#12 - Piper - How does the Gospel save Believers? - Romans 1:16-18
One of the things that has most encouraged me in these early sermons is Piper recognition that Paul is writing to BELIEVERS in Rome about needing the gospel preached to them.
This is how Piper identifies himself with Paul in preaching to his own flock:
I say it with Paul: I, John Piper, am eager to preach the gospel to you who believe—exactly to you who believe—because this gospel which is laid out in the book of Romans, is the power of God to save you. You believers need to hear the gospel in order to be saved.
And then Piper lays out a quote worthy of the gospel hall of fame:
And I fully believe that the reason he does is that when believers know and love and live on the meat of the gospel, we will be so gospel-filled and gospel-shaped and gospel-dependent and gospel-driven and gospel-hoping and gospel-joyful that no one will need to tell us why we need to share the gospel or how to share the gospel. We will be so thankful and so desperately, day-by-day dependent on the gospel for our own hope of eternal life, and our own sanity, and our own stability, and our own marriages or singleness, that it will be impossible not to know that people need the gospel and why they need it and how it relates to their biggest needs—because we know we need it, and why we need it, and how it meets our biggest needs day by day.
Why comes of preaching the gospel to believers?
Paul was utterly convinced—and we should be too—that preaching the gospel to believers would bear fruit. Look back at verse 13: “I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that often I have planned to come to you (and have been prevented so far)so that I may obtain some fruit among you also, even as among the rest of the Gentiles.” When the gospel is preached among believers there will be fruit! All kinds of fruit. Righteousness, peace, joy (Romans 14:17)—and converts who hear and see the gospel from the people of God.
It’s true that we see in the gospel, day by day, all that is needed for God to be righteous, and to declare us righteous, and to progressively make us righteous. That’s what the gospel reveals to us day by day. That is what we grasp hold of by faith. That is what keeps us believing and helps us fight the fight of faith and persevere to the end and be saved.
What we need day in and day out, in order to make our way to heaven, is to see and receive and feed on this gift of imputed righteousness. This is the way God saves believers. This can be and should be grasped by children. Let me try to say it simply. We all do bad things and we all are bad in the sense that the bad we do comes from a deeply rooted badness. Our bad deeds come from a bad heart. But God says that we should be good or he cannot accept us, because his own goodness would be ruined by our badness. So what we need is for God to take our badness and punish it in the death of Jesus, and then take the goodness of Jesus—his own goodness—and make it ours.
That’s what he did. So everyone who believes in Jesus receives the gift of God’s goodness, God’s righteousness. That is called justification by faith.
Don’t miss this exhortation at the end!
Look to it daily in the gospel. Be relieved by it daily from the gospel. Be encouraged by it daily from the gospel. Be emboldened by it daily. Be empowered daily. You live by an alien righteousness. Not by your performances, but by God’s. This is the gospel we live by and this is the gospel we will share this week with family and friends. And this is the gospel that will save us and bring us safely home to God.
Steve Allen
ACTION Zambia
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