Blessings That Will Knock Your Socks Off

SPEAKER 02 : 0:05

Well, we’ve come to the end of Romans, this book of Romans, and I’d like to share a few reflections with you about it. You may wonder why I broadcast on the book of Romans every year. It used to be a year and a half that it took me to go through the book of Romans, but I tend to go through it these days about every year or 11 months. Why do I do that? Well, I wonder if you and I could share some thoughts about our Christian life in the early days. When I was a young Christian, I read the Bible. It was a new thing to me to read the Bible when I was at the age of 15. I was fascinated. by the stories, by the history, and I was quite honestly more fascinated by the Old Testament than I was by the New at the time, because the Old was full of stories and amazing things, and I didn’t grasp at that time the real import of the New Testament and the life of Jesus. I have only discovered that in the last 40 years or so. But before that, I read my Bible and I found conflicting… perspectives in that Bible. Have you ever experienced that? You don’t know whether you are being blessed or rebuked or judged sometimes by what you read. Some of the Psalms are tremendously uplifting and give us courage to believe. Psalm 23, for instance, that the Lord is with us. Psalm 63 and many others that we can find our comfort in the Lord. But then there are Psalms that make us afraid, like Psalm 37, the blessing of the righteous and the blessing of the wicked, the curse of the wicked. And sometimes we don’t know, especially in our younger days as Christians, which side we’re on, do we? We seek to believe and trust in God and believe he has saved us. But then we’re reminded of all our wrongdoing and our sin. And we are comforted by the assurances and the promises of Scripture. But then we’re also facing the judgments that are described there. And we say to ourselves, well, do these belong to me? Are these judgments applying to me because I’m still a sinner and I still haven’t overcome? And so what we find in Scripture, without a knowledge of how faith works and in what faith believes, we find ourselves thrown from pillar to post, encouraged by some Scriptures one day and kind of frightened and made insecure by other Scriptures the next day. Have you experienced that? Maybe you haven’t. But I certainly did. I was in my legalistic days then, when the promises of God only applied to me if I was truly righteous and overcame all of my problems and sins and habits. Well, of course, that never fully, totally happened. And so I could never quite hold on to the promises of God, though I did, and I thank God that he enabled me to keep going. Excuse my voice today, by the way. I’m having a bit of croakiness at the moment. It’ll pass. So do you see what the conundrum often is that Christians face? But then it was in my thirties that I was exposed to the book of Romans. And by the way, I might say also before that, the Gospels themselves give us wonderful hope, Jesus dying for our sins, but Jesus also said certain things that make us insecure at times, right? That make us think, well, how in the world do I do this? Where he told us, whosoever loves a father or mother or anyone else more than me is not worthy of me, and sell all you have and give to the poor, and other verses that give us a sense of… inadequacy and incompleteness and inability to meet what Jesus has laid out there. But then, as I said, when I was at university, I came to hear the book of Romans. And it changed my life completely from that day forward, from 1970, let’s see, 1971 onwards. Because the book of Romans teaches us how to believe. Now, you may have approached the book of Romans and found it very, very difficult to understand. Paul says some things that confuse us. We died to sin, and we are freed from sin. Well, anyone who reads that without knowing how Paul is talking about it can be quite frightened. And so many people avoid the book of Romans because, for one, they think it sounds too abstract and intellectual, and for another, they find that statements like being freed from sin and dying to sin seem totally beyond our reach. But that’s because we haven’t learned how Paul is, how shall I say, the paradigm, the context in which Paul is speaking these things. That’s why I want to encourage you to listen in to the next round of the book of Romans, which we will start in a day or two. But what the book of Romans did for me was to teach me that Christ not only atoned for my sins and took away all judgment from me, but he accounted his life to me as if his life were mine. so that I’m counted as if I were righteous, because I am treated by Jesus with the favor of his love and his mercy to me. And this is true of the Father, because Jesus simply spoke the words of the Father to us.

SPEAKER 01 : 7:08

Well, when I learned this, I was blown away.

SPEAKER 02 : 7:13

I mean, what I mean by that is that I couldn’t quite believe the good news that it was telling me. It seemed too frivolous. It seemed too easy. It seemed as though I was letting myself get away with sin. It seemed like a soft gospel.

SPEAKER 01 : 7:35

And many people, or some people, have charged me with that, that I preach a soft gospel.

SPEAKER 02 : 7:44

And that’s the temptation that one is inclined to fall to when one starts believing in the book of Romans. I mean, for instance, in Romans 4 verse 5, Paul says that God declares innocent the wicked who trust in him. Now notice what that means or says. It doesn’t say God justifies or declares innocent the repentant or the sincere or the earnest or the surrendered.

SPEAKER 01 : 8:24

It says God justifies or declares innocent the wicked. Well, that’s almost too much to believe, isn’t it?

SPEAKER 02 : 8:35

I knew that my heart was wicked even though I was a converted Christian, but I couldn’t seem to meet or come up with the strength and the wherewithal to overcome all these inclinations of my sinful heart. So I knew I was a wicked man. And before the good news of the book of Romans, I couldn’t cling to God consistently with hope only when I felt good enough for a few days or a few weeks, but not when the temptations and struggles came back. But Romans taught me how to believe more consistently. You see, it says that God declares innocent the wicked who trust him. Well, I could go before God and I could say, Father, I’m a wicked man. But I’m going to trust that you count me, you justify me.

SPEAKER 01 : 9:38

Romans 3.28 tells us that, that we are accounted righteous.

SPEAKER 02 : 9:45

Well, when you begin to grapple with this, you slowly find that your mind becomes more steady. it becomes more consistent in thanking God and praising God, and less inclined to go off the rails into depression or an overwhelming anxiety over one’s sins. you begin to be more consistent. That’s what the book of Romans gradually teaches you. It teaches you consistency. Now you say, Colin, I’ve never, in fact, a lady wrote to me and said, I’ve never been able to grapple or grasp Romans very well. And I grant you that you may need to go to a Christian bookstore and ask them what is a good commentary on the book of Romans. You may have to get help, in other words, by reading a book that teaches you about Romans or listening to this broadcast on a regular basis. That will help enormously, I can assure you. But once you start delving into it and don’t read it lightly, but studiously, trying to break apart each line of thought, each sentence, each clause, if you like, and by the way, get several translations of the Bible, so that you can hear the book of Romans in different translations. I recommend the revised King James Version, of course, but also what about the Message Bible? That is a paraphrase, really, and it helps us a lot in understanding what Paul’s trying to say. But gradually, you begin to gain an enormous amount of courage from it. Now, by the way, I would recommend Concordia’s translation of Martin Luther’s commentary on the book of Galatians. Now you say, I thought you were talking about Romans. Yeah, but Galatians, Martin Luther’s commentary on the book of Galatians, the one translated by Concordia, is tremendously helpful in how to believe How to believe. This is what we’re talking about when it comes to how to trust in Jesus. What did Jesus do for us? He took our judgment on the cross. He was not simply a moral teacher. He didn’t simply die for us as a good example. He was a substitutionary sacrifice. God took his judgment upon the world and placed it upon himself in the person of his Son, so that you and I are no longer counted as enemies and sinners of God. Now, I tell you, if you keep your head in the book of Romans, you will find yourself training your faith. You will look at these passages and you’ll say, I don’t understand them, but I’ll listen to Colin on the radio and maybe I will, or I’ll get a book on this and help and understand it, or go, by the way, to Biblos online, Biblos, B-I-B-L-O-S.com, which is a whole series of commentaries on every book in the Bible, and key in there, or rather type in Romans 1, verse 1, and you’ve got a commentary right there in front of you. So join me in the next year and let’s study the book of Romans together and find a new vision of our Savior Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection for us, and we will have a new sense of joy and consistency. Well, thank you for joining me today. Colin Cook here, and you’re listening to How It Happens. You can hear the broadcast on the radio at 10 o’clock in the evening, repeated at 4 in the morning in the Denver and Colorado and surrounding states areas on KLTT AM 670. but you can also hear it any time of the day or night on your smartphone. Simply download a free app, soundcloud.com or podbean.com, and key in how it happens with Colin Cook when you get there. Well, I do hope you will join me regularly, and you will get a blessing that will knock your socks off. I’ll see you next time. Cheerio and God bless.