What is the Romans Road to salvation?

Trusting in the Lord for guidance I will now examine the different epistles, that we may see how salvation is treated in each of them. In Romans 1 the apostle is not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes. The reason it is this is because righteousness on the part of God is revealed on behalf of man, and that in view of the revelation of wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. God meets this state of sin in which all men are by nature, by the revelation of His righteousness on behalf of man, and by justifying the ungodly sinner who believes on Jesus. In chapter 10 Christ is said to be the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believes; but the righteousness which is of faith says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Here the Lord becomes my salvation. I call upon Him, and find that He is rich unto all that call upon Him; “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” I take this to be the way we enter the kingdom, and in coming into the kingdom we are under His protection and influence, and find salvation. In chapter 5, “Having been justified by His blood we shall be saved from wrath through Him”; and, “Being reconciled we shall be saved by His life.” Before the wrath comes He will remove us from the scene where it will be inflicted, so that it will not hurt us. In chapter 13:11 it is said to be nearer than when we believed. Evidently this last passage contemplates it in its perfect character, which will be when we are glorified. What we see in Romans is that the Gospel is the power of it, it is realized in subjection to the Lord, and we are going on to the day when it will be perfected.

And it is with faith, as so exercised, that remission of sins is always connected. This will be at once understood, if the reader will turn to the passage already cited from Luke 24, where repentance and remission of sins are linked together, both to be preached in the name of the risen Christ. For the moment there is the reception of God's testimony concerning the death and resurrection of Christ, forgiveness of sins is enjoyed. Repentance brings into a right state of soul before God; faith identifies the soul with all the value of the work of Christ. Both therefore are absolutely necessary for salvation.

The question, however, is often asked, Whether repentance must always precede faith? The very form of the question, as a few words will show, is misleading. If the true nature of repentance has been apprehended, the reader will see that it cannot be dissociated from faith. For what produces repentance? It is God's testimony, received in power, concerning me as a sinner. Somehow or other light has entered into my soul, and convicted before God, I bow to all He says of me in His word, as a lost sinner. This faith - faith in God's word as to the truth of my condition - must always be connected with repentance. The two things are indissolubly united. But the soul may remain in a state of repentance, if it may be so described, a long time before accepting God's further testimony as to His beloved Son; and it need scarcely be said that, as long as it thus continues, there will be no peace or liberty. Hence repentance in such a case precedes faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ, and this is undoubtedly the general order of the soul's experience.

We say the general order, for it cannot be denied that there would seem to be many exceptions. Repentance is so little preached, and the forgiveness of sins, or, in other cases, eternal life, without even raising the question of sin, is so often pressed upon souls - especially in so-called revival preaching - that many appear to be converted with scarcely any exercise as to the state of their souls before God, almost without ever having had the burden of sin upon their conscience. Fully granting that there are genuine cases of this kind, it yet must be said that all such will have conscience-work as to sin sooner or later. With them, what answers to repentance will undoubtedly follow after their conversion. But the divine order is repentance toward God first, and then faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ; and wherever the truth of the gospel is proclaimed according to God, this order will be maintained in the experience of souls. Take, for example, the epistle to the Romans, which in an especial manner presents the gospel. In the first place, after unfolding his theme, the apostle proves that all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God, then - but not till then - he expounds the provisions of God's grace for the sinner's guilt, and thereon he proceeds to explain how God has met also the sinner's state as well as the sinner's guilt. We do not here enter into this, beyond calling attention to the fact that the demonstration of our guilt precedes his description of how God has set forth Christ Jesus as a propitiation through faith in His blood. And wherever this divine order of the presentation of truth is followed, it must necessarily produce repentance toward God, though repentance will ever be connected with the reception of the Word, before faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. E. D.

The Epistle to the Romans presents us with an orderly unfolding of the Gospel. Its first two and a half chapters are occupied with the assertion and proof of universal sin and corruption. Every kind of man is condemned, all pretension to goodness is demolished, and all the world is brought in as "guilty before God" (Rom. 3:19). From that point the gospel of God, which alone meets this condition, is unfolded, and in this unfolding the first great landmark is found in the propitiatory sacrifice of Christ, meeting every claim of the righteousness of God. "Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness" (ver. 25).

The Epistle to the Romans, presents us with an orderly unfolding of the Gospel in Romans 1 - 8. First of all we are carried through an exposure of the ruin and corruption that marks the human race in all its branches, and then step by step the Divine way of blessing is unfolded: the way in which God has wrought on man's behalf in the death and resurrection of Christ; the particular application of His death and resurrection to the believer, first as regards his sinful acts and then as regards his sinful state; the consequent gift of the Spirit; the experimental process by which the believer learns to now walk in the liberty of the Spirit and free from the dominion of sin and law and flesh. This is supplemented in Romans 9 to 11 by a treatise upon the ways and purposes of God, showing how His ways, which are past finding out, are made to work out to the fulfilment of His purposes.

Certainly, there is not a soul who does not need forgiveness, though we do at times fall in with some of the ninety-and-nine just persons who judge that they have no need of repentance. But they are deceiving themselves. The wise man's words are all too true: "There is not a just man upon earth that does good and sins not" (Eccles. 7:20). The summing up of the Apostle is even more conclusive: "There is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). Such comprehensive language leaves no door of escape for any; the whole human family is brought thereby under the judgement of God. Moreover, from such a condition none can extricate themselves; no amount of human effort, as amendment of life, almsgiving, etc., can possibly purge away a single sin.

“The wages of sin is death,” which solemn sentence Adam and myriads of men have proved in their own bodies. Death is the wages of sin, not the debt of nature. God did not make man in order to die, but by sin man forfeited his life, and now hath “death passed upon all men for all that have sinned,” and he who dies in his sins will be eternally banished from the presence of the holy God.

In Rom. 10 we have God's principle of salvation — faith in contrast with works. Two kinds of righteousness are presented to us: "the righteousness which is of the law" in verse 5, and "the righteousness which is of faith" in verse 6. The first is what men love most, because it gives a place to human effort; the second, however, is what God sets forth in the Gospel of Christ, and it calls for no human effort at all, but instead magnifies what God and Christ have done. Does any soul long to be saved, crying out with the Jailer of Philippi: "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" (Acts 16:30). Here is God's answer to this tremendous question: "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord (R.V.), and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." To confess Jesus as Lord is to renounce once for all our own self-will, the root of our every sin. It was a great moment in the history of the writer of the epistle to the Romans when he first lay broken and humbled at the feet of Jesus, and contritely called upon Him as Lord. God demands this from us all as the first step towards eternal blessing. Why does the apostle add, as a second condition, if thou "shalt believe in thine heart that God raised Him from the dead"? "Some perhaps would have preferred him to say, "If thou shalt believe that Jesus died." But the apostle does not so express himself. The reason is very simple. Resurrection pre-supposes death. The two great cardinal truths of the Gospel are given to us in 1 Cor. 15:3-4 thus: "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures … and He was raised again the third day according to the Scriptures." Incidentally it is added, "And He was buried," as if to emphasise the reality of the Saviour's death.

Of old God brought His commandment very near to Israel that they might do it. He has brought His word even nearer to us in Christ. It is now not a word of what we ought to do, but of what Christ has done, and of what He Himself has done in raising Christ from the dead. On our part the word only demands that we believe with the heart that God has raised Him from the dead, and that we confess Him as Lord with our mouths. When heart and mouth thus go together there is of course reality. Real subjection to Jesus as Lord carries with it salvation.

The gospel then preached to this awakened sinner of the Gentiles was salvation by faith. The jailor's thought, like many others, was that salvation was by works; what must I do? But Paul and Silas assured him that he could be saved only in the way of faith. They presented the Lord Jesus Christ to him as the object of faith, and His finished work, and God's acceptance of it, as the ground of salvation, and warrant for perfect peace — "thou shalt be saved." This is very simple, and commends itself to the confidence of an anxious enquirer. The gospel really excludes all idea of creature-doing for salvation, because it testifies that Jesus, the Son of God, hath so completely finished the work of our redemption, so thoroughly purged our sins, that He sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, the rightful Lord of heaven and earth, and that all who believe on Him have at once an eternal, interest in that blessed work. The Lord Jesus having magnified the law by bearing its curse, put away sin, abolished death, burst the bars of the grave, and triumphed over Satan, hell, and the grave, has entered into heaven itself with His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption for us; the resurrection and glorification of Christ being God's public testimony of His acceptance of the Saviour's all-sufficient work. What is then to be done for salvation? Nothing; it is done already, and we have the warrant of God's word to receive and enjoy it by faith — "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." Faith reads the lessons of redeeming love in the death of the Son of God upon the cross; and those who can say, "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us" have peace; they see that God's love has brought salvation to them, even when sinners, in the cross of His Son, and knowing He is now risen from the dead, they approach God with confidence; they know that He declares them saved by grace, through faith. What, I would ask, can exceed this boundless love? What else could have really met us in our low estate? What could so redound to the glory of God? And who so thoroughly reject the gospel, display self-ignorance, and despise the unsearchable riches of Divine love, as those who talk of doing for salvation? "Where is boasting?" said the apostle. "It is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay; but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." (Rom. 3:27-28.) Blessed gospel for a sin-convicted, heavy-laden sinner!

And this word, which is nigh, the Apostle saith "is the word of faith which we preach." And this it is "if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shall believe in thy heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." How blessedly simple all this is. Jesus must be owned as Lord; He, who died for our sins, and whom God raised from the dead. Blessed assurance, "thou shalt be saved!" Saved by grace, through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.