Latest / Reformed Thinking / The Gospel Revealed and the Wrath of God Unveiled (Romans 1) | Leon Morris

Transcript

The Gospel Revealed and the Wrath of God Unveiled (Romans 1) | Leon Morris · Reformed Thinking

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to Reformed Thinking.
• 0:02
  I am your host and I'm so glad you decided to join us for this
• 0:06
  deep dive today. Yeah, I am really looking
• 0:08
  forward to this one. It is always a good day when we
• 0:10
  get to talk about these specific texts.
• 0:13
  For anyone who might be new to what we do here, we should
• 0:16
  probably lay some groundwork right off the bat.
• 0:18
  We are approaching everything we discuss through very specific
• 0:21
  lens. We are Protestant Christians and
• 0:24
  we stand very firmly in the Reformed tradition.
• 0:27
  Right. So we adhere to the Westminster
• 0:29
  Confession of Faith. When we open up the text, we are
• 0:31
  reading it with an eye toward the sovereignty of God and the
• 0:34
  authority of Scripture. That is, that is our baseline.
• 0:38
  Yeah, and today we are tackling an absolute monster of a text.
• 0:42
  I mean that in the best possible way.
• 0:43
  Of course, we are looking at the Epistle to the Romans, and
• 0:46
  specifically we're going to walk through chapter 1 today.
• 0:50
  Martin Luther actually called Romans the chief part of the New
• 0:53
  Testament, and he said it was the purest gospel.
• 0:56
  It really is the cathedral of Christian doctrine.
• 0:59
  It is, and to help us get our heads around this, we are using
• 1:02
  a guide. We are looking at the commentary
• 1:05
  by Leon Morris, simply titled The Epistle to the Romans.
• 1:08
  Now Morris is a heavy hitter, isn't he?
• 1:10
  Oh, definitely. He was an Australian New
• 1:12
  Testament scholar. And what I appreciate about
• 1:14
  Morris is that he is incredibly rigorous with the Greek text,
• 1:18
  but he never loses sight of the pulpit.
• 1:20
  He writes for the church. He isn't just dissecting the
• 1:22
  letter, you know. He is trying to show you the God
• 1:25
  behind the letter. That is a great point.
• 1:28
  You know, when I picked up Morris's book, the first thing
• 1:30
  that struck me was his introduction.
• 1:31
  He makes this comment that I think it sets the tone for
• 1:34
  everything we're going to talk about today.
• 1:36
  He says that Romans is first and foremost a book about God.
• 1:40
  It sounds so simple, doesn't it? I mean, of course the Bible is
• 1:43
  about God. But Morris is getting at
• 1:45
  something very specific. He points out that the word God
• 1:48
  appears in Romans more frequently than in any other
• 1:51
  book of the New Testament relative to its length.
• 1:53
  Paul isn't just writing about how to get saved or how to be a
• 1:57
  good person. He is writing about who God is.
• 2:00
  And that completely changes how we read it because I think
• 2:04
  sometimes we read Romans looking for a formula, you know, step
• 2:06
  one, Step 2, Step 3. But Morris is saying no.
• 2:09
  Look at the author of the story. Precisely whether Paul is
• 2:12
  talking about sin or righteousness or Israel or the
• 2:15
  law, he relates every single one of those things back to God.
• 2:19
  If you miss God in Romans, you have missed the entire point.
• 2:23
  So with that in mind, the fact that this is a book about God,
• 2:27
  let's open the text. Romans chapter 1.
• 2:29
  And we have to start where Paul starts, which is the salutation,
• 2:33
  the greeting, right? And Paul?
• 2:34
  'S greetings are never just a simple hello.
• 2:36
  No, he packs a lot in there verse one says Paul, a servant
• 2:40
  of Christ Jesus. Now in our English Bibles that
• 2:43
  word servant sounds well it sounds polite.
• 2:46
  It sounds like a Butler or maybe someone who does volunteer work
• 2:49
  on the weekends. And Moore stops us right there.
• 2:52
  He says if we read servant and think of a hired worker, we are
• 2:55
  missing the shock value of this opening line.
• 2:58
  The Greek word Paul uses is doulos.
• 3:00
  And Doulos doesn't mean hired hand, does it?
• 3:02
  No, it means slave. Slave.
• 3:05
  That is a word that carries A tremendous amount of weight,
• 3:07
  especially for us today. It is really hard to hear that
• 3:10
  word without thinking of the horrors of the transatlantic
• 3:13
  slave trade and chattel slavery. It is, and we have to be
• 3:17
  sensitive to that. But to understand Paul, we have
• 3:19
  to step into his world. In the 1st century, slavery was
• 3:22
  everywhere in the Roman Empire. But here's the thing Morris
• 3:25
  points out. Paul was a Roman citizen, and in
• 3:29
  that culture, freedom was the ultimate status symbol.
• 3:33
  To be a citizen meant you had rights, you had dignity.
• 3:36
  To be a slave meant you had none of that.
• 3:38
  So for Roman citizen to voluntarily take the title of a
• 3:41
  slave, that sounds like social suicide.
• 3:44
  Why would he do that? Is he just being self
• 3:46
  deprecating? Is he trying to say he is a
• 3:48
  nobody? Not at all.
• 3:49
  This isn't false modesty. Morris points out a fascinating
• 3:52
  paradox here. Paul is Jewish, and he knows his
• 3:55
  Old Testament backward and forward in the Hebrew
• 3:57
  Scriptures. Who gets called the slave of
• 3:59
  Yahweh? I'm guessing it wasn't the guys
• 4:01
  at the bottom of the social ladder.
• 4:03
  It was the giants of the faith. Moses was called the servant or
• 4:06
  slave of the Lord. Joshua was called that.
• 4:09
  The great prophets like Amos and Isaiah, It was a title of total
• 4:13
  ownership. Yes, they belonged completely to
• 4:15
  God, but it was also a title of immense honor because of who the
• 4:18
  Master was. I see.
• 4:19
  So if you are the slave of the king, you actually outrank the
• 4:22
  free man on the street. That is it.
• 4:24
  It implies total devotion. A sleigh has no will of his own.
• 4:28
  He does the will of his master. Paul is saying he has no rights
• 4:31
  and no backup plan. He belongs entirely to this
• 4:34
  master. But then notice the shift.
• 4:37
  He doesn't call himself the slave of God the Father.
• 4:39
  He calls himself the slave of Christ Jesus.
• 4:42
  That is a massive claim, isn't it?
• 4:44
  Because a slave of Yahweh is the highest title in the Old
• 4:46
  Testament and Paul applies that to Jesus, He is making a huge
• 4:50
  theological statement. He is placing Jesus on the
• 4:53
  divine level. He is saying Jesus is his
• 4:55
  Yahweh. Morris argues this is a very
• 4:57
  high Christology right out of the gate.
• 4:59
  Paul stands in the line of the prophets, but his master is the
• 5:02
  Messiah. And Speaking of names, Morris
• 5:05
  has this interesting little footnote about the name Paul
• 5:08
  itself. I had never really thought about
• 5:10
  where the name comes from. It is the Latin word paulus.
• 5:13
  And what does that translate? To it translates to little.
• 5:16
  Little So are we talking about his height?
• 5:19
  Was the great Apostle Paul a short guy?
• 5:21
  It is certainly possible. There is an ancient document,
• 5:24
  the Acts of Paul and Fekla, which describes him as a man of
• 5:27
  small stature, bald headed and bow legged.
• 5:31
  So maybe he just kept the nickname.
• 5:32
  But Morris suggests something else.
• 5:34
  It might be that he used his Roman name Little as a mark of
• 5:38
  humility compared to his Hebrew name Saul, which was the name of
• 5:41
  the first king of Israel. That is a really great contrast,
• 5:45
  King Saul versus little Paul, the little servant of the big
• 5:48
  God. But even if his name means
• 5:50
  little, he doesn't stay in a humble, quiet posture for long
• 5:53
  because in that same breath, he says he is called to be an
• 5:56
  apostle. And Morris notes the grammar
• 5:58
  here in the Greek it is just a called apostle.
• 6:01
  The stress is on the calling. He didn't sign up for this.
• 6:03
  He didn't see a job posting for Apostle to the Gentiles and
• 6:06
  submit a resume. This goes straight to our
• 6:08
  reformed roots, doesn't it? The idea of the effectual call.
• 6:11
  It does. It's a God's initiative
• 6:13
  entirely. Paul sees his entire life
• 6:15
  trajectory as something mapped out by God, not by his own
• 6:18
  choices. He puts himself on the level of
• 6:20
  Jeremiah, who was called before he was even born, and then he.
• 6:23
  Use of this phrase set apart for the Gospel of God.
• 6:27
  Morris points out a beautiful irony here involving Paul's
• 6:30
  background before he was a Christian.
• 6:32
  Paul is a Pharisee. And what does the word Pharisee
• 6:35
  actually mean? It comes from a Hebrew root,
• 6:37
  meaning to separate. A Pharisee was a separated 1.
• 6:41
  So when Paul was a Pharisee, he was separated to the law.
• 6:44
  He was defined by what he didn't touch, who he didn't eat with,
• 6:47
  what he avoided. Exactly.
• 6:48
  His entire identity was based on separation from impurity.
• 6:52
  But now, as a Christian, Moore says, he is still a separated
• 6:55
  one. But he is no longer separated to
• 6:57
  the law, he is separated to the gospel.
• 6:59
  I love that it is a positive separation.
• 7:01
  He is too defined by what he is against anymore.
• 7:04
  He is defined by what he is for. He's a gospel man.
• 7:07
  And he is very careful to tell us what this gospel is, because
• 7:11
  in the 1st century, new religions were popping up all
• 7:14
  the time. If you came into a city with a
• 7:15
  brand new idea, people might listen, but they would be
• 7:18
  skeptical. Paul says in verse 2 that this
• 7:21
  gospel was promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy
• 7:25
  Scriptures. So this isn't a startup
• 7:27
  religion. No, this is the fulfillment of a
• 7:29
  contract thousands of years in the making.
• 7:32
  Morris notes that Paul calls the scriptures holy.
• 7:34
  Here he is building a bridge. He is telling his Jewish readers
• 7:38
  that if they believe the prophets, they have to believe
• 7:41
  this message. This is what the prophets were
• 7:42
  talking about all along. And the content of that message
• 7:46
  is all about the sun. And here is where Morris really
• 7:49
  digs into the theology. Paul describes Jesus in two
• 7:53
  stages, or maybe 2 states. First verse 3 says as to his
• 7:58
  human nature was a descendant of David.
• 8:00
  That establishes his credentials as the Messiah.
• 8:02
  The Messiah had to come from David's line to fulfill the Old
• 8:05
  Testament promises. But then verse 4, this is the
• 8:09
  heavy lifting Paul says, who through the spirit of holiness
• 8:12
  was declared with might to be the Son of God by his
• 8:14
  resurrection from the dead. There is a lot going on there.
• 8:17
  Let's break it down, the word declared.
• 8:20
  The Greek word is Horace Thanos. It implies designated or marked
• 8:25
  out or defined. Morris makes a crucial
• 8:28
  distinction here that we cannot miss.
• 8:31
  Some heretics throughout history have argued that Jesus was just
• 8:34
  a normal man and then at the resurrection God adopted him and
• 8:37
  made him the Son of God. Like a promotion, right?
• 8:40
  But Morris says the text doesn't support that at all.
• 8:43
  The resurrection didn't make him the Son of God.
• 8:45
  He was always the Son. But the resurrection was the
• 8:48
  unveiling. It was the public demonstration
• 8:51
  of a status that was already his.
• 8:53
  It is. It is like a coronation.
• 8:54
  The ceremony doesn't create the king, the bloodline does that,
• 8:59
  but the ceremony shows the people who the king is.
• 9:01
  That is a very helpful analogy. The resurrection was the moment
• 9:04
  God the Father said to the world, This is the one.
• 9:07
  Look at the empty tomb. This is my son.
• 9:09
  And Morris points out something interesting about the phrase
• 9:11
  spirit of holiness here. It is an unusual phrase.
• 9:14
  It is. It is not the standard term for
• 9:17
  the Holy Spirit. Morris discusses the debate over
• 9:19
  whether it refers to Jesus's own human spirit implying his inner
• 9:23
  holiness, or if it refers to the Holy Spirit.
• 9:26
  Where does he land on that? He leans toward the Holy Spirit.
• 9:29
  He sees the Holy Spirit as the active agent in the
• 9:31
  resurrection. The Spirit raises Jesus, and
• 9:34
  that act, that infusion of divine life, is the declaration
• 9:38
  of sonship. So we have the person of the
• 9:40
  gospel, Jesus, fully man, fully God.
• 9:43
  Then verse 5 Paul talks about the purpose of his mission.
• 9:46
  He says we received grace and apostleship to call people from
• 9:50
  among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.
• 9:53
  Obedience of faith. That is a phrase that has caused
• 9:56
  a lot of arguments over the centuries.
• 9:58
  I can see why it sounds a little bit like works righteousness,
• 10:01
  doesn't it? We are Reformed folk.
• 10:03
  We get nervous when we hear obedience mixed in with faith.
• 10:05
  We do because we are so protective of solafide faith
• 10:08
  alone. But Morris clarifies this
• 10:10
  beautifully. He asks what the relationship is
• 10:13
  between the obedience and the faith.
• 10:15
  Is it faith plus obedience to equal salvation?
• 10:18
  And the answer to that is no. Right.
• 10:20
  Morris argues that the grammar suggests the obedience that
• 10:23
  springs from faith, or even that faith is a type of obedience.
• 10:28
  When God commands you to believe, believing is an act of
• 10:31
  obedience. So you cannot have one without
• 10:33
  the other. Impossible.
• 10:34
  You cannot say you have saving faith in Jesus and then
• 10:37
  completely ignore everything he tells you to do.
• 10:40
  Real faith, living faith, naturally produces obedience.
• 10:45
  If you are a slave of Christ, you obey the Master.
• 10:48
  It is the necessary fruit of the root.
• 10:50
  And the scope of this mission is all the Gentiles.
• 10:53
  Paul isn't thinking small. He wants the nations.
• 10:56
  And that includes the Romans, verse 6 says, and you also are
• 10:59
  among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
• 11:01
  And then verse 7, the address to all in Rome who are loved by God
• 11:05
  and called to be Saints. Let's talk about that word
• 11:07
  Saints, because if you walk into a cathedral today, a St. is a
• 11:12
  statue of a guy who did 3 miracles and has been dead for
• 11:15
  500 years. Right.
• 11:16
  Or we use it to describe a really nice grandmother.
• 11:19
  We say, oh, she is a St. But Morris says that is not how
• 11:21
  Paul uses the word. No, in the New Testament, St.
• 11:25
  simply means Holy One or set apart one and notice who he is
• 11:29
  talking to. He isn't writing to the
• 11:30
  leadership team, he is writing to all in Rome, every single
• 11:34
  believer. If you are loved by God and
• 11:36
  called by Him, you are a St. So the guy sitting in the back
• 11:40
  row who is struggling with his temper is a St.
• 11:42
  If he is in Christ, he is a St. It is a status, not a
• 11:46
  performance review, and Morris points out it is plural.
• 11:49
  Saints. You don't see Saint Paul acting
• 11:52
  alone. We are called into a body.
• 11:54
  There are no solitary Saints in the New Testament.
• 11:57
  That brings us to the next movement of the chapter.
• 11:59
  We move from the greeting to Paul's prayer and longing.
• 12:02
  This is verses 8 through 15 and. Notice how he starts 1st.
• 12:06
  I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you.
• 12:09
  There's that mediation again, through Jesus Christ.
• 12:12
  Paul never forgets how he has access to the Father.
• 12:15
  He doesn't just barge into the throne room, he comes through
• 12:17
  the son. And what is he thanking God for?
• 12:20
  He says. Because your faith is being
• 12:21
  reported all over the world. That is quite a reputation.
• 12:25
  Rome was the center of the known world.
• 12:27
  People traveled there from everywhere, and apparently the
• 12:30
  word on the street was, Have you seen those Christians in Rome?
• 12:35
  They really believe this stuff. Paul goes on to say that he
• 12:37
  serves God with his whole heart and that he prays for them
• 12:40
  constantly. But there is this tension in the
• 12:44
  prayer. Paul desperately wants to visit
• 12:46
  Rome. He says he has planned it many
• 12:48
  times. But he adds A crucial qualifier
• 12:51
  by God's will. He submits to Providence.
• 12:54
  Completely. Think about who this is.
• 12:56
  This is the Apostle Paul. He raises the dead, he heals the
• 12:59
  sick, he plants churches, and yet he cannot just snap his
• 13:02
  fingers and go to Rome. He has been prevented.
• 13:05
  That is comforting, actually. Sometimes we think if we are
• 13:07
  spiritual enough every door will open, but even Paul had doors
• 13:11
  slammed in his face. Morris knows that Paul respects
• 13:13
  God's timing. He wants to go, He prays to go,
• 13:16
  but he waits for God to move the pawn on the board.
• 13:19
  And why does he want to go? Verse 11 says I long to see you
• 13:22
  so that I may impart to use some spiritual gift to make you
• 13:24
  strong. That sounds very Apostolic.
• 13:27
  I am coming to bless you. I am coming to give you
• 13:29
  something you lack. But then he corrects himself, or
• 13:32
  at least he balances it. Verse 12 says that is that you
• 13:35
  and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith.
• 13:39
  This is one of my favorite moments in the chapter and Moore
• 13:42
  spend some time on it. He says this isn't Paul just
• 13:44
  being polite, he isn't patronizing them.
• 13:46
  It is not false humility, no. Paul genuinely expects to
• 13:50
  receive spiritual benefit from these Roman Christians.
• 13:53
  Think about that. The man who wrote half the New
• 13:56
  Testament needs encouragement from the regular believers in
• 13:59
  the pews. It destroys the celebrity
• 14:01
  Christian idea, doesn't it? It does.
• 14:03
  It shows that in the body of Christ it is always a two way
• 14:06
  St. The pulpit ministers to the Pew,
• 14:09
  but the Pew ministers to the pulpit.
• 14:11
  We need each other. Now in verse 14, Paul uses some
• 14:15
  economic language that really stands out.
• 14:17
  He says I am a debtor both to Greeks and non Greeks, both to
• 14:21
  the wise and the foolish. I am a debtor.
• 14:23
  Why is he in debt? Did he borrow money from the
• 14:25
  Greeks? No.
• 14:26
  Morris explains that his debt arises from the grace he
• 14:29
  received. It is a debt of obligation.
• 14:32
  Because God gave him the gospel, he is under a divine obligation
• 14:36
  to share it. He owes the gospel to the world.
• 14:39
  I have heard it described like finding the cure for a terrible
• 14:42
  disease. If you have the cure in your
• 14:44
  pocket and you walk into a hospital ward full of dying
• 14:47
  people, you are a debtor to them.
• 14:50
  You owe it to them to speak up and share it.
• 14:52
  That is a perfect analogy. And notice the categories he
• 14:55
  uses. Greeks and Barbarians, wise and
• 14:58
  foolish. In the ancient world, those were
• 15:01
  huge divides. The Greeks look down on the
• 15:03
  Barbarians. The philosophers look down on
• 15:05
  the uneducated. But Paul says I owe it to all of
• 15:08
  them. The gospel bridges the cultural
• 15:10
  gap and the intellectual gap. It is for the philosopher in
• 15:13
  Athens and it is for the uneducated person in the
• 15:16
  village. It is for the highly educated,
• 15:18
  and it is for the person who didn't finish school.
• 15:21
  Paul is ready to preach to them all.
• 15:23
  And that sense of readiness, that pressure to pay his debt,
• 15:25
  leads us right into the thesis of the epistle, verses 16 and
• 15:28
  17. These are probably two of the
• 15:30
  most famous verses in the entire Bible.
• 15:32
  They are the heartbeat of the letter.
• 15:34
  Everything else flows from this. For I am not ashamed of the
• 15:37
  gospel. Let's pause there.
• 15:39
  Why does he start with a negative?
• 15:40
  Why say I am not ashamed? Well, it implies that there's a
• 15:44
  temptation to be ashamed. Exactly.
• 15:47
  Morris paints the picture for us.
• 15:49
  Think about where Paul is going. He is writing to Rome.
• 15:52
  Rome is the center of imperial night.
• 15:54
  It is the city of marble, of armies, of philosophy, of
• 15:58
  emperors who claim to be gods. It is the peak of human glory.
• 16:02
  And Paul is coming with a message about a Jewish Carpenter
• 16:06
  who is executed by the Roman state as a criminal in a
• 16:10
  backwater province. To the Greeks it was
• 16:12
  foolishness, A crucified God that is moronic to them.
• 16:15
  To the Jews it was a stumbling block, a cursed Messiah that is
• 16:18
  impossible. To them, the gospel looked weak.
• 16:20
  It looked ridiculous. It looked low class.
• 16:22
  So the natural human reaction would be to hide it, to dress it
• 16:25
  up, to be embarrassed by it. But Paul says I am not ashamed.
• 16:29
  Why? Because it is the strength of
• 16:31
  God that brings salvation. That word for strength or might.
• 16:34
  Dunamis. It is where we get the English
• 16:36
  word dynamite, though Morris warns us not to read modern
• 16:39
  explosive meanings back into it. But the point is clear.
• 16:42
  The Gospel isn't just good advice.
• 16:44
  It isn't just a suggestion. It is active energy.
• 16:47
  It is the effective might of God, Morris says.
• 16:50
  The gospel doesn't just bring help, it is the active energy of
• 16:53
  God operating to save people. When the gospel is preached, God
• 16:57
  is acting. And salvation.
• 16:59
  Here, Morris points out that this is a huge word.
• 17:02
  Very broad. It isn't just going to heaven
• 17:04
  when you die. It means rescue.
• 17:06
  Rescue from the wrath of God, rescue from sin, rescue from
• 17:10
  meaninglessness, rescue from death.
• 17:12
  It is total deliverance. And he notes the order first for
• 17:15
  the Jew, then for the Gentile. There is a historical and
• 17:18
  theological priority there, but universal availability.
• 17:22
  Right. The message came through Israel,
• 17:23
  but it spills over to the whole world.
• 17:25
  And then verse 17, this is the verse that altered history, for
• 17:30
  in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed.
• 17:33
  OK, we need to camp out here the righteousness of God.
• 17:36
  This phrase is notoriously tricky.
• 17:37
  It is the question that tormented Martin Luther.
• 17:40
  Tormented him. Absolutely.
• 17:42
  Before his Reformation breakthrough, Luther hated this
• 17:45
  verse. He said he stood before God as a
• 17:47
  Sinner with a troubled conscience.
• 17:49
  When he read righteousness of God, he understood it as God's
• 17:52
  attribute, meaning God is a righteous judge.
• 17:55
  And if God is a righteous judge and I am a Sinner, then the.
• 17:58
  Revelation of his righteousness is just a revelation of my
• 18:01
  condemnation. If the judge walks into the
• 18:03
  room, the criminal doesn't shear, he trembles.
• 18:07
  Luther thought this verse was saying God is holy and you are
• 18:10
  not so you are in trouble. But Morris argues that is not
• 18:14
  what Paul means here, No. Morris walks us through the
• 18:17
  grammar in the context. He argues that in this specific
• 18:20
  verse, righteousness of God refers to a status that God
• 18:23
  gives. It is a righteousness from God.
• 18:26
  A gift. Precisely.
• 18:27
  It is a right standing before Him that we cannot earn, but
• 18:30
  that He freely grants. It isn't God demanding
• 18:32
  righteousness from us, it is God providing righteousness for us.
• 18:36
  That changes everything. That turns it from bad news into
• 18:38
  good news. It is the best news in the
• 18:40
  world. And how do we access this
• 18:42
  status? A righteousness that is by faith
• 18:44
  from first to last. Or literally in the greed from
• 18:47
  faith to faith. What does that mean?
• 18:49
  Does it mean we start with a little faith and grow into big
• 18:52
  faith? Morris rejects that view.
• 18:54
  He believes it means faith through and through.
• 18:57
  It starts with faith. It continues in faith.
• 18:59
  It ends in faith. There is no point where you
• 19:01
  switch over to works. You don't start by trusting
• 19:04
  Jesus and then maintain your salvation by being a good
• 19:07
  person. It is faith all the way down.
• 19:11
  And to prove he isn't making this up, Paul quotes the Old
• 19:14
  Testament again. Habakkuk 2.4.
• 19:17
  The righteous will live by faith.
• 19:19
  This is key. Paul is showing that salvation
• 19:22
  has always been by faith. Even in the Old Testament.
• 19:24
  Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as
• 19:27
  righteousness. This is the only way humans have
• 19:30
  ever related to God properly. So we are on this incredible
• 19:33
  high note. The gospel is divine efficacy.
• 19:35
  Righteousness is a free gift. We are saved by faith.
• 19:38
  It is exciting, is liberating. And then we hit verse 18.
• 19:41
  And the lights go. Out The mood shifts so fast it
• 19:44
  gives you whiplash. Verse 18 says the wrath of God
• 19:46
  is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and
• 19:49
  wickedness of men. It is a jarring transition, and
• 19:52
  the first word in the Greek is gar, which means for or because.
• 19:57
  So it is connected to what he just said.
• 19:59
  It is intimately connected. Why do you think Paul goes from
• 20:01
  the righteousness of God straight to the wrath of God?
• 20:04
  Why ruin the mood? Well, Morris explains it like a
• 20:07
  doctor, you cannot appreciate the cure until you understand
• 20:10
  the disease. Exactly.
• 20:12
  The gospel in verse 16 is the solution, but the solution is
• 20:16
  meaningless unless you understand the problem.
• 20:19
  Why do we need a righteousness from God?
• 20:21
  Because we don't have any of our own and we are facing the wrath
• 20:24
  of God. Let's talk about wrath because
• 20:26
  in our modern culture, people really recoil at this idea.
• 20:29
  We like the idea that God is love.
• 20:32
  We are OK with God is spirit, but God is wrath.
• 20:36
  That sounds primitive. It sounds like Zeus throwing
• 20:39
  thunderbolts because he had a bad day.
• 20:40
  That is a very common reaction. And there was a famous scholar
• 20:44
  named Chapter Dodd who really struggled with this.
• 20:46
  He tried to redefine wrath. What?
• 20:47
  Did he say it was? He argued that wrath isn't an
• 20:50
  emotion in God. He said it is just an impersonal
• 20:53
  process of cause and effect. You know, karma.
• 20:56
  If you touch a hot stove, you get burned.
• 20:58
  The stove isn't angry at you. It is just the nature of heat,
• 21:01
  God said. God's wrath is just the natural
• 21:04
  moral law of the universe working itself out.
• 21:06
  That sounds cleaner, less offensive to modern years.
• 21:09
  It is cleaner, but Morris pushes back hard against this.
• 21:13
  He says you cannot read the text that way.
• 21:15
  Paul uses personal, active language.
• 21:18
  God gave them over. God's wrath is revealed.
• 21:21
  So Morris says God is personally angry.
• 21:24
  Yes. But, and this is a big
• 21:26
  distinction, it is not a human anger.
• 21:27
  It isn't a temper tantrum. It isn't capricious.
• 21:30
  It is a settled holy opposition to evil.
• 21:33
  I guess if God is good, he has to hate evil.
• 21:35
  If you love cancer patients, you have to hate cancer.
• 21:37
  Exactly. If God looked at child abuse or
• 21:39
  genocide or pride and just shrugged his shoulders, he
• 21:42
  wouldn't be good. His wrath is the proof of his
• 21:44
  goodness. He's actively opposed to
• 21:46
  everything that destroys his creation.
• 21:48
  And verse 18 says this wrath is being revealed.
• 21:51
  It is in the present tense. Yes, it is not just waiting for
• 21:54
  Judge Day. It is happening now.
• 21:56
  We are seeing it in real time. So what is the charge?
• 22:00
  Why is God angry? Verses 19 and 20 introduce the
• 22:03
  idea of general revelation. Paul says what may be known
• 22:07
  about God is plain to them. This is the doctrine that
• 22:10
  creation speaks. Morris explains that God's
• 22:13
  eternal ability and divine nature are clearly visible in
• 22:16
  the things that have been made. When you look at the universe,
• 22:19
  the order of the stars, the complexity of a cell, the
• 22:22
  majesty of a mountain, it is screaming Creator.
• 22:26
  It is like looking at a painting.
• 22:28
  You might not know the painter's name, but you know there was a
• 22:30
  painter. Right.
• 22:31
  You know he is capable. You know he is intelligent.
• 22:34
  So is Paul saying people can be saved just by looking at a
• 22:37
  sunset? No, this is a crucial
• 22:39
  distinction in Reformed theology.
• 22:41
  Morris is very clear. General revelation is enough to
• 22:44
  condemn, but it is not enough to save.
• 22:46
  It gives us enough information to say there is a God, but not
• 22:49
  enough to say Jesus died for me. Correct.
• 22:51
  It renders mankind without excuse.
• 22:54
  We cannot stand before God and say we didn't know he existed.
• 22:57
  He will say He shouted it from every star in the sky.
• 23:00
  So the problem isn't a lack of evidence, Verse 18 says.
• 23:04
  The problem is that we suppress the truth by our wickedness.
• 23:07
  Suppress. The Greek word means to hold
• 23:10
  down. Like holding a beach ball
• 23:11
  underwater. Exactly.
• 23:13
  And if you have ever tried to do that, you know it takes active,
• 23:16
  constant effort. The ball wants to come up.
• 23:19
  The truth of God wants to surface in our conscience.
• 23:22
  But Morris says humans actively push it down.
• 23:24
  We don't want it to be true. Why not?
• 23:26
  Because if there is a God, I am not him.
• 23:28
  If there is a God, I am accountable.
• 23:30
  And we love our wickedness too much to admit that.
• 23:33
  And this suppression leads to what we might call the great
• 23:36
  exchange. Verse 21 says.
• 23:38
  For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor
• 23:42
  gave thanks to him. Morris identifies this as the
• 23:45
  root of all sin. It isn't murder.
• 23:47
  It isn't theft. It is ingratitude.
• 23:49
  It is refusal to give God his proper place.
• 23:52
  We refuse to say thank. You when refused to say you are
• 23:54
  God and I am not. And what happens to the mind
• 23:57
  when you cut yourself off from reality like that?
• 23:59
  Paul says. Their thinking became futile and
• 24:02
  their foolish hearts were darkened.
• 24:04
  It is intellectual suicide. Morris points out the irony in
• 24:08
  verse 22. Although they claim to be wise,
• 24:11
  they became fools. When you reject the source of
• 24:14
  all truth, you don't become smarter, You become incoherent.
• 24:18
  You lose the ability to make sense of the world.
• 24:20
  And the ultimate expression of this foolishness is idolatry.
• 24:23
  Verse 23 says they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for
• 24:26
  images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and
• 24:30
  reptiles. It is tragic.
• 24:32
  We were made to worship the infinite, holy immortal God, and
• 24:36
  when we reject him, we don't stop worshipping, we just start
• 24:39
  worshipping lower things. We trade the sun for a
• 24:41
  flashlight. Worse, we trade the Creator for
• 24:43
  a snake. We worship the creature.
• 24:45
  And because of this vertical exchange, trading God for idols,
• 24:49
  God initiates a judgment. And this is where the chapter
• 24:51
  gets terrifying. We enter the section on
• 24:53
  judgment, verses 24 to 32. And the phrase that keeps
• 24:57
  repeating is God gave them. Over it appears three times,
• 25:00
  verse 24, verse 26, and verse 28.
• 25:02
  What does that actually mean? He's gave an letter.
• 25:04
  This is how the wrath of God is being revealed right now.
• 25:06
  He doesn't necessarily send a plague.
• 25:08
  He doesn't strike them with lightning.
• 25:09
  He simply removes his restraining hand.
• 25:11
  He says you want to live without me.
• 25:13
  OK, have it your way. He lets them go.
• 25:16
  He hands them over to the consequences of their own
• 25:18
  desires. That is scary.
• 25:20
  It means the punishment for sin is more sin.
• 25:23
  Exactly. The worst thing God can do to a
• 25:26
  Sinner is let them succeed in their sin, to let them have what
• 25:29
  they want. Let's trace the downward spiral
• 25:31
  Morris outlines here. It happens in three stages.
• 25:34
  The first, giving over, is in verse 24.
• 25:37
  God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to
• 25:41
  sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies.
• 25:43
  Notice the connection. It starts with idolatry, which
• 25:46
  is spiritual unfaithfulness, and it immediately leads to sexual
• 25:49
  immorality. Morris notes that false religion
• 25:52
  almost always leads to false morality.
• 25:55
  If you worship a base idol, you live a base life.
• 25:58
  In the second stage, verse 26, God gave them over to shameful
• 26:01
  lusts and here Paul gets very specific.
• 26:04
  He talks about unnatural relations.
• 26:06
  Yes, Morris deals with this text very straightforwardly.
• 26:09
  We are just reporting what Morris says here.
• 26:11
  Of course. Paul describes women exchanging
• 26:14
  natural relations for unnatural ones and men generally
• 26:17
  abandoning natural relations with women and being inflamed
• 26:21
  with lust for one another. Now obviously this is a huge
• 26:23
  topic in our culture today, but looking at the text, Morris
• 26:27
  notes that Paul calls this against nature, right?
• 26:30
  Paul sees a created order, male and female.
• 26:33
  When that is abandoned, it is evidence of a society that has
• 26:36
  lost its moorings. It is a reversal of creation.
• 26:38
  And he says they received in themselves the due penalty for
• 26:41
  their perversion. Morris explains that the penalty
• 26:43
  isn't necessarily a ZAP from heaven.
• 26:45
  The degradation is the penalty, the breakdown of the human, the
• 26:49
  slavery to appetite, the loss of true intimacy, that is the
• 26:52
  recompense. It is a heavy diagnosis, but the
• 26:55
  Paul doesn't stop at sexual ethics.
• 26:57
  He goes further. Stage 3 is in verse 28.
• 27:00
  Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the
• 27:02
  knowledge of God, He gave them over to a depraved mind.
• 27:06
  A mind that failed the tests. That is what the Greek word
• 27:09
  adakmos means. It means rejected, worthless.
• 27:13
  A mind that can no longer think straight about moral reality.
• 27:17
  Up becomes down. Good becomes evil.
• 27:20
  And then we get the vice list verses 29 to 31.
• 27:24
  It is like a machine gun of accusations, envy, murder,
• 27:28
  strife, deceit, malice. It is comprehensive and what is
• 27:31
  frightening is how democratic it is.
• 27:33
  What do you mean by democratic? I mean, it includes everyone.
• 27:36
  You might read the part about idolatry or orgies and think,
• 27:38
  well, that is not me, I'm a respectable citizen.
• 27:41
  But then Paul lists gossip. Whisperers.
• 27:43
  Yes, the Greek is distinct there.
• 27:44
  Secret slander. Have you ever whispered
• 27:47
  something negative about someone behind that back?
• 27:49
  Who hasn't? Then you are on the list.
• 27:50
  He lists insolent, which is a specific kind of pride that
• 27:53
  looks down on others. He lists disobedient parents.
• 27:56
  Wow, the rebellious teenagers are in the same list as
• 27:59
  murderers. It shows the extent of the rot.
• 28:01
  The depraved mind effects everything.
• 28:03
  It breaks down families through disobedience.
• 28:05
  It breaks down trust through deceit.
• 28:06
  It breaks down community through strife.
• 28:09
  And Morris points out that one word Ruthless.
• 28:12
  Literally without mercy or without natural affection.
• 28:16
  It is when a society stops caring for the weak, when it
• 28:19
  becomes hard hearted. So we have this picture of
• 28:22
  humanity. We suppressed the truth.
• 28:24
  We worshipped ourselves. God let us go.
• 28:27
  We fell into sexual chaos, social chaos and relational
• 28:30
  chaos. But there is one final step,
• 28:34
  verse 32. The climax of rebellion.
• 28:36
  Although they know God's righteous decree that those who
• 28:39
  do such things deserve death. Which goes back to that general
• 28:41
  revelation we talked about. Deep down we know.
• 28:44
  We know this isn't how it is supposed to be.
• 28:46
  They not only continue to do these very things, but also
• 28:49
  approve of those who practice them.
• 28:50
  That is the final nail in the coffin.
• 28:52
  Approve of those who practice them.
• 28:54
  It is one thing to sin. We all sin.
• 28:56
  We succumb to temptation and usually we feel bad about it.
• 28:59
  But this is different. This is looking at sin and
• 29:01
  calling it virtue. This is setting up a society
• 29:04
  that applauds evil. It is when we give awards for
• 29:07
  wickedness. Exactly when we encourage others
• 29:10
  to destroy themselves, when we say good for you to someone who
• 29:14
  is rebelling against God, Morris says.
• 29:16
  This is the bottom of the spiral.
• 29:17
  It is the total inversion of God's moral order.
• 29:21
  It is a pitch black picture Paul has painted a portrait of a
• 29:24
  world that is totally lost. And that is exactly what he
• 29:27
  intended to do. So let's wrap this up.
• 29:30
  Why does Paul start his letter this way?
• 29:32
  Why bring us so low? He is a lawyer building a case.
• 29:36
  He has established the credentials of the gospel that
• 29:39
  it is God's effective strength, but now he has to establish the
• 29:42
  need. He has proven the universal
• 29:44
  guilt of the Gentile world. From a Reformed perspective,
• 29:48
  this is. The doctrine of total depravity
• 29:50
  isn't. It it is total depravity doesn't
• 29:51
  mean we are as bad as we could possibly be.
• 29:53
  We aren't all murderers, but it means every part of us is
• 29:57
  affected. Our minds, our hearts, our
• 29:59
  bodies, our wills. We are trapped.
• 30:00
  Left to ourselves, we suppress truth.
• 30:02
  We worship idols. We destroy ourselves.
• 30:04
  And that sets the stage for verse 17 to make sense.
• 30:07
  If we are this depraved, can we save ourselves?
• 30:10
  No chance. Can we work our way back to God?
• 30:13
  Not if our minds are darkened. Exactly so.
• 30:15
  We need a righteousness from God.
• 30:17
  We need a gift. We need a rescue from the
• 30:19
  outside. The darkness of chapter 1 makes
• 30:21
  the light of the gospel shine that much brighter.
• 30:24
  Now I have to give a little spoiler alert.
• 30:26
  If you are listening to this and feeling pretty good about
• 30:29
  yourself, maybe thinking you are glad you are not like those
• 30:31
  nasty pagans Paul is talking about, Paul has a trap waiting
• 30:35
  for you. Oh yes, Chapter 2 is an ambush.
• 30:39
  He is going to turn the spotlight on the moralist and
• 30:42
  the religious person. He is going to remove their
• 30:45
  excuses too. But for today, the take away
• 30:47
  from chapter 1 is clear. The Gospel is the effective
• 30:50
  strength of God, and mankind is in desperate need of it.
• 30:53
  We need it more than we know. I would encourage you to read
• 30:56
  Romans one again this week. Read it slowly, use this
• 31:00
  framework, look for the doulos, look for the thesis, and look
• 31:04
  for the diagnosis. And before we go, I want to
• 31:06
  leave you with a final thought to Mull over.
• 31:09
  Think about how modern technology and social media act
• 31:12
  as a new platform for the vice list we talked about.
• 31:14
  Think about how the Internet accelerates that approval of
• 31:17
  evil mentioned in verse 32, turning private sins into public
• 31:22
  celebrations. How does that change the way we
• 31:24
  live as Christians today? That is a great question to
• 31:26
  reflect on. Thank you for joining us for
• 31:28
  this deep dive into reformed thinking.
• 31:30
  Grayson, peace to you. Until next time.