Received Grace… For Obedience

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which He had promised before, by His prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, which was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God, with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, by whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith, among all nations for His name. Among whom are you also called of Jesus Christ, to all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The gospel is not God's backup plan, but a gift planned before time and now opened in Christ—received by grace, for obedience.

A Word on Citizenship and Voting

As an aside before we turn to Romans, consider that just days before Jesus was condemned to die by a Roman court—pressured by a Jewish court in Jerusalem—He was questioned by people who did not like paying taxes. Can anyone relate? They asked, "Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar?" trying to trap Him. He asked for a coin, asked whose inscription it bore, and answered, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's." As always, He answered perfectly.

I think we should note that as citizens of this country we have the right to vote, and so we should. I won't tell you whom to vote for. Look at the candidates, consider how they have voted, their record, and their character, and take all of that into account—not only for President, but down to city council, the school board, and the hospital board. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. I sent in my absentee ballot the other day, grateful to live in a country where we get to be part of that process. Even if you don't always feel your vote counts, you should still vote.

Servant, Apostle, Separated

"Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God." As we considered last time, Paul calls himself a servant of Jesus. Anyone who receives Christ as Lord receives Him as Master, and so by title we become His servants. The question is whether we actually serve once we are called servants.

As we serve, God begins to reveal His gifting in us. At the new birth He gifts us by His Spirit with supernatural giftings—we spent seventeen weeks on this in 1 Corinthians. As we discover those gifts, we begin to see how the Lord has called us. He saved us, He gifted us, He called us. Paul was called to be an apostle, and in a certain sense every one of us has an apostolic calling. We are sent with a message, commissioned to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That commission in Matthew 28 was not given only to the eleven who stood with Jesus; it is given to every disciple.

So we are saved, we become servants, and as we serve we discover our gifting and calling. Then God appoints us specifically within His body, placing us perfectly where He has given us talents and abilities, for His glory and the building up of the church until we come into His presence—a day every one of us looks forward to more and more.

God Enables the Insufficient

Paul's calling was specifically to the Gentiles. Though he came from a Jewish background, and everything about his heritage would seem to say he should minister to Jews, God said, "No, I'm going to use you among Gentiles." God takes the foolish things of this world to confound the wise and the weak things to confound the mighty. Paul confesses his weakness in 2 Corinthians 3: "I am not sufficient of myself to think anything as being of myself, but my sufficiency is of God, who has made me an able minister of the new covenant."

God enables us to do what we cannot do in our own strength. As I've talked with Eric, preparing to teach Bible college students in an underground school in China, he does not feel sufficient—and the reality is, he isn't. But God is the One who makes us able ministers of His new covenant. We must rely on Him and trust Him.

The Good News of God

In verse 2 Paul has a parenthetical break: "...which He had promised before, by His prophets in the holy scriptures." He is speaking of the gospel of God referenced at the end of verse 1. Paul is writing to a young, growing church in Rome made up largely of people without a Jewish heritage, who lack the cultural framework a Jewish mind would bring to the Old Testament. This is a doctrinal primer, written to disciple and equip people to maturity, so Paul starts at square one—the building blocks of our faith—and now explains what is meant by the gospel of God.

The word is euangelion, which simply means good news. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament made in the second and third centuries BC, this word is used when news came to captive Israelites in Babylon after seventy years of slavery: "You're free. You can go back to your country." That was good news to people under oppression. Paul uses the same language: it is the good news of God. The origin is not man but God, proclaiming to a humanity that are all prisoners of war and slaves of sin, "The prison doors are open. You've been set free."

This is one of the prophesied ministries of the Messiah in Isaiah 61, which Jesus quoted in Luke 4 at Nazareth: "I am come to preach liberty to the captives." That is the good news at its most basic. Having been set free, we go back into the prison and tell those still captive, "The door is open; you've been set at liberty by Christ, because the payment for your sin has been dealt with on the cross." This did not originate with man. People have long claimed the Bible is merely a collection of writings by men. No—it is the good news of God, inspired by Him, declared to people who, since the fall in Genesis 3, have been captive to sin.

Not God's Backup Plan

This was planned before the foundation of the world. Revelation 13 tells us the payment for our sin was accomplished before time began—Jesus is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. It was not God's backup plan. As Americans we sometimes process the gospel as though it were plan B because plan A failed.

In the garden God told Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "for in the day you eat of it you shall surely die." Adam and Eve ate, sin entered, and death spread to all humanity. We sometimes imagine God had merely hoped Adam would keep the command. No—God knew he never could. Two thousand years later God gave the Law at Sinai, and some say He then wanted people to make themselves righteous by following it. The Law is holy, just, and good, but it cannot save you; it reveals your sinfulness. As Paul says in Romans 7, "I would not have known covetousness except the Law had said, 'Thou shalt not covet.'" The Law convicts and shows there is no way to save ourselves.

But again we imagine God looking at Jesus outside of time, saying, "This Law thing isn't working—You think You can fix it?" and Jesus replying, "Yeah, I'll go down and try." That is not how it happened. He is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

The Mystery, Wrapped and Promised

We know it didn't happen that way because of verse 2: "which He promised before, by His prophets in the holy scriptures." Until Jesus came in the incarnation, the salvation God intended was a mystery—not in the sense of being unknowable, but in being known only by revelation. We think a mystery is something we can never solve. A biblical mystery is like a Christmas gift: wrapped up so you can't see inside, but meant to be opened.

Perhaps some of you are like my wife, who hates surprises, both for herself and others. When she has a gift for me at Christmas, she cannot help but try to get me to guess—"Don't you want to open it? Don't you want to know what it is?" It drives her crazy; she just wants the gift opened. God is like that. There is this mystery called salvation that He wants to give as a gift, and He has a specific date—Christmas, actually—when He will unfold it in the Person and work of Jesus Christ. But for thousands of years leading up to that, He can't contain Himself, revealing bits and pieces through His prophets.

Throughout the Old Testament are hundreds of prophecies where God reveals the mystery. Over 300 were fulfilled in Jesus at His first coming, with more yet to come. Before He ever said "Let there be light," it was all planned, and He revealed these prophetic promises to Jeremiah, Isaiah, David, Moses, even Abraham.

The Prophetic Promises

Consider just a few. Isaiah 1, written 700 years before Jesus, addresses a nation outwardly religious—observing feasts, fasting, offering sacrifices—yet far from God in their hearts and headed for bondage because of idolatry. God says in verse 18:

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

When Israel asks how they can be made clean if not by the Law, God answers, "I'm going to do a great work."

Two hundred years later, 500 years before Jesus, God speaks through Jeremiah to a nation now in bondage, Jeremiah 31:31:

Behold, the days come, says the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel... not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers... I will put my Law in their inward parts, and write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people... for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

At that same time, hundreds of miles east in Babylon, another prophet, Ezekiel, hears God say (Ezekiel 36:25–27):

Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean... A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you... and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes.

These are just a few of the great Messianic promises—God's good news to a fallen humanity in captivity because of their own sin. The gift was wrapped; the mystery was waiting to be opened.

Manifested in Christ

In 2 Timothy 1, his last letter before his execution, Paul writes:

Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord... but be a partaker of the afflictions of the gospel, according to the power of God; who has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but now is manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ.

The gospel opens the package. It reveals the gift accomplished before the world began—that our salvation is not according to our works but according to His purpose and grace, through His Son, incarnated 2,000 years ago. God became a man.

God gave prophetic promises and always makes good on them. Deuteronomy 7:9 calls Him "the faithful God, which keeps His covenant and mercy." Jesus is the fulfillment of God's prophetic promise.

The Gospel Concerns His Son

What is that gospel about? Verse 3: "Concerning His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, which was made of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God, with power... by the resurrection from the dead." The gospel that brings salvation is the one that concerns His Son.

Many things are espoused today as gospel that sound good—that the gospel is about social renewal and justice, about kingdom transformation on earth, about living eternally on a rejuvenated earth, as the two Jehovah's Witnesses who knocked on my door recently claimed. That is not the gospel of God that brings salvation. Does the work of Christ transform communities? Yes—our own nation shows the power of the gospel to bring good to a people. But those are byproducts. The prime product is the salvation of lost souls, and that comes through Jesus Christ.

People get tripped up, as those women at my door did, by the word "made," thinking it implies a created being. But the Greek ginomai means to come on the scene, to become. In our earthly realm God's Son was incarnated through the kingly seed of David. Two genealogies, in Matthew 1 and Luke 3, show His Davidic line, revealing that Jesus is royalty in His earthly flesh—yet He is also the King of kings and Lord of lords.

Fully God, Fully Man

Verse 4 says He was "declared to be the Son of God, with power." People struggle with this title—Jehovah's Witnesses and Latter-day Saints among them. The Mormons take it to a gross extreme, teaching that God came to earth and impregnated Mary in a carnal sense. That is false doctrine at its worst, and not at all what Scripture reveals.

"Son of God" is a title given to Jesus, who had a different title before He became a man. John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. And all things were made by Him." The One who in verse 14 becomes human flesh was, before that, the Word of God—eternal, equal with the Father, and involved in creation. Colossians 1 confirms it: "By Him were all things created that are in heaven and on earth... and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist."

The Jehovah's Witnesses have added one small word to John 1:1, saying the Word was "a God." That is not in Scripture, and every Greek scholar says it is a wrong translation. They've gotten away with it, and many are seduced by it. If they have that wrong, you can be certain much else in their theology is wrong. I will hold firm to this until my last breath: the Jehovah's Witness church is a cult; they have diminished the deity of Christ and fail to recognize salvation in Him alone.

The Hypostatic Union

John 1:14 again uses ginomai: "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory... full of grace and truth." He is given the title "Son of God" not because He was begotten by God, but to differentiate God in the flesh, lest we misunderstand that God in His eternal state is human flesh. The title implies He has the very nature of God, here tabernacling among us. This is what theologians call the hypostatic union, from the Greek hypostasis, found in Hebrews 1.

Hebrews 1:3 says Jesus is "the brightness of God's glory, the express image of His person... when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of majesty on high." The ESV renders it "the exact imprint of His nature." That word "person" or "nature" is hypostasis. It tells us that Jesus, born as a boy to Mary in Bethlehem, is God in human flesh, with two natures, fully God and fully man. He did not set aside His deity to become man and reclaim it at the resurrection. He is fully God and fully man, having all the power of God.

How do we know? Verses 3 and 4 say He was declared, or proven, to be the Son of God with power "by the resurrection from the dead." First Corinthians 15 summarizes the gospel: Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and rose the third day, seen by over 500 witnesses, including Paul. The resurrection is the most important fact of the gospel; if Christ be not raised, we are dead in our sins and our faith is in vain. But He was raised, and He is alive today.

We know it not because we heard it secondhand, but because over 500 eyewitnesses saw the risen Lord. The authorities who put Him to death could not find His body, because the tomb was empty. They bribed the Roman soldiers to say His disciples stole Him while they slept, because they could not prove what happened. The reality is, He rose. His life proves He is God incarnate, that He purged our sins and is seated at the right hand of majesty on high.

Grace and Apostleship—For Obedience

Verse 5: "By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith, among all nations for His name." Through Jesus we receive, first and foremost, grace. He did not come to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved, that whosoever calls on the name of the Lord would be saved. That is grace.

But we also receive "apostleship." Paul may be speaking specifically of himself, but I think it goes further—every one of us is called to be an ambassador and representative of God in this world. We are given an apostolic calling. Not that our words become Scripture, or that we walk on water or raise the dead, but that we have been given the words of eternal life and sent on mission with a message.

Notice the order: grace and apostleship for obedience. We do not obey in order to receive grace and a calling. This is incredibly important. We are "saved by grace through faith... not of works, lest anyone should boast," but "we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works." We don't become saints by saintly living; we are made saints to live saintly.

Obeying the Faith

What does it look like to obey the faith? We often boil "faith" down to mere mental recognition—"Yeah, I believe Jesus died and rose." Is that saving faith? Some dislike the book of James because he says, "Show me your faith without your works, and I'll show you my faith by my works." As Warren Wiersbe put it, "A faith that doesn't work can't be trusted." Saving faith produces a whole new life by His grace.

First, obedience to the faith means to obey the gospel by believing it. Jesus said in John 6:29, "This is the work of God, that you believe on Him whom He has sent." But it goes further: to obey the faith is to live the gospel. Philippians 2 describes the incarnation and opens, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." To live the gospel is to live incarnationally. The Message translation, which has its faults but also some great things, says of the incarnation that "Jesus moved into the neighborhood."

A few months ago our friend Jeff from Frontiers urged us: "Move into the neighborhood, learn the language, learn the culture, and bring them to Jesus." That is what it means to obey the gospel—to be the hands, feet, and mouth of Jesus in your neighborhood and workplace. If you're not doing that, you're not obeying the gospel.

Among All Nations

Don't forget the last words: "among all nations." These are the very root words Jesus used in the Great Commission—panta ta ethne. The gospel is received by grace through faith so that we who receive it carry it into all the world, among all nations.

Verse 6: "among whom are you also the called of Jesus Christ." The Romans counted themselves a high and mighty class, above all other peoples, as they showed in how they conquered nations. But Paul classifies them as just one among all nations. In Christ, all that pride falls apart. We may take pride in being born in the U.S.A.—and I wouldn't belittle it—but you are still a sinner who needs salvation by grace, and God is not a respecter of persons.

Later, in Romans 12:3, Paul says we ought not to think of ourselves more highly than we should, but to "think soberly, according as God has given to every man a measure of faith." All humanity is on common footing. We believe God has given to all humanity a measure of faith and an opportunity for salvation, because the Scriptures teach it.

Faith Comes by Hearing

If all have received a measure of faith, why do not all believe unto salvation? Romans 10:17 is key: "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." The word of God is like a fan, fanning the flame of faith God has imparted to every human being. We are blessed to live where the word of God is everywhere, but there are places in the world today with no opportunity to hear the gospel or even the name of Jesus.

That is why we must have a passion for these people. Even in our day, when we can fly anywhere and send information instantly, there remain people groups with no access to the gospel—the unreached or unengaged. Jeff tells us there are about 2,200 such people groups. That word ethne does not mean groups divided by political boundaries but peoples separated by culture and language—2,200 unique groups with no witness for Christ. This is why Paul says we need a heart to carry the gospel to all nations, among whom you also are called of Jesus Christ.

Beloved of God, Called Saints

Verse 7: "to all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called saints: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Paul calls them the beloved of God. "Behold what manner of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God." He calls Him God our Father—not distant and separated as the deist would say, but intimately involved in our lives.

He has called us saints. Some translations read "called to be saints," but those added words appear in italics or brackets, supplied for clarity but not necessarily in the original. You can read it either way: God has called us to be saints, to live saintly, or God has already called us saints in Christ. Both are true. God has called us saints in Christ, though that doesn't mean we always live like them; His goal is to bring us to maturity, where we represent Him well.

Nearly every New Testament epistle opens with "grace and peace"—always grace before peace. Pastor Chuck called them the Siamese twins of the New Testament, and grace is always the firstborn, because you cannot have peace with God until you receive the gracious gift of Jesus Christ. And it comes "from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ"—the Father is the source, and Jesus is the channel through which God's grace is dispatched to humanity. In Him we receive grace and a calling to obey the gospel by incarnating it among all nations.

For us it begins in Escondido or San Marcos, but that is only the starting point, because God's plan is for all peoples. There are people called of God in every tribe and nation. We know this prophetically, for in Revelation the Lord is worshiped at the end by every tribe and tongue. Would to God that He would raise up within us a passion to see all nations know His name. Amen?

Closing Prayer

Father, we pray that You would work this into our hearts. We thank You for Your gospel of grace, Your good news. Lord, stir in us a passion to carry the good news to those we come in contact with—be it at the grocery store, the gas station, the softball field, the post office, or in our neighborhood. Wherever we are, stir us with a passion to share the truth that You incarnated, that You became human flesh to save us who are fallen. Work in us, Your church; make Your gospel alive in us. Cause Your word through the apostle Paul here in the book of Romans to transform and revolutionize the way we see the world around us. Give us a new perspective. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.