Righteousness Revealed| Romans 1:16–17

Intro: Thank you Leighton and team for leading us in worship this morning. If you have your Bible with you, please turn to Romans 1. We are going to be looking at verses 16 and 17. This Friday is October 31st. What famous day do we celebrate on October 31st. Not halloween you sinners, Reformation Day. What are we doing here? I kid. But yes, while it is the date of halloween, which is the day before the Catholic All Saints Day. It is also Reformation Day. It is Reformation day because on October 31st, 1517 in Wittenberg, Germany, Catholic Monk Martin Luther nailed to the doors of the Catholic Church in the city what was known as the 95 Thesis. Up until this point, the Catholic Church ruled and dominated all of Christianity. Other than the Eastern Orthodox movement which held a lot in common, there was not Christian faith aside of that of the Catholic Church. The tradition of the church was granted higher authority that scripture. One example of that was purgatory. It is believed purgatory The place the church, said then and now, that one’s soul waited while undergoing final cleansing before going into heaven. The Church at the time was selling indulgences to pay for the building of the Saint Peter’s basilica. If somebody bought an indulgence, It was said that helped get a loved one out of Purgatory faster. What was being taught was, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from Pergatory springs.” In the 95 thesis that Luther nailed to the door of the church in Wittenberg, he took on the teachings of indulgences as well as the sacramental system. In Catholic Theology, there is no instant salvation. It’s believed one achieves salvation, though they don’t use that term, by taking the seven sacraments. Through these, grace in infused into the person over time. He took great issue with the idea of righteousness and salvation being given slowly over time through the taking of the sacraments. Luther had published an earlier version with less topics that didn’t even make a ripple. He felt the same may happen here. But what he started was a movement that led to the rise of a protestant faith that freed authority from the church leaders and back to scripture.

Martin Luther was far from a perfect person. He had theological beliefs that as Baptist we don’t agree with. He had personal views that I vehemently reject. But we cannot ignore the importance of the Reformation which started that night almost 508 years ago. It was there that the belief of justification through faith, meaning we are justified not by participating in the sacraments but by grace through faith in Jesus, was found once again. But it didn’t start that night. It started years earlier when Luther was teaching at the University of Wittenberg, and was preparing to teach on the book of Romans. It was there that he read Romans 1:17 and everything began to change. I believe that if we look at today’s text, as Luther did, we will see that The gospel is the truth that salvation is a work of God that trades our sin for His righteousness. Will you please stand as we honor the reading of God’s Word.

Romans 1:16 ESV

For I am 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.

Romans 1:17 ESV

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Verse 16

Exposition: Lookin at verse 16 we read right away that Paul says “For I am not ashamed of the gospel.” Now this is a powerful statement alone. But we always need to make sure we look at scripture in context. This verse goes with what Paul has already written, particularly in verses 13-15when Paul wrote Romans 1:13

Romans 1:13 ESV

I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.

Romans 1:14 ESV

I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.

Romans 1:15 ESV

So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

Explanation: Paul writing sometime in the first century, probably around 57 ad, had never been to the church in Rome. But he had heard of its faith and he wanted to go and support their mission in reaching other people in Rome with the gospel. The church had both jews and gentiles and Paul felt an obligation to preach to both. He wanted to go and preach the gospel. So he tells us in verse 16 Romans 1:16

Romans 1:16 ESV

For I am 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.

That he is unashamed of the gospel. According to what I found in commentaries, when Paul says he is unashamed, he is using a figure of speech. It means he glories in the gospel as one author, Steven Runge puts it. He gets his energy and his purpose from the gospel. That’s why he is eager to go and preach the gospel to the people in Rome. Paul is excited about the gospel. But why. Why is Paul so excited.

Exposition: Let’s first look at the meaning of the word gospel. It comes from the Greek word euvangelion. It literally means good news. Paul says he is unashamed of good news. We can only know why that is if we understand why it is good news. Paul tells us that he is unashamed of the good news because it first is the power of God for salvation. It is the means of salvation and it is not based on our own work, but on that of God.

Illustration: Martin Luther, the reformer we will be referring back to a lot today first became aware of his need for salvation, or at least the certainty that he would be with Christ for eternity in 1505. According to church Historiographer, Roger Olson, Luther was walking in a thunderstorm when he was almost killed by a lightning bolt. He made an oath to God that if he survived the storm he would become a monk, which is always a great way to make life decisions. For those of you who don’t know, monks and nuns use to be much more common in the Catholic traditions. But men who were monks and women who were nuns would live in one place and largely disassociate from the outside world as a way to have a holier life. He thought that in the monastery he would find a gracious God, but instead he found only God’s wrath. He had hoped in this lifestyle he would become righteous, but he just became more aware of how unrighteous he was. He never felt like he was close to finding that certainty.

Application: But that is because he was never going to find eternal certainty in anything that was of himself or of anything other than God Himself. Salvation is a work of God Himself, and there is nothing we can do on our own to find it. Salvation, the reality of having our eternity secure in heaven is not based on anything we can do, and thank God it isn’t. That goes for everyone in here. If you have found salvation illusive, it is because it is not of your power.

Exposition: But the good news goes beyond it being obtainable by God. It also goes to who can obtain it. Paul tells us that it is the power of God for salvation for everyone. Just in case that isn’t clear enough, I looked up the definition of everyone. It’s not much different, it means every person. In the Greek the word is pas which is all or every. I think Paul is being pretty clear here. But just in case he isn’t he emphasizes it some more. He says to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

Explanation: It would be easy to think that Paul is saying something derogatory here. We have to once again take the Bible in its context. It is the Jews that are descended from Abraham. It is the Jews that God chose to make his people and to promise a savior to. Remember, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Jewish prophecies found in our Old Testament. He was promised to bring salvation to them. But God in his grace and mercy has grafted us in as well. Through Jesus he has made a way not just for you, but for all who believe. If you are here this morning, God loves you and has made a way for you to spend eternity with Him, and eternity that begins not when you die, but when you place your faith in Him on this earth. This is indeed good news.

Transition: You see Martin Luther while trying to become righteous enough to get to heaven did not see the gospel as good news. It was not until reading verse 17 in preparation to teach at Wittenberg University that he saw how it was good news.

Verse 17

We read in verse 17 Romans 1:17

Romans 1:17 ESV

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Exposition: When Paul is speaking of righteousness, he is speaking in legal terms. As one commentary pointed out, that throughout scripture God is a moral judge. The standard by which we are judged is what God has told us to do. If we do that we are righteous and if we don’t we are not righteous. It’s pretty simple.

Illustration: No one understood this better than Martin Luther. Luther living in the sacramental system never felt righteous. The more he studied the bible the more he realized how he fell short. The more he participated in the sacraments where God’s grace was believed to be slowly infused into practitioners, the less righteous he felt. He would go to confession and confess his sins, but when leaving he would remember something he had forgotten to confess. He would become greatly concerned this would hinder his finding certainty.

Illustration: This should be of no surprise to us. My wife, Morgan is an attorney. If I were to have her bring in copies of the official code of Georgia which contains every law in the state of Georgia and give everybody highlighters and tell you to highlight every law you have ever broken, we wouldn’t leave here pointing out what good citizens we are. We would all leave scratching our heads thinking, “it’s worse than I thought.” The law reveals that we are lawbreakers.And our own efforts can’t erase that.

Exposition: But verse 17 changed Martin Luther’s life and literally the course of world history because he saw that the righteousness of God was revealed in the gospel. The gospel tells us that God saw that we could not achieve our own righteousness. He saw that we were not capable of making our sins go away. But that there is one who could. For this reason Jesus came into the world. He left the glory of heaven and became a human while still being God. He lived a perfect life being the only person to ever truly be righteous and up to God’s standard. But yet he died on the cross. He died the death that we deserved for our wickedness. And he made a way that God would look on us and no longer see our own unrighteousness, but instead see the righteousness of Christ. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21

2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Exposition: The righteousness of God is attainable. It is something we can have as Martin Luther longed for all those years. But it is not attainable by any way of our own efforts. No it is only through faith in what Jesus has done. Paul writes in verse 17 of our main text Romans 1:17

Romans 1:17 ESV

For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

Exposition: This righteousness that is needed for eternal security comes not from anything we can do. It does not come from doing things found in church tradition but not scripture. No, it is only received when one places faith in Christ. And this revelation of God’s righteousness that comes from faith frees us to live a life of faith. Paul helps us understand this by ending the verse by quoting the prophet Habakkuk, “The righteous will live by faith.”

Application: The mistake that Luther made early in his life is not one that is unfamiliar to many of us. We think, I want to have a relationship with Jesus, so I need to get my life cleaned up. But the dirty little secret is we never get our lives cleaned up enough to get to Jesus. We never can get there. The reality is that it is not a faithful life that leads to righteousness. It is being given the righteousness of Christ. We don’t live the way God has called us to live, we don’t do the things God has called us to do to be righteous. It is from placing our faith in Jesus and being made righteous that we are made into new creations. We don’t do things to earn favor with God. It is because of God’s favor we have been given undeservingly that we do good things.

Conclusion: Luther later in his life would write a lot about the feeling of trying to make himself righteous before God. He found himself feeling angry towards God. He was angry that God required righteousness when he continued to find it out of his reach no matter how hard he tried. He found the act of trying to make himself right before God as discouraging and impossible as one can imagine. But when Luther came to understand the truth presented to him in Romans 1:17, that all changed. Luther would write,

“I felt that I had been born anew and that the gates of heaven had been opened. The whole of Scripture gained a new meaning…”

“And from that point on the phrase ‘the justice of God’ no longer filled me with hatred, but rather became unspeakably sweet by virtue of a great love.” — Martin Luther, Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Writings (1545)

Conclusion Cont. Maybe you are here this morning and you have been trying to figure out how you can make yourself righteous. Maybe you have been trying to figure out how to be right before God. Or maybe you look at your life, and you think it’s too far gone. You think there’s no way that you could ever be good enough for heaven. I tell you this morning that you can find relief and joy the same way Martin Luther did all those years ago. One thing Luther was right about then and you are right about today, there is nothing you can do to make yourself righteous enough for God. But that’s ok. Jesus came and died on the cross, paying the price for your sin. And then he rose again so that those that placed their faith in Him would not be limited by their own righteousness or lack thereof. No, it would be the righteousness of God that would be counted as your own. Bringing with it the hope of eternity in heaven with God. And that is available for you this morning. If you are ready to place your faith in Jesus this morning and have that promise, I will be at the front, I would love to pray with you. Pastor Matthew will be right here as well. But don’t let this moment pass.

But maybe you are here and you realize that you have not been living as Paul in the beginning of verse 16. You realize that you have not been living as somebody with great joy in the story of Jesus. If we are not unashamed of the gospel or if we glory in the gospel, we will live like it. Has your excitement for the gospel grown stale. Have you stopped seeing it as the power of God. If that is you this morning, maybe you need to come to the altar and pray. Or if you need somebody to pray with you we are down here as well. Whatever you feel God leading you to do. Do it. Let’s pray.