Gooding, David: 2 - Introduction & Outline

Let's begin by reading the Epistle to the Romans, then let's read the opening verses at the beginning, and then the closing verses at the end. Seems to me always a reasonable thing to do when one is, um, studying Holy Scripture, a book of Holy Scripture, to notice how it begins, and then to look and see how it ends, because all you have to do thereafter is to discover how it gets from the, uh, beginning to the end. And that's what we should be trying to do together in the course of these sessions. Beginning then at chapter one verse one: Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which he promised before by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning his Son who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and was declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the dead, even Jesus Christ our Lord. Then the last words of the last chapter, chapter sixteen and verse twenty five: Now to him that is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept in silence through times eternal, but now is manifested, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, is made known unto all the nations, unto the obedience of faith, to the only wise God through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever. Amen. Now, as you have heard Roddy say, we have today to try and get through the first eight chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, so that tomorrow we might comfortably get through the second eight chapters of the book. That obviously means that we're not going to have time to investigate the shape of every comma, nor even semicolon in the book. For my part, what I shall be attempting to do by my small contribution is to suggest the thought flow, the flow of the argument, and some of the major themes within that general argument. I shall be obliged to lead discussion of the details, such as there, uh, we shall have time for, to the discussion groups. Of course, uh, I'm not, I'm not suggesting that the discussion groups will have to, uh, accept without murmur or complaint the analysis that I shall give. There are many analyses of the Epistle to the Romans. I hope I would have grace to go to the stake for the truth of Romans itself. I'm not quite sure that I would go to the stake for any one analysis, uh, uh, uh, that includes my own. I shall be suggesting an analysis of this book as a practical device so that we may get our fingers round the message and the themes and the flow of the argument. And in order to come to a more exact appreciation of the detail of any one particular argument or paragraph in the book, to be able, conveniently, to compare one section with another and to notice what things are similar, and more importantly, what things differ. In A Work of Music, so I understand, though I couldn't read the note, you will get a theme in the early part that will be repeated, but upside down, in the second part, and then transposed in a third part to a different key, and so forth and so on, with variations upon the theme. There are some respects in which books of Holy Scripture are very much like that. Now, the, um, uh, general theme, of course, of the epistle is, as we were observing last night, the gospel. Paul says it in verse one of chapter one, does he not, when he had notices that he was called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God. He notices again in verse nine when he says that he serves God as a priest would serve the deity. He serves God in his spirit, in the gospel of his son. In verse fifteen he tells the Romans that he is ready to preach the gospel to you also that are in Rome, and in verse sixteen he informs us that he is not ashamed of the gospel. As we said last night, though the theme of this epistle is the gospel, it was written to Christians, people who were already believers. And Paul tells us why he is doing it. He wants to come and visit them, he says. He hopes one day that God will open the door and make it possible, verse ten of chapter one. For he longs to see them, to impart unto them some spiritual gift, that they might be established. And since he can't go at once, he writes to them this gospel. It is, it seems to me, an exceedingly good and important and healthy thing, however long we have been Christians, to come back constantly to the gospel, that we might be established. It is always so possible, as the years go by and we get interested in this and that and the other, to wander a little bit, like a ship or an airplane getting off its course. We need to be brought back to the gospel and to be established in the gospel. And then he says in verse twelve that when he comes to them, their being established will involve this. He said, I would like to be encouraged by you, each of us by the other's faith. How gracious, but I suspect quite realistically, Paul is telling them that when he comes, he's going to find encouragement himself, help in their faith. And if Paul needed it, I need it a thousand times more, my brethren. For while I believe the gospel with all my heart, there come days with me, I don't know about you. When Satan himself whispers his doubts. Is the whole thing true? Or is it mere psychological self-deception? The faith of the Roman believers had become hot news all around the world. Delighted in it, he says, and I'm looking forward to come to meet you, my brethren, that I might be encouraged by your faith and you be encouraged by my faith. And I say to you the same, my brethren and my sisters. Delightful to hear of your faith in the Lord. Tell me, why do you believe the gospel anyway? What makes you think it's true? If you were put on the spot by some inquiring youth, by the next generation, and asked, why do you believe the gospel is true? I wonder what you normally reply. What is the first reason you give? Some of us perhaps would say, oh, but I've had such a real experience of God, and there's no denying my experience. Praise the Lord for that. Of course, experience is one of the reasons we know it's true. Like we know bread is bread because we've proved it to be bread. It has satisfied our hunger and done the job that we needed, desperately needed, being done. Yeah, but your experience, how do you know your experience is valid anyway? And isn't what Mr. Scrooge called a little bit of undigested cheese giving rise to all sorts of dreams and psychological self-deceptions. How do you know your experience is valid? Has any objective reality and truth about it? And is not merely the product of the pressure groups and, uh, the, uh, um, popular habits of thought that were about when you got converted. You say, my dear good man, then she started off Romans by questioning whether the thing is true. I found it written in Romans, this great gospel that I have believed, written there by an inspired apostle. Oh, good for you. You found it in the New Testament. That's another excellent reason for believing the gospel. Who wrote Romans? Paul did. Mm. What made him think it was true? Because he didn't read it in the New Testament, did he? You're believing what he says, but how do you, how do, what made him think it was true? He tells us surely, as he opens his verse, uh, his epistle, he was called to be an apostle. The experience, of course, never le- uh, left him how he met the risen Lord on the road to Damascus. And in that self-revelation of the riven- risen Lord to Paul, of course, lay not only his commissioning to be an apostle, but the evidence that it all was true. You say, if I'd had a blinding experience like that when I got converted, a Damascus road in very, very truth, and seen the light above the brightness of the sun, I'd never have another doubt all my life, and I wouldn't need anything else to cling to. You wouldn't. But Paul did. Didn't he? So notice what he now says next. He is, um, separated unto the gospel of God, which he promised before by his prophet in the Holy Scriptures, namely the Old Testament. And if an apostle with such an immediate experience of the glory of the risen Christ also found tremendous strength in this fact that the gospel he preached was a gospel prophesied and promised over centuries in the holy writings of the Old Testament, it seemed to me that we should be wise men and women ourselves, to make ourselves acquainted with, in great detail, these Old Testament scriptures, in which God promised before his gospel. Here is the most weighty, objective evidence that the gospel is true. And when one ponders at the moment, one sees the great wisdom of God, with all the centuries of time to play with. Why didn't God announce the gospel fully to Adam? Or keep quiet about it until the Lord Jesus came? Why this technique on the part of his divine majesty to promise it with promises added to promise over many centuries, and what is more, written down in the scriptures of the prophets. Why that technique? Promises that were finally fulfilled. Why, surely, amongst other things, let me observe the obvious, that it is in the nature of things that when anybody makes you a promise, the longer it is delayed, the more you may have questions about it. But when it is finally fulfilled, it makes a mock of all your doubts. And gives you objective evidence that the one who promised was true in what he promised. And that what he says is true indeed. If we should be wise, it seems to me, as we may have time in the course of our study groups, to notice the tremendous evidence and emphasis put upon Old Testament scripture in this New Testament book. Oh, I think I hear objections coming from Mrs. Jones, if not Mister. Oh, but sir, you can't expect our young people to read much about the Old Testament nowadays. Oh goodness me, man. You can't. Yes, but if I might speak as an old codger to those who one day will be such. Of course we want to stress to our younger folk that personal experience of the Lord is absolutely fundamental. But if we are wise parents and pastors, we should not leave them just with the evidence of internal personal experience. Because middle age can be a very effective demolisher of the more vivid parts of personal experiences and ecstasies and what have you. When the fires of i- youthful idealism have burned low, and the difficulties of middle age come, and pain and problem. How many a man and woman has come to wonder whether the experience they had when they were eighteen was a genuine experience, whether there's anything in it. It is, in that situation, a A tremendous tremendous seat sheet anchor. anchor. To have observed that our gospel is not simply our personal experience within, but is demonstrated to be true by ages of promise, written down objectively, and eventually fulfilled by the living God who gave it. Is the gospel big enough for all the ages of time? There is a sense in which it is the gospel that, uh, was the whole purpose for the stage being built. It is our little planet and all the galaxies that roll in space. Of course, within the, uh, uh, prophetic scriptures, in addition to the prophetic scriptures, there will be, of course, that supreme piece of evidence that was the incarnation of the Son of God. But there, as you see Paul talking about it, it is the gospel concerning his son, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh. Came with all those promises of history behind him, and what is more, as son of David, heir himself to those promises. And in the third place, with the history of David and the Judaic kings, and particularly David, acting as a thought model that we can use in order to get our minds round the significance of the person and the work of Jesus Christ our Lord. The Old Testament is not there to make life difficult. It is there to make our understanding of the Lord Jesus easier. Then he is marked out, pointed, if you like, to be the Son of God in power, as distinct from what he was in the days of his flesh, when he was crucified in weakness. Always the Son of God, he was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, then demonstrated to be Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead. Scripture then in history, the great historical fact of the incarnation and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Even so, there is another reason why we need to grasp the Old Testament in relation to our gospel. For if reading that Old Testament and seeing how its promises are fulfilled can show us that the gospel is true, the next question we have to ask, do we not? How do I know I've got the right end of the stick and I've interpreted the gospel the right way round? And as we read through this epistle, we shall hear echoes, shall we not, of Paul's endless debates in synagogue after synagogue, with rabbis, in the home, in the marketplace, in the school of Tyrannus, publicly and privately, as many a Jew, let alone Gentiles, challenged his interpretation of Old Testament, challenged his gospel, made out his gospel contradicted the Old Testament. And Paul had to fight, in all due Christian fashion, of course, to show that his gospel was indeed the right interpretation of Old Testament. So shall we need in our modern day. For Christendom is awash as never before with ten thousand and one versions of Christianity. How do you know you've got the right version? And does it matter whether we get the right version or not? Not only so, as we shall tomorrow, God willing, come across chapters nine to eleven, we shall see another reason why Paul clung to his Old Testament. There were days when over his tent work, in the small hours of the morning, after he'd been beaten perhaps or stoned, or had to face a ferocious roasting in the synagogue. There were days when he posed himself the question, how can my interpretation of the gospel be true? If the vast majority of my fellow Jews, of the greater part of that nation that was raised up to God to be a witness to the coming gospel, say I've got it wrong. And if my gospel is true, why aren't my fellow Jews getting converted? I'm no apostle. I suspect you're not either. Do you ever wonder? Sometimes the lack of converts make you wonder whether you've got the gospel the right way round. In those chapters nine to eleven, as Paul lays bare his heart, watch him searching through Old Testament for answers to this practical, heartbreaking problem. If I got the gospel right, why aren't Israel getting saved? With that then, I pass to suggest what may be, uh, uh, some of the major themes of the Epistle to the Romans, and to suggest a practical layout for them. In, uh, verse sixteen, Paul observes, sixteen of chapter one, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. And why he is not ashamed of it is because this, it is the power of God's salvation because it offers the solution to an age-long problem. Therein is a righteousness of God revealed that works all together on the principle of faith, and that is why the gospel can be the power of God unto salvation. Because here is an acquittal, a righteous acquittal given us from God himself, and we receive it all together on the principle of faith, from faith to faith. That is why the thing works. If it depends on our effort, then like all other such recipes that depend on human effort, in the end it would break down and wouldn't work. But if it is the power of God unto salvation, let us proceed to ask, why do we need to be saved anyway? Why do men need to be saved? And it seems to me that Paul now will answer that question, why people need to be saved. And in the first great movement of his work, one, he tells us right at the beginning, the inspiring Holy Spirit normally puts the key to any house by the door. Why people need to be saved? Not ashamed of the, uh, of the gospel, it is the power of God unto salvation. It reveals a way of acquittal, a righteousness which is from God, bestowed by God. Why do we need such a thing? Because, ladies and gentlemen, the wrath of God is revealed. Number one reason why we need to be saved. Of course, the second great movement in the epistle is going to give another hefty reason. But notice first, our most urgent need is to be saved from the wrath of God. Mark now, if you will, how that theme of the wrath of God proceeds through the early chapters of the book. You may care to notice one thirty two, for instance, who knowing the ordinance of God that they which practice such things are worthy of death. Here is God's judgment on human sinfulness. Or you may care to notice, uh, two verse eight. But unto them that are factious and obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, shall be wrath and indignation. Or verse twelve: for as many have sinned without the law shall also perish without the law, and as many as have sinned under the law shall be judged by the law. And again, verse sixteen: in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men according to my gospel by Jesus Christ. The wrath of God reveals against sin, is constantly revealed against sin. Shall be revealed against sin in the day of judgment. What is more, let us look at chapter three and verse, uh, twenty five. If we need to be saved from the wrath of God, here is how we can be saved from the wrath of God. It is through Jesus Christ and the redemption that is in Jesus Christ, verse twenty five, whom God set forth to be a propitiation. Peace be to all liberal scholars, but the word still means a sacrifice that deals with the wrath of God against sin and removes the wrath of God from the sinner. The wrath of God then is revealed against human sin. It is revealed in his judgment, his present judgments and his future judgments. It is supremely revealed, ladies and gentlemen, at Calvary itself. And our studies will invite us again today to think about Calvary and what actually was going on at the cross. One of the things that was going on, says Paul, is Christ was offering a propitiatory sacrifice, satisfying the wrath of God against sin. Notice also then, when we come to what seems to me to be the end and climax of this first movement, in chapter five, Paul is there arguing about the love of God, and he says, verse eight: but God commended his own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than, and here come the tremendous implications of the love of God for us expressed in the death of Christ. Here are its final and future implications. Much more than, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath through him. I'm going to suggest, therefore, that when we come to the end of what I would call movement one, uh, it will tell us how we may be saved from the The wrong wrath. through Christ. Mm. But of course, that's not the only reason why we need to be saved. If the first movement comes to its end and climax in verse eleven of chapter five, then the second movement begins in five twelve and supplies for us now another major reason why people need to be saved. Paul observes, therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. We need to be saved from the wreckage of Of Adam. Adam. Sin. With all its fearful results for the human race and all who have sprung from Adam. So, in this second great movement, we find the apostle going to on to talk about the great slaveries and dominions that have come upon us through Adam's sin and our own personal sinning. There is the great dominion of death. Five fourteen: nevertheless death reign. Again, verse seventeen: for if by the trespass of the one death reign, the terrible, hitherto irresistible dominion of death. And then, of course, in addition to that, the dominion and slavery of sin. You get reference to it, for instance, in six fourteen, talking to the believer, sin shall not have dominion over you. And the exhortation in verse twelve of chapter six, let not therefore sin reign in your mortal body. The terrible dominion, slave mastery of sin. And if you were beginning to think, well, surely the habit of sinning could be put right with a dose or two of the law regularly applied, God's holy law would tone up our spirits and our souls and eventually give them strength to shake off what you are pleased to call the dominion of sin. Learn this, that far from releasing us from the shackles of death and sin, the law itself has become a terrible dominion. Look at chapter seven. are you ignorant, brethren, verse one, for I speak to men that know the law, how that the law has dominion. Instead of setting us free, it has bound the chains of our bondage even more tightly and strongly. So much so that when we come to it, we shall find that the first step in setting people free from the dominion of sin is as chapter 6, verse fourteen describes it. Sin shall not have dominion over you, for now in Christ you are not under law. We could go on, couldn't we, as we think of Adam's sin and the terrible slaveries and dominions into which it has brought mankind, to think of what he said in chapter eight uh as the apostle comes towards the end of this second great movement. He talks about creation herself, eight twenty: Creation having been subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it. He says, not only so, not only, verse twenty two, does the whole of creation groan and travail in pain, but we ourselves, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves. What a terrible entail, ruin and wreckage has come from the admission of sin into our planet. And we groan not only in spirit, but our bodies groan, at least mine does, in the mornings. Uh, uh, you'll say, while we wait for the time when it shall all be put right, waiting for the redemption of our bodies. And we have the glorious promise that creation herself also shall be delivered from her bondage to Corruption. corruption. So I want to suggest that the second reason Paul gives us, uh, why we need to be saved is because of the wreckage induced by Adam's sin and our own personal sinning. Just let's pause there a moment to see the practical importance. Whether you agree with my analysis or not, and would like to shape it a different way round, or stand it on its head, or look at it sideways, in the end doesn't matter a lot, at least to me. What's the practical importance of it? Why do we need to get hold of the fact that there are two major me- reasons why people need to be saved? Because if we don't get hold of them, we shall be shallow in our diagnosis of what people's needs are. And secondly, if we don't get hold of both, we should be preaching a half of a gospel if we're not careful. Days were, I freely admit to you, when in evangelical circles, evangelical preaching used to, uh, center its emphasis here in the first movement. There were, going around the country, what were called hellfire preachers, shouting loudly about the wrath of God, and seeking to bring people to repentance and to faith and to justification. That is good. More recent times, the emphasis has tended to shift, hasn't it? And perhaps we don't hear so much about the wrath of God. Some people are not quite sure whether God ought to get wrath or not. They seem to think of the wrath of God like we think of our dear friends whom we love dearly, who occasionally blow their top. And talking to others, we say, you, Tom, yes, well, he is a, is really, you know, basically he's a nice chair, perhaps you'll say. He does sometimes blow his top, but then there's a good thing about him, he soon gets over it and he doesn't hold any grudges, you'll say, and so he soon forgets it all and, and yeah. And if God has any wrath at all, we're inclined to, uh, uh, offer some excuses for it. Doesn't really mean it, you know. And he soon gets over it, and he's very soon forgotten that people are sinners anyway, and he'll be merciful at the end. All this talk of wrath won't add up to much at the finals, you'll see, because he'll be so merciful. Yeah. And in that kind of thing, we tend to, to, uh, center perhaps nowadays more on this reason why people need to be saved. The wreckage of human sin. We see how broken people become, what slaves to sin in one form and another, be it polite sin or, or, or crude sin. And we come to them with a message that meets their need, their sorrows, their groanings, their weaknesses. That is delightful. They went they, we mustn't allow that emphasis to make us forget the first emphasis, may we? I use, uh, a little homely analogy. I'm very poor at making up analogies, and if I get one that's anywhere near, I have to keep on flogging it, you'll see. But, um, there's a young gentleman, you'll see, and he has this delightful Jaguar, XJ or ZY or something, and you'll see he's only had it about nine months. The thing is absolute wreck. Tires aren't blown up properly. You'll see it's gone along the M one, city champ at ninety, and put it in reverse to see what happens. Yeah, just now he's got drunk and landed it against the garden brick wall. It's demolished the radiator and sundry other parts. You'll see it never puts any oil in the thing, and it seized up more than once, and the steering's all wobbly. The thing is an absolute wreck. And there he stands, half drunk, you'll see, emerging from the door of this wrecked aforesaid XJ Jaguar by the garden wall. Come along and you'll say, you know, yeah, old chap, your life's in a mess, and so is the car, isn't it? You know, we better see about putting your car right. That's the first need. All this wreckage must be uncomfortable. Let's put the old car right, and then we'll put you right. You say, surely that's the first need. No, it isn't. I have to tell you something else about his car that ain't his. It was borrowed, and the owner is about to hear about what's happened to the car. It ain't his. It was borrowed, and the owner is about to hear about what's happened to the car. You say, we'll do our best to see he doesn't hear until we've helped the young man to put it right. So we encourage the young man, now the main thing is to get this right, and if only we can work on it, you'll see, and get it, well, if not like it was before, but right enough so that we wouldn't be afraid to meet the owner, you know, coming around the corner by Woolworths, we we could, um, meet the owner and be fairly sure he wouldn't get too upset. But we tried to put it right first. Do you know many people are trying to do that with that, with their lives, aren't they? They made a mess of their lives. We come along and tell them there is a wonderful savior called Jesus Christ who can put you right and your life right, patch up your marriage, conquer your drunken habits, who have been making a mess of your body on drugs. He can put that right too. And then if we're not careful, we shall give them the impression that the scheme is this, that Jesus Christ is going to help them put their life, life right, and little by little, little by little, little by little, their life will be improved so much that one of these days it might even be good enough to appear before God himself, and God mightn't be too pleased. He might even be prevailed upon to accept them into his heaven, which is a straight denial of the gospel. It is not so. And oh, what a bondage we should put people in if we preach the gospel like that. The glorious fact is, yes, it's a solemn fact, isn't it, that we, we are creatures of God. That means that God is raw with us and our sin. Our first need is not, so to speak, to put the car right. Our first need is what's going to be done about the wrath of God. The glorious gospel is you don't have to wait till you put the car right. You can come and meet God right now. Stand amidst the ruins of your life. And through faith in Christ, be justified and accepted with God and the guarantee that you will be saved from the wrath of God through him. What a glorious gospel that is. Oh, how many a person is laboring and laboring to put the old car right, and we come along to them with Jesus Christ as though he were a bit a little red paint that we could put on the marks on the car and fill in the scratches and then put the gears right, and if only by degrees we can improve ourselves and improve ourselves and put ourselves right, we can find acceptance. That isn't gospel, that's law, you know. That backbreaking servitude. The gospel is that though God be wroth with our sin, and our first need is to be saved from the wrath of God, we can be saved, not live in uncertainty of whether we shall be. We can be justified here and now, acquitted, saved, with the assurance that we shall be saved from the wrath of God, and being right with God and therefore having peace with God, right with the owner. And the second part of the gospel is that by the grace of the Savior, and in cooperation with him, we can start putting the car right. And that's the second bit. Or if you want it in theological terms, therefore, this first bit is going to deal with justification. And this second bit is going to deal with sanctification. And they are twin movements. But we need them both. It seems to me no accident, the order in which the Holy Spirit has placed those two movements. Having Having mo- noticed those similarities, let's begin to notice some other things. The first movement shows us how we may be saved from the wrath of God. Of course, it has to demonstrate why we are under the wrath of God, and it will do that in detail. But come now towards its climax, and notice how the first movement is taken to the final glorification of the believer. Look in chapter five, if you will, verses one and two: Being therefore justified by faith, let us have, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have had our access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and we rejoice, that is, we exult confidently in hope, and hope, as you know, doesn't mean anything uncertain, it means absolute certain expectation, of the glory of God. Let's put that thing down here. Glory of God. Consider what that means. Chapter three has informed us that all have sinned in the past and still do come short of the glory of God. It's thinking, therefore, not of God's external glory only, it is thinking of the glory of God's holiness. We come short of it. But through the justification that is in Christ, through faith, the moment we have been justified, we have peace. The moment we have been justified, we enter into this standing of grace. The moment we have been justified, we can be confidently exultant in the certain expectation that we shall attain the glory of God. Marvelous indeed. Oh, notice where it comes, ladies and gentlemen, this sure and certain hope of the glory of God. This isn't the final last paragraph of the Epistle to the Romans. This is the climax of the very first movement. We shall attain the glory of God. So from the disaster of man sinning, coming under the wrath of God, the movement takes things right to the final climax and the triumph. We shall be sa- we shall be saved from the wrath. We shall attain the glory of God. How can we be so sure about it? Oh, look at the great statement at the end. Forgive the blackboard. You'll see it's got ridges here and there. Um, and this is the end we're talking about. There's a lot before it, but this is chapter 5 in the first paragraph. Look at that tremendous statement of the love of God. As you come to the first paragraph of chapter five. The love of God, that is God's love for us, says verse five, has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which was given us. And the Holy Spirit proceeds to argue to us the nature of the love of God. The general argument being that if he loved you enough to give his son for you when you were a sinner, now that you have been justified and are no longer an enemy, he'll never cast you out. For if he did, that would imply an illogicality and inconsistency in the love of God. Suppose he loved you while you were a sinner and an enemy, but then finally throw you out if you were a saint and a son. Thing would argue an inconsistency in the love of God. And the love of God isn't like that, says the Holy Spirit. It's utterly consistent, do they? All for this tremendous statement, for the first time in the epistle, of course, of the love of God. Notice how it fills several verses. And tells us, yes, God knows about our weakness. While we were yet weak, Christ died for the ungodly. We We were were reconciled by the death of his son, which gives rise, therefore, to hope. In justified by faith, we have hope, confident in it, and as life goes on and experience proves us genuine, gives rise to hope again, twice over, we'll say verse, uh, two and then in verses four and five. Our hope. Yes, but now if we come to the end of movement two. notice how this movement is likewise taken to its climax in the coming glory. Thing is argued all the way through. Look at our hope, as now once more it finds expression in the context of sanctification. The chapter eight and verse twenty four: for by hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopeth for that which he seeth? But if we hope for that which we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. And hope in this context of, of sanctification. See the wonderful scope of it. It's going to lead to glory. Those he justified, them he glorified. We are to be conformed, says chapter eight, to the image of God's Son. And not only so, creation herself made subject to bondage in hope of one day being delivered from the bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God. Our personal salvation has universe-wide implications. Look once more how the themes are repeating themselves in both those movements as they come to their climax. Is this forgetting the realities of our present state? Oh no, indeed not. You know, we are weak, aren't we? Paul notices the fact in chapter eight. What the law could not do in that was weak through the flesh. That Christ, uh, God has done by giving us his son and his Holy Spirit. But even now, we know not what to pray for as we ought, but the Holy Spirit helps alongside of our weakness. Isn't that delightful? God the realist, not letting his love blind him to the actualities of our state, but with a salvation geared to those realities. He can still assure us of the glory that shall be, and therefore this tremendous hope, based, of course, in the love of God, for here comes the second great statement of the love of God in the epistle, as all of us have known for many generations. I am persuaded, you'll say, says Paul, nothing shall separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Not all the forces of creation, known and unknown, will ever separate us from that love. So that when we come down to the detail, ladies and gentlemen, we ought perhaps to notice the, uh, similarities, how those two movements are twin movements. They are two sides of the proverbial one coin. They come up to their climax, both of them, in glory. And when we've noticed the similarities, then we ought to begin noticing the differences, you'll see, such as how the work of Christ at Calvary is put. Here, of course, it is redemption. Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, we can be saved from the wrath of God. Here, of course, is redemption, but now it's the redemption of our bodies. Yes? Here redemption is expressed in propitiation. The death of Christ and the shedding of his blood through faith, by his blood, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation. That aspect of the ca- of Calvary's work. Here it's going to be death, Burial burial. and resurrection with Christ. That side of the work of the cross. And it will be our wisdom, surely, to see how the different aspects of the death of Christ that are mentioned fit the argument, the flow of the argument of their context. Of course, there's another sense in which the whole thing is an argument going on. The one, two follows one, in other words. They don't just stand side by side. And all praise God for the wonders of it all. When we were enemies of God, under his wrath, and murdered his very son. When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son. We were against God, and God was against us and our sinning. Oh, but the wonder here. Who can be against us? Against us. When God is for us. We are to be conformed to the image of his son. And we have the spirit of his son. And we call God Abba Father. I'm now going to take a quarter of an hour more, for our first session is due to end at a quarter to eleven. I promise you I shall behave much better than this in other sessions, spectacularly better, in the sense that I shall not take all the time, but this is our first introductory session, and uh, to get the ship afloat, it needs to be done. So in the next session, I shall give you much more time to discuss. Uh, uh, just let me sketch in for you the other two major movements in the book. When we come to chapter 8, uh, chapter nine, we have three chapters that stand together, self-evidently so. They discuss the problem of Israel. What have they got to do with the general message? Well, look how they are described in chapter eleven, sorry, chapter nine verse four: who are the Israelites, whose is the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the service of God and the promises, whose are the fathers and of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. In that description, as we shall see in more detail when we come to it tomorrow, Paul is reminding us of the special role that Abram and Israel were given among the nations. For this great gospel, as we thought earlier, was not suddenly given to the world without warning. The great purposes of redemption found a new beginning and a new stage in their progress when God called Abram out of the nation and gave him and his seed a special role by his divine presence among them, his divine revelation, his law, his tabernacle, his very glory among them, and gave them the role to be the pointers to the coming Messiah. So here we meet one of the very early and exceedingly important and unique stage- stages in the redemption of mankind. But by Paul's day, instead of witnessing that the Son of God was indeed the Messiah and that Jesus was that Messiah, Son of God, the majority of Israel were doing the very opposite and telling the world that Jesus was not the Son of God. What does that mean? What does it imply? Ladies and gentlemen, it was bad enough when Adam sinned and introduced into the world the wreckage that we have been talking about. But God had a scheme of redemption, and historically, one of its major stages started with Abraham and Israel. Tell me that Adam went wrong, that was bad enough, but has the scheme of redemption itself gone wrong? Has God not, God not been able to manage things a little bit better? For if this whole business of Israel chosen to be the unique witness and testimony to the coming Messiah, has gone so utterly wrong as that the nation now as a whole denies that Jesus is the Messiah. One of the great parts of the plan of redemption has gone askew. Could you have any faith in the gospel itself? I'm a Gentile, my dear good man, don't bother me with Jews. I'm not interested in Jews, of course I'm not. I mean, I'm saved, I know that. I can't be bothered about the Jews. Oh, but if, uh, God's scheme of redemption started in the Old Testament's gone wrong, you're not even saved, you know. Are you? Of course you're not. Because if God's scheme in the Old Testament's gone wrong, ladies and gentlemen, well, you could have no grounds for having faith that Christianity is right. Or will go right. We must find an answer to it, mustn't we? And it hasn't gone wrong. And Paul has got to show it, and does show it in these chapters. All I'm going to observe now is that by the time he comes to the end of this third movement, he's back with ideas of glory, isn't he? I should think so, yes. Oh, he says they're going to be saved, and it's going to be so marvelous. It's going to be the reconciliation of the world. Reconciliation. I haven't spelled it right, have I? Reconciliation, yes, of the world. Their falling away has brought such riches to the world. What shall their receiving again be, but life from the dead? Oh, what glory there awaits us. Think of the multi-millions that have been saved since the days that Israel as a nation rejected the gospel, and it went out to the gentiles. Think of the multi-millions that have been saved, and then imagine, if you can, the glory of what yet shall be when Israel is restored. Paul takes on the great vision right up to the time, excuse the term, of coming glory. Glory. And then he has a fourth, and in my mind, a final movement. Stands obvious that it has to do with the practicalities, the application of the power of the gospel, the power of salvation in daily living. And Paul had much to say in these opening verses on the question of our own bodies and mind. We're to present our bodies a living sacrifice. We're to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. And that is understandable when we go back to the beginning of the epis- uh, of the epistle. You'll remember how in its earlier chapters, it talks about the way in which those who refuse to retain the knowledge of God found two things happening. They desecrated and desanctified their own bodies. And nowadays in the West, as well as in third world countries, we are alarmingly made aware of this very phenomenon. And when they didn't like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. Body and mind. Now, man being put right, justified, and in process of being sanctified. Our great salvation will find its expression in both our body and mind. But more than that, Paul immediately goes on to talk about the body of Christ. That's a bigger thing still, isn't it? In Romans chapter one, we read about God as creator and how men departed from God as creator. And then how man can come back and be reconciled and justified. In the second movement, we read about all the wreckage that followed upon Adam's sin, our personal sins. How through the sanctification that's in Christ Jesus, God is in process of putting that right. In the course of the great plans of redemption, God took up Abram and Israel. And you know what, in those days, this earth saw the marvel of the glory of God in the tabernacle and temple. Transcendent Lord actually walked the desert sands of Sinai and dwelled in the tabernacle. What a colossal phenomenon that was. I can tell you something more glorious. The salvation won't merely put ro- right what Adam put wrong. There has been created in this universe something the universe never saw before. We'll ponder it well. The great plan of redemption, I say it with bated breath, I mean no reference, has changed the Godhead. For he who was eternally Son of God has become human and remains human for all eternity, being still the Son of God, no less. They are things we talk of with bated breath, ladies and gentlemen. Or we think of the changes that have happened in us. Huh. We rightly do so, don't we? But God give us now and again to look off and see what has happened in the Godhead, that the eternal self-existent Son of God, having become man for our sakes, remains man eternally. And in addition, creation has seen a something, why even Abraham knew nothing about it, according to Romans and elsewhere. The formation of a new thing in God's universe. As men and women taken up into Christ by his spirit forming this new thing that is the body of Christ. Not just a metaphor, you know. We ought to behave like a body behaves. It is a glorious fact. And we have not explained the whole of salvation until we've come to movement four and talked about the body of Christ and its implications. Of course, there are dangers. Abraham and Co. being chosen of God to play their role in redemption historically, Israel went wrong, we say. And from an outside point of view, seemed to have wrecked the whole thing. They didn't actually, but it would appear to be from the outside that they might have. In this body of Christ, there are Jew and Gentile. Thank God the body of Christ can never be destroyed, but you know, in day-to-day practical life, it could get divided, couldn't it? And what if it were to get so divided as the gospel loses all credibility before the world? And that ungodly men are able to say, oh, you preach me a gospel, uh, that's supposed to reconcile men and women, and look at you Christians. Hm. It's understandable that Paul would have to deal in this practical portion, not just with how much you pay for your, uh, Kellogg's cornflakes in the supermarket, and be sure you pay enough and pay the true price and don't cheat and run out with a pack of mustard you haven't paid for, but how's your behavior getting on, Jew and Gentile, and the oneness of the body of Christ? Yeah? Like in all his passages, he comes at length to final triumph, doesn't he? Look at what he says in, uh, chapter, uh, sixteen and verse twenty. In all the conflict of daily living and its difficulties, this we can, uh, uh, hold on to. God shall bruise Satan under your heel shortly. With that remark, he takes us in thought right back to the beginning, where the whole thing went wrong. And coming to the end, announces the final victory. Ha, full of hope this is. Uh, which reminds me just to put hope here. As in movement one and two, so now in four, he will bring us back to the Holy Scriptures, to the Jewish scriptures, point out that a true understanding of them will give us tremendous grounds, even as Gentiles, for hope. And so I want to say that just as movements one and two are twin movements, it isn't me making this noise, it's the blackboard. Uh, just as movements one and two are twin movements dealing on the one side with justification, on the other side sanctification. How we can be saved from wrath, how we can be saved from wreckage. So, of course, movements three and four are twin movements, aren't they? This has to do with the great problem of the Jew, and how, in one sense, the Jew have been set aside and the Gentile been brought in. Some of the natural branches cut off, and the wild olive grafted in, the Jew-Gentile thing. And of course, this in another sense is going to deal with the problem of Jew and Gentile, not now the nation of Israel, but Jew and Gentile in the church, and in this present period, and the question of how Jew and Gentile, being both believers in Christ, must learn to live together in peace and harmony. This then, counterpart of this and putting the other side of the story. My submission then that the Epistle to the Romans isn't simply a glorious statement of the gospel up to chapter eight, and then goes wandering off into all sorts of irrelevances, uh, that are of very little practical point for us. The Epistle to the Romans is about the gospel all the way through, and every bit of it is an essential part of their gospel. So now, at long last, I give you relief. You will feel such relief that I must warn you, this isn't the millennium come yet. It's the relief of being able to get up out of your chairs, you see. In our second session, I'm going briefly to survey the argument in movement one, and uh, then give you uh, a great worthy part of the second session for your own deliberations.