25 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 justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Dig Deeper
When my son was much younger than he is now, he was determined that he wanted to learn how to swim. Now, I had promised him that I was going to teach him how to swim but I didn’t think he was quite ready to do it yet. He became impatient and slowly became convinced that he could figure out how to swim on his own if we would just let him. He certainly did not think that he needed help anymore. So, I decided that the best course of things would be to let him try and fail. I let him get in the pool and pushed him a ways from the edge and let him go. He flailed around and realized quite quickly that he had overestimated his own ability to quickly learn how to swim. This was exactly where I wanted him to get to. He now knew that he couldn’t do it on his own. He needed help. He needed me to teach him to swim. Now he was ready to learn how to swim because he knew that he needed to rely on me. At the same time, there was another benefit. I had not only taught him a valuable lesson, I had shown myself faithful to my original promise to teach him to swim. I had given him the chance to learn on his own but that was only related to my original promise to teach in so much as it showed him that he really needed me to come through on that promise. And now I had.
Paul has made the case that the whole human race, Jew and Gentile alike, stand guilty before God in rebellion to his will with nothing to say in their defense and nothing that they can do to change the situation. Not even the sacrifices of the law in the old covenant could change the verdict of the Israelites. They could be called the people of God in the present age, but they needed something that would justify them not only temporarily in the present age but also at the final judgment. The Jews and the Gentiles needed the power of the gospel to change the situation that they both faced. They needed it to have the justifying effect, to enact the declaration that they were in the right as the people of God both now and forever, that the law could simply not have. Paul has already stated that the solution to both the problem of man and the problem of establishing God as righteous and faithful to his covenant is found in Jesus the Messiah. He will now begin to offer at least a brief explanation of how it is that God has accomplished all of that through Jesus.
In Leviticus 16, God gives Moses some strikingly specific instructions as to how Aaron was to enter in the Most Holy Place and make atonement for the sins of the people of God on the great Day of Atonement. The text tells us that “The LORD spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron who died when they approached the LORD. The LORD said to Moses: ‘Tell your brother Aaron that he is not to come whenever he chooses into the Most Holy Place behind the curtain in front of the atonement cover on the ark, or else he will die. For I will appear in the cloud over the atonement cover’” (Lev. 16:1-3). The text goes on to describe the way that Aaron should “put the incense on the fire before the LORD, and the smoke of the incense will conceal the atonement cover above the tablets of the covenant law, so that he will not die. He is to take some of the bull's blood and with his finger sprinkle it on the front of the atonement cover; then he shall sprinkle some of it with his finger seven times before the atonement cover. He shall then slaughter the goat for the sin offering for the people and take its blood behind the curtain and do with it as he did with the bull's blood: He shall sprinkle it on the atonement cover and in front of it” (Lev. 16:13-15). Israel was in a constant state of trouble before God before their sins but the Day of Atonement was the day that God graciously and mercifully put things back to right between them, at least temporarily.
This is the language and the imagery that Paul draws upon to describe what Jesus has done. On a much larger scale, in fact in a once-and-for-all type of action, Jesus’ death was the final sacrifice that the Day of Atonement could only point to and serve as a shadow for. What could be done only temporarily on the Day of Atonement was enacted for all time in Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross. Just as the Day of Atonement showed the Israelites that God was faithful to the covenant by dealing with their sin and inability to live up to that covenant, the sacrifice of Jesus is the ultimate atonement, in a sense, that shows God’s righteousness, his covenant faithfulness to the highest degree.
This falls in line perfectly with Paul’s overall point that the death and resurrection of Jesus demonstrate God’s covenant faithfulness. Through Jesus, God was making good on his promise to Abraham that there would be a faithful family of all nations, both Jews and Gentiles. In order for this to happen, though, something had to be done about sin. The shedding of the blood of the suffering but faithful servant is God’s response. This is how he fulfilled his promise. In doing so, God has not only dealt with sin once-and-for-all but he has demonstrated his incredible patience and forbearance by not dealing with rebellious Gentiles and unfaithful Israel in the way that their sin deserved.
God presented Jesus, says Paul, as this sacrifice. He uses the word “presented” that was associated with the act of the priests presenting the showbread on the altar in the Temple. Thus, Paul has combined three powerful points of imagery. The cover of atonement (or mercy seat), the presentation of the showbread, and the shedding of blood. It all adds up to make the point that God has truly made forgiveness available through the blood of Jesus and that this was all to be received in a new way. It was to be received in the way that God had always intended and expected, by faith. Paul will get to that in more detail in chapter 4 but for right now he is content to simply make the statement and let it speak for itself.
To understand what Paul is saying fully in verse 26, then, we have to remember that the way the term “justify” (and all of it’s related terms) was used in two senses. The most important aspect of justification was the final declaration that God would make at the day of judgment. He will declare on that day once-and-for-all who his people are, who is standing in the right before him. But the other aspect of justification was how to tell who those people were in the present. Who did God justify in the present and what was that justification based on? This justification in the present anticipated and brought forward that final future judgment into the present.
Through the Messiah, God has demonstrated his covenant faithfulness in the present age. The final verdict of that last day has, through the resurrection of Christ, been brought forward into the present so that no one has to wonder what the judgment on that final day will be. Those who enter into the life of Christ through the vehicle of faith (There is an unbreakable link in Paul’s mind between faith and entering into Christ which will become more explicit in chapter 6. We must be careful to understand this insoluble connection between faith and the faithful action of entering into Christ and not try to inappropriately disconnect the two as so many in the modern evangelical world do. This leads to a false distinction between faith and the obedient act of entering into the life of Christ that Paul would not have recognized) can know in the present that they have been justified. They have been declared to be in the right and given access to the one true family of God. This declaration stands as a sure guarantee for those who stand in Christ before God on the final day. Thus the sign of justification, the uniform (so to speak) of the people of God is those who live by faith in the life of the Messiah. Theologian NT Wright declares that the meaning of justification by faith is that “when anyone believes in the gospel, God declares that he or she is truly one of those who will be vindicated in the future.” Doing the works of the law that separated the Jews out from everyone else, Paul wanted to make clear, are not the marks of justification in the present age. If you want to know the verdict of the future in the present, if you want to know who the people of God are, then look for those who have died to self and are living by faith a crucified life in Christ (Gal. 2:20).
Devotional Thought
In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God has shown himself to be faithful to his covenant, to be just in dealing with sin; and to be compassionate on those who would appeal in faith to the life of the Messiah rather than their own merit. When we consider all of that, is there any better reason than to spend some extra time today in fervent praise of the almighty God?
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