Portrait of a Gospel Church

As we come to a close of this letter, what we're gonna realize is all these greetings, right?

Who's gonna preach a sermon on a bunch of names you can barely pronounce?

Uh but this is there's a lot of beauty in this because what we're trying to understand and look at this morning is a portrait of a gospel church, a gospel family.

What does that look like and how do we function in within it in today's time?

Uh now, as we start to approach the end of this letter, uh we see that Paul's sending his greetings.

He's saying, uh, you know, say hello to this person.

He calls them by name, he talks a little bit about their story, he makes sure that he he kind of addresses how he's in relationship with them and the impact that they've had on his life and in the church as a whole.

And something we should pause and consider as we read off these names is this.

This letter is meant to be a real help to real people.

As we look at the book of Romans and we and we read through this letter, and we spent the last uh 30 now, five weeks in this letter, there's all kinds of different postures that we could take towards some of the content.

You know, the first 11 chapters is really trying to tell us how hopeless we are without Jesus, uh, how Jesus is the only way that we can be rescued out of our hopelessness.

He's our only true hope, and that there is nothing for us apart from the finished work of Christ.

And so uh the there's 11 chapters on just that alone.

Hey, you you're you're not good.

Jesus is good, and if you are in him, then you become good so that you might be reconciled to the Father.

That 11 chapters on that, and then it works through all these other different ways of how we love one another within the church and how we have relationship with one another.

But we when we look at this letter, some of us can can can love this, right?

We geek out on theology and we start nerding out on all the things about election and predestination and depravity and all these big words that we want to throw out there, but but we don't really allow the letter to apply itself to us.

We we still take it from a distance or from just a uh kind of academic perspective.

We don't allow it to transform our hearts and actually bring uh conformity to the image of Christ that the spirit-inspired text is supposed to do.

Some of us we reject it, right?

You've been waiting for us to get out of Romans for as long as you possibly, as long as we've been in it.

You really aren't chiving, you aren't following, you don't think that it has any benefit to you.

In fact, some of you might have even dipped out for a season and you hear we've only got a couple weeks left, and so you're back, right?

This Sunday.

Uh but what we have to realize is this.

These were the first Christians ever.

Now, we take that for granted, right?

We're in America, we're in a kind of Christian context where it's at least assumed Christian or that you have some type of faith or that you love God or that you live the blessed life or what, you know, whatever kind of thing you want to put around it.

But uh, what we see is uh we take this really for granted.

When we meet other Christians, it's kind of like, oh, okay, cool, you're you're a Christian, I'm a Christian too.

But back then, when you met another Christian, wow, that was that was mind-blowingly transformational.

That rocked your world.

That that was this joy and wonder and excitement about, oh, you're a follower of Jesus too.

They were the first ones ever.

And they find themselves in a context that didn't know anything about them, that that rejected them wholeheartedly, rejected their savior, and started to persecute them.

And so Paul's not writing them a letter to puff up their knowledge of theology.

Paul's not writing them a letter that is of no use and has no value to their life.

Paul's writing real help to real people who are suffering, who were burdened with this reality that they were sojourners in a foreign land, that they they didn't belong here any longer, that their allegiance was to a different king and a different kingdom, that they were trying to walk out Christianity faithfully and to serve the Lord and worship him alone.

And so Paul pins Romans to help them.

There were real people who were trying to live lives as followers of Jesus, as faithful disciples.

In this list of greetings, there's actually 24 named people and two unnamed people, right?

So Paul's gonna uh by name asked to greet these 24 people, and then he he talks about two unnamed, like the the mother of or the sister of.

Uh but out of these 26 people identified, uh nine of them are women.

Uh and and Paul starts the letter predominantly with greeting women.

Uh, we want to pause and really realize the significance of that.

The the role that women had in the church.

And we're gonna kind of blow that up and unpack it and try to understand it more concretely in the context of the letter, but but women were uh very primary people in the success and expansion of the church and the kingdom and the gospel influence that was happening globally.

And Paul recognizes that.

The beauty of what Jesus does, the beauty of what the New Testament does, and the revelation of who Christ is, is that women finally come up to the place of dignity, value, and worth that they were created to do.

And then we see that not just as something that you say but don't see function and form of.

We see it as a living reality within this letter of women who were taking uh the place to make sure that the gospel work that was needed to see people come to salvation, to see churches planted, see the kingdom expands.

They were stepping up to the plate and making it happen.

And I love that Paul uh welcomes the first two names are women.

These people, these faces, are church planters, disciplers, teachers, ministry funders, people of royal birth, slaves and servants, Jews and Gentiles, single people, married couples, some in prison for the gospel, and some who would later lose their lives for it.

This list of greetings puts on display the kaleidoscope of diversity of the church.

And what we're gonna look at is kind of the main thrust of this is the diversity of the family of God.

And we see this in just this greetings.

All these different types of people from different walks of life, from different upbringings, from different cultures, all of them find this what?

They find this family.

If we read this as just a list of names, we fail to see the stories, the souls behind each one.

You see this letter, Romans, it can feel distant, it can feel inapplicable, potentially even of no use to some of us.

But this letter was a means of encouragement, it was a means of instruction, and it worked to help build upon the faith and unity of the body of Christ.

Behind each name that we just read off is an eternal soul.

And the letter was working to establish and provide help for an eternal purpose.

And so let's not just gloss over these names, but let's look at why they matter and why they're important, the stories behind them that shape why Paul was ever writing the letter in the first place.

So the first person that he talks about is Phoebe.

We can't engage this section of the text without pausing and talking about Phoebe.

Uh, she's a very important uh person in this letter, predominantly because she's believed or known to be the one who delivered the letter.

So Phoebe actually was the one who uh took the letter from Corinth, where she had known Paul because she was a servant at the Church of Sincrea.

We're gonna unpack that in just a second, but she was the one who actually delivered the letter to the church in Rome.

So she's of huge importance.

Why is Paul greeting Phoebe first?

He's could he's not just greeting her, he's commending her to the church at Rome.

He's saying, Look, I vouch for her.

Uh my my word goes to approve and affirm her.

What that helped to do also in times of antiquity to was to make sure that this letter wasn't a false.

It wasn't a phony letter.

At this time there was already false gospels and other false epistles being written and actually circulated within the church at some uh to some degree.

And so this uh commending of Paul helped to affirm the authenticity of what was being delivered to the church in Rome.

And so he commends Phoebe to them.

He says this, he says, our sister.

I love this because they've never met Phoebe before.

She's a woman in Corinth, in a port city on the southeast side of Corinth.

They don't know who Phoebe is.

But what does Paul say?

Oh, no, she's our sister.

She's in Christ, she's a family member.

Uh, you should receive her first and foremost.

I commend you to her first and foremost on the fact that she is family.

You should welcome her.

And then he says this he qualifies who she is a servant of the church at Sincrea.

So, as I said, Sincrea is this little port in the southeast side of Corinth.

Paul was writing this letter from Corinth.

He had spent some time there, and he's met some other people in this letter in his time at Corinth, and he's written letters to the churches of the uh in Corinthians, right?

So he's he's familiar with the area, and he met Phoebe at his time there.

And he says that she's a servant at that church.

That word servant is Daconus, it means deacon, uh, the word we get deacon from today.

Deacon fundamentally just means one who serves, a servant.

Now, we believe that Phoebe was an actual deacon, held in office at the church of Sincrea.

You see, we could have said that she was just a servant.

Some Bible translations are going to just translate it servant, like the ESV, which we read out of, but then other Bible translations actually translate it as deacon.

The reason why we would hold that Phoebe held in office is a couple f a couple reasons.

Number one is if Paul wanted to use a more generic term of diaconus, of servant, as he's done in other letters, he probably wouldn't have tethered it to a physical church location.

He probably would have just said in the Lord or of the Lord.

Phoebe, a servant of the Lord, or servant in the Lord.

The fact that he tied it to a physical congregation at the church of Sincrea gives a little bit more weight to it.

Plus, we would understand contextually the need for female deacons with inside the local church.

These were people who were now ostracized from society, who had to find family, who had to find care and help inside of the family of God because those resources weren't available to them as they once were in society and in culture.

And so there would have been this influx of women.

We see actually in Acts 6, there's this whole group of Turkish widows, these Gentile widows who are being overlooked.

They're not being cared for.

And so they bring the attention to the elders there and they say, hey, look, uh, we need to kind of build some system around to make sure that these widows are taken care of.

So they said, okay, you appoint seven men of righteous worth and make sure that this happens, right?

So there were women who needed to be served and women who needed to be served uniquely.

And so we can see that the office of deacon would have been a necessity for a local church congregation at that time.

And Phoebe steps up to the plate.

She says, I'll be a servant, I'll work, I'll meet the physical needs of the church, because that's what office of deacon actually does with inside the local congregation, is they meet the physical needs of the church in a posture of servanthood servanthood, while the elders meet the spiritual needs of the church as servant leaders.

And so he says, Here, Phoebe, our sister, a deacon of the church at Sincrea, that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints.

As we look at this first section of the text, verse 1 and 2, this is kind of our summary idea.

Phoebe gets a saint's welcome.

Phoebe gets a saint's welcome.

Welcome her in the Lord, Paul says.

If we think back to something Jesus uh talked to his disciples about, he was talking about caring for one another.

And he said that they actually overlooked him.

They overlooked his needs of when he was hungry or thirsty or when he was cold and naked and when he was in prison.

And they said, Well, how did we ever do that?

You've never been imprisoned, or I don't know anything.

He says, When you failed to do it to the least of these, you failed to do it to me.

When we fail to meet the needs of others, then we fail to meet the need of Jesus.

That seems weird, but that's what he was trying to help us understand is that as we serve one another, ultimately we serve him.

And so when we are welcoming her in the Lord, what he's saying is welcome her like you would welcome Jesus.

When we welcome one another as the family of God, we should welcome one another as if we were welcoming Jesus into our home.

There was a pastor who was holding a conference and he uh wasn't expecting the person who walked in the room to step in.

It was a pastor that he admired and loved and really uh valued for what how he impacted his ministry, and he got all tussled in his chair and he kind of straightened himself up and he was like, This guy just walked through my front door, and his wife elbowed him and he said, You should act like that every Sunday because Jesus walks through these doors with us and our people.

He's telling them, if you're gonna greet her, greet her as if you were greeting Jesus.

Welcome her in the Lord, a way worthy of the saints.

You see, this is unique to our position in Christ.

Phoebe just isn't some woman.

Phoebe is in Christ.

Phoebe is a sister in the Lord, she's a saint.

And so they say, give her this saints welcome, worthy of saints.

And it kind of got me thinking, you know, imagine if a gospel saint walked into our congregation, right?

Not just like Paul, because like that would mean he like raised from the dead.

You'd, you know, we'd all we'd be concerned about that.

That would be a little different.

But just imagine, like, your dude, whoever it is, right?

John Piper or uh Matt Chandler or somebody else walk through this front door this morning, y'all would geek out.

Most of you would geek out.

Some of you'd be like, I don't even know who that dude is.

That's fine.

Some of y'all would geek out.

But us, we are saints.

Every single morning when we walk through these doors, when we walk into one another's homes and mission groups, when we greet one another at the park during play dates, when we meet one another for coffee or lunch, we are saints gathering together and we should welcome one another as if we were welcoming Jesus and as one worthy of a saint because we are in him.

Now, Paul, as he mentions Phoebe, he's understanding that she's delivering this letter to the Romans without a husband.

This is very important to the context.

Phoebe's not mentioned uh having a husband or having any male colleague with her in the delivering of the letter.

For this time in antiquity, that's a big deal.

Uh, the the travel, the journey from Corinth uh to Rome would have been an extensive one.

And one that a woman normally would not have taken by herself without any type of uh uh uh servants or slaves to go with her to help her if she was not accompanied by her husband.

And so Phoebe being named alone probably points to the reality that she was very wealthy.

She probably didn't take the journey by herself, right?

She didn't just go on board a ship all alone with this letter and make sure that it got all the way to Rome.

But she probably had servants, hired servants, uh, that was able to accompany her to make sure that she was safe on her travel.

And this wealth is kind of affirmed also when Paul says that uh to greet her, she's been a patron of many and of myself as well.

This patron means helper, but in a in a financial type of sense, that she's some type of benefactor who's actually supported Paul in his ministry, supported church plants in their rough times and helpings.

Phoebe's been this very prominent figure of gospel work.

And it's important to understand that she's undefined by a husband.

When we look at our identity, what we tend to do is we tend to try to identify ourselves by things that can be taken from us, right?

We identify ourselves by our job, and then when that job's taken from us, we don't know who we are anymore.

We identify ourselves by our marriage, or we identify ourselves by our children, or we identify ourselves by our good looks, which fades daily.

But we tend to identify ourselves by things that can be taken from us.

Phoebe's not identified by a husband.

Woman, you don't need a man for your identity.

Let me just pause.

You do need a man, you need the bridegroom, you need Jesus.

Every single one of us, men and women, need to find our identity in the very one who can never be taken from us, or better yet, who we can't be taken from.

Because he holds us in his hand.

He's the author and finisher of our faith.

And so when it Bible's talking about rooting yourself in the identity of Christ, it's talking about rooting yourself in an eternal identity that can never be stripped from you or robbed from you.

I know me and my wife used to play this game of why do you love me?

And it was, I just love you because I love you.

And that's what I would say to her, because I never wanted to say, I love you because X, and then one day something tragic happened and X was taken from her, and she'd wonder, Do I love her still?

No, I love her because I love her.

Jesus loves you because he determined before the foundations of the earth that he would love you.

And so our identity is in him and him alone.

Paul says a saint's welcome is expected because our identity of saint is rooted in the one who can never be taken from us.

It's a welcome of the highest regard, a welcome of Jesus Himself.

Now we come into the verses three through seven, and we're gonna see these names of people, and Paul kind of uh elaborates on their stories the most uh compared to the other people that he greets in this letter.

And so when we look at this passage, what we're looking at is gospel risk.

Gospel risk.

These people are mentioned in this letter, greeted in this letter because of gospel risks that they've taken in their lives.

We're introduced some people are being honored by the risk that they have taken for the gospel.

And the first ones that we're introduced to is Priscilla and Aquila.

You you've probably heard their names before.

She typically goes by Priscilla.

Luke, who's writing the book of Acts, calls her Priscilla.

Paul, who knows her well, calls her Priscilla.

Maybe that's his shortened version of referring to her, a more intimate relationship that they had.

Uh, but this is Priscilla and Aquila, who Paul met in Corinth.

So, if to kind of give some backstory, what happened is that uh they were actually uh Jewish people were kicked out of Rome under Emperor Claudius.

And they were removed from Rome and forced to go out into these other areas.

And so Priscilla and Aquila being Jews in Rome, after they were forced to evacuate, uh they found themselves in Corinth.

They were tent makers by trade.

Uh, they built tents out of leather construction and so forth that was able to be portable and slept in and so forth.

And so one day in the synagogue, uh Paul runs into Aquila and they greet one another and they meet one another there.

What's interesting about this is in synagogue times, you would actually have the woman sit on one side and the men sit on the other side.

And then the men were subdivided by their actual employment or what they did for a living.

So you can imagine there's the men's section, and then somehow there's the tent makers.

I don't know.

Maybe they were like people who do stuff with leather.

I don't, whatever, whatever they're kind of tent makers seems really specified for this time.

But they were kind of collected into these subcategories, and then Paul and Aquila are over there hanging out, and they greet one another, and then they get to know one another, they build a relationship.

They're fellow workers in Christ Jesus, Paul says.

He actually labored to bring them to faith in the gospel of Jesus.

He was one of the one who was instrumental to them coming to faith.

And then they start working in the gospel.

They start getting their hands dirty in gospel work.

What we see throughout Acts is that uh Priscilla and Aquila are actually church planters.

So they actually have house churches in their home in Corinth, and they have a house church in their home in Rome.

So they have house churches in Rome and in Corinth, and we see that Priscilla herself actually pulls Apollos aside.

Apollos was uh a disciple of Paul, who he was raising up to do gospel ministry.

Priscilla and Aquila pull Apollos aside, and Priscilla corrects Apollos' theology.

He says, hey, she says, hey, look, you got a lot of zeal, you got a lot of energy, but let me tell you about it, should be focused toward the person and work of Jesus.

And so she actually comes forward and corrects Apollos to make his theology rooted in Christ Himself.

Priscilla played a vital role in this church, in Rome, and in the church at large.

And Paul's recognizing this.

In fact, in the Bible, when Priscilla and Aquila are mentioned, Priscilla is uh named first four out of the six times.

She led the charge in a lot of ways to seeing the gospel.

Transform and impact that region.

Like I said, they were church planters, house churches, both in Rome and Corinth.

And Paul says they risked their necks for him.

I love that.

We don't know what the story is.

There's probably some great story there behind the actual event that took place.

But he says, beyond all these other things, they risk their neck for me to make sure that I was good and healthy and safe.

Then Paul greets my beloved Epineedus.

He says he's the first convert to Asia.

Imagine that.

Like Asia.

Like they didn't have the billions of people they have now, right?

When we talk about just Asia.

But the first dude who was ever converted in Asia is here in this list of greetings.

He's now in Rome at this church, and Paul's saying, He's my beloved.

Paul was sent as one of the primary apostles to the Gentile people to be able to preach the gospel.

In fact, we read last week that he was actually hindered from coming and visiting the church in Rome because of his work to preach the gospel to Gentile people who had not heard of Christ or heard of the gospel yet.

And so he went to Asia and he started to do evangelism and he started to preach the gospel and plant churches there.

And he says, Oh yeah, Epineetus, he's there.

First convert in Christ in Asia.

Mary, he greets her.

It's another woman Paul greets and points to the grittiness of her gospel labor.

He says, Greet Mary who has worked hard for you.

He's pointing to this work hard, this grittiness that she's labored and toiled in hard work for the health of the church there.

Mary, who's called by name.

Andronicus and Junior, this husband and wife team.

He calls them his kinsmen, Jews.

Right?

They are fellow Jews and they are fellow prisoners with Paul.

Probably for the sake of the gospel, because they were preaching Christ and making him known they had been imprisoned with him.

And he says that they're actually well known to the apostles.

So not only does Paul know them, but the apostles at large know their names.

They're very well known.

And they were actually in Christ before Paul.

This means that being Jews, being in Christ before Paul, well known among the apostles, there's high probability that they were engaging and interacting with the ministry of Jesus while he was on earth.

That maybe they were one of the 500 who witnessed his ascension after his resurrection.

There's all this probability of who they could have been, but they were key players in the church being planted and spreading throughout this area.

These are people who have taken great risks for the gospel.

Think about this.

The church in Rome would have never been if some people would have never taken the risk.

How was Paul able to even write this letter to a church in Rome?

Because the names he just quoted took gospel risks.

What are we doing?

What are we thinking about, not just our now and here, but the future of what the gospel looks like, of what the church looks like in our area, in our region?

Are we willing to take some of these risks?

Are we willing to risk our necks for the sake of the gospel?

Are we willing to be imprisoned for the sake of the gospel?

Are we willing to take gospel risks so that we can have letters pinned to these other congregations, these other Christians who are suffering, who are being persecuted for their belief in Jesus, who are wondering if there's any hope at all?

And we point them to, yes, look at Jesus.

He is our hope in the midst of our hopelessness.

The gospel, the kingdom, is worth every risk imaginable.

Then as we look through verses 30 through 33, we see gospel family.

This is a section of the letter where Paul just blasts through some names.

He gives a couple of little uh descriptors or adjectives of these people, but he doesn't really unpack the story of who they are as much.

But these are some very key players that we, if we if we brush over these, we're gonna miss the beauty of who some of these people are.

We're brought into the bulk of the people who Paul desires to greet.

He emphasizes the essence of family.

In this list, he emphasizes the essence of family in two particular phrases.

And we have to be keyed in on this.

One is in Christ, and the other is beloved.

Paul consistently uses these interchangeably or from person to person because he's really building or emphasizing the reality of the family of God.

And it's rooted in its identity of in Christ, and because they are in Christ, they are then beloved.

And Paul is going to uh uh make this emphasis clear to us as he works through these names.

And we're brought into the extravagant diversity of the family of God.

The first four names are the names of men who hold diverse positions in society.

We see um Piletus, likely he was of the emperor's household, a convert who actually was in the emperor's home, who had heard the gospel, come to faith, and imagine what his missional life would have looked like living in the emperor's home, being a servant of the emperor.

Urbanus.

His name means urban.

It's kind of where we get our name for urban uh uh um society or structure from.

Uh he was actually named Urbanus primarily because he was probably born in a metropolitan area, a very poor person.

He was a slave.

And so this uh this man, Urbanus, is likely to be just a poor slave.

Then Staccus and Apelles, likely of the imperial household.

So the imperial household was a separate house that the emperor would be able to have, who held his high offices, like secretary and so forth.

They would be these people who held high offices in society, and it'd be a separate household where they would work and function.

And so you had the emperor's household, then you had the imperial household.

These men uh uh held offices or positions uh within that house.

Then we get into the family of Aristobulu, including Herodian.

Now, who is this guy?

Who is this household?

He's the grandson of Herod the Great.

So let's take this into context.

Who's Herod the Great?

If you've read the Christmas story, the whole thing, not just the one they put on uh PBS, the whole thing, there's this point where this king tries to uh actually kill Jesus.

How does he do that?

He orders that all uh toddlers two years and younger be slaughtered in the vicinity and area of Bethlehem.

So Herod was that king.

Herod had been uh uh visited by the three wise men or the Magi, uh, and they were and they told him why they were there.

There's this prophecy that's being fulfilled.

We saw the star, we came to travel there, and he's going to be the king of the Jews.

And Herod said, Oh, okay, cool.

Hey, I'll tell you what, once you find that little boy, why don't you come tell me where he's at so I can go worship him too?

The Lord visited the three wise men and said, Hey, don't do that.

He's trying to trick you, he wants to kill Jesus.

So they go home a different way.

They don't talk to Herod.

But what does Herod do?

He demands that all children, males in the vicinity of Bethlehem, to and under, be put to death.

Because uh they said that the time of the star that they traveled and so forth, Jesus would have been around two years old when the three wise men actually came to visit and worshiped him.

And so uh the the Lord visited Joseph, Jesus' uh uh physical father, and told him to get up and go to Egypt, flee this so that Jesus isn't put to death.

So here you have the grandson of the dude who tried to kill Jesus.

You want to talk about an executive order that's not like super cool?

Uh, how about killing every male under the age of two years old?

Right?

And so this guy's grandson, Paul's greeting in the church in Rome, in his whole household.

And then Herodian, if you see Herod in there, right, was a member of that same family.

Imagine having that kind of influence, that kind of heritage, and the Lord softens their hearts and brings them to saving faith in the gospel.

Narcissus.

Narcissus was well known in Rome.

He was actually a very wealthy freed man.

But Narcissus' story is that he actually is put to death under the Emperor Nero.

More than likely, it was for the sake of the gospel.

Nero was somebody who was trying to extinguish Christianity within Rome, and he was very well known for uh executing uh many Christians uh through persecution.

And so Narcissus, though he be very wealthy, though he be a freed man, he would be later be put to death.

Then we have uh Trifina and Triphosa, dainty and delicate.

That's what their names mean.

They're two sisters, uh dainty and delicate, and they're two sisters, but you know what?

Paul's kind of funny here because these two girls that he calls dainty and delicate, he talks about them as those workers.

Those ones who got their hands dirty in gospel ministry, those ones who labored and toiled to see uh the kingdom expand.

I love that he identifies two uh uh single sisters who had a huge influence on the church and its health.

Then we have Persis, who worked hard for the Lord, and Rufus, right?

Rufus, if you don't know who he is, so he's actually talked about a couple of other times within the Bible.

Uh and there's a we have to go back to Jesus' crucifixion.

So Jesus is uh carrying his cross down the Via della Rosa or the way of suffering, and uh he can't really make it.

He's been flogged with the cat of nine tails, he's been beaten, mocked, so forth.

He can't really make it carrying this heavy beam up to the hill of Galgotha.

And so he stumbles and falls, and there's a man next to him named Simon, Simon the Cyrene.

Uh and they the guards look at Simon and say, Hey, pick up his cross and carry it.

So imagine you're the you're just a dude in the crowd.

There's all this chaos, all this uh commotion happening.

All of a sudden you step up, some guy's being led to be crucified, and they look at you and they say, Hey, pick that cross up and carry it up.

So Simon had to carry this cross up to the place of Golgotha where Jesus was crucified.

Well, Rufus is his son.

Rufus had a brother as well who's mentioned within the scriptures, and Paul talks about his mother.

Imagine what stories Rufus brought to the table in Rome.

His dad probably retold that story over and over and over again.

And Paul becoming a new convert, right?

Him being a Pharisee now in Jesus, meets this family.

He's like, hey, can you, Simon, can you just tell me that story again?

What was it like?

What did it feel like to look Jesus in the eyes, to carry his cross, to see him crucified?

And then to see Rufus and his brother discipled and raised up to be prominent leaders within the church.

Take witness of the diversity of a gospel family.

What dictates this diversity, though?

What dictates this family?

Fundamentally, it's being found in Christ.

That word, that phrase, in Christ, is what creates that diversity.

It's what creates this family.

Billy Graham, he's an American, uh uh, he's uh uh passed away now, but he was an American evangelist and crusade holder.

He said this the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

The ground is level at the foot of the cross.

It doesn't matter your place in society, it doesn't matter if you're of royal birth or you're born a slave, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, it doesn't matter if you're single or married, it doesn't matter who you are and where you come from, the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

And so this diversity, this family is fully known and realized and only able to be established because of those two words.

In Christ.

If we are in Christ, then we are a gospel family.

If we are in Christ, then we are a gospel family, a family more eternally real than our physical family, because it's rooted in the bloodline of the sun.

Paul then says in verse 16 greet one another with a holy kiss.

Call this gospel affection.

Gospel affection.

Um, Clement of Alexandria, he wrote in some of his letters that the churches of that day would resound with the sound of kissing.

Like it was almost deafening or annoying.

Man, I love that, right?

We've become so anti-affectionate in our culture and society.

That I know a lot of uh, you know, our children long for affection, our spouses long for affection.

There's a reality that Jesus designed and created us to be touched, to be embraced, to be welcomed, to be loved in such a unique way that we as human beings are the only ones who can understand and know the fullness of it.

Paul's basically telling us that the family should be filled with affection.

All the churches, he says, greet you.

Speaks to the universality of the family of God.

It's not just Paul who's writing and greets them.

He he ends this with, all the churches greet you.

Man, we we gotta have this sense of unity.

When we start our new sermon series in two weeks, we're gonna be talking about this prayer of Jesus that he has in John 17.

It's called the high priestly prayer.

But the number one emphasis in that prayer is that they would be one.

The church, that they would be one like you and I are one.

Speaking to the Father, Jesus was.

The universality of the church, the affection of the church, the greeting of the church, the welcoming of the church.

Are we modeling that?

Like, are we even welcoming people when people come into our home?

You know, a lot of us have mission groups that we go to, or some of us have mission groups that we lead.

And how welcome when people walk through our door, do we greet them?

Do we even act like we're excited that they're there?

Do we offer them something to drink?

Do we share our lives with them?

Do we display our affection for them?

We are the church because we are in Christ.

And there's an expectation that Paul has that I think is not abnormal, but is normal for the kingdom and has become abnormal for our culture.

And the expectation is that we would display and put on display for the entire world what family should actually look like.

It's diverse, it's in unity, it's affectionate, it's hospitable.

So our main idea this morning for us is this: that the gospel alone makes a diverse family.

We cannot have diversity.

Diversity means nothing without the gospel, with us being in Christ.

You see, it has nothing to do with who we are, but it has everything to do with the person who we've engaged with, who we've who we've put our faith in, who we have been united to by faith that makes diversity even have meaning to it.

It is this display of these greetings, of these names, of these people and these faces that shows us that it is in Christ, in the gospel alone, that brings any sense of true diversity, and it's an eternal one because we are all found in him.

We are brothers and sisters in Christ, and that will have no end to its reality.

Our status as husband and wife, our status as parent and child, our statuses will cease except for one.

And it's the one created by his blood that makes us family.

But see, we try to create diversity or we reject diversity because we don't see it for its beauty and its importance in the gospel.

And we see this a lot in our society today, right?

This is a huge uh uh issue that we see going on in culture.

Many of us, what we do is we actually try to embrace a false, diverse family.

We embrace a false diverse family.

Here's what I mean by that.

We try to fabricate diversity.

And we try to find diversity in all these uh these different obscure things.

We make subcategories for the subcategories that also have subcategories of all the ways that we have to be diverse.

And what we're trying to do is we're trying to build a society and a culture of what?

Inclusion.

That's like the hype word right now.

How inclusive are you?

How welcoming of one another are you?

But the problem that you and I know is existing within society and culture is the cannibalistic nature of the very ones who are contending for inclusion.

Oh, well, you're not inclusive enough.

You don't have this, you know, sub-subcategory of this subcategory inside of your environment, and so your inclusivity actually doesn't even count.

They become so demanding of what actually creates diversity, and we're working and putting so much effort into embracing the sense of diversity that has no substance and is rooted in nothing authoritative or eternal, and from day to day or hour by hour, we see it constantly changing.

You see, the problem with our society right now, and with this pursuit of inclusivism, if you look at it, is the absence of grace.

There's no grace in their narrative.

Cancel culture exists because grace doesn't.

You see, it's funny funny if you look at it.

What they blame the church for doing 25, 30, 50 years ago, they're doing.

They're calling out sin and they're providing nothing but condemnation for it.

There's no grace, there's no mercy, there's no hope.

If you don't get it right, if you miss the mark, if you fail in one area, you're done.

That's not diversity.

That's not family.

That's self-righteousness that has no end to its hunger and its thirst.

It can never be quenched, it can never be satisfied.

And so what we're gonna constantly do is we're gonna keep going and keep going to try and embrace some sense of diversity that's rooted in nothing.

If you look at the flags that they're creating, the flag keeps changing over and over again to include someone else, to include someone else, to include, might as well just make this thing look like black.

Just make it a black flag.

It's all the colors mixed together.

You can't have that many patterns, symbols, stripes, stars, whatever else on this thing anymore.

But what they're doing is they want the diversity that the gospel actually has, but they have no means or understanding of how to create it.

Because they're doing it on their own strength and on their own terms.

So some of us we embrace that.

But it's only the gospel that can actually make diversity matter.

Because it's the only way that diversity is rooted in something eternal, something transcendent and beyond ourselves.

Because it's rooted in Christ, not in what you think or what you've deemed as the daily source of inclusivism.

Some of us, though, we actually don't embrace a diverse family at all.

We reject it wholeheartedly because we don't see the beauty of diversity with inside the kingdom of God, inside of those of whom he has made family.

You see, Jesus has uh the prophecy of Jesus, the prophecy of the Messiah coming all the way from the Old Testament was for what?

Inclusion.

That's literally what the Old Testament prophets were saying.

There would be one who would come up from among God's chosen people, Israel, who would then what?

Be the hope to all the nations.

When we look at Advent, what we see is the reality of this Christmas season coming up, right?

Uh what we see is the reality that Jesus was put forward as the Messiah so that all the nations might rejoice and find their hope in Yahweh alone.

Jesus is for radical inclusion.

Those who are enemies of God, because this is the reality for us the problem has nothing to do with ethnicity.

It has everything to do with enmity.

The sin that you and I hold, the sin that consumes us and is curses us, is the problem.

It has nothing to do with who we are, what we look like, what gender we are, where we come from, where we were born, any of these things.

But some of us, we actually fail to embrace a diverse family when we come into the kingdom because we fail to see that that's what Jesus was trying to create.

That every tribe, nation, and tongue would what?

Worship because of the hope that He brings us in the gospel.

And so you and I, at the root of us, what do we love?

Homogeny.

We love sameness.

We don't love unity, we love uniformity.

Those who look like us, act like us, same culture, same pedigree, all these different things, that's what we like.

And so we actually reject the diverse family that the gospel was intended to make.

We want to be a place where we celebrate diversity, where when we come to the place of the cross, we find each and every single one of us on the same playing field.

It doesn't matter what gender you are, it doesn't matter if you're married or single.

It doesn't matter if you if you've got a degree and a good job or you're broke and don't have any paper to show that you're smart, like me.

Like, hey, look, that's see a lot of D's from your high school.

When we come to Jesus, we come into the unity of a diverse family for one reason and one reason alone.

That we are in Christ.

And so what this place is going to be, what we're going to work to create a culture of, is gospel family, where no matter who you are and how you came in here, doesn't matter.

The only thing that matters are, are you in Christ?

And if you are in Christ, then you get a welcome worthy of the saints.

Then we get to embrace you with affection.

Then we get to celebrate your presence.

Then we get to lean on your strengths and giftings.

Then we get to realize that God has created you and wired you and gifted you and filled you with his spirit so that his kingdom might advance.

It doesn't matter who you are.

Imagine if they rejected the diversity of the gospel and we didn't have Phoebe's name.

We didn't have Priscilla's name.

We didn't have Rufus' name.

Well, imagine if that was the case for them back then.

You know what would probably happen?

The church wouldn't have done what it did.

It wouldn't have reached the people, it wouldn't have made the disciples, it wouldn't have planted the congregations, it wouldn't have seen the world transform and turn upside down if they rejected the diversity that the gospel was intended to create.

If Paul looked at everybody, if the apostles looked at everybody and said, unless you're a man and married, you don't count.

Church, we've got to stop acting that way.

We might say it out of our lips that diversity matters, but there's a lot of areas that we don't function in that truth.

And I'm not saying that we need to eradicate the places in the scripture that they are clear about our roles inside the church of who we are, but we have to prop up one another.

We have to build each other up.

We have to encourage and strengthen the faith of one another.

We have to realize that each and every single one of us in this room who are in Christ are gifted for one sole purpose: the building up of the church.

There's not a person in here that's not gifted for that end.

So that means there's not a person in this room who shouldn't be laboring and getting their hands dirty in gospel work.

The beauty of the gospel for us is that Jesus took on the uniformity of sin to make a diverse family.

Jesus took on the uniformity of sin to make a diverse family.

What the first part of Romans helped us understand is that you and I are kind of crappy people.

Sin has evaded every aspect of our being.

Sin has no respecter of persons, which is why the cross doesn't either.

We looked at our depravity in the first 11 chapters and how sin affects our will, affects our judgment, affects our desires and our ability.

Sin has cursed us and left us hopeless alone in our own strength.

That uniformity, every man, every woman, under the curse of sin, Jesus took on the cross.

He was our substitute.

He stood in our place.

Why?

So that a diverse family could be born.

He's the elder brother.

I love what the Bible calls Jesus as the first among many, the first brother, reborn, risen from the grave among many who would follow him.

We are resurrected in spirit and we will be resurrected in body in glory.

And we get that promise because why?

Our elder brother went first that we might be a diverse family rooted in him, in him alone.

You see, we can't have diversity without the gospel.

All attempts at diversity without Christ is hopeless.

It's condemnation, it's insufficient, it's cannibalistic.

Because we will eat our own to be more diverse.

But praise God that he was put to death, that this family might be full of life.

So what do we need to do?

Number one, get your hands dirty.

What we see in this letter is a list of people who were hard workers for the gospel.

I mean, look at how he talks about Mary, a hard worker.

How he talks about the twin sisters, workers in the gospel, how he talks about these people, risked their neck, were in prison, right?

How amazing is it that they got their hands dirty in gospel work.

Can you imagine being the first Christians ever and trying to church plant in that?

Right?

This context is kind of easy to church plant, right?

To some measure.

There's still an expectancy that, like, you go to, there's a moral expectancy, at least in our Midwestern little kind of context, that you go to church on Sunday.

And especially if you want to try and be good, you go to church.

That's where good people go.

Right?

There's still this kind of subconscious.

Though we're gravitating toward a post-Christian society, the reality is that we still kind of operate in that normative.

But for you and I, what we're noticing and what is coming is post-Christian culture where that normal expectation or assumption won't even exist anymore.

You know what we're gonna have to do?

We're gonna have to get our hands dirty in gospel work.

We're gonna have to labor and be hard workers.

I want you to imagine for a second that your name was in this letter.

Imagine Paul writing this letter and he puts your name in there.

Why is he doing it?

What's he gonna say about you?

Why is he gonna say it's important that your name's at the end of this letter?

Now that's not to discount or discredit all the other Christians who are not named at the end of this letter, who lost their lives, who worked hard, who were imprisoned, who planted churches, who funded the gospel.

I'm not trying to discredit all the names that aren't listed.

I'm just trying to ask us to ponder and think and consider for one moment.

If our name was found there, what would it be found there for?

How are we getting our hands dirty in the gospel?

Number two, embrace your family.

Embrace your family.

One of our main identities that we try to actually establish in our mission groups is family.

That means we celebrate together.

That means we mourn together.

That means that we rejoice and weep together.

That means that when you come through my front door, you're treated like a brother or sister.

One who I delight in welcoming and bringing to my home, one that I treat and greet as worthy of a saint.

Imagine that.

Are we embracing our family?

Are we still trying to stay as distant from it as we possibly can?

Do we still see church as an event that we just come to?

Or do we see it as the people who we get the joy and privilege of having relationship with?

How are you viewing church?

How are you viewing your attendance and presence here?

We need to rethink and restructure the way that we understand the church is not just an event that we come to inside of some building, but it's people, it's faces, it's souls, it's family.

We need to be those who embrace it, not reject it.

And I get it, we come from broken families, or we don't have healthy families, like maybe your family, you know, uh are really weird.

You know, mine's kind of weird, and uh they do weird stuff, and uh they don't act like family the way I wish they acted like family at times.

But guess what?

Jesus heals that.

Jesus speaks to that, Jesus corrects that.

Jesus conforms us to himself, who was willing and joyously laid down his life for this family.

Are we willing to risk our necks for this family?

Are we willing to be imprisoned for this family?

Are we willing to greet one another with a holy kiss?

That got weird, didn't it?

Yeah.

Listen, hey, let this building resound with holy kisses.

I don't even know what that sounds like, but probably something like ASMR, weird stuff.

Lastly, what we need to do is we need to celebrate the diversity.

We need to celebrate the diversity.

I I love the diversity of sacred mission.

And you might think, oh, we're not that diverse.

I see a lot of white people.

Fine.

If that's how you're understanding diversity, then that's how you're understanding diversity.

Uh, diversity is much deeper than ethnicity, and we have a radical amount of diversity with inside of this church.

And I celebrate the mess out of it because every single one of us, no matter who we are, where we come from, brings something to the table to see the mission accomplished.

We all are indispensable and valuable.

And so, so all of us are this diverse family of gospel laborers.

And I want us to start celebrating the reality of what God has done here and how he's continuing to create and spread the diverse presence of his people, of his children in his church.

Church, I hope we see this letter, this list of names as people, faces, who were ransomed by the blood of Jesus, who were wrecked by the gospel, who got their hands dirty in the mission, so that you and I, two thousand years later, could read their names.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's pray.