Should we soften the gospel? No!

In Romans 1:16, the Apostle Paul declares, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ." In this Reformation Sunday sermon, Dr. Toby Holt calls the church to proclaim the gospel boldly and unashamedly, without watering it down.

Questions this sermon answers:

1. Why was Paul "not ashamed" of the gospel? Because it is "the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes." The message itself saves, so there is no reason to hide or soften it.

2. What is the danger of watering down the gospel? It robs the message of its power and leaves sinners without the truth they need. To appease people at the cost of truth is to fail them.

3. What does the Reformation remind us? That the gospel of grace, recovered by men like Luther, is worth proclaiming plainly and courageously in every age.

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes." — Romans 1:16 (NKJV)

Speaker: In Romans 1:16, the Apostle Paul declares, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ." In this Reformation Sunday sermon, Dr. Toby Holt calls the church to proclaim the gospel boldly and unashamedly, without watering it down.

The righteousness of God is not what we offer to Him to placate Him, but it's something that's given to us.

The righteousness that we desperately need is not something that we just heave onto God's altar and hope it's sufficient.

Rather, the righteousness is something that's granted to us.

It's something that's given to us, and that was a game-changer for Luther.

On the day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, he was angry.

But why? What had made him so upset?

In today's study, we'll remember the Protestant Reformation, and we'll focus on the growth

of the early church in chapter 1 of Romans.

You know, most of us, if you spend any amount of time in a Reformed church, a Presbyterian

church, a Lutheran church, what have you, you've heard the story of Martin Luther.

Specifically, you've probably heard the story of the time when he nailed his 95 thesis to

the door of the church in Wittenberg.

The day that Martin Luther nailed that 95 Thesis to the door of the church in Wittenberg, he was angry.

He was upset.

There was a practice that was going on in Rome and throughout Europe for the sale of indulgences,

by which Rome, for the receipt of some coin from the people, would grant them a means by which they or a loved one

might be excused or pardoned for some period of time that they were spending in purgatory.

Martin Luther didn't believe in indulgences.

Martin Luther was angry.

He was angry at Rome for perpetuating this practice,

and he was angry at himself for being complicit in it for some period of time.

In 1517, Martin Luther knew enough to be angry.

But here's the thing that many of us forget if we don't know our history.

At this time, he didn't know enough to be saved.

In 1517, Luther knew enough to know that Rome was wrong.

He knew enough to know it was a bad idea to sell indulgences,

to take advantage of poor and illiterate farmers

in order to build the basilica in Rome.

He knew that was wrong.

But for all that he knew and for all that he understood,

as hard as he tried, he still didn't understand

the heart of the Gospel.

Specifically, Luther didn't know how to become righteous.

Luther's understanding at this point in time

was that the way in which you please God

and the way in which he saves and pardons you

is if you do enough to earn it.

Martin Luther, at this time in his life,

His understanding of how God would ever hope

to love him or save him was based on how much Luther did. And as many things as Luther did,

He constantly felt insecure like it was not enough. And so he would declare and he would

write at times, even in his own journals, that he didn't get it, he didn't understand,

He was angry at God for setting a bar that he felt he perpetually fell under. Luther was having

a crisis of conscience. Even the very day he nailed the 95 Thesis to the door of Wittenberg.

If you don't believe me, listen to Luther's own words on this matter. He said this,

He said, though I was living as a monk without reproach, I felt that I was a sinner before God

with an extremely disturbed conscience. I could not believe that he was placated by my satisfaction.

I did not love, yes, I even hated the righteous God who punishes sinners. And secretly, if not

blasphemously, certainly murmuring greatly, I was angry with God. And I said, as if indeed it is not

enough that miserable sinners, eternally lost through Original Sin, are crushed by every kind

calamity by the law of the deck log without God having add pain to pain by the Gospel and also by

the Gospel threatening us with righteousness and wrath. 95 Theses or no 95 Theses. Luther was not

only angry at Rome by his own words he was angry at God. He tried so hard for so long to make God

happy and yet he never felt that he did. He felt like he had been given a standard of works in the

deck log and the 10 commandments things to do and that he had never done them or at least that he

had never done them sufficiently to please God. So what did Luther do? Some of us know the story

of Martin Luther. What he did in the monastery was this. He scrubbed every corner. He washed every

pan. When he went to confession, he longed to hear the words te absolvo from the confessor in order

to tell him he'd been absolved from his sins. And yet he'd go two minutes outside of the confession

booth. He'd commit another sin and he'd go running back. He actually drowned out the ears of those

that he confessed to. And the reason why is because he perpetually thought,

ongoingly thought, habitually thought that God was angry with him.

One day, about 1510, Martin Luther,

He had an opportunity to travel on behalf of the monastery to Rome.

Now at that time, if you were a Roman Catholic, to go to Rome was a big deal.

It was the Mecca, so to speak, of the Roman Catholic world. Martin Luther had

thought, well, maybe things in Germany are kind of messed up, but if I get to

rome. Boy, there I'm going to see some holiness. I'm going to see some righteousness. I'm going to

see there the answer to many of my questions as I watch how others live out their faith

in that holy context. So Luther went to Rome. Now, is that what he experienced? Did he experience

this nirvana, this utopia of righteous people doing righteous things? Not so much. Luther gets

to Rome and he begins to watch the priests there and he watches them butcher the mass and he was

offended to no end by that. He was offended by the sale of indulgences. People traveling far and wide

making pilgrimages, giving money in order to fatten the coffers of Rome, and meanwhile being told that

this was accomplishing some good for their loved ones or for themselves in the future. And Luther

thought, well, this doesn't seem right. So Luther traveled to something called the Scala Sancta.

Is anyone familiar with what that is? If you ever travel to Rome, Scala Sancta is a set of stairs.

Sacred stairs is what the term means. Now, the sacred stairs are the stairs, theoretically,

supposedly, by which Christ ascended when he was going to the praetorium in order to visit with

pontius Pilate during his trial. The scala sancta are the stairs. They were moved from Jerusalem

to Rome by Saint Helena, who was the mother of Constantine, and they were placed at a church you

can still find in Rome. Now, Luther went to check out the scala sancta, because his understanding

was that if you climb the skull of sancta on your knees 28 steps he said our father every step of

the way kissed each step you get to the top that that gave you some sort of eternal reward it was

a means of indulgence it was a means of buying back or buying down your time in purgatory or

that of a loved one so Luther did what everyone did he went up on his bloody kneecap step after

step after step and when he got at the top he said these words who knows if it is true who knows if

is true. Even going to Rome, even going up the staircase on his bloody kneecaps, hoping that that

would finally appease God, did not give him a sense of assurance. Who knows if it's true? Right now,

that is the estate of every man, woman, and child who trusts in their own works unto salvation.

Who knows if I've done enough? Who knows if I've climbed enough stairs? Let me ask you, have you

ever felt that way? Have you ever felt, perhaps through a bad theological understanding, or perhaps

just because of your guilt, that forgiveness is a pipe dream for you.

That forgiveness is a pipe dream.

That because of things you've done in the past,

or because of a lack of things that you should have done,

that somehow God's love is not upon you.

We preach the Gospel, you hear the Gospel, you nod your head, you say amen,

and yet, in the back of your mind, you ask this question.

Who knows if it is true?

Well, one night, about two years after Martin Luther had wrote his 95 thesis,

martin Luther re-read the very verses that we're studying today in Romans 1.

And at that time, in readings Romans 1, verses 16 and 17, he had an encounter with God.

And he realized that salvation does not come through our works.

It does not come through bloodying your kneecaps.

It does not come through waving down or appeasing God by a hundred or a thousand things you do.

In this text, he saw that salvation comes through faith.

And so this is what he said about that experience.

He said this,

at long last, by the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of those

words. Namely, in it, the righteousness of God is revealed. As it is written, he who through faith

is righteous shall live. There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that

by which the righteous lives as a gift of God, namely, by our faith. And here I felt that I was

altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates. If ever there was a

man that needed a fresh encounter with Romans 1, if ever there was a man who needed a fresh

encounter with the doctrines of grace, it was Martin Luther. He needed to understand that he

was forgiven, full stop, that he was forgiven. Perhaps that's something that you or I need to

remember as well. Well, let's consider that first. Let's consider the forgiveness that we have and

the means by which it is purchased. I'm going to read verse 16. We'll look at this text for a bit

and then we'll look at verse 17 before we conclude. Verse 16. For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of

Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and

also for the Greek. You know, for many years, the Apostle Paul had a desire to go and preach

minister in Rome. Paul was a Roman citizen. He had a desire to go to Rome. This is a desire he

mentions earlier on in chapter 1. Now, as Paul thought about Rome, he knew that it was a spiritually

darkened place. He longed to go there. He wanted to minister to the people there, and yet he knew

that this was not a healthy, vibrant bastion of Christianity. Rather, it was a place where

Christians were persecuted, and yet he still wanted to go. He knew it wouldn't be safe. He knew it

wouldn't be easy, and yet he knew that people were drowning in their sins, and he desired to throw

them the life raft of the Gospel. Paul was not just an apostle in the theological sense, but he was a

lover of the people. He loved God, and that's why he did the things that he did, but he also loved

people and he didn't want that and he should perish and so he sought them out in Athens and

corinth and Ephesus and Philippi and Thessalonica and in Rome and when he got to these places

He didn't pander to them when he got to these places he told them the Gospel he told them

their problem of sin because you have to start there you have to understand that you have a

problem if you're ever going to care about a solution so he told people the problem of sin

and then he introduced Jesus Christ as the means, the means of salvation, the solution to this

problem. However, if he had not done this, if he had not told them the truth, he knew that this

would just be pandering to them. That would be deadly and self-defeating. Paul was not ashamed

of the Gospel because he knew the Gospel was the power by which he could do what he did.

And so Paul says, I'm not ashamed of this. I've got nothing but this to offer you. I could speak

all day long about all many number of other things, but those things will not help you in the main

area in which you need to be helped he says I'm not ashamed he may have been nervous or anxious

at times certainly he was persecuted and beaten and shipwrecked and bad things happened to him at

times and yet even knowing that those things might be the outcome he would ultimately lose his life

in Rome even knowing that those things might be the outcome he said I'm not ashamed here I stand

is what Luther would say centuries later it's roughly the same thing I'm not ashamed here I

stand. Paul knew that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. He knew that if he was to

preach something less than the Gospel of Jesus Christ, if he was to preach something less than

that, he would be robbing God of his glory, and he'd be depriving people from what they need the

most. In our own day, as we said earlier, the Gospel is increasingly radioactive, as Christians

our beliefs are regularly ridiculed or attacked but even if that should increase even should

increase tenfold in the time yet to come is the answer to start eliminating those beliefs or

watering them down well no and yet that's the trajectory of so much of the modern church the

modern church has yet to have at least in our generation a here I stand moment now it may be

coming and it may be hardships that bring it about but the modern church has yet to have a here I

stand moment. With that said, every day of our life is a here I stand moment in an individual

sense. you and I have opportunities to share the Gospel with those who desperately need to hear it.

And if we water it down, if we pander, if we mollycoddle to those who desperately need to

hear it, we're not doing any help to the sheep and we're being a detriment to the shepherd.

In the past number of years, there's been a deception that Christendom has fallen under

where we've danced to the world's tune on any number of different things thinking that God is

well-pleased. He's not. What's the course ahead?

What's the course heading for our own church here in Gulfport as we minister to a

culture that in the years before us seems to be on a trajectory

that's going to make it more difficult to do so? Where do we stand?

Well, whatever the specifics look like, whatever the specifics look like,

they have to be founded on this one premise.

That we're not ashamed. That we're not ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

In verse 16, Paul went on to explain why he wasn't ashamed.

And again, he declared that the reason he wasn't ashamed

is because the Gospel is the power of God into salvation.

Now, why do you think he refers to the Gospel in that way?

There's a lot of ways you could refer to the Gospel.

You could say the Gospel is very helpful to salvation.

The Gospel is very important for salvation, you could say.

Well, here's the thing. Yes, the Gospel is helpful.

Yes, it is important. Both of those statements are absolutely true.

However, there is a key distinction.

you and I are not saved because the Gospel is important.

you and I are not saved because the Gospel is helpful.

Rather, we are saved because when we hear it,

the Gospel has the power to cause a change in us

that we cannot affect on our own.

The Gospel is the power of God and salvation.

God uses the declaration of the Gospel

from the lips of people like you and I

through his Holy Spirit to change and convert

the very heart of those who are spiritually dead.

Remember, we've said before,

the unbeliever is not sitting there spiritually sleepy.

The unbeliever is not sitting there spiritually taking a cat nap.

The unbeliever is dead, spiritually flatlining.

The unbeliever is laying down as if in a grave,

and he cannot come up of his own accord.

So what needs to happen?

Well, we've said before, the Holy Spirit needs to change that individual's heart,

regenerate the heart of stone, turn it to a heart of flesh

to enable that individual to spring to spiritual new life.

But what is the means by which the Spirit does that?

The proclamation of the Gospel.

The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation.

You water that down, you do so to your detriment

and the detriment of those you're talking to.

If you hide the hard edges of sin and death and resurrection

and repentance and all those different things

and bury it under having your best life now,

you'll find a lot of people want their best life now.

They want God to be a genie.

What they don't want him to be is a savior

because they don't think they have anything they need to be saved from.

That is the great hole in the Gospel presentation throughout the 20th and 21st century,

at least in the past few decades.

We've given people a solution for a problem that we've never explained that they have.

Well, Paul explained it.

Luther understood it all too well.

If there was ever a person who understood the problem of sin, it was Luther.

He sweated it out in ways that you and I could probably never even relate to.

He was desperate to find a solution.

And for so long, he looked at the works of his own hands and thought,

maybe this is the solution.

What I do with this, the efforts I go to, the things I say, the steps I walk, the knees I stand on,

maybe that's the means by which I have hope.

It's not.

We're not saved through our works, through our efforts.

We're saved through our faith.

And faith comes from hearing and hearing from the Word.

You don't dare omit the Word from preaching and teaching and evangelizing and the like.

You do so to your own detriment.

The Gospel has a power that is unique to the Gospel,

above and beyond anything else that we might ever say or teach.

When we hear the Gospel, it alone can pierce to the vision of soul and Spirit.

It alone can break the devil's hold upon the unregenerate heart.

It can remove veils from the eyes of even the most hardened individuals.

It can, it has, it does.

There's no other ideology you can have, no other philosophy you can espouse that can do this.

Now, if all that's true, spoiler alert, it is.

If all that's true, if the Gospel is that powerful,

if the Gospel is that powerful,

why in the world would we ever subjugate it beneath anything else?

Why would we ever think in Christendom

that you can build the church by subjugating the Gospel

underneath programs and initiatives and smiles

and all manner of different things?

You can't.

Now, you can have initiatives and programs and the like,

but those are to be built on top of the Gospel.

You don't sneak the Gospel in like a Trojan horse in those things.

This, again, is a key distinction.

Paul knew it.

Paul knew it, and his advice to us is to understand and accept this as well.

Paul was not ashamed, and he wouldn't want us to be ashamed either,

but to have this be the tip of the spear as we go out into the fallen world.

All right, let's look at verse 17.

For I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ,

for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes.

It's for the Jew first and also for the Greek.

For in it, in the Gospel, in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

For as it is written, the just shall live by faith.

Let's stop for a moment and return to our good friend Martin Luther.

As we said at the outset here this morning, Martin Luther really wanted to please God on some level.

He wanted to be righteous in God's eyes.

And that's a noble objective for him to have and for you and I to have as well.

We're called to be righteous.

That's the standard by which you can ever hope to step a foot into God's golden shores is to be righteous, to have this righteousness.

That begs the question, however, if righteousness is the means by which God will accept you on that great day,

if righteousness is the ticket that needs to be punched in order to be accepted into God's kingdom,

if righteousness is the hinge on which your salvation turns,

then the question I have for you this morning is, how do you attain it?

If you believe that you need to be right in God's eyes in order to dwell with God forever,

which seems like a pretty reasonable concept,

if you think you need to be right in God's eyes in order for Him to want you on His golden chores for all of eternity,

how are you going to get right with Him?

Well, again, for most people, across the scope of mankind,

if we were knocking on doors in our own community, we would find this to be true.

Most people think that they'll get right by God by doing enough good deeds to offset their bad ones.

That if I just do enough, if I'm nicer to the neighbor, if I don't kick my dog,

if I help old ladies across the street, if I do all those things and they stack up,

then God will have to let me in.

What does that make salvation?

It makes it a debt that God owes you.

Well, that's not the Gospel.

The Gospel is not about a debt God owes you.

It's about grace.

Dear heavens, grace is the singular means by which we're saved.

Grace through faith.

Righteousness comes not through your own efforts to attain it,

not by doing 100,000 good deeds,

not by doing what Luther did and scrubbing every pot

and washing every floor and climbing up every step.

It comes through our faith.

The just shall live by faith is what verse 17 says.

And that's the verse that struck Luther between the eyes.

The just shall live by faith.

The just shall live by faith.

In that moment, it's like the shackles broke off of Luther

because for the longest time he thought to be just and righteous and the like

was on the basis of the things that you do. You've got to bridge the gap through your efforts.

You know, these verses, you don't need te absolvo to be said by some father confessor in a booth in

order to feel a little bit forgiven for the next five minutes. What you need to know is that you

have forgiveness that is ongoing and perpetual because it's not bought through your works but

through the blood of Jesus Christ on Calvary. There's nothing you can add to that and there's

nothing that can be taken away from that. Those who have this manner of faith, even if they might

stumble and fall at some time in the future, can still have security. Why? Because their salvation

never hinged on their own works. If you think your salvation hinges on your works, you'll go

through life a very sad individual. Why is that? Because you'll mess up. And you'll say, well,

maybe God doesn't love me anymore. I did a lot of good things last week. I hope God paid attention

then. I hope he was writing that down. But I really messed up today. I wonder if he still

loves me today. That was what plagued Luther. We live in a culture that's seared in its conscience

that might not even think that way. But if they did, they would come to the same point and say,

if I've been trusting and doing things to appease God, it can't possibly work. Because for all the

ways in which I might try to serve him, I will fail him as well. The only alternative Luther saw

before he was saved was to keep trying harder. And so that's what he did. He kept trying harder.

He thought if he was ever to be justified, he needed to be justifiable.

You understand that?

That's the distinction, not only to Luther's bad theology at that time,

but to Roman Catholic theology and much theology,

arminian theology in the world around us.

The belief that in order to be justified, you need to be justifiable.

Let me ask you this.

Was the thief on the cross that Jesus said,

truly you'll be with me in paradise this day,

was he justifiable on the basis of the things that he did? Good heavens, no. His own people

were thrilled to be done with him. They nailed him to a cross. He had nothing to the cross he

could bring. How about Paul when he was solitarsis? Was he justifiable when he was breathing threats

and murder against Christians? No. But out of God's sovereign love, while he was yet sinner,

Christ died for him. You're not justified because you are justifiable. Luther, again, he thought

that's the way that it works and because he would sweep every floor and wash every pan and the like

He once made this statement he says look if any monk was ever going to get to heaven on the basis

of his monkery he says it would have been me if any monk was ever going to get to heaven on the

basis of the things that he did it would have been me but in 1519 Luther encountered the words from

today's passage the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written

the just shall live by faith. A spiritual light bulb went on in Luther's heart and mind. At that

point, he realized that the righteousness of God is not what we offer to him to placate him, but

it's something that's given to us. The righteousness that we desperately need is not something that we

just heave onto God's altar and hope it's sufficient. Rather, the righteousness is something

that's granted to us. It's something that's given to us. And that was a game changer for Luther.

Luther began to understand this about what happened on Calvary. He realized that on Calvary,

that the sins of Luther and you and I and all who believe were placed upon Christ.

All the bad things you've done, past, present, and future, were placed upon Jesus on the cross.

And at that same time, a second imputation occurred.

Not only was our sins placed upon him, but his righteousness was granted to us.

The day that you stand before God, it's coming.

It's never been closer than it is today.

The day you stand before God is coming.

On what basis will you stand?

If someone was to stop you at the gates of heaven, so to speak,

this isn't going to work this way, but if someone were to stop you and ask you,

on what basis do you deserve to enter into this holy and golden estate?

What would you answer?

Well, the answer many folks have is on the basis of our works.

If someone is ever to stop and ask you, why do you deserve to get into heaven?

It's a trick question, because you don't.

you and I do not deserve heaven.

We do not deserve salvation.

But we have received grace and so if you ever stopped and asked by what means you hope to get

into God's golden shores and enter in through those pearly gates you point to the one on the

throne you say because of him I do not enter in on the basis of my works and righteousness and the

things I have done I enter in because the white robe of the son's righteousness Christ's righteousness

has been granted to me and when the father looks at me he doesn't see me through the lens of what

I've done or haven't done, he sees me through the work of his own son on the cross. It's by his

righteousness I'm saved. When Luther embraced that, when he embraced that understanding, it's as if

the shackles broke off, the veils came down. And again, that's why he wrote these words. He said,

meditating day and night, I gave heed to these words. The righteousness of God's revealed that

He who through faith is righteous shall live. It's then that I began to understand that the

righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives as a gift of God, namely through our faith.

It's at this point that Luther got it.

It's at this point that he understood it.

It's at this point he accepted it.

And most scholars believe at this point in 1519, it's at this point he was converted.

Because he finally understood it wasn't about Luther.

It was all about Christ.

This morning, with that thought in mind, let me offer some closing exhortation and encouragement.

In a room of this size, it goes without saying, not everyone here has faith in Christ.

Throughout our community, not everyone in the community around us has what we would

call a saving relationship with their maker. And yet, as I said earlier, most everyone, if you go

knocking on the doors, thinks they're in good shape. And that's because they trust in the things

that they've done. And they say, you know, as long as I'm better than the guy down the street, as long

as I'm better than my neighbor who lets their dog wander all over my property, as long as I'm better

than that guy or that guy or Hitler or whoever, as long as I'm better than those who are the worst

of the worst, God's going to smile upon me. Most everyone thinks that they're saved on this basis.

Well, to that, if that's where you're at this morning,

if that's what you or a loved one is at in your thinking,

martin Luther's voice is practically screaming

from a grave in Europe this morning to say this.

It doesn't work that way.

It doesn't work that way, and it never has.

If you try to stand before God on some day in the future

when God should call you to himself to appear,

if you should try to stand before God

on the basis of the things that you've done

and hope and trust that's enough,

as the old saying goes, at that moment you will melt.

Like a wax figurine in front of a blast furnace.

That's what it's like to stand before God

apart from the white robe of righteousness

that is granted to us through faith in Christ.

Man-made righteousness, it's not the standard to shoot for.

So stop shooting for it if you are.

Man-made righteousness is not the standard.

That's not the dress code of heaven.

The dress code of heaven is the white robe of Christ's righteousness.

If you got that this morning theologically, congratulations.

That's a good place to start.

Do you trust it?

However, do you trust it? Do you share it?

Do you preach, teach with folks this same message, a message of grace?

This morning, for some of us, maybe our problem is

that we have done certain things in our life that are just so bad

that we've messed up in such significant ways

that even though we hear these words of forgiveness,

that we think, well, it might not apply to me.

Well, to you, I would say this.

King David sinned horribly.

King David sinned horribly. Elijah questioned God's plan.

Peter. He denied Jesus three times. Guess what? Every last one of them is in heaven now. As I

said this morning, our future is not based or predicated on our sinlessness. It's predicated

and based on Christ. When you mess up, it's not the end of the road. Even if you're living a life

this week where you've gone off the rails in recent days, you're never so far gone that the

captain of our salvation cannot rescue you. This morning, today, tomorrow, on into the future,

the everlasting arms of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, they're still long enough.

They're still long enough to reel you in and to reel in your loved ones.

God is not only powerful to save, but he wants to.

So this morning, the everlasting arms of Christ, they're still long enough to reel you in, to hold you close to himself.

This morning, that's Christ's invitation to you and to your loved ones.

This morning, his arms are open wide, no matter who you are, no matter what you've done.

So stop holding on to either your fears or your anxieties or your works.

Stop holding on to these things. Let them go.

Turn to Christ. Let's pray.