Clearly, the Gospel encompasses the whole plan of salvation as revealed from Genesis to Revelation.
Long before Luther, the Apostle Paul was changed by the power of this Gospel. And so he writes: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth; to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith" (Rom. 1:16, 17). This power of the Gospel permeated Paul's writings, e.g., "For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God" (1 Cor. 1:17-18); The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know . . . what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places" ( Eph. 1:17-19). Martin Luther only rediscovered what the Apostle Paul experienced and wrote about.
It behooves us to understand why Paul wrote as he did. First, we must recall what and who Paul was before he wrote these words. He was very much like the religious establishment before the Reformation, smug and content in his own righteousness and good works. Listen to how he once boasted: "Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinks that he has whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; Concerning zeal, persecuting the church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless" (Phil. 3:4-6). Listen to how he described his own people: "For I bear them record that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God" (Rom. 10:2-3).
Well, what happened? Paul came under the power of the Gospel, the Word of God, a power he describes in Heb. 4:12: "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." The Gospel, the Word of God, can bring real change into human life. The Gospel is that powerful. It is more powerful than any two-edged sword. It is a spiritual sword that comes with a power that destroys pride and arrogance. No part of human life is invincible in the face of its attack. Bones and marrow fall apart as the power of God comes into the soul. Thoughts and intentions are scrutinized and laid bare, and everything we are and hope to be is brought before the bar of God's judgment by the devastating power of the Gospel. That's what happened to Paul on the road to Damascus. He came face to face with the Lord Jesus Christ. The verse that calls the Word of God living and active and sharper than a two-edged sword occurs in a book which begins by declaring that God, who spoke in the past by the prophets, now speaks by means of His Son who is none other than the Christ (Heb. 1:2).
The vision of Christ that we find in the last book of the Bible brings the power of the Gospel, the Word of God, in connection with Christ as well. Here Jesus is pictured on a white horse and the Word that comes out of His mouth is like a sharp sword: "And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. . . .And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, with which to smite the nations . . ." (Rev. 19:13, 15). The Word of God is the Word of Christ. Again, it was the power of this Word, the Word of Christ that confronted Paul on the road to Damascus. What was the result? Hear Paul tell it: "But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ. And be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith" (Phil. 3:7-9); ". . . and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).
The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation: "For therein [in the Gospel] is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith"-the righteousness of God that comes and stays by faith, and by which the just shall be saved. What did this mean to the apostle Paul and to Martin Luther who rediscovered it? Now let me tell you about Martin Luther and how he rediscovered what the apostle Paul knew and experienced. The following has been gathered from various accounts of Luther's life:
Luther was traveling along a hot road on his way to the German town of Erfurt. It was the summer of 1505. He was 21 yrs old, and graduated from what we call college that very spring with a Master's degree in philosophy. He was now studying law and had just been home to see his parents, who were very proud of him. Luther's father was a miner and had worked very hard to pay for his son's schooling. Luther liked to study and you might think that he would be very happy as he traveled back to school. But, as a matter of fact, Luther was very unhappy. Luther was unhappy because his conscience was bothering him. He knew he was a sinner. A friend of his had died not long before and Luther often thought about that. What if he were to die? How could he stand before God Whom he had so often disobeyed? As Luther traveled along, the air was hot and heavy. From the distance came the rumble of thunder. Very soon the sky was black with clouds. The young man had to struggle against the rising wind that whipped dust into his eyes. Then the rain began to fall. Suddenly there was a blinding flash. The air seemed to explode with the force of the thunder. Luther trembled with fear. What if the lightening struck him? He was not ready to die. He could not go to meet God. Again the lightening struck, and in terror Luther prayed to God. "Oh God," he prayed, "spare my life, and I will seek to prepare my soul. I promise to become a monk and give my life to prayer and meditation."
Many men have made religious promises when they thought they were about to die, but have forgotten them as soon as the danger was over. But Luther went back to Erfurt, had a farewell party with his friends, and entered the monastery of that town. He was very much in earnest. He wanted to make his soul ready to meet God. Luther's father was furious. He wanted his son to be a lawyer, not a monk. But Martin Luther continued to study in the monastery and soon became a priest in the church.
Year after year, Luther continued to live as a monk. He studied hard and by 1512 was given a position on the faculty of the University of Wittenberg. He prayed hard, too, following the hours of prayer that monks were supposed to keep. He prayed at six o'clock in the morning, at nine o'clock, at noon, at three in the afternoon, at six pm, and at nightfall. He prayed during the night too: at nine o'clock, at midnight, and at three in the morning. At each of these times, he followed the long forms of prayer that had been invented. Whenever he missed an hour of prayer, he made it up. Sometimes he did not eat or drink for three days or a week until he had made up the prayers he had missed while engaged in some business for the monastery.
But after all this, Luther was no happier than when he had been traveling in the thunderstorm. He was no more ready to meet God. He says of this time: "Never did I succeed in being able to say, ‘Now I am sure God is gracious to me, but rather, my sin, my sin, my sin!'" At this time Luther began to read Paul's epistle to the Romans. Luther had not read very far before he came to the words of our text and especially the phrase, "the righteousness of God" (vs. 17). Luther tells us that he feared and hated that word. His professors had taught him that it meant the holy righteousness of God according to which He punishes sinners. Luther well knew that God was righteous and he well knew that he was a sinner before Him. But even though he hated those words, Luther kept coming back to them. Then one day, Luther was led to something that the whole church of his time had forgotten. He noticed the last part of verse 17: "The just shall live by faith." As Luther pondered these words, God opened his eyes to understand them. He thought, "What if the righteousness of God that Paul speaks about here is a gift? What if Paul means that God has shown it to us through faith so that we may receive it and make it our own?" Luther read verses 16 and 17 over again: the good news that God gives righteousness to sinners. Could it be true? Luther saw that it was true. He realized that the gospel is the good news of God's gift. He had been trying to earn God's forgiveness. Now he understood that it could not be earned. He had been trying to be good enough to get into heaven. Now he saw that he only had to receive by faith the righteousness which is God's gift to those who believe in Christ.
Salvation comes not by doing things, but by grace, through faith. "For by grace are you saved, through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast: (Eph. 2:8-9). We who have broken God's law can never be good enough to get to heaven, but the Gospel, the good news tells us that there is a way. If we believe in Christ, He takes away our sin and gives us His righteousness. And Christ's righteousness is perfect! Let's look at some other verses from Paul to see whether Luther was correct in his understanding of these verses. In Rom. 3:10 we read: "There is none righteous, no, not one." A little later in verse 19 we read: "Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to them who are under the law; that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." So, all the world is guilty before God. This verse tells us, too, that we cannot talk back to God: "That every mouth may be stopped." All of us know in our own consciences that we have broken God's law. If we know the law of God, does that make us good? No, for we read in verse 20: "Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin." The law shows that we are sinners. We cannot keep the law, and when we try, we only discover how far short we fall. In verses 21 and 22 Paul says again that God's righteousness is a gift for those who believe in Christ. It cannot be found in keeping the law, because Paul repeats in verse 23 that "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Paul goes on to nail it down in verses 24-28: "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? No, but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law."
There are many people, young and old, who have made the mistake that both the apostle Paul and Luther made. Not knowing about the righteousness that God gives, they have tried to build up their own goodness. Remember how Paul wrote about them in Rom. 10:3: "For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God." It is Christ alone who can give a perfect righteousness. He has fulfilled the law for those who believe, for in verse 4 we read: "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believes." The Bible does not say that we are saved by being good and keeping the Ten Commandments. But what does it say? Look at verses 8-10: "The word is nigh thee, even in your mouth, and in your heart: that is the word of faith which we preach: That if you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ, and shall believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." And then hear from the apostle Paul one more time: "For he hath made him [Christ] to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (2 Cor. 5:21).
This is the word of faith. This is the faith of our fathers. This is the faith that Luther was at long last given. This is the faith so biblically set forth by Ursinus and Olevianus in H.C. Q60-61. I trust that these words have been on your mind all along:
How are you righteous before God? Only by true faith in Jesus Christ; that is, although my conscience accuse me, that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God, and have never kept any of them, and am still prone always to all evil; yet God without any merit of mine, of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ, as if I had never committed nor had any sin, and had myself accomplished all the obedience which Christ has fulfilled for me; if only I accept such benefit with a believing heart. Why do you say that you are righteous by faith only? Not that I am acceptable to God on account of the worthiness of my faith, but because only the satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ is my righteousness before God, and I can receive the same and make it my own in no other way than by faith only.
This is the faith, the Gospel, of which Paul was not ashamed. What did he do with it? I trust you know. He preached it far and wide. He preached it simply and directly, without apology, and without catering to the fickle tastes of the secular, smug, sophisticated public, and without adjusting it to make it more attractive to the mind of man. "For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. . . .And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God" (1 Cor. 2:2, 4-5). Many of those who heard him mocked him. But that didn't bother Paul. He wasn't ashamed of the Gospel, for he knew it was the power of God to those who believed; that faith came by the hearing the God's Word (cf. Rom. 10:17). The same thing was true of the other apostles in those wonderful days when the enemies of the Gospel complained that these men were "turning the world upside down" (cf. Acts 17:6). We read that they went everywhere with "boldness" (cf. Acts 4:31), a word that characterizes them very well, not only when they faced the ridicule of the world, but even when they had to face the bitter hatred of those who were determined to kill them because they insisted on preaching the truth of the Gospel. The same could be said of those bold Reformers of the sixteenth century.
Beloved, that's the Gospel that our world needs as well. It alone can change this vile world. We may be living in a new world, but we are still the same old sinners at heart. We need the same Gospel to save us. Do you have this faith? This wonderful gift of salvation? Do you have the righteousness of Christ as your own? Do you know that all your sins are forgiven? These things you can never get for yourself, but Jesus Christ will give them to you and transform you. Believe His Word and trust His grace. "For the just shall live by faith." Don't be ashamed of this Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation, for in this Gospel is revealed the righteousness of God and how the justified live by faith. Amen