Fully Persuaded, Part 3

For Paul, it was the gospel and
nothing but the gospel. For Paul, it was the whole gospel.
And we began to see what all is involved in that gospel. And we began to see so as he
began to discuss that in verse 15 of chapter one. If you would,
let’s go back to chapter 15. We’ll take it from that point. Where Paul communicated to the
Roman church Thus, for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel
to you who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel,
for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes
to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness
of God is revealed from faith to faith. As it is written, the
righteous man shall live by faith. Paul was fully persuaded. Paul
didn’t need a seminar to pump him up to focus on the gospel. Paul didn’t need a gathering
of other men who would encourage him to stand for the gospel if
he became timid. Paul gives in this passage a
well-reasoned explanation for his passion to preach. That was
his one longing was to preach the gospel. Essentially, the
thought pattern goes like this, as you think your way through
verses 15 through 17, I am eager to preach because I’m not ashamed
of the gospel. And I’m not ashamed of the gospel
because it is the power of God. And it is the power of God for
salvation because it reveals God’s righteousness. In verse one, we learned that
it was the gospel of God. It’s God’s gospel. It’s God’s
message. And Paul wasn’t ashamed of God’s
message to the world regarding salvation. It is the gospel of
God that reveals the power of God and the power of God for
salvation. Paul wasn’t ashamed of the gospel
because he knew that was the great means of calling out. Of the great masses of humanity,
Those who were chosen for salvation. It is the gospel of God reveals
the power of God and it reveals the righteousness of God. Here,
Paul tells us why the gospel is so powerful. It is because
the righteousness of God is revealed in it. Paul was fully persuaded. Paul knew exactly what message
he wanted to take to the world because he desired more than
anything else for the salvation of souls. Paul said, thus, for my part,
I am eager. I can’t wait to preach the gospel
to you who are at Rome. And in a word, he puts aside
all the criticism that he had faced in not having arrived in
Rome for lo these 20 years. They probably were suspicious.
They probably did think that he was a flake. They probably
did think that Paul was all talk because he had heard so many
times that Paul desired to come to them. And in a single word,
Paul says, look. I may have been providentially
hindered from coming to you who are at Rome, but it certainly
wasn’t because of shame. It wasn’t because it was ashamed
of the gospel. Verse 17 presents to us very
clearly the tie-in that that particular verse has to the previous
one. The gospel is the power of God
for salvation because in it the righteousness of God is being
revealed. This morning we want to look
at verse 17 a little more fully, having considered those two previous
verses. which are building upon one another. This morning, we’ll look at how
exactly this righteousness of God is revealed. How is it revealed?
How is it received? Once it’s revealed, how is it
received? And how is it affirmed? How is
it proclaimed? How is it proven? First of all,
this morning. Before we even begin to look
at some of those more particular questions, I want to just take
you and look at some of the words in this great sentence, what
is righteousness? What is righteousness? That’s
a good place to stop, because if we don’t understand what that
is, it doesn’t matter how it’s proclaimed. It doesn’t matter
even how it’s received. And it certainly doesn’t matter
how it’s proven. What is righteousness? There are a series of words.
Greek words that speak of this great subject of righteousness,
the core word is decay. Not decay in our English spelling. Essentially, D.I.K. Within ADA
at the end, for those of you in the Greek class, the basic,
that’s the basic of the word group. And originally it meant
custom. That which was customary, standard.
As you would go to a different country, you would conform to
those customs. Later, it took on a judicial
meaning, which came to eventually predominant. That became the
meaning of the word judgment. Did it conform in my judgment? Did that conform to the custom,
to the standard? It was courtroom language. And as such, it ultimately came
to refer to the execution of a sentence, the pronouncement,
the judgment. These words that flow out from
this little word decay. And all of the words around it
are such important words in the book of Romans. Dozens and dozens
and dozens of times they occur in the book of Romans and in
Paul’s epistles and in scripture. It plays such an important role,
though, in this particular epistle that it’s crucial that we at
least have a grasp on what the meaning of these words are. One form of the word Dikaios
means righteous. And in the New Testament, that
word can be used to speak of God being righteous and of Christ
being righteous, but it’s also used of people. Being righteous
and what it talks about there is in the normal course of their
activity. That they are virtuous, they
are upright, they are said to be righteous. It describes a
man whose conduct conforms to a standard, as one said it, of
people that are observant and strictly so of custom and rule. Dikai’o, pardon me, dikai’o,
the verb form, means to make righteous or to declare or pronounce
righteous. And a third in this very large
group of words, The very word that is in our
text this morning, Diakosune, is righteousness itself. Over the course of history, this
word began to be used as an eternal. Unwritten principle of right,
that’s how the ungodly used it, that’s how the philosophers used
it. It was this universal principle
of right, and people had this sense of what was right and wrong. That word came to denote proper
or appropriate conduct toward others, and typically it was
used in social settings. But it was also used with regards
to meeting the demands of God and one who lives uprightly and
lived according to the standard was said to be righteous. Now, it is precisely there. That we discover a problem, don’t
we, if we’re honest. It is precisely that righteousness
which we lack as men and women, as young people, because as sinners,
just as we discussed last week, we are anything but righteous. As a result of the fall of Adam
and Eve, we looked at all of those things that are ours now,
the burden that we bear because of the fall of Adam and Eve. We are inherently simple. We
walk out of that garden with the proclivity, the inclination,
the. Tendency, and it’s an exclusive
one to sin. We walk out of the garden with
a full intention of sinning and everything that we do. We saw
that there were other things, that we are temporally vexed,
all the difficulties that come from life, physically dying,
spiritually dead. But the one I want to look at
this morning is that we are inherently sinful. We’re anything but righteous
because of the fall. We own that sinful tendency. We are sinners by nature. We have a complete inability
from the moment we’re born to please God. We are not righteous. We do not conform to the standard
and we have a desperate, desperate need. As one pastor said, reconciliation
is God’s plan, and it could not occur unless God initiated it
and God applied it. There’s no way as unrighteous
people that we could ever do enough good To be able to come
and to stand before God, a holy God. He goes on to say that sinners
cannot devise their own religious approach to God, although we
try. Because they are dead in their
trespasses and sins, the lie of false religions is that man
can reconcile himself to God by his own effort. But all attempts
to do so are futile. What a lie. What a lie that is
propagated upon the land that simply by following a set of
rules, by doing these tenets of a particular church. We can do enough. To tally up
into our favor, enough good works, enough good deeds, and even after
we die, if we lack a few, others can do a few for us. And carry
us across the finish line, as it were. Not so. Not so. We have a problem. And it’s interesting that Paul’s
great hope. As he proposes to encourage the
Roman church. Paul’s great hope is the righteousness
of God. And you say, what good can that
be for me? I need some of my own. I need righteousness in order
to conform to God’s standard. I need to be able to meet up
with that standard of God’s righteousness. And that’s exactly what Paul
proposes is our great remedy. The righteousness of God, that
God is going to set the standard and God is going to give us that
righteous standing. The righteousness of God here
in this passage isn’t just understood plainly as a divine attribute,
as if it stands before us as something to admire. If you look at it, it says that
that righteousness ultimately is by faith, that somehow we
take it to ourselves by faith. God’s righteousness becomes ours. And we see plainly we can’t do
it by law. We can’t do it by some attempt
to live according to the law. The Jews had tried that for hundreds
of years. That was an utter failure. It’s
a gift. Ultimately, it’s not our own,
but it’s from God. That’s why one said the righteousness
of God, therefore, must mean either righteousness of which
God is the author or righteousness of which he approves or, as I
would say, both. God set the standard. God called
us to the standard and God gives to us exactly what we need to
need it. Those two ideas are not. At opposites. The gospel presents to us God’s
righteousness, which God gives, which he approves, which is our
desperate, desperate need. God sets the standard because
he is the standard. God is the standard of all right
and wrong. God doesn’t conform to the law that he gave to Israel.
The law spoke of God, the law spoke of who God is in his being. And as such, God cannot lower
the standard or ignore the standard, because because he is righteous,
he meets the standard. God couldn’t grate on a curve
for us as much as he might have wanted to. God had to provide for our unrighteousness,
and he did so by sending a perfect sacrifice for sinners. His own
son. God sent his own son, the Lord
Jesus Christ. To fulfill that perfect standard
of righteousness. Not even a simple thought, not
even a simple tendency, not even a slip. Did Christ make while he was
here on Earth, God fulfilled his demands for perfect righteousness
through Jesus Christ. As one said, God’s righteousness
means that God always acts in accordance with what’s right
and is himself the final standard of what is right. Another said it this way, the
fundamental idea of righteousness, righteousness is that of strict
adherence to the law. Among men, it presupposes that
there is a law to which they must conform. It is sometimes
said that we cannot speak of righteousness in God. Because
there is no law to which he is subject. But though there is no law above
God, there is certainly a law in the very nature of God, and
that’s what he proclaims. Paul says it’s not a law that
God conforms to. The law flows from God. It is
a God righteousness of which Paul speaks. God is the author. It is the righteousness of God.
That meets with God’s approval, it is a righteousness that meets
all of the demands of justice. And it’s been interesting to
read these past weeks, how many different ways, you know, I love
these lists, how many different ways that people take these simple
words. Some said it’s the righteousness
which proceeds from God, and that’s part of it. It’s the righteousness
which God approves. That’s part of it. It’s the righteous
righteousness that avails with God or enables us to be with
God. That’s part of it. It isn’t just a divine attribute. It is the righteousness of God
that orients from God, it begins with him. An acceptable standard,
according to his standard of judgment, It comes down to us
through Christ. As one said, God’s righteousness,
righteousness, belonging to the character of God required by
him in the character of men distinguish from any righteousness with man,
which man sets up for himself or thinks to acquire by himself.
What we desperately need is the righteousness of God. And Paul
said. I’m not ashamed to preach the gospel because the gospel
is the power of God, because the gospel reveals the righteousness
of God. It gives us exactly what we need. This is exactly what is proclaimed
throughout the scripture, but particularly in the book of Romans.
Paul said now, apart from the law. No degree of adherence to the
law Could ever equip us to stand before God? Paul says, apart
from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested. God’s
given us what we need. Romans 10, three. Being critical
of the Jewish nation, knowing about God’s righteousness and
seeking to establish their own, that is mankind’s biggest problem.
Seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves
to the righteousness of God. Philippians three, nine, outside
of the Book of Romans, the thoughts continue that Paul’s great desire
was to be found in him that is in Christ, not having a righteousness
of my own, which is derived from the law, but that which is through
faith in Christ. Which righteousness is that?
the righteousness which comes from God. Paul says, look, in
the context of that particular statement, he said, look, I had
it all. I had all the Jewish training that anybody could ever
wish. I had all of the standards. I was impeccable as a religious
man. And I was bankrupt, utterly bankrupt. What I needed was the righteousness
which comes from God. Of course, Paul writing to the
Corinthians in probably arguably one of, if not my favorite in
all of Scripture, my favorite verse. He that is God made him
that is Christ who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that
we might become the righteousness of God in him. Paul said, I don’t
I don’t want any of my own righteousness, I don’t want to have to work
at becoming good. I don’t want to have to work
at some kind of adherence to a code, even the law of God,
because I see it to be an impossible standard. What I need, what I
need is salvation, what I need is the power of God, what I need
is the righteousness of God. Now, here’s where we go deep
or. I want to just do a quick landscape
of views of how we approach gaining righteousness, and there have
been only really, if you break it down, there’s really only
three. There’s one that is referred to as the Pelagian approach.
which begins with the statement that we are basically good. We’re basically good. And so
what we really need, more than anything, is just practice. We
just need to work harder, doing moral works, good works. We have
it within us. And I’ll tell you, that is the
mantra of our society, is it not? We’re basically good, we
just need to do better, we need to work harder. The other approach
is the approach that was advanced by the Roman Catholic Church,
which sometimes comes into my crosshairs being a rescued Roman
Catholic. Rome said this. This righteousness
of which Paul speaks is inherent righteousness. Now, Rome has
a form of original sin, but what they’re talking about is a restored
righteousness that when somebody comes to Christ or in their case
comes to the church, they are restored to a righteous standing
and everything then that flows from them is righteousness. And
in a very real sense, in their mind, they are holier than thou. And then there’s a third approach.
And that is the approach that I believe the scriptures speak
of. The righteousness for which we are justified, enabled to
stand before a holy God has nothing to do with my inherent goodness,
it has nothing to do with anything that is restored to me. It is the righteousness by which
we are justified, we are stamped by God with his approval. It isn’t anything that’s done
in us or done by us, but it’s something that is done to us
and imputed to us. What it is, is the work that
Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross and what he did to
satisfy the law’s demands. As one said, this righteousness
is not our own. It is nothing we have either
wrought ourselves or inheres in us. Christ is our righteousness
and we are said to be justified by his blood, his death, his
obedience. We are righteous in him and we
are justified by him or in his name. You say. Well, that’s an awfully good
deal. It’s an awfully good deal. It
is an awfully good deal. It’s the best deal that mankind
has ever been offered in all of history because all of this
takes place in what many have called the great exchange. We
put all of our sin on Jesus. As he went to the cross and Jesus
Christ puts all of his righteousness on us. And when we stand before
God, God sees us not for who we are. But he sees Christ for who he
is. First Peter 224 says that he
bore our sins in his body on the cross. Galatians 310 says
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse
for us. We, because we were sinful, deserve
the penalty of sin. Christ didn’t. You know the verse well, Isaiah
53, all of us like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned
to his own way, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us
all to fall on him. Christ suffered for sin, not
for his own, because Jesus had no sin. He was an utterly sinless
savior. As one said, Christ was not made
a sinner, nor was he punished for any sin of his own. Instead,
the father treated him as if he were a sinner when he went
to the cross. Matthew Mead, one of the great
Puritans, said it this way. Alas. It is an infinite righteousness
that must satisfy our sins, for God is an infinite God that is
offended by us. If ever your sin be pardoned,
it is infinite mercy that must pardon it. If ever you be reconciled
to God, it is infinite mercy that must do it. If ever your
heart be changed and your soul renewed, it is infinite power
that must affect it. And if ever your soul escape
hell and be saved at last, it is infinite grace that must save
it. Jesus didn’t become a sinner.
But he did take all of our sin and he took all of our sin so
that he could return to us the righteousness of God. Now, it’s
for another day. We don’t stand before God perfect,
but God sees us as such. He doesn’t see us individually
anymore. He sees Christ. He sees the Lord
Jesus Christ. I want to take you through a
quick illustration of this very point, the robe of righteousness
that is so often sung about in the hymns. I want to take you
to Matthew chapter 22. To speak of our desperate need
of this robe of righteousness. In Matthew, Chapter 22, you have
a beautiful little story that Jesus tells, it’s a parable.
And in that parable, Jesus speaks of a king, a kingdom. And in
that kingdom, he’s going to the king is going to have a wedding
feast for his son. There was no greater day of celebration,
certainly not for the king and for the whole kingdom. Begin
with me, if you would, in verse one. Jesus spoke to them again
in parables. Saying the kingdom of heaven
may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his
son. What a great start this is. Can’t you just see the pomp
and all the town decorated and all of the palace decorated and
cleaned and readied? And he sent out his slaves to
call those who had been invited to the wedding feast and they
were unwilling to come. And you can hear the brakes screeching,
right? The tires. What? Here is the king. Let’s check that again. No, it’s
the king putting on a wedding feast for his son. And he goes
and he sends those into the highways and byways and he calls them
to come and they say, no, they were unwilling to come. If you’re
not already clued into the story, it’s the it’s the story of heaven,
the story of God calling people to himself. They were unwilling to come,
and he sent out other slaves saying, tell those who have been
invited. Maybe they missed. Maybe the
invitation got smudged or maybe, you know, they were confused
about exactly who it is that’s throwing this party and for whom. Tell those who have been invited,
behold, I’ve prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fattened livestock
are all butchered and everything is ready. Come to the wedding
feast. Everything has been laid out
for you. All you have to do is come. It’s not a potluck, right? But they paid no attention. And
went their way, one to his own farm. Another to his business. And then it gets really shocking,
and the rest seized his slaves and mistreated them and killed
them. Wow. There are some that are always
going to be too busy. Those go to their farms. There are others
that are too interested, more interested in earning a living
than they are about caring for their own souls. And there are
still others who hate God. Who hate his way. And what Jesus
refers to is those who kill the prophets and they were plentiful. Ultimately, they would kill the
Lord Jesus himself. But the king was enraged and
he sent his armies and destroyed those murders and set their city
on fire. Then he said to his slaves, the
wedding is ready. But those who were invited were
not worthy. Go, therefore, to the main highways
and as many as you find there, invite to the wedding feast.
He says, go get the town rabble. I don’t care who you get. And
you have this image that the original group. was a very choice
lot. These were the upwardly mobile
of the society. It was the nation of Israel. Now he says, go get the rabbit. Go get those that are sitting
on the park bench and bring them to the wedding feast. Those slaves,
verse 10, went out into the streets, gathered together all they found,
both evil and good, and the wedding hall was filled with dinner guests. And if the story ended right
there, what a happy ending it would be. But while the first part of the
story was about the Jews, this latter part of the story is about
so many of us. So many of us who think that
we can earn our way to heaven, that all we’ve got to do is attend
church on these particular days. And while we want to add to that
a quiet time here or there, we want to work our way to heaven
by hook or by crook, no matter what. But that’s not what happened. It says that they all came in
both evil and good. There was nothing inherently
righteous about any of them. The wedding hall was filled with
these guests, but when the king came in to look over the dinner
guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes.
And you say, well, how crass is this? The king invites everybody,
the rabble of the town, to come to his son’s wedding because
those other people wouldn’t even come. And now he’s going to criticize
how they’re dressed. This is this is over the top. This is harsh. It’s well known
in the culture of the day, if you walked into a scene like
this, if you didn’t have clothes, they would provide them for you.
They would deck you out just like they decked out the palace
and everything else. They would provide you. The road. The problem is, the man didn’t
want the road. The problem is the man thought
that his clothes were just fine. The problem is he thought he
was dressed well enough. Thank you very much. And he said to him, friend, how
did you come in here without wedding clothes? The man was speechless. The king
said to the servants, find him hand and foot and throw him into
the outer darkness in that place, there will be weeping and gnashing
of teeth for many are called, but few. will be chosen. The
robe is not optional. The robe indicated there is absolutely
necessary, it’s crucial. If we don’t have the robe of
righteousness that Christ alone provides, there is no heaven,
there is no feast. There is no eternity for us with
God. As Robert Haldane said, it is
the righteousness which God has provided, which he has affected,
which he imputes for the justification to all his elect. It is through
this righteousness revealed in the gospel that the gospel is
the power of God to salvation. The grand object of the apostle
is to show that man, having lost his own righteousness and thereby
fallen under condemnation, God has provided him a righteousness.
The complete fulfillment of the law in all its threatening and
in all its precepts, by which being placed into his account
through faith. He is acquitted from guilt, freed
from condemnation and entitled to the reward of eternal life. Remember, I told you it was a
good deal. It’s the best deal that humanity’s ever received.
That we put all of our sin on the Lord Jesus Christ and the
Lord Jesus Christ in return rewards us with a robe of righteousness.
We sang about it already. Oh, may I then in him be found. Dressed in his righteousness
alone. Don’t try to get in there with
ratty clothes, the ratty clothes of your own works. God has offered to you the greatest
offer that he’s ever made in the history of humanity. That
if you place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, who has already
paid the penalty for sin and for sinners. If you place your
faith in that Savior, you will be saved. And as you stand before
God, you will be seen, not in your own filthy rags, not according
to your own works. You’ll be seen in the robe of
the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. I told
you it was a good deal. We’ll speak more of it next Lord’s
Day. Our merciful King, we humble
ourselves before you because we know our natural tendency.
Is to shun these ornate clothes of a king. And to try to work
our own way to heaven, to try to provide for our own and. To
stand before you and to suggest that ours is good enough and
it’s not. Lord God, we pray that you would
humble us. I pray that if there are any
here who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior,
this is the day. I pray that you would humble
them. And having humbled them, open
their eyes, let them see Christ having paid their penalty on
the cross. Let them see that no effort on their part will
ever secure them a grander place. Than to be one of your children
dressed in the righteousness of Christ. Lord, we thank you
and we praise you for your grace and your goodness in our life. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray,
Amen.