Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. It's the final day of our weeklong international challenge. We always want to have the same heart that Jesus has. And guess what? His heart is for the nations. His word promises that people from every tribe and tongue and language will be a part of his eternal kingdom. So today, as we wrap up our international challenge, we'd love for you to join us if you haven't already. Invite your friends who live abroad to read through the Bible with you and us next year. Our goal is that TBR can be a tool to help people around the globe read, understand, and love scripture more, and in turn, to love God more. For those of you who've joined the challenge, thank you. You may never know the impact of those invitations. And for those of you who haven't, the good news is this is an ongoing challenge. Even though we're wrapping up our announcements about this today, we'd love for you to keep thinking about and praying and taking action to advance the spread of the gospel and the understanding and love of the gospel.

Now onto the podcast. We first heard about the Church in Rome back in Acts 18. That's when we met Aquila and Priscilla, the married couple who were Paul's tent making, missionary companions. The whole reason Paul met them in Corinth is because they were kicked out of Italy for being Jewish. Then, about five years after the governor kicked them out, they were allowed to return. But when everyone comes back to Rome, the church looks dramatically different than it did half a decade earlier. There are so many new Gentiles in the ranks and the Jewish culture has really been diluted. It's causing a lot of division and frustration. We've seen this theme from country to country and church to church. So Paul picks up his pen again to address this persistent problem with a new group of people. And as always, the gospel is his solution. He writes this letter to help the church zoom out on what the gospel is and what the gospel means and what the gospel does. He addresses this letter to all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints, every Christ follower from every culture and ethnicity.

Through Christ, they have all received grace and apostleship, which lead to the obedience of faith. Our obedience is a gift of grace from Him to us. It's something he gives us that we offer back to him. But also, hold up, He gives us apostleship? Paul, an apostle, calls the believers in Rome, apostles. What does that mean? We've talked about this briefly in the past. Many scholars believe there's room for all believers to be called apostles today. Others believe it still exists today, but it's a spiritual gift granted to few, and still others believe it ended in the first century after the church was established. If you want to read more, check out the three articles we've linked to in the show notes. Also, for what it's worth, we're still in the introduction. I told you Paul's intros are dense. Paul really wants to come visit the Romans. I know he's probably starting to sound like that friend who says, We should catch up sometime. Text me and we'll put on the calendar. Except he totally means it. He's willing to endure beatings and imprisonment to visit his friends and encourage them in the faith. He knows this visit would be mutually encouraging.

Also, Gelato. But in the meantime, he has a call to preach the gospel to a whole variety of people. He'll preach it to anyone who will hear, and he trusts it will save everyone who believes it. And the fact is everyone needs to hear it. Everyone was born into a fallen world and some have even resigned themselves to that fallenness. God has made the truth obvious to them that there is a creator who is in charge of all this. Like Psalm 19 says, The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies above proclaim his handiwork. But people ignore the truth and continue to live life on their own terms, suppressing the truth. Jesus said this same thing in John 3:19. He said, This is the judgment. Light has come into the world and the people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. They knew God but didn't honor or thank him. Their lack of humility and gratitude toward God served too hard in their hearts all the more, catapulting them further down the trajectory of disbelief and disobedience. Their idolatry continues on, ever increasing. Instead of worshiping the creator, they worship the things he made, humans and animals, as they distort worship and sexuality and creation, the way God responds to them is with inaction.

He doesn't grant them repentance. They feel no guilt over their actions. In fact, they celebrate them. This is what God's passive wrath looks like. Its that he lets people continue on in their sin, unchecked. He gives them over to their sins. It's terrifying and heartbreaking. While believers in Christ will never experience any version of God's wrath, passive or active, it's important to remember two things. First, if we're honest, we all find ourselves somewhere on this list of evil things in verses 29 through 30 and not just in the past, but maybe even in the present. Here it is. Unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, maliciousness, envy, tragedy, murder, strife, deceit, gossip, slander, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless. Did any of that ring a bell? Second, because we're all on that list somewhere, death and separation from God is what we all deserve. But God grants us grace instead. Third, the recognition that we deserve what they got keeps us humble. We can't grow toward them as if we did anything to earn grace. We're not Judaism. That's legalism and moralism and not at all square one.

In fact, Paul points all this out in chapter two. He says, When you look down on others, you try to act like you don't do this stuff, but you do it, too. So don't abuse God's kindness toward you. Yes, he has shown you incredible kindness and not giving you over to those sins, but the point of that is so you'll be drawn back to him and away from those sins. Grace isn't a pass for sinning. Grace is a change agent. And if you miss that, then you prove that you don't actually have a new heart after all, in which case the same judgment is coming for you. This message was probably directed primarily toward his Jewish readers who might have been relying on the law and the Old Covenant to keep them in good standing with God. It was probably easy for them to look at the Gentiles and think, Oh, sinners. So Paul is saying, takes one to know on you guys. And whether you're a Jew or a Gentile, you're living out what you believe. It's being revealed day by day, and there will be a day when it all culminates in God's righteous judgment in response to that, regardless of your ethnicity.

Paul talks a lot about obeying the law, so let's clarify a few things. He's probably referring to all 613 Old Testament laws, which Jesus summed up as the vertical laws and the horizontal laws, Love God and love people. To love someone is to honor them, and these people aren't really doing either of those things. He points out that the Gentiles who don't even have those 613 laws are proving by their actions that they do love and honor God. That love only comes from a transformed heart. At this point, he assumes that his Jewish listeners might be wondering, What's the point of even having the law if you don't have to have the law to know and love God? Paul says, Seriously? The law revealed God to us. That's a huge blessing. The law made us carriers of the promise and the covenant. That's incredible. The law revealed our great need for God's great rescue because we can't live up to what the law requires. We need to know this about ourselves. The law shows us so much about God and about ourselves. Then Paul responds to another hypothetical question. This time, he imagines his readers asking, Is there even any advantage to being an ethnic Jew instead of a Gentile?

Paul says, No, there isn't. Being Jewish doesn't protect you against the righteous judgment of God. Both Jews and Gentiles are under the curse of sin. Both Jews and Gentiles need God's rescue, and there's only one savior for all ethnicities, Christ Jesus. So we Jews have no reason to boast in our Jewishness or our attempts at lawkeeping because we're only saved by faith in Jesus anyway. But that great gift of faith and salvation is adjacent to a changed heart that makes us want to obey and honor God and His law. In other words, we don't obey the law because we want to get God's love. Rather, we want to obey the law because we've been given God's love. The cause and effect is a crucial distinction. My God Shot was in 3:23-24. It's talking about faith in Jesus, and it says, All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. All of these things are gifts. The grace, the faith, the justification, the redemption. He gives the best gifts. Everything I need and everything I didn't know I need, he gives it all.

He's where the joy is. Tomorrow we're starting the second half of Roman. So check out the short video overview we've linked you in the show notes. It's nine minutes long, and it will really set you up for success. We're blown away by all your positive responses to the announcement of our TBR Kids Devotional. So many of you have already pre-ordered the book, and we know you're eager to start this devotional with your family on January first. If you haven't pre-ordered a copy for yourself or for a family you love, head to our store to do that now. You can also see samples of the daily devotional and activities, and just a reminder. The book itself won't be released until the end of January, but when you preorder, you'll get the PDF of the first 45 days. You can start with your kids on January first. Go to the TBR store at thebiblerecap. Com/store to pick up your copy or click the link in the show notes. Hey Bible readers, have you listened to Hope Nation's brand new Christmas podcast? It's called Scrooge, a Christmas carol podcast. Check out the brilliant storytelling and pick up on the Christmas themes of forgiveness, finding peace and combating fear.

It's a great way to show family and friends the lasting hope of Jesus. To listen to the podcast, click the link in the show notes.