1:16
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ.”
[Once more we have a textual variation. The Textus Receptus says “of Christ”, the Nestle-Aland, no. But again not a serious matter. But this explains why your KJV/NKJV have “of Christ”, and other versions you might read, do not.]
Notice in this verse how he comes to the end of his greeting but moves carefully into the theme of his epistle. This letter is about the gospel. Here is Paul’s clear proclamation of what the gospel means to a believer.
First note that he is not ashamed of it. Why does he even bring up “shame”? No one was suggesting he should be ashamed. What could be shameful about this good news about Jesus?
Paul knows the world he is living in. It is the same world in which we live. This gospel, which he will describe carefully in Romans, is not popular.
Paganism ruled and rules our world. Many gods. Materialism. Comfort. Pleasure. Self-seeking. Privilege. Success. Political power. Political correctness. Being Accepted. Signs and Wonders. Prosperity. Health and Wealth. To bring up the gospel about a man dying on a tree to forgive you of your sins in the midst of such a culture is very difficult.
But Paul is about to bring it up anyway, and to anticipate the reaction that many will have to the true gospel, he says, By the way, I’m not ashamed of this.
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Are we ashamed? In the midst of polite society or even the ravages of revolutionary politics, how easy is it for us to broach the subject? How easily can we start talking to people about some good news concerning a crucified Jesus? How natural, normal, is it to begin a discussion that is so far off the charts of typical human existence, not just in Paul’s day, but in our own?
Paul was not ashamed.
As for me, I have been reticent to start such conversations. I love to go to the corner of Lawrence and Kimball, where this is a busy bus and train station, and raise a banner that cuts through the conversations of men and hopefully draws someone to such a discussion. Most people walk on by. I am constantly thinking, “Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by?” How can you see Jesus inviting you to rest in Him, and just ignore it?
The answer for us is simple: they have heard it over and over. And they have been disappointed in the followers of this gospel of Christ. And they have been misinformed about us. And their hearts are hard. But lift up the banner we must anyway. God has a people, and He will call His people through our faithful gospel invitations. We must not be ashamed.
“…for it is the power of God to salvation.”
The question implied in this statement is, what is powerful enough to save me? He’s writing in part to Jews who depended on the law. But the law was powerless to save, as we will see later in Romans 8:3:
“For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin…” What did God do? He saved us. Through Jesus, according to the gospel Paul preached. The law was weak, the gospel powerful.
Implied in that last verse is the powerlessness of human flesh to save itself. Look at Jeremiah 13:23,
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“Can the…leopard [change] his spots?” You cannot change yourself. You cannot save yourself. You are powerless. But the gospel is powerful. It will save.
Paul uses this same line of thought to the Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 1:8:
“The message of the cross [i.e., the gospel] is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
Look at its apparent weakness. A man dying on an accursed Roman cross is supposed to do away with the sin problem forever? Yes! For the man is no ordinary man, and the death is no ordinary death, for it will soon become resurrection, and he that had the power of death and sin and hell is defeated, as the ancient prophecy foretold.
Yes, that apparent weakness is the very powerful action that saves us forever. Macarthur [p. 53] shares that, through the years, this despised message has brought out the worst of comments and caricatures from the mouths and pens of men. I quote:
“While excavating ancient ruins in Rome, archaeologists discovered a derisive painting depicting a slave bowing down before a cross with a jackass hanging on it…” He quotes one Celsus of the 2nd century warning, “let no cultured person draw near, none wise, none sensible… if any is wanting in sense and culture, if any is a fool, let him come boldly to Christianity… [they are] the most uneducated and vulgar persons…” He compared them to swarms of bats, ants crawling out of their nests, to frogs holding a symposium around a swamp, and to worms cowering in the muck! God raises up these uneducated, foolish, vulgar worms, and saves them by his power.
Romans 1:26-28 we will cover soon, but take a look at it now:
“For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are
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mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are.”
Take a look around the room next time you are in church! Weak, common people saved by God’s power. God’s gospel.
We use the word “saved” and “salvation” as though we know exactly what we are talking about, and as though everyone around us knows, too. What is the word “saved” all about? Money?
Delivered, you say? Like a package? What’s that mean? How about “rescued” or “set free.” Here is where the problem comes in for many believers. They come into the four walls of a church, start liking the people, developing relationships with them, eating together, maybe even eventually make this their church home. Does that make them “saved”?
If I join the church, I’ll be like them after a while… Yes, maybe on the outside.
They may have been set free from loneliness and Biblical ignorance. That is not Biblical salvation. Jesus, the Savior [ another word in the “saved” family that we use without meaning sometime] came to set His people free from sin. Have we been delivered from sin? Forgiven of sin?
Jesus came to set His people free from death, eternal separation from God in a lake of fire with the devil and his angels, the death that is the natural and common consequence of sin.
Everyone on the planet is headed for eternal judgment except the relative few who can say, God has rescued me from that! He has set me free from sin, so I know He will keep me from that awful death. My body will die, but my soul and spirit will go to be with Jesus, rescued! Snatched from the pit!
That’s saved. God may have answered your prayer. That’s not salvation. God may have healed you. That is not the salvation we are talking about.
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God may have prospered you, made you rich. Many people in the world are rich. That is not Bible salvation, to be set free from poverty.
Have you dealt with the sin issue? Have you freely confessed to Jesus that you are a sinful man or woman or child, have you believed for your forgiveness, and asked Jesus Himself, through His Spirit, to live inside of you, making you daily a new creation?
Saved. Rescued. Set free. From spiritual death, from Satan, from judgment, from wrath, from lostness, from spiritual ignorance, from your fleshly desires, from false religion. Free. And whom the Son sets free is free indeed! That’s salvation.
As Macarthur points out, Epicurus was a Greek philosopher. [Remember the Epicureans of Acts 17?] He said that his philosophy was the very medicine of salvation. That medicine never saved a soul from the wrath of God. But the resurrection of Jesus, that the followers of Epicurus scoffed at, has healed the souls of many.
Seneca, the Roman statesman who lived around the same time as Paul, said that everyone was looking for salvation, that everyone needed a hand let down to lift us up. Right, Seneca. But if you could have discussed with your fellow citizen Paul Whose hand it was that would lift everyone up, perhaps you could have been saved. As it was, Seneca’s words were just theory.
I trust that this marvelous truth about salvation is not just theory for us. I’m sure that most everyone agrees with the things I have spoken. But has everyone put them into practice? Or rather, has Jesus made these truths real in our lives? Is sin really the worst enemy we ever faced? Is Satan a liar and a slave-master? Is fear of everlasting punishment not the worst experience we have ever imagined? Then have we been to Calvary, seen Jesus’ offer of salvation, and grabbed at it with all our might?
“for everyone who believes.”
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Notice this Gospel has no power for one who remains in unbelief. The Gospel and the accompanying grace of God is the means by which an unbeliever becomes a believer. A man is dead in sin. God uses a message about this Gospel to stir the heart, to actually create faith. Yes, look at Ephesians 2:8 again:
“For by grace are you saved through faith. And that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God.” The whole package of salvation is a gift. The grace, the Gospel, the faith. God bestows it feely into your soul and you say, yes.
Your heart may have been cold toward these things all your life, but now it says, yes. I desire that. I don’t understand why I desire it, but I desire it all of a sudden! I want this Jesus. I want His salvation. I want to be free from sin. Where did that come from? Why the sudden believing when before there was none? The answer: Grace. Faith. The gifts of God.
C. S. Lewis tells of the trip he and his brother took to the Zoo. He thought about spiritual things often, and the ride to the Zoo on the bus was one of those times. His testimony is that when he got on that bus he was not a believer. When he got to the Zoo, he was. God had by His grace resolved the issues he had dealt with, and broke through.
Macarthur says, “God does not first ask men to behave but to believe.” And we must add that He makes that believing possible through His grace.
“For the Jew first and also for the Greek.”
You will recall that when Jesus was here, He ministered almost exclusively to Israel. There were exceptions. The Syrophoenician woman, whom He referred to as a dog. The Roman centurion, whose faith he praised. They received their miracle, as Gentiles have been doing ever since. But first and foremost, to the Jews. Paul, though he knew he was sent to the Gentiles, which means merely the “nations”, still went to the Jewish synagogue in every city, first. He was usually thrown out, but he still felt a compulsion to go to his people.
But also to the Gentile, says Paul? No, it says, to the Greek. Why that word? Paul uses that expression to encompass the entire world outside
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Israel. The Greek culture had overtaken the world of his day. Alexander the Great had brought his language and way of life to Egypt, to Asia, to Europe. It was a Greek world. So, to speak of Greeks was to speak of the nations, the Gentiles.
We are suddenly getting into the meat of the book of Romans. At first Paul is speaking to the Romans about a visit he will make. Then he tells them why that visit, namely, to “preach the gospel” there. Now he begins to explain what that gospel is. And without warning we dive into the heart of his message.
I do not believe that Paul had constructed an outline and was working from it. He was writing a letter, and he was filled with the message of that letter. He was a man full of the Holy Ghost, but he wrote letters like we do. We just start writing with a bunch of ideas we want to communicate, and we flow from one to the other. The difference with Paul is that those ideas were from God. What he writes as an apostle is binding on the recipient of that writing. And since the Holy Spirit has seen fit to include this letter in the collection of letters and books called the New Testament, we take his message to our own hearts, as did the Romans. Let’s move to verse 17.
1:17:
“For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.” The righteousness of God becomes a theme of his writing [35 times in
Romans alone!] The following outline is borrowed, and shows just how replete is Romans with this theme.
I. Greetings, Intro, & Theme, God’s righteousness. (1:1-17.)
II. Condemnation. The need of God’s Righteousness (1:18-3:20)
III. Justification. The Provision of God’s Righteousness. (3:21-5:21)
IV. Sanctification. Demonstration of God’s Righteousness. (6:1-8:39)
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V. Restoration. Israel and God’s Righteousness. (9:1-11:36)
VI. Application. The Behavior of God’s Righteousness. (12:1-15:13)
VII. Conclusion, Greetings, and Benediction. Why he wrote of God’s righteousness. (15:14-16:27)
Here is then the first suggestion of the topic of righteousness which we will visit often. But in it he uses the curious phrase,
“from faith to faith.”
Let’s look at least at that part of the thought.
Macarthur believes that Paul is singling out the faith of each individual believer, using the expression to parallel what he said in verse 16 about salvation being for “everyone who believes.” So it is from faith to faith to faith to faith… Not sure that is the strongest view.
Ellicott says that it is by faith that we first come to Christ, and it is equally by faith that we continue on in Christ. Thus, from faith to faith. Stronger, I think.
The Greek prepositions are tricky here and can be translated different ways. But in front of the first “faith” is ek, “out of”, or “By means of”, or “from.” So, God’s righteousness is revealed to us through the means of faith, as opposed to some work that we do. That much is sure. But what about that second preposition? It is eis, or “into”. Let’s see if we can put it all together:
God has shown us and given to us His righteousness by simple faith in Him, bringing us into a faith-walk whereby we continue to manifest that righteousness. From the faith of salvation to the faith of daily walking with Him, to the faith of believing God for healing and meeting our needs, to the faith that joins with the hope of our salvation, the receiving of our souls into Heaven itself. It’s all a faith journey. We just move from faith to faith to faith and to more faith. That’s the road. There are works along
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that road, but none of them are placed there to earn God’s righteousness, rather to prove that we are living from faith to faith to faith.
“as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith.’”
And Paul gives as a proof text of this whole idea of graduating from one faith to another, Habakkuk 2:4. He quotes the second part of the verse, but I think it will be instructive for us to see the whole verse:
“Behold the proud. His soul is not upright in him. But the just shall live by his faith.”
Take a look at two different men. One is unjust, or unrighteous. The other is just, or righteous. The unjust man is ruled by his pride. He rules himself. He has no other source of strength but what is in his crooked soul. He makes decisions based on his own knowledge and what is good for him. A typical proud man of the world. Habakkuk goes on in the rest of the chapter to describe the ways of proud men. Given to wine. Never satisfied. Power-hungry. Covetous. Violent.
The other man, righteous before God, is alive and thriving simply because of his faith. Along with Paul, the writer of Hebrews in 10:38-39, picks up on this man’s description, quoting the very same verse, telling us that the man of faith believes to the saving of the soul. And this is not initial salvation, in the context. This is a man who has been a believer for a long time and who will continue to believe until the end of his life. He will not draw back to his old ways. To give examples of this kind of perseverance of the saints, we have been given the entire eleventh chapter, called by some the “hall of faith.”
So, Hebrews follows up the Habakkuk quote with a rollcall of faith, Habakkuk himself with a rollcall of evil. What does Paul do?
Paul uses Habakkuk to show that the Gospel saves people by faith. And that that faith is the substance by which we continue to live. But instead of leading from there to a hall of faith, Paul launches into territory that sounds more like Habakkuk. He will talk about the wrath of God being
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released on evil men, the men around us who do not live by faith. Their extended description, in chapters 1 and 2 and some of 3, is among the most depressing in the entire New Testament. But he must show us the darkness before he is able to lead us to the Light. This is a good pattern when telling others of Jesus for the first time, by the way. Get them good and lost, then tell them where salvation can be found.
