“What shall we say then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith, but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” Romans 9:30-33
The offense of Christianity was the same then as it is now in our time. We can’t save ourselves. That fact offends us. It’s the most offensive thing in the world. Why? Because the world is full of sinners drunk on the wine of humanism. Atonement is the action initiated, fulfilled, and secured by God alone. The only thing we bring to salvation is our sin. This is the incredible fact that’s the “stumbling stone” in every area of life. The good news of the gospel is only good insofar as sin is understood for the horrible thing it is. What is it? It’s the action of trying to play God. It’s pride before God. It’s insurrection and, as R.C. Sproul perfectly called it, cosmic treason. It’s the action and insistence of trying to reorder created reality around oneself. To do that, we must kill God.
Does this sound strange? Consider it this way. Imagine a man or woman walking into the king’s court, barging right in like they own the place. They prance around, doing this and that, eating and drinking and carrying on like they own the place – utterly ignoring the king. Unable to physically overthrow the sovereign, they presume to live and act as though he doesn’t exist. They flaunt his rules. They “do their own thing” and, even worse, they ignore and then abuse his messengers who bring warnings of the king’s judgment.
Or think of a man who drives down the road at double the speed limit and ignores the flashing lights behind him. How will the police deal with such a man? Or imagine an employee casually walking into the office of the boss and telling him he’s fired.
Sin is a clash of authority.
In this case it’s a monumental and elemental clash of the flea declaring that the lion must concede. It’s preposterous. It’s insane. Here we are in the great King’s temple (Psalm 19:1) demanding that He prove Himself to us!
Everyone knows this. Democrats railing against the Capitol riot last January 6 speak of insurrection. We talk about national borders and rule of law. Everyone knows. We know that authority exists and must exist or else chaos ensues. But for any authority to exist there must be somewhere along the line an ultimate authority backing it up. We know this but suppress the truth in order to continue our charade (Romans 1:18). Thus, as Romans 1:20 declares, “so they are without excuse.”
So, that’s the case with sin – only it’s millions of times worse. The whole earth is God’s and we are His subjects. To live for one moment as if we’re the king or queen, in defiance of Him, mocking His warnings and message, is what we’re talking about. Thus, we should do away with this petty defiance – insisting that sin is no big deal. Sin is a call to arms and the penalty is death. The gifts we have all around us are testimony of His amazing mercy and patience (Romans 2:4). To reject these millions of mercies from the King of Kings, whom we insult daily, in small ways and great, is to challenge Him to a fight.
That’s what Judgment Day will be, only it won’t be a fight. It will be a judgment against us if we don’t repent and come to Christ for mercy, admitting our rebellion. There will be no fight anymore than a man with a squirt gun can defeat the Marines.
The thing to note, though, is that our issue now, in the flesh, is desperate. Since we were created by Him, and for Him, and placed in His garden, the echoes of our alienation haunt us. Like a fish out of water, gasping for air, is a man or woman outside of Christ. Made for Him, to know Him and love Him, and to live in the warm light of His love, instead we wander in a barren spiritual wasteland, seeking what we’ve lost. Rejecting His loving hand, outstretched to us in history’s supreme act of grace, we’re busy trying to assuage the trauma of sin. We try everything. We seek meaning and purpose in any way we can, chasing created things meant to bless us and to cause us to thank Him. We turn these things into ultimate things and then agonize over our emptiness.
The thing to know is that once we reject Christ and truth, that reconciliation is impossible, though we desperately need it. So, we blame our condition on others or something else, or we try and punish ourselves. Outside of Christ our life becomes non-stop attempts for self-atonement. Without Christ, we’re all either sadists or masochists. Look at our politics. Look at our arts and entertainment. Look at our schools. We’re trying to fix ourselves through some form of penance or we try and fix others. Many on the left make it their cause to help the poor through various socialist schemes. Others, on the right, busy themselves with charity. They’re busy, busy, busy. They’re trying to say, “look, I’m okay…I’m not so bad.”
This is why so-called mental health “improves” during wars and crisis. The sadistic desire, born from our enmity with God and refusal to come to His free offer of grace, leads us into demonizing others. Evil is out there and righteousness is by doing works of some sort. Get the vaccine and wear your mask, for example. And demonize/tyrannize those who won’t. Or support the latest cause and denounce the latest “bad” thing/group. It’s all the sadistic approach to self-atonement. The masochistic approach is through rigid adherence to man-made rules. It’s austerity for the purpose of declaring ourselves “nice people” (i.e., righteous). That’s the whole point of the objections raised in Romans 9. And yet that’s the whole point of Romans…the righteousness that comes by faith alone. Only God is righteous. Our works can’t achieve His standard but, and this is the Good News, we have His righteousness imputed to us by faith in Christ. This is what it means to say that Christ is the stumbling stone. He’s really not the reason for the stumble – that’s because of our humanistic pride. It’s in pride that we stumble upon our Rock and our Redeemer. The stumbling block to prideful hearts is that salvation is initiated by God, fulfilled by God, and secured by Him. This is the truth that finally ends the war. This is the truth that brings our freedom. He is our sabbath rest. His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
His love, if we will have it, will cast out shame. It will overcome our failures. It will remake us one precious step at a time. Our lives in Christ, through faith alone, become lives of love, always bubbling over and impossible to hide, like the light of the rising sun. In Christ, all that shame is gone. That war is over. You know…that war that drove us into the caves of our minds and twisted our emotions into mysterious knots so that we’re alien to ourselves and others. So many secrets. That’s the human tragedy; shame leads to secrets and fear. Why would we choose that? It’s the stubborn pride of humanism that does the trick and that’s why the simple and pure gospel is such a stumbling block and offense.
But now, in Christ and in Him alone…that war is over. The shame is gone. And we see no offense in Him. How could we? He died for us! Yes, died. That is the story of your life, Christian! That’s the only fact that matters and it puts every other fact in context. We see only endless and boundless and depthless love that is ours. Completely ours. Personally ours. There’s no condemnation. There’s no fear. All the penalty, and power, and presence of sin is gone and with it, all the shame too.
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