Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of Follow Him. My name is Hank Smith. I'm your host. I'm here with the amazing John. By the way, welcome John. Thank you. It's good to be back.

Yeah. John, we are in the book of Romans today. I know you have some experience in the book of Romans. Of course, what are you looking forward to learning from Paul?

I was talking with my wife about this last night and I said, just a family prayer. I'm like, somebody, book of Romans, anything. I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. That's what they all remembered.

But there's a lot of amazing teachings in here about how grace and works. I mean, all these things. There's some wonderful stuff and so I'm so glad we're going to talk about this today because I want to feel more understanding about justification, sanctification, grace works, merits, Christ, all of this.

So really looking forward to it. John, we have an expert joining us this week. He's been with us before. Dr. Adam Miller. Adam, what are our listeners have to look forward to it in these opening chapters of Romans?

There's a lot to look forward to. I think Paul offers to us in these opening chapters of Romans, one of the best explanations of the gospel of Jesus Christ in all the scripture.

Wow. I've noticed with my friends who aren't members of our church, but who are devout Christians, the book of Romans is slightly important to them, talking with them about religion, the book of Romans frequently comes up.

I was thinking last night as I was preparing that perhaps it would be difficult for this little church. We don't think of Christianity as a little church today, but this little group of Christians in a huge world of the center of the Roman Empire and what that would be like for them.

I'm looking forward to this as well. John, why don't you introduce to our listeners, Dr. Miller? Maybe they didn't hear our awesome episode last year.

Yeah, and I'm sure they'll be excited that we have Dr. Miller back again. I'm just going to read from the back flap of his book, Original Grace, which is one of the things that we'll be talking about today in the title of this book.

But Dr. Adam S. Miller is a professor of philosophy at Colin College in McKinney, Texas.

He earned a bachelor's in comparative literature from Brigham Young University and an MA in PhD in philosophy from Villanova University.

The author of more than 10 books, including letters to a young Mormon and early resurrection and Mormon, a brief theological introduction served his mission in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He and his wife, Gwen, have three children. And as we were talking before Hank, we had Dr. Miller, when we did the book of Job, and it was an amazing paradigm shifting episode that was so helpful and so beautiful.

And I just I just love the beautiful way he expresses himself, no pressure, Adam, but so we're I'm really looking forward to this thing.

John, I specifically remember Dr. Miller saying something that that shifted my point of view, and I've taught it differently ever since is the commandments aren't to avoid suffering.

The commandments are what you do in your suffering to keep you close to God. To me, that that was a light changing moment. And maybe our listeners are like, well, I knew that, but I sure didn't.

I was excited about that. Adam, welcome. Thank you for being here.

I'm so glad to be back with you. It's a real pleasure. I hope everyone will go back and listen to that episode on Job after they finish this episode, of course.

I'm going to read the opening paragraph to the come follow me manual. And then Adam, let's turn it over to you and give us maybe some background on Romans and where we're going to go.

This is what the manual says. This is by the time Paul wrote his epistle to the Roman church members who were a diverse group of Jews and Gentiles.

The church of Jesus Christ had grown far beyond a small band of believers from Galilee about 20 years after the Savior's resurrection.

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