Gospel of God

Romans

R. C. Sproul

• Publisher: Christian Focus Publication
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781845507091

1
Introduction and Greetings
(1:1-17)

Paul begins very briefly and succinctly with these words: Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God.

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus (v. 1)

In seminary, I saw a manuscript written by Marcus Barth, the son of Karl Barth, of some 168 pages on these words, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ…

In the Greek text, the word that the apostle uses is doulos which is not properly translated ‘servant’. A servant in the ancient world was a hired employee, a person who could come and go at will, who could resign from one job and seek employment elsewhere if so inclined. But a doulos was a slave owned by a kyrios, a master or a lord. Frequently in the New Testament this type of imagery is used to portray the relationship between Christ and his people: ‘You are not your own; you were bought at a price.’ Christians are those who belong to Christ. He is our Lord, he is our kyrios, he is our Master.

Paul will explain in the book of Romans that man, out of Christ, is in bondage to sin and a slave to his own evil impulses, inclinations and desires. This is man's natural condition in the fallen state. Yet Paul wrote elsewhere that where the Spirit of the Lord is, where the Spirit of the kyrios is, where the Spirit of the Master is, there is liberty (2 Cor. 3:17). How are these truths to be reconciled?

Paul had learned that man is only free when he becomes a slave to Christ. Outwith Christ, he is a slave to sin; but when enslaved to Christ, he knows the royal liberation that only Christ can bring. Paul, in citing his own credentials, regards as his highest virtue that he is a slave of Jesus Christ.

Called to be an apostle (v. 1)

Paul, after identifying himself as a slave of Jesus Christ, writes, called to be an apostle. The idea of ‘calling’ and the verb ‘to call’ is used in many different ways in the Bible, just as we use it in various ways in our own vocabulary today. For example, the verb ‘to call’ can refer simply to someone shouting. There are, of course, a number of more weighty and important meanings of the verb ‘to call’ in the New Testament, three in particular.

First, there is God's call to sinners to repent. There is a sense in which this call of God is contained in the gospel itself, for in the gospel God calls men to repentance. This understanding of ‘call’ suggests a divine command, for their response to which men will be held accountable by God. When the gospel is proclaimed a call goes out that all men, everywhere, should repent and come to Christ.

There is, however, a degree of confusion on this matter in the Christian church today. Evangelists regularly conclude an address by calling for a response from the audience, and this call to commitment is often described as an invitation. But the idea of an invitation carries with it the moral right to accept the invitation or to reject it. If someone invites me to do something, it is not the same as being commanded to do it.

Such an invitation is emphatically not the call of the gospel. God does not invite people to repent, he commands them (Acts 17:30). This use of the word ‘invitation’ has always puzzled me. Perhaps it is used in order to soften the blow of the gospel to modern man, to assuage some of the hostility engendered when people are told that they are sinners in need of repentance, that they are morally obliged to change their lives and commit themselves to Christ.

This ‘external’ call, where God commands people to come to Christ in faith and repentance, is crucial to our understanding of the New Testament. In fact, the Greek word for ‘church’ in the New Testament is ekklesia, which means ‘called out’. The church, then, is literally, ‘those who are called out’: those who are called out from the world to join the kingdom of God. To be a member of the church is to have responded to this external call of the gospel.

Secondly, there is in the New Testament an even more dramatic sense of the ‘call’ of God. This is termed the ‘internal’ or ‘effectual’ call of God. We even have a doctrine in theology called the doctrine of effectual calling. What is meant by the effectual call of God is that, when he calls, he calls sovereignly and effectively by an inward call which goes beyond the ears into the soul and into the heart. What we are speaking about is regeneration. Only God can do that and he does so by the power of his Spirit through the Word.

Thirdly, there is yet another way in which the Bible speaks of the call of God, a call illustrated by the next phrase: set apart for the gospel of God. This is what we call ‘vocation’, a concept which was popular when the Christian Faith had more influence in forming the outlook of our culture. It is a realization that every human life is to be lived under the authority of God. This means that the career I pursue, the job I take, is to be in conformity with the will of God. In other words, my life is to be dedicated to God whether I am a minister, a farmer, a carpenter or a physician. Each one of us has a ‘vocation’, a calling from God that we are to carry out to his glory and for the benefit of his kingdom.

In the Bible there were certain specific callings which carried particular authority. These were prophets and apostles, who were of special importance for the people of God. It was really the same office – prophet in the Old Testament and apostle in the New Testament.

An apostle means literally ‘one who is sent’, someone who is commissioned with the authority of the one who sent him. Paul's claim that he was called to be an apostle was a dramatic and radical announcement, because if you read the book of Acts you will discover that there were three stipulations necessary to qualify for the apostolic office. First, the person had to be a disciple of Jesus during his earthly ministry; secondly, he had to be an eye-witness of Jesus’ resurrection; and thirdly, he had to have his call from Christ himself.

One of the early controversies in the church arose when Paul became an apostle. Paul was not a disciple of Jesus during his earthly ministry, indeed he did not even know Jesus. Paul didn't encounter Jesus at the resurrection, but only after he had ascended into heaven. So how could Paul be an apostle? Three times in the book of Acts, Paul bears witness to the call he received from Jesus. The risen Christ appeared to Paul and called him to be an apostle. By far the most important credential of an apostle was to have an immediate and direct call, which Paul clearly had on the road to Damascus.

What if somebody today claimed the same thing? If somebody came in from the desert and said that he had just seen Jesus who had called him to be an apostle, what would we say? If such a person started writing books and wanted to have them added to the New Testament, what would be our response? Couldn't a person make that kind of claim? Joseph Smith did and started Mormonism.

Notice that even Paul, in his extraordinary situation, could not begin to function as an apostle until he had been endorsed by the rest of the Twelve, whose credentials were not in question. Although it is theoretically possible that God could call a person directly today, it is impossible for that person to have his claim confirmed by other apostles whose apostleship is not in doubt. They have all passed from the historical scene.

That is why the church attributes special importance to apostles. They were agents of revelation, just as the prophets were in the Old Testament. The New Testament records the call of Paul to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. It is that gospel which the apostle sets before us now in this magnificent epistle.

The gospel of God (1:1c-6)

The whole book of Romans sets before us the gospel of God. I used to think when I read this text that the gospel of God meant a message about God. But that is not what Paul is saying here. By using the genitive of possession, he shows that the gospel belongs to God. Paul is saying that the gospel he is about to describe is not a message which he invented by means of his own brilliant and creative imagination. Rather the message he is setting forth here is the announcement of good news from God himself. It is God's gospel. God owns it, God originated it, God designed it, and now God is simply using the apostle Paul to communicate it to us. In other words, Romans is not at all the result of the theological insight of Paul, one of the most educated Jews in first century Palestine, but it is a message that comes from the mind of God, with the power to change lives.

Paul continues in verse 2 to elaborate on what he means by the ‘gospel of God’. He says, parenthetically: the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. The first feature of the gospel is that it is not entirely new. That may seem strange because the word ‘gospel’ (evangelion) means literally ‘good news’ and we think of news as being that which is fresh and up-to-the-minute. But even though there is a new element in the proclamation, the basic theme of the gospel (albeit in a very brief and summary form) was preached by Adam, by Abel, by Abraham, by Moses and by the prophets.

In saying this, Paul relates the New Testament to the Old Testament. The focal point of the gospel is spelled out in verses 3 and 4: regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, 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. This gospel concerns Jesus who is called the ‘Son of God’, the ‘Christ’ and ‘Lord’.

When we read through the New Testament we find that there is an abundance of titles ascribed to Jesus. The most frequent title is ‘Christ’. So often is that title linked to the name of Jesus, that many think it is his proper name. But Jesus’ name would have been Jesus bar Joseph or Jesus of Nazareth. His title is Christos or Christ, meaning literally ‘Messiah’. Paul is affirming that in the Old Testament, God, through the prophets, spoke about the coming of the Messiah from the line of David, and that Jesus was this Messiah.

The second most frequently used title for Jesus in the New Testament is the title ‘Lord’, a title of enormous significance because it is the one ascribed to God in the Old Testament. It is the title kyrios, which is the Greek form of the Hebrew Adonai, meaning ‘the sovereign one’, the one who reigns over us. This title, which in Old Testament days was reserved for God, is now ascribed to Jesus. This is the name above every name about which Paul speaks in Philippians, when he says that every tongue will confess Jesus to be ‘Lord’ (Phil. 2:9-11).

Now Paul draws a strange contrast here. Although Jesus was the son of David, there is obviously a certain sense in which he is not the son of David. According to his human nature, Jesus was a descendant of David. But not only does he come from David, he also comes from God. He is the Son of God. At this point the apostle is declaring something about Jesus that is expounded throughout the New Testament: Jesus is not a mere man. In addition to his humanity which comes from David, Jesus is also declared to be uniquely the Son of God.

Verse 4 says that Jesus is declared to be the Son of God, with power, a declaration that God himself makes. Notice, it is not that Christ is declared to be the Son of God with power, but that the declaration of his sonship is made in a powerful way. When God declares the unique sonship of Jesus, he does not drop subtle hints here and there or offer esoteric suggestions that only the most brilliant of theologians can figure out. The evidence that God gave to confirm the claim of Jesus to be the Son of God is the resurrection.

The resurrection of Jesus is qualified by the phrase, through the Spirit of holiness. Just as Jesus was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, so also he is declared to be the Son of God through the Spirit of holiness. The reference is not to Jesus’ human spirit but to the Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead when he brought the human flesh of Jesus back to life to bear witness to the trustworthiness of his claim to be the only-begotten Son of God. So the gospel involves Paul's affirmation of both the human nature of Jesus, which comes from the line of David, and the divine nature of Jesus, which comes from God.

In verses 5 and 6 Paul describes the result of preaching the gospel. 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. The role of an apostle was to lead people from all over the world to obedience to the faith. When Paul was made an apostle, he was given a specific title: to be the apostle to the Gentiles. Paul was the first great missionary of the early Church.

The book of Acts follows the outline of the great commission, where Jesus instructed his followers to declare his gospel first in Jerusalem, then in Judea, then in Samaria and then to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). In thinking about this commission it is helpful to try and conceive of it as a series of concentric circles. In the center of the circle is the focal point, the starting place of the expansion of the early church, Jerusalem. On the outskirts of Jerusalem we find the province of Judea, north of Judea is Samaria, and then beyond is the whole world of the Gentile nations. Paul, in reminding his readers that he has been commissioned to be an apostle to the nations, goes on to explain why he is so interested in them.

His readers (1:7-8)

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 (v. 7). Here we have a very typical salutation from the pen of the apostle. He states the destination of his letter, to all in Rome, and then in a very warm and personal way, he addresses his readers as those who are loved by God. That is a very pregnant, descriptive term because in the first instance and pre-eminently, it is Jesus Christ who is called ‘the beloved’, the special object of God's affection (Matt. 3:17; 17:5 ). In God's economy of grace, however, his love does not stop with his onlybegotten Son, but pours out to those who are within his family, to those who are the adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus.

He further describes them as called to be saints.

There is a dual way in which the word ‘saint’ functions in Christian history. In Roman Catholic tradition, the term ‘saint’ refers to special Christians who have done extraordinary deeds of valor, or made extraordinary contributions to the life of the church. A few such people the church has canonized, elevating them to a status of heroic proportions so that they are called ‘saints’. But there is a broader sense in which the term ‘saint’ is used (in fact the customary way in which it is used in the New Testament). It refers to the rank-and-file Christian, to anyone who is truly in Christ, to anyone who has within him the Holy Spirit.

In the New Testament, the word translated as ‘saints’ is hagioi meaning the holy ones. They are not holy in and of themselves; not holy because they have reached an unthinkable level of virtue or righteousness. Rather, they are those who have been made holy by the fact of having been set apart by God and consecrate...