ROMANS ROAD
to RIGHTEOUSNESS |
Romans
1:18-3:20
|
Romans
3:21-5:21 |
Romans
6:1-8:39 |
Romans
9:1-11:36 |
Romans
12:1-16:27 |
|
SIN
|
SALVATION
|
SANCTIFICATION |
SOVEREIGNTY |
SERVICE |
NEED
FOR
SALVATION |
WAY
OF
SALVATION |
LIFE
OF
SALVATION |
SCOPE
OF
SALVATION |
SERVICE
OF
SALVATION |
God's Holiness
In
Condemning
Sin |
God's Grace
In
Justifying
Sinners |
God's Power
In
Sanctifying
Believers |
God's Sovereignty
In
Saving
Jew and Gentile |
Gods Glory
The
Object of
Service |
Deadliness
of Sin |
Design
of Grace |
Demonstration of
Salvation |
|
Power Given
|
Promises Fulfilled |
Paths Pursued |
Righteousness
Needed |
Righteousness
Credited |
Righteousness
Demonstrated |
Righteousness
Restored to Israel |
Righteousness
Applied |
God's Righteousness
IN LAW |
God's Righteousness
IMPUTED |
God's Righteousness
OBEYED |
God's Righteousness
IN ELECTION |
God's Righteousness
DISPLAYED |
|
Slaves to Sin |
Slaves to God |
Slaves Serving God |
|
Doctrine |
Duty |
|
Life by Faith |
Service by Faith |
|
Modified from Irving
L. Jensen's excellent work "Jensen's
Survey of the NT" |
PROFESSING
(alleging, asserting, affirming) TO BE WISE: phaskontes (PAPMPN) einai (PAN) sophoi:
(Romans
11:25;
Proverbs 25:14;
26:12;
Isaiah 47:10;
Jeremiah 8:8,9;
10:14;
Matthew 6:23;
1 Corinthians 1:19-21;
3:18,19)
Professing (5335)
(phasko) means
to affirm, allege, pretend, profess. Thinking they are wise, they have
become fools because their own speculations can’t replace the revelation
they reject.
Vincent
says,
“is used of unfounded assertion.” (Webster
adds that "assert implies stating confidently without need for
proof or regard for.")
Vine adds this pithy comment:
"Mere profession of wisdom is spiritual hallucination. The
condition of heathenism is the consequence of departure from the
primitive acknowledgment of God and the recognition of His attributes as
revealed in creation; it is not a state from which men have advanced by
stages to attain the knowledge of God."
Man rationalizes his sin
and proves his utter foolishness by devising and believing his own
philosophies about God, the universe, and himself. The next stage of
downfall consists, as in Orwell’s novel, 1984, in asserting as truth its
opposite—darkness is really light, futility is really wisdom.
Frederick Louis Godet
writes that ...
Paul does not mean to stigmatize
ancient philosophy absolutely; he only means that all that labor of the
sages did not prevent the most civilized nations, Egyptians, Greeks,
Romans, from being at the same time the most idolatrous of antiquity.
The popular imagination, agreeably served by priests and poets, did not
allow the efforts of the wise to dissipate this delirium. When good is
omitted, there always comes in its place an evil committed. As, in
respect of the understanding, the refusal of adoration ( they did not
glorify ) became a vain laboring of the mind ( they became vain ), and,
finally, complete estrangement from truth, folly ( they became fools );
so in respect of the heart , ingratitude was first transformed into
darkness; and, finally—such is the last term described ver. 23-into
monstrous and debasing fetishism. The ungrateful heart did not stop
short at not thanking God, it degraded and dishonored Him, by changing
Him into His opposite. (Godet, F: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans)
Sinners are fools for they think they are "safe" and there is no Holy
One to judge them. Isaiah records these words to foolish, idol
worshipping Babylon...
"And you felt secure in your
wickedness and said, 'No one sees me,' Your wisdom and your knowledge,
they have deluded you; For you have said in your heart, 'I am, and there
is no one besides me.' (Isaiah 47:10)
God warned in Isaiah 5:20-21
Woe to those who call evil good, and
good evil; Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness; Who
substitute bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are
wise in their own eyes, And clever in their own sight!
THEY BECAME FOOLS: emoranthesan
(3PAPI):
Became
fools
(3471)
(moraino from morós = foolish and root of our English
moron = very stupid person) can refer to
physical sloth or dullness, but mainly is a reference (and especially in
the present context) to one's intellectual life. It means to cause
content of certain thoughts to become devoid of meaning or even to cause
them to become nonsense.
Moraino is used only 4 times in the NT, once each
in
Matthew,
Luke,
Romans and
1 Corinthians.
The greatest fool in all the
world is the person who exchanges God’s wisdom of truth and light for
man’s wisdom of deceit and darkness.
Writing to the Corinthian saints in
one of the intellectual centers of the ancient world Paul asks...
Where is the wise man? Where is the
scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish
(moraino) the wisdom of the world (even as He did those here in Romans
who professed to be wise)? (1Cor
1:20)
Moraino
has a variety of other secular Greek uses depending on the context. And
so moraino can mean “insipid” of insufficiently seasoned foods. Jesus
used moraino this way declaring to His audience that
"You
are the salt of the
earth;
but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It
is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled
under foot by men". (see note
Matthew 5:13)
The lexicographer Photius bears
witness to this, and the use occurs in doctors and comedians. Thus
Dioscurides Medicus, who was a contemporary of Paul and also from
Cilicia, speaks of insipid roots (medicinal). Elsewhere in medicine it
is used of the slackness, fatigue or dulling of the nerves. It is also
used in respect of the sluggishness of animals in winter. With reference
to men the use is predominantly psychological. The word implies censure
on man himself; his acts, thoughts, counsels, and words are not as they
should be. The weakness may be due to a specific failure in judgment or
decision, but a general deficiency of intellectual and spiritual
capacities may also be asserted. The charge of folly does not have to be
a definitive judgment. In many cases it is more in the nature of an
admonition or warning, or it expresses the impossibility of
understanding or following the thinking or acts of someone. But the
judgment can also imply condemnation of the whole personality. In other
cases, too, it is implied that there is not just a deficiency, a mere
stupidity or irrationality, which would not occur if there were better
mental equipment, but that man is controlled by a power which confuses
his understanding, causes him to do mad things, and hides the right path
from him.
ILLUSTRATION: For a
modern example of men professing to be wise but really being fools, see
the September 1976 National Geographic article entitled "The
Awesome Worlds Within a Cell" .
On page 358 the authors describe the utter complexity of the cell. There
is no such thing as a "simple one-celled organism"! Even the simplest
cell has turned out to be "a micro-universe" (p.358). Then on p.388 we
read, "...this really is the major problem of biology. How did this
complexity arise?...biologists still confront the deep, basic mystery of
science: How did it all begin?" Then on page 390 the "experts" answer
this by crediting it all to CHANCE and saying that given enough time
even the IMPOSSIBLE can happen! With time, chance and evolution all
things are possible! "They have become fools" -- Romans 1:21-22. (Middletown
Bible Church)
Godet writes their...
Futility of thought has reached the
character of folly. What, in fact, is Polytheism, except a sort of
permanent hallucination, a collective delirium...And this mental
disorder (ironically) rose to a kind of perfection among the very
peoples who, more than others, laid claim to the glory of wisdom.
Those
who deny the God of creation are fools and "without a defense" (Ro1:20)
Yet they come to such a foolish decision in the belief that they are
scientific in trying to explain the infinitely complex, majestic,
beautiful creation without a Creator. The ancient pagans did this, with
immeasurably tragic results in the history of the human race. Modern
evangelicals, compromising with evolutionism and increasingly flirting
with New Age pantheism, feminism and occultism, are in serious danger of
starting down that same slippery slope (2Ti 3:1-13).
The fact is, once a man rejects the truth of God in Christ, he will fall
for anything foolish, and trust far more tenuous and fanciful systems
(eg look at evolution, mythology, etc) that what he has rejected from
God. This futility of thinking, darkening of the heart, and folly must
be seen as one manifestation of God's righteous wrath against those who
have rejected His revelation
Rejecting the light of God’s knowledge in their consciences, men now
arrogated to themselves wisdom, and became —what? Fools! "The fear of
the Lord is the beginning" —of both knowledge and wisdom (Pr 1:7; 9:10;
15:33; Ps 111:10; Job28:28). What a sad contrast with the rejection of
the Lord is the beginning of folly & foolishness.
Through Jeremiah God
declares that...
Every man is stupid, devoid of
knowledge; Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols; for his molten
images are deceitful, and there is no breath in them. They are
worthless, a work of mockery; In the time of their punishment they will
perish. (Jeremiah
10:14-15)
Jesus speaking in the context of
not placing one's trust in earthly treasures declared that...
"if your eye (the ancient idea
was that the eye was the window through which light entered the body. If
the eye was in good condition the body could receive such light)
is bad (With their eyes they were coveting money and wealth), your whole body will be full of darkness (an internal corruption
of one’s whole nature). If therefore the light that is in you is
darkness, how great is the darkness (darkness actually emanates from
within and affects one’s whole being)! (see note
Matthew 6:23)
Paul writes to the "wise"
Corinthians warning them...
"Let no man deceive himself (a
severe warning to any who would try to interfere with or destroy the
building of the church on the foundation of Christ). If any
man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become foolish
that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness
before God. For it is written, "He is THE ONE WHO CATCHES THE WISE IN
THEIR CRAFTINESS" (1
Cor 3:18-19)
Charles Churchill, who died in
1764, was the English poet and satirist given to every kind of loose
living, and whose literary productions were rough, ironical and insolent
in tone. In his last hours, conscience-stricken, he regretted his lost
life and the prostitution of his craft and died saying:
What a fool I have been.
Pritchard
writes:
"Here is the divine estimate of the great philosophers of Greece
and Rome. In God’s eyes they were fools because their philosophy was
based on a rejection of God’s truth. Dr. R. A. Torrey used to read verse
22 this way, "Professing themselves to be wise, they became
philosophers? No, Foolosophers." That’s what God thinks of
the world’s intellectuals. Although possessing great intelligence, they
are moral and spiritual pygmies. Have you ever ridden a see-saw? It
works on a very simple principle: If one person is up, the other person
must be down. Both people can’t be up at the same time. It’s the same in
the spiritual realm. If God is up, then man is down. If man is up, then
God is down. Both can’t be up at the same time. When God is up in his
rightful place, man will be down in his rightful place. But when the
roles are reversed reality itself is distorted."
William Newell writes that
"The silliness of these "modern" shallow-pan days! How men are
rushing back to the old pagan pit out of which God’s Word and His gospel
would have delivered them! They suck up sin; they welter in wickedness;
they profess to be wise! They sit at the feet of "professors" whose
breath is spiritual cyanide. They idolize the hog-sty doctrines of a rotten Freud: and count themselves "wise"! They say, "God is not a
person; men evolved from monkeys; morals are mere old habits; self-
enjoyment, self-expression, indulgence of all desires—this, " they say,
"is the path of wisdom." It is the path of those who go quickly down to
the pit and on to judgment! The very morals of Sodom, as our Lord
foretold, are rushing fast upon us, and God will bring again the awful
doom of Sodom (Lu17:28-31). This is a strange introduction to the
gospel of God’s grace, we answer, It lies here before us, this awful
indictment of Romans One, and cannot be evaded! Moreover, until man
knows his state of sin, he wants no grace. Shall pardon be spoken of
before the sinner is proved a sinner? While the evidence is being
brought in, the whole attention of the court is upon that. If the
evidence of guilt be insufficient or inconclusive, there is no necessity
for a pardon! Preachers and teachers have soft pedaled sin, until the
fear Of God is vanishing away. McCheyne used to Say, "A holy minister is
an awful weapon in the hands of God" A preacher who avoids telling men
the truth about their sin as here revealed, is the best tool of the
devil. (2Ti4:3-4, Ac20:30, Heb13:9)"
A FAIRY TALE
Frog + Princess = Handsome prince (this is called a “fairy tale”)
Frog + 10 billion years = Handsome prince (this is called “science”)
Dr. Stephen Jay Gould wrote
the following futile foolish rumination...
Humans
arose, rather, as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of
linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent
history on an alternate pathway that would not have led to
consciousness." - Scientific American, October 1994, p. 86)
As another evolutionist
logically but sadly concluded
"I refuse to believe in God, so what other alternative do I
have but evolution?”
No evidence for evolution led to disbelief in
God
But rejection of God led to evolution!
The French Mathematician, Lecompte de Nouy, examined the laws of
probability for a single molecule of high dissymmetry to be formed by
the action of chance. De Nouy found that, on an average, the time needed
to form one such molecule of our terrestrial globe would be about 10 to
the 253 power billions of years.
“But,” continued de Nouy ironically,
“let us admit that no matter how small the chance it could happen, one
molecule could be created by such astronomical odds of chance. However,
one molecule is of no use. Hundreds of millions of identical ones are
necessary. Thus we either admit the miracle or doubt the absolute truth
of science.” (Quoted in; “Is Science Moving Toward Belief in God?”)
G. K. Chesterton wrote that...:
It is absurd for the Evolutionist to
complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to
make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more
thinkable that nothing should turn itself into anything.
Lewis Thomas in Harvard Magazine, 1981:
I cannot make peace with the randomness doctrine; I cannot abide the
notion of purposelessness and blind chance in nature. And yet I do not
know what to put in its place for the quieting of my mind. It is absurd
to say that a place like this is absurd, when it contains, in front of
our eyes, so many billions of different forms of life, each one in its
way absolutely perfect, all linked together to form what would surely
seem to an outsider a huge, spherical organism. We talk—some of us,
anyway—-about the absurdity of the human situation, but we do this
because we do not know how we fit in, or what we are here for. The
stories we used to make up to explain ourselves do not make sense
anymore, and we have run out of new stories, for the moment.
|
Three Monkeys |
Three
monkeys sat in a coconut tree
Discussing the things that are said to be—
Said one to another: “Now listen you two
There’s a certain rumor, but it can’t be true,
That man descended from our noble race—
Why, the very idea; it’s a disgrace!
“No monkey ever deserted his wife,
Starved her babies and ruined her life.
Nor did ever a mother-monkey
Leave her babies with others to bunk,
Or pass them on from one to another
‘Till they scarcely knew who was their mother.
“And another thing you’ll never see
A monkey building a nest around a coconut tree,
And let the coconuts go to waste,
Forbidding all other monkeys to have a taste.
Why, if I build a fence around a coconut tree,
Starvation would cause me to distribute to you.
“Here’s another thing that a monkey won’t do:
Go out at night and get on a stew;
Or use a gun, a club, or a knife
To take another monkey’s life.
Yes, Man descended, the ornery cuss!
But Brother, he didn’t descend from us.” |
