The Provision, Proclamation, Privilege, and Purpose of the Good News
Romans 1:5-7
We're in Romans chapter 1 again tonight for our study of God's Word and looking at the first seven verses. Again, as we examine a very important introduction to the book. We spent a little more time with this introduction because we really feel it sets the tone for the rest of the epistle. And again tonight we look back at these same marvelous seven verses. Let me read them to you as a setting for our thinking tonight. Romans, chapter 1 and verse 1:
Paul, A servant of Jesus Christ, called an Apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, which He had promised before by His prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead: by whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations, for His name: among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ: to all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Did you notice that that's one sentence? Paul is famous for that. He writes "Paul" in verse 1, "to all that be in Rome" in verse 7, and adds practically the entire gospel in the phrases in between. And so, we have been dealing with those very important phrases and shall again tonight look at this same marvelous passage.
There was an extremely wealthy man who possessed vast treasures of art. The man had one son who was a very ordinary boy, who passed away his adolescence in obscurity and had little effect on anybody. He reached a certain age in his life and he died rather unexpectedly as a young man. The father mourned the son greatly. Within a few months after the death of his son, the father died as well.
And he left this incredible wealth bound up in art treasures. He left a will and he said that everything was to be auctioned. And strangely enough in the will, the father stipulated that one particular painting had to be auctioned first and that was a painting of his son done by an artist that no one really knew. And so the auctioneer in accord with the will did exactly what was to be done and first of all, to the large crowd that had assembled, he directed their attention to this painting of the rather obscure son of the wealthy man and started the bidding there. No one knew the boy. No one knew the artist. No one really cared about the boy.
A long time passed without any bid at all and finally an old black man who had been a servant in the house of the wealthy man came forward and he said he would like to place a one dollar bid on the portrait of the son whom he loved very much. And at that point in his life that was all he could afford. There were no other bids and the black servant was able to purchase the painting of the son for one dollar.
Then the dramatic moment came as he read the next portion of the will. It said this. "All the rest of the treasure shall go to the one who loved my son long enough and strong enough to purchase his portrait."
There is no way to comprehend the riches that God has provided for those who love His Son...no way. They are infinite. Jesus said the Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure. The Bible says eye hath not seen, nor ear heard the things that God has prepared for those who love Him. And this, beloved, is the good news, isn't it? That if we love the Son, we inherit all the riches of the Father. In Christ we have treasure beyond imagination. The Bible says that if we love the Son we will have a faithfulness that will never be removed. We will have a life that will never end. We will have a spring of water that will never cease to bubble up within us. We will have a gift that will never be lost. We will have a hand out of which the resources will never end. We will have a chain that will never be broken. We will have a love from which we can never be separated. We will have a calling that will never be revoked, a foundation that will never be destroyed and an inheritance that will never ever ever fade away. Now this is the good news.
And this is the message of the epistle to the Romans, that God has good news for those who love His Son. And then as we are beginning the epistle, we are examining just the introduction in the first seven verses. And already we have begun to sense the riches and we're going to see more tonight.
Now these seven verses contain the seed of truth that blooms fully in the remaining sixteen chapters. And we have noted for you that there are at least seven elements to this introduction, seven features regarding the good news. There is the preacher of the good news, the promise of the good news, the person of the good news, the provision of the good news, the proclamation of the good news, the privileges of the good news and the purpose of the good news.
Now let me remind you briefly of the first three. First of all, the preacher of the good news is introduced to us in verse 1, "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, a called Apostle, separated unto the gospel of God." And there we have met the preacher of the good news. And it points to us to a very important reality and that is this, that God has chosen human vessels to be the instruments of the transporting of the good news. Paul, a man like us, a servant of Jesus Christ, a called Apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, pointing to the fact that God has chosen to use human agency. God has designed to use men and women to proclaim the good news. In fact, it tells us in 1 Corinthians that God has chosen by the foolishness of preaching to proclaim His message and even use weak and ignoble and foolish preachers to do it.
So, no one's faith stands in the wisdom of men, but it stands only in the power of God through the weakness of men. God's people are still the instruments. Jesus commanded us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. The preacher--a human instrument.
Secondly, we looked at the promise of the good news. Verse 2, "Which He had promised before by His prophets in the holy scriptures." The good news, or the gospel had already been promised in the Old Testament. That's why in Matthew 5:17 Jesus said I didn't come to destroy the law but to fulfill it. I came to fill it up, to bring it to fulfillment, to bring it to fruition, to bring it to wholeness, to bring it to completeness. The New Testament is the Word of God that completes the Old Testament, that consummates the promise. So the good news is going to come through a human preacher and the good news is going to be based upon the promises of God in the Old Testament.
And thirdly, we saw not only the preacher and the person, or rather the preacher and the promise but the preacher and the promise and the person. What and whom is the heart and object of the good news? Look at verse 3. "It concerns His Son Jesus Christ our Lord who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead."
The person of the good news is Christ. That's the issue. It is what you do with God's Son the Lord Jesus Christ that determines whether you inherit the riches of the Father. And there is in those two verses an absolutely wonderful presentation of Christ. We see His humanness in verse 3, He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh. He was a real human being. We see His deity in verse 4, He was declared to be the Son of God with power through the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. We see His humanity. We see His deity. He had to be man to take man's place. He had to be God to conquer sin and death and hell and Satan.
And we focused on what it meant when it said He was the Son of God. He was made a Son in incarnation. He was manifest a Son in resurrection. He was always God. He always existed. He existed with the Father from eternity. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." There was a time when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. And then we beheld His glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth. He was always God but He was made manifest as a son in incarnation and declared to be so in His resurrection.
Now I want you to notice one thing in verse 4, just as we conclude our thoughts on the person. It says that this was accomplished, that is His power and resurrection according to the Spirit of holiness. That is another way to say the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit working in Christ Through the agency of the spirit, Christ did what He did. He expressed His power and He was raised from the dead through the agency of the Holy Spirit.
Now this relationship is very important. If you look back, for example, at Matthew chapter 3 for a moment, let me take you just on a very fast tour of how Jesus was related to the Holy Spirit in His incarnation. The Holy Spirit's the third member of the trinity, as you know. And within the trinity, they were equal, and yet when Jesus was incarnate, He submitted Himself to the will of the Father and to the power of the Spirit in a voluntary submission. And we find that at His baptism in Matthew chapter 3, He was baptized in verse 16. He went up out of the water. The heavens were opened to Him and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting upon Him. And a voice from heaven saying, "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."
Now the Father was bestowing on Christ the Spirit. Now mark this. I believe that from this time on, and this was the initiation into His ministry, His ministry was controlled by the power of the Holy Spirit. Now follow a little further into Matthew chapter 12 and verse 31. He said this to those who accused Him of being of the devil. They accused Him of being of Satan. They accused Him of being representative of Beelzebub which was a pagan term for Satan. And He said in verse 31, "I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven men. And whosoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, a word against the Son of Man can be forgiven. But whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit shall not be forgiven."
Now what was He saying? He's saying you might say something against My humanness, and that would be forgivable. But when you blaspheme the Spirit of God who is doing the work through Me, that is unforgivable. Now we'll see in full what that means. But the point that I want you to see is this, that when they denied the works of Christ, He says you're not blaspheming the Son of Man, you're blaspheming whom? The Holy Spirit. Why? Because He had surrendered to the power of the Holy Spirit. And when they blasphemed His works, they were blaspheming the Spirit because it was the Spirit working through Him.
And so, you have just in this introduction in that one little phrase, not only an understanding of the humanity of Christ and the deity of Christ but His relationship to the Holy Spirit. One of the most marvelous of all theological categories.
Well, listen to what it says in Luke 4:1, "And Jesus being full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan." After His baptism He went from that place full of the Holy Spirit.
In John 3:34, it says this: "For God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him. The Father loves the Son and hath given all things into His hand." When God gave the Son the Spirit, He gave Him the Spirit without measure. In other words, in absolute and utter fullness.
Now this is a mystery, people. Jesus is God. He's one with the Father and one with the Spirit. The trinity is one and yet distinctly three. But in a marvel of the incarnation, there was some kind of separation. The Son took on a voluntary submission, did only the will of the Father and only through the power of the Spirit. And so it was the agency of the Holy Spirit that empowered Him in His voluntary humiliation. It was the agency of the Holy Spirit that was doing the work through Him. And that shows you...that shows you the utter submissiveness of Christ. And when it says in Philippians that He set aside these things, that he took on the form of a servant and was found in fashion as a man and humbled Himself, it really means that. He did only what the Father showed Him to do and only in the power of the Spirit. Quite a submission for one who is fully God and has been and will be for all eternity.
And so, it was the Spirit who empowered Him in His resurrection. You say, "Why is that important?" It is important because it indicates to us that the trinity, that God Himself is involved in the living and the dying and the rising of Christ. And the greatest affirmation that Jesus was who He claimed to be was that God Himself raised Him from the dead through the instrumentation of the Holy Spirit. So Christ is the Godman, fully man and fully God. And that is fully indicated in that God Himself raised Him from the dead through the agency of the Holy Spirit. That's good news. He came to identify with us. He came to be a man as we are men, to suffer, to understand the role of human life but at the same time He was God and He overcame by the power of the Spirit and rose from the dead.
The marvel of His humanity and deity and that mysterious union we can never fully understand. And we can never fully understand how He was related to the Father and how He was related to the Spirit because it is so mysterious. We can't really grasp it all. But that is precisely what the Bible teaches, fully man and fully God.
I think maybe you can understand it a little bit by just looking at illustrations of it. Listen to Matthew 17:24, "And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tax money came to Peter and said, Does not your Master pay taxes? He said yes." Now that's interesting. Jesus paid taxes. Think of that the next couple of weeks, it will make you feel better. Jesus paid taxes. That shows His humanness. That shows that He was a man like other men.
"And when he was come into the house, Jesus spoke first to him, saying, What are you thinking about, Simon? Of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute, of their own sons or strangers? Peter said unto Him, Of strangers. Jesus said unto him, Then are the sons free." In other words, He's saying in effect we don't really belong to the system. They really tax their own and we are not of this world, but nevertheless, lest we should offend them, right? We don't really belong to this world but lest we should offend them, we're going to pay our taxes just like everybody else. And then He says this, "Go down to the sea and throw in a hook and pull out the first fish you catch and open its mouth and you'll find a piece of money. Take that and give it to the tax collector for you and Me."
Now wait a minute. It's one thing to pay your taxes, but that's another way to get the money that none of us can handle. You see, there you have a perfect illustration of the marvel of His humanity and His deity. He paid His taxes but He had ways of providing that were absolutely supernatural.
In Mark chapter 4, verse 35, and we've read this recently, "The same day when the evening was come, He said unto them, Let's pass over to the other side--going across the Sea of Galilee--and when they had sent away the multitude, they took Him even as He was in the boat and there were also with Him other little boats, a little flotilla going across. There rose a great storm of wind and the waves beat into the boat so that it was now full." Now you know as well as I do that it's okay for the boat to be in the water but it's not okay for the water to be in the boat. And get this, verse 38, "And Jesus was in the stern of the boat asleep on a pillow." Now that's His humanness. He was tired. The crowds literally dogged His steps without relenting. He was tired and He was asleep in a storm.
"And they said to Him, Master, don't you care that we perish? And He arose and buked the wind...rebuked the wind and unto the sea He said, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased and there was a great calm." You see His humanity, in the one hand He's asleep because He's so tired. On the other hand, He stops the storm instantly. You can't explain the mystery, you can only see it.
Luke 23 verse 39, and one of the malefactors who were hanged railed at Him saying, "If Thou be the Christ, save Thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked Him saying, Dost not thou fear God seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly for we receive the due reward of our deeds, but this man hath done nothing amiss." There you see His humanness. He's a victim, mercilessly hammered to a cross with a cloak of blood and flies, spit on, mocked, stared at in His nakedness, humiliated. "And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom. And Jesus said to him, Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with Me in paradise." That's His deity. And you see this co-mingling all through His life.
So, we meet the preacher. We see the promise and the person of the good news, Jesus Christ, God in human flesh doing the will of the Father whose Son He has become in the power of the Spirit.
Now let's come, number four, to the provision of the good news...the provision. If you love the Son, what happens? If you receive the good news, what happens? Two things first pop out of the treasure-trove that God has provided. Verse 5 says, "By whom we have received grace and apostleship," and you can stop there.
What is it that the good news gives us? What is it that the good news bestows upon us? What is the treasure that we inherit when we love the Son? First, grace...second, apostleship. First, watch this, conversion...second, vocation. First, to be called; second, to be sent.
First, let's look at grace. We receive grace. What do you mean, Paul? Well, there is the possibility that he could be meaning the grace of apostleship, that's possible. But I like to think he's saying something more distinct than that, that the translation of the Authorized is right, that he is saying we have received grace and apostleship. What is grace? It's unmerited favor, unearned favor. The good news is that salvation is by grace. Ephesians 2:8 and 9 says, "For by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves it is the gift of God not of works lest any man should...what?...should boast." We're saved by grace, the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. It is grace, unmerited favor, the kind good will, the mercy, the loving kindness of God grants this as a gift and all we do is respond in believing.
A baby breathes because it is slapped. And we enter into the Kingdom of God and receive the gift of life from Him because with divine sovereignty He whacks us and we begin to breathe spiritually. If we are alive, it is because His breath has been breathed into us. We are born from above. There's no place for self-congratulations. There's no place for human achievement. We are not saved by works. In fact, in Romans this will be developed for us in the third chapter so that you could never miss it. In Romans 3, verse 24 it says, "We are justified freely by His grace." Verse 27, "Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law or works? Nay, but by the law of faith." We believe and God is gracious.
In Romans chapter 5, he'll develop that more in verses 20 and 21 talks about where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Mercy without cause, kindness without deserving. So, salvation did not come by confirmation, salvation does not come by communion, does not come by baptism, does not come by church membership, does not come by church attendance, does not come by trying to keep the Ten Commandments or trying to live the Sermon on the Mount. It does not come by giving to charity. It does not come by believing there is a God, or there is a Christ. It does not come by simply being moral and respectable. It does not come even by claiming to be a Christian. It comes when we receive by faith the gift of grace. By the way, hell will be full of people I've just described who think they have salvation in the wrong thing.
And so, Paul says we receive grace. That's the first provision of the gospel that you don't have to earn it. You couldn't if you wanted to. It's impossible. "For by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified."
Dr. Barnhouse had a good word. He said this: "Love that looks upward is worship. Love that looks outward is affection. And love that stoops is grace." And God has stooped to give us grace though we don't deserve it.
The dying saint Pacean(?) said this: "Grace is the only thing that can make us like God. I might be dragged through heaven, through earth and through hell and I would still be the same sinful polluted wretch unless God Himself should cleanse me by His grace." And we're going to see a lot more about grace, so I'm just going to leave it there. But it is free. It is a gift. The first provision--grace.
The second, apostleship. And I think Paul is expanding his thinking here. He starts with himself, "Paul," by the time he gets to verse 5 he has the word "we." We have received grace. And I think he embraces the believing community. We have received a certain kind of apostleship. I know he sees himself in that "we" and he sees the other apostles there and those who worked with him. It's also possible he senses the breadth of that term in its broadest possible context. The gospel not only brings us the grace of salvation, but the task of apostleship.
And we saw, didn't we, in our study this morning that it means to be sent, to be a sent one. We are called and saved to be sent to reach the world. And for Paul, his apostleship was that very unique apostleship, a very unique...in fact, there was none like it. There was the Twelve, Judas fell out, Matthias was added, that kept the Twelve in tact. And later Paul appeared on the scene as born out of due season, an Apostle as truly as any of the others who saw Christ personally after the resurrection. And yet there was a uniqueness about his apostleship. And I think he sensed that. But he also realized that all of us are encompassed in the concept of being sent ones. You know that Hebrews 3:1 calls the Lord Jesus an Apostle? He was sent from the Father.
So, in its widest sense, I believe, the term refers to any gospel messenger. Commentator William Hendricksen agrees with that. He says, "Anyone who is on a spiritual mission, anyone who in that capacity represents the sender, anyone who brings the message of salvation is in a sense an apostle." But please don't be confused. We are not equal to the Apostles of the New Testament. They were unique for their own time.
But you can find as you study, and we've seen this in past lessons so we won't belabor the point, that there were many who were sent ones. For example, in Romans 16:7 it says, "Greet Andronicus and Junias," have you ever heard of them? You know anything about them? I don't. It says, "Who are of note among the apostles." What kind of apostles were Andronicus and Junias? Well, certainly not apostles with a capital "A", not the official ones. But they were dispatched. They were sent ones on a mission of proclaiming the truth of Christ in His behalf. And so, I believe this is what we are learning here that there is not only the grace of salvation but the challenge of being sent.
By the way, in Acts 14:14 it calls Barnabas an apostle. He wasn't one of the Twelve and nor was he the equivalent of Paul in that sense. And this goes on throughout the Scripture. You have the term apostle being broadened and broadened in many texts so that we can't confine it to just some limited specific individuals.
Now let me just see if I can give you an illustration to help you. I grew up with athletics as a background. And I was on a lot of different teams. And some coaches that I played for in various sports were kind souls. Others were not so kind, winning was everything. But I can remember several different teams that I was on in my life where a boy would come and he would try out for the team and he really wasn't very good, didn't have a lot of ability. But maybe his father had died, or maybe he was a poor fellow or maybe he was just kind of the sort of person that draws sympathy out of you. And every once in a while a coach would just put him on the team, you know. Just give him a uniform, make him feel a part. But he'd never play, never get in the game.
And I thought about that in reference to this. The Lord doesn't work that way. If you get on the team, you're going to get in the game. It's going to be grace and apostleship that He's called us to. It is not just to be redeemed, it is to be redeemed and then sent. He graciously puts us on the team. And by the way, we're all like that little kid who couldn't do an