For I am not ashamed of the Gospel Romans 1:16-17

Coram Deo Reformed Baptist Church

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For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

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Jew first and also to the Greek. For in the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

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As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

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These two verses are the thesis statement for the rest of Romans.

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16 starts with, For I am not ashamed of the gospel. Paul, as we should also recognize, is that the gospel is a stumbling block for the

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Jews. After all, he's a Pharisee. It is also foolishness to Greeks, the scripture says.

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Or why would a God become a human being so that he can be killed?

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Greeks value logic. It's completely illogical, but scripture itself says that it's in part why.

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Because it's completely illogical. It's God's plan, not anyone else's.

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Paul is well aware of the taunting and scoffing the ungodly throw at the message of the gospel.

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Like I said before, he is a Pharisee, or was. Also, he is uniquely, as are the other 11, aware of the scoffing and hatred that we human beings in our sinful nature tend to throw at the truth.

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The gospel is very offensive to those who hear it for the first time.

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He continues, For it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.

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The means by which God offers salvation to us is through the gospel, through the hearing of it, and it must be preeminent above all other teaching.

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It has to be. We all know that lights and music and a show is wrong, right?

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We have that figured out, at least here.

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But so is pure intellectual pursuit of God. There are people who get swung to the complete opposite end of the spectrum.

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You have all of the people over here that want just to feel it, and then you have all of the people over here who want a purely intellectual pursuit.

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And the same thing that both of them are doing wrong is that the gospel is not preeminent.

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I could stand up here and share all the doctrine I wanted to with you. If the gospel doesn't come before that, then what

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I'm doing is evil. Plain and simple. A person must first understand initially that they are a sinner and under God's wrath, and without the salvation provided by Christ, they will be justly punished for it.

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For the wages of sin is death. And if we are judged justly because we have offended an eternal

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God, then the punishment must also be eternal. Not because of the offense, but because of who we have offended.

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A lot of people have that mixed up because of the way we punish laws here, right?

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You do this, you get this punishment. Do this, you get a more severe punishment. But the basis of our law system is

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God's law, and when you break

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God's law, you break all of them. That punishment is a place that we in English call hell.

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It's actually a Danish word, but it's a place void of God's grace and mercy, where sin is unrestrained.

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And I will go further into that because I know it sounds funny. It sounds funny when I say it.

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But in Matthew 13 42, you don't have to flip there if you don't want, it's just an excerpt from the verse.

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It says, in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And then he confirms, this is Christ speaking, confirms this statement again in 13 and 50 when he says, and throw them into the fiery furnace, in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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What is the weeping and gnashing of teeth? One, he's speaking in parables.

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But this term is used enough that we can surmise that it is a more or less accurate depiction, also because of who was saying it.

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Without understanding, it is easy to come to the conclusion that with weeping and gnashing of teeth, it means that there are people there who are sorry that they're there.

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I know I got whipped as a child and there was a lot of weeping and a little bit of gnashing of teeth.

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And if that is the only reference you have for punishment, how could you think otherwise?

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And it's not completely wrong. The issue is is that they're not sorry for the reason that they should be sorry.

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Because there is no grace to unrestrain their sin, they are sorry that they can't get out on their own.

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Not that they put themselves there. They're sorry they didn't do better.

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They can't get themselves out. And the gnashing of teeth is because they still hate

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God for putting them there. In that place, you are not capable of godly sorrow, which leads to repentance.

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There was, and I forget who, where it comes from, some of you may know, but I forget off the top of my head, it was either

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Sproul or MacArthur or Washer or someone I was listening to had an analogy that God could go there and throw open the doors of hell and offer everyone again the chance to get out.

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Simply recognize him as God, repent, and they would slam the door in his face.

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Not because they don't want, not because they necessarily want to be there, but because they hate him more.

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The reason that the world works the way that it works, in the sad fashion that it does, in our time before the flood period at all, is because of God's grace and mercy restraining our sin.

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This is evident when you read the Old Testament and Christ giving nations over to it.

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When he speaks to Abraham about Canaan and says that they are not yet ready, but that he will send his people into Egypt for 400 years until the

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Canaanites are ready to be judged, and he gave them over to their sin.

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I could go into a diatribe about our country, but I'm not gonna. Those who end up there, unfortunately, aren't spoken enough of in the

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American church, but we see in Revelation 8 21, it says this, speaking of the final judgment, but as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and liars, their portion will be in that lake that burns with sulfur, that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.

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And in 1st Corinthians 6, or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

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Do not be deceived, neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

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This is an inescapable fact that we all deserve this punishment, because we are all guilty of one or more of these things, and God would be just as loving and just to not save a single person.

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He would. He would be just as loving to His Son and to the

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Holy Spirit. All three persons of the Trinity would be just as loving and just to not save a single person, but He does.

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That in 1st

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Corinthians 6, it continues in verse 11, And such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God, the one by which we can be saved,

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Christ our Lord, our King, who lived a perfect life, completely obedient to the will of God the

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Father, and died as an unblemished Lamb, giving Himself up to satisfy

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God's wrath, and because of who He is, vera homo, vera

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Dei, truly God and truly man, or truly man and truly

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God. His sacrifice on the cross is sufficient because of who

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He is, and is sufficient for everyone who believes to save us from the wrath to come.

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Paul continues, To the Jew first and also the Greek, the gospel was offered to the

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Jews first. Read it in Acts. Church starts in Jerusalem.

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Christ's ministry is in Israel, and the entire

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Old Testament is about Israel. The revelation of God came to them first, and may

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I preface that with saying, not because they're special, but because He chose to give it to them.

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He could have easily chosen another people, but He didn't. He chose them.

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Now there is a line of accession there all the way back to Adam that you can trace, but Israelites are

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His chosen people. But after their rejection of it,

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Paul and the other Apostles go to the Gentiles. They go to the Greeks. Paul here is speaking chronologically, not hierarchically.

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He said that word right. That is, he is saying that the revelation of God was given to the

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Israelite people, and now will be shared with all peoples and nations indiscriminately.

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Because of their rejection of it, they have no higher importance than anyone else anymore.

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They're on a level playing field, as it were. Only that they received it first in the order of history.

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Acts 13 44 and 48. In AD 48,

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Paul and Barnabas are in Antioch in Pisidia at the synagogue on the

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Sabbath, as was their tradition. 42 starts with,

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As they went out, the people begged that these things might be told to them the next

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Sabbath. And after the meeting of the synagogue broke up, many Jews and devout converts to Judaism followed

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Paul and Barnabas, who, as they spoke with them, urged them to continue in the grace of God the next

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Sabbath. Almost the whole city gathered to hear the word of the Lord.

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A lot of people notice here when we talked earlier about hyperbole.

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This doesn't read like hyperbole. It reads as a statement, a fact.

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Almost the whole city. But they gathered to hear the word of the

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Lord. But when the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and began to contradict what was spoken by Paul, reviling him.

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And Paul and Barnabas spoke out boldly, saying, It was necessary that the Word of God be spoken to you first.

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So you thrust it aside and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life.

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Behold, we are turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us, saying,

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I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.

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And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the Word of God.

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And as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. And the word of the

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Lord was spread throughout the whole region. But the Jews incited the devout women of high standing and the leading men of the city, stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their district.

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As I said before, the revelation of God was given to the Israelites first, God's chosen people, by way of the promises to Abraham and his offspring.

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In Isaiah 49, 6 it was written, he says, It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved

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Israel. I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.

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17, For in the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

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The recognition and understanding of the gospel and God come from the faith that is given to us from God, and from this faith, from this our faith is strengthened by that understanding.

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What Paul is speaking of here is not the righteousness of God's character, but the righteousness that is imputed to the believer from Christ, due to his infinite value as the second person of the

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Trinity. It is more than sufficient to cover our unrighteousness. This is why it says, from faith for faith.

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This righteousness is revealed from that initial justifying faith that is given to us through the

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Holy Spirit and continues in our sanctification.

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It is maintained in that. Then as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

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This is that wonderful verse that Luther struggled with for so long, seeing righteousness as, again, an unachievable character trait that God required that he could not achieve.

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Paul, in this verse, is quoting Habakkuk 2 4, Look at the proud one, his soul is not upright, but the righteous shall live by faith.

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For a brief history lesson, at the moment, Luther was a priest for six or eight years with a doctorate and as a professor before the

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Holy Spirit revealed to him in the original Greek what this actually meant. The original word that it was translated at in Latin was justicar, justicare, which means to make, to make righteous.

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But in the Greek, the word is, and I hope I'm saying this correctly, dikaios, which means to regard as righteous.

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And at that moment, Luther says that he understood.

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It is not by our merit, but by his merit, his work.

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Because of the work of Christ, God regards the saved as righteous.

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And then, of course, you have the entire rest of the Reformation leading up to us, because it's still happening.

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Paul's point in these verses, like Sproul said,

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Romans 16 and 17 are the thesis statements for this epistle. The entire rest of Romans, Paul is going to flesh out the meaning of what he just said, what he just wrote here in the beginning of the chapter, here in the beginning in chapter 1.

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The righteousness that is required for salvation is not a righteousness that can be obtained by our own merit, but that is given.

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It is a gift through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

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It is imputed to us from him through his merit and his work. You can do nothing to earn it, even after you're saved.

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I struggle with myself that sometimes. Not in the manner of, well, if I do this,

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I'll be better off. No, not of that. It's usually, well,

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I did that, now I'm worse off. But then, you know, repent, pray, fast, which

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I have a hard time with. And the faith that is given leads to the process of sanctification throughout the rest of every saint's life, i .e.,

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the righteous shall live by faith, a faith that is given, the faith that grows.