{"id":1307,"date":"2015-03-28T06:43:51","date_gmt":"2015-03-28T11:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/?p=1307"},"modified":"2015-03-28T06:43:51","modified_gmt":"2015-03-28T11:43:51","slug":"beginning-romans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/2015\/03\/28\/beginning-romans\/","title":{"rendered":"Beginning Romans"},"content":{"rendered":"

We begin this Sunday a new series of sermons on the book of Romans, The Power of God Unto Salvation to Everyone Who Believes.<\/i><\/p>\n

Throughout church history, God has used this letter time and again to bring many to faith and to restore His church to Gospel truths. Read the biographies or the writings of Augustine, of Luther, of Bunyan, of Wesley, and you will see the great influence of the book of Romans.<\/p>\n

The title of our series is taken from Romans 1:16, which reads in part, \u201cthe gospel . . .\u00a0 is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Note three key truths in this brief sentence:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Gospel is not only Good News. It is not only an offer or invitation. It is a power. <\/i>It is a power granted to people<\/i>. And it is a power that is effective, that produces a result: salvation.<\/li>\n
  2. And what can we say about this salvation? The Gospel not only saves us from God\u2019s just wrath \u2013 His righteous punishment, from hell itself \u2013 which all men deserve (Romans 1:18, 3:23). Nor does the Gospel save us only from our self-destructive passions and desires (Romans 1:24-27). That is, the Gospel is not simply a get-out-of-hell-free card. Rather, the Gospel saves us unto being Christlike <\/i>(Romans 8:29). The Gospel transforms us from the inside out (12:2). It is indeed the power of God unto <\/i>salvation, unto <\/i>becoming what God created us to be.<\/li>\n
  3. This Gospel, this power unto salvation, is to everyone who believes. <\/i>It is not to all Jews because they are descended from Abraham; it is not to those who have the Scriptures because they have the Scriptures; it is not to those who prove themselves worthy or who look righteous in the eyes of others. Rather, this power unto salvation is for all who look away <\/i>from themselves and look to the power of God unto salvation, <\/i>who look away<\/i> from their own efforts and look to<\/i> Jesus who has already made the effort.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    So this Gospel, this power \u2013 this Spirit-wrought ability to be conformed to Christlikeness \u2013 is yours now <\/i>as a gift, if you believe, if you trust, if you depend on Christ alone. As the Apostle says to those who have received this power, \u201cPut on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires\u201d (Romans 13:14).<\/p>\n

    And that present, in-this-world salvation from slavery to sin culminates in the eternal, joyful state \u2013 when we, as \u201cheirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ\u201d are glorified with Him (Romans 8:17) and revealed as the sons of God (Romans 8:19).<\/p>\n

    That\u2019s the glorious theme of the letter to the Romans.<\/p>\n

    So I encourage you: Read the book in its entirety, noting the way Paul weaves this theme throughout. Let this letter begin to dwell in you richly \u2013 and pray with me that God would use this great epistle for His glory in the life of DGCC as He has used it so often in His people over the centuries.<\/p>\n

    But how are we to approach this letter? How should we go about interpreting it?<\/p>\n

    Consider these three guidelines:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Look at the context. <\/i>Many of you have heard me quote D.A. Carson: \u201cA text without a context is just a pretext for a proof text.\u201d We must look at the context, then look at the context, then keep looking at the context. How we interpret any one verse must make sense in the flow of thought in the surrounding paragraph, in the chapter, in the letter, in the New Testament as a whole, in the story of the Bible as a whole. While this exhortation holds for the interpretation of all Scripture, the near context is especially important when interpreting Romans. Paul is always a logical thinker who advances his argument systematically, but in Romans \u2013 unlike, say, his second longest letter, 1 Corinthians, where he addresses a series of somewhat separate issues in the Corinthian church \u2013 he sustains his argument over most all of the book.<\/li>\n
    2. Ask the right question.<\/i> If you don\u2019t ask the right question you cannot get the right answer. And if the question you ask seems to have no good answer, perhaps you are asking the wrong question. As a possible example, consider Paul\u2019s account of his struggle with sin: \u201cI do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate\u201d (Romans 7:15). Many interpreters ask the question: Is Paul talking about his pre-Christian life, or his life as a believer? The question itself presupposes <\/i>that he is talking about one or the other. And in the history of interpretation of Romans 7, scholars have marshaled strong arguments for one answer to that question or the other. But what if both non-Christians and Christians can experience such a struggle \u2013 and yet neither all non-Christians nor all Christians have that struggle? In that case, we would have asked the wrong question, and the question itself would have diverted us from properly understanding the passage. We have to ask the right questions.<\/li>\n
    3. Know the Old Testament.<\/i> We cannot understand the book of Romans without an understanding of the Old Testament. Paul quotes the Old Testament about fifty times in this letter \u2013 an average of almost four times a page in my Bible. He draws time and again on Old Testament stories: Adam, Abraham, Jacob and Esau, Pharaoh and Moses, David. He speaks of Old Testament ideas and uses Old Testament categories: Law, circumcision, remnant, sacrifice. We must dig into the Old Testament if we are to dig into and profit from Romans.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      So join me in eagerly anticipating what God will do through our time in this great book. May these truths dwell in us richly, so that we may become what God intends us to be individually and corporately, and therefore we might play our role in bringing about \u201cthe obedience of faith for the sake of His Name among all the nations\u201d (Romans 1:5).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      We begin this Sunday a new series of sermons on the book of Romans, The Power of God Unto Salvation to Everyone Who Believes. Throughout church history, God has used…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,15,24],"tags":[342,657,733,869,899,1190,1265,1357,1364,1434],"class_list":["post-1307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-devotions","category-sermons","tag-context","tag-gospel","tag-holiness","tag-justification-by-faith","tag-law-and-gospel","tag-power-of-god","tag-purity","tag-right-question","tag-romans","tag-sermon-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}