Romans 1: "THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD REVEALED"
THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD REVEALED
Romans 1
Preached by: Carolyn Sissom
Sunday, September 20, 2009
1:17: “For therein (the gospel of Christ) is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith.
Righteousness has been defined by William Manson as ‘a way of salvation which does justice to the moral reality of God’s relations with men, at the same time enabling men’s restoration to right relations with God.’
This definition will not be found in an English dictionary. This is because its roots lie deep in the Hebrew Scriptures, the seed bed of the New Testament revelation.
The reference to Jeremiah 3:11 shows the idea of righteousness came to be applied to the relations between God and man.
God’s righteousness is both His moral holiness and His saving activity on behalf of Israel. “Righteous” became part of the vocabulary of the covenant between God and His people.
God’s activity in defending Israel against the Canaanites is called His “righteousness’ or “righteous acts.’ His righteousness in this sense is His intervention in warfare. The judge executes His judgment as a warrior; the law court is the very field of battle.
In Romans, “righteousness’ is God’s saving victory over sin, man’s enemy, as well as a moral attribute of God and man, and man’s acceptance by God.
At the Cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has acted in moral and saving righteousness. He has offered to man the gift of the righteousness of acceptance with the intent that man may go on to live a life of moral righteousness. (F.F. Bruce Bible Commentary – Leslie C. Allen).
Paul explains the doctrine of his gospel in terms of Hab. 2:4, unfolding its relevance for the new Christian era. God by the death of Christ has set men right with Himself, if they will but put themselves by faith into His hands. The faith-righteous man shares the life of the risen and exalted Christ now in part and hereafter fully.
The first seven verses of chapter one was Paul’s introduction.
1:8-12: “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my Spirit in the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayer; Making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come to you. For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, to the end you may be established. That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.”
Rome was full
of wickedness. However, the Roman
Christians were famous for their Faith.
Travelers would talk of them as they jo9urned about the empire. In time their faith was known in all the
major cities of the Gentile world. Their
testimony is doing a job for Jesus throughout the empire.
Seneca a philosopher and contemporary of Paul wrote, “Rome is full of crime and vice. Vileness gains in every street. Vice is no longer practiced secretly but in every street. Innocence has not only become rare, it is extinct. A monstrous contest of wickedness is going on… He confirms Paul’s account of the awfulness of the heathen.”
There is no way to live a dedicated life in the face of adversity without the power of the Gospel of Christ.
That Paul would desire to impart to them some spiritual to establish them is the source of much conversation by commentators. I believe it means exactly as it reads.
All of us know and experience the intimacy of the Presence of the Lord. I believe Paul l is saying, “I want to bring you some spiritual blessing that will strengthen you in the faith. Or perhaps I should say, we will both be strengthened by each other; I by the influence of your faith upon me and you by mine.”
This scripture spoke to me a confirmation about a trip Sandra and I will be taking to Birmingham Sept. 24-27th. This will be an opportunity to meet with Bob Jones, Kathie Walters and some other ministers.
Yes, I have duties here, but I know since I have this opportunity, I am being sent to be strengthened by the influence of Bro. Jones’ Faith and the Faith of other ministers. Yes, I have faith and do not have to go any where to go in to the Presence of the Lord. Yet, as we meet together, we will be strengthened. That, my friends, is the Word of God.
All are welcome to go with us.
1:13-16: “Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that often times I purposed to come to you, (but was prevented.) That I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles. I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise and to the unwise. So as much as in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.”
The Spirit has steadily urged Paul in the direction of Rome. In moving westward from Syrian Antioch (the beginning point of his missionary travels) Paul established one church after another. But then he found he had to revisit them to deal with internal problems and fortify them against the persecution of the Jews. It kept him so busy grounding the churches of Asia and Greece that he wasn’t able to push on to Rome.
Now that is over, as he says in chapter 15, there is no further need for his ministry in Greece. However, arrest, trial, two years’ languishing in prison and shipwreck were to intervene before his prayer was answered.
Paul makes an interesting statement. I considered it and said, “Lord such boldness of Faith”. “That I might have some fruit among you also.”
His apostolic commission has endowed him with a sense of world-wide missionary obligation which transcends all types of civilization and degrees of culture. Cosmopolitan Rome would be a mixing pot of all cultures and civilizations. This is also true of Houston, Texas.
Paul must have paused her and pondered Rome---with thoughts of grandeur, power, culture and pride of the ancient world. The heathen of Rome considered themselves to be wise men, yet they despised the gospel as so much foolishness. However, they didn’t hesitate to worship their own emperors as living deities. Paul says he is not ashamed of the Gospel. It is a power that eclipses the achievements of Rome.
It was the power of the Gospel and Paul anointing to the Gentiles that causes him to expect a harvest. O Saints of the Living God what are we expecting?
Christians some times sound like the Philosopher Seneca, we can philosophy about the problems of the world as he did. However, Paul carried the dunamis power of the Gospel to bring changes even to Rome.
In the O.T. with all of its miracles, is a history of power. It is the power of God. Those miracles displayed God’s power working for man. When we come to the N.T., we again see power. But this time it is God’s power working in man—taking sinners and making them righteous.
When men believed the message he brought, they were blasted out of their depravity and guilt and supernaturally lifted to the level of Christ! They were placed “in Christ.” Paul was keenly aware of the military power of Rome, but he knew that no power on earth could do for men what his gospel could do.
Verse 16 is the grand theme of Paul’s letter –salvation.
The moment a sinner believes the gospel, he becomes the “righteousness of God” in Christ (@ Cor. 5:21). In an act of faith, he opens his heart to Jesus and invites Him into his life. The indwelling Lord breaks the grip of sin on the believer enabling him to live a Godly life and serve God. At death he is released from the body to live in eternity with the Lord.
1:17-18: “for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, the just shall live by faith. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.”
There is no way to receive righteousness except by believing the gospel it is acquired by Faith. There is no salvation until they open their hearts to Jesus.
Verse 18 is a stumbling block to some who are intellectual.
Consider the wrath of God and how Jesus said it abides on all who believe not the gospel.
John 3:36: “He that believes on the son has everlasting life; and he that believes not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abides on him”
In his righteousness, God has let the law of the harvest stand.
1:19-20: Because that which may be known of god is manifest in them; for God has shown it to them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.
Paul seemingly anticipates the question, “How can God be angry with people who have never heard of Him and know nothing about Him?
That’s impossible, says the apostle. There is no such person. Everyone knows there is a God, for the Fact of God stand s out clearly in the midst of His creation. From the very beginning the creation itself has been a billboard shouting the fact that God is alive. “The heavens declare the Glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork...” (Psa. 19:1)
God is easily discernible in creation and conscience. Just as human character is revealed by the acts of a man, so are God’s existence and divinity seen in what He does. The natural reveals the supernatural; the visible the invisible.
Knowing the fact of God does not save a man. If a man cries out to the Lord, he will hear him and save him. He will reveal His way to Him by revelation.
In primitive times, as today, men knew about God, they didn’t want any part of Him. The Spirit’s witness made them uncomfortable. Because they liked sin better than walking with god, they turned down the “hearing aid” of the spirit’s voice. They shut their eyes to the testimony of God’s creation. The heathen in foreign countries are descendants of people who forgot God. Because God has made the witness so plain, mankind of every age is wholly without excuse.
1: 21-14: “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.”
Paul is weighing the Hellenistic society of his day and finds it wanting. Everywhere is chaos. Animals have become gods, man has become woman, wrong has become right. Nature without the true god has become unnatural. The Creator has been rejected and creation is in chaos; for the apostle these two facts are cause and effect.
In resisting the high moral standards of god, they quickly lost their appreciation for god. This led them to abandon the true knowledge of God and find a way to worship Him without having to put up with His Holiness. But once the high knowledge of God was shunned, man went into spiritual darkness.
These men began to search out the meaning of life through reason. This is the basis of philosophy. The man who tries to explain himself and the world without the light of God is a philosopher. The word means, ‘lover of wisdom.” The wisdom, of course, is man’s no God’s.
This is what we see on our TV. screens night after night as the pundits of television philosophy about the condition of the world. None will ever come to the right conclusion with out the light of God.
The man, who rejects God, soon ends up doing the most stupid thing a man can do, worshipping something he has made with his own hands and calling it his god. For someone who claims to be wise, to make an idol and then say it made him, is about as foolish as a man can get.
Man is inherently religious. Designed to worship the true god, he must now worship something even if he has to make it with his own hands.
The rest of the chapter is made up of three parallel sections grouped around the phrase “God gave them over”--- because they did not glorify Him; their fate was the sexual degrading of their bodies.
1:24-26: “Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of god into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever Amen. For this cause god gave them up to vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature.”
Humanity reaches the depths when its women become corrupt. For God intends that the virtues of the race should be preserved in her. But when she abandons herself to the lower nature, society is doomed. When women fall from their high places, man becomes inflamed and abandons himself to unrestrained vileness.
1:27-28: “And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.”
When a man turns his back on God, refusing to have God in his thoughts, God removes His witness from that man’s conscience. Then the individual is abandoned to a life without restraint and his character degenerates as his evil nature takes over.
1: 2931: “Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of god, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment of god, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
God made them harvest the crops they themselves had sown. Because they exchange the real God for false gods, by way of temporary punishment, they exchanged that which was natural for that which was unnatural. The price they paid for rejecting God was to become moral rejects.
This is the climax of sin. To assent coldly and objectively to others’ sins is worse than to succumb to temptation oneself in the heat of the moment.
All such must expect sentence of death at the judgment day.
Preached by: Carolyn Sissom
Scripture from K.J.V. Bibliography F.F. Bruce Bible Commentary, Leslie C. Allen, C.S. Lovett’s Lights on Romans, comments and conclusions are my own.
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