(Habakkuk 2:1-4; Romans 1:1-17)
This will be an interesting sermon series for me—something of a voyage of discovery. This past January, up at Calvin, I heard N. T. Wright talk about baptism in the light of Romans 6, and he argued that Romans 6-8 is a theological retelling of the story of the Exodus. Which made a lot of sense to me, and got me thinking that maybe he didn’t go far enough with his idea; maybe all of Romans, or at least much of it, is a theological retelling of the whole story of Israel—and thus of our story as the people of God.
It’s an attractive idea, I think, both because it helps make sense of some things in the structure of the book and because it addresses the biggest question I’ve always had about Romans: why was it written? Why did Paul just decide one day to sit down and write a theology textbook to a church he’d never visited? If it isn’t just a theology textbook, if there’s a deeper purpose to it, then that makes more sense to me. The only way to work out this idea and see how true it might be is actually to go through and write the sermons and see how it works.
If I’m right, then the purpose of Romans is not just to tell us what the church should believe, but to give us an overarching vision of what the church ought to be—what we ought to be on about as the people of God, what life as a follower of Christ should look like, and what the ministry of Christ ought to be about. We saw this Christmas that a key idea in Matthew’s gospel is that the life of Christ recapitulates the history of Israel; in Romans, I think, we have Paul doing by his teaching what Jesus did by his life and his example. The life of Christ is the model for the life of the people of God, because we his people have been given his life; Romans unpacks that for us and helps us to understand it. Paul wants us to understand what it means for us to live in and by the life of Christ and the power of his Holy Spirit as his redeemed people.
We see this in Paul’s introduction, which we read this morning. His description of himself normally takes up just a line or two in his letters; here it’s six verses long and basically a thumbnail sketch of his mission and message. His thanksgiving for them is briefer than usual, because this is a church he doesn’t know—it quickly shifts into a statement of his desire to visit them, culminating in the declaration, “I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.”
And here’s the interesting thing: we see the theme of this letter in verses 16-17—and yeah, there’s a lot there, and we’re not going to unpack it all this morning—but these two verses are grammatically subordinate to verse 15. 15 is the main sentence, 16-17 function as a causal clause. We know this sort of thing—it’s like when I tell my wife, “I’m going to the store because we’re out of milk.” She doesn’t need me to tell her we’re out of milk, she already knows that; what she needs to know is that I’m taking the car keys. I tell her “we’re out of milk” so that she knows why.
It’s the same deal here. This has given some scholars heartburn—how can this be the main point of the letter if it isn’t even the main point of the sentence?—but I think it’s really quite important. He says this, he lays out the heart of his message, for a specific reason: to explain why he’s eager to preach the gospel to them. This is why he preaches, this is why he ministers, this is what his ministry is all about. Paul is in it for the gospel, driven by the gospel, inspired by the gospel, powered by the gospel, guided by the gospel—and nothing else. This is what he does, and all he does, and he wants the same thing to be true of them as the church.
This is the vision, nothing more and nothing less. Notice, I’m not saying it’s Paul’s vision. It is, in a sense; we can talk about this as Paul’s vision for the church, or my vision for the church, in the sense of being captured by this vision. But it isn’t his vision in the sense that it began with him or belongs to him. If it were, it would be merely a human vision, and no merely human vision can build the church. As Andrew Purves of Pittsburgh Seminary says, no human ministry can redeem anyone; only the ministry of Christ is redemptive. Human vision may build a large, successful organization—it often does—but it won’t be the church, because it will only be a human organization. What we need is the vision of Christ for the church, which shines through Paul here.
The vision is that the church should be people of the gospel, all about the gospel, first, last, and always. We should be a people who recognize our absolute dependence on Jesus Christ—that we are not in the least righteous by our own power, but only through faith in him; that we depend completely on his righteousness, for our own attempts are worth nothing. We are called to be a people of grace, who humbly acknowledge before God and each other our need for grace—that we sin, that we fail, that we fall short, that we let others down, inevitably—we cannot be satisfactory people in our own strength.
We will always fall short of even what we consider “reasonable” expectations, because we are limited, fallible, and still struggling with our sin; we need grace, and so we need to show grace to others. We need to tell each other and to tell the world that the good news of Jesus isn’t “Work harder,” though to be sure we all have things on which we need to keep working; rather, the good news is that we are saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ, and he is sufficient for us. He has redeemed us by his power, and he is transforming us by his power, making us righteous according to his will. We need to give him our best, not because it means we’ll get the result we want—we might not—but simply because it’s our best and it’s what God asks of us. The rest is up to him.
The key is, the power of salvation isn’t ours, it’s God’s, and his power and his righteousness are far beyond anything we can manage; this is why Paul declares, “I am not ashamed of the gospel.” We usually read this as an individual statement, and it is; Paul is an evangelist because he understands that only in the gospel is the power of God for salvation that brings true life. Indeed, this is the only motivation for evangelism that really bears fruit for the long term, if we are captured by the glory and goodness of Jesus Christ and our salvation in him—if we are full to overflowing with his love, and with gratitude for all he has done for us, then we will tell others naturally, every chance we get, the same way that those who are in love are always talking about their beloved. That’s what fills their hearts and their thoughts, and so that’s what fills their speech as well. In the same way, if we would be effective in telling others about Jesus, we must begin by looking to him ourselves and delighting in his presence.
That said, what Paul is saying here is about more than just our individual witness, it’s also about how we live together as the church. It’s about putting the gospel front and center in everything we do and refusing to be about anything else. We lose sight of this because the church has become organizationalized. It’s become all about the organization, thinking like an organization—and an organization exists first and foremost to keep itself in existence, and then if it can, to get bigger, so as to give itself more resources to stay in existence. The church in this country has a bad habit of thinking and evaluating itself in those terms, and so it becomes all about the numbers and how you attract people; and you do that through programs and worship style and stuff you can advertise.
Now, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with programs, and certainly everyone has a style, but there are a couple bad assumptions here. The first is that the church is supposed to be successful on organizational terms, which means strength in numbers; the second is that we have to be the ones to make that happen, and we have to use the same techniques the world does. When we get into that mindset, we end up ashamed of the gospel, because the gospel doesn’t fit the marketing paradigm; we put the stuff front and center that goes over well with the test audience. Paul is calling us to something different: to fix our eyes firmly on Jesus, to proclaim the gospel in every way we can find to do it—which is where our programs come in, to give us different ways and opportunities to proclaim the gospel—and let God worry about the rest.