Opening Prayer
Lord, open our eyes to see what You have given us in Your Gospel. Amen.
Text: Romans 1:16–17
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. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
Devotion
Undoubtedly we are coming to a time when the multitude of the world and its wise men will oppress the Church and despise the Gospel as never before, so that confessing the faith will really bring shame. Then we will learn to understand Paul’s words in Romans 10: “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation.” Besides, it is always true, that we are prone to be ashamed of the Gospel because it destroys all our honor, and Christ with His kingdom is not at all glorious to the world, but a stumbling block to the Jews, and to the Greeks foolishness. See, then “God’s righteousness” becomes a serious matter for us. If we understand that it is a matter of eternal life or eternal death, and that only the Gospel can save our soul, then we overcome the shame and consider it an honor to be despised with Christ.
For only the righteous can stand before the righteous God: how can we who are unrighteous get righteousness that avails before Him? The world says, “There’s no problem. If I do everything the best I can, He doesn’t require more. It’s foolish to worry about your sin, if you just try to do your best.” Then Paul and Peter are fools for being so zealous for others to be able to stand before God. Yes, what shall we say then about God’s own Son who suffered so much and died such a bitter death to create righteousness for us? There is something to what Paul once said that “the foolishness of God is wiser than men.”
Righteousness which avails before God comes not from our works, but it is from faith. It is wholly and completely a righteousness of faith. It is nothing other than the perfect work of Jesus Christ which He accomplished by His obedience of faith and which becomes our own when we believe. It is not God’s demand on us, but God’s gift to us. Because in every respect it is from faith and is not found except where there is faith. It completely depends on faith and not on works. It belongs to the revelation of faith and not of the Law: So the Apostle calls it the “righteousness of God from faith.” Next, it is “to faith.” It is given “to faith,” to the believer by the light and teaching of the Gospel: the Word works faith in the heart, faith which accepts Christ with His righteousness by which one is justified and stands before God. Luther tells us that he had struggled for a long time to become righteous. He had fasted, prayed, and nearly killed himself to find peace, but in vain. Then God’s Spirit explained to his soul this passage: “The just shall live by faith,” and then he felt renewed and made alive. Then he understood that the righteousness that avails before God is given by grace in Christ and counted freely to all poor sinners who believe, so the one and only righteousness is “from faith to faith.” “Then I felt immediately that I was born anew and had found an open door to paradise, and now I considered the dear Holy Scriptures with completely different eyes than before. And while before I had actually hated the little term ‘God’s righteousness’, now it became my most glorious, dearest, and most comforting word, and this passage in St. Paul indeed became to me the real gate to paradise.” But Luther, who rightly enough is really the world’s greatest man since the days of the Apostles, of course, is just worthless to the wise people of our time!
Closing Prayer
God, help us to know sin and righteousness, death and life. God, help us to believe in truth, so that we never are ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. Amen.
Hymn
Come, Holy Ghost, and witness bear
That I with Christ new life shall share,
And that I know no other name
To save my soul from guilt and shame.
O Counselor of truth and light,
Teach me to know my Lord aright,
That from the way of faith I may
In sunless vales of death not stray.
Kingo: The day of Pentecost is here L 421:3-4 tr. J. C. Aaberg in Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark, alt.;
tune: Her kommer dine arme (ELH 144); alternate hymn: Come, Holy Ghost, God and Lord ELH 2:3