To read the passage you can click HERE.

“Lord, would You capture my mind’s attention and my heart’s affection”

This is one of the greatest passages in all of the New Testament. It has a compendium of some of the greatest concepts in Christianity: righteousness, faith, justification, redemption, atonement, grace, glory of God.

This is a passage that pleads for us to think and meditate on… to ponder if you will. It is pregnant with hope, and power, and joy-filled relief.

This is a passage that is almost too good to be true. And yet it is bonafide truth.

Think about it. Paul is telling the Jews (and us) that they can stop trying to earn the favor of God by obeying a bunch of rules. Rules incidentally that were established by God. The rules were given not as a means to salvation but as a way of revealing to people that no matter how hard they tried they just could not meet the standard of obeying ALL of them. In other words, they show us how unlike God we really are.

People never knew whether they had done enough to satisfy God’s sense of justice and avoid his wrath.. It was a terrible way to live and people lived more in fear of God’s anger with them than in love for Him and His goodness to them.

Paul is explaining in this passage that you don’t have to live like that. Salvation is not based on what we do, it is based on what Christ has done. “We are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

No doubt, this sounded too good to be true. (Perhaps this is one of the reasons that Paul didn’t end Romans with chapter 3 – he had some explaining to do). But once this begins to sink in and once we really understand the power of this grace oriented gospel then we can begin to worship God with heartfelt gratitude, serve Him with joy-fueled passion, and reveal Him with authenticity and integrity.

Praise be to God for a gospel that only seems to good to be true – but in fact is the greatest truth ever proclaimed.

Next Week’s Passage: Romans 4:1-12
Memory Verses: Romans 8:1-8 (still)

To read the passage you can click HERE.

Lord, would You capture my mind’s attention and my heart’s affection.

In this passage Paul continues to make his case that Jews and Gentiles alike are all in the same boat. We are all bonafide sinners. It doesn’t matter if we are the keepers of the law (as Jews are quick to point out) or really really good people (as Gentiles like to say).

The verse that struck me this week is the last part of verse 20: “…through the law we become conscious of sin.” The Jews were trying to say that because God had chosen them as His special people and that because he had given them the law (not the Gentiles) that they got a pass when it comes to salvation. In other words, they don’t need Jesus because they have been entrusted with the very words of God. And the Scriptures for them had become a book to be studied and debated and interpreted – but not a book that reveals their neediness for a Savior or a book that unveils their sin.

It seems to me that I do the same thing. I am a pastor. I teach the Bible. I preach the Bible. I memorize the Bible. I love to talk with other people about what the Bible says and means. Studying God’s Word is my job. If I am not careful, the Bible becomes for me the same as it became for the Jews – “a book to be studied and debated and interpreted.”

Verse 20 is a reminder to me that instead of reading the Bible I need to allow the Bible to read me. I need to let God’s Word search my heart and reveal sin and penetrate the darkness that is within me and shine the light of the glory of God into my soul. If I do not do this then I may know God’s Word but not know God at all.

Lord, would You capture my mind’s attention and my heart’s affection.

Next Week’s Passage: Romans 3:21-31
Memory Verses: Romans 8:1-8 (Same as last week – if you are memorizing this chapter along with me then I am going to give us a few weeks to do some catch up and to make sure we have the first 8 verses before pressing on.)

To read the passage you can click HERE.

There are several things that I want to comment on this passage but I will only give one here. Perhaps as you pondered you saw the other things that grabbed my attention. I’m always interested in hearing about what stands out to you as you ponder.

Paul, who was trained to be a rabbi, uses a rabbinic teaching technique in this passage. He quotes a verse from Psalm 51 to help make a point (v.4). Psalm 51 is  the great Psalm of repentance by David after being confronted with his sin of adultery and murder in the Bathsheba incident. By quoting one verse, Paul is drawing attention to the entire Psalm. Rather than making excuses for their sin, as the Jews were prone to do, Paul is hoping the Jews would come face to face with their own sin as King David, their hero, was quick to do. Note the verses that come immediately before and after the verse that Paul quotes:

² Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. 
³ For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
⁴ Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge.
⁵ Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
⁶ Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb; you taught me wisdom in that secret place. (Psalm 51:2-6)

Paul is beginning to make his case that “all have sinned” and all need the Savior. Jews are not exempt from this just because they are the chosen people of God. In fact they ought to be the first ones to get this because, as Paul points out, they have been entrusted with the Word of God.

Here is my takeaway – as believers we pride ourselves on being a people of the Word. We listen to it being preached. We read it for ourselves. We study it in small groups with others. And yet we have the same tendency as the Jews. We feel safeguarded from God’s judgment because we go to church regularly and have “prayed the prayer” and sometimes read the Scriptures and pray and give our money away. What Paul is reminding us of is this: until we come face to face with our own sin and genuinely repent and turn away from our sin and then cling to Christ and the cross – we will be subject to the same wrath that the Jews would encounter apart from Christ.

And God would be faithful in doing this because it is not as if He has not given us fair warning. So don’t just hear the Word, shema it. (I’m teaching on the Shema this Sunday night in my Jewishness of Christianity  course if you want to find out what I mean by this.)

Next Week’s Passage: Romans 3:9-20
Memory Verses: Romans 8: 1-8

¹⁷ Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and brag about your relationship to God; ¹⁸ if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; ¹⁹ if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, ²⁰ an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth…  (Click HERE to read the rest of the passage)

There was one word in this passage that stuck out to me. It was mentioned 9 different times. It is easy to overlook but it seemed to me to be the key to the passage. It was the little word that has HUGE implications: the word “if.”

Here is a one sentence summation of what I think Paul was saying: IF you do all the right things and even have the right “look”, it doesn’t matter IF you do not know the right person.

Now admittedly he did not mention Jesus in this passage. He is building his case in these early chapters of the need for the Savior and Jesus is very much on Paul’s mind if not on the page he is writing.

So here is my paraphrase of what Paul is saying in a 21st century, American, North Durham, baptist context:

If you go to church every Sunday, and give your money, and read your Bible, and pray, and take notes on the sermon, and memorize portions of Scripture, and go on mission trips, and help with the Toy Drive, and donate time and money to the Durham Rescue Mission, and have a child that you sponsor in Haiti, and have a cross that you wear, and own Christian tee shirts, and listen to K-Love, and regularly read this blog – but don’t know Jesus, then all of that is of no value. It only has value if you know Him.

It is always good to make sure that we know why we are doing what we are doing. If you do all that stuff to earn God’s favor then you are in trouble because you can’t do enough. If you do all that stuff because you love Jesus and want to know Him better then you understand the gospel. Just make sure that you never put the cart before the horse.

Next Week’s Passage: Romans 3:1-8
Memory Verses: Romans 8:1-7