~Dave Parks

The Gospel: Life in the Spirit

Posted on October 17, 2026 by PastorDave

ROMANS | Lesson 7 | Lesson Notes / Talking Points

GOD’S GLORIOUS GOSPEL

Romans, chapter 8

The Gospel: Life in the Spirit

I | CONTEXT AND CONNECTIONS

1 / We are calling this lesson Life in the Spirit because that is the over-arching message Paul is proclaiming. The Spirit will be named 21 times in chapter 8. Because the Spirit is the ‘law,’ the governing authority and power, and the very life that is now living in us—now that we are justified by faith in Christ and united with Christ, in union with Christ. He is in us and He leads us.

2 / So, as we go through chapter 8, we will—over and over—hear echoes and reverberations from chapters 5, 6, and 7. Chapter 8 is the joyous, hopeful, and climactic conclusion of this section of Romans that Paul began in chapter 5. Chapter 5 introduced the practical, personal, and present benefits we receive from since we have been justified by faith. The over-arching and all-inclusive benefit we have received is we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Formerly, in our natural-born human condition, we were enemies, condemned, and sentenced to the wrath of God against our unrighteousness. But now that we are justified—or ‘righteous-fied,’ declared and made to be righteous—we are now recipients of every blessing and promise of Grace that God gives to all those who are in Christ. Chapters 6-7 focused on our union with Christ—every Grace we receive from God comes to us because we are in Christ Jesus. So, every Gospel truth that Paul proclaims here in chapter 8 will find its connection in something Paul has already introduced in previous chapters, and is a follow-up to that truth. Of course, we won’t have time to trace and connect each one, but we will attempt to connect the most primary words and themes that Paul will develop here in chapter 8.

3 / But, just keep in mind that Paul’s primary purpose and burden here in chapter 8 is to draw our attention to the role of the Holy Spirit here in our present body and life—as we live out the life of personal and practical obedience to God in the life of the Spirit of Christ who is in us!

II | vv 1-11 | Since the Spirit of Christ lives in us, and we live in the life of the Holy Spirit, we can no more be condemned than Christ can be condemned—because we are ‘in Christ Jesus’!

1 / There are so many connections to be made here in these verses. The “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” takes us back to the end of ch 5. There, Paul expounds on the principle of the ‘federal head’—how both Adam and Christ stand in the place of all those who are ‘in’ them. And, since Adam acted as the ‘federal head’ of all those who would be born from him, after him, therefore we were all born in condemnation [see ch 5.16, 18]. But, Christ is also the ‘federal head’ of all those who have faith in Him and His perfect obedience and righteousness. And so, if you are a believer in Christ—you have put your faith and trust in Him as your only hope of righteousness before God, and you have been united with Him by faith [ch 6.1-11]—therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus! Jesus Christ has borne all our condemnation and put it all away!

2 / And that is because, when God justifies us, He also gives us the new birth—the Holy Spirit of Christ Himself lives in us! And, when the Spirit of Christ lives in us, then He lives in us the life we are now living! “Christ lives in me” by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit becomes the ‘law’ by which we live. And that ‘law,’ or reigning government in our life is the law of the Spirit of life. And the Spirit has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. Sin and death is no longer the ‘law’ by which we live.

3 / In truth, the governing ‘law’ of our lives is now the very life of Christ that He lived here among us—except that He is now raised—who is at the right hand of God: “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” THAT is so profound! Christ was born under the law [Galatians 4.4-5]—He submitted to the law of God and fulfilled its every requirement by His perfect obedience to it. And when we receive Him and are in Christ; and when we live our lives by walking according to the Spirit, we too fulfill the righteous requirements of the law!

4 / BUT, we don’t do that by our own efforts or abilities—it is all by the Spirit of Christ who lives in us. Those who are ‘in the flesh’ cannot please God [v 8]—our merely-human nature and mind is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed it cannot [v 7]. “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you” [v 9]. The Spirit of God who dwells in you is the very Spirit of Christ—and Christ fulfills the righteousness of the law, and the Spirit is life because of righteousness [v 10]. And then, in v 11, Paul introduces the promise of the final resurrection for which we are sealed and destined—and he will carry us in the next verses to that glorious destiny to which we have been saved—final glorification, raised in the image and likeness of Christ…‘in Him’!

III | vv 12-17 | We are not ‘debtors’ or obligated to ‘live according to the flesh’ any longer—either in the lifestyle and deeds of the flesh or attempting to live a life of obedience to God by the efforts of the flesh—because the Spirit of God makes us ‘adopted sons’ and children of God—in Christ and with Christ! We now live by a different life, ‘law,’ and allegiance!

1 / However, before Paul continues, he reinforces and presses upon us our responsibility to live by the law of the Spirit and not by the ‘law’ [under the dominion] of our former sin nature and the deeds of the body [sin] we lived in before we were justified and born again. We are no longer ‘debtors’ or under obligation to live like we used to before we were born again and indwelt by the Spirit. Since we are no longer controlled or under the dominion of sin, we yield our bodies, wills, and deeds to the Holy Spirit of Christ who now lives in us and rules over us—from within us. “…but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” Our allegiance now belongs to Christ and not to our former sins.

2 / We are not just ‘believers’ by profession—it is a real life in the Spirit…we are actually sons of God: “but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’” And the Holy Spirit gives us the assurance in our own hearts and spirits that we truly belong to God. And He gives us the assurance that, since we are in Christ, then what belongs to Christ belongs to us also! “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ…!” We need to stop and let that truth sink in—soak our souls in that truth! What belongs to us—and what we have been justified to receive—is not just stuff or things—it is God Himself! We are ‘heirs of God’! We belong to God—and He belongs to us! But the reason we are heirs of God is because we are in Christ. And what Christ is heir of, we are fellow heirs with Christ!

3 / Now, Paul will introduce another inescapable ‘fact of life’—and that is, this present life is full of all kinds of sufferings. And, yes, all of these sufferings are the curse and consequences of sin—all of which will end in death. YET, Paul has already taught us back in chapter 6, and here in ch 8.3, that Christ suffered for our sin by His death on the Cross. And, we have been united with Him in a death like His [6.5]. And so, since we have suffered with Him [by being united with Him in His death], then by that same faith God promises us “in order that we may also be glorified with Him” [in His resurrection]. And so, here, Paul introduces two more truths that he will elaborate on through the rest of this chapter: sufferings and Glory [or ‘glorified’]—our final, ultimate, and eternal destined resurrected Glory!

IV | vv 18-25 | Yes! we will ‘suffer with Him [Christ]’ here in this present time—but we are destined for Glory—the promised Glory of the resurrection and the New Creation!

1 / Now, since Paul has introduced the sufferings of this present time, he proceeds to put them in perspective with the glory that is to be revealed to us—to conclude that there is no comparison! We all know that sufferings of all sorts are a fact of this present life. And since there is now no condemnation to those who are justified and in Christ Jesus, then shouldn’t that exempt us from sufferings? His answer, of course, is No. Because he has just told us in the last line of the previous paragraph that we suffer with Christ—in union with His death. So, Paul makes the comforting summary statement from his own understanding of our union with Christ: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” [see also 2 Cor. 4.16-18]

2 / Here are some truths we must always keep in consideration—even as we experience the inevitable sufferings we will experience here in our fallen, broken, sin-cursed earthly life—(not necessarily in the order in which Paul will develop them):

[1] All of the sufferings of this present time are the natural, mortal consequences of the same sin that brought our condemnation upon us [from which we have now been saved]. For the creation was subjected to futility when Adam sinned in the beginning of our human history [see Genesis 3.17-19]. Futility means ‘vanity, purposelessness, emptiness, brokenness, out of order, not working as it was originally intended to work.’ God created the world to be ‘very good.’ But then, when sin entered the world, death became the ultimate end, and all the sufferings of this present world are the precursors, or the dying process, of the ultimate end. We are living now in the bondage to corruption. Our sufferings are all the ‘rot’ and decay that set into our world as the curse and consequence of the reign of sin.

[2] But, even when God pronounced the curse of death, corruption, and sufferings on the earth, He also promised the Redeemer would come—the seed of the woman, who, of course, is Christ. God subjected the creation to futility—BUT in the hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

[3] The Promise is that Christ will come and redeem the creation back to God—restore it in the future promised New Creation. [see Ephesians 1.9-10; Colossians 1.19-20; Revelation 21.1-5; et al]

[4] And so, the sufferings of this present world are both the ‘death throes’ and agonizing pains of the eventual destruction that God will bring upon the present creation in the end—and they are also the groanings, labor, and travail of childbirth, or the birth of the New Creation [vv 22-23].

[5] That New Creation has been promised and given to us! In fact, Paul calls the New Creation the revealing of the sons of God [see 2 Corinthians 5.17]. Jesus Christ Himself is the New Man, New Adam, and the Creator of the New Creation. There will be no sin, no suffering, no pain, no crying or tears, and no death in the New Creation. We’re not there yet—but God has promised it, and it is coming!

[6] That New Creation will be brought to pass by the power of the Holy Spirit, giving life in the final resurrection to Glory—the Spirit will raise us up in Glory just as He raised Jesus Christ in Glory [v 11]!

[7] And, even now, as we suffer, we are eagerly expecting, anticipating, and waiting for that promised Glory—when we will inherit and enter into that New Creation Glory along with the redeemed creation: “And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies [our final resurrection in Glory].” [see 2 Peter 3.11-13]

3 / And so, all of this promised prospect of the future Glory that will be given to us in that Day becomes our comfort and encouragement to endure our present sufferings—with rejoicing—with hope [this takes us back again to ch 5.1-5]. “For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience [endurance with rejoicing—knowing that we will receive it!]. REMEMBER how we have defined Bible ‘hope’—it is not an iffy, wishful thinking kind of hope. Bible hope is the certain assurance and confident expectation that God will do what He has promised to do in His Word!

V | vv 26-30 | And, in the meantime, the same Spirit that will raise our mortal bodies in the resurrection at the Last Day is also helping us in our weakness right now in this present life of suffering—and He is working all things together for our good as He accomplishes God’s purpose to bring us safely and securely to His promised Glory!

1 / Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. This is such a loaded promise!

[1] Likewise [at the same time—in the same way]…in addition to our considerations of the Glory that awaits us. We are not alone in our sufferings. Because even as we suffer, likewise the Spirit is strengthening us by the life He gives us and the assurances of the promised Glory of God.

[2] Likewise, not only will the Spirit resurrect and raise us up in the Last Day, but He is also presently helping us in the sufferings of this present time. The very Presence and life of the Holy Spirit in us now is the firstfruits of the our resurrection life in Glory. We now live by the life that will resurrect us then!

[3] Likewise the Spirit is not only indwelling us, but He is also helping us in our weakness by bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God and heirs of all the Glory God has promised to give us in that Day. The Spirit continuously reminds us of our inheritance in the Glory that is to come!

2 / The primary means of grace that God gives us to help us endure our present sufferings with rejoicing is prayer. By praying, we surrender, yield, and trust ourselves to God’s love and will. We pray so we will remain faithful and obedient to God’s will and purposes in our sufferings. BUT, as it is often the case, in the confusion, extremity, and weakness that we experience in our suffering, we do not know what to pray for as we ought. We get discouraged. We wonder how we will survive. We don’t know what to do. We wonder whether our present sufferings will even destroy us. But, the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Even when we cannot even think straight or keep our faith in perspective—when we cannot ‘draw equal marks’ between our present sufferings and our hope of the Glory of God, when we cannot articulate and express even what we are thinking and feeling, the Holy Spirit prays for us. The Spirit takes our inarticulate ‘blubberings’ before God and intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words—words and language that is in ‘the language of God.’ The Holy Spirit is God, and He shares the mind, will, and purposes of God. And He who searches hearts [God] knows what is the mind of the Spirit [as He intercedes for us], because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

3 / And, in this intercession of the Spirit with God on our behalf, the will of God is perfectly synced, accomplished, and fulfilled according to God’s purpose even in every experience and circumstance of our sufferings. We know that! We are sure of that! God has promised that! “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.” And what is God’s purpose? It is many-fold, but it is all summed up in the next words of promise and God’s purpose—and that is to conform us to the image and likeness of Jesus Christ and ultimately bring us to His promised Glory! NOTE how this ‘chain of Grace’ ends in GLORY!

[1] God foreknew us—that is, He set His love on us from before the creation of the world and chose us in Christ to belong to Him and be with Him in His Glory. [see John 17]

[2] God predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. [see Hebrews 2.10-18]

[3] God called us to faith, to believe in Christ here in our earthly lifetime.

[4] God justified us—which is the over-arching message of this letter…

[5] And God glorified us. This is the Glory to which God purposed, chosen, predestinated, called, and justified us—and the Glory He has promised to share with us in the New Creation. And, even though, now in the sufferings of this present time, sometimes we can’t see or even envision how such a Glory could ever come out of the brokenness and pain of our present experience, in purpose of God, it is already accomplished! It is as good as done!

VI | vv 31-39 | How then shall we respond to our present sufferings as we consider them through the lens and prism of God’s sovereign purpose, promise, and love? We ‘rejoice in the hope of the Glory of God’! [see chapter 5.1-5]

1 / So, how should we respond to the sufferings of this present time … especially as we consider them in light of all of God’s revealed purpose and promises? What shall we say to these things? If you count them, Paul gives us a rapid-fire series of six questions we may often ask. Read them and mark them. But, the sum of them all will take us to the heart of the love of God—the love of Christ [see ch 5.5, 8]. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” The resounding answer is “No one—nothing!” Our experience is the constant baptism, immersion in all kinds of overwhelming sufferings: “As it is written [Psalm 44.22], ‘For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.’” Verses 35-39 are all various experiences of “the sufferings of this present time” [v 18].

2 / And yet, “NO! In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us!” I’m not quite certainly sure what Paul means by ‘more than conquerors’ unless he means for us to know and rejoice in the hope that, not only will we win all the battles in our sufferings of this present age, but we will also certainly, surely, rejoicingly receive and enjoy all the promised joys of the Glory we will share with God ‘in Christ’! “For I am sure that…nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!”

And you and I can be just as sure!

ROMANS.L7.Romans, chapter 8.Life in the Spirit Download

Posted in Bible Studies, Gospel, Lesson Notes, ROMANS, Sunday School lessons | Tagged Bible Studies, Glory, God's Glorious Gospel, Gospel, Lesson Notes/Talking Points, Life in the Spirit, more than conquerors, New creation, Prayer, rejoicing in suffering, Resurrection, ROMANS, Romans chapter 8, Spirit of adoption, sufferings of this present time, Sunday School lessons, the love of Christ, the love of God, unbreakable chain of Grace | Leave a comment

The Gospel: Union With Christ

Posted on October 10, 2026 by PastorDave

ROMANS | Lesson 6 | Lesson Notes / Talking Points

GOD’S GLORIOUS GOSPEL

Romans, chapters 6-7

The Gospel: Union with Christ

I | CONTEXT AND CONNECTIONS

1 / We will attempt in this lesson to at least outline and follow Paul’s train of thought and the development of his message of “The Glorious Gospel of God.” In broad outline of the whole book thus far, in chapters 1-5, Paul has been proclaiming what God has accomplished for us in the Gospel. Now, in chapters 6-8, He will bring it home to our heart and lives by telling us what God has accomplished in us by the Gospel. As we read through these chapters, we will observe a distinct moving into our innermost hearts and lives as he describes how the Gospel does its work in us—especially here in chapters 6-7 with respect to sin in our lives.

2 / The most core and pivotal message that Paul will deliver is our Union with Christ. That’s what the Gospel does—the Gospel joins us with Christ. Not just an association with who Christ is and what He has done for us, but our very identification with Christ Himself. So vitally are we joined with Christ and united with Him, that Paul will proclaim that when Christ died for us, we died with Him—in Him. And when Christ was resurrected from death, we were resurrected and raised with Him—in Him. And that’s the way we must live out the life we are now living. We live in Him, and He lives in us.

3 / By way of connection, we must begin reading chapter 6 where it comes in Paul’s writing—after the end of chapter 5. As chapter 5 ends, Paul has been describing what we called in our last lesson “federal headship.” Whatever the ‘federal head’ does, those who are ‘in him’ do the same. It was so with Adam in his sin, and it is so with Christ in His death and resurrection. The ‘federal headship’ of Christ is another way of expressing ‘union with Christ.’

4 / We will follow the reading of these two chapters according to Paul’s questions that he raises at the beginning of each section of his message: “What shall we say then?” [6.1]; “What then?” [6.15]; “Or do you not know, brothers?” [7.1]; “What then shall we say?” [7.7]. As always, all we can do is summarize Paul’s main Gospel truths in each section and show how they connect and explain the whole message of Union with Christ.

II | ch 6.1-14 | Union with Christ in His death and resurrection saves us from living in sin

1 / As Paul does all throughout this letter, he is anticipating and pre-empting questions his readers—or even his detractors who seek to find flaws, poke holes, disprove, or refute his Gospel of free Grace through faith in Christ alone. That’s what he’s doing by this Q&A section: What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! This is a follow up to the previous section where he repeatedly says that the free gift by the grace of that one Man Jesus Christ abounded for many [15], and his grand conclusion but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more [20]. So, the possible confusion—or even the objection—could be said this way: Well, if the abundance of God’s grace through faith in Christ justifies me from all the abundance of my sin, then does that mean that since I am justified freely and wholly from all my sin…that I now have the liberty to continue to sin with impunity? Paul’s rejoinder is: By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

2 / Paul is not saying here that justified believers in Jesus Christ do not commit sin. He will go into this issue at length and in depth in ch 7.7-25 using his own personal experience as an illustration of our daily, on-going sin that remains in us. But, continue in sin means to practice sin as a way of life or as the controlling, ruling authority in our lives and conduct. Believers in Jesus Christ do not—indeed, cannot—live in on-going practices of sin. The reason being: we are united with Christ in His death and resurrection! Paul will draw out both of these inseparable provisions of the Gospel—Christ’s death for our sin and His resurrection for our justification [see ch 4.24-25]—in the following verses of this section.

3 / The illustration that Paul uses is baptism [immersion, plunging under water]. Baptism illustrates, confesses, and proclaims our union with Christ. Also, baptism here should be viewed from a two-fold perspective—kind of like viewing the same object through two lenses to bring it into sharp focus. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, or order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk [live, conduct our lives] in newness of life. When we believe in Jesus Christ, we are united with His own death on the Cross as the propitiation / sin payment for our sins. So much so, that when Christ died for our sins, we died in Him along with all our sins. That is, when Christ died for our sins and was buried [baptized, immersed into the grave], we too died with Him and were buried [baptized] with Him! And then, when Christ was raised from the dead in His resurrection, we too were raised with Him in His own resurrection. We are so united with Christ and ‘in Him,’ that when He died, was buried, and raised again from death—so were we! For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His! We know that our old self [that continued in sin, lived in sin as a ruling, governing law] was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin [5-6]. Then, the second lens through which we view baptism is our physical baptism in water as our confession and testimony that we have been united with Christ by faith in Him.

4 / Now, since we know that [as Paul repeatedly reminds us in vv 3, 6, 8, 9, 16], we must live in that reality! Therefore since we know that, believe and trust in that reality by saving faith, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus [vv 11-14]. NOT LIVING IN SIN IS NOW OUR CHOICE, OUR DECISION, OUR COMMITMENT! Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body [connect with ch 5.17, 21], to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present your members to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since not under law but under grace. Before we were saved, we were enslaved to sin. Sin ruled over us with dominion. But now! We have been united with Christ in His death to put our sin’s rule over us to death—and in His resurrection to raise us up again to live in righteousness as our ruling government over our lives and conduct! We don’t HAVE TO sin. Our residual indwelling sin CANNOT MAKE US sin. We have been united with Christ—our ruling sin nature and desires have been put to death. We now live united with Christ in His own eternal life to live in righteousness!

III | ch 6.15-23 | Union with Christ liberates us from slavery to the Law and sin—and makes us love-slaves to Christ

1 / Since Paul has already introduced our former way of life in sin as ‘slavery’ or being enslaved to sin [6], he now returns to the example and illustration of slavery to explain how our union with Christ frees us [7] from the rule of sin in our lives and conduct. And since he has also brought us back to our relationship with the Law of God [14], he will now describe in more detail our relationship with the Law of God as it relates to our desires and motivation to live a holy life. He has just said in 6.14 “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you not under law but under grace.” So, he means for us to understand that as long as we are under law, we are under the dominion and enslaved to sin. So, he is using the Law here to refer to when we attempt to keep the Law to earn our salvation. Keep in mind: justification is ‘being made righteous / to righteous-fy.’ The truth that Paul has been emphasizing is that righteousness is either ‘gifted’ to us by faith in Christ; or it is ‘earned’ by us by our works keeping the Law.

2 / So, the question here is: Since we are not ‘under the law’ to earn our salvation [but under grace], does that mean we should disregard it and sin without compunction or conscience? By no means! And then, the rest of his explanation has to do with a slavery analogy. A slave does the will of the master. A slave is owned and under the dominion of the slave-master and does what the master desires and commands. When we were enslaved to the Law in our efforts to do what the Law commands and requires to earn our justification, the only outcome of that slavery is death. [This is in contrast to the life we have from being in union with Christ.] But Law-keeping is always trying to perform external acts that will qualify us to be ‘good enough for God.’ It can’t be done. And, we don’t attempt to keep the Law out of obedience from the heart [17].

3 / Paul is emphatic here: every one of us is enslaved to some master that leads us to sin [16]. Either it is the Law of ‘religion,’ or it is our own will or some other creation object—or it is Christ. And you present yourself to that sin-master to fulfill its desires, all in the hopes it will satisfy your desires to be fulfilled, or made whole and complete. This is what Paul means when he talks about what fruit were you getting at that time [21].

4 / BUT, the only way we can be fulfilled in righteousness is to be heart-slaves, love-slaves to Christ. If you are attempting to earn righteousness by serving any other slave-master, the only fruit you will earn is death [16, 19, 21, 23]. And the only way you can be gifted to be slaves of righteousness leading to sanctification and its end, eternal life is by the free gift of God [which] is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord [23]. That’s why “But thanks be to God” [17] is the only response we can have and give—because this love-slavery to Christ is by God’s Grace through faith in Jesus Christ!

IV | ch 7.1-6 | Union with Christ releases us from being ‘married’ to the Law as the motivation for our obedience—and ‘marries’ us to Christ in love…to please Him by our obedience

1 / Paul pursues this same theme of not under law but under grace through our union with Christ. In the last illustration, he employed the illustration of slavery. Now he pursues the illustration of marriage to continue teaching our union with Christ. When we believe on Christ to be justified, made righteous before God, God marries us to Christ! We used to be married to the law [whatever law we were ‘married’ to]. But now, when we are married to Christ, then the ‘law marriage partner’ died. Why? Because Christ fulfilled all its demands, requirements, and judgments against us.

2 / So, to follow Paul’s analogy: “…that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives … For a married woman is bound by the law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage … But if her husband dies, she is free from that law…” Then the marriage analogy is applied to us: Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ [that is, through our union with Christ, when Christ died in body on the Cross, He fulfilled and perfectly satisfied the law’s requirements, demands, and judgments against us, and in Christ, we also died to the law] … so that you may belong to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit to God.

3 / This is so beautiful—to think and to know with certainty that when we trust Christ, we are in union with Christ! And, it is a marriage union. Christ gives Himself to us to be our Heavenly Husband and Bridegroom! And the fruit we bear to God is the fruit of righteousness. When we were married to the Law [whatever law it was], the only fruit we could bear is death. Our law ‘marriage partner’ could never satisfy our desires for righteousness; it could only stir up our sinful passions that were in our born human nature—ending up in bearing fruit for death.

4 / But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. And all of this is because of our union with Christ!

V | ch 7.7-25 | Union with Christ gives us the discernment, the desire, and the victory over our struggles with our residual sin in our present mortal bodies

1 / And now, Paul answers another question: What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means? He says this because he has just concluded a section in which he has bemoaned and blamed the Law back when we were enslaved to the law—that the Law couldn’t satisfy us or make us righteous, or even inspire us to want to be righteous with the righteousness of God. [Though we made every attempt to keep it with the hopes that we could ‘earn’ righteousness. No! The only thing our Law slave-master / marriage partner did was to stir up more and more sinful desires and passions in us [5]. So, does that mean that the Law itself is sin? By no means! [Have you been keeping count? This is now the fourth time he has used this strong, bold, and adamant negative assertion [6.2, 15; 7.7, 13]. “Certainly not!”

2 / NO! The Law in itself is not sin! Because the Law is the expression of God’s own personal holiness and righteousness. And the Law is the code and standard of righteousness that God requires from us—which we cannot attain, earn, or work out by our own efforts in our born human nature. Paul will go to say in v 12: So the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. But that’s precisely what this personal testimony is all about. Paul will describe in graphic and painful detail how the Law performed its holy, righteous, and good ministry in his own conscience and life.

3 / There are two time-frames of his life that Paul will testify about—how the Law worked in his religious life to bring him to a knowledge of his sin and his need of the righteousness of Christ. [1] vv 7-14: He testifies to his former life—leading up to his conversion to faith in Christ. NOTE how he uses past tenses in this part of his testimony; [2] vv 15-25: he testifies to his present experiences and struggles with his residual, still-indwelling sin that still remains in his mortal, physical, human body and life. He uses ‘I’ and present verb tenses—it is still going on! As we all can testify from our own painful experiences.

4 / vv 7-14: how the Law of God worked in his former life up until his conversion by faith in Christ and His righteousness. Remember that all this time, Paul was exceedingly religious and self-righteous—thinking he was ‘good,’ Law-abiding, and attaining a righteousness by his own efforts and works [see Philippians 3.4-11]. Yet if it had not been the Law, I would not have known sin. So, what the Law did in his conscience was to bring him to the realization that he was a sinner before the righteousness of God. All of us must come to this conviction of our own personal sin, unrighteousness, guilt, and unworthiness of the grace of God. [This, too, is my own personal testimony as a very ‘religious’ young boy … before God convicted me of my sinful unrighteous, self-righteousness—a guilty sinner in need of repentance…] So what did the Law do in Paul’s conscience?

[1] First of all, the Law of God defined his sin. With Paul, it was the sin of all kinds of covetousness [8]. Here is an interesting truth about covetousness. It is the last of the Ten Commandments. And, it is the only commandment that deals exclusively with the innermost desires and motivations of our hearts. The other commandments are external. We can make every effort to do all the outward works and activities to give the appearance, at least, that we are living up to them. Yes, we know that Jesus interprets them to convict the deeper spiritual violations of even the external commandments: lust in our hearts is tantamount to adultery, bitterness and hatred in our hearts is tantamount to murder, etc. But, we can still attempt to live up to the external compliances with the other commandments. But covetousness will slay us every time—as it did Paul [8-11]. The Law truthfully and righteously defines our sin for what it is.

[2] Secondly, the Law of God reveals and exposes our sin—as it did Paul’s. The Law revealed and exposed to Paul how his covetousness worked itself out in his conduct. Even the very attempt to work out our own righteousness before God and others is covetousness. Because what we are coveting is God’s own righteousness—except we will work out our own! We covet the sovereignty and Lordship that God alone has. We covet mastery over our own lives. And, we covet the approval and praise of others. And on and on… And so it is the goodness, holiness, and righteousness of the Law that defines and reveals the hideousness of our sin to us—“in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.”

5 / vv 15-25: how the Law of God worked in his present experience—even as a justified, righteous believer in Jesus Christ. “For I delight in the Law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” [vv 22-23]. All of us can say “Amen!” to Paul’s struggles. Even while we do not continue in sin [v 1] or live in sin as the ruling ‘law’ of our lives, sin still remains in us. It is grievous and painful to us. But we struggle with it. Yes! we are united with Christ in His death to our sin and His resurrected life for our eternal life, yet we, too, have to moan “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” [v 18]. We share Paul’s confession here: that the ability and power to live righteously before God is not in our fleshly, human ability. But it is possible through our union with Christ—to Whom we are united by faith! And it shall be done by the life of the Holy Spirit of Christ who lives in us! And Paul will begin to draw this out in chapter 8.

6 / So now, let’s give thanks to God again for His amazing Grace:

“Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death! Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the Law of God with my mind, but with the flesh I serve the law of sin.”

ROMANS.L6.Romans, chapters 6-7.Union with Christ Download

Posted in Bible Studies, Gospel, Lesson Notes, ROMANS, Sunday School lessons | Tagged Baptism, Bible Studies, God's Glorious Gospel, Gospel, Lesson Notes/Talking Points, ROMANS, Romans 6-7, Romans-chapters 6-7, slaves to sin, struggles with sin, Sunday School lessons, Union with Christ, United with Christ | Leave a comment

The Gospel: Peace With God

Posted on October 3, 2026 by PastorDave

ROMANS | Lesson 5 | Lesson Notes / Talking Points

GOD’S GLORIOUS GOSPEL

Romans, chapter 5

The Gospel: Peace With God

I | CONTEXT AND CONNECTIONS

As you begin to read Romans, chapter 5, the first word you read is ‘Therefore…’ As we always say, “Anytime you see ‘therefore,’ you need to know what it’s ‘there for.’ Therefore means, ‘this is the conclusion or consequence of what I’ve just said.’ So, Paul’s Therefore is a consequence of what he’s been teaching just prior to this: ‘Therefore, since we have been justified by faith…”. What he’s been teaching is that the only way we can be justified before God is by faith in Jesus Christ! Justified means ‘to be credited with / declared / made righteous before God’ [3.21-22]. And the only way we can be made righteous before God is by faith in Jesus Christ—by trusting, relying, depending on Christ’s righteousness that was demonstrated by His death on His cross and by His resurrection again from death [4.22-25]. Paul has elaborately drawn this out in the extended previous section, chs 3.21—4.25. Now, Paul will begin to tell us what the consequences or effects are…

II | vv 1-5 | Here are some benefits of Grace we enjoy ‘since’ and as a ‘therefore’ consequence of ‘having been justified by faith’ in Jesus Christ

1 / We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. ‘Peace with God’ means that the previous state of hostility and enmity has come to an end. What was this previous state of hostility, enmity, and warfare? This verse takes us back to ch 1.18: For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men… We need to connect these two verses. The wrath of God was His just and inevitable sentence and judgment against our unrighteousness. But, when we are justified by faith before God, then God’s holy and just warfare and hostility against our sins has been satisfied by the death and resurrection of Christ [3.26]. How? and Why? Because God’s wrath that our sins deserved has been poured out and executed upon Christ when He died in our place and bore God’s wrath upon Himself that we deserved. And since He made full and final payment for all our sins, then God’s wrath has been satisfied, and we are no longer under that sentence [3.24-25]. Paul will draw this conclusion in these words in v 9: Since, therefore, we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. Now, instead of being sentenced to bear God’s holy, just, and righteous wrath, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ!

2 / Through Him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand… Where are we ‘standing’? Our ‘standing’ refers to a new relationship we now with God. Peace with God is not just a ‘cease-fire.’ It is more than that; our standing is now into this grace of God! We stand in God’s favor, in His Grace, we are accepted by God into His very Presence! And we also have obtained by faith every blessing and benefit in Christ that Christ Himself is and has! When we believe in Christ and are in Him by faith, then we enjoy every benefit that belongs to Christ—including being with Him in Glory!

3 / Which is what the next benefit of having been justified by faith promises us: and we rejoice in hope of the Glory of God! This hope of the Glory of God is the promise that we will share His Glory in His Heaven—in His very Presence! And this hope is not just a wishful, ‘maybe,’ ‘iffy’ kind of hope. Bible hope is a confident expectation and certain assurance that God will do what He has said He will do. And this is what we rejoice in…this is what gives us our joy and happiness, even when the trials, sorrows, griefs, and adversities of life come upon us—as they certainly will…keep on reading…

4 / Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings… Only the hope of the Gospel and the assurance of having been justified by faith in Christ can give this kind of rejoicing that is not contingent upon the circumstances and experiences of this human life we all live. Because the sufferings—of all kinds and degrees—will come. BUT, instead of separating us from the love of God and cancelling our standing in the Grace of God [see ch 8.31-39], our sufferings will even strengthen and enrich our rejoicing—even in the midst of those sufferings [ch 8.18-25]. How does that work?…

[1] …knowing that suffering produces endurance… When we know and rejoice in our justification before God through faith in Christ, our sufferings do not break us down, but rather strengthen us up. Our sufferings are ‘stress tests’ of our faith in Christ. But when our faith is in Christ, not in ourselves, we find out that Christ does not fail us. And as we trust Christ in our sufferings, we discover and experience that His strength becomes ours! He works His strength in our weaknesses. And, like a muscle is strengthened through stressful exercise, so our faith and confidence in Christ grows stronger and more enduring.

[2] …knowing that endurance produces character… This very word character means ‘tested-ness.’ And the test is whether Christ is real or not, strong or not. What is being tested is Christ in you, the hope of Glory [Colossians 1.27]. And since Christ is our Glory, our hope of Glory, and already in Glory—then He will see us through every temptation, trial, and suffering and bring us to His Glory [Hebrews 2.10]!

[3] …knowing that character produces hope… Paul brings us back to we rejoice in hope of the Glory of God. And it is the testing and proving of our hope in Christ that makes us rejoice—even in our sufferings. And Paul assures us that our hope in Christ and in the Glory that is yet to be revealed to us and in us will not fail us—we will not be disappointed in the end…‘does not put us to shame’…and we must not be discouraged or lose hope in the present sufferings. And what gives us this hope in life and in death? It is because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. The gift of the Holy Spirit is an accompanying gift [and guarantee of all future gifts] that God gives us when He justifies us through our faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit witnesses and testifies in our inner spirit that God loves us! This is a subjective assurance that the Holy Spirit gives us—even as we suffer! NOTE: our physical afflictions and sufferings are not testimonies to God’s anger or wrath against us—rather, they testify and witness to God’s love for us. God makes us more like Christ through our sufferings if we suffer in the knowledge and assurance of our justification before God.

**III | vv 6-11 | God also gives us an objective witness and testimony to His love and promise of sharing His Glory in Heaven…since we have been justified through faith in Christ**

vv 6-8: Paul reminds us that God loved us—and Christ died for us—when we were in our weakest state: For while we were still weak [in our sin and unable to save ourselves], at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. That’s who God saves…that’s who God justifies when they believe in Christ—the ungodly [see also ch 4.5]. And Christ died for the ungodly as a testimony to the love, grace, and justice of God. God’s love in Christ’s death for us is so God-like, so un-man-like, that it defies any comparison or precedent that we can point to in our merely human experience. For one will scarcely die [it will never happen]—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die [OK, there may be a case where someone would volunteer to die to save another extraordinarily ‘good’ fellow human being—but none of us was ‘good’ in any sense of the word in God’s assessment]—but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us! So, how can we ever doubt God’s love for us, now that we have been justified by faith in Christ and given us access to Himself and all His Grace in Christ? If He loved us so—and if Christ died for us—when we were ungodly and while we were still sinners, will He not continue to love us until we receive the full measure of the hope of the Glory of God?

vv 9-11 | Paul continues to press home our rejoicing in hope of the Glory of God… Since, therefore, [going back to v 1] we have now been justified by His blood [Christ’s death and the offering of His own righteousness for our unrighteousness], much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. This is another testimony and witness to just how ‘justified’ we are—this is what it means to have also obtained access by faith into this Grace in which we stand. The word that Paul uses here is reconciled. “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.” This is a commentary on ch 4.24-25: The Gospel includes both the death of Jesus Christ to pay the righteous penalty and punishment for our sins, and also His life in His resurrection. Not only did He die for us, but He was also raised from death for us. And when He died for our sins, our sins died with Him and in Him. And when He was resurrected from death to life, He demonstrated that our sins have been put away forever—and His perfectly obedient life is now ours! We have been reconciled to God—God is at peace with us, perfectly, and forever!

IV | vv 12-21 | Jesus Christ and Adam stand before God in similar roles in relationship with the people they represent—both were in human history as a “federal head” of those who are ‘in’ them

1 / All throughout this section, Paul is going to use the words “by one man / one man” over and over—referring to either Adam or Jesus Christ. When he does this, he will tell us what each one man did, and what effect it had on those who were ‘in’ that man when he did what he did. Paul will relate Adam and Jesus Christ to one another so closely, he even says: …Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come [v 14]. Adam may be the last person we would expect to be a type of Christ—but read on…

2 / By doing this, Paul is referring to both Adam or Christ as a federal head. He doesn’t use those words, but that’s what he means. So what is a federal head? The word federal refers to ‘one’ person or entity that acts on the behalf of those whom he represents—in other words, whatever the federal head does, those whom he represents do also. [Think of our ‘power of attorney’ acting in another’s person/stead…]

3 / In fact, the word federal comes from the Latin word foedus [pronounced: foy-dus] which means ‘a covenant, pact, or common mutual agreement and union.’ So, if something is federal, it means that the federal head acts ‘in the place of’ all the constituent parties that are in the federation / union. We use this word and concept all the time. For example, the government of our collective states is called the federal government. The states are represented by the federal government. In our federal government, whatever the federal does, all the states who are members of the federation do the same. Take a labor union for another example: the members of the union elect a representative to bargain and speak for them—in their person and place. Whether they like it or not, agree with it or not, when their federal head or union boss speaks or acts, everyone of the members speak or act the same thing. The examples go on and on…

4 / So, with that in mind, let’s read and see what these two federal heads—Adam and Jesus Christ—have done in their respective roles in the history of justification by faith in Jesus Christ…

vv 12-14: Verse 12 tells us in a three-fold progression of thought how we all came to be dead, both physically and spiritually before God—and all through the federal headship of one man, Adam.

[1] …just as sin came into the world through one man This, of course, is Adam’s transgression against the authority and command of God in the Garden of Eden. When Adam ate the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, he sinned—and when Adam sinned, since we were all ‘in him’ [though yet to be born], his sin came into the world and upon everyone who would be born from him, after him—which is every one of us in the human race. In other words, Adam’s sin altered both his physical and spiritual ‘DNA’ for us all who would be born after him—in the likeness of his fallen human nature;

[2] …and death [came] through sin… since that was the consequence God had prescribed: in the day you eat of it, you will surely die. And, as Paul will explicitly state in 6.23, For the wages of sin is death.

[3] …and so death spread to all men because all sinned. NOTE: this is not the same as saying because all have sinned [as in 3.23]—referring to the personal acts and experience of each individual human being—but “all sinned.” This is a particular verb case [we call it aorist which means ‘an act that is done in a point in time in the past’]. So, the statement says that when Adam sinned as our federal head, since we were all in him yet to be born, everyone of us sinned in his sin. And lest anyone say, “But, that’s not fair! I was not there. That was Adam, not me. You can’t blame me and make me a sinner just because Adam sinned, and I would be born thousands of years later as a member of his progeny race of mankind. And, if I had been in Adam’s place, I would not have sinned [which everyone of us would have].” But, God says it is fair—and so it is. God created Adam in a state of innocence of sin and righteousness—but Adam had the ‘created-in’ capacity to become unrighteous, which he did. AND ALSO, if you have a problem with Adam being your federal head in his transgression, then you need to read on and remember that the same federal headship will be exercised by Christ in His act of righteousness and obedience for our justification. So the federal headship / representative / substitute role is exercised by both Adam and Christ.

vv 13-14: the point that Paul is making here is that, even the Law God gave at Sinai would not come until hundreds of years later [when God would explicitly define and codify transgression,] still there was a ‘law’ of disobedience, of right and wrong, that was written ‘by nature’ on our hearts and consciences in the creation [see 2.12-16]. That’s why death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam…and before the giving of the Law. Then, by adding “Adam, who was a type of the One who was to come,” Paul leads us into the next discussions of how Adam’s and Christ’s federal headship are alike…and not alike…

vv 15-17: But the free gift is not like the trespass… The dissimilarities Paul points out are basically these [and they are but generalized here in these expressions]:

[1] Death vs. life—Many died through one man’s trespass—but through the obedience of Christ, many will live [a word that Paul will use repeatedly in the following verses].

[2] Adam’s trespass vs. Christ’s obedience. Adam disobeyed—Christ obeyed [v 19].

[3] One man’s sin=many died vs. free gift by the grace of that one Man Jesus Christ abounded for many=many are made righteous.

[4] Condemnation vs. justification. Adam’s transgression brought condemnation upon the whole human race that was ‘in him’ when he sinned; Christ’s righteousness obedience brought justification to all who believe ‘in Him.’ Condemnation brings death; justification brings life.

[5] Reign of death vs. reigning in life. Notice ‘who’ reigns, and in ‘what’ sphere each reigns: because of Adam’s sin [as our federal head, and we in him], death reigned through that one man—all died. BUT, in Christ, our federal head by faith in Him, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one Man Jesus Christ. He doesn’t just say that life will reign in us as death reigned in us through Adam, but that we will reign in life. What we need to see and understand here is that: in the original creation, Adam was created to reign in life over the creation God had entrusted to him. But, he failed, and forfeited his reigning life, not only for himself, but for all those who were ‘in him’ and would be born after him. But, since Adam was a type of the one who was to come [Christ], then when Christ does come—as the second Adam / last Man [1 Corinthians 15.45-47]—then as the federal head of all those who believe in Him, when He assumes His Kingship over righteousness and life, we assume that same co-reigning kingship in life—since we are ‘in Him’ as our federal head, both in His obedience in His life and in His victory over sin and death in His resurrection! What we must see also is that Jesus Christ is creating a whole new-creation ‘humanity’ [2 Cor. 5.17].

vv 18-21: Here’s another “Therefore…” since Paul is going to re-state, sum up, apply, and give us the conclusions and consequences of all these comparisons he’s been making, beginning in v 12. His summary statement is:

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one Man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

That one summary statement, when read and interpreted through the prism of federal headship makes us understand how Adam represented and acted for us all [since we were ‘in him’] … and Christ represented and acted for us all, His people, as our Substitute and federal head, and we are ‘in Him’ by faith!

In v 20, Paul returns again to the Law as he did in vv 13-14 … to show that what the Law did when it was given was to specifically codify the righteousness of God that He requires us to live up to [which we can’t, didn’t, and won’t]; and the Law by which we all will be judged; and the Law which indicts us all to be guilty; and the Law which sentences us all to condemnation – BUT this is the Law which Christ fulfilled perfectly, fully, finally, and satisfactorily to God by His ‘one act of righteousness’ [v 18] and ‘the one Man’s obedience’ [v 19]. [see also ch 3.26, 31]. These summary resumes’ include the whole of Christ’s coming into our world, the life He lived, the death He died, and the resurrection life He rose from the dead to live forever!

BUT—“where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

When Christ cried from His Cross: “It is finished!” He was offering to God His Gospel obedience of righteousness! And when we believe in Him by faith, God credits us [who are unrighteous, ungodly, sinners in Adam] with the perfect righteousness of God in Jesus Christ!

That’s what it means to be justified by faith in Jesus Christ— and have peace with God!

ROMANS.L5.Romans, chapter 5.Peace with God Download

Posted in Bible Studies, Gospel, Lesson Notes, ROMANS, Sunday School lessons | Tagged Adam type of Christ, Bible Studies, federal head, God's Glorious Gospel, Justified by faith, Lesson Notes/Talking Points, Peace with God, rejoice in hope of the Glory of God, ROMANS, Romans 5, Sunday School lessons, The Gospel-Peace with God, therefore | Leave a comment

The Gospel: Faith ‘Counted’ for Righteousness

Posted on September 26, 2026 by PastorDave

ROMANS | Lesson 4 | Lesson Notes / Talking Points

GOD’S GLORIOUS GOSPEL

Romans, chapter 4

The Gospel: Faith ‘Counted’ for Righteousness

I | CONTEXT AND CONNECTIONS

We have been following Paul’s letter to the saints in Rome as he meticulously develops and proclaims God’s Glorious Gospel. He is unfolding and developing the truths of the Gospel feature by feature.

ch 1.1-7: a brief synopsis of the Gospel

ch 1.8-15: Paul’s passion to preach the Gospel at Rome also

ch 1.16-17: The Gospel’s preeminent message is ‘the righteousness of God—“For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” The righteousness of God is who God is in His nature, character, and conduct; the righteousness God requires of us to be ‘right with God’ or ‘good enough for God’; and the standard by which every human being will be judged by God to determine our right and worthiness to be with Him in Heaven.

And, also, in this preeminent message of the Gospel—“The righteousness of God” … Paul introduces the only way we can receive the righteousness of God—“by faith.” This truth of by faith is going to be contained in every following teaching of The Gospel…and especially in the lesson we’re undertaking right now…

ch 1.18—3.20: since God is righteous in Himself and all His ways, therefore the ‘bad news’ is that God must ‘reveal His wrath’ against everyone who is un-righteous—which includes every human being, both Jew and Gentile, both religious and irreligious. Paul begins to address a particular ‘target audience’ here in this extended section of universal indictment and condemnation for their un-righteousness—and that ‘targeted audience’ are Jews who assume that their ‘Jewish-ness’ either ‘pre-qualifies’ them for favor with God; or at least, it gives them a ‘head-start,’ a ‘leg-up,’ or a ‘favored people’ status with God. Paul addresses this self-assumed favoritism with God in ch 2.17-29. They assumed that because of their covenantal privileges going back to Abraham and Moses, their national and ethnic heritage, their physical lineage and descendance from Abraham, and because of their external conformity with and compliance to the Law—especially circumcision—they were attaining to the righteousness of God by their religious heritage and practices. In other words, they were pr-qualifying or self-qualifying themselves by their own efforts. Paul refers to their efforts to make themselves ‘right with God’ and ‘good enough for God’ by such phrases as: ‘rely on the law’ [2.17]; ‘boast in the law’ [2.23]; ‘works of the law’ [3.20]; ‘law of works’ [3.27]; etc… What Paul means by these phrases is that: anyone who thinks he/she is going to produce or work any act of goodness or righteousness before God by their own efforts that will ‘qualify’ them to be considered righteous before God is WRONG! And that goes, not only for Jews, but for any of us also who thinks we are working out our own righteousness that God will look at and say: “Yeah, looking at what you’ve done—all of your religious and moral works, services, and activities—I’d say that what you have done there is as good as My own righteousness, The righteousness of God, and therefore I’m going to accept your deeds as ‘good enough for God’!” Not going to happen!

ch 3.21-31: in verse 21, Paul returns to connect and follow up with ch 1.17. After declaring that “in [the Gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed” in ch 1.17; and then condemning us all in un-righteousness in 1.18—3.20, we are left in a quandary: “How then will we ever be made right with God? How can we un-righteous sinners ever be considered to be ‘as righteous as God’? Ch 3.21-22 gives us the Gospel answer! “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested [connect with 1.17] apart from the law … the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” So these two verses, 1.17 & 3.21-22 encapsulate what the Gospel is: the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ and His finished work on the Cross and His resurrection … AND the means by which we receive it: “through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.” What does that FAITH look like?

II | chapter 4.1-12 | Both Abraham and David—the two most prominent covenant ‘heads’ of the Jewish faith—they both were justified before God by their faith … apart from their self-produced works of righteousness

ch 4.1-3: So now, that brings us to chapter 4. All along, Paul has been preemptively anticipating questions and objections that his Jewish audience [or, in our own context, think ‘religious’] will be raising. They could not accept the fact that their Jewishness [religion] did not in some way make them ‘better off’ than Gentiles [see ch 3.9]. They touted and boasted in their descendance from Abraham. But, Abraham was NOT justified before God at all by any works of his own! How was Abraham justified—declared by God to be righteous? By faith! “For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’” The quotation here is from Genesis 15.5-6. God came down to Abraham, put him to sleep, and performed a covenant ceremony for Abraham—making covenant promises that He would keep! “And he [Abraham] believed The LORD, and He [The LORD] ‘counted’ it to him as righteousness.” And that was that! God ‘credited’ Abraham with a righteousness that Abraham did not have! But because Abraham ‘believed’ God—and that God would keep the promises He was making to Abraham, God ‘counted’ it to Abraham—credited to him—His own righteousness!

ch 4.4-8: So now, here again, as he has been doing all along, Paul introduces another key word that is essential to the Gospel: ‘counted’ or ‘credited [Grk logidzomai]. Paul will use this key word eleven times in this message. It is an accounting term. An accounting ledger will have two columns: what you owe, and what you have paid. Let’s say you owe a debt to a creditor or lender. It is an astronomical debt. There is no way you will ever repay it—you just can’t, it’s humanly impossible. But your creditor/lender is gracious to you, and says: “I know you will never be able to repay this debt; but tell you what I’m going to do: out of the kindness of my heart, out of my own assets and resources, I’m going to give you that equal amount, and write it down here in your ‘credited’ column. This is not an additional loan; it’s a free gift. There! Your debt has been paid by the gift I have ‘credited’ to your account! It is ‘your’ payment that I have given and made for you. As the record shows, you’re paid in full!” That is what God did for Abraham; and that is what God does for everyone who believes in Jesus Christ and His righteousness granted to us on the Cross [see ch 3.21-26].

To continue the discussion here: if you work your hours and do your job, you get paid for what you do. That is how reward for your works…works—you earned it by your own efforts. But, the righteousness of God can never be earned by any works we have done or can do. It wasn’t so with Abraham, and it wasn’t so with David—another one of their covenant ‘fathers.’ Paul then quotes from Psalm 32.1-2. David sinned grievously against God in the Bathsheba affair. Yet, God forgave David. God did not ‘count his sin’ against him; rather “…David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works…” In both of these cases—Abraham and David—and in the cases of everyone of us, and everyone else who has faith in Jesus Christ: “And to the one who does not work but believes in Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness…” [v 5].

ch 4.9-12: Another objection–“But, wait! We’re faithful followers of our father Abraham. And wasn’t his circumcision the physical sign of his covenant faith and obedience to God? And we, too, have been circumcised like him…so doesn’t that make us people of faith like Abraham, and therefore justified by it—or at least give us ‘extra credit’ over uncircumcised Gentiles?” Paul answers that objection with a simple question: “When God ‘counted’ Abraham’s faith to him as righteousness—‘Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised.’” And that is borne out by the historical account. God declared Abraham to be justified by his faith in Genesis 15 … but God didn’t give Abraham the sign of circumcision until Genesis 17. So, he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised [v 11a]. And God did that in this order on purpose! The purpose was to make him the father of all who would believe without being 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! [vv 11b-12].

III | chapter 4.13-25 | The promises of justification and righteousness before God—both to Abraham and to us who believe—are all revealed and received by faith, and faith alone … apart from any works we contribute

ch 4.13-15: Abraham received all of the covenant blessings God promised him ‘through the righteousness of faith [received by faith]’ and not through any effort or works of his own. The promise that God made to Abraham was that he and his offspring [descendants] would be heir of the world. Abraham’s offspring refer to all of those who would believe God like Abraham did, and be justified from their sins—whether from among the circumcised or the uncircumcised.

So, what does ‘heir of the world’ mean? It means that God’s people, who believe in Him and receive His righteousness by faith, will inherit and inhabit the eternal Kingdom that is to be realized in the New Creation—when we all dwell with God Himself in the New Heaven and New Earth.

Paul will explain that in the next verses—but for now, he means to emphasize that those believers, the heirs, will not receive it by keeping the law through their own religious efforts and works, but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. Faith and religious efforts cancel one another. This takes us back to v 4: if we earn it, then it is our rightful wages. But, if it is freely given to us by faith, because we believe in and trust in the free grace of God, then we receive it by the free, gracious, and undeserved promise of God. As we have seen before in ch 1.18 and following, the law of God condemns us before the righteousness of God and sentences us to His wrath.

Then Paul makes that statement that kinda makes us scratch our heads [‘What does that mean?’]: For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression… Paul is not saying here that those who don’t know God’s law can’t be charged with sinning against the law they don’t know anything about. Because he’s already proven that even those who have lived in ignorance of God’s Law given through Moses in the Old Testament still “show that the work of the law is written on their hearts and conscience” [ch 2.14-16]. But Paul is saying here in ch 4 that keeping the law cannot produce the righteousness of God because the law can only show us where we come up short of the glory of God [ch 3.23]. The Law brings wrath upon those who violate its specific commandments. Those who have sinned without the Law [ch 2.12] cannot be charged with a specific transgression because they didn’t know about it. But they are still sinners before the righteousness of God just like those who transgressed the Law they did know—as Paul’s Jewish hearers did.

ch 4.16-17: No one can work out the righteousness of God by his/her own religious efforts and activities—because we have nothing to contribute and no ability to produce anything to contribute! “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 adherent of the law [Jew] but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham [Gentile], who is the father of us all.” What Paul is doing here is ‘leveling the playing field’ for both Jews and Gentiles. In essence, he is saying: “Whether you are a Jew [physical descendent of Abraham] or a Gentile, the only way you can claim to be a true child of Abraham is by believing and trusting in the gracious promise of God like Abraham did when he was still uncircumcised—a Gentile himself!” God made Abraham a Jew…by faith and not by any ‘work’ that Abraham could do to fulfill God’s promise!

AND, the specific promise that God made to Abraham was: “…as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations!’” Not ‘the father of the Jew-nation’ … but ‘the father of faith of many nations of peoples who will who will follow you in believing in my promises like you have’! This promise was given to Abraham in Genesis 17.5. Those ‘many nations’ equally include those believers “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” [Revelation 7.9] who would believe the Gospel in the ages to come. And that includes the Gentile believers in Rome—and all of us who receive the righteousness of God by faith in Jesus Christ!

BUT MORE! Paul keeps referring to this ‘promise’ that God made to Abraham…and that Abraham believed. What was that specific ‘promise’? It was that God would make Abraham ‘the father of many nations’ who would have faith in Him just as Abraham believed. Abraham believed that promise of God—by faith—because he had no other option!

God was promising Abraham that he would be ‘the father of many nations—innumerable descendants and ‘children of faith’—when Abraham was old and had no children at all, not even the first one! That’s why Paul adds this line: [Abraham believed this promise] “—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.” Paul is still quoting from the context of Genesis 15.1-6. Here was God promising Abraham innumerable descendants—and Abraham hadn’t been able to produce even the first one! Abraham offered his personal servant, Eliezer of Damascus, who stood to inherit everything he had since he had no physical son of his own, to fulfill God’s promise of descendants. But God said “NO! This man shall not be your heir; your very son shall be your heir!” ‘Abraham, you’ll have to trust Me!’ “And he brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then He said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’ And he believed The LORD, and He counted it to him as righteousness.” Abraham was no more able to produce even the first offspring—much less innumerable nations of ‘like-faith’ descendants—than he could produce the stars he was looking at in the night skies. But the God, in whose Presence he was standing…CAN! God is “[He] who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist!” And Abraham can only believe Him and trust Him to do it! And THAT’S THE FAITH with which Abraham believed—and God ‘counted’ / credited it to Abraham as righteousness. The righteousness Abraham was trusting in was not his own—but GOD’s! And that’s the faith God requires you and me—and every believer—to have!

ch 4.18-25: Here in this testimony to Abraham’s faith, we will find some distinctive and distinguishing characteristics of saving faith—both Abraham’s and ours!

[1] vv 18-19 | Saving faith trusts in God’s promise [v 18] regardless of how we feel or how our physical reality appears [v 19]. Abraham “‘considered’ his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old)…and he ‘considered’ the barrenness of Sarah’s womb…” In other words, he saw and reasoned upon his and Sarah’s physical weaknesses, impotence, and barrenness to fulfill the requirements of God’s promises—and there was nothing, no hope in themselves. He had to have faith in God’s promise apart from any ability of his own! And so do we!

[2] vv 20-21 | Saving faith focuses on God’s power, faithfulness, and grace to keep and fulfill His own promises—believes Him, trusts Him, and relies upon Him! Contrast the ‘consider his own body, which was as good as dead’ with ‘fully convinced that God was able to do what He had promised.’ As Abraham kept his faith fixed on God—and not on anything he could do or contribute to make God’s promise come to reality—his faith grew stronger, and the glory he gave to God increased! This is what purposed and intended when He made our faith in Him necessary for us to receive His promise!

[3] vv 22-25 | Saving faith is God’s gift to us, too! The very same faith with which Abraham believed is the faith by which we believe The Gospel of God ‘counted to us! And what is that Gospel? What is it that we must believe and trust in ONLY for our salvation? “It [the righteousness of God] will be ‘counted’ [freely credited] to us who believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.”

This is “the Gospel” that “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” [ch 1.16].

“THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL LIVE BY FAITH!”

ROMANS.L4.Romans, chapter 4.Faith ‘Counted’ for Righteousness Download

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The Gospel: God’s Righteousness for our Unrighteousness

Posted on September 19, 2026 by PastorDave

ROMANS | Lesson 3 | Lesson Notes / Talking Points

GOD’S GLORIOUS GOSPEL

Romans, chapter 3

The Gospel: God’s Righteousness for our Unrighteousness

I | CONTEXT AND CONNECTIONS

1 / The one over-arching, all-encompassing theme of the Romans letter to the saints in Rome is the Gospel of God [ch 1.1]. It is the most comprehensive declaration and definition of the Gospel we have in the Bible. BUT, it is in no way just an academic ‘dissertation-like’ treatise on the Gospel. RATHER, Romans is a passionate, heart-felt, and personal proclamation of the Gospel! Paul is preaching the Gospel even as he excitedly tells the Roman saints that he so desperately longs to come to Rome and preach the Gospel among them! It is so personal to Paul, that he says in ch 1.1 that he has been set apart for the Gospel! The Gospel is not only his confession of his own faith, but it is his very vocation, life’s work, and what he lives and breathes for! And, he even calls it my Gospel at least two times in this letter [chs 2.16; 16.25]. So, it is my prayer and aim through these studies that you and I will also believe it, trust it, embrace it, experience its power and blessing, and rejoice in it!

2 / So, what is the Gospel? Well, we know it is God’s Good News! But, what is the Good News of God’s Gospel? Here’s where we have come so far:

[1] The Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes [notice how he immediately introduces the theme of ‘faith’ which he will repeatedly emphasize in his Gospel proclamation], to the Jew first and also to the Greek [Gentiles—another all-inclusive theme Paul will repeatedly emphasize];

[2] The Gospel is the revelation of the righteousness of God—“by faith from beginning to ending” (ch 1.17). Nail this down in your observation and understanding from the get-go here: the Gospel is all about God’s own perfect, sinless, flawless righteousness—that He alone possesses in Himself, but which He requires from us also! BUT, as Paul will meticulously lay out from the beginning here, God’s righteousness is a righteousness we don’t have by our own born, human nature and condition.

[3] Which leads us to the third Gospel declaration that Paul lays out in the beginning of this letter: The Gospel’s first keynote [and a very minor note it is, too!] is that God’s Gospel reveals His wrath from Heaven against all ungodliness and un-righteousness of men, who by their un-righteousness suppress the truth…of God’s righteousness and how we are justified [made righteous] before God!

3 / And so, in our last lesson, we noted the three groups of people, which will encompass and include all humanity, who are declared to be un-righteous before God:

ch 1.18-32: the un-righteous Gentile world who are without excuse before the condemnation and wrath of God…

ch 2.1-11: the religious moralists [both Jew and Gentile, 2.10] who seek to ‘justify’ themselves by their religiosity, and judge and condemn others who are not like them…

ch 2.12-29: the religious Jews among them [ch 2.17], who seek to ‘justify’ themselves by claiming that they are ‘righteous’ because of their religious heritage, background, and because they have been identified with that heritage by being circumcised. But their physical circumcision does not make them righteous before God. Only faith in Christ, which is an inward circumcision, a matter of the heart will please God [this is the ‘point’ of the whole discussion in ch 2.25-29]. And this circumcision of the heart is given equally to both Jews and Gentiles—without ethnic distinction, favoritism, or exclusion when one believes and receives the Gospel of the gift of God’s righteousness through faith in Christ!

4 / So, that is where we will pick up Paul’s continuing proclamation of the Gospel in chapter 3…

II | ch 3.1-8 | Is there any advantage to our knowing God’s righteousness from the Old Testament Scriptures and the Law as we have learned it and practiced it?

1 / What follows here is a continuation from ch 2.17—Paul’s confrontation with the Jews’ claims to superiority or ‘being better than’ the Gentile world because they had received the OT covenant teachings which were summarized in their ethnic/religious identity as ‘the circumcision’…

2 / Paul engages them in a series of Q&A over these eight verses—there are nine questions Paul will pre-expect them to ask, and he will answer. I’m going to copy and quote Timothy Keller here from his Romans for You commentary:

Q: Paul, are you saying there is no advantage to biblical religion (v 1)?

A: No, I’m not saying that. There is great value in having and knowing the words of God (v 2).

Q: Yes, but those words have failed, haven’t they, because so many haven’t believed the Gospel of righteousness revealed in God’s Son Jesus. What has happened to the promises (v 3a)?

A: Despite His people’s failure to believe, God’s promises to save are advancing. Our faithlessness only reveals how committed to His truth He is (think of what He’s done in order to be faithful to His promises!) (vv 3b-4).

Q: But if unrighteousness is necessary for God’s righteousness to be seen, how is it fair for Him to judge us (v 5)?

A: On that basis, God would not judge anyone in the world. And we (ie: Paul and religious Jews) all agree God should judge (v 6).

Q: Well then, if me sinning makes God look better, that means that I should sin more, shouldn’t I, so that His glory is more clearly seen (vv 7-8)?

A: I’ve been accused of thinking this, and I certainly don’t. And saying you’re sinning so that God will love you is an attitude that is absolutely worthy of judgment (v 8).

3 / The conclusion that Paul is drawing here in their [our] understanding is that: Yes! It is to our great advantage to know God’s Word and His will for our instruction and obedience. But NOT if we think or assume that our merely knowing and going through the outward motions and rituals of ‘keeping’ God’s Law will make us righteous before God! We can’t, won’t, and don’t become righteous before God through any religious effort or activity of our own. To the contrary, any and all of our self-worked acts of ‘righteousness’ only increase and compound our un-righteousness before God—and He will be just and righteous when He condemns us.

III | ch 3.9-20 | Every human being, regardless of our religious background, heritage, or practice [or total lack thereof]—we all are universally and without exception “under sin”…subject to its corrupting influences and just condemnation—the wrath of God.

1 / Paul continues to address the Jews among the Roman saints, including himself among them: “we Jews.” Two more questions following the previous ones: “What then? Are we Jews better off?” What are we to conclude about whether our ‘Jewish-ness / religiosity’? Does it give us a ‘leg up’ or move us to the front of the line when it comes to gaining any kind of ‘favored’ status before God? “No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin. This is a summary conclusion from his extended discussions back in ch 1.18—2.29.

2 / We sometimes call this teaching the doctrine of ‘Total Depravity.’ ‘Total’ means that every faculty and facet of our natural-born human nature is corrupted, depraved, and so ‘under sin’ that we are incapable of having, doing, or working anything in the sight of God that He would call righteous or good. Remember: the standard by which God measures is His own righteousness, which is perfect, pure, sinless, flawless, uncorrupted by anything un-righteous. When we judge and call anyone or anything ‘good,’ we are judging and comparing by some ‘good’ standard of our own.

3 / So, what Paul will do here is: he will do an ‘autopsy’ of the universal human nature. Every faculty and element of our human nature will be examined. Paul will use the testimony of Scripture and the Law of God—who God is and what God requires us to be—as his instruments of this spiritual ‘autopsy’ and to record God’s findings and judgments against us all: “…as it is written…” The findings will be conclusive, the report will be damning, and judgment of God against us will be righteous, just, and deserved [vv 19-20]. So, here is how thoroughly corrupt, depraved, and un-righteous we are in our natural, human-born nature and condition…

v 10b: None is righteous, no, not one… This is our legal standing before a righteous, just, and holy God. The quote here is from Psalm 14.1-3 and 53.1-3. This is a summary indictment and judgment…
v 11a: no one understands… This is the depravity of our minds. To not understand goes back to ch 1.19-32. Review those verses, highlight/repeat again all the words and phrases that reflect our rejection of knowing God, acknowledging Him, and giving Him his rightful preeminence in our worship.
v 11b: no one seeks for God. Our motives, desires, and the love of our hearts—what we seek—is not God. Quite the contrary according to ch 1.18-32. If we seek God, God has first sought us!
v 12a: All have turned aside; together they have become worthless… Our wills are so corrupted that we choose our own ways instead of God’s. We live for ourselves—our desires, our pleasures, our goals, our glory. The quote here is from Isaiah 53.6.
v 12b: no one does good, not even one. Our works and deeds are thoroughly corrupt, depraved, and corrupted by our self-will and self-seeking. Even the ‘good’ things that we do—our human kindnesses, helping one another, generosity, etc.—all of our ‘good’ works and deeds are corrupted and not good before God because they come from our corrupted nature.
vv 13-14: Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Our tongues and words are thoroughly corrupt, depraved, and unrighteous. Remember: Paul is describing every human being who is under sin, and apart from the righteousness of God which is given to us through faith in Jesus Christ. The reason why our tongues and words are corrupt—every one of them—in our natural human-born condition is because every word comes from our hearts, which are corrupted by sin. These direct quotes are from Psalms 5.9; 140.3; 10.7.
vv 15-17: Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. All our human relationships have been corrupted by our sinful nature. These descriptions include all our social violence, injustices, prejudices and class warfare, conflicts and wars both between persons and among nations, lying and deceit, oppression, using others as ‘leverage’ to our own advantage—and all the rest of our broken relationships practices that characterize our human culture and history.
v 18: There is no fear of God before their eyes. This, again, is a summary statement that includes all the rest. This is our relationship with God—and it is corrupted, depraved, and un-righteous—lost!

4 / And so, Paul comes to the end of this section that began in ch 1.18: “For the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth…” What Paul has been proving in this whole extended section is that: God’s wrath against our sin, un-godliness, and un-righteous is just, righteous, fair, and deserved—because it is a violation of all that God is and all that God has required us to be!

5 / That’s why Paul concludes by issuing this universal indictment against the whole human race—Jews and Gentiles alike—because we have broken God’s righteous Law, and in so doing, we have presented the evidences against ourselves that we are guilty before God and deserving of His wrath that has been revealed from Heaven against us. “Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by the works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight, since through the law comes the knowledge of sin” [vv 19-20].

IV | ch 3.21-31 | The Gospel reveals first the wrath of God against all our un-righteousness … so it can then reveal the righteousness of God that justifies us through faith in Christ!

BTW, this is a good time and place to be sure we all understand the relationships of these theme words we have already heard…and will hear repeated over and over throughout the rest of this letter: ‘righteous,’ ‘righteousness,’ ‘just,’ and ‘justify’—they all are related forms of the same root word. So, ‘the just’ are ‘the righteous’; and ‘to justify’ means ‘to righteous-fy’ or ‘make righteous’ with the very righteousness of God!

1 / So, BUT NOW, after all that ‘bad news’ of the Gospel’s Good News, Paul will lay out the premises of how God justifies [declares to be righteous—‘righteous-fies’] all who believe and have faith in Jesus Christ! The “But…” is connected with ch 1.17: “For in it [the Gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” Paul is going back now to ‘flesh that out’ after having interjected the ‘bad news’ of the Gospel in ch 1.18: “For [because] the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth…” [NOTE the repetition of ‘reveal’—the Gospel reveals both God’s righteousness and His wrath again our unrighteousness].

2 / So, what he will do ‘now’ is to show how God saves us from His righteous wrath which our unrighteousness deserves—which He must reveal because He is the impeccably righteous and just Judge! And the “now” hones in on “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction…” Paul will make this expression three times: “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the Law [21]; This was to show God’s righteousness…[25]; It was to show His righteousness at the present time…[26].” The “But now” and “at the present time” is the Gospel of Jesus Christ revealed in His substitutionary death on the Cross…

3 / So, here’s how God reveals and gives His righteousness to sinful people—and does so without compromising His own righteousness, either in His personal character or His just judgment…

[1] Righteousness comes “through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe” [v 22]. This has been the consistent, unswerving testimony of God from the first of His revelation in Scripture. It has been accomplished “But now” in time and history…although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it [see ch 1.1 & 17]. No one has ever been saved—ever in Old or New Testament times—except through faith in Jesus Christ. OT saints were saved through faith in Jesus Christ by believing and trusting in the OT sacrifices as Paul will declare in vv 24-26 which was yet to come—‘on future credit,’ as it were!

[2] Righteousness cannot, does not, and will not ever come to us through our own efforts or actions—our ‘works of the Law’ which we do [v 23 (& v 20)]. “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” We cannot produce the glory of God, which is His righteousness from ourselves [see vv 9-20]. All we can produce or work out from ourselves is unrighteousness which deserves and receives His righteous condemnation and judgment—the wrath of God.

[3] Righteousness is given to us “freely—by His grace as a gift.” This is what faith is—it is receiving the gift of righteousness which God gives us when we believe in and trust in Jesus Christ. Faith is not a ‘work’—that is, something we ‘do’ to deserve grace! As Paul will explain again in Ephesians 2.8-10, even our faith is the gift of God.

[4] Righteous is freely given to us by God when we believe in, have faith in Jesus Christ and His redemptive work on the Cross—and not just in Jesus as a good ‘model’ for us to emulate or admire. We must have faith in “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forth as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith” [vv 24-25]. So, here’s how God makes us righteous: God requires a perfect righteousness—His own righteousness—from us. And He will reveal His wrath against all who come short of it. But none of us has it, nor can we attain or produce it. Jesus Christ is the only One who can—and did! And, on the Cross, Jesus Christ assumed responsibility for our unrighteousness—God charged Christ with our unrighteousness and punished Him in our place. He becomes the ‘propitiation’ [sin-offering] to appease God’s wrath. Our sin has been fully punished in Christ! And, as the Perfect Sacrifice for our unrighteousness, God receives Christ in our place when we believe and place our faith in Him!

4 / “…so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus!” The righteous Judge does not compromise His righteousness and justice—He punished our unrighteousness in our Substitute. And having done so, He can now ‘righteous-fy’ even the ungodly [ch 4.5] when that believer trusts in Christ, our Propitiation and Redeemer!

**Faith in Christ is both a righteousness-transfer—His to us [vv 21-26]; and a boasting-transfer—from boasting in anything we have done…to boasting only in what Christ has done for us! [vv 27-31].**

ROMANS.L3.Romans, chapter 3.God’s Righteousness for our Unrighteousness Download

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The Gospel: God’s Righteous Wrath and Judgment

Posted on September 12, 2026 by PastorDave

ROMANS: GOD’S GLORIOUS GOSPEL

Lesson 2 | Lesson Notes / Talking Points

Romans 1.18—2.29

The Gospel: God’s Righteous Wrath and Judgment

I | CONTEXT AND CONNECTIONS

1 / Paul’s purpose and aim for writing this Book-letter to the Romans is two-fold: [1] to thoroughly lay out in detailed explanation and comprehensive development what the Gospel is; and [2] to show that this one Gospel is equally applicable to both Jews and Gentiles—without distinction, favoritism, or partiality. God is not predisposed to favor Jews; nor is He predisposed to discriminate against Gentiles. God is neither prejudiced for Jews nor against Gentiles just because of who they are. For God shows no partiality, ch 2.11.

2 / Therefore, Paul will throughout Romans address one of the primary cultural dynamics that was plaguing the church fellowship in Rome and the unity among the Jewish and Gentile saints: conflicts, tensions, and even rivalry among the two ethnic groups. That’s why we will hear Paul repeatedly state some variation of his all-inclusive statement: to the Jew first and also to the Greek [Gentile].

3 / Our last lesson passage concluded with Paul’s all-inclusive ‘dynamic’ confession of the God’s Gospel in v 16. And then, Paul introduces in v 17 what will be his summary statement of what the Gospel reveals—and that is, ‘the righteousness of God!’ The Gospel is the message and the power by which the Righteous God saves—declares to be righteous before Him—those who are unrighteous. Or, as John Stott says, “…in the Gospel God’s righteous way of ‘righteoussing’ the unrighteous has been revealed” [ch 1.14-17].

4 / However, since everyone—Jews and Gentiles—are ALL unrighteous before God in their human-born nature and condition, therefore, the only way we can be ‘righteous’ before God is BY FAITH in the Gospel God has revealed in Christ! So, everything in Romans here on will be the revealing of that Gospel of God in Christ which everyone must believe by FAITH! “For in it [the Gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’” [ch 1.17]. That phrase ‘from faith for faith’ simply means: ‘it is by faith, and only by faith, from beginning to end—and it’s always been that way!’ Paul quotes here from Habakkuk 2.4 to show that those who were saved in the Old Testament/Covenant era were saved by the same faith that the Gospel as it is now revealed in Christ requires! It is by FAITH and FAITH ALONE exclusively, solely, and always!

5 / NOW, beginning with this lesson passage, Paul will begin to lay his foundation for why it must be by FAITH. And that is because all of us—the whole human race without distinction—are unrighteous and ungodly, and since we are NOT the righteousness of God by born human nature and condition, we are therefore under the righteous wrath and judgment of God. And if we are to be saved from God’s righteous wrath and judgment against our sin, we must have FAITH IN, believe in the Gospel He has revealed in Christ!

II | ch 1.18-31 | God’s righteous wrath is revealed from Heaven against all our unrighteousness and ungodliness—particularly those godless, pagan cultures [whether ‘cultured’ or ‘uncultured (ch 1.14)] who reject His Glory for their own preferred ‘lesser glories’

v 18: NOTE the repetition of the word ‘revealed.’ In v 17, God reveals His righteousness in the Gospel of Christ—which we must believe and receive by FAITH. In v 18, we must believe in God’s righteousness by faith because the righteous God’s wrath is revealed from Heaven against the unrighteousness and ungodliness we are and practice in our born human nature and condition. We call this ‘the bad news of the Good News.’ In the following descriptions of our universal human sinfulness, Paul will reveal that we all have suppressed the truth of God’s righteousness by our unrighteousness.

vv 19-20: God has shown us who He is in His creation. We know there is a God of eternal power and divine nature who is above, beyond, and more glorious than we are. And He has revealed Himself so clearly and powerfully, So they are without excuse.

vv 21-23: Our refusal to acknowledge, honor, and give thanks to God who so clearly reveals Himself in His creation has not only perverted [‘darkened’] our very faculties of thinking and emotions, but we have also ‘exchanged’ and counterfeited His Glory for the worship and glory of ourselves and other elements of His created things! NOTE that any object, idea, or belief of our ‘spiritual loyalty’ to which we give ourselves in ‘worship’ is an idol … and is a rejection of the Glorious God, the Creator.

vv 24-25: “Therefore…” as a righteous consequence of His righteous judgment, God has ‘given us up, given us over’ to the delusions and addictions to those sets of lies we have chosen to believe—preferred religion—whatever it may be. And then, to emphasize God’s righteousness in this turning us over to our own preferred idol-worship, Paul adds this doxology: “the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” NOTE: God’s giving us over to our worship of our worship of our preferred sets of lies is His present WRATH OF GOD that is being revealed now in this time! And it is a foreshadowing of the wrath to come in that final Day of Judgment “on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed” in the end, ch 2.5, 16. Paul is leading up to that—but the accepted perversions of the culture right now in our own day and time is the wrath of God being revealed against us.

vv 26-27: What follows here is a sordid, detailed commentary of why God is righteously justified for revealing His wrath against a society and culture that so denies, abominates, and perverts God’s Glory that He reveals in His creation order. V 25 says “because they exchanged the truth about
God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” – and then v 26 follows with “For this reason…” God reveals His wrath against our unrighteousness by ‘giving us over, giving us up’ to what we choose to do as a society and culture of ungodliness. And the ultimate example is the prevalent practice of the homosexuality culture among both men and women. Both male and female homosexuality practices are exchanges and perversions of God’s righteous and glorious creation order. “For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.” NOTE that when a culture normalizes and ‘declares to be right and natural’ the abominable practices of homosexuality—that in itself is the wrath of God being revealed from Heaven. And the inevitable corruption, decay, and eventual erosion and destruction of that culture is the due penalty for their error. And, it is the righteous precursor of the coming Day of Wrath upon them, both individually and corporately that will be meted out in their eternal condemnation in the Day of God’s righteous judgment, ch 2.5, 16.

vv 28-31: When these ultimate shameless acts are normalized, accepted, and codified into a culture, every other practice of sinful unrighteousness will follow as an exercise of the wrath of God revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth [going back to v 18]. “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness…” and then what follows is a whole catalog of depravity that will be ‘approved and practiced.’ All of these social abominations will pervade and permeate their society because when they reject God and His righteousness to choose their own preferred lifestyles, God gives them up to a debased mind. They have no righteous sense of right and wrong, no conscience, and no ability to discern what is good.

III | ch 2.1-16 | God’s righteous wrath is revealed from Heaven against judgmental moralizers, whether they be Jews or Gentiles

vv 1-2: Paul now turns his attention to another group of godless practitioners of unrighteous—those who think of themselves that they are the ‘righteous elite’ and judge, condemn, and reject everyone else who is ‘not one of them.’ Paul has already rendered the former class of pagan idolaters, who have rejected God for their own ‘idea-worship,’ are without excuse before the righteous wrath of God, ch 1.20. Now, the same indictment and verdict of “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges” those who do not ‘worship’ their preferred ‘god.’ “We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.”

vv 3-5: Two rhetorical questions expose their perverted and depraved delusions of ‘self-righteousness’ and ‘self-justification’: “Do you suppose, O man…?” and “Or do you presume…?” God has extended to them all over centuries of time the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, [they] not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance… God has not immediately, in their real-time generations destroyed them all, giving them space to repent and turn to Him in repentance. BUT, they are all consumed by their own self-imposed judgments in history, and God’s full, final, and eternal condemnation yet awaits when the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven…on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.

vv 6-11: God will judge every person, every peoples, every culture by the one righteous standard that applies to all—“the Jew first and also the Greek [Gentile]…for God shows no partiality.” God will render to each one according to his works because our ‘works’ are the practical outworkings of our ‘faith’—that is, what we believe, trust in, and worship. The over-arching condition and requirement for righteousness [being declared righteous before God] is GOSPEL FAITH in God’s provision: “The righteous shall live by faith” [ch 1.17]. So, here are the two contrasting ends of those believe, trust in, and worship God…and those who do not: “to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, He will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.”

vv 12-16: Paul continues with God’s righteous indictment and judgment against all those who moralize themselves into believing they are ‘right with God’ in their own self-assessment and self-justification because they presume they have practiced their religion in accordance with God’s revealed Law. But they have done so only outwardly and superficially and not with true saving faith in God.

[1] “The Law” is God’s standard for judgment because The Law is the expression of God’s own righteousness. Therefore, in order for us to be righteous before God or ‘right with God,’ we must be in perfect, absolute compliance with and conformity to The Law. This is the basis of the Gospel’s message.

[2] The two class distinctions Paul makes here are sinned without the Law and sinned under the Law. Those without the Law are the pagan peoples, whether ‘civilized’ and ‘cultured’ or not. They didn’t have the advantage of knowing God’s revelation of Himself. Those who have sinned under the Law are the Jews with their history of knowing God’s revelation of Himself in the Law. Paul will explain this distinction in the words that follow, and especially by referring to circumcision as the physical marker God gave His people from the beginning, Genesis 17.9-14 ff.

[3] The Gentiles, who have sinned without the Law…who do not have the Law, still know right from wrong because God has revealed a natural standard for righteousness in His creation, which they have rejected [ch 1.19-23]. But they have condemned themselves and made themselves without excuse before God and His Law because when they by nature do what the Law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the Law. They show that the work of the Law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them…

[4] On the other hand, all who have sinned under the Law will be judged by the Law because they have kept and observed its requirements only outwardly and superficially. They have just ‘gone through the outward physical motions’ without a heart of faith toward God, trusting Him to make them right before Him. They had a ‘head knowledge’ of the Law without a ‘heart knowledge’ of love for God and faith in Him to make them righteous. “For it is not the hearers of the Law who will justified [made righteous].” And since the Gospel that Paul preached first reveals the wrath of God from Heaven against all the unrighteous, Paul declares that it will be finally and eternally adjudicated on that Day when, according to my Gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

IV | ch 2.17-29 | Jews, therefore, are not ‘righteous’ and justified before God just because of their religious knowledge, legacy, or heritage—if they rely on their Jewish identity without FAITH

vv 17-24: Paul reveals the inconsistency and self-contradiction of the Jews’ trust and reliance upon their religious heritage to make them ‘right before God’…

[1] He proposes two ‘if’s to show them the fallacy and deficiency of their self-righteous presumptions that they have and keep the Law: “But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the Law and boast in God and know His will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the Law; and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having the Law the embodiment of knowledge and truth…”

[2] However, even while they presume their moral and religious supremacy because of what they ‘know’ in their minds and presume to ‘practice’ in their lifestyle, they dishonor God by breaking the Law they boast in and seek to impose on others—to make the ‘others’ as ‘right before God’ as they presume they are: “While you preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?” In this way, they not only prove themselves to violate the very Law they presume to impose on everybody else, but they also bring God’s righteousness and righteous Law into disrepute among the Gentiles they seek to assume superiority over. “For, as it is written, ‘The Name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you,’” quoting from Isaiah 52.5.

vv 25-29: Mere ‘Jewishness’ will not save without FAITH in Christ from their heart…

[1] Their required compliance with the Old Testament physical marker of circumcision, which God gave them to mark them as people of true faith, is of value if—and only if—they love, obey, and trust in their hearts that God will justify them by their faith in Him. Otherwise, if they have the physical mark of circumcision without faith in God’s righteousness, they are seeking to establish their own righteousness and, in effect, become uncircumcision. On the other hand, “if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the Law [by faith, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision?” That is, if an uncircumcised Gentile obeys and receives God’s righteousness by faith, then he is the one who finds favor with God!

[2] And then, we come to this inviolable marker of how God truly identifies who is His true Israel, or Jew: “For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not be the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.” Being a Jew by ethnicity or religious heritage in no way makes one ‘more special’ to God or ‘more favored’ by God when it comes to righteousness; nor are they ‘grandfathered’ into the people of God by their ethnic or religious ‘Jewishness.’ God receives us into His grace and ‘makes us right with God’ only and solely on the basis of FAITH. This is the consistent proclamation of the Gospel in all of Scripture—both Old and New Testaments.

CONCLUSION: Paul will continue in the next section to declare that Yes! there are advantages to being a Jew—but only in that God first revealed Himself to them through their covenant forefathers: Abraham, Moses, David, and the others. But he will also continue to bring every human being, Jew or Gentile, ALL under the condemnation, judgment, and wrath of God because of the universality of their sin. This universality of sin and wrath of God against our unrighteousness is what requires FAITH! [see ch 3.19-20] The Gospel of God through faith in the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ begins with this revelation of the wrath of God against our sin—and will lead us to “Therefore having been justified through faith…”

But, we must ‘become lost’ before we can ‘become the righteousness of God’ in Jesus Christ!

ROMANS.L2.Romans 1.18–2.29.God’s Righteous Wrath and Judgment Download

Posted in Bible Studies, Gospel, Lesson Notes, ROMANS, Sunday School lessons, The Gospel | Tagged Bible Studies, Gentiles, God's Glorious Gospel, God's Righteous wrath and judgment, Jew, Jews and Gentiles, Lesson Notes/Talking Points, ROMANS, Romans 1.17--2.29, Sin, Sunday School lessons, unrighteousness | Leave a comment

The Gospel

Posted on September 5, 2026 by PastorDave

ROMANS | Lesson 1 | Lesson Notes / Talking Points

GOD’S GLORIOUS GOSPEL

Romans 1.1-17 | The Gospel

I | INTRODUCTION TO ROMANS / CONTEXT

1 / For the next few weeks, we will be surveying the Book of Romans. And, it will be no more than just a summary survey of this book. It may very well be that more has been written on and about Romans than any other book of the bible. So, with our limited number of class sessions and limited time in each session, all we can do is provide an outline of the book, try to follow Paul’s train of thought and ‘logic’ throughout the chapters, how they connect and flow from each other, and explain just the pith and core of why Paul says what he says where he says it.

2 / Or, as I always say to us about every Bible book we study, “We just want to learn how to read, follow, and understand the Book of Romans to get the message of what Paul was writing.” This is why we choose to survey the whole of books of the Bible intact, rather than just highlights of certain passages in the book.

3 / So, let’s begin by asking some pertinent questions that will help us read Paul’s message as well as his words.

4 / NOTE: here at the outset, I want to acknowledge my indebtedness to two works in particular who are helping me analyze, summarize, and express the various sections and sub-sections of Romans—which is all we can hope to do in this survey course. I will borrow and repeat from them often as they help me understand the flow, development, and connections of Paul’s Gospel message: Romans for You, by Timothy Keller, The GoodBook Company, 2014; and Romans, God’s Good News for the World, John Stott, Intervarsity Press, 1994. They both (along with Robert Yarbrough, ESV Expository Commentary) have helped me tremendously to discover, distill, and crystallize Paul’s logic and message here in Romans.

II | WHEN DID PAUL WRITE ROMANS?

1 / We believe Paul wrote Romans from Corinth during a 3-month stay there. This was at the end of his third missionary journey. See Acts 20.1-3. And, it was a return visit to Corinth after having been there previously. At this time in his ministry, he was on his way back to Antioch, his home/sending church. So this would have likely been during the winter of AD 57-58.

2 / However—and we must keep this in mind as we approach the text of Romans—it had long been Paul’s desire to go to Rome. He had never been there. But his heart was set on going to Rome. See Acts 19.21. This is important background to keep in mind. Because we also need to know that, to Paul, Rome was not just another city or region to be evangelized, but he had met some other believers from Rome prior to this time of his writing this Roman letter—and it was a ‘letter’ as we will see, and not just a ‘book.’ The believers he had met previously in Corinth were Aquila and Priscilla—and they were from Rome. See Acts 18.1-3. And Paul had previously spent some eighteen months in their company and fellowship. So, he would have learned a lot of contextual background information from Aquila and Priscilla, both about Rome and the affairs of the churches in Rome. We’ll expand on this connection…

III | WHY DID PAUL WRITE ROMANS?

1 / We often call Romans Paul’s ‘magnum opus’ or ‘greatest work.’ And it is. It is not only his magnum opus, but it is also the ‘greatest work’ in the whole Bible when it comes to laying out the glory and grandeur of the Gospel. Romans is the most complete, thorough, and carefully, meticulously written definition and explanation of the Gospel of God’s grace and salvation.

2 / But, as we said before, it is also a personal letter. Don’t ever think that Romans is like an ‘ivory tower’ academic dissertation. Paul didn’t just decide one day, “I think I’ll write a treatise on the Gospel and send it to the saints in Rome”—saints he hadn’t personally met and didn’t personally know. Romans is a very personal letter. Paul uses the “I” first-person-singular verb form over one hundred times in this letter. And when we get over into the end of Romans, chapters 15-16, we will listen to Paul talk about his personal desires to come to Rome and give many details about his ministry up to that time and his ambitions and aspirations for future ministry among the saints in Rome—and also beyond them on to Spain. So, we come back to our present question, Why did Paul write Romans? Just some reasons, not necessarily in the order of their importance or priority—they’re all intertwined together…

3 / Purpose #1: Paul wrote Romans as a ‘missionary letter’—both to evangelize the Romans and also to encourage them to assist him in his evangelistic mission beyond them…on to Spain. Remember that we pointed out how back in Acts 19.21, Paul had been making it known for some time that he wanted to go to Rome to preach the Gospel. And most likely, he had this goal even before meeting Aquila and Priscilla who had relocated to Corinth, having been exiled from Rome by Emperor Claudius in AD 49 [see Acts 18.1-3]. No doubt they further intensified and stoked his desire, but he had aimed to go to Rome long before. BUT, Rome was not the terminal point of Paul’s missionary desires. His ultimate missionary destination was Spain [Rom 15.22-28]. At that time, Spain was the western-most regions of the Roman empire. Paul was in Corinth, Greece at the time of writing Romans. Rome was mid-way. Spain was on the western land boundary of the Roman Empire. So, Paul is writing the Romans to anticipate his coming to them—and then asking them to prepare “to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while” [v 24].

4 / Purpose #2: Paul also wrote Romans to help them mediate many conflicts among them over issues between Jews and Gentiles. We surmise that the churches in Rome had been established [perhaps] by believers who had returned to Rome from Jerusalem after the Day of Pentecost [see Acts 2.10]. We don’t know who they were, but they had carried the Gospel of Christ back home, and more Jews in Rome had become believers—and churches were established. BUT THEN, not only were Jews being saved and converted to being believers in Christ, but Gentiles also were saved. And that created the inevitable conflicts and disagreements between Jews and Gentiles [Greeks] over whether they should still maintain the Jewish cultural and religious traditions. This will be one of the repeated lines of preaching and counsel that Paul gives the saints in the churches as make our way through Romans. Watch for it! Getting back to Aquila and Priscilla and Paul’s months of close association and fellowship with them, we have no doubt that they filled Paul in during many hours of intense conversations about these tensions and conflicts between the Jewish and Gentile contingents in the several churches in Rome.

5 / Purpose #3: Paul also felt the need to acquaint the Roman believers with his authority as an apostle of Jesus Christ and his steadfast commitment to the Gospel of Christ and his faithful fidelity to it. Remember, they had not personally met, but they had heard a lot about him—and a lot of it had been negative and false accusations [see ch 3.8: “…as some people slanderously charge us with saying…”]. Remember: Jesus had commissioned Paul to be His apostle to BOTH Jews and Gentiles, but primarily to Gentiles [see Acts 9.15; Galatians 1.15-16; 2.9]. Paul preached the Gospel as it is: salvation solely and exclusively by God’s grace apart from our keeping the Jewish law, either to obtain salvation or to keep it. This Free Grace Gospel had brought Paul into disfavor among many of the hardline Jewish traditionalists. And so, if Paul is to maintain acceptance and influence among BOTH Jews and Gentiles, he must establish his true apostleship and authority from Christ AND proclaim the impartiality of God’s grace to BOTH Jews and Gentiles equally.

6 / Purpose #4: But, most importantly, and in all his preaching and activity, Paul must proclaim the purity and power of the Gospel of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. So, we’re going to get the Gospel of God’s free and sovereign grace in its fullest, and most complete, replete, and comprehensive proclamation in every line of Romans. In the opening ‘Gospel salvo’ in ch 1, Paul will name the ‘Gospel’ four times, and then throughout the letter, name the ‘Gospel’ seven more times. And, in between, in every paragraph and every truth Paul develops, it will be the ‘Gospel’—what it is, who it is about, and what it does to save and transform everyone who believes it. It’s ALL about the Gospel!

7 / So, with all this historical and biographical background in mind, let’s listen to Paul as he open this letter to the Roman saints. This first opening ‘introduction’ to Romans in ch 1.1-17 will serve as Paul’s summary doctrinal and personal statement of faith or confession of ‘THE GOSPEL’…

IV | ROMANS 1.1-17

vv 1-7 | Paul’s very identity and life’s mission, calling, vocation, and work is “The Gospel”

v 1 | We are ‘owned’ by the Gospel—and every fiber of our being and facet of our lives is committed to the Gospel of God. Paul identifies himself as a servant of Christ Jesus. He didn’t own or belong to himself. He belonged to Christ Jesus: he was Christ’s ‘doulos’ or ‘slave / bondservant.’ Called to be an apostle. Obviously, Paul refers to his conversion to Christ on the road to Damascus and Christ’s call on his life to be an apostle, or one specifically appointed by Christ to speak for Him—with His authority. AND Paul had no other vocation, purpose, ambition, or aim in his life and everything he did but proclaim the Gospel of God. And so, God Himself is the Author of the Gospel, and Paul had no other goal in his life, but to proclaim this Gospel that God had given him to proclaim. He had done that everywhere else he had ever been, and he wanted to do that in Rome also.

v 2 | This Gospel is what the Old Testament is all about—it is a ‘covenantal’ Gospel. NOTE here how Paul will identify immediately with the Roman saints who were Jews—who knew the OT Scriptures. Paul is not only identifying with the OT Scriptures, but he is declaring that all those Scriptures that they knew, believed, taught, lived by, and trusted—they all were a ‘prequel’ or ‘pre-enactment’ of Jesus Christ and His Gospel.

vv 3-4 | The Gospel is all about Jesus Christ, the God-Man. Jesus Christ is the personal embodiment of the Gospel, the subject of the Gospel, and the object of the Gospel’s proclamation. Jesus Christ fulfills all the OT covenant promises given to David according to the flesh: here Paul will establish Jesus’ incarnation-humanity lineage … AND [He] was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by His resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. This is a clear declaration of the God-ness, or God-hood, or Deity of Jesus Christ as evidenced by His sacrificial death on His Cross and His resurrection from the dead. There is also a distinct Trinitarian confession here, in that the ‘Spirit of holiness’ is the Holy Spirit.

vv 5-6 | The Gospel calls for, commands, and enables ‘the obedience of faith for the sake of His Name among all the nations.’ That is to say, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not just another ‘faith journey’ or ‘faith tradition’ that is offered to those who hear it. It is the only faith that must be obeyed. And that goes for Jews and Gentiles [‘nations’] alike. As with any other good book, letter, or writing—if you’ll read the end of the book before you start the beginning, it will help you better understand what it is written from the first, and why it is being said. So, if you compare this purpose statement for the Gospel in ch 1.1-6 with ch 16.25-27, you’ll see that Paul both introduces and concludes Romans with the same purpose statement.

v 7 | The Gospel is for ‘everyone’ as Paul will repeat throughout Romans—but since this letter is specifically addressed, they are highlighted: “To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

vv 8-15 | Paul’s passionate longing, intense desire, and long-time aim is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Rome

vv 8-10 | The Gospel of Jesus should inspire our hearts to share it with everyone! First, Paul says, he gives God the credit and recognition for the faith they already have. Their vibrant, steadfast faith in Christ is proclaimed in all the world. News of their faith and witness had already been reported and disseminated all throughout the Roman Empire. Everywhere Paul had been, people were talking about their faith. Paul is not pandering to them, nor is he engaging in self-serving flattery. He is sincere in his commendation—and, at the same time, he is directing their attention also to the power and grace of the Gospel that is already working in them and has been since from the beginning of their own faith. Not only that, but for the longest time, he has been praying that God would open up his way to come to them “always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you.” NOTE: ALL of our Gospel efforts and activities must be purposed, directed, and empowered by our prayers to God for Him to make it happen by His will!

vv 11-12 | There should be a longing in our hearts to share the Gospel with others! For Paul here, he shares his heart with the saints in Rome that he has been longing to bring the Gospel to them. And, he had entertained this longing in his heart even while he was continuing to proclaim the Gospel in all the other places where he had been—and even now, at the time of this writing, here in Corinth where he was ‘on hold’ in his travel plans to go to Antioch. And the reason he had this longing in his heart is because he knows that the Gospel is the message of God’s Grace and Peace—it is God’s blessing, God’s spiritual gift that He has given us in Christ. AND, the spiritual gift and mutual encouragement is not a one-way ministry. When we share the Gospel of Christ in community with one another, we are ALL strengthened and encouraged mutually and simultaneously. [Much as we are right now as we read and study this text together!]

v 13 | God is the One who makes our Providential arrangements and intersections with others to share the Gospel. This is a personal note from Paul to the Romans: he has wanted to come to them for the longest time, and has even tried to make the plans to come their way… “but thus far have been prevented.” Paul will add further commentary on this statement in ch 15.18-24. There, Paul gives the Romans just a little of his missionary itinerary over the past previous years. He has been hindered from coming to them because there were all these other regions where he was and around him that needed the Gospel. Paul’s ambition was to preach the Gospel primarily in pioneer missionary work, “not where Christ has already been named, let I build on someone else’s foundation” [15.20]. But now, he wants to make his way further west—to Rome—“in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles.” We might ask: ‘But I thought you wanted to preach where Christ has not yet been known? The Roman saints are already believers. Christ is already known and believed there. Why such a longing to go to Rome?’ Good question, but as we shall see, they had a deep need there also to be strengthened in their faith. And, there were all the tensions and conflicts—and even rivalries—among their Jewish and Gentile communities. And so, Paul knows he can help them to come to a fuller understanding of the Gospel—as he will proceed to write in the text of this letter. ALSO, keep in mind: Paul will want them to help him through their prayers to God, encouragement, partnership, and even financial assistance to go on further from them—to Spain…where truly Christ and His Gospel has not yet been preached: “as well as among the rest of the Gentiles [nations].”

vv 14-15 | We are ‘under obligation’ [‘debtor’ KJV] to preach the Gospel to everyone! Where does this ‘obligation’ or ‘debt’ come from? Who has placed us under obligation or debt to them? It is not the world of unbelievers who have put us in debt or under obligation to preach the Gospel to them. They are in unbelief and disobedience to the Gospel. As Paul will tell us in ch 3.11, “…no one understands; no one seeks for God.” Those who need the Gospel couldn’t care less. But, the One who puts us under obligation and in debt to them is Christ Himself. He has commanded us to “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel … Go and make disciples of all the nations.” And so, for this reason, to fulfill this Great Commission [and his own personal calling and apostleship], “So I am eager to preach the Gospel to you also who are in Rome.”

vv 16-17 | Paul will now begin his proclamation of the Gospel—what the Gospel is in its purest essence and expression—The Gospel of God declared and defined

v 16 | God’s Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes—and it is the only power that will save! After everything Paul has said about his bold confession, affirmation, and commitment to the Gospel [“for I am not ashamed of the Gospel”—when you get Paul, you get the Gospel], he will now begin with his definition and declaration of what the Gospel is—and what it does. The Gospel deserves our fullest confidence. NOTE here how begins with his ‘inclusive’ appeals to both Jews and Greek [Gentiles]. As we go on, there will be discussions where Paul will address them separately, but all of his definitive and declarative proclamations of the Gospel will include them all.

v 17 | The Gospel is the revelation and manifestation of God’s righteousness from faith for faith. This is what the Gospel is all about: God’s righteousness both condemns those who do not obey and believe the Gospel … and His righteousness justifies, forgives, reconciles, saves, and sanctifies ALL those who believe the Gospel through faith in Jesus Christ! Quoting from Habakkuk 2.4, Paul reiterates and re-affirms the one way God has always saved: through faith in His Good News!

“THE RIGHTEOUS SHALL LIVE BY FAITH!”

ROMANS.L1.Romans 1.1-17.The Gospel Download

Posted in Bible Studies, Gospel, Lesson Notes, ROMANS, Sunday School lessons | Tagged Bible Studies, God's Glorious Gospel, Gospel, Jews and Gentiles, Just shall live by faith, Lesson Notes/Talking Points, ROMANS, Romans 1.1-17, Rome, Sunday School lessons, The Gospel, the righteous shall live by faith | Leave a comment

Ruth, chapter 4 | Redemption and Restoration

Posted on August 29, 2026 by PastorDave

Joshua / Judges / Ruth | Lesson 10 | Lesson Notes / Talking Points

SEARCHING FOR CHRIST IN THE BOOK OF RUTH

THE ROMANCE OF REDEMPTION

YAHWEH’S PREPARATION FOR HIS TRUE KING

Ruth, chapter 4 | Redemption and Restoration

I | INTRODUCTION / CONNECTIONS / CONTEXT

1 / Ruth, chapter 4, is an explicit and prophetic ‘pre-enactment’ of Christ—when He will come in the fullness of time to redeem His people from the bondage and moral indebtedness of their sins. Not only would God’s Redeemer come from the tribe of Judah and be born in the town of Bethlehem, but He would also be a direct royal descendent of King David. Isaiah 11.10: In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of Him shall the nations inquire, and His resting place [see Ruth 3.1] shall be glorious. Paul goes back to get this verse and writes it again in Romans 15.12 where he is exulting in God’s forethought and fore-planning to bring His Redeemer into the world to save not just Israelites and Jews, but peoples from ALL the nations. Romans 15.12: And again Isaiah says, ‘The root of Jesse will come, even He who arises to rule the Gentiles; in Him will the Gentiles hope’ [see Ruth 2.11-12]. Again,Paul quotes Isaiah 59.20-21 in Romans 11.26-27 when he announces that Christ had come to fulfill all of God’s OT promises and pre-enactments of our Redeemer: …as it is written, “The Deliverer will come from Zion, He will banish ungodliness from Jacob”; “and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins.” THIS is the Christ redemption Boaz is ‘re-enacting’!

2 / The theme of Ruth, chapter 4, is REDEMPTION & RESTORATION. The central theme of REDEMPTION has been woven all throughout this short-story pre-enactment of the Gospel. The noun or verb form of go-el has been used at least 12 times during this narrative. AND, chapter 4 will bring us full-circle back to chapter 1 [‘Emptiness & Exile’] and fulfill all the needs introduced there.

3 / Now, in chapter 4, Boaz will fulfill the redemption of Naomi and Ruth. As chapter 3.18 concludes, the narrator is giving us a ‘teaser’ for the next act. Ruth has returned from the threshing floor where she has proposed to Boaz that he fulfill his role prescribed by the law as their ‘go-el / redeemer.’ “She [Naomi] replied, ‘Wait, my daughter, until you learn how the matter turns out, for the man will not rest but will settle the matter today.’” This is a pre-enactment of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer! Get the picture that God is inspiring and writing here to point us to Christ and to pre-enact what He will do for us when He comes!

4 / In chapter 4.1, Boaz makes his appearance at the town’s gate—the place where civil and legal transactions were formalized—to accomplish redemption for Naomi, Ruth, and for Elimelech’s and Mahlon’s family name. When this formal, legal transaction has been made, Boaz can exclaim “It is finished! – It has been paid in full! It is done! Redemption accomplished!”

5 / Because…we have to see this! In this immediate transaction, Boaz is going to redeem [see chapter 4.9-10]: [1] Elimelech and his family land and inheritance in Bethlehem; [2] Mahlon and his perpetuity of their family’s name and lineage; [3] Naomi and her future security and provision; [4] Ruth and her place in the family’s name and lineage; But, God is working through Boaz to also restore the family lineage through whom He has chosen, purposed, and planned for CHRIST to be born to redeem us! [see Luke 1.67-75; Galatians 4.1-7; Hebrews 9.11-12; Ephesians 1.7-10; 1 Peter 1.17-21; et al.]

II | A simple breakdown and historical, covenant background of chapter 4…

1/ A simple way to break down this chapter and flesh out the theme of Redemption & Restoration:

verses 1-11a: A legal transaction – blessing comes through a costly redemption
verses 11b-17: A series of blessings – the restoration of the family’s land and lineage [11b-12: the blessing of the people and elders in the gate on Boaz / 13-17: the blessing of the women of the neighborhood on Naomi
verses 18-22: A genealogical pointer to the future and Christ [see Matthew 1.2-5]

2 / However, before we begin to explore this narrative and how Boaz pre-enacts, promises, and points to Christ, our Redeemer, it would be helpful to refresh our memories re: how God provided for go-el/kinsman-redeemer and redemption in His law…

3 / Yahweh’s covenant provisions for redemption. Yahweh had provided for the perpetuity and continuation of two covenant blessings: [1] the family (lineage) [see ch 4.10], and [2] their enjoyment of the Promised Land inheritance He had given them. And so, if someone fell into need and either of these two covenant blessings were in jeopardy of being broken, a close family member was expected to volunteer to step up and step in to help – to become that needy family member’s go-el / redeemer. The noun go-el comes from the verb galal = to redeem / deliver.

Let’s review a couple provisions Yahweh gave them to prevent the loss of either family or inheritance:

[1] Leviticus 25.23-28: if the family’s property [which was their land-grant inheritance from Yahweh Himself in the Promised Land, see v 23], had to be mortgaged [‘hocked / escrowed’] to another member of their tribal clan, the go-el could redeem it [buy it back], regain possession of it for the original owner, and return it to the family. This way, the family would not lose their allotted inheritance in the Land.

[2] Deuteronomy 25.5-10: this provision is called levirate marriage from levir which is Hebrew for ‘brother-in-law.’ If a brother of a family dies without first fathering a son who will perpetuate and carry on the family name and lineage, then the next available unmarried brother [the widow’s levir / brother-in-law] will take her as his wife to father a son who will become the heir of the deceased brother to perpetuate his family name and lineage. This is what Boaz fulfilled in Ruth 4.9-10.

III | Redemption and Restoration

So – getting back to Ruth 4, Redemption & Restoration, here’s how the legal transaction was ‘finished’!

verses 1-11a: The legal transaction – blessing comes only through a costly redemption

Boaz makes good on his promise to Ruth just a few hours before [3.11-13]

v 1: Boaz immediately makes his way to the ‘gate’ of the city as soon as it is daybreak – he goes from the threshing floor to the venue of the redemption transaction: the gate—this is the entrance into the walled city from the surrounding fields outside where town’s elders & council members would convene and ‘sit’ to officially conduct the town’s legal civil and social matters. Notice the 5 repetitions of the word ‘sit’ – this was their formal legal posture. The narrator highlights and emphasizes how the nearer- go-el ‘just happened’ [Providentially, of course!] to be passing by at that very moment: “And behold!” [see also ch 2.3-4]. Boaz calls for his to come and ‘sit’ down with him. Boaz obviously knows his name—he is a relative [see ch 3.12]—but he is keeping this transaction as impersonal as possible between the two of them. “Friend” is actually too personal and friendly for this greeting; more like “Hey, you there!”—the words the narrator uses makes him just a generic “Mr So-and-So.” But, this unwilling go-el shall remain nameless forever—while Boaz’s name will go down into Messianic redemption legacy and greatness!

v 2: Boaz seeks for a formal quorum of city elders—he may have had to go and find them—but he does, and they, too, are ‘seated.’ All the legal parties are now present, seated, and ready for the transaction to be formalized. Boaz begins his first public, formal, legal proposal to the nearer-go-el…

vv 3-4: Boaz presents the legal “whereas” conditions of this transaction… “Whereas Naomi is selling the parcel of land that belonged to our relative Elimelech.” NOTE: Naomi didn’t have possession of the land they had mortgaged, some other family member had the ‘lien’—but she is seeking a go-el to act on her behalf to recover and restore it to Elimelech. “Whereas you are a nearer-go-el than I am, I thought I would honor Yahweh’s law and give you first priority to make the redemption…” We don’t know whether Boaz and the others who have gathered around to witness the redemption transaction were surprised or horrified by the nearer-go-el’s response—but he readily responded “I will redeem it!”His thinking was that he would redeem Elimelech’s property—yes, he would have to take care of Naomi for as long as she lived – but since there were no male heirs, when she died, the land would be his.

v 5: Boaz counters with the additional caveat: whoever redeems Elimelech’s land must also marry Ruth to raise up a son/heir to Elimelech’s dead heir, Mahlon – Ruth’s former husband. This is the ‘levirate’ marriage provision we referenced above. Boaz obviously saved this additional responsibility as a ‘rider’ or a ‘codicil’ in order to present a complication which he hoped the nearer-go-elwould have to refuse

v 6: It worked! Boaz probably knew him well enough to know that he was a shrewd landowner, farmer, and businessman. He couldn’t risk or jeopardize his profit and estate in order to fulfill his legal / moral responsibility to marry Ruth [and especially with her being a Moabitess!] in order to raise up and restore a relative’s family and lineage! He wouldn’t be adding to his own personal estate!

vv 7-8: the ‘exchange of the sandal’ ceremony—“Now this was the custom in former times in Israel concerning redemption and exchanging…”: as a formal recognition that he was reneging on his ‘levirate’ responsibility and forfeiting his nearer-go-el claim to redeem Elimelech’s property, he took off his own sandal and gave it to Boaz—thus relinquishing and transferring the nearer-go-el right of redemption to Boaz—giving Boaz the ‘right of ownership’ to ‘walk’ on that property. Some historians/commentators believe this custom derived and had evolved from Yahweh’s promise to Joshua when they went into the Promised Land to possess it [see Joshua 1.3].

vv 9-11a: Boaz had now bought and ‘owned’ his right to redeem and claim Elimelech’s land…and assume the responsibility to provide and care for Naomi for the rest of her life……and marry Ruth! and raise up a son to carry on the family name and lineage!

verses 11b-17: A series of blessings—the restoration of the family’s land and lineage [11b-12: the blessing of the people and elders in the gate on Boaz / 13-17: the blessing of the women of the neighborhood on Naomi]

1 / I’m calling this section Prayers, Promises, & Prophecies. There will two remaining scenes and then the final genealogy [which is a ‘historical scene’]. All of these Prayers, Promises, & Prophecies are going to be pointers to Christ. That’s what we will highlight…

2 / I’m calling them: Prayers because when you read the words “May the LORD…” what you are reading is a prayer they are praying to Yahweh to do this. Promises because what they are asking Yahweh to do in the lives of these saints is what He had already promised He would do. Prophecies because they were not aware of how prophetic they were speaking. But we know that God was speaking His own prophetic words and purposes through them. God was pre-enacting and pre-announcing what He would do 1000+ years later when He would send Christ into the world to be our anointed and appointed Redeemer!

3 / So now, let’s see how these Prayers, Promises, & Prophecies were announced:

Scene 1: ch 4.11b-12 – city elders and townspeople

…at the gate of Bethlehem where the redemption transaction was publicly witnessed. The speakers are the elders and the townspeople who had gathered to witness the redemption transaction. They will make three separate statements in their Prayers, Promises, & Prophecies.

[1] “May the Lord make the woman, who is coming into your house, like Rachel and Leah, who together built up the house of Israel.” Remember: Ruth had been Mahlon’s wife for the 10 years they had been in Moab, and was barren, childless [see chs 1.4 & 4.10].Rachel also was barren until The LORD opened her womb and gave her Joseph and later Benjamin. They are praying that Ruth may become as fruitful as Rachel and Leah, who [along with their handmaids Bilhah and Zilpah] gave birth to the 12 sons who became fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel [Genesis 29-30].

[2] “May you act worthily in Ephrathah and be renowned in Bethlehem…” Literally, “May your noble acts be remembered, and may your name live on in perpetuity through the offspring who will be born to you and bear your name for generations to come…”Just think of the implications of that prayer in terms of Matthew 1.1-5.

[3] “…and may your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah, because of the offspring that the Lord will give you by this young woman.” This reference is to the tawdry story of Genesis 38. Judah is the father of their tribe, the royal tribe – from whom would be born David…and Jesus! But Perez was born to the unwitting ‘levirate’ [incestuous] marriage that his daughter-in-law, Tamar, deceived and seduced him into. The only similarities between these stories are that both Judah and Boaz bore their sons through a levirate union.

Scene 2: ch 4.13-17 – neighbor women, friends of Naomi

…nine months later, presumably in the home of Boaz, Ruth, Naomi, and now little Obed. The speakers are the neighboring women who love Naomi and have come to celebrate this birth with her and bless her in the name of The LORD with their Prayers, Promises, & Prophecies.

“So Boaz took Ruth, and she became his wife. And he went in to her, and the Lord gave her conception, and she bore a son.” The redemption had been consummated. Now the marriage had been consummated also.The LORD gave conception and the birth of a baby boy – to this formerly barren / childless foreign Moabite woman – who had professed her faith in Yahweh the God of Israel [see ch 1.15-17 & 2.12]. “Then the women said to Naomi, ‘Blessed be The Lord, who has not left you this day without a redeemer…’” All credit, recognition, and praise is given to Yahweh who has given Naomi this little go-el—this baby boy who will save her from loneliness, destitution, poverty, and the extinction of her family and name…and God will save us all from our sins in generations to come through Christ who will be born from this little baby’s lineage! “…and may his name be renowned in Israel!” As the elders and townspeople had prayed for Boaz [v 11], may this baby boy’s name also be renowned, not just in Bethlehem, but in Israel! Jesus’ Name will not only be renowned in Israel, but God will give Him the Name that is above every name! [see Matthew 1.21 & Philippians 2.9-10 & Acts 2.36, & others…] “He shall be to you a restorer of life and a nourisher of your old age…” This word ‘restorer’ is the same word the narrator used 12 times as ‘turn,’ ‘turn back,’ ‘return,’ etc. as he was showing us there how God was ‘turning’ Naomi’s whole life fortunes from emptiness to fullness, from bitterness to blessing. This baby boy go-el is going to ‘restore’ her very life to her and take care of her in her old age—for as long as she needs to be taken care of. “…for your daughter-in-law who loves you, who is more to you than seven sons, has given birth to him.” Although love is shown in so many persons and so many ways in this redemption romance, this is the only time the word ‘love’ is mentioned in this whole narrative of Romance of Redemption. And it is Ruth’s love for her mother-in-law Naomi. In the Hebrew culture, seven sons was considered to be the ideal family. Yahweh had given and restored to Naomi more than the ideal of family completeness and fullness in Ruth and her baby boy.Read Ephesians 1.1-14 in the light of this promise and prophecy – how many parallels of promises that God has given us in Christ can you find? ¹⁶Then Naomi took the child and laid him on her lap and became his nurse. ¹⁷And the women of the neighborhood gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi.” They named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David.

Scene 3: ch 4.18-22 — the genealogy.

This, too, is a ‘scene’ in the sense that the narrator will give us a flashback of history from Perez to David. It is included in the Prayers, Promises, & Prophecies because in this genealogy, the human narrator [inspired by the Spirit of Christ…(1 Peter 1.10-12)] is revealing to us why he is writing this historical record. Obviously, he is writing this Book of Ruth after David had been anointed and inaugurated as Israel’s King. Otherwise, Naomi, Ruth, Boaz, and Obed would have been just among the other millions of common people Israelites who lived and died unnamed during all these generations. But now that David is known, they, too, become part of the public record as his predecessors. They are King David’s lineage and family tree. They are King David’s ‘credentials’ as the rightful king of Israel—being a direct descendent of the royal tribe, the tribe of Judah. “Now these are the generations of Perez: Perez fathered Hezron, ¹⁹Hezron fathered Ram, Ram fathered Amminadab, ²⁰Amminadab fathered Nahshon, Nahshon fathered Salmon, ²¹Salmon fathered Boaz, Boaz fathered Obed, ²²Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David. ~This prophetic genealogy is repeated in Matthew 1.1-5

Of this man’s offspring God has brought to Israel a Savior, Jesus, as he promised. ~Acts 13.23

Joshua-Judges-Ruth.L10.Ruth 4.Redemption and Restoration Download

Posted in Bible Studies, Lesson Notes, Ruth, Sunday School lessons | Tagged Bible Studies, Boaz, David, Genealogy of Christ, goel, Jesse, Lesson Notes/Talking Points, Matthew 1.1-5, Obed, Pre-enactment of Christ, Redeemer, Redemption, Redemption and Restoration, Ruth, Ruth-chapter 4, Sunday School lessons | Leave a comment

Ruth, chapter 3 | Audacious Asking and Assured Acceptance

Posted on August 22, 2026 by PastorDave

Joshua / Judges / Ruth | Lesson 9 | Lesson Notes / Talking Points

SEARCHING FOR CHRIST IN THE BOOK OF RUTH

THE ROMANCE OF REDEMPTION

YAHWEH’S PREPARATION FOR HIS TRUE KING

Ruth, chapter 3 | Audacious Asking and Assured Acceptance

I | INTRODUCTION / CONNECTIONS / CONTEXT

1 / We don’t know who the human writer and narrator of this story was, but what we DO know is that “the Spirit of Christ Himself was in him” [to paraphrase 1 Peter 1.10-12]. Jesus Christ Himself is inspiring the human writer and narrator to ‘pre-enact’ what He Himself would do in generations to come – when He would come into our world through this very same ‘little town of Bethlehem’ to be our Redeemer [see Micah 5.2]. See also Luke 2.38—and all the other related NT texts to ‘Redeemer / redemption’…

2 / Not only would God’s Redeemer come from the tribe of Judah and be born in the town of Bethlehem, but He would also be a direct royal descendent of King David. Isaiah 11.10: In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of Him shall the nations inquire, and His resting place shall be glorious. HEADS UP: this promise of ‘rest’ is one of the premises of Ruth, ch 3 [v 1].

3 / Paul goes back to get this verse and writes it again in Romans 15.12 where he is exulting in God’s forethought and fore-planning to bring His Redeemer into the world to save not just Israelites and Jews, but peoples from ALL the nations [as He will do here in our lesson, i.e. Ruth]. And again Isaiah says, ‘The root of Jesse will come, even He who arises to rule the Gentiles; in Him will the Gentiles hope.’

4 / NOW, what we are going to witness here in Ruth, chapter 3, is a picture of Jesus Christ committing to assume the role of Redeemer of His people and assuming the responsibility of redeeming us for Himself – to belong to Him! See, e.g. Titus 2.11-14, et. al.

5 / Boaz is intentionally presented to us here as a pointer to Christ. He may not be a formal type of Christ [a ‘type’ must be formally recognized and specifically named as such in the New Testament], but Boaz is certainly a ‘motif’ or [as I like to call it] a ‘pre-enactment’ of Christ. And we know that Boaz is a pre-enactment of Jesus Christ as our Redeemer because the writer/narrator repeatedly emphasizes that Boaz is ‘a near relative, a redeemer’ [see 2.20; 3.9; 4.4]

6 / So, when we come here to chapter 3, we are going to witness Boaz’s commitment to redeem Elimelech’s estate for Naomi, and in so doing, he will also commit to marry Ruth and raise up a family in the name of Mahlon, Ruth’s deceased husband. In this way, he will redeem their family from dying out [‘be cut off’ ch 4.10].

7 / AND, by perpetuating Elimelech and Mahlon through Ruth, Boaz will become the great-grandfather of David – who is the human forefather and progenitor of Jesus Christ! ch 4.18-22

II | SO – HOW DOES BOAZ BECOME THE ‘REDEEMER’?

1 / I’m going to give chapter 3 the theme of Audacious Asking – because Ruth’s proposal to Boaz to marry her is one of the most audacious askings in all of Scripture! [NOTE: ‘audacious’ means: bold, daring, fearless, willing to take big risks!] And since Boaz is the ‘pre-enactment’ of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, then it is consistent with his character to encourage audacious asking and agree to granting audacious requests! Hence…the second part of our lesson title: “Assured Acceptance”!

2 / Jesus certainly did! Matthew 7.7-11: ‘ask and you shall receive’ / Matthew 8.1-3: “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean…” “I will…!” / Mark 10.46-52: To Bartimaeus: “What do you want me to do for you?” / Luke 11.1-13: the parable of the insistent neighbor / Luke 18.1-9: the parable of the insistent widow.

3 / So, what we’re going to do is work our way through Ruth chapter 3. And, yes, we will focus on Boaz’s gracious consent—his ‘assured acceptance’—to be Naomi’s and Ruth’s redeemer … but we will also focus on the audacity of Ruth’s way of asking him.

4 / We are going to cast Ruth as a woman of great faith in her redeemer. And we want to learn to pray, ask, and expect great graces from our Redeemer just as Ruth did from hers.

5 / I’m going to present us with six facets of Ruth’s faith in Boaz as they play out in the story … and then challenge us to act toward Christ, our Redeemer, with these same acts of faith. [NOTE: these six ‘facets of great faith’ are borrowed from Christopher Ash’s excellent little commentary Teaching Ruth & Esther, published jointly by Christian Focus / Proclamation Truth Resources.]

6 / Chapter 3 can be called Act 3 of this Drama of Redemption. And Act 3 can be broken down into 3 scenes:

SCENE 1, vv 1-5, begins in their house again

SCENE 2, vv 6-15, will go to the threshing floor

SCENE 3, vv 16-18, will be back in the house

1 | read vv 1-5 | GREAT FAITH IS INTENTIONAL

1 / The ‘rest’ that Naomi wants to find for Ruth is the rest of a permanent family and home—a husband who will love her and provide for her safety, sustenance, and security. They are still without their family property. For the past several weeks – maybe months – they have been living off of the gleanings Ruth has been bringing home from Boaz’s field. But, what about the future? For Ruth? For Naomi?

2 / Boaz is, after all, a close relative and redeemer, ch 2.20, and he is fully qualified as such to redeem or ‘buy back’ Elimelech’s ‘hocked’ property and estate which he had ‘sold off’ when they first went to Moab seeking relief from the famine in Bethlehem [see ch 1.1].

3 / So, Naomi proposes a daring plan: Ruth will go to the threshing floor and propose to Boaz that he marry her! Look at all these intentional preparations: [1] wash yourself; [2] anoint yourself [with perfumed oils]; [3] put on a cloak-garment [this may have been an instruction to take off her former widow’s / mourning garments and assume her place among the eligible women for marriage]; [4] go to the threshing floor – but remain hidden until after the evening meal and festivities; [5] After Boaz retires, she is to go where he is lying down, remove the covers from the lower parts of his legs, and lie down beside his legs and feet. We need to note here also that everything is intentionally planned with chastity and discretion…

4 / Naomi is so confident that Boaz will comply with this proposal, that she tells Ruth: “…he will tell you what to do.” Here, the emphasis heavily points to their dependence upon Boaz’s willingness to redeem.

5 / Ruth obediently and trustingly consents to carry out this plan in full: “All that you say I will do.”

6 / You must take Christ at His word and ask Him for His grace! “Whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved!”

2 | read vv 6-7 | GREAT FAITH IS VULNERABLE

1 / I don’t know if we can even begin to recognize and appreciate what a risk Ruth is taking here: she is Moabite woman; she runs the risk of being seen as a prostitute soliciting illicit services; she runs the risk of being rejected; she runs the risk of being publicly shamed and shunned for her ‘perceived and imputed improprieties.’ NOTE: everything Ruth did was risky—but not one act was ‘risque’!

2 / But she casts herself upon the good character and ‘mercy / hesed’ of Boaz – believing that he will respect her need and her request.

3 / We live in abject dependence upon the Grace of Jesus Christ, our Redeemer – but we believe in His mercy and grace! We have no one else to go to – we need none other! “All that the Father gives me shall come to me; and whoever comes to me shall not be cast out!”

3 | read vv 8-9 | GREAT FAITH IS INTIMATE & PERSONAL

1 / Sometime during the night, Boaz was startled awake – could have been shivering from the night air or could have been delayed reactions to the movements at his feet.

2 / What he discovered was a woman sleeping at his feet, without recognizing her! “Who are you!”

3 / Notice how the narrator continues to cast everything in the ambience of darkness and secrecy—creating and building up the tension of uncertainty of outcome: ‘tonight’; ‘do not make yourself known to the man’; ‘at the end of the heap of grain’; ‘she came softly’; ‘at midnight.’ This is not out in the open field in broad daylight; this is just the two of them with no one else even knowing or participating…

4 / Faith is always intensely intimate and personal – a personal transaction of love and trust with Jesus Christ, casting ourselves upon His promised Grace, love, and ‘assured acceptance’!

5 / Ruth identifies herself by her name: “I am Ruth” … she takes the place of a ‘servant’– even a foreigner, not a citizen, not an employee—with no rights to request anything at all. [compare Matthew 15.21-28]

6 / And yet, she proposes to Boaz that he marry her! “Spread your wings over your servant, for you are a redeemer!” The ‘wings’ were the lower portions of his outer cloak or the blanket with which he was covering himself for sleep.This was an act of engagement to marry—to take Ruth to himself—to assume the responsibility to take care of her every need! see Ezekiel 16.8-10

7 / Jesus Christ invites you into His own life – into His family – into His very heart! “As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God!” [John 1.12-13]. This is redemption, adoption to Himself!

4 | read vv 10-11 | GREAT FAITH IS GROUNDED IN COVENANT PROMISES

1 / Faith is our conscious, deliberate, intentional decision to trust that God is both able and willing to do what He has promised to do—and then acting upon that confidence with obedience! [see Romans 4.16-25; 1 Thessalonians 5.24; Hebrews 10.23; et. al.]

2 / We have to recognize that everything that has been going on in this little story is grounded in God’s Word and in the laws He had given to Israel to govern their conduct – every aspect of their lifestyle and conduct: the gleaning; the expression of charity and hospitality to the poor and disadvantaged; the rights of the redeemer to buy back the property of a close relative and restore it back to their original family…

3 / Ruth has already made her profession of faith in YAHWEH, the God of Israel [ch 1.16]; Boaz greeted his reapers and farmhands in the name of YAHWEH [ch 2.4]; Boaz had already recognized Ruth’s membership in their family of faith and her personal trust in YAHWEH [ch 2.12].

4 / Boaz also commends Ruth and acknowledges that she has already proven her personal faith in YAHWEH and her commitment to obey and serve and follow Him by the ways she has taken care of her mother-in-law Naomi [ch 3.10-11].

5 / So, Boaz accepts his personal responsibility under God’s law to marry Ruth and have children with her—to restore the family line she lost when Mahlon died! [Leviticus 25.24-55; Deuteronomy 25.5-10]

5 | read vv 12-17 | GREAT FAITH IS EFFECTIVE

1 / The narrator is deliberately crafting his words [under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit] to show us that God is the One who is doing through these faithful servants everything they are doing.

2 / vv 12-13 So – the first response we get from Boaz is: “Of course! I will marry you and redeem Elimelech’s property and resume the family line of Mahlon! But, there is a redeemer who is closer to Naomi than I am. We’ll have to see if he wants to claim the right. If he does, I will have to honor the law and the custom and concede to him. But, if he doesn’t – as surely as YAHWEH lives and is faithful [and He is!], I WILL!”

3 / This is such a beautiful picture, pointer, and pre-enactment of Jesus Christ being willing to obey His Father to come to earth, be born as one of us so He could be like us and close to us – AND REDEEM US! …except that, of course, in His case – He was the ONLY One qualified to be our Redeemer! [see Hebrews 2.14-16; et. al.]

4 / v 14 They were all up before it was light enough to be seen and recognized. Boaz was always careful and conscientious all through the transactions of the night to be a man of character, integrity, above-board—nothing was ever done that was indecent or inappropriate. He is committed to keeping it that way: “Let it not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor.”

5 / v 15 But Boaz is not going to send her home to Naomi without another abundant blessing. “Hold out your shawl…” and he filled it with as much of the threshed grain as Ruth could carry home for her and Naomi. This is so much more than just another hospitable gesture—THIS was Boaz’s ‘dowry’ or ‘pledge’ of his ‘assured acceptance’ of Ruth’s marriage proposal! If you could call this transaction an ‘engagement,’ this was Boaz’s way to ‘put a ring on it’—promising to follow through with his redemption.

6 / vv 16-17 Naomi is waiting up for Ruth: I really doubt she even slept all night long—wondering how the night was going? Will Boaz be willing to secure their future? Did she do the right thing sending Ruth out there to the threshing floor in the night with a bunch of men? [Remember: this was during the days of the Judges [ch 1.1]…]

7 / Ruth gives Naomi her good report – and then shows her the bountiful gift Boaz has sent home with her for them. NOTE again how the narrator is crafting his words to show us that God had completely reversed their prospects for the future… when Naomi first came back to Bethlehem, her bitter complaint against YAHWEH was: “I went away full, and YAHWEH has brought me back empty!” [ch 1.20-21]. But here, the narrator puts it in Boaz’s mouth, “Don’t go back to your mother-in-law empty-handed…” [same word]. God has done this! –- and this was God’s intention and plan all along! … and not only is He filling up their human and physical provisions, but He is also pre-enacting here how He will send our Redeemer into our world in the fullness of time and when He comes, He will be “full of grace and truth!” “For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace! [John 1.14, 16].

8 / We will see the prophetic and Messianic fullness Yahweh is preparing for them and us in ch 4.18-21!

6 | read v 18 | GREAT FAITH IS WILLING TO WAIT

1 / Naomi concludes her celebration with her call to wait for Boaz to act. She knows he will be faithful to do all he has promised. 1 Thessalonians 5.24: He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it! This is a sterling testimony to Boaz’s faithful integrity—not just his personal character, but also his faithful obedience to his family responsibilities commanded by YAHWEH’s Law.

2 / Naomi’s instructions to Ruth to “Wait…” were personal to them in that moment, household, and family. But, at the same time, this ‘waiting’ is also the prevailing and pervasive attitude of the whole OT community of faithful believers. They were ‘waiting’ for their Promised Redeemer. And, they had been ‘waiting’ ever since the first promise had been given to Eve after their fall into sin in Genesis 3.15: I will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel. All of these OT provisions for their family ‘redeemers’ were promises, pictures, pointers, ‘pre-enactments’ of the Messianic Redeemer who would come to redeem them from all their enemies [Luke 1.71] and ‘return’ them back to YAHWEH, their God. This whole OT era of ‘waiting’ is quintessentially distilled in the testimonies of Zechariah, Simeon, and Anna when their Redeemer finally appeared: “And his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, saying, ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited and redeemed His people…!’” [Luke 1.67-68]; “Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him” [Luke 2.25]; “And there was a prophetess, Anna…And coming in up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of Him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” [Luke 2.36-38].

3 / And, in that very same spirit of waiting in confident, expectant hope, we. too, are ‘waiting’ for the full redemption that Jesus Christ will bring us when He comes again! see Romans 8.18-25!

When our Redeemer, Jesus Christ, victoriously proclaimed “IT IS FINISHED!” … He secured for us “an eternal redemption”! [Hebrews 9.25]

Joshua-Judges-Ruth.L9.Ruth 3.Audacious Asking & Assured Acceptance Download

Posted in Bible Studies, Lesson Notes, Ruth, Sunday School lessons | Tagged Audacious asking and assured acceptance, Bible Studies, Boaz, Great faith, Lesson Notes/Talking Points, Redeemer, Redemption, Ruth 3, Ruth chapter 3, Ruth's marriage proposal to Boaz, Sunday School lessons, waiting | Leave a comment

Pastoral Prayer | 2 Corinthians 5.11-21 | All things “Back to School”

Posted on August 17, 2026 by PastorDave

During our Lord’s Day corporate worship services, our Pastors rotate delivering the public reading of the Scripture (1 Timothy 4.13) and Pastoral Prayer (1 Timothy 2.1). We strive to publicly cultivate and model the exercise of ‘praying God’s Word back to Him’ as we have just read and heard it … and it focuses on a particular subject of intercession for that day and occasion. We intentionally keep the Pastoral Prayer brief and pointed.

I was asked to deliver it on 9 August 2026, and since that week was the beginning of new school terms, we prayed for all things “Back to School.” For those who expressed an interest in it or asked for a copy of the prayer, I humbly offer it here with the on-going prayer that God will use it to inspire, encourage, and edify your own…

The Scripture references that are included are not recited—they are just the other relevant Scriptures that come to my mind as I prepare to pray it and inspire the specific wording of the particular petitions.

SCRIPTURE READING | 2 Corinthians 5.11-21

PASTORAL PRAYER | All Things “Back to School”

O God, You are the creator, fountain, and giver of all true knowledge and wisdom. You are the All-Wise, Only-Wise God! And to fear You, know You, and to be reconciled to You is true wisdom and eternal life. (Romans 16.27; 2 Corinthians 5.18-20)

And so, it is to You we pray for all of our students who are now beginning a new school year. Some of them may be excited about going back to school—maybe even for the very first time. Or it may be that they [or their parents] are suffering from anxieties, dread, or even fears during these days for various reasons. If they are, may You quiet their hearts as they entrust their children and themselves to Your care.

We call on You, O God, to cover them with your physical protection—keep them from danger, harm, and violence.

And guard, not only their physical bodies, but keep and guard their minds and hearts, especially. Keep them from all the alluring temptations to believe, accept, or embrace anything that is only “falsely called ‘knowledge’”—that will distract them from seeing and pursuing the Glory of Christ and the will of God—or the convictions of our faith that are grounded in Christ – whether it be in beliefs, conduct, or lifestyle. (1 Timothy 6.20-21)

May we test and prove everything we hear by the purity and truth of Your Holy Scriptures…which are ‘able to make us wise unto salvation.’ (2 Timothy 3.14-16)

Some of our parents are in school or other trainings, also. Give them the physical strength, Godly wisdom, and spiritual stamina to balance all the priorities and demands that they must deal with—and may they keep their eyes of faith and focus fixed on Jesus. (Hebrews 12.1-2)

And if they are schooling at home, give them all the wisdom, discernment, and strength they need to do that well!

We pray for all of their teachers, professors, and administrators also—a host of whom are right here in this very room. May each of them exercise their wisdom and influence toward God and righteousness—& be good models for their students to follow—good models of the ‘new creation’ of Grace we are in Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 5.17)

We pray that we will not seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge only—but that we will—every one of us—commit to a never-ending discipleship after Christ, who calls each one of us to “Come to Me … Learn from Me!” May we commit ourselves and everything we learn to “no longer live for ourselves, but for Him who for our sake died and was raised” to ‘save us from our sins’ and ‘from this present evil age.’ (Matthew 11.28-30; 2 Corinthians 5.14-15; Galatians 1.3-5)

MAY WE ALL BE RECONCILED TO GOD! (2 Corinthians 5.20)

And whether it is book knowledge or vocational training, may each one of us apply everything we learn and come to know … to our preeminent vocation: to be ambassadors for Christ! (2 Corinthians 5.20)

And now, Pastor Ben is coming to deliver your precious Gospel to us! Anoint him with the Spirit of The LORD…with wisdom and understanding / counsel and might / knowledge and the fear of The LORD... (Isaiah 11.1-2)

And grant us these desires of our hearts through the merits of Your Son, Jesus Christ, whom You have made to be to us … The Wisdom of God — Amen. (1 Corinthians 1.24, 30)

Posted in Pastoral Prayer | Tagged 2 Corinthians 5.11-21, all things Back to School, Back to School, Pastoral Prayer, Praying God's Word, praying God's Word back to Him, public prayer, public reading of Scripture, Scripture reading | Leave a comment

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