Faith and Strength

 

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.

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God's will I may now at last succeed in coming to you. For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you— that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, both yours and mine. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles. I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. – Romans 1:1-18

 

Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith — to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen. – Romans 16:25-27

 

          We're looking today at the arc of the book of Romans. What I want to do is relatively simple. The first big chunk of the sermon I want to race through this book.

 

This is the 44th sermon that I preached on the book of Romans. There's plenty of things we could spend our time on, but I want to get the bird's eye view. Then I want to come back around to three specific things.

 

First we're going to look at the message of Romans as a whole. And the first thing we find after this introduction in chapter 1 is Paul launches into the gospel. For him, the gospel starts with the bad news about the fundamental human problem. According to Paul – and the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments – the fundamental human problem that people have is rejection of God. That rejection takes three stages. It starts straightforwardly with a failure of thanks: that people do not recognize who their maker is and give him thanks as they ought to. Then, they try to come up with substitutes for their creator by setting up idols. Now in our culture it's relatively rare, not many people consciously have a statue in their house that they leave offerings for. But in most cultures throughout most of time, idol worship has been very explicit. In our culture, it's a little bit more subtle. People set up various things in their lives and treat them as if they were gods or saviors – as things that can give them help and rescue. You may look to your career as an idol. You may look to your family as an idol. You may look to money or to pleasure as an idol. You make look to the approval of your peers as an idol and build your life around these things. But even though you're not bowing down to a statue or a picture, the principle of idolatry is the same. Because we don't receive the world as a gift that God has given us – and our own lives as gifts – and give him the credit for it, we look for some place else to locate that credit, that praise, and to ask for more help in day-to-day life. So the first step is thanklessness.

 

The second step Paul says, in chapter 1 and chapter 2, is idolatry. Going on from there, then we get into all the specific sins. Very often as Christians we go with the simple answer when we talk about what's wrong with us. We say sin. And that's true. But very often when people hear the word sin, they think of a specific sin or list of sins. They think of adultery, or they think of murder, or they think of stealing, or they think of taking the Lord's name in vain or some specific sin. They think, oh, when you break the list, then you're sinning. But that's not how Paul treats sin. He treats specific sins as downstream from a more fundamental sin, which is the sin of thanklessness. And then the next step, which is replacing God with something else.

 

And so only then does Paul launch into this list that is harder than ever for people to hear, since Paul lists sins that are protected by our culture right now. He talks about homosexuality as an example of degrading sin. He's not saying that homosexuality is the worst of all sins, but he is saying that it is one of the most obvious ones. He goes on from there to list many other sins, maybe more respectable ones that people engage in. But the fundamental problem that human beings have – that we have to know in order to understand the gospel – is rejecting God.

 

He goes on from there to talk about the human inability to fix the problem; because we are all, no matter our nationality or religious background, absolutely embroiled in sin. We can't extricate ourselves from it.

 

Then he goes after his fellow Jews. Remember, Paul is writing as a Christian pastor, but he is also writing as a former serious, believing Jew, a Pharisee among the Jews, a trained rabbi and scholar of the ancient law. He understood that many of his fellow Jews, and their Gentile converts, were attempting to fix the sin problem by simply working harder at obeying God. Paul says first of all, you're never going to make it, you're never going to check off all the boxes in the way that you should. Second, even if you could, the problem is not something you can resolve that way. The problem is not the future and our future behavior but our past and our hearts. The problem goes too deep. So a restored relationship with God has to come a different way. It has to come as a gift, which we call grace. We talk about salvation by grace. Because it is a gift, it can only be received, can only be received by faith. Furthermore, it always has been like this, and his fellow Jews who think salvation is through keeping the law are mistaken. He goes back way back in the history of Israel, to the time of Abraham. Even Abraham, the father of all Israel, received salvation as a gift before he did anything to obey God. How does that come to us now, as Jews or as Gentiles? We can only be justified by faith. We are not justified or fixed or made right or declared not guilty by anything that we do. We are justified by faith in Jesus the Messiah.

 

Then Paul goes on to talk about the Holy Spirit, who renews our hearts and connects us with Jesus. He teaches us in chapter 7 that through faith we are renewed. We are no longer fundamentally dead in our sins, or fundamentally slaves to sin. If you are a believer, connected with Christ by faith, then the real you is not enslaved to sin, not entrapped and forced to do whatever sins says. Sin says jump, you no longer ask 'how high?'

 

You are struggle with sin, sin is still in there somewhere but that is not the real you. Paul describes his own experience as a believer struggling with sin. He intends both to sober us up, because some of us think, especially new Christians, "I feel so fresh and clean, I don't have to strive anymore. I'm good from here on." And we think that we can continue, maybe we can even say in ourselves, "Lord, thank you for cleaning me up, I'm good. I can take it from here." Paul says, "No, I'm an apostle and I'm telling you that the good that I want to do, I don't do. The sin that I don't want to do, I find myself doing." This is a struggle in the Christian life that will be with us until the end.

 

He goes on from there to tell us that with the Spirit within us, we are empowered to live a different life. The Spirit empowers our praying. We have the Spirit of God within us, the Spirit of Christ by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. We call God Father, because God is Jesus's Father. Through the work of the Spirit, we are connected with Jesus in a mysterious way, and the Spirit will raise us up at the resurrection just as he raised Jesus. Furthermore, the hope of the resurrection gives us the strength we need to face suffering and death.

 

          In chapters nine through eleven Paul struggles with the question of, how is it that not everybody who hears this gospel – and especially among his fellow Jews – believes it and is saved? He points to the mystery of election, that is, predestination. God ultimately is the one who chooses. Yet the gift is truly offered to all. The choice that God makes is not done in such a way that those who have heard the gospel have no choice. It's done in this way: God is the author of the story, we are the characters in the story, and we have a genuine choice to hear and to believe, or to harden our hearts to the gospel. Yet in the mystery of God's Providence and election, God is ultimately the one who chooses us.

 

So why have so many Jews rejected that gift? God has hardened their hearts to the gospel. Yet Paul says this rejection is temporary, not forever. One day, God will bring faith and salvation to Israel again. Paul ends with a warning. He says, you Gentile Christians (and that likely includes you, Reader), must be humble towards your Jewish friends. You must not think, “There's something good about me. God chose me and my people over those Jews. We're better than them because we have faith.” Paul says No, no, no. They are branches of the vine God cultivated. If God has cut off some of those branches and grafted you in, he will also cut you off if you become arrogant. Understand that the gift of faith is a call not to pride, but humility.

 

          In chapter 12 and following Paul answers the question, How do we respond to this gospel? The gospel frames our problem as a rejection of God, and says that God's answer is to receive us by grace through faith in the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. How then shall we live? What do our lives look like, if we are saved by this grace? He tackles our new life in chapters 12, 13, 14 and some of 15. We are to live our lives as a sacrifice of obedience to God. The time has passed when, in order to worship God, you had to bring your best farm animals and slaughter, barbecue, and share them with poor neighbors and priests. Don't get me wrong. If you want to share barbecue with me, I'll be there. But that is not the role of pastors or leaders in the church. We are primarily shepherds under Jesus Christ who lead you to the one sacrifice that can actually do anything about sin, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

 

So what kind of worship does God want, if he doesn't want us to pour out the blood of a bull for our sins? Along with worshiping together on Sundays, our whole lives are to be living sacrifices as our spiritual service of worship. We are to offer our bodies; the things that we do with our bodies are acts of worship, all of them, not just what we do at church. Furthermore, we are to use his gifts to serve one another within the church by warmly loving each other. We are to love those outside the church as well, although not in the same way. Notice how Paul lays out, “Be warmly affectionate toward one another in the church.” He didn't say be warmly affectionate toward the whole world because that's impossible. But he does say when it comes to those outside of the church, you are to be wise and loving toward them. At a minimum, he says, never avenge yourselves, because vengeance belongs to the Lord. Be respectful of those outside, kind, as we have opportunity. Honor those we owe honor to. And in that context, he talks about everybody's favorite subject, submitting to the government. He says that we are called to know the purpose of government, to be a servant of God whether it looks like it or not, whether they know it or not. Rulers are servants of God, put in place to do his bidding, and governments will be judged for their disobedience to God. Yet unless the government is telling us to engage in sin, we are called to a basic attitude of submission and respect. In sum, we are called to live lives of love, purity and holiness.

 

          In chapters 14 and 15, Paul dives into something that remains a big deal among Christians today: what to do about issues that divide Christians but are not of first importance. At that time, these issues were mainly matters of Jewish law-keeping, quite emotionally important to many Jewish Christians. What about these things that divide but aren't gospel issues? First of all, be very accepting of one another. He uses this sort of logical jiu-jitsu. He says those of us who are strong should use our freedom to serve, protect, and love the weak. Now, who on Earth is going to put up their hand and say, “I'm weak. You guys all have to be nice to me.” This is one of Paul's moments of genius. He calls those of us who are strong in faith to be tolerant and patient with those who are weaker. As much as you can don't grieve the other, but also don't let others judge you for your freedom. The goal is that we may with one voice worship our God and Lord, in an undivided church.

 

          In the last chapter and a half, Paul says several things in sequence. First he says, I hope you listen to me. I can't make you listen; I didn't found this church; I'm not your apostle or spiritual father. But I hope you'll listen to me. I want to meet you, and I want you to help me continue my apostolic mission. After I go to Jerusalem – he wrote Romans while heading to Jerusalem – please help me continue my apostolic mission. I want to go beyond you to Spain and continue my apostolic work of planting churches.

 

Finally Paul ends with greetings to noteworthy Roman Christians as he writes this letter in Corinth. The last few verses are what we call a doxology, a moment of praise for God.

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          There's your whirlwind tour of Romans. Now let's take three things away from this grand book. First, how to do something great with your life, however much of you have left. Second, a summary of Romans as God reconciling humanity through Christ. And finally, the most important message of all, the good news of Jesus Christ for you.

 

Admittedly, this may sound like a self-help approach. How do you do something great with your life? But let's remember that Paul writes as part of his apostolic mission. He describes himself as a servant of the Gospel, under obligation to Greeks and barbarians, with the desire to preach the gospel, not only in Rome, but beyond Rome. We read about him, because he is giving us an example to follow, not just teaching us the truth. The first thing we need to do if we're going to follow Paul's example is to set out to serve something greater than ourselves and our own success. Paul very straightforwardly serves the gospel, God's power to save Jews and Gentiles. There are many good things that the Lord loves that are good to spend your life pursuing. This is perhaps the highest of all: the pursuit of the Gospel. But there are many good things as well as many bad things that people spend their lives focusing on. The first thing, though, is serve something greater than yourself and your success.

 

Second, and this is subtle but it comes up in Romans: ask what you owe. What do you owe? Most adults have had loans, a car loan, a student loan, or a mortgage. We're very aware of our mortgages! What we owe shapes our lives. We can't say, I don't feel like working any more, because next month's mortgage bill will come, and if you don't pay it, you're not going to be in that house much longer. What we owe shapes our lives.

 

Paul says some interesting stuff about his obligations. In chapter one he says, “I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and the foolish. So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.” The word he uses there for “obligation” is “I am in debt.” Later he says in Romans 8:12, “so then brothers, we are debtors” – same word – to the Spirit. He's not saying that the Greeks and the barbarians gave so much to me, and I really just want to give back. By the way, that's why I don't like it when people use that terminology of giving back; “It's all about giving back to the community.” Maybe the community did some good things for you, or maybe they were really hard on you. It's not really the best reason to do nice things for other people. Paul is not basing this sense of debt on the things that the Greeks, barbarians, wise, and foolish have done for him. He's basing it on the gifts that he's been given by God. If you look at your whole existence and salvation as a gift that lands on you from heaven that you did zero to deserve then your life gets reshaped. I am somebody who was given an immeasurable gift that I did not merit and I have to live my life on the basis of that.

 

What does that look like? Paul said that he owed it to all of these people to preach the gospel to them. God's free gifts are what drove Paul. He had been given much and much was expected of him, as Jesus taught in Luke 12.

 

The question, What has God given me that I must give to others? is a way better question to ask than, What do I want to do? It is also a far better question than, What do others expect of me? Your feelings about what you want to do may be good or they may be stupid. And others' expectations of you may be good and hopefully are; but sometimes, they're definitely wrong. And some of us have lived big chunks of our lives feeling like slaves to other people's expectations. And others of us have lived big chunks of our lives as slaves to our own feelings. “I don't want to do that. Well, you shouldn't do anything you don't want to do.” We have a running joke in our house about feeling enthusiastic about things. I think our joke came from a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon. My wife or I will tell a child, hey I need you to do this. “I don't really feel enthusiastic about taking out the trash,” and we say, “Well you shouldn't do anything unless you feel enthusiastic about it.” Do you really want to live your life like that? I don't. Sometimes I do, but it's not the way to live. The question is not what others demand or what I feel, but What do I owe?

 

Third, line up what you want to do with what God wants to do. This is cool; we can see it by lining up the beginning and the end, what preachers call an inclusio. Paul has something at the beginning and again at the very end, and they connect like a sandwich to bring the whole together. Romans 1:11, “I long to see you that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.” He elaborates: that we may mutually build each other up.

 

Chapter 16:25, “Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ.” You get it? I want to strengthen you; God is able and willing to strengthen you. Also chapter 1 verses five and six: “Through Jesus 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.” Chapter 16 verses 25 and 27: “To him who is able to bring about the obedience of faith.” I have been given the task, my life is dedicated to bringing about the obedience of faith. God is able and willing to bring about the obedience of faith. If you dedicate your life – if you line up what you want to do with what God has already said he is going to do, you're on a pretty good track.

 

Paul's purpose is to serve God's purpose and therefore he knows that his work will succeed. Did it? You and I are reading this book now, on the other side of the world, almost 2,000 years later. Paul's work succeeded because what he set out to do was something he knew God wanted to do.

 

But did it work out exactly as he planned? No, it didn't. So I say last of all, be prepared for God to change your plans, although not your purpose.

 

It happened to Paul. Paul lays out his plans to the Romans. None of them worked out as intended. Paul's plan was to go to Jerusalem, and when he was done in Jerusalem to go to Rome and then to Spain to preach the gospel there. But when he finally made it to Rome it was in chains.

 

And we don't know if he ever got out of those chains. He died in Rome as a prisoner of the Romans. After several years of imprisonment, he was beheaded by the Roman authorities, as another inconvenient Jewish troublemaker. He never got to freely preach in Rome in the way that he likely wanted to. And he certainly never made it to the Iberian peninsula. Now, does that mean that Paul failed? Absolutely not. The specifics of what he wanted had to change. Because Jesus said, I'm glad you're making plans but I have a more glorious battle for you to fight. That is what happens to God's people all the time. Planning is important. To be honest, this drives me crazy because I don't like making plans in the first place; and then when I do, I don't like it when they don't work. Maybe you've had that experience. But while planning is important, God is jealous of his own glory. When he looks at you making your plans he wants to be pleased with what you're planning, but even more he wants to say, I want the glory in your life. Therefore sometimes I'm going to send you down a different path than the one you anticipated. And it's going to be okay. In fact, it's going to be better than okay.

 

          The next thing I want us to take away is that if I had to pick a theme for the whole of Romans, I don't think it would be justification by faith.

 

I think it would be that God is reconciling human beings through Jesus Christ. And that means actually four different things.

 

Some years ago, I read a great little Christian book which was not particularly theological. It's called When Helping Hurts, by Brian Ficker and Steve Corbett, and it's about mercy ministry. Highly recommend it; very practical. One of the things they talk about almost in passing is that sin creates four alienations; sin breaks four relationships.

 

The first is that it creates a broken relationship, or an alienation of human beings, from God. That's the biggest, loudest one. That's all the way through the book of Romans. We have this broken relationship, this alienation from God.

 

Second, sin creates alienation of human beings from each other. As soon as Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened, they saw that they were naked, and they were ashamed. And while they were hiding from God, they were also hiding from one another. Ever since, every human relationship has been spiked through with sin, and is either experiencing potential or actual alienation.

 

Thirdly human beings are alienated from nature, so that we see a rebellion of the physical creation against mankind. Right from the beginning, childbirth becomes this terrible thing for the woman; labor becomes this terrible thing. The earth is not going to yield fruit peaceably for you, Adam. By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread; thorns and thistles will it yield for you.

 

And finally, there's this fundamental shame, or alienation from ourselves that we experience, that we are no longer the unified, whole people that we were created to be, and that the promises of God and immortality have for us. We are not the whole people we should be. We are alienated from ourselves.

 

If you read the book of Romans through that lens, a lot of things are going to jump out at you. First that we are reconciled with God: that our root problem of thanklessness, and then the fruit of that – idolatry, and the fruit of that – our sins – are dealt with. That Christ bore the penalty for our sin; that Christ lives out the perfect obedience that we owe to God. That Christ gives us those blessings as a free gift received only by faith. That Christ, when we become one with Christ by faith, grows bigger than our sins and changes us from the inside out, in a way that no rule book or law could ever do. And that ultimately Christ promises resurrection and glory and joy with him.

 

But we are reconciled further with one another. Romans one through about chapter eleven is focused on our relationship with God, and then switches. From chapter twelve on, Paul talks much about the church and our relationships with fellow human beings. This isn't just a transition from indicative to imperative. This is how you shall live. God is also reconciling human beings with one another. How can Jews and Gentiles, people from the chosen nation of God and people from everywhere else, the scary garbage dump that is the world, be reconciled to God in the same way? It is all through faith in Jesus Christ, and this reconciles them to each other, so that Jews and Gentiles – and all kinds of Gentiles, because there are many kinds – can live a life of common salvation, common worship, common life together, in mutual love and affection.

 

Thirdly we are reconciled even with nature. We learn that nature is not a goddess to be worshiped or a savior to be prayed to. We also learned that, unlike some of the ancient cults, nature is not a horror show to be escaped from, but rather it is renamed creation; this physical world that we live in is not merely stuff out there. It's not Gaia, mother Earth with its own personality. It is the creation of our loving God. And it groans, per Romans 8, under our sin. The problem with human beings is the problem of the rest of the world; the world is under the influence of our rebellion against God. The redemption of nature starts with the redemption of humanity.

 

As Christians, we believe that the universe is anthropocentric, man-centered. God relates to the universe through man, and ultimately through the son of man, Jesus himself. When Jesus redeems humanity on the cross, day dawns on the physical world and there is hope. Humanity rules over the creation through Christ. When humanity is healed, so is nature.

 

Finally, we are reconciled with ourselves. Sin makes our hearts into a crowd, a zoo of competing desires. The world we live in today absolutely inflames this. We're fed image after image: you could be this, you could do that, you could have this, this is what your life could be like. It forces oxygen into that fiery sin reaction that's going on in our hearts. Sin makes our hearts into a cacophony of competing desires. Sin brings shame. Apart from Christ, sin is who we are. But through faith in Christ, even if I sin, it is no longer I, but the remnant of sin in me. The shame of sin is taken away because Christ carried the shame of my sin naked and bloody on the cross so that I am no longer stained but clean. I'm no longer ugly but beautiful, no longer damaged but whole and glorious. What we are now inwardly we will be entirely at the resurrection, made whole along with the world. Read Romans 8:19 and following:

 

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.

 

          One more thing. We have all as human beings chosen to build a life on our own choices and desires and accomplishments. And it really doesn't matter what that life is. If your life is your own project, it kind of doesn't matter what kind of project it is. There are practical differences. You can do some more good for the world, living one life rather than another. But if your life is in your own hands you are equally lost, whether you are a wild child living for pleasures and drugs, or religious and well-behaved. Either way, we are treating our lives and the world as our thing to do, our accomplishment, our project. We must recognize our helplessness to fix ourselves or the world, and see that salvation is a gift that cost Jesus Christ everything. His cross brings not only him resurrection but us the hope of resurrection; because his cross washes away our sins. So the very first thing that any of us has to do, if we are going to be right with God, is to recognize that we can't save ourselves.

 

Recognize that salvation is a gift. Cry out to him and say, “This is not mine anymore, you've got to take it. Take this burden from me. Take the good things I've done. Take the bad things I've done. Take the whole thing. Send me where you want me to go. Teach me what you want me to do. I'm yours.” This is us. This is Paul picking up exactly what Jesus said, when Jesus said that if anyone wants to be his disciple, he must take up his cross daily and follow him. We are no longer living for ourselves. We walk after Christ no matter where Christ leads us. And there is freedom and terror and joy in that.

 

And yet, God will give us everything that our hearts desire, even if they are not things that we know our hearts desire, if we will give ourselves to Christ as he is offered to us in the gospel.

– Daniel Howe

Christ Church RPC

Providence Rhode Island

March 17, 2024