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How Romans Is Structured and What It Teaches | James Orr et al. · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
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  We we have a pretty significant task ahead of us today.
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  You certainly do. We're taking the source
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  material, specifically the International Standard Bible
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  Encyclopedia entry by James Orr and Hanley Dunelm, and we're
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  going to crack open what is, well, what is arguably the most
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  consequential documents in the history of the Christian Church.
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  It's good to be here and significant is definitely the
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  right word. We aren't just looking at a
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  letter today. Some have called this the
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  Cathedral of the Christian Faith.
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  That's a great way to put it. And the source material, it
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  describes the Epistles to the Romans as the greatest of the
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  Apostolic letters in every sense, scale, scope, and this
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  incredible mix of, you know, doctrinal precision and ethical
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  wisdom. You're right.
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  And for you listening, just to set the stage, we are
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  approaching this from our shared perspective.
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  We're standing on the shoulders of the Reformers looking at this
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  text through the lens of the Westminster Confession.
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  We believe this is the inspired word of God.
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  The mission of this deep dive is to extract those Nuggets of
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  knowledge, the history, the arguments, the Greek terms that
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  show why this book has shaped the hearts and minds of
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  believers for, what, 2000 years now?
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  That's the goal. This isn't just an ancient
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  artifact or, you know, a museum piece.
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  It's a treatise, a full blown treatise.
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  It deals with the pillars of our reality, the condition of man,
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  the character of God, the work of Christ, the operation of the
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  Spirit. Found duty in the world.
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  Our duty in the world and the mystery of Israel, it's all
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  there. OK, so before we get into the
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  heavy theology, and believe me, we will get there, we have to
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  look at the history first. We need to establish the ground
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  we're standing on. Is this thing real?
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  Is it genuine? Yeah.
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  In the world of higher criticism, especially back in
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  the 19th and 20th centuries, you always have someone popping up
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  claiming a book is a forgery or a second century invention.
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  So what's the verdict on Romans? The verdict is surprisingly
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  unanimous, and that's rare in biblical scholarship, really
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  rare In a field that is so often full of skepticism and and
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  conflicting theories. There's almost no serious
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  suspicion regarding the genuineness of Romans.
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  None. Practically not.
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  It is the gold standard of Pauline authorship.
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  That is rare. Usually there's some fringe
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  theory floating around about how a committee wrote it in
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  Alexandria 100 years later or something.
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  They're always fringe theories, but the evidence here is just
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  overwhelming. I mean, you have witnesses from
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  the very early church, Clement of Rome, Ignatius Plicarp,
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  Justin Martyr. These are the guys writing right
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  after the apostle. Exactly, late 1st and early 2nd
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  centuries. And they all quote it or allude
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  to it. But here's the kicker.
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  Even Marcian, the 2nd century heretic, is a key witness here.
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  Now Marcian is the one who hated the God of the Old Testament,
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  right? He thought he was an evil
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  demiurge or something. That's the one.
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  He essentially took a pair of scissors to the Bible.
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  He rejected the Old Testament entirely and only accepted
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  Luft's Gospel and Paul's letters, and even then he edited
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  them to fit his Gnostic views. So what did he do with Romans?
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  Even Marcian included Romans in his list.
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  He chopped it up, sure, but he couldn't deny it was Paul.
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  That's very telling. When even the enemies of
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  Orthodoxy admit it's authentic, you know you're on solid ground.
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  You really do. The source brings up an argument
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  that I found, well, just fascinating.
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  It's an internal argument, almost a psychological line.
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  It talks about literary personation.
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  Can you unpack that for us? This is a brilliant insight from
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  Orr and Dannell. The argument addresses the idea
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  of a literary forgery where someone writes under a famous
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  name like Paul to gain credibility.
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  Right, like a fake. The source argues that this is
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  actually a modern art form. It barely existed before the
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  Renaissance and wasn't fully developed until the 19th
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  century. But more to the point, just
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  think about the mind required to write Romans.
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  You're talking about the intellectual capacity needed to
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  fake this. I mean the logic is so dense.
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  To forge Romans you would need a mind capable of some of the most
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  complex, close knit logical thought in human history.
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  But it's not just about intellect, it's about character.
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  The source calls it spiritual elevation and noble morale.
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  So the argument is that a man who could write with such
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  intense sensitivity to truth, such hatred of hypocrisy and
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  such moral purity simply would not engage in a fabrication.
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  Precisely. It is a moral impossibility.
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  You can't fake the kind of heart that pulses through every single
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  page of Romans. It's too genuine, too raw, and
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  frankly, too intellectually superior to be a counterfeit.
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  So a forger would trip up somewhere.
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  A forger generally betrays himself a slip in tone, a moment
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  of shallowness or historical anachronism.
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  Romans has none of that. It's a difference between a
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  plastic flower and a living rose.
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  You can spot the difference if you get close enough.
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  That's a great analogy. OK, so moving on from
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  genuineness, we have to look at the text itself, the integrity
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  of the letter. This is where we run into what
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  scholars call the Chapter 16 mystery.
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  Yes, this is classic puzzle in New Testament studies.
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  If you open your Bible to Romans chapter 16 verses one through
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  15, you see this long, very detailed list of names.
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  Greet Amplus, Greet Urbanus, Greet Trifena and Trifosa, and
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  on and on. It reads like a phone book from
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  the ancient world. It does.
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  And the problem, or the perceived problem, is that when
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  Paul wrote this letter, he had never been to Rome.
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  Right. He was writing from Corinth, and
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  he says in the letter he's planning to go to Rome.
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  So, the critics ask, how on earth did Paul know nearly 30
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  people by name in a city he had never once visited?
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  It seems suspicious. It does, on the surface, and
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  that led some critics, particularly from the Rendon
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  school, suggest that maybe Chapter 16 wasn't written to
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  Rome at all. They theorize it was actually a
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  short note or maybe a lost letter sent to Ephesus.
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  And Ephesus makes sense geographically, right?
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  Paul had lived there for three years.
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  He taught their daily in the Hall of Tyrannus.
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  It makes perfect sense that he would know 20 something people
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  in Ephesus intimately. So the theory is that some
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  scribe just what pasted this Ephesian note on to the end of
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  Romans by mistake. That is the theory, but our
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  source pushes back hard against that, and the defense is
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  twofold, textual and historical. OK, let's start with the
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  textual. Textually, it's pretty much an
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  open and shut case. We have something like 300
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  manuscripts of Romans, not a single one of them, provided it
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  isn't physically damaged at the end of midst these chapters or
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  changes their order. That's a strong point.
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  If this were a pasted on letter, you would expect to see
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  manuscripts where it's missing or maybe placed at the beginning
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  or just floating around independently.
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  Exactly. You'd expect some variation in
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  the manuscript tradition, but there's none.
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  The text is solid. So what about the historical
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  defense? That seems like the harder case
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  to make the. Historical defense is even more
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  fascinating because it explains how he knew these people.
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  We have to understand the Roman Empire.
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  We tend to think of ancient people as static, you know,
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  living and dying in one village. But that wasn't true at.
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  All not at all. The Empire was incredibly
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  mobile. There was a constant migration
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  factor. People moving for trade, for
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  military service, for government jobs, because they were slaves.
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  All roads led to Rome. It was the magnet of the world,
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  and the source uses Aquila and Priscilla as the prime example
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  of. This right we see them pop up
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  all over the place and acts. Let's trace their movements.
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  They're Jews. From Pontus.
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  They move to Rome. Then they're expelled from Rome
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  by the Emperor Claudius. They move to Corinth, where they
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  meet Paul. Then they move to Ephesus with
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  Paul. By the time Romans is written,
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  it's very likely they have moved back to Rome.
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  They were globetrotters. They were, and if Aquila and
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  Priscilla could move back and forth between Rome and the East,
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  so could others. So these other names could be
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  people he met elsewhere who then moved to the capital.
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  That's the idea. And Bishop Lightfoot, the great
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  scholar, He adds A fascinating layer of archaeological insight
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  here. He studied inscriptions in Roman
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  cemeteries, the columbaria from the early imperial age, and
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  guess what he found? Let me guess the names from
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  Romans 16. Yes, names like Amplius,
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  Urbanus, Trifina and staches. They appear in burial grounds
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  associated with the household of Caesar.
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  OK, the household of Caesar, that sounds very elite, but what
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  does it actually mean? Are we talking about Nero's
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  cousins? No, not necessarily the
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  Emperor's blood relatives. It refers to the immense staff
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  of servants, slaves and Friedman who ran the imperial
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  administration. These are the bureaucrats, the
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  domestic staff, the financial officers, the functionaries, a
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  huge organization. So the theory is that these
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  people, Paul Greats, were converts.
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  He met in the East, maybe in Philippi or Corinth or Ephesus,
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  who were then transferred by the government to the capital.
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  That is the most logical inference.
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  It explains everything. It explains why Paul sends
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  greetings to them. He led them to the Lord in the
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  provinces, they got promoted or transferred to Rome to serve in
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  Caesar's household, and now he is writing to them there.
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  That turns a problem into a historical confirmation of how
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  the early church spread. It does.
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  It spread through the arteries of the Empire.
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  That's incredible. It really makes the text come
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  alive. It's not just a theological
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  textbook, it's a letter to real people working real jobs,
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  probably high stress jobs in the capital city.
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  Now. There are a couple of other
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  minor textual notes. The source mentions the phrase
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  at Rome is missing in a few manuscripts.
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  Right in chapter 1 verses 7 and 15, the theory there is that
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  some scribe might have deleted it to make the letter feel more
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  universal, like a general circular, but the evidence for
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  the omission is very weak. And what about the final
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  doxology, that closing prayer? The doxology in 16.2527.
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  Its placement varies in some manuscripts, and we know Martian
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  deleted it, probably for dogmatic reasons, but the
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  leading unchills are best and oldest manuscripts.
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  Keep it right at the end where it belongs.
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  So the integrity of the text is solid.
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  Very solid. Speaking of history, let's
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  anchor this in time. When was this letter written?
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  We can fix the date with a high degree of certainty.
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  It's likely around 58 AD, possibly as early as 56AD.
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  And how do we know that with such confidence?
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  It's all about the context clues.
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  In Romans 15, Paul mentions that he's finishing his work in the
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  East. Critically, he's carrying a
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  collection of money for the poor Saints in Jerusalem.
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  The Jerusalem Collection. Right.
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  And if you cross reference that with Acts 20 and 2nd
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  Corinthians, the timeline locks in perfectly.
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  He is in Corinth, about to head to Jerusalem with money, and
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  he's already making plans to eventually go West to Rome and
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  then on to Spain. OK, and here is where it gets
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  really interesting for me. The source asks us to do a
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  little thought experiment to understand the freshness of this
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  letter, because 58 AD sounds like ancient history to us.
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  It feels like Once Upon a time. Exactly.
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  But in 58 AD, how long had it been since the crucifixion?
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  About 30 years, maybe slightly less. 30 years, I mean, that's
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  nothing. It's a single generation.
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  The source asked us to think back 30 years from today.
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  Think about the major events of the mid 1990s.
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  I remember them clearly. I remember the music, the
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  politics, the technology. I remember where I was when
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  certain things happened. Of course.
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  And are those events ancient legends to you?
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  Are they mythology? No, not at all.
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  The contemporaries of those events are still alive.
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  People who were adults then are still adults now.
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  That puts a completely different spin on the New Testament.
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  It means that when Paul is writing about Jesus, he isn't
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  writing about a mythical figure from the misty past.
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  No. He is writing about someone
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  whose friends, whose family, whose disciples were still
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  walking around. Peter, John, they were still
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  alive. Jesus was not a haloed figure of
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  a distant legendary age. He was a contemporary memory.
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  That's the point. This implies that the Epistle to
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  the Romans offers a solid historic basis for the faith.
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  Paul couldn't just invent A theology about a man who never
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  existed or whose life was totally different from the
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  claims because thousands of witnesses were still alive to
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  say, hey, wait a minute, that is not what happened.
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  That gives me chills. It grounds the theology in real,
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  verifiable history. It proves that the Gospel was
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  not a slow accretion of legend over century, no.
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  It was there, fully formed, within the lifetime of the
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  eyewitnesses. And that historical grounding is
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  so vital for the Reformed faith. We don't believe in a
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  philosophy. We believe in a historical act
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  of redemption. Exactly right.
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  Okay, so we established he wrote it from Corinth, likely staying
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  with Gaius who is a Corinthian and commending Phoebe from SIM
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  Curry, which was the port of Corinth.
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  Let's look at the destination Rome.
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  What did the Church in Rome actually look like?
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  This is another surprise for many people.
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  We have no record of who founded the church in Rome.
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  Which is a big deal. It's a huge deal.
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  There is 0 evidence that Peter found it, despite the later
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  traditions of the Roman Catholic Church.
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  That's the point worth repeating.
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  If Peter had been the Bishop of Rome for 20 years at this point,
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  as tradition claims, Paul certainly would have greeted him
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  in that long list in Chapter 16. You would be insulting not to.
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  The silence is deafening. If Peter were there leading the
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  church, Paul's omission of his name would be a massive breach
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  of protocol. It's unthinkable.
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  So what's the likely origin story?
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  The likely origin is much more organic and much more humble.
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  Remember the Day of Pentecost in Acts Chapter 2?
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  Yes, where Peter preaches in Jerusalem and 3000 people are
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  saved. Well, the text says specifically
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  there were visitors from Rome present in the crowd.
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  It is highly probable that some of those Jewish pilgrims
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  converted that day, went back home to Rome and started meeting
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  in their homes. It was a mission church started
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  by lay people. That fits with the whole
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  household of Caesar idea too, just believers moving there for
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  work and starting fellowships. It does, and it was spiritually
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  advanced, but there's no mention of organization.
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  No bishops or elders are named. What about the city itself?
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  Rome in the 1st century, What was it like?
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  A massive metropolis estimates put it at around 800,000 people.
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  It was closely packed, noisy and multicultural.
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  The source calls it a motley host of races with a strong
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  oriental element. And the church reflected.
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  That the church reflected that it wasn't the elite, it was
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  largely the lower middle class immigrants and slaves.
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  Which brings up the language question.
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  We're in Rome, the heart of the Latin W.
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  Why is Paul writing this masterpiece in Greek?
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  This puzzles people, but it really shouldn't.
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  The Church was composed of that immigrant class and Greek with a
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  lingua franca, the universal language of the Mediterranean.
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  It was the language of commerce of the slaves and to the
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  traitors. So even in Rome, if you were
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  walking the streets of the poorer districts, the language
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  you'd hear most often would be Greek.
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  Constantly, in fact, for the first few centuries of the
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  Church, the bishops of Rome, the early popes had Greek names, not
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  Latin ones. That's a fascinating detail.
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  It shows us that Christianity in Rome started at the bottom of
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  the social ladder and worked its way up.
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  Paul wrote in Greek because that was the language of the people
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  he was trying to reach. OK, so we have the context.
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  A lay LED immigrant church in the capital of the world.
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  Now the occasion. Why write this massive letter?
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  Now we know Phoebe was travelling there so she could
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  carry it and it served as a letter of recommendation for
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  her. But Paul had a bigger strategy,
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  didn't he? He always did.
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  Paul's a grand strategist. He felt a divine call.
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  I must see Rome. He had finished his work in the
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  Levant, Ephesus, Thessalonica, Corinth.
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  He wanted to move his base of operations to the center of the
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  world. A staging ground for a mission
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  to Spain. Exactly.
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  But he also knew that the Roman church had a specific internal
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  tension he needed to address. The tension between the Jews and
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  the Gentiles. Correct.
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  And this is crucial for understanding the whole book.
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  You had converts from paganism and you had native Jews, and you
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  also had that third group, the proselytes or God fears.
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  These were gentiles who hung around the synagogue, right?
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  They believed in the one God, but they hadn't been
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  circumcised. That's them.
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  So now they are all in one church believing in Messiah, and
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  they are bringing all their cultural baggage with them.
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  So you have arguments about the law, about Israel's special
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  status, about what food you can eat, what days you should
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  celebrate. All that friction, the Jewish
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  believers are saying, wait, we have the heritage, we have the
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  covenants, we have the law, The Gentile believers are saying,
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  but we are free in Christ. Don't put that yoke on us.
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  And that friction is what prompted Paul to write what the
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  source calls a massive statement of Heaven's easy, artless,
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  unencumbered plan. I love that phrase.
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  Heaven's easy, artless, unencumbered plan.
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  It's. Beautiful phrasing.
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  It is Paul's response is to level the playing field for
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  everyone. He explains that both Jew and
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  Gentile are in the same sinking ship when it comes to sin, and
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  both have access to the exact same lifeboat when it comes to
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  grace. And on the secondary issues?
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  He calls for loving tolerance, what we call Christian liberty,
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  but he's absolutely rigid on the primary issue of salvation by
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  grace through faith. There's a debate among scholars
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  mentioned in the text. Did Paul write this primarily to
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  fix the fighting between these groups, or was his main goal to
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  explain personal salvation? Right.
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  Lightfoot and Hoard lean toward the idea that he was writing to
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  reconcile the different schools of thought.
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  But the source disagrees. Our source, and I agree with
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  this, argues that the primary focus is personal salvation, the
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  sinful man's relation to eternal law, and redeeming grace.
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  Can you explain that distinction?
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  It sounds subtle. Well, the church conflict is
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  there, yes, but Paul solves the conflict by explaining the
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  gospel. You cannot fix the community
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  until you fix the individual standing before God.
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  I see. If I understand that I am a
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  desperate Sinner saved only by grace, and you understand that
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  you are a desperate Sinner saved only by grace, then our
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  arguments about food and days suddenly seem pretty trivial.
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  That's a very reformed insight. Structure and quality flow out
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  of doctrine, not the other way around.
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  Precisely. All right, let's dive into the
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  theology. This is the meat and potatoes,
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  the theological deep dive, as the outline calls it.
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  Section 6. The doctrine of man.
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  Paul starts with the bad news, and it is devastating news.
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  The problem of man is not that he is uneducated or financially
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  poor or socially disadvantaged. The problem is that man is a
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  Sinner facing an absolutely holy law.
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  And he makes sure to catch everyone in this net.
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  He leaves no wiggle room, no exceptions.
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  He starts with the Gentile. They don't have the written law
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  of Moses, so they might say, well, we didn't know.
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  Paul says they are without excuse.
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  Why? Because they have nature and
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  conscience. They perceive eternal power in
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  Godhead, in creation. They know there's a God, and
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  they know internally the difference between right and
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  wrong, and they suppress that truth.
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  They hold the truth in unrighteousness.
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  That's the phrase. Then he turns to the Jew who has
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  the law, who prides himself on the law, and says you are
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  breaking the very law you cherish.
• 18:53
  The conclusion is universal guilt.
• 18:55
  Every mouth is stopped. The whole world is guilty before
• 18:58
  God. And it's not just guilt, is it?
• 19:00
  The source says It's inability. This is the crucial reform
• 19:03
  distinction. Man cannot restore himself.
• 19:07
  He is bound by his own failure. In the Reformed tradition, we
• 19:10
  talk about total depravity. Which doesn't mean we're all as
• 19:12
  bad as we can possibly be. No, it doesn't mean we're all
• 19:15
  Hitler. It means that every part of us,
• 19:17
  our mind, our will, our emotions, is tainted by sin and
• 19:21
  we are unable and unwilling to choose God on our own.
• 19:25
  The source notes that man is cognizant of the moral law, but
• 19:28
  is bound by his own failure. So if the ship is sinking and we
• 19:31
  cannot swim, the solution has to come from outside.
• 19:33
  You must. Which leads us to the Doctrine
• 19:35
  of God and the Sun, Section 7. And this is where we see the
• 19:39
  majesty of God. The source describes God in
• 19:42
  Romans as absolute in will and power.
• 19:46
  He's the sole author of nature and the ultimate cause of
• 19:48
  goodness. And here we have to talk about
• 19:50
  sovereignty. The source mentions a specific
• 19:52
  Greek term pro ISIS predestination.
• 19:56
  Yes, before defining the source is very careful here and very
• 20:00
  Westminsterian. It says the believer traces all
• 20:03
  good to the will of him who spared not his son.
• 20:06
  So we don't credit our own intellect or our own goodwill
• 20:10
  for our salvation. No, we credit God's sovereign
• 20:12
  election. This always raises the tough
• 20:14
  question, if God predestines the saved, does he create the wicked
• 20:18
  just to destroy them? The source clarifies something
• 20:21
  very important about the vessels of Wrath.
• 20:23
  It does. It clarifies that while God is
• 20:26
  the active cause of salvation, he's not the author of sin.
• 20:29
  He doesn't fit vessels for ruin in the same way He prepares
• 20:32
  vessels for glory. The Greek makes a subtle
• 20:35
  distinction. What's the distinction?
• 20:36
  The vessels of mercy are prepared beforehand for glory by
• 20:40
  God. It's active, but the vessels of
• 20:42
  wrath are described as fitted for destruction.
• 20:46
  But the grammar is passive. It doesn't explicitly say God
• 20:49
  did the fitting in the same active sense.
• 20:51
  So man fits himself for destruction through his own sin,
• 20:55
  and God in his justice endures them for a time and overrules
• 20:59
  their end for his glory. That is the idea.
• 21:02
  It's a mystery for sure, but Paul holds both God's absolute
• 21:07
  sovereignty and man's responsibility and tension.
• 21:10
  He refuses to water down God's control, but he also refuses to
• 21:13
  make God the creator of evil. Let's talk about the mechanism
• 21:16
  of salvation, the Christology of Romans.
• 21:18
  The source points out a specific word that is absolutely pivotal.
• 21:21
  Hillisterian. Oh, this is the center of the
• 21:23
  wheel. Romans 3.25.
• 21:25
  It's often translated as propitiation in the KJV and the
• 21:28
  ESV. The source notes that it's
• 21:30
  actually an adjective. He is the propitiatory 1.
• 21:32
  OK, break that down for us. What does propitiation actually
• 21:35
  mean? It's not a word we use everyday.
• 21:37
  No, it's not. It's a temple term.
• 21:39
  It refers to the Mercy Seat, the golden lid of the Ark of the
• 21:42
  Covenant. Once a year, on the Day of
• 21:44
  Atonement, the High priest would go into the Holy of Holies and
• 21:48
  sprinkle blood there to satisfy the holiness of God.
• 21:51
  It means the place where Wrath is turned away.
• 21:54
  So it's not just forgiveness in the sense of a grandfather
• 21:57
  letting something go, saying, oh, don't worry about it.
• 21:59
  No, that is the liberal view of the atonement, that God just
• 22:03
  decides to be nice. The biblical view is that God is
• 22:06
  holy, His justice must be satisfied.
• 22:09
  His wrath against sin must be poured out.
• 22:11
  So justification isn't just a pardon.
• 22:13
  It is not a governor establishing A pardon.
• 22:15
  It is a legal declaration where the offender is welcomed into
• 22:18
  peace with eternal holiness because the penalty has been
• 22:20
  paid in full. The wrath of God, which is real
• 22:24
  and holy, was absorbed by the sun.
• 22:26
  He took the hit. He took the hit.
• 22:28
  He is the Helisterian. He is the place where God's
• 22:31
  perfect justice and God's perfect mercy meet.
• 22:33
  This leads to what the source calls the central doctrine, and
• 22:37
  it says that for Paul, the central doctrine is not even
• 22:39
  justification itself, it is union with Christ.
• 22:42
  This is a distinction that often gets missed, but it's huge.
• 22:46
  We often think of justification as a transaction.
• 22:49
  I give faith. God gives righteousness like a
• 22:52
  commercial exchange. Like a courtroom declaration?
• 22:55
  Yes. But Paul views it as a union.
• 22:58
  We are in Christ. That's the key phrase.
• 23:01
  The source uses the analogy of the head and the member.
• 23:04
  Or think of the vine in the branches from John 15.
• 23:07
  Or a marriage. The wife shares the husband's
• 23:10
  status and wealth not because she bought it, but because she
• 23:13
  is one with him. We are justified because we are
• 23:16
  united to the one who is just. We have his life because we are
• 23:19
  grafted into the vine. Everything flows from that
• 23:22
  union. That changes how you view the
• 23:24
  entire Christian life it's not just about a legal status that
• 23:27
  was changed it is an organic living reality.
• 23:30
  I am part of him. That's it.
• 23:32
  Which brings us to the practical application of this Section 8
• 23:35
  the spirit and duty and we have to talk about the battleground
• 23:37
  of Romans 7 and Romans 8 the. Battleground is the right way to
• 23:40
  put it. Romans 7 describes A struggle
• 23:42
  that every Christian feels in their bones.
• 23:45
  The good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not,
• 23:49
  that I do. The great debate here has always
• 23:52
  been who is he talking about? Is this a non believer under the
• 23:56
  conviction of the law or is this Paul as a mature Christian
• 24:00
  describing his daily struggle? Right, and there has been a lot
• 24:03
  of ink spilled on this. The source takes a specific
• 24:07
  view. And that is it.
• 24:08
  Interprets Roman 7 as the experience of the regenerate
• 24:11
  man, the born again Christian, who is trying to fight sin with
• 24:15
  his own faculties. He's trying to be holy by sheer
• 24:18
  willpower, and he's failing miserably.
• 24:21
  He finds the struggle insupportable.
• 24:23
  A wretched man that I am. So the struggle itself is
• 24:25
  actually proof of life. A dead man doesn't fight against
• 24:28
  sin, he just floats downstream with the current.
• 24:31
  That's a great way to say it. The pain of the struggle shows
• 24:34
  the presence of the new nature, but the defeat comes from
• 24:37
  relying on self. And that is why Chapter 8 is the
• 24:39
  glorious answer. There is therefore now no
• 24:42
  condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.
• 24:45
  It introduces the spirit of life.
• 24:47
  The victory doesn't come from trying harder.
• 24:49
  It comes from the Holy Spirit who now dwells in US.
• 24:52
  Romans 8 is the locust classicist, the classic passage
• 24:55
  for the Spirit's work. And the source points out this
• 24:57
  is realistic. It's not a pain free life.
• 25:00
  Not at all. The believer groans.
• 25:02
  Yes, we still suffer, we still struggle, but it's a groan of
• 25:06
  sonship, not a groan of despair. We have the Spirit testifying
• 25:09
  with our Spirit that we are children of God.
• 25:12
  That internal reality of the Spirit must spill out into
• 25:15
  external duty. The ethics of Romans.
• 25:18
  Paul never leaves us in the theological clouds.
• 25:21
  If we have this union with Christ, he says, the continuing
• 25:25
  in sin is morally unthinkable. That is the direct answer to the
• 25:29
  objection he raises in Romans 6. Let us continue in sin, that
• 25:33
  grace may abound. It is.
• 25:35
  Paul is horrified by the thought.
• 25:37
  God forbid. How can we who died to sin live
• 25:39
  any longer in it? You cannot receive his life and
• 25:42
  then choose to express it in death.
• 25:43
  It's a contradiction of your new nature.
• 25:45
  And then he gets very, very practical, like pay your taxes.
• 25:48
  Yes, civic duty recognize the political order even when it is
• 25:52
  ministered by pagans. And we have to remember the
• 25:54
  context here. Who was the emperor when Paul
• 25:56
  wrote this? It was Nero.
• 25:58
  Nero, a man who would eventually use Christians as human torches
• 26:02
  to light his gardens. A monster.
• 26:06
  Yet Paul insists on loyalty to the state as a matter of
• 26:09
  conscience. Why?
• 26:10
  He argues that anarchy is worse than tyranny.
• 26:13
  The state is an institution of God to restrain evil even when
• 26:17
  it's run by wicked men. That is a hard pill to swallow
• 26:20
  for many people today. Paul sees the government as
• 26:22
  God's Deacon of justice. Then he moves to social duty.
• 26:26
  Unselfish love. Owe no one anything except to
• 26:29
  love each other and tolerance and religious observances.
• 26:32
  If your brother thinks eating meat is wrong because it might
• 26:34
  have been sacrificed to an idol, don't flaunt your liberty.
• 26:37
  Don't destroy your brother with your food.
• 26:39
  Love is the fulfilling of the law.
• 26:40
  We are coming down to the final section of the theology, the
• 26:43
  mystery of Israel. This is Romans 9:10 and 11:00,
• 26:47
  and this seems to be a heavy, heavy load on Paul's heart.
• 26:50
  It is his greatest sorrow. He says He has great heaviness
• 26:52
  and unceasing anguish in his heart.
• 26:54
  He would be willing to be accursed to be cut off from
• 26:56
  Christ for the sake of his kinsmen, because his own people,
• 27:00
  the Jews, have rejected their Messiah.
• 27:03
  They had the Law, the prophets, the promises, the covenants, the
• 27:06
  very lineage of Christ, and they missed Him.
• 27:09
  But Paul speaks as a prophet here.
• 27:11
  He insists the promises of God are not canceled.
• 27:13
  God hasn't failed. He does, He develops the
• 27:16
  doctrine of the remnant. He says look at Elijah's day.
• 27:19
  Elijah thought he was the only one left and God said, I have
• 27:22
  reserved for myself 7000, who didn't bow the knee to bail.
• 27:27
  There is an Israel within Israel.
• 27:29
  God has always preserved a faithful remnant according to
• 27:32
  His election of grace. He goes further than just a
• 27:34
  remnant, though. He predicts a future national
• 27:36
  restoration. He does.
• 27:37
  He says all Israel shall be saved.
• 27:40
  Now, interpreters differ on exactly what that means and when
• 27:42
  it happens, but the source emphasizes the cycle that Paul
• 27:46
  lays out, the cycle Israel's rejection brought the gospel to
• 27:49
  the Gentiles. That's us.
• 27:51
  We were a wild olive branch grafted into the cultivated
• 27:53
  tree. But eventually the blessing of
• 27:55
  the Gentiles will provoke Israel to jealousy, and that will lead
• 27:58
  them back to life. It's a magnificent panoramic
• 28:02
  view of history. It connects the individual soul
• 28:05
  to the eternal purposes of God for the nations.
• 28:08
  That's the scale of Romans. It zooms in to the microscopic
• 28:12
  level of the human heart and its sin, and then it zooms out to
• 28:15
  the telescopic view of God's plan for the ages.
• 28:19
  It's comprehensive. As we wrap up, the source lists
• 28:21
  some preeminent interpreters that we should look into who
• 28:24
  makes the list? From the Church Fathers, Chris
• 28:27
  Ostom is praised for his sanctified common sense.
• 28:30
  He was a great preacher, very practical.
• 28:32
  Augustine, of course, for his grasp of grace in the will.
• 28:35
  But the source singles out one man as eminently the great
• 28:39
  commentator. Let me guess, John Calvin?
• 28:41
  John Calvin, our guy. The source notes that Calvin is
• 28:44
  almost modern in his method. He doesn't allegorize
• 28:47
  everything, he doesn't try to find hidden codes.
• 28:49
  He just asks what does the text say and he follows the logic
• 28:53
  wherever it leads. The grammatico historical
• 28:55
  method. That's the reformed method.
• 28:57
  I love the final thought from the source.
• 28:59
  It asks us to read the text not as a relic, but as a fresh
• 29:02
  letter. Yes, it combines A transcendent
• 29:04
  estimate of Jesus Christ with masterly argument.
• 29:08
  It's not just poetry or nice feelings.
• 29:10
  It is reasoned truth. When you read Romans, you are
• 29:14
  reading a letter from a contemporary of Christ
• 29:16
  explaining the meaning of the universe.
• 29:19
  That's a perfect place to leave it.
• 29:21
  I really hope this deep dive has encouraged you, our listener, to
• 29:24
  open that book. Maybe even read it in one
• 29:27
  sitting if you can feel the weight of the arguments.
• 29:30
  Struggle with the difficult parts.
• 29:31
  It's the solid historic basis for our faith.
• 29:34
  You understand Ronan's. You understand Christianity.
• 29:36
  Thank you for listening to Reformed Thinking.
• 29:38
  Keep thinking, keep reading, and we will see you next time.