Before Jesus Lifts, Jesus Levels
Prayer of Consecration
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Scripture
What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision? Much in every way! First of all, the Jews have been entrusted with the very words of God.
What if some were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God’s faithfulness? Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar. As it is written:
“So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge.”
But if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.) Certainly not! If that were so, how could God judge the world? Someone might argue, “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” Why not say—as some slanderously claim that we say—“Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just!
Romans 3:1-8 (NIV)
Consider This
I’m not going to lie. Romans is hard. Today’s text is hard to make heads or tails of for me. I get the feeling someone out in the audience has lawyered up and is asking the kinds of questions a person asks when they don’t get (or don’t like) what’s being discussed. They are the questions of a religious person whose heart is not right. They are the questions of a person who doesn’t really want answers but rather wants to play the part of an agitator. It’s kind of like when people don’t want to hear what you are trying to say so they ask ridiculous questions that obfuscate the whole conversation. It’s kind of like those people in the Bible study who never do the homework and instead of being quiet, they try to convince everyone of their intelligence by releasing their pet rabbits into the room so others might give chase.
It is very difficult to deal with uber-religious people on the one hand and recently converted pagan heathens on the other. Maybe I’m missing it, but that’s how I’m sizing up the scene here in Rome. And the truth is, these two groups of people don’t get along. It’s a judgment-fest. It’s kind of like that scene in the movie The Jesus Revolution, when the pastor’s daughter invites all the unkempt and uncouth hippie Jesus freaks into their prim and proper church and the deacons pitch a fit and start to leave.
In a poignant scene around this point in the movie, the drifter-hippie turned preacher, Lonnie Frisbee, (ironically played by Jonathan Roumie who plays the part of Jesus in The Chosen), says to Chuck Smith, (pastor of Calvary Chapel played by Kelsey Grammar),
“There is an entire generation out there searching for God. My people are a desperate bunch—and desperation—there is power in that word. What would it take for you Chuck Smith to become desperate?”
I think I cried for the rest of the movie after that.
Paul is desperate to reach the lost Gentiles, but he has to deal with the legalistic Jews first. What we are witnessing here is the master stroke of the gospel. Before Jesus lifts, he first levels. All the status markers in the house, especially religious ones, must go. Truth be told, this is what most churches need most. We need the most religious people in the house to rend their hearts and repent. We need the families who think they own the church and run the place to stand down and make room. The gospel is a wrecking ball for comfortable, conventional, respectable religion. The ground is level at the foot of the cross. Why does this matter?
Because there is an entire generation out there searching for God.
What would it take for you to become desperate?
Prayer
Jesus, we belong to you. Yes, Jesus, I belong to you. Jesus, you are the gospel. We confess we have tried to fit you into our program and make you serve our agendas. We like our familiar crowd and our easy beliefs. Would you level the ground under my feet? Search me and show me the ways I have put myself on a higher level than others. Convict me of my secret pride. Holy Spirit, awaken me to the desperation of Jesus who is searching for those who are desperately searching for him. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.
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The Butterflied Heart
Prayer of Consecration
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Scripture
Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. So then, if those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.
A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.
Romans 2:25-29 (NIV)
Consider This
The bottom line on chapter 2—the ground is level at the foot of the cross. Jew or Gentile—a sinner is a sinner is a sinner and we are all one of them. Stop comparing. Stop judging. Stop faking. More to come on that next week, but today Paul drops a bomb of a hint about all the goodness to come. The hint comes in this stunning phrase; a heretofore uncombined combination of words:
circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit
So think about circumcision (and I’ll spare you the graphic details). Now think about the heart, which Paul poignantly chooses as a metaphor. Now think about the Holy Spirit. Circumcision of the heart by the Spirit.
Now, besides everything, what did circumcision mean to the Jews? It was the mark of belonging to God. The circumcised heart is the mark of belonging to Jesus. It is not a mark made by human hands but by the Holy Spirit. I see it as the cauterizing of the cross.
I got an interesting text message from a friend this week. It was in response to the entry where I got super real about my body and losing weight. Here is the thread:
Friend: Dear Jesus, turn my heart into a fillet of surrender. Today.
Me: What do you mean by fillet?
Friend: I had a dream years ago that my heart was split like a fillet and all these butterflies came flying out and they all went different ways to do good things for Jesus and I was so peaceful. I still envision it and feel like all is well.
Friend: I guess it’s more like butterflying meat. Which actually (to me) brings it a step deeper.
Me: The Bible calls what you are referring to as the circumcision of the heart—which signifies the kind of surrender you are referring to— which releases the kind of flourishing you describe with the butterflies.
Friend: PS to John David, get rid of the scale.
I know so many of you want this very thing for your life too. And you know what? Jesus knows it too. He sees your heart and it pleases him. I asked him if he would speak to you today, by his Spirit, through my yielded heart and free-flowing words. I am asking Jesus to circumcise your heart by his Spirit right here and right now. Here’s my sense of his Word to you today:
My Daughter, My Son,
I see you and I delight in you greatly. I don’t want anything from you. I am not looking for you to do something for me. I am not needing you to try to become someone for me. I simply want you, the real deep true you—not the person you think you should be or the one you hoped you would become by now, or even the one you take pride in having become. I want the you who you were when you were a child before it all became so complicated and broken and many other things it was never meant to be. Bring me your heart now that it might be circumcised by my Spirit—butterflied, laid open, and made whole again.
I want you to let all the broken past be finally buried now, as in a grave, my grave, where I can cut it away like the lesions it has become on your soul, compromising and often crushing your true identity. I will give back your wounds as resurrected scars of glory. I’ll give back your ashes as resurrected beauty. I’ll give back your canceled sins as stories of salvation. I’ll give back your brokenness as resurrected blessedness. All of this suffering I will give back to you as a song you will sing to me for the rest of your days until the day you sing it before me face to face.
And I’m not looking for the you of your achievements and accolades and accomplishments—the you, you clamor for others to see. I want you to put all that on the shelf, my shelf, and let me cut away the broken attachments to your heart and heal the distortions it has done to your soul. I simply want you, like a child who can be held, carried, embraced, and blessed for nothing but love. I will give back your insecurities as the mighty fortress of my safe and secure presence. I’ll give back your achievements in the form of accolades to those who couldn’t achieve. I’ll give back your trophies, stripped of their idolatry and resurrected from the dead, as tokens of my glory you will one day lay at my feet again.
Give me your heart, in full surrender, fuller than ever before. Trust me completely and with abandon. Find your knees, make an altar, and do whatever it takes to mark these moments for these are the moments I am marking you. I am writing my name on your heart again. And I know you may have done this before, and you will certainly do it again. What’s important is you do it now, right now, bringing your heart just as you are. No expectation. No anticipation. Feeling it or not; willing or willful. Just bring a pure, unbridled, unconditional gift of your deepest heart to me in love. You belong to me. I belong to you. This is love, and you will never be the same again.
Prayer
Jesus, we belong to you. Jesus, I belong to you. Jesus, you are the gospel—the pure, unadulterated, too good to be true but true goodness of God. I not only believe you today, but I receive you. I receive you in greater measure than ever before. I want the circumcision of the heart by the Spirit. I sense it will be costly and yet nowhere near as costly as the life lived without it. Holy Spirit, lead me into this deep place with Jesus anew and afresh. This will be awakening. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.
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A Diatribe against Self-Righteous Sinners
Prayer of Consecration
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Scripture
Now you, if you call yourself a Jew; if you rely on the law and boast in God; if you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law; if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”
Romans 2:17-24 (NIV)
Consider This
Paul engages today in the practice of a diatribe. Permit me a bit of a diatribe in that same spirit.
The deeper purpose of the law is to make us deeply aware of our need for God in order to have any possibility of actually obeying it. I once heard a great man of God say, “The Law was given so that the Spirit might be desired, and the Spirit was given so that the Law might be obeyed.” Reflect deeply on this truth.
The problem is the way broken human beings tend to approach the Law with a “yes we can” attitude. Show me the rules and I’ll show you a rule keeper. Show me a rule keeper and I’ll show you a moralist—which is someone who endlessly judges other people. Something in us wants to justify ourselves—to show we have the heart, mind, soul, and strength to do it ourselves. And then we want to hold others to this same standard. There is a word for this self-righteousness. This is the world of honor and shame, of pride and pretense, of virtue signaling and cancel culture. It is alive and well in religious and irreligious communities alike.
Obey the rules and you are in. Disobey the rules and you are out. Disobey the rules while hiding behind your enforcement of the same rules on others, and we will make you a leader in the community. These kinds of leaders killed Jesus and they still try to kill him while thinking they are doing him a favor. And yes, our churches are full of them. They are called hypocrites. The capital H Hypocrites are the leaders and the little h hypocrites are the followers, but from the first century to the twenty-first they are all the same.
One of the telltale signs you are dealing with a legalistic, hypocritical leader is they are always trying to control the narrative; which makes them impervious to correction—always finding fault and never owning it. In these communities, repentance is behavioral modification rather than relational realignment. And repentance is image management rather than identity reorientation.
Paul knows these people because he was one of them and in today’s text he starts by sparring with them and then he takes off the gloves. He identifies them as the problem. He basically says the hypocrisy in the church is the cause of the unbelief in the world.
You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law? As it is written: “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”
And in the tradition of Jesus, Paul will go on to liken their so-called righteousness to filthy rags. Religious systems are notoriously deployed in the service of image management. The gospel is about a total renovation of one’s identity. Jesus hates image management. He only cares about deep identity formation. It’s why his gospel is about the righteousness that comes from faith from first to last.
The problem is how a warning to hypocrites never actually gets to them because they are ingrained to think you must be talking about somebody else. So I think what I am saying here is could you be open to the fact I may be talking to you?
Prayer
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On the Law, the Gospel, and the Religion of Weight Loss
Prayer of Consecration
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Scripture
All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares.
Romans 2:12–16 (NIV)
Consider This
Welcome back to Sin Swamp where today we will be talking about the Law.
A text like today’s seems irrelevant and even obtuse to the average twenty-first-century bible reader. It feels like Paul is dealing with a first-century issue we no longer deal with. Truth is, we don’t—and yet we do. I’ll say a word in the notes about the historical piece so we can get on to the present-day matters.1
Just as there is capital S Sin and little s sins so there is the capital “L” Law and all the little “l” laws.
The capital L law, according to Jesus, is, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ and to ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’’’ (see Mark 12:30–31)
All the little “l” laws show us examples of what it looks like to break the capital L law.
Capital S Sin simply means the failure of love. Little “s” sins are all the ways we do so. The problem is we put all the focus on the little “l” laws and consequently the little “s” sins. We must get our focus back onto the capital L Law of Love. Only this will shift us out of sin management mode with its endless behavior modification strategies which is another name for religious legalism.
Let’s bring it all together with a practical example.
It might surprise you to know that I am obese. I’m not super fat, but according to the charts, I qualify. I am five foot eleven inches and I weigh (can’t believe I’m telling you this) 221 pounds as of yesterday. I have been stuck in a plus or minus range of 220 for the past four years. I’m actually down from 236 pounds at my high. The charts say I should weigh around 180.
I’ve done calorie counting, WeightWatchers, Atkins diet, Whole30, keto, Mediterranean diet, intermittent fasting, macro management, diet pills, the Noom app, weight training, 10,000 steps a day, and whatever is next. Still, I remain obese—stuck at 220 pounds.
I find all of these programs and approaches have in common a focus on little “l” laws and little “s” sins. Don’t do this, reduce that, measure this, count that, calories in, calories out, weigh every day, weigh every week, weight is just a number, don’t weigh at all, throw the scale away, analyze, monitor, track, record, and repeat. And rest too, yes, rest. Oh yeah, and I forgot, drink a ton of water. And the insane thing is all of it kind of works and yet none of it really works at all. It is a kind of religion in and of itself.
They are all just so many little “l” laws, aren’t they? And they are all addressing so many little “s” sins, aren’t they?2 More little laws will never get it done. And it’s amazing how in focusing on so many things we miss the one thing. The whole point Paul will make about the Law and legalistic religion in Romans (and the rest of his letters) is law is powerless to change people. Sneak Preview:
For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Rom. 8:3–4)
So how am I going to lose thirty to forty more pounds?
It’s the wrong question, isn’t it? That is the question of little laws and little sins. It is the wrong focus.
So what is the right question?
Some of you are undoubtedly asking, what does any of this have to do with Jesus and Romans and being a Christian? What does my physical body have to do with being more spiritually alive and mature? What if the answer is—everything? Here’s another sneak peek:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. (Rom. 12:1)
What if the question is, “How might I offer my body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God?” Every. Single. Day. This would mean asking this kind of question:
How might I love God with my body? And truth be told, what do we actually have outside of our own physical body?
From here, we might ask this question, “How might I live according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh?”
Now we are getting somewhere.
Prayer
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Reapproaching Repentance (Romans with J.D. Walt)
Prayer of Consecration
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Scripture
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
Romans 2:1–4 (NIV)
Consider This
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was way back in the late 1900s, near the turn of the century. I was a local church pastor in Texas. One day our worship leader invited me to listen to a new song he was writing and give him my thoughts. The song gripped me and to remember it takes me there. Here are some of the words:
Open up the skies of mercy.
Rain down the cleansing flood
Healing waters rise around us
Hear our cries, Lord
Let them rise
And then the chorus:
It’s your kindness, Lord
That leads us to repentance.
Your favor Lord is our desire.
It’s your beauty, Lord
That makes us stand in silence.
And your love is better than life.
My thoughts? Wow! Amazing! Perfect.
Though I had contributed thoughts and ideas to some of his other songs, I was speechless before this one.
The song revealed something about repentance I had never grasped. In those days repentance felt to me like behavior management. You know—stop sinning.
If there were two words I would not have connected it would have been kindness and repentance. And there they are plain as day in today’s text:
God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
The Greek word behind repentance is metanoia. It means to have a change of mindset. A related meaning for repentance is to make a 180-degree turnaround.
It brings us back around to our conversation about focus. Will we focus on the problem of Sin or on the person of Jesus? We can’t simultaneously focus on that which we are turning away from and that which we are turning to. We must choose. The focus of repentance is not on turning away from sin but on turning to Jesus.
The person of Jesus is the riches of the kindness of God. As we turn to him we begin to turn our lives over to him and sin loses not only its luster but its power. It’s why the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of all who will believe. It’s why the gospel is Jesus.
Prayer
Jesus, we belong to you. Yes, Jesus, I belong to you. Jesus, you are the gospel. You are the kindness of God. You are the power of God. It’s why I love to repent because it means turning to you. As I am turned to you I cannot at the same time be turned to sin. Come Holy Spirit and train me in this turning to Jesus and turning my life over to him. It is an awe-filled thought to fathom how he has turned his life toward me. What a kindness. Praying in Jesus’s name, amen.
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The Difference Between Our Sins and Our Sin (Romans with J.D. Walt)
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Romans 1:24–32 (NIV)
Let me say at the outset today that I believe every single word of today’s text without exception (and every other day for that matter). It is a clear, unambiguous, strafing of both capital S Sin and lowercase s sins and the people who commit them. And to be clear—that would be all of us—every single one.
That said, in the spirit of what I said yesterday, I will wait to deal with yesterday’s and today’s texts until next week and the week following. See the note below for a bit more on my approach.1 Suffice it to say, today I want to practice what I preach and give prior focus to the gospel about which this entire book (if not the entire Bible) is devoted.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith” (Rom. 1:16–17).
In today’s text, Paul captures for us the very essence (if not the definition) of Sin in one sentence. Notice I capitalized the word sin as Sin. We will say much more about this in the coming few weeks, but we must begin to grasp the relationship between our Sin and our sins. Paul begins by giving us one of the clearest definitions of capital S Sin in the whole Bible:
They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Paul then gives us a representative but not an exhaustive list of the little s sins by detailing for us the scene of an average day in first-century Rome (and any other society suffering in the advanced stages of the metastatic cancer of Sin.) Our sins are the symptoms, but the sickness is Sin. The rest of the letter and every other letter in the New Testament is all about the cure. It comes down to one Word: Jesus.
We must make a critical shift in our understanding and orientation before launching into the deeps of this letter to the Romans and to us. We must shift from the notion of the little phrase, “The gospel of Jesus,” to the equally little but infinitely larger phrase: The gospel is Jesus.
I want you to reflect deeply on this today. The gospel is Jesus.
As Martin Luther famously sang, “He must win the battle.” In fact, he already has.
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From A Burning Bush to a Burning House (Romans with J.D. Walt)
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Romans 1:18–23 (NIV)
Chapter 1 of Romans takes us on quite a journey.
Yesterday we stood together in awe of the burning bush of the New Testament. Today and tomorrow we will stand in shock before a burning house.
The burning bush:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
The burning house:
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
The real dilemma we must solve here at the outset—as it relates not only to the letter to the Romans but to our very hearts, homes, churches, and cities—is this one: Where will we focus? Will we focus on the burning bush or the burning house? Will we focus on the problem of sin or the power of the gospel? Will we focus on the crucified-risen Messiah or the chaotic mess in the world and our lives? Will we focus on the diabolical problem of sin and its myriad manifestations or the singular solution of salvation in Jesus Christ?
The seduction is to think you can choose both. To try and choose both is to choose neither. It is to wind up stuck in the eddies instead of the river (i.e., Romans 7 vs. Romans 8). We will not deny sin here. We must not. Sin is undeniably real. It is diabolical and devastating and yet it is a distraction. Sin’s most deceptive and successful strategy is to consume the conversation and crowd Jesus out. We cannot deny sin’s reality. But we must deny sin our focus. We must reserve our unfettered and undeniable focus for Jesus himself, only, ever, and always.
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The Burning Bush of the New Testament (Romans with J.D. Walt)
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
Romans 1:16–17 (NIV)
Today’s text is nothing short of a burning bush—on fire and consuming but not consumed. It has burned with brilliance from the day it was inspired by the Holy Spirit and written on parchment.
Billions have warmed to its fire and been found in its light. If Romans can be summarized (which it can’t) this is it.
I don’t know if you know this about me, but I am a poet. I just decided one day many years hence.1 I wrote the poem below back around Easter after meeting up with an old friend. While I know my verse will not do the text justice, I am certain my normal commentary is wholly inadequate. I call it . . .
The Hard and Beautiful Truth
“I don’t want you to think I’m not a good person.”
That’s what my old friend said to me
upon meeting again after decades apart
and a long confession of her broken story.
I assured her with The Hard and Beautiful Truth:
“You are not a good person.
I’m not either.
We are broken sinners.”
Something deep in me (and maybe you too)
wants to believe we are good (or worse that we are bad)—
that we just need to lose twenty pounds,
drop a few bad habits, and try harder to be better.
Then I assure myself with The Hard and Beautiful Truth:
Good people and bad people is a lie
from the pit of hell,
and the way from good to great (or bad to worse)
paves the way there.
Jesus only goes from
Death to Life
Lost to Found
Slave to Free
Broken to Beautiful
Then she asked me, “If you are not good, what are you?”
“LOVED,” I said.
“I am loved,
and you are too.”
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
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Give Me 100 (Romans with J.D. Walt)
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. God, whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.
I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong—that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.
I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.
Romans 1:8–15
Can we get our bearings a bit on what is going on here?
Rome, in the first century, was the capital of the world. It was a city of around a million people. The early church in Rome, not to be confused with the modern day Basilica of St. Peter in the Vatican, was a series of house churches likely comprising a total of about one hundred people.
Get this fixed in your mind. We are in the most powerful city in the first century world ruled over by the most powerful (and cruel) man in the world, Lord Caesar (Nero). The threat is a hundred lower-class people scattered across the city (meeting in homes) who are ostensibly being led by a dead man who was reportedly resurrected from the grave and ascended to Heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, Lord Messiah (Jesus).
It gets better. We are reading a letter written by the apostle Paul around the year 50ish to a tiny church planted by the apostle Peter several years earlier and behold what is unfolding . . .
First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world.
The faith of a hundred people is being reported all over the world, and they didn’t even have the internet. By the power of the gospel of Jesus, through the obedience of their faith, one hundred people—bound by love and federated by freedom, would plant the flag of the kingdom of God in such a way that the Roman Empire would ultimately come undone at the seams.
Maybe that’s why John Wesley would write centuries later in the midst of the great British Awakening, “Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergymen or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon Earth.”
This letter to the hundred Christians in the several little Roman house churches is easily the most important letter ever written in the history of the world—not because of what it says to us but what it said to them. For today, my friends, we are them. And Rome is now another name for home. Our ten-year-olds are killing themselves at epidemic rates. Our schools have become slaughter houses. The Democrats and the Republicans and the seductive, toxic politics of outrage will not save the day. Only Jesus can.
That is the message of the letter to the Romans and to us. The gospel of the kingdom of Jesus is the simple yet comprehensive solution for all that is broken in our lives and in the world.
In the first century in a city of a million the faith of a hundred was being reported all over the world. Two months ago, in this the twenty-first century, we witnessed the faith of nineteen college students light the first fires of great awakening in this century so far. And I do not exaggerate when I say their faith is being reported all over the world.
What could happen if we woke up and began to move in the obedience of faith in our time?
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What Is Your Calling? (Romans with J.D. Walt)
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body as a holy and living sacrifice to you.
Jesus, We belong to you.
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake. And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
What is your calling? People expend so much energy, throughout their lives, trying to figure out what exactly is their calling in life. We tend to think it is a specific career or vocation or some particular job. Many spend much of their lives feeling as though they have missed their calling. You feel stuck in a job you can do but don’t love. More challenging, you spend a lot of time wondering if God wants you to be doing something other than what you are presently doing—like maybe you are supposed to go into “the ministry.” College students live in enormous anxiety about needing to figure out what they are going to do with their lives before they graduate. I tell my own collegiate children regularly to relax—Jesus didn’t even get started until he was thirty.
I’ve got good news for all of you. You don’t need to figure out your calling. It’s already set in stone. Did you catch it in today’s text? It is right there in verse 6.
. . . you . . . are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
This is your full time vocation. It is your 100 percent job 100 percent of the time. You are called to belong to Jesus Christ. Even better, this is your identity. You are called to belong to Jesus Christ. He tells us who we are and why we are here. Every possible question and quandary in life can be answered if approached from this singular starting place. It’s why we begin in this place of consecration every single day on the Wake-Up Call—Jesus, I belong to you. Promise me that you will never, ever, ever, skip that. Yesterday’s consecration is not sufficient for today’s calling.
Our calling must include and inform our job or career but it is much larger and far more comprehensive than our work week. It’s why the whole concept of retirement is an absurdity in the kingdom of Jesus. Calling transcends retirement. Sure, you can quit your job, but you can’t retire from your calling. In fact, I call the years between the ages of sixty and eighty the “kingdom prime.” And over eighty is “kingdom super prime.”
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