Romans 1:  Why Romans?


Why Romans?
This morning, as Trevor said earlier, we start a new series on Sunday mornings in the book of Romans.  The Mark series kind of goes underground and we'll be following on that journey in small groups, but starting this week on Sunday mornings we're going to be beginning a parallel journey through Romans.

And this morning, I want to start by asking the question:  Why Romans?  

It's possible of course to answer that question with the Edmund Hilary answer - the one he gave when they asked him why he climbed Mt Everest, and he said:  "Because it's there."  It's not a bad answer - in fact the book of Romans sometimes gets described as the Himalayas of the New Testament, so the Edmund Hilary answer is kind of appropriate, but it's not the only way you could answer the question.  

When I was a teenager, Romans was a part of the New Testament that people spoke about as a kind of rite of passage for a keen young Christian - you read Romans if you felt like you were ready to become a serious Christian thinker, to put a few hairs on your theological chest (metaphorically).  And again, that may well be a good reason to get into Romans at that stage of life, but then most of us are not at that stage of life any more;  most of us are not keen young eighteen year old Christians ready to dive in at the deep end for the first time and get into a bit of serious theology.  

So does that mean Romans is not for us any more?  Or is there another reason for reading this letter?  Is there another reason for applying ourselves to the hard work of going back nearly two thousand years in time and grappling with this dense, complex, profound piece of writing?  Why Romans?     

Why preach the gospel in Rome?
Well, in the first chapter of the letter, Paul addresses himself to a similar question.  Not 'Why Romans?', but 'Why Rome?'.  Paul's writing this letter ahead of a visit that he plans to make to them soon - he tells us that in verse 10.  He has a few other destinations planned as well - before he goes to Rome he wants to go first to Jerusalem, to deliver a gift from the Gentile congregations to the Jewish Christians who are suffering from a famine in Judea.  He wants to go to Jerusalem first, and his relationship with the Jerusalem church is kind of tense, and he's worried about how that visit will go, and so he wants the Christians in Rome to pray for him.  And then after he goes to Jerusalem and then to Rome, he wants to go on across to the Western end of the Mediterranean, to Spain, so he can preach the gospel where it hasn't been preached before.  This is stuff that he tells us in the second last chapter of the letter, in chapter 15.  And on his way from Jerusalem through to Spain he's planning to pass through Rome, and he's hoping that they will welcome him and help him and refresh him on his journey.  

So he plans to go to Jerusalem, and he plans to go to Spain, and in between he plans to go to Rome.  And that's the thing he talks about here in chapter 1.  He's on his way to Rome.  He's never been there before;  this wasn't one of the churches that he planted;  most of them don't know him;  but he's on his way to see them.  And when he gets there - verse 15 - the thing that he wants to do is preach the gospel.  He wants to evangelise the non-Christians, of course;  but he also wants to evangelise the Christians - verse 15:  "I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you."  And this first chapter of the letter is about why he wants to do that - a whole string of reasons for why he wants to come to Rome and talk about the gospel there.  

These are the reasons why he wants to visit them;  but they're also indirectly the reasons why he wants to write this letter.  Paul didn't sit down at his desk one day and say to himself, "One day someone's going to get around to writing Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and then before you know it, it'll be Acts, and then they're going to be asking me for Romans.  It wasn't like that.  The reasons for Romans are bound up with the reasons for Paul's visit to Rome, and once we've understood that we're in a good position to start thinking about where we fit into all of this and why we might need to read this letter to the Romans too.  So why does Paul want to go to Rome, and why does he want to preach the gospel when he gets there?

* The gospel is what God set me apart to live for (v.1-4)
In the first place, Paul says, it's because the gospel is the thing that God set me apart to live for.   Verse 1:  "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God ‹  2 the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures 3 regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David,  4 and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord."

When Paul was converted he knew that that made him a servant of Jesus Christ and a servant of the gospel.  His conversion was also his call to ministry, as it is for all of us.  And in Paul's case, that ministry was a very particular one, as an apostle of Jesus to the gentiles - as a witness of the resurrection of Jesus, taking that testimony to the non-Jewish nations of the world.  That's what the gospel is, by the way, as Paul explains in verses 2-4 - it's the message about Jesus, and how he showed himself to be the son of God, and how he died and rose again for our salvation.  That's the gospel.

And Paul says, verse 1, the meaning of my life now is that gospel of Jesus.  When God converted me he called me and he set me apart for the gospel of God.  So it's no surprise that the reasons why I want to come to Rome, and the things that I want to do when I get there have something to do with the gospel.      

* The gospel is what brought you into relationship with God (v.5-7)
But then, secondly, verses 5-7, it's not as if the gospel is just something that I'm into, some particular ministry that I have because I'm an apostle.  The gospel is not just the thing that I was set apart for;  it's also the thing that brought you into relationship with God.  Verse 5:  "Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.  6 And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.  7 To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:  Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ."

The relationship that we have with God is a gospel-shaped relationship.  It is 'through Jesus' and 'for his name's sake' that we came to be in relationship with God.  When God called us to him, he called us 'to belong to Jesus Christ'.  And so Paul says, when God gave me this ministry of taking the gospel message about Jesus to the Gentiles, it was people like you that he had in mind;  that very gospel that I preach is the same gospel that is the foundation of how you come to be in relationship with God.

* The gospel is what will make you strong (v.8-13; cf. 16:25-27)
Thirdly, Paul says in verses 8-13,  I want to come to Rome because I want to make you strong, and the gospel is what is going to do that.  

Verse 8:  "First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world.  9 God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you 10 in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God's will the way may be opened for me to come to you. 11 I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong ‹  12 that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith.  13 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles."

How does Paul think he is going to strengthen these Christians in Rome?  How is he going to encourage them in their faith?  Well, he doesn't tell us in as many words here, but by the end of the letter he's made it very clear.  So at the very end of the letter, in chapter 16 verse 25, Paul writes:  "Now to him who is able to establish you [literally, 'to strengthen you', the same word that he uses back in chapter 1] to him who is able to strengthen you by my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past,  26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all nations might believe and obey him ‹  27 to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ! Amen."

In Paul's mind, the gospel is not just the message you hear at the start of the Christian life, and then you move on to something more esoteric or more spiritual or more interesting - no, in Paul's mind you don't grow out of the gospel, you grow into the gospel.  The gospel is not a door you walk through at the start of the Christian life.  It's a boat you sit in all the way to heaven.  So when Paul comes to Rome, the thing that he wants to do for the Christians there, not just the non-Christians - the thing he wants to for the Christians is to evangelise them.  He wants to remind them of the gospel, and to help them to trace out the implications of the gospel for all sorts of aspects of their lives.  He wants the church in Rome to be a strong church, and so he wants it to be a gospel-centred church.  

* The gospel is for all people, the wise as well as the foolish... (v.14)
Fourthly, he wants to come and preach the gospel in Rome because of his conviction that the gospel is a message for all people, for the wise as well as the foolish.  Verse 14:  "I am obligated both to Greeks and Non-Greeks [literally, both to Greeks and barbarians] both to the wise and the foolish."  I don't think Paul is saying:  "You guys in Rome are not very smart;  you're barbarians, you're a bit foolish, but I'm obligated to take the gospel to all sorts, so I'd better come to Rome."  I think what he's saying is exactly the opposite of that.  Rome is the capital city of the empire.  

The church in Rome, right from the start, seems to have viewed itself as being something pretty special - this is a sophisticated city, Rome, and the Christians there seem to have viewed themselves as a pretty sophisticated kind of bunch.  Paul knows that it takes a little boldness to write like this to the church in Rome.  So he says in chapter 15, and this is about as tactful as Paul ever gets in any of his letters - he says in chapter 15:  "I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another.  15 I have written you quite boldly on some points, as if to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me 16 to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles."

He's polite, but at the end of the day, he's not intimidated by Rome, or by the sophistication of the Christians in Rome.  He knows that he is under obligation not only to the barbarians but also to the Greeks;  not only to the foolish but also to the wise;  not only to the people in the back blocks of Asia minor, but also to the people in the capital city of the empire.  

The gospel places us under that sort of obligation, doesn't it.  In my experience, it's not so difficult to challenge people who are younger than us, or less influential than us, or less powerful than us, with the message of the gospel.  I remember when I was a teacher, how easy it was to evangelise my students, and how hard it was to evangelise my fellow teachers, especially the ones who were twenty years older than me, which was most of them.  It really wasn't till my third year in the staff room that I gradually began to overcome that timidity.

And Paul says here:  the gospel doesn't just entitle me to speak to those people and to challenge them;  it obligates me to, when the opportunities arise.  And so, verse 15, Paul says:  "That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome."  If the gospel is for the whole world, the great as well as the small, the wise as well as the foolish, the sophisticated as well as the unsophisticated, then sooner or later, if Paul is the apostle to the gentiles, that will mean going to Rome.

* for I'm not ashamed of the gospel... (v.16-17)
That is the background behind those great verses that follow, in verses 16 and 17, which are really the theme of the letter.  Paul writes, verse 16:  'I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.  17 For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written:  "The righteous will live by faith."'  

I want to come to Rome, and I want to remind you of the gospel, and I want to help you to be a strong church, that is to be a gospel-centred church.  And the reason is because I know that the gospel of Jesus is the place where God's power for salvation is to be found - for Jews, for Greeks, for everyone who believes.  I used to be a Pharisee;  I used to think that the centre of everything was the law of Moses;  now I know that the centre of everything is the gospel of Jesus, and that it is the one message that comes with the power of God for salvation, and that it comes with the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.  

I'm not going to spend a lot of time explaining these verses now - in a sense, the explanation of these verses is the rest of the letter, particularly the next few chapters.  

But what I do want to do is look, just finally, at the last point that Paul makes in this chapter, which is about the backdrop that makes the message of the gospel so important and so urgent, the reason why the gospel of Jesus is in the end our only hope.    

* The gospel is our only hope
- God's wrath (v.18)
The backdrop, verse 18, is the wrath of God.  Paul writes:  "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness."

The thing that the gospel saves us from is not just human evil, or the power of the devil, or the darkness of death, although it does save us from all of those things.  But in Paul's mind, those things are only secondary issues really.  They're not the heart of our predicament.  The heart of our predicament is the judgement of God.  When Paul talks about God saving us, that's the main thing that he has in mind;  it's about God saving us from the demands of his own justice and judgement, and all the other things that God saves us from - sin and death and the devil - all those other things are really just the consequences and the outworkings of this.

- The scope of God's wrath (v.18-20)
What is the scope of God's wrath?  Verse 18:  "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness,  19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities ‹ his eternal power and divine nature ‹ have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."  It's "all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness."  It's everyone - everyone who's ever seen a sunrise;  everyone who's ever breathed the air;  everyone who's ever experienced the things that ought to make it obvious that we are creatures with a creator.  This is not a Jewish problem;  this is not a Gentile problem;  this is not just something to do with criminals and murderers and Adolf Hitler.  This is all of us.

- The reason for God's wrath (v.21-23)
The reason for God's wrath, verses 21-23, is the way that we worship and live for anything and everything except the God who made us.  Verse 21:  "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.  22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles."

It's not little statues of gods and animals that we bow down to in our culture of course;  it's physical beauty and health and money and education and real estate and family - we bow down before those things and we worship them and we live as if they were our ultimate concern, as if they were the reason why we're here on earth.  That's the reason for God's wrath.

- The way God's wrath is revealed (v.24-32)
And so, verses 24-32, God's wrath is revealed.  It's revealed in a strange kind of way.  It's revealed in the consequences of our choices.  It's revealed in the mess that we make of our society and our sexuality and our relationships when we leave God out of the picture.  And three times in these verses, Paul says, "God gave them over..." to those things.  He gave us over to the kind of world that we create when we worship things and ourselves instead of God.  

Verse 24:  "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.  25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator ‹ who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.  27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. 28  Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.  29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,  30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;  31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.  32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."

And so, when we watch the news at night, when we walk down the street, when we see the kind of world that God has let us make for ourselves to live in, we are seeing the wrath of God.  We are seeing the fact that things are not right between humanity and God, that we are part of a people that is under God's judgement;  we are seeing the fact that we live in a world that has an aching need for the gospel of Jesus.

Why preach Romans in Petersham?
So why preach Romans in Petersham?  Why set aside sixteen weeks or so on Sunday mornings this year to work our way through this letter together?  

We need to read Romans because that same world that Paul describes in verses 18-32 is the world that we live in.  It's a strikingly contemporary description, isn't it.  And we need to read Romans because the gospel that he describes in verses 1-17 is the same gospel that we are saved by.  And we need to read Romans because the strength that Paul wants to give to the churches in Rome is the same strength that we need.  If we are going to be strong to stand for Jesus in the midst of an increasingly post-Christian world;  if we are going to be strong to persevere through sufferings and through testing and through the weariness of life;  if we are going to be strong in mission, not just surviving the world but impacting the world for Jesus;  if we are going to be strengthened this year as a church of God's people, then this letter of Paul to the Romans would be a great part of the Bible for us to feed on.  

So let's pray that as we preach Romans here at Petersham this year, God would strengthen us and establish us as a congregation here on Sunday mornings;  that he would remind us again of the gospel, and that he would keep on bringing that gospel back to the centre of the way that we think and feel and live.   Let's pray...