Right with God

Hi and WELCOME in again...as I said last week I am starting a series on the Book of Romans...here is the second in the series. If you have any questions or comments please leave them for me to read. Thanks.
Paul's Letter to the Romans: Sermon 2
Justification By Faith
Introduction
Rom 1:8 “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.
1:9 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 prayers,
1:10 making request if, by some means, now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you.
1:11 For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established-
1:12 that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.
1:13 Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you (but was hindered until now), that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other Gentiles.
1:14 I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and to unwise.
1:15 So, as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also.
1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
1:17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith.’”
First of all, the Apostle Paul thanks God.
He thanks God since the Roman Christians’ faith was known and spoken of widely throughout the then known world. It is important to the Apostle since he was an evangelist like, for example, the prophet Isaiah and Jesus Christ Himself and the Apostle Peter and the first martyr Stephen. These men wanted everyone to know that Jesus Christ is LORD and Saviour.
In verse 9: The Apostle Paul says: “that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers.” Paul prayed for his readers constantly.
Please also pray for me. Will you pray for me as I pray for you and prepare these messages specifically for you? Pray that we will hear God speaking to us. In this way we can get on the same page together and learn together.
The aim is to learn together what blessings God has for us and how we can pass these blessings on.
There is little use in me preaching if you do not hear from God, for we are all earthen vessels. 2COR 4:7 “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.” It is by His grace that we have been chosen to hear, receive, speak and live the word of God. My task is to preach and teach the word of God to you, so I need your prayers.
Later, in writing to pastor Timothy, Paul says:
II Tim 3:14 “But you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, 3:15 and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”
If there are things you have learned about God that you cannot be assured of then begin to think about them. Bring them up in your mind and heart as we go though Romans together.
Read the chapter before each Sunday. Even if the chapter I ask you to read each week is the only thing you read, it will help you.
Ask questions while you read.
Ask God to resolve your questions and about how to be sure about God’s truth.
As you prayerfully read God’s Word ask yourself:
• What does this passage mean to me?
• What is God telling me?
• Is there a lesson to learn?
• Is there a command to obey?
• Is there a sin to avoid?
• Is there a promise to claim and keep?
• How does this apply to me?
• What will I do about it?
In vv.10-12 Paul prays that he may be able to come and see the Roman Christians. He wants to help establish them in Christ as he brings them a spiritual gift. He spells out what this gift is: “that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.”
Sound selfish? Well, it’s not. If Paul is not encouraged he will be ineffective. He is only human after all!
True, a great leader but still only human, if he is not encouraged he will be ineffective.
If so, he cannot bring the Christians the blessing of encouragement. He cannot encourage them to hold to and experience the same faith in Christ which they hold together. He cannot establish them in the faith. It is his calling and he feels indebted to them.
v.13-15 God has laid a burden upon Paul to preach and teach the gospel to them, and he feels indebted. It is because of his calling from God that he feels indebted to the Roman Christians and that is why he wants to come to them and encourage them and be encouraged together with them in the gospel.
Paul: The Apostle to the Gentiles
Paul never forgot that God called him to be ‘one sent to preach the gospel,’ but to the Gentiles, which is everyone who is not a Jew. In Romans, Paul calls them ‘Greeks’ in v.14 and in Chapter 3:9 and but mostly refers to non-Jews as Gentiles as in verse 13 of this chapter.
God spoke to him in the temple in Jerusalem years before… Bible commentator F.F. Bruce says it was three years after his conversion on the road to Damascus.
(F.F. Bruce, Commentary on the Book of the Acts, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, Ltd, London, 1954, page 443.)
Then in Acts 22 Paul relates his story of being appointed an Apostle, or “one sent out,” when he preached to the crowds on the stairs outside the temple in Jerusalem. I will leave you to read that for yourselves in Acts 22:17-21.

Like Paul, I feel indebted to you because of God’s call. Ministers are called by God. They do not call themselves. At least they are not supposed to.
I am indebted to you because I owe you an explanation of the gospel and that’s what I am attempting to do.
Paul felt this indebtedness to God and to the Christians he wrote to in Rome.
Since Paul is the Apostle to the Gentiles, sent by God to speak to non-Jews i.e. you and me, we had better listen to what he has to say!
v16-17 “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
1:17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith.’ ”
There are four things in these verses that need to be explained so as to help us:
First are the words: “I am not ashamed.” “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ” (16) is a way of writing or speaking to get his point across. It can be rendered “I am overflowing with the message of the good news of Christ.” “It is a highly commendable thing.” In speaking this way, Paul already dismisses arguments that attempt to weaken the goodness (or beneficial nature) of the gospel in the eyes of the Romans.
“I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also. I am not ashamed to do so…”
In writing this way, He is careful to protect the image or standing of the gospel message and the Lord Jesus of which it speaks.

The Righteousness of God is Revealed
The second thing is this business of the righteousness of God.
God loves righteousness. He is the Righteous One. We do not have righteousness. We do not love righteousness. God does not love unrighteousness. He loves His Son Jesus Christ the Righteous. He does not suddenly become a lover of righteousness out of a reaction to man’s bad behaviour or attitude to Him.
God by His very nature is just, righteous, holy. So His is a natural love for all that is right, all that is good and holy and true.
Our nature is opposite to that. Paul spends three chapters telling us that!
In order to be loved by God we have to have righteousness. What is more, we have to have a righteousness that is not our own, since we do not have righteousness naturally or by any natural means. We are not born with it. In fact the opposite is a fitting way to describe our nature.
King David in Psalm 51 says 51:4 “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight - That You may be found just when You speak, and blameless when You judge. 5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me. 6 Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts,
And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom. 7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” and Paul quotes Psalm 14 v 3 “There is none righteous, no, not one; 3:11 There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God. 3:12 They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.” The Apostle Paul in chapter 3 of Romans.
So we will leave any comment on that until later.

Let me just say that we do not come upon the gospel naturally. Paul says it has been revealed to him by God:
“…in it,” i.e. the gospel, “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.”
What We Need and How We Can Get It
What we need is the righteousness that Christ has. It is only His righteousness that is accepted before God. It is only by or because of His righteousness that God loves us, for there is nothing naturally in us that He loves or would love.
We are counted as righteous when we trust Christ, when we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
From Faith to Faith
1:17 “For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith…”
The third thing that needs to be explained is in verse 17. The words are “from faith to faith.”
God likes to see our faith in practice. God honours our faith. He rewards our faith. He expects to see our faith grow.
John Calvin says that at the beginning of our Christian walk we see God as it were at a distance. He says: “When we first taste the gospel we do indeed see the countenance (face) of God turned graciously toward us but at a distance.” Then as our knowledge of God increases he says, “we see the grace of God with more clarity and with more familiarity as though He were coming nearer to us.” (Calvin’s Commentaries: The Epistles of Paul to the Romans and to the Thessalonians; Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1961. Romans 1:17, page 28)
Even so, we must not be under any illusion that our faith is a power or an ability that we have.
It is not a capacity that we offer to God. Faith is not a special skill or talent. Don’t think of it that way.
It is God who works the miracle of faith in our hearts. Eph 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God not of works, lest anyone should boast.”
That is why the Apostle Paul says that to be justified or put right with God through faith in Jesus Christ is “from faith to faith.”
Faith begets faith. Faith is born of faith.
Faith is given to us as a gift from God in the first place. It is faith to be put right with God.
From faith given to as this gift is faith to get more faith…to get more understanding in mind and heart of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You become more familiar with His ways and His desires for your life, and you become more willing to hear Him and to obey His promptings.
More spiritually aware, more sensitive to God and to people He wants you to share Him with.
Justification
“…as it is written, "The just shall live by faith.”(17)
This is the fourth thing that needs to be explained.
The just shall live by faith or the justified shall live by faith. But what is justification?
It is being put right with God.
Justification is being reckoned to stand rightly before God.

Sometimes we may question someone’s actions. We hold them to account and ask them: “How can you justify that?”
God always has a right standing because He alone is righteous. Only He is just.
Abraham asked God a very good question: GEN 18:25 “Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
God justly offers us Christ’s righteousness as the means by which we can stand rightly before Himself.
This offer cost Jesus Christ, God’s Son, severe punishment and His death on the cross.
Illustration
It is like the story of the unusual judge.
A person is arrested and tried for a crime.
The judge finds the accused person guilty as charged.
A sentence of life in prison is passed on the guilty party.
The full weight of the law is to be justly applied. The person is guilty and is about to go to prison for life.
But a thing strange happens.
The judge comes down from the bench and takes off his robes and wig and pays the penalty by going to prison in place of the guilty person.
The originally convicted person was still the one who had committed the crime, but the righteousness and compassion of the judge paid their penalty for them. He took their place.
Someone might say: “It’s unfair!” But if some one did it for you, you would not call it unfair.
However, it is not a perfect illustration and an unfairness is involved in the illustration, but JUSTICE was served.
JUSTICE was done: Someone was guilty. The law had been offended and someone paid the penalty which the law demanded. That part of it was just.
We have a righteousness imputed to us. We are given the benefits of Someone else. We are granted the position of being right with God.
We are let off. We are not convicted. We are not sent to prison because God counts us as innocent before His righteous law.
Why? Because Jesus Christ is our righteousness. He paid the full penalty on our behalf.
“And Israel will dwell safely; Now this is His name by which He will be called: THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” Jer23:6
ROM 10:4 “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”
2COR 5:21 “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Amen.