Studying His Word and His Works

Listen to the study here: Romans 5:18-6:4

Read here: Romans 5

Review

• Calvin on the theme of Romans: “Man’s only righteousness is the mercy of God in Christ, when it is offered by the Gospel and received by faith.” Romans 1:17 and elsewhere.
• Luther: Simul iustus et peccator = At the same time, righteous and a sinner! Romans 3:23-25
• In Ch. 1-3 Paul shows us our unrighteousness, and God’s wrath against that, and the switches to Christ’s righteousness as our covering, the propitiation of our sins (Romans 3:25) as the final sacrifice for sin, fulfilling the promise to Abraham, who had faith before any works
• Faith being “counted” or “credited to our account” as righteousness is mentioned 11 times in Chapter 4! If “none are righteous” as Paul wrote in Romans 3:10, then this saving faith must be a gift from God.
• John Macarthur said the purpose of Ch. 5 is to show us how Adam was a type of Christ. Christ is the 2nd Adam, or last Adam as Paul describes in I Corinthians 15:45. The first Adam imputed sin to mankind, and its penalty, death. The last Adam defeated death, and instead brought righteousness, and its reward, eternal life.

Intro

• John Calvin said the theme of Romans is this: “Man’s only righteousness is the mercy of God in Christ, when it is offered by the Gospel and received by faith.” The farther we get into Romans, the more clear Calvin’s statement becomes. Even the faith to receive Christ’s righteousness is a work of the Holy Spirit, as Ch. 4 mentions 11 times. Saving faith was credited, deposited, placed into our account without our help. What we’ve been covering lately is basically the origins story of sin and wickedness and death. Paul showing his trust of the Old Testament as true in time and space, that it’s not just words floating around randomly, but words connected to actions that have a time stamp in history. As verse 6 says, “at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.” 
• I wanted to talk about the historical aspect a bit because, if you go all the way back to Adam like Paul does in Chapter 5 and 6, revealing to readers your complete trust in biblical history, you are going to get mocked and scorned and ridiculed. 
• I don’t know what to call it, so I will call it a “faith anchoring point.” You probably have some of these, memorable situations where you had to make a decision to follow righteousness or wickedness, and you chose righteousness. Sometimes these are little things, which I have all the time, and sometimes these are big moments. Tragedies can be a faith anchor point, and I know it was for me and my parents after my sister died unexpectedly after having a baby. For me, it was either trust His plan with that, or not. It was a lot harder for my parents, but we got through that, together. Relationship was huge there, starting with being saved and being a friend of God instead of an enemy like verse 5:10 says.
  • Another anchor point has to do with these verses. As a scientist and engineer, with 8 years of college at secular universities, I have faced real opposition regarding what the Bible says about creation and history. So I’ve had to think about all of this a lot, sometimes too much, but there is a very real opposition out there. There does seem to be less hostility towards biblical creation and history than 10-15 years ago, but it is still there. There are people who try to do that reductionism thing, that the world is material only, no spiritual, or that faith and reason are opposites, and you have to reject one or the other. But the “material only” people lose the argument as soon as you discuss logic, because logic is immaterial but we know it exists, and the “reason only” people are also materialists, so this kills their argument, too.
  • Anyways, the faith anchoring point connected to Romans 5&6 came for me in the 1990’s while watching a video by Dr. John Morris, whose father, Henry Morris, founded the Institute for Creation Research, or ICR. Morris said that, if evolution is true, then death brought man. With evolution, death is the creator, so God, and in particular the God of the Bible, is out. But these verses we are reading say no, that’s a false origin story. Adam’s sin brought death, and then death spread to all men (5:12). Evolution says that millions and billions and trillions of creatures, over billions of years, died, and through all that death, eventually and very randomly and with no purpose whatsoever, a bacteria turned into a monkey and then a man popped out of a monkey one day. Dr. Morris’s video was a faith anchoring point for me because he used the Bible’s “sin origin” story, recounted in these verses by Paul, to show the stark contrast between the biblical account of origins and the modern secular one.
    • It’s the Bible’s description of purpose and pattern and timing versus no purpose, no pattern and totally random events. It’s also about people framing this as a scientific debate, when it’s actually a debate about history.
      • Scientific conclusions are vastly different from historical interpretations. One big difference is that scientific conclusions are testable and repeatable. If one scientist draws a conclusion from an experiment, another scientist is able to verify their claim by doing his or her own experiment. 
      • Historical interpretation is just that, interpretation. People look at evidence and interpret it. When it comes to origins research, like looking at evidence for Noah’s flood and things like that, I call that natural history research. That’s what all scholars used to call it, but somewhere along the way people started calling it “science,” and claiming that you are “anti-science” if you don’t agree with their secular interpretation. Interestingly, the ONE piece of evidence the secular historians won’t use is the Bible! Every. Single. Time. 
    • You can go super deep into the creation/evolution debate, answering every argument, and I think it is good for some people to do that, but the reality is that people need Jesus, not a debate. If you answer rationally one of their objections, those who really aren’t searching will just come up with another objection. And another. It can turn into casting pearls before swine if you’re not careful. Wasting time answering fools who God has already “given over,” that have clearly not received a gift of faith.
  • Speaking of faith, Hebrews 11:1 offers a great definition of faith. Those on the “faith=fairy tale” side will claim that faith is “believing what you know ain’t so,” as Mark Twain once said. The Bible however says faith is “the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen”. As we have discussed, saving faith is a gift, it’s not like having faith that the sun’s gonna rise or my chair is not going to break while I’m sitting here. Saving faith is similar, but different, almost as if when we receive saving faith, it allows us to more fully utilize the faith God designed into us. We learn how to leverage faith in better ways as we walk the road of sanctification.
    • Saving faith is not blind, there is evidence for things unseen. Is there evidence that humans are born sinners? Oh yes there is. Is there evidence we were designed uniquely, with pattern and purpose? Oh yes there is. Is there evidence a worldwide flood came and destroyed everything? Oh yes there is. Is there evidence God created and designed living things with the ability to adapt and change within their kind, not from bananas into people, but more like different breeds of dogs or cats or different colors of people yet still people? Oh yes there is.
  • Okay, last faith anchoring point. We read in Romans 1 and 2 what happens when you exchange the truth of God for a lie. And a lot of the result is weird and creepy sexual perversion stuff. Now, years ago, I did volunteer work with the Texas State Board of Education to help get modern scientific discoveries into high school biology textbooks. You couldn’t teach about biblical creation, but you could teach about new science that runs counter to the standard evolutionism beliefs. So I did that and the “God gave them over” crowd lost their minds. I would make blog posts about the “Texas biology textbook battle” and the comments were just crazy! Perverted stuff, even death threats. The overwhelming majority of comments were ad hominem attacks. Not reasonable as they claim to be, but just name calling. But, having that experience and not caving to the crowds was a faith anchoring point for sure. Through that I was able to see how absolutely perfectly Paul described what to expect from the “God gave them over” crowd. 

• Enough on that, let’s get into our verses for today.
• Verses 18-19
  • Paul wraps up his emphasis on federalism, this truth we see in our world that one man can make a difference.
  • Some analogies:
    • One broken rule: all condemned::One righteous act:justification
    • One man’s disobedience:making many sinners :: One man’s obedience:making many righteous
      • Interesting that Paul uses both many and all here, almost as a reminder of something we have talked about, that human words don’t often convey the truth perfectly, AND that we have to read more than one verse and avoid cherry picking to get a better understanding. For example, we know not all, as in every single human, will get saved, because that contradicts Romans 1 and 2 which states that God gives some over to his wrath, even before they physically die. 
• Verse 20
• We discussed this in the last study, how sin was here before Jewish law was written, the 10 commandments, etc., but once it was here, sin took on a sharper profile, made it more real. We discussed the fact that just because we can’t give something a specific name, doesn’t mean it’s not real.
  • BUT, where sin became more real through the law, all the more did God’s grace abound. Even though grace through Jesus hadn’t happened yet, it was coming. 
  • Sproul wrote that God gave us the law so that we may see the extent of our sin. Look at Adam, one law shown to him and he had a billion other things to do, but breaks the one law. That was bad, but think how wicked our hearts are now that we have a sin nature.
  • But sin and its penalty, death, is no match for God’s grace.
• Verse 21
  • Here we transition from the discussion of death’s reign, to the reign of grace.
  • Grace reigns through righteousness, and righteousness is from Christ alone.
  • And righteousness leads somewhere, to eternal life! Another analogy:
    • Righteousness from Christ alone:leads to eternal life:: Wickedness from us alone: leads to eternal death.
  • Hawaii state motto: The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness. Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ʻĀina i ka Pono. Words first spoken by King Kamehameha III in 1843, at a time when Hawaiians were fully embracing Jesus Christ as their Savior. So, think about this. Since righteousness is from Christ alone, the motto is actually saying “the life of the land is perpetuated in Jesus Christ.” Just like these verses say, sin reigned in death, and grace reigns in life. When we read these verses it is easy to see that if the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness, then the death of the land is perpetuated in wickedness. 
• Chapter 6, verses 1-2
  • By no means! Paul isn’t saying to sin more so that grace can abound even more, as if grace would stop if we stop sinning. It’s what we discussed last time; Paul is saying that giving sin a name made it more real, and that grace is better, always.
    • Sproul wrote that after Luther promoted sola fide, justification by faith alone, the Roman Catholic church feared this idea created a license for sin. But it’s like they hadn’t read the Bible that much, because right here Paul is saying “By no means!” That’s a bad argument! The ASV translates it “God forbid.”
    • Luther said we are justified by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. “By faith alone” is shorthand for “by Christ alone and his righteousness.”
      • It is not saying our works don’t matter.
      • We are not justified by good works, but UNTO good works (Eph 2:10)
      • We are not justified by our sanctification, but UNTO sanctification.
      • Paul is beginning to show us how true believers respond to the gospel.
        • Justification+works=faith, that is what James describes.
        • Justification=works+faith, that is the RC church view, Mormon view, etc. 
        • A justified person is a changed person, and it should be evident. 
        • We cannot have saving faith unless the Holy Spirit has changed the disposition of our souls. Remember Romans 5:5, God’s love has been poured into us through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Grace is a package deal, you get the Holy Spirit, God’s love, eternal life, saving faith, justification, Christ’s righteousness, sin debt paid for, anything else? 
      • BUT, the battle with sin goes on. We don’t believe in instantaneous sanctification, but in instantaneous justification and grace. Christ’s righteousness imputed to us is like our medicine we need to start the healing process, and that indeed is a process, the process of sanctification.
• Verses 3-4
  • Sproul writes that Luther used to say, when the Devil would tempt him, “Get away from me! I’m baptized!” Baptism doesn’t save, but it is for sure an outward sign that we trust His promise to redeem us. All the processes that are wrought through the redeeming work of Christ are contained in that sign. Baptism is a sign of our being regenerated by the Holy Spirit. It does not affect regeneration, but it is a sign of it. It is the sign of God’s promise that all who believe will, in fact be justified. It is a sign or our sanctification. It is a sign of our being indwelt by the Holy Spirit. It is a sign of our glorification. It is a sign of our identification with Christ. We are in Christ now. He is our champion. 
    • We are already participating in the resurrection of Christ, which is what raising up from the water symbolizes. Walking in newness of life, trusting that is what is happening. We already have a downpayment of eternal life in our souls by having been given the sealing of the Holy Spirit. How could we then, as someone in Christ Jesus, someone who has participated in the power of His resurrection, continue in sin that grace may abound? The truth is, we can’t! Both true believers and hypocrites might respond this way. The difference though, would be the true believer would repent, and the hypocrite would not.
• Coming soon, Romans 6:4-11.