What is the purpose of the gospel?
Take a moment to think about that and then write down your thoughts in the space I’ve given you at the top of your sermon outline this morning.
[Give people a chance to write down their answers]
Would anyone like to share what you’ve written down?
[Let people share]
I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with anything you’ve shared, but this morning I think we’re going to find that the primary purpose of the gospel according to Paul’s letter to the churches in Rome is this:
The Gospel Keeps Believers Believing
As we continue our journey through that letter, we will come to the key passage in the entire book. In verses 16 and 17, we find the central theme of the book, one that Paul will expand upon in the rest of his letter. But in order to put those two verses in context this morning we need to read the two verses that bookend this crucial passage. So we’ll start reading in verse 15 and go through verse 18. Since this is such a short passage, let’s read it out loud together.
So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. 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.” For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
(Romans 1:15-18 ESV)
Because this is such a pivotal passage, it’s probably going to take us a little longer than normal to get through it. Not quite as long as Pastor John Piper who preached six complete sermons on these two verses, but maybe an extra 5 or 10 minutes. And because, like Paul, I am not ashamed of the gospel that I’ll be preaching this morning, I am certainly not going to apologize for whatever additional time it is going to take to understand this important passage.
Before we dig in here, let me ask you another question. What do you think is the key word in this passage? Ryan and Jon, you can’t answer this since we talked about it on Monday morning. [Wait for answers].
All those words – gospel, power, salvation, believes, faith – are certainly important. But I would suggest to you that the key word that unlocks our understanding of these verses is the little three letter word “for.” Paul uses that word to indicate a reason for something he is claiming. In fact, it would certainly be appropriate to substitute the word “because” for the word “for”. It’s helpful to diagram this passage like this:
So I am eager to preach the gospel…
For [because] I am not ashamed of the gospel,
For [because] it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes…
For [because] in it the righteousness of God is revealed…
For [because] the wrath of God is revealed…
So in broad terms, here is what Paul is saying:
• I’m eager to preach the gospel to you believers in Rome.
• The reason I’m eager to preach is that I’m not ashamed of the gospel.
• The reason I’m not ashamed of the gospel is because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.
• The reason the gospel is the power of God for salvation is because it reveals the righteousness of God
• And finally, the reason it is important that the gospel reveals the righteousness of God is because the wrath of God is revealed.
In the limited time we have this morning I’m going to do my best to demonstrate to you that when we view verses 16 and 17 in this context they reveal what I would contend is the main purpose of the gospel…
The Gospel Keeps Believers Believing
As we discovered earlier with some of your answers, I think it is fair to say that most Christ followers would say that the primary purpose of the gospel is to bring about the conversion of unbelievers. And until studying this passage in context this week, I would have also said that was the main idea in verses 16 and 17. While I am confident that Paul wouldn’t disagree at all that the gospel certainly does result in the conversion of unbelievers, I’m also confident that I’ll be able to show this morning that Paul has something else in mind here.
Hopefully you’ll remember that last week, we saw that, while Paul was a debtor to those who had not yet accepted the gift of the gospel, his main focus was on serving the needs of the believers in Rome by preaching the gospel to them. We discovered that therefore the purpose of the gospel cannot be merely the conversion of unbelievers. As we look at verses 16-17 in some more detail this morning that is going to be even more evident.
Since Paul’s argument here is built on these different propositions, each introduced by the word “for”, it seems to me like the best way to approach this passage is to examine this passage in reverse order. So that’s how we’re going to proceed. Let’s begin with a brief look at verse 18, which we’ll look at in much more detail next week:
…For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
It’s instructive that when Paul takes us back to the root need for the gospel he starts with God’s wrath. We’ll spend a lot more time next week discussing the nature of that wrath and why, given who God is, it is necessary. But for now, let me briefly note a couple of important aspects of God’s wrath.
First, God’s wrath is His response to those who live their lives in a manner that is inconsistent with His character, particularly His righteousness. And, as we’ll see clearly as we progress through Romans, that describes all of us apart from the gospel. So therefore that means that all of us deserve that wrath.
The second thing we see here is that God’s wrath is not something that will only be experienced some time in the future. It “is revealed” – present tense – right now. Again, we’ll discuss next week some of the ways that God’s wrath is being revealed right now.
So we see clearly right off the bat that we all have a horrific problem that we need to deal with. We are all subject to God’s wrath. But, as we’re going to see, the gospel is good news because through the gospel we have the ability to be saved from that wrath. My guess is that for many of us that is an idea that we understand intellectually, but not one that really grips us the way it gripped Paul.
Paul knew firsthand the futility of attempting to obtain righteousness based on what he could do. Those efforts to become righteous on his own had actually led him to zealously persecute those who were proclaiming the very same gospel that was now at the very center of his life. So he knew just how much he deserved God’s wrath and what a tremendous price God had paid to make it possible for him to be saved from that wrath.
Paul may have been ashamed of his past, and probably even some things in his current life, but how could he ever be ashamed of the gospel which had freed him from suffering the wrath of God which he rightfully deserved.
That wrath is necessary in large part because of the righteousness of God, which takes us back to verse 17:
…For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”…
I think that most people would be much more comfortable with a gospel that revealed the love of God rather than the righteousness of God. Obviously the gospel does reveal the love of God, but not in the way that many people imagine or wish for. Unfortunately in our culture the word “love” usually just means warm feelings toward someone else. And very few people would have a problem with a God who loves us like that. But God’s love for us is more than a feeling – it is an action that makes our best interests a priority.
Unfortunately, this revealed righteousness of God seems to be a truth that even the church tends to shy away from, or even at times, dare I say, be ashamed of. So we have churches that proclaim that God is “love period.” A well-known pastor recently wrote a book titled “Love Wins” in which he discounts God’s righteousness and His wrath and claims that because love is God’s primary attribute all people will one day be saved regardless of how they have responded to Jesus in their life here on earth.
And I think even some really sincere followers of Jesus, in their efforts to make converts have often elevated God’s love above all His other equally important attributes, including His righteousness, because that is obviously an easier “sell”.
Most of us are probably familiar at least to some degree with “The Four Spiritual Laws” tract which begins with this first “law”:
God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
First, let me just say that this tract has been an effective tool in leading people to become Christian converts. But, in my opinion, its weakness is that nowhere in that tract is God’s righteousness or His wrath ever mentioned. And that’s a shame because the idea that a righteous God would provide a way for us to be saved from the wrath we deserve is certainly good news worth experiencing ourselves and sharing with others.
God’s love for us must be consistent with His righteousness as well. So that kind of love demands that God has to provide a way for man to deal with the fact that God is righteous and we are not. And in verse 17, Paul explains how God loves us like that.
Notice that in the first half of this verse Paul begins with the righteousness of God that is revealed by the gospel. But exactly how is that good news for all of us who fall far short of that standard? The answer is found in the second half of the verse where Paul quotes Habakkuk and changes the focus to the righteous person who lives by faith.
What Paul is hinting at here, and which he will go into much more detail as his letter unfolds, is that the good news of the gospel is that God Himself provides for us the righteousness that His character demands. He has imputed or credited that righteousness to us through His Son Jesus. Paul sums that idea up in another of his letters:
For our sake he made him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
(2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV)
So exactly how is that righteousness appropriated or received into our lives? Paul wants to make sure that there is no mistake about the answer to that important question, so he use two different ways to emphasize that that righteousness can only be received by faith:
• First, he writes that the righteousness of God is revealed “from faith to faith.” There seem to be a lot of different ideas about exactly what Paul means with that phrase. The most common ideas appear to be that Paul is describing faith that is developing from an immature faith to a mature faith, or from a law-oriented faith to a gospel-oriented faith. Those ideas would certainly not be inconsistent with what we find in the rest of the book. But if we consider Paul’s other writings where he used similar phrasing (see 2 Corinthians 2:16), the primary idea here seems to be that this righteousness is received by faith and faith alone.
• That idea seems to be supported by Paul’s quote from Habakkuk. With that quotation, Paul is making it clear that the idea of God imputing righteousness to man through faith is not some new idea. It is a concept that is found frequently in the Old Testament, including Habakkuk. And he is also reaffirming the idea that it is only by faith that one can understand the things that God does that don’t make a whole lot of sense in our human understanding.
Let’s review what we’ve learned so far:
• The root issue that the gospel deals with is the wrath of God, which every person deserves because he or she has lived in a manner that is inconsistent with the character of God.
• God’s solution to that problem is the gospel which imputes righteousness to us through the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus. That righteousness is received through faith and faith alone.
With that in mind we can now work our way back to verse 16.
…for it [the gospel] is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek…
The first thing we note here is that the gospel is power. The word Paul uses here is the Greek word from which we get our English word “dynamite.” So the gospel packs “dynamite power.”
And what does that power do? It provides salvation. And from what does the gospel save us? We’ve already answered that question, haven’t we? The gospel saves us from God’s wrath. Hopefully now you see why we’ve been working through this passage backwards.
Although there is a sense in which the gospel saves us from ourselves and the mess we make of our lives, it is much more important that it save us from the wrath of God so that we can experience eternal safety and joy in the presence of God.
Before we move on, we need to take a few minutes to understand that in the Scriptures, and particularly in Paul’s writings, there are…
• Three aspects of salvation:
We’re going to see this idea throughout the book of Romans, but one of the best places to see all three aspects discussed together is in the first two verses of chapter 5:
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
(Romans 5:1-2 ESV)
Let’s see if we can identify all three aspects:
o Past – justification
We see this in verse 1 where Paul writes “we have been justified…” Paul is describing here a one-time action that took place at a specific time in the past. As we just saw in our last section, at the very moment that we place our faith in Jesus, God imputes, or credits, His righteousness to us and we are immediately justified.
Justification is a big theological word that simply means that God declares me to be righteous. Justification does not change who I am. It merely changes my status before God.
During our wedding ceremony, Mary and I exchanged vows and rings and at the end of the ceremony, the pastor declared us to be husband and wife. That pronouncement didn’t change who we were, but it did change our status from engaged to married. However, that change in status has eventually resulted in significant changes in who we are as we have lived out our marriage together.
Because the commitments Mary and I made to each other that day were lifelong commitments, there was only a need for us to change our marriage status once. We don’t need to keep doing that over and over again.
The same is true with our position before God. There is only the need to make one lifetime commitment to Jesus in order to be declared righteous before God. But just like our marriage commitment has resulted in significant changes in who Mary and I have become, my faith in Jesus also does the same thing spiritually. That is the second aspect of salvation.
o Present – Sanctification
This aspect of salvation is described in the last part of verse 1 and the first part of verse 2 where Paul describes how he and his fellow believers are currently experiencing peace with God and how they are able to stand in God’s presence.
While justification is a legal declaration that is instantaneous, sanctification is a process in which we are set apart for God’s work and conformed to the image of Jesus. Unlike justification, which is a work of God that comes from without, sanctification requires our participation. While it is still God at work in the believer to produce godly character in the person who has already been justified, it is not instantaneous because it requires that person to submit to and cooperate with the work that God is doing in his or her life.
Let me go back to the marriage analogy for a moment. Someone else, the pastor, declared us to be married based on the commitments we made to each other. And at that point we were instantly considered to be married legally. After the wedding, that same pastor as well as many other people have given Mary and me some very godly, Biblical counsel regarding our marriage. But in order for any of that guidance to actually have any effect, we have had to actually put those principles to work in our lives.
That is how sanctification operates in the spiritual realm. God’s Word, the Holy Spirit and other believers can all be used by God to reveal what God wants us to become. But all those things are only effective if we actually put them into practice.
o Future - Glorification
This last aspect of salvation is seen at the end of verse 2 where Paul writes that he and his fellow believers rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
This is the future aspect of salvation in which our salvation will be brought to its full and final fulfillment. We’ll cover this idea in much more detail when we get to Romans 8. At the return of Jesus to this earth, God will transform our mortal physical bodies into the eternal physical bodies in which we will dwell forever. In those bodies, we will experience no more sickness, no more pain, and no more sin.
So which of those three aspects of salvation is Paul referring to here when he writes that the gospel is the power of God for salvation?
I think we can eliminate one of the three possibilities right away. As we saw last week, Paul is eager to come preach the gospel to the believers in Rome. So it seems pretty clear that the salvation he writes about is not justification since these believers have already been justified by their faith.
In order to choose between the other two options let’s look at the recipient of this salvation according to Paul. He declares that this salvation is available…
…to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek…
Let’s deal first with the idea that salvation is first for the Jew and also for the Greek. We’re going to explore this idea more fully in the “Connections” time later, so let me just give you the Reader’s Digest explanation. Paul is merely making the point here that salvation is available for all – Jews and non-Jews alike.
The more significant phrase here is “everyone who believes.” The word “everyone” just confirms the idea that salvation is available for all. But the verb “believes” is really the key in many ways to this entire passage. After all, if the primary purpose of the gospel is to keep believers believing, then we probably need to understand what we mean by believe.
Before we talk about the underlying word itself, the first thing to note is that this verb is a present tense verb. And by now, most of us know that indicates continuing action. So we could really translate that verb:
…to everyone who keeps on believing…
Since we’re going to be dealing with this particular verb frequently in Romans, let’s take a few minutes to make sure we understand it.
“to believe” = Greek pisteuo =
“to be persuaded”, “to trust”
The underlying Greek word means much more than just to believe. It conveys the idea of receiving information into one’s mind, accepting it as being true and then having enough confidence in it to act.
So if we put all this together, we could accurately translate this phrase:
…for it [the gospel] is the power of God for salvation to everyone who keeps on trusting..,
While I’m not sure I can be totally dogmatic about it, I’m convinced that Paul primarily has the future aspect of salvation – glorification – in mind here. But we can’t get there without going through the process of sanctification first. So obviously the gospel has a tremendous impact on the current aspect of our salvation as well. But Paul’s ultimate concern seems to be that through the gospel these believers would persevere until the end so that they would get to experience the fullness of the salvation that God has provided for them.
And the words of Jesus would seem to support that conclusion:
But the one who endures to the end will be saved.
(Matthew 24:13 ESV)
So let’s come back to the primary purpose of the gospel again:
The Gospel Keeps Believers Believing
Based on what we’ve learned so far, it would be appropriate to restate that purpose like this:
The Gospel Keeps Believers Trusting [in God]
It is the gospel that allows us to continue to trust in God and His plans so that we can eventually realize the full extent of our salvation – glorification.
Let’s review what we’ve learned so far:
• The root issue that the gospel deals with is the wrath of God, which every person deserves because he or she has lived in a manner that is inconsistent with the character of God.
• God’s solution to that problem is the gospel which imputes righteousness to us through the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus. That righteousness is received through faith and faith alone.
• That gospel is the dynamite power that enables everyone who keeps trusting to experience the fullness of salvation
Understanding that, it’s pretty easy to see now why Paul can claim:
… For I am not ashamed of the gospel…
Paul was constantly shamed for the gospel. He was heckled, beaten, stoned, jailed and eventually put to death because of his commitment to the gospel. But from the day he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, he was never once ashamed of a gospel that could do all that we have seen this morning. And because he was not ashamed of the gospel he could say to the believers in Rome:
So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
One of my greatest fears, both for me personally and for us as a body is that our familiarity with the gospel will diminish our sense of awe and wonder and our incredulous joy over what God has done for us. I worry that we will take for granted what God has done for us in providing a way to be saved from His wrath which all of us deserve. And in a culture that is increasingly hostile to the gospel, I worry that our apathy will lead to being ashamed of the gospel.
That is why Paul’s words here are so encouraging. He, too, faced a culture that was hostile to the gospel. And he was certainly at a point in his walk with Jesus where it would have been easy for him to lose his enthusiasm for the gospel. But when I read Paul’s words, I see a man who was not ashamed of the gospel because it was the number one priority in his life. And because his life was saturated with that gospel, he was able to keep believing and trusting in God and to encourage others to do the same.
So right along with Paul, I say to you this morning that I am eager to preach the gospel to you. I am eager to do that because I personally need to be encouraged to keep believing and trusting in God in my own life. I need to let the gospel continue to nourish my soul and develop my confidence in God. I need to continually be reminded of just how marvelous the gospel is.
Every time I preach the gospel I’m reminded of the fact that I fully deserve God’s wrath, but that God has provided a way for me to be saved from that horrible fate. And as I’m reminded of what God has done for me, it encourages me to live a life that is obedient to Him – not because my conduct is somehow going to earn favor with God or remove my guilt or generate forgiveness, but rather because I know that if God has taken care of my greatest need through the gospel that everything else he asks me to do is going to result in my good and His glory. So when I preach the gospel, I am personally encouraged to keep believing
I am also eager to preach the gospel to you because I want to share this great gift of the gospel. I want you to be encouraged and reminded of the extraordinary lengths that God has gone to in order to demonstrate His love to you by making you righteous through absolutely no effort on your part. I want to use the gifts and abilities that God has entrusted to me to do whatever I can to encourage you to keep on believing, to keep on trusting in God so that one day, together we’ll all get to experience the complete fulfillment of God’s great salvation.
