Romans 9: Is God Faithful?

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Jason

Reading for Friday, Feb. 10: Romans 9

After the crescendo of ch 8, we’re entering into one of the more difficult sections of Paul’s writing. Paul turns an eye toward his fellow Jews to discuss Israel’s status as God’s chosen people. Have the promises of God failed? Has God rejected Israel proper in favor of a “new” chosen people — the Christians to whom Paul is writing? These are the kinds of issues Paul turns to in Romans 9.

Paul takes up the issue a few different ways. He starts off by grieving the condition of Israel. The sonship, the glory, the covenants, the receiving of the Law, the promises — these are Israel’s possession. Israel is uniquely situated to receive the fulfillment of God’s promises in Jesus…yet they reject Him. You can see Paul’s heart on display when he says, “For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers…(v3).”

But Israel’s rejection does not negate God’s faithfulness. “It is not as though the word of God has failed” (v6). Paul points out that true children of Abraham are descendants of his promise and his faithfulness, not necessarily descendants of his flesh. “This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring,” (v8). Paul then traces the lineage of this promise from Abraham through Isaac to Jacob and Esau, Moses and even Pharaoh’s role in this whole thing (v7-18).

In v20, Paul pushes back a little at those who would put God on trial. “Are you going to answer God back? Is this REALLY what you want to be doing?” Paul sees God’s faithfulness to His promises; therefore, our part to play is to live out faithfulness to the Covenant Promiser. As such, Paul doesn’t have much room for those who want to accuse God — at least not in this section of his writing. He closes the chapter with quotations from the prophets (Hosea, Isaiah) to demonstrate God’s faithfulness to “the remnant” — true Israel, children whose very identity is linked to the promise of a loving and faithful Father. This number includes us — children of the promise, descendants of Abraham by faith.

In Rom. 9.5, we have one of the most important theological statements about Jesus in the NT: “Christ, who is God over all…”. The early church grappled with how to understand Jesus as fully God and fully man at the same time. But in this text, Paul equates Christ the Son and God the Father. Plenty of other passages speak of Christ’s subservient nature to the Father, but Paul doesn’t qualify his statement here. God the Son is of the same essence — the same “stuff” — as God the Father. Jesus is not less than God the Father in this sense; He is not some “lesser god”. But that’s just the point: He subjects His will to the will of the Father and, in so doing, wins our salvation.

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Things I Want to Remember: Vol. 17

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Jason

Jackson’s joke for today:

Jackson: “Dad, why did the pelican walk across the road?”

Me: “I don’t know. Why?”

Jackson: “To get away from Justin Beever! Ha ha ha!”

I have no idea what this joke means, but Jackson cracked himself up with it! Not sure which part is my favorite: the fact that he butchered the opening (it’s supposed to be a chicken, not a pelican; and he crosses “the street”, not “the road!) or the fact that he butchered Bieber’s name!

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I want to remember how Abby Kate is such a little Momma to Sadie. She loves to hold her — almost too much! But you can tell that she’s going to be a great Mommy someday. And really, I’m not surprised…she comes by it naturally!

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I want to remember Joshua’s pure joy at playing baseball. He’s a pretty good little athlete, but baseball is really his thing. We had our tryouts for the upcoming season last Saturday. Watching Joshua in the batting cage, I was so proud of where he is and what he’s able to do. We’ve come a long way from the day he entered the world at 2 lbs. 5 ozs.

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I want to remember what a voracious reader we have in Abby Kate. See Sunny’s post here.

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I want to remember how much my kids love Star Wars!

The Jedi Bybees

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Romans 8: Spirit Over Flesh

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Jason

Reading for Thursday, Feb. 9: Romans 8

We could probably spend a whole month talking about all the encouraging truths Paul lays out for us in this great chapter. With yesterday’s study in mind, I think ch8 flows naturally out of Paul’s comment about this new “law of the Spirit”. In fact, you could say Paul turns the spotlight on the Holy Spirit in this chapter.

Look at the promises God gives us here regarding the Holy Spirit:

1. Through Christ, the Holy Spirit sets us free from sin and death. Rom. 8.1
2. The Holy Spirit unites our “living” (conduct, ethics) with our “thinking”. Rom. 8.5
3. The Holy Spirit is the promise of life and peace. Rom. 8.6
4. The Holy Spirit is the promise of resurrection. Rom. 8.11
5. The Holy Spirit is the promise of adoption. Rom. 8.15-16
6. The Holy Spirit is the promise of inheritance. Rom. 8.17
7. The Holy Spirit is the promise of hope. Rom. 8.22-24
8. The Holy Spirit is the promise of help in weakness. Rom. 8.26
9. The Holy Spirit is the promise of intercession in prayer. Rom. 8.26
10. The Holy Spirit is the promise of God’s love toward us. Rom. 8.31-39

A keep a note that a good friend of mine wrote me years ago. In this note, my friend shared some of his struggles to live out God’s calling for him: to be the kind of husband, father, employee, friend, and man God wanted him to be. At the end of the letter, my friend quoted from this chapter and he wrote, in large bold print: SPIRIT OVER FLESH. That was his prayer and he was asking me to join him in praying that God’s Spirit would victoriously reign over his flesh. I think my friend understood the theme Paul is laying out for us here. Through His Spirit, God is waging against our fleshly desires, our human compulsions, to bring about His Kingdom reign IN us. As Paul has already argued, there is only one way this happens: IN CHRIST.

Let us remember today that IN CHRIST, there is no condemnation.

IN CHRIST, we cannot be separated from the love of God.

IN CHRIST, sin and death no longer have the final word.

IN CHRIST, tribulation and distress and persecution and famine and nakedness and danger and sword no longer have the final word.

IN CHRIST, we graciously receive ALL THINGS necessary for life and peace and love.

IN CHRIST, we are truly more than conquerors.

IN CHRIST, SPIRIT OVER FLESH.

This is Good News.

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Romans 7: Law vs. Spirit

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Jason

Reading for Wednesday, Feb. 8: Romans 7

It would be easy to assume that Paul has a negative view of the OT Law based on some of his writings (especially Galatians!). I think we have to remember that Paul is arguing against those who have improperly elevated the Law onto the same plane as the atoning work of Christ. It’s not that Paul dislikes the Law; in fact, as a Torah-observant Jew, he would have much use for it. See v12: Paul argues that the Law is holy in that it comes from God and illuminates our sinfulness. But Paul’s concern is to make the Law subservient to Christ — and in the case of Gentile converts, to render the Law obsolete for their relationship with Jesus.

We’ll talk more about this in Galatians, but Paul’s “salvation equation” works something like this:

Faith in Christ = Salvation

Paul is arguing against those who would want to make this addition to the equation:

Mosaic Law + Faith in Christ = Salvation

For Paul, adding anything to the first equation is a violation of the Gospel.

We can see Paul’s understanding of this new relationship with God through some of his phrases in this chapter:

v4 – bearing fruit to God
v6 – released from the Law
v6 – the new way of the Spirit

The purpose of the Law is to make us cognizant of our sin.

The purpose of Christ is to liberate us from this sin into a new life, a new Way of being — the new way of the Spirit.

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Marriage Is Love

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Jason

A friend of mine asked me to write a guest piece for his blog. His name is Warren Baldwin and he writes extensively on family and marriage. (You can access his blog by clicking here.) This is a little something I wrote for him entitled “Marriage Is Love”. This is essentially what I tell all my pre-marital counseling couples.

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God is love.

This little phrase is densely packed with theological insight. Scripture teaches that God exists in eternal relationship – Father, Son, and Spirit. The essence of this relationship is love. Prior to creation, prior to anything, there was love – the eternally binding love of Father, Son, and Spirit. Each member of the “Godhead” is distinct and differentiated; Father is distinct from Son who is unique from Spirit. And yet, the “oneness” of these three is found in an essential characteristic: love. We see the depth of this love in that God chose to create us in the first place. Out of His great love, He creates a space where He isn’t – at least not fully – in order for differentiated creation to exist. Out of His great love, He wills us to exist within His good creation. And out of His great love, He imbues humanity with the potential to bear His image within the created order (Gen. 1:27).

I believe marriage is the greatest context for humans to bear God’s image to one another. In marriage, we experience the unconditional love of our mate. On your good days, on your bad days, on your mundane days, and on your worst days, the loving presence of your spouse is a constant amid life’s turbulent seasons. In this way, marriage is held up to the world as a reflection of the unconditional, self-giving love that binds the Triune God in eternal relationship. We hold marriage up to the world and we say, “This is how God loves. This is faithfulness. This is commitment. This is love!” When we love our spouses unconditionally, we stand as God’s proxies in their lives, a breathing embodiment of the covenantal love of God. In marriage, we give ourselves over to being fully known – warts and all. Yet, our fears are allayed by an unconditional promise: “I love you and I always will love you. It’s okay. You can be yourself around me.” Again, we say to the world: “This is who our God is. For our God knows us fully and completely. And yet, He pursues relationship with us. He never wavers from this pursuit. He is love.” More than any other institution, marriage holds the potential for the image of God to be played out most fully, most intimately, and most precisely.

God is love.

And so is marriage.

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Romans 6

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Jason

Reading for Tuesday, Feb. 7: Romans 6

This is one of my favorite chapters in Scripture. Paul addresses some common human assumptions re: sin and grace. He takes on permissiveness: Is it better to sin so that grace may increase? By no means! (verses 1-2) Later, he argues the same reasoning re: the Law — should we go on sinning because we’re under grace, not the Law? Again, by no means! Paul makes his appeal by pointing to the risen Jesus. Christ’s resurrection validates His victory over death (v9). But it’s not just that He conquered death; his death brings down the power of sin once and for all (v10). For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus diminishes the hold sin has on us. Therefore, we are no longer slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness (v18).

I love the contrast of v11: dead to sin, but alive to God. The imagery of baptism declares the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus as the primary story of our lives. In baptism, we submit ourselves to the will of another, trusting them to take us under and bring us up out of the waters. This is a beautiful demonstration of the spiritual immersion that occurs simultaneously: in faith, we submit our whole selves to God, trusting Him to put to death the old person, trusting Him to raise us as transformed and redeemed. All of this is so we “may live a new life (v4)”. This new life is what Paul declares in v11 — a life fully alive to God.

Although Paul can be pretty abstract and theoretical in Romans, all of his theological insight is focused here: on making these believers more aware of the life God has called them to. We might say, Paul is most interested in God’s people being more fully alive to God. In order to do that, sin must be dealt with. And Paul will have much more to say about that in the coming chapters.

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Romans 5

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Jason

Reading for Monday, Feb. 6: Romans 5

Reconciliation and justification emerge as some major themes in the first part of Paul’s letter to the Romans. The justification that he discussed in chapter 4 restores peace between God and humanity. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” (Rom. 5.1). We are a people longing for peace. As a minister, I speak to so many guilt-wracked people, men and women who carry around these burdens, whether it’s past sins, current struggles, relationship problems, wayward children, etc. What they’re most hungering for — what we’re ALL hungry for — is a word of peace and hope. To know that all of this strife and burden doesn’t have the final word in our lives.

Paul lays out a trajectory that helps make sense of our struggles. Sufferings produce endurance; endurance produces character; character produces hope; and hope leads us to God’s love that has been poured into our hearts (v5). In our weakness, we can remember that Christ died PRECISELY BECAUSE we are weak and incapable of justifying ourselves before God. This, for Paul, is cause for rejoicing (v11).

Paul contrasts Adam and Jesus in the second part of the chapter. Sin and death entered into the world through Adam (v12), but grace and life come through Christ. The sin we read about in Genesis 3 was a “game-changer”. God created the world, called it good and intended for His creation to bear witness to His glory. (This is part of our understanding of humanity being made in God’s image, Genesis 1.27.) Yet, through sin, this image is marred and corrupted. And we all participate in this same willful disobedience (Rom. 3.23). The condemnation we experience as a result of sin — personified here by Adam and his disobedience — is overcome through the justification we know in Christ. Romans 5.17 speaks of the “abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness” that are ours in Christ. Now sin no longer has the last word. Instead, “as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,” (Rom. 5.21).

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Best. Commercial. Ever.

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Jason
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Romans 4

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Jason

Reading for Friday, Feb. 3: Romans 4

In this chapter, Paul continues to emphasize the availability of righteousness through faith in Christ, contrasting it with the Jewish belief that righteousness came through “circumcision” — being born a Jew. Against those who would argue the latter, Paul uses their own forefather, Abraham, as a prime example of someone being justified PRIOR to any external mark, such as circumcision.

You may be wondering why Paul is even bringing all of this up. From what we know of the movement of first century Christianity, the followers of Jesus were primarily Jewish, at least early on. Jesus was understood as the Jewish Messiah, meaning He was the fulfillment of all those promises God made back in the OT. Gradually, as more and more Gentiles heard the message and accepted Jesus, the question became “How much of this OT stuff is binding on the new guys?” Some would argue quite adamantly that to become a Christian also meant becoming a Jew, too — observing all the customs, rituals, festivals, and, probably most importantly, being circumcised. Others (like Paul) argued that Gentiles need not accept the entirety of the OT law and its commands in order to accept Jesus as Lord. You can see this in several places in the NT, but it comes to a head in Acts 15:1-2, “Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: ‘Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.’ This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them.” Luke records the resolution of this issue at the end of Acts 15 when James stands up and says, “We should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning toward God,” (15:19). The rest, as they say, is history.

There are some beautiful verses in this chapter. I particularly like these three:

v16 – “the promise comes by faith” – a reminder that “faith is the victory”, the key which unlocks the deep and eternal promises of God.

v17 – “the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.” Life is the gift of God, both in the beginning (at birth) and in the end (at re-birth). He calls things that are not into existence. Only God is powerful enough to speak creation into existence out of nothingness, or make life spring from a barren womb, or righteousness swell up amid the sinfulness of my own life.

v18 – “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed”. Against all odds, Abraham kept believing in the One who made him these great, sweeping promises of land and descendants and blessing. Even when it seemed God had forgotten him, Abraham kept the faith alive. He didn’t always make the best decisions (see Hagar!), he wasn’t always the most scrupulous (lying about Sarah, telling Pharaoh she was his sister)…but in the end, he was commended for having faith, even against all hope. We might ask, is there any other kind of faith?

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Romans 3

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Jason

Reading for Thursday, Feb. 2: Romans 3

In Romans 3, Paul answers some of the questions he laid out in the first few chapters. What makes someone righteous before God? It certainly isn’t the law. V20, “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.” Instead, Paul says, “a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known (v21).” Righteousness is not merited or accrued in relation to one’s obedience to the law. Rather, “this righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe (v22).”

Paul spells out the universal problem of sin in v23: For all have sinned and fallen short. Sin is “falling short” or “missing the mark”. We might ask, “What mark? Falling short of what?” The mark, I believe, is God’s intention for humanity to bear His image in the world. We fall short any time we fail to live as He intended for us to live. This problem — sin — plagues every man, woman, and child. As he says in v23, ALL have sinned and fallen short of His glory. We do this every time we choose our way over His way.

But Paul also holds up a universal solution to this problem: the justification that He graciously extends to us through Christ. “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus (vv23-24).” Paul argues that the cross is the greatest demonstration of the justice of God. He cannot let our sin go unpunished; to do so would violate God’s sense of justice. Yet He lovingly chooses to absorb the full penalty for sin, making our justification possible.

Paul closes the chapter with a practical warning to the Jewish Christians in Rome: since we ALL have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory and since the death of Jesus brings justification to ALL who believe, where then is there room for boasting or differentiating between Jew and Gentile? “Is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles, too? Yes, of Gentiles, too…” (v30).

Romans 3 helps us remember that righteousness is intrinsic to God’s character, therefore it is His to dispense as He sees fit. The Jews historically associated their right standing before God with the lineage of Abraham and their reception of the Torah. But Paul is expanding this understanding. Although he will have much to say about both Abraham and the Law in the next few chapters, Paul maintains that the Gentiles have a full share in the Gospel because the one God is God of both Jews and Gentiles alike.

When we study James, we will bring his conversation alongside what Paul has to say here about the Law. As it pertains to salvation, faith alone is God’s means. And yet, as it pertains to discipleship — the “what comes next” after salvation — the commands of Scripture are binding to “bear fruit in keeping with repentance (Luke 3:8).”

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