Good News for You
Romans 1:14–17
Good News for You
Romans 1:14–17
Mt. Pisgah Presbyterian Church
January 8, 2012
Roslyn, WA
Dr. James D. Berkley
It was summer in Milan, Italy, in the year AD 386. A young libertine sat weeping in his friend’s garden. He was a professor of rhetoric and the father of an illegitimate child. He was brilliant, and is life had held much promise, but so far, he had largely wasted it in excesses of wine, women, and song. The man just couldn’t seem to break with a destructive way of life. He lacked the resolution.
Then he heard a child’s voice from a neighboring house saying, “Tolle, lege! Tolle, lege!”—“Take up and read!” He found a scroll sitting beside his friend, and his eyes fell on Romans 13:13–14: “Not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual impurity and promiscuity; not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no plans to satisfy the fleshly desires.”
He later wrote, “No further would I read, nor had I any need. Instantly, at the end of this sentence, a clear light flooded my heart, and all the darkness of doubt vanished away.” This brilliant professor had found in Romans the good news he had sought. God’s good news from Romans made a drastic change in the life of this man we now know as Saint Augustine.
In November 1515, a rough and somewhat profane Augustinian monk, a professor at the University of Wittenberg, began a ten-month series of lectures on Romans for his students. In his preparation for the classes, he was struck by the centrality of the doctrine of justification by faith. Later he wrote,
I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, “The righteousness of God,” because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and deals righteously in punishing the unrighteous…. Night and day I pondered until … I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise…. Whereas before, “the righteousness of God” had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love.
It is to our benefit that this man, Martin Luther, pondered the good news of Romans, for he absolutely altered the course of church history.
The evening of May 24, 1738 was an eventful one for a Londoner. In his journal he wrote:
I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for my salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken my sins away, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.
This young cleric who had met frustrating defeat as a missionary to Georgia, this man who had tried so hard to be religious in his years at Oxford, this seeking soul found refreshment in the personally applied good news of Romans. From this point on, John Wesley sparked the evangelical revival of the eighteenth century.
Spring term 1970 was a terrible and turbulent time on American campuses—the Kent State and Jackson State killing of students, student strikes, and riots. One university student deeply involved in the strike and demonstrations at the University of Washington was burning out and despairing. He got persuaded against his will to attend a Campus Crusade weekend conference. There, a brilliant speaker opened up the Book of Romans and taught its message with clarity and power. In that message, the student at last recognized the good news he sought, a belief system broad enough to answer his questions on life, radical enough to demand his allegiance, and powerful enough to bend the arc of his life toward the eternal.
I am that student, and I am here in your pulpit today because I believe the good news of Jesus Christ, as it is explained in Romans.
Friends, we have a great treat in store for the next few weeks, as we listen to this life-changing Book of Romans Sunday by Sunday. Let me warn you: You may find it changing you, as it has so many others. So I invite you to take this adventure with me. God wants to touch us deeply through his good news in Romans.
In today’s text, Paul declares his underlying conviction: his inner obligation to preach the good news. He says, “I am eager to preach the good news to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. For in it God’s righteousness is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’”
Paul is writing here about his response to the gospel. He calls this good news the power of God, and he explains how God’s righteousness is revealed by the gospel. Therefore, we have good news, power, and righteousness to investigate.
Good news
Let’s start with the good news. I’ve been using the terms gospel and good news interchangeably. I can do this because they mean exactly the same thing. The gospel is the good news.
Paul is both eager to preach this good news/gospel and not ashamed of it. Why? Because of the nature of this message he is preaching—mainly what it is not. First, the gospel is not further laws and burdens to heap on listeners’ backs. It is not one more hurdle to climb or one more burden to carry in order to know God. The gospel liberates us from slavery to the law.
Second, the gospel is not a compilation of human ideals, not an eclectic combination of wise sayings, not a consensus of human opinion. In fact, human ideas often conflict markedly with the truth of the gospel. The gospel is something given by God, made flesh by Jesus Christ, and conveyed through the Holy Spirit.
Third, the gospel is not anti-intellectual. For me, the phenomenal breadth of its answer to the human condition was the very thing that recaptured my attention to Christianity from other so-called intellectual answers. The gospel, God’s good news, is good news indeed because only in the light of the gospel does everything else become clear. Paul eagerly preached the gospel because it was not just more news, it was good news—the best possible news for himself and all the rest of us.
Paul also said that he was not ashamed of the gospel. Earl Palmer, recently pastor at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, once outlined some reasons why Paul could have had reason to be ashamed of the gospel. First, Paul could have been ashamed if it were not true, if it were a sham and a lie. But it is true! Second, Paul might be ashamed if the gospel were powerless in the face of need, if it had no ability to address our needs as sinners. A weak, ineffective gospel without any durability would be shameful. But it isn’t weak!
Again, Paul would be ashamed if the gospel were bad news, if the life results were negative. They aren’t. And finally, shame could result from a gospel that was narrow or strictly tribal in scope, for a limited gospel is no gospel for most. But that’s not a problem either.
Paul says he is not ashamed of the gospel, for none of these possibilities proves correct. The gospel is true; the death and resurrection of Jesus are real. The gospel is powerful, because sin and death are conquered, and all power in heaven and earth belong to Christ. The life results are positive, because Jesus rescues and enriches lives. And the gospel is for all, because God is not willing that any should perish. This is the gospel—true, powerful, positive, and unlimited. Paul felt no shame in preaching this good news!
Power
So what does Paul say about this good news? First, Paul says that it is God’s power for salvation. The good news of Jesus Christ is the powerful tool that God uses to move us from the realm of sin, meaninglessness, and death to the Kingdom of God, full of goodness, meaning, and life. The universe abounds with God’s power at work, from the sun to lightening to crashing waves to howling winds, but nowhere is his power more awesome than in its work in a human life to bring about salvation. The gospel is certainly God’s power for salvation.
And who is this power for? Everyone. Paul says, “First for the Jew, then for the Gentile.” The first to have access to the gospel were naturally those closest to Christ: his people, the Jewish people. But the gospel was not to be limited only to them, since it was for the Gentiles, the non-Jews—even the detested Romans. The good news is for the entire world, regardless of tribe or nationality.
Of course, to do this, the good news first had to break through barriers, but it certainly had the power to do so. Jews stumbled over the Messiah being crucified, and Gentiles thought the idea of a great leader who couldn’t halt his own execution was foolishness. But the gospel prevailed for both Jews and Gentiles, because God’s power works through one man’s stumbling block and another man’s foolishness to effect the fullness of life known as salvation.
Righteousness
And not only does this gospel show God’s power. It also reveals his righteousness—a righteousness truly different than what people expected, both then and now. Then, Jews kept rigorous laws to attempt righteousness. Now, a pervasive folk belief assumes that if someone is well-intended and tries really hard, that person will probably earn God’s approval. The Jews had codified what they thought was righteousness, and we today have diluted righteousness into a mushy level of attainment somewhat better than the worst example we can cite.
God’s righteousness, revealed in the gospel, is altogether different. We wrongly turn to good works; God looks to faith. This is the surprising, radical aspect of the good news that captured Martin Luther’s attention: God considers people righteous because of their faith in Jesus Christ. When we have faith in Jesus Christ, when we quit relying on our own miserable display of goodness, then we can find true righteousness. The righteous person lives by faith, not by striving after an impossible goal, not by being somewhere above the median in human achievement, not by showy good works.
Righteousness is a direct result of faith. That is the gospel. Religious striving doesn’t make it; faith does. None of us can perform so well that we would be considered righteous, but any of us can believe and be saved. That is the good news. None of us can save ourselves, but God’s power can save us all. That, again, is the good news. The gospel reveals to us just how good God is; it reveals his righteousness.
Thus, Paul is announcing to the Romans, “I’ve got good news for you.” The good news is in the gospel; the gospel that Paul is eager to preach exactly because it is good news; the gospel that he is not ashamed of because it stands up to the claims made about it; the gospel that displays God’s power to save, God’s willingness to save, God’s faithfulness to save, and God’s means to save. Paul was eager to accept and to spread that gospel, and he continues in the rest of Romans to roll it out and tell how it affects lives.
Our good news
Friends, I bring that same good news to you. God’s gospel of grace is for each one of us, too. God’s good news is there, waiting for our acceptance by faith, so that it can begin its powerful work in our lives.
Have you invited Jesus into your life to take over? In 1970, taking hold of this good news transformed me from a despondent, despairing, desperate student radical into a radical disciple of Jesus Christ. I can attest to its truth and power and joy.
Perhaps this good news is already the bedrock of your life, too. But maybe it’s something you’ve heard about and wanted, but never really taken hold of. If you have not yet given yourself to that good news of Jesus Christ, I invite you now to pray along with me silently as I lead us in prayer. If God is calling you today to hear and accept the good news, now is your moment to respond.
Let us pray. Lord God, I believe the good news. I give up trying to make myself acceptable, and I turn over to you the job of saving me from the penalty for my sin. I believe in you and trust in you—you alone—to save me. Thank you, God. Please be my rescuer and the leader of my life. I am yours. Amen.
