The Power of the Gospel and God’s Righteousness

Well, good morning. Well, Happy New Year. 2023. Wow. For people that are my age and older, I'd say think, wow, 2023. Keep the song the year 2525. I don't think I'll be alive then. But I will be alive but not here. I'm not sure where I'll be 2025. Anyway, Well, I have the privilege today of doing two of the most incredible verses, I think, in scripture. I feel it's a real privilege. I engineered it so I would do it. Not exactly. Not exactly. No, it's incredible. Just incredible verses. And the title, I kind of adjusted. I've been using Hal's outline, which I'll show you shortly.

So I label these two verses the power of the gospel and God's righteousness. And let me just say up front here, I hope these verses, you know, you have a burden for your family, you have a burden for people that you want to know the Lord, and I think these two verses are tremendously helpful in that way. Hopefully you'll see that as we go through this. They're just tremendously helpful because it's going to present the good news, the gospel, but it's also going to present God's righteousness. And they have to be linked together, because if you don't see you're interfacing with the Holy God, you don't really Don't think you really get the gospel without seeing your you it's from a holy God and that's a holy and righteous God So that's just key to that this whole discussion Okay, so I'm just gonna put the outline up here the whole thing So how develop this outline for the first 17 verses and I used it and then and might kind of taught the 18 through 15 part But you know the first part is just wonderful Paul starts off with the blessings that he has personally and You know, personally, Paul was a bondservant of Christ, he was an apostle, and he was set apart for the gospel, for what we're going to be talking about here, for the glorious gospel. And then we saw in 2 and 3, verses 2 and 3, the blessings of the gospel.

And, you know, they were promised beforehand. They concerned the Lord Jesus Christ. And then Paul moved in. He had the stair-step approach he used. And then he got, once he got onto the Lord Jesus Christ, he said, well, we've got to talk about who Christ is. He talked about who Christ is. He's, you know, he's of David's line. And he's declared to be the Son of God with power and glory.

And then we got into the 5 through 7. We talked about who we are as believers in Christ. You know, we're called of God and so many more things. And then Mike, right before Christmas, taught us about the fact of Paul being so thankful for the Roman believers. He was thankful for them personally. And he was praying for them. He encouraged them.

And then toward the last part, toward verse 15, he says, he wants to share the gospel with them. And that kind of leads right into 16 and 17. He desires to share the glorious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. So that kind of sets the stage for 16 and 17. So I want to go back and just, first of all, let's put our verses up here, the main verses. So let me just read them again.

So for my part, I'm eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I'm 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 gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith. And if you're a student of just Christianity, anything, you'll know that Martin Luther, verse 17 was a verse that showed him who Christ was, showed him that faith was the only way he could approach a holy God. And in the King James it says, and the just shall live by faith. Just a tremendous and we're gonna come that's kind of the climax of this whole thing. So Just wonderful verses.

So let's kind of get into it here. So let's start back at 15 So I want to kind of pick up on Paul's eagerness He says I'm eager and he has a couple of this guy named Denny who Constable quotes a lot Kind of tried to capture that Greek word. It's all that depends upon me is eager and For my part, I'm ready. Paul was ready. Think about that.

The Lord, he was called up to the third heaven, and the Lord said, Paul, this is going to be your message. This is the message that you're to proclaim. And he's the apostle to the Gentiles. This was Paul's message. So Paul was ready. And then he also kind of said that he saw a contrast between Paul's willingness and God's preparation.

Think about it. The gospel message is not a message from man. In fact, you read that message and you almost say, Well, wait a minute, that's not enough information. You read it, and we're going to read it shortly here again, but God has set those words and those scriptures aside for us and for Paul, and that is his message that has power to change lives. So that's God's part. Paul is willing and God is willing to use the Holy Spirit to deliver that message.

To preach the gospel, this is this word euangelizo, if I pronounce that right, is to evangelize. This one word, a lot of English words, to preach the gospel is one Greek word. Preach the gospel, to evangelize, that's all one word in the original. And Paul states later in Romans 15, and he says, Thus I aspire to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, so that I would not build on another man's foundation.

So Paul, through his whole ministry, especially in the book of Romans, is focused on the gospel message that was given to him. So let's just look at that for a second. So what's the origin of the message, and what is the gospel message? And this is all review.

We look in Galatians, which we studied several years ago, and it says, the gospel which was preached by me, Paul, Not according to man. It doesn't have man as its source And then he kind of backs it up by verse 12. He says For I neither received it from man nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ So God says this simple message that I'm going to quote here in a second these simple verses Basically, it's history. You say well Roger.

This is just history. I This is a message that God has chosen to change men's lives, and He has. He's chosen this message. It's about His Son. So here's the core message. The core message of the Gospel is that Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture, He was buried, and He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

And we're going to see that these two verses are going to declare that this simple message of the Gospel has God's power behind it, Displays his righteousness, you know at first that's not obvious to be honest my first I said I don't quite see all that but hopefully you will The simple message of the gospel has God's power behind it is power. It's inherently power God's Word is powerful. You know, I thought about the the song there's power in the blood, which I like that song I want to get a new song. I mean, I'll get mine to help me power power in the gospel And it's scriptural.

We're gonna see it's a scriptural message. I So, we're going to see here, and we saw I underlined the word for, for kind of demarcates in 16 and 17, it's this word gar, G-A-R in the Greek. It introduces or explains what Paul wants to kind of highlight. And you could say, basically Paul is saying, please allow me to give you an explanation. Why is he so, why is he so focused? Why is he so eager? He wants to explain that in 16 and 17. Okay, so let's start in the 16th and 17th.

So he starts off maybe kind of, this is kind of a disclaimer, if you will. He says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel. And it implies the one that I preach. He's not ashamed of it. So you think, why would he even say that? Why does he have to even say that? Well, I think it's because you look at that message and you think, I'm going to go, he's going to go to the New York City of the world at that time. He's going to go And he says he tells me not ashamed.

He's going to go to Rome the cultural center of the world It's where all all the pride and intellect and pomp and idolatry So if you're going to go to a cool place you want to have all your ducks in a line, right? You want to have all have your best laundry out. You want to look cool. You want to have the coolest message?

It's going to be the most intricate and you come with this message that says this Jewish Man died on a cross. He died for my sins. And he was buried. He rose again. What kind of message is that? What's that going to do? But God says, that's the message, Paul, I want you to deliver. So you can see there's some. But Paul realized that that wasn't anything to be ashamed of. That was God's power. In fact, God works opposite to man. Man, you know, man pumps himself up and God suddenly takes him down. He says, no, you're not. You're not going to. You're going to.

I'm gonna glory in the just a fact of the death of my son for your sins That's what's going to be the power in the in the life for salvation So also another kind of connection to this is you look at the word the cross the cross is also that concept of The words of the cross, which are the gospel, that's offensive too to the intellectual man, to the man.

And he talks about that in Corinthians. We saw this back several years ago now. For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. But we preach Christ crucified to the Jew, a stumbling block, to the Gentiles, foolishness. So different reactions by different people groups, right? The Jewish, it stumbles them. And to the Gentiles, that's just foolishness. But to Paul it says, no. He repeats that idea of not being ashamed in Timothy here, where he says, for this reason I also suffer these things. I'm not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed.

He knows the source of this wonderful message. Okay, so that's the first part of that. So then he comes back with another four statement. So now he's going to explain one of the key attributes of the Gospel. It is, it is, applying the gospel, it is the power of God unto salvation. So let's just kind of look at that.

So this has one of my favorite Greek words, Emi. I mention it all the time. But Bonnie says, Roger, you mention that word, Emi, so many times people are going to get tired of it. Well, I don't think they're going to get tired of it, but it's really amazing. And actually some of this, a good part of this I got from Merriman.

But anyway, the word Amy, the definition of that, it's a state of being, a verb, the state in which something continuously exists. And it's present tense. So it's called a status quo. It's a status quo. It's a present tense. So I'm just going to go through. We're going to look at the present tense, indicative voice. I'm sorry. Present Indicative Act. So we're going to look at each three of those. Present tense. So present tense is a continuous tense.

It continues on. It tells us that the gospel keeps on being the power of God. And you can think of it with the fact that this essence of the gospel will always be God's power to save the lives of people. It will always be that way. It's continuous. Present tense, continuous action. Active voice means that the power is within itself.

The gospel contains that power. That message is powerful. And then thirdly, it's reality. Within the gospel resides God's power unto salvation and the direction of salvation. I'm going to repeat some of this quite a few times. So it's present tense, continually right now. It's the essence of the message that God wants to save man. and it's reality. So let's go on.

If the gospel message is the power of God. So let's think about this for a bit. So we found it's a good news, it's a gospel, and it's powerful. This word power is dunamis. It's the ability, natural, inherent power that resides in the thing by its nature. And we're going to see it's important to realize And the power is a noun here. It identifies the gospel. Power, you could put equal signs. You could put power and gospel with equal signs between it. That's why, in a way, you think, wow, how can these simple words be so powerful? How can that be?

It's because God has declared that to be. He has, in His sovereignty, in His will, He's declared that this message is to display His power. Another cool part of this, and this is from Merriman, is the fact that the of God, the power of God, is a subjective genitive, don't ask me to explain too much about that, but it's the idea that the of God shows us who produces the action. God is producing the power. The power of God is produced by God.

Maybe not too well spoken, but... So the gospel is the dynamic of God that transforms lives. The power of God. Okay, now we're going to go into the next part, unto salvation. Is the power of God unto salvation? So unto gives us a direction. So where is this power focused? Where is God with this message, this simple message, going to focus His power? He's going to focus it on the salvation of man.

So Merriman says here, the direction of God's power is in the salvation of men, which includes justification, sanctification, So we know this. We teach this a lot at Holly Hills. We think about the past, the present, and the future aspect of salvation. So God's power in saving man just doesn't stop at justification, him being saved. It continues on through his Christian life and on to glorification. So the power of God unto salvation speaks to the whole process, the whole past, present, and future aspects of salvation.

So, from Galatians 1.12, the gospel is God's word given to Paul through a revelation of Jesus Christ. So again, these words, which seem rather simple, are what God has declared through the Apostle Paul to what men need to believe to be saved. The power is contained in God's word.

We know that. We know that the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword. But this is kind of a reaffirmation, if you will, of the power of God's word. And this is a really cool verse. I came across this verse in listening to, I think it was Merriman that pointed it out. Actually, no, I take it back. It was the other end. We have Merriman, Malloy, and so on. So anyway, this is from Macaulay, I think, actually.

So here's a verse in Acts. And this is Peter's ministry. And it says, an angel speaking here. It says, send a Joppa and have Simon, who is also called Peter, brought here. And He will speak words to you by which you will be saved, you and your household. Boy, I thought that was just so good. When I heard Macaulay talk, I said, wow, that is, he's going to speak words. What words you're going to say?

Well, it doesn't, it doesn't exactly tell you in the context, but by the overall context, men are being saved by Peter's ministry to them. And I can't believe it's not the, it's the same message. It's a, it's a gospel message. He's so, but what's cool about this, these are words. These are God's words by which you will be saved. Kind of locking in again, these words that God has given Paul, and to us, are words that are to change men's lives.

Okay. So now, here's kind of the qualification. You know, it's not like, I'm going to go out and speak these three, these several sentences, the gospel, and then people just will be saved left and right. You know, it's like a magic formula. Well, no, it's not that.

Here's the qualifying point that makes it, makes it real. to everyone who believes. So the qualification is that yes, the gospel is powerful. Yes, it will change men's lives. But you have to enter into it. You have to believe it. You have to trust it.

It tells us who can receive this power of God for salvation. And that phrase, to everyone who believes, modifies Aimee, this verb. It gives us information about the power of salvation, so it restricts it to someone who believes or trusts in that message. It's to everyone who believes. You must believe God's Word about His Son.

And then Merriman says, anyone who believes the Gospel is going to be included in salvation. Now this is why this is just so helpful to me. I'm thinking about, you know, when I talk with my loved ones about, wow, This is a message. I know it seems simple to you, but God has has declared it to be his method of salvation. It's not going to be by something you do. It's going to be about what he has done and you believing it. And we're going to see that reinforced here in a bit. So now he kind of does a little maybe a little history, if you will. He says to the Jew first and also to the Greek. So we know that the nation of Israel was God's chosen people. He chose them.

All of the all of our Bible, you know, I'm amazed we're kind of big fans of this ministry to the Jewish people called one for Israel and the claim of most Jewish people who come to Christ is I never realized the Bible was a Jewish book. I never realized the New Testament is I'm reading about my my people my The rabbis never told us about that They're totally ignorant of that But this ministry was to their people, to the Jews first.

Many verses in scripture tell us about God's dealing with the Jewish people. So here's just a few verses. In Exodus it says, Now then, if you, Israel, will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine. And then it asks, this is the Lord Jesus speaking here, right before the ascension he talks about witnessing the witness that will be about him he says talking to his disciples I think but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you you shall be my witnesses both in notice these are all Jewish places both in Jerusalem in Judea and Samaria and even to the remotest part of the earth so the Jew first and then to the Greek and the Gentile so that's that's what God has chosen in his And then here's a verse that the Lord spoke to the woman at the well, and she was a Samaritan, half-Jewish. He says, you worship what you do not know, but we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. So that's just some history, if you will. So in the midst of, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, it's God's power for salvation to everyone who believes. God chose the Jewish people to be his messenger and where his son would come out in the flesh as a Jewish person.

Okay, so let's go on to 17. So now we've talked about the gospel, its power. So now he's going to tell us about God's righteousness. And this is the part that I was very weak on. I should have been stronger on this. God's righteousness is displayed in the gospel. Let's see if we can understand that. This is the second attribute of the gospel message, the righteousness of God. In it, in the gospel, the righteousness of God. Let's just go back and think about this. I've gone through this many times before here at Holly Hills, but righteousness. So it's a subject of verse 17. The verb is revealed.

So what does that word righteousness mean? Well, Weiss tells us that righteousness, in the biblical sense, is a condition of rightness, the standard of which is God. All that is right, all that is holy, God is the standard of. So it's righteousness is in accord with God and His standard. That's what righteousness is. And again we have one of these generative descriptions. Righteousness of God. So Merriman says it's God's quality type of righteousness. And it has two aspects. It's revealed in the gospel. The righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel. God provides is revealed in the gospel. And secondly, that's the only kind of righteousness that God approves.

He doesn't approve of man's righteousness. Man is rather arrogant. He thinks that his righteousness is pretty cool sometimes. So here's this chart that I got from, I think, Merriman. Kind of comparing, not actually a chart, just some words, but it's man's view of righteousness versus God's view of righteousness, and they're totally different. Man thinks a lot of himself.

Just look around. Just look around. Just look at politics. Oh my goodness. Don't look at politics. Anyway. Alright. Man thinks that his righteousness is a lesser form of God's righteousness. He thinks, well, when I do this good thing, I'm really pretty good. Let's give back. That's today's buzz. Let's give back. I want to give back. And I'm not against giving back. But it pumps man up.

That's what it does. So that's not God's kind of righteousness. Man thinks righteousness is relative. He thinks, well, wait a minute, I'm better than this person or that person. I'm certainly much better than so-and-so. It's always relative. But God's righteousness is absolute. And that's what he requires. He requires that your righteousness be absolute. And that will be the first flag right there going in your minds.

I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. But we don't think that way. Because man is blind. We know that. But the Holy Spirit and the Gospel can change that. So here's the concept of God's righteousness. And this you kind of know. We could probably add more to this.

Merriman, I believe all are guilty, you know that there are none righteous. No, not one There's no degree of righteousness. I God doesn't grade in the curve. I don't get like I want to I'll be 90% righteous. Is that good enough God? How about 99% righteous? How about 99.9? How about 99.999999? No, not enough got to be a hundred percent No degrees of rights when it comes to salvation.

This is really cool. I Just think about this. When it comes to salvation, it's all of God and nothing of man. Look at our simple gospel message in 1 Corinthians 5, 3 and 4, which I read. What do you see of man in that? Christ died for our sins. Do you see man sin in that? You do. Christ died for our sins. He was buried and rose on the third day. There's nothing of man in that. There's no works of man, no something you have to do. You have to believe that message. You cannot mix human works with God's salvation.

And then down a little later in Romans, Acts 3.9, a little before 3.10, there it says, we are all, both Jew and Greek, are all under sin. We're all under that power of sin. So God's righteousness is in total contrast to where man is at. For the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

And when I first started out looking at it, I went around the mulberry bush a couple times from faith to faith. Anyway, it's interesting. It's interesting. And actually, it's not as hard once you kind of catch on to it. So God wants to reveal His holiness, His righteousness, if you will. He wants to uncover it, unveil it. And that's the main verb in 17. then the remainder of the verse kind of modifies that. It's the unveiling and uncovering of His righteousness.

From faith to faith. So we have two. We have a from and a to. And we have faith. So you have three words there. From faith to faith. So what does that mean? So let's look at... So the first from, or the first... We have ek faith is the first one. From is the word ek in the Greek. Or ek is the word... How did I say that one? The source of man's righteousness is from faith. It is out from faith as a source.

This is God's design. So this is God's plan. That faith, basically, you can enjoy God's righteousness by simply by faith. And that's kind of a revolutionary thought, if you will. It goes countered. We say, well, I want to do something. I want to perform something for God. No, he says, your simple faith is what will allow you to enjoy my righteousness. By simple faith in the gospel, not by keeping a set of rules or doing works for God.

So it's contrary to our faith. So that's the first one. From faith, then we have to faith. And this is ICE or ACE. Unto faith. So this is the direction of our faith. It's from faith to faith again. This is the response of man. It means righteousness is received by faith. Faith is simply acting upon God's word. So here's some observations from a colleague which I liked. This really helped.

As we grow in the Christian life, we start off from faith, to faith, to faith, to faith. As we exercise faith, we trust Him more, then we have more faith. That's a continuous process. It's from faith, to faith, to faith, and so on. From faith is speaking of our salvation or justification. This is our initiation into salvation. And to faith is speaking of our growth or sanctification. This is our growth in that salvation. So from faith to faith. That's a growth process in the Christian life.

Okay. As it is written, or literally it has been written, perfect tense, Past completed action with abiding results. So it was written, it was written in the Old Testament. So now we're going to see how do we live before a holy God. And so I kind of made that wasn't appropriate, but let's go on. So perfect tense. So the place in the Old Testament was in Habakkuk.

Behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him. But the righteous will live by faith. So that quote is what Paul quoted in the New Testament in Romans. It's also quoted several other places too as well. But the righteous man. Righteous here is the core word of righteous. Righteous is this word dyke. And it comes from a verb to justify, to declare righteous by God. So who is the righteous man?

So I think actually this verse kind of answers that question in a way. It says, therefore, As you have received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in Him. It's a person that has received the Lord by faith. He has exercised faith. That's what God requires to be righteous. To put your faith and trust in Him.

Shall live by faith. Will live in the future. Future indicative middle. So again, we have ex-faith, out from faith as a source. So we come to salvation by faith. And we continue by faith. So this is the second time for this ek faith. This tells us that the righteous man is how he conducts his life. Ek also shows us that we are talking about the principle of faith. All right, so my final thoughts here.

This is from a constable quoting another gentleman. And he says, here we have the text, speaking about verses 16 and 17 in Romans, of the whole epistle of Romans. Encapsulates the whole the gospel message and God's righteousness First the words the gospel so dear to Paul as will appear in the remainder of Romans Next we have the universal saving power of this gospel Is asserted and I would kind of quality or universal bother me a slight bit. He should say you know for those who believe it's universal for all those who believe and Then the secret of the gospel power, the revelation of God's righteousness on the principle of faith. Finally, the accord of all this with the Old Testament, the righteous shall live by faith.

So I hope that was helpful. I might come back and review a little bit of this next week. We're going to start in, next week we start into the section that talks about what is man's condition before a holy God. And it's not a pretty picture. But this is just incredible, the power of the gospel and God's righteousness as seen in the gospel message, that man cannot contribute to his salvation. It has to be holy of God and nothing of man.

Man offers his faith and trust in that wonderful message. Let's close in prayer. Thank you, Father. We thank you for our time in your word. We thank you for this wonderful message about your son, the message that To some it seems simple, but it holds the power that you have declared it to be. And we pray that we'll be able to share this message with those who would listen. In Christ's name, Amen.