As many of you know, I came to saving faith in Christ as an older teenager, and I began reading my Bible regularly, even then.
One evening my dad poked his head into the room while I was reading my Bible. Now my dad was a rank pagan, but he said something interesting. He said, “Someday, I’m going to read that book.”
He was like many people who are pagans but have some sense that the Bible is a special book, that it might be very relevant to their lives and especially their eternal future. However, despite some level of curiosity, and because many other things are deemed to be more important, they often put it off, many I’m sure until it’s too late.
Well, if you’re in the same category as my dad, and many others, wondering what the Bible is all about, and what its core message is, your day has come. You have come to the right place, because this morning we embark on our study of the one book in the Bible that is probably the fullest exposition and explanation of what God has to say about our relationship to Him. And that’s the Book of Romans.
The letter to the Romans, written by the great Apostle Paul, can rightly be called the Magnum Opus of all Paul’s New Testament letters. It clearly was an effort by the Apostle Paul to write to the church at the center of the civilized world and explain just about everything He knew and believed about man’s relationship with God, and especially to focus on the issue of how a sinful man can be made right in God’s sight.
That it is undeniably a great book and of supreme value among the books of the New Testament has been the opinion of many scholars and famous writers. The poet Samuel Coleridge once wrote that Romans is “the most profound book in existence.” My seminary professor, John Grassmick wrote, “It stands as the greatest exposition of the Christian gospel ever written and thus has always been a major bulwark of evangelical Christianity.”
Martin Luther wrote: “This epistle is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word by heart, but occupy himself with it every day, as the daily bread of the soul.” And John Calvin wrote, “if we understand this Epistle, we have a passage opened to us to the understanding of the whole of Scripture.”
And thus, I can rightfully claim, if you desire to read the Bible someday, hearing the message of the Book of Romans is a summary of all that the Bible teaches, written by an inspired writer, the great apostle Paul.
Now the book was written by Paul in 57 or 58 A.D. probably as Paul was in or around Corinth, Greece. The letter was unique in these respects: First, unlike most of Paul’s letters, this letter was written to a church and a city where he had never been. With the exception of Colossians, Paul had either founded or actually been to the churches he addressed and preached the Gospel there personally. But in this case, not knowing for sure that He would ever reach Rome, though it was on his itinerary, He clearly determined to write, to put down on paper, what He clearly had preached orally in other places. And thus, we have this full explanation of his insight into the relationship between God and man, and how a man can be right with God, in this letter, as is in no other letter He produced.
Secondly, as Paul wrote this, He was impressed with the monumental importance of this letter, because of where it was going and to whom it was written. It was said in those times that “All roads lead to Rome.” And that was true. It was the capital of the Roman Empire, and therefore the capital of the entire civilized world, and thus very influential. Not only was it true that all roads led to Rome, but all roads led from Rome. So Paul, I believe, knew how incredibly influential his letter would be as he was writing it, not only in Rome, where there was already a great Christian church, but also with regard to its influence on the whole Roman Empire. And he had been appointed by the Lord Jesus to be the apostle especially to the Gentiles, who, of course, made up most of the population of the empire.
The basic theme of the Book of Romans is the Gospel of Jesus Christ—that is the good news that all men can be made right with God and be sure of heaven simply through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. God had recently, within the previous 25-30 years, intervened in human history supernaturally in a way He never had before with the coming of the only begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ. Christ had died to pay the penalty for the sins of the world and proved it by His resurrection from the dead. And He had offered heaven as a free gift to anyone who would put his faith, his repentant faith, in Him. This was incredibly good news, and the world needed to hear it. And the Apostle Paul was God’s chosen instrument to take it to the pagan, or Gentile world. This Good News had already reached Rome, and a great church had been established there, before Paul wrote this letter. This letter was designed to encourage and to keep this new church on the right track with regard to the truth of the Gospel and how to follow the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now many very basic questions about the relationship between God and man are answered by this letter. First and foremost, the major questions we all have about eternal life and heaven are answered. How can a man be made right before God? How can a man be assured of heaven? This is the foremost and most relevant question answered by this book. However, other questions, such as, is it possible for the moral person to get to heaven by his works? What about the Jew who attempts to keep the Law? Can he get to heaven by keeping the Law? What’s the basic problem between man and God? What’s going on in this crazy world? Why is it so full of difficulty and struggle? Why doesn’t life turn out better for most people? Why am I struggling so much in my own life? How can I live a life that pleases God? What about the heathen? What about those who have never heard of Jesus Christ? How does or will God respond to them? And what about Israel today? How does God relate to them even though they have largely rejected Jesus as their Messiah? These and other questions are questions that are answered by this great letter to the Romans.
This morning, since we have communion, we have time only to cover the introduction to this great letter, the first seven verses. But it’s amazing how much is said in the first seven verses. The basic idea this morning has to do with why you should pay attention to what this letter has to say. It’s this: Listen, because god’s messenger brings you God’s message of Good News with regard to eternal life. Listen, because God’s messenger brings you God’s Good News about how you can live forever.
Now the Apostle Paul writes a rather majestic and powerful salutation and introduction to this letter for one reason: He wants to convince His readers that they should pay attention to what it says. He’s answering the question that any believer in Rome might have upon receiving this letter. Who is Paul to tell us anything? Why should we listen to Him? Why should we pay attention to what He has to say? Chances are, many already had answers to this question. Paul had in the course of 20 years planted most of the influential churches in the Mediterranean, in Asia Minor and in Europe, with the exception of Rome. He had been the main character to bring the message of the Good News of Christ to the whole Roman Empire. So he already had great respect as an apostle of Jesus Christ. But just in case anyone had missed it, he repeats the authority behind His message in this book with His introduction. He introduces the book with two huge statements about Himself that demonstrate that He is God’s messenger who speaks the very Word of God with the very authority of God as He writes.
He says, in effect, “Listen, because I bring God’s Good News, God’s Message, with the very authority of God and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.”
Romans 1:1: “Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the Gospel of God.”
Paul her identifies himself and his mission. He is first and foremost a bondservant of Christ Jesus. He’s actually identifying himself as a slave of Jesus Christ. It’s estimated at this time that there were six million slaves in the Roman Empire. Many would have completely understood what Paul was trying to communicate. Paul, as a bond-slave, or bondservant, was all about doing His master’s will. He was not about Himself. He was not about promoting Himself. As a slave submits to his master’s will in everything, so Paul humbly submitted himself completely to one who was greater than Him, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah of the Jews and the Savior of the world, God in the flesh.
When he uses the phrase bond-servant, he does so with the understanding given that term in Exodus 21:5. In ancient Israel, when a slave so loved his master that he never wished to be freed but wanted to continue in service to him forever, a hole was put through his ear signifying that He was a bondslave, one who freely chose as a result of his love for his master to be his servant and slave forever. And so out of love for his Master, the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul had volunteered to be His servant and slave forever. So, with regard to Paul’s motives for writing, Paul was not interested in fame or fortune, but only in fulfilling the interests of Jesus Christ in the lives of his readers. They could be assured of that.
But Paul was not only a bondservant, but he was also an apostle, in the most restricted and technical sense of that term in the New Testament.
What was an apostle. The word comes from the Greek word “apostello” which means to send. It literally means “sent one” or whom who is sent by another. In the New Testament, it refers to one who has been sent by Jesus Christ personally with the purpose of taking his message of good news to the world, or to anyone who would hear it.
Paul had indeed been sent by Jesus Christ to take His message to the world, as many of us might have been sent by Christ to take the message to others. But He was an apostle in a special and restricted sense above and beyond that, a sense that gave him special authority as he took the Good News of the Gospel to the world. He was an apostle in the sense that he had personally seen the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ and had been personally and explicitly sent by Jesus Christ Himself to take His message to the world. He was thus classed with the original 12 disciples whom Jesus called apostles, who had all seen the risen Lord Jesus Christ and been given the same commission. Each of them was personal eyewitnesses of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ and could personally testify that they had seen Him alive from the dead as proof of His deity and the eternal life and resurrection He offered to mankind. All this is confirmed from the account in Acts 9 and also by Paul’s own testimony in I Corinthians 9:1. He was an apostle out of due time, as he puts it, in I Corinthians 15:7-8, because He saw the resurrected Christ on a different occasion and later than the other apostles, as he was on his way to the Damascus to persecute Christians as an unbelieving Jew. So, Paul, having been a rabid unbeliever who opposed faith in Christ and persecuted Christians, had special credibility now as one whose life had been completely turned around by the resurrected Christ. And more than that, as he wrote parts of the New Testament, his words were the Word of God. He spoke authoritatively for God. This book of Romans that He would write was the very Word of God, and He as the messenger of God, was seeking to reconcile mankind, and the Gentiles to Christ.
So why should they, why should you, listen to Him? He is a bonafide qualified messenger of God sent by Jesus Christ Himself, also, as an apostle, attested by God as a messenger of God by miracles that accompanied His ministry. And he brings the message that can give you a right relationship with God and the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
That is an awesome thought. God is speaking to you through Paul. He’s offering you heaven and eternal life, if only you will listen and respond appropriately. Yeah, you former pagans in Rome, God has shown up and He is speaking to you through this letter. Listen up. Your lives depend on it.
So, it is true for us also. This is God’s Word—the Bible summarized, the truth of God summarized as best it ever was so you can know God and His Son and have eternal life.
Now the question might come up whether there are apostles today. I don’t believe so. Paul speaks of Christ’s appearance to Him, and thus His apostleship, in I Corinthians 15, as “last of all,” as to” one untimely born.” A qualification for an apostle was that He had seen and been commissioned personally by the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul fulfilled these qualifications, but he said about Himself, he was the last of all, the last of all the apostles. Apostles passed after the first century, because they had to have seen the Risen Lord Jesus Christ, and those experiences were over after the Apostle Paul’s experience on the Road to Damascus. And we have the New Testament, the testimony of the Apostles and their close associates to guide us in the Christian faith today.
At the end of verse one and through verse four we have the Apostle’s inspired message—the Good News of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Paul says at the end of verse 1 that he had been set apart for the Gospel of God. God had marked him out and given him one purpose in life, and that was to propagate the Gospel or the Good News of Jesus Christ.
The word gospel means good news. The core message of the good news, as defined in I Corinthians 15:1-5 is this: that Christ, the Son of God, the Godman, came and died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins so we wouldn’t have to, and He rose again to prove it. This is the central truth of the Christian faith. These are the actions of God by which we must be saved and forgiven. When we believe Christ died for our sins personally, and we trust in what He did for us, rather than what we can do for ourselves, then we are saved and forgiven of our sins and are granted the gift of eternal life. This is the core of God’s good news. This is the message God brought through Paul to the world.
But the question for the Romans and the world was this: Why should you believe this message. Paul has already answered the question, “Why should you listen to Paul?” Now he answers the question why we should all believe the Good News of God. And he tells us we should be convinced of the Gospel of God by three unique facts in all of history about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 2: Regarding the Gospel: “Which he promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord.”
1. Christ’s coming and the Gospel were supernaturally predicted for 1500 years before He came, in detail, by the Jewish prophets.
2. Christ was raised from the dead, and thus became the only man in history to predict His own resurrection and fulfill it.
3. Christ was raised according to the Spirit of holiness. I take it that Christ was raised because he lived an indestructible life, that is, an impeccable life free of sin. Christ’s holy and righteous character stands out above all others who have ever lived on this planet, thus signifying him along with the other two facts here quoted as uniquely the Son of God.
Now just how unique are these proofs of the deity of Jesus Christ and the reliability of the Good News He brought? First, modern mathematical analysis has demonstrated the chance that anyone who has ever lived might have accidentally, or by chance, fulfilled 48 prophecies about the first coming of Jesus have shown that there’s only one chance in 10 with 157 zeroes behind it.
Secondly, fulfilled prophecy likely has never taken place outside the Bible. Grant Jeffrey, a biblical researcher and author of The Signature of God, wrote: “Despite the fact that the world is full of spiritual texts by multitudes of religious writers, a close examination of this literature reveals that not one of these texts contains detailed prophecies that have been fulfilled. The reason is quite simple: Since no one but God can know the future accurately, religious philosophers who wrote other texts were wise enough to refrain from attempting detailed prophecies which would quickly prove their authors to be in error" (p. 161).
Regarding the uniqueness of the Resurrection of Christ, of course, we all know resurrection is a very rare phenomenon indeed. In my own research, it has become evident that purported resurrections apart from the Christian faith are either mythical or legendary. None are reported and written down by eyewitnesses within the generation that the resurrection supposedly occurred. Of the perhaps hundreds of resurrections that have occurred since the time of Jesus, all of them have come as a result of prayer in Jesus’ name. And Jesus’ resurrection is unique—He is the only man in all of history to predict His own resurrection to the day and pull it off. Clearly, God was saying something about Jesus He has declared about no other man. Jesus put it this way, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though He dies and never die” (John 11:25). He also was declared not merely to be human, but to be the Son of God by this one powerful act.
And finally, “the spirit of holiness” most scholars agree refers to the impeccable, absolutely holy and righteous life Christ lived. How many of us can ask our enemies to accuse us of sin and find our enemies have no valid answer. To this day, Jesus Christ of Nazareth is hands-down regarded by all, at least in Western Civilization, to be the greatest person who ever lived, bar none, and a model of righteousness for all to follow. No one comes close to having his reputation. He stands head, shoulders and ankles above every other person who has ever lived. Very few people can find anything to argue with in the character of Jesus Christ. This, also, declared Him to be the holy Son of God.
Why should we believe in Jesus? Why do we believe in Jesus and His Gospel? Because He and His Gospel were uniquely and supernaturally predicted for 1500 years before He came; He predicted His own resurrection and fulfilled it, and His character marks him off as the only man who could qualify Himself as God, the Son of God, God in the flesh, because He actually was without sin.
In a few short verses, we have many powerful and indisputable reasons to listen to the Apostle Paul and the Letter to the Romans.
And finally, the difference all this made for the Roman believers, and for all of us who are believers. It brings grace and peace to all of us who practice an obedient faith. Why do you want to listen? Because the Gospel of God brings grace and peace to all who obediently believe.
Verses 5-7: Paul clearly regards his own apostleship, his own appointment as a preacher of the Gospel and an apostle, as stemming from God’s grace, since Paul Himself was the chief of sinners. And He says it is through Jesus Christ and the Gospel of God, that any and all of us who believe in such a way that we obey—not perfectly, but generally, can experience the grace and forgiveness of God, which results in peace with God.
Verse 5, regarding Jesus Christ, “through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name’s sake, among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ. And now addressing the recipients of his letter, Paul says, “to all who are beloved of God in Rome, called as saints, Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
This Gospel is according to our great need. As sinners we need grace. Grace is undeserved or unwarranted favor. God provides for us his undeserved favor, undeserved because we are all sinners. And yet in spite of that sin, God demonstrates His own love for us in this, that Christ died for us.
Do you need to know you’re loved? Do you need to know that there is Someone at the core of the Universe, the core of all creation, who cares about what happens to you, and has taken action to assure you of a blessed and eternal future? Then this is what Jesus Christ was all about. Through His death on the cross He provides that grace, and when by faith in what He’s done for us, apart from what we can do for ourselves, we receive it, we can also experience His peace--a peace that surpasses all understanding and assures us of eternal bliss in His presence forever.
