Romans 1:17
I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. In it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith” [Hab. 2:4].
The Righteousness of God is Revealed
We have already covered v. 16, but I included it here for context.
Verse 17 begins with “In [the Gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.” We read this, but we don't think much about it. We believe that we understand the righteousness that comes through faith, but many of us don't. Even those who do still miss how powerful a statement this is that Paul makes. This is a world changer. If what he is saying is true, then God has invaded the earth and made his will known with finality.
We have seen in the previous sections that the Jews trusted in the Law, but they did not trust in the Law by obeying it. They believed that because they were circumcised, kept the Sabbath, and did some other things that marked them as Jews, they were of the elect and they were righteous. Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho, a Jew, written around a century after Paul's letter to the Romans, tells us that the Jews believed this way about the Law. It explains why Paul so confidently accuses these Jews of violating the Law in numerous areas (2:1ff). They weren't all that worried about obeying it. In a sense, as long as they were circumcised, they were “once saved, always saved.”
Thus, the Jews, in this confidence about the Law, had simply rejected Paul's Gospel. But here he makes an announcement that makes it impossible to ignore his Gospel.
Though the Jews made their boast in the Law and were satisfied with that, they did honor the deeply righteous in the same way that Catholics honor their saints and Protestants our missionaries. Going “all the way for God” is a good thing to all of us; it's just that not all of us are up to it. There were some people doing it in the first century, though: the Christians. In Paul's Gospel the righteousness of God was being revealed from faith to faith.
When Martin Luther wrote his introduction to the New Testament, he made it clear that it is important to define terminology, such as what justification, or righteousness, means. He is correct in that it is important, but I believe he was quite incorrect in his definitions. He created very western definition of these terms, so that justification and righteousness are like legal terms that have to do with being vindicated. As modern charismatics like to put it, it means “right standing with God.”
I do not believe this is an accurate definition, and I don't believe the Scriptures work if you use that definition. Here Paul tells us that the righteousness of God is being revealed. In what way being revealed? Being revealed means that it's being seen by people. Paul says that the righteousness that his Gospel produces can be seen. The apostle John certainly sees it this way. He writes, “Little children, let no one deceive you. He that does righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous” (1 Jn. 3:7). If being righteous means right standing with God, then John says the only way you will have it by doing righteousness. Clearly, Paul means the same thing, because the righteousness his Gospel produces can be “revealed.”
I don't mean to jump the gun on what will be explained later in Romans, but Paul clearly had a real righteousness in mind. In Romans 7, as we will see when we get there, Paul explains that the problem with the Law is not a lack in the Law itself, but in us. We are unable to keep the Law. This is so sad a situation that towards the end of that chapter, Paul has to cry out, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?!” The answer he gives is Christ. How does Christ deliver us?
What the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. (Rom. 8:3-4)
It is important to remember that Paul's righteousness is one that is acted out. It is not just positional. It is positional. It is an imputed righteousness, but it is also imparted. If it is not imparted, then neither is it imputed. Those who practice the works of the flesh will not inherit the kingdom of God (Gal. 5:19-21). No immoral man has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God (Eph. 5:5). And as John has told us already, it is the man who does righteousness who is righteous as Christ is righteous. The one who says he knows God but doesn't keep his commandments—is a liar (1 Jn. 2:4).
This is what gives Romans 1:17 its great power. The righteousness of God has been revealed by faith and from faith to faith. What the Law wasn't doing, faith in Christ was doing. So it didn't matter to Paul what was being said about him (see the commentary on Rom. 1:16). He wasn't ashamed of what he was preaching, because it worked! The righteousness of God was being revealed in his Gospel. This was his confidence and his justification, and in the end he knew it would silence all his critics. This is why he told the Corinthians, “You are our letters, written in our hearts, known and read of all men, evidently declared to be the letter of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God” (2 Cor. 3:2-3). Of the Thessalonians he said, “In every place your faith toward God is spoken of, so that we do not need to say anything, for they themselves declare what kind of entrance we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thess. 1:8-9). Paul depended on the power of his Gospel to produce a visible salvation in order to silence all critics. Again, John agrees: “In this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: whoever does not do righteousness is not of God, nor he that does not love his brother” (1 Jn. 3:10). The world is watching, and the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit will give them something to see (Jn. 13:34,35).
The Righteous Shall Live by Faith
Paul says that the righteousness that his Gospel produces proves the Scripture that the just will live by faith. His point is that the Law will not produce righteousness. Because of our flesh, we are too weak to live righteously just because the Law tells us to. But faith in Christ not only will produce righteousness, but he's telling us that it is producing righteousness that is being “revealed”; it can be seen. Paul says Habakkuk knew this and declared it long ago. The righteous will not live by something else; they will live by faith. Faith is what empowers them through the Spirit of God.
HomeCommentary Section
