Sunday Sermon: The Righteous Shall Live By Faith (Romans 1:17)

Romans 1:16-17 as the Thesis of Romans

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Well good morning.

Good morning.

Pleasure to see everybody this morning. If you would open your Bible, please, to Romans 1. We are finishing up what has been three sermons in Romans 1, verses 16 and 17. This being the thesis statement to the book of Romans.

The statement that's going to carry us through the rest of our study of this particular book, and we read today about how the righteous shall live by faith. The Puritan Richard Sibbes said, Faith, whereby especially Christ rules, sets the soul so high that it looks down on all other things as far below, as having represented to it by the Spirit of Christ, riches, honor, beauty, and pleasures of a higher nature, things we know this world cannot satisfy.

We find fully satisfied in Christ. Let us read once again Romans 1, 16 to 17 in honor of the word of the King. Would you please stand? This is the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Rome. Hear the word of the Lord.

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. You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, as we come back to this word again, we ask that your Spirit would teach us, would guide us into all truth, and that we would have assured within our hearts a confidence in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

If we have come to believe in Jesus, we are saved. We are rescued from our sin. We are even lifted up from the wages of sin, which is death, and promised eternity in heaven above with God and glory. We are saved from the very judgment of God that comes against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.

We have nothing to fear of man. We have nothing to fear of anything that this life throws at us if we have faith in Christ. The righteous, who are made righteous by their faith in Jesus, shall live, shall be sustained by faith in Him.

Continue to lead us in this, we ask in your name, and it's in the name of Christ that we pray, and all God's people said, Amen. There's a new movie out. Not endorsing this film. I haven't seen the movie.

I know very little about it. But I just happened to catch that Clint Eastwood has made a new movie. Anybody have any idea how old Clint Eastwood is? He's 94, and he just directed and released a new film that's called Juror No. 2.

Now why am I even bringing that up this morning? Because the movie has a fantastic logline. Now if you're not familiar with what a logline is, it's like the slogan or the tagline that goes along with the film.

The official name for this is a logline. So back in 1978 when Superman came out, the logline was, you will believe that a man can.

Fly.

Or when Braveheart came out, every man dies, not every man really lives. That's the logline to the film. Well for this movie, Juror No. 2, the logline is, justice is blind, but guilt sees everything. And I read that and I was like, I can't remember the last time I was convicted by a logline.

In a movie.

Not really convicted. But I still found it very thought-provoking. Justice is blind, but guilt sees everything. Have you ever felt that way about your own guilt? And there are sins that you're guilty of, and you hide from everybody else, right?

Plenty of sins I don't want everybody else to see. So as long as you have it out of everybody else's sight, then it's tucked away, it's gone, and I can feel relieved of it, but that guilt still remains.

And it still reminds you of what you have done. And it seems like there's nothing that you can do to get away from it. There's always going to be that reminder of what you're guilty of, no matter what you can hide from other people, that reminder still exists.

And maybe the adversary, maybe Satan himself, stands there in your conscience and reminds you of what it is that you have done. You will never be good enough. You're never worthy enough, because you are guilty of this, and you know it.

You can hide it from everybody else, but you can't hide it from yourself. Would you even want everybody to know all the stuff that you are guilty of? How are we relieved of this guilt? And furthermore, not only how are we relieved from it, but how can we know and be assured that something's actually been done about it?

That we're innocent now? That the guilt has been taken away? And there is no offense held against us any longer? Is there anything that can be done that can relieve us of that guilt? And the answer is in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That Jesus died on the cross for our sins. We've been talking about this the past couple of weeks. That His very death on the cross comes with the declaration to Telestai, it is finished. Paid in full.

And so that all who believe in Him, as said in Colossians chapter 1, our sins are nailed to the cross and the debt is paid. And so that in Christ Jesus, His death on our behalf has relieved us of our guilt and has justified us before the Father, declared innocent, guiltless before God.

And so not only can we have assurance, not only can we have that feeling of guilt taken away, but we can even have the assurance that we are not guilty at all. We are declared innocent before God by the precious blood of Jesus.

As we sing in the old hymn, as written by Robert Lowry, what can take away my sin? What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

And that is the answer to our guilt. And it is by faith in Jesus that we receive all the benefits that are given to us through the cross of Christ, so that we come to understand that the righteous shall live by faith.

We have looked the past couple of weeks at just verse 16. I am not ashamed of the gospel. That was two weeks ago. What does it mean to be ashamed of the gospel? What is therefore our confidence in the gospel?

And then last week looking at the next part of that verse. For in the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. And this gospel message was declared first to the Jew and then also to the Greek.

Today we focus on verse 17. For in it, in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. What does that mean? We'll consider that. And then lastly, as it is written, and Paul making a reference from the Old Testament, specifically from Habakkuk 2 .4, the righteous shall live by faith.

What does that mean that the righteous shall live by faith? So what we're going to do this morning as we look at this particular verse, we'll break this up into two parts. First of all, seeing that in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

Then secondly, we'll look at that next part as it is written, the righteous, or in some of your translations, the just shall live by faith. And then we want to do some review, looking back over what we have considered these last couple of weeks in the gospel that has been proclaimed to us, and also come to understand.

I haven't done this yet, so I felt like this Sunday was the best place to do it. What is not the gospel? And we'll consider that as well. So let's come back to verse 17 here in this first portion, in which it is said that in it, referring to the gospel, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

Now, Paul is a brilliant writer in case you haven't picked that up. And what we have said here in this, what I've called a thesis statement to the book of Romans, this, this is our log line for Romans.

Basically, it's, it's the statement that's going to set up everything else that comes after it. Everything that we're going to learn from this letter, Paul is summarizing here in this statement in verses 16 and 17.

And as he states it here, he's going to come back to it. Paul has this habit. You'll see this as we go through Romans. He's got this habit of making a statement, fleshing out the statement, and then saying the statement again.

And he might even word it in a slightly different way. Charles Spurgeon, whenever he would teach his young men on, on preaching, he said, learn to say things twice, but in a different way. So word it slightly different so that people hear you say the same thing twice, but word it in such a way that it even gets into their heart.

It explains itself. It penetrates the heart even more. That was how he would, he would train his pastors in repetition. When I was in, uh, when I was in speech in college, I majored in communications and I had a speech coach that taught me what he called the tell them rule.

Whenever you do a speech, you're going to do the tell them rule. It was like, okay, tell me what the tell them rule is. He said, you're going to tell them what you're going to tell them. Then you're going to tell them and then you're going to tell them what you just told them.

And so it's this constant repetition of, I'm going to tell you this, this, and this. Now here's point one. Now here's point two. And now here's point three. And now I've just told you point one and point two and point three, therefore this and go back to the previous statement.

That's not a new concept. That's, that's not like modern speaking. When you go back to rhetoric, even in the ways that the Greeks taught it, we teach math and science and reading and things like that in education.

Well, the Greeks also had rhetoric classes. So when it was teaching people how to talk, that tell them rule was a common thing. The repetition is how it gets into people's heads. Those of you who are educators, even doing homeschooling, a lot of your homeschool curriculums will probably tell you that to get through to kids in a certain age range, you have to repeat it like seven times or 13 times or whatever it is.

I learned stuff just listening to my wife teach the kids and repeat that stuff over and over again. And I'm sitting in my office listening to it. And I'm like, okay, I can say it with them now because I've heard it over and over again.

So Paul has that habit of doing the same thing of making a statement and then explaining it and then coming back to the statement again. He doesn't do that in all of his letters, but it is very much a pattern in Romans.

So we see this statement here in verse 17 in it. The righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. Now we're going to spend several weeks, probably a few months here now going through the rest of chapter one, chapter two, and about halfway through chapter three.

So make a mental note here or a note in your Bible or something like that. Put a pin in it. As I've heard it said, put a pin in this because this statement in verse 17 comes back up again in the gospel.

The righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. Let's go ahead and cheat and look ahead at where it comes back up again. Go to chapter three and look at verse 21, Romans 3 21. But now the what righteousness of God has been.

What word do you have manifested or revealed? It's the same. It's the same word as before. So in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. And here it's now the righteousness of God has been revealed or manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it.

Verse 22, the righteousness of God through what faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. You see the same statement again, right? So Paul is making the statement here in chapter one, verse 17, and then he's spending the rest of chapter one, two and three, making a point that he's going to come back to repeating the statement again in verse 21.

The righteousness of God has been revealed. It has been manifested apart from the law, but the law and the prophets bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

Same thing that we have in Romans one, 16 and 17. So go back to chapter one now. So what's Paul going to do from here? Again, we have this thesis statement that's made here, the capture of the letter.

And then when we go through the rest of chapter one, beginning next week, in fact, Paul is going to bring all men into condemnation, whether they are Jew or Gentile. Because remember, we have that statement in verse 16, that the gospel is first for the Jew and then to the Greek.

Whether you are Jew or Greek, you are guilty before God. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That's what Paul is going to demonstrate. So through all of chapter one, showing the sin of mankind, chapter two, you who are Jews, you're no less guilty than the Gentiles are, than the Greeks are.

You're guilty as well. Even though the law of God was given to you, you had it, but you broke it. So you're no better than they are. In fact, it makes you worse because you knew what God's will was, and yet you didn't follow.

It.

So all had sinned and fallen short of God's glory, which Paul summarizes in chapter three, verse 23, bringing all men into condemnation so that all of us now realizing that we are guilty before God. Everybody, whether they had the law or not, everyone is guilty before God.

And now knowing that, there's a righteousness. There is a righteousness of God that has been revealed. It's been manifested apart from the law because you could never keep the law to attain it.

Anyway.

So if we can't keep the law to be righteous before God, how do we get there?

Good news.

There's a righteousness that has been revealed apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it. Whenever we read in the law, you shall do this. You shall not do this. What that should be doing for us when we read that is exposing our hearts to the reality of the fact that we've never kept the law.

We break the law. Whenever it says, you will not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. Oh my goodness, I did that on the way to church this morning. Something to that effect. When you read that in the law, you will recognize I've broken this law.

God says, don't do this. But I know I have done that. And so the righteousness of God is seen there in that way. God demands holiness. He demands perfection. And I've never been righteous at any point.

And so now having seen that in the law, the law and the prophets bear witness to it. But there's a righteousness that's apart from it. Again, Romans 3 .22, it is the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all.

Who believe.

How do I attain that righteousness? If I can't get it through the law, how do I get it? Through faith. By believing in Jesus. The righteousness of God is given to you apart from the law. But whoever has faith in Jesus Christ will be clothed in his righteousness.

We will be declared righteous. Not by anything that we have done, but by the grace of God. So again, in verse 17, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. In the good news of the gospel, in the good news of the message, that God sent his son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins and rise again from the dead.

In that very message, we hear about our sin and need for a Savior. And God provided that Savior. We hear about our guilt and need for something, some way to pay for that guilt. But even giving our lives would not be enough to absolve us of that guilt because we're.

Not a good enough sacrifice.

And then we would be dead and that would be the end of it. So how can I possibly take away my guilt? It is God sending his son for us on our behalf. And Jesus who was perfect and was righteous and did everything right when we can't do anything right.

And he by his life fulfilling all of the righteous obligations of the law. And dying for us that we might live. Laying down his life in our place on our behalf, paying our sin debt for us. And when we hear that message in the gospel, the righteousness of God is seen in it.

The righteous requirement, the righteous demand. We were sinners. God gave his righteous son to die for us so that in him we can be forgiven our sins and have eternal life. And when we hear that in the message, in the gospel, the righteousness of God therefore is revealed.

And it is revealed, it said, from faith for faith. What does that mean? From faith for faith. Well it's basically the same as saying something to the effect of it begins with faith and it ends with faith.

You have come to see and know and even live in the righteousness of God because you believed. It's talking about our conversion there. So at the time that we have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have come to know the righteousness of God.

His righteousness has been upon us from then. From the time that we had faith. It's not something that we have to work our way toward and eventually we will get to it. Some of you probably remember a commencement speech that was given this past May.

It was like one of the biggest stories of the year by the place kicker of the Kansas City Chiefs, Harrison Butker. And he was speaking at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. I've been there to Atchison.

Beautiful little town. You wouldn't think that there's a college there, but there is. It's a Roman Catholic college. And Butker is a Roman Catholic. And the commencement speech that he gave was very Roman Catholic.

Now he made some statements there specifically toward women and was saying, don't listen to the feminism of this age. Here is instead what God has in store for you. One of the greatest accomplishments that you can feel rewarded in as a woman is by being a wife and a mother.

And those statements were so controversial. You heard them all over the place. I think Serena Williams, it was, even spoke against them at the ESPYs, telling young girls, don't listen to that guy. Pursue your hopes and your dreams.

Anyway, that was the part of the commencement speech that got all of the attention. But as I said, the speech itself was very devoted to Roman Catholicism. So you couldn't really call it a Christian message, despite the number of times that he would say something like, be a man of God or be a woman of God.

He talked about the importance of the Latin mass. He talked about the importance of submitting to your priests and having your sins forgiven you by a priest or something like that. He would mention in the message.

And there was at one point where he was talking about his wife. He was praising her. It was beautiful. It was wonderful. They seemed like a very nice couple. But he said in there that as they are working on each other and sanctifying each other and trying to grow in holiness, he made the statement, and hopefully one day, by the will of God, will attain salvation.

It was, it was sad. It's heartbreaking. That that message exists under the name of Christ. He would say that he's a Christ follower. He would say that he's a Christian, but he would say that he hasn't attained it yet.

He hasn't attained salvation yet. I'm going to continue to do these works. I'm going to continue to do these things. I'm going to fulfill these religious obligations. And eventually, hopefully, by the will of God, I'll reach salvation.

But what is this saying to us here? You have the righteousness of God from the start. From the moment you believe, you are in His righteousness. And there is nothing else that you need to do. It is by the grace of God.

The righteousness of God is revealed from faith. From the very beginning of our faith, we are in the righteousness of God. But Paul doesn't put the period there. He says it is from faith for faith. So he's not just talking about conversion.

He's also talking about living in the faith now that you have in Christ. So you receive the righteousness of God from the beginning when you believe, but you're still in the righteousness of God in that you're living by faith in the one whom you believed in.

So you live by that faith. You came to Christ by that faith. You are still in Christ and living in Christ by that faith. So it is from beginning to end in faith. Our emphasis as Christians is not just to convert people.

And very sadly, there are a lot of church missions out there. It seems like that's the extent of their mission. Let's just get out there and convert people. And we can write a number down. If we've got them baptized, boom, we've got them.

Let's increase our baptism numbers. But then there's hardly any investment in the church after that. Any investment in their lives, it's just simply about conversion numbers. Been a Southern Baptist for a long time.

When you go to the Southern Baptist Convention Annual Meeting, you hear that a lot. The numbers that we attained this year, when I became the pastor of a Southern Baptist church, and I'm looking at the rosters of people that we had on our membership rolls, it was something like 1 ,300 people that were members of this church.

How many people were showing up on a Sunday morning? Not 1 ,300. It wasn't even 200. And I'm like, how in the world do we have 1 ,300 on our membership rolls here when we don't have that many people in the church?

Well, because we love our numbers. So we're going to keep them on those rolls because we got them. They're in our books and they make us look good. And that seems to be the extent of a church's discipleship program.

Just convert the people, add to our numbers, and then that's it. But for the Apostle Paul, it was not about conversion. A genuine conversion means that person is going to live in that faith and is going to continue in that faith.

And so discipleship meant continuing with one another in the faith of Christ that we first proclaimed. So from faith, we have the righteousness of Christ. For faith is continuing to live in that righteousness.

We will demonstrate by our lives the righteousness of Christ that we've been given. When people look at you, do they see that you're a Christian? If you were to ask somebody, what do you think my religion is?

Would they know that you're a Christian? Here's something that's really humbling for you and is a challenge for you, and you're already going to not like me because I give you this challenge. Ask your kids sometime.

For those of you who are parents, ask your children. Do you think mommy or daddy demonstrates Christ to you kids? When you look at mommy or daddy, do you see Jesus? Here's an even harder question. What do you think mommy or daddy needs to change?

And listen to the opinions of your children with regards to the behavior that they see at home. Do you demonstrate the righteousness of Christ in your life? When you say that you believe, do you live what you believe?

George Whitefield said, the American evangelist, he said, a true faith in Jesus Christ will not suffer us to be idle. No, it is an active, lively, restless principle. It fills the heart so that it cannot be easy till it is doing something for Jesus Christ.

We live by our faith. We have come to faith. We continue in that faith. And so now this gives light to the statement that we have in the second half of this verse. So we're looking at in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.

And now let's look at that second half. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith, or as some of you might have in some of your translations, the just shall live by faith. The Greek word that's used there can be translated either way.

The words are interchangeable. It can be just, or it can be righteous. And both those words, even in English, mean the same. What is just? A just person is a person who does what is right. What is a righteous person?

It's a person who does what is just. So the definitions make the words synonymous. Righteousness, we have right at the very beginning of the word. R-I-G-H-T. I asked my children this one time at devotions, what does righteousness mean?

And one of my girls said, it means right. It means doing what is right. I said, that's right. So how did you get that answer? How did you know that? And she said, because the word is, it's right there.

It's right there. R-I-G-H-T, doing what is right. Doing what is right according to what? What's the standard? According to God. What God has said is just, what He has said is right. The righteous shall live then by their faith.

There's another way that this verse can be interpreted. The way that it gets translated from the Greek into English, it can be rendered another way. If you have the English standard version, then you'll probably see a footnote underneath that gives you this alternate wording.

But it can also be read this way. The one who by faith is righteous shall live. It can also be understood like that. The one who by faith is righteous shall live. Because how do we have the righteousness of God?

By faith.

He's given it to us because we believe in Him. We are declared righteous because of faith in Christ. Not because of anything that we have done, but because of what He has done for us. Now, you'll note also that this verse is put in quotation marks.

Or this expression, the righteous shall live by faith is in quotation marks. Where does that come from? It's a quote from Habakkuk. It's in Habakkuk 2. Now, if you're familiar with the book of Habakkuk, it's a very short prophetic book.

And because it is a short prophet book, it gets called a minor prophet. You have the major prophets and the minor prophets. Really the only distinction between the two of them is the major prophets are longer and the minor prophets are shorter.

It doesn't mean that one prophet has more authority than the other prophet. It's really more a statement of length. So Habakkuk is one of the shorter prophetic books. It's also unique in this sense in that Habakkuk is having a conversation with God.

They're talking about the judgment that is going to come upon Judah. But Habakkuk never addresses Judah. So he's not a prophet coming to Judah saying, here's what God has said to me. Rather, he's written down the conversation that he's had with God about Judah.

So that's unique. Generally, a prophet is given a word that he must then go and speak to a person or people. With Habakkuk, he's writing down a conversation that he's had with God. And the conversation begins with Habakkuk complaining.

That's relatable. He starts by going to God and saying, how long, oh Lord, how long are you going to look at violence? How long are you going to see all this wickedness that is going on? When are you going to do something about it?

And God responds to Habakkuk and says, behold, I'm about to do something among the nations. You wouldn't even understand what it is if I told you what it was. That's a fantastic answer. Of course, it came from God.

Log that one in your memory bank. That God is doing something in your days you wouldn't understand even if he told you what it was. Here's what Habakkuk doesn't understand. And here's what he's complaining about.

Judah's been wicked. I acknowledge that. I acknowledge that Judah's evil. We have turned away from you. We have turned to worshiping false gods. We deserve judgment. I fully acknowledge that. But the judgment that you're bringing is you're using an even more evil nation to come and bring judgment against Judah.

Like, look at the Chaldeans, God. Do you see how evil they are? And you're going to use them to judge us? Yes, we're bad, but we're not that bad. So how can you bring this more evil nation to bring judgment to us when that nation that is more evil than us deserves more judgment than we do?

And God is saying to Habakkuk, essentially, you're all evil, okay? So you're all going to receive judgment, but I will render to each one according to his works. It will not be an unfair judgment. In fact, it's going to be an unfair deliverance in the sense that you don't deserve to be delivered, but I'm going to anyway.

And it's in chapter two that God says this, write the vision, make it plain on tablets so that he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time. It hastens to the end. It will not lie.

If it seems slow, wait for it. It will surely come. It will not delay. Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith. Judgment is coming upon those who are wicked, but those who are righteous will be spared.

He will live by his faith. The Apostle Paul is pointing back to this passage, and he's pointing out that none of us had the ability to be righteous on our own. You couldn't keep the law. So how can this be fulfilled then that the righteous person shall live by his faith?

And the answer is in Christ. Even here through the prophet Habakkuk, all of this was pointing forward to Christ to see that it is in him that we receive a righteousness that we not only believe in, but live by.

And the person who has been made righteous by his faith will live, not just live in it, not just live according to it, but will live. Will not perish under the judgment of God, but will be delivered because of the righteousness that God has given to us through faith in Jesus Christ.

And that's how Paul is demonstrating the fulfillment of that promise that God gave to Habakkuk. For as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

Will live.

We won't perish. We won't be destroyed. We won't be judged. We won't be annihilated, obliterated in our sin by the judgment of God, which is what we deserve. But we are made alive, brought back from death by faith in Jesus.

As we had read previously in Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, it is by grace you are saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. It is not a result of your works so that no one may boast.

And so we have looked at so far in Romans 1, 17, that in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. It is by faith that you come into it. It is by faith you will live by it.

For as it is written, and in this statement going back to Habakkuk, the righteous shall live by faith. The righteous will be delivered. The righteous does have eternal life by faith in Jesus Christ. And it is by that faith that we've been given that righteousness in the first place.

So now having looked at these two parts here in Romans 1, 17A and 17B, if we want to call it that way, let's review briefly what it is that we've considered with regards to the gospel. So again, in Romans 1, 16, Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.