Princeton Presbyterian Church

Princeton Presbyterian Church (EPC) Sermon # 1660

November 10, 2024

Romans 1.16-17       Click here for audio worship.

Dr. Ed Pettus

(This is an extended outline, not a verbatim transcript.)

 

“Not Ashamed”

 

¹⁶For 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. ¹⁷For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

 

• Paul’s Desire to Visit

 

Paul begins this section of the opening chapter of Romans with his desire to see the believers in Rome. In verses 8-15 he expresses his gratitude for their faithfulness that has become known everywhere. What a great testimony for a church to have their faith known throughout a region. “Yeah, we know those people, they are faithful to their God.” For those who are somewhat level headed, they see faithful Christians and at least respect that we are faithful. For others, not as level headed, they see the faithful as buffoons, perhaps I should say “living in a fantasy world”. But we know who truly lives in a fantasy land. The foolishness of the world is a deceptive force that blinds the eyes of unrepentant sinners.

Paul prays for the believing community and desires to be with them at some time. It is an important lesson here as to Paul’s desire, why he wants to come visit – JB Phillips renders it this way, “I want to bring you some spiritual strength, and that will mean that I shall be strengthened by you, each of us helped by the other’s faith” (Romans 1.11-12). This is crucial for us to understand, that we strengthen one another when we are together in faith. It is not a one way street, even for Paul the great apostle, because he knew that being among the faithful is an encouragement to both teacher and student, preacher and congregant, young and old. One of the important reasons we are to not forsake the gathering together is for our edification in the Holy Spirit that we share in our hearts. People who claim they do not need to come to worship because they can get the same benefit watching something on television are missing that point. Now, we understand that sometimes in life we cannot be among the faithful in person. Shut in, sick, snowed in, there are times when we might have to be away from in house gatherings. But, if able, come together. Do not forsake the assembly (Hebrews 10.25).

Paul’s greatest desire was to preach the gospel everywhere and to all people. He says, “I feel myself under a sort of universal obligation, I owe something to all men, from cultured Greek to ignorant savage. That is why I want, as far as my ability will carry me, to preach the Gospel to you who live in Rome as well” (Romans 1.14-15, JB Phillips). And this desire to visit and to preach the gospel leads us into our reading for today… “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel. I see it as the very power of God working for the salvation of everyone who believes it, both Jew and Greek. I see in it God’s plan for imparting righteousness to men, a process begun and continued by their faith. For, as the scripture says: ‘The just shall live by faith’” (Romans 1.16-17, JB Phillips).

 

• Not Ashamed

 

What does it mean to not be ashamed? Not afraid, not timid in belief, not concerned with offending, no way compromising in what some might perceive as the hard edges of the gospel. We cannot abandon the language of Scripture. Sin is sin. Sin is real. Total depravity is our nature. We are hopeless without Jesus Christ. Repentance is necessary. Life must be changed by the power of the gospel for salvation. Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Christ. These and other truths cannot be abandoned for the sake of being nice or never offending anyone. These and other truths cannot be compromised in the hope that we get people into the church and then pull a bait and switch. We must be true to the gospel from beginning to end.

 

Jesus calls us to give ourselves over completely to the gospel. I am not ashamed of the gospel means that we are willing to walk by faith, able to defend our hope, and able to articulate that hope in Christ. I’ve spoken before about the capacity we all have to tell our story of faith. Every person who believes in Jesus has their own unique story to tell. Some might be more dramatic than others, but that does not diminish your story or my story because our stories are God’s story in our lives. Some people will never be able to relate to the dramatic story of strung out on drugs and Jesus brought me out of the pit, but they might relate to what you consider a boring gradual realization that Jesus is real and Lord and Savior. We look at those “thrown off your horse by a bright light” stories with a wow factor, but that is not the only way God works His grace in people’s lives. Your story might touch another in a way that the “wow” stories may not.

It can be as simple as “Jesus saved me from my sin, from myself.” That might be as far as your gospel message goes and it is enough! Take what God has given you and trust that He will work His grace through you. This is my story and I am not ashamed.

Shame leads to compromise and especially compromise in difficult times, in times when people are less willing to hear the truth of Scripture. Many seek to make the gospel more palatable to the masses by watering down the issues of sin and repentance. Their so-called gospel become a psychological fallacy rather than biblical doctrine. The real deception is not just for the hearer, but also for the one who has weakened the gospel to cheap grace and shallow truth.

2 Timothy 4.1-4 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: ²preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching. ³For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, ⁴and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

 

Paul’s warning is to the church itself:

1. People will depart from the faith.

2. Difficult times will come.

3. People in the church will not endure sound teaching.

 

We are called to never compromise the gospel for the sake of those itching ears, but to hold fast to the truth. The compromise comes when leaders begin to believe that we have to soften the message so that it is comfortable to the ear. “Jesus is your friend. Don’t worry about your mistakes or wrong turns in life.” God forbid they use the biblical word sin or wretched sinner or depraved or unholy or unrighteousness. No, just come to Jesus and become buddies. Don’t worry about those Old Testament commandments, the “Thou shalt nots”. Listen, people will be slaves to their passions. That is a key word in this 2 Timothy passage, “passions”. Passions are led by the flesh and not the Spirit. Passions are those things that keep us from admitting our sinful nature. Passions enslave us until God works His Spirit in our hearts to set us free by His grace and the atonement wrought by Jesus on the cross. You see, people don’t want to accept their sinfulness or the fact that there was blood shed for the forgiveness of sin. That is foolish to them, ugly to them, and the gravest horror to them is that it is offensive! We offend with the gospel when we speak of sin and repentance. We offend when we claim that Jesus is the only way of salvation. We offend when we point people to the Word of God, not just because we offend, but because the message we have been given is offensive to their precious sensitivities.

So we must examine what compromises have been made in the preaching of the gospel. Have we ourselves made any compromises? Have certain sectors of the church watered down the gospel for the sake of entertainment rather than worship in Spirit and Truth? The answer is yes. But let me reiterate that we must first examine ourselves on this matter. Is our doctrine sound, solid, reformed, and true to what the Bible reveals to us?

 

• Power of God

 

The gospel is the power of God. Our stories, our gospel stories, by virtue of having been touched by the gospel, are the power of God. Paul speaks throughout the book of Romans of the power of the gospel. Now that power is what often offends because the gospel exposes sin, shines a light on the darkness, and convicts our hearts. That very power is by the grace of God, in the work of God alone, to the glory of God, not for our sake but for God’s holy name.

1 Corinthians 1.18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

I am not ashamed because I live by the power of God, in the power of God, which is the Word of God and the Spirit of God and the Gospel of God. The word for power in these passages is the word from which we get the English word dynamite. The power of God is explosive! There’s a guy on YouTube who entertains things that can be done in better ways. He begins nearly every video with a statement like, “You mean I’ve been doing this thing this way for forty years and I could have been doing this instead?” “Ain’t no way!” Then he will demonstrate something and will often make the motion and sound of his head exploding. That is something close to what happens in the power of God. Our heads and our hearts are exploding with the grace of God so that we are born again in such a way that we see all things new! Boom!

 

We are not ashamed because we live by the power of God

 

• Righteousness of God

 

Paul writes that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel. God’s righteousness has been imputed or credited to those whom God has chosen through Christ’s death and resurrection. It is not our own righteousness but the righteousness of Christ. This is the righteousness that leads to our doctrine of justification. God’s righteousness exposes our sin and through the work of Jesus Christ that sin is forgiven and we are counted as righteous in the sight of God. He sees us through the lens of Christ and through the cross of Christ. It is God who justifies us in Christ, nothing that we have done, only in and through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

 

Paul expounds on this point in Romans 3.21-26, But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—²²the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. ²⁶It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

 

God is the just and the justifier! In the gospel God has shown His righteousness.

 

We are not ashamed because we live in the righteousness of God.

 

• Live by Faith

 

The righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith. It is revealed from the faith of God for our faithfulness given as gift in order that we might live by faith. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2.8). We are not ashamed because we live by faith in God. And as I like to think about it, we live by the faith of Jesus Christ. His righteousness and His faith have been imputed to us. Galatians 2.20 is one of my favorite verses on this topic. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” That is a perfectly good rendering of the Greek, but I also like the King James translation on this verse, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” If we look closely we see that the modern versions all speak of living by faith in the Son of God and the KJV speaks of living by the faith of the Son of God. Either way, it is the gift of faith that is important for even if I speak of living by faith in Christ it is the faith given to me. But what a wonderful thought to consider living by Christ’s faith. It is similar to living by or because of the righteousness of Christ.

Paul sums up this gospel message to Timothy, “⁸Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord... ⁹who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, ¹⁰and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel...But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me” (2 Timothy 1.8-10, 12).

 

We are not ashamed of the gospel. Therefore, we will not compromise the gospel. We will not diminish the gospel. We will not water down the gospel. We will not shy away from the gospel. We will not cheapen the gospel. We will live in the gospel that is the power of God and the righteousness of God and the faithfulness of God. For the righteous shall live by faith. Not ashamed. Amen.