Unless the gospel is my gospel it is really no gospel at all
That is the theme of the passage from Romans that we’ll be studying together this morning. So obviously the question that all of us must answer as we’re confronted with that truth is whether or not the gospel is personally ours. So my goal is to do two things with the message this morning:
• First, I want to show, from God’s Word, why it is necessary that each one of us respond personally to the gospel.
• Second, I want to help all of us make an evaluation of whether we have personally made the gospel ours, not based on our feelings, but based on the criteria that God lays out for us in His Word.
In order to do that we must once again make sure that we keep our passage in its proper context. Hopefully by now you know that we are in a section of Paul’s letter to the churches in Rome that extends from chapter 1, verse 18 all the way through chapter 3, verse 20. So just to see if you’ve been paying attention for the past several weeks I’ve given you some space on your bulletin insert to write down, in your own words, the overall theme of this section. So take a minute or two to write down what you think is the main idea in that section.
The main theme of Romans 1:18-3:20 is:
[Let people write down answers and ask them to share]
You’ve done a great job of describing the purpose of this section. Paul is not describing how to obtain salvation here, but rather why we all need that salvation that comes through the gospel. So with that in mind, follow along as I read our passage which begins in Romans 2, verse 12:
For all who have sinned without the law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
(Romans 2:12-16 ESV)
As I read and studied this passage this week, the one phrase that continually grabbed my attention was the phrase “my gospel” in verse 16. It is the same phrase that Paul will repeat again at the very end of his letter that we are studying and he also uses it in his second letter to Timothy. So I spent a lot of time thinking about what Paul meant when he used those words. I also read quite a few commentaries and sermons to see what others had to say about that particular phrase. And while those other sources were helpful, it seems to me that Paul’s use of those words actually has a much simpler explanation than some of those long and detailed treatments might lead one to believe. I’m convinced that the point Paul is making here is that he has personally appropriated that gospel into his own life. It is no longer just “the gospel” that applies in a general sense to all mankind but rather it is his gospel because he has made it his own personally.
I saw a great illustration of the distinction between “the gospel” and “my gospel” in my own life this week. I was officiating a volleyball match with another official who I really admire in many ways. From everything I know about him, he is a moral man. He is a successful business owner who treats his employees well. He takes excellent care of himself physically. He is faithful to his wife. And over the years as we’ve had several conversations, it is also apparent that he has a pretty good understanding of the gospel. He clearly understands ideas like sin, grace, judgment and repentance. But the problem is that even though he seems to understand the gospel, he apparently doesn’t seem to believe that he needs to respond to it personally.
So as I worked on the message this week, I couldn’t help but think that this is exactly the kind of person Paul was writing to in this section. The religious Jews that Paul is addressing in this section seemed to think that they didn’t really need the gospel personally. They understood the reason the pagan Gentiles might need it, but it never entered their minds that they needed it, too.
As I mentioned earlier, I have two goals this morning. My first goal is to demonstrate from this passage why we all need to respond personally to the gospel.
WHY I NEED TO RESPOND PERSONALLY TO THE GOSPEL
1. God will judge me according to the light I possess
This is a principle that is taught consistently throughout Scripture, including these words of Jesus:
Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”
(Matthew 11:20-24 ESV)
Jesus is teaching that there will be different degrees of punishment in hell based on how much light each person had received and rejected. Those who had witnessed Jesus’ miracles and still chose to reject Him are going to be judged more harshly than those in Tyre, Sidon and even Sodom, who hadn’t even heard about Jesus.
Here in Romans 2, Paul is making it clear that even though all who sin will be judged by God, those who have the most light are going to receive a more severe judgment. In this passage, Paul describes…
Three levels of light:
• Conscience
These are the ones who Paul refers to in the first part of verse 12 when he describes them as “all who have sinned without the law…” He then picks up that idea in verse 14 where they are identified as the Gentiles who do not have the law.
Paul clearly uses the term “law” in this section to refer to the written Mosaic Law possessed by the Jews. That is why the NASB and some other English translations appropriately use the word “Law” with an upper case “L” in their translations.
Let’s note a couple of characteristics of these people.
First, the verb “sinned” is in a tense that implies that they lived a life that was characterized by sin rather by righteousness and holiness. Not surprisingly, given what we’ve already seen in this section so far, Paul uses that very same verb at the end of verse 12 to described those who “sinned under the law” – the Jews.
Second, Paul reveals that those who sinned without the law would “perish” without the law. This word “perish” is a word that is often misunderstood in my experience. Many seem to think that it simply means that a person will be annihilated or cease to exist or that they will only exist in a place of nothingness or unconscious existence similar to the Hindu idea of Nirvana. But those ideas are clearly contrary to the Bible which teaches that the final destiny of such people is a place of eternal torment and punishment.
The word “perish” that Paul uses describes something or someone that is ruined so that it can no longer serve its intended purpose. As Paul uses it here, it describes these people who can no longer serve the purpose for which they were created – to glorify God and have fellowship with Him.
Paul picks up with these Gentiles again in verses 14 and 15. There we see that even though these Gentiles do not have “the Law” – capital L – they do have a form of natural law –small l - which is guided by the operation of their conscience and which is evidenced by what they do. Even the pagan Gentiles often do by nature the things written in God’s Law even though they have never been exposed to it.
In verse 15 Paul describes how these people have a conscience which constantly wrestles with the idea of right and wrong. Every time a person either engages in some action personally or sees someone else do so, his conscience causes him to have to make a decision in which he either accuses because he perceives that the action is wrong or excuses that behavior because he determines it to be right. The fact that a man has such a conscience is proof that he has some idea of God’s law even though he may never have been exposed to it directly.
We see this principle in operation all around us don’t we? Most people in our culture who have no relationship with God whatsoever still at least occasionally, and sometimes quite frequently, do things that are consistent with God’s written Law. They honor their parents, they care for their family, they feed the hungry, they tell the truth, they seek to do justice, and they pay their debts. And even in very primitive cultures, almost everyone believes it is wrong to commit murder and those who do that are punished in some way.
This is why every society, no matter how primitive, has some system of laws and a system of punishment for those who break those laws. Even godless heathens have an innate sense of right and wrong that has been put in their heart by their Creator.
So these Gentile pagans are not innocent before God for their sin because their conscience serves as a witness that they are not ignorant of God’s law and therefore they have no excuse for their sin that would exempt them from God’s judgment.
The Jews obviously had no problem with that idea, But in the last part of verse 12 Paul points out that they have even less of an excuse for their sin because they have a second, higher level of light:
• Conscience + Law
In addition to the natural law that every man possesses instinctively, the Jews also had God’s written Law. The Jews mistakenly assumed that this was going to give them some kind of advantage when it came to God’s judgment. But in reality, it just meant that when they violated the law by their conduct, they were actually setting themselves up for even more severe judgment.
As we saw the last couple of weeks, these Jews were engaging in exactly the same behaviors they were condemning in the lives of the pagan Gentiles. And because they had more light than those Gentiles, their judgment was going to be much harsher,
But in verse 16, Paul reveals that there is a third, even higher, level of light…
• Conscience + Law + gospel
In verse 16, Paul declares that on “that day” – a reference to the Day of the Lord when Jesus returns to the earth as Judge – God is going to judge according to his gospel by Jesus Christ. The idea there is that there is a third and higher level of light that goes beyond just the conscience possessed by the Gentiles or the written Law of the Jews. The people to whom Paul is writing also have the gospel that proclaims that man can only be made righteous before God through faith in Jesus alone.
And those who have been exposed to that light are in danger of the most severe judgment of all should they choose to reject it. Do you see now why we began this morning with the idea that…
Unless the gospel is my gospel it is really no gospel at all
The gospel, the good news, is really not good news at all should I choose to reject it and not make it my own because the very fact that I have been exposed to that level of light means that I am also subject to the most severe judgment should I choose not to make it mine personally.
2. The grace of the gospel does not preclude judgment
Recently the church has experienced a revival of the concept of universal salvation. This is really nothing new as this is an idea that seems to regularly pop up throughout church history over and over again. But once it is exposed to the light of Scripture, it usually fades away, at least for a while.
This recent resurgence of this idea is demonstrated by a well-known megachurch pastor who recently wrote a book titled “Love Wins” in which he writes these words:
A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear.
Unfortunately, this pastor is not alone in buying into the idea that is actually the one that is “misguided and toxic” – the idea that God’s love and his justice are somehow mutually exclusive. Notice here the focus on Jesus' love, peace, forgiveness and joy with no mention at all of his holiness, righteousness, and justice.
As Paul clearly points out in verse 16, the gospel does not in any way preclude the need for God’s judgment. In fact, God’s judgment is an integral part of the gospel and one day God will judge not only man’s external behavior, but also his secret thoughts and actions according to that gospel.
In fact, the entire gospel rests on the enacting of God’s righteous judgment upon His Son. The idea that God’s grace and his judgment are somehow mutually exclusive is completely contrary to the gospel. In the gospel God’s grace and His justice actually co-exist quite happily.
Again, we see that…
Unless the gospel is my gospel it is really no gospel at all
Just calling myself a Christian because I have some intellectual understanding or because I once prayed a prayer or because I belong to a church or because I’ve been baptized or gone through some other external ritual does not exclude me from God’s judgment. It is only by making the gospel mine personally that it becomes good news for me.
My first goal this morning was to help all of us see why we need to respond personally to the gospel and I pray that God has accomplished that in each one of our lives through the preaching of His Word.
My second goal is to help all of us make an evaluation of whether we have made the gospel our own, not based on our own feelings, but rather based on the criteria we find in God’s Word. Here in this passage Paul reveals…
EVIDENCE THAT I HAVE MADE THE GOSPEL MY OWN
It is surprisingly easy to determine whether I have made the gospel my own. In this passage, Paul discloses one simple test that will reveal whether I have done that. If I have made the gospel my own,,,
1. I am a doer and not just a hearer
In verse 13, Paul makes it clear that it is those who are doers of the law and not those who are merely hearers of the law who will be justified and be declared righteous before God.
Like last week, we need to be careful to note what Paul is not saying here. He does not say “By doing the works of the law you will be justified.” Although it seems like we are nit-picking, there is an important distinction between saying that those whose lives are characterized by being doers of the law will be justified and saying that we are justified before God by the works that we do.
Paul is not in any way teaching that anyone can attain salvation by his works. That would clearly contradict not only what he teaches in the rest of this letter to the churches in Rome, but also his teaching in all his other letters as well as the teaching of the Scriptures as a whole.
Here in this passage, Paul uses some rather unusual words for “hearers” and “doers”. With one exception in Acts 17 where the underlying Greek word for doer is translated “poet”, the only other place in the Scriptures where these two words are used is the book of James, where James is also discussing the importance of being a doer of the word and not just a hearer of the word.
The word translated “hearer” describes those pupils who were constantly hearing because they were continual participants in the educational process. In effect they were those whose business was hearing. That was an apt description of the Jews in the synagogue. Week in and week out they came to the synagogue to hear the Scriptures read and explained. But as Paul points out in this section of his letter, that was about as far as it went. There was just no evidence in their lives that they were practicing what they had learned. So they were committing the very same sins that they condemned when the pagan Gentiles did them. And that kind of person can never be declared righteous before God.
Similarly, the word “doer” here described someone whose life is characterized by consistently, although certainly not perfectly, acting in a manner that was consistent with what they were hearing.
Just as we saw last week, Paul does not address right here how a person is enabled to live like that. But fortunately Paul will address that issue elsewhere in this letter and it is also addressed frequently elsewhere in Scripture. When someone make the gospel his own by genuinely placing his faith in Jesus alone and receives God’s grace into his life, God transforms that person into a “doer of the law”. That certainly doesn’t mean that he will obey God’s law perfectly, but it does mean that he will desire to obey God’s Word and that obedience will characterize his life. What Paul is saying again here in verse 13 is that our works will be the evidence of whether or not our faith in Jesus is genuine. And therefore when God judges us based on those works, what He is actually doing is judging whether or not we have genuinely made the gospel our gospel personally.
What counts both now and for eternity is not only whether I have God’s law in my heart as evidenced by my conscience or how much I have read or listened to God’s Word, or even by what I know about the gospel, but rather by whether I have actually conducted my life in in a manner consistent with the light I have received.
One day every single one of us will stand before God for the purpose of being judged. And when it comes to my salvation, to whether or not I am declared righteous before God, the only criteria God is going to use is whether I have made the gospel my gospel. And the way he is going to determine that is by looking at the evidence of my life. When He does that, He isn’t going to be impressed by how many hours I’ve spent reading the Bible or by how many sermons I’ve heard or how much Christian music I’ve listened to or how many Bible studies I’ve attended. In my case, He isn’t going to look at the number or even the quality of the sermons I’ve preached. Instead, He is going to look at each one of our lives, including mine, to see how well we’ve done at applying all that information, knowing that what we do is the very best evidence of whether or not our faith is genuine and whether we’ve truly made the gospel our gospel.
Unless the gospel is my gospel it is really no gospel at all
But if the gospel is my gospel it is the best news of all
Let me close with a few questions that you can ask to help you evaluate whether or not you’ve really made the gospel your gospel:
1. Am I consistently spending time in God’s Word so that God can reveal His truth to me personally?
2. Am I obeying the parts of God’s Word that I already know the very best I can?
3. Am I committed to obeying the parts of God’ Word that I don’t know yet, even if those things don’t make sense to me or are contrary to my own desires and beliefs?
If you can answer yes to those three questions, then you can be confident that you have indeed made the gospel your gospel. And if that’s the case then the gospel really is good news for you. And you need to thank God constantly for bringing the light of the gospel into your life and gifting you with the faith to respond to that gospel.
But if you answer one or more of those questions with a “no” answer, let me lovingly say to you that it is quite likely that you’ve never made the gospel your own and that is not good news at all because it means that God’s judgment on your life is going to be very severe because you’ve been exposed to the highest level of light and still chosen to reject the gospel. But the good news is that it’s still not too late to make the gospel your own by placing your trust in Jesus alone.
Is the gospel your gospel?
