The Power of the Gospel in the Lives of the Romans
Scripture: Romans 1:16-17
Date: June 17, 2012
Speaker: Jonathan Sarr
Last Sunday we entertained a bit of a thought experiment related to the kindness of God. In it, I suggested that if God had granted Paul’s desire to get to Rome when he wanted to that we would not have the book of Romans, and all those thousands of people who have been converted after going down the “Romans Road” in gospel presentations would have had to have heard the gospel by other means. And the millions of believers who have been grown and challenged by Paul’s magnum opus would be deprived of this great book.
Well, we know that God uses a variety of means to effect His purposes, but if we go a step further in our experiment, we may very well attribute much if not all of the Protestant Reformation to the book of Romans, particularly Romans 1:16-17, where we find ourselves this morning. Let me explain.
In the year 1545 Martin Luther wrote an autobiographical introduction to a collection of Latin writings, and in that introduction he writes about what has been come to be known as his “Tower Experience,” his account of which I’ll share with you now.
“Meanwhile in that same year, 1519 (that is, two years after his nailing of the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg), I had begun interpreting the Psalms once again. I felt confident that I was now more experienced, since I had dealt in university courses with St. Paul’s Letters to the Romans, to the Galatians, and the Letter to the Hebrews. I had conceived a burning desire to understand what Paul meant in his Letter to the Romans, but thus far there had Stood in my way, not the cold blood around my heart, but that one word which is in chapter one: “The justice of God is revealed in it.” I hated that word, “justice of God,” which, by the use and custom of all my teachers, I had been taught to understand philosophically as referring to formal or active justice, as they call it, i.e., that justice by which God is just and by which he punishes sinners and the unjust.
“But I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God I was a sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I couldn’t be sure that God was appeased by my satisfaction. I did not love, no, rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners. In silence, if I did not blaspheme, then certainly I grumbled vehemently and got angry at God. I said, “Isn’t it enough that we miserable sinners, lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments? Why does God heap sorrow upon sorrow through the Gospel and through the Gospel threaten us with his justice and his wrath?” This was how I was raging with wild and disturbed conscience. I constantly badgered St. Paul about that spot in Romans 1 and anxiously wanted to know what he meant.
“I meditated night and day on those words until at last, by the mercy of God, I paid attention to their context: “The justice of God is revealed in it, as it is written: “The just person lives by faith.‘” I began to understand that in this verse the justice of God is that by which the just person lives by a gift of God, that is by faith. I began to understand that this verse means that the justice of God is revealed through the Gospel, but it is a passive justice, i.e. that by which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written: “The just person lives by faith.” All at once I felt that I had been born again and entered into paradise itself through open gates. Immediately I saw the whole of Scripture in a different light. I ran through the Scriptures from memory and found that other terms had analogous meanings, e.g., the work of God, that is, what God works in us; the power of God, by which he makes us powerful; the wisdom of God, by which he makes us wise; the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.”
“I exalted this sweetest word of mine, “the justice of God,” with as much love as before I had hated it with hate. This phrase of Paul was for me the very gate of paradise. Afterward I read Augustine’s “On the Spirit and the Letter,” in which I found what I had not dared hope for. I discovered that he too interpreted “the justice of God” in a similar way, namely, as that with which God clothes us when he justifies us. Although Augustine had said it imperfectly and did not explain in detail how God imputes justice to us, still it pleased me that he taught the justice of God by which we are justified.”
Martin Luther came to understand what we have come to take for granted: the righteousness of God refers to a righteousness that He gives to people. He also effects our righteousness, giving two edges to the “Righteousness of God” sword. He both declares us righteous and He makes us righteous.
This was earth-shattering and paradigm-altering for Luther, who became a champion of justification by faith alone, a doctrine which, again, we tend to take for granted.
But what does that have to do with this paragraph, in its context?
The very simple point of 1:8-15 is that Paul wanted to preach the gospel at Rome. The believers at Rome were experiencing some pretty specific challenges, all of which could be helped by the gospel. So while it seems that there were several reasons that Paul wanted to preach the gospel at Rome, among them is that he firmly believed that it was precisely what that body of believers needed.
He punctuates that passage with verse 15: “So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.”
Then he proceeds with our paragraph today, verses 16-17. Now, while providing the letter’s theme, this paragraph also serves as a transition from the opening greetings to the rest of the letter. But in order to properly understand this paragraph - the very theme of the book of Romans - we must understand that it is subordinate to verse 15. That is, it is technically an explanation as to why Paul would be so eager to preach the gospel at Rome.
So, to understand his explanation, let us break down the paragraph by taking it one clause at a time, examining four declarations by the Apostle Paul.
Let us begin then, with the first declaration in the first half of verse 16.
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel…”
Each of these four declarations points back to the one before it, sort of making each one subordinate to the one before. This is evidenced by Paul’s use of the linking words “for” and “as” at the start of the clauses.
Taken as a whole, then, we could actually read the whole thing backwards, starting with where Paul ends, and ending where he starts. It would look something like this:
It is written, “The righteous shall live by faith,” and in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, so the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, so I am not ashamed of the gospel.
And that means that all of it points back to verse 15: “So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome” (1:15).
Seamlessly then, he goes right into his expression of pride in the gospel. To say, “I am not ashamed” is an understatement; rather than being ashamed, Paul is actually proud of the gospel. He loves the gospel. He believes in its effectiveness, richness, power and practicality. He also believed that gospel principles were precisely what the Roman believers needed in their particular situation.
And in the declarations and chapters that follow the first declaration, Paul is pretty convincing. He seems to want to convince the Roman believers that the gospel was worth knowing, owning and applying.
After his first declaration then, Paul goes on to justify his pride in the gospel.
“for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek…”
Remember that each of these declarations points backward: Paul is “not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…”
The focal point of this declaration is the phrase “the power of God.” Think about this. God’s acts of power in creation, consuming the saturated sacrifices and rocks at Mount Carmel, and so many other acts do not attain to this title. The “power of God” is the gospel.
And it’s not hard to appreciate this. God saves sinners. He does it all the time, and He always uses the gospel to do so. Without the gospel, there is no salvation. Isn’t that worth thinking about? We have no problem attributing salvation and election to God, but every time He saves someone, it is by means of the gospel. Sometimes they read it, sometimes they hear it, but they must embrace it or they cannot be saved.
And what is the gospel? It is the good news, that is, the testimony of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And we must trust in Him and believe in Him and embrace the sacrificial payment for our sins or we cannot come to Christ.
What’s more, the faith that is required to believe this is also a gift from Him! It begins with Him and He receives the glory in the end.
So why would’t Paul be proud of the gospel?! He believed that it is powerful to save souls, to mend relationships and to transform an Empire. It is the only way of salvation, and it is the very power of God. It doesn’t just make salvation possible, it is the actual means that God uses to bring spiritual life.
“For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith…”
In the gospel God reveals His righteousness. While this would be more than sufficient material for its own study, I will briefly try to help us to better understand what we have taken for granted: in the gospel God imparts His righteousness to us.
And exactly how is it that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel? Well, we mentioned earlier that, as the very saving “power of God,” it is the actual means by which God saves us. In that process, He declares us to be righteous. Coupled with that, He actually makes us righteous.
There is another means by which the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel, namely, the demands of His righteousness. We’ve gotten away from this notion because more modern - and accurate - translations render this noun “righteousness” rather than “justice,” so we don’t think about the gospel as bearing testimony to the demands of God’s justice.
But God would not be just if He were to simply ignore our sin and justify us apart from the demands of His justice being met. Stated differently, the gospel is all about the work the Christ has done to make us righteous. He has borne our sin, paid a penalty that we could not pay, taken our sin away and given us His righteousness. The demands of God’s righteousness required the death of His Son, and that is revealed in the gospel.
So to review, the righteousness of God does not simply justify His wrath against sin, but it refers to His making us righteous positionally and actually and all that is embodied in that transaction. And He reveals this righteousness in the gospel.
In the generations leading up to Luther’s study of the Psalms and the writings of Paul, the Church had commonly taught that this word rendered here “righteousness” referred to God’s “distributive justice by which he judges all people fairly and impartially” (Schreiner 63), a notion that Luther attacked after his Tower Experience.
Luther understood exactly what the implications of this teaching meant. He had been taught that this righteousness or justice of God was what justified His judgment of sinners. He was righteous, and any who are sinful cannot stand in his presence. This is absolutely true, but Luther and others had been prevented from seeing in Scripture the freedom, the release from this bondage that is in this text.
He understood that if the righteousness of God only carried bad news for the sinner (i.e., the grounds for our condemnation), then he simply couldn’t do enough. Men could not escape his wrath as long as there is present any sin in our lives at all.
Imagine knowing everything you do about the gospel and man’s need for a savior, but take out the part about the imputed righteousness of Christ. How would you live if you believed your salvation depended on your righteousness…even a little bit? You’d probably be really holy…for a while. But as you’d become holier, you’d become more acutely aware of your sinfulness and you’d become even more aware still of the reaming sin in you, and you’d become frustrated…like Martin Luther.
It was this belief that his own righteousness carried weight in the matter of his salvation that drove Luther to the confessional for hours every day. This what brought on his piety, laboring intensely to avail himself of God, denying himself by intense asceticism, sleeping without blankets, in the snow and putting himself through agonizing situations in attempts to live a holy life.
Because what else did he have? If forgiveness of sin came through confession to men and personal holiness and worthiness for heaven were tied to our performance, that is if justification were by faith and by works, then who stands a chance before the “righteousness of God?”
And that “righteousness of God” to which Luther refers is here in Paul’s third declaration. It was not until, as he said, he considered the context of the reference “the righteousness of God” that the light dawned on Him. Let’s look at that together.
“as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’”
“The righteous” refers to the faithful in Christ, that is, it clearly refers to people. And that is fantastic news for Luther and for us! Paul is saying here that people can be righteous, and they are MADE righteous by God, specifically by the saving power of God in the gospel as He imparts His righteousness to us.
This is huge, because in the phrase that Luther hated (“righteousness [justice] of God”), the righteousness only belonged to God, and it only made the chasm between God and man greater. Then suddenly Luther noted the second half of verse 17 and Paul’s mentioning of “the righteous,” in a context that clearly refers to men. And how does that happen? God gives it to us!
Translators have wrestled with this phrase, rendering it differently from one another. Some say, “The just shall live by faith,” while others say, “The just shall live by faith,” and still others use the term “righteous” in the place of “just.” Well, whether “by faith” refers to how believers are righteous or how they live is up for debate because both are true, and both are defended in this letter. You can wrangle with the translations, and it could very well be that Paul did not intend to exclude one of the meanings; perhaps he meant both, because both are true.
But those various translations don’t make up the earth-shattering, kingdom-upsetting assumption that Paul is making in the last part of verse 17. I believe that what literally turned Luther’s life upside down is that the fact that “the righteous” refers to people, and that informs the first part of the verse. “The righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith” to men through the gospel as He gives that righteousness to them!
Without this phrase, without the context, we would be without hope; we could conclude that, like Luther, the gospel - even the gospel - has nothing but bad news for believers. All we have is the righteousness of God that justifies His wrath on the ungodly. But rather, we are righteous in Him! And this is good news.
It is little wonder why Luther refers to the dawning of this reality on his mind and his heart as being the point of his salvation. When he understood that believers passively receive righteousness from God that is both unearned and unmerited, he was saved. It is only with the reality of the giving of Christ’s righteousness to us that we can be made righteous at all. And in the gospel this happens.
I believe that Paul in Romans 1:16-17 is working from the greater to the lesser. Sure, he is concluding the introductory comments that he began in chapter 1, verse 1, and he makes these lofty declarations about the gospel as he transitions into his indictment of mankind in the rest of chapter 1 through much of chapter 3, and the subsequent glorious meditations on the gospel itself in chapters 4-8.
But in the context, it would sure seem to be an argument from the greater to the lesser. That is to say, if the gospel is the very power of God for a salvation from final judgment, if it is the instrument by which God reveals his righteousness, giving it to men and making them righteous positionally and practically, then doesn’t it go without saying that it should be the answer for petty church problems?
Wouldn’t the Roman believers be able to apply these principles to their lives to lend perspective and to gain a powerful witness at Rome?
And the same is true for us today. We ought to be intentional about rehearsing the gospel regularly, preaching it to ourselves, living it out before our children and one another. Because among other things, it is the very power of God for salvation, and it is the means by which we have the sort of spiritual life that we long to live.