Presented to TSA AV Ministries 16 March 2025 by Major Michael Ramsay
Before we needed to be away
for a little bit, we were looking at Paul’s letter to the Romans quite a bit.
Today I want to review a little bit of what we have spoken about and look at
some of the broad themes, ideas and context of the first seven or eight
chapters. First some questions:
·
Who wrote Romans? (Paul)
·
When was it written? (Mid to late 50s CE)
·
Who was it written to? (Holy People / Saints in
Rome – which means Christians)
·
Where is Rome? (Modern day Italy)
·
Who is Paul? (an Apostle, a Roman, a Pharisee
from Tarsus in modern day Turkey)
·
Where and how does Paul die? (executed in Rome –
probably beheaded)
This is important. Paul writes
these words probably realizing that he is nearing the end of his life. He is
respected by the letter’s recipients, and he wants them to be aware of many
things. Now this is a very long letter. I have never written a letter this long
– even my sermons aren’t near this long! - even in the days when I wrote
letters to put in the mail – way back before email and social media, remember
that? I never wrote letters this long. Now because this letter to the Romans is
so long, he covers a lot of stuff. It is sort of like – do you remember the old
days? – Did you ever have a friend or family friend who only sent you a letter
once a year – maybe at Christmas – and it would go on and on for pages telling
you more than you could ever possibly want to know about their life, children,
family and pets, etc.
When
Paul writes his letter, he has some things he expects that we will know before
he even starts writing. When I used to teach, we would often give students vocabulary
sheets of words they needed to know as they read. If the Bible was a Ginn
Reader and we each had vocab sheets, words like these may be on them:
·
Law – rules the demarcate the people of God (separate
out / reveal). Given to the Hebrews through Moses.
·
Circumcision – a sign that specific males are
part of the people of God. This was given to the world through Abraham (hundreds
of years before Moses was born). Looking around the room, all of us seem old
enough that I don’t need to explain how that is done.
·
Flesh – our own body, our own self, our own thoughts,
our own mind, as compared to ‘Spirit’ which is of God
·
Sin / Trespass - In Romans this refers to
anything destructive that erodes holiness, peace, wholeness and/or life itself.
Paul also uses the word to refer to things we do to hurt and decay ourselves
and others (often translated ‘trespass’). He also uses the word ‘sin’ or ‘sin nature’
to refer to a desire or compulsion to do something we know that goes against peace,
wholeness, and holiness. This is like addiction. We know what is right, we resolve
not to do what is wrong but… and Paul spends a lot of time explaining the ‘but’.
·
Faith – this is a key word in Romans. The word
faith (Greek: Pistos) also means faithfulness. It is a reciprocal word.
Whenever you see it, you should probably read it as the faith of one person
(either the subject or the object of the sentence) and the faithfulness of the
other,
·
Grace – When one does what is best for another
regardless of merit or anything else they are extending grace. Often a person
experiences grace and mercy at the same time. You do something, you are
awaiting the results or consequences of that action and instead you get a
reprieve as grace is extended to you.
Romans in Review:
Chapter One: Romans 1:16-17
can be read as a thesis of at least the first part of the letter: “For I am not
ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to
everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 17 For in the
gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith[fulness]
from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith[fulness].”
Chapter
Two: Hebrews were given the Law but still they weren’t able to do what it said
any more than Gentiles and others who were not given the Law.
There
are good things in the Law that we should know and let people know about for
their own benefit, because if they know in advance, they can be saved the consequences
of these things such as: don’t murder, covet, lie, etc. These truths that are
written down are all a very good standard for our life that warn us about what not
to do to keep us out of trouble.
Chapters Three and Four explain the weakness of the Law. One of the weaknesses
mentioned is simply temptation. Sometimes we would never even have considered
doing something wrong, if someone hadn’t come up to us and said ‘no, don’t do
that’! I remember I got in trouble a few times in elementary school because I
just had to try whatever it was that the Teacher had told us not to do, because
I had never even considered that before she told us.
An analogy:
a teacher gives her class a rule, ‘no walking on the street’. She gives the
class this rule because she doesn’t want them to be it by a car: if they get
hit by a car they might be hurt, injured, die, and also, in so doing, emotionally
hurt their friends and family, the driver of the car, etc. – so there is a good
rule: don’t walk on the road.
Now
there are some bad things to come out of this good rule: some people tattle. Some
people tell the teacher every time a classmate walks too close to the road,
every time a classmate accidently touches the road, every time a classmate
walks in the direction of the road. Some people are so concerned about the rule
– ‘don’t walk on the road’ – that they abuse their classmates with it. That
rule which is made to protect people’s lives is now being used to make their
life miserable. This is legalism: when we care more about the rules than the
people the rules are there to protect, when we care more about punishing people
who do ‘bad things’ than helping people to ‘do good things’ and to be safe – which
is the reason the law is there in the first place.
And
then, of course, there is that almost uncontrollable temptation, as well. Once
the teacher tells Johnny not to step on the road, he wants to try it even
though he has never even considered walking on the road before: he will walk as
close beside it as he can, then he will put a foot on it. Then he will pretend
to fall on it – all the while he is testing to see why this rule is here. And then
Cindy Lou Who telling on him all the time doesn’t help either. This all makes
him want to break the rule, which makes him vulnerable to the natural
consequences of breaking the rule, which is getting hit by a car.
Now if
you look at your vocab sheets, you will notice that Paul talks about circumcision.
Circumcision is a sign that people belong to a group: the ancient Hebrews, the descendants
of Abraham. It is like when classes of children are walking near the road how
they all have brightly coloured pinnies or t-shirts on. These are the kids that
have been told specifically not to go on the road. Now, it would be best for us
all not to go on the road, but only the kids in the class wearing the pinnies have
been given that rule for their outing: so the Law is the rule not to go into
the road (which could result in death and / or other things) which was given to
the children wearing pinnies (which is circumcision) but it really is best for
everyone not to step on the road, whether they were told the rule or not. Does
that all make sense? There are many ‘pinnies’ we have in the contemporary
church to identify ourselves as children of God like this today. In the modern/post-modern
church I would say that whenever you read ‘circumcision’ in the Bible, it may
be valuable to read ‘baptism’ or any other pinnie that Christians put on to
show we are God’s children.
Chapter
5 we have talked about a lot and I will speak more about too – but for today’s
purposes, it talks about getting back to the Garden of Eden, getting back to a
time before we needed rules to avoid doing what is harmful and to do what is
good: when we could just do that by being in a relationship with God. Perseverance
through the suffering of life brings us back to the garden.
Chapters
6 through 8, which we will look at soon enough, wrestle with sin: the desire of
the children in our school/pre-school analogy, to walk in the road, those
telling you to (or not to sometimes) walk in the road, and -of course- the act
of walking in the road itself. Basically, what Chapter 6 says is that if you
just follow your teacher you won’t walk in the road. These days preschoolers,
as well as wearing pinnies, often hold a rope to help them follow their
teacher. Chapter 6 says just keep holding the rope and follow your teacher – if
you accidently step on the road or if someone else does, don’t dwell on it,
just keep looking at the teacher, holding the rope and walking – it is when you
stop and focus on the road or your friend who is on the road or the one who is
nagging you about walking on the road, that you run into trouble (that is not
to say you shouldn’t help your friend up if they fall on the road) but you just
need to keep on keeping on following the teacher.
Chapter
7 always reminds me of AA. Anyone here who has ever attended AA meetings will
know just how valuable they can be. AA’s step one paraphrased, “We admitted
that we were powerless over sin [alcohol] – that our lives have become
unmanageable.” Chapter 7 speaks of Sin as that force, that temptation, trying
to draw us into that which leads to destruction, into the peril of the open road;
Sin in Chapter 7 is the Odessey’s siren song calling us to some imagined
pleasure that in reality will just wreck the ships of our life on the rocks of
death and destruction. Sin is calling the preschoolers away from the safety of
the path towards certain doom in the road. In Chapter Seven, Paul sounds like Odysseus
strapped to the mast of his ship, “I do not understand what I do. For what I
want to do, I do not do, but what I hate to do, I do” (7:16) “So then, I myself
in my mind am a slave to God’s law but in the flesh a slave to the law of Sin”
(7:25)
Chapter
8 offers us the hope. The teacher sees us on and near the road and still “there
is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”. (8:1) The teacher pulls
us aside, kneels beside us and offers us much comfort. She tells us that we don’t
need to worry about all the do’s and the don’ts of the rules. We don’t need to
worry about getting into trouble, taunting others, or even telling on them. We
just need to follow our teacher along the path she is leading us along and then
we will be okay, Romans 8:14, “for those who are led by the Spirit of God are the
children of God.’
So
that is my wish for us today. Let us just keep our eyes on Jesus – nothing else
can save us from sin or death. Nothing else can make us holy or whole. Let us cast
our eyes upon Jesus. For us we turn our eyes upon Jesus and look full in his
wonderful face, all the temptations of life will grow strangely dim in the
light of His glory and grace.
Let us
pray.
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