Let us have a moment or two of silence within our hearts before the Lord, that we may not only hear the word, but hear the voice of the Lord.
May we hear the word, and may this be the voice of the Lord to us. May we be open, that we may be able to go from this place conscious of the Lord’s presence and of what He has said to us.
I remind you that in every book of the New Testament there is a definite place and purpose. The four Gospels are historical. Then come the letters, written in particular circumstances and addressed to particular situations.
But when we come to the letter to the Romans, we find something comprehensive and all-inclusive. Romans is a great letter concerning the faith and the meaning of the Cross.
This letter has a special place. It contains the beginning, in principle, of everything that is subsequently developed in the New Testament. What is found in Romans is taken up and developed in the later letters.
I am not going into all the detail of that, profitable as it may be, but I suggest that if you make a study of the New Testament, look for the main things that are found in Romans and then developed elsewhere.
Romans is comprehensive. Look into the first eight chapters, and you will find that everything is there: the history of Israel, the condition of man, the work of Christ, the meaning of faith, the Holy Spirit, and the purpose of God.
Then, after that great parenthesis, Paul says:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual service.— Romans 12:1
The letter takes us into the whole question of humanity: Jew and Gentile, religious and irreligious, moral and immoral. It brings every person into the same position before God.
The testimony is plain:
There is none righteous, no, not one.
— Romans 3:10
This is not merely a statement about particularly bad people. It includes the most religious of people. The whole world is brought into view, and every mouth is stopped before God.
Paul himself was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, trained under the law, zealous, religious, and sincere. Yet he had to discover that no natural standing, no religious background, and no devotion to the law could make him right with God.
He was brought back to that position in Romans 7. He discovered himself in the light of the Cross. The law exposed the true condition of man, but it could not deliver him.
This is the misery of the wretched man: to know what is right and yet discover an inability in oneself to do it. The law brings the knowledge of sin, but it does not provide the power of deliverance.
Sin means exclusion from God: shut out, separated, far away from the presence of God. That is the tragedy of man—alienation from the life of God.
You see the far remoteness of man from God, the distance that sin has created. Man cannot come into God’s presence on his own ground. There is a barrier which he cannot pass.
But the Lord Jesus has taken that place representatively for us. He stood where we should stand. He bore what we should bear. He entered into the consequences of our separation from God.
He was my penalty. He was my substitute. He bore my sin in His own body on the tree. Blessed be God, He did it for me.
Faith, then, is not an abstract or remote theological position. It is a living reality. Have you been there? Do you know what it is to stand before God and say, “I am accepted”?
Then the door is opened. We are accepted before God. Can it be? Can it be that, in the Beloved One, I am precious to God?
This is not doctrine merely as doctrine. It is reality. The truth of acceptance in Christ must become a living thing in the heart.
This truth can turn one’s life inside out and upside down. It can be devastating and desolating when God brings us to the end of ourselves; but it is necessary if we are to come into the reality of Christ.
Something happens when we really come under the hand of God. We come more and more to an end of ourselves. Until something like that happens, we are not going to be much use to God.
It is not that we become perfect in ourselves. But what ought to be happening is that we are coming to see ourselves more truly. We are coming to the end of confidence in ourselves.
If we remain merely occupied with ourselves, we shall be in desolation. But God does not leave us there. He brings us from the discovery of ourselves to the discovery of Christ.
The answer is found in the triumphant declaration of Romans 8:
There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
— Romans 8:1
I am in Christ. There is no condemnation. That does not mean that we call wrong things right. If I have done wrong, I must say, “That was wrong. What I said was wrong. What I did was wrong.”
But I bring it back to the Cross. I say to the Lord, “That was my mistake, my wrong.” The Cross deals with it. We do not return to the old ground of judgment and condemnation.
Under the old economy, failure brought judgment. Under the new economy in Christ, God deals with us in grace. He does not excuse sin, but He takes up our failures and mistakes for His own purpose.
I am not one of those who says that the Apostle Paul was infallible in every personal action and never made a mistake. No, he would not agree with that. But I do see the marvelous sovereignty of God, even where human weakness is involved.
Failure and mistakes do not alter the fundamental fact: there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
What shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
He that spared not His own Son,
but delivered Him up for us all,
how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?— Romans 8:32
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, Who is at the right hand of God, Who also maketh intercession for us.
There are accusations, there are charges, there are many things which would seek to bring us again into condemnation. But Christ is at the right hand of God, making intercession for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, anguish, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword?
If tribulation is interpreted wrongly, it can separate us from our enjoyment of the love of God. We may think that adversity means the Lord is against us, that He has turned on us, or that we are under His displeasure.
But adversity does not mean condemnation. Difficulties, reverses, troubles in the family, perplexities in life—things that are beyond our power to understand—do not prove that the Lord has abandoned us.
The answer is no.
In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
— Romans 8:37
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God,
which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.— Romans 8:38–39
This is the great movement of the letter. After the whole unveiling of sin, judgment, justification, reconciliation, union with Christ, life in the Spirit, and the security of the love of God, Paul says, “Present your bodies.”
That is your whole being: a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God. It is not legal service. It is the response of a heart that has been brought into the mercy of God.
Nothing—unfaithfulness, disloyalty, failure, suffering, or adversity—can nullify the love of God toward us in Christ Jesus. We have to learn something of that.
Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.
May the Lord make this truth real to us, and send us out from this place under the solemn power of it.