Paul really camps out on the story of Abraham, to make the point about grace being given or granted vs. grace being earned.  Abraham God and it was credited to him as righteousness.  It isn’t complex, and it doesn’t REALLY require a lot of explanation.  In fact, to non-believers, I think this is pretty straight-forward and clear, that grace is given not earned.  Again though, half of Paul’s suspected audience were Jews who’d been working all of their lives to EARN their grace; that chapter is really for them.  There is plenty in Romans that is more directed at the gentiles, but I think this chapter is for the Jews.

And I understand their plight - that they don’t feel like grace being given is fair, especially in light of their sacrifice and their work to earn it.

Like we talked about yesterday though, ultimately, it isn’t ‘fair’ the many of us REALLY want, but it is that we want to be the judge.  Remember the pray bottle analogy from yesterday?  We want to hold the bottle...that’s what it is.  But that option is not on the table.  Besides, the only thing that really is fair is that everyone gets it the same way, and that it is free.

Another little literary idea, or really, a language thing, that we often miss is the idea behind the ‘it was credited to him as righteousness’.  In reality, God doesn’t let people off of the hook for sin - not in the New Testament or the Old Testament.  A just God wouldn’t do that - He would judge sin.  What happens is that our faith in Jesus, based on the New Testament teaching of Jesus, allows Jesus’ sacrifice to ‘stand in’ for ours.  In other words, if the punishment for sin is death in the Old Testament, so it is in the New Testament; but Jesus is that sacrifice, in our place, IF we choose it.  When we choose faith in Christ, righteousness is credited to us, as it was Abraham.

That truth brings to lie an interesting idea though.  For 1500 years the Jews thought that God had given them the Law as the method through which they could gain God’s love, and their salvation.  Kind of like when I send my son out into the yard (well, I will do this...he is 3, so I can’t yet!) to mow the grass.  He thinks it is about the grass, and it is a little, but it is mostly about teaching him the value of hard work, and a work ethic.  The Jews thought it was about gaining God’s love, but it was really about God pointing out that we can’t pull off the Law, we can’t execute on His standards, apart from Jesus.  It was always about Jesus.

This is one of the most important teachings in all of Paul’s writings, today in chapter 3, at it really clearly states the reality of what Paul believes about God’s Grace, which is this.

Paul’s hope, before he became a Christian, which is shared by many people in their hearts still today, was that, by way of his perseverance in observing the law of God, or religious practices prescribed by the Bible in general for many people today, that he might be pronounced righteous (or, in our terms, ‘saved’) by God when he stood before his judgment-seat. That is to say, he wanted God to let him in based on the merits of his efforts.  But - Jesus teaches a way of righteousness APART from the law - not somewhat apart from the law, not “believe Jesus and grades on a curve”, but completely apart from the law, and the procedure is reversed: God pronounces believers righteous at the beginning of their course, not at the end of it. If he pronounces them righteous at the beginning of their course, it cannot be on the basis of works which they have not yet done.

This means that your behavior, Paul’s behavior, my behavior - they are NOT a part of God’s decision to save us.  Heaven is not reserved for the ‘behavors’.  God’s Grace and love during this life is not reserve for the ‘behavors’.  You ARE, presently; I am, presently, loved by God.  All we have to do is accept it.

It is easiest to understand this when we have kids.  In fact, I think that’s a huge advantage to having kids...it helps us to understand how God sees and relates to us.  But, I love my kids.  I loved them the moment I knew they existed - in the womb.  There is nothing, not-a-thing, that they could do to make me stop loving them.  There are definitely things that they can do to make me stop LIKING them, but I think that’s a human condition, not a God condition.  They ARE loved.  All they have to do is recognize it.  Or not.  It is their choice.  But, they won’t really have a great relationship with me unless they recognize it.

It is this way because it was that way with God first.  And, if you are a ‘bahavor’, you have to come to the point where you are comfortable with the fact that God loved you before you started behaving.  Your behaving is for your benefit.  Someone who is a hellion acts that way to their own detriment...but that is separate from their salvation.

For some people, this requires prayer and consideration...this just HAS to been 100% accepted if you are going to flourish as a Christian.  If you struggle with this, this is an invitation to struggle more with it...you must, because if you don’t get past this, then you are destined to push people away from our faith because you’ll use your Bible as a whipping tool rather than as an invitation.  You are called to more than that...we all are...our faith should feel like an invitation, not a pair of handcuffs!

This is a wonderfully constructed chapter by Paul.  It addresses an issue that I think many people hold up as being ‘the issue’ when they try to make the argument against faith.  It addresses this issue at several angles.

So here it is in 2 forms:

Both of these arguments come from a place that seems well-intentioned, and they are, at first glance, reasonable positions to take.  But, Paul addresses them bluntly and simply.  Later in Romans, Paul actually circles back to this same idea and addresses this in a more empathetic fashion, expressing a level of understanding in why someone would make this argument.  Here though, the blunt reality is that if you and I get to make a decision.  God gave us over to sin in chapter 1, allowing us to decide to love the moment and indulge in unproductive behavior or love ourselves and our neighbors and Him and discipline ourselves to find and follow our real purpose.  We get the choice.  And, similarly, we can choose, here in chapter 2, whether we want to be judged by the law or by grace.  If we use the law to judge others, seeing other’s sins against the backdrop of the law rather than against the backdrop of God’s grace, so be it to us.  Now, in reality, we aren’t really a judge of anything, because we have no say over where people will spend their eternity, and whether or not they will have relationship with God, so we aren’t really judging anything...we are simply putting on goggles through which we see the world...and if we choose to see the world through lense of the law, Paul is telling us that God will choose to see our lives and our sin through the same set of goggles.  BUT, if we choose grace, if we choose Jesus, if we choose to be forgiven in God’s eyes, we dawn the goggles of Grace and we see ourselves as saved by faith, saved by Grace, and we see others in the same vein - then God will look upon us likewise.  It is up to us.

I have heard it said that most of us tend to want to view Grace like we view an air-freshener.  It is something we hold in our hands and that we spray in the direction of the things we don’t want to have to deal with.  Something smells over there - spray, solved.  Over there, spray, solved.  The thing is, WE are holding the air-freshener in this analogy...not God.  Once we take the air-freshener out of our hands and we ask the question, do you want God to spray you to clean you, or do you want Him to erase you when you create some stink, it becomes a little easier to get at the right mindset.  And some will say, “Well, I know I stink a little...but those people over there REALLY stink.”  “To which God would respond...I am not talking about those people, I am talking about you.  Stink is stink...you are either erased or sprayed...you choose.”

That’s one of the main areas of struggle, comparison.  God didn’t send Jesus as a ruler, in terms of a measure stick.  Jesus wasn’t here to help us all figure out how we stack up...he was here to show us that we don’t, that we can’t, and that we need to play a different game.  We need to accept Grace, forget the comparison game, and we need to follow where God is leading.  It’s just that simple.

Today we get into Romans, and Paul gets right into the heart of the matter.  He starts with a longer introduction, then mentions that he’s been held up from physically coming to Rome, and then he starts into his theology later in the chapter.  And it is the verses from 18 on that really caught my attention this morning.  Paul really is describing a situation that is so common to us, and that I think is essentially a root cause of a lot of the troubles we face societally today.  Paul says that the issue, the primary issue in his estimation, is when we worship created things rather than the creator God.  When we pursue creation as an idol rather than God...that’s when the trouble starts.  In our terms, when we pursue happiness rather than purpose, there is a problem.  When we pursue security over surrender, there is a problem.  When we pursue desire over discipline.

When we place happiness at the center of our attention, it creates some perverse incentives.    This is because happiness is relative.  Further, happiness is about ME, whereas ‘love your neighbor’ is about...obviously, your neighbor.

Imagine if we got that right as a church.  Imagine if we had a reputation of being all about our neighbor like that.  Imagine how attractive Jesus would be.  Imagine how magnetic that would be.

Not only it is better for us individually to live a life that is centered on God and focused on pursuing God’s purpose for us, but it is the most compelling way to influence others to do the same.  The problem is, it is often hard to say no to ourselves, and it seems so attractive to simply adopt a mindset that, “Life is about being happy and pursuing what I want”.  That feels a lot easier.  Eventually though, if you have lived longer than 30-35 years, you start to figure out that you were aiming at the wrong thing and you wish you’d gotten this right from the beginning...because that happiness agenda was the center of the biggest regrets in life.

Today, I pray that God would give me the wisdom to see His will for me life, and the courage to take steps in that direction out of discipline, trusting and knowing that His agenda for my life is the best agenda long-term.

If you were looking for application of God’s word and Paul’s teaching - you don’t have to use your imagination.  Paul lays out very clearly and very explicitly how his theology works itself out through physical actions and how we live our lives in today’s reading.  This is a laundry list of items that Paul lay our for us.  It’s simple - not easy to live in this fashion.

At the root of it is love.  And not just love, it is loving others while at the same time maintaining the perspective and the recognition of just how blessed we are...I think it is the combination of these two elements that truly is heart-shaping and life-changing.

Have you ever had something really lucky happen to you?  In my world, and in my work specifically, I have had a few times in my career where a truly year-making deal fell into my lap.  And, when this has happened, I can definitely say that attitude, my perspective, my generosity, my energy...everything...changes, and for the better.  For a short season, typically a few days, I feel like things are just ‘better’ in general.  And then, what happens?  Well, nothing really changes, it is just that the little high I got off of feeling blessed goes away and I am back into the struggle.  I think that our faith is like that, or at least mine is, in that I get these highs and lows and I struggle to maintain the moment throughout life.  That moment when the deal falls into my lap is a lot like God’s Grace - it is a blessing that I don’t deserve.  And when I feel that blessing, I worry about dumb stuff far less.  I live life in the present, I enjoy life, and I am far more free to distractions.  I think that’s how we can ultimately be with God.  In time, through our spiritual development, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, I think we can move towards living in a state of recognition and response - recognition of how blessed we are, every single day, without losing the newness of that feeling, and response in that we live in response to recognizing how blessed we are, naturally being more generous, naturally being more others-focused, naturally maintaining more margin and peace in our lives.  I think that is a tough standard to really reach, but I envision that as the goal.  I think that, in a sense, is what Paul is communicating.  He isn’t communicating a list of dos and don’ts that we are to just execute, he is listing the fruits of the life of a person living in response to the Grace he’s been given.

That’s my prayer today, that I would live in recognition of how blessed I really am, right now, in this day, and in each moment, and that I would be motivated to respond with love as Paul calls me to here in Romans 8-16.

Today we get through the more theological content during our read-through, hitting chapters 7 through 11, and tomorrow we will roll through the application of all of this content.  In terms of big ideas that stood out to me today were as follows.

I have heard it said that we can’t know the painter fully by looking at his painting.  We can often times figure a lot out about him.  We can often get a sense of who he is and what he thinks...but we can’t judge the painter or know the painter by his painting.  Paul makes a similar point, though his example is with a potter, about God.  It is a GREAT point.  In this life, our view of God is pretty much that of a person looking at a painting...we can only see what God’s done in us and around us.  We can’t know God like we get to know each other.  Now, we have a blessing of having the Holy Spirit to help us, but we must recognize and embrace the idea that there is some amount of ‘being the dark’ that is always going to be true.  And we have to be okay with that.

Another idea that Paul argues has to do with the issue of fairness.  Think about that, what could be more fair - everyone gets in with God in the same way, and everyone gets the same reward for entering?  It couldn’t be more fair than that!  Really, if you think about it, that’s true.  The only thing that is potentially NOT fair would be that some people haven’t heard about the gospel.  Remember, the gospel, or ‘good news’ isn’t anything that someone would come up with apart from being told about it.  We won’t get into this here, but it seems like Paul actually addresses this, in a way, as well.  But, the point is, the only reason it doesn’t seem fair is because we feel like we are more deserving than others, or that they got an easier road...and this reveals the real motivation that is in our hearts...that it is all about US.  That’s the journey we have in front of us, rooting that motivation out!

The biggest idea for me today is this - that Paul isn’t giving “instruction”, he is working out how our bodies and our sin are related and how the Holy Spirit works in and through us.  Paul is tying together theological ideas to make a coherent argument about how faith and works are related.  I have heard people take these passages and use them as if Paul is providing instruction to the church, as if this is a second verse of ‘the law’.  This is why it is important to do these read-throughs before diving into the weeds.  Paul is not doing that.  Paul is not giving instruction on various topics, he is using various topics to illustrate his point.  I think one big mis-use of a lot of Paul’s teaching is to take the theology and try to impute instruction into it when, contextually, Paul is just trying to illustrate ideas.  The instruction, in Romans, comes in chapters 12 and forward.  These are not instructions.  We will definitely spend some time on this idea when we get here.

For today, I am just praying that God would continue to open my mind to the big ideas that Paul is trying to communicate, and that I would have both the wisdom to hear what God is teaching me, and the courage to apply it in my own life.  I have certainly lived long enough to realize that it is these two dynamics, in combination, that are truly key to my spiritual growth and development!

For today, I got through chapter 6...man, it is heavy slogging trying to blitz through Romans!  This is some deep stuff, and I am fired up about opening this up and really getting into it!  This is going to be great.  As far as these 6 chapters go, I kind of got 3 over-arching themes out of the reading this morning, and as we go on a more chapter-by-chapter basis, it will be interesting to see if these are the prevailing themes that capture the conversation, or if we get into some different topics as we slow down and dive deeper.

The first theme is the idea of recognizing that there IS a benefit to being Jewish, it just isn’t related to God’s grace and our salvation.  One of the tensions in this church in Rome (and, as we said during the introductions to Romans, it is a tension that still exists in the church today) is this tension between the Jews and the Gentiles.  The Jews grew up under the Law, working on their behaviors, trying to EARN God’s love and attention.  It is ingrained in them that they must earn Grace.  Now they are being told it is free.  Further, these folks who have been out partying last night while they were in studying their scriptures are going to spend eternity in heaven with them - that doesn’t seem fair.  In reality, there is an element of relatability to that - it kind of isn’t fair.  But, Paul actually explains that (a) it IS fair when you understand Jesus fully, and (b) there IS a benefit to being Jewish and growing up under the law; that benefit isn’t related to the receipt of salvation though.  So, you can go to heaven without being a Jew, but that doesn’t make being a Jew a worthless endeavor.

Another big idea that Paul teases out is this dichotomy of whether we are sinners who are saved vs. saints who sin.  If I were to ask you, “As a Christian, in God’s eyes, are you a sinner who does good at times or are you saint who occasionally sins?”, what would you say?  Paul has a clear opinion on this...and we should too.  I will never forget when a good friend of mine asked me that question several years ago...it has stuck with me.  Though it is an almost quippy question, it is very profound in its implications.  God’s opinion of us, once we’ve accepted Jesus as our Savior, is that we are saints.  We are made righteous in God’s eyes.  It’s not that God has amnesia and forgets our sins.  It is that God imputes Jesus’ goodness on us, and we are saints who sin on occasion.

The last theme that Paul seems to really address is this idea of abusing grace.  There is certainly some relatability to the idea that if grace is free, then grace can be abused.  I mean, why not accept Jesus into our lives, understanding that grace is now ours and that we will spend eternity in heaven, and then turn around and do what we want in this life - sinning away!?!  Well, that kind of seems reasonable at first glance.  But, there is a cost to that...not a cost in terms of God’s love, but in terms of our experience in this life.  Paul unpacks this one theologically, but I think the BEST argument against this comes when we read the entire New Testament as a whole, and if we throw in some of the wisdom literature from the Old Testament.  In short, we are made by God for a purpose, and we will always find our greatest joy in life when we are living into that purpose.  We can find bouts of happiness or fun, which stands in contrast to true joy in life, by doing what we want, when we want, with whom we want; but joy comes when we lean into what God has for us, when we actually start to experience God’s guidance through the Holy Spirit, and when are inner most desires are actually starting to match up with God’s will for our lives.  That’s where real joy comes.  That’s what we should be reaching for...that day when what we want is what God wants for us.

2020, 7.17 Romans Overview

This is a letter written by Paul to a church (or group of churches) in Rome, probably sometime around 57AD and during his third missionary journey (around Acts 19 in terms of timeline, since we just read that together).  Paul probably wrote this from Corinth.  And, in terms of a simple summary - the first 4 chapters of Romans, which form the foundation of the entire letter, essentially lay out the following high-level ideas:

1. We are sinful and broken

2. Living life under the law won’t save us

3. Justification is in Jesus

Paul explains these concepts in depth, and Romans certainly isn’t to be classified as “light reading”.  It is Paul’s longest and most reasoned account of his faith.  That being said, it isn’t a full outline of what Paul believes necessarily, as there are certainly elements we get from other letters of his that are not present here...but he is addressing a church in Rome that seems to have been wrestling with a lot of what we saw in our reading of Acts, and that is the Jewish-Christians and the Gentile-Christians co-existing within the church, trying to work out the tensions between a works-based theology and an theology based on grace alone.  This is such a powerful book largely for that reason - because that same tension exists even today within the church.

So, tomorrow we will start the read-through on this.  Because of the length and the intensity of this letter, the read-through really is a major contributor to the understanding of this book.  In a book where it is easy to get drawn into the weeds, this high level pass-over will be a big help in creating context and a bigger understand of what’s going on; so much so that we MAY actually pull back and do a second read-through part-way through the more in-depth studying.

This morning, I would pray that God would prepare my mind for some intense study.  I pray that God would open my mind and my heart to hearing truth that may not be convenient, but that is certainly needed.  I pray that God would help me to hear from Him during this process.

As I am preparing to read Romans, I will spend a couple of days doing reading on this manuscript in terms of its background and origin, it’s author, and in getting a high-level sense of its purpose.

Before diving into Romans specifically though, it’s important to understand and maintain context around the epistles in general.  These letters make up 21 of the 27 books in the New Testament, and Paul probably wrote 13 of them.  Most of the letters, especially Paul’s, follow a similar pattern with an opening, a body, and a closing.  Typically, Paul’s letters are more technical and precise in explaining some theological ideas, then he turns to more practical application in the latter half of the writing.  Typically letters have a few theological ideas that are worked out throughout the letter using that transition from the technical to the application. As such, it is really important that we look at a specific text in the greater context of the overall letter as we seek to understand it, and that’s why reading through each letter before studying it in depth is important.

Another idea that is important to keep in mind is that the Gospels were written before the ascension, and mostly prior to the resurrection.  The epistles are written on the other side of the cross and resurrection, on our side of them.  Another way to think about this is to view the gospels as being mostly about the story of Jesus, and the epistles are mostly about how we are to respond to that story. The epistles, in a sense, help us understand how to work out that faith in our lives.

It is important to understand that, generally speaking, the epistles were written to a specific group of people, in a specific context, to address some specific issues.  It’s important to understand the author, the audience, and the issues before we try to take what’s being said and apply it to ourselves.

Some scholars have argued that the practice of writing a letter in someone else’s name, a practice called pseudonymity, was an accepted practice at this time.  Evidence supporting this claim has been proven lacking though, so this should not be a general concern; for the most part, the authors have been excepted as stated in these various letters.  There may be small passages or sections that were inserted or touched up here in there, but it’s nothing significant that should detract from the authenticity of these letters or that should distract us in our studying them.

I won’t spend much time on this here, it is probably worth a season of study and journaling and podcasting, so I will put it on my to do list, but it’s important to remind ourselves how the Bible was assembled.  Critics of the Christian Bible will sometimes point out that there was a group of people that put together the Bible originally. This is true, but, stated in this way, it is a little misleading.  there wasn’t a group of people that randomly selected from a whole bunch of manuscripts the group that we would put together to call “the Bible“.  Instead, there were a whole bunch of manuscripts floating around that were agreed to be authoritative, so this group of people simply placed them in a collection. There is a subtle difference between those two, but the subtle difference is a huge difference in terms of what it is suggesting.

For today, I am reminded of the fact that the Bible, itself, is perhaps one of the biggest and most overlooked miracles that we have.  It contains the work of over 40 authors collectively written over a period of time of about 1500 years, most of which never knew each other, all telling the same story, and all  linked together by a common theme - God.  How in the world did all of that come together apart from God’s orchestration?  Maybe I am just a cynic, but I think we aren’t smart enough to pull that off without our Creator!

Now that we are done with Acts, I am taking a day or two to read some Proverbs and to read a couple of things to change up the pace a little.  I think I am next going to dive into Romans, which will be another intense and probably really awesome read.  So, in the coming days, I will do my background studies and my read throughs and then we will dive into the text.

For today, I am reading Proverbs 14, and here are the lines that really jumped out at me this morning:

6 A scoffer seeks wisdom in vain,

but knowledge is easy for a man of understanding.

7 Leave the presence of a fool,

for there you do not meet words of knowledge.

8 The wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way,

but the folly of fools is deceiving.

9 Fools mock at the guilt offering,

but the upright enjoy acceptance.

What really speaks to me is that you can see the interaction between the heart and wisdom in this text.  I think we sometimes have a tendency to treat wisdom as a commodity, like it is something we can have and toss around and leverage for our own benefit, devoid of its connection to our faith and to our Creator.  In reality, wisdom is meant to be leveraged as a connection between God and the world around us.  God gives us wisdom so we can understand Him, not just the world.  Sure, we can leverage wisdom to live life better, but this gets at why I get annoyed when people call the Bible ‘life’s instruction manual’.  It isn’t that.  The Bible is God’s love story for humanity.  The instruction manual I am getting here soon that will come with my wife’s new exercise bike doesn’t care about me.  It doesn’t care about what I believe.  It is simply meant to instruct me on how to put the bike together.  The Bible is meant to draw me into relationship with God...not to tell me how to live a just life, or how to earn God’s trust - it is meant to demonstrate that God has already loved me and accepted me.

Looking at this passage, we can get the sense that fools not only reject wisdom, which we know intuitively, but we can see that wisdom is repelled by their way of living.  It is very similar to the way salvation eludes people.  It is there...God has sacrificed for you just like He sacrificed for me and for everyone else.  Wisdom is in the world for the taking.  However, you must be open to it.  You must be interested in it.  You must value it more than you value what’s in ‘the moment’; you must discipline yourself to see it.  Similarly, God’s love is there for the taking...He offers it freely.  But, you have to allow it into your life.  You must pursue a relationship with Him, just like you must pursue wisdom.  It requires discipline and self-sacrifice.  It is in the seeking where we meet God.  People ask, “How do I have a relationship with someone I can’t see or touch?”, and I would say, “If you get serious about pursuing God and seeking relationship with God, you’ll find that a key element to that is learning to live in wisdom...which is hard to do.  And, when it gets hard, that’s when you will understand the relationship with God thing - when you ‘need’ it, you’ll find it.”

Today I am reminded that wisdom is as much about knowing as it is about trusting.  It as much about relationship with God as it is about information about the world.  When my heart is opened to God, by default, my mind is opened to wisdom.  They are two-in-the-same.  And, I must pursue them simultaneously in my daily life.