Sunday School | Romans Part I

Introduction

How do we do that? Okay. Okay, you guys. So who does not have a Roman sheet? Harrison needs one. Ginny needs one. Tom's gonna hook it up. No. Tom's getting his own. Alright. If you need one of these, Doug needs one. Alright, let's get these things out.

Alright, a couple of things before we get started. Everybody turn around, look to the back of the room, and look up at Susan McQuade. Hey, there's Susan. You guys, you may not realize it, but every week we have somebody. It's often Susan. Sometimes it's Stephanie. Sometimes it's Scott. That runs sound for this class. But we need to add a couple of people to the team. If you are willing to be on our AV team, what it would mean—Susan, what does it mean? You get here, like, five minutes early, and you run through a procedure on the sound board that takes, like, two or three minutes. Right? We've got it all written out. It's all very, very clear. Even if you don't have a lot of AV prowess, if you can read, you can do this job. Okay? You just push this button, turn this knob, push this button, go.

But we need folks that will do it and then grab the recording. It's both so we can amplify it here and so we can get the recording out to others. And so if you're willing to be on that team, I would love to talk to you today. And in fact, if you're willing to be on that team, would you raise your hand right now so I know that I need to talk to you after class today? Rob, you're down? Okay, good. Rob is in the party. Anybody? A couple more? A couple more folks? Who is it? Dude, you're on? Thank you so much. Okay. I'll talk to you guys after class. We'll talk about how it works, what you need to do, and how much money you get paid. It's a lot. It's nothing.

The Bible Study Initiative

Okay, so there's that. Number two, you might know that if you've been here, we've been doing these through the Bible summaries. We had a little bit of a break—I was on vacation in Utah and whatever—but we're full steam ahead. This has all passed things. So this right now, I will have this every week, and it will just fill up the accordion with every group. Right? So Luke and Acts are in here right now. Romans will be in here by the end of the day. And so anytime you come, and if you missed a week and you're like, Can I get last week? Or my friend or my spouse or somebody wanted it, this will always be here with, like, every book in the New Testament as we build the thing.

So you can come and you can grab these. Alright. Which means we are finally at long last at Romans. You guys all have one of these now? You got your Roman sheets? Everybody's got them? Okay. So I told you guys when we started this that there's a couple of things we're trying to accomplish. One is I want—well, probably chiefly, mostly—is I want to just invite and encourage and create a framework and a structure for you to be daily in the scriptures. There's lots of ways that you could do it. What I'm recommending you do is that you read Luke, then Acts, then Romans. And then you do it at a pretty quick clip, something like five pages a day.

Five pages of your Bible a day, you can burn through the entire New Testament. Do you remember how long it would take you? The whole New Testament, five pages a day? Yeah, even less. It's like 52. Your New Testament's probably about two hundred fifty pages. So if you read five pages a day, you can bang it out in two months, which is not that hard. We're probably going a little bit slower because we're interrupting things. But my hope here is that as we study Luke, that you'd be incentivized to go read Luke. As we study Acts, you go read Acts. And now as we do Romans, you can read Romans. Some of you might choose to read ahead so that when we have this class, you kind of have a little more of an immediate, fresh context for it. And others might read through Romans after the class. And you can do either.

But my goal here is this. What we're producing in these is not just a summary of the book. In fact, if you go through Luke and Acts, they're not summaries of it. Really what I'm trying to produce is more like a map, more like these guideposts. What I'm trying to show you week after week in these things is what you need to look for as you read it if you're really going to understand the message. I want to show you maybe some of the themes that might not have been obvious to you but that I promise are genuinely present. Right? Or key terms that if you notice them, they're going to pop.

There's all kinds of things. We're a little noisy in here. There's all kinds of things which, if you're on the lookout for them, I think are gonna help the message stick, you'll see and you'll understand it better. So this morning, as we look at Romans, I wanna begin by just inviting you to consider that whatever letter you're reading, if we're in the New Testament, in the letters in particular, in what we call the epistles, there's always going to be an organizing principle.

These aren't random stream of consciousness, but Paul is organizing his letters. Peter is organizing his letters. And one of the first things that's gonna be useful for you as you just read through these things is just letting, Oh, I get it. This thing breaks naturally into two different halves, topic A and topic B. Or, I see, there's kind of this three-part structure to it. They're not generally that complicated, but I think it adds value if you just learn to see, like, where are the natural cracks? Where are the fissures in this thing? So excluding Romans, okay. Forget about Romans. We'll talk about Romans in a second. Can anybody tell me any—we'll limit ourselves to Paul—do any of you guys have any sense of how Paul has organized any particular letter? It's not the same for every letter. He might do a different organizing principle in Galatians than he does in Ephesians, and maybe there's something going on in Philippians.

But are any of these things obvious to you? Have you ever seen, like, oh, this is how this book breaks in two or three or four pieces? Is this familiar to you guys? Yeah, Virgil, what you got? Most of the shorter letters start with theology and move to practical advice.

Okay, that's excellent. Let's do this because Virgil's exactly right. In Paul's shorter letters, he'll begin with theology, and then there's a sharp dividing line, and he'll give you application. Right? And then sometimes it'll be like, and also say hi to Bob. He'll have this little final greetings thing at the end. So you could say that it's theology, then it's application, then final greetings. You could say it's the indicative, which is like, these things are true, and then the imperatives. These are the things you've got to do.

So I'll show you. We'll just look at one of them. Go to Ephesians and we'll see this. And if you're looking for the cracks, you'll see it. In Ephesians one, Ephesians two, and Ephesians three, there are no commands. It's all just this is good news. This is true. If you skim through it, it's all what we call indicative. He's indicating things, saying this is so, this is so, this is so, this is what is true. And then there's this very sharp contrast in chapter four, verse one. He, where it is in Ephesians 4:1, "As a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received." And that's the sign that now we're moving from theological principle to what are you gonna do about it? You read Ephesians, you should notice chapters one to three, chapters four to six as a very clear line.

Same thing, another example of that. Go to Colossians. Colossians is actually a parallel to Ephesians. And so you'll see the same thing right smack in the middle. Look at Colossians 3:1. He's gonna say, "Since then you have been raised with Christ, set your heart on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things, for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ and God." And then he gets to the commands—puts to death. It becomes all command. So that's a very natural, it's not always what he does, but it is one of the ways that Paul will do it. Theology first, boom, application second. Okay? So you're gonna watch for that. Any other examples you can think of of how Paul organizes his letters? Things you've noticed? It's not always that simple. Sometimes it's that simple. You gotta go look at— I don't care. Go to Galatians. See how he does Galatians. If you look at this, jump in.

By the way, it's easy to remember that G E is Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. Spread. So you go G E P C. If you look at Galatians and you go through, he's gonna begin—it's very personal. Right? It's this whole very personal but also kind of sharp kind of story of his own life. You can see that through chapter one. Basically, he's his own autobiography. And then what happens after that? Is this familiar to you at all, or is this boring to you? Do you care? In fact, I won't even—I’ll leave this for you as an assignment. I'll leave Galatians at an assignment level. You can go through it and just look and see where would I—that's three pieces. I'll give you that much. Okay? And the first one is his own personal biography. Find the second fissure in Galatians just sometime this week, and see if you don't notice it. Okay?

The Organization of Romans

In Romans, you have it in front of you. How does Romans split up? Have you ever seen this or known this? Romans is a three-parter as well, and it's a little bit like the framework we have in Ephesians and Colossians, but there's an insertion in the middle. If you take a look at your sheet, it begins with doctrinal exposition and then it ends with practical application. But right in the middle of them, he shoves a pretty unique passage for Paul, which is this national explanation. So it works like this: he's first talking about, in the theology, essentially, what is wrong with mankind. How do we understand this sin problem, sin and sins, that completely ruins our life? And he walks through what is wrong with us, what is God's solution to it, and it's this massive theological dissertation. You could say it runs chapters one to seven. Probably should say it runs chapters one to eight, although chapter eight is a little bit of a special case.

And that's all pure theology. And then from chapter 12 on is all pure application. In fact, if you look at Romans 12:1, I think I have it on the sheet here for you. "Therefore I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy,"—it's very much like what he does in Ephesians—"to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." And we're off to the races. And from that point on, it's all application.

Theology first, application last. But in Romans, there's this weird, enigmatic section right in the middle that I've described as the national explanation. The first section is about mankind. The last section is about the individual. The first section is about our sin. The last one is about how do we live our lives. The first section is how does the Gospel save the sinner. The last section is what does the Gospel mean for how I live? How does it bear on conduct? But jammed in the middle there is this unique little passage, three chapters' worth, where Paul is working out what is the deal with Israel.

So before we look at that, do you remember how the book of Acts ends? And what is the emotional grind we talked about a few weeks ago that pushes through the book of Acts? Do you remember this? What happens at the end of Acts, and what is it an expression of? Does anybody remember this? You look at your Acts sheet. What was it? Somebody loud. Gary? The gospel is going to spread through the whole world. Yeah, but there's something else that's a little more troubling. Do you have your Acts sheet? Paul goes to prison. Say it loud. Paul goes to prison.

Yes, Paul does go to prison, but it ends with a declaration. Do you remember this? Yeah, John? That's exactly right. Okay, so here's the thing. Everywhere Paul goes throughout the book of Acts, it happens over and over and over and over again. He goes into a community. He prioritizes meeting with the Jewish people, sharing the Gospel with them. Some believe, most reject, and there's a huge fiasco. He goes to the next town. Some believe, most reject, and there's a huge fiasco. By chapter 18, Paul's fed up and he says, That's it. We're done here. I'm not talking to any more Jews. I'm so sick and tired of this. That resolve lasts one verse because he loves the Jews. And literally one verse later, he leads the synagogue ruler to Christ. But by the end of the book, and this is a major theme of Luke's, what he's trying to explain is why has this Jewish message from a Jewish Messiah been so ill received among the Jewish people?

In the book of Acts, it ends like this. Right here, if you go to Acts 20:24, it says, "Some were convinced by what Paul said, but others would not believe." They disagreed among themselves and began to leave after Paul made this final statement. Here's Paul. This is how the book of Acts ends, you guys. The Holy Spirit spoke truth to your forefathers when he said to Isaiah the prophet—

"Go to this people and say, you will be ever hearing but never understanding. You will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people's heart has become calloused. They hardly hear with their ears and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn, and I would heal them."
Therefore, I want you to know that God's salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will listen.

The book of Acts is written partially to explain where all these Gentiles come from. It's an odd thing that this room is overwhelmingly filled with Gentiles. And there's not that many Jews who have believed in the Jewish Messiah and have come into the kingdom. That completely is sand in Paul's gears over and over again in the book of Acts. And it is unmistakably the engine that drives the book of Romans.

Okay? When you read through the book of Romans—even though chapters nine, ten, and eleven are largely about the Jewish people—they're a huge dissertation about what's the deal with all the Jews not believing the Gospel. It's not contained in chapters nine, ten, and eleven; it permeates the entire book. The thing that drives this is incredibly emotional to Paul. And the reason I point that out is that we have a tendency—some people have a tendency—to think of Romans as this work of a logician. It's just this document of fact and truth and reason. And it is all those things. It's incredibly well organized. It's incredibly well argued. But do not mistake that this thing is an angst—the disappointment, his concern, his frustration, his grief, his sorrow.

Just look at what he says. I have this here in this Paul's struggle, the middle section right here about the national struggle. This is the engine that drives the letter. He begins chapters nine, ten, and eleven in the same way. He says,

"I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel."

He's saying if I could die and be cut off from Christ and that would redeem the people of Israel, I would do it. He's like, I promise you this is true. He's hurting. Chapter 10, brothers, "my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved." In chapter 11, he's still working this out. I ask then, did God reject his people? He just can't make sense of the whole thing. What's going on?

So this strange thing that fits normal for Paul to say—doctrine, blah blah blah, for chapters to chapters, application, blah blah blah—that's normal. But this middle thing in the center of Romans is Paul working out the fact that I have shared this gospel in every city I come to, and everywhere I go they reject and reject and reject. He asks the question, what advantage then is there in being a Jew? Then he's like, much in every way. And he lists all these things they have, and it's like, and yet it doesn't come to pass.

When you are enjoying the logic and the reason and the tightness of the argument of Romans, do not forget: it is an incredibly emotional letter because Paul loves the Jews and he wants them to respond. He, by the way, does say — I'm going to show you Paul's conclusion — he says,

"I don't want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you may not be conceited. Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full Deliverer will come from Zion. He will turn away godlessness from Jacob. This is my covenant with them when I take away their sins."

Paul ultimately comes to the conclusion that, for whatever reason, in the mysteries of God's providence, he is hardening partially and temporarily the Jewish nation so that all these Africans and Anglos and Australians—and who am I missing? Asians. Asians and aboriginal people. I mean, like, we're bringing in all the riffraff. And then when he's done that, then there's going to be a revival among the Jewish people, and the game will come to an end. Okay? This is what is driving this book. It's what drove his ministry through the book of Acts. It is what's driving this letter to the Romans. And by the way, the church in Rome is a mixture of Jew and Gentile. As you read through it, just notice how often he's talking to the Jew and to the Gentile—Jew and to the Gentile, Jew and to the Gentile. He's thinking deeply about this, but the whole time he's talking to Jews and Gentiles, he's like, I'm gonna do all that I can. Do you know why? Do you know why Paul says he gives so much effort to reaching Gentile people? What his motive is in doing that? He says he does it to arouse his own people to jealousy.

Even when he's sharing the Gospel with people like us, he's thinking about the Jews because that's the thing that is driving his mouth. So as you read it, I'll just say: as you go through the big picture of this book, you're gonna want to look for that kind of stuff. Okay? So when you go through, watch the breaks— the first eight chapters, chapters nine to twelve, and then from chapters 12:1, you're gonna get into an application. Watch for those cracks, watch for the emotional drive. That's going to help you see a bunch of stuff. Okay? Cool?

Application and Reflection

Catherine: When he says that I would rather be lost than them be longer—rather, to me, that's like the pinnacle of his whole everything because one scripture.

Oh, it's so tight. And what it is, Catherine, is it's a con—it's so consistent with Paul's paradigm. You recall when we looked in the book of Acts, we saw how Paul is imitating Jesus in all things? Everything that happens in the Gospels, everything that happens in Acts already happened in the Gospel. Remember that? I gave you that chart. All these things that are happening in Acts already happened. We see Paul in particular, maybe the most obvious and kind of outlandish thing, is Paul's push towards Jerusalem. He wants to go to Jerusalem. When he gets there, there's this monkey, this trial, what we call a kangaroo court trial and all these things—and it's all an imitation of Jesus' push to Jerusalem and his trial.

Paul is imitating Christ, and it's not hard to see that when Paul says,

"Man, if I could be cursed and cut off so that other people would be saved, I would do that."

Does that sound familiar to you? Right? That is itself an imitation of Jesus who was cursed, he was cut off from his father in order that we might be saved. And all that Paul is doing is saying I want my life to be just like his. Whatever he did, I want to do. And if I can give my life for the sake of those that don't yet know his mercy and grace, then I'm gonna do that. He is setting an incredibly high standard.

Big Picture of Romans

So that's the big, big picture of Romans. So far so good? There's tons more stuff we want to look at, but questions about that? When you go through it, watch through here. The first section, watch when he defines the problem. It’s the first three chapters. It's really half of chapter one through almost the end of chapter three— all problem statement. And then you can see he finally gets to the solution. That passage right there, and I've basically quoted it for you—this God solution. If I could pick one paragraph in the entire Bible to say this is—and I butchered that Bible reference—that begins at Romans 3:21. It goes longer than 3:21. I'll need to change that. So that thing I claimed is one verse is actually several verses.

That passage right there, God's solution—not, we could fight about this and I might be wrong—but I think this is the densest passage in the New Testament. This paragraph. If you could have one book of the Bible, you should choose Romans. If you could only have one paragraph in the Bible, I think you should choose this one.

Let me read it to you:

But now a righteousness from God apart from law has been made known, to which the law and the prophets testify.
This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.
There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood.
He did this to demonstrate his justice because, in his forbearance, he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.
He did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

We could do an eight-week series on that paragraph. We could write volumes on all this—this is the acorn, the acorn in the New Testament. The giant oaks that come out of that paragraph are just enormous.

The Significance and Legacy of Romans

That's your thing. By the way, when I said that if you could only have one book, this is the one you should have—you're allowed to say I really like the Psalms or for that matter, you can be all about Nehemiah—I don't really care. But do you know that when I say Romans is the greatest book ever written? I'm not making that up. This is honestly the broad consensus of the church throughout the centuries.

Do you guys know who put the Bible into English? Who do we credit with the first translation into English? Gutenberg duplicated it. He made the printing press. He didn't do the translation work. He just kept making copies of it. Without him, the world would be nothing like it is today.

Tyndale, man? Yeah. You'd either go John Wycliffe or William Tyndale. Tyndale, and I would say Tyndale. Wycliffe's work was a little bit premature. Praise Wycliffe, but Tyndale is the guy who really is the reason we have the Bible in English. And I used to have somebody gifted it— I never got it back. So if you're in the room, can I please have it? This facsimile of Tyndale's first New Testament made in 1526? Okay.

I have this Tyndale New Testament, and what was so striking to me when I got it—and it's all written in kind of unseal script—and the English is, you know, from 1526, so it's even pre-Shakespeare. I looked at it and it's got Matthew, Gospel of Matthew, and then there's the Gospel of Mark, and then there's the Gospel of Luke, and then there's Acts. What do you think comes after Acts? Romans? Wrong. You know what comes after Acts? A prologue to Romans. And I was going through it, I'm like, when he gets to Romans, he's like, everybody stop, and he writes an essay about the book of Romans before he puts Romans in his New Testament.

Here's what it says. It begins like this:
"For as much as this epistle is the principal and most excellent part of the New Testament and most pure evangelion—that is, to say, glad tidings, and that we call gospel—and also is a light and a way under the whole scripture. I think it meet that every Christian man not only know it by rote and without the book, but also exercise himself therein evermore continually, as with the daily bread of the soul. No man verily can read it too oft or study it too well, for the more it is studied, the easier it is, and the more it is chewed, the pleasanter it is, and the more groundly it is searched, the preciouser things are found in it. So great treasure of spiritual things lieth hid therein."

Here's what Luther said—and somebody was clearly copying somebody else's work:

"This epistle is really the chief part of the New Testament and is truly the purest Gospel. It is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word by heart, but also that he should occupy himself with it every day as the daily bread of the soul. We can never read it or ponder over it too much, for the more we deal with it, the more precious it becomes, and the better it tastes."

John Calvin said,

"When one understands this epistle, he has a passage opened to him to the understanding of the whole scripture."

Packer says,

"All roads in the Bible lead to Romans and all views afforded by the Bible are seen most clearly from Romans."
"When the message of Romans gets into a person's heart, there is no telling what may happen."

John Piper said,

"Romans is the most important theological Christian work ever written."

Ben Merkel, a current Bible scholar, said,

"No other letter in the history of the world has received as much attention or has been given as much consideration as Paul's letter to the church at Rome."
"Paul's letter to the church at Rome is the greatest letter ever written because of its great impact in history, its great theology about Christ, and its practical instructions for Christian living. This is the book to know."

These guys say not only should you have it memorized, but once you've memorized it, you should then read it every day. There is something in here worth knowing.

Conclusion

So I hope that this guide is going to help us get through it. When you walk through, watch for these big sections, and then let's open up inside. I think we're probably going to just give a couple of weeks to Romans. So let me do this. Today we're going to stay out of the particular theological things, and I'm going to give you more of the high-level view of things.

When you read it, I said the chapter—what are the chapters for the first section you're looking at? The time you read it? Yeah. So you could do it one of two ways: you could say chapters 1 through 8—that's probably the best answer—or 1 through 7, because chapter 8 is a unique thing in this book.

Go back to the book of Luke. When we read Luke, when we talked about Luke, we mentioned: how does Luke show Christ? Do you remember this? What's the lens through which he's portraying Christ? What is it? As a human being. Right? And so there's all these kind of indicators that Luke is giving us this very human view on Jesus.

And he's dependent on these women for his financial support. And in Luke's Gospel, we see, to an extraordinary degree, Christ's dependence on the Holy Spirit. Do you remember this? Over and over again, the Holy Spirit is very prominent in Luke's Gospel. Same thing—go to the book of Acts. Who's the hero of the book of Acts? The Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit.

Over and over, you just see they are dependent on the Spirit, they are filled with the Spirit, they are empowered by the Spirit. It is the major theme in Luke and in Acts. And when you get to Romans, what Paul is going to do—first he's going to give us what's wrong with us, right? Chapters 1 to 3, is the problem. And then what is God going to do about it? This solution: we are such unrighteous people, God is going to impute righteousness to us. There's this gift of righteousness. Chapters four, five, six, and seven—we'll look at this a little more next week.

In all those chapters, he's building up the case of how do we make sense of this? Is it really biblically true? Do the Hebrew Scriptures testify to this? What are the implications of this? And he walks through all that we have and the treasures that we have in Christ. And then, by the end of chapter seven, Paul is going to be like: and yet, for all that, for all that we have, for the richness of the gift, for the great solution that he's been offered to us, something is still wrong with me. Do you experience this? Like, he's like, I get that he's expounding on all these richness and treasures, and he gets to the point that, like, alright, let's go live righteous lives. Let's go amaze the world with how much we're changed. Instead, he trips and he's like, but something is wrong with me.

And then, at that point, chapter eight. So chapter eight is, if you look at it, just glance at it—what is the most obvious thing about chapter eight? What's bold, bold, bold, bold, in chapter eight? If you skim through, what's bold—the Holy Spirit. What is happening in Romans 8? Same thing that we saw throughout Luke: that the secret of the life of a believer is the Holy Spirit alive in us. You go to the book of Acts: what is the secret to the life of a believer? The Holy Spirit alive in us. You get to Paul, and Paul has expounded the richness of the crucifixion of Christ, the imputation of his righteousness, his taking upon himself all of our badness—and it's not enough, and it doesn't work.

An intellectual understanding of the Gospel message will not change your life. The only thing that's going to work—is what you'll see in Romans 8—is that Paul is going to say over and over and over again: the secret of the Christian life is the Holy Spirit. When you get to chapter 8, slow down the train. For this group of people, we are a church of the Word. We should be good at this. We should get that. What that should mean is not church of me and not church of Marco. This is the church of the Holy Spirit. If we're going to live lives that are remarkable and live lives that are consistent with what he's called us to, it's going to be because of Romans 8 more than anything else.

And that might seem strange to you, but it is the theme of Luke, and it is the theme of Acts, and it is the conclusion of Romans. So watch: when you get to chapter 8, slow down and ask the question, "Is the Spirit of God allowed in my life?" That's something you're really going to want to see. That's a huge thing. Okay? I may have talked about this in this class; do you guys remember why? Don't even read it. Don't look at the bottom left corner yet. Why do we have the book of Romans? Do you remember? This greatest thing that has ever been written—what was the historical circumstance that led to this gift? Nicholas? It was a fundraising letter. That's not—not really. There's a secondary news to it. He's on his way to Spain, and he wants to stop by. It's not so much a fundraising, as much as a hospitality request, but that's not what drives the letter.

Okay? So why—what historical circumstance compelled Paul to write it? The expulsion of the Jews from Rome. Say it again? The expulsion of the Jews from Rome. Okay. So, what Marty's saying is that—so there's this whole, all this kind of geopolitical reality of Jews getting expelled from Rome, and now the church is this mixture of Jews. There's something that happens—or, more to the point, something that doesn't happen—is the reason Paul writes this letter.

Sam, do you know? Were you raising your hand or no? I was going to say the Jews had an impact. Okay. Let me give you guys a clue. Jason, you want to go? No, he never made it to Rome. He never made it to Rome. That's the reason. This is really important to understand what's going on with this and the gift of this, and there's implications in your life. Epistles have a quality—that we call they are occasional. Now, usually we think of the word occasional as meaning every once in a while. Like, I will occasionally do this thing. That's not what I mean. When I say they are occasional, I mean they are prompted by an occasion. Something happened. They are responses to something.

So, Paul catches wind of what's going on in Corinth. Somebody's like sleeping with his mother-in-law, and he's like, alright, I gotta write him a letter. So they are responses to Galatians—there's this whole controversy going on, and the Jews are pulling back from the Gentiles, and they're saying, "If you want to be a Christian, you gotta first become circumcised." It's like, I gotta write him a letter. There's constantly some problem, and he's writing in response to the occasion that prompts it. Letters are occasional.

In every other instance, Paul is writing a letter to a community he visited. He planted the church in Galatia. He plants the church in Thessalonica. He plants the church in Ephesus. He's like, he's writing, he plants the church, and he goes away, and he writes back a letter to his people. When Paul wrote Romans, he had never been to Rome. That was a huge problem for Paul because Rome was far and away the most important city in the world. It was New York City, London at a different time. It's the most important city in the world, and Paul wanted to go there. He wanted to go do the job, and yet, for one reason or another, God didn't let him go to Rome. That delayed the trip, and he paused the trip. And if something would happen, it would screw up the trip. And he opens the book by saying, "You guys, I'm afraid that you might think that I'm afraid to come to you, that I'm only going to work out in these little hinterland places, like Colossae, but I'm afraid to go to Rome." He says, "Nothing could be further from the truth. I would love to come, but I've been prevented from doing so."

Because Paul never got to go to Rome, what he ended up doing was writing a letter in lieu of a visit to Rome. What he wanted to say to them in person—that he wanted to explain in a live sermon, what he wanted to do—just hand me a piece of paper then—and he wrote down the visit that he wanted to have, which to Paul no doubt seemed like a tragic loss because wouldn't it be better if he'd made it in person instead of written a letter? And yet, isn't it dramatically better for centuries of the church that the trip got turned into a letter? You weren't there. You couldn't be there. If he had gone to Rome, I don't know—it blessed, and benefited, I don't even know—maybe a hundred people, five hundred people—but we would not have had Romans.

And when I realized that was going on, I'm like, oh my goodness. Think about this in your life: how many times has there been something that was so obvious that God should allow you to do, and yet for some inexplicable reason he is prevented? He is blocked. And you don't get to go to Rome. Has anybody ever not been allowed to go to Rome? Anybody? Like, literally? Well, there you go. Did you write a letter about it? Oh, what a miss. Okay? There are these things in our lives, right, where we're like, you should let me do this, but God knew—no, no, shut up. Just put it on paper. Here's a pen, here's a quill. Write it down. And it blesses the church.

Stuart, you wanna say something? It's sort of like that little clip you showed last week about little James or two weeks ago, whatever, little James, like, you're going to do so much more through your infection, now that you say it that way—that's why that sits there. Because instead of planting churches in Galatia and Thessalonica, we're planting churches in Roanoke, we're planting churches in California, we're planting churches in Alaska, or wherever else in the future that we're gospeling. Absolutely. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Can never even follow-up? Yes. Absolutely. God will, God often will prevent this thing that is so obvious to you. This is what should happen, and we don't get to do it. And it's because he's redirecting us to something. Paul thought it was a good idea to go to Rome, and I think it was a better idea to write him a letter. And just watch for that in your life. That's why we get the gift.

Okay. So notice that. A couple other things to notice as you go through here. This book has these bookends. Take a look down here. Bookends: Believe and Obey. Here, the book begins and ends with the same little double phrase. In chapter one, I speak the truth in Christ. I am not lying. My conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit. I, through him and for his name's sake, receive grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to—wait, that's wrong, I've got to clean that up. I'm like, that's chapter eight or chapter—oh, it's all over the place. That's chapter nine. Okay. So here's the thing: we receive grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.

The obedience that comes from faith. Work that into your brain. The obedience that comes from faith. The obedience that comes from faith. Paul's letter is about the obedience that comes from faith. He's going to say the same thing at the very end of the chapter, at the very end of the book, in chapter 16. He says,

"But now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God so that all nations might believe and obey him."

To the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ. Amen. Believe and obey. Believe and obey. Believe and obey. This is the framing of this book. The Romans is about this Gospel message that we must believe, and as we believe it, it leads us into obedience.

He's going to deal with that major controversy in chapter six: what's the relationship between faith and obedience? He expounds it in chapter six, but it permeates the letter. The relationship between faith and obedience. So you might want to watch when you get to chapter six. You might want to slow that one down too—to see what is he saying about that. That'll be really important.

Core Themes: Righteousness

And then, one more thing I think before we wrap it up for today: go to the very back page. The most important word in the book of Romans is righteousness. You might say righteous, you might say just, you might say justification. They're all the same Greek word. They're all just different forms of it. It permeates the letter. It's everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

So I gave it to you in different ways that it's translated. Sometimes it's actually translated righteousness, as you see in many things. Sometimes it's translated as requirement there in Romans 2. But it's all the same Greek word. So as you read through Romans, might just slow down every time you get to it. As you're walking through, you're looking for these divisions. You're slowing down at Romans 8 to see what the Holy Spirit's role is in all of this. But do not miss—it’s a book about righteousness.

The theme of Romans is: you need righteousness because you don't have it. But here's how you can get it. That there could be for you an external righteousness that you didn't earn, that you don't deserve, that you didn't live out. But we will take this external foreign righteousness, and we will credit it to you and lock it onto your life. That is really the primary thing he's writing about throughout the whole book.

So when you're reading through Romans this week, if you go through it, maybe underline every time you see righteousness or righteous or justification, or just—you know, the Greek word is the same. And if you can notice those things, if you notice the divisions, if you notice—next week, we're going to get into the argumentation of it.

If you notice the divisions, if you notice what's happening with the Holy Spirit, if you notice the theme of righteousness, if you see this about believing and obeying, I think those things are going to help you open it up. And then we'll do it again next week, and we'll walk through chapter by chapter, and I'll show you the argument of each and how it all comes together to form really the greatest thing ever written.

Final Questions and Closing

Okay? So a couple questions. Catherine. Paul's scripture—Paul always said, all things are reason, not getting to go to Rome—that's kind of a simple little thing. But if I mean, it's like, by not going to Rome, probably more? Oh, yeah. The impact? Yeah.

So the thing you're quoting is from 1 Corinthians, right? Is it 1 or 2 Corinthians? I think it's 1 Corinthians. But he says, you know, the things are permissible, but he doesn't get to do these things. He could have gone to Rome, and it might be that he did go to Rome later. It's a little ambiguous on that. But at the time, he didn't get to go. Hand in the back. And we are dramatically benefited because he didn't get to go, for sure. Was there a hand in the back? Was that Fetz or somebody or no? Oh, I was going to ask if Luke continued to write in Acts, would he eventually have said that Paul got to Rome? But we don't know that. So we don't know. When Acts ends, you know, Paul's in prison. He's in prison in Rome, but we don't know if he ever got to go do, like, you know, the ministry that he wanted to normally do. Right? That's what I'm talking about. He finally did get to Rome. Yeah, as a prisoner. Yeah, but he's living this out in, like, that real prisoner sense. Yeah, it's true. Yeah, so he goes to Rome, and in Acts, he ends in Rome as a prisoner. But what I mean is I don't know if he ever got to go do the church planting trip that he wanted to do. Do we know that? Maybe someone knows that. I don't think he needed to because what happened to him was the things that he's talking about in terms of freedom. Yeah. In prison, in chains. He was—that's what was happening. Yeah. For sure. He probably spoke louder than if he had the opportunity to go to synagogue and get rejected by his people again. Yeah. No doubt. No doubt. And, of course, he's got plenty of time in prison, and he makes the most—I mean, Philippians is a letter he wrote from jail. He makes the most of all his time no matter what circumstance he's in. And wherever he is, whatever he's doing, he's also preaching the Gospel and making disciples. This guy's just an absolute legend.

Okay, so read through it, watch through it. We'll do a little more chapter-by-chapter breakdown next week after you've had a chance to go through, and look for those sections and all these kinds of main things. That's all we got. And feel free to come up if you need earlier docs. They're all right here. You betcha. Takes a little while. No. No. No. That's great. That'll do? Okay. A little while. Alright. Have a great day.