Romans Made Simple

Well, good morning. It's good to be here. It's always nice to come back, see the familiar faces. Again, brings special feelings. So good to see you, Linden. I don't see where you are, but yeah, appreciated your devotion this morning.

Well, the title of my message is Romans Made Simple, which is kind of an odd title because Romans is not a simple book. But we're going to be talking just about what Paul teaches about salvation in Romans. Now, I think all conservative Anabaptist churches believe that how you live after you've been saved, after you've been baptized, how you live will affect your salvation, your eternal destiny. I think we all believe that as conservative Anabaptists. In other words, you can't after you've been saved, you can't live an ungodly, unholy life and be unrepentant and expect to receive eternal life.

Are we all on the same page on that? Oh, okay. The sisters aren't, but okay.

Okay. So I think we all believe that. But what happens is our Protestant friends, they confront us with and Patrick, good to see you, brother. They confront us with Romans 4:2-5 and other proof texts from Romans. I'm going to just read that. It says, "For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Now, to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. But to him who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness."

Right? You listen to that and, boy, it leaves us confused. It's like, well, okay. Well, God doesn't care about our works. In fact, he just justifies the ungodly. He doesn't want us to be focused on works. Well, actually, Romans does not contradict what we as Anabaptists have believed from the very beginning.

But I think two things we have to keep in mind is as Anabaptists, our system of belief is based on the totality of Scripture. It's not built on proof texts. And when we read Romans, our understanding of Romans as Anabaptists is based on the totality of Romans. It isn't based on this verse or that verse, but what is Paul's total message in the book of Romans? We're going to break that down this morning to help you see it's not that difficult, but it really is easy to get confused and people will throw out proof texts with you.

All right. So there's three things we will be looking at.

Okay. So there's two phases of salvation.

Okay. So we're going to look at three things. The first one is there's two phases of salvation. The second is there are two different laws.

And then the third thing is there are three kinds of works.

Is that legible?

Almost. Well, years ago, I was Deborah and I were helping to start a nonprofit bookstore. And we'd gone down one Saturday to make signs for the different sections: books on prayer, Christian living, devotionals, prophecy, things like that. So we were all taking turns and I made some of the signs. And afterwards, the sister was looking and most of them were sisters who were making that. Their handwriting was nice and neat and all that.

And she was going through, she said, "Well, who made those signs? It looks like a third grader did the writing."

And I'm raising my hand. I made those and yeah, it does kind of look like a third grader did the writing. Anyway, but maybe that's good because we're going to try to make this simple. If you can remember those three points, it makes Romans very simple: two phases of salvation, two different kinds of law, three different kinds of works. All right. So let's just go through these and that's going to be the whole sermon, just these three points, okay? So the two phases of salvation and that's where Protestants get hung up. They want to look at salvation as a one-time event. There's one phase. That's it. You get saved. It's all done. But the Scriptures and I know you all know this because I remember a lot of sermons on this over the years when I was a member here that the Bible talks about salvation in different tenses.

There's a past tense where we've been saved. For most of you here, yeah, your salvation, you have been saved. That has happened. But the New Testament also oh, I'm sorry. I thought my sound wasn't on or something. Excuse me. The New Testament also talks about salvation in the present tense and the future tense. So you've got to pay attention to the tenses. Now, we're going to kind of combine the present and future together. When I say there's two phases, there's the past and then there's the present and future. We're going to just put those together. Okay. The first phase of salvation, which as Anabaptists we tie closely into our baptism, it's through faith in Christ and it's totally made possible by God's grace.

I think we understand that as Anabaptists, we sometimes don't emphasize it as much as we need to, that our initial salvation, it's by faith in Jesus Christ. It's totally through the grace of God. And God does not require any godly works prior to our initial salvation. It's a free gift. It doesn't mean it's okay to have works. He doesn't require it though.

All God requires from us for our initial salvation is faith and repentance. All right. If we have that, then that is sufficient to be saved, to get saved. Now, again, God doesn't mind if we've got godly works. And as Anabaptists, we tend to want to see that before we're going to baptize someone.

Again, you see in the Acts, I mean, they baptized people instantly during the apostolic period. That can have some bad consequences. I mean, a lot of people who, boy, in the spur of the moment, yeah, they're at a revival meeting and they're very moved. And a lot of people, it is a real salvation. And a lot of people, yeah, they get saved. They get baptized and then they're gone. So we usually want to see more, but we should never forget God doesn't require that. He wants to see faith and repentance. And if we have that, that is enough for our initial salvation. So what do we mean at our initial salvation? What happens? Well, all your past sins are washed away.

You get to start with a clean slate. If you died immediately after your initial salvation, assuming it's all genuine, you're going to go to heaven. In other words, you don't have to add anything to it. You are saved. It's finished, that phase. But most of us don't die immediately right after we get saved, okay?

Our initial salvation, you are born again. You're a new creature in Christ. You're a child of God. You're adopted into the family of God. You become a member of Christ's church, His worldwide church. Your salvation is complete. You're not half saved. When we talk about two phases, we don't mean, oh, well, the first half you're half saved and now we got to do the rest. No, you are completely saved.

The issue is that your salvation is not final. Like I say, unless you died right then and there, which very few people do, okay? So you are saved, but you still have a life to live ahead of you. And God now requires faithful living, faithful endurance from that point on.

Now, there are a lot of Scriptures that talk about this first phase of salvation.

And what happens is our Protestant friends—not all of them, but I'd say the majority of the churches—that's all they want to focus on are those verses that talk about our initial salvation. And boy, they can run those verses off. There's maybe six or seven of them. And they talk like, that's it. See, that's all there is to salvation.

I'll read to you well, I just read the one in Romans about it says if Abraham was justified works, he has something to boast about. That verse there's about six or seven. I'm going to just read you three more, okay?

And we shouldn't be afraid of these verses. I mean, as Anabaptists, we should embrace these, but we need to understand it's talking about our initial salvation. All right. So Paul says in Ephesians 2:8-9—I don't know how many times I've heard this verse quoted—"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast," okay?

How many have you heard that quoted to you before? Yeah. Yeah. Like I say, I've heard that one so many times. Now, did you notice when I read that what tense it was? "For by grace you have been saved through faith." What tense is that?

Past. Yes. Past. We wanted to be picky as past perfect, but yes, the past tense, okay? So he's talking about the past. When he's talking to save Christians, he said, "You have been saved," okay? But then Paul goes on in Ephesians to talk about our future salvation as well. Okay. 2 Timothy 1:9, he talks about Christ. He says, "Who 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 times eternal," okay? So again, our initial salvation, totally apart from works, okay, it is purely a gift of God. And we need to understand that. Sometimes we don't understand that as Anabaptists and we get really confused when we hear these verses.

Did you notice again what tense that verse was in? "Who saved us and called us with a holy calling." What tense is that? That's past, okay? All right. So you got to look at what tense Paul is talking about or the other Bible writers. Again, Titus 3:4-5. I got to tell you something about these verses.

Years ago, I was teaching at a youth Bible school. And the messages I was giving wasn't even on I wasn't talking about salvation. I was talking about Christian discipleship. And I was going through some of the things on how we can build our discipleship, how we can build closeness with Christ Jesus.

And it was very interesting. So when I got finished, this other brother who was invited, one of the speakers there, he got up and he said, "I'm going to change the message I was going to give because I think you all need to understand something." And then he went through and gave a message just going through, like I say, these six or seven verses. He read those to the young people and he kept saying, "You see, it's not have anything to do with your works." And when he got through—and I'm going to read his last one—he told them again, "You see, now works are good, but it doesn't have anything to do with your salvation."

And I'm sitting there like, all right, so what do I do? Do I get up and contradict him? It really bothered me. There shouldn't be priests like that in an Anabaptist setting like that and for those young people. I did have the last laugh because the way the schedule was, that was his last message and then he left and I had three more days. So I did get to get it straightened out. Anyway, another one. Like I say, again, Paul, "When the kindness and the love of God, our Savior, toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit."

And what tense again did you notice? Past. "According to His mercy, He saved us," okay? So our initial salvation, totally of grace, totally by faith, it is fine to come—and we'll be talking about it a little bit more—it's fine to come with good works. Pleases God. That's wonderful. But yeah, our initial salvation is totally a gift of God by grace. Through faith. He does require faith and requires genuine repentance, okay? Now, we in our churches—and I'm 100% behind this—we will not baptize someone unless we can also see that they have made a commitment of their life to Jesus Christ. And that's been the Anabaptist position from day one. That was one of the big points they made.

They wanted to see evidence of a true conversion before they would baptize someone, okay? Now, the Bible doesn't require that, but it's not wrong, I think, to do that because of what happened in history, just yeah, everyone getting baptized and it's obvious that they're not Christians. They're ungodly, but they have the name Christian because they got baptized so easily. So again, like I say, we practice something. It's not required. I do think it's wise though to see that. All right. So we should not be afraid of those verses as Anabaptists. We got to hide that. I mean, we should fully embrace, yes, our initial salvation, gift from God, by faith and it's a total by God's grace that we got saved, okay?

There shouldn't be any question in our minds on that. And so when our Protestant friends start reading out these verses, hey, amen, amen, yeah, I totally agree with that. But that's not the end of the story. The Protestants, see, they want to just stop there. That is the end of the story in their book. It's not the end of the story in the New Testament, that's for sure. There is a second phase of salvation, a present and future part to it.

To give you an illustration,

I doubt any of you remember what happened on February 1, 2003. It's a date Deborah and I will never forget. I was out of my office—this was a Saturday—and we lived in Texas at that time. And I'm out of my office doing some work. I don't know if I was writing out—I don't know what it was.

And we lived way out in the country. If you think we're isolated where we live now, if you've been to our house, this was even more isolated. We were at the end of a little used road, country road.

And we were the last house. It dead ended. It dead ended there. And then our house was a quarter of a mile drive back to our house. You never saw big semis coming because, like I say, it just dead ended. There was no place for them to even turn around if they got there. But I'm there working in my office and suddenly I hear this big truck pull down our driveway and pulled up right in front of the office. I didn't have any windows. I couldn't see it. But boy, could I hear it and feel it. I mean, it just shook and it's like, who's this? I mean, what kind of truck? I mean, we didn't order any gravel or something, maybe a dump truck or something, but boy, this thing is big, you know?

So I thought, I better go and see what this is. And I step out of my office and I walk out. I don't hear the rumbling now. There's nothing there. Nothing there. And I go and I looked up the drive.

Nothing. I could see all the way to the road. Nothing. I mean, I walk around my house and drive on the grass. Where'd this truck go? No truck. I mean, just disappeared. I went in the house. I said, "Deborah, did you hear that truck?" She said, "Yeah." I said, "It's not there. It's gone," you know? And it was like we couldn't figure that out. I went back to work and it's like, I don't know what that was.

And then Deborah heard—I don't know what radio, whatever it was—and at lunch she told me, she said, "You know what we heard? It was the Space Shuttle Columbia. It blew apart. I don't know how many miles it was, 39 miles up in space, right above our house or that area of Texas. I mean, parts of it came down right in fields near our house, but over a long, a huge stretch because it was so far up. It's hard to believe something that far away was that loud and shook our office to that extent. It was quite a feeling like, wow, we heard and felt that coming apart. And unfortunately, those people were all killed. So now that shuttle, it got launched correctly.

Well, I mean, there was a problem, but I mean, it got into space. It actually accomplished its mission in space, but it never made it home. And see, salvation is like that for a lot of people. They get saved. They get started just like that Space Shuttle did.

But they don't endure to the end. You have to endure faithfully to the very end or otherwise you're like the Space Shuttle. You end up in space and you lose it all. So that is also taught in Romans. Now, see, this is the part of Romans that tends to not be quoted, okay?

Romans 2:6-9. Before Paul ever gets to this discussion about Abraham not having works and that before he ever gets there, he wants to make sure his readers are not going to get the wrong idea. So before he ever gets there, he sets out—now let me make this clear so you don't misunderstand what I'm going to say next, okay? Romans 2:6-9, "God will render to every man according to His works eternal life to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality.

But to those who are contentious and do not obey the truth but obey unrighteousness, there will be indignation and wrath, yes, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man who does evil." So does that sound like works don't matter?

No, they matter a lot. But Paul is talking about a different phase of salvation. He's talking about Judgment Day, okay? He's talking about the final thing. Yeah, on Judgment Day, God is going to look at your works.

And he says, "Every man according to his works." And the Protestants will want to say, "Oh, well, he's just talking about rewards. We're going to get different rewards in heaven." No, because he says, "Eternal life to those who by perseverance in doing good," okay? Eternal life. He's talking about salvation here. And he's saying it does turn on our works. But now he's talking about a different phase, not our initial salvation, but once we have been saved, how we are supposed to live.

And that was a point that wasn't even in controversy. So Paul doesn't have to spend a lot of time on that because no one is arguing against that. But he says it right at the beginning like, "Hey, now get this clear what I'm saying so you don't misunderstand when I start talking about we don't need works to get saved," okay?

But yeah, people want to just skip this. I had a—I mean, I don't know how many Protestant books I've looked at where they just skip chapter 2. Chapter 2 sets out almost all of Paul's thesis for the whole book. You skip chapter 2, you're going to just totally misunderstand Romans.

And this summer—I'm not going to mention the name of the company—but for Sunday School literature for our children and young people, we use a Mennonite publishing house. We get their Sunday School material. And it happened to be on Romans. And I thought, "Oh, well, this is good, something put out by Mennonites." And so I just leafed through it. I thought, "I wonder what they're going to say about chapter 2."

Guess what? Totally skipped chapter 2. They did chapter 1. They skipped chapter 2 and then they went right to chapter 3. And ended up giving a largely Protestant message. And I thought, "Now how can you in good conscience just skip a chapter of the Bible?"

I don't understand that, particularly coming from Anabaptists. Why would we do that? Because we've been so influenced by the Protestants. Yeah, we just start thinking, "Well, we've got to teach the way that they do." So this second phase of salvation, we have to maintain our saved condition by holding fast to our faith and living faithfully in obedience to Christ's command. We have to endure to the end of our earthly life. It's not a once-and-done thing.

And that's where we differ from Luther and Calvin and—well, Calvin would say, "Yes, you do have to live a godly life." He would just say it's all predestined, but he would say you have to live a godly life. But yeah, Luther and most Protestants know if you've been truly saved, if you turn into sin, that will not affect your salvation. Now, if someone really becomes ungodly, they'll often kind of crawfish on that and they'll say, "Well, he wasn't really saved," even though he did everything that anyone else did, but they'll say, "Well, he wasn't really saved or he wouldn't have done that."

Yeah, I think we should just be honest. Look, no, it's not all over once you get saved. But you do have to get saved. You don't just wait to the end of your life and then hope, "Well, your good works are going to save you in the end." It doesn't work that way. You do have to get saved. There is the initial phase of salvation which is capped by water baptism, okay? It's a visible thing people can see. It's something in your life that you know, "Okay, I got saved." There needs to be that defining time in your life. Now, I am not real fond of the Garden City, Missouri statement of faith because it does reflect the move of the Anabaptists towards Protestantism.

But even it says this: "We believe that it is the privilege of all believers to know that they have passed from death unto life, that God is able to keep them from falling, but that the obedience of faith is essential to the maintenance of one's salvation and growth in grace." So even Garden City recognized, "Okay, we have to maintain our salvation. We get saved by faith alone or grace alone, but we have to maintain that by an obedient walk." We're not earning our salvation in doing that. We're not piling up brownie points where God's going to say, "Well, let's see how many good works you've done." It doesn't work that way. It's, "Do you love Christ?"

He said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments." So now we demonstrate we don't just talk about, "Christ, we love you because you died for us. You suffered for us. And we're going to sing all these praise songs to you, how much we love you." He said, "If you love me, keep my commandments." So we show Christ that we love Him through our obedience and we maintain that obedient, love, faith relationship with Jesus throughout our life. That's what salvation is all about.

Now,

this second phase of salvation is still not apart from grace, okay? We don't move away from grace when we talk about the need for obedience, okay? The first phase is totally of grace. The second phase—but there is something required of us. There has to be faith and genuine repentance. So there's still—God still requires something from us. The second phase, He also requires this obedient, love, faith relationship, an ongoing obedience to Him. But never imagine that you're still owed heaven, that you somehow earned this. I mean, if you kept every single commandment and you lived a sinless life after you were saved, which no one does, even if you did that, how would that entitle you to live forever?

It might entitle you not to get punished. But I mean, how would that entitle you to live forever in heaven? I mean, you haven't done anything. You've just done what you should have done. No, it's still grace, okay? It's still a gift in the end. That part never changes that we're always saved by grace and that God is always there working with us. Jesus said, "Without me, you can do nothing." So this second phase, it isn't like, "Okay, God's done His work. Now we do our part." No, God is still doing most of it, okay? But we have to yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit so He can work in our lives. He will give us the power, but not if we're unwilling.

He works with willing souls, okay?

And let's look at some of the verses that talk about the second phase. I just read 1 Romans 2, okay? And these are all from Romans, okay? I will read them. I'm going to read them pretty fast. You may not have time to look them up. Romans 6:16, "Do you not know that to whom you yield yourselves as slaves to obey, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness?" So Paul starts off in Romans explaining that in chapter 2. Of course, he didn't use chapters. That's man-made, okay? He starts off at the beginning of his letter, "Your ultimate salvation is going to turn on your works," okay?

Get that part down, okay? Then he goes on to explain, "But that's not how you get saved. You don't get saved because of your works." He explains then—and he's mainly explaining why these Gentiles can come in who are living ungodly lives and how do they just suddenly get saved and are accepted into the church. The Jewish Christians were having a real trouble accepting that, that these Gentiles—they wanted them to become Jews first. Let them live a godly Jewish life. Let them get circumcised. Live by the law. Okay, then they can become a Christian. No, Paul says no. It's by grace. God can justify the ungodly, okay?

But then—okay, after he starts off, ultimately it is going to turn on your works. And then he talks about initial salvation. Then he gets back. When he's done that, he gets back just so in case anyone misunderstood him, he starts hammering again, "Your works are going to demonstrate where you are going to end up, either obedience that leads to righteousness or sin that leads to death." So Paul gets back on that. Now, again, if I were an English teacher, I'd probably give him a C minus, because we modern Westerners, we like everything laid out in a proper order, okay? The Greek mind didn't work that way. Paul thinks like an Easterner and no, you don't have to have everything in this order like what we're used to, how we're taught in school, okay?

So that's what makes Romans hard is Paul moves around, but he never loses his main points. Origen used the illustration. He said when you go through Romans, it's like you're touring this magnificent palace and you've got a guide who's taking you around. He takes you into one room and you see all of these wonders in there, but then he takes you out of a different door than what you came in and then you're seeing this other room that's also a room of wonders and he takes you through another door and pretty soon you don't know where you are in the mansion because you keep going through different doors, but every single room you go into is wonderful.

But yeah, you keep being moved from here to there. Now, that's Origen, an early Christian saying this. He's saying he loves Romans, but he's saying, "Yeah, you got to really stay on it if you're going to keep up with where Paul is at." Okay, chapter 8 of Romans, verses 5 through 7.

Again, now he's talking about the second phase of salvation. "Those who live after the flesh mind the things of the flesh, but those who live after the Spirit mind the things of the Spirit." Now, this next part is what's really key. To be carnally minded is death. He's not talking about the—we're all going to die. He's not talking about the death, the normal death that we all experience. He's talking about eternal death, okay?

It's death, but to be spiritually minded is life. He's talking about eternal life and peace. He says, "For the carnal mind is at enmity with God." Now, I grew up—I didn't grow up in it. I was a member of a church for 10 years, an evangelical church that talked about two kinds of Christians. There's the Christians where Christ is on the throne of your heart and then there's the carnal Christian. They said they're both equally saved, but you don't want to be a carnal Christian. That's not pleasing to God. You want Christ to be sitting on the throne in your heart. But the carnal Christian, he's still saved, they said. Well, Paul says no. He says to be carnally minded is death.

No, I'm sorry. You can't live a carnal life and say, "Well, I'm a carnal Christian." It doesn't work that way, okay? He says that's death. Romans 8:13, that same chapter. He says, "If you live after the flesh—what?—you will die.

But if through the Spirit—again, see, God's involved here—but if through the Spirit you put to death the works of the flesh—what?—you will live," okay? And I could quote many more just from Romans, let alone the other books that Paul wrote, let alone the other books of the New Testament, okay? So Paul recognizes his readers understood, yes, there are two phases of salvation. Now, Meno Simons, he quoted that Romans 8:13 to the Lutherans because they were saying, "No, it's just faith alone." And here I'm reading a quote from Meno Simons. He says, "No matter how much we may talk or argue about the Scriptures, this rule will remain firm and can never be broken." And that is, "If you live after the flesh, you will die."

And that is what we've always understood as Anabaptist. Okay, so that's the first thing is recognize there's two phases. That's the big key to Romans, okay? Two phases of salvation. Don't get them mixed up. Don't be afraid of these verses that talk about being saved apart from works. We need to embrace that as Anabaptists and recognize, yes, it's all of grace. I mean, even the second phase without God's grace, none of us would deserve to enter heaven. I mean, in the end, it's still a gift, but it's a conditional gift. He gives it to those who love Him, who demonstrate their love by the way they live. All right. Now, the next is what do you guys usually end your sermons?

You don't? Whenever you're finished. Whenever you're finished. All right. You might regret that. Okay. So our second point, there's two kinds of law. There was a legal case in 1960. It's not real famous or anything.

It was a lawsuit against a company called BNS—I forget what the initial stands for—International Sales Corp. They were a wholesaler who would buy chicken from chicken farmers and they would buy it in huge, huge quantities, okay? And then they would resell it in smaller quantities, okay? So they were located in New York and they got an order from a company in Switzerland, a pretty large order for chicken.

In fact, in the contract, the purchase contract, this company in Switzerland specified, "We want USDA chicken," all right? So they agreed on a price which this wholesaler was able to give them a very good price on it and they delivered the chicken to them, okay? They got the chicken, these people in Switzerland, and it was mostly stewing hens, okay? Well, they were pretty ticked off. It's like, "Whoa, we were expecting fryers, broilers, whatever. You give us stewing hens for the most part," okay? And they said, "You cheated us." They said, "You ordered USDA chicken and that's what we gave you."

And the Swiss company says, "Well, yeah, it's not what we meant and you know it," and they sued them, okay? It went to court and the court sided with the wholesaler. And they went to the actual regulations of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA, and there it defines the word chicken.

And it defines it as meaning fryer, broiler, roaster, stewing hen, and it went on, okay? So if you just say chicken, yeah, it can mean different things or different kinds of chicken. If you want fryers, you better say fryers. You don't just say chicken, okay? So chicken can mean different things.

Law is the same way. It can mean different things and you're going to talk about law, you need to get clear, okay, what law are we talking about? And Paul uses law in at least two different ways. He actually uses it in more than two, but two big ones that keep in mind so someone doesn't trip you up on Romans, okay?

Now, Luther said that there is an irreconcilable conflict between gospel and law and Luther is absolutely false. There is no conflict between gospel and law. The conflict is between the gospel, the gospel of Christ, and the law of Moses. Yes, there is an irreconcilable conflict between the gospel of Christ and the law of Moses, but not between gospel and law because the gospel of Christ contains laws.

And so that issue is kind of the setting for Paul's letter to the Romans.

In the book of Acts, chapter 13, verse 39, I'll just read this to you. Paul says he's preaching to a group. He says, "Everyone who believes is justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses," okay? So Paul, if you read Acts, you see this all over. He's having to continually deal with Christian Jews who want the Gentiles to come and live under the Mosaic law. And they were very insistent on this even after the whole apostles ruled that no, the Gentiles, even the Jews, do not have to live by the law of Moses. But the Jews wouldn't let go of that. The law of Moses had been so ingrained in them.

They just couldn't let go and believe God can save people apart from this law.

In Romans 2 again, when you skip 2, like I say, you're going to mess up all of Romans if you skip his introductory points. He's writing to the Jews; he addresses the Jews here, Romans 2:17. He says, "Indeed, you are called a Jew and rest on the law and make your boast in God." So when he's talking about people who are boasting in works, he's talking about primarily the Jews who were very boastful. "We live by the law. Look how good we are compared to you filthy Gentiles. We're Jews," and Paul is saying, "No, that doesn't justify you living by the law. It was given for a period. It was from God, but that time is over.

The gospel has come now. The law was nailed to the cross. We are done with it." I mean, there's a lot we can still learn there. I mean, it's not useless, but we are not under those commandments. All right.

Now, Acts again, it gives us the historical background to Romans and to many of Paul's letters. You might want to turn there, Acts chapter 15.

This is the Jerusalem Council that I mentioned.

It's the only council you have in the New Testament of all the apostles getting together along with church leaders. Anyway, verse 1 says, "And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren, 'Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved,'" okay? That's what they were teaching, okay? That you can't even be saved unless you're circumcised, unless you live by the law of Moses, all right? Now, verse 5.

Again, they're meeting together to discuss this and says, "Some of the sect of the Pharisees" now, these aren't the unbelieving Pharisees. These are Christians. "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,'" okay?

That's the issue Paul is dealing with in his letter, are these just Jews who will not let go of the law. And it was fine if they wanted to keep it, yeah, but Paul says, "Fine, if you want to keep the law, you're not sinning by keeping it." But he was not going to let them get by with pushing that onto the Gentiles or in teaching even to the Jews that you are saved by keeping the law.

Okay. Now, verses 10 and 11, if you've got your Bibles open to Acts 15.

The apostles and the other brethren there come to a conclusion. Peter says this—whoops, okay. This is a little different than what I thought. Okay, verses 10 and 11. "Now therefore, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believed that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same manner as they." All right. So they later make a ruling from all of them. They send out a letter, but Peter gets up because God used him to bring in the first uncircumcised Gentile. That was Cornelius. So Peter's got enormous standing here, not only as the spokesman, foremost of the apostles, but the one who brought in the first uncircumcised Gentile.

And he says he tells them, "Why do you keep insisting on this yoke that we never kept, our fathers never kept it, and yet you're trying to stick it onto the Gentiles?" All right. So there's the law of Moses that Paul spends most of his ministry having to fight against that issue, that people saying, "We've got to live by the law of Moses in order to be saved," okay? And so you go through almost all of his letters, that issue is there. That issue is there. He keeps having to address it. The whole letter of Galatians is almost the whole letter focused just on that issue. Romans focuses a lot on that, but Paul covers a lot of other things in Romans as well.

But now, Paul, after talking negatively about the law or saying, "We are not saved by the law," and all of that, he then talks about there's a law of Christ, okay? Romans 8:2. Like I say, chapters 3 and 4, he's talking about initial salvation in that, okay? Once he gets that explained, then he goes back to the present phase of salvation, this ongoing phase until we reach the end of our life. Romans 8:2. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death." So he talks about a law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, okay? So there is another law in the Bible and that's what, again, our Protestant friends want to deny.

Years ago, I was writing—it was actually the book Secrets of the Kingdom Life—and I was hiring a sister to do the editing of it. And she and her husband were attending a Beechy Church and I just assumed she had embraced Anabaptist principles, but obviously she was holding on—she was a very good, extremely good editor—but still engrossed in her evangelical indoctrination. And everywhere she kept writing in the margin, "You use the word commandment, David. There's no commandments for Christians. Christ has no—" I mean, all through Christ has no commandments and of course I ignored them all, but it's like, wow, how can you read the Bible and think Christ has no commandments when he himself said, "If you love me, keep my commandments," and then you turn around and say, "Well, he doesn't have any."

He just told you he did, okay? Again, Romans 8:7. "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God nor indeed can be." So again, he talks about a law of God that we are still under once we get saved, okay? We didn't have to live by that law in our initial salvation, but we do have to live by the law of Christ, the law of God, once we have been saved.

Now, Dirk Phillips, he's not as well known. He was a contemporary of Menno Simons, actually a very good writer, but he's not as well known as Menno Simons. He said this: "It is false exegesis"—that means explaining of Scripture—"of Paul's words to compare the ordinances and institutes of the Lord"—that is, the law of Christ—"with circumcision or uncircumcision of the flesh.

But what our Lord taught and commanded in the New Testament remains eternal, unchanging truth," okay? So the first Anabaptists, they got it, okay? That there's two laws and don't confuse the law about circumcision and that with the law of Christ, all right? They understood that and they stood firm against all the pressure from the Lutherans and everyone else trying to push them to say, "No, it's just grace alone."

The Dortrek Confession, article 5—and this is interesting—the heading of that article, article 5, is "The Law of Christ, i.e., the Gospel." I thought that is interesting. Again, they understood the Gospel contains the law of Christ, okay? But it's not the Mosaic law all over again. Things work differently, but there is still a law. It says this: "He has declared all men to be his children who through faith as obedient children heed, follow, and practice what the New Testament contains, thus excluding no one from the precious inheritance of eternal life except the unbelieving and disobedient," okay? Amen. I mean, they got it. They nailed it exactly right. The offer of salvation is open to everybody contrary to what the Calvinists were preaching, but it's to those who heed, follow, and practice what the New Testament contains.

He's not talking about initial salvation there. He's talking about once we've been saved, we have to then maintain our salvation by walking faithfully with Christ. There's nothing difficult about that. Okay. So that was the second point. If you can read my hand scratching, two different laws, okay? Law of Moses. Don't let anyone confuse you when Paul's talking about the law of Moses. Now, what has happened—it's one of my pet peeves—now, when the King James Bible was written, there were no rules in English about what you capitalize and what you don't. And you've probably noticed when you read the King James, I mean, in the middle of a sentence, they'll capitalize a word. It seems like for no reason that there maybe was some kind of subsystem.

I don't know. But it wasn't until the 19th century, until the 1800s, that the laws of capitalization as we know them were finally finalized in the English language, okay? And one of those rules is you capitalize a proper noun, okay? If you're talking about the president of whatever, the Lady Sewing Circle, you don't usually capitalize that, okay? But if you're talking about the President of the United States, you put a capital P. The President. You know when you see that with a capital P talking about the President of the United States or maybe it's another country, okay? But if you're just talking about an ordinary person, you don't usually capitalize that. Constitution, if it's the U.S. Constitution, you capitalize with a capital C, okay?

Just an ordinary constitution of a corporation or something. Again, you don't normally capitalize it, okay? That's just a basic law we all learn in grammar school. You capitalize a proper noun, okay? Mosaic law, the law is a specific proper thing.

It should be capitalized if you're talking about the law of Moses versus just a law in general. And again, you don't see that in the King James because that rule wasn't around when it was written, all right? But in the beginning in 1950, you started getting some modern translations of the Bible put into current English. And all of those early translations of the Bible into the English of today, they capitalized law. Every time it referred to the Mosaic law, they put a capital L there so the reader wouldn't get confused and would understand Paul's talking about the law of Moses.

And I'm talking about the Jerusalem Bible, the Good News Bible, the New American Standard, okay? Which was maybe the first Bible I was introduced to once I left Jehovah's Witnesses, okay? And it capitalizes—I don't know what it does now. They've revised it a lot, but it capitalized law every time it talked about the Mosaic law because that was just the standard rule of English. This is a proper noun here.

But then the NIV, the New International Version, came out I think in 1978 and they decided, "We're not going to use—we're just going to put small l." And boy, that helps to promote Luther's Gospel. See, there's a conflict between law and Gospel because even when Paul's talking about the Mosaic law, they just put a small l there so the reader just thinks, "Oh, law's bad." I mean, to me, that's just wicked. I mean, there's no excuse for that. But yeah, it still is maybe the best-selling modern translation today. And once they did that and they were so hugely successful, everybody else followed. Now, there's some exceptions, but pretty much all the others, yeah, you pick up a Bible in modern English, it's going to put a small l on law to help confuse you and to promote this wrong idea that there's a conflict between law and Gospel.