It is not surprising that the Apostle Paul begins the detailed explanation of his theology in Romans with salvation. It is a logical place to start.<\/p>\n\n\n
He writes, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16a)<\/p>\n\n\n
But where does Paul go next? Forgiveness? Repentance? Asking Jesus into your heart?<\/p>\n\n\n
No. Paul continues: “For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last.” (1:17a)<\/p>\n\n\n
The opportunity for “a righteousness from God” is at the front-end of Paul’s recounting of the good news.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
This is a real righteousness. A righteousness to be lived out in our lives on a daily basis. With God’s help.<\/p>\n\n\n
This is made clear in the rest of the chapter.<\/p>\n\n\n
The common theology of “I’m not perfect<\/i>, just forgiven” masks a desire to have a righteousness imputed to us<\/i> from God (to get us across the finish line and into heaven), but without a genuine lived-out righteousness as well.<\/p>\n\n\n
The sort of righteousness that steers us away from greed, envy, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, arrogance, disobedience, faithlessness, and heartlessness (verses 29 to 31).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
We dare not neglect this “righteousness from God” that is at the center of the good news we claim to believe.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is not surprising that the Apostle Paul begins the detailed explanation of his theology in Romans with salvation. It is a logical place to start. He writes, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16a) But where does Paul […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9133,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9132\/revisions\/9133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}