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Theology of Paul · Reformed Thinking

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  Hello and welcome to Reform Thinking.
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  It is a pleasure to have you with us again as we open up our
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  stack of sources and really get to the heart of what we believe
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  and why it's. Good to be here.
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  Today, we are turning our attention to a resource that
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  well, it's been a staple on the shelves of pastors and seminary
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  students for decades. We are looking at the Moody
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  Handbook of Theology by Paul Anne's.
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  A fantastic resource, very clear, very systematic.
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  It is. And specifically, we're going to
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  be conducting A thorough analysis of the section focusing
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  on, you guessed it, the theology of Paul.
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  And this topic is, I mean, you could argue it's the engine room
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  of the entire New Testament, the engine.
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  Room. I like that.
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  You really can't understand the Reformed faith or the
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  Westminster standards we hold to without grappling with the
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  Apostle Paul when we talk about the doctrines of grace, covenant
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  theology, the absolute sovereignty of God.
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  You're talking about Paul. You're essentially systematizing
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  the letters of Paul. He isn't just a historical
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  figure. He is, for all intents and
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  purposes, the primary architect of the theological framework we
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  operate within. That is a strong claim, but the
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  sources absolutely back it up. So the goal for this deep dive
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  is to analyze his systematic theology, not just, as you know,
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  a list of dry historical data points.
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  Right, not a museum piece. No, we want to see it as the
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  lens through which we view God, sin, and salvation.
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  The source material makes it clear that Paul's theology isn't
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  something he just made-up on the fly.
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  It's a cohesive system. Incredibly so.
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  That before we get into the heavy Greek words, and there are
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  quite a few today, we really need to set the stage.
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  Who was this man? Context is everything here.
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  Paul was born roughly around 83, and that detail is fascinating
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  because it makes him a contemporary of Jesus, humanly
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  speaking. They were alive at the same
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  time. Walking the same earth, though
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  as far as we know they never met during Christ's earthly
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  ministry. He was born in Tarsus.
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  Which was not some backwater town.
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  No, it was a university city, a place of philosophy, of
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  learning. And this birth location is so
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  significant because it made him a Roman citizen by birth.
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  Which was a massive status symbol in the ancient world.
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  A huge deal. It was a golden ticket.
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  I mean it gave him legal rights, protection from certain types of
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  punishment like scourging, and the ability to travel freely
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  across the empire. It comes up again and again in
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  Acts. But religiously, he was the
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  complete opposite. He wasn't Roman at all.
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  Not in the slightest. He was of the tribe of Benjamin.
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  He calls himself a Hebrew of Hebrews, a pure blooded
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  Israelite. So he had the best of both
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  worlds in a way, the legal protection of Rome and the
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  religious pedigree of Israel. Precisely.
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  And he wasn't just a casual observer of the Jewish faith.
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  This is key. He was trained in Jerusalem
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  under Gamaliel. Now, for the listener who might
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  not know, that name is a big one.
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  Gamaliel wasn't just a teacher, no.
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  He was one of only 7 scholars in the history of the nation to be
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  given the title Rabin, which means our master.
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  He was the grandson of the famous Hillel.
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  This was, you know, the Ivy League of pharisaical training.
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  So Paul is sitting at the feet of the most respected mine in
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  1st century Judaism. There's out a doubt he was
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  brilliant, he was trained and he was zealous.
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  So Paul, or Saul as he was known then, becomes a Pharisee and I
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  think we often have this caricature of Pharisees as these
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  mustache twirling villains who just wanted to be mean to
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  people. Right, just legalistic
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  caricature. That's not how Paul saw himself,
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  was it? No, and that's a crucial
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  distinction Ends makes in the handbook.
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  Paul adhered strictly to the law in his own words.
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  Regarding the righteousness which is in the law, he was
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  blameless. He saw himself as on the right
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  side of things. Completely.
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  He acted with a pure conscience when he persecuted the church.
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  When he was arresting Christians and consenting to their deaths,
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  he truly believed he was serving God.
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  That's terrifying when you think about it.
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  It is. He thought Christianity was a
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  heresy, A blasphemous sect that threatened the purity of
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  Judaism. He was trying to cut out a
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  cancer to preserve the nation. He was doing evil, convinced it
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  was good. That is the nature of religious
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  zeal without knowledge. Later, of course, he would look
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  back on those actions and call them blasphemy.
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  He would call himself the chief of sinners specifically because
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  he persecuted the Church of God. But at the time, he was all in.
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  Utterly zealous. And that zeal is what makes the
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  transition so shocking. We move from Paul the Pharisee,
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  the keeper of the law, to Paul the theologian of grace.
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  Let's look at the chronology of this called life.
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  It all pivots on one event. The Damascus Rd.
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  No question this happens around 8033 or 34.
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  It's sudden, it's violent. He is confronted by the risen
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  Christ in glory. And the one he thought was a
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  dead heretic is alive and raining it.
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  Shatters his entire worldview. I mean, it just pulverizes it.
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  And notice he enters immediate service.
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  He spent some time in Damascus preaching.
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  But then something interesting happens that we often gloss over
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  in Sunday school, the hidden years.
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  Yes, the Arabian period. The sources point out that he
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  spent three years from 8034 to 36, in Arabia.
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  Why? What was he doing there?
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  This is one of those areas where we have to engage in some
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  sanctified speculation based on the text.
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  Galatians 1 is our source here. He says he didn't go up to
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  Jerusalem to consult with the other apostles.
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  No, he didn't. He says.
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  He went away to Arabia. It's highly likely that this was
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  a time of intense theological reconstruction.
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  Reconstruction. That makes so much sense.
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  He had a lot to rethink. Think about it.
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  He knew the Old Testament better than almost anyone alive.
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  He had the texts memorized, but he had read them all through the
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  lens of Pharisaic legalism. A lens.
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  That said, the Messiah would be a conquering king.
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  Right. And that righteousness came by
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  strict obedience to the law. Now he's met Jesus.
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  He knows Jesus is the Messiah. But Jesus was crucified.
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  And to a Pharisee, A crucified Messiah is a contradiction in
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  terms. It's an oxymoron.
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  The law itself says cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.
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  So the very thing he thought was proof Jesus wasn't the Messiah,
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  the cross he now has to understand as the centerpiece of
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  God's plan. So he has this massive
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  theological problem to solve. Correct.
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  So he has to go back and in a sense, reread his entire Bible.
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  He has to rethink Isaiah 53, the suffering servant.
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  He has to rethink the sacrificial system.
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  He has to rethink the promise to Abraham.
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  He's taking all the data points he already knew.
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  And processing them through the new authoritative lens of the
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  risen Christ, He's realizing that the law was not the
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  destination. It was a tutor, a schoolmaster
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  to lead us to Christ. That must have been an intense 3
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  years. Just Paul, the scrolls, and the
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  Holy Spirit realigning his entire understanding of God.
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  And out of that fiery furnace of study in Revelation comes the
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  theology we're discussing today. When he finally emerges, he has
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  a clear missionary strategy. We see this play out in Acts.
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  To the Jew first, then to the Gentile.
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  That pattern is consistent. He goes to the synagogue.
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  He opens the scrolls, He argues, from the scriptures they already
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  accept. He gets a few converts, but is
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  mostly rejected by the majority. And then he turns to the
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  Gentiles. And this, of course, creates the
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  first major theological crisis of the early church.
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  Which leads to the Jerusalem Council in AD 49.
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  This is pivotal for us. This is a watershed moment.
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  The question was, do Gentiles need to become Jews?
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  Do they need circumcision and to keep the Mosaic Law in order to
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  be saved? And the the answer from the
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  apostles was a definitive no. An absolutely definitive no.
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  This separated law from grace once and for all.
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  It maintained the purity of the gospel if you add anything to
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  Christ, even something as sacred and God-given as the Mosaic Law.
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  You've destroyed the gospel. You've destroyed it.
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  You are back to a workspace system.
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  Paul, along with Peter and James, stood firm on this.
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  Salvation is by grace through faith alone.
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  It's worth looking at the timeline of his writings too
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  because we see his thought develop and apply to different
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  situations. Galatians, written around AD 48
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  is just it's on fire. Oh, it's white hot.
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  It's all about soteriology, the doctrine of salvation.
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  He is fighting for the soul of the Gospel in that letter.
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  You can feel the urgency in every line.
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  It's the Magna Carta of Christian liberty.
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  Then later around AD 62 you get Ephesians and Colossians written
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  from prison. And the tone is different.
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  Different. These are heavy on Christology,
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  who Jesus is, and ecclesiology, what the church is.
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  The tone is more reflective, more majestic, more cosmic and
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  scope. And finally you get to Timothy
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  around 8067. His final words?
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  These are his dying words. He knows execution is coming.
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  He's passing the torch. It's incredibly personal and
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  poignant. It's quite an arc.
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  Let's dive into the substance of his teaching, and we have to
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  start where he starts. Theology proper The doctrine of
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  God. How does Paul describe God?
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  Paul's view of God is high. It's transcendent.
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  For Paul, God is absolutely, unequivocally sovereign, and the
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  primary way God reveals himself is in grace through Jesus
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  Christ. He's very careful to insist on
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  this point, isn't he in Galatians 1.12?
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  Yes, he says his gospel was not of human origin.
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  He didn't learn it in Gamaliel's school.
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  He didn't get it from Peter in Jerusalem.
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  He received it directly by revelation from the Lord Jesus
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  Christ. But he also speaks of God's
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  revelation of wrath. The Greek word here is org.
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  Org And it is vital to define this word because we tend to
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  think of wrath as a temper tantrum.
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  We picture a human losing control, screaming, throwing
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  things. An emotional outburst.
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  Exactly. That is a different Greek word,
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  thummos, which means an outburst of passion.
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  That is not the word Paul uses for God's wrath.
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  So how is org different? The word describes A settled,
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  deep seated anger. It is the natural, necessary
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  revulsion of God's perfect holiness against sin.
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  It's not an emotion that comes and goes as part of his
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  character. It is the settled opposition of
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  His nature against everything that is evil.
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  Because God is holy, he cannot look at sin with indifference.
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  He must react. If God did not react to evil, He
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  would not be good. His wrath is consistent,
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  principled, and necessary. That is a sobering thought, but
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  Paul doesn't leave us there. He moves from the holiness of
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  God to what I think is the hallmark of Reformed theology,
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  sovereignty and election. The very heart of his doctrine
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  of God. The source material is 6
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  specific terms Paul uses. I want to go through these one
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  by one because they really do define our understanding of
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  salvation from God's perspective.
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  Let's do it. These words are the bedrock.
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  First up, predestined, the Greek is perizo.
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  Perizo it's a compound word. It comes from pro meaning before
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  and herizo, which means to determine or to set a boundary.
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  It's where we get our English word horizon.
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  Exactly. So it literally means to mark
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  out a boundary beforehand. Paul uses this word five times.
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  It means that the destination of the believer was settled before
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  the journey began. So salvation for Paul is not a
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  reaction to human choice. No, it is rooted in eternity
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  past. God marked out the boundary of
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  who would be His children before the foundation of the world,
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  according to Ephesians 1. That leads directly to the
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  second word forno progenosco. Now, I grew up hearing that this
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  just meant God looked down the corridors of time, saw who would
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  choose him, and then chose them based on that foresight.
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  That is the classic Armenian interpretation, and Ends argues,
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  I think correctly, that it fails both linguistically and
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  theologically. The word progenosco is not just
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  about cognitive knowledge. It's not just God knowing facts
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  beforehand. It's more than foresight.
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  Much more. In the Bible, the word to know
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  often implies an intimate relationship.
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  Genesis says Adam knew his wife, Eve.
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  It wasn't just him being introduced to her.
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  It was the deepest intimacy. Or an Amos 3.2 where God says of
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  Israel, you only have I known of all the families of the earth.
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  Right. God certainly knew about the
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  Egyptians and the Babylonians, but He had a special covenantal
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  intimate relationship with Israel.
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  So progenesco is relational. It means God fixed His regard
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  upon the elect. It's an active, initiating
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  relationship. He didn't just see you, He said
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  His affection on you from eternity.
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  It is for loving, not just for seeing.
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  That changes the entire perspective.
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  It's not God reacting to me. Is God setting His sovereign
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  love on me? That's the Pauline in the
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  Reformed view. OK, the third word is elect or
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  choose. The Greek is ecligomi.
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  Ecligomi. It means to call out, to select
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  for oneself. This emphasizes the personal
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  nature of God's choice. God chose believers for himself.
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  It completely removes any basis for human merit.
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  It has to. We weren't chosen because we
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  were smarter or more moral or more likely to succeed.
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  We were chosen because he chose US.
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  Period. Ephesians one says we were
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  chosen in Him so that we would be holy and blameless, not
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  because we are already holy. The choice precedes the result.
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  Fourth word adoption. We Aphasia.
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  This is a beautiful legal term from the Roman world.
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  It's not like modern adoption, which often involves babies.
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  In the Roman world, it was typically the adoption of an
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  adult male. To carry on the family name the
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  business. Exactly.
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  And when a wealthy man adopted a son, that son legally ceased to
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  belong to his previous family entirely.
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  All his old debts were cancelled.
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  He gained the full status of adulthood and privilege in the
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  new family. Immediately he became a full
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  heir. Paul says this is our status.
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  This is our new legal reality. We aren't just forgiving
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  criminals who are on probation. We are sons with full
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  inheritance rights. We have the right to cry out
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  ABBA father and notice. Adoption is presented as the
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  goal of predestination in Ephesus One.
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  The fifth word is called cletos. And this refers to what
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  theologians call the effectual call.
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  There's a general call of the gospel that goes out to everyone
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  who hears it. Many reject it.
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  The. Call to repent and believe.
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  Yes, but Cletos, this specific calling refers to the divine
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  summons that creates what it commands.
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  The classic example is Jesus calling Lazarus from the tomb.
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  Lazarus couldn't choose to come out.
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  He was dead. The call Lazarus come forth
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  imparted the life that enabled him to obey.
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  In the same way, this call from God enables A spiritually dead
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  Sinner to believe. It's linked to what we call
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  irresistible grace in the Reformed tradition.
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  When God calls in this effectual way, the Sinner answers.
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  They answer because of their heart has been renewed by the
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  Spirit to want to answer. The will is not violated.
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  It's liberated from its bondage to sin.
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  And finally, number six, purpose prodigy, me and Will.
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  This zooms the lens all the way out.
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  It's not just about individual salvation, as amazing as that
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  is. It shows that God works all of
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  history according to the counsel of His will.
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  Ephesians 1.1 Oven. He works all things according to
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  the counsel of his will. All things history is not a
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  series of random chaotic events. It is the purposeful outworking
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  of God's sovereign plan. So if we sum that up, and this
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  is often the sticking point for people, the place they push
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  back, does this doctrine of predestination override human
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  responsibility? The source is clear on this, and
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  so is Paul himself, especially in Romans 9.
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  Predestination does not override or negate human responsibility.
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  We are still responsible moral agents.
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  We make real choices that have real consequences.
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  So how do those two things fit together?
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  Paul doesn't fully explain the mechanics of how they fit.
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  He holds them in tension. We are responsible for our
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  choices, but the source of salvation is always God's
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  absolute sovereignty. We choose Him because He first
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  chose us and enabled us to choose.
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  If you get that order wrong, you lose the gospel of grace and you
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  end up with a salvation based on human merit or ability.
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  It's a lot to digest, but it is the solid ground we stand on.
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  So if that is who God is, we need to talk about who Jesus is.
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  Let's move to Christology. All emphasizes both His humanity
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  and His deity. And he holds them in perfect,
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  beautiful tension. On the one hand, you have
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  history of humanity. Galatians 4.4 born of a woman
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  born under the law. He had to be one of us.
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  He had to be. Romans 1.3 says he was a
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  descendant of David according to the flesh.
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  This was necessary for him to be the Messiah of Israel.
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  If he isn't human, he cannot be our substitute.
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  He can't stand in our place. The source mentions the phrase
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  likeness of sinful flesh that comes from Romans 8.
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  That is such a critical phrase, and Paul is incredibly precise
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  with his language here. He doesn't just say likeness of
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  flesh because that would imply Jesus wasn't really human.
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  That would be the heresy of Dosatism, the idea that he was
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  just a ghost, OK. And he doesn't say in sinful
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  flesh, because Jesus had no sin nature, He was without sin.
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  So he says in the likeness of sinful flesh.
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  Yes, he had a real flesh, real humanity just like ours, but
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  without the corruption of sin that affects us.
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  He was truly human, but perfectly holy.
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  As Second Corinthians 5 says, He knew no sin by experience.
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  So then you have his true deity, and Paul is just as explicit
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  here. Colossians 2.9 is a favorite of
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  mine. It's one of the most powerful
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  Christological statements in the Bible, for in him dwells all the
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  fullness of the Godhead bodily. The Greek word for godhead there
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  is theotes. Theotes and it emphasizes the
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  divine essence or nature. He isn't just God like or
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  divinely inspired. He is absolute God in his very
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  being. And Paul says this fullness
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  dwells in him bodily. It's the clearest statement of
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  the incarnation. You can find the infinite God in
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  a finite human body, the God man.
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  There is another Greek word. The source highlights Morphe
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  from Philippians 2 existing in the form of God.
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  Morphe refers to the essential substance, the inherent
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  character of a thing. When Paul says Jesus existed in
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  the form of God, he means he possesses the very nature and
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  substance of God. He didn't become God at some
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  point, He eternally existed as God.
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  And he didn't cease to be God when he became a man.
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  No, He emptied Himself not of his deity, but of the
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  independent use of His divine attributes.
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  He voluntarily veiled His glory and lived as a man dependent on
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  the. Father, and we see this again in
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  Titus 2.13, our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
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  Grammatically, that is a slam dunk for the deity of Christ.
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  It's based on what's called the Granville Sharp rule in Greek
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  grammar. When you have one article, the
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  governing 2 nouns connected by and like the God and Savior, it
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  means both nouns refer to the same person.
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  You can't split that sentence to mean the great God and also our
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  Savior Jesus. So Paul is calling Jesus God
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  explicitly. Unambiguously, Jesus is himself,
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  our great God and our Savior. And then of course, there's the
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  title Lord. Curious, Paul uses it over 200
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  times for Jesus. And this wasn't just a term of
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  respect, like calling someone Sir.
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  Not at all. This is massive.
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  You have to remember that in the Septuagint, the Greek
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  translation of the Old Testament that Paul and the early church
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  used the sacred covenant name of God, Yahweh or Adonai was
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  translated as Curious Lord. So when Paul applies curious to
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  Jesus. He is doing something radical
• 18:47
  and to a 1st century Jew, potentially blasphemous.
• 18:51
  He is taking the covenant name of the God of Israel and
• 18:53
  applying it to the Carpenter from Nazareth.
• 18:55
  To bow the knee and confess Jesus as Lord is to acknowledge
• 18:58
  him as sovereign God. OK, so that leads us to the
• 19:00
  third person of the Trinity, pneumatology, the Holy Spirit.
• 19:03
  Sometimes the Spirit gets neglected in our theological
• 19:07
  discussions, but not by Paul. No, not at all.
• 19:09
  Paul gives us a very robust pneumatology.
• 19:12
  First and foremost, he establishes that the Spirit is a
• 19:14
  person, not an impersonal force like the Force in Star Wars.
• 19:18
  How does he do that? By ascribing personal attributes
• 19:21
  to him. You can't grieve a force like
• 19:23
  gravity or electricity. But Ephesians 4.30 says you can
• 19:27
  grieve the Holy Spirit. That implies emotion.
• 19:30
  First Corinthians 12 says the Spirit distributes spiritual
• 19:33
  gifts to each believer as he wills.
• 19:35
  That implies will or volition. And 1st Corinthians 2 says he
• 19:40
  searches the deep things of God, which implies intellect.
• 19:43
  So we have intellect, will, and emotion.
• 19:46
  That is the definition of personhood.
• 19:48
  And his work in the life of a believer is expensive.
• 19:51
  We have these terms regeneration, baptism,
• 19:53
  indwelling, ceiling filling. Let's distinguish between a few
• 19:56
  of these. What is the difference between
• 19:58
  the baptism of the Spirit and the filling of the Spirit?
• 20:01
  That is a crucial distinction, and a lot of confusion exists
• 20:03
  around it. The baptism of the Spirit,
• 20:06
  according to First Corinthians 12.13, is the act by which the
• 20:09
  Spirit places the believer into the body of Christ at the moment
• 20:13
  of salvation. It happens once.
• 20:14
  Once at salvation, it's positional.
• 20:17
  Every single believer has been baptized by the Spirit into the
• 20:20
  body, For by 1 Spirit are we all baptized into one body.
• 20:24
  It unites us to Christ and to each other.
• 20:26
  So it is not a second blessing experience that only some super
• 20:30
  Christians get. Correct, according to Paul, it's
• 20:32
  a universal experience for all Christians at conversion.
• 20:35
  Similarly, the indwelling of the Spirit is also permanent from
• 20:38
  salvation onward. Romans 8.9 is incredibly blunt.
• 20:42
  If anyone does not have the spirit of Christ, he does not
• 20:45
  belong to him. So the mark of a true believer
• 20:47
  is the residence of the Holy Spirit.
• 20:49
  It is the defining mark and sealing is related to that.
• 20:52
  What's the injury there? In the ancient world, a king
• 20:55
  would put his seal, his signet, ring in wax on a document or a
• 20:58
  shipment of goods. It meant two things.
• 21:01
  This belongs to me and this is authentic and under my
• 21:04
  protection. So the Spirit is God's mark of
• 21:07
  ownership on us. And our security, it's the down
• 21:10
  payment, the guarantee of our final redemption.
• 21:13
  So if baptism, indwelling and ceiling are all permanent one
• 21:17
  time events at salvation, how does filling differ?
• 21:20
  Filling is conditional and it's repeatable.
• 21:23
  In Ephesians 5.18 Paul gives a command be filled with the
• 21:28
  Spirit. The grammar in the Greek implies
• 21:31
  A continuous action be being filled.
• 21:34
  It's an ongoing state. It is, and this refers to
• 21:37
  control. Paul contrasts it with being
• 21:39
  drunk with wine. When you were drunk, you are
• 21:41
  under the control of the alcohol.
• 21:43
  When you are filled with the Spirit, you are walking under
• 21:45
  the control and influence of the Spirit.
• 21:47
  You can be indwelled by the Spirit but not currently filled
• 21:50
  or controlled by Him because of unconfessed sin in your life.
• 21:54
  Which brings us, unfortunately, to the bad news Hamartiology,
• 21:58
  the doctrine of sin. Paul has a very specific and
• 22:01
  bleak vocabulary for ruin. He does.
• 22:03
  He uses multiple words because sin is multifaceted.
• 22:06
  It's not a simple thing. The most common word he uses is
• 22:09
  hamartia. Which means missing the mark.
• 22:11
  Right. Imagine an Archer shooting at a
• 22:14
  target and failing to hit the bullseye.
• 22:16
  The target is the glory of God, His perfect standard, and Romans
• 22:20
  3.23 says we all fall short. Of that, then, there is poor
• 22:23
  Abyssus. This means stepping across a
• 22:25
  line. It implies a known boundary.
• 22:28
  God drew a line in the sand with His Law, His commandments, and
• 22:32
  we have deliberately stepped over it.
• 22:35
  It emphasizes conscious deviation from the straight
• 22:37
  path. It's not just a mistake, it's a
• 22:39
  transgression. Yes, and then there is a Nomia.
• 22:41
  Lawlessness. This is active rebellion.
• 22:43
  It's not just making him a staying or crossing a line.
• 22:46
  It's an attitude that refuses to submit to God's authority at
• 22:49
  all. It is shaking your fist at God
• 22:51
  and declaring yourself autonomous.
• 22:53
  Paul describes the nature of sin in three very heavy ways, as a
• 22:57
  debt, as a taskmaster, and as a universal condition.
• 23:00
  Yes, it is a debt we cannot possibly pay.
• 23:02
  We owe God perfect obedience and we have failed from birth.
• 23:05
  The debt is infinite. It is also a Taskmaster.
• 23:08
  Because it enslaves. Paul says in Romans 6 that you
• 23:11
  are a slave to the one you obey. The unbeliever thinks they are
• 23:14
  free, but they are actually enslaved to their own sinful
• 23:17
  desires and to the power of sin itself.
• 23:20
  They are not free to not sin. And finally, it's universal.
• 23:24
  This is the hammer blow of Romans one through 3.
• 23:27
  Both Jews with the law and Gentiles without it are all
• 23:30
  under sin. There is none righteous.
• 23:32
  No, not one. The ground is perfectly level at
• 23:35
  the foot of the cross, because the pit of sin is equally deep
• 23:38
  for everyone. But this devastating diagnosis
• 23:41
  sets the stage for the glorious part.
• 23:43
  Imperiology, salvation by grace. This is where Paul shines.
• 23:47
  This is the heart of the gospel because the diagnosis is so bad,
• 23:50
  Dead in sin, enslaved, indebted under wrath.
• 23:53
  The cure must be radical. It cannot be self help or moral
• 23:56
  improvement. It must be a divine rescue
• 23:58
  operation. Let's look at the specific terms
• 24:01
  he uses to describe this rescue. First, forgiveness.
• 24:04
  The Greek word is karizumi. The root of that word is karis,
• 24:07
  which means grace. So charisma means to give
• 24:11
  explicitly as a favor to grant graciously.
• 24:14
  It's the idea of canceling a debt without any merit on the
• 24:18
  part of debtor. It's not just God saying it's
• 24:20
  OK, no big deal. It's God saying there is an
• 24:22
  infinite debt and I am graciously choosing to wipe it
• 24:24
  out completely. Then we have redemption, a
• 24:27
  palutrosis. The imagery here is powerful.
• 24:30
  It comes from the Roman slave market.
• 24:32
  You have a slave on the auction block.
• 24:34
  He has no rights, no freedom, no future.
• 24:36
  Someone or Redeemer steps in and pays the Lutron the redemption
• 24:40
  price to buy him out of the market.
• 24:42
  Not to own him as a slave, but to set him free.
• 24:44
  To set him free, Paul says that is what Christ did for us.
• 24:47
  The price was not silver or gold, but his own precious
• 24:50
  blood. He bought us out of the slave
• 24:52
  market of sin. We belong to Him now and His
• 24:55
  ownership is our freedom. Now here is a word that often
• 24:58
  gets debated but is absolutely vital for reformed theology
• 25:01
  propitiation. Yes, the Greek word is
• 25:04
  hilasterium and it relates to the mercy seat the of the Ark of
• 25:07
  the Covenant. In the Old Testament,
• 25:08
  propitiation means to appease or to satisfy wrath.
• 25:12
  This is different from a word like expiation.
• 25:14
  Very different. Expiation just means removing
• 25:17
  guilt covering sin. Propitiation is directed toward
• 25:21
  God. God in His Holiness is justly
• 25:23
  angry with sin. His justice demands a penalty.
• 25:27
  So Christ's death wasn't just about dealing with our sin.
• 25:30
  It was about satisfying the just demands of God the Father.
• 25:34
  Christ didn't just cover our sin.
• 25:36
  He absorbed the full measure of God's orig, His settled wrath
• 25:40
  that was due to us. He's satisfied divine justice
• 25:43
  completely. And that's why Paul can say in
• 25:45
  Romans that God is both just and the justifier.
• 25:48
  Precisely, if God just waved his hand and said I forgive you
• 25:51
  without a penalty being paid, he would not be just, He would be
• 25:54
  ignoring evil. But because the penalty was
• 25:57
  fully paid and His wrath was fully satisfied in the person of
• 26:00
  His Son, God can remain perfectly holy and just while
• 26:03
  declaring ungodly, deadly sinners to be righteous in His
• 26:06
  sight. But leads us to the final great
• 26:08
  word justification. A legal forensic declaration.
• 26:11
  This is the courtroom setting. The guilty Sinner stands before
• 26:14
  the judge. The judge slams the gavel and
• 26:16
  declares righteous, not innocent, because we aren't
• 26:19
  innocent, we are guilty. But declared righteous how?
• 26:22
  Because the perfect righteousness of Christ has been
• 26:25
  legally imputed or credited to our account, and our sin was
• 26:29
  imputed to His account on the cross.
• 26:31
  It's the great exchange. It's so important to understand
• 26:34
  that justification does not make you righteous internally.
• 26:37
  No, that is the process of sanctification.
• 26:40
  Justification is a one time declaration of your legal
• 26:44
  standing before God. You are declared righteous.
• 26:46
  And the instrument by which we receive this gift?
• 26:50
  Faith and faith alone, apart from works of the law.
• 26:53
  This is the thesis of Galatians and Romans.
• 26:56
  It is breathtaking when you put it all together.
• 26:58
  God predestines, calls, redeems, propitiates and justifies.
• 27:02
  It is a complete work of God from beginning to end.
• 27:05
  It is. It is monarchistic one worker.
• 27:07
  God saves sinners. So let's talk about the result
• 27:09
  of this salvation, the Church ecclesiology.
• 27:13
  Paul calls the church a mystery. And by mystery, he doesn't mean
• 27:16
  a puzzle to be solved like in a detective novel.
• 27:19
  In the New Testament, a mystery is a truth that was hitting in
• 27:21
  the past in the Old Testament but is now revealed in the New.
• 27:24
  And what was that truth? The Old Testament certainly
• 27:27
  spoke of Gentiles being blessed through Abraham's seed, but it
• 27:30
  didn't explicitly reveal that Jews and Gentiles would be
• 27:33
  united in one single body on equal footing as fellow heirs in
• 27:37
  Christ. That was the revolutionary
• 27:39
  mystery. And Paul distinguishes between
• 27:42
  the church as an Organism and as an organization.
• 27:44
  Right. The Organism is the universal
• 27:46
  body of Christ. It includes all true believers
• 27:49
  from Pentecost to the Rapture. The entrance is via Spirit
• 27:53
  baptism. It's living, organic, connected
• 27:56
  to the head, who is Jesus. And the organization?
• 27:58
  That's the local assembly, the church in Corinth, the church in
• 28:01
  Galatia, the church down the street from you, the visible
• 28:04
  local expression of the invisible universal body.
• 28:08
  And this organization has specific offices.
• 28:10
  Yes, Paul lists 2 primary ongoing offices.
• 28:13
  First Elders, Presbyteros or Overseers, Episcopos.
• 28:18
  And the source notes these terms are used interchangeably by
• 28:20
  Paul. They are they refer to the same
• 28:22
  office. Elders seems to denote the
• 28:24
  dignity and spiritual maturity of the man overseer or Bishop.
• 28:28
  Delays the function. Shepherding the flock, Ruling,
• 28:31
  teaching sound doctrine. And the second office is
• 28:34
  deacons. Deaconos.
• 28:36
  The word literally means servant.
• 28:38
  They're subordinate to the elders, but it's still an
• 28:40
  official, authoritative spiritual office.
• 28:44
  Their primary role is to handle the service and mercy ministry
• 28:47
  needs of the body so that the elders can focus on prayer and
• 28:50
  the ministry of the Word. The source material brings up a
• 28:53
  specific debate regarding deaconesses in First Timothy
• 28:56
  3.11. It does in the middle of the
• 28:59
  qualifications for deacons, Paul says.
• 29:01
  The women likewise must be. It's ambiguous.
• 29:04
  The Greek could refer to the wives of the deacons, who
• 29:07
  obviously play a key role in assisting their husbands, or it
• 29:11
  could refer to a separate class of female servants or
• 29:13
  deaconesses, like Phoebe mentioned in Romans 16.
• 29:16
  The Source leaves that open-ended, acknowledging the
• 29:19
  difficulty of the Greek and the different interpretations held
• 29:22
  by good scholars. What about the ordinances,
• 29:25
  baptism and the Lord's Supper? Interestingly, Paul mentions
• 29:28
  baptism very rarely compared to the Gospels or the book of Acts.
• 29:31
  He even says in First Corinthians one that he's
• 29:34
  thankful he only baptized a few people because Christ sent him
• 29:37
  not to baptize but to preach the gospel.
• 29:40
  He's not minimizing baptism's value, is he?
• 29:42
  No, not its value as the sign and seal of the covenant, but he
• 29:47
  is fiercely protecting the gospel against any idea that the
• 29:51
  physical ritual itself saves you.
• 29:53
  The focus is always on the gospel that the sign points to.
• 29:56
  But he gives us our clearest and most detailed instruction on the
• 29:59
  Lord's Supper. He does.
• 30:00
  In First Corinthians 11 he says he received it by direct
• 30:04
  revelation from the Lord. He establishes that it is a
• 30:07
  memorial. Do this in remembrance of me.
• 30:10
  But he also issues a very stern warning.
• 30:12
  To partake in an unworthy manner brings judgment on yourself.
• 30:16
  What does unworthy manner mean in that context?
• 30:19
  It's not about being sinlessly perfect, is it?
• 30:21
  No or none of us could ever take it.
• 30:23
  The context in Corinth was flagrant division.
• 30:26
  The rich members were arriving early, having a feast and even
• 30:29
  getting drunk, while the poor members who arrived later went
• 30:31
  hungry. They were despising the Church
• 30:34
  of. God through disrupting the
• 30:35
  fellowship. Profoundly so.
• 30:37
  Eating unworthily meant treating the Body of Christ, the actual
• 30:41
  people of the Church, with contempt while you are
• 30:44
  supposedly celebrating the unity symbolized by the emblems of the
• 30:48
  Body of Christ. It showed they didn't understand
• 30:50
  the very gospel they were acting.
• 30:51
  Finally, we have to look at the end of the story, Paul's
• 30:54
  eschatology, his doctrine of last things.
• 30:58
  And again, Paul gives us details found nowhere else in Scripture
• 31:02
  regarding the church's future. He introduces the doctrine of
• 31:04
  the rapture in First Thessalonians 4.
• 31:07
  The dead in Christ will rise first, then the living will be
• 31:10
  transformed and caught up together to meet the Lord in the
• 31:13
  air. And after that, for believers,
• 31:15
  comes the Bema seat. The judgement seat of Christ.
• 31:18
  This is so crucial for believers to understand.
• 31:20
  This is not a judgement for salvation that was settled at
• 31:22
  the cross once and for all. This is a judgement for rewards.
• 31:26
  So it's about our service, not our salvation.
• 31:28
  Exactly. Paul uses the image of our
• 31:31
  life's work being tested by fire.
• 31:33
  If you build with gold, silver, precious stones, works done for
• 31:37
  God's glory, you receive a reward, a crown.
• 31:40
  If you built with wood, hay, straw, works done in the flesh
• 31:43
  for selfish ambition with wrong motives, they are burned up.
• 31:46
  You suffer the loss of reward, but you yourself are saved, but
• 31:49
  as through fire. What about Israel's future?
• 31:52
  Has God rejected his people? Paul asks that exact question in
• 31:56
  Romans 11, and he answers with his strongest possible negative.
• 32:00
  By no means. He points himself as proof.
• 32:02
  A saved Jew from the tribe of Benjamin.
• 32:04
  He speaks of a believing remnant throughout history.
• 32:07
  But he also speaks of a future restoration.
• 32:09
  Yes, he says, a partial hardening of blindness has come
• 32:12
  upon Israel, but it's temporary, lasting only until the fullness
• 32:15
  of the Gentiles has come in. After that, he makes a stunning
• 32:17
  prophecy. And so all Israel will be saved
• 32:20
  at the return of the Deliverer from Zion, Jesus Christ.
• 32:24
  And regarding the world's future, the Day of Wrath.
• 32:27
  Yes, the source highlights Paul's teaching on the man of
• 32:30
  lawlessness, the Antichrist and Two Thessalonians.
• 32:33
  He says this figure is currently being restrained.
• 32:35
  And that restrainer is likely the Holy Spirit working through
• 32:38
  the Church. That's the most common
• 32:39
  interpretation. But when that restraint is
• 32:41
  removed, the man of lawlessness will be revealed, will exalt
• 32:45
  himself in the temple as God, and will deceive many.
• 32:48
  But his end is certain. Christ's second Advent destroys
• 32:52
  him with the breath of his mouth.
• 32:53
  It's a grand arc from the depths of universal human sin, which is
• 32:57
  damning, to the heights of God's sovereign grace and salvation,
• 33:01
  all leading to a guaranteed and glorious future for His people.
• 33:05
  It really is. When you step back and look at
• 33:06
  Paul's theology as a whole, you see a God who is in complete
• 33:11
  sovereign control of history from beginning to end.
• 33:14
  He is not a frustrated deity wringing his hands and hoping
• 33:17
  people will choose him. He is the author and the
• 33:19
  finisher of our faith. Faith and of all of history.
• 33:22
  We have covered a massive amount of ground today for those of you
• 33:24
  who want to dig deeper, the source The Moody Handbook
• 33:28
  recommends a few classic works. The Origin of Paul's Religion by
• 33:31
  Jay Gresham American is 1. A brilliant work.
• 33:34
  Foundational. And also Paul an outline of his
• 33:37
  theology by Herman Ritterbose. Also excellent.
• 33:40
  Those are giants in the field of Pauline studies.
• 33:43
  So here's a provocative thought to leave you with as we close We
• 33:47
  started with Paul the Pharisee, the man who hated grace, who was
• 33:51
  trying to earn his way to heaven by his own zealous obedience to
• 33:55
  the law. God took that man and made him
• 33:58
  the primary theologian of salvation by grace alone.
• 34:01
  He used a legalist to explain freedom.
• 34:04
  The irony is profound. It is so if God's sovereignty
• 34:07
  could take a Pharisee of Pharisees and use him to pen the
• 34:11
  book of Romans, What does that imply about the scope of God's
• 34:14
  calling today? Who is truly beyond his reach?
• 34:17
  And what seemingly contradictory parts of your own story, your
• 34:20
  own background, might he be planning to use for his glory?
• 34:23
  That is a question worth meditating on this week.
• 34:26
  Thank you for joining us on Reform Thinking.
• 34:28
  Until next time, keep thinking.