Romans: A “plan” of salvation

A plan of Salvation. 

The first “presentation of the Gospel” I heard was composed out of this letter to Rome’s tiny church.  It was called the “Roman road of salvation”.  Such a presentation did not exist until the twentieth century.  Its writers simplified the Gospel to introduce people to Jesus as Savior. 

Writing a “plan of salvation” pushes you to prioritize what is important in the letter, and figure how to show Jesus as Lord and Savior.  I am sharing “a” plan of salvation from Romans.  The key verses’ key insights are in bold print.  Each verse’s address is at the end of each point.

“Coming” to Christ as Lord.  These verses are all from Romans.

1       And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. 1:6

2       God will judge [everyone’s] secrets through Jesus Christ.  2:16

3       If, by the trespass of [Adam], death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ?  5:17

4       You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for [us] the ungodly.  5:6

5       This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, and are justified freely by God’s grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.  3:22, 24

What we have when we step “into” Christ’s Lordship and Salvation. 

A       Justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  5:1

B       We rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we received reconciliation.  5:11

C       If the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!  5:15

D       In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  6:11, 23

What did I leave out that is important?  (Where can I find it?  Can you find it in this letter?)

God gave us five Gospels through Mark, Luke, Matthew, John and Paul.  After WW2 men chose verses for pared-down “plans of salvation.”  They made the message simple.  I challenge you to compose your plan of salvation as we study Romans. What are the most important points?  How do you order them to tell the Gospel story?

Cactus Jack first pushed me to do this.  When I attended seminary I (barely) survived Cactus Jack MacGorman’s Greek class.  We translated Galatians from Paul’s language.  I began with a C-!  Cactus Jack called my best out of me.  He ran Greek and “Life 301” in a Scottish brogue and thundering velvet hand beneath a caring smile.  He would make Bible teachers of us, or kill us trying.  Some days, killing seemed easier.  I loved his passion. 

Cactus Jack “gently” blasted narrow thinking as if we were on God’s gunnery range.  One day, two students opined that Paul changed his gospel from the Roman letter to Galatians.  They trusted his Roman plan better.  Cactus Jack patiently, courteously shot their opinion to dust.  He asked, “If God creates endless fingerprints, then why make coming to Jesus fit one pattern?”

Cactus Jack attacked making the gospel boring, one-hell-fits-all, or dumbed-down.  No two stories are alike in Christ.  No two people follow the same path to Christ.  No two people hold the same issues, the same needs diseases or horrors.  Some of us come needing freedom.  Some need structure or discipline.  Some come desperate for peace, and some need to win an inner war.  Some come devoid of hope, some complacent.  Our variations are endless!

If we all come to Christ holding unique histories and needs, how flexible is the gospel? 

Paul claims in 2:16 this is “my gospel.”  He closes with: “Now to Him who is able to establish you by my gospel” in 16:25.  He frames his personal understanding of Christ’s work on earth: “my gospel”!

So, what is YOUR gospel?  What is your version of the Good News of Jesus Christ?  Dr. Bob Cate taught we are called to minister to the “hopeless and to the helpless”.  

What is YOUR gospel?  At your exit interview with God, how will you answer His question: “Tell Me your story?”

I offer you “a” plan to share the Good News.  

See how great an adventure begins in Jesus.  “And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ” 1:6.  (1 Above)

You know you’re called to belong to Jesus Christ.  How do you know?  If you are reading this, God is moving you from those who have not heard to those who now know He has pursued you.  God through Paul: any reasons bringing you to read this, they weren’t random.  It is Him. 

God lets you in on His secret.  Beyond invited, He called to belong to Him.  Now.  He called you through all circumstance bringing you to read His desire to have you be His, today. 

(2 above).  “God will judge men’s secrets through Jesus Christ” 2:16.  I’m not the measure of myself.  I’m not the last word on me, nor are you.  I’m responsible, but Christ is my ultimate judge. 

Christ turns in our final report, assessment, measure, and estimation.  Christ judges you because He broke the curve.  He did life perfectly.  He, alone, is the faultless One.  His blood shed for you established Him on the Judge’s bench. 

(3 above) Paul tells two stories.  First is Adam and Eve in the first garden.  Little Anmol came home from church, having heard Adam’s story, where God took a rib from Adam’s side to make Eve.  Anmol went home with a pain in his side: truly fearful.  His mother wiped his sweaty brow and asked about the pain in his side.  Anmol worried he was birthing a wife.  So go the jokes. 

Adam sinned.  In a perfect world with access to God every day, Adam sinned.  IF through his sin, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ?”  5:17. Sin and death explain how sick the world is.  Both came through Adam. 

If through Adam so much horror and misery hit the earth, then through Jesus, so much more saving and restoration re-entered earth, re-enters me, and now can re-enter you. 

This verse shocked me.  First it says death reigned in Adam’s trespass.  I thought Paul might place life opposite of death.  No.  God directs Paul to preposterously say: we reign.  You and I reign through life in Christ.  Delivered from death to a new kingdom.  We arrive in Christ’s new kingdom to find we’re not slaves.  We reign in Christ’s new kingdom of life! 

How can something from Christ come into me?  How is this possible?  (4 above) “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for [us] the ungodly.  5:6

It’s not intellectual or emotional powerlessness.  We’re morally helpless to change.  So God introduced a miracle.  He gave us the ability to be rightly restored in Christ. 

Two verses frame some bad news in Romans 3:23?  (5 above).  “This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, and are justified freely by God’s grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”  3:22, 24 

God works in us.  He justifies us like when He brought the Israelites home from Babylon.  He keeps His word.  God to do the right thing, keeps His word.  Trust this.  He keeps His word.

God acts rightly, even if we do not.  God justified the Israelites banished to Babylon by delivering them back home safely as promised.  God justified them, He redeemed them to return home (Isaiah 42:13, 48:9-11), when they did not deserve it. 

That word, redeemed, points way back in Jewish history to the Jews’ bondage in Egypt.  “By God’s grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus”  In redeeming, God buys you back from a slavery into which you sold yourself.  Jacob left for Egypt because Joseph knew and trusted a Pharaoh.  Another arose who did not know that Pharaoh’s kindness, so he enslaved them.  God bought back His people from that Pharaoh as though they were prisoners of war.

Life’s hard times make us prisoners of our circumstances.  A promising marriage became a horror.  A great job kills your conscience.  God redeems us from any form of slavery. 

Maybe you began life, intending to make a difference in this world.  Now you’re weary, embattled, addicted, and a prisoner in your failed dreams.  Now, you are a prisoner of war.

In Jesus, God stands ready to buy you back. God redeemed His people from Pharaoh’s slavery and Babylon.  He redeems us in Jesus.  Christ is our ransom from our captors, conquerors, pet sins, our lostness.  For God’s own crazy, wonderful reason.  He buys us back.

God justifies us, again, like with the same gracious redemption when He brought home His folks from Babylon…from a captivity they brought on themselves. 

The bad news in Romans 3:23, has two book ends, 22 and 24!!  The bookends raise our hopes.  He declares us righteous in beginning our run, not at its completion.  All runners in a Special Olympics receive ribbons on finishing a race.  God puts ribbons on His runners before the race — redeemed already!

Are you working to be good?  Quit.  Working to be moral?  You’re too late!  Without Christ, it’s impossible.  In Christ, you’re already righteous, justified, freed from all your baggage. 

Then what do we have “in” Christ’s Lordship and Salvation?  Please put these verses’ truths in your gospel and life so others can love them. 

A       Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  5:1

B       We rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.  5:11

C       If the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!  5:15

D       In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.  6:11, 23

Do you need to begin in Christ?  Pray.  Ask Him to take you and save you, now. 

Please do not say “it makes sense now.”  Salvation is beyond reasonable.  It is mysterious.  Wonderful.  Amazing.  Beyond words.  Gracious. 

Well, that is one “gospel plan” in the Roman letter in a small nutshell.  Are you the Good News according to you, yet?  Do you have a plan of verses that mean the most to you?

The Big Letter

Somewhere back when pastoring, I ran into a conundrum.  I had studied and taught much of the bible.  I had taken forays into the book of Romans ¾ short ones. 

I knew no other book in Christianity told us more about Christ, salvation, or God’s character.  Nothing else touches Paul’s Gospel… a tsunami across the known world.

No other message seized people and pushed them to embrace an orthodoxy found in his letter.  Snippets change people’s lives. 

What Holy Spirit breathed into Paul, we breathe out from its lines, and can no longer be what we were, as if we had not breathed what this letter leaves in us. 

I preached it, loved it.  Wept at its depths.  Failed to communicate what is in its words, but here it is.  Maybe Holy Spirit will use it to breathe something He intends you to be. 

Paul to the Romans:

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the righteous man shall live by faith.” Romans 1:16-17

epaischunomai;  epi and aischuno; to be ashamed of :- am ashamed.

euaggelion; from euaggelizo, good or glad tidings, gospel.

pisteuo; from pistis; to believe, entrust, believers, do, has faith.

dikaiosune; from dikaios; righteousness, justice, right.

pistis; from peitho; faith, faithfulness, pledge, proof.

The Gospel is not so many things.  It is not bigotry, blessings only, material stuff in a tit for tat relationship with God.  It is not Big Hair or just wealth in this world.  It owes you no enduring Feel Good.  It is so far beyond Sunday mornings, “Turn or Burn” messages, loving your political party and everyone who thinks like you. 

What the gospel is, by the guy that penned the word: “it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” Romans 1:16-17

Paul says he “is not ashamed” of the gospel.

He uses a litotes.  It is like a guy dating the world’s current most beautiful woman to say, “I’ve no reason to be ashamed of her beauty.  No, really!”  It is the same as the biggest fan of Manchester, the Denver Broncos, Lakers, or the Yankees saying, ” I’m not ashamed of my team! I can’t even think that!”  This Gospel is the reason Paul got up in a morning, had hope after getting his hopes dashed, and still believed in promises.  God’s promises. 

“For it is the power of God for salvation.” 

We struggle to understand salvation.  We seem caught in a pendulum swing from one part of salvation to its other part.  Salvation does two things.  It saves us from something awful, and moves us to something wonderful.  Paul chose a Greek word meaning whole or health.  It includes sane, healthy, or whole.  I am leaving what makes me sick, and clinging to what makes me well ¾ gives me health.  It is not enough to leave smoking.  I must then cling to eating and exercising wisely to get fully “saved” from smoking. 

Many of us don’t like “sin”.  It depresses us, so we skip talking about it.  Hell can also be offensive, so we know not to bring it up at parties.  Others dwell on hell, its sulfurous lake of fire and demons.  Do we need that?  If you have nothing from which you are saved (hell and fires), then you turn into a comfortable pew-sitter for no apparent reason void of a firm idea of that from which you have been delivered. 

If I need an awful picture of hell, I moreover need a picture of heaven: my sanity and health, and peace in Christ.  Without both, then we are just a mental health fad competing with Dr. fill-in-the-blank’s belief that it is just as good to believe in her, or him, or myself. 

For me to be whole, saved and sane I must escape my real and imagined hells.  I must be delivered from all fires and torments ultimately.  For me to be whole and sane, to be saved, I must be delivered to, saved into a life in Christ, to heaven, ultimately.

“To everyone who believes,” 

Anyone can begin in Christ by believing.  Johnny Haggai died at age 28.  He died with a total vocabulary of 8 grunts and words.  Johnny’s dad had an IQ north of 200.  Johnny spent most of his life wheel chair bound at home  His mother Christine cared for him rather than pursuing a singing career after a drunken doctor botched his delivery.  His father circled the world more than 30 times.  Johnny met at least two heads of state, but remembered neither of them the next day.  His father, John, was a close confidant and Christian witness to King Juan Carlos, Indira Ghandi, and Yasser Arafat. 

Both John and Johnny began well in Christ.  Both began equally in Christ, because they could only begin in Christ by believing.  Fully 25% of Johnny’s working vocabulary was theological—God, Jesus—two of his eight words.  Do not complicate this picture more than needed.  To begin in Jesus, we ¾ believe. 

For in [the gospel] God’s righteousness is revealed from

faith to faith;

as it is written, “The righteous man shall live by faith.” Romans 1:16-17

Johnnie’s dad lived to be 96.  He was active, writing, engaging in people’s lives to the end.  John Edmund Haggai trained over 120,000 men and women around the world (Haggai International) to do one thing first and foremost.  It is Paul’s thrust in this letter to the Church at Rome: Call for a Decision.  Present the case for Christ, and always call for a decision.

So read.  Learn.  Be amazed, frightened, astonished, and find peace in this letter, but know this.  All of this came to you so you can make a decision.  For Christ as Lord, hopefully. 

Paul began with a man who travelled off his known map, past all he knew of religion, past all he was raised to believe about God.  Paul began with the man who travelled so far past religion, he had nothing but faith to put one foot in front of the other following God. 

And three world religions claim Abram cum Abraham as their Father in the Faith. 

First we believe, and we believe that faith, that believing is enough to begin.