SUNDAY and MONDAY studies are posted together on Mondays

Day 341 – Reading – Romans 1 – 3

Day 342 – Reading – Romans 4 – 7

Read and believe in Jesus!

• “Some of those converted on the day of Pentecost founded the church at Rome. Paul had long sought to visit the Roman church, but had been prevented. In God’s providence, Paul’s inability to visit Rome resulted in this masterpiece of gospel doctrine. 
• The theme of Romans is the righteousness that comes from God: the glorious truth that God justifies guilty, condemned sinners by grace alone through faith in Christ alone.  Chapters 1-11 give theological truths, while chapters 12-16 detail the practical working out of those truths.” (from John MacArthur’s commentary)

SUNDAY – Day 341 – Romans 1.

Paul introduces himself and greets the church in Rome.  He calls himself both a servant (slave) of Jesus and an apostle (sent one).  Paul was called to share the gospel (good news) of God, which God promised through His prophets in the Old Testament concerning His Son, to the nations, including the Romans. He prays for them, the Grace and Peace of God.

Then Paul tells them how he’s been longing to come to Rome, but it has never worked out.  But he has been praying non-stop for them because he so wants to impart a spiritual gift to them to strengthen them… and be strengthened BY them. He knows there is a huge harvest there among both the Jews and Gentiles, just the people God is sending him to.

• “I am eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome!   For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the POWER of God for salvation to EVERYONE who believes.  In the gospel is the RIGHTEOUSNESS of God revealed. 

Next, as is necessary, Paul presents the evidence of man’s overwhelming sinfulness and how man deserves God’s judgment. They have suppressed the truth about God and ignored His attributes and power.

• “Although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him.  Claiming to be wise, they became fools and worshiped images of man, birds, animals, and creeping things … instead of the immortal, glorious God. So… God gave them up to impurity, to serve the creature rather than the Creator.

Then Paul lists the despicable, gross, unrighteous things that their debased minds prompt them to do. (Not only to DO, but to approve of others doing too!  Ugh!!

(Read this awful list carefully, for in it, we also will see some things that we are/were guilty of at one time.)

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Romans 2.

Paul nails that thought down even tighter.

• “You have no excuse, O man, EVERY ONE OF YOU who judges. For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself.  You, the judge, practice the very same things!!”

Then Paul strikes deeper into the Self-righteous in us all.

• “Do you suppose, you who practice the very same things, will escape judgment?  Do you presume on the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?  Don’t store up wrath for yourself when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

Paul (and God) shows no difference between Gentiles and Jews in the matter of sin.

For all who have sinned “outside the law” will also perish “outside the law.  All who have sinned “under the law” will be judged “by the law.”

It is the “doers” of the law who will be justified, not just those who “hear” it.  Gentiles may not know the letter of the Mosaic Law, but the law is “written on their hearts.”

No one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, but inwardly by the Spirit, and not by the letter.

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Romans 3. 

Then Paul asks a question.  What is the advantage then of the Jew?  MUCH!

They were entrusted with the Words of God!  What IF some were unfaithful, did that nullify God’s word?

And then, seemingly, the opposite question. Are we Jews any better off?  No, not at all.  The whole population is under the curse of sin and death…

• ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God;  ALL have turned aside; together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one.”

This is a terrible position to be in, to comprehend, but he says it so NO ONE can justify themselves.

• Yes…. ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…… and are justified by His GRACE as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus….. whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood….. to be received by FAITH.

Oh, what hope he brings to the desperate, soul-sick sinner!

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MONDAY – Day 342 – Romans 4.

Paul then calms the worries of the Jewish believers reading his letter.  Yes, Father Abraham IS included in righteousness by faith alone.  He BELIEVED God’s promises (personal to him as well as about the future Messiah).  And so, God counted that as righteousness for him.  This was BEFORE the law, and even before Abe and his family were circumcised.  Faith alone in the promises of God!

• “To the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”

Praise God!  And not to Abraham only.

• “It will be counted to us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, the One who was delivered up for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.”

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Romans 5.

Then Paul writes those promises that are so sweet to us who have believed. Hopefully we have memorized them.

• “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
• “More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame … BECAUSE God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
• a. “For while we were still WEAK, at the right time, Christ died for the UNGODLY.
• b. “God shows His love for us in that while we were still SINNERS, Christ died for us.
• c. “For while we were ENEMIES, we were reconciled to God by the death of His son, and saved by his life. 

Weak, ungodly, sinners, and enemies.  Oh, the matchless love, grace, and mercy of God toward us for Jesus’ sake!

Paul then reminds them of how it all happened.

SIN came into the world through one man (Adam), and DEATH came through that sin.  Then death spread to all men because, after Adam, we ALL HAVE SINNED.  (And as we will see in 6:23, the WAGES or PAYMENT for sin is death.)

However, life, eternal life through Jesus, is a GIFT by God’s grace.  If death reigns because of the sin of one man (Adam), Paul says that righteousness reigns through one perfect “man,” Jesus Christ. As the ONE ACT of trespass led to condemnation for all men, so ONE ACT of righteousness (the cross) leads to justification and life for all men.

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Romans 6.

Paul says it gets even closer to Home. 

• Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised by the dead by the glory of the Father, WE TOO might walk in the newness of life.
• So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
• LET NOT SIN REIGN IN YOUR BODY TO OBEY ITS PASSIONS.
• Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness. 
• Present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.
• “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Amen and amen!

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Romans 7.

Paul then speaks mostly to Jewish believers about the Mosaic Law.  After a lifetime trying to keep the LETTER of that law and failing, failing, failing, it is hard to let it go and simply TRUST in Christ.  Paul compares it to a marriage.  A married woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives.  But if her husband dies, she is released from that marriage.

“Likewise, my brothers, YOU also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead. And so, you are released from the law, so that they can serve in the new way of the Spirit.

Paul isn’t saying the Law is bad – for how could we know what sin is, unless God gave the law against it.   But the law does try to draw him back into sin.  It’s a huge struggle sometimes. for…

• I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
• Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good,
• It is no longer “I” who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
• For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
• For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep doing.
• If I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

 

• O wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death!!
• Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!

 

Wow, do you ever feel that way?  I do.  I keep on doing the things I don’t want to, and as for the things I want to do to please God… well often they never happen.

But the VERY BEST NEWS COMES IN VERSE ONE AND TWO OF THE NEXT CHAPTER!  Take a peek at it right now!!