Acts 21 – Romans 9

Hey, welcome back to the podcast.
Thanks again for listening.
We hope that as you’re reading the Bible,
it is a blessing to you.
Hope that you’re finding moments of reflection.
Hope that it means something.
And we want to again thank you for being a part of this experiment with us.
Today we’re in the last part of the book of Acts from about chapter 20 on,
and then into a few chapters of the book of Romans.
Yeah, well, once again, thanks for joining us as we come in here to the last section of Acts,
really the last two thirds.
We really zoom in on the Apostle Paul and his ministry.
Of course, that has been present throughout this entire book,
the beginning,
the Damascus Road conversion,
and then his extended ministry to the Gentiles and how the Jewish Christian leaders in Jerusalem respond to that.
And they themselves celebrate it.
But as we come to the end of Acts here,
we really take a very close look at Paul’s end of his life and ministry.
Specifically, as he goes back to Jerusalem,
he is caught up in this sort of commotion as the Jewish leaders rile up the crowd.
He is then pseudo rescued slash arrested by the Roman centurion.
A little bit of context here.
This is not uncommon in ancient Jerusalem that you would have people coming to the temple causing disturbances of all kinds.
There’s zealots,
people who are out to overthrow Rome and who use Jewish language to do that.
So when Paul shows up and the crowd gets riled up,
it’s not unheard of and not really even that uncommon
for the Roman army to respond to that in a security type situation.
They see that Paul is getting beaten to a pulp.
They bring him out and they start questioning him.
And that really sets into motion the last section of acts here as Paul lives in between this debate between the Jews and the Romans
and ultimately makes his way to the capital of Rome itself.
Luke really focuses on the character Paul in the last third of the book of Acts.
Really,
everything is his story and his movement toward Rome.
We get through Jerusalem and there’s a wonderful scene where he and James talk and
James is concerned that the Jews think that Paul is teaching Gentiles to abandon Judaism and
teaching Jews to abandon Judaism and so they have to try and convince the crowd.
Obviously, the crowd is not convinced.
They seize him.
They beat him.
But then really this series of movements toward Rome and that becomes really,
I think, the target of the rest of the book,
Michael.
There’s just something significant, maybe even misunderstood,
but there’s something to look at matters deeply
that Paul ends up in Rome in the center of the empire.
You know, as I was reading this and I don’t want to make a direct connection here as much as as I was reading,
this is something that was in the back of my mind and it was how strikingly similar Jesus’ story and Paul’s story are.
They both are caught up in the Roman political trial system because of the Jews.
Both of them are witnessing in the midst of their captivity.
Of course,
Jesus is executed in Jerusalem by the Roman army,
but Paul is taken out.
But there’s a sense in which both of them speak the gospel.
They speak the truth.
It unsettles the Jewish community.
The Jewish community moves that up to the Roman empire and the Roman empire does the only thing that the Roman empire can do.
And that is to try to maintain its power and its stability.
And in the midst of that,
we see Paul seeking to evangelize at every level of the Roman establishment.
One of the striking things for me here was,
like when Jesus was in conversation with Pilate,
he was preaching the gospel.
He was revealing himself, especially in John.
As Paul has conversations with these Roman leaders,
he’s just straight out telling them,
“You should believe in Jesus Christ,
the resurrected son of God.”
And he’s unashamed to do that.
And I do think that Luke is really intentionally telling us this story of Paul
because it not only connects to Jesus’ life,
but I think it also demonstrates for us as we near the end of the book
what Luke envisions the entire church sensing its calling to be.
Yeah, I think as Luke has painted his portrait of the church in Acts
as the continuation of Jesus’
ministry,
I do think you’re right,
Michael.
I think there are some things he intentionally does here as Paul becomes that ambassador.
So for instance,
in the latter part of chapter 21,
verse 36,
the crowd that followed shouted away with him,
which is very much an echo of Jesus’ trial.
And then in chapter 23,
the Pharisees stood up and contended,
“We find nothing wrong with this man,”
which are almost a complete verbatim restatement of Pilate’s words about Jesus.
And so I think there is a sense here,
maybe in which Luke is saying whenever Christians proclaim the gospel
and receive persecution for it,
they do repeat or at least re-experience the story of Christ.
Reinforce the story of Christ might be the best way to say it.
In Jesus’ own words,
we’re told that the servant won’t be greater than the master,
that they’ve hated me and they will hate you.
And I do think that Paul is a living example of that,
a very challenging example of that,
to be quite honest,
because he doesn’t seem to know an end.
In the previous readings in Acts, he’s been stoned,
he’s been beaten,
he’s been flogged,
he’s mistreated for the gospel in so many different ways.
And for Paul,
that really is, as we’re going to hear in Romans,
his weakness is for him a demonstration of the strength of Christ.
And I think that is really a powerful image of what we are called to be.
Yeah, and of course, there may be more to it than Luke’s presentation
because we only have the surface,
but Luke clearly presents Paul as one who is near fearless
and who doesn’t really have an off switch.
Just any day that he’s capable of getting up,
he’s going to go out and preach.
That is his mission.
That’s his passion.
And nothing stops him in the middle of the book of Acts.
There’s that story where they take him outside of the city and stone him,
and they think he’s dead,
and they leave him.
And the text says that when he got up,
he went back into the city.
And he just gets up from being stoned and walks back into the city,
presumably to preach more sermon.
And you have to admire that kind of faithfulness,
that kind of tenacity,
that kind of willingness to receive pain and punishment for what you feel called to do
and for what you feel compelled to share.
And Paul’s remarkable in that sense.
And I think that’s nuanced,
Clint, by the fact that Paul doesn’t seek out persecution.
That matters.
Paul is neither afraid to be persecuted,
nor does he desire it.
And you see that in really concrete ways,
like Paul appeals to Caesar.
Paul clearly gets,
“I’m not winning this argument.
This is not going my way.”
And so he then reveals to the people,
to the Romans who are beating him,
“Hey, I’m a Roman citizen.”
And they’re freaked out because they’re violating the law
as it relates to how you treat a Roman citizen.
And then Paul takes that another step further and says,
“I want to go higher up the chain of this legal system.”
And at each one of those steps,
Paul is making both proclamation to the people who he’s with,
but he’s also, in some sense, political.
He’s also playing the narrative and the moment to try to advance the gospel as best as he can.
And so we shouldn’t stereotype Paul.
He’s not just a guy who puts his head down and takes the beatings.
He’s also very crafty.
He’s very smart.
He’s trying to be a witness wherever he can.
And he’s not seeking out his end,
though he’s not afraid of it either.
Yeah, he’s not a masochist.
He’s not looking for punishment,
but he won’t turn from it if it means compromise.
Absolutely not.
You know, and there’s that wonderful story,
Michael, where along the way,
he’s being transported from authority figure to authority figure,
and he comes up before Agrippa.
And essentially, in the midst of defending himself,
tries to convert him.
He says, “I’m sure you know these things are true.
I know that you know the prophets.
I know that you are a believer.”
And the king says,
“Are you trying so quickly to persuade me to become Christian?”
And Paul says, “Well, whether it’s quick or not,
I pray that you would,
but not just you but all who are listening,
that they might become,
as I am, a believer, except for these chains.”
You cannot admire a guy that’s standing before the man who’s sentencing him
for being a religious zealot and saying,
“Oh, by the way, I’d like you to join my side too.”
Yeah, and if I remember,
I think Paul was almost cold crazy.
I mean, he was looked at and asked,
“Are you nuts?” And I kind of think that that’s a question that hangs over Paul in the sense that
his courage and faith leads him to do things that are either genius and courageous,
or they’re foolish and mad.
I think sometimes we,
especially as Christians who maybe struggle ourselves to communicate the
faith in the same compelling ways that Paul seemed to just have the natural ability to do,
that sometimes proclaiming good news does require putting ourselves
in awkward circumstances.
Sometimes it literally does require standing in front of the person and saying to the person
who is the judge,
“You’re not the ultimate judge.
I want to introduce you to him.”
And that’s really some of the genius of the early Christian proclamation.
That sets the rest of the book in motion, I think, Michael,
really from chapter 27 on,
even though at the end of chapter 26,
they declare him to be innocent.
But since Paul has made this appeal to the emperor,
they continue with the process of
getting him to Rome.
And really, the rest of the book is primarily that journey.
There’s a little bit at the end when he arrives there,
but a great deal of the story from here
on is this perilous journey that he takes,
the shipwreck, being without food.
Of course, Paul knows what’s going to happen,
and he tries to tell people,
and they don’t listen to him.
But then there is this wonderful verse,
36 of chapter 27,
that said they were encouraged
after Paul’s words that even in the midst of a very terrible time,
it’s Paul who speaks
encouragement to these men,
Paul who doesn’t give up,
who continues to offer hope.
I think that Paul does represent for us a beautiful individual picture of what the larger
Christian church and the early church movement embodied as a whole.
And that was a kind of stubborn and resistant optimism.
The gospel works within us to create a future hope.
And so as Paul is shipwrecked on Malta,
and as he encounters venomous snakes and hunger and
snakes and dissension of all kinds,
the soldiers plotting to kill all the prisoners,
in the midst of all of that,
Paul’s hope in life eternal and in his firm confidence in Jesus Christ
who died and rose again,
it’s not that he’s unfazed by it,
but for him, it is not the ultimate
importance.
It’s not the ultimate end.
He’s not afraid of death,
not only theologically,
but in the way that he lives in his actual relationships and his actual choices.
Paul lives with 100% faith,
total confidence that this is not the only life that he’s living for something greater,
and that that reality then changes the way that Paul lives.
And that, I think, does represent this larger church.
That’s the way the early church lived.
They lived in firm confidence that my life is not my own,
that if I give up my life for the gospel,
I’m merely giving up this life and not the life to come,
for that’s held in the hands of Christ.
And I do think Paul’s individual story illuminates that in a beautiful way.
Yeah.
And again,
we don’t get maybe the full picture,
but the picture Luke gives us is a
man who just constantly takes advantage of his opportunities.
There’s a shipwreck sailors need encouraged.
He encourages them.
Later on, he’s got a snake hanging from his hand.
He shakes the creature off and preaches.
And then he stays,
he’s on an island where they’re shipwrecked.
What does he do?
He cures people.
He heals people.
He does the work of Jesus wherever he is.
And I think one of the great messages that Luke gives us through Paul is just that.
How able are we to
take advantages of our daily opportunities?
How able are we to engage with the people we run into?
Does the sense of hope and of peace and of our security and who we are in Christ,
does that linger with the people who cross our paths?
I think, you know, what I see in Paul is
just this man who just is constantly looking to insert Jesus in every conversation,
in every relationship, in every situation.
And I don’t know how attainable that is for the rest of us,
but it’s a really impressive portrait of who Paul is.
I think so.
And I also think that as we look
here towards the end of this book,
Luke makes it very clear that the gospel’s reach,
not just because of Paul, but with Paul’s ministry,
extends from Judea to Samaria to the ends of the earth.
That’s how Luke begins the account.
And that’s really how we see the ending happen, because Paul,
with all of his missionary journeys,
is now on the ship,
makes his way to Rome,
is now having conversation with the Jewish community in Rome.
And the very last thing that he says in the book
is I want you to know that God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles and they will listen,
which is simultaneously a critique of the Jewish community,
who Paul has repeatedly found not listening.
And it is also an affirmation that the gospels made it.
The gospel is not only being
proclaimed to the Gentiles,
it’s being proclaimed in the central seat of power of the Gentiles.
It has arrived and they will listen.
And in some ways,
it does remind me of Jonah.
The prophet makes it to the city.
And as we know how church history continues,
it is not that long until Rome
itself will be shaken to its core by the gospel.
It’ll be completely refashioned by the very thing
that Paul is beginning to preach at the end of Acts.
And so the story is now open.
The gospel’s been proclaimed, the Gentiles will listen,
and the rest of church history lies in the wake of
the ending of this book.
Yeah. From this time period on,
one of the realities,
maybe we could call it the unfortunate realities of church history,
is that the gospel will now do far better
among Gentiles than Jews.
From this point on,
we see increasingly a divide between Judaism and
Christianity, and there will be less and less overlap.
And that has some unfortunate repercussions
in the history of the church,
but I think here,
we hear language that almost anticipates that,
or at least points us vaguely in that direction.
Absolutely.
And I think, Clint, that that is exactly what we see happening in this transition from the narrative account of Paul’s life to the
theological account of what he believed.
And really, of all of the letters of Paul that we have,
there are many instances in which I think we see this beautiful glimpse into Paul’s deep faith.
But there probably isn’t,
at least in our New Testament,
any more full account of Paul’s faith,
of the energy that drives him in his mission and the thing he carries with him to the end of Acts
and to the people of Rome than what we find in the book of Romans.
And so in some ways,
I think that this disjunction that we’ll have in our reading,
where we’re going to finish reading this historical
account, and then we’re going to pick up what is considered one of the greatest theological works in the church,
it may feel like a real stop and start.
But I think we might be able to reframe that
and say, it’s really not.
It’s actually,
this is what Paul did with his faith,
and this is the faith that animated it.
And I think it makes this transition from Acts to Romans really interesting.
I think you’re right.
I would have at one time thought that it would be nice if Romans had been
pushed back.
We think Romans is one of Paul’s later letters,
but Paul’s letters in the New
Testament are arranged by length.
So we just go through his letters from longest to shortest,
which means we start with probably one of his later letters.
We also start with his most developed theology.
At the time Paul’s writing to Romans,
he hasn’t been there yet.
He hasn’t been to Rome.
And so he’s anticipating coming there.
So that also makes this letter in some
ways the least personal.
He’s not writing to a church that he planted or to people he’s been with.
He’s writing in advance of ending up there trying to kind of pave the way.
And Romans then ends up
with those circumstances to be very deep,
very heady, considered Paul’s greatest theological
work.
I would argue is the linchpin,
the foundation of a great deal of Reformed Presbyterian theology.
I mean, we get a lot of who we are out of this book,
but it also means for the Bible
reader who is going from Acts and then jumping into Romans,
you need to buckle up a little bit.
You’re about to enter Bible 301 class,
and it gets very deep, very quickly.
Absolutely.
And it is not an accident that Romans is the favorite book of the major intellectuals.
It’s not an accident that when you go to any seminary that the people who are going to be
using words that none of us understand are generally the experts in Romans,
because there is an amazing amount of depth in this book.
The thing that is a corollary to that,
a thing that lives with that, is the fact that quite frankly,
Romans has been read very differently throughout
the life of the church.
In fact, it is Luther’s reading of Romans that differs significantly
from the reading of his peers that sets off the Reformation that later John Calvin takes out,
that as you’re saying, Clint,
becomes a part of our Presbyterian heritage,
really a defining marker
of how we consider ourselves disciples of Jesus Christ.
So that being said,
when we come to the
Bible, it requires to not try to get all of the nuts and bolts put in place,
but rather to try to
look at the book as a whole,
as a unit, and ask the question,
if I was receiving this letter,
what’s the thing that Paul’s trying to say in the largest sense?
There’s a ton of details happening here,
but really, what’s the major arc that follows?
And as I read the book this way,
instead of thinking of it as a very sort of section by section kind of reading where I try to
dig into what Paul’s saying when I thought about it,
but in light of this larger arc,
I think for me, I was struck by in some ways how well it all hangs together.
Paul’s making a larger argument
that is simple as it is complex.
It’s very tightly organized.
There’s a lot in it,
so it can feel disjointed.
But really, I think I agree 100% Michael,
when you look at the whole,
if you outline this book, it’s a really sensible outline.
It has a really good flow to it.
I would say though that
if you find yourself in trouble in the book of Romans,
if you find yourself swimming,
and you probably will at some point,
one of the things that might be helpful is just take the section
that you’re in and try and label it with a word.
What’s Paul’s main thing here?
Is it sin?
Is it grace?
Is it faith?
Is it Israel?
Is it hope?
Whatever it might be,
if you can take a passage
and simply locate it within those major identifiers of what Paul’s theological approach is,
I think it may help.
I wonder, Clint, if you think that this is a helpful lead-in to the book of
Romans.
I think what I would personally recommend to you as you come to the book of Romans is that
you need to understand the central question,
why? What’s the problem that Paul’s addressing here?
Because if you don’t come to the book with the awareness of the problem,
Paul’s very well thought
out and compelling answer to the problem may not make sense.
And quite frankly, the problem lives in the book of Acts.
What do you do?
When the people of God,
the people who God has given his word, his law,
his name,
when those people will not respond to the Messiah,
when they will not
receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and the Gentiles do,
what then?
Have the people of
Israel no longer receive the title of the descendants of God?
Are they no longer the
bearers of God’s gifts?
Are they on the out now and Christians are on the in?
What do we make
as Christians of the fact that now God has called these Gentiles and there’s this radically new
understanding of what it looks like to live as a Christian than what the Jews once understood.
And Paul is writing this book to Gentiles,
to people who are receiving it and who are trying
to figure out in the midst of this whole deal,
are we supposed to be more concerned with law or grace?
Are we supposed to be more concerned with the things that God has called the the markers of Israel?
Are we supposed to have a new understanding of what that looks like?
So all of those words to
say, hopefully saying it more simply,
I think if you come to the book of Romans with an awareness
of the problem,
what do we do with this whole history of how God has promised to fix the
problems of the world and how God seems to be doing that with the Gentiles today?
If you read Romans as Paul’s account of how to make sense of that,
then you’re going to be very close to that
meta theme that runs throughout the entire book.
I don’t know if you agree with that, Clint.
I think I do and I think I would just encourage readers to try and stick closely to the path.
There are some rabbit trails that you can follow in Romans.
There are people that have written
dissertations on single verses.
You can’t do Romans justice by simply reading it in one Bible,
in English, in five days or whatever it takes us.
But that’s not the point.
The point here is to hear what Paul says about sin and redemption and faith and grace and belief and covenant in this book.
I would say very much try to stick to the mountaintops.
If you want to pursue the other stuff,
Michael and I can point you in good directions.
We can give you resources.
We can help you with that.
But it is an easy book to get lost in because it is so thick and so dense and
so much here that could distract you.
But as you read,
again, try to identify,
“Oh, this is Paul’s main point here.” If you stick with that,
I think you can really come to appreciate this book even
without maybe getting all the way to the bottom of it.
Yeah, absolutely.
In the spirit of naming
one of those mountaintops,
human nature and sin drops right in the middle of this book.
Paul starts at the core of what he understands the human condition to be,
and that is that in our nature,
in who we are as people,
we are all and universally tinged by sin,
which of course reaches
back to the Adam and Eve story,
the idea that sin has come into the world and that it now reigns in
all of human nature.
But Paul starts there,
and it’s not the only time in the book where human
nature is brought up.
It’s in the beginning of the book,
because for Paul, it is the great connector.
It is something we universally share,
and it is something that God has from the very
beginning been intending to address,
and we see how God does that through the work of Jesus Christ.
I don’t think it’s overstated.
Maybe you disagree, Michael, but essentially Paul here says,
“What is sin?” Sin is the problem that keeps us from righteousness,
from being justified, from being the people that God wants us to be.
Well, then how do we pursue righteousness?
How do we attain righteousness?
That becomes the core of Paul’s argument that there are these major ideas about
how righteousness is attained.
Is it from law?
Is it from my status as a Jew?
Is it from my works or my faith?
And Paul is going to,
one by one, address those things and say none of them are
quite enough, that it is in grace that we find righteousness.
And then because we do,
there are implications for our life.
I think in some ways that idea of righteousness is maybe a central
thread that you can find through the book,
but you have to go through sin to get there.
And Paul does an amazing thing in the early part of this book.
He starts off with they.
They are always easier to talk about than we.
So they are sinners.
They do this.
They do that.
They have fallen.
They have done all these terrible things.
And we go, “Yes,
yeah, they are terrible.” And then
Paul says, “So you have no excuse.” And you say, “Wait a minute.
Paul, we were just talking about they.
Remember they?
They’re bad.
What do you mean?
We now have no excuse.” And Paul,
I love the way
in the first couple of chapters that he kind of sets the reader up and then just pulls the rug
out from under your feet.
And then they becomes the pattern because first they is the sinner and
then we are the sinner and then they is the Jew and we are also people of the covenant.
It’s amazing
writing.
Right. And he actually says in chapter three, verse nine,
“Do we have any advantage?”
Not at all.
And that is I think one of the things that makes Romans so relevant in today’s context
is the fact that we do live in a time and a place in which we’re told and we like to think
that we’re all by nature pretty good.
That if we just believe in ourselves and if we say good
things that our lives are generally pretty good lives.
And the truth is Paul’s not catering to anybody.
To the Jews who think that they’re blessed because they have the law,
he says no.
To the Gentiles who think they’ve got it good because they have the place of power in Rome?
No, you don’t have it.
The truth is we are all found wanting.
And because of that universal need,
now we set up the universal solution,
which is the God-man,
Jesus Christ, the Savior,
the Redeemer, the one who can do for us what we could not do for ourselves,
all of us.
And that’s essential start to the book of Romans.
And what the law could not do for us,
what our own work
could not do for us,
that we all stand in need.
One of the fascinating things about this book,
Michael, is that you hear in it Paul writing to Gentiles and Jews simultaneously.
We sort of anticipate that most of the readers will be Gentile,
but Paul makes very solid arguments from Abraham.
And he wouldn’t need to do that for the Gentiles.
You get the sense that Paul
is writing to these two very different hearers or audiences,
and he’s great to both of them.
And to Paul’s credit,
those early Christians may well have been,
from the Gentile perspective,
willing to say we don’t need all that.
We don’t need Abraham.
We don’t need law.
That’s Judaism.
This is Christianity.
And a book like Romans,
I think we’d have to argue that it is significantly
responsible for not letting the early church go that direction.
Paul argues for the faithfulness
of God in the first covenant,
prays that the Jews,
the Israelites will come to see the truth of Christ,
and says God has not abandoned them.
This isn’t just a new beginning and something different.
This is the continuation of what God’s always done,
tried to save his people.
It’s just that his people are bigger than we thought,
and salvation is different than we thought.
It’s a different mechanism,
a different mode than we once believed.
And I think you have to give Paul
an incredible amount of credit there,
because it would have been easy to say we had that,
but now we have Jesus.
And Paul won’t let anybody do that.
Yeah, I think you raise a great point when you bring up Abraham,
who Paul turns to in chapter four.
That was actually a thing that did jump out
to me in my reading of the book this time through.
And if I was going to spend a little bit of time
digging deeper, I think it would probably be in this chapter.
And one of the questions I bring
to that is, as I read this section of this idea of Abraham,
which of course we know is this central
pivotal figure in the history of the people of Israel.
He is the father.
He’s the one who was
promised to be the one given all of these nations.
And I wonder if what Paul says about Abraham
is not incredibly challenging and different to what the Jews would expect.
Because in truth, Abraham,
by his action,
lives into that covenantal promise.
I mean, there’s this idea that because Abraham obeyed,
because Abraham did the thing,
God chose Abraham and his descendants
as the recipients of his covenant,
of his blessing,
of his name.
They know God, and that is a blessing
that the people of Abraham have.
Paul goes back to Abraham and says,
“Abraham doesn’t get the
credit.” Abraham is important,
but Abraham is the father of all nations.
Jews, you can’t claim him as your own.
Because Abraham had faith in God,
anyone who has faith in God can be adopted into
Abraham’s family.
And I think to a modern reader,
in a quick reading of Romans,
we might miss the
substantive shift that Paul is making there that would be completely dramatic to its original
hearers, especially to a Jew.
And so I just want to sort of point out,
I do think when Paul is envisioning this gospel,
it reshapes everything.
Everything that we thought we knew is new and
different when seen through the light of Christ.
And for him, that goes all the way back to Abraham,
which is the fountainhead of what it meant to be the people of Israel.
Yeah, I think I’d push back a little and say the one thing that I think isn’t different for Paul
that informs all of that is the faithfulness of God.
So for that reason,
the first covenant still matters.
But Paul has to connect Abraham and Christ because God would not make a meaningless promise.
And as God has now fulfilled the promise in Christ,
it reinterprets everything before it.
And I think you’re exactly right there.
I think that that’s significant.
The other thing that I’ve
noticed reading this time,
Michael, and I think I’ve missed it in the past,
how many times Paul
seems to warn the Gentiles not to be arrogant,
not to think that they somehow have attained more than the Jews.
And almost as if they were getting a little big for their britches.
And Paul has to say,
“Wait a minute.
These are God’s people,
the chosen people.
They’re misguided.
They may be lost now
for a while, but that’s still true.
In fact, you have now come into them,
not the other way around.
You’re not your own thing.
You’re grafted into their branch.” And I was surprised by
the amount of that language as I read through Romans this time.
I think I had not
seen that as clearly before.
One of those britches that may be too big for them
is this idea of grace,
right?
The idea that as a Gentile, you’re told, “Listen,
God is going to
forgive you for your sin.
Your record is going to be wiped clean.” And you can almost hear the
thought pattern that Paul’s anticipating.
Great.
So because of grace,
let’s just sin as much as we
possibly can because God’s going to forgive us.
God’s going to have grace for us.
And then we’re going to have grace all the more.
And that would not make any sense in the Jewish context,
right?
Because the Jews,
their first thought is,
“God has blessed us with the law.
Let’s live into the law.”
That’s what it means to be the people of God.
But to a Gentile,
“Hey, whoa,
I can sin and it’s going to be good.
I’m going to get cleansed.
Christ has already fixed the issue,
so I get to live how I want.” And Paul,
anticipating that, turns and says explicitly,
“Grace has been given to us as a gift,
and that gift changes things.” So that when you’re a Gentile and you recognize the forgiveness of sins,
the lordship of Jesus Christ over the evil nature that lives within us,
that demands of us
new life.
We’re recreated, as Paul says in other letters,
that we are people who have been made new.
And in the new order of living,
we live as those who are sinless.
We live as those who live as Christ lived.
Not out of compulsion and law,
which Paul wants to make the case early in this
book, is now completely reimagined because of Christ.
But we live into it because as people of
Christ, there is no other way.
But yeah, I think you’re exactly right,
Clint, that the Gentiles
could have heard these words and they could have thought,
“Wow, so we’ve superseded.
We’re better.
We’ve got a better deal,
quite frankly, than the Jews had.
Let’s make Mary and live life happily
because it’s all been handed to us.” And Paul makes sure to take not even a detour just to say,
“That’s not how it’s going to work,
guys.” Yeah, I’m reading the NRSV translation and I think five
or six times he’ll ask a question and then he’ll answer it by no means.
And it’s usually along those lines.
Does being free from sin mean we do whatever we want?
By no means.
Does grace abound when we sin even more?
By no means.
And in other letters,
as we continue through the New Testament,
I think we’ll get to a few spots where the church seemed to interpret it just that way.
Freedom meant freedom to do whatever you wanted.
And Paul is having none of that.
Especially towards the end
of your reading of Romans for this week as we come to Romans chapter eight,
I suspect you’re going to come to passages that you know.
You might even come to passages that you might count as your favorite.
There are some beautiful texts,
some beautiful affirmations of the grace and love of God,
one that I would point out that I think connects really beautifully to the narrative
of Acts since we’re sharing these two things in this week’s reading.
It comes to us in Romans
chapter eight verse 18 where Paul says,
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth
comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” And I think that’s a beautiful theological
statement of faith.
That’s a beautiful profession from a man who lived it.
It’s one thing to say
that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed.
It’s another thing to pair that belief and that profession with a life that demonstrated
the firm confidence in it.
And I think that is still seen today in believers who challenge
and enter into their sufferings with great faith.
We see that in our own congregation.
And I think whenever those two things are paired,
it is an amazing witness to the life and the
salvation of Jesus Christ.
And I think Paul both has the words and the life to demonstrate it here.
I probably made a mistake,
Michael.
I really think when we did this ordering of chapters,
I really should have made one of the day’s readings,
six, seven, and eight.
And I think because of the way we have it,
you read seven, eight, and nine.
So I’m just going to give…
If you’re listening to this podcast and you haven’t done the reading yet,
I’m going to just give you permission to slide chapter nine into the next day’s reading
and just let yourself end with chapter eight for that day.
Chapter eight’s really, I think, an oasis in the book of Romans.
There is theology in it,
but it’s just this beautiful declaration of hope.
It’s well-written.
It’s poetic.
Chapter nine, I think,
changes threads a little bit,
builds on some stuff earlier in the book.
But chapter eight is maybe one of the great standalone chapters.
And give yourself time to read that slowly and devotionally.
I really think you’ll be blessed by chapter eight of Romans.
But I think one of the best chapters in the book.
Clint, you mentioned,
and it’s completely true,
entire dissertations have been written,
not just on one verse,
in some cases on single words in the book of Romans.
And so we,
as we seek to give words to some of the themes here,
do so with great humility,
because what can really
be said in light of all of the depth of this work.
I guess if I was going to sort of try to
wrap up what I can bring to this section of the book,
I think I would bring that what is shared
in the book of Acts and what is shared in the whole book of Romans,
but also very specifically
seen here in this section,
is that for Paul,
everything,
absolutely everything starts
and ends with Jesus Christ without exception.
In Acts, Paul shows up in cities, miracles happen,
preaching is proclaimed.
He’s often mistaken for a God.
He’s often mistaken as a prophet with power.
Paul repeatedly returns to the fact that all,
and for Paul that include himself,
are broken, are sinful,
are in our natures,
in need of repair.
And Paul with the same consistency
proclaims over and over and over,
let me introduce you to Jesus the Christ,
the anointed,
the almighty, the redeemer,
the one who is God’s redemptive plan from the very beginning.
And as you see in the
book, Paul takes himself out of it.
He doesn’t present himself as the leader,
as the linchpin.
This is all Jesus Christ,
his work,
God’s plan for us.
And I think that’s an inspiring
reminder for us as we seek to be faithful as Christians who ourselves want to proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord.
Yeah.
And I think if you’ve tried seriously to follow Jesus for any length of time,
you just feel the conviction of words like chapter seven,
Paul’s passage there about,
“I don’t understand myself.
I know what I should do and I don’t do it.
I know what I shouldn’t do
and I find myself doing it.
I’m a wretched man.” And any of us are honest.
We’ve lived there.
We’ve had those moments.
And I think that kind of humility from Paul sets the stage wonderfully
for what comes next.
And I think it’s,
again, just a really strong passage.
Michael, you mentioned words and we probably should throw out a few.
I don’t know that we
can do them justice here,
but come to the discussions ready to talk about them.
Get on the Facebook page if you have questions.
You’re going to run into some words in chapter eight,
like foreknowledge and predestined and conformed and justified and glorified.
Some of those have some baggage,
especially from the Presbyterian tradition,
a word like predestined.
For now,
all maybe we need to say about it is,
“For Paul, that’s good news.” The messy questions about the implications of it aren’t on Paul’s radar here.
That’s not what he’s trying to do.
He’s saying to people who put their faith in Christ that they do so because they
matter to God and God was unwilling that they be lost.
And the clear intention there in a word
like predestination or predestined is that God is in charge.
God is sovereign.
And God has extended
to you personally because he wanted to,
and for no other reason,
an invitation to know the saving grace of Christ.
And we can go into all the other stuff about it later and the messiness.
But I think as you read it,
just know that for Paul,
those are beautiful words and they’re positive
words and they’re the good news we receive as believers.
Absolutely, Clint.
Paul is completely honest about our situation where we find ourselves,
but what he presents as God’s rescue plan is without question,
without even debate,
good news.
And we should receive it that way,
I think.
Yeah, and it matters that he ends that passage saying if God is for us,
who is against us?
Who could separate us from the love of Christ?
Hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword.
No,
we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
And I am convinced
that nothing in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And for Paul, that’s it.
That’s the heart of it, I think.
Yeah, and that’s probably a good moment to just let be the last word because you don’t read a
passage like that with two preachers and not get a sermon.
So maybe we just sort of stop the
conversation here and say as you hear your own sermons,
as you read this text,
write them down, bring them with you to the discussion group and let’s share with one another the image and the
beauty of Christ that we all discover as we read these words together.
Absolutely. Enjoy this book.
Don’t get too worried about the places that confuse you or the questions it raises.
Ride along with it and I think you’ll find some really profound insights.
Thank you for joining
us again for the podcast.
We are thrilled that you have spent some time with us.
We hope you found something in it helpful and even more we hope that as you turn to some of the most weighty
theological explanations and discussions of the goodness of Jesus Christ that it might encourage
you not just in your mind but in your heart and soul.
Thank you for spending some time with us.
We look forward to speaking with you again in another short week.