Line by Line with Albert Mohler

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You can find Dr. Mohler's other Line by Line sermons here.

Follow Dr. Mohler:
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For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.
For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.

Well we are continuing in our studying the book of Roman. And it has been a thrill just to get started on what we know is going to be a considerable study. And today we're gonna pick back up in Romans chapter 1, where we began, by looking at the last several weeks at introductory issues and at Paul's very first statements to the Christians in Rome. I thought it might be interesting in the background to our study today to talk about the impact of the book of Romans at significant points in the history of the church. It's important because when we think about the New Testament Canon, that is the set of books that make up the New Testament, or the 66 books that make up the Bible, we need to recognize that the Lord has inspired every single one of them. The Holy Spirit inspired every single word of scripture.
And as the scripture itself attests, men of old were moved by the Holy Spirit to write these very words. Now, the very fact that every single word is inspired and every word is fully inspired means that there are no extra words. There are no unneeded or unnecessary words, even where there is repetition in Scripture, that repetition is important for us. It's telling us something. But when we come to the book of Romans, we are reminded of that very important truth that when we come to the New Testament, it is very, very easy, once you start studying that text, to understand that we need every one of these books. Because without any one of these books, we would be left with a significant gap in our knowledge of the gospel and of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
For instance, when I was teaching some years ago through the book of Hebrews, it was apparent to me that there is so much in this book that isn't found anywhere else. It's one of those books that helps to bring everything together that helps to synthesize our knowledge of biblical truth helps to bring it together so that we can understand it. And once you understand the book of Hebrews, you actually understand not only the other books of the New Testament in a new way, but of course you understand the Old Covenant and the Old Testament in a very profound and powerfully new way. 
But the book of Romans, New Testament scholars always resist when people say it's a systematic theology right here at the center of the New Testament. The reason they resist that is because that really ignores the fact that it was written, first of all, as a letter. But I have to come back as a theologian, and I have to say yes, but it was a letter about theology. And this letter about theology helps us to understand so much about the gospel, about the church, about the Christian life, but most importantly about the gospel itself. And that's what we find when you look at Romans 1, and we really left off at verse seven. We were looking at these introductory issues and we were looking at what Paul said here at the end of verse 7: “Grace to you in peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Combining “shalom” and “karine” in this case, karis, which is grace. He was speaking in a way that would be very much identified with both the Gentile and the Jewish Christians in Rome.
I said that Romans has been important in the history of the church, and it has been at very strategic points. And you can look at the earliest church fathers, the earliest pastors and bishops and elders and theologians of the church. And you can quickly see how the book of Romans was essential to their understanding of what the gospel is. Then you go to the fourth century and really it is Augustine, the great Bishop of Hippo in Northern Africa, the greatest theologian of the early church. It was the book of Romans that helped him to understand how it was that God had determined to save a people, how he did it through the Lord Jesus Christ and how the church then ought to preach the gospel. Then you can fast forward to other eras, especially you think of the Reformation when it was the book of Romans that helped Martin Luther the great reformer of the 16th century to understand the doctrine of justification by faith, which we will shortly encounter in this very book.
And then at other points, the book of Romans has been similarly effective, similarly helpful. The German confessing church, that is the true church over against the Nazis, found great solace in the book of Romans. And we could continue on down. I think for most of us, the book of Romans is our first introduction, if we study it seriously, to some of the deeper things of the faith.
And we get there very quickly in verse eight of chapter one, Paul says this first, “I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world.” Now that's a nice statement. That is a pastoral statement. It's characteristic of Paul, that he would thank God for the Roman Christians. He's expressing his appreciation for the fact that they are a gift to the church. It is more than just a familiar greeting.
As you shall see in verse seven, he identified them as the beloved of God in Rome. These are the ones whom God loves, has loved through Jesus Christ. These are the ones who are the recipients of the gospel. And now Paul says, “I thank God for you,” Why? In verse eight, “because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world.” 
Now there have been in different places in different times, secret congregations, secret groups of Christians. At The end of World War II, there were many Christian missionary agencies that picked up a new opening with, of course, the defeat of the empire of Japan. Different areas, especially in Polynesian and in the South Pacific, where missions could be picked up once again in the great heyday of Victorian missions. There were men like John Payton and others who had gone to the Hebrides, and very famous missionary accounts of how the gospel had been spread to those regions.
But World War II was a great interruption. And I remember years ago, reading of one island that the missionaries had targeted in order to go and share the gospel. And when they got there, they found Christians. Because these different island groups had missionized one another, evangelized one another, even during the war. And sometimes there are secret congregations. The rest of the world isn't even aware that they are there, but there could be no secrecy, no hiding for the church, this congregation in Rome. In the capital city of the empire, this was a congregation that was well known, perhaps well known to the secular authorities that may come later, but certainly known to those who love the gospel. And what is said of them in verse eight is that their faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world, their faith. 
Now, this is a sense in which we would probably, in the English, want to change that to faithfulness because that's really what Paul is talking about there. It is their demonstration of the faith. It's not just for their faith as in the faith once for all delivered to the saints. It's more in the faith that is being demonstrated in their faithfulness, their in Rome being proclaimed throughout the whole world. Now here's another little incident here when you say the whole world, what is Paul talking about? Well, Paul is, as we discussed, a Roman citizen. And so when he mentions the whole world, he's really talking about what we would know now as the Roman world. And so far as the Romans were concerned that that was the world. And in terms of communication, in terms of transportation, in terms of links, that's where the world was. So virtually everywhere where the gospel had yet reached, the faith of the church at Rome was now being known. In verse nine. Paul goes on and says, “for God, whom I serve in my spirit, in the preaching of the gospel of his son is my witness as to how increasingly” or unceasingly, excuse me, “I make mention of you.”
So Paul wants the church at Rome to know that they have become an illustration point in Paul's teaching. They've become a point of Paul's pride and concern. When he talks about the furtherance of the gospel, he can tell churches all over the world, all over Asia Minor, all throughout the Roman Empire, there's a church in Rome now. The capital city has a church as well. You can go to Rome and there are Christians there. He's been speaking of them, using them as an illustration. Perhaps this illustration is rooted in some early form of persecution suffered by the church in Rome, perhaps their faith has already been tested and there may even have been some kind of controversy or pressure, a prejudice that was indicated against them. But they have become an issue for Paul, a teaching point, for him to make reference to them as he writes and ministers to others throughout the Christian world.
 A couple of interesting things in verse nine. If you are reading a modern English translation, it is likely that you see a good many of italicized words in this. And in most of your modern translations, those italicized words indicate words that were necessarily supplied by the translator in order to achieve meaning. And you need these words, trust me, as you study the Greek and the Hebrew. And in this case, the Greek. You'll understand that every time you move from one language group to another, there's a loss of what is called implicit meaning. Implicit meaning is there because we know how a word is used beyond what the word actually means. And you know, children know this. Children have to learn their mother's implicit language. Right? Of course we do.
When she says “don't,” she doesn't just mean don't do anything. She means don't do “that.” And you know “that” is not in there. She doesn't have to use a whole sentence. She just knows it's there. Or if you say “there,” you know, somebody walks in with a bunch of bags and you say, “there,” they put 'em there. You don't have to say “it would be most convenient for me in my family. And for all within this domestic household, if you would place those items carefully in that place.” In other words, we all use a form of shorthand. Now in the Greek language that is particularly so. Because the verbs often have an implicit direct object. In other words, you're supposed to know that “this” is pointing to “that.” So as you look at verse nine, you'll see “for God whom I serve in my spirit in the” and then you'll see italicized text in the New American Standard, “preaching of the,” and then picking back up in the normal text “gospel of his Son.”
So if you just translated it directly, it would be “for God who I serve in my spirit, in the gospel of his Son.” But it is clear that Paul's talking about the proclamation of the gospel, the sharing, the transmission of the gospel. I just bring that up to remind us that when we study the Word carefully, you need to be aware that these italics mean something. And it's not emphasis. 
Sometimes you'll hear, for instance, a first year seminary student do a public reading at the Bible or something and get to these words, and they raise their voice, as if this was an emphasis. You know, “for God who I serve in my spirit, in the preaching of the gospel of his son, is my witness as to how unceasingly I make mention of you”  might make for interesting preaching, but that's not what the italics are there for.
They're instead to tell us those words have been supplied necessarily. And that's a good issue of translation, and honesty. In other words, they're saying we had to put this in, in order to make the point clear. In verse 10, a continuation of the same sentence, where Paul said he makes “unceasing mention of the Romans, always in my prayers making requests, if perhaps now at last, by the will of God, I may succeed in coming to you.” Interesting. Paul here speaks not only of the fact that they have become an illustration for him, but of the fact that he wants to visit them. He's making prayers for them. One of the basic functions of Paul's apostolic ministry was prayer. He refers to this time and time again in almost every one of the introductory sections of every one of his letters; there is a statement about his unceasing, faithful, pastoral prayers for these churches.
Paul was obviously a man of prayer. He speaks of prayer, of his unceasing prayer, of his constant prayer. He speaks of his prayer for the particulars. He will often say, “I'm praying this for you.” And he will say to a church, “I'm praying that you will receive this from the Lord.” But here he speaks of his unceasing prayers for them. “If perhaps now at last, by the will of God, I may succeed in coming to you.” 
Now, one of the things we talked about in the introductory considerations of this book was that Paul's visit to Rome, a much promised visit and a much anticipated visit, had been delayed. And we looked back, you'll remember the book of Acts and we saw how Paul was delayed. First of all, by the necessity of going to Asia Minor. And it was in that return eventually to Jerusalem, first to Asia Minor, and then to Jerusalem, that Paul for instance, gave his farewell address to the Ephesian elders in Melitus. And you follow on through Paul is now writing to the Romans, we think from Corinth, as he is preparing to get to them, but he knows not exactly when he will arrive. But as we shall see, there was frustration obvious, more than implicit, explicit frustration on the part of the Romans that Paul had not yet arrived there. 
And that's a major part of his concern in these verses. He says that he wants to come to them; verse 11, “For I long to see you so that I may impart some spiritual gift to you that you may be established.” Paul here speaks of his intense desire to visit with them. This isn't a light thing. It's not a small thing. It's a very major issue to the Apostle Paul. He wants to visit with the Romans. He wants to see this church for himself. He also wants to get to Rome. But as Paul, the Roman citizen knows, he may get to Rome the hard way. That is, his visit to Rome may come as he is a prisoner of Rome. 
These things are outside of his hands. That's why he speaks to the sovereignty of God. That's why he made the reference in the earlier verse there, in verse 10, to the will of God as to whether or not he would succeed in arriving in Rome. But he speaks of his longing to be there in order that, in verse 11, he might impart some spiritual gift to them. In other words there could be something that Paul could bring to them as a gift. And Paul's apostolic ministry was involved in the bestowal of gifts upon the congregations he visited. To whom he wrote, the congregations of his pastoral concern and his pastoral heart, he wanted to give them a gift that “you may be established.”
Now that word established is very important. Paul uses it repeatedly. It's a common word, and it has to do with what we might consider being fortified. Or being strengthened. But it has an enduring aspect. In other words, this church would be established so that it would be even stronger, even more enduring, even more fortified in the years to come. And there's another, “so that,” and that's another characteristic of the Greek language. You can pile up these clauses that are considered what we would call instrumental. So that, for that, because of, and you see it here, that is in verse 12, “that I may be encouraged together with you while among you, each of us by the other's faith, both yours and mine.” So Paul says, look, I realize that as I aim so fervently and faithfully to come to you it is because I want to give you a gift. But it is also because I know that I will receive much in being with you. 
And again, this speaks of Paul's pastoral personality, of his approach to the churches, of his apostolic ministry. You could call it “give and take” but for Paul it's richer than that. It's “give and give” for Paul. It is the fact that he will encourage the churches and the churches will encourage him. You find a very precious demonstration of this in his letter to the church at Philippi. The book of Philippians, as you read that, Paul speaks of his constant encouragement from this church. Paul was facing apostolic trials, facing persecution, facing all kinds of challenges. He wanted to encourage the churches. But at significant points the churches also encouraged him. Compare the letter that we have in the New Testament to the church at Philippi to the two letters that we have in the New Testament that Paul wrote to the Corinthian church.
And you'll see that at times Paul's ministry is almost at the breaking point of concern for a church, that leads even to frustration. And at other times it is a source of great blessing that helps to energize Paul for his ministry to the other churches. At this point in the book of Romans, it is not yet clear exactly how Paul relates to this church. Now it will become very clear shortly. It's clear right away. By the time you start, for instance, 1 Corinthians chapter one, Paul's writing that church in rebuke. In a very clear, open, undiluted rebuke. If you read the book of Philippians, it opens with tremendous encouragement, you have to get almost to the end of that book before you find Paul mentioning some pastoral issues with conflict in the church, and et cetera. They were minor issues in Paul's mind, over and against the total purpose of the letter.
He wrote the book of Galatians to confront a heresy. And, like with the subtlety of a baseball bat, he got that point across to the Galatian congregation. We are not at this point in the book of Romans yet sure, exactly, what Paul's purpose is. We're later going to see it's the massive exposition of the gospel. And let me go ahead and say at this point, that is most likely occasioned by the fact that this church at the western most extremity of where the Christian gospel has reached, further from Jerusalem than any other church that is mentioned at this time, this church made up of what we now know are largely Gentile converts to Christianity, is a church that probably needs more theological teaching and more doctrinal substance than any of the other churches mentioned. 
Many of whom, that is those other churches, have had multiple apostolic contacts. They've had multiple opportunities for ministry, including from the apostle Paul, but the church in Rome is desperately in need of this kind of teaching. But he wants to be encouraged. “We will be encouraged together,” he says, in verse 12, with you and me. I'll be encouraged. You'll be encouraged. Each of us by the other's faith, both yours and mine. Now that's repetitive somewhat, but it follows the normal letter writing kind of tone that Paul has established. 
In verse 13, “I do not want you to be unaware brethren that often I have planned to come to you and have been prevented so far that I may obtain some fruit among you also, even as among the rest of the Gentiles.” Interesting here, Paul says, “I do not want you to be unaware.” 
Now, some of you may have the King James and in the King James version, it says “I would not have you ignorant, brethren” or “I would not have you ignorant brethren.”
Some of you may remember the name of Miss Bertha Smith. One of the great prayer warriors of Southern Baptist life. She was one of the missionaries in the revival in China. She never married. She was a formidable figure. Let me just say that. 
Miss Bertha was a prayer war. That was her ministry. She led prayer conferences all over the Southern Baptist Convention. She was well known; grown men would tremble in her sight. She was an incredible figure. But when she was asked one time why she did not marry, she mentioned Roma's 1:13. And she said, “I would not have you ignorant brethren.” She wouldn't have any of them. Well, it worked for Miss Bertha. 
But that's not at all what the Apostle Paul's talking about here. He says, I don't want you to dwell in ignorance. I don't want you to be unaware. I don't want you to be in the dark. I want you to be fully aware of why I have not arrived to you.  He says, “I plan to come to you and have been prevented so far that I may obtain some fruit among you also, even as among the rest of the Gentiles.” 
Now in verses 13 and 14, something very important comes to light. And that is that there was open speculation on the part of the Christians in Rome about Paul's reason for not yet arriving in Rome. Now we know this also from some background materials. It's implicit very much here in the text. In other words, Paul writes somewhat, you might say, defensively here. Not defensively as if he's in a position of weakness, but defensively in order to give a defense of the fact that he has not yet arrived there.
The Roman Christians evidently thought Paul should have dropped everything to come to Rome. Paul should have arrived in Rome much earlier. I mean, after all, all the roads do lead here, Paul. Rome is the capital. Why have you not arrived here? Why are you just out there in the provinces? There may even have been some speculation that went further than that. And in a more dangerous direction than that. It could be they were saying, well, you know, Paul, if he came here, he's going to face a lot of trouble. You know, it's one thing being a Christian in the provinces. It's another thing being a Christian here in Caesars city. It may be that they were speculating that he had some purpose for staying out in Asia Minor. Now, folks, you just have to understand that if you live in Rome, everything else is the boondocks, everything else. 
If you're in Rome, you're living at the very center of the universe. Why would anyone not come here? If you want to influence the world, you're going to have to deal with Rome. If you're going to establish a major business, it's going to have to be in Rome. It's going to have to deal with Rome. Rome's going to be the primary client, the primary patron. If you want anything major done in the world, in the Roman world, you've got to come to Rome. 
Paul writes saying, “I have longed to be with you. I have planned, “ he says in verse 13, “to come to you.” But in that parenthetical explanation, he says, I have been prevented so far. In other words, this was not Paul's choice not to be there. The delay was not Paul's volition. It was rather the interruption by the Holy Spirit. He has made that clear already, but he goes on writing more positively to say that he does want to come in order that he may obtain some fruit among you, that fruit meaning the fruit of the faith, even as among the rest of the Gentiles.
Now there, interestingly enough, is a reference to something we might have missed. Paul writes to this church in Rome as if it is primarily a Gentile church. There's a reference to it right there. But he also speaks, remember he is the great apostle to the Gentiles, he speaks of the gospel to the Gentiles right here. Look at verse 14: “I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.” Now at different points. Paul talks about his indebtedness to both Jews and Greeks, or Jews and Gentiles. Later, he will speak of the gospel being for the Jew first and also for the Gentile or for the Greek. But here he speaks of two different classifications of Gentiles. There are the Greeks and there's everyone else. Well, you know enough ancient history to say, well, there really isn't any great Greek empire at this point. 
In fact, the Greek city states have disappeared. Athens has lost its glory. It's no longer the center of the world. So what's this about the Greek and the barbarian? Well, it has to do with the language. And that language, the Greek language, and Greek philosophy, and Greek thought as being the foundation of what will become Roman thought. And remember that at this point the Latin language is at its earliest stages. It has not yet achieved even parity with the Greek language among the educated classes. That will not come for another 300 or 400 years. At that point, Latin became the major language of the Western world, leaving the Greek language as a matter of mostly antiquarium concern. But at this point, Greek is the language of wisdom. Greek is the language of philosophy, of literature, of knowledge. If you have culture and you're educated, you are familiar with the Greek language.
And when he is speaking of the Greeks, he's not speaking of those who have Greek surnames. He's not speaking of people who are even from Greece. He's not speaking of those identified with Greek culture. He's speaking of those who are adept at the Greek language. They're the sophisticated ones. They're the ones, by the way, who could read Paul's letters written in Greek. But he speaks here of an obligation, both to the Greeks and to barbarians.
Now that's an interesting word. And you know, these days, when we think of barbarians, we tend to think of what, I don't know, Conan, or something like that. I've not seen the movie, but I know the title. You know, in other words, the barbarian was an unsophisticated, violent person. And the barbarians were largely unsophisticated. And they were often violent. 
But they got their name, not because they acted barbarically, that came later, but because their language was considered so rudimentary and crude that to the Greeks, it just sounded like “bar bar, bar, bar, bar,” like lots of gutturals. And then, so they just said, all right, bar bar, you're a barbarian. And so when the Greeks talked about barbarians, that was the ultimate put down. If you are a barbarian, you are a knuckle-dragging ignoramus from the provinces. You were people from the Hills. You were the cousins who were the bumpkins. You were unlettered, unsophisticated, and you couldn't even speak a decently language. Much less read any language. 
But the barbarians were on the outskirts of the Roman empire. At least at this point, they came into what we might call the in-skirts in the fourth century. But at this point, they're on the outskirts. And the barbarians were seen as, well, let's put it this way: If you were a Roman citizen, you saw the world divided between Rome and everything else. And what differentiated Rome from everything else was that Rome was the culture, was the literature, was the language, was the inheritance of Greek, and of Greek philosophy and Greek culture. But everything else is darkness, ignorance, and backwards. Paul here writes that he is under an obligation, that is a gospel obligation, both the Greeks and the barbarians.
Now you have read that one a little carefully. Paul's saying here, yeah, I can't wait to get to Rome in order to see all you sophisticated people. I can't wait to get to Rome. I know you're there at the center of the capital city of the empire. I'm really driven by a gospel fervency, a divine commission, to get to you. But I also want to tell you that I am under obligation, not only to you, but also to the barbarians. Also to those you would consider backwards or even foolish. Look at verse 14: “I am under obligation, both the Greeks and the barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.” 
Now don't read this carelessly. This doesn't mean that Paul says I'm going to be reaching out to people of all different IQ levels. I'll be ministering to the mensa society, of the super eggheads, and I'll also be dealing with people who can barely count with their toes and their fingers. No, that’s not what he's talking about. He’s not talking about intelligence. He is talking about language and culture. Because foolishness is what Imperial Rome, or what we might better call Greco Roman culture saw everything else. Foolishness. Come to 1 Corinthians chapter one. We will encounter that again. 
So in verse 15: “For my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also, who are in Rome.” He's preached everywhere else. He preached in the hinterlands, an Asia Minor. He's been preaching it in some of what we would now know as increasingly Western Europe. He has reached as far as what is now known as Greece, he has been in places like Corinth and other major Greek cities. He had even been to Athens as in Acts chapter 17. So Paul had been preaching to the sophisticated and to the unsophisticated, to the cultured and the uncultured, to the Greek and to the barbarian, to the Jew and to the Gentile. Paul has been preaching the ministry of the gospel to all, his ministry has been the gospel for all. And now when he comes to verse 16, he says “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” 
Now what's Paul doing here? I'm not ashamed, he says, of the gospel. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. I'm not ashamed of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm not ashamed of this message of salvation. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Why does Paul say that? Does it come as somewhat of a surprise that he would make a statement that is more in the negative than in the positive? You know, in other words, he doesn't say I'm proud of the gospel. He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. 
I would submit to you that I think the reason for that is implicit in what Paul's already written. And that is the charge of the Roman church that he has not yet come to Rome to preach the gospel. Why Paul, is it? Is there some fear in Paul to come? Is it because there is some lack of boldness in Paul? Is this a strategic decision on Paul's part? Paul wants to be very clear. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. When I get to Rome, it's this gospel I'm going to preach. I can't wait to get to you. And when I get to you, I'm going to preach the gospel just as I preached it in every city from Damascus and Jerusalem, all the way to Thessalonica, Philippi, the cities of Asia Minor, Corinth, and all the rest. 
This is the heart of where Paul begins his exposition of the gospel itself. He says, first of all, that's the very center of my ministry. It's the center of my message. That's what I'm going to preach. That's what I'm all about. That's my passion. That's my heart. When I arrive in Rome, I'm going to preach the gospel. And there's another instrumental phrase that comes right after that, “for it is the power of God for salvation.”
There isn't any other salvation. There isn't any other power. Paul says, when I get to Rome, I'm going to preach the same gospel I have preached everywhere else. The very heart of my ministry, he says, it's the gospel. When I come to you, I'm not going to be about politics. I'm not going to be about culture. I'm not going to be about education. I'm not going to be about all those things. I am going to be about the gospel. 
The one thing the church must always get right before it can get anything else right is the gospel. The gospel is the absolute fundamental, the absolute foundation. If we do not get the gospel right we cannot possibly get anything else right. That's why Paul spends so much time here in the book of Romans setting out what the gospel is and what the gospel is not. He wants the church in Rome to understand the gospel, to embrace the gospel, to teach and to preach the gospel, and to guard the gospel.
He says, I'm not ashamed of it. And in the Greco Roman rhetorical tradition, that's not a defensive statement. That is a very bold statement. In that culture, that was a way of saying, I want to draw a line, a very bold and dramatic line, a bright red line, right here to say, I am going to preach this gospel. In it there is no shame. There is nothing to be ashamed of. It's the gospel I'm going to preach, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. 
In that phrase, to everyone who believes, it has a double meaning. Number one, everyone who believes is transformed by this gospel. Everyone, that's everyone in Paul's preaching. Everyone, or anyone who comes to Christ by faith, will be saved. Whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord will be saved. That's the everyone. It's unconditional. It doesn't say Jew, Greek lettered, unlettered, wise, foolish, according to the culture of the day. Everyone who believes, believes this gospel. 
But that's the second commonality here. Everyone who is saved is saved by this gospel. There's no other way of salvation. There's no other gospel that saves. Everyone who is saved comes to God through Christ by this gospel, the gospel Paul preaches. But he preaches it with a sense of priority. And the priority is to the Jew first and also to the Greek. There have been some who suggested that this is just a chronological reference, just an historical fact. Paul's just saying, look, the gospel was preached first to the Jews before it was preached to the Gentiles. It was Jesus, a Jew in the flesh, who shared the gospel, first of all, with his apostles, his disciples, who became the apostles of the church. And they proclaimed the faith first to the Jews of Jerusalem before going on to Samaria and Judea and the uttermost parts of the world.
But that's not what Paul's really dealing with here. He's really dealing with an intentional priority. In other words, the gospel was intended to be preached to the Jews first. And then through the Jews to the rest of the world, Paul is a Jew. It's by no accident, it's by the providence and sovereignty of God. 
This is one of the things we need to remember is that the gospel was preached first to the Jewish people, not just as a historical accident, but by God's sovereign plan. It will be preached first to the children of Christ’s own people, to the sons of Abraham. It will be preached first of all to those who were his own. And that's why in the prologue to the Gospel of John, you have that statement that says “he came into his own and his own received him not, but to all who received him to them gave you power to become the sons of God.”
So in other words, there was a pattern of the gospel being preached first to the Jews, and then an increasing pattern of Jewish rejection of the gospel that led to an opening, we know from the book of Acts, to the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles.
Paul's doing a little church history here, but he's also doing a little theology lesson, a little doctrinal correction. To say that we are indebted to the Jewish people for the preaching of the gospel. And there is a priority to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Then in verse 17, he says “For in it,” that is in the gospel, “the righteousness of God has revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the righteous man shall live by faith.” There's justification by faith, and there is more than we can handle on this Sunday morning. And so this is where we will pick it up the next time as we are studying here in the book of Romans. But we're going to go back just a little bit to put all this into context, and to look at verse 17, not so much as it points forward, but as it concludes a part of an argument here: “For, in it,” that is in the gospel, “the righteousness of God is revealed from fed faith to faith.”
Now, this is something new, at least in the book of Romans, thus far, this mention of the righteousness of God. Now, if you were a Jewish Christian, you would be completely unsurprised by Paul's reference to the righteousness of God in this way. Because the big issue in the Jewish mind was righteousness. That was the fundamental issue. How could one be made right with God? The sacrificial system was a way of pointing to that righteousness, but there was clearly a misunderstanding. There was an effort of human righteousness. The law was intended, as Paul said, to be our tutor, to teach us of our sinfulness. It was never capable of leading human beings to achieve a righteousness that would be acceptable to God. Paul will, in later chapters, even in later verses of this chapter, make the universality of our sin so clear as the background to that assessment.
So what is the righteousness of God here? Now  I said it wouldn't surprise the Jewish people because the way that the Jewish mind first understood the gospel was very clearly, as demonstrated in the book of Hebrews, in the fact that Christ is our righteousness. Our righteousness, as Paul said, is as filthy rags. There's no righteousness in us. We are incapable of achieving that righteousness that will be acceptable to God, but Christ achieved that righteousness being the sinless one who died in our place, as the God-man in his perfect obedience, his active and his passive obedience in the cross, his resurrection from the dead. His righteousness is then imputed to us. And thus we are righteous. The Jewish mind would understand that as the first and foremost issue in our salvation It wasn't clear that the Romans understood the gospel in the same way. 
As we will continue through our study through the book of Romans, you're going to see at critical junctures in the text, for instance, in Romans 3, and in Romans 5, and in Romans 8, that Paul will be involved in some pretty pointed correction, that's more than implicit in the text, of perhaps how the Romans had come to understand the gospel. But right up front here, he hints to them with this issue of the righteousness of God, that the righteousness of God is what is demonstrated in the gospel itself. Now this phrase, the righteousness of God, in 1:17, again, has a double meaning. 
How many times have we already seen in different verses just between one and 17 in this chapter that there's often a double meaning. And it is because Paul is using some of the most loaded vocabulary in the Christian language. 
The righteousness of God means two things. And it does almost everywhere you encounter it in the New Testament. It means, first of all, God's own righteousness. That is his own attribute. This is his characteristic, the truth about him, that he is absolutely righteous. 
Now, let me ask you a question. How is God righteous? Is it that God measures up to an external standard? Is there some kind of standard out there in the universe of righteousness, some kind of stacked pole and God perfectly matches that? No, there's nothing outside him. You can't measure God by any other standard. He is the standard. So what is righteousness? It's who God is. That's the only way we know what righteousness is. Our concept of righteousness must be derived from the character of God. We cannot come to understand the character of God from our arbitrary idea of righteousness. 
Now, let me just put in a little footnote here, pastorally. This is the only fundamental answer we have. And it is a fully adequate answer we have. When someone says, how could God do that? Or how could God allow that to happen? The question of theodicy. And they say, well, you know, a righteous God could not do that. Or a just God could not allow that to happen. What is a person who makes that judgment doing? They have in their mind an idea of righteousness. And they're saying, God fails to live up to that standard. Therefore, he is not righteous. Well, that's backwards. Where do we come up with such a standard? I hear this all the time. You can come across this virtually every single day if you read the right things. Where people say, well, you know, we have to have a God that will live up to our standards.
Well our standards have to match God's. We have to go the right direction. This is the  self-revealed God, the creator of the universe. Now, where do we think we come up with an idea of justice or righteousness or mercy or grace or holiness? And then we're going to see if God measures up to that? It's an idol of our own mind. There's not some kind of cosmic bank of realities, like righteousness, that we draw off from and say, let's see if God measures up to it. 
Righteousness in the Hebrew sense is absolute alignment with God. It is God's absolute alignment with his own character. That means he is fully righteous. And our righteousness would have to be as righteous as is his, if we were going to be acceptable in his sight. And of course that's an impossibility. 
So the second meaning as in verse 17 of the phrase, the righteousness of God, is about the righteousness that God gives those who come to Christ in faith. So the first meaning is always God's own righteousness, his own personal possession, that absolute righteousness. And then the second meaning throughout the entire New Testament, where you see this phrase, the righteousness of God, it refers to that righteousness which is made ours, declared to be ours imputed to us, that is the righteousness of Christ that becomes the believers by faith. 
Now we aren't given it as if it's something we have earned or deserved. That would be the antithesis of the gospel. It's declared to be ours by God the Father, the Holy Judge, who imputes that it declares his own son's righteousness to be ours. That's the only righteousness that will save, that’s the only righteousness that will suffice. That's Paul's concern here, writing to the Romans. Maybe they don't quite understand the righteousness of God and thus, they do not fully understand the work of Christ is related to that righteousness.
Paul's going to set them straight and verse 17, he throws them in the deep end of the theological pool. After his greeting, after his apostolic blessing, after his explanation of why he has not yet arrived there, after he says he is not ashamed of the gospel, he kicks them in the deep end of the pool and says “for in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written. But the righteous man shall live by faith.” 
When we pick up next time, we're going to be talking about justification by faith, how it's rooted here in this very text, how Paul is going to explicate and expound this in all the verses that continue. But right now, look at this one clause in verse 17: “the righteousness of God is revealed,” how? “From faith to faith.” 
Now you could read that and say, well, now, that sounds like interesting theological poetry, “from faith to faith.” You could put that to music. It could become a hymn. What is he talking about here? He makes it very clear. These things are understood only by those who are regenerated. These things are understood only by those who are redeemed. You can only understand the gospel in this sense from the inside, not from the outside.
It only makes sense to those who have come to Christ by faith in terms of the fullness of the gospel and how it works. When we share the gospel, we speak of these things. We explain the work of Christ. We explain the absolutely insurmountable problem of our sin. We speak about the holiness of God. We speak about God's provision in Jesus Christ. We speak about the necessity of believing in Christ and coming to Christ by faith. And we speak of the promises of our salvation. 
But, you know, it's only when regeneration has taken place, when Christ has come into the heart and has transformed life, that full understanding begins to come of all of these things. And that full understanding is expressed from faith to faith. It is on the basis of faith we are drawn to the gospel. It's in the power of faith that we are kept in the gospel. It is the faith that is God's gift. These things are revealed “from faith to faith, just as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith.” Quoting Habakkuk  2:4. Faith, it's where it begins and ends with Paul. He speaks of the faith, of the content of the faith, of the demonstration of the faith, and of the essence of the faith in this doctrine we know this as justification by faith. 
We have seen 17 verses in the opening chapter in the book of Romans. Every one of these verses is laden with incredible meaning and with great depth. One of my favorite scholars of the book of Romans suggests that Paul, if he had not been so miraculously and marvelously claimed by the gospel, would've been remembered in Jewish history as a legal prosecutor. That is as the persecutor of the church. Not only that, it appeared that Paul was an innovator in terms of using new prosecutorial tools in order to persecute the church. He had a legal mind. He  talks like an attorney. He makes his case like an attorney. He's doing that right here. 
But of course he was gloriously saved by the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. He met Christ on the Damascus road. And now he's using all those tools that God put in him, as he was trained by Gamaliel, the great teacher of the law, he's using all these tools to make an argument and like an attorney, getting ready to set up his entire case in these verses. Paul has been speaking to the church in Rome saying, I'm gonna give you an advanced word of what I'm going to do when I come to you.
But because I have been delayed in coming to you, I'm going to send you this letter. And of course it is a massive letter. And he says, I'm going to tell you that it's going to be about faith. It's going to be about the righteousness of God. And after greeting them in such a wonderfully apostolic way, speaking to them, both as Jews and his Greeks, telling them of his desire to be with them in explaining his delay. And then going on to say, when he does arrive with him, it's going to be to impart a gift, even as he hopes to receive a gift. He says, folks, it all comes down to the gospel. And I want to nail this down before I come to you. Paul is saying, I want you to have all of this clearly understood and embraced, caught, and confessed before I come to visit with you.
It's just too important to wait until I can arrive to you. The gospel, in terms of this content, the faith once for all delivered to the saints, is going to precede Paul to Rome. But when Paul arrives in Rome, literally in Caesar's custody, the church will have received all of this and will already have been taught. 
In all likelihood, Paul never would have had the opportunity to preach as freely as might have been the case, had he not been Caesar's prisoner. But remember, when you do come to the end of the book of Acts, we are told that Paul, even in Caesar's custody, was able to preach the gospel and was preaching in the churches. But they had already received this gospel. And when he came to them as the Apostle, he was able to apply this gospel to them. 
Our Father, we are so thankful for this Word, how fresh and alive it is as it speaks to us and how it challenges us even today. Father, as we follow through this book, verse by verse and word by word, may you apply it to our hearts. That we would be more Christlike, more faithful, and every day more a demonstration of the faith. For it is in the name and in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

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Well, we are continuing our study in the book of Romans. And there's no way to understand the present, as we ought to understand our times, then by looking back in the eternal word of God to how we should understand the earliest consciousness, experiences, and convictions of the church. And no better place for that than in Romans. It is a thrill to begin our study. We've anticipated this for a long time. 
The book of Romans stands right there in the center of the New Testament as that great book without which we would not know so much. Every single word of Scripture is inspired and every word is fully inspired. There's no extraneous material. No book is more important than other books in terms of the inspiration. But in terms of helping us to understand the rest of the story, the book of Romans is so essential because it gives us that synthesis we need.
And you know, what a synthesis is, is when the arguments all come together and are laid out in a way that is comprehensive. We can understand that here. Paul is going to give us the big view of the gospel itself, but he's also going to deal with the actual way the gospel works. And that's what's so important. It's not just enough to say Jesus saves. 
Now you have say that, that's the very heart of the gospel. But Paul tells us not only that he saves, but Paul goes to great length in this book to tell us how he saves and thus how it is the church is to live as a redeemed people in the world. Last week, we started looking at some of the background issues because there's no way to understand what's going on in the book of Romans without understanding why Paul wrote the letter, who Paul was, and where this took place in the chronology of Paul's ministry.
Now, as you will remember, when we looked at this last week, we talked about the fact that there are internal and external clues as to when Paul wrote this book. And we're looking at a period between 54 and 58 AD. So this is very early in the life and experience of the early church; you're talking about in the midpoint of the first century. But this is also something of the midpoint of the Apostle Paul's career as the Apostle to the Gentiles. What is behind him? 
Well, according to the very last chapter of the book of Romans, in Romans chapter 16, we find out that Paul tells us that what lies behind him is the ministry to the east, the ministry to the churches of Asia Minor. And so we have all these churches from Cortinh to Thessolanica, to Philippi. That's where Paul has been giving so much of his attention after his conversion.
And we're gonna trace that in just a moment. After his conversion, he spent so much time there in these missionary journeys, in what we call Asia Minor, or what would today be called Turkey. Now that is completed, it's completed for two reasons. 
Let's think about that for a moment. Two reasons. The first reason is that there are churches planted right there. And so Paul can look back at his ministry in Asia Minor and know that he has left churches and they are not only churches that are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. They are churches that are beginning to thrive and they have leadership and they have a grasp of the gospel. And they're beginning to show the fruit of congregational life. Paul is sending people like Timothy, men he raised up to be the leaders of these churches. And as you follow through the Old Testament, read the letters, and read the book of Acts, you can see that we have in Asia Minor, what we now know is Turkey, are thriving churches. 
There is in Jerusalem a church, and in many ways that is the mother church, of course, of all the rest of the churches that will emerge in the first century. But the other reason Paul's ministry to the east is finished is because God is giving him an open door to ministry to the west. And that means Rome and points westward from there. And what is west from Rome in the Roman empire is the territory known as Gual, and Gaul is today, mostly what we would call France, but also a good deal of Southern Spain. And it is a tremendous territory in which Europeans are beginning to think of themselves as a part of the Roman empire. And by the end of Paul's ministry, the gospel had been preached in Gual.
That is an amazing thing, that by the end of the first century, not by Paul, but by others, he would send and would be sent out from these churches, the gospel will reach what we now know as the British Isles. Just imagine that in one century, in the ancient world, the gospel would spread so quickly to the far east, we know the gospel will get as far as what we now call India. And then as far west and north, as not only Gual or modern day France, but also in England, what we would now call the British Isles. 
But we need to pick up on who Paul was. This is where we left off last week, because in order to understand the book of Romans we have to understand its author. Paul's personality, his testimony, and his chronology is so important. Here. We are reminded that he was born into a Jewish family.
One of the most important aspects of his biography, this is exactly where we left off last week, is the fact that he was a Roman citizen. He was a Roman citizen by birth, which meant that someone in his family in a generation past had done some extraordinary service for the empire and the emperor had, or at least on the emperor's authority, Roman citizenship had been given to Paul's family. That was an incredible honor. And as we shall see, it plays out as an enormous privilege or right, for Paul. For instance, a Roman citizen could not be flogged. And a Roman citizen had a right of immediate appeal to Caesar. So if on penalty of death, as Paul was later to face a trial and penalty of death, he's able to appeal to Caesar. 
Now the Apostle Paul seizes every single moment for the gospel. For example, when he was chained to a member of the Praetorian guard, he says, this is great. This is the most interesting form of evangelism. It's an unexpected form of evangelism. This guy can't get away from me. He is chained to me. And not only that, but the man who's chained to me is a member of Caesar's household. I am able to evangelize Caesar's household by Caesar's accidental plan. And eventually he gets to confront Cesar himself, although that is not given to us at the end of the book of Acts, we know that it's coming. We do not have a record of exactly what happened there, but Paul was very proud of his Roman citizenship, as well as of his Jewish roots. And as you look at texts like Acts 16:39 and Acts 22:3, and the first chapter of Galatians, Paul will make a great deal out of his Roman citizenship. And he will use it to the fullest, as a way of getting to Rome to see Caesar.
But Paul is also raised as a Jewish boy, a Jewish young man. And both in Tarshish, and later in Jerusalem, he will receive the very finest Jewish education. So what we have in Paul is this incredible intersection of the Roman and Jewish worlds. Now, in the providence of God, who better to minister as the great Apostle to the Gentiles than a man whose life situation and biography will represent the intersection of the Greek and the Jewish worlds. It has to be a man who understands the Jewish world or he can't possibly be the great missionary to the Gentiles and do that effectively, if he himself is not a Jew. Because he becomes the transitional figure on the basis of his Jewishness to say:  this is a gospel for Gentiles as well. But he also has to have some credibility. He has to have mobility. He has to have the status that the Roman citizenship would give him. It is clear in the providence of God that long before the Apostle Paul ever came to life, God had prepared him for this particular service. Put him in just the right place, born to just the right parents, having just the right education and just the right experiences. But of course, I am speaking somewhat anachronistically here because I am referring to this man as Paul. 
And the reality is of course that if we had known him as a boy, and if we had known him as a young man, we would not have called him Paul, but we would've called him Saul. Now he was of the tribe of Benjamin.  Saul, as we have indicated last week, was the most illustrious member of that tribe, the first king of Israel, a man whose reign was marked by both greatness and humiliation, but without doubt, the name Saul was the primary name of the entire tribe.
When you name your boy Saul, and you're from the tribe of Benjamin, you expect great things from this young man. His parents obviously expected great things from Saul. Saul began his life and was educated, as we've said, in Tarshish and in Jerusalem. He studied with Gamaliel, according to the strictest interpretation of the ancestral law, as he himself referred. And then having reached adulthood, it is interesting that his young adulthood coincides with the events concerning Jesus the Christ in Jerusalem. Now it is clear that Saul was on the inside track for leadership in the church. 
You know, every once in a while, you can just look at someone and you are going to know this kid is meant for greatness. I mean, this kid is meant for some kind of leadership. I can remember one time, long ago, getting to know an elementary school principal. And he said, every once in a while you see a kid, and this guy had been in the public schools for 40 years, he said, “every once in a while you see a kid and you know, this guy is going to be the president or the godfather one, or, two, he's going to run something. He's either gonna run the mafia or he is going to be a four star general running the military, but one way or another, this kid's going to go somewhere.”
And that must have been the way that Saul looked to those who observed him. It's clear that he was on the inside track, not only in terms of education, but also in terms of his leadership potential. But how does he employ that leadership? That's the big question. How do we come to know Saul in the first place? We know him before his conversion. And that is because he used his leadership, as this young Roman trained, Gamliel trained, Jewish leader, as a persecutor of the church.
The first reference we have to the Apostle Paul, who was then known as Saul, is in the stoning of Stephen, where we are told that Saul had been ransacking the church. And it is at the stoning of Stephen in the book of Acts that Saul actually holds the cloaks of those who do the stoning. Now that is more than symbolic because in the holding of the cloak, that's a way where Saul doesn't have to do the dirty work, he just saw to it that it was done. Now that's an interesting model of leadership right there. He had agitated the crowd in order to stone Steven, but he himself did not throw the stones. Instead, he held the cloaks of those who did the same, but he was known as a persecutor of the church. That's very important. He talks about it himself. Look at Galatians chapter one.
Paul reveals something about himself in virtually every one of his letters, but in Galatians, probably because he was so agitated at the Galatian church, he's very honest about these things. Look at verse 13 and following, “For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions.” 
Now we can follow that through to great profit, but for the sake of time, we're going to end there and just say that in this very revelatory statement, Paul, referring to his previous life, as Saul, says, he was zealous above all his peers. He was zealous for the traditions of his countrymen. In other words, in Saul's persecution of the church, you had a combination of what he saw as Jewish patriotism and a zeal to protect the orthodoxy of his day.
And that meant persecuting the church because the temple authorities, the Jewish authorities, had hardened their hearts against Jesus. They had rejected him as the Son of God and as savior. They had been complicit with the Jews in leading to his crucifixion. Saul was out to defend the temple and its authorities and to oppose this new movement known as Christianity. 
We have another indication of this in 1 Corinthians 15, another statement by Paul, this great chapter that of course refers to the resurrection. That's the central point. In first Corinthians 15, we come across Paul making the argument that the gospel comes with priority. The first priority of the gospel we have in verse three, “For I delivered to you as a first importance, what I also received that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. And that he was buried. And he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures.” 
Now this is, again, Paul's absolute irreducible minimum of the gospel. You can't get the gospel any shorter or smaller than this. You can't leave anything that Paul has just said out and still have the gospel; it is a first priority. This is what you have to nail down first of all. And of course, this is a direct reputation of everything Paul had stood for during his career as the persecutor of the church, but he's going to refer to that. He speaks to the appearances of Jesus in verse six. First we want to go back to verse five, “ he appeared to Cephas,” that’s Peter, Cephas meaning rock, “and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James then to all the Apostles,” not look at verse 8 “And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also for, I am the least of the Apostles and not fit to be called an Apostle because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am. And his grace toward me did not prove vain, but I labored even more than all of them yet. Not I, but the grace of God with me.” 
Interesting, isn't it? This is the Apostle Paul's Popeye verse, “I am what I am” in verse 10, where you have Paul giving his testimony here and saying, listen, I don't deserve to be an Apostle. I don't deserve any of this. By definition we do not deserve grace. And Paul says that if there's anyone who must be reminded that he doesn't deserve grace it is I. But he says, but I am what I am. By human qualification I shouldn't mean Apostle. Why should the persecutor of the church become the leader of the church? But this is God's church, and God does what he pleases in his church. And God pleased to turn the persecutor into the Apostle. And that's exactly what took place here.
This persecution of the church had been largely localized first in Jerusalem. In Acts chapter eight, we are told that Paul was actually dragging men and women out of their homes and persecuting them there in Jerusalem. Bringing them for trial, harassing them, flogging them, imprisoning them, trying to put it into this movement. 
But Paul's zeal as a persecutor. And you might even think of him as a prosecutor, just think of him as legally serving something like the function of a district attorney in our legal system; he is out to find criminals and to bring them for trial. The reach of his persecution or prosecution eventually goes beyond Jerusalem. And that is what leads to his conversion. 
Paul was headed to Damascus. Now I should not pass by us very quickly. Damascus is in what is now known as Syria. It's far to the north, it's outside Jewish territory. It was actually outside Jewish law. 
You can understand the persecution according to Jewish law in Jerusalem, but this is going far outside Jerusalem, where there was a large Jewish community, nonetheless Damascus, and Saul's determination to put an end to this Christian movement, this thing known as “The Way” the followers of Jesus Christ, his zeal led him to go to the chief priest with an unusual request for a warrant to go all the way to Damascus in order to round up the Jews who were believers in Christ there, and bring them back to Jerusalem for prosecution. Now, unless you just let that go by you, that is an almost breathtaking act of audacity. Just imagine that this is going that far out of Jerusalem, going into a different country, into a different region, into Gentile territory, just in order to arrest Jews who were followers of the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Paul is way out on a limb here, or Saul, way out on a limb here. The extremity, the arrogance of his persecution is now almost on some kind of manic or maniacal level. The chief priest gives him the warrant and he goes to Damascus. But in Acts chapter 9, and it's good that we should turn there, in Acts chapter 9, what happens is not at all what Saul has planned. It is now that we understand that Saul is going to be a different man. When he gets to Damascus, he will not be a percutor of the church. He will be a member of the church. In Acts chapter 9, we come across Saul's conversion. “Now Saul, still breathing, threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus so that he found any belonging to the way,” that's the way the Christians referred to there, “there both men and women. He might bring them bound to Jerusalem. As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ And he said, ‘Who are you Lord?’ And he said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city. And it will be told to you what you must do.’
The men who traveled with him stood speechless, hearing the voice, but seeing no one. Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing. And leading him by the hand, they brought him into Damascus and he was three days without sight and neither ate nor drank. Now, there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias, and the Lord said to him in a vision ‘Ananias.’ And he said, ‘Here am I Lord?’” 
Now, that goes all the way back to Samuel. That's the traditional Jewish way that the Lord gets the man's attention, through a dream, “Here am I Lord,”  also in Isaiah chapter six. 
“And the Lord said to him, get up and go to the street called Straight and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarshish named Saul for he is praying.” 
Okay, let's just stop there for a minute. You may have been with us when we went through the book of Acts verse by verse, that was several years ago.
In fact, we were in the book of Acts for several years, but nonetheless, when you look back to Acts chapter nine, here, you have a real sympathy for this man, Annaias. The Lord speaks to you, just imagine in a dream, you know of this fire breathing persecutor of the church, named Saul in Jerusalem, and you've heard no doubt that he's coming to Damascus to arrest Christians. And in the middle of the night, a vision from the Lord comes to you and says, “I want you to see this man named Saul from Tarsus.” That's no ordinary command. 
“He's praying, the Lord told Ananais, and he has seen in a vision, a man named Ananais coming in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight. And Ananais answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to your Saint to Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call on your name.” 
So Ananais does know the church in Damascus had one way or another been alerted to exactly why Saul was coming and what his intention was. “But Ananais said, ‘Lord, I've heard from many about this man, how much harm he did to your saints in Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call in your name.’ But the Lord said to him, ‘Go for, he is a chosen instrument of mine to bear my name before the Gentiles and Kings and the sons of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.’”  
Well, we know the rest of that story. Ananais did what the Lord commanded him to do. And indeed Saul was given his sight. He is then later called Paul to represent the change in his life. Much like Simon is named Peter representing a transition and in some  places and in periods in history of the church, Christians were given new names just to represent this change of life.
But it's interesting in this command to Ananais, the Lord tells this Jewish man named Ananias in Damascus, why he is to do this. And the commission here is very important, because he says in verse 15, “Go for he is a chosen instrument of mine to bear my name among the Gentiles and Kings and the sons of Israel.” It's interesting there, look at that commission. Let's take it apart for a minute. 
He is an instrument of mine to bear my name among whom? Among the Gentiles and Kings and the sons of Israel. So the Apostle Paul will have a ministry to his fellow Jews. That's the last  part of this commission. And that's very important because there will actually come a time when Saul, now Paul, is going to have to stare down Peter, the great leader of the church in Jerusalem, on the question of the Gentiles.
So you're going to have Paul as an authority, as a believer, correcting another believer, establishing the purpose of the gospel there among the Jews as well. But it also says he is going to be an instrument for the gospel among the Gentiles. Paul will become the great Apostle to the Gentiles. He will call himself that. He will come to know that that is why God has called him, transformed him, saved him, redeemed him, and given him this particular commission. It's because there's no one else who is situated as he is now to do this. But the third part of this is interesting, is it not? Because we are told that Paul will have a ministry for the sake of the gospel to Kings. To Kings. Now that's quite a promise, but it literally comes to pass before  Agrippa. Before other Kings, Paul will have the opportunity to share the gospel. And that is also tracked through the book of acts. 
His conversion in chapter nine is not only a transition from being a persecutor of the church to being a leader of the church, it is his regeneration. It is a complete change of life. And in this passage you have this magnificent display of God's grace in the life of the Apostle Paul. 
Let's look at Galatians chapter 3 for just a moment. Paul gives us a commentary on this in Galatians chapter 3, look at verse 10 through 14: 
“For as many as are of the works of the law are under a curse for, as it is written ‘cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law to perform them.’ Now we know that no one is justified by the law before God is evident, for the righteous man shall live by faith. However, the law is not of faith. On the contrary, whoever practices them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us. For it is written ‘cursed as everyone who hangs on a tree,’ in order that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we would receive the promise of the spirit through faith.” 
In this little passage, we just read, Paul ends up giving his warrant for going to the Gentiles, but he also does, making clear, and this is what we need to understand up front, that that's what the Jews should have understood from the beginning. That's Paul's point here in Galatians 3:  They should have understood that the gospel was for the Gentiles from the beginning, even in the Abrahamic covenant. God says through Abraham, I will bless all nations through you.
It is a blessing to Israel first, yes, but it's not just for Israel. It is a blessing that is to go beyond. I wanted us to look at those few verses from Galatians 3, because the man who could write that is a man whose mind has been completely changed from the persecutor of the church to the ambassador of grace to the Gentiles. This is a man whose entire worldview got turned upside down. And now he writes with such forcefulness about the ministry of the gospel over against the ministry of the law. What was old has passed away. It has been fulfilled in Christ. Paul is now the Apostle to the Gentiles, and that will be his role and function in the church. He will lead this westward expansion. He will lead in the establishment of Gentile churches, and eventually he will get to Rome. But before he arrives there, he writes the saints, the church in Rome. And that's the letter we have. 
And so very quickly let's begin looking right at the text of the book of Romans. We now know to whom it was written. To a church, as we saw last week, that was at one time largely Jewish but is now largely Gentile because of the expulsion of the Jews from Rome.
We know about when it was written: somewhere between AD 54 and 58. And we know who wrote it. The human instrument of this writing was the Apostle Paul. Now we can look at the text itself. 
“Paul, a bond servant of Christ Jesus called as an Apostle set apart for the gospel of God.” 
First word is Paul. You often hear the letters and the New Testament referred to as the epistles, the epistle of Paul to this, or the epistle of Paul to those. The Greek word for letter is simply epistle. But the whole category of epistles or letters was well known in the ancient world. Letters functioned in that world differently than in hours. 
Now, every once in a while, we communicate something magnificent or major by means of a letter, but let's face it, we don't get big news basically by letters. Not in the day of instant communications, not in the day of the telephone, much less now in the day of television and email, and satellite transmission and everything else. Rarely do we open a letter in order to find out some magnificent momentous news. 
But in the ancient world, the letter was the main means whereby communication was made. Now, this is something that people who lived just a hundred years ago could have well understood. As a matter of fact, one of the sad things in terms of a historical perspective is how little is going to be known by reading our letters, because we don't write that many. Or the letters we write are largely perfunctory or courtesy. There's not a great deal of material in them in terms of news. But you can't imagine, I don't think any of us can imagine, what it was like to live in a world in which you heard so little.
A letter coming from someone like the Apostle Paul would mean everything. In the traditional style of letters in the first century, you began the letter with your own name. Now, frankly, I think that makes more sense than the way we write letters. You know, we put our name at the end. Well, that's great. But sometimes you have to look to the end to find out who's writing to you. Not so in the ancient world, you put your name first so that the people reading it would know for whom the letter had come. 
Let's look at how he identifies him. So he calls himself by his Christian name, Paul, but then he describes himself as a bondservant of Christ Jesus. Paul will, again and again, describe himself in two different ways. He does it right here in this very verse. On the one hand, as an Apostle. And on the other hand as a slave. 
Now, this is so important because we tend to think of authority as a matter of mere privilege, without understanding what Paul saw. And that is that authority in the church as being a form of servanthood. Now, it didn't mean that he was reluctant to exercise that authority. He will exercise it again and again. He will say, “I am an Apostle. I'm speaking on behalf of the authority of Christ himself. I'm going to define reality. I'm going to tell you what the truth is. This is the gospel, and that's not the gospel choose you today, which one you're gonna serve.” 
The Apostle Paul was not reticent to use his authority, but he understood it wasn't about himself. It's not about Paul. It is instead about Christ. Just as it was John the Baptist who pointed to Jesus said, “I must decrease that he must increase.”
Paul will say in so many different ways in his letters, “I'm not the point here, I am insignificant. It is Christ who is supremely significant.”  And he will say things like “to live is Christ, to die is gain.”  Just to point out the fact that it is Christ himself who is everything. But just as much as Paul was quick to point out that he was a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, he would all also use this apostolic authority. So you have this going back and forth. Paul puts both of these aspects here in verse one. He is a slave, a dulas. He is so much a slave to Christ that everything he knows, everything he has, everything he knows about himself, everythings he hopes for in the life to come is all due to Christ. He is Christ’s slave 
A bondservant is one who has willingly become a slave. That is one who has sold himself into slavery. Paul says, “I belong to Lord Jesus Christ.” Just like a servant would belong to his master. He identifies Christ by Christ Jesus. Now, sometimes we say Jesus Christ. Another important reminder to us that the names Christ and Jesus are just that they are names. But they are names that come as a title, especially Christ. Jesus, or what you would have as a Yeshua in the Hebrew or Aramaic dialect is a name common to the Old Testament. It's the same name that is translated as Joshua in the Old Testament. And it's a word that by itself, declares “savior.”  “Unto you shall be born this day in the city of David a savior, who is Christ the Lord. And his name shall be Jesus, which means savior.” His name was declaring his purpose, but it was a common name. And in the ancient near east, and especially in what we would call Israel, you would find others who would have the same name, the name Jesus or Yeshua, but they would not have the title Christ.
The Christ is the Messiah, the Christos, the anointed one, the promised one, Israel's consolation. So to say Christ Jesus is to make very clear you're speaking of the incarnate man known as Jesus Christ, who is also the incarnate God, son of God, who is the Messiah, the anointed one. “A bond servant of Christ Jesus called as an Apostle.” 
Paul didn't volunteer as an Apostle. What we read from 1 Corinthians 15 reminds us that Paul said I was set apart, I was commissioned, I was called. Now, I'm the least of all. I'm not worthy to be an Apostle, but ladies and gentlemen, I am an Apostle. Not because I've declared myself to be one, but because Christ Jesus has made me one. The one whose slave or bond servant  I am, he has made me an Apostle. That is defined as being set apart for the gospel of God. What is Paul's apostolate all about? His Apostleship, his purpose is for the cause of the gospel. He is set apart for the gospel of God.
In verse two, Paul gives us an extended commentary on that gospel. This is the gospel, which he…Now who's “he?” This is God the father, as we shall see, “he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning his son who is born of a descendant of David, according to the flesh.” 
Let's just stop there for a moment. Here is no longer Saul, here's Paul. How do you see the difference? Saul, the persecutor of the church, made it his business to argue that Jesus was not the son of God, could not be the Messiah, the followers of Christ were illegitimate, they could not be called Jews. They were to be corrected or imprisoned and flogged. They were to be persecuted. Now he's making the case from the other side on the basis of his own apostolic authority, he describes this gospel saying it was promised beforehand through his prophets and the Holy Scriptures.
Don't let that pass you by. Here is Paul saying we should have seen it. The Jews universally, all of us, should have recognized in Jesus Christ the absolute fulfillment of all of God's promises. He had told us beforehand what he was going to do. And he told beforehand, but listen to how he says in his prophets, in the holy Scriptures, he's referring to the Old Testament Scriptures. That's right there. He says, ladies and gentlemen, it's in black and white. We should have known it. These things in verse three “concerning his son.” So what you have in verse one is the title Christ. The anointed one. What you have in verse three is the declaration that this Christ Jesus is none other than the very Son of God. Now it's just like there in the gospel of Luke. The angels put it all together by saying a babe is born to you, a savior, who is Christ the Lord.
They have all three put together, savior, Christ, Lord, put together in the angelic declaration to the shepherds. Here you have it put together in the apostolic declaration of the Apostle Paul Christ, Jesus, Son, all there in the first three verses. But there's more: “who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh.” That is according to how you would measure or trace his earthly lineage, by descent of David, that was foretold also in the Scriptures. 
Then look at verse four, who this is, “the son was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ, our Lord.” 
Just in case we missed it all put together in the first three verses, in the next verse, verse four, he puts it all together for us again: “who was declared the Son of God.” In other words, those who were alive at the time and who witnessed his resurrection, saw the Father's declaration, that this is his son.
The declaration had come already at the baptism., “This is my son in whom I am well pleased.” But it was in the resurrection in particular that God universally said to the entire world, “This is my son.” And that is a theme that will come up again and again in the Apostle Paul's ministry, it is the resurrection that underlines for all time, universally for all peoples and all places, this is God's son. For Paul the resurrection is everything. That's why in 1 Corinthians 15, where we just read, he said, “I delivered under you that, which is a first importance, which I also received, that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. And that he was raised from the dead, according to the Scriptures.” God raised him from the dead. Without the resurrection there is no fulfillment of the prophecy. Without the resurrection there is no power of God demonstrated in him. But with the resurrection, universally, throughout all time, categorically, unquestionably, he is declared to be the Son of God.
And this was revealed to him. How? According to the spirit of holiness through Jesus Christ, our Lord. There you have Jesus, Christ, Lord–all put together. And we're only four verses into the book of Romans. It’s like he's loading it on the upfront, right as we get into the book with the serious theology, with all the serious doctrinal content, that's going to follow. He's writing to a largely Gentile church. And he said, I'm a Jew. We should have seen it. We'll declare it now to you. I'm the Apostle to the Gentiles. He's already said that I am an Apostle. I'm coming to you. And this is the message I send to you, that God showed his salvation, declared his power in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He is the very Son of God. He is the Messiah, the savior Christ Jesus, according to the spirit of holiness, we know him as Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Now in verse five, he's going to tell us that it is through him, through Christ, “we receive grace and Apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for his name's sake, among whom you also are called or the called of Jesus Christ to all who are the beloved of God in Rome called to be saints or called as saints, grace to you in peace from God, our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” 
This is where we'll pick up next week. Just let me make one comment here. If you wrote a letter in the ancient near east, in this time in the Roman empire, in the first century, you began the letter with your own name, but as you wrote the letter, you will give some kind of greeting. And the traditional greeting and the Greek language was karin, which is graciousness.
It's just like today we would say something like, “dear,”  is kind of the same thing. Dear Fred, dear Hazel, dear whatever, dear you guys. That's a gracious thing. You know, the word dear is just kind of a throwaway thing now we don't give it a whole lot of attention, but it really was intended to mean something. “You are dear to me.” And so you would write the letter that way. 
But in the ancient world, in the Roman world, you begin with something like “graciousness to you.” Well, remember that Paul is the Jew who is the Apostle to the Gentiles. He's going to show that the gospel is for Jews and for Greeks, it’s going to come very quickly here in Romans chapter 1. And by Greeks, he means Gentiles. He's going to show that he is a Jew, who is the Apostle commissioned to the Gentiles.
He doesn't use the greeting charin. Instead he uses the greeting charis. Grace. Not graciousness, but grace. A different thing altogether, grace and peace, peace, shalom. So when you come to the end of verse seven, he greets the church, both Jews and Greeks. He greets them, both Jews and Gentiles. He uses not only grace, but shalom, grace and peace. Shalom was the traditional Jewish way of greeting. Grace, a traditional, or at least a modification of the traditional Roman way of greeting. And here, Paul kind of sets it all up before the church, Jews and Gentiles together, grace and peace to you through our Lord Jesus Christ. 
Oh Lord. We pray that you would lead us into the study of your word in a way that will lead us to Christian maturity, to the expansion of your gospel.

You can find Dr. Mohler's other Line by Line sermons here.

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For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.
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You can find Dr. Mohler's other Line by Line sermons here.

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For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.
For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.

You can find Dr. Mohler's other Line by Line sermons here.

Follow Dr. Mohler:
X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.
For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.

You can find Dr. Mohler's other Line by Line sermons here.

Follow Dr. Mohler:
X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.
For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.

You can find Dr. Mohler's other Line by Line sermons here.

Follow Dr. Mohler:
X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.
For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.

You can find Dr. Mohler's other Line by Line sermons here.

Follow Dr. Mohler:
X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.
For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.

You can find Dr. Mohler's other Line by Line sermons here.

Follow Dr. Mohler:
X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.
For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.