THE GREATEST HUMAN CRY

Romans 3:21-24
November 6, 1994
Bob Bonner

The greatest cry of the human race, the craving or central addiction of every individual, including every individual reading this, is to know that we have value and worth. When a person does not sense that he or she is approved or possesses significance, or a person suddenly discovers that those things upon which they had based their confidence or identity or worth has been taken from them and they no longer possess the worth or approval they once had, the results can be disastrous.

Donnie Moore was one of the most outstanding pitchers of baseball during the mid 1980’s. Many felt that he was the pitcher primarily responsible for the California Angel’s bid for the division pennant and the possible berth in the World Series. However, in the final game of the playoffs for the division title, Donnie Moore, after having an outstanding year as a pitcher, placed one ball a mere six inches too much over the plate, and watched it hit for a game winning home run, knocking the Angels out of the pennant race.

Not only for the next five minutes, did the world see on instant replay Donnie Moore’s error, but for weeks to follow, people read about it in the Los Angeles Times. Months later, whenever Donnie Moore was interviewed, he was questioned about that ill-fated pitch. Donnie Moore was devastated. Inside, he was a crushed person. He was six inches from winning the game and being a hero. Instead, he was the goat.

Donnie Moore’s career never escaped the bondage of that mistake and failure. The next year, he was determined to never make that kind of mistake again. As a result of being too careful and afraid of risking putting the ball in too good of a place over the plate, Donnie Moore’s effectiveness as an aggressive strike-out pitcher declined. Before the year was out, he was traded from the Angels. Within two years, Donnie Moore was out of baseball. All he ever heard about was the mistake of that one pitch. He remembered nothing about his successes, just his mistake. As far as he was concerned, his life was over. He was a failure.

Depressed and defeated, despairing of life, only two years after he was being pointed to as one of the most successful pitchers in the big leagues, Donnie Moore put a gun to his head and took his life.

For some, this may appear to be an isolated or extreme example of the power that others approval or our level of performance has upon our lives, but I assure you, it is not. Before I show you why this is not such an extreme example, let’s think about why this craving for knowing that we have value or worth has become so great. For only as we understand why and how this craving began, can we begin to understand the solution that the Apostle Paul begins to give us in this passage of scripture. 

A person was designed by God as follows: as we look at ourselves and how God created us, we are first and foremost, a spirit. The key to our entire identity and value as people rests in our understanding of who we are, primarily, as a spirit. As spirits, we possess or have a soul, that lives in a body. All three make up who we are but the key is our identity spiritually.

Our body is visible and our spirit and soul are invisible. Our souls and our spirits possess the power to think, feel and make decisions. The difference between our soul and our spirits, is that our soul primarily refers to our personality---that which makes you, you. Your giftedness, your talents, your experiences, your temperament, your leadership style, etc. Your spirit on the other had, is that part of you that was designed to commune with and have a relationship with God. It is the ultimate control center of your being. It is from here that you ultimately decide what you will and will not do.

Beginning with Adam and Eve, the key to our value and worth rested in the fact that we were alive spiritually and had a relationship with God. In fact, according to Genesis 2, God actually lived in our spirits when He breathed His “breath of life” into our beings. The term for breath does not just refer t oxygen, but literally to God’s very spirit. His spirit was joined with our spirit and we were made alive as spiritual begins. As a result of this, we were enabled to commune with Him. We derived our sense of worth and value from our relationship with Him. In this state, we were totally approved of and accepted by God. We had value and worth. There was nothing we had to do in order to prove our worth. We were fully pleasing to God.

Then something called sin entered the human race.  According to the scriptures, the resultant effect of sin entering the human race was that our spirits died. No longer could God dwell inside of us. God is and always will be holy and cannot be linked personally to that which is unholy. So, after sin entered the human race, the holy God withdrew His spirit from us, unholy sinners. Ever since that time, even though we have been living human beings, we have been born spiritually dead. Before, we were empowered by God to do that which was right. But after the fall, when we died spiritually, we lacked God’s enablement and were left to our own control. Our identity went from being holy and acceptable beings to sinners and unacceptable in God’s sight. Where as God was in control of our lives before, the power of sin is now driving our lives. Oh, we can do some good things. But we can not defeat sin in our lives. It controls us. Ever since that time when we were once approved of by God we now try to find or earn our approval or value or worth other ways.

The evidence of that spiritual death and not having a relationship with God, according to Romans 1, is that mankind has suppressed the truth about God. We refuse to seek Him out or to allow Him to take control of our lives or to be talked about in our schools. We live as though He doesn’t exist. We deliberately ignore Him and the rules of morality He has placed in every person’s conscience. Every one of us deliberately chooses wrong. Rather than seek God and find our worth in Him, as the human race, we try to find meaning and purpose and value in life from other sources, like people, our jobs, our hobbies, our sports, our possessions, or reaching lofty goals, etc.

Here is just one proof of our trying to find value in life other than from a relationship with God. I call it, “The Big Lie”. As you look at this formula, consider it for yourselves. I challenge you to deny that it is not true of you, or that you have not to some degree accepted this big lie for yourself. If you do not think this is true of you right now, then just put it on the back burner and think about it for a few days, in light of some of the indicators we will be looking at in a moment. Look at it later, because you will see that it is at the root of almost every emotional problem and wrong action or attitude or improper though you possess. The lie is this:

My self worth is based on two things: first, it is based on a standard. By that I mean, that each of us has either developed our own or accepted someone else’s standard whom we admire, like a parent, a coach, a professor. On the basis of this standard, you measure your success and in turn your value by your ability to live up to or perform well according to that standard. Your standard could even be a standard that a religion has passed on to you, or a standard that you believe God has set. The point is, that our lives and the degree to which we may feel worthwhile or successful is often times controlled by us living up to some standard of performance. The standard could be one of amassing wealth or earning a respectable position in society, or receiving as award, or entering the history books. Or, it may be ladies, that you only feel good about yourself and are able to relax in your home if you know that every spec of dirt is removed. You may see yourself as a good worthwhile person and have value because you keep a clean or orderly house or a clean car.

As a result of this, we all live under a subtle or slight fear of failing to live up to this standard. Because if we fail and don’t live up to this standard, we sense that our worth has been decreased. Often times, the pressure to perform reveals itself in “perfectionism”. Not just the desire to do things well, but it is an unacceptable drivenness or unwillingness to not fail. It is the compelling force to perform perfectly or reach a goal. This drivenness toward perfectionism can rob our joy from us. We see it in our work, or in our being punctual, or in our house cleaning skills or appearance and more. Perfectionists are highly motivated, but often times their motivation comes from a desperate attempt to avoid the low sense of worth that comes from failing.

For others, their need for approval is revealed in their being so afraid or anxious that they might fail or not perform well that they avoid taking any risks at all. This way they won’t fall below their standard of success.

Sometimes we reveal our addiction to performance when we become angry or resentful of others especially when their ineptness makes us look bad or prevents us from living up to our standard or reaching a goal that is important to our sense of value. We become enraged and blow up at everything and everybody.

Depression is another sign of this performance trap. Depression generally is a result of anger turned inward when we fail. We become depressed at a sense of los of value or worth because we have not lived up to our performance standard, which was supposed to make us feel good about ourselves. Sometimes the pain of not living up to a standard becomes so great that people mask their pain in substance abuse. And if that doesn’t solve it, they may even take their lives, like Donnie Moore.

The second factor of this “big lie” formula is that we base our sense of worth upon the opinions of others. Rather than looking at a standard that may not involve anyone else, this factor of the approval or opinions of others can dominate our lives. It can be, as it has been for years in my own life, the opinion of my father. What my Dad thought of me just about controlled my life, until I found true freedom in Christ. Now, it is still important, but it doesn’t control me. For others, it maybe a spouse, a coach, a community leader, a friend, a child.

The importance of this factor of the opinion of others reveals its control over how we value our lives when we experience rejection from those significant people whose opinion we value most. When a person experiences rejection, and in turn becomes angry or hostile or vengeful, you know they have bought into the big lie. When you see someone who is co-dependent or easily manipulated, or someone who feels the need to control someone else, like a player by a coach, a student by a teacher, a spouse by their spouse or a parent by a child, you know that that person is living their life on the basis of this lie, that their worth is based upon the opinions of others.

For awhile, as long as one can maintain the approval of others and live up to a standard, they are confident and feel good about themselves. They may be even pretty arrogant and hard to live with because they are so successful. For some, it takes an entire life time before they realize that their whole life has been based on this lie. Sometimes they only discover the truth of this lie when they fail at something or are rejected. I discovered this the first and only time I was fired from a job. The later in life that one discovers that they have been living under this lie, it seems the more devastating the reality of it becomes.

On the other hand, some people don’t have the skills or successes or the shelves filled with trophies to stand behind to feel good about themselves. For them, from an early age they have lived a defeated life, starved for attention. Their insecurities are obvious to all who watch them.

For many when they realize that they just can’t earn other people’s acceptance or live up to some performance standard, they turn back to religion or God, hoping they can earn His approval. But the tragic thing is that for most religious people I have met, and even more tragic, many Christians who should know better, these people do exactly what Paul was telling us back in Romans 2. They try to earn God’s approval. They mistakenly think that maybe God will accept them, if they are religious and really try to be good. But as we have seen these past weeks, no person can live a good enough life to live up to God’s perfect standard, so as to earn His approval.

There you have in a nutshell, the basis for all our deep seated hurts and emotional problems. Because of sin, we have ignored God. We have turned our back on Him and lived as though He doesn’t exist. In turn, we look to others for their approval by living up to some standard of performance. Pretty soon, it dawns on us that we can’t even live up to our own standards or always earn the approval of others. We are cornered. We are trapped. So, when all else fails, we turn back to God and try to prove to Him, that we are really good people. But God has been saying all along in these first three chapters of Romans, “Wake up! You have a serious problem called sin. Unless this sin problem is taken care of in your life, in the core of your being, your spirit, it is impossible for you to have a relationship with Me. And there is nothing you can do on your own to solve that sin problem.”

What’s the end result when we finally understand this? The Apostle Paul states it for us in the last part of Ephesians 2:12, “You were without hope and without God in the world”. Internally, whether you never graduated from high school or whether you are a professional, sometime when you were alone there was this hopeless sense deep within that said, “I am not right. I am not a whole person. I am not satisfied. My person or my life has really no or little value.” Some of you sitting right here and now feel that way at this very moment. You may even want to know God, but something might be telling you, “You aren’t worthy enough for God to reveal Himself to you.” You may feel trapped.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the end result of everything Paul has been teaching us thus far in Romans. The result of sin, the result of turning our backs on God will eventually bring us to this dead end. We find ourselves detached from the One who created us and we have lost our sense of identity, value and worth. And our inner man cries out, “Is there any hope? Is there any solution to find true value and worth? Is there any other way to live life apart from the “Big lie”? Is there any other way to get reconnected to the living God and have our spirits made alive again? Is there any way for us to be made whole, once and for all so that we don’t have to live life with a sense of defeat, failure and hopelessness?

God says “Yes”! He says, “let me show you the ‘bigger truth’”. Jesus said, in direct reference to what we are studying here, that “you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” By “truth”, he didn’t mean all the axioms of physics or math or the information contained the local library. In context, by “truth” Jesus meant the very thing that the Apostle Paul is declaring here for us beginning with Romans 3:21-8:39. He begins it with these two words, in 3:21, “But now…”. Those are words that come with a sigh of relief. In light of what has been explained in the first two and a half chapters, these words introduce words of hope. These words express to us God’s solution to mankind’s problem of sin, which has led to a sense of lostness as it regards one’s value and worth.

In verse 21, Paul shows us God’s solution to mankind’s failure. Then, in verses 22-24, Paul begins to explain how we can take advantage of God’s solution.

Let’s begin by looking at God’s solution to mankind’s need, in verse 21. Paul explains, “But now apart from the Law [meaning apart from mankind trying to earn God’s approval and acceptance through living up to standard of performance such as trying to obey all of the Laws of the OT] {the} righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets”.

The key word for the entire book of Romans is this word “righteousness”. From the very outset of Romans (1:17), Paul has been talking about the righteousness of God. Righteousness, as it is used in the book of Romans, whether it refers to God or to us, does not refer to what you do or what God does, but who you are or who God is. In other places in the scriptures this term “righteousness” may refer to righteous acts. But here it refers to who one is.

 When it refers to God, “righteousness” refers to God as just or “having it all together” in a good sense. When “righteousness” is used in reference to us it refers to us being made whole, approved, accepted, just, and having it together. In other words, if God is righteous, it means that there is nothing wrong or missing in God. If an individual is unrighteous, it means that something is desperately wrong with that person and something is missing.

According to this verse, as righteousness concerns God, the original language tells us two things. It is saying that God is not only righteous, but that He is the source of all righteousness. In other words, if anyone wants to become whole, or to get their act together and to be approved, He is the only source through which righteousness will be received.

The fact that God is righteous and is the only source of righteousness and the only one who can make others righteous is nothing new. Paul says, “this has been clearly explained in the Old Testament through the law and the prophets”.

Note: what is it that we, who are dead in spirit, need? We need to be made alive and to be made righteous or acceptable or approved or whole. We already have seen that this is something we can’t do for ourselves, because due to sin, we are unrighteous and dead spiritually or incapable of changing our state. But none the less, we need to be and feel approved. We need to get rid of the effects of sin from the key portion of who we are, our spirits. What we need is not our own righteousness. What we need is His righteousness in our lives. Our spirits need to return to that previous state (that Adam and Eve knew) whereby we know that we are approved and right with God. And that is the very point behind this verse and the verses to follow. God’s solution to our problem of needing approval is to clear up our sin problem at the core of our being and to give us His very own righteous nature. For when we have that, then we are made spiritually alive and have His approval.

Let’s see more specifically how it is that we can obtain this gift of righteousness from God. Let’s see how we can once and for all be approved of by God, to be accepted by God, never to be rejected. Let’s see how God meets the greatest cry of the human heart.

In verse 22 Paul starts telling us how God’s righteousness becomes our righteousness.  He states, “even {the} righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe”. This verse is declaring that God wants to one and for all give to us His righteousness. He wants to permanently impute to us the state of being righteous, that no matter what we do, good or bad, we, in our spirits, are fully pleasing to God and we can never become less pleasing or more pleasing to Him.

But how is the righteousness, this approval and spiritually coming alive passed on to us? Paul says it is through faith in Christ, and it is only “for all those who believe.” It is not something that is universally applied to every man, woman and child. Righteousness before God is only imputed or given to those who believe or put their complete trust in Jesus Christ and His work on their behalf upon the cross.

But that still leaves us with a question. What are we to believe about Jesus? In what way are we to trust Him if we want His righteousness? From the rest of scripture, the answer is to believe that He died to pay the price and penalty for our sin. We couldn’t remove the penalty of sin from our lives, our death spiritually—only God outside of us could pay for that penalty and then come to live in us to make us new persons, to make us righteous, alive and fully approved of by God.

Now, remember, righteousness is not a term used here to refer to what you do, but who you are. When a person believes in what Christ accomplished for us, and trust in Christ’s work on our behalf, we become righteous. Before Christ enters a person’s life, our identity was that we were sinners. But after Christ, we are no longer known as or identified as sinners, but as saints. No where in the New Testament is a believer ever called a sinner. He or she is only referred to as a saint. Now don’t misunderstand me to say that Christians don’t sin. We definitely do. But we are not looked upon as sinners by God. Our identity has been changed. And further more, we will see in chapters to come, that as we better understand the implications of our new identity, the natural result will be that the sinful habits and preoccupations become less of our lifestyle. Not because we are trying in our own resources to remove sin from our lives. It happens due to other causes.

Paul says, elsewhere, in 2 Corinthians 5:17 [circles] that when a person puts their trust in Jesus Christ and what He did on their behalf, that person immediately becomes a new creation. We are not immediately new in that we have new bodies. We are not immediately new in our souls that we have new personalities. We are new in that we have new identities, spiritually. We are “born again”, made spiritually alive, new. And because of this change, regardless of what is going on in our bodies or souls, we are approved, accepted, forgiven, deeply loved, fully pleasing children of God, whom He will never again reject.

There is a problem which we will get into in the up coming chapters in Romans, and that is, as long as we live in these present bodies, we will still carry around with us, some of the baggage of our old lives before we came to Christ. We will still struggle with old sin patters and temptations. But not to worry, God has provided a solution for that as well!

Paul continues in verse 22, “for there is no distinction”. He means two things by that: first, that there is no distinction in that we have all needed this sense of approval from God. We have all needed to be made righteous before God and to find freedom from the sin that so entangles our lives.

Secondly, there is no distinction as to whom this offer of being made righteous is given. It’s for everybody. Why? Because, as verse 23 states, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”.

Paul continues in verse 24 to explain how it is that we obtain this righteousness. We only have time to look at part of it this week. The rest we will see next week. Paul states, “being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.”

Here we come to the first of one of the most important terms found in the scriptures. Many do not fully understand the meaning of this term nor its radical implications for their lives. The term to which I refer is “justification”. This term is not a synonym for forgiveness. It includes the concept of forgiveness and much more. It is a term taken from the legal world, to which Paul adds his own meaning.

This term literally means “to be declared righteous”. When a sinner believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, he is declared to be righteous. Why? Because he now possesses God’s very own righteousness in his person, his spirit, as a “gift of His grace”, Paul says. God does not just consider the believer to be righteous, He makes the believer righteous. [circles]

But how? Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:21. He says, “He [God] made Him [Christ] who knew no sin {to be} sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” When we put our trust in Christ, God exchanges our old sin nature for Christ’s righteousness, making our new nature, our new identity righteous.

I once heard a conference speaker berate a group of Christian high school students for their secret sins. He told them, “Don’t you know that someday you are going to die and God is going to flash all your sins upon a giant screen in heaven for all the world to see?” How tragically this speaker misunderstood God’s gracious gift of justification.

Justification carries no guilt with it, and has no memory of past sins. Christ paid for all of our sins at the cross---past, present and future. Hebrews 10:17 says, “And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” We are completely forgiven by God. We are forgiven and made righteous because of Christ’s sacrifice; therefore, we are pleasing to God in spite of our failures.  This reality can replace our fear of failure and our fears of rejection with peace, hope and joy.

To put it in a contrasting formula to the “Big Lie”, here is the “Bigger truth”. The Christian’s self worth and approval depends upon two factors: First is Christ’s performance on the cross in our behalf. Our approval is no longer based upon our performance, but solely upon His. Which, by the way, removes any bragging rights from us. Jesus did the work, not us.

The second factor of the equation is God’s approval, not man’s. Since God is the sovereign authority over all of the universe, it matters not what others have to say about our approval, it only matters what God says. And because of Christ’s work on our behalf, God will always approve of the Christian. You are righteous. You are approved. You cannot be any more or any less approved of by God than the moment you took Jesus Christ as your savior and Lord. You cannot even displease God, as a Christian. 

All of our lives, we have lived under the fear of failing and losing the approval of others we value. Proverbs 29:25 tells us, “The fear of man brings a snare, but he who trust in the Lord will be exalted.” 

The new believer, when he or she puts his or her confidence in what the Lord has accomplished for them, for the first time in his or her life, they are free to live as they ought, out of love and appreciation for the Lord. They are lifted up to freedom. He or she is even free to fail, knowing that they will never be rejected. The more they understand their new identity in Christ, the more they will want to please God. 

Now, allow me to take a moment to explain this concept about pleasing God and what pleasing God does and does not mean. Imagine for a moment a child who loves his grandfather. This grandfather is an old grouch, but none the less, this little insecure child idolizes his grandfather and wants to please him. So the child surprises the grandfather by early one morning washing the old grouches car. When he is all done, the child gets his grandfather and says, “Come look. I have a special treat for you. I washed your car.” The grandfather comes out, inspects the car, and finds that the panel behind the rear wheel still has dirt on it. Rather than saying to the child, “Thank you.” He points to the dirty portion over looked by the child and says, “That’s still dirty. Look kid, you’ve got to learn that when you do a job, do it right!” What happens to the kid? His heart is broken, because his grandfather was not pleased and hence, revealed disapproval rather than approval.

In our English language, the expression “to please someone” carries with it the idea of approval.  Not so with the biblical term for “please”. The biblical term “to please” has nothing to do with trying to earn or maintain someone’s approval. It is synonymous with “to bring honor to, to exalt or to bring glory to someone.”

Now the reason I tell you that, is because for years, many of us as believers have been unnecessarily trying to earn God’s approval or to maintain His approval on the basis of this idea of living pleasing to God. Verses like Hebrews 11:6 have been misunderstood and added to the confusion. It says, “And without faith it is impossible to please {Him}.” Because of not understanding what the Greek term for please really means, many of us have been on an unnecessary performance trip with God. We have been trying to please or gain his approval by practicing faith. But that is not what that verse is saying. That verse has nothing to do with acceptance or approval by God on the basis of practicing faith. It has everything to do with showing God honor and glory by living by faith. The author’s point is that the only way we can bring honor and glory to the Lord is to depend on Him, His resources and his principles by faith.

My friend, if you know Jesus Christ personally as your savior and Lord, you never have to be afraid of God not being fully pleased with you. He is already and forever as fully pleased with you as He possibly can be. Not because of your actions, but because of Christ’s actions on your behalf. And because Jesus is in you, specifically abiding in your spirit, your identity has changed. You have His power within you. He and you are linked together. Now, our actions can grieve Him, but we never do. And that is a big difference that we will better understand when we look at Chapter 7.

Maybe some of you are like I was. There was many a time growing up that I disappointed my earthly father whom I love. And by his body language, not so much by his words, he has shown me at times that he disapproved of me. And probably the only reason he put up with me or loved me was because he had to. He was my father. And I am sorry to say, but if you had to ask my kids if they ever felt the same way about their dad as I did about mine, they would probably tell you that maybe I communicated the same thoughts by my own actions.

Well, I am here to tell you that God never shakes his head at the believer, nor does he say in disgust or frustration, “What in the world am I going to do with you?! Tisk, Tisk, Tisk!” Instead, He says “I love you. You are precious to me, even though your actions break my heart.” And since I have learned that this is how God deals with me, I have made every effort to let my children know, their actions may break my heart, but I will always love and approved of them.

Now, when we say that the Christian is made righteous and approved, we don’t mean made righteous in character or that all we do is approved. Rather, we are made righteous concerning our identity. We have been given a new identity in our spirit. It is only as one realizes that one’s identity has truly been changed that one character begins to change.

For example: Take the orphan child of 12 who is living on his own under a bridge. He has no guardian or parents. The only way he manages to stay alive and get what he needs or wants is to steal. His whole identity and how he lives is based on himself being an orphan. Then one day, a very wealthy man, who is childless, spots this orphan boy and decides that he wants to adopt him, So he legally files all the necessary papers and adopts this boy. This boy no longer has to steal to stay alive or get what he wants, because his father’s resources will take care of him. This boy now has a new identity. He is no longer fatherless nor is he poor. He has a father who is rich. In reality, his every physical wish and need has been met.

However, this boy may struggle for some time with the reality that he is really adopted and that it is a permanent situation. It will be hard for him to believe that his identity is no longer a homeless orphan. He is an adopted child. Furthermore, he doesn’t understand that he has the right to charge at the store for any food or other wants he may have. Because he may not fully understand his new identity and the riches that are now his, he continues to steal. One day he gets caught, and then finally he learns that he does not need to steal anymore because of his new identity and rights that go along with it. As soon as he understands what his identity is and what are his resources, he quits stealing.

Whenever a person comes to Christ, that person’s identity is immediately changed, he or she is a new creation, but not necessarily is their character changed to match their identity. But eventually, their character will change, as they learn more about their new life.

The more we realize that we are fully approved of by God, because of what Christ has done for us, the less dependent we become on standards of performance or other’s opinion as our source of value. We can even learn to laugh at our mistakes, be patient with our own growth process. The more we see ourselves as children of God, in whom He is delighted, the less we live in fear of failure or disapproval.

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