Oct. 9, 2016 To All Those Loved By God by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Well, today, with God's help, we will open up the book of Romans, which we will be preaching through for quite some time.

This letter from the hand of Paul is really a magisterial work, one which, once understood, has shaken nations and brought down kings.

Luther's discovery of faith over works set in motion one of the most influential movements in all of human history, which is, of course, the

Reformation of the 16th century. And lesser -known people of a more ordinary bent, people like you, people like me, have read this epistle and seen their sin exposed and been crushed by the universal condemnation all men rightly stand under, only by this same epistle to be lifted up from the ashes of self -dependency and into the arms of a

Savior by the gospel that Paul here expounds in the book of Romans.

It is a monumental work. It took Donald Barnhouse 14 years of weekly broadcasts to get through Romans.

I read in a place that Martin Lloyd -Jones preached 114 sermons from Romans, just in chapters 5 through 8.

Thomas Drakes called it the quintessence and perfection of saving doctrine. Martin Luther called

Romans the purest gospel and commended that every Christian should read it and understand it and even memorize it and daily go through what it tells us to do.

Calvin said, when anyone gains a knowledge of this epistle, he has an entrance open to him of all the most hidden treasures of Scripture.

I mean, it really is enough to scare off someone more ordinary like myself.

If these giants of the faith held it in this sort of regard, if a man like Martin Lloyd -Jones preached 114 sermons just in the middle of this book, what hope do

I have to do justice to it, to do justice for you as I try to preach through it?

But I take hope in the fact that our author, the Apostle Paul, is the one who also said as he was leaving the

Ephesian church that he had founded, he told the elders there, therefore I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

God has given us his Scriptures, he's given us all of his Scriptures for our good, that we might be edified, that we might be encouraged in them, that we might by them know his will, see our sins exposed in order that we might repent.

He's given us all of his word that we might be comforted by the gospel of his son Jesus Christ and keep our eyes firmly fixed on the cross that he bore on our behalf.

And so God willing, I will not shrink from the whole counsel of God, even with a book as momentous as Romans before us.

So with that, we start this series. It should last something close to three years,

I would imagine. I have outlined the book, I know the main headings I want to go through, I haven't figured out each preaching unit, but normally a book of this length should take at least a couple and a half or three years.

I don't limit myself to that, but just to give you an idea, I would ask you as a people, as the congregation here at Providence Bible Church, to read ahead.

To read all 16 chapters would take, what, an hour? And so as we're going through it, for your prayers for me to be informative, read this book as we go through it.

I think Martin Luther is right. The better we know Romans, the better off we will be. The more of it we memorize, the better off we will be.

So I ask you to, as we go through this, know that this is our text for the next several months. Read it, please.

Read it so you can pray in an informative way for me as I preach. Read it for your own souls and your own spirits, as you should any book that we're preaching through in a series.

So we begin, and I think one of the best places to begin is to find out what is the theme of this book.

It's 16 chapters. What is the theme of this book? Is there a single statement that can encompass what this whole book is about?

The Reformers might have said that it was chapters 1 through 5, with the emphasis on justification by faith, and that this is the unifying theme for all 16 chapters.

This is the thought that Paul has that pervades everything and explains all else in the book. And there's a lot to be said for that.

But then chapters 5 through 8, where Martyn Lloyd -Jones spent so much time just on those few chapters, which teach so clearly what it means to have union with Jesus Christ and the work of God's Spirit in that union.

That must loom large as well. Others point out Gentiles and Jews relate to the redemptive work of God's Son.

One more stirring of the pot comes when we notice that there seems to be no specific occasion for this letter.

That is to say, Paul is not correcting specific errors as he does, for example, in 1 and 2

Thessalonians, especially in 1 Corinthians, but also 2 Corinthians, and others, many if not most of his letters.

He corrects a specific error, a specific problem endemic to that one fellowship.

And here in Romans, we don't find that, at least not as clearly. So do we despair of finding a single unifying theme?

Can I present to you this morning as we begin this book a single statement that will glue together this whole book, that any point we're in, we can look back upon this and say, yes, this is what

Paul is arguing for. This is what Paul wants us to find. This is what he wants us to know. And what we must leave with as we go about our business tomorrow and Monday and go back into the world.

Is there a single statement I can make or that can be made? Well, Douglas Moo has one, and I agree with it wholeheartedly.

He writes this. He says, what is the theme of the letter? The gospel. What is the theme of Romans?

Well, it's the gospel. And at first blush, that might sound like an oversimplification. Perhaps a more cynical sort might have heard that and say, duh, and that's what

Paul's all about. His whole life is about the gospel. How could the book be about anything else? But it's not an oversimplification.

It's not an oversimplification. The last two verses that John just read to you make it pretty clear, extremely clear

I should say. Look again at that first chapter in verse 16.

Paul says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

Now here's a word, the gospel, that plays throughout all 16 chapters.

Here's a statement that ties together the grand themes of a grand book. The righteousness of God, as 2

Corinthians 5 .21 tells us, is ours, why? Because of Christ, because of the gospel that he brought.

The righteousness of God, which Jesus says in Matthew chapter 5 and verse 48 is the necessary quality that must be found in any and in all who would stand before God.

The righteousness of God revealed in the gospel of God and revealed from faith to faith.

Faith being that apprehension of God's promises and the full reliance that we must place on those promises.

Faith of a quality that brings us out of our earthly lineage and makes us children of Abraham, father of all who believe in the same way he did.

And what did Abraham believe in? As we get to several chapters from now, he believed in the promise of Jesus Christ as proclaimed to him in the word of God.

As Paul says in Galatians, the gospel was preached to Abraham. I'm not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the

Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed. From faith to faith, as it is written, the righteous shall live by faith.

There is our theme, brethren. The righteousness of God revealed in the gospel, a gospel of which we are not ashamed for by that gospel the power of God in Jesus Christ has been displayed and by that gospel we are saved.

And only by that gospel are we saved. Let us spend a moment speaking of our author.

There is virtually no disagreement on who wrote the book of Romans. It was the apostle

Paul. Now if the theme of Romans is the gospel, then it makes perfect sense that an apostle should be the author of such a book.

Paul was an apostle. He says it at the outset. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of Now apostle, of course, comes from the verb to send.

And so an apostle is simply one who has been sent by another. Now if Paul's status as a servant of Jesus Christ places him with all the rest of us who believe, because every believer is a servant of God, this does set him apart in a special category of service, apostleship.

He is among those personally designated by Jesus Christ to serve him in a special way, to lay the foundation of his church on an eyewitness testimony of Jesus Christ and his death, his burial, and his resurrection.

We're all apostles in the sense of being sent to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. We're all apostles in the sense that we give testimony to our unsaved loved ones, friends, neighbors.

We are all apostles. We are all sent in that sense. But Paul and the other apostles, those designated personally by Jesus Christ, there's a special brand, a unique brand, if you will, of apostleship, because they saw.

They could say, I know Jesus lives because I saw him. Not I believe with the eyes of faith that he lives, which are equally important.

Book of testimony to the actual historical reality, death, burial, resurrection.

Paul is an apostle. Now he is familiar with being sent and representing a higher authority than himself.

In Acts chapter 9, we read of how he was on his way to Damascus with authority. He was sent by.

He had authority from the high priest in Jerusalem. And what was he doing? What was he going there for? To arrest anyone he found worshiping

Jesus of Nazareth. He had authority. He was sent by the high priest to do harm to such a one, even pursuing them, he says, to death.

His mission then was to destroy the church. When he was sent by the high priest, he was on his way to Damascus in chapter 9.

What was he doing there? He was going because he was a zealous Jew, a gold standard, if you will.

If anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, this is Philippians 3, 4 -7, I have more, circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a

Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.

On his way to Damascus, he was, of course, brought to a complete standstill. By whom?

By the risen Lord. By a personal visitation from the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

And three days later, he got a new commission, didn't he? He's still going to be a sent one, but not sent by the high priest to destroy the church.

Acts chapter 9, verse 15, Jesus says, and he's speaking, of course, to Ananias, he says, he, this

Paul, he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel.

So he's still an apostle, but now he's sent by another, by Jesus. Now his energies will be spent building the very thing he had so energetically tried to destroy, the ultimate, the eternal high priest,

Jesus had chosen him and revealed to him, he revealed himself to him, excuse me, and now was sending him.

So now he's an apostle. Set apart by God for the gospel of God.

The gospel brought to its marvelous conclusion, his majestic finish in the work of his son,

Jesus Christ. So what do we make of all this? Well for one thing,

Paul is not just spreading some new way to be happy. There's no self -help formula that will help you to raise happier kids, though there's nothing wrong with happy kids.

You'll find no three steps to being a better husband or more submissive wife here, or how to be hospitable kind of workbook, though being a better husband or wife, being more hospitable are all worthy goals.

Paul's purpose in Romans, though, is much more focused. The purpose of Romans is the gospel, to explain it, to extol it, to be sure we're fully aware of who and what the gospel is and we're prepared to live it out.

And then, and only then, do we get to these other matters of being,

I don't want to say better, but being Christian husbands, Christian wives, Christian children,

Christian hospitable brothers and sisters. But only once we have this gospel surely in our grasp.

This gospel is an old, old story. It didn't just happen all of a sudden.

God didn't look down at creation and see that it didn't quite measure up and he came up with a novel way to suddenly rectify things.

He says, oh, I know what I will do, I will send my son Jesus Christ, he'll die on the cross for sin, I'll forgive sins and everything will be fine.

That's not at all this gospel that Paul is here in Romans explaining. Verse two,

John just read it to you. It was promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures.

Prophets were sent by God to declare to men the word of God. And, you know, if you read them, they saw sin in the same way that prosecuting attorneys today might see crime.

We often hear in the messages of the prophets only wrath and judgment and condemnation. So many people seem on that basis to prefer the

New Testament to the Old Testament. They say the New Testament's got forgiveness and grace and the Old Testament all I ever hear is judgment and anger and wrath.

A very poor way to read the prophets. A very poor way to read Isaiah or Ezekiel or Nahum or Hosea or any of the rest.

Paul says, and remember he's an apostle, he's set apart by God to declare the word of God. Paul says that there the prophet's content was the same as his.

The gospel. The gospel. What's the theme of Romans? It's the gospel.

What holds us together at any point where we are in this book? The gospel. The righteousness of God revealed in the gospel of his son

Jesus Christ. It was declared beforehand, it was promised beforehand through God's prophets in the scriptures which we have today.

Peter puts it this way, concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.

It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you in the things that you have now been announced to you through those who preach the good news to you by the

Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look. What was the message of the prophets?

It was the gospel. What did Abraham hear when he was told in you all nations shall be blessed?

He heard the gospel. What was Paul saying Galatians was preached to him? The gospel. What is this book about?

The gospel. The gospel. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the righteousness of God revealed in this gospel.

The old prophets didn't have the same clarity that Paul or the other apostles did, but we can allow them this.

They hadn't seen Jesus who's the very flower of the gospel. Only he, only

Jesus Christ, only he can bring together all the types, all the forecasts, all the prefigurements that we have.

Only he makes sense of it all. And without Jesus Christ, it's just a book, just a book of stories.

But it's not just a book of stories, it's the book of the gospel of God, it's the book of the history of man, it's the book of God's word that all points to and summarizes in and focuses upon his son

Jesus Christ. It's an old, old story.

In Genesis 3 .15, we're told by Moses how God immediately upon man's first sin gave a promise of a seed to come from Eve who would crush the head of the interloper, which was

Satan. And until that day, there would be constant warfare between the two distinct lines of humanity, those, the seed of the woman and those whose descent is from the serpent.

That's how old the gospel story is, going all the way back to then. Abraham heard the gospel preached when he heard the promise, and you all nations shall be blessed.

The gospel became the warp and woof of Israel, even though most of them were unaware of it. But God had, and always has had, and always will have a believing remnant.

As Paul will make that clear in Romans 9 -11, in Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, the prophets spoke of a gospel that included the vicarious suffering of another, the vicarious suffering, suffering on other's behalf, where a savior takes upon himself the sins of his people.

Centuries and centuries ago, this was prophesied, this gospel. All the works of God were meant to shed an ever -brightening beam of light onto none other than Jesus Christ, who would come and bring all the hope of the prophets, all the words that they spoke, all the gospel that they tried to understand as they were preaching the word of God, word for word to us.

It would all come to light in his son, Jesus Christ. He's the one who would come and bring all that hope to a glorious conclusion.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3 -14, taken away.

We have an old, old story in this gospel, and in terms of the gospel itself, this book of Romans, it seems old to us, it's 2 ,000 years old, isn't it?

But in terms of the gospel, it's pretty recent. It's an old, old story.

And the gospel is a person. The gospel is not just a concept.

It's just not something God thought of. The gospel is a person.

If verse one makes clear that it's the gospel of God, verse three makes equally clear that it is a person, the gospel concerning his son.

And then we have these two descriptions of his son. First, he was descended from David according to the flesh, and second, he was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead.

By the resurrection from the dead. This idea of power, that he was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness, understand something about that word, declared to be the son of God in power.

Power doesn't relate to the declaration that he is the son of God. Power is an attribute of him, of the son of God.

He was declared to be, quote, the son of God in power. That's Jesus Christ.

That whole phrase is Jesus Christ. According to the spirit of holiness, of course, speaking of the third person of the

Trinity, the Holy Spirit of God, and how? By the resurrection from the dead.

He was declared. The word means he was appointed. It was an appointment, a royal appointment, a divine declaration of God the

Father that this is my son, confirmed by the Holy Spirit when he raised him up from the dead. All this is part of this gospel that we are beginning here in the book of Romans.

Christ's descent from David fulfills the promises made to King David in 2 Samuel 7.

I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

Matthew's gospel opens by establishing that Jesus Christ is the one who makes sense of that word forever.

Jesus affirmed this by accepting the appellation son of David. The most common thing he was called by, son of David, have mercy on us, said the blind men.

He is the son of David according to the flesh. The hope of Israel was inextricably linked to this one who had to come from David's lineage, and Jesus is that one.

But of course, Paul immediately makes clear to us that royal descent is not enough.

The kings who came from David maintained the continuity of that lineage, but whenever one of them died, as they all eventually did, that word forever was left hoping for another.

And finally, that hope was fulfilled. That was Jesus, and the proof of it is from an act of God like no other.

Paul certifies Jesus' ultimate sonship with something that will resonate throughout this book, the resurrection from the dead.

The resurrection from the dead. We know he's from David's line in the physical sense, fulfilling all those prophecies because Matthew proved it for us in Matthew chapter 1, when he still had the genealogical records of the temple available to him.

He proved it generation by generation by generation. But we need more.

We need more than a son of David physically. We need a son of God for the gospel.

And Jesus is that one. How do we know? Because he died? Many, many have died.

Because he died unjustly? Same answer. No. Because God raised him up from the dead.

Because God the Father, by the power of the Spirit, raised him up and said, this is my son.

And his work on the cross is complete. And so the gospel has been brought to a conclusion.

Gospel is a person. The gospel is Jesus. You can't have a Christless gospel any more than you can have a

Christless church and still call yourself a church. The gospel is an event.

Here is the stamp that sets the apostles apart, that they could personally attest that the Lord Jesus Christ had been raised from the dead.

And of course, that implies that they could attest that he died. And that says that they must be able to attest that he lives.

So the life, the death, the burial, the resurrection, personal attestation to the historical veracity of these facts recorded to us in the gospels and confirmed throughout this book of Romans.

Only they could say, I know whom I have believed because I saw him. I know whom

I believe because I shook his hand. I walked behind him on the roads as he traveled, preaching the kingdom of God.

Not like us with the eyes of faith, but with their very own eyes, they beheld the event of Jesus Christ, the gospel of God.

By the resurrection, he was declared to be God's son. Paul was not there when Jesus was crucified.

As he himself says, he was untimely born as an apostle. It seems that by this he meant that he had met the risen

Savior after his ascension rather than before as had the others. But he knew

Jesus had lived. He knew that he had been crucified at Calvary. Now after meeting him on the road to Damascus, he knew something more about him.

He knew that the crucified Lord was alive.

He knew that the crucified Lord was alive and that he was the only Savior.

He knew that death had no more hold on Jesus Christ. And as we work through this gospel in the book of Romans, what do we find out that that means to us?

That sin and death have no more dominion over you if your faith is in the Lord Jesus Christ.

If this gospel has been preached to you and you've heard it with a heart of faith, with a regenerated spirit, and heard the strains of the gospel calling you to acknowledge yourself a sinner and repent before God and then seek his forgiveness by and through the work

Jesus Christ did according to the gospel of Paul in this book of Romans. No other religion has ever dared lay claim to something like this.

To having a head, a founder, who can be called in every sense the

Son of God. Back then it would have been heard as the ravings of a madman or as a direct challenge to the

Roman Emperor's claims on divinity. Maybe they saw it both ways, that only a madman would dare to challenge

Caesar. And the gospel is a direct challenge, not only to Caesar in the first century, but to men in the 21st century.

And not just to political leaders in the 21st century, but to you and me, who have less influence than they do.

I don't want to go through a litany of false beliefs just now, I mean Paul doesn't, so we won't. But there is an offense to the gospel.

It's a sort of in -your -face offense that hits us where it hurts most. Not in our face, but where?

In our pride. The gospel has to do violence to your pride.

And if it doesn't, you need to stop and ask yourself if you've heard the gospel. Perhaps you need to come to me afterwards and say,

Pastor, I'm just not getting it. Maybe it's my lack of clarity. I'm a man with feet of clay like all of you.

Give me a chance to clarify. Because this gospel has to destroy pride.

It has to leave us aghast at ourselves and humbled before the cross of Christ.

And if it does not do that, I've misspoken, or you've misheard, or some other combination, but let's reconcile this.

Let's get this clear. Calvin gets it right as he goes through the argument of Romans, just meaning going point by point and saying, here's what the apostles are arguing for.

That's what we mean by argument, not arguing against it, but what the argument is. It's a positive way to say it. I think he gets it exactly right.

When he gets to about chapter four of Paul's train of thought, his argument, having spent most of the first three chapters demonstrating the universality of man's sin and God's righteous judgment against that sin,

Calvin writes this. Having wholly deprived all mankind of their confidence in their own virtue and of their boast of righteousness and laid them prostrate before the severity of God's judgment, he, meaning

Paul, he returns to what he had laid down before us as his subject, that we are justified by faith.

And he explains what faith is and how the righteousness of God is by it attained by Have you confidence at all in your own virtue?

Do you have any boast in you of your own righteousness? My goal is, not just this morning, but anytime

I stand here and preach from this book or really any book in the

Bible, but especially now in the book of Romans, my hope is to destroy that, to do violence against you in that.

Of course, not physical violence, but to your soul, because brethren,

I have to say it again, and this warning will go throughout this book, especially in the opening chapters.

If you come away with any confidence before God based in anything, no matter how slight it might be, in anything but the

Lord Jesus Christ and what he did on the cross according to the gospel of God for which he was sent, anything but that, you have a false gospel.

Now we're sinners, we are fallen humanity redeemed by grace, and so none of us perfectly understands the gospel, and I don't purport to be able to perfectly explicate it to you.

None of us perfectly expunges all pride, all self -sufficiency, none of us can, but let this stand clear, that your pride must be greatly harmed, your self -sufficiency must be destroyed, your sense of righteousness must have some great measure of defeat, and we hang on to it less and less and less as we grow more and more into the image of Christ.

So I don't seek perfection here, I do seek for clarity, faith.

This book's about faith, faith in a risen Savior, faith in a God who is as indignant at sin as he is willing to forgive it.

We will see this in Romans, his indignation against our sin is only matched by his willingness to forgive sin, his wrath matched by his mercy, his anger equaled by his grace.

Faith, faith that is his to dispense as he wills, faith that alone can save from eternal punishment, but more properly, it is

Jesus and he alone who saves, not your faith, but Jesus Christ, and that by the cross, and that alone, and nothing added to it.

This is what saves, Christ. Faith apprehends it.

Faith apprehends and believes this glorious truth. Faith places all our hope in this truth.

Faith understands that only Christ and what he did can save. What is

Paul's purpose as an apostle here? In the fifth verse it says, Jesus from whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among the nations.

Now the obedience of faith has sort of a two -fold meaning here I think. First, and primarily, it means to obey the gospel.

It means to confess yourself a sinner and to believe God's word that Jesus Christ has resolved your sin before a holy

God. The gospel is not some message we preach because if we terrify you enough, you'll behave yourself.

It's a message to be believed because its author is God. Its agent is

Jesus, the son of God, and his communicator is the Holy Spirit of God. To believe the gospel is to believe

God. To believe God is to obey the gospel. To disbelieve is just what it sounds like.

It's to disbelieve. It's to disobey God himself. The first call of obedience is to believe the gospel itself.

Christ called out his first public words, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Obey Christ.

Obey God by repenting of your sin and believing that God has answered your sin in his son.

That's the first way we would understand the obedience of faith, but second, the obedience of faith is for the faithful to live faithfully.

Do you understand that? Obedience of faith is for the faithful, those who believe, to live as if they believe, which is one of Paul's great burdens, that we live in accordance with the calling by which we have been called.

The gospel brings with it great responsibilities. It must affect us in every aspect of our life.

Paul famously breaks his letters up between what we call the indicative and the imperative, and what we mean when we say the indicative is that first we get the statements of fact, the indicatives.

What has God done for us in Christ? The answer is indicative, for while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

What do we have as a result of that? The answer is indicative, therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our

Lord Jesus Christ. How shall we then live? Again, the indicative, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of God the

Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Indicative, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Indicative, for from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever.

Amen. Indicatives, who are you in Christ? What has God done for you in Christ? How do we come to God?

What does faith mean? Those are indicatives, statements of fact. And then beginning in chapter 12, once these facts, these indicatives have been placed squarely before us, these propositional truths, then

Paul switches to the imperative, the voice of command. Only after God's glory and the work of His Son on behalf of undeserving sinners has been explained, then he says,

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

The book of Romans will bring us to obedience to the gospel in both ways, to obey the call to repent and believe the gospel, and then to order every facet of life around that gospel and the commands of God.

Who are Paul's audience? Who does he write to? Well, first, of course, he targets the believers in Rome, and that church is a mixed bag.

It's a mixed church. This church is populated by some Christians who came to Christ from a Jewish background, others who were converted as Gentiles.

No one knows who founded this church. The evidence that it was Peter is very weak.

We have to reject that theory. It wasn't Paul. If it were, he wouldn't be introducing himself the way he does or telling how long it's been that he's been hoping to visit them.

The best guess is that it was Jewish believers who brought the message of the gospel back from Jerusalem after Peter's great

Pentecostal sermon. In Acts 18, verse 2, we understand that the

Jews were, by the time this letter was written, much in the minority there.

It says, Claudius Caesar had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And this fact, and the tensions that would arise between Jews holding to their lifelong habits and traditions and Gentiles who knew nothing of those traditions, explains a good deal of that weak, strong brother argument that we'll come to in quite some time.

It's a mixed church. Probably, by that time, much in the majority were the Gentile Christians.

Yet, there were still Jewish Christians there. But also, look again at that opening chapter to Romans in verses 6 and 7.

Paul says he's 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.

Not just the Roman church some 2 ,000 years ago. If you believe in Jesus Christ, this book is written to you.

Romans is for you. If you're in Christ, it's because God called you to it just as He called you to be a saint.

And on top of all this, what does Paul say? Loved by God. Much as he says in the book of Ephesians, the first chapter.

Why are we accepted by God? As we are found to be in Christ. You're accepted because we are in the beloved.

Loved by God. Let's understand as we try to draw this first message in the book of Romans to a close.

Let's understand something very important about this gospel. The gospel is about God's love for sinners.

The gospel is about God's love. At least a major facet of the gospel is

His love for sinners. And brethren, it has to be. It has to be that God loves sinners.

Everyone seems to know John 3 .16. Romans 5 .8

is no less the word of Christ. But God chose His love for us in that while we were still sinners,

Christ died for us. Now, am I preaching universalism? No.

God chooses those for whom Christ died. God chose them before the foundation of the world.

Believe absolutely in God's predestining sovereignty. That individual by individual, before creation, before time we could even say,

God chose who would be in His Son and to whom He would give the gift of faith.

What I am saying is, if God has no love for sinners, then He couldn't have loved us.

Then Paul could not have said while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. While we were yet sinners.

So let's understand as we go through this epistle, that the gospel is about God's love.

The gospel is about God's love. And finally, as we bring this to a close,

Paul gives a blessing. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the

Lord Jesus Christ at the end of verse 7. We've barely started on an epic journey, and already we have a statement so theologically full, so pregnant with meaning, so shocking as to make us just stop and sing and praise and wonder.

You see, this is no perfunctory way to close the introduction. It's no mere formality here. Paul, as an apostolic servant of the

Most High God, confers grace and peace to you in the name of the Most High God. Grace would be the way

Greeks normally closed a letter. Grace, charisse to you. Peace would be more the

Jewish mode. Shalom, fullness, wholeness, to be well, to be complete.

Paul covers both, grace and peace to you. Grace and peace to you, even here today at Providence Church, from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. It has all the earmarks, to my ear, of the

Aaronic blessing. Where the priests, and Aaron being the first of them, was told, here is how you shall bless the people, the

Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine upon you, be gracious to you, the Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

I think that's all embedded also in what Paul says at the beginning of this letter. Grace and peace to you from God our

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And see there, from whom this blessing proceeds?

God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. He puts them on the same plane. And here we have the beginning of a great

Christology, a great study of Jesus Christ, and our confession.

It says He is all that God is. All that it means to be God, Jesus Christ, equally is.

They're separate in their personage. They are the same as God. There's nothing

God is that it means to be God. His eternality, His sovereignty, that Jesus Christ is not also.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Not the same in person, but the same in essence, in power, in glory.

Reflecting on a good deal of the Apostle Paul's writing, chapter 8 of our confession, the London Confession of Faith says, the

Son of God, the second person in the Holy Trinity, being very and eternal God, the brightness of the

Father's glory, of one substance and equal with Him who made the world. Or the

Nicene Creed, that so ably defended this cardinal truth, Jesus is God from God, light from light, true

God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same essence as the Father. So brethren, this is the

Jesus we are to learn about in the book of Romans. This is the

Jesus that we must obey. This is the gospel of God that Paul is going to give us for 16 chapters, and God willing, pray for me that however long it takes us to preach it, that I can make clear to you as we understand what has

God done for us in Jesus Christ. Who is this Christ, and where did He come from?

And all these questions will be answered as we go through it, and finally, how shall we then live? And we get the imperatives.

This is the Jesus who all that is about. This is the Jesus who must receive all the glory in the preaching and the living of this gospel.

This is the Jesus who is God. This is the Jesus who appointed Paul to be an

Apostle, the Jesus who sent him to declare this gospel, and even to declare it to us today, here in this place, in the year 2016.

When we hear from Paul, our apostolic author, as we hear from him in this letter, let us hear it as the very word of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let us understand that what we have before us is His gospel.

Paul calls it in some places, my gospel, but he means the gospel of our

Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Amen? Heavenly Father, we do thank you for, again, for the day you have given us, and for this chance to dig into this great book,

Lord, which you, word for word, had the Apostle Paul write for us to hear this day, and I just pray that we would have grace to hear well.

You, Father, would bless me with clarity of thought and expression, and those who hear, with clarity of understanding and application.

So, Father, continue to glorify yourself in our midst, even as we open up this book and begin this great work.

I pray that as we proceed, at every step, your Spirit would be with us, helping preacher and hearer alike.