It first should be said that Paul doesn’t actually say we are condemned because of one man’s sin, rather he says that sin and death entered into the world because of Adam’s one transgression.  We are still judged guilty because of our own sin.  And truthfully, who can claim they are guiltless.

Paul’s point in this passage is simple.  Just as sin entered into the world because of one man’s act, one man’s actions could also redeem us from our sins.  The first was an act of disobedience, the later an act of obedience.  The first brought unrighteousness, Jesus brought a declaration of righteous.  The first brought the Law and its condemnation, the later brought redemption.  As such, Paul says that Jesus’ act was “much more” of an act of grace.
It may not seem fair but Adam’s act that caused death is more than balanced out by the cross of Christ.  Jesus’ act was one of ultimate sacrifice bringing us an undeserved forgiveness, not because of what we do or are but because of Christ.  What ultimately is unfair is that Jesus had to die for us, but His love for us overcomes all.

Questions:

1. What do you see in these verses?  What are the concepts and ideas that strike you as important?
2. What do you think Paul means by ‘the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men’?  What was that trespass?  It’s impact on the world?  The impact on your life?
3. What do you think Paul means by ‘the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men’?  What was this act of righteousness?  It’s impact on the world?  The impact on your life?
4. What is disobedience?  What is obedience?  What defines the difference?  How do you discern the difference in your day-to-day life and behavior?
5. How does the Law bring an increase in transgression?  Why would God do that?  What do think His Point is?  What was He trying to accomplish by adding the Law?  Was this a good thing?  Why or why not?
6. How does grace relate to sin?  Why does grace reign through righteousness?  How does this grace bring eternal life?  What does Jesus Christ being our Lord have to do with it?
7. How did the reality of these verses impact your day yesterday?  How will they impact your day today?  How does an understanding of sin and grace change how you go about your day today?

Please post your observations, comments, and questions as we move through this study of Romans and explore what it means to hit the mark Christ sets for each of us.

Paul says in today’s passage the law was given not to save people but rather to better see the sin that is in their lives.  Paul wants us to see that there is only one way of salvation, through Jesus, just as there was a single act that brought sin into the world.

There were those in Paul’s time who preached that although salvation comes through Christ, one still had to follow the Law in order to be saved.  These people are still with us today; but Paul, as well as the rest of Scripture, tells us differently.  The Law, legalism, and a bunch of dusty dogma can’t save; they can only condemn.  When we put our faith in what we do, we fall short and bring condemnation upon ourselves.  The Law can only bring despair.  Faith in the One man, Jesus Christ, brings what we need; peace, the abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness.

Questions:

1. What do you see in these verses?  What are the concepts and ideas that strike you as important?
2. What is your view of sin and its effects?  Does it exist?  If so, how has it impacted mankind?  Can it be remedied?  If not, why not?
3. What do you think Paul means by ‘in this way death came to all men, because all sinned’ (v.12)?
4. What do you see as the impact of the Law upon sin?  Why wasn’t sin ‘taken into account’ before the advent of the Law?
5. In what ways is the gift not like the trespass (v.15)?  What are the effects of both?  What was it that the trespass of sin brought into the world?  What was it that the gift of Christ’s life brought into the world?
6. How do you feel when you fail?  What is it that you want to do in order to make up for or make good your failure?  How do those feelings and thinking stand up against these verses?
7. Why do we tend to want to rely on doing the right thing, the ‘legal’ thing, instead of Christ?

Please post your observations, comments, and questions as we move through this study of Romans and explore what it means to hit the mark Christ sets for each of us.

God’s Viewpoint is very different, and let’s face it, we just don’t get it; Christ died for us while we were still sinners.  We had absolutely nothing to recommend us to Him and everything to argue against us.  We didn’t recognize Him, we didn’t worship Him, in fact we were at war with Him and guilty of all kinds of atrocities.  Yet at just the right time, Christ died for the ungodly, for you and me.  If you can imagine sending your son, or you yourself being sent to Death Row to select the most heinous criminal there and then taking that criminal’s place at his execution so he could go free, you might get a flavor of what Christ has done for us.  No deal was struck, no conditions established, just God demonstrating His Love for us, making us right with Him through the death of His Son.

As impossible as this may seem, the Good News doesn’t end there.  God not only reconciled us to Himself, but He also saves us from His Own Wrath (1:18) through His Life.  He literally gives us Himself so that we might be saved from who we are, share His Life with Him and rejoice in Him through that Life.  As hard as it may be to understand Christ’s Death for us, His giving His Life to us goes right over us.  It defies everything that we think and think we know and understand about the world, yet there is something within me that says this is True.

Paul never wandered far in his thinking and preaching from this fundamental fact of Christ’s death for us (1Corinthians 1:22-24; 2:2; 2Corinthians 4:10-11; Galatians 2:20; Philippians 3:10-11), an example that it would behoove us to follow.  When we wander from founding our faith and thinking on His Death and the Life that He gives us, we tend to get more than a little crazy.  Those old assumptions begin to creep in; I can think of me being something special and being able to somehow please God on my own, by my obedience, and begin trying to replace Christ’s Obedience with my own.  When I wander from pondering His Death and Resurrection I begin to want to generate my own ‘Christian’ life rather than receiving the Life, the Holy Spirit, whom He would pour out in and through me; that is exactly the kind of thinking and faith that landed us on Death Row in the first place.

Questions:

1. What do you see in these verses?  What are the concepts and ideas that strike you as important?
2. What do the concepts of justification and salvation mean to you?  How are they reflected in your day to day life?
3. What is your thinking about Christ’s Death?  How does that Death apply to you?  Does that Death apply to you?  Why or why not?
4. What do you see as your status with God?  Are you justified?  Are you righteous?  Why or why not?
5. Are you in need of a Savior, someone to bail you out from the mess that you are in?  Are you in a mess?  Why or why not?
6. What does v.10 mean to you?  What do you think Paul means by the life we are saved through?  Is this Life ‘real-time’?
7. How does Christ’s death apply to you, right here, right now, in the challenges that you face in this day?
8. Why do you rejoice in God?  What is it about God that brings you joy?

Please post your observations, comments, and questions as we move through this study of Romans and explore what it means to hit the mark Christ sets for each of us.

Paul has spent the first four chapters of Romans getting to the point of ‘Therefore, since we have been justified by faith…’, laying the groundwork of dealing with the Wrath of God, the Law and circumcision, what it means to be a Jew or a Gentile and Abraham taking the step of faith that lead to that faith being credited to him as righteousness.  Without this fundamental step of faith in accepting Christ as Lord and allowing Him to justify us, allowing Him to make us right and righteous on His terms and conditions, none of what follows applies; we are left dealing with Father’s Wrath and all the issues of sin and the Law on our own.  Not necessarily the place we want to be but one that we still chose none the less.

Having chosen to enter the process by faith, we are given peace and enter into grace where we rejoice or exult in the hope of the glory of God; which is where we want to stop reading.  But that hope is not just some empty emotion, some ‘cheerleading’ session where we get all fired up for God but rather the firm result of that hope being made a reality because God proves Himself to us.  That proving is one of those concepts that is repeated in Scripture and just doesn’t make any sense on the face of it; we rejoice in our suffering.  But that suffering or ‘narrowing’ of each of us is an absolutely critical part of the process and when we enter in and accept it for what it is, given to us as part of the love of God being poured out in our hearts, the rest of the process kicks into gear.  We hang on and persevere and as we persevere, God’s Character is proven and hammered out in us and as we see that Who is says He is real and true, hope is built and confirmed as we look back at who we were and what we have become and rejoice in the Love of God being poured out in us by the Holy Spirit.

The bad news is that this is not a one time cycle, but an ongoing process.  The good news is that this is where Joy is built and the foundation on which it resides.  The writers of the New Testament aren’t just blowing smoke when they say ‘rejoice in suffering’ (Matthew 5:12; Acts 5:41; 2Corinthians 12:10; Colossians 1:24; James 1:2-3; 1Peter 1:6); they are giving you the benefit of their experience in having gone through the process multiple times and now knowing what the reality is.  When the Holy Spirit begins to hammer out Himself in each of our hearts, He is giving us the opportunity to know Him better and more intimately, have our hope confirmed and built into something greater, to be changed in the process and to be part of His Love being poured out into our hearts and into the people around us.  The apparent incongruity of rejoicing in suffering doesn’t lie in God’s Word but in our hearts because we haven’t allowed Him to hammer out His Truth within us.

Questions:

1. What do you see in these verses?  What are the ideas and concepts that strike you as important?
2. What do you think Paul means when he says ‘Therefore, since we have been justified by faith…’ (v.1)?  What is the argument and idea that his ‘therefore’ is pointing to?
3. What is the result of this justification?
4. Where does your hope lie?  From what will this hope save you?
5. What is your attitude toward suffering?  What do you see suffering to be?
6. Do you agree with Paul that suffering is something to be rejoiced in?  Why or why not?
7. What do you see in the line of cause and effect in vv.3-4?  Does suffering produce perseverance?  Perseverance, character?  Character, hope?  What is your experience with this process?
8. In what ways does hope not disappoint us (v.5)?  Again, what is your experience with hope not disappointing?  With God pouring out His love into your heart?
9. What does Paul mean when he says ‘…by the Holy Spirit whom he has given us’?  What do you think this has to do with love being poured out into your heart?  What are the implications for our suffering, perseverance, character and hope by this gift of the Spirit?
10. When God gives, He expects us to receive.  What have you done to receive the Holy Spirit and what He would pour out in your heart today?

Please post your observations, comments, and questions as we move through this study of Romans and explore what it means to hit the mark Christ sets for each of us.

Sin is one of those ideas that everyone has an opinion on, whether they realize it or not.  We all have standards and some understanding of what is right or wrong, even if that definition and standard boils down to ‘I don’t like it; it offends me’.  Opinions can range from there is no sin, there is no God to set a mark for us to shoot at, to the mark that God sets is impossible to hit and includes most everything in between.  Yet at the root of our thinking, behavior and faith, we all hold the idea that there is a standard and that it is possible to at least hit it on occasion.  Even a criminal who will steal from anyone and everyone will take offense when he or she is stolen from.  Even if we hold that there is no God, we still hold onto the idea of sin, even if that idea is centered strictly on ourselves and what pleases or satisfies us.

Over the next four weeks, we are going to be studying through four chapters from the book of Romans.  In chapters 5-8, Paul begins to deal with not only the idea of sin, but of who Christ is and what He has done for us so that we might no longer miss the mark and instead become marksmen, hitting the bullseye, the center of His Will, with confidence and consistent accuracy.  So, as always, prepare to be challenged as only God’s Word can challenge us.  Read through the first four chapters of Romanshttp://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%201-4&version=NIV1984 and prepare for what I hope and pray will be a life-changing study for us all.

Please post your observations, comments, and questions as we move through this study of Romans and explore what it means to hit the mark Christ sets for each of us.

Of course, the fly in the ointment is that I don’t want to see that failure and would much rather explain it away, rationalize why I am right and God is wrong, even though I don’t have the courage to put in those kind of words.  It is always someone else who has the problem; it can’t be me because that would throw all of my assumptions about who I am and who I have defined God to be right out the window and we just can’t have that.  So I stumble along, battered and bloody, making the same mistakes over and over again and all the while giving God the Glory for my failures and taking credit for His Victories.

The miracle is that in spite of my blatant idolatry, ignorance and foolishness, You fight for me; You are not content to leave and abandon me to my own well deserved fate.  You are determined to give me every opportunity to recognize You for who You are and not who I define and want You to be.  You have even sent Your One and Only Son to fight and win my battle and remove the last barriers to my knowing You on such an intimate basis that I can’t even begin to imagine that Reality.  And still I want my own way.

If the Book of Judges shows us anything, it is that nothing has changed on our side of the equation; we are still sinful, stubborn, stiff-necked people who want our own way and don’t necessarily care about the price we pay for our foolishness.  We blame God for our problems and use our fears and failures as excuses to go off chasing after any and every other solution instead of sitting down with an open heart and spirit and ask Him to reveal Himself.  Then and only then does the proverbial rubber hit the road as we chose to trust Him in obedience.

Questions:

1. What is it that has struck you as important in the Book of Judges?  What are the concepts and ideas that have stood out to you?
2. What is it that you have objected to in Judges?  Where has Judges challenged you in how and what you think about God, who He is, what His Character and Nature actually are as He reveals it in His Word?
3. What have you agreed with in Judges?  What have you seen in the stories of Israel’s struggle to conquer the Promised Land that have confirmed what it is you think about God and the world around you?
4. What do you think that the Holy Spirit is saying to you in both your agreement and objections?  Have you sat down to actually ask Him?
5. What does your daily round say to you about what you actually think and believe about God?  Does your daily habit tell you that you think He is some dead and lifeless image or that He is the Living God?

Please post your observations, comments, and questions as we move through this study  of the Book of Judges and what it means to our lives today.

As we have seen in the story of Jephthah earlier, one of the silly things the Israelites seem to like to do is make vows and take oaths.  In the last chapter of Judges we see the people of Israel bound by their oaths and wishing they hadn’t.  They do some nasty things in the name of fulfilling their oath and in the end, with a wink and a smile, ignore another.

They made the silly vow of not allowing any of their daughters to marry a Benjamite.  Oops.  They killed all the women and children of Benjamin so now the last remaining men of Benjamin would not be able continue the line of the tribe.  This results in the rest of Israel grieving over the impending loss of that tribe.  They know they made a mistake in making the vow and maybe even more so, they know they made a big mistake by being so overzealous in killing the Benjamites.

Strangely, although they present burnt offerings and fellowship offerings to the Lord, it doesn’t seem that they actually seek His will in this matter.  Instead, they come up with two schemes to help the men of Benjamin get new wives, one of which is the result of another stupid vow to put to death any group of people that failed to show up for the battle against Benjamin.  They try to fix the problem by doing what appears to us to be awful, putting a whole group of people to death except virgins, who would be the wives for the Benjamites.  If they didn’t have the problem, that oath may well have been ignored.

The second scheme they concoct is one of duplicity.  The men of Israel basically ignore the fact that some daughters of Shiloh become wives of Benjamites because they were stolen as wives and give the Benjamites excuses for stealing them.  So, in the end, the Benjamites get wives, everyone goes home, and “everyone did as they saw fit.”

Questions:

1. What do you see in these verses?  What are the concepts and ideas that you see as important?
2. What do you see as the reason(s) that Israel behaved as they did?  What was it they were trying to accomplish?
3. What do you see as the mistakes they made along the way?  What were their options at each point of the decision?
4. What do the actions of Israel in these verses reveal about their attitude towards God?  Who and what do you think that saw Him to be?
5. What was the end result of Israel’s behavior?
6. Where do you see God in these verses?  Do you see God in these verses?  Why or why not?
7. How does your understanding of doing what it is that you see as ‘fit’ conflict with what God is calling you to do and be?  How would you recognize such a conflict if it did exist?
8. In what ways might we, both as a people and as individuals, be guilty of the same kind of rationalizing of our behavior as Israel was?
9. What can we do, both as a people and as individuals, to avoid the pitfalls and failures that plagued Israel?

Please post your observations, comments, and questions as we move through this study  of the Book of Judges and what it means to our lives today.

Lets first look at what the Israelites did right.  First, they responded to the atrocity.  They recognized a great sin had taken place, despite the fact that at this period of time “everyone did as they saw fit” (Judges 21:25).  There were some things that just could not be overlooked, even if it took a grizzly act to get them to see it in the first place (Judges 19:29-30).

The Israelites also responded correctly by wanting to punish just the men who were guilty.  They did not create an army to go against all of Benjamin, just Gibeah.  The Benjamites could have prevented a lot of agony if they would have recognized Israel’s complaint as legitimate.

The Israelites did the right thing by asking God what to do.  More importantly, they didn’t give up after initial defeat but kept asking God what to do.  Even when it seemed like God’s answer was wrong, they believed and kept trusting in God for the answer.  It should be noted that it was only on the third day God said, “I will give them into your hands.”  Up to that point, God had simply told them to attack.  If they had given up, they would have never seen victory and the guilty would have remained unpunished.

So why does this whole event seem to end in complete tragedy (see Judges 21)?  First, the tragedy starts because the people of Benjamin did not recognize the sin that was in their midst.  They fought to protect the sinners and in doing so, assumed the guilt of that sin and its resulting punishment.  Instead of the men who did the horrible things we read about in Judges 19 being punished, almost all of the tribe of Benjamin was put to death.

Of course, we have to ask if the Israelites were way overzealous in the pursuit of the Benjamites and the destruction of all their towns.  Scripture doesn’t explicitly say it was wrong but we see that the results of their zealousness was disastrous.  When they inquired of God if they should attack, God promised them victory but Scripture doesn’t say that God told them to destroy everyone.  They got their deliverance and then it seems that they got bloodlust and went wild.  Chapter 21 of Judges gives us the results.

Questions:

1. What do you see in these verses?  What are the concepts and ideas that strike you as important?
2. How should we respond when we see sin?
3. What do you see in the progression of Israel’s calling out to God and in God’s answers (vv.18, 23, 27-28)?  When does Israel make decisions and when do they ask God?
4. What does the mention of Phineas as priest in v.27 tell us about the time frame for these events (Joshua 22:13)?
5. How should we respond when it seems that God’s answer ends in disaster?  What is it about perseverance that we seem to resist?
6. Why would the Benjamites have supported the guilty men of Gibeah instead of standing with their brothers of Israel and condemn them?
7. Was the Benjamites’ defeat just?  Was their almost total obliteration just?  What do you think should have happened?
8. What is your decision making process?  How do you go about making the decisions that face you every day?  How do you approach what God says needs to be done and keep that separate from what you think needs to be done?
9. In what ways can we take what God tells us, obtain His deliverance and then go beyond what He wants?

Please post your observations, comments, and questions as we move through this study  of the Book of Judges and what it means to our lives today.

The first is the “deliverance” of an unfaithful concubine.  The Levite could have let the concubine just stay with her father; divorce her and be done with it.  But he apparently forgave her of her transgressions and went to rescue her from her shame.  She apparently didn’t really want to be rescued and delayed them from leaving.  In the end, this deliverance unfortunately ended in her tragic death.

The second “deliverance” we see is the Levite’s decision to not stay in Jebus but go on to an Israeli city where they should be safe.  Yet going into Gibeah, they found no help, rather they found only trouble.  The deliverance they expected in the safe choice only turned into tragedy.

The third “deliverance” we see is in the old man.  Where the native citizens of Gibeah didn’t help the Levite, this outsider invites them into his home and treats them well.  When attacked, he tries to appease the wicked men but to no avail.  The deliverance he tried to provide ends in disaster.

Reflections:

1. What do you see in these verses?  What are the concepts and ideas that strike you as important?
2. If the concubine had wanted rescued by her husband, what would have been different?
3. When we resist God, is He able to rescue us?  Why or why not?
4. We often make decisions on how we want to be delivered instead of putting ourselves into the fully capable hands of God.  How successful are we at making our own decisions for deliverance?
5. When in trouble, we often have choices that seem fairly straight forward, the “safe” choice and a risky choice.  What should we do in making this choice?  How often does turning to God and let Him rescue us seem to be the risky choice?
6. We sometimes turn to our family, friends, and even complete strangers before we turn to God when we are in trouble.  Why do we often wait until last before we turn totally to God for our deliverance?

Please post your observations, comments, and questions as we move through this study  of the Book of Judges and what it means to our lives today.