Review:
Preacher Paul introduced himself, 1:1-7
Preacher Paul’s Passion, 1:8-15
Today: Preacher Paul’s Powerful Gospel, 1:16-17
Romans 1:16-17
I. Paul’s gospel gives no
Could Paul have ever been ashamed of the gospel?
I once heard James Stewart of Edinburgh, in a sermon on this text, make the perceptive comment that ‘there’s no sense in declaring that you’re not ashamed of something unless you’ve been tempted to feel ashamed of it’. And without doubt Paul knew this temptation. He told the Corinthians that he came to them ‘in weakness and fear, and with much trembling’.5 He knew that the message of the cross was ‘foolishness’ to some and ‘a stumbling-block’ to others,6 because it undermines self-righteousness and challenges self-indulgence. So whenever the gospel is faithfully preached, it arouses opposition, often contempt, and sometimes ridicule.
Jesus and Paul both raised being ashamed of Jesus or the gospel as a possibility.
Mark 8:38 (NASB95)
2 Timothy 1:7–8 (NASB95)
Why shame? How shame?
Crucifixion was a shameful death. It was so shameful and cruel that no Roman citizen could be executed by crucifixion. It was a terror tactic to subdue slaves and rebels, to whom it was most frequently applied.
Paul would be declaring in Rome that a Jew from Galilee who was crucified by the Romans for claiming to be the King of the Paul was the real Lord. How could you that declare a rival to Caesar was a nobody from nowhere who was rejected by the leaders of his own nation and died a criminal’s death? Wouldn’t that cause shame all by itself?
Yet Paul was not ashamed – at all – of the good news about Jesus.
II. Paul’s gospel is the of God for
Paul explains why he is not ashamed of the gospel. (See that word ‘for’.)
The reason that Paul is not ashamed of the gospel is because of what it is.
It is the power of God for salvation.
What is salvation?
from a very dangerous situation.
This book of Romans tells us what the danger is that we need to be saved from
Romans 3:23 (NASB95)
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Romans 6:23a (NASB95)
For the wages of sin is death
The salvation Paul is talking about is rescue from what we deserve for the sin we’ve committed: eternal separation from God in Hell. Jesus dies for us to rescue us from this fate.
How is the gospel the power of God for salvation?
On one hand, the gospel is simply words.
On the other hand, the gospel more than words.
The gospel, the words that explain the good news of what Jesus did on the cross and in his resurrection, is the power of God to save us. When we believe in the words of the gospel, these words will have a radical effect on us. They will transfer us from the domain of darkness to the Kingdom of Jesus, they will move us out of spiritual death and into spiritual life, they will cause us to pass from death to life, they will ensure us that we have eternal life.
When the gospel words are believed, they release the saving power of God to work in a person’s heart and soul and bring about a radical transformation.
III. Paul’s gospel saves who believe
(MULTILINE)
IV. Paul’s gospel reveals God’s
These words raise a question. What does Paul mean by God’s righteousness?
There are at least three possibilities:
The of righteousness which God has (He possesses righteousness)
The righteous of God (He behaves in righteous ways)
The righteousness which God (He is the source of righteousness.)
Paul helps us chose which he means in other passages in this book and in a passage about his own life:
Romans 3:22 (NASB95)
even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction;
Romans 3:26 (NASB95)
for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier (the declarer of righteousness) of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Philippians 3:9 (NASB95)
and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,
John R. W. Stott says:
There can be little doubt that Paul uses the expression ‘the righteousness of God’ in this third way. He contrasts it with our own righteousness,20 which we are tempted to establish instead of submitting to God’s righteousness (10:3).
Charles Cranfield, who opts for this interpretation, paraphrases 1:17 in this way: ‘For in it (i.e. in the gospel as it is being preached) a righteous status which is God’s gift is being revealed (and so offered to men)—a righteous status which is altogether by faith.’22
This means that the gospel reveals how God gives his righteousness to others, to you and I who are unrighteous and cannot create our own righteousness. As we will see he gives us tis righteousness when we put our faith in Jesus as our Savior.
V. Paul’s gospel demands only
Paul is quoting from Habakkuk 2:4 with one slight change. He eliminates the pronoun ‘his’. ‘His faith’ and replaces it with just the word faith. In the Hebrew,
Habakkuk 2:4 (NASB95)
“Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him; But the righteous will live by his faith.
But prior to Paul the translators of the Septuagint, which was a translation of the Hebrew OT into Greek translated the verse this way:
Habakkuk 2:4 (Brenton LXX En)
If he should draw back, my soul has no pleasure in him: but the just shall live by my faith. (God’s faithfulness.)
They substituted the word ‘my’ for the word ‘his’.
Scholars love differences like this and opinions are not lacking as to which version is more correct, and why Paul chose to eliminate the disputed pronoun altogether, but Paul did consistently quote Habakkuk 2:4 this way so is likely following a known convention.
He quoted Habakkuk 2:4 in Galatians 3:11
Galatians 3:11 (ESV)
Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.”
What does Paul mean? What is he saying Habakkuk was saying?
Is Paul saying that a righteous person by faith?
Or, is Paul saying that a righteous person because of faith?
I’ll quote again from John R. W. Stott who after a discussion of the first option says this:
Many scholars, however, like RSV, translate Paul’s quotation of Habakkuk differently: ‘he who through faith is righteous shall live’. There are strong arguments in favour of this epigram. First, Paul has already used this text, in Galatians28 written some years earlier, as biblical support for justification by faith, not law. So this seems to be how he understands it. Secondly, the context almost demands this rendering, being an endorsement from Scripture of ‘from faith to faith’. Paul’s concern here is not how righteous people live, but how sinful people become righteous. Thirdly, this translation fits the structure of the letter. Thus Anders Nygren points out that in Romans 1–4 ‘faith’ occurs at least twenty-five times and ‘life’ only twice, whereas in Romans 5–8 ‘life’ occurs twenty-five times and ‘faith’ only twice. These statistics establish, he concludes, ‘that the theme for chapters 1–4 is “he who through faith is righteous” and for chapters 5–8 “he shall live” ’.29
What Paul then is using Habakkuk to say is that people become righteous . It is true that saved people live by faith, but before they can live by faith, they must be saved. They are saved, or they become righteous in God’s eyes through faith.
This is in direct contrast to anyone who teaches that you must obey rules, participate in rituals, join the right church, or repeat the right words to be saved. Salvation is by . God gives his righteousness to us when we put our faith in Jesus alone as our Savior. We become alive – we live – because we put our trust for salvation in Jesus.
CONCLUSION
This, then, is Preacher Paul’s powerful gospel.
It is a gospel that we never need to .
It is a gospel that is the to save, and to save who believes.
It is a gospel that requires faith, but requires faith, in order for it to do its work in us: save us from the eternal penalty of our sins..