Pip:Sunday Morning Greek Blog, where the footnotes go six layers deep and the baptismal theology is somehow more soaking wet than you’d expect.
Mara: Scott Stocking has been doing a deep dive into Romans, and what surfaces is a case that baptism and the call to be a living sacrifice are more tightly connected than most readings let on. That’s the territory we’re covering today.
Pip: Let’s start with that connection — baptism as theology, not ceremony.
Mara: The central claim here is that Romans 6 and Romans 12:1 are not two separate ideas — they are one continuous argument, and baptism is the hinge between them.
Pip: And the evidence for that hinge is a single Greek word that shows up five times in Romans 6 and then reappears exactly when Paul says what he means by a living sacrifice.
Mara: Right — the word is paristēmi, translated “offer.” It appears throughout Romans 6 as Paul urges believers to offer themselves to God and then surfaces again in 12:1: “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God — this is your true and proper worship.”
Pip: So the living sacrifice of chapter 12 is not a new instruction — it is a callback to what baptism already accomplished.
Mara: Exactly. And to understand why, you have to follow Paul’s logic from the earlier part of Romans 6. The setup is verses 3 through 5: “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.”
Mara: What that means in practice is that baptism is not primarily a public declaration — it is the moment of union with Christ’s death and resurrection. The believer does not merely symbolize something; they participate in it.
Pip: Which reframes the famous last verse of Romans 6 considerably. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” — usually read as a warning — is actually, on this reading, an affirmation for people who have already come through baptism.
Mara: That is precisely the argument. Because Christ paid the wages of sin on the cross, and because baptism unites the believer with that crucifixion, the verse functions as a confirmation of what has already happened, not a threat about what might.
Pip: The obedience Paul keeps returning to — his stated theme from Romans 1:5 all the way to 16:26 — is not a checklist. It is what life in Christ’s presence actually looks like after baptism.
Mara: And that reading is reinforced in the earlier post on the mystery of immersion, which makes a closely related case: that immersion is “the glue that ties the two pillars of the faith — Christ’s death and his subsequent resurrection — together.” That post works through the benefits linked to each pillar separately, from justification and reconciliation on the death side, to bearing fruit and victory over death on the resurrection side.
Pip: Both posts land in the same place — baptism is not peripheral, not merely a work of the flesh, not optional color commentary on the real theology happening elsewhere.
Mara: The phrase from the immersion post is worth sitting with: immersion is “a near-complete picture of who we are and what we have in Christ.”
Pip: Romans as a unified argument, baptism as the hinge, and the living sacrifice not as a new ask but as a return to the starting point.
Mara: There is more in Romans to surface. We will be back when the next posts land.
Pip:Sunday Morning Greek Blog, where the word “therefore” is never just a transition — it’s a theological event horizon.
Mara: Scott Stocking brings us two sermons this episode, both circling the same gravitational center: how Christ’s faithfulness, not just our own, is what justification actually rests on. We move from Romans 5 to the temptation in the desert and back again.
Pip: Let’s start with what Paul is actually arguing in Romans 5 and why the word “faith” might be doing double duty.
Mara: The post works through Romans 5:1–12 as part of a longer Romans study, and the central question it raises is whether “faith” in Paul’s letters refers only to our belief — or also to Christ’s own faithfulness to his mission.
Pip: And the answer, apparently, is both, which changes the weight of the whole argument considerably. The post frames it this way, reading from Romans 1:17: “For in the gospel the Righteousness of God is revealed — from faithfulness into faithfulness, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faithfulness.'”
Mara: What this means in practice is that the “Righteousness of God” Paul invokes isn’t an abstract moral standard — it refers to Jesus himself. Jesus is the Righteousness of God, and his faithfulness to the cross is what makes our justification possible in the first place.
Pip: So when Paul writes “justified through faith” in 5:1 and then pivots to “justified by his blood” in 5:9, he isn’t contradicting himself — he’s showing the two sides of one coin. Christ’s faithfulness is the foundation; our trust is the response.
Mara: The post also tracks a structural shift in Romans that’s easy to miss as a casual reader. In chapters 1 through 4, Paul uses words for faith or faithfulness 27 times and words for life only twice. In chapters 5 through 8, those numbers nearly reverse — 25 occurrences of life and live, and only 2 for faith.
Pip: That’s a deliberate rhetorical gear change, not an accident.
Mara: Exactly — and it lands hardest in verse 8, which the post calls “somewhat profound”: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” No prior cleanup required.
Pip: The historical context sharpens that. Paul is writing to a Roman congregation where Jewish believers had been expelled and were only now returning to find Gentile house churches still thriving — so the unity argument isn’t abstract theology, it’s pastoral triage.
Mara: And perseverance under that pressure is precisely what builds the character and hope Paul describes in verses 3 through 5. That thread connects directly to what Jesus himself modeled when his own faithfulness was put to the test.
Mara: The second sermon takes up Matthew 4:1–11 alongside Romans 5:12–19, and the framing question is pointed: where Adam failed under temptation, what did Jesus actually do differently, and what does that mean for everyone who comes after?
Pip: The post opens with a comparison most sermons wouldn’t lead with — that Satanism is an oxymoron — but it earns the setup, because the whole argument depends on understanding what Satan is actually after.
Mara: The key move comes in Romans 5:19, quoted directly: “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.”
Pip: So the upshot is that Jesus’s obedience isn’t just a moral example — it’s the structural reversal of Adam’s failure. One act of faithful obedience undoes what one act of disobedience broke.
Mara: The post draws a careful parallel: Satan used the same three categories against Jesus in the desert — appetite, spectacle, and power — that he used against Eve in the garden. Jesus refused each one by knowing exactly what God had actually promised, not the distorted version Satan offered.
Pip: And the post makes the point that what made the crucifixion uniquely effective wasn’t only perfect legal obedience to the Law — it was love. Bulls and goats couldn’t love anyone. Jesus could and did.
Mara: Which is why the post lands where it does: believers are “in Christ” in a concrete sense, baptized into his death, freed from the law’s demands, and called to walk in the righteousness he earned and extends to them.
Pip: Two sermons, one through-line — Christ’s faithfulness is prior to ours, and that sequence matters for everything that follows.
Mara: Romans keeps pulling the thread. There’s still the second half of Romans 6 ahead, so this conversation isn’t finished.
Part 1 of the Romans podcast series may be found here.
Pip: Welcome to Sunday Morning Greek Blog, where the coffee is hot and the participles are passive — and sometimes that’s the whole point.
Mara: Scott Stocking is our guide this episode, working through Romans with a close eye on the Greek text — what words like pistis and dikaiosyne actually mean, and why the translation choices matter for how we understand salvation.
Pip: Let’s start with the Romans Road and what happens when you read it in the original language.
Pip: The post on Romans 3:23–24 opens a question most readers skip right past: when Paul says we are justified by faith, whose faith is he actually talking about — ours, or Christ’s?
Mara: The post frames it this way: “For all who are being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came through Messiah Jesus sinned and are lacking the glory of God.” That rearrangement of word order is deliberate — the participle dikaioumenoi, meaning “who are being justified,” attaches directly to “all,” making justification an ongoing process, not a completed event.
Pip: So the grammar itself is doing theological work. Being justified is present tense, active right now, not a box you checked at conversion.
Mara: Exactly. And that present-tense framing connects to a comparison with Ephesians 2:8, where the parallel construction swaps “through the redemption in Christ Jesus” for “through faithfulness, and this not from yourselves.” The argument is that the faithfulness in view is Christ’s — his obedience to the cross — not a quantity of belief we have to produce on our own.
Pip: Which dissolves a question that has quietly tormented a lot of Christians: do I have enough faith to be saved? If the faithfulness is Christ’s, the answer is structurally irrelevant to us.
Mara: The post makes that point directly. If salvation rests on our faith, it becomes relative — how much is enough? But if it rests on Christ’s faithfulness, the statement becomes absolute. Our own trust in Jesus is, as the post puts it, “not so much for the purpose of being saved but the result of being saved.”
Pip: That’s a quiet but significant inversion of how the passage usually gets preached.
Mara:The companion piece on pistis across Romans 1–5 develops this at length. It argues that the phrase pisteos Iesou Christou — “the faithfulness of Jesus Christ” — in Romans 3:22 is a subjective genitive: Christ is the one being faithful, not merely the object of our faith. The post traces that reading through the whole arc of Romans 1–5, from God’s wrath under the Law in chapters 1 through 3, to Abraham’s faithfulness in chapter 4, to the application in chapter 5.
Mara: The inclusio that brackets the entire letter is telling: the phrase eis hypakoēn pisteōs — “into obedience of faithfulness” — appears in both 1:5 and 16:26, the first and last occurrences of pistis in Romans. That structural frame suggests Paul’s whole argument is about faithful obedience, not faith as a discrete interior event.
Pip: So Romans is less a manual for how to believe and more a demonstration that Christ already did the believing on our behalf — and we walk in the wake of that.
Mara: With the caveat that our own faithfulness still matters — the post is careful to say this doesn’t imply universalism or unconditional security, but rather a call to trust more deeply because God has already demonstrated his reliability. Works, confession, and obedience all follow from that trust.
Pip: From the mechanics of justification to the question of who the righteous one actually is — that thread runs all the way back to Romans 1:17, which is where the deeper argument begins.
Mara: The thread connecting both posts is really one question: what kind of faithfulness is Romans built on, and does the Greek text change the answer?
Pip: Turns out the grammar has opinions. Next time, we’ll see where else those opinions show up.
Pip:Sunday Morning Greek Blog — where the Greek is original and the theology is anything but shallow.
Mara: Scott Stocking has been working through one of the more contested questions in New Testament theology: what immersion actually does, what Peter and Paul meant by it, and whether the word itself carries more weight than most translations let on.
Pip: Let’s start with the text that says it most plainly — 1 Peter 3.
Baptism as Event, Not Ritual
Mara: The question driving these posts is deceptively simple: does immersion save, and if so, how does it work — what gives the water any power at all?
Pip: First Peter 3:21 is the sharpest answer in the New Testament, and the post on that passage offers a translation that cuts through the usual hedging: “This immersion now saves you through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, not the body-dirt removal immersion, but the clear-conscience-pledge to God immersion.”
Mara: So the power is not in the water itself. The resurrection is the qualifier — it is what carries the person through immersion the way the floodwater carried the ark. Without that phrase at the end of the verse, the whole thing collapses into ritual.
Pip: And the Greek grammar backs that reading up. The relative pronoun at the start of verse 21 is neuter, which means it points back to water, not to the ark — Peter is saying the flood water corresponds to immersion, not that the ark does.
Mara: The post on The Mystery of Immersion picks up that thread and pushes it further, asking whether ascribing salvific power to immersion while calling the Lord’s Table a mere symbol is a theological inconsistency — either both carry mysterious power, or both are symbols.
Pip: That is a genuinely uncomfortable corner to be argued into.
Mara:Mystery of Immersion, Part Two lands the argument more firmly. It reads Romans 6 as the centerpiece of Paul’s entire theological argument in chapters 1 through 11, with immersion as the event that binds Christ’s death and resurrection together in a single act.
Pip: So immersion is not a footnote to salvation — it is, in Paul’s architecture, the load-bearing joint.
Mara: The Part Two post puts it this way: immersion is “the glue that ties the two pillars of the faith together.” United with Christ’s death, the believer receives justification, reconciliation, and a cleansed conscience. United with the resurrection, they bear fruit and share the victory over death.
Mara: And across all three posts, one consistent boundary holds: a purely outward act, the “dunk and ditch” version, accomplishes nothing — the pledge of a clear conscience is what makes the event real.
Pip: From water as typology to Romans as architecture — the question underneath all of it is what it means to be all-in for Christ.
Pip: Three posts, one through-line: immersion is not where the journey ends — it is where it starts in earnest.
Mara: The Greek keeps pulling that thread. More to come.
Pip: Sunday Morning Greek Blog is back, and if you thought Paul’s letter to the Romans was just a greatest-hits playlist of salvation verses, Scott Stocking is here to walk you through the whole road — construction specs included.
Mara: Scott Stocking covers two connected territories this episode: what righteousness actually means in Romans, and how the phrase “obedience of faithfulness” functions as the letter’s spine from opening greeting to closing benediction.
Pip: Let’s start with righteousness — and what it costs to define it carefully.
Mara: The central question in this segment is what Paul means by “the righteousness of God” in Romans 1:17 — and whether it’s something God hands over to believers, or something embodied in a person.
Pip: The answer lands hard. The post sets up Romans 1:17 carefully, then offers this reading: “The righteousness of God then isn’t an object to be given. It is embodied in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the righteousness of God.”
Mara: The upshot is that righteousness isn’t a transaction — it’s a participation. Because Jesus fulfilled every requirement of the law, he alone is called righteous, and believers share in that only by being “in Christ.”
Pip: Which reframes the familiar Romans Road considerably. The post uses a road-construction metaphor that actually earns its keep: righteousness is the substructure — the rebar, the compacted earth, the dowel bars — and Jesus’s faithfulness is the surface we walk on.
Mara: Romans 1:17 gets parsed as “from faithfulness into faithfulness” — Jesus’s perfect obedience to the law moving into his faithfulness unto death on the cross. The post ties that directly to Philippians 2:8: “he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross.”
Pip: So “obedience of faithfulness” in Romans 1:5 isn’t just a theological motto. It points, specifically, to the crucifixion.
Mara: Romans 2 extends this. Paul warns both Jews and Gentiles against hypocrisy — knowing the law isn’t the same as following it. The post notes that circumcision and baptism function as parallel initiation rites in Paul’s argument, and reads Romans 2:25–29 as groundwork for the baptism discussion coming in chapter 6.
Pip: The small-group kickoff context matters here — this is a congregation being asked to read Romans one chapter at a time, and the post is honest that chapters 1 and 2 alone carry enough freight to slow anyone down.
Mara: That honesty is part of the argument. The post closes the Romans 1 and 2 discussion with a summary worth quoting directly: if we remain faithful to living in the righteousness of Christ, then as Romans 2:13 says, “we’ll be declared righteous when we stand before our maker.”
Pip: Which brings us to the phrase that holds all of this together — and how it functions across the whole letter.
Mara: The question the second post takes up is whether “obedience of faithfulness” is a throwaway greeting formula or the actual organizing theme of Romans — and the answer is the latter.
Pip: The post on “Obedience of Faithfulness: A Walk On the Romans Road” opens with personal testimony but arrives at a precise textual claim. Paul, it argues, “told us what he was going to say, he said it, and he told us he said it” — the phrase appears in Romans 1:5 and again, word for word, in the closing benediction of Romans 16.
Mara: That’s not a coincidence. The Greek is only two words, and the post explains that the structure implies the terms define each other: “obedience is faithfulness, and faithfulness is obedience.” Faith, in this reading, is never purely intellectual — it always carries action with it.
Pip: The post traces this through baptism in Romans 6, reading immersion as the believer’s own enactment of the pattern — buried with Christ, raised to new life. That’s the “obedience of faithfulness” made physical.
Mara: And Romans 12:1–2 closes the arc: “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God” and “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The post is careful to note these are promises for life now, not only for life after death.
Pip: Two posts, one through-line — the road Paul built was always meant to be walked.
Mara: Righteousness as foundation, faithfulness as the road you actually travel — that’s the frame Romans keeps returning to.
Pip: Next time, we’ll see where else on the blog that road leads.
I preached this message July 26, 2026, at Mount View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, Nebraska. It follows up on my previous message two weeks’ prior on the first third of Romans 8 (Life in the Spirit (Romans 8:1–11) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog). I also video recorded the message for my Rumble and Instagram accounts. I will post those links when they are available.
Good morning! The Lord be with you!
A couple weeks ago we looked at the first part of Romans 8 and talked about the life that we have in the Holy Spirit. Today, we’re going to close out this second major section of Romans, chapters 5 through 8, by walking through Paul’s “deeper dive” into the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives in the last third of Romans 8.
I’m scratching my head a bit at why the editors of the Lectionary chose to break the text between last week’s Romans 8 passage and this week’s. The most obvious clue we have that this break may not have come at a natural stopping point is the fact that our passage begins with “Likewise” in the version we read, or “In the same way” in the NIV.
Seeing this word or phrase in the biblical text should give us cause to pause for a moment and ask, as we do with “therefore,” what is it there for? Likewise compared to what? In the same way as…? Well, the obvious place to look is the paragraph just before our text, beginning in verse 22, because there are some obvious verbal parallels we can’t ignore.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.[1]
Did you hear the connection to today’s passage in the first couple verses? It’s the idea that not only is the earth itself groaning right along with us. I want to come back to that in a minute, but it’s important to drill down a bit into the implications of the Greek word translated “likewise” (ὡσαύτως hōsautōs).
In our English translations, we probably don’t even give much of a second thought to such a word. For some of us, it probably carries about the same weight as the word “whatever.” But this word appears to have a specialized use in the New Testament, one that implies a deeper or more profound connection to the situations or persons being compared. That’s important because as the body of Christ, we live in fellowship not only with Christ but with one another as well. This simple little word is shorthand for letting Paul’s readers (at least in the original language) know that something special is going on here.
The word is typically found in lists or narratives of repeated action. For example, it’s used in the parable Jesus tells about Levirate marriage, where the next youngest brother is responsible for marrying his older brother’s widow to continue the family line. It’s used a couple times in 1 Timothy 2 and 3—once to say that men and women should worship God similarly but with instructions specific to each gender. Then in chapter 3 he uses it in reference to the three leadership groups mentioned: elders have their qualifications; just like the elders, deacons have their own qualifications specific to their ministry; and just like the deacons and elders, “the women” in leadership have their own qualifications specific to their ministry.
Recognizing that this connection exists between the entities compared helps give us a deeper appreciation of what it means when Paul says, “Likewise…the Spirit intercedes for us through wordless groans.” Creation itself has been groaning for redemption ever since Adam and Eve at the forbidden fruit. From Genesis 3, you may remember God told Adam:
When Paul first mentions groaning in vs. 22, he uses a special form of the word translated “groan” that adds a prefix meaning “together with.” We see that prefix in modern English in words like sympathy and symphony. It supplements the implications of the word “likewise.” It wasn’t just the ground itself, but the greenhouse-like paradise God had created for his creation to dwell in was disrupted very shortly after that by a flood that literally reshaped the world and created the weather patterns we see today: tornado season, monsoon season, hurricane season, the four seasons, earthquakes, etc. I believe those are all manifestations of the curse God spoke upon the land in Genesis 3. Those things will not exist when God establishes the new heaven and new earth.
Paul says in verse 23 that you and I are groaning right along with creation as we await our own redemption. We’re all keenly aware of that kind of “groaning.” When we’ve been hurt deeply by someone who loved us, or even when we, intentionally or not, hurt or severely disappoint those closest to us. We feel when we get fired or “downsized” from a good job that has been a source of security for us. We feel it when a child is ill and all we can do is hold them closely to help them get through the sickness. We especially feel it with the loss of a loved one, of course. We mourn with those who mourn, and somehow that brings some small comfort or a sense of security even when we don’t have the words to express our sorrow.
We see this groaning in our world in other ways as well. Poverty, political aggression, and religious oppression, to name a few are evils that haunt us. War, mental illness, and substance use disorders often arise from undesirable or unhealthy ways to address those evils and compel us to lift our cries for redemption, even when we cannot find our words to express it.
So, when we come to our passage today and see that, “in the same way” we groan for the things troubling our hearts, the Holy “Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” This isn’t some supernatural spiritual language, then. If you’re in Christ, the Spirit knows your heart and mind intimately, so he feels the pain and the sorrow that causes us to groan. The mystery of the Trinity is that the Spirit is the presence of Jesus in your life, and therefore the presence of Jesus’s deep love for you. Additionally, God the Father knows precisely what the Spirit is conveying to him on your behalf, so God knows your pain as well and begins to work through his Spirit and his Word (Jesus) to comfort us and provide for our spiritual and emotional needs in our time of distress (vs. 27).
When we understand the groaning of the Holy Spirit and what it is accomplishing for us, we can begin “to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge”[3] as Paul says in Ephesians 3. If his love surpasses knowledge, then it kind of sounds like there are no words to describe it. That’s pretty deep, extremely profound. It’s heavy, but in a good way, because, as Paul continues in Ephesians 3, we’re “filled to the measure of all the fulness of God.” This is how great his love is for us, and this is the taste of the eternal life that awaits us as believers.
What we’ve just covered here is Paul’s response to what he calls “our present sufferings” in Romans 8:18 and begins the process of revealing God’s glory in our lives. That is the context for vs. 28, then, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”[4] Now if you’re following along in a printed Bible with this passage, you may notice a footnote here that suggests a couple alternate translations, but the version we read from (New Revised Standard Version) has the most straightforward translation. The issue has to do with grammar, and you didn’t come here this morning for a grammar lesson. But if you want an explanation, ask me after the service.[5]
The “all things” refers to what Paul was talking about in chapter 8 that we already mentioned: the present sufferings, the groaning for redemption, and so on. Whatever has happened to us and whatever is currently happening to us is all part of God’s design for our lives if we love him and walk with him. The phrase “Those whom he foreknew” most likely does not refer to individuals but rather to a group. In Romans 11, the same word refers to the Jews. In 1 Peter 1:20, it refers to Jesus being chosen before the creation of the world to be savior, so by extension, the implication in Romans 8 here is that it refers to Jews specifically and everyone else who would follow Christ in history. He describes those Christ-followers as called, justified, and glorified.
This brings us to the grand conclusion of chapter 8 specifically, and chapters 5 through 8 as significant subset of Paul’s larger treatise. Paul hearkens back to the opening verse of chapter (“There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus”) by asking in verse 34, “Who then is the one who condemns? No one.”[6] We have assurance that with God on our side, no one and nothing can stand against us. Nothing can bring us down. Nothing can or should raise questions about our standing or relationship with God.
All of that is possible because of Jesus’s sacrifice and what that accomplished as Paul explains especially in chapter 6. If we are in Christ, God has justified us. If we are in Christ, God has guaranteed us eternal life through the resurrection of Jesus. Baptism is the outward expression of that security. And along with the Holy Spirit, who dwells in us, Jesus is at the right hand of God interceding for us as well. We can’t lose!
Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 4:16–18:
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.[7]
None of the troubles that Paul mentioned earlier in chapter 8 can separate us from God’s love. The worries of chapter 7 and “doing what I don’t want to do” are banished when we realize that we are no longer slaves of sin but “slaves” of Christ. Our participation in the death and resurrection of Christ in baptism assures us of the eternal life we have in Christ.
This is why Paul says in 8:37 that we are more than conquerors! Amen? We have assurance and confidence that we are fully secure in the body of Christ and in God’s kingdom for eternity when we walk with and in him. We have victory in Jesus! Let us go forth today and share the good news of that victory with those who need to know the assurance of his hope. Amen!
[5] The underlying text is vague, but the theological significance among the options is minimal in my opinion. The issue is with the word πάντα panta (“all things”), which, as a neuter form, can either be the subject of the sentence (nominative case) or the direct object of the sentence (accusative case). The NRSV (here), KJV, and ESV have the most straightforward translation: “All things work together….” The NIV confuses the issue by putting panta in the dative case (“in all things”). The more recent Common English Bible (CEB) has “God works all things together…,” which requires the translator to infer God is the subject of the verb. However, “God” as a nominative case noun does not occur in the eclectic text.
Metzger’s Textual Commentary (p. 458) on the variant reading where it does occur in some copies of the text is helpful, but not necessarily conclusive ([B] rating):
“Although the reading συνεργεῖ ὁ θεός (𝔓46 A B 81 copsa (eth) Origengr2/5) is both ancient and noteworthy, a majority of the Committee deemed it too narrowly supported to be admitted into the text, particularly in view of the diversified support for the shorter reading (א C D G K P Ψ 33 614 1739 ByzLect itd,, vg syrp, copbo arm Clement Origengr3/5, Eusebius Lucifer Cyril-Jerusalem Chrysostom Augustine al). Since συνεργεῖ may be taken to imply a personal subject, ὁ θεός seems to have been a natural explanatory addition made by an Alexandrian editor.”
[6] Romans 8:34. The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Contextually, since the chapter begins with, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” the answers to the questions in this section (vv. 33–35) about who is bringing charges, who is condemning, and who is separating us from Christ’s love are all “No one” by implication. The “No one” in vs. 34 (NIV) and the “No” at the beginning of vs. 37 (NIV) are glosses to indicate this, that is, they are not translated from Greek words in the text, and consequently some translations do not include those glosses.
I preached this message on July 12, 2026, at Mount View Presbyterian Church. Although my mom wasn’t there, as I say in my opening remarks, my dad decided at the last minute he would come hear me speak. I’m so grateful to still have both my parents around.
Good morning! May the Lord be with you.
I’m feeling kind of bittersweet this morning. I think this is first time I’ve preached here that my mom isn’t in the audience. She and my sister have had a great time at Niagara Falls and will be flying back this evening.
Well, it seems like I started something a few weeks ago when I decided to preach on Romans chapter 5. I understand Al preached on Romans 7 last week, so I’m back to keep it going. One of the reasons I’ve come to love studying, teaching, and preaching on Romans is that the more I study it, the more structure I see to the whole letter. As Christ-followers, sometimes we forget that when we’re reading the epistles, we’re reading the author’s response to a story of the church and its members in a community we may not know much about. The author knows the stories and histories of his audience, but he rarely lets on what that entails. Unless we have evidence from elsewhere, like say, from the Book of Acts that detail much of Paul’s ministry activity, we’re often guessing at the context or trying to understand why Paul and the other writers are saying what they’re saying, and sometimes even how they’re saying it.
It’s important, then, to pay attention to how the epistle is organized. Paul isn’t just putting together a random set of platitudes in Romans with a few memory verses for his readers. He’s crafting an argument, by way of storytelling in some spots, to address the concerns he has for the two communities who have recently reunited in Rome. The Gentiles have been permanent residents there, but the Jews had been kicked out Rome a few years before Paul wrote Romans and had only recently returned, perhaps within the last two years, at the time he’s writing this letter to them. In a situation like that, you might expect there’s going to be some tension!
I’ve hinted at some of this in my past messages, but it bears repeating here, that Paul’s letter can be divided into two main sections. In chapters 1 through 11, Paul builds a theological case for salvation for both the Gentiles and the Jews. Chapters 12 through 16 are the practical chapters: how do you live for Jesus in such a diverse culture.
We can break up chapters 1 through 11 into three subparts. In chapters 1 through 4, Paul speaks of the importance of faithfulness, even to the point of contextualizing it a bit for the Romans. The Romans, as pagans, would have had a deep respect for nature and thus what some call “natural philosophy” or “natural theology.” That’s why Paul makes the argument in chapter 1 that nature itself reveals the very character of God, but then he challenges these Gentiles by saying one of their biggest “sins” is that men and women have corrupted and abandoned their own natures, something that would have been quite contrary to their natural philosophy. They were “unfaithful” to their natures.
But then Paul turns to the Jews and essentially says to them they’re in the same boat. They’re doing some of the same things the Gentiles are doing and ignoring the foundations of the Jewish law, that is, the Ten Commandments, that had been their heritage. That’s why Paul can say to them in the first part of chapter 3, “There is no one righteous, no not one.” Paul then brings in the big guns in the last part of chapter 3 and explains how the work of Christ on the cross has won salvation for Jew and Gentile alike. Then he wraps up that first section in chapter 4 with a story about Abraham’s faithfulness.
I’ll come back to chapters 5 through 8 in a moment, but I just wanted to say that chapters 9 through 11 speak of how God is reconciling both Gentiles and the Jews back to himself. Those are probably the toughest chapters to read and follow, but they do have a purpose of sealing the bond between Jews and Gentiles in the body of Christ.
To the degree that chapters 1 through 4 were about “faith” and “faithfulness,” chapters 5 through 8 are about being “alive” in Christ and the “life” that we have in him, especially through the Holy Spirit as our passage today discusses. I said it a few weeks ago and I’ll say it again here: chapters 1 through 4 have over 25 occurrences of the word for “faith” and “faithfulness” and only two occurrences of the words that mean “life” or “alive.” But chapters 5 through 8 flip those numbers around with words for “life” and “alive” used about 25 times while “faith” and “faithfulness” are only used twice in the first two verses of chapter 5.
This theme of life becomes obvious as we start reading chapter 6 that this life is represented by baptism our connection with the death of Jesus and his resurrection. Chapter 6 is the central chapter in chapters 1 through 11, literally and logically. And here’s where I think the structure of Romans takes his argument to the next level. He’s not changing subjects from chapter 6 to chapter 7. Remember what the last verse of Romans 6 is: “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” That verse is not just a summary of chapter 6 as I said a couple weeks ago, but it also states the subject of chapters 7 and 8 to tie those four chapters in a nice, neat bow.
In chapter 7, we see how destructive sin is to our lives if we continue to be slaves to it. The “I” of last weeks passage from Romans 7 is not Paul specifically, but the “I” is I. The “I” is you. The “I” is anyone who understands what it means to try and live a faithful life in the midst of a sinful world. But even with that expression of struggle, Paul still finds a way at the end of 7 to say, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”[1]
The very last part of Romans 7:25 is our transition into chapter 8, then. “So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”[2] He summarizes chapter 7 and sets up the dichotomy he’s experiencing, by setting us up for the only thing that can truly transform our sinful nature and get our hearts and spirits in sync with our brain that knows Jesus is Lord: the Holy Spirit.
This why again we see Paul use the word “Therefore” at the beginning of chapter 8. We’ve seen how baptism works in the spiritual realm in chapter 6. Paul makes the first connection of this event with the Spirit in Romans 7:6, looking forward to chapter 8. Chapter 8 has, in some respects, the same purpose for the Romans as John 14 through 16 had for the disciples at the Last Supper: teaching about the Holy Spirit and how he works in the life of the believer.
When Paul says, “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” he’s following up on what he said in chapter 7. The condemnation that would have been ours under the Law has been swallowed up in Christ’s redemptive act on the cross. As Jesus promised at the Last Supper and reaffirmed at his ascension, the Holy Spirit has come and given us life, completely dispensing with the law of sin and death. That law never offered the chance to bring life; it was always about punishment.
Paul goes on to say that the righteous requirement of the Law, which we could not earn because our flesh was weak and we faltered, is fully met in us because we live in the Spirit. Thus, there is now only affirmation and assurance of our salvation, not condemnation.
Although our salvation is by grace and we can do nothing to earn it, it does always require our mindful attention. In verses 5 though 8, Paul gives a great deal of attention to where our minds are dwelling. There’s likely a subtle reference here to Deuteronomy, where Moses repeatedly exhorts the Israelites to “be careful.” For example, in Deuteronomy 4:9, Moses says this to the Israelites, shortly before they repeat the recitation of the Ten Commandments:
9 Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. [3]
Paul uses a similar exhortation to the Ephesians, in 5:15–17:
15 Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.[4]
God never expects us to rest on the laurels of our salvation and faith. When Paul says some have their minds set on what the flesh desires, he’s essentially saying that those people are living on pure instinct. Get what you can while you can. Go for the gusto. It’s a selfish way of life if you’re only looking out for number 1. Paul has even defined the works of the flesh in Galatians 5:19–21:
19 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.[5]
But those who have their minds set on the Spirit have a completely different focus in mind for how to live their lives, a focus that puts God and others first and trusts God to provide for their needs. Paul goes on in Galatians 5 to describe the results of a mind focused on the Spirit, and you’ll recognize this passage I’m sure:
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.[6]
Before I get back to the rest of Romans, I want to take a moment and talk about why the NIV used “forbearance” instead of the word most of us are used to: “patience.” When that word (μακροθυμία makrothymia)[7] is used of God, it typically refers to God “holding back” his judgment on unbelievers. In Romans 2:4, it’s used in parallel with different word that’s translated forbearance: “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?”[8] In fact, the word is translated “patience” in every other occurrence in the NT. I bring this up primarily because of the challenges we see in our world today. We see a lot of angry people in the news these days. “Patience” or “forbearance” doesn’t mean we have set our anger aside at the evils in the world. In fact, one of the roots of the Greek word means “anger” or “rage.” It refers to a higher form of anger that isn’t controlled by our flesh and our instinct. Another way to look at it is that it is anger that keeps its distance from the situation. It calls us to have the same patience and forbearance that God himself has for the sinful, no matter how awful things may be. It’s scary to see the surveys out there where people increasingly think violence is the answer to get their way. We have a higher calling as Christ-followers, but we shouldn’t be patsies either.
Paul closes out the last half of our passage this morning by essentially repeating the same thing in different ways and drills down to make the relationship increasingly more personal and familial with each step. If we live by the Spirit, then we belong to Christ and have access not just to living a life of love here on earth, but to that eternal life we eagerly await in the heavenly realms. He repeats the connection to the resurrection of Christ as well. Because Christ lives, we also will live.
He also repeats the warning of chapter 7 as well in verse 13: “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.”[9] Those misdeeds are the do’s and do-nots of Paul’s subtle lament about the flesh in chapter 7.
Finally, we have the wonderfully reassuring promise that not only are we in Christ when we walk in the Spirit, but we are in fact called “children of God.” We’re no longer slaves; we’re sons and daughters of God, family. And God does not stand aloof in his relationship to us. He tells us to cry out, “Abba, Father!” Abba is essentially the baby word for “da-da” in Hebrew. It’s an intimate and emotional connection each of us can have with God to experience the unconditional love he has for each of us. As family, we are also heirs of God and coheirs with Christ. We share in his sufferings and glory, not just in our baptism experience, but in daily life as we walk faithfully with God and experience the victory that is in Christ.
I pray that each of you will have some experience of that victory in the weeks to come. God is good, even when life is challenging. The Spirit brings us life by reassuring us of the peace and presence of God in our lives, especially in the difficult times. May the peace of God go with you this morning. Amen.
I preached this message at Mount View Presbyterian Church on June 28, 2026, “Proper 8” in the Lectionary. As with my previous message, I wanted to focus on the Romans passage for the day given my recent intensive study into the letter. I also wanted to establish what I think is an overlooked connection between the climax of the first 11 chapters of Romans, chapter 6 featuring Paul’s discussion of baptism, and the “conclusion” of that argument that Paul states in 12:1, namely, that we should offer ourselves as a living sacrifice in the waters of baptism.
Good morning! The Lord be with you!
As I said a couple weeks ago, I wanted to focus on the Romans chapters in the Lectionary readings this month because of my recent “deep dive” into Romans. My purpose was twofold: to help my home church kick off a Romans study this past semester as well as to edify myself for my own personal encouragement and enrichment. The more I have drilled down into Romans, the more scriptural gold I find that enriches my own faith, calls me to a deeper commitment to faithfulness, and transforms my heart and mind in ways I have never experienced in 50 years of being an intentional Christ follower.
I’m especially excited this morning to share with you my message, mixed with a little bit of testimony, on the last half of Romans 6. I have discovered in the past year that Romans 6 is central point of Paul’s explanation of the righteousness of faithfulness. His whole discussion in the first five chapters leads up to the explanation of his stated theme. I’ve said before that Romans 1:5 is the main theme of the entire book of Romans, as is evident by Paul’s restatement of it at the end of Romans 16:26. Romans 1:5 says this:
“Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience of faithfulness for his name’s sake.”[1]
The connection of today’s passage with the concept of obedience, especially as it relates to chapter 6’s main topic of baptism, was clear as we read the text. But I want to issue a disclaimer here: when Paul is talking about obedience, he is NOT talking about a legalistic checklist we all must check off. Nor is he talking about mindless, robotic, walking-in-lockstep behavior. Obedience in this context means something much more personal, so let’s dive into the passage and find out what that is.
To refresh our memories, we need to look back at what immediately precedes our passage today, because, as I said a couple weeks ago, we need to see what the “therefore” in verse 12 is “there for.” Here’s what Paul said in vv. 3–5 as he introduces the topic of baptism:
“3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.”[2]
Then in verse 11, the verse leading into this morning’s passage, Paul says this to summary the first part of his discussion in chapter 6:
“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”[3]
Paul considered baptism to be the transformative moment in the life of the believer, then. Repenting and turning to God involves two (at least) sequential events: In dying with Christ, not only do we share in his crucifixion and suffering on the cross, but we become united with, made one with Christ as well for eternity. Just as Christ did not remain in the grave forever, so we too, at baptism, are alive with the resurrected Lord even in our mortal bodies. This is what I meant above that Paul’s main theme, the obedience of faithfulness, is more than just a list of rules and behaviors to abide by. This obedience of faithfulness means we’re actually living our lives in the presence of Christ himself.
This is where we catch up with this morning’s reading. The fact that Paul says “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires”[4] should not surprise us. If we’re living “in Christ” and walking daily in His presence, would we want to bring sinful habits, behaviors, and thoughts into that relationship? Of course not!
Paul gets a little more specific as he goes on in 13 and 14. Don’t let any part of yourself—body, soul, or mind—fall into sin. Paul is pretty much saying here it’s an all or nothing proposition, just as baptism represents a complete identification with Christ. Christ gave his all for us, after all. He calls us to offer our complete self as “an instrument of righteousness.”
Paul’s use of a word here that we have translated into English as “instrument” need not concern us, even though on the surface it may cause us to think we’re just chess pieces. But as we have seen, our connection to Christ is a relationship: he is the head of the church; we are his body. So again, it never hurts to repeat this fact: we’re not cut off from the body if do happen to sin once in a while.
The word for “instrument” (ὅπλον hoplon) may have reminded the Greek-speaking gentiles of Hoplite soldiers of ancient Greece. They were heavily armed infantry troops that were quite successful in their day. The point of making this connection is that the body of Christ, the diverse church, is united in moving the kingdom forward, preferably through peaceful means, just as an army is united in purpose even though different battalions may have different tasks.
Hebrews 6 can help us understand this concept a little better, I think. Hebrews 6 can be a little scary if we don’t understand the context. Here’s what it says:
“It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age 6 and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.”[5]
The idea of not being able to return to repentance if you’ve made a mistake is a little frightening. Does that mean you miss out on some heavenly rewards? Or worse yet, that you miss out on heaven? Fortunately not. In the opening verses of chapter 6, the author chides the Hebrews for still consuming spiritual baby food. One of the items in his list is “repentance from acts that lead to death.”
The author of Hebrews is telling his readers they don’t need to “re-repent” or get “re-baptized” to get back right with God after they sin. What he is saying, however, is that the Hebrews have to develop a more mature mind set about life. He knows they already believe, they just have to start acting like they believe. They must start acting “faithfully” to show they are walking in that “obedience of faithfulness.”
Getting back to Romans 6, Paul repeats his opening question of chapter 6 with a slightly different nuance but the same answer: “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!”[6] Of course not, Paul! Silly question, or so it seems, but evidently people thought that way back then. Paul goes on to talk about the difference between offering ourselves as “slaves” to righteousness as opposed to offering ourselves as slaves to sin.
The word for “offer” (παρίστημι paristēmi), which appears five times in Romans 6, is a word we should pay attention to, because the next time it appears in Romans is in 12:1: “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”[7] If you’re not picking up on the connection here, let me spell it out:
Look at Romans 6:13b again. Paul says, “Offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life.”[8] In the context of Romans 6, what does that phrase “from death to life” refer to? We’ve seen that it refers to baptism.
Baptism is how we unite with the sacrifice of Christ and the life that comes from his resurrection. In other words, it’s the perfect definition and example of what it means to be a “living sacrifice.” When Paul exhorts the Romans in 12:1 to offer themselves as a living sacrifice, he’s exhorting them to participate in the obedience of faithfulness as represented by baptism. In Philippians 2:8, Paul tells his readers that Christ “humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!”[9] The faithful obedience of Jesus should encourage our own faithful obedience.
Finally, we can’t talk about the last half of Romans 6 without talking about the very famous last verse of Romans 6: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[10] For quite a long time, this verse has been treated as a warning to believers and unbelievers alike, in some cases, being used to scare us away from the devil and toward Christ. But I want to suggest to you this morning that Paul never intended to use this verse as a warning, but as a summary statement for chapter 6 that applies to everyone who’s made the decision to follow Christ.
We know that Christ paid the full wages of sin for us on the cross so we wouldn’t have to. By participating in Christ’s crucifixion through baptism, we get “credit” as if we had paid the wage ourselves. Christ’s righteousness clothes us when we come to him. The last verse is an affirmation that we have paid the wages of sin. Since baptism also connects us the gift of eternal life and the hope of the resurrection, we have already received that free gift but will not “redeem” it until we die and go to be with the Lord. So again, verse 23 is an affirmation of that life we have received, not necessarily a promise for good behavior.
That’s what makes it grace, then. As Ephesians says, we’re saved by grace through the faithfulness of Christ. We only need to respond to it willingly. If you haven’t already, I urge you to do so today. Peace to you, brothers and sisters, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love. Amen.
If you are interested in scheduling an engagement with me for teaching. pulpit supply, conference speaker, etc., please click my name in the signature and send me an e-mail. My preference is to remain within a two-hour drive of Omaha, but would consider farther for a longer weekend engagement.
I delivered this message June 14, 2026, (Proper 6, Year A, Third Sunday after Pentecost). I broke from the practice of preaching from the gospel passage this day because I recently did some pretty intense study and writing in Romans (the epistles passage from the Lectionary for this Sunday) and wanted to share my thoughts.
Good morning! The Lord be with you!
This past semester, the church Jill and I attend had their small groups going through the book of Romans. In seminary, one of my professors had published an article about Romans 1:16–17, the passage about “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes,” and it opened my eyes to a whole new understanding of what Paul meant when he talked about the relationship between our faith and Christ’s faithfulness.
Prior to that, I had spent a great deal of time in Ephesians, memorizing the entire epistle. But the more I studied Romans, the more I saw the connections and the organization of Paul’s logic as he built the theology of justification by faithfulness. I began to understand why it was placed first among the Pauline epistles, and I was not disappointed. I was asked to speak for the kickoff of our Romans study at the church, so with those thoughts fresh in my mind, I wanted to share some of my insights the next couple times I’m with you using the Romans passages from the Lectionary readings for those respective Sundays. We’ll look at the first half of Romans 5 this morning. In two weeks, I’ll tackle the last half of Romans 6.
Since we’re diving into the middle of Romans here, I want to give a brief summary of chapters 1 through 4 to catch us up. Broadly speaking, chapters 1 through 11 form a cohesive argument about the relationship between Jews and Gentiles and how each group understands their own respective shortcomings in the eyes of God. In chapters 1 through 4, Paul’s theme seems to be centered around what “faith” looks like for both Gentiles and Jews in spite of their lapses. After Paul introduces the overall theme of “the obedience of faithfulness” in Romans 1:5, he finishes his introduction with the statement: “For in the gospel the Righteousness of God is revealed—from faithfulness into faithfulness, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faithfulness.’”[1] You might be interested to know that this “Righteousness of God” that is revealed is NOT a concept or abstract idea; it refers to Jesus himself. Jesus IS the Righteousness of God.
In the rest of chapter 1 and the first part of chapter 2, Paul addresses the Gentiles in the church at Rome, primarily indicating that nature itself demonstrates the existence and glory of God, and that those who violate their natural state are not respecting that natural order that God has otherwise made obvious to them. From the middle of chapter 2 to the middle of chapter 3, Paul makes the argument that the Jews have the benefit of having been chosen by a God who revealed himself to them directly, and yet, like the Gentiles, they still refuse to acknowledge God, causing Paul to quote Psalm 14:1: “There is no one righteous, not even one.” This is as much a criticism of the Jewish believers as the last half of chapter 1 was to the Gentiles.
From the middle of chapter 3 to the end of chapter 4, then, Paul begins to talk about what true faithfulness looks like and what it accomplishes, that is justification, first in Christ, then in the life of Abraham. He brings home the point that it is Christ’s faithfulness to fulfill God’s purposes through the cross and the resurrection that is the foundation of Paul’s mission to bring Jews and Gentiles to “the obedience of faith.” We even will get hints of this overarching theme in 5:19 and 6:16 as we move forward.
Now the other thing going on in the text of Romans is something that the average reader might miss. In chapters 1 through 4, Paul mentions the word “faith” or “faithfulness” 27 times, while only using words for “life” and “live” twice. But in chapters 5 through 8, Paul flips those numbers around. Paul has 25 occurrences of the two Greek terms for “life” and “live” while only 2 occurrences of the word for “faith” or “faithfulness,” and those two occurrences are found in the first two verses of chapter 5, so let’s dive into that text this morning.
Paul begins chapter 5 with the conjunction “Therefore.” If you’ve been in church long enough, you probably know the old saying: “When you see the word ‘therefore,’ we should find out what it’s (say it with me) ‘there for.’” Well, we already covered that briefly in the summary I just gave. What I want to unpack here is the summary that immediately follows the “therefore”: “Since we have been justified through faith.” That’s the point he just demonstrated in the first four chapters.
The verb “justify” (δικαιόω dikaioō) simply means “to be made right with God” in the context of Scripture. In some contexts, the word is translated “declared righteous,” so the noun “justification” (4:25, 5:16; δικαίωσις dikaiōsis) is closely related to the word “righteousness” (δικαιοσύνη dikaiosynē). The word is used several times throughout Romans 3 through 5 but not always associated with the same phrasing.
In 5:9, Paul says something similar to 5:1, but he swaps out one key word: “Since we have now been justified by his blood.”[2] Why does Paul switch from talking about “justified through faith” and “justified by his blood”? Let’s look at few more verses to fill that out.
In Romans 3:22, Paul indicates that God’s righteousness, or justification, is given through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, the “Righteousness of God” whom the Law and Prophets point to.
In verse 24, Paul continues by saying “all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”[3]
In verse 26, Paul puts the emphasis on our own faith in Jesus: “[God] did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”[4]
From these verses, we can see that the concept of “justification by faith” has two components to it. The first is that the word for “faith” can also be translated “faithfulness.” In that sense, it refers to how Christ’s sacrifice brings about the possibility of our own justification: “By his blood,” “through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” In other words, he’s referring to Christ’s faithfulness to his earthly mission as I mentioned earlier.
On the other hand, we also see the importance of our response to that faithfulness: putting our trust (i.e., our faith) in Christ. We see the great love he showed us through his sacrifice and his victorious resurrection from the dead and are compelled to make but one response: declare our love and allegiance to Jesus.
Now I mentioned earlier that there is a shift from chapter 4 to 5 about Paul talking about, primarily, the faithfulness of Christ and its relation to our faith to the life we live when we are “in Christ.” We see that in vs. 3 as Paul begins to write, in general, about the sufferings they have endured for Christ. He doesn’t get specific with the Romans, because I’m sure each of them recognize the sufferings they’ve all endured, especially since the Jews had been expelled from Rome prior to Paul’s writing Romans and have just recently returned to find the Gentile believers still thriving in their house churches in Rome.
This is another reason why Paul had to address both Gentiles and Jews in Romans 1–4, so he could get the returning Jewish exiles on the same footing as the firmly established Gentiles. He knows that if they persevere under these difficult conditions, they will build a strong character that can withstand further challenges and help unite them as they were before. As they grow in unity, they will also grow in hope. They will truly experience and share the outpouring of God’s love through the Holy Spirit as they once again gather together to worship.
Paul also reminds them that there wasn’t anything Jews or Gentiles in Rome did to earn this blessing. Verse 8 is somewhat profound if you think about it: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”[5] Did you catch that? We didn’t have to do anything, because God was already at work through Jesus on our behalf “while we were still sinners.” We didn’t have to clean up our lives first. He reemphasizes that in vs. 10: “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son [there’s the “how” of justification again], how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!”[6] Not only are we set free from God’s wrath, but we also have confidence to boast in God about the reconciliation we have received through Jesus Christ.
As we head into the summer months, I would encourage all of you to read through Romans at least once. You will begin to see why the early Church Fathers chose to put it as the first book, the shining star of Paul’s epistles in the New Testament. It is full of encouragement and hope and will help you see more clearly your place in the kingdom of God and in the local congregation. Paul wrote compassionately to those who were reuniting after a long separation, and he helped to restore the unity of the church in Rome so they could continue to be a mighty witness for the Gospel. I pray that you all will continue to be a mighty witness here at Mount View. Amen.
The Lord be with you! Happy Birthday to the Body of Christ!
The festival known as “Pentecost” in the New Testament is as old as the Mosaic Law itself, having been established in the first few chapters of Exodus after Moses received the Ten Commandments. Yet you can’t find that name in the Old Testament, not even in the Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint. Pentecost simply means “50 days,” in the Christian context, that’s 50 days after Easter (Easter, or Resurrection Sunday, is considered “Day 1,” so subsequent Sundays are a multiple of 7 plus 1 in the day count[1]).
When it was established, it anticipated Israel being settled in the Promised Land, but of course it took them 40 years to get to that goal. In Exodus, what became Pentecost was originally the “Festival of Weeks” or “Festival of Harvest.” It occurred 50 days from the Sabbath of the Passover week. The Jews considered it a sacred day, a Sabbath if you will, and was one of the three festivals in the year where men had to appear before the Lord at the Tabernacle/Temple.
Even though the Greek New Testament uses the term πεντηκοστή pentēkostē, some English-speaking Christian traditions as early as the 12th century called it “Whitsunday,” for the white robes new converts wore after being baptized on that Sunday. It was common for the churches in the Middle Ages to set aside sacred days like Easter and Pentecost for confirming young communicants or recognizing those who completed the catechism and were baptized.
The name Pentecost, then, seems to blur what might otherwise be an obvious connection between what the festival represents historically and what Jesus said about his own ministry, why it makes the day of Pentecost that much more significant for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the birthday of the church. What did Jesus say about the harvest? Maybe you’ve already made the connection to John 4:35: “I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.”[2] Jesus had said much about the harvest, usually in connection with the end times, but in Acts 2, the harvest theme seems to be in the background.
In Joel chapter 2, in the verses leading up to the passage Peter quotes at the end of our NT reading this morning, the prophet speaks of God’s blessings in terms of a complete harvest:
21 Do not be afraid, land of Judah;
be glad and rejoice.
Surely the Lord has done great things!
22 Do not be afraid, you wild animals,
for the pastures in the wilderness are becoming green.
In light of this background, then, let’s look at Acts 2 more closely. When the 120 or so initial followers of Jesus[4] gathered on the day of Pentecost, I’m convinced they had absolutely no clue what was about to happen. They simply gathered because Jesus had told them to wait in Jerusalem. They were likely continuing to evangelize in Jerusalem, and the large crowd present for Pentecost (remember, a required feast for men to present themselves) was wondering about the gathering of the Jerusalem-based believers would bring about.
It’s not clear where they were gathered at. Chapter 1 says they had been staying at a house. Verse 2 suggests they are still in the house, so it must have been a very large place in a location near the heart of the city where many others could gather. The text tells us the sound of the wind was so powerful that people heard it from a few blocks away. They began to gather around the house and they begin to recognize they’re hearing the praises of God being spoken in their own language.
It’s significant here that the miracle is in the speaking and not the hearing. God-fearing Jews from all over the world at this event, and each one is getting the seed of the Gospel and the outpouring of the Spirit in their own language so they can take that message back to their own people. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that some of those who were empowered to speak in other languages, perhaps a language they had never learned or had limited exposure may have also been commissioned to be a missionary to those people. That’s essentially what the purpose is of the gift of tongues. It’s not a personal prayer language; it’s a gift to help spread the gospel to people and places distant from Jerusalem.
The place names mentioned are most likely not exhaustive. The area covered is immense, from Persia to Rome east to west, and from northern Turkey to Arabia north to south. Within one generation, the gospel will have spread through the eastern Mediterranean region and the entire Middle East. There is no discrimination based on race, gender, or language. God’s blessing is no longer solely upon the Jews. Let’s break down the quote from Joel.
We saw leading up to Christmas that Jesus made a point of showing his ministry was not just to the Jews exclusively but to the Gentiles as well. We see this in the rest of the book of Acts along with the 13 letters Paul would eventually write to the young churches. Not only that, but we see it in the interaction among the churches, especially when some of the churches in southern Europe provided support for the church in Jerusalem.
Sons and daughters will prophesy. Prophecy is not necessarily proclaiming the future, although we see hints of that in the book of Acts. Prophecy is at its most basic level is proclaiming the Word of God. We see plenty of that coming from folks who aren’t part of the inner circle. Priscilla and Aquila; Apollos; Timothy; Phoebe and many of the others mentioned at the end of Romans; and the list goes on.
Stories of signs and wonders have perpetuated throughout history. Constantine converted the Roman Empire to Christianity because he claimed to see a cross in the clouds and took that as divine appointment for his kingship. The Catholic Church claims to have validated several miracles, like the Lady of Fátima in Portugal in 1917.
However most of these “signs and wonders” seem to refer what will happen in the end times, as next verse refers to “the great and glorious day of the Lord.” Even as the church is being formed in its infancy here, the prophetic pronouncement of Peter here looks forward to the end of time. God wants to make sure the faith grows and that the whole world has the chance to hear the gospel eventually. The recent talk of revival breaking out is proof that the church is still fighting the good fight to get the gospel message out.
So the harvest that began on that first Pentecost after the resurrection is still going on even today. The promise of Joel, as affirmed by Peter, still holds true today as well: “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” And this missionary call still applies to us as well.
In Romans 10, Paul says this:
9If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. 11As Scripture says, “Anyone who believes in him will never be put to shame.”l12For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”p
14How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? 15And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”[5]
You and I are called to help bring unbelievers into the harvest. Just as we can love others because he first loved us, so we can call others to God because God has called us to him. In fact, other than laying our life down for someone else, there is no greater love we can show to our fellow man than inviting them to join you on your walk with the Lord, to join the fellowship of the faithful.
The early church grew rapidly in the first few years after this event, and the church has continued to grow in certain cycles. In a culture that is hostile to Christianity, we shouldn’t be surprised to find that people are in fact coming back to church in greater numbers. In places like China where the church continues to operate underground for the most part, the number of believers continues to grow.
As we celebrate the birthday of the kingdom, let us also recommit ourselves to sharing the good news with those in our lives. We may feel like the culture is against us, but we have a God who is bigger than our culture. We may feel like world events are too much to handle, we have a God who is still in control. We have God who’s promised that as the church advances against the gates of hell, hell’s gates cannot withstand the onslaught. We know that we win in the end in the great and gloriously day of the Lord. Let us live in that victory even now. Amen.
Sunday Morning Greek Blog 