Some politicians have argued for a "level playing-field" - though one suspects they aren't suggesting everyone should receive the same income as they do!
Jean-Jacques Rousseau began his Social Contract (Du Contrat Social, 1762) with the words, "Man was born free, but he is everywhere in chains." Rousseau died in 1778, eleven years before the storming of the Bastille. But his work became part of the movement that led to the French revolution with its cry for "liberty, equality, fraternity."
In Romans 3, Paul wrote about a different kind of equality. He concluded that everyone is equal before God - equally guilty. Some may be degraded sinners, others may be earnestly good-living sinners. Yet all are sinners - whether Jew or Gentile. The whole world is therefore under God's judgment. But the free gift of God's grace puts people right with him through Christ Jesus. Jesus has paid our punishment, has died our death, so that we can be put right with God through faith.
However we view ourselves from the human perspective, we all have an equal bias against us because of sin. And we all have an equal bias in our favour because of the great love of God poured out for us in the coming, the life the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In chapter 4, Paul develops the theme of the importance of faith. We still have the option of whether we want to be dealt with on our own merits or on the basis of the gift of God's grace. On our own merits, not one of us can be made right with God. By faith, by our dependence on what God has done for sinners in his Son, Jesus Christ, we can all be put right with God.
Paul refers to the example of Abraham whom God accepted as righteous because of his faith, not because of the things he did. And, Paul notes, he was accepted as righteous before he was circumcised - which makes him the father of all people of faith, whether Jew or Gentile.
Incidentally, James is often seen to be at variance with Paul on this point. What James was saying was that Abraham showed his faith through his actions. Abraham's faith wasn't dead or passive, it was alive and active. If I am flying to Brisbane, I can't take myself there. When I arrive, I can't boast, "Look at what I've done!" Yet if faith in aeroplanes is just an intellectual exercise, just a theoretical affirmation about their existence and nature, I will never get further than the gate lounge. In the same way, faith in God must actively accept and depend on the redemptive work of Christ - leading to a life which is constantly acting on that basis. Works can never save us from our sins, but a faith that is real will lead to a whole lifetime of works.
"God will credit righteousness," Paul says, "to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification" (4.24-25).
It is important for us to grasp this final verse of chapter 4. It is the key to understanding chapter 5. All of us have some appreciation that Christ died for our sins. The cross is a central Christian symbol and forgiveness is a central theme. Paul is here emphasising the resurrection - Jesus was "raised to life for our justification." Forgiveness is the important entry-point, but God's purpose is new life, a new relationship with him. The term for this is "justification" - "justification by faith." Sometimes we have talked about it as if it merely means being forgiven, whereas it really speaks of the restored relationship with God. Keep your focus, not just on the cross - and forgiveness - but on the resurrection - and the new relationship with God.
The lad was in the far country. He had sinned against heaven and against his father. He was no longer worthy to be called his son. Yet he received his father's gift of grace. He received what he didn't deserve. He was forgiven, of course. But he was also restored, brought back into a right relationship with father and household. The robe and sandals and ring weren't just to replace his beggar's rags. They tell us that his father received him back with honour as a son. Much learning and growing would no doubt have to follow. What about his attitude to the farm-work? What about the fractured relationship with his elder brother? What would he now do to heal the hurts he had caused? Yet he was received back on the basis of the father's grace. And he didn't turn back to the far country - he accepted that grace by faith.
"Therefore since we have been justified through faith," Paul begins chapter 5, there are certain consequences. One of them is "peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." The rebel sinner has stopped his fighting against God and is accepted.
Paul must have often recalled his Damascus road experience - persecuting Jesus, kicking against the pricks of conscience as the Holy Spirit strove to bring him to faith. Even as that faithful disciple Ananias laid hands on him so that he might receive his sight back, there must have been the overwhelming awareness of peace with God. In a short space of time the antagonist became the protagonist. The good-living sinner who knows that his life just doesn't reach the mark, who is conscience-stricken because of honest failure and sin… knows the beautiful peace of forgiveness as the love of God pours over his.
By faith, Paul says, we now live in this experience of God's grace. God hasn't fully worked out his plan in us yet, but "we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God." We all fell short of the glory of God, but now we're going to reach it. Even the sufferings that happen to us along the way will produce perseverance, developing our character and feeding this hope - this confident expectation. And it's not an idle hope - a pie in the sky when you die. Already "God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us."
This is not just a nice feeling. "God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" The symbol of the cross and the sacrament of the Lord's Supper are both reminders of this central truth of what God has done. "We have now been justified [put right with God] by his blood..." That means that we are "saved from God's wrath through him." In other words we are no longer God's enemies, since "we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son."
When someone is convicted of murder, the press often notes their response to the verdict of "guilty". Some react with a great deal of emotion. Others are stony-faced.
Matthew tells us that "when Judas, who has betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse…" and then went and hanged himself (Matt. 27.1-10).
Or we think of that soliloquy of Lady Macbeth, "Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One- two -why then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?"
The judge isn't looking for the person who feels guilty, but for the person who actually committed the crime. The accused may be guilty without feelings of guilt at all.
Justification isn't saying that Jesus has fixed up my feelings - so I can stop worrying about it. Justification says that Christ has died for my sins. When I have believed in Jesus, God has made me right with himself. God regards me "just as if I'd" never sinned.
Forgiven - put right with God - peace with God - the confident hope of becoming what God has always meant us to be - no longer enemies but God's friends.
Thanks be to God!
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