Romans 1-3

The Acropolis of Athens, seen from Philopappos Hill (Leonhard_Niederwimmer)

Greetings. I’d like to type up a couple more articles concerning the most important subjects of repentance and God’s glorious kingdom. But first, let’s delve into the Book of Romans today. 

Beginning in the first chapter of the Book of Romans. Written around 57-58 A.D. Here, the Apostle Paul is addressing the brethren there at Rome ── not necessarily to Romans in general. Not all of them were Romans; however, most probably were. 

So, our Lord Jesus Christ had taught His disciples for 3½ years, and then He was murdered ── He was crucified. And, His disciples became apostles, forty days after His glorious resurrection, and He was taken to the upper heavenly realms; and they were instructed to wait until they would receive the glorious Helper – the Holy Spirit, which they did receive ten days later on the day that the Day of Pentecost had fully come – 31 A.D. And they were empowered to go out with a great commission. 

Now, the very word “apostle” in Greek is apostolos, meaning “representative, messenger, envoy.” 1 So, in actuality, it was proclaiming a Message. It was not what the Protestants believe and teach ── that it was a “soul-saving” campaign. Our Lord Jesus did not come to earth for a “soul-saving” campaign. He never invited people to come forward out of a crowd and “give their heart to the Lord.” He never tried to talk anyone into conversion. Now… as an example here… in the Book of John, we read that when He was passing through Samaria ── and truth be told, the Samaritans for some 600 years had been Babylonians that had been moved to this location after King Shalmaneser V, the king of Assyria (reigned 726–721 BC), who subjugated ancient Israel, and had removed all the Israelites out of the land and then had taken them as slaves over to the land of Assyria on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea. The king moved the Babylonians to that land. So, they were people of the Babylonian mystery religion. You might recall that I had briefly spoken of this in the article “Is God Judging You ── Now?” MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS. A universal church that has daughter churches that have come out of her, that the LORD God calls harlots. The old Chaldean/Babylonian mystery religion. 

It's important to have this background before we begin today in the Book of Romans, and as the apostles began their commission, because immediately they met with great opposition. And right from the start, their first opposition was the Jews, who would not accept our Lord Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah. So, the apostles’ first preaching was their testimony as witnesses to the fact of our Lord Jesus’ glorious resurrection unto life. Now, they had spent nearly every day with Him for 3 ½ years before His murder ── His crucifixion. And then, even after His death and resurrection, they came to spend another forty days with Him. They were eyewitnesses to the fact that He was the same being that they had been with for those 3 ½ years, who was resurrected from the dead ── proving that He indeed was and is the Messiah!

Now… under the Old Covenant, Israel was made a Church+State. It was civil as well as church. But understand ── as a church, the LORD God had never offered them salvation, and only God’s holy prophets were blessed with the Holy Spirit. Israel would come to reject the LORD God as the Revealer of knowledge and the Source of all basic knowledge. They also rejected Him as their God and Savior spiritually. And they rejected Him as their Ruler, so far as the civil government was concerned.

So, it’s also important to have this in mind as we begin to delve into the Book of Romans ── or, the New Testament in general. For the LORD God, in essence, said to Adam- You made the decision for yourself and for your children and all who would come from you – the population of the whole world; therefore, I sentence you and the world that will come from you to 6,000 years of being cut off from Me and from My Spirit. You have rejected Me as Your Revealer of knowledge and as Ruler of government ── you have rejected My government. So then, go out from before Me, as you create your own gods and goddesses, your own religions, with your own educations and knowledge ── because you have taken unto yourselves “the knowledge of good and evil” of what is right and what is wrong. You will go out before Me, and you will create your own governments to rule over you. And you will create your own religions and your own gods and goddesses, your own society ── because you have rejected My Way of life.

So, what did we have rise up? World civilizations. Some of the most ancient civilizations were those that began in the Tigris-Euphrates valley at least as early as 4000 B.C. The Babylonian-Assyrian civilization. And even before then, the Sumerians. And of course, the Egyptians. All descended from Adam and Eve. And, they created their own gods and goddesses, their own worship and religions, their own idols. As an example, one of the oldest of Chinese religions was a complex tapestry of beliefs, including animism (the attribution of a living soul to plants or inanimate objects), of ancestry worship, along with different philosophies such as Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. And, they had this complex tapestry of beliefs about the same time that the Egyptians began with Osiris and Isis. The first divine royal couple who they believed to have made ancient Egypt civilized. Then, the ancient Greeks with their Chaos, Aether, Hemera, and so forth. Then the ancient Romans with their Jupiter and Diana, and all those other gods and goddesses. Then, in India, came Buddhism. And the Hindu religion. And all the plethora of worldly religions.

And, in the Middle East ── during the time of our Lord Jesus Christ ── was the Babylonian mystery religion, which had sprung up from ancient Chaldea, and then had been transplanted into the northern part of Palestine by King Shalmaneser V of Assyria, roughly some 700 years before our Lord Jesus. So, the Jews of northern Palestine were called Samarians.

I mention a few of these ancient religions that were hundreds of years before our Lord Jesus Christ, and some even thousands which knew nothing of the true God. They knew nothing concerning the glorious Holy Spirit. 

Immediately after the great Flood, there was a religion that began, which is mentioned in the 10th chapter of the Book of Genesis. And I have mentioned this individual a few times throughout the years. Nimrod. A mighty hunter against the LORD who built Babel, Erech, Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar (the name for the southern region of Mesopotamia). And from there he went on to build Nineveh. Nimrod would go on and marry his wife/mother, Semiramis. Interestingly, there is a skyscraper and hotel complex located in Garden City, Cairo, Egypt called the Semiramis InterContinental Hotel. It was she who started the ancient religions that first came into ancient Egypt, and then formed the Babylonian mystery religion, as well as all others. Yet, none knew anything about the true God. Because the LORD God had shut them out.

Turn in your Bible to the Book of Romans, chapter 1.

The Apostle Paul is talking in the first chapter about the Gentiles who thought by that time ── in the first century A.D. ── that they had developed a great wealth of knowledge. As I had previously mentioned, the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. And so, he had come into Athens and came across an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. The Apostle Paul, therefore, said to them, “the One whom you worship without knowledge, Him I proclaim to you.” Saying to them, “God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.” He is our Creator and our Maker!

In the first chapter here, the Apostle Paul mentions how these people did not like to retain God in their knowledge, and that they would not regard Him as God, that they had rejected everything good about God and had turned to a reprobate mind, the worship of idols and of every unrighteousness, and sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness. And, that they had looked down upon the Jews, because, as he says, “for the Jew first and also for the Gentile. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.” 

So then, let’s go back a little with the Jewish religion. There came to be a division in the kingdom of Israel. In the days after the death of King David, and even after King Solomon died ── and then King Rehoboam ascended the throne. He announced to the Israelites that he was going to greatly tax them even more than his father had before. And so the Israelites rejected him as their king and made Jeroboam I their king.

However, the tribes of Judah and Benjamin stayed with Rehoboam as their king and formed the kingdom of Judah. So, the kingdom of Israel now had a new king. And the very first thing that King Jeroboam I did was to change the annual festivals that were in the seventh month to the eighth month. He didn’t want his people traveling down to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, and then decide they would rather have Rehoboam as their king. So, he changed the annual festival to the eighth month. Interestingly, also, while there is no direct biblical statement confirming this, it could have been possible that King Jeroboam I also changed the Sabbath day ── which is the seventh day of the week ── to what came to be known as Sunday. And this is possibly where Sunday worship began among the Israelites. The Sabbath was and is the “sign” that the LORD God had given Israel by which the world would know that they were Israel, because no other nation on earth kept the Sabbath. No other nation had. The seventh day is a memorial of the Creator and of creation. Yet, Israel had lost their “sign,” they lost their identity. The Sabbath is the “sign” between the LORD God and man – we find this in the Book of Exodus, chapter 31, verses 12 to 18.

So then, here we are. According to our history books, the kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrian monarchs Tiglath-Pileser III and Shalmaneser V, and was forced to relocate by the Neo-Babylonian Empire around 734-732 B.C. And as I was saying, the Babylonian mystery religion moved into the land there in Northern Palestine ── with only the southern kingdom of Judah. Then, around 597 B.C., the kingdom of Judah was captured by King Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon, who conquered the Jews. This event marked the beginning of a long period of exile, with further deportations occurring after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 587 B.C.

But then, in 538 B.C., the Jews who were in Babylon were allowed to return to Palestine, due to Cyrus II of Persia. Yet, the people were only from the kingdom of Judah. The LORD God desired them to go back to Jerusalem and construct a second Temple to be there when our Lord Jesus would come, which was going to be some 512 years later. So, the LORD God stirred up the spirit of King Cyrus of Persia and gave a decree to send all those who had been in captivity, “of those who had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away to Babylon,” to return to Jerusalem. – Ezra 1&2. So, there were roughly forty-two thousand three hundred and sixty, besides their male and female servants. Yet, they were not called Israel. And there in the Book of Ezra we find the tribal names of those people, and every one of them was from the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, or Levi. Notice, “Then the heads of the fathers’ houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites.” – Ezra 1:5.

So, Ezra and Nehemiah were the two prophets who were sent down to Palestine with the people of the kingdom of Judah to build the Second Temple. So, that group of people was only the kingdom of Judah ── not Israel.

We’re coming to the end of this background. Here we come to this Simon the Magician, this Simon Magus, that is revealed to us in the 8th chapter of the Book of Acts. This same Simon would go on to deceive many, founding Roman Catholicism, usurping Simon Peter’s name, and declaring himself God on Earth and the first Catholic pope. Now, get this, the apostles’ first opposition was that Jews didn’t believe our Lord Jesus of Nazareth was the prophesied Messiah, and they wanted to continue their enforcement of the ritual laws. In other words, they wanted more physical laws instead of spiritual laws. A little later, the whole thing changed ── the Gentile religion was the opposition, a religion against the Law of God, the spiritual Law of God ── the holy and righteous Commandments of God. They also called the Holy Spirit a third person of a Trinity. Calling it a person and not the glorious mind and power of God. And it received the Catholic stamp of approval around March 7, 321 AD. Yet, that false doctrine was taught long before that. This is why the term “Holy Ghost” is used in the King James Bible of 1611. When God’s living word was translated from Latin into English, they believed wholeheartedly ── and still do ── that the Holy Spirit is a person. The word ghost is an inappropriate translation. It should be Spirit. The Spirit of God was poured out on the Day of Pentecost, 31 A.D. It was poured out; it filled the people. 

So here the Apostle Paul was talking of how the Gentiles had tried to do away with the Law of God altogether in the first chapter, and how they had “exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” And he begins correcting them.

2nd chapter of the Book of Romans. 

The Apostle Paul chastens the Jews, in which now the Gentiles believed they were far superior to the Jews because, as they said, the Jews had Judaism, whereas the Gentiles were enlightened and had knowledge. The Apostle Paul corrected the Jews because they were boasting that they had the Law, which they disobeyed. They were not even obeying the Law of God that they were given. 

3rd chapter of the Book of Romans 

Verse 1 ── “What advantage then has the Jew, …?” Talking about the difference between the Jew and the Gentile. The Gentiles have their philosophies. They had all this knowledge, filled with myths and superstitions, and the Jews had the Law of God. So, “What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision?” Here, the Jews believed in the ritual of circumcision ── and circumcision is one of those things that the Apostle Paul had explained was part of the Jews’ ritual laws, as a religious ordinance, circumcision was done away with. Not to say that you can’t get circumcised for health benefits, but rather that it is no longer a religious ordinance by the LORD God under the New Covenant.

So, “What advantage then has the Jew, …?”

Verse 2 ── “Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God.” Meaning, the Commandments and the Covenants of God. 

Verse 3 ── “For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect?” What the Apostle Paul had in mind was thus ── you know, I’ve come across many people who profess that they are Christians. Well… I don’t want to have any part of them. They judge Christianity by the lives of the people who profess to live it, but are not actually living it at all. That’s what he's saying here. If people do wrong, will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect?

Verse 4 ── “Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true but every man a liar. As it is written: ‘That You may be found just when You speak, And blameless when You judge.’ ” As quoted from Psalm 51:4.

Verse 5 ── “But if our unrighteousness …” – speaking of the Jewish unrighteousness that is. “ … demonstrates the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unjust who inflicts wrath? (I speak as a man).” 

Verse 6 ── “Certainly not! For then how will God judge the world?” Notice, Romans 7:1 - “Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?” 

You see, the LORD God is going to judge the world, but the LORD God is going to judge it through and by our Lord Jesus Christ because He has turned all judgment over to His Son.

Verse 7 ── “For if the truth of God has increased through my lie to His glory, why am I also still judged as a sinner?”

Verse 8 ── “Why not indeed ‘do evil that good may come’, as some libelously report me as saying? To condemn such men as these is surely no injustice.” (NEB).

Let us do evil that good may come ── he’s referring here to a type of religion that some had, and that some had who were professing to be a Christian. They say that since we do evil and God has grace, then God’s grace can forgive the evil we do for good, showing the greatness of God in forgiving our sin. Therefore, the more we sin, the greater we make God, because it makes God greater because of the more He forgives our sin ── therefore, we need to sin more. “Let us do evil, that good may come”

Verse 9 ── “What then? Are we better than they? …” That is, ‘we Jews.’ It’s important to rightly know the “we,” and “they,” and the “us,” and so forth, all through the Apostle Paul’s writings.

Are we, in other words, are we Jews any better than they – the Gentiles? “ … Not at all. For we have previously charged both Jews and Gentiles that they are all under sin.”

Verse 10 ── “As it is written: ‘There is none righteous, no, not one.’” 

Verse 11 ── “’ There is none who understands; There is none who seeks after God.’” 

So, they were not seeking God. And it’s a good thing he says that here – I’ve got this underlined in my Bible. NO ONE IS SEEKING AFTER GOD! None of the apostles sought after our Lord Jesus Christ. He called them. In fact, neither Peter nor Andrew sought out the Messiah. They wanted to be fishermen, fishing in the Sea of Galilee. Because, as our Lord Jesus Christ said, “’ No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; …’” – John 6:44. The Father has called out those He had predestined to be called. Does this mean that God the Father knew thousands upon thousands of years in advance that we were going to be born ── that is, that Leonard V Johnson was going to be born in the year of our Lord 1969 and that He had already preplanned to call me out of this world? Thousands of years before even Adam was created? Before Adam was ever thought about? Well… could it be more so that the LORD God had predestined or preplanned that a certain few would be called to a certain position? And I want you to note that predestination has nothing to do with whether you will overcome and be saved or not. It only has to do with whether you would be called out of this world at this time or whether you are not.

But what the Apostle Paul is saying is: NO MAN IS SEEKING GOD. It’s God who seeks us.

Verse 12 ── “’ They have all turned aside; They have together become unprofitable’ There is none who does good, no, not one.’” 

Verse 13 ── “’ Their throat is an open tomb; With their tongues they have practiced deceit’; ‘The poison of asps is under their lips.’” 

Verse 14 ── “’ Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.’”

Verse 15 ── “’ Their feet are swift to shed blood.’” 

Verse 16 ── “’ Destruction and misery are in their ways.’” 

Verse 17 ── “’ And the way of peace they have not known.’”

Verse 18 ── “’ There is no fear of God before their eyes.’” 

Verse 19 ── “’ Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.”

Now… ‘under the law’ in this case, he is referring to the spiritual Law of God – the Ten Commandments. And, we are under the law when we have broken the law ── the law then is over you and me demanding our life as its penalty. It is your lord and master in this sense, and it demands your life. But our Lord Jesus Christ ransomed us and paid our debt in our stead. So, ‘under the law’ doesn’t mean under obligation to obey the law. EVERYBODY IS UNDER OBLIGATION TO OBEY THE SPIRITUAL LAW OF GOD.

Now… he’s not just talking about Jews ── “Now we know …” No, he’s talking about those who have sinned, and therefore they’re under the law, and the law is over them demanding their life. “ … that EVERY mouth may be stopped, and ALL THE WORLD may become guilty before God.” This includes both Gentiles as well as Jews.

Verse 20 ── “Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” 

Now… right here it should be capitalized, boldened, and highlighted in your Bible! In every Bible! BY THE LAW IS THE KNOWLEDGE OF SIN.

Truly, no man is justified by a ritual. A great many believe that a man is atoned for his sins by punishing himself, and that too is in Gentile religions. The Jews took all those physical rituals, which included circumcision, and because they considered that it was a type of punishment, therefore, they were using these physical rituals to atone for their sins by inflicting punishment upon themselves.

On the other hand, by the law of God is the knowledge of sin. The very purpose of the Ten Commandments is to tell us what sin is. Later, the Apostle Paul would write, “I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, ‘You shall not covet.’” – Romans 7:7. Because we wouldn’t know that it is wrong to covet, if the law had not said so.

Verse 21 ── “But now the righteousness of God apart from the law is revealed, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets.” Meaning the Old Testament Scriptures.

Verse 22 ── “even the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, …”

Now, not our faith in Jesus Christ, but it is the faith that our Lord Jesus gives us, the faith that our Lord Jesus has.

“ … to all and on all who believe. For there is no difference.” 

Verse 23 ── “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Verse 24 ── “being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” – so, it’s not by our performance of obeying, because we must do this anyhow. 

Verse 25 ── “whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, …” – in other words, His blood was His life, and that it paid the price for us. “ … through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed.”

The sins that were previously committed. Grace does not forgive a sin that maybe you have not yet committed, so that you have a license to go ahead and commit a sin, and that it's already been forgiven in advance. No. Grace does not forgive any sin in advance. It only forgives sins up to that moment. Yet, so many people say ──   O, no. Once you’re in grace, you’re always in grace, and you can not even sin after that. In other words, ‘go ahead and sin, God doesn’t recognize it as sin anymore. You’ve been forgiven.’

“ … because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed.”

Verse 26 ── “to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” 

Verse 27 ── “Where is boasting then? …” 

Understand, the Jews were boasting because they had the Law, and the Gentiles were boasting because they had such great knowledge – they thought.  

“ … It is excluded. By what law? Of works? …” – in other words, by those ritual laws? “ … No, but by the law of faith.”

Verse 28 ── “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law.”

So, it’s important to understand what “justified” means. Justified means that your past guilt is cleaned up and is paid for. Justified is a matter referring to your past sins, and you’re justified by your righteousness today. You are justified by the blood of Christ.

“Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? No, but by the law of faith.”

It is excluded, meaning that it is apart from. It doesn’t mean without. He doesn’t mean you can go on and not have to have good works in keeping and obeying God’s spiritual Law. And he is talking about the spiritual Law here.

Verse 29 ── “Or is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also.”     

Verse 30 ── “since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith.”

Verse 31 ── “Do we then make void the law through faith? …”

The keeping and obeying of God’s Law today doesn’t forgive us of the sins we committed yesterday or last year. Does that do away with the law so that we don’t keep and obey?

“ … Certainly not! On the contrary, we establish the law.”

And, even that. Faith establishes it. But if you break the law, you still have to keep it today. And if you didn’t keep it yesterday, it takes the blood of Christ to erase it, and your keeping and obeying it today won’t do it, nor will the physical rituals.  

To be continued. □

1) The Strongest Concordance of the Bible, 21st century ed. 2001. ISBN 978-0-310-23343-5 (hardcover), #652, pg. 1594.