Right with God - Romans 1:1-7

We're kicking off a series which will take us through the next couple of months. And this series is through the first half of the book of Romans. And Romans is one of the most important letters in the New Testament. For nearly 2,000 years, it has been shaping how we understand who God is, how we what Jesus has done, and how we can truly be made right with God. And so we've called our series Right with God.

Romans is also a book that can be a bit difficult. There'll be parts of it that are beautifully clear and other parts that you'll look at it and you think, what on earth do I like? How do I understand this? What do I do with this part of Romans? And so our hope is over the next nine weeks or so that you will I reach the end of this with a clearer understanding of the gospel and a really strong confidence in God's word.

As we open our Bibles to Romans chapter one, where we're going to start today. Let's pray. God, we thank you for your word. Lord, we thank you for this letter. And as we start our series together, Father, we just pray that you would be with us throughout it.

Lord, the bits of the letter that are hard, that are confusing or maybe make us feel unsettled and uncomfortable. Lord, we pray that you would speak to us through that, that we wouldn't push against it, but rather we would let it through your Holy Spirit, transform our lives and that we might come away with a better understanding of who you are. And so we pray this in Jesus precious name, Amen. If you're like me, I like being across the news of what's happening in our world. And it's been fairly grim reading the last couple of weeks, I'm sure you'll agree.

But if you're accustomed with reading newspapers, and by newspapers I mean, I don't even know they print paper newspapers anymore. It's all online, online newspapers. You'll know the ratio for bad stories to good stories. It's about 19 bad stories, and good story seems to be the kind of ratio that it works out to be. And those good stories are normally something random, like someone raising money for charity or a cute baby animal being born in a zoo, or someone completing some heroic act.

That's incredible. But if you look at the same sites that I do, the free ones, you'll notice at the end of the articles there's comments and the readers can post what they think about it. I don't think it adds anything to those sites, but obviously it works. And I just Think it gives us insight into the minds of people who read online newspapers, which, you know, on reflection, I'm one of those people, so I'm not sure that that's a good thing, but pretty much guaranteed at the end of these stories, and I think some of you will have seen it as well, someone will write, this has restored my faith in humanity. Someone will make that comment at the end of one of those feel good articles.

And I'm always struck by it. I'm always struck by the fact that one small act of kindness, one newspaper article about one small act of kindness or something good is enough for someone to say, I oh, actually, everything's okay with the world. Everything's right. It's like the other things don't matter anymore. And I'm always surprised with how small a foundation that is to kind of build your hope on.

Because those moments are good, they're encouraging, but they don't do anything to solve the deeper problem that we have in this world. And I suspect the person commenting knows that. I suspect that they know that one glimpse of goodness isn't enough. It doesn't get to the heart of what's actually wrong. And that's why I think the book of Romans is so important for us, because the book of Romans gives us the clearest gospel answer for what we see in this world.

It gives us a global solution to a global problem, the problem of sin in our world. But it also gives us a personal solution for a personal problem, which is the problem of sin in our own lives. And so this morning we're going to work our way through just the first seven verses, because these seven verses will set us up really well for our study over the next couple of months. And in these first seven verses, we see four key ideas. We see the author, the message, the mission, and the church.

They'll come up on the screen in a moment. The author, the message, the mission, and the church. So let's look at verse one, which is the author says this. This letter is from Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, chosen by God to be an apostle and sent out to preach his good news. In ancient letters, really helpfully, they start with the name of the author.

We do it the other way around. If you're writing a letter now, or probably more to relate to you, an email is kind of the chosen form of communication. We put our name at the end, not at the start, but in these ancient letters, they put their name at the start. And Paul introduces himself. In verse one of Romans, he says three important things about himself, he says, firstly, I am a slave of Christ Jesus.

You know, that's an odd way to start a letter, isn't it? He was writing to a group of believers that he hasn't met. I suspect if it was me, I'd be tempted to lead with my qualifications. I'd be saying, this is why I'm worthy of sending you a letter. And Pa could have done that better than anyone.

His qualifications were better than anyone's. He could have said, I'm Paul, the one who trained under the renowned Rabbi Gamaliel. I'm Paul, the Roman citizen. This would have carried power in Rome. They would have read that and seen that he has important legal and cultural standing.

He could have said, I'm Paul, the one who has seen amazing miracles. You see, from an earthly perspective, all of those things would have been, would have carried weight. But in Paul's heart and his life, they paled into insignificance compared to his position as a slave to Jesus. The word he uses here is the word duolos. It literally means someone who belongs to another.

It's someone whose life is under the complete authority of a master, while his other credentials, Roman citizen, student of a renowned rabbi, a man who's seen incredible miracles. While they would have carried some kind of importance in the Roman world, this one's the complete opposite. Because in Rome, the city to which he's writing, 40% of the population there are either slaves or freed slaves. These are people who valued freedom above all else. They knew what it was like to have no personal claim to your own life, to not be free.

And so as he calls himself a jewel loss, it's a title that no one would have aspired to. Now, I reckon we're not much different today. I reckon in this world, the most sought after attribute or thing is to be free, to be financially free, to be free from responsibilities, to be free to express our opinions, to be free to determine our own path. And some of those things aren't inherently bad. But Paul knows something that is way more important.

He knows that none of the freedoms of this world would even come close to belonging to God. Because in the Scriptures, the same language that Paul uses here is used of Moses and David and the prophets. And it's never a mark of shame, it's a mark of honour. These were people whose whole lives had been given over to God's purposes. And so, as Paul says here, he's saying, my life is not my own anymore.

I belong to Jesus. And I want us to grasp that. This morning Church, because the world tells us the total opposite, says your life is your own. No one can tell you how to live or what to do. You have the freedom to define yourself.

But that isn't the message of the Gospel which says belonging to Christ is the way that you can actually be free. You can find fulfillment and purpose not in self autonomy, but in seeing yourself in the same way that Paul saw himself, which is as someone who belongs to Jesus. The second way that Paul introduces himself is he says, I am chosen to be an apostle. And the word apostle here just means one who is sent, someone who is commissioned to carry out a special task on behalf of another. And so just like his identity is not found in title or position, his authority doesn't come from those things either.

His authority rests in the fact that he had been called and sent by God himself. And so when Paul writes, he writes with a sense of weight and responsibility because it is not who he is in himself, but it is because of the one who has sent him. And then to really drive the point home, the third way he introduces himself is he says, I've been sent out to preach his good news. That phrase sent out sometimes in some versions it says set apart. It comes from a word which means to be separated for a purpose.

And Paul knew what it was to live with a purpose. Once his purpose had been as one of the Jewish elite, there to completely destroy the church. But then everything had changed. On the road to Damascus, Jesus had confronted him. And instead of being set apart for his own purposes, the destruction of the church, he's now set apart for the Gospel of Jesus.

So that is the author. And then in verses two to four, we see the message says this. God promised this good news long ago through his prophets. In the Holy Scriptures, the good news is about his Son. In his earthly life.

He was born into King David's family line and he was shown to be the Son of God. When he was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit, he is Jesus Christ, our Lord. Paul begins by saying the good news, the message of the Gospel. It's not something that he, Paul, has come up with. It's not something created by the early church.

Instead, if you look at the Holy Scriptures, it's there. This is not a new path that God suddenly decided to take. This is what the prophets were speaking about. Paul's making this point really clear that everything God has been doing through the Old Testament was coming forward to this point. The gospel's not disconnected from the rest of the Bible.

It's the fulfillment of it. It's the point where God's promises have come together. And this isn't a throwaway line from Paul because he'll actually, through the book of Romans and we'll get to see plenty of these. He actually refers back to. He quotes and he paraphrases the Old Testament scriptures some 60 times.

And then he says what the good news is actually about. It's so simple, I wonder if you can see it there. He says, the good news is, is about his son. You see, at the heart of it, the gospel is not primarily about a set of ideas. It's not primarily about a way of living.

Those things flow out of it, but they're not it. It's the gospel is Jesus. It is Jesus. And Paul gives us two things he wants us to understand about Jesus. First, he says Jesus was born into King David's family line.

Now, that would have really resonated in the hearts of the Jewish Christians there in Rome, because for generations God had been. God's people had been waiting for this. God had promised David that one of his descendants would rule and reign forever. So there was an expectation, a hope that the Messiah would come from that royal line. And Paul's pointing back to this Old Testament promise and saying, this Jesus is a him.

This promise has been fulfilled. But he doesn't stop there, because Paul says that Jesus was shown to be the Son of God when he was raised from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit. A few years ago, I was chatting with someone at church and they said to me after the service, I'm a Christian. I believe most of what the Bible says. And I thought, oh, where's this going to go?

And they said, I believe most of what the Bible says, but I cannot accept the resurrection. And we chatted briefly. And what became very clear was that they'd never actually investigated it. They never looked into it. They never considered the evidence.

They just had decided that it couldn't possibly be true. But the reality is this. You can't have Christianity without the resurrection, because the resurrection is not something that you take or leave. It's where the whole of scripture comes together. It's the moment where Jesus revealed in power who he truly was.

It was a clear and public declaration that he is the Son of God. Paul is saying, this is the gospel. It's the announcement that God has kept his promises, that Jesus is king, that he's been raised from death to life, and that he is the Lord. You know, I wonder if at times we've made the gospel smaller than that. We've made the gospel mainly about our own comfort rather than about God's rule and his reign.

We've treated it as something that helps us in life rather than something that brings us under a king. We've treated forgiveness as something that enables us to just keep going as we are, rather than seeing that it is something that calls us into a different way of living. And maybe we've even reduced the gospel to being something that just helps us to get through the week rather than something that transforms our life. But Paul won't let us do that. He starts the letter by lifting our eyes and showing us this is God plan, worked out through history, carried by Jesus.

And it's not something to just believe in theory. It's something that changes everything. And then in verses 5 and 6, we see the mission says this through Christ. God has given us the privilege and authority as apostles to tell Gentiles everywhere what God has done for them so that they will believe and obey him, bringing glory to his name. You see, Paul builds on what he's just said about Jesus and says what it leads to.

Because knowing the gospel naturally should lead us to living as people with a specific mission. And in these verses, we see the scope and the goal of that mission. Paul says, the mission is for people everywhere. The gospel isn't just for Jews. It's also for Gentiles, the people who aren't Jews.

It's not just for one nation or one culture or one language. The gospel speaks to a global problem. And so it goes to all people. But the goal of it is just as important. It's about obedience.

In other words, responding to the gospel should lead to a transformed life. Faith leads to submitting our lives to Jesus, to living shaped by him and his mission so that we might bring glory to him. And then in verse six, in case it's sitting out there as an abstract concept to the believers there in Rome and to us, Paul brings it right into their lives. He says, and you are included among those Gentiles who have been called to belong to Jesus Christ. And that changes how they see themselves before anything else, before what they do or how they live.

This is who they are. Just as Paul has declared about himself, he now reminds them that the same reality applies to them. They belong to Christ. And then fourth there in verse seven, Paul turns his attention directly to the church. He says, I am writing to you, to all of you in Rome who are loved by God and who are called to be his own holy people.

May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. Rome was an incredible place in the ancient world. As the center, the heart of the Roman Empire, everything flowed out from Rome. But Rome itself was not an easy place to be a Christian. There was a huge city, over a million people, which by modern standards is pretty big, but by ancient standards is ginormous.

And it had enormous contrasts within this city. We often see those pictures and maybe at school you saw those beautiful villas with gardens. A few people lived like that in Rome, but most people in Rome were packed into these densely crowded slums that were rife with disease and violence and where most people just struggle to get by. And for many of the believers, choosing to follow Christ meant giving up their family relationships and status. The believers in Rome couldn't gather in one large group and so they were spread out amongst many smaller gatherings, meeting in homes.

Culturally, it was diverse and that was complex for them to manage. The city of Rome included, sorry, the church in Rome included both Gentile believers and Jewish believers. Actually, a few years before this, the Jews had been kicked out of Rome and then they'd been allowed to return. And so the church is working out how to live together again with these two very different cultural backgrounds. So it's not a settled, comfortable church that Paul writes to.

It's a group of believers who are faithfully trying to live out their faith in a difficult cultural environment. It's worth us remembering that Paul's never visited the church in Rome. Many of the letters that he writes, many of the churches he writes his letters to are churches that he started himself, and this is not one of those. And so he's not writing to address a specific problem in the church, as he so often says does. Instead, he steps back and he lays out the Gospel clearly and carefully.

Because in a church like this, what they needed more than anything else was a shared foundation of the gospel that would hold them steady in the middle of everything that they were facing and everything that they were going to face.

I wonder if that's more relevant for us than we realise. We can easily think that what we need from the gospel, what we need is a solution to an issue that we're facing. What we need most from the gospel is clarity on a situation. And Scripture has that for you. But Paul goes deeper than that.

He starts it by bringing them back to their identity as children of God, and he's modeled that for us in these opening verses. He said, I belong to Jesus, I've been set apart by Jesus and I'VE been set apart for the message of Jesus. But here's the thing that I want you to take with you today, that those things are not unique to Paul. The same gospel that he was entrusted with and that was entrusted to the Church in Rome has now been entrusted to each one of us. And so I want to ask you this morning these simple questions as we close.

Do you know that you belong to Jesus? Do you know that you belong to Jesus? Just as Paul could say with great confidence in the face of adversity, in the face of huge sacrifice, I belong to Jesus. Do you know that? Secondly, do you know that you are loved by God?

Paul knew that. He knew that didn't matter what was happening in his life, that nothing could change the reality that God loved him. And third, do you recognise that your life has been set apart for God's purposes?

I think for many of us, we probably would say, yep, the first two, tick, tick. I know those things. For some of us, maybe there's still a question mark there. I think for many of us, that third one, do I know? Do I recognise that my life has been set apart for his purposes is something that we're still trying to work out, we're still grappling with.

What's the reality of that? In my everyday life and my hope this series is that that becomes clearer in your life, because when it does, it will shape everything. It will shape how you see yourself, it will shape how you make decisions, it'll shape the things that you give your life to.

So I hope and I pray that over the course of this next nine weeks that. That the gospel will become clearer to you than it ever has before, that you might be grounded in who God is, that you'll be confident in what Jesus has done and that you'll be certain about what your life is for. Let's pray. God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for these opening seven verses where Paul says a lot.

He models to us really clearly what it means to have confidence in knowing that we are loved by you, that we are called by you, that we can stand confident upon the reality of what Jesus has done and that those things should shape our identity, that they should shape the way that we live. Father, as we work our way through these sections of Romans God, we pray that you would reveal yourself to us, that we might see through your word a clearer image of the Gospel, that we would be confident in knowing how that influences and impacts our lives and that we might be transformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus. And so we ask you these things in Jesus name, amen.