Intro to Romans: The Just Shall Live by Faith Alone

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

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My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

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Today is an exciting day because today we are beginning a study of the Book of Romans.

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Now the hardest part about this particular study is going to be the fact that I'm limiting myself to one video per chapter.

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And in the 16 chapters of the Book of Romans, it is filled with theological significance on every page.

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And so it's going to be very difficult for me to limit myself to just one five to seven minute video about each particular chapter.

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But I want to try to do so to continue to follow the pattern that we have so far.

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And so what I'm going to do today is I want to just simply give you an outline of the Book of Romans, how we're going to be breaking it down and looking at it.

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And I also want to point out one of the most important verses, not only in the Book of Romans, but in the whole Bible in regard to the gospel.

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And it comes to us in Romans chapter one.

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Now very quickly, I want to read to you the introduction.

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This is in our pew Bibles here at Sovereign Grace Family Church.

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We have the English Standard Version and these pew Bibles all come with an introduction to each book.

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And it's just a paragraph that I'd like to read to you now.

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Romans is the longest and most systematically reasoned of Paul's letters.

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Paul announces its theme in 1 16 and 17.

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The gospel is God's power for salvation because it shows us that the righteousness of God is through faith for all who believe.

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Paul explains the need for justification through faith because of sin.

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He then spells out the results of justification by faith in terms of both present experience and future hope.

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In the next three chapters, he expresses his sorrow that many of his fellow Israelites not embrace the gospel and he wrestles with the theological implications of this.

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And then he concludes by describing how the gospel should affect one's everyday life.

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Paul wrote his letter to Rome in about AD 57.

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So that's where we are.

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That's what we're going to be looking at today in the Book of Romans.

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And one of the things that I find helpful is to break Romans down into sections.

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Romans, as it says in this introduction, Romans is the most systematically outlined of Paul's letters.

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Romans is his magnum opus, his theological treatise.

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This is his doctoral dissertation.

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This tells about the Christian faith and about how we ought to understand the great doctrines of the faith.

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And it's why it's been so beloved, especially in the Reformed community where there is a very high value placed upon the doctrines of scripture.

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When you look at the Book of Romans, it's broken down in one sense in the way that I have on my board here.

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The first three chapters regard man and sin, depravity.

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So we call that the first three chapters, the doctrine of sin.

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Then in chapters four and five, we find the doctrine of justification.

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How is a sinful man made right with a holy God? That's what we see in chapters four and five.

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Then the question arises, well, if we're justified by faith, how does that result in good works? And can we just continue to sin and be justified? Paul addresses that in chapter six through eight on the doctrine of sanctification.

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Then in chapters nine through 11, Paul addresses the issue of election.

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If we were to understand that Israel was the elect of God and now Israel has rejected Christ, does that mean that God's word has failed? And Paul addresses that and the doctrine of election from chapters nine through 11.

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Then we get to chapter 12, and Paul uses this great word, therefore.

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And it's the therefore in chapter 12 is looking back on everything that he's written so far, and he gives this great application to how to live the Christian life in light of the great and wonderful doctrines of the faith.

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In fact, that is what the Christian life is, is living out the truth that we have as Christians.

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So that's the outline.

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That's how we're going to break it down, and we're going to look at each chapter, one chapter a day.

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I'm going to give you a few thoughts from each chapter every day, just as I have been with all the other books.

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Today, we're going to be looking at chapter one, and I want you to look with me at verses 16 and 17.

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This is the passage that history tells us was highly influential on the reformer Martin Luther.

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If you'll remember, Martin Luther was consumed with grief over his own sin.

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He was consumed with fear of God, because he knew that his sin warranted God's justice and God's judgment.

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In fact, at one point, he even said that he didn't feel like he could love God, but that he hated God because he knew he was an object of God's wrath.

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But then, in his studies of Galatians and Romans, we find that he learned that he's not justified by what he does, but he is justified by faith.

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Let's read together.

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It says, For I'm 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.

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For in it, that is in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

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Now, one of the things I want to do right away is mention a place where I think the ESV does not translate this well.

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You'll notice it says in verse 17, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

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I don't like the way that that is translated.

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In fact, I don't think they did either, because if you notice, if you have one of our Bibles, you'll notice there's a little superscript there, number one, and it goes down to the bottom and it gives an alternate reading.

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And the alternate reading is much better, because this would be the alternate reading.

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The righteousness of God is revealed from faith, beginning and ending in faith.

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Some versions say from faith to faith.

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Some say from faith from first to last.

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And all of those are driving to the point.

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The point is the Christian life is to be lived by faith from the beginning to the end.

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There is no time in our Christian faith where our works suddenly become meritorious.

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Now, are we called to good works? Yes, we're saved for good works.

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For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourself.

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It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

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For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.

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We're created to do good works.

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We're created to image God, and we image God in doing good works.

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Absolutely good works are something that we are called to, but they never contribute to our salvation.

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Our salvation is from faith to faith.

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Faith in the beginning to faith in the ending.

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It is always, always, always of faith.

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And so the important thing to remember about this passage is that this helped bring Martin Luther out of his sense of despair because he realized there was nothing he could do to warrant the righteousness of God.

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There was nothing he could do to make himself righteous before God.

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All he could do is trust in the righteousness of God.

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Notice what it says.

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The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, not the righteousness of me or the righteousness of you.

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Recently, I was sitting in a group of men, and one of the men began to say how he was struggling with doubt because of his life and the sins that he deals with.

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And while it's not my job to give assurance, because that's the Holy Spirit's job, it is my job to point him to Scripture.

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And this is the Scripture I pointed him to.

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I said, look at this verse.

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Does it say the righteousness of you or the righteousness of God? And he looked at it, and he says, it's the righteousness of God.

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I said, so whose righteousness are you trusting in? Are you trusting in your righteousness, or are you trusting in his righteousness? The Bible says we have a righteousness that comes not from within, but from without.

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The Bible says that we do not have a righteousness which comes from the law, but a righteousness which comes through faith in Jesus Christ.

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Again, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

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As it is written, and this passage is quoting Habakkuk, as it is written, the just shall live by faith.

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Later in the book of Romans, Paul will go back and show us that even Abraham was justified not by his works, but by his faith.

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Abraham was justified by faith.

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Martin Luther was justified by faith.

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And if you are in Christ, you too are justified, not by your works, but by faith alone.

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I hope this has been an encouragement to you.

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I hope this has been helpful to you.

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And if you are enjoying these videos, please take a moment, like, comment, and subscribe to our YouTube page.

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And if you're on Facebook, please take a moment to share this video so that we can reach more people with the word of God.

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Thank you again for watching.

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I'm Keith Foskey, and I have been your Calvinist.