Epistle to the Romans

It's very powerful kind of confronting stuff.

But even Paul will say to the church in Rome, there are some of you who are filled with a different spirit.

That's your problem here.

If you can't operate in victory over sin through the power of the Holy Spirit, which spirit do you have? It might not be the Holy Spirit.

And then after we've done that, I want us to think through how we must respond to James' teaching in our everyday lives.

Okay, so what's the problem that jumps out at us from this passage? Well, earlier this year in the morning service, I finished off a sermon series from the Letter to the Romans in the New Testament written by the Apostle Paul.

And in the letter to the Romans, we came across verses like this.

Paul says a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

So to be justified means to be declared right with God.

specifically support Roman Catholicism.

And by the way, even Catholics rarely make that connection because they realize, and the church obviously realizes, but I'm talking about your everyday run-of-the-mill Catholic, they realize that if you were to say that James and 1 Peter were Catholic epistles because they support our position, that would kind of imply that books like Romans and Ephesians don't support your position.

And so when we say Catholic epistles, we just have to take the word Roman Catholic out of our minds.

Instead, it's the Greek word Catholicos, which means universal.

And then after that, I would arrange them by the order that the books were written.

But let's go with what the early church did.

So Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and then Romans, because Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians are Paul's big books, and Acts ends in Rome, so it just flows right into Romans thematically.

Then after Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, it goes into all of Paul's medium and small books, medium-sized and small books.

Ua puipui afo i tatou mai le toasa ma ua taʻuā mia o tonuina ona o le toto o Iesu.

Roma e lima faiʻupu e iva.

O le toto o Iesu Keriso e faamama ina i tatou mai agasalauma.

Fai mai le moomoioa nei moomo faiʻupu e fitu.

O le mafai ona faolaaina ma puipui le toto o Iesu.

E tatau ona e taʻutino i lou gutu le aliʻi o Iesu ma tali tonu i lou loto ua toe faatuina mai o ia i le Atua na iewoti.

Roma e se fulu faiʻupu e iva.

O le toto o Iesu e puipui ai Kerisiano faatua atu mai le amio leaga.

1 Corinthians 1.18. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but to them that are saved it is the power of God.

In this epistle to the Romans, therefore, he exhibits the indispensable necessity of this saving gospel, together with its utility and advantage to all mankind, Jews or Greeks.

In order to which, in the first place, he convicts the Greeks of having palpably corrupted the moral sense of good and evil implanted in their constitution by their Maker, and transgressed the moral law.

And secondly, the Jews of having although in the enjoyment of the written instructions of the divine laws, yet rejected the benefit arising from them and rendered themselves thereby obnoxious to the heavier retribution.

For, as St. Ambrose says, Where Peter is, there is the Church, and where the Church is, there is no death, but life eternal.

And St. John Chrysostom writes in his Homily on the Epistle to the Romans, From this place Peter, from this place Paul, shall be caught up in the resurrection.

Oh, consider with trembling that which Rome will behold when Paul suddenly rises with Peter from his sepulchre, and is carried up into the air to meet the Lord.

No wonder that, in that twice-hallowed place, the soul of Charles Borromeo was filled with divine love and holy fervor.

And then the Book of Acts presents Ananias and Sapphira being killed by God for lying to the church.

The Book of Romans begins by stating that the wrath of God is right now being revealed in this Earth.

And again, we could go on and on.

Indeed, as far as I know, only Second and Third John in the New Testament contain no examples of the anger or judgment of God.

Now, that word simply means to remove sins instead of to remove anger.

Others suggest that the term might refer to the mercy seat in the Old Testament, so in that way, Romans 3:25 might say God presented Jesus as the place where God and man are reconciled.

But as hard as some try to get away from the meaning of the word propitiation, the context of the Book of Romans simply will not allow that kind of a translation.

In Romans 1:8, in Romans 2:5, in Romans 3:5, God is characterized as a God of wrath.

Let's read those verses, and we'll get stuck into a, a story here.

"But the righteousness of faith speaks in this way." This was Paul writing to the church in Rome.

"Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend to heaven?'" Let me explain this in a moment.

"That is, to bring Christ down from above.