The Gospel; Faith-Rest Drill; Spiritual
Growth
Romans 15:13-16
Open your
Bibles with me to Romans 15. While you’re turning there I want to comment on
some things going on in the national news. Most significant, of course, is this
case of ebola in Dallas. I think that as believers we really need to think
through how we’re going to respond if this gets out of control. I’ve read a
number of things recently about the possibility of this really getting out of
control not being very distant. We think that we have things under control.
We, as a
generation, have been really blessed in this country with an incredible amount
of health. My mother was a victim of the polio epidemic in 1952, which was
centered here in Harris County. Prior to that, going back into the early part
of the 20th century, there would be these periodic outbreaks of
polio that just put fear into the nation. People were scared to death to let
their kids go outside, to go to the swimming pools, and to go to any kind of
gathering when these epidemics occurred. Most of us have never had to live with
that.
You go back to
1918 and the flu epidemic. The other night I misspoke. I thought it was about
18 million that died but the actual number of deaths worldwide were between 50
and 100 million. It ravaged the trenches of World War I. We’ve never seen
anything like that.
If you’re not
familiar with ebola, a book I would recommend is a book that came out in the
mid 90s called The
Hot Zone. Many of us read that back when it first came out. One of the
people mentioned in there was a Colonel David Franz, who at the time was the
director of USAMRIID, the United States Army Medical Research and Infectious
Disease Institute in Frederick, Maryland. He’s got a fascinating testimony
because when he was a college student, I think in Kansas, either University of
Kansas or Kansas State, he had grown up as a Mennonite, a pacifist Mennonite.
He got hold of a book called Freedom Through Military Victory and that changed his life.
He rose to be a
full colonel in the army and he was the director of USAMB. In 1998, right after
I’d gone to Preston City, Pam and I went down to visit Dan Inghram in
Washington, D.C. and Colonel Franz gave the three of us a personal tour for two
or three hours through the “hot zone”. Then he took us into one of the briefing
rooms because he had been in charge of the teams that went in to dismantle the
biological and chemical warfare stuff after the first Gulf War. He gave us the
same briefing he gave to Congress minus whatever was top secret that he
couldn’t communicate. That was absolutely fascinating. The movie that Dustin
Hoffman and Rene Russo were in in the late 90s called Outbreak was based
loosely on that book.
The predictions
in that book and the film very much fit the scenario that we’re seeing right
now. There’s an outbreak of ebola in Africa. Someone is exposed. They get on an
airplane and they come to the United States and dozens of people become exposed
and infected and you can just have a pandemic that occurs. This is something we
have to think about. I don’t know if that’s what’s going to happen. I’m not
saying this to be a gloom-and-doomer. I’m saying this because a) This is a real
threat to the world and I have no confidence whatsoever in civil servants and
bureaucrats which is what the Center for Disease Control is. Maybe they can get
a handle on this. I’m reading some things showing where they’ve dropped the
ball already. We need to be prepared in our souls and in other ways to face
whatever threats may come. I don’t mean we should be survivalists or preppers
or any of the extreme stuff, but we need to be thoughtful and aware of what’s
going on around us. If this goes beyond this one case, the fear that will hit
people is going to give us a wonderful opportunity for us to communicate the
gospel. And it’s going to give us a wonderful opportunity to remain calm and to
remain stable in the midst of panic. Many will be scared to death because
suddenly their whole fantasy of a stable, secure world will have disappeared.
Last time when we
were going through the text in Romans, which starts in Romans 15:14 and goes
down to verse Romans 15:33, I focused on some key things that show up in the
introduction and are parallel to what goes on in the conclusion, like any good
piece of literature. I’m not going through this section at this point verse by
verse although I’m doing some spot exegesis on some key passages.
There are some
important things that run through this particular section. One of those is the
word gospel. Just look at your Bibles with me for a minute. In Romans 15:16
Paul says, “That I may be a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles,
ministering the gospel.” You ought to underline the word “gospel” every time it
occurs in this section. In Romans 15:19 he says, “I have fully preached the
gospel of Christ.” In Romans 15:20 he says, “So I have made it my aim to preach
the gospel, not where Christ was named but in new places.” In Romans 15:25 he
says, “I’m going to Jerusalem to minister to the saints but I knew that when I
came to you I should come in the fullness of the blessing of the gospel of
Christ.” The gospel is mentioned so many times in Romans 15:14-33 that it’s a
major theme of Paul’s.
As we come into
this conclusion, the thing I pointed out last time is that, like Paul, we
should have serving the gospel as the central priority of life. Just to review,
Paul said he was separated to the gospel of God in Romans 1:1. In Romans 1:9 he
came to serve with his spirit the gospel of His Son. In Romans 1:15 he said he
was ready to preach the gospel. Finally in Romans 1:16 we see a verse that many
of you should have memorized that says, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of
Christ for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, to
the Jew first and also the Greek.”
I went through
these verses at the end where he emphasizes the gospel. In the closing
benediction in Romans 16:25 Paul says, “Now to Him who is able to establish you
according to my gospel and the preaching in Jesus Christ.” I looked at this
last time and one of the important things that come out of this that is easy to
miss is a series of words that are used that have this overtone of service of a
priest. The bottom line is that Paul is viewing his ministry as an apostle as a
priestly ministry, serving the people with reference to the gospel.
We have words
like the verb LATREUO which means to serve. A lot of people miss the point that these words
are used in a cluster and not just individually. They’ll focus on the word
service but it’s a worshipful service. This is a word that is commonly used to
describe the worship of a priest in the tabernacle or a temple. Romans 1:25
uses that same word in terms of the idolatry of those who have rejected God,
that they serve the creature rather than the Creator.
We see this
same word again in Romans 2:1 as Paul sets up the theme for the last part of
Romans saying we are to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. There’s that
word “living sacrifice” and a parallel word meaning offering shows up in verse
16 again indicating this aspect of worship that is behind this. We are to
present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is
our reasonable service. The parallel word is LEITOURGOS where we get our word liturgy. It’s not just someone
who’s being a servant but it’s always used within some sort of relationship to
God. It’s used of the Lord Jesus Christ as a minister of the sanctuary and the
tabernacle. It’s used of Epaphroditus’ ministry to Paul in Philippians 2:25.
It’s also used in Romans 13 to refer to the government authorities as a
minister of God. It’s always in that context of somehow serving God in relation
to this kind of ministry.
In our passage
in Romans 15:16 Paul uses the term minister of Jesus Christ [LEITOURGOS] clustered with the next word ministering. See, we use
the same English word there to translate two completely different Greek words.
I am always critical of that by translators because the concepts that are
represented in the Greek are not identical to the English word “minister”.
There is a connection. The second word ministering is the Greek word HIEROURGEO which means to serve as a priest. We lose the sense
of that meaning by translating it with the English word ministry. Then it uses
the word offering PHOSPHORA in Romans 15:16 where Paul says, “ministering the gospel of God.” So he
is serving as a priest in his proclamation of the gospel. He is serving people.
Remember in the
Old Testament you had two basic roles. A prophet represented God to man and a priest
represented the people to God. A priest is the one who would come into the
tabernacle or into the temple and present offerings. Even though priests were
often responsible for teaching the Torah to the Jews, it was so they could have
acceptable worship to God.
Paul says his
ministry to the gospel of God was primarily focusing on the Gentiles. Then as
they offered their lives as in Romans 12:2, presenting their lives as a living
sacrifice to God, holy and acceptable, it was set apart or sanctified by God
the Holy Spirit. That’s one of the major themes in this section, the emphasis
on God the Holy Spirit. PHOSPHORA is an offering term. It’s used to describe Christ’s work on the cross,
that He loved us and gave Himself for us as an offering and sacrifice. That
uses both the words PHOSPHORA and the word THUSIA for sacrifice
in Ephesians 5:2.
This gets us
down to the last couple of words. One is acceptable. It’s a different word than
what is used in Revelation 12:2. It’s a synonym, though, showing that the
offering of the Gentiles might be pleasant or pleasing to God. It’s done for
the right purposes, walking in fellowship, having been sanctified by God the
Holy Spirit. The word there is HAGIAZO and again, the grammar is important. It is a perfect tense participle,
indicating something that had been accomplished and completely accomplished in
the past with ongoing results. So a perfect tense verb, whether it’s a
participle or a verb, emphasizes the present result of a completed, past
action. That completed, past action would have reference to positional
identification with Christ at the cross which we call positional
sanctification.
One other thing
I want to point out in Romans 15:16 before we go on to the second area of
comparison between the introduction to the book and the conclusion, is that
Paul emphasizes that his focus is to serve in this priestly way the gospel of
God. Now that’s really important because as I pointed out the word there for
minister in the first case is that word LEITOURGOS where we get our word liturgy. He’s not relating this
priestly service to some sort of liturgy. If you’ve grown up in a Roman
Catholic Church or an Episcopal Church, or in a high Presbyterian Church or any
church where you go through regular liturgy, then you understand.
We have more of
an informal liturgy on Sunday morning. We go through a pattern that’s similar
every Sunday but in high churches they repeat the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene
Creed. They will sing the “Gloria Patria” and the doxology and three or four
other things. Often they follow the so-called Christian calendar throughout the
year. At different times of the year they’ll change the colors of all the
vestments up on the platform or different things like that. That’s a liturgical
church but Paul isn’t talking here about serving in the Church in terms of
liturgy, in terms of the kinds of offering sacrifices in the tabernacle or
temple.
This is all
oriented to Paul’s operation and function as one who proclaimed the gospel.
That’s a function of our priesthood. Every one of us is a priest. We are a
believer-priest and part of our function as a priest is to offer ourselves as a
living sacrifice, completely focused and dedicated to the mission that Jesus
gave. This is called the Great Commission and says that we are to make
disciples.
That’s not
something directed to pastors or evangelists or only to the early church or
just the prophets and apostles. Everyone is included in that. That is a mission
given to everyone. Where you fit within that ministry will differ depending
upon your spiritual gift and depending upon the circumstances in your local
church wherever that may be.
We serve the
gospel in different ways. Some people are involved in gifts of helps. Some
people are involved in gifts of administration. Others are involved because of
gifts of giving. In some way at a personal level, we should also be involved in
getting involved in evangelism. I’ve often thought about different ways that we
can develop an evangelistic outlook into a community. I think that I’ve been
intrigued by one that Bret Nazworth’s church developed down in Brownsville.
I’ve been hearing from different churches that adopted that. That’s a preview
of coming attractions after we get past my Israel trip and past Christmas and everything
when we get into the winter. We’ll be looking around at different things and I
think this has some great possibilities. It will certainly be a challenge to
people. Not a tough challenge. It’s a pretty simple way and I like it. We’ll
focus on that.
The principle
here of application is, like Paul the focus of our life should be on the
gospel. We should be thinking all the time about how we can turn certain
circumstances and conversations to the gospel. Now that doesn’t mean
necessarily with some people that it’s an overt gospel conversation. Sometimes
you’re just putting a thought out there. Sometimes you’re just challenging
their pagan suppositions. It all depends on understanding and knowing the
individual and how to get them to think about spiritual things by the questions
that we ask.
I find that one
of my biggest problems and the problem with many people who know a lot about
the Bible is that we want to start correcting people’s misconceptions right off
the bat and straighten them out without giving them the opportunity to think
through the path from where they are to understanding the gospel. We jump in
there way too soon in my opinion in telling people what they ought to be doing
without leading them so they come to their conclusions on their own as a result
of some of the questions that we ask.
So when we look
at the phrase “gospel of God” I just want to go through several points so that
we understand with clarity what the gospel is. First of all, the phrase “of
God” tells us that the source of the gospel is God. Of God indicates source. It
indicates its origin. It indicates that God is the One who came up with and
designed the gospel in eternity past. Before God ever created anything, in His
omniscience, He already knew all of the knowable. So when we talk about what
God knew in eternity past, we communicate this in a logical sense but not a
chronological sense because God has always known everything. He’s never learned
anything. He’s never forgotten anything. All of His knowledge is direct and
intuitive whereas all of ours is learned and progressive.
Isaiah pointed
out that our knowledge is not like His knowledge at all. He designed a gospel
plan in eternity past, understanding the problem of sin, all of the different
aspects of the problem of sin because man, the fallen creature, would not be
able to do it. So the gospel comes from God. He is the only One who can apply
the gospel ultimately in terms of bringing people to salvation.
Second, the
gospel is good news. That’s the meaning of the word EUAGGELION. The “u” in the word is usually pronounced like a “v”
which is where we get our English term evangelism. It’s just a term borrowed
straight from the Greek. It means good news. That “eu” prefix always indicates
something that is good and positive so if you’re going to say something good
about someone or something it would be a EULEGEO or a eulogy. That’s how that prefix works and it
comes over to many different words in English.
The gospel is
good news. It’s something we should be excited about. Too often Christians are
fearful. They’re afraid of rejection. You’re not being rejected. God is the One
being rejected in a gospel presentation. Too often people are fearful that they
will say something or do something that will create a problem. The gospel,
then, is good news for everyone, both Jew and Gentile.
Specifically in
the context of passages like Romans 11 and in this passage where Paul is
talking about Jew and Gentile and in other passages like Ephesians 2 the issue
is that the gospel is for everyone. Jews had a problem with that because many
of them thought that the Messiah was coming only for Israel, only for the Jews.
Messiah, however, was coming for everyone, the Jew first, and also the Greek
which means the Gentile.
We need to
understand that God provided a salvation for all mankind. What I mean by that
is that it’s without exception and without distinction. These are theological
terms that you might hear. Remember that Calvinist theology is summarized with
the acronym “TULIP”. The “T” stands for total inability, “U” is unconditional
election, “L” is limited atonement, “I” is irresistible grace, and the “P” the
perseverance of the saints. It’s that “L” in the middle that is what is usually
referred to as the fifth point.
Calvinists are
often split between moderate Calvinists who believe in 3- or 4-point Calvinism
whose issues are on limited or unlimited atonement and maybe how they
understand election but your 5-point Calvinist would say in defining limited
atonement that when the Scripture says that Christ died for all, it means that
Jesus died for all without distinction. What they mean by that is that He died
for Jew and Gentile. So they will teach that when you read in the Scripture
that Christ died for all what those passages mean is that He died for Jews and
He died for Gentiles, all without distinction.
In unlimited
atonement we say that Jesus died for all without exception. He died for every
single human being without exception. To make it clear I like to use both terms
and say that Jesus died for all without exception and without distinction.
There’s no one that was left out. There’s always that challenge for people of
understanding unlimited atonement. If Christ actually died as a substitute for
someone who is an unbeliever, how is it that they end up in the Lake of Fire if
Jesus paid the penalty for their sin?
I remember when
I was contemplating going to Dallas Seminary I went up there to visit a close
friend of mine who had become converted to 5-point Calvinism as a student at
Dallas although I didn’t know this. It was the result of S. Louis Johnson, a
well-known professor at Dallas Seminary. My friend’s name was Randy Price.
Randy is still a 5-point Calvinist and nothing is probably ever going to be
able to change that. He brought to my attention this one theological problem
that if Jesus died as an actual, real substitute then how is it that anyone is
lost, that is, if Jesus truly died and paid for their sins. That was a good
question.
I thought that
through over the years and actually came up with a good answer for that. The
good news is that Christ paid the price to free every person from the sin
penalty. There are actually three problems that people have. First of all,
we’re all born spiritually dead. Ephesians 2:1 says that we’re born dead in our
trespasses and sins. We’re born spiritually dead. There is an aspect of our
immaterial being that cannot have a relationship with God.
Second, we’re
told that we’re born lacking perfect righteousness. Only a creature with
perfect righteousness can have fellowship with a God of perfect of
righteousness. Isaiah 64:6 says that all of our righteousnesses are as filthy
rags. Third, we’re born under the condemnation of Adam’s original sin. Because
we’re born under that condemnation, that penalty for that sin has to be paid
for. So Christ paid the penalty for the condemnation but even though the
penalty for every sin is paid for the person still has the first two problems.
Jesus solved
the third problem but His death provided the basis for solving the first two
problems. The first problem is that we’re born spiritually dead. Jesus may have
paid my eternal penalty for being condemned under Adam’s original sin but I’m
still born spiritually dead. Number two, I’m still born without righteousness.
You’re born without righteousness. You’re born in a state of spiritual death
and unrighteousness and that has nothing to do with the penalty for Adam’s
original sin which Christ paid for. The only way to have the spiritual death
and the righteousness problems solved is for us to trust to Christ.
Point four is
that Christ’s payment for the penalty of sin doesn’t save us or give us
righteousness or impart life. It paid the penalty for sin, the judicial penalty
for sin on the cross. So fifth, only by trusting Christ do we then receive
spiritual life and perfect righteousness. Christ died for all. He paid the sin
penalty for all but that only solved one of the three problems. The other two
problems get solved when we make a volitional decision to trust in Christ. At
that instant, His life is applied to us and we are born again, given spiritual
life, and we are justified which takes care of perfect righteousness. So under
point six, at the instant of faith alone in Christ alone, we are positionally,
that is legally, totally forgiven of all sin. It’s wiped out personally.
Now we’ve
studied this in Colossians 2:10-12 in the past that when Christ died on the cross
the certificate of our sin, that death penalty, was nailed to the cross and was
wiped out. But we’re still left being spiritually dead and unjustified. We
receive a new human spirit instantly at the point of salvation. We’re
regenerated. We’re made a new creature in Christ at that instance. God
regenerates that human spirit, that aspect of our soul that allows us to have a
relationship with Him. That is given birth to at that point and that is called
regeneration.
Second, and I
think this is the logical order. It all happens simultaneously and instantly.
That new human spirit receives the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. God
doesn’t save us because He sees anything good in us but because at the instant
that Christ’s perfect righteousness is credited to us, it’s imputed to us, God
looks on us as possessing that perfect righteousness. Third, He declares us
then to be righteous. We are then given eternal life. All of that happens
instantly. Christ died for our sins. That’s unlimited atonement but its
application in terms of regeneration and justification is limited by individual
volition.
Unlimited
atonement is not universal which is what this Calvinist argument attempts to
say. They say that if you’re really consistent and Christ died as a substitute
then everyone ought to go to heaven. That’s a theological trap that many people
got caught up with for many centuries. But it’s not true. You have to
understand there’s an objective payment of the penalty which is for all and a
subjective application which has to do with regeneration, imputation, and
justification. That’s the gospel.
That’s why it’s
not based at all on how we lived before we’re saved or what we do before we’re
saved or how we live after we’re saved or what we do after we’re saved. It’s
based upon one decision to trust in Christ alone for salvation. The instant
that we do that then we’re regenerate and all of this is irreversible. We are
secured forever.
Another thing
that Paul says in Romans 15:19 is that Paul relates this to his own ministry.
He says, “For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ has
not accomplished through me.” We have a lot of personal issues in our lives
that are really irrelevant in terms of eternity. We spend a lot of time talking
about our kids, about our parents, about our hobbies, and about all kinds of
things. If we’re really engaged with people, we spend time talking about things
that really matter such as religion, their view of God, and politics.
Everything else is really irrelevant. Paul puts it in perspective here and says
that if it doesn’t have anything to do with what Christ has accomplished
through him it’s not worth talking about. He’s not a master of small talk. He
says, “I will not dare speak of any of those things which Christ has not
accomplished through me in word or deed to make the Gentiles obedient in mighty
signs and wonders by the power of the Spirit of God so that from Jerusalem and
round about to Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.”
There are a
couple of things we need to observe here. First of all, look on a map. [Pastor
Dean shows a map on slide 24.] What we see here is that Israel and Judea are
located down here and here is Jerusalem. Paul’s first missionary journey
basically covered what is now southern Turkey. The second missionary journey
took him across Turkey. He was not allowed by the Holy Spirit to go into Asia.
He crossed over and went into Philippi, came down through Thessalonica, through
Athens, and Corinth and then came back home. On the third missionary journey he
retraced those steps. Apparently when he covered the area in Macedonia, he was
involved in sending out people who took the gospel into Illyricum. This would
have included areas of the old Yugoslavia and going up into areas of Switzerland
and even into Southeastern France which are all part of Illyricum. So he’s
taking the gospel there.
He’s saying his
gospel has been confirmed by signs and wonders. That’s a term that refers to
performing miracles, especially sign miracles which would substantiate his
claim to be an apostle. In 2 Corinthians 12:12 we read, “Truly the signs of an
apostle were accomplished among you with all perseverance and signs and wonders
and mighty deeds.” Apostolic ministry was not restricted to just the 11 or 12
but there are associates like Steven and Phillip in Jerusalem in the early part
of Acts. They were serving with the apostles and so their signs and wonders
confirmed that apostolic ministry. Ephesians 2:20 talks about the fact that the
prophets and the apostles are the foundation of the church. So how would you
confirm that someone was an apostle? It was through these signs and wonders.
In the 1980s
there was a development of a new trend in the charismatic movement that was
called the signs and wonders movement. It was started by an adjunct faculty
member at Fuller Seminary by the name of John Wimber. It was also called “power
evangelism” because Wimber said that it’s not really evangelism unless you have
it confirmed with signs and wonders. What was different from the charismatic
movements was that they de-emphasized tongues but they emphasized miracles and
casting out demons and many other strange things.
They
misunderstood the point that signs and wonders were not given to convince
people in an unerring way of the truth of the gospel. The Gospel of John is
written around eight signs that John emphasizes in giving the gospel. Many
people have rejected the Gospel of John. Jesus performed many signs and wonders
and many people rejected His claim to be the Messiah. Paul performed many signs
and wonders and people rejected the gospel. Just because signs and wonders are
there doesn’t mean that that guarantees that people would believe in the
gospel.
That was the
mistake in the whole signs and wonders movements. These things were aberrations
in the late 70’s. They got a lot of play in the 1980’s because there were some
well-known pastors, even a professor at Dallas Seminary who got caught up with
this. There were others who kind of kept their head underground. One of the
most well-known Calvinist preachers in America who has recently retired by the
name of John Piper was into this whole signs and wonders things in his entire
ministry, although most people don’t know this. He just didn’t emphasize it
like others did. Others who are involved at Phoenix Theological Seminary such
as Wayne Grudem whose systematic theology is highly touted among evangelicals
today was caught up in this signs and wonders movement and has been since I
studied it back in the mid-eighties.
This has
entered mainstream evangelicalism. We see these generic evangelical churches
spring up all over everywhere and they have huge numbers of people. I always
wonder where they advertise and where they get all of their money. I have no
idea but this is part and parcel of the modern, young evangelical movement that
anyone who questions the continuation of the sign gifts or signs and wonders
are being arbitrarily dogmatic and there’s no basis in the Scripture for that.
It’s because
many young Christians are still thinking in terms of moral and philosophical
relativism, including logical relativism and post-modernism. They don’t want
dogmatism at all from the Scripture. They want to sit down and talk about the
five different views of this or the three different views of that, where no one
ever really comes to any kind of definite conclusion. But God intended His Word
to communicate something, not many different ideas. He intended to communicate
one and only one thing and we have to discern that from the text through a
study and exegesis of the text and come to a conclusion of what the text says
and what it doesn’t say.
People who say
you’re being too dogmatic are operating like a post-modern pagan. This is
what’s happened to the evangelical church over the last forty years. We have
been infiltrated by believers who have not left their pagan thought modes at
the door. They come in. They sit in the pews. They want to sing music like they
sing out in the world. They want to conduct the church service with
entertainment like they have out in the world. They want to focus on how you
evangelize people by using salesman techniques like they learned in the world,
not from the Word of God. They do not want to hold to a hard and fast
distinction between the human viewpoint techniques and modern techniques.
One of the
great emphases in learning Biblical apologetics is to recognize as a
foundational principle that you don’t bring people to an understanding of the
gospel of Christ by validating their assumptions about life. If you validate
their assumptions about music, and you sing the same kind of music they do, how
are you going to give them an unadulterated gospel that you’ve already
perverted by your compromise by affirming their pagan assumptions on music?
Or their pagan assumptions on morality?
This is how you
grow an organization. You grow it by having entertainment. You grow it by
providing what people want. If you provide what people want, then of course you’re
going to build Summit-size churches but you’re never going to be teaching
people the Bible. It’s going to be different when you have Biblical
presuppositions. You’re not going to build a very big church because people
today don’t want that big of a change. They want to make sure they’re going to
go to heaven but they don’t want to disrupt the pattern of their life too much.
This has always been a problem we face.
Paul faced it all
the time and he says in Romans 15:19 that he “fully preached the gospel.”
“Fully” is the word PLEROO the same word
that’s used in Ephesians 5:18. It means to complete something, to fulfill
something and to fill something up. Here it has that idea of completing
something. It’s a perfect active infinitive. Once again we’re dealing with
grammar. Perfect tense means it’s a completed action. So he says he’s completed
the action relating to the gospel. This is usually translated something like “I
have fully preached the gospel”.
In that English
translation, the word preach is presented as a past tense verb. There’s no verb
for that in the Greek. There’s the word for gospel, EUAGGELION, but there’s no word for preach. It should be
translated “I have completely fulfilled the gospel.” The noun for gospel is in
the accusative case indicating it is the object of the verb “completed”. What
has he completed? The gospel and that would assume the word ministry. What Paul
is saying here is that he has fulfilled the Great Commission. He has proclaimed
the gospel. He has taken the gospel from Jerusalem to Illyricum. He is going
out and taking the gospel around the world. In that sense he has completed the
gospel of Christ. That’s all related to that first point of similarity between
Paul’s introduction to the book of Romans and his conclusion.
The other
parallels between the introduction and the conclusion are not as involved or as
long. The second thing, Paul commends his recipients. In Romans 1:8 in the
introduction he says, “First of all, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for
all of you that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.” He says
something very similar to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 1:9. He is
thankful to God that they are acting or living out their faith.
The word faith
can mean a couple of different things. It has the idea of naming or identifying
or trust in God at the gospel. The second meaning it identifies the content of
what we believe. Sometimes we talk about a person’s faith, like they’re
Christian, Jewish, Presbyterian or Methodist, or whatever they are. The content
of your faith is spoken of throughout the world, Paul tells them. A third
meaning is your outworking of your faith, your actions of believing, your
on-going trust in God.
I believe
that’s what he’s talking about here. I believe these believers in Rome have a
reputation, like the Thessalonians who Paul said their knowledge of their
faith, the way they’re trusting in God, has spread through all of Macedonia and
all of Acacia. It’s going out through all the world. To the Romans he’s telling
them they have a reputation that has gone through all the whole world,
throughout the Romans Empire and beyond.
The emphasis
here is on what we call the Faith-rest drill. Now there are three components to
the practice of the Faith-rest drill. We’ve gone over this somewhat. I’m
recording a whole series on the Faith-Rest drill that is part of the videos
that you will be watching over the time I’m in Israel and the time I’m in Kiev in
January, going through verse by verse, promise by promise, how we use the
Faith-rest drill.
First of all,
we mix faith with the promises of God. In Hebrews 4:2 the writer says, “For
indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them. So “us” means 1st
Century Christians. “Them” is referring to the Old Testament believers, the
wilderness generation, who left Egypt in the Exodus.
By the way, did
you know there’s a new movie coming out called “Exodus: Gods and Kings”? It’s
supposed to be quite interesting. It comes out around Christmas so everyone
needs to read Exodus five or six or ten times between now and then so that when
you go to the movie, see who can come up with the most Biblical discrepancies.
That’s how you engage your mind and you don’t just suck it in but you think
critically about the film. It should be a fascinating, interesting film. I
still can’t get past Charlton Heston. I don’t know if I ever will. To me, he
epitomized Moses.
So the writer
of Hebrews was saying, “Indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them
in the Old Testament.” When did you ever see a reference to the gospel in the
Old Testament? Can anyone give me a chapter and a verse for the gospel in the
Old Testament? No one can because it’s not stated that way in the Old Testament
but the writer of Hebrews under inspiration of Scripture says they had the
gospel in the Old Testament to believe. When you read the Old Testament you
don’t find it but it doesn’t mean it wasn’t there.
A lot was known
and a lot was going on in Old Testament times that God didn’t see fit to tell
us about in Scripture. In Hebrews we learn that yes, the gospel was preached to
them but the word which they heard [the gospel] did not profit them. The
wilderness generation were believers but they were disobedient to the message
proclaimed to them in the wilderness. They failed to trust in God to take them
into the land and to take it away from the Canaanites. They had to go through
forty years of wandering in the desert, the Wilderness of Zen.
We’re going to
go to the Wilderness of Zen when we go on our Israel trip in about a month and
we’re going to see just how barren that area is that they wandered through for
those forty years. The writer of Hebrews says “The word that they heard did not
profit them, not being mixed with faith.” That’s the key phrase. They didn’t
believe it. That’s what that phrase “mixed with faith” means, that you have to
believe what the Word of God says and you have to believe that it’s true.
In the first
stage of the Faith-Rest Drill, we think about a verse that we know or a part of
a verse that we know and we wrap our mental arms around that and we grab it and
say, “God this is a principle or promise you’ve given me. Here’s what you’ve
said. I’m claiming this for you to fulfill this promise.” We don’t just claim
an abstract principle or say, “God, somewhere you’ve said something that I
think means this. I heard someone say this or I heard some preacher say that.”
That’s not what Jesus did in the wilderness. He quoted Scripture verbatim
against the temptations and the attacks of Satan. So we mix faith with the
promises of Scripture. We need to memorize Scripture.
Second, we need
to understand the embedded reasoning contained within the promise. For example,
one you’ve heard from me many, many times is Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord
with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways
acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths.” Now there are three commands
there. To trust, to lean not, and to acknowledge. Then there’s a conclusion.
So how do those
three commands relate to each other? The first command is that we’re to trust
in the Lord completely or totally with our whole being, our whole heart.
Second, we’re not to lean on our own understanding. Those are complete
opposites. It’s not that we’re going to trust in the Lord but we’ve got to
think through this and figure it out as well. No, we have to base our thinking
completely and exclusively on God because He knows all the issues. We don’t.
When you’re
making tough decisions with relation to career, with relation to life, we have
to think through those issues. We think those through but we tell the Lord that
we’re trusting Him. You admit you don’t know all the data here but you’re trusting
God to guide and direct you. You will make the best decision you can based on
the data that you have. I used to pray this all the time, “Lord, keep me from
making a bad decision. Keep me from making a foolish decision. Keep me from
making a decision that I’m going to regret down through the years.”
So we trust in
the Lord. We don’t lean on our own understanding or our own frame of reference.
“In all our ways, acknowledge Him.” That means put Him first. What’s the conclusion?
The conclusion is that He will direct our paths. Not necessarily overtly where
He’s going to put traffic lights out in front of us, directing us to turn left
here and turn right there. As we make those decisions He’s going to close and
open doors and give us opportunities. When we get done we look back and see how
the Lord directed us down through the years. That’s the third aspect, when we
reach a conclusion then that stabilizes our emotions and stabilizes our soul.
Paul is
praising them in the introduction because of their faith that has gone out. In
the conclusion he does the same thing. In Romans 15:14 he says, “Now I myself
am confident concerning you, my brethren, that you also are full of goodness,
filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another, for your
obedience has become known to all. Therefore I’m glad on your behalf.” Notice
how positive towards them he is because they are moving forward spiritually. He
uses this idiom about goodness. It’s a descriptive term. They’re good people in
terms of intrinsic goodness. It’s describing their character. They’re good.
They’re kind. They are upright.
Second, they
are filled with all knowledge. There’s our word PLEROO again. It’s a perfect passive participle, meaning
completed action. They’ve already been filled which is accomplished through the
Holy Spirit. This is the same word used in Ephesians 5:18 where we’re commanded
to be filled by means of the Holy Spirit. They have responded to that command
and they are full of knowledge from God the Holy Spirit. That’s what he fills
us with, spiritual knowledge.
As a result
they are able to admonish one another. This is a Greek word NOUTHETEO which is an interesting term because it comes from
the noun NOUS which means
the mind. It has an element of instruction or teaching with it but it also has
an element of admonishment. It has the idea of addressing not only the
intellect in terms of this is what you need to know or this is what you need to
do but also challenging their will and their emotions. The meaning of the word
is wide-spread. It has the idea of admonition, advice, and warning, reminding
someone of the truth, teaching in terms of instruction and then challenging
them, spurring them on to correct behavior. So this is the result of someone
who is spiritually mature. They are “filled with all goodness and admonishing
them.”
Next time we’ll
come back to the last four points where first of all, Paul is persevering and
overcoming all the obstacles in getting to Rome. Rome was God’s destiny for
him. There are a lot of things God wants us to do but that doesn’t mean it’s
easy to get there. So he persevered in overcoming those obstacles to get to the
goal.