The Shameless Eagerness for the Gospel
Romans • Sermon • Submitted
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· 148 viewsPaul is shamelessly eager to preach the gospel because it is the power of God and reveals the righteousness of God and without it people suffer the wrath of God.
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
This morning, we come to one of the most important passages in all of Scripture. Paul explains to his readers why he is so eager to preach the gospel. He explains why his is eager to evangelize. In essence, this is Paul’s motivation behind evangelism. And I believe that if we pay attention, his motivation may just rub off on us.
Paul felt both an obligation and an eagerness to preach the gospel and did not feel ashamed to do so no matter the audience. Most of us could say that we feel that same obligation, but few of us would probably say that we feel an eagerness to do so. But Paul gives three reasons in this text this morning as to why he feels both the obligation and the eagerness.
The first reason that Paul feels the obligation and the eagerness to evangelize is because the power of God is in the gospel. The second reason that Paul feels the obligation and the eagerness to evangelize is because the righteousness of God is revealed in it. The third reason Paul feels the obligation and the eagerness to evangelize is because without evangelism, humanity is under the wrath of God. So the three reasons or the three motivations behind Paul’s shameless eagerness for the gospel are:
The Power of God
The Righteousness of God
The Wrath of God
Power of God
Power of God
The first reason that we find that Paul feels the obligation to proclaim the gospel message and is eager to do so is because he realizes that it contains the power of God. Look at
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.
The first thing that Paul exclaims that he is not ashamed of the gospel. This is the initial reason behind his obligation and eagerness, but he quickly moved on from there. So, the cause of his eager obligation is a feeling of shamelessness. But in fact, this shamelessness can simply be a restatement of the eager obligation. Let’s quickly back up. Remember
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,
and
through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations,
The gospel called Paul to a ministry: to be an apostle. His focus, his aim was the gospel of God, in essence the gospel that God originated and doles out upon the world. As verse 5 indicates, this was from grace. So Paul was saved by grace and called to the ministry by the gospel. Therefore, he was saved for this very purpose: to bring about the obedience of faith. That’s his job. That’s his focus. That’s his life passion. Therefore, he feels obligated and rightly so, to dispense the gospel to everyone he can. And not only is it an obligation but it is an eagerness. Hence, we read
I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.
So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
Because Paul is under obligation to share the gospel with everyone, it explains his eagerness to preach in Rome. To be eagerly under such obligation takes it one step further as he states that he is not ashamed of the gospel. Of course not! I may owe a debt to someone and be ashamed of what they require of me. Thus, I would not be eager to do it. I may be eager to do that which is shameful to others though not under obligation to do it. But I typically cannot be under obligation and eager to do that which I personally find shameful. But why is Paul not ashamed? Because the gospel is the power of God. Let’s read it again:
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.
Now notice what Paul means by the power of God. He does not simply mean that the power is under God’s possession. He does not just mean that God has power. But rather, like we saw a couple of weeks ago with the gospel of God. This power originates from God and is doled out upon the people who believe. That power that is given by God for the salvation of believers can only come by the gospel. As Peter said to Sanhedrin who had them arrested for evangelizing:
And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Paul understood this and therefore was shamelessly eager for the gospel. I am sure there are some here who are yet to understand this. There may be some who are not believers. You know that something is wrong within you. And you’ve tried to tackle it in various ways. You’ve done various therapies, you’ve made resolutions, you’ve tried turning over a new leaf. And some may have even had some successes in doing those. But those things will not put you right with God. Only by believing the gospel of God can you receive the power of God that will save your soul and make you a new man, a new woman, a new child, a new creation.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
It is more than turning over a new leaf. This is a clean slate. As the song goes,
My sin—O! the bliss of this glorious thought—
My sin—not in part, but the whole—
Is nailed to the cross and I bear it no more.
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! O my soul!
If you are wanting to see the power of God change your immortal soul, you cannot expect to see it by doing what is in your own power. God’s power will come into your soul and save it when you believe the gospel that Jesus died bearing the weight and wrath of our sin and rose again proving he was God’s divine Son capable of removing sin from all who will believe.
Righteousness of God
Righteousness of God
This leads us to the second reason Paul is shamelessly eager for the gospel. The first is that it is the power of God to save everyone who believes. The second reason is that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel. Look at
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Why is Paul shamelessly eager to preach the gospel? Because in it—the gospel—the righteousness of God is revealed. Now, I can tell you that I wrestled this week with this verse. Katie walked in on me while I was wrestling with it. My glasses were off, my head was in my hands, I was praying that God would help me out here because I wasn’t grasping what Paul was trying to say. I remembered that Martin Luther had talked about wrestling with this text at conversion, and I remembered how that just didn’t make sense to me. In fact, translating this text isn’t that hard! But the meaning is difficult.
I can’t remember all that happened while wrestling with it, but the gist of it came down to what does righteousness of God mean? And at some point, I was looking at this text that says the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel. And I said to myself, “The righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel? I would not say that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel. I would say the mercy of God is revealed in the gospel. I would say the grace of God is revealed in the gospel. But I would not say that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel. I would say that the righteousness of God is revealed in his wrath.” And then I looked at Paul’s proof-text. It comes from Habakkuk. “The righteous shall live by faith.” It’s a proof-text to show that what Paul wrote was true. “As it is written...” Paul’s argument that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel is because of Habakkuk 2:4. And in my head I was asking how in the world Habakkuk 2:4 backs up Paul’s assertion that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel. And then I noticed something that is lost in translation. Paul wrote in the Greek that the righteousness of God is revealed ek pisteos which means from faith or out of faith. The proof-text he cited used the same phrase, “But the righteous shall live ek pisteos” which the translators translate “by faith” rather than “from faith.” Now I’m royally confused! There’s a connection there. Paul connected his assertion by using the same wording that Habakkuk used. I do this all the time when I quote someone. I want to show you guys a connections between my assertions and what someone else has said and so I will insert their phraseology into my own preaching just before giving the quote. I did this earlier when I said, “Only by believing the gospel of God can you receive the power of God that will save your soul and make you a new man, a new woman, a new child, a new creation,” and then quoted 2 Cor. 5:17 that says that if anyone is in Christ he is a “new creation.” Is that Is that what Paul is doing? It seemed like it to me. But what was he getting at?
Then my eyes looked down one more verse which we’ll get to in just a moment, but in that verse we read
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
And suddenly, it all came together. I understood Martin Luther’s explanation of what happened when he discovered the meaning of the text. He wrote, “From this passage I concluded that life must be derived from faith…. Then the entire Holy Scripture became clear to me, and heaven itself was opened to me. Now we see this brilliant light very clearly, and we are privileged to enjoy it abundantly.” It was! It was like heaven opened up to me! The excitement that flooded my soul is indescribable.
In my mind, and perhaps in your mind as well, when you read or hear the words, “the righteousness of God,” you think of God’s righteousness. God is righteous. God is holy. We tend to think of a state of being. But when Paul wrote the words, “the righteousness of God” he was not describing God. He was not saying that we see God being righteous in the gospel or that we see God as righteous in the gospel. No! If that is what you think Paul is saying, get it out of your head. It’s not. It doesn’t fit the context. It doesn’t fit the quoted verse. It doesn’t fit the argument that Paul is making.
Instead, like the gospel of God in verse 1 and the power of God in verse 16, the righteousness of God does not show ownership but shows origin and a doling out. In other words, The righteousness that God gives is revealed in the gospel from (or out of) faith. This is why Paul used Habakkuk 2:4 as a proof-text. “But the righteous shall live by (or out of) faith.” Those who have received the righteousness that God gives out, received it due to their faith.”
That word “revealed,” does not simply mean that it is seen, but that it is experienced. Remember Romans 1:18 when Paul wrote that the wrath of God (the wrath that God gives) is being revealed. That doesn’t just mean that the wrath is seen, but that the wrath is being experienced. So here, the righteousness of God is being revealed, seen and experienced by those who have faith. It is faith all the way. It is from faith to faith (or as the ESV translators put it, “for faith.”).
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
The “from faith for faith” is better translated “to faith” and it is saying that faith is the beginning and end of receiving the righteousness that God gives. It’s like our saying, “from sea to shining sea.” The sea is the beginning and the end, and it encompasses all that is in between. This is why Paul is shamelessly eager for the gospel. The only way for the righteousness of God to be revealed (experienced) is by the gospel being proclaimed and by those hearing it believing.
For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
Brothers and sisters, if we are hoping and praying for our lost friends and family and coworkers to be saved, we must understand that they will not get saved by observing us. They will only believe by hearing the gospel clearly proclaimed from our mouths. God will not give this righteousness except to those who believe and they cannot believe except they hear the gospel. Beloved, let us not ever give up on the gospel, but let us be shamelessly eager for it. It is our life! That’s what Paul meant when he quoted Habakkuk. The righteous shall live (not day to day living, but eternally live) out of the faith we possess.
We cannot give out this righteousness any other way. It is by the gospel only. For years evangelicals have sought almost any other way conceivable to dole out this righteousness not realizing that we exchanged righteousness for a cheap knock-off called morality. If we just elect the right people into office. If we just have enough justices on the Supreme Court. If we just teach our children cute Bible stories with moral lessons to learn. If we just watch how we act around our neighbors. But God will not give his righteousness out except through the gospel. Many Christians mourn the state of our nation and yet are too ashamed of the gospel to do anything about it.
Wrath of God
Wrath of God
But there is a third reason that Paul gave for being shamelessly eager for the gospel. The first reason was the power of God. The second was the righteousness of God. This third reason is the longest of the reasons: Paul was shamelessly eager for the gospel because of the wrath of God.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
Like the power of God and the righteousness of God, the wrath of God is not possessive or descriptive. It is the wrath that God is bestowing upon the ungodly and unrighteous. It is imperative for us to see and understand that Paul did not see God’s wrath only as a future reality awaiting the ungodly. He saw it as a present reality. In fact, Paul put the words, “is revealed,” as the very first words in this sentence because he was emphasizing that it is a present reality. We could translate the text, “The wrath of God is being revealed...” Paul was shamelessly eager for the gospel because he understood that his fellow-man, his neighbor, his brother, his co-worker, was under the wrath of God. They were currently, at that very moment of his writing, under God’s wrath. He could not stand by and do nothing. Will we?
Next week, we will look at what that wrath actually looks like, but today we will simply see why God’s wrath is being revealed. But if you were to look at the rest of the chapter, I think you would easily be able to see that all around us people are living under God’s wrath. So then the question that we want to deal with is, “why?” Why is God’s wrath being poured out upon people?
The short answer is sin. Another way to put it, is unrighteousness. God is giving unrighteous people a righteousness that is not their own when they believe the gospel that they have heard. But those who have not believed, he is giving wrath. Those who have not believed suppress the truth. Whether that truth is the gospel they heard and rejected, or the truth that they know intrinsically, but still disobey as Paul wrote in
For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them
on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
Paul argued that the unrighteous (and that is everyone who has never put their faith in Jesus) suppress the truth. They put their fingers in their ears, they stuff a sock in its mouth. They do whatever they can to keep the truth from entering their minds. And this suppression often reveals itself in anger. If they can yell loud enough, intimidate truth-speakers, shame them, make them think they are hated, are oppressive, etc., they can rid their minds of the truth. Which then means that they must know the truth. Which is Paul’s argument.
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
They may not know everything about God, and who does. But what they can know is plain because God has shown it to them. What has he shown?
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
It’s like Paul starts over, because God has made it known, because God’s invisible attributes are clearly understood. Notice all the synonyms Paul is using: Revealed, known, perceived, shown—all pointing to this experiential understanding or knowledge of God and his work. God’s invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, cannot be seen, but they can be clearly understood. From the time Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, humanity has been able to see that God is powerful. They have been able to see that there is someone that is above them, that transcends them. The divine exists. Though the eyes cannot see his divinity or power, they can see the works that his power and divinity made. I have never met John Williams, but every time I hear the Superman theme song, or Indiana Jones’ theme song, or Jurassic Park, Star Wars, E.T.’s theme songs, I know that there is someone out there with more musical talent and more creativity than I have. I know that those notes did not just come together on the page all by themselves. We can look at this universe and see God’s power and divinity at work. And so everyone is without excuse.
God can be known, but mankind does not want to know him.
For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
Why are they without excuse? Because even though they knew God existed, they did not honor him. I think a better word is glorify him. That is our purpose in life: to glorify God and enjoy him forever. They knew that there was a God but they did not glorify him and they were not thankful to him for what he has done. Instead of glorifying God and giving thanks to him, they became futile in their thinking. Their thoughts were worthless. Paul used a bunch of different ways to describe the unrighteous: futile in thinking, darkened in foolish hearts, morons (that’s what the last fools means in verse 22). The picture is pretty clear. God’s wrath is upon the unrighteous because they turned their backs and rebelled against him. They can try and justify their reasons all day long, but their excuses that they try to use are not good enough. They are from foolish thinking, dull hearts, and moronic ideas.
So rather than glorify God and give thanks to him, what did they do?
and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
This isn’t simply saying that they gave to the creature what belonged to the Creator. It is saying that the glory of immortal God was traded in for a lesser glory. It trading in a pristine Ferrari or Bentley for a broken down jalopy, but with far greater consequences. Every person, except for Jesus, has exchanged God’s glory and so every person not in Christ is under God’s wrath at this moment. And beloved, those who are in Christ, you are saved from God’s wrath as an individual, but those around you who do not know Jesus are not. Understand that because society at large is under God’s wrath, though you are saved eternally from it, may feel and know the effects that society experiences. You may have a child, a brother or sister, a parent, a spouse who is currently under God’s wrath and you know how greatly it affects you. Oh that we would take Paul’s urging seriously,
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people,
for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.
This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior,
who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Conclusion
Conclusion
As we conclude this study of Romans 1:14-23, we have seen three good reasons to be unashamedly eager for the gospel. It is in the gospel that the power of God works to the salvation of all who are believing. In it, the righteousness of God is experienced for all who are believing. Without hearing the gospel, our neighbors, friends, family, co-workers, fellow-students, politicians, celebrities, undiscovered tribes people, are experiencing the wrath of God as we speak.
If you have never put your faith in Jesus, do not hesitate to do so. You may have convinced yourself of a half dozen reasons why you shouldn’t, but they all come from a dark and dull heart. You can see that you have exchanged God’s glory for something infinitely worse. The gospel of God, the good news that God gives, is that Jesus takes away all your sin, all your rebellion, all your exchanged glory, and restores you to where you could have been all along: a child of God. He can do that now.
If you have put your faith in Jesus, but your heart has grown dull to or ashamed of the gospel, take time to pray and ask God to give you the opportunity (perhaps over lunch today or coffee tomorrow) to proclaim eagerly and unashamedly his gospel message.