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How to Read Romans: Purpose, Argument, and Scope | James Hastings et al. · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to Reform Thinking. I am so glad you've decided to
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  pull up a chair and join us again.
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  We are here to do what we love best, which is cracking open the
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  archives, dusting off some serious heavy hitting
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  scholarship, and seeing how it helps us understand the bedrock
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  of our faith. It's a pleasure to be back, and
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  frankly, the text we have in front of us today is, well, it
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  is a mountain. We're looking at a classic entry
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  from A Dictionary of the Bible by James Hastings, specifically
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  the article on the Epistle to the Romans written by A
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  Robertson. Now I know what you might be
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  thinking. A dictionary entry from the turn
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  of the 20th century. That sounds about as exciting.
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  Yeah. This is Hastings.
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  This is the gold standard of biblical scholarship from that
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  era. And the topic It's Romans.
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  The Cathedral of the Christian Faith.
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  Some have called it that. That's it.
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  And just to set the stage for everyone listening, because we
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  always want to be transparent about where we're coming from,
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  we're approaching this as we always do.
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  We're two Protestant Christians. We hold to the Westminster
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  Confession of Faith. We love systematic theology.
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  We believe Scripture is the final authority.
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  So when we look at a historical source like this, we're not just
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  looking for dry facts. We're looking for how it
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  illuminates the doctrines of grace.
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  Right. We're not doing history for
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  history's sake. We want to understand what the
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  Holy Spirit was saying through the apostle Paul.
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  And this particular article by Robertson is fantastic because
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  it treats Romans not just as a letter, but as a mature, settled
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  expansion of Paul's theology. It's the right fruit, as he
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  calls it. I love that phrase and Robertson
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  makes a pretty bold claim right out of the gate regarding the
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  authorship. He basically says this is the
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  most Paul Lane of all the writings that bear the apostles
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  name. That is the consensus, and it's
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  remarkable when you think about it.
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  You know some books of the New Testament, You look at Ephesians
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  or the Pastorals. You have critics constantly
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  arguing about authorship or dating.
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  Did. Paul write this.
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  Did a disciple write it? All that stuff.
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  All of that, yeah. But with Ramans, the voice is so
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  distinct, the argument is so intellectually cohesive, that
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  even the most skeptical, you know, German critics of the 19th
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  century, had to admit this is Paul.
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  There's no one else this could be.
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  And it was recognized immediately by the early church
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  too, was it not? It was instantly you see traces
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  of Romans in the very first generation of church writings.
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  You've got Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Polycar.
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  They all knew this letter. It was circulating and being
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  quoted before the ink was barely dry.
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  Another New Testament book. So it had an immediate impact.
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  Huge impact. Even the heretics knew it.
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  Marcion the great arch heretic of the 2nd century.
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  He had to include it in his collection of authoritative
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  books. Though, as we'll get to later,
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  Marcion took a pair of scissors to it.
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  He did some significant editing, to put it mildly, yes, but the
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  point stands. The provenance of this letter is
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  rock solid, but Robertson makes a fascinating distinction about
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  the tone of the letter compared to Paul's other writings.
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  He compares it to Galatians. Yes, I loved this part, he says.
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  Galatians was written out white heat, but Romans is the mature
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  expansion. Let's unpack that a little.
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  It's a really helpful comparison for anyone who's read both.
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  If you read Galatians, you can feel the fire.
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  Paul is angry. He is almost shouting from the
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  page. Yeah, you can hear his voice
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  cracking. You can.
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  He is fighting for the very soul of the gospel against legalism,
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  against the circumcision party. It's sharp, it's fast, it's
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  aggressive. He calls them accursed.
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  Romans covers the same theological ground,
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  righteousness by faith, but it does so with a sense of calm.
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  It's written at leisure. As the source says, it's the
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  settled, definitive peace treaty on how a man is made right with
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  God. I love that image.
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  Galatians is the battlefield report scribbled in the middle
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  of a firefight. Romans is the peace treaty that
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  explains why the war was won and what the new constitution of the
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  Kingdom looks like. That's a great way to put it.
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  But to really understand this document, we need to place
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  ourselves in the timeline. Where was Paul when he sat down
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  to dictate this masterpiece? OK, so to understand Romans you
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  have to look at what scholars call the aging period of Paul's
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  ministry. This is roughly Acts chapters 18
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  through 21. Paul's been planting churches in
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  these major Greek cultural centers.
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  Ephesus, Philip. Thessalonica.
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  The big hubs of the Roman world. Exactly.
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  And at the moment he's writing Romans.
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  He is in Corinth. The city of Corinth, a place
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  known for wealth, commerce, and, well, let's say moral
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  flexibility. A very diplomatic way to put it.
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  Yes, Corinth was a rough port town, but Paul is there, likely
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  in the winter, and Robertson points out he is staying with a
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  man named Gaius. Gaius, who is mentioned in First
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  Corinthians. I thank God I baptize none of
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  you except Crispus and Gaius. So Paul's a guest in his home.
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  Precisely. And the timing here is critical.
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  He's about to sail for Syria, but he has a specific mission in
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  mind. Before he turns his eyes toward
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  Rome, he's carrying a collection of alms.
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  Right, the money. Money collected from the
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  churches in Macedonia and Akaya, these Gentile churches, and he's
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  taking it to the poor Saints in Jerusalem.
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  That's such a human detail that we often gloss over.
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  Here is the great theologian, the man whose mind is wrapping
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  around the concepts of predestination and
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  justification. The deepest theology imaginable.
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  But he's also worried about logistics.
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  He is carrying a bag of money to help the poor in Jerusalem.
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  It's a very practical act of love and unity.
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  It shows his heart. He was not an ivory tower
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  academic. He was a pastor.
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  He was trying to bind the Gentile and Jewish wings of the
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  church together, but he knows that after Jerusalem, his
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  strategic eyes are set on the West.
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  He wants to go to Rome and then eventually to Spain.
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  The edge of the known world at the time.
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  For them, yes. So this letter is sent ahead of
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  him. It's an ambassador.
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  And do you know who carried it? This is one of my favorite
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  details in the entire New Testament history.
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  Phoebe. Phoebe, A deaconess or servant.
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  The Word is the iconos of the church at century, which is the
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  eastern port of Corinth. Just stop and imagine that for a
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  moment. The single most significant
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  theological document in the history of the world.
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  The document that would convert Augustine.
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  That would spark the Reformation with Luther.
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  That would compel Wesley. Was carried in the folds of a
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  row by a woman named Phoebe, traveling by ship and road to
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  the capital of the empire. She was navigating a world of
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  shipwrecks, bandits and Roman guards.
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  It's just incredible. If she had dropped that scroll
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  or if the ship had gone down, we would be in a very different
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  place today. It's a witness to God's
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  Providence in preserving His Word.
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  Now let's talk about her destination, the church at Rome.
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  There's a lot of mythology, especially in certain church
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  traditions, about how that church started.
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  The big one being the Petro Pauline tradition, as the source
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  calls. It right the idea that Peter
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  founded the church in Rome. The Roman Catholic tradition has
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  often claimed that Peter was the Bishop of Rome for 25 years,
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  starting early in the reign of the Emperor Claudius.
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  That would be roughly 8041 to 54.
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  So a long established tenure. A very long one, but our source
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  Hastings is very clear on this. The historical facts simply do
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  not support it. It's a later tradition.
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  And Paul's own words in the letter seem to argue against it.
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  He says explicitly in Romans that he does not like to build
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  on another man's foundation. Yes, that's his rule.
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  He's a pioneer, a church planter.
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  So if Peter, the Prince of the apostles, the leader of the 12,
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  had been there for decades, teaching and preaching, Paul
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  probably would not have written this kind of foundational
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  doctrinal letter or plan this kind of visit.
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  It would be incredibly rude, actually.
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  It would it be like, hey, Peter, I know you've been here for 20
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  years, but let me Paul, explain the gospel to your people.
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  No, Paul would not do that. And then you look at the
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  greetings in chapter 16 A. Huge list of names a.
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  Huge list. Paul greets dozens of people,
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  men and women. Some he's worked with before,
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  some he only knows by reputation.
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  But he never mentions Peter. That would be a stunning, almost
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  insulting omission if Peter were the presiding Bishop of the
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  Church in Rome. It just doesn't add up.
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  So how did the church start? If it wasn't an apostle planting
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  a flag, who was it? The source puts it beautifully.
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  It was the steady, though obscure, circulation of everyday
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  believers. You have to remember Rome was
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  the center of the world. As the saying goes, all roads
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  LED there. Jews and proselytes were
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  constantly traveling back and forth for trade, for government
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  business, for family reasons. And some of them were probably
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  at Pentecost in Jerusalem, right in Acts 2.
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  Almost certainly Luke's account is very clear.
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  We know there were visitors from Rome present in the crowd in
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  Acts 2. They heard Peter preach, They
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  saw the fire. They believed and then they just
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  went back home. They didn't wait for a
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  missionary, they became the missionaries.
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  Exactly. They went back to their jobs as
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  merchants or artisans in the capital and started meeting in
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  homes and house churches. It was a grassroots movement.
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  And it started, you said, within the Jewish community there.
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  Completely. It had to There have been a
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  large Jewish community in Rome since the Maccabees way back in
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  the 2nd century BC. They were often unpopular Roman
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  satirist like Juvenile and Horus used to make fun of them for
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  their sabbaths and their weird food laws.
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  They were seen as strange and exclusive.
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  Very much so. But Despite that, they attracted
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  people. They attracted gentiles who were
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  looking for something more substantial than the chaotic,
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  often immoral Roman pantheon. They were drawn to the
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  monotheism and the morality of Judaism.
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  This brings us to a really interesting puzzle that the
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  source highlights regarding the audience of the letter.
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  This is key to understanding the whole book.
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  When you read Romans, Paul seems to be addressing Gentiles.
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  He says it outright. He explicitly calls them
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  Gentiles in chapter 1 and Chapter 11.
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  I am speaking to you Gentiles. But the arguments he uses are
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  incredibly Jewish. He assumes they know the law
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  intimately. He assumes they know the story
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  of Abraham, the concept of circumcision, the sacrificial
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  system. It's a paradox, isn't it?
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  If you're writing to Pagan Romans who just converted from
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  worshipping Jupiter yesterday, why would you spend 3 chapters
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  discussing the nuances of the Mosaic Law?
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  They'd be totally lost. They wouldn't have a clue what
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  you're talking about. It would be like trying to
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  explain quantum physics to someone who doesn't know basic
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  math. So what's the solution?
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  Who is he writing to? This mixed audience, The
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  solution lies in a specific group of people that were common
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  in that world, the God fearing proselytes.
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  These are the core of the Roman church.
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  These were Gentiles by birth, by ethnicity, but they had spent
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  years, maybe decades, sitting in the back of the synagogues.
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  Where they were interested. They were.
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  They hadn't necessarily gone all the way to full conversion,
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  which for men would have meant circumcision, But they attended
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  the services. They revered the God of Israel.
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  They knew the Septuagint, the Greek translation, the Old
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  Testament. They knew the prophecies.
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  They knew the stories. So they were culturally Jewish,
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  theologically literate, but ethnically Gentile.
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  That's a fascinating combination.
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  Robertson calls them Gentile in elements, the Jewish in ideas,
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  and that is the key that unlocks the whole letter.
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  It explains why Paul can jump right into a serious discussion
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  of Adam and Abraham and the Law and expect his readers to keep
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  up. He's not starting from scratch
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  with them. Not at all.
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  He's writing to people who have the software the Old Testament
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  installed in their minds, but who needed the update of the
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  gospel of Jesus Christ. That makes perfect sense and it
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  sets the stage for the purpose of the letter.
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  Why did he write it? You know he wanted to visit, but
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  why this massive theological treatise?
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  It's not just a hello I'm coming postcard.
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  No, it's much more. Well, you mentioned Spain
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  earlier. Paul was a strategist, a
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  brilliant 1. He understood the Roman Empire
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  was a vehicle, a tool for spreading the gospel, the roads,
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  the common language, the relative peace.
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  The Pex Romana. Yes, it was a perfect
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  infrastructure and he wanted to go to Spain, what he considered
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  the ends of the earth, but to launch a mission that far West,
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  he needed a base of operations. In his old base, Antioch in
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  Syria was too far away to be a supporting base for a mission to
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  Spain. Correct.
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  Logistically, it's a nightmare. He needed Rome to be his new
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  Antioch. He needed a church there to
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  support him, to fund him, to pray for him, and to send him on
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  his way. So this letter here is
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  essentially his introduction. It's his job application in a
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  way. He's saying, here is my gospel,
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  here's what I preach. I know there are rumors about
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  me, but this is the truth. Please accept me and then help
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  me go to Spain. That's it.
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  It's a letter of introduction. But because he hasn't been
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  there, and because there are no apostles there to vouch for him,
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  he feels the need to give them a comprehensive, systematic
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  breakdown of the message he is paving the way.
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  And in doing so, he gives us the structure of the book.
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  The source breaks it down into two main parts, which is a
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  classic way of looking at. It very classic.
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  You have the doctrinal part, chapters one through 11 and then
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  the practical part, chapters 12 through 16.
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  Doctrine first, then duty. And even that doctrinal part is
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  split in a very reformed, systematic way.
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  It is you have the theology of salvation in the 1st 8 chapters,
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  how an individual Sinner is saved and then you have the
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  theology of history, the big picture question, the problem of
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  Israel in chapters 9 through 11. OK, let's untack the theology of
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  redemption. This is the heavy lifting
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  chapters one through 5. And Paul does not start with the
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  good news, does he? He doesn't start with God, loves
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  you and has a wonderful plan for your life.
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  No, and this is classic Reformed theology too.
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  You cannot understand grace until you understand the need
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  for it. You can't appreciate the cure
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  until you realize you have a fatal disease.
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  Paul starts with a wrath of God. Chapter one, verse 18.
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  The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all
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  ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.
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  That is a scary opening. It is.
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  It's meant to be. And notice the scope.
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  It is a universal indictment. First he looks at the Gentiles.
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  Now the Jewish reader at the time would have expected this.
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  They would be nodding along. Yes, the pagans, Gentiles, they
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  are sinners. Of course, that's a given for
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  them. But Paul explains why they
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  didn't have the written law, the Torah.
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  So are they off the hook? Paul says no, they are without
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  excuse. Because they had creation, they
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  had conscience, they knew intuitively that there was a
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  God. His eternal power and divine
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  nature are clearly seen in the things that have been made.
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  But they suppress that truth. They exchange the glory of the
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  Immortal Guide for images of mortal man and birds and animals
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  and. Because they suppressed it.
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  God did something terrifying. Yes, the text uses this phrase
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  three times. He gave them over.
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  Paraduncan. Yes, it's a judicial term.
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  It means a handing over. It means God withdrew his
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  restraining grace. He let them have what they
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  wanted. You want to worship the creature
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  rather than the creator? Fine, go ahead.
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  And the result is a downward spiral into moral degradation,
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  sexual morality, social chaos, malice, envy, murder.
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  It destroys them from the inside out.
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  It's the ultimate judgement in a way, letting a Sinner have his
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  own way. But then, just when the Jewish
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  reader is nodding along saying yes, those pig and gentiles are
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  terrible, Paul pulls a bait and switch.
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  He spins the camera around in chapter 2.
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  It's a brilliant move, he says. Therefore you are inexcusable.
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  Oh, man, whoever you are who judge?
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  He turns to the Jew. He says, you have the law, you
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  have the oracles of God. You boast in the Torah, You're a
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  guy to the blind. But do you keep it?
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  And the answer, of course, is a resounding no no.
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  You who preach against stealing, do you steal?
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  You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit
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  adultery? And he argues that having the
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  law actually heightens their guilt.
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  Is worse to break a rule you know and claim to love than to
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  break a rule you were ignorant of.
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  So the law becomes a witness against them.
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  It does. So the result by the time we get
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  to chapter 3 is that every mouth is stopped.
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  The whole world is guilty before God, Jew, Gentile, it doesn't
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  matter. It is a total, comprehensive
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  moral failure of the human race. I think that phrase, every mouth
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  stopped is so striking. It's the silence of the
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  defendant in the courtroom who has no alibi, no excuse, nothing
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  left to say. And that is the dark black
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  velvet backdrop against which he is about to display the diamond
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  of the Gospel. This brings us to the central
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  theme of the entire epistle, the righteousness of God.
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  Now the source mentions there's a significant debate about this
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  phrase righteousness of God in Greek De Caius and I Theo.
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  Does it mean God's own personal attribute that he himself is
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  righteous, or does it mean a status that he gives to us a
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  righteousness from God? It's a.
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  Huge debate in Pauline's scholarship.
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  The source leans toward a correlation that it's both.
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  It argues it's God appearing as righteous and in that same act
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  making us righteous. But as Protestants, as people
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  holding to the Westminster standards, we need to be very
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  precise here about the mechanism.
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  We're talking about justification.
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  Yes, and the source defines it beautifully.
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  It says justification is a forensic act.
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  Now forensic is a courtroom term.
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  We hear it on crime shows and think of medical evidence, but
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  it just means legal. It's a legal declaration and the
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  source says it is the non imputation of sin.
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  Can we breakdown imputation for a second?
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  That's a big theological word that gets thrown around a lot,
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  but maybe isn't always understood.
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  Sure. Imputation basically means to
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  credit to someone's account to reckon.
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  It's an accounting term. So when we sin, we accrue a debt
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  in our spiritual account. When the source says sin is non
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  imputed, it means the judge looks at your record, sees the
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  massive debt of sin and decides not to count it against you.
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  He cancels the debt. So it's forgiveness.
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  It is forgiveness, but it goes further.
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  Justification is not just a negative, the removal of guilt.
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  It's not just God saying you're not guilty.
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  It's also the positive declaration you are righteous.
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  But how can God say we are righteous when we clearly are
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  not? I mean, I looked in the mirror
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  this morning. I'm not perfectly righteous.
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  And that is the miracle of the Gospel.
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  It is a change of our legal status, not a change of our
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  internal nature, at least not at first.
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  God declares us righteous because Christ's perfect
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  righteousness has been imputed or credited to our account.
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  So my sin was credited to his account on the cross, and his
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  righteousness is credited to my account.
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  The Great Exchange. And how do we access this new
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  status? Not by working for it.
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  Not by keeping the law. It is by faith.
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  Faith alone, as the reformers would say, Solafiti.
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  But Robertson, the author of our source, adds A crucial nuance
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  here. And it's so important, he says,
• 18:29
  faith is not a meritorious work. We have to be careful not to
• 18:32
  turn faith itself into a new work.
• 18:35
  It's not that God looks down and says, oh, wow, look how hard
• 18:37
  he's believing. That's a good deed.
• 18:38
  I will reward him for that effort of believing.
• 18:41
  Right, that would just be another form of earning
• 18:42
  salvation. My belief would be the thing
• 18:44
  that saves me. Precisely, Robertson says.
• 18:47
  Faith is just the empty hand that receives the gift.
• 18:51
  It is the instrument, not the cause.
• 18:53
  It is a trust in a person, Jesus Christ.
• 18:55
  It's looking away from ourselves and looking to Him.
• 18:58
  And this faith is the great leveller.
• 19:00
  That is the sociological key to the letter.
• 19:03
  If you have to work for salvation by keeping the law,
• 19:07
  then the person who has the law, the Jew, has a massive
• 19:10
  advantage. They have the rulebook.
• 19:12
  They have a head start. But if it's by faith.
• 19:14
  Then the Jew and the Gentile are on perfectly equal footing.
• 19:17
  There is no distinction. All has sinned and fall short of
• 19:20
  the glory of God, and all are justified freely by His grace
• 19:23
  through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
• 19:26
  Paul then moves to this massive comparison in chapter 5 to
• 19:29
  explain how this works on a cosmic historical scale.
• 19:33
  The two atoms. The first Adam and the second
• 19:35
  Adam, who is Christ. This is what we call federal
• 19:37
  headship. It sounds like a government
• 19:39
  program, but it's really important theology.
• 19:41
  It means representative headship.
• 19:44
  Adam was the representative for the entire human race in the
• 19:47
  Garden of Eden. When he acted, he acted for all
• 19:50
  of us. By his one act of disobedience,
• 19:53
  he bequeathed the heritage of sin and death to everyone who
• 19:57
  came after him. So we're all born into Adam's
• 19:59
  family, and the family inheritance is sin and death.
• 20:02
  Thanks a lot, Adam. It seems unfair to our modern
• 20:05
  individualistic years, but Paul uses it to set up the beautiful
• 20:09
  symmetry of the solution. If Adam, one man, can represent
• 20:13
  us for death and condemnation, then Christ, the second Adam,
• 20:16
  can represent us for life and justification.
• 20:19
  His one act of righteousness. His perfect life and sacrificial
• 20:22
  death. It's an act of power that
• 20:23
  supersedes the heritage of Adam. It brings a free gift of life.
• 20:27
  The source has an interesting take on the law in this section.
• 20:29
  It says the law came in as a secondary factor to aggravate
• 20:33
  the disease. That sounds counterintuitive.
• 20:35
  Why would God give a law that makes things worse?
• 20:38
  It's a brilliant insight. Think of a surgeon.
• 20:40
  Sometimes an infection is hidden deep in the tissue, yet to bring
• 20:43
  it to the surface you have to make the symptoms acute.
• 20:46
  Make the swelling and the pain obvious before the patient will
• 20:49
  admit they're sick and consent to the surgery.
• 20:50
  OK, that makes sense. The law was given to show us
• 20:53
  just how sick we really are. It stimulates sin.
• 20:57
  It takes our general sinful tendency and turns it into
• 21:00
  specific acts of transgression. It makes us realize I cannot do
• 21:03
  this. It reveals our complete
• 21:05
  inability so that we will finally despair of ourselves and
• 21:08
  desire the remedy which is Christ.
• 21:10
  So that covers the legal side of things, our justification.
• 21:14
  We are declared right in the courtroom of heaven.
• 21:16
  It's a done deal. But then Paul anticipates a very
• 21:19
  dangerous but logical question. If grace covers sin, and if
• 21:23
  where sin increased, grace increased all the more.
• 21:26
  Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?
• 21:29
  It's the natural objection. I hear it all the time today
• 21:31
  from people skeptical of the doctrine of grace.
• 21:34
  If I'm saved by free grace and I can't lose it, why not live like
• 21:37
  the devil? Why not party on Saturday and
• 21:39
  repent on Sunday? This moves us into Section 4 of
• 21:42
  the Source, The Theology of Christian Life, Chapter 6
• 21:45
  through 8. And Paul's answer is immediate,
• 21:47
  immediate and emphatic. Made genoito By no means.
• 21:51
  God forbid. It's a phrase of shock and
• 21:54
  horror. The very idea is impossible.
• 21:56
  Why is it impossible? Is it just a matter of
• 21:58
  gratitude? God was nice to me, so I should
• 22:00
  be nice back. It's much deeper than that.
• 22:02
  It's about our union with Christ.
• 22:04
  This is where the theology gets mystical and practical at the
• 22:07
  same time. Paul says in chapter 6 that we
• 22:09
  are dead to sin. When we were baptized into
• 22:12
  Christ, we were symbolically buried with him.
• 22:14
  We were baptized into his death. So we're not just forgiving
• 22:17
  criminals let out of jail. We are dead men walking.
• 22:20
  Or rather, resurrected men walking.
• 22:22
  The old self was executed. Right.
• 22:24
  We have a new ontology, a new state of being.
• 22:26
  The person who loves sin is dead and gone.
• 22:29
  We are no longer under the external compulsion of the law,
• 22:32
  trying to obey a list of rules from the outside by sheer
• 22:35
  willpower. We are now driven by an
• 22:38
  indwelling force, grace, which is the power of the Holy Spirit.
• 22:42
  And he uses that metaphor of slavery.
• 22:45
  Yes, we used to be slaves to sin.
• 22:47
  Sin was our master and we did what it told us to do.
• 22:50
  Now we've been set free from that master and it becomes
• 22:53
  slaves to righteousness or slaves to God.
• 22:55
  You cannot serve 2 masters. You have changed owners.
• 22:58
  A slave doesn't just freelance for his old cruel master on the
• 23:01
  weekends for fun. That's a great image.
• 23:03
  Then we get to Chapter 7, and I have to say this is one of the
• 23:06
  most debated, most psychologically intense chapters
• 23:08
  in the entire Bible. The man who cries out the good
• 23:11
  that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not that I
• 23:13
  do, wretched man that I am. Who is the this man?
• 23:16
  Is this Paul before he was a Christian?
• 23:18
  Is this some hypothetical person?
• 23:20
  Is this a normal Christian struggle?
• 23:22
  The source takes a very specific view here.
• 23:24
  Robertson argues that this is Paul's personal reflection.
• 23:28
  It's not just a rhetorical device.
• 23:30
  He sees it as a profound psychological analysis of what
• 23:34
  happens when the law meets the flesh in the life of a believer.
• 23:37
  So this is the struggle of a regenerate person, Christian.
• 23:40
  Most Reformed theologians, including those in the
• 23:42
  Westminster tradition, would say yes, there's the already not yet
• 23:46
  tension of the Christian life. We are saved, but we're not yet
• 23:49
  perfected. But Robertson points out
• 23:51
  something very interesting about the faculties of the soul.
• 23:54
  Here. He notes an Aristotelian
• 23:56
  connection in Paul's thinking. The phrase he uses is
• 23:59
  understanding alone moves nothing.
• 24:02
  Break that down. What does that mean?
• 24:03
  Chapter 7 shows us that the intellect, the mind, or what
• 24:06
  Paul calls the news can know God's will.
• 24:09
  It can look at the 10 commandments and say this is
• 24:11
  good. I delight in the law of God and
• 24:13
  my inner being. It can wish to do good.
• 24:15
  My mind wants to obey, but the mind cannot move.
• 24:18
  The flesh sarks. The flesh isn't just our
• 24:21
  physical body. It's our fallen human nature,
• 24:24
  the seat of passions and appetites.
• 24:26
  It has its own desires the mind wishes, the source says.
• 24:29
  But it cannot affect, it can't make it happen.
• 24:32
  That is such a relatable experience.
• 24:34
  I know I should not lose my temper.
• 24:36
  I want to be patient. My mind agrees with the concept
• 24:39
  of patience, but in the heat of the moment, the flesh takes
• 24:42
  over. That's Chapter 7 in a nutshell.
• 24:45
  The law is like a map. A map is good, a map is perfect.
• 24:48
  It tells you where to go. But a map cannot put gas in your
• 24:51
  car. Chapter 7 is the man sitting in
• 24:54
  a car with a perfect map on the passenger seat but an empty fuel
• 24:58
  tank, screaming in frustration at his own inability to move.
• 25:01
  Who will deliver me from this body of death?
• 25:03
  It's a cry of desperation. And that desperation leads to
• 25:06
  the glorious answer in chapter 8.
• 25:08
  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
• 25:11
  The solution is the Spirit. Life in the Spirit.
• 25:14
  This is the fuel for the car. Spot on.
• 25:16
  The Spirit of God supplies the vital energy that the law could
• 25:20
  never provide. The law commands from the
• 25:22
  outside, but the Spirit enables from the inside, and this moves
• 25:25
  us from the fearful obedience of slaves, who obey because they're
• 25:29
  afraid of the whip, to the loving obedience of sons.
• 25:32
  Adoption. Sonship.
• 25:33
  Exactly. Adoption.
• 25:35
  We have received the spirit of sonship, and by him we cry.
• 25:38
  ABBA, Father and Robertson calls the Spirit the firstfruits.
• 25:41
  It's a down payment, an installment.
• 25:44
  The glory we have now in the Spirit, the peace, the joy, the
• 25:46
  growing sanctification is just a tiny taste, a deposit of the
• 25:50
  massive weight of glory that is coming at the final
• 25:52
  resurrection. Now we have to pivot because the
• 25:55
  structure of the letter forces us to.
• 25:57
  We've had this mountaintop experience in chapter 8.
• 25:59
  Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
• 26:02
  It ends in this massive crescendo of assurance.
• 26:05
  But then Chapter 9 starts with a thud.
• 26:07
  Paul says I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my
• 26:10
  heart. He could wish himself a cursed
• 26:12
  and cut off from Christ for the sake of his people.
• 26:15
  Why the sudden jarring mood swing?
• 26:17
  Because of the problem of Israel, this is where he moves
• 26:19
  into the theology of history. Think about it from the
• 26:22
  perspective of his readers. Paul has just argued that the
• 26:24
  gospel is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies.
• 26:27
  It's the climax of Israel's story, but the people of the Old
• 26:32
  Testament, the Jews, his own kinsmen, have largely rejected
• 26:35
  their Messiah. It's a theological crisis.
• 26:38
  It creates a huge question mark. If God's promises to his chosen
• 26:42
  people, Israel, seem to have failed, is he a covenant
• 26:45
  breaker? Can we, the Gentile believers,
• 26:47
  trust his promises to us? If he dropped Israel, maybe
• 26:51
  he'll drop us next. That is the worry.
• 26:53
  That's the tension he has to resolve.
• 26:55
  If God's word failed with Israel, then the Christian has
• 26:58
  no real security. Paul has to answer answer this,
• 27:00
  and his answer is nuanced and thick.
• 27:02
  First, he redefines Israel. He says in essence, not all who
• 27:05
  are descended from Israel are Israel.
• 27:07
  This is the critical distinction between physical descent and
• 27:09
  spiritual descent. Right.
• 27:11
  The true Israel was never just about having Abraham's DNA.
• 27:14
  It was always about the children of the promise, the children of
• 27:17
  faith. He points to the Old Testament
• 27:18
  itself for proof. Isaac, not Ishmael.
• 27:21
  Jacob, not Esau. God has always made distinctions
• 27:25
  within the physical family of Abraham.
• 27:27
  And this leads us right into the deep waters of predestination
• 27:30
  and sovereignty, the Potter and the clay.
• 27:32
  This is Romans 9. It is the text that makes
• 27:34
  Armenian sweat and Calvinists cheer.
• 27:37
  But we must be careful to read it.
• 27:38
  Rightly and humbly, Paul vindicates God's absolute
• 27:41
  freedom. He anticipates the objection.
• 27:44
  Why does God still find fault? For who can resist his will?
• 27:47
  And his answer isn't a philosophical proof, it's an
• 27:50
  appeal to authority. He uses the analogy of the
• 27:53
  Potter. But who are you, O man, to
• 27:55
  answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its
• 27:58
  molder? Why have you made me like this?
• 28:00
  It's fundamentally about authority.
• 28:02
  God, as the Creator has the right to do what he wants with
• 28:05
  his creation, whether for mercy or for wrath.
• 28:07
  But Robertson in the Source makes a very careful distinction
• 28:11
  here regarding what some people call double predestination, and
• 28:15
  I think this is helpful for our listeners who might struggle
• 28:18
  with the idea that God creates people just to send them to
• 28:20
  hell. Please unpack that, it's a heavy
• 28:23
  topic. The source notes that Paul
• 28:25
  speaks very clearly and actively about predestination to glory.
• 28:29
  In chapter 8 he says God predestined, called, justified
• 28:32
  and glorified his people. And here in Chapter 9 he talks
• 28:36
  about vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory.
• 28:40
  It's an active verb. God does the preparing.
• 28:43
  But when he speaks of the vessels of wrath, the phrasing
• 28:46
  changes. In the original Greek it says
• 28:48
  they were fitted for destruction or made ready.
• 28:51
  It's a passive construction. So it does not explicitly say
• 28:54
  God made them evil for the purpose of destroying them in
• 28:56
  the same active way He prepares the Saints for glory.
• 28:59
  Right. The text allows for the
• 29:01
  interpretation that they fit themselves for destruction
• 29:04
  through their own persistent sin and unbelief.
• 29:06
  God simply endures him with much patience before bringing just
• 29:09
  judgement. It's a subtle but massive
• 29:11
  theological distinction. We affirm God's sovereignty over
• 29:15
  all things, but we are careful not to make Him the author of
• 29:18
  men. And the source also notes that
• 29:20
  Paul is not trying to offer a systematized scheme here.
• 29:24
  He's not writing a textbook on determinism.
• 29:26
  He's answering an objector in a debate.
• 29:28
  He is humbling the human pride that dares to put God in the
• 29:31
  dock and judge him. Exactly.
• 29:34
  But the story of Israel is not over, is it?
• 29:36
  He doesn't end on that harsh note.
• 29:38
  No, that's the mystery he reveals in Chapter 11.
• 29:41
  Right. Paul argues that Israel's fall,
• 29:44
  the rejection of the Messiah, was strategic in God's plan.
• 29:47
  It opened the door. It allowed salvation to go to
• 29:49
  the Gentiles. It was a hardening in part.
• 29:51
  But he warns the Gentile believers in Rome, don't be
• 29:54
  arrogant. He uses the olive tree analogy.
• 29:56
  Yes, Israel is the cultivated olive tree.
• 30:00
  You Gentiles are wild, all branches who've been grafted in
• 30:04
  contrary to nature. And if God did not spear the
• 30:07
  natural branches, He will not spare you if you become proud
• 30:10
  and disobedient. And the hope, the final part of
• 30:13
  the mystery, is that all Israel shall be saved.
• 30:16
  Yes, that the rejection is partial and temporary, that
• 30:20
  eventually the fullness of the Gentiles will come in and that
• 30:23
  success will provoke Israel to jealousy and they will turn back
• 30:26
  and embrace their Messiah. It's a message of hope.
• 30:29
  So we have covered the heavy doctrine, justifications,
• 30:33
  sanctifications, sovereignty. We've covered history.
• 30:35
  Now we get to the So what part of the letter, The practical
• 30:38
  theology in chapters 12 through 16.
• 30:41
  Paul never leaves his theology in the clouds.
• 30:43
  It always lands on the ground of everyday life.
• 30:45
  He starts with the body. Present your bodies as a living
• 30:47
  sacrifice. And then immediately he says
• 30:50
  individualism is rejected. In the Roman world and certainly
• 30:53
  in our modern world, people focus on self actualization, on
• 30:55
  being true to myself. Paul says no, you are members of
• 30:58
  one another. Each has a different gift to
• 31:00
  serve the whole. Then he moves from the Church to
• 31:02
  politics. Chapter 13.
• 31:05
  The civil magistrate. Let every person be subject to
• 31:10
  the governing authorities, for there is no authority except
• 31:12
  from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.
• 31:17
  The magistrate is a minister of God, an avenger who carries out
• 31:21
  God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Context is absolutely key here.
• 31:25
  The source reminds us that Paul wrote this before Nero went mad
• 31:28
  and started using Christians as human torches.
• 31:30
  Yes, this is almost certainly written during the golden
• 31:32
  quinquenium of Nero's reign, the first five years when things
• 31:36
  were relatively stable and well governed under the influence of
• 31:39
  his advisers, Seneca and Burris. This reflects the Roman Paul
• 31:43
  Paul, the Roman citizen. He valued order.
• 31:45
  He saw the Empire, despite its deep idolatry, as a force that
• 31:49
  kept chaos at Bay. It really challenges us, doesn't
• 31:51
  it? Even when the government is
• 31:52
  Pagan, as long as it is fulfilling its basic function of
• 31:55
  punishing evil and rewarding good, it serves a divine
• 31:58
  function. We are to be good citizens.
• 32:00
  Pay your taxes. Show respect.
• 32:01
  But then he moves from our duty to the state to our duty within
• 32:06
  the church, specifically the internal conflict between the
• 32:10
  strong and the weak in chapter 14.
• 32:13
  This is fascinating social dynamics.
• 32:15
  This was likely about food and days, right?
• 32:17
  You had Jewish Christians who still felt in their conscience
• 32:20
  weird about eating pork or meat that might have been sacrificed
• 32:23
  to idols. And you had gentile Christians
• 32:25
  who were like an idol is nothing, bring on the bacon.
• 32:27
  That's the conflict in a nutshell.
• 32:29
  The strong were the ones with the correct theology.
• 32:32
  They realized that idols are nothing.
• 32:34
  A piece of meat is just protein. All foods are clean.
• 32:37
  They could eat whatever they wanted with a clear conscience.
• 32:40
  The weak had a conscience that was still bound by the old
• 32:42
  rules. For them, eating that meat felt
• 32:45
  like participating in idolatry. It felt like sin.
• 32:48
  And you would expect Paul, the great theologian of freedom, to
• 32:51
  say, hey, weak people, grow up, you're wrong.
• 32:54
  Get over your scruples. Read my theology section again.
• 32:57
  But he doesn't. It's amazing.
• 32:59
  His governing principle is unity over uniformity.
• 33:03
  He tells the strong to curb their liberty for the sake of
• 33:06
  the week. He says it is good not to eat
• 33:08
  meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your
• 33:11
  brother to stumble. That is so countercultural.
• 33:14
  Today. The mantra is I have my rights,
• 33:18
  don't infringe on my liberty. Paul says you have your rights,
• 33:21
  yes, but you have a higher obligation to love.
• 33:25
  The governing motive is not what does my liberty permit me to do,
• 33:29
  but what does love require me to do to help my brother.
• 33:33
  If eating meat in front of your brother makes him violate his
• 33:35
  conscience and stumble into what he thinks is sin, then for the
• 33:38
  sake of love, don't eat the meat.
• 33:40
  It's a profound ethic of self sacrifice for the good of the
• 33:43
  community. Finally, before we close out our
• 33:45
  deep dive, we have to touch on the textual criticism section of
• 33:48
  the source. I know this can get a bit
• 33:49
  technical, but it's important and it solves a bit of a mystery
• 33:51
  about the end of the book. Yes, it's a puzzle for textual
• 33:55
  scholars. In some ancient manuscripts, the
• 33:58
  letter seems to end at chapter 14, and the doxology, that great
• 34:02
  burst of praise at the very end. It floats around.
• 34:04
  Sometimes it's after chapter 14, sometimes it's after 16 where we
• 34:07
  have it, sometimes it's in both places.
• 34:09
  So why? Who is messing with the text?
• 34:11
  The finger points to our old friend Marcian again.
• 34:13
  Remember, he was a duelist. He believed the God of the Old
• 34:16
  Testament was a different evil creator God, and Jesus came from
• 34:20
  a good alien God, so he hated anything that seemed Jewish.
• 34:23
  And Romans chapters 15 and 16 are very Jewish in their focus.
• 34:27
  Very Chapter 15 quotes the Old Testament repeatedly to show
• 34:31
  that Christ's mission was to confirm the promises made to the
• 34:34
  Fathers of Israel. And chapter 16 is full of
• 34:36
  personal greetings to believers, many of whom have Jewish names.
• 34:40
  Marcian likely took a scissors and just cut the last two
• 34:42
  chapters off to make it a cleaner, more universal, less
• 34:45
  Jewish epistle. And once that shorter version
• 34:48
  was circulating, it created confusion for scribes down the
• 34:50
  line. Exactly.
• 34:52
  But there's also this other theory called the Ephesian
• 34:54
  theory. Some scholars, especially in the
• 34:57
  19th and 20th centuries, argued at chapter 16 with that long
• 35:01
  list of names, Prisca, Aquila, Epinetus, and so on, was
• 35:05
  actually a lost letter to the church at Ephesus.
• 35:08
  And their argument was Paul had never been to Rome, how could he
• 35:11
  possibly know 26 specific people there by name?
• 35:15
  It's a fair question on the surface, but our source,
• 35:18
  Robertson, rejects that theory, and I think he's absolutely
• 35:21
  right. He argues that Paul knew many
• 35:23
  people in Rome precisely because of the constant travel to the
• 35:26
  capital we talked about earlier. Everyone ended up in Rome
• 35:29
  eventually. He specifically mentions Prisca
• 35:31
  and Aquila, who had been expelled from Rome by Claudius,
• 35:34
  met Paul in Corinth, worked with him in Ephesus, and then had
• 35:37
  evidently moved back to Rome. And the names themselves match
• 35:40
  the archaeology, do they not? They do.
• 35:43
  This is the fascinating part. Inscriptional evidence,
• 35:45
  tombstones and household from that era in Rome.
• 35:49
  Names like Aristobulus and Narcissus who are mentioned in
• 35:52
  the greetings. In Romans 16, these were known
• 35:55
  prominent Roman households. The details fit the Roman
• 35:59
  context perfectly. So the text as we have it
• 36:01
  stands. It's a genuine letter to Rome,
• 36:04
  ending not with abstract doctrine, but with personal
• 36:06
  affection and greetings. So as we wrap this up, what's
• 36:09
  the big take away from this deep dive we've walked through?
• 36:12
  The provenance, the theology of salvation, the theology of
• 36:15
  history, the practical ethics. What's the sum of it all?
• 36:18
  I think the source nails it when it calls this epistle the right
• 36:21
  fruit of Paul's mission. It takes the local arguments of
• 36:24
  Galatians, which are about a specific crisis with the
• 36:26
  Judaizers, and universalizes them.
• 36:29
  It moves from Jewish categories to the fundamental categories of
• 36:32
  human nature itself, Adam and Christ, flesh and spirit, law
• 36:35
  and grace. So it's not just a DRY abstract
• 36:38
  to treat us. Far from it.
• 36:40
  It's a gospel of righteousness by faith.
• 36:43
  It's ultimate goal is to level human pride.
• 36:47
  It silences the boasting of the Jew in his law.
• 36:49
  It silences the boasting of the Gentile in his wisdom.
• 36:52
  It silences the moralist and the Pagan, so that the only thing
• 36:55
  left standing in the courtroom of God is the unmerited grace of
• 36:59
  God in Christ. And that is what we need to hear
• 37:02
  again and again, because we try to build our own little towers
• 37:04
  righteousness so often, don't we?
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  Every day and Romans just demolishes them.
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  One final thought for our listeners to chew on something
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  that builds on this. We often think of Romans as a
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  book about our individual salvation.
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  How can IA Sinner get right with God?
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  And it is that. But if you look at how it begins
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  and how it ends with Paul's desire to preach the gospel to
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  all the nations in his vision of all the nations rejoicing, you
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  realize it's actually a book about God's cosmic victory.
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  Say more about that. The question is not just am I
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  saved. The bigger question Paul is
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  answering is how does my personal salvation fit into
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  God's grand historical plan to reclaim the whole world for his
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  glory through Jesus Christ? Yeah, it's about the triumphs of
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  God over sin and death on a global scale.
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  That's a huge thought. It takes the focus off us and
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  our little story and puts it back on him and his big story.
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  Where it belongs. Soli Dale Gloria, To God alone
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  be the glory. Amen to that.
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  Thank you so much for guiding us through this.
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  This has been a true deep dive. It was my privilege.
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  And to our listeners, thank you for joining us, Unreformed
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  Thinking. Do yourself a favor this week,
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  go read Romans. Don't just read a verse here or
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  there. Read it slowly.
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  Read it all the way through from beginning to end.
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  It might just change your life. We'll see you next time.