Romans 1:18-32
Last week Granville used the expression “life changing power” as a description of what the letter to the Romans was all about. I want you to hang on to that as a guide. This letter is not before us today to stretch our intellectual although it will do that. It is not to give us a feel-good factor to escape from the trails of life. It is about the central fact that God can change your life. So be on the lookout for how God can change your life as we read this together.
I want to start this morning with what may be a new word to you.
The righteousness of God.
It probably means something to you already and you are correct to think it must mean something about rightness, being on the right side of God, being in the right. However if you stop there you will have missed the point about our Gospel. We spent two and a half years reading John’s gospel – our Gospel, and now we are embarking on a study of Romans, which is often seen as a great treatise on the Gospel. As you can see from the Outline in your hand Romans can be seen having four parts.
Introduction 1:1-7
The Gospel – the righteousness of God 1:18-11:36
Christian life-style 12:1-15:13
Epilogue 15:14-16:27
and today we are plunging into Paul’s explanation about the gospel which he describes as the righteousness of God. Let me read verses 16-17 again:
16 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. 17 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."
This verse
is so important to your understanding of life that I want you to learn it off
by heart. You will see it and 9 other passages in Romans on the back of the
outline.
In our gospel ‘a righteousness from God is revealed’ Notice the source is from God. That is a key to our understanding. This righteousness, whatever it is, comes from God. It is not a prescription for what you have to do, it is not a tradition, it not a cultural thing. It comes from God.
And it is to be received by faith. You got to believe it! Not do it, not beg for it, not pay for it, not suffer for it. You believe it. It is a matter of faith. This sounds familiar doesn’t it. Remember in John’s gospel – our gospel we read
3:16"For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Thirdly the righteous will live by faith. In other words our life-style is to be transformed into a life of faith.
So this verse summarises the rest of the book.
We need to keep it in the back of our mind as we plunge into the rest of the chapter.
Read Romans 1:18-32
Phew! That was heavy going! Where’s the love and faith and all the nice things we think are what the gospel is about?
Well, the gospel is about the righteousness of God. And that means it is about how you relate to God. You will not get far in any relationship if you don’t find out what annoys the other person. What riles God? What do you know about God? Well Paul starts at this point because if you don’t believe God is really worked up about rebellion and sin and evil, you will have no idea why Jesus died on a cross. God is righteous because he is the creator, sustainer, intelligence and moral arbiter of the universe. So when Paul starts The wrath of God is revealed we need to sit up and listen, any hope we have in this universe depends on us avoiding upsetting God.
God is against godlessness, wickedness and suppression of the truth. Now the first seems as if God is self-centred, the second we prefer our own choice of what is wicked. And that is the key problem. We want a man centred universe, preferably us centred universe. But this is not our world. It is God’s world. And he has created us to work in his way. And that means we have to have the righteousness of God, to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our strength. It means we must say NO to hatred and murder. NO to lust and adultery; NO to theft; NO to dishonesty and lies and slander; NO to coveting and jealousy.
The third element comes from the fact that rather than believe we are sinners, we hold down the truth; suppress our consciousness; say God wouldn’t be that harsh; excuse lying; enjoy lusting; and so on. So are you holding down the truth? Are you keeping your Bible closed? Are you doing church but doing nothing about what you hear? Paul is quite clear. You are on a slippery slope. And when a nation turns its back on God, individual behaviour combines to create a nightmare where love, trust, joy, peace and all the blessing God gives disappear.
When we read verses 21-32 we get the picture of our own society. Paul observes that the key is knowing God. And not just knowing but honouring him and giving thanks to him. So if you stop loving the love your God what happens? You start loving something else. Yourself, your car, your house, your work, your football team, even your church and it replaces God and becomes your God. It seems foolish to us that people worship religious artefacts but those who do justify it by very ‘reasonable’ but wrong arguments. When we turn away from loving God, your thinking becomes foolish, you start worshipping the created rather than the creator. But that is only the start. Because God gives you the freedom to choose. And so you are given over to the consequences. Instead of worshipping God we turn to the strongest physical desires we have. Sex. And once you have explored adultery, you move on to perverted sex, whether it is homosexual behaviour, fetishes; violence and abuse. Our society pillories child abuses but approves every step along the way.
The consequences are obvious. Adultery and all the other results of deserting God’s way lead inevitably in a society it outbreaks of every form of epidemic and pandemic you have heard of. The truth about Aids and HIV is that it requires an intimate exchange of body fluids to be transmitted. Most other diseases can be transmitted the same way but also other ways. So Venereal diseases, leprosy, Tuberculosis and so on are helped along by our decadent society.
But nothing but God satisfies. So once you turn your back on him, everything gets boring in time. So you have to seek greater and better excitement. An evening drink turns into a night out binge drinking. Dancing needs stimulation so you take ecstasy with its risks. And the dissatisfaction leads to Paul’s catalogue of evil:
Read verses 29-31.
The sad summary is that we know a better way. But we reject it.
The Gospel is not set in isolation to the world we know. It starts by facing up to the reality of what we have let ourselves in for. But is not a documentary. It is a story of HOPE. Hope that that does not disappoint. You see our Gospel; Paul’s gospel; John’s Gospel is about God stepping into our world to bring life changing power in Jesus for you and me. That is why our HOPE is different from the world’s hope. It is based on what God does not on what we do. It is certain because it comes from God not from our ideas about how to please God.
So as we come to communion, we are reminded that we have escaped from the consequences of turning our backs on God.
Stop and reflect. The downward slide begins when we justify replacing God with other things in our life. So this moment is here to turn back to the one who loves us and gave himself for us. To be sorry that other things have got in the way of our relationship with God. We are here to remind ourselves that a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last. The righteous will live by faith.
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