“The death of Jesus was designed not solely to deliver us from sin and condemnation but also to demonstrate the righteousness of God and to vindicate His holiness and glorify His good name.

The way that God had governed the world from the fall of Adam to the birth of Christ made it look to many like God was unrighteous and unaffected by sin and indifferent to moral evil.

For centuries it appeared that God had been doing what Ps. 103:10 says he does: “He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities” (ESV).

In order to make known His greatness and the majesty of His holiness, God sent His Son to pay the price for sins committed and thereby vindicated and demonstrated the immeasurable worth of His glory.

Paul intends for us to see in the death of Christ, first and foremost, a declaration and demonstration of the unfathomable worth and infinite value of God. God is committed above all else to uphold and make known the glory of His name.

But there appears on the surface to be a miscarriage of justice in the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Prov. 17:15 we read that “the Lord detests” both “acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent.”

But if the gospel is that God justifies the ungodly (Rom. 4:5) and acquits the guilty, how does He escape this denunciation? Here we see the twofold challenge that God faces.

In the first place, He is committed to proving to everyone that He is in fact just, righteous, and holy. But second, he also desires to justify sinful men and women.

How can He do both and declare as righteous people who have belittled Him and disregarded Him and despised Him? How can He be the one who justifies (3:26) fallen and rebellious people and at the same time be seen as just and righteous Himself?

The solution is found in the death of Jesus as our substitute. The just God requires the maximum punishment for those who have despised Him. And Jesus endures that punishment. He satisfies the demands of justice. He quenches the wrath of God.

And on that basis God is free to impute the righteousness of Jesus to us and declare us justified when we put our faith in Him. In Rom. 4:5 Paul describes God as the one “who justifies the ungodly.”

But how can God declare as godly those who are ungodly? God can do it because a righteous substitute, Jesus, has lived the sinless life that they should have lived and didn’t, and He died the sacrificial death that they should have died but now don’t have to.

When God set forth Jesus as a propitiatory sacrifice on the cross, He was, as it were, answering His critics.

The death of Christ was not only a substitutionary sacrifice for sinners; it was also the public vindication of the justice and righteousness of God Himself.

God is just; God is righteous; the wages of sin is death; the undeniable public proof of these is the propitiatory suffering of Jesus.”

–Sam Storms, Romans, ed. Craig S. Keener and Holly Beers, Word and Spirit Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2024), 55-56.