By His Stripes We Were Healed

We often quote the statement "by His stripes we were healed" to speak of how the Cross heals us from physical sickness. However, there is much more here than just relief from illness and disease. The healing here encompasses healing of body, soul and spirit through the Cross. Moreover, Peter is speaking of healing as it relates to Christian suffering, and how we are healed from our sins as we imitate the Cross and take the stripes of others. It is only when we are willing to surrender ourselves to suffer innocently that we can truly unleash the power of the Cross. The weakness of the Cross is stronger than all of the power of sin and death.

Look at the text in I Peter. Peter speaks first to servants, then to women. He addresses two groups that were routinely oppressed in the ancient world. He tells them that they can reenact the power of the Cross if they will submit themselves to suffering for the name of Jesus. In other words, they will have a resurrection morning when God will raise them up and vindicate them before their enemies if only they will share in the sufferings of Christ with humility and patience. This is how we must respond to difficult situations today when we feel that we are being treated unfairly. We must bear the Cross.

Something happens to our wounds when we bear them patiently in the name of Jesus to the glory of God. Peter says that it is a "gracious thing" (ESV) when we are mindful of God and suffer injustice humbly. There is grace in the suffering. When we suffer gracefully, the power of Christ rests upon us. This means that our wounds become redemptive. Our wounds become one with the wounds of Jesus Christ as His power rests upon us. This means that our wounds bring healing as the wounds of Christ bring life to us. It also means—and this is astounding!—that our wounds become redemptive for others as the love and mercy of Christ is extended to others through our patient suffering. We are healed, and we heal others. But the grace of healing only comes when we suffer injustice humbly and patiently, following the pattern of Christ and experiencing the power of the Cross.

Peter speaks here of Christian servants that are beaten unjustly by cruel masters. He teaches them to take a beating with Christian grace. And by teaching them this principle, Peter highlights the most radical idea in the world: weakness defeats power. This is the very center of the Christian faith, and Peter applies it here in a way that turns the world upside down. Jesus came preaching this counter-revolutionary idea. The Zealots thought they could overthrow Rome through the power of the flesh, but Jesus showed them that they that live by the sword die by the sword. This is the central idea of Christianity: we must die to live, and we must suffer to heal.

True Humanity

Romans 1 shows us the de-humanization of mankind. Romans 12 shows us the re-humanization of mankind. This re-humanization of mankind occurs in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God called Abraham out of Adam's race in order to redeem the sons of Adam. God determined to accomplish this redemption by sanctifying to Himself a holy nation who would bear vicariously the sins of mankind. Israel was created by God to offer atonement for the nations. They were disobedient to this vision and failed to offer themselves selflessly in love for the nations, as the story of Jonah so profoundly illustrates. So, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to fulfill in perfect obedience, the task that Israel failed to accomplish. Israel, because of her disobedience, could not redeem the nations, but Jesus, through His perfect obedience, became the substitute for Israel, and thus, for the entire world. God narrowed the sins of humanity from Adam to Abraham, and from Abraham to Israel, and from Israel to David, and from David to Christ. The vocation of Israel was to offer herself as a burnt offering for the salvation of the world, but she failed in this vocation. Jesus took this vocation upon Him and fulfilled it in perfect faith, hope and love.

Compare Jesus to Adam (as Paul does in Romans 5, I Corinthians 15 and Philippians 2): Adam sought divinity and lost his humanity; Jesus surrendered His divinity and gained true humanity. What is interesting here is that this idea of full humanity, which Paul calls "the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ," is what God planned for Adam from the start. God intended that the human race should be bear His image and share in His glory. It was the will of God from the beginning that the human race should be filled with the fullness of God. God intended for Adam to be exalted and rule over all creation as regent Lord of all. Of course, the plan of redemption included the fall of man, but image and glory was still God's original plan. Moreover, God has not changed His mind. He still intends to glorify humankind. Jesus has accomplished what Adam was supposed to do. The original plan for humanity was and is deification. Of course, I mean this in a biblical sense of sharing in the glory of God, not in the idolatrous sense of possessing independent, innate divinity. This false sense of deification, that man could be like God apart from the indwelling presence of God, was the lie that caused Adam to sin. The only way to be fully human—and that means to share in the divine—is to be filled with the life of God.

And that is the point I am trying to get at: to be fully human is to share in the divine. This is why the idolaters of Romans 1 are so pathetic. Romans 1 shows how far humanity can fall when man decides to seek his own glory in self-deification. Man's glory is a fading glory. Indeed, man's glory becomes shame. Man's glory degenerates into the twisted extremes of self-love and self-loathing. Furthermore, when an individual man exalts himself as god and enthrones himself upon his own will, then the ultimate casualty is community. The human race begins to fragment and disintegrate. (Integration means to relate parts into a whole; to disintegrate means to scatter the whole back into disparate parts that then decay because they can only live when joined together.) The idea of community and heavenly society shaping earthly society is everywhere in Scripture. This is God's primary and ultimate purpose. God is forming and shaping His redeemed people into a Spirit-filled society of faith, hope and love.

Paul has Israel in mind throughout all of Romans. Paul has Israel's sin at the Golden Calf in view in chapter one, and he sees the Christian church in Christ as the new Israel born and again and filled with the Spirit in the remainder of the book. God called Israel out of Egypt and gathered them together at the foot of Sinai so they could be reformed and shaped into His new humanity, the new community of faith, hope and love that would show the light of God to all nations. Israel had been slaves in the land of Egypt, and they were pitifully dehumanized in the process. But now, God was gathering them into a re-humanizing project that would form them and shape them into an image-bearing and glory-sharing community. The wisdom of God was the blueprint by which this community would be designed. As the wisdom of God was manifest in Israel, the people of God would reveal the image and glory of God to the world. Israel was called to be kings and priests on behalf of all nations.

This is what Paul shows us in Romans chapters 1 and 12. He shows us how Israel, who was dehumanized by sin and slavery and acted instinctively from their dehumanized nature at the Golden Calf, was being re-humanized in the New Covenant by the freedom of the Spirit. Israel was born again in the New Covenant and experienced a new Exodus in the waters of baptism into the name of Jesus. As the first Christians were baptized into Christ, they were called to come through the waters of baptism out of the old slavery to sin into the new freedom of the resurrection. This is why Paul was so adamant that the Gentiles were full members of the new community. Converted Gentiles were baptized in Christ and growing by the Spirit into Christ. This new community of faith, hope and love was created to be a community based on the person and work of Jesus Christ, nothing more.

This is really what compels me to this topic. In order to be fully and truly human, we must be perfectly related to one another. Humans were made to share in the image and glory of God corporately, in relationship to one another. This means that the community of faith, hope and love, the church, is a heavenly society that is developed by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. This is what the New Testament is all about. God is forming for Himself a new humanity, a new human race born again in Christ. God is creating for Himself a new community of faith, hope and love, the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem. And the entire point of this is that God is forming and shaping each faithful household and each local church into a microcosm of this future reality. The members of the church are being shaped by God into full humans, people who attain the full potential of all that God wants them to be. Of course, we cannot be all that God wants us to be without being properly related to our fellow Christians. We are all members of one body. We have been called into vertical and horizontal relationship with Christ and the church. We cannot think that we are saved as mere individuals. We are saved as members of the body. This means that we must learn how to relate to one another by the Spirit.

This is the difficult part. It is easy to talk about forming community in theory, but when we are called to live out what we theorize, to walk the talk, then we are faced with the difficulty of actually working with real people and helping them to see how they must be related to one another. We must think in terms of family, or even, of a team. We must think in terms of accepting one another regardless of the difficulties. We must not reject one another and withdraw from one another. We must work out our differences. We must learn how to get along. Why? Because this is what reveals the image and glory of God to the world. "By this shall all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love one to another." And we cannot demand love; we must give love. Love is not a feeling (though it produces a feeling). Love is an action. Indeed, love is community service, to borrow a phrase. (Hopefully, though we can come to see that love is not punishment.) This is where we are as a church, and this is the point that the Holy Ghost is compelling us to consider. The church is called to function as a community of believers. We must understand what God is doing. He is forming His church into a fellowship, a koinonia, a society of believers, the heavenly city where spiritual cooperation and interchange of service is necessary for life, liberty and happiness.

In the church, God has given us a glimpse of the world to come. We are compelled by the Spirit to look in faith toward the heavenly society that God is forming for His everlasting kingdom. He is relating us all together by the Spirit. He has gifted each of us in unique ways so that we may all contribute to the common good. We should each one pray that God will help us to develop our personal gifts for the good of the church. We should understand that God has given to every man a measure of faith according to grace. We have been called to exercise these gifts to the glory of God and the edifying of the church. The church is built up in the earth as each member finds his or her place. This is the process God is using to get the job done. We must understand it.

The idea of a new human community is central to all of Paul's teaching, indeed, the entire New Testament. This was God's plan from the beginning. From the start it was "not good that man should be alone." No man lives to himself or dies to himself. God created us as communal creatures. We cannot avoid this reality. To avoid communion is to be dehumanized. To withdraw into permanent seclusion is not natural. God did not call us to be hermits. God called us to be members of His one body. He has called us and gifted us to contribute to His people and purpose. This is the plan of God. God is building for Himself a habitation through the Spirit. This is the only way His image and glory can be revealed. It takes a universe to reveal the glory of God.

Integrity

We need to consider for a moment the matter of integrity. Integrity, as I understand it, is to do the right thing when no one is looking. Integrity means that your heart is not duplicitous and multi-layered, but it is simple and uncomplicated. Integrity means that you are what you say you are and what you portray yourself to be to others. Integrity means that you are honest with yourself and with God, which makes you honest with all men. Integrity means you are true.

A lack of integrity always begins with the self-deception of the lying human heart. The fall of the human heart into self-deception began in the Garden of Eden. The "father of lies" deceived the woman, and the woman fed the man. Both the man and the woman fell into the grip of sin and death when the man sinned. Then, their eyes were opened, and they saw immediately that they were naked. There is no doubt that they saw the "truth" about their condition, but the truth they saw became distorted because it was a self-referential truth, a subjective truth that flowed out of their own perception of themselves rather than the pure truth about them that can only be seen by God, who sees all things perfectly. They were immature and unable to see in any objective way the truth about themselves. They could not make true judgments because of their limited knowledge. They were not wise. They received knowledge of good and evil without the wisdom to understand the implications of such knowledge. Thus, their knowledge became deception.

The very first thing that Adam and Eve did once they knew they were naked is to become self-conscious before one another. They felt the need to cover themselves in front of each other. Thus, they made aprons of fig leaves to hide their nakedness from one another. Their self-deception flowing out of their foolish immaturity forced them to try and deceive one another. They could not afford to be honest and open with each other any longer. So, self-deception led them into "other-deception." This is what Paul talks about when he says that fools seek to measure themselves by others, which is not wise. When Adam sinned, he was doomed to a life of trying to measure up to others because he forsook the only true measure of righteousness: Jesus Christ. And finally, when God came into the garden to confront their sin, they attempted "God-deception." Of course, that did not work very well, for God cannot be deceived, but they tried it. "Self-deception" leads to "other-deception" to "God-deception" (which never succeeds). Man lies first to himself; then, he lies to others; and, finally, he lies to God.

After the fall of man and his expulsion from the Garden, the heart of man began to develop layers of self-deception producing more other-deception and attempting more God-deception. God responded to man's lies by giving him over to his lies. Because fallen man "received not a love for the truth, God sent them a strong delusion that they should believe a lie and be damned." However, God did not abandon man forever in the grip of his lies. The father of lies had enslaved man in a web of deception, but Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life, came to confront Satan's lies and preach the truth to man. This truth is brought into contact with the lying the human heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, who breaks the power of the lie and causes men to believe the truth of the gospel. When men believe the truth, the power of the lie is broken and deliverance begins to come to the lying human heart.

Of course, the truth does not deliver us completely from self-deception all at once. The conquest of any land given over to idols takes years. God does not give us victory all at once. We gain victory by degrees. This causes a tremendous battle between the father of lies and the Spirit of truth for the deceitful hearts of men. Certainly the battle was won at Calvary, but now that victory must be applied in our lives every day. We must confront daily the lying nature of our heart and submit ourselves to the Spirit of truth. And there is only one way to do this: we must submit our heart each day to the Spirit of truth to be measured against "The Truth," Jesus Christ. Our self-deception, like Adam's, comes when we take to ourselves the task of determining what is right and wrong rather than learning this in relationship with God. The only way we can become true again is to be filled with the Spirit of truth that goes all the way down into the deceitful heart of man and confronts our lies at their root in our heart. Only by measuring ourselves against the Truth, Jesus Christ, can we be set free from the prison of self-analysis and self-comparison that is based on fear of men rather than love of God. And this truth must get to the heart of the matter and become truth in the inward parts.

This is the point we must grasp. We must get to the matter of being true in our hearts, of being true within ourselves because we are filled with the Spirit of truth. This sort of truth can only be achieved as we allow the Spirit to confront our little daily self-deceptions and make us honest with ourselves and with others and with God. The only way this can happen is for God to reveal our own heart to us. It is only in the presence of God that we can be truly laid bare before Him, to become naked before Him and allow Him to reveal the true nature and motives of our own heart. This is why we need deep, spiritual self-examination. Now, I do not mean that we need morbid self-introspection. Rather, we need the Holy Ghost to take us by the hand and show us our nakedness rather than seeking out our own follies by ourselves. That is merely repeating the error of Adam and Eve when seek to know ourselves apart from relationship with God. We must allow the Spirit to speak to us in preaching, prayer and praise and truly reveal our nakedness in His way and in His time so that He may clothe us in garments of glory in His time and in His way.

The bottom line is this: we must be honest with ourselves if we ever want to be honest with others and with God. We must be willing to confront who we really are and fall before God in humble repentance. This is entirely different from self-condemnation. Condemnation flows from self-introspection, and it is a lying introspection because it is our own lying heart trying to tell what we are all about. We need the Word and Spirit to stand as the true measure of who we are. We must allow God to search us out and correctly identify the truth about us. He will speak the truth in love. He will tell us what we need to hear as we need to hear it. And He will not berate us or upbraid us. He will love us into change and not browbeat us into condemnation. His truth will produce integrity.

Healing and Priesthood

In the Old Covenant, those who were sick, infirmed, diseased, lame, crippled, blind, halt, lame, etc. could not enter into the temple to worship or to serve as priests. When Jesus came healing the sick, He was doing more than just improving their quality of life. He was healing them for service in the temple. Jesus was forming around Himself a new temple of worshippers made up of living stones, but these worshippers could not enter to stand in the presence of God until they were healed. When Jesus healed the multitudes, He brought shalom, peace and wholeness. When Jesus said, "Peace be unto you," He was saying, "May you be blessed and made whole." Jesus often commanded the sick to be made whole, or complete.

This is what we are facing today. We are surrounded by a world that needs healing and wholeness. The world needs the shalom of God to be spoken to them in the gospel of peace, the gospel of reconciliation and wholeness. It is God's desire and determination to make men and women whole. However, He is not just improving our quality of life. He is bringing us into His temple that we might serve Him as a nation of priests that minister before Him as priests for the world. Jesus is still healing the sick so that they can enter into the temple and serve the Lord. This is the still the mission of the church and the kingdom.

The Lord intends to heal us spiritually, emotionally, physically, financially, relationally, etc. He makes us complete. What does it mean to be whole, complete? It means, I think, at least, to be developed in all of the potential God has sown into the soil of our heart. It means to become all that God wants us to be. But again, this is not just to improve our quality of life. It is to bring us into the temple for His service.

The story of the lame man at the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3) has profound implications here. The lame man was placed outside the gate of the temple, and he could not enter into the court of the worshippers. He was excluded because of His disabilities. But now, in the coming of the kingdom, the church was announcing the same message that Jesus preached: "If I by the finger of God do cast out devils, then the kingdom of God has come upon you." Peter and John healed the lame man as a sign that God was overthrowing the power of the curse and restoring all creation to wholeness. In the resurrection, Christ makes all things new. And now the lame man can rise up and enter into the temple to serve in his proper capacity. Moreover, when this man is healed and brought to fullness, the temple itself is brought to fullness. As each living stone of the temple is brought into healing and restoration, then the ministry of the temple itself will grow into the shalom, the peace and wholeness, for the whole world that God envisioned for His eternal purpose. God heals His people so they may serve him with gladness. This is what it means to be whole.

The Faith of Abraham

Paul speaks in Romans 4 about Abraham believing God. The amazing thing is not just that he believed, but what he believed. God promised Abraham, an obscure, little-known, nomadic Hebrew shepherd, that he would inherit the world (Romans 4:13), and Abraham believed it. That is amazing!

God later told Israel that they would be heirs to the promise made to Abraham beginning with the land of Canaan. They refused to believe it. God loathed them for their unbelief and killed them in the wilderness (Psalm 95:10 ESV). Israel never did fully believe the promises of God. However, Paul teaches us that the promise made to Abraham has come to fruition in Christ, and the church shares in the promises made to Abraham (Galatians 3:14). Thus, Paul sees the Gentile mission in the New Covenant era as the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham. Again, Israel, this time as first-century Jewish Christians, did not believe God and rejected the Gentiles' inclusion in the church. Paul makes it clear that Israel's failure to accept the Gentiles is an indication that, again, they did not believe the promise made by God to Abraham that all nations will be blessed in Abraham. It was simply a matter of faith vs. unbelief.

So, how about the church today? Do we believe God? Do we believe that all nations belong to Him? Do we believe that the kingdom is coming upon the earth, and that all of the enemies of Christ shall be defeated as He rules in heaven, seated upon the throne of God? Do we believe that Jesus is defeating all of His enemies now through the evangelistic endeavor of the church? It is very important that we believe, but it is also very important what we believe. If we are to be the children of Abraham, then we must believe what Abraham believed. We must believe that the church is called to be the heir of the world. And we must see this as the motive and impulse of evangelism. Our evangelistic efforts must be built upon this faith. God has promised us the world: do we believe it?

Evangelism: Ministry vs. Marketing

There are two competing models of evangelism. One is the marketing model, and the other is the ministry model. They are antithetical to each other. The marketing model treats the church as a business, with people as customers. People are the necessary component of their success. If church marketers want to grow their "business" (their church), they must attract more customers. So, they offer up a "product" that fits the desires of the customer. The customer is always right. The customer wants personal happiness, and so personal happiness must be offered up in a way that pleases the customers. We must keep 'em coming back for more. Fundamentally, this model of evangelism does not do evangelism for the benefit and good of the people, just like Wal-Mart does not offer low prices as a matter of selfless philanthropy. The marketing model promotes evangelism in pursuit of success in business. It is essentially selfish evangelism, evangelism as the necessary means for personal success. It is sanctified Amway, soap-peddling, hard-sell, close-the-deal sort of evangelism.

The ministry model of evangelism is completely different. This model promotes evangelism because the gospel is "good news" for those in need. The goal of ministry evangelism is to love people as Christ loved them. This means, then, that ministry evangelism will compel some and repel others. Love always tells people the truth because it is best for them, even if they do not want to hear it. Here, the customer is hardly ever right. Here unbelievers are challenged and confronted on every level of their life, and they called to become a part of this ministry to others, to lay down their life, take up their cross and follow Jesus. This sort of gospel requires that "the customer" surrender his temporary happiness in the pursuit of lasting joy. And the catch is that lasting joy only comes as a result of deep suffering. Your average, pursuit-of-happiness customer usually does not like that sort of thing, and the crowds walk slowly away.

Ministry model evangelism loves people and helps people with no strings attached. It feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, delivers the captive, visits the prisoner, prays for the sick, all while asking for nothing in return—not even a visit to church. There are no demands placed on this kind of evangelism. It simply meets the needs of people. Then, it preaches the gospel to those who will hear it, baptizes those who believe, and disciples those who continue in the faith. Certainly there will always be those who love only the fishes and the loaves, and Jesus soundly rebukes them for it. However, He does not stop healing their sick and feeding their hungry. He continues offering "no-strings attached evangelism." No doubt His preaching drives the crowds away, but still He ministers to them and says, "Suffer the little children to come." This is true ministry model evangelism, and we must imitate it.

Prayer as Declaration

One of the things that has been dancing around the edge of my mind for a while is the role that prayer plays in the advance of the kingdom of God. It seems to me that prayer is as important as preaching. Preaching declares the will of God to sinners and saints and breaks forth the will of God into the unbelieving world around us. But it seems that prayer is also a form of declaring the will of God, though we declare it to the invisible world of the heavenlies and directly to God Himself. And yet, I think prayer is more like preaching than we think. God declares His will through preaching. God uses preaching as the conduit to proclaim His purpose in the earth. It seems to me, then, that prayer is very similar. It seems that God has chosen to use human speech as the medium for His will to be "prayed through" and "prayed into existence."

In what way does prayer speak forth the will of God into the earth? I tend to think that God has chosen to use believers as incarnational vessels to pour His will into the world, as human conduits to stream heaven into earth. God has poured out His Spirit into the world via the indwelling Spirit of Christ that enters into the heart of believers when we receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is distributed into the earth through the church, through the individual members of the body of Christ that are joined together incarnationally into one ecclesial body by the perichoretic indwelling of God in Christ in the church in all creation (John 17). In other words, the Spirit of God is present to the world through the church, and when we pray, God prays His will into existence through us. This means that, just as preaching releases the will of God into the earth by declaration, so prayer releases the will of God into the earth by declaration. And further, just as the will of God cannot be done apart from preaching, the will of God cannot be done apart from prayer, and this is all by God's sovereign design. If we do not preach, then the truth is not proclaimed, and the victory will not come. This is true as well of prayer. If we do not pray, then the declaration of the will of God is silent in the earth, and this declaration is the only means by which the will of God can come to pass. God has designed it so. We must speak the Word of God through preaching and the will of God through prayer. If we do not pray, then the purpose of God is not expressed and poured into the earth.

Often, our problem is that we do not see the immediate results of prayer, so we do not pray. This is also true with preaching: we expect visible, immediate results, and if we do not see this we believe that our preaching has failed. We have learned to judge the success of preaching (falsely) through audience response. The applause of the crowd and the tears shed at the altar often are how we judge the success of a message, when long experience should tell us that immediate response is often fleeting. We must judge preaching by the long term results that come through the Word of God. Prayer is the same. We must judge our prayers in terms of long term results, not by immediate answers.

Do we believe in the power of preaching? We do. So then, we must believe in the power of prayer. We must believe that we are declaring the will of God whether or not we see immediate results. We must believe that something very real is happening when we pray. The purpose of God depends upon our prayers. We must pray the will of God into existence.

A Living Sacrifice: Studies in Romans (1:16-17)

Romans 1:16, 17

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 for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith."

The Righteous Shall Live By Faith

Paul's oft-quoted statement in verses 16 and 17 is a summary introduction, an outline of sorts, to the entire book of Romans. First of all Paul is "not ashamed of the gospel." As we shall see, there were many who attacked Paul for preaching the gospel of grace, but he refused to bow his head and mumble incoherently with hesitant voice. He was bold and unashamed in the face of his religious critics. He was unashamed in the face of unbelieving skeptics. And, most of all, he was unashamed in the face of Caesar himself, before whom Paul later testified. This attitude of boldness characterizes Paul's presentation of the letter from the beginning to the end.

The boldness of Paul flowed from his confidence in the power of God. Paul had seen the risen Lord, Jesus the Messiah, and he had no qualms about declaring Christ's authority in all the earth. As Paul says in Ephesians, the same power that raised Christ from the dead now works in us (Ephesians 1:19, 20). The power of the gospel lies in what God did in the resurrection of Christ. And what God did in the resurrection of Christ is realized in us when the gospel is preached to us and we believe with obedient faith. Then, what God did in Christ becomes what God does in us, and the gospel reveals the power of God unto salvation. Such power makes men bold.

The gospel was more than theory to Paul, more than abstract doctrine to be discussed and dissected for intellectual stimulation. The gospel itself was the medium of God's power to save. The power of God to save men from their sins and all creation from the bondage of the curse was contained in the declaration of what God had done in Christ. God saves through preaching. Through the preaching of the gospel, the death, burial and resurrection of Christ are lived out in the life of the believer. The power of God that raised Christ from the dead raises us from the dead in the preaching of the gospel. There is no power on earth greater than this.

And yet, we must be careful to see that salvation means more to Paul than just a personal deliverance from the power of sin and death. No doubt salvation can never be seen as less than that, but it must be seen as much more than that. For Paul, the gospel is the fulfillment of the salvation promised to Israel and, by extension, to the entire world. As Romans unfolds we shall see that, for Paul, salvation includes much more than merely "going to heaven when I die." We shall see that salvation encompasses the full scope of universal redemption promised to Israel by the prophets. This includes the redemption and reconciliation of all creation through the resurrection at the last day. The gospel promises a new heaven and new earth where righteousness dwells. That is good news indeed.

Paul's most fundamental reason for writing Romans is to defend the idea that salvation is given freely "to everyone who believes." The good news of what God has done in Christ is preached to all nations beginning at Jerusalem. The prophetic vision of the Old Testament that all nations would come to worship the one true God was now coming to pass in the evangelistic ministry and mission of the church. True, the gospel is preached "to the Jew first"—there is no doubt that salvation is offered initially to Israel. Yet, we must not stop short of the full vision of the gospel: the gospel is preached "also to the Greek." The gospel is the power of God to save everyone that believes.

The gospel reveals the "righteousness of God." The gospel shows us that God is righteous, that God is faithful, that God is right. In other words, the "righteousness of God" here concerns the fact that God keeps His Word. His promises have not failed. This will be an important theme throughout Romans. The gospel preached by the Christian faith is the realization of God's Old Covenant promises to Israel. Though critics and mockers may deride Paul's gospel as making a liar out of God, Paul will vehemently defend his message with countless Scripture quotations as being the fulfillment of what the prophets foresaw. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the vindication of God, of Christ, and of the body of Christ, the church. The gospel Paul's preaches needs no other endorsement. The resurrection and exaltation of Christ is enough.

The righteousness—the rightness of God—is revealed in the preaching of the gospel, in the account of how God is fulfilling His promises to Israel in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This gospel is preached first to Israel and, then, to all nations. This seems to be what Paul has in mind when he says, "The righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith," which is literally "from faith unto faith." The righteousness of God is revealed in the outworking of faith from the faithful remnant of Israel to the faith that is now spreading abroad throughout the world (cf. 1:8). This is a sort of "faith-momentum" that builds in the earth until the consummation of all things by faith at the end. This is the same idea that the writer of Hebrews employs when he speaks of Jesus being "the author and finisher of our faith." The faith that Jesus set in motion in the faith of the elders, beginning with Abel (Hebrews 11:4), will continue until the last of God's elect is brought into the faith. God's righteousness is revealed from faith unto faith.

This process of salvation "from faith unto faith" means that the fulfillment of the promise will not be immediate. Therefore, the faithful must patiently wait on God until the realization of the promise comes. This leads Paul to quote from Habakkuk 2:4: "The righteous shall live by faith." Paul quotes from Habakkuk because both Habakkuk and Paul are concerned with the same issue: how the faithfulness of God is worked out in the face of the faithlessness of Israel. Like Habakkuk, Paul has wrestled with the question of Israel's persistent unbelief. Like Habakkuk, Paul sees impending judgment upon Israel, this time by the Romans in AD70. He, too, wonders how God's promises can stand in the face of this seeming failure, with Israel rejecting her Messiah and her city and temple being destroyed, and the word comes to Paul as it came to prophet so long before him, "The righteous shall live by faith." Paul has come to see in his Gentile mission the ultimate outworking of the purpose of God, as he will argue so eloquently and passionately in Romans 9-11. We shall hear the echoes of this word throughout Romans: The righteous shall live by faith.

God shall be vindicated. His promises are sure. The faithful must simply believe that. Moreover, those who believe shall share in the vindication of God. The righteous shall be vindicated at the last day in the resurrection of the dead. The righteous shall live by faith. However, this final vindication is anticipated in the resurrection of Christ, which we share through baptism into Christ. Those who believe the gospel, are baptized into Christ and receive the fullness of the Spirit are vindicated already awaiting the final display of their vindication before the world at the last day. The righteous shall live by faith.