The Bible Binge: When I'm Not Enough (Romans 1:8-17)

Lightning Bolt from God

This is beautiful weather here today. A great day to be outdoors for a worship service. Nice temperatures, good sunshine. But we are gathering here in this morning as The Table because of a thunderstorm over 500 years ago. There is, in a small village in central Germany, a stone commemorating a life changing event for a 21-year-old lawyer name Martin Luther. The law student had been visiting his parents. He was in the midst of a lot of inner turmoil, which he did not disclose to his mom and dad. He had been reading the Bible at law school. Increasingly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be a lawyer. The things that he was reading in the Bible made him uncomfortable. He though, maybe if I enter a monastery, I’ll find the answers to this fear that I’m not enough for God. But he didn’t tell his parents. He knew they would not be happy. So he made his way back to school and on the way, the skies got dark and a thunderstorm rolled in, and as he walked, a lightning bolt hit the ground near where he was walking and he was knocked to the ground and he injured his leg. As he lay on the ground, feeling the pain in his leg, he begged St. Anne, the patron saint of thunderstorms for help. And he promised that he would indeed leave the legal profession and become a monk. That stone stands near where that lightning bolt hit.

The question that bothered Luther both before the lightning bolt and after he became a monk was this: what makes us acceptable to God? He wasn’t satisfied with the way many in the church answered that question. Forgiveness had to be attained. There were hoops you had to jump through. It was up to Luther, and yet Luther knew this couldn’t be it. Luther was afflicted by the terror of not being enough.

He was caught in the same relentless quest that we all have. We all want to be enough. We all want to be loved and we’ll work to get it. We all want to be known. And we’re all bothered by this sense that we aren’t enough. So we try harder. At home. At work. At school. At play. In our relationships.

And Luther knew the dirty little secret about this: these attempts to be enough for our spouse and for our job and for our family and for ourselves.. our health… really is at its core spiritual. We are trying to be enough for God. We may not say it. We may not believe it, but eternity really is at stake in our desire to be enough and to be loved.

The book of Romans is the answer to all of this. A few years after that lightning bolt barely missed him, Luther was reading Romans 1 and what he found there changed his life, changed the world and changed history. We’re looking at Romans 1 today as part of our Bible Binge. We began reading Romans in our daily Bible reading. If you haven’t started, now’s a great time to start. This book of Romans is a little different from what we have been reading. The book of Romans is a letter written by the great missionary Paul.

Here’s a summary of the first part of the book from the Bible Project:

Video

That’s an overview of how the entire book unfolds. As the video suggests, the main occasion for the book is the unity of a widely diverse congregation. Jews and non-Jews functioning in the same church body together. That’s a big deal in those days. But more importantly.. on what basis are people from starkly different cultures unified? What unites them?

This is where I think there’s more going on than just unity as a theme. If we were writing this… how do you get everybody on to the same page? If this is a business, we remind everyone of the mission and purpose of the business. We highlight our common values and desires to see the business succeed. Paul doesn’t do that. Paul is going to go beyond this… he doesn’t just say “yes, we’re all one body because we’ve all shared in the same salvation.” He does say this. It’s a big point. But Paul spends an awful lot of ink on the “how” question. We share the same salvation, but Paul takes great pains to show them how they came to share in this same salvation as sinners. Their problem isn’t just you eat different food and have different views of the law in the Old Testament. They differed on the fundamental question:

How is a person made right with God?

What makes a person acceptable to God? That goes beyond cultural differences. How are we enough for God? They all shared and we all share the same problem: we’re all trying to be enough for God. We want to be enough and we try hard. We share that same human condition. Paul spends paragraph after paragraph going over what is is that we need most in life and why we need it.

I’m highlighting this because this book of Romans is a letter. It’s different than anything we’ve looked at yet. It would be very easy to just skip over parts here that seem boring. And if I hazard a guess… some of us probably wonder just why is any of this important? Why bother with theology? What does this have to do with dealing with co-workers and kids and problem-solving on Monday afternoon?

If Paul were here, he’d say everything. You know how often I lean into the important stuff in this letter? Every day. This is what keeps me sane. Yes, there are no fun stories to read in this book, but this is MY story. This tells me who I am and how I am to think and act and respond in the mundane activities of life. And it all comes back to this question:

What makes me enough?

So much of life is about being enough. I just want to be known and loved by someone and so I pursue being enough. I need justification. And Paul tells us how we get it.

There are two verses that stand out at the front end of this letter and they contain what we need to know about our story and being enough:

Romans 1:16–17 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.”

These two verses turned Luther’s world upside down. Luther read these two verses and realized he had it all wrong. In fact, the church at the time had it all wrong. Being enough.. Being accepted by God is not about trying harder. It’s not about making sure you do all the right rituals and prayers and services. In fact, it’s the opposite: being accepted by God starts and ends with God himself.

The Gospel is the Power of God for Salvation

The Gospel is the power of God for salvation. Not me figuring out how to make it work. Not me trying on the next best diet in order to be accepted. Not me getting on YouTube to have the best house and the best car and the best job and the best family relationships and always working harder and faster and climbing more ladders. I need Jesus. I need the gospel.

See, we’ve told ourselves that all those things that we are pursuing have nothing to do with the gospel. But the moment we begin to find our identity in those things.. the more that we begin to think that those things will make us enough… enough for ourselves and enough for others is the moment that those things have become my salvation. My righteousness.

In the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed

Which leads to this… the Gospel gives us the righteousness of God. We’re not righteous. To be righteous is to keep all of God’s commands perfectly all of the time forever. And that’s exactly what we’re doing when we try to be enough. We’re constantly living by our own ideas of what it must be to be accepted by God. We are constantly trying to justify ourselves. But this book of Romans is going to show us there’s no possible way to get there from here. We’re all sinners. We’re all falling short.

But I guarantee you, sometime tomorrow, you’ll find yourself attempting to be enough for something and it won’t be enough. But in the Gospel, God is enough. There’s a fancy word here: righteousness. Righteousness means doing the right thing and being the right thing all of the time. God is perfectly good. And that goodness is what we need to save us. Jesus is enough for us when we are not enough.

Jesus’ justification is FOR YOU

There’s another fancy theological word that is implied here, but is unpacked in this letter: Justification. Justification is God’s affirmation of you. It is being declared accepted by God. And even more… it makes you accepted by God. Jesus gives you right standing with God in His life, death, and resurrection. No need to do anything. Jesus does it.

Most, if not all of our sin, every day, is thinking, believing, and acting as if God’s acceptance of me is dependent on me. I think I can do enough. I can keep the law the way God wants it kept. I can’t do that as a non-Christian. I can’t do that as a Christian. I’m never enough and I better admit it. I need Jesus and His justification… here’s what justification really is:

Justification is being known and loved by God.

Justification is Jesus being enough FOR YOU.

That’s what Jesus being enough for us means. This is what Luther discovered. Being accepted by God doesn’t doesn’t on you. In fact, it can’t. There’s nothing we can do to earn his favor, and that includes the lives we live as Christians. God’s smile for you is always dependent on what Jesus has done for you. He accepts you because of Jesus and who He is FOR YOU. When you’re not enough, Jesus is enough for you. You are known and loved by God because of Jesus… no strings attached. That’s what justification means.

But the real light bulb moment for Luther is in the final phrase:

The righteous will live by faith. (Romans 1:17)

Our freedom, our acceptance by God, our “enoughness” (a word coin by a theologian named David Zahl), is a gift. It comes from outside of ourselves. It is something to be received in faith. It’s never about your righteousness. It’s never about how many prayers you pray, it’s not about how much work you do for Jesus..

God doesn’t wait for you to be enough. Jesus isn’t standing there just hoping and praying that somehow, someday you’re going to be enough… even in your Christian walk. No, Jesus is always making the first move. Jesus is constantly knocking down our self-reliance, our self-salvation, our self-justification. Jesus shatters our self-sufficiency to give us the faith we need to rely on him.

What is your “never enough”?

I will cop to this being a problem in my own life. I want people to like me. My “never enough” is constantly pursuing the approval of people. I want your approval. I want you to like me. And that is an absolutely terrible hamster wheel. Try as I might, it’s never enough. I can never do enough for your approval. If I tell you what you want to hear.. you’ll like me. Now, over time, I’m come to find ways to care less the way people think about me. Trying to have a more healthy outlook on being more concerned about God’s acceptance of me. But it’s still there. I have this funny mark on my forehead now thanks to a cat in the middle of the night. Trying to do the things necessary to help it heal. But it’s still there. First world problems, I know. But I can feel this costing me approval ratings. And it’s just dumb.

I have no idea what your “never enough” is. Maybe it is health. Maybe it is clothes. Maybe it’s relationships and family. I don’t know. What is it that you need to tell you you are OK? What is it that you look to for affirmation and identity? Who or what is your hope dealer? Where do you look for significance? Whatever it is, none of it is enough. And I have to tell myself this all of the time. The end goal of being enough is being in control. We have a lot of anxiety in the world because we’ve convinced ourselves that I can be enough, I can be in control, if I just find the right activity or do the right thing or say the right thing in the right conversation or push the right buttons. But the dirty little secret is that it’s never enough. Ever. Being enough is a mirage.

What we need is Jesus to love us. We need His grace. We need His justification. It’s what He does. What is it that’s driving your guilt? What is it that you are depending on to give you value? What I do know is that this salvation and righteousness and justification and enoughness isn’t just for Martin Luther. This turned the world upside down. That world includes you. and me. The Gospel is Our salvation. God’s righteousness… God’s being enough in Jesus is FOR YOU.

Let’s Pray.

The Table

This Table is Jesus being enough for you. This is where we come with our self-sufficiency and give it to Jesus. Jesus forgives, Jesus heals, Jesus makes us right with God. Again. right here at this Table.

Benediction

Numbers 6:24–26

May the Lord bless you and protect you;

may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;

may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.