“There were these famous stories Paul’s audience would have been familiar with.  The Greco-Roman world loved them a good ‘bromance’.  Stories of friends so close and committed that one was willing to die for the other.  This is not at all what God has done for us.  Christ laid his life down for us, according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, while we were still weak in nature, ungodly in character, still choosing to sin against him, his enemies rather than friends…Our conviction this morning is that we have not appropriately rejoiced in what God has done for us.”

“My professor says ‘the Law is like soil that always produces wrath, while faith is like soil that always produces righteousness and blessing.’ …Behind all this stands the expressed purpose of God: ‘That is why it depends on faith!!!’ (v.16)…It is imperative that the church resists all such efforts to enforce any distinctions between persons. Whoever you are, where ever you live, whatever land is your homeland, whatever your racial or ethnic background, if you place your trust for your standing before God in the work of Jesus Christ: Abraham is your father. You too are numbered among the people of God, those who believe and are justified by faith.”

“…There is one church in Christ, not two. Do you know what the messianic Jews in the first century were called? Christians. Or the gentile believers? Christians. The church was not separated by culture or ethnicity. Paul is not only tackling that issue here in Romans — not only does he put Jews and Gentiles in the same boat, but he also forces us to see ourselves to in the same boat as unbelievers today. It forces us to see ourselves as no more deserving of God’s grace than all those ‘ungodly’ people around us, with sins and lifestyles we find most offensive. God is in the business of justifying the ungodly - because no one is righteous, no not one…”

“So this church (in Rome) that is struggling with this unity because they are of mixed ethnicity (Jew and Gentile) and they can’t get along, they think that some are superior to others — Paul puts everyone in the same boat. Some of us grew up in church. We learned the rules, we got the Sunday School lessons, we had the Word. And we are in the exact same boat as those who just discovered it today!! All are in desperate need for God to save.”

“There developed in the history of Israel a belief that circumcision, the sacred rite which was the sign of the Old Testament covenant, was all it took to be saved.  We have a similar confusion in the Christian church today where some people believe that they are automatically guaranteed salvation by some rite or response. This passage in Romans refutes any thought that one gains membership into the people of God by baptism (infant or otherwise), or that any other rite of passage can grant us assurance of salvation. The New covenant counterpart to circumcision is not baptism, or any other thing which can be accomplished by human choice and human hands— but circumcision of the heart, and that is accomplished only by God.”

“…Paul uses the term justification in two senses with two different tenses: a here-and-now justification by faith — an alien righteousness applied to wicked sinners through the obedience of Christ — and…the final verdict of ‘justified’ which was declared by God over them already through faith…

With Paul, we can say with integrity, ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel,’ because this is a gospel that acknowledges the gravity of sin and the sober reality of coming judgment, while at the same time being the power of God to both justify and sanctify all who place their faith in Jesus Christ.  It is a gospel in which faith and obedience are two sides of the same coin, a gospel to celebrate and revel in, and not one to be ashamed of.”

“…Our passage this morning is a diatribe against (a) those who believe that God will be lenient to them despite their continued disobedience, AND, (b) those who believe that their obedience is sufficient to be counted righteous before God…Both are called to repentance here…

It is so easy for us to see sin in others and overlook it in our own lives. It’s easy to look at the world and call out “shame, shame,” and not recognize that the sanitized sins of our own hearts have the same idolatrous roots. To have the highest standards for others, but cut ourselves a lot of slack…Many of the Jews at this time felt free to condemn ‘sinful Gentiles’ because ‘they are not God’s people;' And then when they would sin themselves whenever the temptation arose they believed that they would not be held accountable for their own sins. Does this sound familiar yet?…”