The Book of Romans pt 13

It is at this point that Paul starts to expound true and false religion. From chapters 4-8, Paul seems to only have one thing in mind: separate the precious from the vile. We've looked upon how all are under sin, whether Jew or otherwise, and thus all are in need of salvation. Toward the end of Romans 3, Paul has stated the mechanism by which salvation is obtained - namely, the blood of Jesus Christ. Through faith in Him, we have received our eternal reward.

If salvation is obtained by faith, then what does faith look like? And so we pick up in Romans 4 as Paul starts to expound the great man of faith: Abraham.

What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, discovered in this matter? 2 If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about—but not before God. 3 What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

4 Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. 5 However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness. 6 David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:

7 “Blessed are those
    whose transgressions are forgiven,
    whose sins are covered.
8 Blessed is the one
    whose sin the Lord will never count against them.”

Note that the main point that Paul presses right from the get-go is that righteousness and faith are intertwined. Why is this so?

Lets first consider our faith in God. Then we'll move to God's righteousness. Then we'll talk about the consequence this has for community.

Our righteousness is not constituted by our deeds. It is solely constituted upon one thing: our faith in Christ. We'll discuss what this faith looks like as we continue through Romans 4 and 5. At this moment, we'll focus upon why our righteousness is only constituted upon faith in Christ.

To put faith in something is not to simply trust it. I can trust that the chair I am sitting in has enough strength to hold me up. But that doesn't necessarily mean I have faith in the chair. Faith constitutes a change in the individual. The person moves from unrighteous to righteous, and thus faith cannot be mere trust. I can trust that God will provide, but that does not mean that I have faith. I can know the principles and subscribe the to truth that God provides without ever coming to full acceptance and being changed by the belief that God provides.

Faith takes more than belief. It takes more than trust. It is only faith when the inner most fabric of our being fully subscribes to it. To have faith in Christ is to have complete and utter surrender to the character of God. It is more than trusting God that you will make it to heaven. You have complete trust that every experience that comes is from the hand of God. He is sovereign, even through the free-will of men. Nothing comes apart from God. This statement is made by Paul, who suffered lashes at the hands of the Jews 5 times, 3 times he was beaten with rods, once pelted with stones, shipwrecked 3 times, spent a day and a night in the open sea, had been constantly on the move, had been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from his fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles, in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea, in danger from false believers, had gone without sleep, had known hunger and thirst - often going without food, and has been cold and naked.

This man who has suffered more than anyone else that I know - save Christ - was able to then stand on Mars Hill and tell them about the "God who gives all things."

Does your faith look like that? Do you have that kind of faith in God that you can bear such a suffering and still not attack the character of God?

Righteousness is indeed constituted upon faith. We forfeit our glory for the glory of another. We lay down our lives for the life of another. Our comfort and convenience doesn't matter. What matters is the glory of God forever. Anything that we say, do, think, or teach that is separate from the glory of God is brought under question and immediately repented of. We all have blind spots and we have all temptation. It is how ruthless we are to be converted to the image of God and how desperate we are to display the glory of God that speaks louder than our failures.

In this sense, I can understand why it would be that righteousness and faith are intertwined. But how is God righteous? Does God have faith in Himself?

Don't forget that God is 3 persons.

Jesus was always about glorifying the Father and proclaimed that His words were Spirit. He never did anything that He hadn't seen His Father do, and never spoke anything that the Spirit didn't first give utterance. In this way, He laid aside His own glory for the glory of the other two persons in the Godhead. He cast Himself aside for the sake of His Father and the Holy Spirit.

God the Father was about glorifying the Son. The way that He spoke to Jesus and the way He speaks to us is through the Holy Spirit. He does nothing of His own, but continues to display Himself through His Son and through the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit does not speak anything to us that has not been spoken by the Father. The Holy Spirit doesn't have its own words, but is only the messenger from the Father to us. In this way, the Spirit has denied herself (the Hebrew word ruach is feminine) in order to promote the Father. But the Spirit also has the passion to glorify the Son. She speaks concerning Him and leads us into all truth.

Thus because God defers to the other two parts of the Godhead, He both places faith in the other two by giving them all glory and honor and is credited as righteous for it. One of the most challenging aspects to understand is that in deferring glory to the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Father gains a greater glory. So it is with the Son and the Holy Spirit as well. In forfeiting our glory to glorify God, we find that we are all the more glorious.

Don't think that I am speaking of humanity as being gods. Any glory that we receive can only be a reflection of God's glory; for apart from God there is no glory. Apart from God there is no righteousness. We can only truly understand righteousness in the context of God's righteousness.

And how does this pertain to community?

When we are willing to give up our names and reputations for the sake of promoting our brothers and sisters, then we have obtained to righteousness beyond the conventional dimensions. It is amazing to me how unwilling many are to give up their own names and honor. They have worked so hard for so long, why would they allow all their toil to be in vain?

It is such a worldly way of perceiving. The heavenly perception reasons that in honestly giving up our names and reputations for the sake of others - and not in hope of regaining that reputation and honor - that we find deeper manifestations of honor and glory. If there is any other reason for our humility than to honor and promote and respect those brothers and sisters around - out of our love for them - then we are the greatest deceivers. It is manipulation and deception - which are both of the devil - to try and use people so that we might gain honor and respect.

God knows our secret hearts. I haven't yet obtained to this calling. It is something altogether more pure than I have become. By God's grace, I pray that I might be able to match this one day - maybe even today - but for now I continue to fall short.

I think we ought to all be humiliated and cut to the quick whenever we read the book of Acts. Our Christianity is utterly anemic and does not even bear comparison. These men - fishermen and louts - turned the world upside down. Our Christianity doesn't come close. And I think it all comes down to this one point that Paul is making: our faith is not a faith unto righteousness.

We might be able to put faith in God, but to put faith in another believer that we only see once a week is absurd. We have not been made on as He is one, and the result is that we officially have been made into a Christian culture instead of a Church. We have a Sunday Club. Some places around the world there are people that are required to meet more than Sunday and a midweek Bible Study. In those communities, God has wrought a likeness that our Western Culture cannot comprehend.

What is it that would cause such men - as unlearned as they were - to be so equipped by God to even debate against the most pristine that religion has to offer? The Holy Spirit had its own logic and law. The law of Grace compelled them to love one another. That love was not cheap. It cost everything. It cost honor and reputation for the sake of a higher one's honor and reputation; namely, the honor and reputation of God, but secondly the honor and reputation of those believers that you are with daily.

This is what we're called to.

Do you have faith for that?

The Book of Romans pt 12

21 But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.


I have heard people say that this passage is possibly the most important passage of all Scripture. I happen to disagree, but not because I think there are other more important passages. I believe that unless we have the context of the whole Bible story, this passage doesn't make sense. The freedom we have in Christ isn't an issue that we find strictly in the New Testament. From the very beginning God stirred the creation into more and more manifestation of order and light.

It is from the foundations of the Earth that we find a God who is not content to simply speak over the creation in order to bring it into fullness. He gets down into the nitty-gritty. He isn't satisfied with being afar off; God comes into the darkness and chaos. So it is in the sinner. God isn't content to speak over the sinful heart, "Be clean." God comes into that unclean heart to purify and to make new. Jesus had a similar experience with a leper. The leper approached our Lord and said, "You can heal me if you are willing..." Jesus wasn't going to allow that mentality to last another minute. He didn't only say, "I am willing." Jesus actually reached out His hand and touched the unclean thing.

The Gospel isn't so much about the cross and resurrection as it is what these things symbolize. The Gospel is the proclamation of a God who came into His creation to rescue it from the darkness and death that binds it. The cross and resurrection are the medium by which God brings deliverance. It is not a one time moment in history, but an epoch of all God's moments in history. This is the crux of God's character. He has always been one who suffers for the betterment of His creation. It is not sufficient to say that God died upon the cross and that is it. He is the Lamb slain from the foundations of the Earth, and indeed God's character is and always has been to live in the reality of the cross and resurrection with His people.

It is by this that we are justified freely by grace. It is all about the blood of Jesus, and it is not limited to the one time event. Jesus' blood is eternal. From the beginning, all the saints have pleaded upon the mercy of God. God could only have justified them by the blood of Christ that had not yet come. It was through their faith in the character of God that saved them. Jesus hadn't died for forgiveness to come to David after he sinned. How can God forgive him?

So please understand that I don't mean to diminish the cross and it's importance. On quite the contrary, I'm trying to establish the importance. It is in the context of understanding that God is and always has been the Lamb slain before the foundations of the world that we can fully embrace the cross of Jesus and plead His blood for the redemption and remission of sins. God's plan of salvation has been established from the very first.

I think this is why Jesus rebuked the two saints on the road  to Emmaus. It has always been the character and pattern of God to suffer before the glory. The cross was laid out in the prophets, but also in the stories of the Torah and historical books. It has always been God's character to embrace suffering and not reject it. God isn't a coward to flee from suffering. He embraces it.

And so we can approach the cross of calvary as an event that effects all of history because it is a culmination of all of God's events in history. Every time God interacts with humanity is a cross and resurrection. His character is displayed through every word, action, reaction, judgment, and mercy.

Thus we conclude that it is upon that cross that God was able to be both just and the justifier of the wicked. But why is this a problem?

How can God forgive the wicked and appease justice?

Those who break the law demand the punishment required. This is the set up for the next few chapters. We'll dive into further detail, but for now let us consider a general overview to chew on.

When we ask God to forgive us of sin, we are asking that He would break the law. The law demands punishment. How can God both exact punishment and give grace to the repentant heart? God took upon Himself that punishment of death. He took upon Himself the full wrath and punishment that deserved to go to we that call upon Christ Jesus' name. It is by grace that we have salvation, and of works lest any man should boast.

But the requirement of repentance is not simply a prayer of forgiveness. Repentance requires that we have a change in mindset and heart. It takes a death. Jesus is our sacrifice of atonement, but the wages of sin is still death. There must be a death in the believer in order for there to be freedom from sin. Anyone who has tasted of death and come out victorious by the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is now free from sin (examine Romans 6). Christ is our atonement, and we willingly go to death with Him that we might also be raised with Him to life eternal.

This is how God is able to be both just and the justifier of the wicked. All wickedness is put to death so that resurrection life might come to wholeness within the believer. Little wonder, then, as to why the next statement out of Paul is about the Law and how there is no boasting:

27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. 28 For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.29 Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, 30 since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. 31 Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law.

We are freed from the Law in the same sense that the married man is free from the law that tells us to remain obstinate. While I were single, it would be sin for me to have sexual intercourse. But now that I am married, this no longer applies. It is still sin, however, to commit adultery. So the Law hasn't been abolished, but has been transformed. It is all the more imperative now that we have been made new. Law hasn't been nullified nor made an object of ridicule. Law is now inescapable - for the law has been written on our hearts by the Holy Spirit.

So then we conclude that all who are free from Law are free from death and sin. There can be no death nor sin where there is no Law. But this statement doesn't mean that we no longer have to hold up to a moral standard as some in the hypergrace movement have claimed. Should we continue in sin now that we are free from it? No - if you have died to sin, then how can you live in it any longer? Our very conduct has changed to that of us no longer desiring sin. If we no longer desire to perform wickedness, then why bind ourselves to unnatural habits?

As we continue through Romans, we'll continue to deepen this mentality of freedom and faith and how to walk it out. And we'll also start to look at some practical implications this has as we get into some of the later chapters in Romans.