Welcome to Lectionary Help for the first Sunday of Lent, February 22, 2026, the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. The celebration of Easter/Resurrection of the Lord is on April 5 this year.
I’ll just pull a relevant quote from the sermon linked above, as I think it’s succinct enough to give you the sense of the words used for “temptation” and “testing.”
Word Study (from the sermon linked above)
Tempt, test (πειράζω peirazō)
Temptation, testing (πειρασμός peirasmos)
So why do three of the versions I mentioned use “test” instead of “temptation” for the same Greek or Hebrew word? Well, as I tell my students when they ask me questions like that, the answer is “context, context, context.” If you follow the use of the words in their respective story settings, you find that “testing” has to do with the relationship between God and humans. The general thrust of the verses in question goes one of three ways: either God is testing his people to see how they respond, or the people are testing God by NOT doing what he’s commanded them to do, or one person is testing another’s character. And consistent with the concept of testing, sometimes there’s a judgment or “grade” on how we responded to the test.
“Temptation” is a subset of testing. That is, all temptations are tests, but not all tests are temptations. The word “temptation” is used by these English translation committees to indicate a situation in which some personified evil power or influence is at work.
Application
In the message above, I offer three ways after the example of Jesus to fight against temptation and weaken their influence in your life:
Pray! (Hebrews 4:15–16)
Live in the will of God; Live “in Christ” (1 John 2:15–17)
Memorize and proclaim God’s word (Psalm 119:11)
Epistles passage (Romans 5:12–19)
If you’re looking for a different angle to approach the theme, consider using Romans 5:12–19 as your starting point. I’ve had Romans on the brain for the past couple months because I gave the kickoff message to our 2026 first semester church-wide small group study in Romans (Romans 1 & 2: Jesus Our Righteous and Faithful Savior (StoneBridge small group kickoff) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog). I side with the subjective genitive approach to Romans when it comes to talking about both righteousness and faithfulness, so Jesus is “the righteous one who lives by [his] faithfulness” and we’re saved through the faithfulness of Jesus, the Righteous One.
Having established my foundation for my understanding of Romans, I’ll give some quick hits here.
The “sin entered the world through one man” concept is countered by Jesus, the Righteousness of God, the “one man” through whom all are made righteous by being “in Christ.” Jesus’s faithfulness secures that for us.
Verse 19 makes the connection to the stated theme of Romans (leading the Gentiles to the “obedience of faithfulness”; 1:5 & 16:26): “Through the obedience [of faithfulness] of the one man the many will be made righteous.” This is the set-up for Paul’s discussion of baptism in chapter 6: If we’re baptized into Christ, we’re baptized into his death. That “death” is how we’re freed from the law (Romans 7), and our subsequent emersion (coming out of the baptismal waters) results in life “in Christ.” Our righteousness is not something separate imparted to us; it’s something we walk in when we walk “in Christ.”
Blessings this week as you enter into the Lenten season. If you’re in a tradition that gives up something for Lent, try giving up those things that keep you from drawing closer to your Savior. I’ve preached the above sermon twice in the last four years, so time for me write something afresh.
NOTE: Video link will be added when it is available.
I presented this message at StoneBridge Christian Church in Omaha, Nebraska, on February 4, 2026, to kick off the church-wide small group study on Paul’s letter to the Romans. In the first part of the message, I address the connection between faithfulness and righteousness in 1:5 and 1:17. In the last half of the message, I cover the high points of the other sections of the two chapters. There is a 7-second lacuna at about 9:18 where I had to cut out the audio from a Bible Project video on Romans that we showed during the service due to copyright laws. The bold text in the message represents the supporting slides on the screens.
Good evening, Church! The Lord be with you!
I trust you all have been enjoying Mark’s and Josh’s messages to this point. It is a huge undertaking in this day and age to take one chapter at a time through a book like Romans, but then that’s the answer to the age-old question, right? How do you eat the elephant in the room? One bite at a time.
If you’ve been in one of our First Step classes, or, if you’ve been here as long as I have, a 101 class, you know that StoneBridge is affiliated with a brotherhood called The Restoration Movement or Stone-Campbell Movement. You were probably also told that we have our “catchphrases” like “No creed but Christ; no book but the Bible” or “Where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, there is freedom.”
It’s important and beneficial, then, to do something like this every so often to make sure we’re aligned as a congregation on both how we understand our relationship with God and what we expect from the church and each other in the congregation and especially in our small groups.
Paul’s epistles in the New Testament historically were arranged from longest to shortest, which is why Romans stands at the head of the Pauline epistles. But Romans is also the most complete “systematic” theology we have in the New Testament, covering all the key concepts of salvation and walking faithfully with Jesus, our Righteousness. The contextual clues in Romans 15:23–32 place the time of writing somewhere around AD 56 or 57, which coincides with the historical record in the first few verses of Acts 20. Paul was in or near Corinth at the time waiting to return to Jerusalem.
The situation in Rome at that time is probably pretty fluid. The Jews had been kicked out of Rome twice in the 40 years prior to Paul’s writing the letter: By Tiberius in AD 19 and by Claudius in AD 49. Under Claudius, then, the church in Rome was primarily Gentile. But some speculate after Claudius’s death in AD 54, the Jewish Christians may have started to return to Rome, only to find the church somewhat different than when they had left.
Paul’s letter may serve a couple purposes, then. The first, as evident in 1:5, is to affirm that his mission is to call the Gentiles into what he calls “The Obedience of Faithfulness.” But it seems also that he needs to remind the Jewish Christians who have returned to Rome what is their own relationship with their law in Christ and what responsibilities they have as God’s original “chosen people.” The Gentile Christians wouldn’t have been ignorant about the Jewish background of Christianity, but they may have forgotten some important details in their absence.
Paul talks about the law quite a bit in Romans, but he does so in a way that engages both Jews and Gentiles. While the law is important and reverenced by the Jews, Paul argues that it cannot ultimately be the thing that saves them. He points out that sometimes the Gentiles get it right even though they don’t have that connection to the law the Jews do. What matters is what is in their hearts, and that’s how he grabs the attention of both groups.
Paul also realizes the importance of evangelizing the largest city in the Roman Empire as well. Population estimates vary, but it was likely somewhere around 500,000 people, give or take a 100,000 or so. The only time Paul uses the word “church” (ἐκκλησία ekklēsia; perhaps a better translation would be “congregation”) in Romans is in chapter 16, where greets those who seem to be leaders in house churches in Rome. They certainly didn’t have any church buildings yet, although some Jewish Christians may have still been able to meet in synagogues. In a city that size, it may not have been feasible to try and gather all the Christ-followers in one place, either, even if only a couple times a year.
In keeping with the theme of “Pave the Way,” I want us to look at the “Romans Road” from two perspectives so we can get a fuller idea of the two main themes in Romans: the first is Righteousness and the second is the thematic statement at the beginning and end of Romans, Obedience of Faithfulness.
Now even though we have two perspectives of the Romans Road here, we’re not going to be looking at two separate roads. We’ll be looking at two parts of the same road. You can’t have one without the other. “Righteousness,” as I’m going to describe it here, is the foundation or substructure of the road. It’s the rebar, the expansion joints, the paved-smooth layer of compacted earth that ensures there will be no surprises or sinkholes after the road is complete. The foundation for any road, just like the foundation for any building, must be perfectly aligned and perfectly measured.
If you’ve ever seen the never-ending construction on I-80 across Nebraska, you’ve probably seen the perfectly placed dowel bars and tie bars they lay down before they start pouring the concrete. Those ensure that the road structure holds together under all the stresses placed on it. That is what righteousness is times infinity. Righteousness isn’t just about being “right with God”; it is absolute, uncorrupted perfection in the eyes of God. That is the foundation we need as Christ followers to have the assurance that we’re walking on the right road with all the support we need from our Father in heaven and to support our fellowship with one another here on earth.
The main part of the road, the part we see and walk on, is paved on this foundation of righteousness by Jesus’s faithfulness. Just like there’s more to righteousness than being right with God, there is more to faithfulness than just saying you believe in Jesus. I’ll break that out here shortly.
Now here’s the beauty of the foundation aspect of righteousness. That foundation has already been lain and the road has been paved and maintained in perfect condition for 2,000 years now. It is a straight and narrow path that goes straight from where each of us is now to the main entrance of the heavenly city. All we have to do is walk on it, in Jesus. People like Mark and Josh and your campus pastors are all primarily concerned with the part of that road that goes straight to heaven’s gate. But the reality is, when you’re “in Christ,” you have that foundation of righteousness wherever you find yourself—at work, on vacation, in your home, etc.
That is the important background information you need to know about Romans and some of the key words in this epistle. We’ve got a short Bible Project video here we want to play for you before we focus on chapters 1 and 2.
In Romans 1:5, Paul makes an interesting statement about the “obedience of faithfulness” in his greeting. I want us to read my translation of the first five verses of Romans 1 together here, because Paul has a lot of “supporting facts” that will come up as we discuss both righteousness and the obedience of faithfulness.
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3 regarding his Son, who was a descendant of David according to his human ancestry, 4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord 5 through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience of faithfulness for his name’s sake.[1]
Paul will close his letter to the Romans with that very same phrase. Again, let’s read the final verses of Romans together in context so we can hear it for ourselves.
25 Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, 26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience of faithfulness—27 to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.[2]
Now many translations have tried to get creative with this phrase “obedience of faithfulness,” but the truth is it’s only two words in the original Greek. The New Living Translation, which Mark typically uses in his sermons, has “believe and obey.” While that captures the meanings of the two words, it doesn’t capture the unity of the phrase in the original language. The way it’s written in the Greek text implies the two words refer to the same thing. When Paul says, “obedience of faithfulness,” he is really saying that “obedience” is “faithfulness,” and “faithfulness” is “obedience” (e.g., see McKnight p. 32). The other implication of this is that “faith” is not just an intellectual assent to a fact. “Faith” always implies that some action is involved, as we’ll see.
Before we commence on this journey, I do need to make you aware of a couple of synonyms for these terms. Depending on the version of the Bible you read, and sometimes even within the same version, you may see the adjective “righteous” translated as “justified” and the verb “make righteous” as “justify.” Those words all come from the same root word. The Greek word for the noun “faith” also means “faithfulness” or “belief.” The verb “have faith in” may be translated as “believe” or “trust.” My goal is to be consistent with how I speak about these terms when they occur.
Let’s start with the theme verse in Romans 1:5. The concept of “the Obedience of Faithfulness” permeates Paul’s letter to the Romans, so it’s crucial to understand what it refers to. It’s also strongly bound to the concept of righteousness. We see that at the end of the first section in Romans 1, Romans 1:17. In the NIV, it reads like this:
17 For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”[3]
In the New Living Translation, we regularly use in Sunday service, it sounds a bit different:
17 This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”[4]
This is a rather difficult verse to translate because of some technical grammatical issues that scholars debate. It’s also tricky because so much meaning is packed into the phrase “the righteousness of God,” it’s hard to capture the nuances of that in a straightforward translation. I won’t go into the grammatical issue here tonight, but I do want to deal with the part of the verse that is translated “from first to last” or “from start to finish” and establish the meaning of “righteous/righteousness” here. This is important to spend a few minutes on, because once you understand what’s going on, a lot of other things fall into place and make sense in Romans.
First, I want to talk about what “righteousness” means here, especially “the righteousness of God.” For years, many assumed that this phrase refers to the righteousness that God imparts to us when we believe. But about 35 years ago, several scholars argued for a different understanding of that concept, and I’ve been following, studying, and writing about that concept for almost that whole time. The concept they argued for, and that has taken hold in many circles, was that “the righteousness of God” was an inherent character quality of God that is unique to him, a quality that is active, that “is being revealed” in the gospel.
Who or what is the gospel that’s being revealed about, then? It’s about Jesus, of course. 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.”Jesus Christ is “The righteous one [who] will live by faithfulness.” That last bit is a quote from Habakkuk 2:4, where the Hebrew adds a pronoun: “The righteous one will live by his faithfulness.”
Let that sink in for a minute. Look back at vs. 16: the gospel is “the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who has faith.” Again, isn’t the “good news” of the Gospel that Jesus’s death on the cross and shed blood is what makes our salvation possible? This also helps flesh out the “first to last”/“start to finish” translation. A word-for-word rendering of verse 17 is “the righteousness of God in the gospel is being revealed from faithfulness into faithfulness.” How does that apply to Jesus?
Remember what I said a couple paragraphs back: God’s righteousness, like God’s word, is living and active. When it says “from faithfulness,” this refers to Jesus living out the righteousness of God by perfectly obeying the law of God while he’s living on earth. He’s the only one who can do that. Romans 10:4 says: “Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who has faith.” That means Christ fulfilled every requirement of the law, something no one to that time had ever done. Because Jesus fulfilled every requirement of the law, he is the only one who can be called “righteous.” And because Jesus is the righteous one, if we are “in Christ,” we share in that righteousness as well.
Because the phrase is “from faithfulness into faithfulness,” we must find out what is the “into” part. Well, Josh Dotzler said that when he preached on Romans 2: Jesus Christ lived a perfect life, and his reward was death on the cross. Christ’s faithfulness to the law resulted in his being faithful to death on the cross. Sound familiar? That’s because Paul makes that same statement in Philippians 2:8: “And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross.” There’s that word “obedient” from Romans 1:5. “Obedience of faithfulness” refers to the crucifixion of Jesus! So it makes sense that Paul would want to lead the Gentiles into an understanding of the significance of Christ’s death on the cross and his resulting resurrection from the dead.
Okay, everybody take a deep breath for a moment. Breathe in. Breathe out. That was kind of intense, so let me bring it down a notch. I want to come back to our current them of “Pave the Way” for Mark’s sermon series. I went through all that because it’s important to understand this: “Righteousness” is the foundation for the road we walk on. What I just said about Jesus being the righteous one doesn’t take away from the fact that because we are in Christ, we “have faith” or “act faithfully” as well. We’ll get to that in chapters 4 through 8, and especially in 8 when Paul talks about the role of the Holy Spirit in our walk of faithfulness. I would encourage you to read the section on “Honor” on pp. 40–42 in Scot McKnight’s Romans book that you should have received, because he unpacks so much more meaning and application from Romans 1:16–17, more than I can get into here tonight.
Here’s a quick summary then, and we’ll move on to other topics in chapters 1 & 2. Righteousness is something that only Jesus possesses because of his faithfulness to the law of God, but we still share in that because we’re “in Christ” and we have the Holy Spirit as our internal guide. It is typically more accurate to speak of “faithfulness” than just “faith” when we encounter that concept, especially in chapters 1–4. We need to use some discernment, however, to determine if the word is referring to the faithfulness or work of Jesus Christ or to our own faithful walk in Christ. This will influence how you understand these concepts throughout the rest of the epistle. God knows we will mess up from time to time. If we’re in Christ, though, his righteousness covers us. So don’t mistake what I’m saying here that we must be perfect 100% of the time or we’ll lose that standing. That doesn’t happen when we strive for faithfulness.
Now, some notes on what we skipped over to talk about the theme of 1:5 and its relationship to 1:17. In 1:2–4, we see that Paul, right off the bat, emphasizes both the humanity of Jesus and his divine nature. We often forget about the human side of Jesus. He never sinned, of course, but he did experience the full range of human emotions. But why did Jesus have to come in the flesh? Why couldn’t God have just made an updated list of the Ten Commandments and sent it through another prophet? Well the answer is quite simple, and it’s not some fancy theological mumbo jumbo.
By sending his son, who had all the fulness of the deity dwelling in him according to Colossians, God got a first-hand report of just what the human condition was like. God did know in a certain sense, but because God is spirit and we’re not, he couldn’t really express his love to us. That’s what Jesus did, both in his life and in his death: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son….” And why did Jesus have to die on the cross for our sins? The blood of bulls and goats in the sacrificial system could never really deal with sin. Those sacrifices were only an appeasement to God. They couldn’t make us righteous. They never came back to life. And those animals didn’t, and couldn’t, love us like Jesus could. Only the sacrifice of one in human flesh who had attained the fullness of God’s righteousness could love us enough to be both a sacrifice AND our source of hope (and righteousness) in his resurrection. That’s the importance of Jesus’s humanity.
A quick note on verse 6: I think Paul must be speaking to the Jews who have returned to Rome after getting kicked out when he says “you also are among those Gentiles.” The reason I think this is because he addresses the Jews and their relationship with the law in chapter 2.
After the greeting, in verse 8, we see Paul’s praise for the Romans that their faithfulness, that is, the way in which they are living out their faith in Christ, is being reported all over the world. That’s a common sentiment in many of his letters. He probably didn’t know too many Roman Christians personally. We know from Acts 18 that Paul had met Priscilla and Aquila (the first two mentioned in Romans 16) in Corinth and had probably learned much about the Roman church from them since they had just been expelled from Rome. I think it’s a safe guess to say that the list of house churches in Romans 16 probably came from Priscilla and Aquila. “Be sure you mention these folks when you write to the house churches there, Paul. Wouldn’t want to leave anybody out!” He learned enough to know he wanted, no, needed to go to Rome and encourage them all.
We can look at verses 8–13 here as a sort of model for what our small groups should look like. Praying for one another; sharing the gospel with one another; and encouraging one another to faithfulness. Small groups aren’t just a good idea; they’re a biblical concept that makes the experience of “church” more personal.
Jumping over to verses 18ff, we have a parallel statement on a different aspect of God’s being and activity in the world. “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”[5] God’s wrath, unlike God’s righteousness, is not bound up in one individual, though. God’s wrath is being revealed in real time. The verb form there implies the action is continuous and has not ceased.
The descriptions of unfaithfulness, idolatry, and contempt for the created order are pretty grim, perhaps even bordering on blasphemy of the Holy Spirit (see Romans 2:24), the “unforgiveable sin” in the gospels. This “wrath” likely encompasses both the physical and spiritual damage to an individual who’s progressed to that point. The physical damage in some cases may be beyond repair, (at least by human hands), but I think Romans 2 indicates there may be a possibility of spiritual redemption even for those whom God has already given over to separation from himself. Let’s turn there next and land this plane for the evening.
In Romans 2, we have two things going on. From a high level, Paul begins a series of “arguments” or persuasive speeches demonstrating how God is righteous in his judgments and that walking faithfully in Jesus is the only way to new life, but also warns of hypocrisy for those who think they have no reason to be rebuked. Then he starts to address the Jews, formally and cordially.
Paul emphasizes in the first part of chapter 2, as he’s continuing on from where he started in Romans 1:18, that you don’t need the law to know if you’re doing something bad. If you don’t live under the law and do something bad, you’ll still experience judgment. If you live under the law and you’re a Jew at least or a Jew who’s converted to Christianity, you understand what the law is and how it can be applied to you, if you’re not in Christ. But fortunately for those who are in Christ, they’ve already had the assurance we saw in Chapter 1: Christ became the righteousness of God so we wouldn’t have to experience the judgment and wrath of God.
But he also emphasizes that since we (Jews and Gentiles) have broken the law in some way, we must be careful of the judgments we make of others who are enslaved to sin. He reminds his readers in 2:4 that some of them have already received God’s kindness that led them to repentance, and they should be paying that forward to those who still need to hear the message of repentance and forgiveness in Jesus. Instead, they’re “storing up wrath” for themselves in the final judgment by showing contempt for God’s kindness because they (Jews and Gentiles both) are too stubborn to admit they’re wrong. What is the ultimate source of stubbornness? Persistent selfishness.
To counter this persistent selfishness, Paul exhorts his readers to persistent faithfulness in verses 7–10. In other words, instead of focusing on how bad others are, they need to focus on the good things that lead to eternal life, glory, honor, and peace. Let God take care of the judgment.
In verses 12–16, Paul shifts to talking about that final day of judgment. Just because the Jews are God’s chosen people and have “heard” the law all their lives doesn’t mean they are automatically declared righteous in the end. It’s not a matter of hearing only; it’s a matter of following through on what you’ve heard. The OT background here is Deuteronomy. Over and over again in Deuteronomy Moses exhorts the Israelites to “Be careful to heed the word of the Lord.” That “carefulness,” or to use a modern buzz word, “mindfulness,” carries over into the NT. We shouldn’t be sloppy about our faith. Think before you act or post (I’m speaking to myself when I say that!). What matters is that what you hear about the law or the gospel in your ears and process through your brain makes it to your heart and to your hands and feet. Then you will have assurance in the day of judgment.
Paul addresses the Jews specifically in the last half of chapter 2. He essentially repeats the warnings of the first part of chapter two, but for good measure and to tweak their consciences a bit, he throws in some conspicuous references to the Ten Commandments and how they might not be following them. The good that’s required by the law doesn’t go away because we’re in Christ. One way to look at the “thou shalt nots” of the Ten Commandments is to flip them into positive actions. “Don’t commit adultery” becomes “set boundaries for your marriage,” “love your wife as Christ loved the church,” “pay attention to when she does something different with her hair,” etc.
Paul ends chapter two with a discussion of circumcision. This was an initiation rite into the Jewish community from birth. Although many non-Jews practice circumcision today, it’s not much of a religious rite; it’s ostensibly done for health reasons. But as followers of Christ, we do have our own initiation rite: immersion, commonly known as baptism. I believe that Paul is setting up his readers for his discussion of baptism in chapter 6 here. We can’t rely on our baptism to get us into heaven if we’re not going to live like we’ve undergone that transformative event! What Paul says about circumcision in vv. 25–29 can be applied to baptism. If we’re only baptized outwardly but our hearts and our minds haven’t been “baptized,” then it’s of no value.
I’m going to tease chapter 6 here: As I’ve studied the book of Romans over the past 30 years, my understanding of the argument Paul is making in chapters 2–11 had broadened immensely. I have come to see that the first five chapters of Romans are building up to what is our “obedience of faithfulness”: our baptism. When we are baptized into Christ, Paul says, we are baptized into his death. Just as Christ was raised from the dead, so too does our coming out of the water affirm that we have newness of life. Think about the implication there. If Christ is “The Righteous One [who] lives by faithfulness,” then being in Christ means we share in that righteousness. That’s why righteousness is much more than being “right with God.” It’s about a whole new way of living life. 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. That is our prayer for all of you.
Let’s pray,
Thank you for allowing me to share with you. Go forth in the peace and strength of God.
An analysis of the gospel passage for the Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany (Year A), February 8, 2026. Please feel free to comment and give feedback below or use the comment section as a place to exchange ideas for communicating the message of this passage.
It’s been a busy couple weeks for me as I’ve been hard at work wrapping up my message on Romans 1 & 2 for our small group kickoff at my home church on February 4. It will be the longest message I’ve ever preached to the largest crowd I’ve ever been in front of. But I’m ready for the challenge, and I know a lot of people in the audience, so I’m not nervous at all.
The gospel passage for the Fifth Sunday After the Epiphany is Matthew 5:13–20, part of the Sermon on the Mount, and I’m sure very familiar to most preachers. Verses 13–16 about being salt and light are almost second nature for those who share the gospel, but I’ll still offer a few comments. However, in light of my just finishing up (at least for now) an intense study of Romans, I did want to focus on the last half of the passage in which Jesus discusses his and our relationship to the Law and the Prophets.
Salt had many uses in the ancient world that most of us are familiar with. But Jesus here focuses particularly on salt’s ability to add flavor to something (“If the salt has lost its saltiness”), so we should consider that aspect of it as Jesus’s primary intended meaning by referencing it. What are the ways in which believers can “add flavor” to a conversation or to life in general? I think most of you can answer that question based on your own experience and the demographic you minister to.
The use of the term “salty” to mean, essentially, “cussing like a sailor” or just using crude or unfiltered language generally did not arise until the late 19th century, so we should be careful to avoid reading that meaning back into a first-century text!
Jerusalem was built on a hill, so the image of light here may have a dual meaning. Borrowing from themes we’ve seen in previous weeks of the Epiphany season (e.g., Isaiah 9:2, 42:6, 49:6), we can see why Jewish tradition considered Jerusalem to be the light of the world. The Law held that distinction as well: “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path” (Psalm 119:105; see also v. 130).
With this in mind, it seems to be a natural transition from talking about “salt and light” into talking about the Law. Jesus says his mission is to “fulfill” (Greek πληρόω plēroō) the Law and Prophets. Not only, then, is Jesus the promised Messiah in prophets like Isaiah and the Psalms (Psalms 22 and 110 come to mind), but he also claims he has fulfilled the Law of God, something no one before him had ever dared to claim.
Since I mentioned I’d been working in Romans, some of you might know where I’m going with this last section of the gospel passage. Leviticus 18:5 says “5 Keep my decrees and laws, for the person who obeys them will live by them. I am the Lord.”[1] Paul cites this passage in Romans 10:5. But Romans 1:17 says “The righteous one will live by faithfulness.” So what’s the connection?
In Romans 10:4 (NIV), Paul says “4 Christ is the culmination (Greek τέλος telos) of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”[2]The Common English Bible (CEB; a version you may see me quote more from since I discovered it this week) translates it this way: “4 Christ is the goal of the Law, which leads to righteousness for all who have faith in God.”[3]That’s essentially what Jesus means when he says he is fulfilling the law. Christ was faithful to the whole law of God such that he is declared “righteous” in the sight of the law, which allows him to qualify to be faithful to death on the cross for our salvation (Philippians 2:8).
This adds another layer of meaning, then, to “the righteousness of God [that] is being revealed” in the first part of Romans 1:17. Righteousness is not a “what” (or not just a “what”) but a “who.” Jesus Christ is the Righteousness of God! If we are “in Christ,” as Paul regularly says, especially in Ephesians 1, then we are walking under the umbrella of his righteousness. It’s not something “imparted” to us (at least not while we live), but something that we actively live in. Verse 20 then makes a lot more sense. How can our righteousness exceed that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law? Only by being in Christ, the righteous one who perfectly fulfilled the whole law.
Thank you for reading! Share this with your pastor friends. I encourage you also to leave comments below and use those comments as a way to share and exchange ideas about how to communicate the truths of this passage. Your feedback is always welcome as well.
Peace to you as we approach the end of the Epiphany season on February 15 with “Transfiguration Sunday.”
Note: This was my workshop at our 2018 Men’s Retreat.
When things break, what do we guys do? I would guess many of us would find a way to fix it, right? Now some of us are naturals at that kind of thing. Whether its our cars, our homes, our motorcycles, lawn mowers, we’d like to think we can take a stab at fixing these things. For some of us, the rule is not “necessity is the mother of invention,” but “necessity is the motivation for self-education.” We’re not afraid to find that video on YouTube that shows us how to do a complete brake job, how to fix a broken pipe, change a blown circuit breaker, or install a ceiling fan. We dive right in and give it the old college try. If it goes right and we don’t burn the house down, it’s a success. But when the inevitable problem you never saw coming rears its head, that’s when things can get ugly, and expensive.
Now when things break, we generally need to know what the original looked like, or what a complete, functional version of the thing looks like. In other words, we need a model or a manual from the manufacturer (that is, a source of truth) to show us the right way. If we can fix it ourselves with the model or manual, great! But if we don’t have the right tools, the tools are too expensive, or we just don’t have the resources or skill to fix it, we need to call the experts. They have the experience, the knowledge, and the tools to not only get the job done right, but to anticipate and work through those problems you never saw coming. And when whatever it is gets fixed, it looks right, works right, and is a source of joy or pride instead of frustration to its owner.
Now fixing material things is relatively easy. But how do we fix things that we can’t put our hands on? How do we fix an irreconcilable break in our marriage? How do we overcome PTSD after experiencing military conflict, violence, or a bad accident? How do we repair a relationship with a child who’s taken the wrong path, and how do we help repair that child? These problems are much bigger than ourselves, and we typically need more than a YouTube video to find the answers. When our hearts and our minds are troubled by things larger than ourselves, we can turn to the maker of our hearts and minds, God, to begin the healing process.
On a personal level, this is what salvation is. God created a perfect world with a perfect couple and gave them only one simple warning to heed in order to maintain that perfection, and Adam and Eve blew it. That one act of disobedience forever broke mankind’s relationship with God. Because that relationship was bigger than any human could fathom, God needed a big solution to fix it: one man who was fully human and fully God, so that he understood completely and intimately within himself what our relationship with God should be like. This God-man, this Son of God/Son of Man, of course, is Jesus. He is the only one who can fix our broken lives so that we can live as he intended us to in this world and be a source of joy not only for God, but for those around us.
Personal side of salvation
Ephesians 2:1–10: Break it down:
We were worldly, but God loved us enough to reunite us with Christ
Made alive
Raised us up
Seated us with him
Grace used three times in this passage
Grace through the faithfulness of Jesus (compare Romans 3:23–24 here)
Jesus’s life and death
Faithfulness to go to the cross
One sacrifice for sin (Hebrews 9:15; 10:12–13)
Created to do good works
Personal response to salvation
Mental Assent: Belief
Romans 1:16–17: Break it down
God’s righteousness revealed; Jesus lived for God faithfully so we could know the salvation he brings.
Physical Assent: Baptism & Communion
So if we have a savior who laid down his very life for us on the cross, a physical sacrifice, can we accept such a great act of love without a response? The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin, so it makes sense that our response to that should be something that puts us in contact with, figuratively speaking, the blood of Christ. This is where baptism, or more accurately, immersion, and communion come in.
Romans 6:1–14: Break it down (read at least through 7 if time is short)
Word means immerse; derives from the sound of something or someone going into the water: /Bahpt/. Βαπτω = dip, but βαπτίζω = dip completely, immerse. It’s more intense than just dipping.
Connects us not only with the blood of Jesus, but also his resurrection, so can have assurance as well.
Christ is our new master; no longer slaves to sin
Communion: Our weekly reminder of and connection to Christ’s sacrifice.
The Big Picture of Salvation: Saved from our enemies
Luke 1:68–75: Read it and explain briefly that God’s salvation is also deliverance from our enemies
Who are our “enemies”? Not just those who don’t like us personally, but those in the world who reject Christianity, who call us bigots and a host of other pejoratives for taking a stand against things out of whack with God’s created order, who reclassify our fellowship as isolationism. Maybe 30 years ago, we didn’t feel this way; but more and more, it feels like the end is getting nearer as persecution begins to ramp up.
Assurance
1 John 5:1–15: Break it down
We KNOW we’re God’s children
We overcome the world, our enemies, the hostile attitudes toward us, with God’s love.
Action
Titus 2:11–14 is nice little compact “formula” for what salvation is and isn’t. Let’s close by looking at those verses (read them)
Premise: The saving grace of God has appeared to all people
Reason: Teaching us to live self-controlled, righteous, and godly lives
Condition: While denying ungodliness and worldly passions in this present age.
Hope: Waiting for the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.
Xenophon, one of Socrates’s students, wrote about the three ways to live in his own polytheistic context, using these same words or synonyms:
Godliness: Right conduct toward God (Socrates: can only be godly if the gods think, or in our case, if God thinks, you are)
Righteous: Right conduct toward others
Self-controlled: Right conduct toward self
Conclusion/Invitation
Your action items:
Talk to someone here about getting immersed if you haven’t been already, then do it!
Write out your own testimony about being saved
Invite another person to hear your testimony, and have him share his
Make a list of any lingering questions you may have about salvation. Talk to one of the leaders or pastors here about them
Make a list of areas you need to work on for right conduct toward God, others, and self.
[Note: minor corrections made 12/18/2020] In this third and final post in this series, I want to look at the New Testament view of tax collectors in general, and specifically at one chief tax collector, a wee little man named Zacchaeus.
For the Jews, the occupation of tax collector was at the bottom of the barrel socially. It was right down there with slopping pigs, prostitution, and leprosy. In order for the Roman government to collect taxes, they needed people in every district who knew the people (and the culture) of those around them. For the Jews, this meant that their own people had to serve a Roman government that at best tolerated their belief in the one true God and that considered their emperor a supreme divinity worthy of worship. In fact, everything about the Roman pantheon and worship sickened devout Jews, so to work for that government was essentially an act of treason against one’s own people. In fact, they were often called “sinners” by the Jewish people.
The process of tax collecting was a rather inexact science as well. Rome didn’t really give their tax collectors a salary. The norm was that the Roman government expected a certain amount of taxes in the aggregate from a district, and it was up to the local tax collector to decide how much to tax people. There were no forms to file and no concept of a “personal” income or wealth tax. If the tax collector wanted to get “paid” for his services, he would often add a “hidden” surcharge to each bill. (It wasn’t really hidden, though; the people knew how the tax collectors operated.) The tax collector kept anything he collected over the aggregate amount Rome demanded for his compensation.
Rome was organized well. They had a hierarchical structure in their government that allowed them to effectively rule a large territory. As you might expect, then, the local tax collectors in the various districts would report to a regional “chief” tax collector. If Rome told the chief tax collector, “We want 100,000 denarii from your region,” the chief tax collector would add his own cut to that, divide it out among his subordinates, and demand that amount from the subordinates. For Rome to get its 100,000 denarii, it was possible that as much as 200,000 denarii was collected from the people. In other words, they were taxed twice as much (or more) as what Rome demanded.
Zacchaeus, the Chief Tax Collector
We come, then, to the story of Jesus’s encounter with Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector, in Luke 19:1–10. Zacchaeus has a fascination with Jesus and his teachings, so much so that the short little rich man climbed up into a sycamore-fig tree so he could catch a glimpse of Jesus over the crowd. As Jesus is walking along with the crowd, he sees Zacchaeus, calls him out of the tree, and says, “I’m having lunch with you today.”
Now we don’t have to imagine the reaction of the crowd here, because Luke tells us how they responded. They were a bit disgruntled. After all, I’m sure there were a lot of good Jews in the crowd who had some very pressing needs: sick relatives to heal, spiritual questions to ask, and relationships to restore. But out of that whole crowd, Jesus pays special attention to a man, known by the crowd, who was considered one of the worst sinners in Israel for his collaboration with the Roman government. Wouldn’t you feel a bit put-out as well?
But Zacchaeus, perhaps realizing his own fallen nature, doesn’t even give Jesus a chance to come to his house. In fact, he announces something astounding to Jesus and the crowd that probably caused a few of them to swoon and faint: “Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Because salvation is not just an assent to a belief but evidence of a changed life, Jesus responds: “Today salvation has come to this house.”
The Lesson for Today
As I said in the first post in this series, high taxes are considered sinful in Scripture. Zacchaeus himself seems to have been a good man, but he had become slave to a system that in the end did not set well with his conscience. The recent revelations about the U.S. IRS showing bias against conservative and religious groups for tax-exempt status is evidence of just how corrupt that particular organization is. But do you think they’re going to return four times the amount those organizations got cheated out of? Not a chance. Yet if we make a mistake and shortchange the IRS, well you’d better be prepared to pay the penalties. That’s not equitable in the least.
As with the Medicare & Medicaid regulations I mentioned in the previous post, the IRS tax code is a behemoth that needs to die a quick death. With a 2016 budget of $14 billion (and about 40% of that spent on enforcement), it’s easy to see how we could reduce spending by simplifying the code and reducing the out-of-control bureaucracy. I think all Americans understand this, and that is why the political candidates who are pushing for a simplified tax code have the most traction right now.
As an update to the previous post, the new report on Medicare and Medicaid overpayments came out last week; Medicaid improper payments alone have nearly doubled in the last two years! The 2015 figure: 9.78%, or $29.12 billion. That’s twice the IRS budget for 2016! Officials continue to blame the second increase in as many years on the States’ failure to catch up to new provider enrollment requirements. Well, can you blame them? With the regulations and size of these programs far exceeding the capacity to effectively manage them, and with States already strapped for cash for being practically forced to expand Medicaid and foot the bill for other unfunded mandates, it’s no wonder the States can’t keep up. They’re in the same boat as the populace at large.
Paul says in Romans 13 that we’re to be subject to the governing authorities. Of course, he was speaking to people who lived under the rule of a king, so they didn’t exactly have a voice. The government that God has instituted for America is a republic, rule of the people, by the people, and for the people through our elected representatives. As citizens, then, we do not “rebel” when we demand a change to systems that we find unfair or oppressive. In fact, in a republic, it is our civil obligation to not only say something, but to actively work to promote policies that improve the general welfare of the people. Unfortunately, in an increasingly selfish and fragmented society, government is working to promote the specific welfare of specific classes of people, and all for the purpose of enslaving those people to dependence on the government instead of reliance on themselves.
The Pope’s September visit to America had the liberal media all a-buzz, focusing on such things as his appeal to address nonexistent global warming. So much for his infallibility. The media and liberal establishment try to justify the ever-burgeoning Welfare State of America by suggesting that those who work hard for their pay have to hand it over to those who don’t work but can. The ignorance about the Bible and what charity really means is really quite disgusting for those of us who’ve been educated on the matter, and even for those who paid attention to Sunday school growing up.
Rehoboam’s Rejection of Rationality
David and his son Solomon worked tirelessly to establish the new kingdom of Israel. David was the warrior who conquered the enemies of Israel. Solomon was the builder who established the infrastructure in Israel. Solomon put a heavy burden on Israel to build that infrastructure, but the people shared his vision, and willingly gave to see the Temple built as a “home” for their God.
But when Solomon died, his son Rehoboam had a decision to make. The Israelites came to him seeking relief from the heavy burden under Solomon, primarily because Solomon had amassed the most wealth of anyone before him in the whole earth and probably since, at least until American capitalism came on the scene. The message the people brought to Rehoboam is found in 1 Kings 12:4:
“Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you.”
Rehoboam took three days to decide. The elders of Israel saw the wisdom of providing tax relief to the people, but Rehoboam listened to his young friends who had no clue what it took to run a country and only saw the opportunity to try to make money by continuing the status quo under Solomon: heavy taxes and forced labor. His friends’ suggestion was to tell the Israelites:
“My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist.”
Yeah, thanks, Rehoboam. His response to the people three days later sounds like the liberal’s rant against the rich:
“My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.”
Now if you think this is a travesty, you’re right. The people who came to Rehoboam would have been those who had some degree of wealth and influence. If there were any poor in Israel at this time, given the wealth of the nation, there weren’t many. The modern welfare state that forcibly takes the people’s money (through taxes) and redistributes it to others would have been abhorrent to Israel. The idea of such heavy taxation, regardless of who the subjects were or how much wealth they had, was exactly the kind of problem God warned Israel about when they demanded a kingdom (1 Samuel 8). In other words, heavy taxation was and is a sin (see The Eighth Commandment, the Eighth Amendment, and Cancel Culture | Sunday Morning Greek Blog).
Rehoboam’s action earned the people’s disfavor. They killed Rehoboam’s man in charge of forced labor, and Rehoboam barely escaped with his life. Rehoboam’s desire to increase the tax burden on Israel caused a civil war as well. I sense a history lesson waiting to be ignored.
The Lesson for Today
Rehoboam continued to place a heavy tax burden on Israel so he and his cronies could prosper off the people. This really isn’t much different today, especially when the socialist, liberal Left insist on taxing everything that lives and breathes in any way possible. The bailout in 2008 of companies “too big to fail” was a farce. GM got a huge chunk of change, then had to recall thousands of vehicles they had made at that time. Obviously, there’s no accounting for quality there with “other people’s money” [credit Milton Friedman for the implications of that phrase].
Then there’s the whole debacle with Healthcare.gov, the system set up for people to enroll in a healthcare plan with a kickback. One recent report documents the lack of qualifications of CMS employees to serve as contracting officers and the lack of quality controls that give new meaning to the term “snafu.” I work for a Federal contractor, so I know all about our monthly status reports and providing deliverables on time and on budget. Yet neither the major contractor, CGI Federal (their contract was worth over $250 million) nor CMS could prove they’d delivered or received, respectively, the quality assurance surveillance plan. It’s not much of a leap to assume that the lack of such a plan was a major reason why Healthcare.gov had such a pathetic kickoff. The improprieties of the whole process are too numerous to list here, but the report makes for good, but disturbing, reading for those who think the government spends way too much of our money. For more disturbing reading, check out this report.
There’s no excuse for the poor quality Americans got for their money. The system may be working now, but there are other problems that I’ll delve into later, especially the questionable practice of offering kickbacks to folks who buy their insurance through the marketplace. More on that in Part II. The American tax system is so bloated that it’s an insult to the faith of millions to suggest we should be taxed more to continually prop up and expand the Welfare State and then suggest that’s the “Christian” thing to do. The founding fathers are rolling over in their graves. I even hear Thomas Paine scratching on his coffin to remind people we’re close to coming full circle back to 1776.
The preamble to the U.S. Constitution says to “promote the general welfare” of this nation. But we’ve certainly turned that on its head. We’re promoting the specific welfare of Democrat cronies and those who refuse to work or have given up all hope of work and change for the better in the dreadful Obama economy.
June 26, 2015, was a sad day for American jurisprudence. On the political side, the “Supreme” Court of the United States (SCOTUS) failed to recognize the plain language of the Affordable Cafe Act, inartfully and carelessly crafted as it was, and upheld the economically unsound premium subsidies for those who work 29 hours or less per week. Paying people not to work or to work less: that’s the government’s way (2 Thessalonians 3:10).
On the moral side, SCOTUS declared gay marriage to be the law of the land, which is beyond the scope of their constitutional powers. Now I admit to being somewhat torn on the issue. On the one hand, I tend to be Libertarian when it comes to the issue of marriage. I don’t think the Federal or State governments have any business declaring anything about marriage. That is between two people and whatever supreme being they worship (whether it’s the Supreme Court or the only one true God).
The Dilemma
I realize I can’t force people to accept God’s teaching about marriage, that it’s the God-ordained union between a man and a woman who aren’t confused about their gender. But if two same-sex people want to live in a union, that’s their choice, and they have to come to terms with God about it in the end. (Note that I believe an ultimate encounter with God is both necessary and inescapable, so that underlies my whole worldview.) I can be happy that they’ve found happiness here on earth, but always in the back of my mind I wonder about their eternal destination. I have friends, family, and coworkers I respect who live that lifestyle, so I have to have some peace about the issue to get along in my own world.
On the other hand, I cannot abide SCOTUS’s decision, because it is, in reality, a moral statement about marriage that undermines the freedom of association the First Amendment should guarantee us. It puts churches in a position of obeying God or government, and I pray they will obey God. Even worse, it strengthens the argument of the thought police that speaking against a homosexual union borders on a hate crime, which further diminishes our freedom of speech. King George must be laughing in his grave that the American Constitution is failing.
Political Coercion, not Divine Truth
Why any gay or lesbian couple would want to compel a church that doesn’t share their beliefs to perform their wedding or a baker who doesn’t share their beliefs to bake them a cake is beyond me. The only motivation I see is political coercion, and that has nothing to do with freedom at all. Most homosexuals, like most of the rest of us, just want to live their lives peaceably, and I’m not complaining about them. The radical 1% of the 1-2% in this country who are homosexual are imposing their beliefs on the rest of society. Good luck with that in the long run. It’s as if the radical homosexuals have become the elite ruling class imposing their agenda on the rest of society through fear and intimidation. There’s bound to be a reaction against that sooner or later, just as there was against King George 250 years ago.
The Biblical Perspective
So forgive me if I don’t celebrate SCOTUS’s imposition of a moral imperative contrary to God’s law. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:6: “Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth.” Evil is what God opposes, proscribes, or finds detestable. It’s pretty plain in Leviticus 18:22 what God thinks of homosexuality. But lest anyone argue “That was the Old Testament!” look back at 1 Corinthians. In chapter 5 verse 1, Paul chides the Corinthians for tolerating a man who is violating Old Testament sexual ethics. The specific reference is to Leviticus 8:8, same chapter as the prohibition of homosexuality.
The problem for the Church, that is, the believers that are members of the body of Christ, is that most don’t understand this connection. Old Testament sexual ethics are still relevant in 2015. I’m not asking the church to go Westwood Baptist on homosexuals. Far from it. Love should still rule the day, but love for the people, not for the sin. Acceptance of the individual, not tolerance of the behavior.
Fallout
As for the fallout of this decision, again, it’s a blow to First Amendment rights. It compels people and businesses to spend their money on things they don’t believe in. The ability to make a decision on based on conscience has been taken away from the individual. The ability to speak one’s mind now becomes a criminal offense. Sorry, but I’m inclined to exercise some peaceful, civil disobedience if it comes to that. And don’t expect me to keep quiet, especially when the militant radicals and their political sympathizers try to terrorize me into compliance with their beliefs.
I can think of a number of reasons Paul’s letter to the Romans wound up at the head of Paul’s writings in the New Testament. His discussion of justification by faith is classic, strengthened by his further treatment of the subject in Galatians. The statement from 1:16 has long been hailed from pulpits to encourage the body of Christ to boldly serve, speak, and act for the cause of the Gospel. I especially like Paul’s treatment of immersion in chapter 6, where he rescues the subject from those who downplay it as a “work of the flesh” by empowering it with the blood of Christ and his resurrection to make it an important and necessary part of our salvation journey. And of course, the Romans Road has long been an effective evangelistic tool for many, although I was never sure why that always took a detour around the heart of chapter 6. But there’s a bigger picture in Romans that often gets overlooked when we focus on verses and individual sections.
An Overlooked Inclusio
In a previous post, I mentioned that Romans 1:5 and its parallel in 16:26 form an inclusio for the entire book of Romans. However, in that post, I focused on the term πιστίς (“faith”/”faithfulness”), especially as Paul builds his initial argument in the first five chapters of Romans. In some contexts (e.g., Romans 1:17), that term refers to the faithfulness of Christ But what I noticed this time through Romans is that seven of the ten occurrences of the words for “obey” (ὑπακούω) and “obedience” (ὑπακοή) in Romans are found in chapters 6 (four times) and 15–16 (three times). The four occurrences of the words in chapter 6 come in the midst of his discussion about the significance of immersion and our being released from the slavery of sin. In fact, the words are tied to the metaphor of slavery in all occurrences there.
Because πιστίς refers to Christ in several key passages, I asked myself if “obedience” might have some Christological implications as well. One of the first passages that comes to mind is Philippians 2:8: “And being found in appearance of a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross.” A few verses later (v. 12), Paul commends the Philippians for their obedience and encourages them to “work out [κατεργάζομαι] their salvation with fear and trembling.” That word for “work out” figures very prominently in Romans 7, where Paul speaks of “doing” what he does not want to “do.” What does this mean?
Breaking it Down
First, the discussion of obedience comes between the discussion of the significance of immersion and the popular conclusion to chapter 6 (cited in the Romans Road without the rest of the context of chapter 6): “The compensation for sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Here is the irony: obedience or slavery to sin and obedience or slavery to Christ both lead to death. For those who are slaves to sin, they only have eternal death to look forward to, assuming they are looking forward to anything eternally. Obedience to Christ does lead to death, death to self, but there is on the other side the gift of eternal life. What is this obedience? One only need to look back to the first part of chapter 6: obedience to immersion. Just as Christ was obedient to death on a cross, we who believe are called to be obedient to death by immersion. Immersion is our Calvary. Immersion is also our Resurrection. Paul’s conclusion in 6:23 must be viewed in the context of 6:1–10.
Second, this gives new light to the phrase “obedience of faithfulness” found in Romans 1:5 and 16:26. The whole phrase is a euphemism of sorts for the crucifixion of Christ. It’s not just about legalistic obedience or stilted faithfulness. It’s about living this life sacrificially, knowing that we have eternal life as our ultimate reward on the other side of death. Ideally, obedience to immersion is a one-time event for the Christ-follower. But obedience in general is a lifelong commitment. Salvation is not a one-time event: it is a lifelong process we “work out… with fear and trembling.” Don’t get me wrong: we become a part of the kingdom the moment we put our trust in Christ, and we can be sure of the promise of eternal life from that moment on. But we cannot sit back and expect God to do everything for us. Repentance, discipline, study, meditation on God’s Word, and faithful obedience are all part of the “working out” process. We can never become perfect in this life, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try (Matthew 5:48, 19:21).
Conclusion
Those of you who are fond of the Romans Road, don’t take a detour around the discussion of immersion in the first part of chapter 6. It is part of the obedience that informs the rest of the discussion in Romans. To add a little more context to Romans 6:23, you might read it this way: “The compensation for slavery to sin is death, but the gift of God for those who are obedient to righteousness is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Immersion is our physical experience and signification of the death and resurrection of Christ. It’s not just a “work” that you can do whenever you think you’re ready. It’s an important component of working out your salvation as you grow in your faith in and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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