SPEAKER_00: But um kicking off in this series in Romans, um this is this is a big book, right?
SPEAKER_00: We have uh one of the largest letters uh really in the New Testament is the book of Romans.
SPEAKER_00: And it and it can be this complex thing.
SPEAKER_00: If we try to just go at it and we take it piece by piece and we don't look at it through the whole lens of the letter that Paul was intending to write, there's parts of it that get really complex and difficult to navigate.
SPEAKER_00: This letter, though, it is foundational to the church.
SPEAKER_00: This is an imperative letter.
SPEAKER_00: This is something that's going to create uh really a catalyst of our understanding of the gospel even to today.
SPEAKER_00: It transforms and understands the way that we understand our relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of my favorite uh guys from church history is a guy named Martin Luther.
SPEAKER_00: And you've probably heard me talk about him before, but he loved the letter of Romans.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in his uh introduction to his commentary, he refers to Romans as purest gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And what Romans was for Luther was this change, this drastic conversion, even out of his own words.
SPEAKER_00: This is a man who uh gave himself to be a monk.
SPEAKER_00: He uh was of the Augustinian order, he was very devout and faithful.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there's stories after stories about how uh the priests inside of the cloister would not want him to come to them anymore to confess any more sin because he would spend hours just laboring over all these sins of his heart and mind and things that he'd done, and he would they would say, Martin, this is a this isn't even anything to ask for forgiveness over.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is ridiculous.
SPEAKER_00: But Martin Luther had this tension in his life, right?
SPEAKER_00: So he had this devotion to God, uh greater devotion than any of us in this room have given to God in our physical being.
SPEAKER_00: But he hated God.
SPEAKER_00: These are his own words.
SPEAKER_00: He hated God because of this.
SPEAKER_00: He understood how holy God was and how holy God called him to be, and he knew he could never live up to that.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of judge, what kind of creator, what kind of being would have such high standards of righteousness and holiness and then inflict them upon me of which I could never, ever live up to.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a damning reality for Luther.
SPEAKER_00: That's how he saw his relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't until he read Romans.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Romans 1:17 was the very last scripture in our passage this morning that he himself says he was converted.
SPEAKER_00: The gates of paradise were opened to him.
SPEAKER_00: This is what he says.
SPEAKER_00: He was reading it in his home.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, as if you visit there, you can see the corner of his house where it's all broken off, and it's got a little sign there and it says, This is where Martin Luther was actually converted, reading Romans 1:17, that the righteous shall live by faith.
SPEAKER_00: He said he was converted, everything changed.
SPEAKER_00: No longer did he hate God, but he loved God, and the gospel started to just go forth, and that that was a catalyst moment for him.
SPEAKER_00: And so when we look at Romans, what we're really looking at in this entire letter is the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the gospel said so succinctly in the first opening verses, but then unpacked over the next several, several chapters of what the gospel means for us as believers today.
SPEAKER_00: And so if we look at the opening, that one, one through seven, what we're gonna see is this God is the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: As he opens up this letter to the Romans, this is what we're going to see and identify from the very beginning: that God is the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That word, that phrase, when he says that he has been set apart for the gospel of God, as he introduces himself.
SPEAKER_00: That word God alone is probably the most important word of this entire letter because it is about God and it is about our understanding of God that dictates the way of which we're allowed or able to have relationship with him.
SPEAKER_00: You see, our relationship with God is contingent upon his character, who he is, and how he chooses sovereignly to relate with us.
SPEAKER_00: And so we have to realize one thing: it's not our gospel.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have the ability to fabricate it, we don't have the authority to twist it, manipulate it, change it, alter it.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have that freedom and privilege.
SPEAKER_00: But a lot of us in the church and throughout church history have assumed that we've had that freedom.
SPEAKER_00: That we get to dictate what truth is or what the gospel is or how we even have relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: We are able to set the standards for such things.
SPEAKER_00: We've believed that lie, we've operated that lie, and we have condemned thousands upon thousands of souls through such heresy.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the gospel is God's.
SPEAKER_00: As we look down in the introduction of the letter, we'll see that Paul says, a slave, a servant, he says, of Christ Jesus, he's a slave of Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul makes it really clear to us in these opening remarks what that gospel is.
SPEAKER_00: We kind of have this creed opening to the letter.
SPEAKER_00: So if we look at church history, something that's so vitally important to the church is ancient creeds and confessions that have always been confessed throughout church history.
SPEAKER_00: Without those, uh, we would have no anchor to go back to.
SPEAKER_00: We'd have anything that roots us in our faith.
SPEAKER_00: And so we constantly would see these changes in church belief and confession.
SPEAKER_00: And we have that now even with creeds and confessions, because unfortunately, we have this um arrogance about us, right?
SPEAKER_00: Often in that the church, and when we see and we look back at church history, we tend to have an arrogant posture as if we know better than they did, right?
SPEAKER_00: And that's that's such a that's such a pride thing, that's such an arrogance thing.
SPEAKER_00: We have to look back to the church uh throughout history to understand what it has always confessed, because because when we look at where purest doctrine is, we're gonna see it at Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And the closer to Jesus we can get, uh the more faithful to pure doctrine we're gonna be.
SPEAKER_00: The farther away from Jesus we get, uh, the crazier things get, right?
SPEAKER_00: Now you can write a book uh about uh some heretical thing and get a two million dollar tour with Oprah.
SPEAKER_00: Back then, you wrote a heretical work, it was chained to your leg and you were burned out of stake.
SPEAKER_00: There was different consequences in the content of what we wrote.
SPEAKER_00: But see, Paul says this is God's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And he's using this creedal opening, this formal statement of beliefs about Jesus and about what he accomplished for us in this opening letter.
SPEAKER_00: He gives us this precise and succinct gospel presentation that he then labors throughout the rest of the letter to unpack.
SPEAKER_00: I I love this quote from uh a Scottish theologian, James Denny.
SPEAKER_00: He says, as there is only one gospel, so there can, or as there is only one God, so there can only be one gospel.
SPEAKER_00: As there is only one God, so there can be only one gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the gospel of God, not of man.
SPEAKER_00: And so as Paul works to lay this out, he starts with this that it was promised beforehand through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this is something that isn't new.
SPEAKER_00: As Paul's writing to the Romans, he's saying that this isn't something that was just created.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't something that was just brought onto the scene of human history, this is something that has been prophesied about uh throughout the ages of time that was going to come to pass.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we see the very first proclamation of the gospel from God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: This shows the ownership that God has in the gospel, of it being his own plan of redemption.
SPEAKER_00: When we look all the way back to Genesis chapter 3, we see something that theologians call the proto-evangelion.
SPEAKER_00: This is the first proclamation of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: As man has uh disobeyed God and they've ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
SPEAKER_00: God comes in and he starts cursing man and cursing woman.
SPEAKER_00: He curses man that he has to work by the sweat of his brow, curses woman in pain and childbirth, but but also he curses the serpent that deceived them.
SPEAKER_00: And he says to the serpent that this there's gonna be a seed that comes from this woman, singular seed.
SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be a child that comes from this woman.
SPEAKER_00: You will bruise his heel, but he will crush your head.
SPEAKER_00: That's the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That's the promise that Adam failed in his ability to protect, provide, and pastor Eve.
SPEAKER_00: So we needed a second Adam.
SPEAKER_00: We needed a true head crusher.
SPEAKER_00: If we look at the sin of Adam, where did he sin?
SPEAKER_00: He failed to cut off the head of the snake.
SPEAKER_00: Men, let that be a lesson to you.
SPEAKER_00: As we're called to be pastors, protectors, providers, we have to cut off the head of the snake that tries to come into our home.
SPEAKER_00: As sin tries to come in, as the enemy tries to come in, we have to be the first ones to say no, to go at war against that which tempts us away from the heart of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Adam failed to do, but Christ wouldn't.
SPEAKER_00: Christ would be the second Adam, the true and better Adam, the head crusher that was promised to us.
SPEAKER_00: Some theologians and historians present more than 400 prophecies in the Old Testament about Christ.
SPEAKER_00: More than 400 of them, and Christ fulfilled them.
SPEAKER_00: These prophecies, uh, Paul goes on to say, were concerning his son, who was descended from David according to the flesh, of the lineage of David, David from the flesh, his humanity and literal natural birth, even though it was through supernatural virgin birth.
SPEAKER_00: So this is where we get this kind of creedal response.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's getting ready to go out, and he's saying this was promised beforehand through the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: All of this was concerning his son, Jesus, who was born of the lineage of David, right?
SPEAKER_00: He's walking us through, and he says, He was declared to be the Son of God in power.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this isn't a making, right?
SPEAKER_00: When Christ was resurrected from the dead, he didn't become Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, declared to be the Son of God in power is an actualization, a realization of who he was.
SPEAKER_00: This was a definitive statement that Christ was who he claimed to be.
SPEAKER_00: So he was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness that's through the Holy Spirit by his resurrection from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: So, so this resurrection that Paul talks about, that Paul bases his whole ministry upon.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says that if Christ Jesus did not raise from the dead, then what are we doing here?
SPEAKER_00: We're to be most pitied above all people.
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus is still dead in a tomb somewhere, if you can go and visit his ossuary, then what in the world are we doing here?
SPEAKER_00: And so he he banks all of his ministry, all of his sacrifices, even the future martyrdom of his own body, on the fact that Jesus got up out of the tomb, was resurrected from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: This is the full evidence of Christ is who Christ said he would be.
SPEAKER_00: And this is where Paul leans into that.
SPEAKER_00: That he is, this is, he says, this definitive statement, this is Jesus Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, Son of Man, Christ, Son of God, Lord, King over all creation.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5, he then says, okay, so because Christ came, he was he was prophesied, he was foretold that he was coming, he was born, he came, he resurrected from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Now Paul says, What did that accomplish for us?
SPEAKER_00: In verse 5, he says, Through whom, speaking of Jesus, we've received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says this that the purpose of Christ's coming is for the obedience of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Obedience of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Now those things seem contradictory to one another, don't they?
SPEAKER_00: Obedience doesn't seem very faith-filled, and oftentimes we think of faith as not needing or requiring obedience.
SPEAKER_00: If we just have enough faith, then it doesn't really matter how we act or behave, right?
SPEAKER_00: Or if we just do enough good, we really don't need that much faith.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul says, no, it's the obedience of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Our obedience is to be demonstrated in a life of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Because faith transforms the heart to actually desire such obedience.
SPEAKER_00: You see, that's the difference that we have to understand.
SPEAKER_00: The law demands not simply outward obedience, but done so with inward joy.
SPEAKER_00: You see, many of us, and we'll get to this later in this in the sermon, but but we obey not out of joy, but out of coercion, out of fear.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to go to hell, right?
SPEAKER_00: Nobody would really raise their hand and say, I want to go to hell.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of you would.
SPEAKER_00: Um we'll talk afterward.
SPEAKER_00: I'll be in the lobby.
SPEAKER_00: But um, many of us would not just raise their hand and say, I want to go to hell, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so what do we do?
SPEAKER_00: There's a measure where our obedience is actually out of fear, it's actually out of coercion, it's actually trying to avoid the judgment and wrath of God if we believe hell is real in the first place.
SPEAKER_00: But what God demands is not obedience so that we actually miss penalty or we miss judgment.
SPEAKER_00: God demands obedience out of joy.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's not about just the things we do, it's about the reasons we do them.
SPEAKER_00: You see, that Jesus always raised the bar on sin.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of us, when we look at Jesus and our relationship with him, we typically think that he's gonna lower the bar, right?
SPEAKER_00: All I have to do is say this prayer, or all I have to do is believe in Jesus, and then I've escaped the penalty of hell, and I get to just kind of live whatever one, because isn't God loving and isn't God gracious?
SPEAKER_00: Like, aren't those two things true?
SPEAKER_00: But see, Jesus never actually lowered the bar on our sin.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, throughout his ministry, raised the bar.
SPEAKER_00: When it was questioned to him about what does adultery look like, he said, Look, I'm not saying just when you sleep with another person, that's adultery.
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying when in your heart you even desire to do it, you've already sinned.
SPEAKER_00: You see, that's the difference between outward obedience and inward joy to that obedience.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard it said that if you murder someone, right, then there's this penalty that follows it.
SPEAKER_00: But I tell you, if you just hate your brother, you've already murdered him in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Christ doesn't just deal with our outward actions, but we constantly do that in the church.
SPEAKER_00: We constantly deal with the outward behavior of ourselves and others rather than asking a better question is why did you even want to do it in the first place?
SPEAKER_00: Why are where would where did that desire come from?
SPEAKER_00: Where did that longing come from?
SPEAKER_00: Where did that where did that come from?
SPEAKER_00: You see, obedience without joyful desire is dead religion.
SPEAKER_00: Obedience without faith has no power to save us.
SPEAKER_00: Paul comes in in verse 8 and kind of greets those in Rome all the way through 15.
SPEAKER_00: And so, to give us some historical context of what's happening in Rome, one of his things that we have to understand Paul at this point had not got to visit these people.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't a physical plant that Paul actually established himself or started himself.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the the throughout the New Testament, there's all kinds of churches that Paul helped establish and appoint leaders and disciple and train and go on to the next thing.
SPEAKER_00: But Rome was not one of those things.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul was called to be the apostle to the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: And so Rome was full of Gentile people, these Greeks.
SPEAKER_00: But also there was Romans there, uh there was Jews there as well.
SPEAKER_00: And so what happened is there was this dispersion.
SPEAKER_00: There's this uh the Jews in Rome had to be removed under Emperor Claudius, that they came back over a period of time later.
SPEAKER_00: And so these Christians who were Jewish Christians and these other Christians who were Greek Christians started to build one church together.
SPEAKER_00: And there was all this confusion about well, how do we obtain righteousness?
SPEAKER_00: What is the right way of which we should live?
SPEAKER_00: How does one go about serving Christ?
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul had heard about these things, and his heart to be a pastor was causing him to write to them to encourage them.
SPEAKER_00: So when we look at summary verses 8 through 15, we see that Paul demonstrates a pastor's heart to encourage and be encouraged.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to write to them and to encourage them in their faith, to be able to sharpen them from a distance theologically or and to train them in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: But then he says this very key statement that he wants to be encouraged as well.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12, that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Paul saw himself as a Christian above all else.
SPEAKER_00: Not just this apostle that that needed to come in and fix everything right, but he saw himself above all else as a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: He needed to be encouraged.
SPEAKER_00: He was one who wanted to celebrate and have joy over the faith that he had heard about in Rome.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted to experience it firsthand and be a key player in it.
SPEAKER_00: And what he saw is that they were missing the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The church in Rome was missing the gospel, both the Greeks and the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: They were getting it wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And so he says to them, I I long, I've heard about your faith.
SPEAKER_00: I've wanted to come and visit with you many times, but but let me tell you this from a distance, before I get there, I'm eager to preach the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: I'm either I'm eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Roman.
SPEAKER_00: This is what's key for us is that Paul doesn't ever see the gospel as something we go beyond.
SPEAKER_00: You see, he talks about that he he's he's encouraged by their faith.
SPEAKER_00: He's heard of their faith.
SPEAKER_00: In his prayers, he thanks God for the faith which they have.
SPEAKER_00: They've received the gospel enough to identify themselves as Christians, to gather together as God's people, to establish a church.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul's saying, I'm eager to come to you to preach the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Us as Christians, we think so often that the gospel is some starting line that we go beyond into deeper or more uh uh secret things of faith.
SPEAKER_00: But but Paul shows us very clearly here, we don't get to go beyond the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Because I would argue that every time we've sought to go beyond the gospel, we've gotten away from it completely.
SPEAKER_00: And what we have to constantly do is fight to come back to that anchor.
SPEAKER_00: And here we go in verses 16 through 17, the closing of his opening statement in his letter to the Romans, we see that the gospel reveals the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel reveals the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Why does Paul transition this way in the letter?
SPEAKER_00: Right there at the top of verse uh uh 16, he says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Why is he making that argument or that statement so early in the letter?
SPEAKER_00: Because he knows who he's writing to has such uh equity in their works, of how they live their life, of the works that they do, of the of the of from the from the Jewish Christians of the Torah of which they obey, from the Greek Christians, from the way that they've now lived their lives and the wisdom that they have.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul's gonna explain to them very clearly it is not about your works, it's not about your wisdom, it's not about anything that you have, it's about the gospel alone.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not ashamed of the gospel, Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: Why is he not ashamed?
SPEAKER_00: Because it alone is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is what the church in Rome needed most, and he longs to preach the gospel to them because only in the gospel is true salvation.
SPEAKER_00: You see, you and I, we can only be saved through perfect righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: That's what God demands.
SPEAKER_00: God demands utterly perfect righteousness to be in relationship with Him.
SPEAKER_00: That's the only way that we can be saved.
SPEAKER_00: Without perfect righteousness, we are hopelessly damned.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul gives them hope in.
SPEAKER_00: It is the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17 for in it, speaking of the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.
SPEAKER_00: So how is righteousness attributed to us?
SPEAKER_00: Not by our efforts, not by our works, not by our obedience, but by faith.
SPEAKER_00: Faith alone.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is not ashamed of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Because he understands its power.
SPEAKER_00: He understands its necessity for the church in Rome.
SPEAKER_00: He says this to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
SPEAKER_00: Think about the way that Paul is engaging with this Roman church.
SPEAKER_00: The Jewish people believed wholeheartedly that they were the chosen people of God.
SPEAKER_00: They were the ones who received the law, right?
SPEAKER_00: And we're even going to see this in the next coming chapters.
SPEAKER_00: They were the ones who the promises of God were given.
SPEAKER_00: They were whom the law was revealed to, and they're the ones that are working as hard as they possibly can to uphold every single bit of it.
SPEAKER_00: So they would think that they don't need the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: They're not the ones that are in need of this thing.
SPEAKER_00: The Gentiles need something else.
SPEAKER_00: We are the chosen people of God.
SPEAKER_00: We have his promises.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul says, You want to know who the gospel is primarily for?
SPEAKER_00: To you first.
SPEAKER_00: You who think that you're the chosen, the promise, you need the gospel first, and then to the Greek.
SPEAKER_00: Because Paul's helping us see that there's one gospel for all humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 4, 5 through 6, Paul writes to the church at Ephesus: there's one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all.
SPEAKER_00: There is no other.
SPEAKER_00: In all of our experience with religion and all of our attempts to try and create and fabricate other ways to God throughout the scriptures, if we're going to have any belief that this word of God is truth and authoritative in the way that we live our lives, then we cannot come out on the other side of that with this multiple pluralist way of getting to God.
SPEAKER_00: Because from Genesis to Revelation, we see a clear understanding that there is one God, one faith, one baptism, one way through Jesus Christ his Son.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's not ashamed of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: For in it, speaking of the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this was Luther's conversion from this verse.
SPEAKER_00: And he was battling this culture of obedience.
SPEAKER_00: He was battling this reality where the Catholic Church had come in and created these indulgences to be able to purchase righteousness or right standing with God.
SPEAKER_00: You see, to give some historical context to Luther and why this verse meant so much to him was that the Catholic Church had put on their people these burdens that no one could truly carry.
SPEAKER_00: You had to work your way to get out of hell, to get out of purgatory, and be in paradise with God forever.
SPEAKER_00: And so you had to, uh they made it to where you could go and visit relics.
SPEAKER_00: You could go on these long pilgrimages to see Mary's breast milk or to touch John the Baptist's beard or to be able to get uh pants from Joseph.
SPEAKER_00: All these different relics that were fabricated and made up.
SPEAKER_00: They would prop up and build churches around them, and you'd have to make these pilgrimages to go and touch them.
SPEAKER_00: You have to pay to touch them, first off, uh, and then be able to actually uh uh have part of your sins forgiven you.
SPEAKER_00: But then the Catholic Church found themselves in quite the predicament.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to build St.
SPEAKER_00: Peter's Basilica and they ran out of money.
SPEAKER_00: So what did they do?
SPEAKER_00: They made up a heresy.
SPEAKER_00: When you have when you're short on cash, that's the first thing you do.
SPEAKER_00: Make up a heresy.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and what they did is they said, if you give an X amount of money to us, we will write a certificate that says you and your loved ones are released from purgatory.
SPEAKER_00: That's how they built St.
SPEAKER_00: Peter's Basilica.
SPEAKER_00: Through exploiting people's fears, the grief over their loved ones, that if you just pay us enough money, we'll write a certificate, they'll be free, you'll be good to go.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Luther raged against.
SPEAKER_00: But this is also the burden that he found himself under because he did not know any other way until he read 117 that the righteous shall live by faith, not by works.
SPEAKER_00: You see, God's righteousness is revealed not by works done from coercion or fear, but through faith in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: This is the great exchange of imputation.
SPEAKER_00: You see, you and I, we can never meet God's standards of righteousness in our obedience.
SPEAKER_00: You and I know even the good things that we do at times are not done from good motives.
SPEAKER_00: You and I know that when we lay our head down at night, the things that we thought, the things that we wanted to say but held back, the things that we wanted to do but didn't, maybe on the outside we were of good works, but we know our hearts and minds and the stillness of the night.
SPEAKER_00: We know.
SPEAKER_00: We can't live up to the righteousness of which God calls us to.
SPEAKER_00: But this is what we have to understand about the gospel: this great exchange that happened on the cross, where Christ, who lived in perfect righteousness and obedience to the Father in every aspect of his life, both in outward obedience and inward joy, gives to us his righteousness, accounted to us, credited to us, so that we might be right standing with God the Father, and he takes on himself all of our sin.
SPEAKER_00: This is the great exchange of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we put our hope in, that Christ is sufficient, that Christ is efficient, and that he gives to us every ounce of righteousness of which he obtained in his perfect life of obedience.
SPEAKER_00: Without that, we have no hope.
SPEAKER_00: Without that, we have nothing but sorrow, agony, grief, and a burden that we cannot lift ourselves from out under.
SPEAKER_00: So the main idea of this introductory letter is really a call of the reformation.
SPEAKER_00: Sola fide, faith alone.
SPEAKER_00: The reformation established these five solas.
SPEAKER_00: This was this kind of anthem of the reformation that helped them understand what they were fighting for.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that they were fighting for is sola fide, faith alone.
SPEAKER_00: It is by faith and faith alone that we are saved through the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about how good we are, it's not about what we do, it's not about what we obey or don't obey, it's not about anything of the conduct of our life because there's nothing that we can do that will merit for us God's love, his favor, his blessing.
SPEAKER_00: All of that is contingent upon two things: his own free choosing of you to be one of his children, and Christ's perfect accomplishment of every standard that heaven set.
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
SPEAKER_00: We can't add anything to that.
SPEAKER_00: But we try to do this all the time.
SPEAKER_00: The church constantly gets caught up in this reality or of this false uh notion that our works somehow save us or produce more righteousness in us.
SPEAKER_00: And we have to fight for, as the church, faith alone, because when we try to add anything to the gospel, we completely eradicate it of all of its power.
SPEAKER_00: Because when we put uh being baptized to the gospel, when we put how you dress or what music you listen to to the gospel, when we put how much you go to church or or these other things as contingents to the gospel, then you know what we do?
SPEAKER_00: We are simply saying Christ is insufficient.
SPEAKER_00: What damning, condemning heresy that is.
SPEAKER_00: That Christ somehow needs you and I to make up for the difference of what he couldn't accomplish in his own self.
SPEAKER_00: You see, it's faith alone.
SPEAKER_00: There's not anything else that we can do in our lives that adds to the finished work of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And when we try to do that as the church, I'm not saying that there's not a demand for obedience.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that there's not a demand to for conformity to the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying that's there.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm saying it's with joy, it's with a changed heart, it's with faith first.
SPEAKER_00: And you don't do those things to earn God's love or earn his favor or earn his blessing.
SPEAKER_00: You do them because you already have.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a different heart posture.
SPEAKER_00: I don't work and toil to escape hell.
SPEAKER_00: I work and toil in joy because God uh snatched me out of it.
SPEAKER_00: And when we try to add works to our salvation, we empty the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: We empty the gospel of all.
SPEAKER_00: Paul fought this in Galatians, the reformers fought this in the 1500s against the Catholic Church, and there's times and areas, even in today's church culture, that we have to fight it now.
SPEAKER_00: Solophide, faith alone is stated to be the article by which the church stands or falls.
SPEAKER_00: This one point of theology.
SPEAKER_00: Are we saved by how good we are?
SPEAKER_00: Or are we saved by faith and faith alone?
SPEAKER_00: You see, a lot of us we believe that we're actually saved through our works.
SPEAKER_00: This is a part of the the false notion that we have in our understanding.
SPEAKER_00: If we look at our story and the way that we engage with God and in a relationship with Him, we believe that we are saved by our works.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a this is a constant theme.
SPEAKER_00: If you talk to people, right, you'll hear language of like, oh, they're a good person.
SPEAKER_00: They're good enough.
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: And like what you're saying is like they don't rob banks or or do bad things like that.
SPEAKER_00: They're good people, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, and what we're saying is a person saved by their works.
SPEAKER_00: And this is in the in the unbelieving world, as we we seek to have relationship with people who aren't trying to understand their relationship with God, there's gonna be this notion or this reality that one, God is so loving and so good that he would not do that to somebody.
SPEAKER_00: And then on the backside of that, but this person is good enough to make it.
SPEAKER_00: And what is that good enough?
SPEAKER_00: Where is that bar?
SPEAKER_00: You and I cannot discover that because it doesn't exist.
SPEAKER_00: It's perfect, it's so the bar is so high that you and I could never even begin to get close to touching it.
SPEAKER_00: And and but we do this constantly of, oh, they're good enough.
SPEAKER_00: Well, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: Where is the measuring stick?
SPEAKER_00: You know, for some religions, if we look at certain areas of Islam, they're accounted the work if they just thought about doing it.
SPEAKER_00: So, like, I thought about taking my neighbors some groceries, didn't do it, but thought about it, so it was accounted to me as if I did.
SPEAKER_00: Literally, some Islamic people believe that.
SPEAKER_00: Wonderful, cool.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, some believe that you have to go to such radical memes at the expense of other people's lives, or else you're not counted worthy to enter paradise.
SPEAKER_00: Where's the bar?
SPEAKER_00: What bar are you gonna choose?
SPEAKER_00: You see, we don't know the bar, and the world is searching for that bar throughout every other religion.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter how you search the earth, every other religion is formed on this one principle.
SPEAKER_00: Do enough good, get salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Call it Judaism, call it Islam, call it whatever you want to call it.
SPEAKER_00: Every other religion is do enough good, get salvation.
SPEAKER_00: But where's the standard?
SPEAKER_00: Where's the bar in that?
SPEAKER_00: They don't know.
SPEAKER_00: All they do is hope they did good enough in the end of their life.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel and the gospel alone says you can't do it good enough, so Christ will do it for you.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the foolishness of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: That's the stumbling block of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Paul's saying.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not ashamed of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not ashamed to tell you that there's nothing that you can do that is going to earn God's love for you, favor for you, blessing for you.
SPEAKER_00: It is only in Christ's finished work.
SPEAKER_00: The fact that Christ died and resurrected from the dead, that's his opening statement.
SPEAKER_00: That fact that he has brought us in relationship to God the Father through that power is the only hope we have for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's not ashamed of it.
SPEAKER_00: And so many of us go throughout this whole life that we believe that we're gonna be actually saved by our works.
SPEAKER_00: And we fall into that pit too.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe because we're actually ashamed of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Many of us will say, Oh, yeah, he was a good man, he was a good person, or she was a good woman, or whatever we might be.
SPEAKER_00: And we're what we're really doing is we're passively damning people because we're ashamed of the consequences of preaching the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says, no one's good enough, no, not one.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we needed Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If we look at the whole history of Christ and his coming, why did we need Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Because we couldn't accomplish it on our own strength.
SPEAKER_00: We had no ability to.
SPEAKER_00: You're trying to bypass Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You're trying to go at it around Him.
SPEAKER_00: And Christ is waiting there with His arms open saying, Stop working for something you cannot obtain.
SPEAKER_00: Just come to me.
SPEAKER_00: I've already accomplished it for you, I've already obtained it for you.
SPEAKER_00: I am the righteousness you are striving for.
SPEAKER_00: Now rest.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this is why Christ calls us to come and rest constantly.
SPEAKER_00: Why is this language of, come unto me, all you are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest?
SPEAKER_00: The law causes us to be weary.
SPEAKER_00: The law is a heavy laden burden upon us that we've tried to fulfill and we've failed and failed and failed.
SPEAKER_00: And it's when we come to Christ that we come out from underneath such weight and we can rest.
SPEAKER_00: We can rest because he's worked and accomplished it for us.
SPEAKER_00: But some of us we believe that we're saved through our righteousness, our righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a pitfall of the church where we enter into Christianity, we enter into the church through the gospel, but then we move beyond it.
SPEAKER_00: And so then we think that the way that we behave or that our obedience actually merits for us or earns for us Christ's or God's blessing and favor.
SPEAKER_00: This is rampant in certain uh prosperity gospel movements, but the prosperity gospel has shifted to just become mainstream Instagram preaching.
SPEAKER_00: Where it's if you want God's favor, if you want God's blessing, if you want God to take you to the next level, if you want that breakthrough, if you want that whatever, whatever, whatever, then you have to do this.
SPEAKER_00: And it's an earning of God and his favor and blessing.
SPEAKER_00: But what we have the fullness of God's favor, we have the fullness of God's blessing, and we have the fullness of his love in Christ Jesus, in him alone.
SPEAKER_00: And we twist this where we enter in by means of grace, but then we make it to the finish line by works of our own righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we do that to ourselves?
SPEAKER_00: Why do so many of us enter the kingdom of God as a younger brother, riddled with sin, riddled, stained in our depravity, longing to just be brought into the home, but then two years later into our Christianity, we're elder brothers judging everyone, telling everyone to look at our obedience and our righteousness, telling everybody, look at how I'm living and you're not.
SPEAKER_00: This is something that plagues the modern church.
SPEAKER_00: This is something that plagues Christianity in today's culture.
SPEAKER_00: We believe God, you'll get me there, but then I need to do the rest on my own.
SPEAKER_00: No, we are not just saved by the gospel, but we are kept by the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And we persevere because of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: It is Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the Bible tells us, that He is the author and the finisher of our faith.
SPEAKER_00: That He who began a good work in you is faithful and just to complete it, that nothing can pluck us out of His hand, that Christ is the one who saves us, sustains us all through His finished work on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther said this of our relationship with righteousness and obedience.
SPEAKER_00: Outwardly you keep the law with works out of fear of punishment or love of gain.
SPEAKER_00: You'd rather act otherwise if the law didn't exist.
SPEAKER_00: Think about those words for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Out of fear of punishment or love of gain, we typically obey the law.
SPEAKER_00: But inwardly in our heart, we'd rather act differently if the law didn't exist.
SPEAKER_00: This is where Luther was getting to the heart of why we do what we do.
SPEAKER_00: When we are saved through faith and faith alone, then our obedience is from this wellspring of joy and delight because we are fully transformed by faith with a new heart.
SPEAKER_00: We're given that heart of stone that lived in our chest is now taken out and put in a heart of flesh by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And now we should love and delight and find joy in God's law because in God's law is life, is flourishing for us as his image bearers.
SPEAKER_00: If we would fully obey God's law, what beauty and human flourishing would we experience as his people?
SPEAKER_00: But many of us, if we're honest, we can resonate with Luther's statement.
SPEAKER_00: We can resonate that if the law didn't exist, if fear of hell wasn't really in the scope of our vision in life, we'd probably choose to act differently, wouldn't we?
SPEAKER_00: What state have we got ourselves in as the church?
SPEAKER_00: As Christians.
SPEAKER_00: When we look at God's law and we say, man, if I really wasn't afraid I'd go to hell for doing this, I probably would do it.
SPEAKER_00: That's coercion.
SPEAKER_00: That's fear.
SPEAKER_00: That's obedience that God does not delight in or desire.
SPEAKER_00: And we're not saved.
SPEAKER_00: That's the funny thing, is we're not saved by that obedience.
SPEAKER_00: It has no power for us.
SPEAKER_00: We are saved simply by faith alone, and that faith should produce in us a joy-filled response to obedience and who God is and what he's commanded us to do.
SPEAKER_00: But the beauty of the gospel for us church is that Jesus was declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, by his resurrection from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: This is straight out of Paul's opening statement.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of Holiness by His resurrection from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Christ was dead, but then was made alive, so that us who were dead could be made alive in him.
SPEAKER_00: That's the hope that we have of the gospel, that we don't serve a God who's still dead in a tomb somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: We don't serve a God who was made and fabricated by human hands.
SPEAKER_00: We don't serve a God who is distant from us and unable to hear our pleas and cries and petitions.
SPEAKER_00: We don't serve that kind of God.
SPEAKER_00: We serve a God who's empathetic, compassionate, who loves us.
SPEAKER_00: And so what did he do?
SPEAKER_00: He saw that we could never ever obtain the empty promises of the law.
SPEAKER_00: The law was held up for us so that we would know what sin was and know we could never accomplish it.
SPEAKER_00: And so Christ Jesus came and he fulfilled the law perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: Enjoy heart.
SPEAKER_00: And then he was resurrected from the dead after he was crucified, that we might have new life in.
SPEAKER_00: Him.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the resurrection of Christ is the pinpoint of our faith.
SPEAKER_00: So, how should we live?
SPEAKER_00: As I try to close up on our time and introduction to Romans this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Number one is you can't become more righteous than you are right now.
SPEAKER_00: Hear that.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot become more righteous than you are right now.
SPEAKER_00: In God's eyes, you are perfect.
SPEAKER_00: In God's eyes, you are holy.
SPEAKER_00: In God's eyes, you are righteous.
SPEAKER_00: In God's eyes, you're a saint through Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You are not meriting righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: You've been given Christ's righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing that we could ever, ever add to that.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 1:17, for in it, in the gospel, in the truth that Christ the Son of God came, lived a perfect life, died in our place on the cross under the wrath and weight of God's judgment, but was risen again from the dead three days later.
SPEAKER_00: In it, the righteousness of God is revealed.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel revealed God's righteousness in declaring those who place their faith in Jesus utterly, completely, and eternally righteous.
SPEAKER_00: But hear this.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We are utterly and completely righteous.
SPEAKER_00: Our obedience, our works, our labor does not add righteousness to us.
SPEAKER_00: It just conforms us more clearly to the righteousness that's already been freely given.
SPEAKER_00: We should mirror that.
SPEAKER_00: We should emulate that.
SPEAKER_00: We should act like it.
SPEAKER_00: You're a son of God, act like it.
SPEAKER_00: You're a saint in the kingdom of heaven, act like it.
SPEAKER_00: You're a holy priest consecrated and set apart for the work of reconciliation.
SPEAKER_00: Act like it.
SPEAKER_00: You're one who God has given up all of heaven and his son Jesus to purchase by his own blood so that he could bring you and adopt you into his family.
SPEAKER_00: Act like it.
SPEAKER_00: But act like it out of joy.
SPEAKER_00: Act like it out of pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: Act like it in excitement and enthusiasm.
SPEAKER_00: Act like he's the one who ransomed you out of heaven, not like your works depend on it.
SPEAKER_00: So you can't become more righteous than you are right now.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, joyful obedience to our righteous state is evidence of our faith.
SPEAKER_00: Joyful obedience to our righteous state is evidence of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Without faith, not only are our works based in coercion and fear, but they eternally fail to merit us anything.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 11:6 says this, and without faith, it is impossible to please him.
SPEAKER_00: For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
SPEAKER_00: Hear this out.
SPEAKER_00: If you're someone who would count yourself as not a believer, someone who's not a part of the church by placing your faith in Jesus, anything you try to do to earn God's love, to earn God's pleasure, to earn God's favor, Hebrews 11:6 says it with clarity and precision.
SPEAKER_00: Without faith, faith in what?
SPEAKER_00: The gospel of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It is impossible to please Him.
SPEAKER_00: Why do you continue to strive for it?
SPEAKER_00: You see, many of us believe our works gain us faith, but it's faith that actually joyfully brings about our obedience.
SPEAKER_00: We cannot continue living as though every act of obedience is a gain in God loving us, but as a freeing of the soul.
SPEAKER_00: Because we're utterly convinced through faith, he already does.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say it like this.
SPEAKER_00: Many of us are find ourselves in this prison.
SPEAKER_00: And we're trying everything we can to open up that gate.
SPEAKER_00: We're trying everything we can to get out on the other side, to become a freed man.
SPEAKER_00: All the time that we sit in that cell, we don't realize that Christ already opened the door and he's waiting for us to walk out.
SPEAKER_00: We still think that we've got to earn our way out.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to dig our way out.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to be the ones who actually muster the strength to overcome the obstacle, to find freedom on the other side.
SPEAKER_00: And Christ is saying, the door's open, walk through it, and then in because of faith, live like a free man.
SPEAKER_00: Live like a free man.
SPEAKER_00: This is looking at Jesus and realizing He cannot do anything else to show you how much He loves you.
SPEAKER_00: And in that freedom, in life through faith, we demonstrate the righteousness that He has freely given to us.
SPEAKER_00: Lastly, the gospel, not the law, is the power of God for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel, not the law, is the power of God for salvation.
SPEAKER_00: We have become ashamed of the foolishness of the gospel and replace it with a wretched, works-based message.
SPEAKER_00: And we've seen this in this last year.
SPEAKER_00: In a year full of gospel opportunity, we sadly became focused on preaching in empty self-righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: We demanded that the kingdom come through faithless obedience and loveless conformity.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Christians shouted through social media.
SPEAKER_00: This is what they shouted in protest.
SPEAKER_00: If you conform, if you obey, not with faith, but but with your own power and strength, if you become what we're calling you to be, then we will have salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And it was felt from both sides of the fence.
SPEAKER_00: We wanted kingdom fruit without kingdom submission.
SPEAKER_00: We failed to preach the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we preached works.
SPEAKER_00: And the most evident thing that 2020 showed us about the state of the church in America is that if we were found amongst the crowd before Pilate, we would scream out, give us Barabbas.
SPEAKER_00: Give us the revolutionary.
SPEAKER_00: We have to hate a works-based message, church.
SPEAKER_00: We have to hate it with everything in us.
SPEAKER_00: And we have to cling tightly to the gospel of Jesus Christ that is faith and faith alone.
SPEAKER_00: We have to have the heart of Paul for the culture around us.
SPEAKER_00: I'm eager to preach the gospel to you, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.