Audio Transcript

The book of Romans answers some of the most important questions we have about life, particularly our own lives. What was my spiritual condition before my conversion? What did God do in Jesus Christ to save me from that condition? How is that work different from what God has done inside of me? How did God overcome my stubborn resistance and give me the gift of faith? And now, how should I live in light of this precious salvation God has given me and is working out inside of me? How does it affect my relationships, my work, and my life at home, in the church, and in the world? What confident hope can I have for the future?

Paul’s letter to the Romans is such a precious gift from God, answering all these questions for us. Pastor John, as we approach March and prepare to dive into Romans in our Bible reading and read it throughout the month, help us out here. You’ve been reading and studying and cherishing this letter for over sixty years now. What advice would you give us to help us draw out the most glories from this great letter?

Let me see if I can raise the expectations of us all as we move into Romans again this year. I will claim, without any fear of contradiction, that Paul’s letter to the Romans is the greatest letter that has ever been written in the history of the world by anybody — Christian or non-Christian.

Why Romans Is So Great

Here’s what I mean by greatest. Three things.

1. It is the fullest divinely inspired summary of the greatest realities in the universe.

2. Among those inspired writings, it is not only the fullest summary of the greatest realities. It penetrates more deeply into those realities than any other book does, like the condition of humanity outside Christ, the meaning of justification by faith, the miracle of the Christian life lived after the law in the Spirit, the condition of the natural world under the fall, the future destiny of the people of Israel, the mystery of why God would prepare vessels of wrath for destruction — things like that. It’s just unparalleled in its penetrating power.

3. What I mean by greatest is that no other letter has had a greater impact on the history of the church and the world than this one. Augustine traced his conversion to Romans 13:13. Martin Luther entered the paradise of imputed righteousness and freedom through the portal of Romans 1:17. And John Wesley’s heart was freed from the strivings of the Oxford Club into the joy of faith by hearing the Moravians read Luther’s Preface to Romans. And millions upon millions of others have walked into peace with God along what we call “the Romans road.”

Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Romans 6:23: “The wages of sin is death.”
Romans 5:6: “While we were still weak . . . Christ died for the ungodly.”
Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

Goodness, how many millions of people have heard those four glorious and painful and wonderful truths and been saved by God? It’s the greatest letter that has ever been written, and we should enter the front door of Romans this year with a sense of wonder and reverence and thankfulness and expectation and joy.

It’s not just the Mount Everest of Scripture, which it is. It is a whole range of mountain peaks of soaring revelation. If there’s any Scripture to which we should apply Psalm 119:18, this is it: “[O Lord,] open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your [instruction].” (That’s a good translation of torah, sometimes translated “law.”) So, with this sense of expectation and wonder and reverence and thankfulness for the greatest of all books, is there a peculiar angle from which we should come at this book as we read it this year?

How to Approach Romans

Well, I’m very hesitant to limit anybody’s approach to this book. It is, without exaggeration, an ocean. It’s an ocean of insight into reality, and the ocean has no bottom, and the ocean has no shores, which means that this book will never be exhausted by finite human beings in what it has to show us about God and his ways and about his world and his people. But if anybody listening to us would like a suggestion, here’s mine.

“Romans is the greatest letter ever written in the history of the world by anybody — Christian or non-Christian.”

I would dare to say that no believer fully understands who he is and what God did to make us believers — who we are and what we will become. I would venture to say that most Christians have an incomplete — and many even a defective — grasp of what happened to make them a Christian and the miraculous thing it is to be a Christian. Therefore, my suggestion is that many of us read Romans, ransack Romans, this year — for three to four weeks or however long we’re in it — to find the answer to five questions.

1. What was my condition before Christ saved me?

First, what was my condition before conversion to Christ? Which is a form of the same question, What would be my condition now if God had not powerfully moved in my life to save me? We must let God answer this question from Romans, not from our experience.

Some of us were saved when we were six years old, and we don’t have any memory at all of what our condition was before we were saved. And some of us think we know how bad we were because of the bad things we did before we were saved, but we don’t realize how bad we were because, deep down, the analysis of our condition and our corruption is so much more profound than any experience could teach us. We must be taught by God what our condition was (and would be today if we weren’t saved), or we won’t be singing “Amazing Grace” the way we should.

2. What did God do to save me from that condition?

Here’s the second question we should try to answer: What did God do in Jesus Christ in history to save me from that condition? Now, let’s not confuse that question with what God did in me — in me. Martin Luther’s whole world was turned upside down when he realized that his salvation was accomplished outside of him. He called it extra nos. I remember the first time in seminary I heard that phrase, and it landed on me similarly, with power — extra nos, outside of us.

Centuries ago, on a hill outside Jerusalem, it was done. The salvation was achieved. The decisive, divine work was done before Luther existed, you existed, I existed. What did God do outside of us to save us in eternity, in history? Romans is really good on that. Let’s answer that question, because we need to know what he did for us outside of us thousands of years ago, before we ever existed, not just what he does in us.

3. What did God do in me to save me?

Third question: What, then, did God do in us to save us? What does he do to us by his Spirit and his sovereign grace? How was my resistance to him overcome? How did that happen? How did my faith come into being? What was that like? If the mind of the flesh is hostile to God and cannot submit to God’s law (Romans 8:7), how did I get saved? The glory of God’s grace that we find in the Bible is so powerful and decisive that we stop attributing things to ourselves that the Bible attributes to God.

4. How then should I live?

The fourth question I hope we can answer this year is this: How then shall I live in this world if I was saved like that? How shall I live in this church? How shall I live with my enemies? How shall I live in relation to the government, in relation to unreached peoples of the world? By what power can I live the Christian life? How am I to gain that power? How am I to defeat sin? How do I live the Christian life?

5. What does God have in store for me?

Last question, number five: What is my future? What’s my future in this life? What kind of care does God take of me in this life as I walk in the Spirit? What is my future forever? Those are my five questions.

Now, I don’t want to limit anybody’s insights as you read Romans. God has things for you to see besides these five questions, I am sure. So, one way to do both — to let God say whatever he wants to say besides these, and to do this ransacking for these five answers — is to get a notebook or a few sheets of paper and put these five questions on five different pages. And then, as you read — I think that the sections we’re going to read are fairly short — just stay alert to these five questions. And every time you see something that relates to one of them, jot it down on that particular page while he shows you all kinds of other things as well.

Let God speak to you any way he pleases. And don’t fret that you can’t see it all. Depending on how old you are, you can read it maybe another hundred times — and there will always be more to see.

Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) believed the cannonball that broke his leg was essential to his spiritual awakening. For Martin Luther, it was the threat of lightning. What unites them is that they are part of a common Christian tradition that teaches an uncomfortable lesson: suffering sanctifies.

The stories can be found throughout Scripture and in every church on almost any day. We might wish that faith grew especially during prosperity, but the voice of faith says, “Jesus, help!” And those words come most naturally when we are weak and unable to manage on our own. Growth can be judged, in part, by the number of words we speak to our Lord, and we tend to speak more words when we are at the end of ourselves.

Suffering sanctifies. God tests us in order to refine us. This is true, and knowing this might help us face the inconveniences and challenges of everyday life. But this knowledge feels less satisfying in the face of the death of a child, betrayal by a loved one, or victimization that leaves you undone. Then the nexus between trouble and God’s sanctifying goodness can gradually give way to a relationship in which you and God seem to live in the same house, but you rarely acknowledge him.

We expect some types of sanctifying suffering, but not those sufferings that border on the unspeakable. When these come, the idea that they sanctify us may feel unhelpful. Though we might say to a friend who had a flat tire, “How is God growing you through that?” we know that we should never ask such a question to someone when “the waters have come up to my neck” (Psalm 69:1). The basic principle is true — God sanctifies us through suffering — but there are more elegant and personal ways to talk about it.

Sanctification Is Closeness

A more helpful approach first refreshes our understanding of sanctification.

Let’s begin with a common definition: sanctification is growth in obedience. The problem is when this definition drifts from its intensely personal moorings. As it does, suffering becomes God’s plan to make us better people — stronger, seasoned soldiers who don’t retreat after a mere flesh wound. All of this, of course, sounds suspiciously like a father who is preparing his children to move out and become independent, which is the exact opposite of what God desires for us. Left in this form, the principle that “suffering sanctifies” will erode faith.

Sanctification, of course, is much more intimate. “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Jesus died to draw us near to God, and our obedience serves that closeness. From this perspective, sin and any form of uncleanness distance us from God. Holiness, or sanctification, brings us closer.

Progressive Nearness

Think of the Old Testament tabernacle. The unclean, which included the foreign nations and those contaminated by the sins of others, were farthest from the place of God’s presence in the Most Holy Place. The clean were closer. They camped around God’s house and could freely come near to worship and offer sacrifices. The priests, however — the ones made holy — were closer still. They were invited daily, in turn, into the Holy Place, and, once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest dared to enter the Most Holy Place. The high priest offers a picture of humanity as God intended — purified and close to him.

For us, we have been sanctified once for all by the obedience of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 10:10) and our faith in him. We now are holy ones. From that place, in the Most Holy Place, God invites us closer still, and our obedience and love for him are means by which we draw nearer. In his book on Leviticus, Michael Morales helpfully suggests progressive nearness as an alternative to progressive sanctification (Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord?, 18).

This heavenly pattern of nearness through obedience overflows into the very fabric of marriage: a married couple has been brought near in their declarations of commitment to each other, and then, for the rest of their lives, they draw nearer still through their growth in covenant love.

Sovereignty Has Mysteries

With sanctification understood more personally, we turn to our understanding of God’s sovereignty. “Suffering sanctifies” suggests that God purposely brings suffering into our lives. He ordains every detail. This is true, but some ways of talking about God’s sovereignty can be misleading and miss the emphasis of Scripture.

“God’s sovereignty invites us to trust in our Father who will make everything right, even in creation itself.”

God’s sovereignty is not an invitation to make perfect sense of how his power and love coexist with every detail of our suffering. Instead, his sovereignty reminds us to approach him as children who trust their Father and his love. A child understands love, and God’s love is, indeed, a fathomless expanse that he welcomes us to explore. He gives help and wisdom as we consider, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32).

The most shameful abuse will not separate us from God, which is certainly counterintuitive when we feel like an outcast who is among the unclean. When we see him face-to-face, we will rest in (and even rejoice in) his righteous judgement against oppressors, and we will be thoroughly cleansed from the wicked acts done against us. In other words, God’s sovereignty invites us to trust in our Father who will make everything right, even in creation itself.

How Suffering Draws Us

So, how does suffering sanctify? How does God sanctify us in the midst of suffering?

In this way: with boundless compassion, God rushes to us. He comes close and enters into our burdens. He hears the cries of his people, which means that he will take action (Psalm 10:14). This is all true. Satan would have you think otherwise, but this is true.

“I am the suffering servant. Talk to me.” The Spirit invites you to see and hear Jesus, the suffering servant. The misery of a mysterious servant in Isaiah 52–53 foretells his story. The last week of Jesus’s life in John 10–21 reveals him most fully. In Jesus, you find a kindred spirit who knows your experience through his own. He understands you without you explaining the details. As you watch him, you will notice how the list of abuses against him gathered momentum every day. Perhaps you will be stunned by his universal rejection and shame.

“In Jesus, you find a kindred spirit who knows your experience through his own.”

Next, there is an unexpected turn. “He was pierced for our transgressions” (Isaiah 53:5), which is to say, for your transgressions. What does your sin have to do with your suffering? When Jesus took your sin, he assured you that nothing can separate you from the love of God, and he breached the wall of pain in which Satan, death, shame, sin, and misery dwelt. To this stronghold, Jesus announced their demise.

Then Jesus makes all this even more personal. He brings you closer. He invites you to speak to him. “Pour out your heart” (Psalm 62:8), he says. Prayer, of course, can be much more difficult than it sounds, so he gives you words to replace those unspeakable silences. When you read the Psalms, you can almost overhear Jesus ask you, “Is this how you feel?” His request that you speak to him is a sincere request, and he patiently waits for your words.

In response, you break your silence. Perhaps your words jar you, not because of their honesty but simply because your recent words to him have been so few.

“But how could evil have been given such liberty in my life? Why did you hide your face from me? How could you have allowed . . .” With these words, he has drawn you closer. They are expressions of your faith in God. You are being sanctified. You have listened to him. Unbelief turns away or simply rages; faith responds to God, presses in, and inquires, with words shaped by Scripture. Jesus himself has asked these very questions to his Father.

After more words back-and-forth, God invites you to grow as his child. “I am your God and Father. You can trust me.” He has given you evidence that he is trustworthy. He certainly will not forget you or the acts done against you (Isaiah 49:16). Do you believe? This is the truth.

He says, “Come closer, as my child, and trust me.” You respond, “Yes, I believe; help my unbelief. I trust you, but please give me more faith.”

This is one way suffering sanctifies: it brings us closer to God.

What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.