No Excuses

To the day I die, I will always remember where I was and what I was doing on July 1^st, 1996.  I was recently graduated from high school and was reporting to Beast Barracks at West Point as a New Cadet for R-Day (Reception Day).  It was a hot, humid morning when my family and I gathered with the other incoming New Cadets and their families at Holledar Sports Center.  After being ushered into the basketball arena, we were welcomed to the Military Academy, given sixty seconds to say goodbye to our parents, and then whisked away to begin the transformation from civilian to soldier.   

Over the next 24-hours I would experience a whirlwind of blurred reality where my head was shaved, I was issued enough gear and uniforms to cripple a mule, reported to the dreaded “Cadet In The Red Sash,” assigned a barracks room, and trained on basic drill and ceremony and cadet customs and knowledge. 

The first thing I learned was that New Cadets and Plebes did not speak unless spoken to, and when spoken to there were only four authorized responses that every New Cadet must use:  Yes Sir; No Sir; No Excuse Sir; and Sir, I Do Not Understand.  Lord help you if you deviated from these responses unless given permission to do so. 

For a sarcastic kid just out of high school, it was maddening to be limited to responding with, “No Excuse Sir,” for any and every offense I could possibly stumble into out of ignorance, lack of experience, or willful disobedience.  

 Yet, everything that is done at West Point is done for a purpose. 

The point of the “No Excuse Sir,” response is to teach you to accept responsibility for failure.  It is to teach you that yes, you are a spaz, woefully inadequate, and in need of training and development.  You have broken the expectations provided by regulation and tradition.  These regulations and traditions are unyielding and inflexible.  There will be no excuses, there will be no attempt to squirm your way out of responsibility for failure, and there is no justification or defense.  You are guilty.  Own it.  No improvement can be made until that fact is accepted. 

In his epistle to the mixed congregation of Jewish and Gentile believers in Rome, Paul is about to make perhaps the most succinct articulation of the gospel in all of scripture.  He is going to do so by starting off with the bad news.  He is going to do so by taking away all excuses, justifications, or defenses that we might offer and present to us the unpleasant news that we are guilty under the Law.  

“Now we know that whatever the Law says, it speaks to those who are under the Law, so that every mouth may be closed and all the world may become accountable to God; because by works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.”

To this point in his epistle, Paul has condemned every listener in excruciating detail, using two and a half chapters to drive home the point that every person is without excuse before the Law and before God. 

Paul begins this condemnation by addressing his Gentile listeners. 

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.  For even though thy knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.  Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.” 

In other words, the Gentiles, those who did not know the God of Israel, were nonetheless guilty of idolatry.  Paul asserts that they naturally know by general revelation that God exists, that he is the creator of all things, and that he deserves their thanks and worship.  And yet, knowing this, they readily exchange the truth that man is God’s creature so that they might serve gods of their own creation, which they can fashion after themselves and control as they will. 

As a result of this idolatry, the Gentile in his original unbelieving state is bent toward depravity.  Paul gives us a pretty comprehensive list of the sins that they are all guilty of doing.  He says that they are filled with wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice.  They are gossips and slanderers, haters of God, and guilty of insolence, arrogance, boastfulness.  They are inventors of evil, they are disobedient to parents and authority.  They are without understanding, are untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful. 

When we look at this list it would be impossible to say that we do not qualify as sinners under one or more of these offenses before God.  For who does not engage in envy, or malice against his brother at some time or other?  Who has not engaged in slander or gossip or rebellion against authority?  Who has not proven themselves unloving or untrustworthy or unwilling to extend mercy to others at some point? 

The Gentile is left hanging his head in shame, as are we even today.

While the Jewish listener is likely exhorting Paul on to list more and more sins of which the Gentile is guilty, Paul suddenly turns his withering gaze toward them as well. 

“Therefore you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practices the same things.” 

Paul demonstrates God’s impartiality toward the Jewish listeners in his audience, showing their hypocrisy.

“For all who have sinned without the Law (the Gentiles) will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law (speaking to the Jews who have received the Law of Moses) will be judged by the Law; for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers of the Law will be justified.”

In other words, the Jews should not feel that just because they were God’s chosen people to receive the revelation of God’s moral law through the Torah that they will be judged differently than the Gentiles.  The Law doesn’t declare one righteous just because they possess it, one must follow the Law to be declared righteous by it. 

And just as the Jews may believe they have one last shred of hope that they might be declared righteous if they keep the Law, Paul destroys that hope too by demonstrating that they do not faithfully keep it. 

“But if you bear the name ‘Jew’ and rely upon the Law and boast in God, and know His will and approve the things that are essential, being instructed out of the Law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the immature, having in the Law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth, you therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself?  You who preach that one shall not steal, do you steal?  You who say that one should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?  You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?  You who boast in the Law, through your breaking the Law, do you dishonor God?” 

The implied answer to all of these questions is that, yes, the Jew also does all of these things and is declared a hypocrite by the same Law that they take so much pride in having received from God at Mount Sinai. 

Paul later quotes a series of Psalms just to seal the deal with his listeners that even the Old Testament provides a witness that they are indeed lawbreakers, every one of them. 

“There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; all have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, there is not even one.”

And so we arrive at our initial point.  No flesh, none, not one person will be justified thru our faithfulness to the law.  We are naked before God and guilty of sin, and we know it.  The wrath of God rests righteously upon us due to our transgressions. 

“No excuse Sir.”

There is no other response that one may utter in the court of God’s justice. 

And yet, Paul now tells us of a righteousness that comes not from faithful obedience to the Law, but a righteousness that comes from God Himself.  Not a righteousness of works, but a righteousness by faith. 

“But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith.” 

It is this God that sent His Son, who though he shared equally in the divinity of the Father, humbled himself and took on flesh.  He dwelled among us and lived a righteous life.  He fulfilled the Law in His own flesh through His obedience to the Father, so that he might be presented as spotless and blameless in God’s sight for our sake.  When the fullness of time had come, Christ allowed himself to be arrested, publicly humiliated, beaten, and crucified under the condemnation of the Law.  He paid the price for our sin with His flesh and His blood so that when He had born all our sin, he could say with certainty, “It is finished.” 

After three days, Christ was risen from the grave and appeared to his disciples and many others, demonstrating his victory over the power of sin, death, and the devil. 

“This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”  

So although we stand before God without excuses, we no longer stand before God without a defense.  Our defense is that Christ has atoned for our sin.  Our justifier, the one by whom we are declared righteous, is Christ. 

We receive this righteousness not by our works or ability to fulfill the unyielding requirements of the Law, but by faith in the One who fulfilled the Law and bore the curse of the Law for our sake. 

“Where then is boasting?  It is excluded.  By what kind of law?  Of works?  No, but by a law of faith.  For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.”

In Christ, we have been declared righteous by faith.  Again, although we have no excuses, we have a rock-solid defense.  We have the stone the builders rejected which has become the cornerstone.  We have Christ crucified for our sins.  Amen.