Latest / Reformed Thinking / Romans Explained: Themes, Purpose, and Message | Steve Bond et al.

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Romans Explained: Themes, Purpose, and Message | Steve Bond et al. · Reformed Thinking

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  Hello, and welcome back to Reformed Thinking.
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  It's really good to have you with us again.
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  It's great to be here. We are two friends who just
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  really enjoy sitting down and taking a long hard look at the
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  historic Christian faith. Our goal here is pretty simple.
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  We want to look at the Bible and honestly the world around us,
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  but through the lens of Reformed theology.
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  To see how it all fits together. Exactly.
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  We want to see how the sovereignty of God and the grace
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  of Jesus Christ really shape everything we look at.
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  Yeah, there's just nothing better than opening up the text
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  and seeing what's actually there, you know, rather than
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  what we might assume is there. Agreed.
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  And today, well, today we are tackling the big one.
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  The big one. The heavyweight champion of the
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  New Testament. We are looking at the letter to
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  the Romans. The Everest of biblical
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  theology, you might say. That's a.
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  Great way to put it. I mean, Paul wrote 13 letters
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  that we have in the New Testament, but this one, this
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  one just stands apart. It does.
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  It's the longest, and it's just so intensely theological.
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  It feels less like a quick note to a friend and, I don't know,
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  more like a manifesto. It definitely carries that kind
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  of weight. And historically, the impact of
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  the single document is it's hard to overstate.
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  You really can't tell the story of the Protestant Reformation
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  without talking about Romans. Right.
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  This is the text that really flipped the switch for Martin
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  Luther, isn't it? It is you have to kind of
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  picture Luther, you know, as a monk in the early 1500s and he
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  is just terrified of God's judgement.
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  He's trying everything to be good enough, trying to earn his
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  standing before a holy God. You know, confession, penance,
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  all the monk like discipline you can imagine, but he was just
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  miserable. Because he knew deep down he
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  couldn't actually meet the standard.
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  Precisely. He knew he was failing.
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  So he's studying Romans and he hits this phrase in the 1st
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  chapter, The righteousness of God.
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  OK, for years he hated that phrase.
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  He absolutely despised it. To him, it just meant the
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  standard God uses to crush sinners.
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  God's act of judgement. Yes, God's act of punishment of
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  anyone who isn't perfect. But then something clicked the.
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  Aha moment. The aha moment, he's up in the
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  tower of the monastery, apparently wrestling with the
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  Greek text, and he suddenly realizes that in Romans, the
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  righteousness of God isn't just a standard we have to climb up
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  to and fail at. OK, it's a gift.
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  It's a righteousness God sends down.
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  He realized a person becomes righteous in God's sight through
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  faith alone. Wow.
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  And that realization right there sparked the battle cry of the
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  Reformation. Solified.
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  By faith alone. By faith alone.
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  It's just wild to think that a few sentences in an ancient
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  letter could completely change the map of Europe and, you know,
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  the history of the Church. It shows you what the Word of
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  God can do when the Spirit opens your eyes to it.
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  So here's our mission for this discussion.
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  We want to try and get our arms around this massive letter.
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  We want to look at the background, The Who, when,
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  where, and we really want to trace the argument Paul makes.
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  It is a dense book for sure, but we don't want to get lost in the
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  weeds. Right.
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  We want to see the forest and the trees.
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  Yeah. Keep it accessible while still
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  dealing with some of these really heavy theological
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  concepts. Let's do it.
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  OK, so let's start with the basics.
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  Section 1, the author and the scribe.
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  I feel like this is probably the easiest question I'm going to
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  ask you all day. Who wrote Romans?
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  The Apostle Paul and you know, unlike some of the other New
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  Testament letters where you have modern critics debating
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  authorship. Right, you always hear that
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  about. Sex, But you do.
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  But the evidence for Romans is just rock solid.
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  It's so clearly Paul that honestly only the most radical
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  skeptics have ever tried to challenge it.
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  It's basically the touchstone you use to determine if other
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  letters are authentic. And here's where it gets a
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  little interesting. He didn't physically hold a pen
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  for this one, did he? No, he didn't, and we know that
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  because of a little verse that's kind of tucked away at the very.
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  End. I love these details.
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  Romans 16.22 It says I Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you
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  in the Lord. So enter Tertius.
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  But that raises a question, right?
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  How much of this is Paul and how much is Tertius?
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  That's a good question. Was Paul just pacing around the
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  room saying Tertius take a letter, tell them about
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  justification, and then Tertius sort of wrote it in his own
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  words? Or was it word for word
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  dictation? Well, that's a debate that
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  scholars have. Some have suggested that Paul
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  just gave the themes and Tersha's composed it.
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  That was a pretty common practice in the ancient world
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  for some types of correspondence kind.
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  Of like a boss telling an assistant hey send a memo about
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  the new dress code and the assistant actually writes the
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  sentences. Exactly.
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  But when you look at the style of Romans, the vocabulary, the
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  way the arguments are structured, it's incredibly
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  consistent with Paul's other letters like Galatians or
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  Corinthians, where Tersha's just wasn't involved at all.
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  That distinctive Pauline voice is just all over it.
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  So it's how Like Tertius was functioning more like a a
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  faithful transcriber. That's the most likely scenario,
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  yes. You almost have to visualize the
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  scene. Paul is probably pacing the
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  floor, maybe because his eyesight was poor and he's just
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  pouring out this theological masterpiece.
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  And Tertius is just trying to keep up.
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  And Tertius is there, scratching it all down on parchment, word
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  for word. It makes you realize the
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  physical labor that was involved.
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  I mean, writing back then wasn't like typing on a laptop.
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  It was slow. It was expensive.
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  It was a huge investment of time and money.
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  This wasn't a casual e-mail, this was a project.
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  OK, so we have The Who. Let's talk about the where and
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  the when. We're trying to place this on
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  the timeline of Paul's life. Right.
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  So to date the letter, we have to look at where Paul was in his
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  missionary work and we know he wrote it at the very close of
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  his third missionary journey. And what are the clues that tell
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  us that? Well, Acts chapter 20 mentions
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  Paul spending three months in Greece.
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  This was right before he decided to head back to Jerusalem.
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  And then in Romans 15, Paul tells us exactly what he's
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  doing. He says he's on his way to
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  Jerusalem to deliver a financial collection.
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  The collection for the poor. Exactly, from the churches in
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  Macedonia and Achaea to the poor believers back in Jerusalem.
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  And that lines up perfectly with the narrative we see in Acts.
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  It does. It's a perfect match.
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  So we know he's in Greece, but we can get even more specific
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  than just Greece. We're almost certain he was in
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  the city of Corinth when he wrote it.
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  How do we know that? I mean, does the letter ever
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  explicitly say written from Corinth?
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  No, it doesn't. We have to be detectives here
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  and follow the clues. OK, first in Roman 16, Paul
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  commends a woman named Phoebe to the Roman church.
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  He says she's a servant of the church in Sancrea.
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  And Sancrea was. Sancrea was the eastern seaport
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  of Corinth. It was right there.
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  OK, that's a pretty strong hint. She was probably the one
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  carrying the letter to Rome. That's what most people think,
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  yes. Then Paul sends greetings from a
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  guy named Gaius and another named Erastus.
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  And we know who they are. We do if we cross reference this
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  with First Corinthians and Second Timothy.
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  These men are both linked directly to Corinth.
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  Erastus was actually the city treasurer of Corinth.
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  Wow, I love it when the archaeology matches the text.
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  And Speaking of archaeology, there's a specific inscription
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  that helps us pin down the date, right?
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  Yes, the Gallio inscription. This is a massive piece of the
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  puzzle in Acts 18 during Paul's second missionary journey.
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  So this is before he wrote Romans.
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  He was in Corinth and was brought before the Pro console
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  Gallio. And we know when Gallio was in
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  charge. You do.
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  Inscriptions found at Delphi, an ancient site, date Gallio's rule
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  in Akaya, specifically to the period from July of 8051 to July
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  of 8052 2. That gives us a firm anchor
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  point in secular history. Precisely.
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  It's huge for New Testament chronology.
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  So if the second journey ended around 8051 and then Paul went
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  on his third journey, which included a three-year stay in
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  Ephesus, you can do the math. You can do the math.
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  He likely arrived in Greece and wrote Romans around 8056 or 57.
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  And that specific date, 8056 or 57, puts us in a very specific
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  political context, doesn't it? Who's the emperor in Rome at
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  that? Point.
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  That would be Nero, and this is early in Nero's reign.
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  Before he really went off the rails.
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  Yes, and the Roman historian Tacitus tells us that right
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  around 8056 to 58 there was significant unrest in Rome.
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  The people were angry about excessive taxation.
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  That is fascinating because when we get to Romans 13, Paul gives
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  these very specific instructions about submitting to the
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  government and paying your taxes.
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  It's not abstract advice at all. It's highly likely Paul was
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  aware of those specific tax riots and was writing to ensure
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  the Christians in Rome didn't get caught up in some kind of
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  rebellion. That wasn't just be a good
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  citizen in general, it was be a good citizen right now while
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  everyone else is, you know, rioting it.
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  Was very timely counsel. That leads us perfectly into our
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  next section. Then the purpose, Because I
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  think there's a big misconception out there.
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  A lot of people see Romans as this this dry academic textbook.
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  Like Paul just sat down in an ivory tower to write his own
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  systematic theology. That's a very common view, but
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  it's incomplete. I mean, don't get me wrong, it
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  is intensely theological, but it's a letter, right?
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  It was written to a specific group of people to address their
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  specific needs. It wasn't written to strangers
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  in a vacuum. So how do we know it wasn't just
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  a general theology textbook that he was writing?
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  Well, for one, look at what he leaves out.
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  If this were supposed to be a summary of everything Paul
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  believed, he missed some really big things.
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  Like what? He doesn't mention the Lord's
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  Supper, which he covers in great detail in First Corinthians.
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  He doesn't go into detail about the Second Coming or the Day of
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  the Lord like he does in First Thessalonians.
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  That's a great point, yeah. If it were a systematic
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  theology, you'd expect a chapter on the end times and a chapter
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  on the sacraments for. Sure you would, but instead he
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  focuses really heavily on things that aren't discussed as much in
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  other letters, like the specific relationship between Jews and
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  Gentiles in God's plan. Which tells us.
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  That tells us he's targeting the specific situation in the church
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  at Rome. OK, so why did he write it?
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  We've sort of identified 3 main reasons from the text.
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  Let's start with the practical 1, the logistics.
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  Right. So Paul was a missionary.
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  He was always moving. He says in the letter that he's
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  finished his work in the East. Which is an amazing statement in
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  itself. It is, he says, from Jerusalem
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  all the way around to Illyricum, which is modern day Albania.
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  He has fully proclaimed the gospel.
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  He felt like he'd tapped out that region.
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  He was a pioneer. He didn't want to build on
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  another man's foundation. Exactly so his eyes were set on
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  the the extreme W Spain. He wanted to go to Spain, but to
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  get to Spain from the Middle East, you need a pit stop, you
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  need a home base. You need a base of operations.
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  Antioch had been his base for all the work in the East.
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  He needed Rome to be his new base for the West.
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  So reason #1 was just missionary support.
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  Yep, he was writing to introduce himself and basically to raise
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  support for the new mission to Spain.
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  OK, so that's the practical reason.
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  Reason #2 the defense of his Gospel.
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  You have to remember Paul had never been to Rome when he wrote
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  this. He didn't plant this church.
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  They didn't know him personally at all.
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  They just heard the rumors. And the rumors about Paul were
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  often nasty. People said he was anti law,
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  that he was teaching people to sin so that Grace could have
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  bound. I mean really terrible stuff.
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  So he needed to set the record straight.
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  He needed to clarify his message before he arrived.
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  He needed to defend his gospel against potential slander and
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  warn them about false teachers who might be twisting his words.
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  So it's kind of a pre emptive strike against heresy.
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  In a way, yes. He's laying out his credentials
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  and his full message, so there's absolutely no confusion when he
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  finally knocks on their door. And then reason #3 this one
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  seems to be the real heartbeat of the pastoral issue in the
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  letter unity. This is crucial.
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  The Church in Rome was a mix. It was made-up of Jews and
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  Gentiles and, well, they were not getting along.
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  What were they fighting about? The usual things in that era,
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  unfortunately. Diet what you can and can't eat.
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  Holy days. The status of Israel.
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  So the Jewish believers were probably looking down on the
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  gentiles as like second class citizens or judging them for not
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  keeping the law. Very likely, and on the other
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  side, the Gentiles were probably looking down on the Jews,
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  thinking God was done with them and that they were now
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  irrelevant. This brings up that core
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  theological tension, doesn't it? Did including Gentiles mean God
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  abandoned his promises to Israel?
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  That's the huge question of Romans 9 through 11.
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  And Paul's solution to all this disunity wasn't just to say,
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  hey, guys, you know, play nice. His solution was deeply
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  theological. He levelled the playing field.
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  That's exactly what he did. He argued that both Jews and
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  Gentiles are in the exact same boat, pal.
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  So he says both are sinners. Romans 3.23 For all have sinned,
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  and both are saved in exactly the same way, by grace through
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  faith. There's no room for superiority.
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  None. If you are both bankrupt sinners
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  saved by the same charity, there's just no room for one
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  group to feel superior to the. Other It's the ultimate
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  equalizer. The ground is level at the foot
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  of the. Cross.
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  That's the idea. So we have the author, the
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  context, and the purpose. Now let's try to pin down the
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  theme. If you had to summarize Romans
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  in like a bumper sticker, what would it be?
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  History has kind of shifted on this, hasn't it?
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  It really has. During the Reformation, as we
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  mentioned with Luther, the focus was heavily on the 1st 4
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  chapters. So the theme was justification
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  by faith. Which makes sense, you know,
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  given their battle with the Church of Rome at the time.
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  It does, but then later people started focusing on chapters 6
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  through 8, Union with Christ the Holy Spirit.
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  That became sort of the deeper life view.
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  Then others looked at chapters 9 through 11 and said no, no, the
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  real theme is salvation, history and the whole Jew Gentile
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  question. And then you have the practical
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  folks who point to chapters 12 through 15 and say it's all
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  about behavior and unity. Right.
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  But if we want a banner that kind of covers all of that, most
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  scholars today would settle on the phrase Paul himself uses in
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  chapter 1, the righteousness of God.
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  The righteousness of God. OK, let's unpack that because as
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  you said earlier with Luther, that phrase can be confusing.
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  What are the options for what that actually means?
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  There are 4 main ways people have understood it.
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  First, there's the traditional Protestant view.
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  It's a status given by God. Like a legal declaration.
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  Exactly. It's forensic.
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  God looks at a Sinner who has faith in Christ, and he judges
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  them or declares them righteous. It's a gift of legal standing.
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  OK, that's the one we're probably most familiar with in
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  our circles. What's the second view?
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  The second is the traditional Catholic view.
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  They would argue it refers to an actual internal righteousness
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  that God produces in the believer.
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  It's about transformation. So God makes you righteous.
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  He doesn't just declare you righteous.
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  That's the distinction they would make, yes.
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  The third is what's called the power view.
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  This connects back to the Old Testament, especially the Psalms
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  in Isaiah. When the OT talks about God's
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  righteousness, it often means His saving power, his act of
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  delivering his people. OK, so it's God's action.
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  And the fourth, the 4th. Is the attribute view.
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  This says that it simply refers to God's own personal character.
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  He is just, He condemns sin. He is righteous in and of
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  himself. So which one is it?
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  Which one is Paul talking about? Well, the beauty of scripture is
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  that it's often both hand rather than either.
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  But strictly speaking, in Romans 1.17 Paul seems to have the
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  attribute view in mind, but it immediately flows into the gift
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  view. Can you explain that a bit more?
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  Sure, God is righteous sin himself.
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  That's the attribute. And he expresses that
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  righteousness in two ways, by justly judging sin and by
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  graciously justifying the believer who has faith in Jesus.
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  So God is righteous and he acts righteously to save.
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  You've got it. But if we want the broadest
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  possible theme, the one that covers everything, I think we
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  just have to call it the gospel. The gospel, Romans 1.1617 For I
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  am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for
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  salvation to everyone who believes.
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  That's the banner over the whole book.
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  The gospel reveals God's righteousness both of His
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  justice in punishing sin and His grace in justifying sin.
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  That's a great summary. OK, let's get into the argument
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  itself. Paul is such a master debater.
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  He really builds a case here. And like any good lawyer, he
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  starts with the bad news first. Chapters one through 3.
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  The prosecution's case against all of humanity.
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  And this is really where that Reformed doctrine of total
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  depravity comes from, isn't? It it's just so vividly
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  displayed here. Paul starts with the Gentiles.
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  He says they're completely without excuse.
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  Why? Because they didn't have the
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  Bible? I mean, that seems like a good
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  excuse. Wow.
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  He says it's because they have creation.
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  The truth about God, His eternal power, and His divine nature is
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  clearly seen in everything that has been made.
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  OK, but Paul says they suppress the truth.
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  It's not just ignorance. It is an active willful
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  suppression. Their core sin is a refusal to
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  give God the glory He is due. And the result of that
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  suppression is it's terrifying. It is.
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  Paul describes the wrath of abandonment 3 different times.
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  He uses the phrase God gave them over.
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  That is a chilling phrase. What does that mean?
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  He gave them over. It means He let them have what
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  they wanted. He removed his restraining grace
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  and let them plunge headlong into their sin.
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  So. Sin becomes its own punishment.
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  That's right, the idolatry leads to sexual immorality, which
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  leads to a debased mind in all kinds of repulsive behavior.
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  It's a downward spiral that starts with one thing, refusing
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  to honor God as God. So the Gentiles are clearly
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  guilty. But then Paul turns his eyes to
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  the Jews, and you can almost see the Jewish reader in Rome
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  nodding along, saying, yeah, get those Pagan Gentiles, Paul, tell
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  them. That is exactly the reaction
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  Paul is baiting them into. It's a brilliant rhetorical
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  trap. He lets them agree, and then he
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  turns on them and says, you who, judge?
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  Do you do the same things? He argues that just possessing
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  the law does not save you. Because having the rule book
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  isn't the same as playing the game correctly.
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  Right, he says. They preach against stealing,
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  but they steal. They preach against adultery,
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  but they commit it, he says. Their hypocrisy.
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  He actually causes the name of God to be blasphemed among the
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  Gentiles. And he even goes after
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  circumcision, which was the badge of their entire identity.
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  He does. He says circumcision has no
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  value at all without an internal change of heart.
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  He says a true Jew is one who is 1 inwardly by the spirit, not
• 18:22
  just outwardly by the flesh. So after he's made the case
• 18:26
  against both Gentiles and Jews, what's the final verdict?
• 18:29
  The verdict is Romans 3.10. Quoting the Old Testament.
• 18:32
  He says none is righteous. No, not one.
• 18:36
  That is just so sweeping. It is universal.
• 18:38
  God plays no favorites. His judgement is fair and
• 18:41
  impartial, and the purpose of the law, Paul says, was never
• 18:46
  actually to save people. So why did God give it?
• 18:49
  Its purpose was to shut every mouth.
• 18:51
  It was meant to hold up a perfect mirror so we would see
• 18:53
  how dirty we really are and stop trying to clean ourselves up.
• 18:57
  It's designed to drive us to despair of any self salvation.
• 19:00
  For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
• 19:04
  It really is the great leveling. We're all in the same desperate
• 19:06
  condition. And that desperation, that's the
• 19:09
  necessary setup for the solution.
• 19:10
  You can't appreciate the cure until you really understand the
• 19:14
  disease. Let's talk about the cure,
• 19:16
  Section 5. The solution.
• 19:18
  This is chapters 3 through 8, the heart of the Reformation
• 19:22
  justification. This is the massive turning
• 19:25
  point of the letter. But now, Paul says.
• 19:27
  But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from
• 19:30
  the law. God declares the ungodly
• 19:32
  righteous. Based entirely on Christ's
• 19:35
  atoning sacrifice. I want to pause on the mechanism
• 19:37
  of this. Paul uses some very specific
• 19:40
  language. In Romans 3.25 he talks about
• 19:43
  Christ as a propitiation or in some translations, a sacrifice
• 19:47
  of atonement. That is a huge word.
• 19:49
  The Greek is Hellasterian. Break that down for us.
• 19:52
  What exactly is propitiation? It means a sacrifice that turns
• 19:56
  away wrath. Now in the Pagan world, you
• 20:00
  would offer a chicken or a goat to an angry God to get him to
• 20:03
  calm down. You were basically trying to buy
• 20:05
  off the deity. But.
• 20:06
  That's not what's happening here with Christ's sacrifice.
• 20:09
  No, it's the complete opposite. In the Pagan view, the human
• 20:13
  provides the sacrifice to appease the God.
• 20:16
  In the Gospel, God himself provides the sacrifice to
• 20:19
  appease his own justice. God initiates it.
• 20:21
  God is the one who provides Jesus to absorb the justice that
• 20:24
  was due to us for our sin. So God's justice isn't ignored
• 20:27
  or swept under the rug, it's fully satisfied.
• 20:29
  Precisely this allows God to be both just and the justifier.
• 20:33
  He is just because he punished sin fully in Christ.
• 20:36
  And he is the justifier, because with justice satisfied, he can
• 20:40
  now legally declare us innocent. And this, as Paul says, excludes
• 20:44
  all boasting. Entirely.
• 20:45
  If you earned it, you could brag about it, but since it's a gift,
• 20:49
  all you can do is be thankful. So to prove his point, Paul
• 20:52
  brings in a star witness here. Abraham.
• 20:56
  Why Abraham? Because the Jewish objectors in
• 20:59
  Rome would immediately say this whole justification by faith
• 21:02
  thing sounds like a new idea, Paul.
• 21:04
  It's a deviation from our tradition.
• 21:07
  And Paul says no, it isn't. Just look at Father Abraham.
• 21:10
  He quotes Genesis 15.6. Abraham believed God and it was
• 21:15
  credited to him as righteousness.
• 21:17
  And there's a crucial detail in the timing of when that
• 21:19
  happened. Yes, this is the killer point in
• 21:21
  his argument. It happened before Abraham was
• 21:23
  circumcised, and it happened hundreds of years before the
• 21:26
  Mosaic Law was ever given at Mount Sinai.
• 21:28
  That's basically a slam dunk argument.
• 21:30
  It proves that righteousness has always been by faith.
• 21:32
  It was never about the ritual or the law keeping.
• 21:35
  Abraham was justified as an ungodly Gentile essentially
• 21:39
  before he became the circumcised father of the Jews.
• 21:42
  So we have justification. Then Paul moves to this massive
• 21:45
  comparison. In Romans 5.
• 21:47
  He pits Adam against Christ. This is what theologians call
• 21:50
  federal headship. It's the idea that humanity has
• 21:53
  a representative. Right, two teams, 2 captains.
• 21:56
  Team Adam, Adam's one act of disobedience in the garden
• 21:59
  brought death and condemnation to all of his descendants.
• 22:02
  It had a universal impact. We are born into that.
• 22:05
  We're all born on Team Adam. But then there's Team Christ.
• 22:08
  Christ's one act of perfect obedience his whole life and his
• 22:12
  death on the cross. It cancels Adam's failure and
• 22:15
  brings life and righteousness to all who are in him by faith.
• 22:19
  So I have to ask the question that Paul anticipates.
• 22:22
  If grace covers sin, why did the law even come in at all?
• 22:25
  Paul's answer is fascinating. He says the law came in to
• 22:29
  increase the trespass. That sounds completely
• 22:31
  counterintuitive. Why would God want to increase
• 22:33
  sin? It does sound strange, but the
• 22:35
  law makes sin explicit. It turns a vague moral failure
• 22:39
  into a specific, defined transgression.
• 22:41
  It's like a magnifying glass. It shows us how bad the problem
• 22:44
  really. Is exactly it shows us the full
• 22:47
  extent of our rebellion to magnify our need for grace.
• 22:50
  As he says, where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
• 22:53
  Which of course leads to the inevitable objection, if grace
• 22:57
  abounds when we sin, then shouldn't we just sin more so we
• 23:01
  can get more grace? I mean, it sounds logical if you
• 23:04
  don't really get the heart of it.
• 23:05
  That's the objection of Romans 6, and Paul's answer is just so
• 23:10
  emphatic. By no means in the Greek it's
• 23:12
  the strongest possible negative. Absolutely not.
• 23:15
  So why not? What's his reasoning?
• 23:17
  His reasoning is our union with Christ.
• 23:20
  He says we die to sin. He uses the analogy of baptism.
• 23:23
  We were buried with Christ in baptism and raised to a new
• 23:26
  life. You can't keep on living in sin
• 23:28
  if you've already died to it it. Would be a contradiction.
• 23:31
  You would be like a zombie walking around.
• 23:32
  It contradicts your entire new nature.
• 23:34
  He uses a marriage analogy too, right in Chapter 7.
• 23:36
  Yes, he says that death breaks the legal bond of marriage.
• 23:40
  If a husband dies, the wife is free to remarry someone else.
• 23:44
  OK, Paul says. In Christ we died to the law,
• 23:47
  our old husband, you could say, so that we could be married to a
• 23:50
  new husband, to Christ. We are under a new covenant, a
• 23:53
  new relationship. But then we hit the second-half
• 23:56
  of Romans 7, and this is a battleground for interpreters.
• 24:00
  Paul describes his intense internal struggle.
• 24:04
  For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is
• 24:07
  what I keep on doing. The great tug of war.
• 24:11
  So who is he talking about here? Is he describing his life before
• 24:14
  he was a Christian? Or is the normal Christian life
• 24:18
  well? Reformed theologians have
• 24:19
  generally viewed this as the experience of the mature
• 24:22
  believer. The more you grow in grace, the
• 24:25
  more sensitive you become to your own remaining corruption.
• 24:28
  So you see your sin more clearly.
• 24:30
  You delight in the law of God, in your inner being, but you
• 24:34
  feel the constant drag of the flesh.
• 24:37
  It's a realistic picture of the Christian life.
• 24:40
  It's actually really comforting in a way.
• 24:41
  I mean, even the Apostle Paul struggled like this.
• 24:44
  It is, but he doesn't stay there in despair.
• 24:46
  He cries out, Who will deliver me from this body of death?
• 24:49
  And the answer to that question launches us directly into Romans
• 24:52
  8. Thanks be to God through Jesus
• 24:54
  Christ our Lord. And Romans 8 is just.
• 24:57
  I mean, it's glorious. It is the summit of the letter.
• 25:00
  There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are
• 25:02
  in Christ Jesus. And the focus shifts
• 25:04
  dramatically to the work of the Holy Spirit.
• 25:06
  Yes, the Spirit accomplishes what the law could not.
• 25:10
  The Spirit gives us life. He assures us that we are sons
• 25:13
  of God. We cry out ABBA Father because
• 25:16
  of his work in US. And it all ends with that
• 25:18
  unbreakable promise. That nothing can separate us
• 25:22
  from the love of God, not height, nor depth, nor angels,
• 25:25
  nor demons, nothing in all creation.
• 25:27
  It provides such deep, solid assurance.
• 25:30
  If God is for us, who can be against us?
• 25:33
  Amen to that. But then you turn the page,
• 25:35
  Chapter 9, and the music just completely changes.
• 25:38
  It goes from the soaring major key to a somber minor key.
• 25:42
  We hit the section on God's sovereignty in Israel, chapters
• 25:45
  9 through 11. This is the section that deals
• 25:47
  with that huge tension we mentioned earlier.
• 25:49
  Paul has just argued that God's love in Christ is unbreakable.
• 25:52
  But wait a minute, what about Israel?
• 25:54
  They were God's chosen people. They had the covenants, the
• 25:56
  promises. But the nation, by and large,
• 25:59
  has rejected their Messiah. So did God's Word fail?
• 26:02
  That's a massive problem, because if God's promises to
• 26:05
  Israel could fail, how can we possibly trust his promises to
• 26:09
  us back in Romans 8? Exactly.
• 26:10
  The credibility of God is at stake, and Paul's answer is just
• 26:14
  it's deep. He explains that God's promise
• 26:17
  was never for every single physical descendant of Abraham.
• 26:20
  It was always for the children of the Promise.
• 26:23
  And he goes back to the patriarchs to prove it.
• 26:25
  He does. He distinguishes between Isaac
• 26:27
  and Ishmael, and then more pointedly, between Jacob and
• 26:30
  Esau. Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.
• 26:34
  That is a hard verse to read. It is, and Paul knows it.
• 26:37
  He immediately anticipates the objection.
• 26:39
  Is there injustice on God's part?
• 26:41
  It sounds unfair. If God just decides before
• 26:44
  they're even born who He will love and who you will hate, how
• 26:47
  can he hold them responsible for their choices?
• 26:48
  And Paul doesn't back down or try to soften it.
• 26:51
  He appeals directly to divine sovereignty.
• 26:54
  He quotes God's words to Moses. I will have mercy on whom I have
• 26:58
  mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have
• 27:00
  compassion. And then he uses that famous
• 27:02
  image of the Potter and the clay.
• 27:04
  Has the Potter no right over the clay to make out of the same
• 27:08
  lump 1 vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable
• 27:11
  use? This is where reformed theology
• 27:13
  really just leans in. We don't try to explain this
• 27:15
  away. We can't.
• 27:16
  It's in the text God chooses based on his own mysterious and
• 27:20
  good purpose, not based on any foreseen behavior in US.
• 27:24
  It's what we call unconditional election.
• 27:26
  And it is a hard truth. It's a very hard truth, but it's
• 27:28
  also the only reason any of us are saved.
• 27:30
  If salvation were up to us, we would all be like Esau.
• 27:33
  So God is sovereign in election, but Paul also insists on
• 27:38
  Israel's responsibility. Yes, the Reformed view has
• 27:41
  always held these two truths in tension.
• 27:44
  God is 100% sovereign and yet man is 100% responsible.
• 27:48
  Paul says Israel stumble because they tried to seek righteousness
• 27:51
  by works, not by faith. They missed the point of their
• 27:54
  own scriptures. They did, he says.
• 27:56
  They heard the message. He quotes the Old Testament to
• 27:59
  prove that the gospel was preached to them, but they
• 28:01
  rejected it in their stubbornness.
• 28:03
  All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and
• 28:06
  contrary people. It's a heartbreaking image of
• 28:09
  God's patience and their ongoing rejection.
• 28:12
  Is that it? Is God just done with Israel?
• 28:14
  No, Paul says. By no means God has not rejected
• 28:18
  his people whom he foreknew. First he talks about the concept
• 28:21
  of the remnant. Even now, he says, there is a
• 28:24
  group of Jewish believers preserved by God's grace.
• 28:27
  Paul himself was one of them. OK, so there's always a remnant,
• 28:30
  and then he uses that grafting illustration.
• 28:32
  The olive tree, the natural branches which are the
• 28:36
  unbelieving Jews, were broken off so that wild shoots, the
• 28:39
  Gentiles could be grafted in. But the purpose behind it all is
• 28:42
  amazing. God used the Jewish rejection to
• 28:45
  send the gospel out to the Gentiles, but now he says
• 28:48
  Gentile faith is meant to provoke Israel to jealousy.
• 28:51
  To make them jealous for their own Messiah.
• 28:53
  Right. And Paul hints at a future
• 28:55
  mystery that eventually a great mass of Jewish people, what he
• 28:59
  calls all Israel, will turn to Christ and be saved.
• 29:02
  For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.
• 29:05
  It all ends with that beautiful doxology.
• 29:08
  Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God.
• 29:11
  It's the only proper response to the mysteries of chapters 9
• 29:14
  through 11. Not argument, but worship.
• 29:18
  You don't solve the mystery, you adore the God who is behind it.
• 29:21
  So we've covered the sin, the salvation, and the sovereignty.
• 29:24
  Now we get to the So what? Section 7, the transform life.
• 29:28
  Romans 12. The great pivot of the entire
• 29:32
  letter Romans 12.1 starts with that crucial word, therefore.
• 29:37
  Because of all this mercy we've just spent 11 chapters talking
• 29:39
  about. Exactly because God has done all
• 29:41
  this, justified you, adopted you, elected you, promised to
• 29:45
  glorify you. Because of all that, how should
• 29:48
  you live? You should offer your bodies as
• 29:50
  a living sacrifice. Total devotion.
• 29:52
  Not just one part of your life, but everything.
• 29:54
  And you do it by renewing your mind.
• 29:56
  You stop thinking like the world thinks.
• 29:58
  And this plays out first in the community, in the church.
• 30:01
  Paul talks about humility. No one should think of
• 30:03
  themselves more highly than they ought to.
• 30:05
  We are one body with different gifts.
• 30:07
  If you teach, then teach. If you serve, then serve, but do
• 30:10
  it with genuine love. Let love be genuine.
• 30:13
  Then he moves from the church to our civic duty in chapter 13.
• 30:16
  We touched on this earlier with the tax riots in Nero's room.
• 30:19
  Submission to governing authorities and his reason why
• 30:23
  is important. It's not because the emperor is
• 30:25
  a nice guy, Nero certainly wasn't, but because all
• 30:28
  authority is ultimately appointed by God to preserve
• 30:30
  order. So Christians are not
• 30:32
  anarchists. No.
• 30:34
  We pay our taxes, we show respect, we obey the law unless
• 30:37
  it forces us to disobey God. Finally, he addressed this is
• 30:40
  that specific friction in the Roman church between the weak
• 30:43
  and the strong in chapters 14 and 15.
• 30:46
  This was all about meat in holy days.
• 30:48
  Right. The weak were likely Jewish
• 30:50
  believers whose consciences were sensitive and wouldn't let them
• 30:53
  eat non kosher meat or ignore the Sabbath.
• 30:55
  The strong were likely Gentiles, and Paul includes himself here.
• 30:59
  Who knew that in Christ all foods are clean and all days are
• 31:02
  the Lord's? So what was the rule for how
• 31:04
  they should get along? The rule is love.
• 31:07
  He gives 2 principles. First, do not violate your own
• 31:10
  conscience. If you think something is a sin
• 31:11
  then for you it is sin. But second, do not destroy your
• 31:15
  brother over a secondary non essential issue.
• 31:18
  So if eating meat causes your brother to stumble in his faith,
• 31:22
  then put down the burger. That's the principle.
• 31:25
  Your freedom isn't worth more than your brother's soul.
• 31:27
  Except one another, then, just as Christ accepted you.
• 31:31
  That is the summary of Christian ethics right there.
• 31:34
  Treat others the way that Christ treated you.
• 31:36
  Wow. We have covered a lot of ground.
• 31:38
  Let's head to the outro. If we look back at this letter,
• 31:41
  it really is a massive sweeping arc.
• 31:43
  It really is. It moves from the depths of
• 31:46
  universal guilt and human depravity up to the absolute
• 31:50
  heights of justification and union with Christ, then through
• 31:54
  the deep mystery of sovereign election, and it lands firmly on
• 31:57
  the ground of practical, sacrificial, everyday love.
• 32:01
  And that overarching theme we talked about just holds it all
• 32:03
  together. The gospel is the power of God.
• 32:06
  It's the Dynamo that drives history and saves sinners.
• 32:09
  It is the only hope for the world.
• 32:10
  Before we sign off, I want to leave our listeners with a
• 32:12
  provocative thought. Plans.
• 32:14
  At the beginning, he wrote this massive letter in large part to
• 32:17
  get support for a mission to Spain.
• 32:19
  He had his whole itinerary all mapped out.
• 32:21
  He was going to Jerusalem, then swing by Rome and I head off to
• 32:24
  Spain. Right, That was the plan.
• 32:26
  But did he ever? Actually make it to Spain.
• 32:30
  The Bible doesn't say we have no.
• 32:31
  Biblical record of it. We know he got to Rome, but not
• 32:34
  at all the way he planned. He arrived in chains.
• 32:37
  As a prisoner after a shipwreck. That's right.
• 32:40
  And. It really makes.
• 32:42
  You think about how God uses our plans for His own purposes.
• 32:48
  Paul wanted to go as a free missionary.
• 32:50
  He arrived as a prisoner. He wanted to go on to Spain.
• 32:53
  We don't even know if he ever did.
• 32:55
  But because he was arrested and imprisoned, he had the time to
• 32:58
  write letters that have guided the church for 2000 years.
• 33:01
  The heart of man plans his. Way, but the Lord establishes
• 33:04
  His steps. Amen.
• 33:06
  Of that. Listeners, we want to challenge
• 33:09
  you. Don't just take our word for it.
• 33:10
  Go read Romans 8 this week. You just sit, sit it for a
• 33:14
  while. So can the assurance you find
• 33:15
  there. It will be time well spent.
• 33:17
  Thank. You so much for joining us for
• 33:18
  Reformed. Thinking we'll catch you on the
• 33:20
  next deep dive. Grace and peace.