Turn to your Bibles to Romans chapter 1. Romans 1, we'll begin in a moment in verse 8 and read through verse 17. Romans 1, 8 to 17. Two Sundays back, we actually looked at the end of the book of Romans. We went to Romans 16 where we met the church in Rome. We met the people. We examined those personal greetings which close out the book. And by doing so, we got to know some of the individuals and some of the flavor of that church in Rome. There were some wealthy people. There were quite a few poor people. There were some who were free born. There were some who were freed men, former slaves. And there were some who were still slaves. There were some Jews that were mostly Gentiles. There were a handful of names of men that we've never heard of since and a couple of very important women. We saw here a diverse group of believers in this imperial city. We also saw that due to the size of the city, they were geographically isolated from one another, that they gathered in probably five different house churches in various neighborhoods around the city. But they had gathered on this particular occasion to hear Paul's letter read out to them, and we saw how he encouraged them to greet one another with a holy kiss, to come together in fellowship and in peace, to come together and not let their divisions keep them apart, but let their shared love for Christ and his love for them draw them together. Last week we looked more closely at Paul himself, the author of the letter, a servant-slash-slave of Christ Jesus, as he describes himself. We noticed how both of those words are problematic. He was bound in the manner of a slave, but never oppressed. He was under Christ's absolute control and yet Paul was free. He was this doulos, this servant slash slave of Christ Jesus. And in that he saw himself akin to the prophets who were described in the same manner. They were burdened to deliver a particular message which God had laid upon them. We saw that Paul was trained under the rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem, essentially the Harvard of his day. It was this top-flight education that Paul had. He was an expert in the Old Testament. And we are going to see for the next many, many months, as we consider the Book of Romans closely, that he is constantly going back to the scriptures of the Jews, of the Hebrews, and finding in that his foundation for what he is preaching and teaching in Rome or to Rome. He also marks himself out as an apostle. an envoy of special power, of special significance, a representative who not only speaks on behalf of Christ, but who wields the authority of Christ. And we saw in his conversion story how he was set apart specifically to address Gentiles, to bring the message of Jesus Christ to those who were not part of Israel. In other words, to you and to me. This morning, we are going to see the introduction to the letter proper. We've met the church, we've met the author of the letter, and we are going to now meet the letter itself, and next week begin to dive in to the details. This morning we look at what Paul has to say when he gets started and kind of lays out what's coming for the Roman church. here at the Shore Harvest Presbyterian Church. We believe the Bible is the only infallible rule for faith and for practice. And that means that if we want to know what the gospel really is and how to be saved, if we want to know how to live in light of that, and if we want to understand this letter that Paul has written, then we have to know God's word. So I encourage you now to give your ear and your heart and pay attention to the Word of Almighty God. Romans chapter 1, beginning in verse 8. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of the Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers. asking that somehow by God's will I may now at last succeed in coming to you, because I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you, that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented. in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles. I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome, because I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed, from faith to faith. As it is written, the righteous shall live by faith. Holy Spirit, this is a very dense passage. There is a great deal packed in here. We need your help understanding it. And as we look forward to this book of Romans, we need you to guide our exposition of it, that what I say would be true. And that if I would say anything that is false, that it'd be immediately stricken from our memories, so that you and your word are what we remember. That those are what we understand, that those are the truths to which we are clinging. that we would hear today and over and over and over again in the coming weeks and months the message of the gospel and its implications for us. That we might be mature in these things, a church which is drawn together because of them, not divided by the nature of our society. We pray this in Christ's precious name. Amen. You probably know the feeling of being embarrassed or ashamed of something that you were telling to a group. Maybe you overhyped a joke. You then told the joke. You messed up the punchline. And in the end, nobody really laughed. And it was that awkward moment of kind of embarrassment. You're ashamed. Oh my goodness, I really botched that. It happens. Maybe you you start talking about how much you really love cotton candy grapes, this new genetic marvel that's out there. I love these cotton candy grapes, and you're going on and on about them, and then somebody in the group says, really? You had to bring up grapes? My sister just choked on a grape. And you just feel like you're just this big. You thought it was something wonderful to share, and now you're embarrassed by it. I've had many of those kinds of moments in my life, many accounts of being in front of people and saying things that I thought were relatively innocent and turned out to be something that embarrassed me. One of them occurred here. Back on the very first Sunday I was ever here, I was the candidate. to take the call to be the minister here at this church. And I taught the adult Sunday school class, so I preached the sermon in here, we moved over there, actually I preached the sermon over there, we transitioned into Sunday school over there, and I was teaching the adult Sunday school class. And I picked an illustration that was timely, that came out of our culture, our society, but it was of a slightly more mature nature. and I was coming from a big church. It never crossed my mind that sixth graders might be in the adult Sunday school class. And now I have picked this illustration that was fitting to the lesson and timely to our culture. I wasn't crass about it, I wasn't graphic needlessly in any way, and yet I felt badly because I knew that some poor mom or dad was going to climb in the SUV after church and a question was going to come from the back. Mom, what was Pastor Shaw talking about today? I didn't mean for that to happen. I was embarrassed by the illustration I had chosen. We've all been there at some point. We've all had those moments where what we want to talk about just isn't, just doesn't connect with our audience. It isn't fitting to all of them. That tends to be the greatest challenge is when our audience is diverse. When there's a wide array of ages, it can be hard to connect sometimes. When there are people of very differing backgrounds, It can be hard to connect sometimes. When in the same group, you've got the highly educated and those who graduated from Ohio State, both there together. It can be hard to connect sometimes. I say that because as far as I'm aware, none of you are Ohio State Buckeyes. It can be hard to connect with your audience. Paul has described to us, we jumped ahead and looked at the end of the letter, and we have seen what a diverse congregation the church in Rome was. There were, in that congregation, Priscilla and Aquila, wealthy business owners. In all likelihood, if not at the current time that he wrote this, for sure in their past, in their previous life, probably slave owners. That would have been normal for a business owner who had, they had multiple locations of their business around the empire. They were not small business operators. They were wealthy. They probably owned slaves. And we saw from the list of names there that several of the names on that list were of slaves. These were names that free people did not give to their children. These were slave names. So we have in the same church, Someone who, if they don't currently own slaves, for sure they used to. And then we've got people who are enslaved. We had the tension of a patriarchal society, and into that Thebe comes with authorization from Paul to carry out some important task on behalf of the church. There's going to be male-female tension in this church. We saw that they were geographically diverse, spread out over the city. There was gonna be the political tension that comes with that. Those who were worried about how things would play out in their neighborhood, rather than your neighborhood. And we saw how there were Jews and there were Gentiles. And how the church was originally Jewish in its origin, but increasingly Gentile in its flavor. This church was a diverse group. it would be difficult to address them. And Paul brings that out. He points to that in these words that he has said here, these introductory verses. Notice how he says, let me back up and just kind of walk through this real quickly. So first of all, we have to remember these are believers. Paul's difficulty is not that he's talking to unbelievers. He says right from the get-go, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. He acknowledges that they are believers. And he goes on to say that they are a wonderful group of believers. He thinks very highly of them. He is thankful for them. He praises God for the testimony about them throughout the rest of the Christian world. And he wants to visit them. For God is my witness, whom I serve in the spirit of the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayer, asking if somehow by God's will I may now at last succeed in coming to you, because I long to see you." Real quick textual note, verse 11 starts with the word for. If you look up the word for in dictionary.com, it has 32 distinct uses. I'll tell you this one. For most of the rest of the book of Romans, not always, but for most of the rest of the book of Romans, think of the word because. This for is the word because. He's explaining why he just said what he said, okay? Why do I want to succeed in coming to you, verse 11? Because I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you. And again, strengthen you, not convert you. These are believers. And he wants to proclaim something to them to make them stronger in their faith. And he acknowledges in verse 12, and that is to say that we may be mutually encouraged. It's not going to be a one-way thing. I'm not going to come there and just bless you. I fully expect to be blessed by you for everything that I have heard. By the way, that's kind of how the body of Christ is supposed to work, right? It is a two-way street. As I minister to you, you minister to me. As you minister to them, they minister to you. There is this interaction of blessing within the body of Christ. And he says in verse 13, I do not want you to be unaware that I have often intended to come to you, but I couldn't. I've been providentially hindered. Please understand, I don't think poorly of you just because I haven't been there. I think the world of you all, and I want to get there as soon as I can. And he says, so that I can reap a harvest among you as among the rest of the Gentiles. Remember, his particular focus is on Gentiles. And this is a church that is increasingly Gentile. And then verse 14, he says something interesting. And in verse 14, we're going to have to begin to dig into the weeds a little bit. I am under obligation. Remember how he introduced himself as a doulos of Christ Jesus, a servant slash slave. He is bound. He is obligated. This is not an obligation that is onerous to Paul. No, he thoroughly enjoys it, which is why he's going to use the word desire in parallel to the word obligated. It has both the sense of something he really wants to do, but it is also something he just has to do. He doesn't have the freedom to not speak the truth of God to these people. I am under an obligation. The sense of that obligation is that if I am the servant of Christ Jesus, and you are his adopted children, and adoption is going to be big in the Book of Romans, If you are His adopted children, then you necessarily outrank me as a mere servant, and I am obligated to you. That's kind of the sense here. The head of the household, God Himself, has bound me as His servant. You are His child. I owe you my service. I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians. This is a strange thing. Think about where is this book headed? It's headed to Rome. Now, even if you're not good at geography, I'm going to guess that the vast majority of us know that Rome is in Italy, not Greece. So why does he make reference to Greeks? Well, in that society, in that culture, the elite, those who had money, those who had privilege, they would educate their children in the Greek philosophy. They were well studied in Socrates and Plato and Aristotle. Greek culture and Greek thinking was still considered, even though the Romans had conquered the Greek Empire, Greek thinking was still considered the height of human wisdom, human sophistication, human knowledge. And so this term Greek here is those who are extremely well-educated, those who are very well-informed, those who are sophisticated. Look at the next line. Both to the wise and to the foolish. That word wise in Greek is the word sophois, from which we get sophistication. Sophois. He says that I am obligated to both the wise and the foolish, the sophisticated and the foolish. That's the explanation of the word Greek. Those who are well-educated, those who are trained, those who live the good life, who have lots of money, who have time to read books, who can afford a book. Back then, books were expensive. Okay? I am obligated to them. In the audience in Rome, in the church in Rome, as this letter is being read out, the wealthy, the sophisticated, the Greeks that he's addressing are all going, well, duh, of course you're obligated to us. We're the upper crust of society. We are the patrons, and you are but a mere client. Of course you're obligated to us. That's the way society works. But look what he says. I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. Barbarians, quite simply, were anyone who wasn't part of that Greek category. If you weren't among the wealthy, if you weren't among the elite, if you weren't well-educated, if you weren't high-born, then you were a barbarian. Now, I have taught a long time, and many of you have been teachers, and one of the things that we teachers notice is that students, as they learn, are pretty good at acquiring new knowledge they're really bad at jettisoning wrong information from their brains. So I would teach students a lesson in chemistry, and the students would get all the facts I wanted them to get, and they would put it into their brains, and they would have it right, and they'd get an A on the test, and then, you know, a month later I would be talking to one of them, and they would ignore the new stuff they learned and fall back into their old pattern of thinking about the things that they had just taught them. And I would say to them, but you know, they're like, yeah, I know that. I'm like, do you not see how that, oh no, I never saw that. We aren't good at getting rid of our wrong ways of thinking. And so what's going on in the church back here, they are taking in, they're bringing to the church their false understanding of the world. Yes, they no longer believe in the gods, plural, They believe in the one true God, Yahweh, the God of Israel, the God who sent His Son to be Jesus of Nazareth. They know He alone is God, but they still have this view that some people are created by the gods to be blessed in this life, and some people are created to be servants. And so they are still bringing to with them this idea that God loves the high born, he loves the wealthy, he loves the powerful, and that's why they are all of those things. And all the rest of you are on the planet to serve those of us who are those people. You were born to be our slaves. It's just the natural order of things. And by the way, Doubt that this was creeping into the church? Let me remind you of the conversation that Jesus has with his apostles in Mark chapter 10 and parallels in Matthew and Luke, where Jesus says to the 12, it is incredibly difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. And do you remember Peter's response? What? It's hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven? Peter's response is, who then can be saved? If the rich aren't going to heaven, who is? Ain't nobody going to heaven if the rich aren't, because God loves the rich, and He doesn't love the rest of us. That was the way they thought. Do you see the degree to which Paul is undermining that? I am under obligation. both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. There had to be some jaws slacking already at this point in the letter. How could you, Paul, when you understand that in terms of the social hierarchy of the Roman Empire, you're a tent maker, you're a merchant, you're in the merchant class, it ain't the bottom rung of the ladder, but you sure aren't at the top, but you really wouldn't be under the barbarians. You wouldn't be obligated to them, Paul. And for sure in the church, you're an apostle. How can you be obligated to anybody? Right up front, this letter is upending the social order, the thinking that would have seeped into the church from the surrounding culture. He says, I owe all of you a thorough explanation. And then in verse 15, that's why. So, that's why I am eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome. Because it's in the imperial city that all of you are gathered together in one church. It's in Rome that slaves and slave owners worship together. It's in Rome that every ethnicity of the world is found. It's in Rome that the wealthy and the poor are both right side by side. And if I come to Rome, I can preach to every class of humanity. That's why I'm eager to come to Rome. That's why I can't wait to get there. And then he tacks on verse 16. And you really can, if you're a person who makes notes in your Bible, I think it's appropriate to mark out 15 and 16 as kind of the thesis statement of the book of Romans, kind of the summary of the entire book. And Paul says, so 15, I am eager to preach the gospel to you who are also in Rome. Because remember the word for because I am not ashamed of the gospel It's a story that can be told to any group of people It's a story that every group of people must hear It's a story that works Whether you are poor or wealthy whether you are slave or freedman or freeborn citizen whether you are of the merchant class or the ruling class, whether you are male or female, whether you are Jew or Greek, whether you are gentile or barbarian, no matter where you come from, and I picked on the Buckeyes earlier, but Paul would tack on even if you went to Ohio State University. It's something everybody must hear. I can tell this and never be ashamed of it. I can say this and never regret that I chose to talk about that in that situation. I am not ashamed of the Gospel. Why? Because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone. There it is again. Notice Paul's emphatic nature. This is going to unfold over and over and over again in the book of Romans. Paul is emphatic here about the fact that this is for all people. to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Gentile, to the Greek. That'll make more sense as we get back later into the book of Romans, this idea that it's for the Jew first and then for the Greek. Little, I'm not sure I wanna delve into that this morning. We will unpack that as we go through the book. Because in it, verse 17, because in it, the righteousness of God is revealed. We gotta make a little sense of that phrase. That is a much debated phrase. The righteousness of God. What does that mean? Well, it can be argued that it is the righteousness which is characteristic of God. God is good. He is righteous. And certainly there's an argument to be made for that. In all likelihood, his original audience, his readers, when they saw this word in Greek, that's where their brains would have jumped first, to a characteristic of the person being described. Almost exactly the same time, like within a couple of months of each other, almost exactly the time that Paul was writing the book of Romans, Nero had authorized a new coin to be minted. And on this coin, There was the goddess Equitas, equity, the goddess of fairness. And she's holding a scale, and the scale, the balances are in balance with each other. And over the top of her is emblazoned the word righteousness. It was the idea of fairness, of justice, of doing what is right. In all likelihood, when the original audience heard this, the righteousness of God, what they heard was God's fairness, God's justice, God's inclination to do what is right, to hold balanced scales, to not tip them in favor of certain people. And we're going to see this play out in a couple of chapters. Paul is going to say God shows no partiality. which makes this a valid view of the term righteousness of God. But we're also going to see how Paul is going to unfold this idea that we are not righteous and we need righteousness, and that it is the gift of God to those of us who are evil in and of ourselves. And so he's going to talk about how the righteousness of God is a gift of God. It is something given. So this can also be understood as a righteousness from God. It's not just a characteristic of God, but it is something from God. We can also see it in contrast to the following verse. Verse 18 is not a part of our passage this morning, but if you glance down at verse 18, he begins to talk about the wrath of God being revealed from heaven against sin. It is this idea that it is an activity or an action of God, and some have noted the grammatical parallels to that in this verse, and we probably ought to understand the righteousness of God being the act of God. And we see that right here in the sense that he says I'll be back up. Sorry. Verse 16. For the salvation to everyone who believes. That God acts to save sinners. that we should see the righteousness of God as his good action to save sinners. So rolled up in this idea of the righteousness of God is all of those ideas that God is himself good and just and fair and equitable. God also gives those qualities to those who need that as a gift. and that God acts to save those who fall short of that standard. All of that's rolled up together. It is, after all, a summary, so rolling a whole bunch of things into one little tight phrase is kind of a way you do a summary. And he says, for it is the righteousness of God, it is revealed from faith to faith, from faith for faith, it is of faith from first to last. Depending on your translation, there's a lot of different ways. Again, this is a difficult phrase to translate. It is hard to put it into English in a meaningful way. It's not that your Bible is flawed in some way, it's just that it's up against a legit challenge. But I think there's a case to be made that what Paul is arguing here is that it's faith in every circumstance. It is from faith, to faith, to faith, to faith. It is by faith that the wealthy get this salvation and the righteousness of God. It is by faith that the slaves get this salvation and the righteousness from God. It is by faith that the free men, it is by faith that the woman, it is by faith that the man, it is by faith that the merchant, it is by faith that the client, it is by faith that the patron, that no matter where you are in society, This righteousness from God, this gift that He is going to bestow upon you, comes by faith. And that's very fitting, by the way, that fits into his Old Testament quotation out of Habakkuk 2.4, the righteous shall live by faith. He's tying this back into that Old Testament passage. And he's making the argument that all of us are saved in that same way, that we all come to Christ Jesus by faith. The wealthy are not saved because of their position in society. And in fact, Jesus warns it's very difficult for the wealthy to be saved. Why? Because of their position in society. Their lives are pretty good. Their lives are pretty comfortable. It's hard to think they really need anything. And it's really not tempting to long for heaven. But they've got to receive it by faith. It is from faith to faith. It is faith in every instance. And with that, Paul has now taken this idea of the gospel and said it applies to everybody in the Roman church. And you see now where he's going with this. We're going to see, we jump forward to 15 and 16, and we see his desire. Y'all need to get along. Y'all need to submit to one another. Y'all need to love one another. You need to stop judging one another. You need to come under the same authority together. Why? Because you're all in the same boat. You are not stratified in the way the world sees you. You are one people, adopted into God's family by your faith in Christ Jesus. And I want us to see, we're gonna dive into the nitty gritty of Romans over the next many weeks. This may be our last opportunity to stand on a hilltop Look at the whole forest before we examine the trees And I want us to stop and see where Paul goes with this argument the rest of chapter 1 is going to be a declaration against the the really bad people You know those out there who are obviously sinners And so what is Paul going to do? He is going to talk about things that everybody in his audience would have been amening. Oh yeah, oh yeah, that's bad. These people, they exchange the glory of God for created things. They look to stars to control their future. They believe in astrology. They think the stars control their destiny, when it's God who controls their destiny. They've taken the glory of God and assigned it to the created thing, the stars. And he goes on with other examples. He talks about their sexual perversion. They are so messed up, they can't even get the basics of nature right. They don't understand the basics of human reproduction, and so men sleep with men, and women sleep with women. These guys are really messed up, and the whole congregation of Romans is probably going, Amen. And we love Romans 1 even today in the church. Why? Because it's pointed at them out there. We're not like that. Those people are really messed up. But then what does he do in Romans 2? He says, wait a second. If you're judging them, you're judging yourself. For the moment you admit that there is a standard of judgment, you confess that there is a law, whether or not you recognize it to be the law of God. You are now pointing the finger right back at yourself. Or do you imagine that you're going to somehow just escape the judgment of God because he decides to be nice to you because you're wealthy? He says it's never going to happen. The moment you're judging those other people out there, you're judging yourself. You're admitting that there is a standard. Don't imagine for one moment you live up to it. But he recognizes, and by the way, throughout the entire book, he's gonna have this habit of anticipating the argument of an imaginary opponent. And he's going to jump in the end of two and imagine a Jew in the congregation going, well, yeah, that is true of the Gentiles here in this church. They're a bad lot. But I'm a Jew. I've kept the law of God. And he says, he flat out asks, so is there an advantage to being a Jew? And he goes, nope. You can go to church your whole life and still be under God's judgment. Because it's not about those outward things. A Jew is not one who is outwardly a Jew. Circumcision is not circumcision of the flesh. It's gotta be about what's happening in your heart. And by the end of Romans 2, Paul has pretty much said to everybody in that congregation, y'all all on your own are held out. You all on your own stand under the judgment of God. And he says that to us today. No matter who you are here, no matter how much doctrine you know, no matter how little doctrine you know, no matter where you have come from, what your background is, what church you were raised in, what church you weren't raised in, No matter how much you love liturgy and its formality, or you wish we would just let the Spirit guide our service, whatever the issue is for you, you are convinced that the Republican Party is going to save America. You're convinced that Democrats are the only way forward. I don't care. Paul's point is that you all are in trouble before God. And in case we missed it in chapters 1 and 2, how does he open chapter 3? He goes in, so there are none righteous, no not one, no one seeks after God. And he quotes the passage from Isaiah. And then he moves on to say, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And if you quit at Romans 3.23 part A, there's no good news at all. There's no gospel at this point! But it is the backdrop. It is the truth of the situation. It is the reality of the world against which the message of the gospel is good news. Which is why he immediately turns things around there in Romans 3. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but... One of the greatest words in all the Bible. But... The free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And now he's going to begin to flesh out how that plays out in our lives. How is it that the gift of God, the gift of Jesus Christ, is a saving gift for us? And he's going to begin to say, listen, first of all, you've got to get fixed legally. When that judgment comes, I've already said the righteousness of God, I've already planted in your brain the idea of scales of justice, and that God is a just judge. When he stands to judge you, you're in trouble. So you gotta get legally fixed. And he's gonna begin to float the idea in Romans 3 of imputed righteousness. Righteousness which is given to you, which doesn't belong to you. righteousness which is counted for you as though it was your own. It is that idea that you have a judgment in the court and you owe some amount of money and somebody else goes and pays it for you. And you're off the hook. And that's gonna cause some consternation among his audience, among his congregation. But he's also going to say in there that it is received by faith. He's gonna reiterate what we just saw in the introduction. that it comes not by obedience of the law. It's not a question of you getting everything right with regard to God's law, but you receive it by faith. And people are going to go, wait a second, wait a second, wait a second. Paul, we need to deal with that whole imputed righteousness thing, but for a second here, you've got to explain to us how it can possibly be by faith. We are Jews, or at least this church was founded by Jews, we know the law of God matters, and we know you've got to keep it. How is it by faith? And he's going to say, great, thanks for asking. And he's going to bring up Abraham. And he's going to say, you love your circumcision. It's the sign of the covenant. It's the thing that makes you Jewish. God declared Abraham righteous. Was it before he was circumcised or after? And Paul's going to remind his audience, it was before. He hadn't yet kept the law of circumcision, but because he believed God, It was counted for him as righteousness. And Paul is going to say very plainly, you don't have to do anything. You simply have to accept the gift of righteousness that God bestows in Jesus Christ. I'm going to skip chapter five for just a moment and go to chapter six. Because some in this congregation are going to pick up on that and go, wait a second here. So we don't have to keep God's law. We just have to believe. This righteousness is just laid on us by faith. Well then, shouldn't we just keep on sinning? I mean, wouldn't that make a lot of sense, Paul? Should we go on sinning and grace may increase? Wouldn't we just ramp up the glory of Christ? He would be covering even more sins. And Paul says, no, you don't get it. He was your federal head. He was your representative. He's the one that stood in your place. When he died, you died. When he was righteous, you were righteous. When he obeyed, you obeyed. And when he rose from the dead, you rose from the dead. You are in Christ. If you go on sinning, you just reveal that you really are not connected to Christ. Let me back up to chapter 5. He's going to say in chapter 5, some of you are going to be a little frustrated with me. You're going to tell me, how can righteousness be imputed? How can the just judge of the world just declare me righteous, justify me when I'm not actually righteous? Paul, I love you, But I kind of know who I am, and I'm not a good person. Even on my best days, I don't pull it off. And Paul says, God is just. God is fair, and he is equitable. You don't think righteousness can be imputed? You don't think it can just be given to you, and you don't think it can be handed to you? Isn't that how your wickedness came? Why is it that children die, Paul says? Why is it that those who have never heard the law die? Why do some who have never done anything wrong still die? Because in Adam we all sin. One man was our representative. He could have chosen the good, and we would have enjoyed the life we were supposed to have right now, right here on this earth. But he chose evil, and in him we all went down the path of evil. And Paul says, just in the same way that that wickedness of Adam has been imputed to all of his descendants, so the goodness of Christ can be imputed to all who are his by faith. Paul says it's the only thing that works. If it doesn't, it's logical. If it's not that way, then how do you explain people dying who have never violated the law? Either God is corrupt, or goodness of Jesus Christ can be handed to those of us who are corrupt. And all of this, he's been tying together. And he gets to the end of chapter six, where he says, you shouldn't sin, and he anticipates the next argument. Because somebody out there is gonna go, but I can't stop sinning. And this is the amazing chapter seven of the book of Romans, where the apostle says himself, I get it, I understand your frustration. I know the good that I'm supposed to do, and I don't do it. And I know the evil that I wish I would never do, and yet that I do. My life is messed up. I am entangled in this sinful body. Though I have a redeemed component to me, I am so tied up in the old man that I cannot shake off the sin of this world. And anticipating the pain of those who are listening, he says, I don't do the good I should do. I do all the evil I shouldn't do. Who can save me? What hope is there for me? wretched man that I am." And how does he close chapter 7? Praise be to God for Jesus Christ my Savior. He says that's the gospel again. You got to go back around to the good news of Christ. You got to go back around to this idea that His righteousness is covering you. No, you're not supposed to live in sin because His righteousness is covering you. But when you sin, His righteousness is covering you. which is why the chapter eight can begin with that beautiful verse. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, none, zero. Doesn't matter what you just did, no condemnation. Doesn't matter the thought you just had, no condemnation. Doesn't matter the degree to which you are still wrestling with this sin, no condemnation. But this life is still hard. Yes, this life is hard. Creation is messed up, he says, and the creation groans for salvation. as do you yourself. But remember, we've been adopted as children of God. And he says, if God adopted you, he's not going to leave you in this messed up situation. And he begins to talk about what we call the golden chain. If he chose you, then he's going to call you. And if he calls you, he's going to justify you. And if he justifies you, he is going to glorify you. The day will come when you will be perfect, when you will be what you're supposed to be, when the frustrations of this life will be thrown off, when your battles with sin will be in the rear view mirror forevermore, when your disappointments will never again creep into mind. And he says, that's what we're looking forward to. That's what we hope is. And he says there in Romans 8, we know that all things work together for good. For those of us who love the Lord, who are chosen by Him. So even our sufferings produce endurance and perseverance. Even the hardships produce a character in us. And he's going to talk about all these things and how they unravel. But he's going to come to the unavoidable conclusion. He's gonna come to the logical. This is where we can get frustrated with doctrine, but doctrine is so important. He's gonna come to the doctrinal, to the logical, to the reasonable position of saying it comes down to this. Who then can condemn us? Who is gonna stand before God and point the finger? Yes, you're a sinner. But who's gonna condemn you? Will it be God? No, he's chosen you, he's called you. Will it be Christ Jesus? He's the one who died for you. If God is for us, who could possibly be against us? And so it doesn't matter that you feel condemned. It doesn't matter that you want to condemn yourself. There is no condemnation. And he's going to wrap up chapter 8 with that beautiful reminder. I am absolutely convinced that neither height, nor depth, nor principalities, nor powers, and things to come, things present, things on this earth, things above, things below, I can't remember them all. I'm confusing a couple different verses. My apologies. It's in here somewhere. I should have read it. But he's going to come to the conclusion that nothing can separate us from the love of God. This is the power of the gospel, Paul is saying. This is the good news This is how it plays out in the real world, and this is what it means for the future. Now he's going to realize there are going to be some skeptics. Some of them are going to go, whoa, time out. Didn't God make these promises to Israel? Didn't God make exactly these kinds of promises to Israel? In fact, Paul, you said yourself that God made promises like this to Israel, and not all Israel is saved. And in fact, Paul, we have watched Jews leave this church and go back to Judaism. So why should we believe your gospel when the promises of God have failed in the past? We're going to take chapters 9, 10, and 11 and explain how that works. Explain how not all who call themselves Jews are truly Jews and how God is fulfilling all those promises in the grafting of the church into the nation of Israel. And then in chapter 12, he's going to turn a corner and say, therefore, I urge you, dear brothers, to live like this. And in chapter 12, he is going to talk to us about our need to live lives of peace amongst each other. In 13, he's going to encourage us to live in peace with the government around us. In 14, he's going to tell us to stop judging one another. Yes, some of you are weak in the faith. Help them, don't judge them. And he's going to say in 14, yes, some of you are strong in the faith and you have tremendous Christian freedom. Don't use it in a way that trips anybody else up. And he's going to say, his point is this, don't you understand? If the gospel is for everyone, if everyone is saved in the same way, if everyone is sinners, if everyone is fallen, if everyone is saved by faith in Jesus Christ, then we're all in this together. There's no longer any us and them within the church. There's no longer a stratus of higher and lower. We owe it to one another. God was gracious to us, we must be gracious to one another. Don't judge the weaker brother, help the weaker brother. If you're all that strong, then use it for the benefit of those around you. And you can say, by the way, don't forget, the reason I'm telling you not to judge, because they don't answer to you, they answer to their master. They answer to the God who saved them. And there's a great line in Romans 14, five. For it is before their master, that they will stand or fall. And they will stand, for he is able to make them stand. And at that point, he's going to begin to wrap things up. He's going to wind it down. He's going to tack on a few more comments about some particular application. But his point is this, that we are all in this gospel journey together. that each of us is going to be held up by the one who has saved us. Then in the final analysis, it is not the judgment of one another, but the judgment of God that matters. And that's a terrifying judgment to face. But because Jesus Christ loves you, because he died for you, because you have hoped in that truth, on that day of judgment, he will make you stand. You might feel faint standing before the Almighty. You might feel weak, your knees knocking, when He begins to read off the acts of your life and all the ways that you sinned and all the ways that you failed. And as you're about to faint for all of your evilness, Christ Jesus is gonna come alongside of you, wrap His arm around you and say, Father, this is one of mine. My death was for Him. My good works were her good works. I've got them. Before your master, you will stand. This is why Paul is eager to preach to the Romans. This is why I'm excited to go through the book of Romans. Because there is so much good news. Let's pray. Lord, we need this. We need this desperately. We need to understand how it applies to us in the here and now, how it levels the field on which we interact with one another, that we are equally fallen before you and equally saved by you. We need to understand the hope that this gives us for eternal life. We need to understand the The way in which your grace is not a license to sin, but a call to goodness and to right living. We need to understand this book. Help us to do so. Work in us to live it as we understand it. Give us grace to come alongside one another in the midst of it. Let us be a people who, like the church in Rome, though fragile, though on edge, though it rifts always, you sustain us, you see us through. And we will be, let us be a testimony like them of faithfulness and encouragement to others because of the work you are accomplishing in us. We pray all of this in the precious name of Jesus.