245. The Gospel is About God's Righteousness, Not Man's

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After starting to talk about what "the gospel" is in the first half of Romans 1 (the revealing of God's righteousness), Paul backtracks for two chapters until picking back up again on his talk about God's righteousness in the second half of Romans 3.  Paul talks about the wrath of God and he mentions various behaviors that are symptoms of "all of the unrighteousness and ungodliness of men."  During all of this, Paul talks about things that are not part of the gospel.  So often we confuse all his words as pertaining to the New Covenant (to the gospel), but here we have a case in which he purposely backtracks to he can better set up what he's trying to say.

All this talk about God's wrath and about sinful behaviors and judging one another has nothing to do with the actual gospel, but Paul brings all of it up to show how the gospel cannot be about the righteousness of man.  Man's righteousness falls very short of God's righteousness.  ALL have sinned and fallen short of God's glory.  That's Paul's big point, before he gets back to talking about the gospel in the middle of Romans 3.  Again, the gospel cannot be about man's righteousness.  It's all about the gift of God's righteousness that He freely gives.