faith for faith

When we think upon the declaration of Romans 8:28, namely that, “For those who love God, all things work together for good,” its implications are staggering. “All things work together for good, you say? Do you mean all things?”

Well, when we think upon the all things in Romans 8:28, we must understand it in its context. The apostle Paul is speaking there particularly of the suffering of the saints, manifesting itself in tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, danger, nakedness, and death (v. 35). These things seem to come to the saint from external sources, such as from those whom the apostle labels, “Life and death, angels and rulers, things present and things to come, powers, height and depth, and everything else in all of creation (vv. 38, 39). None of these things, the apostle says, “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 39).

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Therefore, since our baptism into the death of Christ has crucified our old and fleshly man so that we would be set free from our slavery to sin, the apostle Paul exhorts the church to live in a way that is consistent with this reality. He gives this exhortation to the church, not because men who have been baptized into Christ are able to overpower the work of the Spirit of God, but because natural men have and always will find their way into the ranks of the fold of God. We know this is true because of the apostle’s later declarations in his discourse, and we see it clearly elsewhere in the promise of the surety of God’s work in the elect. The apostle writes, “I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Ph. 1:6 NASB). For when God begins a work in a soul, he finishes it (cf. Rm. 8:29, 30).

Therefore the apostle gives this command to the church, “Let not sin therefore reign in you mortal bodies to make you obey its passions” (v. 6:12). In other words, do not submit yourself to the slavery of sin and let sin be your Lord so that you follow after the fleshly passions of your body. As those who have been baptized into the death of Jesus Christ, we are cleansed not only from the condemnation of our wicked deeds, but we are released from the slavemaster who commands them of us so that we can live our lives in such as way that we do not submit to the passions of our flesh. For now, Christ has redeemed our flesh so that which was once use for wickedness can now be used for the sake of righteousness.

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Continued from previous post: “Therefore, Ezekiel declares, as the apostle Paul declares, that baptism results in the obedience of God’s people. How? Because God places in his people a new heart and a new spirit, and he puts his Spirit in us so that we will ‘walk in [his] statutes and be careful to obey [his] rules.’ Therefore, man’s inability to fulfill the obedience of faith is remedied by God’s ability, for it is God who works in his people to bring them to obedience through Jesus Christ. The question that remains then is, ‘How is this accomplished?’”

This obedience which God accomplishes in his people comes about first through the emancipation from sin that baptism affords. Paul addresses this truth thoroughly in the sixth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans. However, before we look at that text, I would like to explain how the apostle structures his argument. Yes, baptism is the apostle’s topic in Romans 6-8:17, however he does not come at the topic directly as though he were writing an essay on baptism, but he does it in response to certain objectionable questions, each question raised by a prior claim of his. The reason he structures his discourse in this way, I believe, is because he is preparing the church for the false teachers who will inevitably spring up among them proclaiming destructive heresies. He expresses this concern at the end of his epistle, writing, “I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them” (Rm. 16:17). Therefore, the apostle structures his discourse on baptism in such a way that the church will have a defense against those who bring in a false gospel.

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Having come to the end of Paul’s epistle to the church at Rome, the apostle clarifies that which can be surmised throughout his letter, namely his very purpose in writing the letter. Everything that the apostle has written in the letter tends to a particular end, and he emphasizes that end by calling forth the same language that he used to begin the letter and thereby neatly bookends his purpose.

The great purpose of the apostle in writing his letter is this: “To bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Christ's] name among all the nations” (Rm. 1:5). We know this is the great purpose of the apostle for he ends his letter writing:

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith–to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen (vv. 16:25-27).

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This is the reason why I have so often been hindered from coming to you. But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, and since I have longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while. At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem bringing aid to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints at Jerusalem. For they were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material blessings. When therefore I have completed this and have delivered to them what has been collected, I will leave for Spain by way of you. I know that when I come to you I will come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ (Rm. 15:22-29).

Though it may seem unclear on the surface of our present text, the entire Epistle to the Romans has been building up to this point. For the apostle Paul has at this point concluded the purpose of his letter, which was declared in v. 1:5, viz. “To bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Christ's] name among all the nations.” For he brackets his entire letter by this objective, stating again in v. 15:18, 19, “For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience–by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God.” Everything in his letter can be traced to this purpose, and it is a purpose that is founded in a passage written by the prophet Isaiah concerning the End of all things.

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I had a great conversation the other day with one my wonderful brothers in Christ concerning our failings as believers and how we are to respond to those failings. And though such failings among God’s people are inevitable because of the nature of our present state in this age, we oftentimes do not know how to respond rightly to those failings. And it is not a simple issue. For when we fall into sin and temptation as children of God, our whole soul is cast into upheaval. For our mind understands our fall and logically seeks to rectify it, our heart feels it and is torn by it, our will comprehends it and strives against it, and our spirit is broken by it and feels as though it is severed from the very Spirit of God.

And because of this turmoil that captivates our souls when we fall into sin and by it turn from our God, we long to jump up quickly and turn back onto the path of obedience. However, despite our desire, the path back to obedience is not always as quick and easy as we would like it to be. And I have found this to be the case in my life, where I have walked the path of obedience and then, seemingly out of nowhere, fell into temptation and then found that the obedience that I desired to have was even more difficult than it was prior to my fall.

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After the apostle Paul encourages the church at Rome to love their neighbors and thereby fulfill the second table of the Law, he draws a glorious picture of the life of Christian by depicting it as a single day on this earth.

He begins by writing, “Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed” (v. 13:11). The picture that the apostle is giving is that of person who is lying in bed at dawn, and the light of the day is breaking over the horizon. The person, prior to the dawn, was ever asleep and his life was characterized by the darkness of night. But now, he has seen his salvation and has believed, and for him, “the night is far gone; the day is at hand” (v. 13:12a).

For those to whom the apostle is speaking, the darkness of their former existence is far gone, and the light of day is now their only existence. For this reason, the apostle exhorts them to throw off the works of darkness that formerly characterized their lives, and encourages them instead to put on the armor of light. And when the Christian wakes to God in this life, he wakes into enemy territory, and he therefore must do two things: one, cast off works of darkness, and, two, put on the armor of light.

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There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Rm. 8:1-4).

In some ways, the Roman Road basis of evangelism has been both a blessing and curse to American Christianity. For on the one hand, the Romans Road has taken verses that are fundamental to the Faith and has made them well known to many, and yet, on the other hand, it has taken those same verses and ripped them from their contexts and has in the process watered down the Gospel.

For while it is indeed true that, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus” (v. 6:23), the verse taken from its context removes the very foundation of eternal life, namely regeneration and sanctification. For v. 6:23 is the apex of the apostle’s chain of salvific events that begins with identification with Christ in his crucifixion by baptism (v. 6:2), the freedom afforded by Christ’s death from the body of sin (v. 6:6; cf. v. 7:23) and thus from slavery to sin (v. 6:6; cf. v. 7:14, 25), and ends with the Christian’s being brought into slavery to obedience, to righteousness, and to sanctification, and sanctification’s end–eternal life (v. 6:16, 18, 19, 22). For the gift of God indeed is eternal life in Christ Jesus, however eternal life never comes apart from obedience, righteousness, and sanctification.

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There is little doubt that when the Holy Spirit through the prophet Moses penned the narrative of the life of Joseph that Joseph was portrayed in such a way to make him a pre-figuring of the coming Messiah promised in Genesis 3:15 and realized in Jesus Christ. We see this in the narrative sinlessness and blamelessness of Joseph (though we know he was a sinner, yet there is never any mention of his failings), and how, through the person of Joseph and his unmerited sufferings, that he saved God’s people from starvation and extinction and thereby fulfilled the Promise of God given to Abraham. In Sunday School yesterday, our teacher made an excellent observation concerning the narrative of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife found in Genesis 39. The observation was in the similarity between the Joseph’s temptation in the house of Potiphar and Adam’s temptation in the Garden. Both, though low in rank compared to their masters’, were given charge of their masters’ estate and were permitted to enjoy all things save one–in the case of Adam, eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and in the case of Joseph, Potiphar’s wife. Both were tempted to take both, yet unlike Adam, Joseph did not fail. Where Adam did not succeed, Joseph did, thereby demonstrating the coming Messiah’s position as the Second Adam, the second head of the human race, who, rather than imputing his sin to his subjects as did Adam, imputes to his subjects his righteousness (cf. Rm. 5:12-21). Just as through Joseph’s righteousness and obedience, God saved Israel from physical annihilation, so too now through Christ’s righteousness and obedience, God has saved spiritual Israel from eternal destruction (cf. Gal. 6:16). Just a thought.

This is a post that I have meaning to write since the launch of the new site, but, for various reasons (few of which are good), I have waited till now to explain the reasons for the name of this site. And though I am sure there will be the usual naysayers who will think that “faithforfaith.org” was the only available address left at the time to replace the difficult-for-our-English-speaking-brethren “xpistou.com,” I hope that through this post you might see the significance behind the name.

The phrase, “faith for faith,” is taken directly from the translation of Rm. 1:17 by the English Standard Version, expressly, “For in it [that is, the Gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.” I say, “translation,” but I mean more “interpretation” for, though the literal interpretation of the passage is “faith to faith,” I am thinking (though I am unsure of this) that the translators of the ESV are picking up on part of what the apostle is doing with this phrase, namely using it as an inclusio to bracket with Rm. 3:21, 22 the section of the epistle from Rm. 1:18-3:20. [An "inclusio," is a literary device used to set apart a particular section of literature, bracketing it with common phrases.]

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