Justified
by Faith Shall Live. Romans 1:17
Romans
1:17 NASB “For in it {the} righteousness of God is revealed from
faith to faith; as it is written, ‘BUT THE RIGHTEOUS {man} SHALL LIVE BY
FAITH.’”
This
is an extremely important verse; it sets out the theme of the whole epistle.
“For in it,” i.e. the gospel. The use of “gospel” here isn’t the narrow use in
the sense of only that message which is required to believe in order to have
eternal life but Paul uses the gospel to refer in a plenary sense to the whole
realm of theology that flows out of the gospel. In other words, the doctrines
that are fundamental to Christianity.
The
“righteousness of God is revealed” introduces the topic, the subject matter, of
Romans. It is to explain the righteousness of God in relationship to mankind,
to human history, how God’s righteousness has been violated by the human race
and how God’s righteousness is satisfied by the death of Jesus Christ on the
cross; and how the righteousness of Christ, then, is imputed or credited to the
account of the person who believes in Christ so that they are saved not on the
basis of what they have done but on the basis of the righteousness that they
possess from Christ. This is the basis for God saying that they are justified.
This
is a tremendous verse but there is a little controversy about it: how should it
be translated? Should it be translated, “The justified by faith shall live”? Or
should it be translated, “The justified shall live by faith”? In the first way
of translating it the emphasis is on how those who are justified by faith shall
live in their Christian life after salvation. In this first formulation, “The
justified shall live by faith,” it is just a fine shade of a difference but it
puts the emphasis on the fact the post-salvation life is by faith. The first
puts the emphasis on being justified by faith; the second puts the emphasis on
living by faith. So we have to answer this question—and it is another
quote from the Old Testament, coming from Habakkuk 2:4. We have to understand
how Paul is using it because the meaning he is giving this phrase in Romans
1:17 isn’t exactly the meaning that Habakkuk had when he originally wrote this.
There
are four ways in which the Old Testament is quoted and used in the New
Testament. This is based on how the rabbis used quotes from the Old Testament
in different ways, using what we refer to as fulfilment language. The first is
the idea of literal prophecy-literal fulfilment. This is where an event or a
verse in the Old Testament clearly is predicting something, saying that something
is going to happen in the future and then when it is fulfilled in terms of
prophecy the New Testament quotes it as fulfilment. Example: Matthew 2:5,
6.
The
second use is called literal historical event. It is not a prophecy; it is not
predicting anything. It is simply describing a historical event or situation
but it is a type or shadow or picture of something that would take place in the
life of the Messiah or the future history of Israel. So in Matthew 2:15 we read
that Joseph and Mary, after they were warned by the angel, went down to Egypt
with baby Jesus so that He would survive the slaughter of the babies by Herod,
and they were there until the death of Herod, “that is might be fulfilled what
was spoken by the Lord through the prophets, saying, ‘Out of Egypt I have
called my son.’” That is a direct quote out of Hosea talking about the
historical exodus from Egypt. This also connects with a statement in Numbers 24
in the prophecy of Balaam indicating that the Messiah would come out of Egypt.
This is a picture, a foreshadowing of what would happen in the individual life
of the Messiah. It is a typological fulfilment.
The
third use is an application. It is not a type, it is looking at a series of
historical that happen and then there are another set of historical things
happening at the time of the New Testament and the writer is simply saying
something like, This is like that. It is an analogy where, let’s say, five or
six things that are the circumstances of the original event, only one of which
is analogous to what is happening at the time of the writing. It is that that
is used as an analogy. E.g. Matthew 2:17, 18, which describes the slaughter of
the infants by Herod in Bethlehem. What we have to recognize is that this
refers back to the historical situation (Jeremiah 31:15) that occurred around
598-586 BC during one of
the conquests by Nebuchadnezzar when a group of hostages were taken and
deported to Babylon. The Jewish mothers were seeing their children being taken
away and would never see them again and they are weeping for them. Ramah is a
village north of Jerusalem, but this is being applied to the weeping of the
mothers in Bethlehem and Bethlehem was south of Jerusalem. At the time of
Nebuchadnezzar the children were being deported but in the time of Jesus the
infants were being killed. The writer, Matthew, is applying this and saying
what was happening of Jesus with the slaughter of the infants and the mothers
weeping over the murders is like what happened at the time of Jeremiah 31:15.
That is the literal history and application.
The
fourth use is a summary where, for example, Matthew says that Jesus returned
from Egypt and came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth “that is might be
fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.”
Nowhere is there a prophecy that says that the Messiah was going to be called a
Nazarene. But every place we live there is somebody down the road that is
thought of as being less bright, less intelligent, less talented than where
ever we are, and they are made fun of. In Israel in the ancient world it was
Nazareth. The summary is that “Nazarene” stands for somebody who is just
backward, uneducated, and not really going to contribute anything to society.
This reflects the teaching of the Old Testament teaching about the Messiah,
especially in Isaiah chapter 53: that He would be despised and rejected among
men. Nazarenes were despised and rejected by their neighbours, so this is a summary
of different things that are said about the Messiah being rejected by His
people.
So
how is Paul using Habakkuk 2:4 in Romans 1:17? The original quote, Habakkuk 2:4
NASB “Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within
him; But the righteous will live by his faith.”
Habakkuk
is a book that answers the question that everybody asks at least once in their
life, if not many times in their life: Why do bad things happen to good people?
This is really what Habakkuk is asking. He precedes that question with the
question: Why don’t bad things happen to bad people? In other words, he is
looking around at all the people and they are all losers, all disobeying God
over and over again. It has been going on for a long time: God, why don’t you
judge them? Then he realizes that God is going to judge them and there are a
lot who are not necessarily participating in the evil so how come God’s
judgment is going to happen upon those who are innocent? So these questions are
basically around how God judges in human history, and why is there evil, why is
there suffering for people who are not evil, and why isn’t there more suffering
for people who are evil? These are basic questions that anybody asks.
We
don’t know anything about Habakkuk as an individual other than he lived in the
southern kingdom some time just prior to the invasion of the southern kingdom
by Nebuchadnezzar. His name means to embrace, in the Hebrew. Luther wrote of
him: "Habakkuk signifies an embracer or one who embraces another, takes
them to his arms. He embraces his people and takes them to his arms." That
is, he comforts them and holds them up as one embraces a weeping child to quiet
it with the assurance that if God wills it shall soon be better.
The
exact time of this prophecy is not known. Some think it was as early as the
reign of Manasseh. There is a prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem in 1:5
and in that God says, “Because {I am} doing something in your days…” So it
couldn’t have been as far back as Manasseh because Habakkuk wouldn’t have lived
as long as from Manasseh to the time of 586, so it was relatively close. The
setting comes at a time when the Assyrian empire has been waning and they are
finally defeated in 609 by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar and his father Nabo-polassar at the Battle of Carchemish. Israel was surrounded by her enemies. One of the
characteristics of this time was that the people were in out and out rebellion
against God in some of the most horrible ways as they were practicing the
fertility cults with all of the sexual perversity that went along with it. It
was a time of violence, a time of conquest by the Babylonians, a time of
instability and chaos, crisis and war. Internally it is a time also of
violence, of people doing whatever they want to do, a time of rejection of God
and the Mosaic Law and rebellion against the prophets.
Yet
there was still a remnant of believers in Judah who were worshipping God and
Habakkuk is one of those. He was a righteous man and when he saw what was going
on around him—all of the depravity and violence—he said: God, it
can’t be long before you are going to judge these people.
Habakkuk
1:2 NASB “How long, O LORD, will I call for help, And You will not hear? I cry out to You,
‘Violence!’ Yet You do not save [or, You will not hear
and deliver from the sin that is taking place].” It is as if God is
insensitive; He just isn’t doing anything about it. [3] “Why do You make me see iniquity, And cause {me} to look on
wickedness? Yes, destruction and violence are before me; Strife exists and
contention arises.” He is a little self-absorbed, a little self-righteous. [4]
“Therefore the law is ignored [Heb. Word means to be numbed, chilled or frozen]
And justice [application of the Law] is never upheld
[is powerless]. For the wicked surround the righteous; Therefore justice comes
out perverted.”
Nobody
can get justice. If you don’t have justice then there is no value for life or
property or a future because everything is in limbo, in turmoil. There is no
stability, everything is destroyed because there is no rule of law and there is
nothing but corruption among those who are ruling. This is the cycle of
civilization that occurs time and time again. When the ruling elite, whether
they are elected, business elite that is put into power, some sort of
oligarchy, once you lose this foundation of righteousness and integrity then
instability and uncertainty comes in. That is what we are seeing today. There
is nothing that is more embarrassing to this country than most of the people
who are operating either in the civil service or in Washington as elected
leaders. They have no sense of objectivity, they are more concerned about their
own power and preserving their own political power and whatever base they can
establish that gets them some kind of extra money (and there are all kinds of
hidden deals that take place in Washington), and the corruption just gets worse
and worse.
But
the leaders always reflect the people. If the people don’t have integrity and
virtue the leaders will not have integrity and virtue. And the more the culture
moves in the direction of absolute licentiousness and moral relativism the more
the fabric is destroyed that is necessary to produce the kind of integrity and
leaders to do the right thing. It gets to a point in a culture where when
people who want to do the right thing come along—in a culture that has
slipped to the point where moral relativism has become the norm, and those who
hold to an absolute standard are viewed as the enemy—they become
ridiculed and are attacked.
Then
the Lord gives Habakkuk a reply. Habakkuk 1:5 NASB “Look
among the nations! Observe! Be astonished! Wonder! Because {I am} doing
something in your days— You would not believe if you were told.” Look at
the nations. Quit focusing on the domestic issues and look at what I am doing
on the grand chessboard of human history and nations. Assyria has been destroyed
and I am raising up Babylon; you are going to be
astounded at what is going to happen. These pagan Chaldeans are going to be my
instrument to bring judgment upon Judah. Judah has been unrighteous, yes; I
have given them time.
The
bottom line questions: Why do bad things happen to good people and why does
evil exist and God seem to allow it to exist and continue? It is because God
gave the human race freedom. We have freedom to do wonderful things and freedom
to do evil things, and you can’t limit one without limiting the other. So when
God allows man to make those choices God is going to give them the rope to hang
themselves and to go to the extent of their depravity. And God is always going
to be calling them back to change, to repent, to turn back to Him, because once
God stops it stops, it is over with, it is the end. There is judgment coming
and they are destroyed. God gives them grace and extends their time, gives them
opportunity to turn back to Him. That is His grace, but ultimately the time
will come when God has to bring that judgment. Now is the time and He warns
that He is bringing judgment against the nation of Judah. He is going to do it
through the Chaldeans.
Habakkuk
1:6 NASB “For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, That fierce and
impetuous people Who march throughout the earth To
seize dwelling places which are not theirs.” There are twelve things listed in
the next verses that describe the Chaldeans. Fierce, which is that they are
bitter in temper, angry and violent in warfare. They are impetuous, which means
they are swift, fast. They march throughout the earth, which means their armies
are continually conquering new places. They are dreaded and feared, they strike
terror. They listen to no one but themselves; they set their own standards and
agenda and are a law unto themselves. They are described as more
fierce than evening wolves; the idea of being keener, sharper, more
attuned to what is going on. They can respond quickly in the battlefield to
what is happening. They swoop down on their horses like eagles—surprise
attacks. Their faces are set like the east wind, which indicates that they are
set hard; they are not going to succumb to compassion. They gather captives
like sand—they defeat so many there are just multitudes of captives. They
scoff at kings; they don’t care about the rulers of these other countries. They
have the ability to conquer anything that is thrown up in their path.
So
God’s description of the Chaldeans in vv. 5-11 basically spells out the horrors
of being defeated by the Babylonians, and the conquest and what was in store
for the southern kingdom of Judah, as they would come under Nebuchadnezzar’s gazes.
Three different times he would invade and only the last time would he conquer
and destroy Jerusalem and the first temple.
Then
Habakkuk’s question: You are a holy God, how can a holy God use these wicked
people? God’s answer is that He is the one who controls history and He can raise up whomever He wants to to
bring judgment upon His people for their violation of His Law. Habakkuk
1:12 NASB “Are You not from
everlasting, O
LORD,
my God, my Holy One? We will not die. You, O LORD, have appointed them to judge;
And You, O Rock, have established them to correct. [13] {Your} eyes are too
pure to approve evil, And You can not look on
wickedness {with favor.} Why do You
look with favor On those who deal treacherously? Why
are You silent when the wicked swallow up Those more
righteous than they?”
Then
there is a description of what this conquest will be like. Habakkuk 1:14 NASB
“{Why} have You made men like the fish of the sea, Like creeping things without
a ruler over them?” Why do you allow this to happen? is
what he is asking. God’s answer is broader than the individual situation. He
thinks in terms of the scope of history and pictures how He is going to use
this to bring judgment upon Israel for the purpose of eventually raising them
up so that they are a nation that is righteous and worships and glorifies
Him.
We
get into chapter two which begins: Habakkuk 2:1 NASB “I will stand
on my guard post [a mental watch] And station myself
on the rampart; And I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me, And how
I may reply when I am reproved.” He is going to observe this and write about
it. He understands that he will be corrected by God.
The answer that God gives. The opening
salvo from God is in verses 2-5, and this is where we see the quote that shows
up in Romans. Habakkuk 2:2 NASB
“Then the LORD answered me
and said, ‘Record the vision And inscribe {it} on
tablets, That the one who reads it may run.
Then
starting in verse 6 five woes are announced against
Judah, and when it is over with Habakkuk is going to recognize that God is the
one who is sovereign. The conclusion in verse 20 is: “But the LORD is in His holy
temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him.” He recognizes that he was
judging God’s way of conducting Himself in history and he understands the
justice of God and how it has worked itself out in the history of Israel. He is
basically saying no one has the right to judge or question God’s ways. Why?
Because we do not know all that God does.
In
verse 2 God instructs Habakkuk to write down the vision. This will serve as a
warning to those who read it to pay attention to it. Habakkuk 2:3 NASB
“For the vision is yet for the appointed time; It hastens toward the goal and
it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it; For
it will certainly come, it will not delay. [4] Behold, as for the proud one,
His soul is not right within him; But the righteous
will live by his faith.” Who is the proud? The Chaldeans. They are the proud,
the arrogant, and even though God is using them to bring discipline against the
southern kingdom of Judah that does not absolve them of their guilt and
arrogance. Judah is wrong and needs to be punished for their rebellion against
God; the Chaldeans are wrong but God is going to use them in their
unrighteousness to punish Judah, and then God in turn will bring judgment upon
the Chaldeans. There will be justice in history; God does not forget.
There is a parallelism here. “Behold, as
for the proud one…” This is an analysis of this group; they are called proud.
Then there is a diagnosis. What happens to the proud? It comes in verse 5: “And
he is like death, never satisfied.” What happens to the proud? He dies. In
contrast to the proud we have the just. They are going to live. “But the righteous
will live by his faith.” The question is how this is going to be translated.
The word order in the Hebrew: “The righteous by his faith shall live.”
The
word translated “faith” here is the word emunah. There is a lot of
controversy over how this is translated. Most translations translated before
the last 20-20 years consistently translate this as “faith.” The contrast is
between the pride of the Chaldeans and the faith of the believers in Judah.
This is the only place in all of the Old Testament where emunah has the idea of faith; in
every other place it is “faithful.” So there are some modern translations
which translate it “faithful,” but there is a judgment that is being
pronounced on both the proud and the just. The judgment is that the proud will
die; the just will live. You can’t pronounce the judgment if you have an
open-ended value. The open-ended value is faithfulness. How do you know if you
have been faithful or not? It doesn’t fit the contrast. It is not a contrast
between the unfaithful and the faithful, it is between the proud (those who
have no faith) and those who have faith. This is why most commentators and
translators understand that this should be translated “faith” and not
“faithful,” and it is accurately translated that way.
“The
just by his faith…” They are righteous by faith. Abraham was declared righteous
for his faith in Genesis 15:6. He is declared righteous on the basis of his
faith, not on the basis of works. Works do not make us righteous enough. Isaiah
64:6 NASB “And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment.”
So the point in verse 4 is in contrast to the proud who die. The one who is
justified by faith shall live.
There
are five woes that are announced. The word “woe” in the Hebrew is hoy. It is the
basis for a judgment. In the first (vv. 6b-8) the judgment is on the
transgressors, the Chaldeans because of their ill-gotten gains. They have taken
too many spoils and this is unrighteous, so God will spoil the spoils of the
spoiler and plunder the plunderer. The second woe (vv.9-11) focuses on the
covetousness and self-exaltation. They see themselves as the ultimate; they
ignore God, they focus on evil gain, and for that they will
be judged by God. In the third woe (vv. 12-14) they are building their
empire on the death, destruction and violence done to those they conquer. So
they are going to be judged for their tyrannical oppression of captive people.
You can never build yourself up on the basis of destroying others. The fourth
woe is for their violent conquest of others (v.15). The drunken person is
typically used as a picture of conquest of someone who can’t control himself.
The Chaldean lust for power and conquest leads to their destruction. They are
drunk on their power, their lust, and they will become conquered as a result of
that. That applies also for any individual and any nation. When the leaders is
business and government serve themselves at the expense of their customers or
the citizens then they become ruled by their own lust and passion, and they
will be easily destroyed because they become slaves to their own sin nature.
The fifth woe: Judgment is pronounced upon them again because of their
dishonesty and unrighteousness (v.19). The judgment is upon their idolatry
because they are worshipping idols of wood and stone that they have overlaid
with gold and silver.
The
conclusion: “But the LORD is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before
Him.” God will bring judgment at the right time and in the right way.
This
causes a change of thinking on the part of Habakkuk. His prayer is in chapter
three. He recognizes that at the beginning he questioned God’s judgment because
God didn’t do things the way Habakkuk thought God ought to do things. But when
God explains it he gets it. He recognizes the principle of Isaiah 55:8, 9 NASB
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your
ways My ways,” declares the LORD.
For
{as} the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My
ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.” In those verses
God makes it clear that He is the sovereign God who rules history and He is
going to do things the way He deems best because He is omniscient and He knows
all the facts. When man, the creature, comes along and says God should have
done it this way or that way he has a microscopic, infinitesimal amount of data
and he is trying to extrapolate from this grain of sand sized knowledge, and he
thinks that that grain of sand is the size of the universe. What God does is
just because that is His essential nature, and this is the conclusion that
Habakkuk comes to. Habakkuk 3:19 NASB “The Lord GOD is my
strength, And He has made my feet like hinds’ {feet,} And
makes me walk on my high places.”
The
life that he is talking about here is fullness of life even in the midst of
judgment and defeat, the life that God has for every person who is a believer.
When we look back at verse and the phrase “justified by faith shall live” he is
talking about the mentality of the believer who can surmount any circumstances
and difficulties because he is walking with God and therefore can have the
fullness of life.
If
we plug that into Romans chapter one that is exactly what Paul is talking
about. Romans 1:17 NASB “For in it {the} righteousness of God is
revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘BUT THE RIGHTEOUS {man} SHALL LIVE BY
FAITH.’”
Just as the righteousness of God was revealed for Habakkuk, so it was revealed
for us in the way God deals with the believer and the believer’s life. But the
one who is justified by faith shall live. In the last part of Romans chapter
one through chapter four the focus is on how a person becomes justified before
God. It is by faith and not by works. In Romans 5 onward the issue is the
result of justification by faith. In chapter 5 the believer has piece with God.
Chapters 6-8 talk about the believer’s life and how he can live in service to
God. Chapters 9-11 focus on how God’s righteousness is demonstrated in His
dealings with Israel and that Israel will eventually will be saved. Then there is
final application in chapters 12-16. So this lays out the outline of the book;
that those who are justified by faith shall live. That is what Romans is all about.