Overview Of Romans (part 1)

Today we're going to talk about Romans, but we're not going to go through the whole book of Romans. We're just going to go through Romans 1 through 8. Because Romans is sort of one of those books that's foundational to a lot of theology.

It's foundational to the nature of man, salvation, and really gives you the big picture. This is almost Paul who wrote it, Paul the Apostle. It's almost like his magnum opus. Some of the commentators say it's like his last will and testament.

Even though it's not like the pastorals where he's saying, well my time is almost up, I've run the race, so forth. But this is sort of his one time where he just lays it all out there. Where he just gives everything that he can to the doctrines of salvation and the doctrine of man.

So what we're going to do is just look through it. Because I think a lot of times what happens is we pick verses, or we hear verses, we read verses that are just sort of plucked out of Romans, and we don't really understand the flow.

Or what is Paul really saying in context? So it's going to be a little tricky. If you have questions, stop me. Normally, again, we go verse by verse. We go very thoroughly through each verse. What we're going to try to do is the proverbial flyover where we get the overall view and the flow.

But we're also going to hit some peaks as well and try to take a look at what Paul is saying and get an idea of what he's trying to point out. Scott Brown, if you don't have a handout, Scott's got them.

Scott Brown, if you need one, raise your hand, he'll get you one. So the book of Romans, very quickly, it was written from Corinth. So Paul had already written the Corinthian letters, and he's in Corinth writing Romans.

And Romans was written to a dual audience. Romans was written to primarily a Gentile audience in Rome. And it was also, there was a heavy Jewish audience as well, as evidenced by a lot of the things that Paul writes and kind of the focus that Paul has at times.

So it was a mix of Gentiles and Jews. And so what we want to do is just find, very quickly, Paul gives us the, I should probably have a Bible up here. I had one at one time. Excuse me. Does everybody have their Bible on their device?

If you guys need handouts, just raise your hand. I'm so used to reading it on my device, I'm curious to see how this is going to go. Cindy, over here, Scott. So what we have here is Romans, and Paul introduces himself in Romans as an apostle, as a slave of Christ, a bondservant, really.

And bondservant, as Paul uses it in Romans 1, he introduces himself. It's a term that's very interesting, and he'll bring it up again and again. One thing I want to mention about Romans is Romans is a book that recapitulates itself.

You know, like any good song or any good piece of music, you keep coming back, and again and again, to the similar theme that you're familiar with. So what happens in Romans is Paul gets into, he introduces things, but then you'll see him come back again and again to those things.

So here, he introduced himself in Romans 1, 1. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. So right away, he introduces himself, and he says, this is why I'm writing to you, it's all about the gospel.

And what Paul's basically going to do in these, particularly in the first four chapters, is he's going to talk about what the gospel is and why the gospel is necessary. And he set apart for the gospel.

So Paul, as an apostle, apostle means one who is sent. And so Paul and the other apostles, Paul, of course, was an apostle after the original 12. He never met the Lord except in a vision. And in the Damascus Road, you all know Paul's conversion.

But he was called as an apostle to the gospel of God. And so he describes Jesus as concerning his son, promised beforehand, through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures in verse 2, concerning his son, again, he's describing the gospel, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

This is very interesting because what Paul does here, you say, well, how was Jesus declared to be the son? And there are some cult groups that pick up on this idea to dispute the divinity of Christ. And they say, see there, Christ was appointed or Christ was declared to be the son of God.

What this is talking about, not in his very being, but what this is talking about is that when Christ was raised from the dead, he was appointed and inaugurated through the giving of the spirit and inaugurated a new age.

And so Christ was what most commentators say is Christ was declared to be the son or presented as the son to the world. So his nature didn't change, but there was a presentation of the son once he was resurrected.

So, again, we have to be careful when we read these things because a lot of people will take these things, and again, this is my point, is people will pick and choose verses out of context from Paul, from Romans, and try to make some theological points that are pretty weak or that are heretical in this case.

So Paul goes down and he talks about he's writing to the Romans. He says why he's writing. And, again, I apologize, we're going to end up skipping passages, skipping sections, because they're really not pertinent.

Everything's important, but they're really not pertinent to kind of following the flow of Paul's thought here. So what I'm going to do is take you down and we'll find that Paul has the theme of the whole book is down in chapter 1, verse 16 and 17.

And this is where Paul says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation, to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, that is the gospel of God, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

So here Paul gives us, here's the theme. He says, okay, this is what I'm going to be writing to you about for the next really eight chapters, the righteousness of God. It's interesting here, Paul says the righteousness of God is revealed.

And that's a present tense verb. And it's not necessarily saying that it's continuously being revealed. And a lot of times we hear the present tense, we think, oh, it keeps being revealed. It's really a simple present here where Paul is saying it's been revealed, it's out there.

So the righteousness of God is revealed. And right away after saying that, Paul in verse 18 says, For the wrath of God is revealed. And you go, wait a minute, I thought the righteousness of God was just revealed, I'm all happy.

And now the wrath of God is revealed. But one thing Paul is going to go through as he just walks us through the idea of the righteousness of God, which is a main theme of these first four chapters. It's very clear the righteousness of God is binary.

The righteousness of God is God's rightness or rightness with God, purity, moral excellence. But the righteousness of God is also the judgment. And that's why the gospel of God is both. OK, it's both the righteousness of God is his judgment on sin and his giving of his good, right, just character to men and manifesting that in Christ.

So that's why he declares that. So this this idea of the wrath of God is revealed. And by the way, that word revealed when it says the gospel is revealed. What that means, I think we're familiar with this, is that the righteousness of God is revealed.

So it's it's manifesting something that was previously hidden. As well as the wrath of God is now revealed as well. Now, once what sense is the wrath of God revealed? Well, I think in two ways. And what he's going to talk about for the rest of chapter one is very interesting because he's going to talk about really from chapter one through three.

It's in your outline there. What Paul is going to talk about is a condemnation. And this is the gospel. It discusses the universal condemnation of man. And so when he says that the wrath of God is revealed.

He's talking about the wrath of God that he shows on the basis of man's sin. Right. God's wrath is not arbitrary. Right. God's wrath is not random. God's wrath is because of human sin. And so that wrath is is revealed.

Inaugurated and shown through through what we see here. And Paul describes in the next three chapters. So the condemnation, the universal need for righteousness. There you have in your outline in part a.

The Gentiles are guilty before God. The Gentiles don't have not only don't have the ability to know God, but as we'll see in a second, they manifest that inability and they manifest their lostness in in many ways.

So if we go down here to further down in verse verse 21. He's talking about the Gentiles and he says, for although they knew God. Why did they know God? How did they know God? And he tells us in verse 19, he says, for what can be known about God is plain to them or manifest to them.

Because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature. Having clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made.

So they are without excuse. Now, we have to be careful when we read this. It's easy to overread this passage. What this is talking about is moral accountability. So God's the things that we're going to see in a second, the things that have been revealed.

But in this God, Paul is telling us that the things about God, which may be known, it's not exhaustive. OK, there are some people who say, well, we can know things about the creation. But this is not really what's focusing what Paul's focusing on here.

He's not focusing on the creation. What he's focusing on is is the creature and the knowledge that creature has of God. So we don't want to get off track. We don't want to say, well, what's this telling us about nature or cosmology or creation?

We don't want to go there because Paul does not intend us to go there. This is about man and it's about sin. And so. Here he's talking about in verse twenty one. So in some sense, it says that the pagans knew God.

But their reaction to that knowledge is very telling. Right. He says they didn't honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise.

They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. So here's an interesting contrast. So here, Paul says they had a knowledge.

They had some base knowledge that God existed, right, that God was divine, that God had created all this. So when people say, you know, they deny there's any design in nature, that's just not true. Nature shouts out the glory of God.

We think of Psalm 19, right? Psalm 19, the heavens declare God's glory. So everybody who's ever been born has had that knowledge in them. And so what Paul's saying here is based on that knowledge, every man is morally accountable.

So Paul introduces his idea of the righteousness of God right here. And he says, OK, every single person is morally accountable. And then we'll see what people do with that knowledge in the next few chapters.

So here it's interesting. He says they didn't give thanks to God, but instead they became futile in their thinking or futile in their thinking. And it's interesting because, you know, the Greeks, this was written to were very proud of their philosophy.

You know, Greek philosophers, everybody knows all the famous ones. But they did not have the knowledge of God. So what they did, Paul is very pointed here. He says basically that what the pagans did was they developed their own godless way of thinking.

And, you know, I have friends that are that are sort of in ministry that are really gearing their ministry to postmodern people. And their whole thing is, well, you know, there was a Christian era and then we got into the Enlightenment and we became modern thinkers.

Right. So we no longer thought God was important. We just thought this mechanical universe existed. So that's really what modernism is, what postmodernism is, is postmodernism goes yet a step beyond that.

It's postmodernist the way they think is not only do they not know what's really real or can they even know what's really real other than what's empirically verified. What a postmodern does is he says you can't even describe it in language.

Postmodern says language is inadequate to understand these things. And his view is that postmodernism is sort of post-Christian, almost like you have to. And he's actually said this. People say this.

You have to reformat the gospel. And to me, that's unbelievable. That's a that's a different gospel. A dear friend of mine. And he's ministering to people. And he's like, how do you reformat the gospel once given?

You can't do that. But the point is this. When you get. When you get people that don't understand God and it says here the foolish minds are darkened and their thoughts become futile. What happens is, you know, the idea that's a post-Christian says, well, we are postmodern says, well, we've gone beyond.

We've advanced beyond modernism. Ironically enough, you know what happened? It's really just pre-Christian. Right. This is it right here. And what we'll see is that Paul is saying based on their darkening of their mind willingly.

All these behaviors will come up. Right. And behaviors are not in a vacuum. Behaviors are manifest out of what is in our hearts. And so the people that behave the way they do behave that way because of a lack of knowledge of God.

Right. Or there's there's just I think people have the idea that certainly in our culture, that behavior is. I mean, I have to say that, you know, just watching the news, I can't watch it anymore because it's just it just shows the sin of man, you know.

And I need to pray for those people. We need to pray for those people. We need to pray that God would open their hearts and open their eyes. But, you know, it can be discouraging when you just look at our culture, but that is we have to expect that.

Right. When you let go of God, the whole culture is just going to go in a way that that just does not honor God and it just debases who we are. So you've got people who are practicing things that clearly don't please God and that show.

Really, I think Peter says, you know, we're no better than beasts, you know, like brute beasts. That's how we behave sometimes when we when we ignore the knowledge of God and we suppress it. It says here that God gave them over in verse twenty four to the lust of their hearts, to impurity and dishonoring their bodies among themselves because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator.

It's very interesting here. Right. So he's saying the exchange is not just. They didn't they just shun the knowledge of God, but then that that shunning turns into worship. The creator, the one who created them was immortal.

We see in verse twenty five, the immortal God exchange that knowledge for a mere creature. And when you see what they made images of. In verse twenty three, images of mortal man. There's one thing to worship a thing like man or a beast, but it's a different thing to just make a copy of that thing.

And right here, what Paul does, he uses two very interesting words. Paul says the change, the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds. When it says images resembling that's language taken out of the Greek translation.

Right. When it says that God made man and his likeness and his image. So I think what Paul's doing here is he's taking those words and he's saying, you ever hear the expression that God made us in his image and we've returned the favor.

Right. You've heard that. So we take and we say we're going to make God in our image. And this is exactly what Paul is saying here. So Paul's. And again, I'm going to skip on a bit because. We can get through this and see that the sinfulness of man, you just go through the list.

And this is one of many lists, by the way. In the New Testament that are given for the sinfulness of man. Galatians five, I think of right. The deeds of the sinful nature. So this is just another one of those lists, and particularly Paul, a couple of times mentions homosexuality as as sort of that base level.

And so the glorification that in our culture is very troubling because that indicates, again, just an underlying. An underlying cultural. Kind of push to suppress the knowledge of God, to deny the knowledge of God.

So we're down in verse. Again, just to take you back to your outline for a second. So Paul, in verse 18 to 32, is talking about the guilt of the Gentiles and the basis of that guilt is what we do with the knowledge that we have.

Through verse 23 there and then the results of the Gentile guilt, by the way, this outline is is from Daniel Wallace at Dallas Seminary. Does great work in Greek language and commentaries and. This is this is.

A very common way to look at the book. So the condemnation of of the need for righteousness is well established by Paul in a universal condemnation from verse 118 all the way to 320. This whole section.

Paul is saying the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith. And I'll come back to that in a second. But what he's saying there is, you know, the righteousness of God is revealed. But now I'm going to give you two whole chapters and tell you how sinful man is and tell you why.

This righteousness is not realized by man, and it's impossible to be realized by man because of our nature. And Paul is going to continue to to hammer that as he goes as he goes along. So in Chapter two, the beginning of Chapter two of Paul does is he pretty much goes he's finished with the Gentiles.

I have heard some commentators say, well, this next section in Chapter two, he's talking about moral man. So a man who has some they're not Jews, but they're not total like idolatrous pagans either. And that may be true, but.

It seemed at least Daniel Wallace would say, and I agree with him. That Paul transitions to the Jews starting in in Chapter two, verse one. Let's pick that up in Chapter one. Anybody have questions on.

Chapter one at all. So his question is, you know, in some versions, it says from faith for faith. This translation, I'm reading the ESV, the Pew Bibles, and we're looking at Anthony, verse 17. So it says in verse 17, for in it that it is the gospel in verse 16.

For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith is what our version says. Right. And then other versions say from faith to faith and the commentators go around on this. But I think the preferred idea that he's expressing here is kind of faith from first to last.

So from the start of of belief in the Christian. We continue faithful, right? It's it's a faith from first to last. So from faith to faith, the initial belief upon faith in Christ, regeneration, so forth, and then continuing faith going forward.

No, same believer. But the idea is the exercise of faith over time. Yes. So it's so it's comprehensive from first belief to continuing belief and that belief sustained through to the end of life. From faith to faith, that's there are a number of different opinions on that.

But the preferred one is basically it's a it's a tricky one, right? I mean, there's nothing substantial doctrinally in what you hold, but that's that's what's generally accepted. That makes sense. Yeah.

Yeah. And in fact, one thing about from this chapter, this point here through all the way through chapter four, the word faith is used like thirty three times. So when you want to see what is the first again, and we're trying to just get a big picture here, guys.

We just want to see what is Paul really talking about? He's really talking about righteousness that comes by faith. And that's really why we say that 16 and 17 in chapter one is really the core of the book.

That's really what the theme of the whole book is, what Paul is driving at for all of one through eight. Now, the reason we don't go further than that, obviously, I only have two weeks, but we also the really this is the foundation.

And then like most of Paul's books, like for the first half, he goes through doctrine and another party goes through. This is how you act it out. This is how you practice it. So for here, really, one through eight is the end of that where, you know, we all know, you know, nothing can separate us from the love of God.

And then he discusses for three chapters. And this is actually all in the back of your outline, too. We didn't go into detail, but in under Roman numeral four talks about Israel for three chapters. And then he talks about the application.

So the application, interestingly enough, in Romans is much shorter than in most other books, because if you take all the way through 11 chapters, he's talking about salvation and the believer. And then he's talking about Israel and the race to the church for three chapters.

It's not until chapter 12 through 16, only four chapters. So much less than Paul usually does. This is why this is really a doctrinal book. And it's very important to get these eight chapters down. So good question about faith.

But that really is. And just a preview in chapters five through eight. Faith is mentioned only in passing a couple of times, but then the word that keeps being repeated is life or living. So, you know, we get this this painting of, you know, a condemned humanity.

And that that the right sense of God is only appropriated by faith. Right. And we're going to get into works right now. But after that. OK, now he's talking to believers. OK, you've justified. Here's why.

And he uses in chapter four, you know, chapter four, he talks about Abraham justified by faith. So Abraham was justified by faith, which is interesting because Abraham is the father of the Jews. I believe they were justified by works.

So very interesting that he just takes it there. But he has to because that's the crux of the whole matter. And we'll get there in a moment. So in any other questions, if not chapter two, God's righteous judgment.

And here Paul is talking about the Jews and he talks about their guilt from your outline, their stubbornness. And basically the guilt of the Jews for two whole chapter, a chapter and a little bit. But then he talks about how they were stubborn and then the hypocrisy of the Jews.

And then but then he throws in at the end again how they're privileged, which he will come back to again. We're not going to go through it in this these two weeks, but he talks about why the Jews are essential.

It's understanding the value what God did through the Jews and that they also still have a future. But again, that's outside of the scope of this. These two weeks. So we go to chat if you want to look at chapter one, chapter two, rather, verse one.

Therefore, you have no excuse. Oh, man, every one of you who judges for in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself because you, the judge, practice the very same things. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.

Do you suppose, oh, man, that you judge you judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

But because of your hard and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment is will be revealed. And so here he's talking to Jews, saying the wrath is coming to you.

Now, think about if you're a Jew and you're thinking, hey, I'm pretty good. Right. Compared to these pagans. And then Paul points the finger right at them. And that that had to shock them. That had to be very shocking for them.

And even for the Gentiles who are converts, you know, they look at the Jews as they are the pinnacle of revealed religion and a practice. They are it. But now in Christ, as Paul says in chapter one, a new era is inaugurated and a new covenant and a new a new justification in relation to God by faith, not by the covenant community, which is what the Jews have.

And so as he goes through chapter two here, I want to. He's talking about the judgment on the Jews in chapter one with the pagans. We're really talking about people who are just plain unrighteous. Right.

In chapter two, he's going to switch. He's going to say, well, you guys, the Jews are self-righteous. Right. This is what we struggle with. And a lot of us who came from Roman Catholic backgrounds like me, you know, we struggle with that.

Right. We come into the Christian faith as born again believers. But we were brought up with just keeping rules. Right. And so we look at that and we say, yeah, I can relate to that. You know, if you came or in the case of others who come from non-Catholic, you know, cults or anything, it's the same thing.

You know, but there's a set of rules that I'm right with God because of what I'm going to do. But that's not what the Bible teaches. And this is what Paul is going to emphasize. I want to point out something interesting to you in in verses six through eight.

Now, I ask you a question. Is Paul teaching here works righteousness? And if not, who is he talking to? Let's read that. So in two six, he says he God will render to each one according to his works, to those who, by patience and well-doing, seek for glory and honor and immortality.

He will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. And then he summarizes there will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil for the Jew first and also for the Greek.

But glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also for the Greek. For God shows no partiality. Now. We know that that's not going to teach us works righteousness, right? But it's interesting that Paul puts this in the section for the Jews.

Why do you think he does that? Why do you think Paul puts a section on works and justification? In fact, right here. He's saying you're going to get eternal life by practicing good things. Why do you think Paul says that?

Any ideas? That's a very good point. Thank you. Yeah. And I agree with that, which what she said was that if you're self-seeking or you're selfishly ambitious, you know, Paul says in Philippians to, you know, do nothing out of selfish ambition.

Right. But if your ambition is for immortality. Right. And that word is actually immortality is actually imperishability. But that's the same word than in Chapter one. He said they exchanged the the image of the imperishable God.

Right. We translate it immortal for a perishable man. You see that dichotomy there. We're just we're perishable beings, but the imperishable God, the one who seek seeks imperishability. And what are the other things that they seek here?

Let's see. They seek patience and well-doing, seek for glory, honor and immortality. He will give eternal life. So let me ask you this. Does this teach that there are seekers, those who diligently seek seeing heads go like this?

That's the right answer, by the way. Why do you think that is? Are there is anyone seek God? That's a good point. So your intent, you know, are you seeking self gratification, seeking self justification?

Are you seeking to honor and glory God? And it's interesting because until recent years, a lot of people took this to be that there are people who do seek God. Right. A lot of the commentators like there are seekers.

It says it right here. People seek immortality. People can seek that. But notice that it says it says that that God will give the eternal life. Right. Right. So God is the one who gives righteousness.

God, who there's a righteousness that is foreign. And as we read on, we'll see that this is this is a gift of God. Right. The righteousness. So what most commentators today to tie it all together, most commentators say that this is this is a little interlude here into the section on the Jewish, the condemnation of the Jewish way of doing things, the religion, the old covenant.

He's he's just injecting something here to the Jews and saying he's talking about believers. OK, so only believers can seek. Right. Only believers can seek righteousness. Only believers can seek true immortality and glory and honor.

And those are the ones that God will give eternal life. But to everyone here, it says. And again, remember, he said in Chapter one, the gospel of God is revealed first to the Jew and then to the Gentile.

Right. Now he's saying here judgment is to the Jew, then the Gentile. No partiality. So God's leveling out the playing field here. Joan, you had a question. Well, that's right. That's right. Yeah. And if we're seeking that and we have found eternal life, we have to share that with others.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's absolutely true. Yeah. No. Well, they seek God by faith. So the question is, how does that faith arise? Right. And so it doesn't happen in a vacuum. Right. It requires ability from God.

Right. To exercise faith. And again, our part is just to throw ourselves on God's mercy and say, God, save me. To realize you're helpless and to repent based on what God does in your life. You know, but God rewards sinners.

Right. The unrighteous, the publican and the sinner. Right. Before God publicans up there. And this is really what you know, when you boil it down, this is what Romans two is really talking about. You've got self-righteous people.

Right. I thank God. It's praying. Thank you. I'm not like this guy right here. I'm not this. I do this. I do that. I do all these great things. He's very self-focused, to your point. Right. It's focused on self.

This is what I do. Right. And the poor tax collector sitting there going, you know, God have mercy on me. I said I didn't even look up. Right. There's humility. But we have to be careful, too. Right. Because, you know, there's a story of the teacher that went through this in Sunday school with a young class.

And teacher says, OK, Johnny, after discussing the these two people, why don't you close us in prayer? And Johnny says, Lord, I think you were not like the tax collector, publican, the Jew. Right. We're not like the self-righteous guy, but we can become that.

I'm glad I'm not that guy. Well, the minute you think that you start going, well, maybe I am a little bit. So we have to be careful. That's a good warning for us. You know, and Paul talks about later the Jews were given the promises, the covenant, everything.

And they fell short. Why? Because they tried to accomplish it by their works. Right. And by the flesh. And they couldn't do it. And God had to provide a savior, had to provide Christ to provide that way to God.

And so what this is saying is, Paul, everybody who seeks and the seeking is not independent. Right. We're not we're not autonomous. We're not. Some we're not a being who can make our own selves righteous.

This is what Paul's really saying and which is why he goes into chapter three. And for the sake of time, let's keep moving. I want to get through chapter four if we can real quickly. I apologize. This is an overview.

Hopefully this is helpful to you guys. In chapter three, again, he's dealing with self-righteous Jews and how it comes through faith. And then in chapter three, he gets to this section concludes in 320.

So let's pick it up in three. Eighteen. Paul has gone through Old Testament passages, several of them where he talks about the universal unrighteousness of man, the universal nature of sin and how everybody nobody fears God.

So this balances it out. Right. For those who seek God. But then he says nobody seeks God. Nobody fears God. Nobody's righteous. And so we get down to verse 18 in chapter three. Now, we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world held accountable to God for by the works works of the law.

No human being will be justified in his sight since through the law comes the knowledge of sin. So interesting. Right. So if you're a Jew, you're thinking, OK, I have the law as long as I keep it, I'm all set or any works based religion for that matter.

But here he's saying that really the only only reason we have the law is to make us aware of sin. A couple of one illustration I heard is, you know, if you have a glass of water with sediment at the bottom and you stir it up with a spoon, you know, the spoon doesn't cause the sediment to come up as soon as I'm sorry, the spoon only causes the sediment to come up.

It's there already. So the law is like that spoon just stirs up and it makes the sin come out or makes it evident. Pastor Mike used to do medical sales, I believe. Right. Back in the old days, a long time ago, he but he used to sell different equipment.

And there's equipment that will diagnose something. Right. In simple terms, our terms like a thermometer. Right. Do you have a fever or not? I take my cat to the vet last week. She had a fever. Who knew?

How do you know if a cat has a fever? I don't know. But that's just a diagnostic tool. They had to give me something else, an antibiotic as a curative tool. So what they're saying is, is the law is not the law is only a diagnostic tool, really.

It's not meant to make you righteous. So when Paul says for those who seek immortality, he's saying you can't seek it by keeping the law. Right. The rules don't get it done. You need this alien righteousness.

And if we look back in verse 18 for a second. So I guess it's 19. My eyes aren't as good as they used to be. Nineteen. Look at the universality in these verses. We know that whatever the law says, everything the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law so that every mouth.