His Perfect Love

Guest (Male): The just shall live by faith. We'll unpack that beautiful truth today on His Perfect Love. New life in Christ, simply for the asking? Sounds too good to be true, but it is true, as we'll hear today on His Perfect Love.

We continue today in the book of Romans. It is there we're assured of the Gospel of grace by faith in Jesus. What's emphasized is not what you need to do for the Lord, but what he has done for you. Romans chapter one makes that abundantly clear. Here with more on this good news that sets us free from striving to earn a right standing with God is Pastor Matt VanderVen.

Matt VanderVen: He then says, if you look in your Bibles, "for the Jew first and also for the Greek." This isn't speaking of prominence here. He's speaking of a pattern or order. Think about the way the gospel was spread. It was demonstrated by both the ministry of Jesus and even Paul. He would go into a city, and where would he go first? Where's the first place that Paul or Jesus would go into generally when he went into a city often? To the Jewish temple. He went to the Jews and he would teach in the synagogue. He would go synagogue to synagogue.

And then what happened? Matthew chapter 15, verse 24. He would open the word of God and he would do the very thing you and I are doing here right now. Think about that for a minute. 2,000 years ago, this is what Christ did. He could have come—he had the Torah, the law, he had the Old Testament, he had the compilation of all the prophets, the minor and major. He could have come in and said, "You have all that. Let me give you something that's different and I'm going to show you an attractive church. I'm going to show you a seeker-sensitive movement. I'm going to show you something that's going to tickle your ears to get you super excited."

No. He didn't try to get the church to conform to the world. He wanted the world to be transformed to Christ. As they would come in, their hearts would be racked and changed. How did he do that? The same way we do it today. It's what Calvary Chapel is built on: the teaching of the word of God line by line and verse by verse. That's not Pastor Chuck Smith's idea. That was Jesus Christ's. That's what he did when he came to earth. We all can say we love Calvary Chapel, but we love Jesus. That's why we're here reading his word. That's the way it was done.

Go back and exegete the scriptures. It was always done that way. Even the prophets, they would be the mouthpieces to speak the word of God to draw them back to what God had already told them, where they had erred or got off. We test everything in the light of scripture, don't we? When we get a word of knowledge and somebody comes up, we don't go, "Hey brother, I got a word of knowledge." We're cautious about that. Why? Because what does the Bible say I have to do? If somebody brings a word of knowledge forward, we write it down. Absolutely, we believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, but we write it down to test it.

Because if it be not true, what are we to do according to the word of God? We declare that person a false prophet. That's why you don't see a long line of charismania, of people going up here saying, "I got a word for you." Not that we don't get words—we do—but everyone's getting words and next thing you know they're being influenced by this or that. We don't see that in Calvary Chapel, and we don't see that in the word of God. But we do see a movement where God uses the Holy Spirit to manifest gifts that are needed in the believer today, but it's not charismania. It's beautiful. It's all done with decency and in order, and it doesn't contradict anything we see in scripture.

Charismania and emotionalism is what we've got to worry about. That's not what we want. But if somebody comes forward and has a word of knowledge and they give a good word, we write it down and if it be true, we say, "Praise the Lord. That be of God." We test everything in the light of scripture. Jesus taught us these things. For the Jew first, also for the Greek. Look at verse 17: "For in it the righteousness of God is revealed." We're told here that the Gospel of God reveals the righteousness of God. That's what the Gospel of God does. The word "revealed" here, circle it in your Bibles, is in the passive tense in the Greek. Very important.

What this says is that God does it. It's not something you and I reach in and touch. This is in the passive tense. It's a righteousness that we can only have by faith, but God does the work. It's not you and I that do it. This is also fulfilled prophecy because it was a quote from Habakkuk 2:4. The revelation of God's righteousness comes to those with faith. Habakkuk 2:4 says, "Behold the proud, his soul is not upright in him, but the just shall live by faith." The justified ones shall live by faith. It's essential to understand exactly what it means that the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel.

It's a righteousness that's given to the sinner who puts their trust in Jesus Christ. Again, this points to a loving, forgiving, compassionate, grace-filled God, not a God who is out to get humanity. There are many people walking around, even Christians, thinking God is going to get them. No, your imagination is going to get you. William Barclay, a scholar, explains the meaning of this Greek word *dikaioo*, which means "I justify." It is from the root of *dikaion*, which means "righteousness." We see this in this passage: righteous, justification, justify. We see these two words combined like this 40 times in all of scripture.

Whenever you see a Greek word with the ending of "oo," it always means to treat, account, or to reckon a person as something. This is part of the context of exegeting in the Greek. That suffix and the ending gives you the context for what it's speaking about. If you understand prefix, conjugations, and suffixes in other languages, you understand this. It's the same thing in the Greek. The "oo" tells you it's treating, accounting, or reckoning to a person or something. If God justifies a sinner, it doesn't mean that he finds a reason to prove that he was right. Far from it, actually.

It doesn't even mean at this point that he makes the sinner a good man. That's sanctification, not salvation. What it does mean is God treats the sinner as if he's never been a sinner at all. That's what we learn in the context of the Greek. This faith or trust in Jesus becomes the basis for life for those that are justified, those who are declared righteous. As we read again, "the just shall live by faith." But they're not only saved by faith, there's another important element here. Look in your word again. What else does it say? "The just shall live by faith." We're not only saved by faith, but we're to live by faith.

And not only that, but "from faith to faith." The idea behind this phrase is "by faith from beginning to end." By faith from beginning to end in the way we live, or from first to last. Pulling this back together before we go on to verse 18, we read that we are justified, forgiven, and redeemed as believers. Those who place their faith in Christ Jesus as Savior and Lord are saved from the judgment facing the human race. Paul is now going to spend the next passage or two describing this wrath of God. Look at verse 18, as we begin to see what is poured out for those that choose not to be justified by the Just One.

There is a consequence to sin and God wants us to understand that. Verse 18 through 23 says: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were they thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened."

"Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God into the image made like the corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things." There was a lot there in those passages. Unless there is something to be saved from, there is no point in talking about salvation. This idea that we needed to be saved from something would not be in here otherwise. Verse 18 says the wrath of God is revealed from heaven. This isn't the enemy. Sometimes people try to attribute these things to the enemy. No, this is a wrath from God.

Just as we read in Revelation chapter 6, there will be a wrath of God poured out during the Great Tribulation. That's not the enemy pouring that out. That's God Almighty acting as a righteous judge to judge sin because of the rejection of the Savior. This word "revealed" is *apokalypsis*. It's the same word we see in the book of Revelation; it is a revealing or an unveiling. God's wrath is revealed from heaven against the human race, and the human race deserves the wrath of God. Again, in the Greek, this is in the passive. This is not something we do. We're not extremists. We don't carry this out.

We're not individuals that believe that somehow our God is telling us to be extremists and to bring things in the kingdom of God forward by doing certain things on earth now. God doesn't teach that in his word. We also don't subscribe to cults like Islam that try to tell people that they need to be the one to usher in the Mahdi, their version of what a savior is. That's not what our Bible teaches us. This is in the passive tense. You and I don't have anything to do with it. It's God that does this work and God who brings this wrath. I think sometimes we can struggle with this idea because we relate our understanding of wrath to human anger.

Human anger can be manipulated or motivated by selfish ambition, personal reasons, or even revenge. We have that capacity in us because of sin. But the wrath of God is completely righteous. He is without sin. There is no evil or wickedness or perversion of true righteousness the way it is in you and I. It's mutually exclusive. God can't love good unless he hates evil. God can't love good if he doesn't hate evil. He doesn't hate the sinner, he hates the sin. He's told us to behave the same way. We're not to hate the one that's sinning. We're to love them, but we're to give them truth and never compromise that to win affection.

Righteousness of God is revealed, but the wrath of God is also revealed. Now Paul's going to demonstrate the absolute necessity of the good news of salvation, keeping us in God's righteousness. But he's also going to demonstrate that for those that are without God's righteousness, they will experience God's wrath. This is real. We need to talk about it. I know it's not popular, and you may not have heard this before. People don't want to offend or hurt others. But this is love. God is telling you no one has to have God's wrath. We can turn to Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior and receive him.

Again, it's in the passive tense—nothing we have to do. The human race is guilty before God because of a demonstration of ungodliness and unrighteousness. Verse 18 specifically says "ungodliness." This refers to man's offense against God. "Unrighteousness" refers to the sin of man against man. This should sound familiar to us from the Decalogue. In the Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20, the first four commandments had to do with our relationship with the vertical, with God. The righteousness we're to have with God or the ungodliness, so to speak. The other six commandments focus on the others-focused, the unrighteousness referring to sins against man.

We've also been reading in Leviticus that when we sin against a brother, we're also sinning against God. It says mankind suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. Mankind does in fact suppress the truth of God. That's a fact and we need to deal with that. We need not to run from that but acknowledge it and see it for what it is. Every truth revealed to man by God has been disregarded, most often because of deliberate disobedience. There's a lost and dying world. Many who have not made a profession of faith, but many who choose not to make a profession of faith.

Now we're going to see why. Look at verses 19 and 21. Paul's going to give us the reason. Remember he's positioning a logical argument here, a case. He wants us to see "because" and "because." Verse 19 tells us, "because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them." He's saying there's an innate knowledge in every human of God. Paul tells us how we know of his existence in verse 20: "For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse."

It seems like a paradoxical statement to say his invisible attributes can clearly be seen. But God is showing us something here. He's talking about his eternal power and divine nature through creation, by the things that are made. This word "made" is only used twice in the whole New Testament. It's an interesting word used to explain a general revelation that is obvious both in creation and within the minds and hearts of man. This is not something that you just have to reason. He's given us this measure of faith in our hearts, and he's told us that all of creation, everything we see around us testifies to that.

That's why I struggle with evolution. Most researchers in the academy and even in high school, when we look at those teaching evolutionary propaganda—and I mean it as a philosophy of man—we see the rationale behind it is generally to disregard or discredit God. It's not a desire to understand better how the universe works. In all other areas, we explain and explore the law of thermodynamics. But somehow when we get to evolution, we turn off all logic and common sense and say that pond scum, when it was hit by lightning, something happened different there.

Everything else in the world is dying and slowing down. Go and study the earth's rotation or the salt content in the ocean. The saline content increases year after year. You can see it on NOAA's website. If the earth were millions of years old, the ocean would be a pile of salt. You went in the ocean recently, and you didn't walk on a pile of salt, did you? No. Why does logic get shut off? Why does scientific evidence get shut off when it no longer applies to a philosophy? Because it's suppressing the truth, just as God said would happen. That's what he's telling us here.

That's why I say there's no such person as a true atheist. It's a lie from the pit of hell. If you're going to use the Greek term, use it correctly. To be an atheist is to say "I know," from *ginosko*. So an atheist is saying, "I know there is no God." They definitely want to discredit God because they have made themselves a god, hence the humanist movement of today. Nothing new under the sun. It's been happening in Israel for 5,000 years. But when you look at atheism, "to know" means that they've explored every aspect of this universe.

Paul talks about three heavens: the firmament, the atmosphere, and the third heaven where God dwells. That means they are declaring by using that word that they have examined every inch of the universe and they can come back and go, "I've been there and there's no God." They cannot say that. So to use that term is ignorant because they really don't know what they're saying. Not only that, but they really don't know what they believe. What they do know is they don't want accountability. They don't want to be put under the authority of God as a master because they're going to do it their way.

I said the word atheist, but I meant agnostic. *Ginosko* means "to know" and when you put the prefix of "A," it means "I don't know." In the Latin, it actually means *ignoramus*. When somebody says they're an agnostic, I say that I'm so sorry. Let's sit down and open our Bible and talk about anything. I'll show you how to make pizza. There doesn't have to be a general ignorance. It's sad because they walk around and don't really realize what they're saying.

Guest (Male): Well, thanks for joining us today for His Perfect Love. You can hear this study from Pastor Matt VanderVen again when you visit hisperfectlove.org. Catch up on what you may have missed in Romans at hisperfectlove.org. Look for us on oneplace.com and most of the major podcast platforms. The Calvary Chapel Harrisburg mobile app is another great way to listen to Pastor Matt's messages shortly after they're delivered. We can help you get started when you visit hisperfectlove.org.

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We hope you'll visit us at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore. Sunday morning services begin at 8:30 and 10:30. We have a midweek service too, Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. We're located at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg, PA. Go to ccharrisburg.org for more information. And then we'll come back to our study of Romans next time on His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt. See you then and God bless. His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore.