Romans

Scripture Texts: Romans 8:1-4

Remember when I said Romans 7 was one of the hardest chapters in the Bible to understand.  Romans 8 is declared by many to be the greatest chapter in the Bible.

Martin Lloyd-Jones said Romans is the greatest book in the Bible and chapter 8 is the greatest chapter in the greatest book.  He preached 77 sermons on this chapter alone.

Charles Spurgeon called it a banquet for the souls of God’s hungry saints, the very cream of the cream of Holy Scripture.

If you can’t memorize the whole book of Romans, consider memorizing Romans 8.  It will be time well spent.  Romans 8 contains some of the most beloved verses of comfort to believers in all ages and of all ages.

It is one of the most glorious chapters in the Bible as it unfolds God’s entire plan of salvation from justification to adoption, to God’s good sovereign providence to glorification, all grounded in God’s love from which nothing can separate us.

Passage: Galatians 5:22-25; Romans 7:4

If you are a normal human being, at some point during the course of your life, however long or short that life may be, you have given some thought to that great existential question, does the fact of my existence on earth actually make any difference.  Of course, you didn’t know it was an existential question, you are not even sure you can spell existential let alone define it.

Existential questions are questions that have to do with existence, with the meaning, purpose, and value of our human existence.  There are over seven billion people wandering around on the planet earth right now, does my individual life really make any difference at all?

Are we like so many ants, scurrying around, living our lives doing our little human things, only to die and be no more and not matter any more whether we lived or not.

Do our lives matter?  What impact will my life or your life have beyond our family and small circle of friends?  Probably no one will write our biography, no one outside of Washington or Minnesota or British Columbia will ever know about us, and certainly not remember us two hundred years from now.  None of us will end up in any history books to be read in school a century from now.

Passage: Romans 7:13-25

These verses give the reason I am not a golfer.  All golfers know that what you want to do, you do not do, and what you do not want to do, that is the very thing you do.

If you asked 100 biblical scholars to list the ten hardest to understand or most controversial chapters in the Bible, it is almost certain Romans 7 would be on most of their lists, and there would be much disagreement.  I asked ChatGPT that question and sure enough Romans 7 made the list.

Peter said there are some things in Paul’s writings “that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction” (II Peter 3:16).

The debate is over whether this is Paul talking about his pre-Christian life or his post-Christian life, earthly Paul or heavenly Paul, sinner Paul or saint Paul.

I believe this passage bears all the marks of being post-Christian Paul.  It is written in first person singular, present tense.  He hates his sin, he is humble about it, he says he delights in the law in his inner being (vs. 22) and desires to please God, to do what God wants, all of these are marks of the work of the Holy Spirit.

Paul’s description of his struggle with sin in Romans 7:14-25 is nowhere found in his pre-conversion testimony.  Philippians 3:4-6 does not indicate Paul wrestled with or agonized over his sin like he does in Romans 7:14-25, nor do the personal narratives he offered in Acts 24:1-27 and Acts 26:1-32 indicate Paul was deeply troubled over his sin prior to his conversion to Christ (Derek J. Brown).

Those who say this is pre-Christian Paul do so because he describes himself as sold under sin (vs. 14) when in the previous chapter he said Christians are not slaves to sin, but slaves to Christ.  And he says there is no good in him, that sin lives in him and evil is right there with him.

Passage: Romans 7:7-13

Tomorrow is an anniversary for me.  52 years ago I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord.  It might be more accurate to say I was taken captive by Christ, it was pure, underserved grace that He won my soul from being a slave to sin to being a slave to Christ.  I am eternally grateful.

I remember it being a real, noticeable change in my life, everything seemed better.  I was sixteen up at Young Life’s Malibu Club in British Colombia.  I stay on at Malibu for another three weeks with my family there and worked on the work crew.  No one prepared me for what happened a couple of weeks later.  I was blindsided by sin, by conflict with some of the other workers.

It really messed with my head.  We were all Christians, everything was supposed to be better, everyone was supposed to get along.  I thought we were over that sin stuff.  I didn’t know about Romans 7.

God didn’t let me go two weeks thinking I was sanctified or thinking I wouldn’t have real temptations and experience inner battles with the indwelling sin still in my heart.

Paul wants to protect us from getting blindsided and confused by this sin problem that doesn’t go away.  Paul spends Romans 7:7-25 helping us better understand our ongoing battle within.  If we don’t, we will mislead ourselves and others, act hypocritically, or fall into despair when we stumble and fall.  So Paul asks and answers three questions.  We will take the first one this week.

Passage: Romans 7:1-6

So far in Romans we have considered the universal problem of sin and how hopeless our situation is.  Then starting in 3:21 we heard the universal solution to sin in the Gospel and how we can be made right and reconciled with God, by being justified by grace through faith in the atoning blood of Jesus.

Our sin must be perfectly, justly punished, and God’s law must be perfectly kept.  Jesus did that.  He came to die for our sins and live for our righteousness.

In chapter six Paul turned from justification to sanctification and to addressing objections.  The first being if we are saved by grace, and where sin abounds grace abounds more, then why worry about sin.  Let’s just go on sinning, and show how great the grace of free justification really is and go ahead and sin some more.  No, we have died to sin in Christ, who died for our sin.

As Paul says elsewhere, “I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”

Then Paul addresses another objection.  What about the law?  If we aren’t under the law but under grace, why not sin?  No, we are no longer slaves to sin but slaves to Christ.  But Paul didn’t address the law part in last weeks text, so he picks up on that here in chapter 7.

Passage: Romans 6:15-23

In Romans 5:20 Paul makes a famous statement, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”

No matter how much sin there is, God’s grace is always greater. But Paul knows how quickly our sinful minds will misunderstand his words to promote sin.

Romans 6:1-2 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

We must think of ourselves as dead to sin. We have died with Christ on the cross, and so now we can live in newness of life in Him. Remember we have moved from our justification by faith to our sanctification, which is living out our faith by the grace and power of the Holy Spirit.

As one commentator put it, “To make being ‘under grace’ an excuse for sinning is a sign that one is not really ‘under grace’ at all” (F.F. Bruce). Grace is liberation from sin, not liberation to sin.

Last week we talked about how sin wants to be on the throne of your heart to make us obey it.

So Paul ends this first argument with:

Romans 6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

But saying that opens another can of worms.

Passage: Romans 6:8-14

A lot of you have been spending time in your gardens and flower beds preparing the soil and planting.  You are well aware of how our own battle with sin is often likened to gardening.  Actually there are three ways our battle with dying to sin and killing sin can be compared to gardening.

The first battle with sin is like a field or weed patch that has not yet by cultivated at all.  The first battle with sin is the battle God does.  God plows the weed patch under, and makes it a garden.  It is now a garden, and not a weed patch.  The old status is dead.  That is like the old man with his old nature being rooted out.  Sinners are turned into saints.  God does all the work.

The second battle is what happens when that garden is untended or neglected for a few weeks, and you come back to find weeds up to your knees and threatening to take over.  This is dangerous when it comes to sin, it shows a lack of wisdom, a lack of understanding or appreciation of the nature of sin.  They may be hard to pull out.

The third kind of battle is what any good gardener will tell you about.  Get out there every morning, and pull up the weeds that are the size of your fingers.  Sin will always be there but if they are attended to right away they will not take root in our souls.  This is the daily battle called sanctification.

Passage: Romans 6:1-7

Last week I outlined and summarized the first five chapters of this great letter to the church in Rome.  I said Paul has been hammering home the righteousness of God and our unrighteousness, how God in His abounding grace, mercy and love has made a way for us sinners to be justly reconciled to a righteous God.  The righteous Savior laid down His life for us unrighteous sinners.  The godly for the ungodly.

Up to now Paul has been preaching grace, grace, grace.  The Gentiles are saved by grace, the Jews are saved by grace, Abraham was saved by grace through faith.  We all sin, and the free gift of God is justification by grace.

Paul had just finished saying in Romans 5:20-21.

Romans 5:20-21 Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I emphasize this one more time so I can make clear the problem the Apostle Paul addresses in chapter six, which it turns out is a very pivotal chapter in this letter.

It is said among pastors and preachers that the Gospel has not been faithfully preached if at some point someone doesn’t ask, so can I sin that grace may abound?

Every pastor who preaches that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone and not by works knows some people will start thinking we can sin all we want.

Every time grace, mercy, forgiveness, faith and justification are preached our sinful minds and hearts are tempted to misunderstand or worse yet, abuse these precious gifts from God.

Passage: Romans 1-5

Since we have been away from Romans for so long, I thought it would be good for us to do a refresher summary of the first five chapters.

You may remember in my first sermon I waxed eloquent on how great a book Romans is, the Mount Everest of the books of the Bible.

John Knox said, “It is unquestionably the most important theological work that has ever been written.”

“Arguably the most influential book in Christian history” (Doug Wilson).

The great English poet Samuel Coleridge said, “Paul’s Epistle to the Romans is the greatest piece of literature ever written, the most profound work in existence.”

“One of the greatest documents ever written by a human being” (N.T. Wright).

It’s been called “The cathedral of the Christian faith,” “The Magna Carta of the human soul.”  It is in reality the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights of the Christian faith.  Romans is the most complete summary of Christian doctrine.  If all the Bible were lost except Romans, almost no fundamental doctrine would be lost.  This is the Gospel according to the Apostle Paul.

This is the book the Church of the 21st century needs to discover all over again.  We all need reformation, renewal, revival.  May it begin here in our study of Romans.

Let’s sink our teeth into Romans again, read it, reflect on it, pray for the Spirit to open our hearts and apply it.  Make real work of knowing and living this truth.  And the offer still stands, $200 to the person who memorizes it.  It’s a little over 7,000 words, about 15 pages.

We begin with Romans 1:16-17, the thesis and theme of the letter.

Passage: I Corinthians 10:16-17; 11:27-32

It is my hope and prayer you had a blessed and thankful Thanksgiving, most of all because the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever and that is cause for gratitude.

This Sunday is a rare Sunday when there is a Sunday between Thanksgiving and the first Sunday of Advent.  Last time was 2018 and next time will be 2028.

This gives me the opportunity to combine two themes, thanksgiving and preparing for coming to the Lord’s Table next Sunday on the first Sunday of Advent.  We sometimes refer to the sacrament as a thanksgiving feast.  The cup of blessing is also called the cup of thanksgiving.  And Jesus gave thanks before breaking the bread and pouring out the cup.  And, finally, we are always called to preparation the week before we take communion.  So it all lines up.

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Passage: Romans 5:18-21

This morning we turn to the final verses of Romans 5.  After today I am going to push the pause button and take a break from Romans for a while.  As has been my practice for all my years of preaching, I will do a series of sermons for Advent.

Then as has also been my practice I will do a series of topical sermons for the new year.  That will lead us up to Lent for which I am pondering a couple of ideas.  So, Lord willing we will resume Romans after Easter which is early next year, March 31.

Our text this morning is a summary kind of passage in which Paul resumes and then concludes a thought he started in verse 12, but then interrupted himself with a digression which led to some other thoughts.

Paul repeats himself here in vss. 18-19.  He started this point in vs. 12, with a therefore, and he comes back to the same point here again in vs. 18 with another therefore.

I have said before that the way God emphasizes things in His Scripture is with repetition.  We use bold, italics, underline, all caps, God uses repetition.  His book isn’t that big, so if He uses up space to repeat something, it must be worthy of extra attention.

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Passage: Romans 5:12-17

Paul has been speaking at great length about our being reconciled to God through faith in Christ whereby we receive His imputed righteousness and are saved by His life.

All this talk of justification, reconciliation, and salvation leads Paul to bring up what makes all that necessary, namely our fall, our sin, death and ruin by Adam.  Last week we said the very word reconciliation implies a previous alienation and hostility, we were once enemies.

In vss. 12-14 Paul shows the depths of this alienation and in vss. 15ff beauty of the reconciliation.  Paul leads us through a series of comparisons and contrasts between the two great heads of humanity, the first Adam and the Second Adam, and their two actions and the two destinies that follow those actions.  By the first man sin entered the world and with it death, and by the second Man righteousness came into the world, and with it eternal life.

There are two ways to be human. Adam and Eve were Humanity 1.0.  God downloaded Humanity 1.0 on earth in the Garden of Eden and it was glorious.  But that system crashed.

God could have written the whole thing off, but He didn’t.  In Genesis 3:15 God announced that He had a new version ready to download.  Jesus is Humanity 2.0, in the new covenant we are the new creation.

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