teachmevp

Romans 2:12-13 - People who lived before the time of the law, as well as the nations who were never under the law, people today who are not under law, the Mosaic Law will not be cited against these people. The law itself was proof that Israel was unable to earn righteousness through their performance. Israel had a problem when it came to learning the lesson of their inability and the futility to gain righteousness through performance. They trusted in themselves that they were righteous. 
 When performance is the measure of a person’s righteous standing at the bar of God’s justice, only a patient continuance in well doing would cut it, and there is none that do good, not to that degree. What is a patient continuance in well doing? Keep the whole law if you want to obtain eternal life through law-keeping. Wrath worthiness if you fail in even one point of the law is the other side of the coin. Paul is proving the wrath worthiness of the entire human race, when it comes to a non-wrath-worthy self-defense plea before God. 
 The dilemma of the human race, just as religion did not save the Israelite during the time of the law contract, religion could not save the Gentiles during that time either, just as it cannot save the Israelite or Gentile today. Religion is an equally inadequate self-defense plea today for people to make, as it was in Paul’s day. No amount of rules and regulations, no observance of rites and rituals, no matter what they are would suffice when it comes to meriting a righteous standing before God. This will be the issue at the Great White Throne Judgment, people will be standing there not clothed in Christ’s righteousness, because they have rejected what Christ accomplished where their sin debt is concerned. 
 To walk after the flesh, is to assign righteous credit to your fleshly conduct, from Adam onward, people have been doing what seems right to a person in regard to having a relationship with God. Not one member of the entire human race has ever lived up to any system of rule-keeping for righteousness. Yet, how many are attempting today, to do what humankind before us was totally unable to do? How many people think they are measuring up to God’s standard today? Israel supposed they were producing sufficient righteousness through their performance for God to recognize their performance and call them just in his eyes.
 Romans 2:14-15 - The Gentiles who were never placed under the law of Moses, do by nature the things contained in the law, the Gentiles determined for themselves their own right and wrong. The Gentiles were following what the Bible calls “the way of Cain” the WORK of the law was written in their hearts. Paul did not say the LAW was written in Gentile hearts. Writing the law in the heart is something God is going to do for the nation Israel in fulfillment of their New Covenant, Jeremiah 31:33-34. 
 The works of the law are written in the hearts of the Gentiles, in other words, God knows whether or not a person has placed their faith in the faithfulness of his son, or whether that person is still holding onto the notion that his good works will somehow merit them a position of righteousness in the eyes of God. God knows the motivation that resides in the human heart that underlies all the works that we call good. 
 Any kind of works at all, even if they appear to be good works in your mind, that are done for the purpose attaining salvation or for the purpose of maintaining salvation, and yes, even for the purpose of proving one’s salvation is a slap in the face of God who had to provide the gift of salvation, because people’s righteousness would be totally incapable of meriting it. Our good works must be done solely out of appreciation for what God has already accomplished. 
 Romans 2:16 - We seldom recognize the sin within ourselves. The most insidious evil present in the heart of people is a person’s refusal to recognize the evil that is present within self. This is what the pride of life is all about, it is always the other person who does the really serious sins. You see, we have a pretty good cause to justify ourselves, because the pride nature uses only relative righteousness as its reasoning. The pride nature rebels against and hates to accept the truth. 
 We do not want to see ourselves as unjust. We resist seeing ourselves as unjust and being in the same boat with those poor unfortunate souls we consider to be less just than we are. The prideful human nature convinces us that we possess some righteousness, some meritorious standing before God of our own doing, some goodness achieved by our own accomplishments. Paul has set out to prove to the human race that nothing we do and nothing we promise to do will have anything whatsoever to do with our righteous standing before a perfectly righteous God. 
 The dilemma of the human race, just as religion did not save the Israelite during the time of the law contract, religion could not save the Gentiles during that time either, just as it cannot save the Israelite or Gentile today. Religion is an equally inadequate self-defense plea today for people to make, as it was in Paul’s day.

Romans 2:3-4 - The first characteristic of a self-righteous moralizer is arrogance. The guilty verdict that God has just declared upon the human race, do you think that you are going to escape that guilty verdict? Do you think for one moment that God is going to give you a non-wrath-worthy pass: that Christ need not have died for your sins; that your sins are of such a non-serious nature that you have no need of a Savior in the first place? 
 God is going to see you as having no need of the saving work of his son. God’s attitude toward ALL ungodliness and unrighteousness of people is being revealed in scripture. People are guilty before God, he has decreed it. NO excuse will suffice to pardon it. It is such a shame that so many people today are trusting in their goodness to get them to heaven. Paul wants us to understand that there is no refuge in human goodness. Judgment based on a righteousness people can produce for themselves can only lead to one verdict, GUILTY. 
 When we put our human hearts under the microscope of God’s truthful judgment, we are going to find out that we need much more than human righteousness to have a perfectly just standing before God. We need a Savior and Jesus Christ became that Savior. Do all people need to change their minds about the seriousness of sin and God’s answer to that serious dilemma people found themselves in? All people should change their minds about the way that God has provided and what his son accomplished where their sins are concerned, because not all people believe that those sins were done away with Christ’s payment. 
 God has held back the wrath you so justly deserve. God has been good to you in holding back that wrath. God has not held back his wrath because he is happy with who you think you are, or because he is satisfied with who you are trying to become. God has been long-suffering in holding back his wrath, because he hopes that you will consider his goodness through his son, his goodness on your behalf and flee to his grace, God wants you to change your mind about who you are from fleshly perspective apart from Christ. 
Romans 2:6-11 - God completely took works out of the equation, when it came to gaining or maintaining salvation! Paul has fenced us all in and it is a closed-in pen, in a manner of speaking of wrath worthiness, therefore, the human race is in need of a Savior, simple as that! All of the saving work that God could possibly do, he has already done through Jesus Christ. God now holds forth the reconciliation that Christ has accomplished, offering people the choice to either accept or reject that gift of salvation. Our good works must be done solely out of appreciation for what God has already accomplished, we place our faith in Christ’s faithfulness, and that alone. 
 The Pastors roll is to prepare his people for the Bema, that is what teaching and pastoring is all about. The Bema has to do with the building project. The building is the Body of Christ. We as members of the Body of Christ, are co-labors with God in the building project. The blueprint for the proper construction of this building has been given to apostle Paul for the work crew of which we are apart. At the Judgment Seat of Christ, Christ will be able to judge, not only what is seen by the eye, but also the motivations of the heart, not only what was done, but why it was done in connection with each believer’s work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope. But understand, it is the value of the work itself that will be judged at the Bema, not the believer. 
 God has given the human race a God consciousness, the conscious perception that we could say that there is a God somewhere and that ultimately the human race is accountable to that God. God knows whether there is a hidden motivation even to ourselves, hidden by our pride nature to look good before others; to appear knowledgeable before others; to somehow elevate self in relation to others to gain the praise of others, God knows the motivations of the human heart. The issue at the Great White Throne Judgment will be those standing there in their own righteousness, and not in God’s righteousness. Romans 2:5 - This is a chilling and sobering thought, when self-righteous moralizers harden their hearts and remain impenitent concerning their goodness, they are storing up to themselves wrath to be visited upon them in the day of wrath. They will one day stand at the Great White Throne Judgment where the merited righteousness they think they have will be put on display. It will be open for inspection. They will be standing at the Great White Throne Judgment having only their own righteousness to show for themselves. 
 Paul has taken on the role of prosecuting attorney seated at the plaintiff’s table. To illustrate just how bad things really are, Paul wants us to understand that all the human race are sitting at the table of the defense. The point that Paul makes as prosecuting attorney is to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt, the reality that every person is worthy of the wrath of God. Making all of us wrath conscious is the point in Paul’s presentation. We have to understand the charges against us and that is precisely what Paul set out to do. 
 Paul as a wise prosecutor has pointed the finger at the entire human race and he has accused us of being guilty of the crimes of being ungodly and unrighteous. We need to be justified, because our own performance and our own production, even when accompanied by our most sincere promises and pledges to God is insufficient to accomplish for us a just standing in the eyes of a perfectly just God. Paul wants us first and foremost to come to a full assurance of understanding that when judged according to truth, we are all in the same boat. Each and everyone of us had a need for a justification to be provided for us; a justification that would come totally apart from anything we could merit through our own performance. 
 Romans 2:6-11 - God completely took works out of the equation, when it came to gaining or maintaining salvation! Paul has fenced us all in and it is a closed-in pen, in a manner of speaking of wrath worthiness, therefore, the human race is in need of a Savior, simple as that! All of the saving work that God could possibly do, he has already done through Jesus Christ. God now holds forth the reconciliation that Christ has accomplished, offering people the choice to either accept or reject that gift of salvation. Our good works must be done solely out of appreciation for what God has already accomplished, we place our faith in Christ’s faithfulness, and that alone. 
 The Pastors roll is to prepare his people for the Bema, that is what teaching and pastoring is all about. The Bema has to do with the building project. The building is the Body of Christ. We as members of the Body of Christ, are co-labors with God in the building project. The blueprint for the proper construction of this building has been given to apostle Paul for the work crew of which we are apart. At the Judgment Seat of Christ, Christ will be able to judge, not only what is seen by the eye, but also the motivations of the heart, not only what was done, but why it was done in connection with each believer’s work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope. But understand, it is the value of the work itself that will be judged at the Bema, not the believer. 
 God has given the human race a God consciousness, the conscious perception that we could say that there is a God somewhere and that ultimately the human race is accountable to that God. God knows whether there is a hidden motivation even to ourselves, hidden by our pride nature to look good before others; to appear knowledgeable before others; to somehow elevate self in relation to others to gain the praise of others, God knows the motivations of the human heart. The issue at the Great White Throne Judgment will be those standing there in their own righteousness, and not in God’s righteousness.

It was God’s plan before the creation of the world, that humankind’s fingerprints would not be found on humankind's salvation. Romans is designed to grow us up in faith doctrine. God has always used faith in every age, he has always used faith or what a person believes as the criteria necessary to effect salvation for humankind.
 Romans 1:1 - Paul was not only first in line, when it came to dispensing the grace of God, Paul was also foremost in crime when it came to murdering the saints of Israel’s earthly kingdom program. If Paul was at Pentecost, would Paul himself, if he took part in stoning Stephen for believing the message given at Pentecost, would he have been a blasphemer at Pentecost? In Paul’s pre-grace zealousness, he would have been a foremost rejecter of any notion whatsoever that Jesus was Israel’s messiah or that Jesus had been risen from among the dead. 
 First in line, first in crime are apt descriptions for the Apostle of Grace. Paul was the chosen spokesman for God to relay the information for this entire dispensation of grace. God is not dealing with Israel nationally today, he is dealing with all alike in the Age of Grace. The apostle Paul dispensed a message that the 12 apostles had not dispensed, and that message was different, and that message was geared to the Gentiles. 
 Paul is the chief pattern of God’s grace to all, he is the foremost example. We need to understand that even though Paul was saved, Paul still considered himself to be a sinner. Paul understood the word: Sin. And Paul understood that word meant to come short of the righteousness belonging to God himself. Paul is the foremost example of the impossibility, the total impossibility of gaining righteousness before God through the performance of the flesh. 
 Paul could never preach and never preached the Gospel of the Kingdom, because the kingdom was no longer at hand. God cease dealing with “the outer man” in connection with God’s program with Israel and prophecy concerning their promised earthly kingdom, and then began dealing with “the inner man” in connection with his program concerning the saints of his heavenly calling. 
 Romans 1:2-3 - The Davidic covenant is an eternal and unconditional covenant between God and the House of David, or the dynasty of David. God says that David and his descendants may be punished for sin. They certainly will be punished for sin, but God will not take the kingdom away from them as he did from Saul. 
 God’s unconditional and eternal covenants with the patriarchs and with David do not prelude the possibility of punishment or chastisement for sin as specified in the conditional Mosaic covenant. The covenant with David, it’s a covenant of grant, it’s a grant of a reward for loyal service and deeds. God rewards David with the gift of an unending dynasty, in exchange for his loyalty. God’s oath to preserve the Davidic dynasty, would lead eventually to a popular belief in the invincibility of the Holy City. The belief in Israel’s ultimate deliverance from enemies, became bound up with David and his dynasty. When the kingdom fell finally to the Babylonians, the promise to David’s House was believed to be eternal. 
 The community looked to the future for a restoration of the Davidic line or Davidic king or messiah. And in the exile, Israelites would pray for another messiah, meaning another king from the House of David appointed and anointed by Yahweh to rescue them from enemies, and reestablish them as a nation at peace in their land as David had done. The Israelites hope for a messiah; it involved the restoration of the nation in its land under a Davidic king. 
Romans 1:4 - The Christian belief in the resurrection of the body did not arise from philosophical speculations or wishful thinking like the notion of the immortality of the soul. It arose from the conviction that such an event had actually already taken place with the resurrection of Jesus from among the dead. The resurrection is proof that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and that his sacrifice was pleasing to God. 
 As long as Jesus lay in the tomb, he was just another tragic religious figure who suffered a martyr’s death. In fact, Paul tells us that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the greatest display of God’s power ever to be demonstrated, nor can it ever be surpassed. Our degree of judicial perfection in the eyes of God comes not through Jesus’ death for our sins, but through our identity with Jesus’ resurrection life. 
 Paul’s statement that Jesus’ resurrection was “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep,” the expression “first fruits” has little meaning for today’s urban dwellers. In Bible times, it had a rich meaning because it referred to the first produce of the harvest, which was offered in sacrifice to God to express gratitude for granting a new harvest. Thus, the first fruits, which were brought to the Temple, were seen not as mere hope of a new harvest, but as its actual beginning. 
 Jesus’ resurrection, then, is “the first fruits” in the sense that it has made the resurrection of believers not a mere possibility, but a certainty. Paul and the 12 apostles preached the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul preached what that meant to us Gentiles. The 12 apostles had preached the necessity of Christ being raised from among the dead, in order to sit on the throne of David in the promised kingdom. Romans 1:5 - Grace within a dispensation was one thing, a dispensation characterized solely by grace is something else altogether. Grace is the foundation on which Paul’s entire ministry was built, and grace covers all the bases for the believer’s life. There is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and it is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished. 
 Paul had been given special divine authority with the understanding that he is our apostle, and that authority carried with it the details of what God expects people to believe today, concerning the salvation Jesus Christ purchased for them with his sacrifice. 
 Therefore, God in his infinite wisdom devised a plan whereby he could take the very faith belonging to his son, along with its resultant faithfulness, and credit that faith and faithfulness to the account of those who believe. It is Christ’s faith that is freely credited to the account of the one who believes the good news message given to the apostle Paul to proclaim to us in this age of grace. 
 Paul wants us to know how a person is saved. He wants us to understand the basis by which God provides eternal security, not only has provided the gift of salvation; but provides eternal security to all those who place their faith in what the sacrifice of his son accomplished. It is our faith in the accomplishment of Jesus Christ’s faithful sacrifice that is the means whereby God acknowledges that we have accepted the gift his son purchased.
 Romans 1:6 - When Paul refers to us as the called, he is referring not just to the fact that God is extending a call to us, an invitation or summons. Paul’s also referring to the fact that God’s calling us to participate in that to which we have been called, the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is an expression denoting the point when God began to judicially join believers to his son, the Body of Christ is not about program, but about judicial identity. 
 God forgave us, not because he had to, but because it was his desire too. God accomplished through Christ what we could never do on our own. God did not wait for us to do the first step. God had a choice, Jesus Christ had a choice, and they chose to do it. Christ believed that his sacrifice would settle the sin issue once and for all, and that God would raise him from among the dead. 
 What an ingenious salvation plan, to take someone else that is righteous and join us to that person. Sin causes a debt to God so large that it can never be paid by ourselves, but the person who knows what Jesus Christ really accomplished, exist in a completely new relationship with God. Justification is a legal act, wherein God deems the sinner righteous on the basis of Christ’s righteousness. 
 Justification is not a process, but is a one-time act, complete and definitive. God could only declare us to be right on the bases of who and what he is, not on the bases of who and what we would be apart from him. God had to devise a way to see us that way, and the way he devised to do that was by joining us to, hiding us in our perfectly righteous savior, thus freely crediting to our account Christ righteousness. 
 Romans 1:7 - The realization that God’s love accomplished some fantastic things on our behalf. God is anxiously awaiting his own inheritance, which happens to be us, God considers believers to be his own inheritance, he purchased us with the blood of his son, we are God’s valuable inheritance. We find the amazing and comforting truth that God’s love for those who are joined to his son, is the same unalterable and unending love God has for his son. 
 That is how closely connected we are to Christ, nothing will ever be able to diminish God’s loving attitude towards those who are joined to his son. We are called “saints” today, “set apart ones,” that is the word God uses for those who have placed their faith in the all-sufficiency of the sin-resolving sacrifice of his son, Jesus Christ. We are the saints of a brand new program, to be identified in Christ makes a person a saint, because we have the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to our account. 
 Grace is that which God does for the human race through his son, which the human race can not earn, does not deserve and will never merit. Grace is God’s work for people, and encompasses everything we receive from God, he is free to do now for ungodly people who take him at his word. We must understand that God has predetermined to glorify us. In fact, he has predestined us to that glorification, we are objects of God’s purpose, because God had a purpose in mind where grace age believers are concerned, and he predetermined through his own decree that his purpose would stand, it will come to pass no matter what. 
 The inevitable result of God’s grace to the believer is true peace, because every believer is without blame before him in love. God sees us in Christ, and Christ was blameless. The only reason God could say through Paul, “Grace and Peace be unto you” is because God’s son fully paid the price. Justification by grace through faith, what a marvelous thing God has done, and who would have thought of a salvation in the sense that God’s plan would call for him to join a person to his son, therefore, what belongs to the son would now belong to believing people who have been joined to the son. Romans 1:8 - A labor of love, it is trying to understand something and then work with that understanding. Love, the behavioral glue that binds together the believer to other members of the Body of Christ, that is how God designed the new creation in Christ to operate. Love is the attitudinal adhesive God intends to keep the Body of Christ functionally smoothly and operating efficiently and effectively. Love is the bond that both unifies and edifies the members of the Body of Christ. 
 Maturity is all about the degree to which you participate in the increase of the Body of Christ unto the deifying of its self in love. The degree to which you participate in that which brings unity to the Body of Christ and edifies the believer to that degree you can consider yourself to be mature. We serve others today motivated by appreciation in the fact that God loves them, we are intricately joined to them, just as we are joined to Christ. 
 The law had apprehension as a motivation factor. Our labor of love under the Age of Grace has had the apprehension aspect removed entirely. We are to serve others today based on how God expressed his love to others through Christ and what he accomplished for them, who he made them and us to be in our savior by joining us to our savior. 
 Christian living is not about doing, it is about believing something, and when we believe something and we continue to take in God’s Word, it should change who we are, not change what we are trying to do and trying to become. Every believer has a part to play when it comes to that which edifies and unifies the Body of Christ, but attitude is that which instigates action. Faith does not come in gallons and tons, faith is not something “do I have enough faith, have I believed firmly enough?” Faith is simply taking your stand where God takes his stand.
 Romans 1:9-10 - When we think of pouring a foundation for a building, we might think of something like concrete being use as the foundation material. We can relate that to Paul’s job, when it came to dispensing the doctrinal truth.
It was committed to the apostle Paul to dispense the doctrinal concrete which would become that firm foundation upon which a believer’s growth might take place. Since growth is an important issue, it was essential that the doctrinal concrete Paul would begin to pour would contain the appropriate ingredients and that those ingredients would be in the correct proportions. 
 What happens if concrete’s too thin or too thick, doesn’t have sufficient water or moist with it. So we see these concrete doctrines would have to be prepared properly. They’d have to be spread adequately and smoothly to the point that our minds become set with the truths Paul was commissioned to establish. We can not pour a foundation properly, even if we have the proper ingredients for the foundation material apart from preparing the soil properly on which those ingredients are to be poured. We would want the foundation of the structure to be poured in an appropriate manner. If the soil of a person’s mind is not prepared by that which God has revealed about himself, then foundational truths holds no meaning. 
 Achieving God’s goals for our ambassadorship is learning to distinguish his goal, from his desire. It is a critical distinction, because it can spell the difference between success and failure. His goal is any specific result reflecting his purposes for our ambassadorship, that does not depend on people or circumstances beyond our ability. The only person who can block his goal or render it uncertain or impossible is us, and if we adopt the attitude of cooperation with his goals, his goal can be reached. His desire is any specific result that depends on the cooperation of other people or the success of events or favorable circumstances we cannot control. 
 Romans 1:11 - Dealing with Satan and his forces is not a power encounter; it is a truth encounter. You can not expect God to protect you from Satan and his forces influences if you do not take an active part in his prepared strategy. The armor that we must take up to protect ourselves from Satan and his forces attack, the first three are established because of our identity in Christ, the last three help us continue to win the battle. 
 It is critical that when we put on the armor of God, we start with the belt of truth. If Satan and his forces can deceive us into believing a lie, they can control our life in that area. It is absolutely vital that we put on the breastplate of righteousness, so that we can resist the persistent accusations of Satan and his forces, they never give up trying to get us down and keep us down by hurling one false accusation after another. 
 We put on the shoes of peace, because we are to forgive as we have been forgiven, and we must base our relationships with others on the same criteria. If we fail to speak the truth in love and manage our emotions, anger which turns to bitterness and unforgiveness is an open invitation to Satan and his forces. 
 In addition to believing it and thinking it, the Word of God is the only offensive weapon mentioned in the list of armor. If you are going to resist Satan and his forces, you must do so outwardly so they can understand you and be put to flight. That is why Paul insists that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Satan and his forces have no power over us except what we give them by failing to take every thought captive and thus being deceived into believing their lies. Romans 1:12 - It is imperative to our growth and maturity that we believe God’s truth about who we are in Christ. God is looking at our identification with his son and at what his energizing power from on high is producing in us, because that is where our life is as far as God is concerned. We cannot use experience to prove the validity of our doctrinal position, we must always use doctrine to prove the validity of our experience. 
 Our brains are an engine of understanding, our transformation process that is taking place in our lives as we take in the Word of God and apply it to the details of our lives, it is only when we come to properly understand God from his perspective concerning ourselves. The battle is taking place between the ears, between fleshy thinking and divine thinking. Trust that God knows what he is doing, and he is going to do it whether we pray or not. God knows precisely what he is going to do. 
 Paul doesn’t tell us that we are filled with God’s energizing power from on high, but instead, Paul is telling us that we should be filled with God’s energizing power from on high. In other words, we should allow God’s energizing power from on high to be in control of our lives. God’s energizing power from on high works in us, but only to the degree that we are willing to yield ourselves to God’s use in our ministry of reconciliation. 
 The most dangerous and harmful detriments to our growth is passivity, putting our mind in neutral and coasting, sitting back and waiting for God to do everything is not God’s way to maturity. Our old pattern for thinking and responding to our sin-trained flesh must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, it is our responsibility to change our behavior by putting to death the deeds of the body. 
 Romans 1:13 - We cannot base our self-worth or our personal success on our desires, no matter how godly they may be, because we cannot control their fulfillment. When a desire is wrongly elevated to a goal, and that goal is frustrated, we must deal with all the anger, anxiety, and depression which may accompany that failure. Dealing with the disappointments of unmet desires is a lot easier then dealing with the anger, anxiety, and depression of goals, we would do well to distinguish goals from desires. 
 When we begin to align our goals with God’s goals for our ambassadorship, and our desires with his desires, we will rid our life of a lot of anger, anxiety, and depression. We can know on a moment-by-moment basis if our ambassadorship is properly aligned with his truth. God has established a feedback system which is designed to grab our attention, so we can examine the validity of our goal. That system is our emotions. When an experience leaves us feeling angry, anxious, or depressed, those emotional signposts are there to alert us that we may be cherishing a faulty goal. 
 Any goal which can be blocked by forces we cannot control (other then God’s goal) is not a healthy goal, because our success in that arena is out of our hands. When we feel anxious in a task, our anxiety may be signaling the uncertainty of a goal we have chosen. We are wishing something will happen, but we have no guarantee that it will. We can control some of the factors, but not all of them. 
 When we base our future success on something that can never happen, we have an impossible goal. Our depression is a signal that our goal, no matter how noble, may never be reached. Depression often signals that we are desperately clinging to a goal we have little or no chance of achieving, and that is not a healthy goal. Feelings of anger should prompt us to reexamine our ambassadorship, and the mental goals we have formulated to accomplish God’s message of reconciliation. 
 Romans 1:14 - The Bema has to do with the building project. The building is the Body of Christ. We as members of the Body of Christ, are co-labors with God in the building project. The Chief Architect for the building project, the master builder is the apostle Paul. The blueprint for the proper construction of this building has been given to apostle Paul for the work crew of which we are apart. 
 Paul’s ministry was distinct, because Paul was the chief, the head architect for the Age of Grace for the building called the Body of Christ. The Bema of Christ, issues with which we need to be concerned, understand God does not want us to be unaware of the evaluation we will face. 
 The Bema has to do with the building project, remember whenever we see those words “labour or work” in Paul’s epistle, they are always in direct connection to the Bema of Christ. What is this blueprint? Paul’s epistles are laid out in the manner of Doctrine, Reproof, Correction, issues. 
 Paul tells us what those issues are in those epistles, and when it comes to our reward worthiness or not being worthy of reward, Faith, Hope, Love, are the maturity of the believer is all about, and the maturity of the believer is what the evaluation at the Bema of Christ is all about. Romans 1:15 - Being created in the image of God means that we must view ourselves as intrinsically valuable and richly invested with meaning, potentially and responsibilities. We are to be and to do on a finite scale, what God is and does on an infinite scale. By virtue of being created in the image of God, human beings are capable of reflecting his character in their own life; animals possess none of these qualities. What distinguishes people from animals is the fact that human nature inherently has godlike possibilities. Omniscience, omnipotence, or omnipresence, none of these other divine attributes have been ascribed to the human race as part of the image of God. We have been created to reflect God in our thinking and actions, but the physical sustained by God and dependent upon him for our existence in this world and in the world to come. Developing a godly character in this present life, this will be our personal identity in the world to come. It is the character or personality that we have developed in this life, that God preserves in his memory. Romans 1:16 - What a marvelous plan God had for us! God has kept the fingerprints of the guilt-worthy off of the righteousness he designed for the guilt-worthy. God has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation, to tell the world God is not imputing their trespasses unto them; so we see the world still thinks he is. This ministry of reconciliation is not to the saved, we know we are reconciled, but now all have access to God, a change in status for the entire world. Does this mean the entire world is save? No. There are those who mistakenly suppose that reconciliation is the same thing as justification. These people have jumped to the conclusion that Jesus Christ taking the sin issue off the table of God’s justice through his becoming sin for the human race is that which makes a person as righteous as God; they have mistaken reconciliation for justification. Being declared righteous is God’s gift to the believing sinner and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the sinner himself doing anything to deserve or merit that righteous standing. What God was doing through his son; God knew about what he intended to do before the world was ever formed, yet, God had kept this secret from ages and generations until it was time for the ascended Jesus Christ to reveal it to the apostle Paul. God no longer views us in our human flesh, he views us in our identity in the second Adam (Jesus Christ), he views us in our glorified identity. In our identity in Christ, now we can bear fruit unto God, but it is only in our identity in Christ, not through this fleshly body in which we dwell. Romans 1:17 - We could look at the righteousness of God, in the sense of righteousness being an attribute of God, God’s righteous character is part of God’s glory. BUT NOW the righteousness of God, apart from the law is manifested; God has provided for people what people desperately lacks, God’s very own perfect righteousness. Inside that gospel message is good news concerning a righteousness that far exceeds the righteousness of any person, no matter how righteous appearing that person may be. The righteousness spoken of in what Paul calls “the gospel of Christ” is no less than than the perfect righteousness that belongs to God himself. Being justified results in an unchanging attitude of peace with God for every believer. Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, and that means all of them and that means for all the world, reconciliation is a sin issue. Justification is something entirely different, it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to the believer’s account. The avenue of our faith in Christ’s faithful performance on our behalf, rather than peace based upon our performance, results in an unchanging attitude of peace with God for every believer. We now have available for the enjoyment of our everyday experience an everlasting peaceful relationship with God! Justification is unfathomable to the earthly mind, that God could judicially consider you just as his perfectly righteous son. This gift decree of righteousness comes totally apart from any and all human promise, any or all human performance or any or all human production, no human merit of people whatsoever for this free gift. God will never consider people’s works as a payment for God’s justifying declaration.
 Romans 1:18-32 - God is fair in revealing his perfect wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of the human race. In other words, in spite of people’s excuses, in spite of trying to shift the blame for people’s wrath-worthiness, Paul is presenting the evidence that all people of all time justly deserve the wrath of God, because all people are without excuse. It’s not what we deserve that is the issue, because all people deserve the wrath of a perfectly just God. 
 People glorify themselves by filtering everything they say and everything they do through that screen of self-protection, self-elevation, and self-gratification. No matter what we wish others to believe, we seek to satisfy self first and foremost. It is true of all of us, whether we like to admit it or not. People began their journey with unthankfulness, a lack of appreciation for the true God, and once on that road of a darkened heart, they traveled through such checkpoints as human reasoning and close-mindedness until their wayward course at it’s final destination brought them all the way to what God calls vile affections. 
 You see, vile affections is nothing more than idolatry at its logical conclusion: the end point of people replacing God with people. Things have not changed from the very beginning of time, we are at the same point today, or rapidly approaching it, that resulted in God giving up on the Gentiles way back in the book of Genesis. They knew about God, they chose not to keep him in their thoughts. The conscience has been present in people since the garden, and knowledge of the reality of God has been present as well. 
 That is Paul’s point, it is not just that people do these things, the problem is all people are wrath worthy, because all people have minds that are capable of doing these things given enough time or the right circumstances. Anyone of us here are capable of doing what anyone else in this world has ever done. Do you know what these vile affections that Paul is making reference to are called today? An alternate lifestyle. Obviously, unclean hearts, darkened minds attempt to take the shame out of it. The idea is, let’s just get on with life and accept it for what it is. 
 Romans 2:1 - Paul knew that the defense mechanism resident within the pride nature of the human heart would be instant in it’s response to protest the accusation of wrath worthiness. Paul knew the human heart would not only be quick, but that it would be ingenious in the pleas that it would offer as to why we are not wrath-worthy. Paul anticipated the reaction of the human heart given the sin nature disease. Paul anticipated that we would jump to defend ourselves. Paul anticipated that some people would be quick to defend other people. 
 Paul has done what any wise prosecuting attorney would do, he has been eliminating our excuses before we have opportunity to present them. No one has a self-defense plea that will successfully excuse them from being counted worthy of God’s wrath. No one therefore, will be able to escape the judgment of God by anything that they do. This is what Paul has been setting out to prove; the necessity of justification, the gift declaration of righteousness by faith. 
 Paul does not saying IF we do these things and IF we judge another then we are guilty. Paul is saying whenever we judge another we are automatically condemning yourself, because the truth is we do the same things, we may do them in a different way, but rest assured we do them. Anytime we condemn the coming shortnesses in others, we need to understand the reality of the fact that we are all in the same boat, we all come short in the righteousness department due to that indwelling sin nature. 
 We all come short of God’s measure of rightness. A person who is in the gutter, so to speak, oftentimes realizes the situation they have gotten themselves into, but a person who believes they are in a position to judge someone else; a person who has rationalized away their own short comings is one who is failing to recognize the sins of self. 
 Romans 2:2 - Paul begins with this statement in order to contrast God’s judgment with people’s judgment. God’s judgment is according to truth. No slanting of the facts to protect the guilty. No self-justification based on the convenience of the moment. No ethics geared to the situation at hand according to Paul, but God’s judgment is according to truth, our own moralizing standards set aside. The human race is guilty. 
 If we are pleading that some individuals do in fact measure up to God’s righteousness, Paul has just dispensed with that foolish notion. We all appear at different places, at different times within the list called: GUILTY. There is a short-coming of righteousness in the world, because there is a short-coming of righteousness in individuals, and that includes everyone.

Romans 2:1 - Paul knew that the defense mechanism resident within the pride nature of the human heart would be instant in it’s response to protest the accusation of wrath worthiness. Paul knew the human heart would not only be quick, but that it would be ingenious in the pleas that it would offer as to why we are not wrath-worthy. Paul anticipated the reaction of the human heart given the sin nature disease. Paul anticipated that we would jump to defend ourselves. Paul anticipated that some people would be quick to defend other people. 
 Paul has done what any wise prosecuting attorney would do, he has been eliminating our excuses before we have opportunity to present them. No one has a self-defense plea that will successfully excuse them from being counted worthy of God’s wrath. No one therefore, will be able to escape the judgment of God by anything that they do. This is what Paul has been setting out to prove; the necessity of justification, the gift declaration of righteousness by faith. 
 Paul does not saying IF we do these things and IF we judge another then we are guilty. Paul is saying whenever we judge another we are automatically condemning yourself, because the truth is we do the same things, we may do them in a different way, but rest assured we do them. Anytime we condemn the coming shortnesses in others, we need to understand the reality of the fact that we are all in the same boat, we all come short in the righteousness department due to that indwelling sin nature. 
 We all come short of God’s measure of rightness. A person who is in the gutter, so to speak, oftentimes realizes the situation they have gotten themselves into, but a person who believes they are in a position to judge someone else; a person who has rationalized away their own short comings is one who is failing to recognize the sins of self.

I rewrote this post, thanks for any insight. Romans 1:9-10 - When we think of pouring a foundation for a building, we might think of something like concrete being use as the foundation material. We can relate that to Paul’s job, when it came to dispensing the doctrinal truth.
It was committed to the apostle Paul to dispense the doctrinal concrete which would become that firm foundation upon which a believer’s growth might take place. Since growth is an important issue, it was essential that the doctrinal concrete Paul would begin to pour would contain the appropriate ingredients and that those ingredients would be in the correct proportions. 
 What happens if concrete’s too thin or too thick, doesn’t have sufficient water or moist with it. So we see these concrete doctrines would have to be prepared properly. They’d have to be spread adequately and smoothly to the point that our minds become set with the truths Paul was commissioned to establish. We can not pour a foundation properly, even if we have the proper ingredients for the foundation material apart from preparing the soil properly on which those ingredients are to be poured. We would want the foundation of the structure to be poured in an appropriate manner. If the soil of a person’s mind is not prepared by that which God has revealed about himself, then foundational truths holds no meaning. 
 Achieving God’s goals for our ambassadorship is learning to distinguish his goal, from his desire. It is a critical distinction, because it can spell the difference between success and failure. His goal is any specific result reflecting his purposes for our ambassadorship, that does not depend on people or circumstances beyond our ability. The only person who can block his goal or render it uncertain or impossible is us, and if we adopt the attitude of cooperation with his goals, his goal can be reached. His desire is any specific result that depends on the cooperation of other people or the success of events or favorable circumstances we cannot control.

Romans 1:18-32 - God is fair in revealing his perfect wrath against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of the human race. In other words, in spite of people’s excuses, in spite of trying to shift the blame for people’s wrath-worthiness, Paul is presenting the evidence that all people of all time justly deserve the wrath of God, because all people are without excuse. It’s not what we deserve that is the issue, because all people deserve the wrath of a perfectly just God. 
 People glorify themselves by filtering everything they say and everything they do through that screen of self-protection, self-elevation, and self-gratification. No matter what we wish others to believe, we seek to satisfy self first and foremost. It is true of all of us, whether we like to admit it or not. People began their journey with unthankfulness, a lack of appreciation for the true God, and once on that road of a darkened heart, they traveled through such checkpoints as human reasoning and close-mindedness until their wayward course at it’s final destination brought them all the way to what God calls vile affections. 
 You see, vile affections is nothing more than idolatry at its logical conclusion: the end point of people replacing God with people. Things have not changed from the very beginning of time, we are at the same point today, or rapidly approaching it, that resulted in God giving up on the Gentiles way back in the book of Genesis. They knew about God, they chose not to keep him in their thoughts. The conscience has been present in people since the garden, and knowledge of the reality of God has been present as well. 
 That is Paul’s point, it is not just that people do these things, the problem is all people are wrath worthy, because all people have minds that are capable of doing these things given enough time or the right circumstances. Anyone of us here are capable of doing what anyone else in this world has ever done. Do you know what these vile affections that Paul is making reference to are called today? An alternate lifestyle. Obviously, unclean hearts, darkened minds attempt to take the shame out of it. The idea is, let’s just get on with life and accept it for what it is.

Romans 1:17 - We could look at the righteousness of God, in the sense of righteousness being an attribute of God, God’s righteous character is part of God’s glory. BUT NOW the righteousness of God, apart from the law is manifested; God has provided for people what people desperately lacks, God’s very own perfect righteousness. Inside that gospel message is good news concerning a righteousness that far exceeds the righteousness of any person, no matter how righteous appearing that person may be. The righteousness spoken of in what Paul calls “the gospel of Christ” is no less than than the perfect righteousness that belongs to God himself. Being justified results in an unchanging attitude of peace with God for every believer. Reconciliation has to do with God’s justice being satisfied for sins, and that means all of them and that means for all the world, reconciliation is a sin issue. Justification is something entirely different, it has to do with a judicial decree of the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to the believer’s account. The avenue of our faith in Christ’s faithful performance on our behalf, rather than peace based upon our performance, results in an unchanging attitude of peace with God for every believer. We now have available for the enjoyment of our everyday experience an everlasting peaceful relationship with God! Justification is unfathomable to the earthly mind, that God could judicially consider you just as his perfectly righteous son. This gift decree of righteousness comes totally apart from any and all human promise, any or all human performance or any or all human production, no human merit of people whatsoever for this free gift. God will never consider people’s works as a payment for God’s justifying declaration.

Romans 1:16 - What a marvelous plan God had for us! God has kept the fingerprints of the guilt-worthy off of the righteousness he designed for the guilt-worthy. God has committed to us the ministry of reconciliation, to tell the world God is not imputing their trespasses unto them; so we see the world still thinks he is. This ministry of reconciliation is not to the saved, we know we are reconciled, but now all have access to God, a change in status for the entire world. Does this mean the entire world is save? No. There are those who mistakenly suppose that reconciliation is the same thing as justification. These people have jumped to the conclusion that Jesus Christ taking the sin issue off the table of God’s justice through his becoming sin for the human race is that which makes a person as righteous as God; they have mistaken reconciliation for justification. Being declared righteous is God’s gift to the believing sinner and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the sinner himself doing anything to deserve or merit that righteous standing. What God was doing through his son; God knew about what he intended to do before the world was ever formed, yet, God had kept this secret from ages and generations until it was time for the ascended Jesus Christ to reveal it to the apostle Paul. God no longer views us in our human flesh, he views us in our identity in the second Adam (Jesus Christ), he views us in our glorified identity. In our identity in Christ, now we can bear fruit unto God, but it is only in our identity in Christ, not through this fleshly body in which we dwell.

Romans 1:15 - Being created in the image of God means that we must view ourselves as intrinsically valuable and richly invested with meaning, potentially and responsibilities. We are to be and to do on a finite scale, what God is and does on an infinite scale. By virtue of being created in the image of God, human beings are capable of reflecting his character in their own life; animals possess none of these qualities. What distinguishes people from animals is the fact that human nature inherently has godlike possibilities. Omniscience, omnipotence, or omnipresence, none of these other divine attributes have been ascribed to the human race as part of the image of God. We have been created to reflect God in our thinking and actions, but the physical sustained by God and dependent upon him for our existence in this world and in the world to come. Developing a godly character in this present life, this will be our personal identity in the world to come. It is the character or personality that we have developed in this life, that God preserves in his memory.

Romans 1:14 - The Bema has to do with the building project. The building is the Body of Christ. We as members of the Body of Christ, are co-labors with God in the building project. The Chief Architect for the building project, the master builder is the apostle Paul. The blueprint for the proper construction of this building has been given to apostle Paul for the work crew of which we are apart. 
 Paul’s ministry was distinct, because Paul was the chief, the head architect for the Age of Grace for the building called the Body of Christ. The Bema of Christ, issues with which we need to be concerned, understand God does not want us to be unaware of the evaluation we will face. 
 The Bema has to do with the building project, remember whenever we see those words “labour or work” in Paul’s epistle, they are always in direct connection to the Bema of Christ. What is this blueprint? Paul’s epistles are laid out in the manner of Doctrine, Reproof, Correction, issues. 
 Paul tells us what those issues are in those epistles, and when it comes to our reward worthiness or not being worthy of reward, Faith, Hope, Love, are the maturity of the believer is all about, and the maturity of the believer is what the evaluation at the Bema of Christ is all about.

Romans 1:13 - We cannot base our self-worth or our personal success on our desires, no matter how godly they may be, because we cannot control their fulfillment. When a desire is wrongly elevated to a goal, and that goal is frustrated, we must deal with all the anger, anxiety, and depression which may accompany that failure. Dealing with the disappointments of unmet desires is a lot easier then dealing with the anger, anxiety, and depression of goals, we would do well to distinguish goals from desires. 
 When we begin to align our goals with God’s goals for our ambassadorship, and our desires with his desires, we will rid our life of a lot of anger, anxiety, and depression. We can know on a moment-by-moment basis if our ambassadorship is properly aligned with his truth. God has established a feedback system which is designed to grab our attention, so we can examine the validity of our goal. That system is our emotions. When an experience leaves us feeling angry, anxious, or depressed, those emotional signposts are there to alert us that we may be cherishing a faulty goal. 
 Any goal which can be blocked by forces we cannot control (other then God’s goal) is not a healthy goal, because our success in that arena is out of our hands. When we feel anxious in a task, our anxiety may be signaling the uncertainty of a goal we have chosen. We are wishing something will happen, but we have no guarantee that it will. We can control some of the factors, but not all of them. 
 When we base our future success on something that can never happen, we have an impossible goal. Our depression is a signal that our goal, no matter how noble, may never be reached. Depression often signals that we are desperately clinging to a goal we have little or no chance of achieving, and that is not a healthy goal. Feelings of anger should prompt us to reexamine our ambassadorship, and the mental goals we have formulated to accomplish God’s message of reconciliation.

Romans 1:12 - It is imperative to our growth and maturity that we believe God’s truth about who we are in Christ. God is looking at our identification with his son and at what his energizing power from on high is producing in us, because that is where our life is as far as God is concerned. We cannot use experience to prove the validity of our doctrinal position, we must always use doctrine to prove the validity of our experience. 
 Our brains are an engine of understanding, our transformation process that is taking place in our lives as we take in the Word of God and apply it to the details of our lives, it is only when we come to properly understand God from his perspective concerning ourselves. The battle is taking place between the ears, between fleshy thinking and divine thinking. Trust that God knows what he is doing, and he is going to do it whether we pray or not. God knows precisely what he is going to do. 
 Paul doesn’t tell us that we are filled with God’s energizing power from on high, but instead, Paul is telling us that we should be filled with God’s energizing power from on high. In other words, we should allow God’s energizing power from on high to be in control of our lives. God’s energizing power from on high works in us, but only to the degree that we are willing to yield ourselves to God’s use in our ministry of reconciliation. 
 The most dangerous and harmful detriments to our growth is passivity, putting our mind in neutral and coasting, sitting back and waiting for God to do everything is not God’s way to maturity. Our old pattern for thinking and responding to our sin-trained flesh must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, it is our responsibility to change our behavior by putting to death the deeds of the body.

Romans 1:11 - Dealing with Satan and his forces is not a power encounter; it is a truth encounter. You can not expect God to protect you from Satan and his forces influences if you do not take an active part in his prepared strategy. The armor that we must take up to protect ourselves from Satan and his forces attack, the first three are established because of our identity in Christ, the last three help us continue to win the battle. 
 It is critical that when we put on the armor of God, we start with the belt of truth. If Satan and his forces can deceive us into believing a lie, they can control our life in that area. It is absolutely vital that we put on the breastplate of righteousness, so that we can resist the persistent accusations of Satan and his forces, they never give up trying to get us down and keep us down by hurling one false accusation after another. 
 We put on the shoes of peace, because we are to forgive as we have been forgiven, and we must base our relationships with others on the same criteria. If we fail to speak the truth in love and manage our emotions, anger which turns to bitterness and unforgiveness is an open invitation to Satan and his forces. 
 In addition to believing it and thinking it, the Word of God is the only offensive weapon mentioned in the list of armor. If you are going to resist Satan and his forces, you must do so outwardly so they can understand you and be put to flight. That is why Paul insists that we be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Satan and his forces have no power over us except what we give them by failing to take every thought captive and thus being deceived into believing their lies.

Romans 1:9-10 - Achieving God’s goals for our ambassadorship is learning to distinguish his goal, from his desire. It is a critical distinction, because it can spell the difference between success and failure. His goal is any specific result reflecting his purposes for our ambassadorship, that does not depend on people or circumstances beyond our ability. 
 The only person who can block his goal or render it uncertain or impossible is us, and if we adopt the attitude of cooperation with his goals, his goal can be reached. His desire is any specific result that depends on the cooperation of other people or the success of events or favorable circumstances we cannot control.

Romans 1:8 - A labor of love, it is trying to understand something and then work with that understanding. Love, the behavioral glue that binds together the believer to other members of the Body of Christ, that is how God designed the new creation in Christ to operate. Love is the attitudinal adhesive God intends to keep the Body of Christ functionally smoothly and operating efficiently and effectively. Love is the bond that both unifies and edifies the members of the Body of Christ. 
 Maturity is all about the degree to which you participate in the increase of the Body of Christ unto the deifying of its self in love. The degree to which you participate in that which brings unity to the Body of Christ and edifies the believer to that degree you can consider yourself to be mature. We serve others today motivated by appreciation in the fact that God loves them, we are intricately joined to them, just as we are joined to Christ. 
 The law had apprehension as a motivation factor. Our labor of love under the Age of Grace has had the apprehension aspect removed entirely. We are to serve others today based on how God expressed his love to others through Christ and what he accomplished for them, who he made them and us to be in our savior by joining us to our savior. 
 Christian living is not about doing, it is about believing something, and when we believe something and we continue to take in God’s Word, it should change who we are, not change what we are trying to do and trying to become. Every believer has a part to play when it comes to that which edifies and unifies the Body of Christ, but attitude is that which instigates action. Faith does not come in gallons and tons, faith is not something “do I have enough faith, have I believed firmly enough?” Faith is simply taking your stand where God takes his stand.

Romans 1:7 - The realization that God’s love accomplished some fantastic things on our behalf. God is anxiously awaiting his own inheritance, which happens to be us, God considers believers to be his own inheritance, he purchased us with the blood of his son, we are God’s valuable inheritance. We find the amazing and comforting truth that God’s love for those who are joined to his son, is the same unalterable and unending love God has for his son. 
 That is how closely connected we are to Christ, nothing will ever be able to diminish God’s loving attitude towards those who are joined to his son. We are called “saints” today, “set apart ones,” that is the word God uses for those who have placed their faith in the all-sufficiency of the sin-resolving sacrifice of his son, Jesus Christ. We are the saints of a brand new program, to be identified in Christ makes a person a saint, because we have the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to our account. 
 Grace is that which God does for the human race through his son, which the human race can not earn, does not deserve and will never merit. Grace is God’s work for people, and encompasses everything we receive from God, he is free to do now for ungodly people who take him at his word. We must understand that God has predetermined to glorify us. In fact, he has predestined us to that glorification, we are objects of God’s purpose, because God had a purpose in mind where grace age believers are concerned, and he predetermined through his own decree that his purpose would stand, it will come to pass no matter what. 
 The inevitable result of God’s grace to the believer is true peace, because every believer is without blame before him in love. God sees us in Christ, and Christ was blameless. The only reason God could say through Paul, “Grace and Peace be unto you” is because God’s son fully paid the price. Justification by grace through faith, what a marvelous thing God has done, and who would have thought of a salvation in the sense that God’s plan would call for him to join a person to his son, therefore, what belongs to the son would now belong to believing people who have been joined to the son.

Romans 1:6 - When Paul refers to us as the called, he is referring not just to the fact that God is extending a call to us, an invitation or summons. Paul’s also referring to the fact that God’s calling us to participate in that to which we have been called, the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is an expression denoting the point when God began to judicially join believers to his son, the Body of Christ is not about program, but about judicial identity. 
 God forgave us, not because he had to, but because it was his desire too. God accomplished through Christ what we could never do on our own. God did not wait for us to do the first step. God had a choice, Jesus Christ had a choice, and they chose to do it. Christ believed that his sacrifice would settle the sin issue once and for all, and that God would raise him from among the dead. 
 What an ingenious salvation plan, to take someone else that is righteous and join us to that person. Sin causes a debt to God so large that it can never be paid by ourselves, but the person who knows what Jesus Christ really accomplished, exist in a completely new relationship with God. Justification is a legal act, wherein God deems the sinner righteous on the basis of Christ’s righteousness. 
 Justification is not a process, but is a one-time act, complete and definitive. God could only declare us to be right on the bases of who and what he is, not on the bases of who and what we would be apart from him. God had to devise a way to see us that way, and the way he devised to do that was by joining us to, hiding us in our perfectly righteous savior, thus freely crediting to our account Christ righteousness.

Romans 1:5 - Grace within a dispensation was one thing, a dispensation characterized solely by grace is something else altogether. Grace is the foundation on which Paul’s entire ministry was built, and grace covers all the bases for the believer’s life. There is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and it is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished. 
 Paul had been given special divine authority with the understanding that he is our apostle, and that authority carried with it the details of what God expects people to believe today, concerning the salvation Jesus Christ purchased for them with his sacrifice. 
 Therefore, God in his infinite wisdom devised a plan whereby he could take the very faith belonging to his son, along with its resultant faithfulness, and credit that faith and faithfulness to the account of those who believe. It is Christ’s faith that is freely credited to the account of the one who believes the good news message given to the apostle Paul to proclaim to us in this age of grace. 
 Paul wants us to know how a person is saved. He wants us to understand the basis by which God provides eternal security, not only has provided the gift of salvation; but provides eternal security to all those who place their faith in what the sacrifice of his son accomplished. It is our faith in the accomplishment of Jesus Christ’s faithful sacrifice that is the means whereby God acknowledges that we have accepted the gift his son purchased.

Romans 1:4 - The Christian belief in the resurrection of the body did not arise from philosophical speculations or wishful thinking like the notion of the immortality of the soul. It arose from the conviction that such an event had actually already taken place with the resurrection of Jesus from among the dead. The resurrection is proof that Jesus is who he claimed to be, and that his sacrifice was pleasing to God. 
 As long as Jesus lay in the tomb, he was just another tragic religious figure who suffered a martyr’s death. In fact, Paul tells us that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the greatest display of God’s power ever to be demonstrated, nor can it ever be surpassed. Our degree of judicial perfection in the eyes of God comes not through Jesus’ death for our sins, but through our identity with Jesus’ resurrection life. 
 Paul’s statement that Jesus’ resurrection was “the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep,” the expression “first fruits” has little meaning for today’s urban dwellers. In Bible times, it had a rich meaning because it referred to the first produce of the harvest, which was offered in sacrifice to God to express gratitude for granting a new harvest. Thus, the first fruits, which were brought to the Temple, were seen not as mere hope of a new harvest, but as its actual beginning. 
 Jesus’ resurrection, then, is “the first fruits” in the sense that it has made the resurrection of believers not a mere possibility, but a certainty. Paul and the 12 apostles preached the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul preached what that meant to us Gentiles. The 12 apostles had preached the necessity of Christ being raised from among the dead, in order to sit on the throne of David in the promised kingdom.

Romans 1:2-3 - The Davidic covenant is an eternal and unconditional covenant between God and the House of David, or the dynasty of David. God says that David and his descendants may be punished for sin. They certainly will be punished for sin, but God will not take the kingdom away from them as he did from Saul. 
 God’s unconditional and eternal covenants with the patriarchs and with David do not prelude the possibility of punishment or chastisement for sin as specified in the conditional Mosaic covenant. The covenant with David, it’s a covenant of grant, it’s a grant of a reward for loyal service and deeds. God rewards David with the gift of an unending dynasty, in exchange for his loyalty. God’s oath to preserve the Davidic dynasty, would lead eventually to a popular belief in the invincibility of the Holy City. The belief in Israel’s ultimate deliverance from enemies, became bound up with David and his dynasty. When the kingdom fell finally to the Babylonians, the promise to David’s House was believed to be eternal. 
 The community looked to the future for a restoration of the Davidic line or Davidic king or messiah. And in the exile, Israelites would pray for another messiah, meaning another king from the House of David appointed and anointed by Yahweh to rescue them from enemies, and reestablish them as a nation at peace in their land as David had done. The Israelites hope for a messiah; it involved the restoration of the nation in its land under a Davidic king.

It was God’s plan before the creation of the world, that humankind’s fingerprints would not be found on humankind's salvation. Romans is designed to grow us up in faith doctrine. God has always used faith in every age, he has always used faith or what a person believes as the criteria necessary to effect salvation for humankind.
 Romans 1:1 - Paul was not only first in line, when it came to dispensing the grace of God, Paul was also foremost in crime when it came to murdering the saints of Israel’s earthly kingdom program. If Paul was at Pentecost, would Paul himself, if he took part in stoning Stephen for believing the message given at Pentecost, would he have been a blasphemer at Pentecost? In Paul’s pre-grace zealousness, he would have been a foremost rejecter of any notion whatsoever that Jesus was Israel’s messiah or that Jesus had been risen from among the dead. 
 First in line, first in crime are apt descriptions for the Apostle of Grace. Paul was the chosen spokesman for God to relay the information for this entire dispensation of grace. God is not dealing with Israel nationally today, he is dealing with all alike in the Age of Grace. The apostle Paul dispensed a message that the 12 apostles had not dispensed, and that message was different, and that message was geared to the Gentiles. 
 Paul is the chief pattern of God’s grace to all, he is the foremost example. We need to understand that even though Paul was saved, Paul still considered himself to be a sinner. Paul understood the word: Sin. And Paul understood that word meant to come short of the righteousness belonging to God himself. Paul is the foremost example of the impossibility, the total impossibility of gaining righteousness before God through the performance of the flesh. 
 Paul could never preach and never preached the Gospel of the Kingdom, because the kingdom was no longer at hand. God cease dealing with “the outer man” in connection with God’s program with Israel and prophecy concerning their promised earthly kingdom, and then began dealing with “the inner man” in connection with his program concerning the saints of his heavenly calling.

Ephesians 1:13-14 - The security all believers have in that the indwelling resurrection power of God guarantees that those who have believed Paul’s good news message can never be lost, they belong to God. The seal is the safeguarding device, the securing device, used to preserve the contents. 
 God’s energizing power from on high is the seal that God uses to secure all who believe in this dispensation of grace. Earnest means a pledge in the sense that an advance deposit has been made as the security guaranteeing the fulfillment of that which has been promised to those who have been sealed. 
 According to Paul, the indwelling of God’s energizing power from on high is both God’s seal and his deposited pledge that all believers are forever his and are destined to inherit eternal life. God’s energizing power from on high works in us, but only to the degree that we are willing to yield ourselves to God’s use in our ministry of reconciliation. 
 Paul doesn’t tell us that we are filled with God’s energizing power from on high, but instead, Paul is telling us that we should be filled with God’s energizing power from on high. In other words, we should allow God’s energizing power from on high to be in control of our lives. Of course, the degree to which we do that is up to us.

2 Corinthians 6:1 - The most dangerous and harmful detriments to our growth is passivity, putting our mind in neutral and coasting, sitting back and waiting for God to do everything is not God’s way to maturity. Our old pattern for thinking and responding to our sin-trained flesh must be transformed by the renewing of our mind, it is our responsibility to change our behavior by putting to death the deeds of the body. 
 If the enemy can deceive us into believing a lie, they can control our life in that area. We are saints whom God has declared righteous, believing the enemies lie will lock us into a defeated, fruitless life, but believing God’s truth about who we are will set us free. 
 It is imperative to our growth and maturity that we believe God’s truth about who we are. We must learn how to resolve previous conflicts or the emotional baggage will accumulate as we continue to withdraw from life, the past will control our life as our options for handling it continue to decrease. 
 Perceiving those events from the perspective of our new identity, which God sealed in Christ, is what starts the process of healing those damaged emotions, because we have the privilege of evaluating our past experience in the light of who we are now, as opposed to who we were then.

2 Corinthians 5:18 - This ministry of reconciliation is not to the saved, we know we are reconciled, but now all have access to God, a change in status for the entire world. Does this mean the entire world is save? No. We have to have an individual change of status and that takes place when we accept what God’s son accomplished for us. 
 Paul wants us to agree with God, to reckon our identity with our flesh as dead and gone, but the sin nature has not died. Do we need to change our minds about the seriousness of sin and God’s answer to that serious dilemma we find ourselves in? Yes, we do. God has been long-suffering in holding back his wrath, because he hopes that we will consider his goodness through his son, his goodness on our behalf and flee to his grace. 
 God wants us to change our mind about who we are from fleshly perspective apart from Christ. God is not patiently waiting for us to change our mind about what we do; many have done that, thinking it gains salvation. We are justified through our sanctified position in Christ; we have a new identity. 
 It is impossible for a believer to lose his salvation, but a believer can die physically. If that believer decided every morning before eating cereal, that they are going to coat their cereal not with milk, but with a fifth of whiskey, what is the believer going to do to their body? A believer can die functionally in that they can serve no further useful purpose here on earth, no heavenly purpose on earth to those to whom they become an ambassador.

2 Corinthians 4:1 - The goal of most believer’s life has been to become disgusted enough with ourselves to try hard enough, so that we can finally win God’s approval. The truth Paul has proclaimed in all of his epistles is we could not get right with God in a million life times of trial and error. We could never make ourselves right with God; God had to do what we could not do for ourselves. 
 Yet many believers spend their entire existence unsuccessfully trying to be someone other than who they really are, paying lip service to the idea that we are accepted because of God’s grace, the struggle for acceptance on the basis of works is epidemic, but the greatest travesty of all, is the lack of understanding about our new identity in Christ. 
 It would be disastrous enough if the reason people did not understand who they are was simply for a lack of information, and the truth is that there is an absence of teaching concerning our new identity and what it means to be new creations in Christ. For all the performance-based people around us, we are simply bad for public relations.