135. Beginner Bible Course: Paul's letter to the Romans

EPISODE 135:  Simple Bible overview of PAUL’S LETTER TO THE ROMANS

Paul's letter to the Romans...

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In a word is a masterpiece. While his second Corinthians letter we just looked at was his most personal and least doctrinal. The next letter Paul wrote Romans was nearly all doctrine. Paul wrote this to the believers in the capital city of the Roman empire Christ followers had come to Jerusalem from there and heard the gospel or had migrated there after hearing it. And Paul knows a lot of them. At the end of this letter, he greets 26 individuals or households by name. And for many of these people makes comments about who they are and how he knows them. So in writing this letter, Paul knows his audience well in the letter, he States that after taking the offering, he's collecting in Macedonia and Acadia to Jerusalem, he plans to visit them on his way to Spain.

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00:00:56

The one word theme of Romans is righteousness, right? Us Snus, how people who have sinned and broke a relationship with a Holy God can be made right again, right? A Snus. God's saying it's right between you and me. The closest relationship I have on this earth is with my wife. It's not an accident that God uses this metaphor to describe the relationship between he and his people read the prophet Hosea. For example, Paul will also use this metaphor in his letter to the Ephesians teaching that marriage is the closest analogy of the relationship between Jesus and his bride.

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00:01:37

The church I asked my students to imagine with me, I did something despicable to sin against my wife, breaking her heart and violating our marriage. Covenant shattering it. I then asked them, how can that broken relationship possibly be fixed in the discussion that follows? I stayed at least four ways. It cannot be fixed first denying. I have a wife at all. When I write this on a board, my students think this is crazy. How can I deny that shattered woman in front of me is my wife. The second one is more reasonable. I can minimize a rationalize the offense that has caused our broken relationship.

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I tell them I've done a ton of marriage counseling and that's the most popular path I've seen how that works. It doesn't. The third is trying to win her back by doing chores. I asked my students to imagine me coming up with a list of 20 things that I'm going to do every day for my wife, writing those down, and then bringing that list to her, smiling saying, here's the chores I'm going to do going forward and her smiling back going great. We're now good. Sometimes the guys in my class seemed to think that's a good step. Then I asked the gals in my class. Would that work for you? If your husband did that to you, they see it very differently.

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They that list of chores as another way to minimize the damage that husband has done to her broken heart. A fourth way, it cannot be fixed is by continuing to feed the thoughts or actions that led to the breach to begin with. Those are four ways that it can't be fixed. Paul addresses each of those four ways. Our broken relationship with God cannot be fixed as well. Paul writes the letter of Romans to give a comprehensive picture of the problem and the solution for our broken relationship with God, after a brief greeting and letting them know that God had sent him to explain this problem and solution to Jews, but especially Gentiles Paul States, he is under obligation to proclaim this eager, to proclaim it.

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And under no circumstances, will he be shamed into not proclaiming it? Paul believes this is critical. God wants his relationship back with his sin, saturated children, Paul then launches into this masterpiece of how to fix a desperately broken relationship with God. He starts with those who deny. There's a relationship with God at all. You can't have a broken relationship if there's no one on the other end. So in chapter one, Paul starts here with those who don't believe there is a God at all. Paul explains that there's two overwhelming evidences, that there is a God.

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One is the voice within you. Your conscience. I imagine anthropologists could find a people group somewhere at some time in history who found stealing, lying, and betrayal as virtuous, but I'm willing to bet that would be one in a thousand for the other 999. There's a set of universal things that appear right and wrong. And the human heart put a thousand kindergartners in a sandbox from across the world. And there'll be certain behaviors that they believe are worth tattling on. Paul then moves to creation that God's character and attributes are clearly displayed through the things God has made.

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We talked about this in Genesis. We talked about the exquisite intricacies that we see in creation, as well as explaining some of the things that have run a muck. Paul says, despite this inner voice, an external evidence of design, many people conclude there is no God to have a relationship with thus, there's not a problem. Paul goes on to describe what happens when we conclude. There is no God. We have to explain things on our own. Our thoughts become warped. These thoughts drive our passions, which become twisted. And before you think that's just big things that are twisted like idolatry or sexual immorality, it twists the social things like boasting and gossip and disobedience to parents.

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Paul moves on to those who had acknowledged God, even a Holy God, but minimize the offense of our sins against God. In chapter two, he describes the bone deep, offensive attitudes and actions we have before guide made worse by the unrepentant attitude we have. When these are surfaced to God, it feels even worse. Coming from those who should know better, the Israelites, because God had revealed these laws to him and made these offenses crystal clear, knowing these expectations for the relationship only make it more hurtful when they're broken to Paul's readers, Jews and Gentiles, who thought they were doing pretty well.

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00:06:39

All they had to do was read the last three vile sins. Paul points out in chapter two, being ungrateful, unloving, unmerciful. Those things break our relationship with God. Well, of course they do. When those things are done to us, people who are ungrateful on loving or unmerciful, it breaks down our relationship. How much more so when we do them to God in chapter three, Paul goes after those who justify their sin, imagine my wife forgives me. And then I think, Hey, that felt good. And it makes her look amazing in her graciousness. I should start calling her grace amazing grace.

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00:07:21

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do the same thing again. Next week. That way her grace will look even more amazing. I asked my students what they think about that they think I may be insane. Certainly wretched, why not continue in sin that God's grace might become even more amazing Paul's response. You've got to be kidding. God forbid, Paul then emphasizes. We all have sinned and fallen short of God's glory, his standard. He goes on to say, there's not one person who's righteous, right? Us in a right relationship with God, not even one. As evidence.

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00:08:02

Paul directs us to examine what spills out of our mouths. That what comes up in our words come out of the well of sinful hearts. Then he asks us to turn around and take a hard look at the destruction we've left in the wake of our lives. The damage we've done with our sin. Paul moves on to those. Who'd come up with a list of chores to do for God so that God will like us again. In chapter three, he writes through the works of the law chores. Nobody will be restored to a relationship with God. My students get this when it comes to a husband with his wife, but they don't get it so well with God.

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For some reason, it's hard for us to transfer this to our relationship with God. I asked them if we went downtown and we asked passers by on the sidewalk, two questions first, would you consider a religious person to those? Who said, yes, ask a second question. If you were standing before God right now, and he asked you, why should you spend eternity with me? What do you think most people would say every year? My students conclude most people would point to chores being kind, going to church, giving time or money, trying to do the right thing. Those comments demonstrate. We don't understand the depth of what we've done or how deeply it's wounded.

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The heart of a Holy God. In chapter four, Paul points back to the past to Abraham, he asks his readers. How did Abraham repair his broken relationship with God? Did he do chores? Absolutely not. God had to fix Abraham's problem. And he fixed it by granting Abraham grace. When he acted in faith and Abraham believed God and God credited to him for right. A Snus. God said, Abraham, we're now good, no chores for Abraham through Abraham's trust in God, God granted a restored relationship throughout the old Testament and the new a restored, right us relationship comes by the grace of the one who's been sinned against by the granting of forgiveness.

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00:10:17

Back to my illustration of breaking my wife's heart. I asked the girls in my class, what would you want from a husband who wounded you? Like I described in my illustration repeatedly. I hear things like this. Come to me, repentant own what you did and ask for my forgiveness. Then it's up to me to decide where to take the relationship from there. I'm paraphrasing. They are seventh and eighth graders in chapter five. Paul explains how this forgiveness and restored relationship operates. My students have been bothered since Genesis chapter three, that because of one person's sin, Adam, we all got a sin nature that broke our relationship with God.

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00:11:00

It's like we got on a bus driven by Adam, he's driving this thing and he drives off a cliff. And because of that, we're all headed for eternal death separation from God. That just doesn't seem right. Paul explains that's true. But what if we were on a different bus? What if we got on a bus driven by Jesus? If so, we'd be taken wherever Jesus took us. We wouldn't do anything on that bus. If we're on the bus driven by Jesus, he'll take us to God. We get on that Jesus bus by faith. It's a gift. There's no fare for it. The fare is simply belief trust going all in.

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00:11:43

Paul writes by the sin of the one. Man, we were all made sinners, but by the obedience of the one, Jesus, we are made righteous, a restored relationship with God means being on the bus, driven by Jesus and to get on that bus requires trust, going all in on the driver. Jesus. I asked my students, assume my wife forgives me truly forgives me. What kind of husband should I be? They say a really good one. One who shows gratitude for that grace and one who works really hard not to repeat the offense in chapter six.

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00:12:23

Paul says my students are right now that our relationship with God has been restored and we've been given the indwelling Holy spirit. We should work hard to show gratitude for that grace and for heaven sakes, not to intentionally repeat it. Paul writes once restored in our relationship to God, we are no longer slaves to our old sins. We're to consider ourselves dead to those sins and alive to Jesus. I heard a story of a man who moved next to an eccentric neighbor. She just adored her cat. You know that lady right early one morning, the man got up and let out his dog.

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00:13:04

As he was pouring his coffee, he heard his dog back at the door. He opened the patio door and the dog came running in holding the neighbor. Lady's dirty, bloody dead cat in his mouth, the man panicked, but then desperate got an idea. He bathed the dead cat, dried it with a blow dryer, snuck over to his neighbor. Lady's back porch and put the cat in a restful pose on our back deck an hour or so later, he heard a shriek from the neighbor next door. Yup. She's found it playing stupid. He ran to the neighbor lady who was hysterical on her back porch. I buried this kitty two days ago in the garden.

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What kind of monster would dig it up and do this to me in Romans six, Paul agrees. How shall we, who died to sin? Still live in it? Don't dig up that cat who would do that? Well, Christians do chapter seven. Paul describes the dig up the old cat process in a Christian. I mentioned Paul's two dogs fighting in us imagery in his letter to the Galatians. Those who've been restored in a relationship to God through all interest in Jesus, have a new nature, a new spirit dog that in dwells us, but that old fleshed dog is still there too.

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00:14:25

In chapter seven, Paul describes this battle, the battle that he had as an apostle, as you read the end of chapter seven, you'll see this dog fight. Paul ends with this as a Richard struggle, but thanks be to God. I don't have to dig up that old cat. This leads to chapter eight, Romans chapter eight, many would argue. This is the high watermark of the 21 letters of the new Testament in the upper room. The night before Jesus died, he gave us the biggest description of the ministry of the Holy spirit, Romans chapter eight, steps it up even further. Paul effectively tells us the best solution to put away the shovel.

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00:15:09

So we don't dig up. The old nature is God's in 12, Holy spirit. The spirit will help us put to death. The old deeds of the flesh, the Holy spirit will speak to us. We're not slaves anymore. We are sons of God. He is our ABA, our daddy, not our task master. The Holy spirit helps us by praying for us on our behalf. So we won't act out in the old nature. The Holy spirit reminds us of our destiny and shapes us to be like Jesus. Paul ends chapter eight with amazing words. God is for us. Now there's nothing that can separate us from him. He can make us super conquerors through the power of the Holy spirit.

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00:15:52

If we will allow him to work in us before moving on to his. So what pug gives us a three chapter parentheses chapters nine through 11 in these chapters, he asks, what about Israel? God had selected them to be the ups drivers, the messenger boys, to bring the Messiah and God's law set aside as his special people. But at the time Paul was writing this and still today, most who have gone all in on Jesus are Gentiles. While there are some Jews who embraced Jesus as the promised Messiah, most Jews then, and now reject Jesus as the promised Messiah and Lord.

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00:16:35

So what's going on with the Jews. Paul answers that in several ways, first that God's laws given to them, we're supposed to show them how much they needed the Messiah, but they had turned those laws, showing them their need into chores. They would try to do to restore their relationship with God. It had become a stumbling block. According to Paul, the result was like a branch on a vine. They broke themselves off and where they had broken themselves off, God had grafted on a new branch, the Gentiles. Then Paul says, God is not finished with the Jewish people. There'll be a time where they turn and embrace Jesus as Messiah and Lord in a big way.

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00:17:20

There'll be grafted back on naturally to the vine and chapter 12 through 14, Paul moves to his application. His so what with the relationship restored to God through a gift of God as we go all in on Jesus, how should we restored people live? Here's helpful things. I picked out for myself out of Paul's instructions. Live each day with a living sacrifice mindset. Get up in the morning and say, God use me and my body today to please. You refuse to be squeezed into the world's mold. Instead, let God remold you through the indwelling spirit and use your gifts on the paint by number canvas of your local church.

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00:18:07

Be devoted to each other and love preferring each other. Another words play nice in the sandbox. Paul gives us that play nice list in chapter 12, be a model citizen. He's writing this to people under the Roman government. Love God with everything you've got and love your neighbor. That's what people in a restored relationship with God do like clothing, put on Jesus each morning and put off the dirty old overalls of our old life. Defer to weaker believers, never push them to violate their conscience, even if I think, or I'm quite sure that their conscience is incorrect.

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00:18:51

I need to start using my energy to remove stumbling blocks from people's lives, not to judge others in what they stumble over. I need to work harder at living in peace. I need to consider it's better to be kind than to be right. And Paul ends his magnificent letter with his signature closing a reminder to those who want to be right us with God, grace, to you. That's how we're made right with God. Sinners restored is by God's grace. Three episodes ago, we left Paul on the shores of the Mediterranean, ready to head to Jerusalem.

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00:19:32

He had been told by Jesus through an alias that he would bring the gospel to the Gentiles and stand before Kings for the next two years. He won't be spreading the gospel among the Gentiles, but he will be standing before, at least one King and perhaps Caesar. And we'll discover how that happens in our next wordpicture.