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Scripture Reading: Rom. 1:16
I. The gospel of God is dynamic (powerful) to save all the sinners who would believe in it — Rom. 1:16:
А. To redeem them:
1. Judicially.
2. By the blood of Christ — 3:24-25.
3. On the cross — 1 Pet. 2:24a.
4. From:
а. Their sins — Rev. 1:5b.
b. God’s righteous judgment, wrath, and condemnation — Rom. 2:5-6, 16; 3:19b; John 3:18b.
c. Eternal perdition in the lake of fire — Rev. 21:8; 22:15.
d. The accusation of Satan, God’s enemy — cf. 12:10-11.
5. Through:
а. The forgiveness of sins — Eph. 1:7.
b. The washing away of the believing sinners’ sins — Rev. 1:5b; 1 Cor. 6:11.
c. The reconciliation of the believing sinners to God from their enmity toward God — Rom. 5:10a.
d. The justification of the believing sinners by God — 3:20-24.
e. The making of peace between the believing sinners and God — 5:1.
f. The sanctification of the believing sinners unto God positionally — Heb. 10:10, 14, 29b; 13:12a.
6. Such a redemption lays the foundation of God’s dynamic salvation for the consummation of God’s dynamic salvation.
B. To save them:
1. Organically.
2. By the life of Christ — Rom. 5:10b.
3. In the Spirit of life — 8:2.
4. From:
а. The indwelling sin — 7:17; 8:2.
b. The condemnation due to the sinful action of the indwelling sin — 7:17-20; 8:1.
c. The old man — 6:6.
d. The natural I — Gal. 2:20a.
e. The self — Matt. 16:24.
f. The flesh with its passions and its lusts — Gal. 5:24.
g. Worldliness — 1 John 2:15-16; Rom. 12:2a.
h. Tribulations and all kinds of environmental troubles — 5:3; 8:35-39.
i. Spiritual death and weakness — vv. 5, 7, 24-26; Rev. 3:1-2.
j. The vanity and the slavery of corruption — Rom. 8:20-21.
5. Through:
а. Regeneration, washing the believers from the oldness of their old man (Titus 3:5a) and making them the many sons of God — 1 Pet. 1:3; John 3:3, 5; 1:12-13; Heb. 2:10.
b. Dispositional sanctification — Rom. 6:19, 22; 15:16b; 1 Thes. 5:23.
c. Renewing — Titus 3:5b; Rom. 12:2b.
d. Transformation, changing the believers’ constitution metabolically with the divine element of the life of Christ into His image from glory to glory — v. 2b; 2 Cor. 3:18:
1) Making the believers boast in their tribulations — Rom. 5:3.
2) Making the believers more than conquerors over the environmental troubles — 8:35-39.
3) Making the believers kings to reign in the eternal life through the abounding grace — 5:17, 21.
e. Conformation, conforming them to the image of Christ as the firstborn Son of God to be the mass reproduction of Jesus the God-man as the prototype for the building up of His organic Body — 8:29.
f. Glorification, redeeming of the believers’ body, to glorify the believers in their entire being with the divine glory for their full enjoyment of their divine sonship — vv. 23, 30.
g. Such a salvation consummates the building up of the church, the organic Body of Christ (fully covered by the following chapters 12—16, after the parenthetical section of chapters 9—11), which will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the center of the eternal economy of God.
II. The way to partake of the dynamic salvation of God:
А. Believing in your heart that God has raised Jesus the Lord from the dead — 10:9b.
B. Confessing with your mouth Jesus as Lord and calling upon the name of the Lord — vv. 9a, 13.
C. To be baptized into Christ Jesus, the embodiment of the Triune God (the Father, the Son, and the Spirit), to get into the organic union with the Triune God embodied in Christ — 6:3; Matt. 28:19.
Now that we have seen the center of the gospel of God, we want to go on to see its content. The content of the gospel of God is the dynamic salvation of God in its fullness. In this chapter we want to see the essence of the particular items of God’s dynamic salvation.
Romans 1:16 says that the gospel of God is powerful to save all men. The word powerful means dynamic. The Greek word comes from the noun dynamo. It refers to a kind of power like that of a nuclear bomb. The gospel of God is a dynamo to save people. The word dynamo implies an endless power.
Thus, the gospel of God is endlessly powerful (dynamic) to save all the sinners who would believe in it. Whoever believes, whether he is a Jew, a Gentile, a gentleman, or a bank robber, will be saved by this dynamic salvation. In John 4 there is a story of the Lord’s encounter with a sinful Samaritan woman who had been married to five husbands and was living with someone who was not her husband. When she asked the Lord to give her the living water, He said, “Go, call your husband and come here” (v. 16). Her husband was the center of her sin. To speak to Christ of her husbands was to confess her sins. But she confessed in a lying way by saying that she did not have a husband. The Lord responded, “You have well said, I do not have a husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly” (vv. 17-18). Even such a one as this Samaritan woman was saved by the powerful gospel in drinking the living water of Christ (v. 14).
In Luke 19 there is another story of the Lord’s contact with a great sinner, Zaccheus, who was an evil chief tax collector (v. 2). He extorted the people by putting an excessive value on property or income, or increasing the tax of those unable to pay, and would then practice usury. The Lord paid a visit to his city purposely to meet him. Right after he received the Lord, he said to Him, “Behold, the half of my possessions, Lord, I give to the poor, and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore four times as much” (v. 8). This is the fast issue of the Lord’s dynamic salvation. So the Lord said, “Today salvation has come to this house” (v. 9). This salvation was to save one of God’s chosen people who fell into sin to such an extent that he extorted his own people by being a tax collector of the Roman imperialism, showing the powerful, dynamic, salvation, a salvation with an endless power.
The gospel of God is powerful to redeem us. God’s salvation is of two parts. The first part is redemption. The second part is the direct salvation. Redemption can be considered a part of God’s salvation because it is the initiation of God’s salvation. Thus, redemption as the initiation becomes the foundation of God’s salvation. First, God redeemed the sinners, and this was done judicially. The word judicial means “to make lawful.” God’s redemption is judicial because the very sinners He saved are all sinful. Everyone is condemned by God’s righteousness, and everyone, in a sense, has been sentenced by God to death, to perish, according to His righteous law. Thus, all the descendants of Adam, according to God’s righteous and holy law, are condemned and sentenced. Now God wants to redeem these condemned and sentenced sinners. If God would just forgive us without a righteous procedure, He would become a lawless God. For Him to remain in His righteous and holy position, He has to do something to redeem the sinners judicially.
All proper Christians admit that they were redeemed by Christ’s paying the price for them. Christ died and shed His blood for us. He died on the cross as our replacement. The Bible tells us that God decided to crucify Christ (Isa. 53:10). If Christ had not died as our replacement, then God would have become unrighteous in crucifying Christ, because Christ is the only person who is absolutely righteous and just. One of Charles Wesley’s hymns says, “Amazing love! how can it be / That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?” (Hymns, #296). The just God-man died for the unjust sinners (1 Pet. 3:18), so His death is called the vicarious death. One just God-man died for many unjust sinners. Such a vicarious death is judicial. God redeemed us judicially by the blood of Christ. To redeem, in a sense, is to purchase. When you purchase something, you have to pay the price. God’s redemption was a kind of purchase. God purchased us sinners judicially by paying Christ’s blood as the price on the cross.
By reading the Gospels, we can see that Christ was hanging on the cross for six hours, from nine o’clock in the morning until three o’clock in the afternoon (Mark 15:25; Matt. 27:45-46). These six hours are divided into two sections. In the first section the Jews associated with the Roman soldiers killed Christ. Jesus was persecuted to death on the cross by both the Jews and the Romans for three hours. Then suddenly at noon darkness fell over all the land. That was an indication that God came in to deal with the dying Christ. That was God’s judgment on Christ, because it was at that juncture, as Isaiah 53 says, that God put all man’s sin upon Christ, considering Him as the unique sinner (vv. 4-6). The Lord Jesus told us in the Gospels that the Father God was always with Him (John 8:16, 29), but when Christ was hanging on the cross in the last three hours, He cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matt. 27:46). At that very juncture on the cross, when God put all of man’s sin upon Him, in God’s eyes He was the unique sinner in replacement of all the sinners. Thus, God left Him economically. Then Christ asked, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” We have to answer, “Lord Jesus, because of my sin.” He was dying for us, carrying out a vicarious death for all mankind on the cross.
God redeemed us judicially by the blood of Christ (Rom. 3:24-25) on the cross (1 Pet. 2:24a) from our sins (Rev. 1:5b). These are the outward sins in our conduct. God also redeemed us from His righteous judgment, wrath, and condemnation (Rom. 2:5-6, 16; 3:19b; John 3:18b) and from eternal perdition in the lake of fire (Rev. 21:8; 22:15). To perish in the lake of fire is God’s sentence to us. We have also been redeemed from the accusation of Satan, God’s enemy (cf. 12:10-11).
We were redeemed through the forgiveness of sins (Eph. 1:7) and the washing away of the believing sinners’ sins (Rev. 1:5b; 1 Cor. 6:11). To forgive is one thing, but the stain of sin is still there. So following the forgiving, we need the washing to take away the stain.
We were also redeemed by the blood of Christ through the reconciliation of the believing sinners to God from their enmity toward God (Rom. 5:10a). We sinners were God’s enemies, and there was enmity between God and us. Christ’s death reconciled us to God. This is the reconciliation through which God redeemed us.
We were redeemed through the justification of the believing sinners by God (3:20-24) and the making of peace between the believing sinners and God (5:1). Through Christ’s redemption we have been forgiven, washed, reconciled, and justified, so peace has been made between God and us.
Finally, our redemption was through the sanctification of the believing sinners unto God positionally (Heb. 10:10, 14, 29b; 13:12a). In our position we have been sanctified unto God. God has accepted us as saints. This is why 1 Corinthians 1:2 refers to us as the called saints. We are the called saints through so many steps, starting from forgiveness and progressing to sanctification positionally. Our redemption is all-inclusive. Such a redemption lays the foundation of God’s dynamic salvation for the consummation of God’s dynamic salvation.
God’s salvation is not only to redeem us but also to save us. God’s redemption is judicial. God’s salvation is organic. We were redeemed judicially by the blood of Christ, but we are saved organically by the life of Christ (Rom. 5:10b). We should not say that God saved us by His blood. God redeemed us by His blood. Also, we cannot say that God has redeemed us from our temper. Instead, God saves us from our temper, not by His blood but by His life. We sinners need judicial redemption by the blood of Christ and also organic salvation by the life of Christ. Redemption was accomplished on the cross, but God’s salvation is always carried out in the Spirit of life (8:2).
God’s salvation saves us from the indwelling sin (7:17; 8:2). When I was initially saved, I was happy, but I found out that something within was still bothering me. That was the indwelling sin. Not only are we sinful in the sins in our conduct, but also we are constituted to be sinners in the sin that is in our nature. Romans 7 says clearly that this was Paul’s experience. Paul was saved, but he still found that there was something he wanted to do but could not do. Rather, something that he hated he did. So he said, “It is no longer I that work it out but sin that dwells in me” (v. 20). Our redemption from our sins is by the blood of Christ. Our salvation from the sin in our nature, the indwelling sin, is by the life of Christ. Romans 8:2 indicates that the law of the Spirit of life releases us from the indwelling sin.
We are also saved by the life of Christ from the condemnation due to the sinful action of the indwelling sin (vv. 17-20; 8:1). On the one hand, we have been forgiven, and there is no more condemnation. In Hymns, #296 Charles Wesley says, “No condemnation now I dread; / Jesus, and all in Him, is mine!” Even though this is true, day after day we are still condemned. A young brother may lose his temper at his mother. He hates this, confesses his sin, and asks for the Lord’s and his mother’s forgiveness. Then he determines that from then on he will never lose his temper at his mother again. But within a short time he loses his temper again, so he has no peace and is full of condemnation. Actually, if you are really redeemed by God, you always have this inner condemnation. You may realize that a Christian should not joke so much, but you are a person who always jokes with people. After you tell a joke, you repent, but later, you still joke with someone once again. To be saved from joking, you need the constant salvation by the life of Christ. This is why you need to fellowship with Him all the time.
We also need to be saved in life from the old man (6:6) and the natural I (Gal. 2:20a). With us it is always I — I first, I second, I third, and I last. One brother quarrels with another brother, saying, “Don’t you know that this is my shirt? Why do you put it on?” This is the natural I.
We also need to be saved by the life of Christ from the self (Matt. 16:24). All these negative things are like gophers, mosquitoes, fleas, scorpions, and snakes. We need to be saved from the flesh with its passions and its lusts (Gal. 5:24). Passions and lusts are two categories of things. Negative desires are passions, and lusts are something worse. Worldliness is another thing from which we need to be saved (1 John 2:15-16; Rom. 12:2a). You do not need to be taught to be worldly. When you contact the world, right away you become worldly.
We also need to be saved from tribulations and all kinds of environmental troubles (5:3; 8:35-39). Romans 8 tells us that nearly everything in our human life is a tribulation. A young brother may desire to have a wife, and surely to have a wife is a good thing. But when he gets a wife, this wife becomes a source of tribulation to him. The young sisters are anxious to get married. But when they get married, their husbands become a source of their tribulation. In a wedding meeting, a pastor may ask the husband to promise before God that he will love his wife for his whole life. Then he may ask the wife to promise to submit herself to her husband for her whole life. Soon after the wedding, when they are going to sleep, the husband opens the window in the bedroom, but the wife cannot take this, because she has always slept in a room with the windows closed. But without the window being opened, the husband cannot sleep. As a result, they quarrel. Thus, we can see that the husband and wife can be a source of tribulation to each other.
On the one hand, it is a blessing to have children, but on the other hand, the more children you have, the more troubles you have. All our possessions become troubles to us. We need to have a house and a car, but these are also troubles. We need to have money to exist, but money becomes a trouble to us. Whatever you have is a trouble. John Nelson Darby said, “O the joy of having nothing and being nothing, seeing nothing but a living Christ in glory, and being careful for nothing but His interests down here.” It is wonderful to have nothing, be nothing, see nothing, and care for nothing but Christ’s interest here on earth. Then you are really saved. Trouble comes to us from every direction, so we need God’s salvation.
Surely the young brothers and sisters have to get married at the proper time. They may think that it is better not to be married. Then I would say, “If you have no wife or husband, you will have even more trouble.” It is hard to find out which way is a debit and which way is a credit. Then what shall we do? To have or not to have are both a trouble. The only way out is God’s salvation. We need to live a life of dying to our self all the time to be conformed to His death all the time (Phil. 3:10). This is God’s salvation.
We need to be saved from spiritual death and weakness (Rom. 8:5, 7, 24-26; Rev. 3:1-2). If you never function in the meetings, you are dead spiritually. You need to be saved from this kind of death and weakness. Also, because of Satan’s rebellion and man’s fall, the entire universe has become a vanity under the slavery of corruption (Rom. 8:20-21). Everything is subject to corruption. If you buy some clothing, it will eventually become old and corrupted. Everything in the universe is a vanity, and day by day everything is corrupting. But God’s salvation by Christ as the life-giving Spirit saves us from these two negative things in the universe: the vanity and the slavery of corruption.
The salvation by the life of Christ is through our regeneration, dispositional sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification. Regeneration washes the believers from the oldness of their old man (Titus 3:5a) and makes them the many sons of God (1 Pet. 1:3; John 3:3, 5; 1:12-13; Heb. 2:10). After regeneration the Spirit of Christ continues to remain in us and to work to sanctify us, to make us holy, not just in position but in disposition (Rom. 6:19, 22; 15:16b; 1 Thes. 5:23). The blood of Christ separates us to make us sanctified positionally (Heb. 13:12). That belongs to God’s redemption. But in God’s salvation we need to be sanctified, not by the blood of Christ but by the indwelling Spirit of life.
We are also saved in life through renewing (Titus 3:5b; Rom. 12:2b). Every day we should be renewed by the Spirit. Then there is transformation to change the believers’ constitution metabolically with the divine element of the life of Christ into His image, the image of the firstborn Son of God, from glory to glory (v. 2b; 2 Cor. 3:18). This is a big step and a lifelong process. Transformation is the infusion into us of God’s new element to replace and discharge our old element.
This makes the believers boast in their tribulations (Rom. 5:3) and makes them more than conquerors over the environmental troubles (8:35-39). In all the troubles we become conquerors. We will never be subdued, because we have the life of Christ and transformation is going on within us. This also makes the believers kings to reign in the eternal life through the abounding grace (5:17, 21) in this age and also the co-kings with Christ to rule over the nations in the next age, in the thousand-year kingdom (Rev. 20:4, 6).
Our salvation in life continues through our conformation, conforming us to the image of Christ as the firstborn Son of God to be the mass reproduction of Jesus the God-man as the prototype for the building up of His organic Body (Rom. 8:29). The last step of our salvation in life is glorification, which is the redemption of the believers’ body, to glorify the believers in their entire being with the divine glory for their full enjoyment of their divine sonship (vv. 23, 30). Such a salvation consummates the building up of the church, the organic Body of Christ (fully covered by Romans 12—16, after the parenthetical section of chapters 9—11), which will consummate in the New Jerusalem as the center of the eternal economy of God. The first eight chapters of Romans are on God’s redemption and salvation. The next three chapters are on God’s selection. The last five chapters are on the church life.
You must believe that God has raised up Jesus Christ from the dead. If you believe in this way, you will be saved (10:9b).
After believing, you have to call on the name of the Lord every day. This is your confession (vv. 9a, 13).
Finally, we need to be baptized into Christ Jesus, the embodiment of the Triune God (the Father, the Son, and the Spirit), to get into the organic union with the Triune God embodied in Christ (6:3; Matt. 28:19). This is the way to partake of the dynamic salvation of God: to believe, to call, and to be baptized. God’s redemption, God’s salvation, and our believing are the three main items in God’s dynamic salvation.
