Romans 1 (Part 2)

Romans — Steve Gregg

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Romans 1 (Part 2)

RomansSteve Gregg

In this discussion, Steve Gregg offers insights into the second part of Romans 1, exploring the meaning of phrases and words in their historical and biblical context. He highlights the power of the Gospel message, which reveals the righteousness of God that is obtained through faith in Jesus Christ. Gregg also emphasizes the concept of faithfulness as a covenantal relationship between God and believers, where both parties are expected to fulfill their obligations, rather than equating it with perfect performance or earning salvation through works. Ultimately, he encourages his audience to critically examine traditional and denominational beliefs in light of biblical truth.

Transcript

Let's look at Romans 1, 8-15 again. We read this material but only commented on the first line of it last time. Beginning at verse 8. Now, I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you, but was hindered until now, that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other Gentiles.

I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to unwise. So as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also. Now, once again, we're just looking at some personal statements of his, especially about his own inner thought life.

He says he thanks God for these people because their faith is well-known worldwide. They were a world-famous church. He says your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.

Now, here we have to deal with the fact that we encounter from time to time in Scripture that the term the whole world in Scripture wouldn't have the same expansive meaning that it would have in our modern speech. When we talk about the whole world, we're much aware of the many continents and the many countries around the world that Paul didn't know about and that no one knew about really, and I should say no one in the Roman Empire knew about. They knew there was an India and a China.

They didn't know there was an Australia or a North America. And so when we say the whole world, we're thinking of something much more, as we would say, global. They may not have even fully understood globe, you know, although they might have.

The main thing is that when they said the whole world, they weren't trying to be global. They were just trying, they're using the word the way it would be commonly used in their time, which meant the whole Roman world. It didn't even include places they knew existed like India and China.

Though, interestingly enough, there were Christians in India by this time because Thomas the apostle went to India. I'm not sure if it was by this time, but before his life was over, Thomas went to India and there were Christians there, but it's unlikely that the Christians in India knew about the church in Rome. So when Paul says your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world, he's not even thinking about all the parts of the world that he was knowledgeable of.

He means the whole Roman world. We see this, and it's very important because sometimes when we read passages that we take as eschatological, that is things that we think is talking about the whole world in the end times, the only reason we think of it as end times is because we're taking the whole world more modernly. Whereas many times things that the Bible says will affect the whole world are really only affecting the Roman world.

For example, in Luke chapter two, the first verse says, and it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar, Augustus, that all the world should be registered. Really? All the world? Not the way we speak of it. He wasn't going to send agents over to South America to register the Mayans and the Incas.

He wasn't interested in the whole world in that sense. The whole Roman world, clearly Caesar only had jurisdiction over the Roman empire and the whole world means the Roman empire in this particular case and in similar cases. In Colossians, Paul uses the expression again in a way that we should understand the same way in Colossians chapter one and verse six, he talks about the gospel, which has come to you as it has in all the world and is bringing forth fruit.

So again, all the world, the whole world, we speak somewhat more literally and more globally when we use a term like that in the Bible, it means the whole Roman world. So when Paul says that the Roman church's faith is spoken of through the whole world, it means that the whole empire has become aware that there is a church in Rome. It's a pagan empire, but they've become aware that in the capital city there are people who worship and follow Jesus Christ as Lord instead of, or in addition to Caesar.

Verse nine, for God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his son. Now he's about to testify to the fact that he always remembers them and prays for them and thanks God for them. And he says, God is my witness.

Why? Well, he wants them to know first of all, he's not just being polite. You know, when someone says, pray for me, you can say, oh yeah, I'll pray for you. Well, hopefully you do remember to do so, but there's a good chance you won't remember.

Unfortunately, we should be better about that than we are. But, but, but if Paul says, I pray for you all the time, he says, God is my witness about this. I mean, he's basically saying, you don't know if I do or not, of course, because I'm talking about something that's very private, but God who knows all things private can bear witness to the fact that I'm telling the truth.

This is not just, I'm not just being polite. I'm not just having a courteous opening saying that I pray for you and thank God for you all the time. God is my witness about this.

This is true, literally true. And I would even, uh, you know, state this before God himself and know that he would say, yep, I know that's true, Paul. You do do that.

And he says, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel. Now I serve with my spirit suggests, first of all, he's not just doing a job for money. He's not just doing it to please men by any means.

He's doing it from an inward impulse, my spirit. It's a spiritual thing and it's a heartfelt thing. It's an inward thing.

His service to God comes from inside him. There's not some kind of a, uh, an obligation imposed on him merely from outside. Like he's got the duty to do it.

And so what else is he going to do now? He's doing it from an inward impulse, his spirit within him, uh, a spiritual motivation within him drives him in his ministry. It's not, he's not a mercenary for example, or he's not doing it legalistically or out of a sense of mere duty. He's doing it from what is inside him, what he is inside his spirit is that from which his ministry is being generated.

And he doesn't mean by that in contrast to God's spirit, of course he, Paul would make it very clear that it's the Holy spirit that he's operating through. And he does say so in other times and other places, but he's simply emphasizing here his spirit as the inward part of them as opposed to the outward. I'm not just an externalistically motivated person.

I'm, I'm down to the bone, to the core, right from my heart of hearts. This is where, what I'm all about is serving God in the gospel. That's what he means when he says I serve with my spirit that without ceasing, and this is what he, he calls God to bear witness of this, that without ceasing, I make mention of you always in my prayers.

Now this word without ceasing, we probably are familiar with from another passage, 1st Thessalonians 5, 17 and 18, where we're told to pray without ceasing. Probably most Christians are familiar with that verse from Paul, 1st Thessalonians 118, pray without ceasing or 17 and 18, and in everything give thanks. There's two verses in a row there in 1st Thessalonians 5, 17 and 18 says pray without ceasing in everything give thanks, and Paul says, well I do give thanks first of all, and without ceasing I make mention of you in my prayers.

Now what does he make mention of them? I, you know, he has never been to Rome. He doesn't know everything that's going on. How does he find content for his prayers for them? Well, he doesn't say that he goes into great detail in his prayers.

He probably prays for them similar things to what he prays for the Ephesians and for the Colossians, and we do have some representation in those epistles of the kinds of things he prays for Christians, and you know, again, if you're familiar with Colossians and Ephesians, we have samples of how Paul prays for those churches. For example, in chapter 3 of Ephesians, he says in verse 14, for this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, this is the kind of thing he prays for churches, probably for the Church of Rome as well, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width, the length, the depth, and the height to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God, and this kind of thing. This is how he prays for churches.

We don't know if he's praying for each individual and things he knows about them as individuals. If he did that for every church and every individual in the church, he certainly would be praying without ceasing. We have to understand that without ceasing doesn't mean every moment of my existence, and this is how it's often misunderstood.

When people say, well, how can I pray without ceasing? You know, I've got a job to do. I've got relationships to conduct. I've got other things to pay attention to.

How can I pray without ceasing? And the answer is usually given, which I have never felt was very adequate, is, well, you're not praying all the time, but you always have to be in an attitude of prayer all the time, so that 24-7 you're in an attitude of prayer. Well, I mean, this may lighten the load a little bit, but it's not necessarily true to what Paul said. Paul said pray without ceasing.

He didn't say be in an attitude of prayer. What is an attitude of prayer? Isn't prayer the offering up of petitions toward God? Isn't that the very definition of prayer? I can't at every moment be consciously offering up petitions because there are other things that call for my attention. So how can I pray without ceasing? And by the way, if praying without ceasing literally meant you never come to an end of your prayer time, what happens when you go to bed at night? Don't you cease to pray for a little while you sleep? If you literally do something without ceasing, you're doing it around the clock because you can't stop or else you've ceased.

Now, that's not what he means. I don't believe that when he says without ceasing, he means 24-7. I think what he means is I don't give up praying for you.

There are things that we have ceased to pray for because we prayed for them before and they didn't happen soon enough, so we just, they're not on our list anymore. We don't pray 24-7, but when we pray, we have certain things that we pray for. Some we pray for regularly.

Some we've been praying for for a long time. There's some people I've been praying for for over a decade, probably over two decades, and I haven't seen what I'm looking for in terms of answers to those prayers. I don't stop praying for them though.

I do go to bed and I cease praying then. In fact, I don't even pray for them all day long. Praying without ceasing doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have a moment's rest from praying.

It means that you don't stop praying for people because of loss of interest in them or loss of hope for them or the conviction that your prayers aren't gonna be answered. You keep going. Don't give up.

And this is, it's like what Jesus, there's a parable of Jesus in the 18th chapter of Luke and Luke introduces the parable. So the woman who petitioned the reluctant judge and in the opening verse of Luke 18 says, Jesus told them a parable to the effect that men ought always to pray and not to lose heart. Or the King James says not to faint.

But and then he tells about this woman who kept going to this judge saying, you know, avenge me of my adversary. And finally he caved in and gave her what she wanted, though he couldn't have cared less about her. And Jesus said, well, listen, if she got what she wanted from this judge who couldn't care less, how much more is your father who does care going to be responsive to your petitions? But the point is she prayed without ceasing.

Now she did go home and eat and fix meals and things, I'm sure, and sleep. But she kept at it. She kept coming back.

She kept pestering him. And that's what it says in Luke 18. One is meant to teach us that we should always pray and not lose heart.

That doesn't mean we're praying 24 seven. It means that we're not giving up on the things we're praying for. And when Paul says, I, without ceasing, I mentioned you, it doesn't mean that every moment, every day, he's mentioning their names, the church in Rome, the church in Rome, Aristobulus, Marcus, Priscilla and Aquila.

I mean, he's making mention of them all day long. That's not what he means. What he means is I have not ever expunged you and your concerns and your church from my prayer list.

When I pray, you're still there. I haven't stopped praying for you. And, and I think that's what it means to pray without ceasing.

Not to, again, it's not literally you never stop. It's that you never are finished praying for them. You never have given up on him.

And he's praying for them. Now it says he, I mentioned you in my prayers. He doesn't say what he mentions, but he has already said he gives thanks for them.

So maybe mainly what he mentions in his prayers is thanking God that there's a church surviving in that pagan city of Rome and that it's a famous church, that his faith is sincere and virulent enough that people all over empire have heard about it. That's something to thank God for. And that might be what he makes mention of them in his prayers about thanking God for them.

But he also has a certain request that he's been praying regularly about with reference to them, but it has more to do with his opportunity to reach them. He says, making request verse 10, if by some means now at last, I may find a way in the will of God to come to you. So he says, that's one thing I've been praying all the time about.

That might even be the way he's making mention of them. Not so much making mention of their needs per se as saying, God, the church of Rome, I want to go there. Give me an opportunity to go to the church of Rome.

I want to minister to the church of Rome. That's making mention of them in his prayers. And that might, I mean, that's the only petition he identifies.

It's probably not the only petition he made for them, but it's the only one he mentioned. So he's been praying for a long time to come to them. And he says, because I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift that you may be established.

And by spiritual gifts, he's probably not using that in the way that we think of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. He's probably not talking about, I want to come there and lay hands on you and you receive the gift of prophecy or the gift of, you know, tongues or something like that. He's probably meaning that I want to bestow something freely as a gift to you of a spiritual nature.

I want to edify you. I want you to be spiritually enriched through my ministry among you and that you'd be more established as he uses term in the end of the verse, but that's not the end of it. Part of my prayer and part of the reason for my prayer, verse 12, is that is that I may be encouraged together with you.

In other words, it's not just, I think I've got, I'm the hotshot who has something you need. I need you too. I need to be encouraged.

I'm the apostle Paul. I'm the supercharged Christian who can raise the dead and heal the sick. And although I'm fairly contemptible in my personal appearance, my letters are strong and weighty and everyone knows I'm a mighty man of God, but you know what? I need to be encouraged too.

It gets discouraging sometimes. And I'm looking forward to being with you. And it is certainly encouraging to encounter zealous Christians.

When you spend a lot of your time in a world where those around you are not so zealous Christians, either they're not Christians or they're barely, you know, Christians. And when you come to into the presence of people who are zealous Christians and you're one too, it's uplifting. You feel like, wow, I can go on.

Life is worth living again. There's fellowship. There's like-minded people around.

And Paul says, I have something to give to you, but you have something to give to me. That's what fellowship is. It's not just a top-down, you know, a download of what I know into your heads.

And now we've had fellowship. It's an interpersonal, mutual encouragement and upbuilding. And they said, that's what I'm looking forward to having happen with us, both you and me by our mutual.

Verse 13, I don't want you to be yet unaware brethren, that I often planned to come to you. I don't only pray, but I actually make plans. I've been praying I could come to you.

And I've actually made plans several times. Interestingly, his plans were thwarted, or at least they've been delayed. Maybe not thwarted, but at least delayed.

He's got sort of a tentative plan to come to them, but he's had something. He says, I've been hindered until now. And he doesn't suggest in this place what it is that has hindered him.

Now, when he was writing to the Thessalonians, in 1st Thessalonians, I think it's chapter 3, he said, I've been wanting to come back to you and minister among you, but Satan hindered me. You might remember that. Paul had been driven out of Thessalonica by the Jews, driving him out of town.

And when he left, he wanted to come back. He said, but Satan hindered probably the synagogue of Satan. Those who say they're Jews and are not, but lie as Jesus called them.

Those who were opposing the gospel were Satan's agents and they were preventing Paul from coming back. So we know on some occasions, Paul couldn't go where he wanted to go because as he said, Satan was hindering him. But that wasn't the issue here.

He said, I've planned many times to come to you, but I've been hindered. But we know that that's not what hindered him. It wasn't the devil because we've already seen in chapter 15, he tells us what hindered him from coming.

In chapter 15, he says that he's made it his aim to preach the gospel where no one else has preached it before because he doesn't want to build on somebody else's foundation. If someone else has planted the church, he'd rather plant a church somewhere else rather than go and build on their foundation. That's what he says.

Now, Paul laid foundations that others built on. In first Corinthians three, he said he laid the foundation of the church of Corinth and Apollos and others came and built on that foundation. He had no objection to that.

That should happen. Once the foundation is laid, someone should build on it. But Paul wanted to lay new foundations rather than build on someone else's foundation.

Let someone else build on those foundations. I want to plant churches where they don't exist. That was his policy.

And he says in verse 22 of Romans 15, Romans 15 20 says, for this reason, I also have been much hindered from coming to you. So there's the reason he was hindered because he's been busy planting churches where there weren't churches. There was already a church in Rome.

So going there couldn't be his top priority. Someone else had planted that church earlier. So although he longed to go there, he didn't long to go there sufficiently to overturn his commitment.

That there's a lot of places that the gospel has not been preached and that's my priority. Now in chapter 15, he says that in verse 19 and 20, he says, in mighty signs and in 19, he says mighty signs and wonders by the power of the spirit of God. So that from Jerusalem and roundabout to Illyricum, which is just north of Greece, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.

So he's, he's kind of covered the ground from Jerusalem to through Greece. Now what's next further West is Rome. So he can now come.

He's been busy preaching from Jerusalem to Illyricum working his way West and he's covered all the ground. I've fully preached the gospel. He says, so I've made it my aim to preach the gospel.

Verse 20, not where Christ is named, lest I should build an unman's foundation. But he says in verse 23, 15, 23, but now no longer having any place in these parts and having a great desire these many years to come to you. Whenever I journey to Spain, I'll come to you.

I've, I've kind of fulfilled the, my mission in this area. Can you imagine being a one man without a car or an airplane and maybe not even a horse, who knows? And he can say after what's probably 25 years of ministry at this point, if that maybe less, less than that of ministry, you've been saved for 25 years, maybe at this point pushing it. And you know, maybe he's been in the ministry for 20 years or less.

And he can say, you know, every place between Jerusalem and Yugoslavia, essentially all that area. I've, I've, I've planted churches through the whole area, the whole, all of Turkey, all of Syria, all of, you know, I've been to Cyprus. I planted church there.

One man and he's and his team, but you know, he says from Jerusalem all the way to Lyricum, which is again, north of Greece. I fully preached the gospel, all those places. And now there's no place left except further West or much further East.

But that wasn't the direction he felt called to go. So he's going to Rome next Spain after that, he hoped. Okay.

Back to chapter one. So he says, I've longed to come to you, but I've been hindered till now. And that is hindered by his other priorities to preach elsewhere that I might have some fruit among you also just as among the other Gentiles.

That is, I'm, I'm kind of used to bearing fruit in my ministry among Gentiles. And you're a big, a big vineyard, you know, Rome, you know, a big fish there. I want to go and have some fruit in that big apple along with the other Gentile places.

I've been bearing fruit. I'm a debtor. He says both to the Greeks and the barbarians, the wise and the unwise.

Oh, this is unusual. You'd think you'd say to the Greeks and the Jews, usually the, you know, racial contrasts that are mentioned are between the Jews and the Gentiles. And, and one might easily understand him saying, I'm a debtor to the Jews and the Gentiles, although more so to the Gentiles, because that's his apostleship.

He's an apostle of the Gentiles, but he still preached to Jews. So you might expect to say, I'm a, I'm a debtor to Jews. Of course, all apostles are Jewish and want to be, you know, reach the Jews, but I'm also to the Gentiles.

He leaves the Jews out of consideration in this particular statement, though they will come up later. And he says, I'm a debtor to the Greeks and the barbarians. Now in the Roman world, there were two kinds of people besides Jews.

There were Greeks and barbarians. Now Greeks weren't necessarily ethnic Greeks. They were the people who had the Greek culture, which was essentially the entire Roman empire, because Alexander the great 330 something years before Christ had conquered that region and had established Koine Greek as the language of the whole empire.

And although the Romans spoke Latin, the, the empire they conquered from the Greeks was a Greek speaking empire. So even in Rome, everyone spoke Greek and Latin, but everyone had to speak at least Greek some of the time because the whole empire was Greek speaking. And therefore anyone who spoke Greek in common usage was called a Greek.

And that's why it might be surprised when Jesus to the Jew first and also to the Greek, why doesn't it say to the Jew first and the Gentiles, certainly not all Gentiles are Greek, but Greek means, you know, all the rest of the people, you know, there's the Jews, they're their own little pocket subculture. And then there's everyone else in the Roman empire, they're the Greeks. So Paul often speaks of the Jew and the Greek, meaning the Greek is simply the Gentile of the Roman empire, but who are the barbarians then? Well, the barbarians are those nations that Rome had not managed to conquer, or at least the Greek culture had never pervaded.

Barbarians were basically anyone who didn't speak Greek. And there were some, of course, Paul's venues of ministry and most of the apostles were in the Roman empire, but beyond the borders, the Roman were the, were the barbarians, the other ones who eventually conquered Rome, the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Huns, you know, these were barbarians, they didn't speak Greek, they were like considered to be, you know, almost subhuman monsters, because they weren't Greek, they weren't cultivated, they weren't civilized. And Paul says, but I'm a debtor to anyone, Greek or barbarian, wise or unwise.

Now, it's not clear what he means by wise or unwise, certainly Greeks thought themselves wise, they were famous for that. But then we find later on, the Jews thought they were wise too, they're the instructors of babes, and of the foolish. So lots of people think themselves wise, I'm not sure who he had in mind was that the wise and the unwise, maybe he meant the educated and the uneducated.

In any case, he said, I'm, I'm kind of my ministry to anybody. He doesn't mention the Jews, because of course, Peter, James and John were especially apostles to the circumcision and Paul to the uncircumcision, but he ministered to Jews too. He just doesn't mention them here.

The point is, all these categories, perhaps could be found in Rome, there might even be some barbarians coming into business there. But he says, so as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also. Okay, no comment needed.

Isn't that amazing? That there's actually a line that I don't feel like I have to comment on. All right. Now we come to the really meat of Paul's argument.

From this point, he begins to launch into his presentation of his thesis. His thesis is the gospel. And the thesis of the gospel is the righteousness of God.

As we shall see, verses 16 and 17 are a great summary of his entire thesis for the book. I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it that is the gospel is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first, also for the Greek, for in it that is in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the just shall live by faith.

Now, this thesis statement is, I'm not ashamed of the gospel and the gospel. Let me tell you what I mean by the gospel. What's interesting is that Paul doesn't seem to be able to use the word gospel without going launching into some further description of excellences.

We found that in the beginning of chapter 1. In verse 20, he says, I'm separated unto the gospel of God. But he can't leave it there. He says, the gospel of God was promised before through the prophets and the holy scriptures.

And the gospel of God is concerning his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who is of the seed of David according to the flesh, but declared to be the son of God by the spirit of holiness through the resurrection of the dead. Whenever he mentions the gospel, he just goes off. He's a fanatic for the gospel.

And here also he says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. It, and there's two things that it is said about. First, it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes regardless of race.

And secondly, it or in it, the righteousness of God is revealed. So one of the statements is about the divine origin and power of the gospel. It is the power of God from God.

There's power in the gospel to do what's got to be done. And what's got to be done is people have got to be rescued. They've got to be transformed.

They've got to be restored to a right relationship with God. They've got to be, they've got to have their sin, not only forgiven, but conquered in their lives. This is, this requires some power and there's no human power can do that.

If there was, there wouldn't need to be a gospel. If man could do what the gospel can do without the gospel, God would never bother to send it. Why, why sacrifice Christ unnecessarily if there's some other way to do the same thing? What a poor economy that would be.

So it is what it's, it's got a power that no other source but God could provide. And it's in the message of the gospel, the word of God. It says in Hebrews chapter four and verse 12, the word of God is alive and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword.

It's a powerful thing. There's the word of God is a living thing. It is alive.

And in first Peter chapter one, Peter says, you are born again, not of corruptible seed, but by the word of God, which lives and abides forever. The word is a living thing. Why? Because it's so, it's so much a living thing that it can become flesh and dwell among us.

And we can see his glory. God's word is not just sound waves proceeding from his mouth that carry information expressed in syllabolic form. That's what my words are.

My words are interruptions of the silence, really my, you know, sound waves proceeding from my vocal apparatus and carrying information, hopefully. That's what all of our words are. God's words do that too.

Well, at least sometimes it breaks the silence because he's been known to speak out loud to men, not very often. His word carries information. That's what words do.

They're expression of thought. But more than that, there's another dimension to God's word. And that is that he empowers it.

It's a living thing. It's like a seed planted. The word of the king was planted like a seed in a heart of some kind.

Maybe it's like hard soil or rocky soil or weed soil or whatever, but it's a living thing that springs to life and grows and produces something. The word of God is an amazing thing when you think about it because it's so powerful that it created the universe. God said, let it be.

And it was, it says in Psalm 33, six, by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He spoke and it was so he commanded it stood fast. That's the power of the power that holds the nucleus of every atom together is they're held forth by the word of his power.

The Bible says in Hebrews chapter one, verse three or four, it says that he upholds all things or holds all things together by the word of his power. All these, all these subatomic particles in the nucleus of every atom that would propel themselves from each other. The, the protons, all of them having a positive charge should repel each other because they have the same charge, but they don't, they stay together.

Nuclear physicists don't really know why they say, well, they're held together by a subatomic glue. Well, that's just a way of saying something holds them together. We have no idea what it is, but the Bible says that he upholds all things by the word of his power.

His power prevents there from being nuclear fission on a billion times over every second from every atom in the universe. That's the power of his word. Now we're talking about his word in the gospel.

That's the power of God focused into a message that enters like a seed and bursts to life, grows up and reproduces the life of God in those who have had it planted in them in good soil. So being born again is not just becoming an adherent to a religious set of beliefs and say, now I'm in this church or that church because I now believe the way they do or they do. Being born again is having the life of God intrude into you like a seed plant inside and and reproducing the life of Jesus.

So that Paul says to the Galatians in Galatians 419, my little children with whom I travail in birth again until Christ is formed in you. Christ formed in you. Christ reproduced and come to formation in your life.

This is a supernatural message and it's the power of God. Why should Paul be ashamed? I'm not ashamed of it. What's to be ashamed of, you know? If you're at the ATM making a withdrawal and a thief comes up with a knife and wants to take your money and you've got a 44 magnum packed into your belt, you're not ashamed of that gun.

You know that that gun is more powerful than your opponent has. And the power of God, who could be ashamed of that in a world that might mock it? So what? Let them mock. They don't have the equal to it.

They only mock because they can't match it. If you're ashamed of the gospel, you don't know what the gospel is yet. It's the message from your creator which enables and empowers you to be in a relationship with him.

Something everybody needs and probably more people would like than have. But which we have because the gospel powerfully regenerates us, changes us, translates us out of the power of darkness into the kingdom of his son, takes us out of Adam into Christ, makes us a new creation. That's a powerful thing.

It's the power of God because nothing less than that can do it. I'm not ashamed of that message. It may be a minority opinion, but I'm not embarrassed in the least about it.

It's the power of God. How could you be embarrassed to be standing on that side? To everyone who believes. Now the power of God is only available to those who believe.

It may be a great powerful message, but it does no good to those who don't believe it. So it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. For the Jew first and also for the Greek.

There's three times in this letter that Paul says to the Jew first and also for the Greek. The other two times are in chapter two verses nine and ten. And I wanted to again say, I think I mentioned this in a previous lecture, but to the Jew first and also the Greek is not Paul emphasizing some priority placed on the Jew.

His readers know that Christ was a Jew. His readers know that the apostles were Jews. His readers know that the revelation of God to mankind was to the Jews first.

He's not trying to emphasize the priority of the Jew. He's simply saying it's not to the Jew only. That's the point that needed to be corrected.

No one had to be corrected on whether the message came to the Jews before it came to the Gentiles. That was a given. But what was often misunderstood, especially by the Jewish element, was that it's not to the Jew only.

It's just they had it first, but it's also for the Greeks. In other words, it's insane to the Jew first, also the Greek. The emphasis is it's to the Jew, but not exclusively, but also to the Greek.

Sure, the gospel and Christ came to the Jews first. That's just a chronological fact. That doesn't mean that we are somehow obliged.

I've actually heard preachers say we need to reach all the Jews before we reach the Gentiles in our community because it's to the Jew first. That's not what Paul's saying. He's not giving priority to the Jews.

It's just a historical fact. The Jews first heard it, had opportunity. Even when Paul preached his first recorded missionary sermon in Pisidian Antioch in Acts 13, when they scoffed at him and didn't receive him in the synagogue, he said, it was necessary that the gospel first come to you, meaning you Jews in the synagogue.

But since you reject it and count yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we go to the Gentiles. So again, the Jews got the first opportunity. It was just, well, for one thing, when Paul came to a Gentile area, he didn't have a place to preach as readily as the synagogue.

He's a visiting rabbi. They'll let him speak. And so there was a ready audience.

The first audience in every Gentile town Paul went to was the Jewish audience in the synagogue, but not just Jews. There were always God-fearing Gentiles, and they were always the most receptive of his audience, which is why he attracted more Gentiles than Jews to his preaching. But the ones he first attracted were Gentiles in the synagogue, already primed to believe in the true God and to have some sympathy for God's ways and so forth, because they'd been somewhat conditioned by their connection to the synagogue.

But the Jew first doesn't mean it's God's priority. It means chronologically the gospel simply has come to the Jews first in almost every land, and secondly to the Gentiles. But the point he's making is, if you think it's for the Jew only, you've got another thing coming.

God's got big plans for the Gentiles too. And just the fact that the Jews got it first doesn't mean they got it only. I had a caller once ask me on the air, you know, why did God only choose the Jews? You know, what does he got against the Gentiles? Well, he didn't have anything against the Gentiles, really.

Well, he has, in a sense, he has things against the Gentiles, the same things he has against the Jews. They're sinners. But he didn't choose the Jews for salvation and the Gentiles to be lost.

He chose the Jews to go to the Gentiles. That's the promise he made to Abraham. Through you and your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.

It wasn't that God said, I want to bless Israel and just ignore the Gentiles. It's, I'm going to make Israel be a blessing to the Gentiles. They're just what they're chosen for.

God didn't choose Israel to go to heaven. There's no guarantee that being a Jew is going to get anyone to heaven. Caiaphas was a Jew.

He didn't go to heaven. Judas was a Jew. He didn't go to heaven.

The Pharisees were Jews. And Jesus said, you can't escape the damnation of Gehenna. Going, being a Jew didn't make anyone go to heaven.

That's not what Jews were chosen for. They were chosen to be God's instrument of bringing light to the Gentiles, which they didn't do. And so the church is now sent out to the Gentiles.

But even the church that was first sent to the Gentiles were Jewish Christians, the apostles and the initial converts in Jerusalem. They're the ones who were scattered when Stephen was stoned and they went out and preached to the Gentiles. So the Jews first had the information, but it wasn't just for them.

They were just first. They were supposed to take it to the Gentiles as well. And that's what Paul was doing.

So he's not ashamed of this message. It's the power of God for salvation, everyone who believes regardless of race. Verse 17, for in it, that is in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed.

And as I put it out in our introduction, the righteousness of God is a repeated phrase in the first several chapters of Romans. And it is something that needs to be defined. Righteousness of God.

There are many phrases in the New Testament in the Greek that have a genitive like this of God is a genitive. It means it can be one of two things. It can mean from God or belonging to God.

This is true of several phrases, like even in the book of Revelation, you find repeatedly the phrase, the testimony of Jesus. Well, what's that mean? The testimony of Jesus. Does that mean that Jesus is testimony of what he says, or is it the testimony of the saints about Jesus? He's the, he's the subject of the testimony.

He's what the testimony is about. Is he the originator of the testimony or is he the subject matter of the testimony? The testimony of Jesus can go either way. It's a genitive of the same kind.

And scholars, when they find a phrase like that, they, they themselves are kind of, it's almost like a toss up. Which way is it meant? And the righteousness of God is that way. The righteousness of God could talk about God's internal virtue and internal righteousness, that he is a righteous God.

And we're speaking about his righteousness or as many believe, and certainly this was part of the reformation theology introduced primarily by Luther, that it's, they could say it's the righteousness that is from God. It's our righteous standing derived from God declaring us righteous. It's a righteousness that isn't from us, from ourselves.

It's a righteousness we possess, but we got it from him. This is the way the righteousness of God is usually represented in, in Protestant commentaries and so forth. I mean, virtually all reformation people are writing very, very proudly on, on Luther's coattails about this.

Luther was the one who discovered or thought he discovered, or at least promoted the idea that we are righteous with a righteousness that God provides, not a righteousness that we provide by our good works. It is an imputed righteousness. It's a righteousness that we didn't earn and we don't really deserve, but we're counted to be righteous nonetheless, because that's just God's gift to us of righteousness.

So righteousness of God in at least some settings can mean that. However, many commentators have said in recent times, especially modern ones like N.T. Wright, who are not altogether enamored with the traditional reformation line on things, that this phrase more literally means the righteousness of God, God's own righteousness, his own character. Now, which is it? In some passages, it makes a huge difference.

There are other times it may be not so much. In one place, at least Luther seems to be very much correct. At least it seems like it, because in chapter three of Romans, it says in verse 21, but now the righteousness of God, the same phrase, apart from the law is revealed.

Now that's the same thing he said in verse 17 of chapter one. The righteousness of God is revealed. In the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed.

Now, he says the same thing in chapter three, verse 21. Now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. Now, if it's a righteousness of God that is to me, the believer, it must be from somewhere.

And it's not from the law. It's not from works. Paul says it's a righteousness of God apart from the law, meaning apart from any obligation to fulfill the law's demands.

I can have a righteousness that is of or from God, not from legal obedience on my part. And this righteousness comes on and to me, who am a believer. So here, the term righteousness of God, you know, it seems to me the most natural way, and I'm definitely a product of Reformation theology on this, always have been all my life.

And therefore, I tend to lean this way. Seems to me like certainly in chapter three, verse 21 and 22, the two instances where righteousness of God are found. He is talking about something imputed.

He is talking about something at least that is from God and not from my own works. So I would think those verses justify Luther's interpretation pretty good. Nonetheless, it remains true that a genitive like that can cut both ways.

And it's not impossible that Paul or any other biblical writer might use such genitives that are ambiguous and use them both ways in different situations. And it does seem that in addition, Paul talks about the righteousness of God as something that is his inherent righteousness. And that also is in chapter three, because he said in verse 24, chapter three, verse 24, or let's go verse 25 and 26, Romans three, 25, whom God that is Christ is one whom God set forth to be a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness, whose God's righteousness.

What he put Jesus forth as a propitiation in order that he God through that means might demonstrate his own righteousness. Is this not the revelation of the righteousness of God in the gospel? The righteousness of God is revealed. Well, God has demonstrate his own righteousness.

It says, because in his forbearance, God had passed over the sins that were previously committed. How can that be righteous? How can it be righteous for God to pass over sins like David's sin? David sinned a sin that you couldn't even offer a sacrifice for two sins, adultery and murder. There's no sacrifice in the law for that.

You'd have to die for that. But God just said, I forgive you. You repented.

So I forgive you. How does God justify that? Isn't God a just judge? Here's a criminal who's definitely guilty. I quit you.

And Paul and Paul, of course, in chapter four of Romans even quotes David about that very instance where David says, how blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven? How happy is he against whom the Lord does not impute guilt, impute sin. I mean, David knew imputed righteousness, but that's another matter. How did God justify doing that? How could God be righteous or just and acquit a man like David or any of the saints in the old Testament who turned to him? Because it's not their sacrifice.

It says in Hebrews, it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. That was all those sections. They were symbolic.

They were a shadow. They didn't take away sin. David got forgiven without offering one of them.

And no doubt there are a lot of Jews who offered them and didn't get forgiven. Think of what Malachi says and what Isaiah says in chapter one about how God hates their sacrifices and their new moons because they're wicked. They've got bloody hands and they're offering sacrifices.

Offering an animal sacrifice didn't forgive your sins and not offering one didn't prevent your sins from being. So how did God justify forgiving sins? Well, that's what Paul says. Now he says at this present time, God has set forth Christ as a propitiation for sins through his blood.

And in this way, he justified himself in passing over sins that were committed previously. In other words, all those sins committed in the old Testament, which God forgave to the faithful. He did that on credit because he knew Jesus was going to come and pay the tab.

And by bringing, setting forth Jesus as the propitiation, he paid that tab. He justified the debt. He justified his doing that because it was done on the merits of Christ.

There's never been a person forgiven in history who wasn't forgiven on the merits of Christ. It's just that some of them were forgiven on his merits before he came. Others after.

But Christ and his propitiation is the only merit upon which God could ever forgive sins. But Paul says he did that and God thereby justified himself, proved himself righteous, demonstrated his own righteousness. And verse 26 says to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of the one who believes in Jesus.

So God can acquit the sinner who believes in Jesus and still be justified in it because that sin was taken care of by Jesus. Thus, the gospel about what Christ has done demonstrates God's internal justice. That's what Paul says twice.

Verse 26, he demonstrated the righteousness of God. So when Paul in chapter one, verse 17 says in the gospel is that the righteousness of God is revealed, which is it? Is it the righteousness that God internally has that he demonstrates that he is righteous or is it the righteousness that he gives to us and imputes to us despite our undeserving state? Apparently both. The gospel is both.

It shows that God can impute righteousness to us and he himself is uncompromising his own righteousness. It reveals that he's a righteous God and that that righteousness is now ours in him. That in Christ we are righteous.

In Christ we're justified. In Christ we're raised from the dead. In Christ we're everything that Christ is in a way.

I mean we're not the Messiah but in a sense we're his body. We're the body of the Messiah too. There's a sense which when you're in Christ what is true of him is said to be true of you.

And so his righteousness is inherent in him but it's ours too. We share in his righteousness by being in him. And so it's kind of an interesting and complicated thing.

It's a brief statement, righteousness of God, but it's repeated often at least in these first three chapters and it is the summary of what the gospel really is. God reveals his righteousness. That's the good news that God is a righteous God and by the way there's a righteousness that comes from him that we enjoy and benefit from too by being counted righteous.

So this is not a shallow message here. I mean it's just even the single sentence here there's depths to it that theologians spend many many years plumbing without getting to the bottom of I'm sure. So in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

That phrase is very difficult from faith to faith. Remember the word pistis. Faith can mean faith or faithfulness.

The same word. It could be that it's saying God's faithfulness to the faithful or God's faithfulness to the believing or some sort of thing like that. But there are translations that take it entirely differently and when they say from faith to faith they actually just kind of paraphrase it.

For example, the let's see the King James, the New King James, the New American Standard, the Young's Literal Translation, they all just say from faith to faith. That's apparently the literal rendering of the Greek phrase, but to get meaning from it the ESV has rendered it from faith for faith, which is not a whole lot clearer. But then you've got more paraphrastic translations like the NIV that says from faith or by faith from first to last.

That's what the NIV says. It's by faith from first to last. And the I think the New Living Translation, which is again a paraphrase, says from start to finish by faith.

So it's obvious that the translators aren't quite sure what to do with this from faith to faith. It's obvious that Paul's saying it's all about faith and it's possible that the paraphrase of the NIV or the New Living Translation may really be kind of grasping what Paul's essential thought is. It's all about faith.

It's from the beginning with faith and it's ending up in faith. It's from first to last faith. I couldn't be sure for the simple reason that translators who know a whole lot more than me aren't sure.

But I would say that probably without reaching a firm conclusion about that phrase from faith to faith, we can still get Paul's message. Essentially, it's a matter of faith. That justification is a matter of faith and that's how it's been revealed in the gospel.

As it is written, the just shall live by faith. Now, the place where that's written is Habakkuk 2.4. Now, the just shall live by faith is one of two favorite Old Testament texts about justification by faith. His other one is in Genesis 15.6. Abraham believed in the Lord and it was counted to him for righteousness.

So, he's got one from the Torah, the law, Genesis 15.6, and one from the prophets, Habakkuk 2.4. So, Paul can say that the law and the prophets both testify to justification by faith. And he's right. You've got it right there in Genesis 15.6 and Habakkuk 2.4. However, it's pretty sparse in the body of the Old Testament to be able to find only two verses that say it quite like that.

But just because only two verses say it quite like that, that doesn't mean it isn't demonstrated throughout the Old Testament. The writer of Hebrews certainly thought it was demonstrated throughout the Old Testament. In Hebrews 11, he runs through the Old Testament.

By faith, Abel did this. By faith, Enoch walked with God. By faith, Noah built an ark.

By faith, Abraham left his country. By faith, he offered Isaac. By faith, Moses and the children of Israel left and crossed the Red Sea.

And by faith, this happened and that happened. It's clear that the Old Testament is seen as a book of faith by the writer of Hebrews and no doubt by Paul as well. But it's not always that easy to find a verse that just summarizes it in just the way you want to say it.

And Paul found one good verse in the law and one very good verse in the prophets to justify this doctrine. But as I said, they're just good verses that say it the way he wants it to be said that make it very clear. There's a lot of evidence of justification by faith in the Old Testament, including David's being forgiven despite his sins and so forth and no doubt everyone who is in the Old Testament is forgiven by faith.

But there's a little bit of a problem with Habakkuk 2.4 because the word faith in Habakkuk 2.4 is not the word for faith. In the Hebrew, it's the word for faithfulness. In Habakkuk 2.4, the Hebrew word for faith, the just shall live by his faith, is Emana, which is not technically the Hebrew word for faith, but for faithfulness or steadfastness or reliability, loyalty.

The writer in Habakkuk is told by God that in the crisis that was coming upon Jerusalem from the Babylonian invasion, which was imminent and which was going to be a horrible judgment on the apostates of Israel, there would nonetheless be a remnant that were preserved. God knew that not all of the Jews were in the same category. He had some righteous ones and those ones will be saved.

Now, by the way, in Habakkuk, saved doesn't refer to going to heaven. Habakkuk talks about being saved from the judgment of the overthrow of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. In the Old Testament, you almost never find the concept of salvation as a matter of going somewhere when you die.

That comes out more in the New Testament. The Old Testament Jews had very little understanding or concept of what happens after people die and it wasn't talked about much. But salvation was always seen typified or that is in a type.

What we call salvation, which is more holistic, including eternal life, is only known in the Old Testament pretty much through types and shadows. God delivering the Jews from Egypt, that was their salvation, their deliverance. God bringing the Jews back from Babylon, that was their salvation.

Saving Noah through the flood, that was their salvation. In the Old Testament, salvation is rarely known to have any ramifications beyond the grave. But God is seen as a saving God because the righteous who trust in him are saved again and again and again.

And each of those, as the New Testament points out, in naming all those things, makes them a type of salvation. In fact, 1 Peter 3, verse 20 actually goes so far to say that the flood and the salvation of Noah and eight souls in the ark was a type. The word type is used in the Greek.

It's a type of our being saved through the water and so forth. He mentions baptism as part of that. But the point here is we know of a holistic salvation that is largely related to eternal life and even extends beyond the grave into eternity.

The Old Testament doesn't say much about that. And when Habakkuk was told by God, the righteous one will live by his faithfulness. Live there didn't have to do with eternal life.

At least that's not the way anyone in the Old Testament would have particularly understood it. But rather a general sweeping holocaust was coming against the Jewish society in the form of the Babylonian armies. And God was going to let some live, the faithful ones, the ones loyal to him.

That's essentially how the Hebrew of Habakkuk 2, 4 would be understood by anyone who knew Hebrew and read it in those days. However, Paul, of course, understands as apostles did that those kinds of saving acts of God in the Old Testament are a type of ultimate salvation in Christ. And the principle upon which God saved them is the same principle upon which he saves us.

And it was in Hebrew, it said faithfulness. So why does Paul say faith? Well, actually he uses the word pistis, which can be translated in Greek faithfulness. There's another Greek word that more like always means faithfulness, but pistis sometimes means faithfulness.

I pointed out that it does in Romans chapter 3 and verse 3. Romans 3, 3 uses the word pistis where it's translated faithfulness. It says, for what if some did not believe, will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? That word faithfulness, speaking about God's faithfulness is pistis, same word. So in a sense, when you find the word pistis, although its primary meaning is faith, it's also got an additional meaning of faithfulness that is not uncommon.

And you almost have to, from context, decide which one it means. Now, because of that, when Habakkuk 2.4 was translated into Greek in what we call the Septuagint, about 285 years before Christ, a bunch of Jews in Alexandria, Egypt translated the whole Hebrew scriptures into Greek. When they came to Habakkuk 2.4, which said, the just one will live by his faithfulness, instead of the word, the clear word faithfulness, the Greek translators in the Septuagint use pistis.

The just will live by his pistis, which usually means faith. And that's how Paul may have understood it himself. He quotes from the Septuagint here.

The question though is, have we, since Reformation times, tended to make a mistake about the translation of pistis? The Septuagint translators certainly knew their Hebrew and their Greek, and they chose pistis to translate the Hebrew word for faithfulness in Habakkuk 2.4. The Hebrew clearly said, the righteous one will live by his faithfulness. Experts in the Greek language translating that into Greek translated pistis. And we know that pistis, even in the New Testament, sometimes means faithfulness, though not always, maybe not usually.

But is it possible that Paul and the Septuagint, who both use the word pistis in quoting Habakkuk here, they understand pistis to mean faithfulness? Or is it, as I was saying in our introduction to Romans yesterday, that the whole covenantal context of God's communication in the Old Testament, and even in Paul's thinking as a former rabbi and so forth, the whole idea of God's covenant with God is all about faithfulness and the response, like a marriage covenant. It's a covenant that two people make promises and trust each other and are faithful to each other. Or if they're not, there's no marriage.

If there's no promise, no trust, no faithfulness, there's not a marriage. The marriage is based on those very things. That's what a covenant is.

And God had this covenantal status with the Jews, and then he made a new covenant in the upper room with the disciples, but still a covenant. And in a covenantal relationship with God, faith or faithfulness are both two sides of one coin. Both parties are to trust in the faithfulness of the other party in some measure.

Now, a lot of people say, well, God can't trust us. He knows we're failures. Well, he has to at least trust our sincerity.

If he doesn't believe you're sincere, it's not going to go well with you on the judgment day. When you stand before God, he'd better believe you were sincere, because if he doesn't think you were sincere, you don't have a prayer, literally. And so the understanding is that I sincerely commit myself to Jesus Christ, and he has sincerely entered into covenant with me.

We are both in this, like my husband, I mean my wife and myself, a husband and a wife, they're both equally in. They both need to trust each other, and they both need to be faithful to each other. Pistis has both meanings, and there's every reason to suspect that Paul wasn't thinking of divorcing one of those means from the other.

That if indeed the just shall be, you know, save or live by his faithfulness, well, there's another side of that too. God's faithfulness is what's going to save him, and what's your response toward someone's faithfulness? It's faith. What I'm saying is, we separate these things almost as if they're at opposite ends of the spectrum.

This person's faithful, this person way over here is believing, it's unilateral. You know, the faith goes one direction, and the faithfulness goes one direction, but they're different things. Faithfulness is one thing, faith is just what somebody responds to that faithfulness.

Well, it is, but the Greek word allows that it's all mixed into one pie. This is a relationship of mutual faithfulness and faith. I trust God for everything, and he trusts that I'm sincere in my faith, and of course he knows, but the idea is, if he doesn't trust me, well, let's put this, if he can't trust me, what if I'm not faithful? Now, someone's going to say, well, the Bible says, if we're faithless, he abides faithful.

He cannot deny himself. Well, I think that's often misunderstood, because the verse before it says, if we deny him, he'll deny us. So, it's very clear that Paul, in 2 Timothy 2 there, is saying that God will deny us, Paul and Timothy and other Christians, if we deny him, but his next verse is, if we are faithless, he remains faithful.

He cannot deny himself. He can deny us, but he can't deny himself, but what's that mean? It means, if I don't believe what he said, it's still true. If we endure, we'll reign with him.

If we deny him, he'll deny us. Do we believe that? It doesn't matter if you believe it, it's still true. He's faithful, he's reliable.

He said this is true, and it's true. You don't have to believe it for it to be true. It is, but when some people have said, well, he abides faithful, means that we, you know, we're still in good terms with him, even if we lose our faith.

That's not what he said in the previous verse. That's not even what he says in the verse they're quoting. It's saying God's reliability and truthfulness and the fact that his words are faithful, that doesn't change whether we believe him or not, and that's also an idea that Paul has there in Romans 3.3, which we're not to yet, but we did look at already.

It says, what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make God's faithfulness without effect? Same thing. They don't believe, but he's still faithful, but they're lost because they don't believe. The ones that don't believe, he's talking about the Jews who didn't receive Christ.

The fact that they don't believe doesn't change the fact that God's faithful, but it doesn't make them saved either. You see, to say that God is faithful is not the same thing as saying everybody's saved. It's saying that God keeps his promises and tells the truth.

Now, we're expected to do the same thing. Now, we're not saved by our performance. It's very important to note.

Sometimes there's people who are opposed to what they sometimes categorize as a lordship salvation or lordship gospel. They say you shouldn't preach lordship gospel because if you teach people that they have to have Jesus as their lord, that's imposing works upon them, and we're not saved by works. We're saved by faith, but actually faith in what? If we're saved by faith, doesn't faith have to... isn't there something at the other end of that faith? What is it we're believing in? Well, certainly we're believing in Jesus is Lord.

Isn't that the declaration of the gospel that Jesus is Lord? Well, do you believe that? Okay, then if you believe Jesus is Lord, you're saved, but believing he's Lord is something that comes with some job description. If I sell myself into slavery in an earthly slave market, I have a lord. I have a lord even if I've never done one thing yet.

As soon as he's paid the price, I have a lord. He owns me. If I'm coming out of a bad situation and my new lord's a good guy, then that's my salvation.

Having that lord is good for me. Having that lord is my salvation. Good, but he's my lord even before I wake up the next morning and do my first task.

In other words, I do those tasks because he's my lord, but he's not my lord because I do those tasks. If he wasn't already my lord, I wouldn't bother to do those tasks. I do them because that's my obligation having a lord, but I don't do a certain number of tasks and then he's my lord.

This is not salvation by works. It's embracing Christ as Lord right from day one, from square one. Before you're saved, you're not acknowledging Jesus as your lord or living like it.

The day you're saved is the day you say, Jesus is my lord. I'm not going to fight it. I surrender.

I accept this. I accept he's my lord. I confess he's my lord.

Fine, okay. Well, that's going to look like something if you're sincere. You're going to live as much as possible in obedience to him, but your salvation is not based on how well you obey.

It's not based on how well you perform. A man might have a slave who's a real poor performer. A man might put his slave in the kitchen to cook and they might burn the food every day.

Might not even show up on time sometimes. That doesn't say, oh, the slave can't say, okay, I guess I don't perform or I guess I'm not your slave and I'm going somewhere else. No, he's still owned.

A slave is owned whether he's a good performer or not. If he has been bought, he is owned. And if he is owned, he's under obligation to obey, but his obeying doesn't make him a slave.

Your relationship with Christ is not established by or maintained by you obeying him. It is established by the fact that God has made Jesus both Lord and Christ. You're surrendered to that fact.

You submit to that. You believe that. You confess that he's Lord.

That confession makes you a Christian if it's sincere. Obedience is simply the way you live when you have a Lord. It's not what saves you.

It's having the Lord that saves you. It's not your performance. So when we preach what some people disdainfully call lordship salvation, we're just preaching what the Bible says.

You're saved when you say Jesus is Lord. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, believe in your heart that he rose from the dead, you'll be saved. That's the gospel.

Jesus never preached the gospel that didn't have the lordship of Jesus as its main subject. But when people say, but if you preach Jesus lordship for salvation, then you're preaching works for salvation. No, you're preaching that you're saved by grace.

You're purchased by an owner. That's why he's your Lord. And we are saying you now do have an obligation, but that's the obligation of a saved person.

It's not like you accept Jesus, you start working on saving yourself or start working on earning your salvation. As soon as you belong to Jesus, you're saved. But now what do you do? Well, what does anyone who has a Lord do? Obey.

And so faithfulness and faith speak of a relationship, a covenantal relationship. When Paul said the just shall live by his faith, the word can be translated faithfulness. And there's a good reason to translate that way.

Since the same word is translated and can only be translated as faithfulness in Romans three, three, though, there are certainly places where believing and faith is more of the meaning of the word. It can go both ways depending on context, but in particular, the quotation of Habakkuk two, four almost seems to require faithfulness as at least part of the definition, since that's the Hebrew word that is translated in the Septuagint as pistis, as faith here. So what am I saying? That you're going to get saved by being always faithful? Let me just clarify what faithful means.

Unfortunately, faithfulness is a lost quality in our society. That's why there's divorce. Nothing causes divorce except unfaithfulness.

People say divorces are caused mostly by differences of opinion about children, money, and sexual incompatibility. No, none of those things cause divorce. I've been in marriages that were lacking in all those things, but that didn't cause any divorce.

The only thing that caused divorce is unfaithfulness. People make promises that they'll stay together forever no matter what happens. When they don't do that, that's unfaithfulness.

No matter what trials make it difficult to keep the promise, faithfulness is the thing that keeps a covenant relationship together. Not being a perfect husband or a perfect wife. Of course, the husband and wife promise to be perfect at their wedding vows.

They promise to love and cherish and never do anything wrong and all that, but in real life, they do things that are imperfect. They do things wrong. They disappoint, but that doesn't make them unfaithful.

It makes them failures in some measure, but not unfaithful. When you are unfaithful is when you decide not to keep faith anymore. When you decide, I don't want to keep my promise anymore, that's when you become unfaithful.

While you are endeavoring to keep your promise, you fail at many steps. We all stumble, James says. In many things, we all stumble.

We don't want to, but we do. It's just our weakness, our foolishness, our sinfulness, but faithfulness means I'm still hanging in there. I made a promise that I'm going to belong to Jesus until I die, and I'm not backing down from that.

No matter how hard it gets, even on pain of death, I'm going to still say Jesus is my Lord. He still owns me, and I'm going to be faithful unto death. That doesn't mean I'm going to be perfect at any point during that time.

I may be a very imperfect faithful person, but I'm faithful as long as I'm keeping faith. That is, as long as I'm not abandoning my position. And so, when people, if we would say, well, you're going to be saved by your faithfulness, some people think, oh, that's very performance-oriented, isn't it? Because being faithful means you have to obey everything God says and so forth.

Well, that's misunderstood. We are supposed to obey everything God said. That is the goal of every Christian.

Because we are faithful, it is our intention to obey. But out of weakness and other things, we disobey sometimes. But that doesn't mean we've denied the Lord.

It doesn't mean we've said, I'm out of this marriage. It doesn't mean I'm done with these vows. I'm not going to break my promise.

I may stumble, but I'm not going to lie down and say I'm done. And this is part of covenant faithfulness. And if we are to be informed at all by what the Hebrew text of Habakkuk 2.4 says, which Paul leans on as one of his two primary verses from the Old Testament of justification by faith, then we're going to have to say faithfulness is in the picture.

Having faith. We even still use faith on occasion in an old-fashioned way. We talk about in good faith, sometimes in legal documents.

They say this person made this promise in good faith. In good faith doesn't mean that they were believing. It meant that they were saying I'm believable.

I say this in faithfulness. You see, even the English word faith in older usage sometimes had the idea of faithfulness in certain usages. The Greek was that way too, and the Hebrew simply meant faithfulness.

The bottom line here is it means a relationship. Faithful relationship between two parties in a covenant. And God is faithful and we can trust him.

We have to be faithful too. And although he can't trust us to be perfect, and he doesn't even know, he doesn't expect us to be perfect. He knows our frame.

He remembers that we're dust. He's not dealt with us after our sins are rewarded us according to our iniquities. He doesn't expect from us what we can't be and what we aren't, but he does expect us to keep our promise.

I came to him on a promise. I take you to be my husband, my lord. And he said, I take you to be my bride.

Okay, we're in a covenant now. And I expect you to take that seriously. As soon as you stop taking that seriously, we're done.

But you can be taking it very seriously while stumbling around making all kinds of mistakes, and Christians do that all the time. And they don't understand because many people are so works-oriented. They think that if you're expected to do the right thing, that any failure to do the right thing means you're going to be rejected.

Maybe their parents did that to them. I don't know, but that's not how God is. God expects you to do the right thing and wants you the right thing, but he doesn't accept you on the basis of whether you are doing the right thing.

He accepts you on the basis of your faithful commitment to be in that relationship with him, with Jesus as your lord. And that's how I understand Habakkuk's words. I think that's how Paul did, although that's got some baggage perhaps that isn't usually brought out in the more narrow teaching of Luther, but I think Luther was trying to counterbalance something in the Catholic church.

And sometimes we do pendulum swing a little bit where we try to even ignore the right things that some of the Catholics may have believed. After all, they were the only Christians for about a thousand years in the West. They might have had some views correctly, and the likelihood that Luther was the first man in a thousand years to really understand God, I don't know.

There are things he was the first to understand in a long time, but well, huss before him, but he got burned. The point here is that we sometimes are so loyal to the tradition of our own denominational background that we can't see even the weaknesses in that. We need to see what the words mean.

Paul had meaning. He understood those words a certain way, and he had never read Luther or Calvin or any Protestant writer. Frankly, he'd never read a Catholic writer either.

But he'd read the Old Testament, and from that he derived his doctrines, and he makes it very clear that that's where his doctrines come from, as well as from Revelation, from Christ. Anyway, we need to take a break here. I'm sorry to run over.