WWUTT 1152 Greetings to the Church in Rome? (Romans 1:1-7)

The Apostle Paul loves a good run-on sentence, but perhaps no introduction to any of his letters is as theologically rich as the one we have here at the beginning of Romans, when we understand the text.

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Thank you, Becky. We have started a study in the book of Romans, and today we're going to get into the exegesis part of things. Yesterday was mostly introduction. Today we'll get to some of these verses.

Paul’s Apostolic Introduction in Romans 1:1-7

Let's begin in Romans 1, verses 1 through 7. 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. What an introduction. That was all one sentence. We start here at the very beginning with Paul identifying himself, Paul, a servant of Christ.

Jesus.

Now we're not absolutely certain when and where Paul was when he wrote this, but it was likely when he was in Corinth on his third missionary journey, sometime around AD 57. So you think about the time that Paul was in Rome, that he actually made it to Rome, which we had read about at the end of the book of Acts.

That was in the early 60s AD. So at this time, writing to the Romans was probably about five years before that. And he was in Corinth at that time. So he introduces himself as the writer of this letter, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle.

So what we're going to read here is going to be the authority of God as spoken through his apostles. The prophets were the ones who gave us the Old Testament. The apostles were the ones who gave us the New Testament.

You know, it always kind of makes me laugh whenever I see some of these ministries that pop up that will be called like red letter Christianity or red letter Christians or something that has to do with getting back to the words that Jesus actually said, those words that are written in red in the gospels.

Well that whole red letter thing didn't come about until I think it was like right at 1900 when the first red letter Bible was published. Who wrote the gospels?

Jesus?

No, it was his apostles, Matthew, John, Mark, who was a disciple of Peter's Luke, who was a disciple of Paul's. So he wrote down essentially the gospel the way that Paul wrote it. I mean, the gospel accounts are eyewitness accounts.

They came from those persons who were actually there and saw and heard the things concerning.

Our Lord.

The apostle John even talks about this in 1 John 1, those things which we have seen and heard we declare also to you. But all of the New Testament that we have is written down by the apostles. So there is no such thing as, well, these words are Jesus' words and these words are somebody else's words.

They're all the word of Christ, Old Testament and New Testament. It's all the word of Christ. But these men were carried along by the Holy Spirit to write what God wanted them to write. Peter talks about that in 2 Peter 1.

The word of an apostle was the word of God. It was the word of the king. An apostle was not that word itself, that title apostle. That's not something that's unique to Christianity. That was the man that Caesar sent out to declare a word from the emperor.

Whatever that man said, it was the same as if it had come from the emperor. If you were to assault a messenger of the king, it would be considered the same as if you were to assault the king himself. So you were to receive the word of one of the king's ambassadors, one of his apostles, one who is sent out.

That's what that word actually means. Apostle means sent one. You were to receive that word as the declaration of the king or the emperor or Caesar himself. So if Jesus is sending out his apostles, he is sending out messengers with the word of the king.

The word that we read here in Romans is every bit as much the word of Christ as the word we read in Matthew that might be written in red. Right now, I'm going through the book of Matthew in our sermon series at church, and we're just about to hit the Sermon on the Mount.

That's what I'm teaching on this coming Sunday. All that's in red from Matthew, chapter five through six and seven. You've just got the words of Christ in red. I don't use red letter Bibles, but if you have one, that's that's the color of the letters on the page.

But the book of Romans is just as much the word of Christ. And as Paul is going to lay out here a rich theology of justification by faith. This is not something that's new. It's certainly going to be something that's more opened up than we've seen previously in the New Testament or in the Bible at all.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts has not opened up to us the doctrine of justification by faith, unlike what we're going to read here in the book of Romans. It is certainly there. You just don't have the theology opened up as much as Paul does here when writing to the church in Rome.

So this word is the word of Christ sent out by his apostle to declare it to the churches. And Paul makes such a great point here in the introduction of making sure the church understands that this word comes to the Jews and to the Gentiles, the entire world of men, that they may hear the message of the gospel and turn from their sin and live.

So Paul being an apostle is not someone, you know, he's a Jew. That's his background from the tribe of Benjamin, a man who was a Pharisee, as I talked about yesterday in our introduction, a Pharisee of Pharisees, a rock star among Pharisees.

But he didn't go out for the Jews. Jesus appointed him to be a messenger not only to Jews, but especially to the Gentiles, even standing before kings and declaring the message of the gospel of Christ, which we certainly saw Paul do there at the end of the book of Acts, speaking to various governors and to King Agrippa and appealing to Caesar and being sent to Rome.

Now, all of that, of course, happened after what we're reading here. He wrote this several years before he would have undergone that whole drama that eventually led him to being put on a ship and sent out to Rome.

So here he expresses to them a desire to want to come to the Romans in chapter one, introducing himself as Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus. Now, that's a very humble introduction as well. So Paul, with the authority of an apostle, could have staked a claim on that.

He could have opened his letter up by saying, you're going to listen to what I have to say because I'm an apostle of Jesus. But instead, he introduces himself to the Romans, a church that he's never been to before, a group of Christians he's never met before.

And he introduces himself as a servant of Jesus Christ, as though to say, I am writing for your good. I am here for you. I'm doing this for your benefit. And later on in chapter one to say, I want to come to you for your benefit.

I want to be able to encourage you and that you may even encourage me. We may be mutually encouraged by one another. So introducing himself again as a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle.

This appointment that he has is not something that he aspired to or that he put himself into. Jesus called him to this. He called him to be an apostle. He has received this appointment by Christ, set apart for the gospel of God.

And this is Paul called to be an apostle set apart for the gospel of God. We read in Galatians chapter one, verse 15, when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles.

So the apostle Paul saying there even this appointment to be an apostle, this was a decision that was made before I was ever even on the scene. So before I was even a twinkle in my daddy's eye, God had appointed me for this task.

I was a rebel against God. I was putting the people of Jesus to death. And yet he showed mercy and grace to me, called me out of darkness into his marvelous light, set me apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures.

So even as Paul, this assignment, this appointment to be an apostle, even though this was decided before he was born, so the same was with the gospel. This has been the plan from before the foundation of the world that the Lord God was going to redeem his people for himself through the person in work of Jesus Christ, a plan that was set in motion before anyone ever even came to be.

Now, Paul doesn't necessarily go back that far with this introduction. He says he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures. But that's just to say, hey, this thing goes way back.

This is before my time. This is before your time or Jesus had even shown up yet. God promised this gospel, which we have heard that I am an ambassador of that I am delivering to you. God promised this through his prophets in the holy scriptures that a day would be appointed.

You would hear it and turn from your sin and believe it. The next verse, verse three, Paul continues his argument that Jesus is the fulfillment of this gospel that had been proclaimed even in the Old Testament.

So again, verse two, he says, which he promised, which God promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures. And then verse three concerning his son, who was descended from David, according to the flesh.

So we're talking about the son of God here who is ascended on high and is reigning with God in glory, seated at his right hand. But he is the Messiah who was promised, descended from David, according to the flesh.

Jesus Christ, the son of God, of course, has been reigning with God from before the foundation of the world. But the one who is seated now in power at the right hand of God is the God man. Paul is being very particular about that point and making sure we understand this is we're not just talking about the son of God who's always been reigning with the father, but we're talking now about the God man, the son of God who became God incarnate, put on flesh, dwelt among us, lived perfectly, kept the law, died a perfect death, was resurrected from the dead.

God demonstrating him to be the son of God by raising him from the dead, raising him up and seating him on high at his right hand. This is the son of God of whom we are speaking. Jesus Christ, who is the fulfillment of these things.

We're not looking for another Messiah. He is the Messiah who came, the one who is descended from David, according to the flesh. All of the prophecies that were made about this Messiah through the promises that were given to David.

So you have the Davidic covenant that God made with David in 2 Samuel chapter 7. You also look at things like Psalm 89. Consider this prophecy in Isaiah 11, 1 through 5. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, and the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide disputes by what his ears hear. But with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. And he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.

Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist and faithfulness the belt of his loins. And this prophecy that was made by Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 11 is fulfilled in Christ. All the prophecies concerning the descendant of David.

There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse. Jesus is the fulfillment of that. And this is necessary for Paul to point out here that Jesus Christ is the one who has fulfilled all the Old Testament prophets that this was declared from of old.

It is fulfilled in Christ. It's necessary for him to point that out because as he's going to be laying down some of the deep, thick doctrine that he will lay out in this particular letter, he is is trying to help the Romans understand these Roman Christians.

He's trying to help them understand what I'm telling you is not new. I did not come up with this. I am making reference back to the prophets of old, the prophecies of old, to demonstrate that all these things concerning the Messiah have been spoken of, spoken of, of old.

Did I say that right?

So all of this had been had been talked about long before. This is the fulfillment of the plan that God had established. So understand that here, that as we're laying out a doctrine of justification by faith, this is the fulfillment of Old Testament scripture.

This is the fulfillment of the prophets, the law, everything, David, Abraham, who are going to be examples that Paul is going to bring up. Examples of justification by faith. Abraham was justified by faith, not by works.

David, likewise, Paul is going to use as an example in the same chapter in Romans chapter.

Four.

So he's mentioning the name here, and then it's going to come up again in this letter. But many of those who are sitting among this church who are hearing this letter being read, they're Jews. You have Jews and Gentiles together in the church there in Rome.

Some of the disputes that Paul is going to address in this letter will be confronting those disagreements that the Gentiles and the Jews have all being part of the same church. Some of the Jews are saying, well, Jesus is our guy.

He descended from us. So therefore, you have to listen to what we say about this. And the Gentiles going, no, no, no, no, no. But you rejected that. And so now the gospel has come to us. So there was a little bit of disagreement on that basis.

And so Paul is going to address some of those things as he unfolds the doctrine that he is laying out in this particular letter. But especially as he's going to come to a declaration of justification by faith, there are going to be Jews that will contest with that because they will say, no, no, no, we've always been saved by the law.

We keep the law. That is how we gain the favor of God. And so Paul's going to have to say, we've never gained the favor of God that way. The law has never had the power to save us. It was powerless to save us.

Jesus Christ is the power that saves again. Romans 1 16. I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to all who believe. That's not just Paul making some standalone theological statement about the gospel.

It's all wrapped up in everything that he's going to talk about over the course of the letter, because, again, he's going to lay out before them that keeping the law and do and doing good works does not save you.

The gospel saves you. Believing in the gospel is the power of God for salvation. You keeping the law, you don't have the power to do that. God alone is the one who saves, which he does through Christ, who is the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets.

He is the one who was promised the promised Messiah who would be descended from David on whose throne God would establish his kingdom forever. He couldn't establish his kingdom forever on Solomon's throne.

Solomon was a mere man, not the God man. Plus, he was a wicked sinner who rebelled against God and worshiped false gods, demonstrating that this covenant promise that God made with David was not fulfilled in Solomon.

Solomon was not the fulfillment of that covenant promise, as great as the kingdom was in the days of Solomon, even greater than it was in the days of David. But Solomon was not the fulfillment of that promise.

There was another who was to come, 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. The apostle Paul, if you'll remember his sermon at the Areopagus in Acts chapter 17, he said that God has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness, and he has shown which man he's going to judge the world through by raising him from the dead.

And that's Jesus Christ, the righteous one. That was the very end of the sermon that led people to go, what? The resurrection of the dead? Are you crazy? But there were yet some Greeks who said, you know, we're going to hear you more about this.

So God demonstrating his power, according to the spirit of holiness, by raising Jesus from the dead, Jesus Christ, our Lord, through whom we have received grace, the grace of God. It is by grace you are saved through faith.

This is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of work so that no one may boast. Ephesians 2, 8 and 9. So it is through Jesus that we've received the grace of God. God has transmitted all of the treasures, the benefits, the wonderful blessings of his grace through faith in his son, Jesus Christ.

And Paul says, apostleship, through whom we have received grace and apostleship. Jesus is the one who appointed Paul to declare the things that he is going to declare. This is not according to the wisdom of Paul.

It is not according to the doctrine of any man, but it is the word of Christ. To bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations. Paul is going to say in Romans 10, 17, that faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ.

The word of Christ being declared through an apostle of Christ to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name. This is all for the glory of God, to the glory of God above. Jesus himself did all that he did for the glory of the father.

According to Philippians 2, 11, it is all to the praise of his glorious grace. For the sake of his name among all the nations, Jew and Gentile together, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

You Romans, you Romans who are the ones who are oppressing the Jews right now over in the land of Israel. The gospel has come even to you that you would belong to Jesus Christ by hearing the gospel, turning from sin, believing in Jesus.

You belong to him. This is not something that's exclusive to Jews, even though Jesus himself was a Jew, but that this message would be declared to all nations. All have sinned. All are justified by his grace.

The argument that's coming up in Romans chapter three, verse seven, 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.

How's that for an introduction? Goodness, theological richness there just in the beginning of a letter saying, hey, what's up? I want to tell you some things. And boy, did he tell us some things already in just the first seven verses here.

We'll move on to verse eight tomorrow. Heavenly father, we thank you for considering our condition. We were but objects of wrath before you. We had rebelled and sinned against God. We deserve to be cast from your presence forever.

And yet you showed us grace and mercy through your son, Jesus Christ, giving your own son to take on the likeness of sinful flesh, yet to live a perfect life, die on the cross for our sins and rise again from the grave so that all who believe in Jesus will not perish, but will have everlasting life.

What a gift from the father this is. We are undeserving of, which is why we call it grace because you have been merciful and you are good. So help us to understand these things all the more as we come into this study of the book of Romans, that we may praise your great name for it is all to your glory.

In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Amen.