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OneWord

To Live By Faith Romans 1:17

Volume 6

September 8, 2013 – November 24, 2013

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Sermon Series: To Live by Faith

“The one who is righteous will live by faith.” Romans 1: 17

“…the righteous live by faith.” Habakkuk 2:4

We accept the challenge of studying Paul’s letter to the Romans with anticipation for how our faith will deepen through our study. The Apostle’s letter was important in the establishment of the early church, and foundational for the leaders of the Protestant Reformation centuries later. As we delve into Paul’s words, we discover how applicable his teachings are to our faith today. Romans 1: 17: “For in [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘The one who is righteous will live by faith.’” Paul is saying that for us to live fully from now to eternity, we need to grow fully in our faith in God. Henry David Thoreau wrote that, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” Paul wants us to avoid such a fate, and so spurs us on to sing our song of faith today, so we can live lives filled with the joy offered to us through God’s son. Welcome to Paul’s letter to people in Rome who believed Paul’s message about Jesus. They led the way for us to live fully by faith today.

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OneWord

The Word for Worship As a Way of Life

Volume 6 OneWord is a way for our congregation to carry the Bible readings we experience in our worship services into our daily walk with Christ. This booklet of scripture passages and discussion starters is an aid for any group, individual, family or ministry to reflect on and internalize God’s word, and to keep his word at the center of our church life. The more all of us are involved in the OneWord program, the more opportunities there are for the Holy Spirit to weave our conversations and personal lives together in Christian community by way of conversations, studies and devotions. Please take as many copies of this free booklet as you need, for use wherever you might want to pause with the Lord and others to connect to his message of good news and hope. Keep a copy at your desk, in your car, near your small group materials, or at the dining room table. All generations of our congregation are using this OneWord program as a way to stay connected and grow in our common life as a community of Christ’s disciples, followers and ambassadors of his good news. Please use this booklet as you like‐‐for a short devotional or a weekly discussion with others, in anticipation before or in reflection following the Sunday service.

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How to Use this Booklet

Whether alone or in a group, read aloud the series and sermon summaries, and then the NRSV or The Message version of the Bible passage for the week.

Take a few moments to write notes for yourself and/or comment to others what aspects of the passage stand out to you, and might connect with your current life circumstances. Note also what you find difficult to understand or even objectionable at first reading.

Pray individually or as a group for the Holy Spirit’s lead in your reflections and conversations around the passage.

Use both your own notes and the conversation questions to guide you in journaling, reflection, prayerful meditation, or group discussion.

As much as possible, try to avoid simply commenting on your likes or dislikes about the current series or passages, so your reflections and conversation can help you focus on your own need for inward transformation in the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

Take note of what further questions come up for you or your group that you might want to share with Doug Learned, or pick up for further conversation at a later date.

Adapt your individual or group practices to fit the needs of your setting or circumstances, while keeping in the spirit of the OneWord program.

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September 8 Romans 1: 1‐17 “Who is Paul, and Why Does He Matter?” Engaging God’s Word: Romans Lessons 1 and 2

NRSV

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the world. For God, whom I serve with my spirit by announcing the gospel of his Son, is my witness that without ceasing I remember you always in my prayers, asking that by God’s will I may somehow at last succeed in coming to you. For I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you— or rather so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine. I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as I have among the rest of the Gentiles. I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish —hence my eagerness to proclaim the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

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For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”

The Message I, Paul, am a devoted slave of Jesus Christ on assignment, authorized as an apostle to proclaim God’s words and acts. I write this letter to all the believers in Rome, God’s friends. The sacred writings contain preliminary reports by the prophets on God’s Son. His descent from David roots him in history; his unique identity as Son of God was shown by the Spirit when Jesus was raised from the dead, setting him apart as the Messiah, our Master. Through him we received both the generous gift of his life and the urgent task of passing it on to others who receive it by entering into obedient trust in Jesus. You are who you are through this gift and call of Jesus Christ! And I greet you now with all the generosity of God our Father and our Master Jesus, the Messiah. I thank God through Jesus for every one of you. That’s first. People everywhere keep telling me about your lives of faith, and every time I hear them, I thank him. And God, whom I so love to worship and serve by spreading the good news of his Son—the Message!—knows that every time I think of you in my prayers, which is practically all the time, I ask him to clear the way for me to come and see you. The longer this waiting goes on, the deeper the ache. I so want to be there to deliver God’s gift in person and watch you grow stronger right before my eyes! But don’t think I’m not expecting to get something out of this, too! You have as much to give me as I do to you. Please don’t misinterpret my failure to visit you, friends. You have no idea how many times I’ve made plans for Rome. I’ve been

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determined to get some personal enjoyment out of God’s work among you, as I have in so many other non‐Jewish towns and communities. But something has always come up and prevented it. Everyone I meet—it matters little whether they’re mannered or rude, smart or simple—deepens my sense of interdependence and obligation. And that’s why I can’t wait to get to you in Rome, preaching this wonderful good news of God. Its news I’m most proud to proclaim, this extraordinary Message of God’s powerful plan to rescue everyone who trusts him, starting with Jews and then right on to everyone else! God’s way of putting people right shows up in the acts of faith, confirming what Scripture has said all along: “The person in right standing before God by trusting him really lives.”

For Consideration and Conversation

See Lessons 1 and 2 in Engaging God’s Word to deepen your understanding of this week’s message from Romans, and to prepare you for further discussions and reflections.

1) In verse 16, Paul writes that he is “not ashamed of the gospel.” The word gospel means good news. Why might Paul in his time, and you in yours, have any reason at all to be ashamed of the good news of God? Search yourself in order to answer this question honestly, because there are many reasons you might be hesitant to claim yourself a believer and to share the specifics of what you believe with others.

2) What aspects of Paul’s life story, before and after his experience of Jesus, help you connect to his mission to share the good news of God? You might research his story to answer this question. Such research will provide a foundation for you to understand his writings to the Romans.

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Notes

September 15 Guest Speaker, The Rev. Abel Mirabal Padilla, Pastor Güines Presbyterian Church, Cuba, and former Moderator of the Presbytery of Havana. September 22 Romans 2: 1‐16 “A Church Full of Hypocrites” Engaging God’s Word: Romans Lessons 3 and 4

NRSV

Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things. You say, “We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is in accordance with truth.” Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise

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the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. For he will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life;

while for those who are self‐seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality. All who have sinned apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them

on the day when, according to my gospel, God, through Jesus Christ, will judge the secret thoughts of all.

The Message

Those people are on a dark spiral downward. But if you think that leaves you on the high ground where you can point your finger at others, think again. Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself. It takes one to know one. Judgmental criticism of others is a well‐known way of escaping detection in your own crimes and misdemeanors. But God isn’t so easily diverted. He sees right through all such smoke screens and holds you to what you’ve done.

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You didn’t think, did you, that just by pointing your finger at others you would distract God from seeing all your misdoings and from coming down on you hard? Or did you think that because he’s such a nice God, he’d let you off the hook? Better think this one through from the beginning. God is kind, but he’s not soft. In kindness he takes us firmly by the hand and leads us into a radical life‐change. You’re not getting by with anything. Every refusal and avoidance of God adds fuel to the fire. The day is coming when it’s going to blaze hot and high, God’s fiery and righteous judgment. Make no mistake: In the end you get what’s coming to you—Real Life for those who work on God’s side, but to those who insist on getting their own way and take the path of least resistance, Fire! If you go against the grain, you get splinters, regardless of which neighborhood you’re from, what your parents taught you, what schools you attended. But if you embrace the way God does things, there are wonderful payoffs, again without regard to where you are from or how you were brought up. Being a Jew won’t give you an automatic stamp of approval. God pays no attention to what others say (or what you think) about you. He makes up his own mind. If you sin without knowing what you’re doing, God takes that into account. But if you sin knowing full well what you’re doing, that’s a different story entirely. Merely hearing God’s law is a waste of your time if you don’t do what he commands. Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God. When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong. Their response to God’s yes and no will become public knowledge on the day God makes his final decision

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about every man and woman. The Message from God that I proclaim through Jesus Christ takes into account all these differences.

For Consideration and Conversation See Lessons 3 and 4 in Engaging God’s Word to deepen your understanding of this week’s message from Romans, and to prepare you for further discussions and reflections.

1) Do we recognize a difference between making judgments

and being judgmental? We all make judgments about right and wrong every day, and God judges whether our actions are right or wrong as well. How do you feel about the idea of God judging you?

2) What would life be like if God had no standards for right and wrong, and if there were no consequences for doing wrong? Who defines right and wrong for you?

3) In verse 13, Paul writes that “the doers of the law” will be justified (made right their relationship) with God. Do you know of anyone who lives by the Ten Commandments to the letter? If not, then who is justified? Or to put it another way, how can your relationship with God, yourself and others be made right and/or whole? Does Paul’s answer make sense to you?

Notes

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September 29 Pulpit Exchange. The Rev. Dr. Douglas G. Pratt, Senior Pastor/Head of Staff, First Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs leads worship. The Rev. Dr. Douglas A. Learned preaches at First Presbyterian Church of Bonita Springs. October 6 Romans 3: 21‐31 “He Really is THE Way” Engaging God’s Word: Romans Lessons 5 and 6

NRSV But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.

Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through

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that same faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

The Message But in our time something new has been added. What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God‐setting‐things‐right that we read about has become Jesus‐setting‐things‐right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ.

God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public—to set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. This is not only clear, but it’s now—this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness. So where does that leave our proud Jewish insider claims and counterclaims? Canceled? Yes, canceled. What we’ve learned is this: God does not respond to what we do; we respond to what God does. We’ve finally figured it out. Our lives get in step with God and all others by letting him set the pace, not by proudly or anxiously trying to run the parade. And where does that leave our proud Jewish claim of having a corner on God? Also canceled. God is the God of outsider non‐Jews as well as insider Jews. How could it be otherwise since there is only one God? God sets right all who welcome his action and enter into it, both those who follow our religious system and those who have never heard of our religion. But by shifting our

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focus from what we do to what God does, don’t we cancel out all our careful keeping of the rules and ways God commanded? Not at all. What happens, in fact, is that by putting that entire way of life in its proper place, we confirm it.


1) When reading Romans, it’s helpful to think “insiders” when Paul refers to Jews and “outsiders” when he refers to Gentiles. Paul is himself a Jew, which is why he emphasizes that Jews and Gentiles alike are equally alienated from God through failure to live by the laws of God. So all stand guilty before God. Question is, who is in a position to boast about his or her status with God?

2) Whether Jew (circumcised, insider) or Gentile (uncircumcised, outsider), how does God make your relationship with you right or whole?

3) What practical difference does Paul’s teaching here make in your life? In what sense or circumstances do you feel yourself an insider or outsider when it comes to God? Do you feel any sense of calling to shift your focus as a result of what Paul writes in these verses?

Notes

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October 13 Romans 4: 13‐25 “Faith: It Really Matters” Engaging God’s Word: Romans Lessons 7 and 8

NRSV

For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation. For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations”)—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” according to what was said, “So numerous shall your descendants be.” He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now the words, “it was reckoned to him,” were

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written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.

The Message

That famous promise God gave Abraham—that he and his children would possess the earth—was not given because of something Abraham did or would do. It was based on God’s decision to put everything together for him, which Abraham then entered when he believed. If those who get what God gives them only get it by doing everything they are told to do and filling out all the right forms properly signed, that eliminates personal trust completely and turns the promise into an ironclad contract! That’s not a holy promise; that’s a business deal. A contract drawn up by a hard‐nosed lawyer and with plenty of fine print only makes sure that you will never be able to collect. But if there is no contract in the first place, simply a promise—and God’s promise at that—you can’t break it. This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that’s reading the story backward. He is our faith father. We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living like a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody. Isn’t that what we’ve always read in Scripture, God saying to Abraham, “I set you up as father of many people’s”? Abraham was first named “father” and then became a father because he dared to trust God to do what only God could do: raise the dead to life, with a word make something

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out of nothing. When everything was hopeless, Abraham believed anyway, deciding to live not on the basis of what he saw he couldn’t do but on what God said he would do. And so he was made father of a multitude of peoples. God himself said to him, “You’re going to have a big family, Abraham!” Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say, “It’s hopeless. This hundred‐year‐old body could never father a child.” Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up. He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise asking cautiously skeptical questions. He plunged into the promise and came up strong, ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said. That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God by trusting God to set him right.” But it’s not just Abraham; it’s also us! The same thing gets said about us when we embrace and believe the One who brought Jesus to life when the conditions were equally hopeless. The sacrificed Jesus made us fit for God, set us right with God.


1) Much is made today of the fact that Muslims, Jews and Christians all trace their heritage back to Abraham. Paul makes clear that what makes that heritage meaningful isn’t law, race or culture, but “righteousness through faith”. Why is this distinction important, and how is it relevant to your life?

2) Is Paul saying that all religions are essentially the same, or is his reasoning more nuanced? Another way to get at Paul’s thinking is to ask, what is it about Abraham that God wants us to emulate? And, what is our path to that faith today in light of Jesus ministry?

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Notes October 20 Romans 5: 1‐11 “Love: More Than Sentiment” Engaging God’s Word: Romans Lessons 9 and 10

NRSV

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him

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from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. 11 But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

The Message

By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that’s not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.

There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!

Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.

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Now that we are set right with God by means of this sacrificial death, the consummate blood sacrifice, there is no longer a question of being at odds with God in any way. If, when we were at our worst, we were put on friendly terms with God by the sacrificial death of his Son, now that we’re at our best, just think of how our lives will expand and deepen by means of his resurrection life! Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus, the Messiah!



1) It’s not always easy to understand exactly how or why it is that Jesus dying on the Cross makes us right with God. The idea is based in Old Testament laws about blood sacrifices made on an altar to atone for sins. What God does through Jesus is accept responsibility for making such sacrifices once and for all time, freeing us from the requirement by providing his own son for the sacrifice. Jesus is the pure and perfect sacrifice, which we could never hope to offer ourselves. That’s why Paul emphasizes the idea that we receive grace through faith. We satisfy our debts to God, not by making more sacrifices, but by believing in our hearts that Jesus’ sacrifice really was and is enough—by trusting that it’s really true! We are now free to live by grace through faith in Jesus.

2) Do you ever think about your faith in Jesus being personal? Sometimes people equate personal faith with private, unshared faith. How would Paul describe personal faith? Is it a feeling or something more?

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Notes

October 27 Romans 6: 1‐14 “Dead and Alive” Engaging God’s Word: Romans Lessons 11 and 12

NRSV What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin,

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once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

The Message So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we’ve left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn’t you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land! That’s what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light‐filled world by our Father so that we can see where we’re going in our new grace‐sovereign country. Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin‐miserable life—no longer at sin’s every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ’s sin‐conquering death, we also get included in his life‐saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death‐as‐the‐end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you

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hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That’s what Jesus did. That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don’t give it the time of day. Don’t even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full‐time—remember, you’ve been raised from the dead!—into God’s way of doing things. Sin can’t tell you how to live. After all, you’re not living under that old tyranny any longer. You’re living in the freedom of God.


1) Think about baptism as a burial to sin and a resurrection to a new life with God. What is Paul saying here about sin in our lives? Is the fact that God forgives us reason to keep on sinning?

2) What would it mean for you to shift your focus from avoiding wrongs in order avoid displeasing God (observing the law), to doing right in order to cause God joy (living by grace)? What effect would that have on your own attitude about life and the way you relate to others?

Notes

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November 3 Romans 7: 13‐25 “Doing Right By His Power” Engaging God’s Word: Romans Lessons 13 and 14

NRSV Did what is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.

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The Message I can already hear your next question: “Does that mean I can’t even trust what is good [that is, the law]? Is good just as dangerous as evil?” No again! Sin simply did what sin is so famous for doing: using the good as a cover to tempt me to do what would finally destroy me. By hiding within God’s good commandment, sin did far more mischief than it could ever have accomplished on its own. I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary. But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time. It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and

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does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.


1) Here Paul acknowledges that all of us, himself included, aspire to live lives of pure action and motivation, according to the laws of God out of love for God (in other words, doing what’s right for all the right reasons), but that sin always lurks within us, and corrupts our actions and motivations. Think of ways that this is true in your own life. What is Paul’s remedy for this?

2) Have you ever had the experience of trying really hard to accomplish something and failing? The harder you try the more success eludes you? How might such an experience connect to Paul’s teachings here? Does it mean not trying, or trying with a different approach or attitude?

Notes

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November 10 Romans 8: 1‐17 “Are you Spiritual? Engaging God’s Word: Romans Lessons 15 and 16

NRSV There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall

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back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

The Message

With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being‐here‐for‐us no longer have to live under a continuous, low‐lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that. The law always ended up being used as a Band‐Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn’t deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us. Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That

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person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored. But if God himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive‐and‐present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s! So don’t you see that we don’t owe this old do‐it‐yourself life one red cent. There’s nothing in it for us, nothing at all. The best thing to do is give it a decent burial and get on with your new life. God’s Spirit beckons. There are things to do and places to go! This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave‐tending life. It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike “What’s next, Papa?” God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we really are. We know who he is, and we know who we are: Father and children. And we know we are going to get what’s coming to us—an unbelievable inheritance! We go through exactly what Christ goes through. If we go through the hard times with him, then we’re certainly going to go through the good times with him!

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1) It is very common today to hear people say that they are spiritual, but not religious. They often mean that they don’t participate in a church or in the life of a faith community, but believe in something, whether it’s the God of the Bible or not. Is that Paul’s definition of being spiritual? If not, what is his definition?

2) People often say that human beings are essentially good. Consider human existence before and after the Fall. Are we essentially good or not? Your thoughts on the topic might shape your understanding or opinions of Paul’s writings. If you do believe we are all essentially good, why are there so many problems in the world? If you don’t believe we are all essentially good, what reasons to you have to feel hopeful and positive?

Notes

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November 17 Romans 8: 31‐39 “If God is For You, Then…? Engaging God’s Word: Romans Lessons 17 and 18

NRSV

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Message So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us.

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Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture: They kill us in cold blood because they hate you. We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one. None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.


1) Paul seems to be saying two things. On the one hand, we are guilty of sin, and therefore rightly judged by God. On other hand, God chooses to see us as being without sin, and therefore “elected” for salvation because of our trust or faith in his son’s sacrifice for our sake. What words or phrases in this passage help you understand how both can be true?

2) Paul really leans into the idea that God’s love for us is the greatest power we can experience. Do you think this is relevant in your life in the same ways it was for believers in Paul’s time?

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Notes

November 24 Guest Preacher

This completes the first half of our sermon series on Romans.

The series picks up again after Christmas, beginning January 12, 2014.

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