“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”. (Romans 1:16, 17)
He was ready, ready to preach the Gospel of Christ to those at Rome. It had been taught to him, not by men but by the revelation of Christ Himself (Gal 1: 11, 12) and he was willing to bear all the reproaches that come with the preaching of it. He suffered and bore those reproaches (Acts 9: 16) after Jesus called him on the road to Damascus, faithfully preaching the gospel, what a great man of God. It is of the greatest importance that we know what the True Gospel is and that we embrace that Gospel alone, just as Paul did!
Throughout all of Paul’s epistles the Gospel is preached but most thoroughly in the book of Romans and the book of Galatians. It is what the Old Testament pointed to, the remedy for the sin of God’s people, their true deliverance, and their redemption. And so, by the power of the Holy Spirit who inspired them we too come to know, as believers, the Truth of the Gospel of Christ and can be ready to ‘give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear”. (1 Peter 3:15)
We know that the righteousness of God is revealed to those who believe (Romans 1:17) by the faith that is given to us, but it is not God’s essential righteousness that is revealed, it is the justifying righteousness that we lay hold of by that faith, I believe. It is the righteousness of Christ that is imputed to us, that righteousness by which we are justified in the sight of God that is revealed to us in the Gospel of Christ and is in direct opposition to the righteousness of men. This is what Christian faith; the Gospel is all about….how is a sinner justified before God. "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief" (1 Ti 1:15) The message that Paul gives us, the Gospel, is how Christ Jesus saved His people from their sins.
Justified=to be put right with God, a simple explanation for an astounding Truth. How am I, a sinner put right with God? Can I work my way right with God through my deeds? So many think that we can, that we can do good works and that those works merit us something in God’s eyes or they may think, at the very least, that we must add them to the work of Christ for His work to be of any affect on our behalf in our redemption. We can, of course, find our answers in Scripture alone, for as Paul said in Galatians:
“As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than you have received, let him be accursed” (Galatians 1:9)
What a privilege to look into the very Word of God and to be assured that we believe in the only ONE gospel.
to be continued......
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