The Gospel Changes Everything (Romans Week 7) by Sarah Knepper

The text for this week is Romans 3v27-31. In this message from Romans 3, we explore how faith in Jesus dismantles our boasting, gives us a new identity, changes how we see others, and frees us from trying to earn what only grace can give. If you’ve been exhausted by comparison, pressure, or the need to prove yourself, this sermon invites you to rest again in the good news of what Christ has already done.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I'm thrilled to be here this morning with you. And I do have to tell you that this last week I think has felt a little bit sad for me because I'm obsessed with the Olympics. Some of you don't care. You didn't watch any of it. That's fine. I mean I'm judging you a little bit, but it's fine. You missed out. You have two and a half years to get yourself together, and that's when they come on again. I'm not a sports person at all. I don't care about sports. I don't have a team. I can pretend, I guess, but I don't have a team. But there is something about the Olympics that I love. All of the weird sports, like who invented skeleton? If you don't know what that is, you can look it up. It's very strange. You're like sledding head first. I mean, it's just like a death spiral. Why would you do that? I have no idea. All these bizarre sports that people from all around the world train for, they come, they compete. It's like all this victory and all of this heartbreak, and I love it. I'm completely sucked in. I stayed up way too late every single night watching it. I'm a high school math teacher, and for the two weeks of the Olympics, I was dragging myself to school every morning because I had stayed up until like 2 a.m. watching the Olympics. I could not turn it off. I had no self-control when it came to the Olympics. And the reason that I have been thinking about this as I've been thinking about these verses that we're gonna look at this morning is the Olympics, if you watched any of the coverage, I don't know if all countries do this, but in the United States, we love to pick out the people that we are just certain they're gonna be the ones that are the stars. So if you watched any of the figure skating, you know that there was this 21-year-old kid that they called the quad god. Okay, anytime we're attaching the name god to a person, it's probably a bad idea. But this kid is supposed to like do things that no one else has been able to do. He can do a quad axle. I don't even know what that means, but he's the only one in the world that can do it. And if you watched him skate when he was out there skating for the gold medal, it was a complete and utter disaster. He fell down multiple times, he ended up eighth place. I mean, he was like, no one was supposed to be able to beat this kid, and it's a disaster. Over and over and over again. Lindsay Vaughn has come back, she's gonna win the downhill, blah, blah, blah. She broke her leg and almost had to have it amputated, okay? I mean, just story after story after story. Eric's laughing. It's not funny. She's fine, she didn't have to have it amputated. But story after story after story of these people who are supposed to be the best of the best. And as I watch these stories and I'm thinking, like, how easy it is. Now I'm not Olympic level anything, okay? Nothing. But how easy is it for me in other areas of my life to begin to put all of this attention, all of this emphasis, all of this trust into the things that I feel so confident in myself about. I'm enough in this area. I'm the best I can achieve. And how dangerous it is as I watched the Olympics and watched heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak. It seemed like every athlete that we were setting up to be the victor fell. And it was a reminder to me of how dangerous it is for us to put our attention, to put our hope in ourselves. The danger of boasting in ourselves. And this morning, the verses that we're gonna look at remind us of that as well. So we're gonna read some verses in Romans chapter 3. I know we've already prayed several times this morning, but will you pray with me this morning just as we open God's word that He'll speak to us? Holy Spirit, we welcome you here. We acknowledge that. We acknowledge that your presence is here already, but we want to say that we're listening. That we want to hear from you today. God, we thank you for your word that you've given us. I thank you, Spirit of God, that you animate it and illuminate it, and I ask God that you would speak today through your word. I ask that anything that is not from you would fall away and would be forgotten, and that your truth would remain. We love you, God. We pray all of this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. If you have a Bible or a phone that turns into a Bible, we are gonna be in Romans chapter 3, like Pastor Michael mentioned, and we're going to read the last few verses of Romans chapter 3. So we're gonna start in verse 27. The title of our message this morning is The Gospel Changes Everything. So we'll read these few verses, and then we're gonna have to back up before we can really get into what's happening here. But Romans chapter 3, starting in verse 27, and then we'll read to the end of the chapter. Paul says this: Where then is boasting? It's 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. Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we then nullify the law by this faith? Not at all. Rather, we uphold the law. Okay, so as we start these verses, right at the beginning of verse 27, where then is boasting? This should be a key to us when we see that word then, like we're jumping into the middle of a thought. So we can't just start here. We have to roll it back a little bit and remember what has Paul already been talking about? So last week, Pastor Rich spoke to you about verses 21 to 26, and those can only be understood in the context of the first two chapters. So if you haven't been around for a few weeks, take a little time this afternoon to reread those few chapters. But what Paul has been doing is building this case, building this argument, saying, look, the law isn't the thing that can save us. It's never been the thing that could save us. None of us are ever gonna be good enough. This was not the intention of the law. The only thing that can save us is God through his grace, which is shown to us in Jesus. That's it. And so we put our faith in what it is that Jesus has done. Okay, now I'm not, I can, Pastor Rich did a pretty good job preaching on this last week, okay? So you can listen to what he has to say. I'm just teasing. He did a good job. Um you can listen to what he has to say or reread those verses, but this is the context then where we jump into verse 27. So now, based on all of this, based on this case that Paul has built telling us that we cannot be saved through the works of our own. We're only saved through faith in Jesus, we're justified through faith in Jesus, we're redeemed through faith in Jesus. And then verse 27 says, then where does boasting go? Like, who do we think that we are to say anything good about ourselves? Because it's not about us. This is very challenging, I think, for us in the culture that we currently live. We live in a culture that is consumed with bragging and boasting. It is the only way to succeed. You have to be your own hype man or hype woman. If you have spent any time on any social media, you will notice that that's what it's all about. You have to talk about how you are better than all of the people around you. Your dinner is better than everybody else's dinner. Look how great it is. Your decorations are better than everyone else's decorations. Your vacation is better than everyone else's vacation. And some of you are like, oh no, no, I'm not on the Instagram. Okay, so you're probably on the LinkedIn. And on the LinkedIn, it's just a business version of all of this. My accomplishments are better than everybody else's accomplishments. The school that I went to is better than everybody else's school. Look at all these projects that I've done. Look at all these accolades that I carry around with me. We live in a culture that is built on us promoting ourselves. And even right now, some of you are sitting there thinking, like, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's no other way to do it. But here's the danger, my friends, here's the danger. When this is the way that we live in our work lives or in our school lives, like I mentioned, I'm a high school teacher, I teach mostly seniors, and so they're in the process of trying to build their college applications and build their resumes to make themselves look like the most attractive candidate. When this is how we live our work lives, when this is how we live our school lives, when this is how we live our social media lives, there is no doubt that that sort of boasting is now going to bleed into my faith life. And so now what happens is I begin to think things like I'm so much better at being patient than fill in the blank. I'm so much more generous than fill in the blank. I'm so much more kind than fill in the blank. I practice spiritual discipline so much better than fill in the blank. Isn't God lucky to have me? Now, some of you are like, you're too smart to actually say that out loud. But my guess would be that many of us in this room have had that thought at some point or another. Isn't God lucky that I'm on his team? Because look at all that I can do for him. Paul has something to say about this in another one of his letters. He expands on it a little bit more. I'm gonna take us to Philippians chapter 3. You can either turn there or you can just listen. I'm just gonna read a few verses and then we're gonna come back to the book of Romans. In Philippians chapter 3, starting in verse 5, he says this. Um, he has right at the beginning of the chapter, he has been building this same sort of case, saying, like, Jesus is the reason that we have anything that we have. We don't put any confidence in ourselves. But then he says, Um, I, actually it's in verse 4, he says, I could have some reasons for this confidence in the flesh. If this is the game that we want to play, Paul is saying, then let's play the game. Uh halfway through verse 4, he says, if someone thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews in regard to the law, a Pharisee. As for zeal, persecuting the church. As for righteousness based on the law, faultless. Paul's saying, if any of you are thinking, like, man, isn't God lucky to have me? Paul's like, not as lucky as he is to have me. Let me show you where I rank. And it's above you. But then that's not where he stops. Verse 7. Whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ and be found in him. Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ. The righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. Paul is anticipating this sort of natural inclination in us to want to boast, to put the attention on ourselves, to become the hero of our own story. And he says, this is not the gospel. The gospel changes everything. And our first point this morning is that the gospel changes our identity. That no longer is my identity found in myself and in my own accomplishments. My identity is now wrapped up in Jesus. I have to tell you that one of my pet peeves, and um, if you have if you are someone who says this, I'm sorry. But one of my pet peeves is how often I hear in our culture people talking about how you are enough. You're enough. Who you are is enough. Actually, no, you're not. That's the gospel. The whole story of the gospel is you are not enough. You were never designed to be enough. Jesus is enough. If I was enough in and of myself, then I don't need Jesus. But I will never be enough. And God isn't expecting me to be. Now, I've broken that into a couple of ideas there. It changes my relationship with myself. And really, that's so much of what we've already been talking about here. That my relationship to my understanding of myself has now changed. That I don't rely on myself anymore, but I rely on Jesus and the work that he has accomplished. But it also changes my relationship with others. So we're gonna jump back into the book of Romans and we're gonna read the next few verses. So where then is boasting? That was verse 27, it's 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 apart from the works of the law. Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. Paul here points out the fact that there is this danger. Now, culturally, and um you've been talking about this for the last few weeks, but culturally there would have been this kind of idea that for the Jewish person who is now a follower of Jesus, that they could be tempted to think like, we've got a leg up here. Like we've known the story for a long time, we've been part of the family for a long time. We've been like understanding the law and trying to follow the law, and so because of that, like we're kind of like first-class citizens, and Gentiles are kind of like the second-class citizens down here. Like you get to be part of it, but like, maybe God is like reluctantly inviting you in. And Paul pushes against that idea right here. He says, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. There is one God and one faith. We're all on the same level playing field. Now, many of us in the room today are Gentiles, and so we say, like, yes, amen. That's great. I'm grateful for that. In fact, I haven't even been worrying about that, I have not felt nervous about that, so maybe we could just move right along. And yet, I want us to slow down here and to think, who are the people that maybe you tend to think of as second-class citizens in comparison to yourself? Who are those people in the family of God specifically, that if you were gonna say, isn't God lucky to have me? We could go a step further and say, He's luckier to have me than to have those people over there. Maybe that's an individual. Maybe that's people who have lived a particular type of life, struggled with a particular type of sin. Maybe it's a a group of people who are of a different race or ethnicity. Maybe it's people who have a different sort of achievement level. Maybe it's people who are part of the family of God but understand certain parts about what it means to follow Jesus a little bit differently than us. And we think, those people, I mean, they'll be in the kingdom someday. But like, I'm gonna be closer to Jesus' like throne, you know? Like they're gonna be like way, like way in the back. And I'm gonna be like right around the corner from Jesus' house. We think they're getting in, but just barely. Who are those people? I feel certain that most of us, in fact, maybe all of us, have people that we would say we can think of who those people are. As we consider the family of God, the people that we think are just squeaking by. And what Paul wants to say to us this morning is we have the same God and we have the same faith. And this morning, I think there are maybe some of us here who need to be encouraged. Because some of us, when we kind of hold up this measuring stick, we find ourselves thinking that we're the ones who are second-class citizens. Some of us are the ones who feel like I'm barely making it in the door. I'm not as smart as that person over there. I'm not as well educated as that person over there. The kind of things that I have done in my past, if people knew, they wouldn't let me keep being part of what's happening here. And if those are the things that you wrestle with as you come to God, please hear me this morning say there is one God and one faith. You are not a second-class child of God. You're part of the family. And really, this kind of like dovetails us back to some of the danger that comes along when we become people who are boasters. Because the danger of boasting, the danger of thinking I'm enough and I'm the one who gets to determine who is valuable, is that it immediately creates human division. So now, because I have put myself on first class status, I necessarily must look at everyone else who isn't part of my group as second class. And then that naturally leads us to denial. Because if I'm first class, if and if I'm first class because of whatever category is the most important to me, because of my education, because of my accomplishments, because of my goodness, because of my ethnicity or my race, as soon as any of those things have failures or flaws in them, I have to deny it. Oh, all of a sudden now my my identity, which was wrapped up in being so good, now I've I've sinned, I've made a mistake, and someone wants to call me on it, and I have to say, no, no, no, oh I'm sorry, you misunderstood. I have to deny any sort of flaw or crack. In my identity, which then naturally leads to all kinds of anxiety. I am constantly going to be worried that I am not going to be enough. And through all of this, the gospel, what Paul wants us to understand is that as your identity has changed, it not only changes the way you understand yourself, it changes the way that you relate to other people. Because now I haven't put myself above, now we're on the same plane, coming to God through the same gospel. What a burden that gets lifted off of us. And so then lastly, this brings us to this question. And I love how like Paul seems to anticipate the question that we're going to ask next. So in the last verse here, he says, Do we then nullify the law by this faith? In other words, if we're all in the same playing field, if all we have to do is believe, then who cares about the law? Does it matter? Now, not to like, you know, ruin the ending, but the very next words that he says are not at all. Okay? So we're not throwing the law away, but something has to change. The gospel changes our understanding of the law. The gospel changes our understanding of the law. And here's why. Again, to reflect back on what Paul has already told us. If I am putting my identity, my ability to be in right relationship with God, on my ability to uphold the law, to fully keep the law, I only have one of two options. One, I have to change the law and make it easier to keep. Because I don't know if you've like read the law, but it's really big. Can't do it. So if that's what I'm gonna like base my rightness with God on, I either have to change it or I'm gonna be crushed by it. That's it. Those are the only two options. I'm either gonna change it or I'm gonna be crushed by it. And if I'm crushed by it, I'm gonna end up either hating myself because I'm not enough, or I'm gonna hate God. Why would you put this weight on me? But the gospel. When Jesus entered into this world, he fulfilled the law for you. And then when he went to the cross, 2 Corinthians 5.21 tells us that God the Father made him who knew no sin, that is Jesus, to become sin for us, so that in him we would become the righteousness of God. Martin Luther called this the great exchange, that Jesus takes my sin and I take his righteousness. That when the Father looks at you and when the Father looks at me, now he sees me through the lens of the righteousness of Jesus, his son. Thank you, God, that is what that's what's happened. And so when we now look at the law, we don't deny the fact that the law demands judgment and death. That is the penalty for not being able to uphold the law. But Jesus came and took the penalty that I deserved. So, no, we don't get rid of the law. But we say, now I am free to engage with the law and uphold the justice that I see in the law because the Spirit of God lives in me. The Spirit of God animates me to be obedient. The Spirit of God animates me to listen to what God is calling me into, to pay attention to the justice that He wants in our city and around the world. We don't throw the law away. We say Jesus has made it possible for us to be men and women who respond to what God is inviting us into. The gospel changes everything. The gospel changes the way that I understand myself and where I find my identity. The gospel changes the way that I relate to other people and the way that I think about how I find myself in relationship to them, not above them, but on the same plane, not below them, but on the same plane. And my gospel now and the gospel now changes the way that I think about the law. It's not crushing me. It's something that Jesus has fulfilled for me. The gospel changes everything. And maybe this morning you're thinking, like, this seems like, you know, kind of simple. Like, okay, yeah, the gospel, got it. Oh, I should be different because of the gospel, got it. But if you take a moment to think about your life, if you take a moment to think about what has been happening, even just this week. And so let me invite you to do that. Let me invite you to just slow yourself down. If it helps you to close your eyes, close your eyes.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Let me invite you to consider. In what ways this week have you measured the success of your life?