followHIM - Romans 1-6 Part 2 • Dr. Adam Miller • Aug 7 - Aug 13

Episode Date: August 2, 2023

Dr. Adam Miller continues to discuss grace, merit, and the law as they relate to the gospel of Jesus Christ.00:00 Part II–Dr. Adam Miller00:07 Justification and Sanctification1:06 Looking through a telescope backwards03:59 Love is sacrifice05:46 Echoes of Sermon on the Mount in Romans 307:16 The Law of Faith and the Law of Works11:19 We don’t earn God’s love13:30 Loving like God loves17:49 Joining God in his work of love19:21 Romans 2:121:36 Echoes of Matthew 722:56 Righteous judgment24:18 Faith, Law, and a tradition-framing view of baptism28:08 Surrendering self-regard29:53 Scriptural descriptions of baptism32:17 Dying and being born again35:24 Discussions on grace and perfection39:29 The Law of Moses and salvation42:09 Examining our motivations regarding love44:30 Believing Christ and Stephen E. Robinson48:30 Reflections on giving up the Law of Works50:43 Works, the temple, and salvation51:48 Dr. Miller’s final takeaways about Romans55:25 End of Part II–Dr. Adam MillerPlease rate and review the podcast!Show Notes (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese): https://followhim.coYouTube: https://youtu.be/R1eqqsj-iekFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/followhimpodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/followhimpodcastSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15G9TTz8yLp0dQyEcBQ8BYThanks to the follow HIM team:Shannon Sorensen: Cofounder, Executive Producer, SponsorDavid & Verla Sorensen: SponsorsDr. Hank Smith: Co-hostJohn Bytheway: Co-hostDavid Perry: ProducerKyle Nelson: Marketing, SponsorLisa Spice: Client Relations, Editor, Show NotesJamie Neilson: Social Media, Graphic DesignAnnabelle Sorensen: Creative Project ManagerWill Stoughton: Video EditorKrystal Roberts: Translation Team, English & French Transcripts, WebsiteAriel Cuadra: Spanish Transcripts"Let Zion in Her Beauty Rise" by Marshall McDonaldhttps://www.marshallmcdonaldmusic.com

Continue listening for part two of Dr. Adam Miller, Romans chapters one through six. Adam, sometimes I hear people in classes talk about justification and sanctification and other big sounding words, but I like that we're saying justification is putting things right. Sanctification, I think, would say making us holy. Is that a fair way to put it as we try this bewildering array of terms or whatever you put it? Yeah, I think that's good. Sometimes in contemporary discourse, we like to make strong distinctions between sanctification and justification. I don't see a strong distinction between those terms in the context of the New

Testament itself. Or like as Latter-day Saints, we like to make a strong distinction between salvation and exaltation. That can be useful, but I don't find that distinction at work in the scriptures. If we try to read that back into the scriptures, I think that's often not very helpful, even if it's a useful distinction for us to make in some cases. The same kind of story here, I think, with that. I want to read you both a comment made by Elder Bruce Hafen, April 2004, General Conference. The talk is called The Atonement All for All. As he's giving the talk, he quotes an Australian convert.

This Australian convert says, My past life was a wilderness of weeds with hardly a flower strewed among them. But now the weeds have vanished and flowers spring up in their place. And then Elder Hafen comments, we grow in two ways, removing negative weeds and cultivating positive flowers. The Savior's grace blesses both parts. He says, we're not paying a debt. Our purpose is to become celestial. So we clear our heartland. We continually plant, weed, and nourish the seeds of divine qualities. Our sweat and discipline stretch us, and the tree of life can take root in our heart garden, bearing fruit so sweet that it lightens all our burdens through the joy of his Son.

And when the flowers of charity bloom there, we will love others with the power of Christ's own love. So it seems to be very similar to what you're saying, Adam. When you join Christ in his work, the negative weeds or the suppressing the truth goes away and in his work you are changed. I think that's right. To put a little additional twist on it, I might add something like, part of what happens when you are converted is that when you start looking through the telescope in the right direction you see that the weeds have flowers too the weeds also deserve your care and attention as well that the life isn't just a bed of roses but the weeds right are things that we're called to love and care for and and that work of stewardship is is the essence of what it means to be like Jesus and to live in love, finding the thing that we were looking for. That leads me to think of more of Paul's statements of becoming new creatures. Those weeds can become new creatures, even, which is miraculous.

I mean, the whole idea of baptism and leaving the old behind and walking in newness of life, it reminds me of that. That's a really good way to look at it. Those weeds can become new creatures or we see them differently, perhaps. Yeah, I think it's a combination of both. We really do become something different in Christ than we were before.

But it's also the case that what we were before, we look at in a very different way. Not with shame. Yeah, instead of looking at myself with shame and fear and a sense of condemnation, a fearful looking for the wrath of God, instead of looking at myself that way, I see myself as God sees me in light of his love, in light of both the good that I am and in light of the good that I still need. Paul, in one of his letters, is going to say, husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.

And here you said that the Savior's atonement is this ultimate sign of love. So, in the context of marriage, could I say that love is sacrificing for someone? Love your wives, even as Christ loved the church. And I think love, what is that? Sacrifice, right? Suffer for, love unconditionally. Do you feel like I'm in line with what Paul was going for? Yeah, I think that's right down the middle.

I think that's a bullseye. There's no quicker way to end a marriage than to think that your marriage is about being loved. If you constantly ask yourself, am I being loved the way that I need to be loved? Your marriage is over. The only thing that can sustain a marriage is the shared project of asking, how do I love? Because again, love isn't even the kind of thing that you can get. It's the kind of thing that you join and you share, or it's the kind of thing that disappears in smoke because you thought it was something that it wasn't. You can't get it. You can only do it. I'm really glad I asked that question. That was wonderful.

John, anything else on Romans 3 before we go to a different passage? No, not really. I think that Romans 3, 23 is probably the one verse that we've all heard. We are all in this same boat, Pharisees and publicans. We're all in need. Yeah, Jew and Gentile, insider and outsider. That's what he says in verse 29. He is the God of the Jews only. Is he not the God of the Gentiles?

Yes, all of them. He died for all of them. Picking up where we left off in verse 27, I'm just going to give you the King James here because actually I think the King James is better than the New English translation on this score. King James for Romans 3, 27. I'm going to give you 27, 28, and then skip ahead to 31. 27 goes, well, where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works?

Nay, but by the law of faith. Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith, right? Made right by faith without the deeds of the law. Do we then, he says says make void the law through faith god forbid yea we establish the law now verse 31 there i think especially a very strong echo of the sermon on the mount where in matthew 5 17 jesus is saying look you think that i'm coming to destroy the law because you got the law backwards. I am destroying the backwards version of the law, but that's not the law.

Think not that I'm come to destroy the law. Jesus says, I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. If you understood what the law was, then you would see that I'm not destroying it. I'm fulfilling it. I'm not creating some special exceptions to what it demands. I'm fulfilling it. I'm not creating some special exceptions to what it demands. I'm fulfilling what it demands. And what the law demands is that we love our enemies. And I'm loving you in that same way because you positioned yourself as my enemy. The really nice thing I think here that we get in verse 27 is the way that Paul describes faith not as the opposite of the law, but as the law.

We get the law of faith here compared to what he describes as the law of works. And what you want is to live under the law of faith, not the law of works. And the crucial difference between them, he says, he just puts it like this. The difference between the law of faith and the law of works is that the law of works allows what he calls boasting. The law of faith excludes boasting. What is boasting? Boasting is claiming that you have earned or deserved something. Boasting treats love as a reward. This is what the quote-unquote law of works does, right? The law of works, as Paul is describing this, is the law upside down. You're looking through the telescope from the wrong direction, and you think that love is something that you can get, is something that you can earn or deserve. That's not it, Paul says.

What you want, on the other hand, is what he calls the law of faith. And faith here, right, is not a kind of band-aid for a problem with the law of works. It's not a kind of end run around what the law demands. The law of faith is what the law, is what God's law demands, right? Faith itself, grace itself, love for the enemy itself is the law. And what you have to do, Paul is saying, is that you have to stop living under what was not the law in the first place, quote-unquote a law of works. You have to give that up and you have to accept what the law actually was, the truth about the law, which is what God has just displayed through Jesus Christ, that you must love even your enemies. And this is called a law of faith because

unlike a law of works that's grounded in fear, the law of faith is going to require you to trust. It's going to require you to believe, number one, that God already loves you and he's not waiting for you to earn it. And number two, that if you join that work, you will find the thing that you were looking for in the first place, even though you went about it in a totally backwards, upside-down way. That's great. In other translations, he says, verse 31, it reads things like, does this mean that by this faith we do away with the law? No, we are upholding the law. This is the New American Bible.

Are we annulling the law by this faith? On the contrary, we areing the law. This is the new American Bible. Are we annulling the law by this faith? On the contrary, we are supporting the law. He even says in one translation, do we then by the means of this faith abolish the law? No, indeed, we give the law a firmer footing. So he seems to be saying, if we're going to rely entirely on Christ, does that mean we can forget the law? No, that is the law. It's relying totally on Christ. Yeah, that's totally right. It'll seem like if you think that the law is about deciding whether or not somebody deserves love, then loving somebody who doesn't deserve it will seem like you're destroying

the law. But that's not it, Jesus says. By loving people who are my will seem like you're destroying the law yeah but that's not it jesus says by loving people who are my enemies i'm not destroying the law i'm in fact doing what the law commands grace is not an end run around what the law requires grace is what the law requires the living bible translation well then if we are saved by faith does this mean we no longer need to obey god's laws? Just the opposite. In fact, only when we trust Jesus can we truly obey him. I like the way that Adam said it better right there. It's not an end run around the law. It is the law.

Yeah. Contemporary English version. Do we destroy the law by our faith? Not at all. We make it even more powerful. Yeah, right. Instead of limiting love just to friends, you unleash love as a law that includes everybody. The law becomes universal instead of selective. So far, Adam, let me see if I'm getting at least some of this right. I need to stop thinking of commandments, laws, as ways of earning God's love.

That's boasting, yeah. Instead, I join him in his work of love. Living the law becomes who I am. It becomes a natural fruit of me joining God in his work. And I'm not even joining God in his work because I want some future reward. That work is the reward. Did I understand everything you're teaching today to some degree? That's the promise.

That's liberating. When I no longer live my life under the cloud of fear and worry about whether I'm going to get what I want, which is God's love, but in fact believe what God asked me to believe, that he loves me already and joined him in that work. Then I find what I'm looking for in the work itself. Then I'm liberated. I'm set free, Paul says, from all that shame and fear and doubt. And I find myself empowered in Christ to live a totally different life that sees the world in an entirely different way, myself included. Yeah, myself included. I really like that. I see myself differently.

Even my past self. We talked about that. I see him differently. Yeah, you see him with love. Is that past self your enemy? Sure, in lots of ways, but you see him now with love. Love your enemies. Yeah, and grace and compassion and mercy. Yeah. That doesn't let you off the hook, of course, from doing what is now needed. Because you wouldn't actually be joining God in his work. Exactly, yeah. If you think you're off the hook, then you've misunderstood what you signed up for in the

first place. You missed the point because the work is the reward. Yeah. Which we continually do, right? Paul points this out again and again in this letter. We continually miss the point because we try to read all this as if it made sense in terms of the law of works. But it doesn't. It only makes sense if faith and love are themselves laws, not rewards.

It's pretty hard to miss in Matthew 5 if you read it in context that he's talking about loving like God loves. It seems to me. I think that's true, yeah. I want to read something from Elder Holland back in October 2017. Be ye therefore perfect eventually is the talk. He's obviously referring to that verse in the Sermon on the Mount that we referred to earlier. I believe that Jesus did not intend his sermon on this subject to be a verbal hammer for battering us about our shortcomings. No, I believe he intended it to be a tribute to who

and what God the Eternal Father is and what we can achieve with him in eternity. In any case, I am grateful to know that in spite of my imperfections, at least God is perfect, that at least he is, for example, able to love his enemies. Because too often, due to the natural man and woman in us, you and I are sometimes that enemy. How grateful I am that at least God can bless those who despitefully use him, because without wanting or intending to, we all despitefully use him sometimes. I am grateful that God is merciful and a peacemaker, because I need mercy and the world needs peace. Of course, all we say of the Father's virtues, we also say of his only

begotten Son who lived and died unto the same perfection. And then a little bit later in the talk, he quotes Tolstoy. And I was just so impressed by this. He talks about serving and loving everyone. And he says, in that regard, Tolstoy wrote once of a priest who was criticized by one of his congregants for not living as resolutely as he should. The critic concluded that the principles the erring preacher taught must therefore also be erroneous. In response to that criticism, the priest says, look at my life now and compare it to my former life. You will see that I am trying to live out the truth I proclaim. Unable to live up to the high ideals he taught, the priest admits he has

failed, but he cries, attack me if you wish. I do this myself, but don't attack the path I follow. If I know the way home, but am walking along it drunkenly, is it any less the right way simply because I am staggering from side to side? Do not gleefully shout, look at him. There he is crawling into a bog. No, do not gloat, but give your help to anyone trying to walk the road back to God. I think that fits really well with what Adam, you're teaching us and Paul is saying here. We join God in his love and even his cheering on of others once we catch a vision of God's love for us. And once we catch a vision of our weaknesses, not as occasions for condemnation, but as occasions for additional love and service. My weaknesses are not calling for condemnation.

God doesn't condemn them. God sees them as an occasion for offering what is needed for the good that the law itself requires, for the love that I need to be changed and transformed. And we have to see ourselves that same way. And how refreshing that is to, freeing would be the better word, free from shame. It's the good news. Yeah, it is good news. And it should be.

What would you expect from a loving God? Good news. Yeah. That thing about Tolstoy, you get so fired up about the truth that you are teaching and you sense it and you get fired up about it and you think that's beautiful. And at the same time, you're like, man, I got to live that better. And I think we've all done that. You get, Oh, this is so true. I feel it. I'm going to give this talk on ministering, but boy, am I a lousy ministering brother. I relish those because they nudge me to do a little better.

And I was thinking too, guys, when we're talking to young people or families that are out there listening, boy, our teenagers are growing up in a world of likes and views and swiping up. Have you ever seen a young adult go on mutual? It felt like a punch in the gut. I thought, swipe up, swipe down. I approve of you. I don't approve of you. Oh, it's just- I don't like the way you look. Yeah. I thought, oh, I think I like the old way of dating better, even though I was horrible at it. But how do we help young people with this love when they are growing up in a world of likes and

thumbs up and approvals. And this is brutal. But almost all of us are going about it the wrong way. We want to be loved. We want to get love. But you can't get there that way. You can join love and do it. You can't get to it if you're using love backwards. Yeah.

Even when I think that you've taught us, join God in his love and you'll get his love. And it's like, wait, you're still seeing it as a reward. You're still seeing it as something that's in the future that I need to go and earn. So it's not joining God in his work of love to get love. It's joining God in his work of love. And that is what you've been looking for. Yeah. If I'm John, by the way, and I stand up in sacrament meeting and give a talk on ministering, and I think to myself, I really need to do better with respect to my ministering. That's right. I really do need to do better. But why? Do I need to do better so that God will finally love me?

Or do I need to do better because that's how I love other people? Yeah. Again, that's the crucial question. I do need to do better because that's how I love other people? Again, that's the crucial question. I do need to do better. I'm right. But why? Yeah. And the why is crucial.

It really is. Yeah. That why is the fulcrum on which the gospel itself turns. This is so fun. I could do this all day. Adam, where should we go next? So let's take a look at Romans chapter 2, verse 1. Here we get a really nice description, I think, that extends through most of the chapter, but is nicely

summarized in the opening verse. A really nice description of the kind of trap that as sinners we fall into when we suppress the truth and treat love as a reward. Paul describes the trap like this in Romans 2, verse 1. He says, therefore, you are without excuse, whoever you are, when you judge someone else. For on whatever grounds you judge another, you condemn yourself, because you who judge practice the same things. The most predictable result that follows from treating the law as a reward, as something that you could earn or deserve, the most predictable result is condemnation. Yeah. You start out by trying to earn or deserve love to make yourself more lovable than other people, right? So that you can deserve more love than other people, which leads to your

drawing that kind of initial distinction between insiders and outsiders, between friends and enemies, between people who deserve love and people who don't deserve love, which means that that very gesture has, from the start, compromised God's commandment to love everyone. You've just drawn a line in the sand that kind of guts this very substance of the law itself by treating it as something that only some people earn or deserve. When you start out condemning other people, the inevitable end result of that, though, Paul points out,

is that you will yourself end up condemned. Because it turns out love isn't the kind of thing you can successfully deserve. And if you condemn other people to not deserving it, you will end up condemning yourself to not deserving it. And you will fall prey to that same judgment. And that's a trap. That's the very trap of a sinful way of seeing the world, is that everything will get darker and smaller and farther away. And that includes you because it's impossible to succeed, to succeed at the task that you set

yourself of earning love. The earning love, you know, hamster wheel, you're never going to get there. Yeah. And this is also a clear echo again, right? Of Matthew chapter seven of the sermon on the Mount, where Jesus is talk about judgment, where he says, judge not, for with what judgment you judge, you will be judged. If I'm using the law to judge how to love, then that's how the law will be applied to me. If I'm using the law to judge who to love, then that's how I will end up applying the law to myself again. If I try to live under the law of works, I will condemn myself to living under that law.

But if I trust God and live under a law of faith, then I will be liberated by and live under that law. What a fascinating insight here. Matthew chapter 7, judge not that ye be not judged, for with that judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged. And I've always thought that phrase meant by God. With that judgment ye judge, you shall be judged by God. But that's not what he says. For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged. It's what you're showing me here, Adam, is by you.

You'll judge yourself because you judge everyone else on that standard. You're going to end up judging yourself on that standard, and you're going to be condemned as well. If you use the law to condemn, you will be condemned by that law. That's inevitable. If you believe God and use the law to love, then that's what the law will be used for. You'll have joined that project. You will be judged the same way. Yeah, you'll be included. These verses may be the most famous instance of the Joseph Smith translation amending the New Testament text as well, right? Where we get this strong addition in the Joseph Smith translation that re-renders these verses by drawing a distinction between

two versions of judgment, where in the Joseph Smith translation it says something like, judge not unrighteous judgment, but judge righteous judgment. So that instead of forbidding judgment period, Jesus draws a distinction between two different ways of judging, a way of judging that condemns and a way of judging that loves. So that we get again here, two different versions of the law, a law of works that's about boasting or a law of faith that's about loving even your enemy. You have to use the law to judge how to love, but you must never ever use the law to decide who to love. One form is righteous judgment that fulfills the law because it loves even the enemy.

The other is a form of unrighteous judgment that ends up not just condemning other people, but you. That's good. Use the law for how to judge, not who to judge. Yeah, you have to judge how to love, not judge who to love. Yeah, that's another t-shirt right there. Yeah, put that on the inside, I guess, when you take it off. That's great. Keep that part close to your heart. In chapter four, we get a nice case study in the difference between the law of faith versus the law of works.

And Paul uses Abraham as a case study. Abraham never boasts. He never has any reason to boast. He doesn't use the law to boast. He just uses the law as a way of being faithful to God's promise to him and his promise to God to join in the work of love. In chapter six, we get Paul's famous and decisive and tradition-framing description of baptism as the work of undergoing our own death early. So, in chapter six, we get a nice description, I think, of how you pass from one kind of law to the other.

How do you achieve this transition? How do you pass from living under a law of works to finally believing in and living under a law of faith in Christ so that the law can be fulfilled? If we pick up in verse 3 in chapter 6, Paul says this, Don't you know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we've been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so too may we live a new life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death,

we will certainly also be united in the likeness of his resurrection. We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For someone who has died has been freed from sin. I'll attend a baptism this coming Saturday. And in our classic Mormon baptismal services, especially for children, we tend to emphasize the imagery of baptism as being about cleansing, where baptism is about being washed clean of your sins, which is, I think, appropriate imagery for eight-year-olds. But that's not especially scriptural imagery. And it's certainly not the image that Paul uses. Paul never talks about baptism washing you clean from your sins. Paul talks about baptism as a way of undergoing your death early, of expediting your death so that you can die before you even leave this world. So you can get your death over with and start a new life in Christ.

You were buried in the water with Christ and then were resurrected up out of the water with Christ. And this he describes, this is the passage. This is how you move from one law to the next. You have to do the thing that you were afraid to do in the first place. You have to let yourself die. You have to stop being worried about yourself. And you have to care about other people. You have to let your

own identity pass away and you have to take up somebody else's identity as your own. Here, Jesus specifically. You put down your name, you take up his name, and now you're going to live in his likeness. And to the degree that we live in his likeness, we will do what he does, which is love his enemies. And we will find the thing that we were looking his likeness, we will do what he does, which is love his enemies. And we will find the thing that we were looking for in the first place, which was love. But it's hard. It's scary, right? Which is why it's all about faith.

It's all about trust. You have to do this thing that you were terrified to do, which was to die, to let yourself go. But that's what love requires. If you want your marriage to succeed, to go back to Hank's example from earlier, you have to do the thing that terrifies you. You have to stop worrying about whether or not you're loved and give yourself entirely over to the project of loving. You have to let yourself die. That's how you cross the gap. That's how you manage the passage from one way of life to the other.

You make this promise that you're not going to judge who to love, you're only going to judge how to love. Yeah, it's a natural question to ask what this looks like as a practical matter, this business of surrendering self-regard, this business of dying to my own worries and my own self-concerns. Does that mean that we end up

letting other people walk all over us. Does that mean that we end up letting other people walk all over us? Does this mean that we allow ourselves to be abused? Does this mean that we stick with damaging relationships? It means, I think, that we do what's good. This is what love demands. Love demands that we do the thing that's good. We do what's good for us. We do what's good for the other person. And allowing ourselves to be abused is not good for us. And it's not good for the abuser.

To love someone else is to do what's good regardless of the cost. In those kinds of scenarios, right? What love requires is that we don't allow the abuse to take place because it's not good. Yeah, that's excellent. I'm glad you said that. I noticed there are just a few places where we can find things like our sins washed away. Even in the article of faith, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins. But boy, I found in the book of Mormon, remission of sins comes by fire and by the Holy

Ghost. It's more receiving the Holy Ghost is the cleanser, not the water and the font. And then maybe Joseph Smith talked about half a baptism if you're baptized, but not receiving the Holy Ghost. And I can see that maybe they're all under one umbrella. I like that idea because I feel like scripturally speaking, it's more the Holy Ghost is a purifying cleanser as the symbol than the water in which we're immersed. Would you say that? Like in scripture, we get these really nice descriptions of baptism as a kind of death. And we get these really nice descriptions of the Holy Ghost as cleansing us through fire. I think that's more scripturally accurate. Though, again, I don't have any objection to describing baptism as a kind of cleansing, but it's not a very

scriptural way of talking, for whatever that's worth. I like that you said that it's useful for eight-year-olds. I don't know how to explain this to one of my eight-year-olds. Now you're going to die. Yeah, now you're going to die. So, I like that you're saying, hey, that's fine. Even the born again thing. When I was eight years old, I didn't know that I was surrounded by amniotic fluid before I was born. And the baptism symbol was kind of, huh, to me. And I see it much more clearly now, that part. But Adam, thank you for the idea of an early death.

Because I know you have a book about early resurrection too, but early death and saying that the old sinful man is going to die, which is like the way Paul is describing it. Now I can have a newness of life. Yeah. Baptism of fire is a nice description too, because on the one hand right like fire is nice it's warm it's comforting on the other hand it's painful it's a baptism of fire uh and to commit yourself to the work of love is to commit yourself to living in in those everlasting burnings which is what god's presence is like and it's a kind of everlasting burning that simultaneously, like the tree, it's like Moses' bush. You have to live like Moses' bush, where you are constantly on fire and being consumed and constantly being renewed by God at the same time. That's kind of a hard way to live,

but it's also, at the end of the day, the only liberating way to live. I've read verse 6 in the past, I think in a flawed way, knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him. And I always tell myself, that's what I have to do to the natural man, right? I need to white-knuckle it and just destroy this tendency. When, through our discussion today, I think I'm seeing that's a natural result of joining God in his work, is my old self withers. My old ideas about earning God's love, condemning others, that withers away when I join him in his work of love. Is that a better way of seeing that verse, I think? I think so. Paul puts a really nice twist on this image in the next chapter, right in Romans 7,

this image of dying and being born again, where Paul says, look, this passage from living under the law of works to living under the law of faith is a lot like what happens when a woman's husband dies. You're the woman, you were married to the law of works, your husband dies so that you're no longer bound to them, right? You're no longer bound to that law. And what you do in the gospel is that you get remarried, except this time you're getting married to Jesus and you're getting married for love. It's this kind of beautiful image of the law of works itself is what dies, Paul says, and then you remarry here in good faith, Jesus, in the law of faith.

And conversions like that. And you move from living under the rule of one law to living under the rule of another. So the law isn't done away with, per se. It's your view of the law. Yeah, the law of works, which is a backwards law. It dies. And you stop living as if love were something that you could get or deserve. Wonderful.

The last verse in our reading assignment today, Romans 6, 23, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. There's a kind of a parallel verse in the Book of Mormon, but I can't resist. I heard a comedian say, the wages of sin is death, but after taxes are taken out, it's just kind of a tired feeling. After you take out taxes. I like it.

That's great. It's what it feels like to be a sinner. You feel constantly worn out because the thing that you're trying to do is impossible. You can't help but feel despair when you try to earn love because it can't be done. You can't get there from there. You've traded the truth of God for a lie and the lie is going to exhaust you. Yeah. It's exhausting to be a sinner.

It's literally exhausting. To be under that mindset of I'm never going to earn it. I'm never going to get there. There's a paragraph in the manual I wanted to read and get Adam's thoughts on it. It's under the heading Grace. In the manual, they do a Romans one through six overview, and they just talk about the law, circumcision, uncircumcision, justification, and then this paragraph on grace. You wrote that book, Original Grace. So let me read this, and I'd love to get your take. Grace is divine help, strength given through the bounteous

mercy and love of Jesus Christ. Through grace, all people will be resurrected to receive immortality. In addition, grace is an enabling power that allows men and women to lay hold on eternal life and exaltation after they have expended their own best efforts. We do not earn grace through our efforts. Rather, it is grace that gives us strength and assistance to do good works that we otherwise would not be able to maintain. And then it asks us, as you read Romans, record what you learn about the Savior's grace. I like that because it's a bit of a paradigm shift for some, I think, to say grace is the strength that gets me there instead of grace is the reward

once I get there. Yeah, amen. Amen to everything you just said. And as I noted at the beginning, right, there are all different ways of talking about this. Paul's way of talking about these things is just one way of talking about them. And there are different ways to talk about grace, and there are different ways to talk about its relationship to works. I think Paul's is a very powerful way to do it, but it's not the only way to talk about these things. Though I think Paul's is a very powerful way to do it, but it's not the only way to talk about these things. Though I think certainly the heart of what you read there is lines right up with what we were describing with Jesus Christ. That grace isn't something different from works. Grace is itself a work.

It's the work that I join God in doing. It's the work of loving. And if I think that I can join that work without doing the work, then again, I've misunderstood what the thing was that I wanted in the first place. God forbid, Paul says, you can't do it. To join God in the work is to do the work. There's no getting around that. I think that both we as Latter-day Saints and the Christian tradition broadly, we tend to get grace wrong in very predictable ways. We tend to think about grace the way that a sinner would think about grace. And the way that a sinner would think about grace is something that you earn or deserve, or something that you don't earn or deserve. Whereas at the end of the day, it's something

that you participate in or something that you don't participate in, right? It's a different question altogether. Is something that you believe in and trust, as Paul says, or is something that you don't? John, you've talked about this before, about the order Moroni gives, come unto Christ and be perfected in him, not be perfect. The sequence. And come unto Christ. So is it come unto Christ, join joining his work that will create in you a new life? The perfection describes the love, not my worthiness for being loved. That's what it means to be perfect, I think, in Christ rather than in myself. If I'm perfect in myself, that's the claim that I deserve to be loved. If I'm perfect in Christ, that means together we have joined in doing perfectly love's work.

It's two different things entirely. Two different goals. You can describe that same thing as the difference between loving perfectly versus the kind of fantasy of perfectionism. Perfectionism is how sinners think about the world, where you try to be perfect and thus be perfectly lovable. That's perfectionism. There's no such commandment to be perfect in that way. And trying to do that prevents you from doing what you are commanded to do. Perfectionism is a powerful form of disobedience. It is. And it's all-encompassing, right? It takes over your life, but you no longer have

even the notion of going out and loving and doing the work of love because you're so consumed in this i've got to perfect myself i've got to earn this yeah it inevitably leads as paul pointed out in chapter two it inevitably leads to condemnation yeah you only use the law to condemn instead of using the law to love and that includes you and it's, hard, exhausting way to live. I would never say the gospel is easy, but I think it's easier than what you've been talking about, trying to be lovable and earn love and think that I'm trying to get God to love me. Everything we've talked about today, it just leads me to want to jump ahead to one of these things that Paul says that is just so poetic and beautiful. When he asked the question in Romans 8, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? And then he just gives this list, you know, shall tribulation or distress or persecution, famine, nakedness, peril or sword i am persuaded skipping down neither death nor life nor angels nor

principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of god which is in christ jesus our lord that's a beautifully crafted thought i feel like everything we've done is leading up to where Paul can say that. I'd like to make this a little more applicable to just Latter-day Saint life today. So I'm going to read a paragraph from the manual and ask you both a question. Some of the Jewish Christians in Rome apparently still believed that the rites and rituals of the law of Moses brought salvation. This may seem like a problem that doesn't apply anymore since we don't live by the law of Moses. But as you read Paul's writings, think about your own efforts to live the gospel.

Are your outward performances, taking the sacrament, attending the temple, and we could make that list really long, all the things we do as Latter-day Saints, are they deepening your conversion and strengthening your faith in Christ? So why or when or how do we forget that? Because I've had conversations with people who, in fact, I just had one last week with saying, I've attended the temple weekly, weekly, weekly, but she lost her faith. And she wanted to prove to me that she was doing all the right things to maintain her faith. She's going through a faith crisis. She's saying, I've read all the manuals, attended the temple weekly, I've gone to church, I can quote to you the Journal of Discourse. All these things she told me she was doing, and it seemed like those became an end in themselves. But comment on this then. Are your outward performances, such as the

sacrament or attending the temple, we could add a lot to that list of things we do, are they deepening your conversion and strengthening your faith in Christ? Why does this happen? Why does the gospel become a gospel of checklists sometimes to us? Because that's an exhausting way to live, filling in all the boxes of, I baked bread for the widows, I served at the cannery. And then to do that day in, day out, day in, day out, and then you think you're earning a reward. Maybe we all have a little law of Moses in our spiritual DNA or something, or just the formulas of the world. If I do this, this, this, then this happens. That works in math class. What do they call it? The doctrine of retribution. I think that

went over into the New Testament to the point that as we've talked about, Hank, hey, who did sin? This man or his parents that he was born blind. We want a cause and effect type of a thing. The way you asked the question was, are those deepening our conversion? Well, are those the fruits of our conversion? The conversion should be our focus. We're trying to be converted to Christ, right? and then maybe those things become more of a fruit of our conversion instead of a formula yeah i think again it's the decisive question is why we do what we do it's exhausting to check off all those boxes on the checklist if i'm checking those boxes to earn love yeah because i believe i can't i'm not lovable unless yeah i do those things but if i'm checking those boxes because i love other

people it's not it's not exhausting in the same way right in fact it's profoundly empowering invigorating enlivening it quickens it fills you with a power that's not your own, with a love that you couldn't command in your own name. It connects you to God in a way that brings you back to life, literally. And the very quality of the work is changed in a way that's liberating rather than captivating. I think that passage in the Come Follow Me manual is really important because it's tempting to read Paul and to think that when he's talking about the law, he's just talking about the law of Moses, which means he's not talking about something that applies to us. Now, everything I've said today assumes that that's not the case. Everything I've said today assumes that the things that Paul has to say about the law. The law of Moses, those things apply just as

much to me as they do to first century Jews who are attempting to live now as Christians. I think that's true not just broadly, generally, I think that's true in the text of Romans as well. In Romans chapter 2, when Paul gives us a whole bunch of examples of the kinds of things that are involved in keeping the law, He doesn't give ritual examples. He doesn't give examples that have to do with sacrifices or ritual requirements of the law of Moses or purity laws. All of the examples that Paul gives of the law of Moses in chapter two, for instance, all of those are moral examples. They have to do with stealing or murdering or adultery or all things that still apply to us. And he's pretty consistent about this, Paul is, that whenever he talks about the law and

keeping the law or living under the law, he uses these moral examples that still apply. That's part and parcel of the way that the main issue he has in mind has to do with how in general we think about God's law, regardless of the details, whether I'm thinking about it as a means to earning love or whether I'm thinking about it as a means to earning love or whether I'm thinking about it as a means to enacting love. I wanted to quote a story told by Stephen Robinson. We mentioned him earlier today. It's a BYU speech given called Believing Christ. He wrote a book with the same name. He says, sometimes the weight of the demand for perfection drives us to despair.

Sometimes we fail to believe that most choice portion of the gospel that says he can change us and bring us into his kingdom. Let me share an experience that happened about 10 years ago. My wife and I were living in Pennsylvania. Things were going pretty well. I'd been promoted. It was a good year for us. A trying year for Janet, his wife.

That year, she had our fourth child, graduated from college, passed the CPA exam, and was made Relief Society president. We had Temple Recommends, we had Family Evening, and I was in the bishopric. I thought we were headed for LDS yuppie hood. Then one night, the lights went out. Something happened to my wife that I can only describe as dying spiritually. She wouldn't talk about it. She wouldn't tell me what was wrong. That was the worst part. For a couple of weeks, she did not wish to participate in spiritual things. She asked to be released from her callings, and she would not open up and tell me what was wrong. Finally, after about two weeks, one night, I made her mad, and it came out. She said, all right, you want to know what's wrong? I'll tell you what's wrong. I can't do it anymore. I can't lift it. I can't get up at 5.30 in the

morning and bake bread and sew clothes and help my kids with their homework and do my own homework and do my Relief Society stuff and get my genealogy done and write the congressman and go to the PTA meetings and write the missionaries. And she just started naming one brick after another that had been laid on her, explaining all the things she could not do. She said, I don't have the talent that Sister Moral has. I can't do what Sister Childs does. I try not to yell at the kids, but I lose control. And I do. I'm not perfect. I'm just not perfect, and I'm never going to be perfect. I'm not going to make it to the celestial kingdom. And I finally admitted that to myself. You and the kids can go, but I can't lift it.

I'm not Molly Mormon and I'm never going to be perfect. So I've given up. Why break my back? He said, we started to talk and it was a long night. He said, I've asked her about her testimony. And she said, I've tried and tried. I cannot keep all the commandments all of the time. And then he said, who would have thought after eight years of marriage, after all the lessons

we've given and heard, after all we've read and done in the church, Janet was still trying to save herself. She knew why Jesus is a coach, cheerleader, an advisor, and a teacher. She knew why he's an example, the head of the church, the elder brother, or even God. She knew all of that, but she did not understand why he's called Savior. Janet was trying to save herself with Jesus as an advisor. Brothers and sisters, we can't. No one can. No one is perfect. He then quotes Ether, and he says, of course we fail at the celestial level. That's why we need a Savior. And we are commanded to approach God and call upon Him so that we may receive according to our desires. He goes on to say, I have learned this lesson in my life. My family has learned this lesson in our collective

life. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He is the Savior of the world. He is our individual Savior. If we will enter into that glorious covenant relationship with Him, which I think Adam would describe as join Him in His work, and hold nothing back, and then have faith and trust in His ability to do for us what we cannot accomplish. I love his gospel dearly. That to me is maybe an all too frequent story of I can't do it anymore. And Adam, I think you've really, really given us the answer here. Can I ask you to give it again? So we're clear to anybody listening that that is not the effective way to look at the gospel. The natural result of that, you're going to end up exhausted, tired, and probably, I can't do it anymore. I give up.

It's a really powerful story. I remember vividly, crystal clear, the moment I first read that story and Brother Robinson's in the book and believing Christ. And I'm really grateful to Sister Robinson for letting him share it. And I think it's been really powerful for a lot of people. For me, I think the really important thing about that story is to recognize that that moment of despair that's described so powerfully there for Sister Robinson is not an optional moment. Discovering that you cannot do it.

Discovering that love cannot be earned and deserved. Abandoning that project, giving up on that project, finding yourself hopeless in the face of that project. Right? That is death. That is the passage. That is how you move from living under the law of works to living under the law of faith. Now, it's a dangerous moment. It's a dangerous moment when you discover that the law of works is impossible.

Because if you think that's all there is to the gospel, then you think that the gospel is over. It's also potentially, in a necessary moment, a potentially redemptive moment, because that is the passageway to discovering what the gospel of Jesus Christ actually is. That's the passage to discovering the law of faith, in which you discover that you were trying to answer the wrong question the whole time, that you were trying to obey a commandment that God never gave, and that you were trying to find love in a way that's impossible to do. And it opens the door, then, to being saved, to being redeemed, to being resurrected, to

finding a new life in Christ. You can't get to that new life without dying first to the old law. And that's a difficult and painful thing, but it's also potentially liberating, redemptive. I think Sister Robinson would be the first to testify to the fact that on the far side of that despair is the love and life and hope that you were looking for. So good. What I'm really hoping for this podcast is it's healing. It's healing for people to go, you're right. Oh, I feel so much better.

Jesus was right. Yeah, Jesus was right the whole time. You know, when I had that conversation with my evangelical minister friend, and we were friendly and everything, he asked me, if you never go to the temple again, could you go to heaven? And what came spewing out of my mouth, I don't know would pass correlation or not. I just remember saying, I go to the temple because I love the Lord and I think he wants me there. But the temple isn't called the Savior. The fact that I went on a mission is not called the Savior. The fact that I keep the commandments are not the Savior.

Jesus is the Savior. He's the only Savior. He's the only one with that name and title. And that kind of helped me to hear my own self describe that, that Jesus Christ is my Savior and He is my only Savior. Maybe the things I do, maybe I'm trying to show I love Him. Maybe my motives aren't perfect every time, but I'm trying to get to that place where I just want to honor my Savior who loves me even when I'm an idiot. Pete Yeah, I want to join him in his work. Dr. Miller, before we let you go, tell us anything else that you feel like our listeners could really benefit from, especially from these chapters.

Here, I think, is what I'd really like people to come away with from wrestling with Paul's epistles, especially Romans. I'm not a sinner because I've failed to earn God's love through my obedience. I'm a sinner because I've been trying to obey a commandment that God never gave and wasting my life in an effort to earn that love. Trying to obey a commandment that God has never given is what prevents me from obeying the commandment he actually gave, from actually being obedient. Trying to be loved rather than loving is what trapped me in the first place. And discovering this, as Paul describes it, and as I've experienced it, is liberating. The revelation is liberating to discover that love, that grace is a law, the law. Loving your enemies is the law that God himself follows and not not just in the hope of something later. And that, I think, that's not just Paul's message. That is, in many ways, the essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ itself. It's the good news.

Adam, it's been such a blessing to have you with us today. So grateful for your time. Thank you. I've loved being with you. I'm grateful for the work that you guys do. And I'm glad it reaches so many people. Yeah. We want to have you back. I was really looking forward to Romans.

You can't just read it quickly like you can read other things. I really had to slow down and I still came away going, I hope somebody can come and explain what this means. So it was a blessing for me to be here. Thanks both of you and thanks Sorenson family for just letting me sit here and take a bunch of notes. What a blessing. Yeah. A lot of people are going to feel that same way.

We want to thank Dr. Adam Miller for being with us today. What a treat. We want to thank our executive producer, Shannon Sorensen. We want to thank our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. And we always remember our founder, Steve Sorensen. We hope you'll join us next week. We're going to do the second half of Romans on Follow Him. Today's transcripts, show notes, and additional references are available on our website, followhim.co. That's followhim.co. You can watch the podcast on YouTube with additional videos on our Facebook and Instagram accounts. All of this is absolutely free, and we'd love for you to share

it with your family and friends. We'd like to reach more of those who are searching for help with their Come Follow Me study. If you could subscribe to, rate, review, and comment on the podcast, that will make us easier to find. We've just completed a new project we think you'll love. If you would like short and powerful quotes and insights from all of our Old Testament episodes, join our mailing list on our website, followhim.co, and we will email you a PDF of the first three chapters of our new book, Finding Jesus Christ in the Old Testament. If you enjoyed our guests on the podcast last year as much as we did, we think you'll love this new collection. Of course, none of this could happen without our incredible production crew, David Perry, Lisa Spice, Jamie Nielsen, Will Stoughton, Crystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra,

and Annabelle Sorensen. We also love hearing from you, our friends and listeners. Hello, I'm Elder Hill, and I'm a missionary right now in Peru, and I'm super grateful for the Follow Jim podcast. I love to start my morning by listening to the podcast as I get ready, and I find myself using the insights as I teach others and as I talk with missionaries. I'm super grateful to learn all sorts of amazing and beautiful things about the New Testament that I would never know without the help of the guests and the hosts. So thanks so much and God bless.