Earlier this year, I presented on the core Christian message, and today, I’m continuing my series blogging this presentation. In my first post, I looked at the structure of the Bible and the historical Jesus. In my second post, I briefly summarized the core Christian worldview and the gospel. In my third post, I looked at how the core Christian message, the gospel, is explained in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and, in this final post, I continue on to the book of Romans.

The background of the book

The book of Romans was written by the apostle Paul to the church in Rome around AD 56, around 25 years after Jesus’ death. Rome was the seat of the powerful Roman empire, and the church there was a mixed church, consisting of both Gentiles (including the ruling Romans) and Jews. This book was written as a (long) letter to the church of Rome.

Some call this book “the gospel according to Paul”. While it is not one of the four gospels, and does not provide an account of Jesus’ life, death, and work, it does provide a clear explanation of what Jesus’ work accomplished and how we can be saved. In other words, it focuses more on the meaning of Christ’s work than it does the history of his life.

The book is theological, teaching-oriented, and formatted as a long letter to the church. In his excellent preface to the book of Romans, Martin Luther wrote that the focus is “the meaning of law, Gospel, sin, punishment, grace, faith, justice, Christ, God, good works, love, hope and the cross.”

Romans establishes that we’re all guilty

The first several chapters of the book of Romans explain how we are all guilty before God. God created all things and, as a result, essentially owns everything – yet we all have sinned against him, rejecting his authority and disobeying him. Thus, Romans 3:23 tells us, “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”

This means that we’re all guilty (as I explained when we looked at Matthew 5-7. This is not to say that we’re all as bad as we could possibly be, but we have all sinned against God. We’ve all been angry, we’ve all lusted, etc. This is so much the case that we recognize it even in our cliches, like
“to err is human”.

Why doesn’t this bother us? Well, it does bother some of us – but most of the time, it we manage to feel OK about our guilt. It’s easy to look around at others and think, essentially, “At least I’m not as bad as that other guy…” or take consolation in the fact that I’m not truly evil, like Hitler or others of the world’s great villains. Yes, we think, I may have done wrong, but in the balance, I’m more good than bad. The problem is that we compare ourselves with others, not with God’s standard which, as we saw, is perfection.

We’re all essentially in rebellion against our king, who requires perfect obedience – and we all fall far short of that.

We deserve God’s punishment

Given that, then, Romans 6:23 tells us, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Because we’ve sinned, we deserve death.

Again, this does not mean that we’re all as guilty as we could be; certainly we’re not. But we’re all sinners, and because God requires perfection, and we all fall short, this means we all deserve God’s punishment. When we tell ourselves that we don’t, it’s usually because we’re comparing ourselves to others rather than comparing ourselves to God’s perfect standard.

God offers hope

But, amazingly, God loves us and offers hope. Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” That is, Jesus, who was fully God, became man and because he was God was alone able to fully meet God’s standards. He alone was perfect and did not deserve punishment.

Jesus Christ alone was perfect, then, but he died to bear the punishment we deserve for our sins. Essentially, he died to offer a great trade – his righteousness exchanged for our sins, so that he could bear the punishment we deserve while we receive the reward he deserved.

Salvation is for those who trust in the savior

This offered exchange is for those who truly trust in Jesus. Romans 10:9 says, “…if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” This, then, tells us that salvation is based on our belief in Jesus’ lordship and resurrection. Romans 10:13 adds, “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved…”, telling us again that this is based on reliance on Jesus Christ, who is here again referred to as Lord.

Salvation, then, is offered through faith (belief + trust) in Christ and his work. In a way, it is based on surrender to him and trust in his work. We were (see Eph. 2) in rebellion against God, his enemies, deserving his wrath, but Jesus came to give us the opportunity to surrender, be forgiven, and be restored to right relationship to God – to the relationship he intended for us and designed us for.

The core of the Bible’s message centers around the gospel

Cartoons of Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration

To recap, the gospel, originally the Greek “euangelion”, refers to the “good news” of salvation through Jesus Christ. As we saw, it centers around several key ideas:

  • Creation: God created everything good
  • The Fall: We sinned, and are sinful; essentially, without Christ, we are in a state of rebellion against the God who created us
  • Redemption: God offers forgiveness, reconciliation and new life through Christ; this includes the power to overcome sin and begin to do right
  • Restoration: God will set everything right when Christ comes again

In this series, I explained how key aspects of the gospel are explained in the Sermon on the Mount, and also in the book of Romans. Indeed, the gospel appears throughout the whole Bible. Not only is it the core message of Christianity, but it is the core message of the Bible, and why Jesus came. I hope this will come to mean as much to you as it does to me.