[Music] [Music] hey there John Crowder here welcome to episode seven in our covenant versus contract series more commentaries have been written on Romans than any book in the New Testament how you look at Romans dictates how you handle Paul how you handle Paul dictates the version of the Gospel You Preach Romans is considered the most systematic layout of Paul's theology so wherever it has been misread there have been centuries of error that followed think for instance of Calvinism that God chooses some for heaven and chooses others for hell that comes from their misreading of r Romans 9-1 so there's a lot at stake in this book and a wrong turn could potentially change everything I've essentially written three books on Romans mystical Union based on Romans 6 grasps how we are co- crucified with Christ and our old sinful nature is not something to be continually killed off but rather we really are free from it Romans 7 is the religious wrestling with that reality Romans 8 is our deification in Christ where all of creation is groaning for the manifestation of our divine sunship and speaking of Romans 9-11 the chapters where Calvinists think God is hardening and rejecting some people and saving other people I wrote two whole books on this Cosmos reborn and chosen for Paradise uh these passages are actually about God choosing himself Jesus Christ is the electing God and the elected chosen man the one man who represents the whole human race the great Theologian Carl Bart brought this to the table it's not good guys and bad guys these chapters are a long extended argument where Paul caps it off in Romans 11 but God has handed all men over to Disobedience that he may have mercy on them all through the one man Jesus all of humanity is chosen so that's Romans 5 uh in recent years I've come into some pretty Revolutionary Ways of reading the first four chapters of Romans in light of a more pure gospel and these first four chapters uh Paul is actually doing some back and for forth in the voice of his imagined opponents the Quasi Christian legalistic Jewish teachers of his day Paul is doing a diale way of writing asking questions then answering posing an argument then refuting it and Scholars already know that Paul does this elsewhere in his letters even elsewhere in Romans I mean it it was a way that tons of first century writing and letters were done so put your finger there we're going to come back to that in a moment because this is big I mean really big see if the things you read in Romans 1-4 are not necessarily Paul's ideas but a presentation of ideas that he's actually arguing against well that should change our whole perspective on what's being said the blinders of Western evangelicalism folks just don't realize the depth of delusion presented with the popular but transactional Romans road model of Salvation and most of us grew up with it the the idea that this conditional legal contract where God determines not to destroy you for your sins if you choose Faith or repentance or whatever is the price tag when you believe you get legally Justified faith in that model is just a law replacement a legal loophole God is still primarily a law God I've argued that we really don't know what faith is what repentance is or what the word justification means so go back through these videos in our covenant versus contract series because right now we're finally able to get to the heart of the biblical argument and give me a chance to really give the credit where it's due okay with the first four chapters of Romans I have learned so much from contemporary Theologian Douglas Campbell he's the most premier Paul scholar today he's out of Duke University he's a student of Bart and of the Torrance family of theologians and he's rightly arguing the gospel is not a contract not a legal exchange it is a covenant it is familial it is relationship salvation is not a deal God Cuts in fact forgiveness precedes repentance the gospel is not saving us from God's anger but from the self-destruction of sin itself to see God's justice not as retribution but his restoration his demand for righteousness means not our demise but our deliverance God really is good he really does look like Jesus but the common Protestant justification theory model the contract model is mostly drawn from Romans 1-4 it starts with a really heavy judgment theme God is angry everybody broke the law nobody has an excuse because somehow magically you already all knew better so there's the problem and here's the solution Jesus but only if you can muster up the faith to believe and that's the common way of reading Romans 1-4 so Campbell helps us to reframe these first few chapters and must say I'm convinced he's got it right in all his letters Paul is battling Jewish legalistic teachings stuff we've seen him address in Colossians Ephesians in Corinth and of course he pulls the gloves off in Galatians and these missionary Jewish teachers who were going around promulgating this stuff well the Romans would most definitely have already heard that version of The Gospel well before they heard from Paul himself because Paul's not been to Rome yet Paul's constantly and con conflict with these guys whom he calls false Apostles the circumcision party the judaizers they've undoubtedly already reached Rome well before Paul and understanding this fact is critical for rightly understanding Romans 1-4 because what we may think Paul is arguing for are in fact the themes that he's arguing against so let's look at the common Evangelical justification Theory based on Romans 1-4 okay we thought Paul is telling us that God's legal wrath is against everybody because everybody's a sinner and that nobody has an excuse nobody because somehow even the Gentiles just mysteriously somehow know about God from observing nature because looking at a tree obviously tells you everything you need to know about God and morality and how you should just be living but no John says nobody knows God except the one who comes from the father's bosom Jesus who himself is God and Paul is abundantly clear that Jesus alone is the way to know God not by Jewish law or Greek philosophy or the wisdom from below or looking at the bullfrogs in the swamp Okay so why is there this bit in Romans 1 that seems to endorse what's called natural theology the idea that God can be known simply by human reasoning that Gentiles can just figure God out without Christ or even without the Jewish scriptures I mean why is it in that section does Paul really believe that CU he argues against it in so many other discourses and then there's all this judgment stuff that we see in these chapters that Paul will also end up contradicting later in this very letter so the Jews and Gentiles all somehow magically know God outside of Jesus and thus they're all without excuse on Judgment Day because God is of course an executioner more than a father and this fear of Judgment Day based on our lawbreaking becomes this big setup for how an Evangelical is supposed to preach the gospel this justification theory is also called if you remember the forensic model the judicial model sometimes it's called The Lutheran model not to slight Lutheran but they just thought you needed to preach the law first to convict people of their sin and God's judgment so that people would realize God hates them for breaking the law but by turning to Jesus for Grace God forgives people if they believe and then he loves them okay you don't have to remember all those terms but the thing is you end up with a God who really doesn't look like Jesus but that Jesus saves you from where God's law is satisfied often times in those models by the father Killing Jesus instead of you you see this in that Ray Comfort Kirk Cameron kind of Turner burn style of evangelism where they uh first use the Ten Commandments to convince people that they're trashy Sinners deserving God's Wrath and only then do they pray a transactional prayer to get God to love them by accepting Jesus God's Wrath is a against you for lawbreaking but Jesus pays the legal debt and your part of the transaction is to have faith okay is this legalistic view of God Something That We're fitting Jesus into or is Christ the clearest picture of God by which we must thereby understand Justice in other words do we fold our understanding of love into Justice or fold our understanding of Justice into love is atonement about punishing someone punishing law Breakers or is it about healing us making us at one atone okay rescuing Sons and Daughters see we are so invaded by evil we didn't need punishment we needed a whole new operating system we needed recreating reconstituting this is not some new Innovative view the Eastern Orthodox have always viewed sin more as a disease we needed healing from rather than seeing salvation as some legal transaction whereby God pays himself off in order to love us that's why they view Protestants as Heretics all right one of the reasons see this is a much older view Paul differentiates This legal stuff from what he calls my gospel and only in chapters 5-8 do we really truly begin to see him lay out his own mystical view of Salvation that God healed Humanity by vicariously taking the whole of the adamic race into his own death destroying death by Death liberating us from the self-destruction of sin and divinizing us as Sons and Daughters the gospel is about rescuing us delivering us because God is love but is there really a contradiction between Romans 5-8 and Romans 1-4 or again have we just read Romans 1-4 wrong well in 2009 Campbell after 15 years in the writing publishes this massive book The Deliverance of God I mean look at the size of these books you can plant your single wide on blocks with these things and he points out that the contract view of justification has infected Pauline studies for centuries that conditional thing you know you broke the law now you have to believe and faith is the price tag to save you from wrath The Genius of Campbell he shows that Paul is using a rhetorical Socratic way of teaching in these first four chapters as he lays out his greatest theological letter in other words Paul goes back and forth giving voice to what his opponents are teaching the legalist Jewish itinerate and then follows up with his own reputations now this is revolutionary because it means that some of the verses that we've held as Holy scripture in these first four chapters of Romans well they are Holy Scripture but they're not all exactly Paul's beliefs he's giving voice to an interlocutor a generalized opponent oent the the view of those guys which he proceeds to shred to pieces now again Scholars already knew Paul uses this technique throughout his letters for instance uh Paul in Romans 6 gives voice to the opposition when he asks shall we sin so that Grace abounds and then he answers emphatically hell no he gives voice to a prevalent Gnostic mindset at one point where he says all things are permissible but then he follows it up with his own phrase but not all things are beneficial folks know Paul uses this diet tribe method just not to the extent that Campbell has rightly recognized what if the very gospel as we've presented it today in the modern Western world is largely a false gospel that Paul's opponents were presenting what if we haven't read him correctly Campbell's thesis is trinitarian it agrees with some of the earliest fathers like athanasius it cuts against the aryanism that we today and modern evangelicalism everybody knows that well actually Romans 3 1-8 had two speakers they know that Paul's doing a back and forth dialogue but Campbell says if this starts all the way back at the very beginning of the letter in Romans one well maybe we've been reading Paul upside down so I'm just going to quickly summarize the first four chapters in the proper voices for you okay now of course uh I I also want to give a Shameless plug you want to go to our inter sanctum platform at the new Mystics you can find we've done 2530 hours on this stuff from Romans we just put it out over the past year and a half and Campbell's work was a huge inspiration for that if you're like me and you have trouble reading a book that thick well I'm helping to chew it up and spit it in your mouth like little baby birds so look here's the first four chapters of Romans in summary just to see how Campbell differentiates Paul's Voice versus the objecting voice of the opposing Jewish leaders now we don't have time to get into all of the Greek for four chapters but if you want to do that pick up his Books Okay so let's look at this slide here and I'm just going to read Paul's and then the teachers back and forth putting these in the right voices so Paul he says I am not ashamed of the gospel for it's the power of God for salvation and the teacher says to the Jew first Paul and also to the Greek for in the gospel the righteousness of God is disclosed which is by fidelity and for Fidelity faithfulness as it is written my righteous one Jesus shall live by his faithfulness and the teacher responds the wrath of God is being revealed from Heaven against the unrighteousness of men unbelieving humanity is justly being judged by a wrathful God for their idolatry deviant sexuality and approval of evil fire Brimstone and all that and Paul responds ah but if that were true then the Jews would be judged too wouldn't they and then even you oh teacher could not be saved so what advantage has the Jew or what value is circumcision and the teacher says well much in every way to begin with the Jews were entrusted with the Oracles of God Paul what if some were Unfaithful does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God the teacher by no means let God be true even though everyone were a liar as it is written that you may be justified in your words and Veil when you are judged and Paul but if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God you know the the faithfulness of God in the midst of our sinning uh what shall we say that God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us I speak in a human way the teacher by no means for how then could God judge the world and Paul but if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory why am I still being condemned as a sinner and why not do evil that good may come as some people slanderously charge us with saying their condemnation is just and the teacher what then are we Jews any better off Paul no not at all for we've already charged that all both Jews and Greeks are under sin look at all the scriptural evidence but now the righteousness of God has been made known apart from the law by the faithfulness of of Jesus the Messiah all sinned and now all are redeemed in Jesus the teacher well what then Becomes of our Jewish boasting Paul it is excluded God isn't the god of the Jews only is he he's the god of the Gentiles and the teacher well what shall we say about Abraham then Paul I'm glad you asked he wasn't justified by works nobody is contractualism is bunk now guys that's a lot okay again we spent 16 months on this I'm trying to boil this down for you in 28 minutes but see the core of Paul's argument against the teacher is that Universal sinfulness prompted not wrathful judgment under the law but God's unilaterally saving act in Jesus Christ now we aren't writing off the Wrath judgment stuff though it does get radically reframed and a big problem with the way evangelicals read these chapters today is this see for them something prior to Jesus is required for salvation first you need the law you need conviction of sin something prior to the Christ act but how can you even have an adequate understanding and remorse for sin outside the Light of Christ understanding your sinful state is not a precondition for salvation it's a byproduct of coming into wholeness an addict once he has a sponsor and goes through the 12 Steps of AA well then he might be able to turn back around a and adequately assess all of the damage that his addiction has caused to his life and the life of others but see he can't even objectively analyze his problem while he's still strung out well sin is the same way if someone is required to adequately and objectively be able to assess the very darkness that blinds them while they're still blind to understand their disease and adequately repent before they can get the medication of Salvation well reality just doesn't work that way and furthermore it devises all of these prerequisites in the chain of Salvation before you even get to Jesus and there are other problems here too a wrong reading of Romans has caused Christians to have an unfair and inaccurate treatment of Judaism Paul is a addressing a false form of Judaism he's showing this isn't real Judaism and that stereotype actually still fuels a lot of anti-Semitism today as if all Jews think they must law themselves to God Paul's saying that's not Judaism Paul is dealing with judaizing teachers who are trying to frighten Christians scaring and intimidating them with a future judgment scenario making them feel insecure and of course he's being challenged by those accusing him of libertarian greasy Grace hyper Grace according to your gospel Paul Christians can just behave like out of control pagans not like proper Jews and in the Book of Romans Paul is going to be pushing back on these challenges very hard but the basis of his push backs is christology as Campbell summarizes Paul is saying and I quote him the reason why we can be secure against the coming judgment is because the god who does not spare his only son but gives him up for us all can be trusted to take us through any judgment process and in the Judgment he will be on our side he won't be on the other side you can be completely assured when you face the future Campbell says second The God Who has not spared his only son but who has given him up to die for us has also transformed us so that we can behave in a way that we need to behave he's taken us he's entered into our condition he's terminated he's executed the stuff that was getting in the way he's resurrected us into a new condition he's joined us to that new condition not only in the Sun but through the spirit this leads to the only sort of right behavior that is valid and authentic Romans 5-8 is where we see the heart of the Pauline gospel Campbell says that when you plant your flag on Romans 5-8 where Paul's doing all of his work out of christology where he's talking about God and the light of Jesus Christ which is solid information or what you end up with is a radically different perspective on the whole salvation model Christ died for us while we were still Sinners that's Romans 5 judgment is thought of this scary thing to avoid but if judgment means setting things right delivering us liberating us then it is something good and to be look forward to we can pray lord judge me and ultimately that judgment took place on the cross cross and the cross is ultimately the throne from which we have been judged righteous faith is not a new contract obligation that just replaces the law as we have said all of the pistus christu language in the Greek often translated faith in Christ Scholars over the past three quarters of a century are realizing no this is the faith of Jesus Christ The Gospel is about his faithfulness his Fidelity my faith is not a Sarge so that I can be legally Justified and as we've layered with the justification Justice justify words that we you know we've gotten them incorrect down at a dictionary level we think of this as like a punitive courtroom thing and how many sermons have you heard over the years where the father's the judge and Jesus is your defense attorney and Satan or maybe God himself is the prosecutor and then you get deemed not guilty even though really you're a piece of crap and then you get legally vested with something called positional or imputed righteousness and you are legally Justified as if Jesus had to hide sinners from an angry legalistic father who stood against us like a sin accountant just formally stamping our paperwork as holy when you prayed a prayer and justification becomes sort of hiding behind a pretend or theoretical sense of righteousness we look for starters they didn't have courtrooms in those days we framed in justification in ret contributive legal terms just like Western Roman law get what you deserve and that's definitely part of the way that the legalist mind worked in Paul's day but Justice is not retribution the Greek daayo words as we've said literally mean restoration Deliverance justification or righteousness is about deliverance from the problem of evil itself it's why he calls this book The Deliverance of God it's a book about justification you've been delivered it's a rescue it's an exodus he reaches to our helpless and wretched humanity and pulls it out of its condition and transforms it Jesus did this with his whole life beginning in the Incarnation not just paying some penalty on the cross to clean our slate with an angry father there there was no courtroom here in Romans 1:16 And1 17 there's actually a throwback to Psalm 98 the righteous one is the righteous King cases were judged by a magistrate in this case whose Justice looks like working salvation for the oppressed working it by his own arm a delivering magistrate see if we view justification not as some loophole where we can just stand before God with a not- guilty verdict but instead C justification is actual Deliverance actual healing actually getting out of jail free from self-destruction Liberty from the disease of sin Freedom From Slavery it's not related to some conditional payoff so that God loves you thanks to killing his own kid and thus Paul goes on in Romans to talk about Christ assuming what we are the sinful nature the flesh the SARS in the Greek and terminating it cutting it off and crucifying it that is Judgment it's God's decree that this situation of Brokenness and disease cannot continue he puts it to a stop so the Hostile part of the judgment is behind us so while any future judgment May indeed be a time of accountability and it's clear that we will stand before him on the last day it may be sobering in a sense but not hostile not where your fate rest on your Deeds weighed in the balance God who has given us his son and given us the spirit is on our side all the way down right through it all all the way to the end and this produces joyful lives of assurance now look our time is up but as I said just earlier this year we wrapped up a marathon study through the book of Romans over on our inner sanctum monthly webinar platform we spent nearly a year and a half revisiting Romans if you're realizing how important this stuff is and want to dig deeper I would highly recommend you folks go join up go through the archives at the new mystic. ct it lays out my most current theology where I myself has have grown and transitioned over the past six seven years so check it out it's revolutionary get Campbell's books God bless you hey guys if you are looking for a wild adventure I want to welcome you to come out for a live in-person event this year 2024 for some Hands-On gospel interaction I'm coming to Reading California later this year it's my only event on the west coast plus don't miss our Holy Spirit weekend on the Emerald Coast of Florida later this summer with Baxter Krueger Rod Williams and Warren Sylvester I'm going to be in Albuquerque New Mexico this August and I'll be in the midwest in Springfield Ohio in December also all of you new englanders need to come out for my only event in the region I'm coming to Massachusetts this fall plus my only European stops I'm going to be together with Baxter Krueger in Germany followed by a fun weekend in bosel Switzerland and finally plan to join us on the mission field bringing the 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