Day 342 (Romans 4-7) - Year 6
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Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. Today we continue in Paul's letter to the church in Rome. It's comprised of a diverse group of people, but Paul's letter primarily focuses on issues that pertain to the Christians who are ethnic Jews. He ended yesterday by saying salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and that Jews don't have a special advantage just because they have the law. Today he continues where he left off by saying...

Case in point, Abraham. He was the very first Jew, and even he was declared righteous because of his faith in Yahweh, not by keeping the law. Because, by the way, the law didn't even exist for another 430 years.

Then he goes on to say, cool, now that we're on the same page, let's talk about how he got that saving faith. Did he get it by doing something like being circumcised maybe? No, because he got the faith before he was circumcised. If he'd had to do something in order to receive the faith, then faith isn't a free gift anymore. It's something you had to earn. So if Abraham was given righteousness and faith as an uncircumcised man, then guess what? The same thing can happen for the Gentiles.

Paul also reminds them that God called Abraham the father of many nations. He's the father of all believers from every nation. Paul says circumcision was just an outward display of the faith Abraham already had, which means that if he had died before he was circumcised, his sins would have already been covered. And it's easy for us to think, but Jesus hadn't even died at that point. How could he have faith in Jesus?

He had faith in Yahweh. Jesus and the Father and the Spirit are all united, the three in one. So even though he didn't know all the particulars of it, the incarnation and the crucifixion and the resurrection, he responded to what he knew at that point, which is Yahweh, the same God. And according to Yahweh, who exists outside of time, even though Jesus hadn't been born when Abraham died, Jesus had already died on the cross before the world was made. It was always the plan.

It's hard for people like us who are constrained to time to grasp that, but here's an imperfect analogy that might help.

Let's say you're writing and directing a movie. You're there during the filming of every scene. You're never in the shot, but you're directing every moment that you wrote. Then you take all that film and you roll it out in the cutting room. You see every frame at the same time, even though they happened at different times. You were there for it all, before it happened and orchestrating it as it happened. This might be kind of what it's like to be outside of time, to see all the frames at once and still be present and active in them all.

So what this amounts to for those of us in the frames is this. We're in a later frame, with a faith that looks back to God's provision on the cross. Abraham is in an earlier frame, with a faith that looked forward to God's provision. And all the while, God stands over and in both of those moments, approving.

In chapter 5, Paul says that being justified or declared righteous in Christ ends the hostility between us and God. Our sin was the problem. So now that our sins are covered, past, present, and future, we have good standing with the Father. And because we have this relationship, we can rejoice even in our sufferings. Verses 3-4 say, There are a few things worth pointing out here.

It's interesting that the first thing suffering produces is endurance. We need it because suffering always lasts longer than we want it to. And then comes character. If we never had to suffer, we would be insufferable. People who get everything they want are hard to be around. And character leads to hope.

Not just hope in any old thing, but hope in the glory of God. We know that God is being glorified and made known in our suffering. Essentially, God can be trusted with our suffering. He has given us His Holy Spirit to carry with us in all things. And God has been with us in even worse times than our suffering. In fact, when He rescued us, we were His enemies—

steeped in sin and weak and rebellious. But God said that was the right time, in the midst of our sin, to draw near and rescue us and be reconciled to us. He pursues his enemies. Jesus came to set right what was destroyed by God's enemies, set in motion by Adam. Where one man, Adam, consigned all to death, Jesus, the second Adam, came to bring life.

It doesn't seem like one man could accomplish that, but this isn't really a one-to-one trade. An imperfect man could die to pay for his own sins. That's a balanced equation. But what about a perfect God-man?

He doesn't need to die for his own sins because he has none. So how many sinful humans can be covered by the blood of a perfect God? As many as accept it. Verse 19 says, And because his blood covers you, you can't out-sin it. Verse 20 says it like this, Verse 20 says it like this,

Grace abounded all the more. In other words, if your sin is a valley and His grace is a mountain, you could push the mountain into the valley and it would still be a mountain.

But he goes on in chapter 6 to say that his grace is no reason to continue in sin, obviously. The pre-Jesus version of us who loved sin got a new heart that loves God. But that new heart still lives in a body that loves sin. So there's a struggle. But we're no longer enslaved to that struggle.

By the Spirit's power in us, we are continually killing off the old self, as Scripture calls it. Verse 11 says, And while it may be easy to fall back into our old patterns, Paul offers a helpful reminder in verse 21 that sin isn't worth it. He says,

What fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The fruit of sin brings shame. The fruit of righteousness, on the other hand, is sanctification and eternal life.

All this talk could make it sound like Paul hates the law, so he clarifies in chapter 7. He says the law is actually helpful because it taught him what sin is. Like we've said, the law is the MRI. It can only diagnose the problem. And if you have a problem, you need it to be diagnosed. We need to know that we're sinners. If we aren't confronted with the fact that we are not good people, we'll never realize our need for a Savior.

The problem Paul highlights, though, is that because we are sinners, we want to push back on boundaries and laws. We want to see how far we can take things. So in the same way that the law helps us, it also presents us with even more temptation. The law didn't make Paul sin, but his sinful flesh saw an invitation to sin all the more. This is one reason why the law can never be an end unto itself. It invites more problems than it could ever solve.

Paul lives in the struggle between the old self and the new self, between the flesh and the spirit. He's very honest about his struggles. This may have been the only time in today's reading where you thought, I get it, Paul. I totally understand what you're saying and I'm with you.

Here's what Paul does in those circumstances. He looks past his surface desires to see what his heart really wants, not his flesh. What is his true desire? What is the desire that's going to last? Because the other thing is going to be fruitless and produce shame, like he said in 621. He digs down to find what's in his inner being, the part of him that delights in God.

My guide shot for today was in 425. It says, Jesus our Lord was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Not only does Christ's death save us, not our works, but also our sins aren't counted against us either. We got grace and mercy. We got forgiveness and adoption. We got our sins erased and our lives restored. Not just the absence of punishment, but the presence of blessing. What a Savior! He's where the joy is. How did you get here?

Are you here because somebody else told you about the Bible Recap? You probably are. Most of you are. And we're so thankful for that person who told you, whether you know them personally or they posted it online and you saw it, however you heard about it. If somebody else told you, we're grateful for them. And now we want you to pay it forward. It's your turn to invite someone new to join us in the new year. We've even created graphics for you to share on social media, or you can text them, whatever is easier for you.

We're excited to find out which friends of yours will become new friends of ours as we read the Bible together starting on January 1st. To find those invite graphics, go to thebiblerecap.com forward slash invite or click the link in the show notes.