Introduction
The best carpenter in the county was asked, "Which is your best tool?" Instead of pointing to a costly power saw or drill, he picked up a simple square and said, "This is the best tool; it makes all the others work." Let us not overlook our best tool; the simple gospel (Rom. 1:16). In this verse, Paul gives four reasons why the gospel is our most effective weapon: First, it is power. The original word is similar to our word for dynamite [dynamos]. Second, it is of God. Though Rome with her imperial power was great, the power of God was greater. However sincere the motive, any alteration or substitution of that power only weakens it. Third, it is unto salvation. In addition to being a past event and a future hope, salvation is a present reality. It can turn hate into love, despair into hope, and defeat into triumph. Fourth, it is for everyone. The saving power of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is for all! (E-Sword Sermon Illustrations)
Transition
That is what we will look at today: our lost condition (diagnoses) and the saving power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (cure). For the next 16 weeks we will walk the Romans Road. We will examine each chapter of the book of Romans. That will bring us right up to Passion Sunday and Easter.
My hope is that this series of sermons will serve as a sort of extended primer for Resurrection Sunday, Easter. In the book of Romans the Apostle Paul tells why we need a savior and how we gain access to Him.
We are saved by God’s grace alone through faith alone. God makes the free offer of salvation in Christ by His gracious act alone, the Holy Spirit draws us to Himself, and we receive Christ not by works, deeds, or any other exercise other than faith.
Background
Key Themes of Romans: Ch. 1-11, Salvation by Faith. Ch. 12-16, Christian Duties.
The letter to the Romans was written by the Apostle Paul toward the end of his third missionary journey to a half Jew and half Gentile church, in about A.D. 57.
Rome was, of course, an important city in the ancient world. At this time in history, Rome was a bustling metropolis, boasting as many as 1 million inhabitants. It was the seat of power for the great Roman Empire and it was filled with impressive buildings such as the emperor’s palace, and the Circus Maximus.
The beauty of the city was marred by the slums in which so many of the city’s poor and slave class lived. The Romans Empire built the very roads which the Apostle’s used to deliver the Gospel message to the then known world.
Romans power played a crucial part in the plan of God. The time of the coming of Christ was foretold and orchestrated perfectly according to God’s design so as to use this unique time in history for the propagation of the Gospel.
According to tradition, Paul the Apostle, the author of Romans, was martyred outside of the city of Rome on the Ostian Way, during Nero’s reign.
Transition
It is here in a powerful and important city within the most powerful and important civilization of its day, that the Apostle Paul writes the letter to the Romans. This wondrous piece of biblical literature that tells us that God justifies ungodly sinners by grace alone through faith alone.
Paul is writing to a church that was probably started by some of the very people who had been converted on the day of Pentecost and had subsequently brought the Gospel back with them to Rome.
Here, in what was likely a fairly small church of the fledgling movement of Jesus followers, Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writes the book that explains our lost state (diagnoses) and salvation by grace alone (cure).
Central Theme of the Text: God’s wrath has been uncured by all flesh (mankind) and is being poured out because of sin. Righteousness is found through faith, from beginning to end (Sola Fide): A Diagnoses, A Cure.
Salvation in Christ begins and ends with faith, according to grace. Christ’s blood alone atones for sin and the only way to access its purity is through faith.
Exposition
What do you think of the Gospel? What do you really believe about the pure Gospel message that God alone saves in Christ because of His great love for us, by faith, according to grace? Do you believe that? Do you embrace that?
This text is that which God used to transform Martin Luther from a frustrated pietistic into a passionate reformer. It is said that when Luther read verse 17 of the first chapter of Romans, as he prepared his lectures for his students on the book of Romans, he was awakened to the reality that the Gospel of pure grace is received by faith alone; sola fide!
“He glanced at a manuscript from Augustine and found where Augustine said that righteousness here is not God’s righteousness but that which he provides for people… This righteousness is not our own; it is Jesus’ righteousness.”
The righteousness of God is revealed as a gift received by faith which produces a life of faith. The life of Christ, His righteousness, (that is moral virtue, holiness, right standing before God, and more) is given to us, covering us, imputing the holiness to us that we could never earn.
It is all of this much more. Sin is the diagnoses of mankind and nothing that we can do can cure that sickness. Man is sin-diseased to his very core. This doesn’t mean that every person is depraved to the fullest extent and can do nothing good. Many atheists live more moral lives than some Christians!
What it means is that every person is sinful well beyond his or her ability to become righteous before God. This is basic biblically theology and the Apostle Paul spells it out plainly here in Romans chapter one.
In fact, Paul opens his letter very much in a “I’ll tell you the bad news first kind of fashion.” The bulk of chapter one explains that every human being is not only sinful but knows it. Even pagans living in the deepest darkest reaches of the Congo or the Amazon have an innate sense of their own guilt.
Verses 18-32, half of the opening chapter outline the depth and extremity of human depravity, perversion, and sinfulness.
The Apostle tells us why we need a savior (diagnoses) and then he tells us how we access that savior (cure); by faith alone in Christ alone according to grace alone, as revealed in the Scripture alone, all to the glory of God alone.
This is why archeology, history, and modern anthropology bear out that there is no such thing as a purely atheistic or agnostic society.
Leith Samuel, writes in HIS magazine, “Many missionaries point out that the heathen know more than we think. They know that there is a God. There are no atheists among heathen tribes. There has never been discovered upon earth a tribe of people, however small or depraved, which has not believed in some kind of god or had some system of worship… the heathen in so-called primitive tribes know that they have sinned. When a Christian comes to them and talks about sin he often finds ready acknowledgement that this is true. The heathen seem to know that their sins must be punished. They seem afraid of punishment, and afraid of death (as are most men everywhere). They know that sin must be atoned for, and they seek ways of appeasing their angry deities.”
From a purely biblical archeology and world history perspective, this, at the very least, implies a common knowledge of falleness and sin going right back to the day of Noah, following the dispersion of people all over the world following the account of the Tower of Babel.
God’s witness is universal. Separation from God is felt, stamped upon every lost human heart. Only when the grace of God breaks in by the preaching of the Word, the pure Gospel message, through the power of the Holy Spirit awakening dead sinner’s hearts to life does salvation come!
There is no Gospel which saves which is contrary to this plain and simple message.
This is the Gospel: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21 KJV)
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:10 KJV)
Friends, the Gospel message is simple. It is straightforward. “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. 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.” (Romans 1:16-17 NIV)
Conclusion
“John Nelson preaching about the influence of John Wesley’s preaching and its effects upon him, said: “This man can tell the secrets of my heart, but he hath not left me there, he hath showed me the remedy, even the blood of Christ. Then was my soul filled with consolation, through hope that God for Christ’s sake would save me.” That is the experience wherever Christ and Him crucified is proclaimed. We must tell of sin, but also of the sacrifice that atones for it; of guilt, but also of grace that pardons; show man’s depravity but God’s redeeming mercy. Not half a gospel, but a whole one.” (Heartwarming Bible Illustrations, QuickVerse 2010)
This is the whole Gospel. The Scriptures not only diagnose our problem but also provide the cure. The Gospel message is essentially about Jesus Christ making a way for the righteousness of God to be given to sinful man rather than sinful man to be crushed under its awesome weight.
The guilt and shame which was ours was borne upon Christ at the Cross, who became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. You see, you were not just pardoned by faith, but made righteous! We are not just forgiven our sin, it is washed completely away.
Speaking to a man at the pool of Bethesda, Jesus asked a man who the Bible says had been crippled for 38 years, “Do you want to get well? … Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” (John 5:8 NIV)
In Matthew 9:5 Jesus says to the Pharisees, “Which is easier: to say, 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Get up and walk'?” (NIV) Friend, if you are in Christ He is saying to you today, “Do you want to get well?” If so, pick up your mat and walk!”
We are not only forgiven, we are the righteousness of God in Christ. We are clothed in it, surrounded buy it, filled with it. I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power that saved me and you. Amen.
