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The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
April 19th, 2009

“Religion and The Good News”
The Letter to the Romans 1:16
I. Ancient and Present Religion
II. The Word “Gospel”
III. The Religion of Religion
IV. The Bad News and the Need for Salvation
V. The Supremacy of the Gospel

Introduction

Good morning. Last week was Easter and we had a great Sunday worshipping Jesus together. During the sermon portion of our service we looked at the life and experience of Thomas the Twin, one of Jesus’ disciples who was a loyalist, a realist, and skeptic until he encountered the risen Jesus. Last time I checked there were still a lot of skeptics about Christianity. We discovered last week that Jesus can handle skepticism.

Some of you are fairly new to our church, new to our city, or even a new Christian…some of you may have been a part of this church for awhile, been in this city awhile, and maybe been a Christian for a long time. Others of you may just be checking out our church, not sure how long you’re going to be in our city, and maybe are not a Christian yet. Today I want to speak on a topic which has relevance for each one of these groups of people…the topic of religion and the gospel or the good news. I’d like to begin by reading a verse from the Bible which in a very succinct way addresses this issue, Romans 1:16 “I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.”

Now since I just sort of ripped that verse out of the Bible without reading what came before it or came after it…let me back up for a second and briefly mention to you the story of this verse. It is sort of the thesis line for a treatise in the Bible regarding Christianity and this book or letter was sent to the city of Rome, which in many ways is like our city, San Diego is today.

Ancient and Present Religion

Ancient Rome was a very beautiful city. Located in the midst of seven hills, it had a water aqueduct running through it providing numerous drinking fountains. It had sublime architectures like the Coliseum and the Pantheon. Rome was the military base of the republic. It had the best universities and the best shopping of any place in the world at the time.

On top of it all, running through the life and culture of Rome was sort of a melting pot of different religions. Some people were into worshipping Juventas, the goddess of youth. Others were into Diana, the goddess of the hunt, or Mars, the god of war. One of the most popular was the sex god Artemis who was supposedly the daughter of Zeus and sister of Apollo. Then there were the Jews living in Rome, who worshipped Yahweh, the God of a book called the Torah.

Like Rome, our city here, San Diego is a very beautiful and diverse city. We have some of the world’s nicest beaches, zoos, parks, and museums. Our whether is perfect 364 days of the year. We have a huge navy, marine, and coast guard military presence. We have four major universities: UCSD, USD, SDSU, and PLNU. And we are one of the top vacation spots in the country.

And like Rome, San Diego is a melting pot of religions. There are several Jewish synagogues, Islamic worship centers, a bunch of Catholic and protestant churches, a major Bahá’í center, a Taoist sanctuary, a brilliantly white Mormon temple, we’ve got Hare Krishna temples, Buddhist temples, and we’ve even got a new age self-realization temple up in Encinitas. Those are just the official religions, without even considering all the fringe spiritualists around from Tarot Card readers to Psychics to crystal channelers…who get together for readings, séances and special book readings.

Considering this strong religious presence combined with the very outdoorsy nature of most the people who live in San Diego makes it a very spiritually minded and spiritually conscious city. It is no wonder that the most popular idea around about religion here is that each one is sort of touching one part of an elephant…some have a got a leg, some a trunk, some a tail…we all got a piece of the elephant its just that most of us don’t know we’re holding on to an elephant.

Now because of that I think today we have a situation here in San Diego, which is really the situation of California and the west in general, but a situation where we are faced with a dilemma when it comes to religion. It is into such a setting that the words of Romans 1:16 comes to life, “I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation.”

Here is the question, what is this thing called “the gospel”? Is it another religion being introduced and considered among the rest? Or is the gospel something different? Is “the gospel” simply another form of spiritual belief like the others but this one works better for some? Or is the gospel something different? Is the Bible, or Paul, the guy who wrote this book to Rome simply introducing a new philosophy and merely saying this one is superior and makes more sense? Or is the gospel something different?

Let me try and answer that question or those questions in two ways. I want to talk to you about the word “gospel” and then talk about the nature of religion itself and if there is actually any merit to the claim of Mahatma Gandhi who said, “all religions are fundamentally equal.”

The Word “Gospel”

So first, the word “gospel.” The word gospel is a funny word, usually only used by Christians. Until just this year I don’t think I had ever heard it used outside of a Christian context. But the cover of the magazine Rolling Stone last November had the band AC/DC on the cover for their new album and the title of the article about it was, “The Gospel of Rock & Roll.” Then just the other day I was in a shoe store in Hillcrest…a couple Japanese dudes in there made a comment to the guy who was working about how much they liked the store. The guy’s response caught me by surprise. He said, “Thanks, spread the gospel.” I don’t think he meant something about Jesus.

The English word “gospel” is an English Anglo-Saxon word that developed sometime before the printing of the first English Bible in 1535. It was most likely a very common word by that time…but here is where the word “gospel” came from.

Before the word “gospel” when a person would give a speech it was often called a spell if the speech was good. Not like a magic spell, but charactistic of what was happening when a good speech was given…a large group of people are quiet with all their eyes and attention on one person who is talking. It was deemed a “good speech” when it had a certain kind of effect on the people listening…most likely penitence, jubilee, or just being mesmerized. Apparently leading up to the time of the Protestant Reformation and during it, this is exactly what happened much of the time when preachers would give speeches about Jesus from the Bible.

So what was normally called a good speech began to be referred to as a god-speech or god-spell when the speaker was talking about Jesus. Saying god-spell was either apparently too much work or just freaked people out…so they eventually just shortened it to the word, “gospel.” This still happens all the time today, this shortening of words or phrases. People from the south are really good at it. Think of the word, giterdon, short for “get her done.” Or ya’ll, you all. Thus, by the time an English Bible was made, the translators, whenever they saw the one Greek word “good-news,” they just translated it gospel because that is what everyone had been saying for a while.

Now maybe that is little super nerdy for you all…but here is the point. The word behind gospel, what the word gospel really means is “good news.” That is important. Here’s why.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is by definition an announcement. It is news. Like the announcement of the birth of a baby, or the headline of a war ending, it is a message of news that is good! You hear it and/or read it and there is excitement and joy, and awe.

So let me catch us up here. This thesis statement at the beginning of this letter to Rome, the center of religious diversity, is made. Good News. And it is not just good news like other messages…not “a good news.” It gets called here, “The” Good News. The one final and ultimate news or message that we have been wanting and waiting for has arrived.

It would be like this. I have a newspaper from today here. Can you imagine if the headline of all the major papers in the country read something like this: “All Religions Done!” Everyone has closed the doors. Every institution and system across the world has quit. There is no longer any need. Everything has been revealed and uncovered plainly and religion is done. It no longer works and is useful for anything. Can you imagine that?

It is not totally unlike the plea of Richard Dawkins. Perhaps some of you are familiar with his most famous best seller, “The God Delusion”? In it he writes, ” We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.” He calls for the whole concept of God to be just simply done away with and wishes all gods and religion would just take there place along side the dead Greco Roman religions and gods who no one any longer believes in because in his estimation all gods are merely mythological.

The Religion of Religion

Are you beginning to feel the weight of the claim of the Bible here in regards to religion? Maybe. But what is religion anyway? How is this verse saying anything about religion? If it is then, what is the religion of religion? Is there a common principle of religion? An elephant or a fundamental equalness? If so, is that present within Christianity?

Religion. What is it? Richard Dawkins says it is a delusional cop out. Sigmund Freud said it is an illusion resulting from sexual frustration. Karl Marx said it is the opiate of oppressed people. Maybe they are all right?

Many religious people do seem to be religious just because their parents were. Religion is tradition and a cop out from wrestling with real things.

Most religions do seem to care about sex. You are either not having it as much as you want, with whomever you want, in whatever way you want…or you are having it too much, with the wrong people, in the wrong way and you ought to suppress it.

Most people are religious in some way, in fact the majority of the world considers themselves religious.

What about when you line the major religions up. Are there similarities? Seemingly so.

In orthodox Judaism, the Judaism most like the one during the times the book of Romans was written and the kind of Jew, it’s author Paul was….that Judaism is about being born a Jew and following and obeying the Torah perfectly, with a perfectly crossed “t” getting all the rules and regulations down just right. Then you’re saved.

In Islam it is all about your deeds. At the end of your life your good deeds are put on a scale on one side, your bad deeds on the other and they are weighed. And hopefully, there’s no guarantee, but hopefully your good deeds will outweigh your bad deeds and you’ll be saved.

In Buddhism and Hinduism it is about recognizing that you are one with the world, atman is brahman. You detach yourself from suffering, empty yourself, and become one with everything and you are saved.

In Taoism you must balance energies. In Confucianism you must make sacrifices to connect with your dead ancestors in order to reach harmony. In Shintoism you need a Kami Dama in your house, a little god shelf for incense and other offerings to ward off impurities.

Those are just some of the major ones…but what we begin to notice is a great and similar strain, that in every religion there is something, we as humans must do. There is a condition a problem and each of us is trying to work out somehow…in order to be or become a good person.

Even the person with no religion…the popular spiritualist whose endeavor to simply do whatever makes them happy and be free, is still stuck in a rut of having to work for their salvation…their happiness.

This seems to me to be the principle of religion, the religion of religion. The natural inborn quest of the human life which attempts to save itself. You see, you may be hearing me today talk about all these major religions and thinking that you are not wrapped up in any of that and so perhaps this has nothing to do with you.

But perhaps religion is not so far from you as you may think. There are about fifty people here today. Can I ask the question, “Why are you here? Why have you chosen to come to this place today? Are you in school or have you gone to school at some point in your life? Why? Do you have a job? Why do you work? Or not work? What are you seeking, what is your goal in life, and if you have no goal why not? What are the motives the decisions you make? What really is the drive behind your life?” I think this is where we begin to find religion. In the motives.

Maybe you are merely attempting to make your parents or someone else happy? So your salvation is found in meeting the expectations that are put on you? Maybe you went to school or work your job because you have great aspirations to be successful in life and make money? Maybe you want to do something really great for people or for this world in someway? Why? What is the motive? Whose recognition are you looking for?

You see we cannot escape the desire and the craving for recognition from someone. We either want credit for what we do or acknowledgment that we are better for not bowing down to anyone’s demands. Tim Keller defines religion this way, he says it is the principle which says, “I obey therefore I am accepted.” I think he’s right. It seems to me we are inescapably bound by this curse. The religious person connects this acceptance with God or with some nebulous force in the universe and the irreligious person flips it and tries to say I don’t need acceptance and therefore I don’t have to obey.

If we accept the religion principle then we try and try and try obey…whether it’s obeying the demands of some official religion or whether it is obeying the demands of a person, school, country, or some self-imposed expectation. Whatever it may be, the principle of religion which runs through everything.

If we don’t accept this religion principle, and instead reject the imposing demand for some obedience…then we become angry or at least think it is wrong that someone or something has put this stipulation on us.

Either way, whether through acceptance or rejection, through obedience or disobedience…what begins to rise to the surface is our deep-seated sense of morality. From there, we either slip into pride thinking that we’ve done a decent job for our attempt to get the moral monkey off our back or we get mad at him and because we think everyone should have the freedom to determine their own right and wrong. We tend to either become prideful of moralistic achievements or of our moralistic autonomy…and still either way we are saying we ought to be accepted because of it.

And if you think this doesn’t happen with people who are Christians you are wrong. My other job these last couple weeks have been really tough. I’m a pastor half the time and I work at a group home for abused kids the other half the time. They’re making changes there and my bosses asked me to do some things, but they didn’t ask nice. That made me mad. Why? Because I am stuck in religion, where I only accept people if they perform correctly for me…because deep down I am stuck thinking performance is what matters and that nothing will go my way unless I do the right things.

Let me just probe the Christians here and ask you some hard questions, because I’m afraid that many of today get sold a Christianity which is really an invitation to get more religious. Like you believe in Jesus for salvation at the end of your life but after you become a Christian your life becomes one where you are really saved by the good things you do.

So let me press those who are here who would consider themselves Christians. Do you think you are better than people who are not Christians? Do you think you are better for reading your Bible? Going to church or community group during the week? Spending time praying? Do you think those things are what make you Christian, that you do those things? If so, I’m afraid you have slipped back into religion…the cycle where my acceptance is based on either how well I do or on how free I am to reject doing anything.

I’ll give you another example using myself as a pastor of this church. I’ll be real honest with you for a minute. We started this church four years ago this last Friday. It’s been slow going. I thought we’d be up to a few thousand people in just a couple months when we first started, simply because I thought I was such an amazing speaker. J Here we four years down the road and we’re barely 50 people.

So If I am honest with you, deep down one of the things I struggle with most is thinking that the health and the growth of this church depends on me doing things just right. Like if I can become just a good enough preacher, or we can just figure out how to do community groups right, or how to handle set-up or figuring out the trick to get some other families with us…then it will happen.

You see, there it is. Religion rearing its ugly head once again. Me trying to scheme and maneuver my way around in order to God to perform for me, rather than trust that Jesus is himself is enough and will take care of things. Deep down I have a religion problem because yeah I want Jesus, but him AND something else and I’ll try every trick in the book to get it. I’ll try every salvation project I can think of to get things to work…everything but trusting that Jesus alone is the savior and accepts me already even if The Resolved Church shuts down tomorrow.

You see, us working hard to figure out how to grow, how to love our city, and how to reach people is not a bad thing. But it becomes a bad thing when it is a part of my own self-salvation project, when it becomes religion.

The Bad News and the Need for Salvation

You see, what I need is something different. Something different than religion. That is the bad news. That everywhere we turn in religion we find a dead end. The principle of religion is bad news. If the gospel is good news, then what makes it so good is knowing that there is bad news first. You see there are two types of people in this room today.

There are those of you here, who know that there is something wrong with you deep down and you need a savior and you need one bad because you are stuck and the more you try to get unstuck the more you keep making a mess of your life.

The other type of people who are here are those who don’t think that there is anything really wrong with you. Yeah, maybe you haven’t been perfect and you’ve done some bad things here or there…but for the most part you consider yourself a good person.

I hope I can convince both groups of a different way. That your pride for thinking you are good is just as bad all the rest of us who know we’re screwed up…and that there is probably a lot more self-righteousness and self-centered badness in you than you ever dreamed. Now, I know that sounds pretty morbid.

What I am getting at is this. We started out tonight with this verse, the thesis this letter written to Rome, a city of many religions. The verse says the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.

It is not just the historical context which tells me this has a lot to do with religion itself but this word salvation. We all know we need and want salvation. Maybe we call it different things…to be happy, to have freedom from guilt, to know that we are loved, to be connected, to have security for the future…but we all need and want salvation.

We need salvation in two main ways:

One from ourselves, from thinking we could save ourselves and be our own personal messiah and to stop trying. We keep digging ourselves a deeper and deeper hole.

Two from God. Once we realize how corrupt we are deep down, we realize that is not okay and if there is a good God, he’s not good if he let’s me get away with it and just sweeps it under the rug, I need justice and punishment badly. An eternal one for messing with the God of eternity and morality itself.

The Supremacy of the Gospel

This is where the sublime supremacy and beauty of the gospel comes out and why Paul can and does talk about it like this when he says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes.” The verse steps into the landscape of our conflicted and messed up hearts and says there is GOOD NEWS, there is something different, someone. Jesus.

In the first 6 verses of the book of Romans he outlines what this good news is…the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In a very real and simple way that is exactly what the gospel, good news is, it’s Jesus, he is God’s Son. He lived the life you have failed at.

Where we attempted to obey but failed he succeeded.

Where we were tempted to give up and did, he did not. And what’s more is he suffered the penalty we incurred, so that justice could be served.

Where we have died internally and await an eternal death Jesus rose to life, give us his perfect life, and he lives today guaranteeing his promise.

That is good news in multiple ways. Because in Jesus, I get a way out of myself. I don’t have the power to do everything right all the time. But in the gospel, in Jesus, in the gift of his life to me, I receive his works in the place of mine.

Every step I have failed gets replaced with his success and not only that he empowers me for new life. I get to give up trying to be my own savior and let him be the savior. I get to give up trying control my life, which I do a lousy job of anyway and I get to entrust it to one who has the ability to change me and keep me safe for eternity. That is freeing. God does the work and I get the joy.

This is good news because it actually works and is the only way out of the trap of religion where there is a constant pressure on me to perform correctly and where I am constantly tempted to give up.

Here’s how it works. When I am faced with Jesus I realize that I am far worse than I ever thought but at the same time more loved and accepted than I ever dreamed possible. Life then becomes not a performance but an ever-increasing love and trust and thanks toward him. And that changes me.

Here’s just a few ways…when we believe in the gospel its power from God unto salvation works in us like this:

When I find myself attempting religion again…the gospel comes to life and it saves me and tells me that Jesus is enough. I don’t need Jesus plus anything else.

In religion I obey and therefore I am accepted…so my motives are fear and insecurity. In the gospel I’m accepted by Jesus, which makes me want to obey…so my motives become gratitude and joy.

When I find myself at the end of my rope and I feel like giving up…the gospel comes to life and says Jesus love is better. In Jesus I have an infinite supply of comfort and peace.

In religion I go to God to get things from him. In the gospel I have Jesus so I can go to God to get him, who is all I ever need.

When I find myself experiencing pain and suffering…the gospel comes to life and reminds me that in Jesus God suffered more than I can imagine for me. Jesus knows and did something about it.

In religion when things don’t go right I get angry with God or myself because I think I am good and deserve a comfortable life. In the gospel when things don’t go right I know that all my wrongs fell on Jesus and now he can extend his love in the midst of my struggle.

Without the gospel, we will constantly be comparing ourselves among to others, considering some among us better than others. With the gospel, we will constantly see ourselves as in need of and recipients of the grace of Jesus and all are welcome.

In religion I have a hard time with criticism because any threat to my self-image as a good person is unnerving destructive to my identity. In the gospel my identity is based on Christ, his work and his worth, so I can take criticism and grow through it to become more like him.

Without the gospel we will fall into some form of religion thinking life is all about doing everything just right. With the gospel we will bask in the joy of knowing that despite us being so wrong Jesus has given us himself in full so that we have every blessing from God.

So in religion prayer life is mainly either asking God for things or a cry for help in crisis. In the gospel, my prayer life is mainly praise and adoration and fellowship with God.

Without the gospel, we will focus too much on ourselves and our own personal needs, wants, and desires. With the gospel we are enabled to turn our emphasis to care more about the social needs of the broader community, first in the church and then those in our city.

So in religion my self-view depends on whether or not I am living up to my standards…if I’m doing well I feel confident, proud, and unsympathetic to the failings of others. If I’m doing poorly, I feel like a failure and unable to help anyone. In the gospel my self-view is that though I am a sinner Christ died for me. So I am both humble and confident.

Tim Keller put it all together this way…he said, in religion “I look to my own pedigree or performance for my spiritual acceptability, my heart manufactures idols. It may be my talents, my moral record, my personal discipline, my social status, etc. I absolutely have to have them so they serve as my main hope, meaning, happiness, security, and significance, whatever I may say I believe about God.” In the gospel, “I have many good things in my life—family, work, spiritual disciplines, etc. But none of these good things are ultimate things to me. None of them are things I absolutely have to have, so there is a limit to how much anxiety, bitterness, and despondency they can inflict on me when they are threatened and lost”…because Jesus is the only thing ultimate to me.

Conclusion

To conclude, I want to tell you, the gospel of Jesus Christ is something entirely different than religion. I started out asking, “What is the religion behind religion, the principle of religion?” The answer is the principle of religion is the human desire and effort for our own salvation through some means we accomplish.

The gospel is something entirely different. In the gospel Jesus does something. In the gospel Jesus is something. In the gospel Jesus accomplishes everything and then gives it to us. That’s different. The gospel is a complete life of trust in Jesus in every area of life…whether it be discouragement, suffering, sex, family, identity, race, culture, the environment, authority, guilt, joy, truth…it all has to do with the gospel and gets touched by the gospel.

We’re here in the city of San Diego. A place filled with some of the most intelligent and spiritual people in the country. But no matter how intelligent you are you do not escape your humanity. And it is into our very nature as humans that the gospel speaks because only the gospel says that God became a man named Jesus in order to do everything for us that we can do so that we might have the benefit of everything we wish we could achieve.

My message would fall short of its mark if I did not make an appeal to you. Then it would be left solely as maybe an interesting lecture on religion or Christian spirituality. But the gospel is more than just a theory and it is more than just an idea. If it is true it is about a real person. The real and living God who offers his son Jesus to human beings.

So I conclude with the confident, secure, assured words of the time tested words that so many who have gone before you have embraced…”The gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes!” So believe. I beg you. Give up your vain efforts. Turn aside from thinking your morality either does not matter or that you are good enough and embrace something different than religion, which can only offer you yourself as a savior. Turn to Jesus, The Savior.

This series covers our study through the book of Romans. These sermons with careful and slow exegetical expository coverage move through each chapter and verse following the theme and thesis of the book that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. These sermons were primarily preached by Pastor Duane Smets from April 2005 to November 2008 at The Resolved Church, San Diego, CA in its first three years of existence. Audio from the first year is unavailable.

   Audio & Manuscripts Below

The Gospel Thesis
 Listen     Read    1:1-7 |  An Introduction To Romans
 Listen     Read    1:2-6 |  The Validity, Content & Effect of The Gospel
 Listen     Read    1:7-15 |  Romans Is For God
 Listen     Read    1:14-15 |  Romans Is For Us
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  The Gospel Is The Power Of God Unto Salvation
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  Thank God For Jews
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  Justification By Faith
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  Justification & Habbakuk
 Listen     Read    1:16-17 |  We Are Beggars. This Is True

The Problem Of Sin
 Listen     Read    1:18 |  The Wrath of God
 Listen     Read    1:18-21 |  What Is Plain About God
 Listen     Read    1:18-32 |  The Suppression of Truth and Consequences
 Listen     Read    2:1-11 |  Seek Glory (Part I)
 Listen     Read    2:5-11 |  Seek Glory (Part II)
 Listen     Read    2:11-16 |  The Impartial God
 Listen     Read    2:17-19 |  Circumcision of the Heart
 Listen     Read    3:1-18 |  Moribund No More
 Listen     Read    3:19-20 |  Put Your Hand Over Your Mouth
 Listen     Read    3:21 |  Righteousness From Without
 Listen     Read    3:21-23 |  No Distinction

The Promised Savior
 Listen     Read    3:24-25 |  Propitiation
 Listen     Read    3:25-26 |  Righteousness Demonstrated
 Listen     Read    3:27-30 |  One God & One Salvation
 Listen     Read    3:31 |  The Law Upheld
 Listen     Read    4:1-12 |  The Imputation of Righteouness
 Listen     Read    4:13-17 |  The Promise Secured
 Listen     Read    4:18-22 |  The Heritage of Hope (Part I)
 Listen     Read    4:18-22 |  The Heritage of Hope (Part II)
 Listen     Read    4:22-24 |  The Resurrection of Jesus Christ
 Listen     Read    4:25 |  Who Killed Jesus?
 Listen     Read    5:1 |  Peace With God
 Listen     Read    5:2 |  In The Throne Room
 Listen     Read    5:2 |  Rejoice In The Hope Of The Glory of God
 Listen     Read    5:3-5 |  Rejoicing and Suffering
 Listen     Read    5:6-8 |  Love and Some Verses
 Listen     Read    5:8-10 |  Salvation In Jesus Christ
 Listen     Read    5:11 |  Joy In God
 Listen     Read    5:12-14 |  We Are From Adam
 Listen     Read    5:15-17 |  Jesus Is Better Than Adam
 Listen     Read    5:18-19 |  The Guilt & The Gift
 Listen     Read    5:20-21 |  It’s All About Grace

New Life In Christ
 Listen     Read    6:1-4 |  Baptism: The Life of the Buried Dead
 Listen     Read    6:5-7 |  Sin & Union With Christ (Part I)
 Listen     Read    6:8-11 |  Sin & Union With Christ (Part II)
 Listen     Read    6:12-14 |  God Reigning In You
 Listen     Read    6:15-18 |  Master Jesus (Part I)
 Listen     Read    6:19-23 |  Master Jesus (Part II)

Bearing Fruit For God
 Listen     Read    7:4-6   |   Part I
 Listen     Read    7:4-6   |   Part II
 Listen     Read    7:4-6   |   Part III

Law & Gospel
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 1
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 2
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 3
 Listen     Read    7:7-12  |  Part 4

Inner Confliction & The Gospel
 Listen     Read    7:13-25  |  Part 1
 Listen     Read    7:13-25  |  Part 2
 Listen     Read    7:13-25  |  Part 3

No Condemnation In Christ
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 1
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 2
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 3
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 4
  Listen    Read    8:1-4  |  Part 5

Walking According To The Spirit
  Listen    Read    8:5-9  |  Part 1
  Listen    Read    8:5-9  |  Part 2
  Listen    Read    8:5-9  |  Part 3
  Listen    Read    8:9-13  |  Part 4
  Listen    Read    8:9-13  |  Part 5

The Jesus Family
  Listen    Read    8:12-13  |  Jesus Family Does Not Lose the Battles Which Count
  Listen    Read    8:14-15  |  Jesus Family Welcomes Members and Leads Them
  Listen    Read    8:14  |  The Family of Old
  Listen    Read    8:15-16  |  Adopted Forever
  Listen    Read    8:15  |  The Great Father We Call Abba
  Listen    Read    8:17  |  The Future of the Family

Suffering And The Glory Of God
 Listen     Read    8:18-25  |  Natural Evil & Moral Evil
 Listen     Read    8:18-25  |  The Groaning of God’s Spirit
 Listen     Read    8:26-27  |  Prayer & Suffering
 Listen     Read    8:28  |  How God Works it For Good
 Listen     Read    8:29  |  The Image of Christ
 Listen     Read    8:28-30  |  Predestination
 Listen     Read    8:31-39  |  Evil & The Existence of God
 Listen     Read    8:31-39  |  Barriers for the Believer

The God(ness) of God
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part I)
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part II)
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part III)
  Listen    Read    9:1-29  |  The God of Glory (Part IV)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part I)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part II)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part III)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part IV)
  Listen    Read    9:30-10:21  |  The God of Gospel (Part V)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part I)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part II)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part III)
  Listen    Read    11:1-36  |  The God of Future (Part IV)

Viva La Vida Christus: Living The Life Of Christ
  Listen    Read    12:1-2  |  All of Life is Worship
  Listen    Read    12:3-8  |  Humility, our Gifts, and Real Life
  Listen    Read    12:9-21  |  The Life of Genuine Love
  Listen    Read    13:1-7  |  Life Under Temporal Law
  Listen    Read    13:8-10  |  Life Under Eternal Law
  Listen    Read    13:11-14  |  Living in Light of the Day
  Listen    Read    14:1-2  |  The Principle of Preference (Part I)
  Listen    Read    14:13-15:3  |  The Principle of Preference (Part II)
  Listen    Read    15:4-13  |  The Principle of Preference (Part III)
  Listen    Read    15:14-33  |  Fulfilling the Mission
  Listen    Read    16:1-27  |  Entrusted to God

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The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

:: The Resolved ::

Justin Bragg (elder)

Romans 1:18-32

Paul gives us a stark, vivid, horrifying, unrestricted analysis of why society degenerates into debauched, destructive unrestrained evil. It doesn’t fit current depictions of society, and it is offensive for us to hear. The reason it is offensive for us to hear, is that when a society is sinking into moral decay, it is impossible, because of the nature of decay, to see what is happening. The social mind becomes so defective in the moral decadence, that it doesn’t have the categories or framework to recognize evil for what it really is.

Paul’s message extremely relevant for today, and we need to hear this teaching tonight because it seems so foreign. The title, or theme for the night is “the human condition.” If we put it in the form of a question, what is the human condition? The answer, being shouted in clear and plain language is totally depraved. Every human being, is, by nature, evil, wicked, wrong, wretched, sinful, and a thousand other adjectives to describe our horrendous state of depravity.

Before we look at depravity, let us go back and remember that it was not always this way. In the beginning, the human condition was not as it is now, and the way it is now is not the way it is supposed to be

Genesis – Creation and Fall

Genesis
1:31 God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
2:25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
3:1-13 – it all gets destroyed. Man disobeyed God, and destroyed perfect harmony with God, putting a gulf of separation between man and God

The result of the fall – knowing good from evil (from Bonhoffer)

“Man, at his origin knows only one thing: God. He knows all things only in God, and God in all things. The knowledge of good and evil shows that he is no longer at one with his origin. (3:5)”

Man now knows himself as something apart from God, outside God, and now we only know ourselves, and not God at all, for we can only know God only if we know only God. The knowledge of good and evil is separation from God. Only against God can man know good and evil. Originally we were made in the image of God, but now our likeness to God is a stolen one. We have forgotten how we were at our origin, and have made ourselves our own creator and judge.

We attempt to receive what God gave us through ourselves, rather than through God. We are not meant to know good and evil. Only God is. We are only supposed to know good, and that is how it was before the fall. In becoming like God man has become a god against God. We are now in disunion with God, with men, with things, and with ourselves. Do you get it? We are jacked. We aren’t supposed to have to make ethical and moral decisions.

We aren’t supposed to have to worry about getting too drunk. We aren’t supposed to lust, we aren’t supposed to be greedy. We aren’t supposed to steal, and lie and hurt others. This isn’t the ultimate reality of God’s plan.

In God’s perfect kingdom – the way it was before the fall, and will be in heaven, we don’t get hurt, and we don’t hurt those around us. We don’t lie and cheat and steal, because we don’t know wrong. It isn’t a problem. There isn’t supposed to be a choice between good and evil, right and wrong. We aren’t supposed to even be aware of wrong.

And if you think that is an infringement upon your freedom, then look at Jesus, who could not sin, and look at what we will be like in heaven, where there is no temptation or sin, and realize that you are most free when there is no evil, when there is only good. You are not free, because you are a slave to sin. You are under the curse of depravity, and it is all that you know.

We, as humans, since the inception of sin in humanity, are totally depraved. Define: man’s nature is totally corrupt, perverse and sinful throughout. Total does not mean we are all as bad as we possibly could be, but rather, that the whole of man’s being has been affected by sin. The corruption extends to every part of man, his body and soul; sin has affected all (the totality) of our being. As a result of this inborn corruption, we naturally are unable to do anything spiritually good. We are so spiritually bankrupt that we can do nothing pertaining to our salvation
Those who are unsaved are dead in sin, and their wills are enslaved to evil nature. When it comes to our nature as people in relation to God, it’s as bad as it can get.

The effects of suppressing the truth of God…in our this passage today it is no surprise that we find humanity in a giant mess.

In this text, there are 21 ways of sinning, or 21 kinds of evil.

Why does Paul give us this list, and where does such evil come from?

It all started back in verse 18 where Paul gave the reason for why the gospel of the gift of God’s righteousness is so desperately needed. Verse 16 that the gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Why? Verse 17: “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith; as it is written, ‘But the righteous shall live by faith.’” In other words: the gospel is the power of God to save believers because in it God gives us what we need and could never produce on our own, namely, his own righteousness. The righteousness that he demands from us he freely gives to us, if we will trust him. This is the great truth of justification by faith. This is the only truth that will save you from misery in this life, and in eternity.

Then in verse 18 he tells us why this gospel of the gift of God’s righteousness is so desperately needed: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” We need the righteousness of God because it is the only thing that can protect us from the wrath of God. And we need to be protected from the wrath of God because we are unrighteous by nature and suppress the truth of God. By nature we don’t like God and we don’t want him in our lives.

So what Paul does in the following verses is describe for us the effects of suppressing the truth of God. He wants us to see all the evil of the world as a river that flows from this spring. Reject God, suppress God, distort God, recreate God in your own image to your own liking, and the effect is worse than we expect. And the thing that is worse than we expect is that God joins our crusade against God, as it were, and delivers us into the debasing effects of our own rebellion against him. We’ve seen it three times.

In verse 23, we exchange the glory of God for images, and verse 24 says, “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts.” In verse 25, we exchange the truth about God for a lie, and verse 26 says, “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions.” And tonight in verse 28 we see it again: “They did not see fit to acknowledge God (or literally: they did not approve to have God in their knowledge), [therefore] God gave them over to a debased (depraved) mind, to do what ought not be done.”

This is what Paul means by the wrath of God being revealed (verse 18): God’s wrath is being revealed against the world, as human beings all over the world set their affections on other things more than on God. God’s response to this worldwide disloyalty and treason against our Creator is not, first, to send us to hell, but to see that we sink into the swamp we have chosen.

He says something horrifying about God’s wrath. He says that the root problem is that we don’t like having God in our knowledge. “They did not see fit to acknowledge God.” That is the fundamental problem in the world. That is the essence of the human condition. We don’t want God. We want self-determination and self-exaltation. That was the first sin in the garden. And that is the root of all evil today. We do not want to know God or have him in our lives.

The effect of God’s giving us over and removing his common restraints is that we are imprisoned by a “depraved mind.” “God gave them over to a depraved mind.” Our minds become more and more defective in sin. Not only do we use them to sin, but we can’t even think clearly about sin. We can’t recognize it. Our defective mind produces all kinds of evils. Paul goes on to list twenty-one of them as samples.

So now we have our answer to the first question, namely, where does such evil come from? It comes from:
1) our desire not to have God in our knowledge; and
2) from God’s judgment on mankind to give us over to sink in the swamp we love; and
3) from the depraved or defective mind that we sink into.

Look at the list, and ask why it is here? So now we can ask the question: What is this list of evils? What are we to make of this long list and why is it here?

Let’s read it again. Verse 28b-31:

Of course, a person could raise an objection against Paul here: this is not the way all unbelievers are. Some are very conscientious, law-abiding, philanthropic, courteous, decent people. Yes, that’s true, and Paul knew it was true. But the point of this list is not to say that every society which refuses to love the true God will look just like this. We know this because, in verses 26-27, Paul says that homosexual desire is also a result of not loving God above other things, and being handed over by God, and yet Paul clearly does not think that every unbeliever has homosexual desires.

Similarly, here in verse 28-31, when he says that all these sins are the result of refusing to acknowledge God, and he doesn’t mean that every unbeliever, or group of unbelievers, has all these sins or in the same measure. Instead, these are samples. They are the sort of thing that comes from rejecting God, and the more God gives a people up to their own unrestrained depravity, the more their society will have these sins in greater and greater measure.

So what’s the point of listing all these sins? Give us enough examples to show that virtually every form of evil has to do with God and comes from failing to know him and approve him and love him above all things. In other words, he gives us a sweeping array of evils to waken us to the fact that the ruin of any area of life is owing to the abandonment of God.

Verse 28: they did not see fit to acknowledge God therefore . . . and then he gives his list of evils.

In other words: the point of the list is to connect God with every sin in the world. And we’ve seen that the connection is twofold: every sin is rooted in our preferring something else to God; and every sin gets worse as God takes away his restraints and gives us up to sink in the swamp we have chosen.

If America has the highest murder rate in the western world, it has to do with God. If our executives are greedy, it has to do with God. If our politicians are deceitful, it has to do with God. If we gossip about each other behind the back, it has to do with God. If our children are disobedient to parents, it has to do with God. If we are untrustworthy and don’t keep our marriage vows, it has to do with God. If we are blind to obvious wrongs and are unloving and unmerciful, it has to do with God.

That’s the point of this list. Wherever we are sinking in sin, it is because we have abandoned the glory of God for sin.

We find, in v 32, the culmination, or summit of our sinfulness. In one sense verse 32 brings chapter one to an end with a very bleak view of human nature. We not only sin and choose death; we approve sin and recruit for sin and fail to be outraged at sin, and we create a climate for sin to flourish, and so we take others with us to death.

Calvin is explicitly clear in this: men left nothing undone for the purpose of giving unbridled liberty to their sinful propensities; for having taken away all distinction between good and evil, they approved in themselves and in others those things which they knew displeased God, and would be condemned by his righteous judgment. For it is the summit of all evils, when the sinner is so void of shame, that he is pleased with his own vices, and will not bear them to be reproved, and also cherishes them in others by his consent and approbation. What Calvin is saying is that even worse than sinning and doing evil, is the fact that we are so evil, that we applaud and cheer others on to sin. Calvin calls this the summit of sin, and says in this state, there is no hope:
“for he who is ashamed is as yet healable; but when such and impudence is contracted through a sinful habit, that vices, and not virtues, please us, and are approved, there is no more any hope of reformation.

This is why sin is a trap. You can’t just sin a little bit. You can’t just dip into to the murky waters of sin for a little taste, and then walk away. It is a downward spiral, and the bottom rung of the ladder of wickedness is when you give approval to these things.

I want to point out – to give hope, that there is a real knowing of moral things that is deeper than consciousness. I say this because there are, no doubt, many people who would say that they don’t believe in moral standards set by God, especially if they say they don’t believe in God.
But verse 32 says, “though they know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die.” Note the phrase, “God’s decree” (“ordinance of God.”). Paul teaches us that, even if people don’t think they know ordinances of God, they, in fact, do know at least one, namely, that doing the things listed in verses 29-31 deserves death. This must mean then that there is a knowledge deeper than consciousness.

What verse 32, together with verses 18-21, teaches us is that every person we know, and every person we will ever talk to, already knows God, deep down, and knows God’s law. That is an astonishing truth for everyone who wants to communicate the gospel. It is also an incredible challenge I want to give everyone who does not “believe” in God.

We will never try to coerce or trick or force you into becoming a Christian. But what we will do is try to show you the truth and beauty of God and the relationship that is possible to have with him. If you don’t believe in God, think deep, there is a knowledge in every person that he exists. We just suppress it, because we are uncomfortable with the idea.

Ask what the solution is to these kinds of thing? Which brings us finally to the third and last question: What is the solution? How shall we battle back against these destructive evils in our own lives and in our culture?

Left to ourselves there can be no end to this grim descent into depravity. But the gospel, for the sake of which Romans was written, tells us that God has not left us to ourselves. In Christ, he has acted to restore what we are intent on destroying. The answer is what the whole book of Romans is about 1) We need the reversal of God’s wrath against our unrighteousness. 2) We need the reversal of God’s handing us over to a depraved mind. 3) We need the reversal of our mind’s moral decay so that it can be renewed for right and proper use in God’s service.

The good news is that God has provided every one of those reversals. You do not have to sink any further if you will embrace God and his provision. Here is the key verse for each of these reversals.

The key verse for the reversal of God’s wrath against us is Romans 1:17: In the gospel of Christ, “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” In other words, the righteousness that God demands from us, he freely gives to us, if we will turn back to him and trust him to be our greatest Good. And if you have the righteousness of God, you are not under the wrath of God any more.

The key verse for the reversal of God’s handing us over to a depraved mind is Romans 6:17. “Thanks be to God that, though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were handed over [same word as Romans 1:28].” This is the exact reversal of the hand-over in Romans 1:28. Here it is to a form of teaching that is true and holy, not false and dirty. And notice that it is God who does it. “Thanks be to God,” Paul says, that you became obedient to this teaching. God gives us over to truth and righteousness as much as he once gave us over to sin.

Finally, the key verse for reversing the defectiveness of our minds is Romans 12:2. “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

When God has given us his righteousness by faith in Jesus, and when he has handed us over to a new teaching of truth and begun to make us obedient to it, then little by little we are transformed in the renewing of our minds and the long list of sins in Romans 1:29-31 becomes shorter and weaker to the glory of God.

This is the key to life. I call you and urge you to receive these three reversals from the hand of God by faith: 1) the reversal of God’s wrath through the gift of God’s righteousness; 2) the reversal of being handed over to depravity through being handed over to truth; and 3) the reversal of a depraved mind through the transformation of a renewed mind.

The last effort for hope that I want to try to give, is that this is not the way it is supposed to be…

Plantinga on how this is not the way its supposed to be:
“The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets call shalom. We call it peace, but it means far more that mere peace of mind or a cease-fire between enemies. In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness and delight – a rich state of affairs to which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, a state of affairs that inspires joyful wonder as its Creator and Savior opens doors and welcomes the creatures in whom he delights. Shalom, in other words, is the way things ought to be.

God hates sin not just because it violates his law, but, more substantively, because it violates shalom, because it breaks the peace, because it interferes with the way things are supposed to be. God is for shalom and therefore against sin.

Whether or not you recognize it, you need to be saved from you wickedness. When our blindness is stripped away and the depravity of the race is unfolded before us, the glory of the gospel bursts forth, and Romans 1:16-17 becomes the door to paradise. The gospel is then seen to be “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes” – no matter how sinful, no matter how corrupt

That’s the message for you who do not believe. The message to you tonight is that you are bad. You are really bad. And you deserve to suffer under the wrath of God for how bad you are. Along with that message, I want to shout as loud as I can, that no matter how bad and evil and wicked you are, the righteousness of God is given to you. It was given to you through Jesus Christ.

You are not a good person. your attempts to justify yourself as a good person, and thinking that you can somehow earn a place in heaven or whatever you think happens after you die – is evidence of your self-righteous depravity. How dare any of us think that we are somehow good, and able to make it on our own. Give up – let go – receive the righteousness of God given by grace through faith.

And since I did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave me up to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done. I was filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. I am full of envy, murder, strife, deceitful, maliciousness. I am a gossip, slanderer, hater of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, I am an inventor of evil, and disobedient to my parents, I am foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. And though I know God’s decree, not only do I do these things and deserve to die, but I cheer others on to do the same.

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The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

:: The Resolved ::

Duane Smets

Romans 1:18-21

Romans 1:19-20 makes three clear statements: (1) God has plainly made things known about himself (2) These things about himself he has made known are his “invisible attributes” “eternal power” and “divine nature” (3) These things can be known about him through investigating the things he has made.

This sermon inductively looks at the things God has made in order to see how they demonstrate the eternal attributes and existence of God.

I. Introduction: What I’d like to show you is a compound argument for the existence of God mixing the classic cosmological, telelogical, and ethical arugments together.

II. Beginning with Nothing

    A. An Object: Pick any object in the room you are sitting and ask where it came from. Example: a chair. some one put it where it is, they got it from someone else, who got it from someone else, who bought it at a store, who got it from a factory, who made it from some wood, which was taken from a tree, which came from a seed, that came from a million other seeds, that came from?

    B. The problem of infinite regression: You can’t keep tracing causes back forever and ever, there must be one, uncaused cause, that started it all (this whole chain of cause and effect relationships).

    C. Let’s just call this uncaused cause “nothing” and see if we can find a little more out about it by what resulted from it.

        1. matter/mass/energy: physical objects
        2. space/time: place for physical objects to exist in

III. Looking at Matter

    A. It demonstrates design

        1. Consider a watch, it is a intricate device with several interacting parts which work together to achieve the desired purpose of telling time. Like a watch, the universe operates as an intricate organism with several interacting parts (sun, moon, vegetation, oxygen, water, animals, people, etc.) which all work together having a place and a purpose, a design.

        2. Consider a moustrap, it is an irreducibly complex machine composed of five parts (platform, spring, hammer, holding bar, and a catch) and each part is absolutely necessary for it to function. If you take away one part it will not work. It is designed.

        3. Consider a human cell. Like a mousetrap the human cell is an irreducibly complex machines. The cilium (a small portion of a cell) is a complex motor. It is 25 nanometers in diameter (3,000 times smaller than the diameter of a single human hair). The flagellum (part of the cilium) is a propeller that moves back and forth with speeds up to 100,000 rpm’s and can travel ten times its body length a second (same as a human running at 40mph) and it can stop moving in one direction and instantly turn around and move the other direction at the exact same speed. A cell has around 40 intregal parts that must all work at the same time for a cell to exist, without one part it will not function. The cell is a design

    B. It demonstrates information

        1. Consider DNA. A human cell contains DNA, a single molecule with a mass amount of information. If one were to unravel the double helix in one cell of a strand of DNA and hold it out in a straight line it would be about six feet long. If one then began to write down every letter of genetic information (A,T,C,G, etc.) that is on each ladder rung of the double helix, it will fill up approximently 75,000 pages of information. This highly encoded information is a detailed design.

        2. Consider information intelligence. Information implies intelligence. Suppose one went to the beach and saw the letters JOHN LOVES MARY in the sand. No one would ever conclude that the letters got there by erosion rather than someone writing them because those certain letters have meaning when put together. Meaningful information implies intelligence of a rational agent.
3. Consider Shannon Entropy. according to Shannon Entropy (a standard measure of information content), the amount of information in one protein with DNA is 3.4 units, more than 3 times the amount of information in a normal english sentence (a rating of 1 unit). The high amount of information in the genetic material of DNA implies that a rational agent of intelligence created/designed it.

    C. “Nothing” continued…

        1. matter/mass/energy: physical objects beginning to exist
        2. space/time: place prepared for physical objects to exist in
        3. information/design: high complexity implying vast intelligence

III. Looking at People (a type of matter)

    A. Inherent Morality

        1. We all have the right to our own opinions or beliefs and we have the right to act upon them and we simply need to tolerate each other. Right?

        2. But what if I steal your purse or your wallet because I think stealing is okay and I have the right to believe that and the right to act upon my belief and everyone else just needs to tolerate it. The idea breaks down and doesn’t work.

        3. We all have an inherent sense of morality, of right and wrong. Example: no one would ever say that killing babies for fun is okay.

    B. Origin of Morality

        1. Not animal instinct, the survival of the fittest, or we would never help anyone.

        2. Not just social convention, because we learn other things from society that are objectively true, like math.

        3. Not a law of nature, because it doesn’t work every time. We can violate the sense of ought.

        4. Not imagination, because you can’t choose to have a sense of ought like you can choose to imagine things.

        5. Not an infinite chain belief, our parents and society may have learned from their parents and society and on down but one parent and/or society must have started it all and where did they had to get it from an outside personal source since morality is a personal thing.

    C. “Nothing” cotinued…

        1. matter/mass/energy: physical objects beginning to exist
        2. space/time: place prepared for physical objects to exist in
        3. information/design: high complexity implying vast intelligence
        4. morality/ethics/right/wrong: a perfectly just source

IV. Nothing concluded

    A. What we began calling “nothing” ends up looking a lot like the traditional conception of the Judeo-Christian God.

        1. matter/mass/energy: physical objects beginning to exist

To be able to make matter/mass/energy exist when before there was none, this first cause must be all-powerful.

        2. space/time: place prepared for physical objects to exist in

If before this first cause there was no space or time then this first cause would then be everywhere present.

        3. information/design: high complexity implying vast intelligence

To be able to make such highly complex and information filled matter this first cause must be all-knowning.

        4. morality/ethics/right/wrong: a perfectly just source

To make right and wrong exist to uphold it this first cause must be the standard of justice and therefore be all-good.

    B. See the God of the our universe and of our Bible as described in Psalm 139.

1 O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.

GOD IS ALL-KNOWING

7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

GOD IS EVERYWHERE-PRESENT

13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

GOD IS ALL-POWERFUL

19 Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
 O men of blood, depart from me!
20 They speak against you with malicious intent;
your enemies take your name in vain! 21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies. 23 Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts! 
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting! 

GOD IS ALL-GOOD

Both reason and Scripture demonstrate that an all-powerful, everwhere-present, all knowning, all-good being does in fact exist. It is this being that we call God. Let’s seek him, worship him, praise him and thank him for his son Jesus in whom all the fullness of God dwells.

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The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

:: The Resolved ::

Justin Bragg (elder)

Romans 1:18

THE WRATH OF GOD
What I owe John Piper

Rom 1:18 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,

Today’s preaching is deficient at many points. No point more inadequate and even contrary to teachings in Scripture than the neglect of “the wrath of God”

Where do most people begin when making a presentation of Christian truth? “Felt need” – a lack or a longing that the listener will acknowledge. Preaching should begin with felt needs because it establishes a point of contact with teacher and listener.
But does it? it might, but this is not the same as establishing contact between listener and God, which is what preaching is about. Nor is it even a connection between listener and truth
Felt needs often not real needs, and even suppress them

2 Tim 4:3 – For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires

Another way to offer the gospel is by promises. Like a carrot, a reward given only if the listener accepts Jesus. A means of getting something.

Prosperity gospel
Personal experience – stressing what Jesus has done for us and commending to others for that reason. Paul does not do this in Romans. Not speaking in terms of happiness or some state of mind or appeal, but in the staggering and amazing terms of the wrath of God

The reason: Paul was God-centered rather than man-centered
Paul knew that in the end, the way we feel, or a meaningful experience is not what matters – but what matters is whether we come into a right relationship with God. We are under God’s wrath and are in danger of everlasting condemnation at his hands.

We humbly present ourselves as disciples of God’s word, taking our cue from Jesus and writers like Paul, rather than modern day success stories. It’s not easy to talk about. It is alarming, frightening, and the natural human reaction is to try to get God off the hook, and make him a nicer, friendly God who loves enough to ignore sin, who doesn’t care much about sin, but is content looking the other way when humanity does wrong. But what we learn from scripture is that this is not a God worthy to be worshipped. This is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible is holy, and perfect, and just, and will not ignore the sin of mankind, but burns in anger against it.

WRATH
Most steer away, because we think of it in human categories rather than in terms of Scripture. God’s wrath not the same as human anger. We are uneasy with the idea of God’s wrath, thinking it to be somehow unworthy of God’s character and at odds with his attributes of love and mercy.

Biblical writers had no problem viewing it as one of God’s great perfections.
JI Packer – One of the most strinking things about the Bible is the vigor with which both Testaments emphasize the reality and terror of God’s wrath.
AW Pink – A study of the concordance will show that there are more references in Scripture to the anger, fury and wrath of God than there are to his love and tenderness

Two main words for wrath in NT
Thymos – to rush along fiercely – a panting rage
Orge¬ – to grow ripe for something – something that builds up over a long time, like water collecting behind a great dam
Orge – is used in every passage in NT, except in Rev.
Leon Morris – “The biblical writers habitually use for the divine wrath a word which denotes not so much a sudden flaring up of passion which is soon over, as a strong and settled opposition to all that is evil arising out of God’s very nature
John Murray – “Wrath is the holy revulsion of God’s being against that which is the contradiction of his holiness”
Remember Isaiah 6 – God is holy, and hates evil

In Romans, God’s wrath is his firm, fearsome hatred of all wickedness is building up and will one day result in the eternal condemnation of all who are not justified by Christ’s righteousness.
Rom 1:17 – the righteous will live by faith – the flip side –
But those who do not live by faith will not live; they will perish

Major turn in the letter of Paul to Romans
1:16-17 is the theme: the gospel is the power of God to save believers from wrath to come. And this gospel – this good news of Jesus’ death and resurrection – has that power to save believers from God’s wrath because in the gospel, every moment, God keeps on revealing his righteousness as a gift to be received by faith and for faith, so that those who have their righteousness from God (and not themselves) will not perish but have everlasting life.

We will come back to this theme in future chapters. But Paul enters on a description of human sin and God’s wrath from 1:18-3:19.

1:18-32 – the condition of the gentile world apart from the gospel and saving grace

2:1-3:8 – more or less directly with the Jewish condition.

3:9-10 – summary conclusion: “what the? Are we (Jews) better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, ‘THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE.” – Point of 1:18-3:10
3:10-19 – pile on scripture to support point of universal sinfulness, guilt and rebellion against God in every human heart

Then in Romans 3:21 Paul returns to the theme of 1:17, “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested.” You see how similar this is to Romans 1:17 – in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. And from here on Paul is unpacking the greatness of the gospel of God’s gift of righteousness.

So what we have in Romans 1:18 to 3:20 is a demonstration of sin and guilt in the heart and life of every human being, both Jew and Gentile. The beginning of that section is what we are taking up tonight is Romans 1:18, and more specifically wrath.

You’re going to hear a lot of talk about sin and wrath. And I suspect that some might ask why we need to spend so much time here, talking about sin and guilt for months. To that thought, I say three things:

1. Superficial diagnoses lead to false remedies.
We need to get a full grasp on the disease itself if we are going to be able to diagnose it and find the cure. If you want to find the cure to cancer, you don’t just study cures, but the disease itself, so you can learn how to beat it

2. Understanding sin and wrath will make you wiser.
Profound understanding of sin and wrath will make you a far wiser person about human nature – your own and others.
And if you are wiser about the nature of the human soul, you will be able to fight your own sin more successfully, and you will be able to bless others more deeply with your insight and counsel. If you run away from the study of sinful human nature – if you say, I don’t like to think about sin – then you run away from yourself, and you run away from wisdom, and, worst of all, you run away from the deepest kinds of love.

3. Knowing the nature of sin and wrath will cause you to cherish the gospel.
Probably the most important thing I would say, and the most firmly rooted in Romans 1:18, is that knowing the true condition of your heart and the nature of sin and the magnitude and justice of the wrath of God will cause you to understand the mighty gospel, and love it, and cherish it, and feast on it, and share it as never before.

And this is crucial because this is the way the gospel saves believers. If you don’t understand the gospel, if you don’t cherish it and look to it and feed on it day after day, it won’t save you (see 1 Cor. 15:1-3; Col. 1:23). Knowing sin and wrath will help you do that.

“For . . . ”
Which brings now to the beginning of Romans 1:18.
Look at the connection between verses 17 and 18 namely, “for” or “because.”

Verse 17: “[In the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS MAN SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.”

(18) For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.”
Why does Paul introduce verse 18 with the word “for” or “because”?

He does this in order to show that everything he is going to say about sin is meant to support the gospel of verse 17. He does not mention the gospel for the sake of sin. He deals with sin for the sake of the gospel. Understanding sin is the foundation that upholds the preciousness of the gospel, not vice versa.
His main aim is not to lead us from gospel to sin, but from sin to gospel. That’s the point of “for” at the beginning of verse 18.

Deal with all the sin in Romans 1:18-3:20 to let it point us back again and again to the preciousness and the glory and the necessity and the freeness and the joy of the gospel of the gift of God’s righteousness.

My prayer is that we would escape superficial diagnoses, and that we would cultivate a profound understanding of fallen human nature (which we all struggle with), and that we would come back again and again to the necessity and beauty and freeness of the gospel of justification by faith alone.

We Need the Gospel Because the Wrath of God Is Being Revealed
Now how does Paul begin this section in verse 18?
He begins it by giving the reason that gospel and a gift of God’s righteousness is necessary. It’s necessary “because the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” We need the gospel of Romans 1:16-17, we need the gift of God’s righteousness, because God’s wrath is right now being poured out on the whole world of ungodliness and unrighteousness.
Notice the double use of the word “unrighteousness” in verse 18. God’s wrath is being revealed against “unrighteousness” and the truth is being held down in “unrighteousness.”
Surely Paul means for us to see that in relation to the revelation of the righteousness in verse 17.
In other words, the reason we need God to reveal HIS righteousness to us in the gospel and give it to us as a gift through faith is because we are unrighteous and resist the truth in unrighteousness and, therefore, God’s wrath is against us.
We need righteousness. We don’t have it.
God’s wrath is being poured out on us in our unrighteousness.
Is there any hope? Yes, the gospel is the power of God to save because in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.
We can have a righteousness that is not our own, namely, God’s.

“How is the wrath of God being revealed?”
The first thing to notice is that the word “is revealed” is the very same word and tense as in verse 17. There “the righteousness of God is being revealed.”
Here “the wrath of God is being revealed.”
In both cases it is a present tense, continuous action.
In other words it is happening now, not just in the future.
There is a day of wrath coming (Romans 2:5, 8-9; 5:9).
But in advance of that final outpouring of wrath, God’s wrath is also present.

How? In three ways at least that we learn about in Romans.
1. Universal human death is revealing the wrath of God.
From Romans 5 we see that universal human death is a manifestation of the wrath of God.
Death is the judgment of God on the ungodliness and unrighteousness of the human race rooted in Adam. In the middle of Romans 5:15 we read, “by the transgression of the one [namely Adam] the many died.” Then in the middle of verse 16 death is called a judgment and a condemnation: “For on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation.” So you can see that death is seen as a judgment and a condemnation, as an expression of God’s wrath against sin.

Then in the middle of verse 18 you see it again: “Through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men.”
So the first answer is that the wrath of God is being revealed against human sin in universal human death.

2. Universal futility and misery are evidence of God’s wrath.
From Romans 8 we see that universal futility and misery are evidence of God’s wrath against human sin. Start at Romans 8:18: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (19) For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. (20) For the creation was subjected to futility.” Stop there and consider what that means before we read on. I think it means that the sufferings he speaks of in verse 18 are inevitable in this fallen world.

The creation was subjected to futility. In verse 21 it’s called “slavery to corruption.” Romans 8:20 to see where that subjection to futility came from: “The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope.” This means that God subjected the creation to futility.
Satan and Adam could not be the one who did this, because Paul said it was done “in hope.” Neither Satan nor Adam in the Garden of Eden was planning for the hope of the human race. They simply sinned.

But God showed his wrath against sin and subjected creation to futility, not as the last word, but in hope. There would come a day when the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). But the misery and futility of the world we live in is owing to God’s subjecting creation to futility, and is a testimony to his wrath against sin.

3. The sinking degradation of human behavior reveals the wrath of God.
So the first way God’s wrath is revealed against ungodliness and unrighteousness is in universal human death.
The second way is in the futility and misery and suffering of creation.
The third is the one most immediately in Paul’s mind here in Romans 1, namely, the sinking degradation of human thinking and behavior.
Three times in Romans 1:24-28.
After describing the ungodliness and unrighteousness of man in Romans 1:19-23 Paul says in verse 24, “Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.” In other words, God reveals his wrath against sin by giving people up to be more sinful. Again in verse 26: “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions.” And again in verse 28: “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.”
So these are three of the ways that the wrath of God is being revealed now in this age against the universal ungodliness and unrighteousness of man. He has consigned all to death, he has subjected all to futility, and he has given many over to the degradation of their own minds and hearts.

Wrath Mingled with Mercy
One burning question: Is that God’s only response to the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men? The answer to that question is No – neither in the case of unbelievers or believers.

Unbelievers.
Wrath is always mingled with mercy in this age of hope.
Look at Romans 2:4-5. Here he speaks to those who are missing this great truth: “Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? (5) But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.”

Yes there is kindness in the midst of wrath. God is always doing more than one thing. Jesus said, “He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).

Paul said to the pagans of Lystra, “[God] did not leave Himself without a witness, in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17). He said this to people who were dying and suffering and sinning under the wrath of God.
John Piper says, God warns with his wrath and he woos with his kindness.
He speaks both languages: severity and tenderness.
Remember how Jesus interpreted the coming of John the Baptist as a severe, leather-girded, locus-eating, desert-living, adultery-condemning prophet, on the one hand, and his own coming as a party-going, wine-making, child-healing, sin-forgiving savior, on the other hand? He said, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.” Instead, you said, “John has a demon and Jesus is a glutton” (Matthew 11:17). The gospel came with both languages, but they would not hear.

To the unbeliever, God is speaking to you in your pain to warn you, and God is speaking to you in your pleasure to woo you. Don’t misread the voice of God.

Death and Suffering and Sin in the Life of a Believer
And to believers, what is our case? According to Romans 1:17 we have the gift of God’s righteousness by faith. God’s punishment of us was poured out on Jesus who died in our place (Romans 8:3 “For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh”).

Romans 8:1 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:9 says, “God has not destined us for wrath.” What then are our death and our suffering and our sin? Are they still the wrath of God against us? If not what are they?

The answer is that death and suffering and sin are not the wrath and condemnation and punishment of our heavenly Father.
Each one is fundamentally altered by the gospel of Christ crucified in our place.

1. Death is a gateway into paradise.
For believers, the sting and victory of death have been removed. “O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor 15:55-57). Death is not the wrath of God toward them; it is the last gasp of a defeated enemy who unwittingly opens a door to paradise.

2. Futility and suffering are pathways to holiness.
For believers, futility is removed from suffering. For those who love God and are called according to his purpose “all things work together for our good” (Romans 8:28). Punishment is transformed into purification. Destructive forces become disciplinary forces. And the seeming chaos and futility of life’s calamities become the severe, but loving, hand of our Father in heaven,

3. The power of sin is replaced with a love of righteousness.
Finally, not only is the sting of death replaced with hope; and the futility of suffering replaced with meaning; but the dominion and degrading power of sin is replaced with a love of righteousness (the point of Romans 6). God does not give us over to a depraved mind, he gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore let us awaken to the truth of Romans 1:18 that the wrath of God is being revealed now in this age against the ungodliness and unrighteousness of man. We can’t understand the world or the gospel without that truth. But let us also awaken to the truth that God is revealing something else at the same time. He is revealing the gift of righteousness for all who will believe on Christ. And with that righteousness there is no wrath or condemnation on us any more. For you who believe, death becomes a gateway to paradise; suffering becomes a pathway to holiness; and sin becomes a dethroned enemy that we fight by the power of God’s Spirit. So let us flee the wrath of God, and take refuge in the precious power of the gospel

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The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

:: The Resolved ::

Justin Bragg (elder)

Romans 1:17
“Wir sein Bettler. Hoc est veru.”
“We are beggars. This is True.”

These were the dying words of Martin Luther. In a letter to his wife Katie, he penned, on a scrap of paper, referring to the supremacy of the Bible, “We should bend low in reverence before it. We are beggars, this is true.” After a life of struggle and victory, at the end of his life, he acknowledged the grace of God, and our utter dependence upon his grace, which includes, the paramount doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone!

Historical-Biographical Sermon on Romans 1:16-17
Very early on we come to the crux and climax of the book of Romans, and as we will see tonight, Christianity itself from the time of the apostles, to our presence in this room tonight, coming together a part of this church, The Resolved, and the universal church of Jesus Christ, the most immanent and crucial area of doctrine in all of faith

Break down the message into 3 parts:
From where did Luther come?
What did Luther discover?
And by what means did he come to this monumental discovery?

Circumstances Leading to the Reformation
(FROM WHERE DID LUTHER COME?)
At the turn of the 16th Century, The Holy Roman Empire was in dual allegiance to the Emperor and the Pope. In Germany, a power of the HRE, there were armies to defend both. God himself was believed to have ordained dual authority over Christianity
Emperor – ruler of life on earth
Pope – intercessor for man’s destiny in the world to come

The Church was in a dismal state, long forgetting the mercies of Jesus.
Instead, they emphasized an implacable judge. Jesus was portrayed the relentless avenger. Man lived in dread of a furious God who tormented them with the threats of hell. There also existed a deep superstition and fear among the people. Mix Christianity and Pagan elements.

Believed the world to be filled with demons/spirits. For deliverance from eternal damnation, the church demanded absolute obedience from the people.

Six factors led to or caused the reformation:

Abuses and worldliness in the Papacy and clergy
Too consumed with amassing political power
Amassing inordinate wealth
Practiced open immorality

Conflict of Nationalism with Papal Internationalism
England, Germany, wanted self-rule, break yoke of papal rule

Clerical Fees
Popes raised money to fund intrigues, works of art, etc
Would charge for various religious functions:
Baptisms, penance, indulgences (reduce purgatory)

Rise of Humanism
Rediscovery of Latin classics, in literature, arch, paint, sculp
Printing gave impetus to this – error free, large number redups
Included writings of Fathers of Church and biblical text (Erasmus and Greek NT in 1516)

Pietistic emphasis on Sin and Salvation
- Mechanical and superstitious approach to religion
- Priest say magic words to perform miracle of transubstantiation, and to offer sacs of mass for the living and dead in a foreign tongue
- Saint-worship, image-worship, superstitious rites/ceremonies
- Mechanical recitals and pilgrimages to shrines
- Mystic writers influences people to hunger for more personal, experiential type of Christianity (a Kempis)

Rise of Martin Luther
Important to note Luther didn’t single-handedly usher in reformation. All the factors above, and many more contributed. Any movement must have a strong leader. Luther was this, so let’s look at his own road to reformation.

We won’t spend too much time here, because the movie does a good job depicting the biographical events of Luther’s life. But a few observations that lead to Luther’s discovery, the object of our study

> In 1505, suddenly, in the midst of his successful studies in law school, Luther proclaimed to his friends and family that “something was missing” and that he feared becoming “a skeleton of his own beast”
> Sought to make peace with God through discipline and obedience in the Church – Augustinian order in Erfurt
> contrition – sorrow for sins, confession, penance
> resulted in weakened conscience, more uncertainty, troubled
> Strict adherence and acts of penance failed to bring peace to his soul
> Used to beat himself with a whip until he would pass out in his cell
> Advisor Johann Von Staupitz told him that he couldn’t help his soul by punishing his body, but Luther couldn’t rest with his sin
> At one point the priests ordered him to cease confession until he had committed some sin worth confessing.
> His piety gained him the reputation of being the most exemplary of monks
> Later in his life he wrote:
“I was indeed a pious monk and followed the rules of my order more strictly that I can express. If ever a monk could obtain heaven by his monkish works, I should certainly have been entitled to it. of this all the friars who have known me can testify. If it had continued much longer, I should have carried my mortification even to death, by means of my watchings, prayers, readings and other labors”
> Even after becoming an ordained priest 2 years after entering, he was tortured by sin and God’s justice
> When Staupitz inquired what was wrong once, Luther replied that he did not know what would become of him because he had committed unpardonable sins. God had judged him and he was condemned. He believed that God only condemns, how could he possibly love this God?
> So this was his unpardonable sin – he could not love God!
> The monkish wisdom of the day instructed him to satisfy God’s demand for righteousness by doing good works.
“But what works” though Luther. “What works can come from a heart like mine? How can I stand before the holiness of my Judge with works polluted in their very source?” He later said that if he could believe that God was not angry with him, he would stand on his head in joy.

Staupitz told Luther to look at the wounds of Christ, and find God’s grace in that blood. Instead of torturing self, throw self into the redeemer’s arms. God is not angry with you. You are angry with God.
But how could Luther do that? Where could he hear the Son of God speak to him as Staupitz said he would? The solution was in the Bible. In an attempt to keep him busy, Staupitz set Luther on the Bible, theology, teaching and preaching.

Thought that the church would “gain a champion” when Luther’s soul was set at ease. Further, Staupitz sent Luther to Rome, certainly all of the sights and splendor would busy Luther and give him peace. But Rome brought great trouble to Luther’s soul. He later said, “If there is a Hell, Rome is bult over it; it is an abyss whence issues every kind of sin.”

Kiss the crosses in front of Paul and Peter’s remains and be freed from 17k years of purgatory
14k more for kissing piece of silver used in Christ’s betrayal
9 years for stepping on the stairs Jesus climbed to Pilate’s house – saying “Our Father” on each one, 2x for the step Jesus fell upon.

Luther was greatly disturbed. People were trying to buy salvation.
Upon return to Whittenburg in 1511, a city with 1.9 million years of freedom from purgatory in relics, Luther began to study the Bible.
the distress of mind that he had left at Erfurt had returned with renewed force. The sense of his sinfulness troubled him: the prospect of God’s judgment filled him once more with dread.
But at the very moment that these terrors had reached their highest pitch, the words of St. Paul, “The just shall live by faith” recurred forcibly to his memory and enlightened his soul like a ray from heaven. Luther was learning to live by faith, which was what the text was teaching.

WHAT DID LUTHER DISCOVER?
Psalm 30 – if everybody could understand Ps 30, they would understand God’s righteousness delivers, and does not merely judge.
The church taught that only the Pope could interpret Scripture
What if every man could interpret?
There would be more Christians!

Rom 1:17
Asked Staupitz, “Do we find anything here of relics? By faith man is made righteous, not by what he does for himself; be it attention to relics, singing of masses, pilgrimages to Rome, purchase of pardons for sins, but by faith by what God has done for him already in his son?

Stuapitz replied: “IF you leave the Christian to live by faith, if you sweep away all good works, all these glorious things you dismiss as mere crutches what will you put in that place?

“Christ – man only needs Christ!”
“Our Lord Jesus Christ, by suffering and dying has already paid for our sins forever – how can any man make a further payment? You can’t buy God’s mercy”

“According to the Apostle in Romans 1, the gospel is a preaching the incarnate Son of God, given to us without any merit on our part for salvation and peace. It is a word of salvation, a word of joy, a voice of the bridegroom and the bride, a good word, a word of peace.”
He concludes: “Therefore the true glory of God springs from the gospel. At the same time we are taught that the law is fulfilled not by our works but by the grace of God who pities us in Christ and that it shall be fulfilled not through works but through faith, not by anything we offer God, but by all we receive from Christ and partake of him”

By 1516, Luther was teaching that our inward righteousness was the gift of God and the source, not the consequence of good works. In other words, we are not righteous because we do good works, but we do good works because we are righteous

By 1519, he understood that the righteousness of God is not a righteousness that judges and demands, but a righteousness given by God in grace. The problem for Luther is “how can man, who is conscious of his condemnation as a sinner before God, stand before God?” The answer is that there is nothing of his own merit that he can do, but he can stand before God on the basis of faith alone in Chirst.

According to Luther [Comm on Gal.], justifying faith is “a certain sure confidence of heart and firm assent by which Christ is apprehended, so that Christ is the object of faith, nay, not the object, but, so to speak, in faith itself Christ is present.”

The believer is “cemented” to Christ on the basis of faith, so that the two are made, as it were, one person. the believer can say, “I am Christ, that is, the righteousness, victory, life, etc.m are mine”; and in turn Christ can say, “I am that sinner, because he cleaves to me and I to him, for we are joined by faith as members of His body, of His flesh, and His bones (Eph 5:30).”

The foundation of justification is the atoning work of Christ. Justification is a forensic declaration of God, whose prime element is remission of sins.
The doctrine of justification by faith implies assurance. In salvation by works, you never know if you have done enough. The implications are life-altering and paradigm-shattering. Imagine these truths being taught to people who for their whole lives had been told that their Christian life was based upon their ability to appease God by doing good things and being good people. Imagine hearing for the first time that God was merciful, and his righteousness was given to you, in Christ, apart from anything you do. This is the greatest discovery in all of the world since the discovery of the empty tomb Easter morning.

HOW DID LUTHER COME TO THIS DISCOVERY?
Luther was a man of the External Word (Luther calls it the “external Word” to emphasize that it is objective, fixed, outside ourselves, and therefore unchanging.
To see this intertwining of study and gospel let’s go back to the early years in Wittenberg. Luther dates the great discovery of the gospel in 1518 during his series of lectures on Psalms. He tells the story in his Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Writings. This account of the discovery is taken from that Preface written March 5, 1545, the year before his death. Listen for the references to his study of Scripture (italicized).
I had indeed been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. But up till then it was … a single word in Chapter 1 [:17], ‘In it the righteousness of God is revealed,’ that had stood in my way. For I hated that word ‘righteousness of God,’ which according to the use and custom of all the teachers, I had been taught to understand philosophically regarding the formal or active righteousness, as they called it, with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner.
Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, “As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteous wrath!” Thus I raged with a fierce and trouble conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.
At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, “In it righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.” There I began to understand [that] the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which [the] merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.” Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. Here a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me. Thereupon I ran through the Scriptures from memory …
And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated the word ‘righteousness of God.’ Thus that place in Paul was for me truth the gate to paradise.
Notice how God was brining Luther to the light of the gospel of justification. Six sentences—all of them revealing the intensity of study and wrestling with the Biblical text:
I had indeed been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in the Epistle to the Romans.
According to the use and custom of all the teachers, I had been taught to understand philosophically. (An approach to study from which he was breaking free.)
I beat importunately upon Paul a that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.
At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words.
Thereupon I ran through the Scriptures from memory.
That place in Paul was for me truly the gate to paradise.
The seeds of all Luther’s study habits are there or clearly implied.

In 1533 he said, “The Word of God is the greatest, most necessary, and most important thing in Christendom.”

This was the mark of Luther. In his great refusal to retract his writings as being heretical and divisive in his trial before the Diet of Worms, he said, “Since your most serene majesty and your high mightiness require me a clear, simple, and precise answer, I will give you one, and it is this: I cannot submit my faith either to the pope or to the councils, because it is clear to me as the day that they have frequently erred and contradicted each other. Unless therefore I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture, or by the clearest reasoning – unless I am persuaded by means of the passages I have quoted – and unless they thus render my conscience bound by the Word of God, I cannot and I will not retract, for it is unsafe for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand, I can do no other. May God help me, Amen.”

Do you see his steadfast reliance upon Scripture for all matters of life?
Facing excommunication, being marked a heretic, and probable death, he would not and could not go against his understanding of Scripture, even as it informed his conscience. Oh that we might be people of vigor, enthusiasm and conviction concerning the Word of God

We will never be worth anything if we do not find our entire life and meaning in the Words of the Bible. You want a point of application – Read your Bible! Study it, meditate upon it daily, memorize and dwell upon it every waking hour of your life. Do not rely upon anything but the Word of God.

The Reformation did not take place because of a clever and stubborn man, it is the definitive victory of the Word of God in the lives of His people. Get your doctrine from the Bible, believe it with your mind and your heart, and live it with every breath God gives you. Many try to dismiss the importance of doctrine. Doctrine is very important. Luther’s posting of the 95 theses, and every action he took, every word he spoke was a result of a firm conviction in doctrine.

He wasn’t lackadaisical in his belief and practice. He was convinced of the doctrine of Justification by faith alone, and it was the driving influence behind every great thing he did for the kingdom of God

CONCLUDE

Luther would go on to preach and write many things about the doctrine of Justification by faith, which he learned from Rom 1:17. He would call it “the chief article from which all our other doctrines have flowed.” He called it “the master and prince, the lord, the ruler and the judge over all kinds of doctrines.” He said, “if the article of justification is lost, all Christian doctrine is lost at the same time.”
He argued, “It alone begets, nourishes, builds, and defends the church of God and without it the church of God cannot exist for one hour.

If justification by faith is the doctrine by which the church stands or falls, our contemporary declines are no doubt due to our failure to understand, appreciate and live by this doctrine
The church of our day does not stand tall before the world. It bows to it. Christians are not fearless before ridicule. We flee from it
Is the reason not that we have never truly learned to stand before God in his righteousness? Is it not because we have never learned the truth of Rom 8:31, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” The church will never be strong unless it is united around faithful men and women who firmly hold this conviction.

Over the next few weeks we will be learning more about what this crucial doctrine truly means. Commit to becoming the type of people that know that they are justified by faith alone, and live as justified sinners, not ashamed of the gospel, but proclaiming in word and deed.
It will only come through bending low in reverence before the Word of God

We are beggars. This is true.

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The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

:: The Resolved ::

Justin Bragg (elder)

Romans 1:16-17

“The Gospel is Righteousness Revealed”

1:16-17 “for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.”

Why return to this text? We spent seven weeks here before traversing into the past 17 weeks of hell and sin and depravity – so why go back?

As we proclaimed from the beginning, this statement that Paul makes in his introduction is the thesis, the foundation upon which the entirety of Romans, and the entirety of the Bible, and the entirety of all Christendom is built upon. These are the most important words in the Bible

Why? Because in these two brief sentences we find the essence – the heart of belief in the God of the Bible. Here, in these few words we have the message of how it is that any human has ever or ever can be made right with God.

Why is this such a crucial message? why does it matter? if you have been asleep the past four months, or if you are just joining us, in the verses immediately following this statement, we find a massive indictment against us – humans, a proclamation and sentence delivered from a righteous judge that we are not right in ourselves.

All of 1:18-3:20 serves to prove one point – that you and I, as members of the human race, are not right in ourselves. we are in total rebellion against the God of this universe, and we have a total inability to correct ourselves or make ourselves right – because we are polluted by sin. we are perpetrators of an infinite offense against the judge of the universe.

This is very bad news. This is not what immediately comes to mind when Paul proclaims that he is not ashamed of the gospel, the good news. We would expect flowery and friendly language to talk about our buddy Jesus and our loving look the other way when you do wrong and love you despite your failures Father. But we are not given this depiction. Why? Because it is absolutely necessary, for you and I to believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ is truly good news, to be made aware of the truly bad news that naturally, in and of ourselves, we are at enmity with God, we are objects of his wrath.

Follow this line of thought:
In the gospel a righteousness of God is revealed and this righteousness is received, and has always been received by faith. This is the thesis, the heart of the message I must communicate tonight, and what Paul must communicate to the 1st century Romans. We do not possess this righteousness. Again, the entirety of 1:18-3:20 holds us culpable for our corruption, proclaiming you and I and the pope and newborn babies, Gandhi and mother Theresa to be objects of God’s wrath and condemnation.

Full exposition of what Paul introduces in 1:17 begins in 3:21, which we will begin to expose next week. I get this because when Paul says in 3:21 “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and prophets bear witness to it… he is referring to Habakkuk, the words “revealed, or made known” and the reference to “the law and the prophets” corresponds to Paul’s citation of the specific statement of the Prophet Habakkuk who as a prophet, had revealed to him the fact that it was not by the law that man is just/right, but it was by faith that man is justified in God, faith that God, in the revelation of Jesus Christ, who is the gospel, we can receive his righteousness and live. The word manifest in 3:21 is an even stronger word than reveal in 1:17, and it is upon this manifestation of righteousness of God in life, that we will learn the precious doctrine of justification by faith alone in the coming weeks.

Why does Paul just not connect 1:17 and 3:21? Why does he feel the need to go on and on to the minutest detail of the circumcision of males’ foreskin about the sinfulness of man? The entire section is a statement of the need for this righteousness of which Paul speaks, introduced by a parallel but deliberate contrast with these two statements. At the start of this section, instead of speaking of any revelation of righteousness,

Paul declares: “The wrath of God is revealed form heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” What Paul says in Rom 1:18-3:20 embraces all persons. No one is excluded, but he develops his thoughts progressively, moving from a description of those who are openly hostile to God and wicked to those who consider themselves to be either moral, and acceptable to God on the basis of their own good works, or else religious, and therefore acceptable on the basis of their religious practices.

J.M. Boice, “this is true of everyone. Left to ourselves, we use our heathen lifestyle, our claims to moral superiority, or our religion to resist the true God.” In all of literature there is no portrait of the human race so realistic, so grim, devastating and hopeless, especially to read, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks after God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (3:10-11)

Yet it makes the wonder of the gospel all the more glorious, for it is against this background that a “righteousness form God” is made known. That is what we have been doing the past 4 months, we have been painfully trying to make the gospel more glorious. It may not have seemed like it, but as preachers, it is our job to show you the hopelessness of your life, of your condition, in order to try to make you see how much you need and want the gospel.

The gospel is only good news if you know how bad the news about your situation is. Unless you know that God is righteous, and demands perfect righteousness from his people, and pours out wrath upon them if they do not meet that requirement, then why would you ever care about this “good news” of Christ’s righteousness secured for you through the good news of his death and resurrection on your behalf?

That was all the introduction, trying to tell you why we need to take this trip back to the thesis before moving forward. I needed to show you the connection, to show you why Paul included this painful parenthesis before fully explaining the thesis, which will take us to the end of Romans. Here is the message for tonight: this is what I am attempting to teach – 3 things
1) The righteousness of and from God is the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ
2) God offers this righteousness of Jesus Christ freely, apart from any work on our part
3) Faith is the means by which unrighteous sinners receive Christ’s righteousness

1) The righteousness of and from God is the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ
What Paul states in 1:17 and picks up in 3:21 for a full exposition is that righteousness comes from faith in Jesus Christ
1st – when I say righteousness, what am I talking about? Theology 101 for you
God’s righteousness means that God always acts in accordance with what is right and He is himself the final standard of what is right.

What is righteousness? Righteousness is that which conforms to God’s moral standard. Righteousness is right standing before the mighty judge of the universe

Why is the gospel, as v 17 says, the revelation of God’s righteousness? Because in the gospel we see that God punished sin appropriately even though he forgave his people their sins.

The good news of the gospel is not that God lessons his strict requirements of right-standing before him, but that he punishes them fully, and while we deserve punishment for our crimes against the almighty, the entirety of his wrath is poured upon his own son who receives our punishment in full. This is justice, this is love. Do not try to reduce justice to elevate love. That is not the gospel. The righteousness of God revealed is both love and justice, and that is the good news.

This is why we refer to the atonement of Christ on our behalf as penal substitution
Penal – he bore the penalty, fully
Substitution – he was our substitute in his death

Vicarious atonement/satisfaction. A vicar is one who stands in the place of another. Christ is our vicar in that he receives the fullness of God’s wrath against unrighteousness. He is our representative who took the penalty we deserve. In view of what Paul says in the opening section of this letter, this is the very righteousness of Christ, which God gives to us. Righteousness is revealed in the gospel – Paul says so – and the gospel concerns Jesus Christ 1:1-3 “the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand in the Holy Scriptures, concerning his Son…”

Christ has this righteousness and it is from Him that we both learn about it and receive it.

Christ possesses this righteousness in 2 ways:
Intrinsic – he is utterly holy and without sin. That is why he could say “I always do what pleases him (God)” (Jn 8:29), or how he could silence his critics and enemies in asking, “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin” (Jn 8:46) leaving them speechless. The nature of Christ is intrinsically righteous
Achieved – Christ also achieved a perfect righteousness by his obedience to God on earth. He fulfilled the demands of the law by living a perfect life without sin.

When Paul says that the right. From God is revealed in the gospel, he means that the gospel shows how we can acquire the righteousness that we need. In Christ we can see that righteousness truly exists and can be offered to us by God

2) God offers this righteousness of Jesus Christ freely, apart from any work on our part
This is the heart of the good news. For unless God were willing to give this righteousness to us, and actually does give it, the mere existence of a perfect right. Would not be good news at all, it would be very bad news because it would increase our sense of condemnation
It would be 1:18-3:20 and end there. The bad news without the good news that follows. it would be a life of futility, condemnation and hopelessness because we would seed that God is righteous and demands righteousness in order not be objects of wrath, but we would be forced to acknowledge that we do not, cannot, and never will meet his righteous demands.

The good news is that God does not reveal his righteousness so that we will strive for it and fail miserably; it is that God reveals his righteousness in Christ as a free gift so that those who come to know and trust him can stop fruitless striving and instead rest on him. Do you hear the good news? You can rest in righteousness, knowing that God gives it to us and we can stand in righteousness before God, not in our own self-righteousness, which is not righteousness at all, but in the very righteousness of God – the righteousness revealed in Christ, by which we can live.

This is imputation – God putting an infinite moral capital of Jesus Christ in our empty bank account and having the riches of heaven at our disposal.

Because of Christ you are no longer deficient and bankrupt in righteousness, but are fully righteous and will be for all of eternity. And this righteousness, according to Paul, is revealed to all. To the Jew first, and then to the Greek, but to all who believe, he displays his power to save.

What is the point of all 1:18-3:20? again, the blatant blasphemer of God, the self-righteous Jew, the moral Gentile, are all in the same sinking titanic in the sea of God’s wrath. And the ones, who are saved, all of them, are the ones who believe, not the ones who try to save themselves, but the ones who believe and receive God’s righteousness in Christ. Which leads to the final point?

3) Faith is the means by which unrighteous sinners receive Christ’s righteousness
The role of faith in receiving the gospel will be fully dealt with in 3:21-31 in which we find the word faith 8x in relation to the reception of Christ’s righteousness.

But what is faith? Faith is believing God. It is opening a hand to receive the righteousness of Christ that God offers. Faith is the intellectual, affectional and volitional trust/commitment to the person and work of Jesus Christ.

CH Spurgeon: “faith is not a blind thing; for faith begins with knowledge. It is not a speculative thing; for faith believes facts of which it is sure. It is not an unpractical, dreamy thing; for faith trusts, and stakes its destiny upon the truth of revelation. Faith is the eye which looks, faith is the hand that grasps, and faith is the mouth which feeds upon Christ.”

Faith is relentless, reckless abandon to our need for human security
Faith is denying our own efforts to save us
Faith is total devotion to the God who saves us apart from any work on our part
Faith is utter trust in the God who never disappoints
Only by faith in the complete work of Christ’s righteousness can we stand before God in the day of judgment and be accepted by him

Paul testifies to this in his own experience
Phil 3:4-6 “though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eight day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness, under the law blameless.”

If Paul were to make a list of his assets and liabilities concerning personal righteousness under the law, he would cite only a long list of personal righteous assets. But what does he do with his attainments?

7-9 “but whatever gain I had, I counted loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as excrement, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes from God that depends on faith

skubala – dung, filth, refuse
expresses depth of feeling Paul had for “advantages” or “assets: that he now only feels shame and worthlessness.
this is a vulgar term, it is slang for excremement
the point, advantages of ‘righteousness’ are actually in fact disadvantages, a total loss.
See, Paul used harsh and “vulgar” language to express biblical truths, we aren’t the only ones, and we feel that we are in pretty good company in using vivid and stark language to express vivid and stunning truths in Scripture.

Vivid personal statement parallel to what he is saying doctrinally in Romans. Remember what was preached last week

3:19-20 – now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”

What Paul finally sees in Christ experientially in Phil, and states here is that he understands what real righteousness is. what he had been calling righteousness, and what the religious Pharisees of his day and today thought was righteousness was keeping them safe and protected from God’s wrath was not righteousness at all, but is filthy rags, pure shit, not an asset before God at all, but the ultimate liability keeping us from Jesus where the only true righteousness can be found. Jesus Christ is the only asset in our defense before God, all else is only a liability used to render us guilty before God

Augustus Toplady, Rock of Ages
Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to thy cross I cling; naked, come to thee for dress; helpless, look to thee for grace; foul, I to the fountain fly; wash me, Savior, or I die. Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee

Turn from your attempts at righteousness, they serve only to condemn you. Instead embrace the Lord Jesus Christ in saving faith. God declares your sins and your sinful nature to be punished fully in Christ and imputes his own perfect righteousness on your behalf. The almighty judge does not see your guilt, but instead sees Christ and his righteousness alone.

This is the gospel. This is righteousness revealed. This is the justified life – his righteousness received by faith. What Paul leaves in 1:16-17, and picks up in 3:21 – the giant “BUT NOW” is that while before wrath was revealed against you, now, in Christ, righteousness is revealed.

Paul starts the whole thing off talking about shame: so here is my Pauline advice concerning shame:
Be ashamed. of your sense of pride in religious accomplishments, in your blatant offenses of wretched sin against a holy God, in your thoughts of having anything to do with your salvation, or your failure to honor Him as Lord of the universe, at your laziness in pursuit of holiness, in your lack of faith for him to be all that you want and need, in your waning and weak affections for him, in your SIN
But be not ashamed, in receiving the righteousness of God revealed in Christ, offered to you, a worthless and evil sinner, desperately in need of the power of God to save you from his wrath. Be unashamed of the gospel. It means to be unashamed of Christ, to proclaim in words and actions a righteousness that is yours now. Say it with passion, say it with joy. Be unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ because in it his righteousness is manifested in you if you receive him by faith

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The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

:: The Resolved ::

Justin Bragg (elder)

Romans Chapters 1-2

Tonight we take a step back from our typical exposition of Romans, verse by verse, to look at a subject systematically which has been touched upon nearly every week in our preaching, but has not been treated with the fullness and depth that it must be dealt with.

You might not have noticed, perhaps our repetition of the now quotable phrase, “Romans is a book about God” has breezed by you like traffic on the interstate, but when we say it, and we say it a lot, we mean it. ROMANS IS A BOOK ABOUT GOD.

And if Romans is a book about God, we need to look at what it says about God. Fundamental, and paramount in importance is what God tells about himself through Paul. IF God is the author and source of the Bible, what is He telling us about himself, about us, about the entire whole of reality

The one word, or thought that encapsulates the whole of God’s being and attributes is the glory of God. Romans is about God’s glory. the Bible is about God’s glory. all of everything in any experience is about God’s glory. do you get it? whether you acknowledge it or not, everything is about God’s glory.

One of the reasons I want to show you this thread of God’s glory running through the first two chapters of Romans is to prove to you that the thesis, Romans is about God, is true.
I also hope that in examining this topic through a systematic approach will motivate and teach you to examine all of the rest of Romans, and the entire Bible, and all of life in terms of God’s glory. when you are reading the Bible, I want you to look at it through a God-centric perspective. I want you to look at it through a lens of the God and his glory, because that is the message that is being trumpeted throughout the entire text of Scripture.

Let’s first look at what we have seen thus far in Romans about the glory of God. then we will look at what the nature and character of God and his glory, and finally we will examine what our response to his glory should be.

1:2 Set apart for the gospel of God
right away, we see that Paul has a special honor of being sanctified for the purpose of proclaiming the good news concerning God to the Romans. This is a point of special designation for Paul. This entire letter is written for the purpose of proclaiming the good news of God to the Roman church
1:5 obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations
the purpose of Paul’s ministry is to bring about faith and obedience among the Romans. WHY – for the sake of God’s name. faith and obedience of God’s people is for the purpose of honoring his name
1:16-17 READ.
the opposite of being ashamed is to be unashamed, to be proud, and to take honor. It is in the gospel of Jesus Christ, that we are to find our greatest pride. As it says in Galatians 6:14 – may it never be that I would boast (or take pride in) except in the cross of Jesus Christ by which I have been crucified to the world and the world has been crucified to me.
What is the gospel, the good news of Christ? That God has demonstrated his righteousness in Jesus Christ, and has offered us his righteousness through Jesus Christ. This is what we should be proud of. This is the glory of God revealed in His son.

1:18 – the consequence of not honoring God, we find that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”
God pours out his wrath against what? Against unrighteousness, and ungodliness. God is obviously “godly.” And humans, made in his image, are supposed to be godly and righteous. So here we find that because we fail to honor Him with godliness and righteousness, he pours out his wrath against us. God is displaying his glory by revealing his mighty wrath against humanity for rejecting his glory failing to honor him
What is the truth that we suppress?

19-23 “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.”

The sin of humanity is that we suppress the truth of the glory of God. it is all over in this passage
19 – God has made himself known to us, he has shown us himself. he has shown us that he is glorious
20 – God demonstrates his glory by displaying his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature through creation.
Creation is the display of God’s glory. why did God create this universe? Do not ever wrongly assume that he was lonely, or somehow deficient, or that this world we live in has no purpose. The reason why God created the entire universe was to demonstrate the brilliance of his glory. this is the reason, and the only reason. This is why we can see his nature and power in “the things that have been made.”
And this is why everyone of us are without excuse when it comes to being held accountable for the truth of God’s glory. he has made it plain to us through creation. Our own existence is a remarkable testimony to the glory of God.

21 – Since we are without excuse concerning the knowledge of God, we are guilty of refusing to honor him as God or give thanks to him. We, as the human race, are guilty of futile thinking and foolish hearts concerning the glory of God. We are guilty of not honoring God. the chief sin of mankind is failure to honor God. The definition of sin is a failure or refusal to honor God as we should. This is the fundamental problem of sin. it is not that we offend other people, or make poor decisions, Our nature to cheat, lie, steal, gossip, be proud and arrogant, wallow is self-pity and self-doubt, is an infinite offense to God because it is a failure to honor him as Lord. That is sin.
that is why sin is the quintessential problem with humanity. We were created for the purpose of honoring God. We were made in his image. And we have tarnished and defaced that image to the point of being unrecognizable.

23 – the point is fully expounded upon here: we have exchanged the glory of God. the excellence, radiance, beauty, marvelous wonder, and treasure of that which is most beautiful and wonderful and amazing, for shit. Images of ourselves. Idols. we are an idolatrous people. You are an idolater. You worship yourself, money, fame, sex and a thousand other things above God. So what does God do? V 24-25 – God gives us up to the lusts of our impurity, to the dishonoring of our bodies among ourselves because we have “exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”

There it is again. We make idols of every single thing in this world. What is the idol of this world that we live in? I think it is the woman’s body. Seriously. Men worship and lust after the female body. Millions of dollars and billions of hours are spent looking at women exposing themselves. Our raging lust for the female body has made us salivating dogs for the idol. Everything men do, make money, buy clothes and cars, make jokes and go to the gym to get buff, everything is to try to impress women that they might somehow attain their idol.

And women worship the same idol. Women worship the body of women too. Look at the magazines in every grocery store, watch any television show, look around P.B. on a Saturday afternoon. Loose weight, dye your hair, go to the gym, starve yourself and make yourself throw up, get botox injected into your forehead, wax away unwanted hair, buy $200 jeans and $500 dollar purses, get fake boobs and remove unwanted fat through surgery. Women are told what the perfect body is, and they worship it, and strive to attain it.

This is idolatry. This is the failure to honor God for creating man and woman. For displaying his beauty through the beauty of human beings. This is worshiping the creature rather than the creator. This is sin. this is why God gave us over to our own degrading lusts and passions. For this reason, as it says in v 26, God gave us up dishonorable passions.

28 – And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done. Again, a failure to acknowledge God for who he is punished by a further giving up to a depraved mind. This is as bad as it gets. The pit of the downward spiral. We are guilty of a cosmic crime, failing to honor God, and so he gives us up to a this depraved mind. now, every human being is born with an inability to even think rightly. We are so wicked in our hearts and minds, that we can’t even recognize right from wrong any more. Every single person in this room is evil, and we can’t even recognize it because our minds make excuses and justifications. We continue in our failures, and don’t even recognize the gross disaster that is our present condition in the world.

That is how chapter 1 ends, as we have discussed in previous weeks, and in chapter 2, we have been examining more of the glory of God.
2:5 but because of your heart and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself.
Just as we saw in the last chapter, God pours out his wrath because of our failure to recognize Him as God.
And so he will render to each of us according to our deeds (v6)
7 – to those who b patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life
8 – but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness there will be wrath and fury
do you see it here? There is an eternal and incredible reward to those who seek God’s glory. and those who distort and abandon this truth, those who do not honor God as most precious, there will be torment, wrath and fury.
God rewards those who give him proper glory and honor, and punishes those who reject this truth.
We see it again in verse 10 – but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good
We can participate in the glory, honor and peace that is found in God alone if we will honor him with our affections

Now, hopefully, we can now clearly see that God is concerned ultimately with his own glory above all things. but what does that say about God? is God a good God? if he is so concerned with his own glory and honor, isn’t he just a conceited, insecure, needy being who needs to be told that he is pretty and marvelous? Is this a God that deserves to be honored at all? What kind of God creates an entire universe just to show off how amazing he is, and then punishes the people when they don’t affirm how great he is? Is God really this concerned with his own name and fame? Isn’t God supposed to just love us, and want to be loved by us?

We now come to the crux of what I want to teach you about the very nature of God.
God is Theo-Centric – meaning that he is concerned first and foremost with himself. God does everything for his own sake. He doesn’t do it for us, or any reason other than for the proclamation of his own being and glory.

This is the fundamental concept that we must understand about God, and though difficult to comprehend, we must understand this one thing about God. let me tell you why this must be true about God, because if it is not, then God is not worthy of our praise at all.

God is always and always has been an exuberantly happy God.
If God were unhappy at any point, he would be deficient in some respect
Just look at your own life. We have a void, we crave satisfaction, we yearn, long and desire to be happy. We are, in a sense, not complete when we are not happy, satisfied. We are deficient. But God is complete and overflowing with satisfaction – within Himself. God loves himself more than any of us ever could. God is God’s biggest fan, and he is deeply passionate about himself.

It has to be this way. If you or I were in love with ourselves in this way, it would be idolatry and selfish. We are meant to worship the greatest thing, not lesser things.
But God is the greatest thing. If he loved any single thing more than he loved himself, God would not be the greatest being, and he would be an idolater of something greater than himself, thus negating any claim to God because God must be the greatest of all beings.

God is completely enamored with himself. it can be no other way, or he would cease being God. and everything that God does and has done flows out of this satisfaction within himself.

God’s glory is the heart of all true religious experience. All that God does overflows from his joy. Ephesians 1:5 – he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ “according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace…”
God is not constrained in any of his acts. They are all an expression of joy and he has pleasure in all that he does.

In a call to praise the Lord in Psalm 135, the reason that the people should praise him is because v6 – whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.

God is not constrained. He does whatever he pleases. Is 46:9-10 for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end form the beginning and form the ancient times not yet done, saying, ;my counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.’ God has a sovereign freedom to do all that he desires, and everything he does is an expression of the abundance of his delight
C.S. Lewis says that “God who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them.”

God is in a class by Himself. “The freedom of God consists in the fact that no cause other than Himself produces His acts and no external obstacle impedes them – that His own goodness is the root from which they all grow and His own omnipotence the air in which they all flower.”

God is completely satisfied in himself. God is most glorified by God. God does everything for his own glory. God is all about God. What about us. We have seen through Romans thus far that everything God does is a campaign to promote his glory amidst his creation. But how does his creation give him glory?

The answer is that we respond to God in the same way that God responds to God. God does everything for his own glory, therefore everything that we do should be for the purpose of honoring and glorifying him.
We participate in the glory of God by responding to the magnificence which he displays.

1 Cor 10:31- But in everything you do, whether you eat or drink, do everything for the glory of God. But how? How is God most glorified? If you have hung out with us leaders, and read some of the books that we love, you know what the answer is going to be: John Piper – God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. To put it another way, God is glorified utmost in the delight of our affections toward him.

Psalm 37:4 – Delight yourselves in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. It isn’t your actions, or your going to church and trying to be a good person. The only way that God will receive the glory he is due is through your affections toward him.

Through all the pleasure and the pain, which I am finding are most often invariably linked, our affections toward God, and finding our delight in him alone is the way that God is most glorified. This isn’t something that you can just make happen.
Delighting in God comes from seeing for yourself the exhibition of his excellence. This is saving faith, seeing and understanding with spiritual apprehension the beauty of God in his promises toward us.

The fullest expression of joy is found in the son of God, Jesus Christ. Piper – If we do not taste the beauty of Christ in his promises as delightful, or as satisfying, we do not yet believe in a saving, transforming way. The essence of faith is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus. If you want salvation, if you want glory, if you want joy, if you want hope, and faith, and meaning in life, it is found in Jesus Christ. All of your problems don’t magically go away, but it is in Christ alone that there is satisfaction for our starving souls

This is what Jesus came to do, to unite us though himself to the Father.
Close in prayer of John 17

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The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

:: The Resolved ::

Justin Bragg (elder)

Romans 1:16-17

I am not ashamed of the gospel, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed by faith unto faith, as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.”

Capital letters, Why does the phrase start with “but?” Most people won’t really think twice about this, and it may not seem that important. But we, as your elders, are responsible for teaching you correct doctrine, and to protect you from error and lies, so we passionately study the whole counsel of God, and strive to make clear to you what Scripture says. Leave Romans for a bit, and look at the phrase, “the just shall live by faith” from a different perspective, the perspective of the original text in which we find this phrase.

HABAKKUK
Historical Background
AUTHOR – only know his name. Interesting prophecy. Only one that is not directed to the people. The entire thing is a conversation between Habakkuk and God, similar to parts of Job.

HISTORICAL SETTING – date difficult to determine, author gives none. Background of decline and fall of Judean kingdom (626-586 BC) Severe sin in the land of Judah (1:2-4) which was not present during Josiah’s reign, but consistent with reign of Jehoiakim. This is during the reign of Jehoiakim. Invasion of Babylonians (Chaldeans) predicted in 1:6-10. Habakkuk asks “how long?” (1:2), and God responds that it will be during Habakkuk’s day (1:5). Language indicates invasion of Neb and Babylonians will come soon. Therefore, Following death of Josiah (609 BC), and prior to the Babylonian invasion (605 BC).

Josiah, grandson of good king Hezekiah, instituted reform in his reign, following the sinful reign of Manasseh. Josiah repaired the temple after 60 years in ruin, found a copy of the Law, and purged idolatry from cities of Judah. Josiah died tragically on the battlefield, and his death greatly impacted the nation. Jehoiakim abandoned Josiah’s reforms, and wickedness was again rampant.

Here is a man who loved justice and peace. He had lived under a good king, and as a righteous man, was appalled and disgusted by the wickedness of God’s people. He comes to God, and begs, pleads, and even accuses God concerning His justice. Why is there so much wickedness and evil? How can God allow this to happen?
The question Habakkuk asks is the same question asked today – If God is all good, all loving, and all powerful, why is their sin and evil in the world?

Structure of Habakkuk:
Chapters 1 & 2 explain two problems related to God’s holiness
Problem stated: Reconciling God’s holiness and longsuffering (inaction) with Judah’s sin. (1:1-11 – Habakkuk and God). Reconciling God’s holiness and use of a wicked nation to judge Judah (1:12-2:20 – Habakkuk and God). Problem reconciled (Habakkuk’s prayer in chapter 3)

God is longsuffering with sinful men and sovereignly chooses instruments to accomplish his ends without compromising his holiness, but rather showing his mercy and sovereignty.

Let’s walk through this incredible conversation between Habakkuk and God.

1:2-4 – Habakkuk’s complaint
Lodging complaint against God
Troubled by violence (2, 3)
Injustice and wrong, destruction, strife and conflict (3)
Paralysis of law, inability of justice to prevail, perversion of justice (4)
Clearly an anguished cry from a man who loved justice. He had seen justice perverted and had cried out to God against evil

1:5-11 GOD’s REPLY (Read 5-6)
The answer, “yes Judah is full of wickedness and evil, and God is going to do something about it – he is raising up the ruthless Babylonians who are bent on violence to sweep across the land (6)
God tells Hab to “be astonished! Wonder!” You wouldn’t believe what I am going to do. In this time of moral decay and rampant wickedness, God is going to send a more evil and wicked people to destroy them. The rest of the passage goes into the brutal details how this will happen. Not the answer Hab expected to hear. Surely Judah was better than Babylon. How could God have this wicked people have victory over his own people? Great cry of “That’s not fair!”

1:12-2:1 Habakkuk’s second complaint (Read 12-13)
Appeals to God’s attributes in covenantal terms. God is certainly holy and eternal – why has He appointed the Babylonians to execute judgment and punishment? How can a holy God use unholy instruments of judgment? Why is God tolerating wrong and treacherous? Why is he silent when the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves? How can this be?
Incredibly applicable to all times – We see this over and over again throughout the Bible in the life of Job, and Asaph’s prayers in Psalm 73? In the suffering of John the Baptist, in Matt 11:1-6, asked Jesus when imprisoned if his suffering was in vain, to which Jesus replied, “the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who does not take offense at Me.”

The overwhelming theme throughout the Bible, and what we will look at more closely next week, is that God is holy, faithful and sovereign, and that nothing happens in this world that is not directly ordained by our good God. We can have confidence that “All things work together for good, for those who love God, and are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28).

Habakkuk shows wisdom in 2:1 (READ).
He will wait upon wait upon God for the answers to his questions.
The idea of waiting on a watchtower seems to carry the notion of careful separation, intense watching or looking for any ‘movement on the horizon.’ Just as a guard on the watchtower of a protected city watches intently for the enemy, so Hab will patiently watch for the answer for the Lord

2:2-20 THE LORD’s ANSWER (READ 2:2-4)
Don’t know how long he waited, but answer finally comes
Lord instructs Hab to write down the rev and make it plain on tablets. Let everyone know, write it in stone and have everyone be made aware of this assurance from God. The revelation awaits an appointed time, and will not prove false. Wait for it, it will come and not delay. Habakkuk had asked God if what he was doing was right. The Babylonians, though they would have victory, were not justified in God’s sight. There is a clear distinction between how God deals with the justified and the unjust. The unjust: 4-5
The just: 4 The righteous will live by faith. The Babylonians will be punished for their deeds harshly.

God delivers woes against greed, injustice, violence, seduction and idolatry. This is the way of the unrighteous – the way of the world.
They strive to succeed and find happiness through sinful means
But not the righteous – they will live by faith! They will not fall into the trap of false pleasure and security! The just will triumph by faith!

The Babylonians are merely an instrument in the hand of the God who is in control of history, who controls the affairs of the world with a divine plan and a divine timetable. All of history is bound up with the divine kingdom. The key to understanding every event in the history of the world is to understand that God has a kingdom that is presently being established and ruled, but will be fully realized when Christ comes to vindicate the righteous fully and punish the wicked in full measure.

The purpose of God’s action in Judah, and in the whole world at all times is pronounced in v 14. He is making Himself known to all people. He is asserting his majesty and glory. V 20 – Let all the earth be silent before Him – for He is in His holy temple.

Go Back to Habakkuk 2:4
Paul, in Romans 1:17, is quoting this great pronouncement by God
In the midst of God’s pronouncement against the ungodly, in direct opposition, we are told that the righteous will live by faith, that’s why that “but” is there. In contrast to the Babylonians, who will ascend for a time, for the purpose of receiving condemnation, the just, or upright, are assured that they will live, be preserved by thier faith, or faithfulness, which entails a dependent trust and steadfast commitment in vital relation to God. This is the greatest pronouncement God has ever made. There is no doubt why we find it three times in the New Testament, each time, emphasizing part of the masterful truth.

The Just (Rom 1:17)
To understand what justification is, and who the justified man is, we turn to Romans. IS it ok for Paul to use this text in Habakkuk to support his justification by faith alone comments? Isn’t Habakkuk talking about those who are justified living by their faith? How can Paul use this verse to say that we are “saved,” or justified by faith?
True Translation of the passage: Paul appears to give words a different meaning. The message of Habakkuk is that the person who is already righteous is instructed to have faith that God is faithful and just. In Paul, the quotation functions to characterize how it is that one can attain right standing with God and so live eternally.

What do you connect on “on the basis of faith” with? Many connect “on the basis of faith” with “will live,” so we have “the just shall live by faith.” While this interpretation is accurate, to understand the fullness of what is being said, we need to connect “on the basis of faith” with “the one who is righteous,” so that it reads, “He who through faith is righteous will live.”

In Romans 1-8, Paul continually connects faith with righteousness (5:1) and shows how “life” is the product of that righteousness (5:18) It is also important to note what Paul means by “live,”
For Paul and many Jews Life (especially eternal life) is practically synonymous with salvation In Aramaic, the language Paul probably spoke there is one word for both life and salvation.
So we can take it a step further and say, “he who through faith is righteous will be saved.

Because for Paul, salvation begins with justification, but goes beyond it to include sanctification (or becoming holy), and final consummation in glory. That’s exactly what Duane has been talking about. Our salvation begins with justification, so that we can say that we have been saved by faith. But we also can say that we are “being saved” currently, by faith, and that we will be saved, in the end, by faith as well.
So it is not just that the one who is justified will live by faith, but that justification itself is attained through faith, from the beginning, and on that basis, we will live. From Habakkuk we know that a person can be righteous before God. Paul, in the introduction of his great letter, is attempting to ask the question of how can a person be made righteous before God. He knows that the justified man will live by faith, but how do you get justified in the very first place?

Because of the broad and indefinite statement in Habakkuk, Paul is not out of line to use this text to support his argument. In a moment we will look at Galatians, written earlier than Romans, in which Paul uses the verse again to support that the justified man should live his life by faith, and not by works, so Paul has studied this passage fully, and is convinced of it’s crucial message for believers.
If we are to continue living by faith, it follows that we would first be brought to life (justified) by faith. God has, since the time of Christ, one way in which his people are saved – by faith!

So as we have seen over the past few weeks from Duane’s teachings, it is perfectly acceptable for Paul to claim that faith in Jesus Christ, faith in the saving power of the gospel, is how we are justified, made right before God

By Faith (Hebrews 10:38) READ 10:36-39
How do we receive God’s gift of justification? Hebrews tells us that it is by faith – by believing God and acting upon that belief.
From the long list of heroes of the faith in Heb 11, we see that faith is an action. In salvation matters, trusting the Lord Jesus Christ as the one who dies in our place and thus turning from sin to follow Him is the definition of faith. Similarly to Hab’s revelation of faith in hard times, the author of Hebrews writes, “He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him
We see here, as we do early on in Romans, that faith and obedience are inseparable (v5, the obedience of faith)
Our lives in relationship to God are to be lived by faith, which leads us to the final place we find the great statement from God to his justified children

Shall Live (Gal 3:10-14)
Here we find Paul telling God’s people how to live their lives.
The problem in Galatia was that the believing Jews had received God’s justification by faith, but were turning back to works to “remain” saved. Paul doesn’t mix words when he says in 3:10-11.

The only way to live the Christian life is by faith. The word may crumble around us, causing us to question God. all that we love and know may vanish. But the righteous will live by his faith.
He will live by faith in the One who keeps us, not only in the moment of our initial belief in Jesus Christ, but in every moment of life as well.

The message is clear in v 13-14. Christ has redeemed us from wickedness and eternal punishment, and guarantees for us, if we would place our complete trust in His atoning work, that we will never be lost. We will never lose our adoption into the family of God. God’s declaration of justification is irreversible. Hebrews warns us about those who fall away, but we trust that those who leave were never part of us. We believe the testimony of Scripture that the just will live by faith. And by faith, we will never lose our salvation.

The just will live by faith

Joe did a good job talking about the life of faith last week. Faith is relentless, reckless abandon to our need for human security, and self-preservation. Faith is denying our own efforts save us.
Faith is total devotion to the God who has redeemed us apart from any good work on our part. Faith is utter trust in the God who never disappoints, who will not ever lose one sheep from his fold

We have Faith, trust, and confidence in a holy, faithful, sovereign God who is in control

Faith is also experiencing, the hard lesson of joy in suffering
Joy in suffering seems to be an oxymoron, a contradictory statement. But when we come to Hab 3, we find what it means for the just to live by faith. God’s pronouncement in 2:4, that the just will live by faith is really the foundation for Hab’s final prayer
Hab gets it. he understands what God is doing, and where before he cried injustice at God for his actions, he now cries utter amazement and unrelinquished joyful faith in the midst of suffering
Hab is now comforted and satisfied with what God has told him he will do.

The key is 2:20, “But the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before him.” Who are you oh man, to question the ways of God? God is God, and you are not – shut up (my translation) Habakkuk finally understands the faithfulness of God. God is faithful to his covenant with his people. God makes us righteous, and he will preserve those who place their faith in him without fail.

Calamity will come. We live in a wicked and evil world, and the wrath of God is being poured out all around us. You will suffer! That is certain. But when we read the Word of God, we find that we worship a mighty and sovereign God who is purposeful about every moment of life. Where is your confidence? What will you do when you suffer? Where do you turn when life sucks?

We learn a tremendous lesson from Habakkuk, about how God is glorified in our suffering. Nothing has changed from the first chapters – God is still going to crush his people by the foreign invasion of a cruel and wicked nation, but Habakkuk’s tone has changed, because he has come to understand that the just will live by faith. Those who are the Lord’s will be kept in the midst of suffering

Instead of trying to explain and teach this chapter, I am just going to read it to you. This is one of the most beautiful prayers in the Bible. It’s no Prayer of Jabez, but it’s pretty good – I would love to see this prayer as a national best seller, but I fear that day is not soon forthcoming.

Close your eyes, and breath in the rich aroma of a prayer of the justified man, praising God for his righteousness and mercy.
Drink the bitter-sweet water of what it means to have joy in suffering, which is the way God is most glorified in our turmoil.

PRAYER
You are holy. Let all the earth be silent before you
The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of you
We tremble before you, our lips quiver and decay enters our bones
In the midst of all calamity and distress, we exult in you oh Lord
We rejoice in you God, our salvation
You are our strength
You, Jesus Christ, are our justification, our righteousness
Lord, give us faith to believe and cling to our only hope, that we are saved by faith in your son, Jesus Christ

We pray with the great poet, William Cowper, who wrote:
Though vine nor fig tree neither
Their wonted fruits should bear
Though all the fields should wither
Nor flocks nor herds be there
Yet, God the same abiding,
His praise shall tune my voice;
I cannot but rejoice

Tune our voice to rejoice in all things from your mighty hand
Tune our hearts to live by faith

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The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
May 22nd, 2005

“Justification by Faith”
Romans 1:16-17

Introduction

Tonight we come to what is considered by many to be the most important verse in the whole Bible. Romans 3:26 competes a being one of the most important but it very well may be this verse.

If any of you have heard the story of Martin Luther of the 16th century or maybe you’ve seen the movie, “Luther” then this is the text which ignited his sole and set the Reformation in motion.

Martin Luther later said the doctrine here in this verse is the one by which the church stands or falls. I’ll take it one step further and say it’s the doctrine by which you will stand or fall.

Let’s read the text and pray over it.

Okay, to start off our approach to the third week on this two verses let’s rehearse in our minds what we’ve learned so far about the book of Romans leading up to this point.

Romans a book about God, how God is made to look great. How God is glorious and humans are not. How God is glorious in saving humans through Jesus Christ. We’ve been spending few weeks in verses 16-17 of the first chapter. This is the last verse of the introduction where Paul is making his thesis for the entire book. So, the subject of vs.17 is what Paul, the human author, will be arguing for the entire book.

Verse 16 is all about the word “gospel.” So far we have learned this about the gospel…

The Gospel is Jesus. Jesus’ person, Jesus’ work, and Jesus’ message concerning himself. We have learned the Gospel is sufficiently powerful for future salvation. We have learned the gospel is powerful because it can keep believers believing until that salvation. And we have learned the result of the gospel is that we will not be shamed.

Last week we focused on both the universal and particular aspects of the gospel. As the universal gospel is it for all or any who believe. As the particular gospel, it saves particular peoples, like Jews and Gentiles and those within their ethnicities.

We learned that Jews are significant because they point to the fact that ultimately it’s God who does some choosing. God chooses a Jewish messiah and God chooses to save all kinds of people through that messiah. God chooses to bring glory to himself by doing things this way. So we ended last week by saying that ultimately salvation, through and through has to do with God’s sovereign choice or pleasure.

The Question Being Answered

That brings us to verse 17, which begins with “for” (one of those important connective words). Theology is built on the word “for.” So “for” here says to us that what Paul is about to tells us is how believing in the gospel is powerful to salvation.

Paul’s answer here in verse 17 is “justification by faith.” If you wanted to pose this sermon as a question you could say it’s meant to answer the question, “How can believing in the gospel actually save a believer?”

So let us re-read verse 17 (read twice). “For in it (the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed by faith for faith as it is written…”

Okay. We’re going to be rigorous. That’s what it means to be exegetical. To rigorously read out the meaning word by word. First we looked at the word “For” now “the righteousness of God.” And right away we have a problem.

This is a puzzling phrase, “the righteousness of God.” It’s puzzling because for the most part we are in large detached from a concern for the righteousness of God. We don’t really care a whole lot of whether or not God looks righteous or not. For most that’s not even on their radar unless they are attacking God or saying he doesn’t exist because bad things happen. But most are not even concerned with how right God is in his being…how deep the fountain of his justice flows from.

This verse was the gateway for Luther into paradise because he understood the hell of the phrase the righteousness of God requires. God’s righteousness is perfection, utter holiness and any departure is an extreme offense and malignment.

Today I believe we as Christians in the last couple decades at least, have so emphasized the love of God (which doesn’t even show up until the 5th chapter of Romans) that we have ended up sacrificing the righteousness of God. At the expense of the righteousness of God we have made up a loving God who no longer cares about his honor and his glory and his holy just and right character.

Now I want us to enter into paradise…that this verse would be a freedom and a joy to us. But I don’t think that can happen unless we have a fear for the righteousness of God.

“Righteousness of God”

So my plan tonight, to be straight with you, is to scare you. Before we can even begin to understand this verse and the astounding claim it makes we MUST understand the righteousness of God. We must know that our souls hang over the pit of hell and we live our lives in the face of a God who is angry. Yes…God is angry with us. We are as Jonathan Edwards said…”sinners in the hands of an angry God” if God is truly a righteous and true God.

Our concern at The Resolved Church is to be God-centered in everything. His glory is our #1 concern. We refuse to shy away from the hell-fire and brimstone truths of Scripture which uphold and honor the glory of God. We believe the more we make of God and the less we make of ourselves the more we will truly be satisfied.

All week I thought about how I might communicate the righteousness of God to you. I thought about explaining how all peoples of the earth have a sense of right and wrong…and that it flows out of God.

But that just seemed so detached. Felt just philosophical. I thought about talking about sin. About defining it and how it is an infraction upon God’s glory offending an infinite being and thus deserving an infinite response. I thought about talking on how sin is a stench in God’s nostrils that he detests and that is gross and heinous. But Paul is going to spend the next two chapters talking about that.

So what have decided to do is turn to a very descriptive passage in Scripture which demonstrates how holy and upright God is and what he requires. So turn to Isaiah chapter 6. The picture of God in Isaiah 6 is one of a perfect and holy, righteous being.

Before we read this I want to say some things about the word “righteousness” then hopefully we will be able to read this passage and see the connection between it and the righteousness of God in Romans.

The word “righteousness” in Romans in reference to God is a term of perfection. The word in the Greek original that we translate as “righteousness” in English is, “dikaiosune.” Dikaiosune is the same thing justice. We just don’t have a word for it English. We don’t have a justiceness. That’s not a word, so instead we say righteousness. It is a term describing the state or character of a person. It is a legal term. The picture is one of a courtroom. One of a judge and a guilty party.

The title of today’s sermon is justification by faith and its concern is justice. What is just or right. How can one be right before God? What we are talking about is a concern of one’s standing. When we say justification what we are saying is righteousification. But that isn’t a word either.

So just get this. Whenever we see the word righteousness of God we should think of standing. Right standing before a right God.

Okay so Isaiah 6. The picture of God. His rightness or holiness or perfection… Let’s read Isaiah 6:1-7. God is righteous. Friends, family…. know God is righteous. And be scared for your soul like Isaiah.

God is righteous and that brings us to Romans 1:17 and why Luther hated it and why if we have a view of God’s righteousness this verse will seem very problematic and very puzzling.

So let me read Romans 1:17 again paraphrased in a wrong way but in the way that Luther first saw it and in the way that we should first see it if we are at all concerned about the righteousness of God. “For in it the righteousness of God is made known to humans so that by doing works of faith and works of faith and works of faith we will live eternally.”

Do you see it? Why martin Luther hated this verse? Because when he read it he understood that God was righteous and requires righteousness and when he read the word faith he read acts of faith. Thus no matter how much faith he acted out there was no peace in his soul because he understood the righteousness of God.

Now I pray that in this moment God would allow us to enter paradise. I want to show you that gate that Luther discovered and the one I pray that my soul would know. Luther beat and beat and beat upon this text. Listen to his own account.

“I had indeed been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in the Epistle to the Romans. But up till then it was not the cold blood about the heart, but a single word in Chapter 1 [:17], “In it the righteousness of God is revealed,” that had stood in my way. For I hated that word “righteousness of God,” which, according to the use and custom of all the teachers, I had been taught to understand philosophically regarding the formal or active righteousness, as they call it, with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous sinner.
Though I lived as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I hated the righteous God who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God, and said, “As if, indeed, it is not enough, that miserable sinners, eternally lost through original sin, are crushed by every kind of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, without having God add pain to pain by the gospel and also by the gospel threatening us with his righteousness and wrath!” Thus I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, I beat importunately upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.
At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, “In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’” There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.” Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. (Martin Luther: Selections, pp. 11-12).”

Look at our verse with me, Romans 1:17. If we understand that the righteousness of God here in Romans as saying that the gospel reveals the righteousness of God, that’s the righteousness of God shown in Isaiah 6…then this verse cannot make any sense because when the righteousness of God is unveiled everybody dies, because like Isaiah and his people, we too are all unclean sinners…so woe (that’s a death curse) woe unto us. But the gospel is about how God saves. So then we ask what righteousness of God is being referred to?

Let’s look at two words in hopes that we might discover it.

By Faith Revealed

Luther says he gave heed to the context. What comes before and what comes after the word “righteousness.” What do you see? He noticed two words, “by faith.” The question is in which way the righteousness of God is revealed? Is it revealed in a way that we see the righteousness of God or is it something else?

Lets look at these two words. When we look at the word “by,” what we are looking at is means. That was last week’s sermon. Salvation is the goal and there is a certain way or means by which God saves. This verse, this week is the “how.” How God actually does it. The answer is by faith.
The English here is frustrating. Luther studied this in the Greek text, the language the New Testament was originally written in, and in fact he translated the whole Greek New Testament into English.

What Luther saw in the Greek is that the word faith and the word believe here are the same Greek word. Believe is the verb. Faith is the noun. “Pistos” and “pisteou.” We just don’t have an English word like faithing.

So faithing or believing becomes the means (remember last week we talked about means and ends). The word “by” indicates means. Or as Jonathan Edwards say the thing “fit” for the communication of God’s righteousness to the believer. The thing which is fitting or fits.

Justification or righteousness by faith is the fitting thing. This is the gospel. That God gives us righteousness! HIS! And he gives it to us. Freely! No work!

This is where this text hits us. Where the words “by faith” hit us (the context Luther referred to).
Because we as a people, as human beings are programmed to do works. But we cannot do any one thing or do enough things to get God’s righteousness. Which is why Isaiah 64:6 says, “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.” The gospel as that righteousness is alien to us and God gives it to people despite their hatred of Him and His glory.

Ahh. It is paradise. All that God is. His holiness and perfection becomes our through the gospel. Through Jesus we are made right with God. And it does not just end there…

It would be very easy for us to form a theology at this point that pictures Christianity as this thing in which one believes and they get righteousness and you put it in your back pocket for a rainy day.

But the Bible will not allow us to do that. It won’t let us because of two things more that Paul says here in verse 17.

One, “from faith to faith” and two, “the just/righteous will live by faith.”

Look at the phrase from faith to faith. Now remember verse 16 with me, that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation…now put that next to faith to faith. What this tells us is that what happens is that the gospel (Jesus) is powerful to save me because the righteousness of God is not only given by faith but itself gives faith.

The gospel keeps believers believing! From faith to faith to faith. This is the “will live” of the quote from Habakkuk, “the just will live by faith.” It’s the second reason I spoke of. Will live is future. That future salvation of verse 16, unto salvation.

The gospel is the righteousness of God given and lived out by faith today, tomorrow and into glory. The quote from Habakkuk is sort of an extra umph of support.

In Habakkuk, righteousness belongs to the person. The righteous man will live. Thus we understand the righteousness of God in view here is one given to man.

So those are the two reasons why Scripture will not allow considering faith as something that solely occurred in the past. One, faith is for faith. And two, true faith is the one that keep giving one faith so that one may live…and will live and live forever.

Conclusion

I want to conclude tonight in a couple ways. First I want to summarize and then I want to leave you with some charges.

So first a summary. The title of this sermon is “Justification By Faith.” It is the answer to the question: how can believing in the gospel can save a believer?”

Here is the answer of Romans 1:17. Believing in the gospel, in Jesus and his work, saves believers because through that believing God gives his perfect righteousness to unrighteous human beings freely. It is freely, not on the basis of anything humans do. And the righteousness God gives is a righteousness that keeps giving faith. And that continued faith will enable a person to live unto salvation from the justice or righteousness of God whose anger will be unleashed against all unrighteousness.

Now there may be lingering questions…perhaps about the righteousness of God unleashed against those who do not receive his gift of righteousness through faith. Or maybe how Jesus and his work is sufficient grounds for God to give us righteousness.

But that is where we are going. We’ll deal with them in up and coming weeks. Chapters 2-3 are about our unrighteousness and God’s wrath and chapters 4-5 are about Christ righteousness being given to us.

So I will just let Paul explain those things when we get there.

Since faith is the only way we get the righteousness God requires I want to tell you to have it. Simply put faith is a trust or reliance or a confidence or a sufficiency. It’s a charge to believe in the gospel. 2 Timothy 3:16 says God’s word is sufficient for teaching, correcting, rebuking and training in righteousness. So I want to pray that it does it’s work and grants us that which it calls us to.

The gospel is our only hope. To simply believe is sufficient. So accept the truth of God’s word. Feel the weight and the fear and the importance of God’s righteousness. Then apply it to your life. At every turn, every problem, every day live in light of God’s righteousness and that righteousness that given to you.

Believers are justified by faith. So give up on trying to earn righteousness. Our righteous works are as Isaiah says…filthy rags. Put no confidence in your works and quit trying to impress God, you only reap wrath for yourself.

Give up thinking you can be a good Christian. There is no such thing. We stand over the pit of hell and with only the righteousness of God we will be delivered. Let us put all our hope all our faith in the righteousness of God as it is revealed in the gospel of Christ.

Let us rejoice in justification. Love that term with a holy fear. Love Christ and the gospel. May your justification be your food and your delight for everyday. Trust in the righteousness of God alone for everything.

Preach to your sinful soul the gospel the gospel the gospel. Look forward to a salvation. Have faith to live live and live unto a day when we will see God seated on the throne and will not respond with a plead of death but will plead the righteousness of God and live.

Oh let us enter into paradise daily through the righteousness of God. Let’s pray.

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The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
May 15th, 2005

“Thank God for Jews”
Romans 1:16

Introduction

Today we are going to focus in on the little phrase in the last half of the sentence in verse 16 of Romans 1, “…to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile.” My goal is for us to feel the Jewishness of the gospel so much that it moves us to marvel and thank God for The Gospel being through belief first for the Jew. In order to get us there we’ll talk about the “Means of Salvation” “Why the Jew First” “Two Big Words” and “Jesus was a Jew.”

Means of Salvation

Look at the phrase, “to everyone who believes.” This phrase does two things for us. One, it establishes the means of salvation, belief. Two, it levels the plane, all salvation, for everybody, is by belief.

By “means” what is in mind is the active agent, not the substance of salvation. For example, if i want to nail two boards together, hitting a nail with a hammer is the means of getting to the point when i will have two boards nailed together. So believing is the the means. It is the human activity involved in moving toward the object of salvation.

And this is Jesus, the message concerning him. If salvation is something I want then I need to be actively involved in this thing called believing. That’s what the phrase “to everyone who believes” does for us. It tells us “how” we get to Jesus which is the the message concerning him.

When Paul says at the beginning of the sentence, “I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes” what he is doing is noting how God has set things up. God has set it up so that salvation is only in The Gospel. The Gospel is Jesus as we learned a couple weeks ago. So the way or the means you get to Jesus is belief.

So that is the first thing today, belief is the means of salvation.

The second thing is it levels the plane. When we read, “to the Jew first and then the Gentile” we can easily get bent out of shape, thinking that’s not fair or something. But the text has already said here that both Jew and Gentile expereience salvation the same way, through belief.

If you want a fancy phrase, it is the “universal scandal of particularlity.” This applies to a lot of things in Christianity…there is a universal aspect to things and there are things that are very particular.

Here the universal is belief. Everyone that is ever or will ever be saved or be kept in a process of salvation will experience that through belief. Only belief. There is something particular about Jews but the universal is that belief is the means of salvation for everyone, Jew and Gentile.

Why the Jew First

Now let us turn to the particular. This, at first read is a seemingly odd phrase, “to the Jew first.” This is the point where any of the first hearers who were Jews perk up. For a Jew their ancestry was extremely important beacuase it meant that they were priviledged.

This privilige was completely intertwined with their identity. It is why they made detailed geneaologies. Listen to this statement made by Joachim Jeremias who wrote this little book called “Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus” citing the Jewish Midrash of the time, “For the Jew, considered they possessed merit (for salvation) form legitimate ancestry.”

This raises the exact question this text forces us to ask, is there “merit (for salvation) from legitimate ancestry”? The question is “What is the deal with the Jews? What is the deal with salvation and the Jews? Are they special somehow? Do they possess merit for salvation form ancestry?”

To answer this question…I want to first point out that they didn’t think they were special for no reason at all. Listen to Amos 3:1-2 “Hear this word which the LORD has spoken against you, sons of Israel, against the entire family which He brought up from the land of Egypt, ‘You only have I chosen among all the families of the earth.’”

Countless times, Israel, the Jews are referred to as “God’s chosen people.” So this is the real question behind the question of what is the special about the Jews….”Why did God choose Jews?”

He did choose them. It began with Abraham, the father of the Jews. Abraham was a godless
Babylonian Pagan. God comes to him in Gen 12. God tells him to leave his land and God will make him into a great nation.

So then we we ask the question, why Abraham? Here is the answer we get from the Bible, Deut. 7:7-8 “The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers.”

So let me phrase the question again, “Why did God choose Jews?” The answer is God promised some guy that he would make a new ethnicity from one of their bloodline. That guy turns out to be Abraham. Why did God choose to do this? Why abraham? The answer here that the Bible gives is, God simply chose. It was nothing because of who Abraham was or because of who humans were or what they had done. God simply chose for a reason unknown to us.

Paul will spend all of chapter four in Romans talking about this so I’m going to stop here concerning Abraham. But there are a couple more things we need to talk about before we get to dealing with why this issue of priority and the significance of the Jews.

So let’s back up…because what we are dealing with is a major issue of how we read this book. Implicitly, one of goals in this teaching and in all my preaching is to teach you how to better read your Bible. When we back up on this question of Jew first and then the Gentile we run into a hermenutical question.

No one questions that the Bible is a book about God and how to know Him. So essentially it is a book about salvation. The question is always how. Of all religions that is the question.

Two Big Words

Within Christianity, there two main answers to this questions have been developed. Two main hermeneutical, or interpretive approaches to this question: covenantalism and dispensationalism. Now I know those are big words. So hang with me. Think hard for a moment.

Covententalism looks at the Bible and the unchanging God of the Bible and see that God has always worked through covenant that salvation has always been by grace through faith in Christ. Before Jesus Christ historical entrance into the world, believers looked forward in faith. After Christ’ ascension, believers look backward in faith. Jesus is seen as the fulfillment of the law and that all the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible is written about Him.

Dispensationalism looks at the Bible and argues that God worked with different people in different ways at different times, different dispensations. Thus the result is Jews and Christians really end up being on two sort of tracks or ways of salvation.

So the tension we are faced with right here with the Jew being first is a hermenuetical or interpretative one.

The dispensationalist accuses the coventalist of reading Christ into the Old Testament where he really is not being referred to and as a result unwarranted exegesis takes place that does not consider the history and culture.

The covenantalist accuses the dispensationalist of ignoring both Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5 that he fulfilled the smallest letter and least stroke of a pen regarding the law and Jesus’ teaching in Luke 24 where opened up the Scripture to show how all the Old Testament was pointing to Him. The covenantalist is also uneasy with the apparent denial that justifcation has and will always be by faith alone…we’ll get to that in the next couple weeks.

We here at The Resolved Church teach covenantalism because we believe it to be the most Scriptural and because both Jesus, Paul, and Peter are quite explicit about how the Old Testament is to be seen. However, at the same time, we hear the concerns of the dispensationalists and recognize the need to exercise proper exegesis that takes into account the historical and cultural background on every passage.

Now, I’m guessing you might be thinking what does all this have to do with “the Jew first and then the Gentile”? Here is the connection and it makes all the difference.

Jesus Was a Jew

I want to show that “to the Jew first” is all about Jesus. But before I do, let me show you how a dispensationalist might approach this text.

In a dispensational approach, they would say the Jews were saved first or had the opportunity of salvation first. The Jews sort of get a first chance, or first dibs and then the Gentiles get a chance if the Jews reject. Then they say, later in the future, in a new dispensation of time in God’s historical program, Jews will believe.

Some dispensationalist would go so far as even saying that Gentiles must first become Jews and then they can become Christians (which is one of the interpretation that gets shot down at the first at the Jerusalem council in Acts 15).

I argued last week that this passage is not giving witnessing techniques as so many attempt to use it for. If that’s so and if the dispensational approach doesn’t really cut it then what is the firstness in the covenantal approach? It is the unfolding of God’s plan.

The covenant approach begins with covenant. God acted, he created. God initiated and made covenants with patriarchs beginning with Abraham. God created a people for himself. God instituted his kingdom. God sent the messiah Jesus. Through Jesus, God has put out a message for all peoples.

So primarily, the firstness here begins with recognizing that Jesus was a Jew. Jesus was a Jew who said in John 4:22 “salvation is from the Jews (that is, through the Judaic line salvation comes from the Messiah who is a Jew).”

And salvation from the Jews is what God has said all along. We already mentioned Abraham. Now for a quick second see how God continued that and extended it to the whole group of people whose lineage came from Abraham.

Check out the covenant God made with Israel in Ex.19:4-6 (read). Israel was meant to be a light unto the Gentiles that they would bring God’s salvation to the rest of the world. They were the mediating priests to the world.

So what we get here is a purpose statement for Israel. Why they existed. Here it is again restated in Isaiah 49:6 “I have made you a light among the Gentiles that you might bring my salvation to the ends of the earth.”

Now here is the amazing part! This never happened in Israel’s history. For a brief time during Solomon’s reign some nations started to pay attention to Israel but more because of her riches than her Redeemer. The vision of Isaiah 49:6 and Exodus 19:6 never really happened until Jesus Christ shows up on the scene. Jesus preaches kingdom of God and peoples from all the nations flock to him. Jesus dies on the cross, rises again, ascends to heaven back to his throne and then he sends his Jewish Apostles out unto the world to win all peoples to the Jewish messiah.

The gospel is very very Jewish. But through its Jewishness all kinds of non-Jews get to come to know God.

Now let’s go back to romans. The Jew first then the Gentile. Jesus is a Jew, he is their messiah. They come first. For those who believe first for the Jew. Then unto Gentiles. You and I are here today because the gospel went first to Jews and then to Gentiles.

So this passage says two things. One if you are a Jew, embrace Jesus as messiah. Two, if you are Gentile, embrace Jesus the Jewish messiah.

Let me say it a different way. Jew first. He is genalogically their messiah. But this messiah is theologically for all peoples. The Jew is first. Not in merit. But in the revelation, or unfolding of God.

My hope is at this point is that we have some level of better understanding about this passage. The issues involved. The feelings of a Jew. And how it is all related to God and the way that he has decided to do things.

And that is good…having a better understanding but there remains an uneasiness in me. WE could have ended here simple with a charge for us to believe in Jesus. And that is good, you should. But I think this text drives something at us to provoke us. And that is where I want to end up today.

Conclusion

The things with I think provoke us are affectional things…how we naturally respond. When I read “to the Jew first” and don’t like it, I think there are two things going on in me.

One, I’m at odds with God, discontent with him and how he has done things. Two, I’m lacking a gratefulness for Jews.

So with the first one, when our hearts challenge of God’s righteousness, goodness, fairness of God, here is how we ought to respond…

We don’t want fairness. Fairness means God does not give us any hope for salvation and just wipes everyone out. Both the first sin in the Garden of Eden and all sin since is a questioning of God’s ways. It is foolishness thinking a finite being of us to question God’s ways and think we could know or do better. The proper response to God’s choosing Jews first is to say, “God, it is amazing that you chose anyone.” It’s amazing that God did something at all. What a wonderful being!

When we recognize a lack of gratefulness for Jews in our hearts I think there’s a few things going on there.

One I think we’re experientially detached from the text and forget how loaded the race issue was when Romans was written. Two, ungratefulness is at root of sin…not thanking God for his good gifts and instead challenging him on what he doesn’t give. Three, we forget Jesus was a Jew and the Apostles were Jews. If it were not for Jews loving non-Jews there would be no us. The proper response from us is to say, “God give us love for Jews.” We must beware of thinking our that any ethnos is better.

This text calls for wonder at God’s working in making Jews and saving through them. It is a wonder because he has set it up that way a long time ago. Jews are a special people in that they have played a special purpose in the unfolding of God himself unto the world. May our hearts marvel at the infinite wisdom of our God. May we love and be grateful for Jews and may we love our Jewish Messiah, Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.

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The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
May 8th, 2005

“The Gospel is the Power of God Unto Salvation”
Romans 1:16-17 (Part I)

I. Gospel
II. Salvation
III. Ashamed
IV. Unto

Introduction

In the past couple weeks we have give you a lot of information, but we don’t want to give information just for the sake of information. We care for your souls. We don’t want to rob you, that is why we are moving so slow through Romans. There is no prize for speed or for finishing our study of the book of Romans fast. We want to spend our time. It’s going to take us a couple years.

We are planting a church here and we are looking long term and hope you plan to be with us for a while. We’ll preach sermons on other passages of the Bible and responsibily teach the whole counsel of God…but the bulk of our study as a church for the next couple years is going to be in the book of Romans.

Today we are going to start a three part sermon series on Romans 1:16-17. We’ll look at about half of 16 with the goal that tonight it might give us confidence that GOD IS REAL. THE GOSPEL IS REAL. AND IT CAN-SAVE-US!

This is a key verse. Perhaps the most important verse in whole of Romans. It is the thesis statement. A heading. The whole way Romans is structured is as a support to these two verses.
Chapters 1-3 God’s righteousness and human unrighteousness.
Chapters 4-5 being made righteous through faith in Christ.
Chapters 6-8 is what happens to human unrighteousness after faith.
Chapters 9-11 is returns to God’s righteousness in light of faith.
Chapters 12-16 is practical righteousness, living out faith.)

Back and forth throughout the book the issue is righteousness and faith, righteousness and faith, righteousness and faith. This verse is Paul’s thesis statement about righteousness and faith. A very important verse.

The book of Romans itself is the most systematic presentation of the Christianity and of this clearest book this verse is thesis. Thus, it would be too far off to say that this is perhaps the most important in the whole Bible.

Romans 1:16-17 “16 For I am ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to all the ones who believe, first to the Jew and then to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is unveiled/revealed from believing unto faith, just as it is written, the just will live by faith.”

Let’s pray. As we turn to the study of the ancient letter to the Romans preserved for us and our benefit…may I preach your word. May I rightly divide your word. May the meaning you intended be given for our understanding. May you open the Scriptures to us that our hearts would burn. May you enlighten the eyes of our hearts. Amen.

What I am going to do say a few preliminary things about the gospel and then about this word salvation. Then I want to come back to what it means to be ashamed and the gospel and how the gospel is the power of God unto this thing called salvation.

The reason for approaching it this way is that the entirety of this book is about gospel & salvation…and really the rest of the New Testament and the whole Bible for that matter could fall under these umbrella terms. Yet, there is an understanding of the word “gospel” here that is assumed…so we need to have it in our minds about what he is referring to.

Then I also want to spend some time with the word “salvation” because Paul sees that thing called the gospel is significant for something called salvation, whatever that means. The reason I want to address this is because both us and Paul’s original hearers certainly had some pre-conceived notions or ideas about what these things are, gospel and salvation.

GOSPEL

So first, gospel. …If I want to know what Paul thinks the gospel is at this point all I got to do is scan backward a few verses to the very opening of the letter and we get a picture of the gospel.

If you were here the first week of our introduction to this book we talked about two things: What Scripture is and means and who the Son of God is and what that phrase or title is about.

Listen to Romans 1:1-4 again.

1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, 2 which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, 3 concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh 4 and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The Scriptures in verse 2 is an appeal to the Jew. The Greco-Roman would not care about whether Jesus fulfilled Jewish messianic prophecies in the Jewish Bible. But the Jew cared.

The Son of God in verse 4 is an appeal to both the Greek and the Jew. For the Jews angels were sons of God. For the Greeks, they had a pantheon which was a collection of gods and their sons. Progennates of gods having sex with each other and sometimes with a human.

Paul takes both of these ideas and applies them to Jesus and says that Jesus has fulfilled them in the most ultimate, pure and true way. So at its core the gospel is JESUS. Scriptures point to Jesus. The true Son of God is Jesus. Gospel of God is Jesus.

To make as basic, plain and simple as possible you could almost replace Jesus for gospel in this passage. Let me read it like that. “I am not ashamed of Jesus for Jesus is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, first for the Jew then the Gentile. For in Jesus the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.”

When you hear it that way it sounds very much like Jesus’ words concerning himself in the gospels… In the gospels Jesus is constantly saying ”believe in me.” “Repent and believe the kingdom of God is here.” In Luke Jesus goes into the synogogue, opens up the Bible and reads from Isaiah this passage.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then he sits down (which was a sign of rabbinic authority) and says, “This Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Jesus claimed to be the messiah by doing this. He essentially says I AM savior. I AM

THE GOSPEL.

Jesus is the Gospel. But I think there is a reason why Paul didn’t just use the name of Jesus here. Not because the gospel isn’t Jesus, but because Paul wants to be as clear as possible and the word blankets not only Jesus but his message.

I get this because the word “gospel” itself is literally connected to a message. It is primarily an oral thing. An oral proclamation.

The word in Greek, which our English versions are translations from, is Euangelion. Euangelion means good news. The word had a long history before Jesus even came on the scene. It was always an oral communication. It was used of announcements like birth when a child was born. It was used of war victories when word spreads about the fight being over. It was used at the arrival of a king to tell the whole town to get ready because he was coming. It was used of announcements of financial gain if someone came into fortune, esecially when others were going to benefit from it.

The English word “gospel” is an English Anglo-Saxon word that developed sometime before the printing of the first English Bible in 1535. It was most likely a very common word by that time…but here is where the word “gospel” came from.

Before the word “gospel” when a person would give a speech it was often called a spell if the speech was good. Not like a magic spell, but charactistic of what was happening when a good speech was given…a large group of people are quiet with all their eyes and attention on one person who is talking. It was deemed a “good speech” when it had a certain kind of effect on the people listening…most likely penitence, jubilee, or just being mesmerized. Apparently leading up to the time of the Protestant Reformation and during it, this is exactly what happened much of the time when preachers would give speeches about Jesus from the Bible.

So what was normally called a good speech began to be referred to as a god-speech or god-spell when the speaker was talking about Jesus. Saying god-spell was either apparently too much work or just freaked people out…so they eventually just shortened it to the word, “gospel.” This still happens all the time today, this shortening of words or phrases. People from the south are really good at it. Think of the word, giterdon, short for “get her done.” Or ya’ll, you all. Thus, by the time an English Bible was made, the translators, whenever they saw the one Greek word “good-news,” they just translated it gospel because that is what everyone had been saying for a while.

So, gospel. The gospel is Jesus. A message of God. The message Jesus preached and the apostles preached concerning Him.

SALVATION

Now some things about salvation. As we have said before it is very significant in this letter that the original audience consisted of Jews and Gentiles. It’s significant because these two different groups of people had radically different ways of seeing the world and are going to hear the word soteria, salvation, in very different ways because of it.

First let’s talk about Jews…Jews in the first century lived under the roman rule. They had to pay taxes to roman government. And they didn’t like it. All their actions and lifestyle was regulated. They longed for a political military messiah to come and deliver them from Rome. Some even tried, like Simon Bar Kochba and Judas the Hammer.

Now let’s talk about Greco Romans. Salvation could refer to deliverance from the gods, or salvation from ship peril or salvation from battle. If you’ve ever read Homer’s Illiad or the Oddessy you’ll hear this kind of language and this kind salvation being talked about.

Those are some of the different ethnic associations with this word. But there is some commonality between them, in some inherent things about this word.

Salvation is always is in connotation with escape from peril or danger or something bad that is happening or is going to happen. And more than there are specific uses of the word that put it in a category where the salvation is from something internal.

For the Hebrew, the Jew…humanity is seen as afflicted and in need of help. The picture is never one of prosperity like today. Jews of that day would not say as so many do today that man is basically good or inherently good.

For the Greek this word has a nuance in passages that are referring to a condition of man and not just a outward physical or material peril, where the problem is internal.

Listen to statement of one scholar commenting on the ancient writings of Dio Chrysostom. He says salvation is in reference problem of the “inner health” of man which is set in a “constitutionally ordered” state so that true humanity is lost and man “acts like an animal and a tyrant.”

So here is the question: What kind of salvation is Paul referring to? Some outward physical salvation that will bring escape from some material harm or is he talking about an internal spiritual salvation that will bring deliverance from the corruption of human nature?

We hit a junction here because it would be very easy to skip ahead in Paul’s letter to find out what he is talking about. But I don’t want to get ahead of Paul. So let me say this… I believe it is both. But up to this point, I believe that all Paul has alluded to is internal.

Here is why…I think Paul has in mind the internal aspect primarily. But in a few weeks we will read and study how this internal spiritual problem has caused is causing and will reap a wrathful judgment of God that will be both physical and spiritual.

So that is where we are going. But right now, Paul is stating his thesis statement. A positive proposition: He is eager to preach (vs.15) and the reason is because he says he believes the “gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation.”

ASHAMED

Now that we have something in our heads about the gospel and something in our heads about salvation we can move to discussing this issue of shame and how the gospel and salvation is related to it.

Shame somewhat self-explanatory…not much has been lost in translation with this word. Shame is embarrassment, dishonor, made to look or feel degraded etc.

1st century shame was intense. It was an honor shame society. Your family and heritage is your honor and the last thing you want to do is bring shame to your family’s name.

So let me ask you a question: is Paul here saying that he escapes shame because the gospel keeps him in the best light, it always makes him look good? No. It is the exact opposite.

In 2 Corinthians 11:23-36 Paul describes how he was the recipient of many imprisonments, countless beatings often near death, fives times he received a 48 lashes whipping, three times he was beaten, once he was stoned and left for dead, three times he was shipwrecked, and he says he was in constant danger from robbers to his own people. And all of this, because of the gospel!

In Philippians 3 Paul describes how he was a converted Pharisee. How he used to be on the other side of the fence. How he used to be a picture perfect Jew and was the one giving the stonings for those who challenged and departed from Judaism. And he experience much reproach for switching

Paul experienced much shame.
There is something about believing and living out the gospel that ought to bring shame. The gospel brings shame. Not the personal feeling of shame. But the shaming from others.

This leads me to ask a question. Is Paul giving instruction for witnessing techniques…is he saying “don’t be embarrassed!”? “Scour up your will and evangelize!”? Is that what he’s doing?

I don’t think so because Paul cleary recognizes and feels shaming from others. In 1 Corinthians 1 that people consider the word of the cross folly (1 Cor 1:18) and that those who preach it are despised.

Instead of giving us witnessing techniques I think Paul is telling us how or why we can endure the shame. And that is because the gospel is true and there is a marvelous delight power in it that can actually save, no matter what anyoe says or does to those who put their confidence it it.

So I think he’s making a theological point about the actual power of the gospel. Look at the little word “unto.” I want to spend the rest of our time this morning on this one little word here and the two massive theological implications it makes:

UNTO

First of the word unto is a future word. Notice that. The word “unto” here places salvation in the future.

In the Bible salvation is spoken of in three different time frames.

One, is in the past. Ephesians 2:8 says of believes that they “have been saved through faith.” So there is an aspect of salvation that is already initiated and guaranteed, so much so that it can be spoken of as already completed in the past.

One is in the present. 2 Corinthians 2:15 says believers “are the aroma of Christ to God aont those who are being saved.” So there is an aspect of salvation that is current at work, in progress.

And one is in the future. The majority of all the passages in the Bible that mention salvation speak of it being something that happens in the future. I’ll give you one example directly from the book of Romans. Romans 5:9-10 says “having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.

Salvation in the past happened, if you’re a believer, from the time you first heard the word, your heart understood it, light flooded into your soul…and you believed that Christ was sufficient

Listen to 2 Corinthians 4:4 on this, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” But then what happened is Romans 10:17, “faith (came) by hearing the gospel preached.”

Salvation in the present is the process of purification, where Christi is progressively shown to be proficient in every area of our lives. It’s what theologicans and Christians have called sanctification. 2 Thessalonians 2:13 speaks to this when it says, “God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.”

Salvation in the future is when we will actually, physically, and bodily be saved. This is the tense our text Rom 1:16 fits. The gospel is the power of God that is able to keep us and take us UNTO that day of salvation.

So since salvation here is future, here is our first theological implication:

Since salvation is future in this passage, Paul cannot be saying he is not ashamed because the gospel has some magic power to make converts. He is not saying if you just open your mouth and speak, you will see, people will get saved. That might happen. But that is not guarenteed in the gospel. He is not saying there is something special about Christianity in its ability to make converts. All religions make converts but that does not make them true.

Thus, the second theological implication here is:

Since salvation is future in this passage, it is the result of one who believes and keeps believing. Salvation is not a get into heaven card. Salvation is for the believer. It is what keeps the believer believing. And this my friends is the wonder of this passage… that THE GOSPEL IS POWERFUL BECAUSE IT CAN KEEP YOU BELIEVING. It can give real faith and enable you to keep having it. The gospel really can save us! All our inner turmoil. All our trouble. Our offenses and dissatisfaction. And lack of joy. All the absence of God we feel. The gospel can and will deliver us.

You will never here a message as long as I am here at the resolved on 10 ways of how to have a successful marriage. Why? Because any and every problem you have in your life is a problem with sin and the need for salvation from the savior. The solution to every problem is just the gospel. And the gospel is not merely dealing with the deep problem of our soul but is a taking of us to salvation when we see Christ forever and ever and be so satisfied in him and his glory.

The answer for every single troubled marriage is the gospel. The answer for every depressed person is the gospel. The answer for every experience of suffering is the gospel. The answer for every challenge and difficulty in life is the gospel.

CONCLUSION

Today’s message is one of great assurance. It is one that gives us a surety and a confidence that the gospel is able and powerful and will take us to final security and joy in Jesus. It’s a surety and a confidence that promises us escape from the peril to come and the contamination of our hearts. The message today is Jesus. Jesus is sufficient.

I close with the words from a great hymn. May the words encourage you where you are weak. Rebuke and convict you where you are self-sufficient and lack trust in Christ. And most of all may they give you a vision of a glorious God and savior who is beautiful and strong and mighty and powerful and loving forever committed to those destined for salvation.

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly lead on Jesus’ name

On Christ the solid rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand

When darkness ceils His lovely face
I rest on his unchanging grace
In every high and stormy gale
My anchor holds within the veil

On Christ the solid rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand

His oath, his covenant his blood
Support me in the whelming flood
When all around my soul gives way?
He then is all my hope and stay

On Christ the solid rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand

When he shall come with trumpet sound
Oh may I then in him be found
Dressed in His righteousness alone
Faultless to stand before the throne

On Christ the solid rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand

Friends, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation!

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The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
May 1st, 2005

“Romans is for Us”

Introduction: Read text and pray. God, Abba Father. You who at times seem so very far away and at other times seem so close. I pray that you would do something in the next minutes here tonight to help us. We are small and insignificant in comparison to all the rest of your creation, but we come to you with a hope because of Christ that you might answer our prayer and grant us grace to help us to know these words and how you intend for them to be important to us. Amen.

Last week’s sermon was titled “Romans is for God.” This week’s sermon is titled “Romans is for Us.” The connection between the two is found in seeing that because Romans is written for God, for His name’s sake, for His glory…then we get to see how great and wonderful and marvelous He is. When we see Him as such we are enormously blessed. So in that way, Romans is for us.

The Book of Romans. It was written to a people in Rome around 57 AD, about 1948 years ago. Rome was a large city at the time. Lots of different type of people lived there. Especially Jews and Gentiles. One group who thinks they are special because of the things they do, the Jews. One group who sees Rome as the the center of eternal order and its expression. There are many gods to serve there and depending on your god, you either live for pleasure or by depriving yourself of pleasuere, the stoic’s gain.

So there is this sense that we are reading someone else’s letter, since it was written to these two groups of people. And the question that should arise in our minds is, what does this have to do with me? I don’t live in Rome. I am not a Jew. And not Roman. I live in a completely different time period. These are the questions I want to answer today concerning Romans. What does this letter written by some dead guy have to do with me?

It is my desire tonight that our study might give us here a confidence that this letter has everything to do with us and that we will have a sense that it is extremely important for us to strive with all our might to know this book so that we might know the God it speaks of.

The way I want to go about this is to: First, show the connection between Romans and a class of writing we call “Scripture.” “Scripture” what that means and why it means that. Second, I want to talk about 4 different viewpoints of Scripture and argue for one. Then third, I want to give examples how seeing the Bible in the last way is a special means of grace for us to grow in our knowledge and love of God.

The Class of Writing Called “Scripture”

Romans is Scripture. Last week we studied passages which demonstrate that the author of Romans is Paul. Paul saw himself in a significant and special way. He saw himself as a revealer of God’s very Word. What Paul writes is “revelation.”

We looked at passages like Rom.16:25 where Paul praises God and says…”to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery…know disclosed through prophetic writings according the command of God.”

We looked at Eph 3:1 where Paul clearly states, “I, Paul…according to God’s grace was given to me how the mystery of Christ was made known to me by revelation, as I have written.”

Now in Scripture there are two types of revelation. There is a general revelation, which is the way that God reveals himself to all…like Ps 19 “the heavens are telling are telling of the glory of God the skies proclaim the work of His hands…” We will deal more with general revelation and the philosophies of history when we come to Romans 1:19-20 in a few weeks. But in Scripture there is a second type of revelation, which is a special kind wherein God communicates his Words concerning salvation through certain men.

When Paul claims he was given revelation, it is of this second type. The type of revelation where God communicates specific words of importance for men to know if they are to know him in an intimate way and not just in a general way.

But maybe Paul is just a crazy nut? Some lunatic from ancient history who has written a bunch of stuff that a few super religious people have come to think is something special?

So let’s think about this. Set aside that Romans is the most systematically reasoned, far from lunacy, book in the whole Bible. What did others during his own time period and more importantly other apostles think about his writings?

Here’s what Peter, one of the first disciples of Jesus, who became an apostle and wrote two books of the Bible himself…here’s what Peter thought. 2 Peter 3:15-16 “Count the patience of our Lord as salvation, (so the subject is salvation) our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them these matters. There are some things that are hard to understand which the ignorant and the unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do in other Scriptures.”

Did you hear those important words, “other Scriptures.” So the question is what is “Scripture”? When you read the word “Scripture” in the Bible it is like a red flag, a special word. It literally means, “the writings.” The holy writings. For a Jew, like Paul and like Peter, the “writings” were sacred scripts. Words of God penned by special men. This was the Torah. The Old Testament. And Peter puts Paul’s words on the same level…with the Torah! For a Jew, this is blasphemy. Sackcloth and ash ceremony for saying this type stuff.

Two side-notes here.

1. Circulation

Peter knew about Paul’s letters because there was circulation. We read in the New Testament passages where circulation was specifically commanded. Like in Colossians 4:16, “See that this letter is read in the church of Laodicea.” So the canon, the rule or the standard in which the Bible came together and was recognized as such, was not a power play by the church as the popular book “The DaVinchi Code” might lead you to believe. No, the canon was recognized rather than formed.

What books should not be in the canon were clear. Like the Gospel of Thomas that the Da Vinci code so admires. Listen to a passage from it… Gospel of Thomas 114 Simon Peter said to them, “Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.” Jesus said, “Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven.”

Does this sound inspired to you? No. It presents a radically different view of Jesus than the unanimous one of the gospel which are in the Bible.

For another example consider the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas” where you have Jesus making birds out of sand and then blowing on them and they come to life. Or where you have Jesus getting mad a friend when he is a kid and he curses at him and the boy dies. These other documents, are written at least 100 years after the New Testament Gospels and they present a different Jesus.

2. The Gospels are Scripture

Like Peter Paul defines the New Testament as Scripture. Paul in 1 Timothy 5:18 quotes a passage of Deuteronomy and of Luke together and calls them both “Scripture.” So there is a viewpoint of the writers of the Bible that the Gospels were Scripture.

But what does “Scripture” mean? As I said earlier, it literally it is “holy writings”, or words of God. How? Were the writers zombies then, where God just overtook their motor functions and used their hands to write? No. Listen to this description of how it happened.

2 Peter 1:16-21 “For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic glory, This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased, we ourselves heard this very voice from heaven for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have something more sure, the prophetic word, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture came about by one’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

We will return to this passage in a few minutes when we consider other viewpoints of the Bible. But listen to the last phrase again, “Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” The picture here is one of a conversation between a human being the divine God of the universe telling them truth and what to write. So we have humans, in their human contexts, in their places and with their feelings…writing divine words. That’s phenomenal.

Perhaps the best place for us to turn to define Scripture is to look at how Paul defines it himself. Listen to 2 Timothy 3:15-16 speaking to timothy “You have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness.”

The ESV translation has it here is the most correct. In verse 16, when it says, “God-breathed” that comes from the Greek word, “theopeneustos.” B.B. Warfield in his great book on the Inspiration and Authority of Scripture, notes that this word is a combination of two words: God [theos] and breathed [peneustos]. He notes that what is being said, is that God breathed out the Scriptures. Not breathing into them as if He somehow declared some human writings to be divine. That’s huge.

So thus far what we have is Romans. A letter written to a people in Rome that the Bible sees as being the very communication of God, which is able to make people wise for salvation. Though Romans immediate audience was the people of the first century there is also a wider intended audience.

Look at Romans 16:26 again, “The prophetic writings have been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith.”

Peter says it like this when he preached on the day of Pentecost. “The promise (of the message of salvation) is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”

John, one of the gospel writers says towards the end of his book in chapter 20:31, “these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

And most of all, Jesus himself prayed for us about our reception of the message contained in these writings…listen to His words in John 17:17-21, “Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth (the word). I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word (us), that they mall all be one, just as you, Father are in me and I in you…”

So what we have is a letter. A letter about God to people in the first century in Rome and also to people in our century. Romans is a revelation, a writing of God breathed out by the Holy Spirit into Paul, so that we might know the message of salvation.

4 Views of Scripture and the Right One

Now that we have established a definition of Scripture and shown the relationship of Romans as being Scripture, let’s look at four approaches to this thing called Scripture and talk about the approach we believe in.

1. Divine Bible Codes

In this view, the Bible is seen as a book with secret messages that must be decoded.

2. Demythologization

In this view the Bible is seen as a combination of historical facts and mythical stories and we must separate distinguish between the things of the Bible that are fact and myth…we must demythologize it to find value. The idea is that Bible is infallible in faith and practice but not in history and science.

3. Existential

This third view is closely related to the first one in many ways but historically it is a response to the second view. After demythologization came on the scene certain theologians, like Karl Barth, had difficulty with this because he so believed the Bible to be something truly divine. So what he and others argued is that we know the Bible is true and divine because when we read it we have this experience where we feel it is true and from God and it effects us. So our experience is the key factor. It doesn’t matter if someone says something is factually off in the Bible because they can’t tell me my experience is off. This is actually the same claim Mormons make, that when you read the book of Mormon you have an experience called the “burning in the bosom” that testifies to its truth and divine authenticity.

4. Divine-human Book

The fourth view is the christological model. In this view the Bible is seen akin to the way we see Jesus. It is both 100% man and 100% God. The Bible is the product of real human hand but is superintended and overseen by God to ensure that what they wrote were his words.

Let’s evaluate each of these views.

What about the first view? Consider an e-mail. Say I take your email and convert every 5th letter into a numerical ASCII code and then come up with date. Then say I take that date and look up on the Internet what happened on that date in history. Did your email predict that event? NO! What we have here is a hoax, a trick to make people think the Bible is magic and somehow supernatural. It is not. At least not in that way.

What about the second view? Demythologization. This is not a new idea. Remember Peter’s words, “we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the Lord (1 Pet 1:16).” The Bible warns in many places against this type of idea. Check out Titus 1:14 “Pay no attention to myths or to the commands of those who reject the truth.” Or Colossians 2:8 “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”

The problem with saying that the Bible is true in matters of faith and practice but not in the matters of history and science is that these two are inseparably connected. For example, Paul argues in 1 Corinthians 15 that if Christ did not rise from the dead (historical fact) then our preaching is useless and our faith in vain (spiritual value).

Listen to this quote from Talbot Professor, Dr. Henry Holloman, “Did the Holy Spirit vary His operation when the biblical writer moved from matters of faith and practice to other areas of knowledge? It would be as if the Lord said to the biblical writers when they wrote on non-religious material, “Now you are on your own. What you write in this area is from your knowledge not Mine!”

Simply put, this view is self-contradictory and absurd.

What about the third view, existentialism?

Its first problem is that it accepts the demythologization critique as true. Its second problem is that neither we ourselves or us and another person(s) can ever read the same Bible because our experiences may be different from each other’s and from our previous experience. The heart of the problem of this approach is that “I” sinful, a fallen being, with fallen reason become the standard for what is truth based upon my internal feelings instead of the seeking out of what is true outside my self.

What we see in each of the first three views is a denial of what the writers of Scripture clearly intends their writing to be understood. The human writers of Scripture go out of their way to say that their writing are not their own but are from God and should be taken as such. We have to meet the Bible on its own terms just as we would any other book.

What about the last view? The idea that the Bible is a book written by men, completely inspired by God in a way that he preserved exactly what he wanted us to hear and know about him.

This is the way the biblical writers intended their writing to be read: listen to the words of 1 Thessalonians 2:13 “And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it actually is, the word of God.”

Consider Jesus’ view of Scripture. He consistently treats the Old Testament historical narratives as straightforward records of facts both historically and scientifically. Listen to what he says in Matthew 5:17-18 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” Jesus says even the very marks are inspired. For Jesus, when Scripture is speaking God is speaking (Mat 19:5). Is Jesus a liar? Was he wrong?

Like Jesus, his Apostles had the same view of Scripture as being wholly true and having supreme authority. They never attempt to correct it nor seek to but one book or verse against another. They acknowledge that it speaks with one unified voice because it is from God. D. Hay counts 1600 citations of OT and everyone treats it as wholly true and factual. Just like Jesus the apostles consider God to be speaking when Scripture is speaking (Acts 13:34; Rom 9:13,15,17).

Remember 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:16? How much more explicit can you get? What more could the Biblical writers say to explain inerrant inspiration? What more could they have said to convey that they believed that their writing were really the divine writings of God?

Some of you might ask then, well if Scripture really is the Word of God then what about errors and contradictions?

This is a good question. Often times when people suggest there are errors and contradictions in the Bible I like to ask them which ones they have in mind because nearly every single apparent contradiction, set aside number errors and the like, gets dispelled and turns out not to be a contradiction at all the closer you look at things. This demonstrates the principle that legitimate and good hermeneutics dispels alleged errors and contradictions.

So what are some principles of good hermeneutics?

Here’s two for you. One, authorial intent. We do not have the right with any text of any kind, any book, to make up whatever meaning we want, we must interpret words, sentences, paragraphs, according to what the author intended to say. If anyone says different, then I could say that what they are writing is that the bank is to give me all their money, even if the actual words are speaking about going to the store to buy milk. Often there is an attitude about the Bible where some are like, “yeah God is involved somehow but we know humans wrote it so we must interpret the Scriptures in light of the authors and read between the lines.” But again, you can’t do that because the human authors of Scripture go out of their way to say that their writings are not their own but God’s! You have to either wholly accept it or wholly reject it.

Here’s the another good hermeneutical principle. Recognizing phenomenological and figurative language. That’s when the Bible is describing something versus trying to give a scientific account. Many of the suggested “contradictions” have to do with scientific theories. But let me ask you a question. Did anyone watch the news last night? Did you happen to see the weather? What did they say about when it would get light out tomorrow morning? That the sun would rise at 6:00am right? Now does the sun rise? No, the earth revolves around the sun. The weather forecasters on the news are using phenomenological or figurative language.

Let’s continue with reasons for believing the fourth view is the correct one. Let’s talk philosophy. If there is a God and if he intended to impart words to men then it is philosophical necessity because according to Scripture (and the cosmological argument) God is a God of truth (1 Jn 5:20), thus God cannot lie (Heb 6:18). According to Jesus’ reasoning in John 17:17 God’s Word must be wholly true.

In addition Scripture outright says that it is wholly true and without error. (5) Outright stated. Listen to Psalm 19:7 “The law of the Lord is perfect.” Perfection does not have room for any error.

Lastly, viewing the Bible as the divine-human book from God without any error is the historical view of the church, which ought to count for something. Here’s a couple quotes from Godly men, theologians and pastors of the church through the years…

Saint Augustine, “Only to those books which are called canonical have I learned to give honor so that I believe most firmly that no author in these books made any error in writing.”

Martin Luther, “The Holy Spirit has been blamed for not speaking correctly; He speaks like a drunkard or a fool, He so mixes up things, and uses wild, queer words and statements. But is our fault, who have not understood the language nor known the matter of the prophets. For it cannot be otherwise; the Holy Ghost is wise and makes the prophets also wise. A wise man must be able to speak correctly; that holds true without fail.”

It is my firm conviction that the Bible is in fact the word of God. That the book of Romans really has two authors. Paul and God. We have spent a good deal of time looking at internal evidence…looking at what the Bible says about itself. But there is also a lot of good external evidences, reasons outside the Bible to think it is actually true. We’re not going to spend time on that stuff today, but consider this.

How can you just presuppose Scripture is true and quote it to say that it proves itself true? Isn’t that circular reasoning. Yes it is. But here’s the thing. Everyone presupposes something. Are you not presupposing that reason is true and a good guide and works every time. In my experience, sometimes my reasoning is false or leads me astray. Since we can’t get away from presupposing anything it makes a lot more sense to presuppose something that starts with God rather than myself. We can either presuppose the Bible is true or we can presuppose our reason is perfect and supreme and subject the Bible to it.

The Bible is a Gift for us to Grow in our Knowledge and Love of God

I want to wrap things up today by asking the question, how is any of this significant? Does it have any relevance to me and my life? Yes! The Bible is a special means of grace for us to grow in our knowledge and love of God.

Paul, the author of Romans regularly prays for our growth through the Scriptures. In Ephesians 2:17-18 he prays that “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give us a spirit of wisdom of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of our hearts enlightened that we may know the hope to which he has calls us…”

Apart from the Bible we will not grow in wisdom or knowledge of God. Apart from the Bible the eyes of our hearts will not be enlightened but rather darkened. Apart from the Bible we will have no hope because there is nothing I can count on and trust like it. Apart from the Bible we are lost.

We began today by recognizing that Romans is first and foremost a book about God written for God, for His name’s sake, for His glory…and that because of that, we get to see how great and wonderful and marvelous He is. When we see Him as such we are enormously blessed. So Romans and all of the Bible is about God showing us how good he is, the blessing is we get to see it and experience it.

My biggest prayer and for you today…the thing I hope you take home from this morning, is a love for the Bible. May you know it is the Word of God given for your good and because you know that, love it and devote yourself to it.

Conclusion

I love the Bible. Cherish it. It is the Divine Word of God. To conclude I am going to read a number of King David’s statements in the Bible about Scripture so that hopefully some of his heart and attitude rub off on us in our approach to the Bible.

“In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts.”

“My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to your word.”

“This is my comfort in affliction that your promise gives me life.”

“It is good for me that I was afflicted that I might learn your statutes. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of pieces of gold and silver.”

“Give me understanding that I may learn your commandment. Those who fear you shall see me and rejoice because I have hoped in your word.”

“Oh how I love your law!”

“Sweet is your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth.”

“Your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path”

“Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.”

“Your testimonies are wonderful”

“I open my mouth and pant because I long for your commandments”

“Great is your mercy oh lording? Give me life according to your rules.”

“Great peace have those who love your law”

“I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek your servant for I do not forget your commandments.”

Let’s pray.

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The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
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All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
April 24th, 2005

“Romans is for God”
Romans 1:7-15

Introduction

When we approach the Bible we are met with three kinds distances: first, a distance between our historical time period and the one in which it was written. Second, a distance which exists in the reading of all books and that is between what the author intended to mean and our understanding of it. Third, a distance of spiritual battle. There is something wrong in us that resists acknowledging and feeling what can be shown to be true in this book.

We are in an introduction or salutation. Paul is introducing himself and who he is writing to and telling his reason for writing and he drops these theological bombs. There are words and phrases in this passage that reflect a worldview in which Paul will spend three chapters addressing later in the book. So, we have this dilemna that there is a lot wrapped up in these few vereses…we could spend weeks on them if we wanted. So how much time do we spend on the salutation?

The plan today is to approach this passage through three lenses.
1. Expository exegesis & transfer of confidence. Exposing the meaning of the words in a way which results in us having personal confidence of their intended meaning.
2. Theological implications from exegesis. What these words mean and tell us about God and the world we live in.
3. Being spiritually affected by the message of these words.

The first lens requires we understand something about the historical situation and setting. In this part of Paul’s intoduction he tells us who he is writing to, the reason he is writing, and why he personally is qualified to write.

Look at the first verse, “to all those who are in Rome loved of God, called to be holy ones, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The simplest, clearest, and most obvious thing to see is that there must be a group of people who are believers in Rome. I get this because the text says there are “those who loved by God” “called to be saints” (v6 “called of Jesus Christ”) who are in Rome.

In order to get a better picture of who these people are I want you to think with me a little bit about some of the things Justin mentioned the first week about Rome, and Jews, and Gentiles.

Rome is the center of world. Rome is the major world power for 1500 years. Rome built great temples, huge amphitheatres, and held stadium filled games…with thousands in attendance. Rome was a big deal. One popular saying was that, “all roads lead to Rome.” And many other cities tried to mimic its style and culture, making “little Romes.”

The ruler of rome was the Ceasar who was an emperor and consider a god with divine right. Roman law was seen as eternal order of right. In fact, Rome’s legal formulation or definition was Rome’s great pride and strength. “Rome” was almost synoymous with rule. Roman empire and Rome is the center. We don’t have anything quite like this today. The closest similarity would be like Washington DC with all of New York, Tokyo and LA wrapped up in it as one great city.

So we have a big city, which in many ways is the center of the world and the centerpoint of the cutting edge. But what about the people who lived in Rome?

You’ve got all kinds of people: Greeks, nomads, people from every place the Roman empire took over. The strength and success of Rome was that one could become a Roman citizen but keep some of the distinctives of their heritage…even Jews.

Okay, bear with me the next few minutes. What may seem somewhat dry but paints the letter to the Romans in color.

In Acts 18:2 we read about how Rome had taken over Greece. In the ancient book, “The Life of Claudius” we read how Claudius “expelled all the Jews from Rome because they were constantly rioting at the instigation of Christus.” Orosius says this took place at 49 AD, which concides datewise with Acts 18:2. The result is that Jews had to leave in order to keep the peace of Rome, the “pax romana.”

But in 54 AD Claudius dies and the Jews return…some for family, some for business, some just for the better life of Rome. But in 54 AD Nero begins to rule when he is 16 years old. Sometime within the first five years of his rule, he starts to hate christians. In 64 AD he starts a fire and blames it on the Christians. And Romans was written shortly after Nero begins to reign, probably sometime between 56 or 57 AD.

So who is in Rome? Romans with the Romans law and peace and then you also have Jews. Bloodline Jews were the ones with the holy Jewish law called the Torah. Because of their Torah they were circumcised, had long beards, female head coverings, and wore little boxes on their head with Scriptures in ‘em (phylactries). They’re whole goal was showing distinction. And they were very proud of their distinction.

This creates a mess. Romans can’t stand Jews because Jews are weird and treat Romans as outcasts. Jews despise Romans and Roman rule. And they are both together in this church. It’s tensious. We don’t know exactly how they came to faith or what exactly was the state of the church when Romans was written, but it is most likely that this church is not very old. The use of “established” in verse 11 tells us that at minimum they are young, new believers.

So we have a have a big culturally robust city. We have Romans, and we have Jews. And in seeing that you can almost feel some of Paul’s reason for writing building. Which is where he turns in the very next few verses.

Let’s read verses 8-14. It appears to me that Paul lists four reasons for writing.

Reason one for writing: “your faith is proclaimed.”

Roman roads and military presence had a lot to do with keeping and creating the “pax romana” (peace of Rome). But this made for the ease and safety of travel and thus the circulation and communication between of churches. Chapters 15-16 of Romans reveal there was much interchange going on. So Paul has obviously heard about the church there in Rome.

Reason two for writing: because he has heard about them Paul feels a burden for them.

Listen to verse 9-13, “without ceasing I make mention of you in my prayers…I long to impart to you some spiritual gift…I want you to know…I have often intended to come to you.” Do you feel it? “Without ceasing” “I long” “I want” …these are not just duties but feelings. Paul undoubtedly feels a responsibility for the church in Rome as an apostle. But it is not just duty here. He feels a deep concern for them.

Reason three for writing: the Romans have a need.

They are in need of Paul imparting a spiritual gift. Look at verses 11-13 (read). Here is where we run into a point where we must make an interpretive decision. It is not for us to decide according to what we like most, our opinions don’t matter. Our goal is what the author intended!

So here we go. Let’s do some interpreting according to what the author intended. What is this spiritual gift?
1. Is it charismatic? Some special or supernatural thing Paul wants to impart?
2. Is it just general spiritual encouragement? Nothing in particular or especially significant…but just encouragement
3. Is it a specific revelation Paul has been given directly by God, which the Romans need in order to be established?

The emphasis or mood in the text is that Paul feels something about his communication to them is very significant or important. In verse 11, he prays desperately that he might go there. In verse 12, he longs to impart. In verse 13 he says he has inteded to come. In verse 14 he even says, he is under obligation.

If you just follow Paul’s use of “I” you see that Paul sees something significant about himself (in verse 8 God is his witness, whom he serves with his spirit in the gospel). I believe Paul sees himself as a special revelator of written words given to him by God. I think hearing Ephesians 3:1-11 will help us here.

Ephesians 3:1-11 “3:1 For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles— 2 assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3 how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. 4 When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. 6 This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. 7 Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. 8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, 10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11 This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So revelation is a technical term for being a writer of Scripture. That means we shouldn’t pray and ask God to reveal stuff to us unless you’re wanting to write a book of the Bible. Paul is an apostle “by the grace of God.” As such, God has given Paul is given a specific insight into the gospel which is foundational to understanding what it means to be a Christian.

Perhaps most revealing Paul’s open declaration that God told him to write Romans. In verse 14 he says he was “obilgated” to write. What’s that mean? Romans 16:25-26 at the end of the book give us a strong clue. Romans 16:25-26 “Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God.”

So those are the three main positions: charismatic gift, encouragement, revelation. My goal here is to share the fruit of our study and then replace ourselves so that your confidence might be in the text and not in us. With that said, I will tell you I believe that the third position best accounts for the text.

Charismatic gifts are totally outside the scope of what Paul is saying here. There is no reference to them here whatsoever and in other passages where he does name them his emphasis is always on the Holy Spirit not himself.

Simple encouragement ignores Paul’s emphasis on himself. So we must either conclude that he had an unhealthy pre-occupation with how great he was and thus was a lunatic or in fact there was something that had to be communicated throuugh him.

As we study Romans more and more we will see more and more the nature of the letter as specifically structured argument clearly intended to give a foundation for Christian faith, which could not be known simply through the natural ways God has revealed himself in creation since the garden of eden.

Reason four for writing: the “fruit” of verses 13-14.

Fruit or harvest is a metaphor for the gathering of people. Some have said fruit is money becaue there are other passage in Scripture where finacial offering given were called fruit. Yet this does not fit with his contextual designation here of fruit as a harvest of people, Greeks and non-Greeks. Plus, that would make out Paul’s letter to seem cheap. A reference to money here would just seem very out of place. When Paul does petition for money, like in Philippians, he does so at the end of his letters.

Paul’s desire for fruit demonstrates that Paul has unbelievers in view here in his letter as well as believers. His hope is that he might preach and people be converted. If you’re brain is starting to hurt, I get that. There is a danger in rigourously dealing with the text of scripture. It can start to seem like it’s just academics but there is an intellectual element to real faith. Christianity is not a religion based on feeling or experience but on some objective, something that is true outside of ourselves and i want to give that to you so that when the winds of uncertainity and suffering come there might be something of substance under your feet.

With that said I want to summarize what has been covered so far and then turn to some the theology here in these verses.

So summary. We have a letter to Rome. A big city. Lots of stuff going on. Lots of different people. Particularly a distinction between Jews and Gentiles. We have four reasons this letter was written: it is a big thing that there is a church in Rome and all the rest of the church has heard about it, this new church needs some foundation, in particular the gift of the revelation of God given through Paul, who is has a deep concern and obligation to the church to impart this revelation for the strengthening of the believers faith and for the communication of the faith to non-believers. But none of these are the real reason Romans was written.

There is a bigger reason Romans was written and it has to do with us. So let’s talk about ourselves for a minute. If we are honest I think there is something in us that should feel a little weird about all this…like we are reading a letter to these people who are so different. Most of them wore sandles and robes…lived in adobe houses, lived in a lot of dirt, got their water from wells. It should feel weird because it is like in some ways we are reading a letter that was for someone different than us a long long time ago.

Next week I will discuss this issue more about what why and how this book may be connected to us. But there are some immediate things we can learn here by the way that Paul refers to God and the way that he sees the situation with Rome in light of God. Whether or not they were intended for us (which I believe they are) these things challenge our worldviews and our ways of thinking and will hopefully stirr our emotional relation to God.

The Real Reason Romans was Written

The real reason Romans was written has to do with God’s glory shown in his sovereign intention of the message of the gospel. What does the word sovereign or sovereignty mean?

The word sovereignty isn’t here. I use it simply because it is a word that encapsulates the picture of God that is shown. Sovereign means free (sov) reign (rule). Where I see this in this text is in two places, in verse 8 and verse 10 (read).

Look at verse 8. It seems obvious that the faith is proclaimed through the actions of men. So why give thanks to God? They are the ones who did it. Why does God get any credit? It is men who have been shedding their blood. Going to jail. Getting beaten up. Have been preaching, traveling, performing miracles, ministering to the poor, gathering together for meals and sharing about Christ. So why should God get credit for that?

Thanks is something we give for honoring someone for what they deserve for what they do. It is a response to action. That Paul thanks God is not a flippant thing. There is a huge God-centerness to the book of Romans. Leon Morris, a commentator says that Romans is first and foremost a book about God.

God is mentioned 153 times in it, every 46 words. Romans is pre-occupied with God. There are more references to God in Romans than any other New Testament book. In verse 5 Paul says Romans is for “the sake of his name.” I believe that what Paul is getting at is something that everything in our culture and much in popular Christianity, and much in the depth of the rebellion of our souls wants to deny. And that is that everything about this world is about God and His glory. It is his world and we are his and he can do what he wants with it because he rules it with an unchanging and righteous fist and conforms everything for his glory. It is what it is for him to be God.

Paul thanks God because he recognizes that Rome would not exist and the gospel would not be being proclaimed there if God had not been making that happen. He gives God the credit and rejoices because God has chosen to glorify himself by bringing the gospel to Rome and making converts. Every step of the way God has been working.

Throughout all of Scripture God is pictured as having a unique ability to govern the decisions and actions of men. Yes, man makes decisions but his will is one that is compatable with the sovereign will of God so that it only wills things that God wills. It seems to me that God does this two ways. He does this externally through the ordering of certain circumstances and he does this internally through he moving of our hearts.

Now perhaps you are thinking that I am reading way too much into the word “thanks.” That may be so. But look at verse 10. Paul recognizes that he will not make it too Rome unless GOD WILLS it. Paul recognizes that God controls the physical elements of nature. In Acts and in 1 Corinthians we read of all the natural catastrophes Paul faces in trying to get to Rome…but it is God’s will which enables or disenables him to get there. Look at verse 10. Paul says his jouney will only occur if God wills it. God must set up the circumstances to allow it. And on top of it, Paul recognizes it isn’t just physical elements of nature God orders but that it is also God who orders the hearts of men or why else would Paul pray for people as he does here!

This is the root of Romans. God. Romans is a book that will show us an infinitely holy God. It’s not about us, it’s about God. God is everything. And there is only hope in Christ and in God’s will to reveal his glorious nature to us. Romans is for God. It is for the sake of his name. To make him look great! If any one of us thinks we are something the intent of Romans is to crush us and cause us to fall on our knees in mercy and see the righteousness and wonder of God.

Yes, Romans was written because the Roman church’s faith was being proclaimed, because Paul heard of them and was burdened, because they had a real need, and because there were more people to be reached there who needed this book to be reached. Yes. Those things are all true, but none of them are the real reason Romans was written. The real reason Romans was written was for God…for his glory, chiefly shown through the work of his Son Jesus.

My hope and prayer is that you may see this. That we would become undone as a people, with no confidence in ourselves but only a desire to see and know God through the blood of His son, Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

I believe that if we open up ourselves we will see a dirtiness and emptiness that continually forgets God…that doesn’t easily give him honor and thanks…that is more concerned about our will than His.

That is who I am. I am a needy soul. Romans was written to a group of people in Rome. A big city with lots of different. it was written because the people there needed the gospel.

Like them we despertely need the gospel. The gospel is our only hope. And it is a great hope and a great message…That God is greater and more glorious than anything or anyone and that he has done something in Jesus to rescue us and thereby enabling us to see and delight in God’s great name.

Let’s pray.

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The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church

Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.

:: The Resolved ::

Justin Bragg (elder)

The Gospel: It’s Validity, Content and Effect
Romans 1:2-6

GOOD NEWS – HOW GOOD?
Stop at the definition of “good news” to think about how good the good news truly is. Aside from Christianity, the religions of the world are not at all good news. They are, on the contrary, very bad news, a burden. The rest of the religions of the world are not happy religions for the followers. The reason is not hard to discover – apart from Christianity, all the religions of the world are self-help of “works” religions. They tell you how to find God (or peace, happiness, whatever) by human efforts.

But this is not possible – God is too holy and man is too sinful. Sin has such a great hold on us that it keeps us from the happiness we long for. A religion based on what you or I can do is comfortless because its requirements become burdens that can never be lifted. Many have recognized this and have therefore sought happiness in the religion of “no religion.” They have become practical atheists, regarding religion as a tool or a crutch that should be ignored for true enlightenment.

At first this seems like good news, until you stop and think about it. If there is no God and if we are therefore free to do whatever we please without any thought of accountability to a divine authority or punishment by him, we seem to be liberated to joyous independence. But if there is no accountability, because there is nobody to be accountable to, what we do with this great “freedom” becomes meaningless. Moreover, if what we do is meaningless, we must be meaningless too. We are accidental bubbles upon the great cosmic deep, destined only to burst and be forgotten.

No religion leads nowhere. It may seem to offer the great good news of human progress, but it actually leaves us with despair over the futility of human existence. This is where the gospel comes in – it tells that that God is actually there, not merely a figment of the human imagination, but that he really exists, and has made us for fellowship with himself and does not hold accountable for what we do. This gives meaning to life.

The gospel also tells us that God loves us and has reached out to save us through the work of Christ. We could never reach God because of the chains of bondage of sin that hold us in prison, but God has removed our sins through Jesus Christ
So how good is the good news? Can you sing with the great hymn:

All people that on earth do dwell,
Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
Him serve with fear, his praise forthtell,
Come ye before him and rejoice.

D. Martyn Lloyd Jones asks, “Has the gospel come to us like that? Can we say honestly at this moment that this is the greatest and best good news that we have ever heard?” If we cannot say that, it may be because we are not really born again, regardless of our profession. Or it may be that we do not actually appreciate the gospel, because we have not been captivated with the gospel of God.

[vv 1b-2] THE VALIDITY OF GOD’S GOSPEL

As I ended last week, the gospel is God’s. Here, Paul speaks primarily that the gospel is “sent by God.” He is the one who announces and accomplishes the entire message of the gospel. Look at how prominent the point that Paul makes about God’s activity in the propagation of the gospel – He “promised it beforehand through prophets and Holy Scriptures [v2]. He has sent his Son to accomplish the work promised, with the result that the gospel, then as now, is “regarding” him [v3]. Finally, it is ‘through him and for his name’s sake” that Paul and the other apostles received the grace of apostleship to proclaim the gospel [v5].

God is very active in this world. All he does has a gospel purpose. Why does Paul spend vs 2 linking the gospel to the OT?

PROMISED GOSPEL – THROUGH PROPHETS

Jesus tells us in the gospel of Luke that all of the OT prophesied about him. The Christian gospel probably seemed new and unique, as the message of gospel salvation of men by God through the work of Jesus Christ burst into this sin-darkened world – but Paul makes it very clear here that this is no novelty message, this is no clever message meant to lead people astray –
The gospel is good news, of course. But not only that; it is the good news God has been announcing from the very beginning of his dealings with the human race – from Gen 3:15 (the first announcement of the gospel) to Malachi 4:5 (which speaks of the coming of Elijah as Christ’s forerunner.

This is the key to understanding the whole OT, and the whole NT. This is the key to understanding all history – God’s saving men and women through the work of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, as he promised beforehand “through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures”

John Calvin said, “Christ came not on the earth unexpectedly, nor did he introduce a doctrine of a new kind and not heard of before, inasmuch as he, and his gospel too, had been promised and expected from the beginning of the world.”

HOLY SCRIPTURES
This phrase is important because it identifies the place at which the promise and announcement of God’s great good news may be found. The promise of God’s good news is in writing. This is where we are to go for good news. This is the biblical, objective truth. These documents exist to study and ponder and understand. We can trust these scriptures to be true because they are holy. Although Paul and the other authors of the Bible penned the words, they were directed by God’s Spirit – they are God’s revelation of himself to mankind – and they are holy and perfect.

IF we truly believe the Bible to be God’s Holy Scriptures, we should be drawn to it in faithful study and meditation, like John Wesley “I want to know one thing – the way to heaven, how to land safe on the happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach me the way. For this very end he came from heaven. He has written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it. Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri (a man of one book). Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone. In his presence I open, I read his book – for this end, to find the way to heaven.”

[vv 3-4] CONTENT
THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST
From the phrase: “Concerning His Son…”

We have seen that the gospel is God’s – he is the center and the active agent in causing it to be true and effective. We then come to the fact that the focus of the gospel is a person – God’s Son
Christianity is unique because it is founded upon a unique person – Lord Jesus Christ. You cannot have Christianity without him – Christianity is Jesus Christ. John Stott: “The person and work of Christ are the rock upon which the Christian religion is built. If he is not who he said he was, and if he did not do what he said he had come to do, the foundation is undermined and the whole superstructure will collapse. Take Christ from Christianity, and you disembowel it; there is practically nothing left. Christ is the center of Christianity; all else is circumference.”

WHO IS HE?
Obviously, this causes us to ask who Jesus Christ is, and as soon as we do, we find Paul’s answer in the words “his Son” – Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. When Jesus asked Peter in Matt. 16, “But what about you? Who do you say I am?” The answer of Peter resounded with a thunderous proclamation, beyond what Peter could even realize he was speaking, when he replied in 16:16, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

This answer set Jesus apart from the category of the human figures (John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets) the people were suggesting. It identified him as the divine Messiah. Jesus accepted the designation, assuring Peter that this insight was not the result of human observation, but special revelation from God the Father.

Jesus explicitly taught who he was:
“I and the Father are one” (John 10:30)
“Before Abraham was born, I AM!” (Jn 8:58)
Jesus accepted Thomas’ designation “My Lord and my God” following his resurrection. This is the sense in which Paul begins to unfold the content of the Christian message. Already he has called it “the gospel of God,” meaning that God is the source of this great plan of salvation, now he adds that the gospel concerns “his Son.” The person and work of this divine Jesus is the entire substance of the gospel

GOD-MAN
Looking at 3-4 as a sort of whole, we find a clear description of the object of the gospel, namely Jesus Christ. John Calvin: “This is a remarkable passage, by which we are taught that the whole gospel is included in Christ, so that if any removes one step from Christ, he withdraws himself from the gospel. For since he is the living and express image of the Father, it is no wonder, that he alone is set before us as one to whom our whole faith is to be directed and in whom it is to centre.”

Every word in this section is so precisely chosen and of such significance that we cannot help but be convinced that Romans is much more than a merely human composition. Look at the obvious contrast between the two natures of the historical, earthly Jesus. The first is the human nature: the Greek word sarx carries with it the notion of the flesh, but even more, it means the whole man. This human nature is contrasted with Christ’s divine nature, which is described as “the Spirit of holiness.” That phrase does not refer to the Holy Spirit (though many have interpreted it this way), but to Christ’s spiritual or divine nature, which is holy. So first we must recognize from this section the clear recognition of both the human and divine natures of Jesus. Next look at the contrast between “Descendent of David” and “Son of God.” this corresponds to the previous distinction, in that he was born into a human family tree, and also has a divine origin, being the Son of God.

Finally, the contrast between the “born” of v 3 and “declared of v 4. In his human nature, he was born on a specific date of history, truly human in nature. In his divine nature, he was declared to be the Son of God by his spirit of holiness from all of eternity. In vv 3-4, in 28 Greek words, Paul has provided us with an entire Christology

SON OF DAVID
I see this designation as a clear connection to the comment in v2. It is not superfluous, but he is calling back to our attention the promise, that Christ had been promised through the entire OT, and Jesus fit the description, he was the Son of David, Jesus was the Messiah. Why would Paul point specifically to Jesus’ human roots, especially is this is a predominantly Gentile church?
Gives substance to his main contention that Jesus was a true human being. Gives specific example of the “thing promised beforehand” by God “in the Holy Scriptures. Prepares the way for the exalted title that he is going to give him at the end of the sentence (v7), namely, LORD
If you end here, you only get half the picture of who Jesus really is – his humanity does not define Jesus wholly, and we need to look at v 4 to complete our understanding

SON OF GOD
How are we to understand v 4? It is a tricky phrase – with important implications. 1st option: relate “with power” to “his resurrection” as if Paul was thinking of the resurrection as a striking revelation of God’s power. Using this approach, the words “Spirit of holiness” would be seen as referring to the Holy Spirit, viewed as the agent of the resurrection; and this powerful resurrection, accomplished by the Spirit, would be seen as proof of Christ’s deity.
Problems – Bible never speaks of the Holy Spirit raising Jesus from the dead – the Father is credited. As we have already noted, the words “spirit of holiness” refer to Christ’s divine nature – paralleling “according to the flesh” – and not to the third person of the Trinity. 2nd option – links “with power” to the declaration of Christ’s deity. That is, it views Paul as thinking of a powerful or effective declaration, one that accomplishes its ends.

The problem here seems to be that the fullness of deity was present in Christ from birth, and this view wrongly proposes that it was in the resurrection that Christ was declared Son of God.
3rd option – significant that in the Greek text the words “with power” follow immediately after the words “Son of God” so that the text literally reads, “… declared the Son of God with power according to a spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead.”

In this view the words “with power” are linked to “Son of God,” so that we understand Paul to be speaking of “the Son of God with power” or “the powerful Son of God,” which he is declared to be by the resurrection. It is not merely a case of Paul declaring that the resurrection was a demonstration of the great power of God or even that the resurrection was a powerful demonstration of the validity of Christ’s claims. Rather it is a strong declaration about the Lord’s own person – precisely the purpose of this entire section and the point on which Paul will end. It is a declaration that Jesus is the sovereign Son of God and therefore rightly the “Lord” of all men as well as the Savior.

OUR LORD
Must take a brief moment to elaborate upon the final phrase, Jesus Christ our Lord. The earliest Christian creed. From the earliest days it was recognized that if a person confessed “Jesus is Lord,” he or she was to be received for baptism, because on the one hand, “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (I Cor 12:3) and because, on the other hand, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9). Why is this designation of Lord of such paramount importance? It overflows with meaning. To state that Jesus is Lord implies that Jesus is God, and that Jesus is the Savior.

1st – The Greek word Kurios is used when Yahweh is translated in the Old and New Testaments. And beginning with the disciples, there was no hesitation if calling Jesus – Lord, a clear designation that Jesus was God.
2nd – The title Lord is a symbol of Christ’s victory over the forces of evil. He proclaimed to be Lord, and he conquered all sin and evil on the cross, and therefore our salvation – our rescue from sin, Satan, fear and death – is due to that victory
In recent years, much debate if Christ can be Savior, but not Lord. To this I adamantly reject, because if Christ is Savior, he must be Lord. If Christ is Savior, He is lord of our minds, our will and moral standards, our vocations and ambitions, our churches, our actions in all spheres of life. It can only be this way. To say that Christ is your Savior, but not the Lord of your entire life and being is to reject the victory that has been established for you on the cross. For Paul to exclaim Jesus as Lord is the single best title to express the true significance of Jesus.

[vv 5-7] EFFECT
to bring about THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH

It is through the Lord Jesus Christ that Paul and his fellow apostles received the grace of apostle ship to proclaim and bring about the obedience of faith among the Gentiles for His names’ sake.
The tricky part here is to understand what is meant by the phrase “the obedience of faith.” Important to remember that Paul is building of the title of Jesus Christ as Lord, and we would naturally infer that the appropriate relationship to the Lord is obedience. But how is obedience and faith to be understood in this passage?

The difficulty comes in trying to understand what true biblical faith is. But true saving faith and obedience both necessarily follow from regeneration. Don’t hear me as mixing faith and works for salvation – that is the farthest thing from my mind, and the mind of Paul. But as Paul reached the climax of this great 7 verse sentence with the phrase, Jesus Christ our Lord, it seemed necessary for Paul to continue the sentence and explain and amplify the statement. Obedience which faith produces or in which it results. This meaning is true, but I do not believe it captures the strength of Paul’s statement. I do not believe this explains clearly what the Bible is talking about when it calls us to faith in Jesus Christ. But the case that Paul is making seems to be stronger than “obedience which faith produces.” I believe a proper interpretation is “unto obedience, the very nature of which is faith” or to say it another way – Faith, which is obedience. I am not alone in this interpretation, Lloyd-Jones, Murray, Hodge, Luther, Calvin, Moo, Boice. This is an extremely important matter. It affects how we understand the gospel and how we seek to obey Christ’s command to evangelize.

Today, the gospel, in large part, is offered to people as something that (in our opinion) is good for them and will make them happy but that they are at perfect liberty to refuse. We are told that the Holy Spirit would never coerce somebody, or infringe upon their free will. With a framework like this, sin becomes little more than bad choices and faith only means beginning to see the issues clearly. What is missing in this contemporary approach is the recognition that sin primarily is disobedience and that God commands us to repent and repudiate it. Sin is not just what you do wrong and feel bad about, it is that, but even more, it is rebellion and disobedience to God. So when the gospel is preached it must not merely be offered as an invitation. It must be preached as a command. (This is why Paul stresses his role as an apostle , as one called and commissioned to be God’s ambassador.)

We are commanded to turn from our sinful disobedience to God and instead obey him by believing in and following the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior. Time and time again we find Paul commanding his audience to repent of their sin and turn to Jesus. To repent of their disobedience and place their faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. In my opinion, the weakness of much of modern Christianity can be traced to a deficiency at precisely this point. By failing to present the gospel as a command to be obeyed we minimize sin, trivialize discipleship, rob God of his glory, and delude some into thinking that all is well with their souls when actually they are without Christ and are perishing.

This is exactly what Augustine fought against when he refuted the claims of Pelagius that humans are not totally depraved, and if we are commanded to do something, we must be able to do it. But from Augustine to Calvin and Edwards, rightly maintained that because of our nature, and corrupt moral ability we will not obey God. This is the way the gospel should be presented, as a command and to have it stressed that God will hold us accountable if we persist in sin and refuse to bow before our rightful Lord. That is the nature of faith, obedience to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

This does not confuse works with faith, for both follow from regeneration, and one cannot be obedient if they do not have faith. But at the same time, one does not have true faith if they are not obedient. If they are not obedient, it is clear that there is no real faith. Let’s not forget the mention of grace in vv 5 and 7. Paul is not forgetting the fact that none of this is possible without the grace of God – that is what makes the good news good. The good news is not a burden to be obedient, but a joyful response to follow the One by whom we are saved.

Colonel Robert Ingersol, agnostic of the 18th century said, “Christianity cannot live in peace with any other form of faith. If that religion be true, there is but one Savior, one inspired book and but one little narrow path that leads to heaven. Such a religion is necessarily uncompromising.”
That was a critical insult of Christianity, but it sounds to me as a ringing endorsement and imploring statement to live the gospel out in its uncompromising and hard, yet merciful and graceful message to this world.

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:: The Resolved ::

Romans 1:1-7

Justin Bragg (elder)

PREFACE:
17th century Puritan Thomas Draxe, “The quintessence and perfection of saving doctrine”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet called it “the profoundest book in existence”
Swiss commentator F. Godet wrote that “every great spiritual revival in the church will be connected as effect and cause with a deeper understanding of this book.”

For example:
Augustine – fourth century – brilliant and immoral, held in bondage to his past practice of immortality until in a garden he heard a child singing the words “take and read.” believing it to be a command from God, he opened the Bible randomly and read the words, “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature (13:13-14)

These very words were the means of his conversion. He wrote, “Instantly, as the sentence ended – by a light, as it were, of security infused into my heart – all gloom of doubt was vanished away.
Augustine was the greatest figure of the early church between Paul and Martin Luther. His arguments with Pelagius expounded the Scriptures and plowed fertile grounds for the profound work of Luther and Calvin and all those in the tradition of the Reformed faith.

Martin Luther, the pious monk who hated God for requiring an impossible standard of righteousness for human beings changed the world when he discovered, “For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: The just will live by faith.” Luther realized that the righteousness he needed was not his own but righteousness from God, freely given to all who would receive it.
> When, by the Spirit of God, I understood the words – when I learned how the justification of the sinner proceeds from the free mercy of our Lord through faith… then I felt born again like a new man… In very truth, this language of Saint Paul was to me the true gate of Paradise.”
> This gate to paradise included attacks on the corrupt clergy of the papacy, translating the Bible into the language of the German people for the first time, and beginning the Reformation, the inception of the faith we now treasure and practice freely.
Speaking about Romans, Luther said: “The chief part of the NT and the very purest gospel – every Christian should know it word for word, by heart, and occupy himself with it every day, as the daily bread of his soul”

JM Boice adds, “Christianity has been the most powerful, transforming force in human history – and the book of Romans is the most basic, most comprehensive statement of true Christianity.”

That is why we begin in the book of Romans. We might be here for a few years, but when it came to where we wanted to start, as a church, how we wanted to distinguish ourselves, with the help of Amy’s suggestion, we had to go to the gospel – so we had to go to Romans.

The Resolved is and will be a church distinguished by the Gospel. It compels us, motivates us, challenges us, pursues us – above all, the gospel of Jesus Christ defines us.

READ 1:1-7

BACKGROUND

MAJOR THEME: the gospel!
> Many different attempts to nail down a theme:
>> Reformers – justification by faith (chaps 1-5 emphasized)
>> 20th century – doctrine of the union with Christ and work of God’s Spirit (5-8)
>> How can Gentiles be incorporated with Jew’s into God’s people without jeopardizing the continuity of God’s people (9-11)
>> Last 40 yrs – occasional letter, directed to needs of Roman church. Exhortation to unity (12-16)

Must be careful not to impose single theme that may not be Paul’s intention.

The theological starting point is Christology. This is the only topic broad enough to unify various emphases. God’s act in Christ is the starting point of all Paul’s thinking and is so basic to the conviction of the early Church.

The theological framework within which Paul presents his key ideas is salvation, or redemptive history. He is basically always describing what has taken place in Christ.

The book of Romans is about justification. The newness of God’s work in Christ, saying “no” to the law and Mosaic covenant as means of salvation, and “yes” to the Abrahamic promise and to the future of Israel. The Israel-Gentile connection is a tricky one, but Paul settles on the universality of God’s righteousness.

Justification does not work as a theme because it is subordinate, descriptive of the true theme – the gospel.

Prominent in the intro (1:1, 2, 9, 15) and conclusion (15:16, 19) are the words gospel and cognate verb “evangelize”. In fact, it is the pride of Paul in the gospel when he proclaims in 1:16-17, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel…”

Romans grows out of Paul’s missionary situation; and the gospel would naturally be the focus of the attention in the letter. He writes this summary in a situation charged with controversy over the gospel in relationship to the OT and its embrace of both Gentile, so he nuances the letter with constant reference to these issues.

AUTHOR: Paul (we’ll come back to this)

DATE & PLACE OF WRITING:
Probably written from Corinth in early 57 AD during Paul’s 3-month stay there on his third missionary journey (Acts 20:2-3). Toward the end of this long missionary journey, heading back to Jerusalem with offerings he had collected for the poverty-stricken believers there.

RECIPIENTS:
People of the church at Rome (1:7)
Predominantly Gentile congregation
Large Jewish population in 1st century (40-50k)
Many of the Jewish names in chap 16 (14-24) were descendents of Jewish slaves brought to Rome following Pompey’s subjugation of Palestine in 62 BC.
The Roman church probably began out of the many Jewish Synagogues in Rome
But many gentiles (God-fearers) were no doubt being drawn into a basic Jewish patrimony
Raises questions of Jewish and Christian identity, which we will see over and over again in Romans, specifically chaps 9-11
Probably a rather fragmented organization and fair amount of diversity, lacking organization
Some house-churches were probably more Gentile, some more Jewish
Letter would not be read at a large Christian gathering, but read repeatedly to many different house-churches

OCCASION:
Not much is known of the origin of the church at Rome – probably many Jews (including Pricilla and Aquila) had been converted to Christianity at Pentecost, returning to Rome and starting meeting in house churches, where they were probably joined by “God-fearing” gentiles who were interested in Judaism, and this new faith of the converted Jews –
names mentioned in Rom 16 indicated church encompassed both Jews and Gentiles

Paul greatly wanted to go to Rome. He did not start the church there, and had not been there, but writes that he has desired to go there many times, and wants to go now.
So the letter to the Romans serves as a careful and systematic theological introduction to the people there. They had never received the teaching of an apostle, so Paul goes into intricate detail about doctrine and theology to ensure their knowledge and faith
This is also why there is not much mention of problems in the church, because Paul had not been there, so this letter is rather unique
Church at Rome had evidently been established for some time and their testimony widely recognized (1:8)

PURPOSE:
Much thought and arguments have been devoted to trying to find THE purpose of Romans.
The best answer seems to be that he had many purposes but mainly –
To instruct believers in the basic truths of the Gospel of salvation as preparation for a future ministry among and through them (emphasizes missionary and pastoral/apostolic purposes)

DEAL W/ TEXT

In this intro, Paul introduces himself by stating his divine call (v 1), the message he has been called to proclaim (vv 2-4), and the specific task with which he is occupied (vv 5-6)

V1: PAUL (boice, 1)
MAN FROM TARSUS: (history prior to conversion)
- Born in Tarsus, a center of Greek philosophical thought and Roamn law, even culturally surpassing Athens and Alexandria
- Born of pure Hebrew stock in tribe of Benjamin; Pharisee and son of a Pharisee as well as a free Roman citizen by birth
- Learned trade of tent-making, but Pharisee and Rabbi by profession. Educated in Jerusalem under tutorship of renowned Rabbi Gamaliel
- Returned to Jerusalem after resurrection and Pentecost, vehemently persecuting Christianity
- Converted to Christianity through vision of the living Christ on the Damascus Road, 35 AD (Acts 9:1-7)
Changed name from Saul (requested one) to Paul (little)
Result of humility or accessibility since Saul was Hebrew name and Paul Roman

Uses three terms to introduce himself: servant, apostle, set apart for the gospel of God

BOND-SERVANT OF CHRIST JESUS:
‘doulos’ – bondslave/servant, means both a slave who completely belongs to his owner with no permission to leave, as well as a servant who willing choses to serve his master
Exodus 21:2 – in Israel, a slave was required to serve six years before being set free. If, however, at the end of six years he liked his position, the master would drive a nail through his right earlobe and place an earring in it, signifying he was a slave by choice. The phrase connotes total devotion, the servant being completely at the disposal of his or her Lord. The attributes of humility, devotion and obedience are especially prominent.

The sequence “Christ Jesus” draws particular attention to the Messiah Jesus. Christ comes form the Greek word for anointed, and is equivalent to the Hebrew-derived “messiah.” Placing Christ first focuses attention on the word as a title. Even in this title he can’t help but say something about Jesus Christ, referring to him by the title of Christ – designating his power and authority Messianic claim. Paul is always thinking about relating his message to Christ. In the first 7 vv he mentions Jesus 8 times. Stating from the very beginning what the letter is about – Jesus Christ

Paul is a skilled writer, in identifying himself as a servant, he is identifying with the large Jewish contingency in the Roman church. This will be seen even more in chapter 5, where Paul uses the term ‘redemption,’ the price paid for a slave in the market place, to describe the Christian conversion.

Slavery to Christ is a special kind of slavery – where we actually become free. I love that Paul starts with identifying himself as a slave to Jesus Christ. We would expect him to start with his credentials as an apostle, and he certainly will identify himself in this way, but first and foremost, Paul was convinced with the truth of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Paul was in love with Christ, and it is this love alone that can begin to explain the nature and rigor of his life’s work. It wasn’t just a “job” or “something he had to do” in writing letters to churches to tell them about Christ – it was his passion, he was zealous for it, because he loved Christ above all things.

May this be an indictment to each one of us. May we identify ourselves first and foremost as lovers of Christ, as servants of our Lord. Test yourself – do you love Jesus? Are our thoughts constantly occupied with him? Is he at the forefront? Is he the center? Is he the beginning and the end? When we talk to one another, do we speak often of him? Are content to let the honors of the world pass by, so long as we can be know as Christ’s servants?

CALLED AS AN APOSTLE:
Generally means messenger. Acts 1:15-25, we learn that an apostle, in the official sense, was to be a witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ and that he was also necessarily chosen and equipped by Jesus for this function. But here the title carries a stronger sense, marking Paul as one among the unique group appointed by Christ himself to have the salvation-historical role as the “foundation” of the Church. This divine title of authority is made clear by the verbal adjective “called” – he aims to leave no doubt that he has the authority of Jesus Christ himself.

SET APART FOR THE GOSPEL:
The term “set apart” is probably a further definition of “called.” Paul, as a “called apostle” has been set aside by God for a special purpose in God’s plan for history. Gospel here might denote the activity of preaching the gospel of God, or simply to the message of the gospel itself. Hard to fit with the context, so many suggest that he is using the term to describe both senses.

In saying that he has been set apart for the gospel of God, he is claiming that his life is totally dedicated to God’s act of salvation in Christ – a dedication that involves his own belief in and obedience to the message as well as his apostolic proclamation of it. Leon Morris says, “Romans is ultimately a book about God: how he acted to bring salvation, how his justice is preserved, ho his purposes are worked out in history, how he can be served by his people.

On his way to Damascus, Paul was a Pharisee, which means “separated one.” Not he uses the same term to speak of his commitment to the gospel. When Paul met Christ, a life-shattering change occurred in him. Before he was separated from all manner of things, and was self-righteous, cruel, and obsessive. Afterward, he was separated unto something, unto the gospel. This separation was positive – expansive and joyful, yet humbling. Do you know what it is to be released from a negative legalism into the liberation of a positive Christianity? Paul never thought of the rejection of sins as privation, because he had his heart set on something more, and that was so grand a commitment that he always counted his calling to be the greatest of all privileges. We are striving to be a people set apart – not set apart in the legalistic, pharisaical sense, but set apart by the gospel and for the gospel