A Powerful gospel

Romans 1: 11 – 20

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 2 Dec, 2007

IN THE next few weeks I want to look at some snapshots of God’s gift to us, as we find it outlined in the book of Romans. Today, it is the gift of a powerful gospel.

As we go I want to keep our focus on Romans 12, where Paul says,

I plead with you therefore, brothers, on account of God’s great mercies, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship.

Paul spent most of Romans 1 – 11 outlining God’s great goodness, and then, in Chapter 12, he says, “All of this has a point: God has done so much good for you, that the only reasonable thing you can do is to give your entire self to him.”

Today we will look at the powerful gospel, next we will look at the faith–based gospel, and, on the 16th it will be the Spirit–filled gospel. Then we will fully focus on Christmas on 23 December.

However, the whole thing is about God’s gift to us, his giving goodness.

Our God is a God who gives.

Paul wrote,

 ^{ROM 1:16} I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. ¹⁷ For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

He was not ashamed of the gospel because it is God’s power for salvation.

But how does that work out?

In the first several chapters of Romans, we see that the gospel confronts irrational religion, that it gives where we would expect it to penalise, and that it establishes a new relationship with God.

Confronting irrational religion.

In Romans 1: 18 – 32, we see God’s indictment of all man–made religion: above all, it makes no sense.

God says,

...what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰ For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Then he continues to outline the features of irrational worship.

First, he attacks idolatry.

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Idolatry is ultimately unreasonable.

First, it is unreasonable, because we really don’t know what God looks like. It is incredible to think that we could ever know what God looks like, because that would imply that God was somehow trapped in the physical world, where light and sound and vision work.

Second idolatry is unreasonable, because its images of God are so unworthy of God. Can we really think of a God who is like an animal, or like an ugly dwarf, or like a block of carved marble?

Third, idolatry is irrational because it causes people to give themselves to images which have no power. Pagan temples need attendants to protect the idols from the rain, to put incence before them, and leave food offerings. These so–called mighty gods can’t even keep the birds from leaving droppings on them, yet people actually bow to them and imagine that these images focus the special presence of their gods! It’s crazy!

Idolatry also leads to unworthy behaviour. In the times when Paul wrote, pagan temples were regularly places of sexual immorality. There were prostitutes who were employed by the temples of Aphrodite and some of the Asian gods and goddesses. People believed that having sex with these prostitutes was equivalent to having sex with Aphrodite herself.

People even engaged in orgies as part of some pagan worship.

Equally, Paul doesn’t mention this, because it was less of a problem in his world, but you get some idolatries which impose special restrictions and punishments on people.

In Apuleius’The Golden Ass, you read of priests who cut themselves to show their goddess they were genuine.

When Paul writes against homosexual practices in Romans, he is not talking about people who are genuinely attracted to the same sex — that’s another issue — but about people who are constantly looking for a religious experience or a new thrill, and, if it takes homosexual practices, they will do it.

People use religion to justify all kinds of wickedness.

All of this is feeling–based religion, It is not about a reasoned response to a loving God, but it is all about getting that high that feels so good it has to come from God — except it doesn’t count for anything in terms of faith and grace and eternal life.

As Paul writes,

²⁹ They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, ³⁰ slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; ³¹ they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. ³² Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.

We are not saved by the good we do, but saved people do good — or so we should!

All irrational worship tends to damage people’s behaviour.

But the gospel is powerful and able to save because it turns the focus elsewhere. It engages with the true God. It brings our lusts under his control. It reveals that true religion is not about rituals, it is not about finding ways to get the right kind of feeling, but it is about a right relationship with the ruler of the Universe.

This is the kind of religion which has true power to save, because it is not based on me and my achievements and my sensations and my mystical experiences.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t have achievements and sensations and experiences as Christians — far from it! It does mean that these things are the byproducts of a right relationship with God, and not the cause of it.

I have had achievements as a Christian. I have overcome some temptations. I have touched lives. I have had sensations, when I have sensed the very close presence of God. I have had experiences, when prayers were answered, when God communicated with me in times of distress and need. But these things are not what my belief is about. Among the key turning points in my life was a day when I felt that, if God existed, I had no semse of his existence, but I decided that I would hold onto my belief that he existed whatever I felt. Within days, many things had begun to change for me. That is certainly an experience!

Giving in place of punishing

Paul sets out clearly what is wrong with religion. It is all based on a false premise, except for what is based on Jesus Christ himself.

He goes on to show that false religion deserves punishment. In Chapter 1, he sets out how God essentially stands back and leaves people to make their own choices. That’s his basic approach.

However, as Paul says,

 ^{ROM 2:5} But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. ⁶ God “will give to each person according to what he has done.”

God doesn’t throw down too many random thunderbolts from heaven, because he has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in justice by a man whom he has appointed, that is, by Jesus. It is saved up until the day of wrath.

Paul goes on to give the Jews of his day a serve for hypocrisy, for claiming to have God’s law and teachings, but for being no better morally than pagans who have no such advantages. God will not be more lenient to anyone for the advantages they have, but he will judge everyone justly and fairly. In fact, if we don’t pay attention to what God has said to us, we deserve worse than those who did wrong out of ignorance. There is no advantage in circumcision if you don’t live clean.

...circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code.

That makes sense, doesn’t it?

As the Bible says,

²⁰ Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.

All we can expect is judgment.

But here is the wonderful thing:

 ^{ROM 3:21} But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. ²² This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. ²⁵ God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished — ²⁶ he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

God doesn’t hold back his hand due to weakness or any lack of concern about our sin. He does it so as to be kind. He gives where we deserve him to take.

All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory, but all can be freely justified by God’s grace through faith in Jesus. That way, God can be gracious to us and yet just in having dealt with sin by proxy through the death of Jesus.

That’s why Paul can assure us that

^6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Wages are no more than we deserve. A gift can be anything, and has nothing to do with what you or I have earned.

Our God is a gracious God, who gives far beyond anything that any of us could deserve.

The new relationship with God.

We see that the world’s religions are essentially irrational, and that the gospel confronts them; then we see that God gives far beyond what we deserve; finally, we see that God established a new relationship with us.

As Paul points out, Abraham himself entered a new relationship with God by the new, the only workable method, which is faith.

^{ROM 4:1} What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered in this matter? ² If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about — but not before God. ³ What does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

There is no other religion which is truly a faith. Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

There is no obligation on God to take something as seemingly useless as faith and count it as equivalent to being righteous before him, but that is exactly what God has done.

Every other religion, when it is boiled down to its esentials, is about performance. If a person does well enough, God might accept him or her. It might be good deeds, it might be religious efforts, it is usually a combination of both.

Only Christianity says that these are futile and that only faith can bring about a saving relationship with God.

It worked for Abraham, and it will work for us, too.

As Paul writes,

^4:5 to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness.

He goes on to say,

²³ The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, ²⁴ but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness--for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. ²⁵ He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.

^{ROM 5:1} Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

God’s gift to us is a new relationship with himself, based solely on faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and resulting in our justification and our peace with God.

What that means is that we no longer have a case to answer before God, and he no longer pursues us to punish us for our former misdeeds.

Our God is truly the giver of a powerful gospel. It is either total nonsense, or it is the only way to a right relationship with him. It is certainly far from being one option. There is no sense of, you can take the freeway, or you can stick to the old Highway here. It is a question of either taking the road to Melbourne or taking the road to Brisbane. You can’t take the road to Melbourne and hope to reach Brisbane. It doesn’t work like that. You can either take the path God has opened through Christ, or you will take a path that leads away from God and away from the salvation which he alone gives.

Conclusion

The Christmas story is about giving. It is not really a model based on the wise men. God doesn’t mean us to copy them. In fact, those wise men gave to Jesus because they were copying God, who gives, and gives and goes on giving.

If we are to be like our heavenly father, we will also give.

That baby in the manger is the embodyment of God’s gracious giving nature.

What we have seen this morning is that God is about giving, and has given us, in Christ, a wonderful gift — a powerful gospel.

Other religions have no claim to power. They will give you a rule book and tell you to do as it says. But there is no power in it to change you from within as a person. This comes only by the power of the gospel.

We must — it is imperative that we must — find that power which is ours by the gift of God. If you don’t know it yourself, or if you feel it has grown dim in your heart, make today the opportunity to come to Jesus once more.

AMEN

© Peter R. Green 2007. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)