“To God be the Glory”
(Romans 16:25-27)
Series: Not Guilty!
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
First Baptist Henderson, KY
(12-27-09) (PM)
Take God’s Word and open to Romans, chapter 16.
I feel a bit of sadness knowing that this final text concludes our study of this great book. It seems that we have just gotten started and only scratched the surface of Romans. Nevertheless, all good things must come to an end and here we are now at the final three verses of Romans.
What is good about these final verses is that they take us upward, upward to God, that we may remember that we are here on this planet to glorify God! Paul says here in these final verses, “To God be the Glory.” He concludes our study with a doxology, a word of praise. It is the longest of all the doxologies he writes in the New Testament. Let us read it and hear it and study it as a concluding word of praise to God for all that He has done.
- Stand in honor of the reading of the Word of God.
25 Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began
26 but now has been made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures has been made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith —
27 to God, alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen.
- Pray.
Introduction:
I said a moment ago these concluding verses are a doxology, a word of praise to God. Most of us are familiar with that term. Many of us are familiar, for example, with what is called “The Doxology,” the short praise sung in many churches every Sunday. Many of you know it. Let’s sing it:
Praise God from Whom all blessings flow
Praise Him all creatures here below
Praise Him above ye heavenly host
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
Amen
That’s a doxology, a word of praise to God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
There are other doxologies in the Bible. This being the Christmas season you will recall that we drew attention one Sunday morning to what is sometimes called “The Greater Doxology” or “The Angelic Hymn,” in Latin, the “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” Glory to God in the Highest. This doxology is recorded in Luke, chapter 2. It is the singing of what I call “the first Christmas carol” by the angelic host, the singing of Christ’s birth to the shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem. It is a wonderful word of praise to God.
Not too long ago, we studied another doxology in the Book of Romans. You will remember that the Book of Romans divides into the sections of doctrine and duty or, if you like, instruction and application. The first 11 chapters treat the matter of doctrine and then chapters 12 and following, with duty, or the application of Paul’s teaching.
So Paul fittingly concludes the first 11 chapters of doctrine in Romans with a doxology, a word of praise to God. Do you remember it? Look back at the end of chapter 11. Look down there at verses 33 and following:
33 Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!
34 “For who has known the mind of the LORD? Or who has become His counselor?”
35 “Or who has first given to Him And it shall be repaid to him?”
36 For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen.
Doxology is natural. When we reflect on the glory and grandeur of God, who He is and what He has done, such reflection draws us into praise and worship of the one we adore. We praise Him! Paul has been writing much about the glory and grandeur of God. He refers to God no less than 153 times in these 16 chapters. 153 times! One commentator (Kent Hughes) notes Paul refers more to God than he uses the verb “to be” in Romans. The verb to be occurs in various forms only 113 times, but the word “God” occurs 153 times.
This doxology is very similar to the way Paul begins the Book of Romans. You may wish to check this out later, noting the similarity of these concluding verses to the opening verses, especially, verse 5 of chapter 1. Paul has said all he intends to say to the churches and Rome and He concludes now with this word of praise. Let’s study this doxology together and note the things for which we should praise God. First:
I. We Should Praise God for His Mighty Strength (25)
25 Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ,
The word “establish” there refers to God’s ability to strengthen, or stabilize us. It refers to God’s power and ability to “prop up” and to make us stand strong and steadfast.
The suggestion, then, is that we need to be “propped-up.” We need to be made stable, because we are instable. Without God’s mighty strength, we are weak, wretched, poor, and blind. The Book of Romans is about God’s taking us from our weakness, our spiritual wretchedness, poverty, and blindness, and “propping us up,” making us stand strong and steadfast. Paul is writing here first and foremost about God’s mighty strength to save us. We have “fallen.” We are down. We are unable to rise. God comes to us and He “props us up.” He makes us stand. And God does this through the power of salvation.
The Phillips translation has, “Now to Him who is able to set you on your feet as His own sons.” This is the idea. As we sing sometimes in that popular chorus:
My God is Mighty to save,
He is Mighty to save.
God comes to us in our fallen state and makes us stand. That’s what this means here in verse 25, “To Him who is able to establish you,” to make you stand. It is something of an echo to what Paul had written earlier in Romans 5:1-2:
1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
2 through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Through Christ we have “access by faith into this grace.” Access describes the privilege of being introduced into the very presence of God. When Jesus died on the cross He made possible our being ushered into and introduced to the very presence of God. We can now stand in the presence of God. Before, we could not stand there. We were not “established.” Our sins kept us down. We needed to be propped up. God props us up. So now “we stand.” And it is a standing that lasts forever. We need not fear ever losing this standing. What God props up, He props up forever. Through Christ Jesus we are made to stand steadfast and secure forever.
Jude has this same thing in mind in his famous doxology. Jude 24-25:
24 Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, And to present you faultless Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,
25 To God our Savior, Who alone is wise, Be glory and majesty, Dominion and power, Both now and forever. Amen.
God “keeps us from stumbling.” He “establishes us.” He “props us up.” He makes us stand and to stand steadfast and secure forever and ever.
And how does God do this for us? Through the power of His Word, namely the Gospel. Romans 16, verse 25 again:
25 Now to Him who is able to establish you [How?] according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ,
When Paul says “my Gospel,” he does not mean that he has his own version of the Gospel. His Gospel is God’s Gospel. All of Romans is about the Gospel. He opened the Book this way. Romans 1:1, “Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God.” It is “the” Gospel. Paul simply refers to “the” Gospel as “my” Gospel because it is the Gospel as Paul has been writing about here in Romans. It is Paul’s teaching about the Gospel.
So he says in verse 25 that God makes us stand, props us up, strengthens us, establishes us through the Gospel, “and the preaching of Jesus Christ.” The word “preaching” here is the “heralding” of Jesus Christ. We are saved by Jesus Christ, by the Good News concerning Christ Jesus.
Now, I think it is important that we recognize that the God who “establishes us,” or “props us up,” or, “makes us stand and be strong” for our salvation, is the same God who “establishes us,” or “props us up,” or “makes us stand and be strong” in our sanctification.
In another doxology, in Ephesians 3:20-21, Paul writes:
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
God is able “to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.” So God establishes, or strengthens us, for our salvation and God establishes us, or strengthens us, for our sanctification. We can continue to grow in the strength of the Gospel.
Whatever grace we need to get through this coming week or this coming year, God will provide the Christian. He causes all His children to be “established,” to be strengthened. He will cause us to stand, to be propped-up, to remain sure, stable, and steadfast through the power of the Gospel. He will meet our every need. When we feel like giving up or falling down, He will pick us up. He’ll get us through every trial and tribulation we face. He “is able to establish us according to the Gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ.” So we should praise God for His Mighty Strength. Secondly:
II. We Should Praise God for His Missional Scope (25b-26)
That is, we should praise God for the wideness of His mercy; that His love extends to all nations. The Gospel is for all peoples. Paul elaborates on this far-reaching scope and aim of the Gospel in verses 25 and 26. He refers to the Gospel as “the mystery” which has now been revealed. Look at the second part of verse 25:
according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began
26 but now has been made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures has been made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith —
Paul refers to the Gospel as “the mystery kept secret since the world began.” God had a plan to save all peoples without distinction, all peoples of all nations.
After worship services this morning, Michele and I drove through the Drive-Thru at Wendy’s to get some lunch. There was a guy in front of us with a bumper sticker that read, “I Don’t Discriminate: I Hate All People.” Well, God doesn’t discriminate, either. He loves all people!
God had this plan from the beginning of time, “since the world began,” as Paul says here. This was His plan that was not fully seen until the coming of Christ.
We catch glimpses of this plan in the Scriptures. Paul writes in verse 26:
by the prophetic Scriptures has been made known to all nations,
God reveals the missional scope of the Gospel early on the first book of the Bible, in Genesis. So in Genesis 12:3, for example, God says to Abraham, “In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Later in Genesis 18:18, God says that all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him. Then in Genesis 22:18, God again says that all of the nations shall be blessed in Abraham.
So God had this plan since the world began to bless all the nations of the earth. His love extends far and wide, far and wide beyond the Jews to the Gentiles, too—to all nations. Paul refers to this missional scope of God’s as “the mystery.” The word simply means that which was hidden but is now revealed. That is to say, it was always there. This plan of God’s, for example, was always there. It just wasn’t seen as clearly as it was seen once Christ came.
Remember reading this in Ephesians 3? In Ephesians 3:3-6, Paul writes of the mystery. He refers to the mystery as God’s plan which has now been revealed. He writes:
3 how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already,
4 by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ),
5 which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets:
6 that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel,
God’s “mystery” is simply that the Gospel is for all peoples, Jew and Gentile. God is making “one new race,” if you will. He is bringing all peoples together through the Gospel. So Paul opens Romans with that statement, you remember in Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God to all who believe, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”
This is a truth that has always been there, but has not been clearly seen until later, until the coming of Jesus Christ, and the full teaching of the Gospel.
I have illustrated this before with the analogy of looking for something in my refrigerator. I am looking for the mayonnaise. Where in the world is the mayonnaise?! I open the door and I look and look and look. I do not see it! Then, my wife comes and opens the door and shows me the mayonnaise. There it is! Now, it was always there. I just didn’t see it. My wife revealed to me where the mayonnaise was. There it was right in front of me the whole time, I just didn’t see it. This is the missional scope of the Gospel. It has always been there. It has always been God’s plan to save all peoples of all nations, it just was not seen as clearly as when Christ came.
So the missional scope of the Gospel is a plan that, verse 26, God has now “made manifest.” He has unveiled this plan to make one new race, one new people, bringing together Jew and Gentile into one.
So the Gospel is not just for the Jews, but for all nations. We are to take the Good News to all nations—verse 26—“for obedience to the faith.” That is, so that all nations will receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
We should praise God, then, for His Mighty Strength and for His Missional Scope. Thirdly:
III. We Should Praise God for His Majestic Superiority (27)
Here is the last word of praise in verse 27:
27 to God, alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen.
This last verse is similar to Paul’s doxology in 1 Timothy 1:17, “Now to the King eternal immortal invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.”
We see here Paul’s praise to the only wise God who alone can do only what He does. Only God can stabilize us, establish us, prop us up, make us stand, freeing us from the bonds of sin. Only God can make us His sons and daughters. Praise God for His majestic superiority!
I want to conclude our study the same way FF Bruce concludes his commentary on the Book of Romans, with a quote from the end of William Tyndale’s prologue to Romans. Tyndale, you will remember, was the 16th Century Protestant Reformer who had translated much of the Bible into contemporary English, translating the Greek New Testament into an English translation that was very readable and very accessible. Tyndale was greatly moved and inspired by the Book of Romans. He concludes his prologue to Romans (1526) with these words:
Now go to, reader, and according to the order of Paul’s writing, even so do thou. First behold thyself diligently in the law of God, and see there thy just damnation. Secondarily turn thine eyes to Christ, and see there the exceeding mercy of thy most kind and loving Father. Thirdly remember that Christ made not this atonement that thou shouldest anger God again: neither cleansed he thee, that thou shouldest return (as a swine) unto thine old puddle again: but that thou shouldest be a new creature and live a new life after the will of God and not of the flesh. And be diligent lest through thine own negligence and unthankfulness thou lose this favour and mercy again.
Stand and repeat this verses with me:
25 Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began
26 but now has been made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures has been made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith —
27 to God, alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen.
- Pray.
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