The Gospel According To Grace

1. THE CONSTITUTION of the United States: Important.

• The Bill of Rights: Important.

• The Emancipation Proclamation: Important.

• We can think of document after document, and book after book, and even letter after letter that are very important.

• We think ‘what would life be without them!’?

BUT GUYS the book of Romans is quite possibly the most important document that has ever been written!

• It’s a letter of freedom & liberty & I believe God will use it in our lives in a very mighty and special way.

• It will bring great grace & liberty to you personally.

• It will infuse grace & love in your homes, in your marriages, in your everyday lives.

• Romans is a powerful & revolutionary book!

• It will change your life!

Through the years of the church Romans has brought great change into leaders lives…

• Men like Augustine… changed by the Book of Romans.

• Martin Luther was transformed by Romans.

• He lived most of His Christian life in misery without any peace.

• On a pilgrimage to Rome he came to the sacred stairs that the Roman Catholic church said Jesus stood before Pilate.

NOTE: The custom was that you would crawl up the stairs saying the rosary one step at a time.

• So Luther began the climb, kissing the stairs, following through with the lifeless ritual.

• He was halfway up & he heard, “The just shall live by faith.”

• Another stair, another kiss, another rosary…

• The voice came again, “The just shall life by faith.”

• The voice got louder… until finally Luther jumped up to his feet and left the stairs and began a study in Romans that changed the entire course of history!

NOTE: The book of Romans is responsible for you not being at Mass this morning but enjoying a personal relationship with Jesus Christ!

• The book of Romans convicted Luther so deeply that he challenged the corrupt teachings of Roman Catholicism and stuck to the Word!

The Holy Spirit has used this book time and time again to free God’s people from ritual & religion.

It’s been called ’the profoundest book in existence.’

Chysostom had it read to him twice a week.

Luther, in his famous preface, says ’This Epistle is the chief book of the New Testament, the purest Gospel. It deserves 95not only to be known word for word by every Christian, but to be the subject of his meditation day by day, the daily bread of his soul.’ ...

Melanchthon, in order to make it more perfectly his own, copied it twice with his own hand. It is the book which he expounded most frequently in his lectures.

Even the English translation you hold in your hands traces itself back to the life changing power of God through the Book of Romans. William Tyndale said you can’t read it too much, it’s the principal and most excellent part of the NT.

John Wesley, founder of the Methodist church, was touched by Romans. He was a spiritually dead preacher, preaching unlived truths. He spent a large part of his life evangelizing America but didn’t have one convert because he wasn’t’ saved… he wrote, “I went to save the Indians but who will save me?!”

Romans brought him to the cross and great forgiveness of God!

Wesley writes in his personal journal: “In the evening I went very unwilling to a society … while (the reader) was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation, and an assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

• GOD USED Romans to save this man and through Him bring about a Great Awakening.

OH how that is my prayer as we study this book together.

• Salvation and a Great Awakening!

• Both are mentioned in Romans… (1:16 & 13:11)

I love to read about revivals… seeing God do a new work, a fresh work, breathing life back into the church! It’s so encouraging!

• Well when you look back at the 2000 year history of the church, most if not all revivals can be traced back to Romans.

• So when the church fell into spiritual error, or laziness, or apathy, God has used Romans to bring fresh life!

AND WHAT A TIME in our lives today.

• This book isn’t just powerful in the past, it’s for today!

• It’s still changing lives today and I believe will breath fresh life and fresh GRACE and fresh LOVE in our hearts too!

NOTE: I really believe with all my heart that our precious Savior is doing something wonderful in and through us at Calvary Chapel.