Join us in understanding how the greatest news since creation has been delivered to humanity. While the world often misunderstands or dismisses the significance of Jesus, Paul’s epistle to the Romans sheds light on the profound implications of being ‘in Christ’. Explore how God’s eternal plan and judgment, manifested through Jesus, redefine our identity, deliverance, and future in a captivating narrative.
So Paul is about to launch us onto one of the greatest passages in Scripture. I know I talk about superlatives and the greatest this and the greatest that. It’s difficult not to when you’re talking about the good news. But this is truly one of the greatest passages in Scripture. And Paul says and starts with it by saying, What then shall we say to all these things? And of course, he’s going to say, if God is for us, who can be against us? But I want to tell you this. I want to try to impress this upon your mind. We are here hearing the best news that ever came to the world since the creation. That’s not an exaggeration. All the fears, all the terrors, all the worries and anxieties that we have fall to the ground when we truly comprehend these passages. The trouble is, the world doesn’t believe, and some many Christians don’t really believe, and so these words have failed to have a shock effect. value to us. But they are a wonderful shock, a surprise of good news, the surprise of joy. What shall we say to these things? That’s Romans 8, verse 31. What then shall we say to these things? Well, now, first of all, we need to ask, what things is he talking about? We should know by now. But our minds are so dull, Our minds are so attuned to the crushing death syndrome of this world that we cannot take these things in. But you have to understand that Paul is now asking us a question that implies a conclusion. In conclusion, what have we to say to all these things? To what things? To the glorious things that he has been speaking about in the last many chapters, or the first many chapters of the book of Romans. Let’s remind ourselves of that, shall we? The book of Romans reveals that humankind is utterly broken. There is not one healthy human being on the planet. There is not one human being on the planet that can possibly enter eternal life in the state in which he or she is in. But then comes this glorious news that now the righteousness of God, apart from human performance, apart from law, has been revealed. What is this righteousness? Well, it is Christ. It is Jesus. And who is Jesus? The Son of God. And who is the Son of God? He is God who has come among men. to rescue us. You remember when God came down to the Israelites through Moses because he heard the suffering of the children of Israel, and he has come to deliver them. That was a picture of what God does in Jesus Christ. He comes to the world hearing the suffering and the moaning and the sorrow of the human race, and he says, I have come to deliver them. This is what Jesus is all about. The world disregards him. The world thinks he’s a nice example. The world thinks he’s just too much to take. The world poo-hoos him in many ways. The world ignores him. The world thinks he’s irrelevant politically and internationally. He just isn’t what we need. Oh, he’s the only thing we need, that’s what. God’s righteousness has been revealed in one man, and that one man is going to perform or produce or create the victory for all men and women. He is going to stand in and represent all humanity, and his victory is going to be the victory of the world. In fact, his victory is the victory of the world. That’s what Paul is establishing. That’s what the gospel is establishing. That’s what Jesus has said himself. That’s what all the prophets have proclaimed. Jesus is the victory of the world, the atoning sacrifice of the world, the sin bearer, all of these things. and so we are in him declared innocent. The great guilt that the human race bears and has been so terrified of that it thinks that it deserves to be blasted out of existence and that global warming which will produce the death of the world is our fault and we deserve it, all of that kind of mental insanity, It is a kind of sanity if we don’t have anywhere to place and resolve that guilt, but that kind of insanity has been ruining the planet for so long. And the message of the gospel is that Jesus Christ is, because of his sacrifice, because of his death, which is on behalf of all humanity, is relieving humanity from guilt and shame and fear. And humanity may look up to God and say, Oh, Father, thank you for coming to us. Thank you for visiting us. Thank you for delivering us from the slavery of sin. Thank you, dear God. This is the message of the gospel, you see. If God is for us, what shall we say to all these things? What things? The things about Jesus Christ. You know, really we should read this book of Romans at least once a year, my friends. Try to absorb it because your natural mind will not believe these things. And even when faith comes into your mind, you are likely to forget what you’ve read after a few months. And so you have to be reminded of it. Now, in the light of what Jesus Christ has done, Paul says he’s the propitiation, that means the one who appeases God’s wrath, that is, God in his anger and disappointment over the world takes the judgment for the world upon himself in the person of his Son. In the light of this, humanity is liberated. And the liberation is described in chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8 of Romans. We are freed from the wrath and judgment of God. Chapter 5, we are freed from the identity and burden and heaviness of sin. Chapter 6, chapter 7, we are freed from the judgment of the law. Chapter 8, we are freed from the power of death. Wrath, sin, law, and death, chapters 5, 6, and 7, and 8. We have been liberated from them. And on the positive side, that means we have not merely been freed from God’s wrath, but reconciled to his heart. That’s chapter 5. Not only have we been delivered from the burden of sin, we are no longer under the identity as sinners. We are now God’s children, chapter 6. We are freed from the judgment of the law. On the reverse side of that, we are counted as righteous in him, innocent. Pure, we have the power now by faith to dismiss the judgments of our mind that are endlessly blaming us. And chapter 7, chapter 8 rather, we are now freed from the power of death. Though we may die, though we will die, if Jesus doesn’t come before, we shall be raised from the dead. We are counted in Christ’s resurrection. So what does all this tell us? It tells us that God is a friend of humanity, a friend of the human race, that God is a friend of sinners, that God has become and determined that he would be, before the creation of the world, the world’s defender. Now, many of us have thought this absurd. They thought that God is our judge. Well, God is a judge, of course, and he has judged us in Jesus Christ. If he judged us in ourselves, we would all be doomed. But Jesus Christ took the judgment of God on behalf of humanity. God is the friend of sinners. Now, granted, the preachers need to warn the world of judgment, because these judgments are not to the death of the human race, they are to the redemption of the human race. Because according to the book of Ezekiel, the judgments come that we may know that God is the Lord. But, There’s too much proclamation about human beings from the pulpits. And we need to be reminded that it is not God who is our enemy. It is Satan who is the enemy. It is Satan that is the accuser of mankind. And we find our God defending humanity against Satan, the accuser. Very often Christians wrongly have placed God in the role of Satan, and thus they are afraid. They do not find the good news at all because they think of God in terms of what Satan would be doing, accusing us endlessly and threatening us with death. Our God is not the accuser. Christ has come to redeem the world. You see, this is the greatest news that has ever come across and to this planet since the creation of the world. That’s why I’m not exaggerating when I say this. We need to grasp it and believe it with all our hearts. In the midst of our struggles, in the midst of our darkness, in the midst of our sins and failures, in the midst of our inability to truly dedicate ourselves, in the midst of our awareness that we are fake, We sinners are fakes. We’re pretending all the time. We’re putting on the best front to all the people around us, to our family one front, to our friends another front, to our workmates another front. But God knows all, and we can tell him, O Lord God, I am a fake. Father, Jesus is my truth. Jesus is my righteousness. Jesus is my genuineness. I do not have any genuineness in myself. You see what it is all about. We are liberated from this endless burden of being human, this endless burden of being fallen humans. and broken humans. We carry about a body of death, but our faith affirms that we are counted free from its judgment. Our faith confirms or affirms that Jesus has taken the judgment of this body of death, so that we do not live in its definition. We do not live in its identity. We live in the identity of Christ. You see, this is all that Paul is talking about when he says in Romans 8, What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Now, do you notice that he said, if God is for us? Well, Paul has been talking mostly previously about Jesus, Jesus being for us, Jesus taking the judgment, Jesus being our righteousness. But you see, once we understand that Jesus came on behalf of the Father, that Jesus was speaking the words of his Father, then we realize that he who has seen Jesus has seen the Father. You don’t have to go around believing, oh, I know Jesus is good, but God is my judge, and I’m afraid of God, but I like Jesus. That is silly and nonsense. Jesus has become the revelation of the heart of God, and that is the greatest news that ever came to this planet. God is our friend, he is our defender, and he is our deliverer. Thanks so much for joining me today. Boy, I get wild about this good news, don’t you? I mean, I’m not simply teaching it to you. I’m teaching it to myself. When I hear myself quote the words of Scripture or teach the truths of Scripture, I am lifted up, I am encouraged, and I’m saying, no, none of my shortcomings, sins, or failures will allow me to stop teaching and preaching the good news about Jesus. So join me every day, KLTT AM 670, in the Denver and Colorado and surrounding states, and online at faithquestradio, I mean online at soundcloud.com or podbean.com. See you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
