Transcript
Okay, we're looking at Romans tonight, and I think that virtually all students of the Bible would agree that this is one of the most important books in the entire Bible. If we are thinking of a book that gives us a large amount of Christian doctrine, or in seminary terminology a large amount of Christian theology, probably the book of Romans has no rival in the New Testament or in the Old.
And when you begin to read the literature that has been produced on this book, it is absolutely voluminous. I mean, books are coming out all the time. Articles are coming out all the time, not only at the scholarly level but also at the popular and expositional level. So this is a very important book.
Now, unfortunately, some of our ability to understand this book is a little bit hindered by a few places in the book where the English translation is perhaps not as good or as clear as it ought to be. And so I am going to be referring occasionally to places in the Book of Romans where I think a slight revision of the translation will clarify some of the points that are being made.
I would like to follow the following procedure tonight. I want to first of all take about ten minutes to give you an overview of the book of Romans, working off of this outline that you have here. And then I would like to open it for questions about the overview.
In other words, the overall presentation that we are giving you. We would like you to ask anything about it that you do not understand. Then I want to come back and talk about Romans 10, verses 9 and 10. And then we will open it for questions on Romans 10, verses 9 and 10. And once we are finished with that, we can throw it wide open to all the questions that you may have on the Book of Romans.
And let me just say at the outset, having said what I have said about the book, it is very much likely that you will ask me questions to which I will need to reply, “I do not know,” because the Book of Romans is a lifetime study. And I think everybody who has read it over and over again feels that each time they read it they discover things that they did not notice before.
Let me just guide you down the outline. I have given as a title to Romans “Living Free.” And hopefully by the end of the evening you will understand why I have given it that title, but we will not address that for the moment.
The breakdown of the book that I want to suggest is that first of all it begins with a prologue in chapter 1, verses 1 to 7, which basically is Paul greeting the Romans. This is followed by some introductory remarks on Paul’s part in chapter 1, verses 8 to 15. They are more or less personal remarks made to the Roman readership.
It is when we get to chapter 1, verses 16 and 17 that we have what I think should properly be called the theme of the Book of Romans. Now before I have you look at this in your Bibles, let me give you a mini Greek lesson, okay? You all know that the word “saved” and “salvation” occurs a lot in our English Bible.
And you have probably heard all of us at Victor Street point out that it does not always refer to salvation from hell. One of the things that it is easy to forget when you are reading the Bible is that the word “saved” was a perfectly ordinary word in everyday usage in the Greco-Roman world. And it basically meant to be delivered.
And what you were delivered from depended on what you were talking about. Let me repeat that. The word “saved” basically meant to be delivered. And what you were delivered from depended on what you were discussing. You could be delivered from a shipwreck. You could be delivered from a disease.
Or you could be delivered from hell. Or you could be delivered from a lot of other things as well. As a matter of fact, although we have almost forgotten it in Christian circles, the word “saved” often has that kind of general meaning and ordinary usage in English today.
And unless a person has been exposed to the word “saved” in a Christian context, they may take it in quite another sense than we are accustomed to use it. So one of the problems that exist for us in the book of Romans is that the words “saved” and “salvation” are used a lot.
And when we read them in our English Bibles, we give them the meaning that we normally give to these words, or what I call the knee-jerk reaction that we refer always to salvation from hell. So what I am going to do tonight, when I read verses that have this word in it, I am going to change the word to either “deliverance” or “delivered.”
And I think you will agree that that does affect the way in which you perceive the verse. So we are coming to the theme verses of the Book of Romans. And if you will take a look at them in your Bibles, it is chapter 1, verses 16 and 17.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God for deliverance to everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, The one who is just by faith shall live.
The one who is just or righteous by faith shall live. Now look at the statements I have made about the theme on the outline there. In the theme, Paul is saying he is not ashamed of the gospel.
Why is he not ashamed of the gospel? Because the gospel brings with it the power of God for deliverance. He has not told us yet what the deliverance is from, but it brings the power of God for deliverance. And the reason it does this is because it reveals the righteousness of God.
In the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed in accordance with the scriptural statement, “The one who is just by faith, the one who is righteous by faith, shall live.” So what Paul is going to tell us here is that the gospel provides the power for deliverance, whatever that refers to, okay?
Now we also suggest then that this brings us right up to what we call the body of the letter. A term that is used in classrooms, and we mean by that the basic presentation of the letter, the main argument and discussion of the letter.
Let us skip that for a moment and notice that we carry this down to, in our outline, to 15:13. And then we have what I would describe as an addendum. Do you see that down there at the bottom? An addendum which is really Paul’s personal plan which is relating to the Roman readers, 15:14 to 33, and then an epilogue.
Epilogue is just kind of another addendum, I guess you could say. And this is the section in which we get greetings given to all the people who were mentioned in Rome. Remember that chapter? And then we have people who were with Paul greeting the Romans.
So notice what we have here. We have, right up at the top of the outline, the prologue and the introduction. At the bottom of the outline, we have the addendum and the epilogue. And in between, we have the theme, in 1:16-17, developed in the body, or the basic presentation, in 1:18 to 15:13.
Now, without going into a lot of detail here, let me run you through the outline of the basic presentation. In the first part of this presentation, Paul tells us that the wrath of God has been revealed from heaven against unrighteous men.
And the way in which it has been revealed from heaven is that God has turned men over to the dominion and degradation of their sins. If you read 1:18 at the end of the chapter, that is what you will find in that chapter. Because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God turned them over to a reprobate mind.
He gave them over to vile affections. But the essence of this is that this is God’s wrath. This is God’s anger against the unrighteousness of men. And this is the way in which God’s anger is expressed in that men sink down into the quicksand and the bondage of their sins.
So that is presented in 1:18-32. Now we come, however, since the wrath of God is against the unrighteousness of men, the first step out of this problem is to cure man’s unrighteousness. So the second part of the body presents God’s cure for man’s unrighteousness.
You may look up and anybody may answer this question. In three words, what is God’s cure for man’s unrighteousness? Three words. Three famous words. One starts with a J, one starts with a B, and one starts with an F. Justification by faith. Justification by faith.
And of course Romans is the famous book that discusses justification by faith. God’s cure for man’s unrighteousness. Notice I have broken it down into two sections. It is certainly not found in man’s self-righteousness. Much less is it found in the self-righteousness of the Jews who thought that they would be accepted by God on the basis of their obedience to the law.
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God.
Therefore, by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
That is the bottom line here. There is no cure for man’s unrighteousness in the law. There is no cure in justification by works.
No one keeps the law. No one can keep the law. No one can be justified by the law. So if man cannot get a righteousness of his own, what is going to happen? Notice the next section begins, “But now,” verse 21, “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.”
But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.
And then proceeds the discussion of justification in 3:21 to 4:25. Look over at 4:25, please. He has finished discussing Abraham, who is the classic example of justification by faith. And you remember the famous statement in the Old Testament that Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness?
Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him, but also for us. It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification.
So here what we have learned is that God’s solution to man’s unrighteousness is to give him a righteousness by faith based on the sacrificial work of Christ. But that is only step one. Remember, we are talking about wrath. Wrath was against the unrighteousness of man.
And as long as man is unrighteous in God’s eyes, there is no possibility of him getting out from under God’s wrath. But now, if he is righteous by faith, what then? Roman numeral three. God’s deliverance of the justified from His wrath. This section is 5:1 to 8:38.
Now, we come, therefore, to a very crucial pivot in the book here. And let me suggest that you look down at chapter 5, verse 9. Familiar verse.
But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having been justified by His blood, we shall be delivered from wrath through Him.
Much more than having been justified by His blood, we shall be delivered from wrath through Him. What wrath? The wrath we have seen displayed and elaborated in chapter 1, verses 18 to 32. Now look down at verse 10.
For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be delivered by His life.
Alright, these two verses are, in my opinion, the key to the whole book of Romans. They are a pivotal pair of verses that the book turns on the axis of these verses. Notice that in 5:9 he says, we have been justified by His blood, right? We have been justified. But we shall be delivered.
So being justified and being delivered are not the same thing here, are they? Much more than having been justified by His blood, we shall be delivered from wrath through Him. Now let us go to verse 10.
For if when we were enemies we were reconciled, that is past, right? To God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be delivered by His life. Now, let me ask here, Paul has said, is relating our justification to the death of Christ, right?
What is he relating our deliverance to? His life. His life. Notice that in verse 10, for if when we were enemies we were reconciled through the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be delivered by His life.
Now, glance over at chapter 6, verse 1. “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” Shall we just go on sinning? Certainly not! How shall we who have died to sin live any longer in it?
Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? A reference here, I think, to the baptism of the Spirit. But verse 4 is what I am looking for.
Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
You see what this is saying? It says that we have been identified with Christ’s death. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also are enabled to walk in newness of life. We shall be delivered by His life.
Let me make this as simple as I can make it. God justifies us on the basis of what Christ did for us on the cross. But our Christian experience, our deliverance from wrath and the dominion of sin, is based on our being united with Him in His life.
Remember Paul’s words in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
So the Christian life is the life of Christ being lived out through us. We shall be delivered from wrath by His life, by our identification with His life. That is what Paul is saying here. We have been baptized into His death.
As He was raised from the dead, so also we should walk in newness of life. Now notice under the subdivisions under this, the introduction I say, deliverance by His life, 5:1 to 11. Then we have an extended discussion of victory over sin, it seems to me, from 5:12 to 8:13.
And then, on top of victory over sin, there is the experience of triumph in suffering. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” Remember that verse? “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”
So triumph in suffering, 8:14 to 8:38. Now I can conclude it rapidly. Paul ends this discussion in Romans 8, if you will flip over there just very quickly, by one of the most famous passages in the book.
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I am persuaded, says Paul, that there is absolutely nothing that can separate us from God’s love. And somebody in the audience would say, but what about Israel? Are they not separated from God’s love? They do not believe the gospel.
And so we begin a discussion of God’s purposes for Israel and eventually coming back to us. This is Roman numeral four here, God’s purposes with Israel and with us. And the conclusion of this section is in chapter 11, verse 25.
For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that hardening in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins.
Concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.
The basic thing that he is saying here is that for the time being, Israel is hardened, so that God can have mercy upon believing Jews and believing Gentiles.
But eventually, the Deliverer will come out of Zion, will deliver Israel from its own bondage to sin, and God’s promises to the nation will be fulfilled. Let me see. So notice that this section ends with what amounts to an expression of praise on Paul’s part, verse 33.
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!
The fifth unit I do not really need to discuss with you, except in the form of your questions on it.
What we have here is the working out of God’s will in practical areas of life, in the details of life. What we have in the discussion in 1 through 4 is general truth, and in section 5 we have specific truth about various areas of Christian experience.
Now, let us pause and take questions on this overview. Do you understand what I am basically getting at? If you do not, do not be embarrassed by it because this is probably coming at you as something fairly new.
And so you may want to ask questions about it. It is important, however, to try to get a grasp of the whole book here so that you can see what Paul is aiming at as he moves through the book. And then we can place our questions more intelligently in that context.
Are we saved from God’s wrath through His life? What are you saying? Well, we have, uh, okay, that is a good question, Abby. The wrath has to be defined in the way that it is defined in chapter 1, verse 18 and following, which means it is not to be defined in terms of hell.
It is the present manifestation of God’s wrath in the degradation and bondage to sin that men experience. If you will read 1:18 to 32 at your leisure, you will see that is really what he is talking about. He is not talking about eternal punishment, but he is talking, uh, it might be worth saying that this book was written from the city of Corinth, and Corinth was notorious for its debauchery.
And so when Paul looked out at the Corinthians’ lifestyle, he saw this type of thing that he is describing in chapter one. So what we have to understand is we are not talking here, and in fact I think I would even go so far, Abby, as to say, that the word “wrath” in the New Testament never refers to eternal judgment.
That wrath always refers to God’s anger because the word “wrath” means anger. It always refers to God’s anger at the present time or in the future tribulation. Now if you go down to court, I always tell people this, if you go down to court and the judge comes in, sits down to hear your case, and his face is red with anger and his eyes are flashing, you have a sinking suspicion you may not get a fair day in court.
Anger really has no place in the courtroom. In the courtroom, justice is administered according to the principles of the courtroom. And therefore, wrath in the New Testament never really is identified at all with the eternal judgment.
It is always God’s displeasure with man here and now, which is brief, you understand. Because even if we count two thousand years since this was written, that is a very short time. The tribulation, seven years, very short time.
So God is not quick to anger and He is quick to get over the anger. But nevertheless, the fact remains that the condition, the moral condition in which we see people is the result of God’s wrath against sin.
So Paul is looking out at the kind of lifestyle that was taking place in Corinth. And he said, let me tell you something. I am not ashamed of the gospel I preach because the gospel I preach delivers people from that kind of lifestyle.
As you can already see, I am suggesting that the book of Romans is not fundamentally about eternal salvation, but about practical deliverance from the dominion of sin. But you have to have the righteousness of God by faith before you can have deliverance from the dominion of sin.
So what that means, Abby, your question is very, very good, by the way, because that is really the core of this whole thing. What that means is that if I am going to escape the kind of lifestyle that is going on all around me, I will do so only by means of the life of Christ.
As I learn to reckon myself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus my Lord, as I learn to let Him live His life through me and in me. That is what it means to be delivered from wrath. It means to experience the liberating life of Jesus Christ in our personal experience.
No, he is looking at, you know, this is his description of, if you read one, you might want to go home and read 1:18-32, but it is clear. He is talking about mankind in general. Okay, he has got a slice of mankind in Corinth. And a very bad slice, I might say.
And so he, you know, he can look, I do not know where he is sitting when he writes this, but he can look out at the everyday life of Corinthians. He is not talking about Christians as over against non-Christians. He is saying this is the kind of world we live in.
This is the kind of world in which men live under the wrath of God. And you can see it by the, they are depraved, they are wretched, they are miserable. You can see all these perversions. Romans 1 is a very powerful indictment of the perversions of humanity.
What we have seen in our society, the increasing rise of homosexuality and lesbianism, is an expression of the wrath of God against the society. Drug addiction, abuse. All of these things that are becoming increasingly prominent, what are they? They are God’s wrath against unrighteous men.
We are a nation that in a very real sense has turned its back upon the message of the Bible. It is a rare leader. Our president, hopefully, is an exception. But basically in our society, you do not get very far by being religious in politics.
You are looking for a secular type of approach. So we have got a society that has turned its back by and large on the truth and we are suffering the consequences that God brings upon societies like that. But nobody has to live that way if, number one, they will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be justified by faith.
Number two, learn to walk in newness of life. Learn to experience the life of Christ. It is possible, even in a world like this, for people to live godly lives. That is why Paul is so proud of the gospel.
I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, because it has this kind of power locked up in it. It produces this kind of result. Would emptiness also be, like, I am looking at you a lot, and so is a restaurant or a bar, and it is empty, but would emptiness also be a part of that?
Yeah, I think so. I think that passage pretty well, you know, runs the gamut here on all these things. That is right. Yes, that, that, uh, this is a form of divine judgment that has fallen on our country. The depravity, the distortion, the, you know, uh, when did we ever have a man riding around in a car shooting at people?
That sort of thing. We have had it, but I am just saying there is even in the public mind a consciousness that something is a little wrong in America. Because we are having things here that we ought not to have. And that is a part of this picture, I think.
Now, what that suggests is that where God’s wrath appears in that form, then down the road there are further expressions of it. Maybe in this case it will be the tribulation, for all we know. But nevertheless, judgment has already begun in the display of God’s wrath against this type of thing.
It is not a solution, and that is why I really do not have too much sympathy with those who think that there is a political or social solution for this. It is not a solution to outlaw homosexuality. I mean, it may be good to outlaw it, but that is not going to solve our problem.
The problem can only be solved in the biblical way, by people coming to personal faith in Christ and receiving God’s righteousness thereby, and then learning to build a life in union with the life of Christ. There is not any other way.
Abbey asked a majority of the questions I wanted to ask, but I want to just clarify something here, okay? You said that this is in Corinth to the unsaved or to the saved. The reason I am asking that question is because 18 says that it is to the ungodly and unrighteous.
So would that mean that they were looking at unsaved people here? And if that is true, how can an unsaved person be delivered out of the wretched sin that they are in unless they are a believer? Well, that is Paul’s point.
That people who are in this condition cannot be delivered from it unless they become believers in Christ, first of all. But let me back up, and you understand that the book does not say it was written in Corinth. We put that together. It is written from somewhere.
And it is written to Rome. We do know that much. Okay, if you read 1:18-32, it is clear he is talking about mankind in general. He is not talking about a Christian church. And he is not just talking about, even if he is in Corinth, he is not just talking about the people in Corinth.
All I was saying is that in Corinth he would have had a good illustration of what he is writing about, but he is really talking about mankind. Mankind had the testimony of God in the creation, right? And they are not, they have no excuse for not recognizing the existence of God in the creation.
That is one of the first things that happened in our country. Almost nobody in intellectual circles, well, not almost nobody, but most people in intellectual circles will not admit to believing in God. They do not think that an intellectual person does that.
But there is no excuse for not doing it according to Paul. And then when men turn their back on that, they fall down the chasm into all of the sinful practices and perversions and distortions of character that he describes in those verses.
That is one of the most, you cannot find in the Bible a more sweeping indictment of the character of man than you find in 1:18-32. So you should not think of this as directed toward Corinthians. It is not even a description only of Romans.
It is a description of the world of men. This is what has happened in this world, Paul is saying. They have turned their back on the evidence of creation. They have slid down the slippery slope, and they are at the bottom of the hill, morally and spiritually. That is what he says. Go ahead.
Okay, that is good. So, just to recapitulate, and Abby had brought this up, that is what, that is the way men are, right? We can see it in America. What do they need? Number one, the gospel telling them that they can be righteous by faith in Christ.
Is that all that they need? Not to get out of that wrath. You get a person, you can get a person saved out of an abusive lifestyle. But that does not automatically change his abusive behavior, does it? Contrary to what the Lordship people say, it does not.
And it is necessary for that person to learn to live the Christian life. To live his life in union with Jesus Christ. That like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God. Do not yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but yield yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
That is the message of the Christian life section. But it is an illusion, and what the Lordship people are doing with their all-or-nothing presentation is knocking the ground right out for many people who might otherwise find the deliverance that the Bible offers for them.
But if you go to them and say, if you do not behave righteous, God does not accept you as righteous, you have destroyed it. Okay. Yes, they do. That is true. But long term, they will have to learn to live on the principles of the Christian life.
Oftentimes there is a very immediate and sudden change, but the real test of Christian experience is whether it pans out over time. Okay. Uh, repeat that, Abby, because I have lost your questions a little bit. I will repeat it if you say it again.
Abby was saying that some people, in fact, do change very radically after they are saved from bad behavior to good behavior. That is true. But if that kind of behavior is to continue, there has to be growth and development and transformation.
Otherwise it collapses. It eventually gets to the place where Paul got in Romans 7, I was alive without the law once, and the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. Suddenly he discovers, you know, he is floating along here in the Christian experience, doing pretty good, and suddenly he hears the law say, you shall not covet.
And he says, when I heard the law say that, all sorts of covetousness grew up in me. I was not thinking of covetousness before, and now the law forced me to think in terms of covetousness, and I found all sorts of covetousness in me.
And he said, so then I tried not to covet. I did not want to covet, but I coveted. And the good that I wanted to do, I could not do, and the bad that I did not want to do, I did.
I read, uh, I think it was a biography of A.T. Pearson many years ago. He went out to Africa, and he won a bunch of the natives to the Lord, and he said after a while the natives came to him, forgive the, this is not politically correct anymore, but their language to him was, buona, me wanna do good, but me do evil.
Me do not wanna do evil, but me do good. And A.T. Pearson said they were in Romans 7 without ever having been told it. Because that is where they had to learn someplace along the line that it is not by your own efforts. It has to be by the power of God.
So even when there is change here, uh, immediately there is a danger that, uh, the person will get the false notion that he has got it under control and he can sustain it. And God, sooner or later, demonstrates to him that you cannot sustain it except by the power of God.
Yes, uh, let us, uh, let us look at Romans 10, verses 9 and 10. I think we have pretty well done the questions on that. Uh, you might turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 10. Yeah.
Now, remember that in the section under consideration, he is talking about the situation of Israel. Look at 10:1. “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be delivered.” They are in bad shape. They need to be delivered.
And one of their problems is that they, in these verses, I am summarizing the first few verses, they have pursued a righteousness by works under the law. And they have not found the righteousness that God wants them to find. So let us pick up in verse 6.
“But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way. Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ that is, to bring Christ down from above.” He has already come, is the point. “Or, ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ that is to bring Christ up from the dead.” He has already risen.
“But what does it say? The word is near you, even in your mouth and in your heart.” That is the word of faith which we preach. So what Israel needs is the word of faith which he preaches basically to everybody. And here it is.
That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be delivered. For with the heart one believes for righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made for deliverance.
Now, if we read it that way, that is the way I presented it to you at the bottom of the handout. If we read it that way, we would not jump to the automatic conclusion that almost everybody jumps to when they read these verses.
We would be asking the, look at your handout here. Let us read it again on the handout only. Now you do not even look at the, you do not even see the word “saved” here. “That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be delivered.
For with the heart one believes for righteousness.” What is, what is, what does that mean in Romans? Three famous words. Justification by faith. With the heart, one believes for righteousness. And with the mouth, confession is made for deliverance.
Now, if you read it that way, you would be asking the question, deliverance from what? Am I right? And if you have followed the argument of Romans up to this point, you will be able to give the answer, which is what? Israel is under the wrath of God just like the rest of the world.
Only perhaps more so. Remember in Thessalonians he said that wrath has come upon them to the uttermost. They are in unbelief. They are in opposition to the truth. They are unrighteous despite their claims to righteousness.
And what they need is what Paul preaches to everybody. Namely, they need to believe in their heart to get righteousness. Now confession is introduced here for the first time. Let us go back to your text for a minute. We read verse 10. Let us pick up at verse 11.
For the Scripture says, Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.
A person who believes in Him does not need to be ashamed. “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him. For whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be delivered.”
Now, I always do this with the men in seminary. I do not know whether I should attempt it here, but let me try it. You notice the next series of statements. “How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent?” Let us work it backwards. In order to preach, what has to happen? They have to be sent. Yeah. And how shall they preach unless they be sent?
And in order for people to hear, what has to happen? Right. How shall they hear without a preacher? And in order for them to believe, what do they have to do here? And in order to call, what do they have to do? They have to already have believed.
So, calling on the name of the Lord is not the same thing as believing. So, the steps are, you send the preacher, the preacher preaches, the people hear, the people believe, and the people who believe can then call on the name of the Lord to be delivered.
I do not think that Paul is thinking in this passage about what we call the private confession, you know, like we go to your, uh, you get... Lewis got saved last night, let me use this illustration, and he goes to Phelous and he said, “Phelous, I just got saved last night.”
He is confessing his faith in Christ, that is true, but I think the passage here indicates that we are talking about that open acknowledgement of the power and authority of the Lord whereby we call upon Him for assistance and help.
If you look at this phrase through the New Testament, you will find it refers apparently especially to what we do when we meet together, that we meet in the name of the Lord, we acknowledge the name of the Lord, we call upon Him for aid.
You cannot be a victorious Christian and a secret Christian at the same time. You have to rely on the delivering power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ultimately, calling on the name of the Lord is what is meant by confession here.
Invoking His name for assistance and aid. That means, that comes, brings us, brings us back to Abby’s question, really. Eventually, no matter what immediate transformations the individual may experience right after salvation, eventually he is going to have to learn to call upon the name of the Lord consistently, regularly, with dependence, and with, with the confidence that God can deliver him from the dominion of sin.
Nobody gets to the place and I am getting conscious of this as an old man because there are now some old men in the Bible who are warnings to me. Solomon, uh, bad scene in his old age. It looks like he forgot all his wisdom, right?
So, no one should think, okay, I have walked with the Lord for 30 years and it is all smooth sailing from here on into port. No, it is not. We still need to call upon the name of the Lord. We still need to trust the Lord.
We still need to identify with His life and to seek Him by His Spirit living through us. In other words, you never stop acknowledging the Lord and depending upon Him for help. Well, it is really not backward from his point of view.
His point in this passage is that you need to call upon the name of the Lord, right? But he is saying, you know, how are they going to do that if they do not believe in Him? And how are they going to believe in Him unless they hear?
And how are they going to hear unless somebody preaches? And how is anybody going to preach unless God sends them? I mean, it all goes back to that. This is the word of faith with which we preach, he says. This is what we preach.
And it is important. They are not going to call on Him. We cannot just sit here and say, okay, I hope they call on the name of the Lord out there. I hope the Israelites will do that one of these times. That is not Paul’s attitude.
He said, we go out and preach to them. Because how are they going to call on Him if they have not believed? And how are they going to believe if they have not heard? How are they going to hear if nobody preaches?
And how am I going to preach unless God sends them? That is the way he is thinking about it. Yeah, that is sufficient unless you have further questions on Romans 10, verses 9 and 10. If you ever get puzzled over the passage, keep this translation down here and go back to “delivered.”
On Romans, and there are a number of things that could be done here. I am going to ask you, I will, I will, I will, let me ask you a question. Lewis, could I take a chocolate milk break? Go ahead. Okay, we will just open it up for general questions on Romans.
Anything we have talked about or have not talked about will be fine. We will do the best we can. That was a little confusion here, and probably not really anything big, but... In Romans 3 and verse 20, uh, and, uh, toward the last part of it, it says, it says, the flesh will be justified in its sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
Okay, my, let me read this over here in 2:13. And the second part of that says, but the doer of the law will be justified. So it sounds like it is talking about in 3:20 that by the law is the knowledge of sin, but by the doer of the law should be justified.
Is it just an accident that you have stumbled onto 2:13, which is the most widely misused verse in the current discussion of Romans? Well, the, uh, simple, uh, the simple solution, and let me, uh, then elaborate a little bit, is that Paul is saying, you do not get justified, you, you will not ever get justified by just hearing the law, you would have to do it.
For not the hearers of the law are justified, but the doers of the law will be justified. So, by bottom line, there is no such critter. There are no doers of the law. Now, the Jewish people had a very inconsistent idea here.
You know, they thought that they lived up to the law pretty good, and after all, they were the ones who had the law, and they had a good chance to be justified before God, right? Paul says, forget it. It is not the hearers of the law who get justified, it is the doers of the law who get justified.
But, unfortunately, for you and everybody else, by the deeds of the law will no flesh be justified. This is like, when I go into a fuller explanation of this, this is like setting down the principles of a courtroom.
The judge, let us imagine a judge who is seated on his bench and he has got a row of defendants in front of him. And he says to all of the defendants, in this courtroom, the guilty are condemned and the innocent are cleared. He has got ten defendants there.
Is he saying, some of you are innocent and will be cleared? No. He is laying down the rules of the court. This is a courtroom in which only the innocent get cleared, and the guilty get condemned.
In God’s courtroom, only the doers of the law would be justified, not the hearers of the law. But, there are no doers of the law. There are not any. That is clearly stated, and this is why this is such a ridiculous turn for the discussion of Romans to take, because Paul himself tells us emphatically that nobody plus nobody is going to be justified by the works of the law.
But if you were going to be justified by the works of the law, you would have to do the law. You could not just be a hearer of it. You would have to be a doer of the law. Do you remember, um, uh, the, um, was it the lawyer that, uh, encountered Jesus?
And, uh, uh, I am trying to remember how the conversation started, but, but, uh, he asked Jesus a question, and Jesus said, uh, what does the law say? How readest thou? And he said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your lawyers responding to Jesus.
The lawyer says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, your neighbor as yourself. And, oh, his question was something like, what must I do to have eternal life? And he said, well, what do you read in the law?
What does the law say? And so the man quotes, you love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said, go do that and you will live. But he could not. So then, this is Luke telling the story.
Luke said, the lawyer willing to, wishing to justify himself said, who is my neighbor? You know, just who does this mean? And then Jesus tells the famous story of the Good Samaritan. Your neighbor is that guy over there that is dangerous to help and all, you know, but, but what is Jesus doing to this lawyer?
He is showing him his sinfulness, right? That is what by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in its sight, because by the law is the knowledge of sin all the law succeeds in doing is to show men how far short they fail.
And no doers of the law. No. If there were a doer of the law, they would be justified. The one who lives, you remember, Paul says several times, the one who does these things shall live by the law.
So, if there was any such thing as keeping the law, uh, that would be a justifying process, but there is not any such thing. Whoever shall keep the whole law and offend in one point is guilty of all.
So, the Bible is clear that in theory, in theory, people could be justified by the law if they were perfect. If they loved God with all their heart and they loved their neighbor with just as much as they love themselves.
Anybody who does all that probably does the whole law too, you know what I mean? He loves God with every fiber of his being. He loves his neighbor just as much as he loves his own self. And, you know, uh, so then the rich young ruler comes to Jesus, and the rich young ruler says, uh, what good thing shall I do to inherit eternal life?
And Jesus says, uh, why are you calling me good? There is none good but God. And, well, he was God, of course, but the problem was the rich young ruler thought he was good. And so Jesus says, you know the commandments, you shall not steal, you love your father and mother, et cetera, et cetera.
But what does the rich young ruler say? Oh, it is sin. No. He says, all these have I kept from my youth up. What else do I need? So, you know, there it is. That is the teaching of, I remember Dr. Campbell one time asking S. Lewis Johnson this question.
And I just happened to be... Close by where I could overhear the answer. And it was a great answer. I mean, he asked a question practically identical with yours. I do not think it was on Romans 2:13.
And, and Dr. Johnson said, if a person could keep the law, he would be justified by it. That is the bottom line. Appreciate that answer. All right. Anybody else? Yeah, that is the, that is the crucial hip.
The, uh, that reminds me of the story of the, I think it was Xerxes, king of Persia, sent a message to the Ephors of Sparta. Sparta was famous, you know, as a fighting city, and the Ephors were the rulers.
And the, the king of Persia said, if I cross into the Hellespont, meaning their area, I will level Sparta to the ground. And the Ephors of Sparta sent a back, uh, reply, if. So that is, that is what you are saying here.
Anytime you want to ask a question, I am just going to ask him a couple of questions. In chapter 5, verse 1, we had been talking about the wrath of God. But here it says that, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Well, we understand that, you know, this is the transition point. That in terms of our eternal relationship with God, after justification, it is perfect. There is no further threat to our eternal destiny. There is no further danger of eternal judgment.
We do not even have to stand before the great white throne. We are already justified in God’s sight. Who shall lay any, remember later in the, who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? Who can even bring a charge against them?
It is God that justifies. It is Christ who died, yea, rather, is risen from the dead, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. There are no charges against the elect of God.
When God justifies, He says, I accept you totally and forever. And that is peace. So it is not talking about... No, it is not talking about whether we experience it in our hearts.
You know the story of the Japanese soldier who hid for years and years and years to escape the war? And finally somebody located him and they said, you know, the war has been over for years, there is peace between Japan and... He was afraid to come out for fear he would get killed.
So whether we always enjoy the reality of peace is another question. But the fact remains that if I have believed in Christ, I have been justified in the sight of God. God never calls that justification into question.
My relationship with Him is one of eternal peace. I may be troubled because I get crazy ideas or doubts or fall into sin. I may be troubled by another thing, but that does not change the fact that the war is over. Go ahead, Frances.
This verse is always helpful to me, and I have heard it before, but... I mean, I have heard different explanations that I can never seem to do. “Where there is no law, there is no transgression.” It seems to me like in the unit, you know, anything that is not like God is transgression.
So what does it mean when you say there is no law, there is no transgression? Okay, that is a very good question. Where there is no law, there is no transgression. What sense can that be true?
The simplest way to illustrate it would seem to me is that I can yell at my spouse and it is not against the law unless I disturb the peace by yelling at my spouse, but it is wrong. So, I think the point here is that if God has not laid out there a specific law and says, you shall not do this, you are not transgressing His law when you do it.
Where there is no law, there is no transgression. But that is a little different than saying, where there is no law, there is no sin. There is obviously sin. So, you know, the illustration would be, we do not transgress the law of America till we break it.
Even though we may do a lot of things that are wrong. That would be my understanding of it. Yeah, I think what he means here is that He is not using the term spiritual gift in what we would call the technical sense of a capacity, but he wants to contribute to them.
When he comes to Rome, he hopes to be of spiritual benefit to them, to give them, so to speak, a spiritual gift. Like, you know, it would be quite a gift to have Paul come and preach. We would consider that a... I remember when Luis Palau came to our... Uh, chapel years ago, we were all, you know, really delighted by that, that a man as famous as Luis Palau would come to me on Lino Street.
But Paul’s thought is, I want to be a benefit to you when I come. I want to impart a spiritual benefit. I think the word “gift” here should be taken in a non-technical sense. Do you want to follow up on that, or? Notice how he goes on. Go ahead.
Look at how he goes on, Juan. “For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift so that you may be established.” That is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith of both of you and me.
And he says, well, I do not want to put it quite that way. I want to put it that I am going to benefit and you are going to benefit. I would not dream of that even though I am already doing it. Go ahead.
Okay, Romans 7:9. He says, “I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.” Could this be an inference of when he was a baby and the law was incapable of touching his conscience because he was too little?
Therefore, he was safe, but when he was old enough to understand right from wrong, that is the same as saying the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. Okay, Abby is asking, you want me to repeat that?
Abby is asking whether the statement in Romans 7:9 refers to Paul’s days of infancy and innocence about the law, and whether it then refers to the point at which he became aware of the law and so on. I personally do not think so, although I have to admit that this is an important and, you know, this is a difficult verse.
I think, however, what Paul means here is that he is describing his experience as a Christian in this section and the way in which he found himself fighting himself. That is, the things he wanted to do, he did not do. The things he did not want to do, he did.
And he found that there was a law in the members of his body that was waging war against the law of his mind and constantly bringing him into captivity to the law of sin that was in his members. And I think this is part of that discussion.
And what he is saying here is that I was going along in the Christian life and I was very much alive in it, enjoying the Christian experience, and suddenly a commandment came from the law, and the law said, you shall not covet.
And suddenly, the commandment came, sin revived, all of a sudden I become aware of all this covetousness, and I died. I lost that vitality, I lost that freedom that I was experiencing before I had to come to grips with the law.
So, and I think many Christians, I think this describes what young Christians oftentimes go through. After they get saved, they go through a period sometimes of real happiness and joy in the Lord. And, you know, they are excited and they are getting rid of some of their bad habits.
And all of a sudden, they find out they are not supposed to do this particular thing, which they have always liked to do. And poof. The balloon collapses, and suddenly they are locked in a struggle with, I ought not to do this, I do not want to do this if God does not want me to do this, but I really want to do this, and they are in Romans 7.
So I think that is what that is referring to. I think it is an experiential type of thing where Paul is describing the effect that sudden awareness of a commandment can have on the, on the spiritual life. This is not my question, but it is, uh, is 8:12 and 13, uh, focus on that?
This over here, is this, uh, 8:12 and 13 are different? I think 8:12 and 13 are different. Uh, what we have to do, I think, is to, uh, take, uh, Romans 7, uh, 7 to the end of the, uh, chapter, for example, as a record of Paul’s unsuccessful struggle against sin in his own strength.
And so he comes to the end of Romans 7 by saying in verse 24, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” “I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.”
He has now crystallized the problem of his Christian experience, namely that his inner man delights in the law of God and he serves the law of God with his inner man. But in his physical body there are other desires that run counter to the desires of his mind.
So with his flesh, his physical flesh, he serves the law of sin. So he is like a man caught and trapped in a dead body. “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
Now, and I am glad you brought this up because, uh, this is the first chapter of the booklet on, on the, uh, on the, uh, Christian life. Booklet. Yeah, Six Secrets of the Christian Life. Oh, he is pretending like he never heard of it before. He has been asking me, how are you coming on that? How are you coming on that?
Yeah, you know, I think I will actually get through with it. But let us go back to your verse. He says in verse 8, “So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.” We are talking at that point about unsaved people.
But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.
But now notice, uh, Lewis 10. This is the crux. This is one of the most common, most widely, uh, ignored verses in the whole book of Romans. And if Christ is in you, the body is what? Are you sure this does not say, if Christ is not in you, the body is dead?
Does not, does it? It says if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. That is the problem that he has just wrestled with in Romans 7, right? “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
Inside me is this huge desire to please God, but I am living in a body that will not do it. My body is like a corpse, spiritually speaking. Okay, that is the problem. If Christ is in you, the body is dead. However, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
Now notice verse 11. “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” That is why we say the Christian life is a resurrection miracle because if the Spirit that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead is in us, He is the Spirit of resurrection.
And even though the body in which I live is spiritually dead, He is able to give life to that body so that the life of Christ flows through it. This is a, in my opinion, this is a critical idea to understand in Christian experience because a lot of Christians believe that the Christian life is toughing it out.
You know, we just make up our minds, fight, fight, fight, all that sort of thing. Uh, that is fine if you had a body that had a little life in it. But if you have a dead body, that is pretty, pretty impossible.
So the point here is that the Christian life, the true Christian life, cannot be lived without the resurrecting power of the Holy Spirit of God. If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is alive.
And if the Spirit of Him who raised up Jesus from the dead lives in you, then He will quicken your mortal bodies. That brings us to your verses. “Therefore, brethren, we are debtors—not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.” We are not obligated, we are debtors, not to the flesh, but to live according to the flesh, we do not have to do that, is what he is saying.
For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Then you will experience the life of God flowing through that body.
I always say, in public ministry, if you see somebody living the Christian life, really living the Christian life, you are seeing a resurrection miracle. That is what it is. It is not the guy has screwed up his determination and courage and strength and done it.
It is that God does it through him. “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
I live by faith, says Paul. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is Christ who is doing the living through me. That is the Christian life. It is not screwing up my courage and determination and toughing it out.
In 6:3, y’all come up, whenever you got a question, answer it. In 6:3, you said of this verse, you think this is what it says. Well, actually, if I said that, I meant... Well, I feel very confident that the reference here is to the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
And let me say why. It appears to me that in the New Testament, when we are talking about water baptism, we never talk about baptism into Jesus or into Jesus Christ. But always baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus, or in the name of Jesus Christ.
Whenever we talk about being baptized into Christ, we are talking about the creation of the union that the Holy Spirit creates when He joins us to the body of Christ. “By one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.” The Jews or Gentiles bond or free.
So I think that Paul’s use of this is very consistent, that wherever he wants to refer to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, it is always baptism into Christ. Where he wants to refer to water baptism, it is always baptism in the name of Christ. For new that would be in this king.
Is that what this is saying? Yes and no. You will notice that the key word here is “foreknew.” And of course you will get endless arguments among the theologians as to whether the foreknowledge here refers just simply to God knowing ahead of time who is going to do this or that, or whether it refers to some kind of choice.
In my own judgment, it does not simply refer to God knowing ahead of time, which is almost a platitude. On the other hand, I think that it has been taken wrongly in the sense that it has been turned into something that God does with arbitrariness.
In other words, that looking down the stream of time, God says, I am going to save one. But I am not going to save Phelous. I am going to save Carlos, but I am not going to save Abby. She asked too many questions.
And so, it is made to seem as if the action of God in eternity is arbitrary and unrelated to anything that people may do or not do or respond to or not respond to. And the first thing I want to say about that is that anybody who thinks that that is an insightful way of looking at the way God’s mind works probably needs to examine their own attitude because that is a very, very superficial way of thinking about a being who knows everything immediately and who knows all of the options immediately.
And who knows all of the things that can happen and will happen and will not happen and could happen. So, I think what we are left with is what amounts to a mystery in that God does, in fact, make choices in eternity.
But the basis of those choices is unknown to us. And what we have to rely upon is the scriptural affirmation that the Judge of all the earth will do right. We do not have a situation in the Bible, the Bible does not recognize it, does not support it, that, uh, a person who is unsaved cannot get saved no matter how much they want to get saved if God has not elected them.
That is a, that is a, uh, gross distortion of, it seems to me, of the character of God and the revelation that God makes in the Scriptures. On the other hand, I think it is superficial to say that God just is sitting back here and I wonder what is going to, okay, I guess Abby is going to accept the gospel, so I guess I will save her.
That is too superficial, too. We are in an area of mystery here, that God knows the end from the beginning, He has everything planned, and yet the plans that God has do not undermine or destroy the reality of human responsibility.
We do not know how to explain that adequately. I think we can make efforts and I, on another occasion, some other time, I would be glad to go into what I think is a more satisfying approach to it.
But basically, I think we have to say we do not know how it operates because we do not have the slightest clue to the way God’s mind operates. And the best thing that I think I have ever read about this was C.H. Mackintosh, who summarized the argument this way.
He said, if anybody ever goes to heaven, they will have only God to thank. And if anybody ever goes to hell, they will have only themselves to blame. And I think that is the bottom line. I think that is a scriptural approach.
But I think it is more humble for us to admit we do not know exactly how it functions. Well, is that saying that, that they were all, He knew that they would be saved? Isaiah? Jeremiah? Uh-huh. Jeremiah? Think Jeremiah?
And Paul basically says that about himself in Galatians. “Who separated me from my mother’s womb?” Paul believed that God had His hand on him from, uh, from birth. But, but, alright, having said that, what have we said? Uh, is, does God deal with the genetics of this?
What is going on here? We do not know. What we do know is Paul’s confidence that God did not just suddenly say, oh, this guy that is on his way to the road to Damascus would make a good apostle. He had His eye on me from the moment I was conceived.
I think we can all say that. We can look back and see the things that happened in our lives that we ourselves had no control over. I mean, I was born into a family which understood the gospel. Think of how many families that you could be born into that do not understand the gospel.
Is that an accident? I do not think it is. Uh, and I have had a series of exposures to good ministry over the years. I mean, I have been, you could write the word “lucky” here. I have been privileged to hear some of the finest Bible teachers in the country over the years.
That is because of where we lived. That is because we were close to a Bible conference. Is that an accident? I do not think so. But how God arranged it all, I am not smart enough to figure. Appreciate it. We are going to need to wrap it up here.
Is there any other questions? Anybody? I am going to quit. And I will catch up some other time. All right. Appreciate it very much, Zane. Speaking from my own point of view, this is a very eye-opening.
For a number of years, and as you see, some of the questions that I brought up, it is also trying to put the book together. Appreciate it very much. Well, you are welcome.