Category: Romans

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Romans

The One who establishes us

Romans

And so we finish off Romans.

I think it’s been one of the more fun books that I have blogged through. And as we do, we finish up where we started. With a reminder that salvation is ultimately the work of God.

Paul writes,

Now to him who is able to establish you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God. (Romans 16:25-26)

Here we see the wonder of the gospel. That years before Jesus came, God gave glimpses of what was to come through the prophets.

It was something that was unclear for hundreds of years but found its clarity in Jesus Christ. And now this gospel is clear for all to see that,

all nations might believe and obey him. (Romans 16:26b)

But it’s not a gospel based on our works. Rather, it’s based on the grace of God. He is the one who establishes us in our faith, and in our salvation.

Before time began, he chose us, predestining us to be conformed to the likeness of his Son.

Through Jesus, he paid the price for our sin. And through the Spirit, he sanctifies us day by day so that we might become more like Jesus until the day we see him in glory.

That’s the wonder of salvation. Not that we deserved it. Not that we earned it.

But that through his grace, God’s love was poured out on us that we might believe and be transformed into his likeness.

So as Paul said,

To the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen. (Romans 16:27)

Indeed, amen and amen.

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Romans

That we may not be naive

Romans

Here, towards the end of his letter to the Romans, Paul gives the church a warning.

I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. (Romans 16:17)

What exactly was Paul talking about? False teaching. It was a plague back then, and it is a plague in the church today. And Paul tells us to watch out for them.

The problem is that those who teach false things often sound so good. Paul wrote,

By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. (Romans 16:18b)

But in truth,

Such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. (Romans 16:18a)

And Paul tells us,

I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil. (Romans 16:19b)

How can we safeguard ourselves against false teaching? I think Paul gives us the key identifying false teaching in verse 17. It is “contrary to the teaching you have learned.”

This is assuming, of course, that you are familiar with the true teaching of Christ.

If you are not, then it will be impossible to be “wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.”

Rather, you will live in a naive manner, prey to any wolf that might come to devour you.

The Romans were, however, grounded in the Word of God, and because of that, Paul said,

Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I am full of joy over you…

The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. (Romans 16:19-20)

So ground yourself in God’s Word. Be hungry for the truth that is in it and you will never be deceived.

People who are trained to detect counterfeit money (like bankers) never start by studying the counterfeit. They start with studying and handling the real bills.

They become so familiar with the real bills, that when a counterfeit bill falls into their hands, they can almost immediately tell the difference, just by the feel of it.

In the same way, if you become real familiar with the truth in the Word of God, you will never be deceived.

So let us make it our goal to become familiar with what’s true and good.

And “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.” (Romans 16:20)

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Romans

Working hard, tested, and approved

Romans

Here in this passage, we see Paul sending greetings to different people in Rome.

These were people who Paul really appreciated. Some supported him financially, others worked side by side with him in ministry, others had spent time in prison with him for the sake of the gospel.

But two things really strike me here.

Twice he refers to women (Mary and Persis) who worked hard in the Lord. And he talks about a man named Apelles, who was tested and approved in Christ.

I was just thinking how I’d like to have people say those things about me.

That I worked hard in the Lord.

That I was doing all the things that God asked of me.

And that through whatever circumstances and trials I might go through, that I have been found approved in Christ.

More than that, though, it’s my deepest desire that when I go to heaven, God would say to me, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

For while the praise of man is wonderful, it is the praise of God that really counts.

How about you? What would God and others say about you?

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Romans

Supporting those on the front lines

Romans

It is easy, sometimes, to forget that we are in a spiritual war. But we are.

And many people are out on the front lines sharing the gospel.

Some are doing ministry at home. Others are in foreign countries. But whether at home or abroad, these people especially need our prayers.

Paul himself knew that. If there was one person you would think could make it without others’ prayers, it would be him.

But he was particularly mindful of the fact that he couldn’t do it alone. He wrote the Roman church saying,

I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me.

Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there. (Romans 15:30-31)

Sometimes we think of missionaries and other ministers as Christian supermen and superwomen. But they’re not. They’re human just like us. And they are fighting in a terrible spiritual struggle.

So join them in that struggle by praying for them.

Pray for your pastors. I talked yesterday about supporting them financially, but they also need your spiritual support. Pray for them.

Pray for those you know are missionaries. They need your prayers too.

Let us never forget those who are out there on the front lines.

All of us, hopefully, are doing God’s work wherever we are. And whenever we do God’s work we become targets for Satan and his demons.

But those who are on the front lines are especially targets. So let us not neglect praying for them.

More, let us send them our words of encouragement. And as God gives us the finances to do so, let us support them in that way too.

It can be lonely out there on the front lines. Let us remind those who are out there that they are not alone.

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Romans

Sharing with those from whom we receive spiritual blessing

Romans

Money is always a touchy subject. And talking about tithing always is within the church.

A lot of Christians argue that tithing is not a New Testament teaching, and I believe they’re right. (There are others that do differ with me on this).

However, I do believe that the Bible is clear that we are to support those from whom we receive spiritual blessing.

I think we can see this principle in this passage, though the situation is not talking about tithing.

In this passage, Paul talks about how he was going to Jerusalem with a gift that the people from Macedonia and Achaia had given to support the poor in Jerusalem.

And Paul says a very interesting thing about it. He says,

They were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them.

For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews’ spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings. (Romans 15:27)

Two things to note here. They wanted to do it. They had hearts that were willing to give.

But second, Paul said that in a sense, it was something they owed the Jews, because salvation came from the Jews. (John 4:22)

That is, God chose to bring the Savior through the Jewish race. The Jews, through people like Peter, Paul, and Barnabas, spread the good news of God’s salvation to the Gentiles, and as a result, many were saved.

So Paul says, “Since they have received these spiritual blessings through the Jews, they owed it to the Jews to share their material blessings with them.”

I believe the same is true with us and our pastors.

They have shared many spiritual blessings with us. They dedicate their lives to us that we may know God better, and come into a closer relationship with him.

It is only right that we share our material blessings so that they can support themselves and their families.

But again, this needs to be something done, not simply from a heart pulled by obligation, but from a heart that is willing. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians,

Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. (2 Corinthians 9:7)

So if you’re not willing to give, don’t give.

But if you have a heart that is so in love with money that you are not willing to give to those that support you spiritually, then that’s an area that you’re going to need to grow in if you want to be like Jesus.

Jesus was a giver. He gave up heaven for us. He gave up his very life for us.

If we really love Jesus, shouldn’t we have that kind of heart as well?

How about you? Are you a giver?

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Romans

That people may see and understand

Romans

It is easy to look at people like the apostle Paul, and think that only people like him are called to be ministers.

It is true that he was given a special grace to take the gospel out to the Gentiles that they might see and understand the truth of the gospel. It is because of him that people like us (non-Jews) are believers today.

But the truth is that all of us are called to be ministers.

We all have the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God so that those we touch might become acceptable offerings to him as the Spirit sanctifies them. (Romans 15:16)

Some of you might think, “But I can’t do that. I’m no minister. I don’t have the power or ability to change lives.”

No, you don’t. But Jesus Christ does.

Paul himself gloried not in his accomplishments, as if it were by his power and wisdom that people came to Christ. Rather, he said,

Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. (Romans 15:17)

And again,

I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done. (Romans 15:18)

In short, it is Christ who changes people by the power of the Spirit. (Romans 15:19)

But in his grace, God chooses to use us to accomplish this.

As has been said before, for some people, we are the only Bible people will ever read. For some people, we will be the only people through whom they will ever see Jesus.

So let us fulfill our priestly duty that God has given us. Let us share his gospel with them that,

Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand. (Romans 15:21)

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Romans

Accepting others where they are

Romans

If there is one thing I think we’d all like, whether we admit it or not, it’s the ability to change others. To make others act in a way more palatable or acceptable to us.

Maybe it’s bad habits people have. Maybe it’s a fault they have.

The truth is, though, we can’t change people. We can try to bully people, make them feel guilty, or passively aggressively hint that they should change.

But Paul tells us here,

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. (Romans 15:1)

As I’ve mentioned before, this is specifically in reference to those with tender consciences, those who feel restricted by rules that are not required by God.

As I think of this passage today, however, I think of another application.

We may consider other people weak because of their bad habits, faults, etc, and ourselves as strong because we don’t have them.

More, we try to make them change, many times not for their own sake or for their own good, but for our own. We’re trying to make others act in a way that pleases us.

But Paul is saying here, we should bear with the failings of those around us. I like how the NASB puts it,

Now we who are strong ought to bear with the weaknesses of those without strength.

Many times as we deal with people, they simply don’t have the strength to change. They may know they should change, but it’s a struggle.

And until God gives them that grace and strength, we shouldn’t pressure them, push them, or try to manipulate them.

Rather, as Paul says, we are to,

Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. (Romans 15:7)

How does Christ accept us? He accepts us in our weakness.

I’m sure Christ knows every single fault and weakness that we have. But he does not shove them all in our face and require us to change right here and right now.

Rather, he shows patience, love, and mercy. And not only does he show us how to change, he gives us the power to change.

While we may have the ability to show people what needs to change and have ideas on how they can change, we cannot give them the power to change. Only Christ can do that.

So let us show patience, love, and mercy to those around us, and leave the change in their lives to Christ.

And as we do, God will be glorified.

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Romans

That we might have hope

Romans

Sometimes as we go through scripture, I think most of us wonder why God put all of the things he put in there.

For example, why did he put all the laws he gave the Jews in Exodus and Leviticus?

Or the stories of the awful things people did, stories of rape, murder, and so on.

Do we really need to read all this?

But Paul says something very interesting in verse 4. He says,

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. (Romans 15:4)

In other words, God puts everything in his word for a purpose.

Through the law, for example, we see pictures of the God’s holiness, his justice, and his mercy.

Through the awful stories, we see the sinfulness of man, and just how bad things can get when people walk away from God and do things their own way.

But we also see the grace of God working through the worst of situations to bring out something good.

We see how through times of persecution, God delivered his people. We see how even when God allowed his people to die in persecution, the peace he gave to them, even in facing death.

We see how through times of suffering, when God seemed far away, yet God was there all along and ultimately brought comfort to his people.

And because of all this, when we see evil in this world, when we go through suffering or persecution, we have hope to endure. We find the encouragement to keep on going.

And as we do, we find the same God that was with his people thousands of years ago, working in their lives, is still alive today and working in us now.

So whatever you’re going through and where you are in life, let us immerse ourselves in the Scriptures.

Let us remember that God is not dead, but is alive and at work in us.

And as Paul prayed,

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

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Romans

Living as one

Romans

Paul sums up what he has been talking about in chapter 14 in this passage. He starts by saying,

We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves.

Each of us should please his neighbor for his good to build him up. (Romans 15:1-2)

Basically, the “weak” here are those with tender consciences which don’t allow them to do things that are actually okay, or on the other hand require them to do certain things that they don’t have to do. We saw this in Romans 14.

The strong are those who don’t have those limitations or feelings of obligation.

But Paul says those who are strong should not condemn those who are weak. Rather, they should look out for the good of those who are weak to build them up.

He then points to the example of Jesus, who though he was strong, put up with us who were weak.

He put up with a squabbling group of disciples who were selfish, self-seeking, proud, and in general a mess. And he served them, even going so far as to wash their dirty feet (John 13).

More, he put up with people that hated him for no reason, who insulted him, and ultimately crucified him, and he interceded for them, praying, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

And then he died in their place, taking the punishment they deserved.

Now all of us, both Jew and Gentile, have reason for hope, because 2000 years ago, Jesus laid his life down for us.

So Paul tells us,

Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God. (Romans 15:7)

And he prayed,

May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 15:5-6)

God calls us to live as one. And the key to that is not to focus on each other and our respective failings, but to focus on Jesus Christ, keeping our eyes on him, and following after him.

To the degree that we do focus on each other, it should be not to tear each other down, but to build each other up.

How it must tear at the heart of the Father to see his children biting and devouring each other.

Let us not be that way. Let us live as Christ did, putting up with each other, loving and accepting each other, and serving one another.

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Romans

Breaking conscience

Romans

There is one last thing that I should mention before leaving this chapter, and that’s the motivation of our hearts. Why do we do the things we do?

Paul makes it crystal clear here what our attitude should be. He said,

Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord.

Whoever eats meat does so to the Lord, for they give thanks to God; and whoever abstains does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God.

For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone.

If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord.

So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. (Romans 14:6-9)

Paul’s reminding us here that we are not living merely for ourselves but for the Lord.

So when we regard one day as “holy to the Lord,” we do it not merely because of tradition, but because of our love for the Lord.

Whenever we eat or drink something, we do it not just to indulge ourselves, but we do it with a heart of thankfulness for God.

In short, whatever we do, we do it to the Lord. Paul wrote in another passage,

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31)

But if you are not doing things out of that kind of heart, that is sin. Paul wrote concerning eating meat offered to idols,

But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin. (Romans 14:23)

Here, Paul is talking of a person who is bothered by the fact that the meat was offered to idols. They can’t get out of their head that it was offered to something spiritually impure.

And because of that, if they were to eat it, it wouldn’t be out of a heart of thankfulness to God. Rather it would be from a heart of, “I’m doing something wrong. I’m doing something sinful.”

If they were to eat from that kind of heart, it would become sinful to them. Because it would come from a heart of, “I feel this is wrong but I will do it anyway.”

And God is never pleased with that kind of attitude.

My point is, we should never break conscience. If our conscience tells us something is wrong, we should avoid it.

Even if we know other Christians think something like drinking is okay, if in our hearts it bothers us, don’t do it.

Even if we know other Christians sometimes watch R-rated movies, if it bothers us, don’t do it.

Everything we do should be done with a heart confident that we have God’s approval.

This is not to say that if we are confident that we definitely have God’s approval.

That’s why it’s important to read the Bible: to be certain.

But where the Bible is silent or says the choice is up to us, let us live by our conscience, asking God to continually shape it and mold it so that we can live in a way that’s pleasing to him.

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Romans

Dealing with each other in love.

Romans

In chapter 13, Paul said,

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:8)

And again,

Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Romans 13:10)

In this chapter, we see a very important application of this verse.

We saw before that there were people who were bothered by their fellow Christians eating meat offered to idols. It also seems that there were those who were bothered by those who drank wine.

We don’t see the former problem so much if at all in our society today, but we do see a lot of the latter: Christians judging others over drinking.

Now the Bible is clear cut in saying “Don’t get drunk.” But it doesn’t teach that we must completely abstain from alcohol.

Yet many Christians who drink alcohol condemn as legalistic those who don’t, and those who don’t drink alcohol often condemn as sinful those who do.

But again, Paul says, “Don’t judge others about these kinds of things. Leave judgment up to God. These are God’s servants, not yours. They are accountable to him, not to you.”

And yet, Paul does say this.

If your brother or sister is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy someone for whom Christ died. (Romans 14:15)

So he said,

Make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister. (Romans 14:13)

And again,

Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.

Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All food is clean, but it is wrong for a person to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble.

It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or to do anything else that will cause your brother or sister to fall. (Romans 14:19-21)

In other words, as Christians, we shouldn’t just live for ourselves and think only of ourselves.

Rather, remember that you are accountable for God for your actions, and he calls you to love your brothers and sisters in Christ.

But if you do something that distresses them because they think it’s wrong, you’re not acting in love. Worse, you could cause them to break conscience and fall into sin.

For as Paul wrote,

But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin. (Romans 14:23)

We’ll talk more about that tomorrow, but the key point is that we should never cause someone to break their own conscience.

I heard a story once of some people at my church back in Hawaii.

Some of the guys were hanging out at someone’s house, and they all had a beer. But unbeknownst to them, one of them was a recovering alcoholic.

And unfortunately, being with other brothers that were drinking, he started to drink too. But unlike them, he didn’t stop until he got drunk.

Now it wasn’t their fault. They didn’t know. But it shows the problems that can happen if we abuse our freedom at the expense of our brothers and sisters.

So let us not be selfish in our thinking. If our brother or sister is bothered by something that we do, then avoid doing that thing where they can see it. Let us be sensitive to them and love them.

After all, Christ died for them too.

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Romans

Judging your brothers and sisters

Romans

If there is one problem within the church, it’s brothers and sisters judging each other.

Now I want to be clear, this has nothing to do with black or white issues.

Paul had no problems with judging others when it came to issues that were clear cut right or wrong. You only have to look at I Corinthians 5 to see that.

But we’re talking about issues that the Bible either says nothing about or says is up to each individual Christian. And here we see two of the latter.

Among the Christians in Paul’s day, there were arguments about eating meat and vegetables.

People who ate vegetables were condemning those who ate meat, perhaps because the meat had been offered to idols before being served as food at the dinner table.

Others argued about religious holidays, most probably the Jewish ones and whether Christians should continue to observe them or not. The Sabbath was probably a particular issue they faced.

The key thing here is that Paul did not consider them black and white issues. And Paul says here not to get into arguments over “disputable matters.” (Romans 14:1)

These were issues that were purely matters of conscience.

Some Jews felt that they should continue to observe the Sabbath and other Jewish holidays. And for them, to suddenly stop observing these special days seemed dishonoring to God.

The Gentiles, on the other hand, probably felt that it was a purely a Jewish tradition and had nothing to do with them.

Paul condemns neither. He said,

One person considers one day more sacred than another; another considers every day alike.

Each of them should be fully convinced in their own mind.

Whoever regards one day as special does so to the Lord. (Romans 14:5-6)

In other words, if you consider a day special because of your faith, then celebrate it. God will honor that. But if every day is alike to you, that’s fine too.

For those who felt bad about eating meat offered to idols, Paul said,

I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself.

But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean. (Romans 14:14)

Paul was telling the Romans, “I personally feel that even if food has been offered to idols, it’s okay to eat it. But if you feel bad about doing that, then by all means, don’t eat it.”

But then he said,

The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them.

Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall.

And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand. (Romans 14:3-4)

And again,

You, then, why do you judge your brother or sister? Or why do you treat them with contempt?

For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written: “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.’”

So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.

Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. (Romans 14:10-13)

I really don’t think there’s much that needs to be added to this. It’s about as clear as you can make it.

The main point is that God is our master. He is the one we have to answer to. So we have no business judging one another on things that are a matter of conscience. Instead, we are to leave judgment to God.

When I was a teenager, I was working with other teens teaching Bible clubs to kids. For the first two weeks, we went through a training camp. But in between our classes, sometimes people played cards.

Now we weren’t gambling or anything, but there was one person there that was bothered by it. She had always been taught it was wrong.

Now when one of the other teens heard this, he said, “That’s so stupid!”

He didn’t say it, but if he had been an adult, he probably would have said, “That’s so legalistic.”

But another guy said, “Hey, it’s how she feels. Respect that.”

So we never touched cards again for the rest of camp.

We refused to judge her for her beliefs. And she, though she did say our playing bothered her, didn’t condemn us for thinking it was okay to play cards.

The end result was that we kept harmony, and we were able to do great things for God that summer.

That’s what Paul is saying here. We will not always agree.

But on issues where God says it’s up to us, or on issues where God says nothing at all, let us accept one another.

And if we do, we will make a difference in this world for Christ.

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Romans

Embracing the Day

Romans

When Jesus departed from this earth, and the disciples were left looking at the sky, an angel appeared to them saying,

Men of Galilee…why do you stand here looking into the sky?

This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven. (Acts 1:11)

Luke tells us that hearing this they returned to Jerusalem with great joy worshiping continually in the temple (Luke 24:52-53), and they also waited for the coming of the Spirit (Acts 2).

And when the Spirit came, they went out and turned this world upside down.

Now, years after this event, Paul brings all this back to mind, saying,

And do this (i.e., love each other), understanding the present time.

The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.

The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. (Romans 13:11-12)

In other words, knowing that the day of Jesus’ return is coming soon, we are to be awake, alert, and ready. I love the ESV translation of verse 12.

The night is far gone; the day is at hand.

Paul’s saying, “The time when Satan ruled is long past. The Day of Christ is at hand.”

He then takes the metaphors of night and day, and says,

So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. (Romans 13:12b)

In short, since the time of Satan’s rule has passed, and the time of Christ is at hand, let us put aside the deeds associated with that time of darkness, and instead put on the deeds associated with the light.

What are the deeds of darkness? He tells us in verse 13,

Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. (Romans 13:13)

Most people, when they do evil, do it in secret, in darkness. But Paul says here to step out into the light. Act as you would when you know the whole world is watching.

More, act knowing that God is watching and sees all you do.

Note also that though Satan’s time has passed, though he has already lost because of the cross, nevertheless, he continues to fight. So we are to be prepared for battle wearing the armor of light.

We are to have on the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness, the belt of truth, the sword of the Spirit, and our feet fitted and prepared to take out the gospel. (Ephesians 6:14-17)

Paul then concludes by saying,

Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature. (Romans 13:14)

We are to be people clothed Jesus Christ himself. His power and his character should be resting upon us as we live each day.

And if we are clothed with him, then there is no room for feeding our sinful nature.

Again, I like the ESV which puts it,

Make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:14b)

So knowing that Christ is coming soon, let us be like the 12 disciples, living each day in joy, filled with the Spirit, and turning this world upside down for the sake of Christ.

Let us embrace the Day.

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Romans

To fulfill the law

Romans

It has always seemed strange to me that Paul said,

For whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:8b)

After all, isn’t loving God the other half of fulfilling the law?

Jesus did say after all that the two great commands are to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:37-40)

Why then focus only on the latter?

I’m not sure, but I think perhaps the reason is that we cannot separate the former from the latter. That if we truly love God, we must love our neighbor. And if we don’t love our neighbor, we’re not truly loving God.

John says as much in his epistles.

If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? (1 John 3:17)

And again,

Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.

For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.

And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. (1 John 4:20-21)

It’s very hard to argue with John. How can we claim that we love a God whom we have never seen, while at the same time we hate the people around us that we can see?

How about you? Do you claim to love God?

If so, how are you treating the people around you? Are you loving them? Or are you looking down on them? Are you despising them?

If you’re doing the latter, it’s time to take a close look at how much you truly love God.

So as John wrote,

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. (1 John 3:18)

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Romans

A debt that can never be repaid

Romans

Paul’s use of words here are very interesting when you think about it.

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another. (Romans 13:8)

What is a debt? It’s something that you owe to someone else.

Paul is literally saying that we owe it to the people around us to love them.

Think about that a moment. What would you say if someone were to say to you, “You have to love me. You owe it to me.”

It’s hard to wrap your mind around it, at least it is for me.

Quite frankly, if someone were to say that to me, I’d probably say, “Forget that. I’m out of here. I don’t owe you anything.”

Yet Paul says we do. Why?

First, no matter who they are, they are people created in the image of God. And for that reason alone, they are worthy of our love.

Second, God loves them. And if God loves them, then we need to see them the same way. As people deserving of our love.

But so often, we devalue people. We see them as unlovable.

Why?

Sometimes it’s because they’re “different.” Sometimes it’s because of the things they do. And too often, it’s so hard to see beyond that.

But we need to remember that as people created and loved by God, they are worthy of our love.

To withhold that love from them is to tell God, “You made junk. You are wrong to love that person.”

I think, though, there is another reason we owe love to others. It’s because God loves us and gave his Son for us.

Jesus paid a terrible price on the cross to save us from our sin. And it’s a debt we can never repay.

But since we have received a love and grace that we didn’t deserve, we owe it to God to pass on what we have received from him to the people around us, even if in our eyes, they don’t deserve it.

Jesus put it this way,

Freely you have received; freely give. (Matthew 10:8)

How about you? Are you passing the love you have received from God freely with those around you?

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Romans

Doing what’s right…no matter who’s in charge

Romans

In this passage, Paul talks about the Christian’s relationship to government. And the basic principle that Paul gives is that we are to submit to those in authority.

Why? First and foremost, because ultimately, God is the one that put them there. And so if you rebel against those God has put in authority, you are actually rebelling against God.

Second, God has instituted the idea of authority for the benefit of society. Without authority, there would be total anarchy, and all of us would be living in fear. So Paul says,

For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. (Romans 13:4)

For the most part, because of authority figures in society, we have peace and stability. And Paul tells us that as long as we do what’s right, we shouldn’t have any problems.

I think of Obadiah (not the prophet) in I Kings 18. He served in the palace of one of the most wicked kings in Israel’s history, King Ahab.

But he did such an exemplary job that Ahab put him in charge of running the day to day operations of the palace.

Yet, all the while, Obadiah feared God and did what was right.

Which brings up another point. Sometimes what is right is contrary to what those in authority has ordered or wants.

What do we do in those situations? Do what’s right.

So when Ahab’s wife Jezebel ordered that all the prophets of God be killed, Obadiah secretly sheltered 100 prophets from the king and queen, saving the prophets’ lives.

Daniel and his friends did the same, as seen in Daniel 1-3.

When they were ordered to do something contrary to the Word of God, they did what was right and followed God’s instructions instead.

So did Peter and the rest of the apostles when threatened by the Sanhedrin to be silent concerning Christ (Acts 4-5).

And in each case, God blessed and protected them. Why?

Because they did what was right. And in some cases, they even won the favor of those that initially were against them.

Paul says,

For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong.

Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. (Romans 13:3)

This is particularly true of the ultimate authority: God.

If we do what’s right, we have nothing to fear from him.

Rather, we will be commended by him. So if the desires of those in authority are against what God wishes, then we are to follow our ultimate Authority.

But even when we have to go against the wishes of those in authority here on earth, we are to respect them.

Paul says,

Give to everyone what you owe them…if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor. (Romans 13:7)

That was the example of Obadiah, of Daniel and his friends, and the apostles. And that’s how we are to act too.

Peter sums this all up by saying,

Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?

But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed.

“Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.”

But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. (I Peter 3:13-16)

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Romans

When people hate us

Romans

One thing that the early Christians had to face, and Christians have to face to this day is hatred and persecution.

And Paul told the church how to handle it. He said,

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. (Romans 12:14)

Those words echo what Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount.

But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matthew 5:44)

Jesus himself, lived out those words. When he was on the cross, facing those who put him there, he prayed,

Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. (Luke 23:34)

We are to do the same. When we let bitterness consume us, it destroys us.

So Paul says, “Let go of bitterness and resentment to those who hurt you. Instead, pray for them.”

He goes even further in verse 17 saying,

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. (Romans 12:17)

Rather,

Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody.

The wording is perhaps not the best here. Paul is not saying, “Follow the moral standards of the people around you.”

He’s saying, “In the eyes of the people around you, whether they persecute you or not, do what is right.”

And that of course means not giving into bitterness or anger and taking revenge.

He then says,

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. (Romans 12:18)

Sometimes this means simply agreeing to disagree agreeably.

Sometimes this means we need to apologize to someone even if we feel they shouldn’t have been hurt by something we did.

Sometimes it means finding a middle ground in which you don’t have to compromise the Word of God.

I have friends here in Japan, for example, that refuse to go to any Buddhist funeral or memorial ceremony, but they will go out of their way to serve their family or friends after the ceremonies in any way they can.

Finally, Paul tells us,

Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord.

On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” (Romans 12:19-20)

In short, remember justice belongs to God, not you. God will bring all people to account for what they’ve done. So don’t give in the desire to “fight fire with fire.”

And again, don’t hold on to bitterness. It will only eat you up.

Rather, follow the example of Jesus and show his love to them.

Who knows? Through your actions, they may actually come to Christ.

I wonder how much Stephen’s prayer (Acts 7:60) for those who were killing him ate at Paul before Paul himself finally came to Christ.

So as Paul concludes,

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21)

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Romans

Living as a Christian…with the rest of the body

Romans

It would be easy to look at this passage and just think that these are things we are to do as individual Christians.

But it’s important to note that Paul is saying all this within the context of the body of Christ. He says first of all,

Love must be sincere. (Romans 12:9)

I love how the NLT puts it.

Don’t just pretend to love others. Really love them.

It can be so easy, for example, to pretend as if we’re listening to someone talking, when all the while, our brain is a million miles away.

But don’t just pretend to take an interest in others, really take an interest in them.

He then tells us as a church,

Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.

As a church, we need to hate and fight against the evil that we see in this world, while clinging to what is good and right. But that needs to start with what’s inside the church.

When we see bitterness and unforgiveness in the church, do we fight against that, instead embracing forgiveness?

When we see divisions and factions, do we fight to resolve them and instead embrace unity?

When we see pride and prejudices within the church, do we banish them from our midst, and embrace acceptance and love? (Romans 12:10, 16)

When we see blatant, willful sin, do we deal with it in godly discipline? (1 Corinthians 5)

And when we see a person fall, do we gently work to restore them? (Galatians 6:1)

Paul goes on to say,

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. (Romans 12:12)

When we go through trials, are we supporting one another, giving each other hope, encouraging each other to stand throughout our trials, and praying for each other. Do we,

Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. (Romans 12:15)

We talked about earlier how it’s important to minister to those within the church, not just without.

Paul brings this up as well, saying,

Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. (Romans 12:13)

That’s what our Christian lives should look like. Does yours?

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Romans

But don’t we need to go out?

Romans

I suppose I should address an objection that people might make concerning my last blog.

I said that one reason Christian fellowship is necessary is that we need each other. We all have a role to play in the body of Christ, and that we have a responsibility to use our gifts to minister to each other.

Some might object, “But shouldn’t we be using our gifts to bless the world, not just the church?”

Yes, we should.

But remember that many of the gifts we are given are meant first and foremost for the church.

Paul in Ephesians, for example says,

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers. (Ephesians 4:11)

Why did Christ do this?

To prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:12-13)

Think about evangelists for a moment.

If there is one gifting that is used to be outside of the church, it’s that one.

But Paul specifically tells us that one of the main purposes of the evangelist is to prepare God’s people for works of service.

As well as preaching the gospel, evangelists help encourage other believers to share their faith too. They show other believers how it is possible to make a difference in the lives of their unbelieving friends.

And as each of these people Paul lists use their gifts, we all grow up in unity in the faith and become mature.

“Okay, Bruce,” you may say, “but my gifting is not from that list.”

It doesn’t matter. Paul goes on to say,

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (Ephesians 4:15-16)

Again, we see that everyone in the church, every supporting ligament, every part, needs to do its work that we may all build each other up and become mature.

That’s why Paul reminds us in Galatians 6:10,

As we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. (Galatians 6:10)

So yes, using our gifts to touch the world is vital. But we also need to use them within the church.

Remember what Jesus told his disciples:

Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)

Notice that the way that people will know we are Christ’s disciples is by the way we treat each other.

And if we are loving and serving one another, people will see a difference in the followers of Christ, and that’s what will attract them to Him.

But if we are fighting amongst ourselves, living selfishly, and with an attitude of pride, they’ll rightfully ask, “So what’s the difference? Christians are just like us.”

How about you? Are you loving God’s people? Or are you avoiding them? Are you serving God’s people?

Or are you withholding the gifts God has given you from them?

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Romans

What destroys fellowship

Romans

It is so easy to think of the Christian life as an individual thing. I suppose with the individualistic mindset of Western countries, this is particularly true.

But the Christian life is not meant to be lived alone. We are meant to be in fellowship with other believers.

Yet there are many Christians who no longer attend church.

Why? There are many reasons, but through Paul’s words, we can find one common reason. Paul wrote,

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. (Romans 12:3)

And again,

Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. (Romans 12:16)

If there is one thing that will destroy Christian fellowship, it’s pride.

It’s a pride that says, “I don’t need other Christians. I’m fine by myself.”

It’s a pride that says, “These other Christians are at a much lower spiritual plane than I am. What can I possibly get from hanging around them?”

It’s a pride that says, “I’m at a different social status than these others. What do I have in common with them?”

It’s a pride that says, “This person has hurt me and that person has hurt me. I’m not going to go back to church until they apologize.”

But Paul reminds us,

Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. (Romans 12:4-5)

Here we see an important truth: All Christians are part of the body of Christ. And we don’t merely belong to ourselves anymore.

We belong to Christ, first and foremost. But we also belong to each other.

Why?

Because all of us bring something different to the body of Christ. We all have different functions within his body. And the whole body depends on us to fulfill that function.

So Paul says,

If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.

If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach;

if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully. (Romans 12:6-8)

You may think that you don’t need others. But even if that were true, others need you. And God gave you the gifts you have to bless others.

Remember that in serving others, we serve God.

That’s why Paul admonishes us,

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. (Romans 12:11)

But if we out of our pride withhold what God has given us from the church, God will hold us accountable.

Always remember: we belong to the others in the church. And they belong to us. We need each other.

So let us get rid of the pride that would separate us from our brothers and sisters. Instead,

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. (Romans 12:10)

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Romans

To know the mind of God

Romans

I like how some translations put the first part of Romans 12:2.

Do not be conformed to this age. (HCSB)

So often we talk about “the age we live in,” and how things have changed. And things have certainly changed.

When I first moved to Japan back in 1995, email was still a “new thing,” as was the internet.

So back in those days, I used air letters, and if I needed to make quicker contact, the telephone. Land lines, that is.

Now, of course, we have smartphones, email and Zoom, not to mention social media.

But as well as changes in technology, we have changes in the way people think, particularly about morals.

Things that were once considered “sinful,” are now considered normal. I wonder how many people remember what a couple “living in sin,” means.

More, we are now living in the age of “tolerance.”

Now don’t get me wrong. Tolerance in itself is a good thing.

Tolerance basically means that even if you don’t agree with someone, you can still deal with them on a day to day basis in a way that’s civil, and hopefully even friendly.

But in this age, tolerance means, “All beliefs are equally legitimate. And if you disagree with someone, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong or you’re wrong. You’re both right.

So don’t you dare even think that the other person could possibly be wrong. If you do, you’re being ‘intolerant.'”

Of course, this all goes out the window when these same people consider what Christians believe.

At that point, “tolerance” becomes, “You’re wrong. You have to change the way you think.”

But if we truly want to know the mind of God, we cannot conform ourselves to the way this age thinks. Because while the way people think changes over time, God never changes.

There are multiple pressures to conform.

They can come from society; they can come from family; they can come from friends. And these pressures are everywhere.

I can particularly see it in Japan, with its emphasis on “wa”, which means “group harmony.”

One of the true few “sins” in Japanese society is the breaking of this “wa,” and it can get you ostracized in a hurry.

This is not to say that group harmony is itself a bad thing. Paul himself writes,

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. (Romans 12:18)

But there are times when the way you’re being pressed is contrary to the Word of God. And we cannot let ourselves be conformed to this age. Because ultimately, the patterns of this age will destroy us.

If we let ourselves go along with those patterns, we will end up hurting God, others, and ourselves.

So let us not be conformed to the patterns of this age. Rather, as Paul puts it,

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. (Romans 12:2b)

How are our minds transformed? Through the Word of God. By reading it, meditating on it, and by the power of the Spirit, living it. And as we do so, we find life.

Because not only are our minds transformed, but our whole lives are transformed.

We find the way God meant for us to live from the beginning.

We find a marriage that works, relationships that work, peace in the midst of troubling circumstances, and joy within the darkest valleys.

In short, we find the will of God in our lives. And we find that that will is good, pleasing, and perfect.

How about you? Is your mind being conformed to the pattern of this age? Or is your mind being transformed?

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Romans

A living sacrifice

Romans

This is perhaps one of the more famous passages in scripture. Paul writes,

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship. (Romans 12:1)

It’s always good to look back at what was said previously whenever you see the word “therefore.” And as we saw, Paul had just written,

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romans 11:36)

Think about that phrase “all things” for a minute.

Among those “things” are us. We were created from his mind and by his plan. We were created through his power.

We were created for him, and ultimately, we will return to him, held accountable for how we lived our lives.

So many people scream, “It’s my life. It’s my right to live however I want to.”

That’s only half true. God has indeed given us free will. So in that sense, we have the right to live as we please.

But it is not really our life. We were created by God, by his power, and for him.

And it is with that in mind, Paul says that we are to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to him. He calls it our spiritual service of worship to God.

The King James version puts it, “your reasonable service.”

In other words, it only makes sense that since we were created by God and for him, that we offer ourselves as living sacrifices.

What does that mean though? Does that mean we are to die for him?

While some may be called to become martyrs for Christ, Paul doesn’t mean this. He says we are to be “living” sacrifices.

I like to use the analogy of marriage when thinking of a living sacrifice.

In a marriage, the husband and wife offer themselves to each other.

And while I’m sure, for example, my wife would be happy to know that I am willing to die for her, she would much prefer that I live for her. That I would set apart myself for her, and give myself to no other woman.

More, she would like to know that I love her so much that I want to please her and find joy in pleasing her.

I, of course, desire the same thing from my wife. And when husbands and wives live as living sacrifices toward each other, marriage works well.

In the same way, while God is happy to know that we’re willing to die for him, he would much rather that we live for him. That each day, we would set apart ourselves (be holy) for him.

And he wants us to love him so much, that we delight in pleasing him.

Why would we do these things? Because of his mercies toward us.

He himself became a man and laid down his life for us as a sacrifice. While we were yet sinners, our backs set against him, and going our own way, Christ loved us enough to die for us that we might be reconciled to him.

And now that we know the love of God in our lives, it’s only natural that we respond with that same kind of love and offer ourselves to him, living lives that are pleasing to him.

That’s a living sacrifice.

How about you? Are you a living sacrifice?

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Romans

A God who is beyond us

Romans

One of the things that amazes me is the people who think that if they were to argue with God, they could win.

More than a few atheists, when posed with the question, “If God exists, what would you say when you stood before him in heaven,” respond by saying they could argue why they didn’t believe in God while they were on earth.

And they seem to think they could reasonably argue their position before God.

But in this passage, Paul shows the utter foolishness and futility of that way of thinking.

In chapters 10 and 11, he talks about how God used the disobedience of the Jews to bring the Gentiles to salvation, and how the result of the Gentiles coming to Christ will be the salvation of the Jews.

In short,

Just as you (Gentiles) who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their (the Jews’) disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.

For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. (Romans 11:30-32)

It’s here that you see a glimpse of how God’s foreknowledge works with predestination.

He knew how the Jews would react to Jesus, and he thus made plans to bring Gentiles into his kingdom.

But he also knew that if he did that, the Jews would then feel a longing for God, and thus turn to Jesus and be saved as well.

In short, God knows what his endgame is on the chessboard of the universe, and he knows how to achieve it.

God knows exactly what choices we will make, and he knows exactly how he will respond to each of our choices so that his will will ultimately be done.

People thus retain their free will and he maintains his.

As he contemplated this, Paul was simply overwhelmed, singing,

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!

“Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” (Romans 11:33-34)

In other words, no one can match the wisdom and knowledge of God.

It’s hard to match all wisdom and all knowledge, after all.

And because he knows all things and we don’t, it’s impossible for us to understand all his decisions unless he reveals it to us.

And even if he does reveal it, we’re still limited as to how much we can truly understand.

So when people argue, for example, about how a good God could allow evil in the world, they do so from ignorance.

They don’t have all the information that God has, and so all their arguments against him essentially amount to nothing.

Yet people argue as if they do know everything. As if their arguments are unanswerable. And so they boast that they could debate against God and win.

But when they stand before him, he will lay out on the table all the motivations of their heart and all that they knew or should have known had they taken the time to find out.

He will lay out all the facts as they are, not as we perceived them in our pride.

And ultimately, every mouth will be silenced and every person held accountable. (Romans 3:19).

There is nothing that we can bring to the table that will stun God and make him say, “I never knew that.”

Nor will there be anything that we can point to in our lives to say, “Look at what I did. I deserve heaven.”

For as Paul concludes,

“Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. (Romans 11:35-36a)

Everything we have is from him. All things came through him. And all things will return to him. That includes us.

So we have two choices. We can give glory to him, as Paul did, saying,

To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romans 11:36b)

Or we can continue to rebel against him until the day come when we are silent before him.

How about you? What will you choose?

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Romans

No room for pride

Romans

I have never understood the anti-Semitic sentiment held by some Christians, particularly in view of Romans 11.

I think at the root of the anti-Semitic sentiment is a feeling of pride, and that is something Paul completely squashes in this chapter.

It is this feeling of pride, in fact, that Elijah had when complaining to God about the rest of the Israelites. He said to God,

I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty.

The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword.

I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too. (1 Kings 19:10)

In other words, “Look at me God. I’m zealous for you. Look at all I’ve done. But these other Israelites: they’re hopeless.”

But God told him, “Hey, there are many others who belong to me who have never bowed knee to Baal.”

Paul then says that just as there was a remnant in Elijah’s time, there is a remnant of Jews now faithful to God, who have accepted Jesus as their Messiah. And they, like us, are chosen by God’s grace.

Paul goes on to remind us,

And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace. (Romans 11:6)

Many Christians today are like Elijah. They think they were saved because of their works. That they were somehow better than others, and so God saved them.

But Paul tells us that’s not true. Grace is a gift given to the undeserving.

Elijah was undeserving of God’s grace, and yet he received it. Elijah became bitter, angry, and depressed when his life was threatened. And yet God reached down to him and strengthened and encouraged him.

We too are undeserving; yet God reached down to save us.

How then can we look down on the Jews as if we are somehow better than they are? We are all saved by grace.

Paul then compares the Jews to olive branches that were broken off and us to wild shoots that were grafted in.

But he tells us,

Do not boast over those branches.

If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you.

You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.”

Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith.

Do not be arrogant, but be afraid. For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.

Consider therefore the kindness and sternness of God: sternness to those who fell, but kindness to you, provided that you continue in his kindness.

Otherwise, you also will be cut off. (Romans 11:18-22)

The point again here, is that we are saved by grace. That it is not because of what we have done that saved us, but because of what Christ did on the cross.

The only thing we did was believe. So there’s no room for arrogance on our part.

Rather, those who criticize the Jews should pay more attention to their own selves. And they need to ask themselves, “Am I standing by faith and the grace of God? Or am I standing by my works?

If I’m standing by my works, I’m headed for destruction just as those unbelieving Jews are. But if I’m standing by grace, what right do I have to be arrogant?”

Even if you don’t criticize the Jews, do you look down on others? Are you convinced that you are saved because you’re somehow better than others.

You’re not. If you were, grace wouldn’t be grace. Rather your salvation would simply be what you deserved.

So be humble. And grateful. There is no room for pride in the kingdom of God.

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Romans

Refusing to believe

Romans

A couple of days ago, I talked about the paradox of salvation. That though the path to salvation is so easy, yet it is difficult.

All we have to do is put our faith in God and Jesus’ work on the cross and we’ll be saved. And yet so many people don’t.

We see this problem with the Jews. Paul writes,

But not all the Israelites accepted the good news. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our message?” (Romans 10:16)

That’s not just the problem with the Jews; it’s the problem with most people today.

To this very day, these words ring true. “Lord, who has believed our message?”

Paul then says,

Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17)

In other words, two things are necessary to be saved. To hear the message of the gospel and to believe it.

What is the problem? Why don’t so many Jews and others believe. Is it that Christ has not spoken? Or is it that they have not heard?

Not at all. Paul writes,

Did they not hear? Of course they did: “Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” (Romans 10:18)

The quote here, from Psalm 19:4, talks about how the heavens declare the glory of God.

Paul then applies this to the gospel, that Jesus’ words had gone into all the known earth.

Paul then asks,

Again I ask: Did Israel not understand? (Romans 10:19)

Rhetorical question here, the answer being, “No, they didn’t understand.”

And Paul goes on to talk about the irony of the work of God. That those God revealed himself to first (the Jews) rejected him, but when God went on to others, those others did believe.

So Paul quotes Isaiah who said,

I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me. (Romans 10:20)

God is specifically talking about the Gentiles here. That though the Gentiles were going their own way and were not even seeking God, God revealed himself to them and they accepted him.

The truth is, though, verse 20 can equally be applied to the Jews.

They weren’t really seeking God. They had started worshiping other gods in Egypt. (Joshua 24:14)

Yet God revealed himself to them. But what was their response when God revealed himself to them?

God said of them,

All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people. (Romans 10:21)

Why didn’t they believe? They saw all the miracles. The ten plagues in Egypt. The parting of the Red Sea. The manna in the desert. And so much more. They had every reason to believe.

Then Jesus came. He performed miracles. He cast out demons. He preached words of wisdom such as they had never heard before. And yet they rejected him. Why?

The others (unbelieving Jews) were hardened, as it is written: “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes so that they could not see and ears so that they could not hear, to this very day.” (Romans 11:7-8)

This is a quote from Isaiah 29.

I talk more about this here, but the idea from this passage is that the Jews first blinded themselves. And so God said, “You don’t want to see? Fine. Be blind.”

That’s what happened with the Jews. For hundreds of years, despite all God did and said, they refused to believe. So God gave them over to their unbelief.

That’s the danger for all who hear the gospel. If we harden ourselves to it, sooner or later, God will say, “Fine. Dwell in your unbelief,” and he gives us over to the results of that unbelief: death.

So don’t harden your hearts to God’s message of salvation. Don’t listen to it with a heart that is skeptical and hardened from the beginning.

If you do, you will only blind yourself and you will die, separated from God for all eternity.

Instead, open your heart. For only in Christ and his message of salvation will you find life.

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Romans

The irrevocable call of God

Romans

One of the most amazing things about salvation is that it comes about through the call of God, and that call is irrevocable.

Paul clearly illustrates this through Israel. He talked about how Israel had hardened their hearts to God despite all he had said and done.

He then asks,

Did God reject his people? (Romans 11:1a)

His answer?

By no means! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. (Romans 11:1b)

In other words, how can you say God has rejected the Jews when I myself, a Jew, have been saved?

He then says something interesting.

God did not reject his people, whom he foreknew. (Romans 11:2)

Paul’s saying here, “There’s no way you can say God has rejected his people because he chose them knowing full well that many would harden their hearts against him. That many would reject him. And that many would crucify his Son.”

It’s not as if God said, “Whoa, I didn’t see that coming. I guess I have to reject them now.”

Rather, he knew beforehand that though many would reject him, nevertheless, there would always be those who were his.

How could he know this? Because he had chosen them before creation to be saved.

As God told Elijah when Elijah complained he was the only one following God,

I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal. (Romans 11:4)

And Paul says of the Jews of his day too,

So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. (Romans 11:5)

Paul then reveals the plan of salvation God had made from the very beginning:

That the Jews would reject their Messiah, and so the gospel would be taken to the whole world, and many would receive it and become God’s children.

Then the Jews would see this and be filled with longing for that kind of relationship. They would remember that God had initially chosen them for that kind of relationship.

They would then become angry at themselves for throwing away what had been theirs and would turn to God, and they too would be saved.

In fact, it seems the day will come when all Jews will come to recognize Jesus as Messiah and be saved (Romans 11:26-27).

Paul then reminds us,

As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs. (Romans 11:28)

In other words, the Jews were persecuting the Christians for following Christ. But God still loved the Jews and was planning to save them.

Why? Because of what they had done?

No. Because he had set his love upon them for the sake of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

More, God made his promises to them, and he will never break them.

That’s why Paul could say,

For God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. (Romans 11:29)

The good news for us? His gifts and his call on us are irrevocable too.

He knew us before we were born. He knew what doubts we’d have. He knew what failures we’d have. And he chose us anyway.

So let us never fear that God will reject us because of our doubts and failures. As with Israel, his call on us is irrevocable.

And as Paul said in another letter, what God has started, he will complete. (Philippians 1:6)

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Romans

The need for us to go

Romans

We’ve talked about this not too long ago, so this should be short and sweet. I’ve mentioned before that we were chosen before the beginning of the world to be God’s children.

There have been, however, Christians who have taken this concept too far and said, “Well, if God has already chosen those who will be saved, there’s no need for us to go out and evangelize them.”

That kind of thinking overlooks one key thing. God commands us to go.

The reason: though he doesn’t need us to evangelize, nevertheless, he chooses to spread his gospel through us. He has given us the keys to his kingdom.

But if we don’t use them, people will not be saved.

That’s why Paul says,

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in?

And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?

And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? (Romans 10:14)

These are all rhetorical questions, and the answer is crystal clear to all of them. People can’t.

They can’t call on the one they haven’t believed in. They can’t believe in the one they have not heard. And they cannot hear without someone preaching to them.

Paul then says,

And how can they preach unless they are sent? (Romans 10:15)

Again, the answer is that they can’t.

But here’s the thing to note: God has called all of us who are believers to go. All of us have been commissioned by him to go and share his gospel.

Jesus told his disciples and us,

As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. (John 20:21)

And again,

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 28:19)

We don’t need to wait for him to send us. He already has.

So Paul says of those who take the gospel out,

How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news! (Romans 10:15b)

How about you? You’ve been given the keys to the kingdom.

What are you doing with them?

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Romans

All that’s left for us to do

Romans

The way to salvation is, in a sense, contradictory. That is to say, it is so easy, and yet so hard.

Paul writes,

But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘Who will descend into the deep?’ ” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). (Romans 10:6-7)

In other words, we don’t need to drag Jesus down from heaven to effect our salvation. Nor do we have to drag his dead body from the grave in order for us to be saved.

Jesus has already come. He has already paid for our sins on the cross. And he has already been raised from the dead.

So what is there left for us to do then?

But what does it say?

“The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. (Romans 10:8-10)

In short, all we need to do is acknowledge in our hearts who Jesus is and what he has already done for us.

Who is he? He is Lord.

What does that mean exactly. Paul makes it crystal clear in the next few verses.

As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”

For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile–the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:11-13)

The last quotation he brings out is Joel 2:32, and the word translated “Lord” is not simply “Adonai” which can be used of mere men as well as of God. Joel uses the divine name, “Yahweh.”

In short, “Everyone who calls on the name of Yahweh will be saved.”

So Jesus is not merely “a lord,” but he is God himself.

Paul says as much in Philippians 2 where he quotes Isaiah 45:23 in which Yahweh says,

Before me every knee will bow; by me every tongue will swear.

He then applies it to Jesus, saying,

At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10-11)

So if we are to be saved we need to confess Jesus for who he really is, Lord and God.

More we are to believe in what he has done. That he died for our sins and was raised from the dead. And then beyond that, we are to call on him.

It’s not enough just to know Jesus is Lord. It is not enough to know that he died for us and was raised again. The demons know all this.

We must call on him and ask him to save us. And if we do, he will.

It is so easy. Yet it is so difficult.

Why? Because people simply do not want to believe. Many people claim they can’t believe. But God has given enough evidence for all of us to believe.

It’s not that people can’t believe. They choose not to.

They choose not to because of pride.

“It’s too simple. I must be able to do something to save myself.”

Or, “I don’t need God in my life. I’m fine as it is. I don’t need a crutch in my life.”

Or, “I’m too intelligent to believe in God.”

Others are simply too in love with their sin. They know that if they acknowledge Jesus in their lives, they can’t keep living as they are. And they don’t want to give it up even though it is destroying them.

How about you? What will you do with Jesus in your life?

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Romans

Why can’t there be another way to God? (part 2)

Romans

I seem to be doing a lot of these multi-part posts. 🙂

Anyway, Paul gives two other reasons here why Christ is the only way to God.

Again, he’s talking about the Jews in this passage, but what he says can be applied to just about any religious person in the world.

He says,

Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.

For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. (Romans 10:1-2)

Here Paul makes a very important point. Many Jews and other religious people are very zealous for God. That’s a good thing. But zeal without knowledge is not.

And again, these people are pursuing God in total ignorance of what he really wants. Faith.

More, Paul says,

Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. (Romans 10:3)

That’s the second problem with many religious people. Because they didn’t know true righteousness, they established their own.

They made their own definitions of what is right and wrong. They made their own definitions of what is acceptable to God and not.

And because they are following their own definition of righteousness, when they encounter true righteousness, the righteousness that comes through faith in Christ, they fail to submit to it.

Rather they keep going along the path they themselves (or those who came before them) have established.

But you cannot expect to go your own way, establishing your own standards in direct contradiction to God’s and expect him to be pleased with you, no matter how zealous you are.

The truth of the matter is, even if God were to allow you to live by the standards you yourself have established, you would fail even by those standards. For as Paul said,

Moses describes in this way the righteousness that is by the law: “The man who does these things will live by them.” (Romans 10:5)

How many people keep their own rules perfectly? None.

And yet people still try to reach God through their own rules.

So when people set up their own rules, their own religion, they fail on two counts:

One, their standards are not God’s.

Second, they can’t keep their own rules.

And yet they expect God to accept them? Particularly when the thing God asks for most is that they trust him, and they refuse to do even that?

Forget it.

So Paul says,

Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes. (Romans 10:4)

In short, let’s put aside our standards of righteousness and our religion. They’ll get us nowhere with God.

Instead let us turn to Christ, “our righteousness, holiness and redemption.” (1 Corinthians 1:30).

More on this next time.

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Romans

Why can’t there be another way to God?

Romans

One of the things that bothers people about Christianity is that Christ claims he is the only way to God. That there is no other way. And they say, “Why can’t there be another way?”

There are many ways to answer that question, but Paul gives one answer here, as he talks about the Jews.

As I look at this passage, it strikes me that everything Paul says about the Jews, he could be saying about every other religious person in the world.

He says,

What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. (Romans 9:30-31)

Let’s rephrase that into the modern world.

What then shall we say? That the Christians, who did not pursue righteousness through religious rules, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but the rest of the world, who pursued righteousness through the laws of their own religion, has not attained it.

How can we say that? How can we just dismiss the efforts of all the religious people of the world?

Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. (Romans 9:32)

In other words, their whole idea of how to be made righteous before God is wrong. It’s not by works. It’s by faith.

Let’s put it this way. There’s a famous book called the “Five Love Languages.” And in it, the author makes clear that people feel love in different ways.

Some people feel love by receiving gifts, others feel love by being served, others feel love by the words they hear, and so on. And there can be conflict in a marriage when a person doesn’t know their partner’s love language.

For example, a husband tries very hard to please his wife by giving her gifts.

But though he tries very hard to give her the perfect gift, though he spends tons of money on it, he gets frustrated because she’s not responding as he expects. After all, he feels most loved when he receives gifts.

What he doesn’t know is that she doesn’t want gifts; she wants his time.

And so though he tries very hard to please his wife, because he’s going about it in the wrong way, he can never achieve his aim.

In the same way, most people approach God by thinking they have to do a lot of good works to be accepted by him.

But what they don’t realize is that while the good works are nice, that’s not what he really wants. What he really wants is for people to trust him. To have faith in him.

You see that from the very beginning in the garden of Eden.

He told Adam and Eve, “Trust me. Don’t eat from that tree. It’ll lead to your destruction.”

But they didn’t trust him, and the result was a broken relationship with God.

You see this all the way through the Bible, God telling his people, “Trust me,” and them refusing to do so.

To this day, the pattern continues.

God tells people, “Trust me. Put your faith in Jesus. He did all the work necessary for you to be saved.”

But instead, they try to pursue righteousness through their own efforts.

And so, Paul says,

They stumbled over the “stumbling stone.” (That is, Jesus). As it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” (Romans 9:32-33)

How about you? Are you trying to pursue God through your own efforts?

It won’t work. God isn’t looking at your efforts. He’s looking at one thing: Do you trust him? Are you putting your faith in Jesus?

If you don’t you will fall before him. But if you do, he will accept you and you will never be put to shame.

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Romans

The problem and wonder of election (part 5)

Romans

I’d like to address one last question concerning predestination.

Assuming that what I have said is true, that none will ever come to God apart from his choosing to intervene in their lives, why is it that he doesn’t simply intervene in everyone’s lives so that everyone will be saved?

I don’t know the answer to that. There are probably many factors to that question that are beyond what my brain can comprehend.

But here are two things to consider. One is that God prizes faith above all other things. But faith that is seen is not faith at all.

For some people though, the only thing that will convince them is a direct appearance from God. They say, “I have all these other reasons to believe God exists, but I choose not to believe unless God appears to me.”

But quite frankly, that is a statement of defiance rather than faith, and because of that, God will not honor that request.

The other thing to consider is this: Most of his intervention in people’s lives comes through Christians. God has given us Christians the responsibility to preach the gospel and to tell the whole world about him.

He has given us the keys to the kingdom and ultimately he will hold us responsible if we don’t use them (Ezekiel 33:7-9).

But he will not force us to use those keys.

So then there are two main ways God can intervene. One is directly as in a personal appearance. And one is indirectly through other people.

But God chooses most often not to do the former because he desires faith. And the latter often doesn’t happen because he will not force his people to share the gospel.

Is he right in his ways?

Considering he is God and we are not, it’s hard to say he’s wrong.

Ultimately, as we consider the problem of predestination, we have to ask ourselves the question Abraham did.

Will not the Judge of all the earth do right? (Genesis 18:25)

I choose to believe he does and he will.

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Romans

The problem and wonder of election (part 4)

Romans

A question that often pops up when we talk about predestination is, “You say that God predestines who will go to heaven. So that must mean that God must predestine people to hell as well.”

I answered this to some degree on my last blog.

In a sense, I suppose you could say that he predestines people to hell.

But don’t get me wrong. God does not tell people, “I’ve decided you are going to hell! It doesn’t matter if you repent. It doesn’t matter if you choose to believe in Jesus. None of that matters, because I have already made my decision.”

Instead, he says, “My plan is to give you justice for your sins. That’s what you deserve.”

Then, as I said before, he waits to see if you will do anything to change his mind. That if on your own, without his intervention, you will start to seek him.

But the thing is, no one ever does.

So ultimately, what I believe is this: People go to hell by their own choice and to heaven by God’s.

God has given us free will. We can choose to follow him or to not follow him.

Yet left to our own devices, without any intervention on God’s part, all of us rebel against God, and all of us go our own way.

There is no exception. It is, ultimately, the story of humanity.

So God had to make a choice. He could do nothing and let all perish or do something and save some. God chose to do the latter.

That’s why Paul says,

It is just as Isaiah said previously: “Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” (Romans 9:29)

Sodom and Gomorrah through their own free will chose to rebel against God. And God chose not to show mercy to them, but rather to give them what they deserved: judgment leading to death.

Israel also chose through their free will to rebel against God. But God chose to show mercy to them and gave them what they didn’t deserve: grace leading to life.

What was the difference between the two (I suppose, technically three)? Nothing. Except for one thing. God’s election.

And again, that’s the wonder of it all. We were no better than anyone else. Yet God chose to save us.

So yes, we are saved because God chose to intervene in our lives.

But if we go to hell, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

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Romans

The problem and wonder of election (part 3)

Romans

In the last blog, we talked about how God basically tells people, “I have determined to judge you. Now prove me wrong. Prove that you’re not worthy of destruction.”

And he waits patiently for their response.

We see this kind of thinking in Ezekiel as well. God told Ezekiel,

As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.

Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel? (Ezekiel 33:11)

And again,

And if I say to the wicked man, ‘You will surely die,’ but he then turns away from his sin and does what is just and right… he will surely live; he will not die. None of the sins he has committed will be remembered against him. (Ezekiel 33:14-16)

The problem again though, is that no one does turn. They just go from bad to worse.

We see this with Pharaoh. God first brought warning and then judgment to Pharaoh. But Pharaoh didn’t soften his heart. He didn’t repent. He deliberately hardened his heart.

You see this in Exodus 7:13 and 7:22, 8:15, 8:19, 8:32, and 9:7.

Then in chapter 9 verse 12, you see for the first time, the words “the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh.”

It was at that point, after countless hardenings by Pharaoh himself that the Lord said,

I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. (Exodus 9:16; Romans 9:17)

But after that declaration and one more brief softening in which Pharaoh said he’d let the Israelites go, we see in 9:34 that once again, Pharaoh himself hardened his own heart.

And from that time on, you see it is the Lord himself who hardens the heart of Pharaoh.

God, in effect said, “That’s what you want to do? You want to harden your heart against me? Fine, I’ll help you along with that process.”

Could God have done more to change Pharaoh’s mind? Could he have shown mercy to the point that Pharaoh changed?

Probably. But to say that God was under any obligation to do so would be completely off.

The only thing that God was obligated to do was to punish Pharaoh for his sins. And that’s what he did.

The wonder of grace is this: That we were exactly like Pharaoh.

We continually hardened our hearts toward God and yet he did not choose to leave us to our own depravity. And he most certainly did not give us what we deserved.

Rather, he kept showing us mercy and grace to the point that we “broke” and responded in faith and love towards him.

So stories like Pharaoh’s are not meant to make us look down in judgment upon the people who were judged and condemned. Rather, as Paul said,

God did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory. (Romans 9:23)

In other words, we are to look at these people and their stories and marvel that though we were just like them, yet God chose to save us.

That though we were not his people, God called us his own and made us his children. That though we were not his beloved, yet he chose to shower his love upon us. (Romans 9:24-27)

That’s the wonder of grace.

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Romans

The problem and wonder of election (part 2)

Romans

We ended the last blog with the question, “If our salvation is based on God’s election alone, isn’t he then choosing capriciously who to save and who to damn to hell?”

The short answer to this is no. It’s not capricious. God has a determined purpose and plan that stands behind every decision he makes.

The problem, of course, is that he hasn’t completely revealed the details of his plan, nor the reasons for each decision he makes, namely, why he chooses to save some and not others.

That’s why I said in the last blog, no matter how much we look at this issue, we can never fully understand it. We can never fully understand it because God has not fully revealed everything yet.

Because of this, many people cry out that this choosing is unjust.

And when God says,

“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” (Romans 9:15)

and Paul writes,

God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. (Romans 9:18)

they say, “It’s not fair! How can God choose to have mercy on some and not on others. How can he simply send people to hell because he chose to harden them, instead of showing them mercy. You can hardly blame them.”

After all,

Who resists [God’s] will? (Romans 9:19)

Paul gives two answers. First,

Who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?'”

Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? (Romans 9:20-21)

In other words, God is the creator. He has every right to do what he pleases with what he’s created. He has every right to use what he’s created for whatever purpose he chooses.

But then Paul says something interesting. He says,

What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath–prepared for destruction? (Romans 9:22)

What is he saying here?

I think what he’s saying is God made his plans, and then essentially told those he prepared for destruction, “Prove me wrong. Prove to me that I made the wrong decision, and that you deserve salvation.”

And he waited. And waited. And waited. But the more he waited, the worse things got.

You see this in the land of Canaan, the land God gave to the Israelites. After Abraham initially arrived there, God told him,

In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. (Genesis 15:16)

In other words, though God had determined to judge the Amorites for their sin, he was not bringing immediate judgment. He gave them every opportunity to prove they were not worthy of destruction.

But all they did was prove day by day that they deserved to be destroyed. And when God brought the Israelites back out from Egypt, he used them as the instrument of his judgment on these people.

God did the same with the world before the flood. All throughout the time that Noah was building the ark, he warned the people that destruction was determined for them.

They had all that time to prove God wrong, and that they really weren’t that bad. But all they did was prove that they deserved destruction.

In short, it’s not as though people go to hell even though they have every desire to seek God and follow him.

It’s not as though they’re saying to God, “I repent of my sin. Please forgive me,” and God says, “No. I haven’t chosen you. You’re not part of my plan so you’re going to hell.”

But people from their own volition choose to reject God, and no matter how much time God gives them, they only prove their worthiness of destruction.

That’s why Paul can say,

It (our election) does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. (Romans 9:16)

If election depended on our desire or effort, we’d all be dead because none of us would ever on our own choose to follow God. Therefore, his election is based purely on his mercy and grace.

More on this next time.

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Romans

The problem and wonder of election (part 1)

Romans

One of the toughest concepts the Bible teaches is that of God’s election of the saints.

It seemingly flies in the face of our free will. It seemingly flies in the face of God’s love for all.

The best I can say before I say anything on this topic is that we only have partial answers. No matter how much we look at it, we cannot fully comprehend everything.

Paul talks first about how he mourned for Israel because it was to them that God had originally revealed himself to.

Paul himself was a Jew. Yet his people had chosen to turn their backs on Jesus, and murder their own Messiah.

But Paul says this does not mean that God’s promises to Abraham’s descendants have failed.

He gives two reasons for this. One is found in chapter 11 which we’ll look at later, and one is found here in chapter 9.

The first answer Paul gives here is that the true Jew is not the person who is merely of Jewish lineage.

Paul then gives a slightly different slant on his illustration of Isaac and Ishmael given in Galatians 4.

There he focused on the difference of trying to be made right before God through human effort to keep the law rather than through His promise.

But in this chapter, he contrasts children born because of a promise with those born by natural means.

“Natural means” in this case meaning children born through the joining of a man and a fertile woman (Hagar).

This is in contrast to Sarah’s pregnancy which could hardly be called completely “natural” because she was well beyond her child-bearing years. She was only able to give birth because of the promise that God made.

In the same way, people do not become Abraham’s descendants simply through “natural” means, that is, through being born into Jewish lineage.

Rather we become his spiritual descendants solely because of God’s promise and his grace.

Yet he makes a key point here: the promises of God are not based upon anything we do.

Paul then illustrates this in the election of Jacob over Esau.

Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad–in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls–she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” (Romans 9:11-12)

The whole point here is that God didn’t choose Jacob over Esau because he was better than Esau. Jacob didn’t earn his election by his good works.

Rather, God in his grace chose and made promises to Jacob for his own purposes.

Some people say that God chose people to elect through his foreknowledge. That because he knew they would be good or bad, or put another way, because he knew they would choose him, he in turn chose them.

But to hold that view completely blows up Paul’s entire point in verse 11.

You would be in effect saying, “God chose them not because of what they had done, but because of what God knew they would do.”

But Paul doesn’t even come remotely close to saying this. He says, “Not by him who works (and by extension, ‘by him who God knows will work’) but by him who calls.”

That’s the whole sense of the passage.

He then quotes Malachi where God told Israel,

“Jacob I have loved, Esau I have hated.” (Romans 9:13)

I’ve explained this further here, but the main point again is that God did not choose Jacob because of his works, but because of his grace and his purposes alone.

But isn’t this unfair? Isn’t then God choosing capriciously who to save and who to damn to hell?

We’ll address that question in the next blog.

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Romans

Though we suffer

Romans

I’d never thought of it this way before, but this passage is basically tying up Paul’s thoughts in verses 15-18.

In verses 15-16, Paul reminds us of the kind of relationship we have with God, not one of fear, but one in which we can call God, “Abba, Father.”

Then in verses 17-18, he talks about how sometimes we have to suffer in this world. Sometimes we suffer for Christ; other times we suffer because we live in a broken world.

But now in verse 35, he reminds of something that we would do well to remember during times of trouble. He says,

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” (Romans 8:35-36)

The implied answer to all these questions is of course, “Nothing.

Nothing can separate us from the love of God. Not the troubles and hardships we face in life, not persecution, not natural disasters, nor times of poverty, and not even death.”

He goes even further in verses 38-39.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

So not even spiritual powers, the things we worry about now, the things we fret about in the future, nor any powers here on earth can separate you from his love.

It doesn’t matter where you are either, whether in the depths of the sea or in outer space itself, his love can reach you.

To sum up, nothing at all can keep God’s love from reaching and touching us.

And so Paul says,

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. (Romans 8:37)

In other words, ultimately, we will have victory in life because Jesus won the victory at Calvary. He defeated Satan and crushed his plans on the cross.

And so though Satan would accuse us and tempt us and try us, we have hope because God loves us. And nothing can separate us from that love.

So let us rest in that love when times are hard. Let us take comfort in it. For his is a love that will not let us go.

And no matter what we’re going through, he will bring us through.

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Romans

If God is for us

Romans

So often, even as Christians, we fight feelings of guilt and condemnation. We make a mess of things by the decisions we make, and we think, “Why do I keep messing up like this?”

Or we struggle with temptation, and we wonder, “Shouldn’t I be over this by now? Why do I still struggle with this?”

Or we look at things like the fruit of the Spirit, then look at ourselves, and say, “Love, nope. Patience. Nope. Gentleness, nope.”

And then we ask, “Why don’t I have these things in my life? What am I doing wrong?”

But as I mentioned in the last blog, it’s important to remember that before the creation of the world, God knew you.

He knew what you would be like. He knew what sins you would struggle with. He knew what fruit would take a long time to bear.

And he knew exactly how long the process would take to make you like his Son.

Knowing all of this, he chose you anyway.

Then he called you. He justified you. And the day will come when he will glorify you. We will be like Jesus for we shall see him as he is. (I John 3:2).

And Paul says,

What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31)

God is for you. He loved you enough to choose you. Who then can be against you?

He then expands on this idea.

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all–how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)

In other words, if God met our greatest need, the forgiveness of our sin, will he not meet our other needs? As Jesus said,

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’

For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:31-33)

Paul then goes further, taking us into the courtroom of God, saying,

Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. (Romans 8:33)

Put another way, God is not bringing any charges against you in his court. He’s the one justifying you.

Paul then asks,

Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died–more than that, who was raised to life–is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. (Romans 8:34)

So Christ is not condemning us.

For one thing, he died for us so that we wouldn’t have to be condemned. More, he is right now at the right hand of the Judge and is the one interceding for us.

Talk about a “fixed” case. The judge and the prosecutor are both on our side.

And if that’s the case, why do we beat ourselves up? They’re not. Why should we?

So whenever you’re feeling guilty and condemned, unworthy of the grace God has given you, remember these verses.

God is on your side. He was on your side before you were even born. And he will be on your side for all eternity.

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Romans

A reason for hope (part 2)

Romans

As I look at this passage, I see another reason for hope through the struggles that we go through: that from eternity past, God had a plan for us.

Paul writes,

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. (Romans 8:29-30)

A lot of people struggle with the problem of predestination versus free will. I’ve talked about it in past blogs and will hit it again head-on in chapter 9.

But for now, I want you to consider the implications of Paul’s words as a Christian.

God knew you before you were even born.

In Ephesians 1, Paul says before the creation of the world, he knew you.

He knew all your good points; he knew all your bad points.

He knew all your strengths; he knew all your weaknesses.

He knew what good things you would do; he knew what evil you would do.

And yet, he chose you.

He specifically tailored a plan for you and your good. A plan to transform you so that one day you would be like his Son.

Though he knew you would be sinful, weak, and rebellious toward him, nevertheless, God chose to show grace to you, and made plans to transform your weak, sinful, rebellious self into something glorious.

To put that plan in effect he called you.

Though you were not even seeking him, he called out to you.

And when you turned to him, and responded to him in faith, he justified you. He declared you “not guilty” because of the price Jesus paid for you on the cross.

And the day will come when he will glorify you. He will give you a body like the one he gave his Son. Incorruptible, sinless, and imperishable. Glorious.

That’s what God has in store for you. And it is certain.

How could it not be? Can anything really change God’s plans?

With him knowing everything from the very beginning, can we really believe he looks down on us now and is saying, “Whoops. That was a mistake choosing him. He’s a total mess. He’s hopeless. He’s beyond even me to save.”

No! He knew you from the first, and despite knowing everything about you, he chose you. And as Paul would later say,

God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. (Romans 11:29)

Are you looking at yourself depressed at who you are? Are you discouraged by how little progress you’ve made as a Christian?

God isn’t. He knew you from the first.

He chose you knowing exactly how much time it would take to transform your life into the likeness of his Son. So he will never, ever give up on you.

And no matter what trial you’re going through, those trials cannot derail his plans for you either. Nothing catches God by surprise. God already has in mind how he will bring you through.

So hold on to hope though you go through the fire. And remember what Paul said earlier.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

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Romans

A reason for hope

Romans

This is one of my favorite passages in scripture. Actually, from here all the way on down to the end of the chapter is one of my favorite passages in scripture.

Why? Because it’s a passage of hope.

Many people quote verse 28,

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

But many people miss just why it is that God can work for the good of those who love him. In verses 26-27, Paul writes,

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will. (Romans 8:26-27)

So many times, when we pray, we don’t know what to pray for or even how to pray.

Sometimes as we pray, we’re at an absolute loss for words, unable to even formulate a prayer.

Other times, we pray, but we pray for the wrong things. As Jesus would put it, we think we’re praying for bread, but in reality, we’re praying for a stone.

The good news is that God is not limited by our helplessness or our faulty prayers. The main thing he’s concerned with is that we’re connecting with him.

And when we do, the Spirit intercedes for us. He takes our wordless groans and mistaken prayers and turns them into prayers that match God’s will for our lives.

It is with that in mind, that Paul then says,

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

I don’t know about you, but that’s encouraging to me.

When my daughter was a baby, it could get frustrating sometimes because she would cry and we couldn’t figure out why.

Her cries and babbles couldn’t communicate to us what her true needs were and so we were left with no option but to guess what she needed.

Sometimes we were right, but other times, our attempts to help were seriously lacking.

But the Spirit does know our needs despite our babbling and incoherent cries, and because of that, he can pray for us perfectly, providing the help we need.

Are you going through struggles and trials right now? Are you frustrated in your prayers, and feeling like they’re bouncing off the walls?

Know that there is hope. Even now the Spirit is interceding for you, and he is praying for you according to God’s will.

So take heart. He will work for your good.

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Romans

Why do we have to go through suffering?

Romans

As I look at Romans 8:16-17, it starts out very encouraging.

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Now if we are children, then we are heirs–heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ…

Who doesn’t like to hear that? We are God’s beloved children and we are now his heirs!

But then Paul continues,

…if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Suffering? I don’t want to suffer. What kind of suffering are we talking about?

Paul gives us some examples in verse 35: trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword.

All of us go through suffering in one way or another in this life. It’s absolutely unavoidable, especially if you are a Christian, because if you follow Christ, there will always be people that hate you for it.

But why do we have to go through suffering? Can’t God just take it away? Why does God allow suffering in the first place?

It’s a difficult question. Paul gives us a partial answer in verses 20-22.

For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Romans 8:20-22)

Why do we see earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters? Why do we see birth defects, diseases, and death? Couldn’t God just take them out of the world?

Yes, he could. But he allows his creation to be subject to these things. Why?

Imagine a life without these things, where people sin as they wish, and there is nothing to shake them out of the complacency of their sin.

They would never see just how awful that sin is. And things would be even worse than they are today.

But what these things do is make people face their own mortality. It makes them face the fact that sin is in fact a horrible thing.

And it wakes up some to the point that they actually seek God and are saved.

So God subjects creation to these things with that hope in mind. That people will turn to him once again and find the true joy that only he can bring.

And when that full number has been reached, Jesus will come back and make all things new.

But until that day, Paul says the earth will continue to suffer birth pangs. Not death pangs, mind you, but birth pangs.

And through the suffering we see in this world, we’ll see many children born into God’s kingdom as they turn to him.

Nevertheless, the birth pains are still very real.

So are the sufferings we as Christians experience. Paul says,

Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:23)

We groan because of the sufferings we go through in this life.

We groan because of the sin that we struggle with in our lives day to day.

And we long for the day that we can be free from all these things.

But the thing to remember through it all there is hope.

Hope that we will share in Christ’s glory someday just as we share in his sufferings now.

Hope that that future glory will far outstrip whatever pain we go through now (Romans 8:18).

Hope that all things will be made new.

It’s a hope unseen. As Paul writes, hope that is seen is no hope at all. (Romans 8:24)

But as Paul also said,

Hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Romans 5:5)

So what do we do in the meantime?

Wait patiently. Because we can know with certainty that our hope will be rewarded.

How about you? As you go through the different trials in your life, is that what you’re doing? Are you waiting in hope?

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Romans

Led into a whole new relationship

I think that as Paul wrote this, he probably looked back at his words on Romans 6 and felt he needed to make some clarification.

In Romans 6, he talked about how we used to be slaves to sin, but now we are slaves to God.

It seems a strange concept to be a slave to God. While on one hand, it does carry the idea that we serve God and are wholly his, which I think was Paul’s point, it nevertheless also carries the idea of no freedom and fear of punishment.

And so I think Paul seeks to clear up those possible misconceptions in these verses. He says,

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “‘Abba,’ Father.”

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

Now if we are children, then we are heirs–heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Romans 8:15-17)

In other words, as the Spirit leads you, he’s not a cruel taskmaster that brutalizes you for your failures and mistakes.

He’s not someone that insists that we are no good, and totally unacceptable to God.

Instead, when we are discouraged because of our failures, and feel, like the prodigal son did, that there’s no way we can still call God “Father,” the Spirit whispers to us.

“Hey! Listen to me! You are still God’s child and he still loves you. It’s okay for you to call him, ‘Father.’ It warms his heart to hear you call him that.”

And as we go through suffering, the Spirit reminds us that there is hope for the future. That we are God’s heirs, and that our suffering will not last forever.

In short, we are much more than mere slaves of God. We are his beloved children. May we never forget that.

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Romans

When we belong to Christ

Romans

Looking at this passage at first glance, I wondered if verses 5 to 8 is referring to the non-Christian or a carnal Christian.

Is it referring to the person who doesn’t know God at all and follows after his sinful nature, or is it referring to the person who is a Christian, but is still following after the patterns his sinful nature had laid down in his life before he was saved.

Looking at verse 9, though, I think it’s pretty clear that he is talking about the non-Christian. Because he tells us,

You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. (Romans 8:9, ESV)

Paul tells us in verses 5-8 that a person controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God, he is in fact hostile to God, and his path leads to death.

But in verse 9, he makes a very clear distinction between us and the kind of people he was talking about.

He says, by definition, you don’t belong to Christ if the Spirit of God is not in you. In other words, you are not a Christian if the Holy Spirit isn’t living inside of you.

But if the Spirit is indeed living inside of you, that is, if you are a Christian, then you are living in the Spirit now, and he is working in your life and is transforming you day by day into the image of Christ.

You are no longer in slavery to the sinful nature like the people he talked about in verses 5-8.

He then says,

But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. (Romans 8:10)

Paul is saying here we’re all doomed to die physically because of our sin. But because Christ is in us, our spirit is alive because of his righteousness imparted to us.

It’s important to remember, though, that God not only proclaims us “Not Guilty,” but through the Holy Spirit, he is making us righteous in fact.

Paul goes on to say,

And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. (Romans 8:11)

I think there’s two points of hope here.

First, through his Spirit, though our body dies, we will be raised again in new bodies that will never die.

But second, in our mortal bodies that we’re living in now, he gives us life.

He transforms us day by day to become more like Christ, and because of this, we find the kind of life God intended us to have when he created Adam and Eve in the Garden.

So what does this mean for us practically? Paul tells us in verses 12-14,

Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation–but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it.

For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live,

because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. (Romans 8:12-14)

In short, we have no obligation to something that’s dead.

We don’t need to set a shrine up to our sinful nature in our lives and work to “keep its memory alive” in us.

The destiny it had been leading us to before it died was our death. Why remember and celebrate that?

But now, if by the Spirit’s power and leading we put to death the residual effects of sin in our minds and bodies, we find life.

And according to Paul, that’s what all sons (and daughters) of God do.

How are you living?

Are you living as though you have some obligation to your old sinful nature?

Or are you living as a child of God, led by his Spirit day by day?

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Romans

Not one sentence of condemnation

God’s Judgement

One of my favorite films is A Few Good Men.

And one of the most striking scenes to me is the one where sentence is handed down to the defendants.

Just prior to this, a colonel had just incriminated himself as the one who had given an order to two marines who, because of the order, had unintentionally caused another marine’s death.

Now the two marines stood before the judge who read the jury’s verdict concerning their actions.

On the charge of murder, the members find the defendants, “Not guilty.”

On the charge of conspiracy to commit murder, the members find the defendants, “Not guilty.”

At this point everyone is expecting the defendants to be cleared of all charges.

But then the judge said,

On the charge of conduct unbecoming a United States Marine, the members find the defendants, “Guilty as charged.”

And their sentence was handed down.

But unlike these marines, Paul says of us,

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1)

I like how John Gill translates it: “There is not one condemnation” or “There is not one sentence of condemnation” toward us.

It’s not that God looks down the list of our sins, and says, “Not guilty,” “Not guilty,” “Not guilty,”….”Guilty as charged.”

Rather he looks at us, and says “Not guilty…on all charges.”

Why?

Because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8:2)

What is the law of sin and death? It’s the simple principal that if you sin, you will die. If you break the commands of God, you will be judged for it.

And because of all of us have sinned, all of us stand condemned.

But the law of the Spirit of life sets us free from the law of sin and death.

What is the law of the Spirit? It’s that through God’s grace, we are made righteous before God. That through his Spirit living in us, we now have a new life.

Paul explains further.

For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.

And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. (Romans 8:3-4)

What was the law powerless to do? It was powerless to make us righteous in God’s eyes.

Why? Because all it could do was show us what righteousness is. It did not have the power to make us righteous, because all of us had a nature that rebelled against God.

So what did God do? He sent his Son to deal with our sin.

Jesus led a perfect life, and when he went to the cross, God put all our sins upon him. And he put all of the condemnation we deserved on Jesus.

The law said sin must be punished. And all the sins we committed were punished when Jesus died on the cross. So in that sense, the righteous requirements of the law were met in us.

But it doesn’t stop there. God sent his Spirit into our hearts when we became Christians. And like I said before, through his leading, we actually start to become righteous.

Though our bodies and minds still feel the residual effects our sinful nature left on us before it died, the Holy Spirit helps us fight through them so that we can live the kind of life God originally intended us to live.

And during those times when we feel condemned, and unworthy of God’s love and grace, the Spirit whispers to our souls, “But you are God’s children. You do belong to him now. There is no condemnation.”

How about you? Do you feel like God’s just stringing you along, making you feel like you’re okay just to lay down the hammer at the last minute?

He’s not. If you belong to him, not one charge will be laid against you.

So Paul says,

For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.

And by him we cry, “‘Abba,’ Father.” (Romans 8:15)

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Romans

Hope

Romans

As I mentioned before in my last blog, I do believe there is room for hope in our fight against sin.

The main problem Christians fight in their struggle against sin is despair.

And the question that most people ask is, “Am I really a Christian? How can a Christian possibly do the things that I do? I want to do what’s right, and I keep failing time and again.”

But here is something important that Paul brings up.

For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good…

For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing.

Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does. (Romans 7:15-16, 19-20)

What is the key thing to notice here? One word: struggle.

The non-Christian, at least one not yet touched by the grace of God, does not struggle against sin. They don’t even notice there is a problem. A Christian does.

Now if a Christian were making a practice of sin despite knowing what God has said (and this is a key point because young Christians don’t always know), and telling me, “What do you mean I’m doing something wrong? I’m not doing anything wrong,” that would be a warning sign to me that something is wrong.

Either they are not really a Christian, or they have so hardened their hearts to God that they can’t hear him anymore.

But a Christian that is struggling is a Christian that I have confidence God is working in. And if God is working in you, he will complete his work.

Paul put it this way,

In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy… being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:4,6)

Rest assured, if God is bringing into your life conviction of sin, he will not leave you there in the pigsty. He will bring you victory. That’s the hope that we have.

That’s why one minute Paul could cry out,

What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? (Romans 7:24)

And the next minute cry out even more loudly,

Thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:25)

We cannot make ourselves better. We cannot change ourselves. But God can. That’s the hope that we have.

How does he do it? How do we change?

Through the Holy Spirit whom he has given us.

But that’s another blog. Stay tuned.

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Romans

Why we struggle with sin

Romans

Having given my prologue, let’s look at the text. Like I said, I can see why some people say Paul is speaking as a Christian and others say that he isn’t. Let’s start with the latter.

If you look at verse 14, it says,

I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. (Romans 7:14)

And again, in verse 25, he says,

In the sinful nature [I’m] a slave to the law of sin.

The question is very obvious. Weren’t we redeemed from sin? Weren’t we set free? How then, can Paul as a Christian say that he is sold as a slave to sin.

Again, in verse 18,

For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

Yet isn’t the point of living by the Spirit that we can carry out our desire to do good?

All good points and must be answered.

However, I think other verses are even more problematic if you hold that Paul is speaking as a non-Christian.

The most problematic verse is in verse 17 where he says,

As it is, it is no longer I myself who [sins], but it is sin living in me. (Romans 7:17)

And again in verse 20 where he repeats himself saying,

Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who [sin], but it is sin living in me that does it. (Romans 7:20)

How can the non-Christian possibly claim that “It is no longer I myself who is sinning?” when he is still in rebellion against God, which is the ultimate sin?

There can be no separation between yourself and your sinful nature when you’re a non-Christian. You are your sinful nature. You are so intertwined, that you can’t tell where one ends and the other starts.

Further, because you are married to your sinful nature, the only fruit you can possibly bear is sin leading to death. How then can you, as a non-Christian, say “It’s not really me?”

The Christian, on the other hand, can say all these things. And I believe it is what Paul is saying as a Christian.

To review, our sinful nature is dead in that the part of us that was rebellious to God has been crucified. Our old husband is dead. He no longer can actively influence us.

But though that part of us is dead, we are still bonded to a heart, body, and mind that has been influenced by sin from the time we were born.

The scars left by it, namely all the behavioral patterns of sin, and all the emotional ties to it, all still remain and they affect the way we live.

The old man is dead, but his influence in our hearts, bodies, and minds is still very much alive. And as long as we are tied to our physical bodies and those scars remain, we are in that sense still slaves to sin.

Now these other passages make sense. It’s not me anymore that desires sin. That part of me that was in rebellion to God died. Now I want to do what is right. I want to please God.

But there are still those residual scars of sin in me. There are still those behavioral patterns and emotional ties to sin within me. The old man is dead, but even dead, he influences me.

And right here, right now, influenced by the old man as I am, I find it impossible to carry out the good that I wish to. I want to forgive, but I can’t. I want to be patient with my kids, but I can’t.

So what am I saying? That there is no hope for the here and now? That there’s only despair for me in my fight against sin as long as I live?

Not at all, and we’ll see that in tomorrow’s blog.

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Romans

Is our sinful nature really dead?

Romans

There have been many questions I have struggled with as I’ve been going through the past several chapters. One is the question I’ve put as the title of this post. “Is our sinful nature really dead?”

However you answer that question colors your whole view of Romans 7, particularly verses 14-25.

Is Paul talking there about himself as a non-Christian, coming into contact with the law, and facing the reality that he can’t keep it?

Or is Paul talking about himself as a Christian who struggles with sin even after he is saved?

So before I actually look at the text, I’d like to address this question of the relationship between our sinful nature and ourselves.

It’s admittedly a hard question. I can see both points of view, and like I said, I’m still struggling with it. Come ten years from now, I may see things differently. But here’s my take on it for now.

As I mentioned before, the “sinful nature” is the part of us, a deeply-ingrained attitude, that was in utter rebellion against God.

From the time we were born, this attitude was there, and it started to permeate every aspect of our being. Our body, our thoughts, and our actions. And it so permeated these things, that it became “us.”

In other words, the sinful nature came to define who we were.

So to me, the “sinful nature” or the “flesh” is really two things. It is the cause, and it is the result.

To go back to our “bad infection” illustration, it’s very much like how a “zombie virus” ultimately defines the person it infects.

What happened at salvation? That part that lived in utter rebellion against God was taken away. It was crucified and it died. Now we are married and joined to Christ instead.

But the problem is, we still see the residual effects of what has already died in our lives.

Let’s put it this way. A husband abuses his wife and scars her physically and emotionally. The husband then dies. He no longer has an active effect on his wife.

But the influence he wielded on his wife while he was alive is still very much active in her. The physical scars still remain as do the emotional ones.

And in many ways, the husband has defined who the wife has become. In her future relationship with men, her former husband’s influence often leads her into behavior that is harmful to her.

She may date men that are abusive as her husband was, for example. Or even if she finds a good husband, she may find that she is unable to sexually respond to him because of the abuse she had received from her former husband.

Only through time and the touch of a Healer can she be freed from those effects that now define her.

The same is true with us and our sinful nature.

Our sinful nature was distrustful of God and lived in rebellion against him. And it trained our mind, soul, and body to live that way. It came to define who we were as people.

But when the sinful nature died, though that part of us no longer has an active effect on our lives, its residual effects remained. And as long as we live, we’ll be battling those residual effects.

So in the sense that the rebellious part of us that we were born with is dead, we can say our sinful nature is dead and crucified.

But in the sense that our mind, soul, and body is still feeling the residual effects of that which is now dead, we can say the sinful nature is still very much alive.

The good news? The sinful nature, the part that was in utter rebellion against God, is in fact dead, and can no longer actively affect us.

More importantly, the doctor is in. And that’s what we’ll see in the next few blogs.

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Romans

Just how bad is sin?

Romans

Paul says in verse 5, that while we were married to the sinful nature, the law aroused sinful passions within us.

The natural question then becomes, “Is then the law bad? Is it in fact equal to sin? After all, it’s causing me to have all these sinful desires right? It’s making me sin, right?”

But Paul answers,

Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” (Romans 7:7)

In other words, “The law is a good thing. It’s not sin. Rather it simply makes sure we understand what sin is so that we can avoid what would destroy us.”

What then is the problem?

But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. (Romans 7:8)

Put another way, sin saw the law, and said, “Oh yeah? God doesn’t like this, does he?”

And it immediately extends an invitation to our sinful nature which is more than happy to oblige, because our sinful nature itself is in rebellion against God.

Paul then says,

For apart from law, sin is dead. (Romans 7:8b)

Here we see an important truth: you can’t break a law that doesn’t exist. You may be doing something God says is wrong, but because there is no law, he can’t hold us accountable for it.

The only thing God really held people accountable for before the law came was choosing to turn their backs on him and going their own way, which of course, is the true root of all sin.

But then God laid out the laws through Moses. And they were meant to show people the way to true life. To show them what God was like, and how God had designed them to be.

When God gave the law, though, what happened? Did people happily say, “Oh, this is the way to life? Great! Let’s follow it!”

No. Rather,

When the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.

I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. (Romans 7:9-10)

Why?

For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. (Romans 7:11)

As we said before, when the commandment came, sin in the sense of breaking a commandment became possible.

“Sin” sprung to life and deceived me into thinking breaking the commandment was a good thing, thus bringing me under the law’s judgment.

All of this, of course, is figurative. There is no actual person named “Sin” out there. Nor do I think “Sin” is a reference to Satan, although he can tempt us to sin.

The main point is that the opportunity to break the law came when God gave it, and because our sinful nature is in rebellion to God, we did.

The result? Death.

Paul concludes,

So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. (Romans 7:12)

In short, “The law isn’t the problem. The law is good. The problem is you. You brought death upon yourself by breaking the law.”

He then asks,

Did that which is good, then, become death to me? (Romans 7:13)

Here he pictures the person who says, “Great! The law is good. But it means my death. How is that good?”

But Paul answers,

By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. (Romans 7:13)

What is Paul saying here?

He’s saying, “Now you’re realizing what makes sin so bad. It takes something that is good and twists it so that evil results. The law shows the way to life, but sin used it to bring death to people.”

When you look at all sin, this is true. It takes something good and twists it. Even something like sadism is twisted good.

Sadism is pleasure derived from another’s pain. But pleasure itself is a good thing. What’s bad is how you derive that pleasure.

And so one of the main purposes of the law is to help us realize just how bad sin really is.

One of the main problems with sin is people don’t realize just how bad it is. And until they do, they will never see their need for a Savior.

That’s why we need the law.

How about you? Do you truly understand just how bad sin is?

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Romans

Married to Christ

Romans

I mentioned before that there were two points that Paul was trying to make through his marriage illustration.

The first, as we’ve already seen, is that when we die with Christ, the law’s power over us is broken. He illustrates that with the point that death breaks the law’s power over people in a marriage.

And as I said in my last post, you would think that in making that point, it would only seem natural for Paul to focus on the husband and compare us directly to him. The husband died, and the law lost power over him. We died with Christ, and the law lost power over us.

But instead, Paul puts his entire focus on how the husband’s death frees his wife from the law of marriage that bound her to him.

The result is a very confusing metaphor in which we are not compared to the husband who dies but to the wife who lives.

But in comparing us to the wife, Paul can more easily make his second point. What is that point?

Before we became Christians, we belonged to another “husband.” Now we belong to Christ.

In making that point, Paul clearly refers to Christ as the new husband and us as the wife. The question then becomes, “Who did we used to be married to? Who was our husband that died?”

I mentioned earlier that it can’t be the law, because we never see any passage referring to the law dying. Even now, the law serves a very important function. It shows what is good and what is sin. (Romans 7:7)

Who then were we married to? I believe it’s our old sinful nature. What do I mean by our sinful nature?

It’s a heart that is in total rebellion against God and insistent on going its own way. And from the time we were born, we were married to it. And the fruit of this joining, the “children we bear” so to speak, is sin leading to death. (Romans 7:5)

More, as long as we were married to our sinful nature, it was impossible to be married to Christ.

But when God saves us, he crucifies our sinful nature and puts it to death.

What happens when the sinful nature we were married to dies? Two things.

First, the law no longer has authority over us, just as when a husband dies, the law of marriage no longer has authority over a woman.

She died to the law of marriage when her husband died, and we died to the law of Moses and all its requirements when our sinful nature was crucified with Christ on the cross.

Second, with our sinful nature dead, we now are free to marry Christ.

And as I said before, through this joining with Christ, we no longer give birth to sin that leads to death. Rather, we give birth to the fruit of righteousness that leads to life.

It is ultimately the reason that only through Christ we can be saved.

As long as we are married to a nature that is rebellious towards God, we can never bear fruit towards eternal life. The “seed” it plants within us causes us to give birth to sin.

But when we are joined with Christ, through his seed planted in us, we give birth to true righteousness in our lives, and the result is eternal life.

Who are you married to?

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Romans

The jurisdiction of grace

Romans

I said yesterday that Paul is not consistent in using of his metaphor of marriage in this passage.

We saw how he used the metaphor to show that death causes the law to lose its power over a person. Specifically, in his illustration, the husband’s death caused the law to lose its power over his wife.

Paul then says we died and so the law lost its power over us. But instead of tying us to the husband that died, he ties us to the wife who continued living.

Why would he do that?

Let’s put it this way. When the husband died who did the law’s loss of authority affect? The husband? No. It affected the wife who was still living.

Prior to her husband’s death, she was under the jurisdiction of the law of marriage, and she was bound by that law to her husband.

But when her husband died, she was no longer under the jurisdiction of the law of marriage. She became a non-entity to the law because it no longer applied to her.

In short, when her husband died, she died too…but in a different way. She died to the law’s power over her, and was free to marry another person.

How does this apply to us?

Before we came to Christ, we were under the jurisdiction of God’s law. What did that law say? It said, “You must do everything God has commanded or you will die.”

But there was a problem. None of us could keep the commandments perfectly, and so all of us were condemned to die.

So God sent his Son into the world, and Christ did what none of us could do. He kept the law perfectly. He did everything the law required.

Then having kept the law perfectly, he paid the price for all our violations of the law. He paid it in full by dying on the cross and taking the punishment we deserved.

Now God accepts us not because we keep the law, but because we put our faith in Christ and his work on the cross. That’s the jurisdiction of grace in which we stand.

But because we stand in the jurisdiction of grace, we no longer stand under the jurisdiction of law. We are a non-entity to the law. In effect, we died to it.

So we no longer live our lives focused on trying to keep its commandments. Rather, now we are married to Christ, led by his Spirit day by day.

The result of this joining to Christ? We give birth to the fruits of righteousness leading to eternal life, something we could not do under the law.

The question is, do we understand all this?

So many Christians, though they live under the jurisdiction of grace, live as though they live under the jurisdiction of law.

They still think they have to keep the law perfectly in order to be accepted by God. They live in fear of God, because they still feel liable to punishment if they break his laws.

But we are no longer under the law’s jurisdiction. We are now married One who loves us and accepts us right here, right now.

So let’s not live our lives in fear. Let us not worry about whether we measure up to God’s standards.

Rather, let us focus on enjoying the love that is already ours in Jesus, and let’s live our lives in response to that love.

That’s a life under grace.

How about you?

Are you living under the jurisdiction of grace?

Or are you still living as if you are under the jurisdiction of law?

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Romans

A broken power

Romans

If anyone ever read this article four years ago, it’s undergone a massive change. Since that time, my understanding of this passage has changed, and as a result, this article has also changed.

It was a passage that puzzled me at the time, and I came to some tentative conclusions, but I’ve now come to different ones.

I mentioned this in my original post, but one of the problems in this passage is Paul’s use of the same metaphor to illustrate two different points. Unfortunately, that usage is not consistent.

In this passage, Paul talks about our relationship with the law and with God.

In doing so, he uses the illustration of marriage in which a husband dies and his wife is freed from the law which didn’t allow her to marry another man while her husband was alive.

As a result, she goes ahead and gets married to another person.

Here’s what I originally wrote, describing my inner thought process as I tried to figure this passage out:

“So, we died to the law. That means we are the husband and the law is the wife, right?

No, that can’t be right. Because Paul says with the husband gone, the wife is free to marry Christ.

The Law marries Christ? No, Paul says we marry Christ.”

“So is the law the husband, and we are the wife? No, because the law doesn’t die; we die.”

Ultimately, the problem comes down to the fact that Paul doesn’t intend us to push his metaphor too far.

There are certain points he wants to make and you have to kind of go with his flow even if his use of the metaphor is a little inconsistent.

So what do I think now?

Here’s Paul’s primary point: Death breaks the power of the law over a person.

So in the case of marriage, a husband’s death breaks the power of the law of marriage over a wife.

As long as the husband was alive, she could not be joined to another. But now with her husband’s death, she is no longer bound by the law and she can marry another man.

In our case, we were under a different law: God’s law.

This law told us what was right and wrong. More, it told us that if we sinned, we would be condemned.

But because all of us have sinned, we could not be joined to God. We were separated from him by our sin.

But then, in Christ, we died.

We read this in chapter 6, that when Christ died on the cross, we died with him. Jesus then raised us as new people (Romans 6:3-7).

Baptism is a picture of this.

The water is a picture of the grave. And as we go down into the water, it shows us a spiritual reality.

Our old self, the one that was living for himself or herself, the one that was in rebellion against God is now dead.

Instead, we are raised a new person: a person who loves God, who wants to follow him, who wants to live for him.

More importantly, through the Holy Spirit, we have God himself living in us, giving us those desires and the power to live out those desires.

So now that we have died with Jesus, God’s law no longer has power over us.

Our relationship with God is no longer based on keeping that law. It’s based on the grace of God and the work of Jesus on the cross.

Now, the law can no longer condemn us for our sin, because Jesus took our punishment for us.

The law can no longer separate us from God because of our sin. Rather, in Jesus, we have been joined to him.

I don’t think the picture of Jesus and the church being a groom and bride is an accident.

As his church, we are now joined to Jesus, and we bear fruit for him. Not literal children, of course, but fruit that causes his kingdom to grow as we share his love and his gospel to those around us.

That is definitely a truth to meditate on and rejoice in.

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Romans

True freedom

Romans

Why do so many people flee from following God? I suppose it comes from a desire to be free.

What does freedom mean to most people? It means being able to live however they want to.

But if they follow God, they feel they can’t do that. Instead, they have to follow a series of dos and don’ts that will put a crimp on their happiness.

I think that a lot of what Paul faced, these questions of “Shall we sin so that grace may abound even more,” and “Shall we sin because we no longer under law but under grace” came because of this kind of thinking.

These people simply wanted to live however they wanted to.

But is true freedom simply the freedom to live however you wish? Or is there something more to it?

I think there is something more.

Let’s put it this way. One problem I face in Japan is whenever I’m dealing with Japanese electronic goods, the instructions are always in Japanese.

Now my Japanese level is okay on a speaking level, but reading and writing is another thing altogether. I can do it to an extent, but whenever I do my Japanese blogs, I make sure my wife edits it to get rid of any embarrassing mistakes.

At any rate, I bought a new Blu-Ray recorder recently and was trying to connect it with my TV and our cable box. But because the instructions were in Japanese and I couldn’t understand them.

As a result, I was left trying to figure things out on my own and was in utter frustration for hours.

At least, though, I had an excuse for not following the instructions.

So many other people who can read Japanese try installing their Blu-ray recorders, or computers, or other electronic goods, and just think, “Who needs the instructions? I’ll just do what I think looks right.”

And they end up, like me, in total frustration. Is that freedom?

In the same way, people look at their lives, and God tells them, “This is how I designed your life. This is how it works best. Just trust me, and you’ll find blessing.”

But people say, “Forget that, God. I’ll do things how I think is best. I’ll do things my way.”

In doing so, however, they destroy their relationships with their wives and children and the people around them. They make decisions that destroy their health or even their very lives. And ultimately, they end up in utter frustration.

The happiness they sought by doing things their way ends up utterly eluding them. Is that freedom?

And that’s what Paul says in verses 20-21,

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.

What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! (Romans 6:20-21)

In other words, “Yes, you were ‘free’ from God. But what did your ‘freedom’ get you? It brought you shame. It was destroying you.”

But when we put ourselves in God’s hands, and we follow his leading, what happens?

The benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. (Romans 6:22)

Like I said yesterday, the idea here is that we become whole.

And eternal life doesn’t start with heaven. It starts here on earth, living a life that is full and complete.

Why? Because we are living as we were designed to live.

That’s true freedom.

The key to freedom? Trusting God.

Trusting that he knows best. Trusting that he loves you and actually wants your best.

And because of that trust we have in him, offering our lives to him every day. As we do, that’s when we find true freedom.

How about you? Have you found true freedom?

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Romans

Going back to misery

Romans

I wonder when Paul wrote this if he thought back to the story of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt.

He certainly makes the parallel in 1 Corinthians 10, when he compares the Israelites going through the Red Sea to baptism in Christ.

But in so many ways, the things that he talks about here reflects what happened to the Israelites at that time. They were dying in Egypt. They were living miserable lives as slaves, and it says in Exodus 2:23,

The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God.

So as we know, God delivered them.

But as they were going through the desert and went through many trials, they started complaining and saying,

If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted. (Exodus 16:3)

Then later, just as they were about to enter the land God promised to give them, their faith faltered and they said, “Wouldn’t it be better for us to go back to Egypt? We should choose a leader and go back to Egypt.” (Numbers 14:3-4)

Here, Paul faces a similar situation. He had just written that where sin abounded, grace abounded even more.

So he posed the question, which undoubtedly had been brought up to him before,

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? (Romans 6:1)

To that he gave a resounding, “No!”

Later after talking about how we are under grace, not law, he again asks,

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? (Romans 6:15)

Again, his answer is crystal clear: No!

Why not? He tells us,

We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. (Romans 6:2-4)

In other words, we died to that old way of life of living in sin. We died to that kind of life so that we might live a new life, a better life. A life in relationship with God. (Romans 6:10)

So how can we go back to our old way of life?

But so many Christians are like the Israelites.

The Israelites had passed through the Red Sea and “died” to their life of slavery. They came out of the Red Sea new people. Free to live a new life. Free to live a life of victory.

But instead, they started thinking about “the good old days.” They thought about the delicious food they ate there.

And they started to think, “Let’s offer ourselves back to the Egyptians to live as their slaves again,” all the while forgetting just how miserable their lives had been there.

That’s what’s so deceptive about sin. It reminds you of its pleasures while causing you to forget the misery it brings.

And so Paul says,

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.

What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! (Romans 6:20-21)

In other words, “Those of you who are saying, ‘Let’s go back to sin and give ourselves as slaves to it once again,’ don’t you remember just how miserable that life was?

Not only did it cause you shame, it was killing you? Do you really want to go back to that?”

So he says,

Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. (Romans 6:13)

Why?

The benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. (Romans 6:22)

When we offer ourselves to God, our lives become holy. Put another way, we become all that God meant us to be. We become whole as people. And the result is life. True life.

And the best part is that it’s all free.

If only we could see the true worth of this gift of life God has given us instead of selling ourselves back to that which leads only to death.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

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Romans

A grace that reigns

Romans

These two verses show two things: The weakness of the law, and the power of grace. It says in verse 20,

The law was added so that the trespass might increase. (Romans 5:20)

That sounds a little weird. God gave us the law so that people might sin more?

But if we look back at verse 13, we see what Paul means.

For before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. (Romans 5:13)

So even before the law, people were doing sinful acts. But people cannot be held accountable for what they don’t know is wrong.

What they were held responsible for was for rejecting God and for breaking their own consciences and laws whenever they matched with God’s standards. (Romans 2:14-15)

But those consciences and standards were imperfect. They were dirty mirrors so to speak.

So God gave the law so that people might see the true standard of right and wrong. And as people became aware of it, sin increased because now they were deliberately crossing the lines God had set.

That’s the weakness of the law. It can’t make us good. Rather, it simply makes us more responsible for the sin we commit.

More, our sinful nature sees those laws and because it’s in rebellion against God, it leads us to cross those lines even more.

The result? Death.

The good news?

But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:20b-21)

One might think God was cruel in giving us the law. That he purposely did so in order to pour out his wrath upon us even more. But Paul shows us that this isn’t the case at all.

Because no matter how much sin might increase, grace increases all the more to those who will receive it. No one can ever sin so much that God’s grace cannot cover it.

More, no one can be so bad, that his grace cannot change them.

Paul tells us here that his grace will reign through righteousness.

This doesn’t merely mean that we are made righteous in legal terms before God, that is, we are declared “not guilty” before him.

But as we mentioned last time, through God’s grace we receive a new nature, and through that new nature, we start to do the things that are right. We actually become righteous in the things that we think, say, and do.

And the end result of the work that God does in us through his grace is eternal life.

That’s what’s so amazing about grace. No matter how bad you are or have been, his grace has the power to change you.

All you have to do is receive it.

How about you? Do you know the grace of God in your life?

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Romans

Good infection (aka, the Walking Living)

Romans

I’d love to take the credit for the phrase “good infection,” but I must give credit to C.S. Lewis.

I can’t even remember how he used it, but I did read Mere Christianity, and somehow, that term must have floated back up to my head as I was writing yesterday’s blog.

Yesterday, we talked about “bad infection.” That through Adam, we all have been infected with sin. We’re not sinners because we sin, we sin because we are sinners.

Fortunately, there is also a “good infection” that comes through Jesus Christ. Paul writes,

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!

Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.

For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.

For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:15-19)

In other words, so many have died because of the bad infection of sin they received from Adam.

But through the good infection of grace and righteousness we have received from Jesus, we receive life.

And just as we were condemned through this bad infection we received from Adam, we have now been justified through the good infection we received from Jesus.

More, through this good infection, we become something totally different. And thankfully, we don’t become zombies.

Rather, we become someone with a totally new nature, a righteous nature. And we become righteous not because we do righteous acts. Rather we start to do righteous things because we actually are already made righteous in Christ.

We’ll see this later in 2 Corinthians 5:17 where Paul writes,

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

Maybe I should have named this post, “The Walking Living.” Because that’s what we become in Christ. People who are truly alive.

(In fact, I think I’ll rename this post right now. Hold on a bit…Great! Done!) 🙂

So let us pass on this “good infection” we have received in Christ, that they might become the “Walking Living” too.

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Romans

Bad infection

Romans

This is admittedly a tough passage to completely fathom, though I get the general gist.

The most difficult part, I suppose, is our relationship to sin.

The big questions we need to ask is, “Are we sinners because we sin, or do we sin because we are sinners? Are we condemned to death because we do acts of sin, or are we condemned to death because of the sin that is in us by nature?”

From what Paul says, it seems to be the latter for both questions. He says in verse 12,

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned. (Romans 5:12)

Part of this is clear cut. According to Paul, sin entered the world through Adam when he sinned in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3).

And through his sin, death came into the world. He died. Eve died. And everyone that followed after him died. The ratio of death to humans is still one to one.

The latter part is not so clear. It says death came to all because all sinned.

On the face of it, it seems that this is saying that people die because of the sins that they have committed.

I think this is in part true, but not fully true. We who have lived for some time will be held accountable for any sin that we have committed, and by right, we should be punished for it. We should die.

But what about the child, for example, who dies in infancy, or for that matter is stillborn.

Which of God’s laws have they broken? They don’t even have consciences or any concept of good or evil. Did they die because of their sin?

Paul addresses this somewhat in verses 13-14.

For before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law.

Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come. (Romans 5:13-14)

Paul’s saying here that between the time of Adam and Moses, there were no laws sent from God telling people what was good and evil. There was not even a command, as God had given to Adam.

As a result, sin, in terms of committing a sinful act, was not taken into account by God. Yet people still died during that time. Why?

Because Adam’s sin is in us all. What was Adam’s sin?

An attitude of rebellion toward God. An attitude of “my way.” And this attitude is ingrained in each person from the time that they are born. It is the inborn trait of every human.

So in verse 12, when it says “death came to all because all have sinned,” it’s referring to the fact that because Adam sinned, we all became sinners.

Not because we have committed a sinful act, but because through the nature we have received from Adam (and we are all his offspring), we have all been born sinners.

It is as if his sin has infected us all, as a virus infects a body.

How can this be? I really don’t know. Nevertheless, history tells us this is true.

There is not one person in the history of the world who you can say was utterly good except for Jesus. Everyone else has sinned.

They didn’t become sinners because they sinned. They sinned because they are sinners. That’s what sinners by nature do. And because we’re all sinners, we are condemned to death.

Well, that’s pretty depressing. I hate to stop here, but this is getting long. But needless to say, there is good news, and we’ll see it in tomorrow’s blog.

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Romans

But isn’t God punishing me?

Romans

I talked about verses 6-8 in yesterday’s blog, but I think it would be good to place them back in their context, so that we can get the full picture of all that Paul is saying.

Paul was talking about how we can rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that sufferings produce perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.

But for many Christians, they don’t rejoice in their sufferings; they become bitter. They don’t persevere; they give up. They don’t find hope; they despair.

Why?

Because they start to get the feeling that the reason they’re suffering is because God is punishing them. That because they messed up, God’s really angry and so he’s taking it out on them.

What’s even worse, though, is if they feel this way and they’re not even sure what they did wrong. Or they feel like God is punishing them unjustly.

But what is Paul saying here?

He’s telling them, “Get out of your heads the idea that God is punishing you.”

“Think about it,” he says.

“Before you became a Christian, at a time when you had turned your back on God, and were utterly lost in your sin, Christ died for you.

He didn’t wait for you to turn back to him. He didn’t wait for you to clean yourself up. Before you ever reached out to him, he reached out to you.

Very rarely, will anyone die for the ‘morally correct person,’ though some may die for the ‘good guy.’

But you were neither and yet God showed his love for you. He gave up everything for you.

With that in mind, how can you possibly think that God has it out for you?

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!

For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:9-10)

In other words, he’s already justified us. How can you then think he’s now pouring his wrath on you? We’ve been saved from that.

And if God reached out to us when we were his enemies, won’t he reach out to us in our trials when we are his friends?

It is for these reasons that we can rejoice in our sufferings.

God isn’t punishing us. Nor is he turning a blind eye to our circumstances.

Rather, in the same way he saved us from our sins, he will deliver us from our trials.

And so Paul can say,

Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:11)

Are you going through hardships? Are you wondering if God is punishing you?

He’s not. If you have put your trust in him, he will bring you through the fire you’re passing through, and it will not consume you. Rather, it will purify you and make you stronger.

So hang in there. Don’t lose hope. Keep putting your trust in God, and as Paul says,

Hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Romans 5:5)

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Romans

What grace is all about

cross

I have memorized many Bible verses in my lifetime. But one of the first passages I memorized was this one.

And though I haven’t really tried to recite it in some time, I’m pretty sure I can still get it word for word (although maybe not the punctuation).

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.

Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6-8)

A few punctuation mistakes, and a missed capitalization, but other than that, pretty good if I do so say so myself. 🙂

So many things struck me about that passage way back when and still do now.

It wasn’t as though God did for us something that we could do ourselves.

We could not save ourselves. We were drowning in our sin, with no escape, no life preserver, no boat in sight. We were powerless.

In spite of all that, we weren’t even searching for help, no less searching for God.

Yet though our backs were set firmly against him, God sent Jesus to die for our sins that reconciliation between us might be made possible.

Very rarely will a person die for a “morally correct person,” such as a Pharisee. One who keeps the rules and looks down on anyone who doesn’t.

Some people, though, might die for a “good guy.” A person that is kind and caring.

But we were neither “morally correct” nor “good guys.”

We had rebelled against God, turning our backs on him, and living our own way. And by doing things our own way, we hurt God, we hurt others, and we even hurt ourselves.

Yet God didn’t simply turn his back on us and say (literally), “To hell with you.”

Instead, he came down as a man and died in our place.

That’s what grace is all about. That though we deserved nothing good from God, indeed, though all we deserved was punishment, nevertheless, he loved us and reached out in love to save us.

And it’s the grace that God grants to us who believe in him.

We who are guilty. We who are unworthy of his love. We who have been utterly stained by sin. We who were wretches before him.

It truly is, as the song says, amazing grace.

Amazing grace,
How sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me,

I once was lost,
But now I’m found.
Was blind but now I see.

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Romans

Coming through the fire

Romans

Every once in a while, something in the Bible will puzzle me. This passage certainly qualifies. Paul writes,

Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.

And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Romans 5:3-5)

This is a pretty famous passage, and I’ve read it a hundred times, but I’ve never thought of this until a few days ago.

I can see how suffering would produce perseverance, and perseverance, character.

But character, hope? What’s the connection between the two?

So I looked up the Greek, and the word translated “character” has a much richer meaning than what we see in the English.

The idea is of someone who has come out of a time of testing. They have come out of the fire so to speak, and have come out tested and approved.

Their faith is no longer simply a matter of head knowledge; it has become real in their lives.

They’ve experienced the faithfulness and love of God in their lives, and it has made their faith all the stronger for it. They themselves are made stronger for it.

They now have a character that can stand through even the toughest tests and because of that, no matter what comes, there is hope.

And as Paul says, it’s a hope that never disappoints.

Why? Because our hope is not based solely on who we are and the character we have developed.

Rather, it is based on the unshakable fact that God loves us and will always be with us through his Holy Spirit who dwells within us.

I think of Job in the Old Testament.

He certainly experienced all of this. His whole life was taken from him, his family and possessions; even his own friends turned on him. Yet he persevered.

And when he came out of the fire, he had an even deeper sense of the love and faithfulness of God in his life. Because of that, he found hope.

How about you? What trials are you going through?

Don’t let them chase you away from God. Rather, let them cause you to draw even closer to him.

Because as you do, you will experience his love and faithfulness in your life, and you will find hope for your life.

And in the end, that hope will never, ever leave you disappointed.

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Romans

The grace in which we stand

Romans

It would be so easy to just zoom past these passages, having read them so often. But I can’t help but linger here and think about all Paul is saying here.

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. (Romans 5:1-2)

Peace with God.

I think of my own household. Sometimes my wife and I will have a disagreement, and the tension is utterly palpable.

But then we resolve things and there’s peace. No uncomfortable silences. No sudden need to “get some air.”

Instead, a relaxed smile. Laughter. Just enjoying each other’s company.

And because of Jesus, we can enjoy that same kind of relationship with God.

No stepping on eggshells. No wondering what God is really thinking about me. But relaxing in his presence knowing I’m accepted and loved.

Standing in grace.

I was standing in judgment. The judge, gavel in hand, was about to pass sentence.

And then Jesus came, sweeping me out the door, and now I stand somewhere else. In grace.

Grace in terms of forgiveness for every sin I’ve ever committed.

Grace in terms of being in the King’s favor. That though I deserve nothing from him, he looks upon me with a smile, and delights in showering me with good gifts.

So whenever I fail, whenever I fear, whenever I’m in need, all I need to do is look at where I am at. In grace.

Not in judgment. In grace.

And because of that, there is joy. There is hope.

All because of what Jesus did on the cross for me. He gave me access into this grace I now stand.

And not only to me, but to all who put their trust in him.

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Romans

Fully persuaded

Romans

It’s always cool to find something new in scripture, even after having read it all my life.

The verses that strikes me here are verses 16-17, and especially 17.

Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring–not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham.

He is the father of us all. As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.”

He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed–the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. (Romans 4:16-17)

The God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.

When you think about it, that’s what our salvation is all about.

We were walking dead men before God saved us, condemned because of our sin. But through Jesus’ death on the cross for us, we have now been given life.

It’s the second half of that that really strikes me, though. It seems to point to creation first of all. The ESV puts it this way,

[God] calls into existence the things that do not exist.

In other words, from the mind of God came all that exists today.

But we also see this concept of “calling things that are not as though they were” in the story of Abraham.

God told him that he would be the father of many nations and that the whole world would be blessed through him.

The incredible thing about all these promises is that God made them when Abraham was 75 and Sarah 65. Yet they all came to pass.

What was true in the mind of God concerning Abraham, eventually all became reality.

And Abraham never wavered in his belief that God could do what he promised.

He did have his doubts on how exactly it would happen, (thus the whole debacle with Hagar and Ishmael), but as to the actual promise of God, he never considered the possibility that God would lie.

Paul puts it this way,

Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead–since he was about a hundred years old–and that Sarah’s womb was also dead.

Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.

This is why “it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Romans 4:19-22)

Paul then says,

The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness–for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. (Romans 4:23-24)

As I was looking at this today, it seemed to me that all that Paul said points to the idea of justification.

It’s a tough concept to grasp.

How can God call people who are clearly not righteous, righteous in his sight? How can God call people who clearly still sin, righteous?

The answer is found back in verse 17. He “calls things that are not as though they were.”

That’s justification in a nutshell. He calls us righteous as though we already were.

Why? Because in his mind, we already are. He sees us not just for what we are now, but what we will be.

Before God created the universe, in his mind’s eye, he already saw what it would be like, and with a word, it came to be.

When God made his promise to Abraham, in his mind’s eye, he saw that all he promised would come to pass, and by his power, it did.

And when God looks at us, he sees in his mind’s eye what we will be. And by his power, we will be transformed into his likeness.

It’s a process that is happening day by day and will come to its completion when we stand before him in heaven.

Because of this, God can look at us as we are and call us righteous.

So often, though, we like Abraham look at the reality of today. That we are weak. Sinful.

But like Abraham, let us believe without wavering what God has promised. Let us be fully persuaded that he has the power to do what he has promised: to change us and make us truly righteous someday.

Not just in God’s mind. But in reality. (2 Corinthians 3:18; 1 John 3:2)

With that in mind, let us be strengthened in our faith, giving glory to him, not because of anything we’ve done, but because of what Jesus did.

He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. (Romans 4:25)

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Romans

Salvation: gift or obligation? (Continued)

Romans

I wanted to touch on this a bit more because it’s a point that people often struggle with. It’s a simple point, but even from the time of Jesus, you see this kind of thinking in the minds of people.

We saw in the gospels the story of a rich young man who came to Jesus and asked,

Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life? (Matthew 19:16)

Here you see implied in the man’s very question the idea that salvation is an obligation on God’s part. That if we fulfill our side of the bargain and do A, B, and C, that God has to give us eternal life.

Jesus plays along with this idea by saying, “Well, do the commandments.”

The young man says, “I’ve kept the commandments.”

Jesus says, “Really? Let’s put that to the test shall we? Give all that you have to the poor, and then come and follow me.”

Now if this man loved God with all his heart, soul, and strength, and if he loved his neighbor as himself, the two key cornerstones of the law, he would have had no problem with this.

Indeed, if he had kept the first of the ten commandments, to put nothing in front of God, he could have done this.

But he couldn’t. He loved his money too much. More than God. And more than his neighbor.

The very law that this man said justified him, instead condemned him. The only thing God was “obligated” to do was condemn him.

The sad thing is that this young man learned only half of what Jesus was trying to teach him: no man can keep his end of the bargain, so he can’t possibly earn his own salvation.

Had only this young man looked up at Jesus at this point and said, “I can’t do it. I can’t keep the commandments as I thought I could. How then can I be saved?” I believe Jesus would have smiled at this man and told him what he later told his disciples.

“With man this is impossible. With God, all things are possible.”

But instead, the young man walked sadly.

We see this again in a parable that Jesus told in Luke 18:9-14.

One man in the story, a Pharisee, boasted before God about his own righteousness. In short, he was saying, “You owe me, God. You owe me salvation because I am so good.”

The other, a tax collector (one of the most despised of people in Jesus’ day for multiple reasons), instead cried out to God, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Jesus then told them, “Do you know who went home justified before God that day? It wasn’t the Pharisee.

Despite all the Pharisee’s boasts, his ‘righteousness’ fell far short of God’s standard. He will be condemned. That’s what he earned.

But the other, the tax collector, he went home justified before God. Why? Because of something he did? No, he was forgiven purely by grace. His salvation was a gift granted to him by God merely because he asked for God’s mercy.”

Finally, we see this in the cross and Christ’s interaction with the thief.

The thief had done nothing to earn salvation. Quite the contrary, his actions “earned” him crucifixion.

But when he put his faith in Christ, Jesus said to him, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Though he had done nothing to earn God’s salvation, he nevertheless received it as a gift.

All throughout the gospels we see this theme woven into the narrative. What do we earn for our “works?”

Condemnation.

Salvation is a gift.

It always was and always will be.

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Romans

Salvation: gift or obligation?

Romans

In this passage, Paul takes on a very important issue. Is salvation from our sins and eternal life with God a gift from Him, or an obligation on his part to give us what we deserve?

Paul is very clear here. He says,

Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation.

However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. (Romans 4:4-5)

Paul couldn’t be clearer.

When a person works under contract, the boss doesn’t at the end of the month walk up to him and say, “Here’s your paycheck. Aren’t I so generous?”

And if he tried, the employee would probably be spluttering with indignation.

“What do you mean you’re generous? You’re giving me what we agreed to. I did the work you required of me. Now you have to pay me.”

But with God, that’s not the case at all. We are not forgiven of our sins and given eternal life because we keep the law. We are not made God’s children because we kept the laws God set up.

On the contrary,

Law brings wrath. (Romans 4:15)

In other words, no matter how hard we try, we fail.

We can say, “Okay, I failed this time, but from now on I’ll keep the law perfectly,” but in the end, we’ll find that we can’t keep our end of the bargain.

No matter how hard we try, we keep breaking the law and incurring its wrath.

It’s what the Israelites learned throughout the Old Testament.

And finally, God had to say (although this was his plan all along), “This Old Covenant based on law is not working because you can’t keep your end of it. So I will make up a new Covenant, not based on what you do, but on what I alone do.”

We see this in Jeremiah 31:31-34,

“The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD.

“This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD.

“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the LORD.

“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

In short, “I will no longer require you to change yourselves. I myself will change you from the inside out so that you can do what is right.

You won’t need priests to mediate between you and me. You yourself will have a relationship with me for I will completely forgive your sins, and those sins will no longer be a barrier between you and me.”

On what basis would this new covenant be based? Jesus told his disciples during his last supper with them before his death.

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”

Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:26-28; Luke 22:19-20)

So then, salvation from our sins and a relationship with God are based not on what we do.

Based on what we do, we deserve wrath. Rather, salvation is a gift based on what Jesus did on the cross.

It was a gift that was first given to Abraham, long before the law was given. And now it is given to both Jew and Gentile who come to God on the same basis as Abraham did. By faith.

So Paul says in verse 16,

Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham’s offspring–not only to those who are of the law but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. (Romans 4:16)

More on this next time.

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Romans

Righteousness by faith: a new idea?

Romans

It would be easy to think that this idea of being made righteous by our faith is a new thing. That it was an invention of Paul and the other apostles.

It was, in fact, a contention that Paul probably dealt with back in his day.

“What is this ‘righteousness by faith’ thing? I’ve never read anything about this in scripture before!”

And so in this chapter, he shows what Jesus revealed to him and the other disciples after his resurrection. (Luke 24:27, 44-47; Galatians 1:11-12).

We already have seen him quote the prophet Habakkuk in chapter 1, where he said,

The righteous will live by his faith. (Habakkuk 2:4)

Now he writes what Moses said about Abraham in Genesis.

This was important to the Jews because they considered Abraham the father of their nation, and their example.

So Paul writes,

What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered in this matter?

If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about–but not before God. What does the Scripture say?

“Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Romans 4:1-3)

He then asks,

Under what circumstances was it credited? Was it after he was circumcised, or before?

It was not after, but before! (Romans 4:10)

Conclusion?

So then, he is the father of all who believe but have not been circumcised, in order that righteousness might be credited to them.

And he is also the father of the circumcised who not only are circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised. (Romans 4:11-12)

He also points out what David wrote in Psalm 32.

Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him. (Romans 4:7-8)

Why was David forgiven? Because he did a lot of good things to make up for the bad things he had done?

No. Because he had simply thrown himself upon the mercy of God and put his trust in him. (Psalm 32:5, 10)

Paul writes much more on this in the chapter, and we’ll get to that in the following blogs. But he concludes by writing,

The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness–for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. (Romans 4:23-24)

That’s the good news for all of us.

Not that we somehow make ourselves righteous before God.

Not that we somehow have to work to clean ourselves up before God and then he accepts us.

But that right here, right now, if we put our faith in him and the work that Jesus did for us on the cross, he accepts us.

It’s the truth that sets Christianity apart from all other religions. It’s the truth that sets us free to have a relationship with God without fear.

How about you? Do you have that kind of relationship with God? Or do you live with that little doubt in your heart, “Does God accept me?”

May you truly come to know the grace of God in your life today and every day.

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Romans

Completely throwing out the law?

shaving

I suppose the logical question to all that Paul is saying is, “If the law can’t make us acceptable before God, can’t we just toss it? I mean, it’s worthless if it can’t do that, right?”

But Paul answers here,

Do we, then, nullify the law by this faith? Not at all! Rather, we uphold the law. (Romans 3:31)

What does he mean, “We uphold the law?”

Basically, it means that we recognize that it has its proper role in our coming to salvation. It was our “tutor” as Paul would later write in Galatians.

What did it teach us? It taught us about God’s holiness. More, it showed us our unholiness.

Paul writes in verse 20,

Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. (Romans 3:20)

By being made conscious of our sin, we recognize our need for a Savior.

If we never see our sin, if we think we’re good enough to be accepted by God, none of us will ever think we need a Savior. And we’ll never understand why Jesus had to die for us.

But while the law can show us our unrighteousness, it in itself cannot make us righteous.

Let’s put it this way: A mirror can show a man the beard on his face, but it has no power to shave it off. Only a razor can do that.

In the same way, the law is the mirror that shows us our sin, but it has no power to take it away.

God’s grace, however, is the razor by which our sins can be forgiven. We are therefore, “shaved” by grace. (Sorry, terrible joke).

But let’s take this a step further. Just because a mirror can’t shave my face, does this mean I don’t need it? Of course not. I still need the mirror to see where I need to be shaved.

In the same way, the law shows me as a Christian where I’m still imperfect and need to be made whole.

And as I look at it, God by his Spirit starts to lead me, and say, “You know where it says here to love your wife? Here’s what you can do to show love to her today.”

Or, “Do you see this area where it says to forgive? Here’s a person that you haven’t forgiven. I know it hurts when you think of this person. But let me minister to that hurt. Let me heal you so that you can forgive.”

So then, the law is no longer a matter of me trying to keep a bunch of rules by my own efforts. Rather, it’s a way of opening my eyes to what God wants to do in my life.

And as I look at the mirror, I don’t look at it alone, I see the loving face of my Father looking at it with me, with his razor of grace in hand.

It can be a scary thing to see that razor in the hands of another, but if we have the faith to say, “Yes, God,” by his grace, he will shave off those areas of our lives that are hurting us and the people around us.

How about you? When you look into the mirror, do you see only yourself and your flaws?

Or do you see the loving face of your Father, working in you to heal you and make you whole?

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Romans

No room for boasting

Romans

One of the big conclusions that Paul comes down to in this passage is found in verses 27-30.

Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith.

For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.

Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles too?

Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. (Romans 3:27-30)

In short, when it comes to grace, there is no room for boasting.

God does not accept us because we keep the law perfectly. Nor does he accept us because of our racial background, as the Jews thought.

He accepts us solely because we have put our faith in Christ’s work on the cross.

I think because people don’t understand this, two problems often creep up among Christians.

One is the Christian who says, “How can God accept me when I mess up so much?”

Their problem is that deep down, they still think they have to earn God’s acceptance, and because of that, they feel inadequate. They feel undeserving of God’s love.

But that’s the whole point. Grace is all about the undeserving receiving God’s love and acceptance.

Nobody can stand before God and say, “God, you’re so lucky to have me as your child. Look at how good I am. Look at all the things I can do for your kingdom.”

Instead, all of us stand before God, spiritually poor and needy, with nothing in our hands to offer him. As the old hymn puts it,

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to the cross I cling;

Naked, come to thee for dress;
Helpless, look to thee for grace.

The other problem is the Christian who, because they think they’re good, look down on others who are “not so good.”

They become like the Pharisees, judging all those around them, without seeing their own failures and need for grace.

And instead of extending grace to those who need it, they instead bash them further down.

How about you? Do you truly understand God’s grace in your life? Or are you depressed because you think God can’t accept you?

Worse, are you judging others you consider lesser than you and withholding God’s grace from them?

Here’s a good test for you. When you hear the words “amazing grace,” do they touch your soul? Or are they just words to you?

May “Amazing Grace,” not just be a song, but words that penetrate your very soul.

For when they do, you will never be the same, in how you see yourself, and how you see others.

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Romans

Forbearance and justice

Romans

Paul puts in some very interesting thoughts concerning those who lived and died before Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. He said,

God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.

He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished — he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:25-26)

In this passage, Paul talks about God’s justice. And he says that God showed justice by not punishing the sins committed before the cross.

What does he mean by this? Does this mean that all that lived and died before the cross are saved?

No, it doesn’t mean this. One thing that Paul makes clear through the scriptures is that all are saved by faith.

He says in verse 28,

For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law. (Romans 3:28)

And as we will see in chapter 4, he goes all the way back to the time of Abraham to point out that even Abraham was saved by his faith.

So if a person did not have faith in God, they were not saved, but condemned.

However, Abraham, Moses, David, and all the rest of the Old Testament saints who did put their faith in God had a problem.

All the sacrifices they gave as an expression of their faith were not effective in taking away their sins. All the sacrifices they gave were mere pictures of what Jesus would do hundreds of years after they died.

(We’ll talk about this more when I eventually get around to blogging Hebrews).

But it wasn’t fair to punish them just because Jesus had not come yet to die for their sins.

So instead, because they believed in this Messiah to come, God accepted their faith as righteousness and put off the justice they deserved for their sin.

And when Jesus went to the cross, God put all of Abraham’s sins, Moses’ sin, David’s sins, and all the rest of the Old Testament saints’ sins upon Jesus.

At that point, their sins were completely wiped out by the blood of Christ, and they could enter the presence of God in heaven.

God shows that same kind of forbearance and justice with us.

Though we all deserved death for our sins, and God could have immediately put us to death, he showed forbearance.

He worked in our lives, preparing our hearts for Jesus. And then when we put our faith in him, God wiped out our sin just as he did with the Old Testament saints.

He did this, not with a forgiveness that says, “Oh, I know you did wrong, but I’m a nice God so I’ll just forgive you.”

He did it with a forgiveness that says, “What you did was horrible, and a price needed to be paid. Justice needed to be served. But Jesus paid that price, and in his death, justice was served. Now because of your faith, you are forgiven.”

But this message is important for you if you are not a Christian as well.

Remember that God is a God of forbearance. But he is also a God of justice.

He is patient. He will wait for you to respond to him. But he will not wait forever. And if you don’t accept his grace, you will receive his justice.

So don’t wait. Receive his grace while you can. As Paul wrote in another passage,

I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation. (2 Corinthians 6:2)

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Romans

To be accepted by God

Sitting at the cross

Our deepest need, whether felt or not, is to be accepted. And not just by anyone. But to be accepted by God.

When we are accepted by God, and we understand this in our souls, our life changes. We find contentment, joy, and peace. We find life.

But how can we be accepted by God? One thing Paul makes clear: it won’t come from following the law. In verse 23, he writes,

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

The word for sin in Greek is a very interesting one. It’s an archery term that means “to miss the mark.”

But it’s not just a picture of missing the bullseye. It’s a picture of completely missing the target.

In other words, we’re not even close to perfection. We fall far short of God’s holiness.

Let’s put it this way. Imagine you sin three times a day. That’s not too bad right?

But multiply that by 365 days in a year. Then multiply that by your age. Suddenly, depending on your age, you’re talking about the tens of thousands.

God can literally read off a list against you that would take hours to complete. And that’s if you’re relatively “good.”

Because of this, we all stand condemned. None of us can stand before God and say, “I’m good enough to be accepted by you. I’ve kept all your laws perfectly.”

The good news? In verse 21, Paul tells us,

But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. (Romans 3:21)

How do we get this righteousness? Paul tells us in verses 22-25.

This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. (Romans 3:22-25)

What is Paul saying? We have a lot of what I call Christianese here.

First he talks about redemption. What is redemption?

Redemption is the buying of someone’s freedom out of slavery. All of us were in slavery to sin and the kingdom of Satan. But Jesus bought us out from all that. That’s redemption.

How did he buy us? Through his blood on the cross.

Paul says that God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement.

Atonement simply means a covering. That through Christ’s death on the cross, he covers over our sin and forgives it, drawing us to himself.

Perhaps a better translation of atonement would be another 50-cent word, “propitiation.”

The idea is that God poured his wrath for our sins on Jesus, and now that wrath toward us is appeased.

However you translate it, the point is clear. It is through Christ’s work on the cross we are accepted, not by our works.

And through his death we have now been justified. That simply means that with our sins paid for, God no longer looks upon us as sinners.

You can look at it this way. “God sees me just as if I’d never sinned.”

So now, we are accepted by grace.

Grace is simply the receiving of something that we don’t deserve. We deserved wrath because we turned our backs on God. But instead, God accepts us as his sons and daughters.

All we have to do is have faith, putting our trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins.

Have you done so?

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Romans

But aren’t we exaggerating a bit?

Romans

I don’t think I can go on in this passage without addressing at least one major objection, that being, “Isn’t Paul exaggerating a bit here?

I mean…no one seeks God? I know many people that are seeking God. And no one does good? I know lots of people who do good things.”

Let’s take both questions one at a time.

What does Paul mean that no one seeks God?

We find the answer back in Romans 1, where Paul tells us that people rejected the knowledge God gave them concerning himself, whether it was the witness of creation, the witness of their consciences, or the witness of God’s written Word.

Instead, they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and while they said they were seeking God, they were following after things that were not gods at all (Romans 1:25).

In some cases, they followed idols. In other cases, they corrupted scripture’s teaching of God and started following a different Jesus Christ, a different gospel, and a different Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 11:4).

“But I’m a Christian. I don’t belong to a cult or another religion. I started seeking after God and he saved me.”

That may be true. But it’s only an incomplete picture of what really happened to you. You see, long before you chose Jesus, he chose you. (John 15:16)

Long before you started seeking him, he was seeking you. (Luke 19:10)

The only reason you started seeking God was because he loved you first and started seeking you. He took the blinders off so that you could see your need for him and start going after him.

But had God left you to your own devices, there is no way you would have ever started to go after him.

No one seeks God on their own. They seek God because he touches their lives first. And if you take a careful look at your life, you will come to realize just how he did that.

What then does Paul mean when he says there is no one who does good?

Let’s put it this way. Imagine you make a cake, but instead of using sugar, you intentionally put in salt. When it’s done, the cake looks good on the outside, but is it edible? No. The only thing you can do is throw it out.

That’s what our “good works” are like when we have turned our backs on God.

Doing “good works” when all the while, you’re salting them with an attitude of rebellion against God makes those deeds worthless in his eyes.

Your works may look good, but your attitude of rebellion against God makes it impossible for him to accept them.

The prophet Isaiah puts it this way,

All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags. (Isaiah 64:6)

In short, no one is saved because of the good things they do or because of some inner goodness within them that sets them apart from other people.

We can only be saved by God’s grace alone, and we’ll see that more as we go along.

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Romans

But I’m not that bad

Romans

One thing that many people can’t seem to understand is how God could reject a person just because they don’t believe in Christ.

“After all, there are a lot of good people in this world who don’t believe in Jesus. I can understand sending murderers and rapists to hell.

But what about people like Ghandi? He was a pretty good guy. You can’t tell me God would send him to hell just because he didn’t believe in Jesus.”

The problem with that way of thinking is that we have a warped view of what “good” is. “Good” is what God is. “Good” is not a thing we can define on our own.

“Good” is God in all his essence. So in order to see what is truly good, we need to look at God. And we need to look at how he says he created life to be lived.

That’s what the law was for. It was to show us what God is like, and how he designed us to be.

So if we are going to measure our goodness, we can’t measure ourselves on a sliding scale of how good we are compared to other people.

Nor can we measure ourselves based on a standard that we have set up or even our own cultures have set up.

We need to measure our goodness by what God says is good. And by that standard, no one measures up.

Paul puts it this way.

We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin.

As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.

All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. (Romans 3:9-12)

What is Paul saying? He’s saying that there is no one whom God considers righteous on their own merits.

Why not? Because they don’t even understand what’s right.

And the reason they don’t understand what’s right is that they don’t seek God; rather they have turned their backs on him.

And that is the ultimate evil. Not murder, not rape, nor anything else. Rather, the ultimate evil is turning your back on God.

Why? Because as I said, God is good. And what is evil but turning your back on what’s the ultimate Good.

What happens when you turn your back on the source of all that’s good? It starts to creep out in your words, and in your actions.

How often have you lied? Or slandered someone? Or cursed someone? How often have bitter things come out of your mouth? Do those kinds of things come out of a good heart?

How often have you messed up your life by your decisions?

How often have you hurt others because of your actions?

How often have you said, “I know this is what God has said, but I’m going to do things my way anyway?”

If you’re completely honest with yourself, you have to plead guilty on all charges. And that’s what Paul tells us here.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.

Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. (Romans 3:19-20)

When Ghandi stands before God, there’s not a word he will be able to say when God judges him. God will lay out all his sins before him, things that Ghandi knows were wrong. And he will be without excuse.

Why? Because even when he didn’t know the Bible, his own conscience smote him.

And when he came to a knowledge of the Bible, he became even more responsible because it showed him his sin, just as a mirror shows us the dirt on our face.

And you’ll be in the same position if you face God, having rejected Christ.

So let’s not kid ourselves by trying to convince ourselves we’re not so bad. All of us are sinners in need of grace.

It’s better to realize and admit that now than to do so when we stand before God on judgment day.

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Romans

It’s the result that counts, right?

Romans

Yesterday, we talked about ways of thinking that God condemns, and how some of the things people say today are similar to, but different from how they thought in Paul’s time.

One thing they said was,

Let us do evil that good may result. (Romans 3:8)

In Paul’s day, this meant, “Let’s do evil, so that people will clearly see the difference between us and God, and thus glorify God.”

It was a very perverse way of thinking (not to mention strange), and Paul quickly condemned it.

But people today say the same kind of thing, though with a different meaning. Namely, “The ends justify the means.”

In other words, “I know what I’m doing is wrong, but it’s for a good purpose.”

For example, “I know I shouldn’t move in with my boyfriend, but we can save money this way for when we get married. Plus, we can find out if we’re truly compatible before we tie the knot.”

Or, “I know I shouldn’t twist the truth on my resume, but it’s the only way I can get a good job.”

Or, “I know I shouldn’t marry this guy because he doesn’t believe in Christ. But maybe if I do marry him, he’ll become a Christian someday.”

But God condemns this way of thinking. He wants us to follow his way, and that includes both the ends and the means. When we try to take shortcuts, it often leads to disaster.

If you look at the whole Arab-Israeli conflict today, it came because Abraham thought the ends justified the means.

God had promised to give him a child and that through that child, the whole world would be blessed.

But when years passed, and no child came, Abraham decided to “help” God keep his promise. He slept with his wife’s servant girl.

Now this was at his wife’s suggestion, and it was also in line with the social norms of the day for those whose wives were barren.

But it was not in line with God’s way. And now the descendants of the servant (the Arabs) are at bitter odds with the descendants that came from God’s promise (the Jews).

How much trouble and strife might have been avoided had Abraham not gone with the idea that the ends justified the means?

How about you? Are you living your life by faith, doing things God’s way and trusting that God will bless you for doing so?

Or are you instead making excuses for your behavior, saying that it’s for a good purpose?

In God’s eyes, the ends never justify the means.

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Romans

A damned way of thinking

Romans

No, I am not swearing. The things we see in this passage are literally ways of thinking that will lead to people’s damnation.

To be honest, I find it hard to believe that people in that time held these ways of thinking.

Some people were saying, “God is happy when I sin because when I do, it shows how good he is in contrast. So why does God judge me when I’m simply doing what he wants?” (Romans 3:5)

But Paul quickly debunks that idea by saying, “What are you talking about? God doesn’t take pleasure in your sin, even if it does ‘show how good he is.’ If God thought that way, there’s no way he could judge the world.” (Romans 3:6)

On a similar vein, others were saying, “Well, if I do evil, good will result. When I sin, everyone will see just how good God is in contrast to me and they’ll glorify him. So I should just sin more.”

To that, Paul simply says flat out,

Their condemnation is deserved. (Romans 3:8)

I doubt that people still hold these ways of thinking, but there are still other similar arguments people make today. Today we’ll look at one, and tomorrow we’ll look at another.

God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us. (Romans 3:5)

People nowadays use this in a different context than in Paul’s day. They say things like, “How can God punish people who have never heard?”

But as we’ve seen in previous chapters, God has given people enough evidence to believe that he exists, even in lands where the gospel has never reached.

They have the evidence of creation and their own laws and consciences. And yet they reject what they’ve been given.

These people will not be judged based on what they don’t know, but on what they do know. So the judgment they receive will be entirely just.

Other people say, “How can God send people to hell? That’s so unjust, making people suffer forever just for rejecting him.”

I’ll be honest. I don’t like the teaching about hell. I’d rather believe that all people will eventually go to heaven.

The problem is that’s not what the Bible teaches. That’s definitely not what Jesus taught either.

But I’ll make two points on this.

First, God is simply giving people what they want. And what people who reject God want is to be as far away from God as possible. They want to live their own way. They want to do their own thing.

But what they eventually find out is that God is the source of love, joy, life, and everything that is good. And so separation from God is separation from everything that is good.

What is that kind of existence? Hell.

Second, God sent his Son to suffer and die for our sins so that people wouldn’t have to go to hell. Jesus did all the hard work.

All we have to do is put our faith in him and his work on the cross.

To say, “Father, I know I’ve messed up my life by going my own way. Forgive me. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for me and rose again. I’m putting my trust in you from now on.

Now please work in me to change me and make me more like yourself each day.”

And when we make that choice, we find life. It’s not that hard. The only hard thing about it is not wanting to let go of our way.

I love how C.S. Lewis put it. In the end, people either turn to God and say, “Your will be done,” or they turn away from him and he tells them, “Your will be done.”

Whose will is being done in your life?

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Romans

God’s faithfulness

Romans

It would be easy for the Jew to conclude from what Paul said in chapter 2 that there was no value in being a Jew or being circumcised.

Yet Paul makes clear in verses 1 and 2 that there is indeed value in both. He said,

What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision?

Much in every way!

First of all, they have been entrusted with the very words of God. (Romans 3:1-2)

In other words, one of the big advantages of being a Jew was that they got direct revelation from God as to who he is and what he’s like.

While all the other nations had to settle for the general revelation of God through creation, they had much more.

Of course, as mentioned before, this is a double-edged sword. While this can be a great blessing, it can also be a curse, because the more you know, the more you’re held accountable.

And unfortunately, throughout Israel’s history, though they knew who God was and what he was like, they nevertheless walked away from him to follow after other “gods.”

It would be easy to conclude from that that God has turned his back on Israel. Some Biblical commentators argue this and say that we who are Christians are the new Israel.

To some degree, this is true. As we’ll see later in Romans, we were grafted in with those who are called God’s people.

But to say that God has completely given up on the Jews is going too far, particularly considering what Paul says in verse 3 and 4.

What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God’s faithfulness?

Not at all! Let God be true, and every man a liar.

As it is written: “So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.” (Romans 3:3-4)

In other words, though there were Jews that turned their backs on God, God has not turned his back on the Jewish nation. Their lack of faith did not nullify God’s faithfulness to his people.

God is true to his promises, though many people are not. Because of this, no one can ever accuse God of being anything but honest and fair in his judgments.

And also because of this, I do believe there will be a day when all Israel will eventually come to recognize Jesus as Messiah.

But I also believe that this passage is an encouragement for us non-Jews, because so often, we, like the Jews, are lacking in faith and in faithfulness.

We fail to trust that God desires our best and sometimes we even fail to trust that God knows what is best. And because of this, we stray from him and his Word.

Yet God never gives up on us. He keeps pursuing us and reaching out to us.

Sometimes that means discipline, but it’s a discipline in love that seeks our very best. And we never have to worry that God will simply give up on us because we’ve failed so often.

As Paul said in another place,

If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself. (2 Timothy 2:13)

So when we fail and when we fall, let us never forget the faithfulness of God. And let us always remember his promise to us.

Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. (Hebrews 13:5)

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Romans

A true circumcision

Romans

One of the main problems the Jews had in Paul’s time was that they forgot that God wasn’t so interested in outward appearances as he was in their hearts.

In particular, they thought it was circumcision that made them right before God, all the while ignoring the sin that was in their hearts.

God had made that problem clear through the Old Testament prophets. In Jeremiah, he said,

The days are coming…when I will punish all who are circumcised only in the flesh — Egypt, Judah, Edom, Ammon, Moab and all who live in the desert in distant places.

For all these nations are really uncircumcised, and even the whole house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart. (Jeremiah 9:25-26)

In other words, God wasn’t so interested in people cutting off parts of their body. He was interested in having their hearts. And if he didn’t have their hearts, circumcision meant nothing to him.

And so Paul said,

Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised.

If those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised?

The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.

A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical.

No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God. (Romans 2:25-29)

Again, Paul is speaking mostly hypothetically.

He’s saying that if someone were able to keep the law perfectly, even though he were not circumcised, God would accept them.

On the other hand, if a circumcised person doesn’t keep the law, God will condemn them as a lawbreaker. And for that matter, the law-keeping uncircumcised person could do the same.

Of course, no one, circumcised or not, has ever been able to keep the law perfectly.

So Paul tells them, “You’re not a Jew, that is, you are not truly God’s chosen people if you are simply circumcised, because circumcision isn’t merely physical. It’s a matter of the heart.

Only if your heart is circumcised by the Spirit of God are you truly accepted by God and can be called his people.”

What does it mean to have a circumcised heart? Paul tells us in Colossians 2:11.

In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ. (Colossians 2:11)

In other words, when we came to Christ, he cut off the chains that bound us to the sinful nature.

Prior to that, we were pulled around by that nature and acted in accordance with it. But now, that nature has been circumcised and we belong to God.

And having been set free from that sinful nature, we are free to follow after God and have been given the power to live a righteous life.

But again, that circumcision is not done by our own efforts, but by giving our hearts to Christ, by coming to him in faith, and saying, “Lord Jesus I need you. I can’t save myself. Please save me.

I’m putting my trust in you and your work for me in the cross. Now forgive my sins and make me yours.”

And when you do, that’s when you become God’s child.

That’s when you are truly right before God.

How about you? Have you given your heart to God? Is your heart circumcised before him?

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Romans

Looking at ourselves

Romans

Paul specifically talks to the Jews in this passage, and as he does, he’s trying to get them to understand one key thing:

If you’re going to claim you’re right before God based on his law, it’s not enough to just know it. You need to live it as well. And so he tells the Jews,

Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God; if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law;

if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth — you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself?

You who preach against stealing, do you steal?

You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?

You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?

You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? (Romans 2:17-23)

In other words, “You guys are so proud of yourselves because you have the law. You’re so proud of yourselves because you’re God’s ‘chosen people’ and he has given you his truth.

You think of yourselves as those who know it all. And if anyone wants to know about God and how to live, they need to come to you because, ‘You know.’

But are you practicing what you preach? Or are you saying one thing and doing another?

He then tells them,

As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” (Romans 2:24)

I have to admit, as a teacher of God’s word, this passage scares me. Because I don’t want to have God’s name blasphemed because of me. I don’t want people to blaspheme God because I’m a hypocrite.

And yet, often times, I do fail. I am a hypocrite sometimes. And sometimes I really struggle to do what is right.

Worse, I struggle to do what I preach. So often, when I preach or write these blogs, I’m talking to myself.

In the end, all I can do is fall on my face at the throne of God and ask for his mercy.

And that’s the whole point. All of us need God’s grace. Because if we are going to claim righteousness based on God’s law, we need to keep that law perfectly. And none of us can.

How about you? Do you realize just how much you need God’s grace in your life?

If you’re thinking, “I’m pretty good. I’m much better than a lot of people I know,” then you need to take a much closer look at your life. Because none of us are as good as we’d like to think we are.

And until we truly understand that, we will never really understand our need for God.

When you look in the mirror, what do you see?

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Romans

What happens to those who never hear?

Romans

One of the things that people argue when it comes to Christianity is, “How can God hold people accountable for what he has commanded if they have never even heard of the Bible?”

We find the answer here in this passage.

Paul starts by saying that judgment will be passed on all who do evil, first on the Jew and then on the Gentile.

On the other hand, those who do good will be rewarded by God, the Jews first, the Gentiles second.

Why? Because it was the Jews who received the law from God. And because they directly received it from God, they are more accountable.

Jesus puts it this way,

That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows.

But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows.

From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. (Luke 12:47-48)

Paul expands on this idea, saying,

All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. (Romans 2:12)

In short, people will be judged by what they do with what they know. They will not be judged by what they didn’t know.

If they know God’s law as given to the Jews, they will be judged by that. If they don’t, they will be judged by another standard. What standard?

One standard is their own laws, insofar as they coincide with God’s. Paul tells us,

Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them. (Romans 2:14-15)

In other words, all people, no matter where they are or what culture they are from, have laws that conform to the law of God.

They may not conform perfectly, but where they do conform, they will be held accountable for whether they keep them or not.

So, for example, different cultures may have different definitions of stealing, but when they break their own laws concerning stealing, God holds them accountable because it falls in line with his laws.

The other standard God judges these people by is their own consciences.

Sometimes, people may do things that are acceptable even to their own culture, for example, sleeping with their boyfriend or girlfriend.

But the next day, their conscience tells them that it doesn’t matter what their culture said, they did something wrong.

And God will hold them accountable for it because their own guilty feelings show that though they didn’t know the Bible, deep down they knew their actions were wrong.

This is not to say that our consciences are perfect reflections of God’s law. They are not, any more than people’s laws are in perfect conformity with God’s law.

But insofar as they coincide, they will be held accountable.

One other point. Paul says in verse 13,

For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Romans 2:13)

When Paul says this, I believe he is being entirely theoretical. He’s saying, “It’s not enough to know the law. You need to keep it.”

And theoretically, if you can keep the law perfectly, you will be declared righteous. But as we will see later, there is no one that fits that description.

The main point, however, is this. God is fair. He will not hold you accountable for what you don’t know. He will hold you accountable for what you do know.

So the main question you need to ask yourself today is this, “What are you doing with what you know?”

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Romans

Pride and insolence

Romans

In this passage, we see two problems concerning the grace of God.

The first problem is pride. It’s an attitude of, “I don’t need God’s grace. I’m good enough. The people around me on the other hand…”

Paul addresses this attitude in verses 1-3, saying,

You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things.

Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.

So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? (Romans 2:1-3)

Here you see the judgmental attitude some people have. They look around at the people around them and judge them as “sinners.”

But at the same time, they are blind to their own sin. They are so proud, thinking, “Other people may be messed up, but I’m not.”

Yet Paul asks them, “What right do you have to judge others when you do the same things?”

We condemn others for being stubborn and thick-headed, for example, but we can’t see our own pride that causes us to be just as stubborn and thick-headed when relating to them.

Or we look at murderers in the news and are horrified. We demand punishment for them.

But in our hearts we cut people off for the hurts they’ve caused us. In our hearts, we murder them, and they are dead to us.

And so Paul says, “You have no room to judge others. You have no room to look down on others as ‘sinners’ when you do the same things as they do. You need God’s grace just as much as they do. And without it, you’re lost.”

Paul then addresses another problem. Those who presume upon God’s grace, and say, “Well, since God will forgive me anyway, I’ll just live as I want and ‘repent’ later.”

But Paul tells such people,

Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance? (Romans 2:4)

I like the wording of the ESV here.

Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? (Romans 2:4, ESV)

In other words, God’s grace is not given to us in order for us to indulge in sin. God’s grace is given to us in order that we might repent and turn away from our sin.

Yet so many people presume on the grace of God, living as they please, hurting both God and the people around them.

So Paul says to both types of people,

But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed.

God “will give to each person according to what he has done.”

To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.

There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.

For God does not show favoritism. (Romans 2:5-11)

In short, no one’s going to get away with anything. If we in our pride, think we are above God’s grace because we are so much better than others, we will be judged, and shown to be just as bad as those we judge.

If in our insolence we abuse the grace of God, we also will be punished.

How about you? Do you think you’re above the grace of God? Or do you think that God’s grace is something to be despised?

Such attitudes will lead to judgment.

So let us come humbly before God, admitting our need, and marveling at the love and grace he gives us.

There is no room for pride or insolence in the kingdom of God.

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Romans

The problem of sin

Adam, Eve, and the serpent in Eden

As Christians, we often talk about salvation. But what are we being saved from? What have we done that is so bad that we require salvation?

We find the answer in this passage, one of the darkest in all of scripture, because it describes just how desperate our condition is.

Paul starts by saying,

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. (Romans 1:18)

The wrath of God.

If you really think about those words, they’re pretty scary. We all love to talk about the love of God. No one ever likes to talk about his wrath. Why is his wrath being poured out?

Two reasons: godlessness and wickedness, both of which are described in much further detail as we go along.

What is godlessness? Essentially, it’s a turning of our backs on God.

Paul tells us in this passage that God has revealed himself to everyone. Not just to the Jews. Not to just a select few. But to everyone.

How? Through his creation. All of creation screams out that there is an intelligent creator.

Even those who reject that idea, in honest moments admit, “You know, just by looking at everything, you’d almost think there was an intelligent designer behind all this.”

They then of course do everything to bury that idea behind their arguments and theories.

And that’s what Paul talks about here. Through his creation, we see God’s power and his divine nature.

Just by looking at his creation, we see just how big he must be. We see his mind. We see his creativity. We see his goodness. We see his beauty. God makes all of these things plain through his creation.

But what do people do? They suppress the truth of all this by their wickedness.

If you look closely at the motives of most if not all of those who would argue against the existence of God, at its root, it comes down to the fact that they don’t want to believe that they are accountable to him.

They know that if God truly exists, they can’t just live as they desire but are responsible to him.

By turning their backs on God, though, what happens?

Their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools. (Romans 1:21-22)

We can see this in literal idol worshipers. They make things with their own hands. They are the “creator.” And yet they bow down and worship what they themselves created.

But people set up other idols as well. Their own intelligence. Their own wisdom. Their own money. Their own lusts.

By trusting these things, they become blind. They become blind to what’s truly good and right. And they become blind to how these things they are worshiping are destroying them.

But worse than all of this, because they turned their backs on God, he has turned his back on them.

God says, “You don’t want to follow my will? Fine. Your will be done.”

What’s the result of our will? We see the ugly results from verses 24-31. Not only our godlessness. But our wickedness. All the things that we do that hurt others and ourselves.

I don’t need to go into them all. All you have to do is look at the world around you, and you’ll see what happens when people turn their backs on God.

Verse 32 also very much describes the world today.

Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them. (Romans 1:32)

People know in their hearts they deserve to be punished for what they’re doing. But not only do they continue doing them, they cheer on those who practice them.

I don’t think I even have to comment on what that means. In America, we see the media constantly doing this.

They celebrate when those who do what is evil in God’s sight are open about it. They celebrate when laws are passed that are contrary to the Word of God.

And because of that, we are condemned.

That is the problem of sin. And that’s why we all need salvation.

How about you? Do you recognize the world’s need for salvation? More importantly, do you recognize your need for salvation?

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Romans

The gospel

Gospel and the Bible

In this passage, Paul talks about his longing to come to Rome that he might share the gospel with them as he had in so many other places.

Not to say that they didn’t know the gospel, as they had already come to faith. But all of us need reminders of what the gospel is, and not only that, to get grounded deeper into it and all its implications.

And that’s what Romans is really all about. Getting rooted deeper into the gospel.

Verses 14-15 strike me where Paul said,

I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish.

That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome. (Romans 1:14-15)

Obviously, Paul as an apostle called by Christ, had this obligation to share the gospel. But for him, it went beyond obligation. It wasn’t a drudgery that he had to force himself into. He was eager to do so.

The same should be said of us. We shouldn’t have to force ourselves into sharing the gospel with others. We should be eager to do so. Why so eager?

I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. (Romans 1:16)

It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.

I wonder sometimes if we truly understand what this means.

The gospel is God’s power to change lives. Not just so that people can go to heaven.

Salvation doesn’t simply mean a one-way ticket to heaven. It also means that people’s lives can be made whole here on earth.

Salvation means that their lives which have been broken by sin, can be made whole. That their hearts that have been wounded by the hurts of this world can be made whole.

It means that their marriages and relationships with others that have been torn apart can be made whole.

And most importantly, salvation means that their relationship with God which was broken by sin can be made whole.

That’s salvation. And the gospel is God’s power to bring that salvation.

More, the good news is for everyone. It was first brought to the Jew because God had originally chosen them to be his special people.

But after Jesus died on the cross and was raised again, it became possible for all people to approach God, both Jew and non-Jew. We who believe are all now accepted as God’s children.

How is this possible?

For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” (Romans 1:17)

“Righteousness” has several nuances in scripture, but the idea here is that the gospel shows us how to come into a right relationship with God.

Our relationship with God was broken because of sin. How then do we come into a right relationship with God? Through faith.

When you think about it, it totally makes sense, because our relationship with God was broken.

How?

By not trusting God. By not believing that he is looking out for our best. By distrusting his motives. And as a result, we turned our backs on God and started living our own way.

How then does that relationship get repaired? By turning back to God and saying, “I will trust you.”

That starts with trusting in Jesus’ work on the cross to make us accepted by God. To say, “Jesus I believe that when you died, you took the punishment for my sin.”

When we do that, God not only forgives us, but gives us a new heart that can trust him, not only for salvation, but for everything in life.

And as we learn to trust him more each day, and as God works in our lives empowering us to do the things he asks, our actions start to change and we start becoming more like Jesus in everything we do.

The result? Our lives are totally transformed, and we are made whole. That’s salvation.

Do you know that salvation in your own life? And do you understand it so deeply that you are eager to share it with those around you?

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Romans

Loved and called by God

Romans

And so we hit Romans, perhaps the most important book in the New Testament, because it so clearly sets out what the gospel is.

It was written by Paul to the church in Rome before he had had the chance to visit there.

And unlike many of his other letters, he is not addressing any church-specific problems or issues. Instead, all his focus is on the gospel God had set him apart from birth to preach.

In his greeting, Paul talks about how God had called him to be an apostle and set him apart to specifically reach out to the Gentiles.

It would be easy to take this almost as boasting. “God chose me! God loves me!”

But then Paul wrote,

And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints. (Romans 1:6-7)

You also.

I love those words.

You also.

Paul told the Romans, “You also are called to belong to Jesus Christ. It’s not just us Jews. It’s not just us ‘special people.’

You too are special. You also are loved by God. You also are called to be his saints.”

Sometimes, we wonder how God could possibly love us. We’re nothing special. Why would God even bother with us?

And yet God looked down upon us, even before time began, and said, “I choose you. I love you.”

He saw all our faults, all our sins, all our weaknesses, and despite all that, said, “I set you apart for myself.”

And that’s actually what “saint” means. It means “people set apart for God.”

A lot of us look at the word, “saints,” and we think, “Me? A saint? I’m no saint?”

We think that because we picture saints as people with this halo over our heads who live perfect lives.

But you are a saint not because you are intrinsically better or purer than anyone else, but because God has loved you and chosen you.

That’s grace: the imparting of God’s love to you though you did nothing to earn it. Though you are no better than anyone else. And because God has bestowed his love upon us by grace, we have peace with God.

We don’t have to worry about whether God accepts us or not. We’d only have to worry about that if we had to earn God’s acceptance. But we don’t.

Before the creation of the world, he already chose you and accepted you. And if we could only understand that, how different would our lives be?

No longer striving, no longer fearful. But resting in the love, grace, and mercy of God.