If God were to call a press conference and issue a news release for the world today, what do you think he would say?
Some people think they know what God would say, but do we really know? Some think God would say, "I’m really mad at you guys, and if you don’t knock it off I’m going to send judgment." Others think God would say, "Don’t worry, be happy."
Two years ago an anonymous Fort Lauderdale resident tried to answer the question of what God would say. This person hired the Smith advertising agency in Fort Lauderdale to create an ad campaign to get people thinking about God. Maybe you’ve seen some of their billboards that purport to be messages from God.
"Let’s meet at my house on Sunday before the Game" -God.
"We need to talk."
"I loved the wedding, now invite me to the marriage."
"Don’t make me come down there."
"I don’t question your existence."
I like these ads; they’re very clever, but is that really what God would say in a press conference?
A few years ago a Viet Nam veteran named Neale Walsch has also tried to answer our question. In 1992 Walsch’s life was falling apart, so wrote an angry letter to God, asking God all kinds of hard questions. According to Walsch, right after he finished writing his letter, with the pen still in his hand, his hand suddenly started writing on its own and through an ancient occultic technique called automatic writing God supposedly answered all his questions. That started a regular dialog with this being Walsch claims is God, where Walsch would ask a question, and through automatic writing God would allegedly answer. Walsch used this experience write the 1996 bestseller "Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue."
According to Walsch, everything is acceptable to God and nothing is offensive in God’s eyes (135, 61). According to Walsch, "God’s greatest moment is the moment you realize you need no God" (114). Walsch’s God says, "I do not want your worship…and it is not necessary for you to serve Me…My purpose for you is that you should know yourself as Me" (64, 26).
Is that true? That God just wants us to know that everything’s fine and we need to get in touch with our own godhood?If God were to issue a press release, what would he say? Well fortunately we don’t have to guess about it. God has given us everything he wants us to know in his book, the 66 books of the Bible. And in the Bible, the most comprehensive explanation of God’s press release to the world is found in the New Testament book of Romans. Today we start a new series through this incredible letter to the Romans called GOOD NEWS FOR OUR TIMES.
Romans is a letter written by the apostle Paul, who wrote 13 of the 27 books found in the New Testament. Paul had once been an angry, bitter enemy of the Christian faith, but all that changed when Jesus Christ appeared to Paul. Paul’s transformation was a radical one, from an anti-Christian bigot to a passionate Christian missionary. Romans is the longest of Paul’s 13 New Testament letters, and it’s probably the most complex as well.
In the 2,000 years since Paul wrote this letter, Romans has had an incredible impact on our world. It was Paul’s letter to the Romans that brought an out of control party animal named Augustine to faith in Christ, and Augustine went on to become one of the most prolific and influential Christian thinkers of his generation. It was Romans that sparked the Protestant Reformation, as a monk named Martin Luther discovered forgiveness of his sins in the message of Romans. In fact Luther said every Christian memorize Romans and meditate on it every day (Schreiner 1). The French Reformer John Calvin claimed that understanding Romans opens the door to understanding the rest of the Bible (Schreiner 1). It was Romans that brought a young Anglican pastor named John Wesley into a life changing relationship with Christ. John Wesley and his brother Charles went on to lead a movement that would change England forever. Slavery was abolished in England and the Methodist church was born because of the impact of Romans on John Wesley.
The apostle Paul wrote Romans while he was in the Greek city of Corinth. His plan at the time was to travel from Corinth to Jerusalem to drop off a sum of money he’d been raising from the churches he’d started. After that he was planning to travel from Jerusalem to the capital city of Rome, to visit the church there. Finally, his ultimate goal was to sail from Rome to Spain. Since Paul had never been to Rome, one of his reasons for writing this letter was to introduce himself to the church there and pave the way for his eventual visit. If you’re interested in the background to Romans, click this link.
If God were to hold a press conference and issue a press release, what would he say? Today we’re going to try to answer that question. As we look at the first seven verses of Romans we’re going to find three characteristics of God’s press release to the world.
1. The Character of God’s Press Release (Romans 1:1)
Let’s look at the first verse together. Paul sees himself first as a slave who’s completely devoted to his master Jesus Christ (Moo 35). But in addition to being Jesus’ slave, Paul also sees himself as Jesus’ apostle. Now we don’t use the word "apostle" very much, but back an apostle was a person who was sent as an official representative of someone else ("apostle" in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters). Apostles spoke and acted with the authority of the person they represented. So an apostle of Jesus spoke and acted with Jesus’ own authority. To be an apostle of Jesus a person had to have been an eyewitness to Christ’s resurrection and personally selected by apostleship by Jesus himself. So apostleship isn’t something Paul volunteered for our went to school for, but he was chosen by Jesus himself to this role.
As an apostle of Jesus, Paul had been set apart for God’s gospel. Now we don’t use the word "gospel" very often in our culture, so we’re likely to misunderstand this term if we don’t look at it carefully. In English use the word "gospel" to refer to something that’s accepted as absolute truth. We say, "It’s the gospel truth." But the Greek word translated "gospel" here is the word euangelion, which is were we get our words evangelist and evangelism. This Greek word is used 76 in the New Testament, and it goes back to the very first sermon recorded sermon of Jesus himself where he proclaimed the gospel of God’s kingdom (Matt 4:23). This word was a journalism word that was used to describe "good news" or "glad tidings" when something really exciting took place. For example, in Rome, whenever an exciting announcement was released about the Roman emperor this was referred to as "gospel" (Cranfield 1:55).
Gospel was never used to describe bad news, but it’s only good news. This is the announcement of a brand new father as he walks into the hospital waiting room and tells his family and friends, "It’s a girl." It’s the excitement on the face of a high school senior as she reads her acceptance letter to Stanford. It’s the look of relief on the surgeon’s face when he announces, "It’s not cancer." It’s the smile of a commanding officer who tells his soldiers that the war’s finally over.
Back then they didn’t have newspapers, television, or the internet, so in order to spread good news a messenger would come to town and that messenger would announce the good news. That messenger-kind of like a town crier-was called an evangelist, a person who proclaimed the good news. So evangelist was first a journalism word that had little religious implications.
This good news is described as God’s gospel. In other words, Paul claims that this is God’s own announcement, God’s personal press release. This gospel isn’t a human philosophy, or drafted by a committee of theologians, but it’s God’s own personal announcement.
From this word gospel we find the first characteristic of God’s press release. GOD’S PRESS RELEASE FOR OUR TIMES IS GOOD NEWS.
God’s press release is gospel, glad tidings, good news. Maybe that should be obvious, but lots of people think God’s news to the world is bad news. Now the fact that God’s message is good news doesn’t mean we avoid difficult topics like sin and judgment. After all later on in this very chapter of Romans Paul is going to describe human sinfulness in very graphic and realistic terms. But because God’s gospel is good news we should never think about sin or judgment apart from God’s good news. God’s gospel is the core of the Christian faith. The good news is the golden thread that ties the 66 different books of the Bible into one unified tapestry.
Far too often we as Christians have been guilty of turning God’s good news into bad news. Many Christians in America have become content with joyless, judgmental, angry, grim-faced Christianity. We’ve forgotten that God’s message for our world is a message of good news.
Now as we go through Paul’s letter to the Romans, we’re going to find that God’s good news is explained in four different ways. Chapters 1 to 4 is going to describe the gospel as good news about God’s integrity. In these chapters we’ll see that God has figured out a way to forgive our failures and sins without compromising his integrity as a holy, perfect God. So instead of being in opposition to God’s integrity, God’s gospel reveals God’s integrity. Then chapters 5 to 8 presents the gospel as the good news about God’s love. Here we’ll find that God’s love makes us secure and safe in God’s hands, so we can live the way God intended life to be lived. Chapters 9 to 11 are the most difficult part of Romans to understand. But here we’ll see the gospel presented as good news about God’s faithfulness. We’ll see that God is completely faithful to keep his promises and that God can even use human disobedience to accomplish his plan. Finally chapters 12 to 16 focuses on the good news about God’s community. Here we’ll find that God’s gospel creates a new community of people we call the church. In this section we’ll see how the rubber of the gospel meets the road of real life in our relationships with each other, our attitude toward people who don’t like us, even in our attitude toward our government. So the book of Romans presents God’s gospel: good news about God’s integrity, God’s love, God’s faithfulness, and God’s community.
God’s press release to our world is first and foremost good news.
2. The Content of God’s Press Release (Romans 1:2-4)
Now that we know it’s good news we wonder what God’s press release to our world would actually say? I was reading a book about preaching recently and the author defined the gospel as God’s unconditional love for everyone. Is that the gospel?
What’s the content of God’s good news? Paul tells us in verses 2 through 4. Here we find our second characteristic of God’s press release. GOD’S PRESS RELEASE TO OUR WORLD IS ABOUT HIS SON.
Notice the emphasis on Jesus in these three verses. Jesus is called a descendent of David, a genuine human being related to the ancient Jewish king David. God promised David in the Old Testament--here called the Holy Scriptures--that God would bring His Messiah through one of David’s descendents. Jesus was related to David biologically through his mother Mary, and he was the a legal heir to David through his adoptive father Joseph.
The phrase "descendant of David" emphasizes the fact that Jesus was fully human (Cranfield 1:60), but he’s more than that because he’s also described here as God’s Son. Now when we use the term Son of God, it’s hard for us to realize what a radical claim this was back then. To claim Jesus was the Son of God--as Paul claims in v. 4--was more than claiming that Jesus obeyed God or was even god-like. To claim someone was the Son of God was to claim that person was equal with God, sharing the same nature as God himself. This is why when Jesus called himself the Son of God the people of his day tried to kill him for blasphemy in John 5:18. So if "descendent of David" emphasizes Jesus’ full humanity, the phrase "Son of God" emphasizes Jesus’ fully divinity, that he’s fully human and fully God.
Paul also tells us that Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday was God’s exclamation point on the fact that Jesus was God’s Son. Jesus is also called the Christ here, which was a Jewish title for the promised Messiah. Finally, he’s also called "Lord" here, which again emphasizes the fact that he’s more than human.
All these titles reveal the fact that the content of the gospel is Jesus himself. Who Jesus is and what Jesus accomplished by his life, death, and resurrection is God’s good news. These titles remind us of Christ’s uniqueness, that he wasn’t just a teacher, a prophet, or a guru. God’s gospel claims that Jesus Christ was God himself in human form, the God-man.
Many times people in our culture are offended when Christians talk about Jesus. Now sometimes they’re offended because we are offensive in how we talk about Jesus. But other times people in our culture wish we’d just talk about God instead of talking about Jesus. A lot of people today are like Ted Turner, the founder of CNN. Turner helped organize the recent Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders. In his address to these various religious leaders, Ted Turner said, "There is one God who manifests himself in many different ways" and that the heart of religion is to love people (www.Crosswalk.com). This is why some churches have moved away from being centered on Jesus Christ because he’s so exclusive, focusing instead on an inclusive God who’s known in all world religions.
But here we find that the content of God’s press release to the world is Jesus. Jesus was a genuine human being who’s also fully God and raised from the grave. If we give in to our culture’s demand to stop talking about Jesus we rob people of God’s own good news. God’s good news for the world is focused on His Son Jesus Christ.
3. The Aim of God’s Press Release (Romans 1:5-7)
We’ve seen two characteristics of God’s press release to our world so far: That it’s good news and that it’s about God’s Son. Let’s look at one more in verses 5 to 7. Here Paul describes his personal calling to bring God’s press release to Gentiles. Now a Gentile is simply any non-Jewish person, and back then the Gentiles were the irreligious people, the women and men who had no background in the Bible or in religion. Gentiles back then are the cultural equivalent of what we mean today when we talk about unchurched people. Paul’s calling in life was to invite as many irreligious people as possible to respond to God’s press release about Jesus.
Here we also find that the appropriate response to God’s press release is faith that leads to obedience. Paul didn’t tell irreligious people to get religious, he didn’t call immoral people to clean up their act, but he called irreligious people to place their faith in Christ. Faith and faith alone is the proper response to God’s announcement.
But here we find that Paul’s passion was to invite as many irreligious Gentiles as possible to trust in God’s good news. Here we find a third characteristic of God’s press release. GOD’S PRESS RELEASE TO THE WORLD IS INTENDED FOR ALL PEOPLE.
God’s gospel isn’t just for religious people or church people. It’s also for the person who’s sleeping off a hang-over this morning. It’s for the people who flock to the local gay bar on Friday nights. God’s gospel is for the people we live next to, our neighbor who goes to the river every weekend, and so forth. God’s good news is for everyone, perhaps especially for irreligious, secularized, unchurched people.
Now the way Paul shared God’s message with irreligious people was often by living among them. If you do a careful study from the book of Acts and Paul’s letters about how he communicated the good news, you’ll find that Paul was willing to do almost anything short of sinning to communicate God’s gospel in a culturally relevant way. Paul never changed the gospel itself, but he was willing to change himself in order to share the message. He translated the message into the language of the people he was reaching, he related it to their struggles and questions. Paul constantly sought to be culturally relevant, but he did it in a way that preserved the content of the message. To do this Paul worked in the same workshops as irreligious people, he shopped at the same market, spoke the same language, ate the same food, and so forth. In short, Paul was willing to share his life with irreligious people, and by sharing his life he was able to also share God’s gospel about Jesus Christ.
You might think of Paul’s ministry as being like a song: the words to the song is found in the gospel, but our lives are the music. Paul knew that people had to hear the music first, and only then could he share the words.
Are people hearing the music of God’s press release in your life? Do you love irreligious people enough to open your life to them, to let them hear the music before you tell them the words?
Now part of our problem today is that so many people are cynical about good news. It’s like that junk mail you get every week. Several times a week I get letters in the mail that are cleverly designed to look like refund checks. Yet when I open these letters I find they’re nothing more than advertisements trying to get me to take out a home loan or get a new credit card. I don’t even open those letters anymore, because no matter how much they look like a check I know it’s a trick. I’ve grown cynical.
That’s the way it is with lots of unchurched people today. They’re skeptical when we say we’ve got good news because they’ve heard that claim before. They wonder what our real agenda is. Are we just trying to get them to join our church, or donate money, or vote a certain way in the next election? To them, our claim to have good news is simply bait covering up a cleverly concealed hook. That’s why it’s so important for them to hear the music of the gospel in our lives, so when we share the words it has credibility.
Conclusion
If God were to call a news conference today and issue a press release to the Inland Valley, what would he say? We don’t have to guess. The Bible tells us what God’s announcement would be, that it’s good news, that it’s about God’s son, and that it’s for everyone. This is God’s press release.
In fact, you might think of Easter Sunday as God’s press conference to the world. On Easter God officially declared that Jesus was truly who he claimed to be. Easter was God’s exclamation point on Christ’s claims. That press conference continues to echo into our world today.
Now I mentioned earlier that the Greek word for gospel here is euangelion. This is not only where we get our words evangelist and evangelism, but it’s also where we get the word evangelical. Sometimes people ask me what kind of church Life Bible Fellowship Church is. Are we liberal or conservative? Catholic or protestant? Calvinist or Arminian? Charismatic or fundamentalist? Well if I had to choose one word to describe our church it would be evangelical, that Life Bible Fellowship Church is a gospel focused, gospel anchored, gospel centered church. An evangelical church is a church that’s centered on this message, this good news, this wonderful press release that comes from God himself about his Son Jesus to our world. As a church we believe this message, we teach it, we celebrate it each month in communion, we worship the God who announced it, and most of all we’re committed to sharing this good news with others. Our mission as a church is to share this message with unchurched people and to embody this message in our congregation. That’s why we’re an evangelical church, a gospel church, a good news church. Whatever else we do as we continue to grow and press on into the future, may God help us stay focused on his good news, his wonderful glad tidings about His Son.
Sources
Cranfield, C. E. B. 1975. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Publishing.
DPL = G. Hawthorne, R. Martin (editors). 1993. Dictionary of Paul and His Letters. Downers Grover: InterVarsity Press. STEP electronic edition.
Moo, Douglas. 1991. Romans 1-8. Chicago: Moody Press.
Walsch, Neale. 1996. Conversations With God: An Uncommon Dialogue. New York: Putman & Sons.
