God’s Righteousness Revealed to Faith

Minister:
Date: AM
Text: Romans 1:17
Psalters: 34, 428, 231, 128
    1. In early 1513 God used the correct understanding of our text to turn around Martin Luther’s fearful thinking.
    2. The correct understanding of our text is essential to the name “Reformed,” “Protestant” and even “Christian.”
  1. Gospel revealing righteousness.
    1. In the context Paul states his readiness to preach the gospel and that he is not ashamed to do so, even in godless Rome.
    2. The gospel reveals, i.e., unfolds or unveils in the sense of making plain or clear.
    3. That which is revealed by the gospel is “the righteousness of God.”
      1. First, this is an attribute of God.
      2. Second, it is the fruit of the Messiah’s work according to which He makes men to be conformed and acceptable to God.
    4. The chief end of the gospel is to declare us to be just with God, able to stand as righteous before the holy God.
  2. The righteousness of God becomes a human’s possession by means of faith.
    1. God’s gift of righteousness is revealed “from faith to faith,” i.e., out of faith and into faith, by faith to faith.
      1. Faith is a gift of God to His elect enabling them to believe the gospel (Eph. 2:8,9).
      2. Faith is the instrument God determined to use to give the conscious believer the ability to know that he is righteous.
    2. Paul’s quote from Habakkuk 2:4 shows that the experience of being righteous has always been by faith.
    3. Note that faith has two contrasts.
      1. First faith and grace contrast with a “lifted up soul,” i.e., one which proudly judges God’s ways (Hab. 2:4a).
      2. Second, faith is contrasted to good works.
      3. Salvation is only to those who believe on Him that justifies the ungodly (3:24,25,28; 4:5).
    4. Let us, with Luther, grasp our justification by faith.