Once more, reflections on Romans.
oh First 17 verses.
Introduction.
Then 18 through 32, the faithless non-Jewish world.
Then two, one, to three, 20.
the faithless Jewish world.
with the summary remark in 320.
Now we know that whatsoever things the law said, it said to them that are under the law, that every mouth might be stopped and the whole world brought under judgment before God.
So stamp across the entire human family.
faithless.
Then 321 all the way through 511, it's dealing with the faithfulness of God.
We're calling the lessons a beloved rebel.
The human family is rebellious, faithless to God.
but not unloved by God.
ah We need to make up our minds to this.
Why?
We either hear the gospel on this matter or we're not hearing God.
The human family rebelled.
And see, that knee's developed.
I'm not talking about babies.
I'm not talking about children who have been hurt.
I'm not even talking about every single individual.
It's true that every single individual that grows to what we m
characteristically call the age of accountability.
And then at that point we've all sinned.
But that's not what the Scriptures are dealing with.
It's dealing with the holistic, the whole human family as a human family.
Rebelled against God and the rebellion spread and the corruption spread like fire in a paint factory and we were all in it.
And then we were overwhelmed with the power of the corruption that being reduced.
So that our habits, our shaping, our nature by the practice became overwhelmingly strong and it was no getting us out of it.
And what did God do?
He didn't obliterate us.
He pursued us.
And why did He pursue us?
redeem us.
So in 321 through 511, we're talking about the beloved rebel.
Once more, God did not come into the world in and as Jesus Christ to damn the world.
It come into the world that the world might have life.
Look, if that one truth is true!
are few then of the human family.
Our view of the human family must change.
If we don't think God loves the human family, he does.
Sir Paul in then 321 says, in the light of the unfaithfulness of the human family, let me now talk to you about the faithfulness of God.
oh Is this some new thing?
No, no, he said, this thing is born witness to by the law and the prophets.
I'm only saying what the Old Testament called for.
And number two, this faithfulness of God does not depend on the Mosaic covenantal structure.
Prior to the Mosaic covenantal structure,
the Mosaic Covenant, there was the Abramic Covenant.
Abraham wasn't a Jew.
He was a Mesopotamian, for petty sake.
He lived between the rivers down in Ur of the Chaldees.
He and his kinfolk worshiped gods.
That's what Joshua 24 says.
God called him.
He made a covenant with him long before Moses came along.
God made a covenant.
He made a covenant that would be with the physical children of Abraham, but for the world.
And so when God fulfills the Abrahamic covenant, He's not fulfilling something that hung on the Mosaic law.
He's fulfilling something that was prior to the Mosaic law.
All of that is spelled out in Galatians 3.
and mentioned here as we'll see.
So he said, let me tell you about the righteousness of God.
Do you know what it's based on?
No, where is that?
Is it based on the law?
No, no.
Is it based upon some good guys and some good girls in the Jewish world and in the Gentile world?
No, no.
What's it based on then?
And he points to Jesus of Nazareth.
and says it's all based on his faithfulness.
so that God shows his faithfulness in one place, in one person, nowhere else.
Well, see that phrase, nowhere else, is an overstatement.
But it's not an overstatement in this respect, that it's in Jesus Christ, altogether, flawlessly, perfectly.
He shows his faithfulness.
He showed his faithfulness, for example, when uh he brought Israel into the promised land as he said he would.
So he showed his faithfulness.
But that's not what Paul is dealing with.
Paul is dealing with, and here's a funny word, I'm not even going to develop it.
Paul is dealing with eschatological matters and time issues.
He's not denying that God loved people way back then.
He's not denying that God kept His word way back then.
But He sums the whole thing up in one big, all-encompassing, overarching purpose.
And it all depends on, one, Jesus Christ.
And in his faithfulness, God was showing how he was keeping faith to the human family.
Yeah.
And if you looked at Jesus and rejected him,
You are rejecting God.
So God is faithless.
God is not faithful.
He says I'm doing it in Him, but I don't believe that, so...
1 Peter 1 21 says, God, God raised Him, Jesus, from the dead.
That through Him, the one God raised from the dead, you might believe in God.
That's 1 Peter 1 21.
Take a good look at that and reflect on it for a while at some point.
Will you do that?
So, it's Jesus who is the faithfulness of God embodied.
And anyone who embraces him uh in faith, he experiences.
Nah, not fully, Mark you, for fully is for another day when the Lord returns.
But in Christ Jesus right now, one experiences it in life and transformation and new vision and all of that kind of thing.
But we're all waiting, says Paul, as we'll see if we're still alive when I'm done here.
uh In Romans chapter 8, Paul says, we wait for the redemption of our bodies.
I mean, there's stuff to come, even though it's happening right this minute.
So those who by faith lay hold on Jesus Christ are embracing the faithfulness of God.
And we put our arms around him when we whisper in his ear, is God faithful?
And he says, yeah.
And we say, how?
uh
How do we know?
And he says, do you know me?
We say, yes.
He says, I am the faithfulness.
In John 14, he will say to Philip and the rest, I am...
Well, he said to Martha, I am the resurrection and the life.
He will say to the apostolic group, I am the way, the truth and the life.
I'm everything.
You see the Sabbath?
See the feast of tabernacles when God threw His tent over you and protected you in the wilderness?
You see the Passover?
I am the Passover.
Everything, everything I meant.
And I am the faithfulness of God manifested in my faithfulness.
So, he said, there is no distinction.
Jew and Gentile, it's all one story.
And then he said that God set him forth.
as propitiation, other versions render it as an expiatory sacrifice, an atoning sacrifice.
That's better, but it's...
Well, forget the discussion on it.
That's better, but it's not the best.
And if it took too long, they're going to need a discussion to say how the word should be rendered here.
But one thing we're sure of is God
is not saying, I set forth Jesus as the one I'm punishing so that I can get to forgive you.
What kind of a God is that?
Would you tell me that?
What kind of a God is it who can forgive you without punishing somebody innocent?
Tell me that.
What kind of a God is it who can forgive without punishing sin out of it?
Jesus Christ, we're told by some people, Christ takes all our sin on Him, off, off us, on us, and God punishes sin away?
Punishes it away?
He doesn't forgive it.
He punishes it away.
That's bad doctrine.
So I don't care what scholars say.
Well, it's a good metaphor.
It's not a good metaphor.
But if it were offered as a metaphor, that wouldn't be so bad.
The people who offer penal substitution aren't offering it as metaphor.
They say it actually, literally is true that God punished Jesus for everybody's sins.
Well, if Jesus was punished for everybody's sins, then how can anybody be punished then?
Ah, and that's where some people with a distorted theology enter.
They say, he wasn't punished for everybody's sins.
He was only punished for a certain group's sins.
There you go.
This is where penal substitution leads.
It either leads to universalism
or least to
limited atonement where Christ does not die for everyone.
He dies for only an elect few that God has in eternity determined, well, I'm going to have them and I'll get him to die for those.
The rest will, you know, they'll go down.
That's not Bible.
Never was Bible.
Very popular though, but it's never Bible.
Never mind.
Forget all lexical work.
Forget all the lexical work.
Forget the grammar.
Forget the syntax.
Let other people worry about that.
We're glad they worry about it.
We're glad they give us a Bible that we can read.
But once that's done, it's your view of God that makes all the difference.
It's how McIntyre said, no it was George Adam Smith that said, he said, the issue is not so much is there a God.
What kind of a God is there?
Yeah.
We're in Romans 3.
God set Jesus Christ forward as a by his death, by his blood, to deal with sin.
Set him forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith.
Do we believe him?
Do we believe that faithful one on whom everything depends?
Yes.
Well, by faith in him then, we grasp God's faithfulness and righteousness.
And God set him forth to show sin is dealt with.
He said he wanted to demonstrate his righteousness, God's own righteousness.
God says to Christ, this we need to do, and he sets Christ forth so that Christ will exhibit God's own faithfulness, God's own righteousness, God's own being in dealing with
sin.
He said he set him forth to demonstrate his righteousness because in his forbearance, God had passed over the sins that were previously committed.
Did he pass over the sins that were previously committed?
What does it mean he passed over them?
that he pass over the sins of Gomorrah
Did he?
Does it look like he did?
Did he pass over the sins of the world and Noah's his day?
Does it look like he did?
That he passed over the sins of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and subsequently 40 23,000 Israelites who rebelled and all the exiles.
Does it look like he passed over them?
He didn't pass over them.
He dealt with them.
Where people exalted and would have nothing to do with him.
They died in judgment when God saw fit.
For those who were not part of that exulting in evil,
and who experienced forgiveness.
They were forgiven the animal sacrifices.
They dealt with the issue.
But they were not dealt with and shown to be exactly what they were, precisely what they were, and fully what they were until God had Jesus come and expose them for what they
were.
Now, the people who sinned in the Old Testament and were
repentant and offered sacrifices under the Mosaic deal.
Or if they weren't Jews, they were Gentiles whose conscience rebuked them and they, you know, whatever, they, I hate that.
Those sins were forgiven, but repentance couldn't show.
how bad the sin was that was forgiven.
The animal sacrifices couldn't expose the depth and the nature of the sins that were forgiven.
The depth and the nature and the size and the dimension of the grace of God were never shown until they were shown in Jesus Christ.
So were people forgiven?
pre-Christ, yes.
On what grounds were they forgiven?
The grace of God.
It was always by the grace of God.
Yes, but then they didn't need Christ.
but they did need Christ.
For only in Christ was sin shown for what it was.
God forgave them.
Yes, yes, it's okay.
The animal was offered up by someone genuinely repentant.
And when they offered up the sin offering, they said, sorry, abidant, would give to you what I know you should have more.
And I'm sorry I'm sinned, but you see this spotless animal that I'm offering?
It represents me.
I would give you me as spotless all my life.
I would give you myself as this lovely little animal, spotless.
It's my confession.
It's me identifying with it.
I lay my hands on it and I tell you, this is me, I'm sorry.
I can't give you me like that, but I give that representing me and my heart and my remorse and my repentance.
and they got forgiveness.
Scripture says so.
Says so.
Says so!
But sin was never known.
Sin was never exposed until Christ came.
The grace of God was never appreciated.
Well, wait a minute.
If the whole Gentile world, if the whole Jewish world were as bad as you're saying it was, he should have obliterated us.
Instead, he forgave us.
And Paul said, yes, he did.
But sin was never fully exposed.
Sin was never fully.
dealt with and shown for what it was.
And the grace of God was never seen.
The hunger in God's heart, the desire for reconciliation, the longing for life for you in God never was seen.
And the love of God for all the nations of the earth was never seen until Christ came.
Isn't that a great gospel?
And all of that good news, all of that good news, it was as surely for the Jews who'd been faithless as it was for the Gentiles who had been faithless.
It was as much for the Jew and the Gentile as for the other.
It was for all the families of the earth.
That's why 1 John 2.2 will say,
And he, his blood, is an atoning sacrifice, not for our sins only, the church, the Christians, but for the sins of the whole world.
Only in Christ is the width and the depth of the grace of God may it known.
And Paul will say in Ephesians chapter 3, I want God, I pray all the time to the Holy Father, that God may open your eyes, that you may be strengthened by the Holy Spirit.
that you may be strengthened by the Holy Spirit to have your eyes opened, that you might come to know the love of God which passes knowledge, that you might know the height and
the depth and the length and the breadth of the love of God, which just goes beyond knowing.
Only in Christ!
Others who offered animal sacrifices in genuineness mark you.
They offered it.
Or the Gentile who didn't have sacrifices, who offered his heart and thought, I'm sorry about this, whoever it is I'm talking to, I don't know, but I'm sorry about this.
They were genuine, but they didn't know what it was, the depth, all the horror and the ugliness and the whole cosmic connection of it all.
They didn't understand it all.
And therefore they didn't understand the love of God, the depth of God, the size of God, the greatness of God, the mercy of God, the richness of His mercy and His grace.
None of that was ever known until God set forth Jesus.
And he explains that Jesus being set forth by God, that explains ah why Christ's death, and part of it anyway, why Christ's death is necessary.
He alone shows God to be God, and therefore life to be life, grace to be grace, and sin to be sin.
Sin was dealt with, and people got forgiveness, but it wasn't fully.
identified wasn't fully exposed.
Though for these people, forgiveness was there.
Christ comes, says, you want to know what forgiveness is?
You know, you want to know what you're forgiven of?
You want to know what kind of a God is that forgives?
You want know about the height and the depth and the length and the breadth of His love?
Only in Him, only in Christ.
you want to know who we love?
Only in Christ do you know.
You who sit glaring or sneering see the other?
the one you're clearing at.
all of this only in Christ.
And then he says, because that's true.
God set Christ forth and expanding all of that to demonstrate at the present time his faithfulness, his righteousness, his righteousness, he might be just, that he might be
righteous.
The word just, it's the same word.
It's the same word.
It's a nice discussion or a long discussion how we ended up with the word just, justified, the justifier, and righteous, righteousness, and the like.
but it's not worth our time right now.
But he did all of that in Jesus Christ that he might demonstrate at the present time his faithfulness, that he might be indeed righteous and the justifier.
We don't have an English word, a righteous-er, so we use the word justifier, you see, of the one who has
faith in Christ.
And then he says, where's the boasting then?
It's excluded.
By what manner of law then?
Of works?
No, but by the law of faith.
Well, uh nobody can boast then.
That's true.
Well, how come they can't boast?
What is it that excluded?
Well, there is only one answer.
There isn't any law that says you can't boast.
Well, you know, I've done what is right.
I've up to my, as best I could, lived up to my, none of that kind, says.
The only thing that excludes boasting is Jesus Christ.
You know what will happen?
The Jews will continue to look and brag.
The Gentiles will continue to look, sneer and brag.
Both of them depend on Jesus.
He's the one.
He alone is the one that says the Jews and Gentiles alike, not about you.
about me.
I'm nearly done here.
He wants to know 29, or is he the God of the Jews only?
Is he not also the God of the Gentiles?
Well, yeah, why is he the God of the Gentiles?
Yes, of the Gentiles also, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcision through faith.
Shema Israel.
Every day said, here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Well, if there's only one God, how many creations are there?
Just one.
And if there's only one God who created it, how many human families are there?
Well, there's just one.
So you're all the creation of God.
You're all God's sons and daughters.
You're all one.
It's got nothing to do with the law.
It's got to do with the creation.
And Paul's doctrine of the creation, see what he did with it.
He took the creation doctrine and he turned it into...
supporting truth.
And then he says in 31, do we then make void the law ah through faith?
Certainly not.
We confirm the law.
We act foundation for the law.
He said we only teach what the Old Testament taught.
We're only teaching what the Old Testament all the way through with the mosaic set up.
The Gentiles not having a spelled out prescription and all of that.
We are talking about Abrahamic covenant.
All of that.
The creation.
All of that we get from the whole of the Torah and the teaching of Moses and everybody else.
You think we're undermining the law by preaching this kind of gospel?
No, we're confirming the law.
So, I'm not non-Jewish.
I'm not against Judaism.
I'm not against the Old Testament.
I haven't turned from my people.
And when I speak of God bringing in the Gentiles, independent of the Torah, I'm getting up in the Old Testament.
So, relax.
Thank you for being with us.
Will you come back again sometime?
Please.