Americans have a love/hate relationship with faith. One the one hand people in our culture admire people who have a strong faith. Success literature tells us, "If you believe it, you can achieve it." The Robin Williams movie "Jacob the Liar" captures our culture’s fascination with faith. In the movie Robin Williams plays Jakob Heym, a man who’s town in Poland has become a Jewish ghetto run by the Germans during World War II. Called to the commandant’s office one day, Jacob happens to hear a radio broadcast that Soviet allied troops are just 400 kilometers away. When he returns to the ghetto he tells his friend Mischa the good news in order to keep his friend from killing a German officer. News quickly spreads, and soon Jacob is a hero, so to keep up the morale Jacob starts making up stories about how close the allied troops are, and what their plans are. Each step along the way Jacob’s lies become more and more outlandish as he tries to keep people from sinking into total despair, until finally it turns out that all the stories he made up happened to be true, and the allied troops show up to liberate the Polish ghetto.
We love stories like that, where someone believes something that’s not true but their faith ends up making it true. This is why our culture prizes a positive mental attitude so much. Even when I took my kids to Disneyland a few weeks ago, as we watched the fireworks show the narrator told us that when you believe anything’s possible. For us in our culture, belief isn’t so much true or false as much as it’s a creative force.
But people in our culture can also have a disparaging attitude toward faith as well. Just look up the word "faith" in the dictionary and you’ll find it defined as belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. Who wants that? We think of faith as a leap in the dark, as believing something despite all evidence to the contrary. Faith is often thought of as a crutch for the weak minded, a relic from pre-modern life. So people in our culture both love and despise faith.
Today we’re going to talk about the power of faith. You see, whether you love faith or you hate it, you can’t live without it. It’s impossible to live life without exercising faith of some sort, faith in our friends, faith in our spouse, faith in our country’s leaders. Even the most devout atheist or agnostic takes certain things by faith.
And a person’s faith is only as good as the object of that person’s faith. Just ask the families of the 39 members of Heaven’s Gate, the UFO cult that committed a mass suicide here in Southern California as an expression of their misplaced faith. Just ask the people who gathered to see an experienced climber named Evelyn Mooers rappel from a drain pipe grating on the roof of the Mark Twain South County Bank in St. Louis. Evelyn was an experienced climber, so she thought this job would be a breeze. The problem was that the drain pipe grating wasn’t anchored, so while bank officials and friends watched, Evelyn fell to her death. Faith that’s not properly anchored in reality will fail no matter how strong that faith is.
In Romans last week we learned that the proper anchor for our faith is in God’s message about Jesus Christ, what the Bible calls the gospel or the good news. Today as we continue in our series we’re going to look at the power of faith when it’s properly anchored. Specifically we’re going to look at THREE EFFECTS faith in God’s good news has on our lives from Romans 1:8-17.
1. A Powerful Faith Is Noticeable (Romans 1:8-10).
Back when Paul wrote this letter to the Christians in Rome, part of letter writing was saying a brief prayer in the introduction, so that’s just what Paul does. Notice our key word "faith" in v. 8. The word "faith" is going to occur five times as a noun and once as a verb in the section we look at today, so faith is clearly the theme here. In the Bible faith is more than just agreeing that something is true. Of course faith includes mental agreement, but it’s much more than that. In the Bible faith is agreeing that something is true so much that you actually go out on an limb to rely on what you believe to be true. The dictionary definition of the Greek word for faith here is believing to the extent of complete trust and reliance (Louw and Nida 31.85).
When I started as a police chaplain at our local Police Department five years ago they issued me a police uniform and a bullet proof vest. It’s one thing for me to know that the bullet proof vest is lined with Kevlar, a fiber can stop most bullets. But just knowing that isn’t faith; it’s just mental agreement. Genuine faith occurs when I actually strap on the vest and rely on it to protect me from a bullet.
Paul’s excited because even though he’s never visited the Christians who live in Rome, their trust and reliance on Jesus Christ has been reported all over the world. Now Paul’s using a bit of overstatement here, because obviously not every person alive in the first century had heard of the Christians in Rome. But his exaggeration makes the point, that the faith of the Christians in Rome is making a world wide impact. Their faith in God’s good news about Jesus had a ripple effect that was heard all over the empire. Paul also shares his prayer that he hopes he can finally visit the church in Rome.
But here we find the first effect of faith. WHEN WE RESPOND TO GOD’S GOOD NEWS, OUR FAITH MAKES A NOTICEABLE DIFFERENCE IN OUR LIVES.
Like a caterpillar that had been transformed into a butterfly, the Romans’ lives were noticeably changed now that they’d believed God’s good news.
Faith makes a noticeable difference because genuine faith can never stay hidden or private for long. It’s like the first time you fell in love. Remember what was going through your mind, as you wondered, "Maybe this is the right one. Maybe this strange feeling I’m having is the real thing." So finally you muster the courage to say, "I love you," and you feel completely awkward as for the first time you make your love public, putting into words what’s been growing in your heart. And if the person doesn’t laugh in your face, maybe you say it a few more times, until finally saying, "I love you" starts feeling natural, normal. If that love keeps growing, perhaps you eventually exchange wedding vows and wear wedding rings-again very public acts that make express your love in a public way. Can you imagine being in love but never letting your love out, just keeping it bottled up inside you for the rest of your life? That’s just not natural, and it’s also not natural to have faith in Jesus and to keep it private and hidden.
Perhaps this is why God gave us water baptism as a way of expressing our initial faith in God’s good news, to give us a way to make our faith in God’s good news public. That’s really what water baptism is, making your private faith in Jesus Christ public. Jesus commands us to be baptized after we place our faith in God’s good news so we get used to the idea of having a public faith. In fact, if you’re here today as a Christian and you’ve never been baptized as a Christian, I want to encourage you to get baptized to make your faith in Jesus public. Baptism doesn’t save us; it doesn’t make us a Christian, but keeping our faith bottled up inside by not being baptized is as unnatural as bottling up our love for the person we care about the most.
Now obviously expressing our faith in Christ doesn’t stop with water baptism, but baptism just gets us used to the idea. If we have the kind of faith Paul is talking about here, we’ll work differently, we’ll drive differently, we’ll fight with our spouse differently, we’ll treat our enemies differently, we’ll raise our kids differently, we’ll manage our time and spend our money differently. Faith makes a difference; if it doesn’t it’s not real faith.
2. A Powerful Faith Helps Others (Romans 1:11-13).
Now let’s look at Paul’s reason for wanting to visit the church in Rome in verses 11 to 13. As Jesus Christ’s representative to non-Jewish irreligious people--what Paul calls Gentiles here--Paul has long wanted to visit the Christians who live in Rome. Paul wants to share his spiritual gifts with the church in Rome. Now in the Bible a spiritual gift is simply any embodiment of God’s grace that’s shared with other people (Dunn 1:30). Spiritual gifts are given by God to Christians for us to share with other people for the common good. We find various lists of spiritual gifts in the Bible--in fact we’ll find one in Romans chapter 12--but here Paul’s probably just talking about sharing some sort of spiritual blessing when he arrives.
His goal is to strengthen the Roman Christians in their faith. The word "make strong" here was a construction word that referred to reinforcing a building. Here it means "to cause someone to become stronger in the sense of more firm and unchanging in their beliefs" (Louw and Nida 74.19). Paul doesn’t want to turn the Romans to a different path, but he wants to strengthen them on the path they’re already on (Godet 87).
But as soon as Paul says this he catches himself, because he knows he might be misunderstood to mean that he won’t get anything out of his visit with the Roman Christians. So he assures the Christians in Rome that he’s looking forward to mutual encouragement through--there’s our key word again--each other’s faith. Paul knows that he needs encouragement from their faith as much as they need encouragement from his. The fact that Paul’s an apostle of Jesus doesn’t make him immune to needing encouragement and strengthening in his faith from other people. Paul’s telling them that he needs them as much as they need him, that their relationship is one of mutual dependence (Chrysostom cited in Bray 24).
Here we find the second effect of faith. WHEN WE RESPOND TO THE GOOD NEWS, OUR FAITH QUALIFIES US TO HELP OTHERS IN THEIR FAITH.
The only indispensable quality to help another person in his or her faith is having faith yourself. You can’t give away something you haven’t got. But you don’t need to be a life-long Christian, or a Bible scholar, or a pastor to help another person in his or her faith. The French Reformer John Calvin puts it this way: "There is none so void of gifts in the Church of Christ who cannot in some measure contribute to our spiritual progress" (cited in Cranfield 1:80).
I thought about this when one of our neighbors moved away a few months ago. I was feeling guilty that I hadn’t tried harder to share God’s good news with this particular family, but the few times I’d tried they didn’t seemed very interested. But on the day they moved the wife mentioned to my wife that their nine year old son had suddenly gotten real interested in Jesus and being a Christian. She said he was praying a lot, trying to read the Bible, and asking his mom and dad to take him to church. But then she said something that blew my mind; she said to my wife, "You know, everything my son knows about being a Christian he’s learned from your boys." I thought, "Wow! God used my kids where I failed, and the seeds they planted are starting to take root."
God can use anyone who has faith in God’s good news, no matter how young or how old, no matter how educated or ignorant, no matter what their profession, no matter what their race or language or gender. This is why at Life Bible Fellowship Church we believe that every member is a minister. This isn’t just a catchy phrase. This is the teaching of the Bible about all Christians. If you have placed your faith in God’s good news about his Son, then you’re qualified for ministry. It might be with kids in children’s ministry, being a helper with the fourth graders, or it might mentoring a high school student, or leading a home Bible study, or becoming a Stephen’s minister. If you’re a member of this church, God wants to use you to strengthen other people’s faith, your family’s faith, your co-worker’s faith, your neighbor’s faith, and so forth. You may not feel qualified, this verse claims you are qualified.
Throughout my Christian growth I’ve found that small groups are often the best place to mutually encourage each other’s faith. When we gather together as a large group for worship there are certain things we can do well: We can worship together, we can listen to God’s truth explained from the Bible, we can together reach out to unchurched people who come through our doors. But mutual encouragement from each other’s faith happens best in smaller groups, groups like our second service Adult Bible Fellowship or our Share & Care Groups.
Genuine faith in God’s good news qualifies us to help other people in their faith.
3. A Powerful Faith Brings us God’s Integrity (Romans 1:14-17)
Now let’s look at the next effect of faith in verses 14 to 17. There’s a lot packed into these verses because this is really where Paul announces his theme for the entire letter. Paul explains how he’s under an obligation to share God’s good news with all kinds of irreligious people. The word "Greeks" here refers to people who’d adopted the Greek lifestyle. They were considered the upper crust of the Roman Empire, the culturally refined (Louw and Nida 11.90; Cranfield 1:84). They were the people who’s names were in the who’s who of Roman society, the people who had positions of importance and influence.
Now our English version has "non-Greeks" next but the actual word here is "Barbarians." Barbarians were people who hadn’t adopted the Greek language and lifestyle. They were considered unrefined, common folk (Louw and Nida 11.90; Fitzmyer 250). I have a friend who pastors a church in West Los Angeles, and the people in his church think we who live here in the Inland Valley are all rednecks from the sticks, which is what this word is talking about. Of course that’s all relative, because while I was in Chicago taking a class in July, I met a pastor from rural Arkansas. Now his church was in the sticks. During every class break he wanted to go to Starbucks for coffee because there wasn’t a coffee house in his entire county.
The word "wise" here means educated and intellectual (Cranfield 1:84). These were the people who read Plato and Aristotle, the people who studied Cicero and thought about all the great philosophical questions of the day. The word "foolish" here simply refers to ignorant and uneducated people, people who couldn’t read or write (Cranfield 1:84).
Paul’s point is that he’s obligated to share God’s good news with irreligious people from every level of society, from the top to the bottom. Paul’s sense of obligation here is refreshing, especially for us who live in a time when lots of people have a sense of entitlement that other people owe them. Paul’s sense was the opposite, not that people owed him anything, but he owed them, he had an obligation laid on his shoulders by God himself to share God’s good news with irreligious people of all kinds.
This obligation leads Paul to say that he’s not ashamed of God’s message. Now the only reason he would say this is if he was tempted to be ashamed of God’s gospel at times (Cranfield 1:86-87). To the cultured and educated of our world, God’s good news sounds unimpressive. The idea of God sending His own Son to die a shameful criminal’s death was simply too weird for many irreligious people to believe. To the educated it sounded too simple, to the religious Jew it sounded too scandalous, to the moral it sounded too easy, and so forth.
But Paul’s not ashamed of the message because it’s this very message that unleashes God’s power to transform people’s lives. A British professor of theology named Charles Cranfield puts it far better than I ever could:
"The reason why Paul is not overcome by the temptation to be ashamed of the gospel…is that he knows that this apparently weak and foolish message is really, in spite of all appearances…the almighty power of God Himself directed toward the salvation of men, God’s almighty saving power" (Cranfield 1:87).
Paul’s not ashamed of the message because it truly changes people, all kinds of people, intellectuals and simple people, cultured people and rednecks. It’s not that the message itself is impressive, but the effect of this message on people changes them.
This message transforms people by giving them God’s salvation. Salvation in the Bible isn’t just forgiveness of our sins, but it’s the whole package of what God gives us through our faith in Jesus Christ. Salvation is past tense in the sense that when we trust in God’s good news our sins and failures are washed away and we stand before God fully and completely forgiven (Rom 8:24). But God’s salvation is also present tense in the sense that Christians are in the process of being saved as God cleans up our lives (1 Cor 1:18). And salvation is also future as we await God’s perfecting work in our lives, as we await our resurrection from the grave, when our mortal bodies are replaced with an immortal ones (Rom 5:9). The word salvation here describes the entire package: the past, present and future components of God’s work in our lives, and only God’s good news unleashes God’s power to bring this change about.
But once again we’re confronted with the reality of faith, that this powerful message only brings God’s salvation to people who believe, people who respond to this message with faith.
In this message God’s "righteousness" is revealed. Now we don’t use the word "righteousness" very often, and when we do use it, it often has negative implications. Most people who think of "righteousness" immediately think of self-righteousness, arrogance, being holier than thou. But the Greek word here had none of those implications.
Bible teachers differ over whether the righteousness Paul is talking about here is something God has, something God does, or something God gives. Certainly righteousness is something God has. God is perfect, and so righteousness at least in part describes God’s perfect justice. When the Bible was translated into Latin, "righteousness" was translated with the Latin word for "justice" (DPL). This is the word a sixteenth monk named Martin Luther struggled with as he read Romans, because for him God’s justice wasn’t good news, it was bad news. Luther later admitted that he hated this phrase "the righteousness of God" because for him all it meant was that God punished sin and Luther knew he was a sinner who deserved God’s punishment (cited in Fitzmyer 260).
God’s righteousness here is more than his justice. In the Old Testament, God’s righteousness is not just something he has--his justice--but it’s also something he does. Righteousness in the Old Testament describes being right in our relationships, fulfilling our vows and commitments to other people (Dunn 1:40-41). Thus God is described as righteous in the Old Testament because he keeps his promises, he keeps up his end of his relationships with people. So although it’s certainly true that God is just, from this Old Testament background we learn that God’s righteousness primarily refers to his integrity in dealing with people, the fact that God is trustworthy and faithful in his dealings with others.
Finally, God’s righteousness also refers to something God gives us. In the Old Testament God’s justice and God’s integrity were clearly revealed, but in the good news about Jesus something new is revealed, something only hinted at in the Old Testament. This new aspect of God’s righteousness is that God gives his integrity to people as a free gift. In God’s gospel we learn that we can’t earn integrity with God, we can’t work to be made right with God, so God himself provides his integrity to make up for our lack of integrity.
This integrity comes by faith from first to last; it’s only by faith, with nothing we can contribute to it. This phrase "faith from first to last" is what the sixteenth century Protestant reformers meant by sola fide which is Latin for "faith alone" (Cranfield 1:100). The Roman Catholic church back then thought God’s integrity came to people through faith plus trying real hard to be good. That’s why the Protestant Reformation was born, largely to preserve this idea that God’s integrity comes to people by faith "from first to last."
Paul then quotes a verse from the Old Testament--a passage from the minor prophet Habakkuk--to show that this idea of integrity coming by faith is nothing new. Even back in Old Testament times before God revealed his integrity through Jesus Christ people knew that real life before God was received through faith, not through trying harder. Even back then people who were right with God--righteous people--lived before God on the basis of their faith, not on the basis of their merit or their goodness.
So packed in these few verses we find the third effect of faith. WHEN WE RESPOND TO GOD’S GOOD NEWS WITH FAITH, GOD GIVES US HIS INTEGRITY AS A GIFT.
God’s good news might seem unimpressive at first, but in reality this message is God’s power unleashed to bring about salvation for people who believe it because when they believe it God provides his own integrity as a gift. This is how men and women are made right with God. Not by going to church or getting religious, not by keeping the ten commandments or living by Judeo-Christian values. People are can only be made right with God by receiving God’s own integrity as a gift, and according to the Bible the only way that can happen is through faith in God’s message about Jesus.
So faith is indeed a powerful thing. But only faith that’s properly anchored in God’s good news is truly powerful. When our faith is anchored in God’s good news it makes a noticeable difference in our lives, it qualifies us to be God’s ministers, and--most importantly--it opens us up to receiving God’s free gift of his integrity to save us.
No other message in the world can do that. Moses taught us how to be moral by giving us the ten commandments, Gandhi taught us how to be peaceful, Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us how to be color blind, but none of these messages could make us right with God. Only God’s own good news about his son unleashes God’s power to transfer God’s integrity to our lives resulting in our salvation.
Do you have this powerful faith? Are people noticing the difference in your life because of your faith in Jesus Christ? Have you expressed that faith publicly in baptism? Are you helping other people with their faith, both by serving here in the church and also by serving as God’s minister in your community and workplace? Or maybe some of you haven’t yet responded to this message with genuine, noticeable, life-changing faith.
Sources
Bray, Gerald (editor). 1998. Romans. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture Vol. 6. InterVarsity Press.
Cranfield, C. E. B. 1975. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Publishing.
Dunn, James D. G. 1988. Romans. 2 Volumes. Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 38 A and B. Waco: Word Books.
DPL = G. Hawthorne, R. Martin (editors). 1993. Dictionary of Paul and His Letters. Downers Grover: InterVarsity Press. STEP electronic edition.
Fitzmyer, Joseph. 1993. Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible Vol. 33. New York: Doubleday.
Godet, F. L. 1883. The Epistle to the Romans. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
