reading from Romans chapter 8. And I think we're going to read more than what I put in the bulletin. I just cannot leave out the surrounding verses. So, we're going to read Romans 8, 31, through the end of the chapter. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is He who condemns? It is Christ who died and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword, As it is written, for your sake we are killed all day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter, yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. And all God's people said, Amen. Father, we thank You for the book of Romans. It has blessed my soul as I have meditated upon this over the past several weeks, and I pray that You would bless this Your people, encourage their hearts, and that You would enable me to be faithful as I preach Your Word. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, let's dive straight into the text, beginning at verse 1 of chapter 1. Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God. This is the first epistle of Paul, obviously, that we have in the New Testament, and it very logically follows after Acts, which ended with Paul spending two years in the city of Rome. And I'll point out that this is not the first epistle that Paul wrote. He actually wrote five epistles before Romans. Let me list those for you. He wrote Galatians in AD 49. 1 and 2 Thessalonians in AD 51, 1 Corinthians in AD 55, 2 Corinthians AD 56, and then Romans in AD 57. And so, that just gives you a hint that the New Testament is not grouped chronologically, it's grouped logically, and there is a logic to the order that is here. In the Old Testament, I prefer to follow the Hebrew order, But in the New Testament, I think it is ordered correctly, and there is a logic here in the last verses of Acts. He's teaching in Rome, and this is giving us some of a hint of the kinds of things that Paul would have taught at that church. Now, we saw in the book of Acts that Paul longed to go to Rome. Why? Well, he tells us in verses 9 through 15. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request, if by some means, now at last, I may find a way in the will of God to come to you. For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established, that is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith, both of you and me. I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often planned to come to you, but was hindered until now, that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other Gentiles. I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and to unwise. So as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also. Now, there are at least three reasons why the apostle Paul wanted to go to Rome, besides blessing them and being blessed himself. Obviously, that's a reason that's listed here, but we saw in the last sermon on Acts that he longed to be a part of the fulfillment of Daniel 2. Daniel 2 has that image of these kingdoms and that stone cut without hands, that's the kingdom of Christ, coming down, smashing the image at the feet, which is Rome, and gradually grinding all of the kingdoms of this world until there's nothing left except for the good news of the kingdom of Christ. And he longed to be a part of that and to be right at Rome, where this image was at. The second reason he wanted to go to Rome was that he hoped to use Rome as a launching base for the uncharted territories of Spain. And he mentions that in chapter 15, verse 24. Now, just in terms of order of how everything's arranged, 1 and 2 Timothy actually occur after Acts is finished. And those books indicate that after Acts is finished, he does get his trial, he gets acquitted, and he leaves, and he has a fourth missionary journey, not just to Spain, but to a number of other countries as well. And so once he got out of that house arrest, Rome then became the perfect launching pad, so to speak, for this mission's venture. So there was a logistical reason why he wanted to go to Rome. But before that could happen, the church at Rome needed some healing. And so God sent Paul to Rome in order to bring about that healing. That's the third reason. You'll notice as you read through Romans—some of you have read through this book several times already—that there is a repeated emphasis on a call to unity. There was a disunity that had happened, and a lot of it was actually racial in nature. Just as we have racial tensions in various cities in America, there was racial tensions that were going on in the secular part of the city of Rome, but those racial tensions had sadly crept into the church. And I'm gonna give you a little bit of background on how that happened. We know from Acts that there had already been a thriving church in Rome for quite some time. and it was largely composed of Jews, though there were Gentiles that had come in as well. It was largely a Jewish church initially. In Acts 18, verses 1 through 2, we find the timing where Claudius is so frustrated with all of the—what the secular writings speak of as Jewish riots, that he kicked all of the Jews out of the city of Rome. Now, I believe, based on the secular evidence that is out there, that these riots were against, it says, a Christus. Well, I think they were rioting just like they did throughout the empire to—against Christianity. But Claudius, he's probably ignorant of this, he just all Jews have to leave. So this is the time that Aquila and Priscilla had to leave Rome. And anyway, this mass exodus out of the church was a huge blow to the church, but the Gentile Christians, they rose to the occasion, and there was massive outreach, and the church grew. So five years later, even secular history says this, the emperor invited Jews back into Rome. They were allowed to come back in, and when the Jewish Christians returned to their church—and they probably did think of it as being their church—things had changed. They had totally changed. There had been such a huge influx of Gentiles that a whole new culture had developed. And it created a rather significant divide with the Jews insisting that the Gentiles need to get with it and get circumcised and eat kosher and follow the different festivals. Well, the Gentiles are a little bit savvy by this time. They've read Galatians. They've read Paul's earlier epistles. They're not going to go along with this. And there's tension that's going on in the church. And so it explains why Paul spends quite a bit of time in this epistle dealing with the Jewish issues of food, festivals, and circumcision. I'm not going to get into that controversy at all. I think it's worthwhile studying. I think there's a lot of lessons that we can learn from those Roman controversies for our current culture, just not enough time to deal with those. But I just bring it up to show He had this desire to bring about unity in that church, to bring healing that was there. And the gospel that Paul speaks of is the perfect solution to that racial tension. Actually, all three reasons that he wanted to go to Rome and that God was sending him to Rome are perfect reasons for God to inspire him to write the most comprehensive message of the gospel that you have in the entire Bible. The word gospel occurs 13 times in this book. But the idea of the gospel is pervasive throughout. Now, I'm gonna hasten to say, this is not the truncated gospel of some modern Christians. It's not a gospel where sinners invite Jesus to come into their hearts. Romans makes very clear that God is sovereign in his salvation, and he doesn't need anybody's permission to save them. It is the sinner who bows in unconditional surrender. So, for example, God did not timidly knock on the heart of Saul, who later became Paul, knock on his heart, hoping that Saul would invite him to come in. No, he knocked him off his hort, busted down the door of his heart, you know, actually gave him a whole heart tramplant without asking his permission, thank you. Okay, this is sovereign grace. This is not the kind of wimpy grace and gospel that many times is portrayed. It's not a man-centered grace. So, this is a gospel that reflects the glory of God. In fact, that word glory—what do I have in your outlines? It occurs 23 times in this book. This is not an antinomian gospel that ignores the righteousness of God. In fact, that word righteousness occurs 44 times, interestingly, as being an essential component of the gospel of Paul. God's righteousness, 44 times. The word law occurs 81 times, sometimes negatively, sometimes positively, because it's a word that has different definitions and meanings. But the gospel that is described in Romans is a bold, God-centered gospel that reflects the righteousness of God, a key phrase in this book. In fact, many, many commentators say the righteousness of God is at the heart of the gospel of this book. And I totally agree. And what I'm going to do for you, this is not in your outlines, but I'm going to give you a very quick outline of the book just based on the righteousness of God, looking at it through that lens. In chapters 1–3, we see that mankind lacks the righteousness of God and stands condemned by that righteousness. He needs that righteousness, but he doesn't have it. In fact, he doesn't want it. He rejects it. He suppresses this knowledge and tries to get rid of it. He is totally depraved and unable to come to God. So, what's the solution? That's given in chapters 4–5. It starts with the effectual calling of the Holy Spirit which immediately results in a new creation, just like in Genesis. When God speaks, something happens. Well, he says he speaks, and we get a new heart. We're regenerated. Well, that instantly, that regeneration, makes God's people—God's elect, I should say—instantly look at life differently. All of a sudden, they see God's righteousness, their own sin. They see life in a totally different light. It makes them repent. This repentance is a conversion that leads to what? Justification. And chapters 4 through 5. deal primarily with that justification, where people are set apart as saints—justification—and then he goes on to work in those saints to conform them to God's righteousness. That's chapter 6 through 8. So, chapter 6 through 8, we see God's righteousness does more than simply justify us. Okay? It's not just a legal issue. Justification 4 through 5, yes, that's His righteousness imputed to us, but in chapter 6 through 8, His righteousness is supernaturally imparted within us. It transforms us. So, Chapters 4–5 were set apart as saints as justification. Chapters 6–8 were transformed into his image. Then in chapters 9–11, Paul vindicates the righteousness of God and predestination, as well as in his future program for Jew and Gentile. And the interesting thing about those chapters that God's righteousness will be communicated to the nations themselves. In other words, it's not just an individual gospel—praise God, it is an individual gospel that captures us—but it's a gospel to nations as nations. And what he says there displays sovereign grace, because I tell you, no nation is going to turn to God unless His grace transforms that nation. That's going to be His sovereign grace alone. Now, when you study all of this, you realize that the true gospel humbles man, whereas the modern man-centered gospel really brings down God. It humbles God, and it exalts man. And so chapters 9 through 11 are an absolutely necessary corrective to the pitiful, truncated gospel of modern evangelicalism. But where the first 11 chapters beautifully lay out a sovereign gospel of grace, chapters 12 through 16 go on to show the good news of God's righteousness making revolutionary changes in individuals, families, churches, culture as a whole. And so the whole book's about the gospel, a gospel that must transform everything by moving people away from self-trust, self-law, self-righteousness, towards receiving God's righteousness and justification, living out God's righteousness and sanctification, and bringing God's righteousness to the nations in evangelism. Okay? So, that's all about God's righteousness. That's the kind of God-centered gospel that will change this world. Now, that's the 10,000-foot-high airplane view of Romans. We're going to fly a little bit lower and see a few more of the details. Romans 1, 1-3 immediately corrects two modern heretical views of the gospel. In verses 1-2, Paul declares that the gospel is not something new. This is important to understand. He says it is, quote, the gospel which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures. And in this book, Paul will quote the Old Testament over and over again to demonstrate his doctrine. Old Testament saints were saved in exactly the same way that we are. Well, slightly different. They're looking forward to the cross by faith. through the picture, the lens of the ceremonial law. We're looking backward to the cross by faith, but they're saved by faith in what Jesus Christ did. And so, Paul will use Abraham, the Jewish hero, to demonstrate the gospel, because the Jews claim to follow him, and claim to be followers of Abraham, and Paul says, no, you're not. You have rejected the essence of what Abraham was about. You have replaced his justification with a meritorious justification, which, by the way, is exactly what the Roman Catholic Church has done today. And so, when hyper-dispensational pastors today say that Jews were saved by keeping the law rather than by faith, they are preaching heresy. Flat-out heresy. Damnable heresy. The second error that he corrects is the one that says that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John preach the gospel of the kingdom, whereas Paul preaches a gospel of grace. as if there are two different gospels. But that's what they say. Two different gospels. It's really weird, beyond weird. But this, too, flows from hyper-dispensationalism that says that the church age was entirely, completely unanticipated. They claim that the church age was inserted into God's plan when the Jews rejected Christ's kingdom, and so the law and the kingdom are postponed to a future millennium. And so they distinguish between law for Israel, grace for the church, and they claim that there is a gospel of law for the Jews, a gospel of grace for the Christians. This is so false. It's a false dichotomy. Later, Paul will say that the gospel actually establishes the law. But he hints at it here as well. Verses 3–6 indicate that Jesus did not postpone His kingdom for 2,000 years. He makes that very explicit later, but He's right now, He says, the Messiah. Okay? He's not going to wait to be the Messiah. He is the Messiah, the Son of David, and as that kingly Son of David, He says He is the Son of God with power, According to the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, and verse 8 affirms exactly what the Gospels did, that this gospel demands obedience to the faith among all nations for His name. This continues to be the gospel of His kingdom that has national implications. Same gospel that Paul preached in the last two verses of the book of Acts. You cannot separate the kingdom from the gospel. Verses 16–17 say that this gospel, when rightly understood, has four things true about it. First, it is God's power to salvation. In other words, it's not man reaching out to God. Man's dead—dead in his trespasses. He needs to be resurrected. No, this is God reaching man. He's reaching the unreachable and the hopelessly lost mankind. It's the power of God to salvation. Second, verse 17 says, For in it the righteousness of God is revealed, The it is the gospel. In it, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. Far from ditching God's righteousness, the gospel establishes God's righteousness, and if you don't have a gospel that reveals the righteousness of God, you don't have the gospel at all. And this is the problem with some antinomian perspectives on this. The gospel is not inviting Jesus into your heart. The gospel involves the imputation of Christ's righteousness to sinners. It's a miracle. Third, it's received by faith, and fourth, it moves people from faith to faith. In other words, the Christian life doesn't just start by faith, justification, It continues to receive from His hand everything that we need for life and godliness throughout the rest of our lives, right? And so, every day of our lives and everything that we do, we need the gospel, and Paul will brilliantly display that applicability of the gospel in chapters 12 through 16. Now, those four things I've just gone through—wow, they are hard for prideful man to swallow. They're very, very hard for a man to swallow. Every religion that man has come up with does not think man's quite so bad. Bad, yes, but not quite so bad as God describes them. And man is reaching out to God, and man's trying to earn God's favor. But chapters 1 through 3 show how all mankind is hopelessly lost apart from grace. If you don't understand that bad news, you don't understand the good news, right? The Jews, no doubt, were applauding, saying, yes, Paul, go after those Gentiles. In chapter 1, verses 18 through 32, he's showing how those Gentiles, they just get worse and worse. Their minds are depraved. They're suppressing the truth and unrighteousness. And Paul says, hey, don't get so high-minded. You are utterly without merit in God's sight as well. And so, even though the Jews' sins were manifested in a different way, they're utterly without merit, utterly unable to achieve the righteousness of God. And Paul is clear, without God's perfect righteousness, you can't get to heaven. Impossible. You need to be perfect, 100% perfect. So, having the law was not enough. Paul said, actually, that made the Jews more guilty because they had more knowledge, right? So, his logical conclusion in verses nine through 20 is that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And the collage of Old Testament scriptures he quotes in chapter three, verses 10 through 18, is devastating to the self-righteous Jew. Quoting their own scriptures, Paul paints a depressing collage of what total depravity looks like. Let me read that for you. Chapter 3, beginning at verse 10. As it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is none who does good. No, not one. Their throat is an open tomb. With their tongues they have practiced deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now, since there is no one who is righteous, the only way somebody could be declared righteous is stated in verse 24, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. It's free. We can't buy it. Now, to be justified means simply to be declared righteous. to be declared righteous. How on earth can the unrighteous be declared to be righteous? It's not by bribery of the judge, because it's free. It's not by the judge lying. He does not tell any lie when he says, you and I are 100% righteous. So how on earth can this be? Well, that's the subject matter of chapters four through five, but he summarizes it in the remaining verses of chapter three by indicating that Jesus averted the father's wrath by being a substitute. He took our sins and the father treated Jesus as if he had committed every sin that you and I had ever committed. God poured out his wrath upon him. He became our substitute. And because in God's justice, there can be no double jeopardy, other words, getting punished twice for the same crime. There could be no Jebril Jeopardy. If our sins were paid for, we don't have to pay for our sins. And so, verse 26 says that the gospel could, quote, demonstrate at the present time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. So the big question that people have always wrestled with is how can a just judge, God, be just, and justify a sinner. Declare an unrighteous person to be righteous. How can he be just? Isn't a judge supposed to condemn sinners and never justify them? Well, chapters 4 through 5 go into that subject in great depth. To the Jew who insisted that you couldn't be declared righteous until you, first of all, get circumcised, Paul says, just read your own scriptures. Abraham was declared justified before he got circumcised. Boom, totally destroys their argument. Others had added other laws that you had to keep in order to add to God's justification. And he said, no, at the beginning of his walk, before he had done good works, He was justified. And so, you cannot add any other good works in there. In chapter 4, verse 22, it says, it was accounted to him for righteousness, and that word accounted is legitimized. It's an accounting term. So, the debt is wiped out, and legally, we are treated as if we have done every righteous deed that Jesus did. That's just an amazing, mind-blowing content. So His deeds are credited to our account. Now, this doctrine is what divided Protestants from the Roman church. And by the way, it divided the Roman church from the church of the first 12 centuries, because they held to justification by faith alone through the reputed righteousness of Christ alone as well. Sadly, modern evangelicalism and even some modern Reformed people have abandoned this historic doctrine of three imputations. And I wish I had more time to delve into this, because justification is at the essence of Christianity. I made a little chart on the right-hand side of your outlines, and hopefully you can make out my artwork, but it's got three justifications there. It's got the imputation, three imputations here, the imputation of Adam's sin to all mankind. Now, we're not talking about our sin nature. That would be an impartation, which also happened. But this is a legal imputation. The actual sin of eating of that forbidden fruit was legally imputed to all of his people. That's not fair. Well, wait on a second. If you don't think that that's legit, then we can't ever be saved either, because our sins are imputed to Christ. He's treated as if he committed all of our sins. And then the third imputation is all of Christ's righteous deeds are imputed to us. Now, Not all Auburn Avenue people have denied those three imputations, but those who have—and it's probably a minority of them—but those who have have lost the gospel, pure and simple. They have lost the gospel. But chapter 6 begins to deal with the issues of sanctification. If we are counted as righteous, well, maybe it doesn't matter how we live. It's a legal issue, right? So who cares if we sin? Or, as verse 1 words it, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? And his answer in verse 2 is a resounding, certainly not. If we legally died with Christ when we were united to Him by the baptism of the Holy Spirit, then we die to our old sinful life. To go back to that is to deny our conversion. All who are in Christ will follow a new life. Or another way of saying it is everyone who was justified is going to be sanctified. If you're not being sanctified right now, then we would say, well, there must be something wrong. You must not have been justified. God links those two together. And so, these three chapters deal with a part of the good news called sanctification. God gloriously gives the righteousness of God in a different way than justification, where justification was a legal credit imputed to us. This is an actual power imparted inside of us, and if we're really Christians, we will grow in sanctification. As verses 15 through 23 word it, We have been purchased out of slavery to Satan and sin so that we can be slaves of God and of righteousness. Slavery is inevitable. You're either—if you're not a slave of God, you're not saved, is basically the bottom line of that. But chapter 7 deals with the vexing question, okay, I'm a new creature, I'm a new man in Christ, so why do I still sin? I hate sinning, but I still do it. Why? I love God's law, but I find myself violating it. What on earth is going on inside of my life? And let me tell you four things that Romans 7 is not saying. These are the four main interpretations that turn Romans 7 from good news into bad news, okay? First, it is not saying that habitual sinning is the normal Christian life. That's the way some people interpret this, and that completely contradicts chapter 8, which indicates that victory over sin and sonship and love for God's law is the normal Christian walk. Now, yes, this person is a Christian. I'll give you a heads-up right there. He's a Christian, but this is not the normal Christian walk. This is a Christian who's very frustrated over something, and we'll see why. Second, it's not saying that the person in chapter 7 is unregenerate. Some people, in overreaction to the first view, they say, okay, this must be an unregenerate person who's had some conviction but is not yet a believer, and chapter 8 is when he becomes a believer. It completely violates the context to say that, because verses 1 through 6 show that it must be a Christian in view. That person agrees with the law, he calls it good in verse 16, verse 19. He wants to do the right thing, but somehow he can't. Now, we already saw in chapter 3, no unregenerate person loves God's law. They hate God's law. The carnal mind is enmity to God's law. They don't love it. Okay? Verse 20 says, it's not the real I that is doing it. Well, that would seem to indicate that the real I has changed. How in the world can that be? In verse 22, this man delights in God's law and the inward man, but he still finds himself sinning. It's clearly a believer, not an unbeliever, and yet it's a believer who's very frustrated. Third, chapter 7 is not describing an optional stage in a Christian's life. a so-called carnal Christian stage, with chapter 8 being an optional stage of victory, if you know the secrets of the victorious life. And I'm being a little facetious here, but you have to buy their book before you know what the seven secrets to their successful life is of victory. This is the Keswick movement, the higher life movement, and exegetically, it is hugely flawed. I won't get into it. Fourth, it is not describing a Christian before he is baptized with the Spirit. while chapter 8 is describing a Christian who speaks in tongues and is baptized with the Spirit. So, what is it? Well, I believe that J. Adams is correct when he says this is describing a Christian in the first stages of struggling to put off sinful habits. You can't just instantly shed bad habits. Adams explains that when a sin, or actually, when anything becomes a habit, we do it without even thinking. It just becomes a part of our nervous system, and it's programmed into our flesh. Sin is so habitual, it is instinctual. And this is true of all habits, whether they are sinful habits or not. For example, if you've got a bad tennis habit, and you're trying to get rid of this habit, you keep finding yourself swinging the same rotten way over and over, and it's frustrating during those times when you're trying to put on the new habit, put off the old habit. Well, the same is true of righteousness. Everything about this chapter describes habits. Verse 16, you do it even though you don't want to do it. Verse 17, you're not intentionally doing it, but the habit is so ingrained that it is a part of your nervous system. You just automatically do it. Your wife gives you, you know, that certain look. And you just, without even thinking, you get angry, or you withdraw, or whatever your bad habit is that you have gotten used to doing. Verse 23 speaks of the law of sin dwelling in my members. What on earth? Law of sin? What is a law of sin dwelling in my member? And what are my members? My members are my hands and the parts of my body. Okay, how does sin dwell there? We know from other passages that sin's not a virus, you know, that we somehow catch. Sin is something that is an action that we are responsible for. So, here's how he explains it. When sin becomes so deeply ingrained that it is a habit, that habit, or what Paul calls the law of sin, dwells in our members via the nervous system. He calls it a law of sin because it's a pattern of sin. And when people fall into the same sin pattern over and over again, they finally cry out in despair, as verse 24 does, "'Oh, wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?' He blames the body because that's where J. Adams says the habits are programmed—in the body, in the nervous system. But he doesn't leave us there. He says in verse 25. I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord That's how we're delivered, through Jesus Christ our Lord. And that's where chapter 8 is going to be picking up, giving us the glorious hope of conquering these habits. But before he gets there, he gives the summary statement of all of chapter 7 and the rest of verse 25. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. So a regenerated person, he's convinced in his mind he should follow the law of God. He loves his law. It's a guide for our lives, but habits become a part of our nervous system that we do without even thinking. And so until those habits are broken and new habits are developed, our nervous system will continue to kick in and make us serve the habits or the law of sin. So, that's J. Adams' interpretation. It's part of the dehabituation-rehabituation process of counseling. And so, chapter 8 tells a Christian how to overcome each and every bad habit. you can graduate from chapter 7 and into chapter 8. You will not be able to get rid of every habit at the same time. It's going to be a gradual process. But if you're regenerate, you will gradually, by the power of the Holy Spirit, put on new habits of righteousness that you can do just as easily as you used to do the old bad habits. That's the glorious theology in chapter 8. So don't park on chapter 7. By the way, chapter 7 is encouraging. When people say, am I going crazy? Am I even a believer? Say, yeah, you're not going crazy. This is a common experience. So chapter 7 is encouraging that you're not alone. Everybody goes through this process, but chapter 8 is super encouraging because it guarantees you can lick those habits of sin. And I'm not going to go through all the tools of the Spirit in chapter 8, but they are marvelous. Spirit not only enables us to cry out, Abba, Father, but ushers us into more and more of the sonship privileges by faith. Will it produce pain and discomfort as we battle our old habits? Obviously, yes, he talks about that pain and discomfort, but he encourages us, like a racer, don't focus on the pain. Focus on the goal. Okay, that's verses 18 through 25. And this disparity between our upward call and where we are right now leads us to pray intensely in the spirit for victory. That's verses 26 through 27. A spirit who, by the way, has guaranteed that God's plan will be accomplished in our lives from predestination, to calling, to justification, to glorification. He's saying, don't worry. What God has begun, He will complete in you. Keep going, keep going, keep battling. God will give you victory after victory. And the Spirit of God keeps us from despairing when we are battling against these bad habits by telling us in the last verses there that there is absolutely nothing that can separate you from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, so encouraging. I didn't put it into your outlines, but I really should have put the central verses of this are the last verses of chapter eight. They're just marvelous, the ones that I read earlier. But if God's grace is so powerful, and it is, Then why are more Jews and Gentiles not believing? Why doesn't God save everybody? He could. And that's where chapters 9 through 11 come in. God is sovereign over even that, and has planned to move the earth from a remnant believing to every nation believing. And it will occur in His timing and plan, and it will give great glory to God. Now chapter 9 gives the doctrine of predestination. It, too, undergirds the doctrine that man cannot earn salvation. No one was worthy. So why did God save anyone? Just because He chose to. It's the only reason He gives. He's the potter, we're the clay. He makes some pots for glory, some for destruction. He can do whatever He wants with us. Verse 16 says, so it is not of Him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy." He chose Jacob, he rejected Esau. He chose Israel, he rejected Pharaoh. Verse 18 puts it bluntly, therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens. And people respond in verse 18, that's not fair. And Paul's response is pretty interesting. He doesn't say, so what? He just says, who are you to judge God? That is not your place. It's not the place of the clay to judge the potter. By the way, if God were to give us fairness, we'd all be in hell, and He would not have saved anybody. That's what's fairness, right? He does not have to save anyone. And so, the whole chapter is a very humbling teaching which makes us bow before our Maker in thankfulness that He chose us. He certainly didn't need to. There is no room for pride once you understand total depravity and predestination. The sovereign gospel of Romans humbles the pride of man, and it exalts God. especially humbled the racial pride that the Jews had. Now, he'd already dealt with that to some degree in chapter 2, but Paul goes on in the rest of chapter 9 through 11 to discuss the future application of God's sovereign gospel to the Jewish nation and the Gentile nations. And the bottom line is that God had chosen to reject Israel as a nation for a time and save only a remnant of Jews in every age until the majority of Gentile nations became saved. we aren't there yet. Not by a long shot. We aren't there yet. Then God will sovereignly save every man, woman, and child, the entire nation of Israel at some point. And I think there's some hints from the prophets, it'll be in one day. Talk about sovereign grace. Only God's sovereign grace could accomplish that. And he says, as a result of that conversion, God's then going to make it such changes in the world, it'll be like a metaphorical resurrection of the entire world. That will be the period when people live long lives, animals become domesticated, and the curse on earth is hugely reversed. And Paul alludes to some of those promises from Isaiah. I don't have the time to argue those points. Amals take a totally different viewpoint on that, and I'll show, though—hopefully, I'll show—that the Amal view, if you follow Paul's logic, necessitates that you take a statist view of Romans chapter 13. We'll see if you're convinced by that, but it necessitates that. Anyway, as Paul surveys in his mind everything that he said in chapters 1 through 11—God's goodness, His wisdom, glory, sovereignty, grace, majesty—it all blows his mind, and he can't help but worship and utter doxology to God. He ends the chapter saying, Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has become his counselor? Or who has first given to him, and it shall be repaid to him? For of him, and through him, and to him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen." Now that's a God-centered gospel. It humbles man, it makes man glory, and God is maker and then his Savior. But in chapter 12 and following, Paul ends the book with practical applications, and he almost always does this in his epistles. We'll see next week that Corinthians is an exception, but normally he starts the book with doctrine, and then he says, here's the logical implications of that doctrine. And I don't have time to deal with the logic of the book. I did find a book that goes through the book of Romans, just like they used to have to do in the colonies, you know, when they were studying for law. It used to be every lawyer had to dissect the book of Romans, and some got even converted doing this, had to dissect the book of Romans and show the watertight logical arguments that went throughout. So, I finally found a modern book that does that. It's really, it's pretty cool. But anyway, what Paul does in chapters 12 through 16 is to systematically demonstrate that our lives must be consistent with the gospel that he's already outlined. Chapter 12 begins, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, Whenever you see a therefore, you need to ask what it is there for, right? It's a logical indicator and helps you to interpret the passage. And in this case, the word therefore is the hinge. This is what commentators say. It's the hinge upon which the whole book of Romans turns. He's saying, in light of the gospel I've been talking about in chapters 1 through 11, I beseech you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, and then the rest of the book is a series of similar exhortations applied to every area of life. First exhortation, chapter 12, verse 1. I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. Now, I won't deal with all of the amazing implications of that verse. I'm just going to deal with one. Our current bodies totally relate to the gospel of Jesus Christ in chapters 1 through 11. A lot of people just miss that completely. If there is a logical implication from everything that he has said, that means our bodies relate to the gospel. You cannot deny that, but many people do. Our bodies will be redeemed. And he is saying, if you understand the gospel, you're not going to abuse your body. You're going to use your bodies as vessels that have been redeemed to the Lord Jesus Christ to serve him. Every member of our body must be trained to be a slave of righteousness. Verse 2 says, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." The Greek word for conformed is suske matizostai, which means, it refers to a clay being squeezed into a mold. And so one translation translates it literally this way, don't let the world squeeze you into its mold. Now, that's conformity, right? And nowhere in the Scriptures are we told to conform to Christ. So, we can conform to the world, or we can conform to Christ, but that's all outward. That has no life in it. But transformation, that's different. Transformation is a miraculous process that goes beyond mere outward conformity. Now, any one of you can conform. You know what the culture is. You say, OK, well, I'm going to conform or I'm a nonconformist, whatever. But you can conform and pretend to be just like everybody else is and pretend to even be a Christian. But transformation is different. The Greek word for transformation is metamorpho. And that means exactly the same thing that it means in English, metamorphosis. Remember how caterpillars turn into butterflies or into moths? It's an amazing process that is metamorph—oh, in the Greek, it's metamorphosis in the English. Well, Paul says that is sort of like what is going on in your life by the power of the Holy Spirit. Okay, it's really a remarkable word. Now, outward conformity does not make you a Christian. Attending church does not make you a Christian any more than walking into a garage turns you into an automobile, right? You could squeeze a caterpillar into a mold that is shaped like a butterfly. I'm going to make a butterfly. Squish, squish, squish. Yeah, that's all that's going to happen is a dead caterpillar, right? That's conformity. Some churches try to conform everyone into a mold. They're happy if you all do the same thing, you know, you follow the pastors or the elders, a conformity model. That's not what we're about here at this church at all. So anyway, the bottom line is you could choose to be conformed to the world, conformed to Christ, but we shouldn't look at it that way. Metamorphosis is a miraculous inside-out transformation that the Spirit produces. It's the difference between a clay image of a butterfly and the real butterfly. That's the difference. The gospel brings life, not just a doctrine about life. Now, we could go on and on in this chapter to show how the gospel produces humility in the individual, gives gifts, spiritual gifts to the individual, gives hatred for what God hates and love for what God loves. There are many other things in this passage, but we do need to move on. Chapter 12, also speaks of God's sovereign claims over the church. Now, if the gospel is transforming us as individuals, it's going to have an impact upon the church, which is made up of a bunch of individuals. Here's what verses 4 through 5 say, For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function. So we being many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another. So Paul says that the gospel keeps us from going to either extreme of being so focused on the individual that we jettison the need for the church or being so focused on the church that the individual is lost. If God has redeemed more than just you, which he obviously has, then more than just you is important to God and should be important to us. We are inconsistent with the gospel if we isolate ourselves from the church, which He purchased with His dear blood. In fact, Paul clearly connects individual sanctification with the church's mutual ministry. Here's what R.C. Sproul Sr. said, It is both foolish and wicked to suppose that we will make much progress in sanctification if we isolate ourselves from the visible Church. Indeed, it is commonplace to hear people declare that they don't need to unite with the Church to be a Christian, They claim that their devotion is personal and private, not institutional or corporate. This is not the testimony of the great saints of history. It is the confession of fools. And he says it is the confession of fools because it is utterly inconsistent with the gospel. It is logically inconsistent with the gospel that Paul preached in the first 11 chapters, which has both individual and corporate dimensions. So Paul is basically saying, in light of everything I've told you in the first 11 chapters, you guys ought to have a sincere love for one another, build up one another, be committed to one another. Next, he tells us how we ought to live with our neighbors. in chapters 12, verse 17, through chapter 13, verse 10. And this involves every social relationship, including civil government, in chapter 13, verses 1 through 7. By the way, this is a—this is one way you can test somebody's eschatology. is you can ask them if their interpretation of chapter 13 on civil government flows from the gospel that the Apostle Paul described in the first 11 chapters, okay? How do God's claims over society relate to the therefore that began this section? They are indeed logically related if and only if you interpret chapters 9–11 as referring to the salvation of nations. not just individuals, nations, as premills and postmills say, not just individuals, as full preterists and amills say. Okay? Many amillennialists insist that Romans 9 through 11 is only talking about individuals being saved, and the church is always going to be a tiny, tiny minority of any given nation. Now, these are good men. But their faulty eschatology in chapters 9–11 affects very negatively their interpretation of chapter 13. And I want to show you how this book, if you don't hold to the logically tight, integrated argument of Paul, you get yourself into trouble. Because they don't believe that nations will ever be discipled into Christian nations—that's chapters 9–11—they interpret Romans 13 as a mandate for civil government, Now, they interpret it not as a mandate, as we do, for a civil government to serve Christ as Christ dictates, but they interpret it as a call to blind submission, no matter what the civil government does. In fact, Lutherans who were the most—not all are consistent with that—but Lutherans who were the most consistent in their application of this interpretation absolutely refused to oppose Hitler. They supported Hitler. They said, it's clear. Take a look at chapter 13. Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves." So they taught you cannot resist government. That's not what the text says at all. It says that we cannot resist God's authority, and that a civil government has no authority except for the authority that God has explicitly delegated to it. In fact, the Greek of verse 1 is quite strong. It says, for there is no authority if not from God. If God has not given the authority, the government may not irrigate that authority to itself. Now, you can see those are two different interpretations that are poles apart. Which one is right? On my interpretation, it will take the grace of God that Romans 9-11 talks about in order to accomplish what God mandates in Romans 13, 1–7. It is speaking of limited government by civil magistrates whose passion is to be ministers of God. My friends, that will take the gospel of Romans 1–11 to accomplish. It will never be accomplished by politics. On the armal interpretation, there is no need for the gospel to reach the civil magistrate in Romans 13, 1–7. No need. They assume that civil magistrate there is Nero. And hey, if the worst magistrate ever, we need to just blindly submit to him, then we got to submit to every magistrate who was out there. And that magistrate's will is God's will. That's the way that they interpret it. Your view of the gospel in chapters 1 through 11 will profoundly affect your interpretation of chapter 13. Now, I've actually taken these two chapters out of order, so I should get back to the order. How does this all transpire? He starts with our individual societal relations in chapter 12 before moving on to our civil relations in chapter 13. We will never see long-term change for the good simply by imposing another presidency. Chapter 12 must come before chapter 13. Now, let's take a look. at our responsibilities as citizens. Before we can expect to bring the civil government under the crown rights of King Jesus—that's chapter 13—we must act responsibly with social issues ourselves. It's chapter 12. The only way you can have a godly civil government of chapter 13 is if you have the pervasive, godly self-government of chapter 12 throughout the citizenry. So I would just ask you, do you have the characteristics of chapter 12? It takes the supernatural grace of God to have those, but do you have those? Don't be protesting and complaining against the civil magistrates if you yourself have no self-government that is listed in chapter 12. And what better way to learn self-government than the ways that are mentioned in chapter 12, verses 9 through 21? You ought to have that memorized. It's just an amazing section there. These principles make for godly citizens of the family, of the church, of the state. It's fantastic catalog of the power of a godly citizenry to overcome evil with good. Not to endure evil, but to overcome evil with good. He's calling us to win the battle with the gospel, not simply to endure the battle. But the gospel produces other duties given in chapter 13, 8-10. Let me read those. Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, You shall not covet. And if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. So, I think you can see that if we were to have a holy government, it makes logical sense that we need to have a godly citizenry. And that's exactly what our founding fathers said in America, that this republic would only stand so long as America remained a Christian country. And there are many, many quotes. I think some of those guys were deceived on what had happened, because there was a secularizing that happened with the Constitution. But anyway, there is—here's one quote from inscribed in the Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C. Justice in the life and conduct of the state is possible only as it first resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens. Christians should be model citizens just because of their relationship with God based on the gospel. Paul does not pit law against grace. God's grace spurs us to keep God's laws, even as they relate to social issues. Nor does he pit law against love. Verse 10 says, love does no harm to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. So hopefully you can see the gospel has incredibly broad ramifications. but it will also one day transform humanistic civil governments into model Christian governments. Augustine pointed out that apart from grace, states are simply legal thieves and murderers. And I echo his sentiment. America does not conform to Romans 13, 1 through 7. America is exactly what Augustine said. It is an organized band of robbers and murderers. And if you think that that is slander, then you better start counting the statistics of the millions of abortions that our government has tolerated and done nothing about. They are guilty of murder. You look at the wars, the ungodly wars. You look at all of the ungodly taxation and eminent domain and asset fortitude and other iniquitous evils. They are not even remotely resembling what God calls them to do. Just because you're used to this tyranny does not make it right. Civil officers are not ministers of God except as they submit themselves to God. God calls them bestial empires. Bestial empires in Daniel and in the book of Revelation when they do their own will. And we ought not to vote for what God rejects. But the way many people interpret Romans chapter 13 makes a mockery out of Paul's logic. A total mockery. Let me substitute Idi Amin into key places in this passage so that you can see how out of touch the interpretation of many people is. Just for those of you who are younger, Idi Amin was the wicked ruler of Uganda who sought to persecute Christians into extinction. He explicitly said his goal was to eradicate Christianity from his country. So he hunted them down, he tortured them, he raped them, killed them, he even ate Christians in his cannibalistic rituals, he was a terror to those Christians. The very name Idi Amin raises the specter of hundreds of people buried up to their necks near anthills so that he could watch them slowly being eaten alive by these ants. Okay, he was a persecutor of the church just like Nero was. So let me read this passage substituting him just so you can see how ludicrous the typical interpretation really is. Let every soul be subject to Idi Amin, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist have been appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists Idi Amin resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist Idi Amin will bring judgment on themselves. For Idi Amin is not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of Idi Amin? Do what is good, and you will have praise from Idi Amin, for he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is God's minister and avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore you must be subject to Idi Amin, not only because of wrath, but also for conscience' sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for he is God's minister, attending continually to this very thing. I think you get the point. Idi Amin was not a terror to evil. He was a terror to good people. He surrounded himself with the most wicked and corrupt people you could imagine, and he rewarded them for their evil. He did the exact opposite of what this passage says a magistrate should do. This passage is a paradigm of a Christian magistrate who has been converted by the gospel of the first 11 chapters, not a description of Nero, even remotely. Not even remotely. If this spoke of unqualified submission to civil governments, Internally, it is contradicting itself, but it's certainly contradicting the logic of the whole book. The only interpretation that makes sense is the one that says that the gospel must reach even civil magistrates if they are to serve in government the way that they must. The gospel of chapters 1–8 is powerful enough to to reach civil magistrates. And the gospel of chapters 9 through 11 guarantees—it's an ironclad guarantee—that all nations will eventually become converted, including the nation of Israel. Now, when you take that interpretation, suddenly chapter 13 becomes a mandate for living out the gospel in the civil sphere. It's showing the calling of a civil magistrate to love small government, to love justice, to praise good, to punish evil, to be self-consciously a servant of King Jesus in all that he does, to acknowledge publicly the crown rights of King Jesus. That's what it's calling for. Now, I won't be able to preach on everything in these chapters, but let me give you hints of how you can continue to study and apply the gospel to every area of life. Chapter 13, 11-14, shows how the gospel that was outlined gives us an entirely different perspective on history itself and what to anticipate in the future. In fact, the cross reverses history. Where all of history was winding down to apostasy prior to the cross, and true believers were only a remnant, all of history is advancing after the cross from glory to glory. And I wish I had the time to preach on that. I don't. What are some other logical implications? Well, chapter 14 says that the gospel should transform the way we exercise rights and liberties. Do we have rights and liberties? Well, absolutely, yes. But we must see them as extensions of the gospel that have been purchased by Jesus, not as excuses for self-centered living. So, so many people are selfish in their exercise of liberties, but the gospel makes us exercise those liberties for Christ and for others. Read that chapter, and I think you'll be blown away by the gospel interpretation of rights and liberties. Chapter 15 says that the gospel should transform the way we look at tribulation. Okay? Makes sense. It's a supernatural gospel that enables us to supernaturally face everything. Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, not even persecution. The same chapter speaks of Paul's enthusiasm for evangelism and miracles and giving as debtors of grace and planning for the future. According to Paul, How we give should be transformed by the gospel so that we're no longer grudgingly giving. It is our delight to give to the Lord and to be strategic in the way that we give. Chapter 16 applies the gospel to fellowship, ministry, and other issues. Even Paul's greetings in that chapter are saturated with an awareness of all that Christ has done for those people that He names and what Christ expects from them. Almost every verse in chapter 16 makes some allusion to Christ's work on their behalf and their work for one another and for Christ. The gospel purchased us to gladly be slaves to God. So that's my question. Are you a slave to God or a slave to yourself? Chapter 16, verses 17 through 19, he clearly sets forth the proposition, you're either serving Christ or you're serving yourself. And the gospel sets us free, according to the early chapters, to serve Christ. Look at verse 18. For those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly. What a contradiction to be purchased and owned by Christ and to spend your whole life serving your belly. And he shows other ways in which the gospel always produces servants' hearts that engage in ministry, always. Verse 20, I cannot skip over that. It's an allusion to Genesis 3, 15, which prophesied that Satan would bruise Christ's heel, but Christ would crush Satan's head. It is not a weak gospel. It is a victorious gospel, a skull-crushing gospel. But it's interesting how Paul words it. Elsewhere, we know that Christ crushed Satan's head at the cross, but here he didn't say that. He says, the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. How can both be true? Well, on the postmortem interpretation, it's easy. Legally, in principle, legally, he was crushed by Christ on the cross. It was over. The victory is won. It's guaranteed now in history. Progressively, Satan is being crushed in history by the saints robbing his territory, right? And he mentions shortly here, I've changed my mind in recent I think it was really shortly that Satan was crushed. I think he was cast into the pit in 8070. But even if you don't believe that, certainly Satan's kingdom was taking hit after hit in those next two centuries until Rome itself had so many converts, despite persecution, that one source, ancient source, said there were more Christians than there were pagans, and eventually the whole empire became converted. There are so many implications of the redemption of Jesus Christ that we've not touched on today. Too many people see the gospel as being only a ticket to heaven. Now, it is that. But the good news is that Christ's redemption goes, as the Christmas hymn words it, far as the curse is found. In your outlines, I've put a chart that shows the impact of the false curse in every area of life. And if you just scan down the left-hand side, you'll see there it impacted mankind spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally, volitionally, religiously, psychologically, motivationally. teleologically, deontologically, socially, individually, environmentally, generationally, cosmically. And I've decided not to preach on that outline because it would take too long. It would take too long. But if you just study that on your own, and realize that the gospel was intended to reverse every one of those things, it is mind-blowing. Too many people have a low vision of what the gospel can accomplish, and our aspirations and our faith are limited by our vision. Romans is a book that is mind-blowing in the comprehensive way that the gospel will change this world, yes, even environmentally, as wild animals are eventually domesticated and humans live hundreds of years of life. And I say, where's that in Romans? Well, Romans appeals to those chapters in Isaiah. And so, brothers and sisters, my charge to you from the book of Romans is to believe in a big God with a big gospel. Amen? Father, we thank You for the gospel of Jesus Christ. Forgive us for those times where we have diminished it and we have not thought of it applying in the broad and comprehensive ways that Your Word says that it does. Help us to submit every area of our lives to the transformation, the metamorphosis of our souls and of our bodies and of our actions and every sphere of influence that we have. by the power of your gospel. And Father, as more and more Christians do that, may there be a transformation of culture itself. We desire that you would be lifted up and glorified, and that we would be purged of every man-centered diminishment of your gospel, and that we would find great joy in preaching your gospel. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.