The Righteousness of God

Gracious heavenly Father, we ask once again for your help. Surely the lines have fallen for us in pleasant places, that we can be in this place of relative comfort and ease and can hear in the language we can understand these great tidings of good news and study with the saints who have gone before – anticipation of the glory that awaits. And so, we ask that you would give us more grace, that we might hear and receive this good word, that you might give grace in our hearts to be changed, that we might, from faith to faith, live the life that is pleasing to you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Our text this morning is Romans chapter 1, verse 17. I promise we will not normally take only one verse. You’re panicking just a bit. There are 433 verses in Romans. So, one sermon for one verse would be a little extreme. I think, Lord willing, the next sermon will have two or three verses. We will move ahead. But there are certain verses which do need a sermon by themselves, and I can’t promise, but some verses later in the book may need more than one sermon themselves. And this is such a magnificent verse. Let me begin reading at verse 16.

“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 (that is, in the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’”

We saw last week that word “for,” gar in the Greek – and you will become acquainted with that word throughout this series, translated “for” at the beginning of verse 16 – connects these two verses with the previous verse, 15, where Paul said he was eager to preach the gospel to you, also, who are in Rome. And so, verses 16 and 17 provide reasons – why is Paul set apart for the gospel of God? Why is he so eager to preach this gospel? He gives reasons. We saw last week in verse 16 several reasons. What’s so good about the gospel? Number one, it’s the power of God. Number two, it is the power of God onto salvation. Number three, this salvation is for everyone who believes. Number four, this salvation is first for the Jews, but it doesn’t stop there. It is also for the Greeks, for the Gentiles. That was last week’s sermon.

Now, this week, verse 17: in one sense, we could look at this as a continuation of those reasons. We could say here that this is the fifth and ultimate reason why Paul was eager to preach the gospel – not only those other four reasons, but also because in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith – and that would be absolutely true. He is stating a reason why the gospel is so good. But I want to look at verse 17 not so much as answering the why question, which it does, but rather the how question. I hope you had ears to hear, and I hope this poor preacher made it explicit enough last week, to understand why the gospel is the power of God unto salvation. And yet here in verse 17, we have that truth made explicit, because just verse 16 by itself might leave you asking the question, well that sounds very good, but how does it work? How does the gospel save us? And so, you put verse 16 together with verse 17. Not only are they connected to verse 15, but they provide – and you see there, this is given its own section. Those headings are not inspired, but it’s wise here, because these two verses give us the theme for the rest of this book. We’re going to come back to these same sorts of ideas with different angles and different nuance and more detail, but it’s introducing to us the great theme of the book of Romans: the gospel. And here in verse 17, we have what may be, without exaggeration, the most important verse for your life. Now, if I say with some other verses that they’re also the most important verse, you understand that there are a lot of most important verses. What did the comedian Brian Regan say about growing up, and he wanted the snow cone? Grape was favorite, but cherry was also favorite. Well, there are also many other favorites here.

This sermon is about how the gospel saves people, and let’s make it even more direct – how the gospel can save you, because some of you, likely, are not saved. You may know that. You may be here – perhaps no one sitting next to you knows that, but you know that deep in your heart. Or even more likely, you have some background in church, and you’re here, but you really haven’t understood the gospel before. And if someone were to give you that famous Evangelism Explosion question – “If you appeared before God tonight in heaven, and he asked you, ‘Why should I let you in my heaven?’” – some of you might begin by talking about things you have done. I’m a good person. My parents brought me to church. I went to a Christian school. I memorize the Bible. And you might offer to God something of your own righteousness. So, some people in this room likely are not yet saved by the gospel. And the many of you that are, it always does us well to understand what it is that has happened to us. That’s one of the things that a book like Romans does and why theology is not a waste, because even if something happened to you, and you’re saved, part of what God does with good teaching and preaching, I hope, is to make sense of what you didn’t even know had happened to you and how it all worked.

Here’s how the gospel saves you. Verse 17: “In it” – that is the gospel – “the righteousness of God” – now, parenthesis, that phrase – that’s what most of the sermon is going to be about, and we’ll come back to that in just a moment. But I want you to go to the other word, “the righteousness of God is revealed.” So, in the gospel, this thing we’ll come back to, the righteousness of God, is revealed. The Greek word is apokalypto. You can hear our English word “apocalypse.” It’s the same root word used for the title of the last book of the Bible: the apocalypse, the revelation. In the proclamation of the gospel, something is revealed. Something is made manifest. Something is uncovered. Something is brought to light. If your kids or grandkids ever come in with breathless excitement, “Mom, dad, grandma, papa, come, I have to show you something. I have to show you something.” They got something behind their back. Or they have a blanket over some Lego creation they’ve made or some Play-Doh disaster in the carpet. And there it is. Don’t eat it. Smells good. It’s not gluten-free. I didn’t have to eat it to learn that, but it’s not. And they have the blanket and they say, “Look.” And they pull that away. Something is uncovered. It’s an apocalypse from your children. It’s a revelation. We are inundated with breaking news. Used to be that was a big deal. Now there’s always breaking news, and they have to just indicate with greater and more pizzazz and flashes and scrolls. Everything is urgent breaking news. Well, this actually is a big reveal at the end of those makeover shows, and now you get to see as you walk into your house, and it has shiplap as far as the eye can see. It’s an open concept, and all the rest, and it’s probably vintage farm, even though none of us want to live on a farm, we just want to pretend like we do. There’s the reveal. You can see it. That’s what the gospel is for us: turning on the light switch, not that these things were not already present. We’ve already seen in verse 2, “which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures.”

So, the gospel of God has been promised. There are going to be quotations upon quotations from the Old Testament, so this gospel is absolutely in the Old Testament. But now, with the coming of the son of God and the proclamation of this apostolic gospel, the light switch has fully come on. Remember that line – so good – from B.B. Warfield, “The Old Testament is a room richly furnished but dimly lit.” Richly furnished. It has all of the best appliances. It has all the nicest upholstery. It has it all there. It’s the same stuff. It’s richly furnished. It’s there in the Old Testament, but the room is dimly lit. You had to feel your way around, and you weren’t quite sure, always, what you were seeing and looking at, and now, with the death and resurrection of Christ, that dimly lit, well-furnished room has had the light flipped on so that in the gospel of Jesus Christ, now there is a grand unveiling, and what has been revealed? In it, the righteousness of God has been revealed. That’s what we see under the blanket. There it is. Pull the doors away. The great reveal: the righteousness of God.

This is probably the most contested, disputed phrase in all of Romans. The first word of verse 17 – now, in English it has “for,” because Greek word order and English word order can be different. The first word in Greek is actually the word “righteousness.” Dikaiosyne – that’s righteousness – theou – you can hear our word theology. That’s the word for God. It’s another one of those “of” words, a genitive is the Greek case: the righteousness of God. There are whole books written about what this one phrase, these two words together, mean. This may be the most important phrase in Romans, and the group of words represent one of the most important concepts in the entire New Testament. This word grouping, which in Greek has the word – the front of it is dikai, so the word dikaiosin Greek is “righteous.” That occurs 79 times in the New Testament. Dikaio– that’s the verb “to justify,” which will become very important in the chapters ahead. That occurs 39 times. Now, right there you can hear our word “justify” – it’s the same Greek root as the English word “righteousness.” To justify is to “righteousify” someone: how they become righteous. The word dikaioma – “righteous requirement” – occurs 10 times. Dikaiokrisia, “a righteous judgment,” one time. Dikaios, “upright,” five times. Dikaiosis, “justification,” occurs two times. And then most of all is this word – 92 times in the New Testament we have this word, dikaiosyne – more than 30 of them in Romans. And this phrase together, dikaiosyne theou, occurs eight times in the book of Romans. Chapter 1, verse 17, 3:5, 3:21, 3:22, 3:25, 3:26, and then twice in chapter 10, verse 3. There’s no exam. You don’t have to write them down. We’ll look at them real quickly in just a moment. And then the other occasion in the New Testament is 2 Corinthians 5:21.

So, what do you do when you come to a phrase like this? We may all think we know “righteousness of God,” but once you stop to noodle on it, you go, okay, well, what is this? Is this the righteousness of God, namely that God has? Is it the righteousness that describes what God does? Is it the righteousness of God, meaning that God is the source of it and he gives it to us? There are three main ways that this phrase has been understood. We can think of righteousness of God – here’s the three main ways: as an attribute, an activity, or an acquisition. I had to stretch a little bit for the third. As something acquired. To put the question another way, okay, here’s what we’re asking: is the righteousness of God in verse 17 mainly – and I underline mainly, because I’m going to argue there’s a way in which it can capture all three of these – but mainly a statement about who God is, what God does, or what God gives? Is verse 17 mainly a statement, “the righteousness of God,” about who he is, what he does, or what he gives? So, let’s look at each of those. And if you’re guessing that the third one is going to be the right answer, that is what I’m going to argue.

Number one: attribute. So, God is righteous. That’s one of his attributes. That’s a characteristic. That’s certainly true. And some have argued that that’s the meaning of the phrase here in verse 17. It’s a reference, then, to God’s unswerving commitment to do what is right. Some in the last few decades have argued, in particular, that the phrase refers to God’s faithfulness, especially to his covenant, that the gospel reveals that God is a covenant-keeping God, and he blesses the righteous, and he curses the unrighteous. That the phrase, then, points mainly to God’s personal integrity, his uprightness, how he is true to his own character and true to his own promises. So, in this understanding, the phrase “righteousness of God” would indicate possession, so that “of” there means it’s God’s own righteousness. So, what is revealed in the gospel, on this understanding, is that God is true to himself. He keeps his promises. He is a righteous God. Now, the best argument for this understanding comes from chapter 3, verse 5. Just turn the page. This is the next instance of this phrase, dikaiosyne theou. Chapter 3, verse 5: “But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us?” So, there in 3:5, it does seem, in that occasion, to be speaking mainly about God’s righteous character, showing his veracity, his integrity, that he is a God who always does what is right. So that’s one way: “righteousness of God” is mainly, the gospel reveals – he’s a God who does what is right.

A second way of understanding: not attribute, but activity, meaning it’s a reference to God’s righteous activity in the world. So, on this understanding they would say, “Well, that first one is a little too abstract, that God has this abstract quality called righteousness. No, this is really about his dynamic intervention into the world whereby God does what is righteous.” Luther initially took this phrase to refer to God’s active righteousness, whereby God punishes unrighteous sinners. Now, we’ll see at the very end, Luther came to reject this understanding, and a more plausible reading would see that the righteousness of God, if it’s an activity, is not to condemn, but rather a reference to his saving activity. So, it could be the gospel unveils God’s saving activity, what he does in the world to save sinners. The best argument for this interpretation comes by connecting it with verse 18. Did you notice – verse 16, we have the power of God; verse 17, the righteousness of God; and verse 18, the wrath of God. And 17 and 18 both have this word “revealed.” So, 18, the wrath of God is revealed, and that revelation is the outpouring of God’s wrath in the world. So, there in verse 18, it does seem to be a reference to what God is doing. So might it be, then, that verse 17, the revelation of his righteousness refers to his righteous activity to save his people in the world?

Now there’s a third way, and that is to see dikaiosyne theou as an acquisition – that is, something acquired – not mainly about who God is, though that’s all true, nor mainly God doing something, though we know that the gospel is accomplished and was accomplished through Christ’s death on the cross, but rather the righteousness of God refers to the gift of God’s righteousness. So, God here – not possession of his own righteousness revealed, but rather God as the source of a righteousness that is then given to us. Now, I don’t think we have to fully reject the first two views. We can certainly say the gospel does show that God is true to himself, and it shows us how he carries out his plan of salvation. But I want to argue the main meaning of this phrase in verse 17 is the righteousness that God gives to us through faith.

Now why do I say that? Because of how it’s used in the rest of the book. So turn again to chapter 3. So, I said the next instance is in verse 5 of chapter 3, and then it’s used several times in the rest of chapter 3. Verse 21 – and notice how all these occasions are connected to faith. 3:21, “The righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. 22 The righteousness of God through faith.” So there’s a connection here. The righteousness of God either is something from the law or something through faith. Verse 25: “whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness.” And again, verse 26, “it was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be the just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” In each of those instances, there’s a connection. The righteousness of God, the dikaiosyne theou, is something that is given to us through the instrumentality of faith. You can turn over and look at chapter 4. It doesn’t use the exact same phrase, but you can look at verse 3: “Abraham believed God. It was counted to him as righteousness.” Verse 5: “The one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” We see the same thing in verse 6, verse 9, verse 11 – that faith is the means by which this righteousness is counted or credited to our account. And then the clearest argument, if you turn over to chapter 10, verse 3. Remember I said this phrase occurs eight times 1:17 3:5,21,22,25,26, and then it occurs twice here in Romans 10:3. Look at the context, because this is the clearest parallel to 1:17. “For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.” So, two times in this verse we have dikaiosyne theou, and notice the contrast. “They were ignorant of the righteousness of God, and they sought to establish their own.” So, contrast: there is a righteousness we tried to establish on our own, and then there is the righteousness of God. You see how this doesn’t work as well to think we’re merely talking about God’s faithfulness to himself or even God’s activity. But we’re comparing a righteousness that comes from God and a righteousness that comes from man, or supposedly does. And there’s confirmation that this is the right way to understand the phrase from the last instance of this phrase in the New Testament, 2 Corinthians 5:21. “God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become” – so notice the language of something that we have become, the dikaiosyne theou – we have become “the righteousness of God.” So this, clearly, in 2 Corinthians uses that phrase as something acquired, something given to us. Similarly, in Philippians 3:9, Paul says, “Not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the dikaiosyne theou, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” There’s another confirmation that we see there – it’s not the exact phrase, but it’s translated similarly – the righteousness from God. You have a righteousness from the law. You have a righteousness from God. The righteousness from the law will never save you. The righteousness from God through faith is the only way for sinners to be saved.

Now, go back to 1:17 and try to bring this together. As I said, it’s not that all three elements aren’t present in some sense. The phrase may include the other aspects, but what it means is the righteousness that comes from God. So, there’s an order of the meaning. There may be other significance that’s implied. So, you can rightly say certainly God is righteous. He is true to himself. And you can say that the gospel is accomplished through his saving activity in the world. And so, to say that those ideas might be included is one thing. To argue that that’s what the definition is is another. So, the explicit meaning in 1:17 of “righteousness of God” is God’s righteous character given to us by faith. Think again of verse 17. We cannot be talking first of all about God’s judgment upon sinners in verse 17, because it says this comes to us by faith. Well, the judgment of God on sinners is not manifested by faith. That doesn’t make sense. Nor can we say we are strictly talking about the righteous character of God. Because we wouldn’t want to say that God’s attribute of righteousness is somehow made manifest only when we believe, as if God’s not righteous when we don’t believe. So the connection to faith means that can’t be mainly what we are talking about, nor strictly that we are talking, first of all, about his activity. We would not want to say that God’s action in the world is dependent upon our faith and that he only saved and only acted in the world upon our belief. No, what we are talking strictly about in verse 17, as first importance, is what God gives to sinners according to faith. And notice – we’ll have much more to say about this, Lord willing, when we get to chapter 3 – but we are not talking about God making us morally righteous by an inward transformation, but rather God conferring upon us the status of righteousness. Not that God, in the gospel, then makes us to be righteous people, so then God says, “Well, look at them. They’re such good, obedient people. I ought to save them.” No, the righteousness of God that is revealed is not ours by works, but is ours by faith. The righteousness of God is that gift that is acquired, God’s own righteous character that is then given to us as our status when we believe.

Now, to finish out the rest of the verse, what is meant by the next phrase, “from faith for faith”? There’s two different prepositions. See, this is why you go to school. This is why you pay attention in your English class, so you can understand your Bible. Ek – that’s the preposition translated here “out” or “out of” – pisteos (“faith”) eis pistin. So, out of faith for faith. The ESV translation is perfectly legitimate, “from faith for faith.” Now, it’s not entirely clear what that means, and it’s one of the principles of the ESV translation to try to carry over some of the ambiguities in the Greek. So, if you’re ever reading, and you say, “Well, some of the other translations – I have a more dynamic translation, and it’s not – it’s a little easier to understand.” Well, that’s intentional, because ESV says, “Well, if there’s ambiguity in the Greek, we ought to pass it on into the English, so that hopefully you have a good pastor and preacher who can try to explain it, and you can read the commentaries and understand it.” So this is one of those occasions. It’s not entirely clear by the Greek itself what is meant. I mean it sounds nice. It sounds very poetic. It sort of rolls off your tongue, but when you think about it, what does it mean to say “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith”? Faith, faith, faith. What is it about faith? Well, there are at least two different ways to understand this. One is to think that faith to faith – ek faith, eis faith – the ESV has “from faith for faith,” or you could say “from faith to faith.” One understanding is to think that this indicates a movement, like if you said “from sea to shining sea.” We mean from one body of water to another. From shore to shore. You mean from point A, that shore, to point B, that other shore. So it could be that faith to faith is indicating some kind of movement from one kind of faith to another kind of faith. Well, what might that mean? People have offered many suggestions: from beginning faith to stronger faith, from faith in the law to faith in the gospel, from faith in the preacher as he preaches to faith in the hearer as he hears, from the faith of the Jews to the faith of the Gentiles. There’s many different suggestions as what this movement might be. The lack of agreement on what this movement, what kind of faith to another kind of faith, entails ought to make us cautious against loading too much on this interpretation. Here’s another rule of thumb in how to interpret the Bible: it’s usually better to choose the interpretation that adds less to the text rather than more. Now, that may sound counterintuitive, because we all love our Bible studies, and we love getting in there and want to see as many important differences as not, but that’s not how human language often works. If I said to my wife on Valentine’s Day, “I will love you forever. Our love will endure from age to age.” I didn’t say that, but I’m saying it now, honey, wherever you are. And someone were to exegete that – so, he says first your love will endure forever and then from age to age, so clearly these are two different things. And he’s thinking age – he’s thinking about the age at which they were married and then the age at which they are now. Or he may mean from one decade to another decade. Or he means this age of this present earthly life to that heavenly age to come. Or he’s thinking about a love that transcends all time and space and has existed in God’s chosen past, predestined and all. Don’t give me too much credit. Forever, age to age, you’re saying the same thing. So, not always, but often, if you come to this and you have an interpretation that adds less, it’s often the better way to go. Or at least give the benefit of the doubt to the simplest explanation.

Another interpretation is don’t land a lot of theological weight upon something that involves a fair amount of speculation. So, what is “the faith to the faith”? Well, once you read there’s 12 different things it might mean, you’re left saying maybe we shouldn’t put too much stock in that. So, another way of interpreting this phrase, which I think is better, is that it is used simply for emphasis. Like 2 Corinthians 2:16 talks about “the aroma of the gospel from life to life,” and others from death to death – I think it’s a poetic way of expressing emphasis. So, the NIV translates this from first to last. Now that’s less literal to what the Greek says, so I like the ESV, but it does give, I think, the proper sense in this case that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel, and how is it revealed? From start to finish, it is revealed in one way: faith. This righteousness that comes from God is yours in only one way. There’s not a different way in the Old Testament and then a separate way in the New Testament. Or there’s going to be some other way once AI takes over, years ahead. No, it will be just one way that the righteousness of God is yours, and that is by faith. I want you to look one more time at chapter 3, verse 22, because there’s something of a parallel here. It says, 3:22, “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” John Murray, helpfully, in his commentary says, “Now why is that? That’s strange. It seems redundant. The righteousness of God through faith for all who believe. Why both of those? You already said the righteousness of God comes through faith in Jesus Christ. It should be end of sentence. Why say through faith for all who believe? Why do you have to say faith essentially two times there?” And he says, well, that’s sort of like 1:17 “from faith to faith.” So you look at verse 22, why does it have “faith” repeated, because that’s what the word – “all who believe” is just the same word. And he makes the argument, which I think is right, that in verse 22 it is to stress not only the righteousness that comes through faith but that it comes to everyone who has faith. In other words, the righteousness of God not only comes through faith, but when there is faith, it always comes. Do you see the slight difference in meaning? Because it could be that Paul simply says righteousness comes through faith. That’s how it works. And whether that works for you, that’s the main way – that’s how it works. But then he says “for all who believe” to let us know, not only – that’s not only the way righteousness comes, but it always comes when you have faith. You could put it like this: faith is the only way for righteousness, and it is, without fail, an effective way. The only way and always an effective way. Romans 1:17 is telling us there is a righteous status held out to all people, and it is only grabbed ahold of by one means, and that one means is only and always effective. That’s how you acquire righteousness. Don’t think that faith is any less concerned with righteousness than the law was. The law was also concerned with righteousness. But the argument of Romans will be, over and over again, that law could not produce the righteousness. How do you acquire the righteousness you need? It comes only in this way, and it always comes effectively in this way: by faith.

So it’s fitting that Paul concludes his argument in verse 17 by quoting from Habakkuk 2:4. We’ve already read it in the service. It’s the Lord’s answer to Habakkuk’s complaint. The Lord says the good news in the midst of all the bad news of the Babylonians is that yet there is a way to live. Habakkuk has said, “We shall not die.” And then God says, “You’re right. Here’s how you can live. You cannot keep the Babylonians from coming. You cannot keep the nation of Israel from being judged, but you can keep yourself and anyone who will listen to you from being guilty of the same things.” How does that happen? Habakkuk receives the word from the Lord. It happens by faith. Do you see how God was calling Habakkuk, and through him the people of God, to not some abstract faith? This was not just here’s a statement of faith on the website, and I can sign off and say, “Yep, that’s what I believe. I’m a Christian. I understand what Luther believed, and I agree with it.” Habakkuk and the people of God were being asked to trust God in the midst of a world crumbling around them. Just like faith for you may mean you can’t keep the Babylonians from coming. You may not be able to keep the cancer diagnosis away. You may not be able to keep from crumbling around you the lives of the people that you love. But there’s a way to not be guilty of those things. There’s a way, yet, to live in the life that really matters – God’s life, eternal life – and that way is by faith. It’s why it’s quoted by Paul here in Romans 1, again in Galatians 3, and again in Hebrews 10. It is not just a word for Israelites, that they would live according to the covenant, but it’s a way for all peoples to be righteous through faith. As you’re waiting for God’s answer, and it seems like it is not coming, because that was Habakkuk’s complaint, God answers to him and to us, and he says, “Here’s how you can live a life and be certain that you will not be guilty before me. It is to live a life confident in my promises.”

Romans 1:17 cuts in both directions. It can be a word to rebuke us and a word to comfort us. Start with the rebuke. That’s the minor key, but it’s important to think about. Verse 17 stops us if we are self-assured. If you are here this morning, and though you would probably not write this down on a theological test, in your heart of hearts you are confident in yourself. And you would all say you’re not perfect. Never met anybody – the most, you know, vain – “you’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you” – that person right there still would say, “I’m not a perfect person.” Everyone always says that. But you know what usually comes after that? You know what they’re usually thinking? The person who says, “Well, I know I’m not perfect” – what’s going on in their head usually is, “But I’m a little closer than most people I know.” Or, “I trust that God grades on a curve.” I know I’m not perfect, but what’s in their heart is God doesn’t really expect perfect. He expects trying. He expects just doing my best, or he expects just not making a royal mess of my life, or as long as I can stand before him, and I can point to some people who did life worse, then I’ll get in. The whole book of Romans is meant to disabuse you of that notion. There is no righteousness of your own that can get you past God’s holy, righteous gaze. If you are confident in yourself, if you assume he grades on a curve, if you are counting on God taking people into heaven because they try or because they were nice people or good neighbors, if you are coasting through life, feeling like God owes you favors and that you really have nothing to be ashamed of before God and that God actually has a lot of questions to answer before you. Now, if that’s you, I hope you’ll stick around for the next weeks and months, because there’s going to be a lot of sermons for you, for people who think that they are not unrighteous.

But I would be remiss if we ended the sermon that way, because this is the power of God unto salvation. This sermon is about how the gospel saves you. And while some of you may be wired to coast through life and think that God grades on a curve, there are certainly others of you wired just the opposite, and you wonder, deep down, could anyone really love you? And you especially wonder if God could love you. And you are burnt out from the trying and the posturing. You feel beat up, cast down, laid low. You know all too well the devil’s many accusations, and here comes, with great lightning and thunder, the power of God in the gospel. It wants to bring you, with all of the devil’s accusations against your disobedience and your unrighteousness, and say, “I have something to show you.” I have something to show you and pulls back the curtain, and the revelation of the gospel there is not your righteousness. Did not pull back that blanket and say, “Here’s what I have to show you: you’re better than you thought.” It’s not the revelation to say, “Here, I have something to show you.” You’re going to have a hard time believing it, but I’m telling you, if you just believe it, it’s yours. It’s the righteousness of God. It’s that which comes to you with the faith of an empty hand. All you have to do is hold out an empty hand and receive it and rest in it. The church father Chrysostom says, about righteousness, “You do not achieve it by toiling in labors, but you receive it by a gift from above, contributing only one thing from your own store: believing.” I might say I don’t love the word “contribute,” but I get your meaning, Chrysostom. You don’t bring anything. You don’t toil after this. You have the faith of an empty hand to believe and receive the righteousness of God.

In 1545, Martin Luther wrote a preface to a new edition of his Latin works, and in this preface, he recounted his famous tower experience, where he wrestled with the book of Romans in the black cloister tower in Wittenberg. This is 1518, 1519. In writing at the end of his life about this event, Luther considered this ordeal to be his theological and his existential breakthrough. So, let me end with Luther’s famous account, and perhaps this is the experience of some of you in this room: “I had indeed been captivated with an extraordinary ardor for understanding Paul in the epistle of the Romans. But up ‘til then it was not the cold blood about the heart, but a single word in chapter 1 –  “in it the righteousness of God is revealed” – that had stood in my way.” You see how Luther read that phrase as an obstacle to salvation. He said, “I hated that word “righteousness of God,” which, according to the use and custom of all the teachers, I had been taught to understand philosophically regarding the formal or active righteousness, as they called it, with which God is righteous and punishes the unrighteous.” That’s why I went into all that explanation of how to understand this, because there’s been a long history of thought, and the Reformation is this breakthrough of what this phrase means. “Though I lived as a monk, without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience.” That may be you in this room. “I could not believe God was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love. Yes, I hated the righteousness of God, who punishes sinners, and secretly, if not blasphemously – certainly murmuring greatly – I was angry with God. I raged with a fierce and troubled conscience. I beat importunately upon Paul at that place, most ardently desiring to know what St. Paul wanted.” You ever that before? God, what do you want from me? You’re righteous. I’m not. What am I supposed to do? “At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words “in the righteousness” – in it, the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, he who through faith is righteous shall live. I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives, by a gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith. Here I felt I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. There, a totally other face of the entire Scripture showed itself to me.” Maybe that’s the work God is doing in your heart right now – a totally different view of God in the Scriptures. Luther says this, “And I extolled my sweetest word with a love as great as the hatred with which I had before hated that word, the righteousness of God. Thus, that place in Paul was, for me, truly the gate to paradise.” May it be so for all of us. Let’s pray.

Our heavenly Father, we give thanks for your word and for the righteousness that is ours by faith, from first to last, for all time, for all people, Jew, Gentile, male, female, old, young, one way: by faith. The only way and always a way. And so, may we stand in that word against all accusations and have confidence that by faith we are counted as righteous in Jesus’ name. Amen.