Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: To Romans.
Romans, Chapter one.
This is where we're going to start.
Has anybody ever read Romans all the way through?
Okay, a few.
Okay, well, we're going to do it over a long period of time.
You're saying it's not working, Katie.
How so?
Oh, no, that's fine.
Yeah, sorry.
Yeah. So we've got a few. We're going to go through it. So I guess you guys will have to attend every single Sunday while we do it so that you can say you've read it all.
Today, I have a goal. I put it on the handouts of getting through the first seven verses. I think we can do it. It is the greeting. But before we start, even if you've not read it all the way through, maybe you've read some of it, maybe you've heard people talk about it.
What do we know about Romans? What's something that you know or you think about when you think of this book?
Okay, Anya, you go first.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Justification by faith alone.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Okay. She said justification by faith alone. In Christ alone. That's definitely a belief that is unfolded in Romans a lot. That we'll see. Ezra. It's one of the letters that Paul wrote. It is one of the letters that Paul wrote. That's right.
Does anybody know how many Letters he wrote?
[00:01:26] Speaker B: 13.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: 13.
And not chronologically, but in the New Testament. This is the first one we come across.
Okay. Anything else?
Well, that's okay.
I'm sure you guys have maybe memorized a verse or two From Romans, Romans 3, 23, Romans 6, 23, Romans 1, 16, to name a few, that are really common. So maybe you'll kind of recognize these and kind of see, you know, what's going on around those verses. I don't think they've been taken out of context, but it'll be helpful to kind of see how Paul gets to those things.
And, yeah, we'll get to all of that in due time.
So here's just some context to start, you know, what's going on? What is this letter?
Why is Paul writing this? Who is this Paul?
So this letter was written probably between 55 and 58.
That's it. That's the whole year. So it was a long, long time ago, you know, nearly 2,000 years ago that this was written.
And it was after Paul completed his Eastern missionary endeavors. So Paul took a couple of journeys. You know, maybe your Bible might even have maps in the back.
You know, if you have one from here, you can. But look in the back of your Bible. Maybe you see a map that looks like this.
Has anyone ever looked at these maps?
I like maps. I used to look at them, but I, you know, seldom ever knew what was going on in them. Well, this one in mine is Paul's first and second missionary journeys. You can kind of see where he's traveled.
So Romans is being written. After he's done these travels. He's helped plant numerous churches throughout that region. You know, it's kind of from modern day Israel up into Turkey and Greece in those areas, and all in between.
Well, now Paul, he wants to push forward. He wants to go further to Rome and eventually to Spain.
So after he's completed those journeys, now he's. He's pushing on.
And the Roman church was likely made up of both Jews and Gentiles. You'll see a lot of discussion both to people that are Jews and Gentiles. You know, it's hard to know if there are more or less of one group than the other or if he wrote primarily to one or the other. People debate that, but I think he's. I think he's obviously writing to both Romans.
A lot of the. There's a lot of discussion because it's, I think, the longest of his letters. It is the longest of his letters. There's a lot in there.
And so there's a lot to discuss, a lot to disagree on, but also a lot to agree on. And people say often that Romans is like a summary of Paul's theology.
What is theology? We know this.
Sure.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Yeah. The study of God and how to
[00:04:24] Speaker C: be more like God.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Yeah, the study of God, how to be more like him. When they say this is like a summary of Paul's theology, what they're saying is all the things he believes about God. This is like him writing a letter saying, here are the main things I believe.
But I don't think that's quite right because there's some aspects of theology, like the doctrine of Christ, there's only a little bit of that. He only talks about eschatology or the end times. I don't know that he talks about it at all in Romans, but in first and Second Thessalonians, he talks about it a lot.
He doesn't talk about the Lord's Supper, but in First Corinthians and other books, he mentions it frequently. So it's not really a summary. But there are important aspects of his theology. In this book. Paul wrote Romans for this reason. So if you want to know why he wrote it, this what I think he wrote Romans to unify the churches in Rome and consequently all Others, especially mending the Jew and Gentile divide. So he wants to bring unity to, you know, if there was a church in Rome or if there were many churches in Rome, he wants them to be unified. He does not want there to be a distinction between Jews and Gentiles.
A second reason he wrote Romans, I believe, is that he intended to equip the church to press on with taking the gospel to Spain and consequently the ends of the earth.
So the mission of the church is to take the gospel where.
I didn't actually understand any of those things. I'm sorry, the ends of the earth. Right. Where do we. Does anyone know where we get that from?
Yeah, great Commission in Matthew 28. And even the phrase of ends of the earth also comes from Acts 1:8.
So we have a couple kind of commissions from Jesus and that's what Paul's doing. Spain is, you know, likely his understanding of the ends of the earth at the time.
Certainly he would not say we should have just stopped at Spain and gone no further.
He was pressing as far as far as he could go. And that's the same goal that the church should have now. He wanted it to go there. It was his goal. Historically, we don't know. We don't think he made it to Spain. The gospel eventually did, of course, and so that is Romans. Romans is therefore probably more accurately described as a summary of the gospel, the good news of Jesus christ, how it can take people from the world and put them in God's family, even people that were called by God long ago, like the Jews and people who were not called at the time, the Gentiles, and put them into the same family, graft them into the same tree so they become branches out of the same root.
That is what the gospel does. And that's what Paul is showing it to do in Romans.
You know, people debate all this stuff. You guys may not care, but at some point, you know, if you go to college, especially someone might, you know, try to enter these doubts across your mind that, you know, books, a lot of these books by Paul were not written by him. They were written by someone else claiming to be him. But it's important to note, as I read, I could find no serious scholar, even non Christian scholars that doubt this book's authenticity anymore. We are certain that Paul wrote this book, which I always think is amazing. We can be certain that this book was written by Paul 2000 years ago. That really is kind of amazing considering all the things that were written since then that we don't have.
We also don't know who took the gospel to Rome first.
It doesn't even seem like Paul has been there yet.
He's likely on his way. You can read the last several chapters of Acts to kind of see how he gets to Rome. But this is probably in those chapters when he writes this letter, he wants to prepare the ground in Rome so that when he gets there, they can push the gospel forward.
Okay, so that's kind of the context. We'll probably run around or run through some other aspects here and there as we study. But let's read the first seven verses and then we'll talk about them.
Okay, so can somebody read Romans 1:1:7?
Anybody?
Malachi? Thank you.
[00:09:11] Speaker C: Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness and by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you, who are called to belong to Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus christ.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Alright, thank you. That was good. Okay, so let's take it verse by verse. That's usually how we do these inductive Bible studies.
Actually, before we do this, does anybody remember what is an inductive Bible study?
It's been a while since we did one. Yeah, yeah. Using the Bible to study the Bible. So we look up close, we understand the English of it, right? We understand how the words and the sentences connect. We understand how those sentences connect to the context right around it, the passage, the book. It's in the Testament, it is in the Bible. It is in. We kind of work from inside out, especially when something is not clear. That helps us study the Bible inductively.
So that is what we want to do. Things from the Bible help us interpret the Bible. That's an important principle.
So that's what we're doing. So verse one, we see Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. So the author is Paul. We've talked about this. Paul. What do we know about Paul? What's something you know about him?
[00:10:57] Speaker B: What?
[00:10:59] Speaker A: He is old? Yeah, yeah, he is old. That's okay. That's fair enough.
Yeah.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: On the Road to Damascus.
Jesus came to him and, like, told him about the gospel and, like, called him to be an apostle.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Yeah, he was called by Christ to be an apostle. That's right. What was he doing on the road to Damascus?
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Wasn't he, like, trying to, like, persecute Christians?
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Yes, he was a big persecutor of the church in terms of killing Christians. And Jesus converted him and called him to be an apostle. That's right. What else?
Mm.
[00:11:42] Speaker B: An apostle of God.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: Yeah. An apostle of the gospel and of God. That's right. Mm. He was a tent maker, sure. Yeah, that's right. It's kind of how he made his living traveling around on all these missionary journeys.
We know he wrote 13 books. We mentioned that earlier Romans, through Philemon in your New Testament.
I mean, that's pretty good. I'm not trying to squeeze everything out. He went on missionary journeys.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: We saw the maps.
Not every day that someone tells you to look at the maps in your Bible, but now we have. Yeah. So he went on a couple missionary journeys. He was primarily called to be an apostle who is taking the gospel to Gentiles. So outside of Israel, that's why we see him journeying all through Asia and Europe.
So that's what he was doing. He was taking the gospel.
You might read about him in Acts. His name is Saul.
Eventually he starts to become called Paul in the Book of Acts because of a language change. Paul is a more Greek name, and that became more associated with him over time. So you'll see him as Saul and Paul, but mostly Paul.
So Jeremiah pointed out that he was set apart for the gospel of God, and that's helpful because Paul gives us descriptors. All of these things we've said about him are true, but he's not giving us his whole biography. He's going to tell us something that is important.
You know, if you're going to. If you have a little bit of time and you're meeting someone, you're not going to tell them probably your whole life story, you know, especially in passing, you might tell them the things that seem most relevant to you for the situation.
So the way that he introduces himself in his letters becomes really important.
So what does he say here? He says first that he's a servant of Christ Jesus. What does it mean? That he is a servant of Christ Jesus?
Yeah.
[00:13:50] Speaker B: He does what Jesus says without questioning.
[00:13:54] Speaker A: Yeah. He's obedient to Christ, doing what he asks.
I think that's good.
He's like, he's a servant in every sense. Of the Word. His whole life is devoted to serving Jesus. And you're right, he really does just give himself to that.
So I want you to think.
Is that something that you can call yourself?
Could you call yourself a servant of Christ Jesus?
So think for a second.
Could you honestly say that?
And now let's think.
What are the marks of a servant of Jesus? What do you think should mark someone's
[00:14:45] Speaker C: life
[00:14:47] Speaker A: to be a servant of Christ? Yes.
Willingness to change from your sinful ways. That's good. Or repentance is a word to summarize that. That's really good.
Yeah. A life of repentance. Always repenting of sin, not ever holding onto it or hiding it.
Mm.
What else?
Okay, Katie, Sharing the gospel. Yeah, that's good.
Uh huh.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Someone who isn't just living just for the day.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Not living just for the day. Can you elaborate?
[00:15:38] Speaker B: So you're not living just for what the world has to offer you right now.
[00:15:44] Speaker A: You're living not just for what the world offers you right now, but what would you be living for?
[00:15:48] Speaker B: What Christophers you in eternity?
[00:15:50] Speaker A: Yeah. You're living with.
I heard in college for the first time the phrase an eternal perspective. You're seeing that your existence will be eternal, you will exist eternally.
And so we want to think in light of the eternal, not just how am I going to be the best of what I can do today? How can I be successful? Successful by the time I'm 30 or whatever else it might be. It's thinking, where am I going to be in a million years?
You will be somewhere.
And so that's really helpful. Yeah. A servant of Christ thinks of the long term, not the short term.
What else?
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: A servant of Christ does know who Jesus is.
You need to know to whom you're obeying, Right?
Yeah.
You have some character traits. What are some character traits? Some virtues?
You guys think of any? Yeah.
You could be brave. Yeah. Or courageous.
I think that could be true. Yeah.
Humility. Uh huh. Humility.
Kind. Yeah.
Yes.
Forgiving, Love, loving, joy, understanding. You said yes. Or wisdom as well. Yeah, those are all good. These are some. I mean, I don't even know how many of those were. It would have been helpful to maybe write them on a board. Maybe I'll bring the board back. It's been a while since I've used the board.
Those are all great marks. I would encourage you to write especially those down that you think God might be working in you to build.
Maybe he's trying to build in you humility or kindness or love or A willingness to repent, or he's trying to build in you a desire to know him better.
You know, all of these are marks of a servant of Christ.
And if we trust in him, if you have faith in Christ, you can call yourself a servant of Christ.
I want to make sure to say you don't need to be perfect in all of these ways to be able to say.
We'll see even in this letter, that Paul too often does the things that he does not want to do.
He is a sinner as well, and yet he's a servant of Christ. But a servant of Christ lays it down to pursue living like Christ, living a life of repentance, as we said earlier.
So, yeah, that's good. On servant of Christ. Next, what does he say? He says he's called to be an apostle. What does that mean?
What is an apostle?
[00:18:48] Speaker B: Apostle is like someone who knows what Jesus taught and goes out to teach it to other people.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
And I think biblically we might tighten the definition. That's true.
But in a way.
And sometimes the Bible does use apostle in a way that's general of all Christians, but sometimes it's used in a way that's of a certain kind of Christian.
And so based on context here, I think, because he's referring to his calling to be an apostle, like you said on the road to Damascus, an apostle is someone who has witnessed the resurrected Christ, has seen him. Paul sees him very clearly in that vision. The others that are called apostles were his disciples when he was on earth and saw him after he came back from the dead.
And so they witness the resurrected Christ and are commissioned or called by him into service.
So he is called to be an apostle. And to be called in this sense is very vivid. I do encourage you. We don't have time to read Acts 9 just to get that sense that he was plucked out of what he was going to do.
Maybe some of you now or in the future will feel like you are walking down the path of death.
You are living for yourself. You are loving your sin, and Christ might pluck you out of that and call you out. That is what Paul experienced.
So that's what he was doing next. He says he was set apart for the gospel of God.
So Acts 9:15, if you want to write that down, Acts 9:15, which is from that account when he was called by Christ. Acts 9:15 says about Paul that he is a chosen instrument of mine. So God is saying this. He says he's a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before The Gentiles and Kings and children of Israel.
So this phrase set apart for the gospel of God kind of helps us understand the rest of the book.
He is setting forth the gospel itself. If he is set apart for the gospel, if he is called to be an apostle for the gospel of God, then he is writing this book that you Jews and Gentiles alike might know what the gospel is. He's kind of telling us this is what the book will be about.
And then verse two, he says this gospel, which he promised beforehand. So I think the promise is the promise of the gospel. Who promised it? Which he promised beforehand. Who is this he?
Yeah.
God. Yeah, I think so.
The gospel of God, which He, God promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures.
What does this refer to?
Through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures?
[00:22:12] Speaker B: Yeah,
[00:22:15] Speaker A: yeah, the books. What books?
[00:22:22] Speaker B: Isaiah.
[00:22:23] Speaker A: I think Isaiah is included. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think this is referring to the Old Testament. I think all of it.
At the very least, the sections that would be categorized as prophets, which to Paul would have been from.
Well, it's a little. I won't list them all. That'll probably take too long. But much of the Old Testament, I think it's probably referring to all of them because even Moses is referred to as a prophet, but he wrote the law.
What are you looking?
Oh, I could sing the Books of the Bible song. Yeah, maybe I will another time when we have the time.
Yeah. So the prophets and the Holy Scriptures that have pointed to the Gospels, you read the Old Testament, you are reading what is pointing to the gospel.
And so Paul clearly believes that the Old Testament is Scripture.
And then in verse three, he continues, he says, so concerning His Son. What is concerning His Son?
What does that connect to?
Concerning His Son.
Yeah.
Yes, that's right. So I'm going to be asking questions like this a lot because especially Paul, you'll notice in your English translation, there's probably not a period until after verse seven.
Now, Greek did not have punctuation at all. So all the punctuation you see is an interpretation to help us read it, or it'd be really hard to read.
So he has all these phrases that kind of hang together. So we're going to kind of try to keep up. This is how we do inductive Bible studies. We want to make sure we know. We don't just assume what a phrase means. We know what it's doing.
So concerning His Son. So the gospel is concerning His Son. The gospel was promised beforehand through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures, continuing descended from David. According to the flesh, what does it mean to be descended or who is being descended? Who is descending?
Yes, Jesus. That's right. And what does it mean to be descended from someone?
Yeah, like an ancestor down the line, a son, a grandson, a great grandson, so on and so forth.
And so Jesus is said to be a descendant of David.
Now, why does Paul specifically point out David, by the way? He is ignoring a lot of generations.
There were many generations between David and Jesus. Why is he pointing out David?
That's right, yeah. He said there was a promise to David that one of his sons would come to save the world. That's right. If you want to write down the verses where you can see that 2nd Samuel 7, 12, 13.
And then verse 16 says, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me.
Your throne shall be established forever.
So what's being established here is the Davidic covenant is what it's called. It's a covenant between the Lord and David. And this promise of a king that will reign forever coming from his descendants is made.
Now, who is the promised son of David?
Yeah, Jesus. That's right. But there's actually more to it because immediately it's Solomon. Solomon becomes his son and becomes king and is the greatest of the kings to that point. He builds a house for the Lord.
But Solomon fails, still being the wisest man on earth, he still falls short.
And so there needs to be another son.
You'll see this in the Old Testament a lot, that there's an immediate referent, there's something that the prophet is immediately talking about, but there's also a future one, which is Christ.
So we kind of see this double meaning a lot in the Old Testament.
So here Paul is making clear that Jesus fulfilled what even Solomon failed to do for David.
Then we get to verse 4, and was declared to be the son of God in power.
So Jesus was a descendant of David, but is also the son of God. How can both of these things be true at once?
The son of David and the Son of God?
Yes.
Yeah, in a way. So he is the heavenly father, the earthly father, his true father is the heavenly father, because Joseph did not procreate and create Jesus, but Jesus was born from the virgin.
But how else can this happen?
Yes, Well, I see what you're saying so he was.
Yeah. I'm not asking you as much how, but how can we talk of this?
Is he a man or is he God? Did he come from people or did he come from God?
Yes.
Yes.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: Both.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: So is he truly man?
Yes. And is he truly God?
Yeah. A lot of you maybe have heard this.
This language is important for us to keep.
Many, many, many hundreds of years ago, some Christians in the church, they got together and they were arguing about, how do we.
The Bible says that he is God and he comes from God, but it also says that he's a man and he comes from humanity.
How can we talk about Jesus in a biblical way without saying things that are untrue of Him? Here's what they said.
Therefore, following the Holy Fathers, we all, with one accord, teach men to acknowledge one and the same Son, one Lord, our Lord Jesus christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood. In other words, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body, of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time one substance with us regarding his manhood. So he is true God and true man. He's not a man who became God either.
Whatever it is to be God, he's always been that.
Whatever it is to be a man, he has been that since the Incarnation.
And Paul's affirming this. So he is showing us clearly that, you know, the church fathers are not just philosophizing and creating philosophies to talk about Jesus. They're not just bored and trying to make things up. They're not adding things to the Bible. It's clear that the Bible talks this way. And we need to have a way to talk about Jesus in a biblical way. Because Paul says he is the Son of man and he is the Son of God, and that is important.
And Paul affirms this by saying, according to the Spirit of holiness. You'll see that.
In. Where is that?
Oh, yeah, verse four. Declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness. But he also says he was descended from David according to the flesh.
So Paul's affirming this. He is God and man truly. Notice, he descended, he was born from David's line, yet it says he was declared to be the Son of God by the Holy Spirit.
So we could think, okay, well then why doesn't it say that he was born from God? Well, he did not descend from God like he did from David. It's not exactly the same because he always existed as God.
You know, John1 taught us that he always has existed as God. Now his Son, he is eternally begotten of the Father, and on earth he was declared to be, to have always been God the Son. And so he's affirmed as that. And the Resurrection declares that that is the case, that he is indeed the Son of God.
So now we are through verse four and we're out of time. So we're going to pick up in verse five next week.
We'll think of how we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus christ.
But let's pray.
Oh Father, we pray that you would make us your servants.
Give us courage and perseverance and humility that we would long to serve you. Lord. Give us hearts that are quick to repent and slow to hold on to sin.
God, we thank you for the gospel concerning your Son. We thank you that your Son is God.
You are God Almighty, and yet your Son put on flesh that we can be saved through him.
Lord, we praise you for this wonderful grace. We thank you for this book and that we can study you and get to know you. We pray this in Christ's name, Amen.
