we ask that you would come and magnify your all magnify yourself in our joy magnify your righteousness in our peace and help me to make plain the meaning of romans 1 17. i pray that you would open our hearts to receive this word i pray that you would banish satan and his bent to pluck the seed of the word from the path from our midst and give us a free course of communion with you in your word we need you i need you to speak and the people need you to help them listen and so come and teach and change and save and empower and humble and reconcile and heal and strengthen in these moments i pray amen i invite you to take a bible and to turn to romans chapter one and we're going to read verses 16 and 17 again as we will next sunday until i sense that this glorious truth in verse 17 is sinking in romans 1 verses 16 and 17 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 or because in it that is in the gospel the righteousness of god is revealed from faith to faith as it is written but the righteous man shall live by faith now the question we're asking if you're here last week you'll remember this is how does the gospel save believers we're not asking the question how does the gospel make believers which it does the gospel has in it when it is spoken or preached in the power of the holy spirit a power to take unbelievers open the eyes of their heart draw them to the beauty of christ incline their hearts to faith and save them that's the gospel can do that it's doing it on tuesday night seven people professed faith in jesus last tuesday night he's doing it on wednesday nights he's doing it in your lives as you get on the phone as you go to the hospital i prayed with a man after the first service who's off to speak to a dying farmer who has maybe a month to leave live and he just wants to make sure that he knows god and he's saved the gospel will do that but what i want to focus on with you is what i see in verses 16 and 17 namely that the gospel is the power of god for salvation to everyone who is believing the gospel saves believers believers need to be saved from the wrath of god from the righteous judgment of god that we made plain a hope last week i read it again this morning by the way if you're with me in reading second timothy in our through the bible plan second timothy 4 18 paul is about to die he's in rome he's just barely escaped by the skin of his teeth his first hearing and he says god save me from the lion's mouth and he will deliver me from every evil deed and save me for his heavenly kingdom there it is salvation is being rescued from the wrath of god and welcomed into heaven so it's still future for believers we'll talk a lot about the present dimensions of salvation but i want to stress what i believe is stressed in romans and especially here at verses 16 and 17 of chapter one namely those who believe will be saved by a certain power and that power is found in the gospel and i'm asking how does it work and i believe that's what romans is all about how does the gospel save believers now let me help you emotionally and intellectually join with me in posing this question look at the link between verses 15 and 16. just want to make sure you you're not skeptical about this question i'm posing and the link between 15 and 16 helps me see it verse 15 says so from my part i am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in rome now who is that who is the you of verse 15 well they're described in verses 16 and 17. among whom you also are the called of jesus christ or verse 7 to all who are beloved of god in rome that is called as saints so there's three descriptions of whom he's preaching to they are called they are loved by god and they are saints that's whom he's preaching the gospel to and the link with verse 16 is why do you want to preach the gospel to those people they're saints they're loved by god they're called of jesus why do you waste your time preaching the gospel to saints and his answer is in verse 16 because i'm not ashamed of the gospel because it's the power of god to save saints that's that's what believers means the believers the people who believe the everyone who believes in verse 16 are the called of christ jesus the loved of god the saints i preach the gospel to believers because it's the only way they're going to be saved in the end in other words if you've got the mindset i got saved when i was 6 or 16 or 26 by believing the gospel and now the rest of my life is lived some other way depending on something else getting strength from something else battling through the hard things of life another way than by the gospel you're in trouble because this text says what's going to save us day by day and in the end is the power of god in the gospel so i'm asking in these three messages on verse 17 how does it work how does the gospel save believers or you could say save saints if if you worry and maybe you should that this could become too ingrown i don't think it will because i am persuaded that the reason paul is so set on preaching the gospel to beloved of god saints called believers in rome is because when believers know and love and feed on the meat of the gospel day in and day out when they become gospel dependent and gospel driven and gospel saturated and gospel hopeful and gospel joyful they won't need to think about evangelism as something where you reach and i found out what's the gospel where's my booklet or where's my list they live the gospel the gospel is their hope the gospel is what they get up with and still their conscience with in the morning the gospel is how they handle a hard day at the work the gospel is how they handle coming home to an empty house after the divorce if you don't live on the gospel evangelism will be artificial and many believers i fear are trying to live another way than on the gospel they don't eat the gospel they don't drink the gospel it isn't the whoop and warf of their thinking but it is the warp and wolf of romans and so my prayer for us in these weeks and months is that we would break out of old paradigms of passive christianity that just looks back on an event of salvation and is somehow just kind of muddling along in some other way and will get the structure of romans in our brain so that we know what it means that the gospel is the power of god to save believers we'll understand the dynamic of how it works how does it help you this afternoon how will it get you through this week how will it keep you believing when all around my soul gives way that's what we need to know so that we're not jumping ship at age 45 when she's gone look at verse 13 just to confirm this again verse 13 i do not want you to be unaware brethren that often i have planned to come to you and have been prevented so far so that i may obtain some fruit among you also even as among the rest of the gentiles now put that together with everything you've seen so far when the gospel is preached in the power of the holy spirit among believers fruit happens all kinds of fruit righteousness peace joy and a lavish display of good news for the world i mean if the gospel were to grip this congregation if we were to be the kind of people who ooze gospel because we live on gospel we eat gospel we get through our days with gospel we handle our disappointing children with gospel we handle our disappointing marriages with gospel we handle our frustrating jobs with gospel the gospel is the way we live everything out then the world would see the gospel we wouldn't become ingrown and we wouldn't be technique oriented and artificial in the way we share christ we would live christ christ would be our all you're my all you're my joy you're my righteousness you're the way i get through every day and i i just hope that if you stay with me long enough through romans these will not just be words to you i really mean and i'll use some technical language here i really mean that the doctrine of justification by faith is the key way to keep marriages together i really mean that i've been married 30 years almost i really believe that the doctrine of justification by faith is the key to staying married but that's for a later sermon i'm just showing you i'm not throwing words away here when i say live on the gospel at every level of your life now verse 17 is the answer to the question posed more or less in verse 16 as to how it works verse 16 the gospel is the power of god unto salvation for everyone who believes it's the power to save believers how verse 17 answers now because in it the gospel in the gospel the righteousness of god is being revealed literally is revealed from faith to faith now last week we said martin luther hated this verse i'm glad we we played carol i'm glad you played a mighty fortress get luther on the table again here banging his fists and throwing inkwells of the devil the devil and things like that he hated this verse and the reason he hated this verse is because in his early monk days he had no categories in his mind for construing the righteousness of god any other way than as damning to his unrighteousness martin luther knew you know you're a sin i'm a sinner god is holy righteous there's this gulf of alienation i would mess up his heaven and defile him if i went there he hates what i do and he's angry at my sin and so luther doesn't want any more righteousness dumped on him from god it just damns him and so he hated this verse when it said the righteousness of god is revealed no thank you until he caught on what we tried to make plain last week that the good news is this in verse 17 and i'll try to defend this this morning now the good news is that the righteousness that god demands from us he gives to us freely for faith the righteousness that the holy god demands from this sinner which i cannot produce he then through christ gives to me freely for the receiving the gospel the only way to be right with god is if god freely makes you right with god you cannot do it you may have tried and you know don't try now at the end of last week's message i said okay if the righteousness of god is a gift in verse 17 if that's the way to understand the revelation of the righteousness of god in the gospel is it god's own righteousness demonstrated in the sacrifice of his son so that it will be plain he doesn't sweep sin unjustly under the rug of the universe and thus he provides a substitute and executes our sin in the death of his son is that the meaning his own righteousness vindicated in the cross or secondly could it be that he means the righteousness which he imputes or reckons or credits to my account though i'm a sinner and he just credits me with his righteousness so that as he looks upon me he sees his righteousness and i'm thus forgiven and acquitted and welcomed into a holy god's friendship sinner though i be or thirdly does it mean that the moral transformation of really becoming little by little in this life a more holy or righteous person is what's given to us through the cross which of those three is meant by verse 17 or i said could it be all three and all three of those are absolutely true and clearly taught in the book of romans i could give you a verse for each one number 1 325 number 2 324 number 384 so you could study that out but i'm going to argue this morning that the main thought in paul's mind in verse 17 is number two and so we'll just dwell on this second meaning of the revelation of righteousness and savor it together for a few minutes as i give you two reasons from the immediate text and then the wider context for why i believe that what is meant in verse 17 is god's crediting believers with an alien righteousness that is not their own but which becomes their own through faith and enables them to have friendship and right standing with god i tell you that is the best news in all the world for guilty people and there's not a person in this room unless you are seared with a hot iron there's not a person in this room who doesn't feel guilty almost daily i do and if you say you do you're supposed to believe the gospel i say every day i have to fight to believe the gospel that's the point believing the gospel when i was six i do believe saved me you think the battle is over to get to heaven the battle is not over i wake up every morning feeling dirty my view of god's holiness and righteousness is so high and so awesome that i regularly feel unworthy before him therefore i must re-appropriate the gospel of a reckoned righteousness to john piper every day and subdue my guilt with real god-given righteousness mine will never ever do and i've cleaned up my act pretty good i don't cheat on my wife i try to tell the truth on my tax forms i try to treat my children with some respect i try to be a law-abiding citizen i've cleaned it up that'll never get me to heaven never endear me to a holy god the attitudes in this head here the battles with pride the battles with lust the battles with fear that's enough to send me to hell any day right so what the hope for peace joy rest love one answer i'm going to argue for it here i live on a righteousness that is not my own it's my only hope so here are my two reasons for believing that's what verse 17 means look at the connection between the first half of verse 17 and the second half of verse 17 which is a quote from the old testament namely habakkuk 2 2 4 which we're going to deal with next sunday but the link we can see today the verse begins for in it that is in the gospel the righteousness of god that's the phrase we're trying to figure out what it means the righteousness of god is revealed from faith to faith and then he says as it is written now when you connect two phrases with the word as you mean they're like each other you say like it is written so what's following is like what preceded but it's coming from the old testament so it has a special punch he's not just restating he is authorizing with this added authority of the old testament now what does he say that is as the righteousness of god is revealed the righteousness of god is revealed as it is written the righteous man shall live by faith this is interesting in the first half of the verse it's the righteousness of god and in the second half of the verse it's a righteous person you say so what's the ass how does this as work that doesn't sound like as to me if these are very different righteousnesses my righteousness and god's righteousness the as is odd and i don't think it is odd and i don't think it's different i think the reason he can say as it is written is because in his mind when he said the gospel reveals the righteousness of god he means the gospel makes plain that righteousness is imputed to us such that we are righteous so that when he says as and then he says the righteous man there's no difference that's what i'm talking about i'm talking about a righteousness that makes people righteous and then he says those kind of people live and i'm going to argue that that means we'll be saved by the living shall live i believe is the salvation of verse 16. i'll talk about that next week by faith refers back to from faith to faith in verse 17 first half so my first reason for believing that the righteousness of god that is revealed in the gospel in the first half of verse 17 is god's imputing or reckoning or crediting that righteousness to us is because i don't think the parallel or the comparison in habakkuk 2 4 would work if it didn't mean that there is a second reason and it's even more compelling to me turn with me to chapter 3 verse 20 chapter 3 verse 20. the reason i take you over here to 320 is because the the wording of the flow of thought here is so close to the wording and the thought in romans 1 17 i cannot help but let these verses fill out for me the shorthand of romans 1 17. let me show you start reading at verse 20. by the works of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight for through the law comes the knowledge of sin now you need to know that the word just or justified is the same word as righteous or set right in the greek in english we don't have a verb for righteousness we don't have a verb called righteousified that's too bad because the greek does justified is built on the word righteousness not a separate word for justice justice and righteousness do not have two separate greek words in the new testament they are the same word so don't distinguish righteousness and justice in your head if you're thinking biblically the righteousness of god is the justice of god and justified means some scholars make up a word like right-wised set right with god so our english language fails us here but with that little tip i think you can keep in mind that justified is being built on the righteousness of god or the justice of god so let's read it again now by the works of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight for through the law comes the knowledge of sin and now he unpacks this and notice the language that he uses it's so much like verse 17. but this is verse 21 now apart from the law the righteousness of god same phrases 117 has been manifested very much like is being revealed in 117 being witnessed to by the law and the prophets so mark this in verse 20 he's talking about god's justifying sinners by imputing or crediting or reckoning to them his own righteousness and then he unpacks this by talking about the righteousness of god being manifested so if you go back to verse 17 of chapter one and you see in the gospel the righteousness of god is being revealed wouldn't you think when you got to verse 21 of chapter three oh oh oh i got it i got it what's being revealed is the righteousness which according to verse 20 of chapter three is credited to us in justification that's my second reason let me just take it just two three two three verses farther so you can see how he works this in verse 22 he he unpacks a little more he says even the righteousness of god same phrase as 117 even the righteousness of god through faith in jesus christ for all who believe just like in 117 it's righteousness revealed from faith to faith four there's no distinction all of sin falls short of the glory of god being justified so they're justified is brought in again to interpret what he means by the revelation of the righteousness of god so put the whole structure together verse 20 he's talking about justification verse 24 he's talking about justification and in between two times in 21 and 22 he says the righteousness of god is being manifested or has been manifested even the righteousness which is through faith so when i read that i say i just can't believe that paul in those similar structures has a different idea in his head as he opens the thesis of the book in 117. so my argument is when he says the gospel is the power of god to save believers this afternoon to save you and to keep you saved and to get you through wrath at the end of the age the power of god and the reason it is is because in it you can read and see placarded and glorious every day a display or a revelation of now what what do you see what you see is a righteousness of god being made over to your account that's the meaning of 117 a righteousness of god credited to you imputed to you declared over you i declare by my righteousness that you have it now we'll see later how he can justly do that in the cross of jesus but that it's happening is declared in 3 20-24 and in other places and that's the meaning of verse 17 and my plea as we close is that we might become a gospel dependent people that your strength and your stability your marriages your singleness the agonies of your relationships your job your leisure would all be thought of in terms of how you relate to them under an exchanged righteousness your sin going to the cross and being damned there in the body of jesus writhing in pain for you so that you don't have to arrive in pain in hell and god's righteousness from jesus put on you so that sinner though you be and remain you are acquitted in the courtroom of heaven you are accepted as friend of god and you will be brought infallibly through persevering grace and faith to an everlasting and ever increasing joy in heaven on that let me put it on the bottom shelf now for any kids that are in the room like 80 year old kids and 48 year old kids these are heavy things i know this is weighty stuff but it can be put on the bottom shelf so i close i'm gonna use some different language this is risky because it's not as theologically precise as i've been doing but this is the way you do with kids you can't do it any other way you take risks with kids okay so kids listen up i am a i do bad things and kids all do bad things i asked in the first service any kid not do any bad things and one little girl right here raised her hand and her mom grabbed it and put it down and i says okay this is one of those teachable moments reminder about yesterday every kid does bad things got that i do bad things we don't just do bad things because they come from mars we do bad things because we've got bad hearts we are depraved jesus said out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks if i'm ever sharped with sharp with my wife that's not because i'm such a nice guy you got that that's not because i'm a nice guy if i'm sharp with my wife it's because i'm a sharp guy who needs some smoothing deep down by the gospel he's working on me okay so kids we do bad things because we got bad hearts but god says you got to be good if you're going to get to heaven i don't have bad people in heaven bad people would defile my heaven i hate badness and so a kid you know what a kid does at that point a kid says okay i'll do more good things which is totally wrong kids the way to get right with god and to be his friend and to be saved and not go to hell is not to try to do more good things but to trust a god who says all right i demand that you be good you're not good but i love you therefore i will give you a goodness if you'll trust me if you'll trust me if you believe in my son if you delight in him and receive all that he is for you i will give you a goodness that is not yours even while you're bad now that's very hard for kids to believe because it's hard for adults to believe kids are wired legalists because we come into the world thinking the only possible way to get right with god is to do more right things for god and if we make our life's effort to get right with god by doing more right things for god we will never get right with god because no matter how good we shape up we fall short and god is perfectly holy and demands a perfect holiness and therefore the only righteousness which will hold it and cut it with god is god's righteousness freely given to faith so we tell our kids look yes you do bad things but if you will repent and say i hate bad things i don't want to do bad things i'll do my best but that isn't going to save me i will look away from myself and my badness to jesus and his goodness and god through jesus and my faith will grant me a goodness that i wear like a coat it's like these fire department guys we've had a lot of fires in our neighborhood over the years i've watched buildings go up like holocaust and those guys are amazing what they do what they'll walk into they look like they look like darth vader only it's usually yellow they walk right into the flames and they don't get burned that's the righteousness that's the goodness that god does for us the lord bless you the lord give you a sweet experience of the exchange of the cross your sin on christ his righteousness on you so that you know how to live your week out to the glory of the grace of god and all the people said amen