Martin Luther climbed Rome's sacred stairs on bloodied knees — and reached the top with no assurance at all. Two verses in Romans finally broke his chains.
How can a guilty sinner ever be righteous before a holy God? That question drove Martin Luther to scrub monastery floors, wear out his confessors, and climb Rome's Scala Sancta on his knees — and it still left him without peace. In this Reformation Sunday exposition of Romans 1:16–17, Dr. Toby Holt tells the story of the angry monk of Wittenberg alongside the apostle who wrote the words that finally set him free.
Dr. Holt begins with Paul's startling declaration: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16, NKJV). Paul, he shows, does not call the gospel merely helpful or important — he calls it power. The unbeliever is not spiritually drowsy but spiritually dead, and only the Spirit of God, working through the proclamation of the gospel, can raise a dead heart to life. That is why watering the message down — burying sin, repentance, and the cross beneath programs and easier promises — robs God of His glory and deprives sinners of the one thing that can save them.
From verse 17, Dr. Holt then unfolds the discovery that broke Luther's chains: the righteousness of God is not something we heave onto God's altar hoping it is sufficient; it is something God gives. At the cross a great exchange took place — the sins of all who believe were laid on Christ, and His perfect righteousness was granted to them. We are not justified because we are justifiable; the thief on the cross and Saul of Tarsus prove it.
The listener will come away knowing why the church — and every individual Christian — needs here-I-stand courage about the gospel, why failure is never the end of the road for those who belong to Christ, and why the only dress code of heaven is the white robe of Christ's righteousness, received by faith alone.
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When Paul wrote "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ" (Romans 1:16, NKJV), he was declaring that he would neither hide nor soften the message, whatever it cost him. He had every earthly reason for shame — Christians in Rome were persecuted, and Paul himself would eventually lose his life there — yet he refused to trim the gospel, because it alone is the power of God to salvation. Shame implies a message is weak or embarrassing; Paul knew the gospel is the one message that actually saves, so he preached it plainly in Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and ultimately Rome.
Paul deliberately does not call the gospel merely helpful or important. Sinners are not saved because the gospel is good advice, but because God works through its proclamation to change hearts that cannot change themselves. Scripture describes the unbeliever as spiritually dead — not sleepy, dead — and a dead man cannot raise himself. The Holy Spirit regenerates the heart, replacing the heart of stone with a heart of flesh, and the ordinary means He uses is the preached and shared gospel. That is why no philosophy, ideology, or church program can substitute for it: the power to save resides in the message itself.
In Romans 1:17 the righteousness of God is not only His own perfect character; it is the righteousness He gives to sinners, received by faith. Martin Luther at first read the phrase as the punishing righteousness God demands, and by his own account he hated it, because he could never meet the standard. When he saw that this righteousness is revealed "from faith to faith" — granted as a gift rather than achieved by works — he described the discovery as being born again and entering paradise through open gates. The righteousness we desperately need is not something we offer to God; it is something God gives us in Christ.
The phrase, quoted by Paul from Habakkuk 2:4, means that those whom God counts righteous — the just — receive and live that life by trusting God, not by performing works. It answers the most urgent question a sinner can ask: how do I become right with God? Not by good deeds outweighing bad ones, and not by religious rigor, but by faith in Jesus Christ. This single line became a watchword of the Protestant Reformation because it struck Martin Luther with full force: justification is by faith, and that faith rests entirely on Christ's finished work rather than on our own.
In 1517, when Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, he knew enough to be angry at the sale of indulgences — but by his own later testimony he did not yet understand the gospel. He tried to earn God's favor through monastic rigor, endless confession, and even climbing Rome's Scala Sancta on his knees, and found no assurance. Around 1519, meditating on Romans 1:16–17, he grasped that the righteousness of God is given to sinners through faith, not earned by works. He felt himself made new, and many scholars date his true conversion to that encounter with this passage.
The great exchange — theologians call it double imputation — is what happened at the cross for everyone who believes. Our sins, past, present, and future, were placed upon Christ, and His perfect righteousness was granted to us. Paul states it in one verse: "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21, NKJV). When God looks at a believer, He no longer sees him through the lens of what he has done or failed to do, but through the finished work of His own Son.
Justification is God's legal declaration that a sinner is righteous in His sight. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. 33) defines it as an act of God's free grace in which He pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in His sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone. Nothing in us and nothing done by us contributes to it; faith is simply the empty hand that receives Christ. This is why a believer's assurance can survive his failures: salvation never hinged on his works, so his stumbles cannot unhinge it.
No. Most people assume God will accept them if their good deeds outweigh their bad ones, but that turns salvation into a debt God owes — and Scripture says the opposite: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast" (Ephesians 2:8–9, NKJV). No one deserves heaven; the question is not whether we are good enough but whether we are clothed in Christ's righteousness. Good works matter — but as the fruit of salvation, never its root or its price.
John Calvin treats justification at length in Book III of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, where he argues that it is the main hinge on which true religion turns. For Calvin, to be justified is to be accepted by God as righteous, and it consists in the forgiveness of sins and the imputation of Christ's righteousness — received by faith, never earned by works. His teaching stands in the same stream as Luther's discovery in Romans 1:17 and the doctrine Dr. Holt expounds in this sermon: the believer's standing before God rests wholly on Christ's righteousness credited to him.
Because the gospel's saving power lies in the true message itself, softening it does not make it more effective — it makes it powerless. Dr. Holt notes the great hole in much modern gospel presentation: we offer people a solution to a problem we never explain they have. Omit sin, repentance, and judgment, and hearers may want God as a genie, but they will not want Him as a Savior. Pandering fails the very people it hopes to win and dishonors the God it claims to serve. Faithfulness means telling the truth about sin and then holding out Christ, plainly and unashamedly.
1. The Gospel Is Power, Not Mere Advice
Paul does not say the gospel is helpful to salvation, or important for salvation — though both are true. He says it is "the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16, NKJV). Dr. Holt presses the difference: we are not saved because the gospel informs or inspires us, but because, when it is proclaimed, God works through it to accomplish what no argument or program can. The unbeliever is not spiritually drowsy or taking a cat nap; he is spiritually dead, lying as in a grave, unable to rise of his own accord. The Holy Spirit must regenerate that heart — removing the heart of stone and giving a heart of flesh — and the ordinary means He uses is the proclamation of the gospel. This is what the Reformed tradition calls effectual calling, described in the Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. 31): the Spirit convinces us of our sin and misery, enlightens our minds in the knowledge of Christ, renews our wills, and persuades and enables us to embrace Jesus Christ freely offered in the gospel. The power is in the message itself; our task is to deliver it plainly.
2. Righteousness Is Given, Not Achieved
In 1517, Martin Luther knew enough to be angry — angry at Rome for selling indulgences and angry at himself for having been complicit — but, as Dr. Holt observes from Luther's own testimony, he did not yet understand the heart of the gospel. He believed God's favor had to be earned, so he scrubbed every corner of the monastery, wore out his confessors, and on a visit to Rome climbed the Scala Sancta on his knees, reaching the top with no assurance whatever. Around 1519, meditating on Romans 1:17 — "For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, 'The just shall live by faith'" (NKJV) — Luther finally saw that the righteousness God requires is a righteousness God gives. It is not something we heave onto God's altar hoping it is sufficient; it is granted to us through faith. Many scholars locate Luther's true conversion at this discovery. Dr. Holt's application is direct: anyone who still quietly wonders whether they have done enough needs the same fresh encounter with Romans 1.
3. Justified, Though Not Justifiable
Dr. Holt names the assumption underneath Luther's early theology, Rome's theology, and much popular religion today: that in order to be justified, you must first be justifiable. Scripture demolishes it. The thief on the cross had nothing to bring — his own people were glad to be rid of him — yet Jesus told him, "Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43, NKJV). Saul of Tarsus was breathing threats and murder against the church when Christ claimed him. As Paul writes, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8, NKJV). Salvation is therefore not a debt God owes the sufficiently good; that notion turns grace into a wage. It is grace through faith — sola gratia, the Reformation's protest against every scheme of merit. A gospel that quietly reintroduces human deserving is not good news at all, because no sinner can meet the standard.
4. The Great Exchange: Double Imputation
When Luther grasped what happened at Calvary, Dr. Holt explains, he saw a double imputation. First, the sins of all who believe — past, present, and future — were placed upon Christ on the cross. Second, at the same time, Christ's perfect righteousness was granted to them. As Paul writes elsewhere, "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21, NKJV). Dr. Holt calls this white robe of Christ's righteousness the only dress code of heaven; man-made righteousness melts before a holy God like a wax figurine before a blast furnace. The Westminster Confession of Faith teaches the same in its chapter on justification: God pardons believers and accepts them as righteous, not for anything wrought in them or done by them, but for Christ's obedience and satisfaction imputed to them and received by faith alone. And because salvation never hinged on our works, our stumbles cannot unhinge it — David, Elijah, and Peter all failed grievously, and every one of them is with the Lord.
5. An Unashamed Church in a Hostile Age
Paul longed to preach in Rome knowing it was hostile, dangerous, and spiritually dark, and when he arrived in city after city — Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, Philippi, Thessalonica — he did not pander. He told people the truth about sin before he offered them the Savior, because no one cares about a solution to a problem he does not know he has. Dr. Holt applies this to the present hour: the gospel is increasingly radioactive in our culture, and the temptation is to trim its hard edges — sin, repentance, death, resurrection — and bury it beneath programs and initiatives. But since the gospel alone is the power of God unto salvation, subjugating it to anything else is self-defeating: it fails the sheep and dishonors the Shepherd. Programs may be built on top of the gospel, never over it. The church at large may yet face its own defining moment of confession, but every believer already faces one daily. Each conversation is an opportunity to stand, unashamed, on the only message that saves.
About The Speaker: Dr. Toby Holt serves as the third President of New Geneva Theological Seminary (Colorado Springs, CO), founded 1993. An expository preacher with over 1.9 million sermon downloads on SermonAudio.com, Dr. Holt brings over 17 years of pastoral experience to his verse-by-verse Bible teaching. New Geneva offers fully online, Westminster Confessional theological education — M.Div., Th.M., D.Min., and other degrees.
Summary. In this Reformation Sunday sermon on Romans 1:16–17, Dr. Toby Holt tells how Martin Luther — angry at the sale of indulgences yet still a stranger to grace — finally found peace when he saw that the righteousness of God is given to sinners, not earned by them. Dr. Holt shows why Paul was not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God to salvation, the means by which the Spirit raises the spiritually dead to life. He warns against watering the message down, and unfolds the great exchange in which the sins of all who believe were laid on Christ and His righteousness was granted to them. Because we are justified though not justifiable, believers who stumble — like David, Elijah, and Peter — are never beyond the reach of Christ, whose arms remain open to all who turn to Him.
The righteousness of God is not what we offer to Him to placate Him, but it's something that's given to us. The righteousness that we desperately need is not something that we just heave onto God's altar and hope it's sufficient. Rather, the righteousness is something that's granted to us. It's something that's given to us, and that was a game-changer for Luther. On the day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, he was angry.
But why? What had made him so upset? In today's study, we'll remember the Protestant Reformation, and we'll focus on the growth of the early church in chapter 1 of Romans. You know, most of us, if you spend any amount of time in a Reformed church, a Presbyterian church, a Lutheran church, what have you, you've heard the story of Martin Luther. Specifically, you've probably heard the story of the time when he nailed his 95 thesis to the door of the church in Wittenberg.
The day that Martin Luther nailed that 95 Thesis to the door of the church in Wittenberg, he was angry. He was upset. There was a practice that was going on in Rome and throughout Europe for the sale of indulgences, by which Rome, for the receipt of some coin from the people, would grant them a means by which they or a loved one might be excused or pardoned for some period of time that they were spending in purgatory.
Martin Luther didn't believe in indulgences. Martin Luther was angry. He was angry at Rome for perpetuating this practice, and he was angry at himself for being complicit in it for some period of time. In 1517, Martin Luther knew enough to be angry. But here's the thing that many of us forget if we don't know our history. At this time, he didn't know enough to be saved. In 1517, Luther knew enough to know that Rome was wrong.
He knew enough to know it was a bad idea to sell indulgences, to take advantage of poor and illiterate farmers in order to build the basilica in Rome. He knew that was wrong. But for all that he knew and for all that he understood, as hard as he tried, he still didn't understand the heart of the Gospel. Specifically, Luther didn't know how to become righteous. Luther's understanding at this point in time was that the way in which you please God and the way in which he saves and pardons you is if you do enough to earn it.
Martin Luther, at this time in his life, His understanding of how God would ever hope to love him or save him was based on how much Luther did. And as many things as Luther did, He constantly felt insecure like it was not enough. And so he would declare and he would write at times, even in his own journals, that he didn't get it, he didn't understand, He was angry at God for setting a bar that he felt he perpetually fell under. Luther was having a crisis of conscience. Even the very day he nailed the 95 Thesis to the door of Wittenberg.
If you don't believe me, listen to Luther's own words on this matter. He said this, He said, though I was living as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction. I did not love, yes, I even hated the righteous God who punishes sinners. And secretly, if not blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God. And I said, as if indeed it is not enough that miserable sinners, eternally lost through Original Sin, are crushed by every kind calamity by the law of the deck log without God having add pain to pain by the Gospel and also by the Gospel threatening us with righteousness and wrath. 95 Theses or no 95 Theses. Luther was not only angry at Rome by his own words he was angry at God. He tried so hard for so long to make God happy and yet he never felt that he did. He felt like he had been given a standard of works in the deck log and the 10 commandments things to do and that he had never done them or at least that he had never done them sufficiently to please God. So what did Luther do? Some of us know the story of Martin Luther. What he did in the monastery was this. He scrubbed every corner. He washed every pan. When he went to confession, he longed to hear the words te absolvo from the confessor in order to tell him he'd been absolved from his sins. And yet he'd go two minutes outside of the confession booth. He'd commit another sin and he'd go running back. He actually drowned out the ears of those that he confessed to. And the reason why is because he perpetually thought, ongoingly thought, habitually thought that God was angry with him.
One day, about 1510, Martin Luther, He had an opportunity to travel on behalf of the monastery to Rome. Now at that time, if you were a Roman Catholic, to go to Rome was a big deal. It was the Mecca, so to speak, of the Roman Catholic world. Martin Luther had thought, well, maybe things in Germany are kind of messed up, but if I get to rome. Boy, there I'm going to see some holiness. I'm going to see some righteousness. I'm going to see there the answer to many of my questions as I watch how others live out their faith in that holy context. So Luther went to Rome. Now, is that what he experienced? Did he experience this nirvana, this utopia of righteous people doing righteous things? Not so much. Luther gets to Rome and he begins to watch the priests there and he watches them butcher the mass and he was offended to no end by that. He was offended by the sale of indulgences. People traveling far and wide making pilgrimages, giving money in order to fatten the coffers of Rome, and meanwhile being told that this was accomplishing some good for their loved ones or for themselves in the future. And Luther thought, well, this doesn't seem right. So Luther traveled to something called the Scala Sancta.
Is anyone familiar with what that is? If you ever travel to Rome, Scala Sancta is a set of stairs. Sacred stairs is what the term means. Now, the sacred stairs are the stairs, theoretically, supposedly, by which Christ ascended when he was going to the praetorium in order to visit with pontius Pilate during his trial. The scala sancta are the stairs. They were moved from Jerusalem to Rome by Saint Helena, who was the mother of Constantine, and they were placed at a church you can still find in Rome. Now, Luther went to check out the scala sancta, because his understanding was that if you climb the skull of sancta on your knees 28 steps he said our father every step of the way kissed each step you get to the top that that gave you some sort of eternal reward it was a means of indulgence it was a means of buying back or buying down your time in purgatory or that of a loved one so Luther did what everyone did he went up on his bloody kneecap step after step after step and when he got at the top he said these words who knows if it is true who knows if is true. Even going to Rome, even going up the staircase on his bloody kneecaps, hoping that that would finally appease God, did not give him a sense of assurance. Who knows if it's true? Right now, that is the estate of every man, woman, and child who trusts in their own works unto salvation.
Who knows if I've done enough? Who knows if I've climbed enough stairs? Let me ask you, have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt, perhaps through a bad theological understanding, or perhaps just because of your guilt, that forgiveness is a pipe dream for you. That forgiveness is a pipe dream. That because of things you've done in the past, or because of a lack of things that you should have done, that somehow God's love is not upon you.
We preach the Gospel, you hear the Gospel, you nod your head, you say amen,
and yet, in the back of your mind, you ask this question. Who knows if it is true? Well, one night, about two years after Martin Luther had wrote his 95 thesis, martin Luther re-read the very verses that we're studying today in Romans 1. And at that time, in readings Romans 1, verses 16 and 17, he had an encounter with God. And he realized that salvation does not come through our works. It does not come through bloodying your kneecaps.
It does not come through waving down or appeasing God by a hundred or a thousand things you do. In this text, he saw that salvation comes through faith. And so this is what he said about that experience. He said this, at long last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of those words. Namely, in it, the righteousness of God is revealed. As it is written, he who through faith is righteous shall live. There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives as a gift of God, namely, by our faith. And here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. If ever there was a man that needed a fresh encounter with Romans 1, if ever there was a man who needed a fresh encounter with the doctrines of grace, it was Martin Luther. He needed to understand that he was forgiven, full stop, that he was forgiven. Perhaps that's something that you or I need to remember as well. Well, let's consider that first. Let's consider the forgiveness that we have and the means by which it is purchased. I'm going to read verse 16. We'll look at this text for a bit and then we'll look at verse 17 before we conclude. Verse 16. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. You know, for many years, the Apostle Paul had a desire to go and preach minister in Rome. Paul was a Roman citizen. He had a desire to go to Rome. This is a desire he mentions earlier on in chapter 1. Now, as Paul thought about Rome, he knew that it was a spiritually darkened place. He longed to go there. He wanted to minister to the people there, and yet he knew that this was not a healthy, vibrant bastion of Christianity. Rather, it was a place where Christians were persecuted, and yet he still wanted to go. He knew it wouldn't be safe. He knew it wouldn't be easy, and yet he knew that people were drowning in their sins, and he desired to throw them the life raft of the Gospel. Paul was not just an apostle in the theological sense, but he was a lover of the people. He loved God, and that's why he did the things that he did, but he also loved people and he didn't want that and he should perish and so he sought them out in Athens and corinth and Ephesus and Philippi and Thessalonica and in Rome and when he got to these places He didn't pander to them when he got to these places he told them the Gospel he told them their problem of sin because you have to start there you have to understand that you have a problem if you're ever going to care about a solution so he told people the problem of sin
and then he introduced Jesus Christ as the means, the means of salvation, the solution to this problem. However, if he had not done this, if he had not told them the truth, he knew that this would just be pandering to them. That would be deadly and self-defeating. Paul was not ashamed of the Gospel because he knew the Gospel was the power by which he could do what he did. And so Paul says, I'm not ashamed of this. I've got nothing but this to offer you. I could speak all day long about all many number of other things, but those things will not help you in the main area in which you need to be helped he says I'm not ashamed he may have been nervous or anxious at times certainly he was persecuted and beaten and shipwrecked and bad things happened to him at times and yet even knowing that those things might be the outcome he would ultimately lose his life in Rome even knowing that those things might be the outcome he said I'm not ashamed here I stand is what Luther would say centuries later it's roughly the same thing I'm not ashamed here I stand. Paul knew that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. He knew that if he was to preach something less than the Gospel of Jesus Christ, if he was to preach something less than that, he would be robbing God of his glory, and he'd be depriving people from what they need the most. In our own day, as we said earlier, the Gospel is increasingly radioactive, as Christians our beliefs are regularly ridiculed or attacked but even if that should increase even should increase tenfold in the time yet to come is the answer to start eliminating those beliefs or watering them down well no and yet that's the trajectory of so much of the modern church the modern church has yet to have at least in our generation a here I stand moment now it may be coming and it may be hardships that bring it about but the modern church has yet to have a here I stand moment. With that said, every day of our life is a here I stand moment in an individual sense. you and I have opportunities to share the Gospel with those who desperately need to hear it.
And if we water it down, if we pander, if we mollycoddle to those who desperately need to hear it, we're not doing any help to the sheep and we're being a detriment to the shepherd. In the past number of years, there's been a deception that Christendom has fallen under where we've danced to the world's tune on any number of different things thinking that God is well-pleased. He's not. What's the course ahead?
What's the course heading for our own church here in Gulfport as we minister to a culture that in the years before us seems to be on a trajectory that's going to make it more difficult to do so? Where do we stand? Well, whatever the specifics look like, whatever the specifics look like, they have to be founded on this one premise. That we're not ashamed. That we're not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
In verse 16, Paul went on to explain why he wasn't ashamed. And again, he declared that the reason he wasn't ashamed is because the Gospel is the power of God into salvation. Now, why do you think he refers to the Gospel in that way? There's a lot of ways you could refer to the Gospel. You could say the Gospel is very helpful to salvation. The Gospel is very important for salvation, you could say.
Well, here's the thing. Yes, the Gospel is helpful. Yes, it is important. Both of those statements are absolutely true. However, there is a key distinction. you and I are not saved because the Gospel is important. you and I are not saved because the Gospel is helpful. Rather, we are saved because when we hear it, the Gospel has the power to cause a change in us that we cannot affect on our own.
The Gospel is the power of God and salvation. God uses the declaration of the Gospel from the lips of people like you and I through his Holy Spirit to change and convert the very heart of those who are spiritually dead. Remember, we've said before, the unbeliever is not sitting there spiritually sleepy. The unbeliever is not sitting there spiritually taking a cat nap. The unbeliever is dead, spiritually flatlining.
The unbeliever is laying down as if in a grave, and he cannot come up of his own accord. So what needs to happen? Well, we've said before, the Holy Spirit needs to change that individual's heart, regenerate the heart of stone, turn it to a heart of flesh to enable that individual to spring to spiritual new life. But what is the means by which the Spirit does that? The proclamation of the Gospel.
The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. You water that down, you do so to your detriment and the detriment of those you're talking to. If you hide the hard edges of sin and death and resurrection and repentance and all those different things and bury it under having your best life now, you'll find a lot of people want their best life now. They want God to be a genie. What they don't want him to be is a savior because they don't think they have anything they need to be saved from.
That is the great hole in the Gospel presentation throughout the 20th and 21st century, at least in the past few decades. We've given people a solution for a problem that we've never explained that they have. Well, Paul explained it. Luther understood it all too well. If there was ever a person who understood the problem of sin, it was Luther. He sweated it out in ways that you and I could probably never even relate to.
He was desperate to find a solution. And for so long, he looked at the works of his own hands and thought, maybe this is the solution. What I do with this, the efforts I go to, the things I say, the steps I walk, the knees I stand on, maybe that's the means by which I have hope. It's not. We're not saved through our works, through our efforts. We're saved through our faith.
And faith comes from hearing and hearing from the Word. You don't dare omit the Word from preaching and teaching and evangelizing and the like. You do so to your own detriment. The Gospel has a power that is unique to the Gospel, above and beyond anything else that we might ever say or teach. When we hear the Gospel, it alone can pierce to the vision of soul and Spirit. It alone can break the devil's hold upon the unregenerate heart.
It can remove veils from the eyes of even the most hardened individuals. It can, it has, it does. There's no other ideology you can have, no other philosophy you can espouse that can do this. Now, if all that's true, spoiler alert, it is. If all that's true, if the Gospel is that powerful, if the Gospel is that powerful, why in the world would we ever subjugate it beneath anything else? Why would we ever think in Christendom that you can build the church by subjugating the Gospel underneath programs and initiatives and smiles and all manner of different things?
You can't. Now, you can have initiatives and programs and the like, but those are to be built on top of the Gospel. You don't sneak the Gospel in like a Trojan horse in those things. This, again, is a key distinction. Paul knew it. Paul knew it, and his advice to us is to understand and accept this as well. Paul was not ashamed, and he wouldn't want us to be ashamed either, but to have this be the tip of the spear as we go out into the fallen world.
All right, let's look at verse 17. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. It's for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it, in the Gospel, in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. For as it is written, the just shall live by faith. Let's stop for a moment and return to our good friend Martin Luther.
As we said at the outset here this morning, Martin Luther really wanted to please God on some level. He wanted to be righteous in God's eyes. And that's a noble objective for him to have and for you and I to have as well. We're called to be righteous. That's the standard by which you can ever hope to step a foot into God's golden shores is to be righteous, to have this righteousness.
That begs the question, however, if righteousness is the means by which God will accept you on that great day,
if righteousness is the ticket that needs to be punched in order to be accepted into God's kingdom, if righteousness is the hinge on which your salvation turns, then the question I have for you this morning is, how do you attain it? If you believe that you need to be right in God's eyes in order to dwell with God forever, which seems like a pretty reasonable concept, if you think you need to be right in God's eyes in order for Him to want you on His golden chores for all of eternity, how are you going to get right with Him?
Well, again, for most people, across the scope of mankind, if we were knocking on doors in our own community, we would find this to be true. Most people think that they'll get right by God by doing enough good deeds to offset their bad ones. That if I just do enough, if I'm nicer to the neighbor, if I don't kick my dog, if I help old ladies across the street, if I do all those things and they stack up, then God will have to let me in.
What does that make salvation? It makes it a debt that God owes you. Well, that's not the Gospel. The Gospel is not about a debt God owes you. It's about grace. Dear heavens, grace is the singular means by which we're saved. Grace through faith. Righteousness comes not through your own efforts to attain it, not by doing 100,000 good deeds, not by doing what Luther did and scrubbing every pot and washing every floor and climbing up every step.
It comes through our faith. The just shall live by faith is what verse 17 says. And that's the verse that struck Luther between the eyes. The just shall live by faith. The just shall live by faith. In that moment, it's like the shackles broke off of Luther because for the longest time he thought to be just and righteous and the like was on the basis of the things that you do. You've got to bridge the gap through your efforts.
You know, these verses, you don't need te absolvo to be said by some father confessor in a booth in order to feel a little bit forgiven for the next five minutes. What you need to know is that you have forgiveness that is ongoing and perpetual because it's not bought through your works but through the blood of Jesus Christ on Calvary. There's nothing you can add to that and there's nothing that can be taken away from that. Those who have this manner of faith, even if they might stumble and fall at some time in the future, can still have security. Why? Because their salvation never hinged on their own works. If you think your salvation hinges on your works, you'll go through life a very sad individual. Why is that? Because you'll mess up. And you'll say, well, maybe God doesn't love me anymore. I did a lot of good things last week. I hope God paid attention then. I hope he was writing that down. But I really messed up today. I wonder if he still loves me today. That was what plagued Luther. We live in a culture that's seared in its conscience that might not even think that way. But if they did, they would come to the same point and say, if I've been trusting and doing things to appease God, it can't possibly work. Because for all the ways in which I might try to serve him, I will fail him as well. The only alternative Luther saw before he was saved was to keep trying harder. And so that's what he did. He kept trying harder.
He thought if he was ever to be justified, he needed to be justifiable. You understand that? That's the distinction, not only to Luther's bad theology at that time, but to Roman Catholic theology and much theology, arminian theology in the world around us. The belief that in order to be justified, you need to be justifiable. Let me ask you this. Was the thief on the cross that Jesus said, truly you'll be with me in paradise this day, was he justifiable on the basis of the things that he did? Good heavens, no. His own people were thrilled to be done with him. They nailed him to a cross. He had nothing to the cross he could bring. How about Paul when he was solitarsis? Was he justifiable when he was breathing threats and murder against Christians? No. But out of God's sovereign love, while he was yet sinner, Christ died for him. You're not justified because you are justifiable. Luther, again, he thought that's the way that it works and because he would sweep every floor and wash every pan and the like He once made this statement he says look if any monk was ever going to get to heaven on the basis of his monkery he says it would have been me if any monk was ever going to get to heaven on the basis of the things that he did it would have been me but in 1519 Luther encountered the words from today's passage the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written
the just shall live by faith. A spiritual light bulb went on in Luther's heart and mind. At that point, he realized that the righteousness of God is not what we offer to him to placate him, but it's something that's given to us. The righteousness that we desperately need is not something that we just heave onto God's altar and hope it's sufficient. Rather, the righteousness is something that's granted to us. It's something that's given to us. And that was a game changer for Luther.
Luther began to understand this about what happened on Calvary. He realized that on Calvary, that the sins of Luther and you and I and all who believe were placed upon Christ. All the bad things you've done, past, present, and future, were placed upon Jesus on the cross. And at that same time, a second imputation occurred. Not only was our sins placed upon him, but his righteousness was granted to us. The day that you stand before God, it's coming.
It's never been closer than it is today. The day you stand before God is coming. On what basis will you stand? If someone was to stop you at the gates of heaven, so to speak, this isn't going to work this way, but if someone were to stop you and ask you, on what basis do you deserve to enter into this holy and golden estate? What would you answer? Well, the answer many folks have is on the basis of our works.
If someone is ever to stop and ask you, why do you deserve to get into heaven? It's a trick question, because you don't. you and I do not deserve heaven. We do not deserve salvation. But we have received grace and so if you ever stopped and asked by what means you hope to get into God's golden shores and enter in through those pearly gates you point to the one on the throne you say because of him I do not enter in on the basis of my works and righteousness and the things I have done I enter in because the white robe of the son's righteousness Christ's righteousness has been granted to me and when the father looks at me he doesn't see me through the lens of what I've done or haven't done, he sees me through the work of his own son on the cross. It's by his righteousness I'm saved. When Luther embraced that, when he embraced that understanding, it's as if the shackles broke off, the veils came down. And again, that's why he wrote these words. He said, meditating day and night, I gave heed to these words. The righteousness of God's revealed that He who through faith is righteous shall live. It's then that I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives as a gift of God, namely through our faith.
It's at this point that Luther got it. It's at this point that he understood it. It's at this point he accepted it. And most scholars believe at this point in 1519, it's at this point he was converted. Because he finally understood it wasn't about Luther. It was all about Christ. This morning, with that thought in mind, let me offer some closing exhortation and encouragement. In a room of this size, it goes without saying, not everyone here has faith in Christ.
Throughout our community, not everyone in the community around us has what we would call a saving relationship with their maker. And yet, as I said earlier, most everyone, if you go knocking on the doors, thinks they're in good shape. And that's because they trust in the things that they've done. And they say, you know, as long as I'm better than the guy down the street, as long as I'm better than my neighbor who lets their dog wander all over my property, as long as I'm better than that guy or that guy or Hitler or whoever, as long as I'm better than those who are the worst of the worst, God's going to smile upon me. Most everyone thinks that they're saved on this basis.
Well, to that, if that's where you're at this morning,
if that's what you or a loved one is at in your thinking, martin Luther's voice is practically screaming from a grave in Europe this morning to say this. It doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way, and it never has. If you try to stand before God on some day in the future when God should call you to himself to appear, if you should try to stand before God on the basis of the things that you've done and hope and trust that's enough, as the old saying goes, at that moment you will melt.
Like a wax figurine in front of a blast furnace. That's what it's like to stand before God apart from the white robe of righteousness that is granted to us through faith in Christ. Man-made righteousness, it's not the standard to shoot for. So stop shooting for it if you are. Man-made righteousness is not the standard. That's not the dress code of heaven. The dress code of heaven is the white robe of Christ's righteousness.
If you got that this morning theologically, congratulations. That's a good place to start. Do you trust it? However, do you trust it? Do you share it? Do you preach, teach with folks this same message, a message of grace? This morning, for some of us, maybe our problem is that we have done certain things in our life that are just so bad that we've messed up in such significant ways that even though we hear these words of forgiveness, that we think, well, it might not apply to me.
Well, to you, I would say this. King David sinned horribly. King David sinned horribly. Elijah questioned God's plan. Peter. He denied Jesus three times. Guess what? Every last one of them is in heaven now. As I said this morning, our future is not based or predicated on our sinlessness. It's predicated and based on Christ. When you mess up, it's not the end of the road. Even if you're living a life this week where you've gone off the rails in recent days, you're never so far gone that the captain of our salvation cannot rescue you. This morning, today, tomorrow, on into the future, the everlasting arms of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, they're still long enough.
They're still long enough to reel you in and to reel in your loved ones. God is not only powerful to save, but he wants to. So this morning, the everlasting arms of Christ, they're still long enough to reel you in, to hold you close to himself. This morning, that's Christ's invitation to you and to your loved ones. This morning, his arms are open wide, no matter who you are, no matter what you've done.
So stop holding on to either your fears or your anxieties or your works. Stop holding on to these things. Let them go. Turn to Christ. Let's pray.
Continue the verse-by-verse series.
