Sermon by Mike Mazzalongo
Video Title: Romans Bible Study – Mike Mazzalongo
Creator: Bibletalk.tv
Original Video: Romans Bible Study – Mike Mazzalongo | BibleTalk.tv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UAdPpkIuwU&t=531s
License: Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)
Video Title: Romans Bible Study – Mike Mazzalongo
Creator: Bibletalk.tv
Original Video: Romans Bible Study – Mike Mazzalongo | BibleTalk.tv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UAdPpkIuwU&t=531s
License: Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)
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00:00Okay, so this is the first lesson in this series entitled, Grace in the Book of
00:06Romans, lesson number one, introductory lesson. Just to dive right into the book,
00:15the book of Romans has some of the most challenging ideas in the entire Bible. So
00:22it'll require an effort, an effort to stay with the class, an effort to
00:26give the class. Some have called this epistle Paul's PhD thesis on
00:33Christianity. If someone said, I'd like to kind of have a just one Bible book to
00:39read that gives me the most information about Christianity, about the gospel in
00:44general, that touches all the important points, I think I'd give him
00:48the book of Romans to read if it was only one book. It fits this description
00:55because in it Paul examines the core ideas of the Christian religion. Also he
01:00deals with a lot of its most challenging questions. So today's lesson is going to
01:06be on the introduction to the approach that we're going to be taking for our
01:11study. We'll be looking at a particular passage in the first chapter of
01:17this letter that summarizes the entire epistle and the scope of our class.
01:25A lot of scholars point to Romans chapter 1 verse 16 as a or as the key
01:31verse in Romans because it distills down into just one sentence the whole point
01:37of not only the book of Romans but the entire Bible itself. That's in
01:41Romans chapter 1 verse 16 where Paul writes, for I'm not ashamed of the
01:46gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to
01:51the Jew first and also to the Greek. When you actually read the
01:57Bible and then read the book of Romans in particular you find out that yes the
02:04gospel is God's power to save man, but the power that the gospel has is that
02:11through it the grace of God is revealed. There's the power. People begin to
02:20understand the depths of God's grace towards man and that has power in
02:25people's lives. That's what the book of Romans does. Anytime you preach
02:34the gospel to someone, to a crowd, write a book about the gospel and the point
02:40that you end up making is something other than the grace of God revealed to
02:46men through Jesus Christ, then you've missed the point. You haven't preached
02:52the gospel. If the point you make in preaching the gospel is that
02:58baptism is by immersion, if that's your point, or if the point that you make is
03:04that well there's only one church or that the Bible is an inspired book, if
03:11that's the point you make when you are preaching the gospel, you have explained
03:17certain true principles contained in the Bible, but you haven't successfully
03:22preached the gospel. This is why we sometimes work so hard in
03:29convincing other people to believe in Jesus Christ and we fail. We teach them a
03:36lot of biblical doctrines but we neglect to expose them to the one thing
03:42that has the power to save, the power to change, the power to convince, the power
03:48to convict. That's the gospel itself. Is it true that baptism is by
03:57immersion? Yeah, sure. We can show that in the Bible. Is it true that
04:01there's only just one church according to the script? Well, yeah, of course. We
04:07can show that, but those true things, that's not the gospel.
04:13It's not what we're preaching. There's no quote good news in the fact that
04:17there's just one church. Well, great, there's just one church, but somebody
04:21will say, so what? What's that to me? What's in it for me? Where's the
04:25good news there? The gospel contains power because it is how God reveals His
04:35grace towards men. Now there's some good news. There's something to be happy about.
04:41There's something to get excited about. Nowhere is the grace of God more
04:48powerfully revealed and described than in the story of Jesus' death, burial, and
04:54resurrection. Of course, that story is in the gospel. That historical story
04:57is in the Gospels. I might add, nowhere is the grace of God more
05:04eloquently and powerfully explained than in the book of Romans. That's my point.
05:11Nothing builds one's faith and hope like a deeper understanding of God's grace.
05:17Therefore, why are we studying this subject? Why is it called
05:22the grace in the book of Romans? Because that's the key to the power. That's why.
05:28So for the purpose of our study, this is the general outline that we're going to
05:33follow. First of all, we're going to look at the renouncing of God's grace, Romans
05:40chapter 1 verse 1 to Romans chapter 3 verse 20. The problem here is the
05:44problem of universal sin, universal sinfulness, that Paul describes,
05:49summarizes in 3.23. Paul begins by explaining the concept of grace by
05:56detailing man's fall from grace and the state of universal sinfulness. The idea
06:02is that you can't understand light if you don't understand darkness. So he
06:08begins by explaining what darkness is, Romans chapter 1 all the way to chapter
06:133.20. Next, the response of grace, Romans 3.20 all the way to chapter 7.25. The
06:22cross of Jesus Christ is God's response to man's rejection of His grace. God's
06:33gracious response to man's sin is the cross of Christ. So we're going to look
06:40at that, how Paul explains and develops that idea. Number three, the request of
06:45grace, Romans chapter 8. Grace stimulates a response that the law, the law of God
06:52could not. The Ten Commandments, the law, the principle of law. Paul
06:58explains the law does not change men. The law does not in any way and has no
07:08ability to make you a better person. The law is there simply to demonstrate that
07:14you are a sinner, that you are a failure, you and I, everyone fails in keeping God's
07:22law perfectly. That's the purpose of the law. Paul talks about that. Then he
07:30explains that grace, on the other hand, it has the power to change people. It
07:35stimulates people. So the offer of grace draws a new response from us which is,
07:42and he calls, spirit-filled living. So the request of grace is spirit-filled living.
07:50Number four, section four, the refusal of grace, chapters 9 to 11. So in chapters 9
07:57to 11 Paul's going to give an aside here. He's going to explain, well, if all
08:03this is true about grace, why did the Jews stumble? And so Paul is going to use
08:10the Jews as an example of what happens to people, to religious people, who refuse
08:17God's grace. So in chapters 1 and 2 he talks about those who fall from grace
08:23without religion. In chapters 9 to 11 he's going to describe those people who
08:29fall from grace, but with all the trappings of religion. Then fifth
08:38section, the result of grace, chapters 12 all the way to the end. The result of
08:45grace is the church, the church that belongs to Jesus Christ, Romans chapter
08:5012, 1 and 2. In this section Paul describes in detail what grace looks
08:55like in the lives of those who experience it. What are we supposed to be
09:00like if we're people who are empowered by the grace of God? So in the end the
09:06church is the collective expression of those who are experiencing God's grace,
09:11vertically, man and God, horizontally, man and man. Paul will describe what that
09:20looks like in a real-time situation. So that's the outline of our course.
09:28We're going to be covering those sections in the next couple of
09:31weeks. Before starting the book itself I want to review some basic definitions
09:36and some misconceptions that we've had about the subject of grace itself. First
09:45of all just a basic definition, New Testament word for grace in the Greek
09:50charis meaning a favor and eleo meaning mercy. Now the idea of grace in the Old
09:59Testament was presented as something that would eventually come. So in the Old
10:03Testament when they talked about God's grace it was always something that was
10:06going to happen in the future. The main hope that the Jews had of
10:11grace would be that God would have mercy on them, that God would have mercy and
10:18save them from every enemy or every sin. This was grace. It was out there in the
10:22future. One day this grace is going to happen. It's going to impact our
10:27lives and we have to have faith and we have to keep moving towards that.
10:32In the New Testament we see that God's grace is not a thing, it's not an object,
10:39but rather it's a disposition or an attitude that God has toward man in
10:45regards to his failures and sins. That's what grace is in the New Testament. Titus
10:50chapter 3 verse 47 says, But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love
10:55for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in
11:00the righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and
11:05renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus
11:10Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made
11:16heirs according to the hope of eternal life. According to Paul, grace
11:23begins with God's attitude, His attitude of love and mercy toward men and is
11:29perceived through His concrete actions throughout history. I perceive God's
11:35grace to me by the actions that He's taken on my behalf. These actions are
11:43the outworking of His grace. Christianity is the only religion whose
11:49theology is based on this quality of God, the quality that exalts this
11:57expression of His divinity, that sees this as the motivating factor in His
12:04dealings with men. No other religion focuses completely on this
12:09idea in God's character. So we're going to delve more into these ideas as we
12:15study the book itself, but for now suffice to say that grace is an attitude
12:22or a quality of God's character that manifests itself in love and mercy
12:27towards sinful men. So that's the New Testament idea of grace. Let's move
12:36on to the misconceptions. There have been some rather serious
12:41misconceptions about grace throughout the years. Many of these resulted in the
12:46development of entire religious systems, some of which are still with us today,
12:50all because men, women, teachers have misunderstood the idea of
12:57grace. So let's review a couple of these. Again, this is not a
13:02harangue against this group or that group, this is just history here,
13:06history of theology, people's thinking. So we start with Roman Catholicism, for
13:12example. In Roman Catholicism grace is a spiritual commodity
13:18distributed through what are called the sacraments, through the intermediary work
13:23of the clergy. So you have God, in Catholicism, you have God, you have the
13:27clergy, you have the laity. And sacraments are like commodities, excuse me, grace is
13:33a commodity that goes from God and is distributed through the clergy to the
13:40laity, through the actions of what are called sacraments. So in Catholicism the
13:48religious ceremony itself, there are seven sacraments, baptism,
13:52confirmation, communion, marriage, holy orders, penance, extreme unction, those are
13:56the seven sacraments. In Catholicism, seven rituals, seven activities through
14:02which grace is imparted to the recipients and is delivered, if you wish,
14:11the delivery system of this grace is through the priesthood, through
14:16the clergy. So we know baptism, then confirmation, when a child reaches
14:20the age of reason. Communion, communion is taking the Lord's Supper. Marriage,
14:26that's a sacrament. Holy orders, when someone goes in the priesthood. Penance,
14:29that's confession, people going to confession. Extreme unction, the last
14:34rites, they put some oil in prayer before a person dies or immediately after they
14:39die. The authority of the priest or the bishop administering these sacraments
14:46imbues the action itself with grace, that's the thinking. Some are even higher,
14:54you've got actual grace, then you've got sanctifying grace, or even
14:58quality. Think that grace is like a vitamin, you've got the
15:02vitamin, actual grace, you've got super vitamins, sanctifying grace.
15:07So in this type of thinking grace is an ingredient contained in these rites and
15:14the more you observe these rites, the more you get, the more valid your
15:18experience. For example, a marriage in the Catholic Church, that's a sacrament.
15:24That's why, if you're a Catholic, you get married at City Hall, well, you're married
15:28legally, but you're not really married before God. You didn't get the
15:34grace pill that comes with a Catholic wedding. That's the
15:41thinking. It's like a spiritual supplement. This is incorrect because of
15:49its view of grace as a commodity rather than an attitude in a relationship
15:55between God and man. This type of thinking leads to legalism in its
16:01worst forms. Another one, Pelagianism, fourth
16:09century heresy. The idea of Pelagianism is that it was up to man to
16:16do it all. The thinking was with the knowledge of the law and determination, I
16:22mean God's law, not civil law, but with the knowledge of God's law and
16:26determination, a person could do right. The idea was that knowledge was the key
16:33to improvement and greater knowledge and greater self-will, these things were
16:39hand-in-hand to make a greater improvement. In other words, you could
16:45become perfect if you had enough knowledge and enough willpower.
16:53Most self-help books work on this principle. If you have the right
17:00knowledge, let's get the guru in for the weekend. We're gonna have a
17:03seminar, 900 bucks a person. You know what I'm saying? If you get the
17:07advanced tapes and the advanced books, you're just going to get more knowledge
17:10more and then you just have to work, work, work, work, work. That's Pelagianism.
17:14In a million varieties, you can do it. Yes, you can. All that stuff, that's
17:26Pelagianism. The Bible teaches that a man is helpless to change himself, that a
17:36person is helpless to improve, and especially helpless to save himself
17:42before God's grace appeared. Paul says in Romans 5 verse 6, he says,
17:49while we were still helpless at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly.
17:58Does that sound like we can save ourselves to you? Because if we could, if
18:04one person in the whole world could save themselves, then what do we need
18:08Jesus for? We don't need Him. Pelagianism, just do it.
18:16Calvinism. Calvinism, most people know what most people know about
18:23Calvinism, two famous doctrines that come from Calvinism. They don't actually come
18:30from Calvinism. Predestination and election are actually their biblical
18:34doctrines, but the take on these two in Calvinism developed and brought
18:41people into another direction. So in Calvinism, grace in this context, in the
18:48context of predestination. Predestination, according to Calvinism or
18:53classical Calvinism, predestination says that God knows in advance who's going to
19:00be saved, who's going to be lost. He knows. Election teaches that God
19:08actually chooses some for salvation and some to be lost. Once He chooses you,
19:16you can't get unlost. This idea, once saved, always saved, that
19:22comes from Calvinism. If God chooses you to be saved, doesn't matter what you do,
19:26you're going to be saved. If God didn't choose you, doesn't matter what
19:29you do, you're never going to be saved. That's breaking it down to its
19:34simplest forms. So grace, in this context, means that God arbitrarily chooses some
19:41to be saved, condemns others. In this context, grace means that an individual
19:48is saved without any response from himself or herself. He can do nothing
19:53good or bad to reverse the choice. So this idea of grace is false, because it
20:00eliminates man's responsibility to exercise his free moral agency and
20:06choose. This free moral agency, this is based in Scripture. Someone says,
20:13we can't choose. It's impossible. We're too depraved. That's another
20:16Calvinistic doctrine. The depravity of man. Man is so morally corrupt, he
20:21can't even make a right choice. He can't even choose to be saved, even if it's in
20:25front of him. It's just too evil. And yet, when you read Joshua 24 15, what does
20:31Joshua say to the people of Israel? He says, choose this day who you will serve.
20:35As for me in my house, we will serve the Lord. You go through the Bible, you see
20:39people choosing all the time, right or wrong, to serve or not to serve, to go or
20:43stay. They're always choosing. The failure here is to differentiate between
20:50conditional and free. Something can be free, but have certain conditions. For
20:57example, air, breathable air, that's free, but we need to breathe it in for it to
21:05be useful. There's a condition, right? Another example, a will. A will gives the
21:11estate to the children, usually for free. They don't have to buy it, they can't buy
21:15it, but certain conditions have to be made. Perhaps the youngest child has
21:21to be 21 years old before they can come into the inheritance. That's a condition.
21:25It's still free, didn't have to buy it, but there's a condition. Well, in the same
21:31way, grace and its benefits are free. You can't buy eternal life. You can't buy
21:38sinlessness. You can't buy righteousness. You can't buy those things. God
21:43gives them to us for free, but there are conditions, however. So conditions don't
21:50make something less free. See what I'm saying?
21:55So Calvinism pushed the idea of grace without any conditions, but throughout
22:02the Bible, God has always placed conditions on man for everything,
22:08even salvation. Alright, let's look at one more. Legalism, or what I call
22:14thermometer religion. The most common misconception of grace is the
22:20thermometer image of grace. Here's the thermometer image of grace. This is how
22:25it works. We give a part. We do our best to kind of... Salvation is at
22:31the top here. When you reach a hundred degrees, that's salvation.
22:35You're good. You're with God. You got eternal life. You got it all.
22:39That's the top up here. The thinking is, well, what we provide, we do our
22:44best. You do the best you can. You get up there. Maybe you get up to 20% or 30% or
22:4850% and God, through His grace, supplies the rest. The famous quote that
22:57goes with this, God helps those who help themselves. How many times have I
23:04heard that? God helps those who help themselves. That might be true in
23:11certain situations, but not when it comes to salvation, not when it comes to
23:17grace. Here's the proper image, if you want to look at the thermometer. The
23:22proper way to use this illustration is that God provides a hundred percent, man
23:26provides zero. When I say man provides, in other words, man does not pay for his
23:37mistakes. Man does not give something to God in order to pay for the nasty, stupid,
23:44bad, evil things that he's done, to make up for it. The cross of Jesus Christ pays
23:53a hundred percent of the moral debt that we have before God, a hundred percent of
23:59it. It's a take-it-or-leave-it situation. There's no room for human pride in
24:08salvation. The Bible concept says that man does not even possess what is
24:15necessary to save himself or other people. Not that he might not want to, it's just
24:20that he doesn't have what it takes to accomplish this. What does it take,
24:25according to the Bible, to achieve this salvation, according to the thermometer
24:30theory? First of all, if you want to save mankind, you have to have a perfect
24:34life, a perfect life of obedience. First Peter, I think I have a scripture here.
24:40Here it is, First Peter chapter 2. Peter says, speaking of Jesus, he says,
24:45"...who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in his mouth. And while being
24:50reviled," He did not revile in return, while suffering. "...he uttered no threats, but
24:55kept entrusting himself to Him who judges righteously. And He Himself, He
25:01Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and
25:09live to righteousness. For by His wounds you were healed." Does he say, so by His
25:16wounds and some of your wounds we'll be healed? No, no, it's by His wounds that we
25:23are healed. So in order to pay that moral debt, what is necessary? Peter
25:31says, well, to begin with, a perfect sinless life is necessary to avoid
25:36condemnation and thus be safe. You want to go to heaven? You want to be with
25:40God? Fine, be perfect. Don't make any mistakes. Don't break any laws. Why is it
25:45this way? Well, because God is perfect and in order to be with Him you have to be
25:51perfect, because you were made originally perfect. So a perfect life is necessary
25:59to offer as payment for the moral debt of sin of others and thus satisfy God's
26:05justice. So here's my point, Jesus has the currency necessary to pay our debt
26:13of sin. And what is that currency? Well, a perfect life. Now there's something else
26:22necessary, a perfect life of obedience and a divine spirit. Let's read Hebrew 9.
26:30Stay with me. He says, for Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, not
26:35the temple on earth, in Jerusalem, a mere copy of the true one. Oh, there's
26:41a true temple? Yeah, it's up there. But into heaven itself, now to appear in the
26:46presence of God for us. And then in verse chapter 10 he says, by this will we have
26:53been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
26:58Every priest, talking about the Old Testament priests, every priest stands
27:03daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices which can
27:08never take away sins, but he, having offered one sacrifice, that perfect life,
27:15one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God. Why can he
27:22sit at the right hand of God? Well, he's perfect, but he's also the Son of God. So
27:25here's a point we need to note. A divine spirit was necessary in order to enter
27:34into the presence of divinity itself which had been shut because of man's
27:38sinfulness. It's not enough to live a perfect life, you have to be able to come
27:45before God and offer that perfect life. So Jesus became a man in order to offer
27:53a perfect human life, but he retained his divine nature in order to be able to
27:58enter into the presence of divinity to offer that sacrifice. Now we're not doing
28:06the book of Hebrews, but that's what the book of Hebrews is about. It works
28:12like this, let's say somehow I managed to live a perfect life, let's just say, no
28:20sins, no mistakes, a perfect life. I've got a perfect life, but my wife, she's a
28:26regular human being, she hasn't lived a perfect life and I love my wife so I
28:31want to save her. I know all the women are saying, yeah sure, but I want
28:35to save her, right? So I've lived the perfect life and I say to God, okay, I'm
28:41willing to offer my perfect life in order to cancel the debts of her
28:48imperfect life, one for one. I won't unfortunately be able to save Paul or
28:57Julia or Emily or William, none of the grandkids, I just have one life, I've got
29:03a perfect life, but I've just got one and so I offer it for one, one for one. Why?
29:13Because it's only a human life that I'm offering, but Jesus, this answers the
29:19question, why did divinity have to come to earth? Why Jesus? Because Jesus not
29:26only has a perfect human life, because He's also the Son of God, He has a divine
29:33spirit and so His offering not only can pay for the sins of one individual, by
29:41the virtue of the fact that His spirit is divine, it has the value to pay the
29:49sins of all people. One last example idea, imagine you have a pound of granite or a
29:58hundred pounds of granite and you have a hundred pounds of gold, you put these on
30:03the scale, they're even, right? A hundred pounds of granite, a hundred pounds of
30:07gold, but which one is more innately valuable? Well, the gold, of course, even
30:14though the weight is the same, the gold is much more valuable than the granite.
30:19Well, Jesus has a human life and I have a human life, yeah, what's the difference?
30:24Well, my human life is human, but His human life also has a divine spirit, much
30:33much more valuable than mine, more valuable in the sense that it can have
30:39the power to pay the emotional, excuse me, not emotional, but the moral debt of all
30:49those who have lived from Adam till now. That's the idea of grace. So one
30:57definition, just one large definition, God's original creation of the
31:06universe with man at the head of it, His subsequent decision to save man through
31:11the method of atonement accomplished by Jesus, and His establishment of the
31:16church in order to reveal this plan to all of mankind, that's what grace is. So
31:23it's not easy, it's one word, but it has such valuable rich meaning. And our
31:31study of Romans will delve into more deeply the meaning of the idea of
31:38grace, as Paul explains it in the book. Okay, that's our first lesson.
31:45I encourage you to read ahead, it's always good, you read the
31:48passages. This is not going to be a line by line study, verse by verse, this is a
31:53thematic study. So I'm just going from section to section where he's talking
31:57about the subject of grace. We could go back through Romans and look at
32:02what Paul says about Jesus Christ and do a thematic study about Jesus
32:07through Romans or other topics, but we've selected the topic of grace and we're
32:12going to follow that theme through the 16 chapters of Romans. So read ahead,
32:15chapters 1, 2, and 3, and you'll be familiar. All right, thank you very much.
32:23you