Romans 1:17 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Romans 1:17

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Here is the perfect definition of the gospel. What makes it so powerful? ‘For therein’, in the gospel, ‘is the righteousness of God revealed.’ Is it speaking of God’s own righteousness – that God is holy? Is the holiness of God especially revealed in the gospel? No, that is not what the phrase means. God is holy and righteous, but that on its own would condemn us, not save us. The holiness of God is taught throughout the Bible; it has been taught since the beginning of time. But what is particularly revealed in the gospel, in the New Testament (it is also revealed in the Old but particularly emphasised in the New Testament), is the righteousness with which God clothes a sinner so that when God looks upon the person who trusts in Christ, he is able to deal with him as though he were righteous because he is clothed in the righteousness of Christ which has been imputed to him. We could express it in this way: ‘In the gospel the righteousness provided by God is revealed.’ I don’t have righteousness of my own. I need a righteousness provided by God and given to me. Perhaps you want to buy a house. You view it, but it's much too expensive. You couldn't afford it; you don’t have a big enough deposit, or sufficient credit worthiness to take out a mortgage. But the owner of the house says, ‘I will provide for you the purchase price. I will give you the money to buy it from me.’ That is the idea here. ‘For [in the gospel] is the righteousness of God revealed.’ God has a righteousness that he will give to me, which will be the currency I need to secure his favour. That is so unexpected, but it is exactly what we need so badly. In Romans 10 Paul writes of the same righteousness: ‘Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved. ² For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. ³ For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God’ (Romans 10:1-3). God holds out to us the righteousness of Christ. ‘Embrace Christ, and make his righteousness your own’, he says. If you have it, you will be accepted by God. Your own righteousness, earned under the law, can never qualify you for heaven. Even at its best it has much wrong with it, and it is mixed with much sin. Nothing but a perfect righteousness can make us acceptable to God, and this is the righteousness of Christ who challenged his enemies: ‘Which of you convinceth me of sin?’ (John 8:46). Peter says of him: ‘Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth’ (1 Peter 2:22). He came to die for us to make a personal atonement and to take the punishment on our behalf, the punishment due to us because of our sin, and he came to offer up his own perfect righteousness. We read of it in Psalm 72: ‘He [Messiah and his righteousness] ‘will come down as rain upon the mown grass.’ Paul had been convinced that this righteousness was our righteousness. ‘We Jews’, he said, speaking of himself, ‘are God's special people, and righteousness has come down in that it has been given to us, so that we are pleasing to God.’ He didn't understand it. Martin Luther had the same problem. Now, the righteousness of God and what it means had been known for centuries, but it had been suppressed. Error had come in. And between the fourth and the fifth centuries AD, the Roman Catholic Church had come into being, and it had spread everywhere and become all-powerful, and it was full of heresy and false teaching, false use of the Bible. It had quite a different idea from the Bible about what the righteousness of God is. It had taught that the righteousness of God is something that God gives to us. When we go through the rites of baptism as a child or later on, something mystical and yet physical and incredible happens. You are made, by a ceremony with the words of the officiating priest, to be a child of God. Christ is put into you, and so you have a capacity for righteousness, and this is the righteousness of God. If as a good Catholic you exercise this capacity, that righteousness which you are producing will deserve heaven for you and acceptance with God. And it came through a physical rite. That is not in the Bible; that is invented. That was what Luther thought. The Catholic church claims to provide extra help also. Inevitably you sin along the way, so you need refreshing. You need penance, and you confess to a priest, and he has the power magically to impart to you the priestly absolution, so that your freshly committed sin can be removed. Through the mass and through penance and through absolution, they teach, you can keep alive that spark of righteousness by which you are effectively earning heaven and making yourself worthy. But tragically at the end of life's journey, you find you are not saved. You don't belong to God because the Catholic Church has taught you to trust in a righteousness which is produced by you. Yes, they say, you need the help of God, the enabling of God, but you must produce it yourself. Now that is what Luther thought. And he sat in the tower in the monastery at Wittenburg in Germany, and between 1513 and 1515, he struggled over this verse. He taught at university level as a lecturer: Galatians, Romans, other epistles, and Psalms. He was a Catholic monk; he was an expert teacher, but he hated this seventeenth verse. He thought it meant the same as verse 18. He thought the righteousness of God meant the retributive righteousness of God, the righteousness and justice with which God would judge him and punish him. But he started to toil with the verse. How can it mean that? Because it says on the end of the verse, ‘the just shall live by faith.’ That comes from Habakkuk 2:4. Those who are justified, accepted by God, are saved. They will live by faith. Well, that is a good thing, so this is a good verse, not a bad verse. The righteousness of God must here mean something good, he thought to himself. Of course, it does. He was rediscovering what had always been the truth. The righteousness of God is the gift, the free gift of righteousness, credited freely to our moral account. This is how you can be saved. There is a free righteousness, available to you: the righteousness of Christ, credited to you, imputed to you, which will enable you to stand before God, and receive the blessings of heaven. We receive that righteousness in a person: in the person of Christ, the second person of the Godhead. He personally ‘shall come down like rain upon the mown grass.’ The LORD our righteousness will descend from heaven. He will come and live a perfect life and suffer and die to atone for the sins of all who trust in him. He is our righteousness, personally. ‘Revealed.’ It comes by revelation. How could I be saved? I could never figure this out for myself – the scheme of God – so he reveals it in the gospel. The word ‘revealed’ translates a Greek word, which means taking off the cover. For in the gospel the cover is taken away, and you see who the prophets are talking about – Christ. He will be our righteous representative and live a perfect life to be credited to us as a free gift when we come to him. Luther saw it. It is a given righteousness. Then Paul says, ‘from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.’ That phrase ‘from faith to faith’ puzzles some. By faith I come to Christ, by trust. Faith has been described as the hand that receives the gift from God, and says, ‘Oh Lord, forgive my sin. Save me, I trust in Christ. Give me new life. Lord, I come and I take Christ to be my Saviour.’ But it is even better to say that faith is not just the hand, but the arms that embrace. Faith embraces the gospel with the whole being. You clutch the rope that is going to pull you up from drowning in the sea. With both arms you take hold of the fireman at the top of the escape ladder, and you get out of the burning building. With both arms you embrace Christ. But having entered in, he began to live the life of faith. That initial leads you into a life where you trust him and put your faith in him, all through life's journey right to the end – ‘from [by] faith to faith.’

Application

Have you ever done that? Do you worship after a fashion, perhaps minimally? But you have never embraced him, trusted him with your life, come as a lost sinner, cried out for forgiveness and for new life. ‘I am not ashamed of the [good news of Christ] for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.’ Supposing I embrace him, supposing I ask, supposing I come, and he doesn't receive me. But listen: ‘to everyone that believeth’; that is your warrant of faith. It’s your assurance he will receive you if you sincerely mean it with all your heart. ‘The gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek’, everyone worldwide, ‘for therein is the righteousness of God’, that currency that he gives, the gift of righteousness, the life and death of Jesus Christ for sinners.

Have you got caught up in that wrong Catholic idea which takes you away from the truth? The apostle Paul faced a similar problem in his day. After churches had been founded in Gentile cities he would move on, leaving a church behind, and along would come people who we call the Judaizers. They were Jewish people, and they taught these new churches among the Gentiles that they must become Jews. They said it won’t do you any good at all to trust in Christ, unless you are circumcised. You must go through the ceremonies of the ancient Jews. But they did not understand. The ceremonies that God gave to the Jews in ancient times were just visual aids that taught about the coming Christ. When he came, they were all finished. No, said the Judaizers, you have got to go through the ceremonies. Without them, Christ is nothing. So what did the apostle Paul say to the churches and the others? If you as Gentiles take up these ceremonies like circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing. You can't have ceremonies and Christ. It's one or the other. Why? Because if you are trusting in the ceremonies, you are not fully trusting in Christ. He is God who has come down from heaven. He has become a man. He has lived a perfect life. He has suffered excruciating, indescribable suffering, all the punishment of hell due to his people who would be saved, concentrated into six hours, and you are saying, ‘It is not enough. It will help me a bit, but I need the ceremonies as well. Something must be done to me by a priest.’ The Apostle said, ‘If you go back to Jewish ceremonies, Christ will not be of any benefit to you. He will withdraw.’ It is the same with Rome. You say, ‘But I want something to be done to me, something to enter into me so that I can partly earn my salvation: partly me, partly Christ.’ That is no good. You will never be saved. You will never go to heaven. You will never know God and truly walk with him. It's impossible. You must leave all that behind. You must say, ‘I trust solely and only in Christ.

If I genuinely came to Christ when I was seventeen, I received Christ’s righteousness at that time. My life changed. Ever since then, I have committed many sins, but I have also tried with the help of God to do better things. Will those better things count to my eternal reward? No. God wants his children doing better things and making progress in personal righteousness. But even if we do well, we cannot contribute anything to our salvation. Only Christ and his perfect righteousness offered up for me can deserve eternal life for me. Some people have fallen into this error, and think that their holiness will contribute. Oh no. You are bound to live a holy life. You owe it to God. You want to please him. He is at work within you, refining you, but it doesn't actually count. It cannot. Only Christ and altogether Christ. ‘For therein is the righteousness of God revealed’, Christ, ‘from faith to faith.’

Questions

What is faith? I believe in God. I believe in Christ. I believe he suffered and died to make an atonement for me, and that he lived a perfect life in order to offer up his righteousness for me. I not only believe it and trust it, but I go a little further than that. Faith believes it enough to depend upon it. It believes the gospel enough to rest its soul upon it, to depend upon it and to embrace it. It is not adequate faith if you believe only enough to technically think that these things are right, that Christ came and died. You believe it enough to yield yourself to God, to repent of your sin, and to embrace this as the only way of salvation, and cry out for it to be yours.

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Introduction

Romans 1:17 Commentary and Bible Study

The meaning of Romans 1:17 explained