Sermons From My Heart

One issue surfaces in virtually every one of Paul’s letters: What good is the law? To most of Paul’s audience, the word “law” stands for the huge collection of rules and rituals detailed in the Old Testament. Whenever he starts talking about “the new covenant” or “freedom in Christ,” his Jewish listeners want to know what he thinks about Moses’ Law. Does God still require obedience?

It is not uncommon for believers to be unsure about their relationship to the law. On the one hand, they have learned that they have died to the law, that they are not under law but under grace and that they should live as free people. On the other hand, they hear Paul extoling the virtues of the law, calling it “holy, just, and good” and describing it as “spiritual,” and they feel a little uneasy about disregarding it all together. The dilemma should be resolved when we remember that God’s law reflects the purity of His character and outlines the standards of behavior that He regards as normative. The flaw of the law is that it cannot bring anyone to regeneration, and to die to the law means to die to all efforts to be justified by keeping it. This does not mean, however, that the law is any less true or that God regards it as less important. It still reflects God’s nature and continues to outline His standards and, therefore, is relevant to the believer.

Paul’s new inner self, the new “I,” no longer approved of the sin that was still living in his flesh, like his old self did but rather, strongly disapproved. Many have misconstrued Paul’s comments as abdicating personal responsibility for his sin by embracing a form of Greek dualism. Dualism taught that the body is evil and the spirit is good, so its adherents sinned with impunity by claiming they were not responsible; their sin was entirely the product of their physical bodies, while their spirits remained untouched and unsullied. But the apostle has already acknowledged personal guilt for his sin. His sin does not flow out of his new redeemed innermost self, but from his unredeemed humanness.

The flesh serves as a base camp from which sin operates in the Christian’s life. It is not sinful inherently, but because of its fallenness, it is still subject to sin and is thoroughly contaminated. The law of sin operates in the members of our bodies—that is, our unredeemed and still sinful humanness—waging war against our desire to obey God’s law.

The believer who holds the law of God in high regard will, like Paul, find himself in something of a battle. One part of him will give assent to the goodness of the law, but another part of him will rebel against it. In response to the principles of God outlined in the law, one part of the believer will aspire to great deeds, but another part will pull him back from achieving them. Challenged by the law to be done with lesser things, the believer may resolve to change his ways only to find that, he goes back to do again the things he loathes.

The key to the interpretation and proclamation of this passage is the identification of the “I.”  Theories abound, and much exegetical ink has been spilled.

• The “I” equals Paul’s pre-Christian life, in which he was dissatisfied with God and with legalism; what we have in Romans 7 is essentially Paul’s pre-Christ diary.  Paul himself, however, does not show that dissatisfaction.
• The “I” equals the Christian.  But how does that fit with all of the passages that speak of the believer as free from sin?
• The “I” equals Adam or humanity as determined by Adam.
• The “I” is the sinner (or perhaps Paul himself) viewed from the perspective of one who has been justified.  The now justified person re-evaluates his/her pre-Christ life.
• But finally, perhaps the “I” is at least in part the present-day Christian.  So why did Paul devote so much space to our passage’s concern if the temptation to sin was firmly in the past?  The anguish of our text sounds fresh. In Romans 7:4-6 there is a strong statement of the “already,” but in Romans 7:14-24 Paul details the gravity of the “not yet.”^. For now the believer is caught in-between.

Paul’s normative use of body is positive.  The body is a gift of God, and it is in the body that the believer is called to glorify God as Paul states in 1 Corinthians 6:20. The word “flesh” on the other hand, is the short-hand term Paul uses when he wants to designate a body or life that is being misused, that is, a body that is controlled by Sin.  The positive body in that case has become the negative flesh.  It is important to realize that body and flesh do not usually in Paul mean the same thing.  And that is why nothing good can dwell in the “I’s” flesh.

Stated in the simplest terms, Paul is describing the sad experience of many a person who believes that the principle “thou shalt not commit adultery” is “holy and just and good” but still has a terrible struggle with adulterous thoughts. Or the person who firmly believes that “thou shalt not covet” is a “spiritual” statement and agrees with it wholeheartedly but has great feelings of resentment toward the person appointed to the position she wanted for her husband (and herself!). They both “delight in the law of God according to the inward man,” but, unfortunately, they are discovering that the law which could not bring anyone justification cannot bring anyone sanctification either. The law pointed out sin in the unbeliever to bring them to repentance, and it goes on pointing out “sin that dwells” in the believer in order that they may look for ongoing deliverance.

The picture of the battle of the soul is clearly sketched by Paul as he carefully chooses words with military connotations. He describes sin as “warring” against the law of his mind with the result that he is brought into “captivity.” It is fitting that he continues the theme by using the expression commonly employed by soldiers wounded in battle and in need of help when he writes, “Who will deliver me?” His response to his own query is as powerful as it is brief. “Thank God,” he says, “through Jesus Christ” deliverance from the ongoing power of sin will be experienced. Paul tempers his exultant cry of promised victory with a balanced reminder: the war is not over and the battle will continue, but with the certainty of victory instead of the inevitability of defeat.

All of us can relate to the fierce internal struggle that Paul describes. Until we stand in Jesus’ presence, we will all experience this battle. The only way to win it is by joyfully tapping into the Spirit’s overcoming power. We simply do not have the power by ourselves to do what pleases God. Even the “good things” we do in our own strength make us prideful and dishonoring to God according to Isaiah 64:6.

 It begins to dawn on us that one of the marks of a mature Christian is the awareness of this struggle with evil in our lives. One of the marks of a mature Christian is this honest awareness about who are, honest about this civil war within us. It is to struggle with evil until our dying day. We all struggle. We all say to ourselves, “O wretched person that I am.”

Or perhaps we have outgrown this? Have we become so mature, so holy? Are our lives so together, so we have finally arrived at the point where we say, “We are just fine. We are not like the Apostle Paul?” We say inside, “Wretched are those other people. We have won the battle with our sins; we have conquered our sinful selves and our civil war.”

According to the Apostle Paul, a mark of a mature Christian is that a person continues to struggle with sin until our dying day. This is not a sign of Christian immaturity, not a sign of Christian weakness, not a sign of Christian double mindedness and doubt. This is a mark of a real Christian who lives in a real world and has real feelings inside and real awareness of himself or herself. Yes, we know that we struggle with it.

Sin is responsible for death, not God’s holy law. Sin twists the goodness of the law so that it brings death. This is catastrophic for those who depend on the law for their life and salvation. The law reveals a person’s sinful nature, but it does not change it. Those who are bound by the law end up embracing death, not life.

The law is spiritual because it originates from God and reflects His holy nature. The word “carnal” does not describe someone who is unsaved, but someone who is saved and still battles the flesh-a condition that will persist until the Saviour returns.

The phrase “sin that dwells in me” uses a Greek expression that suggests that sin “sets up house in me.” Paul is not talking about conflict with evil in the world but conflict with evil within himself. Because Paul failed to do only good, he could not completely fulfill the requirements of God’s holy law.

Born with a legacy from Adam that can do nothing right, believers retain the capacity to sin according to Galatians 5:17. They are also gifted with a new capacity from God: the ability to do right. These two capacities are incompatible and irreconcilable. The law of Sinai demands absolute perfection according to James 2:10. The law of sin and death came into being when Adam fell and places the whole human race under this law. It fights against the law of God. The law of Sinai pulls one toward heaven; the law of sin pulls one toward hell.

Just as eternal life is through Jesus Christ, escape from the flesh is through Him, as Paul states in 1 Corinthians 15:57. Jesus dealt effectively with the problems of sin, Satan, and self on the cross.

(An audio version of this message can be found by clicking this link: Romans 7 verses 13-25 Our Spiritual Struggle)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Nashville, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; p. 1554)
2. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1982; pp. 143-148)
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: Nelson Publishers; 2006)
5. Walter F. Taylor, Jr., “Commentary on Romans 7:15-25.” Retrieved from www.workingpreacher.org
6. The Rev. Edward Markquart, “I Don’t Do What I Want to Do.” Retrieved from www.sermonsfromseattle.com
7. “Limits of the Law: The law serves a good purpose—up to a point.” Retrieved from Christianity.com@crosswalkmail.com

Once upon a time we were “married” to God’s law—and it wasn’t such a great marriage, was it? Never any peace, not for a single moment—because our own sinful desires and actions were constantly fighting with God’s law. It wasn’t the law’s fault— we can all see for ourselves that the commandments are good. But we are not good—not healthy, whole, and happy, the way God made us to be. We are broken people, unable to live by the law. And God knows this.

So He solved it with a death—Jesus’ death. Jesus took our sin, our brokenness, upon Himself, even though He Himself never did anything wrong. And then He took us, the people He loved, along with Him, all the way through His own death and resurrection—so that we could become God’s own beloved children, living in freedom and joy.

And not living alone! Because as Paul says, now that we have died and risen with Jesus, we are remarried—this time, not to the law which made us miserable, but to Jesus, our Savior. He is the One who gave Himself up for us, so that we could live in freedom, serving “in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” Today we do good, not because we “have to,” but because the Holy Spirit is living inside us, making our hearts more and more like our Savior’s. And we delight to make Him happy, because we love Him.

Those people who see their hope of being justified centered in their relationship to the law do not have happy marriages to the law. Married as they are to a law which is perfect, inflexible, demanding, and all-encompassing, they are soon driven to despair by their own incapability, in the same way that tender young brides have been known to be destroyed by domineering husbands whose attitude was matched only by their insensitivity. Paul outlined something of the pressures experienced by the brides of the law when he wrote, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them”

Any law has jurisdiction over a person only as long as that person lives. Criminals cannot be brought to lawful justice after death, no matter how terrible their crimes. For instance, in the marriage contract a wife is required to be faithful to her husband all his life. If she fails in this regard, she is called an adulteress, but as soon as her husband dies, she is free to remarry without there being any suggestion of impropriety. She is “released from the law of her husband.” Just as the widow in Paul’s analogy in verses 2-3 was freed to remarry, the believer has been freed from his hostile relationship to a law that condemned him, and can, therefore, be remarried—this time to Christ. Paul’s application of the illustration is not altogether straightforward, but his obvious point is that, in the same way a widow is no longer under any legal obligation to her late husband, so the believer who was formerly married to the law is under no obligation to the law as a means of justification once the law dies.

No doubt in the church at Rome there were many people who had endeavored to keep the demands of the law, seeking thereby to earn the blessing of God. Yet they were conscious that if their blessing depended on their meticulous fulfillment, their failure promised their ultimate condemnation. Through the presentation of the gospel, however, they had learned that through the death and Resurrection of Christ they had been forgiven and reconciled to God, and, at the same time, “by the body of Christ” they had been released from the law as a means of reconciliation. Like the bereaved bride of the illustration, they had greeted this death with more relief than grief. In fact, they had rejoiced in their liberty to the extent they had used it to be “married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead”

Warming to his theme of marriage as an example, Paul goes on to talk about the “fruit” of the union between the believer and the risen Lord. The previous marriage had been “childless” because of the impotence of the law to reproduce anything but the “fruit to death” in a person devoid of the life of God. In complete contrast, the new marriage between the living Lord and the loving disciple has the glorious potential of bearing “fruit to God.”

The phrase “in the flesh” describes a person who is able to operate only in the sphere of fallen mankind—an unredeemed, unregenerate person. Although the believer can manifest some of the deeds of the flesh, he can never again be “in the flesh.”  The person living “under law” is dominated by sin; therefore, if there is to be any realistic release from sin, there must be a corresponding release from the law. That this is all part of the divine provision Paul now seeks to explain through his rare illustration. Believers are no longer bound by former obligations to the law; they are free to transfer their loyalty to Christ. Upon claiming their identity in Christ, the law is broken and can no longer control them. The believer, having died to the law, is “married” to Christ.

No doubt there were those who, on hearing Paul teach about the inadequacy of the law to reproduce a satisfactory life of righteousness, would leap to the conclusion that the law was sin—bad, contrary to God, the product of yet another human attempt to thwart the purposes of God. But Paul does not allow this conclusion and strenuously sets about showing that he has a profound respect for the law which is not at all diminished by his clear perception of its inadequacies.

In a very real sense, Paul owes his salvation to the Tenth Commandment, “Thou shalt not covet.”  To all intents and purposes, Paul was a perfect example of a fine young man. But there was one major skeleton in his closet. He was covetous or lustful, but no one would ever have guessed from external appearance. Hidden away inside the upright young Pharisee was the dark secret of an “involuntary movement” from God’s will to human desire, which, if the law had not described in detail and condemned out of hand, may have been overlooked or dismissed as a normal experience of all men. Sin uses the specific requirements of the law as a base of operation from which to launch its evil work. Confronted by God’s law, the sinner’s rebellious nature finds the forbidden thing more attractive, not because it is inherently attractive, but because it furnishes an opportunity to assert one’s self-will.

The age-old statement concerning the law, “This do and you shall live,” shows that “life” is available only when the “doing” is being done. Paul found the doing of the law more than he was capable of performing, and so, instead of raising him to the exhilarating experience of the presence of God, it took him farther down the road to despair and dismay. The more he longed for perfection, the more he lacked in performance, and the more sinful he recognized himself to be, the more “holy and just and good” the law became in his eyes. When tempted, people might restrain themselves with discipline, while still desiring to act. The law not only defines evil deeds but illuminates evil attitudes and intentions, as illustrated by the commandment, “Do not covet.”

Perhaps one of humanity’s greatest needs is to recognize that sin is “exceedingly sinful.” Paul sees the law as particularly helpful in this regard, because sin took something as wholesome and perfect as the law and made it the means for sin to become rampant. When the law declares evil acts in unsaved people, those people often feel driven to do those very things. The Holy Spirit fills the believer with an internal desire to serve God so he or she is not driven by external rules.

Spiritually, humankind has been delivered from the law, while naturally, humankind has been doomed by it. The verbs in verses 7-13 are past tense, reflecting Paul’s life before conversion. The verbs in verses 14-25 are present tense, describing Paul’s experience after conversion. The Greek word for “opportunity” was originally used to describe a base of operations for an expedition. Sin uses the law as a beachhead from which to launch its evil work; it triggers sinful nature.

The Word of God reveals to us the character of God—His holiness, righteousness, justice, goodness, kindness, and more. As a reflection of Him, the Word both celebrates His perfect nature and reveals to us our own fallen nature. The law can reveal sin but it cannot remove the sin it triggers. The law’s function is not to reward those who keep its precepts but to punish those who break them. The death penalty is either appended to or associated with every one of the Ten Commandments.

Sin uses the specific requirements of the law as a base of operation from which to launch its evil work. Confronted by God’s law, the sinner’s rebellious nature finds the forbidden thing more attractive, not because it is inherently attractive, but because it furnishes an opportunity to assert one’s self-will.

The technological advancements made by mankind in the last century or even the previous 20 years are astounding. Yet, with all our technology, we still have to wait for lettuce to ripen and for olives to mature. Lettuce ripens a month and a half after planting, but the wait is at least four years for an olive. Some of us, like the lettuce, are maturing quickly while others, like olives, are improving more slowly. Something changed in you when you were saved, and still… God is making changes to you.

Only by looking to Jesus for help in our daily struggles can we find joy, freedom, and victory. So today, accept the fact that you’re capable of any and every sin. Acknowledge your vulnerability and admit your need for God’s help, and you’ll be in a better position to guard yourself against pride. The moment you say, “I’ve got this”—that’s when you’re in trouble. We all desperately need the help that only our Savior Jesus Christ can give. And praise the Lord, for He gives it freely!

We should all be bearing fruit. There may be times when you need to endure pruning before you bear fruit. Pruning redirects energy to the right places. If you are not being fruitful, maybe you need to redirect your energy toward the Lord. Don’t just come to church, be the church. Be praying, giving, serving – joining hands with your church to achieve something far greater than any of us could alone.

Has your Christian walk become a task list or benchmark you use to seek validation? Do you find yourself excusing a lousy attitude by comparing yourself to others who seem worse off than you? And when the Spirit finally convicts your forced obedience do you wonder if you are even capable of serving with joy?

While God’s holiness does elicit our obedience, we miss the mark when we obey outwardly but inwardly rebel. God’s intention when giving us the law is essential to consider before forcing ourselves to comply when we lack the understanding to do so with joy. As Paul points out in Romans 7:7, the law is meant to expose our sins and highlight our desperate need for a Savior. Paul reminds readers that the law is holy and pleasing and intended for our benefit, and its intention was for our benefit.

It is through understanding what God requires of us and the knowledge that, on our own, we are not capable of perfectly keeping the law. God’s law helps reveal to us all the ways we sin against a holy God. We all enter the world as sinners, yet, the law shows us our continued desire to sin and rebel against God’s commandments.

Now that we’ve discussed the bad news, let’s get to the good news! Humans can’t perfectly keep the law, but we still have an opportunity for redemption. The realization of our depravity has paved the way for our redemption! Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we can receive salvation through faith. And that’s not all; this salvation also provides those who believe with the gift of the Holy Spirit, who helps them in their weakness .

(An audio version of this post can be found by clicking this link: Romans 7 verses 1-12 Divorced from the Law, Remarried to Christ)

Bibliography

1. Jermiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; pp. 1553-1554)
2. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1982; pp. 138-145)
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. Pastor David McGee, “Pruning.” Retrieved from theword@aboutthebridge.com
6. Dr. Kari Vo, “Remarried to Jesus.” Retrieved from www.lhm.org
7. Michael Youssef, Ph.D., “A More Excellent Way.” Retrieved from web@ltw.org
8. Laura Bailey, “Delightful Obedience.” Retrieved from www.crosswalk.com

Romans 6:15-23 continues Paul’s discussion of sanctification by reminding his readers of their past slavery to sin and their new slavery to righteousness. He wants them to live in submission to their new master, Jesus Christ, and not to be entangled again with the sins that characterized their old life, sins which no longer have any claim over them. People are either obedient slaves of sin, which leads to death, or they are obedient to God, which leads to righteousness. 

But the outcome of obedience depends on whom or what is heard and obeyed.  In verses 17-18 Paul rejoices that his listeners have been released from their former slavery to sin and have now “become obedient from the heart” to the message about Jesus. That shift results not in total freedom–in fact, the result is the opposite.  Believers have now “become slaves of righteousness.”

The situation is similar to the way professional sports used to be run.  Before free agency developed, professional athletes were bound to the team that had first signed them.  They were “slaves” of that team.  Owners could offer contracts, not offer contracts, or trade players.  Players, for their part, had few options.  They could sign a contract and play, or they could retire.  They were not free to move to another team nor to offer their services to the highest bidder.  If people wanted to play they had to be owned by one team or another.

Paul recognizes that the power of sin is still active in the world of the believers, so that Christians are confronted with the real peril of falling back into the submission to sin that will result in the Christians’ following the baser instincts of human existence rather than God’s will and leadership. Paul tells his readers that they are truly freed from the power of sin and that they are secure in their freedom because God’s grace is the source of their liberty and security. The contrast in this verse between “law” and “grace” brings up a point long debated in Christian circles. What Paul is saying is that in one way of living there is freedom–grace is God’s power at work liberating the believers from their involvements with sin; whereas in another way of forming life, the attempt to live life rightly through the observance of the law, one is left essentially on one’s own without God’s liberating power. For as Paul sees it, the law (holy, just, and good as it is) is impotent to resolve the dilemma humanity faces in relation to sin, while grace is God’s power at work doing for the Christians what they cannot do for themselves.

Three teachings are clear in this passage. First, Paul is not concerned with issues of sin and guilt, but he is advocating for freedom from the power of sin, that is, believers can make a conscious effort on whether they should sin or not. Secondly, Paul is not concerned with growth to perfection but with an awareness of the once and for all saving act of justification done by God through Jesus Christ. Christ launched humanity into the ocean of grace and no one will ever take that away from believers. Third, the gift of grace and salvation calls believers to live in obedience as a verification of the work done by Jesus Christ.

In Romans 6:1 the antagonist says, “Let us go on sinning that grace may abound.” The antagonist in Romans 6:15 says, “Let us commit sin because grace does abound.” Paul answers them the same way: certainly not!  Paul understands a new walk with Christ as the work of grace in which resurrection power propels believers to live worthy lives. Grace does not free anyone to sin but it frees believers from sin. There is a tendency for people to feel that they have an unshakable, unbreakable obligation to sin and an optional, tentative obligation to righteousness. Exactly the reverse is true! The believer does not have to go on sinning and treating righteous living as something that is good if you can get around to it, but rather he does have to live righteously and take care to live triumphantly over sin in the power of the Lord.

Sin is a power at work in the world–and Sin’s twin power is Death. Sin is at work in governmental systems, in economic systems, in political systems, in ecclesiastical systems. Sin’s work is to deliver Death. Death to justice. Death to freedom. Death to peace. Death to human dignity. Death to the life that God wills for all of creation. Death! Death! Death! Such is the work of Sin.

The puny little sins we commit–as painful as the consequences may be for us in terms of lost relationships, lost opportunities and the accrual of the burden of guilt–are merely the side effects of the power of Sin in the world. Humankind is enslaved by Sin. We are all under Sin’s domination. But for those baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, the yoke of Sin has been destroyed. We are freed from Sin’s power. We are out from under Sin’s reach. And the power that has loosed Sin’s shackles from our lives is God’s grace.

Whenever we make the essence of spirituality and holiness a matter of following religious rules, we have missed the mark. Rigid religious rules always become obstacles to loving other people; that means they are obstacles to truly loving God. Jesus called them “burdens too heavy to lift” and points the finger at religious perfectionists of all stripes for ignoring their own sins and focusing on the minor lapses of others. It all becomes just an elaborate way of justifying ourselves by condemning someone else. At the end of the day, even we religious perfectionists can’t bear the burden we’ve created for others.

Paul traces the history of believers in four stages: they were enslaved, enlightened, emancipated, and enslaved again. People from a Jewish background who held the law in high esteem were particularly nervous about Paul’s insistence that “by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified”. They believed that Paul’s teaching that people cannot fulfill the law for justification would encourage them to disregard the law, to claim to be justified by faith, and then because they accepted no law to embark on a life of lawlessness and sinfulness. To this Paul gives another vehement response and proceeds to show that, far from being lawless, justified believers who were formerly nothing more than “servants of sin” become the “servants of righteousness.” He makes the obvious, but no less powerful point, that “to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves”. Those who revered the law and failed, as did everyone, to keep it, were in their breaking of the law exhibiting their “slavery” to sin. But those who through the grace of God had become united with Christ had been made “free from sin” and had traded their slavery to sin for a slavery to Christ and the righteousness for which He stands.

To the sensitive believer, the desire of God is an even more powerful motivational factor than the dictates of sin. He knows from his past history that sin produced those things of which he is “now ashamed” and he also knows that “the end of those things is death.” Pressing home the contrast, the apostle adds: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”. On the one hand, there is the law of God which people either treat with benign neglect or with assiduous care. The former sin glibly and freely; the latter seriously and often unknowingly. This sin produces death as just reward for unsatisfactory living. On the other hand, there is the grace of God which brings people in Christ to forgiveness and the position of having taken the stand against sin which Christ took and adopting the attitude that sin, as a lifestyle, is no longer the normative approach.

Going beyond mental assent to a system of facts about the Lord, these believers obeyed truths from the heart. This was genuine, life-changing obedience. The word “form” is used in classical Greek for the impression of a seal, branding iron, foot, or teeth. Believers had a new “shape” formed by doctrine. Pursuing a right knowledge of God and His work sanctifies.

Believers should present themselves as slaves to righteousness with the same abandon as they willingly gave themselves to sin in the past. Yielding themselves to righteousness will have the same exponential effect, only they will become more holy rather than more sinful. believers to live out their faith in concrete ways, and this can be done when people aspire to live in love because love is the vitality of faith and love accomplishes Christ’s saving work. Love is indeed the description of the Christian life, and while we cannot fully grasp the meaning of being in mystical union with Christ, Paul exhorts us to live out this mystery in love. Becoming what we have become in baptism means to live beyond religiosity.

Unbelievers are “free” from righteousness. In other words, it makes no demand on them. It should never be a surprise when unbelievers behave wickedly; they know nothing else. Unfortunately, without the desire or ability to live in righteousness, they also forfeit the power to comply with its wishes. On the other hand, slavery to God results in freedom from sin, the fruit of holiness, and a future of everlasting life.

The passage reminds us that we are still vulnerable to sin and death, post-baptism.  And so the issue becomes:  which slavery do we want–slavery to sin that leads to death or slavery to Christ that leads to life.

But if we have to make the decision, and if we have to follow the directives in verses 12-14 to “not let sin exercise dominion” in our bodies and to “no longer present” our bodies as tools of injustice, where is the good news?  The good news is that God has freed us from the realm of sin as the determinative reality of our lives, and God has given us the free gift of eternal life in Christ. And that remains an ancient message that is new every day.  And it remains a message that people still find hard to hear.  But it remains what we are called to proclaim.

(An audio version of this post can be found by clicking this link: Romans 6 verses 15-23 Are We Slaves to Sin or Slaves to Righteousness)

Bibliography

1. Jeremiah, David: The Jeremiah Study Bible: New King James Version (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing; 2013; p. 1553)
2. Briscoe, D.S., & Ogilvie, L.J.: The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Vol. 29: Romans (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 1982; pp. 135-137)
3. MacArthur, J.F. Jr., The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers; 2006)
4. Israel Kamundzandu, “Commentary on Romans 6:12-23.” Retrieved from www.workingpreacher.org
5. The Rev. Dr. Alan Brems, “A Cup of Cold Water.” Retrieved from The Waking Dreamer
6. Walter F. Taylor, Jr., “Commentary on Romans 6:112-23.” Retrieved from www.workingpreacher.org
7. Marion L. Soards, “Commentary on Romans 6:21-23.” Retrieved from www.workingpreacher.org
8. The Rev. Gary Manning, “Shackles That Won’t Shrink!” Retrieved from www.day1.org

Chapters 1-5 of Romans dealt with the past, and chapters 6-8 deal with the present. Because we are “in Christ” and He died in our place we are counted dead with Him. This is the fundamental premise of chapter 6, and Paul spends the remainder of the chapter explaining and supporting it.

The law is good, holy, and righteous but it cannot be kept, so it curses. Since it cannot assist anyone to keep God’s moral standard it can only show the standard and thus rebuke and condemn those who fail to keep it. But the believer is no longer under the law as a condition of acceptance with God—an impossible condition to meet and one designed only to show man his sinfulness but under grace, which enables him to truly fulfill the law’s righteous requirements.

Think of it this way. Sin put you in prison. Sin locked you behind the bars of guilt and shame and deception and fear. Sin did nothing but shackle you to the wall of misery. Then Jesus came and paid your bail. He served your time; He satisfied the penalty and set you free. Christ died, and when you cast your lot with Him, your old self died too.

The only way to be set free from the prison of sin is to serve its penalty. In this case the penalty is death. Someone has to die, either you or a heaven-sent substitute. You cannot leave prison unless there is a death. But that death has occurred at Calvary. And when Jesus died, you died to sin’s claim on your life. You are free.

Christ has taken your place. There is no need for you to remain in the cell. Ever heard of a discharged prisoner who wanted to stay?  When the doors open, prisoners leave. The thought of a person preferring jail over freedom doesn’t compute. Once the penalty is paid, why live under bondage? You are discharged from the penitentiary of sin. Why, in heaven’s name, would you ever want to set foot in that prison again?

Having shown clearly that the grace of God “abounded much more” wherever sin abounded, Paul poses the question, which to many would be purely hypothetical but to others may be very real: “If grace is made to abound more as more sin is committed, then why not sin more so that more grace will be released?” In its most common form, this attitude is exhibited in those believers who see in their justification no necessity to go on to experience the sanctification God has in mind for them. Having been forgiven and guaranteed a place in heaven, they feel they can now get on with the business of living as they wish without any concerns or misgivings. Carried to its extreme, this kind of thinking has produced sects that encourage sinning as a prerequisite to salvation.

Paul starts his explanation of the believer’s death to sin by reminding him of the historical facts of Christ’s earthly experience, namely, His death, burial, and Resurrection. Then Paul shows that through baptism the believer is united to Christ and, therefore, is a participant in the experience of Christ. Thus the believer through baptism has died, been buried, and raised again “with Him.”

Only the most corrupt mind using the most perverted logic could argue that continuing in sin somehow honours the God who sacrificed His Son to save people in the first place. Christians have, by placing saving faith in Him, been spiritually immersed into the person of Christ, that is, united and identified with Him

How can anyone die to sin? Paul is talking about something already done by another (Christ), not something people do. The Greek form of the word “died” often signifies summarizing a past event from an eternal perspective-an event that is already past, not an ongoing process.

As Christian theology has developed, one section of the church has seen baptism as a sacrament while a second section regards it as a symbol. For the former group baptism conveys grace to the baptized person. Taken to its extreme, this approach can obviate the necessity for repentance and faith and elevate baptism to the lofty status of the means of salvation. On the other hand, those who regard baptism as a symbol of spiritual reality may decide that as rites are relatively unimportant when compared to reality, the rite can be dispensed with without losing any spiritual benefit. This position has been adopted by such groups as the Salvation Army.  

Paul’s fundamental meaning in Romans 6:3-4 is the identification of the believer with Christ as pictured through baptism into the body of Christ at the moment of conversion. Water baptism, the public mark of faith in God, is symbolic of personal, vital identification with Christ. When Christ entered the world He came from the glory of heaven sinless, spotless, undefiled, and separate from sin. Immediately upon entering human society, He was confronted on every hand by sin’s power and presence. For thirty-three years He lived among the carnage and wreckage of sin. When He went to the Cross, He assumed our sin and bore the wrath of God against our sin; in fact, the apostle says that the Father “made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us”. Having come from an environment where sinlessness was normative to a situation where sin is pervasive and having taken on His sinless self the load of a race’s sin, it comes as no surprise to us that He cried exultantly from the Cross at the end of His ministry, “Finished!” and promptly bowed His head and dismissed His spirit. It was all over for Him. The nightmare of sin, the horrors of death and hell, the pernicious tyranny of sin’s hold on people had been dealt with, and He could go to the grave anticipating His Resurrection with joy and delight. Christ died to sin in two senses: 1) in regard to sin’s penalty—He met its legal demands upon the sinner; and 2) in regard to sin’s power—forever breaking its power over those who belong to Him. His death will never need repeating. Paul’s point is that believers have died to sin in the same way.

In the same way, believers, united to Christ, can exult in the fact that all that must be done about their sin has been done in Christ. They, too, can cry “finished” and breathe a sigh of relief because for them the nightmare of unanswered sin is over and the tyranny of unconquerable sin is broken. But in the same way that Christ did not stay dead but rose to a newness of life to be lived unto the Father, we are raised too! While He was in His body, the Son had an obligation to deal with the sin problem, but when, after death, He arose, having finished with sin, His total concentration was once more upon the Father. In the same way, believers who were previously preoccupied with the remorseless grip of sin on their lives can now concentrate on what they have and who they are in Christ and, accordingly, live new lives. Christ’s death was the believer’s death; His burial, the believer’s burial; His resurrection, the believer’s resurrection. He not only died for them, He died as them. Believers are united to Him in His death and burial and in His resurrection.

The phrase “the old man” refers to the old self, the unregenerate sons of Adam. The phrase “body of sin” does not mean “a mass of sin,” or sin that lives in the body but that the body is the seat, or instrument of sin. The phrase “done away” does not mean “annihilated” but “reduced to a state of inaction or impotence.” It means defeated, disabled, deprived of power. Paul states that this body which is so susceptible to sin’s domination before union with Christ has, through Him, been placed in a position where this domination might no longer be the norm. Now that the “man of old” has been dealt with in Christ and the new man has, accordingly, been shown that the sin which previously controlled his physical body has been dealt with, he should recognize that he is no longer at the mercy of sin, or, literally, “a slave of sin.” In fact, he has been “freed from sin” or “justified from sin.”

Christ’s relationship with sin was far different compared to people’s relationship with sin. He knew no sin, nor was He able to sin, and yet He died to sin. Satisfying its demands once for all, He also died to its power, forever breaking its dominion over those who belong to God through His Son.

The word “reckon” is used 19 times in Romans and has to do with reality. It means acknowledging or acting on what is already true or has already happened. Christians need to reckon, conclude, and accept that they are no longer slaves to sin but have been set free. Paul requires believers to reason through what he has been teaching concerning the believer’s relationship to sin and to Christ and then to place to their own account or apply to their own lives that which they have intellectually grasped.

Bodies are not evil, but believers must not allow sin to have a place of power in their bodies. Sin has been rendered powerless unless they grant it power. The believer must understand that “in Christ” he is no longer totally at the mercy of the inhospitable environment of sin but is alive to all the power and life of God Himself. When this is appreciated, the believer must make some decisions to “let not sin reign in your mortal body”. There is nothing very mysterious about this instruction. It means saying “no” in no uncertain terms!

The word “members” refers to limbs, senses, and intellect. Some translate the word “instruments” as “weapons,” meaning the members can become weapons for the enemy. Inclination to yield to sin must be replaced by inclination to yield to Christ and righteousness. We sin when we “yield” or “present” our tongue to say the wrong word, our hand when we take something that does not belong to us, our sexual organs when we commit adultery, our minds when we harbor uncharitable thoughts. When we take sin seriously, we begin to see how sin cannot operate in our bodies without our giving over a particular member of the body for a specific sin. If the believer is adequately aware of this, he can begin to say “no” to a temptation, not only in a general sense but in the very specific sense of refusing to present the member necessary for the committing of sin.

Believers are like soldiers who have left the ranks of a rebellious unit to rejoin their rightful leader. The rebel captain’s orders have no more authority over them. People are no longer helpless in the face of sin’s power. They have been promised ultimate victory, and they may have daily victory over sin as well.

(An audio version of this post can be found by clicking this link: Romans 6 verses 1-14 A Believer’s Death to 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. 127-135)
3. Stanley, C.F.: The Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible: New Ming James Version (Nashville, TN: Nelson Bibles; 2005)
4. MacArthur, J.F. Jr,: The MacArthur Study Bible: New American Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson; 2006)
5. Lucado, M.: The Lucado Life Lessons Study Bible (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.; 2010)

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