We hope that you enjoy this teaching from Christ Church.
This material is copyrighted and no unauthorized duplication, redistribution, or any other use of any part is permitted without prior consent from Christ Church.
Please consider donating to this work in the San Francisco Bay Area online at ChristChurchEastBay.org.
Today's reading is from Romans chapter 1 verses 16 to 18 and chapter 3 verses 9 to 20.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.
For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith.
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by their wickedness.
What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all.
For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin.
As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one.
There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away. They have together become worthless.
There is no one who does good, not even one.
Their throats are open graves. Their tongues practice deceit.
The poison of vipers is on their lips.
Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.
Their feet are swift to shed blood.
Ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.
There is no fear of God before their eyes.
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law,
so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.
Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law.
Rather, through the law, we become conscious of our sin.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Good morning, Christ Church, and thank you for that reading.
One of my favorite scripture readers in our church, my daughter Constance.
Pastor Andrew and I had the privilege this week of going to New York City
and doing what you do there, which is to not sleep for several days.
And we gathered with a group of about 50 church leaders,
just grappling with these questions of how to sustain flourishing and fruitful ministry
in this new cultural context we find ourselves in.
And we look forward to sharing more about that and what we learned there.
But we had the privilege of learning from two rock star scholars.
One is a guy named James Davison Hunter at the University of Virginia,
who's a sociologist there.
And the other is a guy named N.T. Wright, Tom Wright,
who's a biblical theologian at the University of Oxford.
And it felt like the whole time we were sort of listening to these dueling prophets.
You know, one was a prophet of despair and the other a prophet of hope.
You know, one was a prophet of judgment and the other a prophet of salvation.
We had the sociologist, and he was basically saying,
look, you know, our culture no longer has consensus around the five major questions of,
you know, what is reality?
How do we know reality?
What's a human being?
What's right and wrong?
And what's the purpose of it all?
Where's it all going?
And because we don't have consensus on these things anymore,
life's going to be kind of rough in the Western world for a little while.
Yikes.
This is not a very hopeful message, sir.
And then you had the theologian come up, and he said,
yes, from a human point of view, things are quite hopeless.
They feel pretty hopeless.
But God, he would say.
But God.
Look at what God is doing through Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit
and through his church.
And it struck me as I was listening to these two scholars,
talking about these two mutually compatible truths,
that that's kind of what's happening in this epistle to the Romans.
Romans chapter 1, 2, and 3 is telling us two things.
That number one, all of humanity is under the power of sin.
And yet, it's also telling us that through Jesus Christ,
we can experience the power of God.
And I want you to think about that as we look at this text today.
We're talking about the power of sin and the power of God.
And I think most of us would agree that there are times in life
where we need to be cruel in order to be kind.
We need to be cruel to be kind.
My brother's a medical doctor.
Some of you are doctors.
And you know that when you're dealing with people that have illness or disease,
you need to be cruel to be kind.
Some of you are parents, and you're trying to train up a child
to become a fully orbed human being.
And you know what it means to be cruel in order to be kind.
Conditions may be such that it's the best interest of that child,
the best interest of your patient,
is going to be served by causing them temporary pain.
And causing pain, that's a difficult task.
We take no pleasure in it.
But if we have the real interest of the other at heart,
we must be cruel to be kind and cause this temporary pain.
It's always much more pleasant to soothe and to comfort people
than it is to cause them pain and arouse unpleasant reactions.
But merely palliating symptoms,
rather than dealing positively and actively with the disease,
it's not going to help your patient.
You don't want your doctor to treat you that way.
Amen?
So Romans chapter 1, 2, and 3 speaks this word to us
and this word to the world that's actually quite painful.
It involves a word of judgment.
And Paul, the apostle, is being cruel to be kind.
Because if he's going to help us,
he must first probe the wound and probe the disease
to reveal our trouble.
This cannot be done without causing pain and offense.
It may lead, Paul knows, to being unpopular and to being disliked.
And he knows that if he wants to be popular and he wants to be liked,
he could just soothe people and ignore our problems entirely
and palliate our symptoms.
But Paul, the apostle, along with all the apostles,
are very good physicians of the soul.
And so he gives us a painful diagnosis and a painful prognosis
in order that we might fully appreciate the treatment he prescribes
and the cure that comes through that treatment.
So what is Paul's prognosis?
What's his diagnosis?
He says in Romans 1, 18, we've been considering this verse,
it says that the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven
against all the godlessness and wickedness of people
who suppress the truth in their wickedness.
And there's really no passage in Scripture
that describes so accurately our world today
and the cause of all of our troubles.
He says that our main problem, our central sin,
our greatest sin, is our godlessness and our ungodliness.
And he says from that central human reality
flow all manner of various types of wickedness and unrighteousness.
And Paul's been unpacking this in Romans 1, 2, and 3.
He's just been unpacking that one statement in Romans 1, 18.
And he's really begging this question,
you know, why is the preaching of the gospel such an urgent matter?
And why do we need a salvation from God that's entirely by faith?
And why will nothing less than the power of God
and the power of God's salvation meet the situation that we're in?
And so here in this text in Romans 3,
he brings us to the climax of this argument
we've been considering the past few weeks.
And it's one of the strongest statements
that the Bible gives us about what's wrong with the world
and this diagnosis of the human heart.
And what Paul is saying here is that sin's power is devastating
and its effects corrupting, but God's power is saving.
That's Paul's point, that sin's power is devastating
and its effects corrupting, but God's power is saving.
First of all, he says sin's power is devastating.
Look at verse 9.
He says, what shall we conclude then?
He's bringing this argument to a conclusion.
Do we have any advantage?
Not at all.
We've already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike
are all under the power of sin.
The condition of every human being you meet,
including the one you see in the mirror every day,
is that we're a people who are under the power
and the penalty and the pollution of sin.
And then what does Paul say next in verse 10?
He says, as it is written,
and Paul is this guy who's well-versed in the Scriptures
and he's committed so much of the Bible to memory.
An example to us all, if you've not done any of that,
I encourage you to begin memorizing Scripture.
Paul begins to marshal his memorized Bible
to substantiate the claim that sin's power over us
and over our lives is devastating.
And so he goes in verses 10 through verse 18
to show us the devastating power of sin.
And what does he say first?
He says, it is written,
there is no one righteous, not even one.
Again, Paul's begging the question,
why is it necessary that God should act
and intervene in the world and in our lives?
Why do we need a power that comes from God
before we can be saved?
And why is a righteousness that comes from outside of us,
that comes from God, absolutely essential for us?
Because Paul says, all of us universally,
without a single exception,
good people, even the best and nicest people
that you'll ever meet,
including the worst and the most vile people,
are under the power of sin
and therefore all of us are going to die
in a state of unrighteousness
before the judge of all the earth.
It's a strong first statement.
And Paul begins to arrange these scriptures,
mostly from the Psalms,
a little bit from the prophet Isaiah
in this logical order.
And he says,
there's no one righteous, not even one.
There's no one who understands.
There's no one who seeks God.
All have turned away.
They've together become worthless.
There's no one who does good,
not even one.
Paul says, that's our actual state in sin
and that's the result of being in this state
and condition of sinfulness.
And some of us might hear that and say,
well, Paul, you're flat out wrong
because I know people who are righteous.
I know people who seek God
and people who do good.
And Paul would say back to us,
well, who's defining your terms?
Whose definitions are we using?
Because the biblical definition of righteousness
is to be upright in thought and life.
It's to be blameless with respect to God
and our neighbor.
To be righteous does not mean
to merely be good or moral or respectable
in the eyes of other people.
Because when Jesus summed up the law of God,
he said that we were made to love the Lord our God
with all our heart and all our soul
and all our mind and all our strength.
And out of that love for God,
we're to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Jesus starts with our relationship with God
and then he moves out to our relationship
with everyone else.
And righteousness means living as God desires us to live
with respect to God and with respect to each other.
And so Paul would put the question back to us,
do any of us live in perfect conformity
with God's law of love?
And Paul is saying that since the fall of humanity,
there's not been a single righteous person.
Not Abraham or Moses or David
or any of the prophets, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah.
These are some of the best people who've ever lived.
He said none of them have been upright.
All of them have failed in their relationship
with God and their neighbor.
Think of the best people you know,
the noblest people, the most learned people,
the most philanthropic people.
If you drop this plumb line of God
and his law of love,
you'll see that we're actually not true.
We're not straight.
We're not upright and pure and blameless.
And Paul would say,
are you the solitary exception to this rule?
He says, no, we're not the exalted creatures
that God made us to be.
And be very clear that being
just a little bit better than the next person,
as we sort of think about
who's sitting around us this morning,
being just a little bit better than the next person
is really quite irrelevant
in light of God's ultimate standard
of being absolutely upright,
like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden,
before the power of sin entered the world.
So Paul says, there's no one righteous,
not even one.
And then he goes on and he says,
there's no one who understands.
In Ephesians 4, Paul says that we've become darkened
in our understanding.
And that means that we're lacking
the apprehension of spiritual truth,
the apprehension of divine things.
Of course, from a secular and human perspective,
we have all kinds of understanding
of the arts and the sciences,
of politics and business,
and all the things that we've become experts at.
But he says, because of the power of sin,
God is just simply not in our thoughts.
He's not in our understanding.
And because we don't understand God rightly,
we don't understand ourselves.
We don't understand our souls
and what it means to have a relationship with God.
And because we don't understand God and ourself
and the way sin has alienated us
and corrupted us in our relationship with God,
we don't understand our precarious position
under the wrath of God.
And therefore, we don't understand
that we need a righteousness from God to save us.
And Paul would say,
because we don't understand all of these things,
we therefore don't understand
what it means to be truly happy.
We don't understand all the things
that pertain to our eternal destiny.
He says, no one understands.
There's no one righteous, not even one.
There's no one who understands.
And then he says, there's no one who seeks God.
If there's no one righteous
and there's no one who understands,
then what does that mean?
Follow the logic.
Paul says, because we're unrighteous,
we lack understanding.
And because we do not understand,
we therefore do not seek after God.
To seek God is to desire God.
It's to want to know God and to enjoy God
and to worship God and seek God in prayer
and to want to know the will of God
so that we can obey it.
But Paul says, because all of us have come
under the power of sin,
we, whether we're trying to or not,
we just ignore God.
We neglect God.
We avoid God.
Instead of trying to seek to be close to God,
we're actually moving away from God.
And you might say again,
Paul, wait a second.
I know people who seek God.
I know people who are spiritual seekers
who say their prayers.
And Paul would say, yes,
but which God are they seeking?
Is it the God of the Bible
or is it the God that we've made in our own image
and that conveniently conforms
to all of our values and our preferences?
Is that the God we're seeking?
Or are we seeking the God
who's revealed himself here?
And are people truly seeking God for God?
Or are they seeking God
for the things that God can give them?
Because many of us seek God for his blessings.
We seek God for answered prayers.
We seek God for forgiveness.
But Paul would say,
no one seeks God for himself
rather than his gifts.
To seek God means to desire God
above everything and everybody.
To seek his glory and to be anxious
to promote his glory to everybody we see.
To seek God in a biblical sense
means that God is the center of our thinking
and that the supreme object of our lives
is to know him and love him
and live for his glory.
And Paul says,
no one by nature and left to himself or herself
has ever sought God for God's sake.
Remember that parable we talked about two weeks ago
from the Gospel of Luke.
Jesus tells us about this Pharisee
and this tax collector.
And the Pharisee comes to God
and he says,
God, I thank you
that I'm not like everyone else
and I thank you
for all the amazing things that I do.
That is a man who thinks he's seeking God.
But really he's just telling God
what a wonderful person he is
rather than telling God
what a wonderful God he is.
Right?
He's coming to God,
speaking about his own excellencies
rather than coming to God
and telling God all about his excellencies.
And can we not see ourselves in that man?
Seeking God in order to exalt ourselves
is not seeking God at all.
If anyone is truly seeking God,
there's only one explanation for it
and that is that God has first sought us
and he's justified us by his grace,
he's regenerated us by his Holy Spirit
and he's enabled us to seek him.
But the scriptures tell us
that left to ourselves,
we would never seek God
and we would remain permanently
at enmity with God
and totally unreconciled to God.
That's what Paul is bringing
to our attention with these scriptures.
He says,
sin's power is devastating
in terms of what we were made for.
And he goes on and he says,
sin's power is devastating
and its effects are corrupting.
Since power is devastating
and its effects are corrupting,
Paul is basically saying
in verses 10 and 11,
this is who we are in the state of sin
and then he says in verse 12,
now these are the effects
and the results of being in that condition.
And he says in verse 12,
all have turned away.
We were again created to walk in God's way,
to journey on this true path
that God marked out for human beings
and yet we've all turned our backs
and gone in the other direction.
This is what the prophet Isaiah says
in Isaiah 53,
he says,
we all like sheep have gone astray
and each of us has turned to our own way.
Every person born into this world
since the fall of Adam and Eve
have deliberately gone our own way,
walking not in God's ways
that lead to him
and glorifying him
and enjoying him
but rather the lead on this road
of separation from him
in this life
and on into eternity.
Paul says,
all have turned away
and they have together become worthless.
Holy and simultaneously,
without exception,
Paul says,
we become worthless.
He's so cruel.
He's being cruel to be kind.
That word worthless means unprofitable.
It's a word that is used
for when milk has spoiled
and has gone sour
and of course we know
that milk is meant to be food for us.
It's meant to give us satisfaction
but when it's soured,
it has no value anymore.
It's useless
and it's good for nothing
but to be thrown out.
Paul says,
we've all become worthless
and at this point again,
you may object and say,
Paul, you're too harsh.
Paul, this is too sweeping of a statement.
You're overdoing it
because I know people who are good.
They're good citizens.
They're involved in good causes
and Paul would say,
yes, well the Bible doesn't say
we're as bad or as rotten
as we could be
and from the standpoint
of secular morality,
yes, we probably do know
some virtuous people
but what about
from the standpoint of God?
From the standpoint of God's salvation,
Paul says,
every single one of us
apart from the grace of God
and Jesus Christ
have become totally unprofitable.
I think about the prophet Isaiah
where he says in Isaiah 64,
he says,
all our righteous acts
are filthy rags
and that's striking
because we would have expected him
to say all of our unrighteous acts
are filthy rags
but what does he say?
He says,
all of our righteous acts
are filthy rags.
Paul says something similar
in Philippians chapter three
when he's talking about himself
and he says,
you know,
I was a Hebrew of Hebrews,
I was a Pharisee of Pharisees
and as it pertains
to righteousness
according to the law,
I was completely faultless
but when I saw
the glory of Jesus Christ,
I realized that all
of that righteousness
was a complete loss.
In fact,
the word he uses,
I won't translate it
exactly
because we're in church
this morning
but he says,
all my righteousness
was absolute dung,
completely worthless
and useless to save me.
That's what Paul's getting at
when he says
we've all become worthless.
He's not saying
that his righteousness
wasn't quite good enough,
he calls it total garbage.
It's not that
we need to be
just improved a little bit
or helped a touch
or topped off
just a skosh.
Paul is saying
that our righteousness
is so pitifully worthless
that it was necessary
for God to become
a human being
and to die on a cross
and if God has to die,
our righteousness
must be pretty worthless.
All have turned away,
they've together
become worthless
and there is no one
who does good,
not even one.
And again,
this isn't goodness
in our eyes
which tends to lead us
toward self-righteousness.
It's goodness
in the eyes of God
and God can see
that our goodness
is invariably self-centered.
We probably all
have that experience
where you're kind
to other people
and you serve other people
but really,
it's kind of
to please yourself.
And Paul is saying
that even our goodness
is tainted
with this self-interest
because it's polluted
at the very source
and at this point
you might be saying,
okay, enough.
Enough, Paul.
I can't handle it anymore.
I've heard your diagnosis
and you're being
way too cruel to us
and you're absolutely relentless.
I need a little relief.
And so I'm going to give you
some relief, okay?
We're going to skip over
verses 13 to 14
where Paul talks about
the sin of our words
and what we do
with our mouths
and we're going to skip over
verses 15 to 17
and the sins of our deeds,
what we do with our feet
and with our hands
and we're going to skip over
verse 18.
The cause of all these things
is what we do
with our eyes,
what our eyes are looking at
or actually not looking at
and we're going to jump
to the point
and ask this question,
why is Paul so relentless
in showing us
the power of sin
in our lives?
Why is he so relentless?
Well he says in verse 19,
now we know
that whatever the law says,
it says to those
who are under the law
so that every mouth
may be silenced
and the whole world
held accountable to God.
So that the whole,
so that every mouth
may be silenced
and the whole world
held accountable to God.
Paul is saying,
look, imagine a court of law
and you are the criminal
in the dock
and the judge looks at you
and asks you,
do you have anything
to say in your defense?
And Paul says,
our mouths should be silenced.
We should be saying
nothing at all
in our defense
because when our mouths
are silenced,
your guilt is proved
and you cannot justify
yourself at all.
And Paul's point is
that God wants to put
an end to all
of our talking.
He wants us to put
a hand over our mouth
when it's anxious
to defend itself
so that the whole world
is rendered speechless
before God.
Go back to our Pharisee
and our tax collector.
The Pharisee says,
God, I thank you
and then he just pours out
all these eloquent words
describing himself
and telling God
what a good man he is
and how unlike
this tax collector he is
and what he does
and what he does not do
and he just talks
and talks and talks
and talks about himself.
But how does
the tax collector come?
It says that he stops
his mouth
and he silences his heart
and if he says
anything to God at all
he just says,
God, have mercy on me
a sinner.
That's something
we need to learn to say.
Can we say that together?
God, have mercy on me
a sinner.
What about you?
Has your mouth
been silenced?
Have you stopped
speaking in the presence
of this holy God?
Have you given up
self-justification
and quit arguing
against this charge
and this verdict
that you are under
the power and penalty
and pollution of sin?
Or do you still say,
God, look at all I've done
and aren't you impressed
by all the things
I've not done?
Paul's saying,
look, you're never going
to receive God's salvation
that's described for us
in Romans chapter 3
verses 21 and following
and I promise you
we're going to get out
of all this bad news
next week.
But he says,
you're never going
to receive God's salvation
unless you shut up spiritually
and unless your mouth
is silenced
with no more excuses.
If you're still saying
to yourself,
God, I know that I did wrong
but I can do better
next time.
And God,
I see that my motives
are not right
but I think I can turn it around,
you've not shut up
and therefore you're not
ready for salvation.
You've got to realize
that you cannot fix yourself
and that every effort
to fix yourself
and put yourself together
and be a better person
and try harder
in an effort of self-salvation
and self-sufficiency
is just making you worse.
Paul says,
you need to be quiet.
You need to come
to the end of yourself
and learn to be sorry.
Not only for all
that you've done wrong
but even for the reasons
you've done everything right
and to see that
your righteousness
is totally worthless,
it's filthy rags,
it's dung
and say,
God,
it's true.
I have nothing to say.
I give up
and I give in.
We must admit
that there's this terrible force,
this mighty active power
called sin
which is alienating us
from God
and it's only
as we face this
and realize
the true nature
of our problem,
how devastating
and how corrupting
the power of sin is
that we can come to see
the one power alone,
the sufficient
and adequate
to deal
with our situation
and that's where
I want to close.
Sin's power
is devastating
and its effects
corrupting
but God's power
is saving.
God's power
is saving.
I hope you can
understand now
given Paul's argument
about the power
of sin
why he says
in the thesis
of this letter
in Romans 1.16
I'm not ashamed
of the gospel
because it is what?
It's the power
of God
that brings salvation
to everyone
who believes.
Paul uses
these two negatives
to express a positive.
He says,
I'm not ashamed
meaning I'm proud
of the gospel,
I glory in the gospel,
I boast about the gospel
and you have to remember
that Rome
is a very proud city.
It's the proudest city
because it's the great
metropolis of the world.
I was in New York
this week,
I know how proud
these people were.
They boasted
of great wealth
and power
and learning
and culture.
They attracted
the best people
and the finest goods.
All that was prized
and valued most
came to Rome.
All the religions,
all the schools
of thought,
structures of law,
systems of government,
all their amazing buildings.
Any of you been to Rome?
Okay, you know.
In Rome,
human culture
and human progress
seem to have reached
its zenith
and it was the very
embodiment of pride
and human greatness
and the boasting
of human achievement
and Paul comes along
and he says,
I am proud
and I boast
but I boast
in none of this
Roman power.
No,
I boast
in the power
of God.
Power was everything
for Rome.
Right,
they didn't consider
anything unless it worked,
unless it had power,
unless it produced results
and Paul comes
and he looks at Rome
and he basically says,
is this all you've been able
to produce?
Is this all you have
to boast about?
Because I have
a greater boast.
I have something
that can actually deal
with the problems
of human life.
I know of something
that can save people
from the power
and the penalty
and the pollution
of sin.
To these proud
and cultured people,
the self-satisfied
metropolis of the world
with all of its wealth
and its power,
Paul is proud
of a greater power,
the power of the gospel.
He says,
all that Rome is
and all that it can boast about,
all of the power of Rome
just pales into insignificance
compared to the power of God
and so he says,
I'm not ashamed
because I know of a power
that's a transcendent power
and he says,
my boast is in the power of God
and his gospel to save us
and Paul knows that,
he knows the response
he's going to get,
right,
when he rolls up
into this capital city,
he knows he's going to be ridiculed
and laughed at,
he knows that people
are going to say,
hey Paul,
you should actually be ashamed,
very ashamed
of this message
to suggest that
to these proud Romans
that some small
and insignificant group
of people over here
that belong to this
poorest of Rome's colonies
and her conquered territories
possesses the truth
and possesses a power
that the whole of humanity needs
is absolutely ridiculous
and utter folly,
Paul.
To come here
and claim that Jesus
who belonged to this
despised town in Israel
far from being a scholar
and a philosopher,
just a common worker
was the unique son of God
and the savior of the world,
Paul,
that's madness.
And more than that,
to say that this Jesus,
far from being a conqueror
who subdued nations to himself
by his might
and by his power
like our Caesar,
he was actually crucified
in utter weakness
and helplessness
between two thieves,
Paul,
this message
that you come to bring
is beneath contempt.
But is Paul ashamed
of the gospel?
No.
A thousand times,
no.
Paul, rather,
is ashamed
of all of our foolish pride.
He's ashamed
of all of our empty pomp
and our futile schemes
and vain strivings
to save ourselves.
He's ashamed
of all of our worthless righteousness.
And he says
that the power
that Rome really needs,
the power
that the Bay Area
really needs
is the gospel of God
and the gospel of his son.
The power of God's salvation
is not about God
waiting for us
to seek him
because as we've seen today,
no one is really seeking God.
No,
the power of God's salvation
is about God
and his infinite power
seeking after us.
It's about God
coming and finding us
at infinite cost
to himself.
This powerful,
immortal God
who became a weak
and mortal human being,
God in the flesh,
crucified
in powerlessness
in your place.
Paul says
that is the only power.
The weakness of Christ,
the powerlessness
of his cross
is the only power
that can save you
from the power of sin.
It's the only power
that can save you
for a reconciled relationship
with your creator God.
And so Paul says
in Galatians 6, 14,
he says,
may I never boast
except in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Friends,
what are we boasting in?
What are we proud of?
What's the greatest power
in our lives?
Paul says
this cross of Jesus
is the only power
that can break
the power of sin.
It's his sacrificial death
and shedding of his blood
that's the only power
to save us
because it's the power
of God himself.
Do we have a heartfelt urgency
for people
that are in our lives
to come and know
and experience
the power of this gospel?
And do we have
a prayerful expectancy
that the power
of the gospel
might be unleashed
in our time
and in our place?
Paul says,
I'm a thousand percent
not ashamed
of the gospel.
Why?
Because it's the power
of God
that brings salvation
to everyone
who simply believes.
Amen.
I think I am
I hope you
are in next
doll
is tionna
and
of the gospel
in the name
of the gospel
and of the gospel
and the gospel