Chapter Three: The Deeds of the Law vs. the Righteousness of God.
PART ONE – Doomed By Deeds
~ By James Fire
In this third chapter of Romans, Paul completes his thoughts on the Jewish person whose trust is in the keeping of the Law (humanly speaking, an impossibility), and the conclusion of the matter regarding the whole of humanity and our abject poverty of spiritual virtue.
He then proceeds from this examination of human beings and our sinful condition and nature to the blessed hope of our justification (from vs. 21 to the end of the chapter).
From there he goes on in chapters Four and Five, establishing the basis for our justification, and then, in chapters Six, Seven and Eight he brings up the next phase of our salvation, that being sanctification (dying to self: mortification (ROM 8:13; COL 3:5; and becoming more and more yielded to the Spirit of Christ to transform and enliven us (vivification): ROM 5:17; 6:4,23; 8:2)
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~ By James Fire
In ROMANS 3:10 of this Pauline epistle we read:
As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one. This is the conclusion he is working towards in his examination of humanity and all of its various aspects: from the pagan idolaters (ROM 1:21-32), to the Gentile moralizers (ROM 2:1-16), to the Hebrew ‘Judaizers’ (ROM 2:17-24) – all of us are equally blameworthy of sin and have a sinful nature; there is no one, based upon their own merit or code of moral conduct (or lack thereof) that can stand righteous before the LORD God.
It states elsewhere in Scripture:
JAMES 2:10
For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.
This sounds not only harsh, but unfair doesn’t it? Why would we be considered “guilty of all”, if we have kept ALL the Law . . . but fail only in one instance?~~ What I believe James is pointing out is that by committing a single, solitary sin during the course of a (theoretically) Law-abiding life, this reveals that we possess a sinful nature, which is a nature capable of sinning in any capacity.
The potential of committing each and every sin resides within the being of any sinful person – all that is necessary is time and availability for such a depraved nature to prove itself overtly “guilty of all”.
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Eyes to See, Ears to Hear, Hearts to Understand and Obey – Part Two of Two
~~ By James J. Fire
RECAP on GOD’s RIGHTEOUS PROPHET –
In part one of this article, we saw how the prophet of God was victorious over the overwhelming numbers of pagan prophets introduced to Israel by Jezebel; on Mount Carmel the fire of God came down in answer to the prayer of Elijah, consuming the sacrifices, the dust, the water that drenched everything, and even the rocks that comprised the altar! The people of Israel bowed down declaring that YHWH was indeed God, and at Elijah’s bidding, the false prophets were seized and brought down to the river where the prophet of the LORD then slew them, down to the very last one. He then bid King Ahab to depart for the “sound of the abundance of rain” was heard by the prophet. Soon thereafter “the heavens were black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain” (1 KINGS 18:45).
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~ By James J. Fire
As we now pick up where we left off, I want to examine vs. 16 in Chapter One of this powerful epistle of the Apostle Paul a bit more closely:
ROMANS 1:16
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
I wonder if one could read the writings of pastors from a hundred years ago, and see which of these echoed the sentiment that Paul here expressed, and then compare their convictions with those of pastors today and note the differences; how divergent those differences would be.
I fear that too many are losing, or have already lost such conviction in favor of ‘accommodation’, that is, being tolerant of extra-biblical views expressed even by those intellectual (and liberal!) Bible scholars who downplay, or even deny the inerrancy of God’s Holy Word and the Gospel message of Jesus Christ and Him crucified for the sins of the world (Follow the tracking of this downward spiral into apostasy in Paul Smith’s newest release New Evangelicalism: The New World Order.
Anne Kisly has posted a recent book report on this!
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