Living Hope Church

Pastor Phil Steiger: If you would turn with us please to the book of Romans. We are in Romans chapter 1. Romans chapter 1, and in a couple of minutes we're going to start reading in verse 16 as we pick our way through the rest of this incredible opening chapter to this magnificent book. Last week, we finished our text by going through and reading verses 16 and 17 for a couple of reasons. One of those reasons is that these two verses introduce to us the fundamental topic of the book of Romans. It is, very straightforwardly, the righteousness of God. What this means, how he gives it, and how we receive it.

In fact, if you read carefully through the rest of the book, especially through the first three chapters, you're going to read the vocabulary of righteousness and unrighteousness a lot. You're going to read of the concept itself a lot as the Apostle Paul unfolds this glorious topic to us about what the righteousness of God is. We're going to read these two verses again because specifically, we're talking about the good news of Jesus Christ being the power for our salvation, the exchange of our unrighteousness for God's righteousness, the exchange of our sin for his holiness. Just all by itself, that is an absolutely incredible exchange that God has made in his love and power toward his people.

How does this happen? Why is the righteousness of God needed amongst us? Then the further we go through chapter 1, we're going to be answering another question: are there consequences to rejecting the righteousness of God? All of these kinds of questions become an important part to the rest of the book. In fact, the Apostle Paul develops an astounding piece of literature on the good news that is possible in Jesus Christ.

Part of that good news as we go through the rest of chapter 1, or the next several verses, is that God has revealed himself to humanity. In fact, God is still revealing himself to humanity. We can still know God in some astounding ways. It's not just those who receive salvation who receive the righteousness of God and are transformed, but God has revealed himself. The text is going to say things like, he has made himself plain to all of humanity. God is a communicator. God is busy revealing himself in some ways from the very beginning of creation itself.

In our passage of scripture this morning, here's a couple of the things that are going to guide our conversation today. First of all is this thought: God reveals himself. In fact, in four consecutive verses that we're going to read this morning, we are told that God is actively revealing himself in certain ways, specific ways, some of them from the very foundation of the universe itself. The revelation of God to humanity and the rest of creation has real consequences. Humans can know God. In fact, God has designed human beings to find him, to know him. We are responsible for rejecting that knowledge.

God reveals himself, and that second thought is exactly that: there are consequences for denying our knowledge of God. If you've read through Romans chapter 1, you're thinking, when we get to that last third of that chapter, we're going to go through the consequences for denying God. Trust me, sometime in July we'll get there. Of all the unrighteousness, of all the sin that Paul discusses later in this chapter, they all begin with the denial of God.

This is so important because in our culture and day and age right now, some of the stuff that the Apostle Paul talks about in the next section of chapter 1 are hot-button topics. Sometimes we're a little confused or baffled or even angry at what the Apostle Paul says, but recognize this: everything he says as this chapter continues is the result of human beings denying what they know about God. We deny him in our sin. We deny the honor that he is due. We deny God the thanksgiving that he is due. As a result, our hearts and our minds grow dark.

Begin reading our passage of scripture here in verse 16. Romans chapter 1, 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, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith.'"

Here's this magnificent passage. This is where we finished last time because these two verses act like the pivot between the introduction of the book and then the rest of the argument, the core of the text. Again, Paul introduces this fundamental topic about the righteousness of God. It's good before we jump into the rest that we hear this again: "I am not ashamed of the gospel of God because it is the power of salvation for everyone who believes." It's absolutely astounding.

We see the Apostle Paul endured a lot of things for the cause of the gospel and he continued to preach in many places where he preached. He didn't just face verbal opposition, he faced physical opposition, ends up in prison, and finally gets himself martyred for the cause of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But here's the Apostle Paul right in the middle of all of that saying, what comes from the gospel to me is far more important and far more glorious and far more meaningful than anything I suffer for the sake of the gospel. You can do anything you want to me and I am going to know with a certainty that the gospel of Jesus Christ is worth so much more.

He says it is the power that saves sinners. The open heart that receives the gospel is saved from sin. If we sat down and you and I disagreed about something and we talked something through, maybe I could change your mind and you would see things a little differently or see things the way I do. I might be able to convince you. But that's just the changing of the mind. Salvation is not just the changing of our belief in one little detail. It is a divine, theological, spiritual transference from death to life, from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. I can't do that, you can't do that. What can do that is the good news of Jesus Christ. Paul says that is a unique kind of power that saves souls and it's worth everything I go through to preach it everywhere I go.

It is the power of salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and then also to the Greek. Jesus comes to the Jewish nation as the gospel spreads. Then everybody outside of the Jewish nation, all the Gentiles, all the Greeks, they then hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. We walk through that story and so much of the Apostle Paul's ministry is devoted to that very fact.

Then he says in verse 17: "For in it (the gospel of Jesus Christ), the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, 'The righteous shall live by faith.'" For everything else incredible in the rest of Romans chapter 1, there are four ways in four consecutive verses now in which God makes himself known, in which God reveals himself to all of humanity. It begins there in verse 17 and goes through four consecutive verses. These are these four ways and we're going to get through some of these.

God reveals his righteousness, so he shows himself in his righteousness. The next verse is going to say that God reveals his wrath against ungodliness. The next verse is going to say God makes basic truths about himself plain to humanity. The very next verse is going to say that God makes his invisible attributes easy to perceive. He makes his invisible attributes easy to perceive.

In this verse of scripture, we're talking about God revealing his righteousness. This little verse there, one of those phrases says "from faith to faith." That's an interesting phrase. If you've got a different translation in front of you, every translation almost will translate that little phrase a little bit differently. But the point of that phrasing is this: that we receive the revealed righteousness of God through faith. We put our trust in Christ and we receive what God has shown us, and then we live in faith. We walk in this world as people who trust in Jesus Christ.

So, we receive righteousness through faith and then we walk in faith as well. It is such an important point to this book. God reveals his righteousness. He reveals it. I cannot manufacture it. I cannot earn it. I cannot command it. I cannot declare it. I cannot give it. I can't make it happen in any way whatsoever. God gives it. And the righteous, those who live in right relationship with God, don't then earn it. They receive it by trust in Jesus Christ. I hope that as we go through the rest of this book, that simple truth will become beautiful to us, will become life-changing to us: that God reveals and gives his righteousness and then we can receive it just by trust in Jesus. It's incredible.

To underline his point, the Apostle Paul cites an Old Testament prophet, one of the minor prophets, when he says, "As it is written, the just shall live by faith." The Old Testament prophet he cites is one of the minor prophets, one of the shorter books at the end of the Old Testament. The prophet's name is Habakkuk. Unless you are just a fanatic about reading the Old Testament, it's probably been a day or two since you've read the book of Habakkuk. It's interesting that he grabs this little phrase out of that little book.

The prophet Habakkuk, the book itself is three chapters long. It's short. When you start reading it, you realize this is a conversation between a frustrated and confused prophet and his God. This is how the book of Habakkuk opens. It introduces Habakkuk the prophet, then Habakkuk begins to talk to God and he says this: "Why is there so much evil around us and why do you never pay any attention to me at all?" That's how the book opens.

Then he goes on like that for several verses and then God has this conversation with him. "What's going on, why is it wrong and where in the world are you, God?" You get to the end of the book, the very last thing the prophet Habakkuk does is he prays this prayer of deep and profound trust in God, no matter what. In the middle of those two bookends, God is talking with the prophet. Part of his answer to the prophet's request—everything's wrong and where are you, God—part of God's answer to that problem is, "The righteous will live by faith in God. You're going to learn how to live in trust in me."

It's incredible. When the world seems too much and I do not know where God is, I can still trust in his presence, his goodness, his sovereignty, his power. "My children," God says, "are going to learn how to walk through this life, no matter what it is that you see, in faith in me." They'll learn how to trust in me, God says.

The Apostle Paul grabs this incredible nugget out of this minor prophet, puts it here, repeats it in the book of Galatians as well. In many ways, this little phrase just changes church history as a matter of fact. It underlines this critical truth inside of the book of Romans and it's this: the just do not live by their works, they live by trust in Jesus Christ.

We cannot live in the trust of our own works, the works of our hands, our own morality, our own ability to make ourselves better than we were yesterday, to raise ourselves to a certain level. We can't live by that because I cannot put the trust of my life inside of my own capacities. I can't make myself holy enough to earn salvation, to demand it from God. I also cannot rely in my own power to fix everything. I mean, this is the prophet Habakkuk's frustration. So much around me is wrong and I can't figure out where you are. Do you have the power to make yourself holy? You and I do not.

Many people do think they have the power to make themselves good enough and holy enough. If you do, can you answer this question: do you have the power to make everything right? If you think so, we have a wonderful counseling ministry here at church we would like to point you to as a matter of fact.

We cannot live righteous lives under our own power. Sin just means that there's just too much unrighteousness within me. Paul says it's really, really good news that God has revealed his righteousness and that we are right with God in our trust in him, not our capacities or our strength, but just our trust in Jesus Christ and nobody else. It's important to hear the good news before we begin reading further.

But let's read further. Romans chapter 1, verse 18. We're going to read through verse 23 so that we can get a feel for the next train of thought that he has. Paul goes on to say this: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 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. 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, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things."

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in their unrighteousness. Just as we get to know God through his revealed righteousness—this is one of the ways in which God shows himself to us is in his righteousness in the gospel of Jesus Christ—just as we get to know him through that revelation, we also get to know the character and nature of God as he reveals it through his wrath against sin, through his wrath against sin.

The gospel of Jesus Christ essentially has two steps. The good news of Jesus has two steps. If you disagree with or if you ignore or you don't pay attention to step one, you will be cut off from step two. The two steps of the gospel are this: I am unrighteous and I need salvation. Step number two: Jesus Christ offers salvation through faith in him. That's it. I need saving, Jesus saves me. If I don't think that I need saving, if I think that I'm just good enough, that is a 100% block from the saving grace and righteousness that there is in Jesus Christ.

God reveals truths about himself and our relationship with him through his righteousness, and then God reveals things about himself and us through his revealed wrath against sin. We can say this about God, the Apostle Paul's going to make this clear in this book: we're going to have to become comfortable with it and we're going to have to learn how to glory in it. God is just in his wrath against sinners and merciful in his gift of righteousness. God has every right to judge all sin and he would be just in doing so. It would be justice. But it turns out that God is merciful as well, so he's also revealed himself in his righteousness.

We ask questions like, how is God's wrath just? How is it justice? We ask questions like this because the Apostle Paul now takes the burden upon himself to explain the answers to those questions. Especially early on inside of this book, the Apostle Paul's going to tell us here's why, here's how this works, here's the way out of all of this. Especially here in chapter 1, we're going to read a lot of that kind of thing. Paul fills in the details to the answers to those questions as the book of Romans moves on.

But here to begin with, friends, let's look at it like this. God is the holy and good creator of all things, and all sin is rebellion against its creator. He is the only one in all existence who has the right to judge all human sin. He is the holy and good creator. A little bit later on in this passage, Paul says they've actually denied—they don't give God thanks for the good things he has done. He's the all-powerful and good creator of all things, so he is the only one who has the right to judge all sin, which is rebellion against God.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against unrighteousness because men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. There's a lot going on here, so we want to make sure we hear what the Apostle Paul's saying and why it's so important. The function of sin in the human soul is to suppress the truth and destroy your soul. This is the function of sin—is to blind us to righteousness of God, to make us believe it is in fact ridiculous or unnecessary, to make us think that light is dark and dark is light.

This is the function of sin in our souls. As a result, our souls then are corroded and destroyed, are filled with more and more unrighteousness instead of the light and the goodness of God. In our sin, the Apostle Paul is saying humanity actively ignores God and his truth and eventually loses sight of the truth. This is one of the most incredible things about humanity—is that we learn to love falsehood. We learn to love it. If we've loved it for too long or we've grabbed onto it for too long, we actually don't ever want to let go of it. This is how sin works: when we learn how to love falsehood.

It is true that we can deny the truth of God long enough that it becomes odd to us. It becomes foreign to us. We deny the truth of God long enough, it becomes foreign to us, and we actually think that it's bad itself. It's a little bit like getting out in a little boat off into the shore, out into the ocean. You fall asleep overnight, the currents take you out away from the shoreline, you wake up, you don't see any land, and you're just lost at sea. That's what allowing the suppression of the truth in our souls does to us. It distances us from God and we believe it doesn't exist.

If humanity suppresses the truth, we should also ask the question: what is truth? I tell you every now and then you're going to have to put up with Pastor Phil the philosopher, right? But this is important. What is truth? In this context, this is how we're going to describe it. Truth is reality as created by God. It is what we bump into when we wake up in the morning. It is what happens to us when we interact with the world outside our head.

It's easy over time to build up falsehoods as we live inside our own heads or inside the heads of other people who think the same way we do, and social media's great for that. But when we live in the world outside of our own heads, we just keep bumping into reality as created by God. It's not going anywhere and it's not going to change no matter what I think. But humanity becomes very good at denying and avoiding truth as long as they can avoid the consequences of their false beliefs. We are very good at denying the truth of God as long as we think we can avoid the consequences of these false beliefs.

Clinging to falsehood in the face of reality is intellectual, moral, and it is spiritual blindness. But the truth of God, it is unchanging. A good God created us to live in this world. So then why do we spend so much time denying what is good and true? Why does humanity, why do we in our brokenness still spend so much time and effort trying to deny what is good and true?

The Christian thinker Francis Schaeffer put it a little bit like this in one of his books: sinful humanity would rather believe that we are nothing than believe God exists and we are accountable to him. We would rather believe that we are nothing than to believe that God exists and that we are accountable to him.

This is, quite frankly, why Darwinistic evolution is just still the default position of so many people. It's not because it's true. It's because it gives to the human soul an opportunity to say, "Well, God doesn't exist. Therefore, I am not morally responsible to anybody but myself." I would rather believe that all of this, in its complexity and beauty and glory and majesty, happened by pure chance and accident. Some lightning bolt hit some scummy pond at some point and bam, here I am. My closest neighbor is a chimpanzee or possibly a crow.

Years ago, I spent some time with the Atheist Club at Pikes Peak Community College and the leader of that club was adamant that human beings were just this much different from wolves. I don't know why he thought it was wolves. But in his head, he saw wolves as more incredible than human beings because he had this belief that this is all that there is. Why would you believe that you are nothing rather than believe that you were created in the image of almighty God? It's because now you can live however you want to live. It's why it is such a powerful, powerful deception.

Why are destructive sexual ideas so popular in our culture right now? The Apostle Paul's going to hit this one head-on in the next section of this chapter. But friends, we would rather follow our passions to death than follow God to life. We would rather follow our passions to death. This is just what sin does to us. Remember what the function of sin is: to suppress truth and destroy the human soul. This is the function of sin. And so we would rather follow our passions to death than God to life.

This one maybe just for me, but sometimes I have to say stuff like this: why are so many pastors and churches afraid of the truth? Why are they afraid of the truth? It's because social media acclaim is more important to them than the truth of God. Writing articles for the right people in the right articles and the right magazines—more important to them than the truth of God itself. It's frightening sometimes to stand up and be recorded as saying, "This is the truth of God."

God's wrath is just when his creation made in his image and given the tools to know him reject him in favor of their own sinful desires. God's wrath, his just wrath, is revealed from heaven against the ungodliness and the unrighteousness of humanity. An important part of this story is much of what else Paul says inside of these verses: that God has made himself plain to us.

He goes on to say, "For what can be known about God is plain to them." He's speaking about the Greeks, he's speaking about everybody else. The Jews have the Old Testament word of God and they should find Christ through that, the Apostle Paul believes. Now he says even those who don't have the Old Testament—he makes the case that God has made himself plain, knowable to all of them.

God designed our hearts and minds to click together with reality like two pieces of a puzzle so that we can know that God exists and we can know important things about him. The scripture actually talks about this fairly often. The scripture bears this up. This is not the Apostle Paul sort of making an argument out of nowhere or he's relying on Greek philosophy. He's not doing any of that. He's actually pulling directly out of the word of God.

Psalm 19, verses 1 through 3—the vocabulary here is magnificent: "The heavens declare the glory of God, the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, the communication of knowledge from one to another. Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge." Not just feeling, but knowledge. "There is no speech nor are there words whose voice is not heard." So there's no speech where the voice of God is not heard because the heavens themselves are talking about the divine attributes of God.

This great passage in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11: "He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart so that he cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end." So we can't know everything about God, but every human heart has this desire within it for God himself. God's planted that there, it's how he's created us.

In one of Paul's sermons to the people in the city of Lystra in the book of Acts chapter 14, Paul says this: "Yet he did not leave himself without witness." By the way, these are all Greeks in Lystra. "He did not leave himself without witness for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness." God is witnessing to himself even just in the change of seasons and the way things grow and the way you eat and are filled with the goodness of God. God is saying, "Here I am and here's what I am like."

It turns out that the knowledge of God is our first knowledge. He is the most important thing that we know. To deny that first knowledge—the God who created all things and is good enough to reveal himself in these things—to deny that then is the turning away from the goodness of God and the turning into, the leaning into, our unrighteousness instead. We begin to deny our humanity and we begin to deny God's salvation.

Paul goes on to say: "For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and his divine nature." We cannot physically see God the way that we see each other and the rest of creation. So what God has done is he has made himself visible, his attributes visible through creation itself. We are designed to see God in the world around us, the works of his hands.

His eternal power—we could spend a lot of time talking about the glory and the complexity and the majesty and the expanse and the minutiae on the quantum level of creation itself. When you do that, it should cause us to ask the question: who on earth can do this? Who has this kind of power? Who has this kind of intelligence and design and desire to make this? This is astounding. His divine power becomes obvious to us. If we are not locked into our sin and deaf to the things of God, we are drawn directly up into the presence of God. Nobody—there has to be somebody else.

His divine attributes, his goodness and all that he has done for us, when we come in contact with that kind of power and intellect and goodness that creates all that exists, we begin to make sense of his divine nature, what this God is like. It's only through Jesus Christ that we find salvation. But again, what Paul is saying is that God has made you, God has made creation so that through all of this, we are designed to get to know who he is and that he exists.

Creation is complex and it is designed. It is far more complex than Darwin ever dreamed. Far more complex. And so we are forced to the conclusion: there had to be a mind behind this. There had to be a designer behind this and how great does that designer have to be to make all of this? Human beings, whether they have it right or wrong, we are innately moral creatures. We believe things are morally right and wrong even if we've got that backwards. We are people who require justice for evil and we want the good. How does that get built inside of the human heart? Because the one who created us is the moral lawmaker. He himself is the source of all that is good and right, and he is the foundation of that moral sense that is bred inside of every human soul.

He is the greatest possible being. He can't be the greatest human being, he can't be the universe itself because he created the universe. He has to be greater than the universe. We have all of these ways in which we walk through these truths. The Apostle Paul just tells us this is the case. We sit back for a second, we start to think it through and we realize: yes, this is who this divine being has to be.

Paul says, but what happens in our sin is we shove that down and we shove it down and we shove it down and we suppress the truth. When we suppress the truth, we end up given over to all of our sinful desires and sin begins to have its way in our lives, and the lives of those around us begin to fall apart because of it.

Here's I think an incredibly important point at this moment, and we're going to finish with this thought. He says: "For although they knew God, they did not honor God or give thanks to God." Although humanity knows these things about God, here's where it goes wrong: humanity refuses to honor the God who exists and to give thanks to the God who exists. This is how we poison the well. Humanity refuses to submit to and honor the God of all of creation and to figure out how to thank him for all the good that he has done. All the good that he has given us in creation itself and all the good that he is responsible for inside of our lives.

As a result, the Apostle Paul says, our hearts and minds grow futile in our thinking, empty in the way that we think, and our hearts grow dark. It's a simple and yet it's a very powerful image. We're walking through life as if we have just turned off all of the lights and we just walk in darkness. In fact, there is light and life available to us in Jesus Christ.

I ran across this early Christian document called the *Philokalia*, 3rd century, which means it was written in the 200s AD. The author just simply says this: "Creation is the accuser of the ungodly." I love that phrase: creation is the accuser of the ungodly. If we do not ponder these things, we remain ignorant of the causes of created beings and we cling to the passions which are contrary to nature. This is pulled directly from Paul's argument in Romans chapter 1.

But here's why it was so important to begin again with verses 16 and 17: in our brokenness and in our sin, we suppress the truth. We walk in darkness. We refuse to honor God and give thanks to him. But here's what God does instead: he reveals his righteousness to us. He doesn't say, "Well, here, I'm going to come halfway, I'm going to make you come the rest of the way. I'm going to make you strive and work and strive and work and strive and work until you get to me and then you're saved." He just reveals it. He gives it to us. Then we live by faith in God. This is good news because there is a solution to this.

Our glorious creator God reveals himself to us. He makes his character and his power knowable to us. He reveals his righteousness to us in his son, Jesus Christ. We now stand as sinners who just don't deserve his mercy, but we become subjects of the love, the saving love of our God. Friends, instead of selfishness and our rebellion, we honor God and we give thanks to him. We find the goodness and the righteousness and the salvation that there is in Jesus Christ.

Friends, I would encourage you this week: it will be revealing, it will be cleansing, it will move your relationship with God forward if you find the way to do two things in your context, your life, your family, your circumstances, whatever it is. Find a way to honor God, to recognize him as Savior, as King, as Creator, as Sovereign, as Alpha and Omega. Honor God. Then turn it into a habit in your life to thank God. That is a powerful spiritual discipline: learn how to thank God for who he is and all that he has done. Let's pray.