily, and who's been a naughty boy or girl? To his surprise, the kids again screamed, me! After an awkward moment, Santa shrugged and said, oh, well, I guess you've tried to be good, proceeding then to randomly throw out presents to the expectant crowd. Do you see what the gospel of Santa Claus is? It's not so much that you've been really, truly good, perfect, but as long as you've tried to do your best, then you're going to get gifts from God. This morning my wife asked me if I was gonna talk about Halloween at all in the sermon. I hadn't planned to. But she said, do you remember a few years ago we read an article that compared the gospel of Halloween and the gospel of Christmas according to the world and it said that the gospel of Halloween is actually closer to the Christian gospel than that of Santa Claus? And the point of that article was this, that in the Gospel of Santa Claus, it's only the good that get gifts. But on Halloween, what do you do? Everybody, the good, the bad, and the ugly goes out and knocks on a door and everybody receives candy, no matter how good or bad they are. You see, Halloween actually has a better anthropology view of man than the Santa Claus gospel does. You see, what we are learning is that God's law is not content if we try to be good. This is what Paul says in Romans chapter three He says, now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every single mouth may be silenced. Everybody standing there before Santa Claus, when he asked if you've been good, Should have been silent. And the whole world then held accountable to God. Paul continues and says, therefore, No one will be declared righteous in God's sight by view of the law, by works of the law. Rather, through the law, we become conscious of our sin. He says the law is not there to show you how to be obedient. The law is there to show you as a mirror your disobedience. The law as a mirror was another big insight of the Lutheran Reformation. Where Luther started to teach people that when you come to the law, it's not a mirror that you look at and you use the mirror of the law somehow to clean yourself up. I loved a Lutheran pastor friend of mine says, when you look in the mirror, the mirror itself is not going to make you clean. The mirror shows you that you are dirty and sends you to the wash basin or to the bathtub where you can actually get clean. Nobody likes to look in that mirror though, do we? We would rather look at the mirror and say, yes, I'm doing good rather than evil. We listen to the Santa Claus gospel and say, as long as I've been trying, I'm a pretty good person. I mentioned that we're going to learn something from Taylor Swift today. Now I don't know if Taylor Swift is Christian or not, I actually assume she's not. But this last week she released, I think it's her 10th or 11th full-length CD. And it's called Midnights. And it's very fascinating because it's her introspective thoughts that she has after midnight. As she's wrestling with the question, what does it take to be whole? What does it take to be complete in this world? What does it take to really justify yourself before people? And she wrote a song called Antihero in which She's looking at her life, looking at all the problems that she's had with men, all of the problems that she's had in her career, And most of the time she said the problem is out there. It's the men that I dated. It's the industry that I'm involved with. But in this song she says this. She says, it's me. Hi, I'm the problem, it's me. There is one person in the music industry that actually has an appropriate anthropology or view of man, at least for a moment. She goes on and says, At tea time everyone agrees, I'll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror. It must be exhausting, always rooting for the anti-hero. Although Taylor Swift may not understand the gospel, in this sense she's very close to understanding the law. That every single one of us should stare in the mirror of God's law and say, It's me, hi, it's me, the problem, it's me. You see, that's a correct anthropology. That's a correct low view of man, and that's a correct high view of the law. Thankfully, during the time of the Reformation, Martin Luther didn't just come to have a correct understanding of the law. How to view man properly, how to view God's law properly. He also came to have a correct understanding of the gospel. He found that in Romans chapter three in these verses. Anytime you're reading the Bible and there's a big but, B-U-T, there in the start of a sentence, think about what came before, usually a problem, But now, God's solution, it says this. 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. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness. I'm gonna stop there for just a moment. Paul, in these words, rediscovered the truth of how sinful man is able to stand before a perfect and holy God. And the answer to that question is you can't stand there alone. You need one to stand there in your place as a substitute, not as an example to show you the way, But a substitute to do for you what you could not do for yourself. Did you catch the way that Paul described this? He said that God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement. It was that sacrifice of atonement that really jumped off the page at Luther. Throughout his time, he had been thinking of the righteousness of God as something, God is perfect and holy, and in order to stand before him, I must become perfect and holy. When he read these words about the atoning sacrifice, he realized that God had throughout the history of the Old Testament been showing people how he was going to deal with sin. Do you remember the great day of atonement in the Bible? It was a day every year in the Jewish church year. Where all of the people from all over Israel are supposed to gather together. They were to bring sacrifices of cows, bulls, and goats. And the priest would take his hands And confess his sins and the sins of all of the people acknowledging we have a problem too big for us to handle. They would confess all of that on these animals And then they would kill them and spill their blood out into basins. And one part of the festival is for another day where they would take a goat And take it out into the wilderness with all of the sins of the people on it and they would cast it into the wilderness and today we call that the scapegoat. Our sins have been taken away. But the part of that Day of Atonement that I want you to think about today to answer this question of how do we stand before God has to do with all of that blood that was gathered in that basin. The priest would take that blood and go into the tabernacle or into the temple later on. He would proceed through the holy place Enter into the most holy or the holy of holies a place where only one day each year this great day of atonement he would go and he would take that blood And he would sprinkle it all over the Ark of the Covenant, more literally on the top of the Ark, the mercy seat, And he would stand there before a perfect and holy God and not be struck down dead. Why? Because he had come with the blood of a sacrifice that would cover up all of his sins. How did God visualize this? Well, do you remember what was inside of the Ark of the Covenant? There was Aaron's budded staff. There were some vessels full of manna somehow. Miraculously preserved, I assume. And then most importantly there was the Ten Commandments. All of God's you shall and all of God's you shall not. And god in the picture of the the tabernacle dwelt in this place and he would look down and he would see You shall and you shall not and there was this place called the mercy seat between the cherubim on top of this ark of the covenant Where God dwelt. And on this day, as the blood was spilled on top of this mercy seat, it became an atoning sacrifice. Because instead of God looking down and seeing you shall and you shall not of the Ten Commandments, what did he see? He saw blood. He saw blood poured out for sin. He saw death atoning for sin that would point forward to the last and greatest sacrifice, Jesus. the lamb of god who would lay down his life for sinners The word that Paul uses for atonement here, the Greek word hilasterion is the same Greek word that is used to translate that whole idea of the mercy seat in the Old Testament. So he's taking the people into the throne room or into the, the Holy of Holies before God and say, here's how you stand. Not based on your works and your righteousness, but on the perfect works and the shed blood of the one who was righteous for you. Paul goes on and says this. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. Where then is boasting? It is excluded. Because of the law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. For we maintain that a person is justified by faith. Apart from works of the law. When Martin Luther read those words, he said it was as if his chains and his bonds had been broken. He had been a slave to the law and now the gospel set him free. And those words became a rallying cry for the Reformation. Not by works, but by faith alone, through grace alone, in Christ alone. Martin Luther could now rest. Before that, he, like Taylor Swift, stayed up way past midnight to three a.m., wondering about what it takes to justify himself, both before the world and before God. And now he had his answer. Fast forward a few hundred years and there was a man who wrote a hymn based off of these words. Actually, he wrote this really during the original text before the time Right after the time of the Reformation, his name is Paul Spiritus. I'd encourage you to open up your hymnal to page 558. And we're going to hear what this Lutheran hymn writer who died in 1551 has to say about this text. We'll read these words together starting with verse one Let's read. Salvation unto us has come by God's free grace and favor. Good works could not avert our doom. They help and save us never. Faith looks to Jesus Christ alone and Who did for all the world atone. He is our one redeemer. What God did in his law demand. And none to him could render caused wrath and woe on every hand for man the vile offender. Our faith has not those pure desires. The spirit of the law requires and lost is our condition. Let's skip to verse six together. Since Christ has full atonement made and brought to us salvation, each Christian therefore may be glad and build on this foundation. Your grace alone, dear Lord, I plead. Your death is now my life indeed, for you have paid my ransom. My dear friends, you don't need to stay up late at night. Worrying about the answer to that question, what does it take for a sinful man to stand before a holy God, God has answered that question in Jesus. Today I hope you leave this place with a high view of God. A high view of God and his holiness and his righteousness. And also a low view of yourself to begin with. That you are a sinner who has no ability whatsoever to make yourself right with a holy God. But now, in a sense, you can view yourself highly because God sees you as perfect and holy in His sight because of His Son. And allow that then to influence your view of the law. Keep that high view of the law that says the law in and of itself will not save me. It's a mirror that leads me towards my savior Jesus and the cleansing waters of my baptism to remind me of the righteousness of Jesus for us. And then finally, have a high view of the gospel. A view of the gospel that says, it is finished, it is complete. The blood of the Lamb Jesus Christ shed for the sins of the world Includes your sins and mine completely. On this Reformation Day. Rest confidently with Martin Luther and the Apostle Paul who said that my hope is in Christ and in Christ alone. Amen.

Truth in Love Ministry Thanks for listening to this week's edition of the Witnessing Christ podcast. Have a blessed week as you go out and speak the truth in love.