God’s Wrath Revealed

Romans 1:18-3:20

Introduction

Our son was once playing on a hockey team at a provincial tournament. It was Saturday and we were playing a game that would determine our future involvement. If we lost, we would go home. If we won, we would play in semi-finals on Sunday. I have to confess that I was cheering for the other team because it would have meant a problem for me to stay until Sunday. The good news is that we lost. Of course, for the team that was bad news, but for me it was good news.

Can bad news be good news?

The atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 were bad news. Hundreds of thousands of people died and it issued in a terrible new era of atomic warfare. It was unqualified bad news, except in the sense that it was probably one factor in ending World War II. In that one sense bad news was good news.

God’s wrath sounds like bad news to our ears. However, this morning I would like to invite you to examine Romans 1:18-3:20 with me to discover that the revelation of the wrath of God is also good news.

A few weeks ago we began to look at Romans and noted at that time that Romans 1:16-18 provides us with an outline of the book of Romans in reverse. It speaks of three things – the gospel of God, which is the power of God for salvation, the righteousness of God, which is revealed in the gospel and the wrath of God which is also revealed in the gospel. This morning we will look at this third item – the wrath of God revealed.

What we learn is that salvation does not begin with us, it begins with God. The passage reveals how God deals with the world He has created – both with a compassion that restores and a wrath that punishes. We will see that the wrath of God reveals the justice, impartiality and faithfulness of God, which is a good thing.

We’re All Bad

The first thing we learn is that we are all bad. It says in 1:18 that God’s wrath is being revealed against “all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness…”

John Toews says that the term ungodliness “focuses sin as an attack on the holiness and majesty of God.” Romans 1:18-32 speaks about God’s wrath against the Gentiles in their ungodliness. The term wickedness “defines sin as a violation of God’s just order in the world.” This is described in 2:1-29 and speaks of the Jews who, although they knew the way of God, failed to live in it and so also experience God’s wrath.

Rejection Of God - Gentiles

I have often wondered how people can reject God when they look at the created world. How can chance make a world that is so wonderfully balanced in space? How can chance make a tiny insect and a huge elephant? How can chance cause one animal to fly, another to swim and another to run? The evidence of God is all around us and even within us, yet many deny the truth. They bury what they know to be true because they ignore God. Romans 1:21-23 says that they do not glorify God as God, they do not give thanks to God and since they still have to worship something, they exchange the glory of the immortal God for images. In 1:25 we read that they deny the truth of God and in 1:28 that they reject the knowledge of God.

The critical first sin is the rejection of God.

Failure To Obey God’s Law – Jews

Every Jew who would read this would have nodded in agreement. In 2:1 it speaks about “you who pass judgment on someone else.” They did pass judgment on all the Gentile world and agreed that they were godless.

At the same time, the Jews believed themselves to be in a privileged position. God had chosen them to be his special people. God had communicated His law to them. He had established a covenant with them. God had given them circumcision in order to identify them as His own possession. They firmly believed, as much as we as Christians believe, that they were God’s chosen ones and acceptable to God for all eternity because of being chosen.

However, Paul points out some irregularities. He acknowledges that they have all of these privileges and that they have every opportunity to rejoice in being God’s chosen ones. The problem is that although they know all the right things to do and although they have entered into a covenant with God, they do not follow the conditions of the covenant. Please notice the words of accusation in chapter 2. In 2:1 he says, “you…do the same things.” In 2:5 he points out that they have a stubborn and unrepentant heart. In 2:17-23 he talks about how the Jews consider themselves to be teachers, knowing the way of God and being willing to tell everyone the way of God but they are hypocrites. They teach against stealing, but they steal. They teach against adultery, but commit adultery. In 2:25 he is very direct when he says, “you break the law.” The conclusion is that even though the Jews had every privilege and advantage, they rejected it and were no better than the Gentile sinners and were therefore also under God’s wrath.

Under Sin’s Power

When we think of disobedience to God, there are two concepts which we need to understand. On the one hand, there are sins we commit, on the other, there is SIN as a power which enslaves us. What Paul is saying in these chapters is that every person on earth is under the power of SIN. John Toews describes SIN as a “magnetic field that draws all created reality into its force field.” He also says that SIN is a “power that dominates all people.” The Jews knew this about the Gentiles, but now Paul is saying that because of the evidence of the sins of the Jews it reveals that they also are under the power of SIN. In the conclusion to this section, Paul declares clearly in 3:9, “Jews and Gentiles alike are all under SIN.” In 3:10-18, he quotes seven Old Testament verses to support his claim. I doubt if there is another idea which is so thoroughly supported from the Old Testament. The passages here (Ecclesiastes 7:20; Psalm 14:1-3; Psalm 5:10; Psalm 139:4; Psalm 10:7; Isaiah 59:7,8; Psalm 35:2) all speak of the power of sin in the life of every person.

This SIN as a power is so strong that there is nothing on this earth that can overcome it. The Jews thought that because they had the Law, that the Law could overcome the power of SIN. But Paul says in 3:20 that “no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law.”

God is Mad

That is the bad news, it is terrible news! It is more deadly than ten Hiroshima’s. It is more catastrophic than 100 Katrina’s. The whole world is trapped in the power of SIN and each person lives daily committing many different sins.

What sounds like more bad news is that God is mad about this and His wrath is being revealed against all of this evil.

The Consequences Of Rejecting God

Already now the wrath of God is being revealed against all those who reject God. We often think that people do immoral things and then as a result they reject God. In fact, we find in this passage that it goes the other way. First of all people reject God and God gives them over to the consequences of that rejection and as a result he lets them go their own way and they end up in all kinds of moral evil which destroys. Our moral failures are not the beginning of our walk away from God, but the consequences of it. They are a manifestation of the wrath of God against all ungodliness.

Notice how this comes out in the passage. First of all, in verses 18-23 there is a description of how people reject God. Then in verse 24 it says, “Therefore God gave them over…” In fact, this phrase is repeated three times in this passage, in verses 24, 26 and 28. In 1:24 it says that, God “gave them over” to sexual impurity. In 1:26 we read, “God gave them over” to shameful lusts and in 1:28, God “gave them over” to a depraved mind. “God gave them up” is an act of divine judgment. John Toews says, God abandons humans who have turned away from him and He does not “protect humans against themselves.” “Human rejection of God’s honor by shameful actions constitutes an offense, which God judges by letting men and women become so shameless in their behavior that social order disintegrates.” The question is not “will we worship?” the question is “who will we worship.” When people stop worshipping God, they begin to worship themselves and God’s wrath is revealed as our new god fails us. “The more people reject God the more dehumanized, the more fractured, the more abusive relationships become. The end is total social chaos.”

God’s wrath is poured out on a broken relationship with God in the complete wickedness and immorality in which the world lives. The further consequences of this rejection of God is that the sin and evil and wicked consequences simply multiply so that the world is full of evil, greed, depravity, envy, murder and so on as described in 1:29-31. The end result, described in 1:32 is that people not only continue to do such things which leads to their destruction, but they encourage others who do them.

The other sign of God’s wrath against these things according to 1:32 is that “those who do such things deserve death.”

The Consequences Of Disobeying The Law

Not only is God’s wrath against the ungodliness of humanity, but also against the wickedness of those who do not do what God says. The Gentiles reject God and God’s punishment is the immorality which destroys and brings chaos and death.

The Jews, thought they could escape this chaos and death because they had God’s law and the covenant sign of circumcision. However, because they do not keep the covenant, they find that they are no less guilty than the Gentiles. They also will not escape God’s wrath.

In Romans 2:3, Paul asks, “do you think you will escape God’s judgment?” The consequence for those who know the law, but don’t do it, is that they “show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance…” Because they fail to repent, they continue in disobedience and as a result are under the wrath of God. That is exactly what Paul says in 2:5, “Because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath…”

This is what it means that God’s wrath is revealed against all the godlessness and wickedness of all humanity - Jews and Gentiles.

God’s Wrath Reveals God’s Nature

I want to apologize for title of the second point. It is trite and cliché. It makes it sound like God is a child with a temper tantrum or a teenager having a snit. It makes it sound like the wrath of God is bad news. It is bad news, but in another sense it is actually good news. The wrath of God revealed against all the godlessness and wickedness of human sin is good news in two senses. First of all, because of the hopelessness we have because of the power of SIN, the power of the gospel to save is so much greater. The wrath of God against all godlessness and wickedness sets up the need for and the hope of the good news of Jesus Christ. Next week we will talk about that.

The wrath of God revealed against godlessness and wickedness is also good news because of what it tells us about God. Although this passage reveals much about who we are and where we stand, it is written primarily to tell us something about God. The beginning of the gospel is not us, but God and we need to see and understand how things are from God’s point of view. His wrath is revealed against all the evil in the world and that is good news. How is it good news?

It is good news because it tells us that God’s judgment is just and that therefore God is just and righteous. It tells us that God is faithful, despite human unfaithfulness, and it tells us that God is steady, constant, and reliable because He is impartial.

God’s Impartiality

When we understand that God’s wrath is against all godlessness, it shows us that God is impartial – He does not show favorites.

One of the issues in Romans, which also appears in this section is the issue of the relationship between Jews and Gentiles. Gentiles knew they were sinners and needed a way out. Jews thought they were God’s special people and did not need a way out. They had a relationship with God marked by the giving of the law and the covenant of circumcision. All agreed that Gentiles deserved to be under the wrath of God. The Jews thought they were exempt from the wrath of God. But their disobedience made the name of God to be a cause of blaspheming as we read in 2:24. They were filled with disobedience and if God let them get away with their sin, it would show that God was partial, that he favored some and treated them differently just because of their religious or cultural or racial background.

We live in a world in which there are all kinds of inequities because of race or culture or education or wealth. Last Monday in Little Rock, Arkansas, they celebrated the 50^th anniversary of the day when 9 black students, flanked by national guardsmen, were escorted into Central High School to mark the beginning of desegregation. At the celebration, one of those 9 students spoke and indicated “we have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.” Racial prejudice has created all kinds of inequities which exist to this day in the United States, Southern Africa and many others places.

The wrath of God against all ungodliness shows that God is not like that. Romans 2:9,10 says, “There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew and then for the Gentile…” Romans 2:11 declares, “God does not show favoritism.” Romans 3:19 says, “the whole world (will be) held accountable to God.”

The wrath of God against sin reveals that God is impartial and that is good news. Every evil person is judged accurately and not according to who they are.

God’s Faithfulness

The problem the had Jews was that they thought that if God judged them, it meant that God was not faithful. God had made a covenant with them and that covenant meant that they were safe from the judgment of God, they were already accepted. The question is, “How can God be faithful to his covenant if he punishes us?”

This question is answered in 3:3, 4a when it says, “What if some did not have faithfulness? Will their lack of faithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all!” Some Jews thought that they could escape God’s wrath because they had a covenant with God, but they forgot that their relationship with God was a covenant and that they had broken their part of the covenant. They forgot what Romans 2:4 says, “do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance.” They forgot that if God failed to punish their wickedness, he would be wrong to judge anyone’s wickedness.

How many times have governments made promises, but then broken them? At one time our government promised that it would not change the definition of marriage. Now it has been changed.

God is not like that. The wrath of God against all wickedness shows us that God is faithful in keeping the covenants He makes. If we break them, punishment comes and this shows that He is faithful to His promises. How thankful I am that God is faithful.

God’s Justice

God’s wrath also reveals His justice. I believe that most of our judges, lawyers and law makers are doing their best to judge wisely and fairly. The saying that 95% of lawyers give the rest a bad name is really quite unfair. Yet there are those judges and lawyers who are unjust. They do not always do what is right perhaps because they have a vested interest. God is not like that. When Romans 2:9 says that there will be “trouble and distress for every person who does evil,” we understand that God is absolutely fair in all his judgments. That is why Romans 2:5 can speak of God’s “righteous judgment.”

One of the main problems in bringing justice is that we don’t know every side of an issue. If someone says, “I was not responsible because I was mentally incapable of making a proper decision,” how do we really know to what extent that is true? God does not have that problem. Romans 2:16 says, “God will judge men’s secrets.” God knows what is in a person’s heart and is therefore able to judge justly. The wrath of God revealed against the godlessness and wickedness of humanity shows that God is a just judge.

Conclusion

The knowledge of the power of SIN and the pervasive acts of sin in every human life is bad news. It reveals the hopelessness of our lives. We cannot overcome the power of sin. Not even the Law given to the Jews could overcome the power of SIN. The wrath of God against all the godlessness and wickedness of humanity is also bad news because it means that every human being is condemned. The good news of the gospel must be seen in light of that bad news and I am looking forward to next week when we can examine that contrast and rejoice in the wonderful good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. In it our sins are forgiven, we are freed from the power of SIN and we are given life instead of death.

But even the bad news of the wrath of God against the godlessness and wickedness of humanity is good news. It is good news because it reveals the holiness of God. It shows us that God is impartial, faithful and just. In a world that is not, how wonderful to know this and to be able to count on God because of this good news. As we contemplate these things, I would encourage us to think about this and rejoice as you see that God can be absolutely trusted to do what is right.

The Glory Of The Gospel

Romans 1:1-17

Introduction

If you talk to Carla or Will or Clinton or a bunch of other people here about the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, you will see their eyes light up. They get quite excited about football and their favorite team.

One day this summer, we met someone we hadn’t met before and began to talk with them about canoeing. You should have seen their eyes light up, or was that my eyes, anyway, we had a fun conversation about something we both enjoyed.

I have had conversations with people in this congregation about quilting, horses, Mustang cars, old tractors, flower gardens and many other thing and I am beginning to get a pretty good idea of what makes your eyes light up.

This morning, we are going to begin a series of messages on Romans. My brother-in-law attends the church where John Piper preaches and he told me that Piper had had his final message on Romans some time this spring – after 16 years in the book. I don’t intend to preach that long on it, but hope that we will get some understanding of it’s theological richness in the next 7 or 8 months.

Today, as we look at Romans 1:1-18, we will be introduced to some of the main themes in the book. In this section, the apostle Paul was making a connection with the people of the church in Rome, because he had never met them before. As we read this introduction, we will very quickly see what his passion was, what made his eyes light up. Over and over Paul speaks about the gospel and as he does so, we get a wonderful view of the amazing thing that God has done through it. As we examine the gospel, I hope that even though other things may still make our eyes light up, we will have such an appreciation for the gospel that it, more than anything else, will be what we truly love.

Paul’s Story

When we know a person’s story, we often get a better idea of what makes them tick. For example, when we know that Frank & Marge Kroeker were missionaries in Paraguay for many years and that they have children living there, we understand why they drink Matte, why they continue to have a passion about Paraguay and why they love to go there.

What made Paul tick? What background brought him to the place of having such a passion for the gospel. The first 15 verses of Romans 1 give us an understanding of this.

One of the things we notice is that Paul had experienced God’s grace. Please look at Romans 1:5 which says, “Through him and for his names sake, we received grace…” Paul was a person who had a powerful perception of what it meant that he had experienced the grace of God. We know only a few things about his background and growing up, but something about his personality or upbringing must have made him a very passionate person. Perceiving that the name of Jesus was having a huge impact on people and believing that it was false teaching, he gave all his energy to stamping out Christianity and destroying those who belonged to Jesus. He was a persecutor of the church. One day, Jesus stopped him on the road to Damascus when he was on his way to arrest more Christians and showed him that he was truly Messiah and that Paul was wrong in his assumptions. Paul accepted this confrontation and was forgiven. He never forgot the powerful change that came into his life as a result of the gospel. He had been a murderer, a God rejecter and a blasphemer, but he was shown grace and forgiveness and was accepted by God. The powerful change that had taken place in his life impacted him in an amazing way so that he deeply grasped what God had done through the gospel and was eternally grateful for it.

Romans 1:5 goes on to say, “Through him and for his names sake, we received…apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.” This tells us that Paul’s passion for the gospel also arose out of his desire to make the name of Jesus known among all the Gentiles. It was this call which made him interested in going to Rome as well. He had not planted the church in Rome, in fact he had never been to Rome. However, he was concerned about all the churches of Jesus Christ. He knew there were believers there because he had heard about their faith, as he says in 8. He also knew what kind of a church it was. He knew that it was made up of Jewish Christians and those from a Gentile background. He knew that this combination was subject to all kinds of problems and he had probably heard about those problems. He had prayed for them, as he indicates in verses 9, 10. All of these things – his passion to preach the gospel to Jews and Gentiles and his concern for all the churches of Jesus Christ gave him a powerful desire to visit the church in Rome as well. Four times – in verses 10, 11, 13 & 15 – he mentions his desire to go to the church in Rome. Why did he have this great desire? We read in verse 15, “I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.” We see that the call which defined his life, that is, his passion for the gospel, was what made him want to go to Rome as well and share something with them, but also be blessed by the people in Rome. So we see that Paul’s passion for the gospel arose out of his call and defined the direction of his life.

The Center Of Paul’s Heart – The Gospel

The first thing we have seen is that Paul had a commitment to the gospel because of his own personal experience of the gospel and because of his call to proclaim the gospel. But that was Paul’s personal experience. Carla once took a group of girls on a trail ride, on horses, in the Pembina Valley. The horse she was given was a strong willed horse and gave her no end of trouble, in fact it was quite a scary experience. Needless to say she has a passion about horses, but it is a rather negative passion. Our personal experiences will give us personal passions. As we read on in Romans we find that Paul’s passion for the gospel was not only because of his personal experiences with it. In this passage, he also gives objective reasons why the gospel was at the center of his heart. Because of these reasons this passion for the gospel is not only Paul’s experience, but can also be our experience.

The key verses for this book are 1:16-18. These verses actually provide an outline for Romans. In them, Paul gives three reasons why he loves the gospel. These three reasons form the outline for the rest of the book, in reverse order. First of all he loves the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes both Jews and Gentiles. He deals with this matter of the power of the gospel for the salvation of everyone in Romans 5:1 to the end of the book. The second reason is, as he says in 1:17, “in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed that is from faith to faith.” He talks about this in Romans 3:21 to 4:25. The third reason he loves the gospel is because in it “the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men…” This idea is developed in Romans 1:18-3:20. I will be talking in more detail about each of these three reasons in the weeks to come and exploring all that they mean for us. This morning, however, I would like to look at five reasons why Paul loves the gospel which appear in Romans 1:1-18. They are objective reasons and give us encouragement to also love the gospel.

It Fulfills God’s Promises

The first reason that Paul gives as to why he loves the gospel is because it fulfills God’s promises. Please look at Romans 1:2 which says, “the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures…”

Jewish people today have the idea that although Christianity arose out of Judaism, it is a new direction away from God’s word. Paul believed this until he met Jesus. The fact that a Pharisee and a Biblical scholar recognized that Jesus was God’s Messiah and a fulfillment of all that God has promised is amazing. It helps us understand that there is a massive history behind the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a history which extends to the beginning of God’s relationship with human beings and permeates everything that God has communicated to people.

Not only do we have confidence because the gospel of Jesus is solidly anchored in all that God has ever spoken to His people, it also shows us something of the faithfulness of God. God promised the gospel long ago and he has kept his promise.

Don’t you love the gospel when you know that it was God’s plan all along and when you understand that God promised it and it has come to pass in Jesus?

It Reveals God’s Righteousness And His Wrath

Another reason why Paul loves the gospel and why we can love the gospel is that given in Romans 1:17,18, which says that it reveals the righteousness of God and the wrath of God. In the next two messages, I want to develop what this means and how powerful it is. For today, I would just like to briefly make mention of the power of this statement.

Righteousness has to do with making things right. The gospel makes us right with God, (Romans 5:8, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us) it makes us into people who do right ( II Corinthians 5:17, “if anyone is in Christ he is a new creature…” and it will make the world into a place in which right is done( Revelation 21:27, “nothing impure will ever enter it.”) That is good news! Don’t you want to be a part of a world that is right?

On the other hand, verse 18 says that the gospel reveals the wrath of God. When we live in a world of Osama bin Laden, Idi Amin, drug lords and Hell’s Angels, we long for someone who will pour out his wrath against all wickedness in a just way. It is wonderful to know that evil will be destroyed and that good will prevail. This is what the gospel of God reveals in the most simple terms. What wonderful good news that is! No wonder we love the gospel!

It Is Powerful

Another phrase in this section that reveals the wonder of the gospel is that it is powerful. God is a powerful God. He has demonstrated His power many times in history. As we look around in our world and read the story of what God has done, we are often impressed with His power.

This week I spoke with a farmer who loves to walk in the field when the new plants are emerging from the ground. As we talked, I could tell that watching plants grow was a worship experience for him. Who of us has not recognized with deep awe the amazing power of God displayed in all of the created world.

For Israel, the greatest demonstration of the power of God was the exodus out of Egypt. Whenever I read this story of a whole nation, in slavery leaving and even defeating their captors, I am amazed. I am reading the autobiography of Nelson Mandela. He was the African who was deeply involved in dismantling Apartheid in South Africa. It took years and left many scars on all involved. His book is entitled, “Long Walk to Freedom” and it certainly was a long walk. When we contrast that with the powerful deliverance of God which occurred for the people of Israel, we have to recognize that God’s power was mightily at work.

For Christians, the greatest demonstration of the power of God is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Our whole being and all of life’s experiences tell us that dead people do not come to life again. Yet, Jesus did and it has changed our whole outlook.

We often look to that day when Jesus will return to restore all things and see it as the next big powerful thing that God will do, but the gospel which, like leaven hidden in a lump of dough is slowly changing people and nations today is as powerfully active as creation and the exodus and the resurrection and the second coming. The gospel is powerful to transform lives, to transform people and in the end, the gospel will be powerful enough to completely transform the entire universe when Jesus comes back again.

Paul was committed to the gospel because he knew that it was powerful! I am looking forward to examining much of the rest of Romans to see how the power of the gospel can transform and is transforming us! We will see that due to our weakness, the law was unable to save us from sin and death. It is only the new birth, the gospel, which comes from Jesus, which is powerful enough to save us from the power of sin. We will see the power of the gospel which is transforming people from all nations into Christ-likeness. We will see the power of the gospel which by the Holy Spirit is making all things new.

John E. Toews puts it this way, the gospel, “unleashes God’s end-time power in history to effect salvation.”

It Is Universal

Paul began this section by saying, “I am not ashamed of the gospel…” When we look at this, we need to understand that we do not look at it with the same understanding as Paul did. Our understanding of this is something like, “I am not going to be afraid to tell others about Jesus even though they might laugh at me.” Is that what Paul meant or is that what we read into the text?

In July, at the EMC conference, the speaker, Arley Loewen, talked about the Muslim society as an “honor/shame” society. We live in a truth/justice society. The two perspectives are very different. In our society, it is wrong to lie. In a Muslim society, it is a much greater wrong to be unfriendly. So, for example, Arley explained that if you are invited to dinner, you always say that you are coming, even if you know you are not because to refuse an invitation would be to shame the other person. This is one aspect of how an honor/shame society works. The Biblical world was an honor/shame society.

Since Paul was speaking out of such a context, what did he mean when he said that he was not ashamed of the gospel? As we read on, in this verse, we read that he was not ashamed because the gospel was the power of God for Jews and Gentiles. We live in a society in which everyone is treated equally. In that society, masters were above slaves, Greeks were above Jews and it was a matter of shame to violate the social order. In the church in Rome there were Jewish believers and Gentile believers. There were masters and slaves. The church was deeply divided on theological and cultural grounds. Jewish believers thought that people had to be Jewish before they could become Christian. Gentile believers realized that this was not so and that they could become Christians simply by faith. They looked down on the Jewish Christians believing that they were missing the point of the gospel. When Paul mentions “Greeks and non-Greeks…wise and foolish…” he is alluding to another social division in the church. In their society, all of these social and cultural barriers were not to be crossed. However, the gospel crossed them. The gospel made everyone equal. When he said that he was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ he was affirming the wonder and glory of the gospel as a great equalizer, as something which was available to all men on the same basis. He loved the gospel because it was a gospel which was available to all people in the world on an equal basis.

It Is Centered In Jesus

The other thing that Paul loved about the gospel was that it is not a thing, not a religion, not a set of rules. Paul loved the gospel because it is centered in a person, Jesus Christ. The name of Jesus – either Jesus, Christ or Son is found 9 times in these 18 verses. Whenever Paul mentions the gospel, he mentions that the good news is about Jesus.

Paul makes confession of Jesus in 1:3,4 where he points to His divine origin, His human descent, His powerful resurrection from the dead and His current reign. The center of the gospel is Jesus. The hope of the world is Jesus. John E. Toews says “In a world where things fall apart, the center does not hold.” In that “falling apart world” Jesus is the center that does hold!

It is because of Jesus that Paul was committed to the gospel.

Conclusion

No wonder that Paul’s eyes light up every time he speaks about the gospel. It is truly amazing and I am looking forward to unwrapping this present from God to understand it more clearly and deeply in the next few months. Today as, I hope, we have come to appreciate this amazing gospel, the question is “How do we respond?”

The first response is that, although this gospel is a work of God through Jesus Christ, we must accept it. In verse 8, Paul speaks about the faith of the Romans. They responded to the gospel through faith. In verse 16, he indicates that the gospel is the power of God “for everyone who believes.” We do not receive this amazing gift from God without believing. Verse 17 indicates that this response that is required is a response of faithfulness to the faithfulness of God. The word used here can be translated “faith” or “faithfulness.” It is a Western concept that separates faith from faithfulness, an intellectual apprehension of the gospel from a life that fits with what we profess. The response to the gospel must be a trust in God that lives in that trust, that literally “faiths” or walks in faithfulness.

The gospel is offered and is wonderful. How have you responded to it? Do you believe Jesus? Do you “faith” in Him? If not, I would like to invite you to come to Jesus and experience the good news He offers.

Another response is exemplified by Paul as he responded in obedience to the call from God to proclaim the gospel. Paul’s passion for the gospel was such that he was willing to go wherever God sent him to proclaim that gospel. This is a powerful example and challenge for us to also be people who go and proclaim the gospel. If the gospel is so powerful, so life changing, so exciting, as Romans reveals it is, then surely it is right and even great to commit our lives to the proclamation of the gospel. O that our lives were defined by the powerful gospel of Jesus Christ!