What If Faith Isn't About Trying Harder? | Romans 1:1-17

As many people have said this morning, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at Trinity New Life and a member of our preaching team.

We're starting a new series today in the book of Romans that's going to take us through the whole rest of the year.

Romans, we're actually only doing Romans 1 through 8, but Romans is one of the greatest works, maybe the greatest work of Scripture.

and it shows a constant collision of two kingdoms, the kingdoms of the world and the kingdom of God.

It's showing the kingdom of, and so it's the same thing that's at work in us, the kingdom of flesh and the kingdom of spirit are constantly colliding and asking the question, which one will win out? Now, as we're diving in, just a little backstory to what's taking place when this letter is both being written and who it's being written to.

The church of Rome had already begun in some probably like late to mid, like late 30s, early mid 40 AD.

Around 49 AD, the Roman emperor at the time, Claudius, gives an edict that everyone of Jewish birth has to leave Rome.

Doesn't matter if you're now following the way.

It doesn't matter if you're a Sadducee or a Pharisee.

If you're Jewish, you have to leave Rome.

Rome.

So this church that had been, like others, a mix of Jews and Gentiles is now entirely Gentiles.

So if you are not a Jew by birth, you're a Gentile, okay? So that's us.

So it's a good that Gentiles are in the church.

And so the believers now, these Gentiles, are now in charge of all these house churches.

And then around 54 AD, when Claudius dies, the edict lapses and Jews can return to Rome, including prominent Jews like Aquila and Priscilla.

Now for the next three years, these folks are trying to figure out how to reincorporate together because they've had a unique experience that no other church has, that they have lived with only Gentiles in their church.

So this letter is being written from Corinth when Paul writes letters to Antioch.

the church in Ephesus.

He's not in Ephesus when he writes it.

You have to figure out where he's writing from.

So it's most likely being written from Corinth, where everyone was about as screwed up as you could possibly get.

It's the most rebuked church in the New Testament.

And he's writing to the church in Rome about what it looks like to actually follow God.