Bible Study Romans Part 2-Once Saul, Now Paul

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Well, now we are in the book of Romans.

During the week, we are in the uh book of Genesis here on the weekends on Sundays.

Sundays for us, you're watching this whenever you're watching it.

On Sundays, we study the book of Romans.

As I said last week, we've decided it's sort of come at this from both ends.

We want to be able to understand all of God's word, and we don't want to feel like we're rushing through in order to get to another point of doctrine.

So I figure, why not teach twice a week so that we can actually gather all of what God has to say to us or as much as it has to say to us as we can at any given point.

So we are in the book of Romans.

Last week, all we did was sort of an introduction to the letter, which by the way is something I recommend every time you go do personal study of Scripture.

Make sure you spend some time looking at what is going to be discussed.

Read it through, find some commentaries.

And by the way, if you need some help finding commentaries, please contact us.

I'll be glad to pass on what we know.

Anyhow, do your homework.

Do more than just read it.

Do more than just kind of talk to somebody else about it.

Make sure you do some personal study.

I think it'll be very rewarding if you do.

So here we go.

We're actually just beginning the book of Romans tonight.

Before we do that, how about we read through the book all the way?

We've kind of got out of the habit of doing that when we were in our Genesis series.

When we were in Ephesians, we read it every single time.

I'm not sure we're going to do that again.

This time, these are long chapters, but at least when we first start a new chapter, we'll read it all the way through.

So here we go.

Romans chapter 1, verse 1.

Romans 1:1

I'm reading out of the King James.

Please bring a Bible with you when you come to Bible study and follow along if you can.

If you don't have a Bible with you, we always provide the verses for you up on the screen.

So here we go.

Romans 1 1.

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures or in Holy Scriptures.

Verse 3, concerning his Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, by whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name.

Among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ to all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 8.

First I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.

For God is my witness whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you.

For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift to the end ye may be established, that is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith, both of you and me.

Now I would not have you ignorant, brethren, that oftentimes I purposed to come unto you, but was let, the word means prevented, but was prevented hitherto, that I might have some fruit among you also, even as among other Gentiles.

I am debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and the unwise.

So as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

Verse 17 For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness, because that which may be known of God is manifest in them, for God hath showed it unto them.

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image like made to corruptible man and to birds and four footed beasts and creeping things.

Verse 24.

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves, who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator who is blessed forever.

Amen.

Verse 26.

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections, for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature, and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient, being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity, whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful, who knowing the judgment of God that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.

I have to tell you, that is the man who preaches grace.

And every time we read from the letters of Paul, he gives us a long list of sins that he says are worthy of destruction, worthy of death.

And yet we pretend that God is going to put up with our sins, whether we're saved or not.

Listen to me.

Just because you're saved doesn't mean you can do what you want to.

That will come up in this letter to the Romans.

Trust me.

God has expectations out of you.

As a matter of fact, his expectations of you are greater than the world.

As J.

Vernon McGee always says, God doesn't ask anything of the unbelievers except to believe.

You and me, he asks a lot.

Moving on, as you can see, there is a lot packed into even just this first introductory chapter.

It's obvious that this letter to the Romans was very important to Paul.

The church at Rome was very important to him.

Most of what we're going to learn came from what must have been some need on Paul's part to address issues arising in the early church.

In fact, that's the case with all of Paul's letters and most of the rest of the New Testament, too, outside the gospel.

You have to remember, Christianity, or the way as it was referred to in the beginning, seemed so radically different than what most people were used to in those early days.

And that's why the apostles were so important.

They were the intellectual authority that the early church needed.

There were so many things that seemed so completely different that they needed guidance.

And that's not just limited to the heathen who weren't familiar with our God.

Yes, this was a radical departure in every way for them.

They had no system, no one had any system of worship even remotely like this.

But in a much more dramatic way, the slowly emerging Christian doctrine was becoming an increasingly difficult challenge for the early Jewish converts who made up the bulk of the church for most of the first few decades.

Those Jews, those Christian Jews who saw Christ as the promised Messiah and committed to him as the true Son of God, started to get a little uncomfortable with what they perceived as a, or what they thought was, a too radical of a departure from what they had heretofore practiced.

Now, of course, this was particularly troubling for many of them because Christianity at first wasn't seen as something separate from the Jewish religion.

And you know, rightfully so.

Listen to me.

Christianity is not failed Judaism.

Christianity is not God's do-over.

It is the same process he established from the beginning.

And that was precisely how the apostles and disciples characterized it.

They never taught Christianity as anything but the natural, not a natural, the natural outcome or unfolding of what God had been saying and doing down through the centuries.

Likewise, many Jews in the church didn't see themselves as converts.

They saw Jesus as the very same Messiah who had always been taught in their synagogues in Judaism.

That's why they went right along with it.

For many, this wasn't new.

It was expected.

And of course, this was the correct view.

We're going to see proof of that taught here by Paul in this letter to the Romans.

And you know, he was the right guy to present this argument.

There were few at that time who knew the Hebrew scriptures and Judaism better than that Pharisee of the Pharisees.

That's what he called himself, a Pharisee of the Pharisees.

You're going to see that Paul knew what he was talking about.

That's going to come out in this letter.

A great deal of what is written here is written directly to, for, and about the Jews.

It was part of Paul's plan, as given to him, of course, by the Holy Spirit.

I'm sure of that.

It was Paul's plan to ease the nerves of those Jewish Christians who were a little confused about this next phase in God's dealings with not only their own people, but the whole human race.

But that wasn't all he had to do here.

Much of what Paul has to say is correction of misunderstandings that some of the Jews, many of the Jews, had regarding what this was all about.

You see, the Jews at the time were used to thinking of themselves as God's people.

In fact, they thought they were God's only people.

And Paul spends some time reminding them that God had never intended it to be that way.

Special, yes, exclusive, no.

In fact, that part was particularly difficult for them.

The Jews had long felt that God had chosen only them.

But you see, their scripture never told them that.

Quite the opposite.

Nonetheless, they had gotten to the point that they felt God would never allow the non-Jew, the heathen, as a whole into his kingdom.

Paul had to deal with that too.

Throughout, it was Paul's intention to correct these misunderstandings.

His job was to highlight that God hadn't changed a single thing he had said long ago and often in his word.

The problem wasn't with God.

It wasn't with his word as usually the problem was with man.

Paul's intention was to show that Judaism had become distorted, that it no longer looked like what God had communicated through his word.

Well, what does that have to do with us Christians today?

I think you know the answer.

Church is no longer Christianity, the church is no longer what Christ had established.

It has become something completely different than what he had intended all along.

And that's exactly what had happened in the early days with the Jews.

We have so much to learn here as Christians, as the church, we get to learn the mistakes the Jews made so that we can apply them to ourselves.

So here in the letter to the Romans, Paul is very keen on setting the record straight.

And what made things worse was that this mounting confusion was being fueled by outsiders, those who wanted Christianity to be absorbed into the ritual, heavy, works-oriented, convoluted system developed and supported by the rabbis.

The Jewish leadership was losing control of the hearts and minds of the people in what they saw as the seduction of a heretical viewpoint of the Messiah.

These men, these leaders, these Jewish leaders had position and influence in the community, and they were using it to tempt back, or at least cause doubt in many of those who had declared Jesus as the Christ, as the anointed, as the Messiah.

This was what Paul was up against, not only at the church at Rome, but everywhere Christ was being preached in the synagogues.

But again, let me say, God picked the right warrior.

This man, Paul, was unequaled in his grasp of scripture and how it applied to the arrival of the Messiah.

Paul, through an extensive use of scripture, the Old Testament, of course, the New Testament hadn't completely come together yet at the time.

Through the use of the writings of the Jewish Bible, Paul sets out to prove to those nervous Jews that they were indeed on the same path God set their ancestors on.

And it only felt like a deviation because down through the centuries, the Jewish leaders corrupted the practice of Judaism so thoroughly that it looked nothing like what God had established all the way back with Abraham.

I say this all the time.

When Jesus comes back, when he comes the second time for his church, most of the world is not even going to recognize him because he's going to be the man the Bible says he is, not the man the church has made him out to be.

The same problem happened with the Jews.

Their Messiah had come.

Their Messiah had come with all of the signs that surrounded him.

Everything the Bible said that would precede the arrival of the Messiah had happened, and then came the Messiah and they completely missed it.

That's going to happen to the church.

That's what revelation guarantees us.

I always say to Catherine, when the rapture comes, the world isn't going to even notice.

So few real Christians are going to go to be with Jesus that the world isn't even going to know the true church has left.

The apostate church will still be here.

They're going to still have Sunday services the Sunday following the arrival of Christ.

They won't even know He came.

Now, the wonderful thing about all of this in the book of Romans is that we non-Jewish Christians have the indescribable blessing of having this thorough explanation of the role all Christians play as the adopted children of God.

When Paul corrects error, we all benefit.

God's control of history is awe-inspiring.

So back to the book of Romans, verse 1 again.

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God.

Paul starts out his letter by stating who it is that's writing to them.

As we've pointed out before, this is not something we're used to today.

When you and I write letters or any of their electronic counterparts, we begin by mentioning the recipient through some sort of greeting.

Hello, Mary, dear mom.

Good day, friends.

And we almost never say who we are until way at the end.

Yours truly, John.

All the best, your son John.

Thank you for your time, John Tomasi, Bible Teacher, Chapel Ministries.

Now, of course, we can understand why there is this difference.

99% of the time, when you and I receive a communication from someone, we know right away who sent it.

Look at the return address on the envelope, or we recognize the email address of our colleague that asked for the update, or the sender's avatar is clear in the chat window.

Of course, in Paul's day, none of that existed.

At that time, there may have been no clear external indicator of who sent the letter.

So the writer, for expediency's sake, would identify himself as early on as possible.

John, why do you spend so much time on these little things?

I want you to make a mental connection to these things.

I don't want any of it to feel foreign or imaginary or overly complicated.

Not only that, but I want you to get into the habit of asking why certain things are seemingly different in the Bible to what we're used to now.

And maybe in the process discover that they're not so different after all.

I want you to treat these things as if they're important, interesting, and matter to you.

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God.

Now, this is a statement structured in the classic Paul the Apostle way.

And by that I mean the whole thing is packed with importance and significance.

He's Paul, he's a servant of Jesus Christ, he's an apostle, he's separated or set apart unto the gospel, and that being the gospel of God.

All of that is vital information, and it's going to take us some time to get through it.

So let's start.

Let's go over some of these.

First of all, he gives us his current name.

Now, this alone is fascinating.

You see, Paul hasn't always been Paul.

In fact, it's not the only name he's known by in the Bible.

The name Paul was born with was Saul.

And there are still a few places in the New Testament where we see him referred to by that original name.

By that I mean his birth name.

At birth, the man was named Saul.

His parents named him Saul.

And little wonder, Saul was a very proud, very Jewish name.

The first king of Israel was named Saul.

Of course, he wasn't all 100% successful as a king, but he was at one point God's anointed.

Also, Saul the king was a very effective military man, and therefore the name Saul carried with it an air of honor, an air of national pride.

No doubt the apostles' parents wanted their son to be associated with this legendary king.

Saul, or more specifically, Saul of Tarsus, was what he was known as when we first met him.

But then at some point he started being called Paul.

And surprisingly, no one really knows when that happened, and no one knows why.

We don't even know whose idea it was.

Did he personally change his own name?

Was it one of the other church leaders or apostles that suggested it?

The Cambridge commentary suggests a possibility.

Perhaps he was always named Paul.

The suggestion that they give is that at the time it wasn't unusual for a family to assign more than one name at birth, and that is perhaps what is the case here.

Saul was the given Jewish name for use among Jews, and Paul would be his Gentile name for use among Gentiles.

My uncle's name was Jack, but he was born as Anton.

Little bit of difference.

He went by both.

Maybe that's what happened here.

That's a possibility.

Other commentators believe that the name change was effectuated at the outset of his Christian ministry in an attempt to better relate to his Gentile congregations.

Paul, which is a Roman name, would raise fewer suspicions, less confusion among non-Jewish populations.

And you also have to understand, at the time the Jews were not viewed very highly.

Not that I think they have ever been viewed very highly by earthly people, but at the time they were sort of looked at as barbarians, unintelligent barbarians.

And maybe the name Saul would give off the wrong impression to the Gentile congregations.

That's a possibility.

In the end, this is really only a small matter since he is now almost universally known as Paul and never referred to as Saul except in reference to his pre-conversion days.

I do think, however, there is some value in knowing that he was once named with this Jewish name Saul.

You see, a big part of Paul's personality and indeed his mission is tied to his past.

It is incredibly important for us to know Paul's Jewish pedigree.

Now we'll talk more about this in the future, but this man was proudly Jewish.

As Saul, he was one of the most complete Jews of his day.

He was a vigorous defender of Judaism.

He was an expert on his heritage.

And listen to me, this transformation from Saul to Paul mirrored the transformation of God's relationship with his people from one being based on the law to one that was based in grace.

And it would take a man of Saul's training to communicate that message to the world.

As usual, I think I failed to make my point.

Thank God we have Paul.

Now we're just getting started.

There's still a lot to cover in these first few verses, so let's pick it up right there next time.

See you then.

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It is our prayer that this will be so for all of our listeners.

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