Romans 6 starts out by referring to a fair question. Romans 6:1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? In the first five chapters of Romans, Paul has explained how we are save completely by God’s work, not ours. There was nothing that we could do to earn God’s love and acceptance, but he freely gave it to us in Christ by his grace, a gift to be received by faith. So here’s the problem: if we are saved by grace, apart from anything that we have done, than what does it matter how we live?

Romans 6 has only two main points, but if we really reflected on them to be changed by them, we would be renewed people. Both answer demonstrate how silly the question being asked is. These are both truths of the resurrection life of the believer.

Imagine if you will this morning, being invited into a person’s home for dinner. Maybe you haven’t yet known this person very well up until now, but you’ve received an invitation to come and dine with him, that he wants your presence, and he’s indicated that he wants to get to know you, that he wants to express his admiration of you. What are some ways that you could respond?

 1) Reject his invitation. No thanks buddy. Not interested. I don’t need any more friends. See you later. End of story.

2) Proudly Pay Your Own Way. You accept his invitation, spend the evening with him, eat his food, and then at the end of the meal ask, what do I owe you. It violates the point of him freely giving you of himself because he wants a relationship with you.

3) Presume Upon Your Host’s Grace. You show up late. You haven’t washed. You’ve made no attempt at caring what your appearance looks like. You sit down and start eating before the host is even seated, you talk on your cell phone throughout the meal, get up, burp, ask him for a few bucks for a cab and leave.

It seems someone has brought a charge, not against God’s elect, but against God himself. How do we know we can trust God, if he made all sorts of promises to the Jewish people that don’t seem to have been kept? I liken it to how Solomon’s wives must have felt. After a while, doesn’t the promise you make to me become meaningless if you’ve already made it to so many others?

That is in a nutshell what Romans 9-11 is all about. It is an explanation of God’s workings with the Jewish people, so that we can be even more assured that God is for us, because he has never broken a promise that he has made. Never.

The question of the morning: How do we grow as Christians without killing that freedom we first had when we experienced God's forgiveness? How are we, who have been declared righteous before God by grace, grow in righteousness so that our practical standard of living matches the spiritual reality of our calling. In other words, how does Christ’s righteousness effectually work itself out in our lives?

Paul’s letter to the Romans has been called “the most profound book in existence” by the poet Samuel Taylor Colerage. Martin Luther called it “the chief part of the New Testament and the very purest gospel. . . . It can never be read or pondered too much, and the more it is dealt with the more precious it becomes, the better it tastes.” Yet for all of the letter’s identifiable magnificence, Paul’s motive for writing the letter was very practical. Paul notes in chapter 1:10 that he has been long prevented from coming to the Rome and longs to see the Roman church and impart to them a blessing that will strengthen their faith. In verse 15, Paul identifies what it is that he longs to do: “I am eager to preach the Gospel to you also who are in Rome.” The book of Romans is Paul’s attempt to do in absentia what he longed to do in person. Through the power of the Holy Spirit and the convenience of letter writing, Paul was going to make sure that his gospel was going to be preached in Rome whether he was able to make it there in person or not. The letter to the Romans is in fact Paul’s gospel – his good message about Jesus Christ, the message that he was set apart by the Holy Spirit to dedicate his life to proclaiming.

As Peter watched the Lord bend down to wash the other disciples’ feet, something within him rejected the idea. I believe that it was Peter’s pride that would not allow the Lord to touch him. Although I do not know from the text precisely in what way Peter’s pride kept him from allowing Jesus to touch him, I have observed four different types of pride that often keep people from bringing our sinfulness to Jesus to be cleansed.

The Gospel of John was written to persuade people to believe in Jesus as their Lord and God, and thereby receive eternal life. Yet as we have gone through John’s gospel, I intentionally skipped over a major section. I did so, because this section is not directly connected to the theme of bringing the reader to faith in Christ, but stands out as Jesus’ last words to the group of people who did believe in Him, his disciples. As a Christian, as someone who has already come to faith in Christ, these chapters should stand out to us apart from the rest of the book. In these chapters, Jesus is getting ready to leave, to return to the Father, and he is giving us instructions of how to reach him while he’s gone. These chapters speak of a surprising intimacy that Jesus expects us to share with him, even while he’s away. I say surprising, because it is a problem each of us has probably wrestled with at some time – how do I have an intimate relationship with a guy who lived 200 years ago and is invisible now? Yet in these chapters Jesus assumes that it is not only possible, but something we are to foster if we are to live vibrant, fruitful and joyful Christian lives.

I guess I always get the bad press. I’m the doubter. Did you know I’m even in the dictionary? Doubting Thomas: "one who habitually or instinctively doubts or questions." How original. But come on. Would you have believed it? Seriously, would you have? Be honest. Your friends come to you and tell you that they’ve seen your friend, your teacher, who you saw put to death and buried with your own eyes, out of the tomb, walking around, alive. You’d be a bit skeptical too, wouldn’t you?

What do you think of Jesus? Many people, respecting that Jesus founded one of the world’s major belief systems, yet not completely comfortable with the Christian’s worship of him as God, try to find a safe middle ground when it comes to Jesus. He was a great teacher, they’ll say. He taught us how to live and the golden rule and all that, but he certainly wasn’t trying to get everyone to worship him as God. If we followed his teachings, then we’d see what a great man he was. Like Buddha or Martin Luther King. While I’m not going to say that I don’t think Jesus was a great man, it is important as we study the book of John to understand Jesus as he is presented. In chapters 5-11 of John’s gospel, the life of Jesus is presented through a series of miraculous events and interactions with crowds of people. In these 7 chapters, Jesus makes seven astonishing claims about himself, that we need to understand in order to gain perspective on the meaning of his life and his teachings.

One barrier that prohibits people from being able to see Jesus as John presents him is religion. I often meet people who describe themselves as recovering Catholics or recovering Baptists. For them, the religion of Christianity has left a bad taste in their mouth. They’ve been hurt. They’ve been let down. They don’t want to hear about Jesus and they definitely don’t want to hear a sales pitch. Sadly, the fact is that religion has killed their faith. The ironic thing is that if Jesus were talking to them, he’d say they are exactly right! Religion does kill faith. It does suck life out of you.