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I feel a bit like we've just climbed on board a
jet going from Melbourne to London, or we're just setting
off to drive from Melbourne to Perth. There's a long
journey before us, but there'll be lots of exciting
things to see on the way; lots of varied scenery. And by
the end of our journey I hope we'll have discovered a
little more about the nature of the salvation that God
has won for us through Jesus Christ, a salvation that
comes by God's grace alone. I hope too that we'll be a
bit more confident of the sure and certain hope of
eternal life for all who love Jesus Christ, and that
we'll be a little more confident about sharing our faith
with others so they too can share in that salvation and
hope. |
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I thought what we might do today is to quickly
go through Romans, looking at the main points of
interest. If you like, I'll be your tour guide, getting
you ready for the things you'll experience as we travel
through the book. |
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Martin Luther in his Preface to the Epistle to
the Romans begins by saying that this letter "is in
truth the chief part of the New Testament and the purest
Gospel. It would be quite proper for a Christian, not
only to know it by heart word for word, but also to study
it daily, for it is the soul's daily bread. … The
more thoroughly it is treated, the more precious it
becomes, and the better it tastes." Well, how can I
do anything but agree with that sentiment. After all, it
was the reading of Romans that became the catalyst for
the whole Reformation. We can only pray that our study of
it this year might act as a catalyst for our own
reformation. |
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As we read through this letter, one thing that
becomes increasingly obvious is that this is a carefully
structured and reasoned discourse. One of the
distinctives of the logical nature of the letter is the
way that every now and then a certain word pops up: the
word "therefore". So as we read through it we
need to stop whenever we see that word and think about
what's gone before and how it might impact on what he's
about to say. Well, let's do that now as we think about
8:1-4. What has he said so far and what does he then go
on to say? |
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He starts in the first 2 chapters by showing
that the basic situation of all people is that they've
suppressed the truth about God and substituted something
of their own making. In other words they've done their
own thing. Notice that this is not just a 20th or 21st
century phenomenon. People have been doing it ever since
the fall. And God's response in the first instance has
been to let them do what they wanted; to give them up to
the futility of their own minds. So if they chose to
create gods in their own image, he let them. If they
chose to indulge themselves in sexual immorality, he let
them do that. If they chose to hate and to gossip and to
lie and to slander, if they were insolent or proud or
boastful, if they were disobedient, rebels against
authority, he let them be. And when societies broke down,
when relationships were spoilt, when marriages were
ruined, they had only themselves to blame. Paul goes on
to point out that even the Jewish people, those who had
received God's law, failed to keep it. They too decided
to do their own thing. So they were no better off. The
fact is, he says, everyone has sinned and fallen short of
the glory of God. |
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So what hope has anyone got of being found right
with God? Well, he says, there is a way. Abraham found it
some 4000 years ago - that is, through faith in God; by
the goodness and mercy of God. (grace joke) In his Grace
God has sent Jesus to make it possible for us to be
brought back to life - spiritually that is - and so we
can now have peace with God. How? Well, he says, just as
spiritual death came through the failure of Adam to obey
God, so now spiritual life comes to us through the total
obedience of Jesus who is the new Adam, the new
representative of humanity. |
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Now this is the turning point of Paul's
argument, do you see? And of course if you look at Rom
5:1, there's that word: "therefore". (Rom 5:1
NRSV) "Therefore, since we are justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus
Christ." Then he goes on to explain how it is that
we can now have peace with God through Jesus' death on
our behalf. |
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Now Paul knows we all have a problem. He knows
that the problem we all face in trying to obey God is
that we're fallible, we all have this weakness, this
tendency to sin. What we need is a new being, a new
identity. It's what Jesus said to Nicodemus: "You
must be born again." The Jews had God's law to show
them how to live, but it was no use. No law-based system
will ever be able to overcome our basic human failing.
Only if we're new people, only if we're made all over
again, will we ever be able to relate to God adequately.
And that can happen only if someone outside ourselves
does it for us. Only if God in his grace makes it
possible. Well, Paul says, that's exactly what's happened
with the coming of Jesus. There's a new humanity on the
scene. With Jesus' death and resurrection a whole new set
of possibilities have opened up. As a result of Jesus
death on the cross those who are in Jesus Christ are now
dead to sin but alive to Christ. And of course if through
faith in Christ we too have been brought alive again then
we'll no longer do the things that go with death, but
rather we'll do what God expects of us - the things of
life. |
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He realises that some people take this idea of
being a new person, of having died to sin, as a licence
to do what they like, so he reminds them of the
appropriate response to the fact that we have a new life
in Christ. If our hope is that we'll one day live in
eternity with God, then the only response is to live the
way God wants right now. |
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But of course, as we all know, that's not as
easy as it sounds. We still have the same dead body, the
same sinful urges. He says it's like there's some natural
law at work within him, as sure as the law of gravity, so
that whenever he wants to do good, evil is close at hand.
It's as though whenever he decides to do some work for
God, Satan hands him a crooked tool, a chisel with a chip
in it, a broom with half the bristles gone, so that he
continues to fail, over and over and over again. |
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So he cries out in despair "Who will rescue
me from this body of death?" And the answer comes
quietly and with a sense of relief, "Thanks be to
God, through Jesus Christ our Lord." God in his
grace has rescued us through the death and resurrection
of Jesus. |
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And again we have that word, in 8:1,
"therefore". (Rom 8:1 NRSV) "There is
therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus." What's happened, he says, is that God's Holy
Spirit has come to dwell within us. God is changing us
through the Holy Spirit's indwelling. Here's what he
says: "You, however, are controlled not by the
sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God
lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of
Christ, he does not belong to Christ." This in fact
is what Ezekiel and Jeremiah foretold: (Ezek 36:26-27)
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in
you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give
you a heart of flesh. 27And I will put my
Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be
careful to keep my laws." (Jer 31:33-34) "But
this is the covenant that I will make with the house of
Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law
within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I
will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34No
longer shall they teach one another, or say to each
other, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know
me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the
LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember
their sin no more." In his book about Judaism,
"To Life", Rabbi Harold Kushner's points out
that the reason God gave his law to the whole nation of
Israel was that he wanted "to create a community
where ordinary people … would reinforce each other's
efforts to do the right thing." Well, that's an
important principle that we need to continue to follow,
as we'll see later, but it wasn't enough. The nation
failed to reinforce good behaviour - in fact the opposite
was the case; they actually tended to reinforce bad
behaviour - and they ended up earning God's anger and
judgement. So God decided to move to plan B. That is,
he'd give us a new spirit, change our hearts of stone to
hearts of flesh, so we could obey him. |
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And so, Paul says, God now looks at our lives
and counts them as righteous because of his own Spirit
present within us. And not only that, but the presence of
the Spirit in our lives means that in the end God will
give new life even to our mortal bodies through his
spirit who lives in us. And so he ends chapter 8 of
Romans on the great heights of joy with the affirmation
that if God is for us, who can be against us. If God
loves us, who can separate us from that love. (Rom
8:37-39) "No, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through him who loved us. 38For I
am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
powers, 39nor height, nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation, will be able to separate us from
the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." |
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Then after spending some time in chs 9-11
addressing the issue of God's choice and continuing love
of Israel as his chosen people, we come to chapter 12 and
again we find that word, "Therefore". (Rom 12:1
NRSV): "I appeal to you therefore, brothers and
sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as
a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is
your spiritual worship." |
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The appeal, notice, isn't to our desire to be
found acceptable to God. It's to the fact that despite
our unacceptable nature God has accepted us. It's to our
realisation that God has changed us for all time; that
his Spirit dwelling within us makes us different people,
for whom to follow our evil desires would be a denial of
who we are. It's an appeal to the fact that we're now
children of God and therefore called to be like our
Father. It's an appeal, not to return to law, but to live
out the grace that God has shown us in Jesus Christ. Not
that he expects this to be an instantaneous change. He
says we're to be transformed by the renewing of our
minds. That is, our minds are to be continually being
renewed. It's an ongoing process by which our lives will
be gradually transformed into the likeness of Christ and
by which we'll come to know what God's will is and how to
please him. |
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And how will we facilitate that transformation?
By living it out. He seems to group his advice here into
three areas: how to serve in Christian Community, how to
relate in Christian Community, and how to relate to the
wider community. |
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We serve in the Christian community through
humility and by offering the gifts we have in service of
others. We relate in Christian Community with love,
patience and forgiveness, hating what's evil and loving
what's good. We relate to the wider community as
productive citizens, and as caring and supportive
neighbours. |
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Finally he gives them instructions about how a
godly church should behave so as to promote the gospel
and to be a support to one another. Here's where that old
idea of the community reinforcing good behaviour comes in
again. We're to relate to one another in such a way as
will build each other up, support the weak and bring
praise to God. |
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Well, that's a very brief overview of what will
take us the best part of the next ten months to cover
properly. |
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But the important things to remember at this
stage are these: In the end our salvation comes through
faith in Christ, by grace alone. Christ is the centre of
our salvation and of our ongoing life. The law is given
not to bring salvation. Being good will never work, even
following Jesus' example will fail. Only faith in Christ
will suffice. But having said that our new life in Christ
does carry with it the onus to live a godly life as
though we were in God's presence in eternity already. |
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Well, I hope you'll all stay with us as we make
this long pilgrimage through the letter to the Romans and
that by the end we'll all understand our faith better and
be able to explain it to others so they too can enjoy the
salvation that Christ has won for us. |
