THE WONDERFUL TRUTH FROM PAUL’S LETTER TO THE ROMANS
We have defined a great deal of the truth about our Lord Jesus so far – but there is more – have I got good news for you! But first understand the awful problem of man.
Romans 1:18-32
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,
30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;
31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
In verse 32 we see our problem today. People do not realise what befalls them when they die. And they will die – and there is judgement as I have already mentioned:
Hebrews 9:26-28
26 Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself.
27 Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,
28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
Jesus through the revealing of Himself to Saul – now Paul, when Paul was regenerated on the road to Damascus – – Paul in his letter to the people in Rome explained:
Romans 3:9-20
No one Is Righteous
9 What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.
10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
13 “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 ruin and misery mark their ways,
17 and the way of peace they do not know.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
19 Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.
20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.
Remember that we learnt a very reliable truth from the Holy Spirit – again:
Romans 10:8-10
8 But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming:
9 That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.
Romans 3:21-28
21 But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.
22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference,
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished
26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith.
28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.
Some wonderful truths come from this Scripture above:
- God has provided mankind’s righteousness. God’s righteousness is God’s commitment to man to save man – through Jesus’ substitutionary atonement. This is the wonderful side of God’s perfect justice that deals with the true believer’s rescue and acquittal. Jesus, God’s Son died to save the elect. God sees His sinless Son not you and me the sinners when we truly repent and believe and this gives eternal life with Himself, the Father, and Jesus is our brother eternally.
WOW!!
- God has made His righteousness known (verse 21). Remember, this truth, this letter, was written c 57 AD, about 24 years after Jesus returned to His Father in the glory of heaven.
In the reference above verses 21-22 we see the ‘righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus…’ In Greek the word ‘of’ is also defined. This means the elect are given the faith of Jesus thus to then have faith in Jesus – regenerated forever. This confirms what I explained before that the elect are chosen even before they were given by the Father to the Son (John 6: 39).
Verse 24 above is a marvelous truth as it clearly teaches:
- ‘justified’ – justification. Simply this word means not guilty – innocent in the sense ‘just-if-I’ was not/no longer judged guilty of anything I did because Jesus has paid the price of my guilt. I have been acquitted. It means also to ‘declare righteous’ (Romans 3:20). The important point to remember about righteousness is that it is God’s righteousness not ours and we are declared righteous that is justified through the faith of Jesus and thus faith in
- ‘freely by his grace’ The free unmerited favour of God to the elect chosen. Declared not guilty by trusting Jesus.
In verse 25 above, ‘sacrifice of atonement’ is the sacrifice for the sin of the elect to appease God’s anger for our disobedience. Atonement means we are now ‘at one’ with our loving God through
Jesus substitutionary atonement. Jesus died for you and me to bring us back to the Father. On our own we had no way to get back to God:
- No road to walk,
- No way to reach up to be in contact with God,
- No bridge to span the gulf,
but God made a way,
more accurately the way – Jesus
John 14:6
6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
The second part of verse 25 above concerns the Old Testament sacrificial system. This system was efficacious and ceased in 70 AD when Jerusalem was destroyed by Rome. When Jesus gave His life it covered all sins of the truly faithful in the Old Testament and to the end of future history. All forgiveness has to do with faith in Jesus. Thus verse 28 again:
Romans 3:28
28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.
We see our salvation not by observing the law but ‘by faith’. Martin Luther explained “by faith alone