Romans 3-Getting Stripped

It's a fear most people have... the realization that you are naked. We have nightmares about this.

In junior high it was called "de-pants-ing." Which is the act of a junior high boy running up behind an unsuspecting fellow and pulling down their gym shorts and running away while laughing... humiliating.

The gospel, in a sense, de-pants us. Let me explain.

Every human being is clothing themselves in their behaviors, decisions, morality, and do-gooding. This can be called dressing ourselves in a right way. It's our ability to rightly align ourselves with the world. For instance, if you are a nice guy, you treat others with respect, you have some manors, open doors for people, leave good tips, compliment people, etc... then you are a good citizen of earth. You are right in the eyes of the world.

The opposite is to be out of wack. If you are selfish, and mean, and short-tempered, and rude, and cruel then the world calls you a bad person. You are out of line with the way the world should be. You have clothed yourself in unrighteousness.

So on the one hand, the good guy has put on an outfit of goodness. The bad guy, has put on an outfit of badness. We are dressed in either righteousness or wrong-ness.

The gospel comes along and depants us of our righteousness. "Where then is boasting" it asks (Romans 3:27)? You can not boast in your attire. You cannot brag in your own goodness. The gospel says that your best dress is inadequate. You will not be able to stand before God in all of your "Sunday best." They are filthy rags to Him. So, God is not impressed by your church attendance, your long prayers, your Bible memorization, your concern for social justice, your bible study, or your doctrinal precision, or any other "Christian" thing. He also is not impressed with your clean vocabulary, or your christian radio, or your movie and television watching rating system. He is not impressed with the way you dress your life up. That is stripped from you. The only dress that is impressive to God is the robe of righteousness. The only way to get the right attire is to borrow Christ's. He gives it to us freely by His grace.

We get stripped. We get rightly clothed. He gets worshiped.

In fact for eternity we will all stand around and boast about the grace of Jesus Christ. Nobody will talk about their "christian" performance in heaven. Nobody will talk about the size of their ministry, or the perfection of their behaviors that they achieved before they died. We will boast for eternity about the glorious Lamb that took our sin and gave His righteousness. We will boast about Christ. We are stripped of boasting about anything else.