Romans 1 and 2

This is an exegetical sermon from Romans chapters 1 and 2. It explains how an accurate understanding of human nature leads to a deeper love for Jesus and his gospel. This sermon was originally preached by Pastor Justin Bragg at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA. Audio unavailable.

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:: The Resolved ::

Justin Bragg (elder)

Romans Chapters 1-2

Tonight we take a step back from our typical exposition of Romans, verse by verse, to look at a subject systematically which has been touched upon nearly every week in our preaching, but has not been treated with the fullness and depth that it must be dealt with.

You might not have noticed, perhaps our repetition of the now quotable phrase, “Romans is a book about God” has breezed by you like traffic on the interstate, but when we say it, and we say it a lot, we mean it. ROMANS IS A BOOK ABOUT GOD.

And if Romans is a book about God, we need to look at what it says about God. Fundamental, and paramount in importance is what God tells about himself through Paul. IF God is the author and source of the Bible, what is He telling us about himself, about us, about the entire whole of reality

The one word, or thought that encapsulates the whole of God’s being and attributes is the glory of God. Romans is about God’s glory. the Bible is about God’s glory. all of everything in any experience is about God’s glory. do you get it? whether you acknowledge it or not, everything is about God’s glory.

One of the reasons I want to show you this thread of God’s glory running through the first two chapters of Romans is to prove to you that the thesis, Romans is about God, is true.
I also hope that in examining this topic through a systematic approach will motivate and teach you to examine all of the rest of Romans, and the entire Bible, and all of life in terms of God’s glory. when you are reading the Bible, I want you to look at it through a God-centric perspective. I want you to look at it through a lens of the God and his glory, because that is the message that is being trumpeted throughout the entire text of Scripture.

Let’s first look at what we have seen thus far in Romans about the glory of God. then we will look at what the nature and character of God and his glory, and finally we will examine what our response to his glory should be.

1:2 Set apart for the gospel of God
right away, we see that Paul has a special honor of being sanctified for the purpose of proclaiming the good news concerning God to the Romans. This is a point of special designation for Paul. This entire letter is written for the purpose of proclaiming the good news of God to the Roman church
1:5 obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations
the purpose of Paul’s ministry is to bring about faith and obedience among the Romans. WHY – for the sake of God’s name. faith and obedience of God’s people is for the purpose of honoring his name
1:16-17 READ.
the opposite of being ashamed is to be unashamed, to be proud, and to take honor. It is in the gospel of Jesus Christ, that we are to find our greatest pride. As it says in Galatians 6:14 – may it never be that I would boast (or take pride in) except in the cross of Jesus Christ by which I have been crucified to the world and the world has been crucified to me.
What is the gospel, the good news of Christ? That God has demonstrated his righteousness in Jesus Christ, and has offered us his righteousness through Jesus Christ. This is what we should be proud of. This is the glory of God revealed in His son.

1:18 – the consequence of not honoring God, we find that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.”
God pours out his wrath against what? Against unrighteousness, and ungodliness. God is obviously “godly.” And humans, made in his image, are supposed to be godly and righteous. So here we find that because we fail to honor Him with godliness and righteousness, he pours out his wrath against us. God is displaying his glory by revealing his mighty wrath against humanity for rejecting his glory failing to honor him
What is the truth that we suppress?

19-23 “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.”

The sin of humanity is that we suppress the truth of the glory of God. it is all over in this passage
19 – God has made himself known to us, he has shown us himself. he has shown us that he is glorious
20 – God demonstrates his glory by displaying his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature through creation.
Creation is the display of God’s glory. why did God create this universe? Do not ever wrongly assume that he was lonely, or somehow deficient, or that this world we live in has no purpose. The reason why God created the entire universe was to demonstrate the brilliance of his glory. this is the reason, and the only reason. This is why we can see his nature and power in “the things that have been made.”
And this is why everyone of us are without excuse when it comes to being held accountable for the truth of God’s glory. he has made it plain to us through creation. Our own existence is a remarkable testimony to the glory of God.

21 – Since we are without excuse concerning the knowledge of God, we are guilty of refusing to honor him as God or give thanks to him. We, as the human race, are guilty of futile thinking and foolish hearts concerning the glory of God. We are guilty of not honoring God. the chief sin of mankind is failure to honor God. The definition of sin is a failure or refusal to honor God as we should. This is the fundamental problem of sin. it is not that we offend other people, or make poor decisions, Our nature to cheat, lie, steal, gossip, be proud and arrogant, wallow is self-pity and self-doubt, is an infinite offense to God because it is a failure to honor him as Lord. That is sin.
that is why sin is the quintessential problem with humanity. We were created for the purpose of honoring God. We were made in his image. And we have tarnished and defaced that image to the point of being unrecognizable.

23 – the point is fully expounded upon here: we have exchanged the glory of God. the excellence, radiance, beauty, marvelous wonder, and treasure of that which is most beautiful and wonderful and amazing, for shit. Images of ourselves. Idols. we are an idolatrous people. You are an idolater. You worship yourself, money, fame, sex and a thousand other things above God. So what does God do? V 24-25 – God gives us up to the lusts of our impurity, to the dishonoring of our bodies among ourselves because we have “exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”

There it is again. We make idols of every single thing in this world. What is the idol of this world that we live in? I think it is the woman’s body. Seriously. Men worship and lust after the female body. Millions of dollars and billions of hours are spent looking at women exposing themselves. Our raging lust for the female body has made us salivating dogs for the idol. Everything men do, make money, buy clothes and cars, make jokes and go to the gym to get buff, everything is to try to impress women that they might somehow attain their idol.

And women worship the same idol. Women worship the body of women too. Look at the magazines in every grocery store, watch any television show, look around P.B. on a Saturday afternoon. Loose weight, dye your hair, go to the gym, starve yourself and make yourself throw up, get botox injected into your forehead, wax away unwanted hair, buy $200 jeans and $500 dollar purses, get fake boobs and remove unwanted fat through surgery. Women are told what the perfect body is, and they worship it, and strive to attain it.

This is idolatry. This is the failure to honor God for creating man and woman. For displaying his beauty through the beauty of human beings. This is worshiping the creature rather than the creator. This is sin. this is why God gave us over to our own degrading lusts and passions. For this reason, as it says in v 26, God gave us up dishonorable passions.

28 – And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done. Again, a failure to acknowledge God for who he is punished by a further giving up to a depraved mind. This is as bad as it gets. The pit of the downward spiral. We are guilty of a cosmic crime, failing to honor God, and so he gives us up to a this depraved mind. now, every human being is born with an inability to even think rightly. We are so wicked in our hearts and minds, that we can’t even recognize right from wrong any more. Every single person in this room is evil, and we can’t even recognize it because our minds make excuses and justifications. We continue in our failures, and don’t even recognize the gross disaster that is our present condition in the world.

That is how chapter 1 ends, as we have discussed in previous weeks, and in chapter 2, we have been examining more of the glory of God.
2:5 but because of your heart and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself.
Just as we saw in the last chapter, God pours out his wrath because of our failure to recognize Him as God.
And so he will render to each of us according to our deeds (v6)
7 – to those who b patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life
8 – but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness there will be wrath and fury
do you see it here? There is an eternal and incredible reward to those who seek God’s glory. and those who distort and abandon this truth, those who do not honor God as most precious, there will be torment, wrath and fury.
God rewards those who give him proper glory and honor, and punishes those who reject this truth.
We see it again in verse 10 – but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good
We can participate in the glory, honor and peace that is found in God alone if we will honor him with our affections

Now, hopefully, we can now clearly see that God is concerned ultimately with his own glory above all things. but what does that say about God? is God a good God? if he is so concerned with his own glory and honor, isn’t he just a conceited, insecure, needy being who needs to be told that he is pretty and marvelous? Is this a God that deserves to be honored at all? What kind of God creates an entire universe just to show off how amazing he is, and then punishes the people when they don’t affirm how great he is? Is God really this concerned with his own name and fame? Isn’t God supposed to just love us, and want to be loved by us?

We now come to the crux of what I want to teach you about the very nature of God.
God is Theo-Centric – meaning that he is concerned first and foremost with himself. God does everything for his own sake. He doesn’t do it for us, or any reason other than for the proclamation of his own being and glory.

This is the fundamental concept that we must understand about God, and though difficult to comprehend, we must understand this one thing about God. let me tell you why this must be true about God, because if it is not, then God is not worthy of our praise at all.

God is always and always has been an exuberantly happy God.
If God were unhappy at any point, he would be deficient in some respect
Just look at your own life. We have a void, we crave satisfaction, we yearn, long and desire to be happy. We are, in a sense, not complete when we are not happy, satisfied. We are deficient. But God is complete and overflowing with satisfaction – within Himself. God loves himself more than any of us ever could. God is God’s biggest fan, and he is deeply passionate about himself.

It has to be this way. If you or I were in love with ourselves in this way, it would be idolatry and selfish. We are meant to worship the greatest thing, not lesser things.
But God is the greatest thing. If he loved any single thing more than he loved himself, God would not be the greatest being, and he would be an idolater of something greater than himself, thus negating any claim to God because God must be the greatest of all beings.

God is completely enamored with himself. it can be no other way, or he would cease being God. and everything that God does and has done flows out of this satisfaction within himself.

God’s glory is the heart of all true religious experience. All that God does overflows from his joy. Ephesians 1:5 – he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ “according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace…”
God is not constrained in any of his acts. They are all an expression of joy and he has pleasure in all that he does.

In a call to praise the Lord in Psalm 135, the reason that the people should praise him is because v6 – whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.

God is not constrained. He does whatever he pleases. Is 46:9-10 for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end form the beginning and form the ancient times not yet done, saying, ;my counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose.’ God has a sovereign freedom to do all that he desires, and everything he does is an expression of the abundance of his delight
C.S. Lewis says that “God who needs nothing, loves into existence wholly superfluous creatures in order that He may love and perfect them.”

God is in a class by Himself. “The freedom of God consists in the fact that no cause other than Himself produces His acts and no external obstacle impedes them – that His own goodness is the root from which they all grow and His own omnipotence the air in which they all flower.”

God is completely satisfied in himself. God is most glorified by God. God does everything for his own glory. God is all about God. What about us. We have seen through Romans thus far that everything God does is a campaign to promote his glory amidst his creation. But how does his creation give him glory?

The answer is that we respond to God in the same way that God responds to God. God does everything for his own glory, therefore everything that we do should be for the purpose of honoring and glorifying him.
We participate in the glory of God by responding to the magnificence which he displays.

1 Cor 10:31- But in everything you do, whether you eat or drink, do everything for the glory of God. But how? How is God most glorified? If you have hung out with us leaders, and read some of the books that we love, you know what the answer is going to be: John Piper – God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. To put it another way, God is glorified utmost in the delight of our affections toward him.

Psalm 37:4 – Delight yourselves in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. It isn’t your actions, or your going to church and trying to be a good person. The only way that God will receive the glory he is due is through your affections toward him.

Through all the pleasure and the pain, which I am finding are most often invariably linked, our affections toward God, and finding our delight in him alone is the way that God is most glorified. This isn’t something that you can just make happen.
Delighting in God comes from seeing for yourself the exhibition of his excellence. This is saving faith, seeing and understanding with spiritual apprehension the beauty of God in his promises toward us.

The fullest expression of joy is found in the son of God, Jesus Christ. Piper – If we do not taste the beauty of Christ in his promises as delightful, or as satisfying, we do not yet believe in a saving, transforming way. The essence of faith is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus. If you want salvation, if you want glory, if you want joy, if you want hope, and faith, and meaning in life, it is found in Jesus Christ. All of your problems don’t magically go away, but it is in Christ alone that there is satisfaction for our starving souls

This is what Jesus came to do, to unite us though himself to the Father.
Close in prayer of John 17