May we never lose sight of that doctrine. Sin, faith, and salvation all sin and face the consequence of death. The proof of sin ultimately is death.
Our last enemy the Bible says. Romans 3 for the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. What happens if you're outside of Christ Jesus our Lord?
Well, you're likely not going to benefit from it. However, Paul's gonna spend a whole section dealing with that question and it is going to be satisfying. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Mechanicsville, Virginia. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Romans so please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. Now here's Pastor Rick as he continues teaching through Romans chapter 1 on this edition of Cross Reference Radio. Jesus began both to do and to teach Acts chapter 1 verse 1.
But he also had a lot more to say. He tells us that in John chapter 16. Jesus said I still have many things to say to you but you cannot bear them now.
Again, back to some Christians. You can't put restrictions on them. You can't tell them. They're not ready yet. They're offended by that. Christ is telling his disciples there are things you're just not ready for yet. You gotta wait.
We should receive these things. Much of what is said in this letter is Jesus going on to say the things that he had to say which they weren't ready then but they're ready now. Some Christians can't stand more than a 10 minute Bible study which isn't a Bible study at all. Well, it could be. I'll take that back a little bit. Somebody put me up to saying that.
I'm not going to take the blame for it. 2 Corinthians, Paul writes to them and he says since you seek proof of Christ speaking in me, which he's saying to them, you know Christ speaks through me. He's not the only one but he's talking about himself in relation to the Corinthians. So Christ does speak to his people.
He does work through his people. That Christ being dead speaks as the authority of God because he is God the Son. And may we never lose sight of that doctrine. Sin, faith and salvation. All sin and face the consequence of death. The proof of sin ultimately is death.
Our last enemy the Bible says. Romans 3, for the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. What happens if you're outside of Christ Jesus our Lord?
Well, you're likely not going to benefit from it. However, Paul's going to spend a whole section dealing with that question and it is going to be satisfying. Romans 5-8, God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Not Paul, not Moses, Christ died.
There are those that have another puny and pathetic argument. Well, I'm not good enough to be a Christian. No Christian is good enough to be a Christian. That's why it says he demonstrates his own love towards us while we were still sinners. He didn't wait for us to be good.
You'll never make it. All your righteousness is as filthy rags. That's Old Testament doctrine and it's New Testament also. So the next time somebody run that one by you, run Romans 5-8 by them. Let them know that you're either making an excuse to reject Christ or out of ignorance you need to be corrected so you can receive him. Romans 10-10, for with the heart one believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
Things have to be activated. It's not enough that you're aware of something. You have to act on them and that's what Paul is saying there in Romans 10. God has provided salvation from death of sin to the resurrection of Jesus which is about 25 years, the resurrection of Christ is about 25 years before this letter was written. Authored by the Holy Spirit of course with profound assurance. Now I like to quote 1 John 5-13, I've written to you these things that you may be assured of your salvation. Well it's in Romans too and it's elsewhere but let's just take one of them out of many from Romans. I am persuaded, Paul wrote, that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor death nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Nothing's left out of that. That's the spiritual realm, that's the physical realm. It's physics, it's people, it's devils and demons, none of them can separate me from Christ. One reason why this letter is so loved by many Christians, I prefer narratives, the Gospels, Acts, Samuel, some of you prefer the Psalms, maybe it's Genesis, maybe it's Romans or 1 John.
It's okay, it's all the same author and it appeals to however we are built and we are built, we are exposed to things in life, our environment, our teachers, our attackers, these things form, they shape us. Not to mention the raw ingredients that we're born with and God says I use all that and he does. He finds a vessel that is submitted to him as Paul was.
How do you submit? How do you become a vessel, a righteous vessel submitted to God? We have to empty yourself. John the Baptist said he must increase, I must decrease, pour me out, pour him in.
A very simple formula. The Gospels gives us the Savior, show us the saved in action based on what Christ did. Romans further explains it all, gives us more detail. Now we need to talk about that church in Rome because you're in the church right now physically sitting in a church in Mechanicsville, Virginia. They were sitting in a church in Rome, Italy.
It applies to us every bit as it applied to them. The Roman congregations existed long before this letter arrived and even longer before Paul finally got there about four or five years later after he wrote the letter. Paul wrote this letter before he was arrested in the temple in Jerusalem and that started that trek two years with Felix and then the time in between, the six months or so in Malta before he finally gets to Rome. And Gentiles were initially the minority amongst the Christian Jews that still attended the synagogues. In Acts chapter 18 we read that when Paul came to Corinth he found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus who had recently come from Italy with his wife Priscilla because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to depart from Rome.
Let me tell you, this is a courageous couple and I think Aquila was more the muscle and Priscilla was more the mouth and I mean this in a good way and you'll see how it might have been because as time as Paul writes, Priscilla becomes the first one he addresses so he certainly bonded with her in a virtuous way. Roman historian Suetonius, a biographer of Roman emperors, he has this little thing about the Christians and Jews in Rome and he says that it was because of Christus, which is a corruption of Christ, probably unintentional, but he refers to the disturbances within the Jewish communities because of Christus, because of Christ, Christus. And you had the Christians in Rome attending synagogue with their Jewish families and friends and they're saying Christ is Messiah and they were saying no he's not and he had this confrontation so much that the authorities of Rome said you know what, especially the ringleaders, get out, chase them out of Rome. There is no known Jewish male name by this in that time in history, probably in any time, so we know that they're not talking about a particular Jewish leader, they're talking about Christ. Remember when the pagans wrote about the Christians, they didn't really understand Christianity, so they just gave you a couple of tidbits, even Josephus, a Jewish historian, when he talks about Christ he gives you a couple of tidbits, but he doesn't really understand, a carnal man cannot receive or know the things of God, they're spiritually discerned.
So I think it was a limited action that the ringleaders were put out, even though Luke says all the Jews were put out, and the reason why I say that is because there's no historical evidence of the Jews being pushed out, but it's a detail that is overcome very quickly when you understand the nature of writing and getting to the facts. From these two, Aquila and Priscilla, Paul began to fall in love with Rome. I say that because they're going to stick their necks out, he meets them in Corinth once they're pushed out of Rome, and they're going to tell him about, we got pushed out for preaching Christ, he's going to tell, they stay friends the entire history of the scripture we have, the New Testament scripture, there's never a parting of the ways, even though they go to Rome before Paul does, but he writes this in the end of Romans, when he's greeting everybody he knows in the church at Rome, and you factor in how many did he not know. Romans 1634, greet Priscilla, you see now she's mentioned the head of Aquila, her husband, later he will say Prisca in another letter, because you know, the bond. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their own necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles.
That's powerful. These two Jewish believers, if we didn't have them, God is saying, if I didn't raise up Aquila and Priscilla, you wouldn't have these Roman letters, you'd just cut out, we wouldn't have the words of Peter talking about how Paul's letters are heavy duty stuff, and you better not mess with them. So where do you factor in, in the life of others as a Christian? You're not going to get your name written in the Bible, unless mom and dad named you after somebody in the Bible, but you can get your name on the list of combatants who fought not in the church, but for the church. There are churches out there with people fighting each other.
We know that's not what God wants, except if you're fighting those who are bringing in heresies, which Jude did, and we'll get to that too. So those Christians in Rome, they really had no apostolic influence, and they were engaging Jews anyway, who rejected Christ as Messiah. Peter gets to Rome after Paul, and Paul had a hard time getting there himself. When the exiled Jewish Christians, such as Aquila and Priscilla, finally did return to Rome, when things cooled down, they found themselves no longer welcomed in the synagogues.
So what happened? Well they began to meet in the homes, and the Gentiles soon became the majority. Now when someone says, well we meet in a home like the early church, that's either not well thought out or they're up to something, I have found. First off, the Christians met in their homes because they weren't allowed, legally allowed, to meet in churches, to form churches. That didn't come for a couple hundred years later, so they had to meet in homes, once the synagogues booted them out.
And there was no question that this was a church. Oftentimes you get people meeting in their homes when we're not a church, we just don't want to be under the authority of a church, and hopefully we'll grow into a church and we'll be the authority, but anyway, I digress. Because it's irritating, over the decades dealing with this, people who steal sheep, they're desperate for people to follow them, they go to a church and steal people from that church, and they think that this is somehow righteous, and just evidence is how ignorant they are of the Spirit and of the Scripture. But anyway, I further digress. Because I digress with this because I don't think a lot of Christians know this, and you should know it so you can identify and say, listen, this is not helping the body of Christ.
Too many alternatives. Anyway, coming back to this, they began to assemble the Christians in the homes, making Gentile converts, and under that scenario that I just laid out, this is how the church in Rome came to be, and Paul writing his letter, again, careful, he's very careful to mention Jews and Christians separately in the same letter because they're in the same church. And you can, well let's take, we'll take them both. Romans chapter 1 verse 13, Now I do not want you to be unaware, brethren. That's what I was just trying to do, saying you need to know this. But anyway, he comes back, that I often planned to come to you, but was hindered until now, that I might have some fruit among you also, just as among the other Gentiles. And then when he gets to chapter 2, in verse 17, he says, Indeed you are called a Jew, and rest on the law, and make your boast in God. And so, following him, he doesn't, you know, say, okay, heading, now to Gentiles, and begin to cover that. Okay, now to Jews, and then, no, he just goes all over the place, you gotta keep up with him. And that again drives some of the people who want to outline it to the T of, you know, a problem, because he takes these righteous rabbit trails.
I've never done that. So, he reminds the Gentile converts, also in this letter, of their indebtedness to the work, the spiritual work of the Jewish people. He essentially says to them, how did you get your Bible?
How did you get the rest of the scriptures? You got it from the Jews. They were entrusted with this. And if it weren't for them, they would really slow down evangelism, drastically. But you do have them, and it has sped up evangelism, and we've taken over the world.
They've taken over places that they go. That's the riot in Ephesus. So the origin of this letter to the Romans is Corinth, or Cenchrea, which is a seaport about seven miles outside the city of Corinth. And there Paul writes this letter from the house of a man named Gaius. Now, this letter, Romans, is what Jude wanted to write to the church.
He comes out and tells us that. But the Holy Spirit redirected him because of counterfeit Christians mingling in the church, trying to integrate by sneaking in, and other nefarious deeds, Jude 3. Beloved, this is Jude talking to the Christians. While I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation.
Pause there. Well, that's what Romans is doing. That's why I talked about Hannah, the mother of Samuel, giving this succinct summary on salvation. Jude continues, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once delivered for all to the saints. There's no new gospel coming.
There's no Charles Russell and Joseph Smith bringing some private interpretation of scripture. That is anathema, that is a cursed behavior laid out in scripture. Jude, again, says, I found it necessary.
If you were to say, how did that happen? You'd say, the Holy Spirit moved me. He impressed upon me that I got to deal with these troublemakers coming into the church, stealing away the truth.
And that's why he thunders, he deals with them very thoroughly. And he says, the gospel, contend for it, not against it. Contend for the faith once delivered.
It's trustworthy, it's worth it, there's nothing like it. Converts that creep in need to be disfellowshipped if they're not converted, if they're not converted instantly. If someone comes into a church and says, I'm a Christian, but they're living in blatant sin, they're going to be disfellowshipped.
If we find out, that's how it's supposed to be. If a non-believer comes in and they're living that lifestyle, we're not going to disfellowship them. They're not professing Christ. But, if they start trying to take people from truth, then they will be dealt with too.
That's why we have these handcuffs in this room of, oh, sorry, no, I didn't mean to say that. Anyway, they won't, they will be, you can't say disfellowshipped, you're not in fellowship, but they will be barred until they learn how to behave. When we get to Corinthians, we're going to find out that this is what we have to do. Thessalonians is very tough on it too. Anyway, the church at Corinth, that was the church in Rome.
The church in Corinth, where the letter starts, which is important, because Corinth was a decadent city, and Paul was about fed up with going to the marketplace, looking at the windows, seeing all the lewd things. You know, we go and we see, you know, something on the impulse rack, a magazine or something, we go, oh man, this is just lewd and wrong. Well, Paul had it in real life, people committing lewd acts in public. Years ago, when I was in Sicily, I observed lewd acts in public. In fact, Hunts Point in the Bronx, you can go and see lewd acts in public.
Not that there were bleachers there or anything like that, you're just driving down the street or walking down the street, oh man, where's the shame? Well, sin likes to take the shame out of it so it can thrive. Well, there's a rich background on how this letter came about. In ancient Greek theater, when they portrayed the person from Corinth, they almost always portrayed him as the drunk in the story. This was a stereotype, because there were so many, well, a lot of sailors in Corinth, and, you know, just a lot of, a big population.
Of course, it was a lewd city and the idolatry thrived. And so, even the rest of the unbelieving world understood that Corinth, that lifestyle there was unacceptable. When Paul wrote to the Romans, he preached to the Corinthians. When Paul wrote to the Romans, he wrote to them what he preached to the Corinthians.
It all fits wherever you are. But they certainly, that city, influenced his writing to the Romans from Corinth. However, in spite of all that darkness, these men and women of Christ stacked up the Gentile converts.
A lot of converts. Paul, God told Paul, I have a lot of people in this city and you're going to be the one that I'm using to get them. So the Holy Spirit activated Paul in Corinth, used him, trained him, instructed him in Christ further.
Already he had written Thessalonians and Galatians, and now he's just continuing as this dynamic character. And never want to say these things taken away from the other apostles. It's just not recorded what they did. There's no way to say, well Paul was out there doing it all.
He was in Europe and it did get recorded. Who is the man to limit God? Paul's going to say, not us. Who's the courier of this letter then? In those days, they didn't have the, there are parts of the ancient world that did have a postal system, from Persia to Sardis, for example. But overall, if you wanted the letter to reach someone, you had to take it, or someone had to take it. In this case, is a woman named Phoebe.
And this is quite remarkable. Romans 16 verse 1, I commend to you Phoebe, our sister who is a servant of the church in St. Korea. Wait a minute Paul, that should have been your introduction.
But no, you got carried away with this whole gospel stuff. And so at the end he said, oh yeah, Phoebe. And she was a business woman, evidently. The Greek points in that direction when it talks about her in chapter 16. When she said to Paul, and she's a servant in the church in Corinth, St. Korea, same thing.
She's a servant there, and she says, Paul, I have business in Rome. That lit a fire under that apostle. That stoked him, that electrified him. I don't think he saw what was coming. I think he said, okay, I'm going to write this letter to them. Dear Roman Christians, hi, this is Paul. I love Jesus Christ. And then by the time he gets to the eighth verse there's this explosion.
The dam burst and he begins to pour out and he can't stop until he says, oh by the way, Phoebe. Then there's the scribe, Tertius, means third. Could have been a slave. Sometimes slaves were just given, Primus number one, Tertius number three, Cortius number four, Segundus, you know, they were given these titles.
It could have been. I, Tertius, Romans 16, 22, who wrote this epistle, greet you in the Lord. He's the scribe.
I'll come back to him and Phoebe, not done with them. The host, Gaius, chapter 16, Gaius, my host, and the host of the whole church, greets you. Evidently another congregation in Corinth, Aquila and Priscilla has the church in their home in Rome. Paul is the teacher, of course, as verse one clearly says, Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God. There's no authority in back of all that. There's nothing in there apologizing. I'm sorry I'm a Christian.
He's laying it out. And of course, a man like Paul, he'd take a beating for that. The author is the Holy Spirit. Paul is the teacher. Tertius is the scribe. The Holy Spirit is the author.
So Tertius, he was able to write fast enough, with accuracy, without breaking Paul's rhythm, his train of thought. Can you imagine? If you always stop, Paul, hold on a second. What was that again? Well, you allowed some of that, but if you did too much of it, it's like, you know, never mind.
Just say, God bless you, amen. But, so he's certainly a man of means. Gaius, whose house Paul wrote this letter from, took away the distractions. Paul didn't have to worry about going to fix dinner. He didn't have to worry about, you know, balancing the books. He just could focus on being the apostle that he was. So the Holy Spirit could draw from Paul that which he poured into Paul.
Gaius had no idea that scripture was being written under his roof in his house. Just imagine if he's writing a mortgage check out and he says, oh, by the way, scripture is being written in my house. It couldn't be that way, but it is that way. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.
We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again or want to listen to others like it, head over to crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast, too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website, you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross-Reference Radio. So make a note of it, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans here on Cross-Reference Radio.
