Sermons From My Heart

When Albert Einstein published his theory of relativity, it is said there were only twelve men who were intelligent enough to understand its implications. Forty years later the number had risen to millions as the horror of Hiroshima unfolded. Relatively few could see great significance in E = mc², but even fewer failed to understand that through one man the race had been ushered into the atomic age. There was no going back and there were no exceptions, because in Einstein atomic reality had come upon all men. When a man introduces something new into human experience, the race will always be left to live with the consequences.

In Romans 5:12-21, Paul sets out to show how one man’s death can provide salvation for many. To prove his point, he uses Adam to establish the principle that it is possible for one man’s actions to inexorably affect many other people. So when sin entered the life of a man, it also entered the experience of a race as yet unborn. If it be objected that those locked up in Adam’s loins could hardly be said to have been introduced to sin in Adam, it should be remembered that in Adam they were introduced to everything, for without him as source they had nothing, and if he had died they would not even have had life.

There is no way to explain the pollution of Paradise and the perversion of man outside the doctrine of the Fall. That “sin entered into the world” is an incontrovertible truth, but it is not treated with the solemnity it deserves. Part of the problem is that in our preoccupation with sins and our struggle against them—which may be little more than behavioral manipulation—we have tended to ignore the underlying fact of sin. Adam’s sin was a calculated decision to disobey God and to take the consequences of his own free action. Satan was the original violator of the righteousness of God, but sin entered the world through Adam and death entered the world through sin. Even though there was no law, death was universal because people were still sinful. They died because they inherited the nature of death from Adam, not because of their sinful acts.

When God spoke to Adam about obedience He made it clear that disobedience spells death. There is no room for misunderstanding in His statement, “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”. The immediate death promised was obviously not physical, in that Adam survived that awful day for many years. It was spiritual death, or alienation from the life of God which Adam experienced and which the race is still experiencing.

Paul goes on to show that sin, having entered and abounded, went on to “reign” in human society and experience. The use of this powerful word is a strong reminder of the dynamic control that sin exercises in people on both an individual basis and on a societal level. It is relatively easy for Christians to look at Marxist states which on the basis of atheist philosophies dominate the life of their subjects. The normal Christian response is to see this as the tyrannical reign of sin as it dominates the lives of millions and reigns in apparently irresistible force. But we need to look much closer to home and recognize the reign of sin in all types of society. If we regard sin as a conscious choice to “prefer inclination to obligation,” then we can see that the prevailing attitude in much of our business principles, political choices, educational emphases, and cultural norms may be under a reign of sin so powerful we may not even recognize that we are being subjected to its control.

Sin’s reign is evident every time we open a paper or turn on the TV. Stories abound of overcrowded prisons, escalating divorce statistics, dramatic increase in the incidence of crime, not only in the traditional urban areas but in the respectable suburbs and the heartlands of the rural areas. Death’s reign is painfully evident in expanding cemeteries, burgeoning funeral parlors, and nursing homes. Sin knows no bounds; death, like time and tide, waits for no man. Both march on in relentless, overpowering domination of the bleak human scene. But Paul says that all is not bleak, that grace is equally as real, just as powerful and pervasive. For every sin that robs and destroys another particle of human experience, there is grace to build and restore. For every grave opened by sin and death, there is a door opened in heaven by grace. While mourners mourn over loved ones laid to rest, angels rejoice over sinners coming to repentance.

There is a quality of grace that even this analogy does not express adequately. Paul says that “the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more”. Taken in its most obvious application, the Law (of Moses) applied to the people of Israel. As children of Adam’s race, they were under the reign of sin, but when the law was applied to their lives, it pressured the latent sin out into the open in a great overflow of sins. This was seen in its most appalling demonstration in the rejection of Jesus as Messiah with the collective cry, “Crucify him, crucify him.” When Pilate in his last-ditch effort to extricate himself washed his hands of the Christ controversy, the leaders of the Jews uttered the awful words, “Let his blood be on us and on our children.” Sin at that moment overflowed its banks for the people of the law, the benighted members of “Adam’s helpless race,” but at the same moment that sin was abounding, “grace abounded much more.” The very acts and attitudes of sin that nailed Him to the Cross were being dealt with in grace by the subjection of Christ to that cross. The Cross in its horrible illustration of overwhelming sin was in itself a demonstration of overwhelming grace. Sin at its blackest moment on Calvary was touched by grace at its most golden.

In his early days, Alexander Fleming was mainly preoccupied with farming and fishing, little realizing that he would one day become a world renowned microbiologist whose discovery of penicillin would revolutionize human experience. In the same way that the solidarity principle introduced the race to the possibilities of atomic destruction through Einstein, Fleming was the man in whom the race was introduced to healing on an unprecedented scale. Without casting the former as a modern-day Adam or the latter as a contemporary messiah, the analogy helps us to see how Paul saw the human race introduced to grace through Christ, having already been introduced to sin and death in Adam.

Paul calls Adam “a type of Him who was to come” and develops the idea to show that through “the one man’s offense many died,” and also, through “the one Man, Jesus Christ, grace has abounded to many.” Having taken great pains to show the similarity between the first man, Adam, and the second man, Christ, Paul now sets about showing their marked dissimilarities with particular reference to the superiority of Christ and His work over Adam and his sin. Adam brought “offense,” Christ brought “free gift”; the “offense” meant “death”; the “free gift” provided “justification”; the “disobedience” made many sinners, but “obedience” made many “righteous.” The quiet healing of penicillin is in no way similar to the scorching blast of Hiroshima, even though both were introduced by one man.

Christ in His obedience corrected the wrong Adam did in his disobedience. Christ is not Adam’s successor but his Saviour. They are alike only in the sense that both had universal significance: Adam for death. Christ for life. The key is much more. Whatever humankind has inherited from Adam, they have much more in Christ.

Christ’s one act of salvation was far superior to Adam’s one act of disobedience. One commentator said, “That one single misdeed should be answered by judgment, this is perfectly understandable: that the accumulated sins and guilt of all the ages should be answered by God’s free gift, this is the miracle of miracles.” Christ’s reign in life is greater than Adam’s “reign” of death.

Christ’s obedience is greater than Adam’s disobedience. Adam was in an environment conducive to obedience (the Garden); still, he disobeyed and brought death. The second Adam (Jesus) was in an environment that hindered obedience (the fallen world), yet He obeyed and brought life.

The abundance of grace available through the work of Christ far surpasses the quantity of Adam’s sin. No one can out-sin God’s infinite grace. God proved His love by giving His Son to die on the Cross on our behalf while we were still sinners. Christians now have peace with God because they have been forgiven. They rejoice because they are assured of their salvation.

So what does this mean for our daily lives? Don’t ever give up hope. Don’t you ever despair of God. When things are down in the mouth in your life, and you feel you are being overwhelmed by temptation and sin, don’t ever give up. The message of the gospel is this: the power of grace is so much stronger than the power of sin. Everyone once in a while, when you get overwhelmed by the power of sin and darkness in your life, and every once in a while when you feel like throwing in the towel, remember the gospel of God, the truth of God, the grace of God. And the gospel is this; the power of grace is so much more powerful than the power of sin.

When God’s love impacts our lives, it completely changes us so that selfishness turns to generosity. How would you describe your life before and after becoming a Christian? What major changes have you experienced since becoming a Christian? Write your story down and read it when you feel discouraged.

(An audio version of this post can be found by clicking this link: Romans 5 verses 12-21 The Domino Effect of the Original Sin)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; pp. 1550-1552)
2. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol.29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1982; pp. 117-126)
3. MacArthur, J.F. Jr.: The Macarthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2006)
4. The Rev. Edward Markquart, “Adam and Christ.” Retrieved from www.sermonsfromseattle.com

The center. As human beings, we often try to find the center of things. It is just the way we are. We want to find the center. What is the center of Christianity? The bull’s eye?  The nucleus? We all know the answer. Jesus Christ. There is no argument about that. What does God want from us? We all know- faith in Jesus Christ, believe in Jesus Christ, trust in Jesus Christ. Christ and faith in Jesus Christ is the center of Christianity. The bull’s eye. We know that.

Why do Christians gather in worship services around the whole globe? To grow in faith in Christ. We want our faith to grow strong just as faith grew strong in Abraham. We don’t want our faith to be wavering and weak, to be doubting and double minded to be questioning and querulous. We want to move beyond that. We want our faith to grow strong, like it was in Father Abraham. We want to have faith like in the gospel story  about the Roman official who believed that Jesus could give life to his dead daughter. We want faith like the woman who was very sick and she believed that Jesus could heal her. Faith. Genuine faith. Deep faith. Trusting faith. Committed faith. New Testament faith. Growing faith. Faith in Jesus Christ is the bull’s eye, the nucleus, the very center of the universe called Christianity.

Romans 4:13 is a summary of Romans 4:1-12. God’s promise is independent of the law and rests squarely on the principle of faith. When God’s people look to the law for justification instead of to God, failure to keep the law makes them guilty and they face death instead of life. God’s promise of the law is uncertain. His promise of faith is certain. The promise given to Abraham has not expired nor become the private possession of any one race. It permeates the entire world.

We don’t know what was going on in the Roman church that made Paul go to the great lengths he does in Romans to make the point that God can give life, only God can breathe into corpses and make them come alive again.  God does that.  We cannot.  It is all grace. Apparently, however, that perennial temptation to see our salvation as a result of works, of obedience, of keeping some rules was alive and well in Rome.  And among at least some of the believers there, the argument must have centered to some degree on Abraham and how it was he got saved in the first place and so kicked off the whole stream of saving actions by God that culminated in Christ Jesus.

So Paul takes pains to do a little biblical education in Romans 4.  Basically his argument comes down to this: God’s promise to save the world through Abram and Sarai came from out of a clear blue sky.  Abram had had no law to keep, no rules to follow in order to make himself deserving of the favor God would bestow on him.  God took the initiative and somehow gave Abram the ability to believe the unbelievable, to imagine the unimaginable: from his and Sarai’s as-good-as-dead bodies would come new life.  Not just a child born to them in extreme old age but from that child a host of descendants by and by who would cover the earth the way sand covers the seashore, the way the stars cover the night sky.

When it comes to the subject of faith it is amazing how vague people become. To have a “lot of faith” is applauded, and the need for “more faith” is often expressed. People of “strong faith” are revered, those of “another faith” are distrusted. In all these common expressions of contemporary understanding of faith there is one major misunderstanding. The object of faith is that which really matters more than anything else. Some people who had strong faith in thin ice never lived to tell the tale but died by faith. Others who had weak faith in thick ice were as safe as if they stood on concrete. Abraham’s faith is not exemplary because of its strength or lack of it, but because its object was God.

Abraham believed in the God who specializes in breathing life into deadness and speaking the creative word which brings into existence things which previously were nonexistent. The magnitude of these concepts of God is so vast that they should not be overlooked because it is possible that some believers believe in a God who is far removed from the One revealed in Scripture.

Nothing is to be gained in terms of virile faith by ignoring those factors which militate against faith. On the contrary, strong faith triumphs over the difficulties it fully understands. Abraham was able to grapple adequately with the deadness of his own body precisely because he believed in a God “who gives life to the dead”. His inadequacy, therefore, became the arena in which God’s power was to be shown instead of the place where his faith would sink without a trace. The fact of Sarah’s incapability to bear a son even in her youth was matched in Abraham’s mind with the fact that God “calls the things that are not as being in existence.”The nonexistent capacity of Sarah’s womb was the very place to prove God’s ability to make the barren womb capable of reproduction. Abraham showed that faith links its knowledge of God with the difficulties that stand in faith’s way and throws in its lot with the reality of God in the situation.

Abraham’s faith conquered impossibility, improbability, inadequacy, inconsistency, insecurity, and infidelity. Abraham believed in the God of creation, who calls those things which do not exist as through they did. This is the essence of faith. The same God of Genesis 1-2 who brought forth life and the earth and sky out of nothing also brought forth Isaac, the son of promise, from the deadness of Sarah’s womb. Later, at the altar, standing over that same son with a knife in obedience to God, Abraham again believed that God could give life to the dead. Hope that is centered on God is contrary to the world’s hope.

Some people, when faced with delay and discouragement, “waver” in their faith, while others are strengthened by the delay. When he considered his circumstances on the one hand, Abraham must have been tempted to sink into despair; yet when he considered the promise of God as it related to his circumstances he must have been euphoric.

Abraham did not waver in his faith at the time of testing. For Abraham that faith was especially faith that God would give him and Sarah a son. But the great thing about faith–given Paul’s puzzle–is that you do not have to be Jewish to have faith in the God who “gives life to the dead.” Abraham had faith in the God who would give life to his loins, though he was good as dead. And now both Jews and Gentiles can believe in the God who gave life to Jesus at the resurrection. Jews and Gentiles can both have that faith whether they keep the law or not, or at least whether Gentiles keep the law or not. God’s ability to perform His promises was the foundation of the stability of Abraham’s faith. Faith looks past the gift to the Giver and past the promise to the One who promises.

When we read about the great heroes of the faith such as Abraham there is a tendency for us to feel that they had a special corner on God and thus it was easier for them to believe; if we had similar opportunities we would probably believe in similar fashion. Paul introduces a thought that explodes this idea completely. He reminds us that while Abraham believed in a God who could raise the dead, we have a record of an event which showed that God can raise the dead and that He has raised His Son from the grave. The object of the believer’s faith is not only the God of Abraham but also the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul’s statement concerning the death and Resurrection of Christ shows that it was not the death of Christ alone which provides the basis upon which God justifies the believer, for if Christ had stayed dead, He would never have been regarded as anything other than another unfortunate martyr to a lost cause. But through His Resurrection, He was shown to be the “Son of God with power” and, accordingly, the divine answer to the human problem.

God never promises us anything that He can’t deliver. Do we believe that? If we do, then it only makes sense to put our complete trust in Him, regardless of how dark our circumstances might appear. God can declare believing sinners to be righteous even though they are not, by imputing His righteousness to them, just as God made or declared Jesus “sin” and punished Him, though He was not a sinner. Those whom He justifies, He will conform to the image of His Son.

(An audio version of this post can be foound gy clicking this link: Romans 4 verses 13-25 Faith in God’s Promises)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; p. 1549)
2. The Rev. Edward Markquart, “The Center: Faith in Christ.” Retrieved from www.sermonsfromseattle.com
3. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson inc.; 1982; pp. 101-105)
4. Stanley, C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
5. MacArthur, J.F. Jr.: The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2006)
6. Scott Hoezee, “Romans 4:13-25 Commentary.” Retrieved from https://cepreaching.org/authors/scott-hoezee/
7. David Bartlett, “Commentary on Romans 4:13-25.” Retrieved from www.workingpreacher.org

What does it mean to believe in Christ? To trust God like Father Abraham did, not wavering or doubting but firmly believing that God could do what he promised. That is what faith is: to believe that God can do what he has promised. It is to trust the promises of God so implicitly that you act on them.

Paul uses the model of Abraham to prove justification by faith alone because the Jews held him up as the supreme example of a righteous man, and because it clearly showed that Judaism with its works-righteousness had deviated from the faith of the Jews’ patriarchal ancestors. In a spiritual sense, Abraham was the forerunner of the primarily Gentile church in Rome as well.

God made three promises to Abraham:  1) I will be with you and bless you so that you will be a blessing. No matter where you go and what you do in your journey of life, I will be with you and bless you with my Presence, so that you will be a blessing to the world. Abraham believed God’s promise. To be religious, to be spiritual, is to believe God’s promise to you, that God will be with you, at your side, in this journey called life. 2) The second promise that God made to Abraham was that his descendants would be numerous. There would be millions of descendants, like the sands of the sea and the stars of the sky. Abraham believed God’s promises. Abraham fully trusted that God would be faithful to his promises to give him descendants. 3) God promised him the Promised Land, that Abraham and his descendants would have land to grow their crops, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land rich in abundance. Abraham believed God’s promise. To be religious, to be spiritual, is to believe God’s promises to you.

Here was the first test of Abraham’s faith. Did Abraham truly believe in God and his promises? Father Abraham was in Babylonia, and God said, “Go to the land of Israel where I will give you a good land.” Abraham got up and left his mother and father and brothers and sisters and began his journey to the promised land. Why did he get up and go? Because he believed that God would be faithful to his promises. No proof. No signs. No wonder. No official deed for future lands he would own. He simply believed that God would be faithful to him, be with him, would bless him so he would be a blessing. He acted and got up and left his homeland because he believed the promises of God, that God would give him a new land. That is what faith is: to believe in God’s promises even when there are no signs or miraculous evidence or proofs that the promises will come true.

The second testing of Abraham’s faith was the fact that Abraham and Sarah got old, approaching one hundred years old and they didn’t have any children. But Abraham still believed God, the promises of God, that he would be the father of a great nation and be the father of millions even though he was ninety-nine years old and still didn’t have a child.

The third testing of Abraham’s faith was God’s command to take his only son out into the desert and offer a sacrifice to God. God was putting Abraham to the test, to see if Abraham loved God more than his son Isaac. Abraham passed the test, that he loved God more than his son. And further, Abraham believed God would provide a sacrifice and sure enough, there was a lamb caught in the briars.

God’s promises of his blessing, the descendants, the Promised Land were all free gifts from God, pure gifts, simple gifts. Abraham did nothing to deserve them or earn them or work for them. God simply promised these gifts to Father Abraham and Abraham believed God.

Broadening his argument from Abraham to all men, Paul makes it clear that the forensic act of declaring a person righteous is completely apart from any kind of human work. If salvation were on the basis of one’s own effort, God would owe salvation as a debt—but salvation is always a sovereignly given gift of God’s grace to those who believe. Since faith is contrasted with work, faith must mean the end of any attempt to earn God’s favor through personal merit.

Paul was not satisfied with proving his point from the experience of the great patriarch alone but also called in another Old Testament heavyweight—none other than King David—to further substantiate his argument. Quoting from Psalm 32, he showed that God imputes “righteousness apart from the law,” and this introduced those so enriched into a state of “blessedness” where sins are “covered,” “forgiven,” and “not imputed.”

God’s imputing has a positive side in that He counts righteousness to the ungodly, but the negative aspect of His imputing ministry is no less exciting for He also declines to impute sin to those who have broken His law when they come to Him in faith. A bookkeeper would look at it as if a generous donor was placing vast credits to our account and also refusing to debit the withdrawals but rather was placing them against his own account.

Paul is able to show quite clearly from the Old Testament that Abraham’s acceptance with God came through his faith, not his works, although his works were exemplary. Far from being the cause of his acceptance with God, Abraham’s lifestyle was the result of his acceptance. God did not declare him righteous because he was so good, but rather Abraham lived a good life because God had freely justified him by faith. God, out of grace, determines to make righteousness available to those who will humbly accept it by faith.

Both Abraham and David illustrate the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Abraham’s justification is presented in a positive way. He was credited with righteousness. In contrast, David’s justification is presented in a negative way. His sin was not credited against him. David broke three of the Ten Commandments when he coveted Bathsheba, committed adultery, and had her husband murdered. The Old Testament sacrificial system made no provisions for such premeditated sin. David could only cry out for God’s mercy.

Man’s superficial attitude to sin and forgiveness can only be countered by an adequate understanding of the immensity and seriousness of the human problem. Those who find sin relatively unimportant find little difficulty in expecting that human effort, however half-hearted, may well merit forgiveness, but those who know what sin is also know that only divine action can deal with it. In the same way, those who regard “forgiveness” as a type of “forgetting” coupled with a shrug of the divine shoulders see no necessity for man to take his sin with anything more than a grain of salt. But those who realize that forgiveness entails “a taking away” and a “covering so that it becomes invisible to God” as well as the willingness of God to accept accountability for human sin while relieving man of responsibility, also know that this requires more than human activity—in fact, nothing less than divine intervention. Only the grace of God can initiate such an act of mercy and only the open hand of faith can receive such blessedness. Such is the forgiveness that comes through faith.

When God called Abram from Ur, told him of the Promised Land, and outlined His covenant, He clearly illustrated that, once more, He was taking the initiative and moving graciously into the affairs of man. Through this man He intended to move into the affairs of a family which, by His description, was going to be very large and far-reaching. Jewish people have, quite rightly, traced their roots to Abraham with great pride, but so also have the Arabs—the former, through Isaac, the latter through Ishmael. When Paul speaks of Abraham as “the father of us all,” the family of which Abraham is father is neither the Jewish nor the Arab family but something that transcends both and incorporates far more. It is the family of all those who believe, the family of faith.

If Abraham was justified by works, then he was a self-made man, but Abraham believed God and His promises, and according to Genesis 15:6, this was enough to bring about God’s gift of righteousness. Faith is not righteousness, but it is the only vehicle by which His righteousness reaches believing sinners. How God’s people respond to divine grace has differed through the ages, but they have always responded by faith.

Abraham was justified by faith long before he was circumcised. There were at least fourteen years between when he was declared righteous by faith and his circumcision. Abraham’s circumcision did not confer righteousness; it merely confirmed the righteousness he already had. Abraham was actually justified before submitting to rituals and rites.

Paul’s inescapable conclusion is that as Abraham was declared justified fourteen years before he was circumcised, he was quite obviously not justified because he was circumcised. Therefore God is not interested in a man’s circumcision but in whether or not he is a man of faith. There are, in the divine way of looking at things, uncircumcised believers and circumcised unbelievers. The former are justified; the latter are not justified. In a similar passage in Galatians, Paul stated that the law was given to Moses 430 years after Abraham had been justified by faith, and therefore neither Abraham nor anybody else would ever be justified by keeping the law but only by believing unto righteousness.

These truths, when applied, lead to the discovery that there is one thing God is looking for in the confused and convoluted world of human religion, tradition, and culture. Is that man in the midst of all the accumulated weight of the Jewish tradition a humble believer in the God who justified the ungodly? Is that Muslim who professes to pray five times a day, to give to the poor, to visit Mecca, to observe Ramadan trusting in his ritual or in the God who justifies freely by His grace? Is the Buddhist who in his quest for enlightenment endeavors to practice right views, right desires, right speech, right conduct, right mode of living, right effort, right awareness, and right meditation really trusting in the eightfold path or in a God who through the blood of Christ freely forgives our straying from His path? The same can be said for Baptist, Seventh Day Adventist, Presbyterian, Anglican, all denominations… what are they looking to for salvation?

We are promised that Christ will be with us in all circumstances, near to us, dear to us, at our side. As God’s Divine Presence was with Father Abraham, so God’s Presence continues with us in the Spirit of Christ. Christ’s Spirit is with us, in us, around us, at our side to give us strength for living and power for dying. There is nothing we have done to deserve this gift of his Presence. This gift is from pure grace.

We are promised that Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, that our sins are fully and freely forgiven, that we stand before the throne of God and our sins are entirely covered over by the blood of Jesus Christ. Like the sunshine and the rain, this forgiveness from God is a pure gift. There is nothing we did to deserve it. We are promised in Christ that we shall live forever with Christ, that we shall never die, that Christ conquered death itself and that we shall live eternally with God. Once again, it is pure grace, pure gift. We did nothing to earn or deserve eternal life with God and those we love.

(An audio version of this message can be found by clicking this link: Romans 4 verses 1-12 Justification)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; pp. 1548-1549)
2. The Rev. Edward Markquart, “The Nucleus: Believe in Jesus Christ.” Retrieved from www.sermonsfromseattle.com
3. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Neson Inc.; 1982; pp. 95-101)
4. Stanley, C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
5. MacArthur, J.F. Jr.: The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2006)
6. Lucado, M.: The Lucado Life Lessons Study Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson: 2010)

One memorable day the Lord Jesus was confronted by a group of highly indignant religious leaders who interrupted Him as He was teaching in the temple. Thrusting an embarrassed woman into the center of the group, they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?”

It was apparent that they had scant regard for the feelings of the woman and even less for the Lord. Deeply offended by her attitude to sexual morality, they were also incensed by their perception that the Lord’s approach to the Law was considerably more liberal than theirs. Ever since He had healed a paralytic on the Sabbath, an act which they considered a blatant contravention of the Law’s prohibition of work on the day of rest, they had been most anxious to expose Him as a law-breaker. Numerous other incidents had added fuel to the flames of their hostility, and they had brought the woman to Him before the crowds in an effort to force a showdown. If, as they suspected, He would decline to endorse the stoning of the adulteress, they felt they would have conclusive proof of His disdain for the sacred Law.

From the Lord’s point of view, however, the matter of the woman’s well-being had to be considered along with the integrity of the Law. To Him the woman’s sin was a horrendous thing, her contravention of the divine law of grave importance, but He would not allow her to become a pawn in a religious-political power play or a meaningless nonentity in a cold impersonal struggle to prove a point. The terror in her eyes, the uncontrolled shaking of her body, the tremors in her voice spoke deeply to His heart, for she was more than a cipher—she was a person. Her sin was manifest and could not be disregarded, but her need was equally obvious and must not be ignored. The dilemma He was facing was that He had an obligation to honor the Law and a commitment to uphold it, but at the same time He was deeply drawn to the sinner and was intent on redeeming her. But in the eyes of His adversaries if He took steps to redeem the woman He would desecrate the Law, while His own convictions insisted that if He followed through on the letter of the Law He would be denied the opportunity to redeem her shattered life.

This incident in the life of the Lord illustrates in a specific sense the dilemma that confronts the Father on a divine scale. As we have seen, there is no question about human sin and guilt and equally no doubt about divine judgment and condemnation, but there is also unequivocal evidence of the Father’s love for sinners and His clear commitment to their redemption.

Man has earned the condemnation of a righteous God. Paul’s statement that “now we know” signals the beginning of a new section of his letter-and a new day in the world of faith: before Jesus Christ, the Jews were self-righteous and the Gentiles were unrighteous. As was stated in Acts 13:39, “Now the righteousness of God is revealed…through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and on all who believe.”

It was Paul’s conviction that in our lives, we make such mistakes that there is no way that we can buy our way out. We can’t wiggle our way out of it, as we so often try to do. We hurt others by our sins of commission, of what we have done wrong to hurt others. The way that we have hurt people and our family. We cannot pay God back for all the sins of our lives. For all that we have done wrong. For all that we have not done right. And so when you and I come to stand before the judgment day before God, we are going to say, “O Lord God, please have mercy.”  And God, in that situation, pays the penalty for your sins. He takes the punishment. His son, Jesus, dies on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins with his blood. That is what the death of Christ is all about. That is what the atonement of Christ is all about.

No one is outside the scope of God’s righteousness; there is also no distinction among those who are saved-or among those who are lost; all fall short. The harlot, the murderer, and the liar are short of it; but so are we. Perhaps they stand at the bottom of a mine, and we are on the top of a mountain, but we are as little able to touch the stars as they are.

This righteousness is unique: 1) God is its source 2) it fulfills both the penalty and precept of God’s law. Christ’s death as a substitute pays the penalty exacted on those who failed to keep God’s law, and His perfect obedience to every requirement of God’s law fulfills God’s demand for comprehensive righteousness and 3) because God’s righteousness is eternal the one who receives it from Him enjoys it forever.

The relationship between justice (that which is right) and righteousness (being and doing right) is clear, and from this basic understanding we can move to a position where we see justification as a divine declaration that before God we are “right.” When this declaration of justification is made by God He is revealed as “the justifier.” For God to be “just” and “the justifier,” He must be in a position to declare righteous those who have clearly broken His law and at the same time in a position to maintain His own integrity and preserve His own righteousness.

The term “justified” comes from the Greek word for “righteous” and means “to declare righteous.” This verdict includes pardon from the guilt and penalty of sin, and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believer’s account, which provides for the positive righteousness man needs to be accepted by God. God declares a sinner righteous solely on the basis of the merits of Christ’s righteousness. God imputed a believer’s sin to Christ’s account in His sacrificial death, and He imputes Christ’s perfect obedience to God’s law to Christians The sinner receives this gift of God’s grace by faith. Crucial to the significance of Christ’s sacrifice, this word carries the idea of appeasement or satisfaction—in this case Christ’s violent death satisfied the offended holiness and wrath of God against those for whom Christ died

Grace is one of God’s expressions of love for us. It is the gift unsought, unmerited, unlimited that overrules whatever a person has done, no matter the depth of their sin or the darkness of their heart. Because many years passed during which God continued to atone “temporarily” by covering over sin, it might have appeared that God did not take sin seriously. The cross of Christ removed all doubt. The cross is the public declaration that God is righteous in the way He has handled human sin. It is no longer merely covered but removed.

Divine righteousness excludes all boasting. It eliminates human pride, prejudice, and presumption. Throughout human history, man has shown himself remarkably adept at adopting goals, lofty or otherwise, whether it be the goal of survival, personal freedom, world peace, or making a million before age thirty-five. However noble man’s goals have been, they all pale beside the God-given goal, which is to reflect something of the glory of God in life and after life “to glorify Him forever.” Having failed totally to achieve this goal, man’s greatest need is to find a remedy before God for the responsibility and guilt of his failure and also to discover the means whereby the goal might become realistic in terms of human capability.

In theory, at least, there are two options open to the person who wishes to be reconciled to God. Either he can set about living a life that will be so pleasing to God that he will be rewarded by reconciliation, or he may decide that is hopeless and trust God to give him a chance, although he neither earned it nor deserved it. Theologically speaking, the first option is called “justification by works” and comes in many and varied forms.

This leaves only one option, and the big question is, “What are the chances that God will grant justification to people who have not earned it and do not deserve it?” The answer comes loud and clear, that God has made His righteousness available “apart from the law” and that He has carefully shown this to be the case in His long dealings with His people through the law and the prophets.

“Grace” and its related words such as graceful and gracious all have warm positive connotations. That which is graceful, whether it be an athlete on the playing field, a bride walking down the aisle, or an eagle lighting on an eyrie, evokes admiration and appreciation. Gracious people tend to shine serenely in the midst of uncouth behavior; they silence the unrestrained and invest mediocrity with a degree of significance, and people are grateful. So it is with the graceful, gracious act of God in tempering justice with mercy, mixing holy wrath with divine restraint and blending condemnation with forgiveness.

In New Testament times the infamous slave market was a common sight. Hapless individuals were callously displayed before potential buyers who would examine them and, if satisfied that they had a bargain, would purchase the slave by paying a ransom price. Fortunately, those days are long gone, but, sadly, we are living in days where similarly reprehensible tactics are employed for a variety of ends. We are all too familiar with hijackings, kidnappings, and hostage-taking, which so often are resolved only when innocent people pay exorbitant ransoms to release equally innocent captives. The word “redemption” in the Greek is apolutrosis, which means “to deliver by paying the ransom.” Paul sees the human race which he describes as being “under sin” in a situation not unlike that of a slave or hostage held against his will under bondage and incapable of delivering himself. But Christ is portrayed as the One who, coming into the place of our bondage and observing our hostage status, freely offered to deliver us by paying the ransom Himself.

Behind the decision of God to provide the means of redemption for man through Christ lies a deep, beautiful facet of the character of God. It is because He is a God of grace that there is a gospel to proclaim and a Savior to extol. Far from tiring of His tiresome children, the Father chooses to deal graciously with them. While perfectly free to leave His errant creation to self-destruct, the Creator decides to offer forgiveness and reconciliation with no strings attached.

Knowing he would be accused of antinomianism (being against the law) for arguing that a man was justified apart from keeping the law, Paul introduced here the defense he later developed in chapters 6 and 7. Salvation by grace through faith does not denigrate the law, but underscores its true importance: 1) by providing a payment for the penalty of death, which the law required for failing to keep it; 2) by fulfilling the law’s original purpose, which is to serve as a tutor to show mankind’s utter inability to obey God’s righteous demands and to drive people to Christ and 3) by giving believers the capacity to obey it.

The entrance to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is surprisingly low and decidedly inconvenient. There used to be a large entrance but the nobility rode into the church on their horses. The authorities decided that church was no place for horseback heroics and that a low entrance that brought everyone down to the same level was far more appropriate. Only those who will, by faith, accept justification from the hand of a just God who made it all possible will enjoy its eternal benefits. Receiving something you could never earn and do not deserve is grounds for humility, not arrogance. Gratitude, not boasting, is the language of the redeemed.

(An audio version of this post can be found by clicking this link: Romans 3 verses 21-31 Righteousness, the Law and God’s Grace)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013, p. 1548)
2. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1982, pp. 85-94)
3. Stanley, C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
4. MacArthur, J.F. Jr.: The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2006)
5. The Rev. Edward Markquart, “The Penalty is too Great for me to Pay.” Retrieved from www.sermonsfromseattle.com

As humans, we have a built-in desire to disobey God. We got it from our parents and they got it from their parents, and we all inherited this desire from Adam. This is why sins don’t make us sinners. We sin because we are sinners!

Scripture is brutally honest about the sinful condition of humanity. Nobody is righteous, and no one fully reflects the image and glory of God. Paul elaborates in Romans 3:12-16 that humanity has become absolutely worthless, deceitful, poisonous, cursing, bitter, barbaric and brutal. Only through God’s law do we become aware of the reality of sin’s presence in our lives, and our inability to fulfill all the righteous requirements of the law. Paul writes, in Romans 3:19-20, “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 God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin”.

There is always a danger that when we try to make a point we emphasize one aspect of the truth at the expense of another. Politicians are good examples of this art form, especially in election years! Paul was sensitive to this possibility as shown by his question in Romans 3:1. He argued that the special status of the Jews, the law God gave them as His unique word and the rite of the covenant all had deep significance in spite of the fact that the Jews misread these signs.

God blessed the Jews by making them the custodians of His special revelation, a privilege that had been given to no other nation. Has any gift been as overlooked by humankind and taken for granted by the church as much as the availability of the Scriptures? The religious Jews had been entrusted with the truth but refused to be changed by it. Paul anticipated their accusation that he said God had abandoned them, that they are no longer his chosen, privileged people.

Privilege, to be rightly handled, must be correctly perceived. For example, the British showed so much affection for Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother that they took most people by surprise. Many commentators pointed to the Queen Mother’s attitude toward her position. She saw her privileged position as a platform for service. Her commitment could be measured by the fact that she had not missed a single engagement through illness for many years. Religious people must always wrestle with the possibility they might misunderstand or misapply their privileges, either by disregarding the importance of the privilege or by exaggerating their own importance.

To answer the Jews, Paul used the words of King David. When David committed adultery and had Uriah murdered, God sent the prophet Nathan to confront him. When Nathan accused David of being guilty of sin, David knew it was God speaking through the prophet. Rather than deny the sin and make it seem as though God was a liar, David confessed.  David said he had done wrong in God’s sight-that is, he agreed with God. David wrote in Psalm 51:4, “That You may be justified in Your words, and may overcome when You are judged.” Paul wanted the Jews to know God is faithful both when He rewards people and when He judges them.

Paul expected the Jews’ retort: because their unfaithfulness highlighted and magnified God’s faithfulness, they shouldn’t be judged. People can be creative when rationalizing what is clearly a sin. The Jews should have learned from the words of Genesis 18:25: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” God is just and will exercise justice even when it means judging His chosen people. He does not need Israel to sin to display His righteousness. It is dependent on nothing outside Himself.

The phrase “Let us do evil that good may come” is called Antinomianism, which means those who are released by grace may reject the law. But the end does not justify the means when the means are sinful, evil, or unrighteous. Paul’s brutal exposure of Jewish or religious sin, which followed his equally straightforward treatment of pagan sin, was to show the guilt of humanity before God and introduce them to the only answer to human guilt-the gospel of Christ.

In Romans 3:9-18, Paul asks if there are really any material differences between Jews and Gentiles. The answer he gave was “no.” Both groups are under sin. The awful togetherness of the human race that takes precedence over every other similarity or dissimilarity is that before God we are all exposed in our sinfulness.

God’s righteousness is the central theme of the Letter to the Romans. God’s righteousness has to do with His always being in the right and therefore always doing what is right because He is the only criteria for righteousness. Righteousness is found only in God’s character, and all other standards of righteousness must be determined with reference to Him. Not even one person can earn righteous standing in God’s eyes. All humanity-Jew and Gentile alike-is incapable of doing what is right on its own.

It is against this definition of righteousness that the charge “there is none righteous” in Romans 3:10 is made and can be justified. Paul did not make up this charge. It is not a product of his disenchantment with the human race. He supported his position with quotations from Psalms and Isaiah. They destroy any hope people might have apart from God. The charge is as old as God’s dealings with mankind, and man’s resentment and resistance to the charge are just as old.

It is a mistake to call any non-Christian “a seeker.” It is not within the character of the natural man (one who is not regenerate) to seek after God. But the Holy Spirit’s omnipotence means that no work of His may be thwarted, so those He stirs to seek, He will save.

Some people who opposed Paul claimed that his teaching on grace was the same as saying, “I’m saved anyway, so I might as well sin. God’s grace will take care of it.” Paul condemned this distortion of grace. When people turn aside to go their own way instead of repenting, they go further astray in the process. Every aspect of man has been twisted and corrupted by the original sin of Adam and Eve. People are corrupt and corrupting. Romans 3:18 summarizes the corruption by affirming that fallen people have no fear of God, and so live contrary to His character and will.

In human depravity, people use limbs and organs to harm others and express rebellion against God by death, destruction and division. The extent of the depravity is such that even though it can’t understand God of itself, it can still recognize its own shortcomings and may even be capable of identifying them as spiritual. Man does not have a natural inclination to go looking to God to fill the void. In the same way that a car with a twisted axle will have wheels out of alignment giving it a tendency to go offline, so man with his sin-filled mind and will has a natural tendency to move from the path of God’s choosing. The human race has a tendency to evil and a bias to disobedience. Paul says that without exception there is no human being who has produced a life characterized by undeviating commitment to righteousness and unadulterated goodness.

Paul uses the human voice to illustrate human sinfulness. Romans 3:13 states that “the throat is an open tomb.” If we stop and think for a moment, we will realize that the obscenity and vulgarity that is seen in society today allows those who hear it to see that Paul’s statement is painfully true. For example, the asp, or Egyptian cobra, has a small sac of deadly poison in its mouth which can have a devastating effect on its victim. Paul’s use of the phrase “the poison of asps is under their lips” in Romans 3:13 describes the destructive capabilities of words spoken from a sinful heart. James 3:8 states similar sentiments: “But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.”

When a person’s mouth is full of coarse language, it shows the lengths a person will go to remove from his path all obstacles that threaten the advancement of his own designs and the selfish development of his or her personality. The word “curse” in New Testament times was not so much a swear word as we would think of it. It meant the use of words which of themselves held the power to cause the effect of their sin.

Sin is responsible not only for the presence of evil forces but also the absence of the forces of good. Man can’t grasp the real meaning of peace. He doesn’t know where it can be found. The result is confusion in his efforts to find peace and live in the good of it.

Everyone is without excuse before God, under accusation with no possibility of defense, condemned because of both open, rebellious and private, secret sins. They are guilty because of what they do, say, and are. People can only act within the confines of their character, and without the regeneration of the Spirit, it is not possible for them to live without sin.

The dying thief on the cross could not believe that his crucified partner in crime was still blaspheming God even on the threshold of death. In Luke 23:40 the dying thief states, “Do you not fear God, since we are under the same condemnation?” He was on the cross because he had never feared God! To fear God and keep that fear before the eyes means to respect God for who He is and to constantly keep that knowledge of Him before us in all activities of life. Failure to keep the majesty, grace, and judgment of God in minds can lead us into all kinds of wrong objectives and false viewpoints.

(An audio version of this post can be found by clicking this link: Romans 3 verses 1-20 The Sinful Nature of Mankind)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; pp. 1546-1548)
2. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1982, pp. 71-84)
3. Stanley, C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
4. MacArthur, J.F. Jr.: The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2006)
5. Lucado, M: The Lucado Life Lessons Study Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson; 2010; pp. 1558-1560)
6. Dr. Jack Graham, “Rebelling Against God.” Retrieved from jgraham@powerpoint.org
7. “He Gave Us His Righteousness.” Retrieved from ltcommunications@livingtruth.ca

As a result of the tragedies that had befallen their nation, the Jews had been dispersed from their homeland in every direction. Thus, wherever Rome and Greece ruled supreme, Jews lived, too. Industrious, proud, and different, they had stubbornly refused to be assimilated into the cultural patterns dictated by Rome and Greece. They were respected without being appreciated because of their fierce rejection of the cultural norms of their day. They preserved their distinction by differences in dress, diet and behaviour which neither the might of Rome nor the scorn of Greece could erase. Despite the evidence of grandeur, they were not moved by the accomplishments of other people. They were convinced that they were the chosen people and all others were heathens. They did not like the ornate temples and their associations with pagan worship. The Jews worshipped the one true God who was far removed from these excesses. They were not impressed by the secular Roman empire because they looked forward to the day when the Messiah would establish the real kingdom that would restore the people of Israel to their rightful place among the nations.

The Jews had a sense of pride stemming from these privileges, and these privileges produced an attitude of superiority which, while understandable, had led to the Gentiles becoming antagonistic toward God and the Jews becoming unrealistic in their self-evaluation. Seeing the hypocrisy in the legalistic yet evil ways of the Jews, the Gentiles reviled God and His Word. The superior view that the Jews had of themselves, especially the Pharisees, often led to a false sense of their own importance. They professed to be more than they were. They overlooked the glaring inadequacies of their own performance and lived in self-induced blindness to their own inconsistencies.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Paul made a scathing denunciation of Gentile society. He learned this attitude from his mother, and it was refined at the feet of Gamaliel. What is surprising is the attitude he had toward his own people-the Jews. He said that the Gentiles suppressed the truth in unrighteousness-the truth available to them by observation and interpretation of the world around them. On the other hand, the Jews had a much fuller knowledge of God available to them, which they recognized and in which they took considerable pride. They failed to apply this knowledge to their lives, and that was their sin.

In the law, God revealed great details of His own nature, His expectations for human behaviour, and the basic requirements for a healthy society. That meant that the Jews were second to none in their ability to know God and His will. They were equipped to evaluate things in terms of God’s estimation and compare things in the light of His absolute standards. These capabilities were available to them and not to other people.

To avoid the possibility that the seriousness of his statements might be hidden in a sea of generalities, Paul pointed out four particulars from the law given to Moses. Paul spoke of honouring God and hating idols, stealing, and committing adultery. The orthodoxy of Jewish teachings on these subjects was not in question, but the practical obedience to the teaching by some of the Jewish teachers was very much open to question.

Knowing God’s will is not the same as discerning a specific decision or path. To know His will refers to a revelation in Scripture that is agreeable to Him, what He requires us to do, what he commands, what He prohibits, what He approved and what He rewards. The Jews inherited this treasure trove of truth through their covenant relationship with God, yet they were blind to the promises being fulfilled before their very eyes. Because they possessed the law, the Jews were confident that they were spiritually superior teachers; guides to blind pagans, light, wise in God’s ways, and able to teach the immature (probably a reference to Gentile converts to Judaism). The Jews were to be spiritual guides to the nations, but Jesus  told them that they themselves were blind. He called them blind guides in Matthew 23:24 and blind leaders of the blind in Matthew 15:14.

The Jews did not realize that they needed to become like children themselves to learn what was important to teach the spiritually immature. The word “form” means “a basic outline or sketch.” The law was true, but only a symbolic image of knowledge and truth with little or no substance. A flagrant inconsistency existed between the Jews’ profession and their practice. The Jews were privileged to possess the law, all of God’s revelation in the Old Testament. The Jews had the truth; the problem was what they did or didn’t do with it. The Jews were confident they were right with God because they practiced the rituals or liturgies of their faith. Using the Old Testament, Paul showed them that rituals were no longer sufficient to commend one to God.

God instituted the rite of circumcision as a sign of His covenant with Abraham and his descendants, the Jews. Romans 4:11 affirms that Abraham’s circumcision was also a real sign of the righteousness he acquired by faith in God’s promises. The essence of the covenant with the Jews was “I will be their God,” and from the perspective of the Jews, the proper response was to submit to circumcision as a sign and seal of their acceptance of God’s mastery over their lives and their expectation that He would be as good as His word.

Paul used the ritual of circumcision to demonstrate the truth that only Jesus Christ can save us. Paul wrote, “In [Christ] all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.” Paul was convinced that the sign lost its significance to many of his fellow Jews and the rite was completely devoid of reality. Paul mentioned that if the circumcised could be lumped in with the uncircumcised because of the lack of reality in their relationship to God, those outside the Jewish fold, the uncircumcised, could rightfully be regarded as members of the covenant if they had a valid heart commitment to God.

The idea that the rite of circumcision does not make a man a Jew is not new. It is as old as the law and the prophets. Deuteronomy 10:16 and Jeremiah 4:4 tell us to “circumcise the foreskin of your heart and be stiff-necked no longer.” In the New Testament, the idea of inward circumcision illustrates the reality of the Christian experience. Colossians 2: 11 states that “in Him (Christ) you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ.”

In God’s covenant with Abraham, every male baby in a Jewish home was to be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth, and every male who joined a Jewish family was also to be circumcised. Circumcision was the sign of identifying with the Jewish people and the covenant God made with Abraham.

But the external act of circumcision has never made a person right with God–that’s an interior issue. Paul said in Romans 2:28–29, “He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter.” Paul was saying, “Being Jewish does not mean you’re in a right relationship with God.” The Jew could claim that he belonged to God because of having been circumcised, but that was only true if the Jew kept the law. However, if the Jew broke the law, in the eyes of God it was as though that man had never been circumcised. 

The way we’re saved is not by being physically related to Abraham but by being spiritually related to Abraham. There is only one way to be saved, and it’s through faith in Christ. That’s what Jesus said, and He was a Jew. Being a physical descendant of Abraham is not enough; being externally circumcised is not enough. Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me”

There are many people today who, like the Jews of Paul’s day, have an excess of religion that borders on superstition. They gladly engage in rituals and avidly adhere to church rules and regulations regarding signs and symbols without resting in the One to whom the rite points or committing themselves to the One whom the sign signifies.

Rituals and regulations are powerless to save us. Only Jesus Christ can set us free from the power and consequences of sin. Outward ceremonial acts only have value if they are indicative of a dynamic, personally transformative, scriptural, spiritual experience. People today tend to count such things as church membership, baptismal records, and denominational affiliation as proof of their Christianity, but outward signs have meaning only if one is committed to Christ.

Unbelievers are watching both us and our conduct. God wants what they see to attract them into His kingdom, but when we disobey God and act foolishly, the opposite often happens. People who mock the clear teaching of God’s Word cancel everything a ritual stands for, but a person whose heart is right with God, yet has never practiced a ritual, is fulfilling that ritual’s purpose.

(An audio version of this message can be found by clicking this link: Romans 2 verses 17-29 Knowing God’s WIll Versus Doing God’s Will)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; p. 1546)
2. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1982; pp. 64-71)
3. Stanley, C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
4. MacArthur, J.F., Jr.: The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2006)
5. Dr. Robert Jeffress, “Circumcision of the Heart.” Retrieved from drrobertjeffress@ptv.org

In Romans 2:1-16 Paul is “speaking” to an imaginary Jewish scholar who appreciated the indictment against the Gentiles in Romans 1. Religious moralists are indignant at and critical of other people’s shortcomings and indulgent of their own, but judging others is evidence that they themselves might be judged. God’s judgment is a fact of human existence that must be reckoned with if people want to escape the realm of fantasy and live in the real world. The assumption that “God would never condemn anybody” is so common today that Paul’s approach to the subject of divine judgment is largely rejected. Those who reject the concept rarely consider the alternative.

Like a boy who makes a measuring stick his own height, declares it to be equal to six feet, and then announces that he, too, is six feet tall, people fail when they invent a standard they apply only to themselves. God’s righteous standard of integrity and truth is the only standard for judgment. When people measure their own Christ-likeness against others, they use the wrong standard.

Any man can observe external actions and maybe even rightly evaluate the inner motives, but only God can be relied upon rightly to judge the innermost being of both the uninhibited pagan and the disciplined moralist hidden behind a mask of fake piety. We must remember that God’s standards are much higher than human standards. When people hypocritically and selfishly seek their own justification, the results are wrath (the consistent, purposeful response of God to unrighteousness), indignation (anger that rushes along vehemently), tribulation (extreme pressure) and anguish (a narrow place, confinement and construction).

God judges Jews and Gentiles alike-impartially and righteously-on the basis of their levels of understanding.

The Gentiles who never had the chance to know God’s moral law will be judged on their disobedience to their limited knowledge. The Jews and many Gentiles who had access to God’s moral law will be accountable for their greater knowledge. Humans have a warning system that is activated when they choose to ignore or disobey God’s law. Paul urges believers not to violate their own consciences or cause others to do so because repeatedly ignoring the conscience’s warnings desensitizes it and eventually silences it.

There is a story of a man who came to a minister and said, “Pastor, you just don’t have it any more.  When I first heard you preach, I trembled with fear, but now you speak and it doesn’t bother me in the least.”   The difference:  a seared conscience which no longer speaks.

People often think that they are exempt from God’s judgment because they have not taken part in the immoral excesses listed in Romans 1. They are tragically mistaken. They have more knowledge than immoral people, and thus greater accountability. In the condemnation of others they have excused and overlooked their own sins. Self-righteousness exists because of two deadly mistakes:

1. Minimizing God’s moral standards, usually by emphasizing externals.
2. Underestimating the depth of one’s own sinfulness.

While no one seriously thinks he or she can escape detection by God or resist arrest when death comes to get him or her, and while no one would expect to be able to hire lawyers who could find loopholes in God’s laws or even get him or her off on a technicality, people still think they can escape God’s wrath. The religious Jews of Paul’s day thought that there was one rule for them and a different rule for the Gentiles. Paul announced the painful truth that all people-Jew and Greek-can expect the judgment of God. No one will escape God’s wrath.

It’s time we stop thinking primarily about others and begin to think about and examine ourselves. Even we who are saved may be guilty of hypocrisy. It is foolish to say, “Faults in others I can see, but praise the Lord, there are none in me.” We tend to want to measure ourselves by other people. We want to play the comparison game. The problem is that God measures us by the perfect standard: Himself.

The word hypocrite means play actor. In past times, actors would put on disguises. If they were supposed to be happy, rather than merely acting happy, they would put on a happy face, a disguise. If they were to be sad, they’d put on a sad face. If they were to be fierce, they’d put on a fierce face. They wore masks. Jesus essentially said, “In the religious world, there are some who are hypocrites—they are actors who are wearing disguises,” but Paul said “the judgment of God is according to truth.” God is going to pull off the mask; there will be no disguise. The standard will not be profession, pretension, or performance. Truth is the standard.

There are people who, lacking privilege, rise above the lack of privilege. Paul speaks of the Gentiles who were never given the privilege of having God’s Law, but who had such sensitivity to what they knew of God that their consciences were keen and alert and in touch with reality. God’s judgment has no place for favouritism or exceptions. It is based strictly on the response of the individual to the knowledge of truth that has been made available. In other words, the more privilege a person has, the more responsibility he or she holds.

Moralists have advantages in God’s goodness. His goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering give them opportunity to repent. Salvation is a work of God from start to finish. Even our repentance demonstrates the Spirit of God at work in people’s hearts. People repent because of the goodness of God, not because of the goodness of their hearts. God’s delay in exercising judgment shows His saving character so people might come to Him and receive salvation that is spiritual and eternal. To reject God’s offer of forgiveness and cling to one’s own sin is to earn more of God’s wrath and a more severe judgment.

Some people have misunderstood the absence of a full demonstration of God’s judgment. They see it as either evidence that God does not judge or that the judgment is not severe and can be disregarded. Paul insists that the true reason for the delay in the dawn of the day of wrath is God’s goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering.

When humans realize that God is tolerating sin a little longer out of kindness and not weakness and is withholding His holy judgment on sin out of determination, not irresolution, mankind is supposed to be grateful and demonstrate the gratitude in turning from sin. Unfortunately this is not the case. Man hates the kindness and uses the freedom for more sin. Instead of a warm, generous response to the gracious goodness and generosity of God, man has shown hardness and an unrepentant heart, from which more sin has flourished.

Paul explains how the judgment of God is related to the deeds of man in Romans 2:1-6. He teaches that a man will be judged on his works and that his works are related to his motivations. This is seen by some people as a contradiction to the message of the rest of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, namely, that man is justified by faith, not works. This contradiction is more apparent than real.

There are those who place their own desires before the commands of God. They regard their own pleasure as more important than the needs of others. Their lives are sad stories of one evil deed after another. These deeds are evil because they are contrary to God’s law. They are evil because they elevate the people to the central place in the universe that belongs to God. They are evil in that they despise and ignore the people God created and loves. They are evil in that they are contrary to human well-being and destructive of God’s handiwork. They are evil because they reject truth and embrace unrighteousness.

Some people have the idea that if they’re not having any problems, they’re right with God. If they’re healthy, if their bank account is up, if they have no problems, evidently God loves them, and everything is fine. They don’t need to repent—look at all those blessings. The blessings of God don’t mean you’re right with God. God gives you blessings to bring you to Him. It doesn’t mean you don’t need repentance. The goodness of God leads to repentance.

As a matter of fact, the goodness of God only makes your judgment more severe if you deny your dependence on Him. If you’re being blessed now, let me beg you to come to the Lord Jesus Christ. Don’t get the idea that God’s goodness is an invitation to sin more, because the greater the blessings, the greater the judgment. And I want to remind you that Sodom and Gomorrah were at an all-time high when the fire and brimstone fell. The Bible says one of the marks of Sodom was that the people not only committed abominations but also had fullness of bread and idleness. In other words, there was so much prosperity that people didn’t even have to work. But the goodness of God did not lead them to repentance.

Paul includes two very important details of the final judgment. First, it will be a judgment of the secrets of men. External deeds are seen in their true light only when the secret motivations are known. Conversely, the hidden secrets of men often become visible through their actions, particularly in unguarded moments or pressure situations. Deeds done in secret will be judged in the light of the Day of Judgment.

Second, the Day of Judgment will be “in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to his gospel.”  Anyone who has a picture of Christ which does not include Him as Judge of the earth is operating under a serious misunderstanding of the true identity of Jesus. Jesus as Judge is a strange concept to many people. This should not be strange because Jesus repeatedly announced His own Judgeship during the days of His ministry. It is foolish to pretend before God or try to get anything past Him.

(An audio version of this post can be found by clicking this link: Romans 2 verses 1-16 Don’t Judge Others, Because You Will Be Judged)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; pp. 1545-1546)
2. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1982; pp. 55-63)
3. Stanley, C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
4. MacArthur, J.F. Jr.: The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2006)
5. Adrian Rogers, “Are You Living in Hypocrisy?” Retrieved from devotions@lwf.org
6. Adrian Rogers, “God’s Goodness Leads Us to Repentance.” Retrieved from devotions@lwf.org
7. Dr. Harold Sala, “Is the Bible Relevant Today?” Retrieved from info@guidelines.org

The righteousness of God is the theme of Paul’s letter to the Romans. The fact that God is always in the right is both a challenge and a comfort. Mankind must realize that the rightness of human action is determined not by the moral standards of society but by the unchanging revelation of an eternal God. The closer mankind gets to the righteousness of God, the more uncomfortable he becomes about his own unrighteousness. The gospel realizes this and shows mankind how to become righteous before God.

People who have not heard about Christ will not be judged for rejecting Him, but the charges against them for rejecting the revelation given them through their conscience and creation will stand. God reveals himself in creation. Psalm 19:1 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork.” No one can miss the evidence of God’s creative sovereignty.

Anyone can freely reject God despite the testimony of creation and conscience, and apart from the work of the Spirit regenerating hearts, many do. People reject God in seven ways: through irreligion, ingratitude, intellectualism, ignorance, idolatry, immorality, and inversion. God puts in everyone’s heart an inner witness to a source of right and wrong, a greater power to whom they are accountable.

In the context of Romans 1:22, the word “fool” means someone who has heard the truth about God and deliberately rejected it. How can a loving God give people up to the evils they choose? He gives them up only after an adequate revelation of His being. He does not cause anyone’s demise; the natural law of consequences does. He cannot abide in the presence of sin, which is why He abandoned His own Son at Calvary as Christ bore the sins of the world.

Idolatry is a downward spiral. People know God but fail to glorify Him. They change the truth of God into a lie and reject any knowledge of Him. Then people worship whatever they want. Paul’s doxology reminds readers that dishonorable acts do not detract from the Creator, who is blessed forever.

With words that can be characterized by character, conduct, conversation, concepts, and companionship, Paul describes the shameful human behaviour that causes God to give people over to their sinfulness. Rejecting God and His standards ultimately leads to inverting and reversing His created order. There is no clearer New Testament reference to the sin of homosexual conduct than Romans 1:26-27. Yet no sin or consequence lies beyond God’s grace and forgiveness.

God’s wrath is not the same as human anger. It does not contain uncontrolled passion, unreasonable outbursts, or self-vindication that are part of human anger. God’s wrath is a right response to the unholy, a just reaction to the unjust, a pure rejection of the impure. It would be wrong for God not to express His wrath at much of what goes on in our world.

Paul argues that mankind has suppressed the truth that is uncomfortably clear. There is a chilling severity about the bad news of God’s revelation of Himself that was so callously rejected by man, that God’s righteous anger at such behaviour has been revealed and that, try as he may to avoid the situation, man does not have any excuse. Man has always felt that he is the centre of everything and everything revolves around him. To be told otherwise presents man with a problem. Man doesn’t want to know that God, not mankind, is the centre of everything.

Even the most primitive man has the knowledge of God available to him. That should lead to an attitude of glorifying and thanking God. Humanity would ideally be so sensitive to all that it is learning of God that it would make the change from knowledge to response. Unfortunately the reality is that man chooses not to respond adequately and accounts for his actions by stressing his inadequate knowledge in contrast to God’s assertion that the problem is inadequate response. This has led to a void that can’t stay empty. Into this void has poured all manner of evil.

God expresses His wrath not by sending fire and brimstone, but by doing something more subtle and more appalling. He gave man the absolute right to choose his own course of action and then gave him the perfect freedom to live with the consequences. They will see that not having a knowledge of God destroys lives.

Man has totally reversed the divine order by making God in his own image after his own likeness and then, to add insult to injury, has stooped to the point of making God in the image of the lower levels of creation. God clearly states in Exodus 20:3-5 that man shall not have any other gods before Him, but God’s people have been more influenced by the evil of their neighbours than by God’s commands.

The first creature that people substitute God for is themselves. All idolatry comes down to people worshipping themselves. They want to be in control. If they can make a god in their image and call their own shots, they are happy. They put themselves in the place of God.

Those who reject what they know of God divorce themselves from truth and reality. A person out of touch with the reality of God is out of touch with reality, including the truth about humanity. To be out of touch with the meaning of humanity means a crisis of identity which is demonstrated in many ways, including confusion about sexuality.

Many people today profess their faith in Jesus but cling to certain things or hopes as though these things are the true objects of their devotion. These things can be money, alcohol, drugs, sex, wild parties, and so on. These are what many Christians look to or aspire to as most important in their lives. We want Jesus and the forgiveness and eternal life He offers, but we do not look to Him as the source of peace and joy, except in the most abstract way. The happiness we seek comes from our stuff and our circumstances.

Paul is troubled by both the absence of repentance and the presence of celebration. Instead of being overwhelmed with a sense of failure and responsibility, a carnival air of casual enjoyment prevails in society. Instead of acting as guardians of each other’s souls, people encourage each other’s destruction. Where mourning might be expected, rejoicing is seen. Instead of wholesome disapproval of sin, there is a wholesale approval of unrighteousness.

God reveals His wrath in two ways:

1. Indirectly, through the natural consequences of violating His universal moral law.
2. Directly, through His personal intervention from the punishment given to Adam and Eve to the worldwide flood, from the fire and brimstone that leveled Sodom to the Babylonian captivity.

God holds men responsible for their refusal to acknowledge what He has shown them of Himself in creation.

The Bible states in several different passages that man’s chief aim is to glorify God. To glorify Him is to honour Him, to acknowledge His attributes, and to praise Him for His perfections. It is to recognize His glory and praise Him for it. Failing to glorify Him is man’s greatest affront to the Creator. People need to hear the truth of God’s Word. It is this truth that will set us free according to Jesus.

The darkened heart is like a spooky basement at the bottom of stairs that get darker with each step downward. The first step is ingratitude, where we enjoy God’s gifts but fail to thank Him, like the nine lepers who failed to thank Jesus when He healed them. The next step is deception that leads us to ignore the light of God and His truth. The next step is the darkest one of all-idolatry. It is here where we enter the world of unbelief, worshipping whatever we think will give us some light.

The Gospel is a powerful message, but as long as we feel ashamed of the Gospel, as long as we cower in fear instead of speaking boldly, as long as we live like those in darkness, we will never make an impact for God-and we will never fulfill Jesus’ Great Commission to go into the world and preach the Good News of salvation to a world that desperately needs to hear it.

(An audio version of this message can be found by clicking this link: Romans 1 verses 18-32 Man’s Unrighteousness Versus God’s Righteousness)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; pp. 1543-1545)
2. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1982; pp. 36-51)
3. Stanley, C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
4. MacArthur, J.F. Jr.: The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2006)
5. T.M. Moore, “Wrong Belief, Right Belief.” Retrieved form no-reply@ailbe.org
6. Dr. Ed Young, “The Spooky Basement.” Retrieved from ministry@willingwalk.org
7. Dr. Ed Young, “Beachball Truth.” Retrieved from ministry@winningwalk.org
8. Greg Laurie, “In Our Own Image.” Retrieved from greglaurie@harventdirect.org
9. Michael Yousef, Ph.D., “Transforming Power.” Retrieved from web@ltw.org

Men of achievement are usually men of special attitudes. They achieved what they did because they believed deeply in what they were doing and thought uniquely about the lives they were living. Paul was such a man. Without him, the message of the risen Christ would likely have found its place among the little known legends of the Middle East.

While Romans contains the good news of salvation and sanctification based on the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, Paul begins with the bad news: all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Only by agreeing with the bad news does the good news become life and light to the lost.

Romans is a book of practical exhortation. The good news of Jesus Christ is more than facts to be believed. It is also a life to be lived-a life of righteousness befitting those who have been justified freely by God’s grace-through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Letters of everlasting value flowed from the mind and pen of Paul. They have been the basis for preaching and teaching in the Christian Church throughout the centuries. Where the letters of Paul have been taught, cultures have changed. Where churches have taught the Christian lifestyle as explained by Paul, they have left an imprint on society. Our lives have been touched by both Paul and the Son of God.

The three expressions of the gospel are found in Romans:

1. “The gospel of God” indicates its source
2. “The gospel of Christ” indicates its subject
3. “My gospel” indicates its servant, Paul

The word “bondservant” is one of two words used for slaves. It describes the lowest class of slaves, whose strength, time, and commitment belonged to another-in Paul’s case, The Lord Jesus. His relationship is equivalent to the “servant of the Lord” relationship experienced by Moses in Deuteronomy 24:5, Joshua in Joshua 24:9 and David in Psalms 18 and 36. Apprenticeship was not a product of Paul’s own ambition but of God’s grace operating through him. Paul does not view himself as a great theologian or prophet but as God’s servant. Are we bondservants of Jesus Christ? As Christians we are to submit to Christ and to each other.

Paul says that humanity failed so miserably that God sent His Son to live on planet earth, and that as the result of His death, God puts to our account the righteousness of Christ so that the sin which separated us from God is removed and God accepts us-forgiven, cleansed, and transformed into men and women whose lives have been changed by the gospel.

Paul’s message had been promised before through God’s prophets. The gospel is deeply rooted in the Old Testament, summarized by a well-known maxim: “The New is in the Old concealed, the Old is by the New revealed.” This means the Old Testament points to Christ.

Paul stated in Romans 1:4 that Christ was declared to be the Son of God, and the word “declared” meant not only that a declaration was made about His deity but that certain things happened which clearly established His deity. His position as Son of God was established with power according to the Spirit of holiness and by the resurrection from the dead. It was in the resurrection from the dead that both the power and the Spirit were seen to greatest effect in His experience. Man had done his worst and taken Christ into death on a cross and a tomb, but God intervened and did His best.

Believers are to see each other in a new way-as a new creation-because they identify with Christ. Paul developed this idea in Romans. While death decisively ends life according to the flesh (mortality), the power of the resurrection generates new life. This resurrection power also generates a new way of holy living now. Believers have died and risen with Christ so that they might be transformed in their daily habits. The Holy Spirit that raised Jesus lives in believers to replicate the life of the risen Christ in and through them. Obedience to the faith does not imply that salvation results from our deeds but that it flows as a result of the faith that saves. People do not obey to be saved; they obey because they have been saved.

Had Christ not been of the human lineage or seed of David, He could not have been the Messiah. To recognize anything less than His complete deity and complete humanity would discount Him as the Son of God and as potential Redeemer. There could be no gospel without the singular person of Jesus Christ possessing these two complete natures.

The word “called” means those who have heard the call of Christ, obeyed, and been saved. This applies to all believers. Paul, like them, was “called of Jesus Christ”, but the people were called to be saints. They shared a common calling, acknowledged a common Lord, and knew something of the privilege of being set apart for a special task or set apart to be a special people. God calls us to salvation, sanctification, and service.

The word “beloved” is reserved for those in Christ and appears five times in Romans. The word “saint” means “one set apart.” People are saints because of God’s love and call, not exemplary behaviour. Paul greets the church at Rome with the cause (grace) and effect (peace) of life in Christ. In the worldly environment of Rome, believers were to stand in God’s grace and peace. Grace gives us the desire and the power to obey God, not the right and safety to disobey.

Paul expressed a desire that grace and peace should be the experience of his readers. When he used these terms he invested the traditional with spiritual content because he really wanted his readers to experience God’s grace through the exercise of the spiritual gifts in the fellowship. The exercise of these gifts was to take place with the objective that they would be established or strengthened,

Paul’s prayers are intense-“God is my witness;” intimate-“serve” usually refers to some sort of religious service, including worship; incessant-“without ceasing…..always” and intercessory-“make mention of you.”

Paul’s prayers of thanksgiving and intercession are bound up in each other in a number of Paul’s letters. The praise for what had been accomplished often led to petition that more would be done, while sometimes the deep longings for blessing expressed in intercession were of necessity mixed with glad outbursts of praise for blessing received.

While the word “gift” is the same Greek word as in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12, here it is used in the general sense of “blessing”, probably referring to Paul’s preaching. The Romans’ faith was famous but not firm; it needed to be established.

In Romans 1:14, Paul reveals the secret behind his passion: he considers himself under obligation to preach the gospel to people of all races and ethnicities, cultured or crude, intellectual or ignorant. Like Paul, those who know the truth in Christ are debtors to everyone who does not.

The word “gospel” is the translation of two Greek words that together mean “message” and “well” or “good.”  It is a “good message” for whoever believes, calls, and thirsts. Paul felt that God revealed the gospel to him not so much for his own benefit as for the benefit of the Gentiles. Paul was indebted to God for His grace and to people because his ministry meant that he was never free to feel that his work was done.

Paul was not ashamed of the gospel. The message was one of the power of God for salvation. In his travels Paul saw God’s power at work through the gospel. It made every conceivable type of person safe and sound. The message of the gospel is powerful because God has anointed that simple message with his power to change lives. When a person trusts in what God has done for them through Jesus Christ, God enters into their lives and they are never the same.

The word “righteousness” appears in various forms more than 50 times in Romans. Paul learned this great truth-“the just shall live by faith”-from Habakkuk 2:4. Salvation only works by faith, which is itself a gift from God. Rightly understood, the truths in Romans can revive right thinking and result in right living.

God is not bound by what is possible for us. He has all power and is able to work in whatever way is needed to accomplish His purpose. The seas can part, the sun can stand still, the barren can have children and the overwhelming enemies can be defeated.

(An audio version of this message can be found by clicking this link: Romans 1 verses 1-17 The Power of the Good News)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; p. 1542)
2. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1982; pp 20-35)
3. Stanley, C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
4. Elizabeth Shively, “Commentary on Romans 1:1-7.” Retrieved from www.workingpreacher.org
5. Charles Stanely, “Called by God.” Retrieved from no-reply@intouch.org
6. Dr. Harold Sala, “Does Faith Have Power?” Retrieved from info@guidelines.org
7. Dr. Paul Chappell, “The Power of the Gospel.” Retrieved from daily@dailyintheword.org

Many of you are at least familiar with dysfunctional families if you don’t know one personally. Genesis 25:19-34 is a story of one dysfunctional family-the story of Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob and Esau. The genealogy of Isaac is the focus of the narrative, so the story follows the lives of Isaac and Rebekah’s two sons, Esau and Jacob. This is the family of promise-a promise that was not fulfilled. Isaac loved Rebekah very much, but she was barren. Isaac prayed to God for a child, and Rebecca conceived.

This story should be treated with reverence because it shows that God is aware of, and concerned about, and involved in, the very existence of those yet unborn. The children were struggling with each other before they were born, and this was a preview of the way they would behave toward each other throughout their lives. Jacob’s name, which described his holding of his twin’s foot at birth, while it was related to the idea of God being at our heels as a guard, came to mean someone who had a tendency to supplant, to trip, or to cheat-which he did later in this passage.

The divine word to Rebekah that the older shall serve the younger not only explained the unusual movements she felt in her womb but also foretold a reversal of patriarchal custom. Esau, the firstborn, would have expected to receive both the birthright and the blessing and have the younger serving him. The word “Jacob” means “he who grasps.” His name also foreshadows the discord that these brothers would bring to the family.

God told Rebekah that the severe jostling in her womb was a precursor of the future antagonism between the two nations represented by her two sons. The two sons were very different. Esau was a rugged man and a headstrong hunter who preferred the outdoors. Jacob was a plain man who preferred the comforts of home. Esau was preferred by his father Isaac because Isaac loved the game Esau brought home. Jacob was preferred by his mother, who helped him to trick his father into giving him a blessing. These were the ingredients for conflict and heartache.

As the oldest son, Esau received the family birthright. The birthright included several privileges:

1. Recognition as the oldest son
2. A double portion of the inheritance upon the father’s death
3. Regard as the leader of the family.

After a long day of hunting, Esau arrived home tired and starving. He asked for some of the stew that Jacob was cooking, and when Jacob offered to trade some for Esau’s birthright, Esau gave it up without a second thought. The birthright could be given away or sold, but the older son would lose the latter two aspects of the birthright. Esau’s choice showed how little he valued these spiritual blessings.

How often in life are we the same as Esau? How often do we have a gnawing sense that we have a hole in our lives that needs to be filled? How often do we long to fill that hole with any number of things and experiences both good and bad? No matter how much money we make or what kinds of pursuits we chase after, that hunger for more still eats away at us. Like Esau giving up his birthright for some bread and stew, we sometimes exchange true joy for a temporary thrill, a blessed future for immediate fulfillment. We carelessly toss aside our imperishable spiritual birthright for a consumable, fleeting fantasy.

Esau showed his true colours early in life. He continued to live the way he had started.  He was considered “profane” because he considered filling his empty stomach more important than the spiritual promises of God to Abraham. Jacob, who had more than his fair share of faults, showed in later years a willingness to learn and a readiness to change. The Esaus of our modern world tread a selfish and self-indulgent path to destruction, while the rocky roads of the Jacobs of this world do at least climb higher, leading on to better things. Jacob took advantage of his brother’s physical weakness. He went on to trick his father and took from his brother again. His mother was so afraid for his life that she sent him away to live with his uncle Laban. After many years, and after he humbled himself before God, God eventually reunited him with his brother Esau, who welcomed Jacob with open arms.

Isaac and Rebekah knew God had chosen Jacob to continue the line of God’s promise that had begun with Abraham, continued through Isaac, and would culminate in the birth of the Messiah. In spite of this knowledge, they didn’t train Jacob for his role or to teach him to wait on God’s perfect timing. They didn’t tell Jacob and Esau that God had different plans for each of them-plans they should seek, obey, and rejoice over. Instead of training their children to know and trust God’s revelation, God’s will, and God’s plans, Isaac and Rebekah followed their own emotions-their own feelings and preferences. Thus, Isaac loved Esau, and Rebekah loved Jacob.

Jacob was transformed, and it was necessary. Those who bear God’s name must show a moral and ethical kinship to Him. The object of the divine electing love must learn to be conformed to righteousness. The transformation of character is the work of God’s grace in the lives of His people.

God gives us freedom to choose. God does not make us receptive nor rejects us when we aren’t receptive. Like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we often are not receptive to God’s love. To them and us, God recklessly keeps coming, sowing His Word in us. Gradually we become more receptive. We become more loving. We are blessed and slowly become a blessing for the whole world.

God sides with the powerless, the weak, the younger brother, the barren woman. God sides with Israel, which is represented by Jacob. The people of Israel were a tiny, powerless people who lived in the midst of much stronger nations, including the nation of Edom (which was represented by Esau). This reality became even more evident in the runup to the exile with superpowers who were able to crush a people like Israel without blinking.

This story is a story of redemption. God does things through the lives of the strangest and most awkward of people. We don’t have to be perfect and have everything figured out and in flawless order before God can visit us and bless us. God blessed Isaac and carried out His plans for human redemption through one of the twin boys-Jacob. Jacob became the father of the nation of Israel. Through four women-the sisters Rachel and Leah, and their slaves Bilhah and Zilpah-Jacob fathered twelve sons who became the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel-from whom would come the Christ.

(An audio version of this message can be found by clicking this link: Genesis 25 verses 19-34 God’s Plans for Humanity)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; pp. 37-38)
2. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 1: Genesis (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1987, pp. 206-209)
3. Stanley, C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
4. MacArthur, J.F. Jr.: The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2006)
5. Juliana Classens, “Commentary on Genesis 25:19-24.” Retrieved from www.workingpreacher.org
6. Daniel Clendenin, “Divine Redemption in Our Human Families: Lessons from Jacob and Esau.” Retrieved from www.journeywithjesus.net
7. Laura Bailey, “Cheering Instead of Competing.” Retrieved from ww.crosswalk.com/devotionals/crosswalk-devo/
8. Br. Luke Ditewig, “Wild Love.” Retrieved from www.ssje.org/author/br-luke-ditewig/
9. Michael Youssef, Ph.D., “Greater Than Our Bad Parenting.” Retrieved from web@ltw.org