God's Righteousness Uncovered

Transcript

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[0:00] Time for the sermon now, and the reading is just two verses, Romans chapter 1, verses 16 and 17. And in a second, this is good, Steve, but in a second we'll do the comparison, but we'll wait. Yeah, that's good. So we're starting a series on Paul's letter to the Romans, and just a few words of introduction about it, you know, who wrote it. Obviously the Apostle Paul. There's no doubt that the Apostle Paul wrote this particular letter. To whom was it written? Well, it's written to the believers in Rome. So there were Christians in Rome. Now, what did they look like? Well, it was a church, and there was some debate about this, what the church was composed of. It was definitely composed of Gentile converts to Christianity, people who had been pagans before that. It was also composed of some Jewish people who had become Christians themselves, and there may have also been a few people who had become Christians themselves. So, let's look at the Bible. There were people who had been pagans or Gentiles who had converted to Judaism, so they were not Jewish ethnically, but they were Jewish by religion, and then they converted again to Christianity. So there's three interesting kind of groups that might have been in this church.

[1:08] And why did Paul write this letter to the Romans? And that's also a very big question, but the big picture question is that Paul wants to tell them about what God has revealed to the world, and what he's revealed to the world. And so, he's going to tell them about what he's revealed to the world, is God's own righteousness by which the world can become a place of justice and righteousness itself. But that's only part of it. The other part of it is a question that really consumes Paul, and we're going to take a little time this morning even to get your feedback on it, is why are his fellow Jews so reluctant to receive this revelation of what God is doing in the world? This is really a consternation for Paul. He understands why pagans would become Christians, because it offers so much to pagans. But he's convinced that as attractive as Christianity is for pagans, it must be doubly attractive for Jewish people, because it's really the fulfillment of everything that he thinks they've been hoping for. But the challenge is that he's not seeing a lot of Jewish people become Christians, at least not as many as he hopes. And so his question that he kind of struggles with on the page is, why are so few Jews becoming Christians? And so I want you to think on that, and then I'll ask you your opinion later in this sermon.

[2:31] We'll kind of explore that question, because that really is a big theme of the second half of Romans that we'll eventually get to as well. But I want to go to our reading, and before I do, I'm going to mention that today we're going to show you four versions. And go ahead and show those now, and I'm going to plop down into the corner, and hopefully you can read those. You know, they're big-ish. At home you can definitely read them. But I'm comparing four versions here. In the leftmost column is the New Living Translation, which is what's printed in the bulletin. The next column over is the New Revised Standard Version, which is the version I most often preach out of. The next one is the NIV, but the 1984 edition, which is what you have in the pews in front of you. And that's our church Bible, which we've talked about maybe getting new Bibles for the church, but that's our church Bible. And it's a very good translation, but as we'll see, it has some minor differences. It has some minor hang-ups or challenges. And then finally, in the far right column is the New NIV. And that's the problem, is they didn't, they just call it the NIV. So it's very confusing. When you say NIV, you have to say which NIV, the 84 NIV or the New NIV?

[3:38] And that's in the far right column. And you'll see that in various of these passages, I've underlined some words which are kind of similar words, and I've bold-faced some other words that are also similar to each other across the four columns.

[3:54] But before we talk about all those differences, and the differences are important, I wouldn't do this just for fun, because it's not that fun. But I'm doing this because there's some important points that are going to go on here. But before we do that, let's at least read, or I will at least read the one that was chosen for today, which is the New Living Translation. This is Romans chapter 1, verses 16 and 17. It reads like this. Paul writes, For I am not ashamed of this good news about Christ. It is the power of God. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes, the Jew first and also the Gentile. This good news tells us how God makes us right in His sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, it is through faith that a righteous person has life. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this word as we have it in these places. And we ask that you add your blessing to it, and we ask that you discern it today. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I want to talk real quick about, there's some challenges in the translation here.

[5:08] Take a look at the bold-faced words, and this is where they kind of differ the most. If you look at the New Living Translation, and it's a new translation, but I'm actually a little disappointed in it. Because it says, the bold-faced, it says, God makes us right in His sight. The word right there would be righteousness. Or justification. That's in the Greek. The next column says, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed.

[5:32] But then if you look at the next one over, NIV 84, it says, the righteousness from God. And then finally, the new NIV, which I think is correct, the NRSV and NIV are more correct, I think. The righteousness of God. So you may be saying, well, what's the difference, Hans-Erik? There's the righteousness from God to us, right? And then there's the righteousness of God. And in the original Greek, it's a bit ambiguous. You could actually correctly translate it either way. Because it's this attribute of God that is, it's His, but it's His to give away in essence, right? So it's either His that He's revealing, or it's His to give us. But it's His. You know, it belongs to Him. Now, why? Why is this so important? Well, I grew up Lutheran. You all grew up Protestant. Many of you, not all of you, but many of you grew up Protestant. And one of the things you've been told over and over again in your life is that the righteousness that comes from God is through faith. And Romans chapter 1, verse 17 is one of those examples of why that would be. But also in Galatians and many other places in the Scripture.

[6:46] And this idea is that the righteousness. Is given to you from God. Because you believe. And this is like, we believe, this is what you've heard in catechism growing up, hopefully, if you went. And this is probably still what we teach our kids in catechism.

[7:03] Now, why is this such a strong idea? Well, it has to go back to Martin Luther, right? Martin Luther was worried about his own righteousness. He didn't think righteousness came from faith. The Catholic Church didn't teach that at all. The Catholic Church said that there's a surplus of righteousness. That the church owns. It has it like in a sack by its side. And it can give you a little bit if you pay first. That was an indulgence, right? So your righteousness comes from the church. And it's stored up because there's some faith. There's some saints that have a surplus. And it kind of sloughed off them somehow and fell in this bag. And now they can pass it out for free. Or your righteousness comes by doing penance. And that's when you've done something wrong. Then you kind of do something hard to make up for it. Like writing something on the chalkboard a hundred times. Or in the case of Martin Luther, if he had been sinning, he would whip his own body with a whip to make himself feel bad. And that's how you kind of burn away some of that sin.

[8:02] Oh, our youth group is coming back from their trip already. Well, that's great. Well, then they can come to church. Or not. It's up to them. Anyway, I just saw Dwayne's truck pull up in the parking lot. Very exciting. Okay.

[8:17] Now, Luther was... His life was transformed when he found passages like this in Romans and Galatians. He's like, wait, you're telling me that righteousness comes from God, not because of any work I do or any payment I can make, but because I simply believe in the gospel. And so that was so revolutionary. And it started the Protestant Reformation. And the critique of Luther is that this... He could not see the forest because of this one tree. That there's actually more to this concept of God's righteousness coming to us in Romans. But all he could see was this one big tree of how the Catholic Church was handing out righteousness. And so it's not his fault because it was such a big tree and it had to be cut down. And Luther cut it down. He really did. But we've had a little bit of trouble coming forward since then. So we've had some scholars, one of them's name is N.T. Wright, has looked at it again from a purely Scripture point of view. And say, now wait a second, what do verses like this actually mean? Do they mean, like it says in the NIV 84, that the righteousness from God is revealed, or the New Living Translation, that God makes us right in His sight, accomplished from start to finish by faith? Or does it mean that, look at NRSV,

[9:38] the righteousness of God is revealed through faith, so that you appropriate or are able to see it because of faith. And it is by faith that you can see it. And it is by faith that God makes His righteousness work through in the world. And so it seems like, it may seem to you like a bit of a minor distinction, but it's pretty important. And we'll get to it more as we go through the series.

[9:59] However, I would say the other thing is when we have translations like the NIV 84, and the purple, the purple, the people who wrote, or who translated the NIV 84, a lot of them were Protestants. A lot of them were from the Reformed Church. You know, Luther, Calvin. Those people were heavy in their minds. And so even your own theological background is going to influence how you translate the Scriptures. And so you may have heard this before, but we're always in the search of a good translation of Scripture, right? And even the New Living Translation, which is newer, I think gets it wrong. It's just kind of funny. So the antidote to all of this is to read many different versions of the Bible when you're studying. Okay? The other antidote is to read it in the original language and get your grammar out and kind of say, how many different ways could I translate this? And which one makes the most sense given the context that this verse is in right now? And so what we'll find that in the context of this is that NRSV and new NIV are probably more correct because it's the righteousness of God as his intrinsic character that's being revealed. Makes the most sense because in verse 18, what's revealed is God's wrath at humankind for their sin.

[11:24] And so if in one verse his wrath is being revealed towards his sin, then his justice or his righteousness, it makes sense, is being revealed in the verse before. That's the context of this little couplet of verses. Now we're not preaching from verse 18 today. All that to say is that this is important stuff, but also very exciting stuff. Can you tell how animated I am about this? And some of you are like, what? Wow, something exciting is happening. And you're wrong. It's not. No, it is. It is. It is. It's very exciting. So those are the, we're not going to spend too much more time on that. But the other word that we're going to take a look at is the underlined words. And in this case, we have very good agreement. NL, New Living Translation tells us, although the New Living Translation is kind of, it's more readable. It's a bit of a semi-paraphrase. It's probably a very good Bible for about a sixth grade level. I think it's great.

[12:18] But, and so, but then you get NRSV, you have is revealed, is revealed, is revealed. So the last three are all the same, is revealed. Okay. Now we can go back to the regular view of the sermon then. So you can see more of me. You don't want to see more of me. Make me small again. No, don't, don't, don't. It's fine. So the, that word for reveal, now this word you may recognize now, that Greek word is apocalypto. Apocalypto. That word means to uncover something, to take it out of hiding, to cause something to be fully known. The correct way to translate it into English is either to reveal or to disclose or to make fully known or revelation. And actually that's the Greek word for the book of Revelation is apocalypto. And our word apocalypse, which we think means the end of the world, technically it just means the revealing. So the word apocalypse is the revelation of something that's hidden or the uncovering of something that hasn't been seen before. But in English, the word apocalypse has now taken also on the meaning of all sorts of things that happen at the end of the world. Right? So you can say the apocalypse and by it mean a volcano exploding in your neighborhood where there never was a volcano before or something like that.

[13:36] That's a correct way of talking about it in English. But strictly speaking, the apocalypse is the revelation or the revealing of something that we haven't seen yet before. And so there's other places in the Bible where this word apocalypto is used. Luke chapter 2, 35, it says, so the thoughts of many will be fully known or revealed. Right? See these things, that's how it's used. Thessalonians 2, the wicked one will be revealed. So it can be of a person like the true colors are revealed or shown. Romans 16, 25, according to the disclosure of the secret truth, which was hidden for long ages in the past. So secret things being revealed. Secret things being now made known or public.

[14:18] And Romans 8, all creation waits with eager longing for God to reveal something, his sons, his children. So there's a sense of something being revealed. And that's a really big theme that I think we're going to be working on here in Romans is that Paul is talking and writing. Why is he writing this book? Because he's revealing what God has revealed to him. He's uncovering something. You could say it was a secret. God kept it close to his vest until Jesus came. And Jesus kept it close to his vest as he was here. Remember at the feast of Cana, at the wedding of Cana, he told his mom, it's not my time yet. I'm not going to play all my cards yet. And she's like, okay, I'll play one of them. He said, you know, I'll play one. But later his time came. Now is the hour. Now is the time. Now all the cards are on the table. Now I'm going to reveal everything. At Pentecost, everything is revealed. Right? Everything comes out. So things are being revealed. And just as a side note, don't trust religions that are full of secrets. You know, and I'm going to name a few of them. The Mormons have a lot of secrets. They won't tell you what everything, they won't tell you up front everything they believe. And even they don't know everything that's happening in the sort of the smaller circles.

[15:31] We're a religion or a faith of revealing things. We're not a faith of hiding things or keeping secrets. Everything is now out in the open. At the right time, God revealed what he wanted to reveal. And now there's nothing left to reveal. We have the entirety of our revelation. It's in the Bible right in front of you. That's the entirety there. God has laid out every card that he has. It has all been apocalypto. It's all been revealed. So we don't have any secrets anymore. Thank God for that. Because you know, the challenge with secrets is it's so hard to keep track of them all. And it's hard for our son George, God bless him, he can't keep a secret. You know, we should all be that way. It's like it's stressful for him to keep a secret. He goes to a friend's house with a birthday present. And he's like, here's your present. It's a toy car. You know, he's just the stress of the friend not knowing is so great. So I think genetically George was destined to be a Christian. Nothing can be hidden. And nothing is hidden.

[16:29] So that's the theme of the beginning at least of Romans until we get to this question of why the Jews haven't received it, the revelation, is to explain the revelation. The revelation is. That God's righteousness is coming into the world through the work of his son Jesus Christ. And that in that righteous, that righteousness is now an expectation of us so that we live in righteousness and just justice or in a just world. And here's the other thing that I always want you to keep in mind. And we might make a poster out of it. But in the New Testament, the word for righteousness and the word for justice are the same word. It sounds funny. But it kind of makes sense. Right? So you can think of righteousness or being in a right relationship with somebody is similar to justice even in our language. But in Greek, it's the exact same word. And so that's the other challenge for a translator is how do I translate this right now? Should I translate this as righteousness or as justification? Right? That's an important question. But they're similar concepts. And so what's being revealed is that Jesus is inaugurating a whole new thing. And there's a lot of sort of wrinkles to that. The other thing that's being revealed is that God is pretty angry.

[17:46] We'll get to that too. God is pretty angry at the world. And God, but also God is now revealing his plan for how he's going to deal with his own anger at the world. So and I would like, here's what I would like to do real quickly is if you remember we had a sermon series about the vineyard. Remember that? It was how Jesus tells us to do it. And so we're going to go through this parable about these tenants in the vineyard. They're not doing what the landlord expects. They're doing, they're not paying him what they owe him. He sends various people to go collect the rent and they're all mistreated. Finally, he sends his son. They take the son and they kill him. Then Jesus asks the Pharisees who are listening to this parable. They do realize it's about them, but they still give an honest answer. He says, what would, like if this was a true story, what would happen if the landlord finally came forward? And he said, the Pharisees themselves said, well, he would throw them out of the vineyard and he would give the vineyard to those people who do the work that the landlord expects. Okay. And this revealing thing, I want to link it to that whole concept of Jesus, that this parable that Jesus told in the last week of his life, the most, probably the most important parable that he ever tells is that God's plan has been revealed to this waiting people.

[19:04] So you should imagine that this is when the son comes to the vineyard and he says, he's going to do this. Here's the plan. Here's what's being revealed, right? I'm going to fulfill the covenant. It's not going to be in military power or political power, but it's going to be in love and peace and humility and setting aside privilege and power. And it's going to happen through me. This is what the son says when he comes to the vineyard. He says, I'm revealing a whole new way of doing this. All the things that you've been waiting for. This is what it looks like. This is the son.

[19:36] And what was the response though? Of the people, this gets to the question of why Paul's so perturbed. What was the response of the people in the parable to the son? They said, let's kill him. Then it'll be ours. You know, that's really interesting, right? Let not, oh, let's let the son is here. We better act like this is serious. We better act and do the right thing, right?

[20:01] So, um, what the question that I want us to ask. And I think this is a good place to ask. Um, why do we think, and really I want some participation here, really. And if you want to do it at home, I'm going to open up the chat. I'm going to look at the chat log. Because some of you are online and this is great. Why, why do we think that it's so hard for what Paul calls my fellow countrymen. So hard for my fellow countrymen to receive the gospel. Why is that not working out?

[20:40] And honestly, anybody could just raise your hand and tell why, or why is it still happening? I'm going to just bring up the chat log here. Okay. Anyone? You don't have to be like an amazing theologian. You don't have to be. Why? Why? Yeah. Karen. It seems too good to be true. Okay. Yeah. Is it really that simple? Right. Karen says it seems too good to be true. Is it really that simple? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think. We opted for a society where we work hard. We want to try to earn our way. Exactly. We work hard. We try to earn our way. The default human condition is I want to earn my own stuff. And it makes sense because if we don't do that, we won't eat or live. You know, in a hunter-gatherer society, that's absolutely true. Yeah. Yeah. Very good. I agree with that. So it was just too easy. Too simple. Yeah. Anyone else?

[21:30] Why were the Jews having such a hard time accepting the gospel? Why? Why? You didn't know I was going to ask you questions today. I think if they hold themselves to a higher standard, then it feels more humiliating to admit that you didn't help. Very good. You guys are so smart. Yeah. So Michael said if they held themselves to a higher standard, it would feel humiliating to say that I don't have to live at that. Well, how would you say it again? Try again.

[22:02] I'll try again to listen to you is probably what I should say. Yeah. Well, yeah, so I would say it feels more humiliating to admit that you need help. Oh, yeah. Kind of in a similar way that if you're sick and you need a doctor, but, yeah, people don't realize that they're sick. Yeah, or they think they can heal themselves with, by drinking silver or something like that. Yes. Okay. So he says it's humiliating to say that I need help. It's hard, it's humiliating to ask, to admit I'm a sinner. If I have some system of laws that I can keep them all, or I think I can keep them all, then that, that, that helps my own self-esteem. A lot more. Yeah. My own ego. Anyone else?

[22:40] Yes. Deepak. Unable to get rid of their prejudices. I don't have to preach. You guys got it all figured out. I'm going home. These are, this is everything I was going to say. Yes. Deepak said they, they have their prejudices. So there's this real human reaction. Here's this incredible good news, but I really, I really hate these people that I'm now have to be friends with. I don't, I don't want to join that club now. It's not that fun. So let's see if somebody, I just got, did you hear that noise? That's the only, that's the loudest notification sound I can get, but it sounds like a cash register, and it's not money coming in. It's a text message coming in. Let's see what somebody from home sent.

[23:26] So Adele, Adele is watching at home. Hello, Adele. The Jews were taught that their righteousness is by works and Jesus said it is by faith. So it's a whole paradigm shift. Right? There's a whole thing that's, that's just different now. Good. So now we've gotten four answers. Anyone else? We don't, we've probably spent enough time on it, but if there's one last person dying to get it in there. Okay. So we're, this is good. This is really good. Okay.

[24:01] Um, now, um, next week, pastor Victoria is going to, I'm not sure she's going to be here. She's going to preach on the very next section, but the very next verse, verse 18 talks about now, now God's wrath has been apocalyptic, has been revealed against all sorts of sinfulness in this world. So God is angry at the sin in the world. And so you could go, this is good news because the world is wicked. And God, at least God is angry. At least somebody is angry about it. Right? I mean, we're angry about it, but at least God, at least somebody who really matters is angry about it. And at some point God will set it to right. His justice will enter into the world somehow and actually is now entering the world through us. That's the challenge. So God's wrath is now revealed. That's why probably his righteousness or his justice is being revealed is the correct way to translate verse 17. God's wrath is being revealed. That's good news, but it's also bad news. Because.

[25:06] We're also sinners. This is the challenge for us. So everything a little more complex than we think. Is it good news that God is just? Yes. Is it bad news that God is just? Yes. Because he's mad at you. Every last one of you. And I'm looking at, so when you point at somebody, you've got three fingers pointing back. So I'm pointing at you, which is probably rude in some cultures and is a rude in ours, but I'm at least, I want you to see that I'm pointing back at myself with three fingers and pointing at God with one finger, which makes no sense. So I'll go like that.

[25:40] Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? being revealed. My justice and my righteousness is being revealed to you so that you can live in a just and righteous way and create a just and righteous world for the rest of humanity. How are we doing at that? How's that one going? Terrible. Terrible. We have a lot of work to do. I'm sorry to say it. I mean, in fact, we've taken many steps back in the last three or four years as a global church, church with a capital C. It's a mess. So the bad news is that we're part of the sin problem and not just the bad people we can think of. In fact, there's this huge section in Romans about not judging other people. Isn't that interesting? You can't judge other people. So we'll, and we'll get to that eventually too. I want to give a few answers to the question that are really going to consume Paul and us in the second half of the series, right? About why are the disciples of God so evil? And I want to give a few answers to the question that are really Jews not accepting the revelation, the revealed plan, the revealed message. And I think a lot of it has to do with identity. And I think we've all kind of touched on this a little bit, is how we build our own self-understanding. And it's a real problem in our politics today, right? We have

[27:17] politics is largely driven by identity. People on the right, people on the left, they have this conception of who they are and how the world works. And they kind of put up a flag about what that looks like. And it sometimes is an actual flag, like it's a flag on their house. But more often, it's kind of a metaphorical flag, or it could be a bumper sticker, or it could be a tweet on Twitter, or it could be the little signature line on your email that goes at the bottom of every one of your emails. It's a way of saying to the rest of the world, this is my domain. This is the domain of the Republicans or the Democrats or the QAnon, or I don't know what the, there's some other thing on the other side of that. This is where, this is the domain of that thing, and you may not trespass on here, or at least you, we can at least recognize each other if we find each other out in the wild. So we're very tribal. We put up flags that say who we are. And this was true of Jewish identity in the time of Paul, right? Jewish identity should have always been, this is what it should have been, that they're the people of God, that they were created in his likeness, that they were destined to be a light to all the nations. This is what God told the Jewish people.

[28:34] I chose you not because you're more special than anyone or because I like you more than anyone, but because you're going to carry my light to all the nations. That's your job. I chose you. You're my chosen people so you're chosen for work. You're not chosen for just being chosen. And I want you to live in a covenant relationship with me, and I want you to live in shalom with me. each other and shalom means wholeness and peace it means a lot of things but it means wholeness and peace and it can have sort of overtones of justice and righteousness i want you to live as a just and righteous society in yourself this is your true identity and i want other people to see it and that's that light on the hill that everyone can see but over time what did jewish identity possibly become i say possibly because i wasn't there i don't know it but i think i can we can guess at it right our identity morphs into the things that we can control we can't control what god thinks of us we can't control what god does with us and we can't control god but we try but we can control things that we do so if i'm a jewish person i only eat certain foods with certain people so there's some people i never meet i'm never sitting at a table with some people ever

[29:45] and on my best day i tolerate the gentiles i tolerate them i don't like them but they tolerate them even though they're encroaching on our lives they're not going to be able to control us land more importantly the gentiles are encroaching on our culture and our language there's a cultural invasion coming from the greeks that was called hellenization in fact it was so complete that the new testament is not written in hebrew it's written in greek all the people in jesus's time both spoke greek and aramaic they had to speak greek to do business with each other and then the romans came so some of them had to learn latin these foreigners brought new foreign foods new gods new forms of entertainment like the theater which to the jews looked crazy you know and so on my best day i tolerate all these foreigners in my land on my worst day i hate them with the fire of hell because they're destructive and they're in my land and they're destroying my culture and my children are speaking greek now and i don't like it you know and i'm just waiting for the day to make israel great again you know or something like that and it's not gonna it's not happening yeah so jesus is gonna come and do that for us no he doesn't

[31:00] that's the interesting thing so the reality is somewhere in between right but probably there was a lot of hate jewish people probably hated gentiles now i say probably because i wasn't there i don't know that but i've read other books that saying that the racial animus that we experience even in our country is less than that might have existed between jews and gentiles at that time because it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early

[31:50] 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early 20th century therefore it was popularized in the early And so I'm up here and you're down here. And this feels great, right? I can feel superior to other people. I can definitely feel superior to the Gentiles. And I can congratulate myself big time. I can break my arm patting my own back. And so what's on offer in this big revelation? I think Paul should have figured this out.

[32:15] What's on offer in this revelation of the good news of God's justice and the righteousness in the Messiah Jesus is that for a Jew, I have to give up some of my food customs. I have to be friendly to people who I was taught to hate. And I have to stop congratulating myself on how good it feels to follow the law. I have to give up all these things.

[32:38] And so maybe that's why so few Jewish people were joining the Christian church. But Paul was concerned about it because he was a Jew. These were people he really cared about. I think we act in our own. Self-interest. And so even if we're faced with incredibly good news, we might say, I have to give up too much of who I think I am to ever say yes to that. And I think that's our challenge, too. I mean, that's still with us. And I think that's where I want us to go with Romans 2 is I want us to give up. I took a picture of what you put up on the screen there, Wendy.

[33:18] And I cropped it and I'm going to read it again. I need my glasses for that. 2011 students surrender to Jesus the aspects of their lives that keep them from living as a whole life, whole world disciple. And I think that's where we're going to go in this book, too, because that's what's on offer. That's the revelation. God is saying.

[33:43] You have to give up part of what you think makes you you. You have to get rid of some of the obstacles to making yourself a whole. Life, whole world disciple, somebody who lives in justice and righteousness, who creates a world in a society of justice and righteousness. There's more, but I'm going to stop because I think we're done with all this other stuff I can talk about some other day. But this is the kickoff. And I'm excited. I hope you're excited that what's coming next is what's going to be what Paul is talking about. He says this righteousness of God is being revealed.

[34:21] By faith from beginning to end. Now, in the next few chapters, we're going to see what that is that is being revealed. Some of it is justification by faith. Right. Some of it is, though, justification because God is just and he gives us his justice and he gives us his righteousness. So that's what we've got to look forward to. Let's say a word of prayer. Father, thank you again for this word. Thank you for the weeks that are coming ahead that you will teach us from your word.