The Gospel of Redeemed Relationship

Welcome

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Introduction to Romans

Last week we concluded our Missions Month, where we focused on how God is still actively at work in the world today. There are still many in the world who crave to hear the gospel. Many of those who have heard the gospel before need to hear it again in all its transformative power. God himself is on a mission to unite the world under the name of Jesus Christ and to reconcile all peoples to himself. And amazingly, he does this through us, human beings who are broken and imperfect, but redeemed and restored and rebuilt into the body of Christ - the church. You could say that God is building the church of Christ through the church of Christ.

The question then is, what does that look like? What does it mean for us to be part of the community of God?

That is the question we want to explore with this series in the book of Romans that will take us to the end of the year. If you’ve never read the book of Romans before, I highly recommend you read it. If you’ve read the book of Romans before, read it again, because this is one of the richest books in the entire New Testament. Scholars frequently comment that Romans is the magnum opus or the greatest work of the apostle Paul. What I hope to offer you today is an introduction of the book of Romans and an outline of what the next 8 weeks are all about.

As brother (XXX) read earlier, our text is taken from two parts of Romans: 1:16-17 and 3:22-31, which are arguably the most important verses in the whole book. These verses are summaries of Paul’s entire argument throughout Romans about what Christianity is all about. I would summarize it this way: Romans is about the Gospel of Redeemed Relationship, and it is expressed in three ways which we will get into later.

Before we jump into the text, I want to stress a couple of things. First, Romans is about the Gospel: Good News. The gospel is about Jesus and what he has done for all creation throughout all time, and that is good news that brings life and joy and healing to those who hear it! Some of us may have been taught that Christianity is about following a bunch of rigid rules and regulations and that you can’t do any of the “fun stuff” that everybody else does. Some of us may have the idea that Christians miss out on life because we’re trying to be “holy” all the time. That could not be farther from the truth! We who believe in Christ are not missing out on the good things life; it’s because of Christ that we enjoy the best life there is! Actually, it’s because of Christ that we have life at all!

Second, Romans is about the relationship between God and humanity. We often come to Scripture thinking that it is a book of rules saying what we can or cannot do as Christians so that we can go to heaven. And then we think of God as some kind of cosmic policeman checking to see if we have followed all the rules and who gets angry when we don’t.

But that is not how the Bible understands itself. The Bible is primarily a story about a loving God who seeks relationship and intimacy with his creation. God loves us more than any parent can love their child, more than a child can love their parent, more than you can love your spouse. And he has given us words of life so that we can know who this God is and respond to his call of love.

Redeemed Relationship between God and Man (3:23-26)

This is the truth at the heart of the Gospel, and indeed, at the heart of all Scripture. This is the greatest reversal, the “greatest ‘but’ in world literature.”

You see, I have a problem called sin and it has messed up my life. And by the way, you have this problem too. In fact, all of us have this problem. A few weeks ago, brother Terry rightly said that sin like is a disease that none of us are safe from. And just as diseases prevent us from living our fullest lives because we are confined to a hospital bed or we feel lethargic and sick all the time, sin cuts us off from the Source of Life himself! God cannot tolerate sin, and here are some of the symptoms.

Sin is when I get angry at my neighbor for no good reason. You don’t have to raise your hands, but is anyone else guilty of this? Of course, I mean more than the person living next door to you. I mean your father, your mother, your sibling, your spouse. Maybe it’s a schoolmate, a colleague, a boss, a politician.

Sin is my pride and arrogance that makes me look down on others because they are not as smart, not as good looking, or not as successful.

Sin is when I have an opportunity to do good and choose not to do it.

Sin is when I go online looking for images or videos online that have I no business looking at.

Sin is when I love something else more than I love God. Jesus said that the Greatest Command was to love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. How many of us can say that we have kept that commandment? Have we loved our sleep or recreation more than our quiet time with God each morning and evening? Have we loved the comfort of staying at home more than assembling with the family of God?

The list could go on, but you get the picture. All of us are hopelessly infected with sin, and no matter how hard we try to get rid of it, we always relapse. This is a hard truth to accept. We don’t like to think of ourselves as imperfect, sinful people. But that’s exactly what Paul says, right? Romans 3:23, one of my earliest memory verses as a young boy, says “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” When we sin, we become a shadow, an empty shell of the people that God always wanted us to be.

But wait. The story isn’t over. Look at the very next verse: “and all are justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” This is what makes the message of Jesus “gospel” and good news! Even though sin separates us from God, God himself came and restored that relationship through Jesus Christ! We did nothing to earn it, but God’s love is so great that even our worst sins could not stop him.

Corrie ten Boom put it this way. She was a survivor of a German concentration camp during WWII who continued to believe in a good God even when all around her she saw death and hardship and pure evil. She said this: “There is no pit so deep that God’s grace is not deeper still.”

Application

This morning, you may feel that there is so much sin in your life that God is angry at you and that even he cannot forgive you. You may have been a Christian for a long time, but you may have this nagging fear that you might lose your salvation if you sin too much, and you have never tasted the full joy of a redeemed relationship.

Today, let us call them out as lies. Look at the word of God! There is no one excluded from God’s forgiveness! All of us have sinned and fall short of God’s glory! But all of us are justified freely and made righteous before God, pure and blameless. I can stand before you today not because I am perfect and that I never sin, but because the love and grace of God is greater than all my sin. You may feel like a mess, and you are correct - all of us are a mess! But we have a God who looks at the mess that we made, loves us anyway, and makes us righteous again.

This is the good news of the whole Bible, and if you leave with nothing else today, remember this. All have sinned, and all who call upon the name of Jesus have been redeemed. No exceptions, and that includes you.

Redeemed Relationship between Jew and Gentile (1:16; 3:27-30)

Okay, so if that was the message of the whole Bible, what is it doing here in Romans? Remember that Paul is writing to a specific congregation at a specific time, which was probably about the year 60 AD. Why does Paul think that this message of redeemed relationship is so important for the Roman church to hear? Was there some specific problem that Paul was trying to address? As it turns out, there is.

A bit of context. We know that the church consisted of both Jews and Gentiles, though probably more Jews. Then came along the Roman emperor Claudius who decided he didn’t like the Jews and so kicked them out of the city. Suddenly, the church in Rome loses all its Jewish members and only the Gentiles are left. Being faithful Christians, these Gentile Christians continue to evangelize and invite their Gentile friends until there is a large number of Gentile Christians. After about five years, the Jews returned, but now the church was full of Gentiles. And that’s a big problem, because the Jews believe that to in order to follow Jesus, you had to follow the Law of Moses, adhere to all the food laws and keep the Sabbath and be circumcised. The Gentiles, on the other hand, believed that they didn’t need it because they were free in Christ. And actually, they believed that God had rejected the Jews because the Jews had killed their own Messiah, and so the Gentiles were to receive God’s favor instead. So we have two groups that cannot agree on what it means to properly follow Jesus, and both believe that the other does not deserve God’s grace. So there is conflict and tension and probably fighting within the church. That’s where Paul steps in to write this letter to try and resolve this conflict.

Remember that the message of Romans and the entire Bible is that God through Jesus has redeemed all people from sin into a new relationship with himself. Actually, Paul makes this clear from the very first chapter, where he says “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” - we just talked about this, right? But Paul adds another line here:

“For the Jew first and also for the Greek.” Now that we know the conflict that was going on in the Roman church, does it make sense why Paul has to specifically mention this? Both Jews and Gentiles understood that God had redeemed them from sin; they just didn’t understand that God had redeemed the other group! Each group thought that God had given them special privilege and so they could look down on the other group. And so they have failed to understand the heart of the gospel. God did not just redeem some people; he has redeemed all things and everyone who believes.

Application

Who is the “other group” in our lives? As I was growing up, I learned that “we Christians” are supposed to obey God and not be like those who do all the social vices, the “bad kids,” and actually not even hang out with them. 2 Corinthians 6:14. Paul says “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers” right? We need to protect our purity and remain unspotted from the world, right?

I think that God has called us to live pure and holy lives. After all, he has redeemed us into a new relationship, and he calls us to live in a way that honors him. But we will make the same mistake as the Jews and Gentiles of Rome if we think that just because we are Christians, we are entitled to look down on the people who are not like us.

That is why the practice of the Lord’s Supper is so central to the early church. Back then, the Lord’s Supper was a full meal like lunch or dinner, not just little packets. And back then, to share a meal with someone meant that the two of you were of the same status or rank. During the Lord’s Supper, city officials and rich landowners would sit and eat with slaves and tax collectors. The Lord’s Supper was the one place during the week where all the divisions and boundaries didn’t matter. If you believe that Jesus as Lord, you are my brother and sister. We may not disagree on Jewish food laws and circumcision, we can disagree over a lot of other things. What’s the best way to run the church? What’s the best curriculum for the youth program? What kind of music should we sing on Sunday?

Redeemed Relationship between the Law of Moses and the Law of Faith (3:21-22a, 31)

This is where things start to get a little bit complicated. We often hear or say statements like these:

“We are New Testament Christians!”

“We are under the new covenant!”

“The old covenant was nailed to the cross of Jesus!”

“Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice - we don’t need the sacrificial system anymore!”

(Gesture with Bible) Are we really willing to say that Adam and Eve don’t matter? Or Noah? Or Abraham, Isaac and Jacob? Or David and the kings of Judah? Or the wisdom literature and the Prophets? Even if the only problem was the sacrificial system, I don’t think any of us are ready to drop half of Exodus and all of Leviticus from the Bible, because that is still part of the Word of God!

Paul certainly seemed to think that the Old Testament was still important. Actually, all the writers of the New Testament thought so, but we won’t have time to go there today.

One of my professors prefers to call them the “First and Last Testament” because they are not so much two different covenants - the new one replacing the other. Rather, they are two parts of the same story

Some of you might know the Bible Project - great resource if you want to study the Bible - and their tagline is that “We believe the Bible is one unified story that leads to Jesus.”

2 Timothy 3:16 is a familiar verse to all of us: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” By the way, when Paul was writing this to Timothy, what we call the New Testament had not been compiled together yet as “The New Testament”. By “Scripture,” he was referring to Genesis to Malachi.