August 14, 2020 Show with Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington on “A New Series on the Book of Romans” (Part 1)

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 14th day of August, 2020, and I'm thrilled to have back on the program a returning guest,

Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington. He is the new pastor of Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Thorn Grove, Pennsylvania.

He's an author, a conference speaker, vice president of the board of directors for the Reformed Forum, and articles editor for the

Confessional Presbyterian Journal. Today we are beginning a new series with Dr.

Waddington on the book of Romans. We will probably feature Dr. Waddington two or three times a month, continuing on this series, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Jeffrey C. Waddington. Well, thank you, Chris, for having me back on your esteemed program that you've been doing now for a good number of years.

It's a privilege also to be able to discuss the topic for today, one that, you know, years ago when

I was first a pastor back in 1986, I got ahold of Martin Lloyd -Jones, one of the volumes of his commentary on Romans, and thought to myself, yeah, this is how one ought to preach.

This is how one ought to open God's Word, and ever since,

I was convinced of that before I read that book, but I was impressed with, and since then,

I now listen to his, the audio sermons on which that commentary set was based.

It's a wonderful day to have all the technology we have, right? Amen. And this is quite an important book.

Obviously, every word of the inerrant God -breathed scriptures is important, but this book does hold some unique places of being used extraordinarily of God in history and in the

Protestant Reformation, and it's also a book that, although easy to understand, it's not a cryptic, symbolic book like the book of Revelation, filled with allegory and pictures that defy the imagination that we need some in -depth study to discover what is really being addressed in the book of Romans, although it is a very,

I believe, easy to understand book, for some reason the body of Christ is very divided over its meaning, you know, we have differences of opinion on the

Calvinist versus Arminian controversy, the Protestant versus Roman Catholic controversy.

Even within reform circles, we have derived different understandings of biblical apologetics, even though we have the same book in front of us.

Quite an interesting phenomenon. And we're going to be, in the series, we're going to be covering the

Bible is the Word of God written, and Paul's narrative thought world, the background story of this book, creation, fall, redemption, and consummation of Romans in church history.

Why did Paul write to the Romans? Paul's greeting to the Romans, and other main elements of this book.

But first, before we even go into our first session on the book of Romans, if you could tell our listeners about Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Farnborough, Pennsylvania.

I'd be happy to do that, Chris. I think I mentioned on one of the previous episodes that the church here, which you've had the opportunity to visit, and you came to my installation, which was a tremendous support.

I appreciated that, you and Buzz being with us. The church goes back to the

Fundamentalist -Modernist controversy in the early 20th century, and became a congregation, independent,

Presbyterian but independent, in 1936, and then joined the

OPC in 1964, but had one pastor who's still thriving for 44 years.

That blows my mind, just think, because while that was commonplace, you know, years ago, to have that kind of thing in my lifetime, it's a wonderful thing to read about in a history book.

It's quite another to know the man, and to see the fruits of his years of labor, which

I... He's a giant on whose shoulders I am more than happy to stand.

And so the congregation here, we, of course, were closed for several weeks because of the coronavirus, but then we did do

Zoom, like so many other congregations have done, and we're continuing to do

Zoom, even though we've been meeting in person now for over two months. And that's our plan, is to continue doing live streaming for the benefit of our members who are not able to get out to be with us, and also for the church worldwide.

Not that we think, you know, there's anything great or special about what we do, other than to demonstrate a

Reformed approach to worship, you know, and that's a whole other ball of wax, you might say.

But I'm preaching through Romans now, I'm up through chapter 9, and you might find this interesting,

Chris, that the chapter 9 was... This is my second time preaching through Romans.

I've taught it multiple times, actually lost count of how many times

I've taught it, but the sermon... I had one sermon the last time I preached for the whole chapter 9, which is kind of silly and preposterous on the surface.

It's now... God turned it into four. And it's always better, you know, when you're a pastor, you're wanting to...

There's a dialogue between the preacher and the congregation, and if you think you need to slow down and meditate upon something for a longer period of time, you do that.

If it's something that we're all familiar with and we can move at a quicker pace, you can do that.

Years ago, I had asked Phil Johnson, our good friend, about how

Dr. MacArthur, John MacArthur out of Grace Community Church in California, who's been in the news of late, and you've interviewed at least two,

I think, right? Two folks, Phil and at least one other person. Well, I've interviewed John, too, but not on this issue.

I interviewed John... Oh, okay. I've interviewed John MacArthur years ago, probably 2006 or so.

Well, I had asked Phil, specifically, I was, you know, because I've gone back and forth on preaching from a manuscript, preaching from an outline, or preaching with nothing.

And I've done all of them, and I'm comfortable... I found, interestingly enough, that I was most comfortable myself with just having the main points of my sermons, and that's it.

That's all I took with me, along with the Bible, into the pulpit. And I found there was a lot of freedom in doing that.

The only drawback is that Dr. Waddington is long -winded, can be long -winded, and the benefit of having a manuscript is you stick to the time frame.

So I'm now in Chapter 9, and you know, of course, that Romans 9 through 11 is one of those portions that everybody agrees upon, right?

I had a friend who loves, perhaps he still does,

I haven't seen him in years, but he loved James White, and loved to see

James White debate, but he hated James White's Calvinism. And one day, he came to the church where I was a member in New York at the time, and he wanted to pick up some posters for another one of my debates on Roman Catholicism that James was involved in.

And he started in on his tie -right against Calvinism, and I just said to him, look,

I want to read you something, and I just want you to respond, and tell me what you think it means.

I read Romans 9, and he said to me, you know who believes that?

The biggest growing cult in the world, the religion known as Islam.

And I said, you're aware that I just read directly from Paul's epistle to the

Romans, aren't you? This is from the Bible. He goes, yeah, but it's what you read into it. And I said,

I didn't read anything into it, I just read it. I didn't give my commentary,

I didn't exegete it, I just read it. But that's what I was saying before.

I think it's a very easily understood book, but it is amazing how much division there is over this book.

And given its importance in the history of the church, I suppose we can understand that the book would be a battleground, even though, you're right,

I think the message is quite clear, even though St. Peter said there were some things in Paul that were hard to understand, which evil men twist to their own destruction.

We can understand that, but I'd say that the

Romans is crystal clear on so many things, and that's, of course,

I think why the Lord has used it over the years to bring about the reformations and revivals in the church.

And it's good that when we turn to Paul's letter to the

Romans, and it's important to remember that it is a letter, it's written for a specific purpose, to address particular issues that Paul was concerned with.

Perhaps he had heard about some things going on at the church in Rome, no doubt he did.

He did have, there were members, even though he had never met this congregation per se, he was familiar with many of the folk who were members there.

That'll come up in the course of our looking at the material. But we want to remember, as you've already said, brother, that this is

God's Word. It is infallible, it is inherent. And you remember what

Paul told Timothy, that all Scripture is God -breathed and is useful for correction and for rebuke and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be fully equipped for every good work.

The Apostle Peter tells us in 2 Peter 1, 16 -21, that the

Bible was not written, was not merely the opinion of its human authors, but was divinely inspired as well.

Men carried along by the Holy Spirit, and of course the prophet Isaiah, many, many years before that, had said that God's Word will achieve its purpose.

I think the King James says, will not return to him void, it will achieve its purpose.

And of course, it's good to know what the purpose is in any given setting.

We know the overall purpose is to lead the sinner to Christ and to build up the saints in the knowledge of our

Lord Jesus Christ. You want to have that as a necessary background to the study of any book of the

Bible, but most certainly this particular book that has been used so signally in the history of the

Church. And as you already mentioned, and this is just more of a kind of a background item, is that when we're looking at any portion of this letter that Paul wrote to the

Church in Rome, we want to remember that while he may not say it, there's always what we might call the history of the great works of redemption,

God's work of redemption among his people in the world. And that's what Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation is referring to.

We might call it the whole panorama of biblical history up to the time that Paul wrote this letter, is always in the back of his mind, if not in the forefront of his mind.

And of course that makes perfect sense if we think about it. He won't always say that that's the case, but we know because of his...often

he's citing God's word to buttress his arguments.

And so we want to remember that Paul has that great panorama of God's work of redemption in the background whenever we're looking at any particular portion of God's word.

Paul is probably writing this letter around AD 57.

That's generally considered in that neighborhood to be the time in which he wrote this letter.

So he's had...Paul has had more than 20 years of ministry of being a

Christian himself and being the apostle to the Gentiles when he writes it. So this is a well...we

often think of the pastoral epistles as being his mature thought, and that's of course true.

Yes, we believe that the pastoral epistles were written by Paul. Romans, by the way, is one of those letters that Pauline authorship has not been contested, interestingly enough.

And he probably wrote the letter from Corinth. That's the general consensus among commentators, that he wrote this, as we know, end of his third missionary journey as he's anticipating taking the offering of the

Gentile churches to Jerusalem. That's ahead of him.

Now, we know that things don't quite go the way he might have anticipated and...but

he does get to Rome, and we'll talk more about that shortly. Well, in the very beginning of the book, the first chapter of Romans, we find, among other things, that there are no...in

reality, there are no atheists. No. That is something that many will balk and scratch their heads in disbelief when they hear that.

But according to the Word of God, we are held accountable for our beliefs and our actions by...minimally,

by the very sheer fact that God's creation shows us and proves to us the existence of God, and we just suppress that truth.

I'm talking about when I say we, I'm talking about humans in their natural state before regeneration.

Correct. When we are conceived and born into this world totally depraved, we know that God exists, and we know that what he claims is true, but we suppress the truth before we are miraculously rescued from our delusion and our damnation by God himself and given a new heart.

But if you could go into that a little bit further. Yes. Well, we'll get into a little more detail when we get to verses 18 to 32 of chapter 1, where Paul lays that out, but it's very clear that we as Christians do not take our clues from atheists themselves, that God's Word must be the standard by which we assess the so -called atheist.

We are created in God's image, we are created to live in God's world, we stand in God's presence at all times, and God has revealed himself both through nature and through scripture.

So all of that, taking all of that into consideration, tells us that there are no atheists, that atheists are self -deceived to think that they, well, you know the psalmist in Psalm 14 and a few other places said, the fool in his heart says there is no

God. And of course, in the Bible, a fool isn't merely intellectually deficient, you know, it doesn't just have an intellectual deficit.

There is a strong, there is an overriding spiritual problem called sin.

And of course, Paul deals with that head -on in the early chapters of Romans, really the first almost three chapters, two and a half chapters, let's say, of the book are devoted to the effects of sin.

And again, this is related to what I said earlier about the narrative that Paul has in the background. The creation account is in the background when

Paul talks about the sinful state of the human race. And of course, he'll go on and say it's not just a

Gentile problem, because, you know, he might have had his fellow kinsmen of the Jewish religion who were in the

Amen corner saying, preach it brother, preach it Paul! And then he turns the guns on his own people and says, not only are

Gentiles suppressing the truth and unrighteousness, so too are unbelieving

Jews. And that we can get into more detail at the appropriate time. As we've already made note, the book itself has had a tremendous effect throughout the history of the

Church. And there are three leaders in the Church who are almost always mentioned in an introduction to the book of Romans and are often mentioned even in sermons where there's a brief intro.

And we think of the effect of Romans on Saint Augustine. And the listeners may be aware of the fact that the great

Saint Augustine, who was after the Apostle Paul in the early Church, the greatest theologian and pastor, that he was a professor of rhetoric, an unbeliever.

He was raised in a Christian home. His mother, Monica, was a believer. I think his father, Patrick Petricius, became a believer at some later point.

Augustine is in the home of a friend. He goes to the backyard and he's trying to hide his tears because he's been wrestling with spiritual matters.

The Holy Spirit has been working on his heart. And he sits down on a bench in the garden and he picks up a book that's there and he takes up and reads and it's

Romans 13. He does, as he does that, there are children in the next -door neighbor's backyard playing some sort of a game and saying, take up and read, take up and read.

And he joins in and takes up this portion and he reads Romans 13, 11 through 14.

And that became the means by which the

Lord brought Saint Augustine to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that Augustine will end up becoming, for a thousand years or more, he becomes the major theologian and preacher and pastor and Bible commentator in terms of influence in the

Western Church. It's often said that he casts the longest shadow, apart from the

Apostle Paul, over theological discussions in the Church.

So he writes some great books that we still have, his

Confessions, his City of God. And then later, 1 ,200 years later, actually,

Augustine lived in the late 300s, early 400s, was the Archbishop of the port town of Hippo, Regius, in North Africa, I think what is modern day

Algiers. Martin Luther came along, and we're familiar with that story, and how his study, he had been singled out as a gifted man, even though he had many, many serious spiritual struggles that we're familiar with.

He became a monk, and became a professor, as well as a pastor, and he was assigned the duties of teaching through the

Psalms and through Romans, and it was through his study of Romans, chapter one in particular, verses 16 and 17, that he said he was led through the gates of paradise.

John Calvin made the observation that the book of Romans was the entryway, or the key, that unlocks the whole

Bible. But then the third major figure in the history of the

Church is John Wesley, with whom we would have many disagreements, but Wesley went to a

Bible study at Aldersgate Street in London, and he was converted.

He had his heart strangely warmed, as he put it, when he heard the preface to Martin Luther's commentary on Romans.

So that tells you how significant Romans is, that the preface to a commentary on the letter was used by the

Lord to bring John Wesley to faith. He had been an Anglican minister for many years, and even had been a missionary to the colony of Georgia, and he at one point said,

I've been sent to bring the gospel to the natives, and that's what he was tasked to do, but I've gone to Georgia to save the natives, but who will save me?

Well, he came to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ on that glorious day when he heard the preface to Luther's commentary.

And of course, we've already mentioned Martin Lloyd -Jones preaching through the Book of Romans on Friday nights,

Friday evenings, at Westminster Chapel in London. It had a major impact on the evangelical world in his day.

I believe those were sermons that were preached in the 50s and 60s. And so going on through our day, there's a great influence that the

Book of Romans has had, especially with regard to the Protestant Reformation and the recovery of the doctrine of justification by faith through grace in Jesus Christ alone.

Well, why don't you let us know about how this book, this great book of Scripture, has impacted you as a former leader in the

Salvation Army denomination, which, I mean, they are our brothers in Christ, but they are in many ways polar opposites when it comes to this book, at least some of the key passages in this book, now that you have become a theologically

Reformed Christian. Yeah, interestingly enough, it wasn't

Romans that was key in bringing me around, but the Gospel of John.

But surely, once I came to embrace, by God's grace, the

Reformed faith, it opened up windows onto this letter that, even though I had been a student of Paul for some time, even as a

Salvation Army officer, I was reading, for instance, John Murray's commentary on Romans.

And of course, you know John Murray, a former professor at Westminster Seminary back at its founding in 1930, he joined the faculty and served until 1966.

A standard commentary, even now, you know, 60 -some years after it was written.

So I've been captured by the writings of Paul, and Romans in particular, having read enough to know that this was a significant book, and then having read the book itself multiple times, and never being bored with reading it, and always benefiting from the study of this letter, which, while it is not a systematic theology in this textbook, it is systematic and it is most assuredly theological, pointing us to the

Lord Jesus Christ, which is the, you know, theology is meant to lead us to God, to worship

God, and to glorify and enjoy Him, to use the language of the Westminster Shorter Catechism.

In fact, we have to pick up right there where you left off, because we have to go to our first break. If you'd like to join us, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. We'll be right back with Dr.

Jeffrey C. Waddington and more of our first edition on a series of the Book of Romans, right after these questions.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours is

Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington, the pastor of Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania, and we are beginning today the first part of a new series on Romans that Dr.

Waddington, God willing, will continue to conduct two to three times a month on this show.

If you have questions of your own about the Book of Romans, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. ChrisArnzen at gmail .com.

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

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter, and if you could pick up where you left off,

Dr. Waddington. We do. Okay, Chris. As we look at Paul's letter to the

Romans, it probably crosses your mind that you might want to know, well, why did he write the letter?

Especially since it's a church he did not plant, and Paul tells us that he did not want to build on another man's foundation, which is probably a nice way of saying, you know, with the church plant of another apostle.

But as we look at the letter, and as we also compare that with Luke's Book of Acts, we discover that Paul had some specific goals in mind as he's writing to the church at Rome.

The first thing, of course, is he wants to introduce himself and the gospel that he had been preaching for, as I noted earlier, probably more than 20 years.

He had been an apostle planting churches and then nurturing those churches that he had planted, evangelizing among both his fellow

Jewish countrymen and, of course, among the Gentile non -Jewish populations as well.

And you can look at Romans 15, 20 -21, you'll see there that Paul says that he did not want to interfere with churches planted by other apostles.

He also, so he writes to introduce himself and the gospel. He wants to also, related to that, clear up any misunderstandings of his ministry.

And, of course, one of the big ones would be Paul's treatment of the

Law of Moses. Paul's argument that, with the coming of Christ, that aspects of the law were no longer binding, and especially when it comes to the church expanding beyond the ethnic boundaries of Israel, that now

God is engrafting wild olive branches into the olive tree that has been his people, the children of Israel.

That kind of a misunderstanding he seeks to clear up, and we'll see that in the days ahead.

Another reason for writing this letter is that he's wanting to establish a base of operations for launching into church planting work in Spain.

He tells us that as well. And he also shares with us that he's on his way to Jerusalem to share, to deliver, the monetary collection that he had been picking up over the years from the

Gentile believers in the Mediterranean Sea area.

And so his plan in his mind, as he reveals here in the text of Romans, is that he would take the offering to Jerusalem, and he would bring representatives of the churches that had given money for the church in Jerusalem with him.

So he would travel, as he typically did, with a band of colleagues.

And so his plan is to go to Jerusalem, deliver the gift, and then eventually make his way to Rome.

And by the way, brother, I don't know, again, for some reason, whenever we have you on, sometimes you get very muffled.

Okay, good to know what happens when you use a phone,

I guess. So Paul has said that he's taking his monetary gift, his offering to Jerusalem, with the intent of then making his way to Rome, where he can have fellowship and strengthen the saints there, and then hopefully establish a base of operations for doing church planting and evangelism in Spain.

So he already had his mind set on doing that.

Now, as it turns out, we know from the book of Acts that Paul does get to Rome, but he gets to Rome in a way very different from what he envisioned, from what he tells us in this letter.

But he does get to Rome, except that it's in chains. Whether he ever got to Spain, we don't know.

And there's discussion as to whether Paul meets his demise at the end of Acts, after chapter 28, or does he get released and have more time to evangelize and plant churches, and then gets rearrested and sent back to the emperor in Rome, Caesar.

Again, there's discussion about that, and we honestly don't have a subtle answer on that.

But he gets to Rome in a way different from what he envisioned in this letter, but he does get to Rome, which is important.

So, all of that is background. If it's okay with you,

Chris, I would say we read a few verses and then do some discussion about that.

Excellent. Okay, so I'll read the seven verses, one through seven, and then we'll have some discussion about what

Paul is saying. And this, of course, is the one through seven is the greeting that we typically find in the letters of Paul.

And he says, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning a son who was descended from David, according to the flesh, and was declared to be the son of God in power, according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead,

Jesus Christ, our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And so there you have his greeting, the opening of his letter, and often the case is that in the introduction or in the greeting we will see the first appearance of themes and concerns that will take up the rest of the letter.

And that, in fact, is what we do see in these opening verses. Even though it is a standard part of an ancient

Greco -Roman letter, epistolary style, nevertheless

Paul makes it his own. And you know, as you read

God's word and you are a faithful student of the scriptures, you are often able to detect who the human author is of a particular section of God's word, because you get familiar with the style and the choice of words.

And I think this is true for the Apostle Paul. So this introduction, this greeting that we have, is quite, while it's extended, it is not an unusual introduction.

And in fact, let me take a listener question that sort of involves, in fact it does involve, what you just said.

We have John in Bangor, Maine, who says, do you have any theories as to why the book of Hebrews does not open the way that the book of Romans does, leaving us with a great mystery as to who wrote the book of Hebrews.

Many do believe it was the Apostle Paul, some say Luke, but nobody knows definitively because there is no clear identification of the author.

Do you have any theories why this is in the book of Hebrews, and do you have any theories as to who you believe most was the author of that book?

Well, I think because of chapter 2 in Hebrews, and the verse number escapes me right now, but the author of Hebrews clearly distinguishes himself from the apostolic generation.

That would be one reason why I do not think that Paul wrote

Hebrews. However, I will say that whoever the author was, and there's nothing wrong with it being

Paul, I just think that particular verse, maybe around verse 12, where he distinguishes himself from the apostolic witnesses,

I think is pretty clear. But there is a certainly appalling flavor, appalling influence on the book of Hebrews, even if he didn't actually write it.

At the end of the day, I would have to agree with Origen, the early church father with whom

I rarely agree, but on this point I do, and that is only the Lord knows who the author of Hebrews is.

I will, I do note something that I actually saw last night in,

I was watching a video a few years old of James White and Michael Kruger, the president of the

Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they were talking about the earliest manuscript we have of the collection of Paul's letters, and interestingly enough,

Hebrews is included. So at the very least, we know that whoever put together that early compilation of Paul's letters apparently thought that, believed that Paul was the author of Hebrews.

Many of the great theologians of the church have thought Paul was the author of Hebrews, but at the end of the day,

I guess I have to agree with Origen that only the Lord knows, and that will be one of those mysteries that will be cleared up when we get to heaven.

And do you have any theories as to why the author doesn't identify himself? Well, there could be various reasons why that's the case.

You know, the issue of assuming the author assumes that the receivers of the letter, actually it's a sermon.

You remember the author of Hebrews at the end of the book refers to Hebrews as a brief word of exhortation.

And it's possible that the name was present at one point but dropped out, but I've not recently looked at that issue off the top of my head.

I wouldn't be able to say other than it is true. I mean, there is an observation worth noting that Paul was never afraid to put his name on his letters, right?

By the way, we have to go to our midway break right now. Sorry to interrupt you. That's okay. Folks, this is our longer break.

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We are going to be returning to our discussion on the Book of Romans, the first in our series in the

Book of Romans that we started today with Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington of Faith Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania.

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USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal private matter and Dr.

Waddington, if you want to pick up where you left off. Sure, we had just read the verse seven verses of chapter one which is

Paul's introduction or greeting or sometimes referred to as a salutation. Paul up front identifies himself,

Paul a servant of Christ Jesus, a bond slave.

Servant is a more genteel translation of the Greek word doulos but the doulos can be translated as slave.

In fact at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, first year cadets are called doulis because of the the similar to plebe at West Point.

You're at the bottom of the rung you know when you're starting out at the Air Force Academy. I've been there by the way.

I visited there back in the 1980s, maybe the early 90s with my late wife.

I can't remember. I can't remember if we visited her friends in Colorado before we were married or after we were married but I remember and well we did both because I know that we went there several times but I did.

Yeah, very unusual architecture. Did you you saw the chapel where they used the airplane wings or the design airplane wing design on the it's a triangular shaped building you may remember.

Yes, is that mainly glass? Yep, yep, very beautiful campus.

I was there in 1984. Oh my, 34 years ago.

Okay, 36 years ago. Do my math. So Paul is not afraid to identify himself as a servant or slave of the

Lord Jesus Christ. He notes here that he has been called to be an apostle and of course we know that that calling that commissioning occurred on the road to Damascus when

Paul in fact was on his way to root out Christians among in the

Jewish community at Damascus and he didn't he ended up there and but didn't end up there in the way that he planned.

It's getting to be a habit with the apostle Paul, isn't it, that he heads somewhere thinking he knows what's going to happen and the

Lord takes over. So he's called to be an apostle and he says set apart for the gospel.

The to be an apostle was to be set apart for the gospel of God, to share the gospel, to evangelize, to build up the saints and of course you build up the saints with the gospel if you use that word you can use it to for the whole bible, the whole counsel of God, you can use it in a more restricted sense to refer to the person and ministry of Christ, in particular his atoning death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead.

All of that Paul was set apart by the Lord Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, to go into all the world as he commissioned his apostles in Matthew 28 and so he set apart for that purpose.

He has a singular purpose, the apostle Paul does, and that is to preach and proclaim and teach the gospel.

He was a herald of the good news of Jesus Christ and Paul goes on and he says this gospel for which he was set apart was promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures.

So this is, while there was a certain, Paul will frequently refer to the mystery of godliness or to the mystery of the gospel, that means that the mystery was known partially but is more thoroughly and fully revealed in the new testament but it was not unknown completely in the old testament and he's wanting to remind the saints in Rome that the message that he has been proclaiming for 20 plus years now is grounded in the word of God and the gospel that he preaches was prophesied beforehand and in particular he says in verse 3, concerning his son, that is the

Lord Jesus Christ, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead,

Jesus Christ our Lord. So in the older commentaries, even in the work of Benjamin B.

Warfield of Princeton Seminary, old Princeton as we now like to refer to it, he understood, as did

Charles Hodge, his professor, understood this to be a reference to the two natures of Christ, that is the divine and human natures.

However, I think a better understanding is that it refers to Christ's two estates, that is the estate of humiliation and then the estate of exaltation and you see that the humiliation is who is descended from David according to the flesh, his exaltation is his resurrection where he is declared to be the son of God in power and notice in power, he's the son of God in power at the resurrection and he's raised by the spirit of holiness or we might say the

Holy Spirit and that Jesus Christ is our Lord, this would be consistent with what

Paul told the Philippians in chapter 2 verses 5 to 11, you may be familiar with that portion of that letter where Paul tells us that our mind should be the same as that of Christ Jesus who, being in the very form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God but humble himself and he humbled himself to the point of death, being obedient to the

Father and being raised and exalted so that at the knee, at the mention of his name, every knee would bow and every tongue would confess that he is

Lord to the glory of God the Father. So you see that the praise of the Lord Jesus Christ redounds to the

Father and the Spirit, we would say. So I think that's probably a pretty good idea and that's the verses 3 and 4,

I would say, are the centerpiece of Paul's letter to the Romans, the

Doctrine of Justification which we'll get to in due time, of course stems from the work of Christ, the personal work of Christ in his life and death on the cross and resurrection.

But we never want to forget the one who gives us the gift and not to focus on the gift itself that we forget the giver or we sometimes say the benefactor who is the

Lord Jesus Christ himself. In fact, I don't know if you want to just conclude that sentence,

I just have another listener. Okay, well, all right, so Paul just rounds out the sentence, the thought there that he's been set apart as an apostle by reminding us that it is through the

Lord who has been raised by the Spirit of Holiness that he receives grace and apostleship, right?

That he himself, Paul, he referred to himself elsewhere as the chief of sinners, of that he himself is the recipient of God's saving grace and he knows whereof he speaks when he is in the marketplace, when he's in the synagogue and he tells us here that the point of his apostleship is to bring about the obedience of faith, that is, faith in the

Lord Jesus Christ is an act of obedience because all men everywhere are called upon to repent and believe in the

Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul's calling as an apostle was to do just that, to proclaim the name of Christ among the nations.

And then, of course, he says, among whom you are, that is, the saints who are in Rome. There you go, powerful, powerful words from the apostle.

Well, we have a question from RJ in White Plains, New York, who says, was

Paul chosen to be an apostle by Christ himself after his death, resurrection, and ascension, because the other apostles were in error in choosing

Matthias? Oh, well, that's an interesting question.

It's a good question. He's obviously making mention of the opening chapter of Acts, where Peter tells the apostles that are gathered together that they have to replace, they have to fill the vacancy left by Judas, and they put forward, let's see,

Joseph, Barthabas, and Matthias, and they choose

Matthias. There's nothing in the text of Acts to suggest that what they did was wrong.

I suppose some might conclude otherwise because they drew lots, but there's nothing to indicate that that was a wrong way of ascertaining the mind of the

Lord, any wronger, if I could use, if that's a word, than the use of the urm and pummum in the

Old Testament. It's an interesting question, is

Paul God's choice over against the disciples' choice? No, I think that Paul probably thought of himself as the apostle number 13, rather than being the replacement for Judas.

So there's nothing in the book of Acts to indicate that the apostles act precipitously or they act erroneously in needing to replace

Judas, who, as you know, had betrayed our Lord and then gone out and committed suicide, and all the lovely, you can read the accounts of that in the

Gospels. Yeah, I mean, so that's a good question. I mean, it's understandable how that question could arise, because you look and say, well, okay, and of course it's also true that the use of the word apostle, which means sent one, because the

Greek word for send is apostello, that that word is used in the early church in a narrow sense to refer to the disciples who traveled with Jesus, who then became apostles, and the apostle

Paul. But it's also used for, it's probably not the best expression, but lesser people, lesser figures in the early church, who served a similar function, you know, evangelizing and planting churches, but who were not among the original disciple band.

It's a good question, though. We have another question from Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and Harrison says,

Paul identifies himself as the apostle to the Gentiles, and even says that it is his duty to preach to them.

Why is it, do you believe, that God chose a Jew, a Hebrew of Hebrews, a one who was at one time so zealous for Judaism that he wound up men and women to be executed, who were

Christians, before, of course, he was shown the light on the road to Damascus by Jesus Christ himself.

But why is it that, in your opinion, Paul would not have been chosen to be first and foremost an evangelist to the

Jews? That's the way it seems the modern church thinks of things and does things.

They think that somebody has to have some kind of similar background or experience to effectively reach the gospel to them, but obviously

God doesn't necessarily think that way. That's correct. I mean, that's another good question.

Even though Paul is the apostle to the Gentiles, it's Peter who is typically referred to as the apostle to Jews.

It is Peter who is the first one to have the privilege of leading a Gentile into the faith, and that, of course, is a reference to Cornelius, the

Roman centurion, the account of which we read in Acts chapter 10.

And we also know that Paul always began, when he entered a new community, if there was a synagogue, he went to the synagogue first.

And I think the reason for that is simply that the children of Israel were the people of God initially, originally the people of the original church of the

Lord Jesus Christ in the old covenant era, and therefore he went there first, and then when he was drummed out of the synagogue, and in many instances he was actually not only sent out of the synagogue, he was beaten.

He makes reference to, what is it, 40 lashes minus one, the standard punishment for a heretic,

I believe, in the synagogues of the time. So we don't want to assume that because Paul's the apostle of the

Gentiles and Peter could be called the apostle of the Jews, that that precluded their sharing the gospel with the other side of the fence, if you can put it that way.

Peter shared the gospel with Gentiles and Paul shared the gospel with Jews. With regard to whether God, of course, is not limited by our limitations, he's neither helped nor limited by our backgrounds, if I can put it that way.

Our backgrounds don't inhibit his use of us and they don't assist his use.

Now, saying that, I don't mean that Paul's background didn't fit him for his calling, it in fact did.

The fact that he was born in Tarsus, which was a university city, the fact that he grew up in Jerusalem and trained under Gamaliel, the fact that he knew the scriptures from birth, no doubt.

So he was fitted by God's providence for the work that he would be eventually called to do.

But we don't want to draw the wrong conclusion from that, which would be that only those who share a similar background or ethnic background or language or socioeconomic background are suitable to bring the gospel or pastor churches in particular places.

I think God has a sense of humor. God has a sense of irony.

Those of us who know the Lord Jesus Christ and have been called into the ministry recognize that none of us is sufficient for the work that we're called to and we depend upon the to direct us in all our ways.

So the background, which from a human perspective may look like it helps or hinders, from God's perspective,

I think at the end of the day is ultimately irrelevant. And we have an anonymous listener who says,

I have very close friends who are Messianic Jews or Gentiles who serve in Messianic ministries.

And they believe that chapter 16, I'm sorry, they believe that verse 16 of chapter one of Romans, for I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the

Jew first and also to the Greek. They believe that that means that Jews have priority in our evangelism and witness and mission efforts.

They should be first and foremost when we are bringing the gospel to anyone and Gentiles should be secondary.

I was wondering if that is correct or if that is merely a chronological way of explaining how the gospel spread first to the

Jews and then later to the Gentile nations. Again, another excellent question.

I think, I would say it's redemptive historical. In other words, the children of Israel were the church in the

Old Testament age. The Lord Jesus Christ came from, through the line of Israel.

He was himself a Jew. The first converts to the

Christian faith, to faith in Christ, were themselves Jews. I don't think this is, we want to be very careful that we do not set up a hierarchy of first and second class citizens in the kingdom of heaven.

That would be an error. I would say that probably in our age we do fail to witness to Jews as we should, but there is no

Jews are not first class Christians and Gentiles second class Christians. I think Paul would put that to bed as he did in Galatians and as he does here in Romans.

So that is a redemptive historical, which is a little more, saying a little bit more than chronological, but includes within itself the chronological fact that the gospel arose in Israel.

Jesus ministered in Israel, although of course he did have contact with Gentiles, as we know from the gospel accounts.

Yes, because if you interpret it the way that our listener is rightly describing the view of Messianic Jews and many dispensationalists, then

Paul, who actually says this to the Jew first and also to the Greek, he would be contradicting his own words because he states before that that his first and foremost priority is to be an evangelist to the

Gentiles. That doesn't mean that everybody is called to be that, but that was his calling. Correct, and so we want to be careful that we don't use the words of Paul against what is clear from what he says prior to those verses, which are important verses.

I did want to just touch upon the fact that Paul says here that it is through Christ that we have received grace and apostleship, and I wanted to note that the

Damascus Road encounter between Saul of Tarsus and Paul, he didn't necessarily have a name change.

He would have had a Roman cognomen as well as his Hebrew name, so Paul and Saul could be swapped out depending on the circumstances.

He received the grace of salvation and the commission to be an apostle on the road to Damascus.

I mention that because of the so -called new perspectives on Paul that since the mid -70s has been a growing movement among New Testament scholars in particular.

A movement that you reject. Yes. That's not to say they don't have some helpful insights here and there, and of course it's a very agitated movement, but there is a common habit to look at Paul's encounter not as a conversion but just as a commission, and yet the fact that Paul was persecuting the church would seem to necessitate that he was converted as well as commissioned on the road to Damascus.

So both of those are true. And N .T. Wright and those who embrace the new perspective have some dangerous ideas from what

I understand that I have heard right from the lips of proponents of the new perspective is that they reject adamantly that Paul's letter to the

Galatians was a rebuke to them and a warning to them for adding works to faith that justifies in order to receive justification that they had to add and include works including what many reformed people would say is a precursor of rebukes that are due to Rome for adding in works to their sacramental system and their own understanding of justification and salvation.

They say that Paul was only rebuking the Galatians for an attempt to form a

Jewish cult of Christianity where Jewishness was superior. Am I describing that correctly?

That's correct, Chris. N .T. Wright, probably the best known exponent of the new perspective among evangelicals and reformed folk, is certainly one who rejects standard

Lutheran and reformed understanding of justification and he unfortunately treats an implication of justification with justification itself.

He argues that justification simply is about who's included amongst the covenant people and so for someone like N .T.

Wright and others of the new perspective persuasion, the problem in Galatia was that they were too narrowly focused on Israel or on Jewish believers and so the problem wasn't works, the problem was national identity.

Now my response is you're missing the whole point because they were concerned with national identity and they treated that as a work, even though nobody, you're born with your ethnicity and you don't have any control over that, but so there's,

I mean that's a whole another can of worms, but this whole thing of Paul not being converted but only commissioned is just utter nonsense.

Related to this discussion is what's sometimes called two -covenant theology, which is not bi -covenantal theology, which is a traditional

Presbyterian, Westminsterian covenant theology. The two -covenant theology is the idea that there's one covenant for Jews and another covenant for Gentiles.

Jews are justified by obedience to the law, Gentiles are justified by faith in Christ.

This is not per se new perspective, but it is a view that's out there and we sometimes run across it and it's bad.

We have to go to our final break and you can pick up where you left off. Send us an email if you have a question to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, God willing, we are going to be right back after these messages with more of Dr.

Jeffrey C. Waddington and our first edition of our new series on the book of Romans.

Don't go away, we'll be right back. Chris Arnzen, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio here.

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Chris Arnzen, and this is our final segment of today's interview with Dr. Jeffrey C.

Waddington. By the way, Dr. Waddington, whether you are the third in your family lineage,

I still think that you need to add more sophistication to your name. Dr. Jeffrey C. Waddington III.

Oh, okay. Well, it sounds nice, but I'm actually the first.

Obviously, I was joking, but I just thought it sounded nice. Yeah, I did, but it would sound, it would be like Thurston Howell III from Gilligan's Island.

I was trying to remember the opportunity, in addition to those two wonderful Reformed Baptist congregations on Long Island, I would plug the, we have two or three congregations on Long Island in the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church, of which I have had the privilege of preaching at Franklin Square, where Reverend Lloyd Sterrett is the pastor.

Wow. Yeah, it's a nice, it's a lovely congregation. I had the privilege of preaching there, actually, just a couple of weeks before I first started here.

Yeah, I've been there many, many times before the current pastor, when Bill Shishko was there for decades, and I had the privilege of hearing him preach and hearing his

Bible Conference speakers preach there on many, many, many occasions. Yeah, so it's a lovely part of town, and actually not far, far from where I used to live in Belrose Village, which is part of Floral Park.

That's right. Back in my old life. Well, we don't have that much time.

Perhaps you should wrap up what you most want to say about the first chapter of Romans, or at least this part of it, because we've only really addressed...

The intro, right? Yeah. Well, the one thing I wanted, going back to recognizing the necessity of Paul's need for conversion, as well as the commissioning as the

Apostle to the Gentiles, is how important that Damascus Road encounter was to Paul can be measured by the fact that it appears in the book of Acts three times, right?

In chapter 9, where we have a third -party, a third -person account,

Luke, the historian, is recounting the encounter between Paul and the

Lord on the road to Damascus. And then we have the first -person reports that Paul gives of his conversion on the

Damascus Road as well. Paul clearly understood over time, you know, he matured in the faith as well, that the

Lord Jesus Christ, when he confronted him on the road to Damascus, turned his world upside down. We could say he rocked his world, right?

And he understood that he was the recipient of grace.

So what is that grace? That grace is the mercy of a holy God extended to sinful people who do not deserve that mercy.

In fact, it's quite the opposite. We deserve eternal punishment in hell. And apart from the grace of God, that's where all of us are going.

But by God's grace, Paul experienced that grace. He proclaimed the gospel of the

Lord Jesus Christ in his day, and then he handed that off to his younger colleagues like Timothy and Titus.

And then that message has been brought down to our day through the providence of God, the gracious care and protection that God has provided his people, the gracious care and protection that he has provided his word.

And you see the wonderful history of the preservation of God's word, you know, that Dr.

James White often talks about on his Dividing Line podcast, which, by the way,

I would highly recommend to your listeners. I'm sure you know, Chris, you're a personal friend of Dr.

White. But it is an excellent podcast coming to us from Phoenix, Arizona, where it's, if it could be possible, even hotter and humider than in our neck of the woods.

But anyways, this is a wonderful letter. Did you mention a humidor? Dr. White is not a

Presbyterian, he's a Baptist. No, I mean, more humid.

I know, I was joking. Yeah, I know you were. More humid. It's more humid. I've heard him mention that when he gets in a car, it could be 105 degrees, it'll be 115 or 120 degrees inside the car in Phoenix.

So it's, I'm always reminded that I should be grateful that as hot as it may get, and as humid as it may get around here, and it does, it could be worse.

By the way, I don't know if we have time for one last quick question. But we have an anonymous listener who says,

I do not understand why Romans 1 .17 was used in the mind and heart of Luther to cause him to finally make the break with the

Church of Rome, but the righteous man shall live by faith. It doesn't seem to be teaching anything contradictory to Roman Catholicism.

It doesn't say the man dead in sin shall become alive by faith.

It is saying the righteous man shall live by faith. Doesn't that just mean that righteous men live according to their faith?

Well, of course, there are no righteous men apart from the grace of God in Christ.

That passage, of course, which is taken from Habakkuk, is referring to the fact that a man who has faith in God will live accordingly.

In other words, he will exercise faith and will trust in God. There's a big difference between what the scriptures teach and what

Roman Catholicism has historically taught about these things. In Roman Catholicism, faith is not saving unless it is joined to love, which completes it or forms it.

I mean, that's a whole other topic for another day, which would be to talk about what exactly are the differences between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.

Roman Catholics don't deny the grace of God. What they deny is grace alone.

Right. They deny the sufficiency of grace or the sufficiency of the scriptures.

Right. So there's all sorts of... I mean, that's why you'd have to... That question is almost like untangling a bowl of spaghetti, right?

You have to untangle the strands. But certainly... And remember that Luther was drummed out of the church.

Whatever we may say about all the things that happened during the time of the Reformation, Luther intended to reform the church, and the church said,

No, thank you. And we can be grateful for that, God's providence that that happened.

And we are, and I am. By the way, we are now out of time, and I just want to make sure that our listeners have your website.

It's faithopc .net, faithopc .net.

And for those of you who want to find out more also about the Reformed Forum, you can go to reformedforum .org,

reformedforum .org. And the Confessional Presbyterian Journal can be found at cpjournal .com,

cpjournal .com. Thank you so much, Dr. Waddington. I look forward to your next talk. I look forward to our next edition of the

Roman series. And I want you all to have a safe, blessed, and happy, and Christ -honoring weekend and Lord's Day.

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