Sermon from September 22, 2002

We begin reading today the interpretation of reality as given in the Christian gospel. It has held its own against competing interpretations for two millennia. It will give you a place to stand in the confusions of our generation. It honors God. It points to God. It connects people with God through Jesus Christ. Will you "hear it, read, learn, mark and inwardly digest it?"

"It" is the writing in the New Testament that the Church calls Romans, because the Apostle Paul wrote it to the Church in Rome less than a generation after the resurrection of Jesus Christ to an indestructible life. With your Bible open follow as I read and comment on each passage and bring each reading to an application to our lives. It can make you wise. It can renew your mind. It can make you happy. Leet's begin.

Paul opens this letter by presenting his credentials. Being a servant doesn't sound like much of a credential. Being a servant of Christ Jesus on the other hand would carry considerable weight in those communities who called Jesus Lord. The credential of being called to be an apostle put him in elite company. Peter was an apostle. John was an apostle. If he was their peer, then he deserved a hearing. His final credential was his life work, his vocation. He had been set apart for the gospel of God. He can hardly contain himself. He wants to talk about the gospel. He has a lot to say about the gospel. This entire letter is about the gospel. He is not exactly impolite in the opening lines of the letter, but before he even says hello to the people he is writing to he just has to say a couple of things about the gospel.

First of all, it is the gospel he (God) promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. What Scriptures, if not the Jewish Scriptures? Paul was a Jew, and believing in Jesus Christ did not cause him to stop being a Jew or to stop using the Jewish Scriptures. In fact, he saw his life's work, the gospel, rooted in those Scriptures. He did not invent the gospel. It did not even start with Jesus. It started in the dark flesh of elect Israel ever so many generations before. We did not invent it either. It has come to us through the centuries like some great river of blessing roaring down out of the mountain of God to irriggate the thirsty nations of all mankind.

Where many Jews today see discontinuity between Judaism and Christianity, Paul, the Jew, saw continuity between them. God Himself is the continuity. He made a promise in the Torah, which He kept in the gospel. Paul's broken heart over the cleavage between Jew and Christian in his own day comes through powerfully in this letter. Maybe his broken heart will infect us all.

Second, the gospel God promised is good news, says verse 3 regarding his Son. And what do we know about God's Son? Paul tells us two things here. First, as to his human nature (He) was a descendant of David. God's Son was a Jew, the descendant of the great King David. He had royal blood in Him, as befits the Messiah of Israel.

The second thing Paul tells us about God's Son (even more royal) is that through the Spirit of holiness (He) was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead. Humanity cannot ignore someone who defeats death. Those closest to the event, like Paul, saw in that triumph a declaration that the Son of God had walked the earth and accomplished something inexpressibly good for mankind - the sort of thing you have to talk about, good news, a gospel. The full title of this Son of God, descendant of David is Jesus Messiah our Lord. 

The gospel is about Him and His victory over death. Paul is His servant, commissioned to proclaim this gospel as the best news we have ever heard. Contrary to what the talk about Jewish Scriptures and Jewsus the Jew  might lead you to think, this gospel is good news for the entire non-Jewish world as well.

Verse five makes that clear. Through him (Jesus) and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. That includes us. That includes Chinese and Saudis and Zimbabweans and Peruvians and Esquimaux. This is good news for humanity for all time, all over the world. Paul of course was writing to the Christians in Rome.

It is time he remembered his manners, and he does so in the most elegant manner in verse 6. And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. God called Paul to be an apostle. Paul called Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. God called him and all Christians to belong to Jesus Christ. And that's not all. He writes in verse 7, To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints. That is not a football team, nor is it a band of spiritual superheroes. Those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ are also called to be saints - those who embody in the dark flesh of elect humanity the eternal purpose of God on earth.

It is fitting the greeting that follows be flitting, for grace and peace from God our Father and from great David's greater descendant find further expression in what follows. So, the apostle is sincere but concise when he says, Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Beginning in verse 8, he cannot hold back his exuberance at what he has to say about those in Rome who are called ot the obedience of faith and called to belong to Jesus Christ and called to be saints. First, he says, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. Having a Christian beachhead in the capital city of the Empire would be big news.

Paul acknowledges later on that he had nothing to do with starting the Church in Rome. That makes his exuberance over the Church there even more impressive. It takes a big man to rejoice in someon else's success. He wants them to know that he has been praying for them.

Verses 9-10 say that and point out one of Paul's relevant prayer requests. God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God's will the way may be opened for me to come to you.

He wants to see for himself what God has done in the heart of the Empire. He will tell them later that he has no intention of staying. He just wants to visit. While visiting, he wants to contribute to their spiritual well-being. Verses 11-12 say, I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong - that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith.

Whose faith encourages you? Whose faith do you encourage? We don't know exactly how Paul thought it would happen in Rome. We don't know exactly how it happens here. At least, we cannot grasp the multitudinous ways in which it happens right here in the dynamic exchanges that take place with each other. One of the advantages of being together and of talking about our faith with each other is the potential encouragement it makes possible among the people of Christ.

Paul has another motive in wanting to visit Rome, and the roadblocks to that visit must have frustrated him mightily. Verse 13: I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles. A harvest! He means a harvest of human beings, who become Christans as a result of his efforts.

Isn't it interesting that he singles out Gentiles again? He spoke to fellow Jews everywhere he went. They were usually the first people he spoke to in a new city. But Paul could not escape the charge that he believed God had laid on him to speak to Gentiles. It seems in a way like an odd arrangement that a Jew (Paul) should target Gentiles primarily. But it seemed to work. He left behind new churches full of Gentiles everywhere he went. Verses 14-15 are fascinating, because they open a window into the apostle's soul.

I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome. It is easy to be a snob. Nothing comes more naturally. The gospel of Christ introduces an antidote to that particular social posion. It opened Paul, the Jew, up to the Gentile world. It opened Paul, the intellectual, up to the foolish, as well as the wise. The world was his parish. Humanity was his audience. The gospel had begun its mustard-seed style assault on the brutal caste structure that separated human beings from each other all over the globe. Paul caught that vision as a blessed obligation.

Paul was a socail freak. People found him odd, not to say dangerous to the established order, although he had no political ambitions. He must have felt the awkwardness of his position and the strangeness of his message. Nevertheless, he did not shrink back from his apostolic vocation for a most clear reason, which he articulates in verses 16-17. These verses capture the theme of Romans.

I am not ashamed of the gospel. Neither am I, although I am sometimes embarrassed by the way people share the gospel. I can keep those two things separate. I will never allow the good intentions and lamentable methods of soem cause the gospel  voice to fall silent. Neither should you. Where  there is embarrassment, bear it. Where there is folly, correct it where you can, endure it where you must. But never ever let human folly undermine your confidence in the gospel. Here is why.

I am not ashamed of the gospel, says the Apostle Paul, because it is the power of God. It does not merely talk about the power of God; it is God's power. It is only words, but it is not for nothing that the Bible compares these words to seeds. Small seeds, to be sure, but seeds that settle down in the invisible regions of the human heart and bring forth results that can fill a nation. And what result does this power of God produce?

It is the power of God for ... salvation. Verse 18 will tell us that the gospel is the power of God that saves us from the wrath of God. That hardly begins to tell the whole story, as if the rescue of a drowning child spoke of only a narrow escape and said nothing about the child's future. The gospel is also the passport to a new life, a new heaven and a new earth. However, it is not irresistible.

It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes. The soil in which God hides these small and powerful seeds must be receptive. The name the Bible gives to receptive soil is faith. A person believes the gospel is true, and, believing that, he then depends on God for salvation for a lifetime.

Anyone is eligible. The gospel ... is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. The conviction that God's power for salvation made a universal offer brought Paul out of his Jewish shell and gave him universal sympathies. By why did he believe that the gospel ... is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes? Verse 17 explains.

For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed. In the Bible God's righteousness does not just mean that God is right; it also means that God does what is right. He sees to it that right will triumph; good will conquer evil. He has the power to save humanity from the evil that dogs our every step. How do we know that? God demonstrated His power and resolve to save mankind from all evil and to restore him to paradise, when He raised Jesus from the dead. In Jesus the future has invaded the present. Also, we see that rescue taking place everywhere that people believe the gospel.

No one can prove that. A person believes it and trusts God to make it happen, or a person does not believe it. It is a righteousness that is by faith from first to last. Now, for the first time in Romans, the apostle gives an example of how the Old Testament anticipated the gospel. He quotes the prophet Habakkuk 2:4: Just as it is written: "The righteous, those who experience God's salvation, will live by faith, by trusting God to deliver them from evil." Faith is not a new idea, but the gospel gives faith a new object of trust, namely, Jesus Christ, and what God's power did in Him and promises to do for us.

By God's grace we believe the gospel. By God's grace we trust Christ. That faith opens us up to a new appreciation of our own personhood. Each of us uses a variety of words to identify who we are. We have a proper name that we include in all our important documents and personal correspondence. I am 6'3", 190 pounds, blue eyes, brown hair, wear glasses, right-handed, have a scar above the knuckle on my left index finger. I am also a husband and father and grandfather. I am an American, a citizen of Delaware, homeowner in Sharpley, in the Brandywine School District. I am an ordained, evangelical Protestant pastor in a Baptist congregation, affiliated with the BGC.

We all have a short list of words that identify us. Romans brings out a new word that is on the list but not on our minds. It belongs in the first order of our self-awareness. It gives us dignity. It gives us an unshakeable place in the hierarchy of permanent things. It is the word called. We are called by God.

We are called to the obedience that comes from faith. We are called to belong to Jesus Christ. We are called to be saints - those who embody in the dark flesh of elect humanity the eternal purpose of God on earth.

You may be rich, but more important, you are called. You may be a person of influence, but more important, you are called. You may have a low opinion of yourself, but you are called. We have no high, holy day on which to celebrate the calling of the Church. Our eyes have to opened. We have to help each other. The weight of the glory of being called hovers over us like the Spirit above the waters until it can rest upon us.

God called us. The gospel is His voice. That voice shouts and whispers and warms and invites and separates. You can hear it in the rainforests of Brazil, on the Steppes of Central Asia, and in the giant metroplexes of earth. Tyranny cannot silence it. Freedom cannot make it irrelevant. It proposes but nevermore tries to impose its interpretation of reality.

It reached us and God called us, and we answered and reached back. The power of the gospel, which is the power of a seed, took root in us and set free in us, the power that has set us on the way to the restoration of all things. Here in this act of worship we do well to reaffirm our faith in the God of the gospel, who has called us to glory.