Romans Series Intro - Part 2 - David Bercot

Well, I'm sorry. You know, the God I worship doesn't play games with us. If He invites me to choose life, it's because I have that ability to choose life. If He warns me if I rebel, I'm going to be punished, it means I have the power not to rebel. And if I rebel, it's not because He made me that way, it's because I chose to do that.

And to me, it presents an extremely low view of God, that, yeah, He would give us all these commandments and, yep, you don't have the power to obey them, I just told you to do it.

Well, good morning to everybody.

Hopefully, I didn't scare people off last week. We got, uh, I get very animated when I think of Martin Luther and, uh, some of his failings. On the other hand, uh, he did break things open with the Catholic Church, and I thought this week, you know, who knows, maybe I wouldn't even be a Christian if it wasn't for, uh, his having been there. I'll leave his situation in God's hands. We're going to go through some more on an introduction to Romans. Next, the next message, we're going to actually get into Romans, but, uh, a little bit more background if we're going to understand it the way it was historically understood before Martin Luther and actually before Augustine, before him.

So this is part two. Just real briefly, uh, this is a real brief history of the relationship between the Jews and the Romans. You know, we started in the New, in the Old Testament, uh, the Protestant Old Testament, yeah, there's no Romans, you know, and you start with Matthew and suddenly there's Romans. And where did they come from? How did that happen? Well, yeah, with our Orthodox study Bible, I think now most of us are a little bit more familiar, uh, with that. But it goes back to the Maccabees.

Uh, the book of Maccabees, not in the Protestant canon, it was in the original King James. It didn't get taken out until the 1800s. Beyond question, a historical book that even secular historians recognize for its accuracy. Here's somebody's imaginative artwork of, uh, Judas Maccabeus leading the Jews against the, uh, army of the Greeks, um, who control that part of the world, including Palestine, and, uh, eventually he and his brothers won independence for the Jews.

Anyway, this is from First Maccabees 8, verse 1. I remember reading this for the first time because this was a real surprise to me because I knew, of course, I had never known anything about the Maccabees, but I had no clue how the Jews and the Romans got connected. And I still remember reading this, First Maccabees 8:1. Judas, this is Judas Maccabee, had heard of the reputation of the Romans. They were valiant fighters and acted amiably to all who took their side. They established a friendly alliance with all who applied to them. So I had not realized this about the Romans at that time. Since then, yeah, they, that that was one of their strengths and why, why they grew.

They tended to treat, uh, people well, were very, uh, eager to make alliances with people, and they were able to totally overthrow the Greek Empire, plus some others. So, uh, Judas sent a delegation to Rome, and they asked to make an alliance. And this is what we read, you can read the whole chapter when you go home. The proposal pleased the Romans. And this is a copy of the reply they inscribed on bronze tablets and sent to Jerusalem to remain there with the Jews as a record of peace and alliance. And then it gives what was on the tablets. And basically, uh, each side would come to the aid of the other, that, uh, if the Jews needed the help of the Romans, the Romans would come and help them.

To my knowledge, that never happened against the Greeks, and the Jews would come and help the Romans. Of course, the Romans hardly needed their help. So it was more, I guess, goodwill on, on paper. It did come into play later when Pompey came through the area, and they were supposed to help him when he was mopping up the last of the, uh, Greek, Greek Empire. And the, uh, Jewish kings at that point, they got in a squabble, and they, they left, and they took their armies with them. And he didn't like that at all. When he got through defeating the Greeks, he came after, uh, down to Jerusalem and laid seeds to it. And the Romans took control of Judea, but they still, they didn't view the Jews as this conquered, subjugated people.

They still viewed them largely as allies, as under their authority, but not as their enemies. They granted them a lot of privileges, such as, such as exemption from military service. They were exempted from worshiping any of the Roman gods. This was a big exemption because the Christians didn't get that. And the Christians, as we, I think, all know, were horribly persecuted for unwilling to, uh, offer a sacrifice to the Roman emperor, things like that. That didn't happen to the Jews because the Jews had that alliance. They were given that exemption.

So that, that's how that relationship happened. So we get in the New Testament, like I say, they, yeah, the Jews don't like being under Roman control, but most of the Jews didn't live in Palestine. So they had moved throughout the empire, and, uh, in general, they got along fairly good with the Romans. In fact, thousands of Jews, perhaps tens of thousands, eventually moved to Rome.

So when Christianity came, yeah, there was already a Jewish population there. Now, Rome, I didn't fully realize this until just this last week when I was going through this. Rome was the largest city ever built in human history up through that time, and in fact, until modern times. I mean, it wasn't built as a huge city. It started little, and it just grew and grew. But by the year 100, the end of the New Testament period, uh, according to their historians, it had a population of about 1 million. And, uh, now historians today sometimes say, uh, maybe it wasn't quite that big, but they tend to question everything. But I think it's a realistic figure.

So this was a huge city. No city on earth was that big. The Romans called it the Eternal City. There was a saying, "All roads lead to Rome." There was a reason because all commerce throughout the whole known world, the Western world, all came through Rome, whether it was by ship or by, uh, land travel. So we're looking at this huge city that, that ruled, uh, the entire Western world. I mean, not the entire world, but the entire Mediterranean world, I should say.

There's a picture of the, uh, a lot of those bridges are still there. Um, Deborah and I visited there a number of years ago and, and were able to see them. And a lot of the, a lot of the same things they would have seen in Paul's day when he wrote the letter to Romans are still there.

Now, interestingly, after the barbarian invasions, uh, the city of Rome, it kept dropping in population. It dropped all the way to 30,000 or maybe even less, just a little bit bigger in Chambersburg. Um, that's, you know, what happened when, when the, uh, different barbarian tribes sacked it, took over, and people moved out. In fact, it would have probably disappeared if it hadn't been for the Christians, would be, would be my guess. Now, this is the interesting thing. It wasn't until 1810 that a Western city, perhaps any city, ever again reached a population of 1 million. And that was the city of London. So it gives you just an idea of just how amazing this city was when Paul writes a letter to the Romans.

It wasn't like he, when he was writing, uh, to the Colossians or, or something like this. This was a little on a different scale. This was a huge place that so much of the world looked up to. All right, now let's just talk a second. Again, we're just trying to get a little background for the, the letter of Romans. The founding of the church in Rome, unlike so many of, of the churches, uh, in the, uh, ancient Mediterranean world, it was not founded by any of the apostles. It goes back to the day of Pentecost. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. And he goes on to list them. I'm not going to read them all. Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene. Now notice this. Visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes. Proselytes were Gentiles who had become Jews.

Cretans and Arabs. And then this is them speaking. We hear them speaking. These are the ones who were given the gift of languages. We hear them speaking in our own tongues, the wonderful works of God. Here's an artist, uh, depiction of that. This is Peter addressing the crowd. So from what we know, we don't know this positively, but it's almost everybody's, uh, assumption from back to the days of the early church that it was those visitors who had gotten baptized there, uh, on the day of Pentecost or thereafter. It says they were visitors. They weren't living there in Jerusalem. They were visiting. That they went back to Rome and they took Christianity with them. And it could have been the Jews who did it.

It could have been the proselytes who were Gentiles. And it was probably both of them. My guess is from the very start, you had a church there made up of both Jews and Gentiles. But the first Gentiles there would have been ones who had adopted Judaism, lived by the law, uh, uh, practiced circumcision, everything.

Okay, so as I said, they apparently founded the church there. Now, this is before Paul wrote his letter under Emperor Claudius. We don't know the exact year when this happened, but we know he ruled from 41 to 54 AD. The Jews were temporarily expelled from Rome.

And among them were Aquila and Priscilla. And, uh, Paul ran into them after they had been, uh, uh, sent out of Rome. But then when he writes the letter to Rome, they're back there. So we don't know how long a period it was. Apparently not very long that the Jews were expelled from Rome.

And you can read that in Acts 18, uh, 2, if you're interested. Okay, now we talked last week, Luther made the Book of Romans. He tried to make it the central book of the New Testament. To a large degree, I'd say he succeeded, at least among Protestants.

Now, when we go in our Bible, you go through the four Gospels, there first, and then Acts, and then you get to the Book of Romans, which tends to emphasize, you know, Luther's thing, this is right at the beginning. Now, the interesting thing, and I know, I know I've shared this before, the earliest Bibles that we have found, and there's several of, of these, uh, ancient Bible manuscripts go back to the 300s. Um, that the Catholic epistles, these aren't the epistles of the Roman Catholics. Catholic means universal. And so these are the letters, James, the ones of Peter and John. They're called Catholic or universal because they're not written to a specific city. They're written to the church in general.

Okay, they followed the Book of Acts. So if you were reading one of the ancient Bibles, when you got through with Acts, you went right into the Book of James. Uh, yeah, now it's, it's put there, uh, behind Paul's letters.

Now, the Book of Hebrews, we were talking last week that, you know, uh, Luther made a big point trying to convince everyone Paul did not write this letter. But in the ancient Bibles, the Book of Hebrews, the Epistle to the Hebrews is right there in the middle of Paul's letters. It appears right after Second Thessalonians before you get to the pastoral epistles. So, yeah, the order has changed what? Somewhat. Now, there is no right or wrong placement of the New Testament books. These were written as individual books. At the end of the first century, the apostles did not hand them a, you know, a bound book. Okay, here is the New Testament. There were just a lot of scrolls.

And the Christians had to decide what were the authentic books and put this together as a composite. Now, from the very beginning, the four Gospels have always been the, the first ones. I mean, from the very start, there's never been any deviation from that. And I think that would be only proper. But beyond that, the order of the New Testament books is truly a human decision. Um, yeah, I can't say James should follow Acts. It's fine if it does.

The order of our books and our Bibles today is not Luther's orders. He tried to put Hebrews. He tried to shove it and James all the way to the very back. He had Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. Those were the last four books. But he, he, he didn't succeed. That was one of the things he tried, and it didn't work. And the reason it didn't work is because the order that we have was the order in the Latin Vulgate that Western Europe had used for a thousand years. It's pretty hard to change something that entrenched. So even though Luther tried to change the order of the New Testament books, it fell back to the way, uh, Western Europeans had had them in the Vulgate.

Now, let's talk a little bit about the order of Paul's letters. Now, in all of the Bibles, uh, recent ancient, um, Romans is always the first of Paul's letters. And like I say, that goes back to the oldest Bibles we've ever found. But it wasn't because they viewed Romans as, oh, this is the most important of Paul's letters. I mean, they may have thought that, but that's not the reason it appears first.

Um, the people who first put the New Testament, uh, together, um, when they got Paul's letters, they decided, let's put them in order, the longest first down to the shortest. Makes total sense. I mean, that's maybe what I would do. I think a more logical or better would be to put them in chronological order. But there wouldn't have been a consensus. And so you would have had just, you know, a real jumble. So what they did was the longest ones got put first. That's why Romans is first and First Corinthians is second. Okay, now if two epistles are addressed to the same city, then they put the two together. So Second Corinthians follows First Corinthians, even though perhaps Galatians is a bigger book.

I'm not, I'm not even sure. I haven't checked. And the same with Second Thessalonians follows First Thessalonians just to keep them together. So if I haven't lost you, it's, it's, you know, the longest first down to the shortest. But if two of them go to the same city, they, they put them together. Now, Hebrews, they put it between the letters of Paul that went to specific cities. And Hebrews doesn't. It's, it's just a general letter going out there. And so they put it between the ones going to the specific cities and the pastoral epistles. So that's why they had Hebrews following Second Thessalonians. Okay.

They're in the middle. That was the reason why it was treated a little different. Okay. So just, yeah, just so you know, when you open up, Romans isn't there because, oh, this is the most important, you know, book of Paul or, or of the Bible or anything like that. It's the longest of his letters. So obviously it contains a lot of important truths because it is the longest.

Now, the chronological order, which, like I say, would be perhaps a better way to read them, but you, you can't change that now. This is what nearly everybody thinks this would go back largely to the early Christians. And it's, like I say, almost every commentary will say that today.

First and Second Thessalonians appear to be his first letters, followed by Galatians, and then First and Second Corinthians, and then Romans, and then Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians were all written about the same time period. It'd be hard to say, you know, which one is, is first. And then the pastoral epistles. So Romans was written somewhere in the beginning. They already had some background from others of Paul's letters. Um, and then there were things written after that that maybe would clarify things that are in Romans. Okay. Just to have that as a concept. Does anyone have any questions? Have I lost any of you on this?

We're not going to spend any more time, but just to give you a little example, a little, uh, background, because I'd always wondered, you know, why are the books in this order? I thought maybe it had something to do, you know, the apostles had done this or it was divine or something like that. I had not known until I started, you know, digging into all of this and, you know, reading the early church and, and that sort of thing.

All right. Now we're going to get to some of the, I'd say, important things. I want you to really grasp today. I think all of you know this who are here today. Um, I'd say two basic doctrines you really need to understand if you're going to understand Romans correctly, if you're going to understand it the way it was understood in the beginning. All right. And these two doctrines are free will and the two stages of salvation.

And I've given CD messages on these. They're, they're both up on YouTube. You can download them. If you haven't listened to them, I'd encourage you to, to do that. I'm not going to go into real detail, a lot of detail this morning. But if there's any question in your mind, yeah, I'd really encourage you to do that. Because when we get into Romans, if you don't have these down, yeah, it, it can get real confusing as we go through it.

Okay. As far as what the early Christians believed about free will, they believed that all humans have free will to choose to obey God or not to obey. If you're obeying God, it's because you have chosen to do so. If you're not obeying him, don't blame God. You chose not to obey him. You, you're not a puppet. Uh, you're not being forced by God to be disobedient. We have the ability to choose to believe or not to believe.

Now, this is true both before and after the fall. Now, Luther would have said, oh yeah, we had free will before the fall, but after the fall, no free will. After that, everything is predestined. If we're saved, it's because God predestined us to be saved. If we're lost, he predestined us to be lost. Nothing we can do to change any of that.

Now, after the fall, humans have not had the ability to obey God perfectly. I think we all know that. And I mean, if we said anything differently, uh, we'd all know that's false doctrine because we all know from experience we do not obey God perfectly. But we do have the power to obey him generally. Now, God has perfect foreknowledge of the future. So he already knows who's going to believe and who isn't going to believe. He already knows among us who are going to walk faithfully to the end of their lives and who, hopefully none of us here present, but who among the body of Christians today are not going to endure to the end, are going to give up before they reach the end.

But his foreknowledge is not the cause of our believing. It's not the cause of our obeying or enduring. He knows it, but he's, he's not the cause of it. I mean, a good example, last Thursday night, Christmas Eve, the, uh, all the weather channels, um, if you looked, you know, on the internet or, or if you get an email on your phone, text message, whatever, they all said it's going to get warm, uh, on Thursday afternoon up into the fifties. Then we're going to get a lot of rain, which would mean the snow would melt from both the warm temperatures and the rain. We would have flooding.

Now, they weren't just guessing. They had radar showing all of these systems coming. And they hit that pretty much right on the mark. Now, but they didn't cause it. The fact that they foreknew it based on seeing radar, yeah, we can't blame them that they caused that to happen. They just knew in advance it was going to happen. Now, their foreknowledge is different in that God absolutely sees the future. His foreknowledge is perfect.

And then finally, God is in ultimate control of the universe. Free will doesn't mean, oh, God has no power among humans. He can and he does intervene in human affairs when and as he sees fit. So God is still ultimately in control, but because of free will, he allows many things to happen that aren't his desire, but he doesn't micromanage things here on the earth. He could, but that's not his desire. His desire are for humans to have free will, which means some humans are going to do evil things. Some people will do things that aren't overtly evil, but they'll choose not to believe in God. And other humans will choose to believe in him and obey him.

Here are a few of the scriptures the early Christians quote many, many times. And they quote it when they're discussing Romans. I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing.

This is God talking. Therefore, choose life that you, both you and your descendants may live. I believe that's God. It's either Moses or God. It's in Deuteronomy 30. So they're given the choice. God tells them through Moses or personally, choose life that you may live. So they had the ability to choose, and they could choose not to have life. And many of them made that, that choice. In Isaiah, we read, if you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword. The choice was theirs. They could be obedient if they wanted to, and they could rebel if they wanted to.

Free choice. It's there all throughout the scriptures. I'm not going to read all of the verses. Like I say, if you want more evidence, um, I invite you again to listen to the message I've done on that. Plus, there's all kinds of books written as well. We'll just jump to the end. Revelation 2:10, be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.

Now, he's encouraging them to be faithful, exhorting them to be faithful. Well, if they don't have the ability, there's no point in Christ saying that. And, um, if they do have the ability, that's why he's encouraging them to do it. But it's not a given. It's why he's telling them, be faithful, then I will give you the crown of life. In fact, every verse in all the Bible that commands us either to do something or not to do something is proof we have free will. Now, Luther says, no, the fact that God told the Israelites choose life didn't mean they had the power to choose life.

Well, I'm sorry. You know, the God I worship doesn't play games with us. If he invites me to choose life, it's because I have that ability to choose life. If he warns me, if I rebel, I'm going to be punished, it means I have the power not to rebel. And if I rebel, it's not because he made me that way. It's because I chose to do that.

And to me, it presents an extremely low view of God that, yeah, he would give us all these commandments and yep, you don't have the power to obey him. I just told you to do it. How would you feel if your parents told you to do things, you know, that you don't possibly have the power to do? If your dad said, Pierre, I want you to go, you know, drive the car to the grocery store and bring us back some milk and then got on you and you didn't do it, you know? I mean, yeah, you'd, you'd say that's not very fair.

Uh, I think all of us would, would feel that way.

Now, what a lot of people don't realize, belief in free will was one of the major teachings that set Christians apart from pagans because pagans believed in predestination. They believed all human actions are controlled by fate or by the gods.

Their view was, yeah, we're puppets. These gods are up there. They're deciding what we're going to do. The Christians are saying, no, we have free will. We decide whether we're going to obey or not to, to obey. And so that was one of the big differences between the Christians and the pagans. They're having to debate the pagans about this.

The other one is belief in free will set apart orthodox Christians from the Gnostics because the Gnostics taught that we're predestined to either salvation or damnation. So a lot of the discussion of Romans in the early Christian writings is they're having to explain Romans against the Gnostics who are taking Romans and saying, see, we're predestined. We can't help it. We're either made for salvation or we're made for damnation. It's in God's hands. And the orthodox Christians are saying, no, that's not the way it is.

Okay. The other thing I said we need to understand are the two stages of salvation. Now, these things are true of both stages. Nobody can save themselves. No one can earn their salvation. We are saved through the grace of God. Salvation is a gift, but, and here's what is usually left off, it is a conditional gift. All right. So stage one, there are two stages. Stage one, we are saved by grace through faith at the time that we one, believe in Christ, two, repent of our sins, and three, are baptized.

No prior works are required. You don't first have to do a bunch of good things before you get baptized, before you believe in Christ. When we read there on the day of Pentecost, um, Peter preached Christ to them. They believed. He told them to repent. He didn't tell them, and now go back and, and do this, do this, do this, get your life all straight. No, just repent and then be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins. It's all of faith and grace. We in no way merit this salvation.

Now, when I say stage one, I'm not implying that, oh, we're half saved at that point. We're, okay, we're half saved, but we're still another half coming. No, we are fully saved at that point. But there's a big but, and that's what's not preached in most Protestant churches. The journey is not over. What happens at stage one? What does it mean that we're saved? It means all of our past sins are washed away. We start with a clean slate. If we die immediately after being saved, we would go straight to paradise. We don't have to do anything further.

We're born again. We become a new creature in Christ. We're now a child of God. We're adopted into his family. As a new creature, we receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. All of this happens totally of, of grace, totally a gift, nothing that we have to do to merit that, nothing we can do to merit, even if we were asked to.

Now, to this first stage of salvation can be applied all the popular verses that are quoted so often about being saved by faith, not by works. And they are proper verses. It is part of the gospel. We can't leave them out. For by grace you have been saved through faith and not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works. Ephesians 2:8.

Another example, and there, there are, are many more. I assume you've, you've heard most of these. Who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. All of this God foreknew.

Now, those same two verses, I want to point out something that I've highlighted. For by grace you have been saved. What tense is that? That is past tense or maybe even past perfect. Okay. The other one, who has saved us, past tense again. That's what people don't pay attention to. They read the New Testament carelessly and, oh yeah, we've been saved by grace. Yes.

The past part, stage one, we have been saved, but it's not over. What doesn't happen, we're not perfect. We're still capable of sinning. We have a lifelong journey ahead. Our future sins are not pre-forgiven. In other words, we start with a clean slate, but we can walk away from the salvation we've received.

All right. It would be like the first stage, like being rescued at sea. In fact, the word save is the same word as, as rescue in both Greek and, and Hebrew. Okay. So imagine you're out there, you're on a little, uh, rubber raft or something. You've, you know, been shipwrecked or something. You're out there in the ocean and here comes a freighter along and saves you. Okay. You're saved. You're brought on board that ship and they're not even going to charge you anything. It's, it's free. You, you've, you've been saved. Okay.

But it's not all over. Okay. You're on this freighter and the captain tells you, not going to charge you anything. Happy to have saved your life. Welcome aboard. We're going to just treat you as part of the crew. You're going to have the same responsibilities as the rest of the crew.

And you know, that means, you know, breakfast is at 6:00 AM and Mondays and Thursdays you peel potatoes, you, you know, cook on Fridays. Uh, every afternoon you're going to be responsible for mopping the, the top deck, whatever, whatever you have in a ship. Okay.

And I say, wait a minute, you don't understand. I'm an attorney. Okay. I, I don't mop, you know, decks. I don't peel potatoes like I'm a common seaman, you know? And captain says, well, you either do what everyone else does or you can get off the ship.

And I decided, you know, when I was in that little raft, no one told me what to do. I could sleep as late as I wanted. Didn't have any chores. I'm going to get back in my raft. That's the way salvation is. We don't want to walk as citizens of God's kingdom. He doesn't make us. Um, we can jump back out. We can serve Satan again.

And as absurd as it is, that's the choice a lot of people make. Other people just refuse to live by God's requirements and they're having, they're, they have to be put out. Okay. So stage two of salvation is we have to retain our saved condition by holding fast to our faith, maintaining an obedient love, faith relationship with Christ. We must endure faithfully to the end of our earthly life. It's not all over. We are saved. We don't have to add anything to that, but it's not over. We now have to walk faithfully to the end of our life. And I'm saying all of this because you're not going to get Romans if you don't understand these two stages, because Paul talks about both stages throughout Romans and he goes back and forth between the two.

We do not have to live perfectly. God only expects from us the obedience and love that an imperfect human can give. William Law points this out. He says, God doesn't expect from us the obedience of an angel. He doesn't expect from us the obedience of a perfect human. He only expects what we imperfect humans can do, but he does expect that.

Yet God assists us all the way in our Christian walk. If we abide in him, he gives us the power. We don't have to do this in our own strength. We're not left on our own. So he not only saves us, but he's there to help us all the way, but not as a puppet master. We're not puppets. We still have the free will to obey or, or not to obey. It is still a struggle. And that's what Jesus said it would be.

Here are some of the verses that are so often not ever quoted when we talk about salvation. And these are talking about the second stage. He who endures to the end will be saved future. So there's a past stage. You have been saved. And Jesus talks about a future. You will be saved if you endure to the end. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. You don't have to do it before you're saved except to repent, but you do after you're saved. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. You don't have to keep his commandments before you get saved, but you do afterwards if you want to abide in his love.

Matthew 25, Jesus, our judge tells us what it's going to be on judgment day, how he's going to decide who's a sheep and who's a goat. He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the king will say to those on his right hand, Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. And he goes on. It's all about things people did. Not one word does he mention about their theology.

It's what you did or did not do is going to decide whether you're a sheep or a goat. Now, that's not the entire gospel, but that's an essential part of it.

I am the true vine and my Father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. So we have to be bearing fruit. If anyone does not abide in me, and we read earlier, if we're going to abide in his love, we have to obey his commandments. He says he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire and they are burned. So it's not all over. Once you get saved, that's just the beginning. We now have a life of faithful walking with Christ Jesus. Now, that's not something awful. That's something wonderful that, wow, we get to be children of the heavenly Father.

We get to be citizens of God's kingdom. It's a privilege to do this, but there's a responsibility as well. Now this, you know, Luther wanted to keep John in there among the gospels because of John 3:16 and some other ones, and everyone knows that. No one seems to have ever heard of John 5:28 and 29, which is surprising. This is Jesus talking.

The hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear his voice and come forth. Now, listen to this. Those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation.

Again, he says on your resurrection, it's going to be based on what you did in your life. Okay. Not ruling out the need of faith, not ruling out the need to be born again, assuming all of that has happened. Yes. Then what have you done with your life since then? If you lived evil, it's going to be to a resurrection of condemnation. That's what Jesus is saying.

Notice this next one, Paul from Romans. It says he will render to every man according to his works. And someone will say, well, what he means there is you're going to have a better reward in heaven based on your works. Well, keep reading what Paul says. To those who by patience and good works seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. So no, he's not talking about greater rewards and privileges. He's saying eternal life based on according to our works. Now that's Romans 2. I've noticed so often preachers come, they always want to start in Romans 3. Like you can just skip Romans 2. Now it'd be a mistake to read Romans 2 and skip Romans 3.

You have to have them both. One talks about the future aspect of salvation. One talks about the past aspect. It balances the works and God's grace. You got to have the whole book of Romans. You can't just pick certain chapters. You got to have the whole New Testament. You can't pick certain books.

Two more. For this, you know that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man who is an idolater has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words. But that's what's being done in so many churches, deceiving you with empty words. Uh, your works don't matter. Once you're saved, you cannot lose your salvation. Your works don't matter. Paul says it's going to matter a lot what kind of person you are.

And then James 2:24, you see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. And I want to close on why was Romans written. We read last week John Chrysostom's words. Unless we receive Paul's words with proper caution and keep looking to the point of the apostle, countless inconsistencies are going to follow. And I mean, there is no doubt on that. If you don't stick to what is Paul's point, man, you're going to be having him say all kinds of things that contradict Jesus. You're going to find him saying all kinds of things that contradict himself. So you gotta, you gotta remember why is he writing this letter?

He wrote his letter to the Romans primarily to address the problems between the Jewish and Gentile Christians. This is self-evident in the epistle itself. We're going to be seeing this as we go through it. It was the understanding of all the early Christians. None of them imagined that he was writing. He was trying to sum up all the gospel in this letter. They understood he's trying to deal with the issue between Jewish and Gentile Christians.

Both the book of Acts and Paul's earlier letter to the Galatians make this clear by showing the background in which the letter was written. We're going to look at that in just a second as we close. And what was the problem between Jewish and Gentile Christians?

Well, it was threefold. Number one, Jewish Christians felt superior to Gentile Christians. They wouldn't even enter their houses or eat with them. It would be like, imagine our church. We're kind of almost evenly mixed between those of you who come from an Anabaptist background and those of us who come from Gentile backgrounds.

Imagine how I'd feel. I invite, uh, Kevin and his family over. Hey, I'd like you guys to come over for for supper with, uh, to our house, uh, tomorrow night. Sorry, David. You know, we pure Anabaptists, we can't go to a house of a Gentile, you know? Love you, brother, but yeah, I couldn't go to your house.

Okay. Well, hey, how about, uh, we all go out to a restaurant? You know, I know you guys like that restaurant in Greencastle, the Mexican restaurant. We all go there.

David, that would defile me to, you know, eat a, sit and eat a meal with a Gentile, you know? I still love you. Hey, we, we, man, we're glad to have you in our church. I mean, you're, hey, you come to our church, you're welcome to sit with me in the same pew.

Well, if my family wasn't so big, I mean, our, our family takes two pews, but I mean, otherwise you would be welcome to sit with me in my pew. And hey, I mean, you can take turns cleaning church with the rest of us. I mean, you know, we want you to be part of the church, but no, we can't eat with you. Can't go to your house.

Yeah. Imagine what that would be like being in a church like that if you're one of the Gentiles and that's how you're being treated. This came up in the conversion of Cornelius. And Peter opened his mouth and said, in truth, I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation, whoever fears him and works righteousness is accepted by him. And again, the second stage works righteousness.

Now, this is when God opened up the doors to the uncircumcised Gentiles, to the ones who had not become Jewish proselytes. This is way back before Paul was even a Christian. So Paul didn't start this. This was revealed to Peter and he saw it. There is no partiality.

But guess what? And this is Peter, okay? When he came back to Jerusalem, because this had been down in Caesarea, those of the circumcision contended with him saying, you went in with uncircumcised men and ate with them. And Peter explained to them in order from the beginning. So this is Peter. I mean, the leader of the apostles and the Jewish believers didn't mind calling him down on the carpet. What are you doing? You went into the house of a Gentile. We heard you even ate with him.

Now, at least they did listen, but he had to explain, hey, this was a miracle from God. God gave me this vision and everything else. And then, okay, all right, we'll accept that. That group accepted it, but that didn't last very long.

When Peter came to Antioch, this is some years later, Paul says, I withstood him face to face because he was to be blamed for before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles. But when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. Now, Peter was not a timid person. I mean, he had stood up to the Sanhedrin, had been beaten by them. He spoke to them boldly. He ended up eventually dying in Rome as a martyr. But he's intimidated by these Jewish Christians when they come down to Antioch. And he knows when I get back to Jerusalem, I'm going to catch a lot of flack because I was eating with Gentiles.

And his ministry was to the Jewish Christians. So he's concerned about stumbling them. So yeah, it was a big thing that even he would, would, uh, uh, step back and not eat with the Gentiles. So we're not talking about some little problem here, but it gets worse. Many Jewish Christians were trying to force the Gentile Christians to be circumcised and keep the Mosaic law.

This is why they had the Jerusalem council. And when they, Paul and Barnabas had come to Jerusalem, they were received by the church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all of the things that God had done with them. But some of the sect of the Pharisees who believed rose up saying, it is necessary to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses.

So this would be like me coming here to CCF and not only find out that those of you from Anabaptist background aren't going to come to my house, we're not going to be able to eat together. But then someone says, David, you're going to have to change your name to Yoder. You're going to have to start driving a horse and buggy, get rid of your electricity.

Like, whoa. I mean, I think I'd go to another church, but in the first century, there wasn't another church. See, I mean, that's the big problem. You can't go anywhere else. This is church life. You've got a big problem if you're a Gentile.

And finally, some Jewish Christians believed that circumcision and keeping the Mosaic law were necessary to be saved. So they weren't just saying, you know, we're going to make you do this, but you can't be saved unless you do this.

So this is a big problem. I mean, Paul is not writing a theological treatise. He's not writing a tract on how to get saved. He's dealing with a very real practical problem, an extremely serious problem with huge repercussions for the Gentiles that needed to be addressed. He was the apostle to the Gentiles. It was primarily his responsibility to see that the Gentile Christians were being treated equally along with their Jewish brothers. So that's why he wrote the book of Romans. Now, his letter does shed a lot of light on various theological matters and a lot of light on the two stages of salvation. So there's a lot of meat in there, but why he's writing it is because of this problem.