Turn in your Bibles to Romans 1:7 and while you’re doing that I’ll tell you a story.
A group of 30-year-old friends got together for a reunion and were discussing where they should go for dinner. Somebody suggested that they meet at the Glowing Embers Restaurant because the wait staff there is young and beautiful. They all agreed.
Fifteen years later, at 45 years of age, they met again and discussed where they should have dinner. Somebody suggested the Glowing Embers because the food there is very good. They all agreed.
Another 15 years later at 60 years of age, they once again discussed where to meet. Somebody suggested the Glowing Embers because you can eat there in peace and quiet and the restaurant is smoke free. They all agreed.
Another fifteen years later, at the age of 75, the group discussed again where they should meet. Somebody suggested that they should meet at the Glowing Embers because the restaurant is handicapped accessible and they even have an elevator. They all agreed.
Finally, 15 years later at the age of 90, the same group of friends discussed one more time where they should meet for dinner. Somebody suggested that they should meet at the Glowing Embers because they had never been there before. And they all agreed.
Romans 1:7 “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.
Rome was the centre of the Roman Empire, which was the world wide power of the day. The city of Rome would have been the epi-center of politics and government. The Roman Emperors lived in Rome and so did the Senate and so, this city in their day would have been very much like Ottawa or Washington. Everybody who was anybody lived and worked there.
Rome was also a very wealthy city and one that was filled with every kind of perversion, they had the extreme violence of the arenas and every sort of immorality imaginable. And yet they were also very religious and their religion was heavily influenced by Greek mythology and the practice of Emperor worship.
Rome was also a home to "outsiders" from every culture of the day, including Christians and Jews. Christianity had become a major presence in the city by the late 40s and like most Christians the Roman believers didn’t gather in a single congregation but they had several small groups that gathered in house-churches where they’d worship, fellowship, and study the Scriptures. Paul referred to one of these groups in Romans 16 that was led by his friends Priscilla and Aquilla.
And as far as Rome was concerned, they were tolerant of any kind of religion as long as they kept two rules. One they had to tolerate everyone else religion and two, they had to worship the emperor. And of course, this was a problem because both the Jews as well as the Christians believed in one God and both refused to worship the emperor.
For these reasons, the Christians and Jews began to experience intense persecution. The Roman Emperor Claudius banished all Jews from the city in 49 A.D. and the Christians began to experience greater persecution under the next emperor who was Nero and Nero can only be described as a brutal pervert who had an intense dislike for the Christians. So, although many claimed Rome was the crowning achievement of mankind; others considered it to be the sewer of the universe.
And the believers at the time of Paul’s writing were facing persecution from the outside as well as conflict from within and it was for these reasons that Paul wrote to encourage believing Jews and gentiles alike, how they should live and worship together not only for their mutual benefit but also because of the trying times ahead.
Paul uses four words in verse 7 that would have been common to the Jewish mind but the average Gentile wouldn’t have a clue, but by sharing together they could enjoy the riches of their Christian faith.
The first of these four words are ‘beloved of God’ which would have been an unusual term to the Gentiles because every kind of gentile faith or religious practice had the idea of God needing to be paid off because He was angry. And then second, there’s ‘saints’ and saints were the set apart or sanctified ones and the gentiles all felt like they were born to be part of this world and not separate from it. Then third, there’s grace which to the Jew was the unmerited favor of God but the gentiles felt they had to work for God’s favor and not just receive it. And then finally, there’s the peace of God and in the Jewish mind they gained peace through the Old Testament sacrifices and then through the ultimate sacrifice which Jesus’ death on the cross but the Gentiles felt they had to continually be making sacrifices and could never find peace but hoped that in the end his good works could outweigh his bad.
So, Paul begins in verse 7 by using the clause, “beloved of God, called to be saints: grace to you and peace from God.”
I He begins by calling them beloved of God and the New Testament authors use this term at least fifty times when they wrote to other believers and they like many of us were constantly hearing the people of the world say, “You’re no good. You’re ugly. You’re worthless. You’ll never amount to anything. You’re stupid, you’re lazy, you’re a nobody. You’ve messed up everything you’ve ever tried and you’ll never accomplish anything worthwhile and probably never will.
After Fred Astaire’s first screen test, a 1933 memo from the MGM testing director said: “Can’t act. Slightly bald. Can dance a little.” Astaire kept that memo over the fireplace in his Beverly Hills home. An expert said of famous football coach Vince Lombardi: “He possesses minimal football knowledge. Lacks motivation.” Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, was advised by her family to find work as a servant or seamstress. Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer. So much for the opinion of others.
Paul calls these believers beloved and that’s the same word the Father called Jesus. The gospels say that when John baptized Jesus a voice came out of heaven and said, “This is my beloved son.” And that had to be the greatest commendation anyone has ever heard.
I think one of the hardest things for any of us to accept is the unconditional love of God because until we experience His love, we don’t have a clue as to what it is.
One of our problems we wrestle with is how we’ve been constantly indoctrinated by the worlds view of love because the world’s concept is closer to infatuation. I mean, when they’re in love they’re head over heels but by the divorce rate I think we can assume that soon wears off.
I’ve done a few weddings where the couple stood before me vowing their undying love for all of eternity and within a couple of months, they couldn’t stand the sight of each other. They say love is blind and sometimes it’s stupid as well because I think their love was dependent on one another’s behavior. It was a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours and if you don’t scratch mine, well, I’ll claw your eyes out.”
I had a friend who was a wedding photographer and he told that he made everyone pay their entire bill before the wedding. And the reason he did this was, he had a few couples whose marriage didn’t last long enough to have their pictures delivered two or three weeks after the wedding.
That’s not the love the Bible teaches because the word ‘beloved’ literally means “someone who is esteemed or valued, they’re dear, favorite and worthy of love”. It’s a word that indicates action on the part of the one who professes the love.
I knew a Christian preacher who I thought really loved me because every time he saw me, he said, “My dear, dear Christian brother.” After a while, I realized the only reason he referred to me as his dear, dear Christian brother was because he couldn’t remember my name.
But listen, the God of the universe, the same God who created and sustains this world not only knows who we are but He loves us and has chosen to save us not because of who we are or what we can do for Him but because of who He is. We are His beloved.
So, what does this term mean? It means God wills to loves us because if His love was dependant on our goodness, our consistency or even on our reliability then we’d all be lost in a heartbeat.
God loves us the way a mother loves her baby and her baby hasn’t done anything to deserve her love and there’s nothing it can do to lose it.
An old hymn says:
When we have exhausted our store of endurance;
When our strength has failed ’ere the day is half done;
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father’s forgiving is only begun.
His love has no limit, His grace has no measure,
His power has no boundary known unto man;
For out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again.
II Not only does He love us but this verse says we are called to be saints.
The word saint in the Bible doesn’t mean someone has been canonized by the pope or that they’re to be honored by those who would bow, kiss or burn candles and incense to their image but a saint is simply someone who has been sanctified or set apart for the purpose and use of Jesus Christ.
In fact, the next time you introduce yourself, you can say, "It's nice to meet you. My name is Saint John or Saint Bob or Saint Mary," and that could be the beginning of a good conversation. Because what you’re saying is, “I have been made righteous. I have been made holy. I have been declared completely justified by God Himself, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. You see, that's what a saint is.
So, every Christian is already a saint and we don’t need to wait until we die. We may not always act like it, but God says that’s what we are.
Of course, the devil hates who we are and he does everything he can to remind us of past failures. We can be sitting in church singing our heart out and he’ll say, “Do you remember when you were in grade six and you told the kid next to you that they were ugly, just for the fun of it? Is that the kind of thing that a Christian would say? Or how about the time you stole that thing just for the fun of it and you got away with it, would a real Christian do something like that? And do you remember the time you watched that movie with all the swearing and sex, you certainly weren’t acting like a Christian then, were you?”
Listen, the more we listen to Satan the worse we’ll feel and the worse part is, we have to remind myself that he’s right because we’re guilty of much more than even he can say, but all our sins past, present and future are under the blood of Jesus.
I read someone’s prayer for the day and it went like this. ‘Dear God, so far today, I’ve done all right. I haven’t gossiped, I haven’t lost my temper, I haven’t been grumpy, nasty or selfish and I’m really glad about all that! But in a few minutes, I’m going to get out of bed, and I’m probably going to need a lot of help. Thank you! Amen.’
I read an old legend about a young boy who found an eagle’s egg and hoping to help the egg and the bird in it to survive he put the egg into a turkey’s nest.
The little eagle hatched with all the little turkeys and he grew up with them. All his life, he thought he was a turkey and he did what the turkeys do; he scratched in the dirt for seeds and insects to eat and he learned to cluck and gobble.
When he saw the other birds try to fly, he followed their example and he flew no more than a few feet off the ground because that’s how turkeys fly.
One day, he saw a magnificent bird far above him in the sky and it was gliding with graceful majesty on the powerful wind currents, and as it soared it scarcely moved his strong and powerful wings.
What a beautiful bird!” said the eagle to one of the turkeys. “What is it?” The turkey said, “That’s an eagle—the chief of birds but don’t worry you could never be like him.” So, the little eagle never gave it another thought and he lived and died a turkey.
I’m afraid many of us Christians have an identity crisis as well. We’ve been so “imprinted” by the world that we no longer know who we really are or what God has intended for us.
And so, as saints or sanctified ones, each and everyone of us have been called by God to reveal Him to this world. And God has provided and equipped us with many gifts and abilities to do what He sent us to do. I don’t know what God called you to do but I do know this much, He never saved anyone to simply write out a check.
There was a man by the name of Citrine, who was the bishop of Carthage way back in 252 AD and he not only lived during a horrible plague but the Christians were being blamed for the disease and for every other catastrophe that was happening in those days.
Rather than hide or defend his church Citrine led his people to care for the dying, to bury the dead and then do everything they could to fight the awful plague and to save both the lives and the souls of the unsaved. It was the Christians who fought off the crisis.
I’ve heard well-meaning Christians say, “We leave that kind of work to the unsaved and we’ll preach the gospel.” Their right on one point, we need to preach the gospel but listen to James 1:27 it says, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.”
The orphans and widows in Paul’s day were the nobodies. As someone said, "An orphan had no past; and the widow had no future."
And listen, this isn’t the only verse in the Bible that deals with them. In Isaiah 1:17 it says, “Learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.” In Psalm 68:5 “A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy habitation.” And in Exodus 22:21-24, “You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If you afflict them in any way, and they cry at all to Me, I will surely hear their cry; and My wrath will become hot, and I will kill you with the sword; your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.
So, when James says, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble.” He singling out the two groups of people that society considers to be worthless. Why are they worthless? Because if you spend your time helping them, they’re not going to pay you back. So, if you’re goal is to build a successful ministry and you go out of your way to minister to the poor, the needy, the homeless, the widows and the orphans, you’ll be wasting your time. After all these people not only have no money but most of them will constantly be in need. But God says we have a responsibility to help the poor.
This kind of giving is very much like the offerings of the Old Testament. You know how they did it. If you really loved the Lord and you want to let Him and everyone else know; you would go buy the best ox which would cost about the same as a pick-up truck today. Then you’d bring this ox to the priest who would pronounce his blessing on it, kill the ox and then burn the entire thing on the altar. That was it and there wasn’t even a receipt to use for your income tax. It was a gift to God with no benefit whatsoever except you were obedient.
We are saints the very second we were saved but the process of sanctification will continue until we find ourselves perfected in the presence of Jesus Himself.
We often use the term sanctuary to refer to the main auditorium of the church and sanctuary simply means a holy place. I remember when I pastored Main Street Baptist in Sackville, New Brunswick. We would have our Awana games and church dinners in the room on the ground floor of the church and we’d also use that room for Sunday school or have coffee, tea and desert after the evening service, but the unwritten rule was no one ever brought food into the sanctuary. The sanctuary was where people were saved, baptised and taught the word of God, some were married there and many were buried from there. It was considered a sacred place.
I remember walking through that room after I retired and remembering the many sermons I had preached and how many people had walked the aisles for salvation or re-dedication, and off to the side was the baptismal tank where many had been baptised and the platform where several weddings were performed. These were sacred moments that took place there and it was a place set aside for God.
When Sally and I were first married, we had attended a church where the pastor was sharing in his sermon how he had an argument with his wife the previous week.
Apparently, he had been changing the oil in his car but hadn’t thought through what he was doing and at the last moment realized he had nothing to put the old oil in; and so after searching his garage without luck he went into the kitchen where he noticed a big bowl on top of the kitchen cabinet and he thought to himself, hey, that’s great. It’s just the right size.
He took the bowl outside and drained the oil into it but then his wife came home, and he said she started freaking out because apparently this bowl was some kind of a crystal punch bowl. And in her mind, this was set aside or sanctified for special occasions and changing oil wasn’t one of them. Go figure!
So, just as we use the words saint or sanctified, to refer to someone or something that has been set aside for God but mostly it refers to believers who been set themselves aside or separated from this world for God and His purposes.
Of course, there’s always someone who takes things to extremes and makes the rest of us look foolish. Way back in 423 there was a man by the name of Simeon Stylites who became a believer at the age of 13 by following a reading of the Beatitudes. He entered a monastery when he was 15 and he was so extreme in his commitment to poverty that he was asked to leave.
He shut himself up in a hut where he went on a forty day fast and that meant absolutely no food and no water. Many thought he had died but when he came out, they thought it was a miracle.
Then Simeon then went to live on a mountainside in a very narrow space but crowds of people came asking for advice or prayers and they left him no time for devotions. So, he decided he had to get away from it all.
He discovered a pillar among some ruins and he built a small platform at the top where he determined he’d live out his life. His food was brought by small boys from the nearby village who would climb the pillar and pass him parcels of flat bread and goats' milk.
The platform he lived on was about 3 feet square and about 50 feet off the ground. The strange thing was though, he could never get away from the world but was constantly attracting both believers and tourists. He talked with these visitors every afternoon as people were allowed to climb up within speaking distance. He wrote letters, had disciples, and lectured to those who gathered beneath and they said his preaching was marked with common sense and was free from fanaticism.
He spent 37 years up on that pole and when he died several men decided to follow his example and they became known as the stylites. Two of these held different views of theology and they were known to argue with one another from their columns.
Some think he was effective in communicating the Bible but he certainly didn’t set any kind of example to follow.
III And then third, in the end of the verse Paul gives his usual greeting when he says, “grace to you and peace.” And it’s interesting that he always places grace before peace but I think it makes sense because if there’s no grace there’s no peace.
The Greek word for grace is ‘charis’ and it means the unmerited blessings given to believers in Christ. The word grace has been used as an acrostic, God’s riches at Christ’s expense.
Grace is the love God shows to the unlovely and His peace is given to the restless; both of these are the benefit of the undeserved favor of God. Grace is the opposite of what’s known as karma, which is all about getting what you deserve because grace is simply getting what you don’t deserve. I like how one writer said, “Grace is everything for nothing to those who don’t deserve anything.”
I’ve experienced grace from those who were more mature than I on many occasions. I remember when I attended London Baptist Bible College, in the first two weeks one of the staff called me to his office and asked if I was interested in a Youth Pastor’s position. I said no, but then he asked if I would go to this particular church in Guelph for a week or so and fill in teaching a Sunday School class. I said I would and on Sunday morning Sally and I went. After the service on the second week the pastor said the deacons would like to meet with us and as we went to the office, I was shocked because they offered me a job.
I accepted it reluctantly because I had never worked in a church before and as I said I had no desire to be a Youth Pastor, but we accepted and a couple of weeks later Sally and I came up with the idea of a fishing derby in a lake just a couple of miles north of the church.
On Sunday morning during announcement time I walked up to the front of the church, dressed like a fisherman and picked up a fishing rod when I got to the front of the pulpit. I had given the pastor a paper with a list of questions to ask and I answered by giving the details of the fishing trip while I stood there reeling on the rod.
At the end of the conversation I said I think I’ve got a bite and I yanked on the line and pulled a large blown up fish out of the baptismal tank and it flopped on the floor. And I was really surprised because there not only was there no reaction but I actually thought I heard a few people react with a sense of shock.
After the service the deacons met with the senior pastor and they asked him know how much severance pay they should give me since I’d only been there a couple of weeks. He apologized on my behalf and explained that I no understanding of the history of the church and assured them that nothing like this would ever happen again.
This particular church had a thing about their baptismal tank because one of the previous pastors had always said, “The day the water leaves the tank, God’s blessing leaves the church.” And by pulling a fish out of their tank I was messing with something they thought was sacred. But they showed me grace by allowing me to stay.
So many times, we see the grace of God exercised by Jesus when He healed, saved and delivered people from sin. One of my favorites is when He raised the son of the widow of Nain.
Luke 7:11-17, ‘And it came to pass the day after, that He went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with him, and much people. 12 Now when He came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her.
13 And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said unto her, weep not. 14 And He came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And He said, young man, I say unto thee, arise. 15 And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And He delivered him to his mother.”
Now listen, there’s no indication that Jesus had ever met these people before. I’m sure the boy’s mother was a good person but she hadn’t done anything to deserve having her son raised from the dead and I’m sure her son had nothing to do with his resurrection because after all, he was dead. The entire miracle was an act of grace from beginning to end.
Theologians speak about cheap grace and that’s the kind we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is forgiveness without repentance, baptism without church discipline, and communion without confession.
I like how Dr. John Macarthur explained the concept of grace as being a free gift by using the thief on the cross next to Christ and he says, “This man had done nothing to merit divine grace. On the contrary, right up to the very end he was cursing, taunting, and mocking Christ, even though he himself faced certain death and after that, divine judgment.” The grace that was shown this thief was nothing short of a divine gift that was granted to him freely.
Grace always brings benefits and one of these is “peace” and until we have God’s grace, we’ll never have any peace. Grace and peace are inseparable because without grace there can be no peace. They’re like cause and effect, because the grace of God prepares our hearts for the peace of God. They go together, like peanut butter and jelly, spaghetti and meatballs, macaroni and cheese or milk and cookies.
In the Old Testament, there’s a familiar word for peace. It’s the word shalom, and it’s used about 250 times. It’s a very common way of greeting one another among Jewish people.
Shalom is a powerful word because it’s a wish for completeness; for contentment; for fulfillment, for satisfaction or blessing; in other words, it’s a wish for prosperity on all levels. It’s your desire that only good would come to the one you’re greeting.
I wish we were all recipients of this grace but not everyone who sits in church on Sunday morning is prepared to listen to and obey the word of God.
I had a lady in my first church who attended all the services and yet, I don’t think she ever heard the message. I was preaching one morning and told a joke and later used a funny illustration in my message and a few days later I received a three-page letter from her. She informed me that I should quit the ministry and go looking for a job as a comedian. She suggested I would fit better on some TV show than in the church and she went on and on about what a disgrace I was to the cause of Christ.
When I finished the letter, I felt devastated and I took it up to discuss it with the senior pastor; but he was busy reading an eleven-page letter from the same woman and she explained why he was unfit for the ministry because he had worn a sport jacket rather than a suit to the evening service.
She taught me a valuable lesson which I have had to learn over and over again and that is, not everyone understands or even wants to understand the concept of grace. Because grace is demonstrating to others the blessings we’ve received from God. Grace is foundational to the Christian life.
In 1174 the was an Italian architect by the name of Bonnano Pisano and he began work on what would become his most famous project. It was a high rise eight-story bell tower for the Cathedral of the city of Pisa. The tower would be 185-foot tall.
There was just one "little" problem: builders quickly discovered that the soil was much softer than they had anticipated, and the foundation was far too shallow to adequately hold the structure! And sure enough, before long the whole structure had begun to tilt and it continued to tilt until finally the architect and the builders realized that nothing could be done to make the Leaning Tower of Pisa straight again. It took 176 years to build the Tower of Pisa and during that time many things were done to try and compensate for the "tilt." The foundation was shored up; the upper levels were built at an angle to try to make the top of the tower appear straight but nothing worked. This tower has stood for over 800 years, but it leans 18 feet away from where it should be and one day the experts say, it’s finally going to fall because it wasn’t built on the right foundation.
And those who are depending on anything other than the grace of God for their salvation may join a church, give their money and be involved in various aspects of ministry but someday either sooner or later they’ll fall and the fall will be great.
A woman wrote, “Life – But No Living.”
First, I was dying to finish high school and start college.
And then I was dying to finish college and start working.
And then I was dying to marry and have children.
And then I was dying for my children to grow old enough for school so I could return to work.
And then I was dying to retire.
And now, I am dying…and suddenly I realize I forgot to live.
Winston Churchill once said, ‘We stumble over the truth from time to time, but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.’ But someday we’ll stumble for the last time.
Someone said, “Do not fear death; but rather fear the unlived life because there’s no need to live forever, we just have to live.”
As one man said, “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”
Conclusion
So, this one verse tells us, we are loved beyond imagination and we’re called to be saints because God had bestowed His grace on us and this has resulted in peace.
