There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
We must judge and condemn ourselves for our sins, and own ourselves liable to punishment.
And now, O my God, what shall I say after this, for I have forsaken your commandments? Ezra 9:10(ESV) I have sinned; what have I done to you, you watcher of mankind? Job 7:20(ESV)
I know that the law curses everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them; Galatians 3:10(ESV) that the wages of every sin is death; Romans 6:23(ESV) and that for these things’ sake the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Ephesians 5:6(ESV)
And I am accountable to God; Romans 3:19(ESV) the Scripture has imprisoned me under sin; Galatians 3:22(ESV) and therefore you might justly be angry with me until you consumed me, so that I should neither be of your remnant, nor able to escape. Ezra 9:14(ESV)
If you should make justice the line, and righteousness the plumb line, Isaiah 28:17(ESV) you might justly separate me to all evil, according to all the curses of the covenant, and blot out my name from under heaven. Deuteronomy 29:20(ESV)
You might justly swear in your wrath that I should never enter your rest; Psalm 95:11(ESV) might justly strip me naked and bare, Hosea 2:3(ESV) and take back my grain in its time, Hosea 2:9(ESV) and put into my hands the cup of staggering, and make me drink even to the dregs of that cup. Isaiah 51:17(ESV)
You have been righteous in all that has come upon me, for you have dealt faithfully and I have acted wickedly. Nehemiah 9:33(ESV) Indeed, my God has punished me less than my iniquities deserved. Ezra 9:13(ESV)
Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins? Lamentations 3:39(ESV) No, I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him. Micah 7:9(ESV)
Nehemiah 7:73-8:18 In this week’s studies, we see that Nehemiah not only wanted to rebuild the wall, but also the nation.
Theme
First Steps to Revival
If we are to see a spiritual recovery in our land today, it will be helpful to review the steps to revival as revealed in these activities.
1. Ezra began by prayer (v. 6). This is the first appearance of Ezra in Nehemiah (cf. verse 1), and his prayer preceding his reading of the law, which is not even recorded, might be considered merely a formal invocation. This would be wrong, however. Ezra’s appearance is significant, and his prayer was more than merely formal, as the response of the people shows. Ezra’s prayer seems to have accomplished two things. First, it established the sense among the people that what was to follow, that is, the reading of the law, was no mere civil matter but, rather, had to do with God. A number of commentators have pointed out the importance of the way the Book of the Law is introduced: “The Book of the Law of Moses, which the LORD had commanded for Israel” (v. 1). That makes two significant points. First, the law was already a recognized entity among the people. That is, it was not something that was still in the process of evolving or being developed, which is what the higher critics of the Old Testament have argued. Second, it was already invested with complete divine authority. That is, it was no merely human book. It was from God, and it was to be revered as such.
Second, Ezra’s prayer awakened the people’s anticipation of what God might do among them. Prayer should always do this, for prayer is approaching God and asking and receiving things from him. (It is also more. It is praise, confession and thanksgiving. Those elements are present even in this story.) Certainly the people were not wrong to be in an expectant frame of mind on this occasion.
2. Ezra read the Word of God (v. 3). Much was done to raise the Bible in the people’s thinking. Prayer was part of it. But so were the elevated platform from which Ezra read and the way in which Ezra was flanked by the thirteen Levites whose names are recorded in verse 4. Most of all perhaps is the fact that Ezra read from the law for six hours.
I wonder if we have a similar respect for God’s Word, and if we think of it as highly. I notice that the people stood when Ezra opened the scroll. It is acknowledgment of what the Bible is, namely, the very Word of God. It is a proper heart respect, which prepares the worshiper for hearing it expounded.
Study Questions
What two things did Ezra’s prayer accomplish?
What made it clear that God’s Word was respected?
Application
Application: When the Bible is read and preached in public worship, do you concentrate on what you are hearing? Are you submissive to its commands and instructions?
Prayer: How did Nehemiah and Ezra view prayer? How would you describe your own thoughts about prayer? Does your prayer life reflect a proper adoration of God and a total dependence upon Him?
For Further Study: Download for free and listen to James Boice’s message, “The Greatest Revival in History.” (Discount will be applied at checkout.)
In this blast from the past, J. Warner Wallace examines the popular objection that Christians are biased toward their beliefs and, therefore, cannot assess evidence fairly. Is this true? Is anyone truly free of bias and what role does this play in making decisions in the first place? You can also subscribe to the Cold-Case Christianity Weekly Podcast on iTunes, or add the podcast from our RSS Feed.
On Sunday mornings at our church, we generally study smaller sections of Scripture than an entire book like Exodus. But some things can only be seen from a great height. So from time to time we divert from spending multiple weeks in one book in order to have what we call “overview sermons.” Right now, we are in a series of five such studies on the first five books of the Bible. Here, we look at the second book, the book of Exodus. We will not consider just one text in Exodus, but we’ll jump around the book, taking in as much as we can. In order to help us, I offer a thesis sentence that has arisen from my own reading of Exodus over this last week and that will give focus to our investigation. This study has three points and, as you’ll see, each point will provide a part of our thesis sentence and will state something positively about God’s work. We will also find that each point challenges some misconception that people often have about God.
1. God Works Sovereignly
We begin with point one: God works sovereignly. In essence, Exodus challenges the common notion that God is passive. How many times have you heard God presented as a resource or power for improving your life, should you decide to use him? God is not a passive God at all. In Genesis, he creates the world out of nothing. He judges the world through the Flood. He calls Abraham and then fulfils his promise to give Abraham children, despite age and barrenness. And then the amazing story of Joseph occurs. Do you remember Joseph’s statement to his brothers? “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Gen. 50:20).
In Exodus, the great story of God working sovereignly continues. We see this in many ways throughout this book, but perhaps we see it most clearly in the lives of the book’s two main human opponents: Moses and Pharaoh.
2. God Works Sovereignly to Save a Special People
But that is not all of what we are supposed to observe. We are also supposed to observe that God works sovereignly (now let’s add a little bit to the sentence to make our second point) to save a special people. That is transparently what God is doing in this story.
Exodus challenges the common notion that God treats all people in the same way, or that God is a committed egalitarian. No, that is not the story in Exodus. God is certainly fair; he is the standard of justice. But God does mysteriously and graciously choose to extend mercy to some. And no one can require mercy from him. It is his mercy. From a foundation of utter fairness, God chooses to extend mercy.
God works sovereignly to save a special people. That is what this book says. I hope you see that. But we will not finally understand the message of Exodus unless we see one more crucial point.
Author Mark Dever introduces readers to the Old Testament as a glorious whole so that they are able to see the big picture of the majesty of God and the wonder of his promises.
3. God Works Sovereignly to Save a Special People for His Own Glory
God works sovereignly to save a special people for his own glory. Above all else, throughout Exodus, God aims to display his own glory. But you will learn this only by reading the book itself. Every popular retelling or movie about the Exodus, from Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments to The Prince of Egypt, misses this entirely. Usually, the Hebrew people are presented as types of American colonists or African-American slaves. Moses is some combination of Washington and Jefferson, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, liberator and lawgiver, concerned above all else for human liberty. But this story is not primarily about human liberty. It may have a few implications that tend in that direction, but that is not the point of this book.
In fact, Exodus directly challenges the idea that God does everything for humanity’s sake. Humans are not the ultimate purpose of creation. God’s own glory is!
The Main Point
Let’s take one more quick tour through the book to make sure that you get its main point. The whole book, you could say, is about God establishing his own fame! You see it everywhere. If you have never noticed these statements before, I think it will change the way you read Exodus, and perhaps your whole Bible.
Why does God call Moses to bring the Israelites out of Egypt in the first place? “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians” (Ex. 6:7). God’s purpose is for the Israelites to recognize Yahweh as their God.1
Why does God harden Pharaoh’s heart, causing him to oppose God’s own plans?
“But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it” (Ex. 7:3-5). God’s purpose is for the Egyptians to recognize Yahweh as God.
Why does Moses, amid the plague of frogs, ask Pharaoh to set the time for when God should remove the frogs from Egypt? Have you noticed this? Pharaoh answers Moses’ request, “Tomorrow.” Moses then replies, “It will be as you say, so that you may know there is no one like the Lord our God” (Ex. 8:10) . God’s purpose is for Pharaoh to recognize that Yahweh alone is God.
Why does God, amid the plague of hail, tell Pharaoh he is pressing against him so hard? “This time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth” (Ex. 9:14). Keep in mind, he is saying this to a man whose nation had as many gods as we have people in church. The liberation this book promises is the merciful liberation from the falsehood of idolatry to the truth of worshiping the one true God.
As we continue reading in chapter 9, we find some of the Bible’s clearest statements about God’s sovereign purposes. At one point, God explicitly tells Pharaoh why he has raised him up:
“For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth” (Ex. 9:15-16).2
God worked sovereignly to save a special group of people so that we would behold his greatness.
Moses makes the point again when he tells Pharaoh the precise time the plague of hail will stop: “When I have gone out of the city, I will spread out my hands in prayer to the Lord. The thunder will stop and there will be no more hail, so you may know that the earth is the Lord’s” (Ex. 9:29).
And why don’t the plagues stop here? After all, Pharaoh had sounded repentant several verses earlier: “This time I have sinned” (Ex. 9:27). Yet his repentance does not last. God has further purposes for him. Look again at the beginning of chapter 10:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that [God always has a purpose] I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may knowthat I am the Lord” (Ex. 10:1-2).
And again in chapter 11, why does Pharaoh keep refusing to listen to the Lord, even though it is bringing disaster on himself and his nation? “The Lord had said to Moses, ‘Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you—so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt’” (Ex. 11:9).
Such statements come to a climax in chapters 14–15. After Pharaoh has released the Israelites, the Lord causes him to change his mind: “And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them. But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord” (Ex. 14:4). The Israelites see the Egyptians approaching, but Moses reassures them, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again” (Ex. 4:13). The Lord then sends the Egyptians after the Israelites through the Red Sea:
“I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them. And I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his army, through his chariots and his horsemen. The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen” (Ex. 14:17).
Watching Pharaoh’s army drown, the Israelites come to the same conclusion: “And when the Israelites saw the great power the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant” (Ex. 14:31).
Throughout all these episodes, God gains the reputation he both desires and deserves among creatures made in his image. Moses’ celebratory song in chapter 15 exults in this God’s unique glory: “Who among the gods is like you, O Lord? Who is like you—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?” (Ex. 15:11). And several verses later:
The nations will hear and tremble; anguish will grip the people of Philistia. The chiefs of Edom will be terrified, the leaders of Moab will be seized with trembling, the people of Canaan will melt away; terror and dread will fall upon them. By the power of your arm they will be as still as a stone— until your people pass by, O Lord, until the people you bought pass by” (Ex. 15:14-16).
This, of course, is why the Lord sovereignly placed his people in Egypt, which we thought about at the conclusion to our study of Genesis, when Joseph’s body was placed in a coffin and buried in Egypt. Why did he leave him there? Because Egypt was a great power. Because Egypt provided the perfect stage on which God could display his glory. If God wants to make his might known and his renown great, what good would it do to triumph over a tribe of nomads or some lesser nation? God led Joseph down into Egypt and placed Israel’s children there, because he was preparing Egypt to be the special stage on which he would display his glory for all the world to witness.
And God meant for the deeds recorded in this book to be recounted, so that his fame would continue to be magnified and increased. One of the first times those deeds are recounted occurs in chapter 18, where Moses meets his father-in-law Jethro in the desert. Notice how Jethro responds to hearing what the Lord has done:
Moses told his father-in-law about everything the Lord had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for Israel’s sake and about all the hardships they had met along the way and how the Lord had saved them. Jethro was delighted to hear about all the good things the Lord had done for Israel in rescuing them from the hand of the Egyptians. He said, “Praise be to the Lord, who rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians and of Pharaoh, and who rescued the people from the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all other gods” (Ex. 18:8-11a).
That is the message of Exodus: the Lord—Yahweh—is greater than all other gods. God worked sovereignly to save a special group of people so that we would behold his greatness. He is not just another projection of human hopes or philosophical ideas. God acted in time and space, so we could see his power and worship his majesty.
God works sovereignly to save a special people for his own glory. He did then, and he still does today. That is what he is doing in the church!
Notes:
When our newer English Bible translations have “Lord” in small caps, it stands for the Hebrew YHWH, usually transliterated as Yahweh, which is God’s name for himself.
Though Christians sometimes argue about what Paul says in Romans 9:17, Paul is just quoting what the Lord said in Exodus 9!
Mark Dever (PhD, Cambridge University) is the senior pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC, and president of 9Marks (9Marks.org). Dever has authored over a dozen books and speaks at conferences nationwide. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife, Connie, and they have two adult children.
CIRCUMSTANCES THAT MIGHT SEEM TO THREATEN OUR SECURITY
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Thy sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. (8:35–37)
After establishing that it is impossible for any person to take away our salvation, Paul anticipates a similar question that some will ask: “Is it possible for circumstances to rob a believer of his salvation?” The apostle now proceeds to show that that, too, is impossible. The interrogative pronoun tis (who) is the same word that begins the previous two verses. But the Greek term also can mean “what,” and the fact that Paul speaks only of things and not people in verses 35–37, makes clear that he is now referring to impersonal things. Unpleasant and dangerous circumstances obviously can have a detrimental influence on the faith and endurance of believers. The question here, however, is whether they can cause a believer to sin himself out of salvation. In essence, this question is an extension of the one discussed above regarding the possibility of a believer’s dislodging himself from God’s grace. Paul anticipates and refutes the notion that any circumstance, no matter how threatening and potentially destructive, can cause a genuine believer to forfeit his salvation. In verse 35 Paul lists a representative few of the countless ominous circumstances that faithful believers may encounter while they still live in the world. First of all, it should be noted that the love of Christ does not refer to the believer’s love for Him but rather to His love for the believer (see vv. 37, 39). No person can love Christ who has not experienced the redeeming work of Christ’s love for him: “We love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). In this context, the love of Christ represents salvation. Paul is therefore asking rhetorically if any circumstance is powerful enough to cause a true believer to turn against Christ in a way that would cause Christ to turn His back on the believer. At issue, then, are the power and permanence of the love of Christ for those He has bought with His own blood and brought into the family and the kingdom of His Father. John reports that “Before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” (John 13:1). As John makes clear in his first epistle, “the end” does not refer simply to the end of Jesus’ earthly life but to the end of every believer’s earthly life. “By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.… By this, love is perfected with us, that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world” (1 John 4:9–10, 17). We have confidence as we face the day of judgment, because we know that the divine and indestructible love of Christ binds us eternally to Him. In a majestic benediction at the end of the second chapter of his second letter to Thessalonica, Paul says, “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word” (2 Thess. 2:16–17). Eternal comfort and good hope are the permanent gifts of God’s grace, because, by definition, that which is eternal cannot end. The first threatening circumstance Paul mentions is tribulation, from thlipsis, which carries the idea of being squeezed or placed under pressure. In Scripture the word is perhaps most often used of outward difficulties, but it is also used of emotional stress. The idea here is probably that of severe adversity in general, the kind that is common to all men. The second threatening circumstance is distress, which translates the compound Greek word stenochōria, which is composed of the terms for narrow and space. The idea is similar to that of tribulation and carries the primary idea of strict confinement, of being helplessly hemmed in. In such circumstances a believer can only trust in the Lord and pray for the power to endure. Sometimes we are caught in situations where we are continually confronted with temptations we cannot avoid. Paul counsels believers who are under such distress to remember that “no temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13). Until He provides a way of escape, the Lord provides the power to resist. The third threatening circumstance is persecution, which refers to affliction suffered for the sake of Christ. Persecution is never pleasant, but in the Beatitudes Jesus gives a double promise of God’s blessing us when we suffer for His sake. He then bids us to “rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matt. 5:10–12). Famine often results from persecution, when Christians are discriminated against in employment and cannot afford to buy enough food to eat. Many believers have been imprisoned for their faith and have gradually starved to death because of inadequate food. Nakedness does not refer to complete nudity but to destitution in which a person cannot adequately clothe himself. It also suggests the idea of being vulnerable and unprotected. To be in peril is simply to be exposed to danger in general, including danger from treachery and mistreatment. The sword to which Paul refers was more like a large dagger and was frequently used by assassins, because it was easily concealed. It was a symbol of death and suggests being murdered rather than dying in military battle. Paul was not speaking of these afflictions in theory or second hand. He himself had faced those hardships and many more, as he reports so vividly in 2 Corinthians 11. Referring to certain Jewish leaders in the church who were boasting of their suffering for Christ, Paul writes,
Are they servants of Christ? (I speak as if insane) I more so; in far more labors, in far more imprisonments, beaten times without number, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent in the deep. I have been on frequent journeys, in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles, dangers in the city, dangers in the wilderness, dangers on the sea, dangers among false brethren; I have been in labor and hardship, through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. (vv. 23–27)
Quoting from the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) version of Psalm 44:22, Paul continues, Just as it is written, “For Thy sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” In other words, Christians should not be surprised when they have to endure suffering for the sake of Christ. Before Paul wrote this epistle, God’s faithful people had suffered for centuries, not only at the hands of Gentiles but also at the hands of fellow Jews. They “experienced mockings and scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated (men of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground” (Heb. 11:36–38). The cost of faithfulness to God has always been high. Jesus declared, “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life shall lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake shall find it” (Matt. 10:37–39). Paul assured his beloved Timothy that “indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3:12). If a professing Christian turns his back on the things of God or lives persistently in sin, he proves that he never belonged to Christ at all. Such people have not lost their salvation but have never received it. About such nominal Christians, John said, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). If the things of the world continually keep a person from the things of God, that person proves he is not a child of God. During Jesus’ earthly ministry, many thousands of people walked great distances to hear Him preach and to receive physical healing for themselves and their loved ones. At His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the crowd acclaimed Him as their Messiah and wanted to make Him king. But after He was convicted and crucified, and the cost of true discipleship became evident, most of those who had once hailed Christ were nowhere to be found. Luke gives an account of three men, doubtless representative of many others, who professed allegiance to Jesus but who would not submit to His lordship and thereby proved their lack of saving faith. The first man, whom Matthew identifies as a scribe (8:19), promised to follow Jesus wherever He went. But knowing the man’s heart, “Jesus said to him, ‘The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head’ ” (9:57–58). When the Lord called a second man, he asked permission to first bury his father. He did not mean that his father had just died but rather that he wanted to postpone commitment to Christ until after his father eventually died, at which time the son would receive his family inheritance. Jesus “said to him, ‘Allow the dead to bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim everywhere the kingdom of God’ ” (vv. 59–60). In other words, let those who are spiritually dead take care of their own carnal interests. The third man wanted to follow Jesus after he said “good-bye to those at home.” To Him the Lord replied, “No one, after putting his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (vv. 61–62). We are not told what any of the three men eventually did in regard to following Christ, but the implication is that, like the rich young man (Matt. 19:22), the cost of true discipleship, which is always the mark of true salvation, was too high for them. Only the true believer perseveres, not because he is strong in himself but because he has the power of God’s indwelling Spirit. His perseverance does not keep his salvation safe but proves that his salvation is safe. Those who fail to persevere not only demonstrate their lack of courage but, much more importantly, their lack of genuine faith. God will keep and protect even the most fearful person who truly belongs to Him. On the other hand, even the bravest of those who are merely professing Christians will invariably fall away when the cost of being identified with Christ becomes too great. Only true Christians are overcomers because only true Christians have the divine help of Christ’s own Spirit. “For we have become partakers of Christ,” explains the writer of Hebrews, “if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end” (Heb. 3:14). To some Jews who believed Him, Jesus said, “If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31–32). Holding fast and abiding in God’s Word neither merit nor preserve salvation. But the presence of those virtues confirms the reality of salvation, and the absence of them confirms the condition of lostness. Just as we can only love God because He first loved us, we can only hold on to God because He holds on to us. We can survive any threatening circumstance and overcome any spiritual obstacle that the world or Satan puts in our way because in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. Overwhelmingly conquer is from hupernikaō, a compound verb that literally means to hyper-conquer, to over-conquer, to conquer, as it were, with success to spare. Those who overwhelmingly conquer are supremely victorious in overcoming everyone and everything that threatens their relationship to Jesus Christ. But they do so entirely through His power, the power of Him who loved us so much that He gave His life for us that we might have life in Him. Because our Lord both saves and keeps us, we do much more than simply endure and survive the ominous circumstances Paul mentions in verse 35. First of all, we overwhelmingly conquer by coming out of troubles stronger than when they first threatened us. Paul has just declared that, by His divine grace and power, God causes everything, including the very worst things, to work for the good of His children (8:28). Even when we suffer because of our own sinfulness or unfaithfulness, our gracious Lord will bring us through with a deeper understanding of our own unrighteousness and of His perfect righteousness, of our own faithlessness and of His steadfast faithfulness, of our own weakness and of His great power. Second, we overwhelmingly conquer because our ultimate reward will far surpass whatever earthly and temporal loss we may suffer. With Paul, we should view even the most terrible circumstance as but “momentary, light affliction” that produces “for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17). From the human perspective, of course, the over-conquest God promises often seems a long time in coming. But when, as true believers, we go through times of testing, whatever their nature or cause, we come out spiritually refined by our Lord. Instead of those things separating us from Christ, they will bring us closer to Him. His grace and glory will rest on us and we will grow in our understanding of His will and of the sufficiency of His grace. While we wait for Him to bring us through the trials, we know that He says to us what He said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” And we should respond with Paul, “Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (2 Cor. 12:9). Paul probably wrote his letter to Rome during a winter in Corinth, and it is not likely that either Paul or the Roman believers realized how short the time would be before they would stand in need of the apostle’s comforting words in this passage. It would not be many years before they would face fierce persecution from a pagan government and people that now tolerated them with indifference. It would not be long before the blood of those to whom this epistle is addressed would soak the sands of Roman amphitheaters. Some would be mauled by wild beasts, some would be slain by ruthless gladiators, and others would be used as human torches to light Nero’s garden parties. Consequently, the true and false believers soon would be easily distinguished. Many congregations would be saying of former members, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us” (1 John 2:19). But those whom the world looks upon as the overwhelmed and conquered are in reality overwhelming conquerors. In God’s scheme of things, the victors are the vanquished and the vanquished are the victors.
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1991). Romans (Vol. 1, pp. 509–515). Moody Press.
More Than Conquerors
Romans 8:37
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
There are passages of the Bible that are so familiar that we often pass over truths that would be startling if we were coming to them for the first time. Romans 8:37 is an example. We have just been reminded in the previous verse, by a quotation from the Old Testament, that the people of God “face death all day long” and are “considered as sheep to be slaughtered” (Ps. 44:22). But now, in verse 37, we are told that nevertheless we are all “more than conquerors.” Sheep that conquer? We can think of lions that conquer, or wolves or polar bears or wild buffalo. Edgar Allan Poe even spoke of “the conquering worm,” meaning that at last death comes to all. But sheep? The very idea of sheep as conquerors seems ludicrous. This is figurative language, of course. But the image is not meaningless, nor is it as ludicrous as it seems. In contrast to the world and its power, Christians are indeed weak and despised. They are as helpless as a flock of sheep. But they are in fact conquerors, because they have been loved by the Lord Jesus Christ and have been made conquerors “through him.” Yet even that is not the most startling thing about this verse, for the victory of Christians is described as being more than an ordinary victory. In the Greek text a single compound verb, hypernikōmen, lies behind the five English words “we are more than conquerors.” The middle part of the word is the simple verb nikaō, meaning “to overcome” or “to conquer.” (The famous statue “Winged Victory” in the Louvre in Paris is called a Nike, which means “victory” and was the name given to the goddess of victory in Ancient Greece.) The first part of the verb, hyper, means “in place of,” “over and above,” or “more than.” From it we get our word super, which means almost the same thing. When we put the two parts of the word together we find Paul saying that believers are all “super-conquerors,” or “more than conquerors” in Jesus Christ. But how can that be? How can those who are despised and rejected—troubled, persecuted, exposed to famine and nakedness, danger and sword—how can such people be thought of as overcomers, superovercomers at that? It is a question worth pondering—and answering. Let me suggest a few reasons we may think like this.
Against Supernatural Forces
The first reason why the victory given to Christians by Jesus Christ is a superlative victory and why we are “more than conquerors” is that we are fighting against an enemy who is more than human. This is the note on which Paul ends his letter to the Ephesians, reminding the Christians at Ephesus that “our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12). In this passage Paul is thinking of the devil and his hosts, and he is saying that our battle, however human it may seem, is actually supernatural. It is a spiritual battle. If our enemies were mere human beings or mere natural forces, our victory, if we achieved it, would be a natural victory. But, as it is, our foes are supernatural, and therefore our victories are supernatural, too. We are more than conquerors. The devil is the embodiment of these hostile spiritual forces, and he is a cunning foe. I have often said that we must not overrate Satan’s strength, as if he were the evil equivalent of God. Satan is a creature. Therefore he is not omnipresent, omniscient, or omnipotent. Only God is that. However, Satan is very dangerous. And crafty! The devil devises more schemes in a minute than we can conceive in a lifetime, and all of them are directed toward our destruction. How can we stand against such an evil, crafty foe, let alone be a “superconqueror” of him and his forces? It is not in our own strength, of course. It is as the text says: “through him who loved us.” Martin Luther stood against these spiritual forces, prevailed over them through Christ, and wrote about it in the hymn we know as “A Mighty Fortress”:
Did we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing;
Were not the right Man on our side,
The Man of God’s own choosing.
Dost ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is he;
Lord Sabaoth his Name,
From age to age the same,
And he must win the battle.
None of us could stand against Satan’s hostile forces even for a moment, but in Jesus Christ we can stand firm and fight on to victory.
Lifelong Battles
Second, Christians are “more than conquerors” because the warfare we are engaged in requires us to fight lifelong battles. In his excellent study of this verse Donald Grey Barnhouse sharply contrasts our battles as Christians with the limited battles other soldiers fight: “In earthly battles soldiers are sometimes called upon to fight day and night. But there comes a moment when flesh and blood cannot take more and the struggle comes to an end through the utter exhaustion of the soldier. But in the spiritual warfare there is no armistice, no truce, no interval. The text is in the present tense … in the Greek: ‘For thy sake we are being killed all the day long’ (RSV). From the moment we are made partakers of the divine nature, we are the targets of the world, the flesh and the devil. There is never a moment’s reprieve. It follows, then, that our conquest is more than a conquest, and thus we are more than conquerors.”
Eternal Results
The third reason why Christians are more than conquerors is that the spiritual victories achieved by God’s people are eternal. This is a very important point and one we need to remind ourselves of constantly. We are creatures of time, and we live in a perishing world. Apart from spiritual battles and spiritual victories, everything we accomplish will pass away, no matter how great an earthly “victory” may seem in the world’s eyes or our own. How can it be otherwise when even “heaven and earth will pass away” (Matt. 24:35)? Great monuments will crumble. Works of art will decay. Fortunes will be dissipated. Heroes will die. Even great triumphs of the human intellect or emotion will be forgotten. Not so with spiritual victories, for our spiritual victories impart meaning to the very history of the cosmos. I am convinced that this is what our earthly struggles are about and that this is how we are to view them. When Satan rebelled against God sometime in eternity past, God was faced with a choice, humanly speaking. He could have annihilated Satan and those fallen angels, now demons, who rebelled with Satan against God. But that would not have proved that God’s way of running the universe is right. It would only have proved that God is more powerful than Satan. So, instead of punishing Satan immediately, God allowed Satan’s rebellion to run its course. In the meantime God created a universe and a new race of beings, mankind, in which the rebellion of Satan would be tested. Satan could have his way for a while. He could try to order things according to his will rather than God’s. He would even be allowed to seduce the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, into following him in his rebellion. But God would reserve the right to call out a new people to himself, the very people Paul has been writing about in Romans 8. These individuals would be foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified—all according to God’s sovereign will. And when they were called they would be thrust into the spiritual struggle that Satan and his demons had brought upon the race. Satan would be allowed to attack, persecute, and even kill God’s people. But for them, for those who have been brought to know the love of God in Christ Jesus, these sufferings would not be an intolerable hardship but would instead be a privilege that they would count themselves happy to endure for Jesus. I am convinced that in his supreme wisdom God has ordered history in such a way that for every child of Satan who is suffering, a child of God is suffering in exactly the same circumstances. And for every child of Satan who enjoys the fullness of this world’s pleasures, there is a child of God who is denied those pleasures. The unbeliever curses his or her lot if deprived and made to suffer. The believer trusts and praises God and looks to him for ultimate deliverance. Unbelievers boast of their superiority if they are fortunate in securing this world’s success or treasure. Believers acknowledge God as the source of whatever good fortune they enjoy, and if deprived of these things, as is frequently the case, they say, as Job did, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised” (Job 1:21b). And the angels look on, as they also did in Job’s case. “Is Satan’s way best?” they ask. “Does the way of the evil one produce joy? Does it make him and God’s other creatures happy? Or is the way of God best? Are believers the truly happy ones, in spite of their suffering?” We, too, may pose such questions, and even wonder about the truth of Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount:
Blessed are the poor in spirit.…
Blessed are those who mourn.…
Blessed are the meek.…
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.…
Blessed are the merciful.…
Blessed are the pure in heart.…
Blessed are the peacemakers.…
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.…
Matthew 5:2–10
Those words are indeed true! They are profoundly true. They are what God’s people are proving every day of their lives as they suffer and in some cases are put to death, being literally counted “as sheep to be slaughtered.” “But the poor in spirit are despised,” someone says. True enough, but “theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “But those who mourn, mourn alone,” says another. They often do, in human terms. But when they mourn an unseen presence stands beside them, Jesus himself, and they are truly “comforted.” They know “the peace of God, which transcends all [human] understanding” (Phil 4:7). “But the meek are crushed and beaten down.” In this world they are. Indeed, for God’s sake “we face death all day long.” But our kingdom is not here, any more than Jesus’ kingdom was here, though in the end we will “inherit [even] the earth.” “But those who hunger and thirst after righteousness are strange, odd. Most people don’t want to have anything to do with them.” True, but their longings will be satisfied by God himself, while those who seek earthly pleasures will fall short of joys here and in the end will be cast into the lake of fire, where thirst is never quenched. “But the pure in heart have no welcome here, no secure place.” True enough, but they will see God. They have a home in heaven. “Why do we need peacemakers?” asks another person. “We need strong armies to fight the world’s conflicts.” Peacemakers are despised. The strong and powerful are favored. But those who make peace “will be called sons of God.” “Who would want to be persecuted, especially for righteousness’ sake?” No one, of course. But when Christians are persecuted, they count it a privilege, for it shows that they are standing with Jesus, belong to his kingdom, and have a reward laid up for them in “the kingdom of heaven.” Victories in such sufferings are eternal in the same way that the victory of our Lord upon the cross is eternal. Our sufferings endure for a moment, but they achieve an eternal victory. They point to the truth and grace of God forever. I am convinced that in the farthest reaches of heaven, in what we would call billions of years from now, there will be angels who will look on everyone who has been redeemed by Jesus Christ and thrust into spiritual warfare by him, and they will say, “Look, there is another of God’s saints, one who triumphed over evil by the Lord’s power!” Revelation 12:11–12 describes how they will exclaim of our great victories over Satan:
“They overcame him
by the blood of the Lamb
and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much
as to shrink from death.
Therefore rejoice, you heavens
and you who dwell in them!”
In achieving those eternal victories, we who love the Lord Jesus Christ will have indeed been more than conquerors.
Eternal Rewards
The fourth reason why we are more than conquerors in the struggles of life is that the rewards of our victory will surpass anything ever attained by earthly conquerors. The kings of this world generally fight for three things: territory, wealth, and glory, often all three. And they reward their soldiers with a proportionate share of these attainments. The Romans settled their soldiers on land won from their enemies, though chiefly to consolidate their territorial holdings. Armies have usually been allowed to share in war’s spoils. Napoleon said that men are led by “trinkets,” meaning titles, medals, and other such glory symbols. The world’s soldiers have their rewards, but they are earthly rewards. The people of God look for rewards in heaven. The apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “… Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever” (1 Cor. 9:24–25). In this life, like our Master, we may wear nothing but a crown of thorns. But in heaven we will wear crowns that are incorruptible and will possess an inheritance that will never slip away.
No Greater Cause
The final reason why we are more than conquerors is that the goal of our warfare is the glory of God, and that is an infinitely worthy and utterly superior thing. A few lines back I wrote of our reward as being imperishable crowns, using the image the Bible itself gives us. With that in mind I call your attention to a scene in Revelation 4:1–11. The setting is the throne room of heaven, and there, before the throne of Almighty God, are twenty-four elders who represent the people of God saved from all nations and all ages. They, too, are seated on thrones and wear crowns, because the saints reign with Jesus. In the center, immediately surrounding the throne, are four living creatures who cry out day and night, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come” (v. 8). Whenever the four living creatures worship God with these words, the twenty-four elders rise from their thrones, fall before God, and worship him. Then—and this is the point for which I recall this picture—they lay their crowns before the throne, saying,
“You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being” [v. 11].
This picture is extremely beautiful, for it shows that the crowns of victory won by God’s people are won by God’s grace and therefore rightly belong to him. They are our crowns, but they are laid at the Lord’s feet to show that they were won for his honor and by his strength. In this, as well as in all the other things I mentioned, we are more than conquerors. But there is one more thing to say: The way to victory is not by “going up” to any self-achieved glory but rather by “stooping down” in suffering. Remember the picture of Satan given in Isaiah 14? Satan said, “I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High” (vv. 13–14). But God tells Satan, “You [will be] brought down to the grave, to the depths of the pit” (v. 15). Where Satan aimed to sit is in some measure where the saints of the ages are raised, for they sit on the “mount of assembly,” higher than anything except the throne of God, as we have just seen. But notice how they get there. Not by trying to dislodge the Almighty from his throne. Rather, they are exalted because they have followed in the steps of their Master, who
… did not consider equality with God
something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
Philippians 2:6–11
Jesus was the prototype—the true sheep fit only “to be slaughtered.” He was “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). But he was also a super-conqueror, and we are more than conquerors through him.
Boice, J. M. (1991–). Romans: The Reign of Grace (Vol. 2, pp. 991–998). Baker Book House.
Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.John 13:1
This fact is essentially a promise; for what our Lord was He is, and what He was to those with whom He lived on earth, He will be to all His beloved so long as the moon endureth.
“Having loved”: here was the wonder! That He should ever have loved men at all is the marvel. What was there in His poor disciples that He should love them? What is there in me?
But when He has once begun to love, it is His nature to continue to do so. Love made the saints “his own”—what a choice title! He purchased them with blood, and they became His treasure. Being His own, He will not lose them. Being His beloved, He will not cease to love them. My soul, He will not cease to love thee!
The text is well as it stands: “to the end.” Even till His death the ruling passion of love to His own reigned in His sacred bosom. It means also to the uttermost. He could not love them more: He gave Himself for them. Some read it, to perfection. Truly He lavished upon them a perfect love, in which there was no flaw nor failure, no unwisdom, no unfaithfulness.
Such is the love of Jesus to each one of His people. Let us sing to our Well-beloved a song.
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.Genesis 3:15
This is the first promise to fallen man. It contains the whole gospel and the essence of the covenant of grace. It has been in great measure fulfilled. The seed of the woman, even our Lord Jesus, was bruised in His heel, and a terrible bruising it was. How terrible will be the final bruising of the serpent’s head! This was virtually done when Jesus took away sin, vanquished death, and broke the power of Satan; but it awaits a still fuller accomplishment at our Lord’s second advent and in the Day of Judgment. To us the promise stands as a prophecy that we shall be afflicted by the powers of evil in our lower nature, and thus bruised in our heel; but we shall triumph in Christ, who sets His foot on the old serpent’s head. Throughout this year we may have to learn the first part of this promise by experience, through the temptations of the devil and the unkindness of the ungodly, who are his seed. They may so bruise us that we may limp with our sore heel; but let us grasp the second part of the text, and we shall not be dismayed. By faith let us rejoice that we shall still reign in Christ Jesus, the woman’s seed.
What does the Bible say about the virgin Mary? Is the immaculate conception biblical? Does the Bible teach the perpetual virginity of Mary? Is Mary the mediatrix and/or co-redemptrix?
The gospel and its blessings should produce joy in our lives. When Christians find themselves lacking joy, it may actually be a symptom of legalism. In this message, Derek Thomas looks at the symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of legalism.
For 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. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” (1:16–17)
After having gained the attention of his readers by explaining the purpose of his writing and then introducing himself (1:1–15), Paul now states the thesis of the epistle. These two verses express the theme of the book of Romans, and they contain the most life-transforming truth God has put into men’s hands. To understand and positively respond to this truth is to have one’s time and eternity completely altered. These words summarize the gospel of Jesus Christ, which Paul then proceeds to unfold and explain throughout the remainder of the epistle. For that reason, our comments here will be somewhat brief and a more detailed discussion of these themes will come later in the study. As noted at the close of the last chapter, the introductory phrase for I am not ashamed of the gospel adds a final mark of spiritual service to those presented in verses 8–15, the mark of unashamed boldness. Paul was imprisoned in Philippi, chased out of Thessalonica, smuggled out of Damascus and Berea, laughed at in Athens, considered a fool in Corinth, and declared a blasphemer and lawbreaker in Jerusalem. He was stoned and left for dead at Lystra. Some pagans of Paul’s day branded Christianity as atheism because it believed in only one God and as being cannibalistic because of a misunderstanding of the Lord’s Supper. But the Jewish religious leaders of Jerusalem did not intimidate Paul, nor did the learned and influential pagans at Ephesus, Athens, and Corinth. The apostle was eager now to preach and teach the gospel in Rome, the capital of the pagan empire that ruled virtually all the known world. He was never deterred by opposition, never disheartened by criticism, and never ashamed, for any reason, of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Although that gospel was then, and still is today, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, it is the only way God has provided for the salvation of men, and Paul was both overjoyed and emboldened by the privilege of proclaiming its truth and power wherever he went. Although every true believer knows it is a serious sin to be ashamed of his Savior and Lord, he also knows the difficulty of avoiding that sin. When we have opportunity to speak for Christ, we often do not. We know the gospel is unattractive, intimidating, and repulsive to the natural, unsaved person and to the ungodly spiritual system that now dominates the world. The gospel exposes man’s sin, wickedness, depravity, and lostness, and it declares pride to be despicable and works righteousness to be worthless in God’s sight. To the sinful heart of unbelievers, the gospel does not appear to be good news but bad (cf. my comments in chapter 1), and when they first hear it they often react with disdain against the one presenting it or throw out arguments and theories against it. For that reason, fear of men and of not being able to handle their arguments is doubtlessly the single greatest snare in witnessing. It is said that if a circle of white chalk is traced on the floor around a goose that it will not leave the circle for fear of crossing the white mark. In a similar way, the chalk marks of criticism, ridicule, tradition, and rejection prevent many believers from leaving the security of Christian fellowship to witness to the unsaved. The so-called health and wealth gospel that has swept through much of the church today is not offensive to the world because it offers what the world wants. But that spurious gospel does not offer the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like the false teaching of the Judaizers, it is “a different gospel,” that is, not the gospel at all but an ungodly distortion (Gal. 1:6–7). Jesus strongly condemned the motives of worldly success and comfort, and those who appeal to such motives play right into the hands of Satan. A scribe once approached Jesus and said, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.” Knowing the man was unwilling to give up his comforts in order to be a disciple, the Lord answered, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (Matt. 8:19–20). Shortly after that, “another of the disciples said to Him, ‘Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.’ ” The phrase “bury my father” did not refer to a funeral service but was a colloquialism for awaiting the father’s death in order to receive the inheritance. Jesus therefore told the man, “Follow Me; and allow the dead to bury their own dead” (vv. 21–22). Geoffrey Wilson wrote, “The unpopularity of a crucified Christ has prompted many to present a message which is more palatable to the unbeliever, but the removal of the offense of the cross always renders the message ineffective. An inoffensive gospel is also an inoperative gospel. Thus Christianity is wounded most in the house of its friends” (Romans: A Digest of Reformed Comment [Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth, 1976], p. 24). Some years ago I spoke at a youth rally, after which the wife of the rally director approached me. Expressing an unbiblical mentality that is common in the church today, she said, “Your message offended me, because you preached as if all of these young people were sinners.” I replied, “I’m glad it came across that way, because that is exactly the message I wanted to communicate.” Paul’s supreme passion was to see men saved. He cared nothing for personal comfort, popularity, or reputation. He offered no compromise of the gospel, because he knew it is the only power available that can change lives for eternity. In verses 16–17, Paul uses four key words that are crucial to understanding the gospel of Jesus Christ: power, salvation, faith, and righteousness.
POWER
for it is the power of God (1:16b)
First of all, Paul declares, the gospel is the power of God. Dunamis (power) is the Greek term from which our word dynamite is derived. The gospel carries with it the omnipotence of God, whose power alone is sufficient to save men from sin and give them eternal life. People have an innate desire to be changed. They want to look better, feel better, have more money, more power, more influence. The premise of all advertising is that people want to change in some way or another, and the job of the advertiser is to convince them that his product or service will add a desired dimension to their lives. Many people want to be changed inwardly, in a way that will make them feel less guilty and more content, and a host of programs, philosophies, and religions promise to meet those desires. Many man-made schemes succeed in making people feel better about themselves, but the ideas promoted have no power to remove the sin that brings the feelings of guilt and discontent. Nor can those ideas make men right with God. In fact, the more successful such approaches are from their own standpoint, the more they drive people away from God and insulate them from His salvation. Through Jeremiah, the Lord said, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to do evil” (Jer. 13:23). It is not within mans power to change his own nature. In rebuking the Sadducees who tried to entrap Him, Jesus said, “You are mistaken, not understanding the Scriptures, or the power of God” (Matt. 22:29). Only the power of God is able to overcome man’s sinful nature and impart spiritual life. The Bible makes it clear that men cannot be spiritually changed or saved by good works, by the church, by ritual, or by any other human means. Men cannot be saved even by keeping God’s own law, which was given to show men their helplessness to meet His standards in their own power. The law was not given to save men but to reveal their sin and thus to drive men to God’s saving grace. Later in Romans, Paul declares man’s impotence and God’s power, saying, “While we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6), and, “What the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin” (8:3). Affirming the same basic truth in different words, Peter wrote believers in Asia Minor: “You have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet. 1:23). Paul reminded the church at Corinth that “the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18), and “we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (vv. 23–25). What to the world seems to be utter absurdity is in fact the power by which God transforms men from the realm of darkness to the realm of light, and delivers them from the power of death and gives them the right to be called the children of God (John 1:12). Ancient pagans mocked Christianity not only because the idea of substitutionary atonement seemed ridiculous in itself but also because their mythical gods were apathetic, detached, and remote—totally indifferent to the welfare of men. The idea of a caring, redeeming, self-sacrificing God was beyond their comprehension. While excavating ancient ruins in Rome, archaeologists discovered a derisive painting depicting a slave bowing down before a cross with a jackass hanging on it. The caption reads, “Alexamenos worships his god.” In the late second century this attitude still existed. A man named Celsus wrote a letter bitterly attacking Christianity. “Let no cultured person draw near, none wise, none sensible,” he said, “for all that kind of thing we count evil; but if any man is ignorant, if any is wanting in sense and culture, if any is a fool, let him come boldly [to Christianity]” (William Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975], p. 21; cf. Origen’s Against Celsus). “Of the Christians,” he further wrote, “we see them in their own houses, wool dressers, cobblers and fullers, the most uneducated and vulgar persons” (p. 21). He compared Christians to a swarm of bats, to ants crawling out of their nests, to frogs holding a symposium around a swamp, and to worms cowering in the muck! Not wanting to build on human wisdom or appeal to human understanding, Paul told the Corinthians that “when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:1–2). Later in the letter Paul said, “The kingdom of God does not consist in words, but in power” (4:20), the redeeming power of God. Every believer, no matter how gifted and mature, has human limitations and weaknesses. Our minds, bodies, and perceptions are imperfect. Yet, incredibly, God uses us as channels of His redeeming and sustaining power when we serve Him obediently. Scripture certainly testifies to God’s glorious power (Ex. 15:6), His irresistible power (Deut. 32:39), His unsearchable power (Job 5:9), His mighty power (Job 9:4), His great power (Ps. 79:11), His incomparable power (Ps. 89:8), His strong power (Ps. 89:13), His everlasting power (Isa. 26:4), His effectual power (Isa. 43:13), and His sovereign power (Rom. 9:21). Jeremiah declared of God, “It is He who made the earth by His power, who established the world by His wisdom” (Jer. 10:12), and through that prophet the Lord said of Himself, “I have made the earth, the men and the beasts which are on the face of the earth by My great power and by My outstretched arm” (Jer. 27:5). The psalmist admonished, “Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast” (Ps. 33:8–9). His is the power that can save.
SALVATION
for salvation (1:16c)
Surely the greatest manifestation of God’s power is that of bringing men to salvation, of transforming their nature and giving them eternal life through His Son. We learn from the psalmist that, despite their rebelliousness, God saved His chosen people “for the sake of His name, that He might make His power known” (Ps. 106:8). As God incarnate, Jesus Christ manifested His divine power in healing diseases, restoring crippled limbs, stilling the storm, and even raising those who were dead. Paul uses the noun sōtēria (salvation) some nineteen times, five of them in Romans, and he uses the corresponding verb twenty-nine times, eight of them in Romans. The basic idea behind the term is that of deliverance, or rescue, and the point here is that the power of God in salvation rescues people from the ultimate penalty of sin, which is spiritual death extended into tormented eternal separation from Him. Some people object to terms such as salvation and being saved, claiming that the ideas they convey are out of date and meaningless to contemporary men. But salvation is God’s term, and there is no better one to describe what He offers fallen mankind through the sacrifice of His Son. Through Christ, and Christ alone, men can be saved from sin, from Satan, from judgment, from wrath, and from spiritual death. Regardless of the words they may use to describe their quest, men are continually looking for salvation of one kind or another. Some look for economic salvation, others for political or social salvation. As already noted, many people look for inner salvation from the guilt, frustrations, and unhappiness that make their lives miserable. Even before Paul’s day, Greek philosophy had turned inward and begun to focus on changing man’s inner life through moral reform and self-discipline. William Barclay tells us that the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus called his lecture room “the hospital for sick souls.” Another famous Greek philosopher named Epicurus called his teaching “the medicine of salvation.” Seneca, a Roman statesman and philosopher and contemporary of Paul, taught that all men were looking ad salutem (“toward salvation”). He taught that men are overwhelmingly conscious of their weakness and insufficiency in necessary things and that we therefore need “a hand let down to lift us up” (The Letter to the Romans [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975], p. 19). Salvation through Christ is God’s powerful hand, as it were, that He has let down to lift men up. His salvation brings deliverance from the spiritual infection of “this perverse generation” (Acts 2:40), from lostness (Matt. 18:11), from sin (Matt. 1:21), and from the wrath of God (Rom. 5:9). It brings deliverance to men from their gross and willful spiritual ignorance (Hos. 4:6; 2 Thess. 1:8), from their evil self-indulgence (Luke 14:26), and from the darkness of false religion (Col. 1:13; 1 Pet. 2:9), but only for those who believe.
FAITH
to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. (1:16d)
The fourth key word regarding the gospel is that of faith. The sovereign power of God working through the gospel brings salvation to everyone who believes. Pisteuō (believes) carries the basic idea of trusting in, relying on, having faith in. When used in the New Testament of salvation, it is usually in the present, continuous form, which could be translated “is believing.” Daily living is filled with acts of faith. We turn on the faucet to get a drink of water, trusting it is safe to drink. We drive across a bridge, trusting it will not collapse under us. Despite occasional disasters, we trust airplanes to fly us safely to our destination. People could not survive without having implicit trust in a great many things. Virtually all of life requires a natural faith. But Paul has in mind here a supernatural faith, produced by God—a “faith that is not of yourselves but the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8). Eternal life is both gained and lived by faith from God in Jesus Christ. “For by grace you have been saved through faith,” Paul tells us (Eph. 2:8). God does not first ask men to behave but to believe. Man’s efforts at right behavior always fall short of God’s perfect standard, and therefore no man can save himself by his own good works. Good works are the product of salvation (Eph. 2:10), but they are not the means of it. Salvation is not merely professing to be a Christian, nor is it baptism, moral reform, going to church, receiving sacraments, or living a life of self-discipline and sacrifice. Salvation is believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Salvation comes through giving up on one’s own goodness, works, knowledge, and wisdom and trusting in the finished, perfect work of Christ. Salvation has no national, racial, or ethnic barrier but is given to every person who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. It was to the Jew first chronologically because Jews are God’s specially chosen people, through whom He ordained salvation to come (John 4:22). The Messiah came first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt. 15:24). The great Scottish evangelist Robert Haldane wrote,
From the days of Abraham, their great progenitor, the Jews had been highly distinguished from all the rest of the world by their many and great privileges. It was their high distinction that of them Christ came, “who is over all, God blessed for ever.” They were thus, as His kinsmen, the royal family of the human race, in this respect higher than all others, and they inherited Emmanuel’s land. While, therefore, the evangelical covenant, and consequently justification and salvation, equally regarded all believers, the Jews held the first rank as the ancient people of God, while the other nations were strangers from the covenants of promise. The preaching of the Gospel was to be addressed to them first, and, at the beginning, to them alone, Matt. 10:6; for, during the abode of Jesus Christ upon earth, He was the minister only of the circumcision, Rom. 15:8. “l am not sent,” He says, “but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”; and He commanded that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, “beginning at Jerusalem.” … Thus, while Jews and Gentiles were united in the participation of the Gospel, the Jews were not deprived of their rank, since they were the first called. The preaching of the Gospel to the Jews first served various important ends. It fulfilled Old Testament prophecies, as Isa. 2:3. It manifested the compassion of the Lord Jesus for those who shed His blood, to whom, after His resurrection, He commanded His Gospel to be first proclaimed. It showed that it was to be preached to the chief of sinners, and proved the sovereign efficacy of His Atonement in expatiating [sic] the guilt even of His murderers. It was fit, too, that the Gospel should be begun to be preached where the great transactions took place on which it was founded and established; and this furnished an example of the way in which it is the will of the Lord that His Gospel should be propagated by His disciples, beginning in their own houses and their own country. (An Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans [MacDill AFB, Fla.: MacDonald Publishing Co., 1958], p. 48)
All who believe may be saved. Only those who truly believe will be.
RIGHTEOUSNESS
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” (1:17)
The fourth key word Paul uses here regarding the gospel is righteousness, a term he uses over thirty-five times in the book of Romans alone. Faith activates the divine power that brings salvation, and in that sovereign act the righteousness of God is revealed. A better rendering is from God, indicating that He imparts His own righteousness to those who believe. It is thereby not only revealed but reckoned to those who believe in Christ (Rom. 4:5). Paul confessed to the Philippians, “I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith” (Phil. 3:8–9). “But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction; for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:21–24). The German pietist Count Zinzendorf wrote, in a profound hymn,
Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness
My beauty are, my glorious dress;
’Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed,
With joy shall I lift up my head.
Bold shall I stand in Thy great day,
For who aught to my charge shall lay?
Fully absolved through these I am,
From sin and fear, from guilt and shame.
From faith to faith seems to parallel “everyone who believes” in the previous verse. If so, the idea is “from faith to faith to faith to faith,” as if Paul were singling out the faith of each individual believer. Salvation by His grace working through man’s faith was always God’s plan, as Paul here implies in quoting from Habakkuk 2:4, as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” Abraham, the father of the faithful, believed, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness (Rom. 4:3), just as every person’s genuine faith, before and after Abraham, has been reckoned to him as righteousness (see Heb. 11:4–40). There is emphasis here on the continuity of faith. It is not a one-time act, but a way of life. The true believer made righteous will live in faith all his life. Theologians have called this “the perseverance of the saints” (cf. Col. 1:22–23; Heb. 3:12–14).
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1991). Romans (Vol. 1, pp. 49–57). Moody Press.
The Theme of the Epistle
Romans 1:16–17
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
In the sixteenth and seventeenth verses of Romans 1, we come to sentences that are the most important in the letter and perhaps in all literature. They are the theme of this epistle and the essence of Christianity. They are the heart of biblical religion. The reason this is so is that they tell how a man or woman may become right with God. We are not right with God in ourselves. This is what the doctrine of original sin is all about. We are in rebellion against God; and if we are in rebellion against God, we cannot be right with him. On the contrary, we are to be judged by him. What is more, we are polluted by our sin. We are as filthy in God’s sight as the most disease infected, loathsome individual could be in ours, and in that state we must be banished from his presence forever when we die. What is to be done? On our side, nothing can be done. Yet in these sentences Paul tells us that God has done something. In fact, he has done precisely what needs to be done. He has provided a righteousness that is exactly what we need. It is a divine righteousness, a perfect righteousness. And it is received, not by doing righteous things (which we can never do in sufficient quantity anyway), but by simple faith. It is received merely by believing what God tells us.
No One Righteous
In the next chapter, continuing our study of this very important section of the letter to the Roman church, I will show why Paul was not ashamed of this gospel. Here, however, I want to concentrate on the chief idea in these two verses, namely, that in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed and that this righteousness is received (and has always been received) by faith. The place to begin is with the fact that in ourselves we do not possess this righteousness. There can be little objection to the statement that we do not possess true righteousness, because this is the point with which Paul begins his formal argument. That is, immediately after having stated his thesis in verses 16 and 17, Paul launches into a section extending from 1:18 to 3:20, in which he shows that far from being righteous before God, men and women are actually very corrupt and are all therefore naturally objects of God’s just wrath and condemnation. I make the point in this way. Notice that in verse 17 (our text here), Paul says that “a righteousness from God is revealed.” Then notice that in 3:21, he says virtually the same thing once again: “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known to which the Law and the Prophets testify.” The words “is made known” mean “is revealed,” and the reference to “the Law and the Prophets” corresponds to Paul’s citation of a specific statement of the prophet Habakkuk in the earlier verse: “just as it is written: ‘the righteous will live by faith.’ ” So the full exposition of what Paul introduces in 1:17 begins only at 3:21. So what occupies the intervening verses? They are a statement of the need for this righteousness, introduced by a parallel but deliberate contrast with these two statements. At the start of this section, instead of speaking of any revelation of righteousness, Paul declares: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness” (v. 18, italics mine). What Paul says in Romans 1:18 through 3:20 embraces all persons. But he develops his thoughts progressively, moving from a description of those who are openly hostile to God and wicked to those who consider themselves to be either moral, and therefore acceptable to God on the basis of their own good works, or else religious, and therefore acceptable on the basis of their religious practices. One thing is true of everyone. Left to ourselves, we use either our heathen lifestyle, our claims to moral superiority, or our religion to resist the true God. Paul says that certain facts about God have been revealed to all people in nature. But instead of allowing that revelation to point us to God and then attempting to seek him out as a result of it, we actually suppress the revelation God has given in order to continue in our own wicked ways. This is the real grounds of God’s just wrath against us—not that we have failed to do something that we could not do or refused to believe something that we did not even know about, but that we have rejected the knowledge we have in order to pursue wickedness. When he gets to the end of this section Paul is therefore quite right in concluding, quoting from many Old Testament texts:
As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”
“Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
“Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Romans 3:10–18
We may not like this description of ourselves (who would?), but it is God’s accurate assessment of our depraved lives and civilization.
A Righteousness from God
In all literature there is no portrait of the human race so realistic, grim, or hopeless as this summation of Paul’s. Yet it makes the wonder of the gospel all the more glorious, for it is against this background that “a righteousness from God” is made known. We need to see several important things about it.
This righteousness from God is the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1:17 and 3:21, Paul says that righteousness “comes through faith in Jesus Christ.” But it is surely right to add, in view of what Paul said in the opening section of this letter (and says elsewhere), that this is the very righteousness of Christ, which God gives to us. Righteousness is revealed in the gospel—Paul says so—but the gospel concerns Jesus Christ (1:2–3). So it is Christ who has this righteousness, and it is from him that we both learn about it and receive it. Jesus possesses righteousness in two senses, both important. First, Jesus is intrinsically righteous. That is, being God, he is utterly holy and without sin. That is why he could say during the days of his flesh, “I always do what pleases him [that is, God]” (John 8:29b) or, as he said to his enemies on another occasion, “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?” (John 8:46a). His words left them speechless. Jesus is also righteous in that he achieved a perfect righteousness by his obedience to the law of God while on earth. When John the Baptist resisted Jesus’ call for baptism, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. 3:14–15). By saying that it was proper for him to be baptized in order “to fulfill all righteousness,” Jesus showed that he intended to fulfill the demands of the law while he lived among us. And he did. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones has written: He rendered a perfect obedience to the law; he kept it in every jot and tittle. He failed in no respect. He fulfilled God’s law completely, perfectly, and absolutely. Not only that! He has dealt with the penalty meted out by the law upon all sin and upon all sins. He took your guilt and mine upon himself, and he bore its punishment. The penalty of the law was meted out upon him, and so he has honored the law completely, positively and negatively, actively and passively. There is nothing further the law can demand; he has satisfied it all.
When Paul says that righteousness from God is revealed in the gospel, he means that the gospel shows how we can acquire the righteousness we need. But this does not exclude the truth that the existence and nature of this righteousness are also revealed to us in Christ’s person. In Christ we can see that righteousness truly exists and can be offered to us by God.
God offers this righteousness of Jesus Christ freely, apart from any need to work for it on our part. This is the heart of the Good News, of course. For unless God were willing to give this righteousness to us and actually does give it, the mere existence of a perfect righteousness would not be good news at all. On the contrary, it would be very bad news, for it would increase our sense of condemnation. It was the discovery of this truth that transformed Martin Luther and through him launched the Reformation. Luther was aware that Jesus exhibited a perfect righteousness and that this was a standard of character rightly demanded from all human beings by God. But Luther did not have this righteousness. In fact, the more he tried to achieve this righteousness, the more elusive it became. It was Luther’s very piety that created the problem. He wanted to be righteous. He wanted to please God. But the more he worked at pleasing God, the more he knew that pleasing God involved more than merely doing certain things and refusing to do others. He knew that pleasing God involved even the very attitudes in which he did or did not do these things. Basically he needed to love God, and he knew he did not love God. He actually hated God for making the standard of righteousness so impossible. As I pointed out in the introductory chapter of this book, Luther wrote, “I had no love for that holy and just God who punishes sinners. I was filled with secret anger against him.” But then Luther discovered that he had misunderstood God’s intention in revealing the nature and existence of this righteousness. It was not revealed so that men and women like Luther might strive toward it and inevitably fail desperately, as Luther did. It was revealed as God’s free gift in Christ, so that those who came to know Christ might stop their fruitless striving and instead rest in him. They could rest in his atoning death on their behalf, since he took the punishment of their sins upon himself and paid for them fully so that their sins might never rise up to haunt them again. They could rest in righteousness, knowing that God had given it to them and that they could thereafter stand before God, not in their own self-righteousness, which is no righteousness at all, but in the very righteousness of Christ. The term for the application of the righteousness of Christ to the sinner is “imputation.” It is like putting the infinite moral capital of the Lord Jesus Christ in our empty bank account. It is having the riches of heaven at our disposal. When Luther saw this, it was as if the doors of heaven had been opened and he was able to pass through “the true gate of Paradise.”
Faith is the channel by which sinners receive Christ’s righteousness. Paul lived many centuries before the Reformation, but he seems to have anticipated the sixteenth-century battles over the role of faith in salvation by the way he emphasizes faith both in this initial statement of his thesis and in his fuller development of the role of faith in receiving the gospel in 3:21–31. In Romans 1:17, he speaks of “a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith,’ ” quoting Habakkuk 2:4 (italics mine). In 3:21–31 he refers to “faith” eight times. What is faith? Initially Luther thought of faith as a work and therefore grimly regarded it as something else to be attained. But faith is not a work. It is believing God. It is opening a hand to receive the righteousness of Christ that God offers. Faith consists of three elements. First, it consists of knowledge. It is no mere attitude of mind; it involves content. We must have faith in “something.” In the case of salvation that content (and the object of our knowledge) is the revelation of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. Second, faith consists of a heart response to the gospel. This is because faith is not assent to some principle that is true but nevertheless has little relationship to us. It involves the love of God for us in saving us through the death of Jesus Christ, his Son. Unless this touches our hearts and moves them, we do not really understand the gospel. Finally, faith consists of commitment, commitment to Christ. At this point, Jesus becomes not merely a Savior in some abstract sense or even someone else’s Savior, but my Savior. Like Thomas, I now gladly confess him to be “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28, italics mine). In an excellent little book entitled All of Grace, the great Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote, “Faith is not a blind thing; for faith begins with knowledge. It is not a speculative thing; for faith believes facts of which it is sure. It is not an unpractical, dreamy thing; for faith trusts, and stakes its destiny upon the truth of revelation.… Faith … is the eye which looks.… Faith is the hand which grasps … Faith is the mouth which feeds upon Christ.” One person who read Romans 10:8 (“ ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart’ ”) exclaimed, “Give me a knife and a fork and a chance.” He had the idea. He was prepared to receive the gospel personally. Another who had the idea was Count Zinzendorf. His great hymn about justification through the righteousness of Christ received by faith comes to us through the translation of John Wesley: Jesus, thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress; ‘Midst flaming worlds, in these arrayed, With joy shall I lift up my head. Bold shall I stand in thy great day, For who aught to my charge shall lay? Fully absolved through these I am, From sin and fear, from guilt and shame. O let the dead now hear thy voice; Now bid thy banished ones rejoice; Their beauty this, their glorious dress, Jesus, thy blood and righteousness.
It was by faith in the completed work of Christ and God’s gift of Christ’s righteousness to believing men and women that Zinzendorf expected to stand before God in the day of judgment and be accepted by him.
“Nothing in My Hands”
This was Paul’s expectation and experience, too. He tells of his experience of God’s grace in Philippians. Paul had been an exceedingly moral man: “.… If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless” (Phil. 3:4–6). But Paul learned to count his attainments as nothing in order to have Christ “and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith” (v. 9). This is a vivid, personal statement of what he also declares at the beginning of Romans. In Philippians, Paul uses a helpful metaphor, saying that before he met Christ his thoughts about religion involved something like a lifelong balance sheet showing assets and liabilities. He had thought that being saved meant having more in the column of assets than in the column of liabilities. And since he had considerable assets, he felt that he was very well off indeed. Some assets he had inherited. Among them were the facts that he had been born into a Jewish family and had been circumcised according to Jewish law on the eighth day of life. He was neither a proselyte who had been circumcised later in life, nor an Ishmaelite who was circumcised when he was thirteen years of age. He was a pure-blooded Jew, having been born of two Jewish parents (“a Hebrew of Hebrews”). As an Israelite he was a member of God’s covenant people. He was of the tribe of Benjamin. Moreover, Paul had assets he had earned for himself. He was a Pharisee, the strictest and most faithful of the Jewish religious orders. He was a zealous Pharisee, proved by his persecution of the church. And, as far as the law was concerned, Paul reckoned himself to be blameless, for he had kept the law in all its particulars so far as he had understood it. These were great assets from a human point of view. But the day came when God revealed his own righteousness to Paul in the person of Jesus Christ. When Paul saw Jesus he understood for the first time what real righteousness was. Moreover, he saw that what he had been calling righteousness, his own righteousness, was not righteousness at all but only filthy rags. It was no asset. It was actually a liability, because it had been keeping him from Jesus, where alone true righteousness could be found. Mentally Paul moved his long list of cherished assets to the column of liabilities—for that is what they really were—and under assets he wrote “Jesus Christ alone.” Augustus M. Toplady had it right in the hymn “Rock of Ages”:
Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to thee for dress;
Helpless, look to thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee.
When those who have been made alive by God turn from their own attempts at righteousness, which can only condemn them, and instead embrace the Lord Jesus Christ by saving faith, God declares their sins to have been punished in Christ and imputes his own perfect righteousness to their account.
Not Ashamed
Romans 1:16–17
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
At first glance it is an extraordinary thing that Paul should say that he is “not ashamed” of the gospel. For when we read that statement we ask, “But why should anybody be ashamed of the gospel? Why should the apostle even think that something so grand might be shameful?” Questions like that are not very deep or honest, since we have all been ashamed of the gospel at one time or another. The reason is that the world is opposed to God’s gospel and ridicules it, and we are all far more attuned to the world than we imagine. The gospel was despised in Paul’s day. Robert Haldane has written accurately:
By the pagans it was branded as atheism, and by the Jews it was abhorred as subverting the law and tending to licentiousness, while both Jews and Gentiles united in denouncing the Christians as disturbers of the public peace, who, in their pride and presumption, separated themselves from the rest of mankind. Besides, a crucified Savior was to the one a stumbling-block, and to the other foolishness. This doctrine was everywhere spoken against, and the Christian fortitude of the apostle in acting on the avowal he here makes was as truly manifested in the calmness with which, for the name of the Lord Jesus, he confronted personal danger and even death itself. His courage was not more conspicuous when he was ready “not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem,” than when he was enabled to enter Athens or Rome without being moved by the prospect of all that scorn and derision which in these great cities awaited him.
Is the situation different in our day? It is true that today’s culture exhibits a certain veneer of religious tolerance, so that well-bred people are careful not to scorn Christians openly. But the world is still the world, and hostility to God is always present. If you have never been ashamed of the gospel, the probable reason, as D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones suggests, is not that you are “an exceptionally good Christian,” but rather that “your understanding of the Christian message has never been clear.” Was Paul tempted to shame, as we are? Probably. We know that Timothy was, since Paul wrote him to tell him not to be (2 Tim. 1:8). However, in our text Paul writes that basically he was “not ashamed of the gospel,” and the reason is that “it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’ ” In this study, following the treatment of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, I want to suggest eight reasons why we should not be ashamed of this gospel.
The Gospel Is “Good News”
The first reason why we should not be ashamed of the gospel is the meaning of the word gospel itself. It means “good news,” and no rational person should be ashamed of a desirable proclamation. We can understand why one might hesitate to convey bad news, of course. We can imagine a policeman who must tell a father that his son has been arrested for breaking into a neighbor’s house and stealing her possessions. We can understand how he might be distressed at having to communicate this sad message. Or again, we can imagine how a doctor might be dismayed at having to tell a patient that tests have come out badly and that he or she does not have long to live, or how a person involved in some great moral lapse might be ashamed to confess it. But the gospel is not like this. It is the opposite. Instead of being bad news, it is good news about what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. It is the best news imaginable.
The Way of Salvation
The second reason why we should not be ashamed of the gospel is that it is about “salvation.” And not just any salvation. It is about the saving of ourselves. The background for this side of the Good News is that, left to ourselves, we are in desperate trouble. We are in trouble now because we are at odds with God, other people, and ourselves. We are also in trouble in regard to the future; for we are on a path of increasing frustration and despair, and at the end we must face God’s just wrath and condemnation. We are like swimmers drowning in a vast ocean of cold water or explorers sinking in a deep bog of quicksand. We are like astronauts lost in the black hostile void of outer space. We are like prisoners awaiting execution. But there is good news! God has intervened to rescue us through the work of his divine Son, Jesus Christ. First, he has reconciled us to himself; Christ has died for us, bearing our sins in his own body on the cross. Second, he has reconciled us to others; we are now set free to love them as Jesus loved us. Third, he has reconciled us to ourselves; in Jesus Christ (and by the power of the Holy Spirit) we are now able to become what God has always meant for us to be. We can say this in yet other ways. Salvation delivers us from the guilt, power, and pollution of sin. We are brought back into communication with God, from whom our sins had separated us. And we are given a marvelous destiny, which Paul elsewhere describes as “the hope of the glory of God” (Rom. 5:2). In 1 Corinthians 1:30 Paul expresses these truths somewhat comprehensively when he writes that “Christ Jesus … has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.” Paul was not ashamed of the gospel, because it was about a real deliverance—from sin and its power—and about reconciliation to God.
God’s Way of Salvation
The third reason why Paul was not ashamed of the gospel is that it is God’s way of salvation and not man’s way. How could Paul be proud of something that has its roots in the abilities of sinful men and women or is bounded by mere human ideas? The world does not lack such ideas. There are countless schemes for salvation, countless self-help programs. But these are all foolish and inadequate. What is needed is a way of salvation that comes not from man, but from God! That is what we have in Christianity! Christianity is God’s reaching out to save perishing men and women, not sinners reaching out to seize God. Paul speaks about this in two major ways, contrasting God’s way of salvation with our own attempts to keep the law, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, with our attempts to know God by mere human wisdom. As to the law, he says, “For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3–4). This means that, although we could not please God by keeping the law’s demands, God enables us to please him, first, by condemning sin in us through the work of Jesus Christ and, then, by enabling us to live upright lives through the power of the Holy Spirit. As to wisdom, Paul writes, “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe” (1 Cor. 1:21).
The Power of God
This leads to the fourth reason why Paul was not ashamed of the gospel, the matter he chiefly emphasizes in our text: The gospel is powerful. That is, it is not only good news, not only a matter of salvation, not only a way of salvation from God; it is also powerful enough to accomplish God’s purpose, which is to save us from sin’s pollution. It is important to understand what is involved here, for it is easy to misconstrue Paul’s teaching. When Paul says that “the gospel … is the power of God for salvation,” he is not saying that the gospel is about God’s power, as if it were merely pointing us to a power beyond our own. Nor is Paul saying that the gospel is the source of a power we can get and use to save ourselves. Paul’s statement is not that the gospel is about God’s power or even a channel through which that power operates, but rather that the gospel is itself that power. That is, the gospel is powerful; it is the means by which God accomplishes salvation in those who are being saved. Since Paul puts it this way, we are right to agree with John Calvin when he emphasizes that the gospel mentioned here is not merely the work done by God in Jesus Christ or the revelation to us of that work, but the actual “preaching” of the gospel “by word of mouth.” He means that it is in the actual preaching of the gospel that the power of God is demonstrated in the saving of men and women. In the previous section I quoted what the King James Version calls “the foolishness of preaching” (1 Cor. 1:21), and since that is Paul’s own phrase, we can see it as proof that Paul was himself aware of how foolish the proclamation of the Christian message is if considered only from a human point of view. Some years ago I had the task of talking about “The Foolishness of Preaching” as one message of seven in a weekend conference on reformed theology. My address came after a break for lunch in the middle of what was a very long Saturday, and I began by saying that if there was anything more foolish than the foolishness of preaching, it was preaching about the foolishness of preaching after lunch on a day during which the listeners had already heard a number of other very distinguished preachers. It was a way of capturing what every preacher feels at one time or another as he rises to proclaim a message that to the natural mind is utter folly and that is as incapable of doing good in the hearers as preaching a message of moral reformation to the corpses in a cemetery—unless God works. But that is just the point! God does work through the preaching of this gospel—not preaching for its own sake, but the faithful proclamation of God’s work of salvation for sinful men and women in Jesus Christ. Let me say this another way since it is so important. We read in the first chapter of Acts that when the Lord Jesus Christ dispatched his disciples to the world with his gospel, he told them: “… you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (v. 8). Earlier they had been asking about the kingdom of God, no doubt thinking of an earthly, political kingdom, which they highly valued and hoped for. But Jesus’ reply pointed them to something far greater. His was a spiritual kingdom—not spiritual in the sense of being less than real, but a kingdom to be established in power by the very Spirit of God—and they were to be witnesses for him. Moreover, as they witnessed, the Holy Spirit, which was to come upon them, would bless their proclamation and lead many to faith. And so it happened. Three thousand believed at Pentecost. Thousands more believed on other occasions. So also today. The world does not understand this divine working, but it is nevertheless true that the most important thing happening in the world at any given time is the preaching of the gospel. For there the Spirit of God is at work. There men and women are delivered from the bondage of sin and set free spiritually. Lives are transformed—and it is all by God’s power. As D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, “The thing to grasp is that the apostle is saying that he is not ashamed of the gospel, because it is of God’s mighty working. It is God himself doing this thing—not simply telling us about it: doing it, and doing it in this way, through the gospel.”
A Gospel for Everyone
The fifth reason why Paul was not ashamed of this gospel is that it is a gospel for everyone—“everyone who believes.” It is “first for the Jew” and then also “for the Gentile.” Paul’s phrase “first for the Jew, then for the Gentile” has led readers to think that he was saying something like “to the Jew above the Gentile” or “to the Jew simply because he is a Jew and therefore of greater importance than other people.” But, of course, this is not what Paul intends. In this text Paul means exactly the same thing Jesus meant when he told the woman of Samaria that “salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). Both were speaking chronologically. Both meant that in the systematic disclosure of the gospel the Jews had occupied a first and important place. This was because, as Paul says later in Romans, theirs was “the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Jesus Christ …” (Rom. 9:3–5). No one can fully understand the gospel if he or she neglects this historical preparation for it. But this does not mean that Paul is setting the Jew above the Gentile in this text or, as some would desire by contrast, that he is setting the Gentile above the Jew. On the contrary, Paul’s point is that the gospel is for Gentile and Jew alike. It is for everybody. Why? Because it is the power of God, and God is no respecter of persons. If the gospel were of human power only, it would be limited by human interests and abilities. It would be for some and not others. It would be for the strong but not for the weak, or the weak but not for the strong. It would be for the intelligent but not the foolish, or the foolish but not the wise. It would be for the noble or the well-bred or the sensitive or the poor or the rich or whatever, to the exclusion of those who do not fit the categories. But this is not the way it is. The gospel is for everyone. John wrote, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, italics mine). At Pentecost Peter declared, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Acts 2:21; cf. Joel 2:32). Indeed, the Bible ends on this note: “The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take of the free gift of the water of life” (Rev. 22:17). (I have added italics to these passages to emphasize this important point.) How can one be ashamed of a gospel which offers hope to the vilest, most desperate of men, as well as to the most respectable person? How can we be ashamed of anything so gloriously universal.
Salvation Revealed to Sinners
The sixth reason why Paul was not ashamed of the gospel is that God has revealed this way of salvation to us. The gospel would be wonderful even if God had not revealed it. But, of course, if he had not revealed it, we would not know of it and would be living with the same dreary outlook on life as the unsaved. But the gospel is revealed. Now we not only know about the Good News but are also enabled to proclaim God’s revelation. And there is this, too: When Paul says that the gospel of God “is revealed,” he is saying that it is only by revelation that we can know it. It is not something we could ever have figured out for ourselves. How could we have invented such a thing? When human beings invent religion they either invent something that makes them self-righteous, imagining that they can save themselves by their own good works or wisdom—or they invent something that excuses their behavior so they can commit the evil they desire. In other words, they become either legalists or antinomians. The gospel produces neither. It does not produce legalists, because salvation is by the accomplishment of Christ, not the accomplishments of human beings. Christians must always sing: “Nothing in my hand I bring, / Simply to thy cross I cling.” But at the same time, simply because they have been saved by the Lord Jesus Christ and have his Spirit within them, Christians inevitably strive for and actually achieve a level of practical righteousness of which the world cannot even dream.
A Righteousness from God
The seventh reason why Paul was not ashamed of the gospel is the one we considered most fully in the previous chapter, namely, that it concerns a righteousness from God, which is what we need. In ourselves we are not the least bit righteous. On the contrary, we are corrupted by sin and are in rebellion against God. To be saved from wrath we need a righteousness that is of God’s own nature, a righteousness that comes from God and fully satisfies God’s demands. This is what we have! It is why Paul can begin his exposition of the Good News in chapter 3 by declaring, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify” (v. 21). (As previously mentioned, this verse is a repetition of the thesis presented first in Romans 1:17.)
By Faith from First to Last
The eighth and final reason why the apostle Paul was not ashamed of the gospel is that the means by which this glorious gift becomes ours is faith, which means that salvation is accessible to “everyone who believes.” What does Paul mean when he writes, ek pisteōs eis pistin (literally, “from faith to faith”)? Does he mean, as the New International Version seems to imply, “by faith entirely” (that is, “by faith from first to last”)? Does he mean “from the faith of the Old Testament to the faith of the New Testament” or, which may be almost the same thing, “from the faith of the Jew to the faith of the Gentile”? Does he mean “from weak faith to stronger faith,” the view apparently of John Calvin? In my opinion, the quotation from Habakkuk throws light on how the words ek pistẽs are to be taken. They mean “by faith”; that is, they concern “a righteousness that is by faith.” If this is so, if this is how the first “faith” should be taken, then, the meaning of the phrase is that the righteousness that is by faith (the first “faith”) is revealed to the perceiving faith of the believer (the second “faith”). This means that the gospel is revealed to you and is for you—if you will have it.
Boice, J. M. (1991–). Romans: Justification by Faith (Vol. 1, pp. 103–118). Baker Book House.
Drag queen suggests Danielle Smith should be assassinated ‘next’ after Charlie Kirk Edmonton police are looking into a post from a drag performer that seemed to suggest murdering Alberta Premier Danielle Smith after the shooting of Charlie Kirk. In since-deleted posts, Edmonton drag performer Aldynne Belmont, who posts under the handles Fox McCloud and Bunny Lebowski, celebrated the horrific shooting of the conservative influencer while seeming to suggest that Smith should be next.
Starmer’s digital ID: Here’s how it has unfolded; do not give in to “papers please” dystopia The following are reports relating to what has led “Sir” Keir Starmer to feel emboldened to impose digital IDs in the UK against the will of the people. People will not be surprised that Starmer is attempting to hoodwink the public using the excuse of uncontrolled illegal immigration.
Defeat of the Iranian axis is ‘within our means,’ says Netanyahu Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed war objectives for the coming year in an address to Defense Minister Israel Katz, IDF Chief-of-Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, during a meeting with members of the IDF General Staff Forum in Tel Aviv on Monday. Netanyahu urged that in pursuit of achieving security and overcoming Israel’s enemies, “we need to destroy the Iranian axis… this is what stands before us in the coming year, which could be a historic year for the security of Israel.”
Israel to Close West Bank Crossing to Jordan Indefinitely Israel will indefinitely close the only crossing between the West Bank and Jordan from Wednesday, days after reopening it following a shooting that killed two Israeli soldiers. A spokesperson for the Israeli authority overseeing the Allenby crossing said that it would be closed from Wednesday morning “at the direction of the political leadership.” The statement did not provide any further reason for the closure.
Conservatives Condemn Tucker Carlson for Seemingly Blaming Jews for Killing Both Jesus and Charlie Kirk At the memorial for conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sunday, Tucker Carlson — the former Fox News host-turned-far-right conspiracy theorist podcaster — appeared to advance two antisemitic ideas at once, both blaming the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Jesus and further amplifying his previous suggestions alleging Israeli involvement in the slaying of one of the world’s leading Christian Zionist voices.
Rubio: Hostages must ‘all be released immediately. Period’ The Trump administration is rejecting half-measures and demanding that Hamas immediately release all 48 hostages from the Gaza Strip, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday. Rubio also dismissed media reports that Washington had received a letter from Hamas requesting a 60-day ceasefire in exchange for the release of 10 Israeli hostages.
Everybody wants a Palestinian state — except the Palestinians It’s back in fashion. If Palestinian statehood were a stock, its price would be soaring. In the past several weeks, France, Britain, Canada and Australia have all said that they will recognize a Palestinian state next month at the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. Support for the idea is not about fairness or alleged Israeli misbehavior. It’s rooted in prejudice against Jews, and a willingness to erase Jewish history and rights. And even to acquiesce to the mass slaughter of Israelis as a possibility that is debatable, rather than abhorrent.
Secret Service Dismantles Weaponized SIM Farms Designed To “Shut Down” NYC Cell Networks Hours before President Donald Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly, the U.S. Secret Service announced that it had dismantled a massive, decentralized SIM farm network, just 35 miles from New York City, hidden inside five abandoned apartment buildings. The telecommunications stealth weapon was capable of paralyzing regional cell networks through denial-of-service attacks. Key Details from the Secret Service Report: Investigators seized 300 SIM servers and 100,000 SIM cards across multiple sites. The devices enabled anonymous threats, encrypted communications, and could launch telecom attacks such as: Disabling cell towers. Denial-of-service attacks. Secure communication for criminal enterprises Early analysis shows links between nation-state actors and known criminals.
Olbermann Deletes Direct Threat To Jennings: “You’re Next Motherf**ker” former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann fired off a pair of now-deleted X posts that appeared to directly threaten CNN political commentator Scott Jennings, a vocal defender of conservative values. This incident isn’t isolated—it’s a stark reminder of how quickly the left’s post-assassination playbook reverts to threats and deflection. Just days after Kirk was gunned down on stage at Utah Valley University, Olbermann’s words evoke the very violence that claimed the life of the 31-year-old Turning Point USA founder. This is a pattern of purposeful incitement from the left, designed to stoke division and normalize threats against conservatives in the wake of Kirk’s death.
America Is Reaching A Boiling Point America is reaching a boiling point, and it appears that we have entered a new era of civil unrest in which political violence will become the norm. At this moment in our history, we should all be denouncing political violence as loudly as we can. Unfortunately, there are many voices that are loudly calling for more political violence.
MSM Finally Understands Power Bill Crisis “Now A Major Political Issue” Bloomberg has finally woken up to the power bill crisis erupting across the Mid-Atlantic. Years of reckless energy policies, such as shuttering reliable fossil fuel power plants in favor of unreliable solar and wind, are colliding head-on with unprecedented electricity demand from AI data centers. The result is a toxic affordability crisis for households, and it is fast becoming a major flashpoint in the upcoming election cycle.
Would-Be Trump Assassin Tried To Stab Himself In Neck After Guilty Verdict Today’s guilty verdict against would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh illustrates the Department of Justice’s commitment to punishing those who engage in political violence. This attempted assassination was not only an attack on our President, but an affront to our very nation itself. As the verdict was being read, Fox News reports that their producers inside the courtroom say Ryan Routh tried to stab himself in the neck with a pen after guilty verdict. Routh’s daughter seems surprised…
Typhoon Ragasa to make landfall in China’s Guangdong on September 24 “Hong Kong has shut down, and Shenzhen is evacuating 400,000 people as Typhoon Ragasa (known in the Philippines as Nando) moves towards China. Its earlier landfall in northern Philippines on September 22 has already claimed at least 3 lives and displaced thousands, and now it threatens to wreak havoc in southern China. Ragasa is expected to make landfall in the coastal area between Shenzhen City and Xuwen County in Guangdong Province on September 24.”
California Passes Law Giving State Authority to Set Its Own Vaccine Guidance California Gov. Gavin Newsom last week signed a law granting the state the authority to set its own vaccine guidance based on the recommendations of professional organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), rather than on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) recommendations.
As US Nears TikTok Deal With China, The Communist Regime Cracks Down On Online Youth Evangelism Following a phone call between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday, reports suggest that the two countries are on the cusp of a deal to approve U.S. ownership of the controversial social media app TikTok. The development comes as reports are emerging from China indicating that the communist regime is engaging in a new crackdown against the online activities of pastors and youth evangelization efforts.
Starmer’s digital ID: Here’s how it has unfolded; do not give in to “papers please” dystopia The following are reports relating to what has led “Sir” Keir Starmer to feel emboldened to impose digital IDs in the UK against the will of the people. People will not be surprised that Starmer is attempting to hoodwink the public using the excuse of uncontrolled illegal immigration.
UK government’s proposed definition of “Islamophobia” is “dangerous and divisive”; it should be scrapped entirely Shadow Equalities Minister Claire Coutinho has strongly criticised Labour’s plan to introduce a state-sanctioned definition of Islamophobia, warning it could grant grooming gangs “impunity” and intensify a “culture of censorship” that hinders necessary discussions on issues like Muslim grooming (rape) gangs, gender equality and Islamist extremism.
Former vaccine developer: The rollout of the covid vaccines was reckless …. have spent my whole professional career trying to discover and develop new medicines, including vaccines … If nothing else, I know what good and bad medicines look like,” he says. Now the vaccine-injured and their families are left to pick up the pieces. “The tragedy is that this was all self-inflicted through nothing less than a carefully crafted and fabricated illusion of a deadly pandemic that never was.”
“I rejoice in a belief that intellectual light will spring up in the dark corners of the earth; that freedom of enquiry will produce liberality of conduct; that mankind will reverse the absurd position that the many were, made for the few; and that they will not continue slaves in one part of the globe, when they can become freemen in another.” —George Washington (1789)
Sniper attack at Dallas ICE facility: At least three people were injured when a sniper opened fire at the ICE Field Office in Dallas, Texas, this morning. When police searched the nearby rooftops, they found the attacker dead with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem released a statement on X that there were multiple injuries and fatalities, although police statements have only confirmed one fatality so far. An ICE spokesman told NBC News that two of the victims have died and that a third is in the hospital. No ICE agents were harmed; the victims were ICE detainees.
Jimmy Kimmel is back from his time-out: Jimmy Kimmel made his return to some ABC affiliates last night, although the large Nexstar and Sinclair affiliates continue to preempt his show. Kimmel addressed his heinous assertion that Charlie Kirk’s assassin was anything but a left-wing maniac inspired by continuous left-wing rhetoric that calls people like Kirk far-right threats to democracy. Kimmel contended that he wasn’t trying to make light of Kirk’s death, “nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for his actions.” Still, that’s exactly what he did. Kimmel intended to deflect blame from the Leftmedia he so willingly supports. Kimmel’s best moment came when he reflected on Erika Kirk’s speech on Sunday, during which she publicly forgave the assassin, Tyler Robinson. He called Erika’s actions “a selfless act of grace” and “an example we should follow.”
Routh guilty of attempted assassination: Yesterday, Ryan Routh was found guilty (though New York Times readers were briefly told otherwise) of attempting to assassinate Donald Trump in September of last year. Routh, who represented himself during the trial, responded to the guilty verdict by attempting to stab himself in the neck with a pen before four U.S. Marshals quickly restrained him. He was found guilty on five federal criminal counts and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. The evidence of Routh’s intention to assassinate Trump was overwhelming. It included a handwritten note wherein Routh asked the world to “complete the job” should his assassination attempt fail. The FBI provided evidence of the firearm and tactical gear that Routh had on him when apprehended, as well as digital proof of the meticulous efforts Routh put into scheming out his assassination plot. It was also clear that Routh is not a mentally stable individual.
Harris launches embarrassing book tour: Kamala Harris is trying to sell a book about her failed presidential campaign last year; it isn’t going well. “The Morning Meeting” with Mark Halperin spent an enjoyable two minutes going over Harris’s questionable decision to throw blame on staffers who still have a lot of sway in the Democrat Party. On Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show, Harris failed to explain or even defend her decision not to choose Pete Buttigieg as her running mate due to his homosexual lifestyle. In her appearance on “The View,” Harris dove into her fateful October 2024 appearance on the show, during which she answered a question about what separates her from Joe Biden with the infamous, “Not a thing comes to mind.” Apparently, Harris had been unable to appreciate that voters wanted her to differentiate herself from the man who fell apart on stage that June.
Dems win special House seat: Democrat Adelita Grijalva will fill the House seat vacated by the death of her father, Raúl Grijalva, in March. Grijalva won Arizona’s seventh district, which spans almost all of the state’s border with Mexico. Her swearing in will bring the Democrats’ House total to 214 seats compared to the narrow 219-seat majority Republicans hold. Two additional special elections are scheduled to be held this year to fill the seats of deceased Texas Democrat Sylvester Turner and Republican Mark Green, who resigned to enter the private sector in July.
Strzok loses lawsuit over FBI firing: Former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who led the investigation into the Russia collusion hoax but was exposed as virulently anti-Trump and subsequently fired as a result, lost his lawsuit over his firing. Strzok’s Trump derangement was exposed via a number of text messages with fellow FBI employee Lisa Page, with whom he was having an affair. In his lawsuit, Strzok argued that his firing was retaliatory, done to placate Donald Trump, and that it violated his First Amendment rights. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson found that the evidence did not support Strzok’s claims. His lawyers have yet to announce whether they plan to appeal. Last year, Strzok and Page agreed to a settlement with the Justice Department in a separate lawsuit over privacy invasion claims, whereby Strzok received a $1.2 million payout.
Another academic refuses to retract lies about Kirk assassination: Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), wrote on September 12 that Charlie Kirk’s assassin “likely murdered Kirk because he was not right-wing enough.” Wolfson, a media studies professor at Rutgers University, went on to falsely suggest that Republicans are fascists, language also used by Tyler Robinson, Charlie Kirk’s killer. After the Kirk memorial on Sunday, Wolfson said of Stephen Miller’s speech, “They are saying our rhetoric is dangerous, meanwhile this dude lifts key parts of his speech directly from Goebbels.” If Wolfson is worried about Nazi rhetoric, he should look to his own organization, which defended a University of Pennsylvania lecturer in 2023 for anti-Semitic cartoons showing Zionists drinking the blood of Palestinians. Neither Rutgers nor the AAUP has responded to requests for comment relating to Wolfson.
Leftist psycho targeted four justices: Nicholas Roske, the would-be assassin of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, had his sights set on more justices. According to a Justice Department sentencing memorandum released on Friday, Roske also targeted three other sitting justices. Who those justices were was not clear, but the DOJ noted that Roske stated he was “shooting for three” assassinations. Besides Kavanaugh, Roske searched the addresses and homes of three other justices extensively and marked their “locations on Google maps.” Based on his rationale for targeting Kavanaugh, it’s likely that the other justices were also conservatives. This episode establishes yet another instance of leftist-motivated political violence that was thankfully thwarted.
Numerous laid-off government employees rehired: For hundreds of federal government employees who were laid off following cuts directed by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, their departure has turned out to be temporary. Many of them have been rehired by the same federal agencies from which they were previously let go. For example, the General Services Administration has offered numerous former employees who managed government workspaces an opportunity for reinstatement. According to a former GSA real estate official, “Ultimately, the outcome was the agency was left broken and understaffed. They didn’t have the people they needed to carry out basic functions.” A similar refrain has been expressed at several other DOGE-shrunk agencies, resulting in the overall originally touted government cost-cutting measures being significantly reduced.
Headlines
Trump rejects meeting with Schumer, Jeffries over “ridiculous demands” to avert government shutdown (Just the News)
Major automakers call for EPA to ease tailpipe emissions rules (CNBC)
Disney decides it hasn’t angered people enough, announces Disney+ price hikes (Ars Technica)
Turning Point USA draws 2,000 at first tour event since Kirk’s assassination (Fox News)
Humor: 7 causes of autism newly revealed by RFK Jr. (Babylon Bee)
Does Tylenol cause autism? Well, according to the Trump administration, it just might.
“Taking Tylenol is not good,” President Donald Trump asserted in a major announcement regarding recent assessments his administration has made into addressing the growing problem of autism. Trump noted that pregnant women may want to avoid taking Tylenol unless they spike a very high fever. “Don’t take Tylenol,” the president said. “Don’t take it. Fight like hell not to take it.”
He concluded, “There’s a lot of common sense in this.”
This announcement follows the lead of the Department of Health and Human Services, which launched an effort to investigate autism — an issue that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long sought to understand. Indeed, Kennedy mostly deserved his reputation of being an anti-vaxxer, which comes from his oft-repeated assertion that childhood vaccines may have a causal link to autism.
However, no study has linked vaccines to autism, and he’s largely backpedaled. Yet, as Kennedy has pointed out, the apparent autism rate has increased dramatically since 1992, with now one in 31 children in the U.S. being diagnosed with the condition.
So, why did the Trump administration suddenly make its claim against Tylenol?
Trump’s warning against Tylenol is tied to recent studies. As Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary explained, “We now have good data from large studies and the Harvard School of Public Health Dean has made a very conclusive statement that he believes the association is causal. So when you have that weight of evidence, you have to take it seriously and err on the side of safety, especially since the vast majority of low-grade fevers do not need to be treated.”
The primary active ingredient in Tylenol is acetaminophen, a medication that first gained use as a pain reliever in the 1950s and was later marketed by Johnson & Johnson as an aspirin-free alternative for children under the name Tylenol.
The studies referenced by the Trump administration observe a possible link between autism and Tylenol. Therefore, a “Dear doctor” letter is being sent to physicians across the nation, warning, “Research shows a potential association between acetaminophen use during pregnancy and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes.” However, the letter adds, “Prudent use is needed during pregnancy and for infants and toddlers.”
The current maker of Tylenol, Kenvue, issued a statement pushing back against the Trump administration’s characterization of the drug: “We believe independent, sound science clearly shows that taking acetaminophen does not cause autism. We strongly disagree with any suggestion otherwise and are deeply concerned with the health risk this poses for expecting mothers.”
However, many on social media took note of the fact that, in 2017, Tylenol posted, “We actually don’t recommend using any of our products while pregnant.” Note that there’s a difference between “don’t recommend” and “don’t take this drug.” Nonetheless, the post is intriguing in light of today’s debate.
Dr. Makary defended the administration’s action, arguing, “We have an epidemic of autism that has increased 400% in recent decades, and we don’t have a known cause. Now this may be a cause, but when you have enough evidence to suggest an association and you have no other plausible cause, we have a duty to notify parents and doctors.”
Meanwhile, the administration also expressed hope in an older, long-established drug that offered promise as a treatment for autism symptoms. “Only recently have we recognized that some kids with autism actually have an autoimmune disease,” Makary explained. “The mechanism may be that the body is creating antibodies that block the folate receptors on their brain, restricting the ability of folate to get into the cerebrum. And so what that does is it actually creates a situation where you could have high levels of folate in your diet.”
The potential treatment drug in question is leucovorin, which is a type of folic acid metabolite and has been used to counteract the side effects of various chemotherapy drugs.
Predictably, this announcement has generated intense responses, especially from the anti-Trump crowd, that are little more than knee-jerk contrarianism. For example, social media has started to see a rash of leftist pregnant women ingesting Tylenol to “prove” Trump wrong. One would think that rather than simply doing the opposite of what the administration advises, especially when it comes to the health of one’s baby, a mother would take the time to research the issue and confer with her doctor before engaging in potentially dangerous behavior.
Yet the above reaction serves to capture the nation’s broader problem in a nutshell. America’s authoritative institutions have lost the public’s trust. In its place, politics has been injected. Instead of a common respect for institutions that are purported to be apolitical, every expert opinion or recommendation these institutions may make is now viewed as little other than an expression of political opinion and dependent upon who resides in the White House.
This was certainly true during the Biden administration, particularly in its handling of the COVID pandemic and its underhanded and overt efforts to promote certain views and censor others — often by pressuring Big Tech companies like Google to do so. However, with the Trump administration seeking to right the ship behind Kennedy as HHS secretary, it will be difficult because many will also question the trustworthiness of HHS and CDC recommendations under his watch.
Nate Jackson: Busted UN Teleprompter Doesn’t Derail Trump — The American president addressed the United Nations General Assembly on a long list of his primary concerns, pointing to his success as a way to fix foreign failure.
Sophie Starkova: The Storm Cloud That Is Bluesky — Predictably, the Left’s alternative social media platform to the free speech haven of Elon Musk’s X has become a cesspool of hatred and ugliness.
Emmy Griffin: Beware of Political Violence Data Manipulation — We are all being gaslighted when it comes to determining who is committing most of the political violence in America. The truth is that most of it comes from the Left.
Google Makes Bombshell Admission — Google admits that the Biden administration “pressed” the tech giant and YouTube to censor content it deemed COVID “misinformation.”
“The extremists want to shut down the government because they are unwilling to address the Republican healthcare crisis that is devastating America.” —House Democrat Leader Hakeem Jeffries
“Republicans are forcing hospitals, nursing homes and health clinics to close. People will die. You deserve better.” —Rep. Hakeem Jeffries
Delusions of Grandeur
“It is the closest presidential race in the 21st century in terms of the outcome.” —Kamala Harris
“Joe Biden was a highly capable president who accomplished great things.” —Kamala Harris
Friendly Fire
“To be a black woman running for president of the United States and as a vice presidential running mate, a gay man, with the stakes being so high … it would be a real risk.” —Kamala Harris
Non Sequitur
“As somebody who understands history, when I see ICE, I see slave patrols.” —Rep. Jasmine Crockett
Fanning the Rhetorical Flames
“We used to compare the strength of our democracy to communist dictators. That’s what we’re dealing with right now in Donald Trump.” —Kamala Harris
“It is unfortunate that more of my colleagues … could not see the amount of harm that [Charlie Kirk] was attempting to inflict upon our communities.” —Rep. Jasmine Crockett
Upright
“Erika Kirk forgave her husband’s killer. The state of Utah will inject poison into that killer’s veins until he’s dead. There is no contradiction between those two things. Christian forgiveness does not demand that we allow the cruel to ravage the whole earth. It demands we love our enemies — and sometimes, love is tough.” —Michael Knowles
Rise to the Challenge
“Women, I have a challenge for you, too: Be virtuous. Our strength is found in God’s design for our role. We are the guardians. We are the encouragers. We are the preservers. Guard your heart; everything you do flows from it. And if you’re a mother, please recognize that is the single most important ministry you have.” —Erika Kirk
Re: The Left
“I wonder what it is about a movement campaigning to allow men into protected spaces for women and girls that might attract sexual predators. A mystery for the ages.” —author J.K. Rowling
“If a cloak of moral invulnerability is offered, the first to take it will be the most immoral.” —Elon Musk
For the Record
“To every terrorist thug smuggling poisonous drugs into the United States of America, please be warned that we will blow you out of existence.” —Donald Trump
“The UN is funding an assault on Western countries. The UN is supporting people that are illegally coming into the U.S. The UN is supposed to stop invasions, not finance them.” —Donald Trump
Belly Laugh of the Day
“These are the two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.” —Donald Trump
ON THIS DAY in 1917, Ohio congressman Ivory Emerson introduced the Service Flag (or Blue Star Flag) to Congress, saying the banner was a tribute to families “who gave to this great cause of liberty … the dearest thing in all the world to a father and mother — their children.”
Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray for the protection of our uniformed Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Lift up your Patriot Post team and our mission to support and defend our legacy of American Liberty and our Republic’s Founding Principles, in order that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.
Trump stands by Israel at the United Nations, criticizing other countries for backing a Palestinian state and telling them it’s unwise, while also offering support to Ukraine in its war against Russia, and rebuking European nations on the impact of what he called uncontrolled migration; Chris Mitchell talks about Trump’s support for Israel, the impact of international recognition of a Palestinian state, the Hamas request to Trump for hostage/ceasefire deal, the war in Gaza City and what he heard about migration during his recent visit to the United Kingdom; Israel sees an unprecedented wave of Jewish immigration this year, even in the middle of a war; and our Studio Five look at the new Netflix movie, “Ruth & Boaz,” based on the Biblical story- including our conversation with the lead actors and man behind the movie, Devon Franklin.
Charlie Kirk’s memorial was unlike anything America has seen in one remarkable way. Join Todd Friel as he reflects on the service and the contents of the speeches.
Fox News host Jesse Watters gives his take on President Donald Trump’s speech before the U.N. General Assembly on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime.’ #fox #foxnews #media #breakingnews #us #usa #new #news #breaking #jessewattersprimetime #jessewatters #watters #trump #donaldtrump #un #unitednations #unga #generalssembly #speech #foreignpolicy #internationalrelations #geopolitics #diplomacy #newyork #politics #political #politicalnews #government
‘The Five’ discusses President Donald Trump ‘roasting’ globalists at the United Nations General Assembly after their elevator abruptly stopped for him and first lady Melania Trump. #fox, #media, #breakingnews, #us, #usa, #new, #news, #breaking, #thefive, #foxnews, #trump, #donaldtrump, #melaniatrump, #unitednations, #unga, #globalists, #politics, #political, #politicalnews, #government, #foreignpolicy, #worldnews, #internationalrelations, #diplomacy, #washingtondc, #washington, #dc
For the past decade at least, the progressive movement and the Democrats have consistently abused the American public to the verge of rebellion, then, they pull back just enough to defuse tensions.
They did it with the BLM and Antifa riots, dealing out around $2 billion in property damage in cities across the US, injuring thousands of police officers and killing dozens of innocent bystanders. Conservatives and moderates stood back, for the most part, until the Kyle Rittenhouse incident in August of 2020. When leftists sought to prosecute the young man for defending himself from a mob that was trying to murder him – When they falsely labeled him a “racist” and a “terrorist”, the line was crossed.
Congressman Jim Jordan on Tuesday celebrated Google’s decision to reinstate YouTube creators censored under President Joe Biden, calling the decision “a win for free expression.”
The Ohio Republican told The Daily Wire that Google and YouTube parent company Alphabet admitted in a Tuesday letter that the company and its subsidiaries bowed to pressure from the Biden administration to censor conservative creators speaking out about election integrity and COVID-19.
“They had kicked some people off the YouTube platform altogether — you, your channel, you’re gone. They’ve agreed to reinstate those individuals, which I think is good. They’ve said they will not use the fact-checkers, like other platforms have done — which was a big problem because fact-checkers are typically really biased against conservatives. I thought it was, again, a win for the First Amendment, a win for free expression.”
Alphabet on Tuesday pledged its “commitment to free expression,” and said it “will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the company terminated their channels for repeated violations of COVID-19 and elections integrity policies that are no longer in effect.”
Creators banned under this regime include Dan Bongino and Sebastian Gorka, both of whom now serve in the Trump administration.
Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, recalled just how extreme the Biden administration’s censorship efforts were.
“Never forget the Biden administration established the disinformation governance board,” Jordan said on Wednesday’s edition of Morning Wire. “I mean, the most Orwellian-sounding thing you could think of — as if a bunch of bureaucrats can tell you what you can say, what you can read, what you can tweet, what you can post! That was frightening stuff.”
Fortunately, Jordan notes, “we had an election last November and, thank goodness, things changed.”
Still, Jordan isn’t ready to give up the fight, warning that the United States could soon fall victim to European speech restrictions — something congressional Republicans are fighting to stop.
European speech laws are creating complications for the American social platforms, Jordan said. In particular, the European Union’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act could force restrictive European speech codes on Americans.
Jordan takes that risk seriously.
Earlier this month, British authorities arrested Irish comedian Graham Linehan upon his landing at London’s Heathrow Airport after a flight from the United States. At issue were a series of X posts he wrote in April, which included jokes about transgender-identifying people.
“If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls,” one of Linehan’s posts in question read.
Americans are generally not in danger of arrest in the United States for mocking leftist ideologies, such as transgenderism. But they are still under threat of suppression and retaliation from companies like YouTube or other influential entities, Jordan says.
“I think it’s just a matter of time before that happens to an American,” the lawmaker told The Daily Wire. “We’re particularly concerned about that relative to YouTube.”
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