Gooding, David: 5 - Putting Right what Sin has Put Wrong

Tonight there is to be a brief session in which I shall be attempting to explain the Christian technical term, the propitiation of our sin. So that this afternoon is the last of our major sessions, and we come to the final section of the book. Now, if you've been here before, you may remember that for convenience sake, and indeed for certain other reasons, we have this weekend divided the epistle into four major movements of thought, and in each movement we have tried to pick one prominent theme and traced it through until it came to its own proper climax. So we dealt in the first two sections. First of all, with the need, why we need to be saved, and the first answer that the Epistle to the He- to the Romans gives is that we need to be saved and delivered from the wrath of God. The second answer it gives to that same question, why do we need God's salvation, is that we need to be saved from the wreckage of Adam's sin. And as the apostle works through those double themes, he comes to each own proper climax, glories in the fact that we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Christ, takes the occasion to point us in hope to the future of glory that awaits us, and ends in climactic fashion with a statement of the wonders of the love of God. He does that in the first great movement of thought, he does it again in the second. Then in the third movement of thought, he deals with a problem that any serious expander of the gospel, the Christian gospel, must face, the claim that God raised up Israel as his special people to be a witness for him in the centuries preceding the birth of Christ, and also to be a signpost, a promiser for God of the coming of the great world's savior and deliverer. That is the Christian belief, that is the claim of the Old Testament. The historical fact is that when Jesus our Lord came, the majority of the Jewish nation, the nation of Israel, said he wasn't the Messiah and engineered his crucifixion. That places a very big problem of explanation before any thoughtful Christian. How do you reconcile the fact that your belief is that God raised up Israel of old time to be a witness and to and a pointer to an identifier of the coming Messiah, then claim that Jesus is that Messiah, even though the majority of the nation of Israel have rejected him and say he isn't. That is a burning theological question that the apostle necessarily faces for the sake of the credibility of his own gospel that he preaches and expounds the answer to that problem as God gave him to understand it. And he ends that, uh, movement of thought with a similarly, uh, similar outburst of praise, this time not so much for the love of God as for the wisdom of God. In spite of the defection of the nation of Israel, Paul encourages his own heart and assuages its sorrow in the certainty that the wisdom of God's strategies will bring it about, that one day the nation of Israel as a whole shall be saved, and God's purpose in that nation shall be seen not to have been permanently defeated. God will bring it to successful and triumphant conclusion at the last. Now, this afternoon, we come to the fourth major movement, if you will allow me to call it so. It is what we otherwise call the practical se- section of the epistle. I personally am a little wary of that term, practical, because in the first place, I'm an impossible theorist, you know, and enjoy the theory more than the practice. Uh, you are all very good Christians and enjoy the practice more than the theory, doubtless, but I'm one of these theorists, you'll see. So the term practical isn't altogether always welcome. But when we take the term practical, that good and godly term, and apply it to exhortations, now if you are a Christian, you mustn't steal, and that's thought to be very practical. Well, so it is. We mustn't forget that other parts of the epistle are practical too. Actually, there isn't a comma in the Word of God that isn't devoted to the purpose of our salvation. Every comma has to work, you know, and we were finding in the second session it was exceedingly practical, telling us what is the power behind the school of holiness that God puts before us in Christ. No good announcing theories of sanctification unless those theories are based in a power that works. So this part of the epistle is as practical indeed. Let that not escape our attention, as now we turn to this final movement, which is practical in that, uh, narrowest sense may be for some of its parts, full of proper and healthy exhortations to do this, and full of serious warnings not to do the other. I want, as we begin, to remind us of what we saw on our first session, that, uh, these lists of practical exhortations are not sort of stuck on the last five minutes of Paul's treatise, you'll see, but are an integral part of what he has to say. Excuse my maneuverings, but I have to obey this microphone here and remember not to talk. Just let's look at what we looked at briefly on Friday evening, and notice some of the leading ideas in this final section of the book, and notice how closely they echo some of the leading ideas in the first movement of the book. The chapter twelve begins with the appeal to us by the mercies of God to yield our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto the Lord. And it vividly reminds us of Paul's great exposure of the sin of paganism, how that when they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, uh, God gave them over, and they began the sad business of dishonoring and degrading their bodies. It appeals to us to not to be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Vividly recording what Paul had to say in the opening chapter of his work about when how, about how that when people refused to retain God in their knowledge, God intervened in his judgment, and the judgment took the form of delivering them over to a degraded and reprobate mind. Our judgment was not merely on the things they did. God's judgment showed itself by, uh, the fact that when they wouldn't any longer retain God in their thinking, their thinking went wonky. Their thinking now began to approve things that are, objectively looked at, hideous and degrading, but which now they approved and advertised and advocated and maintained were the expression of modern freedom. What a man from Mars could see at once, it was degrading the human body and demoting it almost to animal status. And what are we therefore saying as we trace the echoes, uh, from this last part, the echoes of what Paul said in the first bit? Here we find the motivation, I beseech you by the mercies of God, the motivation that lay behind man's steep decline into sinfulness. They were not thankful to God. This, that, and further then, I shall not stay to go through the whole list. I want to make the simple point that in studying a sophisticated exposition of God's truth, as is the Epistle to the Romans, it is often good, of course, to make a table of contents. It is even better to try and understand the functional relationship between the different parts of any one book of scripture. And what, pray, do I mean by functional relationship? Well, suppose I was trying to describe to you, who had never seen one, what a human hand is. I could try to list its contents, couldn't I? How will this do, a stab at an attempt to describe a hand? It's a bit of more or less square, uh, flesh and bones and muscles and things, do you see? It's got four things sticking out at the top, uh, and one at the side. How will that do for a table of contents that describes the hand, do you see? Well, you say it's got some of the basic elements to it, uh, the the component parts, but just describing the component parts of a hand hasn't told anybody what a hand is. To describe adequately what a hand is, you must not only describe its com- list its component parts, you must show how those component parts are functionally related. Why is this thumb sticking out at the side instead of joining its fellows on the top? Well, you'd explain that because you need it sticking out the side so that you can grasp things with that hand, of course. Has to be out of the side. And once you've understood why the thing is out at the side, you are beginning to say, well, of course it couldn't be any how else, could it? Uh, and when you understand why one finger is longer than the other and what their sundry functions are, you suddenly begin to dawn on yourself, yeah, well, well, now I understand what a hand is. I see not only how it is, but it, I see how it couldn't be any how else. You have understood what it is in itself, as old Aristotle would have said. You have understood the functional relationships of the component. And it is good sometimes, in a sophisticated work like the Epistle to the Romans, not only to make out a, a, a table of contents of the movements, but to begin to appreciate what the functional relationship is. This last movement that we call the practical part, what is its functional relationship to the rest of the epistle? It's not just tucked on the end. You're Christians now? Well, be good, be kinder to your maiden aunts than that you used to be. Well, why? Well, that's just a thing that Christians do, you know. Not like that, is it? This is an integral part of God's gospel. The gospel takes people who were like this, and by its power it transforms them into people like this. This is an integral part of the gospel. And you'll see. We see it, for instance, coming out, if we come down this, this. Chapter one talks to us of the death of Christ, and shows us how that we can be justified by faith and not by works, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. That doesn't, uh, that doesn't constitute the last we shall hear of the death of Christ in the Epistle to the Romans. Look what is now said. There is another and complementary side to the death of Christ that isn't a little bit attached to the side and added on as an afterthought either. It is an integral part of what our Lord was doing on Calvary's cross. He died and lived again that he might be Lord. That is also an integral part of the gospel. That is why we have to take these practical things so seriously, is it not? They are the outworking of the gospel. I repeat, that changes men from living like this kind of thing and changes them to live after this manner. I want this afternoon not to preach sermons. Uh, I am tempted to preach them often and then preach bad ones. I'll try to, uh, uh, resist the temptation, and just to make some remarks here and there, therefore, on some of the leading ideas of this final section. Let us notice, to start with, turn it off, please. The initial appeal, Romans chapter twelve verse one: I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. We notice at once the motivation of Christian ethics. The main spring of motivation for living a life of Christian ethical behavior is the mercies of God. It is our response to God's astounding mercy in the giving of his son, in the pardoning of us rebel sinners. It is that profound motivation that is the main spring behind Christian ethics. The world outside often doesn't understand it. In the work that some of us try to do in Russia these days, the schools will tell us, we welcome very strongly your help to instruct our teachers to teach ethics and value system. Our empire, they will tell you, is at sixes and sevens. We are left without any values. We don't know what to teach the children. We used to teach them ethics based on Marxism. Now we can't do that. We still got to teach them how to behave as decent citizens, but on what basis do we teach them? We welcome your help to teach them values. We're not particularly asking you to convert the children. That- that's what the church has to do. We don't... Ah, yes. And that is a temptation sometimes for people to think that you can have Christian ethics without the Christian gospel. And the mainspring of Christian ethics lies here. In the mercies of God, who gave his son to die for us rebels at Calvary. It is in response to that infinite mercy that we, in our turn, are called upon to offer our bodies a living and vigorous sacrifice, in gratitude to the one who gave his body a sacrifice for us. That reminds us how practical is the teaching, the doctrinal teaching about the death of Christ in the earlier chapters. In the ancient testament, there is an example of a living sacrifice, namely the whole body of the Levites. They had to be offered to God, not to cut up to pieces on an altar, of course, but standing beside the altar, they were a wave offering to God. They were a sacrifice, a living sacrifice to God, you see. They had been chosen to look after the tabernacle and to do all the routine work of carting the labor here and putting the poles in place there and seeing after the curtains. And you know, when they first did it, it was bordering on fun. You see a brand new tabernacle, who wouldn't? I mean, it's like having a brand new car, isn't it? A brand new tabernacle with beautiful golden frames and curtains and things. It was also new and novel. I dare say there was some competition among the junior Levites as to who should do what. And putting it up and taking it down, whoo, well, marvelous. You know, it happens that when you put up the tabernacle five thousand six hundred and seventy two times and taken it down five hundred and sixty th- thousand other times, and now you come to put it up again, the novelty is worn off. Why do I have to stand here and do this when all the others are, uh, uh, uh, have left and gone off playing Israelite football? Oh, bother the friend, get in face. Oh, you've never felt like that, I never. You run to your Christian duties with alacrity and joy always, don't you? But Dato knew how Levites might, on sundries, uh, might feel eventually. Before they were allowed to begin, he had a solemn ceremony. They were going to be offered a living sacrifice. So what should be done to help them? You had the nation assembled. There was the brand new altar. First, the altar was dedicated, as the princes and head of each tribe were invited to come and show their estimation of the altar and the wonder of its sanctity by offering their gifts, and there they came, solemn leader after solemn leader. You can see them coming, come with beards and all and dressed up for the occasion. And here they come with their costly gifts of silver spoons and fine grown flour and whatnot. And as they come forward before the wondering crowd, they lay their gifts at the base of that altar for its dedication, showing their estimate of its worth. I can imagine the kids nudging their fathers and saying, where do they get all that silver from? Oh, my son, they got that silver when God redeemed us out of Egypt, and the Egyptians were moved to give us of their wealth. That's what they got through redemption. And they're giving it away, Dad? Who? Yeah, but you see, my son, we owe everything to the redemption that God provided and the showing of gratitude. What they thought of the altar, that it focused the nation's attention on God's redemption. When the nation's attention had been thus gathered, the Levites were called to yield their bodies a living sacrifice. Beware of what you are prepared to describe as practical. There is no greater practicality than to sit Allah in charge around the emblems of the body and blood of Christ. Remember that we owe all we have. To that ransoming payment made. So we sing, meaning it. Were the whole realm of nature mine, that were an offering far too small. Love so amazing. So divine. Demands my life. My soul. My all. Now that's practical. That is what will be the main spring that will keep you going at that difficult Sunday school, keep you going in that difficult situation in the factory office, standing firmly for righteousness and for God. Keep you patient at your pastoral work, my dear elder, with awkward and difficult believers and the rest. I beseech you, by the mercies of God, let the wealth of his sacrifice so capture not only our rational minds, but our imagination and hearts, that the wealth of it will sustain us as we give our little sacrifice back to God. Yield your bodies and then your minds. It is interesting to notice the order, is it not? Not minds first and then bodies. You've heard of the centipede, haven't you, who fell into a ditch and thought about getting up and walking again, and he'd forgotten which foot to put forward first. So he meditated. Was it the first foot on the left or the other one on the right, or did you begin by the middle foot? Do you know he was still there weeks afterwards? He hadn't come to his rational and logical conclusions as to which came first. Stupid centipede. The better thing would have been to got up and walk. Then he'd have found out. We can sometimes spend so long time deliberating, deliberating, we never get round to doing anything. First, give your bodies, says Paul. And that done, of course, God will expect us to use these bodies for his glory intelligently. For that, we shall need a mind, and we need a mind that is not conformed to this world's value system. The mind that is truly liberated by the grace and power of God, to think in God's way, by God's standards, and by his system of values, that we may direct our bodies. God wants sacrifice. He doesn't want suicide. And sometimes the youthful, don't I know it from my own experience, can go to an extreme of zeal that takes the form nearer to suicide than to sacrifice. The soldier in the army must be prepared to get shot in battle. He must be prepared to sleep in a wet trench, but he isn't there so as he can get killed or to kill himself. His duty is to keep alive as long as he can, isn't he? So are we by our minds redeemed, sanctified, transformed to control and order the bodies that we sacrifice to God. Let's move on now, therefore, as Paul enumerates some of the gifts that are given, and I wish to pick out a phrase, uh, from his general exhortation from verse three. I say therefore, through the grace that was given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but so to think as to think soberly, according as God has dealt to each man a measure of faith. Those last words, as you will know, have been the subject of much debate. What is this measure of faith? I shall not re- uh, tire you by rehearsing all the possible translations and interpretations and exegetical nuances, and thus and thus, and confess that I myself am attracted to the suggestion that Professor Cranfield made. He's not saying, look, think about yourself. If your faith is ever so strong and God has given you a lot of faith, well, you are at liberty to think a lot of yourself. But if God has only given you a little faith, well, then of course you wouldn't get round to thinking much about yourself, well, you will think very little about yourself. Uh. That would make nonsense of the thing, wouldn't it? To have men and women that are highly spiritual, gifted, getting bloated heads because they've got a tremendous amount of faith and thinking a lot about themselves. That would be a disaster in its way, wouldn't it? Some fall for the temptation. I take it rather to be that our Christian faith in the gospel comes to us as a measuring line, a ruler, tape measure, if you like. A metron by which we can assess our attitude and measure things up and come to our decisions about all kinds of practical questions. So taking that, allow me even if you don't agree with it, uh, uh, taking that, uh, you'll say, as what the thing probably means. Let, uh, let's get out our tape measure, shall we? Our rule. I'll put it over you, if you don't mind, you'll see. How are you to think of yourself, my good Christian lady? Let's get out the old measure of, of faith in the gospel. What do you believe about yourself? What does the gospel demand you believe about yourself, sir? I can tell you it won't be very flattering. It tells me that you are an absolutely wretched sinner. Oh, so impossibly bankrupt, corrupt, perverse, and all the rest, that the most diligent effort on your part to keep God's law to possibly save you, all God could do in his disgusting sin, was to sentence you to be executed, dead and buried. Did I hear you say I hope you'll keep that opinion dark and to yourself, Mr. Preacher, and not blab that around Cambridge? I'm sorry, the news is out. And you're partly responsible. You sat there, stood there singing those Sanky hymns. Advertising it to the world, just what God thinks about you. Vile and full of sin I am. I hope that wasn't just formal language. Everybody knows it. It ill befits me strutting around as though I were someone, doesn't it, Otto? When everybody knows it, if they care to, what God thinks of me. What a fool I should be, giving myself airs and graces. Oh, but that's only part of the measurement. Let me measure you the other way round. How God, uh, how faith in the gospel becomes a measure of what you are. Yeah. I discover as I measure you that you are so valuable, the price God has put on you could never be exaggerated. Am I to believe that, that in God's sight you were worth the giving of his son to die for you? Oh, if that be so, how must I treat you? And incidentally, how must you treat me? Practice based on what we really believe about the gospel. And sometimes I get the impression that we Christians would be less fierce in our accusations of other Christians and our criticisms. If we returned to the old take measure more often and ask ourselves, what does the gospel oblige me to believe about this man, this woman about whom I talk? So it is, of course, about our gifts, whatever they are. Stupid of me, wouldn't it, to, to, if I had a gift to start with, to, to parade myself as though I were someone very important. And everybody knows it's not to my credit I've got a gift. Can't you hear what the word is saying? It is a gift. Like somebody receiving a marvelous Christian present from his mum and saying, aren't I clever to get a gift like this? Of course not. Isn't mother very kind to give you a gift like that? No credit to you, you got it. How stupid we can be, not only in spiritual gifts, but in other things. You hear some people talking of their country. An Italian says he's got mountains in his country, or the Englishman isn't going to be done at that. We've got mountains. Oh yeah. As though it was somehow to our credit. We got a mountain or two or something, or a lake, or the biggest canyon in the world or something. Well, there it is. Thank God for the lot of them. Not to our credit that we've got them, is it? We are but bankrupt sinners who don't deserve to have anything, actually. What we have is by the grace of God. Then it comes to another matter, a very practical matter, the matter of vengeance. Look at the end of chapter twelve. Render to no man evil for evil. Take thought for things honorable in the sight of all men. If it be possible, as much as in you lieth, be at peace with all men. Avenge not yourselves, beloved, but give place to unto wrath, for it is written, vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. But if thine enemy hunger, feed him. If he thirst, give him to drink, for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good. Those verses have proved, once more, difficult advice for many Christians. What is Paul saying? Look, it is not Christian to avenge yourself or to seek avenging. Now here we must be careful of terms. Avenging is one thing, revenge is another. We're not talking about revenge, we're talking about avenging. That means simply seeing justice is done. And that evil and, uh, suffering unjustly applied is removed, and justice is done. What is the Christian attitude to that? You say the Christian attitude is that we should never seek to be avenged. Jesus didn't, you say, did he? When he suffered, he threatened not. Did he not pray, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do? He did, yes. But do notice what he said, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Would have been a very different thing if they had known what they were doing, wouldn't it? And as to our Lord's attitude to these things, Peter himself tells us that when our Lord suffered, he didn't retaliate, he didn't even threaten, but he committed himself Himself to to... him him who who judges... rightly. And went to the cross in the conviction that God cares about justice. And into the hands of a God who cares about justice, our blessed Lord committed himself and his cause. The gospel does not ask us to believe that God isn't interested in justice, or that it is wrong to hope that one day justice should be done. Justice shall be done. And in the confidence that one day it will be done, our Lord committed himself in his suffering to him that judges right. We may follow his example. We are not of the modern sort, who say when people have committed atrocious crimes, I forgive them even before they've repented. That is to condone what they've done. Gospel calls on us to copy Christ and to commit the whole thing to God who judges righteously in a certain knowledge there would be a judgment. He left the whole matter to God and himself concentrated on mercy even to those who crucified him. Mercy to sinners. And bore our sins in his body on the tree and took it as the tactics deliberately taken to have the effect of leading us to compunction and repentance, and thus to salvation before the blood of God. We can afford, because there is a God of justice who will one day avenge his elect, we can afford to copy Christ and show that same mercy and take the suffering and insult and bear it in the hope it be used of God to bring people to compunction and repentance while there's still time to repent. And what about our attitude to the government and its powers of what the Bible calls wrath and, if you please, retribution? That has grown to be a very unpopular thing in the theory of criminology these days, isn't it? No retribution. Criminals are to be dealt with if the strong measures meted out to them improve them. Or as a warning to other people. But they're not to be punished as a retribution, simply because they have done something bad. But God's word seems to say, oh yes, they are. You say, well, wait a minute. You've forgotten your measuring tape. Oh no, why, yes, so I have. Let me get out the measuring tape. What do I believe about the gospel? What does the gospel, um, uh, ask me to believe? Pray tell me, what was happening at Calvary? Was it simply that Christ was suffering innocently at the hands of men? Or did he suffer at the hands of God? And if he suffered at the hands of God, pray why? Sometimes we're told we mustn't use the crude term that Jesus was punished for us. Well, if that's a wrong term, let us cease using it, and let's use biblical term. It pleased the Lord to crush him. He put him to grief, as he made his soul a sacrifice for sin. We must be careful about our social thinking and our criminological thinking, mustn't we? Lest we bow to the soft auctions of a world that scarce takes sin seriously anymore and favors the criminal more than his victim, and adopt theories that, if they were taken to their logical conclusion, would undermine the very doctrine of the cross. And thus and thus does Paul proceed, and time tells me I mustn't carry on using my measuring tape much longer. I am, of course, to love my neighbor as myself. In so doing, I am to fulfill the law of God. And I remind myself and you, just let's look. I remind myself and you how certain themes run right through every section of the epistle. And one of those major themes, of course, is the law. From each movement, I have selected some of the references. There are many more in most of the movements. In the first, the righteousness is apart from the law. In the second, the righteous requirement of the law nonetheless has to be. Notice the balance of Christian truth. Justified apart from the law, when the Holy Spirit works God's salvation within us, it leads to the fulfillment of the law. Similarly, we're reminded that the Jew made a desperate mistake and thought salvation was by his effort to keep the law, whereas Christ was the e- is the end of the law for righteousness. Whereas that is so, the last section, amidst all its practical exhortations, will remind us of our duty to love our neighbor. And in loving our neighbor, we do fulfill the law. The law can be summed up in this, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. Though we cannot be saved or justified by our effort to do so, yet the magic and wonder of God's salvation is that it works in our hearts until we begin to fulfill that law by loving our neighbor more and more as ourselves and loving God supremely. And then the gospel take measure can be applied to life's days, can't it? How much time have you to develop your career? Sometimes when we are young, the temptation is, well, I will take Christianity seriously one of these days, not just now. I've got to get through my exams. Oh, I see. So we'll get through your exams, and then you'll take Christianity seriously. All sort of good stuff. The trouble is, when you get your, through your exams, most people by that time will have found some charming, uh, uh, valiant husband or beautiful wife. They'll get married and they'll have a family. Marvelous, thank God for that. And then they'll say, well, I, yes, but I must take my Christian seriously. I can't do it just now. I've got a wife and a family. Uh, I will when they're grown up, you'll see. But when they're grown up, lo and behold, they've now reached a portly fifty and they're managing director of some e- e- enormously complicated firm, and they say, well, actually, I can't take my Christianity too seriously. I'm so chaste in business. When I retire, I'll take it. I retire at sixty five and die at sixty six. We need to get the tape measure out on our life, don't we, in the light of the gospel before we're fifty six. And what will the gospel tell us about that? That Christ died, that Christ is risen, that Christ is coming again. Our salvation, praise God, is nearer than when we believed. We shan't have another February the, uh, thirteenth or whatever it is, to spend, shall we? It's gone nearly now. It'll never come again. Our salvation is nearer. You say, my brother, I'm looking forward to the Lord to come. I am, I am, I am. Oh, well, so am I. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and some Friday afternoons. I hope you come ever so quick, you see. Other days, I have a certain little niggling. You know, I thought I would have made so much more advance in my spiritual life by the time I'd reached my present age, and life somehow ran by, uh, uh, uh, all too quickly. And if the Lord came tomorrow, I fear I would, uh, not have made all that progress I would like to have made. Oh, God help us to take out our tape measure, our ruler, or what we believe about the gospel, that Christ is coming. And you don't know when, do you? Oh, let us get things in such proportion as when he comes, there shall be no sense of regret or that we've missed our opportunities. But from that, from that kind of detailed practical consideration, we come now to the second half of this final section. Let me then show you what that second half is about. There are selections taken from the third movement of the epistle. We discussed them last night, didn't we? The whole business of the story of Israel and the Jew and their relation to Gentiles, and how in God's marvelous strategies and providences, the falling away of Israel has led to the enrichment of the Gentiles. One day, God is going to provoke Israel to jealousy through the Gentiles, the gospel coming to the Gentiles, and all Israel will be saved. And on that basis, Paul reminds us in his brotherly and fatherly fashion that we Gentiles are not to get stuck up and conceited. You be not high-minded but fear, says he. For if the natural branches, Israelites, were broken off from the olive tree of witness for God in this earth, because they continued not in belief, don't you Gentiles be high-minded, you fear? For if God did not spare the natural branches, he won't spare you. Would that Christendom had listened to it. The Old Testament is full not of Christians with anti-Semitic flavor in their voices, denouncing Jews, it's full of Jewish prophets, Israelite prophets, denouncing Israel's persistent tendency to apostasy. The great apostasy came when Israel disowned her true Messiah. But we pro- we, we, we, we Gentiles will need to watch ourselves, don't we? We think of the hideous attitude that Christendom took to Israel down the centuries. My ex-colleague, Professor Smallwood, expert in the history of the Jews under the Romans, entitled her inaugural lecture From Pagan Protection to Christian Persecution. And that sums up this position. The Roman emperors, even from the time of Julius Caesar, protected the Jews in many fashions, and even Jewish members of the Roman army had allowance made for them and their scruples about the Sabbath, and special legislation was passed by a succession of Roman emperors protecting Jews. Not that the Romans liked Jews, but that was their magnanimity. When did the persecution of the Jews start? When Christendom joined hands with the state and eventually restricted them, and then eventually openly persecuted them. Some of the magisterial reformers weren't much better in that regard, were they? Of the awful things and shameful things that they said about Israel. We need, as Gentiles, to watch it, don't we? Lest our theology become apostate too. Let Christendom beware. If God didn't spare apostate Israel, neither will he spare apostate Christendom. That also is practical. Nor must we think that Israel is gone and finished forever. It has not, says Paul. It will be restored. Jew-Gentile relationships then, and they come up again in this last section of the final movement of thought. Jew-Gentile relationships. Of course, it's a theme that's been going right from the very beginning, isn't it? Where the first section argued that we're justified not by works, but by faith, not by circumcision, but by faith. Jew and Gentile are both condemned as sinners. Jew and Gentile can both be saved on the same terms of faith. And in Christ, therefore, Jew and Gentile stand on the same platform. That is the gospel we preach. But showing that unity to the world at large, consistent to our gospel, that's another story, isn't it? And so in the closing chapters of this epistle, Paul turns to talk to the predominantly Gentile church in Rome about the need for Christian Gentiles to be patient with Christian Jews and respect their consciences. Nothing is here said about meats offered to idols and that complicated problem, but simply about dietary laws, whether you should eat meat or vegetables. Paul is concerned with the relation of Jews and Gentiles, even to the matter of eating of meats and other such cultural things. And it could have happened that Gentiles and Jews should have failed to accept each other socially, and it might even have happened that they wouldn't accept each other in the church. It is marvelous ingenuity upon the part of the people of God, isn't it? How many things they can invent for dividing the people of God. Their ingenuity has been exceedingly fertile. And how minor things can be so exalted as though they were fundamentals of the faith. Thus unnecessarily dividing the people of God and seeming to the world as a very peculiar advertisement for the Christian faith. So Paul exhorts the Gentiles to be patient with the conscience of the Jew, never to override it. And that is not merely a little bit of prudence. It stems from the absolute basics of the gospel. For Christ died that he might be Lord. That perhaps is why there are many things in life where the New Testament itself does not pronounce upon what we may or may not do. There are certain things, many things, where the Bible is completely explicit, isn't it? Christians are not to steal, nor commit adultery, nor lie, and all these other things as said, yes. It's not left to our individual conscience in the matter. A whole range of other things, you'll see. Um, should you drink tea or shouldn't you? German evangelicals felt, uh, people like me were terrible sinners in days gone by because I drank tea. I felt they were terrible sinners because they smoked cigars. It's also curious, isn't it? Um, there are many things where the New Testament doesn't explicitly lay down the rules and regulations. Is that by some oversight on God's part? I fancy not. It would have ti- uh, you know, it would have tired the uh managers of heaven, I imagine, to get out a detailed book or list of rules and regulations if you were to cover everything, what ho. But there was another reason behind it. When there is no specific commandment, and I must make up my mind. What it does is, or what it should do is, is to drive me back to the Lord Jesus. Reminding me that I must stand one day before his judgment throne. He will want to know why he did this and why he didn't do the other. That sense that I am personally answer- answerable to the Savior is an exceedingly valuable thing. If I simply had a book of rules, I could just carry out the rules without coming anywhere near the Savior, couldn't I? Like I treat the garage man. I don't go to my garage man more often than I have to, you know. He's so, uh, exceedingly expensive anyway, because he'll find trouble where there isn't any. Ah, do you see? So I have a book of rules at home. I don't take it to bed with me or anything like that, but when the old car goes wrong, I look in the book of rules, number one thousand five hundred and sixty seven A, and if I can, I put the thing right. Do you see? Don't go anywhere near the garage man unless I have to. We could treat the Lord like that, couldn't we? Keep the rules. No, no, says Christ. Christian ethics is ultimately your personal relationship to me. So that life will oblige me. If I'm going to make up my decisions and be ready one day to stand before Christ's judgment seat, constantly to have reports to the Lord and say, Lord, I've read the word, I've listened to wise Christians, I've considered my circumstances, but Lord, now I have to take the decisions. Some say this, some say that. Lord, I've got to decide. I must decide. I can't leave it undecided. Oh Lord, I'm going to decide, and this is honestly what I think will please you. Suppose I get it wrong. Well, at least when the Lord says, Gooding, why did you do so and so? That was wrong, you know. I want to be able to say, our Lord, I'm sorry I did it. But you who know my heart, you know at the time I thought long about it and I prayed about it, and when I decided, I thought I was doing what pleased you. I'm sorry to discover it was wrong. And the Lord will have mercy, will he not? But suppose I, with my fancied superior knowledge, overpower the, uh, conscience of my brother. He has a conscience about doing something. He fears it's wrong before the Lord. I know it isn't wrong. I've got the superior knowledge. I might even be right. It isn't actually wrong. The Lord doesn't count it wrong. But my brother, he has a conscience about it. To him it is wrong, and he wouldn't do it left to himself, but I overpower him and embarrass him and put him in a position where I almost compel him to do it, though in his heart of hearts he feels it's wrong. Think of the day when he stands before the Lord, and the Lord will say, and why did you do that, my child? It was, it was, uh, all right to do it, but you thought it was wrong, didn't you? And thinking it was wrong and would offend me, you went and did it, didn't you? Why did you do something that you thought would offend me? And the poor man replies, well, it's Gooding made me do it. You suppose the Lord will say, and who is Gooding? Look here, my man, I thought bigger things of you. I died so that I, not Gooding, might be Lord. So must we, as we take out the take measure of what we believe, bring it to bear on our relations, Jew and Gentile, even to Englishmen and Irishmen, that our attitude reflect the gospel we preach, for there is no distinction, Jew or Greek, God loves them, they're saved on the same per- terms, and if they are saved, members of the body of Christ. We must get over our little nationalism. Love as Christ has loved, forbearing one another, ever remaining conscious of the fact that one day we stand before the Lord who died to give account of what we did and why we did it to him. And incidentally, says Paul, you Gentiles in Rome, I'm actually going up to Jerusalem soon. I got a a sizable gift of money. The Gentile believers have collected it, and they want him to send it as a token of their love and respect and gratitude to Christ and to the gospel and to the Jewish nation who produced the Messiah. And I'm charged with taking this gift of the Gentiles up to the, um, up to the Jews in Jerusalem, the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. Pray for me, won't you, that that gift may be acceptable to the Jews? Oh dear. You see the possibility that lurks behind that remark, don't you? Paul is imagining himself with this gift of money coming from the Gentiles to the Jewish church. Oh, what a disaster it would have been if the Jewish believers had turned around and we say, we don't want their unclean money, they're Gentiles, they're not ceremonially pure, they're not circumcised, we can't accept their stinking money. Pray that this gesture of Gentiles reaching out halfway across the world to express their brotherly fellowship with the Jewish churches in Judea, that that gift may prove acceptable to the Jewish believers, and the garment of Christ be not rent, and the gospel be advertised in its practical effect. Now I have not left you sufficient time for your questions. That in a sense relieves me because some of them are hard. Our chairman says that he's going hook up a crook to find time for them somewhere. But then, at the beginning, we had more important things to do. And, uh, you will have excused me for yielding to the temptation once more. It is such a delight to talk to you that you must forgive me for yielding to the temptation to take too long about it.