 All right. Welcome back everyone. This is our second lecture on the book of Romans. I have just started the recording. So we will get started. I know we took a little extra time from our break at the previous class. So people are still returning. That's fine. Okay, good. So we are now going to, we've gone through the introduction earlier. Since anybody wants to ask, we will start off with chapter one. Any other questions? And I've given her a question. Conan, any question? Sharon, any questions? Okay. All right. So we're going to go into chapter one. Now, what we're going to do is, you know, we're going to go through this verse by verse. So what we'll do is we'll read certain portions of scripture, then look at, you know, verse by verse. I would, you know, we won't like read the whole chapter at one go, but we will read portions of the chapter and then, you know, just look at verses, you know, individually and then built like that. Right. So let's read verse Romans chapter one versus one to six. Romans one, one to six. The first six verses, we're going to read that. And I would just request people to read maybe this eight. Anyone can read two verses eight for the stick turns. Romans chapter one versus one to six. And then we'll look at those verses. Romans one, one to six. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ. Paul to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised of four by his prophets in the Holy Spirit. Consuming his son, Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the devil. By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience of the faith among all nations for his name, among whom are he also the Paul of Jesus Christ. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. So let's look at it worse by worse and we will comment on, you know, highlights certain things here. So Paul, it's very interesting. So this is like the salutation, the introduction part of the greeting part of this letter. So every letter would be, you know, dear son, so trust your doing well. I mean, you know, there's a little introduction happening. So this is Paul's introduction. And he kind of continues on a little bit more. So notice how Paul refers to his own self. Now, remember many of these people in Rome have not seen Paul in person. A few of them, like Aquila Priscilla, maybe a few may have seen him, but most of them have not. They only heard of them. Now Paul is saying he's a bond servant of Jesus Christ. That word bond servant there is very, very important. He's borrowing from, again, like we had mentioned earlier, he's borrowing from the Old Testament, a bond servant. Now, what do we know about a bond servant, you know, from the Old Testament Hebrew context. So typically, a servant, you know, fee, you know, let's say somebody becomes a servant, you know, usually it's financial situations that drives people, that would drive people to become a servant. They don't have finances. So they, you know, subject themselves to, or they put in that place where they have to be subject to a master, somebody else who's, for whom they work. Now, typically what will happen is every seven years or even during the year of Jubilee, the 50th year, these servants had to be let free. They had to go. You're free to go. But if somebody chooses to stay as a servant for them with their master, that means they say, you know, I like my master so much. He's a good man. He's treating me well. My life is taken care of. My family is taken care of. So I'm fine with this. And I'm willing to, I am willing to continue, even though, you know, I have the choice of walking away. I'm willing to stay here and be a servant. So he willingly submits, he willingly subjects himself to the master. He becomes a bond servant. That means he has made the choice to be a servant. It is to stay a servant for this master. And, you know, one of the signs that they would do is they would put a ring on the ear as an indication that this person is a bond servant. He's chosen to give himself up like that possibly for the rest of his life. Right. Yeah. So Siddharth has asked a question. Does it mean to be a slave? Yeah. In their context, yes. You know, I mean, our modern day context, we don't use the word slave. But that's what it was. They were a slave to their master. And so, you know, the King James still uses the word, you know, when it translates as slaves, be a bead into your masters. We don't use that today. But that was what the context was. And that was who they were. They were slaves. And they were bond servants. So really, the bond servant was a slave. But he was, he made the choice to submit the rest of his life or however long he had to his master. And he chose to take the mark of a bond servant on his life as an indication of people that he is a bond servant. Okay. So Paul is saying, he says, I'm a bond servant of Jesus Christ. So is that something to really think about? You know, and we could reflect on it for our own lives, that this is, you know, an example to follow. A bond servant of Jesus Christ. But then he says, so bond servant is something I choose to do. But then there is something else that God gave. What does he say? I was called to be an apostle. So this is not something I chose. I didn't choose to be an apostle. I chose to be a servant. But God called me to be an apostle. And we all know the meaning of the word apostle is to be a sent one. Right. That means he is sending me to represent him. He is sending me to represent his kingdom. An apostle is a sent to one, somebody who's sent by the king, somebody sent by the government, somebody sent by a higher authority in order to carry out a purpose. So he says, I chose to be a bond servant. I was called to be an apostle, to be a sent one. And of course, in the New Testament context, the apostle has other functions and responsibilities. And he says, very important, separated to the gospel of God. So in Paul's writings, you'll find these three words very important to Paul's writings. Bond servant, being called and being separated. So Paul really saw himself as somebody who was separated, set aside for the gospel of God. Now that word separated, we have to understand in Paul's context, because for Paul, being separated was a very big thing. So what do you mean? If you understand Paul's life, he was, you know, the first 30 years of his life, he had been trained in, you know, or at least the better part of those 30 years he had been trained in Judaism. He had, he says, I was a, this is in Philippians chapter three, he writes, he says, I was a Pharisee of Pharisees. I mean, I was like the most eminent student, the most eminent Pharisee, upcoming Pharisee was a Pharisee. So his whole life was in that, his identity was in that. And yet he gave up all of that and came out of it in order to proclaim a different message. So for him, it was a big thing. And when we read Philippians three, he says, you know, whatever was gained to me, I counted it, but you lost. And I count them everything as rubbish. For one reason, that I'm again Christ. Right. So this word separated in Paul's mind, and you find it in his other episodes, it's a very big thing. I was separated, called out, set aside, set apart for what? For the gospel of God. Again, that's very interesting here, the gospel of God, because when you look through the New Testament, and we want to understand the gospel, he's going to explain the gospel to us, which is coming up for us in this book of Romans. But you find the phrase, the gospel in many different contexts. And then I've just kind of shared this in the notes that we just shared the screen, so we could all see it. How is the gospel, you know, referred to in various places? Yeah. Yeah. So we see the gospel, which we know the word gospel means good news. It's used in so many ways. He calls it the gospel of God, the gospel of his son, the gospel of Christ. Paul even uses it as my gospel. Very interesting. We will see this in Romans too. And of course, he simply means when he says my gospel means it is the gospel he received directly by revelation. He also calls it the gospel of peace. So it's an interesting thing that the message, which is good news, gospel means good news. Paul understands it in a very comprehensive way. Today, when we talk about the gospel, whereas the gospel is okay, this is what I tell the sinner, this is what I tell people outside. But for Paul, it was the message, everything started there, because it's the gospel of God, the good news of God, it's the good news of Christ, it's the good news of Jesus. It's the gospel of peace. He uses so many different titles for that, the gospel, the good news. It's all encompassing. It's from God. It's the message of Jesus. It's what I am preaching and it's what brings peace in the lives of people. You see that as he uses it, the way he uses it in Romans. Now, I've also just listed here other titles that I used, gospel titles, gospel of kingdom, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel of the grace of God, the gospel of the glory of Christ, the gospel for the circumcised, for the circumcised and so on. But what I want to just emphasize is that the gospel is comprehensive and in our minds often we just say, okay, the gospel is okay, the way for salvation. That is true. Really, the gospel is everything that was proclaimed by God to us. So that's what we see in verse two, Romans chapter one, verse two. So he says about this gospel, he promised before through his prophets in the holy scriptures. So he says, look, the message that I've been separated for, which I'm preaching, which he says, you know, it's the gospel of his son. It is the gospel that I'm, my gospel, the gospel I'm preaching is the gospel of peace. This gospel, this message of good news was promised through the prophets. So when Paul was writing, we didn't have the New Testament yet. So obviously he's referring to the Old Testament prophets. So he's saying, look, this is a message that was actually proclaimed by the prophets in the Old Testament. And notice how he says, how he refers to the Old Testament. He says, which he promised through his prophets in the holy scriptures. Powerful, holy scriptures. Paul is referring to the Old Testament, which they had at that time, Genesis, all the way to Malachi. He's referring to them as the holy scriptures. You can see the regard that he has for, but you know, what we call us the Old Testament. Yeah. He holds them in such high regard, the Old Testament, the holy scriptures. And what he's saying is the gospel was already promised there by the prophets. The prophets in some way were promising, saying there's good news coming. And sure enough, we know from, right from, you know, God's call here on Abraham on through so many prophets and especially Isaiah, you know, we see them all promising the coming of Jesus Christ and what was going to happen. Right. So we see in verse two, Paul's understanding that the gospel we are preaching is not something new. It is something spoken of in the Old Testament. And we also see Paul's heart towards the Old Testament, the holy scriptures, very important. Okay. Let me go to verse three and four, Romans one, three and four. He says, concerning his son, Jesus Christ of a Lord, was born the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. Okay. So verse three, what is the gospel? What is this message we are preaching? It is about Jesus Christ. And in relation to the Jesus Christ, Paul mentions two things. He says, in the natural, according to the flesh that was in the natural, he was born the seed of David. He was a descendant of David. But in the spirit, he is the Son of God by the spirit of holiness and by the resurrection from the dead. Son of God with power. So saying, Jesus Christ, understand, he was a descendant of David according to the flesh. That's important because that is a fulfillment of all the prophecies. You know, the Old Testament prophecies were speaking about the root of David, an offspring of David. They were pointing to in the stem of Jesse, they're pointing to, you know, somebody coming from the line of David. So he says, this Jesus is that he was born to the seed of David, he was a descendant of David. But who was it really? Verse four, he was the Son of God, God who came into the Son of God. And we know that because he came with power by the spirit of holiness and he was raised from the dead. So highlighting the spiritual side of Jesus Christ, the Son of God with power by the spirit of holiness and by the resurrection from the dead. So this Gospel that we are preaching was given to us even by the Old Testament prophets. And the Gospel is a message about Jesus Christ. Yes, he was a descendant of David, but more importantly, he was a Son of God. And we know him as a Son of God because he came with the power of the Holy Spirit and he came and he was the one resurrected from the dead. I want to point out here very interestingly in verse four is the Holy Spirit is a spirit of holiness. You know, it may seem like you know, something that's redundant, obviously Holy Spirit. But sometimes we need to think of the Holy Spirit as the spirit of holiness. We use the phrase Holy Spirit almost like somebody's name. And so the meaning of that sometimes gets lost. Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit. It's a name of the spirit of God, the person of the Trinity, Godhead and so on. So it's just a title that comes up very easily. But when you turn it around and say spirit of holiness, now that makes you stop. Think, hey, when I talk about the Holy Spirit, I'm talking about the spirit of holiness. So not only is he the one who is holy, but his presence is holiness, spirit of holiness. You know, and sometimes I think about this in the sense that many of our church, the baby do church, sometimes there is no sense of holiness, no sense of the awe of God. But we talk so much with Holy Spirit. We may sing about the Holy Spirit, but we do it without a sense that Holy Spirit, whom we are singing about or welcoming or so on. It's actually the spirit of holiness. And therefore there has to be that consecration. There has to be that holiness that we walk in because we are saying Holy Spirit, spirit of holiness come, spirit of holiness move among us, spirit of holiness work among us. So that's just a side thought here from verse four about the Holy Spirit. But anyway, Paul is saying, going back to the main thought is that he was declared, he was announced, he was proclaimed, he was revealed as a Son of God with power by the Holy Spirit of Holiness and by the resurrection for the dead. Two things, the Son of God with power, the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead. Two things are important, power and resurrection, both demonstrative to point to Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Any, let me look at the chat, any questions so far? Are we all okay? Okay, I see a question here. Why Paul? I said my gospel is about Jesus, then why? Okay, so yeah, so Manu's question is, why does Paul refer to the gospel as my gospel? So he recognizes, like as I mentioned on the PDF, he recognizes it's the gospel of God, the gospel of the Son, the gospel of Jesus, because he recognizes it. But he also calls it my gospel because, remember, sorry, we had mentioned earlier that it was what was revealed to him directly, right? So he didn't go and hear the gospel through Peter or through James or John or one of the other apostles, no. He received the gospel message that he was preaching directly from Jesus, and we read that in Galatians chapter one, right? So verse 11 and 12. So that's why he's saying my gospel, meaning the gospel which I received from the Lord directly, which I am proclaiming, but in Galatians he does acknowledge that when he went and met the apostles, he verified that what he was preaching was the same as what they were preaching, the gospel they were preaching and the gospel he was preaching was the same. But he refers to it as my gospel simply because that it was something the Lord revealed to him directly and which he was preaching, therefore he refers to it as my gospel. Okay, all right. So if everyone is clear so far, we are going to go forward. All right, let's just look at verses five and six. I am not sure if I'm going too slow, but so going now to Romans one, five and six, I'll just go back to the PDF, so it'll help us as we look at these verses. So verse five, through him we have received, and it's through Jesus, we have received grace and apostleship, obedience to the faith among all nations for his name. So Paul is telling us that through Christ, you know he's talking about what has been given, he just talks about grace and apostleship. So I just want to, it's like a side note, I just want to make a mention here, there is grace and there is apostleship. Apostleship has to do with the commission, the work or the mission God gives you, and grace has to do with God's empowering over our lives to fulfill that commission. And this is a common way Paul always talks about ministry, not only here, but you'll also find this in Ephesians, you'll find it in Galatians where Paul always talks about grace and work, grace and commission, you know, that means for every commissioning, whatever God's called you to do, there is grace. So it's just through Christ, we have received grace and apostleship. He's given us the empowering, he's also given us the commission, the work to do, but he's empowered us to do it. And what is the work he's given us to do? He says here, we, he's been given, he's been given the commission to, for obedience to the faith, that means to bring people obedient to the faith. He says among all nations, across all the world in his name, for his name. So Paul is saying, look, God has given us grace and God has given us commission to go and bring people and make them obedient to faith in Jesus Christ, among all the nations. So Paul is basically saying, look, the work we are doing, it's a work that we have received from God, the grace we have, it's from God, the call or the commission we have, it's from God. And what is the work? Make people obedient to the faith among all nations in the name of Jesus Christ. That's worth fighting, right? And it's very interesting as, not only did you find this combination of grace and commission or grace and ministry in Paul's epistles, you also find he uses this phrase obedient to the faith in many other places, right? Coming to the faith is actually coming into a place of obedience, right? And sometimes we don't emphasize that aspect enough because we say, come to the faith in Jesus, come to faith in Jesus Christ, you'll be saved from your sin. Come to faith in Jesus Christ, you'll be blessed. Come to faith in Jesus Christ, you'll be healed. Come to faith in Jesus Christ, you'll be free. But Paul is looking at it as an obedience to the faith. That means, come to faith in Jesus Christ, you're actually coming into a place of submission. You're actually coming into a place of giving up your personal, your own freedom in order to obey Christ. So that is something we need to make clear when we preach the gospel. That is, when you come to faith in Jesus, you're coming into obedience to Christ. Lord, I will follow you and you alone for the rest of my life. That's what we're coming into. Yes, there will be healing. Yes, there will be deliverance. Yes, there will be, you know, blessing. Yes, there will be whatever other blessings of the gospel. Yes, but coming to faith is coming to a place of obedience to the faith. It's a very important phrase Paul uses. We will see it again later on in Romans 15, 18, Romans 16, 26. He talks about obedience to the faith. And then he goes on in verse six as we have read. He says, among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ. So he says, believers, you know, God has given us this commission and we are serving him among all the nations and you are part of that. You are also the called of Jesus Christ. You've been also brought into this place of obedience to the faith. Okay. So we've gone through the first six verses. Let's pick up and let's read verses 7 to 12, please. And then we will go to them again. Let me just check with the class. Is everybody comfortable with the speed at which I'm going? Is it too slow? Can I go a little faster? Okay. You're fine. Okay. So I'm not too fast, but you are fine with me. Okay. Right. So in case I'm going too slow or too fast, let me know if you want me to go fast. Okay. Let's please read verses 7 to 12 and then we will look at it. Okay. Sir, I'll read. Yeah, please. I am writing to all you in Rome who are loved by God and are called be his own holy people. May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. Let me say first that I thank God through Jesus Christ for all of you, all of you, because your faith in him is being talked about all over the world. God knows how often I pray for you day and night. I bring you and your need in prayer to God whom I serve with all my heart by spreading the good news about his son. One of one of the things I always pray for, pray for he is, is the opportunity God willing to come at last to see you for I long to visit you. So I can bring you some spiritual gift that will help you grow strong in the Lord. When we get together, I want to encourage you in your faith, but I also want to be encouraged by you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, 7 to 12. Sorry. Yeah. Good. Thank you. So Paul has done the introduction, which is the background to who he is as a ministry of God. What is he proclaiming? And what is his objective? Right? That was verses one through six. Who is Paul? He's a bond servant. He's called. He's separated. What are you proclaiming? A message that was proclaimed by the prophets in the Old Testament contained in the Holy Scriptures. It is about Jesus, who is the Son of God, who was the Son of God, declared to be Son of God with power and by the resurrection. And this message, he is doing it by the grace and the commission God has given him. And the goal is to bring people in all the nations to be obedient to the faith. So that's the introduction. This is who I am. This is what I'm preaching. This is what I'm doing. This is my objective. Then he says, okay, and I'm now reaching out to you people in Rome. But then, you know, of course people say, okay, so why are you reaching out to us? Why are you writing to us? So he tells them saying, look at how he addresses them in verse seven. Beloved of God called to be saints. It's always very interesting and Paul's led to see how he looks at the people of God. What is his view of the church or believers? Very interesting to see that. And here he says, beloved of God called to be holy ones. Saints mean simply holy people, holy ones, consecrated ones. He says, beloved of God, you are deeply loved by God. You're deeply special to God. And you were called to be holy ones. He's also reminding them, you are holy people. You're called to be holy ones. So that's Paul's view. That's the way he looks at the church. He looks at people. And, you know, for us as ministers of God, as people who are serving others in the church, how do we perceive them? You know, sometimes when you hear people talk about those in their congregation, they may speak so badly. These people, they are so worldly. They are so whatever. You know, may not have a very good opinion of church people. But here it doesn't seem like that. He says, these are beloved people, beloved to God. And they're called to be holy people. That's how I'm going to see them, beloved and called to be holy. He says, grace to you in peace. It's like well wishes. You know, like when we greet somebody, hey, have a good day. You know, those are the well wishes you express. I mean, whatever I want. I want something good for you. So grace to you in peace. Let that come to you. God's grace, God's peace to you from God the Father. He says, I thank my God. So now he's talking about how he's praying for these people, praying for them. And what does he pray? First of all, he's thanking God. So part of his prayer for the people is thanksgiving. Right? He says, we're saying, I thank my God. Your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. So we're thankful for the people of God. So how about we be thankful for the church people that among whom we serve? We're thankful for what? In their case, their faith was spoken of in many other places. That means people saying, hey, the billiards in Rome, wow, they're such wonderful people. They are strong. And, you know, the church in Rome was actually increasingly persecuted. So eventually, they actually during this time, they were getting closer and closer to a massive persecution of the church, which would happen in a matter of 10 years, you know, 10 years from the writing of this episode, Paul himself was killed at Rome, approximately, or 8068. And then there was big persecution. So increasingly, it wasn't may not have been so bad at that time, but it was getting bad. But yet the believers in Rome, the people were, you know, hearing about their faith, their life as believers, he says, and I thank God for that. So we can find things to thank God for among the people, for the church people, people that we are serving, the people we are ministering to. I suppose I thank God for you. What else is he praying for them? Then he says in verse nine, he says, God is my witness, for my servant, my spirit in the gospel of his son, that without seizing, I make mention of you always in my presence. Look, I am praying for you. And God is my witness. God knows I'm praying for you. But what I want to point out there in verse nine is he says there, whom I serve with my spirit. Something to think about says, I serve God with my spirit. Why is that important? Sometimes we think about serving God as a lot of what we think about our physical work, right? Or I have to get up, I have to go preach, I have to dress like this, I have to look like this. You know, we think about the ministry, a lot of the ministry we do, we think about the outside. And yes, that's important. I'm not saying it's not important. You know, today we have a wide range of how people look on the outside in the process industry, whatever, you know, wide range. We have people wearing suits and whatever and all of that. We have wide range. So we are all serving God. Those are the externals. Each one has their own things that they think about fine. But don't forget, we serve God with our spirit. Interesting. I'm not serving just with my body or my outside. First of all, I'm serving with my spirit. So a big question we have to ask is what is the condition of the spirit? That is because this is a spiritual work. You know, we have the emphasis on the outer man and I'm repeating myself here. What is the condition of the outer man? You know, are you nicely shaved? Are you nicely clothed? Do you look good? All those things. Okay, to some extent it's important because people have to be it relates to you. Fine. But serving God is a work of your spirit. The work you're doing, ministry work, is a work of your spirit. It says, verse nine, God is my witness, whom with my spirit or in the spirit, spiritual work, a lot to think about. Ministry work is spiritual work. It is work that is your spirit is doing. So I must keep my spirit in good shape. I must keep my spirit strong. My spirit must be in good shape to serve God. Of course, the outer man, you know, more to extent is needed. You take care of it and you, you know, the dress and the mannerisms, all of that is fine. It helps you relate to people. But the spirit, what is the condition of the spirit? And we are going to serve God. It is spiritual work. And part of that spiritual work, he says here, verse nine, I am praying, I am praying for you, for the people that he's serving, or he wants to go and serve. I'm praying for you. In my prayer, I'm giving thanks to God for your faith. Secondly, and I'll quickly summarize verse 10, 11 and 12. Well, we will pick up some details in verse 11 next time, but he says, I am praying that I can come to you and impart to you verse 11, impart to you some spiritual gift to establish you, to make you stronger. So, you know, so the church in Rome was not a baby church, right? Like we said, some of the believers were there from the day of Pentecost. So there have been believers for at least 20, nearing 30 years by this time. So if you say Pentecost happened on the 80, 30, this is about 80, 57, so almost 20 years, 30 years, sorry, almost 30 years. Some of them have been believers. Some of them, you know, came on later on. So they're not baby believers. And yet Paul is saying, I want to come, I want to give you something to establish, to make you strong. So that means there is spiritual input we can give or we continue to give to people who may have been Christians for a long time. I mean, in this case, you know, almost 30 years, as I'm mentioning, but we can still give them input to establish them, to make them even more firm, even more strong, even more secure in their faith. And then verse 12 he says, you know, I want to encourage you and I also want to be encouraged. So that's again another side of Paul, we see the humility that he would say, look, and I want to encourage you. But through the process, I also want to be encouraged. We're going to stop here. Next week, I want to pick up in verse 11 and spend some time talking about that, you know, imparting spiritual gift. What is that? What is that? I want to just dig into that a little bit. We will do that next week. We will start off from there. Okay. Any questions before we close in prayer? I know we've just gone through the first 12 verses here. But any questions? Any thoughts? Okay. All right. Let's take a few minutes to pray. And, you know, there's so much here we've just trying to digest, chew on these scriptures and let it just sing, sing into our hearts, chew on it. Next week is, let's close in prayer and we'll get ready for our next class. Somebody could please pray and dismiss us. So celebrate. Father God, we just gone before you, Father God. Father God, thank you for everything, Father God. Thank you, Father God, for a woman book, Father God. Thank you, Father God, for that book. Thank you for your revelation, Father God. Thank you, Father God. Thank you, Father God, for all your support, Father God, and thank you, Father God, won students and connection also for the network also, Father God, thank you, Father God. Father God, just help us and our leaders, Father God, do your wave, Father God, give your revelation more father god and give your wisdom and knowledge father god that we can understand more subject father god more clear father god. Thank you father god. Take upcoming time father god. I am just submitting to your hand every student father god. Every student is that all the reason father god I am just submitting to your hand father god. Just take care of everything. Lead us father god to your kingdom way father god. Give more revelation father god and take care of everything. Thank you father god. Thank you father god. Just pray to your name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you everyone. Take a take a break and we'll get ready for our next class. See you soon. Thank you and bye now.