Romans Intro (Part 2)

Romans — Steve Gregg

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Romans Intro (Part 2)

RomansSteve Gregg

This text provides an overview of the book of Romans, which was written to the church in Rome by Paul around 55-57 BC. Paul uses a variety of metaphors, such as marriage, family, and employment, to illustrate the themes of righteousness and the fulfillment of God's covenant with his people. The book emphasizes that salvation cannot be earned, but is a free gift of God's grace. Through his death and resurrection, believers are now in a covenant relationship with Christ, and bear fruit through him, not through legalistic obedience.

Transcript

When we left off last time, we were in an introduction to the book of Romans, which we will complete in this session. I talked about something of the history of the Church of Rome, and the city of Rome, and its tensions with Christianity from the beginning. We want to talk now about the letter itself.

It is written to the church that we've been describing, but the letter has its own features that we need to consider. It was written, many scholars believe, somewhere between 55 and 57 BC. Some might even favor, well, it's winter time that he wrote it.

And I think a lot of commentaries say 56 or 57. I heard N.T. Wright recently said something like 55. I guess it's just uncertain what the exact year was.

This was about seven years after the Jerusalem Council, and it was about three years before Paul would actually get to Rome. Now, he's planning to get to Rome, as he says in the epistle, probably within the same year or early the next year. And he tells us of his travel plans.

We don't always have such clear contents of the letter telling us what the circumstances were of the rider, as we have for Romans. If you look at Romans 15, Paul tells the readers some of his plans. In verse 25, Paul says, But now I am going to Jerusalem to minister to the saints.

For it pleased those from Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor among the saints who are in Jerusalem. It pleased them indeed, and they are their debtors. For if the Gentiles have been partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister to them in material things.

Therefore, when I have performed this service and sealed sealed to them this fruit, I shall go by way of you to Spain. Okay, so he says I'm on my way to Jerusalem. I have a ministry to them in the ministry.

The ministry he's talking about is actually taking money to them. He's been taking a collection from the Gentile churches where he ministers for the Jewish church, which has been hit by some economic hardship. Paul, always wanting to improve relations between the Gentile and the Jewish sectors of the church, between which there was often tension, he thought it would be very helpful for relationships between them for him to gather money from the Gentiles and give it to the Jewish church to show the solidarity and the mutual support.

The Jewish church had, after all, provided the missionaries that had evangelized the Gentiles, like Paul himself, and for the Gentiles to send back some relief to the mother church in their time of need was something that would show solidarity, and that's what Paul is concerned about. But he says the churches in Achaia and Macedonia, which would be southern and northern Greece, had given him money to take to Jerusalem, and he was now en route. He was on his way to take that money to Jerusalem.

He thought he would drop that money off and turn around and sail for Rome and then to Spain. What actually happened, however, is he was arrested in Jerusalem, this after the letter was sent, and which he did not anticipate. He was arrested in Jerusalem.

He was jailed in Caesarea. He spent two years in jail in Caesarea, and then he sailed to Rome as a prisoner and spent at least another two years in Rome, but at least he was in Rome. But his arrival there was delayed by the time he spent in Jerusalem and the time he was in Caesarea in jail.

So from the time he wrote this letter, it was about three years before he actually arrived in Rome, though he thought he'd be getting there no doubt considerably sooner. Now, he mentions that he is the apostle to the Gentiles, and therefore it had been a long time his desire to come to Rome. He says actually in chapter one that he had for a long time wanted to come to Rome but had been hindered until now.

In Romans 1 verses 13 through 15, he says, Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that I often have planned to come to you, but was hindered until now, that I might have some fruit among you also just as among the Gentiles, for I'm a debtor both to the Greeks and the barbarians, both to the wise and unwise. He, as an apostle to the Gentiles, felt it appropriate for him to go to the main Gentile city, of course, and do some ministry there. But he said he had been hindered previously.

He does not say here what it was that had hindered him, but he does tell us in chapter 15 what had hindered him. And you can look at that by going to chapter 15 in verse 20. He said, and so I have made it my aim to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build on another man's foundation.

In other words, I didn't want to preach where someone else had already preached. I want to go to virgin territory, pristine mission fields. He says, but as it is written to whom he was not announced, they shall see.

And those who have not heard shall understand. Now, this is a quotation from Isaiah, chapter 52, verse 15. But what he's taking from it is people who had never heard will hear.

And he took that sort of as a mission statement for himself. Those who had not heard the gospel are the ones he wants to hear it from him. So he says, I've made it my aim to not go places where the gospel is already preached because there's so many places where it has not been preached.

Now, Rome was one of the places where the gospel had already been preached. There was obviously a church there. And that was one reason he had not gone there yet.

But he says in verse 22, for this reason, I've been much hindered from coming to you. So he had said in chapter one that he was hindered, but it hadn't said why. But he says, this is why, because I've been keeping myself busy with places unlike you, places that have not heard the gospel yet.

And you have heard, he says, verse 23. But now no longer having a place in these parts and having a great desire these many years to come to you. Whenever I journey to Spain, I will come to you.

So it's obvious that he felt like there's no places east of Rome, at least between Jerusalem and Rome that needed to be evangelized by him. And so he was ready to move on to Rome and fulfill a longtime desire that he had had. OK, so he really evangelized that whole territory, he said, between Jerusalem and Rome and was able to go to Rome.

Now, he then says at the end of verse 24. I plan to come to you, he says, for I hope to see you on my journey and to be helped on my way there by you. If first I may enjoy your company a while.

Now, when he says to be helped on my way by you, he means, of course, through their financial help. He's he's going to go into pristine missionary work in Spain. No one's been there yet.

So he's hoping the Church of Rome might help finance that mission. Now, Paul was not one to ask for money for himself. Really, he he supported himself by making tents.

He said no one would ever take this boast from him. He would not accept money for his service. That is, he didn't accept money from the local people for his local service.

But when it came to missionary activities, he expected the churches to help support that. That is, the Christians in Rome who were not themselves going to Spain would send him there as their representative and help support that amount. This is not him looking for personal support, but really support for the kingdom of God in its expansion.

When he settled someplace like in Ephesus for three years or Corinth for 18 months, he didn't accept pay from the local churches. He instead he just worked. But when you're traveling into new territory and preaching full time, you can't work.

So he expects the churches that have a concern about the expansion of the gospel to support him in that. I actually think that policy would make the church stronger today, too, that if the pastors and preachers in a local area did not require salaries and it wouldn't become a profession, it would become something that they're maybe even working to support themselves or else being supported by unsolicited gifts. Then they would not be professionals.

They would not be thinking of ministry as a job. But the churches should support missionaries that are sent out to reach new areas, because obviously, I mean, especially today, you couldn't even legally work in most countries that you go to. You'd have to write kind of visa for that and so forth.

They didn't have visa issues back then. But when Paul was working full time in new fields, he wasn't necessarily able to work and was supported by churches that weren't where he was. That were supporting the extended mission.

So he had been hindered by his commitment to preach where the gospel had not been preached. And that's why he said he had previously been hindered. He was now in Corinth or Greece and planning to sail for Jerusalem.

When we read about his present whereabouts in chapter 15, verse 19, he says mighty signs and wonders and power of the spirit. I better go earlier. Verse 18.

For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ has not accomplished through me in word and deed to make the Gentiles obedient in mighty signs and wonders by the power of the spirit of God. So that from Jerusalem and roundabout to Illyricum, which is north of Greece, where Yugoslavia used to be, he says, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. I thought this was going to be the verse that told us where he where he was.

I'm mistaken. I thought I gave the wrong verse numbers for that. In any case, he was writing from Greece, from Corinth, and I'm not sure why I gave those verses as the verses to prove that.

So this was Paul's plan when he wrote he was moving. He was moving east at the moment to Jerusalem. Then he's going to head west as far west as Rome and further west, if possible, to Spain.

Did Paul ever get to Spain? We don't know. He didn't get to Rome as early as he planned. And when he did, he was in prison and he was in prison for at least two years in Rome.

He was there is some evidence acquitted when he stood before Nero the first time and released and he might have gone to Spain, though there's no evidence in Scripture that he did. In fact, there's evidence he went the other direction, went to Crete and some other places and left Titus there in Crete and ministered some more in Ephesus and left Timothy there. The pastoral epistles bear witness to some of Paul's travels after he was released from prison.

But we don't have any evidence that he went to Spain, but there are some traditions that he went as far west as Britain, but we can't confirm any of that. Now, the letter that we're talking about here is very much like Galatians. If you've studied Galatians, you'll know it.

Its contents are very similar. Galatians was written earlier than Romans, and one could see it as something of a rough draft of Romans in a way, because many of the same themes that Paul brings up in Romans are treated more briefly in that shorter epistle Galatians. But there are real differences in the style of the two.

Paul is very emotional when he writes Galatians. He uses a lot of sarcasm. He expresses his shock at their departure from the gospel, his fears for them.

He goes so far as to say, I feel like I've labored in vain for you. You've become estranged from Christ. You've fallen from grace.

There's a lot of emotional concern for the Galatians that we don't see quite the same emotion in Romans. It seems to be more reasoned, more calm, and that may be partly because the Roman church wasn't drifting away into the Judaizing tendencies that the Galatians were falling into. That was of great concern about the Galatians.

The church in Rome may not have had quite the same danger, but also the Galatians were Paul's own children in the faith. They were much more his concern even than the Romans were, because although he knew a lot of the Christians who were in Rome, they were not his daughter church. He had not brought them into being.

The Galatian churches were his babies, and to see them drift away from the gospel so quickly made him very concerned. But Romans is the most impersonal letter Paul wrote. Apart from the last chapter where he sends greetings to a lot of individuals, there's not very much evidence that he knew people in the Roman church, whereas all the other letters he wrote are written to friends, children in the faith.

Generally, there's greetings to people he knows as there are in Romans, but usually they're kind of woven into his story or his letter, his narrative. But here, the only thing he shows knowledge of the church about is that there is an issue between the Jews and the Gentiles in the church, and he obviously had only heard about that. But he's concerned about it, and he's going to address it in this letter.

Now, throughout the letter, Paul, when he makes his argument about the gospel, uses quite a few metaphors and some special vocabulary that we need to be aware of before we encounter it in the epistle. Some of what he says to the Jews is apparently in language that they would have understood in reference to the covenant. The main theme of this epistle seems to be the righteousness of God.

He says that in almost the very beginning in Romans chapter 1 and verse 17, he says, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just should live by faith. The righteousness of God is revealed later on in chapter three and verse 21, he says, but now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed. So the revelation of the righteousness of God.

Now, what is righteousness of God? Well, it means that God is just, that God is right, that God is all all good. And in the Jewish mind, it would speak of God's covenant faithfulness to the covenant he made with his people, with Abraham. God has shown himself faithful and righteous, whereas in Israel's history, of course, they had not been faithful and righteous.

And God wanted to save his people, but they have not deserved it. They have shown themselves unrighteous, unfaithful, criminal breakers of his law. And yet the gospel offers salvation to them, the Jews and to the Gentiles.

And how can God be righteous and forgive sinners? How could any judge who has a criminal before him on trial release him knowing that he's guilty? That would not be a just or a righteous thing for a judge to do. And yet God has kept his covenant with Israel. Paul goes into how he's kept his covenant with Abraham.

And this is what the Jews, he's going to address the Jews very directly in the opening chapters of the book. And he's trying to point out to them that the gospel is the fulfillment of what God promised to his people. And God has shown himself righteous by fulfilling this, despite the fact that the people of Israel have been historically disobedient.

Actually, if you look at Romans 3, this again is where he's talking about the need to demonstrate or reveal the righteousness of God. The gospel does so. He says about Jesus in verse 25, Romans 3, 25, whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness as God's righteousness, because in his forbearance, God had passed over the sins that were previously permitted to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ, in Jesus.

Now notice again the manifestation of the righteousness of God. Paul summarizes the gospel in chapter 1, verse 17, as the righteousness of God's revealed in it. He comes back to that very language in verse 21 of chapter 3. Now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed.

Revealed and demonstrated, as he points out in verses 25 and 26, that it's a demonstration of God's righteousness so that he could be righteous or just, even while justifying sinners. Justifying means acquitting. Justification and condemnation are really law metaphors, and we'll see those used.

It's law court language. But throughout the book, he's going to use language from different backgrounds. The idea of God's righteousness really speaks to the Jew of God fulfilling his covenant.

It has to do with the covenant milieu. Everything Paul writes about is mindful of the fact that God has a covenant that he's fulfilling. He made a covenant with Abraham, he made a covenant with Israel, and he is fulfilling it in Christ.

And the salvation that he's brought in Christ is, in fact, the fulfillment of the promise he made to Abraham. And this will come out very clearly in chapter 4 especially. So one of the sort of milieu or themes or motifs that's in Romans is going to be how God fulfills his covenant promises.

Now the word faith is a very common word in Romans, and we need to understand that it's a word that has more than one nuance. In fact, we think of faith merely as believing, and that is in fact a meaning of faith. The Greek word is pistis, P-I-S-T-I-S.

That's the Greek word for faith. And the word can mean simply that, believing something. But it means something else too.

For example, if you look at chapter 3, verse 3, Romans 3, 3, it says, What if some did not believe, some of the Jews, will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? The word faithfulness is pistis also. Now, faith and faithfulness are not the same thing. They're like two sides of a coin.

Faith is believing, but in what? In somebody who is trustworthy, believable, faithful. If you trust somebody who's not trustworthy, that's not a wise thing to do, and the Bible would never recommend that you do so. You should never trust the untrustworthy or have faith in an unfaithful person or believe in somebody who isn't reliable.

You shouldn't rely on an unreliable person. The idea of faith and faithfulness, they're like joined together. Not always in everybody's mind equally, but it should be, I'm sure it is in Paul's mind.

God is a faithful covenant-keeping God. Our relationship with him is through pistis, faith or faithfulness. The word can mean both.

Certainly in some context, when Paul used the word faith, it's very clear he's talking about simply believing. But it's not simply believing like we stand off and academically believe certain facts that we, you know, read in a book or something. It's believing in a person.

It's actually a relational thing. Salvation in the Bible is very much like marriage. In fact, the marriage metaphor is one of the metaphors Paul uses in Romans 7. In a marriage, a marriage is a relationship of faith.

In fact, even apart from marriage, all relationships, friendships are faith relationships too. You don't have friends if you can't trust them or you think you can't trust them. If you believe that the moment you turn your back, they're going to stab you in the back, or the minute you share a secret, they're going to tell everyone.

You don't trust them. You can't. Because they're unreliable.

It says in Proverbs, a faithful friend keeps secrets. You know, they don't tell your secrets. You can't have a relationship of any positive nature with someone that you distrust.

As soon as a man can't trust his wife or a wife can't trust her husband, the marriage is really on treacherous terms. See, a marriage, maybe more officially than ordinary relationships, is based on promises that are stated. There are perhaps implied promises in every friendship.

You don't have to say, you know, I'm not going to gossip about you, but if you're a friend, you're not going to. It's implied. You know, I'm not going to stab you in the back.

I'm your friend. Most people don't make those kind of promises with all their friends. They don't have to.

It's assumed. We're friends, right? Those promises, that faithfulness, that reliability, that trustworthiness is implied. In marriage, it's actually codified.

It's actually stated in a vow. You know, I will do this. I will commit myself to you for life, and I'll forsake all others and stay, no matter what happens, for better, for worse, all the rest.

And marriage, like all relationships, is based on a promise. It's just that in marriage, the promise is made verbally and explicitly with a vow. But all relationships of any positive sort have promises implied or stated.

And therefore, relationships are based upon promises made and believed. But the person who's believing the promise has the same implied promise to the other person. In a marriage, a man makes his promises to his wife, and if she believes him, she'll enter the marriage.

But she turns around and makes the promises to him, too. And if he believes him, they have a marriage. If they can't believe each other, the promises are empty, and the relationship is worthless.

Relationships are based on faith. Now, sometimes people say relationships are based on love. They're not based on love.

Relationships are greatly enhanced by love. Parents and children don't always love each other, but they still have a relationship. Husbands and wives don't always love each other, but they have a relationship.

The relationship is based on something else, but love makes the relationship tolerable. Love makes the relationship enjoyable. Love enhances a relationship, but the relationship is not based on love.

If it was, then people would be quite correct to get a divorce as soon as they say, I don't love you anymore. I don't love you, so I'm going to go find someone else to love. Well, then that suggests, well, I'm married to you only because I love you, and the basis of the relationship is love, and that's gone, so we're done.

No, the relationship is based on faith. You made promises, and I still trust you. I made promises, and you have to be able to trust me.

I have to be faithful so that you can trust me, and you have to be faithful so I can trust you. This whole idea of faith, pistis, involves the whole mutuality of the relationship. On the one hand, I am believing God.

On the other hand, I'm expected to be faithful to God so he can believe me. When I say I'm going to serve you, he's got to believe there's some integrity there, and I have to believe that he's faithful. So faith and faithfulness are twin sides of this one Greek word, pistis, which Paul uses so often.

And sometimes he's obviously talking about the human side of just being believing, believing what God said. That is often what it is. Other times it's not so clear, but even when it is believing, it's in the context of a relationship where there's a mutual faithfulness.

So even to say we're saved by faith, even if we understand that faith means believing, it's not just bare intellectual believing. It's trusting him in a context of a relationship where he can trust me too. My faith involves my faithfulness as well as my trust in his faithfulness.

This is something that is hard to express in a single English word. But we see, as I pointed out, I think we're all familiar with places where faith talks about us believing, but in Romans 3, 3, the very same word speaks of, is translated faithfulness, which applies to God and can to us too. And there's, by the way, as we shall see, there's quite a lot of verses in the Bible where faithfulness is the meaning of pistis, and it's like a character trait.

So in the context of the covenant, like a marriage is a covenant. So God had a covenant with Israel and he was trustworthy. He was righteous.

He did what he was supposed to do. Israel didn't. But now he was calling Jews and Gentiles back into that kind of relationship.

There's a new covenant. And that covenant involves the same requirement of faithfulness. There's promises implied when we when we get saved.

I don't I don't very often see it happen or emphasize that, you know, when you come to Christ, you're making a promise to God, but you are. It's at least implied if you don't say it out loud, getting baptized is your promise. I'm in.

It's like the wedding ring, you know, you're putting on God's wedding ring and you're making a promise to follow him. This is what I have never understood about people who've made a commitment to Christ and then just walk away from him someday. It's like they don't realize, don't you know, you made a promise.

If God can't trust you, who can? You know, if you if you lie to him, won't you lie to me? You lie to anybody. Faith and faithfulness are interwoven. I trust my wife and I have to be a person that she can safely trust.

I believe she trusts me and she's a person that I can safely trust. This trust and trustworthiness, faith and faithfulness are both involved in this same word. And it doesn't come out easily in one of those English words.

You kind of have to remember that they're both in there. So a lot of people have come to think, and I think the Reformation theology that Luther and Calvin developed may have given this impression that the ideas were saved by faith. That means I just have to believe the truth.

I just have to believe the doctrine. I just have to believe whatever God said and then I'm saved. But it's not just believing facts and believing propositions.

It's having a trusting relationship where you and God are mutually trusting each other to keep your commitments and your promises. And God, because he's a covenant faithful God, it does. And when Paul uses the language of the righteousness of God and even uses the language of our faith, it's not without allusion to this covenantal relationship, which is bonded and based upon faith between God and his people.

And we'll see it in the various ways that Paul speaks about it, how that plays out. Now, there's also another kind of metaphor that's used from the idea of employment, the wage laborer metaphor. It's only one of lots of metaphors that Paul uses in this book.

But the idea of works often comes from this metaphor of someone working for a paycheck. Now, of course, we're not working for a paycheck. And that's the very point Paul's making.

But he sometimes uses the metaphor of a worker trying to earn a living. For example, chapter three and verse 20. He says, therefore, by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified in sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

You're not going to earn your justification by keeping deeds or works of the law. In the same chapter, verse 27, he said, where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.

That is, if you're saved by works, you could boast because you've earned something and you're just getting what you were paid or what you worked for. You're getting paid for what you worked for. But if you say by faith, you didn't earn anything and therefore boasting is excluded.

But this comes out real clearly in chapter four. For example, verse two, he says, for if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. And he says, for what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness.

Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as a debt. That is, if you're in an employment situation and you do a day's work and your boss gives you a paycheck, that's not a gift. That's not grace.

He owes it to you. You're in a labor contract. You did the labor, he owes you the money.

It's a debt. He says, now that's not the way it is with us and God. God doesn't have a wage labor arrangement with us where we do so much work and he gives us so much salvation.

Salvation is coming on an entirely different basis. And that's what Paul's arguing in these passages. It's not based on works.

It's not based on you earning it. It is based on God's simply his generosity. In chapter four and verse six, it says, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works.

And in that place, he's talking about when David had sinned with Bathsheba and he was convicted through the confrontation from Nathan the prophet and he repented and he wrote Psalm 32 and Paul quotes from Psalm 32. But the idea is that David didn't do any good works to be justified. David should have been put to death for that crime, but he wasn't.

God forgave him, not because David offered animal sacrifices, not because David was circumcised, not because David did anything, but repent. He had known justification from God without works. He didn't earn it, in other words, and he would have if he could have.

In fact, David said that in Psalm 51. He says, you didn't desire sacrifice and offerings or else I would have given it. If that's what it would have taken, if that's how I could have earned my forgiveness, I would have gladly done it.

But David said, no, but the sacrifices of God are broken and contrite spirit. You know, it's just a humble repentance is really all God requires. And that's not work.

That's something that doesn't earn anything or cost anything to you. Just it's just recognizing your guilt and being repentant and grieved about it. In chapter nine of Romans, verse 11, it says for the children, meaning Jacob and Esau in the womb, not being yet born nor having done any good or evil that the purpose of God, according to election, might stand not of works, but of him who calls.

God chose Jacob over Esau when neither of them had done any works. They haven't earned status. Jacob had not done something more than what Esau did in order for God to choose him.

He didn't earn it. He didn't pay some wage that Esau failed to pay. This choice was made before either of them had done anything good or bad.

And then. And same chapter, verse 31 and 32. Paul says, but Israel pursuing the law of righteousness has not attained to the law of righteousness.

Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law, for they stumbled at the stumbling stone. So, again, they tried to earn their place with God by keeping the laws. And it's as if they had in their mind a wage laborer relationship with God, which is not the way God views our relationship with him.

Finally, in chapter 11 and verse 6, he said, if it is by grace, then it is no longer of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. But if it is of works, it is no longer grace.

Now, again, it's a debt. If God repays us for our good works, then that's a debt. That's not grace.

If it's of works, you can't talk about it being grace. That's what he's saying. It's not a free gift.

It's earned. And that's not the way that salvation is. And so this wage labor metaphor, he uses time and again when he talks about works, as if works earn something.

And he makes it very clear that in our case, that metaphor does not work for salvation because salvation isn't like that. But rather, there's the gift metaphor. Now, we have to be careful because when God says it's a gift, sometimes people think that it's an unconditional gift.

Sometimes people say, well, if I have to stay faithful to have it, then it's not a gift. I have to earn it. But staying faithful is not earning anything.

Gifts can be offered without cost, but not necessarily without conditions. To meet the conditions for receiving a gift doesn't mean you've earned the gift. When you have a baby, the local baby stores will send you a card and say, we have a gift for your baby.

Just come down to our store and present this card. We have a special gift for you and your baby. Well, if you don't go into the store, you don't get the gift.

You can't phone the store up and say, I got this card that says you have a gift for me. Could you just send it to this address? Send it to me here. They say, no, you have to come into the store for the gift.

Well, you don't say, well, but then I'm earning the gift. No, going into our store doesn't earn merchandise. Lots of people come into the store.

They don't walk out owning merchandise just because they walked in. Walking into a store is a condition for receiving the gift, but it doesn't purchase it. Walking into a store does not earn or purchase a gift.

It's still a gift. It's still free, but it's only given to people on certain conditions. My grandmother, when I graduated from high school, offered to pay my full scholarship through a Biola Bible College.

But I had to go to Biola Bible College to do it. I didn't. So she didn't pay a penny.

Now, if I said, but, you know, just send me the money and I'll use it the way I want to use it. She'd say, no, this is for tuition to go to this Bible College. I mean, would I then be able to say, but if I go to the Bible College, you pay it, then that's not a gift because I had to go to the Bible.

I had to meet the conditions. No, it's still a gift. Enrolling in college and going to college isn't earning the money for your tuition.

That's not how you don't pay the college tuition by going to school. You owe tuition by going to school. It'd still be a gift if she'd get.

I didn't take it. I didn't go to college, but I, the truth is, it would have been just as much a gift, notwithstanding the fact that it was entirely conditional. God has a gift of eternal life for us, but it doesn't mean there are no conditions or else everyone would be automatically saved.

If you believe you're saved. If you don't believe you're not saved. If you're committed to Christ as your Lord, and in this relationship, this covenantal relationship with him, you're saved in him.

If you're not in him, you're not saved. It's there are conditions, but they aren't the kind of conditions that really earn brownie points or earn some kind of a salary from God or anything like that. It says in chapter three, verse 24, that we are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that's in Christ freely.

It's a gift. It's not earned in chapter four, verse four. It says now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as a debt.

Grace is the gift language. Debt is the wage laborer language. In chapter five, verses 15 through 18, Paul says, but the free gift is not like the offense.

He's comparing what Christ did with what Adam did. And in verse 16, he says, and the gift is not like that, which came through the one who said, and then in verse 17 or verse 18, therefore, as through one man's offense, judgment came upon men, resulting in condemnation. Even so through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men.

This reference to salvation as a gift is just the opposite of that of a, of a salary or of a repayment, a wage for having, having done some work. And there's more, but we won't look at all the references, but throughout the book of Romans, we'll see him talking about this imagery of a person receiving a gift or earning a wage. These are the opposite ways.

Now, the reason I point out that these are opposite, Paul does is because there are some people who say that even faith itself is a work. Now, this would be the Calvinists in case you're not familiar with them. They would say that salvation is unconditional.

And what they mean by that is that God chose who he had saved before anyone did anything and does not require anything of them in order to be saved, even faith, but rather he chooses them first. Then he gives them faith because he chose them. So faith isn't even a condition for salvation.

They say, because God doesn't require any conditions. He only requires that he chose you and you had nothing to do with that. That was done before you were born on earth.

God chose to save you or not. And if not, you're not going to be saved. If you are, he will give you faith, but faith is not a condition because they believe in what's called unconditional election.

That's the second point of Calvinism, the first being total depravity. So under the doctrine of unconditional election, it's not even proper, they say, to speak of faith as a condition because they say that's a work. They're very emphatic.

We're not saved by works and therefore you can't even be saved by faith because then that's you providing faith unless God is the one who provides the faith as a unilateral gift, then of course it's not a work on your part. So it's kind of an arcane theological controversy, but it makes a big deal to them when you talk to a Calvinist about issues of salvation because they believe that although we are saved through faith, it's God who gives us the faith because he chose us and we didn't come up with it. We didn't believe and there was no condition.

It's not as if mankind stands all with a condition before them. To believe and be saved or don't believe and don't be saved. That's the way I believe the Bible represents it, but they believe that most of mankind doesn't even have that option.

They can't meet any conditions. Election is unconditional and then God gives the faith and the repentance and all the other stuff to the persons that he's chosen so that he has no conditions for having chosen them. I don't believe this is what the Bible teaches and faith is not a work.

They say, well, if you have to produce the faith, then you're saved by your works. If you've never talked to Calvinist, that might sound like the weirdest, most unfamiliar statement in the world. But if you talk to Calvinist, you'll hear him say it a lot.

You know what? You can't produce faith. See, they believe that a person can't have faith unless they're elect. They believe that if you're not already elect before you're born, you cannot believe and it's important to them to say that because if you can, then you might slip into the elect category from the non-elect category without God wanting you to.

You see? Because if you're not elect, he doesn't want you saved. If you are elect, he chose to save you before you're born and he'll give the faith to ones he wants to save but the non-elect cannot believe and be saved. If they did, then that election is out the window as far as they're concerned, the way they understand election.

In any case, all I'm saying is if anyone tells you that faith is a work, they're a Calvinist. And they're saying the opposite of what Paul says because a gift is given conditionally upon faith in this case. It's not earning it.

Believing doesn't earn anything but it does meet the condition for receiving the free gift. It's not the same thing as paying for it. Now, there's the slave market metaphor that comes up from time to time.

Paul talks about us being slaves of sin and slaves of righteousness and so forth. This is not throughout the entire book necessarily. I mean, there's quite a few references but it's one of the metaphors that Paul likes to use sometimes to clarify certain things.

In chapter 5, for example, when he's talking about the effects that Adam had on the race by his sin, he brought sin and death upon all of us. It says in chapter 5, verse 14, Nevertheless, death reigned. Now, death was the king and reigned and dominated us.

We are slaves. We're slaves of death. It says death reigned over mankind between the time of Adam and Moses so that's even before the law was given.

We'll talk more about chapter 5 later. It's got its own problems but just the reference to death reigning suggests that we were slaves of death. It reigned over us.

We were not free. Because we're subject to death. And the resurrection will be made free ultimately from that.

In chapter 6, 6, it says, Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that we should no longer have to be slaves of sin. So being a slave of sin comes up here. And in the same chapter, verses 16 through 22, is all about the slave market metaphor.

When he asks the question in verse 15, What then, shall we sin that we are, because we're not under the law but under grace? He says, Certainly not. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether of sin, so you could be a slave of sin leading to death, or a slave of obedience, of God, leading to righteousness. But God be thanked that you, though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.

And having been set free from sin, again the slavery metaphor, being set free from slavery, you became slaves of righteousness. And he goes on. So this idea of being a slave of sin and a slave of righteousness, and the idea that when Christ died, he redeemed us or purchased us out of slavery.

We no longer are owned by sin. We are owned by God with other implied obligations and ramifications like righteousness. And so when we come to those passages, we'll recognize he's using a metaphor from the slave market.

Now he also used the law court metaphor. I mentioned that earlier. The words condemned or condemnation and the word justification or justify, these are pretty common words in Romans.

These are from the law courts. And in our country, in America, the language is a little different. If you are taken before the judge and you're on trial, if you are found guilty, we don't say you're condemned.

We say you're convicted. You are convicted of the crime. If you are not found guilty, if you're found not guilty, then you are, we would say, acquitted.

We would say acquitted and convicted for the two options. In biblical times, the options were justified or condemned. Condemned was the same thing as being convicted in court.

Justified was the same thing as being acquitted of a crime in court. It's a legal term. The idea being that we stand, our consciences stand before God and if he condemns us or he convicts us of the crimes we've committed, we're done.

We're out of there. There's no hope for us. But if he justifies us, that's the same thing as the judge acquitting, saying I find you not guilty.

Justified means to declare somebody to be just or righteous. And you should understand that the word righteous and just are the same in the Greek. So to be justified means that somebody has declared you, somebody official like a judge, has declared you to be okay.

You're righteous. You're just. You're not guilty.

You've been acquitted. And we're going to find this law court language throughout the book of Romans, justified and condemned. There's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

We're justified freely through his grace, the Bible says. We are acquitted at God's bar of justice. We are not convicted or condemned, which means if there's no condemnation, then when we face God at the end of our lives, he has nothing on us.

We've committed crimes. We've committed sins during our lifetime, but they've been expunged from the record and we're declared innocent. We're declared not guilty.

And so Paul revels in this law court language, which we'll see again and again in the book. I mentioned there's a marriage metaphor. It isn't extensively used, but it is used in chapter seven.

The idea of marriage is when God created marriage in Genesis, he made a man and woman, and what's the first command he gave them? Be fruitful. Be fruitful and multiply. The idea, the first purpose of marriage in the Bible was to be fruitful.

And so bearing fruit is seen as something that takes place in the context of the marriage metaphor. For example, if you'll look at chapter seven, Paul says, Do you not know, brethren, for I speak to those who know the law, that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives? Or the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband.

So then if while her husband lives she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man. Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another, to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.

The idea is that our lives are bearing fruit for God because we're married to Jesus. Now, it's a really good metaphor because on the one hand, it's a covenant between a man and woman, just like we have a covenant between us and God. A marriage is a covenant relationship and so is our relationship with God.

So in that sense, the metaphor worked well, but also marriage is ideally fruitful. I mean, because of the fall, there are people who can't have children and so forth, and so not all marriages are fruitful, but when God made marriage, it was to be fruitful, be fruitful and multiply, he told them. So the idea here is that our lives are here to bear fruit for God and who's the husband? Jesus, him who was raised from the dead.

He's the one we're married to. The idea being that the nature of the husband is reproduced in the womb of his wife. The child may or may not be the spitting image of his dad, but he's got the nature of his dad.

The dad's DNA is in there as well as the mother's, but the point here is something of the nature of the father is in the fruit that comes from the womb and so the father of the child sees the child in some sense as an extension of himself, as his own family, his own has his own nature in him in a sense that the neighbor kids don't and this metaphor works really well because what Paul's trying to teach is that we do in fact live a holy life, but not because we're under some kind of a law, not because we keep a law. We were once married to the law, he says, and that was just a legalism that required us to obey, obey, obey the rules. He says we've died to the law through the body of Christ.

He says in Christ we've died with him and now that marriage is over. Marriage ends with death. He said there's no more obligations in that marriage.

We're not under any part of the law now, but he says it's so we could be married to another. Well, we're married to Christ now, one who was raised from the dead, he said. So in dying to the law, we're no longer under any part of the law, no part of it.

That marriage is over, but we're widows and then we are remarried to Christ. Now Christ bears his fruit in us and we live righteous lives, but not through a legalism of having rules and laws, but through a new nature that's reproduced in us through the spirit of Christ because he is the husband of the church. The church bears the fruit for Christ and we, through the spirit of Christ in us, produce the fruit of righteous living, which is what Paul's talking about here and it's in the context of a marriage and it's more like the nature of Christ being reproduced in us.

If you look at chapter 6, verse 20 and following, Romans 6, 20 to the end of the chapter, he says, but when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. That means you weren't slaves of righteousness. What fruit, there's that word, what fruit did you have then in the things of which you're now ashamed for the end of those things is death.

But now having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness and in the end, everlasting life. Now this fruit, we don't have legalistic obedience. We have fruit being born of holiness and he explains that in chapter 7. That's because we're married to Christ and we bear fruit like a wife gives birth to her husband's children.

So the fruit he wants from us is this holy living. And so he uses this marriage metaphor in his argument. And then finally, of course, and very commonly, he uses the family metaphor.

He talks about being children, both of Abraham and of God. In fact, Paul uses the terms somewhat interchangeably. We wouldn't think that in the Bible, it would always be the case that someone who's called a child of Abraham would be also called a child of God.

But Paul is using the language that way in Romans. For example, he's talking about the children of Abraham in chapter 9. And he says, verse 8, that is those who are the children of the flesh. He means Abraham's children of the flesh.

These are not the children of God. The children of the promise are counted as the seed. That is of the children of God.

Now he's talking about being a true child of Abraham, a true seed of Abraham is being a child of God. But he's saying the Jew who's just physically the same for him. That's not necessarily a child of God.

Being a physical child of Abraham is not the same thing as being a child of God. But being a spiritual child of Abraham is being a child of God. And he, the language of sonship and being an heir is an important theme.

In the book of Romans, it comes up in chapter 8, very prominently. He says in verse 15 of chapter 8 or verse 14, as many of you as are led by the spirit of God, these are the sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage.

There's the slave metaphor again, again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption. That's the sonship family metaphor by whom we cry out Abba father. He says in the spirit himself, bears witness within our spirit that we are the children of God.

And if children than heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him that we may be glorified together. So Paul essentially says that we are children and heirs born of God. And so that comes up in some of his discussion of our privilege and of our, of our basis of our relationship with God.

Again, our relationship with God is not that of a wage with an wage earner, with an employer. It's that of children with a father. And that's pretty important to know because fathers accept their children on a very different basis than employers except their employees.

An employee has a tenuous relationship with an employer based entirely on fulfilling a contract. They're, they're hired to do a job. If they do the job, they get their pay.

They keep their job. If they don't do their job, they get fired. It's all performance based.

Fathers don't accept their children on the same basis. Not that children aren't supposed to perform. A child is born into a family with certain expectations that he'll obey the parents and when he's old enough probably have some chores and things that he's required to do.

But he's not earning his place in the family that way. He's living out his place in the family that way. It's because he's born in the family and belongs in that family that he fulfills certain roles that children have.

But they don't maintain their position in the family by fulfilling those roles. A child who rebels against his father and doesn't obey, if he were an employee, he'd be fired. But fathers don't just disown their children because they didn't do their chores on a certain weekend.

They don't disown their kids because they're, the relationship between the father and the child is on an entirely different basis than that of a wage earner and an employee, employer. And so there's this emphasis on being children and heirs and of course that's packed with meaning as far as our, you know, how do I know if God still accepts me if I'm not perfect? Well, do you accept your children if they're not perfect? Now, many of you don't have children so you maybe don't know that as much as people who do but I think you could imagine a person who's your child, they're going to be imperfect. Every human's imperfect but you don't make their belonging to you as being contingent on how perfect they are.

It's entirely a grace relationship. Your child might be, you know, born, you know, severely mentally handicapped and even paralyzed. Might lack limbs.

Might not be able to do a single thing for you ever but you love that child on the same basis as if he grew up to do you proud and supported you in your old age. You know, I mean, it doesn't make a difference. It's great when a child supports you in your old age but you don't keep them around for that reason.

You keep your child because they're your child because, you know, you love your child for unconditional reasons and so that's a very important metaphor that Paul uses. So there's different aspects of the gospel and of salvation that Paul brings out by the use of different metaphors. There's of course the covenant relationship that God has being faithful, being righteous in a relationship with his people who are faithful to him, have faith in him.

There's the contrast between a wage labor and a gift issue. There's the slave market metaphor. There's the law court metaphor.

There's the marriage metaphor. There's the family of Abraham, father-child metaphor. All these metaphors get interwoven.

Paul has all these social institutions, as it were, in mind as providing something of an illustration for the things he's trying to get across. He gets a little bit from each of these metaphors. None of them is entirely full by itself and we just need to recognize that certain passages, oh, he's comparing this with something but we need to ask, is it exactly like that metaphor or what is the point of comparison he's trying to make so we don't take it too far or not far enough.

Anyway, those are the things I wanted to say about the vocabulary of metaphors in Romans. We got to take our break now. We're going to get into chapter one.

Although at the beginning of the next session, I'm going to go through some suggested outlines of the book quickly so you'll have some idea of the big picture but we're going to get into the actual text of chapter one next time as well. So let's take a break. .