Introducing the Letter to the Romans

Transcript

GR 2200
03/17/2019
Introducing the Letter to the Romans
Romans 1:1
Gil Rugh

Well, as I mentioned, I’d start a study of the book of Romans with you, you can turn there in your Bibles if you would. It’s a book we have studied on other occasions, but as I mentioned earlier today, it’s been about 10 years since we started the study. Someone said how long ago was it when you finished? Two years (laughter). Well, we’ll take as long as we take, but Romans has been a key book, it is foundational. I read to you Martin Luther’s comments on the book of Romans. One of the commentaries on the book of Romans, in their introduction to Romans, just goes through some of those individuals so greatly used at different times in church history that were really impacted by the book of Romans and the message of that book. A man we know of as Augustine, we’re going back to about 400 years after Christ, the impact the book of Romans had on him. I mentioned Martin Luther, who would be in the 1500s, early 1500s. Martin Luther was impacted, and he wrote a commentary on the book or Romans that some of you may be familiar with. John Wesley was impacted by being exposed to someone reading from Martin Luther’s commentary on the book or Romans. This commentator, F. F. Bruce that some of you may be familiar with, say, “There’s no telling what may happen when people begin to study the epistle to the Romans. What happened to Augustine, Luther, Wesley, Barth launched great spiritual movements which have left their mark in world history. But similar things have happened much more frequently to very ordinary people as the words of this epistle came home to them with power. So let those who have read thus far be prepared for the consequences of reading further. You have been warned.” So I like the way he puts that. You’re dealing with the word of God which is alive and powerful as you’ll see as we move down through even the first chapter here.

The book of Romans, we don’t know how the church of Rome was started. Paul wrote this letter to the church at Rome so we call it the letter of Paul to the Romans. It’s primarily a Gentile church as you would expect, but Rome had a large Jewish population so we’ll see a message to the Jews in this clearly and a message about the Jews for clarification as we move through the letter. The tradition that it was established by Peter just doesn’t hold up. Paul would have had a little different view of his relationship—not that he had a conflict with Peter, but he makes no mention of that later in the letter. He had not the sense of urgency to get to Rome because the church had been established, perhaps by some Jews who had been in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost because remember people came from all over for the Feast of Pentecost when the church was started in Acts chapter 2. So it could well be that some of those Jews who were saved, there were 3000, remember, on that day, and they were from all parts of the empire because we are told they spoke all kinds of languages. So Jews who had poured into Jerusalem for that feast could have carried the gospel back to Rome, for example, and the church started. We just don’t know how it started. Paul wrote this letter, we do know, on his third missionary journey, and he wrote it from Greece on his visit there. It’s recorded in Acts chapter 20, we won’t turn there. It would have been about 58 AD so 25 years after the crucifixion of Christ, Paul is being converted and alot has been happening. And as we’ll see, he had been commissioned by God to carry the message to the Gentiles.

Why don’t you jump back to chapter 15 of Romans, see the comment of Paul there. In Romans chapter 15 we’re in Paul’s sentences, (we’ll see one of those in chapter 1) and verse 22 he says, “For this reason I have often been prevented from coming to you.” Paul’s burden was to go where no one else had gone with the gospel and the gospel had already been carried to Rome. So even though he had planned to come on other occasions, his priority, when the opportunity would come up, was to go where they hadn’t heard the gospel or even to revisit churches that he had established by carrying the gospel to them, those who had not heard. But then he says in verse 23, “now, with no further place for me in these regions, and since I have had for many years a longing to come to you,” and then you see, “whenever I go to Spain—for I hope to see you in passing…” So even now what will really motivate him to go to Rome is he really wants to go to Spain because he wants to carry the gospel there. So again that passion of Paul, I want to go where others haven’t gone with the gospel. So that’s the occasion that he anticipates for coming. Verse 25, “but now, I am going to Jerusalem serving the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia,” and those are the two provinces, the northern and southern provinces, in Greece, “have been pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem,” And he goes on saying they are indebted to do so because the Gentiles have benefited from the Jews and the sacrifice of the Jewish Messiah and so on. We’ll see more of God’s plan for Israel as we move into the book of Romans.

So a little bit of the context of what Paul is writing. So he’s going to leave Greece and go back to Jerusalem with the offering he has gathered from these churches in Greece, like the church at Corinth where Paul writes about the collection he is taking in his letter there. And then he plans to take the journey to Spain and visit Rome and the church there. He writes this, it’s his longest letter, the letter to the Romans, to this church, and he unfolds the gospel because even though Paul acknowledged that church has been established, it’s there, his passion is not just the church be established but it be grounded in the truth. That’s what the book of Romans is, it’s God’s truth, the gospel, this is the theme of the book of Romans, the gospel. You could say God’s salvation because that’s what the gospel is about—the salvation God has provided in Christ—but I used the theme the gospel, and that’s what he’s going to unfold. The words faith and believe occur 55 times in the book of Romans. Faith, believe, basically the same thing, the noun and the verb. Pistis and pisteuó, you can see, are two words that don’t sound alike, but in Greek you just really have the same basic stem with the ending on it, pistis being the noun and pisteuó being the verb. We have it as faith and believe. It could say ‘to have faith is to believe,’ 55 times, so that’s a key. When we get into this book and into chapters like the end of chapter 3 and the end of chapter 4, it just comes out again and again and again and again because Paul has to clarify the content of the gospel and how the gospel is applied to the individual. So that will be this theme of the gospel.

And then the word righteousness appears 35 times. You see the gospel tells us how God’s righteousness is credited to us, what was involved in making possible God’s righteousness being applied to sinful human beings. That’s what we need, the righteousness of God provided for us in Christ. So that’s what the book of Romans is about, the gospel. There’s no more important thing so to me it’s such a foundational book that I think that it ought to be a book that every church almost begins with their studies and revisits continually. Because once you drift away from clarity on the gospel you don’t know where you will end up. So it’s not the book of Romans is the only place where we find the gospel presented—no—but it is the most thorough presentation of the gospel in an organized way.

I have a little outline for the book of Romans, and you can see how it progresses. The introduction will be in the first 17 verses, and he gives an overview of his own ministry, the place he has, because it is important to establish the authority he has as God’s spokesman to bring the truth of God to them. As he writes to the Galatians this isn’t a message I created or I got from other men, this is a message from God. So something of his credentials and what God has entrusted him to do in the message he has from God. So down in verse 15 (chapter 1) of this, “I am eager to preach the gospel to you also.” You note the gospel is not just for the unsaved, it is for the saved. I’m coming to you believers in Rome, and “I am eager to preach the gospel to you” because there’s growth that has to take place, have to be sure you’re grounded. This is something that takes, if we will, some theological study and understanding. The message that we believe, there’s a simplicity to it but we grow in our understanding of it. So the introduction, the first seventeen verses.

Then you get into the content of the gospel as he develops it. First is condemnation, and that’s chapter 1 verse 18 through chapter 3 verse 20. You have to establish the need for salvation, what is the condition of all people, the Gentiles and he’ll also focus on the Jews. As I mentioned, there’s a large Jewish contingent in Rome. We take it that the gospel probably started with them, and many of them would have been impacted with the gospel. Understand, Jews were just as lost as Gentiles, they didn’t see it so he’ll establish that. When he’s done with this section he’ll be able to declare we have demonstrated that all, Jew and Gentile alike, because of sin are under the condemnation of God. So everyone is placed in that needy condition, that the Jews didn’t find righteousness through the Law, the Gentiles didn’t find it through their various religious activities.

Then he’ll move to the subject of justification, which simply means righteousness, and explaining the righteousness that God has provided for us, His own righteousness provided in Christ. It cannot be found in any other way, in any other place, it can only be found in the provision God has made. So we’ll talk about the doctrine of justification, and we’ll talk more fully about the terms that are used as we get into these areas and Paul unfolds it for us. But justification is righteousness, and basically it is God’s righteousness applied to us through faith in what Christ has done. That takes us through chapter 3 verse 21 through chapter 5 verse 21.

Then I’ve titled the next section sanctification, and we’ll talk about the doctrine of sanctification and its various aspects as we have been set apart by God for Himself, and the enablement that has been provided in Christ for us to live holy lives, godly lives. The word ‘sanctification’, the word ‘holy’, and the word ‘saint’ all come from the same basic foundational Greek word. Talk about that. And we are to live, and there are different aspects, past, present, and future, of sanctification. We’ll talk about that. That’s chapter 6 through chapter 8, you have the verses there, all of chapter 6, 7, and 8.

Then I’ve titled this next section explanation, sometimes I’ve titled it vindication. Chapters 9 to 11 are about Israel so it is an explanation of how Israel now fits into this salvation plan of God. Paul will ask and answer the question, has God cast away His people Israel because of their failure and rejection of their Messiah and their inability to keep the Law? They never could, and no one was ever righteous by the Law but an explanation, or maybe a vindication, because has God abandoned His people and is He going to fail to keep the promises to His people? So there’s an explanation of how this fits in the saving plan of God during this period of time which we call the Church Age, where Israel is not the focal point of God’s work of salvation in the world as they were in Old Testament history through the time of Christ’s earthly ministry as recorded in the gospels. But with the establishing of the Church, the focus of God’s work of salvation in the world moves from Israel to the Gentiles primarily, and Paul will explain. Some Jews are being saved, and he himself, used himself as an example of a Jew who has been saved in the Church Age. But, what about Israel, what about all the promises to Israel? That’s chapters 9 through 11.

Then the exhortation, or application. Chapter 12 begins, I beseech you, “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies…,” so now we apply this truth, we’re exhorted to live it out. All the provision has been made, but there is human responsibility here, and we’ll talk even then as we open this up. “Present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice,” as chapter 12 opens up. Because we are no longer our own, we’ve been bought with a price therefore we are to glorify God in our bodies as Paul wrote to the Corinthians.

And then we will have the conclusion to the book. So that balances the introduction. From chapter 15 verse 14 through chapter 16, you have the conclusion as Paul wraps it up, gives us some personal comments, and so on. That will be the book of Romans. So it flows in an orderly progressive fashion.

You have to understand Romans and it seems like we’re in Romans a lot because it is so foundational. That’s not to minimize the importance of everything God has said, but if we are not clear on the theology of the book of Romans, that’s why it impacted so many people in so many significant ways. Augustine was used greatly of God. Luther, the whole Protestant Reformation, comes out of the impact of the book of Romans and so on. So churches that are anchored in the book of Romans and have clarity of understanding are in much less danger of drifting from truth. And if we’re not clear and sound on the gospel, we are just out there and the drift will…, you know it’s like a boat being carried away, and it seems you’re close to shore, then you’re further away, you’re further away, you’re further away. One time I was swimming in the ocean back when I could swim, and we were down off of Atlantic City, and I was swimming. I don’t like to touch the bottom, it’s creepy, it’s sand going through your toes, and who knows what’s down there, so I like to get out beyond that. You know, I got out and before I knew it I was out further, further, further. Pretty soon the lifeguard is standing up in his chair waving to me so I start back, but you know what, it was hard to get back. And pretty soon I can see him watching more, and the worst thing that can happen to you is they think you can’t get back then they blow the whistle. Then all the other lifeguards come running, and they get the boat, and they come out. Then everybody on the boardwalk, everybody is watching. I think, “Oh man, this is going to be terribly embarrassing,” so I just kept giving him the signal, “I can make it, yah, I’m doing fine” and I did, obviously. But, you know, you get out there and then you find it hard to get back and that’s the way it can happen spiritually to a church. You know we didn’t realize, we’re just getting a little further, little further, little further, now we got to get back. But somehow it’s hard to get back, and then if you don’t turn and start to get back, pretty soon you can’t get back, and that’s how churches roll over in time. So the book of Romans is crucial.

Alright, let’s start the book of Romans with verse 1, “Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.” And we’re going to have to break into his sentence because that will go all the way down to verse 8. You have it in your English Bible as one long sentence. Well, sometimes in English we break these sentences up so that they’re a little more readable for us, but it’s a long sentence, and it all ties together. He identifies himself Paul and his Jewish name was Saul but he tells us he was born a Roman citizen. So he had a unique place, and God had prepared him for the role he would have because he was going to travel to the Gentile world, But being a Roman citizen, as you’re familiar with the account of Paul’s life, gave him certain rights and privileges that noncitizens wouldn’t have had and he could declare his right as a Roman citizen. So from birth he probably had a Latin name, a Roman name, as well as a Jewish name. His Jewish name would have been Saul. That’s not surprising because he tells us he was of the tribe of Benjamin. And the first king of Israel was Saul, who was of the tribe of Benjamin. So Saul’s Jewish parents, being a Jew, and you’re aware of the tribe of Benjamin, we give you the name Saul, but you are a Roman citizen, born, so you get the name Paul. Some think, well, Paul got his name after his conversion, but most likely he had that name, but among the Jews He would have used his Jewish name. But we become more familiar with him, and that’s to be expected because he’s sent out to the Gentiles so we know him more as Paul than Saul.

He identifies himself here first and foremost as a bond-servant of Christ Jesus. Some of us have talked about this word translated ‘bond-servant,’ and there have been some books written on it. It’s simply the word ‘doulos,’ it’s the word for slave. But the translators had some reservation, perhaps, because of the negative implications of the word slave. They used the word bond-servant, which is different than just the word servant, like ‘diakonos,’ that’s the word for servant. ‘Doulos’ is a slave so Paul identifies himself as a slave of Christ Jesus. The people in Rome would understand what this means because you read the history, and they estimate that the largest proportion of Rome consisted of slaves. And a slave is someone who belongs to someone else, who is owned by another, doesn’t have his own rights, so to speak, even though a slave could be in a prominent position. In the final analysis the master has all the rights over the slaves, and Paul’s claiming that as an honor. And in the Old Testament this word, when the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew to Greek, this word was used of significant individuals in the Old Testament, like Abraham, like Moses, like David, like some of the prophets, like Isaiah. So it could be a position of honor, it depends on whose slave you are. Paul takes it as a badge of honor, I belong to Jesus Christ, I am His slave. And believers are identified as such in the New Testament. I have referenced Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 6, you are not your own, you have been bought with a price, therefore, glorify God in your body, it’s not your body. We’ll get to this in Romans 6, we have been removed from being slaves of sin to being slaves of righteousness, slaves of God so now we use our bodies, all that we are, in our service for Him. So a key concept. Paul brings it up here, it’s true of Paul, but it’s true of everyone who has experienced God’s salvation, believed the gospel, been born again, come into God’s family. Various pictures of us, we are God’s children, we are also God’s slaves. That pictures a little different aspect. So he’s a slave of Christ Jesus, right up front, I want you to know who I am. And he’s laying the foundation. This gives him his authority as well because he doesn’t come representing himself, he comes representing Jesus Christ that will be further elaborated in a moment. But first you understand, I am not on a mission of serving myself, I am a slave of Christ Jesus. That means everything he does, all of his activity, is within that context. That doesn’t mean everyone would be a full time apostle, but Paul wasn’t either. Sometimes he made tents, was a leather worker, to help pay the bills. He never lost sight of that, I am first and foremost a slave of Christ Jesus, whatever I am doing, I am about His business. Remember he will write in other letters, and he’ll address those who were physical slaves during that time. Remember, you are ultimately a slave of Jesus Christ so you even do your earthly work in light of your responsibility to be pleasing and honoring to Him. What he’s telling those slaves is you are to be the best slave because of your relationship to Christ even though the physical slavery may be a burden. So Paul is not ashamed, he put it right out front, I am a slave of Christ Jesus, but I have been called as an apostle. So those facts when he became born again, Acts chapter 9, when God transformed his heart and life through faith in Christ, he became a slave of Jesus Christ. Remember on that Damascus road, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting” by his attacking believers.

But he has been called now, his area of ministry will be as an apostle, a called apostle, he’s stressing that I didn’t pick this for myself. We’ll get into spiritual gifts when we get into chapter 12 of Romans and how that applies to all of us. But the point is I have this position of serving, carrying out the will of the Master by His call, His divine appointment. In Acts chapter 9 when Paul experienced that confrontation with the resurrected Christ, there it is laid out. And Ananias will carry a message to him about the role that Paul will play and sufferings that will come to him because of the prominence he will have in carrying the gospel as Christ’s representative to new places. So it’s a position of great privilege, but it is a privilege of great responsibility and makes him, so to speak, the target of much of the opposition that is raised up toward Christ. He’s a called apostle, an apostle is basically a simple word, it’s someone who is sent on a mission or with a task. Now in the New Testament there is a special group, the twelve plus Paul, there’s certain unique things about it. Paul says here he’s a called apostle, he’s set apart for the gospel of God. Then he’ll go on to an extensive discussion of the gospel. Some characteristics of Paul, and we made a slide of this. Paul was an apostle, he was appointed by God, Acts chapter 9 would talk about that. I’ve used the reference from Galatians chapter 1, you’re familiar with the book of Galatians, it is very similar, it is sometimes viewed as a summary outline of the book of Galatians. But in the book of Galatians chapter 1 Paul says, “Paul, an apostle (not sent from men nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead).” So there, there’s a little further elaboration, but that’s the point, I am a called apostle, you want an elaboration? Well, you can read about that, it wasn’t from men, I wasn’t a decision of a group of men that Paul ought to be an apostle, it wasn’t through appointment of men. It was by divine call, that’s the call of God. It’s a divine call sometimes used of believers or generally, we have experienced God’s call, that drawing, fulfilling the appointment of God. We’ll get into the doctrine of election and God’s sovereignty in every area, in our salvation, in our giftedness, and so on as we proceed through the book of Romans. So here Paul lays it out, I have been appointed by God to this role. And that will be true of everyone in their spiritual gifts, we’ve talked about it, but it will be elaborated, we’ll talk more about it as we get to it, we get our gift by God’s appointment. Paul stresses that role here, his role here is a special significance because as an apostle he’ll get the message of God. We’ll say more about that in a moment.

The second requirement for an apostle in the New Testament is he had to see Christ after His resurrection. It is important we understand the qualifications of apostles, and Paul met those even though he doesn’t go into all of those here. Because there are things that come up, we have present today what is called the New Apostolic movement, the revival of the Fivefold Ministry, coming out of Ephesians 4 where people are promoting that all the gifts are present and that are mentioned like in Ephesians chapter 4, He appointed some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors, teachers. They say apostles have been in these last days now appointed so we have the New Apostolic movement and you have people who believe they have the gift of prophecy. It is important because these gifts receive direct revelation from God, apostles and prophets, so we have to understand what qualifies you as an apostle. We got men today in a whole movement. A leader, one of the key leaders if not the leader of that movement, is a man I studied under many years ago. I had spent some extensive time at the time with him. He believes God appointed him as an apostle, and he’s leading the New Apostolic movement, and it spreads around the country. I’ve shared with you whole books on it, and then you can read about these apostles in various places. But to be a New Testament apostle, you had to have seen Christ after His resurrection from the dead, Paul qualifies in the verses here. Like in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 verse 1, maybe you should turn there, I don’t want to assume too much. In 1 Corinthians chapter 9, and 1 Corinthians is just after Romans, chapter 9 verse 1, “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” You see, that’s because an apostle, to be that narrow group, like the Twelve plus Paul, you had to have seen Christ after His resurrection from the dead. Now not everyone who saw Christ after His resurrection was an apostle, but those were unique. Peter marks that out in Acts chapter 10 when he is at the house of Cornelius, those Gentiles who will hear the gospel for the first time. He says we apostles were appointed as eyewitnesses of the resurrection in Acts chapter 1. Also, when they’re replacing Judas, one of the qualifications was you had to have seen Christ after the resurrection so he could be an eyewitness. So that there is no second hand information at that point, that it’s established by eyewitnesses that Christ was raised from the dead. We have seen Him, now many people will see Him. We’ll see that in a moment, but Paul qualified as this unique position of apostle by virtue of the fact he saw Christ after His resurrection from the dead.

While you’re here, come over to chapter 15 and Paul’s talking about the gospel in a more condensed way which we’ll have unfolded in detail in Romans. Verse 3 and Paul’s talking about the gospel which he preached to the Corinthians. He did carry the gospel initially to Greece, as you’re aware, as he was called in a vision over to Greece, bringing the gospel to Europe. Then he went down to Corinth and established the church there. He said, verse 3, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins . . . He was buried . . . He was raised on the third day . . . and that He appeared.” So He died, He was buried, that’s the evidence of His death on the cross, He was buried. Then He was raised from the dead on the third day, and He appeared and the evidence or proof of His resurrection is the appearance to witnesses, and there are a variety of witnesses. “He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve brethren,” and I take it that would include Matthias who replaced Judas. Cephas is Peter, he’s one of the twelve, but He appeared to Peter, individually, then He appeared to all the twelve, and “after that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time,” and most of those were still alive, but some had died, fallen asleep. Not all of those five hundred are apostles so just because you saw Christ like the five hundred, they are not in this group that are marked off like the twelve. “Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles,” so you have this group expanding here, “then to all the apostles.” You didn’t necessarily have to be just part of that group, there are evidently others who were sent out with the message, which is basically what an apostle is. But these are going to be eyewitnesses of the resurrection, but not part of that initial group of the twelve, and then Paul will become key as well there. Then “last of all,” verse 8, “as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.” And that statement’s important, that indicates clearly that Paul is the last one to get such an appearance. So these claims of new apostles and that are bogus, nobody can claim anything. It’s amazing how gullible people become. “Last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also.” Well, many years have gone by, you know, when He appeared to Paul. What do you mean last of all to you, nobody else? Evidently not, this is a unique experience on the Damascus road in Acts chapter 9. So this gift of apostle that Paul had and he claims here, puts him in a position of authority because of the message that will be transmitted through him.

And then the third thing for an apostle, if you could keep in Corinthians because we are going to go there, he had the power to perform miracles. And this is what happens, those who claim to be apostles also claim to have miracle gifts. Come over to chapter 12 of 2 Corinthians. And this is not just the New Apostolic movement, the charismatic movement, in its different forms. You know, going back to the early 1900s when it initially came into view, this was down through church history, but what we know as the Pentecostal movement, the charismatic movement, then the different stages, but it gets characterized by miracles are happening, God’s giving direct revelation now, there are prophets giving prophecies. The seminary I attended had to dismiss a professor because he claimed to be receiving, you know, information, he had a prophetic gift. So it comes in in a variety of places, a variety of ways. Second Corinthians chapter 12 verse 12, “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles.” Paul here is establishing with the Corinthians where his apostleship was being challenged. Teachers were coming in trying to undermine the ministry he had had with them. He’s saying I demonstrated that I was a genuine apostle by the gifts, the miracles that I could do.

Come over to Hebrews chapter 2. Important because, you know, we have a strong charismatic ministry in our city and many things we would agree on with them with the gospel, but there are things we disagree on. We want to sort through scripture because I don’t want to miss out on what the Lord has for me, individually and for us as a church, we have to be clear on these things. In Hebrews chapter 2, this is one of the warning passages in Hebrews, you remember if you studied Hebrews with us. Verse 3, “How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?” The point was in Old Testament history those who rebelled against God and disobeyed experienced judgment. We have a fuller, clearer revelation now with the finality of God’s salvation having come with the death and resurrection of Christ. “How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard.” They got it from the Lord, those apostles received it from the Lord. The twelve, Judas passes out, Matthias comes, and Paul is added to that group. “God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit.” But this person writing here, some believe it was Luke, some believe it was Paul, there’s not clarity on that, but you know how they say these who were receiving revelation from God had “God also testifying with them, by both signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit according to His own will.” So that revelation is being given, it’s confirmed so what Paul says here is foundational to the authority of what we have as the book of Romans. That’s what he’s saying here, I’m an apostle, I am a slave of Christ Jesus. I have been called as an apostle, I’ve been entrusted with the message of the gospel. Not only him, but others. But we come to this book for authority. You know, I have a problem… I have in my file, a professor I mentioned had to be dismissed from the seminary. He wrote the prophecies he had received. Do you know about them? And he’s come with judgment, if you don’t obey… And man elevates himself. Learned man, a Hebrew professor, written a good book on Old Testament issues.

We want to be careful and understand and discern things carefully and critically. That doesn’t mean God doesn’t use people even though their theology may be off-track. The gospel was brought to us, by us I mean my own family, through some in this kind of movement. It wasn’t exactly charismatic in those days, but it had similarity and a similar kind of foundation. So God does use His word, but we want to be careful that we are correct because there are consequences for not being sound and correct.

So come back to Romans 1. He is a called apostle, he’s set apart for the gospel of God. And we’ll pick up on that because you note the sentence continues, because now he’s going to turn to what the gospel that he received from God is about, and the content of that gospel. So, let me just summarize this little bit we’ve done, and then I want to open it up to you for questions on this area or any other area that we might have. We’ve been studying about Paul, but there are similarities to us as believers, as I’ve mentioned. Let me just review those with you. They come out of here in ways that we as believers today are like Paul. We’re not apostles, but number one, we’ve had a supernatural conversion by faith in Christ. So it may not have been as dramatic in the external as Paul on the Damascus road, when he was struck down and blinded, and so on; But you know, every time a person comes to salvation through faith in Christ, it is a supernatural act of God in transforming them eternally. There’s nothing normal about it. We sometimes think, boy, I wish I had a more dramatic conversion. I was just sitting there and heard the gospel and all of a sudden my eyes were opened, and I’m a sinner, I need to trust Christ and I placed my faith in Him as the One who died for me and was alive. It wasn’t anything spectacular, like some people who were rescued from the edge of the pit of hell and a vile, desolate life. And the supernatural power of God worked in each and every heart of the person who believes. The work of God can only be accomplished by Him, that’s why we can’t do it, only God can do it, it is supernatural. The gospel is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes, as we’ll get down further into verse 16 and 17 of chapter 1, God’s power unleashed into your inner person. To your heart, to your soul, to your spirit, to your mind, that inner person we’ve talked about. That’s where the transformation is, because it’s the heart, that inner person, that’s desperately wicked, and only God can change the inside. That’s what the book of Romans and the gospel’s about, and everybody who has experienced God’s salvation has experienced that same transforming power of God.

Secondly, when that happens, every believer is a slave of Christ, you are not your own, you’ve been bought with a price. You belong now to Him, totally, completely, every part of my being is now His, because He’s transformed me within and made me a new man, a new person. And as we get to chapter 6 we’ll see that means what I do with all the parts of my body now are to be under His authority, consistent with His will for me, because we are slaves of Christ. Paul, well, he’s unique. There’s a uniqueness about him because he’s Christ’s slave, just like there’s a uniqueness about each one of us because we are.

Thirdly, we have been specially gifted by God to serve, there is a uniqueness about every believer. We talked about this with spiritual gifts, and we’ll be seeing it again in the book of Romans because it’s all part of that package of salvation. I’m not an apostle, I don’t have that same authority. Paul could come and speak directly with the word of God. I am indirectly in this sense. I have no authority, all the authority is in this book. People transfer their authority to their pastor or priest or other religious leader or their religious denomination. There’s no real authority anywhere but in the word of God, this is the authority. It’s not true because I preach it, not true because I teach it, it’s true because God said it. That’s why we open our Bibles to look and see what God has said, and I’m responsible as a teacher to teach it accurately. You’re responsible as a listener to listen with discernment and look and say that’s not what that says, I think we’re going off-track here, where does it say that? We want to examine it in light of the Word. Each of us has been specially gifted by God to serve, so we’re not all teachers, we’re not all apostles, obviously, but we each have an area. We’ll talk about that more.

And we’ve been set apart for the gospel. Paul’s been set apart as the one who would bring the truth of the gospel in its fullness to the church; to the world. But we have been entrusted with it now, if I can say, in the second-hand, because we have it here, and we are to be faithful with it. That’s why we, all of us here, have heard the gospel from someone someplace. You’ve been entrusted with the gospel. As Paul told the Corinthians, we have this treasure in earthen vessels. You say I’m not much. I don’t know if that’s why God entrusted it to us, so He gets all the honor, all the glory. I thank God for the person who preached the gospel the day I heard it and believed it. I don’t remember their name, although my cousin was with me did tell me his name because he did. For the record, I don’t recall it right now, but he’s just an instrument. There wasn’t anything special about him, it was the truth that he conveyed that the Spirit of God used because it’s the gospel that’s the power of God, not the individual. We transfer that authority to the individual then we are out on a sea of uncertainty.

Alright, those are some of the things that come here. I’m going to open it up to you for 15 minutes or so. If you have questions, it doesn’t have to be on Romans, it can be on anything that’s been on your mind. Anything that I can answer, if not, we’ll wait until the next time and I’ll answer then. Anybody have anything on your mind?

Question: Gil, if I could just ask, what books would you recommend that deal with the charismatic movement and evaluating that biblically?

Answer: Okay, the charismatic movement. And since we have it here, I used to meet periodically with one of the charismatic pastors in town. We’d have good discussions, in fact, he had his kids come over here. This was years ago on a Sunday night when I was doing a study on spiritual gifts. Because he said, “I think they ought to hear it from someone who holds it so they hear your position accurately presented.” And I appreciated his integrity and we would have discussions about that, so I don’t view them as the enemy in the sense of unbelievers who attack the gospel, we agreed on the gospel. But what would I recommend? Off the top of my head, MacArthur, many read MacArthur and he has material out, books out, on the charismatic movement. Some of you may have been more current than me on the charismatic movement. Anybody read something recently? I’m stuck on Romans in my mind, and Ecclesiastes right now.

Oh, the guy from Capital Seminary wrote a book on the charismatic movement. It’s very good, Edgar is his name, we’ve carried his book; I don’t know if it’s in stock there now. It would be a sound theological examination of spiritual gifts. I’ll think about that for sure when we get to the spiritual gifts, I’ll bring some material. There is a deterioration on this. Dallas Seminary has a number of professors who have moved that direction, they published a book “Who’s Afraid of the Holy Spirit?” and they’ve moved from the exegetical to the experiential. And I’ve mentioned this on other occasions for those of you who’ve been here, but in this book, in fact one of the editors has written one of the finest Greek grammars, a secondary Greek grammar after you’ve taken basic Greek. He says, “I’ve just found out the word of God is not enough so I went back to my Pentecostal charismatic groups. I needed something experiential.” You know, we all go through dry periods and I think that’s a danger of where we’ve gone with our advanced education. We’ve so become scholarly-oriented, but sometimes the reality of the Word gets lost, and I can see a person who immerses himself just in the Greek text and all the nuances of it. And that can sometimes just seem cold and analytical. We always want to be careful as we come to the Word. That’s where I share with you how I do sermons. I thought I might do a study of Jude, but you know, as I was preparing it, this word is the word of God, but it doesn’t have a grip on me. I don’t want to teach something in the Word that doesn’t have a grip on me. I acknowledge its truth, but that’s not having the same impression on me today. That’s how I got into Ecclesiastes, going through it on a number of occasions. And you know, you think this is just something that is thrilling, it’s thrilling to me and I want to pass it on.

So they’ve done a whole book by men who either are or were professors at Dallas Seminary, who are now moving to the charismatic movement, but they’re honest. “Because we’re looking for experience.” But once you start looking for experience and move out there, pretty soon the experience eats up the foundational, basic truths. Because what is the authority? Is it your experience or is it the word of God? Now the word of God brings experience. That’s why Luther said as you study the book of Romans it ought to get more and more precious to you, it’s a yellow light turning red. We say read the word of God. But it’s not very interesting to me; when it’s not, I have to say, “Lord, something’s wrong with me, I want this word of God to be precious. Why is it growing cold? Why was it one time more exciting, more fresh, more alive?” So I think there are dangers in this and it just keeps creeping in, creeping in, creeping in. Other things.

You know, experience begins to eat up the truth. It’s hard to deny someone’s experience that have come out of that. We were in the Holiness movement, and we were saved and you had to get the second blessing, and that came into my family. I sat in meetings where—my mother’s with the Lord now so I can say this—she claimed to get the second blessing. She stood up in the meeting and began to speak and they took that as the Lord directly speaking to and through that person. And in many conversations over time and I had to begin to get into the Word more deeply. What is the biblical foundation here? But you know, they’re dear people, they were instrumental in our becoming believers. That’s how we were involved in that. They say you cannot deny my experience. How many times I’ve heard that. Well, you had an experience, I can’t deny that but I have to come to the word of God to evaluate the experience, otherwise, I begin to interpret the word of God through my experience rather than going the other way. I interpret experience through the Word, the Word is the authority, not my experience. This is where we’ve gone with the modern movement where they want to create an atmosphere of darkness, candles, going back to the Roman Catholic ideas. Or where you have an atmosphere where you feel like you worship. What does it mean to feel like you worship? The emotions can be controlled, manipulated, and that’s what they do when you can create an atmosphere, turn down the lights, light the candles, light incense, well, you create, like we talk about, mood music, different kinds of music affects you, all these things.

Question: Gil, talking about the apostles in your reference in 1 Corinthians (15). Talking about the twelve apostles and men, in verse 7, then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. My question is, is that more apostles or the same ones?

Answer: Evidently, I think there’s evidence in the New Testament that there were other apostles than maybe just the original twelve. Those twelve are uniquely set apart, and have an authoritative position, but there could have been other apostles during that time of the establishing of the church that were going to carry the word of God to places. And received apostles and prophets who could have received direct revelation that was not even preserved for us, but were being used of the Lord during that time when the church was being established. So they would have qualified as apostles in the broader sense of those sent on Christ’s behalf with the message, but they’re not on the level of the twelve plus Paul. And that’s where it could become confusing in the churches when others came in with a different message, and claimed the same authority. If it wasn’t the same. . . Any genuine person had a message from God, and some did because there were prophets in the church, and they could receive a message from God. But if it was in conflict with the truth that was revealed like through the twelve plus Paul, then it was to be rejected. So there’s a standard there. So as the New Testament is completed and established, I take it those gifts pass out, and that may be in view in 1 Corinthians 13 when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away with. There’s a debate whether that perfect is the completed word of God or it’s ultimately looking to the coming of Christ. I think there’s good, strong evidence that it’s referring to the completed Word. But until that time, there were individuals with a prophetic gift who could receive a direct revelation, because you’re carrying the message out in the parts of the world and to places, but you don’t have a completed New Testament yet, so there could be direct revelation on that. So I think there were. Barnabas may classify as an apostle, some of the references using that with him. James, you know, the brother of the Lord, who leads the church in Jerusalem and writes the letter with his name. Jude, perhaps, the other half-brother of the Lord. So those kind of things.

Okay, thank you. Let’s have a word of prayer. Thank you, Lord, for Your Word. We do want to be diligent students of the Word, Lord, we don’t want to lose our hunger and appetite for the Word. We want it to grow more precious to us, not less, we don’t want to have a casual familiarity with the Word, where we begin to take it for granted. We want it impressed upon our minds, even as Your servant Luther said. Every word, word by word, we take it in and we mull it over, it’s in our hearts, it’s on our minds, it’s precious to us. Lord, we have been blessed to walk with You over many years, having experienced Your saving grace years ago. We want to be aware of the danger of becoming less passionate in our love for You and love for Your truth. We don’t want to just become students who study for knowledge, but knowledge that is transformed in the reality of our living. We pray as we study, specifically books like Ecclesiastes, Romans, other books that are taught by other teachers in our studies at various times, and the truths relating to the Word, Lord, may this make all this grow more precious to us so that the light that we shine in the dark is stronger, bolder, and clear. Use us in the week before us, wherever You put us, whatever situation, whatever place. May we remember we’re here as slaves of Christ to carry out His will and to honor Him. I pray in Christ’s name, amen.