Limapela Education Project
Faith in Action
This project aims to provide quality education to children in Zambia's Copperbelt Province.
'How can I get right with God?' In his third sermon on Paul's letter to the Romans, Rob Yule examines this momentous question which people burdened by moral failure and a guilty conscience have struggled with throughout history. Stating his central theme, Paul's answer is that the Christian message announces 'God's way of righting wrong', making people right with himself, not through our religious quest or moral striving, but through faith in Jesus Christ. Rob preached this message at Greyfriars' Classical Service on 25 February 2007.
'How can I get right with God?' At the end of the nineteenth century a well–known man was struggling with this question. He was a famous writer. His great novels superbly described the society of his day, depicting with great skill the sweep of events, and with great subtlety the feelings and relationships of people. He was an aristocrat, a landowner, a father of a large family. He seemed to have everything the world had to offer.
Yet Leo Tolstoy was desperately unhappy. He struggled with his sensuality. His marriage was full of conflicts and jealousies, all described in great detail in his and his wife's diaries – the best-documented domestic quarrel in history! He tried all sorts of things to get his life right. He became a vegetarian. He gave his lands to his peasants. He wrote moralistic essays. He made vows to curb his lust. Finally he left home to become a poor holy man – a kind-of elderly Russian hippie. He collapsed and died soon after at the local railway station, in a blaze of publicity – all caught on some of the world's earliest newsreel photographs!
Only God knows the secrets of the heart. But as far as I can tell from his biography, Tolstoy never found the answer to the question, 'How can I get right with God?' Tolstoy tried the official church of his day, but gave up, misunderstood, estranged, excommunicated. The religious rituals, the candles, the icons, the archaic services, never answered for him this most important question in the world: 'How can I get right with God?'
The central theme of Paul's letter to the Romans is 'the gospel', the good news of how God has answered this question for us. The gospel tells what God has done through Jesus Christ to restore the broken relationship between himself and the human race.
The Greek word for 'gospel', evangelion – from which we get 'evangelism' and 'evangelical'– was used in the ancient world to describe a herald's announcement of glad news of victory in war or release from oppression. It was used in the Septuagint – the Greek translation of the Old Testament – for Isaiah's prophecies proclaiming Zion's future release from exile. 'How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, ... who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!" ' (Isaiah 52:7). 'The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners.' (Isaiah 61:1).
The gospel, the Christian message of joyful liberation, announces the release of men and women from sin and death through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
For Paul, the gospel was a matter of personal experience not of abstract theory. 'It is the power (dunamis, 'dynamic') of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.' (1:16).
Paul could testify that the gospel was effective in his own life. 'I am not ashamed of the gospel' (1:16a). Paul had been brought up a scrupulously observant Orthodox Jew. He had attempted to live by keeping the Torah as a fastidious, even fanatical, Pharisee. His religious zeal was similar to Tolstoy's moral struggle. He tells us in his letter to the Philippians that it didn't make him right with God, give him inner peace, or help him live a moral life. After Jesus changed his life in the vision on the road to Damascus, he counted all his upbringing and religious striving as so much rubbish compared to the worth of knowing Jesus and suffering for him (Philippians 3:4–11). Through Jesus Christ he was made right with God, gained peace with God, and received the power to live a life pleasing to God.
Paul could confirm that the gospel was effective in the lives of others. 'It is the power of God for salvation' (1:16b). For nearly twenty years in his missionary preaching – in Damascus, in Antioch, in Ephesus, in Corinth – Paul had seen how effective the gospel is in changing people's lives, whether they were religious people or irreligious people, pious Jews or pagan Greeks. In synagogue communities Paul had seen the gospel set Jews free from religious pride and legalism. In town halls and market places he had seen Gentiles freed from immorality and debauchery. The gospel can change both churched people and unchurched people. It's God's dynamic means for changing human lives.
The gospel reveals 'the righteousness of God' (1:17). It shows 'how God puts people right with himself' – as the Good News Bible translates this phrase. The gospel provides the answer to the question that tormented Tolstoy, 'How can I get right with God?'
Early in the 16th century, another man with a tormented conscience, grappling with this text in Romans, discovered the right answer to the question, 'How can I get right with God?' The man's name was Martin Luther. He was an Augustinian monk. In 1513, beginning a course of lectures on Romans at the University of Wittenberg in Germany, he struggled to understand this passage and so find out how he could get right with God. His monastic devotion didn't answer this question. Personal discipline and ascetic practices couldn't give his conscience peace.
'As a monk I led an irreproachable life,' Luther says. 'Nevertheless I felt I was a sinner before God. My conscience was restless, and I could not depend on God being propitiated by my satisfactions.'
Luther struggled to clarify what this phrase 'the righteousness of God' meant. How could 'the righteousness of God' save a sinner? Wasn't it God's righteousness that exposed unrighteousness and condemned sinners? 'I hated that word “righteousness of God”,' he says, 'because in accordance with the usage and custom of the doctors [the medieval theologians] I had been taught to understand it philosophically as meaning . . . the formal or active righteousness according to which God . . . punishes sinners.'
'Then, finally,' Luther tells us, 'God had mercy on me, and I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that gift of God by which a righteous man lives, namely, faith, and that ... the merciful God justifies us by faith. Now I felt as though I had been reborn altogether and had entered Paradise.... My mind ran through the Scriptures, as far as I was able to recollect them, seeking analogies in other phrases, such as the work of God, by which he makes us strong, the wisdom of God, by which he makes us wise, the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.' (Quoted in Hans J. Hillerbrand, The Reformation in its Own Words [London, SCM Press, 1964], p. 27).
Joy flooded Luther's heart as he realised that 'the righteousness of God' is a phrase describing how God makes wrong people right with himself, calling forth their response of faith and gratitude. The gospel shows us God's way of righting wrong.
The letter to the Romans outlines two ways – a wrong way and a right way – to get right with God. Tolstoy tried the wrong way. Luther found the right way.
The wrong way to get right with God is the way of religion and ethics, the way of striving and effort. Paul describes it in Romans 3 & 4 as the way of 'works', in Romans 5 & 6 as the way of 'death', and in Romans 7 & 8 as the way of 'the flesh'. It is based on keeping the commandments. It is our human search for God.
The gospel is the right way to get right with God. It is God's way of putting us right with himself. It is the way of revelation and faith, the way of salvation and effectiveness. Paul describes it in Romans 3 & 4 as the way of 'faith', in Romans 5 & 6 as the way of 'life', and in Romans 7 & 8 as the way of 'the Spirit'. It is based on believing in Christ; it is God's divine search for us.
In his discussion of the world's religions Karl Barth illustrates these two contrasting ways of salvation. The common factor in the world's religions is that they depend on human effort. Barth compares them to a 'she–monkey, to which the young must still cling even while they are carried.' By contrast, the gospel of grace is like the way a cat carries its young. As Barth says, 'the soul . . . does not need to make any effort, because God leads it to salvation in the same way as a cat carries its kitten.' God, like a mother cat, saves us by grace, not by our own efforts. (Church Dogmatics, I.2, [Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 1956], p. 342).
The way of religion doesn't work. To tell a person to get right with God by keeping commandments, by living a good life, by trying to be better, is to cause failure and despair. The central message of Romans is that the way to get right with God is not by trying to be better, but by believing in God's appointed Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Paul says the righteousness of God is 'revealed through faith' (1:17). The gospel is the way of faith or trust. Faith is spelt F-A-I-T-H: 'Forsaking All I Trust Him.' Faith is the hardest lesson for human beings to learn. In order to be saved, to get right with God, we must not only turn from our badness but stop trusting in our goodness. This is why good people find it harder to humble themselves and become Christians than bad people do. It isn't by our own moral efforts that we are saved, but by trusting what God has done to make us right with himself through his Son Jesus Christ.
Rob Yule, 25 February 2007
© 2007, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church
