The Romans Road
Bibles Study Time 6-17-07
Bibles Study Time 6-17-07
Paul started off his letter to the Romans, saying:
Romans 1:1-4 (NKJ)
1 Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God
2 which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,
3 concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,
4 and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
In this statement, Paul declared the fact that he was an apostle who had been called by God to preach the good news of Jesus Christ, to tell the world that Jesus Christ was the Son of David and the Son of God. These two points were critical to Paul’s ministry at the time that Paul wrote to the Romans.
It was well documented in the gospels which were written by Matthew and Luke that Jesus was a descendant of King David. This was critical if Jesus was to rule over Israel as King. God had promised David in II Samuel, Chapter 7, that one of his descendants would sit upon his throne and rule the world in an everlasting kingdom. Specifically, God told David:
2 Samuel 7:12-13 (NKJ)
12 "When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.
13 "He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
The angel told Mary:
Luke 1:31-33 (NKJ)
31 " . . . behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus.
32 "He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.
33 "And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end."
Israel’s Messiah had to be the Son of David.
Paul also emphasized that Jesus was the declared to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead. In Psalms, Chapter 2, King David wrote about a heavenly scene in which God the Father spoke to Jesus, saying,
Psalms 2:7-8 (KJV)
7 . . . Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
When Christ was raised from the dead, God the Father made a formal declaration before all of the principalities and powers that Jesus was and is the only begotten Son of God. He said, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.”
Now this may sound a little strange. Wasn’t Jesus always the Son of God? Certainly! He always has been and always will be God the Son. But the day that Jesus arose from the dead was the day that God formally declared it to be so.
The day when Christ was raised from the dead was a great day of victory for God and for all of us who have put our faith in Christ. According to Colossians, Chapter 2, believers have victory in Jesus because we have been buried with Christ in baptism and raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Christ from the dead.
When Christ was raised from the dead, God forgave our sins, He nailed the Law to the cross, and He disarmed the principalities and powers of Satan.
So in Romans, Chapter 1, Paul says that the gospel of God which he was preaching at that time was based on the fact that Jesus Christ was the Son of David, and it was based on the fact that Jesus Christ was declared to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead.
Now from this we can see immediately that the message we preach today is somewhat different from the message that Paul was preaching at that time. How many of us go around today emphasizing that Jesus was the Son of David? It’s just not something we would emphasize as part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But it was a very important part of the gospel at that time because Jesus had to be the Son of David in order to qualify as Israel’s Messiah.
When we look closely at Romans, Chapter 1, we also see that Paul’s message at this time was something that had been promised by God’s prophets in the Holy Scriptures. Paul starts off the book of Romans stating that his gospel was promised by the prophets of the Holy Scriptures, and then he ends the book of Romans with this same thought. Romans, Chapter 16, and verse 25 says:
Romans 16:25-26 (NKJ)
25 Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began
26 but now has been made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures has been made known to all nations . . .
When Paul said that God was able to establish believers according to his gospel, we have to conclude that Paul was talking about the same gospel that he spoke of in the first chapter of Romans. It was the gospel of God:
Romans 1:2-4 (NKJ)
2 which (God) promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,
3 concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,
4 and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
It would appear that Paul referred to his gospel as a mystery because it had up to this point been hidden in the Old Testament scriptures. The fact that Paul called this gospel a mystery causes some confusion among Bible students. They confuse this mystery with the mystery which was given through Paul in his letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians. However, there is no reason for this confusion.
The mystery in Romans, Chapter 16, is clearly stated to be a mystery which was being made manifest by the prophetic scriptures. It was promised by God’s prophets in the Holy Scriptures, but it was hidden in a cloak of mystery. It would have been impossible for anyone to put all the pieces together before the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. (I started to say almost impossible, but I think I can safely say that it would have been absolutely impossible for anyone to have put all the pieces together before Christ was crucified and raised from the dead.)
Regardless, the truth of the gospel which Paul was preaching was present in the Old Testament scriptures. After all, it was the Old Testament scriptures that Paul used to prove His gospel.
By contrast, the mystery in Ephesians and Colossians is a mystery which was not hidden in the scriptures but rather was hidden in God. Paul says in Ephesians 3:
Ephesians 3:8-10 (NKJ)
8 To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,
9 and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ;
10 to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places,
This mystery had been hidden in God from the beginning of the ages, and this mystery was all about the church of our present age which is currently revealing the manifold wisdom of God to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.
Jesus Christ disarmed the principalities and powers when He came back from the dead, and now He is revealing the wisdom of God to the principalities and powers through the Church which is the Body of Christ.
This church is to be distinguished from the other churches of the Bible. In Acts, Chapter 7, Stephen spoke of the church in the wilderness and was clearly referring to the Jews who followed Moses from Egypt to Mt. Sinai.
The word church is ekklesia in the Greek. It means “called out ones.” It refers to any group of people who have been called out by God for a specific purpose. Therefore, Stephen spoke of the Jews who followed Moses as the church in the wilderness. They had been called out of Egypt to inherit the promised land.
As Paul wrote to the believers in Rome, he was writing to the New Covenant Church. This New Covenant Church was, as the name implies, looking forward to the fulfillment of the New Covenant. Jeremiah promised that God would make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It was a covenant which promised the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit and a world wide kingdom of peace and righteousness. In Romans, Chapter 11, Paul said:
Romans 11:1-2 (NKJ)
1 I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! . . .
2 God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew . . .
Romans 11:25-27 (NKJ)
25 . . . I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;
27 For this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins."
This was part of the gospel of Paul. In Romans, Paul emphasized the salvation of the soul by means of simple faith in shed blood of Jesus Christ. He knew that the promises of the New Covenant would not and could not be fully realized until individual Jews put their personal faith in Jesus Christ and came to the point of believing that Jesus Christ died for their sins.
But make no mistake about it, Paul had the New Covenant Kingdom in mind as he taught the great spiritual truths of the book of Romans. In Acts, Chapter 26, Paul stood before King Agrippa and defended himself against the charges which had been brought against him by the Jews. He said:
Acts 26:5-7 (NKJ)
5 "(These Jews) knew me from the first, if they were willing to testify, that according to the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.
6 "And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers.
7 "To this promise our twelve tribes, earnestly serving God night and day, hope to attain. For this hope's sake, King Agrippa, I am accused by the Jews.
Paul had not been accused of teaching the mystery concerning the Church which is the Body of Christ, but he been accused of incorrectly interpreting the Old Testament scriptures to make it appear that Jesus was the promised Messiah.
Paul ultimately told King Agrippa in so many words that yes, he was guilty of teaching the hope which was taught in the Old Testament scriptures, and yes, he did believe that Jesus was the One who had come to fulfill all of its promises.
There were two big problems that Paul faced in his New Covenant ministry. The first problem was that the truth of the New Covenant was hidden in the scriptures. One had to dig a little and compare one scripture with another scripture in order to put it all together. But the biggest problem that Paul faced was the blindness of the hearts of the people. For the most part, the people were willingly ignorant. They just did not want to hear or see what Paul was teaching.
Obviously, Paul’s dramatic defense before King Agrippa was very close to the end of the Acts period. It wasn’t long afterward that Paul ended up in Rome in a meeting with the Jewish leaders of that city. Again, Paul’s trusted friend, Luke, recorded the fact that Paul:
Acts 28:23 (NKJ)
23 . . . explained and solemnly testified of the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus from both the Law of Moses and the Prophets, from morning till evening.
Paul let them have from one end of the Old Testament to the other. From the scriptures he proved that Jesus was the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament promises. When they refused to believe, Paul said that their unbelief was not a result of ignorance, but it was a result of rebellion against God. This prompted Paul to say:
Acts 28:25-28 (NKJ)
25 . . . "The Holy Spirit spoke rightly through Isaiah the prophet to our fathers,
26 "saying, 'Go to this people and say: "Hearing you will hear, and shall not understand; and seeing you will see, and not perceive;
27 For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them." '
28 "Therefore let it be known to you that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it!"
The mystery concerning Church which is the Body of Christ stands in stark contrast to the mystery concerning Israel’s New Covenant. You can search the Old Testament scriptures from one end to the other, and you will never find even a hint concerning Israel’s rejection of the resurrected Christ or of the calling out of the Church which is the Body of Christ. This mystery had been hidden in God from the beginning of the ages, but it was finally revealed through the Apostle Paul in his letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians.
As members of the Church, the Body of Christ, we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. We no longer look for the kingdom which is the earthly hope of the New Covenant. That’s exactly why we no longer emphasize that Jesus was the Son of David.
We are not citizens of this earth, we are citizens of heaven. God has
Ephesians 2:6 (NKJ)
6 . . . raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
Therefore, we should:
Colossians 3:1 (NKJ)
1 . . . seek those things which are above . . .
Thank you for listening to Bible Study Time this morning. It’s been a pleasure studying with you, and I’ll look forward to studying with you again next week at this same time.
Church links:
Romans 1:1-4 (NKJ)
1 Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God
2 which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,
3 concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,
4 and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
In this statement, Paul declared the fact that he was an apostle who had been called by God to preach the good news of Jesus Christ, to tell the world that Jesus Christ was the Son of David and the Son of God. These two points were critical to Paul’s ministry at the time that Paul wrote to the Romans.
It was well documented in the gospels which were written by Matthew and Luke that Jesus was a descendant of King David. This was critical if Jesus was to rule over Israel as King. God had promised David in II Samuel, Chapter 7, that one of his descendants would sit upon his throne and rule the world in an everlasting kingdom. Specifically, God told David:
2 Samuel 7:12-13 (NKJ)
12 "When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.
13 "He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
The angel told Mary:
Luke 1:31-33 (NKJ)
31 " . . . behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus.
32 "He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.
33 "And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end."
Israel’s Messiah had to be the Son of David.
Paul also emphasized that Jesus was the declared to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead. In Psalms, Chapter 2, King David wrote about a heavenly scene in which God the Father spoke to Jesus, saying,
Psalms 2:7-8 (KJV)
7 . . . Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.
8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
When Christ was raised from the dead, God the Father made a formal declaration before all of the principalities and powers that Jesus was and is the only begotten Son of God. He said, “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.”
Now this may sound a little strange. Wasn’t Jesus always the Son of God? Certainly! He always has been and always will be God the Son. But the day that Jesus arose from the dead was the day that God formally declared it to be so.
The day when Christ was raised from the dead was a great day of victory for God and for all of us who have put our faith in Christ. According to Colossians, Chapter 2, believers have victory in Jesus because we have been buried with Christ in baptism and raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Christ from the dead.
When Christ was raised from the dead, God forgave our sins, He nailed the Law to the cross, and He disarmed the principalities and powers of Satan.
So in Romans, Chapter 1, Paul says that the gospel of God which he was preaching at that time was based on the fact that Jesus Christ was the Son of David, and it was based on the fact that Jesus Christ was declared to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead.
Now from this we can see immediately that the message we preach today is somewhat different from the message that Paul was preaching at that time. How many of us go around today emphasizing that Jesus was the Son of David? It’s just not something we would emphasize as part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But it was a very important part of the gospel at that time because Jesus had to be the Son of David in order to qualify as Israel’s Messiah.
When we look closely at Romans, Chapter 1, we also see that Paul’s message at this time was something that had been promised by God’s prophets in the Holy Scriptures. Paul starts off the book of Romans stating that his gospel was promised by the prophets of the Holy Scriptures, and then he ends the book of Romans with this same thought. Romans, Chapter 16, and verse 25 says:
Romans 16:25-26 (NKJ)
25 Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began
26 but now has been made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures has been made known to all nations . . .
When Paul said that God was able to establish believers according to his gospel, we have to conclude that Paul was talking about the same gospel that he spoke of in the first chapter of Romans. It was the gospel of God:
Romans 1:2-4 (NKJ)
2 which (God) promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,
3 concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,
4 and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
It would appear that Paul referred to his gospel as a mystery because it had up to this point been hidden in the Old Testament scriptures. The fact that Paul called this gospel a mystery causes some confusion among Bible students. They confuse this mystery with the mystery which was given through Paul in his letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians. However, there is no reason for this confusion.
The mystery in Romans, Chapter 16, is clearly stated to be a mystery which was being made manifest by the prophetic scriptures. It was promised by God’s prophets in the Holy Scriptures, but it was hidden in a cloak of mystery. It would have been impossible for anyone to put all the pieces together before the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. (I started to say almost impossible, but I think I can safely say that it would have been absolutely impossible for anyone to have put all the pieces together before Christ was crucified and raised from the dead.)
Regardless, the truth of the gospel which Paul was preaching was present in the Old Testament scriptures. After all, it was the Old Testament scriptures that Paul used to prove His gospel.
By contrast, the mystery in Ephesians and Colossians is a mystery which was not hidden in the scriptures but rather was hidden in God. Paul says in Ephesians 3:
Ephesians 3:8-10 (NKJ)
8 To me, who am less than the least of all the saints, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ,
9 and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ;
10 to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places,
This mystery had been hidden in God from the beginning of the ages, and this mystery was all about the church of our present age which is currently revealing the manifold wisdom of God to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places.
Jesus Christ disarmed the principalities and powers when He came back from the dead, and now He is revealing the wisdom of God to the principalities and powers through the Church which is the Body of Christ.
This church is to be distinguished from the other churches of the Bible. In Acts, Chapter 7, Stephen spoke of the church in the wilderness and was clearly referring to the Jews who followed Moses from Egypt to Mt. Sinai.
The word church is ekklesia in the Greek. It means “called out ones.” It refers to any group of people who have been called out by God for a specific purpose. Therefore, Stephen spoke of the Jews who followed Moses as the church in the wilderness. They had been called out of Egypt to inherit the promised land.
As Paul wrote to the believers in Rome, he was writing to the New Covenant Church. This New Covenant Church was, as the name implies, looking forward to the fulfillment of the New Covenant. Jeremiah promised that God would make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It was a covenant which promised the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit and a world wide kingdom of peace and righteousness. In Romans, Chapter 11, Paul said:
Romans 11:1-2 (NKJ)
1 I say then, has God cast away His people? Certainly not! . . .
2 God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew . . .
Romans 11:25-27 (NKJ)
25 . . . I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;
27 For this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins."
This was part of the gospel of Paul. In Romans, Paul emphasized the salvation of the soul by means of simple faith in shed blood of Jesus Christ. He knew that the promises of the New Covenant would not and could not be fully realized until individual Jews put their personal faith in Jesus Christ and came to the point of believing that Jesus Christ died for their sins.
But make no mistake about it, Paul had the New Covenant Kingdom in mind as he taught the great spiritual truths of the book of Romans. In Acts, Chapter 26, Paul stood before King Agrippa and defended himself against the charges which had been brought against him by the Jews. He said:
Acts 26:5-7 (NKJ)
5 "(These Jews) knew me from the first, if they were willing to testify, that according to the strictest sect of our religion I lived a Pharisee.
6 "And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers.
7 "To this promise our twelve tribes, earnestly serving God night and day, hope to attain. For this hope's sake, King Agrippa, I am accused by the Jews.
Paul had not been accused of teaching the mystery concerning the Church which is the Body of Christ, but he been accused of incorrectly interpreting the Old Testament scriptures to make it appear that Jesus was the promised Messiah.
Paul ultimately told King Agrippa in so many words that yes, he was guilty of teaching the hope which was taught in the Old Testament scriptures, and yes, he did believe that Jesus was the One who had come to fulfill all of its promises.
There were two big problems that Paul faced in his New Covenant ministry. The first problem was that the truth of the New Covenant was hidden in the scriptures. One had to dig a little and compare one scripture with another scripture in order to put it all together. But the biggest problem that Paul faced was the blindness of the hearts of the people. For the most part, the people were willingly ignorant. They just did not want to hear or see what Paul was teaching.
Obviously, Paul’s dramatic defense before King Agrippa was very close to the end of the Acts period. It wasn’t long afterward that Paul ended up in Rome in a meeting with the Jewish leaders of that city. Again, Paul’s trusted friend, Luke, recorded the fact that Paul:
Acts 28:23 (NKJ)
23 . . . explained and solemnly testified of the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus from both the Law of Moses and the Prophets, from morning till evening.
Paul let them have from one end of the Old Testament to the other. From the scriptures he proved that Jesus was the fulfillment of all of the Old Testament promises. When they refused to believe, Paul said that their unbelief was not a result of ignorance, but it was a result of rebellion against God. This prompted Paul to say:
Acts 28:25-28 (NKJ)
25 . . . "The Holy Spirit spoke rightly through Isaiah the prophet to our fathers,
26 "saying, 'Go to this people and say: "Hearing you will hear, and shall not understand; and seeing you will see, and not perceive;
27 For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I should heal them." '
28 "Therefore let it be known to you that the salvation of God has been sent to the Gentiles, and they will hear it!"
The mystery concerning Church which is the Body of Christ stands in stark contrast to the mystery concerning Israel’s New Covenant. You can search the Old Testament scriptures from one end to the other, and you will never find even a hint concerning Israel’s rejection of the resurrected Christ or of the calling out of the Church which is the Body of Christ. This mystery had been hidden in God from the beginning of the ages, but it was finally revealed through the Apostle Paul in his letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians.
As members of the Church, the Body of Christ, we are blessed with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ. We no longer look for the kingdom which is the earthly hope of the New Covenant. That’s exactly why we no longer emphasize that Jesus was the Son of David.
We are not citizens of this earth, we are citizens of heaven. God has
Ephesians 2:6 (NKJ)
6 . . . raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
Therefore, we should:
Colossians 3:1 (NKJ)
1 . . . seek those things which are above . . .
Thank you for listening to Bible Study Time this morning. It’s been a pleasure studying with you, and I’ll look forward to studying with you again next week at this same time.
Church links:
1 comment:
Jim,
Your Footnotes is great. You work very hard on it. I found the titles for 5/6 and 5/13 BST messages
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