Romans 3:27-31
November 16, 2008

Pity poor #144,001. Jehovah’s Witnesses are sincere people, but part of their aberrant belief system is the idea that Heaven will be populated by 144,000 people. Wouldn’t you hate to be #144,001? We can imagine Maxwell Smart wistfully saying, “Missed it by that much!” How silly—and yet in a system based upon good works, wouldn’t that be something like the way it worked?

Think about it: what if the gospel were about works, and not about faith? What if a person were convinced that his good works played into the salvation equation? What are some things that would be true?
• How would I ever know if I’d done enough good works, or if the good I’d done outweighed the bad?
• Why would Jesus have had to die on the cross?
• What kind of place would Heaven be like?
o “Here’s what I did to make it!”
o Lots of bragging; think about the egos!
o Would God receive the glory, or would we get some?
• Faith would become irrelevant

By contrast, we believe that because of our indwelling, innate sinfulness, there is nothing that our good works can accomplish when it comes to the achievement of our salvation. Paul lists several key truths about the faith-alone gospel:

I. Excludes boasting – :27-28
Paul goes back to his “diatribe” form of teaching, that of imagining a conversation between two individuals. He asks three questions: first, “what becomes of our boasting?”

We love to boast about ourselves! Some of us may do it in a more modest fashion, rather than in a boisterous way, but we all naturally want other people to like us, to think highly of us, and frankly, we want to think highly of ourselves, and so one of our bad habits is boasting. Paul betrays the fact that he himself was a religious braggart; in Philippians 3, he lists the credentials of which he’d have boasted in his days before Christ. But for the Christian, the fact that we are believers is never cause for boasting in ourselves. Our problem is our focus on ourselves, but the cure is focus on Jesus, and Paul says that those who boast ought to boast in the Lord (Galatians 6:14).

Paul in verse 28 sets two possible paths to salvation alongside one another. One is the way of faith; the other is the way of works. The two are mutually exclusive. The person trying to earn his way to Heaven through the performance of good works will never have any certainty that he’s made it, that he’s done enough, that God has accepted him as His child. This person is constantly looking at himself, asking, “am I good enough?” Contrast that with the faith-walking follower of Jesus: we look to Him, for we know both that we have nothing in ourselves to offer Him, and that He alone has made the way by which we can be redeemed.

II. Establishes God as God over all – :29-30
Note Paul’s second question: is God the God of Jews only, or of Gentiles, too? Paul has been arguing for the exclusiveness of the gospel, that it is the only way, the only path.

Let’s put it this way: man-made religion might say, “Jesus and…” The spirit of this age says, “Jesus or…” The gospel says, “Jesus only!” Paul now uses the argument of the exclusiveness of the gospel to make a different argument, one for the inclusiveness of the gospel. Since there’s one God, there must be one way of salvation, and the deciding factor is faith, then if the Jews come by faith, so must the Gentiles be able to. The dividing line is not between circumcised and uncircumcised, between clean and unclean, between Jew and Gentile, between moral and immoral, between good and bad, whatever that means; the dividing line is between faith alone in Jesus alone and any/every other system in the world.

Paul puts the Jews on the horns of a dilemma. They prided themselves, of course, on being God’s chosen people; “hear, O Israel, the Lord is One”, and that One was their God, Yahweh. They also prided themselves on confining to themselves salvation, that Gentiles did not possess salvation, indeed only could come to God through coming into Judaism. But if there is only one God, then who is the God of the Gentiles? Must it not be this same God, Yahweh, the God of the Jews? The same God Who justified the “circumcised” Jews by faith will justify the “uncircumcised” Gentiles by faith as well.

The Jews had forgotten God’s promise to Abraham, recorded by Moses, that He would not only make of Abraham a great nation, but that through Abraham’s seed, all of the nations of the earth would be blessed. The benefits and privileges of salvation were for the blessing of the Gentiles, not for the exclusion of the Gentiles. Do we ever make the same mistake? The point of our salvation is the blessing of others, not merely our own blessing! We make that mistake
• Every time we extend to sinners the pointing finger of judgment instead of the hand of love
• Every time we make of some “opposition group” an object for our hatred
• Every time we show a blithe unconcern for people without Christ

III. Explains the purpose of the law – :31
Paul asks his third question: do we overthrow the law by this principle of faith? Paul has already tackled the fact that the law does not produce a right standing before God, the righteousness of God. Now, he answers the opposite objection: there was a philosophy that took root in the early church called antinomianism. From the Greek words meaning “against” and “law”, this term is the opposite of legalism, which is the attempt to use obedience to the law as a means of salvation. This philosophy said, basically, “since we’re saved by grace through faith, and keeping the law plays no role in our salvation, we are now free to pitch the law and live as we please, indulging whatever desires we see fitting.” Paul says that this kind of thinking is not consistent with the gospel, though some try to make it such.

A fair question is then raised: what do we make of the OT law? Is it of value, or is it rendered null and void by the gospel? Paul says emphatically that the law is still of value, that we “uphold the law”. What does this mean, though? Douglas Moo suggests there are several ways we could possibly interpret Paul’s emphatic statement that the law, far from being undermined or rendered useless, is upheld by the gospel. All of these possible interpretations are true; the only question is “which does Paul have in mind?”
• The law is a testimony to the gospel (ch. 4).
• The law brings conviction of sin (3:19-20).
• The law is a source of guidance for the Christian life (13:8-10).
• The law is God’s standard for holiness, and has been perfectly fulfilled in Jesus (8:4).

Moo opts for the last option on the list, that it is Christ Who fulfilled the law’s demands. Stott has a variation of this, believing, from the same passage in 8:4, that it is believers who themselves are seen to fulfill the law by virtue of being in Christ. Christ Himself said that He had not come to do away with the law, but to fulfill it, and then He did, living a sinless life and dying a sacrificial death to demonstrate the truth of what the law was pointing to all along.

What’s the upshot for us? Practically speaking,
• No boasting
o Boasting stifles worship

o Boasting of our works ignores their inconsistency and imperfection

• No discrimination

• No lawlessness
o I will remember that while Christ fully met the demands of the law, I am one who has been bought with a price, to glorify Him.

o I will use my freedom in Christ to serve others.

Romans 3 is arguably the most essential chapter in the most essential book in all of the Bible, because it articulates in such clear terms the way God has worked to provide salvation to sinful man. We come to its conclusion today in our study, but again I would stress that the important thing is not that we understand its truth intellectually, but that we by faith alone confess as our Lord and Savior the Jesus to Whom Paul’s great teaching points.

Taking it Home
• Galatians is the “companion” book to Romans; Paul there tackles the problem of false teachers who try to add law-keeping to the gospel of grace. Read Galatians 6:12-14, and answer the following:
o What does Paul say are the motives of these teachers?
o What do they fail to do themselves?
o Where does Paul place his “boast”?
o What do you think he means by the second phrase of verse 14?
• The gospel of Christ is both “exclusive” and “inclusive”. In what senses are these things true?
• The Jews forgot that one key purpose of their being blessed was to be a blessing to the nations (Genesis 12:3). How do Christians today sometimes make the same mistake?
• Antinomianism (lit. “against law”) was a prevalent misunderstanding of the gospel of grace, suggesting that a plan of salvation that did not require good works in order for a person to be justified would encourage the saved person to live a lawless life.
o Why is this teaching wrong?
o Why is this teaching dangerous?
o What would you say to the person today who would espouse that kind of thinking?

I Corinthians 12:12-27
November 9, 2008

The body of Christ is a beautiful thing. In Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians and Colossians Paul makes over 30 references to the body of Christ. It seems his favorite metaphor for the church. Christ loved the church, Paul writes, and Paul loves it as well and sees it as a beautiful thing. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its problems; it does. But despite struggles and problems brought on by the fact of our innate sinfulness, the church—the body of Christ—is a beautiful thing. Let’s read Paul’s words together today!

The context of today’s passage is one of a church that is pretty messed up. The Corinthian church was diverse when it ought to have been unified (“I am of Paul; I am of Cephas; I am of Apollos: I am of Christ”), and tried to be uniform when it ought to have been diverse (conforming to the same spiritual gift). There were attitudes of spiritual superiority; there were attitudes of economic superiority; there was probably a good deal of envy going on. While some claimed that their particular spiritual gifts were superior, perhaps others claimed that they had nothing to offer, no spiritual gifts to give to the body of Christ. But note Paul’s words:

I. Nobody is a Nobody Because Everybody in the Body is a Part of the One Body of Christ. :12-13
Gk. “Melos” – a “member” is a part of the body; that’s what the word means. We have watered down the word, so much so that we think in terms of our watered-down version of it, and not in terms of the original meaning. To be a member of Red Oak, Biblically-speaking, isn’t to have your name on a moldy roll somewhere, or to belong to an organization; it’s to be a body part. What it means is that you are assuming your position of responsibility in the body of Christ, contributing to the ongoing health of that body, and of each of its other members. And when you think of it in those Biblical terms, “membership” is a richer, fuller, far more meaningful thing than simply signing up and paying dues or something.

A body is a living thing. Paul is writing about the body of Christ to one particular expression of that body, the church at Corinth. There is one body of Christ (Red Oak is a local expression). I live out my commitment to the body of Christ through my commitment to this local expression. Some of the language Paul uses in this passage would make no sense if the only context were the broader body of Christ, and so while he has in mind the broader body of Christ, he also has in mind the local expression of the church universal.

My bodily parts have one thing in common: me! I am what is common to all my body parts. Christ is Who is common to every one of us who are part of the body. If a person doesn’t have Christ, that person is not a part of the body. Every member of the body of Christ has Christ in common, even if nothing else! And Jesus is enough!

:13 – Spirit baptism is an experience that takes place when we “all” (regardless of spiritual gift) are placed in the body of Christ. The Spirit is the universal common denominator of all God’s true children. We all, alike, have received the Holy Spirit, at the moment of our regeneration. It is the Spirit Who brings life; it is the Spirit Who binds us together. Paul mentions some classes of people: Jews/Greeks; slaves/free. He could mention more. The Spirit of God is the One Who brings us together! And because the Spirit has brought you into the body of Christ, and because you are a contributing member, you are not a nobody!

II. Nobody is a Nobody Because Everybody is Different. :14-20
I need the various parts of my body in order to live and function as I should. In :17, Paul envisions a monstrosity, a huge eyeball or a huge ear, something out of science fiction, suggesting that that would be weird beyond words; in :19, he asks how that would work out in practice.

Note, in :18, that it is God Who does the arranging! If you’re a Christian, you’re a part of the body of Christ, but the only way you function as you ought is in vital connection to other members of that body, and be sure of this: it is God Who has placed you where He has. Since there is one body, it’s critical that all the members of that body be united in purpose. The health of the body ought to be our paramount concern, as we take direction from the Head, Christ. Bodies are healthiest when every member is functioning at peak capacity; a body is sick when its members aren’t. When its members don’t contribute to the health of the body, the body suffers. Nobody is a nobody because every member is different and every member contributes something that the rest of the body needs, which is my next point:

III. Nobody is a Nobody Because Everybody Needs Everybody. :21-27
Paul personifies an eye and a head, saying to other parts of the body, “I don’t need you!” This is ridiculous, of course—but no more so than one part of the body of Christ adopting that attitude toward another! Listen, if you’re a member of Red Oak, you need every other member of Red Oak. I gain something from each of you that I gain from nobody else, and the same is true, at least in a church this size, of everyone, I believe.

A. Everybody in the body is treated with appropriate value and care. - :21-24a
So we recognize that some of the most vital parts are delicate, ones that could not survive and function on the outside, but that doesn’t make my guts less important than my pinkie; the fact that I can see my pinkie doesn’t make it more valuable than my intestines. And there are parts we cover for modesty’s sake as well; this is showing honor to the entire body, and to those parts in particular. That’s altogether appropriate, and in the body of Christ, it is the same: we recognize that it’s not necessarily the “out-front leaders” who determine the ultimate success of the church!

B. God brings everybody into the body - :24b
We said this earlier and won’t belabor it here, but it’s God Who has done the work to bring the body together as it is. You are here, in this place, at this time, by divine appointment. God has placed you here. And it’s up to you to find that role that God has placed you here to perform, with the purpose that

C. God expects the body to act in unity - :25a
Division in the body is a killer, whether it’s the human body acting at odds with itself, or the church of Jesus Christ acting at odds with itself. Jesus said that all men will know that you’re my disciples if you have love for one another, and that leads to the final point for the morning:

D. Unity is achieved when everybody cares for everybody - :25b-26
Look at the picture here: the body works together for the benefit of every part of it. When one is hurting, everyone hurts and everyone helps. Question: do you know of needs in the body here that need meeting? Have you asked? Have you considered? Are you close enough to others in the body that that can take place? Are you functioning as a caring member of the body of Christ here at Red Oak? Look around; who’s not here? Who will care for that person? Who’s hurting? It’s not up to the pastor to do all the caring, but to every member of the body.

A member does not consider merely his own interests, but the good of the body. Philippians 2:4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. And yet Christians, church members, make decisions all the time and act as though they think it’s all about them, that nobody else is affected by their decisions. When one organ in the body acts only in keeping with its own supposed well-being, we call that “sickness”. When you sign on the dotted line, you are committing yourself to something bigger than yourself, to the overall health and wellbeing of the body of Christ here at Red Oak. And the attitude you ought to take into church membership is this: “what’s in it for…HIM!”

Considering the good of the body equates to considering Christ. So note the recap Paul gives:

Recap!
27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

Taking it Home
• Do you think most church members today understand the concept of membership in the way the Bible describes it? When members don’t see themselves as parts of a living body, what are some of the negative consequences?
• Read Romans 8:9-11. We said that it’s the Holy Spirit Who brings life to every member of the body. What are some things we understand from these verses about life in the Spirit?
• Why is the analogy of the body representing the church such a fitting analogy on so many levels? Even besides the points Paul makes in our passage, what are some other ways in which the human body and the body of Christ parallel?
• “Unity is achieved when everybody cares for everybody”:
o Give an example of another Christian caring for you in a way that made a real difference.
o What are some things that conspire against everybody caring for everybody?

Romans 3:24
November 2, 2008

Redemption: A Definition
“buying back out of slavery that which was bound”

We do hear of this happening today; in some African and Middle Eastern nations, freedom for slaves has been purchased by the payment of a price. But in a theological context, redemption is God at work, buying back that which is rightfully His own, and He does so in order, not to enslave us or to demand His pound of flesh, but that He might set us free. In fact, the Greek word implies just this, that not only has a ransom price been paid, but it has been paid to obtain the release of the one bound.

Last week, we were in a courtroom as we considered the biblical picture of justification. Today, the scene shifts to the marketplace, from judicial proceedings to business transactions. And what has taken place in redemption is this: though I am a slave, “under sin”, I have been purchased and then set free!

I. Redemption implies a previous state of freedom.
Here’s a basic Bible truth: God created Adam and Eve to live free. He didn’t give them a long list of rules and regulations; He said, “do anything you please, except for this one thing Freedom is God’s design, but bondage comes in as a result of sin; we read of that in Genesis 3.

This runs counter, of course, to modern ideas of the state and situation of man. We’re evolving upward from the primordial goulash, from the impersonality of pond scum to a better and better state of humanity. We’re not getting older; we’re getting better! And as proof of this, look at the advance of technology.

But a fair question is, are we better people? Might I suggest that we are now able to sin more efficiently and more creatively than ever before? We can exterminate life much more efficiently; we have more tools with which to satisfy our prurient desires; we have more substances with which to intoxicate ourselves; we have more toys with which to amuse ourselves. At the same time, we have less moral authority than ever before, less tolerance for any voice which suggests that some things are ‘wrong’, less interest in right thinking and more interest in telling ourselves those sweet little lies which keep us mollified and pacified. Lacking a moral compass, our increased technology leads us to increased brutality, increased immorality, and lessened inhibitions. We have much more learning, but were we smarter when we were dumber? And are the things that we are sold as liberating really just bonds and chains by another name?

II. Redemption implies a perilous plight.
Sin enslaves us. The more willfully I practice sin, the more enslaved I will be. We hear of addictions—I’ve never been altogether certain of what I think of that word, because it uses psychological terminology to describe spiritual issues—but we know what we mean when we use that word. A more biblical word would be “slavery”, and while we think of drugs and alcohol and pornography, among others, as things to which people are addicted, the fact is that sin enslaves every one of us. We are all, if you will, “sin addicts”, fallen beings who naturally do not choose God, but who choose sinful ways and practices.

III. Redemption implies the payment of a price.
Redemption is not merely “rescue” or “deliverance”; redemption involves the payment of a ransom, as we might think of a kidnapper demanding a payment to secure release of a hostage. Jesus said that “the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Christmas is so critical: God became incarnate in Jesus Christ, to live among us that He might die and pay the ransom for us, entering the human condition, He Who was God from eternity past. Galatians 4 tells us that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” And I Peter 1:18-19 says that “you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” Ransomed…purchased from the ways of sin, from the bondage that sin brings. And the purchase price was that of the blood of Jesus. B.B. Warfield said that “Redeemer is the name of the Christ of the cross. Whenever we pronounce it, our hearts are filled with remembrance that He paid a mighty price for our redemption.”

And if Jesus paid the price on the cross, there’s nothing to be added; to try is an insult to God. His was the once-for-all-time payment for our sin.

IV. Redemption implies the proprietorship of the purchaser.
“Blessed Jesus, Thou hast bought us; Thine we are”. I Corinthians 6 reminds us that we are not our own, for we have been bought with a price. If I purchase something, it’s mine. Jesus is the Lord and Master, for He has paid the price to buy the merchandise! We, slaves to sin by nature, are now bought by Christ to serve Christ.

Sin will be a cruel taskmaster; we all know that by experience. Sin promises much but delivers little; pleasures for a season, but anguish for eternity. Serving Jesus, on the other hand, brings true freedom. We all will serve somebody, but serving Jesus brings us the freedom for which God designed us. If Jesus loved us enough to die for us, will we prove we love Him enough to live for Him?

Jesus has paid the entire price for our redemption—but a price paid for a pardon is ineffective if the pardon is not accepted. The only response is faith-acceptance of Jesus Christ!

Taking it Home
• Read Hosea 1. Though we see God’s judgment there, what signs of redemption do you find as well?
• How does the first verse of Hosea 2 bear this out?
• Why do many people seem to misunderstand that God’s desire is for our freedom, rather than the bondage of legalistic rule-keeping? What factors might play into this misconception?
• What are some evidences of the way sin enslaves us?
• Why is “redemption” a stronger word than “rescue” to describe what Christ accomplished for us?
• How do we reconcile the freedom that comes through redemption with the fact that we “serve” God?

Romans 3:23-24
October 26, 2008

Said Martin Luther, “The doctrine of justification by faith alone is master, prince, lord, ruler, and judge over all kinds of doctrine.” There are other important doctrines besides the doctrine of justification, but none is more critical to us, and we need to know only have an intellectual grasp on it, but we also need to check the condition of our own hearts to make sure that what we’re talking about when we speak of being justified is true of each of us as well.

We’ve all watched courtroom scenes on TV, either true life stories or those invented for our entertainment. But have you ever imagined what it would be like to be the defendant, to stand accused of some terrible crime, to hear the airtight case woven by the prosecuting attorney, the desperate attempts by your overmatched defense attorney attempting to win an acquittal, knowing all the while that the evidence was incontrovertible, that you were guilty beyond a single doubt—and that everybody in the courtroom knew it. The trial is wrapping up; closing arguments are over; the judge is about to pronounce his verdict, and everyone knows what it will be: “guilty on all counts”; the conclusion is foregone. And you rise at his bidding, inwardly cringing as you await his words. “I find the defendant…not guilty!” Waves of shock ripple through the assembled crowd; you drop to the ground with astonished relief, wondering how it could be that you’ve been declared innocent, free from guilt. This is the picture of justification.

I. The Definition of Justification
“to declare, accept, and treat as “innocent”, and as “righteous” in the sight of God”

It is a declaration of utter and complete innocence in the eyes of the judge; its opposite is condemnation, the judge declaring “guilty”, ringing the gavel down, and preparing to pronounce sentence. But beyond this, justification gives to the guilty sinner a positive declaration of “righteous”; in other words, it is more than full forgiveness, though it includes that. It’s not just that God is unwilling to send you to hell for the sins you’ve committed; it’s that He sees you as though you’ve not committed them, and thus that there is no basis for punishment at all.

II. The Need of Justification – “All have sinned”
We have all failed to live up to the glory of God, the glory in which we were all made (in God’s image), the glory of His eternal presence, the glory of His righteous eternal standard. Condemned, you deserve nothing but judgment for your many transgressions, and yet the judge rings down the gavel and declares “innocent” despite the fact that you’re dead-to-rights guilty.

III. The Nature of Justification – “Gift”
Cement this into your minds as well: justification is a gift (Romans 6:23; Ephesians 2:8). Innocence is a gift, and thus the title of today’s message. The significance of this is that a gift is something which is not, indeed cannot be, earned or merited. When Scripture uses this terminology to describe our justification, it’s not throwaway language, but rather is stressing a critical concept: justification is not, indeed cannot be, earned, but rather is received as a gift.

IV. The Source of Justification – “Grace”
The Giver of the gift of justification is God, and the source is His amazing grace. He is under no compulsion other than that of His own character; He is not under obligation to you or to me.

Remember that we spoke last week of the fact that it is God Who seizes the initiative in our salvation; any formulation of theology that denies this is sub-Christian, indeed anti-Christian. God’s grace is the source, for it is God Who takes the lead in bringing about our justification.

V. The Cost of Justification – “Redemption”
Justification is free, but it is not cheap! “Redemption” is the word which refers to the act of paying a price in order to set free one who had been in bondage. Jesus is the One Who paid a great price and purchased us out of the slavery to sin that Paul has already described when he said we were, by nature, “under sin”.

VI. The Grounds of Justification – “His blood” – Romans 5:9
According to Paul in Romans 5:9, we have been “justified by His blood”, and by this, as we see from the preceding verse, He means Christ’s death on the cross, His blood sacrifice for our sins. God’s justice demands that payment be made for sin, and when we look at the cross, that’s what we must see, Jesus by His voluntary death satisfying the demands of God’s holiness and justice.

Justification does not equal “amnesty”; this is no pardon without principle, no overlooking of sin or sweeping it under the rug; instead, a great price was paid for your justification, and so while it is free to you, it is anything but cheap. God is not saying, “ah, your sin isn’t that bad a thing”; He’s saying that it is a terrible thing, and that’s why nothing short of Christ’s death could atone for it. Jesus identified with me and died for me, in my place, taking my punishment and shame.

VII. The Authentication of Justification – “Resurrection” – Romans 4:25
Christ was “raised for our justification”, Paul writes in Romans 4:25. In what sense is this true? Without the resurrection, Jesus Christ would have been another man dying, no reason for us to place faith in Him, no reason for any confidence that He was anything more than just another teacher who walked the countryside with delusions of grandeur. But the resurrection provides proof, authenticates the teaching of the Bible, that He is indeed the One Whose death secures our justification.

VIII. The Means of Justification – “Faith” – Romans 5:1
“We have been justified by faith”, Paul says in Romans 5:1, and he’s doing nothing more than echoing what he’s also said in the surrounding context of today’s passage; we note that same type of phraseology in :22, in :25, and in :26. We are saved by faith, and when we say that, we believe that what Paul means there is to say that it is by faith alone that we are justified, that our good works play no role in it, that if they did, the word “gift” would be meaningless to describe how God does it. That’s what God is looking for from you today: faith, period. He’s looking for you to simply receive the gift that He freely offers, to take from Him what you can’t otherwise attain, and what He alone can provide: justification through faith in Christ.

Taking it Home
• We defined the act of justification thusly: “to declare, accept, and treat as “innocent”, and as “righteous” in the sight of God”. Why are all three of those verbs important? What do they each teach us about God’s actions and attitude toward us?
• The old song “The Solid Rock” has a verse that says that we are “dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.” If this is true, how does possessing the righteousness of Christ take justification to a deeper step than merely being pronounced “innocent”?
• Justification takes place “as a gift”. In what way(s) does this fact make the gospel easier to hear for people without Christ? In what ways might it make it more difficult?
• If this verdict on my sin regards sins past, present, and future, then what does justification say about my security in Christ? On what basis am I secure in Him?
• Look at Romans 8:33 and the surrounding context. What are some of the things that are true of those who are justified by God’s grace?
• Next week, we look at the topic of redemption. What is your understanding of that word, and how does it impact us?

Romans 3:21-26
October 19, 2008

“But”…a little word with great power. I decided to look up its meaning on Dictionary.com, and I was surprised that that little word had so many different shades of meaning:
• “on the contrary”
• “except”
• “unless”
• “without the circumstance that”
• “otherwise than”
• “that”
• “that not”
• As an exclamatory expression – “but I love you!”
• “than”
• One little word…so many meanings!

The meaning for the Christian, though, is literally life-changing, this little word “but”, the “divine conjunction”, leading us from the darkness and death of sin to a life lived in the freedom God intends!

“But now…” – Paul begins here to offer us the hope that we need. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel, the dawn after a long night, the bright sunshine after the perfect storm. Paul has talked about the unrighteousness of men, and about the self-righteousness of some; now, he talks about the real righteousness that of God, seen in His character and His actions in taking the initiative to save us from sin. Note first that

I. God’s righteousness does not come through His law
This righteousness of God is seen totally apart from anything you or I can do to keep God’s law or follow rules of good, clean, moral living. In the early church, there were people known as Judaizers; these folks tried to make Gentiles become Jews prior to becoming full-fledged Christians. And so they tried to add circumcision and Sabbath-keeping and all sorts of Jewish rules and regulations to the equation. They added do-it-yourself baggage, and that’s why Paul wrote the book of Galatians, to say that there are no good works we can add on our own to merit our salvation, to achieve the righteousness of God by our effort.

II. God’s righteousness is built upon His self-revelation
The law doesn’t bring God’s righteousness; you can’t experience it by doing the deeds that the Law prescribes, or by avoiding the sins that it proscribes. That said, this revelation of God’s righteousness doesn’t come to us as a surprise, as though it hadn’t ever been seen until this moment when Paul reveals it. The Law and the Prophets—i.e., the Old Testament—presages this understanding of God’s righteousness. But how does God’s righteousness take effect in a person’s life?

III. God’s righteousness comes by faith in Christ, our Propitiation
“Through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe”, he says. Hasn’t Paul already been talking about all people? Sure…for two chapters! And what he’s said about them is that they are hopelessly under the bondage of sin! Now, he says that the righteousness of God is available through faith to “all who believe”. That’s it. Believe, place your trust in Christ, and you who are a miserable sinner condemned by a holy God will experience, not His wrath, but His righteousness. Have we lost the sense of how incredible that statement is?

Note that this faith is placed in Christ. God volunteered His own Son, Jesus Christ, to be a “propitiation” through His blood. Propitiation is the work of Christ on the cross, by which He fulfills the wrath of God and conciliates Him who would otherwise be offended by our sin and would demand that we pay the penalty for it; it connotes the appeasement of a holy God that He might not exercise His wrath. Some are bothered by the idea that God needs to be “appeased”, likening our God to pagan gods who demanded a pound of flesh to appease their anger.

So do we drop the word? No…we define it Biblically! John Stott points out 3 differences between the pagan idea of propitiation and the Biblical one:

• The need is different. Pagan gods were fly-off-the-handle deities whose capricious anger might erupt at any time, and needed continual appeasement; God’s wrath is His settled opposition to that which is unholy.

• The author is different. It was the pagans themselves who would have to appease their gods of wood, stone, and imagination; in the Christian understanding, it is God Himself Who has taken the initiative to do so.

• The nature is different. Bribery was the order of the day; the terrified pagans would offer up animal or vegetable, even human sacrifices in order to satisfy the whims of their deities. God offered up, once for all, His only Son, Jesus Christ, as the satisfactory propitiation for all our sins.

A. The context: God’s wrath
Paul has already told us this, that all people are under the just judgment of a holy God. “Grace” is a meaningless word without the possibility of wrath; “saved” makes no sense to describe us unless/until we can answer, “saved from what?”

B. The motivation: God’s love
God’s love is directed toward us; He perfectly hates the sin, but loves the sinner at the same time. Verse 26 says that He is both “just, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus”. Look at verse 24: there’s that word “justified” that we saw last week. To be “justified” is to have a standing before God as a person who has never once committed a sin. It is for God to see me as a person with no stain on my name. Zero. Zip. Nada.

And it happens “by God’s grace” as a “free gift”. Grace is God in His love giving me what I in no way deserve, giving me something free that I didn’t and couldn’t earn. He’s not obligated to me. He does what He does as a free gift. And what He does is to “justify” me, a sinner.

And the Bible says that God justifying us shows His righteousness (:26). It’s about God demonstrating that at one and the same time, He is just—He does things equitably, honestly, “above-boardly”—and He also says of sinful people, “I don’t see anything at all wrong with you; nothing”. How can God do that without rigging the system, cooking the books, shaving the coin? Listen to the words of Proverbs: “He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 17:15). So how in the world can God get away with doing that? Our next point answers this question:

C. The impetus: God’s initiative
He does it this way: the same God Who rightly demands that our sin be atoned for, Himself provides that atonement in His Son, Jesus Christ. God’s answer to the question, in other words, is the cross. Without the cross, there’s no answer to the question; without God’s paying the price He demands, He cannot both be just and justify godless people like us.

Notice: all we can do is respond. We do not initiate. As we saw last week, “there is no one who seeks God”. Any theology that involves man taking the initiative to find his way to God is a flawed theology. If that’s true, then the only way we’re going to be brought into relationship to that God is if He seizes the initiative to bring us back to Himself. Which is exactly what He does; He “put forward” Christ as a propitiation for our sins.

D. The response: our faith
We accept this atoning sacrifice, Christ, “by faith”. Now we’re back full-circle, to the fact that it isn’t by us doing things to prove we are good enough for God that we are made right with Him; it is by faith by trust in Jesus. We place our trust in Him, not in anything else—our good works, our church membership, our moral living; nothing else—and on that basis, we stand before God justified, as though we had never sinned.

IV. God’s righteousness is available to everyone who believes
Everyone who believes. Nobody is excluded on the basis of what he has done; nobody’s sins have rendered her beyond the pale, unable to be saved. Nothing earns it; nothing disqualifies from it, except for a lack of belief in the Christ Who died on the cross and rose again. It doesn’t matter who you are; what matters is Who Christ is. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done; all that matters is what Christ has done. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been; it only matters where Christ has been. He’s been to Calvary, died there, and then beat death. It doesn’t matter what you’ve said; what matters is what He said, and He said, “come unto Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” God’s righteousness is available to everyone who believes—and it’s available to you, right now.

Taking it Home
• The Judaizers were people who tried to make Gentiles become Jews first in order to become Christians, adding certain good works to faith in Christ in order for a person to be a true follower of Christ. Why is this so dangerous? Are good works then unimportant to our walk with Christ? Read Ephesians 2:8-10 to help answer.

• As we said, some today suggest that the idea of “propitiation”—the appeasement of God by virtue of Christ’s sacrifice—is a concept unworthy of God, because it conjures up images of pagan deities demanding sacrifices. What are the similarities, and what are the differences, between these two scenarios?

• How do this world’s religions demonstrate that they rely upon human initiative to accomplish their various understandings of salvation?

• What would you say to the person who says, “this gospel is too easy?”

• What would you say to the person who says, “I can’t believe that salvation and forgiveness are available to ____________ (the worst people on earth).”

Romans 3:1-20
October 12, 2008

The mirror has a way of telling us the truth about ourselves, doesn’t it? Sometimes, it’s truth we don’t want to see or know. Today, one more time before we get to the good news of the gospel, Paul holds up the mirror to mankind, Jew and Gentile alike, for the purpose of every person seeing the stark truth about himself/herself.

A contemporary theological issue in Judaism, at the time of Paul’s writing, was the theme of the righteousness of God. What did it mean to say that God was “righteous”? Jews understood God’s righteousness in terms of His faithfulness to them, faithfulness to the covenant He’d made with them to bless them, to be their God as they were His people. But then came a series of blows that fell upon Israel, being besieged and carried into exile by foreign powers, eventually annexed by the Romans as part of their Empire. So…what was God doing? Why would He allow these things to happen if He were a faithful/righteous God? One popular viewpoint was that God’s righteousness involved the chastening of Israel, for their own cleansing and discipline, but that in the end, He’d hold them immune from final judgment.

But another viewpoint was that God’s righteousness is to be found in His faithfulness, not so much to Israel or to any group of human beings, but to Himself, to the glory of His name. God will be faithful to His promises (“let God be true, and every man a liar”), but God promises severe cursing to those Jews who do not obey Him (Deuteronomy 28). Being entrusted with God’s Word does not make Israel immune to God’s judgment, because that very Word promises judgment on sin!

Paul takes the second position, that God’s righteousness entails His faithfulness to Himself and His character and nature, which includes the judgment of sin, regardless of who commits it!

I. FAQs* regarding the Jews - :1-8
(*Frequently Asked Questions)

A. Question: If having the law and the covenant of circumcision doesn’t get me closer to Heaven, what advantage is there in being a Jew?
Can you imagine what it must have been like to see firsthand the miracles of God, to be there when God parted the Red Sea, to see God perform mighty miracles? The Jews had the lineage of people who had done just this. And God had made His covenant with His people Israel. Does Paul’s teaching undermine that covenant? The Jews thought that their status as God’s covenant people was their security blanket. If it was not, then what advantage did they possess in having the law and the covenants?

Answer: Jews have many advantages, starting with having directly received the revelation of God.
Paul answers by pointing out both their access to the Word of God, and the awesome responsibility of the Word with which they’d been entrusted.

B. Question: Has God failed because His people, the Jews, didn’t live faithfully?
Is God not faithful to the promises He’d made? Jews seemed to believe that having the law and covenants shielded them from God’s judgment, that his fairness would be seen in not judging His people. Is God somehow to blame here?

Answer: God is not responsible for sin; He is the Standard of right.
Paul answers with an axiom of Christian understanding: “let God be true, and every man a liar”. God’s faithfulness is not compromised by our failures; in fact, God is the Standard-setter of what is right and wrong, of what is faithful and unfaithful, in the first place!

C. Question: If through the depth of my sinfulness,
God’s righteousness is more clearly seen, then why would God inflict wrath on me?
We’ve asked if God is a covenant-keeper, and if He is faithful. The third question is this, essentially: Is God just in punishing those whose disobedience serves, in part, to magnify His own love and grace? “Hey, when we sin, we just give God the opportunity to show Himself to be a gracious God! Doesn’t our darkness allow God’s light to shine more brightly? Why does He punish us for that sin?”

Answer: God’s holiness demands that sin be punished.
God is the just Judge of the world, and to impugn His justice is to undercut His competence to judge. He is the very definition of holy, and so to live in unrepentant sin, feigning to be concerned to further His glory by our sin, is the height of silliness.

D. Question: Why not do more evil, so that God can show Himself more gracious?
This argument is an extension of the last one, looking forward to future sin, and asking, “why not just sin up a storm so that God can show Himself to be a God of grace?” This would rationalize lawlessness and undermine any sense of God’s standard of holiness at all.

Answer: This is the warped reasoning of a person steeped in sin.
Paul doesn’t even attempt an answer at such an absurd suggestion; evil can never be encouraged under any circumstances or for any reason! God is righteous in all He does!

II. FATs* about all people - :9-18
(*Frequently Avoided Truths)

In these verses, Paul begins to wrap up this section of the argument with a compilation of quotes from Psalms and Isaiah; these words were originally applied, not to Israelites, but to pagans. Paul uses these quotes, though, to make the point that all alike are sinners.

All are “under sin”, meaning that, more than just the fact that we all sin, we are by nature its prisoners, that sin places us into bondage (Galatians 3:22). Why is this important? Because to get the right solution, we need to rightly diagnose the problem. Marxists believe that the basic problem with the world is that wealth is distributed unequally, and thus the solution is for the government to take over the economy to ensure what they would see as a just distribution of wealth. Other people believe that the greatest problem in the world is ignorance, and thus the solution that is advocated is education, as though education will solve all of our ills. I’ve got a Masters, and Meach is a teacher, but education isn’t the be-all/end-all answer. When it comes to sin, our problem isn’t merely that we commit sins—if we could then somehow stop sinning, in this view, our problem would be fixed. But our problem is deeper: we are “under sin”, prisoners to its effects and consequences, and we need release from both the power and the penalty of enslaving sin. Liberation—the ability to live free—is the ultimate answer.

Here’s Paul’s synopsis of our endemic sin:

A. Summary Statement – “Not even one”
B. My mind is messed up – “understanding”
C. My priorities are wrong – “seeks after God”
D. My direction is wrong – “turned aside”
E. My usefulness is nil – “worthless”
F. I say evil things
G. I act with malice and violence toward others
H. I do not fear God as I should

John Stott points out three striking truths about sin that come from this list:

• Ungodliness
None of us is like God; none of us naturally seek God; none of us by nature goes God’s way.

• Pervasiveness
Sin affects every part of us; this is what theologians call the “total depravity” of man. One theologian suggested an analogy of total depravity that has stuck with me ever since I first heard it; he said that total depravity means that if sin were blue, I’d be some shade of blue all over! Sin affects, and infects, every part of me.

• Universality
We’ve all got it, and we’ve all got it bad!

Finally, Paul takes the feet once and for all out from under the pious Jews, by making four explanatory statements about the law:

III. FESs* about the Law - :19-20
(*Four Explanatory Statements)

A. The Personal Effect of the Law – “Every mouth stopped”
We get the picture of a defendant in a courtroom, realizing that the case has been made, that any defense he could attempt to offer would be futile and silly.

B. The Comprehensive Effect of the Law – “whole world…accountable”
Having been found guilty, the whole world of human beings is now accountable to the justice of a holy God.

C. The Limit of the Law – “no human being will be justified”
Because we tend to have a high view of ourselves, we gravitate as human beings to ideas of salvation that involve the contribution of our own efforts toward that salvation. We may realize that we need a little help here and there, but the basic idea a lot of folks have is that with a little help from God, we can achieve what we need to achieve; you can “become a better you”. But the Scripture is clear: what you do has nothing…nothing…nothing to do with the accomplishment of salvation. What you fail to do never…never…never disqualifies you from it either, by the way.

“Justified”…Paul here introduces a term that will form the basis of the next part of his argument; what does the term mean? How is it that a person can stand before God justified? Suffice it to say that when Paul employs this term, he’s speaking of a holy God declaring you to be totally without fault, sinless, before His holy bar of judgment standing as if you had never even once committed a sin. He doesn’t tell us here how it happens, but he tells us here how it doesn’t: it doesn’t happen because you become a very, very good person.

D. The Purpose of the Law – “knowledge of sin”
Through the law, we become conscious of sin as to its nature, what it really is: the transgression of God’s righteous standard. The law makes us aware of the fact that we have transgressed. But it provides no elixir to cure the condition; it only diagnoses the problem in the first place.

Paul does us a great service here in holding up a mirror to our lives. He treats us with dignity, the dignity of people created in the image of God. He doesn’t suggest that we are victims who ought to look for scapegoats to blame and excuses to make; instead, he says that we are to blame, that we’ve made willful choices as free moral agents, that we’ve chosen to do the wrong thing over and over again.

But he doesn’t stop there. This is the end of the bad news before the coming of the good news, for Paul has already hinted at what is to come: we can stand before that same holy God as though we had never once committed a sin in our lives, that we can live…free!

Taking it Home
• Look at Romans 9:4-5. Besides having received the law of God, what are some of the other advantages that the Jews had as God’s covenant people? Does it make sense that they might assume that God would not hold them accountable on the basis of God’s promises?

• Galatians 3:21-22 talks about the purpose of the law of Moses. What are some of the things we find in that passage that Paul says are true of the law?

• Does Paul’s list seem excessively harsh in :9-18? Why or why not?

• John Stott says that this list, in :9-18, teaches us three things about sin:
o Its ungodliness
o Its pervasiveness
o Its universality
What does he mean by each of these?

• How is it true that “through the Law comes the knowledge of sin?

• Paul introduces the term “justified” in :20. What do you understand that word to mean?

Romans 2:12-29
October 5, 2008

As we’ve seen the past couple weeks, after introducing the wonderful gospel of Jesus Christ, which Paul says is powerful to produce eternal salvation in the lives of all who believe, he then launches into a significant discussion, not of God’s amazing grace that brings salvation, but of man’s predilection to sin. Grossly. Repeatedly. Religiously, some might say. And so we talked, in the second half of Romans 1, of how the pagan world had suppressed the truth of God and turned to all manner of wickedness. Last week, we considered the case of the moralizing hypocrite, who’d roundly and quickly condemn the “sinners”, but then turn around and practice the very same things himself. Today, we continue in that vein. John Piper wrote that, “…there are probably some very profound reasons for this lingering over the sinfulness of Gentiles and Jews. I think of two at least. One is that the gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone simply does not land on us as overwhelmingly good news until we have some deeper sense of our sinfulness and hopelessness before God. The other reason Paul may draw out his demonstration of our sinfulness is that we are so resistant to seeing it and feeling it.”

God, Paul has argued, will render to each person according to what he has done, and it doesn’t matter if that person is a pagan with no “religious background”, or that person is a religious Jew who has been part of the synagogue all his life and devoted himself to living by the Law. God’s judgment will be the same, and He will judge impartially. In the original language, the term translated here “shows no partiality”, and in the KJV as “no respect of persons”, literally means “God does not receive the face” of an individual; in other words, He doesn’t look on the outside, but on the inside. And in this respect, He is impartial.

That said, He will not judge us all the same, but in the light of your exposure to the revelation of God in your life. How would He be impartial if He judged everyone on the basis of the Law of God, when many never read the Law of God, were never exposed to its teachings, never had its guidance? And Paul answers that it’s in light of the light we do have that each of us will be judged.

I. God’s Justice for Jew and Gentile Alike :12-16
Even without the law, man sins; it’s part of his innate nature, just as I have the ability to transgress the speed limit even when I don’t know what it is. And thus the judgment of God will fall upon those who, though without law, still sin.

If not in the form of written law, like the Jews had, the law is written in the hearts of people, no matter their circumstance, through the element of conscience. God has imprinted something of His moral law on the hearts of every person. And I believe that that’s a key point Paul is making here. Moreover, every person has violated his conscience at one time or another, without exception. We are without excuse, and so alike, the Jew and Gentile are under the just judgment of God.

II. The Claims of the Jews - :17-20
Then Paul turns to those who know the law—and yet sin anyway. This referred to the Jews in Paul’s writing here, the people to whom God had entrusted His righteous decrees for living. God had given His law to them through Moses, recorded in the first five books of our Bibles. And some might say, “We Jews are the custodians of the law of God! And we have the sign of circumcision as God’s covenant-keeping people!” Objection overruled: it isn’t about having the law of God, but about keeping it.

Since Jews have been instructed out of the Law, there are some boasts they can naturally make:
• Rely on God
• Boast in God – To be rightfully joyful in one’s relationship with God, to boast that “our God is an awesome God”, is entirely appropriate!
• Know His will
• Approve the right things – Discernment of right from wrong, on the basis of God’s law.
Further, he says, because of your grounding in the Law, you have confidence that you can be of help to others, to the blind and unknowing, etc. What’s the problem?

III. The Hypocrisy of the Jews - :21-24
The problems are at least two: one, the Jews were not obeying the law that they had. As Paul puts it, you don’t keep the Law you profess to love! You are guilty of breaking the Law, even as you talk about how much you love it. Two, to the degree that their keeping of those rules and regulations represented a man-centered, faithless approach to God, they were wrong even as they obeyed the rules. If in keeping the Law outwardly and legally, we rob God of what pleases Him—faith—then we have broken the intent of the Law.

The Jews had the law of God and bragged about it; they thought that because they possessed the law, they were on special terms with God, but no, they didn’t keep it, and when they did keep it, they didn’t generally do so out of faith. All of these things represented hypocrisy on the part of the Jews. But what is a real Jew?

IV. The Mark of True Jews - :25-29
Circumcision served as a sign and seal of the covenant between God and His people, Israel. But the ritual did not serve as a substitute for obedience. Yet, the Jews believed that it had almost a superstitious quality to it, like those who put plastic Jesus on their dashboards or baseball players who make the sign of the cross before stepping to the plate. Jews were saying, of circumcision, that “membership has its privileges”; Paul was saying, “membership has its responsibilities!”

On the basis of the inward change wrought by God’s Holy Spirit, Gentiles who do not have the law could/would sit in judgment on Jews, who though they had the law, were not fulfilling the real demands of that law, no matter how much they might conform to some of its outward constraints.

We can make the same mistake today that they did, when we substitute outward things for inward change brought about by God. What matters is not outward symbols and signs, but an inwardly-changed heart which evidences itself in outwardly-changed living.

Taking it Home
• Does it strike you as consistent or inconsistent for an impartial God to judge those who have never heard the gospel by a different “yardstick” than those who have? Why or why not? Consider Luke 12:47-48 in answering.
• A perplexing question for many people is, “what happens to people who’ve never heard the gospel of Christ?” How would you answer this, on the basis of this passage?
• How would you answer the atheist, like the fellow on Pastor Harvey’s website, who maintains that we can speak of “right and wrong” without there being a God Who established those standards?
• Read James 1:22-27. According to verse 25, how does one become a doer of God’s Word? What is the benefit of being a doer? What area of your life is most characterized by hearing and not doing?
• Looking ahead to next week, what advantages are there for the Jews in having the Law, if the simple possession of it doesn’t guarantee that they are right with God?

Romans 2:1-11
September 28, 2008

It seems to me that in the first 11 verses of chapter 2, if not in the first 16 even, Paul is addressing people who in their own eyes live moral lives, who might well fancy themselves good enough people to achieve heaven in their own merits. He’s confronting the moralizer, the person who not only lives by a strict moral code but also who looks down his nose judgmentally at others who don’t live up to the code.

And let’s not kid ourselves: there are plenty of these people who sit in nice churches on Sunday mornings, who sing consistently and listen politely and give significantly and work diligently in the church’s ministries. They’re upstanding members of the Kiwanis Club, they serve on the board of the PTA, they coach Little League and take their kids to Girl Scouts and vote in every election. And they think that they’re living pretty good, moral lives, and that in the end, God will take all of that into account because, you know, they’re not like those “other people”. And they’d listen to Paul’s words at the end of Romans 1 and say a hearty “Amen”! But then, Paul turns the tables on them!

I. The Peril of Hypocrisy - :1-4
The word hypocrisy derives from the Greek hypokrisis, which means “play-acting”, “acting out”, “feigning, dissembling”. It was used of one who on the Greek stage wore a mask, taking on a persona other than his own for the purpose of looking to be someone other than who he was. This is what a hypocrite does: he wears a mask to pretend to be someone he is not, and to play a role that makes him think in his own mind that he is better than other people.

A. The hypocrite’s predicament - :1a,b -“you condemn yourself”
“Therefore” always raises a question: “what’s the ‘therefore’ there for?” In this case, it would seem to me that it hearkens back, not to the immediately preceding verses, but instead to 1:18-20, where Paul has said that man is guilty of “suppressing the truth”. The argument then is this: the self-righteous hypocrite is also engaged in suppression of the truth and therefore is “without excuse” and no better off than the sin-indulgent pagans that said hypocrite imagines himself better than.

This subject of “judging” is one in which we lack needed clarity today. Jesus gave the definitive answer to how we ought to approach the subject, when He said, “Judge righteous judgment”. How do we know the difference between “right judgment” and un-right?

• We should not judge on the basis of mere appearance. In selecting David to be the new king, Samuel said that while man looks on the outward appearance, God looks on the heart.

• We should not judge on the basis of personal opinion. Where the Bible does not speak pretty clearly, we need to be quiet and reserve judgment.

• We should not attempt to take the place of God in issuing final judgment upon a person (though we can and must judge actions in the light of God’s Word).

• Our first impulse toward another person ought not be to seek to be judgmental; there is a “judgmental spirit” that we can lapse into wherein we look for the wrong in another, and are happy to find it so that we can criticize.

There is another problem on the opposite side of the coin from judging, addressed in Proverbs: “He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the just, both of them alike are an abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 17:15).

• When a Christian persists in sin, the church is called upon to intervene with righteous judgment to call him back to Christ.

• When there is a conflict between Christians, Scripture makes it clear that wise, mature Christians are to intervene and make a judgment as to right/wrong for the good of both parties and the name of Christ.

• Finally, on the basis of Scripture, we are required, while loving the sinner, to judge that sin is wrong, for it always is.

The hypocrite is the judgmental person who points his finger at the “sinner” but fails to consider that while he’s pointing at another, there are always those three fingers pointing back at himself! Why does the hypocrite condemn himself?

B. The hypocrite’s problem - :1c-3 - “you do such things…”
One of the curious things about our sinfulness is that we all tend to see the faults of others much more quickly than we see our own (that’s why Jesus talked about getting the massive log out of our own eyes before we try to deal with the little speck in the eyes of others!). The hypocrite condemns himself by doing the things he claims to despise in others.

C. The hypocrite’s presumption - :4 - “do you presume on…His kindness?”
Man cannot sin with impunity on the basis of God’s mercy/grace. The person who can treat sin as though it “ain’t no big deal” is guilty of misunderstanding and abusing the grace of God, and gives evidence that he likely has never experienced the grace of God.

II. God’s Judgment on Hypocrisy - :5-11

A. The surety of God’s judgment - :5
Grace doesn’t lead to license. When it does, when we mistake God’s kindness and forbearance for nonchalance, indifference regarding our sin, then we invite the judgment of God in the end. And His judgment is sure.

B. The basis of God’s judgment –:6-10
Justification is by faith alone, as Paul will make clear, but judgment will be based upon our works. Two good options present themselves as to what Paul is saying:

• Option 1 – Paul is suggesting that our works demonstrate the reality of our faith, that those who have real saving faith will evidence that faith by a changed life that performs good works. Faith saves us, not works, but real saving faith is a faith that works; faith that is more than mere intellectual assent, more than mere head knowledge of theological facts, will demonstrate itself by deeds done for others in the name of and in the love of Christ. Paul says this in Ephesians 2:10; James echoes it in James 2:18. And this may be the point Paul is making here, but there is a second option.

• Option 2 – Paul is saying here that God’s judgment will be based upon our works, but he later says that all of our works are tainted and none of them can possibly measure up to God’s standard of holiness. Notice that judgment is based upon what we seek and upon what we do. But Paul says this in the next chapter, Romans 3: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.”

There is no one whose works measure up to God’s perfect standard, that because our innate sin taints everything we do, we can’t possibly be counted right with God by our works, since they aren’t that “good” anyway! It seems to me that this is the more likely option. God will judge our works for what they are: unworthy of His holy standard!

C. The fairness of God’s judgment– :11
God never gets the call wrong, and He is never swayed by some partiality to cook the books. He’s not partial to His chosen people, the Jews; He’s not partial to Americans in some way; He judges each person impartially. And because you sin, your sins will be judged.

But here’s the wonderful news: your sins were judged on Calvary’s cross. The cross isn’t about God saying, “sin ain’t no big deal”; it’s about God saying, “sin is a huge deal—and then paying Himself an excruciating price to deliver us, the objects of His love, from that sin!

III. The Cure for Hypocrisy

A. Brokenness – A right response to myself
I am a broken person. And so are you—the question is whether or not you are willing to admit it. I should be broken over my sin because my sin has broken me! I see myself through the lens of brokenness, that I have been fatally marred by my sin in such a way that I cannot by any means fix myself. That was David’s attitude; listen to Psalm 51: 16-17:

“For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

On the heels of brokenness comes

B. Repentance – A right response to God
The only appropriate response to a holy God, Whom I’ve offended by my continual sinful affronts to His holy character, is heartfelt repentance, on a regular basis. Paul says, in :4, that this is what God’s kindness toward us should lead us to, heartfelt repentance. Repentance is a change of mind and heart that leads to a change in action. Scripture tells us that “godly sorrow brings about repentance” (II Corinthians 7.

C. Mercy – A right response to others
The hypocrite is under the judgment of God because he minimizes his own sin and maximizes the sins of others, condemning them for the very same types of things of which he himself is guilty, wearing a mask of bogus spirituality to hide the rottenness within. But the faithful follower of Christ is different. I must see myself as one who, though broken, has received the abundant grace and mercy of God, and on that basis, I extend mercy to others instead of judgment.

God has an answer for hypocrites, and it is this: when you condemn others, you condemn yourself, because you are guilty of the same things. Your hypocrisy earns the wrath of God—which is why we all, every one of us, need the grace of God.

Taking it Home
How would you answer the person who says he doesn’t need the church because it is “full of hypocrites”?

Read Isaiah 29:13-14, and compare it with Christ’s words in Mark 7:1-13. What is at the heart of hypocrisy? How is it that hypocrites tend to substitute one thing for another? What are some easy hypocrisies for us to fall into today?

How is Jeremiah 17:9-10 a warning to each of us? Even in talking about the subject of hypocrisy, do we find it easier to see hypocrisy in other people than in ourselves—and is that hypocritical?

We all make judgments—we have to do so in order to live! What are some guidelines we can use to be certain we are judging “righteous judgment” (John 7:24)?

Romans 1:18-32
September 21, 2008

Sometimes, it’s not a good thing to be politically-incorrect; at other times, though, it’s a good thing to buck the trend of political correctness. We serve a God Who isn’t particularly concerned that He pass some politically-correct litmus test, and yet there are people who sometimes seem to want to fit Him into their box; His character and nature aren’t up for vote. Yet here’s the son of one prominent evangelical leader: “Some might say I would be wise to swallow my misgivings about…stuff like God’s sovereignty, wrath, hell, etc., remain orthodox, and thereby secure my place with God in eternity. But that is precisely my point: If those things are true, then God might as well send me to Hell…I have standards for my God, the first of which is this: I will not worship any God who is not at least as compassionate as I am.”

Paul has just soared to the heights in his description of the gospel of Christ, the powerful gospel that accomplishes eternal salvation. What’s next?

“For the wrath of God…” Oh…OK. How antiquated! How outdated! How hellfire-and-brimstone, pound the pulpit, fundamentalist can you get? Further, we don’t just get a mention of the wrath of God, and of man’s sinfulness, for a paragraph or two; it goes on this way for the next two chapters, before we get back to the subject of God’s saving of men and women from damnation. What’s up with this? Why does Paul go from the incredible “positive” message, if you will, of God’s powerful gospel of grace, to a discussion of God’s fierce wrath? Here’s the answer: we can’t get to the good news of the gospel until we see the bad news of our sin, and the just/righteous wrath of a holy God directed against that sin!

I. The Fact of God’s Wrath - :18
“It is necessary for God to reveal His righteousness in the gospel because God has also found it necessary to reveal His wrath against sin” (Douglas Moo). What do we mean when we speak of God’s wrath?

A. Definition
It is His consistent opposition to sin: period. Wrath is the necessary reaction of a holy God to the sin of man. If God did not react with wrath, He would not be holy; He would not be God.

B. Direction
“Against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men”, the Scripture says; God perfectly hates the sin (while loving the sinner, by the way!).

Despite what you’ll hear from some pulpits, God is not a celestial life-coach cheering you on to reach greater heights in self-fulfillment, a “you-can-do-it” positive thinker to the max who is there to pull you through. Paul says that the wrath of God is being revealed (present tense) against man’s wickedness. Why?

II. The Basis for God’s Wrath - :19-26 – “they exchanged…”
Man is engaged in a full-scale battle to suppress what he knows to be true about God. We can know that a God exists, know something of His creative nature and His awesome power, by looking at creation, at the world and the universe in which we exist. “The heavens declare the glory of God”, Scripture says. Johannes Kepler, founder of modern astronomy, wrote that “the undevout astronomer is mad.” Why? Because man can look at the created order and see that there must be an intelligence behind it all, and he could look at the complexity of the cosmos and know there was a Designer.

Three times we read, “they exchanged…” In each case, people put themselves, their own idols, their own ideas, their own self-whatever in place of God. God, in each case, responds to their decisions by “handing them over” to some consequence of their own sin. He consigns people to experience the full consequence of sinfulness.

A. Exchange 1: The glory of God for idols
• God made the truth plain
• Man doesn’t want the truth
• Man does this proclaiming that he’s being smart in so doing
• Man ends up playing the fool

An idol is simply a substitute god, and there are many and they are varied. Politics has become an idol these days to many, particularly to those, it seems, lacking a belief in any real God. Material things serve the same purpose for others, as do hobbies, relationships, money, sex, even spirituality…people are adept at crafting idols of their own making, to their own liking, for their own use. But the first commandment is still valid: “you shall have no other gods before Me!”

B. Exchange 2: The truth of God for lies
Charging young Timothy with the critical, central nature of proclaiming the truth of God’s Word, Paul warns that “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (II Timothy 4:3-4). We’ve managed to exchange God’s truth for lies that we like to tell ourselves.

C. Exchange 3: The design of God for deviance
We get accused, as Christians, of being against a lot of things, and sometimes against certain groups, notably homosexuals. Let me set the record straight on a few things:

• God designed sexuality as a key component of what it means to be human. The first word re sex isn’t “don’t”; it’s God’s design!

• God designed it to be vitally linked with committed love between a man and a woman.

• Anything that deviates from that norm that God established constitutes a falling short of God’s standard; anything.

“Due penalty” – here is a phrase that has given countless preachers license to rant about the AIDS virus, about particular diseases that tend to afflict homosexuals, etc. The fact is that AIDS is one, but only one, very visible and particularly deadly evidence of the rebellion of all of us against the holy standards of God’s will for living, and there are many, many more! AIDS is evidence of God’s disapproval of our sin—as is cancer, and arthritis, and Alzheimer’s, and heart disease, and…

III. The Execution of God’s Wrath - :24-32 – “God gave them up…”
This is present-tense judgment in this passage, not some future-tense sense of what will happen in eternity. Yes, God will reveal His wrath fully one day in final judgment, but that’s not what’s in view here. Rather, Paul tells us here, three times, that “God gave them over”; this is the judgment of God seen in God’s abandonment of sinners to the consequences of their own willful self-centeredness.

A. Regarding the will – what we do - :24-25
God abandoned man to do things that will prove man’s undoing.

B. Regarding the emotions – what we feel - :26-27
God abandoned man to emotional misplacement, to emotional confusion, to emotional attachment to the wrong things and “unattachment” to the right things.

C. Regarding the intellect – how we think - :28-32
Our minds don’t think right; this is also the consequence of not only our sinful choices, but God’s present-tense abandonment of us to our sin. And minds that don’t think right prove fertile ground for all manner of sinful activity.

And then he finishes by suggesting that beyond committing sin, man experiences the unfolding wrath of God by condoning sin, minimizing sin, justifying sin, lying to God and ourselves about the sinfulness of sin.

Do not despair: what we’re talking about today, and over the course of the next few weeks, will lead us to the amazing grace of God, that while we are sinners through and through and under the wrath of God, He has provided a way for us to live free.

Taking it Home
1. Christian Smith, in his book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, says that our young people today have a concept of God that he calls “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”. Evaluate its tenets against the teaching of Scripture:

- A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
- God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
- The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
- God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.
- Good people go to heaven when they die.

Why do you think young people have developed such concepts of God?

2. Read Acts 17:22-31. Paul is addressing a group of learned men regarding the gospel. How does he tie God’s “natural revelation” to this presentation? Why is “natural revelation” insufficient to lead one to Christ? What are some things we can know from “natural revelation”?

3. What are some ways in which we can see the judgment of God upon sin even now? Use examples (without sharing names!) if you can.

4. Why do you think Paul singles out homosexual sin in this passage? Is homosexual behavior a worse sin than other forms of sexual sin? Further, are all sins “equal”? Why or why not?

5. Compare Isaiah 5:20 with Romans 1:32. How do you see these things taking place in our society today? Do you think things are worse in this regard in our society than they used to be? Why or why not?

Romans 1:8-17
September 14, 2008

Religion is a dud; the gospel is dynamite.

Last week we took a look at the theme of the book of Romans, and today we continue. We said last week that the point of Romans was the gospel, and that the point of the gospel is Jesus Christ, that without Him, we have nothing.

I. Paul’s Deep Regard for the Romans

A. “I am thankful” - :8
Christians were being made in the cultural center of the ancient world, and word was getting out!

B. “I am praying” - :9
I fear that for too many of us, “out of sight is out of mind”, and yet for Paul, unceasing prayer, even for people he’d never met, was altogether appropriate.

C. “I want to minister to you” - :10b-11
What does Paul mean by “some spiritual gift” that he longs to impart to them? Likely, because he doesn’t know their particular situation and their particular needs in detail, his desire is to find out in what way(s) he can best benefit them, and share in that way with them.

D. “I want to be ministered to by you” – :12
If you ever are tempted to think that our relationship as pastor/parishioners is some one-way thing whereby I do the giving and you do the receiving, please, please think again!

E. “I want to win some in Rome to Christ” - :13
Paul had a genuine concern for lost people, and thus he speaks of his desire to win some to Christ. Let me tell you this: as a follower of Christ, there is no greater joy than helping another person come to know Him, a joy I hope each of you experience!

II. Paul’s Deep Desire to Minister the Gospel
Religion is a dud, but the gospel is dynamite. And Paul has a deep desire to minister that gospel. Note his attitude:

A. “I am obligated” - :14
Our text uses the word “obligated”, and that’s my word in the outline, but there is an even deeper meaning in view, a sense of “debt” (KJV: “debtor”). In what sense is Paul a debtor to the Romans? Have they given him anything which he is responsible to pay back? No…but there is another way to be in debt to another. If I give you $1000 with the charge to pay it to another party, then you “owe” that third party the $1K. It is in this sense that Paul is in debt to Greeks and barbarians; i.e., to both the cultured and the uncultured, because God has entrusted something to him with the directive that he pass it along to others.

B. “I am eager” - :15
Paul had been called by God to proclaim the gospel, and thus he writes in I Corinthians 9, “Woe to me, if I do not preach the gospel…” Paul’s have-to was matched by his want-to! In every culture, it is considered a dishonorable thing to leave a debt unpaid. This is why Paul is “eager” to discharge his obligation.

C. “I am unashamed” - :16,17
Jesus warned his disciples (Mark 8:38) not to be ashamed of Him, implying that such was possible, and so Paul makes it clear: “I am not ashamed”, and he didn’t just say that, but he lived it, taking that gospel to all. James Stewart made the trenchant remark in a sermon that “there’s no sense in declaring that you’re not ashamed of something unless you’ve been tempted to feel ashamed of it.” In writing to the Corinthians, he acknowledges that it was with “fear and trembling” that he came to them, recognizing that the message of the gospel was (and is) to many people “foolishness”. As John Stott says, “whenever the gospel is faithfully preached, it arouses opposition, often contempt, and sometimes, ridicule”. And yet, Paul was unashamed of the gospel because he knew its power (get to that in a minute!).

III. Paul’s Deep Convictions Regarding the Gospel
Here’s why we say that the gospel is dynamite:

A. It is powerful - :16 – “dunamis”
That’s what the word “powerful” means in the original Greek; it’s the word “dunamis”, from which we get the word “dynamite!” And it is dynamite in the sense of what it is able to produce: Paul says it’s the power of God “for salvation”. Bible teacher John Piper is convinced that it is the future tense of salvation that Paul is talking about here. Romans 5:9 - “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.” This is speaking of the fact that those who have been justified by God, accounted righteous before Him, will be spared God’s wrath, wrath poured out in divine justice against those who never confessed Jesus Christ as Savior. In other words, the gospel is dynamite in that it alone has the power to bring us into final, realized salvation and everlasting joy with God the Father.

B. It is entirely by faith - :16, 17 – “believes”; “from faith for faith”; “by faith”

Another way to understand the quotation from Habakkuk 2:4 is “he who through faith is righteous shall live.” Sometimes Christians struggle to consider themselves “worthy” of salvation—here’s the good news: you aren’t. You’ll never be. You can’t achieve worthiness before God. Give up. But here’s the better news: you don’t have to! It’s not about you being worthy. This gospel is appropriated by faith in Christ, not by achievement of ours.

And what is faith, in a Christian understanding? Let’s define it as “actively staking one’s eternal life/destiny on Jesus Christ alone”. And according to the Bible, Christ can transform the worst sinner into a fully-justified saint in an instant, when that sinner places simple faith in Christ and His sacrifice. Religion is a dud, but the gospel is dynamite!

C. It is all-inclusive - :16 – “everyone who believes”
The gospel reaches across the boundaries that man sets to say “who’s in” and “who’s out”. There is no one that is beyond the scope of God’s grace: no one. That’s scandalous to some people. People who think that God is rewarding “good people” for “good behavior” can’t imagine that God would allow rapists and murderers and child molesters to get his forgiveness, because those are “evil people”…but I’m going to propose to you through the course of this study that that is exactly, precisely what God does, and further, that God is perfectly right and just in doing that very thing. Religion can’t find a way to forgive everyone, because it’s a dud, but the gospel is dynamite! Finally,

D. It reveals God’s righteousness - :17 – “the righteousness of God”
This speaks of the righteous status which God requires of man, and which God provides for man through Jesus Christ. It is contrasted throughout Romans with the “righteousness” which we can achieve in our own efforts (non-existent!).

The gospel is powerful; it’s dynamite. The question is, what is your own response to the gospel of Jesus Christ? Christ has done everything for you; salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone; will you place your faith in Christ?

Taking it Home

What truth do you find in verse 12 that is so critical for Christians today to remember and put into practice? What sorts of things do you find most effective in living this out?

What are some things that tempt Christ-followers to be ashamed of the gospel?

We see that the gospel is all-inclusive; in what way(s) is it also exclusive?

How have you seen the power of the gospel demonstrated in your life, and/or in the lives of others?