Sermon Tone Analysis

Opening Remarks

Good morning,

So glad everyone could join us, both in person and online

I hope you have enjoyed your week and have come hungry for God’s word

Please stick around after services for our annual meeting: should be 15 minutes or less

I hope you were all able to read your assignments this week from Romans 1:16-17 and meditate on them.

Our assembly challenge in January is to be unashamed of Christ, and there are few better places to start than thinking on the righteousness of God in Christ.

So I pray that your assignment this week led to deep communion with the Holy Spirit as you reflected on how Jesus revealed the righteousness of God to the world.

Your assignments for next week:

Assignments: 1:18-32

The Heartbeat of Romans

God’s righteousness is the heartbeat of Romans.

Therefore, the primary proposition of Paul’s letter is that God’s righteousness is revealed in the good news of the Messiah to powerfully save the world.

This is the reason why Paul is coming to Rome, as a herald of this powerful gospel that is for everyone.

He is not ashamed of this gospel because it has the power to make the world right by unveiling God’s righteousness.

Genre

We need to note an important observation upfront about the deliberative nature of this discourse: Paul employs deliberative rhetoric to call his audience to weigh his words and decide the appropriate course of action in response to what he proposes.

For this reason, Paul lays the weightiest matter at the forefront of his message and calls on the Christians in Rome to consider what course of action is right and honorable in light of the righteousness of God that has been revealed in Christ.

He tells them that he is not ashamed of the gospel, inferring a critical question: “are you?”

We can understand the kind of argument Paul is making when we consider what the renowned Roman rhetorician, Marcus Fabius Quintilian, taught about deliberative rhetoric: he said that “the appeal to 'honor' is a higher form of deliberative rhetoric than appeals to mere ‘expediency’ or ‘personal benefit’; such oratory should address themes of 'righteousness’, ‘justice’, ‘piety’, ‘equity’, and ‘mercy’.”

(Institutio Oratio 3.8.25–29).

And this is exactly what we see Paul doing: he begins chapters 1–11 with reasoning how God is impartial, faithful, and just in regard to his promises, and merciful and equitable towards both Jews and Gentiles.

God’s righteousness then becomes the grounds on which Paul argues in chapters 12-15 that his audience must likewise be just, merciful, equitable, pious, and righteous.

And, by beginning this discourse in verse 16 by saying that he is unashamed of the gospel, he is calling them to consider what is honorable in light of the good news of Jesus Christ.

Are they ashamed of what he has done?

In other words, the righteousness of God that has been revealed in Christ changes everything for the way that we live when we believe the good news of Christ.

One more critical observation about the genre we are reading is the importance of propositional statements.

In fact, it really is hard to overestimate their importance in rhetorical discourses because they set the entire thematic course that will then be advanced by their authors coming series of arguments.

For example, the stress on the gospel being “the power of God for salvation to the Jew first as well as the Gentile” foreshadows the arguments in chapters 9–11.

And the reference to “living by faith” in verse 17 is precisely what chapters 12–15 will focus on.

Most importantly, the reference to the righteousness of God is crucial to chapters 1–8, where Paul defends God’s righteousness in view of human depravity and his redemptive plan in Christ.

But no one should miss that the one word, with its cognates, which gets repeated four times in this propositio is faith/faithfulness/believing.

This whole discourse will be an attempt to instruct about the nature of faith and faithfulness.

Considering how many contravening opinions there are about the meaning of “faith” there are circulating the Church today, this makes Romans uniquely important for our time.

We need to recover the meaning of “Biblical faith” because it is on the grounds of “faith” that righteousness comes.

God’s Righteousness Revealed

The primary proposition of Paul’s letter to the Romans is that God’s righteousness is revealed in the good news of the Messiah to powerfully save the world.

I must drive this point home hard in light of just how unpopular it has become to talk about righteousness today.

Paul is saying that the good news of Jesus is that God has saved us in his righteousness.

Now what?

What is the right and honorable response to this salvation?

So now that we have stated this proposition, let’s deal with the first part of Paul’s statement and then break it down to digest it and make some applications for life today.

Verse 16: “For”

This word is called a “logical conjunction” and is used in Greek to explain the reason for the previous statement.

In our case, Paul is explaining his eagerness to preach to the Christians in Rome.

So this is why we took three weeks to deal with the movement of this first discourse and Paul’s extended introduction to the Christians in Rome.

Without understanding Paul’s purpose for writing, it is very difficult to understand his primary proposition for the letter because it is the logical extension of his introduction.

Paul wants to preach the gospel to the Christians in Rome because it is the unabashed power of God for their salvation!

Verse 16: “I am not ashamed of the gospel”

Paul explains the reason why he wants to preach the gospel to the Christians in Rome: he isn’t ashamed of the gospel.

Ben Witherington suggests that this is a figure of speech and form of verbal irony, called “litotes”, which uses understatement to emphasize points by stating a negative (often double negatives) to further affirm a positive, noting that : “Paul begins his discussion in verse 16 with the issue of shame.

It could be that we have the rhetorical device litotes, saying in a more reserved and negative way what is meant as a positive, namely, ‘I am proud of the gospel’.”

In other words, Paul implies that, for those who believe the gospel is honorable, the right course of action is to preach the good news of Jesus.

And even more than this, to disconnect oneself from this work is to admit that one is ashamed of the gospel.

This is a deliberate echo of Jesus words in Mark:

So Paul stands in line with Jesus in saying that the good news of God’s salvation calls his people into active gospel-service.

Verse 16: “Because it is the power of God that brings salvation”

The good news about Jesus is not mere words; it is power.

Jesus’ resurrection was not simply “one miracle among others”, it is the very epiphany of God’s redemptive power itself; in other words, it reveals the powerful salvation accomplished for us by God through his Son Jesus Christ.

And it calls us into this salvation through faith so that when we believe in the risen-Jesus and follow him, we enter true life through his powerful grace.

Paul does not mean that he didn’t use words to preach the gospel.

He is not saying that his gospel consisted only of miracles.

Nor does he mean to say that his words were awkward, unskilled, or even unconvincing.

I’ve heard some make these mistakes, often to disastrous results.

We know this isn’t what Paul meant because he acknowledges in verse 6 that he is speaking words of spiritual wisdom.

Instead, Paul is saying that the power of the gospel is not in the brilliance, wisdom, or persuasiveness of its words, but in the mighty resurrection of Christ that reveals our salvation in God’s righteousness.

Similarly, the Greek word for “power” (dynamis) has sometimes elicited the reaction that the gospel is dynamite!

This is quite out of place.

The emphasis here is not on "blowing false religions out of the way”, “blasting a trail of success”, or anything like this.

Paul is clear about what sense the gospel is “power”: the gospel reveals something not to be found anywhere else — a righteousness from God!

For this reason I will say that someone who is disinterested in righteousness - when this word is properly understood - cannot be saved by the gospel because they will trample under their feet the grace of God.

And Scripture has much to say about this, though it is not our topic for today.

Therefore, when we preach the gospel we are announcing the righteousness of God that saves people from their sin and delivers them from the powers of darkness.

This is the good news of Jesus: God has acted in his righteousness to save us from sin and death.

Now we have encountered for the first time in Romans the term “salvation” (σωτηρίαν - sōtēria), which is the term Paul uses exclusively in reference to our relationship with God.

Paul always uses other terms when he is talking about rescue from ordinary temporal dangers.

For Paul, “Salvation” has “past”, “present”, and “future” dimensions.

Paul frequently uses it to speak of deliverance from future judgment:

“Salvation” also involves a present experience, the a result of which comes from what God has already done in Christ on the cross, as is often the case for Paul:

2 Corinthians 6:2 (CSB)

For he says: At an acceptable time I listened to you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.

See, now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation!

So, one can say “I have been saved”, “I am being saved”, or “I will be saved,” but not “I am saved,” if by that one means that salvation is already complete.

We see salvation operating at three distinct levels:

Salvation was accomplished by Christ through the cross at his resurrection

Salvation is being accomplished by the Holy Spirit, who renews us day by day

Salvation will come when Christ returns and delivers us from the power of sin and death

We see all three levels of salvation operating simultaneously in us as we trust in the cross of Christ, walk in the Holy Spirit, and fix our hope firmly upon the glory that will be revealed when Christ returns.

About this salvation Paul is also exceedingly clear: our condition as fallen creatures is so severe that salvation is fully beyond the reach of our own power.

Left to our own strength, we will surely all come under God’s wrath, which Paul explains in the next movement of his discourse.

You and I have rebelled against God and committed various acts of evil, in many cases even justifying our sins to ourselves (thereby “suppressing the truth in our unrighteousness”).

How can we save ourselves from the righteous wrath of God?

The answer to how God saves both Jews and Gentiles by his righteousness will be one of the major themes of Romans 1:18-11:32, which is indicated by this last verse:

Verse 16: “to everyone who believes”

Paul now explains that the gospel brings salvation to those who “believe”.

Two observations are vital:

First, the link in this sentence is clear in Greek:

“παντὶ τῷ πιστεύοντι”

“Everyone” and “believes” are in the same form, demonstrating that Paul is arguing that salvation belongs to those who believe.

Perhaps this is why so many people dislike Paul so much, because he was exceedingly clear that salvation requires faith.

This excludes the idea of universalism, wherein Jesus saves the world irrespective of their response to him.