His Perfect Love

Guest (Male): Today on His Perfect Love, we introduce the letter of Romans, and as you'll see in a moment, the context matters.

Well, it's been said you are either spending your time or you're wasting your time, but you ought to be investing it while there's still time to do so. No doubt you want to invest your time, but in what? Hopefully you say something that will last forever: the word of God and the souls of men and women. Today's His Perfect Love will encourage us in that direction.

Hello, so glad you've joined us as we embark on a new study in the book of Romans. For it's been used by God to bring salvation to unbelievers and a great awakening among believers. Here's Pastor Matt VanderVen.

Matt VanderVen: So as we begin here in the book of Romans, as I typically do when I'm beginning a new book, we begin with an introduction. If you've spent time with us, you know we do this for every book that we go book by book. That's what we do here at Calvary Chapel.

Now, Romans is said to be the most theologically significant letter of the Apostle Paul. It changed many men's lives and theology, and I'm sure you've heard that. Martin Luther, for instance—the impact of Romans for Martin Luther's salvation and theology is pretty well known. You can read most books today and go back and read about that: justified by faith.

Remember where Martin Luther had come from. He was focused before that in a Roman Catholic system of works-based mentality. And so as Martin Luther had come out of that, he began to formulate by simple reading, by laying presuppositions down. That's what Martin Luther did. He had to do that. He laid presuppositions down, and he began to formulate his understanding of sin, the law and the gospel, faith, salvation, and the righteousness of God, all as he began this intensive exegesis of this letter.

In his preface to one of his commentaries or his epistle in studying, if I can quote it to you, it says, "This epistle is really the chief part of the New Testament and is truly the purest gospel." You've probably heard that quoted many times, but it's important in context because what he says after is just as important as what he said about the purest gospel. He says, "It is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word..."

But can't we say that same thing about every book of the Bible? That we would study that way, by heart, but also that he should occupy himself with it every day as the daily bread of our soul. When many think of Romans, if I asked for a show of hands, how many think it's a book of doctrine? Don't be shy. Raise your hand if you think it's a book of doctrine. We've got five people think it's a book of doctrine.

How many think it's a book of systematic theology? One, two, three, four, five, six. Well, I want you to understand this isn't a book that was written as doctrine or systematic theology. What is it? It's a letter. In that letter, is there systematic theology that you may be able to take out of it? Sure. Is there doctrine that we may pull out of that? Absolutely. But we can't forget the fact that it's a letter.

Because when we try to take the Bible and we begin to take a metaphorical approach to the book of Revelation, we err in our exegesis. We err in our hermeneutics because we're not taking a literal interpretation or narrative understanding of the book of Revelation. No different than if we came to the Psalms which, because it is obviously worship songs, if we took an exact literal interpretation of every little word in there, we would interpret that incorrectly as well potentially.

So we have to treat each book, each letter, each work individually. And Romans is a letter. Why do you write letters? I know some of you are going, "We don't write letters anymore." Why do you email? Why do you text? Why do you communicate? You're communicating something. I still love letters. I still write letters sometimes.

Sometimes my bride, if she would write a letter or a note or something for me, she'll put her perfume on it. Do you remember that? We can't get that in an email, at least not yet. The computer doesn't spit out some perfume. I remember that. I love that some of you have those electronic devices. That's fine. Use whatever the Lord gives you, but I love the smell of my Bible. I love the feel of the page. I love everything about it. It reminds me of pouring over and spending time with God, watching Jesus transform and change my heart.

Well, it's a letter, so it's written with a specific purpose here. The message and its teachings, just as with all scripture, it's timeless. It has a direct impact to you and I today. Now when we study any book of the Bible, and I've said it over and over again and you'll hear me say it until the Lord takes me home or we're raptured out of here, whichever comes first: context is king. Context is king in biblical hermeneutics.

We need to allow the word of God to speak for itself without mere reading in man's philosophy. Therefore, I think it's important that as we start this new book together in this fellowship, we go back and we examine: where was Paul? Where did he write this book? What is the dating of this book? What is the context of why he wrote the letter?

Does what you see and what you experience not affect or impact your lens? Maybe your mood or if you're traveling for business and you're away and you're seeing something that disgusts you, does that not make you want to retreat to your hotel room and not necessarily venture out? Well, we're going to talk about that because that's what it means to take context into biblical hermeneutics. We don't just treat it as a letter that's just a letter. We know it's an inspired letter from God written by His fingerprints, but nonetheless, He inspired a man. And that man had feelings. That man was looking at something. That man lived somewhere. That man was traveling somewhere, and that's the Apostle Paul.

If you would, briefly, just turn in your Bible to Romans chapter 15, verse 20. We're going to start to lay what I like to call the bullseye of context. Any of you who have gone to seminary or studied hermeneutics, you're familiar with the bullseye. We start in the book, we start in the chapters, and then we work our way out or work our way in. In Romans chapter 15, verse 20, Paul says that it was his aim to preach the gospel not where Christ was named, lest he should build on another man's foundation.

So here we see that the purpose, or one of the things that was on Paul's heart as he was even writing this letter, was that he was not looking to step on another man's foundation because Paul had already planted churches in his second missionary journey and third missionary journey. He had already been out church planting as a missionary, but he had not been to Rome. He actually did not make it to Rome until after he met with Caesar, and we'll talk a little bit more about that.

But why was Paul writing this letter? He was writing a letter to Jewish Christians or Gentile Christians to exhort them, to encourage them, to live out the gospel. He's pointing them to God. That's a purpose of this letter. And yet men have created all types of philosophies from this, and we need to be so careful of that. He says, "Don't lay and build on another man's foundation." It appears from this that Peter wasn't there because if he said this and he wrote this in Romans, what's that tell us? Does that mean Peter was there? No, because what would that be doing? Laying on another man's foundation.

So Peter wasn't there, and we don't believe the apostles were there. And that's going to bring up a couple questions: how did the Christian get there, or how did the Jewish Christian get there? Who planted this church in Rome? Look in chapter 1, verse 11. It says, "For I long to see you that I may impart some spiritual gift so that you may be established." Clearly this is a church plant or a Bible study, maybe a house Bible study at this point.

Paul, at the writing of his letter, hadn't visited this church plant. We can see that even from verse 13. He says, "I desire to." We don't see the word *ekklesia* in here. What's that word mean in the Greek? We know that's "church." Look at verse 7: "To all who are in Rome, beloved God, called to be saints." We don't see it saying, "to the church of Rome." That's important.

So how did the church plant in Rome get started? Paul went to mention 35 individuals by name. Of them, 27 were living in Rome at this time. Why is this important? Because we're answering the question: how did the Jewish Christian get there, or how did Paul end up writing to this group of individuals that he had never met personally or physically? How did this happen? Well, clearly, if he's writing to these people, he must have met them somewhere, hadn't he?

Do you just write letters to people you've never met? Generally you write to people you know, and if you're going to name people like that or you're going to reference them in some way, there's a relationship there. You're saying, "Oh, such and such, and I know this person well." Paul says, "And oh by the way, hey, how are you doing? How are you doing?" 27 of them actually were in Rome. He must have known these folks outside of the Roman Empire. Paul established a church plant by long distance and he used letters to write and guide its course. That's one of the purposes of this letter.

Now we need to again draw our target. Who are we talking about in Rome? What was Rome like in that day? Well, at that time, it's believed by scholars there were somewhere between one to two million citizens of Rome. Now, specifically in Rome, there was a one-to-one relationship with their slave population. That means for every one Roman citizen, there was one slave. And that had a lot to do with the culture in Rome. This isn't slavery as we would say by race or anything. What we're talking about here is what would be—remember they had debtors' prison, they had a lot of different reasons that you would indent yourself to another person.

Clearly we have a one-to-one ratio. What that also tells us about many of the Romans is that they were not necessarily ones to want to be caught up in manual labor. They were more interested in being entertained. They were more interested in going to places and watching chariot races. I often wondered if they had ever read the Proverbs about how man isn't worthy to eat if he doesn't work or he doesn't even take his own spoon to his mouth. That was the culture in Rome at that time.

You look at the numbers. Scholars say one to two million, that means it could be anywhere from really two million to four million living in Rome at this time because if you have a one-to-one with the slave population that way, you could end up with two million as a yield. So just to give you some perspective, let's bring it home for a moment. We live in the Susquehanna Valley, don't we? That's Perry, Cumberland, and Dauphin counties. This metropolitan area has an estimated population of 571,903 individuals.

Think about this whole area. Literally, Rome would have been double, or if you're counting the slave population, quadruple that number, closer to what we would see in Philadelphia from a population perspective, just to give you this idea of what this populace was like. I believe the Susquehanna Valley is the third most populous in the entire commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In the United States, we're the 96th most populous area in all of the United States. And yet Rome was four times this.

I want you to remember those numbers. We're going to come back to that in a little bit. Therefore, why am I bringing this up? Because it's highly suspect with all of these people, with all that's going on, that they would have congregated in a single church in a single area. It would have been scattered. You'd have house churches everywhere. So when Paul's writing this letter, he's going to be in some ways saying that he's writing to all the saints, plural, the *hagios* or *hagia*, plural.

This is important. It's not just one individual in one church. Sometimes I think we read this letter and we think he's talking about like the church at Corinth, a single church. That's not who he was talking to. He was talking to many, many house churches, many, many groups like that gathered through this very large city. Now, back to our point as to how did it get there? Well, there's possible and probable scenarios. Do you remember in Acts chapter 2? You'll read in verse 10 there something very interesting.

In Acts chapter 2, verse 10, it tells us very clearly that there were those that had gathered on the day of Pentecost, Jews that had come for the feast. And as they had made their way back to Jerusalem and they were there in Jerusalem, what happens? All of a sudden they hear this breakout, this wind that had come. We know it was because the apostles and the disciples were gathered in the upper room. And they had come out and the Holy Spirit had come upon them—*epi* in the Greek, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Peter comes out and the people begin to gather in this area. Remember, normally you have somewhere around a couple hundred thousand people living in Jerusalem at any one time. Up to the feast days, you had a million people swelling in because people were coming from Rome. Verse 10 actually lists from Rome that people would come to this feast day. So they're all coming in, and what do they see? They begin to see men talking in other languages. They naturally initially say, "You're all drunk with wine."

Peter stands up and goes, "No, no, no, brothers." And he begins to explain the gospel of Jesus Christ. And as he starts to explain this gospel of Jesus Christ, it says they're cut to the heart. What does that mean? It means they're getting it. It means that their heart is being softened and they're receiving the gospel. And as they begin to receive the gospel, what happens? They have this moment, and if you're a believer in Christ, you know that moment where you go, "Oh man, what am I going to do? That needs to be me."

You receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, but you have the question: "How do I do that?" We just had someone come in the church earlier this week and they accepted Jesus Christ. A young lady came in and we had a great conversation and we began to pour over the scripture. And she'd heard the gospel, but not necessarily scripturally presented before. And she came to Christ. I was just praising God as she had to carry on her day; she had to go pick up the kids and things like that. But it was the gospel that was presented, and the power unto salvation as the Bible says.

So here they are, they're hearing this and they respond, "What do we do?" Do you remember that response, friends? "What do I do? I agree. Yes, Amen, so be it. What do I do now?" God made it so simple. "Receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, believe on Him." So what happened? In Acts chapter 2, verse 10, we see that there were Jewish men from Rome. They got saved. And what did they do? Did they say, "Well, we're going to now live here"? No, they had wives, they had families, they had children.

So what are they going to do after the feast is over? They're going to go back home. And what do they take home with them that they didn't have when they left? Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. When you have Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, what can't happen? You can't keep it to yourself. You can't keep quiet. Jesus said it can't be hidden, even on a hill. You can't hide it anywhere. We teach our kids, "hide it under a bushel?" No way, man. Can't be done.

So they make their way back to their home synagogues in Rome and that's what begins the Christian movement in Rome. At least that's what many believe, and that's what I happen to believe. Further, if you look at Acts chapter 18, verse 2, we learn that Aquila and Priscilla—remember them?—where did they come and meet Paul the first time? Corinth. Why did they come and meet Paul in Corinth? Because they were booted out of Rome. What happened? Do you remember? Right around AD 49.

One of the leaders, Claudius, at that time said, "Get out." And so all the Jewish Christians or Jews had to leave. Because remember, under the Roman Empire at that point, they didn't understand the difference between you being a Christian, a Jew, or a Jewish Christian. It was "you're Jewish, you're all going." They didn't know how to break that out. They weren't theologically looking at it going, "Do you know Christ? Well, you can stay." No, you're Jewish, you have to leave.

So we see that they left and they coincidentally came to Corinth as Paul's there a year and a half. And they begin to talk to Paul, and as a matter of fact, Paul meets them and they say, "Hey man, why don't you stay with us?" And Paul's like, "I dig it, I'm in." So he turns around, he moves in with Aquila and Priscilla. You guys want to know what it looks like to be a dynamite ministry team, husband and wife? Aquila and Priscilla. It's a good study.

Anyway, they come and start living together. And what did they share in common? They were all tentmakers. That means they worked with leather. And so they begin to work, but as they're staying with Paul, don't you think that at dinner sometimes, "So tell me what Rome was like"? "Oh man," Aquila starts saying, "you don't know. Man, we were there, we were at Pentecost." "You were at Pentecost?" "Yeah, yeah, we were at Pentecost. We came back home and man, we were on fire for Jesus. Gentiles were getting saved. People were getting saved in Rome left and right."

"Really? Do the Gentiles understand that we didn't heap the law on them there, did we? Because these Judaizers have been following me all around. Man, they just keep following me around and saying, 'Oh, you've got to be circumcised' or 'You need the law.'" He's like, "Oh no, that didn't happen in Rome. That didn't happen in Rome." He says, "You know what though? There's a lot of biblical literacy, man. Not that we can relate today anymore, but there's a lot of biblical literacy."

He says, "What do you mean?" He says, "Yeah, because you've got some Jewish Christians which understood the law and understood Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the Davidic covenant and the promise of one that was Messiah. But then you have these Gentiles, they've never experienced any of that." And Paul goes, "Man, I know about that. When I was traveling, I went to this one place and I began to go in there and they were Gentiles and I started talking to them about the law and oh, it did not end well. For me, now I only preach Christ and Christ crucified."

We read that in what book? The book of Corinthians. God's giving us the hints of where this is all coming from. He's in Corinth at this time when he meets Aquila and Priscilla. So it's coming clear. And they're sitting there and they're talking, and he says, "Man, they're all scattered now, but as soon as Claudius goes back, man, we're going to go back to Rome." He says, "Pray for the saints in Rome. Pray for those in Rome." Paul's like, "All right." And when Paul says he's going to pray for you, Paul's going to pray for you. So you don't think that was on his heart? That's why context matters. It's a letter. What was on his heart at that time?

Guest (Male): We're making our way through Romans one verse at a time here on His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt VanderVen. You can hear the study again at HisPerfectLove.org. That's HisPerfectLove.org. We're also at OnePlace.com, and look for us wherever you get your podcasts. We also have a mobile app. This is a great way to take Pastor Matt's teachings with you at the gym, in the car, on your way to work, or as you're getting ready in the morning. You can learn more about the mobile app and start your download when you visit our website, HisPerfectLove.org.

And thank you for your prayers and financial support. You can make a donation to this ministry and send us your prayer requests through the website again at HisPerfectLove.org. Those of you that are in the Mechanicsburg, PA area or will be visiting the area, we want to invite you to join us for a worship service here at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore. Sunday morning services begin at 8:30 and 10:30. We have a midweek service on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM. We're located at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg, PA. Go to CCHarrisburg.org for more information.

Are you looking for a Christian school that offers a quality education and a nurturing environment for your child? If so, you might be interested in Calvary Chapel Christian Academy, a ministry of Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore. Calvary Chapel Christian Academy is a non-denominational Christian school that serves students from kindergarten to 12th grade. The academy's mission is to provide a Christ-centered education that equips students to love God, love others, and serve the world.

The academy offers a rigorous academic curriculum, a variety of extracurricular activities, and a caring and supportive staff. The academy is located at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg, PA. For more information, please visit our website at CCHarrisburg.org/academy. That's CCHarrisburg.org/academy. There is much more to come in Romans. Don't miss a moment of the journey with Pastor Matt here on His Perfect Love.