Paul the apostle wrote a long letter to the church at Rome in the first century. What is amazing about this author, is that not too many years earlier, he was ravaging the church, attempting to crush it in its infancy.
His purpose for writing this letter is found in 1:16-17; “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 in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” (ESV).
Unfortunately over time this message became muddied and/or lost for generations until the 14th and 15th centuries, when some voices out of the wilderness cried, “This is the way!” These people, John Wycliffe and Jan Huss among others, were hunted and killed for gifted attempts to lead their fellows out of the spiritual wilderness.
Other men like William Tyndale, Ulrich Zwingli, John Calvin and Martin Luther also cried out, responding to God’s call, and they did not fail or falter. “Here is the way in which you should go…” God seemed to say, and they did.
We are again in a time when there seems to be confusion as to the message of the Bible and how one is accepted by God. Increasingly today, many are teaching that there are many roads, paths or ways to heaven and eternal life with God. But the Bible tells us of only one, “I am the way and the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6, ESV). This should eliminate any confusion, but in our day and age, people are trying to get to God in other ways than that which is clearly laid out in the Bible.
God is not the author of confusion but of perfect clarity. It is us that have muddied that message by and through our sin. We appear to be reliving the book of Judges, where everyone does right in their own eyes. But there are many voices crying out to be saved and Christians are the only ones with the answer that the world needs.
And God’s gospel is powerful unto salvation and we don’t have to do anything to earn it for the price would be our own blood, and we still would fall far short of what God requires. So God took care of it on our behalf.
The answer which we will see in the next few weeks is that God gave the gospel in the person of His Son to do for us what we could not possibly do for ourselves. He lived a perfect life and then died the death we deserve. This, believe it or not, is the righteousness of God in action.
Be open to the Biblical righteousness of God and then let Him do His work on your behalf. It is for His glory and your eternal joy.