Grace For The Journey

In today’s blog we come to one of the great missionary texts.  God has been faithful to send His messengers out with the gospel message.

Context

Yesterday we examined the first half of this chapter.  Today I would like to concentrate on the second half, but to do so, I need to set the context of the passage.

In the course of explaining the Gospel message of salvation from sin by faith in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul sought to bring comfort and assurance to believers by pointing out the sovereignty of God in salvation.  Though we struggle with our own sin, though we suffer persecution in this world for the sake of righteousness because we are identified with Christ; though we have not yet received the fulfilment of all God’s promises, we long for the fulfillment of those promises of our final redemption with great confidence.

Why?  Because God is omniscient, omnipotent and sovereign. Nothing can thwart His plans.  What He began in eternity past in His foreknowledge and predestination of those who would be saved has worked out in the present in His calling and justification of those who are saved and will be completed in His glorification of them.  There is absolute confidence that God will complete the good work that He began in us.  No circumstance and no entity of past, present, or future, nothing can separate us from His love.

These are wonderful truths, but the declaration of God’s sovereignty bring up some other questions including God’s justness if He is sovereign over a man’s eternal destiny. And what about God’s promises to the nation of Israel?  In view of the fact that much of the nation had not yet been saved, would God fulfill His promises to them?  Paul uses God’s relationship with Israel to demonstrate both God’s justness and mercy while also answering the question of the future of that nation of people.

In chapter 9 Paul demonstrated that God was just in His dealings with Israel, and all people, by virtue of the fact that He is the Creator and that He has been merciful to all people.  By virtue of being the Creator, God has the right to do whatever He wishes with the beings He has created.  We have no right to question what God does (9:20-23).

Paul points out further that irrespective of God’s right as Creator, God cannot be accused of injustice because His actual actions toward man are a step beyond being just fair.  God is merciful.  God would be fair and just to immediately condemn all men to eternal Hell.  Instead, God is merciful and patiently endures the rebellion of sinners while making known the riches of His glory to those He has chosen to be “vessels of mercy.”

God’s sovereignty in salvation is not a basis for any accusation that God is unjust in His dealings with man.  But Paul goes further in Chapter 10 to demonstrate that God is also just in His condemnation of the wicked because man is responsible for his rejection of God’s offer of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

Israel’s Ignorant Zeal.

Yesterday we saw in verses 1-3 that Paul longed for the salvation of his fellow Israelites. They had a great zeal for God, but they were ignorant of the true nature of righteousness.  Paul had been that way himself when he was still Saul the Pharisee. Paul had considered himself then to be blameless according to the righteousness of the law.  He was so zealous for God that he became a persecutor of the church because he thought they were blaspheming God and His law.  But the truth was that he had been ignorant of God and the true nature of righteousness.  So many of his fellow Jews were still in that condition of being zealous, but ignorant.

Law vs. Faith.

Paul explains in verses 3-5 that they were still busy striving to gain righteousness for themselves through their diligent efforts to keep the Mosaic law.  However, that law condemns them for, as verse 5 states, those who practice the righteousness based in the law must also live by that righteousness, and no one can keep the law perfectly.  All have sinned (Romans 3:23), and to break just one commandment brings the full condemnation of the law (James 2:10).

As I also pointed out yesterday . . .

It is not just the Jews that have fallen into this trap.

Whether it is the Mosaic law, religious laws they

Have made for themselves, or the law of conscience

That God has placed into all people (Romans 2),

Everyone falls short and violates even their

Own standards resulting in condemnation.

Since righteousness before God cannot be earned, it must be attained on another basis.  That basis is faith in Jesus Christ for He “is end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”  In other words, Jesus Christ is the end of a person’s futile effort to achieve their own righteousness before God.  Instead, the righteousness of Christ is imputed, or attributed to the believer.  This is the righteousness of faith that Paul has been talking about since the beginning of the book.  Paul speaks more of this in verses 6-10

The Nearness of the Message.

Paul explains here that the righteousness of faith, which is the Gospel message that he has been explaining since the beginning of the book, is not something mystical that still has to be searched out from either heaven or from someone who has returned from the dead.  It is a message from heaven already given by Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead.  The message was near them and should even have been in their own hearts and mouths.  Paul gives the Gospel message in very simple terms in verses 9 & 10.

The Simplicity of the Salvation.

Verses 9-10 says, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.” 

The message is simple.  

The correct confession

And heart belief

Will result in

The salvation

Of the individual.

As with Abraham (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3), God reckons or counts belief as righteousness.  This heart belief and not mere intellectual assent, but something that is held to as true by thought and will which in turn generates motives for action. Confession is the outward expression of the core belief of the heart.  Jesus stated in Matthew 15:18 that the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart.  In Matthew 10:32-33 Jesus said, “Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven.  But whoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.”  Confession
is the response of belief.  Belief brings righteousness, and confession confirms that belief, resulting in salvation.

Now these truths that are believed and confessed

Are significant and by their very nature life changing.

Too often in American Christianity we find that they are treated as incidental or trivial truths.  Too many people profess Jesus as their Savior, yet live lives that are in contradiction to what they say they believe.  What then is the significance of confessing Jesus as Lord and believing God has raised Him from the dead?

As I pointed out yesterday . . .

To confess Jesus as Lord

Is to agree with God that Jesus

Is deity and your Master

With all the ramifications

That come with it.

The term “Lord” here is not a simple reference to deity because that is not how Paul uses the term in this context.  In addition, even if you wanted the term to be just a reference to deity, that does not remove the obligation for obedience.  God by His very nature is Master and His creatures are obligated to obey Him.

To believe in your heart that Jesus was raised from the dead encompasses all that Scripture says concerning Jesus’ death and resurrection.  It includes the purpose of Jesus death as an atonement for sin, and His resurrection from the dead according to His own prophecy (John 10:17-18; Mark 8:31).  Paul makes that clear in other passages dealing with the beliefs necessary for salvation.

The Offer of Salvation.

God has brought the message of salvation through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ near to man.  He has not left it as some mystical truth that can only be known through great effort.  Man is responsible for the message he has been given. God is just in this because not only has the Gospel message been openly proclaimed, but it is a message that is given to all.  Look at verses 11-13, “For the Scripture says, ‘Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.’  For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, abounding in riches for all who call upon Him; for ‘Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.’  How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed?  And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard?  And how shall they hear without a preacher?  And how shall they preach unless they are sent?  Just as it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of good things!’”

The Universal Offer.

Notice in verses 11-13 that the offer is made universally.  It is “whosoever believes” and “whosoever calls.”  The universal nature of the offer is emphasized by Paul’s statement that there is no difference between the Jews and the Greek in this, for the Lord has always had the same rich grace to all that would call upon Him.  The Scripture referenced in verse 11 is Isaiah 28:16.  

The offer of salvation to the Gentile

Was not something new,

But something that existed

In the Old Testament.

In fact, part of the responsibility that the nation of Israel had as God’s chosen people was to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation that would proclaim the true God to the other nations (Exodus 19:6; Isaiah 3:21).  God had said when He made His covenant with Abraham, that through Abraham all the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3).

The Jews had responded negatively to the Gospel message Paul was proclaiming, because they were hostile to the idea of the Gentiles being included.  They, like all other people, were ethnocentric.  They viewed themselves as the best of all peoples, and so they wanted to be the exclusive people of God and keep the blessings for themselves instead of sharing them with others.  The book of Jonah is a good example of both God’s mercy toward Gentiles and Jewish exclusiveness.

Recall that God told the prophet Jonah to go to Ninevah, the capital of the Assyrian empire and warn them to repent or God would judge them.  The Assyrians had made many raids into Israel by that time, and so the Jewish people had a hatred for them. Jonah wanted God to destroy the Assyrians, and so he wanted no part in warning them of how to avoid it.  Instead of going to Ninevah, Jonah gets on a ship and heads the opposite direction.  But it is not wise to refuse to do what God tells you to do.  God caused a great storm to occur that threatened to destroy the ship.  Jonah told the ships’ crew that the storm would stop if they would throw him overboard.  They continued to fight the storm as best they could, but finally in desperation they followed Jonah’s advice and tossed him over.

That should have been the end of Jonah, but God still wanted him to go to Ninevah, so he had prepared a great fish that swallowed Jonah and transported him back to the shore where it spit him up.  Jonah got the point and went to Ninevah where he reluctantly warned them of God’s impending judgment.  They repented and God turned away from His fierce anger against them.  That bothered Jonah because he wanted the Assyrians to be destroyed by God, and as he states in 4:2, “I knew that You are a  gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, and one who relents concerning calamity.”

That is the nature of God.  He cannot be accused of being unjust in His judgement of sinners, for He has offered salvation to all.  Man is responsible to respond to that offer. Many other Scriptures make this same point: Jesus’ death as an atonement for sin is sufficient for all.

• John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
• Jon 5:24, “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”
• John 6:40, “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him, may have eternal life; and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.”
• John 8:51, “Verily, verily, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he shall never see death.”
• John 11:25, “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die.”
• In Acts 17:22-31 Paul instructs the Athenians about the Unknown God to whom they had made an altar, and he tells them that this God, who made the world and all things in it, who is Lord of heaven and earth, “Having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all everywhere should repent.”  God commands people to turn from their false gods to Him.  The Gospels and Epistles are full of declarations of God’s offer of salvation to all who will believe in Jesus Christ.
• 2 Peter 3:9 tells us that “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”  It is God’s moral will that all respond positively to His offer of salvation.
• 1 John 2:2 says of Jesus, “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for [those of] the whole world.”

As we have seen in Romans 8 and 9, God is sovereign in salvation, but here in Romans 10 we find that God has made a genuine offer of salvation to “whosoever will.”  Man is responsible for his response to the message of salvation.  

While God’s sovereignty and His universal offer

Seem to be opposites to our finite minds,

They are not to God’s infinite mind.  

The failure for men to be saved

Does not rest in God or

Anything that He has done,

But rather the responsibility

Rests upon man.

The offer is there,

And it is genuine,

And it is not that man

Cannot turn to Christ and believe,

But rather that because of his sinful nature,

Man absolutely will not believe

Unless God sovereignly intervenes.  

All man has to do is to

Call upon the name of the Lord

To be saved (verse 13).  

The idea of this would be a desperate cry out for help to God such as given by the tax-gatherer in Luke 18 who was beating his breast saying, “Be merciful to me, the sinner.” But man will not do this on his own because it is foolishness to him (1 Corinthians 2:14).

God has provided the means of salvation to men.  The message is simple and God has brought it to man.  God has made a universal offer to all men.  But some might still object saying that a universal offer is not worth much if the message is not told to everyone.  

In verses 14 and 15 we find that God has sent out His messengers and in verse 18 we find that they have proclaimed that message throughout the earth.

Provision of Messengers.

Verses 14-15 state, “How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed?  And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard?  And how shall they hear without a preacher?  And how shall they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring glad tidings of good things!’”  Paul brings up all the objections that could be made and then states that it has been fulfilled just as Isaiah 52:7 says.  Of course, this is not a praise of the messenger’s physical feet, but of the joy that comes with the Good News that the messenger has brought.  At that time, you got from place to place by walking or running. When someone arrived bearing Good News, you welcomed everything about them. Even their dirty feet seemed beautiful.  It is still the same way today.  Even though I think the UPS truck itself is pretty ugly, I like seeing it pull up.  You probably do too.  Why?  Because they usually bring good things.  But we can be a bit ambivalent toward the mail carrier because it could be good news, or it could be bills.

That is how it is for those who declare the Gospel message.  To those who understand it and receive it is great news and the messenger is given high regard.  Think back to those that shared the message of salvation with you, and what your regard for them became when you finally understood what Jesus had done for you, and you were forgiven your sins.  Of course, those that do not understand the message or reject it are not so favorably inclined to the messenger.  Perhaps that is why so many Christians are hesitant to tell others about Jesus Christ.  Most people do not respond positively to the Gospel.

Rejection & Responsibility.

Verses 16-18 declare, “But they have not all obeyed the Gospel.  For Isaiah says, ‘Lord, who has believed our report?’  So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.  But I say, have they not heard?  Yes, indeed: ‘Their voice has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”  These verses teach us two things . . .

Rejection.

Paul again quotes from Isaiah.  This time from 53:1.  The news of Jesus Christ and what He has done for us are the Good News of the Gospel.  He has proven His love for us.  He has paid the price of our sins.  He offers eternal life which will break the bondage to sin to everyone who will place their faith in Him.  Some will heed the report of what the Lord has done and believe thus becoming new creations in Christ.  But most will not.  In His “Sermon on the Mount,” Jesus said, “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide, and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and many are those who enter by it.  For the gate is small, and the way is narrow that leads to life, and few are those who find it.”  That truth has not changed in our day.  The Gospel message goes forth, but most people still reject it.

Responsibility.

But let’s back up a minute and consider the rhetorical questions Paul presented in verses 14 and 15, “How then shall they call upon Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard?  And how shall they hear without a preacher?  And how shall they preach unless they are sent?” Add to this verse 17, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”

If people are going to

Respond to the gospel,

They first need to hear it.

They cannot call on someone they have not believed, and they cannot believe if they do not hear, and they cannot hear if someone does not tell them.  The word “preacher” in verse 14 is from “karusso” meaning “one who heralds or proclaims.”  A herald was sent with a message.  God has sent His heralds to proclaim His message.

There are two important points for us to consider in this . . .

1) Do not confuse the preacher/herald here with the office of pastor.  

Some have used this text to try to bolster the importance and authority of the pastor, but that would be contrary to the meaning of this passage.  As a pastor, I preach, but I am not the only one that is to be proclaiming the truths of God.  That is something that is the responsibility of every Christian.  Every single one of us reading this blog that know the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior are to be proclaiming Him to others.  It is not just the responsibility of the pastor and the evangelist.

2) What then is this idea of the preacher/herald having to be sent in verse 15?  

It is not the idea of being sent by a church or a mission board.  Those would be foreign to the context.  It is the idea that any herald was sent to proclaim the message given to them by someone else.  They were not to proclaim whatever was on their mind.  They were to proclaim the message of the one that sent them.  Who has sent us?  More specifically, who has sent you to proclaim the Gospel message?  Your Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.  That is the Great Commission.  You do not need my permission as the pastor of this church to do that.  I am only the undershepherd.  Your true shepherd, our true pastor, the Lord Jesus Christ has already told you to do that.

I cannot stress this fact enough.  

If people are going to hear the Gospel,

Then it will occur only because

God’s people told them

The message of Jesus Christ.

Even if your church were able to hire an evangelist, his job would be to train you to tell people the Gospel, not to fulfill your responsibilities for you.

The question that every Christian

Must answer then is this.

Who are you telling?  

You are God’s herald.  

Who are you proclaiming Him to?

Do not slip into the mindset of our society that is so self-centered where life revolves around doing what you like and being with the people who make you feel comfortable. The Christian is to be constantly making new relationships through which they can proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.

The fact is that God will get His message out even as verse 18 states.  They have heard for the sound of God’s messengers has gone to the ends of the earth.  Paul already said in Romans 1:20 that the Creation declares enough about God that all men are left without excuse for not seeking Him.  But the Lord has gone much further than that by declaring Himself to all people through His heralds.  God gives the Christian the privilege of being His herald.  It is your loss of being fruitful and fulfilling the purpose of your life if you refuse or fail to be and do what God wants you to be and do.  

Yes, you will suffer for Christ’s sake when you strive to live in godliness.  But the suffering of living in ungodliness is worse.  In addition, you also receive the blessings of having “beautiful feet” to those who do hear and heed God’s message from you.

There is no injustice with God in His condemnation of the unrighteous and the ungodly. God has sent His heralds to proclaim forgiveness of sin through Jesus Christ.  The message of salvation has gone out to all.  It is a message that offers forgiveness of sin to all.  It is a message that is simple, understandable, and near to all men.  Man is responsible for his own rejection of that message.

God’s Faithfulness.

God’s faithfulness is further seen in verse 19-21.  The mercy He has shown to the Gentiles was also a means to provoke Israel to hear, heed, and believe.  He has also continued to persevere in declaring Himself to Israel despite their rebellion against Him. Paul reiterates that in these verses, “But I say, surely Israel did not know, did they?  At the first Moses says, ‘I will make you jealous by that which is not a nation, by a nation without understanding will I anger you.’  And Isaiah is very bold and says, “’I was found by those who sought Me not, I became manifest to those who did not ask for Me.’  But as for Israel He says, ‘All the day long I have stretched out My hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.’”  In these verses we learn about . . .

Mercy to Gentiles.

The quote in verse 19 is from Deuteronomy 32:21.  Fifteen hundred years before Paul turned to the Gentiles (Acts 13:46) with the Gospel message, Moses had revealed that God would do this.  While it is a great mercy to the Gentiles, it was also designed to provoke Israel.  Israel did know God and His message of salvation of righteousness through faith.  But most of them rejected it, and so refused to tell others.  They were without excuse.

Isaiah also foretold that this would happen.  The quote in verse 20 is from Isaiah 65:1. God would reveal Himself to the Gentiles even though they had not sought Him.  The context of that passage shows that this would be done because of Israel’s rejection of the Lord.

Paul uses the quote from Moses to represent the law,

And Isaiah to represent the prophets.

It was no surprise to God that Israel would reject Him, and in that rejection He would show mercy to the Gentiles.

Mercy to Israel.

Verse 22, which is a quote of Isaiah 65:2, shows that even in the midst of Israel’s rejection of the Lord, the Lord was still merciful to Israel.  They were a disobedient and obstinate people, yet the Lord continued to “stretch out His hands to them.”  This in itself was an act of great mercy.  Justice would have allowed Him to destroy them, but mercy compelled Him to continue to reveal Himself to them and offer them forgiveness.  Tomorrow we will see that even with all this, only a remnant would hear, heed, and follow God.  The rest would suffer the Lord’s condemnation.

God is loving, merciful, gracious, kind, and longsuffering.  He declares His plan of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ to all men.  He then patiently endures man’s rejection of that message and continued rebellion against Him.  But eventually, God’s holiness, righteousness and justice compel Him to judge the wicked and condemn them.

Any charge that God is unjust in His dealings with man is unfounded.  Man is responsible for his own rejection of God’s offer of salvation.  God continues to demonstrate Himself to be merciful.  His sovereign intervention in choosing some for salvation is only a greater extension of that mercy.  God is sovereign.  He is just.  He is merciful.

This is God Word …

This is Grace for your Journey …

Rest and Rejoice in this eternal truth!

Pastor Terry

Ephesians 4:7 – “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Grace For The Journey

Over the past several days, as we have been studying Romans 8 & 9, we have seen Paul emphasize God’s sovereignty in salvation as a means to encourage and comfort believers.  Those who have placed their faith in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ have been delivered from their bondage to sin and its condemnation of death and made free to live by the Spirit of God in righteousness.  The new nature that we receive at salvation makes us aliens and strangers in the very world to which we were born.  We have an increasing longing to depart from this world and be with our Savior in heaven, where our citizenship now resides.

God’s sovereignty guarantees that the promises

That He has made us will come true.

Salvation of the individual begins with God’s foreknowledge, which results in His predestination, which results in His calling and His justification and those in turn will conclude in that person’s glorification.  There is no circumstance that can separate us from the love of Christ.  There is no entity, past, present, or future, that can separate us from the love of God.  What began in eternity past and has come to past in the present is absolutely guaranteed in eternity future because God is omniscient, omnipotent, and sovereign.

These truths would have caused questions among the Jews about God’s faithfulness to Israel.  Since all of Israel was not saved, was God just in His dealings with them.  Paul spends chapters 9, 10 and 11 dealing with God’s relationship with Israel, and in so doing Paul demonstrates God’s justice, His faithfulness, and His future plan for His chosen people.

Paul greatly longed for the salvation of his “kinsmen according to the flesh,” and it greatly grieved him that the vast majority of them were not saved.  But this did not in any way mean that God was unjust towards them.  Paul uses God’s sovereignty to show this in chapter 9, and in chapter 10, our passage for study in today’s blog, Paul will use their responsibility to prove God’s righteous dealing with Israel.

In chapter 9, Paul shows that God sovereignly choose Abraham to bestow His blessing upon him.  God then choose Isaac to be the son of promise and not Ishmael or any of his other sons through Keturah.  God then choose Jacob to be the next son of promise and not Esau.  These were not choices God made based on anything in those chosen, either good or bad.  God has not told us His reasons.  It was simply His desire according to His own good pleasure.

That does not sit well with us humans

Because we want to be autonomous

And make our own decisions.  

We do not like the idea

Of being subjected to

The sovereign will of another.

Some have used this to say that God is unjust if this is the way it is, because no one can resist His will and therefore it is God’s fault if someone is not saved.

Paul gives two answers to this charge.  First, (9:20-21) man is a creature that has no right to challenge what God, who as creator, has the right to do, and He may do whatever He desires.  Second, there can be no justified claim that God is unjust when in fact God’s actions show that He has been merciful to all.  God has the right to cast the unrighteous into Hell immediately, but instead He mercifully endures them with great patience.  He uses them for His own glory despite their rebellion against Him.  God also extends mercy to “vessels of mercy” to whom He makes known the riches of His glory.

In the rest of chapter 9, Paul demonstrates the outworking of these truths to both the Jews and Gentiles.  Some gentiles have received the blessing of being vessels of mercy and have been included as part of God’s people.  Many Jews have rejected God’s plan and remain as vessels of wrath, though God has always and will always keep a remnant of Jews that belong to Him as vessels of mercy.

This now brings up other questions.

• What is man’s responsibility in salvation?  
• Can God be just if He does not give people a fair opportunity to become a “vessel of mercy?”
• What about all the people that are very religious and claim to be seeking God?  
• What about the Jews that have been so diligent to keep God’s law?

Paul answers these questions in chapter 10.  He does not back down from God’s sovereignty in the least, but he does clearly show that man is responsible to respond to the mercy that has been shown to him.  Israel has been zealous for God, but they have been ignorant of true righteousness.  They have sought to earn it instead of accepting it by faith.  They have been given the message, but they have rejected it.

Paul’s Desire.

What Paul has said in Romans 9 is offensive to most Jews.  What he’s about to say in Romans 10 about their stubbornness in their ignorance is even more offensive, so Paul begins the section with a statement to reassure them his desire toward them.  Verse 1 says, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation.”  This continues to be Paul’s great desire just as he had expressed at the beginning of chapter 9.  Note as well here that the doctrine of God’s sovereignty in salvation has not changed in the least with Paul’s yearning to see his fellow Jews come to salvation in Christ. On this basis . . .

I think it can be said categorically,

That if your belief in God’s election

Ever causes you to be less zealous

For the salvation of the lost,

Then you do not yet fully

Understand God or this doctrine.

If a person is indifferent toward the unsaved, then they themselves are comatose or dead spiritually, or they are believing a false doctrine, or both.  

A proper understanding

Of the doctrine of election

Does not reduce

Evangelistic zeal.

It did not in Paul.  It should not in anyone else.

Religious Ignorance.

What Paul states in verses 2 and 3 is the very life that he had previously lived.  He has great compassion on those still in that state, “For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge.  For not knowing about God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.” 

Zeal without Knowledge – Verses 2-3.

Zeal is an emotional fervor, a passionate pursuit toward something.  To have such zeal for God and at the same time to be ignorant of God and what He desires is a great, great tragedy.  Paul’s reference here would refer to so many Jews that he personally knew that were still like he used to be.  They still believed with all their hearts that they were pleasing to God with all their efforts to keep the law, some even believing they were actually doing so.  They thought God was pleased with them for achieving righteousness.  The truth, however, was the opposite.  They were ignorant of the true nature of righteousness before God and so did not submit to it.  Instead, many were wrapped up in their own self-righteousness and would look down upon or even persecute those who did not agree with them and pursue those same standards.  Paul had previously been a zealous persecutor of Christians because of this (Galatians 1:13).

But it is not just Jews that fall into this trap.  The Jews were self-righteousness based on their adherence to the Mosaic Law.  Paul has already stated in Romans 2 that there are many others that think themselves to be righteous before God because of they are zealous keep their own standards of conduct.  Then there are those Jesus warned about in Matthew 7 that would believe themselves to be righteous despite their disobedience to His commands.  Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’  And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”  Their manner of life demonstrated they did not love Jesus, for those who love Him and keep His commandments (John 14:15).  They thought they were righteous before God because of the ministry they were doing in Jesus’ name.

In all these cases, the people are self-righteous and ignorant of true righteousness that can only come through faith in Jesus Christ.  Paul points this out in verse 4 and 5.

Righteousness of the Law.

Verses 4-5 declare, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.  For Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on law shall live by that righteousness.”  As Paul has already pointed out in Romans 3:28, man is justified, or made righteous before God, by faith apart from works of the law.  If a man is striving to become righteous through the law, then they must not fail at any point for they will be judged by that law.  Paul refers to Moses statement in Leviticus 18:5 as proof for this.  Paul has already stated in chapter 2 that those who do not have the Mosaic law will be judged and condemned by the law of their conscience. They do not keep the basic aspects of the law that God has placed into the conscience of all people, nor do they keep even the standards they have set up for themselves.  No one will ever be able to justify themselves before God by the works of the law because they fail to keep the law and their works condemn them (Galatians 2:16; Revelation 20:12-13).

Since righteousness before God cannot be earned, it must be attained on another basis.  That basis is faith in Jesus Christ for He “is end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”  In other words . . .

Jesus Christ is the end of a person’s futile effort

To achieve their own righteousness before God.  

Instead, the righteousness of Christ

Is imputed, or attributed to the believer.

This is the righteousness of faith that Paul has been talking about since the beginning of the book.

Paul speaks more of this in verses 6-10.

The Righteousness of Faith.

Verses 5-10 say, “But the righteousness based on faith speaks thus, ‘Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down), or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).  But what does it say? ‘The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart’ – that is, the word of faith which we are preaching, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus [as] Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”

The Humility of Faith – Verses 6-8.

One of the first things we notice

About the righteousness that is

Based on faith is that it is simple

And it is something that is received as a gift.

It is not a difficult thing to understand or attain.

The righteousness of works is proud and must work through difficulty to achieve for itself.  Paul refers to Deuteronomy 30:11-14 here in verses 6, 7, and 8 but modifies them for his own purpose by including his own parenthetical comments about their meaning.  In the Deuteronomy passage, Moses explains to the people that the Word of God has now been brought to them so that they may know and observe it.  The commands of God were no longer too difficult or out of reach.  They did not need to send someone to heaven to bring back to them God’s will, neither did they need to send to a far-off land to find someone who would teach them about God.  The law of God had now been given to them through Moses.

What they had sought for had already been given and was embodied in the command to love the Lord God, walk in His ways, and keep His commandments.  The righteousness of works rejects the obvious to seek for something that must still be hidden, for their conscience still reminds them that there is a sin problem that has not gone away.

Paul explains here that . . .

The righteousness of faith does not

Need to seek out further

Revelation regarding salvation.  

They do not need to try

To get the Messiah, the Christ,

To come from heaven to tell them

What good thing they must do,

Or to search among the dead

To find the Christ and bring Him back

To tell them how to be saved

From God’s condemnation.  

The message has already been given

And it was now near them,

In their mouth and heart.  

It is the message that Paul

Has been proclaiming

Throughout this book.  

The righteousness of faith

Accepts the message

For what it is.  

It is a message from heaven

For Jesus descended from there

To proclaim God’s will to us.  

It is a message from one who

Has been raised from the dead

So that we might know how

To conquer death through Him.

It is the gospel message that Paul has been preaching.  What is the expression and belief of the gospel message?

The Expression and Belief of Faith.

Verses 9-10 say, “That if you confess with your mouth Jesus [as] Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”  

That is the gospel message in brief.  

The righteousness of faith

Concerns the individual’s response

To the person and work

Of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In verse 9, Paul uses the order given in Deuteronomy 30:14 which he quotes in verse 8 in expressing the person’s response to Jesus Christ.  In verse 10, Paul reverses it into the chronological order by which salvation comes to an individual.

Confession means to “speak the same thing” or “agree with.”  In this case, to agree with God by stating it yourself with your mouth the specific truth that Jesus is Lord.  Belief is the assent of the mind to the truth of a declaration or proposition.  In this case it is an acknowledgment of the declaration that God has raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Paul adds here that this is a belief of the heart in order to distinguish from a mere intellectual assent.  We tend to us the term “heart” allegorically as a reference to emotion, but to the Jews, the term referred to the deepest, innermost aspect of a man’s personhood in which resided the thought, will, and motives of the individual.  It represented the core of that person’s being.

Paul states unequivocally that the

Correct confession and heart belief

Will result in the salvation of the individual.  

In both the confession and the belief

There are core truths that must be held

By the individual if they are to be saved.

In verse 10 Paul explains how this works.

As with Abraham (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3), God reckons, or counts, belief as righteousness.  Again, this is heart belief and not mere intellectual assent.  It is something that is held to as true by thought and will which in turn generates motives for action.  

Confession is the outward expression

Of the core belief of the heart.

Jesus stated in Matthew 15:18 that the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart.  In Matthew 10:32-33 Jesus said, “Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven.  But whoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.”

Confession is the response of belief.  

Belief brings righteousness, and

Confession confirms that belief,

Resulting in salvation.

Now these truths that are believed and confessed are significant and by their very nature life changing.  Too often in American Christianity we find that they are treated as incidental or trivial truths.  Too many people profess Jesus as their Savior, yet live lives that are in contradiction to what they say they believe.  What then is the significance of confessing Jesus as Lord and believing God has raised Him from the dead?

There is a large section of American Christianity that teaches that confessing Jesus as Lord is not a big deal.  They pass it off as an intellectual acknowledgment that Jesus is God with little or no consequences in the life.  Not only is that idea not true, it is utterly silly.  The supposed justification by those promoting this idea is to protect the Gospel from any works-based righteousness.  They argue that if salvation was dependent on people confessing Jesus as Lord in the sense of a master who is to be obeyed, then works are added into the Gospel message.  Since salvation is based on grace alone through faith alone (Ephesians 2), then any requirement of salvation that demands people will obey Christ must be rejected.  Again, not only is that blatantly wrong, it is also plainly silly.

For the sake of argument, let me agree for the moment that the term “Lord” here is only a reference to Jesus’ deity.  If that is true, then I have a very simple question.  

What sort of God are you confessing

If you also think obedience to Him is optional?  

What sort of God is it that is not also master?  

The answer.  He is not God at all.  

God by His very nature and attributes

Is master over everything.  

The true God is Lord

Without any qualifiers.

Those who claim the term “Lord” here is only a reference to Jesus’ deity without respect to any demand of obedience have created for themselves a false God not worthy of worship.  Their belief is on par with that of the demons who also believe and confess that Jesus is God (James 2:19), except perhaps that the demons have a better understanding because they also confess Jesus’ authority over them.  An example of this is in Matthew 8:31 where the demons entreat Jesus that if He was going to cast them out of the man, to send them into the swine, which Jesus then did.

There are also those who will say that “Lord” here is only a title of respect, much in the same way “Lord” is used as a title in England to this very day for certain noblemen and those holding certain offices.  They also reject that “Lord” carries any meaning of required obedience too.  Confession of Jesus as Lord in that sense will not result in salvation, because such a Christ would not have the ability to save.

The sense of “Lord” here

Is a reference to both

Jesus deity and the position of Master

That He has because He is God.

In the book of Romans alone, Paul has already asserted the Deity and Lordship of Jesus Christ.  Back in Romans 1:1-4 Paul asserts Jesus deity as the “son of God.”  Paul continues to assert Jesus as the son of God throughout the book (1:9; 5:10; 8:3,29,32; 9:9).  Could Jesus nature as master be asserted any better than Romans 6 in which Paul proclaims that the purpose of our salvation was to free us from slavery to sin and enslave us to God and righteousness?  What meaning would there be to Paul’s struggle against sin explained in Romans 7 if obedience to Jesus Christ is of little consequence.  Or what do you then do to Paul’s statement in Romans 8 that the mind set on the flesh is death (verse 6) if having a mindset on the Spirit with its resultant obedience to Christ in putting to death the deeds of the flesh (verse 13) is optional?

Or perhaps it would be best to go back to Jesus’ own declarations.  Jesus accepts the title “Son of God” in the sense of deity and uses it of Himself in many passages (Matthew 16:16; 26:63-64; Luke 22:70; John 1:34,49; 3:18; 5:25; 11:4) and continually referred to God as His Father (Matthew 7:21; 10:32; 11:27; 16:17; 20:23; 26:53; etc.). Jesus even calls Himself by God’s covenant name of “I am” for which the Jews sought to stone Him for blasphemy (John 8:58).  Jesus demonstrated the attributes of deity including authority over nature (Mark 4:41); disease (Matthew 4:24); demons (Matthew 8:31ff); and even death (John 11).

In regards to Jesus as Master He demands it all by virtue of who He is (Philippians 2:10), and requires it from His followers as evidence of their relationship with Him. Jesus plainly told His disciples that those that loved Him would keep His commandments, and that those that did not love Him would not keep His commandments (John 14:15, 24).  Jesus commanded His followers that because all authority was given to Him, they were to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe (obey) all that He had commanded.  In Matthew 7:21-23, which we looked at earlier, Jesus plainly states that even those who profess to minister in His name but who in fact practice lawlessness will be cast out from His presence because He never knew them.

All that to say this . . .

Confessing Jesus as Lord is to agree with

All that God has revealed about Jesus

As deity, sinless man, Savior and Master.

The term “Lord” must be applied in this verse is the same way it is applied to Jesus throughout the book of Romans and the rest of Scripture.  You cannot change the meaning to suit what you would like it to be.

Let me quickly add here that the statements concerning confession with the mouth do not exclude those who are mute.  That would seem like something obvious, but there are those that might think that.  There are also those that have used this verse to teach that a person can be saved if they can just get them to say the words.  That is not true either.

The reason that Paul refers to the mouth is because that is in keeping with his quote from Deuteronomy 30:14. 

The point of it is the personal response

To the person and work of Jesus Christ.

If you believe in Christ, then there is

An outward proclamation of that belief.

A person who cannot speak could do that through writing or drawing or whatever means by which they can communicate.  A person that can speak that refuses to confess Jesus as Lord with the mouth is a different issue.  They demonstrate that following Jesus is not as important to them as something else whether that be fear or pride.  Their actions prove that they in fact do not believe Jesus is who He claims to be, otherwise they would seek His favor above all else.

In regards to those who think that saying the words are enough, and I had a friend in college that got mixed up with such a group, such is pure nonsense even in keeping with the passage because there also has to be heart belief.  Paul will point this out in verse 13 and 14 that you cannot call upon a being in whom you do not believe.

The belief that Jesus rose from the dead

Is also important for it also encompasses

All that Scripture says concerning

Jesus’ death and resurrection.

In other words, it is not an equivalent to believing Lazarus was raised from the dead, but it encompasses the purpose of Jesus death as an atonement, for sin and His resurrection from the dead according to His own prophecy (Mark 8:31; John 10:17-18).

Well, I did not get as far this morning as I had originally planned.  Tomorrow we will finish this chapter and see further that man is responsible for his own response to the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Today we only got as far as the widespread ignorance of not only the Jews, but so many other people who continue to believe that they can attain a righteous standing before God by their good works.  In pursuing their own self-righteousness they do not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. The truth is that they will be held to the standard of righteousness of the law they are seeking to practice, and that law will condemn them, for sin causes everyone to fail to even keep the law of conscience, much less God’s revealed law.

The nature of the righteousness of God is found in faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  God has revealed the truth to us and placed it within reach.  God reckons faith in Jesus Christ to count for righteousness before Him.  That faith reveals its belief in Jesus’ atonement for sin and resurrection through a confession of who Jesus is. He is the true God in human flesh to whom obedience is due.  The obedience of the Christian is not given to earn salvation, but as a response to righteousness already given.

Tomorrow we will find in the second half of chapter 10 even more reason that man is responsible for his salvation.  The message of the Gospel is a universal offer of salvation and man is responsible for his own rejection of that offer.  God’s merciful character is seen in His continuing patient endurance of those who have rejected Him, and in the fact that He will keep His promises despite our failures.

This is God Word …

This is Grace for your Journey …

Rest and Rejoice in this eternal truth!

Pastor Terry

Ephesians 4:7 – “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

This morning we come another passage that is very theologically deep and often misunderstood.  As I have said over the past few weeks, I believe the reason for the misunderstanding is that theologians . . .

Want to understand the infinite God

Within a framework that

They can comprehend.  

The result is that they

Interpret Scriptures within the

Logic of their theological framework

Instead of what those Scriptures

Actually reveal about God.

We must always remember that God is beyond us.  His ways are higher than our ways and often beyond our understanding (Isaiah 55:9).  He does not have to make logical sense to us.  We need to accept and believe what He has revealed about Himself in the Scriptures.  Please keep that in mind this morning as we study the last half of Romans 9.  While I hope to help you understand what God has said in this passage, I know that you may still have difficulty trying to make sense of it all, for . . .

When we come to the issue of God’s election

And man’s responsibility for his

Own choices, both are true.

The Argument.

Yesterday we examined Romans 9:18-19 and God’s sovereign choice of Israel to be His people.  God did not do this because of anything special about that nation.  In fact, many of the Scriptures that comment on this make it clear that God chose them despite their good qualities (Deuteronomy 4:37-39; 9:5-6; Deuteronomy 10:14,15). Throughout this passage . . .

Paul does not shy away from

A clear declaration that God

Is sovereign in His choices.

God choose Isaac and not Ishmael to be the son of Promise. God then choose Jacob and not Esau to be the next son of Promise.  Despite any claims Arabic or Islamic people may make, the blessings of God, including the ancient lands of Abraham, belong to the Jewish people and not to them.  God has compassion and mercy on who He decides to extend it, and like He did to Pharaoh, God is also free to harden those who resist Him as He desires for His own purposes.  Whether we like it or not, God is sovereign in what He does.

But this immediately brings up an argument against God’s justice.  Paul states the argument that he knows will be in the minds of some in verse 19, “You will say to me then, ‘Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?’”  In other words, how can God be just if He determines our eternal destiny?  Because God is omniscient and omnipotent, all knowing and all powerful, no one can successfully resist God’s will.  In the end, God always wins.  If man does not make his own choice about his eternal destiny, then it is not fair for God to find fault with him and punish him for something he did not have a choice in.

That argument is still around today in full force.  I pointed this out a few days ago when I explained what Arminian theology and those arguing for the idea of “Open Theism” believe.  Arminians, and others, reject God’s sovereign election in salvation and change it to God choosing by His omniscience those who would choose Him.  In effect, they make man sovereign in choosing their own salvation.  The “Open Theists” go beyond this by claiming that God is also bound by time, and therefore, they reduce God’s foreknowledge to foresight.  Man chooses and God responds with His own choice.

But the plain reading of Romans 8 and 9 makes it clear that God’s foreknowledge is much, much more than foresight.  Roman’s 8 magnifies God’s sovereignty in both His actions that bring salvation to an individual – foreknowledge, predestination, calling, and justification; as well as the absolute guarantee of fulfilling His promise to fulfill all of salvation in glorification.  No circumstance, no entity, nothing at all can separate us from God’s love.  What God has begun in us, He will complete (Philippians 1:6).  When we add in Paul’s comment about the timing of God’s work in our salvation that “He choose us in Him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4), then it is clear that we did not choose first. Jesus’ statement in John 6:44-45 that, “No one can come to Him unless the Father draws him” and the statement in 1 John 4:19 that, “We love God, because He first loved us,” make it clear that man’s choice is a response to God’s choice, and not the other way around.

What then is the answer to the charge of God being unjust if man does not have free will, autonomy, to make his own choice?

The Answer.

Paul answers the charges in verses 20-29 by explaining God’s rights as Creator, God’s patient endurance of the wicked, God’s glory in extending mercy, and then giving examples of this among both Jews and Gentiles.  Let’s first look . . .

God’s Right as Creator.

Verses 20-21 states, “On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it?  Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use, and another for common use?”  Whether you like it or not, God is the Creator and you are simply one of His creatures.  He has full right as the Creator to use you for whatever He desires.  In addition, God would be just regardless of whatever decision He does make concerning you.

Paul’s analogy here about the potter having the right over the clay he is working with is one that God had used before in explaining things to Israel.  In both Isaiah (64:6-8) and Jeremiah (18:3-16), the people are reminded that they are the clay, and God is the potter who can deal with them as He desires.  This analogy is also something all those in the ancient Roman world would have understood.

Potters and pottery were a part of everyday life.  Today, we usually buy pots and such from a retail store.  Unless we go to places like Silver Dollar City, we never meet, much less see the potter at work.  But back then, pots were usually bought at the marketplace from the potter or his representative, or directly from the potter at the place where he was busy making pots.  He could have been the guy that lived just down the street or next door.  Everyone had seen potters take a lump of clay, divide it into several parts and then proceed to make one clump of it into a beautiful vase for holding wine, juice or milk, and then from another piece of the same lump of clay, he would make a common wash pot.  What each piece of clay was made into was totally up to the discretion of the potter.  You could use any modern analogy you want to get the same point across.

From the same pad of paper, one sheet could be used to compose a beautiful poem extolling the virtues of your spouse or children, and the next sheet is used to compose a shopping list of cleaning supplies.  Cotton is harvested from the same field.  Part of it is manufactured into beautiful cloth that is made into curtains to decorate the kitchen.  Part of it is made into common cloth that is used for dish rags.  An oak tree is cut down.  Part of it is made into a pulpit, another part is used to make shipping pallets, and some of it is burned up in a campfire.  Every person here understands that the clay, the paper, the cotton, and the tree are all used at the complete discretion of the one who has authority over them.  Those things have no right to say to the one using them, “Why did you make or use me like this?”  Neither does man possess the right to challenge God on what He decides to do with a person or how He wants to use them.

That thought does not sit well with us humans

Because we have an inherent desire to be autonomous,

And we resist, or outright reject anything that would be

Contrary to having the right and freedom to choose as we desire.

One of Satan’s lies that he used to deceive Eve was that if she would disobey God by eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, then she would be like God.  Man has continued to believe similar lies ever since.  He either wants to elevate himself to the position of God with authority over others, or bring God down to man’s level as a mean’s of denying God’s rightful authority over him, or it will be a combination of the two.

Praise the Lord that He did not let Paul end the discussion there.  That is the end of the discussion in Islam, for their false God is all powerful, but completely arbitrary in his dealings with people.  No matter what they do, they never know what Allah will do.  

While Paul makes sure we understand

The right of God as Creator to do

With us what He wishes,

He also goes on to give us some

Great insight into God’s dealings with man,

And we find that the true God is not arbitrary,

But rather, the true God is patient, just and merciful.

God’s Actual Dealings with Man.

Verses 22-24 state, “What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?  And [He did so] in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory. [even] us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.”  This is a rhetorical question that changes the thought by considering the answer to the question from a different angle.  Paul has made it clear that . . .

God has the right as the Creator to do as He pleases,

But what has God actually shown in His dealings with man?  

Can anyone have legitimate reason to complain about God

Being unjust when His actual actions toward man have shown

Him to extend to man unwarranted and unexpected grace and mercy?

While we all might like some complete explanation for why God has allowed evil to exist, God has chosen to not reveal the full answer to this point in time.  However, what He reveals here through Paul does give us at least two reasons for it even as Paul demonstrates God’s grace and mercy toward man.

His Wrath & Patient Endurance – Verse 22.

Paul first presents God’s dealings with wicked men.  He continues in the language of the analogy given in the previous verses and calls them “vessels of wrath.”  Paul’s argument here is that rather than God being unjust to the wicked, He has in fact shown great grace and mercy in His patient endurance of them, and in fact the only reason He has put up with them is because He has chosen to demonstrate His wrath and make His power known through them.

Go back and consider again the example of Pharaoh that Paul gave in verse 17.  Those who quickly glance over the Scriptures often conclude that God was unjust in punishing Pharaoh since God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  God seems almost cruel in telling Pharaoh that the very purpose He raised Pharaoh up was to “demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.”  God had revealed to Moses what would happen before Moses had even made it back to Egypt (Exodus 4:21-23), but the Lord did not say this to Pharaoh until there had already been six plagues, and Pharaoh had not been passive in his response to God in each of the plagues up to that point.

• Pharaoh’s heart was hardened when Aaron’s rod became a serpent and ate up those that Pharaoh’s magicians threw down (7:13).  
• Pharaoh’s heart was hardened at the turning of the water into blood (7:22).  
• Pharaoh hardened his heart at the plague of the frogs (8:15).  
• His heart was hardened at the plague of gnats (8:19).
• He hardened his heart again when Moses removed the plague (8:32).  
• Pharaoh’s heart was hardened once again when the Egyptian cattle died (9:7).  

It is not until the plague of boils that we find that “the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.”  It is only after all of this that God tells Pharaoh through Moses, “But, indeed, for this cause I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power, and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth.  Still you exalt yourself against My people by not letting them go.”

That is patient endurance of a stubborn and rebellious man.  God would not have even had to send the first plague as a warning before wiping Pharaoh and his kingdom out. He could have just sent Moses back with the orders and power to destroy Pharaoh from the beginning because Pharaoh had enslaved the Israelites.  It was an unwarranted and unexpected mercy for God to delay His final judgement at all, and to send the plagues as warnings of what was to come.  God only put up with Pharaoh’s insolent pride and rebellion because He had already determined that He would use Pharaoh as a means to demonstrate His wrath against sin and make His power known throughout the earth.

That is still true today . . .  

It is only the unwarranted mercy of God

That extends from His longsuffering

Patience that causes Him to delay

Final judgement on sinners even while

He seeks to bring them to repentance.

God is willing, not in the sense of indifference, but with a determined intent, to endure sinners for the present.  Peter warns in 2 Peter 3:9 that God’s patience with sinners should not be construed that He is slow to carry out His promises – of either blessing or destruction.  

God’s patience is extended because His desire is

For all to come to repentance instead of perishing.

Every breath that the unrepentant sinner takes is a demonstration of God’s mercy to him.  But at the same time there is a point at which that patience ends and the wrath of God is revealed. Never presume upon the mercy and patience of God.  You do not know when the mercy will cease and the hardening will take place.

God will glorify Himself through all men.  Those who repent and turn in faith to Jesus Christ for salvation from their sin will glorify God willingly.  Those who remain unrepentant will be forced to glorify God by bowing the knee and confessing Christ prior to their final judgement.  They will glorify God unwillingly through the demonstration of His righteous judgement of them.

Now some may still object at this point that it is not fair to punish people who were not chosen by God for salvation.  This idea is predicated on the idea that people are passive recipients of God’s decrees.  They will point out the last part of verse 22 as proof because in English it appears that they are passive recipients as “vessels of wrath fitted for destruction.”

However, in Greek, this verb is in the middle tense.  We do not have such a thing in English, so it is hard to translate it.  

• It is not active tense, by which the subject performs the action.  This would be the sinner preparing themselves for destruction.
• Nor is it passive, by which the subject has the action performed upon it.  This would be the sinner being prepared by an outside for destruction.  
• It is instead in the middle.  The subject, the sinner, the vessel of wrath, performs the action of preparing itself for destruction while at the same time there is a force that is concurrent in preparing it for destruction.  

That is in perfect keeping with the example of Pharaoh that was given earlier.

The sinner is not an innocent party that has been unfairly chosen by God to be a vessel of wrath.  The sinner is a guilty party that has actively brought condemnation upon themselves by their rebellion against God and to which God has concurred and sealed them as a vessel of wrath.  In mercy, God patiently endures them and their continuing sin and rebellion for the present even while He demonstrates His own glory through His righteous wrath upon them and proclaims His power through them.

His Glory And Mercy.

In verse 23, Paul further proclaims the grace and mercy of God by magnifying the riches of God’s glory which is made known to the “vessels of mercy” through the contrast to His wrath on the vessels prepared for destruction, “And He did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory.”  While the vessels of wrath have a part in their preparation for destruction, the vessels of mercy are prepared beforehand by God.  God is the one that has taken action upon them which in turn displays His glory.  This is not something they have done for themselves.  Believer’s are saved without merit of their own or for any work they have done.  Paul stated this directly in Titus 3:5, “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.”  

That is why believers must give

All praise and glory to God,

Because He choose you as a vessel

To receive His mercy despite

Your sinful character and works.

Mercy by definition is to have the punishment that is deserved withheld.  God couples this with His grace in extending to us blessings that we do not deserve.  Here in this verse, it is being the recipients of the riches of His glory.  The phrase, “the riches of His glory” refers to all the various blessings of salvation that Paul has already brought out that belong to those justified by faith in the Lord Jesus including our future glorification.  We have God’s mercy, compassion, love, grace, forgiveness of sin, justification, the Holy Spirit and His ministry, Jesus’ intercession, sanctification, progressively being conformed to the image of Christ, and the promises of inheritance in heaven are all part of riches of God’s glory made known to us.

Examples.

Paul does not leave this discussion as ethereal theology, but applies it directly to his readers, for as he says in verse 24, God’s mercy has been extended to “even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.”  Paul then gives two specific examples from the Old Testament.  One demonstrating God’s mercy that included the Gentiles in the plan of salvation, and the other showing God’s choosing of only a remnant of Israel.

Hosea – Gentiles Included – Verses 25-26.

Verses 25-26 says, “As He says also in Hosea, ‘I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’ And her who was not beloved, ‘beloved.’  And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not My people,’ There they shall be called sons of the living God.”  These quotes come from Hosea 2:23 and 1:9-10 respectively.

The Lord spoke through the prophet Hosea about His relationship to the nation of Israel. The nation had forsaken God with the result that the curses that God had warned them about even as early as Deuteronomy 27 and 28 came true.  God had already judged and scattered the northern ten tribes of Israel through the Assyrian captivity.  In Hosea, God is warning the two remaining tribes in Judah that the same was about to happen to them.  That judgement was carried out in the Babylonian captivity.  Yet, even in the warning of coming judgement there was hope given.  Though they would be estranged from God for a time.  Though Gentiles who would believe would be able to become part of God’s beloved people, Israel would eventually be restored to her place as God’s chosen people.  We will be examining these truths more closely in a few days in our study of Romans 11.

But for here, Paul is simply making the point that God’s mercy was extended even to the Gentiles, and that Israel, though under His judgement, would still receive His mercy.

Isaiah – Only a Remnant of Israel.

Paul explains further in verses 27-29, “And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel, ‘Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved; for the Lord will execute His word upon the earth, thoroughly and quickly.’  And just as Isaiah foretold, ‘Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left to us a posterity, we would
have become as Sodom, and would have resembled Gomorrah.’”  Paul is quoting from Isaiah 10:23 and 1:9 to demonstrate that only a remnant of Israel will receive this mercy from God.  The rest will receive His wrath.  In Israel then, there is an illustration of both vessels of mercy and vessels of wrath.  They were all deserving of God’s wrath, yet He still extended mercy to a remnant.

The claim that there is injustice with God because He has mercy on whom He desires and hardens who He desires is false.  First, the charge cannot be made because God is Creator and therefore has full right to do whatever He wants to His creatures.  No creature has the right to question what God does.  Second, regardless of God’s rights as Creator, God had already demonstrated that what He extends to His creatures is mercy.  To the vessels of wrath, there is mercy in His patient endurance of their evil instead of instantaneous destruction.  To the vessels of mercy, there is mercy in granting them the riches of His glory.  God’s mercy has been extended to both Jews and Gentiles.

Righteousness Of Faith Verses Works Of The Law.

Some Jews might have objected that God was still unfair for extending such mercy to the Gentiles while withholding it from His own chosen people, Israel.  Paul responds with a brief explanation of the basis for God’s extending mercy to the Gentiles while judging Israel.  There is no injustice with God.

Verses 30-33 state, “What shall we say then?  That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law.  Why?  Because [they did] not [pursue it] by faith, but as though it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone, just as it is written, ‘Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, and he who believes in Him will not be disappointed.’”

Mercy was not extended to the Gentiles because of anything they were able to do or anything they received that was beyond what Israel had already received.  God’s blessing had already been poured out on Israel, but the vast majority of the people did not understand what it all meant and how they were supposed to live.  Though their father, Abraham, was the example of what it meant to receive God’s mercy because God reckons faith for righteousness, most Jews stumbled over the law.  They believed that they could become righteousness enough for God through their own efforts.  That has never been true, and it never will be true, but the truth does not stop most people from responding to their false beliefs.  People today are no different from the Israelites back then.

The Gentiles were granted mercy based upon the righteousness attained by faith.  Faith in what?  The stumbling stone and rock of offense that so many of the Jews rejected. The person and work of Jesus Christ.  Paul had explained this faith at the end of chapter 3, and illustrated the nature of this faith by Abraham’s example in chapter 5.  The Jews had the Mosaic Law and sought to earn their righteousness by keeping that law.  However, they never could keep the law.  No man can.  Instead of crying out to God for mercy as the law convicted them of their unrighteousness, they started to redefine the law for themselves.  They reinterpreted some of God’s commandments into ways that they could keep, or at least fool themselves into thinking they were keeping them.  Other laws were rated as not so important, so it did not matter that much whether you kept them or not.  A general belief arose which is still with us today that if you had more good works than sin, then the balance tipped in your favor and you made it into heaven.  But no one keeps the law (Romans 3:23) and breaking any part of the law makes you guilty of all (James 2:10).  They, and so many today, were so busy trying to earn their own righteousness, that they refused to believe that God would accept them based on their faith in what God had already done for them in Jesus Christ.  He had already paid the penalty of their sin on the cross and offered them forgiveness of their sins based on simple faith in Him.  Salvation is received as a gift from a merciful God.  It cannot be earned.

That is a truth with many ramifications, including this theological fact that God chooses only some men for salvation.  All are deserving of His eternal wrath, but He chooses to extend His mercy to some.  God has not revealed to us why He chooses some and not others.  We are mortals who struggle to understand and accept this.  It is one of those things that would be included in Peter’s comments about Paul’s writings which, “speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own
destruction.”  There is no cause in this truth to question God’s character.  There is no injustice with Him.  This doctrine demonstrates the glory of God and His sovereignty. Salvation is God’s choice, yet man is responsible for His rebellion against God and refusal to heed God’s call to repentance.

While God foreknows, predestines, calls, justifies, and glorifies those who will be saved. The opposite is not true for those who will suffer eternal judgement in Hell.  God does not choose them for that.  Hell was not made for man.  Matthew 25:41 states that Hell was prepared for the devil and his angels.  Man goes there because he does not repent and turn to Jesus Christ for salvation.  God simply leaves the non-elect in their sinful state under His law, and as Paul pointed out in Romans 1, 2 and 3, man is condemned by failure to keep the law, even that of his own conscience.  God has no obligation whatsoever to extend to man anything except condemnation, yet God extends mercy and grace.

The truths of this passage of Scripture should cause those of us who are saved to be even more thankful that the Lord has chosen us, though we were not and are not more worthy of that salvation than anyone else, even those who are still lost.

Those who have yet to repent and place their faith in Jesus Christ should be greatly sobered by the doctrine of election.  God is not unjust.  You are responsible to heed His call.  Cease striving to earn your salvation, humble yourself and cry out to Him for mercy.  God resists the proud, but gives His grace to the humble (1 Peter 5:5).  He is a rewarder of those who seek Him (Jeremiah 29:13).  Jesus has invited all who are weary and heavy laden to come to Him.  He will give you rest for your soul (Matthew 11:28-29).  What are you waiting for?  Today is the day of salvation.  Don’t risk God sealing your rebellion by hardening your heart as He did with Pharaoh.

This is God Word …

This is Grace for your Journey …

Rest and Rejoice in this eternal truth!

Pastor Terry

Ephesians 4:7 – “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Grace For The Journey

How important is the salvation of others to you?  How much are you willing to give of yourself in seeking to see others rescued from their sin and its eternal damnation?  In today’s blog we will look at an example that will challenge us to think more seriously and be more giving toward the salvation of others.

Our tendency is to look at those mentioned in the Bible, such as the Apostle Paul, as somehow so different from us that their example is unattainable.  We think that it is impossible for us to do the kinds of things that they did.  Yet, we are told to look at their examples and follow accordingly.  1 Corinthians 10:11 tells us that the Old Testament was recorded as an example for our instruction.  In 1 Corinthians 11:1 Paul tells us to be imitators of him, just as he was of Jesus Christ.  The truth is that Paul, the other apostles, the prophets, and the others mentioned in the Bible were people just like us.  There was much they did not know.  They had their own fears. They often failed, but they also succeeded in ways that sometimes make us wonder what is wrong with us.  That is why we tend to think that their examples are unattainable.  However . . .

I think the only real differences

Boil down to their priorities.  

They understood and lived

With the right priorities in view.

Why was Paul able to accomplish so much in the service of the Lord?

It was his heart and mind

Set for sacrificial service.

 That heart and mind set are clearly expressed in our passage of study this morning, Romans 9:1-18.

Paul’s Passion – Verses 1-5.

Paul’s Heart.  

Paul’s expression of his heart’s desires for the salvation of his fellow Jews is so strong that he prefaces it by making three declarations of its validity.  He is telling the truth in Christ.  He is not lying, and his conscience is bearing him witness in the Holy Spirit of the truth of his statement.  Paul is not making an exaggeration here for the purpose of stressing his point. This is an expression of how he actually feels.  He has great sorrow and unceasing grief over the lost state of is kinsman.

The word “sorrow” expresses the heaviness of heart that comes with sad news.  The disciples had this after Jesus had told them He was to be crucified (John 16:6, 20-22).  It is also the sadness that comes upon a person when they recognize they have sinned.  Godly sorrow produces repentance while worldly sorrow produces death (2Corinthians 7:10).  Here we find that Paul had great sorrow over the lost state of his brethren. Paul also had “unceasing grief.” “Grief” is the pain that one is plunged into when there is something bad that has happened.  The verb form is used in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 to describe the grief of having a loved one die.  Paul says here that this is the emotion he is continually feeling in his heart as he considers the state of the unsaved Israelites.

These emotions are so strong that he even states that he could “wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren .”  In other words, if somehow my own damnation could result in the salvation others, then I would wish that.  Of course, that cannot happen.  You may be able to save other’s physical lives at the cost of your own physical life, but
you cannot save them spiritually by the sacrifice of your own spiritual life.  Yet, Paul would even long for that if it could happen.  

That is an extremely strong statement

About his love for others.

The heart of true love is

The willingness to sacrifice oneself

For the benefit of the one loved.

The reason that Paul was used

So mightily in the Lord’s service

Was because of this

Heart of sacrificial love.

That is the challenge to us in imitating Paul.  It is not doing all the things that Paul did as an apostle – the various miracles, traveling all over the world, and establishing churches everywhere.  We can only do what God calls us to do according to the particular gifts He has given us, and no one here is an apostle.  That would require you to be an eyewitness of the Lord’s life (Acts 1:21f).  What Paul does ask us to imitate about his life is his passion and character.  Live in righteousness and be passionate about serving the Lord.

No wonder that we tend to be intimidated by Paul’s example. How many of us would dare say that we could wish ourselves accursed if it would result in the salvation of our relatives?  We demonstrate our hardness of heart towards others by our hesitancy to speak to them about Christ, or to give of our time, talents, and finances in serving the Lord in our areas of giftedness or supply for the needs of others so that they can better serve the Lord with their gifts.  The answer to your hesitancy is not in making out Paul’s example to be unreasonable, but rather to repent of your selfishness and then, asking the Lord to help and change your heart, step out in faith to give a little more of yourself, to be in situations that make you uncomfortable, to even risk the rejection and persecution of others because they do not want to hear the truth from you. Paul’s example is a realistic one to follow, and those who share his passion for the lost will follow it.

Paul’s Kinsmen – Verses 4-5.

Paul was an apostle to the Gentiles (Romans 1:5; 11:13), but he understood that the gospel was to the Jew first (Romans 1:16) and he still had a great passion for their salvation.  In verses 4 & 5 Paul makes it clear that it is to his “brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises, whose are the fathers, and from who is the Christ according to the flesh.”  The identification is clear here as is also the blessing that God has poured out on them including the fact that the Christ, the promised Messiah is also of the lineage of the Jews, and at the mention of Christ, Paul cannot contain the praise, and so he proclaims Him as the one “who is over all, God blessed forever, Amen.”

The Jewish people have received great and wonderful blessings from God as His chosen people. They are the ones that have received God’s promises.  They are the ones through whom God has manifested Himself and His glory. But in bringing them up, there immediately rises several questions concerning God and His dealings with the Jews . . .

• Why did they receive these blessing instead of some other group?
• If God has chosen them, then why aren’t they responding to the gospel?  
• How do the Gentiles fit in?
• What is Israel’s future?
• Will God keep His promises to them?

Paul will be answering those questions in chapters 10,11, and 12.  They are important questions for us too, not only because they reveal how we Gentiles fit in, but also because they reveal the character of God in both His choosing of His elect and His faithfulness to keep His promises. This morning we will only be working out way down to verse 18, but in doing so we will find out why God chose Israel and begin to understand His nature in choosing His elect.

True Israel – Verses 6-13.

Children of the Promise – Isaac – Verses 6-9.

The first thing that Paul points out is that the word of God has not failed.  The Bible says in Numbers 23:19, “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; has He said, and will He not do it?  Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?”  What God says is true and will be fulfilled.  Paul pointed out earlier in 3:3 that their unbelief does not nullify God’s faithfulness.  In Romans 11:1-2, Paul makes it clear that God has not rejected His people, for He always keeps for Himself a remnant even when the vast majority reject Him.  When God’s sends His word out, it will accomplish what He desires (Isaiah 55:11).  Failure in people to respond properly to God does not reflect a failure on God’s part.

Paul states at the end of verse 6 that “they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel.”  Paul had explained in 2:28,29 the spiritual application of this statement in that having physical descent as a Jew is not enough to make a person a Jew spiritually. That belongs to those who are circumcised of heart by the Holy Spirit.

Here in Romans 9:7, Paul traces the truth of his statement in its physical application by starting with the lineage from Abraham.  This is a very important point for us to understand in our own day due to the constant tension in the Middle East between the Jews and Arabs.  The basic conflict between Jews and Arabs has also engulfed America and is the major reason for the terrorist activities against us.

What is this basic conflict?  It is a question of who has God given His promises to?  Who are the people that have inherited God’s covenant with Abraham?  Who are the ones that have received God’s adoption as sons, the covenants, the laws, the promises, and through whom does the savior come?  Paul said in verses 4 and 5 that this belongs to the Jews.  Islamic Arabs claim that it belongs to them through Abraham’s first-born son, Ishmael.

Paul’s first point in tracing the correct lineage is that it belongs only to the children of the promise, and not to all physical descendants of Abraham.  Abraham actually had many sons.  Ishmael was his first born through Sarah’s maid, Hagar.  Isaac was his only child through Sarah herself.  And then after Sarah died, Abraham took Keturah as a wife and she bore to him Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishbak, and Shuah.  Four of these eight sons became fathers of nations.  Did all of them inherit God’s covenant with Abraham?  If not, which one did? 

Paul quotes Genesis 21:21 (verse 7) and 18:10 (verse 9) as two of the passages that make it clear that Isaac is the son of the promise.  It is Isaac through whom Abraham’s descendants would be named.  Even today, it is only the Jews’ that freely boast about being the “children of Abraham.”  Arabic apologists will trace their lineage to Abraham, but they are more likely to stress their descent from Ishmael or their forefather of the Arabic tribe than to Abraham.  

Another strong passage proving that Isaac is the son of promise is Genesis 17.  In that chapter God establishes His covenant of circumcision with Abraham.  In the process, God also changed the name of Sarai to Sarah and promised that she would bear a son, even though she was already 90 years old.  Abraham actually argues with God in verse 18 saying, “Oh that Ishmael might live before Thee!”  In other words, Ishmael is enough, let the covenant be through him.  God’s response is recorded in verses 19-21, “But God said, “No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.  And as for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I will bless him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall become the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation.  But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this season next year.”

So contrary to Arabic and Islamic claims, the promises belong to the Jews and the land belongs to Israel because of that.  Even the claim of the so called “Palestinians” is a false one, for up until the modern establishment of the nation of Israel and even into the 60’s, it was the Jew who was called a “Palestinian” and not those of Arabic descent. The Jews have had a presence in the land for over 3,000 years.  Those who are called “Palestinians” now of Arabic descent are only recent immigrants into the land.

This claim of descent is also important to us who are Christians, because God’s covenant to Abraham traces through to Jesus Christ who is the fulfillment of the blessing promised.  This means that Muhammad has no legitimate claim to be a prophet of God.  He is in fact a false prophet of the false god, Allah, not of the true God, Yahweh.

Children of the Promise – Jacob – Verses 10-13.

Paul further narrows the children of the promise in verses 10-13.  It is not even all the children of Isaac, but only those of Isaac who trace their lineage through his son, Jacob. In verses 10-12 Paul refers to the story told in Genesis 25 about the birth of Isaac’s twin boys, Esau and Jacob through Rebekah. It was while both boys were still in the womb that the Lord said to Rebekah, “And the Lord said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb; and two peoples shall be separated from your body; and one people shall be stronger than the other; and the older shall serve the younger.”  The subject of the prophecies are the nations that would arise from these two boys and what the relationship of those two nations would be.  There is no Biblical or extra Biblical evidence that Esau himself actually ever served Jacob, but there is plenty of evidence of the nation that came from Esau (Edom) being in subjection to and serving Israel.

Paul’s quote of Malachi 1:2-3 is also in reference to the nations that came from Jacob and Esau rather than the individuals themselves, for that it is the context both in this passage and in Malachi.

It is important to note what Paul says in verse 11.  God’s choice in this was done before these boys were born, before they could do anything either good or bad.  The choice was made simply by God’s sovereign purpose as He decided and not upon any work either boy had done.  The impact of this is made even stronger when it is considered that the prophecy was dealing with the nations that would arise from them that had not yet even been conceived, much less born to take some action, good or evil.

That truth tends to make people uncomfortable, especially us Americans because we value our supposed autonomy so much.  We don’t want others telling us what to do, and we certainly do not want people deciding our destiny without our say so in the matter.  There almost seems something unfair about it.  Why should one be chosen for blessing and the other placed in subjection especially when neither has done anything to either warrant the blessing or the hardship?

There are several things about this truth people do not like.  First, we tend to focus more on the negative aspect than the positive.  We look at the one that received a hardship or did not receive the blessing as unfair.  If we look at the one who got the blessing, we see that as good for them, but don’t tend to think of it as being unfair to them, only unfair to the one that did not get it.  Second, we don’t like the fact that God is sovereign in His choices and He does not always explain the reasons why He does something in any way that makes sense to us.  As a result, people tend to skew the interpretation of these passages to produce a god they can understand rather than One that is beyond their comprehension and to Whom they must humbly bow.

The nation of Israel was chosen to be God’s people on the same basis that Jacob was chosen to receive the blessing instead of Esau.  Cultural tradition demanded that Esau receive the blessing and that the younger should serve him, yet God’s choice was the opposite.  God is not bound by the cultural traditions of any people.  The Old Testament gives us several insights into the choosing of Israel to be God’s people.  The Lord says in Deuteronomy 4:37-39, “Because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them.  And He personally brought you from Egypt by His great power, driving out from before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in [and] to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is today.  Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the Lord, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other.”  Deuteronomy 9:5-6, adds, “It is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord your God is driving them out before you, in order to confirm the oath which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Know, then, it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stubborn people.”  Deuteronomy 10:14-15 states, “Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the highest heavens, the earth and all that is in it.  Yet on your fathers did the Lord set His affection to love them, and He chose their descendants after them, even you above all peoples, as it is this day.”

Putting all of these verses together, we find that the Lord did not choose Israel for anything commendable about them.  Even their possession of the land was due to God’s judgement upon the wickedness of the people before them and not as a reward for something good about them. God chose them simply as an act of His own gracious love in keeping the promises He made to Abraham through which God would glorify Himself. His choice of you is the same.  It is an act of His own gracious love for His own purposes.

The illustration given here of the Lord’s love for Jacob and hatred for Esau demonstrates further God’s sovereign choice in His own mercy and grace. Again, the context of this passage and of Malachi 1:2-3 from which the verse is quoted, is of the nations that came from Jacob and Esau.  There is no Scriptural indication of any divine hatred against Esau the man, but God’s hatred of Edom, Esau’s descendants is clear. They were an idolatrous and rebellious people whom the Lord chastised and eventually destroyed. But Israel was also often idolatrous and rebellious against God.  God also chastised them and even had them taken away into captivity, yet God also preserved a remnant and brought them back to the land.  This was done only because of God’s mercy and grace extended to them while He was working out His plan of redemption. The nation of Israel exists today only because of God’ grace upon them in working out His future plans for them.

God’s Mercy – Verses 14-18.

Verses 14-18 further bring out this point, “What shall we say then?  There is no injustice with God, is there?  May it never be!  For He says to Moses, ‘I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.’  So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.  For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth.’  So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires.”

No Injustice with God – Verse 14.

First, though many people would react and claim this, there is no injustice with God.  Deuteronomy 32 records Moses’ song to the Israelites. In verse 4 Moses declares of God, “The Rock!  His work is perfect, for all His ways are just; a God of faithfulness and without injustice, righteous and upright is He.”  Elihu wisely said in Job 32:12-15, “Surely, God will not act wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice.  Who gave Him authority over the earth?  And who has laid [on Him] the whole world?  If He should determine to do so, if He should gather to Himself His spirit and His breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.”  There is no injustice with God. He has authority over all things and would be just and righteous if He decided to withhold His mercy and grace though that very act would result in the destruction of all flesh.  The Lord’s judgements are always true and righteous (Revelation 16:7).

God’s Sovereign Mercy – Verses 15-16.

God is sovereign with His mercy.  The quote in verse 15 is from Exodus 33:19 when Moses requested to see the Lord’s glory.  It was an act of grace and compassion for the Lord to allow Moses to see the goodness of the Lord pass before him.  When God did do that He proclaimed of Himself, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations” (Exodus 34:6-7).

That is the character of the Lord our God.  The extension of the Lord’s mercy to someone is not dependent upon what they desire or how well they work at being good. It is dependent on the Lord’ mercy to them, for no man seeks God (Psalm 14:1-3; Romans 3:10-12), and even a man’s best effort to do a work of righteousness falls far short and is filthy before our holy God (Isaiah 64:6).

God’s Sovereign Hardening – Verses 17-18.

God is also sovereign in hardening of the hearts of those that resist Him.  Paul brings up the example of Pharaoh during the time of Moses to illustrate this.  Some have incorrectly taken these verses to mean that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in the sense of it being done as an act of predestination or election to condemnation.  This is the idea that this is something that God did to Pharaoh who was a passive recipient to God’s
decree.  However, the quote in verse 17 is taken from Exodus 9:16.  By this point in time, Pharaoh had already endured six plagues.  Pharaoh’s heart was hardened when Aaron’s rod became a serpent and ate up those that Pharaoh’s magicians threw down (7:13).  Pharaoh’s heart was hardened at the turning of the water into blood (7:22). Pharaoh hardened his heart at the plague of the frogs (8:15).  His heart was hardened at the plague of gnats (8:19) and he hardened his heart again when Moses removed the plague (8:32).  Pharaoh’s heart was hardened again when the Egyptian cattle died (9:7).  It is not until the plague of boils that we find that “the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.”  It is only after this that God tells Pharaoh through Moses, “But, indeed, for this cause I have allowed you to remain, in order to show you My power, and in order to proclaim My name through all the earth. Still you exalt yourself against My people by not letting them go.”

Pharaoh was responsible for his actions.  He continued to harden his heart until finally God sealed His fate and confirmed the hardening so that there would be no repentance. God did exalt Himself through Pharaoh as the rest of the plagues were poured out on Egypt culminating in the Passover, the exodus and the destruction of Egypt’s army in the Red Sea.  Those are all events which are still celebrated to this day to the glory of God.

God has mercy on who He has mercy and He hardens who He hardens.  It is God’s sovereign choice, yet man is still responsible for his own rejection of God and refusal to seek refuge in Christ.

To those that are already saved, Jesus revealed no one could come unto Him unless God the Father draws him (John 6:44).  We do not come to Jesus Christ because we choose Him, but because He chooses us (John 15;16). We love Him only because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Yet to the unsaved, Jesus gives warning and an invitation in John 8:24, “Unless you believe that I am He [Messiah], You shall die in your sins;” in John 3:18, “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God;” and in Matthew 11:29-30, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load is light.”

The interaction of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility is not understood by man. Those who have been saved simply turn with greater praise to God that He would extend His grace and mercy to them. You do not have to know what God has chosen for you in order to respond to His invitation to salvation.  If you respond with belief in Christ’s atonement as the payment for your sins, then you receive God’s mercy. If you reject it, then you are responsible for your sin, but be warned if you think you can sit on the fence and put off a response to the invitation to salvation.  There could come a point in time when God seals you in your rejection and hardens your heart so that you cannot repent and turn to Christ.  Neither you nor I know when that could be.  It is not a risk worth taking.  Don’t leave here today without making peace with God.

This is God Word …

This is Grace for your Journey …

Rest and Rejoice in this eternal truth!

Pastor Terry

Ephesians 4:7 – “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Grace For The Journey

This morning we come to one of the most encouraging texts in the Bible.  It is a revelation of God’s sovereignty and character with direct application to His loving relationship and promises to the Christian.  Will look at Romans 8:31-36 today, “What then shall we say to these things?  If God is for us, who is against us?  He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?  Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns?  Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  Just as it is written, ‘For Thy sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’  But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Paul begins this section with the question, “What then shall we say to these things?”  What are the “these things” Paul is referring to?  This brings us back to the context of this passage, for the “these things” are the sufferings that we have in this life that he has been speaking about.  We suffer in this life because of sin.  There are the consequences of our own stumbling.  There are the accusations and persecutions made against us by sinful people, and there are the general common hardships of living in a fallen world.  Paul addresses our security in Christ as we face each of these situations, but he begins with a general statement of God’s loving actions toward us that provide the foundation of our security in Christ.

GOD IS FOR US.

Paul’s first sentence is not really a question, but an affirmation.  The Greek grammar here is not questioning God being for us.  It is a clause of simple condition in which the premise is presented as true and therefore the conclusion is also true.  In English, we can get a better sense of the meaning by translating this as a statement using “since” or “because.”  Thus, it would be correct for it to say, “Since God is for us, no one can be against us.”  This same thought is expressed in Psalm 118.  This is a Psalm of thanksgiving for the Lord’s goodness in saving the Psalmist.  After an opening of giving
thanks to the Lord, the Psalmist speaks of the distress that he was in and how the Lord answered. In verse 6 he says, “The Lord is for me; I will not fear; What can man do to me?  The Lord is for me among those who help me; Therefore I shall look with satisfaction on those who hate me.  It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man.  It is better to take refuge in the Lord Than to trust in princes.”

Paul gives the reason we know that the Lord is for us in verse 32.

GOD FREELY GIVES TO US.

Verse 32 says, “He who did not spare His on Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?”

The Major Gift

God’s love for us is so great that He sent His only begotten Son to die as the payment for the penalty of our sins.  This is His great gift. Paul has made it clear throughout Romans that this was not due to something attractive in us, but out of His own love, mercy and grace.

Why did Jesus have to die?  

Because it was the only way

For God to remain holy and just

And still have loving compassion

On us to save us from our sins.

God could not overlook our sins, for to do so would make him unjust and unholy.  He has set the law and the requirements of the law must be met.  For example, what if God decided to just overlook Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden?  God would then be a liar for not carrying out His word to them about the consequences of eating the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  God could not retroactively change the law, because that would destroy His immutability – i.e. that He is unchanging – and make Him untrustworthy. His judgements would then become arbitrary and therefore unjust.

It is popular in our culture to rename sin to be something else in an effort to either remove the responsibility and therefore also the guilt, or reclassify it as something that is not sinful.  Drunkenness is renamed the disease of alcoholism.  Homosexuality and other perversions are called “alternative lifestyles.”  Teen rebellion is considered normal. Sinful man can call things whatever he wants, but it will not change God from considering them to be abominations and rebellion against Him.  God is holy and just and will carry out His condemnation in His wrath against all who violate His laws.

God could not be holy and just if He were to either ignore or rename our sins.  

God’s love satisfied

His holiness and justness

By paying the penalty of the sin

Himself through Jesus Christ.  

This is His great gift and

There could be no gift greater

For there is nothing more

Valuable than God Himself.  

The greatness of the gift

Speaks of the greatness of the love

He has extended in redeeming us from our sins.

I must remind you at this point that the context here limits the “us” to referring only to those who have been justified by God’s grace through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Paul makes this even more clear by referencing the “elect” in verse 33. While God makes a genuine universal offer of salvation to all sinners, for He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9), it cannot be said that God is “for” everyone.  God is against the proud (1 Peter 5:5) and His wrath is against “all ungodliness and unrighteous of men who suppress the truth in
unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18).

Minor Gifts

Paul then argues from the greater to the lesser.  Since God has given such a great gift, then He will also freely give the lesser gifts needed to live the Christian life.  The specific application in the context here would be related to forgiveness of our sin.  The Greek word here for “freely give” also implies this.  

God gave Jesus Christ as the

Propitiation for our sin so that

We could be restored to

A proper relationship with Him.

 Jesus brought about

Our justification through faith

In Him which then granted us

God’s forgiveness and imputes

Jesus’ righteousness to us.

1 John 1:9 tells us that after salvation as we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

But the principle in this verse goes beyond just the forgiveness of sins, for in Christ we also receive a new nature, adoption into God’s family, and an inheritance.  We have been “blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3) and “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (2 Peter 1:3).  This encompasses our practical needs for daily life too.  In thanking the Philippians for their gift in suppling his needs, Paul not only told them how he had learned to be content in all circumstances, but also that “my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Jesus Christ” (Philippians 4:19).

Even in the midst of suffering, we can trust God to supply our needs, both spiritual and physical, because He has proven His love for us in His gift of Christ Jesus.

GOD JUSTIFIES US.

In verse 33 Paul deals with another aspect of our suffering in this life on this sin filled world. 

Accused.

Paul’s question is not rhetorical, for there are many sources of charges made against God’s elect.  Here are some of them.  The ungodly will deliberately accuse God’s people.  Jesus warned us in Matthew 5:10-11 that we would be insulted, persecuted and have all manner of evil said against us falsely because of our relationship with Him. The godly are concerned about truth and avoiding lies, but the ungodly do not share such a concern.   If they can get what they want by telling lies, then that is just another tool to get ahead.  If someone stands in their way, then assassinating their character is just a way of clearing the path.  If someone’s righteousness exposes their own sinfulness by the contrast, then trashing their character is a way to make themselves feel better, and for the ungodly, it is all about themselves.  How much hurt and damage they cause other people is of little concern as long as they are getting what they want.

There are also times when even godly people might charge us with sin.  Often this is due to misunderstandings, but sometimes it is due to sinfulness that they have let themselves stumble into.  Sometimes is it because we have fallen into sin.  Those accusations, especially if false or made without compassion, can hurt a lot because they are coming from people you thought would be more careful, and be more kind.

Then there is Satan, who is also known as “the devil” which means “slanderer” or “accuser.”  He is the father of lies and his accusations against the Christian will be numerous.  However, the greatest suffering we receive from the devil’s accusations, are when the charges are true.  There are times we sin and Satan is quick to capitalize on them and seek to discourage us with his accusations – “You can’t serve God when you have done that” or “You can’t claim to be a Christian when you have done that sin.”

That brings us to the accusations we make against ourselves.  We do stumble into sin as Christians.  Any claim that a Christian can be sinless in this life is false.  1John 18, 10 tells us that Christians will sin, as does Romans 7.  When the Christian does sin, sometimes there also results a discouragement because of the lack of perceived growth in holiness and victory over sin.  We then question whether we really can serve God, or at times even if we are a Christian.

How can the Christian deal with such discouragement whether it comes from accusations by others or the feelings of defeat from personal failures?  The answer is that regardless of the source or validity of the accusations, God is the one who justifies (verse 33).

Justified.

Recall again that justification means that God has declared us “not guilty” in His court and has given to us the standing of the righteousness of Christ before Him because we have placed our faith in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.  We have not justified ourselves.  He has justified us through Christ.

The picture here in verse 34 is that of God’s court room.  The devil is seeking to condemn us for our sin.  The penalty is death and the picture is bleak because the accuser presents his case and it clear that we are guilty.  Then our advocate stands up from His seat at the right hand of God the Father who is judging us.  Jesus points out that He has already died as the payment for the penalty of the sins we are being charged with.  Jesus also points out that He has gained the victory over sin by being raised from the dead.  Because of that, He asks for a verdict of “not guilty” on the basis of the law’s demands having already been satisfied by Himself.  Jesus intercedes on our behalf with God the Father.  No charge can stand against us because Jesus Christ has already satisfied the law and justified us before God.

But let me quickly add here another point . . .

In an earlier study we saw that

We could be comforted in the

Midst of our sorrows because of

The Holy Spirit’s intercession for us.

Now we find that Jesus Christ

Also intercedes for us.

What a blessing!  Jesus, having made “one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:12).  Jesus is therefore the prefect High priest who “is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).  We can take comfort that God will not forsake us regardless of what accusations are made against us.

NO CIRCUMSTANCE CAN SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF CHRIST.

In verses 35-37, Paul shows that we can be confident in God in the midst of any circumstance, because . . .

There is no circumstance that can

Separate us from the love of Christ.

Hard Circumstances We Face.

Verse 35 says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”  The answer to the rhetorical question is of course, no!  Each of the items in the list is an impersonal circumstance that we could possibly face, yet none of them can separate us from Christ’s love for us.  The word for “separation” here means to “leave, separate, divide” or “put asunder.”  No circumstance can put a division between the true Christian and the love of Christ.  Nothing we may ever face can cause Christ to abandon His love for us and leave us.

The word tribulation” is a general term usually referring to the common troubles and trials of life, though those trials can be severe, such as a woman in labor (John 16:2).  It can also refer to specific tribulations of Christians such as in Acts 11:19 where it describes the persecution that caused the church in Jerusalem to scatter.  Paul has already said in Romans 5 that the believer should “exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”  Tribulation does not separate us from the love of Christ because He matures us through it and, as 1 Corinthians 1:4 says, He also comforts us in the midst of it so that we might comfort others.  Jesus said that in this world we would have tribulation, but we can take courage, because He has overcome the world (John 16:33).

“Distress” has a root meaning of to “be in a narrow space” or “compressed” and it carries the idea of “affliction, calamity. extreme difficulty.”  This takes in more of the emotional element.  Paul uses it to describe the distress he had when suffering severe persecution as an apostle of Christ. Distress which came from the beatings, imprisonments, riots, labor, and sleeplessness (2 Corinthians 6:4-5).  Yet, Paul was content in this because for Christ’s sake, in his weakness, Christ was made strong (2 Corinthians 12:10).

“Persecution” specifically describes the sufferings, (physical, mental, and emotional), the believer receives because he is mistreated by others for his faith in Jesus Christ. Again, Jesus told this would happen in Matthew 5:10, “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  But even in the midst of this, we can “Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (verse 12).

“Famine” is also translated as “hunger.”  Psalm 37:25 says, “I have been young, and now I am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, or his descendants begging bread,” but this does not mean that at times the Christian will not be hungry as a result of the tribulations and persecutions they face.  There were times Paul was hungry and often without food (2 Corinthians 11:27), yet he learned to be content and trust the Lord whether he had a lot or was in need (Philippians 4:12).  He understood God’s love for him even in that situation.

“Nakedness” does not necessarily mean without any clothes, but rather to be without adequate clothes.  In 2 Corinthians 11:27 this word is translated as “exposure” and is joined with being cold.  Paul did not have adequate clothing for the circumstances he would find himself in.  Yet again, Paul had learned to be content.

“Peril” or “danger” was also something Paul often faced because of his relationship with Christ and ministry for Him.  In 2 Corinthians 11:26 he lists out some of the dangers he faced on his journeys – dangers from rivers, robbers, his countrymen, Gentiles, dangers in the city, in the wilderness, on the sea, and among false brethren. We can face the same dangers ourselves, but like Paul, they are never a sign of any deficiency in Christ’s love for us.

The last circumstance Paul mentions is that of the “sword.”  Certainly Christians have faced the dangers that come with war, but the particular word here refers to the short sword or dagger, and so could also be referring to the danger of being murdered. Many Christians have been martyred in such a manner.  But even this extreme, does not in any way infer a diminished love of Christ for us.  Though we may not understand the circumstances God is allowing us to go through, His love for us is still as sure as ever and it is proven in Jesus’ sacrifice for us.

God’s Plan

We do not always understand God’s plan, for sometimes it includes things we consider only as a negative from our own perspective.  Paul does not shy away from this, but points it out directly in verse 36 with a quote from Psalm 44:22, “Just as it is written, ‘For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”  We Christians should not be surprised when we have to endure even severe suffering for the sake of Christ.  The Hall of Faith in Hebrews 11 includes those
who “experienced mockings and scourgings,” and, also “chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated ([men] of whom the world was not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground.”

Paul told Timothy that “all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”  The cost of following Jesus has always been high.  Jesus even said this cost should be considered before being His disciple for it will require carrying a cross (Luke 14:27). Jesus said in Mathew 10:37-39, “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.  And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.  He who has found his life shall lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake shall find it.”  It is that last phrase that causes Christians’ to follow Jesus. In Him, and only in Him, we find true life.

Conquering Through Christ.

It is in the life that we have in Christ that we find we can overwhelmingly conquer the circumstances that come upon us.  Our life is no longer tied with strong cords to this world, for our citizenship is in heaven, and we long for our Savior’s return from there to take us to be with Him forever.  His love for us has been proven for all time and eternity on the cross in which He bore the penalty of our sins.  The true Christian can face even the most difficult circumstance of life with a confidence that they do not in any way reflect a lack of love on Christ’s part for us.

This does not mean that we look forward to such hardships or that we will not struggle in the midst of them.  It does mean that we can and will work through them to learn the contentment Paul learned (Philippians 4), and we can even come to the place of the Apostles who rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer shame for Jesus’ name (Acts 5:40).  We can see God being glorified in our weakness through His strength working through us (2 Corinthians 12:10).  We learn to rejoice and exult in our tribulations knowing that God is maturing us and conforming us to the image of Jesus Christ in the process (Romans 5; James 1).  Our foundation in the love of Christ  remains unshaken.

NO ENTITY CAN SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF GOD.

We can be secure in Christ because there is no circumstance that can separate us from the love of Christ.  Neither is there any entity than can separate us from the love of God. Paul states in verse 38,39, “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Paul is convinced because he believes what he has just written to the Christians in Rome is founded in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and in God’s promises to those who have faith in Him.  Salvation from sin is a work of God.  Therefore, it cannot be lost by man.  No circumstance and no entity can disrupt it.  It is as secure as God’s promises, and since there is nothing greater than God and because does not lie, there can be no doubt about the final outcome no matter what may occur in this life.

As Paul said in 2 Timothy 1:12 as he encouraged Timothy with his own reflections on what he had endured in serving Christ, “For this reason I also suffer these things, but I am not ashamed; for I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him until that day.” 

Not Death Or Life.

Death is included as an entity instead of a circumstance because it is so often spoken of in a personified way.  It is an entity that each of us will meet as the Lord tarries His  return.  Death is listed first because it is still our enemy, and one that can cause great fear if we are not solid in our understanding of and belief in Jesus Christ.  The godly throughout the ages have always found comfort in God’s promises as they faced this enemy.  This was true of David in Psalm 23 as he considered the valley of the shadow of death and found comfort in God’s rod and staff. It was true for Paul as he even considered it a preference to be “absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.” We Christians comfort one another with the promise that the “dead in Christ shall rise first, then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).  Death cannot separate us from the love of God because Christ’s victory over it has made it just a door for the Christian to go through into God’s very presence.

Some wonder why Paul includes life as a threat, but consider how many religions view death as the final conclusion that seals the person in their eternal destiny, but until then, where they are headed is open to question.  Paul’s statement is a reflection of the security that believers have in their salvation through faith in Jesus Christ that He will lose none of those given to Him (John 6:39).  True Christians will persevere until whichever is first, either their death or the Lord’s coming (Romans 15:4-5).

Not Angelic Beings

No angelic beings can separate us from God.  “Angels” here is a reference to the holy angels, and “principalities” are a reference to the evil fallen angels, often referred to as demons (cf. Ephesians 6:12).  1 John 4:4 says, “You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” James 4:7 says, “Submit therefore to God.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”

Nothing from Any Time Period.

The phrase, “Nor things present, nor things to come” refers to anything that currently exists or that may exist in the future.  Obviously things that existed in the past but do not exist now nor will exist in the future could be a threat.  Paul adds “nor powers” which includes the thought that regardless of what miracles those things of the present or the things of the future might be able to do.

No Creature of Any Size.

The phrases, “Nor height, nor depth” were common astrological terms of Paul’s day referring to the zenith, or highest point of a star’s path, and to the nadir, or lowest point of a star’s path.  In the context of this list referring to various creatures, it could be a reference to any creature that lived up the highest point of the heavens or to any creature that might live to the lowest points of hell.  It could also refer to any person that lives with the greatest amount of wealth and power and to any person that lives in the greatest amount of misery.

No Created Thing.

The final all-encompassing phrase, “nor any other created thing,” references anything that could possibly be left out from the previous list.

There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God.  Why?

The Guarantee of God’s Love.

The love of God is guaranteed to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.  Jesus put it this way in John 10:27-30. “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand.  My Father, who has given [them] to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch [them] out of the Father’s hand.  I and the Father are one.”

There are difficult things that Christians will face in this life.  There is real suffering we will endure because of our own sin, the sin of others and living in a sin filled world.  Yet, we have a hope for the future that is a confident assurance of what will take place.  God has given us His precious promise of being justified through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

We are forgiven our sins . . .

• His love was demonstrated for all time and eternity in Jesus’ sacrifice of Himself for our sin.  
• His victory over sin was demonstrated in His resurrection, which is also the guarantee of His promises to us of a future resurrection.

What God began in the believer in His foreknowledge, predestination and election which stretches back into eternity past, will be accomplished in the present in our justification and finalized in our glorification. Our security of all this is God’s sovereignty.  There is nothing greater, nothing more powerful, nothing wiser. No one, no thing, no circumstance can take us out of the Father’s hand and separate us from His love.

Are you secure in Christ Jesus our Lord?  If you are, then step forward in faith and live accordingly with His assurance and confidence to face whatever may come in this life. Your future with Him is guaranteed.

If you are not secure in Jesus Christ, you can be today.  1 John 5:12 says that, “He who has the Son has the life, he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.” You can receive Jesus Christ, the Son of God today through simple faith in believing and trusting what He has said about Himself and His promises to those that will seek Him. Will you seek Him?  Send me a post, I would love to introduce to you Jesus Christ that you too may know the forgiveness of your sins and have security for the future in Him.

This is God Word …

This is Grace for your Journey …

Rest and Rejoice in this eternal truth!

Pastor Terry

Ephesians 4:7 – “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Grace For The Journey

 

I want to begin today by repeating something I said yesterday, for we are going to be looking at two verses that have been the center of a lot of theological debates.  I believe that the major reason for this, as with the majority of theological debates, is that man wants God fit within his own theological system.  He then interprets Scripture in light of the logic of his theological system rather than in careful consideration of its grammatical and historical context in order to know God as He reveals Himself, whether He fits our system or not.

We must come to grips with the fact

That there are many things that we simply

Do not understand about God.  

We are finite and God is infinite.  

That in itself states that God is

Beyond our ability to comprehend.

But we must also grapple with the fact that God has only given us a limited revelation of Himself.  Moses recognized this and said in Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.”  Paul also recognized this and exclaims in Romans 11:33-34, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?”

As we look at Romans 8:29-30 in today’s blog, we will be examining concepts that are hard, if not impossible, for us to fully comprehend.  We are bound in the box of this physical world of matter, space and time.  God is not, and we must not place upon Him the same limits that apply to us.  If what God reveals about Himself does not seem logical to us, then the error lies in our logic.

Remember, the validity of logical conclusions are only as good as the validity of the observations and suppositions that lead to the conclusion.  We err when we demand that God ‘s nature and behavior must fit within the dictates of our own observations, experiences and values.  We must take God for what He reveals Himself to be, not what we want Him to be.

That being said, we must also remember the context of these two verses.  Let’s look at these verses starting in verse 26 and then make some brief comments about the thrust of the passage before analyzing these two verses in depth.  Verses 26-29 says, “And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.  And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.  For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many  brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.” 

Though there are three main thoughts in this section of Scripture, they are all joined together by one theme.  They really form only one paragraph, even though different translators break up the passage in different ways.  In the previous section, starting in verse 18, Paul was speaking about the present suffering that Christians have in this life as we await our final redemption to receive our glorified bodies and are then taken to heaven.  In this passage, Paul is presenting the reasons we can have hope for the future in the midst of present suffering.

I have spoken about this suffering in my previous blogs.  Because we live in a sin fallen world, we suffer its consequences.  

• There are the consequences of my own sin.  
• There are the consequences of the sin of others against us.
• There are the consequences of sin upon the world which has left it in its current cursed state.

Not only do I long for the day when the curse of all this sin will be done away with, but so does creation itself (verses 19-23).  God’s Word promises us the hope of a day when that curse will be removed.  But what can give me hope to endure the present sufferings?  What is the basis of having hope that those promises will be fulfilled?

In verses 26-30, Paul gives three reasons to endure the present sufferings and have hope for the future.  All three are based in having confidence in God Himself . . .

1) We can be confident that God cares about us individually, for He has sent His Holy Spirit to help us in our weakness and intercede on our behalf (Verses 26,27);

(2) We can be confident that God is powerful enough to carry out His promises for our good, because He does work all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Verse 28); and

(3) Our hope in God is a confident assurance that He will fulfill His promises to us because He is sovereign.  What He has started, He will finish.  Even when I face difficult circumstances in life, I can trust my heavenly Father, for the work of redemption He began in me in eternity past will be completed in eternity future.  There will be a day that every true Christian will stand before Him in a glorified state as a joint heir with Christ. His sovereignty guarantees it.

This is the context of verses 29 and 30.  We must also remember that everything in these two verses only applies to those referred to in the previous verses, those who love God and are called according to His purpose.  These are true Christians only. However, the theological debate may rage about the meaning of the words in these verses, we must never forget the context of them.

We discussed briefly the words Paul uses in verses 29 and 30.  Let’s look further into the meaning and application . . .

“Whom He Foreknowledge.”

Foreknowledge is an interesting concept.  It arises out of the fact that God is omniscient.  He knows everything about everything.  There is nothing He does not know.  Omniscience includes knowing what will happen in the future, as well as knowing what is happening currently, and what has happened in the past.  All prophecy is based on this.  God tells beforehand what will happen in a future time, and He never makes a mistake.  In fact, the test of a true prophet is that they must be 100% accurate.  Deuteronomy 18 declared that any prophet that erred was to be considered a false prophet and was to be stoned.  The same test applies today, even though the authority to stone them does not exist in our society.  Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, and those in many other cults are following false prophets.  God knows the future with 100% accuracy, and those claiming to speak on His behalf must also be 100% accurate in their prophecies, or they prove they are false and not from God.

The Greek word used here for “foreknowledge,” is the word for experiential knowledge with the prefix for “before” attached to it.  In some way God has experiential knowledge of us before we are born.  I believe that God exists outside the time box that we are in. He knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10).  He chooses those who will be saved from before the foundations of the world (Ephesians 1:4).  Before I existed in time and space, God knew me and choose me to be one of His adopted sons.  I do not understand exactly how God had foreknowledge of me, but I am comfortable with simply accepting that in some way He did, because I know that God is beyond my full comprehension. I can accept His revelation of Himself simply as it is given without forcing Him to fit into my preferred theology.

Others are not so comfortable and do try to explain such things according to their theology.  This is the source of a great debate about what it means that God has foreknowledge of us.  The context here is salvation, so how God’s foreknowledge works out in salvation is part of the debate.  The concepts of foreknowledge and predestination are linked together.

“He also predestined predestined.”

“Predestined” means to “foreordain” or “to appoint beforehand.”  In Acts 2:23, the Apostle Peter uses the cognates of these two words to refer to the same thing.  In that passage, Peter is preaching to the crowd that had gathered after the Holy Spirit had come and the church had been born.  In reference to Jesus, Peter said, “This Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.”  In Greek, the phrase “predetermined plan” and “foreknowledge” are linked in a grammatical structure which ties them together to refer to the same thing.  In other words, God’s predetermined plan and His foreknowledge are equated as the same thing by Peter.

In our text, predestination is linked with foreknowledge as being the next step in the sequential process of God’s work of redemption.  Foreknowledge invariably results in predestination.  In this text, predestination refers to God’s gracious decision which appoints for the elect their goal.  Included in that goal is adoption as sons through Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:5) and obtaining the inheritance (Ephesians 1:11), as well the goal here of being conformed to the image of Christ.

Arminianism

There are many theological views concerning foreknowledge and predestination.  Some believe that God looks down the corridor of time by His omniscience to see who would believe, and He then responds by choosing them.  This would be sort of like knowing in advance who will win the tournament, so I choose them for my team.  This can be an intriguing idea, and it certainly gives abilities to God that no man has.  However, it quickly runs into two problems.  First, it reduces foreknowledge into foresight, which is far short of what that word means.  And second, this view is predicated on man’s choice.  God looks down the corridors of time and therefore knows who will choose Him, and so God in His foreknowledge will then choose them, foreordain them, call them, justify them, and glorify them just as the rest of the passage states.  This is the teaching of Arminian theologians and is referred to as “conditional predestination” since it is based on God’s foreknowledge of the way in which the individual will either freely accept or reject Christ.  It is a popular view among many today, even by those that are not otherwise in the “Arminian” theological camp.

This view has severe theological problems.  Paul has already clearly explained that no man does good or seeks God on his own (Romans 1:18-3:18).  God calls on man to seek Him and even promises reward for those that do (Isaiah 55:6; Acts 17:27; Hebrews 11:6), but man does not and will seek God on his own (Psalm 14:2-3).  Man will not choose God of his own volition because it is against his sinful nature.  The natural man lives “in the lusts of [their] flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and [are] by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3).  The minds of the unbelieving are blinded by the god of this age (2 Corinthians 4:4).  As 1 Corinthians 2:14 puts it, “a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.”

If God based His choice on man’s choice, there would be no human to choose, for no man will choose God of his own “free” will.  The truth is that the unsaved do not have a “free” will.  Their will is corrupted by their sinful nature which has bound it to sin.  God makes a genuine offer of salvation to all men throughout the Scriptures, but because man’s nature is bent toward sin he will not choose righteousness for it is foolishness to him he and does not understand it.  He cannot be saved without God’s merciful intervention, because he will not choose God.

In addition, this view violates all the passages that make it clear that God initiates salvation based on His own character of love and grace.  For example, Titus 3:5-7 states, “He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”  We
can love God only because He loved us first (1 John 4:19).

Open Theology

A current view that is growing is the idea that God lives within time, not out of time.  This view also holds that man has free agency to choose, therefore God cannot know anything that happens within the realm of that free agency.  In that respect, it is Arminian in its origin.  Some are even calling it a neo-Arminianism.  Those espousing this theology say that God is relational, open, suffering, and everywhere active, but as He is moving history along to a future conclusion, the specifics of that journey are not settled.  Some even say that the final outcome is not settled.  Since God does not know the details of what will happen in the future, He is “open” to responding and changing as time unfolds.  Thus this view is called “Open Theism.”

This view is based in logic and philosophy, not Scripture.  One of its proponents, William Hasker reveals this when he said, “[A] main difficulty about divine timelessness (i.e. God is not bound by time) is that it is very hard to make clear logical sense of the doctrine. He also said, “It is logically impossible that God should have foreknowledge of a genuinely free action.”  Since his theological system demands that man have a “genuinely free” will, then he must interpret Scripture in a way which will make God fit into his logical system.  It does not matter what doctrines are destroyed in the process, as long as it will make logical sense to him.  

In this system, the argument is that either God is sovereign in all things and therefore impersonal and responsible for all things both good and evil (which include would the existence of evil itself and the actions of evil men such as Hitler, the holocaust, the destruction of the World Trade Center, etc.), or God does not control everything and therefore He is not responsible for the evil that beings of free will do.  Of course, in the world of Open Theism, God can also be imperfect in His actions and evil could possibly triumph.

Open theism denies God’s attributes of timelessness, omniscience, immutability, sovereignty, as well as His foreknowledge and predestination.  The God of Open Theism is incapable of true prophecy.  He is just a very good guesser.

God is timeless. He inhabits eternity (Isaiah 57:15).  His ways are eternal (Habakkuk 3:6).  He saved us and called us “according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began”(2 Timothy 1:9,10).  One day with the Lord is a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (2 Peter 3:9).  The Lamb of God was “slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8).

God is sovereign in all things both big and little.  Deuteronomy 32:39, “See now that I, I am He, and there is no god besides Me; it is I who put to death and give life.  I have wounded, and it is I who heal; and there is no one who can deliver from My hand.”  Proverbs 16:33 says, “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.”  Isaiah 45:6b-7 declares, “I am the Lord, and there is no other, the One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these.”

God is omniscient and reveals the future with certainty before it happens for the purpose of declaring Himself to men.  Isaiah 46:9-10 says, “Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure.”  Jesus said to His disciples in John 13:19, “I am telling you before it comes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am.”

Like Arminianism, a major error of open theism is in its lack of understanding of the corruption of man’s nature.  Because they believe that a genuine offer by God also demands that man have a free will to choose between good and evil, they must twist the Bible to fit their logic.  As we have already seen this, man’s nature is so corrupted by sin that he absolutely will not choose God.  He rejects God’s genuine offer of salvation
because he does not understand it and finds it to be foolishness, and no amount of arguing can convince him otherwise.  He will not choose to respond to God’s call to repent because he is by nature a child of wrath, dead in trespasses and sin, and walking in the ways of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air (Ephesians 2:1-3).  Unless God intervenes to remove the blindness of his sin and make him alive in Christ, the natural man cannot be saved for he will always choose to reject salvation by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

Calvinism

Others believe that God’s foreknowledge is tied to His will and power.  In other words, what God knows, He ordains.  He does not know things just as information and then sit by as a spectator.  He wills it and has the power to bring it to pass.  God’s knowledge of all things is the presupposition of their being.  Or to state it another way, God in His sovereignty and omnipotence decreed in eternity past all the details of what will happen in the present and the future, and time is just the unfolding of that decree.  This has strong Biblical support in all the verses that speak of God’s timelessness, sovereignty, omniscience, omnipresence, and immutability.  This is the teaching of the theological system of Calvinism.

However, it must be cautioned that many Calvinists make logical extensions of this view that are biblically unsound at best and just plainly unbiblical at worst.  For example, while all that exists does so because it has been eternally in God’s foreknowledge, this cannot be extended to say that God’s foreknowledge is the cause of all things.  God knows what is possible as well as what is actual.  Some have extended God’s sovereignty to mean that God is even the cause of evil.  God knows Satan and sin, but He is not their cause.  God is holy and righteous, and there is no evil in Him (Deuteronomy 32:3; Psalm 92:15; 145:17; Revelation 16:7).

Others deny the legitimacy of the universal offers of salvation in the Gospels.  Yet, the Bible is full of verses calling men to repent, seek God, and receive His blessings.  These verses are given to “whosoever will.”  Verses such as John 3:16; 11:26; Acts 2:21; 10:43; Romans 10:9-13; 1 John 4:15; 5:1 and many others.

Theological Tension.

There are theological tensions in the Bible.  There are things we do not understand. They do not make logical sense to us.  We must always remember both that we are finite with a limited capacity to understand things, and we do not have all the information.  Divine foreknowledge is the presupposition of all things including our wills, choices, and decisions, yet divine foreknowledge must not be confused with determinism or fatalism even if we do not understand how it all works out.  God knows man’s decisions, but He is not the cause of them, and He justly holds man responsible for them.  We must learn to be content and rest in God’s character when we come to things we do not fully understand.  As God said in Isaiah 55:8-9, “’For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts han your thoughts.”

Purpose.

Paul states here in Romans 8:29 that the purpose of God’s foreknowledge and predestination of the elect is so that they will be “conformed into the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren.”  That is the ultimate goal of the Christian, and it will take place in fulness when we are in heaven and receive our resurrection bodies.  We will then be like Jesus, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2).  God’s foreknowledge and predestination give us confidence in the present that our future hope will be fulfilled (Philippians 1:6).  God will be glorified.  What He has done in raising Jesus from the dead, He will also do for those of us who are joint heirs with Christ.

At present, we are in still the process of becoming like Christ.  As we mature in this present life, we should become greater reflections of Jesus Christ.  Currently, we “lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit,” and being “renewed in the spirit of [our] mind,” we “put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Ephesians 4:22-23).  As 2 Corinthians 3:18 states it, “We are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” 

Called.

The word “called” here in verse 30 refers not the general call of God to the world to repent and partake of the offer of salvation, but to the effectual call of God that brings a person to salvation in Jesus Christ.  The context here is specific to those who are Christians, so this is the drawing of the Father spoken about in John 6:44 when Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.” 

Justified.

The word “justified” refers to God’s judicial declaration of “not guilty” on the person who has placed their faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ for salvation from their sins.  The righteousness of Jesus is then imputed to them.  We have spoken about justification many times already in our study of Romans.

Glorified.

The word “glorified” refers to when we will be receive our inheritance and be changed into the glorified state we will have in heaven, including having our resurrected bodies. Paul uses the past tense here in demonstration of the absolute confidence we have that God will fulfill His promises to us.  We can speak of a future event as having already taken place because God’s sovereignty makes is certain.

Each of these actions of the work of God in our redemption are tied together in an unbreakable chain.  

In the sovereignty of God,

There is no possibility of

A break in this chain.

What starts with foreknowledge

Will end in glorification. 

That is a great comfort to us

When we are suffering in

This sin fallen world.

God’s promises to us are true.  They will be fulfilled even though circumstances at present may not be pleasant.  My hope in God is not a wish, but a confident assurance of what will happen in the future.

If you do not have that same confidence in God, talk with someone about it.  You need to be introduced to the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  If you do have that confidence, then rejoice in it and give God the praise He deserves.  Tell others what God has done for you, so that they too might know what God has done for them and join in the praise.

This is God Word …

This is Grace for your Journey …

Rest and Rejoice in this eternal truth!

Pastor Terry

Ephesians 4:7 – “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Grace For The Journey

In today’s blog we come to Romans 8:26-30.  This is a text that contains verses that are greatly debated in theological circles.  The major reason for this, as with the majority of theological debates, is that man wants God to fit within his own theological system. Passages of Scripture are then interpreted in light of the logic of that theological system rather than in careful consideration of its grammatical and historical context in order to know God as He reveals Himself whether He fits our system or not.

The truth is that there are many things that we simply do not understand about God.  Not only is God not fully comprehensible to finite man by virtue of God’s infinite nature, but additionally, God has only given us a limited revelation of Himself.  Moses recognized this in Deuteronomy 29:29 when he said, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of this law.”  Paul also recognized this and exclaimed in Romans 11;33-34, “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!  For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who became His counselor?” 

We also must keep this in mind as we study this passage this morning.  There are concepts within it that are hard, if not impossible, for us to fully comprehend.  We are bound in the box of the physical world of matter, space and time.  God is not, so we must be very careful not to place upon Him the same limits that apply to us.  If what God reveals about Himself does not seem logical to us, then the error lies in our logic. Remember, the validity of logical conclusions can only be as good as the validity of the observations and suppositions that lead to the conclusion.  We err when we demand that God ‘s nature and behavior must fit within the dictates of our own observations, experiences and values.  We must take God for what He reveals Himself to be, not what we want Him to be.

In the chapters leading up to Romans 8, Paul has set forth clear displays of God’s character and His response to mankind.  In the first three chapters Paul has proven that all men are guilty before God and justly deserving of His holy wrath. In the last half of Chapter 3, Paul explains that the only way for a man to be justified before God is through faith in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, who paid the redemption price for man by atoning for sin on the cross of Calvary.  The nature of such saving faith is demonstrated in Chapter 4 by the example of Abraham who “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.”  In chapters 5, 6, and 7, Paul has explained some of the ramifications and benefits of being justified by faith.  The believer has been radically changed having been “crucified with Christ” and receiving a new nature. Sin is no longer the Christian’s master and the bondage of the law has also been broken. However, the believer will struggle with sin because he remains in an earthly body that has not yet experienced the fullness of the redemption that is to come.  We no longer have to sin, but we will do so because of our present weaknesses until we receive our resurrection bodies.

In Chapter 8, Paul starts dealing with the work of the Holy Spirit in the believer.  Those who are in Christ Jesus are no longer under God’s condemnation, and the Holy Spirit, who indwells them, has begun the process of sanctification.  The Christian is to no longer have his mind set on the flesh, but rather in living according to the Spirit he is “putting to death the deeds of the flesh.”  As joint heirs with Christ, true Christians will
inherit the kingdom of God with Him.  Those are wonderful promises concerning our future destiny. We suffer in the present because of the world’s hatred of Christ as well as from the consequences of our own sin, the sin of others and the curse of sin upon the world.  All of creation is anxiously longing for “the revealing of the sons of God” when the curse upon it will be lifted.  Believer’s eagerly await the same event when we will receive our full adoption as God’s children by receiving our resurrection bodies and being with Christ for eternity.  That is the Christian’s great hope.  That is the context of Romans 8:26-30 where we find that  . . .

Paul lays a

Solid foundation

For our hope,

For it is in

God Himself.  

God, through the

Ministry of

The Holy Spirit,

Is intimately involved

With His people.  

He is sovereign,

And will always

Fulfill His promises.

The Spirit’s Intercession.

The first basis of our hope comes from God’s intimate involvement with us.  He cares about us so much that He has given the Holy Spirit a special ministry of intercession on our behalf.  The Spirit’s intercession is always perfect because there is perfect communication between God the Spirit and God the Father, and He always intercedes according to the will of God.

His Help: The suffering that we endure in this life lets us know that we are weak.  It is difficult enough to face persecution, but even more so to do so with a godly attitude that would include loving them and praying for those who persecute us and despitefully use us (Matthew 5:44).  We need the Spirit’s help to do that.  

It gets frustrating living in a sin fallen world.  

We long to be in a better place.

We need the Spirit’s help in

Being content in the present

While looking forward to the future.  

God has work for us to do

While we are still on this earth.  

The Spirit helps us to accomplish that.

And then we all must also acknowledge, just as Paul did in Romans 7, that we personally struggle against sin in our own lives.  We need the Spirit’s help in “putting to death the deeds of the flesh” and walking in holiness.  What a comfort to know that the Holy Spirit is present to help in each of all these areas.

Verse 26 also tells us of a specific weakness related to the above, “We do not know how to pray as we should.”  

In the midst of suffering in this life

And facing its many problems,

We often find ourselves uncertain

About how to pay about

The things we are facing.

This could be from a lack of knowledge about either the nature of God or how He would desire us to acts, or it could occur when our emotions overwhelm us at times.

Let me give you a couple of examples.  When the Twin Towers were destroyed, I admit that I sat watching in disbelief.  I could write you a theological treatise on things to pray for in a disaster, but what was I to pray specifically when there were thousands and thousands of individuals directly involved in that disaster, not to mention all of its ramifications to the rest of our nation and around the world.  My emotions were shocked.  

It was a great comfort to know that the

Holy Spirit was interceding right then.

Or, to make this more personal, how do you pray when you face some personal distress?  Would you know the proper prayer to make in these situations?  You are told you have cancer. Your child has just been killed in a car accident.  Your unmarried daughter is pregnant.  You come home and find that a lot of your furniture is missing and there is a note pinned to the wall that reveals your spouse has just left you for someone else.  You have just retired, and your spouse is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.

Each of these are real situations

In which we would find it

Difficult, if not impossible,

To know how to pray.  

We are weak, but

The Spirit helps us.

His Intercession: It is a great comfort to know that God is so intimately involved with us that not only is He aware of the situation we are facing, but God the Holy Spirit is interceding with God the Father even as we face it.  Our text says that “The Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”  “Intercession” is to “accost with entreaty.”  It is a word describing rescue by one who pleads on behalf of someone who is in trouble.  The Holy Spirit does this on our behalf to God the Father
with “groanings that cannot be uttered.”

Amazingly, some Charismatics interpret this as “ecstatic utterances of glossolaly” or “speaking in tongues,” despite the fact that it is the Holy Spirit that is doing the groaning, and not the person, and the fact that these “groanings” are “too deep for words” that they “cannot be uttered.”  It should also be pointed out here as a footnote that prayer always has a rational content.  Paul states in 1 Corinthians 14:15 that he prayed with both with the Spirit and with the mind.  This is not one or the other, but both at the same time.  When we cannot express ourselves rationally, it is at that point the Spirit intercedes for us.

Since the Spirit’s groanings cannot be uttered, we cannot know what this would sound like.  What we do know is that it is communication of intercession on our behalf by God the Spirit to God the Father.  One member of the triune Godhead is communicating to another member of the Godhead in a way that we do not understand.

His Knowledge: Verse 27 tells that this is perfect communication and perfect intercession.  The one who “searches the hearts” is God the Father. Jeremiah 11:20 and 17:10 tells us that it is the Lord of hosts that searches and tests the heart and mind, because, as Hebrews 4:13 tells us, “All things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.”  In this verse, we find that God the Father knows the mind of the Spirit.  1 Corinthians 2:11 tells us that the opposite is also true, “For who among men knows the [thoughts] of a man except the spirit of the man, which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.”  This means there is perfect communication between the Father and the Spirit.  There is no interference in the transmission of their communication.  There are no misunderstandings.  They understand each other perfectly.

An additional confidence we have in the Spirit’s intercession is that He intercedes for us in perfect accord with the will of God.  When we pray, we often have our prayers mixed with our own desires that may be in conflict with God’s will.  In fact, remember that a major purpose of our praying is to align ourselves with God’s will.  He already knows our minds and hearts, so our prayers are not giving Him information that He does not already know.  We pray so that we will know and understand God’s will, not to persuade Him to do our will.  We often do not know how to properly pray as we should, but the Spirit intercedes for us in perfect harmony with God’s will.

The Spirit’s intercession gives us great comfort and confidence in God’s care for us.  If He is that intimately involved in knowing our needs through the Holy Spirit’s communication, then we can be confident of the same level of care to make sure that all of His promises to us will be fulfilled.

God’s Omnipotence.

Another source of confidence for us that God will fulfill all His promises is His omnipotence in the affairs of our lives.  The religions of the world; including Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, the various forms of Paganism, etc., have no confidence in their god or gods.  They do not know if he, she, or they are even paying attention to them, much less intervene on their behalf.  The same is true of many Christian cults and sects.  They do not have a personal relationship with God, and so do not have confidence in His care of them.  But we do have a personal relationship with our Creator through our redemption in Christ Jesus.  We have been given promises which assure us of His personal involvement with us, and that He does intervene in our lives.

Paul expressed this in verse 28, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

How do we know this?  First, because history records it.  God has revealed Himself throughout the Scriptures as One who takes action to ensure that every one of His promises will be kept.  Second, we know it by our own experiences.  They began with God’s gracious actions that brought us to Himself.  They continue in the present with His gracious leading and intervention in our lives.  They continue throughout the future culminating in our final redemption and His taking us to heaven to be with Him forever.

His Action: The God of the Bible is a God of action.  The work He is doing is detailed in this verse is His “causing all things to work together for good.”  There has been a lot of spilt ink trying to explain exactly what is meant by this phrase.  Most of the interpretations are slight variations on the same theme, but there are few out there that forget the context and remove the personal nature of this promise to Christians.  While we would agree that God in His sovereign omnipotence controls all things, the context here is the personal encouragement that comes to believers in knowing God’s personal
care for them in their present sufferings.  There are many tough things the believer must face in this present life.  They cause us to long even more for our final redemption, but until that comes, we take great comfort in the intercession of the Holy Spirit and our heavenly Father’s response in working all the things that happen to us together for good.  That is, for both our good and His glory.

The foundation of the claim here is that God knows what is best for you individually as well as what is best for everyone else both individually and collectively.  That in itself is a proclamation of God’s omniscience – knowing all things.  We are often clueless about what is best for ourselves, much less what is best for others.  It is easy to make a decision between good and bad, but what about when it is between good, better and best?  Which option is the best?  And just because I think it is best for me, that doesn’t mean that it is the best choice, because it will affect others, and that must also be taken into consideration.  We face those decisions daily.  What specific chore should I do and in what order?  What books should I read, and in what order should I read them?  I know I need to study the Bible, but should I be studying Genesis or Revelation at the present time?  You would drive yourself into a white jacket with long sleeves that tie in the back if you thought about this too long.  Instead, we can rest in God’s guidance of us because He does know what is best.

God knows all things, so nothing ever catches Him by surprise.  He is also all powerful, so no matter what the circumstances, He can bring everything together to produce good, even from bad things.

Now at this point you say, “Whoa, Pastor Terry!”  For all of us are aware of evil things that happen.  This world is filled with sin.  God can’t use the sinful actions of people to produce good, can He?  The answer is yes.  God can produce good even from the actions of evil people who hate and sin against Him.

Paul has already told us in this chapter that we Christians will face tough things in our lives we do not like.  None of us get excited about suffering from sin, whether it is our own, someone else’s or the general curse the world is under because of sin.  We all properly seek to avoid it if possible.  Yet, God knows just what needs to be brought into our lives in order to produce the character of Jesus Christ within us.  That is why Paul said earlier in Romans 5 that he would exult in tribulations.  God used those tough things to produce in him perseverance, proven character and a hope firmly based in the love of God demonstrated for all time and eternity in Jesus Christ dying as the substitute payment for our sins.  James 1:2-4 says basically the same thing, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.  And let endurance have [its] perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.?

Even when we fail the testing of our faith, God can use that for our good.  How?  Because it brings us back to confessing our sins to Him.  He then forgives us and cleanses us.  We then learn to pass the test the next time, and we help others avoid the same pitfalls.  As Paul said back in 6:1, may it never be that we would sin with the idea that it would cause God’s grace to increase, yet God’s grace does abound to cover our sin (5:20).  He is so powerful that He can work even our sin together for good in the process of maturing us.  This should not surprise us, for we do it with our own children. When they err in the behavior or attitudes, we correct and discipline them which results in their developing a better character as they mature.

But let’s take this one step further.  What about actions that can only be described in terms of utter evil.  What about WWII and the holocaust?  What about the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11?  Can God cause even such acts of evil to work together for good?  Again, the answer is yes.  The persecution against the Jews in Europe during WW II and the years immediately following resulted in the formation of the nation of Israel.  This fulfilled ancient prophecies.  Many Jews found that Jesus Christ was Messiah in the midst of the persecution.  Many mission efforts to the Jews began as a result of that war.  In addition, WW II also resulted in the largest missionary effort that has every occurred.  In particular, thousands of American soldiers went back to places they had fought during the war in order to fight a different battle.  This one against the forces of darkness by bringing the light of the gospel to millions that had never before heard it.

The attacks on America by Islamic terrorists on 9/11 brought about a spiritual openness in the city that was not thought possible.  It caused an increased desire for God throughout our nation.  How many thousands have been saved or restored to active service for the Lord as a result of those attacks will only be known in heaven.  In addition, it tore off the mask of Islam, and even though the media and many of our government leaders refuse to acknowledge the utter evil of that religion, many Christians have been awakened to the need of bringing the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ to those entrapped in the worship of the false and evil god, Allah.

The Benefactors:

Yes, God can cause all things, included acts of pure evil, to work together for good in accomplishing His purpose for those who belong to Him.  That is an important point to remember.  This promise is not universal in nature.  It is specifically related “to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”  Who are the “those who love God?”  Who are “those who are called according to His purpose?”  They are the elect that have come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Paul will explain more about this idea of being called in verse 30.  These are the same people that verse 26 says the
Spirit is helping in their weaknesses.  These are those that verse 17 says are joint heirs with Christ.  They are living according to the Spirit (verse 13).  They are in Christ Jesus and therefore without condemnation from God (verse 1).

Paul has already pointed out that people do not seek God on their own (3:11).  No one loves God except as a response to the love He has already shown us in Christ Jesus (1 John 4:19).  When a person does love God, it is demonstrated in their desire and effort to keep His commandments (John 14:21,23; 1 John 5:2-3), which includes loving other people (1 John 4:20).  The promise that all things will work together for good only belongs to true believers.  They will receive a benefit even when bad things happen, and when they suffer.  Believers have a reason for hope.  For the unbeliever, and those with false professions of faith, all things do not work together for good.  They will suffer from evil and sin without benefit.  They have no reason for hope, and for them to hope for something better is ultimately foolish, for without Christ, their eternal destiny is the wrath of God.

Only a being that is omnipotent could make a claim such as this, for it demands the ability to overcome any event that occurs.  It demands a power that can never be overwhelmed.  Any power less than that is subject to something else thwarting its effort and making the claim false.  Only God Himself can cause all things to work together for good for those that love Him and are called according to His purpose.

God’s Sovereignty.

This power of God is part of what makes Him sovereign, and that sovereignty is another source of comfort to the believer.  Paul explains in verses 29,30, “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.”  I will devote a whole study to this passage tomorrow, and we will be
dealing with the sovereignty of God for the next couple of days.  That should help us grasp at least a basic understanding of the deep theological concepts here.  But for this morning, I only want to bring out the general point of these verses.  Even when I face difficult circumstances in life, I can trust the promises of my heavenly Father.  He will complete the work He has begun in me.  There will be a day that every true Christian will stand before Him in a glorified state as a joint heir with Christ.  His sovereignty guarantees it. Let’s look at the words Paul uses to drive this truth home.

Foreknowledge is the Greek word for experiential knowledge with the prefix for “before” attached to it.  God has experiential knowledge of us before we are born.  I believe that God exists outside the time box that we are in.  Foreknowledge is knowing things or events before they exist or happen.  In Greek, the term for “foreknowledge” is “prognosis,” which expresses the idea of knowing reality before it is real and events before they occur. In Christian theology, “foreknowledge” refers to the all-knowing, omniscient nature of God whereby He knows reality before it is real, all things and events before they happen, and all people before they exist.

Both Old and New Testaments speak of God’s foreknowledge . Nothing in the future is hidden from God’s eyes (Isaiah 41:23; 42:9; 44:6-7; 46:10).  God sees our lives, our bodies, and our days even before we are conceived: Psalm 139:15-16 declare, “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

• God promised to bless future peoples through Abraham – Genesis 12:3. 
• God told Moses what would happen with Pharaoh – Exodus 3:19.
• Through God’s foreknowledge, the prophets spoke of a coming Messiah – Isaiah 9:1-7; Jeremiah 23:5-6.
• Through Daniel, God made known the future rise and fall of kingdoms – Daniel 2:31-45; 7).
• In many New Testament passages, Old Testament prophecies are fulfilled in Jesus Christ’s ministry and in the formation of the church – Matthew 1:22; 4:14; 8:17; John 12:38-41; Acts 2:17-21; 3:22-25; Galatians 3:8; Hebrews 5:6; 1 Peter 1:10-12.

The apostle Peter teaches that God had foreknowledge of His Son’s sacrificial death long before Jesus died (1 Peter 1:20); see also Revelation 13:8).  Jesus’ death on the cross was part of God’s eternal plan of salvation before the creation of the world.  On the day of Pentecost, Peter condemns those who put Christ to death but at the same time points to the sovereignty of God: they had been given free rein to do as they wished with Christ because of “God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23). Although evil rulers had conspired to kill the Lord Jesus, His death had been decided by God beforehand (Acts 4:28).

The Bible teaches that God’s children were chosen beforehand, and God’s foreknowledge was involved.  The elect are those, “who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Peter 1:2).  And Romans 8:29 says, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”

But God’s choice of the elect was not simply based on His foreknowledge of events; it was based on His good pleasure: Ephesians 1:4-5 tells us, “For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.  In love He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will.”  In Romans 11:2, divine foreknowledge suggests an eternal connection between God and His chosen or “foreknown” people because of His loving faithfulness: “God has not rejected his people whom He foreknew.”

The foreknowledge of God is far more than His ability to “see the future;” His foreknowledge is a true “knowing” of what will come to pass, based on His free choice. He decrees what will come to pass.  In other words, foreknowledge is not just intellectual; it is personal and relational.  Foreknowledge is equivalent to foreordination in that God ordains, or orders, all that will be.

I do not understand exactly how God had foreknowledge of me, but I am comfortable with simply accepting that in some way He did.  Because I know that God is beyond my full comprehension, I can accept His revelation of Himself simply as it is given without it forcing Him to fit into my theology.

Predestined means to “foreordain” or “to appoint beforehand.”  This is God’s gracious decision which appoints for the elect their goal.  Included in that goal is adoption as sons through Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:5) and obtaining the inheritance (Ephesians 1:11), as well the goal here of being conformed to the image of Christ.

Purpose: A purpose of salvation is being “conformed into the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren.”  This is, of course, the ultimate goal of the Christian that will take place in fulness when we are in heaven and receive our resurrection bodies.  We will then be like Jesus, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2).  God’s sovereignty gives us confidence in the present for it makes our future hope for this sure.  God will be glorified. What He has done in raising Jesus from the dead, He will also do for those of us who are joint heirs with Christ.

But in the present, we are in the process of becoming more like Christ.  As time passes in this present life, we should become greater reflections of Jesus Christ.  In the present, we “lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit,” and being “renewed in the spirit of [our] mind,” we “put on the new self, which in [the likeness of] God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth” (Ephesians 4:22-23).  As 2 Corinthians 3:18, states it, “we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.”

The idea of being Called here is the effectual call of God that brings a person to Jesus Christ.  There is the general call of God to the world to repent and partake of the offer of salvation, but the context here is specific to those who are Christians.  This is the drawing of the Father spoken about in John 6:44 when Jesus said, “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Those God called, He also Justified.  We have spoken about justification many times already in our study of Romans.  This is God’s judicial declaration of “not guilty” on the person who has placed their faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ for salvation from their sins.

Those God has justified, He has also Glorified.  This refers to when we will receive our inheritance and be changed into the glorified state we will have in heaven, including having our resurrected bodies.  Paul uses the past tense here in demonstration of the absolute confidence we have that God will fulfill His promises to us.  We can speak of a future event as having already taken place because God’s sovereignty makes is certain.

Again, we will look at verses 29 and 30 in depth next tomorrow, but for today, if you are a Christian, be at peace and rest in the confidence that comes because God is sovereign.  His promises are certain.  That is a comfort to every believer.  You have the responsibility of telling others how they can also have peace with God and hope for the future.

But God’s promises are not comforting to sinners, for they are still under God’s condemnation and wrath.  If you are reading this today and do not have confidence that if you died today you would go to heaven, then please talk with someone who has accepted Jesus as their Savior and has a growing relationship with Him.  You can have your sins forgiven in Jesus Christ and then have that confidence.  Don’t leave and risk a Christless eternity.  Get right with God today.

This is God Word …

This is Grace for your Journey …

Rest and Rejoice in this eternal truth!

Pastor Terry

Ephesians 4:7 – “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Grace For The Journey

Anticipation.  At times this is not such a good word if you waiting for something to happen that you know you will not enjoy, like a trip to the dentist.  At other times it is a wonderful word that describes the mixture of hope, joy, and pleasure usually stirred with a bit of anxiety and sometimes even a little frustration as you await some good event to take place.  Children anticipate the coming of their birthday and Christmas because of all the special attention they will receive.  Teens anticipate becoming adults even though all of its freedoms are also bound by new responsibilities.  An engaged couple anticipate the celebration of their wedding day along with the beginning of their married lives together.  There is the anticipation of the arrival of a new baby.  Young adults anticipate the starting of their careers and middle age folks start dreaming about what it will be like to retire. 

There is one more major event that we need to anticipate, though whether that will be considered something to look forward to or something to dread will depend on the individual’s relationship to God.  

We all need to anticipate

The passing from

This life into the next.

For the true Christian, that is an event that can be anticipated with joy, as Paul states in our text for study this morning.  We can anticipate that with anxious longing as we wait eagerly to pass from this life and be with Jesus.  For the person who does not know Jesus Christ as their Savior, death is a dreaded enemy.  For those who do dread death, I hope to help you understand today how you can anticipate it positively instead.

We will be studying Romans 8, verse 18-25 this morning.  From these verses we learn several important and necessary truths . . .

The Suffering of the Present.

The idea of suffering that Paul presents in verse 18 was introduced in what he had said in verse 17 about being joint heirs with Christ and therefore suffering with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.  I gave a brief explanation of this in yesterday’s blog.  Today, I want to expand more on both the idea of suffering in the present and the blessing of glory that is to come.

Our being joint heirs is seen in our present reality of suffering with Christ.  By that, Paul is referring to the persecution that comes against all who strive to live godly in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:12).  The more we become like Jesus, the more the world will hate us because it hates Him (John 15:20).  Jesus specifically told us in Matthew 5:10-12, “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are you when [men] cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me.  Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”  While such suffering of persecution is not something we anticipate with joy, yet is it something that can be positive in our lives, for that very suffering because of our identification with Jesus is assurance of our also being glorified with Him.

That is the great hope of the Christian. It is that hope that drives the Christian on in their battle against their own sin as well as the temptations and persecution of the world.  All who have this hope of being glorified with Jesus purify themselves (1 John 3:3).

There is another aspect to this suffering than just direct persecution by the ungodly.  There is also the suffering that we endure simply because we continue to live in a sin cursed world after our salvation.  The Scriptures tell us in no uncertain terms that Jesus Christ left the glories of heaven in order to come to earth as a man as part of the plan for our redemption (Philippians 2:5ff).  I don’t think there is any way that we can fully comprehend the full extent of what that meant in terms of leaving the glories of heaven in order to dwell with man.

Perhaps the best we can do to get a bit of the idea is for someone who has been living in one of these Christian retirement communities where all the neighbors are mature Christians who love the Lord and each other, and place that person in a federal prison among the general population of inmates – thieves, swindlers, rapists, murderers, etc.  I think you can understand that there is a suffering that will take place simply because of the change of environment.

Being justified by faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the true Christian is made an alien and stranger to this world (1 Peter 2:11).  We are new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17) whose citizenship is now in heaven (Philippians 3:20), but we remain here for the present.  Like Lot, who felt “his righteous soul tormented day by day by the lawless deeds” of the people of Sodom, so we too feel our souls tormented by the unrighteousness of those around us.  Can any of us watch the evening news without feeling disturbed, troubled, and even offended in your soul by the reports of unrighteous acts that come pouring out?  Don’t you long for it to be different?

Let’s make this more personal.  How do you feel when the guy living next door decides to let the whole neighborhood listen to his favorite music, whether they like it or not?  More than a little annoyed, perhaps?  How do you feel when not only are you cut off while driving, but the fellow also sideswipes you and speeds off?  I would guess you would be a little more than just annoyed.  What about when someone publicly lies and slanders someone you know and love?  Righteous indignation would be appropriate.  Or how about if you came home and not only was your house robbed, but it was trashed as well?  Or even worse, what if someone abused a child you knew or even your own? Your soul would be vexed at the sin that is all around and which is personally affecting you and those you love.

You must also add to this your struggle against your own sin.  It troubles the Christian deeply to still have to deal with their own sin.  It is upsetting enough to have to deal with the effect of our own sin upon our own lives, but it is tormenting to see those we love hurt by our sin.  Our souls are vexed and we yearn to be changed.  Paul’s expression of this in Romans 7:14-25 matches the heart of every believer.  We cry out longing for the day in which we will be free from this body of sin that we are still in.  We desire to be in a place where sin no longer exists.

In verse 18 Paul considers all the suffering that we endure in this life with the glory that is to come in the future for the Christian, and concludes that there is no comparison to be made.  It is not that Paul is insensitive to suffering, either his own or that of others. Rather, it is that what is to come is so wonderful that what we endure at present, though difficult at the moment, is not to be compared.  The sorrow of the present will be turned to great joy in the future.

In John 16:20-22, Jesus comforted His disciples with this same thought as they considered Jesus’ soon departure from them. Jesus said to them, “Verily, verily, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned to joy.  Whenever a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she remembers the anguish no more, for joy that a child has been born into the world.  Therefore you too now have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one takes your joy away from you.”

When a woman is in labor, the time is filled with anguish.  Yet, no matter how difficult and painful it was for her to deliver, when that baby is placed in her arms, her heart is filled with joy.  (If that was not true, none of us would have siblings).  So, it is with the present sorrows and suffering.  They will give way to something better in the future.

Let me add here that the present suffering is not without benefit.  Remember what James 1 and Romans 5 says about the trials we have in this life.  God uses them to mature us.  The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond al comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” 

The suffering we endure here reminds us

That this world is not our final home.  

We are awaiting the glory that is

To be revealed to us which is so

Far better than the present

That they cannot be compared.

The Glory to be Revealed.

What is the glory to be revealed to us?  It is what we will receive as heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ (8:17).  We will be part of God’s eternal kingdom.  Remember what Matthew 25:34 tells us that Jesus will say to those that belong to Him, “Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”  The glory that belongs to the kingdom of God is the glory that will be revealed to us.

What is that glory?  All the glory of both the Millennial Kingdom and heaven.  During the Millennial Kingdom, Jesus will reign on the throne of David in Jerusalem (Isaiah 24:23). All the nations will be subject to Him (Zechariah 14).  There will be a perfect government.  Nature will also be restored and function in a way that we would find unbelievable at present.  Amos 9:13 describes that time saying, “’Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘When the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; when the mountains will drip sweet wine, and all the hills will be dissolved.”  Can you imagine a harvest so plentiful that you can’t finish picking it all before your starting to replant.  That also tells us that the seasons will be different from what we experience now.  Harvest time will merge with planting time without the harsh deadness of winter in between.  The current curse on the earth will also be lifted for Isaiah 55:13 tells us, “Instead of the thorn bush the cypress will come up; and instead of the nettle the myrtle will come up; and it will be a memorial to the Lord, for an everlasting sign which will not be cut off.”  Weeds and thorns will be replaced by good plants during the Millennium.

After the Millennium, the present heavens and earth will be destroyed and a new heaven and earth will be created.  It will be even better.  We can hardly begin to imagine what that would be like, for there will no longer be any curse and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be there.  The glory of God will illumine everything, so there will no longer be any night or even the need for a lamp.  If that is but a very brief description, what must the splendor of this glory actually be!  It is no wonder that both we and creation long for this.

The Longing of Creation.

In verses 19-22, Paul describes the “anxious longing” of the creation which “waits eagerly” for this to occur.  “Anxious longing” is a “strained expectancy.”  It is the idea of stretching your neck and craning your head as you look eagerly and patiently wait for something to happen.  That is the sort of anxious longing while eagerly waiting a groom would have at his wedding while looking for his bride to make her entrance.  Paul tells us that creation has that kind of longing for the sons of God to be revealed.

The revelation of the sons of God will occur at the beginning of the Millennium when the
judgement of the “sheep and goats” will occur (Matthew 25:32ff).  The sheep, which are the people that belong to Him, will be invited into His kingdom.  The goats, those people who have not followed Him, will be cast away to eternal damnation.  At present, it is not revealed who the sons of God are.  There are many people who profess faith in Jesus Christ, but there are tares among the wheat of the church (Matthew 13:38).  There are wolves among the sheep (Acts 20:29), and those who are self-deceived about their true relationship to the Lord (Matthew 7:22-23).  I think we will be surprised on that day to find who really does belong to the Lord and who does not.  Some we did not expect will
enter God’s kingdom, and some we expected to enter will be cast away.

Creation here refers to the animals, plants, the earth, and the heavenly bodies.  It does not refer to people since believers are mentioned separately and the ungodly would not be anxious to have their judgment come upon them.  In that same vein, it does not refer to Satan and the demons because they do not want the sons of God to be revealed; and it does not refer to the good Angels because they are not corrupted.  It is an amazing thing to consider that nonrational creation longs for the coming of the Millennial kingdom and the consummation of the ages.

Some might wonder about how nonrational creation could have longings, but the idea of attributing human characteristics to creation occurs commonly in both Biblical and non-biblical literature.  While we may not understand how the rocks, plants, seas, and sky that make up creation could have desires, in some way they do.

In verse 20, Paul tells us that the curse that creation is under did not come by its own will, but by was placed upon it. It was subjugated to futility by God.  Creation is unable to fulfill its original purposes.  Some might object that it is unfair to curse creation when it was Adam that sinned, yet it must be remembered that the earth was placed under Adam’s dominion (Genesis 1;28), so Adam’s sin also affected what he held dominion over.  God had used creation as the means to provide for Adam’s physical needs.  Prior to his fall into sin, gathering food was not a difficult task.  But as a result of his sin, God cursed creation as part of the curse upon Adam.  Genesis3:17-19 records, “Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you,’ saying, ‘You shall not eat from it;’ cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.  Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Many environmentalists become extreme in their position because they forget that the creation is also cursed.  It is proper that man takes proper care of our environment, for God has given to man that responsibility, and he will be held accountable for his stewardship.  Man has often abused nature instead of taking care of it, and it is good for organizations and government to oppose such abuse and seek to give it reasonable protection and even restore it.  That is also a proper Christian response for that is the proper stewardship of the earth that belongs to man.

However, it is sheer foolishness to think that you will restore nature simply by keeping man out.  In fact, it often takes man’s intervention to restore an environment.  Creation is under the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  Things go from a state of high energy to low energy, from order to disorder.  Things decay even without man.  Natural disasters – earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and fires can quickly devastate even large areas.  Man cannot control such disasters, but he can help minimize the damage of some of them and he can help restore devastated areas.

Some environmentalists have gone to the extreme of worshiping nature instead of the God that created it.  Some have even become what can only be called anti-human, their own existence excepted of course.  Their evolutionary beliefs have led them to think that nature will somehow improve if man is kept from interfering with it.  But the actual record of nature is the opposite.  It is decaying.  It is declining.  The fossil record proves that countless species of animals and plants have become extinct without man causing it.  Man can strip mine, but only nature can cause the climate changes that have resulted in the desertification of Northern Africa and the basin and range system of the American west.

Nature longs to be restored to what it was in the Garden of Eden, but its hope is not in the plans of environmentalists, no matter how helpful they may want to be.  The hope of nature to be free of its current slavery to corruption is the freedom it will receive when the glory of the children of God is revealed.  Only then will the curse be lifted and it will be cared for by those who are following God’s original plans to rule over the earth instead of just exploit it.

At the present time the whole of creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth.  Paul does not say who or when the world will be made new.  He only alludes to the fact that it will be by using the analogy of being in the pains of childbirth.  It is painful now, but new life is coming.  The Apostle Peter tells us that a day will come when the present heavens and earth will be destroyed by fire which will melt even the elements, but then a new heaven and earth will be created (2 Peter 3:10-13).  The Apostle John speaks briefly of the same event in Revelation 21:1 saying, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.”

The Longing of Christians.

Christians have a similar longing as creation.  Verse 23 tells us that already having the first fruits of the Holy Spirit, we long for the completion of our redemption.  We have been redeemed from the curse of sin by Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit has already regenerated us to new spiritual life.  He now lives within us and is changing us through the process of sanctification.  But the more we are changed, the more we long for our final redemption when we will receive the final aspects of our adoption as sons when our bodies are also redeemed.  These bodies of sin, not just our unredeemed flesh, but the corruption that remains in our minds and emotions, will one be day done away with and we will receive resurrection bodies and minds and emotions that will no longer have any bent to sin.

Paul also describes this longing in 2 Corinthians 5:4 saying, “For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, in order that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”  Creation longs for the complete removal of Adam’s curse, and so do we.  That is our great hope.

The Nature of Hope.

In verse 24, Paul explains the nature of hope, “For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one also hope for what he sees?”  Biblical hope is not a wish, but a confident assurance based in God’s promises.  We have not experienced the complete fulfilment of these promises yet.  That is the simple reality. They are still in the future, which is why they are still a hope, and not something we can presently enjoy.  But we are confident that they will be kept. That is the nature of hope because that is the nature of our faith.  The definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1 explains this, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen.”

The Perseverance of Hope.

This assurance and conviction causes us to persevere in our hope.  Paul explains in verse 25, “But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.”  If hope was based only on what we can presently experience, then it would
have no relationship to the future.  It would be the confidence that a skeptic has, which is based only in himself.  Our confidence is based in someone far greater than we.  Our hope is not irrational, for the evidence of God keeping His many promises is recorded throughout the pages of the Bible.  In addition, though we have not yet received the fullness of our redemption, we have experienced many aspects of it.  We know that we have already been radically changed by something outside of ourselves.  It is reasonable to believe that the one that raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also be able to fulfill His promises of redemption to us.  We have been forgiven our sins through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  We are joint heirs with Christ and we will receive a resurrection body that is like His.  Therefore, we persevere in the present life while longing for God’s promises to be fulfilled in the future.

The reality of our hope manifests itself in our present life in how we live, for as 1 John 3:3 states, “And everyone who has this hope [fixed] on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”  I pray that the evidence of your hope of final redemption is also being
manifested in your present life.

This is God Word …

This is Grace for your Journey …

Rest and Rejoice in this eternal truth!

Pastor Terry

Ephesians 4:7 – “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Grace For The Journey

Anticipation.  At times this is not such a good word if you waiting for something to happen that you know you will not enjoy, like a trip to the dentist.  At other times it is a wonderful word that describes the mixture of hope, joy, and pleasure usually stirred with a bit of anxiety and sometimes even a little frustration as you await some good event to take place.  Children anticipate the coming of their birthday and Christmas because of all the special attention they will receive.  Teens anticipate becoming adults even though all of its freedoms are also bound by new responsibilities.  An engaged couple anticipate the celebration of their wedding day along with the beginning of their married lives together.  There is the anticipation of the arrival of a new baby.  Young adults anticipate the starting of their careers and middle age folks start dreaming about what it will be like to retire. 

There is one more major event that we need to anticipate, though whether that will be considered something to look forward to or something to dread will depend on the individual’s relationship to God.  

We all need to anticipate

The passing from

This life into the next.

For the true Christian, that is an event that can be anticipated with joy, as Paul states in our text for study this morning.  We can anticipate that with anxious longing as we wait eagerly to pass from this life and be with Jesus.  For the person who does not know Jesus Christ as their Savior, death is a dreaded enemy.  For those who do dread death, I hope to help you understand today how you can anticipate it positively instead.

We will be studying Romans 8, verse 18-25 this morning.  From these verses we learn several important and necessary truths . . .

The Suffering of the Present.

The idea of suffering that Paul presents in verse 18 was introduced in what he had said in verse 17 about being joint heirs with Christ and therefore suffering with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.  I gave a brief explanation of this in yesterday’s blog.  Today, I want to expand more on both the idea of suffering in the present and the blessing of glory that is to come.

Our being joint heirs is seen in our present reality of suffering with Christ.  By that, Paul is referring to the persecution that comes against all who strive to live godly in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:12).  The more we become like Jesus, the more the world will hate us because it hates Him (John 15:20).  Jesus specifically told us in Matthew 5:10-12, “Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are you when [men] cast insults at you, and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, on account of Me.  Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”  While such suffering of persecution is not something we anticipate with joy, yet is it something that can be positive in our lives, for that very suffering because of our identification with Jesus is assurance of our also being glorified with Him.

That is the great hope of the Christian. It is that hope that drives the Christian on in their battle against their own sin as well as the temptations and persecution of the world.  All who have this hope of being glorified with Jesus purify themselves (1 John 3:3).

There is another aspect to this suffering than just direct persecution by the ungodly.  There is also the suffering that we endure simply because we continue to live in a sin cursed world after our salvation.  The Scriptures tell us in no uncertain terms that Jesus Christ left the glories of heaven in order to come to earth as a man as part of the plan for our redemption (Philippians 2:5ff).  I don’t think there is any way that we can fully comprehend the full extent of what that meant in terms of leaving the glories of heaven in order to dwell with man.

Perhaps the best we can do to get a bit of the idea is for someone who has been living in one of these Christian retirement communities where all the neighbors are mature Christians who love the Lord and each other, and place that person in a federal prison among the general population of inmates – thieves, swindlers, rapists, murderers, etc.  I think you can understand that there is a suffering that will take place simply because of the change of environment.

Being justified by faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, the true Christian is made an alien and stranger to this world (1 Peter 2:11).  We are new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17) whose citizenship is now in heaven (Philippians 3:20), but we remain here for the present.  Like Lot, who felt “his righteous soul tormented day by day by the lawless deeds” of the people of Sodom, so we too feel our souls tormented by the unrighteousness of those around us.  Can any of us watch the evening news without feeling disturbed, troubled, and even offended in your soul by the reports of unrighteous acts that come pouring out?  Don’t you long for it to be different?

Let’s make this more personal.  How do you feel when the guy living next door decides to let the whole neighborhood listen to his favorite music, whether they like it or not?  More than a little annoyed, perhaps?  How do you feel when not only are you cut off while driving, but the fellow also sideswipes you and speeds off?  I would guess you would be a little more than just annoyed.  What about when someone publicly lies and slanders someone you know and love?  Righteous indignation would be appropriate.  Or how about if you came home and not only was your house robbed, but it was trashed as well?  Or even worse, what if someone abused a child you knew or even your own? Your soul would be vexed at the sin that is all around and which is personally affecting you and those you love.

You must also add to this your struggle against your own sin.  It troubles the Christian deeply to still have to deal with their own sin.  It is upsetting enough to have to deal with the effect of our own sin upon our own lives, but it is tormenting to see those we love hurt by our sin.  Our souls are vexed and we yearn to be changed.  Paul’s expression of this in Romans 7:14-25 matches the heart of every believer.  We cry out longing for the day in which we will be free from this body of sin that we are still in.  We desire to be in a place where sin no longer exists.

In verse 18 Paul considers all the suffering that we endure in this life with the glory that is to come in the future for the Christian, and concludes that there is no comparison to be made.  It is not that Paul is insensitive to suffering, either his own or that of others. Rather, it is that what is to come is so wonderful that what we endure at present, though difficult at the moment, is not to be compared.  The sorrow of the present will be turned to great joy in the future.

In John 16:20-22, Jesus comforted His disciples with this same thought as they considered Jesus’ soon departure from them. Jesus said to them, “Verily, verily, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned to joy.  Whenever a woman is in travail she has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she remembers the anguish no more, for joy that a child has been born into the world.  Therefore you too now have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one takes your joy away from you.”

When a woman is in labor, the time is filled with anguish.  Yet, no matter how difficult and painful it was for her to deliver, when that baby is placed in her arms, her heart is filled with joy.  (If that was not true, none of us would have siblings).  So, it is with the present sorrows and suffering.  They will give way to something better in the future.

Let me add here that the present suffering is not without benefit.  Remember what James 1 and Romans 5 says about the trials we have in this life.  God uses them to mature us.  The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond al comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” 

The suffering we endure here reminds us

That this world is not our final home.  

We are awaiting the glory that is

To be revealed to us which is so

Far better than the present

That they cannot be compared.

The Glory to be Revealed.

What is the glory to be revealed to us?  It is what we will receive as heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ (8:17).  We will be part of God’s eternal kingdom.  Remember what Matthew 25:34 tells us that Jesus will say to those that belong to Him, “Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”  The glory that belongs to the kingdom of God is the glory that will be revealed to us.

What is that glory?  All the glory of both the Millennial Kingdom and heaven.  During the Millennial Kingdom, Jesus will reign on the throne of David in Jerusalem (Isaiah 24:23). All the nations will be subject to Him (Zechariah 14).  There will be a perfect government.  Nature will also be restored and function in a way that we would find unbelievable at present.  Amos 9:13 describes that time saying, “’Behold, days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘When the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; when the mountains will drip sweet wine, and all the hills will be dissolved.”  Can you imagine a harvest so plentiful that you can’t finish picking it all before your starting to replant.  That also tells us that the seasons will be different from what we experience now.  Harvest time will merge with planting time without the harsh deadness of winter in between.  The current curse on the earth will also be lifted for Isaiah 55:13 tells us, “Instead of the thorn bush the cypress will come up; and instead of the nettle the myrtle will come up; and it will be a memorial to the Lord, for an everlasting sign which will not be cut off.”  Weeds and thorns will be replaced by good plants during the Millennium.

After the Millennium, the present heavens and earth will be destroyed and a new heaven and earth will be created.  It will be even better.  We can hardly begin to imagine what that would be like, for there will no longer be any curse and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be there.  The glory of God will illumine everything, so there will no longer be any night or even the need for a lamp.  If that is but a very brief description, what must the splendor of this glory actually be!  It is no wonder that both we and creation long for this.

The Longing of Creation.

In verses 19-22, Paul describes the “anxious longing” of the creation which “waits eagerly” for this to occur.  “Anxious longing” is a “strained expectancy.”  It is the idea of stretching your neck and craning your head as you look eagerly and patiently wait for something to happen.  That is the sort of anxious longing while eagerly waiting a groom would have at his wedding while looking for his bride to make her entrance.  Paul tells us that creation has that kind of longing for the sons of God to be revealed.

The revelation of the sons of God will occur at the beginning of the Millennium when the judgement of the “sheep and goats” will occur (Matthew 25:32ff).  The sheep, which are the people that belong to Him, will be invited into His kingdom.  The goats, those people who have not followed Him, will be cast away to eternal damnation.  At present, it is not revealed who the sons of God are.  There are many people who profess faith in Jesus Christ, but there are tares among the wheat of the church (Matthew 13:38).  There are wolves among the sheep (Acts 20:29), and those who are self-deceived about their true relationship to the Lord (Matthew 7:22-23).  I think we will be surprised on that day to find who really does belong to the Lord and who does not.  Some we did not expect will enter God’s kingdom, and some we expected to enter will be cast away.

Creation here refers to the animals, plants, the earth, and the heavenly bodies.  It does not refer to people since believers are mentioned separately and the ungodly would not be anxious to have their judgment come upon them.  In that same vein, it does not refer to Satan and the demons because they do not want the sons of God to be revealed; and it does not refer to the good Angels because they are not corrupted.  It is an amazing thing to consider that nonrational creation longs for the coming of the Millennial kingdom and the consummation of the ages.

Some might wonder about how nonrational creation could have longings, but the idea of attributing human characteristics to creation occurs commonly in both Biblical and non-biblical literature.  While we may not understand how the rocks, plants, seas, and sky that make up creation could have desires, in some way they do.

In verse 20, Paul tells us that the curse that creation is under did not come by its own will, but by was placed upon it. It was subjugated to futility by God.  Creation is unable to fulfill its original purposes.  Some might object that it is unfair to curse creation when it was Adam that sinned, yet it must be remembered that the earth was placed under Adam’s dominion (Genesis 1;28), so Adam’s sin also affected what he held dominion over.  God had used creation as the means to provide for Adam’s physical needs.  Prior to his fall into sin, gathering food was not a difficult task.  But as a result of his sin, God cursed creation as part of the curse upon Adam.  Genesis3:17-19 records, “Then to Adam He said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you,’ saying, ‘You shall not eat from it;’ cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.  Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Many environmentalists become extreme in their position because they forget that the creation is also cursed.  It is proper that man takes proper care of our environment, for God has given to man that responsibility, and he will be held accountable for his stewardship.  Man has often abused nature instead of taking care of it, and it is good for organizations and government to oppose such abuse and seek to give it reasonable protection and even restore it.  That is also a proper Christian response for that is the proper stewardship of the earth that belongs to man.

However, it is sheer foolishness to think that you will restore nature simply by keeping man out.  In fact, it often takes man’s intervention to restore an environment.  Creation is under the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  Things go from a state of high energy to low energy, from order to disorder.  Things decay even without man.  Natural disasters – earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, droughts, and fires can quickly devastate even large areas.  Man cannot control such disasters, but he can help minimize the damage of some of them and he can help restore devastated areas.

Some environmentalists have gone to the extreme of worshiping nature instead of the God that created it.  Some have even become what can only be called anti-human, their own existence excepted of course.  Their evolutionary beliefs have led them to think that nature will somehow improve if man is kept from interfering with it.  But the actual record of nature is the opposite.  It is decaying.  It is declining.  The fossil record proves that countless species of animals and plants have become extinct without man causing it.  Man can strip mine, but only nature can cause the climate changes that have resulted in the desertification of Northern Africa and the basin and range system of the American west.

Nature longs to be restored to what it was in the Garden of Eden, but its hope is not in the plans of environmentalists, no matter how helpful they may want to be.  The hope of nature to be free of its current slavery to corruption is the freedom it will receive when the glory of the children of God is revealed.  Only then will the curse be lifted and it will be cared for by those who are following God’s original plans to rule over the earth instead of just exploit it.

At the present time the whole of creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth.  Paul does not say who or when the world will be made new.  He only alludes to the fact that it will be by using the analogy of being in the pains of childbirth.  It is painful now, but new life is coming.  The Apostle Peter tells us that a day will come when the present heavens and earth will be destroyed by fire which will melt even the elements, but then a new heaven and earth will be created (2 Peter 3:10-13).  The Apostle John speaks briefly of the same event in Revelation 21:1 saying, “I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea.”

The Longing of Christians.

Christians have a similar longing as creation.  Verse 23 tells us that already having the first fruits of the Holy Spirit, we long for the completion of our redemption.  We have been redeemed from the curse of sin by Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit has already regenerated us to new spiritual life.  He now lives within us and is changing us through the process of sanctification.  But the more we are changed, the more we long for our final redemption when we will receive the final aspects of our adoption as sons when our bodies are also redeemed.  These bodies of sin, not just our unredeemed flesh, but the corruption that remains in our minds and emotions, will one be day done away with and we will receive resurrection bodies and minds and emotions that will no longer have any bent to sin.

Paul also describes this longing in 2 Corinthians 5:4 saying, “For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed, but to be clothed, in order that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”  Creation longs for the complete removal of Adam’s curse, and so do we.  That is our great hope.

The Nature of Hope.

In verse 24, Paul explains the nature of hope, “For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one also hope for what he sees?”  Biblical hope is not a wish, but a confident assurance based in God’s promises.  We have not experienced the complete fulfilment of these promises yet.  That is the simple reality. They are still in the future, which is why they are still a hope, and not something we can presently enjoy.  But we are confident that they will be kept. That is the nature of hope because that is the nature of our faith.  The definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1 explains this, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not
seen.”

The Perseverance of Hope.

This assurance and conviction causes us to persevere in our hope.  Paul explains in verse 25, “But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.”  If hope was based only on what we can presently experience, then it would have no relationship to the future.  It would be the confidence that a skeptic has, which is based only in himself.  Our confidence is based in someone far greater than we.  Our hope is not irrational, for the evidence of God keeping His many promises is recorded throughout the pages of the Bible.  In addition, though we have not yet received the fullness of our redemption, we have experienced many aspects of it.  We know that we have already been radically changed by something outside of ourselves.  It is reasonable to believe that the one that raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also be able to fulfill His promises of redemption to us.  We have been forgiven our sins through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  We are joint heirs with Christ and we will receive a resurrection body that is like His.  Therefore, we persevere in the present life while longing for God’s promises to be fulfilled in the future.

The reality of our hope manifests itself in our present life in how we live, for as 1 John 3:3 states, “And everyone who has this hope [fixed] on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”  I pray that the evidence of your hope of final redemption is also being manifested in your present life.

This is God Word …

This is Grace for your Journey …

Rest and Rejoice in this eternal truth!

Pastor Terry

Ephesians 4:7 – “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

Grace For The Journey

Today we are again in Romans 8.  We will be looking at verse 12-17 where Paul contrasts living in the flesh and its results with living by the Spirit and its results.  Paul begins this section by explaining the believer’s relationship to the flesh.

Living In The Flesh.

The Believer’s Relationship To The Flesh.

Verse 12 states, “So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh.”  As we have seen over the last several days in our study of Romans, the person who is justified by faith in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ has no obligation to the flesh. We have no debt to the flesh.  We have no duty to the flesh.  It has no right to compel us to do its bidding.

Paul has explained the reason for this in chapters 6 and 7.  In chapter6, verse 6 he said, “Our old self was crucified with Christ so that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”  God and His righteousness are our new masters.  Sin has no right to tell us what to do.  Christ has broken the law’s jurisdiction over us and joined us to Himself (7:1,4) so that we are released from the law and serving it in the oldness of the letter and are now bound to Him and serving in the newness of the Spirit (7:6).  This is important, for though the law is holy, righteous and good (7:12), it was used by our old sinful natures to produce in us more sin.  The result had been our conviction of and condemnation for sin. But the believer has been changed.

Yes, as Romans 7:14-25 points out, Christians still struggle against the sin that still exists within what Paul refers to as the “flesh,” that part of us that remains corrupt while awaiting final redemption when we go to heaven.  Yet, the believer has a new nature that is in conflict with this flesh and he fights against it.  The unregenerate cannot do that for they are slaves to sin.  Even their best efforts to do good fall short and are filthy before our holy God.  They cannot “joyfully concur with the law in the inner man” (7:22).  The true Christian does do this for he recognizes the spiritual nature of the law, and even though it reminds him of his continual failure to live in perfect holiness, he now strives to fulfill the law out of his love for God.  Though the body of flesh still struggles with sin, the Christian’s mind is set on “serving the law of God” (7:25).

The true Christian is justified by his faith in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and so he is no longer under God’s condemnation (8:1).  His sins are forgiven, and He is clothed with the righteousness of Christ.  As wonderful as that is, if we were left in our flesh to battle sin by ourselves in this life, we would have very miserable lives.  We, like Paul in 7:24, would be continually crying out to be “freed from the body of this death.”  God gave us something additional so that we can win in our battle against the flesh.  The Holy Spirit sets us “free from the law of sin and of death” (8:2).  Through the ministry of the Holy Spirit we are enabled to fight against the flesh and win.  We will not have complete victory in this life because at times we will try to do things in our own power instead of His, but through the Holy Spirit are lives should be marked by less sin and more holiness.  The Holy Spirit also enables us to fulfill the righteous duties God has revealed to us in His word (8:4).

The true Christian has the Holy Spirit dwelling within them (8:11) as part of the new covenant.  Non-Christians and those with false professions of faith do not.  As I pointed out from verse 9 yesterday, either you have the Holy Spirit and you belong to Christ, or you don’t and you are not a Christian.  Anyone who teaches that the Holy Spirit comes upon the Christian as a separate act sometime subsequent to salvation is teaching a false doctrine.  1 Corinthians 12:13 even makes it clear that the Baptism of the Holy Spirit comes upon the believer at salvation, otherwise they are not part of Christ’s body.

The true evidence of the Holy Spirit’s presence in a person is seen in the fruit of the Spirit which Paul lists in Galatians5:22-23, “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  Against such there is no law.”  How is that fruit generated in the Christian?  It arises from the mind-set of the individual, which in turn reveals the true spiritual nature of the person.  The mind set on the flesh is death, for it is hostile to God (8:6,7).  The mind-set of the Spirit is life and peace.  The importance of having a proper mind-set in order to live for Christ and evidence true salvation cannot be stressed enough.  That is why Paul stresses it again here in verse 12.

Again, as Romans 7:14-25 explains, the Christian is in a struggle against the flesh.  It is a battle that he will lose at times, but the primary reason for defeat is what he has set his mind on.  If he sets it on the flesh, then he will obey sin, and it will be his master.  If he sets it on the Spirit, then he will obey righteousness, and it will be his master (6:16).  The problem we often have is that at times we think or feel like we have no choice but to sin.  That is simply not true, but it is the reality of how we think and feel at times.

We have God’s promise that He will never allow us to be tempted beyond what we are able, but with the temptation, He is faithful to provide a way of escape that we may be able to bear it (1 Corinthians 10:13).  We succumb to the temptation because it is attractive to our flesh, which includes our corrupt thoughts and our pride (1 John 2:15-16), and so we consider it and yield to it if our mind set is to fulfill the flesh’s desires.  But as Paul says here in 8:12, the Christian has no obligation to the flesh.  We do not have to give in to it.  We do not have to live according to it.  That is a key element that makes the true believer different from the person who has a false profession of faith.  The true Christian will stumble in sin and fall at times, but he is not characterized by catering to his sinful flesh (8:5), and even when he does fall, it is contrary to his true desires (7:23,25).  The false Christian is characterized by catering to their flesh.  They may make effort to do some good things, but they are not done for the glory of God.  Their mind set and life is actually one in which they are living according to the flesh.

Evidence of Living in the Flesh – Galatians 5:19-21.

What is the evidence of living in the flesh?  I spoke about this briefly yesterday and pointed out Galatians 5:1-21, “Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions dissensions, heresies,  envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like.”  This cannot be considered a comprehensive list for Paul adds on a qualifier at the end, “and the like,” that tells us there are more things that could be listed.  This is rather a sample of areas where the flesh leads.  But let’s take a closer look at this list and see what they reveal to us about those that live according to the flesh.

Sexual Immorality.

This refers to all sexual sins.  Those who live in the flesh view their sexuality as something that must be fulfilled, which is not true.  It is reserved for marriage only.  They also approach it as getting pleasure for themselves rather than God’s design which is for it to occur only within marriage as an act of vulnerability, intimacy and giving of yourself to your spouse.

Impurity

This is moral impurity, dirty. It is the mind set of fornication. It would include pornography, lewdness, and obscene jokes.  It differs from “porneia” only in that this is mental rather than physical.  It is the filthy mind that could lead to immoral actions if the opportunity arises.

Sensuality.

This is lasciviousness, being unbridled in lust, without restraint.  It is shameless conduct.  It seeks to satisfy the flesh by doing whatever feels good regardless of its impropriety or offense to others.

Idolatry.

This is worshiping a false god.  Those living according to the flesh do not want to know the true God because that would make them uncomfortable, to say the least, in their sin.  They make up a god for themselves that will either accept them or which they can appease in some way.

Sorcery.

This is “magical arts” of potions, etc.  We get our word, “pharmacy,” from it.  These are drugs.  Those who live according to the flesh are quick to use drugs if they will give the desired effect.  We live in a society that has latched onto this in a big way in both street drugs and prescription drugs.  I am not referring to taking medications for genuine medical health reasons, but taking drugs because they make you feel a certain way. The mind that is set on the flesh wants to only experience good emotions, so if drugs will give you those, or help you escape bad emotions, then that is great.  The truth is that God has given us the capacity for both positive and negative emotions.  The negative emotions are valuable tools in the process of maturing us into godliness (James 1, Romans 5).  We should work through them, not escape them.  There are also those drugs given because it is easier to do than have the self-control necessary to avoid something, often diet related, that gives you a problem, including eating too much food.  There are also the drugs given to control people.  I am thinking especially of the many, many children that are on now on behavior modification drugs. So much of it could be avoided with proper diet and discipline in the home, but it is easier for the parent to give their child a couple of pills.  That is living in the selfishness of flesh instead of doing what is best.

Enmities.

This is hatred, active hostility toward others. It is the opposite of love. When you live in the flesh you see other people as competition that must be crushed, or as enemies that must be subjugated.  This is the mental and emotional driving force that will express itself in several of the characteristics that follow.

Strife.

This involves contention, quarrels, and fighting.  It is the outward expression of enmity, it is the hatred put into action.  Arguing has a basis in logic and exchange of ideas.  Strife has no such basis.  Its only goal is to conquer and subject.  It becomes adversarial even over minor issues and resorts to yelling, berating, and name calling in order to get its way.

Jealousy.

This is ambition to equal or surpass others.  Those living in the flesh cannot be content when someone else has something they do not, so the effort is made to get the same or surpass. While this may be expressed in the materialism of effort to “try and keep of with the Joneses.”  The root is the idea that you are the equal or better of everyone else, so it is also expressed in areas of honor, prestige, or position.

Outbursts of Anger.

This refers to uncontrolled temper, fits of rage or anger that boils up and over.  The mind-set of the flesh has little or no self-control and so the enmity that is present will erupt when something blocks you from getting what you want.  This may explode in a violent rage of words or physical force, or it may remain relatively calm, but the effort will be made to destroy the opposition.

Disputes.

Mercenary, selfish ambition, to court by any means to gain for self or cause.  It is used of those electioneering, and it leads to strife & disputes.  Those who live according to the flesh seek to use other people for their own purposes.

Dissensions.

This means, “to stand apart,” and refers to those will not work as part of the team.  The mind-set on the flesh cannot humble itself to subject itself to the will of others unless they can gain something for themselves through it.  If you don’t play their way, they will take their ball and go home.  Dissension leads to the next character.

Factions.

This refers to divisions or sects based on people choosing to group together with those who share their opinion.  The mind-set on the flesh is more interested in finding other who will agree than in searching out the truth.  It can also refer to social groups that form that then exclude others.  We usually refer to these as cliques.  They evidence minds set on the flesh for they are the opposite of the love Jesus told us we were to have for one another.

Envying.

This is resentment of others because they have prospered in some way more than you. Those who live in the flesh can only see life through their narrow little window, so they cannot rejoice when others do better or get ahead of them.  Among people who want to think themselves to be spiritual, but they really are not, this manifests itself in being envious of those who have more prominent spiritual gifts or a larger ministry.  And yes, I have seen it among men who call themselves pastors.

Drunkenness.

Being intoxicated.  The Bible says in Proverbs 31:6-7, “Give strong drink to him who is perishing, and wine to those who are bitter of heart.  Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.”  Hopelessness and misery belong to those who walk in the flesh, and that is why they seek refuge in a bottle.  They want to escape their problems, but they are still their waiting when they sober up.

Carousing.

This refers to the riotous, noisy parties that result from drunkenness.  The inhibitions are gone so the flesh is free to satisfy itself.  There is a line of defense that is now used that argues a person is not responsible for their actions when they are drunk, as if the alcohol was the culprit.  The truth is that the alcohol simply pulled back the normal covering of restraint to reveal the debauchery that really exists in that person’s heart. They live according to the flesh.

The essence of all the deeds of the flesh is a selfishness that wants the world to work according to what you think is best for yourself, and so you labor at making it work that way.  The truth, God and other people are not really important in the quest.  You are the most important entity in the universe, so the goal is to satisfy the cravings of your body, please your thoughts and emotions and build up your ego.  Obviously, that is against God’s declaration that you are just a creature made for the glorification of Him.  God is the most important entity in the universe, not you.

Results of Living in the Flesh.

Paul gives the results of living in the flesh in verse 13, “Or if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”  Paul’s point here is simply this . . .

Genuine faith in the Lord Jesus Christ

Results in some very significant

Changes in the individual.

Yes, the Christian will still struggle against sin, but he will no longer be characterized by it, for the true Christian is no longer obligated to the flesh and so no longer lives according to it.  The true Christian lives according to the Spirit and is putting to death the deeds of the flesh.  How you actually live reflects whether your mind is on the Spirit or the flesh.  If it is characterized by the flesh, then your profession of faith is false.  You are believing something other than the gospel.  You do not have the Spirit of Christ, therefore you do not belong to Him and you must die.

Living in the Spirit.

Living in the Spirit is radically different

Than living according to the flesh.

Paul explains this in verse 13 . . .

Its Effect On The Flesh.

Living according to the Spirit has a direct effect upon your flesh.  Paul had said back
in verse 8 that “those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”  But the opposite is also true.  Galatians 5:16 tells us that if you “walk by the Spirit, you will not carry out the deeds of the flesh; for the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.”

Notice that those living in the Spirit are “putting to death the deeds of the body.”  This is not something that is immediately accomplished, but something that is on-going.  This is what Paul is referring to when he calls on believers in Colossians 3:5 to “mortify,” or “put to death” the members of your earthly body.  True Christians are characterized by their struggle against the sins of the flesh.  The Christian will lapse into doing the deeds of
the flesh on occasion, but those deeds do not characterize them.

What does it mean to be “putting to death the deeds of the body?”  It means that the longer they walk in the Spirit, the less they will give into the deeds of the flesh.  The process is the same as breaking an old habit and developing a new one, except we also have the power of the Holy Spirit to help us in this process.  How do you break an old, bad habit?  First, you recognize and acknowledge that it is something that you do not want to continue to do.  Next, you ask the Lord’s forgiveness and His power in stop doing it.  You put that desire to death.  Then, you replace that bad habit with a new habit that is good.  Do that for a long time and it becomes your normal way of life.

When opportunity comes along to do your old habit, you remind yourself that you no longer want to do that and so refrain from doing it.  Instead, you practice the new habit you want to establish.  The Christian can call on the Lord for help in this.  This can be done with any deed of flesh.  For example: Let’s say a sinful habit you have had in living in the flesh is anger.  Something happens, you get angry and you lose your temper. How is that changed?  First, you recognize it is not a godly response. James 1:19-20
states, “Let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God.”  Colossians 3:8 tells us to “put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.”

I ask the Lord to convict me when I am in danger of asserting my own desire and will instead of seeking His.  If I find myself losing my temper, I stop, ask God’s forgiveness, and apologize to the individual.  I then surrender anew to the Holy Spirit and seek His power to replace this sinful habit with a new one that is good.  The Holy Spirit will lead me to think biblically – I remind myself that with humility of mind, I am to consider others as more important than myself – Philippians 2:3, and so as the Lord’s bondservant I “must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged” (2 Timothy 2:24-25).  Proverbs has several verses that apply . . .

Proverbs 14:29 says, “He who is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who is quick-tempered exalts foll.”

Proverbs 15:1 states, “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

Proverbs 15:18 says, “A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but the slow to anger pacifies contention”

The Holy Spirit has brought these truths to mind when I am in danger of giving into my flesh, and then I step forward in faith to do them and leave the results in God’s hands.  If I strive to control the results, then I am stepping back out in the flesh and taking what belongs to God.

The Bible teaches that there are four benefits of living in the Spirit . . .

1) Being Led By The Spirit And Being Able To Be A Part Of God’s Family.

The benefit of living in the Spirit is in verse 14, “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”  When we follow the leading of the Spirit of God, we give evidence that we do indeed belong to Him and that we are sons of God.  We entered into this relationship when we received Christ as our savior.  The Bible tells us in John 1:12, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the power to become children of God, [even] to those who believe in His name.”  This was a thrilling concept for John, the Apostle.  He marvels about it in 1 John 3:1, “See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are.”

And indeed, all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.  Those who are not Christians can claim God as their Creator, for such He is, but they cannot claim Him as Father, for they do not have such a relationship with Him.

2) Having Confidence Before God.

Being children of God gives us a confidence in coming before Him.  Paul says in verse 15, “For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba!  Father!’”  We are God’s bondservants, but that does not mean we have the fearful relationship to Him that a slave would have.  We had that fear before being justified by faith in Christ, and it was a proper fear because we were under His condemnation.  But there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus (8:1).  

Instead, we have the spirit of adoption by which we not only can approach  God as our Father, but as the Bible says here, it is “Abba!  Father!”  This is not a formal relationship, but the rather the intimacy of loving relationship between parent and child.  “Abba” is the equivalent of us saying, “daddy.”

We have a great confidence in coming before God

Because of this intimacy of relationship

That is birthed and saturated with His great love.

And please understand that adoption is a greater love, for it chooses to give to one that is not naturally a member of the family.  It is normal and natural to love the child of your own flesh, but it is extraordinary to extend that love to a child who is of someone else’s flesh.

3) Having The Spirit’s Witness.

We have additional confidence before God because, as verse 16 states, “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”  Admittedly, this is subjective, but it is that inner knowledge that God’s people have within them that they are right with God and belong to Him.  It gives us assurance of our relationship to Him and our salvation, and by it we have confidence to go to God with our troubles, trials, and fears as well as our joys and triumphs.

The two other witnesses to our salvation are: 1) A changed life that reflects we are no longer walking in the flesh, but in the Spirit. 2) The witness of the Word of God to the truth and our commitment to believe and trust God’s promises.  When the devil accuses us of our sinfulness and the assurance based on our changed life is lost, we fall back to the witness of the Spirit with our spirit and then to the ground of truth in the promises of God’s Word.

4) Being Fellow Heirs with Christ.

In verse 17, Paul explains an additional blessing of being adopted sons of God, “And if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him.”  As God’s children, we are His heirs and therefore fellow heirs with Christ.  We will hear those blessed words as we enter heaven, “Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 25:34).  We will be part of God’s
eternal kingdom.

Have you considered the magnitude of being “fellow heirs with Christ?”  This is slightly different than our normal concept of inheritance, for when we inherit from a relative’s estate, we only receive a portion of the total estate as designated in the will.  Often this means selling off the estates assets so that it can be divided.  But, as a fellow heir there is no division of this estate, but we all become fellow owners with Christ of heaven. That is why true Christians are heavenly minded.  If you are going to be inheriting heaven, who can be that excited about amassing an earthly estate which will all burn anyway?

Our being joint heirs is seen in our present reality of “suffering” with Christ.  By that, Paul is referring to the persecution that comes against all who strive to live godly in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:12).  The more we become like Jesus, the more the world will hate us because it hates Him (Matthew 5:10-12; John 15:20).  But that very suffering because of our identification with Jesus is assurance of our also being glorified with Him.

This the great hope of the Christian.  

It is that hope that drives the Christian

On in their battle against their own sin

As well as the temptations

And persecution of the world.

All who have this hope of being

Glorified with Jesus purify themselves

(1John 3:3).

What is your hope?  What marks your life?  Are you living according to the flesh?  Then be warned that you are bringing God’s wrath and condemnation upon yourself.  You do not have to continue to live that way.  You can find forgiveness for your sins in Jesus Christ and a new way of life through the Holy Spirit.

Are you living by the Spirit?  Then rejoice in your hope and continue putting to death the deeds of the flesh so that you might be further conformed to the image of our wonderful Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ.

This is God Word …

This is Grace for your Journey …

Rest and Rejoice in this eternal truth!

Pastor Terry

Ephesians 4:7 – “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it.”

Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”