Romans: The Gospel Creates a New Way of Living

Well, this semester and this coming year, or maybe even more, we're going to study our way through the book of Romans.

Rome was the greatest city in the ancient world.

It was wealthy, it was powerful, it was sophisticated, and yet it was deeply broken.

This letter to Rome becomes Paul's theological masterpiece in the New Testament.

In the 1500s, John Calvin, a theologian, he said this about the book, the Letter of Romans.

The subject then of these chapters may be stated thus: that man's only righteousness is through the mercy of God in Christ, which being offered by the gospel is apprehended by faith.

Now, Pastor and author Tim Keller, he summarized that thought by saying this other religions are about being saved through giving to God a righteousness.

Christianity is about being saved through receiving from God a righteousness.

That Christianity at its core is a receiving, receiving a gift amidst being nothing.

And Romans answers some big questions for us, questions we all have.

Why is the world broken?

Why do I never seem to measure up?

Can anyone really be accepted by God?

Could I be accepted by God?

How do people truly change?

What does it look like to live by grace in an anxious, divided world?

Romans is gonna unpack those questions for us.

Have you read The Odyssey?

Maybe you saw the movie.

Uh there's a version of the Odyssey.

The most popular version of the Odyssey is 416 pages.

Not sure I would make it through that.

Now, I could say this to summarize this big story, the Odyssey, I could give a brief explanation.

And I could say this the Odyssey is the story of a hero's long journey home through trials that test his character, wisdom, and endurance.

That would be a brief explanation.

Now, if you want a full explanation, you could go to Moses Finley's 1954, The World of Odysseus.

Sir Moses Finley, there he is.

He's a professor at Cambridge, he studies the story, he writes an entire book on the world of Odysseus.

He gives a full explanation, right?

Not a brief explanation, a full explanation.

And that's Romans.

Romans is the fullest explanation that we have of the gospel.

But Romans is not just an explanation.

This is actually life-changing.

It's not just information.

It creates and changes us.

Because the letter is not just about trying to get us to be more religious.

The letter is about us discovering the one-way love of God to us in Jesus alone, apart from our work.

So let's look at these first seven verses.

Romans 1:1.

Romans 1:1

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus.

Point number one is this we are reminded who we are before we're told what to do.

The past few weeks, I got to be on break.

I got to go fishing for a week out in Idaho, middle of nowhere, Idaho.

Here's a great picture of us fishing out in the middle of nowhere, Idaho.

I can't find a more favorite thing for me to do with a few buddies.

This one particular day, we show up in this one little fishing hole, and my buddy Joe is fishing the hole from one side of the stream.

It's not a big river, kind of a little stream, maybe 20, 30 feet across, and he's casting.

He's not getting anything, casting, not getting.

Finally, he decides, yeah, what you fish the hole.

I'm gonna get out my camera.

I cast one time, I promise you, in the same exact spot he was casting.

I catch the fish of my lifetime.

This is a cutthroat trout, probably over 20 inches.

For a small stream trout, it doesn't get any better.

I will never replicate this the rest of my life.

And I am thinking the rest of the day, I'm amazing.

I'm amazing, man.

I set that, I set that men, I set that hook, and I got a men, and I did all that, and I'm a great fisherman, and I'm a great pastor, and I'm a great preacher, and I'm a great dad, and I'm just great, right?

Justification by works.

Because just a few days later, I was along that same stretch of stream, and I'm working a hole that I had killed it in before, and I get nothing.

Nothing.

All day, nothing.

One day I'm producing, I'm feeling fantastic.

The next day I'm not producing, and I'm not quite sure who I am.

Justification by works, but what if I'm not producing?

Can I remember that I am somebody before I produce?

That's what Paul is constantly doing in his writings.

He's affirming who we are in Jesus before he begins to tell us what to do and what we're called to.

So Paul does not begin with what to do, he begins with who he is in Jesus, a servant of Jesus.

He is somebody, servant of Jesus, son, daughter of God, and then he's called to something.

He calls us to obedience, but he immerses us in grace first.

The emphasis of Paul's understanding of his own self is on God's initiative toward him.

And it begs for our reflection.

It begs for us to pause and say, How do I understand myself?

Not like on the good fishing day, on the bad fishing day.

How do you think about yourself?

How do you understand yourself?

The greatest freedom you'll ever have is deeply knowing you belong to Jesus.

That's why we shower on you every single Sunday.

It's easy to keep defining yourself by performance and reputation, your parenting, your success, your kids' parenting, your kids' failure.

But the good news is that our deepest identity is never what we've done for Jesus or in the world, but for what he's done for us, what he deems us, what he calls us, his initiative.

And therefore, the greatest empowerment you will ever have, not just the greatest freedom, but the greatest empowerment is deeply knowing you belong to Jesus.

Verse 2, 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, and power according to the Spirit of Holiness by His resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Point number two is this the gospel is God's eternal story, always centered on Christ Jesus.

Verse 2, Paul immediately gets himself out of the spotlight.

This is going to be about Jesus, who came from David.

So he roots this new gospel, this new way of faith in the Old Testament, into the heart of God.

And Paul does something amazing here for us, a theological understanding that Jesus is fully human and fully God.

Verse 3, he was human, he's from David.

Verse 4, he was divine, he resurrected from the dead.

That's the doctrine of hypostatic union.

Just use that this week.

People will love it, really connect with it.

One person, two natures, fully God and fully human.

And this matters.

The reason why this matters is it means that Jesus understands your disappointments.

And Jesus also shows himself as God through power over death.

So when he says you're forgiven, it means you're forgiven.

And when he says you're righteous and you're a saint, it means you are that, because he calls you that.

Verse 5, through him we have received grace.

We received it, didn't earn it, didn't perform for it.

We received grace and apostleship to bring about, why do we have this?

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.

Point number three is this the gospel creates a new way of living.

Grace, transformation, and mission.

And we could even say grace is empowering transformation and mission.

Right?

First, we get this idea that grace produces a transformation, an obedience of faith.

Verse 5a.

Received grace brings about obedience.

It's not perfectly, it's over time.

If I asked you to go on a long walk from here to Atlanta, it wouldn't be a perfect walk.

You'd meander a little bit, but it would be a long walk in the same direction.

That's the Christian walk of obedience.

Not perfect, but in the same direction.

Second, God's grace produces mission.

Verse 5b.

Received grace is not simply for personal blessing.

It's not all about you.

It's actually about becoming a loving person that can love others.

The gospel means we're so loved we can stop obsessing about ourselves.

We can actually care about someone else.

We can love someone else.

We get a mission towards someone else.

Because I'm already loved, I have the power and margin to love you, hopefully.

And not just you, like other Marietta people, but actually other people who look different and believe different, people who irritate me.

Right?

We're empowered to love them and we want them to know Jesus, whether they're from Marietta or Iraq or India or Guatemala, whether they believe differently or believe similarly, because we've been so loved by this Jesus, we want them to know the same.

Last point, 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.

That phrasing, grace to you and peace to you, grace and peace, grace and peace, grace and peace.

Paul uses over and over to open letters and close letters.

We're only going to have peace when we have grace.

You'll only have peace in your life when you understand the grace that you have been called something apart and outside of yourself.

Point number four, the Christian life is increasingly becoming who you already are in Christ.

Notice Paul doesn't call them saints because they're mature.

He calls them saints because they belong to Jesus.

That's the doctrine of imputation.

It's the blessing of imputation.

God's favor and his righteousness and his forgiveness is not your performance, it's by his choosing to give it to you.

So holiness begins not out of your effort, holiness begins out of a receiving of the declaration from God's authority that in Jesus you are this.

Before you've done anything this week, you are a saint to God.

This isn't the message of the Odyssey where you're punished for your mistakes.

In Jesus, you are loved and forgiven.

You're not tolerated, and you're not merely accepted.

You're loved like a child.

It's easy to live as though the Christian life begins with grace, and then we're going to continue it with effort.

But Romans begins by saying exactly the opposite: Grace called you, Grace saves you, grace sends you, Grace transforms you, and grace will finish what it began.

This is how Jesus works.

The book of Romans builds on this doctrine of imputation, being saints while sinners.

All the way into chapter 8, in the climax, Paul uses this metaphor of adopted children.

Last year we had a family adopt a child, a baby from Texas.

And I got to talk with them and I got to watch that process.

And they loved this baby before they ever met the baby.

Isn't that interesting?

They chose this baby before they met the baby, before the baby met them.

And that's the thing about babies.

They're cute, but they're not real impressive.

You can't do anything.

And these parents chose to go and get this baby and bring this baby into their family.

They brought this baby home to be a part of their family and their children.

Now, what if I had told you when they got home, the baby slept on the porch, on the front steps, but their biological children slept inside.

You say, that's horrible.

Didn't happen, by the way.

It didn't happen.

What an issue.

Would never happen.

Let me show you two pieces of art to close us.

On the left is a piece by William Macduff from the 1800s.

It's an orphan on the doorstep.

The child's exposed, vulnerable, insecure.

You ever felt that way?

Now on the right is a Norman Rockwell piece of a child that's loved and asleep in their bed.

So sweet.

Look at that little girl.

Anybody have a three-year-old?

It's about the only time they look like that.

They don't look like that during the day.

Anybody have a three-year-old and your three-year-old's incredibly impressive?

Doesn't exist.

And you may have a three-year-old and three-year-old's not a brat?

Doesn't exist.

Doesn't happen.

This little child being loved and secure is being given to the child.

It's imputed.

And this child is accepted and safe and secure, not because of the child's impressiveness or performance or service, but because the parent is choosing to impute love to the child.

That's Paul's point with this metaphor that you're a saint while you're a sinner, imputation, building towards this metaphor of an adopted child, that you are a child of God because He's choosing of you and loving of you.

Many of us can live as paupers and lowly while we're saints and children of the Heavenly Father.

We know we're forgiven.

But do you also know that you're fully righteous, accepted, secure, and loved in this Jesus?

We're going to study the book of Romans for the next year.

That's what it's going to be unpacking because this is so true about you.

You are a sinner and yet you are a saint because of Jesus.

What does that mean for your life?

What does that mean for your heart to be a sinner yet fully loved, already loved?

What transformation toward obedience might that call you to?

What mission to love another person could it call you to?

Church, your beloved sons and daughters called and sent.

If you have any questions about the sermon that we pastored down front after, we'd love to talk to you, pray with you perhaps about something.

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, we're so thankful you don't leave us in the wilderness to wander about our own, but you pursue us, you chase us, you love us, you welcome us, you grab us, and you bring us home.

And you don't leave us on the front porch, you bring us inside the family.

And this is by your choosing and your loving.

We look to the cross this morning to know that you already love us and that we're already forgiven and we're already righteous by your work for us.

May that produce a great empowerment in our lives, that your Holy Spirit would use the imputation of your righteousness to us, that we are your righteous children, beloved sons, beloved daughters, saints in your family.

And may our lives have obedience and mission to others.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.