December 8, 2025 | Romans 4-7
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Introduction and Holiday Greetings
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Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. Happy Chanukah. No, no. I was trying to think of the NSYNC song. Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Yeah. Oh yeah, I heard it.
AI-Generated Music and Church Growth
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AI generated metal or rock version of Bye bye bye the other day that I was like, actually, that kind of slaps.
But it's because you really like the original too though. Well, I know all the dance moves and everything. Yeah. But aside from that, yeah, people would love to see that. I don't think they would. I think we're trying to get a lot of people to come to our church. We need to grow. We need to grow. We keep saying that.
So this is one way that we can reach the masses. The dancing pastor, come see him, display his moves next Sunday service. I know for a fact that my wife would not like to see that. Well, she's been reached though, and the deal has been sealed. She has a sign and seal on her finger that guarantees she cannot leave.
But if I'm gonna live with her in an understanding manner, [00:01:00] I probably need to live with her in such a way that I'm not gonna do dances. Yeah. But I think one of your sermons would also say she needs us a man.
Yeah.
Celebrating Hanukkah and Multicultural Memories
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Are you celebrating Hanukkah this year again, since you are, you know that Jewish, I do have the, what's that called? Yamaka. Yamaka. I do have a yamaka thanks to the Panahis. Yep. So I might sport it at some point. I keep on flirting with it. It's always in my bag and I think, you know, I just put it on.
Like, I just need to own it. I am partially Jewish, ethnically, so I need to own that. I think this year somebody should get you a Menorah for Christmas. Okay. Without that. You know what? I do remember in elementary school having some really sweet memories. When we did a multicultural celebration, the dreidel, we did the dreidel.
Yep. And we did have the menorah and we had some Jewish sweets that were just delicious. And I can still, in my mind, taste what they. Tastes like, I guess remember what they taste like. Yeah. I just can't remember what they were. It's weird. I can't baklava. I have no idea. I can't recall if I tasted it, I would be I think I would know.
Transported back. I would, yeah. But it was an awesome celebration. I'd never to that point, even knew what Judaism was until we did that. [00:02:00] Celebration. It was awesome. And then you found out you are one. And then I found out years later. Wow. I wish I would've been able to flex on them though. That would've been really cool.
That would've been, you'd have been like, these are my people. So hold up, y'all. Hold up. Yeah.
Deep Dive into Romans: Faith and Works
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Man, speaking of Jews that, we're in the book that's dealing a lot with Jews and Gentiles, with our daily Bible reading right now with Romans. And we've got some meaty sections today.
We are in what, Romans four through seven, just 4, 5, 6, and seven is all Yeah. And not a big deal. Some of the most dense theology that Paul's gonna get into. We left off yesterday talking about God being the just justifier, the just the one who is just, and the justifier, there it is, of the one who has faith in Jesus and he's gonna exposit.
More about that, expound more on that with chapter four by pointing to an example here of Abraham. And he's gonna point to Abraham and he's gonna say, look, Abraham was justified by faith and one of the things that he's going to point to is the fact that when Abraham was circumcised that he was circumcised after it was said that [00:03:00] he was justified by his faith or that his faith was credited as righteousness. And Paul's point there is that the faith preceded the work. The faith preceded the obedience. The obedience came afterwards. And so, Abraham's act of faith was not contingent upon his obedience to the Lord Abraham's righteousness that he received.
It was not based on the fact that he had already been obedient. It was based on the fact that he believed, and Paul's point is that made Abraham the father of all who would believe, not just of the Jew, but also of the Gentile. That's a point that Paul's gonna make in Galatians chapter three as well, specifically.
But here he's making the argument. Yes, righteousness does come through faith, and in the rest of chapter four, he's gonna really say, this is important for us to understand because it's by faith, not by works. Because if it's by works, then the promise is not it doesn't rest on grace anymore.
Then it's somehow merit. It's somehow earned. But instead it's a promise that comes down to the faith that we need to have that precedes any of the obedience that follows
Chapter five, then he.
The Peace and Love of God in Romans 5
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It unpacks more of the implications for this. And he begins by talking about the, one of [00:04:00] the results and again, five through eight are a lot of the results of the gospel, the results of our faith. And one of the immediate results of the gospel is that the peace that we have with God.
And that's what he begins with in the first 11 verses here of chapter five. And this is where we find the great statement that God loved us, that God came after us and he showed his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And that shows us again the initiative of God.
In salvation that is traceable all the way back to the fact that he sent Christ not when humanity at large, mankind at large was coming back towards him. And also he came for us, you as an individual, not when you were cleaning yourself up and coming back to him, but when you were a weak, ungodly, sinful enemy of his.
And that's how he loved you. And he came after you in that stint, that state. And that's where, Paul's argument is, look this, he said, look, we're gonna rejoice in this because if we were enemies when we were reconciled to him. And by the death of his son, how much more are we gonna now be saved by the life of his son?
If God was willing to pay that penalty, a point he's gonna make later on in chapter eight as [00:05:00] well. Then what is there that he wouldn't do to deliver us all the way through? So there's great confidence that we can have in the love of God poured out for us there at the beginning of chapter five.
The Two Adams: Sin and Righteousness
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After this, he goes into the relationship of two atoms, if we can put it that way. You've got the first, Adam and Adam number one introduced sin into the world and with sin came death. And this is where we get into the idea of original sin. That's a doctrine that we draw from passages like this one and the federal headship of Adam.
That is, that Adam was the representative head of all of mankind, that all of us were represented in Adam. So that's such that when Adam. Sinned death came into the world and death spread to all men, as the Bible says there, because all sinned. And this is one of those doctrines that can make us uncomfortable.
I think until we realize the implications for the rest of Paul's argument here, that if we don't want association with Adam's sin, then we can't. Want association with Christ's righteousness as Adam represented us in a bad way. Christ represented us in a good [00:06:00] way and gave us his righteousness. And so, this is the bad news, good news side thing that we talked about in yesterday's episode.
The bad news is, yeah, Adam sinned. So thereby all of us sin. And the other thing on that is nobody is innocent. Nobody is sinless. Nobody is sitting here. Only possessing the original guilt in Adam. Everybody has sinned as a result of being somebody who's born with a sin nature. And so nobody is being sent to heal hell on the guilt of Adam alone.
Instead all of us are guilty and we can have this. Great, good news that if Adam once represented us in sin, a crisis represented us with his perfect obedience, and we can be made righteous if our faith and trust are in him. What does it mean in verse 13 where it says sin is not counted, where there is no law.
Sounds like there's no sin. If there's no mosaic law. Well, and that's where he is gonna point to death. Right. And he's gonna say, death rained. Even from Adam to Moses, even over those sin who, those whose sin was not like Adam. And that would be those that sinned without a law. Adam was given a law in the garden when God said to [00:07:00] Adam directly, do not eve from this truth.
There's the law. He sinned. He broke God's reveal law. But from Adam to Moses, the argument is there was no codified law. God didn't have a codified law here on earth, and yet death still existed. People still died, which showed that the guilt of sin went back to our connection to Adam and that sin was still there.
Paul's gonna talk about the nature of mankind. He already has talked about that earlier in the letter that God's law is written on the hearts of mankind and that they're guilty before him for sinning, even though they don't have the revealed loss sitting in their hands. And that's what he's talking about here.
That's helpful. What about this next section here? It seems like Paul is teaching universalism that everybody will be saved in the end. In verse 18, he says, therefore, as one trespass, one sin led to condemnation for all men. And of course that's all of us in humanity 'cause we're all now inheritors of Adam sin.
So one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men. So it seems like Jesus. Death was satisfactory for that same group of people, all people under Adam. Now, all people under Christ in verse 19 says, for as [00:08:00] by one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. So by one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous.
So it seems like there are two groups in mind here, well rather there's two people Adam one and Adam two, and that their effect was universal in application for both parties or both people. That All the people That is everybody. Yeah. And that's where we have to go back to.
Remember that we have to interpret scripture in the context of scripture. So even if we go back to Romans chapter two, verse five Paul says, you're storing a wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God's righteous judgment will be revealed. So he's pointing forward to a group that is gonna suffer under the wrath of God on the day of God's judgment there.
So that would imply that not everyone is going to be saved. And there's other places beyond that in the book of Romans, even where he's gonna talk about the existence of wrath. So we know that he's not a universalist. So then we have to say, okay, well then what did he, what was he implying here? What was he saying?
Was what was the meaning here. And it, my best understanding of this passage is that what his argument is the death of Christ was [00:09:00] sufficient in being the atoning sacrifice, such that anyone, without distinction anyone could come to him in faith and received forgiveness and be declared righteous to be declared justified.
If they come in faith that, that his death is enough to forgive the sins of any. Any person that comes to him, there's nothing that somebody would say, well, I'm, his death wasn't enough for me. And so in that sense it's that which can lead to justification of life for all men. It's not all without exception, but it's all without distinction.
So any person, his death is sufficient for them to come to him in faith and receive forgiveness for their sins. It doesn't mean that. All will. And we know that to be true because the other passages in scripture that points to the existence in reality of hell that if this meant that all would be justified, then hell wouldn't exist.
And even, not just Paul, but Jesus also spoke a lot about hell and the dangers there and the weeping the gnashing of teeth and the torment and things like that of that nature. So in verse 18, then the word all. Even though it's the [00:10:00] same word and it seems like it's being paralleled to itself here, it seems like there's a form of Hebrew parallelism here.
The word all though it's being used in a similar way, is not the same meaning on both sides of the equation, right? Is that what you're saying? Right. I guess it's really important for you guys to hear and see, because I think a lot of people, I know a lot of people that have taken passages like this, in fact, this very passage and have said, evidently God will restore all things.
In the end, and he's gonna reconcile all people to himself. In fact, I do have a question because this one seems really clear. If I understand where a universals would come from and saying, look at Romans five, all in Adam, all in Christ. One is one. One group of people that is, all of humanity is condemned, but now in Christ, all of humanity is redeemed.
And you said, well, that's not actually what it means because of Romans two. They're gonna respond, well, why do you prioritize Romans two over Romans five? Maybe Romans two is, whatever they would say, it's a different time or a different, [00:11:00] something else. A different, who knows? Why do we prioritize one verse over another and how do we know when we're doing it the right way?
Yeah and I would say, that was an example. When you look at the corpus of scripture, the context beyond even the book of Romans, we see that there are other teachings, there are other passages that do point to the existence of hell. And even the existence of hell as an eternal place is that you fast forward to the Book of Revelation.
It talks about the fact that hell and those in it are gonna be emptied into the lake of fire where the false prophet and the beast are gonna be as well. And they're gonna be in the lake of fire where their smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest day and night.
So there are other passages throughout the full corpus of scripture that. Help us to say, okay, it's not just Romans two but Romans two is one example. There's plenty of others that we could appeal to that then say, okay, we have to interpret this verse in light of the full context of the Bible.
Not just even the full context of Romans, but the full context in the New Testament, the full context of the Old Testament as well. And when we do that, we see that there are clear teachings in scripture about the eternality of heaven and the eternality of hell, or the eternality of the eternal [00:12:00] state one way or the other.
And so this is an example where we would say, okay, so that means I have to interpret this in light of that. Otherwise I have to look at this and say, Paul disagrees with himself in a lot of places. He disagrees with Jesus and he disagrees with the rest of the Bible. And if we're gonna get there, then we're in insanely shaky ground at that point, being a good Bible.
Student is often more challenging than what you might realize. 'cause this is a really clear passage. If someone were to say, this is universalism, you'd be like, well yeah, it sure says like this. Sure. Sounds like it's saying that. Right. But it's not. And what you're getting at is something so few people really feel the weight of.
And that's being a good Bible student really means you have to know the whole thing. Yeah. And putting it together in a faithful way is a delicate and responsibility laden process. You have to do this carefully and slowly. This is why picking your pastor and deciding who you're gonna attend church with or who you're gonna follow at a church is so important because questions like this are always arising when you're doing your Bible reading.
You and I are looking at this right now and saying, well, it sure looks clear, but as you just heard from Pastor pj, there's a lot of ways to look at this [00:13:00] that don't, don't deny the text doesn't under undermine it at all, but does it justice by saying, what does this mean in light of the whole? And that's a challenging process and I don't know that a lot of times we really give that sense as preachers, sometimes we're preaching a sermon and we don't have time to discuss the nuances of passages.
But I just want you to see here. Stuff like this can be really challenging unless you have a skilled Bible teacher who knows what he's talking about, who knows the Bible genesis to revelation and can helpfully orient somebody. Even still, you need to do the work. You need to take responsibility for your own Bible reading and know it well enough to be able to say, okay, is my pastor cutting it right?
Mm-hmm. So yes. Thank you for clarifying that. If you guys have questions about that, you're welcome to send 'em in, but I thought someone would get hung up. I think you answered it pretty well. Yeah, I think dead on. I agree with you.
Christian Life and Freedom from Sin
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I'm glad you pointed that out in chapter six. Then we get into the life that a Christian lives in light of salvation in light of the peace that we have in light of being declared righteous.
What does that mean for us? And we get another one of those questions at the beginning. Paul says, okay, are we to sin more and more that Grace May have bound if our sin results in God's grace, [00:14:00] are we to sin more and more that Grace May be multiplied? And he says, again, by no means. And then he goes on to talk about our new relationship.
The sin as Christians, and he connects it to our relationship with Christ, and he does that right there at the very beginning. He says we were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death in order that justice Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. We too might walk in newness of life.
So he's talking about our spiritual baptism and that's something that takes place at the moment of conversion. We're buried with Christ. We're united with his death in order that just as he was raised in the dead to walk in newness of life, we too might walk in newness of life and the temptation may be to say, okay, well that's eternity.
How about right now? Well, that's where he goes in the rest of chapter six. He says, look, we've been united with him in a death like his, so that the, as he says in verse six, our old self, the old man would be crucified with him in order that the body of sin, that's the flesh would be brought to nothing.
It's a phrase that means rendered powerless so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. This is such an important doctrine for the Christian. That means that when you are [00:15:00] saved, the chains of your bondage to sin have been broken, such that now when you do sin, you are not sinning under compulsion.
You are not sinning because you are a slave to that sin. When you sin, now you are. Choosing willfully to go back to the old master, you are choosing willfully to go back to that cruel master that led to death and to submit yourself again in obedience to him. He's gonna say later in chapter six the, we are slaves to whatever we obey either to sin, leading to death.
Or to righteousness leading to godliness. And so here he's saying, look, in Christ, you've been united to him such that the power of sin is broken in your life. That means now as he goes on in verses 12 and following, to say, quit letting sin reign in your bodies to make you obey its passions. You've got a freedom now in Christ.
And as such, you have a choice. Daily. And that's what's so important to this. Sometimes we think about, okay, I made that choice when I came to faith in Jesus, so now I should be settled. Now, sanctification is daily choosing to say, today I'm gonna present myself to [00:16:00] God as an instrument of righteousness instead of to sin as an instrument of unrighteousness.
And so Paul's calling for that. That realization of going, okay, you've got peace with God, Romans chapter five, praise God. That's awesome. Now let's live in light of it and understand the impact that that has in our lives. Just wanna point out the word slave doesn't mean, doesn't suggest options, is all I'm saying.
If you're a slave of righteousness, if you're a slave of Christ, it's now you're life. For his right, you do his bidding and that often will mean putting the death, the deeds of the body so that we can live in Christ. So amen to that. We'd probably need more encouragement to be like that. Yeah. And that's the thing, man.
I mean, we're not saved and freed in the sense of being autonomous. People think, I think sometimes about freedom as autonomous freedom, and that's not Christianity. It's, you're freed from one slavery to be brought into a different slavery. The difference is you're master's far greater and far nicer, fi, far kinder, far more loving, far such a good master in Christ versus the master of your fall.
And sin, we're free to be righteous. Or free to. Right. Live the way that God designed us to live. So [00:17:00] it's not freedom to, and that's a great point because we often will think about the word in relationship to the context that we live in, which is one of those issues that we can fall into because we take a word and we change its meaning according to how we understand it today.
And that's a form of anachronism that an, did I say that right? Anachronism. Anachronism, that's the one that can do us harm because we're interpreting it from our own context versus interpreting it from that context. We're free to live in Christ and that's a righteousness that is gifted to us by God, and that's how we're designed to live.
Yeah we've talked about some key doctrines. Romans brings out so many doctrines, phrases that you've probably heard. We talked about original sin. Another doctrine out there is total depravity. And that's a little bit about what we're talking about here too, because in Christ you mentioned, you were free to pursue righteousness.
What the doctrine of total depravity teaches is that prior to coming to faith in Christ, we aren't free to pursue righteousness. We are free to pursue sin in that sense that is our inclination. That is what we will choose to do by default, is to pursue sin. In Christ, we are redeemed and now we are [00:18:00] able to pursue righteousness.
We are free to pursue righteousness now and that is something that takes place, that trans transition takes place there.
Struggle with Sin: Believer or Unbeliever?
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Alright, chapter seven, I think we flip flopped over the last couple years on who this is talking about. Is this the believer? Is this the unbeliever? Is Paul writing about his own experience, somebody else's experience?
What do we do in chapter seven? Well, we know that chapter seven's about the Christian's relationship to the law or the law in general. What does the law do? And as he's already said earlier in Romans, the law is there to show us our sin. But Paul gets into this introspective wrestling match here in chapter seven, where you're saying, you know what?
The law shows me my sin and the law reminds me that I do the things I don't wanna do instead of the things I should do. And he. Culminates in this statement in verse 24, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. And then he says, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
So then I serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin. So Pastor Rod, this year, where are we at? Are you thinking this is Paul Believer or [00:19:00] Paul Unbeliever? Yes. No, I can't say that. That'd be a cop out. I am. Oh, I just hate the fact that I flip flop on this. It's hard, man.
I just hate it. I hate that. I do. It is hard and that's why I struggle with this. I struggled with it again, so I know I'm going against history here, at least right now, because I'm gonna say I think he's speaking about life as an unbeliever, and my primary reason why is because chapter eight. Is how the spirit changes things.
Mm-hmm. The spirit's introduction to the Christian's life changes our condemnation, changes our relationship to the law. So I think he's talking about life as an unbeliever. What do you say? Yeah. I think that's a compelling argument there. I, when I go back to verse 14, I. Of chapter seven, he says, we know the laws spiritual, but I am of the flesh sold under sin.
Even what we were just talking about there. Yeah, he was just talking about the opposite, the freedom, right? Yeah. So that phrase there would seem to imply that he's looking at life as an unbeliever here. And I know some people will argue, okay, but what about verse 20? [00:20:00] He says, if I do what I do not want, it's no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
How could an unbeliever not want to do sin? And I think that's a simplistic argument. I think there are plenty of unbelievers that want. To be better people than they are. I think there are plenty of self-righteous unbelievers that are, even when you look at Judaism, like this is a perfect example.
Paul's been arguing against those Jews that wanna be made righteous by the works of the law. And his whole argument has been, the law is only gonna show you how sinful you are. You're gonna be frustrated by that because you're gonna want to do the works of the law to be righteous, and yet the law is gonna show to you that you don't measure up.
Time and time again. So I think that even fits with where he's been in his treatment of the law earlier in the book saying the law is not going to, you're gonna say, I want to be righteous according to the law. And yet what you're gonna find is you've got another law at work in you, the law of sin, which is preventing you from being justified by the law.
And so as a result, you need something more wretched man than I am who's gonna set me free. How can I find true freedom? It's only through Jesus where he goes in the end of chapter seven. [00:21:00] So I'm with you. I think this is Paul writing as an unbeliever, saying, this is where I used to be and I needed Christ.
Mark it down this year. We do agree, we do. You know, one thought that I had, and I'm not gonna try to confuse anybody, but I'm just gonna say what I was thinking. I do wonder if he's creating a bifurcation. It's our sending pastor's favorite word, where on chapter seven, he is talking about life simply in the flesh versus chapter eight is life in the spirit.
If you were to hypothetically and you were able to surgically separate them, this is what it would be like, which would only reinforce the fact that we are talking about someone pre Christ. And I think one of the challenges for a lot of, lots of us is that we see the struggle in ourselves and we say, oh man, I wanna do the right thing.
Evil lies close at hand. What do we do with that then? Because that's how I would use this passage. In fact, that's how most people use this passage. They would say, man, this resonates so deeply. I wanna do the right thing, but I don't do it. You've taken that away from me because now you're saying that's only for an un-Christian or non-Christian.
What gives, I mean, I would go to another passage from Paul, and that's in Galatians five when he talks about the flesh in the spirit. He says, walk by the flesh and you will not, [00:22:00] or walk by the spirit. Rather not the flesh. And he talks about the battle between the works of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit.
And so I think even there, he's indicating for the believer that there is a tension. That there is a battle there. And as Christians, we are called to keep in step with the spirit. That that is something that is intentional. Even going back to chapter six when he's saying, Hey. Don't present yourself to sin, present yourself to God.
And I think even the fact that he has to lay that out there is him acknowledging that there is a battle that does exist. And that is something that a Christian doesn't have to fight to say, there's things in my flesh that I want, but then there's things in my spirit that I know that I should pursue instead.
And as the Christian in Christ, we can pursue the things in the spirit instead.
Conclusion and Prayer
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Chapter eight is tomorrow, so we can't get to the good news of chapter eight yet. But yeah, so let's pray and we'll be done with this episode. Lord, we are grateful for salvation, for the peace that we have with you that we talked about in chapter five. That's ours because you came after us when we weren't worthy.
When we didn't deserve it, and yet you came after us out of an expression of your love for us to make peace with us by the blood of the cross. Even [00:23:00] as Paul says in Colossians. Lord we're so thankful for that and we wanna live the life of now slavery to you. We want to be free to pursue righteousness as pastor was saying.
And so God, we, we pray that by your spirit, you would help us to walk by the Spirit as we're gonna talk about tomorrow, even in chapter eight, but that by your spirit, you would cause us to become more and more like Jesus. What? It's good for us to remember things like Romans seven and to remember where we used to be and to remember that there was a time that we were trying to trust in other things other than Christ to be right before you.
But all of us had to get to that place of saying, wretched person, wretched man, wretched woman that I am who will set me free from this body of death. And the conclusion for us is the same as it was for Paul. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to you, father, through Jesus Christ. 'cause it's him that we have forgiveness in.
It's him that is, we'll look at tomorrow. It means that there's no more condemnation for us. And so we're thankful for these things. We pray that we would keep them in mind as we live to present ourselves to you as instruments of righteousness today. In Jesus' name, amen. Keep your new Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast.
See you. Bye.
Outro and Podcast Information
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Bernard: Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast! [00:24:00] We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.
PJ: Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said