Romans 1:5-7
4th in the series
Called To Be Saints
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. And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. 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.
(Romans 1:5-7 NIV)
There is an old story from the Middle East about a little sparrow: "A man was traveling on his donkey when he came upon a small fuzzy object lying in the road. He dismounted to look more closely and found a sparrow lying on its back with its scrawny legs thrust upward. At first he thought the bird was dead, but closer investigation proved it to be very much alive. The man asked the sparrow if he was all right. The sparrow replied, 'Yes.' The man said, 'What are you doing lying on your back with your legs pointed towards the sky?' The sparrow responded that he had heard a rumor that the sky was falling, and so he was holding his legs up in support. The man replied, 'You surely don't think that you are going to hold it up with those two scrawny legs, do you?' The sparrow, with a very solemn look, retorted, 'One does the best he can.'"
We often are much like that sparrow. We are going through life trying to do the best they can. As a matter of fact, we think that is the way things ought to be. After all, everything is up to us, we are in charge of their life. We make the plans. And we do what we have to do to accomplish those plans.
There is something intensely individualistic and ego affirming in the idea that you make your own way. We would all like to think that we could pull ourselves up by our own boot straps, that we are ‘self-made people.’ We like the idea of being in charge of our lives. We want to cry aloud with W. E. Henley, in his poem Invictus,
W. E. Henley
Invictus
OUT of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbow'd.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Just visit the self-help section at the bookstore for verification. The shelves are filled with all kinds of books teaching how one can take charge of their life, and accomplish their dreams and goals. "You can do it on your own!"
But the Bible reveals that there is a plan. It is God's plan. And it is His plan for us. God does have a wonderful plan for your life. It is called the Plan of Salvation, or the Gospel. Gospel means "good news." The good news of God is that He has a plan for each of us.
Do you know God's wonderful purpose for your life? What is the purpose of the gospel? What does receiving this good news from God produce in our lives?
If we can understand what God’s purpose for us, then that purpose can be accomplished in our lives. We will walk from a different perspective, seeing our lives in light of God's purposes, and consequently we will live differently. Rather than do the best we can, we will be able to live a life that matters. So, to understand this, let's look at several purposes of the Gospel. Our text reveals one primary purpose and three secondary purposes.
To Exalt Our Savior
The primary purpose for the Gospel is found in the first phrase in verse five. When Paul says that he received his mission as an apostle through Him and for His name's sake, he is revealing the central place that God holds in all of this. It all begins and ends with God. It is all by His grace and for His glory.
You see, everything in the entire universe finds its meaning in God. He has created all things. He sustains all things. And one day all things will return to Him. This is what Paul means when he says, in Romans 11:36, "For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen."
God is the source of all things because He is the creator. He is the sustainer of all things because He supplies what is necessary for life to exist. Therefore all things will ultimately bring Him glory because this was what they were designed to do. The primary purpose of the Gospel is to bring glory to God - to exalt our Savior.
To Effect Our Salvation
This brings us to the first of three secondary purposes of the Gospel. The primary purpose of the Gospel is to exalt our Savior. A secondary purpose is to effect our salvation. Paul tells us that he received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith.
The great commission that Paul received from God was to call people to Christ. This call goes out to all people. The call first came to the Jews, and was extended to the Gentiles. Indeed, it goes out to everyone.
Two phrases are used to describe this call. It is referred to as the obedience as a result of faith. It is also described as a call to belong to Jesus Christ. These are interesting phrases and very descriptive of what it means to be a Christian. Visible obedience is required and a personal commitment is demanded.
The obedience that comes from faith concerns the foundation of our walk with God. The call of God is a call to obey. Paul makes clear that for faith to be considered real and viable, it must be revealed in obedience - it must be made visible.
Jesus Himself made this clear when He asked, in Luke 6:46, "Why do you call me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?" It should be clear from this statement that for us to consider Christ our Lord means that we must obey Him. When we come to Christ, we always come by a step of faith resulting in obedience.
And when we come to Christ, we also surrender ourselves to belong to Him. We give ourselves to Him. This is our commitment. Paul speaks of this commitment in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, "You are not your own; you were bought at a price." Peter explains what this price was in 1 Peter 1:18-19, "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect."
It should be clear that we belong to God because He purchased us with the blood of His Son Jesus Christ. The good news is that God purchased us through Christ's blood and now has received us into His Kingdom. He was not content to see us go to hell. He bought us for Himself. This is our salvation. A purpose for the Gospel is to effect our salvation.
To Enhance Our Significance
Another secondary purpose for the Gospel is to enhance our significance. You see, like the Roman Christians, we are loved by God. This is what gives us our true significance.
Because we live in a society that has forfeited it's belief in a Creator, we find people looking desperately for a measure of significance for their lives. They seek significance through human relationships only to find that people let them down. They seek significance through their employment only to find that after years of loyal service they are summarily laid off by their company. And the quest goes on. But it is a futile quest without God.
You see, it is only through our relationship with Jesus Christ that we can find true significance. Our significance comes from knowing and serving Him. It comes from understanding that He knows us. It is knowing that He knows all about us and yet loves us that gives us a sense of significance.
It was God's will to choose us, to adopt us as His own sons and daughters. We are told that this is His will. In other words, God has given us what we do not deserve. He has freely bestowed upon us His grace, and made us part of His family. This is why John could say, "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!" (1 John 3:1).
There is nothing we can do for God to love us more. God doesn't change us so that He can love us; He loves us in order to change us. It is His love that changes us. Rest in your relationship in Christ. In Christ you're secure. In Christ you are significant. You don’t have to make great accomplishments in order to be significant, you don’t have to make great contributions to society, or make large amounts of money. We are significant because we are created in God’s image and made to be a child of God.
To Establish Our Sainthood
The final secondary purpose for the Gospel is to establish our sainthood. Paul declares that all in Rome, indeed all Christians, are called to be saints.
Saint is a term commonly applied to all believers. It comes from the Greek word hagios, which means "holy." To be a saint, in the New Testament sense of the word, is to be a "holy one." Not self-righteous, to be "holy" in the biblical sense of the term is simply to be in Christ.
Don't be mislead by the mistaken idea that sainthood is something which can only be conferred upon certain dead people by some ecclesiastical body. According to God's Word, all believers are saints. From God's perspective, we are all saints, not because of who men say we are or have done.
, but because of what Christ did for us. We are not holy because of our own good works or righteousness. The Bible tells us that "all our righteous acts are like filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6). We are righteous because Jesus died on the Cross so that He could give us His righteousness.
2 Corinthians 5:21, "God made him [Christ] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him [Christ] we might become the righteousness of God." What an amazing statement! We are now the righteousness of God in Christ.
The two-stage process of holiness is often reversed, resulting in putting the proverbial cart before the horse.
The first stage of holiness is positional; it is something believers are declared to be because of their position in Christ (Eph. 1:4).
Because of our positional holiness, we are able to become holy in practice, progressively more so as we mature in Christ (1 Thess. 4:7). In this verse, Paul is focusing on the believer’s positional holiness. An understanding of the Old Testament root concept will help. Qodesh was the Hebrew word signifying “holy,” but like many words in the vocabulary of Israel it was adapted from the Semitic culture. It basically meant something that was set apart for a particular use. Cultic temple prostitutes were referred to by this root word because they were set apart for religious purposes (Gen. 38:21).
Our revulsion in thinking of a prostitute as “holy” is an example of our thinking of the second stage of holiness before understanding the first. Knives, tables, lamps—all the articles of the tabernacle and temple worship in Israel were called “holy” because they were set apart for sacred use. Think of it: one minute a knife is ordinary, the next it is holy, all on the basis of being declared holy (set apart for special use) by the priest.
Perhaps the most striking example of the ordinary becoming holy is when God said dirt was holy. When Moses approached the burning bush on Mount Horeb, God told him to remove his sandals “for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exod. 3:5). The dirt “here” was holy; the dirt “over there” was not. Why? Because the dirt “here” was set aside as the meeting place between God and man. When the meeting was over, the dirt was no longer holy.
So when Paul calls the Roman believers saints, what is he saying? He wants them to know that, regardless of how they view themselves, how unimportant they may think themselves to be in the grand scheme of things, they are as “holy” as Paul himself is. Paul is a saint, and they are saints. Paul has been set apart to accomplish God’s goal of spreading the gospel to the nations, and so have the Romans. It has nothing to do with spiritual giftedness, the office one does or does not hold, one’s education or appearance, one’s wealth or poverty, or one’s outward manifestations of spirituality. Rather, “holiness”—total dedication to the service of God and his purposes—is a positional reality for every believer, like it or not! )
When Christ died on the Cross, he paid the penalty for our sin. He died there to put to death our old self. He died to forgive us, and He died to enable us to receive life. When we surrender to Him, He gives us His life in exchange for ours. He becomes our life. We live by His life. He is in us, and we are in Him. So when God looks at us, He sees us in Christ. His righteousness is made ours.
This is who we really are. It has been said that some people can't get saved because they won't accept their sinnership, and that some Christians can't walk in victory because they won't accept their sainthood. And it is true. Unless we know our true position in Christ, we will never begin to live from that perspective. We are saints because of our position in Christ. This is what we must begin to see by faith. You are a saint.
Do you understand that you are indeed a saint? Can you even begin to comprehend just how much God loves you? Have you given yourself to Christ? Are you walking in obedience to Him? If these things are true for you, then you are a living testimony to the grace of God. Praise God, we are redeemed.
Credit goes to JD Hoke
