Hi, church, and welcome back to this week’s Bible study video, where we bring the Bible home. We want to continue with the Scriptures not just on Sundays and Wednesdays but throughout the week as well. If you are new here, I am Pastor Ryan Rench, the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California, and today’s video is the fifth in our series through Romans. It is a sermon series at our church, but we are trying to help you continue with it through this video format as well. We have a playlist of all the videos before this one; this is number five. In the previous videos we covered up to about verses 15 and 16.
I Am Not Ashamed
I touched on verse 16 in the last video, where it says, “I am not ashamed,” and I appreciate that phrase so much, because some are ashamed of the gospel. Some go on national television and are ashamed of their faith. And then there are others who are just not ashamed. No matter how the media spins it, they just do not care. They cannot be embarrassed or ashamed of the truth. They know they have the gospel, and that is what the gospel gives us: that kind of power and that kind of confidence. This pure gospel is that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. That is the gospel message. Not the idea that after all I can do, I am going to get to heaven. It is not praying the rosary. It is not some additional works I do. It is the gospel itself, the pure message, the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. It is a pretty simple belief.
To the Jew First
It says, “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.” There is a movement today that says the modern-day Jews are not the same Jews the apostle Paul was talking to or about, or the same Jews who were in Jesus’ day. But I disagree with that. I know there are ethnic Jews today who can trace their bloodline back, and there are also Jews today who, even if they cannot trace a bloodline, are still considered Jews. Even back in Jesus’ day there was proselytizing, where strangers from the outside could marry into the Jewish people and essentially become Jewish. Rahab and Ruth are prime examples. They are in the very line of David and the very line of Jesus, yet their bloodline was not ethnically Jewish, but they were accepted as Jews. Our church supports missionaries like the Kasichenkos, who have a Jewish outreach ministry, and I am so thankful for that. Our church gave an update on them just last night in our prayer service: they are witnessing and ministering to modern-day Jews. I am thankful for Jews for Jesus and many organizations out there trying to reach Jewish people, showing that Jesus Christ is the Messiah. Looking at the Jewish people, I am fascinated that they are still around, given the satanic assault against them. They have suffered more than any other people group and have been under more oppression than anybody else, and I think that is coming from the devil himself. I believe their existence is a miraculous sign of the almighty power of God in protecting them and keeping them for what the Bible teaches is still a future purpose for them.
One article I read said, “I love Israel. I am sad at her stubborn rejection of God’s Word, but I look forward to her conversion, and beyond that to ruling and reigning with the redeemed of Israel in Christ’s millennial kingdom, and beyond that in the New Jerusalem, the gates of which are named for the twelve tribes of Israel and the foundations of the wall of which are named for the twelve apostles of the church,” Revelation 21:12-14. “The church and Israel are different bodies and different programs in God’s great eternal plan, but they are closely associated in that they have the same father, Abraham, the same Saviour, Jesus Christ, and they will live forever in the same city.” We will look more at that when we get to chapter 4 in the book of Romans, where it says we are of Abraham’s seed and he is the father of many nations. But Paul is saying here, in this headline verse, verse 16, that the gospel is for the Jew and the Gentile. This is for everyone. The gospel was proclaimed first to the Jews. The apostles would go into the synagogues first and preach to the Jews, declaring Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, and then they would take it to the Gentiles beyond them, to the Greeks.
The Righteousness of God Revealed
So this section ends with this proclamation of the gospel and continues with verse 17 before we get to verse 18, which begins a whole new section of the book. “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” “For therein,” in the gospel, “is the righteousness of God revealed.” That is fascinating. Righteous and righteousness, rightness, are used about forty-three times in this book, and just or justification about eighteen times. This standard of perfection, this righteousness, is absolutely impossible for man. By God’s standards, there is no way we could ever reach perfect righteousness. But the righteousness of God is revealed, manifested, shown, through the gospel. Verse 17 points back to verse 16. The Bible says, “And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” So salvation is not just being forgiven of sin. It is being declared righteous by God. The gospel is about the righteousness, the rightness, of God. Our faith in Christ gives us a new standing before God. It is having the very righteousness of Christ put on you, put on your account. “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.” That is the incredible part of that verse: “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed,” not through ourselves, but “from faith to faith.”
From Faith to Faith
When I was a youth pastor, our teens group was called the Teens of Faith. We had a tagline, a theme verse, and the subtitle was “Saving Faith, Growing Faith.” It all starts when you are saved, but the same faith you placed in Jesus Christ to save you is the same faith you place in Jesus Christ to sustain you, to keep you going day by day. Everything you do in your life should be done by faith. Salvation is by faith. Your growth is by faith. Everything you do is by faith. We are saved by faith. We are justified by faith. We have access to God by faith. We have the righteousness of God by faith. Our hearts are purified by faith. We stand by faith. We walk by faith. Christ dwells in the heart by faith. We wait for the promise of the resurrection by faith. We live by faith. We are sanctified by faith. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
The Just Shall Live by Faith
Verse 17 has a quotation about faith from the Old Testament, from Habakkuk 2:4. Habakkuk 2:4 is a very important verse. It is quoted three times in the New Testament, and each time with a different focus. It is quoted here in Romans 1:17: “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” Here the focus is on the justice and the righteousness of God, the righteousness of God making us just; that is the context. Then it is quoted again in Galatians 3:11: “But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.” It is the same verse, but this is really focusing on the faith aspect, highlighting that we live by faith, not by the law. Galatians is a fight over whether the law is important to our salvation, and the point is, no, it is all about faith. So there is a little less focus on justification and the righteousness of God and more focus on the faith we place in Jesus Christ. It is quoted again in Hebrews 10:38: “Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.” The idea of drawing back is that those saved by faith are not going to draw back. They are going to live that eternal life by faith. They will continue to live in Christ by faith. So that is a really cool focus there.
The Condemnation Section
When we get to verse 18… the whole first seventeen verses are an introductory setup for the whole book, about the gospel: here is where we are going. Here is the apostle Paul writing to this church at Rome, and he wants to be sure they fully understand what the gospel is and what it means. As he starts his discussion of the gospel, he begins with a whole bunch of bad news, and verse 18 starts the bad-news section of the book, what I call the condemnation section. We are going to take it slowly over the next few videos, but today was just a short study of verses 16 and 17, finishing off the introduction to chapter 1. This condemnation section, starting in verse 18, is one of those areas people just want to take a penknife to, cutting it out, removing this section of the Bible. And if you are excited about getting into the condemnation part of the book, that is the wrong kind of Christian right there. Your favorite passages of the Bible should not be about the condemnation of lost souls. That probably says more about you than it does about them. When you read about God’s condemnation of unbelievers, that should break your heart. I do not think the apostle Paul is angry about these things. I do not think he is gleeful about the wrath of God, as if it were the apostle Paul’s wrath. No. If you read this and you are not broken over lost souls who are bound by their rejection of God, then part of your prayer, and my prayer, should be, “God, break my heart for the lost. Give me a heart to see lost souls changed.”
I believe that no matter how far somebody gets from God, they are never too far gone. I am not convinced there is some point of no return, as if homosexuality, for example, were a point of no return. In 1 Corinthians 6 he says of homosexuals that they could be saved, washed and cleansed: “And such were some of you.” Right there in that church were those who had been saved. So I believe we preach the gospel to every creature. We love every person equally enough to tell them the truth of the gospel and the condemnation of their sin, and we have to be willing to confront sin the same in everyone. Now, there are levels to sin. I believe sexual sins take a deeper grip on you. 1 Corinthians 6 teaches that sins of the body, specifically sexual sins, unite you with people in ways other sins may not. 1 Corinthians 6:16: “What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh. But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit.” “Flee fornication.” “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.” So we will be dealing with sexual sins in Romans 1:18-32. It covers more than sexual sins, but the predominant type of sin there is sexual sin. We will get into that next time in this condemnation section of the book of Romans. It is not a fun part of the book to cover, but it is an important one. So God bless you. We will see you in the next video.
