Romans 1:16-23 (Wednesday Evening Bible Study)

Romans 1:16-23

• Romans 1:16-17
• 16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.
  • The introduction is over, and here comes Paul laying out his themes for the letter
  • There are only two verses here, but they contain so much of the very essence of Paul’s gospel
  • He begins by saying that he is not ashamed of the gospel
    • Think of the background of that statement. Paul had been impirsoned in Philippi, chased out of Thessalonica, smuggled out of Beroea, laughed at in Athens, and in Corinth his message was foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews
    • Out of that background, he declared that he was not ashamed of the gospel. There was something in the gospel which made Paul triumphantly victorious over all that anyone could do to him
  • In this passage we see three foundational pillars of Paul’s thought and belief
    • Salvation
      • At this time in history, salvation was the one thing for which people were searching
        • It was a salvation from physical illness. It was not a completely other-worldly thing. It aimed at rescuing an individual in body and in soul
        • It was salvation from danger. It was not that it gave people a life free from perils and dangers, but it gave them a security of soul no matter what was happening. The Christian salvation makes us safe in a way that is independent of any outward circumstances 
        • It was a salvation form life’s infection. It is form a corrupt and perverse generation that we are saved. This who have this Christian salvation have a kind of diving antiseptic which keeps them from infection by the evil of the world
        • It was salvation form lostness. It was to seek and to save the lost that Jesus came. The unsaved man or woman is on the wrong road, a road that leads to death. The saved man or woman has been put on the right way
        • It was salvation from sin. Men and women ware like slaves in bondage to a master from whom they cannot escape. The Christian salvation liberates them from the tyranny of sin
        • It was salvation from the wrath of God. We will discuss this deeper in the next section. There is in this world an inexorable moral law an in the Christian faith an inevitable element of judgment. Without the salvation which Jesus brings, we can only stand condemned
        • It was a salvation which is eschatological. That is to say, it is a salvation which finds its full meaning and blessedness in the final triumph of Jesus 
      • The Christian faith came to a desperate world offering a salvation which would keep men and women safe in time and in eternity
    • Faith
      • At its simplest, it means loyalty. When Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, he wanted to know about their faith. That is, he wanted to know how their loyalty was standing the test. Faith is the enduring devotion and loyalty which marks the real follower of Jesus
      • Faith means belief. It means the conviction that something is true. In I Corinthians 15:17, Paul tells them that if Jesus did not rise form the dead, then their faith is vain—all that they have believed is wrecked. Faith is the assent that the Christian message is true
      • Faith sometimes means the Christian religion. In II Corinthians 13:5, Paul tells his opponents to examine themselves to see if they are holding to their faith, that is to see if they are still within the Christian religion
      • Faith is sometimes practically equivalent to indestructible hope. We walk by faith, not by sight
      • Mostly, faith means total acceptance and absolute trust. It means betting your life that there is a God. It means being utterly sure that what Jesus said is true, and staking all time and eternity on that assurance
        • Faith begins with receptivity. It begins when we are at least willing to listen to the message of the truth. It goes on to mental assent. We first hear and then agree that theis is true. But mental assent need not result in action. Many people know very well that something is true, but do not change their actions to meet that knowledge. The final stage is when this mental assent becomes total surrender. In fully fledged faith, we hear the Christian message, agree that it is true, and then cast ourselves upon it in a life of total submission
    • Justification
      • This word has a different meaning than just our English word justify. If we justify ourselves, we produce reasons to prove that we were right; if someone justifies us, that person produces reasons to prove that we acted in the right way. But in the Greek, if God justifies issuers, it does not mean that He finds reasons to prove that they were right. It does not even mean that He makes the sinners good. It means that God treats sinners as if they had not been sinners at all. Instead of treating them as criminals to be obliterated, God treats them as children to be loved. It means that God treats us not as His enemies but as His friends; not was bad people deserve, but as good people deserver, not as law-breakers to be punished, but as men and women to be loved. 
      • That means that to be justified is to enter into a new relationship with God, a relationship of love, confidence, and friendship, instead of one of distance, enmity, and fear. We no longer go to a God radiating just but terrible punishment. We go to a God radiating forgiving and redeeming love. 
      • Justification is a right relationship between God and human beings. The person who is just or righteous is someone who is in this right relationship, and who is in it not because of anything that he or she has done, but because of what God has done. Such people are sin this right relationship not because they have meticulously performed the works of the law, but because in utter faith they have cast themselves on the amazing mercy and love of God.
      • The righteous will live by faith. People who are in a right relationship with God, not because of the works of their hands, but because of their utter faith in what the love of God has done, are the ones who really know what life’s like in time and in eternity. And to Paul the whole work of Jesus was that He had enabled men and women to enter into this new and precious relationship with God. Fear was gone and love had come.. The God previously thought of as an enemy had become a friend
• Romans 1:18-23
• 18 For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, 19 since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse. 21 For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.
  • In the previous passage, Paul was thinking about the relationship with God into which people can enter through the faith, which is submission and trust. In contrast, he sets the wrath of God which men and women must incur if they are deliberately blind to God and they worship their own thoughts and idols instead of Him
  • The Wrath of God
    • In the early parts of the OT, the wrath of God especially connected with he idea of the covenant people. The people of Israel were in a special relationship with God. He had chosen them and offered them this special relationship which would continue as long as they kept His law. That meant two things
      • It meant that without the nation, any way in which the law was broken provoked the wrath of God
      • Because Israel stood in a unique relationship to God, any other nation which traded Israel with cruelty and injustice incurred the wrath of God
    • In the prophets, the idea of the wrath of God occurs, but the emphasis has changed. Jewish religious thought from the prophets onwards was dominated by the idea of the two ages.
      • There was this age which was altogether bad, and there was the golden age which was altogether good. 
      • These two ages were separated by the day of the Lord. That was to be a day of terrible retribution and judgment, when the world would be shattered, sinners destroyed, and the universe remade before God’s kingdom came
      • It was then that the wrath of the Lord would got into terrible action
      • But the prophets did not regard the wrath of God as being postponed until that terrible day of judgment. They saw it continuously in action. When Israel strayed away from God, when they people were rebellious and unfaithful, then the wrath of God operated against Israel and involved the nation in ruin, disaster, captivity, and defeat. To the prophets, the wrath of God was continually berating and would reach its peak of terror and destruction not eh coming day of the Lord
    • Paul speaks frequently of this idea of wrath. But the strange thing is that, although he speaks of the wrath of God, he never speaks of God being angry. He speaks of God’s love, and he speaks of God loving. He speaks of God’s grace, and of god graciously giving. He speaks of God’s fidelity, and of God being faithful to His people. But very strangely, although he speaks of the wrath of God, he never speaks about God being angry. So, there is some difference in the connection with God of love and wrath
    • Further, Paul spaces of the wrath of God only three times. Here, Ephesians 5:6, and Colossians 3:6. He speaks of the wrath of God coming upon the children of disobedience. But, quite frequently, Paul speaks about the wrath, without saying it is the wrath of God as if it ought to have capital letters—the Wrath—and was a kind of impersonal force at work in the world.
      • In Romans 3:5, the literal translation is “God who brings the Wrath”. In Romans 5:9, he speaks about being saved from the wrath. In Romans 12:19, he advises people not to take vengeance but to leave evildoers to the wrath. In Romans 13:5, he speaks about the wrath as big a powerful motive to keep people obedient. In Romans 4:15, he says that the law produces wrath. And in I Thessalonians 1:10, he says that Jesus delivered us from the Wrath to come. Paul speaks about the wrath, and yet from that very wrath Jesus saves men and women
    • Let’s go back to the prophets. Their message often amounted to this: If you are not obedient to God, the wrath of God will involve you in ruin and disaster.
      • The whole message of the Hebrew prophets was that there is a moral order in this world. The conclusion is clear—that moral order is the wrath of God at work. God made this world in such a way that we break His laws at our peril. Now if we were left solely at the mercy of that inexorable moral order, there could be nothing for us but death and destruction. The world is made in such a way that they person who sins must die—if the moral order is to act alone. But into this human dilemma there comes the love of God—and that love of God, by an act of unbelievable free grace, lifts us out of the consequences of sin and saves us from the wrath we should have incurred
  • Paul goes on to insist that we cannot plead ignorance of God
    • It has always been possible to see what He is like for His world. We can always tell something about people from the work they produce; and it is possible to tell something about God from the world He made. It is from the world that Paul starts when he is speaking to the people of Lystra
    • In the world, we can see God. It is Paul’s argument that if we look at the wold we see that suffering follows sin. Break the laws of agriculture—your harvest fails. Break the laws of architecture—your building collapses. Break the laws of health—your body suffers. Paul was saying: Look at the world! See how it’s constructed. From a world like that, you l know what God is like. Those who sin are left without excuse
  • Paul goes another step. What did the sinners do? Instead of looking out to God, they looked into themselves. They involved themselves in futile speculations and thought they were wise, while all the time they were fools. Why? They were fools because they made their ideas, their opinions, their speculations the standard and the law of life, instead of the will of God. The sinners’ folly consisted in making man the master of things. They found their standards in their own opinions and not in the laws of God. They lived in a self-centered instead of a God-centered universe. Instead of walking looking out to God, they walked looking into themselves, and like  people who do not look where they are going, they fell
    • The result was idolatry. They glory of God was exchanged for images of human and animal forms. They root sin of idolatry is that it is selfish. People make idols. They bring offerings and address prayers to them. Why? So that their own scheme and dreams may be furthered. Their worship is for their own sake and not for God’s
    • In this passage, we are face to face with the fact that the essence of sin is to put self in the place of God