“The Gospel of God”
(Romans 1:1-7)
Series: Not Guilty!
(The Book of Romans)
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
First Baptist Church Henderson, KY
(2-1-09) (AM)
- Take God’s Word and open to the Book of Romans, chapter 1.
Romans is in the New Testament. It follows the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, John—then Acts, and then Romans. It is fitting that Romans occurs after the Gospels. In one sense, Romans helps us understand the Gospels. That is, in the Gospels we read about the life and work of Jesus. Romans helps us understand the significance of His death and resurrection. You might even say that Romans “explains” the Gospels. But it is a wonderful book and we are beginning this morning a series of studies, verse-by-verse, through the book of Romans.
The book of Romans is actually a letter, a pretty long letter, in fact the longest letter Paul has written in the New Testament. He is writing it from Corinth during his third missionary journey, his last missionary journey. He is writing in the year AD 57, during the early part of the Roman Emperor Nero’s reign (AD 54-68). He is writing this letter to the Christians in Rome. He is likely writing to more than one “church” there in Rome. Churches in Rome met in houses and so there were likely several “house churches” scattered throughout Rome and Paul has all these small congregations in mind as he writes this letter, desiring that the letter be circulated to these churches throughout the city of Rome. These churches likely started after Pentecost. You remember Pentecost from our study of the Book of Acts, chapter 2. People were in Jerusalem from every known nation, people from everywhere, including from Rome. They heard the Gospel and then took the Gospel back to their cities. So there were several small churches, house congregations, scattered throughout Rome.
Paul had never visited Rome, but he indicates in this letter that he hopes to visit the Christians there before too long. Later in the letter he writes that he plans to take the Gospel further west into Spain and that he plans to stop by in Rome on his way. He says, “When I journey to Spain, I shall come to you. For I hope to see you on my journey, and to be helped on my way there by you, if first I may enjoy your company for awhile (15:24).” So Paul hopes to be helped the Roman Christians as he journeys onto Rome. The word he uses for “help” is the word used for financial support of mission work. So Paul plans to stop by Rome, enter into the Christian houses there where congregations were meeting and, you know, give his PowerPoint presentations about his missionary work and then take up an offering. That’s how we do it, isn’t it?!
Well what is so wonderfully exceptional about this letter is its content. This letter has been translated into our English Bibles as a book with sixteen chapters. And the content of this book is, in essence, one long, but carefully-thought-out exposition of the Gospel. Romans is a long letter about the Gospel. The Gospel is its main theme. What is Romans about? It’s about the Gospel. Think “Romans = Gospel.”
The greatest emphasis in the Book of Romans is its teaching about the righteousness of God. This righteousness is available to everyone who is justified by faith in the salvation provided by Jesus Christ. In fact, the key verse—or verses—is found in the first chapter, Romans 1:16-17. These key verses help us unlock the overall meaning of the Book of Romans. Just look at them really quickly before we read this morning. Put a little star there in your Bible by Romans 1:16-17, because these verses are the key to understanding the book. Romans 1:16-17:
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
Now maybe those words don’t mean a lot to you right now. Maybe they’re a bit confusing to some of us. But let me encourage you to study them, read them over, and memorize them because they are important verses and our study through this book will help us understand what Paul is saying there. And let me just say here that when Paul is talking about “the righteousness of God” being revealed to us and that we “live by faith,” he’s talking about how we can stand before God without trembling. He’s talking about how we can be “put right” before God. He’s talking about how we can stand before God free from worry, free from wondering whether we have been forgiven of our sins. He’s talking about how we can stand before God on Judgment Day and hear the beautiful words, “Not Guilty!” That’s why I’ve entitled my series, “Not Guilty,” because it underscores the main theme of this book. Let’s read the introduction.
- Stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
1Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God
2 which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,
3 concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,
4 and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
5 Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name,
6 among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ;
7 To all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
- Pray.
Introduction:
Have you ever noticed how often when someone is promoting a new book that he or she will hold that book up and dramatically say, “This book will change your life!” That’s quite an attention-grabber. Many people aren’t happy with their lives so they’re interested in a book that will give them a sense of meaning and purpose and satisfaction. Book marketers know this and so they appeal to that yearning within consumers.
But you know, at the risk of sounding so cliché, this book of Romans may indeed change your life. I really believe that. And I say this not on the basis of my trying to “sell” it to you. You already have it. You are holding it there in your hands. Most of us have more than one copy of Romans. We already own it, perhaps we’ve even already read it. But have we really digested its contents? Have we mulled it over? Have we absorbed it into our lives? I’m not sure I have and that is, in part, why I am looking forward to preaching through it. There is so much here!
But this book of Romans has changed people’s lives. For example, in the summer of AD 386 there was this young guy who had lived a pretty wild life. Today we might call him a “party animal,” or something like that. He was deeply involved in the things of the world—drinking, carousing, and so forth. And he had a godly mother who prayed hard for his conversion, praying he would come to know Jesus Christ. This young man was beginning to awaken to spiritual things, but he wasn’t letting go of the world and he wasn’t sure Christianity was the way to go, either. But he reached this miserable state of existence where he was convicted that his life wasn’t right, but he didn’t know what to do. One day he is sitting in the garden of his friend’s house just weeping. Have you ever been there? He’s just sitting there weeping. And then he hears the voice of a child in a nearby house who is playing outside. Apparently this child is playing some sort of game. The child keeps singing over and over, “Take up and read! Take up and read!” This young man hears those words and senses that God Himself is giving him a message: “You!—Take up and read.” The young man reaches over and takes up a scroll there by his friend’s side. He takes it up and reads. And do you know what he had taken up? He had taken up the book of Romans. And that book radically changed his life. His name was Augustine. He wrote a lot of theology and was one of the greatest minds of the early church who significantly influenced the men and women of the Protestant Reformation years later.
Here are Augustine’s words himself about that fateful Summer afternoon:
I was…weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo, I heard the voice as of a boy or girl, I know not which, coming from a neighbouring house, chanting, and oft repeating, “Take up and read; take up and read.” Immediately my countenance was changed, and I began most earnestly to consider whether it was usual for children in any kind of game to sing such words; nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So, restraining the torrent of my tears, I rose up, interpreting it no other way than as a command to me from Heaven to open the book, and to read the first chapter I should light upon . . . I grasped, opened, and in silence read that paragraph on which my eyes first fell,—“Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” No further would I read, nor did I need; for instantly, as the sentence ended,—by a light, as it were, of security infused into my heart,—all the gloom of doubt vanished away.” —The Confessions of St. Augustine (Book 8, Chapter 12)
The Book of Romans “changed his life!” Do you know who else was radically changed by the book of Romans? Here’s a guy living in the early 1500s and he’s a monk. His name is Martin Luther. Luther worked really hard at being a good person, faithfully following the strict order and rules of the monastery. In fact, reflecting back on those earlier years, he had once said: “If ever any man could have been saved by monkery, I was that monk.” Over time, however, Luther became increasingly aware of the fact that no matter how hard he worked at pleasing God, he still had this sin problem deep within and he shuddered at the thought of one day facing a holy God.
In his study he became more and more drawn to this phrase in Romans 1:17, the phrase we read earlier, “The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, ‘The just shall live by faith.’” Here are Luther’s words:
I had greatly longed to understand Paul’s letter to the Romans, and nothing stood in the way but that one expression, ‘the righteousness of God,’ because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and acts righteously in punishing the unrighteous…Night and day I pondered until…I grasped the truth that the righteousness of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before ‘the righteousness of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gateway into heaven.—cited from FF Bruce commentary, introduction.
Luther later referred to the Book of Romans as “the masterpiece of the New Testament.” It had radically changed his life. Luther even wrote a commentary on the Book of Romans and, in another interesting work of God’s providence, another man was saved by actually listening to somebody read aloud Luther’s commentary. The man was John Wesley, the founder of Methodism. He was sitting in a meeting in Aldersgate Street in London in 1738. He was just sitting there listening to somebody reading Luther’s preface to his commentary on Romans. Here’s what Weseley said about that evening as he listened to Luther’s preface:
About a quarter before nine while he (Luther) was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for my salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken my sins away, even mine; and saved me from the law of sin and death.—from John Wesley’s Journal.
This is what I long for in our study of this letter! I long for every one of us to be radically changed by this book of Romans. There are so many books out there promising to change our lives, but this book can deliver. It can! And it will if we will partner together to study it carefully and thoroughly. So my prayer is that the study of this book will draw every single one of us closer to God and that we will mature together over the next several weeks, finding less interest and less satisfaction in the popular man-centered and self-focused books that promise so much but in the end leave us empty as they are replaced by the next best-seller. And I pray we will fall in love with this book that will provide us true spiritual nourishment to strengthen us in our journey together.
Are you ready to study? Let’s go. Let me give you quickly some introductory considerations that surface from the opening verses, the first seven verses of chapter one. First:
I. Consider the Proclamation of the Gospel (1)
The opening verse, verse 1, gives us the writer of this letter and tells us who he is and what he’s about. Look at it again, verse one:
1Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God
Letters in New Testament days were written with the writer identifying himself at the very beginning of the letter. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Today we sign off with our names, but then writers began with their names so you knew right from the beginning who was writing it.
Paul describes himself as “a bondservant (or slave) of Jesus Christ.” That’s a great way to put it. Before we come to know Christ, we are slaves to the world. We are slaves to sin. Paul says his loyalties have changed. He was once a slave to the world and a slave to sin, but now he is a slave to Christ. He serves Christ and he serves Christ willingly.
Paul further describes himself as, “called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God.” Here he is referring to his calling, a calling that was dramatically told for us back in chapter nine of the book of Acts. Do you remember that story? Before Paul was a Christian, his name was Saul. And Saul was on his way to Damascus for the purpose of arresting Christians. On his way, God visited him! The Lord Jesus Christ appeared to him and spoke to him. Paul was at once saved and called into the ministry, chosen of the Lord to bear his name (Acts 9:15). So Paul says here in verse one that he is “called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God.”
There it is, “Gospel of God.” Remember when you think of Romans, think of the Gospel, the Gospel of God. Paul was called by God to proclaim the Gospel, to tell as many people as he could about the Gospel. The proclamation of the Gospel. Secondly:
II. Consider the Promise of the Gospel (2)
2 which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures,
He’s talking about “the Gospel of God.” It is the Gospel of God—last part of verse one—that God “promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures.”
What Paul is saying here is that this wonderful Gospel that we will be studying in the coming weeks is a Gospel that was promised by God in the Holy Scriptures. And what Scriptures does Paul have in mind? Well of course Paul has in mind the Old Testament. In the Old Testament God promised the Gospel. God promised that His Gospel would come.
You see there is continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. They go together. We don’t just read the New Testament and say, “Ah, all the Old Testament is just so, so old! Let’s just read the New Testament.” No! God has one unfolding story that cannot properly be understood without reading—and I would add without regularly reading through—both testaments.
So we’ll find Paul quoting from the Old Testament in this letter more than he does in all of his other letters combined! There are at least 61 direct quotations from the Old Testament in the Book of Romans. Paul quotes 61 times from the Old Testament, quoting from 14 different books. We’ll see that the books of Psalms and Isaiah are the most frequently mentioned.
The Gospel of God is promised in the Old Testament. The Old Testament points to Jesus. Do you remember after Jesus was raised from the dead the Bible says in Luke 24 that these two guys were walking away from Jerusalem to the city of Emmaus. Do you remember this? The Bible says that Jesus appeared and walked with them. And Luke writes that, “beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself (24:27).” The Old Testament points to Jesus. We’ll be seeing that more and more in the weeks ahead. In fact this, “pointing to Jesus” takes us to the third point:
III. Consider the Person of the Gospel (3-4)
What’s the Gospel all about? Better, “Who is the Gospel all about?” Verses 3 and 4:
3 concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh,
4 and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.
There’s an antithesis, a contrast, going on in verses 3 and 4. They go together. Verse 3 telles us about the humiliation of Christ and verse 4 tells us about the exaltation of Christ; verse 3—humiliation, verse 4—exaltation. That’s what these phrases mean. Verse 3:
Jesus Christ was born of the seed of David according to the flesh. Here is a reference to the fact that God left the glories of heaven to come down to us to save us. He comes down to earth and is born of the seed of David. That’s what this phrase, “according to the flesh” means. He comes down to earth. The awesome God of heaven humbles himself in coming down to us. We sing of it in that praise chorus: “He came from heaven to earth to show the way.” That’s a reference to Christ’s humiliation.
But then, we have in verse 4 Christ’s exaltation. Christ was, “declared to be the Son of God with power.” Note that: the Son of God with power. This is that power, the full extent of which He did not use when he came to earth in lowly humiliation. Jesus did not use the full extent of His omnipotence during His earthly ministry. We might say, “He held back.” But through the resurrection—and since the resurrection—Christ reigns in full power. This is the idea of verse 4. Through the resurrection, Jesus Christ is declared to be the Son of God with power—this comes “according to the Sprit of holiness, which is the Holy Spirit. So His humiliation comes in verse 3 “according to the flesh” and His exaltation comes in verse 4 “according to the Spirit.” Again, these verses are illustrated by the popular praise chorus about Christ’s humiliation and exaltation:
He came from heaven to earth
To show the way (humiliation)
From the earth to the cross
My debt to pay (further humiliation)
From the cross to the grave (further still humiliation)—but then:
From the grave to the sky (that’s exaltation!)—from the grave to the sky:
Lord I lift your name on high (further exaltation)
The wonderful Person of the Gospel is the Person of Christ! So in these introductory verses we are considering the proclamation of the Gospel, the promise of the Gospel, the person of the Gospel, this leaves just one more:
IV. Consider the People of the Gospel (5-7)
That is, for whom is this Gospel? Who is it for?
5 Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name,
See that last phrase there in verse 5, “among all nations?” That’s who the Gospel is for. It’s for all nations, for everyone. Literally the word is “ethnos,” the word from which we get “ethnicities.” It’s for everyone.
Paul calls this sharing of the Gospel with everyone a privilege. He calls it a grace. Through Christ we have received this blessing, this grace and apostleship to share the Gospel. He says we share the Gospel “for obedience to the faith.” The phrase is probably best translated as, “for obedience of faith.” That is, we are all called to obey God by believing the Gospel. We obey God by believing, by trusting Christ as Lord and Savior and then by living out what we believe. And this call to obedience is for every single person without distinction. It is for “all nations,” all ethnicities.
6 among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ;
So Paul says to these Romans, “You are the people who the Gospel is for.” And he would say the same to us. The Gospel is for everyone Then this blessed greeting in verse 7:
7 To all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
We don’t have time to unpack this verse fully, but note a couple of things here. First, note that Christians are “called to be saints.” If you are a Christian, did you know that you are a saint? You are! A saint of God. You don’t have to do something special and be voted a saint by someone else. The New Testament always addresses Christians as saints, those who are specially set apart to serve God and to receive God’s love. That’s the other thing to observe here:
See the phrase, “beloved of God?” Who is a Christian? A Christian is someone who is “loved of God.” That’s everything to me. God comes to us in our sin. He comes to us and awakens our faith. He shines the light of the Gospel into our very beings so that we hear it and it, and receive it into our lives. What love that God would give us this gift—the gift of His Son, Jesus Christ! Beloved of God.
- Stand for prayer.
Invitation:
I really believe you are here this morning because of God’s love. He has you here right now by divine appointment. You are here not by accident, but by appointment…receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior…
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