Chapter # 9 Paragraph # 1 Study # 2
July 22, 2008
Lincolnton, N.C.
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<418> Thesis:   The "theology" of love is that it will embrace loss for the sake of another. Introduction:   When we last met, we considered Paul's preface to the content of Romans 9-11. We saw that he made a fairly big deal of his "truth speaking". We saw that he apparently believed that what he had to say was going to be so unbelievable that he felt compelled to insist that it was true before he ever said it. It was our contention that we have a profound obligation to embrace what is True regardless of how it makes us "feel". We know two crucial things about "feelings". The first is that they lie at the roots of Life: Joy is a "feeling". The second is that they also have a root: feelings primarily arise from the interaction between values and reality and secondarily from the input that faith has regarding what is valued and whether, or not, reality will fulfill it. So, what Paul wrote in Romans 9:2-3 is a major challenge for one reason: in those two verses he posits a tenacious "value" that reality is going to absolutely deny. This is a problem of such magnitude that we need to be reminded that Paul went to extremes in 9:1 to insist that what he wrote is truth. This evening we are going to ask ourselves this question: What is this problem?