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Good morning, gentlemen. This is our second day in our series of studies on the Epistle to the Romans. Let's begin by reminding ourselves that on our first occasion, we observed that there are four major parts to this epistle. First of all, chapters one to five eleven. Secondly, chapter five twelve to eight thirty nine. Thirdly, Thirdly, to the nine to the end of chapter thirty six.
And finally, would be if I could get it. there, twelve one to the end of the book. Let me remind you how we came across that division. This is not some arbitrary division imposed on Paul's own writing. It is, uh, it comes to light as you consider the thought flow, the order of his argument, what are his main themes, and how he develops them.
So we noticed at the beginning, he tells us in chapter one why we, that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes. He proceeds then to give us the reasons why we need to be saved, and therefore what salvation implies. We notice that in the first part, he is concerned with the wrath of God against sinners. And that we are not only sinners, but guilty sinners.
That is, we have not only come short of God's glory, but we are guilty and stand guilty before the judgment throne of God on account of our sin, and there are to be found without excuse. So chapter one talks about the wrath of God, and so does chapter two. And throughout this whole section, the wrath of God is mentioned time and again, and comes to its climax, as you see towards the e- towards the first end of the first half of chapter five, with the glorious statement of salvation, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.
Which, of course, forms the climax of that particular theme, that flow of thought. We need to be saved because of the wrath of God against our sin. We shall be saved. Notice that future. That future tense, gentlemen, not have been, shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. And at that climax, we have this tremendous statement of the love of God that has secured the fact that we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. With the beginning of chap- uh, with the beginning of the second half of chapter five, we get the second major, uh, reason why we need to be saved.
That is the wreckage caused by Adam's sin. And the devastation, the slaveries, the dominions under which we have fallen as a result of Adam's disobedience and sin. That topic of the wreckage of Adam's sin now goes through to the end of this second part, where we find the statements of the wonderful redemption from this wreckage. Creation herself, uh, subjected to vanity.
Creation herself delivered from bondage to corruption, therefore, subjected to vanity because of Adam's sin, but through the redemption in Christ, creation herself shall be delivered from her bondage to corruption. Secondly, even we who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we groan within ourselves, waiting for our redemption, uh, our adoption, that is the redemption of our bodies. The wreckage of our human bodies caused by Adam's disobedience and the fall shall eventually be put right.
We, our bodies themselves, shall be redeemed. And then as to ourselves who will inhabit those bodies, we're told at the end of Romans eight that we are to be conformed to the image of God. And with the tremendous statement of the redemption that saves us from the wreckage of Adam's sin and brings us to glory, we have another great statement of the love of God. It's not a question, therefore, of imposing arbitrary analyses on the gospel, it is a question of following through its major themes and tracing them through, each to its own particular climax.
That chapters nine to eleven form a particular part is again, eh, pretty evident, because chapter nine begins now with the question of the failure of Israel, who though they were the chosen people of God, the nation through whom the Messiah would be born, the nation to whom the Old Testament pro- prophecies were committed as a trust, the nation that stood out amongst all other nations in the quality and form of its worship of God and its service of God.
The nation nonetheless, that when the Messiah came, rejected him and crucified him. That, of course, constitutes a great problem. If you're going to preach, like Paul did, uh, the gospel of God and tell your audience that the gospel of God, as he does in chapter one, is founded on what was promised in the Old Testament through the prophets. And then you have to admit that the nation to whom those prophecies came rejected Jesus as Messiah. Well, now you have a certain, uh, a problem that you'll have to start explaining.
You can imagine Paul, when he was at Caesarea, now and again being, uh, invited to, uh, have dinner, uh, with the Roman governor Felix, you'll see. Felix was an old rogue, but, uh, he enjoyed listening to Paul, and Paul was a man of considerable intellectual powers, a bit more than the average Roman soldier, and therefore it made a little entertainment for Felix, you see, to converse with Paul, particularly over dinner at night when he had nothing better to do. You'd imagine Paul, uh, Felix saying to Paul, now this is marvelous, uh, this gospel of yours, you say it was prophesied of, uh, um, in the Old Testament?
Yes, uh, yes, uh, it was indeed. Well, show me a two passages, and Paul reads him some from Isaiah fifty three or something. And then Felix says, yes, Paul, but perhaps this could be your interpretation, couldn't it? Are there many Jewish rabbis like you that hold this interpretation that Jesus is the Messiah? Well, it was, yeah, some. Uh, oh, ah. Well, how many, Paul, would you say? The majority of Jewish rabbis agree with your interpretation of the Old Testament, yeah? Well, not the majority, sir. No, I see. Well, how many? Well, there's, uh, Nicodemus.
Mm-hmm. And, uh, well, Joseph of- Joseph- Joseph of Arimathea agrees with me. He- he was member of the Sanhedrin, you see. Well, how many more rabbis, Paul? Well, can't think any at the moment. Oh, I see. So- so this is your interpretation. Well, it was very interesting. Now- now have another olive, or let's take a sweet, uh, thing. Yes. So, uh, this section three is not there by way of filling up the pages because Paul couldn't think of anything else to say at the time. It's an integral thing to the gospel, because the gospel is based on the prophets.
And that being so, you have a problem that has to be answered if the nation to whom the prophecies were given, by and large, reject the idea that Jesus is the Messiah, and therefore reject the gospel. And so, here is the wreckage of Adam's sin and how we need to be saved from it. Yeah, but the seriousness of this thing is that Israel was one of the early examples of God's beginning the plan of redemption. Israel's redemption out of Egypt, of course, stands as a great prototype of the great redemption that comes through Christ.
It's bad enough if the first man went wrong and caused wreckage. But if God's scheme of redemption has gone wrong, that would be a very serious thing, wouldn't it? And Paul hastens to ha- add, as he introduces this topic, not that the word of God has been made of none effect. The word of God has not gone wrong, has not proved to be untrue. So then he deals with this matter here because it is such of vital importance to our message of the gospel.
And from mentioning the failure at the beginning, he comes down to the glorious climax, the triumphant climax. All Israel shall be saved. You notice how each of these things is coming to its end in a glorious climax of whatever theme is being developed. Yeah? And here now is a doxology, not this time to the love of God, as the first two were, a doxology to the wisdom of God in his great providential government, how he is organizing all things, and in the end, God can guarantee that Israel as a whole shall be.
With the fourth section, we're coming on now to, um, the, um, final great part of the, of the epistle, what is normally, uh, called the practical side of the epistle. What the theme is there, and how it comes to its climax, I shall not spend the time now because I haven't got the time to declare. All I've been doing is to make the point that this analysis of the Epistle to the Romans is not some arbitrary thing, imposing on the bu- book our own ideas, it is following the major themes and their development, each to its own climax.
Now, what the major theme is here, I shall not be saying now, save to notice this, that at the beginning of the epistle, and now to the end, Paul emphasizes the fact that this gospel is not merely for the Jew, but for the Gentiles as well. That Jews and Gentiles shall be saved according to the same principles. And this shall form a great unity. And therefore, as a major tactician in the spiritual war, Paul is concerned with the practical behavior of Jews and Gentiles.
That the behavior of converted Jews and Gentiles as a spiritual unity shall be a worldwide testimony to the reality of the gospel. And hence Paul will campaign in this last section against sundry ideas and practices that would split the people of God and have them fractured into many different groups, which would be a sad testimony to the ineffectiveness of the gospel.
But that I, I, I leave for the moment, if I have made my point that, uh, the, uh, uh, epistle has these four major parts to it. So we considered last time... what are the major contents of this first part of the epistle is about the wrath of God.
And last week we considered, up to verse 20 of chapter three, what I have called the justification of God's wrath. How God is just in his wrath against sin, and how he demonstrates that mankind is without excuse on the ground of the evidence that they have been given, where they have rejected it, they are without excuse.
Now we begin our session this morning by thinking of the second half, where Paul is going to, uh, expound God's salvation in this regard. And how it will come to the climax, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. Let us first scan the sundry arguments of this second part of section one. First of all, establishing the claim that man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.
The statement to that effect, and why this justification has to be apart from the works of the law. Number one argument, it's a statement of the principles of justification. From that, Paul moves on to a second argument, the validation of that claim by an appeal to the precedent of Abraham's experience in the Old Testament. Paul makes the first claim as an apostle, of course, and expounds it.
Now he validates the claim by an appeal to the case law of the Old Testament, to the precedent set by Abraham's experience, then by the experience of David. Then he turns to what is a very important argument. The definition of what is meant by faith. Because if he's going to claim that justification is by faith, and it's through Christ and through his blood and through the propitiation that he has offered, and it is without works and solely by faith, it would be exceedingly important to explain, wouldn't it, what is meant by faith.
And having explained what is meant by faith, he now expounds in the final great paragraph all the results and implications of being justified by faith. And so, as we've said, comes to the climax that we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Christ. That then is the second half of the first section, and we're about to study it now in its, uh, some of its detail. Let's begin by certain facts.
First of all, the meaning of the technical terms that are used in this passage. And we start with the familiar one, justification. That is the noun. The verb, justify. What does the term justification mean? What did it mean when it is said that God justifies us? When we look at that word first, justify, it looks as if it meant make someone just.
Consider the English word magnify. What does it mean to magnify something? You say it means make it big, make it large. Magnify. Yes, from the Latin term magnificare. Uh, justify? What does justify mean, therefore? It comes from the Latin word justificare. Um, what does that mean then? You say that means to make somebody just. No, it doesn't. Though it appears to mean that because of its Latin root, it is exceedingly important and absolutely foundational to the gospel to see that it does not, in the New Testament, mean to make somebody just.
It is the word you would use of a judge in declaring somebody just. Because of that mistake, for centuries, the Roman Catholic Church has taught that this sent salvation is a question of making us just, huh? And therefore that must be a very long process if we're going to make us in a practical sense just. It would take, according to them, a whole of a lifetime and a good deal more of uncounted years in purgatory to accomplish the great thing of making us practically just.
But the word doesn't mean to make just. How can we show that? Well, let's look to our Bible and how it's used, first of all, in the Old Testament. Uh, epistle to the, to, uh, sorry, the uh, uh, book of Deuteronomy, chapter twenty five and verse one. If there be a controversy between men, and they come to judgment, and the judges judgment, uh, judge them, then shall they justify the righteous and condemn the wicked.
You see the context. It's about a judge in court pronouncing, uh, his verdict. And the judge has to justify the righteous. Now, quite clearly, that doesn't mean he shall make the righteous righteous. Of course not. The righteous was the man who, who, uh, was right. His claim was right. His opponent was wrong. This man is innocent. He's right. He's righteous in the sen- in the sense of the law. The right is on his side. What the judge does is to declare him righteous, not make him righteous, declare him righteous.
And that is, in fact, what the Hebrew verb means. I won't trouble you with that at the moment. That's what the Hebrew word means, to declare righteous. And he shall see the opposite, condemn the wicked. Yes, and he shan't do the opposite, of course. He shall not declare the wicked to be right, or declare the right, the man in the right, to be wrong. So, in the Old Testament, it means to pronounce somebody, to declare him to be right, to be in the right, to be, in that sense, therefore just.
Now let's look at Luke chapter seven in the New Testament. Luke chapter seven. And the verse is verse twenty nine. This is our Lord talking to the crowd. And he's talking, uh, to the crowd about their reaction to John the Baptist and to his preaching. Verse twenty nine: and all the people, when they heard, that is heard John, and the tax gatherers, justified God.
And now you will see at once that that cannot possibly mean that these people made God righteous. Of course they didn't. God is righteous anyway. Didn't make God righteous. But they declared God to be right. For through John the Baptist, God had declared them to be sinners and worthy of his judgment and his wrath. And the people admitted God was right. They were sinners. They needed to repent, and they needed forgiveness. And in so saying, they declared God to be right, to be just.
So here's the meaning of the term. We're going to find it throughout Romans three and so forth. To justify, when God justifies us, it's not a question of making us right, it is declaring us to be in the right. One little thing about English, gentlemen, but then you'll know what a m- wonderful language English is, and has two or three terms for the same thing. So we have the term righteous, and we have the term, uh, uh, uh, uh, right, we have the term righteousness, and we have the term justice. We have the term righteous, and we have the term just.
The righteous bit comes from our Germanic side of the language, and the just bit comes from the Latin side of our language. And then we use both terms for the same thing, though in common parlance there's a slight difference between them. But we shall notice that as we proceed, we shall find sometimes our translations use the term righteous, and then they use the term justify, because we don't have in English a term righteousify. So we have to use the two terms, do we? Now a second technical term.
Romans three once more. In this passage, we're going to come across the word propitiatory. Chapter three, verse twenty five. For the showing, I say, of his righteous— sorry, verse twenty five. whom God has set forth to be. Now, I don't know what your translations read there, and I haven't the time to consult them. The translation in front of me says, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation. Through faith, by his blood, to show his righteousness because of the passing over of sins done aforetime.
The question, therefore, is what does this term propitiation mean? This is a very key term in this passage, and therefore now I assert that propitiation carries the meaning of appeasing God, appeasing, satisfying his wrath. It refers to what the Savior has done by his death upon the cross, as satisfying the wrath of God against sin.
When we come to chapter five, the second half, and chapter six, and chapter seven, and chapter eight, we shall read many times of the death of Christ there. We will not find there the term propitiation. Because there we are dealing, as we saw, with the wreckage of Adam's sin and how the death of Christ delivers us from that wreckage. But here, this term propitiation is used very precisely. Because the theme is the wrath of God against sin.
And our way of deliverance from the wrath against, uh, God's wrath against sin is through the sacrifice of Christ that has satisfied God's justice, appeased his wrath against sin. So, as I say, the term propitiation is, uh, very carefully used. Now I must bother you with a little lesson in Hebrew and Greek. No extra charge, gentlemen.
You will remember the directions for the making of the tabernacle in the Old Testament, and in particular chapter twenty five, where the first vessel to be made, because it was the all important vessel, was the Ark of God, which was a chest, an oblong chest made of acacia wood, overlaid inside and out with gold. It was that ark into which the tables of the law were placed.
God's command, with, of course, their penalties attached to them, if you broke them. There was also another part to that ark, called in the old-fashioned English translations the mercy seat. Though, of course, it wasn't a seat. The English translations were influenced by Luther, who called it in German the Gnadestuhl, the grace seed.
And so the English translators put mercy seed, but it wasn't a seed. It was a lid, if you like, a covering that went on top. It was made of solid gold. It had cherubim beaten out at the ends of it. It was a lid or cover then. And on the great Day of Atonement, when once in a year the high priest went into the most holy place as a representative of the people, he had to take a basin filled with the blood of the animal that had been sacrificed outside on behalf of the people to atone for their sins.
And he took that blood of the sacrifice, and entering into the most holy place, he sprinkled it on that lid, on that cover. You'll see. Now, that is a very interesting fact when we consider the context of this first part of Romans. Why? Because we hear there not merely of God's wrath, but the occasion of that wrath, that we have broken his law. So that chapter three comes to the conclusion of the first part of its arguments.
We know that whatever the law says, it says to them that are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world become guilty before God, exposed to his wrath because they have broken the law. Now, in ancient Israel, because Israel had broken the law, they had to bring their offering. It was killed, its blood shed. The blood was taken in to the most holy place, to the ark, which contained the law.
And the law said that sin must suffer its penalty, which is death. So how could he now go into the holiest, not only for himself, but as the representative of all the people outside, all this collection of sinners, variegated sinners. And how could he come and stand in the presence of God before that law, which was the basis of God's throne and government? If God could ever accept a man like that on behalf of the people into his presence to stand beside the law, it wouldn't be because God said, I'm sorry I made that law so sound so, oh, it was so strict, wasn't it?
I didn't really mean it all that much. I love the lot of you. Of course, never mind that law. Never could be. That law must be upheld. The penalty paid in sprinkling the blood on that so-called mercy seat, on that lid, on that cover. The priest was saying, yes, we justify God. We are sinners. We are without excuse. We have broken the law. The penalty must be paid. Here is the symbol, the blood, that the penalty has been paid by our substitute.
Of course, that animal was only a substitute and a symbol. It must have been obvious to them, as it is obvious to any Jew today, and to us indeed, that the blood of bulls and goats could not possibly take away sin. Cows don't know anything about sin, you know. I don't go to bed at night worried with a bad conscience, not cows. I haven't any concept of sin to start with. We have. It is the glory of a being, human being, that we have a consciousness of right and wrong, and know what sin is.
Now, the interesting thing, therefore, is the term that is used in Hebrew for that lid of gold on which the blood was shed. The word for this cover or lid was in Hebrew, keporeth. Should not trouble you with the basic linguistic meanings of the word, important as they are, but we haven't the time to discuss them. What is to the point is to notice how the Jews themselves translated that word into Greek. When in two hundred and eighty BC in Alexandria in Egypt, they translated the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, when they came to that word kaporeth, representing the cover or lid on the ark on which the blood was put.
They translated it by two words. The first word was epistema, which simply means something laid on top, which is what the ark, uh, the the lid or cover was. It was laid on top of the ark. And one of the possible meanings of the Hebrew term kapa, kapha, is to cover. But then the Jews saw there was more, uh, meaning in that word than just something that covered the ark. They added an adjective, hilasterion, which means that it has to do with propitiation.
It was the place where the blood of propitiation was sprinkled, where propitiation was made and proclaimed and accepted by God. On the basis of which, therefore, he could accept his people. Notice that term there, if you will. Originally in Greek, that's an adjective, hilasterion, the place, sterion is used in Greek for referring to a place where something happens. Hilasterion, where propitiation is offered and accepted before God.
So you've got the connection in the Old Testament, the ark with the law in it, God's just requirements, the law broken and demanding its penalty. And now when the high priest comes in, it's not the law being diminished. God insists upon the law and its penalty, but the blood sprinkled on that cover is the blood of propitiation that satisfies the wrath of God and his righteous standards and makes it right for him, therefore to pardon and accept repentant sinners.
It is this word hilasterion that is used here in Romans three twenty five to describe Christ. God has set him forth as an hilasterion. It is helpful to remember the history of that word, therefore, in the Old Testament. The context is here. The law of God, yes? That's plain for anybody to see, even without spectacles. The law of God is the context, and it condemns us, and our mouths are shut.
We have nothing to say for ourselves. We deserve the penalty. How on earth can we be saved? It is through Christ as the hilasterion. He is the place where we can come and meet God. His is the sacrifice of propitiation that satisfies an ap- uh, the wrath of God and appeases God, so that God can remain just and true to the standards of his law, and yet declare us to be right with him.
Gentlemen, let me, gentlemen, let me then pause ag- just to say again, notice how precise and coherent are the terms that Paul uses in scripture. Scripture is precise. And one of the education ga- educational values of studying scripture is that it begins to sharpen our thinking and make us precise in our thinking and logical, as well as simple, of course. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
So we've got our technical terms in. Now we better start looking at the arguments, do you see? We have already considered, uh, some of them. Let's come down to the, uh, um, actual chapter. First of all, then it was the wrath of God. Man without excuse. The wrath of God now demonstrated in the fact that when men reject him, it has, by God's own arrangement, repercussions on his reasoning faculties, on his body, and on his sexual relationships.
The wrath of God, eh, now in action. God has built us that way. You can't reject God without it having very serious repercussions on your rational processes and upon your bodily behavior. You can't reject the Creator without its diminishing your dignity as a human being. God's wrath in the future.
God's wrath and the day of judgment. Now Paul turns to describing God's salvation in this context. Let's notice some of the details. It is always good to get a comprehension of a whole passage, rather than that get lost in the details to start with. Salvation in this kind of context will mean being justified. That is declared to be in the right.
It's a word you use of God as judge, with us sinners standing before him. Sinners though we are, he is able through Christ to pronounce all who have repented and trusted the Savior to be in the right as far as he is concerned. To acquit them, if you like, of all charge. To declare them, therefore, to be righteous in the sight of God.
Not make them righteous, but declare them righteous. It is freely and by his grace. It is because of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus is the propitiatory. And now we shall notice the significance of that term and its precise meaning.
It deals with the wrath of God. It satisfies God and his sense of justice. This process of God declaring us in the right, in our side is through faith, our faith. But on his side, it's through the propitiation that is in Christ. Notice you need both. Though Christ has offered the propitiating sacrifice, it doesn't mean that everybody in the world is automatically declared just with God. Only those that ha- have faith in Christ are thus covered.
What is more, says Paul, this salvation is through God's righteousness. He is righteous that God himself might be just and the justifier. It is a marvelous thing. It's not just an exhibition of God's mercy. Salvation through the death and propitiation that is in Christ is an expression of God's justice.
I remember in my youth being in a certain place when I was taken out by a senior brother who was, I'm sure he was, and he certainly thought himself to be a good theologian. And on the walk he did what some old boys are con- uh, apt to do from time to time. He thought to examine me in my faith, you see, and said, David, my boy, what are you trusting in for your salvation? And I was then about to say through in the grace of Christ, in the grace of God, you know. Then I mercifully twigged it in due time, how he wanted to trick me a little bit, and I replied, I'm trusting in the justice of God.
I got full marks, ten out of ten for that reply. It's by grace we are saved, of course, yes. The magnificent thing is, we can trust in the very justice of God. God is just when he justifies the ungodly. He's just to do it, righteous to do it, because the propitiating sacrifice of Christ has upheld the law. And so it's going to say that salvation, justification is apart from the law, not on the grounds of our keeping the law, not something we attain to at last by our painful struggles to keep the law throughout our life.
It's apart from the law. And yet, in another very important sense, it establishes the law. And what that means, by establishing the law, we shall have to think in our next, uh, session. I hope it's now becoming clear, um, what are the central arguments of this great first section of the epistle. God's wrath against our sin.
We are not only sinners, but guilty sinners, and he is perfectly just in his condemnation of our sin. We stand before him, our mouths shut, without excuse, open to the penalty of God's law. But there is a salvation. If we will justify God and say God is right, we deserve that penalty, then God has a salvation for us. Through Jesus Christ, the propitiation for our sins, whose sacrifice satisfies the law of God, upholds the righteousness of God, and makes it just and righteous of our God to declare those who put their faith in Christ to be in the right with him, to have legal status, acquitted, accepted, in the right with the judge of the whole universe, so that I can be sure of our salvation resting not merely in his grace that is magnificent in itself, but in his very righteousness.
Hm? So let's get ho- ho- hold of those basic principles, then in our second session we shall think about some of the details. It is time for coffee.
