Or, The Empire Disrupting Power of RomansRomans 5:21 September 5, 2021 Lord’s Day Worship Sean Higgins

Introduction

The selection of a book of Scripture and start of a new sermon series is a big deal. Not that studying any part of the Bible would be bad (all His works are great and studied by His people for their delight, Psalm 111:2), but certainly some sections at some times are more relevant. Because of my approach, preferring to preach about paragraph at a time, a book with some size could be a year of two of Sundays.

Over the summer at least three people recommended Romans to me, about a month apart from each other and completely unaware of each other. They also had different reasons. There was no other consensus to consider, and all the elders affirmed the choice of Romans. Here we are.

I have taught through Romans about one and a half times already, and it was twenty years ago. I got into chapter eight with the seventh and eighth graders at Grace Community Church before moving to Marysville in 2001, and started over in chapter one that fall until finishing all sixteen chapters. Some of you here today not only heard those sermons, I think you’d say that some of those sermons were vital to your understanding and appreciation of the gospel. Maybe you remember titles such as “The Performance Treadmill” and “God’s Display of God.”

What shouldn’t be a surprise, but is still quite surprising, is that I am almost a completely different preacher than then, and while I still believe probably everything I said/taught, I can’t imagine saying/teaching it that way now. I believe the same gospel, and I’ve also come to see the gospel’s dominion in ways I didn’t have categories to imagine back then. “Jesus is Lord” (Romans 10:9) is a confession like a deep and full well; the water on the surface is the same as the water further down, but by grace the taste keeps getting gooder.

In addition to commentaries, I’ve now read some of Livy and Suetonius and Tacitus; the historical context for Romans is more clear, and more ugly than I thought. I knew about paganism and idolatry and nationalism from the Old Testament, but now I’ve also read more about the myths and the “futile ways inherited from … forefathers” (1 Peter 1:18), so the religious context into which Jesus came and Paul preached is even more desperate and bleak than I had considered. I was living 2000 or so years into church history, but now I’ve learned more about how that history doesn’t make sense apart from the “flood-tide of Christ” (a phrase used in the third century).

It has affected even the angle from which I see the purpose of Paul in writing it, and how that makes it relevant for every context, but maybe especially as an encouragement for us, right now, staring wide-eyed and jaw-dropped at a society abandoned to God’s wrath like Romans 1, full of moral goodie-two-shoes (which we’ve nicknamed social justice warriors) like chapter 2, and headed toward the collapse of an empire with exactly the truth we need to repent from sin, resist sin, and rejoice in the God of our salvation.

It was a verse in Romans that converted Augustine (albeit in sort of a “random” reading). It was a phrase in Romans that liberated Martin Luther and ignited the 16h century Reformation. The truths in this letter are the core of Christianity’s dominance in Western Civilization. The gospel has done more to topple idols and tyrants, to undo sinners and Caesars, than any other single influence. The gospel of Christ is the power of God to subdue rebels and remake men.

And it is all gift.

The two greatest works of God are creation and redemption. Both are undeserved, unearned, and un-asked for. Both are givens. Both are gifts. Both gifts establish new ways of life.

Paul’s epistle to the Romans is perhaps the single greatest and sustained (let alone inspired) writing on salvation. As early as Romans 1:16, Paul pre[...]