Romans 3:25-26 – Faith in Christ’s Blood

Paul’s use of this But now phrase is showing what’s now made manifest, that we can be now be justified by God’s grace through faith and not by our works, wasn’t known before this It was kept secret by God as Paul will show us later in Romans 16:25-26,

Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, 

But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith: 

 

So we see in this sentence, as we covered last episode, some of the grammar, the semicolons and the colons.

There’s four statements in this sentence separated by those three semicolons and each one of these statements shows us that now a good thing has happened, a gospel truth, witnessed by but not openly revealed by the law and the prophets.

 

In verse twenty four (Romans 3:24), which we covered last episode Paul says,

Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 

 

Now he talks about the redemption that’s in Christ Jesus in Romans 3:25,

Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 

 

In this verse Paul explains what that verse 24 redemption is, what that payment is, which is something that the scriptures testify to; how God saves Israel, but he’s using it as a witness and a testimony that He can justify us freely, because if He can justify Israel through Christ’s blood, then He can justify me and you through Christ’s blood, because all are sinners.

 

He’s using the law to witness what he just said and nowhere else in the Scripture does it say that.

Remember in verse twenty one (Romans 3:21). But now the righteousness of God without the law.

We focused on those three words “without the law”.

What does that mean, without the law?

God’s righteousness is expressed in the law, and God wants people to do good and to keep the law. But now Paul’s saying, without the law, and this is part of that great mystery that’s the hallmark of Paul’s epistles.

But we noticed that in the second half of that verse it says this is witnessed by the law and the prophets.

So we say, “Hold on. Is this new information or old information?” Well, it’s both.

It’s new information that Paul’s linking to the scriptures like in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4 where Paul says, Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried and rose again the third day according to the scriptures.

Paul never separates what he’s saying from the scriptures, all scriptures.

But what he’s saying is a revelation. It’s manifest. It’s something that’s now being declared.

So in Romans 3:21-22 he says, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ. See, he’s revealing this thing, the righteous, which is not by our works, not by the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, unto all, and upon all them that believe.

It’s not just Israel. It’s not just one nation it’s to all, and upon all them that believe. There’s no difference.

This verse is him witnessing from the law and the prophets the necessity for the shed blood of Jesus Christ for salvation.

That is not unique to you and me in this dispensation of grace.

That’s necessary for everyone to be saved.

 

How were people saved in time past, before this “but now” period that Paul discloses.

Before, this “but now” moment it was a great mystery. Nobody knew how God could actually save so the thought was, just do the best you can and do good things and try to satisfy God.

What Paul reveals here was not what the law and the prophets taught.

 

Paul says we’re justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Redemption is the payment, the price of being made free. Redemption is the explanation.

Notice how at the end of verse twenty four, there’s a colon?

That colon means what’s about to follow is going to define or elaborate what was just said.

Verse 24 says, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus and verse 25 is the answer. This is that redemption that’s in Christ Jesus, Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God.

 

There’s a lot there.

First of all, the whom here is Jesus Christ and it’s Him Who’s been set forth to be a propitiation.

God set Him forth.

It wasn’t an accident that Christ died. It wasn’t something that God didn’t foresee or plan for, He purposed it.

We see in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that it was a purpose that Jesus’s own disciples didn’t understand.

They’re running away. They’re questioning. Peter even tries to stop it because they just don’t get it. It hadn’t been revealed yet you see.

But Jesus knew what had to happen.

We might say well, if He’s the God of the universe, why didn’t He prevent it?

Well, when we understand why, that God set Him forth for a purpose, then we realise why He’s not preventing it and we understand that more and more as we read Paul’s epistles.

They’re the revelation, the marching orders if you like, for the church, the Body of Christ today.

If we only had Matthew, Mark, Luke and John we wouldn’t understand what God was doing either.

 

So, God set forth Christ to be a propitiation. What in the world is that? Propitiation?

Propitiation is what makes propitious, which doesn’t help at all. What’s propitious?

We don’t use that word much today. But propitiation is the noun or the thing that makes something propitious. Propitious means to gain favour or mercy from someone who’s offended.

Say we offended someone, maybe a friend or neighbor, how do we reconcile that situation?

Somethings going to need to happen to get us to that reconciliation.

Propitiation is that deed or action that gets back the favor of the offended party causing them to give mercy to us.

If we’ve offended them, we transgressed them. There’s justice that needs to be done. We did wrong. We deserve punishment, which is one way out. We pay the fine. Say we broke someone’s lawnmower. We fork over the money to them and we apologise.

Then they’re able to say, “We’re good.  It’s settled.” So we’ve settled that debt.

This’s the idea between God and sinful humanity even though it’s communicated by me in a silly way.

Our sins are transgression, an offense to God and His character.

 

Now, God’s character is love and mercy, which is why He’s provided this means of reconciliation and salvation.

It’s propitiation, that thing which makes God’s favour, His mercy and His forgiveness possible.

Without propitiation, without this thing, forgiveness and reconciliation’s not possible.

 

We tend to confuse forgiveness. Forgiveness always requires a sacrifice, that’s what religious forgiveness looks like, but in the Christian ideal, forgiveness is just freely given. And there’s some truth to that in the Scripture as well.

Ephesians 4:32,

And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you. 

 

Paul’s talking to believers who know the gospel about how to live by that gospel.

He says to forgive others for Christ’s sake, Who has already forgiven you. So, we forgive the other person because that’s what Christ would have us do.

Propitiation though, is a justified basis, a reason for it even being possible for a sinner or a transgressor to gain forgiveness.

 

If a criminal comes before a judge saying, please forgive me, and the judge lets him loose without any sort of propitiation, any sort of payment, atonement then this is an unjust judge.

Now, depending on whether the criminal’s repentant or not, the judge might say, well, I’m not going to throw the book at you, but you still need punishment.

But forgiveness is saying no punishment. That’s what forgiveness is. No punishment. So now there’s the age old question of how is it ever justified if someone does a wrong and is not punished?

Here in Romans 3, God’s saying that Christ is the propitiation, the payment, the punishment or the thing that we owed for our transgression to God.

Because He’s the payment price He redeems us from sin.

God purposed that He‘d be the propitiation, in our place, the thing that would make forgiveness possible while still preserving perfect justice.

Justice is served because Jesus is God, but He’s also man.

He represents both God and you and me in the transaction.

Before Jesus put on humanity, He couldn’t represent us.

It’s God and man that’s being represented by Jesus because none of us can pay the penalty of death for sin and still live because we’re all sinners and our death is just.

So God puts on us, humanity, to represent us while also representing God. Do you see it?

Another way to think about it is that Jesus Christ Himself as man, when He died an innocent, sinless death, He didn’t die of His own sins. He didn’t die as His own punishment.

His innocence made Him able to offer his death as payment for someone else, us.

He was the Son of God before he was incarnate. One with God.

The Father and the son are one together. There’s no enmity in the Godhead. God’s not at enmity with himself. So when Jesus was incarnate and He was baptised, the Father says from heaven, “This is my son, in whom I’m well pleased.”

He’s well pleased before Jesus even started his ministry. He’s well pleased because it’s His son, part of the Godhead.

There’s no enmity there. And so, this man who is God’s son also represents humanity.

God can show mercy because Jesus represents all men who trust Him, who believe in Him.

 

So, so it’s very important to see that Jesus is the man born in the flesh, and also the Christ, that prophesied one, the Son of God who God made to be a propitiation.

We’ll see when we get to Romans 11:32,

For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. 

 

This is a summary of what we’re learning here in Romans 2 and 3, that all are sinners. He counts them all unrighteous so that He might have mercy upon all.

Why? Because the mercy comes from the propitiation, the thing, the shed blood of Jesus Christ, His death.

His life and His death and His resurrection from the dead allows mercy to be given to humanity.

Without Christ as the propitiation, there is no mercy.

 

In the Old Testament. Before Jesus died, God showed mercy many times. We may ask, “How could He do that if He needed Christ’s death on the cross? Because God knew that Christ would die. He knew that mercy was unjustified without Christ but God also knew Christ would die.

He’d always purposed it. That was always the plan.

And so now God can be merciful to all people.

Israel is in sin and fallen today but God can be merciful to them just as He is to the gentiles through the death of Jesus Christ. God sent Him forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood. Through faith is how this sacrifice, this propitiation gains favour with God and makes forgiveness possible.

 

Propitiation is for the whole world.

We see this from verses like John 3:16,

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 

 

And 1 John 2:2,

And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. 

 

John was an apostle of Israel.

Was he given the revelation of the mystery? No, and not knowing what the mystery is is where people tend to stumble.

They assume it’s Jesus shed blood on the cross, but the mystery of what that accomplishes is not found in 1 John.

Before 1 John 2:2 we have of course 1 John 2:1 which reads,

My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: 

 

This is Jesus Christ, the man, the righteous, the propitiation for our sins.

John’s writing to the little flock of Israel and its Israel’s sins he’s talking about, but then he goes on to say, and not for ours only, those who are given the promises and the covenants and to whom Jesus came, Israel, but also for the sins of the whole world, Jews and Gentiles.

How is that?

Because John understands what the prophets taught and what Jesus Himself would explain, that there’s no propitiation outside of Him.

If the world’s going to be blessed, even through Israel in the future kingdom, it has to be through the propitiation, the sacrifice, of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, dying on the cross to satisfy justice and enable mercy from God.

It has to be through that and John knows this.

 

Now, as we’ve said, through Romans 3 we see Paul introducing some things that were not known before hand, like freely justified without the law.

For the next two chapters, Paul’s quoting Scripture to prove what he’s saying about salvation, that it’s by grace through faith, freely given without the law.

 

Look at 1 John 4:10,

Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 

 

By the way, we don’t find that “without the law” Paul talks about anywhere in first John. John mentions the law over and over again.

This is a Hebrew apostle talking about Jesus Christ. He’s the salvation of Israel and the world. That’s what the prophets and the law witness.

But now, here’s Paul revealing things that nobody knew anything about beforehand, things that Paul reveals in the sense that he’s making them clear, even though the scriptures talked about them in shadows and types.

He’s making it clear that it’s through faith. The benefits of that propitiation are received through faith in Christ’s blood.

 

Now, faith isn’t something new with Paul. The prophets witness faith as well. It’s always there, but faith in what?

This’s where Paul’s explaining something that they didn’t know to believe in even though faith’s always been a necessity.

 

Acts 2:38, and this is a response to the Jews asking the question, what shall we do, after they were pricked in their hearts at killing their Messiah, which Peter just proved to them that Jesus was and that He fulfilled the prophecies. Let’s read that,

Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. 

 

Notice Peter doesn’t mention the cross anywhere.

He did mention it before then, and he blamed Israel for it but he’s not explaining it here as good news to them. He’s talking about Jesus Christ being their Savior, and he remits their sins, but they have to repent and be baptized and receive the Holy Ghost.

This is the same message John the Baptist preached and the same message the Old Testament prophets preached.

The difference is they’re naming who the Messiah is and this water baptism is in His name.

Peter’s saying you can’t deny Jesus and continue on with this Jewish program.

Then he goes on to reiterate all the promises the prophets spoke about as given to them that believe.

Peter’s declaring that, yes, God set up Israel, established the covenants and promises and if you reject Jesus, you don’t get any of them.

He said this to the Jews, to their face, to Israel and that’s a big thing. But it’s not the revelation of the mystery.

In Acts 2:23 Peter tells this Jewish audience,

Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain: 

 

Peter blames Israel for killing the Messiah. But look what he says. You delivered him. He was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.

Peter knows in Acts 2 that Jesus died on purpose and he’s saying you, Israel, did not foil God’s plans.

So when Paul says God set Him forth to be a propitiation he’s saying a similar thing to Peter, that God knew what he was doing when Christ died.

 

In 1 Peter 1:18-19 Peter describes redemption,

Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; 

But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:

 

Paul just talked about redemption and redemption’s not a mystery. Redemption is something the Old Testament spoke about, too. There were ways to redeem in the Old Testament, through the commandments, but not Christ. He hadn’t come yet.

But the great mystery in Romans 3:24 is that we’re justified freely by God’s grace through the redemption that’s in Christ Jesus.

The redemption in Christ Jesus is something that was prophesied and has now happened. But the free access to that by all sinners, Jew and Gentile, is what Paul’s preaching.

 

All over the Old Testament sacrifices were offered. The blood of animals was shed.

But those animals were innocent, they didn’t do anything wrong.

And that’s the point. It’s to bring people the understanding that our actions, our sins, lead to death and will ultimately lead to our own death. It’s the consequence of sin.

And so when God mandates the law to Israel it’s a picture that death, the shedding of blood is required for sins.

Hebrews 10:1-4 says,

For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. 

For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. 

But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. 

For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. 

 

Sacrifices were continually being made in the temple. It wasn’t a once only deal. You had to do this constantly to justify yourself.

 

But Hebrews makes it clear that those animal sacrifices could never make those people perfect.

What’s the proof of that?

Because they had to keep offering them as we’ve just seen in Hebrews 10:2. If those sacrifices could have removed sin and redeemed man they wouldn’t need to be repeated.

We think sacrificing animals is terrible, and it is, but our sin and it’s penalty is much more terrible.

So we should stop sinning! But wait a minute, we can’t! We need mercy and forgiveness.

 

Hebrews 10:3 , as we just read tells us that there’s a remembrance again made of sins every year.

That’s what the sacrifices were for, to remind people of their sin. As we learn in Romans 3 by the law is the knowledge of sin.

Sacrifices were part of that law. If the actual law itself didn’t bring you a consciousness of sin, the killing of this animal should have.

The fact that people killed animals without conscience showed their own hard heartedness. People should’ve been weeping, bringing these animals to die but it just became a religious ritual.

God hates the killing of animals but their death and shed blood was to get people to wake up to the gravity of sin.

 

As we’ve just seen in Hebrews, it wasn’t possible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.

Hebrews 10:5,

Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: 

 

So God’s will, His purpose, and His intent was for Christ to be the propitiation.

Those animals were sacrificed as a shadow pointing to Christ. Hebrews explains the details of how that temple was a shadow of the heavenly place, and the animals were a shadow of Christ. And Christ put an end to that.

It wasn’t just Israel offering sacrifices. Israel was offering animal sacrifices but the Canaanites were offering human sacrifices. The God of the Canaanites demanded babies to be killed.

God says one of your lambs and even then it was used for food.

In the book of Leviticus, which is a book explaining the sacrifices, not all sacrifices required blood. For example, there’s the burnt offering, where there’s no blood taken. Everything’s burnt up. There’s the the meal offering or peace offerings, where there was no blood either. These were meal or flour offerings.

 

Blood sacrifices were trespass offerings.

Leviticus 17:11,

For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. 

 

So blood was associated with payment for sin.

Leviticus 17 explains that because blood is set apart, it has a certain purpose and a function. Verse eleven, the life of the flesh is in the blood.

So God’s explaining how He made blood to have life in it, which again, we know to be scientifically true.

When a man’s blood is shed he’s being killed. The life is leaving the body.

Leviticus is talking about atoning for people’s sins by shed blood, and the blood is shed by animals.

Eventually, this will point to Christ and His own shed blood and that’s the only blood that God’s ever required for the eternal salvation of anyone’s soul. It’s the blood of His own son, who purposefully and willingly died as propitiation in a gracious giving of Himself.

 

In Acts 20:28 Paul says to the Ephesian leaders,

Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. 

 

This is interesting. Life’s in the blood.

The son and the father are one. God has no blood. He’s a spirit. Before Christ, He had no blood. He had to put on humanity to have blood.

Jesus had blood. That’s the human manifestation of God. He had to put on humanity, be fully, one hundred percent man, so that he could die, that he could shed His blood, but He had to be God as well so that His innocent shed blood could count as a propitiation for our sins.

Otherwise, if it were some man born of Adam who’s blood was shed, it couldn’t possibly have been our propitiation because that man would have been as guilty as you and me and deserving of death.

That’s what makes Christ’s blood different.

His blood was shed not shed as a consequence of sin. It would’ve been perfectly just for God to shed our blood because we’re sinners but for Jesus Christ, that human blood that was in Him didn’t deserve to be shed.

He deserved life as a man. He’s God, but He deserved life. And it was shed without necessity of his own sin, for to pay for his own sin, to atone for his own sin.

Hebrews 9:22  reads,

And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. 

 

Without shedding of blood is no remission. Remission of sins.

There’s no remission of the filth, the dirt, the sin problem without shedding of blood.

Hebrews 9:23,

It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 

 

So he’s talking about a better sacrifice being required than animal blood.

See perfect justice demanded a sacrifice for the payment for the sins of all mankind that was so unimaginably greater than anything in this universe was capable of making. It was so great that only the death of God Himself, perfect in every sense, was sufficient.

This should make us acutely aware of how impossible it is for man to earn salvation or to keep salvation by his own works. If it were up to mankind to work good deeds in order to gain or to keep salvation no man who ever lived on planet earth would be redeemed and they’d be relegated to a Godless eternity.

How terrible is sin and how unbelievably magnificent is our God Who willingly gave Himself for it. How great thou art indeed!

 

Hebrews 9:24-25,

For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; 

 

So Christ is not suffering a multitude of times, because there’s a ton of people or a ton of sins.

Hebrews 9:26,

For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 

 

Christ’s own sacrifice of His blood, His life was necessary for atonement, propitiation, for remission of sins.

 

Colossians 1:14

In whom (in Christ) we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins: 

 

His blood is necessary for forgiveness. We have redemption, forgiveness of sins through His blood.

Did Christs death on the cross save us?

If that were true every person that ever existed would be saved and we know that’s not true.

The key to all things with God is belief, faith. Without faith it’s impossible to please God.

It’s our belief in the death, burial and resurrection of Christ that saves us. That’s the gospel. The gospel as we find defined in 1 Corinthians 15:3,

For I (that’s Paul) delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 

And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: 

 

Ephesians 2:13 says,

But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. 

 

So here we are, separate from Israel, separated from God, without hope, without God in the world, and yet by His blood we’re made close to God.

We’re made near to Him, brought together. We’re gathered together to Him by His blood. That’s peace between us and God. That’s reconciliation.

We’re justified by his blood.

Romans 5:9,

Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

 

We’re justified and declared righteous because of His bloodshed.

His blood is necessary for sanctification because we can’t be set apart for God’s purpose unless we’re first cleansed from sins.

1 Corinthians 1:30

But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: 

 

The shed blood of Christ is what makes salvation possible in any dispensation.

Without Christ shed blood, nobody can ever claim to be saved, whether it be in this dispensation, Israels dispensation or any other dispensation.

 

Let’s move now to Romans 3:26 and we need to read it in context, remembering that we’re still in one long sentence that began at Romans 1:21.  So verse 26 runs on directly from verse 25 and we read,

Romans 3:25,

Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 

Verse 26,

To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. 

 

This word declare here is Paul declaring the things in Romans 3:25.

He’s declaring things about what happened before even he was saved, about how people in the Old Testament were saved.

 

Throughout the Old Testament, including during Jesus’s earthly ministry we see people having their sins forgiven.

These’re people back before Christ died so how or by what means can these people have forgiveness from God?

Was God righteous to forgive when the propitiation, the payment for sin hasn’t been made. The blood of Christ hadn’t been shed yet.

 

So here Paul’s showing God’s righteousness in His forgiveness of sin before the blood of Jesus Christ, the propitiation, the sacrifice, had been shed.

Notice the verse is not saying, “to declare the righteousness of Christ”. He’s talking about the righteous of God. Paul’s justifying God, saying God is righteous to have forgiven people before. Even though there was no actual propitiation for their sins because Christ hadn’t died yet.

In the Old Testament they offered the blood sacrifices and they would be an atonement, forgiveness of their sins, but they would be forgiven again and again and again.  By repeated sacrifices, they received repeated forgiveness.

How was God righteous to do that if there’s no atonement seeing that you can’t forgive someone without atonement and we’ve seen that already.

Paul’s declaring God’s righteousness because Christ is now dead and His blood has been shed, by the time Paul writes Romans.

Jesus died for a purpose that God had ordained and purposed sin before the world was formed.

He’d purposed His righteousness and that He’d be righteous for the remission of sins that are past.

Past means before Christ’s death.

You and I are in the future from this time. We’re beyond Paul and beyond the books of the Bible and beyond the cross.

 

How can God be righteous to justify sinners? Answer Christ’s death on the cross. That’s what Paul’s saying.

Now Paul tells us that God set Christ forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith. We’re not told to put our faith in His blood; Christ Himself is the object of our faith.

It’s only a resurrected and living Christ Jesus who can save. He’s the propitiation.

Faith in Him is how we partake in that propitiation. His blood is the price that was paid for sin in order to satisfy perfect justice.

The finished work of Christ declares God’s righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, sins committed before the death of Christ. From Adam to Christ, God saved those who put their faith in Him on the basis of whatever revelation He gave them at the time. For example Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness (Genesis 15:6). But how could God do this righteously seeing that a sinless Substitute hadn’t been slain yet? The blood of a perfect Sacrifice had not been shed. Christ had not died. The debt had not been paid yet. God’s righteous claims had not been met. How then could God save believing sinners in the OT period?

The answer is that although Christ had not yet died, God knew that He would die, and He saved men on the basis of the still-future work of Christ.

Even though Old Testament saints didn’t know about Calvary, God knew about it, and He put all the value of Christ’s work to their account when they believed God.

We might say that Old Testament believers were saved on credit. They were saved on the basis of a price still to be paid in the future. They looked forward to the cross; but we look back to it.

So all those people can rightly claim forgiveness because God offered it to them and He was right to do so because Christ would die on the cross for their sins. They didn’t know that. But Paul’s declaring that now.

 

That is what Paul means when he says that the propitiation of Christ declares God’s righteousness because He had passed over the sins that were previously committed.

Some people very wrongly think that Paul’s talking of sins which an individual person has committed before his salvation, before the moment he believed the gospel.

This suggests that the work of Christ took care of sins before salvation, but that a man’s on his own after that. This is usually where the idea comes from that we must work good works to keep our salvation.

The ramifications of that are horrible because that would mean  no body is ever saved because every one of us fail miserably in always doing good works.

No, Paul’s dealing with the fact that God seems to be lenient and even unrighteous in that He apparently overlooked the sins of those who were saved before the cross.

It might seem that God excused those sins or pretended not to see them.

But Paul clearly says her No! This is not so!

The Lord knew that Christ would make full restitution and atonement for sin, and so He saved men on that basis.

So the Old Testament period was a time of the forbearance of God. For at least 4000 years He held back His judgment on sin.

Then in the fullness of time He sent His Son to be the Sin-bearer. When the Lord Jesus took our sins upon Himself, His death declared God’s righteousness. God is just because He has required the full payment of the penalty of sin. And He can justify the ungodly without condoning their sin or compromising His own righteousness because a perfect Substitute has died and risen again.