So here we are, "Grace in the Book of
Romans", that's the title of this series. This is lesson number two. The title
of this lesson is "The Renouncing of" "Grace part 1", where we're gonna break up
this material into two parts. So last week we began our series in the book of
Romans and I told you that we'd be tracing the idea of grace as Paul
explains it in this epistle. So this particular class this particular study
we're not doing a line-by-line, paragraph by paragraph study of the book
of Romans. It's called a thematic study. So we're picking up a theme. We're
picking up an idea and the idea is the idea of of grace that Paul talks about
throughout this epistle. We could study the idea of Christ. What
does Paul say about Christ in Romans? What does Paul say about faith in Romans?
There are so many themes that we could look at and continue to go
back through this wonderful epistle but we've chosen the idea of grace. So we've
said that our course is divided into different sections. We're going to
look at different sections to cover the book of Romans, five parts. Part one,
"Renouncing of Grace", chapter 1 verse 1 to chapter 3 verse 20. The next part will be,
"The Response of Grace", chapter 3:20 to 7:25. "The Request of Grace", chapter 8. "The
Refusal of Grace", chapters 9, 10, and 11. And "The Result of Grace", chapters 12 to
16. So that's kind of our outline, the outline of the study that we will
use for this book. So this week we begin with the very first section
where Paul explains how mankind has renounced grace, God's grace, and how this
renunciation has led to universal sin, and that's chapter 1 verse 1 to chapter
3 verse 20. That whole section is this point. So in the
opening verses of the book Paul greets his readers by
establishing his credentials as an apostle by summarizing the gospel itself. He
offers a blessing upon the readers themselves. He also states his own
objectives in ministry and that is to preach to all men the gospel both Jews
and Greeks and that the gospel is God's power to save them. Then he begins
his effort to show that all men need this gospel and he does so by explaining
this idea of the universality of sin. So before we examine Paul's teaching on the
universality of sin we need to look at an opposing view called the universality
of salvation or by its more modern name, pluralism. Universalism or pluralism is
a popular idea in the religious world today that says that the love and the
grace of God virtually ensures that everyone will be saved no matter what
path they choose. In other words, God is so good that nobody will be lost.
It's impossible that anybody can be lost because God is so good. If I were to
make a diagram, the old story all roads lead to God, all roads
lead to heaven, all religions lead to God. That's the idea of universalism. That's
the idea of pluralism. When explaining this people say each religion is
distinctive because of culture and geography and history. Hinduism,
it's been affected by the culture in which that religion developed.
That's what people say. Right? But then people say all of these religions are
capable of leading a person to God and thus salvation. So
you can get to God through Hinduism or through Islam or through
Buddhism or through Jainism or through whatever "ism", Christianity, Mormonism, all the roads, as long as you're on one of these roads they
lead to God. Now some Christian pluralists teach that every religion
is really a form of underdeveloped Christianity and when that religion
matures it actually leads a person to Christ. So they say like, Hinduism for
example, is a primitive kind of Christianity and they say that when
the Hindus follow their religion to its maximum ideal eventually
they'll find Christ. Now major Christian denominations, Presbyterianism
and other, Catholicism, so on and so forth, major Christian
denominations have a smaller version of pluralism that says this. It says all
churches lead to heaven but not all religions. So certain Christian
pluralists, they say Buddhism doesn't take you to heaven and Hinduism
that doesn't take get heaven but all forms of Christianity take you to heaven.
In a diagram form they say that every religion is just a
branch on the tree of Christianity, just different way to get
to the same thing. It's the same pluralistic idea but it's restricted to
Christianity. People who believe this, people who accept this, they use
language like, "Of what religious" "expression are you? What Christian
expression are you or what fellowship of" "believers do you belong to?" This is just code for underneath we're all the same.
It's all the same business. We all believe in Christ in one way or
another and we're all going to the same place anyways. Now these ideas
they're easy to understand. Right? All roads lead to heaven or all Christian
denominations, part of a tree, that's all the same thing. Very easy to
understand, actually very attractive and very comforting. No arguing here.
I mean, if everybody's going to heaven there's no debating. There's
no arguing. There's no working. It seems like a much more loving type thing.
Doesn't it? I mean, if you're able to say all religions, everybody's going to
heaven. I'm just full of love. I'm saying that because God is love that must be
the way it works. Well, it's the way a lot of people would
like it to work, until you begin to examine it. That's the problem.
When you examine it it doesn't hold up for a couple of reasons. Number one, this
is illogical. It is illogical that God, who is perfectly logical, would give
different and even contradicting information about Himself and how
to reach Him to different people simultaneously. It's like saying to two
people at the same time, the way to reach me and you say to that person, I'll be in New York on January 1st and to this person you say, I'll be in Los
Angeles on January 1st, contradicting information. Eastern religions
like Hinduism and Jainism and Buddhism, they teach that man
is responsible to reach a state of perfection or some call it nirvana and
union with the force of life through either a cycle of reincarnation,
personal effort and or acquiring special knowledge and insight through meditation
and self-denial. That kind of summarizes the ideas of Eastern religions.
Western religions that include Judaism even Islam, they teach basically that God
helps man to come to Him. That he dies once and then God judges each man. That's not reincarnation. Is it? Eastern religions see God as a force
without personality or will. Western religions see Him as sovereign,
intelligent Lord. That's not the same thing. Is it? Eastern religions are
inclusive for all religious beliefs. Western religions are exclusive, only one
religion is the true religion. Again, contradictory. The point here is that the
information about Hinduism will not lead a person to the same God and the same
result as the information on Islam, for example, or the information on
Christianity. It won't get you to the same place. It will not create in you the
same idea, the same concept of who God is or what God wants or what God does.
A logical God does not purposefully give conflicting, illogical, and confusing
information about how to find Him. That would be cruel. Another problem, universalism is
unbiblical from a Christian perspective. The Bible and especially the
book of Romans has a very exclusive view of the Christian religion. It does
assure that all Christians, that they are positively and completely
saved for ever and ever, absolutely. The Bible also
emphatically declares that those who are not Christians will perish. That's pretty
clear in the book of Romans and other places in the Bible. It is for this
reason that Christian, the Christian religion was so despised at the
beginning when it started in the first century. When all
religions were inclusive, you could be a collector of gods and
religions. The more the merrier. This is the world that
the Apostles were in and in the world that they were preaching to.
They were preaching to a world where people had many gods. The more gods the
better, bring them on. They come up and say, sorry about that. There's only
one God, only one. Then Peter says and "There is salvation in no one else. For
there is no other name under heaven that" "has been given among men by which we
must be saved." That's why they were hated. They weren't hated because they
were taking care of orphans or because they lived a moral life,
they were striving to be sexually pure in their life. They weren't hated
because of that. They were hated because they stood up and said "I'm sorry
about your ten gods but none of them are" "gods. There's only one God and that's
Jesus," "that's come in person and that's Jesus
Christ. Only through Him can you go to" "heaven." People didn't like that. I know there are a lot of other political reasons
for the persecution but certainly the hatred of the people
was based on that. And you know what? Nothing has changed today. If you declare
that only through Christ can you be saved, oh my, that is so politically
incorrect today, to say a thing like that. So nothing has changed.
they weren't martyred because Christianity was a new or different
religion. They were despised because the disciples of Jesus dared to say it was
the only religion. So the first three chapters of Romans explains why and how
this is so. It sets the stage to explain why Christianity is the only
religion that deals effectively with man's basic problem which is the problem
of sin. So in Romans chapter one, two, and three, among other things,
Paul describes man's true condition and his true condition is
he's fallen from grace. He's renounced the grace of God. Now we
know that man began as good. He was the recipient of God's grace as the head of
creation, the partaker of the divine nature, an intimacy with God that He
shared. This was God's very first expression of grace towards man, the
creation and putting man at the head of creation. That was God's initial
expression of grace, and man through disobedience, fell or renounced this
grace and came into the condition that Paul describes in Romans chapters one,
two, and three. So he begins describing this fall from grace by describing the
process of sin itself and how this leads to judgment and death. Let's read
chapters 1 verse 18. Like I said this is not a line-by-line study. I'm just
picking certain passages that support and describe our theme. So verse 18, it
says, "For the wrath of God is revealed" "from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the" "truth in unrighteousness,". So Paul is
explaining here that God will punish all those who refuse and willingly suppress
the truth. What is the truth? the truth is, there is a God and this God
can be known and this God is to be obeyed. This is the truth. Paul says
man has willingly suppressed this truth. The best example I can give you is, you
ever take a beach ball and in a a swimming pool, if you just throw it
into the pool, what'll happen? It'll float. Right? I'll throw it on the surface.
You have to hold the beach ball under water to get it under water. You have to
suppress it to get it under water. This is what Paul is saying.
The truth has a buoyancy. It wants to rise up the knowledge that there is a
God and He's the one who created everything and that we ought to obey Him. That truth has buoyancy. It wants to rise up. Paul is
saying that sinful men have suppressed this truth, have kept it down willingly
because if they didn't do that the truth would simply rise up. In verse 18 to 20
he continues and says, "because that which" "is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For" "since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal powers" "and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been" "made, so that they are without excuse." So
God or the truth is known in two very natural ways that Paul mentions here,
through conscience and through creation. Every person can come to know God and
His attributes through either or both of these means. A person who is blind and
and cannot speak can still know there is a God through conscience. So
these two witnesses Paul says, the creation and our own conscience, are so
overpowering that no one can plead ignorance. No one can plead ignorance. You're driving along and there, every quarter mile there's a sign that says 45
miles an hour, 45 miles an hour, and you're doing 63 and you get pulled over.
You say to the policeman I didn't know. Really? You didn't see all
those 45, you think that was just a suggestion?
Same thing. Paul was saying, nobody can say I didn't know there was a God. Really? The stars in the heaven? You never had the thought,
who put those there? Verses 21 to 23 we continue, he says,
"For even though they knew God, they did" "not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in" "their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise," "they became fools, 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." So rather than
responding to a fundamental truth that man has always known, a fundamental
truth that was always there, man historically, collectively, and
individually, has chosen instead, Paul says, not to acknowledge or honor God,
refused to be grateful even when he did acknowledge God, chose rather to worship
baser things expressed in pagan religions, seeing in these a wisdom
devised in their own minds. In other words, you'd rather worship things that
you created yourselves then worship the God that created you. So instead of
letting the truth emerge Paul says man has chosen to pursue the course that
I've just described, not to acknowledge God, not to thank Him, not to worship Him, but
rather to create his own god's, his own way. Then in verse twenty four and five
he says, "Therefore God gave them over in" "the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored" "among them. 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." So the net result of all of this was
that God did not intervene. God permitted them to sin to their heart's content. You
don't want to know me? You don't want to obey me? You don't want to honor me? Fine.
You like sin? You like paganism? You like that? Go ahead. Fill her up.
Fill her up. So Paul, in the final verses, describes
some of the sins that this fall from grace and this process of sin led them
to. Now understand here, Paul is not describing a single person or a single
nation. He's describing a natural progression of humanity that forsakes
God. This is what happens. So the progression,
there's the refusal to acknowledge God as God. It starts there. Whether it's a
person a nation or all of humanity, it starts there. That is followed by a
refusal to respond with thanksgiving. So if you refuse to acknowledge that
God is God you're not going to give thanks for anything. Who are you gonna
thank? You're not acknowledging God and that will lead to a creation of
personal gods devised by human minds to fulfill the need of the human soul
for the truth of God. You know what is so strange?
We're designed in such a way that we want to worship. We have to worship. It's
part of our... We're wired to worship. So the sad thing is if we
reject the true God eventually the need to worship will find a way out and
we'll end up worshiping things that are not God. Paul says the last step is a
downward plunge into active evil. Now in a historical sense the process is
as follows, in a kind of a macro view of history. If you looked at history
and if you looked at this kind of process here, this downward fall,
this is what it looks like. You begin with grace, God's expression of grace.
Then when you reject God, when you reject grace, the first thing to fall is your
theology. So there's a theological fall because you're not acknowledging the
true God anymore. A theological fall leads to a philosophical fall because so
long as you're acknowledging God your philosophy, your thinking about life and
how it works, its orderly because you understand there is God, there's the
creation, there's me. You understand the relationship between
yourself and your Creator. But if you reject God, there's your
theological fall, then your thinking will also fall. You're going to begin
creating scenarios to explain how life is. Where does it come from?
You start having all of these philosophical ideas that explain reality,
that explain the world without reference to God. There, that's a theological
fall, a philosophical fall. Sorry. That philosophical fall is followed by a
moral fall. People start acting in ways that are ungodly. So that's what Paul
is talking about in a kind of a macro sense here.
The value, the rejection of values of right and wrong, by the time you get to a
moral fall you're at a point where as a nation you're saying good is bad and bad is good. Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Wait a
minute. The Christians are the bad guys in this society and those who promote
immoral sexual lifestyle they're the good guys. They get the
headlines. They get the parades. We've seen this cycle in history. Right?
The creation and then the garden, boom, the fall. Seth comes
along and men once again begin calling on the name of the Lord. What happens?
We get to the flood where God destroys everything. Then post alluvion, means
after the flood, everything starts over again. What happens? We get to the Tower
of Babel where humanity wants to rise up. God has to spread them out. Then you have
Abraham, a hope to the crucifixion. Then you have the Apostolic age. The
Apostles, the church is growing. Things are happening, a great revival. Whoops! Then we get to the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages, and
then we have the Reformation, back to the Bible, back to God, tremendous
religious renewal in Europe. Whoops! Then we get to the
Enlightenment. The Enlightenment with the philosophers who said man is
the center of everything. We can invent stuff. Technology will solve all our
problems. The artists have been set free. We don't need God. We can
explain how everything happened. It's called evolution. That's all the product
of the Enlightenment. It's always the same circle going round and
round. Then we have the restoration. Now we're getting close to our own
history. Right? "The Great Awakening", they called it. Another back to the Bible
movement that swept across Europe, especially across America for a hundred
years to the point where, in the 1950s, and you've heard this before, the
Churches of Christ, that restoration movement. Let's get back to the Bible.
Do Bible things in Bible ways. Fastest-growing religion
group in America. Now we're at the present. Where are we now?
Good is bad, bad is good. It's just a cycle. Some people say, why aren't you more excited? Why aren't you more afraid? Because it's just the same stuff going around all the time round and round and
round and round. So we see this cycle in modern history. Don't we? The theological
fall came with the rejection of the Bible and inspiration in most mainline
denominations in the last 50 years spearheaded by scholars of the higher
critical method. In other words, Bible scholars were not looking to see, what
does the Bible teach and what does it say in context? They just saw the Bible
as literature, no inspiration whatsoever. These scholars began to influence
the writers and the ministers and the leaders, because ministers go to
seminaries and seminaries are populated by intellectuals and
intellectuals were buying into this stuff. So ministers brought this
back to their churches. The fact that a gay woman can be a pastor of a Methodist
Church, that doesn't happen overnight. That takes 75 years to happen but it
happens. I tell people, you want to send your kid to Harvard? Sure, if you want to
go to business school there, but don't send them to the divinity department
because he'll come out, he won't even believe in God, let alone be a minister. So they influenced the writers and
ministers and leaders to reject the Bible as authority and rely more on
social and psychological sources for ministry models and church models and
moral issues. Lutheran churches ordained active homosexuals because it
no longer considers the Bible as an authority.
Then we have the philosophical fall. I'm just talking about the
latest cycle in our lifetime. This occurred simultaneously with great
thinkers establishing relativism as the new basis for thinking about ourselves
in our world. Relativism has many variations but basically it says that
the only rules that one is bound by are the rules that one creates for himself
as long as you don't hurt anyone else. That's the only rule. So
we see this thinking expressed in the pro-choice movement.
No one can impose a standard on the individual that he or she has that has
not been chosen by that person for themselves. So the ability to choose for
yourself, how you live and what you do, trumps God's command. Social laws become
valid because they have been chosen by the majority. They really don't have any
values in themselves. We believe that basic laws should be there because
they are naturally good. Thou shalt not steal, that's a good thing. That's why it
should be a law aside from the fact that God has given the law. But in relativism
the law is there because it serves us somehow and when we don't
like that law anymore we get rid of that law. Now in our country we have an
institution that helps us do that. What's it called? It's called the Supreme
Court. Imagine. One person's vote, one person's vote has changed 6,000 years of
social conduct. One person's vote has said from now on every court in the land
must permit two men or two women to be married.
One vote, government, politics, law, this becomes very important in a
relativistic world because these are the only vehicles to establish
what a society is to be. We need to be afraid of a society completely dependent
on relativism. We need to be afraid of a country like Russia, for example,
becoming a complete democracy without any religious conscience, because fueled by
our capitalistic system, a nation that is totally relativistic could choose to
collectively destroy us and have the money to do it and feel absolutely no
remorse because it was the will of the nation. It isn't that might makes right.
That's what Nietzsche said. It's the majority has the priority. So in a
relativistic world there's no such thing as loving your enemy because
the majority of people would never choose to adopt such a policy. Only a
religious people would adopt this type of policy and in our nation that group
is shrinking. Then the philosophical fall always followed by a moral fall. So
we are currently experiencing the moral fall of the West. The East fell with
communism and secularism in Europe. When homosexuals march in the streets for
their rights, when governments openly robbed their own people, when God's name
is publicly blaspheme before millions of people in the media day after day after
day with no outrage and no way to stop it, when we glorify and we pour adulation
on liars, thieves, fornicators, and God haters, as we do on many of our
entertainers and sports people who publicly act this way
without shame, no shame, a woman who is a mother will expose
herself completely naked to millions of people and be considered a hero or
heroine, when a man begins to dress like a woman and has been given awards for that
action, when this type of systemic immorality becomes clear and visible to
all, then three things are near. Number one, we're nearing the end or the bottom
of the moral fall. You can't get much lower. You cannot get much lower in
your society, that child molesters claim that they were born that way and asked
not to be penalized because of that reason. Some of you might be saying
that's terrible, that would never happen. Oh really? It's already happening.
It's already the most common defense for pedophiles. I can't help it I was born
that way, that's just the way that I am. They're seeking mercy
from the courts for their actions. Or we're near the beginning of another
period of God's grace as the cycle begins a new phase in history,. This is
seen in the working of the Holy Spirit strengthening the church to grow
dynamically. This is seen in spiritual and moral fervor for Christ among the
people, not just any revival of religion. Not greater Islam, but the rise
once again of the church that belongs to Christ. You understand what I'm talking
about here? In this cycle here, where are we at? I think, if just look
at society, we're at the moral fall part of society. The question is
what happens after the moral fall? Revival, hopefully, historically it's
always been revival, people kind of swing back or we're near the end of the world
brought on by the return of Jesus. Because it is when there is the
greatest challenge to God's Authority in position, the Bible says that that's
when Jesus returns. This is what 2nd Thessalonians teaches. Now without getting to spectacular here, the book of Thessalonians also says
that the man of lawlessness has to be revealed to Christians before the
end comes. I've not seen any sign of the man of lawlessness being
revealed. So I doubt we are at this particular point yet. However, according
to the Bible this is how it's gonna work. So this cycle, theological fall,
philosophical fall, moral fall, and either the return of Jesus or revival,
this just keeps going round and round and round. That's why the encouragement to the church is always be faithful.
Understand that you're living in a world that just keeps going round and round
like this, be faithful. So in Chapter 1, so you're saying, what does this have to do
with Romans? In Chapter 1 of Romans Paul is describing this cycle of falling
from grace and how all humans are caught up in it in one way or another. In
chapter 2 and 3 he goes from a macro-cosmic, in other words a big-picture
view, which is what he gives in Chapter 1, to a microcosmic, a detailed view of the
very same thing. So in Chapter 1 he describes this cycle on like on a
worldview and in chapters 2 and 3 he's going to kind of narrow it down and
describe it on a very personal view. So from the moral history of mankind to the
working of sin in the heart of each individual person and the results of
this in the lives of individual Jews and Gentiles. So the lesson for us so far is
that this cycle continues and each of us is caught up in it despite our advanced
technology, despite our global worldview. The moral collapse of society is
played out in each of our personal lives as well and in the end these remain.
There remains only one name under heaven by which we must be saved. Also Jesus
Christ, that's the thing that just remains throughout this
history the power of the gospel which is the revealed. Grace of God is just as
powerful today as it was then and it will be just as powerful in the future.
So when we study Romans or any other book in the Bible for that matter, we're
handling that power, we're handling that spirit, we're handling that life that can
lead us to a state of grace or can ignite a period of grace for the whole
world if we're not ashamed of it. They weren't ashamed of it
in the first century and they were in the throes of a moral fall.
I think we're similarly in the throes of a moral fall in our generation and our
response is not to worry or to be afraid. Our response is not to be ashamed of the
gospel as the power of God to save mankind even in our age today. Such is
the power of the gospel, as Paul will say, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for
it is the power of God for salvation to" "everyone who believes, to the Jew first
and also to the Greek." In our next lesson we're going to discuss part two,
the renunciation of God's grace and His judgment. We're going to go into more
focus view of that. That's our lesson for this morning. Thank you
for your attention. Appreciate it.
