Romans 1- What does it mean to live by faith?

Our theme for 2021 is “Redeeming the time.”

Last week we began a series of “Hot Topics”

The messages that I am preaching in July & August come from requests that you made.

The first one had to do with anger - is it good or bad?

The answer is both!

Last week we talked about God’s anger -or God’s wrath as it is called in the Bible.

We learned that it is really an expression of God’s love.

It’s God’s response to injustice and the loss of innocence.

Today’s question is also from Roman’s chapter 1 and is a sort of “part two” to last week’s question:

“What does it mean to live by faith?”

Romans 1:16–17 ESV

16 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. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

In fact, this might be the most difficult question of all of them.

Do you realize that this question and specifically Romans 1:16-17 is historically, one of the most studied and most debated passages in all of scripture?

Consider that when Martin Luther read these verses in the original Greek rather that the typical Latin, it sparked a revelations which led to the reformation.

If you were to do an academic research this topic and these verses today, it would take years to comb through literally thousands of resources which have been written on the subject.

For the purpose of this message, I’m going to have to try to somehow make this simple.

I’m going to give three possible answers to the question, but in the end we are going to find that the answer is “all of the above”.

Faith is believing, belonging and obeying.

That is, none of these answers is adequate, exclusive of the others.

If you had to sum it up in just one word, a good word might be “trusting”.

But the word, “trust” has a number of different nuances, which is why it works so well.

So lets look at them separately to get the whole picture.

Faith as believing

John 3:16 ESV

16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Believing is realizing.

We see all through the New Testament that faith is described as believing.

John 3:16 is probably the most common scripture that we use to tell people about becoming a Christian.

But what are people supposed to think it means to believe?

At face value, it would seem to mean that they simply accept what you are saying as true.

“Sure, I believe in Jesus,” they might say.

But then you want to be sure that they really understand what they are saying so you might use one of any number of evangelistic tools to explain the gospel.

The bridge diagram.

The Romans Road.

The Four Spiritual Laws.

Even “the sinner’s prayer” is a tool.

All of these tools have one purpose, to help people comprehend their need for Christ and to invite Jesus into their life.

Faith begins with a realization about your need for God, God’s love for you and that Jesus made it all possible.

Believing is responding.

Romans 10:9–10 ESV

9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.

It may seem like a simple thing to believe in Jesus, but there is so much going on on multiple levels.

You mind is connecting the dots about who Jesus is and what he has done for you.

You emotions are feeling gratitude and responding to God’s love.

Spiritually, you are getting revelation; the lights are coming on and your coming alive.

In the natural, your confession, actually speaking with your mouth has creative power to change the atmosphere.

Oh yes, and there is spiritual battle and resistance happening too, so keep it up!

Believing is relational.

One of the important aspects of believing is that it is a personal individual response.

You can’t believe for anyone else, and no one can make you believe.

This was one of the most powerful results of the reformation - the idea that each person needs to have their own faith.

God doesn’t have any grand-children; only children.

You may have had faith modeled by a friend, a parent or grandparent, but at some point you have to decide to have your own relationship with God.

In what way is believing like trusting?

It is because of relationship.

Why are you inclined to believe one person and not another?

Because you either know them or you don’t know them.

You determine whether or not you can trust them by what you know.

And if you trust them, you will also believe them or believe in them.

That’s relational language and it demonstrates that faith is not just believing doctrine or agreeing to a creed, but it is a relational walk with God, through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

For a lot of Evangelical Christians, that pretty much sums it up, but you’ll notice that I have two thirds of an outline left.

I don’t think we have fully defined faith.

And the Bible has more to say.

Faith as belonging

Have you ever noticed that when you talk to people about matters of faith the first thing they want to know is what group you belong to:

What church are you from? What denomination?

What does your church believe (usually means what are you allowed to do or not allowed to do)?

In some settings your religion is tied to ethnicity or family background?

Some places where I have travelled, calling yourself a Christian has little or nothing to do with faith; it’s a social category.

In Protestant Evangelical churches we place the greatest emphasis on a person’s own decision to follow Christ.

However, historically, in most of Christianity the emphasis has been on covenant - belonging to God.

We belong to God.

1 Peter 2:9–10 ESV

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Peter is writing to believers in Christ, but he is using the language of the Old Testament to draw a parallel.

Israel was God’s chosen people.

Out of all of the nations of the earth, God chose a people for Himself.

He rescued them from Egypt and brought them into the promised land.

He made covenant with them and they became the people of God.

Those who are in Christ are also God’s covenant people.

He has rescued us from spiritual darkness and brought us into light and truth.

We relate to God as our Father; that’s another way of saying that we belong to His family.

We have an inseparable bond like that of blood, DNA and life itself that ties us to God and to one another.

I’m a Kolb. Around here that mean’s something. Usually I find, it has a positive connotation. But there are also some Kolb traits, that I might try to distance myself from. The bottom line is, for better or for worse, I belong to a family.

As a Christian, you belong to a family too. You may not like all of the assumptions that people might make about you because of it, but nevertheless its true. It’s not a matter of personal choice; you are part of something much bigger than you. You belong. Might as well make the best of it!

Hopefully the language of belonging helps take the focus of my faith off of me and puts it on to God where our focus should be.

We belong to the Body of Christ.

Romans 12:4–5 ESV

4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

As Gentiles, the way that we get to be the people of God is through Jesus who purchased our redemption with His own blood on the cross.

Our covenant with God is through Jesus.

Talk about belonging… the Bible refers to us as being in Christ!

We are the Body of Christ; members of Christ and of one another.

Before salvation came to be understood as a personal, individual experience it was understood as a corporate one.

In the older traditions, people were saved by belonging to the church.

It wasn’t a matter of belonging to one church or another.

In most places there was only one church and you either belonged or you didn’t.

In most cases your family belonged to the church and you took the steps as you were required to take them to become a member too.

Some of us left those traditions behind when we made a personal commitment to Christ because they seemed empty and meaningless.

That may be how they seemed but there are also some very rich and meaningful traditions in the older denominations.

They understood corporateness and covenant.

There is value in belonging to God and to one another.

In the last few decades I have heard of some who have left Evangelicalism to pursue older forms of Christianity because what they were raised in had lost its meaning and they found it in the rituals and the liturgy of the more traditional church.

I guess the moral of the story is that what’s old may be new again and that we all need each other.

To belong is to be faithful.

Really understand what faith means, we need to look more closely at what Paul wrote in Romans 1:16-17

Paul is quoting the OT prophet Habakkuk.

Habakkuk 2:2–4 ESV

2 And the Lord answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. 3 For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay. 4 “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.

Habakkuk would have been a contemporary of Jeremiah and Daniel who prophesied in the early years of the exile.

He asked the same question as Jeremiah and Daniel: How long is this going to last?

God’s answer is, “you better write this down, because it is going to be a long time.”

God’s deliverance is certain because evil is jut that, evil - over inflated ego creating a distortion of the truth.

In contrast, the one who is going to endure and hold true through these rough times will exhibit the quality of faithfulness - holding fast to the covenant with God.

I thought we were talking about faith? What does faithfulness have to do with faith?

Actually, they are the same word here in the Hebrew and also in Greek.

Here in Habakkuk, there is a pronoun that makes it clear that we are talking about man’s faithfulness to God.

But in Roman’s the pronouns are conspicuously absent, making us wonder whose faithfulness or whose faith are we even talking about.

And now you see why this passage is studied and debated so much.

Add to that the fact that faith or faithfulness mentioned twice.

Some like to point out that it is God's faithfulness that is most important, and the context would seem to bear that out because it come between God’s power and God’s wrath so it should be God’s faith or faithfulness that makes us righteous.

Others like Martin Luther point out that while it is certainly God’s righteousness that we receive, faith is our minimal part that we exercise to receive it, after all Paul is quoting Habakkuk where man’s faith is the context.

Still others would say that it is some combination of the two; perhaps, “from God’s faith to ours,” or “from our faith to God’s faithfulness.”

I’m thinking that Paul left out the pronouns for a reason.

It’s good for us to wrestle with the question of “What is God’s part and what is my part?”

After all, that’s what we do in relationships.

Isn’t belonging also a trust?

We use the word trust with regard to property or finances being left for the use or care by another.

A trust is fiduciary relationship with a purpose.

Belonging is a responsibility with which we are entrusted.

God has already done His part, now we ought to do ours.

Faith as obeying

James 2:18–24 ESV

18 But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! 20 Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

The classic theological argument when it comes to faith is faith vs. works.

The leaders of the reformation made it their declaration that salvation is only by God’s grace and only by faith.

Solo Scriptura, Solo Gratia, Solo Fides.

Understand that this declaration was in response to corruption in the church where people were literally being made to pay money to ensure their salvation or that of their loved ones.

But now, hundreds of year later is seems to have evolved into the attitude where, “I don’t have to do anything to earn salvation.”

Which is technically true, but the independent attitude behind it couldn’t be further form the truth.

Obedience is not optional.

When we ask, “What does it mean to live by faith?” do we mean, “what do I have to do to get saved?”

And if by “getting saved” we mean being approved by God and going to heaven when we die.

The answer often implies a sort of minimum requirement to which we as Protestants reply, “ all you need is faith!”

You don’t have to go to church.

You don’t have to pay tithes.

You would do well to avoid sin, but nobody is keeping track.

You should pray and read your Bible, but that doesn’t save you, it’s just a suggestion.

Do you see why so many people are going back to more traditional forms of Christianity or abandoning it altogether?

In our efforts to make Christianity more palatable, we have made it bland.

Earlier in the year, in the series “redeeming the time” I shared about a model for discipleship which focuses on making disciples.

One of the things that I learned is that discipleship happens naturally where there is an emphasis on obedience.

In other words, we don’t just have Bible study but we each look for something to do as a result of what we have learned.

Then when we come back next week we hold each other accountable for what we have done with what we learned.

Yes, salvation is by grace through faith, but obedience is not optional.

If there is no obedience, it makes you wonder what kind of faith is operating; certainly not a faith that is synonymous with faithfulness.

If faith is merely believing, but no transformation is occuring, then you have to wonder if the person really believes what they say they believe?

Or if faith is merely belonging, but there is no relationship or growth, then there is no life flowing through that connection and you might conclude that faith is dead.

Obedience is the result of faith.

James addresses the relationship between faith and works as a causal relationship - faith leads naturally to good works.

Its true, you can’t get to heaven by doing good, but if your not doing good it makes everyone wonder which direction you are headed.

Why is this distinction important? Because a religion which emphasizes works might make you want to skip the faith part and just do the works.

Sometimes it’s easier to just do what’s expected than to wrestle through what it means to be in relationship with God.

That’s right, good works is not necessarily the same as obedience.

James uses the example of Abraham offering Isaac as a sacrifice.

Offering you son as a burnt offering is not a good work; it was only good because Abraham was obeying God.

You see, James isn’t talking about the things we may do to try to look good, he’s talking about the things we do because God says so.

That puts a twist on the faith vs. works argument. Sure, only faith saves us, not works.

But real, living and active faith produces fruit which is also good works.

Just make sure that you understand which is producing which.

Obedience is how we grow in faith.

So do good works ever lead to faith?

I know, trick question.

We have already established that faith comes first and obedience is a result.

But it is also true that obedience both completes our faith and increases it.

So obedience (not just dead works) produces faith because it makes faith grow.

Returning to the original question; “What does it mean to live by faith?”

Living in this context is not just “not dying”.

Living is being alive, having the life of God flowing through you and increasing in oth vitality and effectiveness.

John 15:4–5 ESV

4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

This is an illustration of what faith really is; not just believing but belonging or abiding as it is called here.

And not just abiding but obeying, or producing the fruit of abiding.

The more you learn to know God, the more you are transformed by that knowledge.

It impacts not only you but the world around you through you.

Obedience is another form of trust.

It is putting your full weight on a chair because you trust it will hold you.

it is the confidence that allows you to work in harmony with God.

God can work through you because not only do you trust Him, but He can trust you.

And so the cycle of faith is complete- from God’s faithfulness to our faith and from our faithfulness to God’ faith.

Questions for reflection:

As we prepare for communion, think about believing, belonging and obeying. In what area is God asking you to trust Him more?

As we receive the bread, consider the Body of Christ. By receiving the bread we are declaring that we are part of Christ’s Body. We are renewing our covenant with Him and with each other. What does it mean to you to be in covenant?

As we receive the cup, consider the life of God that He has given to you. Jesus gave His life so that you could have life, and that more abundantly. What does it mean to live, truly live, by faith? How does taking this cup make you more alive?