Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Okay, so let's see. I'm actually going to grab a handout so I know what questions to be sure to answer. So what book are we in?
[00:00:13] That's right.
[00:00:15] Romans.
[00:00:18] And we're doing an inductive Bible study of Romans.
[00:00:23] What is an inductive Bible study?
[00:00:27] Yes. Was it using the Bible to study the Bible? Yeah.
[00:00:34] That's a pretty good way to describe it, using the Bible to study the Bible. We study the Bible from the immediate context and work our way outward.
[00:00:43] Because obviously, I think a lot of us know, maybe not everyone, but a lot of us understand you can't just take a phrase and make it mean whatever you want it to mean and remove it from its context. We kind of get that, but sometimes we forget that the context is more than just that paragraph or that passage or that book. But it extends for the whole Scripture.
[00:01:05] Even though we have 66 books in our Bibles, it is one unified work.
[00:01:12] And so Genesis speaks into Matthew and Nahum can speak into Revelation and so forth. We can see this unity. And so that's why we study the Bible inductively.
[00:01:25] We want to know what it says from within.
[00:01:29] So we have today Romans 1.
[00:01:34] We're going to, I think, be able to cover Romans 1, 16, 17.
[00:01:39] So we've covered the first 15 verses of the book. And what are some things we've learned? Who has written this book?
[00:01:47] Yeah. Paul. And who is Paul?
[00:01:51] An apostle.
[00:01:53] What makes someone an apostle?
[00:01:56] Seeing the resurrected Christ. Yes. Anything else? Were you going to say that.
[00:02:05] A little bit more than just seeing the resurrected Christ? I think you're on the right track. You know, there were people that saw him or potentially saw him maybe that didn't even believe or not all those people were considered apostles. Yes.
[00:02:22] Yeah. They were servants and they were given their work by the Lord. He commissioned them is the word. He said.
[00:02:31] You're going to be my witness. A particular witness having seen Christ resurrected. So Paul is one of those. He saw Christ on the road to Damascus and was converted by him there and called to be an apostle to the Gentiles. What is a Gentile?
[00:02:50] Yeah.
[00:02:52] Yes. Not a Jew.
[00:02:55] So why is this Jew and Gentile distinction important?
[00:03:01] Is it important?
[00:03:03] Oh, it is. Okay. You have an answer?
[00:03:12] Yeah, sure, sure. I would think the church are also the people of God.
[00:03:19] So we need a little bit more. But you're on the right track. We're actually going to get to see a little bit more of this distinction in these verses. So we'll talk about it more in a minute. Lincoln, you have something to.
[00:03:31] So Jews are like the land of where Jesus was born and Gentiles were like, I guess like not them, but also Christians.
[00:03:44] Yeah, well not all Gentiles are Christians.
[00:03:48] Yeah, but you're also adding some helpful information.
[00:03:52] The Jews were the people into which Jesus was born. You know, we'll get into this more in a second. I think it'll be helpful to, to cover this in context. But this is a big theme in the book where he's an apostle to the Gentiles. So he is proclaiming the gospel, you know, Right. Romans is like a summary of the gospel. He's giving it to primarily a Gentile church.
[00:04:18] And his mission is to bring the gospel to Gentile nations. And yet he wants to also answer the question where is the place of, of Jews?
[00:04:26] There's a lot of history. Most of your Bible covers Jewish history.
[00:04:31] And so what do we do with them? Are they done away with? Are they replaced?
[00:04:36] What is their function? Romans deals with this a lot. So we'll get to it as we go, we'll get a fuller picture.
[00:04:43] But today we're still in this introductory phase. So he's kind of giving us the themes and topics we're going to dig into.
[00:04:51] So with that let's go to verse 16.
[00:04:56] So we've seen him greet the people, we've seen him discuss how he has been intending to go there, but he hasn't gone there. And so he's sending them this grace filled message that he wants to give to them in person, but decides to write it down, send it ahead. He wants to get there and he wants to go onward he even further as we find out, to Spain.
[00:05:22] And at the end I'm going to read starting in verse 14, just to give us a little bit of a running start.
[00:05:28] He's saying I am under obligation both to Greeks, which is Gentiles, and to barbarians both to the wise and to the foolish.
[00:05:40] So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
[00:05:45] And here are our verses. For I am not ashamed of the gospel. For it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
[00:05:56] For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith. For faith as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.
[00:06:06] So here we are. Verse 16 starts with this word for why is the word for here? What is it doing in speech?
[00:06:21] Yes, explaining a why. That's a good way to put it. It is a purpose for what he just said. So he's explaining why? It is the reason that he is eager to preach the gospel to him.
[00:06:36] So that's what he says, right? I'm eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.
[00:06:41] Why am I eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome? For I am not ashamed of the gospel, he says.
[00:06:50] Now, aside from him just saying it here, what do you know about Paul? You know, he's a well known figure from the New Testament era.
[00:07:01] How do we know that Paul wasn't ashamed of the gospel?
[00:07:06] Do you know anything about him besides him saying those words?
[00:07:14] Oh, Malachi, sorry, yeah, he spent a lot of years in prison for sharing the gospel.
[00:07:22] So he didn't just get arrested once and give up, he continued to go to prison for it. It's remarkable. Anything else?
[00:07:31] Bless you.
[00:07:39] Well, let me just list a few or this may not be. This is a pretty decent summary, I think I've pulled together. So he preached it all over, right? He preached all over the known world, all the way from Jerusalem, eventually to Rome, but mostly in modern day Greece, Turkey, that area, and all throughout. He was intensely persecuted. Christianity was not an accepted religion for quite a long time.
[00:08:10] Five times he received the 39 lashes with the whip. So whipped 39 times on five separate occasions at least. This is just what we know of. Three times he was whipped by Roman authorities. That's separate from those previously mentioned ones. This one is probably my favorite. He was stoned and dragged out of a city because they presumed him dead. After stoning him, he eventually got up and went back into the city.
[00:08:37] He was physically abused in other situations in a more ambiguous way. Multiple times he was jailed. So Malachi mentioned that assassins plotted against his life. They wanted to kill him. He was driven out of cities by angry mobs again, often going back in or sometimes going around the city to another one just to receive the same treatment.
[00:08:59] So in hearing this, you know, we don't live in the same climate as him. Praise the Lord.
[00:09:04] But how much do you believe in the gospel?
[00:09:08] There's a question we have to deal with when we read these verses. It's easy to kind of glaze over this because it's a. A good memory verse from Awana or something.
[00:09:18] But how much do you believe in the gospel?
[00:09:21] I want you to think, are you ashamed of it?
[00:09:26] I want you to kind of have that in the back of your mind as we reflect on these verses.
[00:09:31] Do we believe it this much?
[00:09:33] You know, potentially, if we were in a climate like this where it was so persecuted, then yeah, if you Are a believer, then you are ready.
[00:09:42] You're accepting that this is going to be your life. When you turn to Christ in the first place, it's hard for us to imagine because we didn't come into that place. So I'm not saying we have to be abused like this or we have not been unashamed of the gospel.
[00:09:59] We can be unashamed and not experience any of these things again. Praise the Lord. I think that's a good thing. But what challenges do we face?
[00:10:09] What do we face?
[00:10:12] What are some reasons that you might be ashamed of the gospel today? This could be you or just a general answer. I want to hear some examples. What are some reasons people might be ashamed of the gospel?
[00:10:24] Yes.
[00:10:29] Certain people think extreme.
[00:10:36] Okay, that's an interesting thought. So just in case you couldn't hear.
[00:10:42] The answer is certain people might have particularly extreme views and hate people, and one might be ashamed of the gospel because they don't want to be associated with. With hateful people.
[00:11:01] Right. And so, you know, sometimes there are things called hate that really are not hate, but really just Christian love. And sometimes there are genuinely evil things that people do while saying they're Christians and we might rightly be ashamed to be associated with them.
[00:11:16] Yeah, that's. That's definitely a pressure.
[00:11:19] Yes. Because some people have had a bad experience with religion before.
[00:11:24] Yeah, you. So like, you might be ashamed to share the gospel with someone who has had a bad experience.
[00:11:30] Yeah, that's another really great example. You might feel the need to over apologize.
[00:11:39] But sometimes people's perception of their bad experience could even be false. You know, sometimes people might blame the church because they were removed from a church, but they were removed from a church because they sinned openly and did not repent.
[00:11:53] But other times, church people, in the name of Christ, act wrongly and do hurt people.
[00:12:00] Yeah, that makes sense, granted.
[00:12:14] Yeah.
[00:12:16] The social pressure, I would think that's probably the biggest one. And all of these kind of have an element of social pressure in them, but just being afraid to be labeled that person, kind of become an outsider. You can.
[00:12:31] Not necessarily, but you could be labeled that or kind of alien to the group.
[00:12:37] I remember in college I heard some guys talking about one of my close friends and my close friend.
[00:12:48] They were talking, I think I just overheard them. They dreaded when he showed up because they thought, is this guy going to talk about Jesus again?
[00:12:58] Now maybe in some extent, I don't know, maybe he was over the top. I don't think he was.
[00:13:04] But you know, that's sometimes a Cost Sometimes that happens to be unashamed of the gospel and be faithful.
[00:13:12] People might feel that way.
[00:13:15] Now, there is a. You know, that doesn't mean you just, like, bash people's head in with the gospel until they're annoyed with you. That's not the goal. We would like to keep them our friends because you can share the gospel with people and still be their friend.
[00:13:29] Okay. Anything else?
[00:13:38] If, like, your friend who's not Christian is doing something wrong, you're like, hey, don't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You def.
[00:13:50] Yeah, yeah. Definitely can be looked at judgy. If you're, you know, discouraging something that someone is doing. And sometimes even if you don't, you know, all the time, because I work at a church, you know, for example, my barber, if he lets a curse word slip, he just is so embarrassed, I think.
[00:14:13] You don't have to pretend to be all clean around me. Just be who you are.
[00:14:19] People kind of clean up what's going on in their life when I talk to them.
[00:14:25] So, yeah, they're just assuming that there's judgment there and maybe there's feeling guilt to some extent. It could be social, but they might be feeling guilt.
[00:14:35] And so they don't want to be judged because they know that what they're doing is wrong to some level.
[00:14:40] Okay. Anything else? Yeah, these are all really good thoughts.
[00:14:47] Yeah, there's a helpful book called Walls Overcoming Walls to Witnessing by Timothy Bucher.
[00:14:57] Although if you want to know that guy's name, you'll just have to ask me about it because it's not spelled how you would think.
[00:15:03] He was one of my professors in seminary, and it's a tiny little book. It would take you, like, 20 minutes to read, maybe. Maybe 30.
[00:15:11] And he just. These walls that we have to get over, some of it is social. Some of it is being afraid to not know the answers.
[00:15:19] Sometimes being afraid of not knowing the answers is our excuse because really, we're just afraid, socially anxious to get into a gospel conversation to begin with. But there are all sorts of reasons.
[00:15:31] You know, we can acknowledge that these are real.
[00:15:36] And when we're thinking about Paul, because we just listed all of the difficulties and walls to witnessing he overcame, we can acknowledge that his difficulties are generally more significant than social pressures, as they were, you know, endangering his actual life. But that doesn't make the challenges that you and I face any less real.
[00:15:58] You know, sometimes we look at Paul, we're like, man, I'm just. I'm terrible. I'm afraid to share the gospel and that guy had no fear at all. We live in a different world, so we. We don't need to draw a strict comparison. But I do think his testimony, his witness in life should challenge us to be more courageous.
[00:16:18] These examples are real that we are dealing with, though, but they can be overcome. It's difficult to overcome them, but they can be.
[00:16:29] So how can we overcome these challenges? I think we need courage.
[00:16:34] We need courage. Courage from the Lord.
[00:16:38] We need to have a strong passion for the gospel, as Paul clearly does.
[00:16:45] What is something that you're proud of or something that you're passionate about?
[00:16:53] Art, Music. Yeah. Music, Yes.
[00:17:09] Sports. Okay. You going to say that too? Sell your hand, huh? You're going to say the Dodgers? No, it can be an answer like that.
[00:17:18] Reading. Reading. Yes. Yes.
[00:17:22] Okay. Yeah. These are good answers.
[00:17:27] Now, you know, some of these, you know, if it's maybe the Dodgers, you might answer it differently than if it's art or something.
[00:17:37] But what do you endure? What do you go through to advocate for that heartbreaking. If it's sports. If it's sports, yeah, you go through heartbreak. And yet, you know, for two years, I put on my Oklahoma State polo every Saturday.
[00:17:53] Watch us lose every single game. You know, like, what is it worth? You know, I've heard you go, Owen and I have gone back and forth on. He was making fun of track athletes the other day, and I started making fun of baseball players.
[00:18:05] And, like, we were arguing. So. So you were advocating. You're like, I gotta stand up for this sport. This is the best sport in the world.
[00:18:12] Played by the best athlete in the world, Shohei Ohtani. Right. You know, that's your argument. And, you know, so depending on, like, what you're passionate about, you know, we can answer that in a serious way or in a less serious way. But whatever the case, we typically want to advocate. We want to talk about those things. They come up in conversation. We're willing to debate people about those things.
[00:18:35] This is what we need.
[00:18:38] We need this kind of passion. But if you were at risk of persecution or being stoned to death, Owen, would you say, okay, baseball players are not that athletic. If you were going to be stoned to death, if you said otherwise, you know, it's probably not worth your life. Even if you don't really believe what you're saying, it's not worth your life.
[00:19:04] But we can't stop there with the gospel. We actually have to believe it, that in theory, we would be willing to give it all for it.
[00:19:14] That is the call of The Christian that is our great commission is to make disciples of all nations.
[00:19:22] We have to believe in it.
[00:19:26] And if we really believe that sin and hell are real, that everybody exists somewhere, which I think as Christians, we have to believe those things.
[00:19:40] What do we do?
[00:19:42] We have an urgent task.
[00:19:44] There are people that are suffering now, but will suffer a whole lot more eternally.
[00:19:50] We have to do something. We have. We can't do the saving. God alone saves, but he's chosen to use us as his instruments to bring forth the gospel to the nations. That is what we are called to do.
[00:20:05] And he continues, and this is the grounds for our courage, because he uses that word for again. So this is kind of the grounds for why he is not ashamed. He says, because the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes the gospel is God's power to save.
[00:20:27] That is how people that are going to die forever can be saved.
[00:20:32] So have you ever been worried about knowing the answers or saying the gospel rightly in a situation? Maybe that's you. Well, the good news is that ultimately it is God who saves. It's not your intellect or your ability to outwit someone or win the debate. In fact, if you're winning a debate, you're probably not converting them.
[00:20:53] It often comes in just the ordinary conversations, the times that we stammer and stutter and sometimes say, I don't know, but you know, Jesus has changed my life. Just as a personal witness and testimony. Those are way more transforming than the apologists with great YouTube videos who are helpful in helping us think and answer questions. But typically, most of the time, people are coming to Christ just through witnessing from their friends and their family, from parents to children, these intimate relationships with normal conversations.
[00:21:27] And it's because this is how God has chosen to work. He's reminding us that our weakness can be shown to be power. If we're relying on him and when we think we're powerful and we're the greatest of all the apologists, then we might be relying on our own power.
[00:21:45] Typically, the great apologists are not doing that, but we could be tempted to think that way.
[00:21:50] It is the power of God that is the gospel.
[00:21:54] And now he says, this is what we were talking about earlier to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
[00:21:59] So if someone asks you, what does that mean? So he's talking about the gospel now he's talking about Jews and Greeks.
[00:22:05] What would you say? What does that mean?
[00:22:15] Anyone know?
[00:22:17] It's a little difficult.
[00:22:19] So he's explaining kind of well, he's introducing this theme of Jews and Gentiles. Remember, Greek also is Gentile. They kind of are coming from. They come from the same word. So that's why the translations, maybe even your own Bibles, are different from one another.
[00:22:36] So first, Greek is Gentiles. Second, it does not refer to rank or importance.
[00:22:42] It is a chronological statement. And we'll see this unfolded. The covenant promises were made to Israel, Abraham to Israel, through Moses to David.
[00:22:56] And therefore Jesus came to the Jews. He came as a Jew. So literally the gospel of Jesus christ came first to the Jews. So it is a chronological statement.
[00:23:10] Now, in his life, some Gentiles do believe, but the gospel mostly spread to Gentiles after Jesus ascended into heaven.
[00:23:17] When he came, it was first to the Jews because they had been originally given these promises before Christ established a new covenant that welcomed in people from all nations.
[00:23:29] All nations will praise him as we prayed from Psalm 117.
[00:23:34] Now, Jews, understandably could have felt a lot of confusion.
[00:23:38] An old religion for Jews by Jews, a Jew comes, he's their Messiah. But now he's also saving Gentiles, which is fine, but he's also changed what the religion looks like in a significant way.
[00:23:54] You know, it looks very much different than what it did when they're entering the promised land in the book of Joshua.
[00:24:01] I mean, this has to. You gotta understand that would be radically transforming. And if you're used to your Jewish religion, which even had, you know, developed in unhealthy ways the few hundred years before Christ was born, you know, it's a big change. What are we to do? Are we just kicked out? Now we're replaced? Now it's just this new thing.
[00:24:24] Well, Paul wants them to know where they belong. It might have been culture shock to them, but they do belong. They do have a role.
[00:24:33] Again, we'll get into that more later.
[00:24:36] And then verse 17 again for in it, what is it?
[00:24:46] Gotta keep track of our pronouns. What is the it?
[00:24:49] The gospel. That's right. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed.
[00:24:55] And so what is he explaining?
[00:24:57] Not just the gospel, but the power of the gospel. He's explaining the power of the gospel. In this power, the righteousness of God is revealed. Now, the term righteousness of God can actually have multiple meanings.
[00:25:11] You know, I was going to ask what you guys think, but, you know, some of the best scholars in the world can't really agree, but I do think there's a preferable option.
[00:25:21] First, it could mean righteousness that comes from God, right? So righteousness of God. If you think about righteousness that comes from him, it's righteousness of him. Or it could mean that righteousness that is God's. So it's his own righteousness.
[00:25:37] I think it's the first option, righteousness that comes from God. One of Paul's points in Romans and other books is the that righteousness is something counted to someone through faith. It is credited to them, just as Abraham believed and it was counted to him as righteousness.
[00:25:52] Therefore, to say that this righteousness of God is revealed from faith makes more sense. If it's God's own righteousness, well, he doesn't need to have faith in the same way that we do. Now. God is faithful, And so he then says, it is from faith for faith. Now this can be a little confusing. So it's revealed from faith for faith. It is faith all the way around.
[00:26:20] This can also be read. You know, people try to say what? It's kind of an awkward phrase, right? Sometimes we get these awkward phrases.
[00:26:27] I think it's kind of saying beginning and ending with faith. You know, there are a lot of biblical scholars that think that. Some people disagree.
[00:26:36] I think that's a helpful way to understand it. Beginning and ending with faith. It is from faith. And it is for faith from is the origin for is the destination.
[00:26:46] Now, why does it matter that righteousness comes through faith?
[00:27:00] Why can't righteousness come through something else?
[00:27:05] Yeah, because our righteousness only comes from God, not from what we do. Yeah, it only comes from God, not from what we do.
[00:27:13] If this righteousness is supposed to be produced from us in any way, we're going to fail. If it's to be produced by someone else. For you that's just a person, it's going to fail.
[00:27:27] It's only righteousness that comes from God who is righteous.
[00:27:33] And so that's why it's so important. We would never obtain righteousness. And righteousness is the standard that gets you into God's family in heaven with the Lord forever. And it's this way because righteousness coming through faith only means that God gets all the glory.
[00:27:51] God gets the glory for it.
[00:27:54] Paul then says, as it is written, what does this mean, as it is written? What's he referring to?
[00:28:03] Kind of just assume this, but maybe not.
[00:28:07] Not a trick question.
[00:28:09] Did you say the answer? Scriptures. Scripture. Yeah, he's referring to the Scripture. So this is written in what we call the Old Testament. The righteous shall live by faith. This comes from Habakkuk 242 4.
[00:28:24] Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.
[00:28:33] Now there is an alternate translation too. It is probably even noted in your Bible at the bottom of the page. The one who by faith is righteous shall live.
[00:28:45] Now what does this verse? The righteous shall live by faith.
[00:28:50] So why would someone want to be righteous? Why would someone want to be righteous?
[00:28:57] This may be kind of a deep question, but not too complicated.
[00:29:05] It is God's standard. We were created to be righteous. So actually living righteously is being as human as you can possibly be. Because God's image is intended for you to live righteously. So to be.
[00:29:21] You know, people talk about finding want to be your truest self, your truest self in how God made you is to be righteous.
[00:29:28] That's actually what being your truest self is. So we want to be righteous because that's what we're made to be. That's God's standard for salvation. How does someone become righteous? Well, we just said it's through faith in Christ. It's not something we do.
[00:29:43] And what is the result of being righteous by faith?
[00:29:47] According to verse 17, It's the L word.
[00:30:00] They shall live it's life.
[00:30:03] Life is what you get if you are righteous by faith.
[00:30:10] Now this idea I think protects us from two ends. It protects us from legalism, which legalism would be adding laws or trying to obtain righteousness by following certain laws.
[00:30:26] Legalism cannot save because we cannot follow the law.
[00:30:30] We fall short of righteousness. James 2:10. It was preached just a few weeks ago.
[00:30:37] If you fail at any point, you are guilty of all the law. So legalism can't save and legalism is destroyed because one can only be righteous by faith, not by works. According to this verse. Well, the opposite side of legalism is something called antinomianism, which means no law, basically just means no law.
[00:30:58] Sometimes we're tempted towards legalism.
[00:31:00] Maybe you're tempted towards having no regard for living righteously or obediently. Now why can't the no law view save?
[00:31:11] Well, we must live righteously if that's who we are called to be. If we are saved to righteousness, then we live righteously.
[00:31:21] And then antinomianism, the no law view, is destroyed because one must live, live by faith and be righteous.
[00:31:29] If you are ignoring all of God's laws and decrees, then you're not actually living by faith in his word. And if you're not living by faith, you are not righteous because the righteous live by faith.
[00:31:43] So both ends of this are destroyed in this One verse, and some of us err one way or the other. But the passage says centers us. It gives us hope that you don't have to uphold the whole law because Christ did it. You failed, but he did it for you. If you trust in him, you get his righteousness.
[00:32:03] And it also frees us from just living however we want to do. It says, look, you have purpose. There is a direction, a destination. You can live a better life by living by faith to the law of Christ.
[00:32:18] So it kind of brings us in from both sides. You can rest knowing that if you live by faith, then you are righteous in God's eyes. You already are.
[00:32:29] And again, the pressure is off of you because Christ took the burden, but you must trust in him.
[00:32:39] That's what these verses are telling us.
[00:32:41] And this is why we shouldn't be ashamed of the gospel. Because it has this wonderful news that no matter where someone is, if they're tending towards this legalism side, the no law side, or anywhere else, it brings us to the Lord. We must live by faith.
[00:32:57] We must have faith in Christ.
[00:32:59] So I want to encourage you to write something down about what gives you courage, what gives you courage.
[00:33:08] I want you to think of how you can have courage, courage to not be ashamed of the gospel, much like Paul wasn't ashamed of the gospel.
[00:33:17] Think of what situations might you need to pray for courage. Maybe there's someone you need to talk to. Maybe you look up to someone who is courageous. Maybe they can help you.
[00:33:27] But I encourage you to not just leave this here, but to take it on and think about it more. Next week we'll talk about the rest of or the next part of Romans 1. Almost certainly not the rest of Romans 1. Maybe.
[00:33:39] Yeah, let's pray and then we can go.
[00:33:41] Father, thank you for your word and the gospel, which is the power of God that saves all who believe.
[00:33:49] Lord, help us to live by faith. Give us faith that we might see your Son in his glory, that we might live unto him, that we might not be ashamed of the gospel because if it has saved us, then we know its power. We know that it can save others.
[00:34:05] We pray this all in Christ's name, Amen.
