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The good news of faith Romans 6: 8–14 Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 09 Jan, 2007 “BY GRACE you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is God’s gift.” Faith is a gift, the gospel is a gift. God keeps giving over and over. My grandfather used to have a little rime: The rain, it raineth on the just, The Bible says that God sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. It is his nature to give. If we had looked a bit further into Romans 5, we would have seen that God commends his love to us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Here is a God who gives before we even knew we needed it. And, as I showed last week, this all has a purpose, as Paul reminds us: ROM 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship. God has given so much for us: our appropriate response is to give ourselves to him. Last week we saw how God has given us a powerful gospel, a message which actually transforms lives. That doesn’t mean that you necessarily feel all that much different; it does mean that, by objective measures, a person who responds to Christ will be different. In my own life, I can see that God took someone with a limited sense of what community was about and helped me to understand and see how I belong to others. He took a shy stammerer and gave me the ability to stand before crowds and speak confidently. He took someone who was uncomfortable with people with mental health issues or intellectual disabilities, and helped me relate to them. Without Christ, I would have done many things differently and probably to my own destruction and the destruction of many others. It is a powerful gospel, transforming lives.
Christianity is about faith But it is also a faith–filled gospel, a gospel which approaches life, God, and all the rest from a radically different perspective. As I said last week, Christianity is the only true faith. What I mean is that Christianity is the only religion which is truly faith-based rather than performance-based. I don’t say that other religions don’t contain elements of belief — far from it. In fact, they generally hold quite firm ideas, whether or not those ideas make much sense. But the point is that none of them depends on belief per se. They depend on performance. We Christians have what no others have: a guarantee of salvation. For them, everything depends on the sum of what you have done in this life. It is seen as a wages sheet, where the bottom line payment depends on how many hours you spend at work. But the Bible clearly declares, The wages sin pays is death. The bottom line on every wages sheet is negative; the response of heaven is a sacking. Our good deeds and our religious acts can never repay the damages for which we are liable because of disobedience. Christianity is also the only religion which is truly a faith, because it is the only religion which clearly grasps what faith is. Other religions require assent to certain propositions. Christian faith certainly contains propositions, but it is essentially about trust in a person and faithfulness to that person because of trust. Christianity is about depending on Jesus Christ to be our leader and our saviour, and never let us down. Paul makes it very clear in Romans 1:17 where he says, 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.” By faith from first to last. The Greek says, “Out of faith unto faith.” (ek pisteos eis pistin) It means that the righteousness of God which we live by arises out of faith and its purpose, its end–point is that we have more faith. Let’s think how that works. You believe that Jesus is directing you to perform a certain ministry. You are scared, but you know it’s the right thing to do. So you pray and you swallow hard, and you say, “Lord, if this is to work out, you have to help!” And you do it, and you see Jesus is at work in it, and you say, “Hey! That worked! I will trust Jesus more fully next time!” So a little bit of faith grows into a bigger bit of faith — and, all the time, God is working out his righteousness in you, because, as you follow Jesus and obey him, you become actually more righteous to match the imputed righteousness you got from Jesus when you believed. What do I mean by, imputed righteousness? Just this: when you come to God through Jesus, you don’t come with any claim to righteousness. As the Bible says, ISA 64:6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, As far as God is concerned, our so–called righteous acts are like a pile of used nappies — that might give you an idea of what Isaiah is saying there. In fact, the idea in that passage is even worse than that, but I don’t want to put you off your lunch. But when you believe, when you repent and turn in faith to Jesus, God credits you with the righteousness of Jesus himself. That’s the idea of imputation. It’s an accounting term. So, use faith, and you gain a righteousness credit enough to cover all your sin and need. Keep using faith, and you discover Jesus at work in you. That builds more faith and leads you into righteous deeds: it just builds up more and more. In the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness which begins in faith and results in ever more faith. That’s a great gift, isn’t it?
Believe — know — count But the faith–filled gospel takes us even further. It is easy to dabble in the shallows, and never go further in your understanding of Jesus. When I first began preaching, I preached some decent evangelistic sermons. But I became bored, because I was covering the same territory each time. It was my problem, not the gospel’s. I wasn’t developing my understanding of the gospel. We all need to know more about faith. We know about repentance and about righteousness by faith. But wait — there’s more! In Romans 6, Paul tells the Christians to believe, to know and to count themselves. Those are all actually words of faith. He says if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. and ROM 6:11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body... Believe is a faith word. We all know that. Paul tells us to have a full belief. If we have shared with Jesus in his death, we believe we shall also share in his resurrection. We can’t prove that that it the case, but we can make out a strong argument that we belong to Jesus in death, in life, in resurrection. If sharing in his death brings about separation from the world and its lures, then it makes equal sense that we shall also share in his resurrection and all the blessings that are involved. Paul also tells us we know that, since Christ was raised from the dead, he is no longer subject to death. That is also really a faith statement. We know it, because alternative explanations are improbable. It is possible that he was raised only to die again at a later stage, but that raises the further question, “Why did he rise in the first place, if it was a meaningless resurrection?” We also know it, because it is the way that God would work. If God overcame death for Jesus one time, wouldn’t he do it for all time? And we know it because it fulfills what the prophets taught. 1000 years earlier, David said, You will not allow your Holy One to see corruption. Knowledge by faith, but hardly irrational. It’s just that you can’t put any of that in a test tube, pour on acid, and see the incorruptible golden result when the liquid is poured off. Count — or reckon, in some versions — is also a faith word. When I finished my Arts degree in 1975, I had about five months to wait before I would graduate. I contacted the administration, and asked if I could put the letters, BA., after my name while I waited for the official acknowledgement. They told me that, if I had completed all the requirements, I could. Although the official confirmation hadn’t been given by the Vice Chancellor at an official ceremony, I could count myself to be a bachelor of arts. I exercised faith that the University’s confirmation letter that I had completed the requirements was assurance that I would obtain what I hoped for. In the same way, we count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God. Sin comes knocking on the door. Sin calls out, “Let me in! I have a great idea for a scam. We are clever enough to rob a bank, I’ll show you how to defeat that person who was rude to you!” But I can say, “Go away! The old Peter doesn’t live here any more. He died in Christ.” Sin says, “Oh, that’s sad. Come down and get drunk and pick up a girl so you can forget the sadness.” And I say, “There’s nothing to be sad about. Jesus gives the dead Peter new life!” I might not be actually dead. I might not have fully experienced resurrection. But, as far as the world, the flesh and the devil are concerned, I’m dead to them, and alive to God. Romans 6 is not the place to find practical answers to the sin problem. We’ll look at that in Chapter 8. It’s the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of practical holiness. But he can work practical holiness in us because he knows where to find us. If we believe we share with Jesus in death and resurrection, if we know that we are sharing in an eternal benefit through his death and resurrection, and if we count ourselves to be dead in Christ and alive to God, we stand rock–solid, and the Holy Spirit can do something with us. That’s what this is about: our standing before God, our standing in Christ, our standing in opposition to sin and agents of sin.
Obedience of faith Finally, in Romans 6: 17, 18, Paul writes, 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. This is a further aspect of a faith–filled gospel: the obedience of faith. One of our greatest failings as Baptists is that we don’t truly trust when it comes to obedience, because obedience is an aspect of submission, and we are so afraid of submitting to something wrong that Satan tricks us into submitting to nothing — except himself. When things go wrong for us Baptists, they really go wrong in a big way, because we don’t trust each other. But trusting each other is part of trusting God. And we won’t let the Holy Spirit reign in our lives, because we are afraid that an evil spirit might take control instead. The consequence is spiritually weak, spiritually disabled churches. Paul speaks about the obedience of faith. Trust and obey is not a nice little harbour. It is the key to being God’s people in the power of a faith–filled gospel. When we truly submit to God, when we are willing to obey, we no longer belong to sin, but to the realm of righteousness, where people live by faith, where God’s people trust each other and trust Jesus and trust God the Father and trust the guiding Holy Spirit. Faith is about obedience. Some people say, “Are you saying that our obedience saves us?” Certainly not! I am saying that obedience proves that we are saved, because saved people obey the One who saved them. I saw a delightful clip from YouTube recently. A woman who had raised an orphaned lion cub eventually had to send him to a zoo. The day came when she visited the lion. The little old lady stood near to the safety rails and this great golden lion saw her. He stood on his hind legs and put his paws around her neck and rubbed his face on hers, just like a little house tabby when its owner comes home. When that lion had nothing, the lady took him in, cared for him, raised him, loved him. It is the nature of lions to treat smaller creatures as prey, and he could have gone for the woman to eat her, but, instead, he loved her as much as a lion can love. He didn’t turn on her, but he loved the one who had loved him. In the same way, God loves us when we are rebels against him; Jesus takes us in when we come naked, poor and blind; together Father, Son and Holy Spirit give us a new life in their own home. How could we deny God? How could we strike at the one who saved us? How could we do anything but lovingly obey in return? That is faith put into practice.
Conclusion God has given us a wonderful gift in the gospel. It is a powerful gospel, because it offers real hope for change. As we saw last week, where every other religion gives a list of things to do and leaves you to do it, the gospel acknowledges that we constantly fail and can’t do the things we need to do. But today we have also seen that the gospel is a faith filled gospel, which leads us to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. We have seen that this gospel starts in faith and just creates more and more faith. We have seen that, by faith, it puts us into a right relationship with God where he can begin doing his new work in us. And we have seen that it is a faith which creates the conditions for obedience to God. As I said, a genuine Christian faith has power to change lives. Let’s follow Jesus and find for ourselves the truth of the gospel that The just shall live by faith. May it be so, AMEN. |
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© 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.) |
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