Many of you may have seen a recent video clip of a prominent pastor speaking these words:
I just want to encourage every one of us to realize that when we obey God, we’re not doing it for God — I mean, that’s one way to look at it — we’re doing it for ourselves, because God takes pleasure when we’re happy. That’s the thing that gives Him the greatest joy. So, I want you to know this morning: Just do good for your own self. Do good because God wants you to be happy. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy. Amen?
After receiving a great deal of criticism for those remarks, this pastor released the following statement in an attempt to defend and explain those remarks [name of the church is omitted intentionally]:
While I admit that I could have been more articulate in my remarks, I stand by my point that when we worship God and are obedient to Him we will be better for it. I did not mean to imply that we don’t worship God; that’s ridiculous, and only the critics and cynics are interpreting my remarks that way. Every ________________ Church member knows what I was talking about because they have experienced first hand the joy and victory of a ________________ Church worship service, and the honor, reverence and gratitude we show God.
While that’s a bit better than the first comments that were made in the midst of a worship service, you’ll notice that the focus is still on what the people of that church get out of their worship.
Before we’re too quick to join those who have rightly, in my opinion, condemned these remarks, we need to recognize that most of us, though probably in much more subtle ways, have probably from time to time bought into the same lie that worship, and even the gospel itself, is primarily about me – my happiness, my joy, my victory – and only secondarily about God. I’m pretty sure that I can demonstrate that by asking you to honestly answer a few questions:
• Have you ever left a worship service thinking something like this? Unfortunately, I know I have.
o I didn’t really like the music today because it just didn’t speak to me or it’s not the style of music I really like or it was too loud.
o The sermon today really wasn’t relevant to me.
o I just didn’t feel God’s presence today.
o I didn’t feel like I got fed today.
Notice all the focus on “I” and “me” in those statements and a lack of focus on God.
• Have you ever switched churches because you felt like the church you were attending just wasn’t meeting your spiritual needs? In my experience most people don’t leave one church and go to another because of doctrinal issues or because they genuinely sense God is calling them to go serve Him somewhere else, but rather because they don’t feel like the church is meeting their personal needs or satisfying their personal preferences.
• Have you ever failed to do what God wants you to do – read the Bible, pray, invest in the lives of others – because you’re just too busy doing the things you want to do?
As Paul begins his letter to the churches in Rome, he makes it clear from the start that the gospel which is the subject of this letter is primarily about God and not about him or his audience. Without a doubt, he and his readers are the beneficiaries of the operation of that gospel, but that is not where they are to place their focus.
Turn in your Bibles to Romans 1 and follow along as I read the first seen verses:
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
(Romans 1:1-7 ESV)
In the original Greek, verses 1-7 comprise one long sentence. And in that one sentence, Paul summarizes the teaching that he will go into in much more detail in the remainder of that letter. Last week, we used verse 1 to show that God’s purpose for us in our study of Romans is for us to be like Paul and become sent, separated servants who are totally devoted to Jesus and His purposes, plans and ways. And that kind of life is centered in “the gospel of God”.
Here in the opening words of his letter, Paul reveals three important aspects of that gospel that set the stage for the rest of our study. If we don’t keep these critical principles in mind, then we’re going to miss out on what God has for us in the rest of the book, so I plead with you this morning to make sure that you give your full attention to what Paul is communicating to us here.
Let me begin by laying out these three key principles and then we’ll spend some time looking at each on in some more detail.
THREE KEY ASPECTS OF THE “GOSPEL OF GOD”
1. The gospel is more concerned with God’s glory than my good
2. The gospel is more concerned with my holiness than my happiness
3. The gospel is grace to be saved and apostleship to serve
Don’t worry if you didn’t get a chance to fill in all the blanks on your sermon outline as we’ll be coming back to each of these aspects in the message this morning.
1. The gospel is more concerned with God’s glory than my good
This is the important issue that I addressed in my opening remarks this morning. And I hope I was effective in reminding all of us just how easily we can get caught up in the trap of thinking the gospel is all about me, when in reality it’s all about God. There are several things in this opening section that confirm that the gospel is first of all about God’s glory:
• God acts, I respond
One of the first things we notice in looking at this passage is that it is God who is doing all the action. I encourage you to take some time later to go back through this passage and circle all the verbs and see who is at work here. It is God who called, set apart, promised, declared, and loved.
And what has Paul done? We see in verse 5 that he has merely received that which God has done. His responsibility is limited to responding to what God has already done for Him.
• The gospel is centered on Jesus Christ our Lord
One of the first things we learn about the gospel of God is that it is “concerning his Son” (v. 3) and not “concerning Paul” or his fellow believers. If we had nothing else, this fact alone would indicate that the gospel is about God’s glory more than it is about my good.
The “good news” is not “new news”. It is a gospel that was promised by God in the “holy Scriptures”, which for Paul and his readers would have been what we call the Old Testament. It was not, as some claim, God’s plan “B” or “C”, but rather it was His plan from the very beginning. And from the very beginning God had determined that His gospel was going to be centered on His Son, Jesus.
Paul, as he is inspired by the Holy Spirit, is such a master craftsman of words here. In only a few words, he summarizes the ministry of Jesus, who is the focus of His Father’s gospel, by describing three aspects or phases of Jesus’ ministry to us.
o The Eternal Son
Jesus is first identified in this passage as God’s Son. Here Paul is identifying Jesus in relationship to God the Father. That is a relationship that has existed eternally, long before Jesus ever became God in the flesh and came to earth. So Paul first makes it clear that the gospel concerns Jesus who is equal in His deity with God the Father.
o The Eternal Son incarnate
This next aspect of Jesus’ ministry is reflected in the phrase “descended from David according to the flesh.” The picture here is that at a specific time determined by God, Jesus left the glory of heaven and came to earth and willingly took on a body of flesh. As we’ll see more clearly later in Romans, Jesus did not cease to be God’s Eternal Son, but He did become 100% man at the same time He was still 100% God.
And as the Eternal Son incarnate, Jesus fulfilled the prophecies in the holy Scriptures in which God promised a Messiah from the line of David. Matthew, in his gospel account confirms the fulfillment of this promise by tracing the lineage of Jesus’ earthly legal father, Joseph, all the way back to David. And Luke likewise traces the lineage of Mary, Jesus’ mother, back to David as well.
o The Eternal Son exalted
The third stage of Jesus’ ministry is reflected in the phrase “…declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead…” The key words in this phrase are the words “in power” which must not be separated from the idea that Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God”. The resurrection did not declare Jesus to be the Son of God. He has always been the Son of God. But what the resurrection did do was to allow Jesus to enter into a new phase of ministry in which God has placed all things under His feet and in which He exercises headship over His body, the church.
When Paul ends verse 4 by referring to “Jesus Christ our Lord” he reinforces all three aspects of Jesus’ ministry:
Jesus, the name given to him at birth and which means “God saves”, pictures the Eternal Son incarnate.
Christ, which means “anointed” and is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah, points to the Eternal Son, who existed from the very beginning as God’s anointed who would fulfill God’s promise of a Messiah.
Lord indicates the lordship to which he is exalted at the right hand of the Father and pictures the Eternal Son exalted.
• The gospel is for the sake of Jesus’ name
As we see clearly in verse 5, the purpose of the gospel is not for the sake of Paul or his fellow believers. It is for the sake of Jesus’s name among all the nations. There is no way that Paul could have made it any clearer that the gospel is more concerned with God’s glory than my good.
Before we leave this first aspect of the gospel, let me be clear that I’m not saying that the gospel does not have tremendous benefits for my life. I’m not saying that the gospel does not result in good in my life. As we progress through the book of Romans we’re going to see that what God has done for us through the gospel is something beyond our wildest imagination. But what I am saying is that the gospel is first of all about God’s glory and not about me.
2. The gospel is more concerned with my holiness than my happiness
Nowhere in this passage can I find the idea that God wants me to be happy or that my happiness makes God happy. I certainly don’t claim to know everything that is in the Bible, but from what I know of Scripture, those ideas are not contained anywhere in the Bible. If I’m wrong about that then I hope that some of you will show me the passages that reflect those thoughts.
On the other hand, I can find ample evidence here that God desires for me to be holy and that He is pleased when I develop holiness in my life.
I’m going to come back to the first part of verse 5 in a minute and talk about grace and apostleship, but right now I want you to focus on the middle part of that verse where Paul says that the purpose of grace and apostleship is “to bring about the obedience of faith…”
The phrase “obedience of faith” is found elsewhere in the Bible only in the last paragraph of Paul’s letter to the churches in Rome and its exact meaning has been subject to extensive debate among Bible scholars and commentators. Since I am certainly not in a position to make a determination of exactly who is correct in that debate, let’s focus on what we can be sure of – that there is some kind of connection here between faith and obedience. Would you all agree with me on that?
Whether this is “obedience to the faith” as some would suggest or “obedience produced by faith” as others would suggest is not nearly as significant as the idea that one cannot separate faith and obedience. They go hand in hand.
As I said last week, the gospel is more than just a set of facts to believe; it is a life to be lived. And regardless of how we translate the phrase in question, there is no doubt that Paul is communicating the idea that the gospel is supposed to shape the way that we live our lives. And when we combine that idea with what is revealed to us in verse 7, there is little doubt that God desires for us to develop holiness in our lives.
In verse 7, we first note that Paul and his fellow believers were loved by God. And because they were loved by God, He called them all to be saints.
Unfortunately, in today’s culture the word “saints” has come to be used to identify a small group of Christians who have somehow earned their sainthood through what they have done. But that is certainly not the way Paul uses the word here or the way it is used elsewhere in the New Testament.
The Greek word Paul uses here is “hagios”. Elsewhere in the New Testament that same word is frequently translated “holy”, including when it refers to the Holy Spirit. The word literally means “set apart” or “unique”, but as we find with many Greek words used by the New Testament writers who were primarily Jews, we must look to the Hebrew concept of the word in order to fully understand Paul’s use of the word here.
The Hebrew word for “holy” is “kodesh”. That word does not merely describe moral or ethical behavior, but is more about God taking possession of us. So it is more about dedication, consecration and surrender. It is not a synonym for morality, but rather a term that describes complete abandonment to God which is based on the actions taken by God for His purposes.
All the believers in Rome are saints because God loves them and has made them His possession. And now He is calling them to submit their lives completely to Him so that He can work in their lives to produce behavior that is consistent with who He has already made them to be.
What that means is that when it comes to holiness, while our behavior does matter a great deal, it can never be the basis for earning our “sainthood”. When God calls us to be His “holy ones”, His saints, He is calling us to a life that is abandoned completely to Him so that He can complete the work that He started in us in the first place.
It is that holiness, and not our happiness, that pleases God the most. I can’t find once place in the Bible where God commands anyone to be happy. But I can find a lot of places where he commands us to be holy. As we’ve already seen, He desires holiness in our lives because it results in His glory. But He also desires that holiness because He knows that a life characterized by holiness is also the very best for us as well.
So far we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on the purpose and intent of the gospel. We’ll close by taking a look at the operation of the gospel.
3. The gospel is grace to be saved and apostleship to serve
In verse 5 Paul writes that “…we have received grace and apostleship…” Paul, and his fellow believers have received grace. As we pointed out earlier, God had already done everything that was necessary to make that grace available and all Paul and the other believers had to do was receive it.
The theme of grace is central to the entire Bible, but especially to the New Testament and Paul’s writings in particular. The word is used about 150 times in the New Testament, with about 2/3 of those found in Paul’s writings. And about one fourth his uses of the word grace are in the book of Romans. So certainly this a major theme in this letter we are studying, so we’re going to have a number of opportunities to further develop the idea of grace as we progress in our study.
So with the limited time we have remaining this morning we’ll only be able to introduce the topic of grace. It is certainly a word that we throw around a lot. We sing about it. And we’ve even tried to define it with this well-known acrostic:
God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense
While that kind of simple definition is somewhat helpful, it can’t begin to capture the richness of the word “grace”.
We’ll have plenty of time to look at the underlying Greek word for “grace” and explore the wide range of meanings it conveys as we progress through the Book of Romans. But what I want us to see this morning is the connection between grace and apostleship. As I mentioned to you last week in our discussion of the two ways the word “apostle” is used in the New Testament, all followers of Jesus are apostles, with a little “a”, in the sense that we have been sent forth as His representatives. And you’ll notice that Paul reinforces that idea here when he writes that “we have received…apostleship.” He is saying that all of his fellow believers have received grace which is connected to apostleship.
I think most of us tend to think of grace as God’s unmerited favor toward me in which He provides for my salvation. And there is no doubt that is an important element of grace. But by connecting grace with apostleship, Paul is showing us that the grace given to us through Jesus is not just for us. It is a gift that we are to share with others as representatives of Jesus here on earth. And it is that same grace that provides the benefit of our salvation that also supplies the power for us to carry out the task of apostleship that Jesus has given to all His followers.
So what we find is that grace not only saves us for heaven, but it also equips us for a life of spiritual growth and maturity here on earth in which we serve as Jesus’s ambassadors.
God did not give us His grace just so that we can be happy. Whatever happiness we might have in our lives as a result of that grace is not an end in itself. Rather it is only a means by which we might be apostles who empowered by that grace to take the gospel to all nations so that Jesus might be glorified.
Grace is a gift, but it is not a gift to be hoarded merely for our own personal benefit. It is a gift to be given away. And nobody is beyond the reach of that grace. That means that no matter how “pagan” your family member, co-worker, neighbor or friend might seem and no matter how degrading and enslaving the sin in which he or she engages, that person is never beyond God’s ability to extend His grace and make him or her a new creation in Christ through the gospel. And that same grace that freed you from your bondage to sin and which is able to do the same for others is the very same grace that will empower you to be a witness to others through your life and your words.
This morning we’ve learned three important truths about the gospel:
1. The gospel is more concerned with God’s glory than my good
2. The gospel is more concerned with my holiness than my happiness
3. The gospel is grace to be saved and apostleship to serve
And based on those truths I would suggest to you that here is what the pastor I mentioned at the beginning of this message should have said and what I’d like to leave you with this morning.
I just want to encourage every one of us to realize that when we obey God, we’re not doing it for ourselves — I mean, that’s one way to look at it — we’re doing it for God, because God gets glory when we’re obedient to Him. That’s the thing that should give us the greatest joy. So, I want you to know this morning: Just become holy for God. Live a life that is completely abandoned to Him. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you’re not doing it for yourself really. You’re doing it for God, because that’s what gives God glory. Amen?
