Chapter 1
Letters of Paul
Not Ashamed of the Gospel
For I am not ashamed of the gospel,
because it is the power of God
that brings salvation to everyone who believes:
first to the Jew, then to the Gentiles.
For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—
a righteousness that is by faith from first to last,
just as it is written:
“The righteous will live by faith.” Romans 1: 16-17 (NIV)
FAITH ALONE
Romans 1:16-17
It was a summer afternoon. We were on the back nine of the East Course at Andrews Air Force Base (now known as Joint Base Andrews). My golfing companions were three Marines, two of whom were members of our church. The afternoon was so hot and muggy that we were sweating before we got to the first tee. We were half-way through our round when, in an instant, the weather dramatically changed. Ominous dark storm clouds covered the sky. Suddenly, there was a clap of thunder so loud that it sounded like a cannon. The rain started to fall, just a few drops at first, then a torrent. We pulled our golf carts under some trees to wait out the storm. The rain was falling now in sheets, like a waterfall. Then a bolt of lightning flashed directly over our heads, and another boom of thunder. I said to my friend Pat, who was driving our golf cart, “Let’s get the heck out of here,” or something to that effect. The wind was howling, and the rain was coming at us almost horizontally, with some hail mixed in. Pat started driving, across fairways, over hill and dale, through rough and trees, heading for the clubhouse. Visibility was down to about five feet. Somehow, we made it back to the clubhouse, totally drenched, cold, and more than a little shaken. I took off my shoes and poured water out of them. I have been in fierce thunderstorms before, but I never felt so vulnerable as that day on the golf course. I’ve developed a healthy respect for lightning and storm clouds ever since.
Martin Luther was a 22-year-old university student, preparing for a career as a lawyer. It was a summer afternoon, July 2, 1505, when he got caught in a violent thunderstorm. A bolt of lightning struck the ground so close to him that he could feel the hair on the back of his neck standing straight out. Luther was thrown to the ground, terrified for his life. In that moment of crisis, he prayed to St. Anne that if she would save him from the thunderstorm, he would give his life to God and become a monk. Sure enough, Luther was spared further harm, and he kept his promise. He gave up hopes for a legal career and became a monk. He entered the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt, Germany and studied to become a priest. If ever there were a dedicated monk, it was Martin Luther. He embraced the poverty, chastity, and obedience of the monastic life with ferocious intensity. He wore himself out with prayer and fasting and going to confession. Later Luther wrote, “If ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it was I. If I had kept on any longer, I should have killed myself with vigils, prayers, readings, and other work” (Glimpses, Christian History Institute, Number 15, 1991). But the harder that Martin Luther tried to earn his salvation, the guiltier he felt.
You see, Martin Luther had this distorted image of God as an angry judge, rather than as a loving Father. Luther lived in fear that God was going to punish him for his sins. He knew he was unworthy of salvation, so he tried ever harder to somehow be good enough to escape eternal damnation. But the harder he tried, the more he worried about the state of his soul.
In 1512 Martin Luther was appointed a Professor of Theology at the University of Wittenberg. To prepare for his lectures, Luther began to study the Bible, particularly Paul’s letter to the Romans. He read Romans over and over again, night and day. It was more than an academic exercise—it was a deeply personal quest. Luther was consumed with the question: what can I do to be saved? The church had given him an answer, but it did not satisfy. The church had told him that salvation comes through the rules and rituals of the church. Going to Mass, going to confession, paying the tithe, saying all the prescribed prayers, praying to the saints, venerating holy relics, receiving the sacraments—these were the means of salvation, according to the church. Luther did all those things, but still he did not feel forgiven, still he did not feel saved. He even had become a monk and a priest; he had dedicated himself to live a holy life, but none of that was enough.
To Luther’s dismay, the church had come up with yet another way to offer salvation, and another way to fill the church coffers—the sale of indulgences. Indulgences were like a ticket to heaven. They were like a guarantee of salvation. Indulgences were like letters of pardon for the forgiveness of sins. Buy an indulgence and you didn’t need to go to confession. Money was all that was required to buy God’s forgiveness. Luther was appalled. Such abuse and corruption could not be right. So, Luther was driven to the Scriptures, driven to seek to know how sinful man could stand before holy God. And the answer he found in the Bible changed his life; it changed the church; it changed history. How can I be saved? Martin Luther found the answer to that question in Paul’s letter to the Romans—by faith alone! This was a radical new idea in Paul’s time, and it was a radical idea in Luther’s time as well. For the Jews, the only way to be right with God was to keep all the commandments. For the Jews, there were 614 specific requirements in the Old Testament law. In addition, there were prescriptions attached to each of these requirements, handed down orally from generation to generation. Only by keeping the law—all the law—could a person hope to be saved. Paul himself had tried to earn his salvation by living a righteous life as a pharisee. But then Paul was converted to Christ, and he came to see that salvation comes by faith alone. What we cannot do for ourselves by living righteous lives, Christ has done for us by his death on the cross.
When Martin Luther read in Romans that salvation comes by faith alone, it was like another thunderbolt had crossed his path. It changed his life forever. No longer was he trapped in that endless cycle of trying to be good enough to deserve God’s favor. No longer was he tormented by the guilt of his sins. Now, for the first time in his life, Luther could accept God’s forgiveness. He could stop trying to win his way into heaven. He could accept that fact that Christ had died for his sins, and that faith in Christ was all that was required for him to receive eternal life.
Because of Paul, and Martin Luther, and others who followed, we know that salvation comes by faith. Yet, even though we know it in our heads, we still can get caught up in the obsession to try to be perfect. We imagine that if we can just be good enough, God will accept us. But even if we go to church every Sunday, even if we give a tithe of our incomes, even if we pray every day and read the Bible every day, even if we do acts of charity, even if we live thoroughly moral lives, none of that is enough to assure our salvation. Only faith can do that. Only faith can give us the courage to stand before holy God without shame or fear. We don’t do good works in order to become Christians. We do good works because we are Christians.
Martin Luther didn’t intend to start the Protestant Reformation. He was only trying to find a way to save his own soul. But the way he found to peace of mind and heart became a pathway for millions of others to follow. Today every Protestant church, every Protestant Christian, owes a debt of gratitude to Martin Luther who taught that salvation comes, not by works, but by faith. And we owe a debt to Paul who wrote in his letter to the Romans that “the righteous will live by faith.” To be sure, good works will follow, because the sincere Christian will try to live a moral and productive life. But salvation comes by faith.
LIVE BY FAITH
Romans 1:16-17
Over 500 years ago, Martin Luther, a German priest in the Roman Catholic Church, nailed 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. Of course, 500 years ago in Germany, and in the rest of western Europe, the Roman Catholic Church was the church; it was the “only game in town.” There were no other kinds of churches in western Europe before Martin Luther—no Lutheran churches, no Presbyterian churches, no Anglican churches, no Episcopal churches, no Methodist churches, and certainly no Baptist churches. In western Europe, the Roman Catholic Church was it. If you were a Christian in western Europe, you were a Roman Catholic. If you hoped to be saved, you had to go through the church. You had no other option. The problem is that a church without rivals, a church with absolute power, is subject to corruption. The church in Martin Luther’s time had become corrupt.
Martin Luther was especially troubled by the power of the Pope. In Luther’s time, the Pope exercised more authority over the church and over the lives of individual Christians than the Bible did. In fact, since the Bible was available only in Latin, and since most people could not read Latin, and since most people did not have access to a Bible (even if they could read Latin), most church members did not know what was in the Bible. They had to do as they were told by the Pope, the priests, and the other church officials.
Martin Luther was especially troubled by the sale of indulgences. To raise money for building projects and other church funding, the Pope had authorized the sale of indulgences for the forgiveness of sins. If you wanted your sins forgiven, or if you wanted forgiveness of sins for people you cared about, then you were encouraged to buy indulgences. It was like the church was selling forgiveness. Martin Luther knew that wasn’t right. How did he know? Well, he studied the Bible. He was especially persuaded by the book of Romans, and by Romans 1:16-17. Martin Luther discovered that the Bible does not prescribe the sale of indulgences. Rather, the Bible teaches that forgiveness and salvation come through faith. Forgiveness and salvation are free gifts of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
In his letter to the Romans Paul wrote, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith.” Paul said nothing about buying indulgences. Paul said salvation comes to everyone who has faith in Jesus Christ. When Martin Luther read those words in Romans, it was like a light came on in his mind and heart. Luther became outraged at how the church had perverted the teachings of Paul and other New Testament writings. Luther explained how he came to this new understanding. He wrote, “At last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the words...’The one who is righteous will live by faith’” (Luther’s Works, vol 34, ed. Lewis Spitz, Muhlenberg Press, 1960, p. 337). Luther began to understand that salvation is a gift of God through faith. Salvation comes through personal faith in Jesus, not through indulgences or the rituals of the church.
Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, to publicize some of the issues he had with the Church. Other Christians in other places also had begun to question the authority, teachings, and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Some “reformers” had been questioning the Roman Catholic Church for centuries. But Luther had the advantage of the invention of the printing press, so that his ideas could be more easily disseminated.
Eventually Martin Luther was excommunicated for challenging the authority of the Pope. Had he not been protected by powerful German nobles, Luther likely would have been arrested and executed for his heretical views. Ironically, Luther’s goal was not to start a new church. His goal was to “reform” the church. It was to be a “reformation” based on faith in Jesus, the authority of the Bible, and the priesthood of all believers.
92 years after Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the church door in Germany, some religious dissenters in England sought to “reform” the church. The Church of England had broken away from the Roman Catholic Church after Luther did in the 16th century. But some Christians in the 17th century felt the Church of England had not gone far enough. These “reformers” were called “puritans” and “separatists.” Puritans wanted to purify the Church of England. Separatists sought to separate from the Church of England and form a new church based on the Bible. Some separatists had read the Bible for themselves and could find no biblical justification for infant baptism. Most of the Reformation churches had rejected the authority of the Pope, but they had not rejected infant baptism—they still baptized babies. “Radical reformers” such as Anabaptists in Europe and Baptists in England and America, rejected infant baptism, based on their study of the scriptures. They practiced believer’s baptism. Thus, the Reformation that Martin Luther had begun in 1517 was taken a step further in 1609 when some of those “radical reformers” who had been baptized as babies in the Church of England were baptized again as believers on the basis of their personal and voluntary faith in Jesus. Some of those Baptists came to New World, and they formed the First Baptist Church in America in Providence, Rhode Island in 1639. Believers baptism was for them an expression of being saved by faith.
Now, over 400 years later, Baptists continue to proclaim salvation through faith in Jesus and to practice believer’s baptism. We are baptized not in order to be saved but because we have been saved through our faith in Christ. We are “not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.”
COMING TO FAITH
Romans 1:16-17
FAITH – what is it, and how do you get it? That’s what Gordon Jackson wanted to know. So, he asked people. He conducted interviews with 210 people of faith—Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians; men and women; clergy and laypeople. To each one he asked a simple question: how did you come to your faith? He asked, and they told him. The average interview lasted two hours.
Gordon Jackson took all those interviews and analyzed them and reported the results in a book titled, Pathways to Faith. You might think it would be difficult to get people talking about something so personal, but most people enjoyed telling their faith story. One man said, “I’ve been a Baptist all my life, and no one ever asked me how it was with me and God. Preachers have told me from the pulpit, but no one ever asked me. Thank you for letting me share my faith with you” (p. 58). Some of Jackson’s findings I found to be surprising. For example, he discovered that most people came to their faith gradually. Only 10% of the people he talked with had a dramatic conversion experience. For the other 90%, their faith was an evolutionary process. Some had grown up in the church; others had not. Some had come from a Christian home; others had not been exposed to Christian teachings until they were adults. But for the vast majority, faith did not come like a thunderbolt out of heaven. Most people could not say, “That’s when it happened; that was the critical moment.” For most of them, faith came over time, like a seed that was planted and gradually grew.
Would you like to guess the number one influence that led people to their faith? No, it was not preachers. No, it was not church services. No, it was not reading the Bible. No, it was not watching some religious program on television. The number one factor which led them to faith was the influence of caring people. Someone cared about them, and through that caring person or persons, they came to believe that God cared about them too.
In many cases, it was parents or grandparents who played that crucial role in their faith development. Especially for children, it is hard to overstate the importance of the climate in the home for laying the foundation for a strong religious faith. When children feel loved and cared for, they develop a basic trust about life, and that basic trust is easily translated into religious faith. But not every child has the advantage of a safe, secure, loving, nurturing home environment. That’s where other caring persons come in. Beyond parents and grandparents, can you guess what other caring persons had a significant impact on the lives of children? I was kind of hoping the interview results would say it was the pastors of their churches. But no, for most of them, the pastors of their childhood did not make that much of an impression. Most of them did not really know their pastors when they were children. The key persons outside the home were not the pastors, but, you guessed it, Sunday School teachers. It was Sunday School teachers who communicated care and concern to many of those persons when they were children. And what they remembered most was not the lessons their Sunday School teachers taught them. In fact, they could remember very little in terms of content. What they remembered most was the kind of persons those Sunday School teachers were. They remembered the caring, the kindness, the loving concern, the faithfulness.
For the church to be a community of faith, the church must first be a community of caring. People do not care how much we believe until they believe how much we care. If we truly want to share our faith, the way to do that is to communicate genuine love and concern. So, the garden plot for faith is a community of caring. Yet, even within a caring community, how a person comes to faith is still something of a mystery. We can prepare the ground and plant the seed, but it is God who causes faith to grow. It happens in a different way for each individual. God works in each person’s life in a way that is unique to that person. If you haven’t had a faith experience just like mine, that’s okay. We come to believe in God and to accept Jesus in our own ways. Faith is personal. It is not something we force on another person or even give to another person. We can share our faith, but the other person in his or her own way makes a choice about making faith his or her own. That is one reason we don’t baptize babies in the Baptist church. Even though parents want to give their faith to their children, faith is not something you pass on like a family heirloom. Children come to a point in their own lives when they make a faith decision for themselves. The important thing about faith is that it is your own.
I was eleven years old when I decided to be baptized and join the church. I cannot point to an exact moment in time when I became a Christian, because I learned to believe in God and to love Jesus from my earliest years. I was one of those fortunate children who grew up as a Christian, so that I never knew a time when I was not. But even then, at the age of eleven, I made a faith decision. As an expression of that faith decision, I walked down the aisle of the church on a Sunday morning during the hymn of invitation and shook the pastor’s hand and filled out a membership form. Some weeks later I was baptized as a believer on the basis of my faith in Christ. But I cannot say that I became a Christian in that moment. It was a time when I professed my faith in Christ in a public way.
How does a person come to faith? It is a two-part process. First, it is God reaching out to us in Jesus Christ, offering us forgiveness and salvation and new life. Then, it’s our reaching back to God, confessing our need for forgiveness, accepting his love, and living the new life. As Paul said, we live by faith.
QUESTIONS/SUGGESTIONS FORDISCUSSION/REFLECTION
- What is faith to you?
- How did you come to your faith?
- What persons were instrumental in your faith journey?
- What is the “righteousness of God?”
- What does it mean to “live by faith?”