So we're going to be looking at Paul's Epistle to the Romans. It's not going to be every Sunday for the rest of the year in case you were wondering. But I will be doing this. At least my plan is each time I preach this year and maybe beyond, I don't know how long it will take to go through Romans. What we want to see is how Romans was understood by those closest to the apostles. So this isn't going to be my take on Romans at all. It's how was it understood in the beginning? What is the historic faith?
Now, this would be very easy, and I wish today I could just start right with Romans 1. But there is one big problem why we can't do that. And this is the problem. You recognize him. Whether or not you've ever read a single word of Luther's writings—and probably most of you have never actually read his writings. Most Christians today wouldn't have. I can almost guarantee you that you've been heavily influenced by Martin Luther, particularly on the meaning of the Book of Romans.
That's because his interpretation of Romans has influenced nearly every theologian and commentator who has come after him. It was very different before Martin Luther came on the scene, how people understood Romans. But ever since he came up with a new interpretation of it, that's what we hear. If you've ever listened to a sermon, if you've ever attended Sunday school, if you read other Christian books other than the Bible—and there's nothing wrong with that.
I hope you do read Christian literature—you've probably been influenced by Martin Luther. It is so hard to get away from his influence. I notice almost every Christian book I read, it's there. It's just impregnated in everything. I still remember one of the very first sermons I heard in this church. In fact, I think it was the third sermon I heard here. We're on out of Romans 3, which is fine. I thought it was interesting, but it's normal.
The brother didn't start in Romans 2, which would put everything in perspective. But everyone always jumps to Romans 3. And it was just straight Martin Luther. And I remember driving home, I told Deborah, "I don't think I'm going to go back there. They're just too Protestant." And thankfully, I thought better of it, and I'm glad I did come back. It's even affected the Bible translations you read. Not enormously, but it's there. Things have been added.
Things have been changed a little bit to fit Martin Luther's translation and understanding. Now, as most of you know, one of my big themes is that to understand Scripture correctly, you've got to start with a blank slate. Blank slate. Okay? That's what we need to do is, okay, let's just hear Scripture speak. But it's hard to have a blank slate when your mind has already been indoctrinated. And indoctrination is not a bad thing. I mean, that's what we do here every Sunday.
I mean, that's what church is supposed to do. Parents are supposed to teach you. I mean, so indoctrination isn't in itself a bad thing, but it does mean that, yeah, most of us, we think, okay, I'm just picking up and reading Romans, and you're reading Martin Luther every way you go, not even realizing that. So let's just talk a little bit about Luther's Gospel. I mean, you've heard it. You've heard it over and over again. Okay? Number one, we are saved by faith alone.
Works, that is, obedience, play no role in our salvation. Now, I put a little asterisk there. Luther did teach that if we are a genuine Christian, if we are saved, then we will be living out a Christian life. Our works are evidence that we've been saved, but the works themselves play no role in our salvation. You don't have to have works, but you should as a Christian. If you don't have any, then it's evidence maybe you're not a Christian at all.
Number three, to believe that obedience to Christ is essential is works righteousness. If you've ever used that term, works righteousness, you've been influenced by Martin Luther because it's not in the Bible. And I thought I would just double-check. I wish I'd put it on the slide. And so I did a word search in my computer Bible, works righteousness. And the only one that came up was in Acts, where maybe I do have it on here.
Peter says that when the Gentiles were first accepted into the church, that now he sees that salvation is open to everyone who works righteousness. So it's the exact opposite of Luther's use of that term. But when you hear people use that, and I've heard it all the time, or that's work salvation or all that, that's Martin Luther. Once saved, we cannot be lost. Fallen humans cannot do any good. The only good we do is what Christ does through us. Fallen humans have no free will.
Now, most evangelicals have moved away from that. Generally today, it's only the Calvinists who would say we have no free will. But Luther said, and that was one of his big things, we have no free will. Everything is predestined. We cannot have any righteousness of our own. Christ's righteousness is imputed to us. Have any of you ever heard any of those doctrines? Have any of you ever heard them preach from this pulpit? Some of them.
So virtually all of us have either been indoctrinated with these teachings, or at least we've been exposed to them. Now, according to Luther, if you don't hold to these doctrines, you're not a Christian. So in the end, even though he said it's faith alone, it really isn't what he taught. It's if we're saved by embracing Luther's theology. Because if you think about it, Roman Catholics, they have faith that Jesus died for them. They all believe that unless they're just totally nominal.
But Luther certainly didn't look at them as saved because they didn't hold to his Gospel. Jehovah's Witnesses, they all believe Christ died for us. We're saved through his death, through his blood. But most Protestants would not look at them as being saved, even though they would say we're saved by faith alone. So it's, yeah, it's really more faith plus theology is how it's worked out. Now, like I say, it's hard to wipe the slate clean.
I mean, I find as much as you've heard me preach against the teachings of Martin Luther, I mean, it's hard for me when I pick up the Bible, boom, it just comes out. I mean, it's, like I say, if you read much Christian literature, it is just, it's constant. It's in all throughout the hymn. I mean, I'm always grimacing. We're singing a hymn. It's like, whoa, this is right out of Luther. So how do we clear Martin Luther out of our brains?
I mean, you're not going to understand the historic understanding of Romans unless you can get him cleared out of your brains. And it's not an easy thing. And that's because his doctrines are supported by plenty of proof texts. I mean, if there was nothing in the Bible to support what he said, well, yeah, probably no one would follow it. But I mean, you can pull proof text, proof text, proof text, proof text. I mean, that's easy to do. And that's what Christians all over do that.
And that's what's so often preached. And so that's why we've heard those proof texts. And yeah, we ignore other scriptures that say opposite things. But his Gospel falls apart when we embrace the teachings of the entire New Testament. When we don't pick and choose, when we look at the totality of everything, then we see, no, the New Testament teaches something different. So this is what we're going to try to do. Let's wash Luther out of our brains if we can possibly do that.
And what helped me—I mean, I got programmed with Luther like most of you. What helped me to deprogram myself was when I realized how he came up with his unique Gospel. A quote from Otto von Bismarck: "The less people know about how laws and sausages are made, the better they will sleep at night." Ever since hearing that quote, I have never wanted to know how sausages are made. I like them. I'm going to eat them. But don't tell me how they're made. Something tells me it's—I don't want to know.
But it's kind of that way with Luther's Gospel. When you look at how he created it, it's not quite so enticing. When Luther translated the Bible into German, he inserted an introduction at the beginning of the New Testament in which he created a hierarchy of New Testament books. He said they're not all on the same level. Certain books are higher up than other ones. Now, this is not something—and we're going to be looking at a lot of quotes.
And I don't want you to think, oh, David must have found some anti-Martin Luther website. They came out of here. I mean, back in the 1980s, I bought a set of Martin Luther's writings, not because I was against him. He was one of my heroes. I knew I didn't agree with some of the things he taught. But yeah, he was someone I really admired. I wanted to read his works. So I bought this whole set of them. And it was just in the process of reading that that I came on all of this stuff that, like, what? He said that?
And this is not published again by Anti-Luther. This is by Baker Publishing House, which is very strongly Martin Luther. And yeah, it was very shocking to me. And they didn't put the worst quotes in here. Some of the things that we read a few weeks ago from Daniel, yeah, they didn't include that in the set. But yeah, what they did have was shocking enough. This is what he said. Now, this is the introduction to the New Testament in his Bible. So you're a Christian getting the Bible for the first time in German.
And so you start in the New Testament. Before you get there, he's got an introduction. And here's just a few quotes from it. He gives this hierarchy. He says, "From all this, you can now judge all the books and decide among them which are the best: John's Gospel and St. Paul's Epistles, especially that to the Romans. And St. Peter's First Epistle are the true kernel and marrow of all the books. They ought rightly to be the first books, and it would be advisable for every Christian to read them first and most.
John's Gospel is the one precious true chief Gospel, far, far to be preferred to the other three and placed high above them. So too the Epistles of St. Paul and St. Peter, far past the other three Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke." In a word, he continues, "St. John's Gospel and his First Epistle, St. Paul's Epistles, especially Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, and St. Peter's First Epistle are the books that show you Christ and teach you all that is necessary.
And good for you to know, even though you are never to see or hear any other book or doctrine." Boy, that should shock you. Therefore, he continues, "St. James' Epistle is really an epistle of straw compared to them, for it has nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it." So this is how Luther was able to create a new Gospel by sweeping much of the New Testament under the rug. And it wasn't just obscure books like Jude or something. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the books that contain the bulk of Jesus's teaching.
He says, "If you never read them, you get the Gospel from Romans. That's the Gospel." Now, it's interesting that the early Christians who put together our New Testament, they labeled Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as the Gospels. They're the ones who gave them that name. When they talked about the Gospel, they talked about Jesus's teaching, not Romans. So this is what Luther did. Yeah, we sweep all these things that don't fit my Gospel under the rug. You don't need to read them.
Don't worry about Matthew and those books. As you saw, he put Romans above all the other books of the New Testament. And as we saw, he taught that we can basically skip the three Gospels that contain the bulk of Jesus's teaching: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Now, every Christian should be outraged. I mean, how did this man get a following? I mean, this was in his study Bible. This wasn't in some obscure letter or something. If you had Luther's Bible, this was right there in his Bible.
This is the preface to Romans that he put in his Bible. He said, "This epistle is really the chief part of the New Testament and the very purest Gospel. And it's worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word by heart, but occupy himself with it every day as the daily bread of the soul." Now, Romans is a marvelous book. We're not downgrading Romans, but neither are we putting it ahead of the Gospels. Therefore, it appears that St.
Paul wanted to comprise briefly in this one epistle the whole Christian and evangelical doctrine. You mean you can have the evangelical doctrine, the doctrine of the Gospel without the Sermon on the Mount, without the words of Jesus? I mean, that is outrageous. He would have been put out of the early church as a false teacher. And yet instead, he became a hero. And people still follow him blindly today. I mean, passionately today to try to preach against what Martin Luther taught, you're going to be condemned.
But not only do Jesus' words contradict Luther's new Gospel, but also the teachings in Hebrews, James, and Revelation. So he had to eliminate their influence. So as I said, he had prefaces to all the books of the Bible so he could brainwash you before you read that book. When you read Romans, oh, this is the whole Gospel in this one book. When you got to Hebrews, it said something different. He stuck it at the end of his Bible.
He said, "Up to this point, we have had the right certain chief books of the New Testament. The four following books" and that was Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation "had in ancient times a different reputation." Well, that's not really true. He gets that in that the New Testament was not handed down as a single book. When the apostles died, they didn't say, "Okay, here's the New Testament." I mean, there was just lots of writings.
And the early Christians had to decide which books should be part of the New Testament and which aren't because there were all kinds of fake Gospels. And the criteria they used was, was this book written by one of the apostles or by an associate of the apostles? And like I say, there were a lot of fake ones. So yeah, they had to sort that out. And like Hebrews and Revelation, people weren't quite as sure on that. But yeah, it wasn't that, oh, we don't like this book. They just weren't sure.
Was this written by an apostle or one of the associates? Because Hebrews is anonymous. It doesn't give the name. But the verdict of the early church was, no, these are apostolic books. So yeah, it's a little misleading the way he said that. They didn't have a bad reputation. It was just, like I say, they weren't sure. And in the end, they decided, yes, these are apostolic. He said, "In the first place, this epistle is not St. Paul's nor any other apostle's." He said that to Hebrews.
And that's still you're going to find that in almost every commentary. Now, it's interesting because every single one of the early Christians state that Hebrews is written by Paul. They quote it all the time, and they all attribute it to Paul. Now, two of the, what you might say, more learned early Christians, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, they pointed out that the language of Hebrews, the Greek, is not Paul's Greek.
They had no question that he was the author, but they thought perhaps he originally wrote it in Aramaic since it was written to the Jews, particularly in Palestine. And then maybe Luke or one of his associates translated it into Greek. And that's why the Greek reads a little differently than Paul's Greek. But no one doubted Paul was the author of it. Luther continues, well, he quotes a passage that we're going to look at in a minute. And he says, "This seems as it stands to be against all the Gospels and St.
Paul's epistles." And although one might make a gloss on it, a gloss means an explanation, a comment, the words are so clear that I do not know whether that would be sufficient. My opinion is that it does not deal with any single subject in an orderly way. So he tried to, let's erase Hebrews. This is the verse he didn't like, but there are several others in Hebrews like it.
"For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment and fiery indignation, which will devour the adversaries." That hardly sounds like once saved, always saved, does it? Or that our works play no role in our salvation? Paul continues, "Anyone who has rejected Moses's law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
Of how much worse punishment do you suppose will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace." So yeah, this didn't fit into Luther's Gospel. He didn't want people reading this and thinking that was Scripture. And of course, it is Scripture. And so it's like, well, yeah, Hebrews, you better be careful about this book. His preface to James, he starts off, "Though this epistle of St.
James was rejected by the ancients," not true. It was again a book. Yeah, it didn't circulate as widely. But no one who I mean, it's quoted widely by early Christian writers. And it was never like, oh, a book that, yeah, we don't approve of this book or anything like that. And it was in the canon. Anyways, "I praise it and hold it a good book. Yet I consider that it is not the writings of any apostle, for flatly against St.
Paul and all the rest of Scripture, it ascribes righteousness to works." And as we saw earlier, he called it a Gospel of straw. Little disingenuous. I praise it and hold it a good book. Well, you do just the opposite. You downgrade it and you say it's an epistle of straw and that it contradicts all the rest of Scripture, which it doesn't at all. I mean, that would be like me saying, Brian, I praise him. He is such a good brother. Now, he'll lie to you and cheat you and stab you in the back.
But yeah, get to know him. You'll like him. I mean, it's kind of what he did. Boy, I praise this book and then runs it down. Yeah, he did not like this. "Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac, his son, on the altar? You see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone." Now, that's not the totality of the Gospel either. You can't just take James and create a Gospel out of it. You've got to take everything the New Testament says.
This is what Luther said about Revelation. "I could nowhere detect that the Holy Spirit produced this book." Wow. "My spirit cannot fit itself into this book. There is one sufficient reason for me not to think highly of it. Christ is not taught or known in it." Has that been your experience with Revelation? That Christ isn't in it? Wow, this is the triumphal book where he's the Lamb who's been slain and sits on the throne and all of these things about Christ.
Not only that, the letters to the Seven Revelations are from Jesus. Jesus is the speaker in the book. So I'm sorry, Martin Luther. I do not believe you that, oh, you reject this book because Christ is not taught or known in it. I think this is why you rejected the book. Revelation 2, and these are just excerpts. "To the angel of the church of Ephesus write, I know your works.
To him who overcomes, I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." So the battle is not over when we get saved. We have to keep overcoming till the end of our life. "To the angel of the church at Smyrna write, I know your works." Every one of these, he talks about their works. He says, "At the end, be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life." Not once saved, always saved. "To the angel of the church in Pergamos write, I know your works.
To the angel of the church in Thyatira write, he who overcomes and keeps my works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations." Goes totally against Luther's Gospel. This is even more. Revelation 20:12, "And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the book of life.
And the dead were judged according to their works by the things which are written in the books." Yeah, so you can't embrace Luther's Gospel and embrace this at the same time. Either Luther is wrong or you shove all of these books under the rug. Nowadays, I mean, Luther did the dirty work. So now all of these books are in our Bible. No one would say, oh, there's a hierarchy. But that's what they practice. And so yeah, this verse in Revelation, they would find some way to explain it away. I don't know what it is.
It's so plain. But I guarantee you they explain it away some way. And same with James and the others. Luther went so far as to even alter the text of Romans. Thankfully, this is not in the King James, I don't believe, but it's in Luther's Bible. Romans 3:28 says, "A man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law." Luther changed the verse to say, "A man is justified by faith alone apart from the works of the law." Now, when the Catholic scholars were reviewing his Bible, they said, "Wait a minute.
You've altered the Bible. You've inserted a word here that's not called for." And one of Luther's friends brought this to his attention. And this was Luther's replied. "If your papist wishes to make a great fuss about the word alone, say this to him: Dr. Martin Luther will have it so. And he says that a papist and an ass are the same thing. I will it. I command it. My will is reason enough." Wow. You're going to follow this man as a teacher? I mean, just like, what on earth is going through this man's mind?
I don't know that the Pope even talked like that. So this was how Luther was able to create his new version of the Gospel. And yes, if you take away Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Hebrews, James, Revelation, and all kinds of verses throughout Paul and the other books of the Bible, yeah, you can make his Gospel fit. Of course, if we have to shove Jesus and several entire books of the New Testament under the rug, then it should be obvious that we are not teaching the truth.
Imagine trying to get away with this with a human document such as a last will and testament. I mean, I thought about this when I was preparing these slides, as an attorney, going to court and I'm presenting a will to the judge and there's some dispute over the interpretation. And I say, well, okay, you can ignore Articles 1, 2, and 3. Article 4, now that we're going to look at that. Skip Articles 5, 6, and 7. But now Article 8, now that's the chief one.
That's far to be preferred above all the other articles in this will. And then Article 9, 10, they're good. Article 10, well, that's an article of straw. You can ignore that one. If you pull that in a court of law, I can imagine the judge looking at me and saying, "Counselor, just what are you trying to pull?" I mean, I doubt I could go back in that court again. I mean, my name would be so blackmarked. It's like, what on earth?
You don't take a document and say, well, you look at this part, ignore this part, and all of that. I mean, we wouldn't do that with a human document. But with God's Word, we go through and, oh, ignore that, ignore that. I mean, it's just wicked. As I said, he would have been put out of the church as a false teacher. Now, why was he able to get away with something so outrageous? Well, the German Catholics had never had a Bible before they could read.
I mean, he did something marvelous giving them the Bible in German. That was a very wonderful thing. And so he put all of these introductions in there. Well, what would a Catholic know who'd never read the Bible before? It's like, oh, Martin Luther, if he says it, he must know what he's talking about. Plus, his Gospel appeals to our flesh. I mean, let's be honest. So yeah, he got away with it. So that's why we're going to be going back to see how Christians understood Romans in the beginning.
All I can say is if Luther's Gospel is true, then the entire body of Christ was in ignorance of the Christian Gospel for the first 1,500 years. Nobody taught that Gospel before Luther. So are we to believe that Christ established his church and yet nobody understood what the Gospel was until Martin Luther, 1,500 years later, not even from Palestine, not even a native Greek speaker, a German speaker? I mean, he did no Greek. That somehow he understands it where people who lived back then didn't.
I mean, this would mean that the apostles were abysmal failures. They weren't able to keep the church on the right path for even 50 years after their death. I mean, Luther's Gospel is still preached everywhere today. People are passionate about it. If you say anything against it, you're going to get shouted down, attacked, and all of that. And yet if his Gospel is true, if it's really what the apostles taught, then they were terrible failures. I mean, everyone forgot it as soon as they died.
I mean, you can't even find a trace of it. There weren't even arguments about it. One faction saying, well, we're saved by faith alone. And another one saying, no, works play a role in our salvation. There's no argument. Everyone believed the same thing. And it wasn't Luther's Gospel. So yeah, I find that hard to believe. How would a major teaching like that just can you imagine today that five years from now, no church teaches this? No Baptist Church, no Charismatic Church, no Lutheran, no any church.
They've never heard of this doctrine of Luther. No one teaches it. It just disappeared. I mean, can any of us believe that would happen? There's no trace. It's just gone. Well, that would be the case if his Gospel is true. Yet Paul had told Timothy, "The things that you heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also." He said this right at the end of his life. That's his last letter, 2 Timothy.
"So the Gospel was passed down from the apostles to the disciples of the apostles and then to the disciples of those men." And how well had this system worked by AD 100 at the close of the Apostolic Age? Were they still holding onto it? Well, John gives us an evaluation of both the old men and the young men in the church at the end of the first century. This is what he said. 1 John, this is written probably about the year 95.
"I have written to you fathers because you have known him from the beginning." From the beginning. So they're in good shape. "I have written to you young men because you are strong and the Word of God abides in you. And you have overcome the wicked one." So everything was in good shape, AD 95. The early Christian writings pick up shortly after those words were written. The Didache might have been written actually before then.
If not, certainly the letters of Ignatius, the letter of Clement of Rome, they're like AD 105, 110 in there. I mean, there's no gap in time. The New Testament ends and then the uninspired writers begin. And the early Christian approach to any doctrine, they first focused on following and preserving what had been handed down to them. We don't have that luxury. I mean, what was handed to our from our parents. But yeah, we can't say, well, this came from the apostles or from a disciple of the apostles. But they could.
Second, they built their beliefs on the totality of the New Testament instead of placing certain books above other ones. It's, what do all the scriptures say? If there's a problem, if we have a bunch of problem verses, then our doctrine must be wrong. If our doctrine is true, then it fits all of the passages. We don't have any books we have to hide under the rug, any verses, chapters of the Bible. No, our doctrine needs to embrace it all. They certainly didn't believe Romans to be the central book of the Bible.
They believed it to be fully inspired and on the same level as the other books. Third, they began with the teachings of Jesus. The book they quote from the most isn't Romans. It's Matthew for the simple reason that it contains more of Jesus's teaching than any other New Testament book. They didn't put it above the other New Testament books, but they quote from it all the time because this is Jesus. This is our Lord. And then they interpreted the rest of scripture in light of Jesus's teaching. You get down solid.
What did Jesus teach? What is the Gospel? And then you understand the others correctly. Jesus said, "But you do not be called teacher, for one is your teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren." So we don't make Paul the teacher. I mean, we saw the video a few weeks ago from Daniel. Yeah, this brother saying Paul is the teacher. You don't go directly to Jesus. You got to go to Paul. I'm sorry. It's not that way. Jesus said none of you are to be called teacher.
Not in the lower sense of that we are teachers, but that we are the Father of the church. We are the teacher. Something like that. No, it's Jesus Christ. And if we have to shove his Gospel under the rug, there is a big problem because there is only one Gospel. Mark starts off, "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." It's not the Gospel of Paul, Gospel of Luther. It is Jesus Christ. And it's found in the Gospels.
Matthew says, "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the Gospel of the kingdom." That is the Gospel, the Gospel of the kingdom that Jesus preached from the very beginning of his ministry. And Jesus said, "And this Gospel of the kingdom, the one he had been preaching, will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations. And then the end will come." There are not two Gospels, one preached by Jesus and another preached by Paul or by Luther.
So Jesus is always our supreme teacher. If we are interpreting the apostles in a way that contradicts Jesus, then we are misinterpreting the apostles. There's another problem with making Romans the chief book of the Bible. This is not a slam on Romans in any way at all. We're going to be going through it because it is a book that contains very important truths and gives a balance, say, to the Book of James and some of the other books. This is 2 Peter 3:14-17.
Peter writes, "Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by him in peace, without spot and blameless." So where to be diligent? I noticed Luther wanted the first letter of Peter in those books, his hierarchy. He didn't mention 2 Peter in there.
"And consider that the long suffering of our Lord is salvation, as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the scriptures.
You therefore, beloved, since you know this beforehand, beware, lest you also fall from your own steadfastness, being led away with the error of the wicked." So the letters of Paul are the only books of the Bible that come with a divine warning, caution. Beware. Proceed carefully as these letters contain things that are hard to understand. It's not me saying this. That's the Holy Spirit saying that through Peter. And it was already happening in his day.
People were taking Paul and taking the things that are hard to understand and coming up with some bad teachings. Now Peter wrote that about all of Paul's letters. Yet Romans is by far the hardest to understand of all Paul's letters. So if that's true of, say, Galatians, which to me is not that difficult, how much more so is it true of Romans to be cautious. And the early Christians took Peter's words very seriously. And so should we.
John Chrysostom, who was one of the most gifted, I would say, exegetes of scripture, of just going through and being able to make scripture clear and come to life, he lived in the 300s. He said, and he was a big admirer of Paul. I mean, he starts his sermons on Romans. I don't know. There must be five just going on praising Paul and all that. So he's not critical of Paul in any way.
But he said this, "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 that's what's going to happen. And when that happens, then we know we are misunderstanding Paul. If we're having to shove Matthew, Mark, and Luke and these other books under the rug, we are misunderstanding Paul because he does not contradict his Lord Jesus." If you like this message, you'll want to hear more like it.
Go to Scroll Publishing's website and check out all the different books and audio messages available. Scroll is a place for people who are seeking the truth, who are looking for the historic faith, who don't want spins or complicated interpretations. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this video with others. Thanks. God bless.