The Righteous Shall Live By Faith | Romans 1:16-17
The Text
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. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Some Thoughts
Paul starts this section with the thought of not being ashamed of the gospel. This thought mirrors the words of Jesus in Luke 9:26 where it says "For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels."
The word for ashamed in the Greek is epaischunomai and the two root words that make up this Greek word means to be humiliated or ashamed because you've been deceived or you've placed your confidence in something that let you down.
This is why Paul continues on with the sentence that the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
Here are six quick signs to show if you are ashamed of the gospel of Christ or not.
We are ashamed of the Gospel because we are worried about offending people
We are ashamed of the Gospel because we are a man pleaser rather than a God pleaser
We are ashamed of the Gospel because we are afraid we can’t answer objections
We are ashamed of the Gospel because we don’t take the Lordship of Jesus seriously
We are ashamed of the Gospel because we don’t really believe the Gospel is true
We are ashamed of the Gospel because we don’t even know what the Gospel actually is!
Many in the early Church age were Jews who were taught from a young age that Jews were God's chosen people to the exclusion of all Gentiles unless they converted to Judaism first, and forgetting that the Jews were God's chosen people to be an example to nations around them. Paul quickly explains that salvation was first to the Jews and also to the Greek or in other words, to the rest of the world.
With the watering down of the true gospel of the Bible, many people have a misunderstanding of the nature and substance of salvation. Verse 17, while being a strange way of describing salvation to our modern hearers, is still a very clear description of salvation.
God reveals His righteousness in salvation
from faith that he gives
for faith that the hearer might believe
in that those righteous through their belief will continue to live by faith believing in Gods righteousness
This doesn't leave any room for attaining righteousness through any work, such as praying around beads, saying a sinners prayer, offering a sacrifice, giving money, baptism, church attendance, or anything else other than the faith the God grants us.
Additionally, this doesn't leave any room for believing one time and then continuing to live as the world outside of faith.
Finally, this doesn't leave any room for having faith and then loosing faith. Either you have been given faith and respond by faith and continue to live by faith or you have deceived yourself.
