The Book of Romans: A Bible study series in 16 parts
Lesson Two
Chapter Two: Part I
To watch this on YouTube first given on Facebook Live, and on Zoom, please visit
The outline of J Vernon McGee influenced me
1.
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Salutation: Paul the slave
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2.
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Sin: What it is (First, the bad news)
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3.
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Salvation: How to get it (Then the good news)
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4.
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Sanctification: God makes us right with him
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5.
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Struggle with self and with Torah
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6.
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Spirit-filled living: Alive each day in him
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7.
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Security: Assurance of being his
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8.
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Sovereign God of Israel
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9.
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Sacrifice & service: Living for him
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10.
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Separation and priesting/serving each other
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11.
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Salutation and farewells
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Lesson Two: Sin: What it is (First, the bad news) Part I (1.18-2.16)
[For those watching online, please watch this 7-minute 47-second video which showcases with great graphics the first four chapters of this book. https://youtu.be/ej_6dVdJSIU ]
The theme: How to be right with God.
Today in Australia is Good Friday, and I want to talk about Good things and the Bad things that usually precede them. We are in the midst of a lockdown throughout the world due to COVID-19. No one thinks this is a good thing, but as a result of going through this, many are finding good behaviours reinstated, good relationships fixed, good coming out of tragedy.
Good Friday is the day in history when Yeshua died on a Roman cross. If you believe in him as a messiah and saviour, it’s a great day. It’s the day when our righteous messiah took the sins of the world on his shoulders and according to Isaiah the prophet (chapter 53) “the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Verse 6). If you don’t believe in Jesus, then it’s the day of unspeakable trauma to a good man, a day which should be called “No-good” Friday, when a good man copped unbearable evil.
For believers, what makes Good Friday good is that Yeshua died in our place and rose again in triumph on Sunday morning. Good overcame evil.
The other night, Wednesday evening our family and maybe yours as well, celebrated Passover. And we ate unusual items like parsley dipped in salt water, horseradish on matzo, and egg also dipped in saltwater. We remembered the pain of the house of bondage. We experienced life as if we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. The only real way to rejoice in our deliverance is to remember that we were slaves. You don’t know joy unless you remember that from which you were delivered.
In today’s reading, from chapter 1, verse 18 to chapter 2, verse 16, we see some seriously bad information. That is, we see ‘bad news.’ And no one, at least no one I know, ever wants to listen only to bad news. I often ask people reading their newspaper alone in a café, “Anything good in the paper today?” And to a man they almost always insist there “never is anything good in it.” And yet, they buy the paper. Curious, eh? Tragedy, failure, despair, loss. These are realities, to be sure, but they are not our go-to movies or go-to broadcasts. We want good news, don’t we? But this section of Romans is going to highlight human failure and God’s justice. This lesson won’t get me on the cover of Time magazine.
Last week we began this teaching of the book of the Bible titled Romans. Not a book, this was actually a letter written by the former rabbi Saul of Tarsus to the Roman believers. We saw in last week’s episode the great themes Saul, now Paul, would be unpacking in this letter. In today’s lesson, we begin the 2nd section, which you can see in this outline from J. Vernon McGee. By the way that’s all I took from this Bible teacher from the last century. For my personal study, I’ve used the academic research of Donald Robinson, Michael Bird, John Murray, Stuart Briscoe, and James DG Dunn. There are many others I recommend including John Stott, NT Wright, and Timothy Keller, but the main book I like to read to interpret the Bible is the Bible itself. And we will need that reference book more than ever as we enter into this 2nd section of the Book of Romans which McGee titled “Sin: What it is, or as Briscoe calls it “First, the Bad news.”
Let’s read the passage, chapter 1, verse 18 through to chapter 2.16 (Full text in endnotes)
And here’s today’s outline, remembering the overarching theme of this book, as Warren Wiersbe titled his study book, “Be Right”, that is, how to be right with God.
Let’s go through this, line by line.
God’s wrath is revealed from heaven. Paul doesn’t say how that is revealed. But Jewish people and dare I say, Greeks in Paul’s day, would have understood retribution. Evil has consequences. Do bad and you will get bad results. There is no need to prove this allegation; it’s understood.
What is the cause? Paul says, ‘suppressing the truth.” That’s not about axioms or absolute ideal, but rather the way we learned about God and then disregarded it, it’s man vs God, it’s man vs man. It’s the battle of souls against what they already know or have learned about God.
He starts with his identity in verse 20: Creator. He is known in every society worldwide; the most remote village, the highest cathedral… everywhere there is a divine, actually the Divine of Divines, the Unknown God (Acts 17), the One among many. The Great Spirit, Jehovah, the Higher Power… all of them describing the God who reveals himself at the beach, on the top of a mountain, as we look over grasslands and empty spaces… He is Numero Uno.
As a result, we are without excuse in rejecting him and suppressing that truth about him.
Look how we behaved in response.
We knew he was God (whatever that looked like) (.21), we suppressed his truth (.18), we did not honour (doxos) him as God or even give thanks, we became futile in our speculations (dialogues), and our foolish heart was darkened. The heart is the centre of our being, our DNA if you will, our matrix of life. That which defines us, our character, our essence, our being itself. That became darkened.
Paul used that sentiment later in his citation of chapter 11 “LET THEIR EYES BE DARKENED TO SEE NOT AND BEND THEIR BACKS FOREVER.” (11.10)
and again, to the Ephesians,
Eph. 4:18 being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart;
Darkness is the withdrawal from the light that is available. It’s wilful. It’s not merely a lack of awareness; it’s a hostile choice against the light. In other words, as Dunn says, “by withholding the appropriate recognition of God they became less (not more) able to function as rational beings; failure to recognize their own creatureliness brought with it a decreasing ability to function as a human being.”
Our dialogue is really our hostile rejection of the truth as we knew it and God’s grace was there all the time in that he revealed himself to us in creation and in his invisible attributes and divine nature. Love, a sense of right and wrong, justice, kindness, fairness… these are part of who God is and what we learn as we live in a just society.
Verse 23, our exchange is evidenced in idolatry, the first commandment of the 10 commandments we broke, and one which persists to our day, to be sure. We love stuff; we love honour and approval. We look for society to shout our praise, and we like the stuff of winners, whether it’s the decorations of sports heroes on our walls and the clothes we wear, or the celebrities we adore on the television and whom we think we know because we are mesmerized by their every action. Idolatry is the #1 sin of today, making anything and everything other than God into our own god. We vaunt human enterprise and humanity itself over the being otherwise known in less-civil society as the God of heaven and earth.
And it shouldn’t be missed “since creation” highlights the actual list of things created in Genesis 1. Nor should we miss “image” and “likeness” to God creating man in God’s image and likeness.
What will God do as a result? Verses 24 to the end of chapter one highlights a three-fold downward spiral of our own making and of God’s activity. He turns us over to our own impurity. Why? Exchange TRUTH (a lethos) for a lie (Pseudo). Not hidden, revealed. Then we take the pseudo-real. It’s not only the axiomatic truths; it’s the truth about God and his being and his relationship with us. Remember Pilate asked Jesus “What is truth?” And the irony is that Truth was standing in front of him at the moment. Truth, the Nature of God, the revealed Ancient of Days, the Messiah, who gave himself to die on our behalf, Truth is Jesus. He even said, “I am the way, THE TRUTH, and the life.” (John 14.6) He’s not an information piece to study and then dispense; He’s the eternal Son of God who loves us and gave himself for us. No wonder praise and honour are his; no wonder we should shout and sing of his goodness. And no wonder he is going to withdraw from us if we suppress this.
Verse 26, if we persist, we are turned over again to degrading passions. Some think these three ‘turn over’ phrases indicate sameness, but I see them as growing and developing spiraling away from the Almighty. His love being rejected; our decay increasing. AND YET, in all of it, he still reaches out to us and longs for us to stop in this downward spiral at any time. Please, I almost hear him cry, come back to me.
So, in verse 25, our sin was lustful, in verses 26 and 27 we see homosexuality described for men and for women very clearly. There are some who aver that this was not Paul’s intention. They say it’s the burning and not the act itself which is in view. If they think that, they aren’t Jewish. Paul uses clear adjectives to describe the repulsion and the misbehaviour, not the level of activity or the wrong attitude in the allowed homosexual enterprise. He’s clearly saying that God made us to be male and female and anything outside that is degrading and wrong. And it’s a function of missing the point, and that point is to know and honour God with all our hearts, and all our minds, and all our strength.
Verses 28-31 showcase the continual downward spiral of those who knock God and his love. They are evident in greedy, envious, murderous, disobedient to parents, slanderers, haters… the list doesn’t really ever end. The first commandment gets broken, then all the rest follow suit.
They know what they are doing, but they go ahead anyway. This is ‘in your face’ rejection of the Almighty and his authority. Reject God as God, and you make yourself to be god, and then all hell breaks loose. Literally.
Remember Pharaoh in the Exodus story we read this week at Passover? He hardened his heart three times (Exodus 8.15, 8.32, 8.34) and God hardened Pharaoh’s heart (10.1, 11.10, 14.4) It sounds like this triad of God ‘giving over’ the Romans who rejected him.
Chapter Two brings us The Judgement of God. And to the interrelationship of people. Chapter one rightly describes an individual and his hopeless estate who rejects God and suppresses truth, chapter two shows our inability to get along. The issue? Judging one another. It’s not the only time Paul will address this in the letter.
I guess Paul is saying that if wrong is happening, that judgment should follow. But human justice is warped and in need of repair. We need someone from the outside to show us true and Truth judgment.
You judge others? You are without excuse (he already said that word “without apology”) in 1.20. since you also practice the same wrongs. Verse 2 he again repeats without example the obvious “God will judge” determination.
What is God thinking as this takes place? Look at verse 4. “kindness, tolerance, patience, goodness.” Do those words ring of an angry God? Do they sound like a hostile or vindictive God who is keeping score in heaven and can’t wait to injure those who fail? Not at all! These are words of the divine nature (1.20) that is revealed. Truth (the word means ‘not hidden’) is for all people. It’s not about God, the examiner, who can’t wait to punish us; it’s about God who is our Father and gracious and longs to relate to us. He wants us to get this right. And he’s ever helping us go there.
Verse 5 sounds like Paul lingered at 4. He pondered God’s love and kindness. His goodness. Then he had to keep writing. Verse 5, BUT BECAUSE of your rejection, now titled stubbornness and unrepentance, you are doing something. You are storing up (Gk. Thesaurus) wrath for yourself. It’s not God’s will. He doesn’t delight in sending people to hell. He wants everyone to be his.
And yet.
God’s justice is
1) According to the truth (.2)
We have already addressed this. The visible, tangible, real already-shown evidence of the Almighty to humanity.
2) Inescapable (.3)
3) Cumulative (.4-5)
4) Based on man’s actions (Proverbs 24.12, 1 Kings 8.39)
5) Impartial (11-15)
Jews and Gentiles are going to be judged, in that order. No impartiality with God, which might make some boast that they are in like flint. Phew, God will be fair, that means I will be ok. Why? I basically keep the 10 commandments. I basically do good to people. I didn’t buy more toilet paper than I was allotted last week. I gave an extra bit in the Salvation Army kettle when they approached me last Christmas.
6) Inevitable (.16)
That sounds like Gentiles don’t have a prayer. Paul does seem to include everyone in this judgment concept, but this makes one wonder, if the Jewish people are included in this pervasive and exhaustive determined judgment to befall the world. Is anyone able to escape? And if anyone is, then surely the Jewish people, God’s chosen people, are in that 2nd category, right?
We will look at that next week. God willing.
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NEXT WEEK, then what about the Jews? Are they better off? Are they worse off? And what about Torah? Stay tuned!
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Chapter 1: Verse 18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not honour Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and [crawling creatures.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonoured among them. 25 For they exchanged the truth of God for [a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed [forever. Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is [r]unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing [s]indecent acts and receiving in [t]their own persons the due penalty of their error.
28 And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful; 32 and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.
2 Therefore you have no excuse, every one of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. 2 And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. 3 But do you suppose this, O man, [when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? 4 Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? 5 But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, 6 who will render to each person according to his deeds:7 to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life; 8 but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation. 9 There will be tribulation and distress for every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek, 10 but glory and honour and peace to everyone who does good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 11 For there is no partiality with God.
12 For all who have sinned without the Law will also perish without the Law, and all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law; 13 for it is not the hearers of the Law who are just before God, but the doers [of the Law will be justified. 14 For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, 15 in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, 16 on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.
