Life In Christ - HIS Way or Ours? - Romans Part 12 - David Bercot

He says, "Without me you can do nothing." Okay? Paul, in one of his letters, says, "Through Christ I can do all things." So without Him we can do nothing. That means in walking righteously with Him we can do all things, Paul says. So we're saved by His life being in us. It's not enough that He died and that our sins are forgiven at the time that we are converted and baptized. Okay? We get a clean slate, but now we have to produce fruit. We have to walk faithfully with Christ, and we're not going to do that without His life being in us.

Well, good morning to everyone. We're back into Romans, which may or may not be good news. We're moving to a little different subject today in Romans.

The last time I preached on Romans, we looked at the first half of chapter 4, and we saw how Abraham was counted righteous apart from any of the works of the law. And we saw that even more than that, that in Christ you don't have to have any works when you come to salvation.

Once you've been saved, then Christ requires that we produce fruit. But we don't have to bring anything except faith and repentance when we are initially saved. And so that's what all of chapter 4 is about. The last half of it, which I'm not going to preach on, it just goes right back over that, showing that Abraham was declared righteous before the covenant of circumcision and centuries before the law came in. So you can be declared righteous without any of those things. And since the Jews look to Abraham as their father, he's showing, well, yeah, he was declared righteous before any of those things. So the Gentiles don't need circumcision. They don't need the law. And they can be children of Abraham just as the Jews can be.

So Romans is Paul's longest letter, not because he covers more subjects. First Corinthians has a lot more subjects in it than Romans does, but because he repeats himself on purpose. I mean, he's obviously aware of it, but he wants to make sure his readers really get this point. So he'll say it one way, and then he'll come back, say the exact same thing, but in different words, and he'll come right back again a couple chapters later. And all I can say is, if you read Romans and think that you have to have the law or circumcision to be saved, yeah, you're not paying attention to what you're reading because, I mean, Paul really gets that point across.

But he doesn't want to stay there. So today we're going to be looking at life in Christ, verses 1 through 11 of Romans 5. Now, I'm going to be having the verses up here, but I want you to turn in your Bible to Romans 5 right now because we're going to start right off with a controversy.

It's not a controversy I created either. Romans 5:1. If you've got your Bibles, look this up, okay?

"Therefore, being justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Now, if you're looking, you're probably thinking, "Well, that's not what it says in my Bible." It says, "Therefore, being justified, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

And when I first saw this, it's like, "Hmm, this isn't how my Bible reads." And I can't tell you how much time I've spent into researching what's going on here. I want to show you how the early Christians understood this.

And basically, their understanding is, "Okay, we're justified by faith." But then once we're justified, if we go back to a life of sin, then the peace that we have at our baptism, we lose that. It's not an automatic thing that we automatically have peace with God just because we have been converted and believe in Jesus Christ. We have to maintain that peace throughout our life.

I'm going to give a number of quotes here just, and what it comes down to is their Bibles. It's not that they took this verse and, "Oh, well, we're going to give it another interpretation." Their Bibles read differently. Now, it took me a while to figure this out. It's like, "Whoa, what's going on here?" And it finally dawned on me, their Bibles read different than our Bibles. I'm going to explain at the end of this, but just listen to some of them. Now, Tertullian, this goes back to the year 200. I mean, we're talking about just a century after the Apostle John died. And he's quoting this. He says, "Paul exhorts those who are justified by faith in Christ and not by the law to have peace with God," that he exhorts us to have peace.

It's not automatic. Origen, this would be about the year 245. "Once the barrier of sin has been taken away, if someone returns to sin, he undoubtedly restores the wall of separation, and he reestablishes the former hostility. In this manner, he destroys the work of Christ, and he nullifies Christ's suffering on the cross for him. We can be absolutely certain of one thing: no one in whom evil doing exists can have peace with God."

So the early Christians are very adamant. I mean, to them, it's clear what Paul is saying, that he's exhorting us to have peace with God. And the reason is because if we go back to a life of sin, now we're not talking about stumbling, that everybody sins every day. But if we just decide, "I'm tired of the Christian life. It's too hard. People out in the world are having more fun. And yeah, I'm going to go back to where I was," well, then you lose that peace that you started with, and you're not going to have peace with God. But it's taught the exact opposite in most churches today. They say, "Oh, if you got saved, you have peace with God.

Now, yeah, it's guaranteed you have peace with God because you got saved." And that's not what Paul is saying at all. Chrysostom, "Paul now turns to our manner of living. Up until now, he has said much on the subject of faith. He puts faith ahead of the righteousness that is by works.

Accordingly, to prevent anyone from supposing that what he said provides grounds for spiritual laxity, Paul now says, 'Let us have peace.'" In other words, "Let us not sin anymore, nor go back to our former state. To do so would be to make war with God." So see, our conversion has to be a surrender. Okay? All of these weapons, all of our fight against God, are resisting His ways. When we come to salvation, okay, we lay down our weapons. I surrender, Lord, I surrender to You.

And that is why in our tradition here at Jamesburg Christian Fellowship, we don't ask people or teach, or invite Jesus in your heart. What we want to see in people is, "I surrender my life to Jesus Christ. I believe in Him as my Savior, but I surrender my life to Jesus Christ." It has to be not just inviting Him into your heart, but surrendering your life to Him. And Paul is going to go, when we get to chapter 6, we'll see this in even more detail. But yeah, Paul is talking about, it doesn't take a lot to get saved. I mean, it takes a lot in the sense of faith, particularly back in a pagan world where people never heard of Jesus Christ and that.

And so it was a big thing to believe that this man was the Son of God, someone the Romans had crucified, a criminal. He's our Creator, and he's the Son of God. I mean, that took a lot of faith. And it took faith for the Jews. It's like, "Well, if he was the Messiah, how did he get crucified?" I mean, it just doesn't make sense. So it was a big thing. I mean, faith is not something little. It is more important than works because works come out of faith. But yeah, we've got to have those works. We've got to have righteous living once we've been saved, or else we're making war with God. If we lay down our weapons and say, "Well, I'm going to take all of those up again," okay, well, then you don't have peace with God.

Now, as I said, look this verse up in your Bible, which I've already had you do. You'll find it reads differently. In your Bible, it's going to say, "We have peace with God." And of course, the difference is significant as if it's an accomplished thing.

So yeah, I got curious, okay, why does it read differently? And I spent several days digging this out. It wasn't something that was there on the surface that Bible translators go out of their way to make it real clear what's going on. Well, as it turns out, in Greek, "Let us have peace," or "We have peace," either one. It's just one word in Greek. In English, it's four words or five words. In Greek, it's just a single word.

Ecomen means "Let us have peace." Now, that is, if you have an omega, which is a long O, then it means "Let us have peace." So it's not just, it's just one word. And whether it's "Let us have peace" or whether it's "We have peace" turns on one letter. If the O after, you know, at the end of echo, if it's a long O, it's "Let us have peace."

If it's a short O, which is called an omicron in Greek, it means "We have peace." So wow, it all turns on one little letter. So virtually all of the most ancient Greek manuscripts and of various text types, are you all familiar with text types when I say that? Raise your hand if you've heard of text types.

Okay, a few of you have. So let me explain, okay? So there are variations. There's like, my mind just pulled a senior moment on me. I want to say 5,000 Greek handwritten manuscripts. Don't hold me to that.

No two of them read exactly alike. That part I'm certain of, okay? No two of all of these manuscripts read precisely alike. They're all handwritten. And wow, to write all of that out and not make a mistake would be very, very difficult. So now, most of these variations aren't major. It's not like, oh, you know, one Bible says Jesus is the Son of God, and then this Greek manuscript, you know, says he's not.

It's nothing like that. I mean, most of the differences are extremely minor, but they all have differences. And so people who study then these Greek manuscripts, okay, so what did it originally say? And we can't be 100% certain, okay? And that's obviously God's choice. If He wanted us to have, or maybe we would end up worshiping the letters on the page and not worshiping Him and His Son, yeah, He let this happen, but He could have changed it if He so desired. But this is what He chose to do, that He used earth and vessels, and they had their imperfections. So they've seen that, okay, a certain group of manuscripts, they tend to read the same way on these verses where there's variation.

Most verses, there's no variation at all. And so they'll call it a family. Okay, this group, there's a whole family that tend to read very similar. So one family is the Alexandrine family. They think it had its origin in Alexandria, and that's at least, that's the theory. So it's called the Alexandrine family. And then there's a Western text family, okay, that they notice people like Tertullian, Cyprian, a lot of these people who lived in the West, they tend to quote the Bible a certain way. Again, it's only certain verses, okay? So they call that the Western text family. Then there's another one connected with the town of or city of Caesarea. And so there's a Caesarean text family, okay?

And then there's the Byzantine text family, which is later. It's not as early as these other ones. It was after it's a state religion, and now you can get some more uniformity. And then the Byzantine text type is more uniform. It doesn't have as much variation. And it tends to be a combination of both the Western and the Alexandrine. So in the Byzantine text family, nothing is left out that's God's word. There might be stuff in it that's not God's word, which I would, and that's why I prefer the King James would follow that, the New King James. I prefer that. Yeah, if there's something in there that maybe wasn't part of the original text, okay, I can live with that.

There's certainly nothing heretical, but I'd rather be certain, okay, nothing's been left out, okay? Now, so what I'm saying here is all of the ancient manuscripts, it doesn't matter if they're Alexandrine or Western, the most ancient ones all say, "Let us have peace," that Paul is giving an admonition there.

Virtually all of the early Christian writers who quote this verse quote it as "Let us have peace," and then they discuss it. That makes it clear. You know, it's not like, "Oh, well, maybe someone later came in and changed it to 'Let us have peace.'" What they say makes it clear that they're reading "Let us have peace," you know, because they go into detail about it. It just says, "We've read those quotes," okay? And it goes all the way back to Tertullian, long before any of these Greek manuscripts, or oldest Greek manuscripts would date into the 300s, okay? But this would be like the year 200, okay?

The other thing is virtually all of the early translations of the scriptures quote this verse as "Let us have peace." And some examples are the early Latin versions, the early Syriac. Syriac is a form of Aramaic. The early Coptic, the early Armenian, the early Ethiopian. And these translations were made in like the third to the fifth century. So they're very ancient. And this is when they were translating it, this is how they have it, "Let us have peace." So I mean, the evidence is overwhelming that this is what Paul said. I mean, the early Christian writers quoted this way, the most ancient manuscripts, the most ancient translations. So why on earth do our Bibles say, "We have peace with God"?

Well, the King James is based on the text's receptors. Those were the manuscripts they had in front of them, which was just a handful. And so that's how the King James reads that way. But now, the other Bibles that are around today, the ESV, the NIV, the Living Bible, all of these, they're not from the text's receptors. They're from the critical text, okay? And these are scholars who've gone in and tried to determine how it originally read, which, you know, they admit we can't ever get, you know, determined with any kind of certainty. But they have certain standards they use. And all of these manuscripts that I've just mentioned, these ancient manuscripts, these are the ones they rely on, okay?

Because they're older than the other ones, you know, they view this as how it should read. So then the NIV and ESV should read, "Let us have peace," because all of the weight of the evidence is there. Now, Vincent's word studies, I was going to bring them. I couldn't find mine.

I had a set. Any of you familiar with Vincent word studies? Does that mean anything? Okay, we got one hand there.

Yeah, it just goes to the New Testament and talks about different words. I had it in a four-volume set. I guess I've stuck it up in my attic because now I have it electronically, and so it's a lot easier just to look at it electronically. And this is so typical of what you read, okay? The true reading is, "Let us have peace," but it is difficult, if not impossible, to explain it. It's like, "Huh?" The early Christians had no trouble explaining it. It made perfect sense to them. But all these modern guys say, "That doesn't make any sense. Let us have peace." Why doesn't it make sense? It's their theology. It contradicts their theology. So, "Oh, that doesn't make sense.

Let us have peace with God." It's like, "Huh?" I mean, how could it make sense to the early Christians and not make sense today? That's your bias, okay? And there's a bunch of those I could quote the same way.

The critical text that, like I say, the ESV and all of them use, okay, I have their notes, okay, where they explain why they went with this. And in their notes, they say, "Yeah, overwhelming the evidence is, 'Let us have peace.'" But it doesn't make sense. Paul doesn't seem to be saying that here. So we're going to go with, "We have peace."

It's like, "You've just contradicted your whole, you're supposed to be doing this objectively. You admit the textual evidence is, 'Let us have peace,' and then you say, 'This doesn't make sense.'" Paul doesn't seem to be saying that here. It's like, "What is that supposed to mean?" It goes against your theology is what you're saying, even though most of these are liberal guys, but they still want to believe, "Yeah, we have peace with God once we're saved, once saved, always saved." You know, no matter what you do, you're saved. Whether they're liberal or evangelical, it fits it the same way. And so it's like, "Wow, the guys we look to and rely on to give us an accurate Bible, yeah, they play theological games."

I mean, it was just frustrating to see this. And like I said, I could read you a bunch of quotes. I don't want to take the time of scholar after scholar saying, "Yeah, it's definitely 'Let us have peace,' but it doesn't make sense. It can't be that, but it says that." And in fact, the guys who do the critical text, they said, "Well, in ancient Greek, if you're saying ecomen or ecomen, yeah, it's virtually the same." And so, I mean, they have the audacity. What they say in their notes is when Paul was dictating this to the secretary, he used that, "Yeah, the secretary, the scribe taking it down, yeah, heard him wrong because the two words would have been pronounced the same."

And so from the very beginning, in other words, the Bible went out with an error. It said, "Let us have peace," because, like I say, all the early Christians quoted that way, but the original scribe got it wrong. It's like, "I don't believe you're saying this. I mean, this is terrible. I mean, you're saying, so what was God's word then? Not what went out to the Romans? When they got it, they got a wrong copy? I mean, that is terrible."

Anyway, but this isn't the only New Testament passage where saved believers are exhorted to be at peace or harmony with God. There'd be a lot of examples, but just one is 2 Corinthians 5:20, where Paul is writing to saved Christians. He's not, he's not talking to the crowds, the unsaved, you know, unbelievers. He says, "We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God." Well, of course, we all got reconciled when we got saved, but he's talking to saved people. He says, "Be reconciled." It's a daily sort of thing. Not that we lose our salvation daily, but we have to work on this relationship. God requires an obedient, love, faith relationship with Him. So, yeah, we sin every day.

We do things that would put us at enmity with God, probably for most of us every day. It may be pretty small things. Just I've been impatient. I've harbored unforgiveness. I've maybe had critical attitudes about people in the congregation or people in other congregations. I mean, it's a number of things.

Now, that doesn't make us God's enemy if we're repentant. If we lay these things down and every night or throughout the day, "Father, please forgive me. I confess. Yeah, I was sharp with my wife today. You know, I've been harboring this unforgiveness. Please forgive me." That's the kind of God we have. Yeah, every day He extends His mercy. But that's why Paul says, "Let us have peace." We need to every day repent of what we've done. We need to look at our lives and change where we're missing.

Okay. By whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. So we have access by faith into this grace. The grace doesn't end when we are baptized. It's a continual thing. We live with God's grace, assuming we avail ourselves. Again, if we're going to reject it by the way we live, then it's not an automatic thing, but it's something that, yeah, we should be living in. He's describing the normal Christian life. I don't know if the book is very popular today.

Back in the '80s, when Deborah and I were running a Christian bookstore, one of the books we had there that was fairly popular was called The Normal Christian Life. It was by Watchman Nee. Have any of you heard of that?

Okay, a couple of hands up. It was, I think, you know, read a lot more then, but I remember reading it and I was expecting The Normal Christian Life. It was going to be talking about some kind of mediocre blasé sort of thing. And it's like, you know, he's describing this really sold-out pure discipleship. And he's saying, "This is the normal, this is what normal Christianity should look like." And it is, it's what it does look like. If this isn't your life, then you're not leading the normal Christian life. You're just kidding yourself. It was really a wake-up call reading that book.

Chrysostom, but when you hear of grace, do not think that thereby the need for effort on our part is set aside. The reason Paul emphasizes that this is a gift is to destroy any haughtiness or arrogant spirit on our part.

So what Paul teaches, what Jesus taught, what all the New Testament writers teach is what is called in theology synergism, which means two things working together. And it's not that God needs our help. I mean, He could save us without our doing a single thing. I mean, He doesn't need us. He wants a relationship with us. So He wants us to be cooperating with His grace.

He gives us power, but we respond obediently. We work with God because that's what He wants. It's what all of us want. We want children who aren't robots. We want them to obey us, but we want it from their own free will. But we want that obedient relationship with our children and a loving relationship with them, with our spouse. It's the same way. It's two people working together. And this is what God wants. It's not that He needs us, but it's what He wants from us and requires of us. But Paul talks a lot about grace more than the other apostles, more than Jesus. Jesus doesn't mention it very often at all in His teaching, but that we don't get haughty and start thinking too highly of ourselves, that we have to be reminded, yeah, this is a gift.

It's a conditional gift, but it is a gift that, I mean, God could so easily look at my life and say, "David, I'm sorry. No eternal life for you." He would be totally justified in doing that. And I think that would be true of every one of us here. So it is a gift. We should always be aware of that, that, yeah, I don't deserve this. It's a gift. But not, He doesn't say that. He says it to keep us humble, not that, "Oh, it's all a gift. It doesn't matter what I do." That's not what at all what Paul teaches.

It is not to minimize the labor of effort God requires of us. Therefore, do not become spiritually slack because Paul has called this a gift of grace. Okay, the next verses. And not only that, but we also rejoice in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces endurance and endurance approval and approval hope. Jesus had said, "Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you." So this is one of the things, it's probably not unique to the Christian religion, but there would only be a few more who would have the same teaching.

It's unique for most of what the world would embrace that we rejoice in tribulation because, as Jesus said, if you're following me, people are going to say bad things about you. I mean, at a minimum, they're going to say they're a little bit nutty. Yeah, you know, those Christians, that's at a minimum. You know, at a maximum, they might be putting us to death. But I think of the verse in Acts where the apostles had been beaten by the Sanhedrin and told not to preach anymore. And do you remember how they went out after that happened? Everyone's shaking, nodding their heads. Yes. Yeah. They didn't go out and like, "Oh, we better be quiet now.

You know, I don't want to get beaten again." They went out rejoicing. Hallelujah. We suffered. We got to suffer for Jesus Christ. And it was that spirit that the Roman Empire could not defeat. It's like they could torture Christians. They could kill them. But how do you defeat people who rejoice in tribulation? I mean, it's just like finally the Romans gave up. We can't beat them. Even though the Christians had never lifted a sword against them, never resisted in any way. It was just this steadfast, "We're going to rejoice. No matter what you do to us, we're going to rejoice in it and we're going to continue on." And they kept saying that. And it took several centuries, but the Romans finally realized, "We're not going to be able to beat the Christians.

We just, no matter what we do, the harder we persecute them, the more they grow. They are undefeatable." And of course they were because this was God's kingdom. No kingdom of this world can defeat the kingdom of God.

The next verse. "And hope does not make us ashamed, for the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given to us." Chrysostom says, "These are not mere human hopes, which often slip away. When that happens, those who hoped in them are put to shame." So why Paul says, "Yeah, with hope we're not put to shame," is because we're hoping in God.

Now, you're hoping in humans. Yeah, often it comes to nothing. Chrysostom uses the example. You wouldn't have it as much nowadays where someone has been promised something by a rich benefactor. You know, maybe you're a servant in the household and he says, "You know, when I die, I'm going to leave this or that to you. Maybe you're a slave." He says, "When I die, you know, you're going to be given your freedom and all of that." Well, yeah, maybe he changes his mind.

His will isn't written out legally correct and all your hopes are dashed. I saw this back in the year 2000 where I lived in East Texas. Nearly every Bible-believing Christian, or I should say a large segment of them, were absolutely convinced. On January 1st, 2000, at one minute after or one second after 12 midnight, and a lot of you are smiling, you probably remember this, yeah, everything was going to quit working. The computers were going to quit working, which would then mean everything else which is dependent on computers would quit work. Our electricity would go off. Your car wouldn't start. Everything was to come to a standstill.

Now, the irony is that a lot of Christians were hoping for this, if that makes any sense. I mean, I was studying the Bible at that time with a group of people who were from various fundamentalist backgrounds, and that was all they could talk about. I mean, they had their houses all prepared. They had, you know, backup, this and that. They had hand grinders for wheat. They had, you know, enough wheat to last several years stashed away. And man, they were going to make it when the rest of the world, everyone else would be collapsing. And, you know, they had their little oil lamps and everything was set up. I mean, I realized you're wanting this to happen.

I mean, because you're going to be on top. Everyone else is going to be out here starving and all that. And you're all set up, which wasn't a very Christian thing. In fact, a lot of them had guns, you know. You know, I got my gun ready, you know, because they assumed the world was going to come in and try to take it away. But they also had all their windows. They had fitted things that would shut out light so the neighbors wouldn't see that they had light in their house because then the neighbors would come and try to get their stuff. So it was very unchristian, but yeah, January 1st, 2000 came, not a thing happened.

And yeah, they were pretty crushed. One couple ended up getting a divorce. I mean, it was just, well, the wife had really convinced her husband of this, and he had gone along, you know, just totally sold into it. And so I guess it created a big argument afterwards. But yeah, that's what happens when you put your hope in human predictions. Okay, it says the love of God is spread abroad in our heart.

We'll be looking at this in chapter 8 of Romans, the love of God. Now, that can mean two different things. It can mean our love of God or it can mean God's love for us. And you don't know. I mean, in English, it's ambiguous. In Greek, it's ambiguous, the love of God. So some of the early Christians understood that this meant God's love is spread abroad in our heart, and that's absolutely true. And some other ones understood it to mean that our love for Him is spread abroad in our heart. And that's absolutely true as well. So either one fits. But yeah, you can't be a Christian if the love of God is not in your heart.

And it is, again, synergism. I mean, John says, "We love Him because He first loved us." So yeah, it's a fruit of the Spirit. We need God's Spirit in our life. People don't just, in ordinary life out there in the world, just love God. They may believe in God, but most people don't just start off loving God. It's something that usually comes from conversion and the Holy Spirit residing in our heart. But it doesn't happen automatically. There are a lot of people who've been born again, who've been saved, and they don't love God. So yeah, it has to be spread abroad in our heart. We have to do our part, cooperate with His Holy Spirit.

Romans 5:6, "For when we were yet without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly." So again, Paul returns to this theme quite often in Romans that, again, we did not deserve it. When Christ died, everybody was his enemy. I mean, there were people who believed in him, but everybody needed salvation. And most people were his enemy. And he died for them. Nevertheless, he died for the very ones who stood there and mocked him on the cross. He died for their sins as well, and he prayed to his Father to forgive them.

Origen has this comment, "Christ came to earth to die for us before any of us even believed in him. Furthermore, before our conversion, we were all ungodly." So yeah, this is the love of Christ that he would do this for us. You know, no one even believing in him, and yet he voluntarily comes to earth, becomes a man, or comes to earth as a man and dies for us in our sins.

And that's why we should always be grateful and not ever take salvation for granted. And when we just trample on Christ's commandments, we can talk about how much we love him. We can sing praise songs, but he looks at our life. Our life reveals how thankful we really are. You know, if I'm really thankful that he made this sacrifice, then he is going to be my Lord. And if he's my Lord, I'm going to obey him to the degree that I can as a fallen human.

Romans 5:7, "For scarcely will one die for a righteous man." It's like, yeah, I mean, a few people will die for, you know, a righteous friend or something like that, but not very many. Now, we'll die for people in our family. That's fairly common. But for somebody who's not a family member or someone we dearly love, that's not very common. He says, "Yeah, scarcely someone will die for a righteous man, but for somebody who's wicked, for your enemy." Yeah, no humans, you know, outside of Christianity do that that I'm aware of. He says, "Yet perhaps some would dare to die for the good." Now, a lot of translations say some would dare die for a good man.

That's how all the translations I had had always read. And it always puzzled me. Okay, he says, "Scarcely someone will die for a righteous man, but maybe they will for a good man." It's like, so what's the difference between a righteous man and a good man? I mean, I went, what, I'm 72? Probably went 70 years.

Well, I didn't wonder when I was two years old, but probably from eight years old on when I first read Romans, it's like, what does that mean? And I never heard an explanation. Went through it my whole life wondering. It wasn't any key scripture, so it's not something I spent a lot of time on.

I'll get to that in a minute. "If no one would hastily choose to die for a righteous man, consider your master's love, for it was not for righteous men that he was crucified, but for sinners and enemies." Okay, now I'm mentioning the part there, "Yet perhaps for a good man, some would dare to die." That's how most of our Bibles read. Well, that's not what the Greek says. I mean, you could translate it that way, but it's not what it literally says. What the Greek says is not that perhaps someone would die for a good man. It says, "Perhaps someone would die for the." It's got the definite article "the" there, for the good. It doesn't have the word "man."

And so Origen, when he's discussing it, he understands that Paul is saying some men are willing to die for the good, who is Jesus Christ, that yes, we will die for Jesus Christ. Most will not die for a righteous man, but yes, some would die for the good. It could also mean just the good in general. There are a lot of people who have died, say, for their country that they think is the good. People will die for good causes.

But yeah, it doesn't say for a good man. It's like translators, they're always second-guessing. And I understand it's not an easy thing. I mean, I'm sure if I did a translation, I don't have the ability to, but if I did, I'm sure people would second-guess, "David, why did he translate it that way?" I mean, it's not an exact science. So I'm not, this one, I'm not going to say that there's any skullduggery involved. It's just, yeah, somebody guessed that, and it really, they made it not make sense where if they just left it the way it was, it makes more sense.

Okay, Romans 5:8 through 9, "But God commends his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we will be saved from wrath through him."

Now, many modern Christians have chosen to interpret this verse apart from all the other scriptures. They look at it as, "Aha, we have a definite guarantee. We're saved from wrath. You've been saved. That's it." And when I was a member of an evangelical church, I heard that all the time. It's an absolute guarantee. You know, it says, "We're saved from wrath."

But you can't ever just pick and choose scriptures of the Bible. I mean, you don't ignore this verse, but then you got to look at all the totality. And that's what's different. I saw in the beginning, the early Christians, they don't, they hardly, I don't even know an example where they ever take a verse and just give it an absolutist interpretation such that it would contradict all these other verses. I mean, they look at this statement and they look at all these other statements and it's, so what is Paul saying? Well, he's talking about the normal Christian life. Every one of us should have that expectation that we will not face condemnation when we die.

Now, if you're living a wicked life, then yeah, you should be worried about it. But in other words, the normal Christian life, we don't approach death with this fear of, "Oh no, I may only have 10 more years to live and what's going to happen to me?" No, we can have this confidence that we've been saved from his wrath.

Unfortunately, we can have false confidence. There's a lot of people that no doubt are going to face God's wrath who are absolutely certain they're not because, "Oh, well, Paul said, you know, we've been saved from his wrath." Well, he's not trying to make an absolute statement, but he's saying when we got saved in the beginning, we didn't just get justified and all that, but it was so that we would not face his wrath when we do die and when we're resurrected, that we've been saved from that. But he's not saying it's an automatic thing. And the early Christians, it was obvious to them.

And the scriptures make this so clear. 2 Peter, now this was a verse that, a verse, a whole book that Luther tried to take out of the New Testament canon. We talked about that at the beginning of Romans. This is one of the reasons why. "If after they have escaped the pollutions of the world to the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning." So he doesn't say, "Oh, if you've been saved, then yep, you've got a ticket that's, you know, cannot be canceled. You're going to be saved from wrath." No, Peter says, "If you get entangled again in sin, then the latter end is going to be worse."

You know, you're better off to at least be able to say on Judgment Day, "I never heard the gospel," then, wow, you heard it, you gave your life to Christ, or you at least believed in him and you proclaimed him as your Lord, and then you go back and serve the world. "For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than having known it to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them." So there are commandments for Christians. 2 Timothy 2:12, "If we endure, we shall also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us." Again, Paul is writing, well, he's writing to a Christian, you know, apostolic man, Timothy.

Just, you know, yeah, it's certain if. Normally, yes, we are saved from his wrath, but there is an if. If we endure, we will reign. Jesus, "You will be hated by all for my name's sake, but he who endures to the end will be saved." So there is the past aspect of salvation. There's a future aspect if we endure faithfully. 2 Chronicles 15:2, "The Lord is with you while you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you." I mean, a perfect verse on the word I was just telling you, synergism, working together with God. If you work with him, if you seek him, he'll make sure you will find him.

But if you forsake him, he will forsake you. That's God's message to us. Okay, Romans 5:10 through 11, "But for if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more being reconciled, will we be saved by his life." So here he talks about a future aspect. We will be saved. We have been saved, but there's also, we will be saved by his life.

So what does it mean that we're saved by his life? We all understand being saved by his death and his blood. That part we've all heard, you know, all of our lives is a very foundational teaching of Christianity. We don't hear this as much, that we will be saved by his life. Okay, so what does this mean? We're going to be saved by his life. Well, think, I know you've heard me quote John 15, so we're not going to look it up, where Jesus talks about the vine, that we are branches on the vine. And he says, when he gives that illustration, he says, "Without me, you can do nothing." Okay, Paul in one of his letters says, "Through Christ, I can do all things."

So without him, we can do nothing. That means in walking righteously with him, we can do all things, Paul says. So we're saved by his life being in us. It's not enough that he died and that our sins are forgiven at the time that we are converted and baptized. Okay, we get a clean slate, but now we have to produce fruit. We have to walk faithfully with Christ, and we're not going to do that without his life being in us. That you can't just take the Bible, and people try to do this in the world, take the Sermon on the Mount. I'm going to live by the Sermon on the Mount. And the fall didn't put us in such a state that we're totally unable to do that.

There are people who are not Christians who live by a lot of the things in the Sermon on the Mount. But if you don't have Christ's life in you, you're not going to be able to live by all of his teachings. They will pick and choose. They will live by certain things that Jesus has in the Sermon on the Mount, but they totally ignore and even reject other things that he has and then things that his apostles have given us. So we need his life inside of us that we will ultimately be saved, our final salvation. His life has to be in us. The other way his life saves us, Hebrews talks about him being our high priest, and Paul says that he intercedes for us.

So it's such a wonderful thing. And when he says he intercedes, it's not like the Father is against us and Jesus is for us. It doesn't really work that way. But Paul is trying to get the point across that we have him on our side. You know, he was a human. I mean, the Father never was. I mean, he can say to the Father, "Yeah, I was down there." It's kind of like this, you know, when it's hot and all of that. You know, the Father has never experienced that that Jesus has. But really, the wonderful thing is they're both on our side. You know, God wants us to succeed. He's not sitting here waiting, "Okay, who can I cross off, you know, and cut them off of the vine?"

No, he's like, "Man, I want everyone to make it, you know, what will help this person?" And he's there to help us, not to condemn us. But we have to avail ourselves of that help. Again, we have to have the Christ life in us. But we're saved by his life, both living in us and the fact that we have a high priest who's interceding for us when we're repentant.

Romans 5:11, we'll stop here. "And not only that, but we also exalt in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation." Okay, so he says we can exalt in this. God doesn't want us to continuously dwell in remorse and sorrow about our past life. I mean, we repent. And you know, some people come to salvation with a horrible wicked past. Other people have maybe been raised in a godly household and their sins are less. But whichever way we come, either way, we still need his blood. No one can save themselves. But he wants us to exalt in our salvation. He doesn't want us to go through life, "Oh man, I was so wicked.

I was so wicked." Hey, he forgives that. Now, there may be some things you have to make right. Sometimes there is, you know, a need for restitution. But yeah, we can exalt in our salvation, not go around with sour faces and it's like, "Oh, you know, I'm such a miserable, you know, wicked sinner and all that." Wow, he's given us a clean slate. He says exalt in it, rejoice. He wants us to be happy and not dwell on where we fell in the past.