Gospel Debt
Paul’s words “I am obligated” should properly be translated “I am a debtor.” There are two possible ways of getting into debt. The first is to borrow money from someone; the second is to be given money for someone by a third party. If a friend of yours had given me money to give to you, I would be in your debt until I handed it over. Your friend had put me in your debt.
It is in this second sense that Paul is in debt. He has not borrowed anything from the Romans which he must repay. Rather, Jesus Christ has entrusted him with the gospel for them. It is Jesus Christ who has made Paul a debtor by committing the gospel to his trust.
Paul was in debt to the Romans. As apostle to the Gentiles he was particularly in debt to the Gentile world. It was because of his sense of debt to them that he could write: “That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.”
Similarly, we are debtors to the world, even though we are not apostles. Because the gospel has come to us, we have no liberty to keep it to ourselves. Nobody may claim a monopoly of the gospel. Good news is for sharing. We are under obligation to make it known to others. It is universally regarded as a dishonorable thing to leave a debt unpaid. We should be as eager to discharge our debt as Paul was to discharge his.
Romans 1:16 NKJV
The Saving Power of God
Some people are so offended by the thought that Paul could feel ashamed of the gospel that they pronounce his statement a sort of understatement for effect. But Jesus himself warned his disciples against being ashamed of him, which shows that he anticipated they might be (Mark 8:38). Paul gave Timothy a similar admonition (2 Timothy 1:8, 12). Paul knew that the message of the cross undermines self-righteousness and challenges self-indulgence. Whenever the gospel is faithfully preached, it arouses opposition, often contempt and sometimes ridicule.
How then did Paul (and how shall we) overcome the temptation to be ashamed of the gospel? By remembering that the same message which some people despise for its weakness is in fact “the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.” We know this because we have experienced its saving power in our own lives. God has reconciled us to himself through Christ, forgiven our sins, made us his children, put his Spirit within us, begun to transform us and introduced us into his new community. How can we possibly be ashamed of the gospel?
Moreover, the gospel brings salvation to “everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.” Saving faith is the great leveler. Everyone who is saved is saved in exactly the same way, by faith. That goes for Jews and Gentiles equally. There is no distinction between them.
Paul’s eagerness to evangelize in Rome arose from his recognition that the gospel is an unpaid debt to the world and the saving power of God. The first gave him a sense of obligation (he had been entrusted with the good news), and the second gave him a sense of conviction (if it had saved him, it could save others). Still today the gospel is both a debt to discharge and a power to experience.
God's Righteousness Revealed
The reason the gospel is God’s saving power is that in it, God’s righteousness is revealed. Moreover, this righteousness is “by faith from first to last,” in fulfillment of Habakkuk 2:4: “the righteous person will live by his faithfulness.”
Throughout Romans, Paul is at pains to defend the righteous character and behavior of God. For he is convinced that whatever God does in salvation or in judgment is absolutely consistent with his righteousness. And in Romans, God’s personal righteousness is supremely seen in the cross of Christ.
The righteousness of God revealed in the gospel is the righteous status which God requires if we are ever to stand before him, which he achieves through the atoning sacrifice of the cross, which he reveals in the gospel, and which he bestows freely on all who trust in Jesus Christ. It is God’s righteous initiative in putting sinners right with himself, by bestowing on them a righteousness not their own but his. The righteousness of God is God’s just justification of the unjust, his righteous way of pronouncing the unrighteous righteous, in which he both demonstrates his righteousness and gives righteousness to us. He has done it through Christ, the righteous one, who died for the unrighteous, as Paul will explain later. And he does it by faith when we put our trust in him and cry to him for mercy.
This righteousness of God, which is revealed in the gospel and offered to us, is literally “out of faith into faith” or “from faith to faith.” Many scholars, however, translate Paul’s quotation of Habakkuk differently: “he who through faith is righteous shall live.” Is it legitimate to translate the Habakkuk text in this way, and so to make faith the way to righteousness instead of the way to life? I think so. Whichever way the sentence is understood, both renderings affirm that “the righteous will live” and that faith is essential. The only question is whether the righteous by faith will live, or the righteous will live by faith. Are not both true? Righteousness and life are both by faith. Those who are righteous by faith also live by faith. Having begun in faith, they continue in the same path.
Adapted from Reading Romans with John Stott, Volume 1. Copyright © 2017 John Stott's Literary Executors. Used by permission. For more information, please visit www.ivpress.com/reading-romans-with-john-stott-vol-1.
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