Romans

Romans 12:3-8

Romans 12:3-8

“It may shock you, in this modern age, to see that Paul does not deal with the problem of pride by appealing to the concept of equality…Paul’s larger emphasis in these chapters is the unity of the church….(T)he shocking thing here is that the church is not called to unity by seeing our equality, but by seeing our diversity.  Certainly, Paul has earlier emphasized the equality of all people - in that we have nothing of value to offer God and have done nothing to deserve anything good from God at all.…(but) the central point here is that each believer has something unique to contribute to the proper functioning of Christ’s body, and that despite our many inequalities, we can have unity when we each offer ourselves as living sacrifices to God by existing for each others’ good…”

Romans 12:1-2

Romans 12:1-2

“So why does Paul wait until now to begin discussing Christian living?  That’s what he should be focusing on right?  Obeying the command of Christ to “Go and make disciples”… Why the long theology lesson? And shouldn’t the message of the church just focus on victorious Christian living and godly behavior?  Theology confuses and doctrine divides, right?

If we start with a list of instructions, we will tend to start trying to accomplish those things without the gospel motivation required in order to genuinely fulfill them from a motivation of love towards God. I can tell you: be humble, be generous, be selfless; But these are worthless instruction unless we begin to understand what God has done as a free gift; the mercy he has shown to undeserving sinners like you and me; the people God has formed from among those who had no right by birth or by merit to be called the children of God.”

Romans 11:11-36

Romans 11:11-36

“What will motivate us to persevere in faith?: ‘the kindness and the severity of God.’ The kindness of God cannot be truly appreciated as a gift of his grace unless the severity of God is contemplated as the just penalty for forsaking him…Although our salvation flows out of God’s gracious and unconditional election, this does not mean that we are merely passive recipients of that final salvation. We are called to live by faith; and if we choose disobedience and unbelief, we cannot expect any better of an outcome than Israel has experienced.”

Romans 11:1-10

Romans 11:1-10

“Throughout, we need to recognize that what Paul says here is not only true of Jewish people, but also gives us an example of the faithful character of God and his promises which can be relied upon by all believers today…Like you and I, Paul was not more likely to choose faith and obedience. He was the least likely to convert, from the least likely of people. God makes this clear through the Scriptures, that Israel was not chosen for their righteousness but for their weakness. This is God’s modus operandi, his M.O…They were not chosen based on God’s foreknowledge - something which the Bible never says…but they were chosen by grace…Now church, we must defend this doctrine of unconditional election so vigorously, because the denial compromises the biblical gospel, that justification is by grace alone through faith alone. The Protestant Reformation was propelled by people coming to believe in and preach passionately these doctrines of grace…”

Romans 10:14-21

Pastor Josh continues to teach us through Paul’s Epistle to the Romans:

“There is a responsibility and a necessity under the sovereignty of God, to preach the gospel and to send preachers. It is defiant insubordination to say that we will just ‘trust God to save whomever he wills’. He has already establishede that he will save through our obedience…Human responsibility and divine sovereignty are not played off against each other so that one nullifies the other; instead human responsibility is always subordinate to the sovereignty of God without ‘emptying human choices of their authenticity or validity’…”

Romans 10:5-13

Romans 10:5-13

"The clear message is that saving righteousness is a work of God alone.  What did you do to accomplish your salvation?  Did you go up to heaven and send Jesus down to save us?  No?  Maybe you went down to the dead to raise Christ up from that place?  Perhaps not.  Did you bring the word of God near to you?  Preach the gospel to yourself?  Did you place the word of faith in your own mouth and circumcise your own heart? No!  God has taken the initiative.  He sent his Son and raised him from the dead.  He gives new hearts to understand, eyes to see and ears to hear.  There is no one else in heaven or on earth who could do it. Since these things have been done by God, our response is not to do anything to gain righteousness, only to respond in God-given faith.

Romans 9:30-10:4

Romans 9:30-10:4

“In Romans 9, we read the unpalatable truth that God himself had caused the Jews to be hardened in their hearts, but we must realize here that this was not by causing or working evil in them, or by tempting them to sin: it was the gospel of Jesus Christ...That was the stumbling block and offense; that’s what they could not handle, because he was saying to them, ‘Your works are not pure enough to merit entry into the kingdom of God.’ This infuriated the Jews because the doctrine of justification by faith alone is a violent assault upon human pride. ‘Instead of allowing Jesus to lift them up, they tripped over him.’…Romans 10 is a vital section for understanding that Paul viewed divine sovereignty and human responsibility as complementary rather than contradictory truths…”

Romans 9:14-29

Romans 9:14-29

“Paul is not saying that humans have no free will, only that, in the clearest possible terms, free will is not the fundamental factor in divine election; it depends only ‘on God, who has mercy.’…It is important, as we speak the truth about human inability to save ourselves, that we accurately portray that our weakness is not physical, or even fundamentally intellectual, but moral.  It is not as though God has commanded anything of us which we are totally incapable of, only that we will never want to do it.  The weakness is in your will…Who of us, by our own free will, would claim to be able to choose absolute and eternal submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ.  Who of us, by our own choosing, could practice perfect and perpetual obedience?  But this is exactly what is promised to us in salvation.  And this is exactly what God does in his mercy; he makes us fit for heaven.  This salvation is not of ourselves, ‘it is the gift of God… so that no one may boast.’”

Romans 9:6-13

Romans 9:6-13

“Welcome, this morning if you are visiting. We are in the most difficult part of the Bible. Not the most difficult part to understand, mind you. But the most difficult part to be comfortable with…Any attempt to explain the election of Jacob over Esau on the basis of God’s foresight of Jacob’s good works or Jacob’s choice is to reverse everything Paul is saying here and to turn the text here on its head. Paul very carefully and specifically explains that it was not Jacob’s choice or Jacob’s works that saved him only the sovereign choice of God who chooses. To come up with some apologetic that makes this make no sense doesn’t help us. We just must hear the word of God and it’s us that needs to change if we don’t like it…”

Romans 9:1-5

Romans 9:1-5

“Whenever we are studying in Romans there is a danger, especially as we work slowly through a couple verses at a time, that we miss the forest for the trees. This is Romans. There are some magnificent sequoias in here, some towering cedars. We’ve got predestination, we’ve got the sovereignty of God, we’ve got the state of ethnic Israel and the promises being granted to Israel….but we don’t want to miss the big picture…(T)he central issue in these chapters is not predestination, nor even the salvation of Israel, but the question: “Are we in the church able to fully trust the promises we have just received in chapters 5-8?”  At the forefront of Paul’s thinking is God’s faithfulness to his promises…(F)or God to be truly ‘good’ he must also be fully in control.  For God to consistently give such amazing promises to his people, as we have just seen in abundance throughout chapter 8, he must be fully willing and capable to carry them out.  Anything less is not ‘ good’, well meaning though it might be...”

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