Romans Bible Study: Justified By Faith (Romans 1-4)

Hey everyone! I wanted to post my notes from the Bible study that I did on Romans 8 because I absolutely love that chapter of this book, but then I thought to myself, to fully understand these sections of Scripture in this chapter, there has to be some context to what is being said. And to do that I wanted to give a short synopsis of the previous chapters - an abridged version of the studies that were done previously on these chapters - just so that we are all on the same page and have the lead-in to the verses in Romans chapter 8. It’s a little bit of a refresher, so to speak, before we get into the new study - and because I think there is so much amazing truth to be reflected on in the previous chapters, as well! I have posted the first synopsis below in case you are interested in reading them, but I will also be including a recorded version in a video that I will be posting above because it had been mentioned to me, especially with the Ephesians 2 study, that there should be a podcast-type version available for those who would listen to it in different settings. The first section will focus on chapters 1-4. The second section will focus on chapters 5-7. And the last blog in the series will be the one that looks at the words that Paul writes in chapter 8. I hope that it may be a blessing to you in beholding God and seeing the hope that we have in Him.

Chapter 1-4 Synopsis from the Romans Bible Study:

In chapters 1 and 2 Paul writes about how there are secular unbelievers and religious unbelievers. From our study, there was much more that could be discussed about this, but as a general overview this is the main idea. Religious unbelievers are those who do things ritualistically and by rote, who have their checklists of man-made things, and do their religious works to be observed. They say “tell me what I need to do to look spiritual in people’s eyes, but it’s not about God. It’s about me doing those things because if I do those things I will be blessed and then, because I’ve done them, because I’ve checked those off and am covered, I can keep living the same way as I was when I wasn’t a religious person.” What Paul writes here is that the secular unbeliever and the religious unbeliever are pretty much two sides of the same coin: both groups do not want God to be God in their lives, they want to stand in the place of God, they want to be autonomous, and they are motivated by the pursuit of their own glory instead of God receiving the glory that He deserves. We also learned in chapter 1 that (and this is important) there is no one that doesn’t know that God exists - there aren’t any atheists - there are just people who want to not consider Him, who want to push that thought of His existence aside, and who do not want Him to be Lord in their lives because they want to pursue their own pleasures for their own attention-seeking before man.

Chapter 3 carries on with this idea at the start. Again, Paul starts this letter talking about sin. And he does this to show that we were all were in this state. All of us were spiritually dead, not one person was good. Not one person could make themselves right with God because they loved the sin that makes them take the place of God, that causes them to not stand under His Lordship and that lets them pursue their own man-focused, glory-seeking pursuits. So everyone is deserving of condemnation and everyone is separated from God because of sin. Paul uses a bunch of verses from the Psalms and Isaiah and Proverbs to highlight this, as we read about before (“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands, no one seeks for God…no one does good, not even one…”)

But then he goes on in the middle of the chapter to talk about the Law. The Law was a pointer. Everyone was in sin. We did not have the Holy Spirit in us, obviously, because we were separated from God because of our unrighteousness (God cannot be joined to us in our sinful state because He is holy) and we could not do what was good because we did not want to do it, first and foremost, but also because, even someone who appears to be “good” is coming at it from a place of being motivated by self-glory, as we heard about in chapters 1 and 2. So God brought in the Law. And it very clearly showed our need for a Saviour because it pointed to how we could not make ourselves right with God as sinners. We were in love with sin and we would desire the sin, and the bringing up of the Law not only showed us that we couldn’t keep the Law, but it also showed man that we didn’t like the Law because it made it clear that we were sinners and that we didn’t want to be under his Lordship. We didn’t want to be shown the right things that we weren’t doing because we wanted to continue in our wrong of wanting to be our own gods and getting the glory from our pleasure pursuits.

But Paul writes how there was a remnant who were given eyes to see that they were in need of a Saviour and, though they did not have the Spirit in them at the time (the Spirit would fall upon them to open their eyes to their need for a Saviour, but wouldn’t stay in them, because He couldn’t live in sinful man), they saw the Law for what it was meant to show: that a Messiah was coming who would deliver them from sin and help make them right with God. Paul goes on to say that the righteousness of God came to His people not through the Law but through the One who kept the whole Law for them (and helps them do it all now, too, through the Spirit): Jesus.

“For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” but then Paul writes that those who are believers “are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood [Christ bore the punishment we should have received for our sin], to be received by faith[faith is a gift of grace]. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what comes of boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:22-28).

So there are a couple topics that he will get into in later chapters, such as faith being a gift that is given by grace, and how the law is not something we should disregard - that is not what Paul is saying here. He is saying that what we were responsible for doing has been fulfilled in Christ, His perfect life was placed upon us as we were clothed in His righteousness, and it is seen as though we have fulfilled it! And not only that, but He gives us the power to actually be able to do it now. So that should be something else to marvel at, not toss aside.

But the part I want to spend more time summarizing here is that Paul writes how Jesus’ work not only covers the sins of God’s people at the time of the cross and those who would come to faith following the cross, but it also covered the sins of the people who were part of this remnant who were given eyes to see their need for a Saviour before the Holy Spirit came to live within God’s people after Christ’s ascension to Heaven. Paul writes this because people were asking him, “Well, look how is God righteous? He’s passing over their sins. Isn’t God just letting their sins slide? He’s not doing anything about them? So are we able to sin and He will still save us?” And Paul’s like no way! He didn’t let their sins slide. See, as we talked about in chapter 5, sin came in the world, and God knew. Another way to say it is that when God was authoring the story of existence, sin was in there, and it wasn’t because Adam and Eve somehow took Him by surprise and He’s like “Awww, guys!! You messed it all up!” Sin came because God couldn’t create other perfect beings who could be self-sustaining in their perfection because then He would create other Gods. We will get into this more in our synopsis of chapter 5, but here we will say that the existence of sin in the world was not an out of the blue thing for God. Indeed He writes “when you eat of the tree” - they were not beings that would remain perfect and, thus, not being God, they would sin. But God said the Seed would come and bruise the serpent’s head and, right from the start, if you look at the Old Testament with eyes that behold what God was doing and not focus on how we can be like the people, we see how God worked and moved through all of history, unfolding the sovereign plan of His people’s salvation, that they would see the full display of His glory through Christ’s work on the cross.

But here Paul says, the remnant in the Old Testament were given faith as a gift - they saw through the Law that they were in need of a Saviour - but they didn’t have the Spirit in them to be able to convict them and enable them to do the things of God because Christ had not come yet and man was still separated from God because of sin. If the Spirit did live in them while they were sinners, it would go against everything that God had said to Adam and Eve as they were in, and leaving, the Garden and it would be something they could boast in - same as how people nowadays think they can just make themselves awake and right with God on their own or continue on sinning without a care when they have the Spirit. But Paul writes “Then what comes of boasting? It is excluded.” God justifies His people justly by saying that they are only believers through Christ’s work. No one comes to the Father except through Christ’s work on the cross. His blood paid the cost for their sin, through His sacrifice He bore the punishment that we deserved and vindicated God’s righteousness. The gift of grace is a big deal because sin was a big deal, but we only receive this grace at the cost of Christ’s blood poured out for His people.

But Paul was then having to answer people who were saying to him, “See, we can be like the people in the Old Testament - we can sin and God’s ok with it. See, they were saved.” And this is where Paul brings up the comment that we were just talking about: the people who were part of the remnant didn’t have the Spirit. Their sins were definitely not swept under the rug. When a comment like this is said from people then, and now, it shows a complete lack of understanding of what Paul was trying to say. God never says that we are supposed to be like the people in the Old Testament. The focus isn’t on them. It’s on what God was doing. That should always be our takeaway. Not that we should be like someone - some “hero of the faith,” as people call them. The whole Old Testament is a big finger pointing to how the people needed a Saviour, how they didn’t have the Spirit because they were in sin, and how they couldn’t make themselves right with God in their own strength. God never condoned their sin. See, moralism makes the passage about us. Moralism has to have us “experience” the passage by having us be like someone. It gives us three steps to takeaway so we can do what whoever did and that way we can worship and say we understand it because it’s about man again and us doing something for our own spiritual glory. But, not only does a comment like the one above show a lack of understanding, it also shows the real desires of a heart. Yes, the people in the Old Testament didn’t have the Spirit and Christ’s work covered their sins BUT, as Christians now, post-cross, why would we ever, now that we have the Spirit who guides us into truth and convicts us through the grace of God, want to go backwards pre-cross and be without the Spirit? The people then would probably look at us and say, “What are you talking about?!” Someone saying that displays their heart’s true desire. Because, if you are a Christian, who has been given new desires by grace and the power to be transformed and convicted and grieved by sin and know the joy of being found bound in relationship with Christ, it would never be said that they would want to be able to sin and still be saved (Paul makes another point about the foolishness of such a thought in Chapter 6). That’s someone who loves sin saying that. That’s someone who doesn’t comprehend the cost of Christ’s sacrifice and that it is only through Christ’s work (not outside of it) that we come to stand before the Father as one who is saved, the Law fulfilled for us, sanctification happening in us, the Spirit at work within us. We have something far better, as Jesus said - He’s leaving something far better for us: the Spirit (“it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away (ascend to Heaven) the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you…When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…” John 16:7, 13) There was way more in this chapter than even this, but as this is a synopsis, we must go on…

Paul touches briefly in chapter 3 on the topic of how we are believers by faith and that it was never by nationality or biological family that we became children of God. The Old Testament and New Testament say the same message about this. And Chapter 4 continues to speak about this truth - it was always by faith alone, all throughout the pages of Scripture. (Just a quick side note here: See how important it is to look at the Old Testament to understand the New Testament and what it means in terms of our salvation and Jesus’ work on the cross? If anyone says that you don’t need it as a Christian, be very wary of that!) God never changes His direction on this - the Old and New Testaments have that same line continuing throughout - by faith alone. It was not just like “oh, you’re a Jew, so then you are saved.” No, that was not the case. In chapter 9 he will talk more about this, but the idea is that there is a remnant that believed by faith, with eyes being given to see, and then there was the nation of Israel as a whole. The remnant was in the nation of Israel, yes, but there were also Gentiles who were part of this remnant from other nations (look at Ruth, Rahab, etc). There was true spiritual Israel (those who were given faith to believe) and physical Israel (the physical nation). Paul was saying that faith was not a physical thing, it wasn’t an “I grew up in a Christian household” or an “I was born in such-and-such a country” thing. It was a gift given by God alone to His people from all nations. Paul proves his point with this amazingly well-laid out argument about Abraham. Abraham was given faith to believe - it wasn’t through the Law (it didn’t exist then) and it wasn’t through Israel (the nation didn’t exist then) and it was even prior to Abraham being circumcised. Abraham was given eyes of faith to see that God was doing something, to see who He was, and this faith was credited to him as righteousness. And, having been given eyes to see God through faith, he believed God that out from Abraham’s seed would come MANY nations. Get it? Not just one. It was a picture. Again, it is a representative idea. He was promised to be a father of MANY nations and this is important because he was a picture of being the family head of offspring that included all the people who would believe by faith - pre-law, pre-nation of Israel, pre-circumcision. He was counted righteous BEFORE all of those things that the nation of Israel could religiously point to as their checklist. Paul says, no, it is Jew OR Gentile who believe by faith alone: “The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without bring circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised” (Romans 4:11-12) When people speak about Messianic Jews - Jews who still follow the Law but do Christian things - it doesn’t actually make a lot of sense in light of what Paul is saying here. Instead there are Christians who are Jews, in the same way as there are Christians who are Canadian and Christians who are Spanish and so on.

There’s more to say about this too (and maybe I will post about this again, as well), but the last thing that this chapter touches on is the difference between grace and works. “Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due” (Romans 4:4).And in verse 16 Paul writes “That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his [Abraham’s] offspring - not only to the adherents of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all [both groups], as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’ - in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist” (Romans 4:16-17). Do you see how faith is an act of grace and not a work of man? It is a God-given thing. And do you see how this relates to our discussion in the book of Ephesians? The promise is given to those by grace (faith is an act of grace) by God who gives life to the dead (which we were spiritually before we were brought to faith) and calls into existence things that don’t yet exist, things that are not yet alive. How can man cause his own salvation by having to say yes to Jesus? How can man bring himself to life when he is dead? How can a man resuscitate himself when he is no longer alive? How can man speak himself out of the grave? That is spiritual evolution. Paul explicitly states in this passage that grace - and faith is a part of that - is a God-given gift. And similar to Ephesians 2, he states that it is not a work of man or else it would no longer be a gift. Any worldview that says that man has to accept or reject Jesus is going down a different path than this passage. Because that becomes a work that God would have to owe you for. Man could boast in this work! Do you see how that goes against what is written here? Any Jesus ands are works that are apart from grace - like saying you have to go to church to be saved, or be baptized to be saved, or do something in the local church to be saved, or if I do my checklist and then I’ll be covered for going to Heaven. No. I’ll touch on this in another blog, but I will say this here: By grace you are saved and by grace you grow and are changed and transformed and understand more about God - it is God’s doing alone and that work alone is sufficient.