July 28, 2017 Show with Scott Bashoor on “The Book of Romans: When and Why Did Paul Write It?”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida and the rest of humanity living on the planet earth listening via live streaming on ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Friday on this very, very rainy

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July 28th here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. July 28th, 2017 and I am delighted to have for the very first time on Iron Sharpens Iron Scott Bashor.

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Scott Bashor became pastor of Bible Church of Buena Park, California in 1999.

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He was raised in a godly Baptist pastor's home near Washington, D .C. He graduated from Bob Jones University with a bachelor's degree in Bible and then went to receive a

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Master of Divinity degree and a Master of Theology degree from the

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Master's Seminary, the seminary founded by one of my modern -day heroes, John MacArthur, who

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I've had on this program and hope to have back on the program. Before coming to the

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Bible Church of Buena Park, California, Pastor Scott served as a camp chaplain, a pulpit supply and event speaker, and an interim pastor.

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Since 2002, he has also served as a faculty associate at the

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Master's Seminary where he teaches courses in Hebrew, Aramaic, Old and New Testament studies, and other select courses.

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He has published several articles on preaching and pastoral ministry and he is a contributor to the

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Lexham Bible Dictionary. He's the author of a new book,

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Visual Online Charts of the New Testament, which is a digital publication by Broadman and Holman Academic, and he is also, he and his wife

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Heidi, who is self -employed as a decorative artist, both live in La Mirada with their children, and we are honored and privileged to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron to discuss the

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Book of Romans, when and why did Paul write it. Pastor Scott Bashoor. Chris, wonderful to have you,

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I mean for you to have me, thank you, it's an honor to be here today. Well it's my pleasure brother, and in studio is another fellow graduate of Bob Jones University, Reverend Buzz Taylor.

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And hello, good to have you here. Hello, good to speak with you. If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for our guest

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Scott Bashoor on the Book of Romans, when and why did Paul write it, or anything related to that, perhaps you are already familiar with his digital work,

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Visual Outline Charts of the New Testament. Well you can ask a question about that broader issue as well.

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But before I go into our discussion, I'd like to give out our email address.

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It's chrisarnson at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com,

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and please give us your first name, at least your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Before I go into any of the heart of the matter in regard to our topic,

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I'd like you to, as I always do, or at least I typically do, when I have a new guest, a first -time guest,

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I'd like to get a summary of that person's testimony of salvation, what the religious upbringing you had was like, and as I already mentioned in your brief bio, that you were raised in a godly home right near Washington, D .C.

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Your father was a Baptist pastor. But tell us something about how the Lord actually got a hold of your heart and his sovereignty, and providentially drew you to himself and saved you.

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Yes, well, I'm grateful that I grew up in a Christian home. Of course, you know that just having that experience doesn't bring anyone to faith, but the

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Lord used that wonderfully to save me at a very young age. I'd like to back up for a moment and talk about how my father came to the

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Lord, because his experience was so very different. He grew up in D .C.

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in an immigrant family. His father was an immigrant from Damascus, Syria, and they were

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Eastern Orthodox Christian, but just nominal, not really religious at all. And after my dad fought in World War II, he found himself hanging around with friends he knew from a

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Baptist church in downtown D .C., and the Lord brought him to salvation through a passionate message one

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Sunday night on the Lake of Fire. And so the Lord wonderfully saved him, and he went off to Bible school and prepared for the pastorate.

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Met my mom in D .C. She grew up in the hills of Kentucky in Southern Baptist circles.

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The last school that my father studied at was Bob Jones, and he was at BJU in the 50s when the

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Billy Graham crisis really hit its high point. So that became sort of a defining point for him, and so he pastored an independent fundamental

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Baptist church for about 35 years. Now, when you speak of the Billy Graham crisis, are you talking about when he made a decision, a conscious decision, to really involve mainline liberals in his crusades instead of the fundamentalists that were once a part of his circles of fellowship?

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Exactly, yes, the cooperative evangelistic approach that he began taking around 1957 in the

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New York Crusade and then also the Los Angeles Crusade. That was a really, I think, sorry chapter in evangelical history, and the conservative churches were split over what to do about that, and, you know, the fundamentalist side went one way and then the

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Graham side went another way, and there was a lot of folks in between, too.

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So I grew up in the more separatist side of things and was around the word of God all my life.

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When I was four, we had an evangelist come to our church and he showed what I've now come to see was a really badly produced

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Christian movie called

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The Burning Hell. I haven't seen it in years.

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I think I found a little clip of it on YouTube the other day, and I didn't remember how everyone had really bad southern accents.

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They were actually faking the southern accents, or they were unnecessarily a part of the movie because that's the way they spoke?

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I think that was just the way they spoke, and, you know, I never knew that Nebuchadnezzar had a southern accent.

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But, you know, aside from all that, the Lord used that to awaken me to my problem of sin and my need of Christ, and I remember coming up to my dad that evening and I chugged on his jacket, and, you know,

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I didn't understand everything, but I knew I was a sinner, and hell is where sinners went, and my mom took me into the back room and shared with me the basics of the gospel, and I believe by God's grace that's when the

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Lord drew me to himself. I know a lot of people have childhood conversion experiences that they come to question later on, and often for good reason, but I can look back and see the hand of God had worked in me even in those young years, and he in many ways saved me in advance from many sins and choices

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I might have done otherwise, and of course I had enough sin in me even at that age to need the

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Lord's grace. So I rejoice in the heritage of the faith that I had, and while my ministry is in some ways different from my dad's, and my theology is, while still of course conservative and evangelical has changed some as well,

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I'm so thankful for the upbringing where the Word of God was central and primary and to be a part of really what was trying to be a back -to -the -Bible movement.

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And what were the providential circumstances that led you to be convinced that the

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Lord had placed the call upon your heart to be an under -shepherd for his flock? It began when

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I was young. I had a desire in my heart to preach.

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Now some of that I think was just wanting to imitate Dad, and so I don't want to say that the

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Lord was actively putting every one of those desires in me, but as I grew older, those desires matured, and I was given opportunities here and there to speak to small groups, and as I grew in my own character and through discipleship, others confirmed what they were seeing as the gifts for teaching and shepherding.

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And throughout college, when I went to college, I majored in Bible, and I set my heart to study the

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Word so I'd be able to teach to others, and that desire just grew and grew, and the confirmation from others around the mountain grew as well.

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And tell us something specifically about the Bible Church of Buena Park, California, and how you were eventually led by God to pastor there.

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This is a small work in northern Orange County. It's an old church.

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It was founded by West Coast standards anyway. It was founded in 1934.

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It was really a country church surrounded by orange groves and other agricultural work, and since then it's been overrun by the city, so we're part of that urban sprawl that starts north of Los Angeles and goes down pretty much to San Diego.

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It's a small work, but sometimes people ask me how large my church is, and my first answer is

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I always like to say it's under a thousand, but then I have to be honest and say it's much, much larger.

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Because ten is less than a thousand. That's right. So we're a work of about 50 souls.

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There's a Spanish ministry that's a separate ministry, but they meet on our campus and we partner together in certain tasks as well.

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So on the on any given Lord's Day, there's probably 80 to 100 souls here.

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Well, praise God for those 50 souls, and we had an interesting conversation yesterday with Pastor Bill Hill on the challenges of pastoring and belonging to a small church.

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And if you haven't listened to that, I would recommend you listen to it on the archive at irontreponsireradio .com

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because it's already posted up there. Yes. Yes, I was able to listen into that yesterday.

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It resonated with so much of what he was sharing. You know, I wear two hats, of course.

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You know, I'm the solo pastor of the flock here, and then I teach classes as sort of an overloaded adjunct up at Master's Seminary.

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So in some ways it's a ministry of diversity. You know, when you go up to the seminary and it's everything is very well polished and highly organized, and you have a very narrow focus of what you do, whereas in the small church you're wearing all kinds of hats and having to get involved in many things that you might not want to all the time, but it's the

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Lord's work and needs to be done. And yet in the midst of that, the

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Lord was pleased to enable me to put together this book of charts as a church that began here in the adult

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Bible class, and then I was able to expand them and enlarge them for use in the seminary classroom.

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And as far as your belief in the doctrines of grace and having a theological understanding that would resonate or very much echo that of my modern -day hero that I mentioned earlier,

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John MacArthur, how did that specifically come to develop in your life?

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Was that before, during, and after Bob Jones University? Because back in those days, I know that from its inception to rather recently, the university had a reputation for being somewhat anti -Calvinist, and I know that that is rapidly changing now to some degree or another, but if you could comment on that.

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Sure, well, to say at first, I think at the universities, in their history they've had waves of time where they've been more adverse to it than not, but well, my own exposure to the understanding of God's sovereignty and salvation grew first in high school, where I had teachers at the

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Christian school I went to who would teach about these things, and occasionally I'd listen to other pastors and those on the radio.

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So by the time I came into college, I had pretty much come to be convicted about doctrines of election and predestination, still not really hammering out all of the details.

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But when I was at BJU, I should say that my favorite professor, the one who probably impacted me the most in terms of my desire to study, was

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Dr. Michael Barrick, who at the time was a Free Presbyterian.

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I'm not sure if he's still associated with the Free Presbyterians or not, he's now at the Geneva Reform Seminary in Grand Rapids.

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Oh, in Grand Rapids, okay, because there is a Geneva Seminary in South Carolina that's run by the

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Free Presbyterians. Right, right. You know, the one in Grand Rapids, the

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Puritan Reform is the one I'm thinking of. Oh, okay, all right, yeah. Jill Beeke founded that one.

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I've had him on the program many times. Geneva Reform is the name of the one, or Geneva is the one in Greenville, correct?

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So Dr. Barrick's love for the Scripture, and particularly the Old Testament, was really instrumental in my life, so much so that I dedicated myself to the study of Hebrew, which

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I know is ironic that my first published book is about the New Testament, but Dr.

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Barrick's focus on Scripture was just very contagious, and I wanted to understand more of the

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Old Testament. I really didn't have many discussions with him in class or in person about matters of systematic theology, but I did admire his willingness to be, in some ways, a fish out of water at BJU.

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Yeah, that is an interesting love affair that BJU has had with the Free Presbyterian Church, and Ian Paisley, even though Paisley and that denomination is thoroughly

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Calvinistic. Yes, it is curious, and Paisley and Bob Jones Jr.,

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who was really, I guess you would say, a half -point Calvinist or a four -and -a -half -point

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Arminian, were quite close friends, so they were,

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I guess, co -belligerents in some way, so that seemed to be part of the commonality.

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Well, we have to hear, obviously, about this book that you have. It's only in digital form right now, but visual outline charts of the

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New Testament, what led you to develop this work, and tell us more about the details and the purpose of it.

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These were charts that grew out of the adult Bible class here at our church. About five years ago,

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I began teaching a series of surveys through the New Testament, and I was trying to think of some way to visually show the whole of the book on a single page, so that I could walk through the text and people could see where the individual verses what they belong to, what line of argument they belong to in the book.

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So, I had first developed some outline charts for a class I was thrown into about seven or eight years ago.

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One of my colleagues at the seminary had to take sudden medical leave, and I was thrown into his

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Isaiah class, and I was probably over my head, but one of the things

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I put together was a series of charts showing the structure of the book of Isaiah. So, I sort of cut my teeth making these charts in that course.

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But back at church, in the adult Bible class, I started creating single -page landscape charts using color and gradations of color to guide your eye through the chart to show the main structure of the book, main divisions, subdivisions, and to give a phrase or a clause to summarize each of the paragraphs of that.

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So, over time, those grew and developed. I started posting them on Facebook and was getting a lot of positive feedback from pastor friends and former students.

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And a friend of mine, a former student from Bob Jones, actually, who's a

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PCA pastor in West Virginia, he was the first one that encouraged me to pursue publication. So, there were some representatives from Broadman and Holman at the seminary for Shepherd's Conference one year, and I showed them a few of the charts, and they reacted positively right away, and within a few months, they'd given me a contract to finish out the

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New Testament. So, what was originally envisioned as 27 charts grew into about 70 as I decided to enlarge the charts, especially for larger books like Romans and, of course, the

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Gospels and things like that. Well, I want to read a commendation for this work by John MacArthur.

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John MacArthur says about this book, Visual Outline Charts of the

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New Testament, it is my conviction that the Bible is not difficult for the believing heart to understand, and the more we understand, the more unshakable our conviction that the

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Bible is the living, authoritative, inerrant Word of God. The more I study it, the more

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I hunger to know. That is why I am grateful for the efforts of Scott Bashor and the fine work he has done in producing these outline charts.

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Their unique style and detailed content provide an excellent study tool for pastors and laypeople alike.

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They're an important resource, and it is my prayer that they will be used of the

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Lord to bless many. That's Dr. John MacArthur, president of the Master's Seminary and, of course, the radio and television speaker for Grace to You Ministries, and world -renowned author and conference speaker and pastor of Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, California.

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Well, I know that we are going to be addressing today the

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Book of Romans. When and why did Paul write it? This is one of the pivotal books in regard to the

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Protestant Reformation. It was one of the areas of the

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New Testament that were key in the conversion of Martin Luther and many who have made an exodus out of Rome before and after him and, in fact, probably alongside the

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Book of Galatians and Ephesians and the Gospel of John, probably the most frequently referred to books in the

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New Testament when a discussion or debate arises over the doctrines of sovereign grace, over the doctrines of election, unconditional election, and, of course, justification by faith alone.

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But tell us about this book, because I understand one of the reasons why you wanted to include in this discussion when

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Paul wrote the book. You are of the opinion, and I'm assuming this is a widely held opinion amongst biblical scholars, that the books that we find in the

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New Testament are not according to the chronological order that they were originally written, and that would include debunks

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Paul's epistles. That's right, yes. In fact, one of the things that I include in the back of my book, in the appendix, is a chart that shows the order of books as we have them now in our

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Bibles, with a note that explains that that order is a logical arrangement of the books, but not at all, well, not much at all a chronological arrangement.

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That it's not an inspired order in which we have them, it's a way that the

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Church through time has organized this library of the New Testament. So, for instance, in one of the charts

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I have dealing with the traditional arrangement of the New Testament books, you see that all of Paul's letters are grouped first by letters he wrote to churches,

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Romans, 1st Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians, and so on, and then the last four of his are letters written to Church leaders, individuals like Timothy and Titus and Tylema.

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And almost in every case in those two categories, subcategories of Paul's letters, in almost every case, the books are arranged by order of length.

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So Romans, which we have listed as the first epistle, is in the

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Greek text over 7 ,000 words, whereas 1st Corinthians is about 6 ,800

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Greek words, and 2nd Corinthians is quite a bit smaller, 4 ,500 Greek words.

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So there seems to be a sense in which his letters have been arranged for the last millennium or so by order of their length.

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And I suppose you could say there's some order of significance in that Romans is Paul's most extensive treatment of doctrine, particularly the doctrine of justification and God's plan for the ages.

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But that's helpful, because sometimes believers will, they're flipping through their Bibles and they just logically assume, or they shouldn't say logically, they just assume that, well,

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Romans must be the first letter that Paul wrote, because this is the first one that we have in our

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Bibles. But this arrangement of the letters is only about a millennium old.

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If you were able to get a hold of a Bible a thousand years ago, it probably would go from Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and then you would have

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James, followed by what we call the general epistles, and then

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Paul's letters would be toward the end. But over time, particularly

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Archbishop Langton in the 1300s was responsible for putting the order of the

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New Testament books in the arrangement that we now have. And let's see, we already have some listeners that are eager to have their questions asked and answered, and if anybody else would like to join them, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com, and please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

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Obviously if you have a personal and private matter that you want to ask a question about, let's say you disagree with your pastor on some theological issue in regard to our discussion, or you disagree with your spouse, or whatever the reason is, or if it's about a particular biblical area that has an impact on your life that is regarding a personal and private matter that you would feel much more comfortable remaining anonymous, we will honor that request.

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But if it's not about a personal and private matter, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

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We have Gordy in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says, can you summarize the role of an amanuensis and why it appears that the book of Romans is the only one he used, meaning

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Paul, or at least mentions an assistant? Wow.

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Well, that's a great question. I'm not sure I'm prepared to answer that in the depth that would satisfy your listener.

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It obviously is a lengthy work, and I would imagine that just having someone on hand to assist in the writing of such a large work would be tremendously helpful.

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Whether or not his amanuensis adds anything stylistically or content -wise,

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I think it's a very different matter, and I tend to be less open to those ideas.

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But I'm certain you would agree that whatever wound up on that amanuensis's paper, that was something

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God breathed. Absolutely, yeah. So if a conservative approach to the use of amanuensis was,

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I don't know how you would call it, maybe a dual inspiration, you know, through the mind of Paul, from the

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Spirit into the hand of the amanuensis. There are a few other spots where it's wondered if an author as an amanuensis, you know, 1

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Peter's style is noticeably different from 2 Peter, and at the end of 1

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Peter he acknowledges, you know, a brother who's bringing the letter. Some have wondered if maybe that was an amanuensis involved in 1

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Peter, because the style sounds more Pauline. But even there I'm not persuaded of that.

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I think the change in style from 1 Peter to 2 Peter is more due to the circumstances in which

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Peter was. He's now, I believe, a prisoner, and writing in a more urgent tone and more rhetorical tone.

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But I don't know that I can give your listener a really firm answer for what they're wondering about with Rome himself.

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And perhaps you could even, it might be helpful for our listeners to have some understanding of how the scriptures wound up from God's heart through Paul's mind to an amanuensis' pen to paper.

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There are religions, like the religion of Islam, if I'm not mistaken, the way that they understand the

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Quran coming into being is that Muhammad was merely just like a stenographer, or he was just spitting out words directly,

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Allah was spitting out words directly through Muhammad, and somebody was writing it for him, I believe that was the story that they have, or is the story.

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But that is not what we believe the scriptures, we don't believe that that is the methodology

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God has used to bring us the scriptures, am I right? That's right, yeah. You know, there are some portions of scripture that you could say were dictated, you know, there are some instances where the script, the text will say, and the

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Lord said, and then you have a direct quote from the Lord himself. But generally speaking, it doesn't seem that the

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Spirit used the dictation method when it came to inspiring writers to compose sacred scripture.

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There was this work of the Spirit through their minds, through using their own words, and communicating their own thoughts, yet it ends up being exactly what

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God has ordained, and inspired, and fallible, and inerrant. It's something of a mystery, we can't replicate it, and I don't think we can fully explain it either.

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I heard a sermon recently, while I was preparing for a sermon of my own,

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I just recently preached, in fact last Sunday I preached, at the Bethesda Mission, which is a homeless shelter for men who, many of whom are battling substance abuse and so on, and being a former abuser of alcohol to a very extreme and serious degree, and having been delivered from that,

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I have a very big place in my heart for ministries like that, and my church from time to time, the church where I'm a member,

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Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, asked me to preach at that mission, and in preparing for my own message on Matthew 22 verses 1 through 14, the parable of the marriage feast,

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I was listening to Stephen Lawson's message on that very same text, and he said something very funny that kind of relates to what we're talking about.

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He was like basically describing an overall summary of the passages in Matthew 22 from 1 to 13, about basically it being a summary of the history of redemption, where you have in the

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Old Testaments, the Old Testament prophets being ignored and rejected and persecuted by the nation of Israel, and then you have in the

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New Covenant the same thing happening with the treatment of not only

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John the Baptist being beheaded, but Jesus Christ being crucified and his apostles being martyred, and then you have, you know, the story of the man being at the wedding feast without a wedding garment, signifying somebody who was not clothed in the righteousness of Christ, but merely wearing his own righteousness, which is not good enough for anyone to enter into the kingdom of heaven.

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And then Stephen J. Lawson says, and then we come to verse 14, for many are called, but few are chosen.

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What is this, a footnote by A .W. Pink? He says

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God has to throw that in there. But there is,

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I'm assuming, some realm of mystery that is involved in what exactly does it mean that God used the personality and minds of human authors to bring about his

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God -breathed truth on paper? Yes. You know, there's been a long -used illustration in our

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Bible -bleeding circles about wind blowing through different instruments. The same musician, for instance, picking up a trumpet, the sound is different than that same musician blows through a flute, and that these different instruments could be likened to the human authors of Scripture, while the

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Spirit is the breath which is coming through them. And I think that's a helpful illustration, if not a perfect one.

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You know, each of these writers of Scripture, they are aware of some particular situation involving the people to whom they're writing, particularly in the epistles.

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You know, you don't get an epistle written to you unless there's a problem. In fact, let's pick up right where we left off there.

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That's an important point. You don't have an epistle written unless there's a problem, and we have to go to a station break right now.

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So anybody else who would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

34:39

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And I believe, Scott, you have a methodology by which our listeners who submit questions can receive a special code by which they will get a free digital copy of your book today?

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That's right. Yes, I can email out a rejection code and instructions where you can get your own copy of the digital outline charts.

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Now, will this be one code that you'll be sending to me, or are you going to be sending it individually to the listeners that win? Whichever you prefer.

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I can do either. I guess it would be easiest for you to just send me one code and let all of my listeners that submit questions win the book.

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Sure. Okay. Well, we're going to be right back, God willing, after these messages. So if you want to email us a question of your own, it's chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. God willing, we'll be right back with Scott Bessure.

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We hope that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio blesses you for many years to come. Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, inviting you to tune in to A Visit to the

39:25

Pastor's Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio, www .wlie540am

39:37

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

39:45

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon

39:51

Eastern Time for A Visit to the Pastor's Study, because everyone needs a pastor. Welcome back.

39:56

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned in today, our guest today is Scott Bashore, who is our guest for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go.

40:06

He is pastor of Bible Church of Buena Park, California, and a faculty associate at the

40:11

Master's Seminary, and he is also the author of visual outline charts of the

40:17

New Testament. We are addressing the theme, The Book of Romans, When and Why Did Paul Write It?

40:23

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

40:29

that's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

40:41

USA. We have Andrew in Avon Lake, Ohio, who says,

40:49

I'm a long -time listener and a first -time questioner for Iron Trip and Zion Radio. I'd like to ask

40:55

Scott what commentaries or other resources he finds helpful in the study of Romans.

41:03

Wow. Well, of course, there's such a huge corpus of books for the

41:09

Book of Romans. I think there's almost more written on that book than just about any other one in the

41:16

New Testament. I've been helped by, of course,

41:23

I have to mention my president, Dr. MacArthur's commentary, which is, of course, more of an expositional level treatment of the word.

41:33

But Thomas Schreiner's work in the Baker Exegetical Commentary, I found that to be quite useful.

41:40

And Schreiner writes so well and clearly and does a great job of bringing together a lot of the different viewpoints and helping you sort through exegetical issues.

41:51

So that's one right off the top of my mind. Okay, well, thank you very much.

42:02

Guess what, Andrew? Not only are you getting the digital format or the digital edition, which right now is the only edition, of the visual outline charts of the

42:13

New Testament by our guest Scott Bashore. Not only are you getting that, but since you are a first -time questioner, you're also getting a free

42:22

New American Standard Bible, complements of the publishers of the

42:28

NASB who have been sponsoring Iron Sharpens Iron Radio ever since we first launched on the air in the early years of 2000, about 2005 -2006, somewhere in that area.

42:45

It was a time of our history that we were not even digitally recording our interviews.

42:57

So at that time, we have a lot of those earliest interviews that are forever lost, unfortunately, unless there are listeners out there that recorded them at home on their own cassette recorders.

43:08

But thank the speed of God, we do have still a very huge archive of programming going all the way back to 2007, at least.

43:20

And we thank all of those who are involved in archiving those programs for us.

43:26

We are very much in the debt of the publishers of the New American Standard Bible, so keep your eye open for that package in the mail with the

43:36

New American Standard Bible, and also you'll be getting by email the digital version of visual outline charts of the

43:44

New Testament. And we need your full mailing address, by the way, for the Bible. So thank you very much for submitting that question.

43:53

And we have Joe in Slovenia who has a question.

43:59

Joe says, I've recently read two authors putting forth the claim that because Paul used amanuensis, say that 10 times fast, having traveled or had traveling ministry partners who also wrote scripture,

44:14

Luke and John Mark, and he names ministry partners who are with him in his greetings and salutations in his letters.

44:22

The letters that we attribute to him are really collaborative efforts. They postulate that because the

44:28

Eastern mindset is more predisposed to group behavior than the Western mindset, we have failed to see that Paul's ministry team collaborated in a group effort to jointly produce the letter to the

44:42

What does Brother Scott think of this claim? Does internal and external evidence support or contradict this idea?

44:51

Thank you, brothers, for edifying us today in the study of God's Word. Well, that's a question that touches into some technical matters of style at the very least, as well as theories about ancient composition.

45:05

I wouldn't say that that viewpoint is impossible, but I've not been convinced that, let's say,

45:12

Luke or Mark or someone else, or Tertius, who is credited at the end of Romans, have a significant play in formulating the particular expressions.

45:24

Of course, Paul is teaching his own people and traveling around, so I think they are more likely to be influenced by him than the other way around.

45:37

In fact, I think that part of a large purpose for Luke's writing his

45:42

Gospel and the Book of Acts is to provide a kind of authentication for the ministry of Paul, to explain that what

45:51

Paul was doing in running around the empire, speaking to Gentiles and establishing churches largely populated by Gentiles, that this was, in fact, the work of God, something ordained from ages past.

46:05

So is Luke influencing Paul, or is Paul influencing Luke? I would tend to see it more the other way.

46:12

Paul speaks of himself as being uniquely called and uniquely gifted for this ministry of being an apostle to the

46:19

Gentiles. So I want to give him his due while recognizing that he grows in his understanding of God's revelation and the company of those who he's with, but I'd rather give him more his due than diversify credit.

46:38

Well, thank you, Joe, in Slovenia, and keep your eye open in your inbox, in your email inbox, for the digital version of the book that we are describing today, that we are touching on today by our guest,

46:54

Scott Bashor, and that is the book, Visual Outline Charts of the

47:00

New Testament, which is only in a digital format right now. So thank you very much for contributing such a great question all the way from Slovenia.

47:10

Let's see, we have another listener, and I have to enlarge this font of the listener because it's microscopic.

47:23

It's a small question. Let's see here, we have

47:35

CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, and CJ says,

47:44

How do you understand the book of Romans in Romans 9 that clearly seems to indicate to us who are

47:54

Calvinists that God has a special people that he elects to himself unconditionally, and as opposed to those who are an opposition to Calvinism who takes this view in regard to nations?

48:10

Well, I don't see those two so much in contradiction with each other.

48:17

Now, I'll show my cards and say that I'm a premillennialist, and I believe that God in his sovereignty is ordained to save a future generation of Jews and bring them into everlasting glory.

48:31

But his selecting of nations and individuals is really all part of the same sovereign mind, sovereign plan.

48:42

So I do know, though, that those who are not particularly favorable towards doctrines of election and predestination of individuals for salvation, they are going to gravitate towards the view in Romans 9 that it's only about large people groups, and it's not individuals differentiated.

49:03

But I don't think that you have to put those two concepts together against each other so harshly.

49:13

Yeah, in fact, I don't know how someone who is an opponent to the doctrines of sovereign grace or Calvinism escapes the unique love of God over one as opposed to another.

49:29

How on earth they think they escape it by making individuals not the focus of attention, but masses of humanity, you know,

49:40

I mean, entire nations. How does it make anybody feel better if God hates nations and loves other nations?

49:47

That's right, that's right, yeah. Yeah, it's a way of, I think, kind of diverting away or clouding something that is thought to be controversial.

49:59

Well, thank you very much, C .J., and keep your eyes open for this digital version of visual outline charts of the

50:08

New Testament that will be sent to you via email, God willing, by this evening.

50:15

And, well, tell us more about the main focus that you believe the

50:20

Apostle Paul had when he wrote the book of Romans or his letter to the Church at Rome.

50:26

Sure. Well, and I'll back up a little bit to talk about the sequence of the letters.

50:33

You know, I would say that Romans is maybe the eighth, ninth book of the

50:41

New Testament that's composed, written around 56 A .D., and what's happened is

50:48

Paul has been touring around, he's been establishing churches, and then having to come back and do reform work in churches.

50:57

You know, we talk about the Reformation of the 1500s, but we forget that there was a lot of Reformation that had to happen in the first century.

51:05

You know, you look at the Church of Corinth and a place where Paul had spent a very significant amount of time, a year and a half, laboring there, and it turns into this horrific mess.

51:19

So, over a course of years, Paul is having correspondence with the Corinthians and trying to sort it out and making visits, and finally, after 2

51:28

Corinthians, which he writes in around A .D. 55, he comes back to Corinth and things are getting more stable.

51:37

And it's while he's there at Corinth that he seems to hear about some troubles at the great church in Rome.

51:44

And even though he's not been to that church before, he knows people from that church, and he understands the pivotal role that the

51:53

Roman church can have. So he is led by the Spirit to write this tremendous letter to Christians in Rome to help these

52:04

Jew and Gentile believers sort out the differences that they're having. Now, the differences seem to have come about due to some issues in politics.

52:14

You know, in A .D. 49, Emperor Claudius expels all of the

52:19

Jews out of Rome, and that included Jewish Christians who had already been active there in their church.

52:27

And it appears that the Roman church had been predominantly Jewish with a fair number of Gentiles, but after Claudius kicks out the

52:37

Jews, including Priscilla and Aquila, whom Paul had met at Corinth in A .D.

52:43

51, the

52:49

Jews are gone, and now the church is very different. It's all Gentile. When Nero comes to the throne, one of the first things he does is reverse a lot of the policies of the previous emperor, which is not unlike what happens in American politics, it seems.

53:06

And so he rescinds the ban on Jews, and many of these

53:11

Jewish Christians are now free to return to Rome. They come back into the Roman church, and it is quite different.

53:20

Paul mentions later in the book of Romans this issue about food and drink, and I don't think that that's an afterthought.

53:29

I think those practical issues that Paul goes after in chapters 12 and 13 and 14 and 15, those are the situation that had led him, that he's led by the

53:45

Spirit to address. You know, some of the favorite foods in the Roman diet were shellfish and pork.

53:54

And can you imagine if you're a Jewish Christian, and you've been away from the Roman church for a while, and you come back, and boy, the potlucks are awfully different now.

54:08

And I can't help but have them think in their minds if there was a pig on that spit, boy, they smell a lot better, too.

54:19

So it seems like you've got, after that return, you have Jewish Christians who are sort of sticking together, perhaps isolating themselves, you have

54:31

Gentile Christians who aren't sure what to make about these Jewish believers with these hang -ups, and there's some judgmentalism going around.

54:39

And Paul has seen in Corinth firsthand the devastation of schism, and I believe that he is concerned that the

54:49

Roman problem not grow and become another Corinth. Now, to the

54:57

Romans' benefit, they have a lot more spiritual maturity going for them than the

55:03

Corinthian church had. But overall, these Jew and Gentile believers in Rome are a far more spiritual lot than the folks there on the

55:13

Greek peninsula. And Paul will say of the Romans, for instance, that he's confident that they're able to admonish one another.

55:23

Well, I can't imagine him saying that about the Corinthians. That's a state in which they were in, there probably were some individuals there who could, but they were generally not a mature church.

55:36

You know, Paul, when he writes Romans, will have long, long stretches of argument going in through ins and outs.

55:44

When you read the Corinthian letters, he can't do that. They don't have the mind yet to absorb that.

55:50

So you have doctrine, and then he pauses, goes to application, and back to doctrine, and back to application.

55:57

Whereas in Romans, you know, the first 11 chapters are more discourse -oriented, and he doesn't get to practical matters until chapter 12.

56:07

In fact, we have to pick up, we're right there, because we have to go to another station break. And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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01:02:27

Join us this Saturday at 12 noon eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs a pastor.

01:02:34

Welcome back. This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today is Scott Bashor, pastor of Bible Church of Buena Park, California, faculty associate at the

01:02:43

Master's Seminary, contributor to the Lexham Bible Dictionary, and author of Visual Outline Charts of the

01:02:50

New Testament. Today we are discussing the Book of Romans, when and why did Paul write it?

01:02:56

And we are going to be returning to our discussion with Scott momentarily, but we have a few important events to announce by some of our sponsors.

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The theme is For Still Our Ancient Foe, obviously referring to Satan from the line of the classic hymn

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A Mighty Fortress by Martin Luther. The speakers include Kent Hughes, Peter Jones, Tom Nettles, Dennis Cahill, and Scott Oliphant.

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If you would like to join me at that conference, go to alliancenet .org, alliancenet .org,

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click on events, and then click on Quakertown Conference on Reform Theology. And then we have coming up in January, from the 17th through the 20th, the

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01:08:42

We are now back to our discussion with Scott Bashore of Bible Church of Buena Park, California, and the

01:08:49

Master's Seminary. We are discussing the Book of Romans, when and why did Paul write it? And I believe when we left off,

01:08:56

Scott, we were talking about how the epistles came to be because of problems in the church, and there was only a certain period of time when there was more practical information given.

01:09:06

Am I correct on that? Yes, that's right. Yeah, you know, I don't think that Paul was sitting in Corinth and just musing on matters of theology and doctrine and the

01:09:18

Gospel and thought, I want to write a treatise, where am I going to send this? You know, just send it off to Rome.

01:09:25

I should say that there is a viewpoint about the purpose of Romans that Paul's purpose is primarily evangelistic, that he has written this as a treatise and mailed it, as it were, into the heart of the

01:09:38

Roman Empire, with the view that it'll be circulated and have an impact in the imperial city.

01:09:45

And I can't deny that that might be a purpose that Paul has in mind, but I don't think it's the main purpose.

01:09:53

Paul is writing this letter to Christians. It's an exposition of the

01:09:58

Gospel to believers, and he's trying to help these Jewish and Gentile believers understand what they share together in their common experience in the

01:10:09

Gospel. And he begins by talking about the common problem that they have, which is depravity and the judgment of God, which hangs over both

01:10:19

Jew and Gentile because of sin. And after, of course, speaking about that at great length, very famously in the first second half of chapter one, all of chapter two, and much of chapter three, he then focuses on the single solution that they have, which is righteousness through God's justification.

01:10:42

That's the same experience of justification that they all go through in their salvation, whether they're

01:10:49

Jewish or Gentile. They don't have different methods of salvation. And even their experience in sanctification, how they grow in godliness, which he discusses in chapters six through eight, they have a common plan for that.

01:11:04

There's not some separate way that Jewish believers become holy versus the way

01:11:10

Gentile believers become holy. The Gospel has paved one path for them all, and the more they understand their common experience of Christ in the

01:11:20

Gospel, the more strength they'll have and the more informed mindset they'll have to live in love with each other and to deal with each other's differences and hang -ups and backgrounds and the like.

01:11:34

You know, all of this is a part of the sovereign plan, bringing Jew and Gentile together, and of course in chapters nine, ten, and eleven, the last part of the, if you will, the doctrinal part of the book,

01:11:45

Paul explains how, you know, this turning of the Lord unto the Gentiles and bringing them to salvation is all part of the majestic plan.

01:11:55

This is not some accident, and the Lord has a plan to bring them together, even has a plan,

01:12:01

I believe, to bring to himself a generation of Jews at the end of days.

01:12:07

But once they have a shared understanding of what God does for sinners in Jesus Christ, regardless of their background, the more they focus on that, the more empowered and transformed they can be to love each other, deal with their differences, use their gifts for one another, and really be a unified church to the glory of God.

01:12:32

Amen. We have Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania, who asks, the Church of Rome makes much of the fact that Peter is the first bishop of Rome, and in their minds, meaning the first pope.

01:12:47

But isn't it true that we have no record of Peter ever entering into Rome, and it was only the

01:12:53

Apostle Paul that we are aware of in regard to the writers of any book in Scripture who actually was in Rome and wrote the letter to the

01:13:02

Church of Rome that we are discussing? Well, I will certainly join her in decrying the idea of the papacy, the idea that Peter was elevated as some earthly lord over the

01:13:17

Church of Rome, contrary to Scripture. But I don't think to object to that false doctrine of the

01:13:24

Roman Catholic Church that we have to use the argument that Peter himself never was in Rome.

01:13:29

I actually think there's some good evidence that he was. Really? Yeah, I'm of the mindset that in 1

01:13:37

Peter, when he speaks about she who is in Babylon, greets you that he's speaking euphemistically about Rome, and that he's been laboring there in the

01:13:51

Church of Rome. Peter is certainly familiar with Paul's writings, and if he's in Rome for some time, he's gotten a big one right there that he's been exposed to.

01:14:03

So, yeah, I'm no friend of the idea of papal supremacy whatsoever, but I don't feel constrained to use that kind of historical argument to undercut it.

01:14:16

Right. And as I have said, and I've heard others say before, that if indeed the

01:14:24

New Testament did teach that there was a papacy, and of course it doesn't, but if it did, it would be much more likely

01:14:30

Paul would be that person than the Apostle Peter. That's right. That's right.

01:14:36

Yes, indeed. Yeah. Why do you think that the

01:14:41

Book of Romans, or explain to our listeners why the Book of Romans is so pivotal in the

01:14:48

Reformation, and why so many in that period and before and after have left the

01:14:57

Church of Rome because of this letter to the Romans? Well, I think it's easy for us to see some concerns that Paul has about Jewish notions of righteousness, that some within First Century Judaism, maybe not all of them, but some of them have the idea that salvation is something to be obtained through observance of a law.

01:15:22

And the Reformers rightly saw that traditional

01:15:27

Christendom had slid into a new kind of Judaism, that it wasn't observance of the

01:15:34

Mosaic law, per se, but it was the observance of Church traditions and the calendar, and of course this false notion that if you strain enough to be righteous and you gain enough merit that you secure for yourself salvation.

01:15:51

So the Reformers rightly saw some parallels between their experience in Medieval Church and the kind of Jewish works righteousness that Paul goes after in Romans.

01:16:04

Now, I have to say that the new perspective on Paul, which has become popular in some academic circles, would strongly disagree with that and say that, you know, the

01:16:14

Reformers erred in reading their situation into the Book of Romans, but I think there's been too much overplay about, or I should say, let's put it this way, they've diminished too much the idea that there was a not a works righteousness approach amongst

01:16:33

Jews in the first century. You know, Judaism in the first century was not monolithic.

01:16:38

There were different movements and pockets, but you can't read the Gospels and even epistles like Romans and not get this idea that there are

01:16:48

Jews who think that by being rigidly observant to the law that somehow they're going to obtain merit with the

01:16:55

Lord. Add to that their sense of national election as well. Yes, and that new perspective theory, which

01:17:06

I believe is very dangerous, it would even say in Paul's letter to the

01:17:12

Galatians that adding works to faith for our justification had nothing to do with Paul's letter to Galatia, to the church in Galatia.

01:17:24

They will say that the real core of the sin of the

01:17:30

Judaizers was merely making Christianity an exclusively Jewish club, but anything else in regard to works had nothing to do with what

01:17:39

Paul was talking about. That's a bit absurd, isn't it? Sure, right, right. Well, I mean, this whole idea of making it

01:17:46

Jewish, how do you as a Gentile become a Jew? Well, it's through the work of, in their case, the work of circumcision.

01:17:55

I mean, how does that not become some sort of work of obedience? And it goes beyond that, of course, as well, the idea of keeping the

01:18:07

Jewish diet and just this multiplication of rules and the tendency within rabbinic

01:18:14

Judaism later on, you know, to add rule upon rule upon rule to sort of cordon off the law. You can imagine that's taking place outside of Palestine in different shapes and ways as well.

01:18:25

But obviously the Apostle Paul was opposed to even any kind of a work, not even just works confined to the ceremonial

01:18:35

Jewish law. It was combining works in order to merit eternal life that he was opposed to, regardless of what kind of works those were.

01:18:44

Now, I'm not obviously siding with those who are antinomian or who have a belief in repentant -less

01:18:55

Christianity or salvation. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about those who believe that your works are actually in some way meritorious, even if requiring some kind of a false notion of provenient grace.

01:19:14

I mean, Paul seemed to be pretty general in his condemnation about works being viewed as meritorious.

01:19:21

That's right, that's right, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a blade that cuts against the

01:19:26

Gentile moralist as well, you know, about the direction of his moralism as running in different directions.

01:19:35

And in fact, my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor, had brought up during the break that it is interesting that not only many today assume that the

01:19:48

Apostle Paul wrote the book of Hebrews. Reverend Buzz Taylor, you were mentioning that the earliest

01:19:54

Christians seemed to think he did. Well, I was just mentioning to Chris that, you know, I have a list.

01:20:01

I've got a little day planner here. One of the pages has the list of the original order of the

01:20:06

Bible. And of course, as you were reading off the books of the New Testament, I was looking at my list and saying, yep, that's right, that's exactly what

01:20:11

I got here. But I was just showing Chris that right in the middle of the epistles of Paul to the churches and the ones to the individuals is the book of Hebrews.

01:20:22

Yes. And do you have any theory on that? I know that, like, for instance, my friend, my longtime friend,

01:20:30

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, he is fairly convinced it was not

01:20:36

Paul. He believes that it may have been Luke that wrote the letter to the

01:20:41

Hebrews. And he also, and another person that I know, a female

01:20:47

Christian author, Dr. Latane C. Scott, who is not egalitarian, she's a complementarian, but she has a theory that, believe it or not, it may have been

01:20:58

Priscilla that wrote the book of Hebrews. But do you have any theories of your own? Whoever it is, if someone who knows about Paul's ministry, we can take that for sure.

01:21:13

I'm persuaded, I'll not say convinced, but I'm persuaded it's not Paul, but someone quotes in his orbit of things.

01:21:23

I can't quite bring myself to say it's Luke, although I appreciate the argument that's been made for that, especially in recent years.

01:21:33

It's interesting to see that viewpoint gaining some traction. I think that the idea that it's

01:21:39

Priscilla, sometimes the argument is made that the anonymity of the book was partly due to female authorship.

01:21:50

But I don't know. You know, when I surveyed through Hebrews at church, as well as at the seminary,

01:21:59

I'll lay out all of these arguments and then just say, God in his wisdom knows.

01:22:06

Well, the only thing I ever heard about it being a woman was because at the end of this long epistle, it says,

01:22:12

I have written to you briefly. And send your letters of complaint to Reverend Buzz Taylor.

01:22:23

No, not to Iron Sherpins Iron, to Reverend Buzz Taylor. I'm tempted to actually give your actual mailing address out.

01:22:31

But just out of curiosity, when it comes to allegedly

01:22:36

Priscilla writing Hebrews, this is kind of off topic, but just for a quick answer, is there anything in the

01:22:45

God -breathed scriptures that would rule that out, that would rule a female author of a book of scripture out?

01:22:54

Even if you take the strictest of complementarian views and are opposed to egalitarianism, could a woman have written a book of the

01:23:04

Bible? Well, I suppose that obstacle I have to the idea is that it seems to run aground to the idea of a woman not exercising authority over a man in teaching.

01:23:18

The letters are instructive. They are didactic. And while it's not the same, you could be argued it's not the same as someone standing in a congregation and teaching, this seems to be something even more than that.

01:23:35

You know, this is inspired scripture. This is the kind of thing that will be taught within the churches.

01:23:43

So I don't want to, I guess I'm going to hedge and say I don't want to slam the door airtight, but it feels to me like the door is closing in on that option because of the concept of male leadership within the church.

01:23:59

We have an email from, I don't know if it's Lagos or Lagos, Nigeria.

01:24:05

Do you know how to pronounce that? You got me. Okay, well it's L -A -G -O -S,

01:24:11

Lagos, Nigeria. Our listener there, who I know is in a reformed

01:24:16

Baptist church in that area. In fact, it might be the only reformed Baptist church in Nigeria.

01:24:21

Osinachi, and I don't know if it's Osinaki or Osinachi or none of those or neither of those.

01:24:28

So forgive me if I'm mispronouncing your name, Osinachi, but he says, hello,

01:24:34

Chris, can your guest please give his view on the right interpretation of Romans 7?

01:24:40

I am assuming he is talking about Paul, whether he is viewing himself in that sinful state prior to his regeneration or after in a present sense, in a present tense when he is writing it.

01:24:57

Yes, well, your listeners are all queued in to some of the difficult passages, aren't they?

01:25:07

What did you say, Buzz? I said we're finally going to get it right here now. Have I talked about my other charts?

01:25:14

No. You know,

01:25:20

I'll be honest to say that the screws are not entirely nailed down.

01:25:26

They're not entirely tight for me on what to do with that. I think every view has something to latch onto in interpreting what

01:25:36

Paul is describing. But for now, I bend toward the view that Paul is describing his post -conversion experience, and in particular, describing his perhaps early attempts to grow in his sanctification by means of observance to Jewish law.

01:25:59

He had been so steeped in Pharisaic understanding of things, and been gloriously saved and transformed, but it seems like, for a time, he tries to make a go of things by holding on to some old observances, and he just finds this to be a miserable, horrible failure.

01:26:20

In fact, let me just quickly read the verses in question here in Romans 7, 14 and following.

01:26:29

We have, For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am a flesh sold into bondage to sin.

01:26:37

For what I am doing I do not understand, for I am not practicing what I would like to do.

01:26:43

But I am doing the very thing I hate. But if you do the very thing I do not want to do,

01:26:50

I agree with the law, confessing that the law is good. So now no longer am

01:26:56

I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh.

01:27:06

For the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.

01:27:12

For the good that I want I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.

01:27:18

But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.

01:27:26

I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.

01:27:32

For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of which is my members.

01:27:49

Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death?

01:27:55

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other with my flesh the law of sin.

01:28:07

And my contribution as to my thoughts on that, how or why would there even be a battle going on if this is a pre -regenerate person?

01:28:20

Why would there be any struggle going on? People who are unregenerate typically are just those who have surrendered and are enslaved by sin.

01:28:31

There's no real battle it seems going on. That's right, yeah. Now in fairness to that viewpoint,

01:28:39

I will say that some want to say that, you know, maybe the first half of Romans 7 before verse 14 is pre -conversion, and I don't know.

01:28:47

I think you're right that Paul's describing the condition of someone who's been enlightened to the problem of their sin and to the beauty of salvation in Christ and growing in righteousness, but that there's this struggle that's brought about by something.

01:29:05

You know, a few of the interpreted battles or difficulties with this section is the first answer is

01:29:12

Paul's truly speaking autobiographically here. Right, right. Or is he speaking generically?

01:29:18

Because earlier in the book he'll say I and me, but it's obvious that he's speaking in the abstract, you know, like one or someone.

01:29:29

So do you think that he was speaking about himself when he referred to himself as the chief of sinners? I think there

01:29:36

I do, yes, in 1 Timothy. Yeah, I don't think he's being abstract in that spot.

01:29:46

And the tremendous humility on his part that the Lord had worked into his heart, understanding the gravity of his sin before.

01:29:53

But here in chapter 7 of Romans, I do think this is autobiographical. You know, another issue is what does he mean by the law?

01:30:02

Is he talking about law in broader categories? Is he speaking about, you know, the moral dimension of the law of Moses?

01:30:11

Is he speaking more broadly about the law of God in general terms? Or is it the

01:30:17

Mosaic law that was given to the Jews for ceremonial observance and the like?

01:30:23

So those are all some hard things that have to be sorted out. And when he refers to this body of death in verse 24 of Romans 7.

01:30:40

Are you there, brother? Scott? Hello, Scott.

01:30:45

We have been disconnected from Scott. Well, hopefully Scott will call back and we're going to go to our final break now anyway, because it's time.

01:30:52

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:31:01

Don't go away. God willing, we'll be back with Scott Bashor right after these messages.

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01:35:31

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01:35:38

Welcome back, this is Chris Arnson. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the last 90 minutes and the following half hour has been and will continue to be

01:35:47

Scott Bashor, pastor of Bible Church of Buena Park, California, and faculty associate at the

01:35:53

Master's Seminary, and author of Visual Outline Charts of the New Testament. We are discussing today the book of Romans, when and why did

01:36:01

Paul write it? And our email address, if you'd like to join us with a question of your own, is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:36:08

chrisarnson at gmail .com, but you better hurry up because we are rapidly running out of time if you want to submit your own question.

01:36:13

Before you get cut off, Scott, and I'm assuming that's you on the line. Yes, it's me. I'm sorry about that.

01:36:19

Would you believe someone sent me a text to say that they were enjoying the show, and I think my phone couldn't handle that.

01:36:26

Well, before we get cut off, one of the things that I thought supported that Paul was writing about himself in the present tense as a regenerate man, he says, wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death?

01:36:43

It seems that if he were referring to a lost person, it would be more than just the body that has to cope with remaining sin that even all

01:36:53

Christians must face and challenge and grapple with. There would be the mind and the soul and the heart of the human that needs to be, he needs to be delivered from.

01:37:06

He needs to have his heart removed and so on, more than just a body that has plagued with sin.

01:37:14

That's right. That's right. And Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to say. The only thing I'm thinking about that I have yet to hear a

01:37:20

Christian at least say to me, well, I don't go through this. And if we did say that, wouldn't we be kind of in the category of those that John said in 1

01:37:31

John, they're saying they're without sin? Yes. Well, actually, I have had conversations, unfortunately, with some fundamentalists who they would not say that they're without sin, but the way that they would describe themselves is that they would say that they never, never, ever even have a season or a moment of doubting their salvation.

01:37:55

They never, in fact, they would say, I'm talking about a certain sect of fundamentalists.

01:38:01

They would say even to doubt your salvation is a sign that you're not saved and things like that.

01:38:08

Well, not a lot of fun. I guess you'll hear everything out there. But if you could,

01:38:16

I want you to give the overall picture of what this book that the

01:38:23

Apostle Paul or this letter that the Apostle Paul has written. In summary, what is the core of what

01:38:30

Paul is saying in this book? What he's doing is expounding the gospel to Jewish and Gentile Christians to counsel them to accept one another, since God has accepted them through the righteousness that they've received by faith in Christ.

01:38:48

As they contemplate what great things God has done for them through Christ on the cross and by the

01:38:55

Spirit's work applying to their hearts Christ's righteousness and growing them in the knowledge of Christ, this becomes the basis for their service together, their fellowship together.

01:39:07

It enables them to get over the cultural differences that they have and to get past the judgmentalism which is born out, not of conviction really, but of bias and a flawed understanding of how the

01:39:21

Lord is drawing different kinds of people to himself. You know, this is the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

01:39:27

He says that because you don't... I have no idea what's going to come out of his mouth and I don't want people to think it's me. That's exactly it.

01:39:34

Some people have said we sound alike, so he wants to differentiate who's actually speaking. Yeah, and we know that the

01:39:40

Lord has already differentiated us sheep and goats. Now, what were we talking about?

01:39:46

What were you going to say? You had something that you were going to say. I think we were still talking about Romans 7, weren't we?

01:39:53

All right. Well, anyway, as Paul... Still had me turned up. As Buzz is trying to remember what he was going to say,

01:40:01

I wanted to ask you about Romans 1. Now, a lot of Christians, especially those that would be presuppositionalists, and although I am not very learned in this area,

01:40:16

I would tend to agree with every pre... or most presuppositionalists I've heard defend that as their apologetic view.

01:40:23

But you have people... Paul describing that basically everybody is without excuse because the truth is, you know, written on our hearts and we suppress it before we're regenerate.

01:40:39

So, therefore, you'll have a lot of people, especially perhaps presuppositionalists, saying there is no such thing as an atheist.

01:40:47

In other words, when somebody says to you that they are an atheist, they are lying to you. Now, is it that they are lying, or is it that...

01:40:56

could it be that they have suppressed the truth so much that they consciously, in reality, reject

01:41:03

God's existence? I think the latter. You know, Paul will speak of some of the false teachers in other passages about being deceiving and being deceived.

01:41:20

So, I would... even though it's a different setting and situation, I kind of think that's what's happening with those suppressing the truth and unrighteousness.

01:41:29

They really become so blinded to their false notions of life that they really do believe that they are without God.

01:41:38

Now, that there is no God. Deep within their being, is there some concept that they're wrong, perhaps?

01:41:48

But, I'm not sure how far we get when we talk with atheists, and we argue with them that they really do believe there's a

01:41:55

God. For some, that seems to have some impact. But, of course, you can come back to this passage and talk about, there is truth, there is an objective standard of truth, and it's observable within the world around about us, and within our hearts, there is this notion that we were made for something greater than ourselves.

01:42:18

There is one greater than ourselves. Well, Reverend Buzz Taylor remembered what he was going to say. Yes, now don't sidetrack me, Chris. About your comment concerning the book's purpose to show

01:42:30

Jewish and Gentile believers how to function together and so forth. I don't think the average church member today realizes the importance, the centrality of the message.

01:42:45

It's almost like the message of the New Testament is the change from Judaism to the church, and the bringing in of the

01:42:55

Gentiles, and the struggles it caused, and the dissolution of Judaism, and the continuance of the church.

01:43:05

And, you know, if you read the parables and so forth, this is not some tangential thing. This is a major thing in the

01:43:11

New Testament. Yes, absolutely. And if we don't understand that, we miss so much of the meat, the purpose of the

01:43:21

New Testament. Yes, absolutely right. It is such a massive transition, moving from how

01:43:28

God had dealt largely through this one nation for so long with a centralized place of worship, to now there being no single centralized place of worship, and all kinds of different people coming to know the

01:43:43

God of Israel. It is a massive, massive shift. And I think this explains why you have such an outpouring of the miraculous power of the

01:43:52

Spirit, as well, in the first place, to authenticate that this transition, this change, is not something of human contrivance.

01:44:01

This is the work of God, and that it fits perfectly well with the plan that's been revealed in ages past.

01:44:09

It starts very early in the Gospels, too. I mean, some of the first words you hear spoken are, you know,

01:44:15

John the Baptist says, the ax is laid at the root. Like, oh, wow, he can't mean what he's saying.

01:44:21

Yes, that's right. We have a listener in Kinross, Scotland, Murray, who says, he cites from Romans 16, verses 3 and 5, greet

01:44:35

Priscilla and Aquila, likewise greet the church that is in their house.

01:44:40

Would you see this as a separate church to the one in Rome, or part of it, but having their own meetings, perhaps?

01:44:49

Is there anything to suggest that there were many of these house church meetings, but also occasions when the whole church in one locality or city came together?

01:45:00

It does seem that the church is meeting in different locations. And I don't think the church within Priscilla and Aquila is a separate church.

01:45:10

It's part of the Roman church, a significant part of it. Given the size of the city of Rome, and what would likely be a very large group of believers within that city, having one central meeting place is probably not tenable, considering that they're meeting in people's homes and the like.

01:45:35

Do they all get together for quarterly rallies? I don't know.

01:45:42

I don't know. They obviously have some kind of interconnectivity. They see themselves as a part of the same church.

01:45:51

But as we've discussed with this letter, there is some isolationism that's taking place.

01:45:57

The Jews are congregating together, it would seem. The Gentiles are not working to include the

01:46:04

Jews. So we can only piece together some things about what the church looked like in these metropolitan settings.

01:46:15

Corinth, you have perhaps a similar situation. A large church.

01:46:20

Ephesus also, a large area, multiple house churches. How often, if ever, do they all get together?

01:46:30

We can't really say. They certainly don't have the buildings and the common meeting grounds like we do now.

01:46:38

So I wish we had a time machine at times. We could go back and see these sorts of things.

01:46:45

We might have to wait till glory. Well, thank you, Murray and Ken Ross -Scotland. You are also a winner of the digital edition, which right now is the only edition available, of visual outline charts of the

01:46:59

New Testament. And so we will have that email, that code email to you, where you can retrieve that free edition, digital edition of the book sometime this evening.

01:47:12

And Reverend Buzz Taylor has something to add. I think we have another little insight on the answer to that question, where Paul is addressing the elders of Ephesus in Acts chapter 20.

01:47:23

And in fact, it's in verse 20, he says, I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable and teaching you, and he used the words, publicly and from house to house.

01:47:33

So it sounds like there was, yeah, there was public ministry and then there was the more private meetings.

01:47:41

Yes, yeah, and I guess there's still the issue to sort out the house to house where these church within a church meetings, or was this individual homes?

01:47:52

And publicly could have been public evangelism, couldn't it have been like open air evangelism? Well, I suppose, although he seems to be addressing the church body, the leadership at that point, but, yeah.

01:48:08

And the, I just had something in my head that flew out.

01:48:13

I know the feeling. The, oh, the apostle

01:48:22

Paul, something interesting about this, where in our modern mindset, you very often think, many people often think that the best way to evangelize is to like, you'll even have some churches who will specifically plant a church in an inner city, black neighborhood or neighborhood predominant, dominated by African American residents.

01:48:53

They will plant a church with a black pastor there. They will plant different churches or have domestic missionaries specifically looking like and sounding like and dressing like and talking like the people in that area.

01:49:13

And it even goes farther that people are going to be won to Christ out of any particular sin.

01:49:21

It might even be drug and alcohol addiction. It might even be prostitution. Whatever the area is, they seem to think very often.

01:49:29

We seem to think very often that the best pastors, preachers, and evangelists to meet, to reach those people are people who are very much like them.

01:49:43

But this is interesting how the apostle Paul, who was a Pharisee of Pharisees, a

01:49:49

Hebrew of Hebrews, a Jew, a fire -breathing a zealot when it came to Judaism, so much so that he was rounding up men and women for execution who became

01:50:04

Christians before he himself was regenerate and converted to Christianity. And I know that many of our

01:50:12

Messianic Jewish brethren don't like that term converted, but I think that that's an applicable term to use for anybody that converts from darkness to light.

01:50:24

But isn't it interesting that God has chosen the apostle Paul to be the apostle to the

01:50:32

Gentiles? It seems to go, it's counterintuitive to what we might think would be the correct methodology there.

01:50:40

Oh, that's right. Yes, it's not what we would think. It's got the fingerprints of God all over it, doesn't it?

01:50:46

But it really puts his power much more on display in this very unlikely of choices to be the messenger of grace to the

01:50:56

Gentiles. By the way, I'm not trying to be disparaging against having a black pastor in a church plant in a black community.

01:51:05

I'm not being disparaging of that, but there are people that think that is the very best thing to do, and perhaps even sometimes the only thing to do, is to send out people that look, dress, and talk like the community to which they are sent.

01:51:23

Right. And there are particular situations where churches are planning missions where they have to be, you know, wisdom comes in, and who amongst us is best suited for a particular work.

01:51:38

Now, languages would obviously be a primary reason to do that. Sure, of course. Of course.

01:51:45

Of course, we also would acknowledge that Paul is someone who is aware of the cultural differences.

01:51:51

It's not as if he's just going in as a talking machine and has no thought about how he's amongst different kinds of people.

01:52:00

And of course, he famously says, you know, he's all things to all men, which, of course, is often an abused verse in the world of missions.

01:52:11

But there's a right way, obviously, to fulfill that, to be sensitive and knowledgeable about the people to whom you're communicating, and not to put unnecessary stumbling blocks before them as they hear what you're communicating about the

01:52:24

Lord. Well, you have now four minutes to basically close the program with what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

01:52:34

Well, I think one thing that's valuable about the book that the

01:52:39

Lord's enabled us to put together is that it encourages believers to look at portions of Scripture within context, to see that there's a larger purpose to each portion of Scripture.

01:52:53

Many people, believers, will encounter Scripture in bits and pieces. They'll treat the

01:52:59

Word of God as a reference tool to find that particular phrase that's useful or apropos.

01:53:06

And the Lord certainly uses that. And the New Testament quotes the Old Testament in pieces like that.

01:53:13

But we are best served when we understand how that small piece of Scripture fits into the larger pieces.

01:53:21

And knowing that Paul has an overriding purpose for writing the Book of Romans helps us to make sense of all the smaller parts.

01:53:29

Knowing that there's a single reason, a dominant reason why the Book of Hebrews is written helps us to deal with all of the smaller parts as well.

01:53:39

The great rules of interpretation that you know, the top three rules of interpretation are context, context, and context.

01:53:50

And unfortunately, folks tend to encounter the Scriptures just as individual texts and don't see enough what goes with that particular text.

01:54:00

So one of the passions of my teaching ministry, both at the Church and the Seminary, is to encourage readers of Scripture, those who are encountering

01:54:09

Scripture, to look at the big picture while they also take time to go down deep in the individual spot where they are.

01:54:17

And that guards us from using verses and portions of Scripture in ways that are far from what the

01:54:24

Holy Spirit originally intended. I should also mention there's another benefit to the

01:54:34

Roman Church and to Paul's mission when he writes this letter. He has primarily a pastoral concern for them, that they,

01:54:42

Jew and Gentile, learn how to get along together in the Gospel. But he has, I think, a secondary purpose, and that he has plans to launch a massive evangelistic missionary work in the western side of the

01:54:55

Empire. He mentions at the end that he hopes to come to Rome soon and to be helped by them as he goes out to Spain.

01:55:04

And it seems as if Paul is planning to begin a circuit of ministry in the western side of the

01:55:10

Roman world, just like he's been doing for years on the eastern side. And if he's going to do that, the

01:55:16

Church at Antioch is probably not going to be able to sustain that mission. He's hopeful and prayerful that Rome will become his new

01:55:23

Antioch. And if they're going to be behind him in the ministry of the Gospel to Gentiles on the far western side of the

01:55:30

Roman world, they have got to be united together in a clear understanding of what

01:55:35

God's plan is for the Church of bringing together Jew and Gentile. So that fits in with this concept of Jew and Gentile living together in the

01:55:47

Lord. It's not just so that they can enjoy their potlucks together without getting hung up on how much pork or shellfish there is, but also that they be about the work of the

01:56:00

Gospel together and promoting those who are going out for the sake of the name. Well, I want to make sure our listeners have all of the necessary contact information for you.

01:56:10

First of all, the Bible Church of Buena Park, California.

01:56:17

That website is BibleChurchBP for Buena Park. BibleChurchB as in Boy, P as in Peter dot org.

01:56:28

BibleChurchBP dot org. And to get the book, to order the book, those of you who have not won the book today, and even those of you who have won the book today want to order more copies for gifts, it's a digital book right now, as we mentioned.

01:56:43

That's visual outline charts of the New Testament. Go to BiblePrism dot com.

01:56:50

BiblePrism, that's P -R -I -S -M, not a facility where people are incarcerated for crimes.

01:56:58

BiblePrism, P -R -I -S -M dot com. Any other contact information you care to give? No, that's the best place to go.

01:57:05

That website you just mentioned is the landing page for the book, and that will give background information about how the book came to be.

01:57:14

It has a number of endorsements, including Dr. MacArthur's that you mentioned earlier, and it has ordering information.

01:57:21

This is a limited release title from Broadman and Holman Academic. You can only buy it through the publisher, particularly through their

01:57:30

Bible software distributor. That information is there on that website.

01:57:37

If people want to sample it, there's a place where they can request a sample. They give their email address, and they'll have a link for a sample sent to them.

01:57:47

That's also a great way for people to stay informed about the book. I am in discussion with the publisher about a print edition.

01:57:54

Print is difficult because every single page of the charts is color -rich, and that's just pricey.

01:58:02

So B &H is discussing possibly a print version when I complete the Old Testament charts, which hopefully will be done before Jesus comes.

01:58:15

In the meantime, I might pursue some other print method. But if they sign up for a sample, then that'll put them on the mailing list, and they'll be able to learn about developments with the publication of VOCNT.

01:58:28

Great. And of course, the Master's Seminary, where you serve as a faculty associate, their website is

01:58:33

TMS .edu. TMS, standing for The Master's Seminary.

01:58:40

TMS .edu. Thank you so much, Scott. If you could hold on the line, I have a question to ask you. So please stay on the line there.

01:58:47

And I want to thank everybody, not only our guest, Scott Bashore, but also my co -host, the

01:58:52

Reverend Buzz Taylor, and all of our listeners today who listened, and especially those who took the time to write.

01:58:59

I hope you all have a safe and joyful and blessed weekend and Lord's Day. And please seek out a

01:59:04

Bible -believing church to worship our God if you do not have a church where you are already a member.

01:59:10

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.