The Righteousness of God – Review
It’s so important for us to know God’s Word. Somehow
people think that if we just know the doctrines of God’s Word and understand
the theology, then that’s what counts. Yes, that’s true but it’s the Word of
God we should know that’s so important. It’s not just an end in-and-of itself.
When you study the Bible and read through books of the Bible and you read
through the epistles or letters of Paul, we need to recognize that these are
given to us the way they’re given so we will take the time, make the time, and
create the time in our own lives and in our own busy schedules to put our
attention on God’s Word so we can internalize it. Then we can think through it.
As we internalize the Word and think through it, it
teaches us how to handle reality. It fortifies us and strengthens our soul. As
has been my custom for probably ten or twelve years now when I go through
various books, especially lengthy books in the Bible, I like to take the time
to stop and sort of pull back and give overviews of different sections at the
beginning and the end of the book. We need to learn to think our way through
these epistles. We spend a lot of time drilling down on lessons. This is
approximately lesson 152, no? It’s 163? I was only off by ten or so. It’s been
four years we’ve been in Romans. We’ve drilled down on a lot of important
things that are taught in Romans and a lot of doctrines that are taught in
Romans. It’s important for us to understand these things.
In doing so we often get away from just the basic understanding
of the epistle itself. We have to be reminded that in the original context when
Paul wrote this to the congregation in Rome, it was read at one sitting to the
congregation there. It really wouldn’t take that long. It might take about 30
minutes or so to read through the entire sixteen chapters of Romans. This was
done all at one time.
We come along and break it down and analyze it and
study the minute components in it so we can grasp it. We’re somewhat removed
from the original context, both in time, culture, and in background. We’ve
learned a lot about it through various nuances that are given in Romans and the
doctrines that are embedded there or just briefly summarized there in some
sentences. It’s important for us to go through that but when we’re done we need
to go back and have a flyover and think about the entirety of Romans. This
helps to put it into our souls. It’s not a matter of just getting it into our
notebooks but of getting it into our thinking so that when we face the
challenges of life, hardships, difficulties, and opposition, we need to be able
to pull up verses from the Scripture that we’ve memorized and that we’ve
internalized. Also we need to remember the principles that we’ve come to
understand that are in God’s Word so we need to constantly be thinking about
it.
When we look at Romans we need to remember that this
was written by the Apostle Paul. It was written on his third missionary journey
on his way from Corinth. He wrote three epistles on his third missionary
journey, 1 and 2 Corinthians while he was on his way to Corinth. Probably from
Corinth he wrote this epistle to the Romans church. He’s writing this for a
couple of different reasons. It’s very important for him to be writing it to
the Romans because Rome is the capital of the Empire. Everything came to Rome
and came out of Rome so Rome is the center of the government, the center of the
Empire, the center of the Roman universe.
The church at Rome was particularly significant. It
was a church that was comprised of both Jews and Gentiles and they were
experiencing some conflict, some problems within their congregation simply
because Jewish background believers in Jesus as the Messiah were coming to
Christianity having to deal with the fact that the Law was no longer significant
in the way it had been in the Torah, the time previous to the cross. They were
having to think in a new way in relationship to the Old Testament. Paul quotes
from the Old Testament quite a bit in this epistle.
The Gentiles have a pagan background and they have to
learn how to handle certain situations, especially in relation to the Jews, and
have to understand that the Jewish people are still a select, holy people of
God. Even though God is doing something different with them in this
dispensation, nevertheless God has a future plan for Israel. That’s covered in
Romans 9–11. It also plays an important role in understanding Romans,
chapters 14 and 15. This was important to lay out an extremely logical
thought-out case for Christianity.
He lays out the foundation for the gospel, which he
focuses on the terminology of justification by faith alone. That becomes a very
important topic. Today we’re very loose about how we talk about our
relationship to God and how a person gets eternal life. We often use that
simple phrase, salvation, but in the book of Romans we discovered that the term
salvation is a term that does not apply to that initial stage of justification.
It was a term that Paul used to refer to the spiritual life, which is being
saved from the power of sin, or to the culmination of all three phases of
salvation in terms of glorification and being delivered or saved from the
presence of sin. He never uses the SOZO or salvation word group in relation to justification.
That causes a lot of problems and a lot of misunderstandings.
Paul writes Romans in order to give a very
well-thought out logical development of the doctrines of salvation, in terms of
justification and the doctrine of the spiritual life or sanctification,
experiential sanctification, and of the impact that these doctrines and
important truths should have on our day-to-day life. He begins by emphasizing
the righteousness of God so my title for Romans is The Righteousness of God.
Romans is all about developing our understanding of God’s righteousness.
It’s interesting that in both Hebrew and in Greek the
words for righteousness and the words for justice are the same. In the Old
Testament it’s the word group tsedeka
and in the New Testament it’s from the word group DIKAOS and DIKAIOSUNE. DIKAOS has to do with justice and
righteousness. DIKAIOSUNE emphasizes the quality of righteousness.
The context is going to determine how you understand
these words. If it’s talking about God or the character of God or the attribute
of God, it usually emphasizes His righteousness. It is saying that He is the
absolute standard for the universe. When it’s talking about the expression of
that attribute towards His creation then we would translate it justice. Justice
is the application of God’s righteous standard to his creation. So these two
attributes that we put in the essence box of God, His righteousness and his
justice, are very closely related.
That forms the core teaching in Romans that Paul is
developing. He talks about the righteousness of God revealed. We see this in
the central verse for Romans, which is in that first chapter. You should have
your Bible open as we run through this chapter-by-chapter. There are some
verses that you should or have already underlined that are very significant
verses to be aware of. In the first chapter that would be Romans 1:16-17 where
Paul says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power
of God to salvation for everyone who believes.”
A couple of observations there. It is the power of God
unto a goal. That’s the way it’s expressed in the Greek. It indicates a goal
and that goal is salvation. It’s not phase one, justification. It’s talking
about the culmination of God’s plan, phase one, phase two, and phase three
which is glorification. I think this is what a lot of people miss.
The term gospel has two meanings. In a narrow sense of
the gospel, it answers what I must believe in order to secure an eternal
destiny in heaven. It’s the good news related to what we call justification.
Then there’s a broader sense, which is everything that flows from that. This
verse gives us that orientation at the beginning of that epistle. Paul is
talking about the power of God unto salvation and the whole book is talking
about salvation and the gospel. Only the first five chapters talk about how we
are justified. The remainder of the epistle talks about the results of that
salvation in terms of our spiritual life.
So Paul says, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of
Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes, for
the Jew first and also for the Greek.” He’s showing there’s still a priority to
the Jew first because they’re still God’s chosen people. This isn’t some
hangover he has from the previous dispensation. He understands that as long as
the temple was still standing in Jerusalem there was still a priority message
to the Jewish people. Whenever he went to a new place he always went to a
synagogue first. Those who believed in Jesus as Messiah would eventually leave
the synagogue or be asked to leave or be run out of the synagogue and they
would start a congregation.
In Romans 1:17 Paul says, “For in it…” What is the
“it” here? It is the righteousness of Christ. “For in it [the gospel] the
righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.” This is talking about
the faith that we have at justification to the faith that we have in our
spiritual life. We not only believe in Christ when faith is the key to
justification but we also walk by faith after salvation. So there is faith related
to justification and faith related to our ongoing spiritual walk. This
introduction helps us to understand that the focal point is going to be on
understanding the righteousness of God. Paul is going to be developing and
explaining the righteousness of God as it relates to God’s plan for mankind as
he goes through Romans. So the first part of Romans, the first eleven chapters,
is really focused on instruction about God’s righteousness.
We’re being taught about the righteousness of God as
it relates to mankind. Now in the second part of Romans there is a personal
application of that instruction to individual believers. The first part teaches
us a lot about God’s righteousness in these areas and in the last part as is
Paul’s style many times, he then makes some more specific applications related
to what he taught in the first part of the epistle. So we have an instruction
section in chapters 1–11 and then we have a more direct application
section in chapters 12–16. The first seventeen verses of chapter one comprise
the introduction where he brings into focus the righteousness of God and you
should underline Romans 1:16-17.
In the next section he talks about justification by
faith alone in Christ alone. This section is from Romans 1:18 down through
Romans 5:21. That covers the doctrine of justification by faith alone in Christ
alone. Now when he does this he sets it up by looking at the need for
justification from Romans 1:18 to Romans 3:20. This is when he talks about sin.
He’s not talking about sin like some modern evangelists do where they’re saying
you need to repent of your sin. Instead he’s pointing out that you need to
recognize that you’re a sinner, that you’re spiritually dead, and that you have
a need for righteousness.
There is a very specific reason and purpose for making
sure someone understands that they’re a sinner. If you don’t know you’re
drowning you’re not going to reach for the life preserver. It’s not that you’re
berating the person for the fact that he’s drowning which is what some evangelistic
approaches do. That’s just terrible. The issue at the gospel hearing is not
what sins someone has committed. They’re already paid for at the cross. But the
person has to understand that they’re spiritually dead and in desperate need of
justification. They are unrighteous.
In these chapters Paul laid out a legal case why three
distinct groups of human beings are under condemnation. The first group that he
addresses is covered in Romans 1:18 down through the end of the chapter where
he condemns the immoral man, the man who has rejected God, the one who has even
rejected the existence of God and is living in rank immorality. But immoral
unrighteousness is not the only problem. There’s also a problem with moral
unrighteousness. The moral person is the one who is morally righteous but in
terms of absolute righteousness he’s a failure.
That is the problem with the second man. This is
presented in Romans 2:1-16. He has a relative righteousness. He’s moral but
morality doesn’t get you anywhere with God. Just because you’re a moral person
doesn’t mean you are right with God. The Pharisees were extremely moral. They
were as obedient to the Mosaic Law as they could possibly be. People in the 1st
century were surprised when Jesus confronted the Pharisees on the basis of
their lack of righteousness. Everyone thought of them, from their perspective,
as moral people. They were teaching the Torah, the Law of God.
Where Paul goes with this, he shows that the immoral
man is under condemnation, and the moral man is under condemnation. This refers
primarily to Gentiles in Romans 2:1-16, and then in Romans 2:17, he shows that
the moral Jews, the religious Jews, the observant Jews of his day are also
under condemnation. This is what we worked through in terms of our study. They
are all under condemnation. Paul trots out the evidence to show they are all
guilty and they fail to come up to the standards of God.
When we look at those sections there are several
verses that should be underlined and in fact would not be difficult for you to
memorize. Romans 1:18–21 are some of the most significant verses in the
Scripture. “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness
and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” I want
you to note that there is a comma after men. A couple of us have had an
on-going debate about when and when not to use commas. I always get confused
over commas because I grew up in an era when there was a lot of shift going on
in how commas were taught. I was taught to use a lot of commas at one time in
junior high and by the time I was in college, I was taught not to use commas.
You can look in several stylebooks and they reflect these various debates that
go on. Depending on whether you’re following the Chicago Manual of Style or one
of the others, some will have more commas and some will have fewer commas.
It’s important sometimes to look at where the commas
are in Scripture because sometimes they reflect the translator’s theological
perception. What we have here in this phrase “the unrighteousness of men” and
then the next phrase which is a relative clause, “who suppress the truth in
unrighteousness”. The issue is whether this is a condemnation of God’s wrath
being revealed against the unrighteousness of men and whether that relative
clause describes all mankind. Is every single human being characterized as a
truth suppressor? Or is this related to a class of men who are truth
suppressors?
Now that’s an important theological distinction. High
Calvinism will say all men are truth suppressors and thus they are totally
unable to even exercise positive volition towards the general revelation of God
in the creation which is the focal point of Romans 1:20. “For since the
creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead so
that they are without excuse.” It’s very clear here that a fallen human being
can look at creation and can discern that there is a creator from general
revelation. He can then exercise positive volition at that point. It doesn’t
mean he’s going to be saved. It doesn’t mean that when he gets to gospel
hearing he’s going to exercise positive volition. When he gets to gospel
hearing, he may exercise negative volition. At some point he may recognize that
there is a God. There are others who at God-consciousness reject God and they
are truth suppressors. They are the ones described in these verses.
Then in Romans 1:26 it says, “God gave them up again…”
Then in Romans 1:28, “God gave them over…” You see that what God gives them up
to are the sins of sexual immorality and sexual perversion. So sexual
immorality and sexual perversion in a culture is not the cause of Divine
discipline on that culture. It is
divine discipline on that culture. So when we look at the rise of homosexual
perversion in our culture we see that is a sign of judgment on a culture that
has already rejected God and has already turned its back on God and no longer
wants to submit to the authority of God.
In this section we focus on the unrighteous immoral
pagan and then there’s a shift in chapter 2 to the moral person who, even
though he doesn’t have the Law of Moses, he is obedient to the same principles
which he has come to understand just from creation. Paul points out that even
these moral men are still hypocrites. In Romans 2:8 they are self-seeking and
they don’t obey the truth. They obey unrighteousness and to them will also come
indignation and wrath. That is divine judgment. In Romans 2:9, “Tribulation and
anguish on every soul of man who does evil to the Jew first and also to the
Greek. In Romans 2:12 it says, “For as many as have sinned without law will
also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law will be judged
by the law.” That would be a reference to the Jews.
By the time we get to Romans 2:17 Paul is focusing on
the Jewish community who have been relying upon the Law. He points out that as
much as the Jews are devoted to the Law they are still sinful. They have
focused on ritual as a source of righteousness. They’ve emphasized
circumcision. They believe that if they’re circumcised as descendants of
Abraham, then because of their relationship to the Abrahamic covenant, they
will automatically be saved. They emphasize being obedient to the Torah and
this is unique to Jews. Paul disabuses them of that notion in Romans 2:25, “For
circumcision is indeed profitable…” Ritual does have a reality if properly
understood. He says that ritual is profitable if you keep the law but if you’re
a breaker of the law, then circumcision might as well not be there. The point
he’s making is that ritual doesn’t really have any value one way or the other.
The real issue is whether you are obedient to the Law.
In Romans 2:26 he goes on, “Therefore, if an
uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his
uncircumcision be counted as circumcision?” In other words, does the ritual
really affect his righteousness? His conclusion then is that the real issue is
what’s going on internally in the individual’s relationship to God. In chapter
three he also develops the fact that not only have the Jews the recipients of
the Abrahamic covenant and the blessings but they’re the recipients of the
oracles of God and they have many blessings that God has given them. However,
that does not mean that they are automatically righteous. They are still
unrighteous and they will still come under condemnation.
This is where he drives in the conclusion of this
section in Romans 3:9–18 in a series of Old Testament quotes where he
points out that there’s none righteous. No, not one. He goes back to the psalms
in Psalm 14 and various other psalms to point out that no one is righteous. No
one measures up to the standard of God. No one is going to be justified simply
because of their relationship to the law and their observance of ritual.
This answers the next question, which is: If we’re all
unrighteous, if every person is born unrighteous and this is the doctrine of
total depravity that every person is born unrighteous, then what can be done?
This is not total inability. I want to point out the distinction there. In
Calvinism, total inability means that a person cannot even exercise positive
volition towards God. Everything is dependent upon God’s selective process in
their doctrine of election.
What are called modern Calvinists believe in total
depravity rather than total inability. Total depravity means that everyone is a
sinner and everyone has a sin nature. We are all fallen creatures, all under
condemnation. The sin nature is driven by lust patterns. At the very core of
the sin nature, we have our own arrogance. We’re self-absorbed and we’re
focused on just living our lives apart from God. We can produce relative
righteousness. We can be the moral person but ultimately we still have sin in
our lives, as Paul says in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God.”
We all also commit personal sins from our area of
weakness. This may be sins of the tongue, mental attitude sins, or overt sins
but we all commit personal sins. We have a trend to our sin nature. This is
important to understand. Some people have a trend toward asceticism. That means
they’re really moral. The Pharisees trended toward asceticism. The observant
Jews, the Hasidim, the Haridim in Israel we see them praying and discussing the
Torah all of the time. They’re meditating on the Torah all of the time. What
the Bible says is that we’re all sinners. Isaiah 53 says, “All we like sheep
have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way.” That’s everyone.
We’re all corrupted by sin. That’s what total depravity means. It doesn’t mean
we’re as depraved as we can be. It means that in the totality of our being,
every aspect of our person has been corrupted by sin so we are desperately in
need of salvation. If we’re all corrupted by sin then we can’t produce anything
of righteousness. We can only produce relative righteousness. If we’re relying
on that, that leads to moral degeneracy.
That was the problem with the Pharisees. There are
other people who trend in the opposite direction and they are licentious or
lascivious. They don’t really care about the Law of God. They’re always looking
at a way to circumvent it. This also has an impact in terms of how they think,
in terms of irrationalism and mysticism. A lot of that is what we see today.
When you reject standards for thought, you just go into irrationalism. That
dominates our culture, especially in post-modernism. This leads to a
recognition we have that we are desperately in need of righteousness.
This is what Paul develops starting in Romans 3:21
where he says, “Now the righteousness of God apart from the Law is revealed
being witnessed by the Law and the prophets.” God’s righteousness looks down on
our lack of righteousness and we’re under condemnation. There’s nothing we can
do to change our status as being spiritually dead and being unrighteous. God
made a provision for us in terms of salvation. When the righteous Son of God,
Jesus, the Messiah, was crucified on the cross; then we’re told in Isaiah 64:6
that “all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment.” God had to solve that
problem. He did so by making Christ to be our sin. He imputed our sin to Him on
the Cross so that what happened is that our sin is imputed to Christ on the
Cross and He is judged. Then when we trust in Christ as Savior, when we believe
God’s promise, then we are declared righteous.
This is the illustration Paul develops from the Old
Testament from Abraham in Romans 4. Notice he builds his whole theology out of
the Old Testament. Paul isn’t inventing Christianity. This is one of the
arguments you’ll hear in the Jewish community is that Jesus was not so bad but
Paul re-invented Christianity. They say that what Paul taught wasn’t what Jesus
taught. What Paul taught is exactly what Jesus taught. Jesus said “I am the
Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one can come to the Father except by Me.” Why?
Because He’s the only one who could pay the penalty for sin. This is exactly
what Paul is developing here. Just as Abraham believed God in the Old
Testament, the verse reminds us that Abraham had already in some time past
believed God and it was that faith in God that was accounted or imputed to him
for righteousness.
The rest of Romans 4 talks about that. When our sin is
imputed to Christ it is paid for. That’s true for every single human being. The
sin is paid for at the cross. Paul says in Colossians 2:14 that sin wipes out
that certificate of death against everyone. It’s wiped out at the Cross so that
sin is no longer the issue. The problem is that this poor human being is still
unrighteous and still spiritually dead so when he trusts in Christ as Savior at
that instant God the Father imputes Christ’s perfect righteousness to the
unbeliever. So from that point on God looks at the perfect righteousness of God
that person possesses. That’s the basis for our justification and we are
declared righteous.
That’s what Romans 3:20 to Romans 5:21 is emphasizing,
that we’re righteous; not because of something we’ve done but because of what
Christ did. At that instant we’re declared righteous and that is that wonderful
doctrine called justification by faith alone. Today we don’t hear people talk
about it a lot but this is the real issue, how to be just before God. How can an
unrighteous person be made righteous? This is how it takes place.
Only then can God bless us, and He blesses us not
because of what we’ve done but because we possess the righteousness of Christ.
He’s blessing Christ’s righteousness, not us. We’re still sinners. We still
have a sin nature. So the question then becomes what in the world are we going
to do about this nasty little sin nature? That’s the next section that gets
developed in Romans.
Romans 6 through 8 discusses how do we live this new
life that we’re given at the instant of justification. We had just a great time
going through Romans 6, 7, and 8. These three chapters are the key chapters, I
think, related to the spiritual life. How we understand this is foundational to
understanding the spiritual life. It’s a development and a refinement of what
Paul covers in Galatians. Galatians has six chapters. Romans has sixteen
chapters. Galatians, in many ways, is a microcosm of Romans. Galatians was
Paul’s first epistles. He’s dealing with the same issues there.
One of the great passages on justification is in
Galatians 2:16, “That a man is not justified by the works of the Law but by
faith in Christ.” Paul clearly states that we know that a man cannot be
justified by the works of the Law. Then in Galatians 3–5, Paul is
developing the foundation for the spiritual life. Starting in Galatians 5:16 he
then builds on the spiritual life. This really relates to understanding Romans
6–8 which is Paul’s best development.
It starts off talking about a very important doctrine
which we describe as the baptism by the Holy Spirit. When you and I trusted in
Christ, we were identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection.
I was six years old and though I didn’t know it at the time, I didn’t feel
anything, what happened is that I became free from the tyranny of the sin
nature. That had never happened before Christ. It didn’t happen to Noah. It
didn’t happen to Abraham, David, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Daniel, or Zechariah or
anyone in the Old Testament. It didn’t happen to John the Baptist. It didn’t
happen to any Old Testament saint. They were still under the tyranny of their
sin nature.
It wasn’t until the Day of Pentecost when God the Holy
Spirit came that the Baptism by the Holy Spirit occurred. That’s the act of
identifying the believer with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection.
Paul says to the Romans, “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized
[identified] into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” We were buried
with Him through baptism into His death that just as Christ was raised from the
dead by the glory of the Father, we also should walk in newness of life.” That
term “walk” is so important. That’s the Christian life. That’s your Christian life.
What Paul is saying here is personal. You can fill in
the blank; you can put your name there. When you’re reading your Bible sometime
and Paul uses these pronouns, it’s very helpful to substitute your name in
these places because that helps you see the application. So there, [put your
name in here} you were buried with Him through baptism into death just as
Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, even so [your name]
should also walk in newness of life. That’s the basis for this new life we have
in Jesus Christ.
Paul goes on to say that this is a reality even though
we weren’t aware we were experiencing it as such. Now we have to live to God.
For just as Christ died to sin once for all, the life He lives, He lives to
God. So, too, we should live to God. In verse 11 he says we are to “Reckon
ourselves [a present active imperative command] to be dead to sin but alive to
Jesus Christ.” What happens to most believers is that they run around every day
totally alive to their sin nature and dead to Christ. They let their sin nature
just run rampant and then they say, “I’ll just confess it later.”
That’s missing the whole point of the Christian life.
That’s missing the whole point of newness of life. The point of newness of life
is that we’re so immersed in doctrine and doctrine so wraps around our soul
that we understand this new identity that we have in Christ. We’re alive to Him
so we’re supposed to be dead to sin. Death has that idea of separation. That
doesn’t mean that if you sin you lose your salvation but it means that if you
sin you have to recover from it. That’s why we have 1 John 1:9.
In verse 14 Paul says that “Sin should not have
dominion over you because you’re not under the Law but under grace.” Sin is
going to destroy your life as a believer if you don’t get a handle on this
principle and live in a way that is separated from sin. So how do we do that?
In Romans 7 Paul really talks about himself and all the problems that he had,
that he couldn’t live the life he wanted to because he didn’t understand how to
do that. He tried to do it on his own effort. He tried to do it with
self-discipline or self-improvement or self-morality but it just didn’t work.
Finally he comes to Romans 8, which is where we have
our emphasis on the Holy Spirit. At the very beginning he says, “There is
therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” We aren’t under
condemnation any more. We don’t need to worry about sin in that sense. We only
worry about it because it takes us out of fellowship and we need to recover.
Paul goes on to talk about this contrast between the Spirit of life versus sin.
This is a struggle between the spirit and the flesh. He develops this and is
parallel to what Paul says in Galatians 5:17-18 which is that the Spirit wars
against the flesh and the flesh against the Spirit.
The issue is that we are to walk by means of the
Spirit because the Spirit of God dwells inside each and every believer. Christ
is in us but because of the Spirit we have life. So the Holy Spirit becomes the
foundation for understanding how to live the spiritual life. We have to learn
to walk by the Spirit. If you don’t learn to walk by the Spirit then you’re
just going to be a failure in the Christian life. We all have periods of time
like that where we fail to do it. But that’s the simple solution in the
Scriptures, to walk by the Spirit.
What’s entailed in that? Whenever we fail to walk, we
have to confess our sins but that’s not enough. That just gets us back in a
place where we can then walk by the Spirit. We need to be involved in studying
the Word of God so that it is internalized and is assimilated into our souls.
That’s what Paul’s going to talk about when we get to Romans 12:1-2, that we
need to not be conformed or pressed into the mold of the world but we need to
have our thinking transformed by the Word of God so we learn to handle
circumstances and situations by the Word of God and not by what our natural
responses would be because that comes by our sin nature.
This is what is developed by Paul in Romans 8. He
talks about the role of suffering. Everyone suffers. We live in a fallen world,
a fallen creation. Romans 8:32, “The whole creation groans and labors with
birth pangs together until now but we who have the first fruits of the Spirit,
even we ourselves groan.” We struggle because we live in this fallen world but
we have a hope. We were saved in this hope but hope that is seen is not hope
for why does one still hope for what he sees? In other words, we’re living in
light of eternity. So we hope for what we do not see and we wait for it with
endurance, and with perseverance. We have to hang in there through the trials
and difficulties because that’s what God is using to conform us to the image of
Christ.
Then as Paul closes out his discussion on the
spiritual life he comes to a crescendo with a pair of verses which you should
have underlined, Romans 8:38-39. You should also have them memorized. “For I am
persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers
or things present or things to come or any other created thing shall be able to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We have
eternal security but our salvation is not dependent on what we’ve done at all.
Anyone who thinks that they can lose their salvation by something they can do,
somewhere they’re thinking they got salvation by something they did. They’ve
got works somewhere hidden in the background and they don’t understand grace.
Grace means God the Father in His omniscience knew
every sin we would ever commit and He didn’t drop one when He imputed them all
to Christ on the Cross. And He was smart enough and wise enough and omniscient
enough to impute every sin to Christ so that every sin was paid for. There’s no
sin that Christ forgot about, no sin God the Father forgot about and there’s no
sin that we can commit that’s too great for the grace of God.
As soon as Paul would say this someone would say,
“Paul, you’re arguing that God is faithful but what about the Jews? It looks like
He’s pretty much washing His hands of the Jews.” That brings Paul to the next
section in Romans 9 where we’re going to look at the vindication of God’s
righteousness in relationship to Israel. So what have we done so far? Let’s
just think it through. We’ve got first of all that all people are under
condemnation. The righteousness of God condemned everyone. The immoral, the
moral, and the religious, all are under condemnation because we’re born with
this defect. We’re born sinners. We are totally depraved. There’s nothing we
can do to become righteous. No, not one. The only way we can have righteousness
is if God gives it to us and the way He gives it to us is in a way that
everyone can use which is through faith. Just as Abraham was justified by faith
alone, so we’re justified by faith alone. Because of that, we now have a new
life and in sanctification, because we’ve been justified and our sins paid for
and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we’re now free from the sin nature.
Just as we have to rely on God to solve the problem of
our unrighteousness at justification, we have to rely upon God the Holy Spirit
to deal with our experiential unrighteousness of this life. We have to walk by
the Spirit. That’s Romans 6, 7, and 8. The question that then comes up is what
about God’s faithfulness to Israel? This is developed in Romans 9, 10, and 11.
It indicates that God is not through with Israel and in one of the great
passage in Scriptures where Paul says in verse 4, “The Israelites, to whom
pertain the adoption, the glory, the giving of the Law, the service of God, and
the promises.” This is in the present tense. These things still belong to the
Jewish people. God still has a plan and a purpose.
Then he goes through the background for the calling of
God’s people, that God still has a purpose, and it’s not based on their works.
This is a call to corporate Israel, not on individual justification or
condemnation but on God’s calling on the Jewish people. This is why He says,
“For Jacob I loved and Esau I hated.” This is a sign that Jacob is in the line
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and they were corporately God’s chosen people, not
for an individual destiny for individual salvation. Their destiny was as
custodians of the Word of God and of the line of the Messiah.
God rejected Esau as part of this. He was not part of
the corporate plan. This is not talking about the individual justification
because I believe you can demonstrate that both Jacob and Esau were blessed by
God. Jacob got the greater blessing but Esau was blessed by God, too. Both
Jacob and Esau were believers. Esau was definitely a believer so it’s not
talking about their individual destiny in terms of heaven.
Then in this section Paul develops the issue that even
in the Old Testament God had a plan for the Gentiles, that they would be
blessed by the Jewish people and then he goes on to develop this in chapter 10.
He says that Israel would eventually be saved, that is delivered in Romans
10:1, “Brethren, my heart’s prayer and desire to God for Israel is that they
may be saved.” He’s very pro-Israel. This isn’t a foundation for anti-Semitism
but for the deliverance of Israel. That word saved isn’t talking about
justification. It’s talking about their ultimate future deliverance as a people
in terms of the plan God had for them as stated in the Old Testament. This is
how we must understand then the verses that are often used for gospel
presentations in a very wrong sense in Romans 10: 9-10, “If you confess with
your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him
from the dead, you will be saved.” Saved doesn’t mean justified here. It’s
deliverance.
There are two steps. One is believing with faith
and the other is calling out to God, confessing with your mouth and this has to
do with the deliverance of the Jewish people in the end times which is the
context of the quote that’s given in Romans 10:13, “Whoever calls on the name
of the Lord shall be delivered.” This is from Joel 2:28-32. This is at the end
of the Tribulation period. Then Paul goes on to develop this in Romans, chapter
11 to show that God has not permanently cast away His people, that is, in terms
of covenant position and blessing in verse one. It states that God is
eventually going to restore them to that position of blessing.
Again, it’s not talking about individual
justification. It’s talking about being restored to the position of blessing
with that illustration of the olive tree, the natural domestic olive tree where
some of the branches are cut off and removed from the place of blessing. The
wild olive branches, which are the Gentiles, are grafted in. It has to do with
their relationship to the Abrahamic covenant. It doesn’t have to do with
individual justification.
Now as Paul wraps up that particular passage, he’s
brought to a great crescendo and a great benediction in Romans 11:33-36,
focusing on the character of God. That God is wise. His knowledge is perfect
and His judgments are unsearchable. When it’s all said and done we’re going to
look back and see that God’s plan was perfect and righteous.
Then we come to the second part of the epistle where
we talk about personal application of righteousness. Then, again, it’s pretty
simple. In chapter 12 the focus is on how to exhibit experiential or personal
righteousness within the body of Christ. The foundational verses are verses 1
and 2 and these should be underlined in your Bible. “I beseech you therefore
brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies [your whole life,
everything] a living sacrifice to God.” We’ve forgotten a lot about what a
sacrifice means and next Thursday night we’re going to have a very significant
and special focus just on sacrifice. We’ve lost the understanding of what that
means and we’ll be showing a little film with that as well. I’ll be teaching on
sacrifice and hopefully we’ll walk out of here with a very different
understanding of what sacrifice is than what we probably have in our minds.
We’ve often sanitized this concept in modern civilization.
But our lives should be a living sacrifice, holy [set
apart to God] and acceptable to Him. How do we do this? By not being conformed
to the world but being transformed by the renewing of our mind. We have to
immerse ourselves in the Word of God. We have to immerse ourselves in the
teaching of the Word of God day-in-and-day-out, not just a little here and a
little there but as much as we can. And it’s never enough. That’s what positive
volition is. It’s not just showing up at church three times a week. It’s
immersing ourselves in the Word of God. What we learn in Bible class should be
a springboard to an even greater application of the Word of God. It should be
driving us to a greater level of study on each individual’s part.
As Paul develops this he talks about the use of
spiritual gifts in the body of Christ in the next few verses and he talks about
how this relates to each other, emphasizing the principle of “loving one
another” which is the hallmark for the believer. We should always respond no
matter what the antagonism may be. We always have to respond with love that can
come only from God. We are to love one another as Christ loved us.
This also impact others. It impacts us in terms of
government and how we relate to those in authority over us, and those who
surround us, at work, in our neighborhood, and in our family. There’s the
discourse on government authority in Romans 13. Authority is so important to
understand. That’s what the original sin was in the Fall of Satan. He violated
God’s authority. He rejected God’s authority and so this is an issue.
Even when you think the person in authority is
unworthy, none of us under that person have the right to make that judgment. We
are to follow God’s command that every soul is to be subject to governing
authorities because there’s “no authority except from God and the authorities
that exist are appointed by God.” We went through all of those details there
related to the importance of the individual believer being a good citizen and
being obedient to the law of the land and the governing authorities.
This also means we’re to love one another, including
others within the state in Romans 13:8-10, “Love does no harm to a neighbor,
therefore, love is the fulfillment of the Law.” Paul wraps this up by talking
about the fact that we are to put on the character of the Lord Jesus Christ.
“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh.” See
this goes back to Romans 6. We’re to reckon ourselves to be dead to sin. We’re
not to make any provision to give the sin nature any opportunity to fulfill its
lusts.
Then in the last two chapters of the epistles he deals
with the application of righteousness and love to the believer who is weak in
the faith. He doesn’t understand issues related to food and drink. He thinks
certain taboos apply and this is probably dealing with Jewish background
believers who haven’t figured out how to deal with the Law of Kashrut, the law
of unclean food so there was an attitude of bickering within the body at Rome.
Paul is telling them not to make an issue out of it because there’s nothing
particularly significant about meat or drink but it’s important not to create a
situation which causes another believer to stumble.
I pointed out that there are a lot of carnal believers
out there who are legalistic believers. They’re not stumbling because in order
to stumble you have to be moving forward. This is dealing with people who have
legitimate confusion over the issue and need to be helped to think through the
issues Biblically. While they’re going through that process don’t create
further confusion for them. Paul goes on to talk about our attitude toward
these weak believers and then he wraps up with Romans 15:14, going down through
the end of the epistle.
He again returns to some of the main themes related to
the gospel, related to the fact we are to ministering the gospel to others as
Paul says he’s a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the
gospel of God, that the offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable to God,
sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Again it’s emphasizing our priestly role as
church age believers. He wraps things together in the midst of giving some
reports about his plans to shift his base of operations to Rome so that he can
move into areas like Spain and Illyricum which is north and east of Italy and
across the Adriatic. This is where he’s going. Then he gives various reports
back to people he’s known who were now located in the church in Rome.
So what’s the main idea? The main idea of Romans is
the righteousness of God revealed. That God’s righteousness is the issue in
history and we get the great opportunity by grace to participate in that, first
by expressing faith alone in Christ alone and receiving the imputation of
Christ’s righteousness and then walking by the Spirit so we can have the
righteousness of God develop in us as the fruit of the Spirit so that through
our experiential righteousness we mirror the character of Christ to the world
around us. We’re not going to be conformed to the world around us but we are
going to be distinctive in how we live our lives, demonstrating the character,
the grace, and the love of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That wraps up our study of Romans. Due to the fact
that we’ve got only two weeks and on December 25th there won’t be
class and on January 1st I’m going to be in Kiev. We’re going to
have a couple of great speakers while I’m gone covering Bible class, finishing
up the DM2 material on the Life of Christ. Remember we went through Part 1 back
in September. They didn’t finish everything. There’s a whole second part that
will be finished by great speakers within the congregation that are going to
take us through four more lessons there while I’m gone to Kiev. Then we’ll
start with either 1 Samuel or 1 Peter. I haven’t decided yet. Hopefully we’ll
finish Dispensations before I go to Kiev so we’ll have two new studies when I
return.