ROMANS: Good

Paul has been working hard to make the case that we are not justified because of our own righteousness, but by our faith. That faith, from a Jewish perspective, can be understood as “trust” — and so we have been using the phrase trusting in the promises of God. But what promises do we mean, specifically? For some, they may not like the phrase because they think that “faith” should be a reference to some creedal affirmation of the personhood and deity of Jesus. While I’m not going to take away from the significance of those truths for even a moment, it is important to see that good biblical exegesis doesn’t let that understanding hold water.

There is great debate over the use of pistis Christou (in the Greek) and how it should be translated. Modern scholarship leans toward saying this phrase in the New Testament should always be rendered as “faith OF Christ” and not “faith IN Christ.” Historically speaking, the phrase “faith IN Christ” will only make sense if the New Testament letters are penned much later than we are typically comfortable with. This doesn’t even begin to touch on the etymological problems with translating the phrase IN and not OF.

Nevertheless, more relevant to our conversation, that understanding of faith will not work in Paul’s line of reasoning. Paul has now said in two different letters that Abraham had an understanding of the “gospel” and his faith was the reason for God’s justification. Obviously, Abraham cannot demonstrate a “faith IN Christ,” while he can demonstrate the “faith OF Christ.” So we return to our original question: What promises did Abraham and Jesus trust in? What promises are we supposed to trust in?

There will be many ways to articulate it, but for our conversation we have used the phrase trust the story. It’s a reference back to the story of creation and how God truly feels about humanity. It’s a story reminding us that God sees us with love and compassion. It is a story where God affirms our acceptance and our value. Simply put, God loves us.

Not only this, but God said we (along with all of creation) are part of a good creation. For many of us, having grown up in a Christian worldview that emphasizes our brokenness, our sinfulness, and our depravity (all truths about us, by the way, but not the essential truth God told us), this may come as hard to swallow. I’m not trying to argue man isn’t sinful or that I believe in some twisted version of Pelagian heresy. Humanity is obviously broken, full of potential for incredible evil, and has a tendency for sinful behavior. We all know it to be true of ourselves (more on that in Romans 7) and of others. What I’m saying is that from the opening chapters of Torah, God has pleaded with humanity not to believe this is the essential truth about who they are. And at no point throughout Scripture did God give us a memo to think otherwise.

Sin is serious. Sin is destructive. Sin is incongruent with the world God desires and the Kingdom he invites us to be a part of. There is an urgency about sin in my heart (and yours) and how we ought to turn from it and repent and return to our original design. But there is an original design about us as true today as it ever was. We wrestle with the parts of us that war against each other. But the most inherent truth about who we are is not our depravity, but the truth that we bear the image the God.

Most will point to the book of Romans to make a case that we are all sinful and doomed. The good news is we are engaged in a verse-by-verse journey through the book of Romans as we speak. We will have an opportunity to see if we think this is really what the letter is trying to communicate.

Maybe this idea is too much. Maybe you aren’t willing to accept this, and that is fine, but we must wrestle with the most fundamental truths that shape our understanding of God and humanity. If we are unconvinced, we should be unconvinced because of a serious look at the Scriptures through sound Biblical interpretation and historical context. If so, we will emerge from this journey with an even better understanding of our convictions. And if we consider these questions and find that things seem to have been construed by a few centuries of bad Christian dogma…

So it sounds like it’s time to keep moving! We’re off to deal with a verse that has never made sense until you see it through the lens Paul is presenting.

After making the argument that our justification does not come from our ability to be righteous, but by trusting in the promises of God, Paul makes this statement:

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Paul references the powerlessness that he so eloquently described in the first three chapters. He then says that somebody wouldn’t die for a righteous man, although for a good man, somebody might dare to die. Wait, what?

In our typical understanding of man’s depravity and ultimate sinful condition, that verse makes no sense without an awful lot of explanatory gymnastics. However, if we hold our previous point in view, everything comes in line and works with Paul’s reasoning. Paul has been saying your righteousness does you very little good when it comes to justification. He then says a person won’t lay down their life for another because they are “righteous.” Nobody would do that. A person is willing to lay down their life for another because that person’s life is good. It’s worth being preserved and it’s worth dying for.

We all inherently know this to be true. If you or I were willing to lay down our life for another, it would not be because that person is righteous. It would be because life is worth saving. Humanity is worth saving. The image of God in another human being is worth saving. And do all the Greek etymological study you want surrounding the words used in this verse — it’s only going to help make this case. The term “good” refers to the inherent nature of a thing. Righteous? Well, not so much.

Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.

We know this to be true for our own lives. We just don’t believe it to be true about God. Brothers and sisters, welcome to the gospel of justification by trusting in the promises of God.