Romans 1:1–7Scripture
Everybody turn your Bibles to Romans chapter 1. And if you've spent any time looking at Romans, there's a lot of verses in here, and quite honestly, I will tell you, I had the hardest time this week trying to figure out how to communicate to you one thing out of seven verses, right? Because it's doctrinally rich, right? And one of the things that I don't want to miss, I don't want to fail us in, is to not talk about things that are important. So here's what's going to happen in this series, I can just tell right now, just in preparing for today: what's gonna happen in this series is you're gonna walk away with questions. All right? Some of those questions, of which I will not be able to answer in the short amount of time that I have. I just can't fully extrapolate all that there is to learn from the text. I will tell you this, that through this series it is going to be important that you invest yourself into seeking out truth, not just more on what I'm sharing with you today, not just reminding yourself through the week that it might actually become sticky and stick in your heart, but also further explore the text, because there's more truth in there to gain than what i'm going to talk about today. I have to just pick. For instance, here's two things that it talks about. Here's several things that it talks about. It talks about grace, talks about faith, talks about obedient faith, it talks about callings, it talks about gifts, it talks about the fruit of faith. That's just not even half of what it talks about, each of which could be a sermon series, right? Not just one sermon but many sermons. So what I'm doing is literally giving you a Cliff Notes version, and if you were to take a test from just the Cliff Notes version, more than likely you wouldn't pass, because no one asks questions that you can get in the Cliff Notes version.
Introduction
No teacher performs a test that you can just get the answers in a quick-notes version. How do you know that to be true? Because you tried it in college, right? It doesn't happen. You can't watch the movie, like this is the movie, and then extrapolate all the truth from it. You have to do the homework yourself. So I'm just encouraging you: do the homework. Now here's what I'm going to do. I resource the students with steps on how to study God's Word. I feel like it simplifies it to such a fashion that anybody can do it. I'm going to post those today on my Facebook page, right? Again, I've already posted them once, you might not have seen it, I'm going to post it again. And in this list of six steps of understanding and reading God's Word, I resource you with about seven linkable clicks, links, okay, clickable links. This is my brain in the morning, right? But clickable links that will help you have free resources to be able to understand the history, the context, what the writer is saying, who he's writing to, all of that stuff, because it's pertinent for you to understand it. So you have no reason, you don't have to buy a commentary, you don't have to buy sets of commentary, you don't have to buy Logos, you don't have to do that. I'm going to give you free resources, and then if you have questions, when you click into those resources and you don't know how to use it, I want you to reach out to one of our staff members. If our staff member does not know how to use that, they will figure it out, find another one that does, and we will tell you how to use it the easiest way, right?
But before you call us, YouTube it, Google it, try to figure it out yourself. Don't just call us because you're lazy, right? Try to figure it out. If you can't figure it out, call us, and then we will help you. All right, Romans 1:1-7 says this, all right, and today I'm going to zero in on verse 5. There's a lot said, but I'm going to zero in on verse 5. But let's read it all. "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord." It's still a sentence, it's still going on. This is the longest sentence of all humanity. This would not pass English class, right? They would be like, turn it into multiple sentences. Anyway, so, but God said this, so he rules anyway. I want to stop here, and I probably shouldn't, but I love this: "concerning his Son, Jesus, who was descended from David." Now why is that important? I think this is extremely important today for many different reasons. Let's just go to the simplest of them: one, God was working on remedying our sinfulness, our unholiness, and us not having the right king, which is him.
Because we called out for an earthly king, we became abundantly sinful. So God provides a king for them, and then he provides such kings that out of this kingship that God provides, the Son springs, the Son of God, who is Jesus, springs out of, and he now is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. Now this is beautiful, because we don't just see Jesus show up as an infant in the New Testament, we see God establishing a line of kings by which he will re-establish himself as the King of kings. And so although in the Old Testament we see people crying out for a king, and he provides them a king which is not him, he goes all the way back and provides a whole line of kings, and then springs out of that line of kings and becomes the King of kings for all mankind. Again, that, ladies and gentlemen, don't miss that, because we cry out for things that are not him, but he is constantly working to re-establish himself as the King of kings in our lives. That's so beautiful. I can't preach about that. Kind of did a little bit, but that's just really good. Maybe I should have preached about that. But let's just go on, verse 5. This is where I really want to hammer down on: "through whom," everybody say "through whom," "we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name." Now there's the three points for my sermon, right? It is by grace, through faith, for his name, and specifically not just through faith but through the obedience of faith. Now that's important, because there's a faith that we have adopted in the culture of evangelicalism that says faith is merely what we decide in our heart or our mind, but it is not necessarily indicative of obedience.
Paul would argue with that doctrinally, and not just here in this text but throughout the entire book. Paul would argue with that. He says that there is a fruit of faith. It produces obedience. Okay, it's the fruit. You're not obedient and that makes you faithful, right? No, it's not about faithfulness. It is, when you have faith in God and you trust in him and you trust in his Word, you obey his Word because you do trust him. Are you with me?
So the evidence of our faith is obedience. That's important. So by grace, through faith, and for his name. I want to talk about those. Let's go ahead to verse 6: "including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." Amen, that's good too,
Point 1We are saved and empowered by grace alone
You can preach on that. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to talk about this word, grace. By grace we are saved, Ephesians says. Paul also says, when he writes to the church at Ephesus, Ephesians 2:8-9, he says it this way: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." But that's shout-worthy right there, because if it depends on us, you know that phrase, "as far as it depends on me," thank God it doesn't depend on me, because we'd be toast. And I'm not talking about the good, sweet, buttery toast. I'm talking about the one that got left in the toaster too long. We'd be toast, burnt toast.
That's what we'd be. By grace. I looked up the definition of "by," because I think that's what's really going to trip us up. All right, here's the definition of "by": the word "by" is indicating the means of achieving something. We become a saint, or we become a child of God, or we become a Christian, by grace. It's the means. Grace makes us. It's grace.
Now guess what you do in regards to grace? Guess what your role is? Nothing.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 10:19
That's important. Now I'm going to get lots of amens here because we've been on First John, I've just been talking about, you know, live holy, and you're like, dude, can we talk about grace up in here? Right? So just soak it in, right? Because Paul will turn on you too about halfway through this book. He's going to turn, and you're gonna be like, I loved it. No, I don't. But this is pertinent and it's important. It's important you don't do anything.
It's not God plus a little bit of you. God does it all. Let me just say this: some of you think about your good works you do post-being a believer. You couldn't do that without his grace, because you're not empowered to do anything good if not for him empowering you to do it. Can I get an amen on that? Right? I mean, because if you're like me at all, sometimes just being nice driving down the street is all the strength I have. Okay, go to Walmart, that'll test every man's. You want to see if you're saved, go to walmart during Christmas. It's crazy. It's crazy. God empowers you to be kind when no one's kind. God empowered it. It's by his grace. Let me make this more, let me bring this to a place you wouldn't like. You're here today and you're alive in this service because you're breathing and your heart's beating, and you have not done anything to contribute to that. You didn't will yourself to make your heart beat today, over and over again. I don't even imagine how many hundreds of times, since you've moved in this building during our worship and during the opening of this, that your heart has kept you alive. It's by grace it's still beating. And what we need to understand about God's Word, and this is really important, is that when God speaks a thing, it does not merely create a thing, but it sustains that creation. So when he speaks one time and he brings life through his words, "Let there be life," that is a sustaining word that will forever be going. God's Word sustains life. You don't sustain life, he sustains it, and it's his grace that even allows you to stay alive when we act like nincompoops. It's his grace that even allows it to happen. Grace is, I'm afraid, more precious than we realize, and today I hope I can show you from the book of Romans what it is and why grace is so precious. Now in the New Testament this word is used 155 times. 100 of those times the apostle Paul uses it, so it's an important word to him as he proclaims the gospel. I think it's like 24 of those times it's in this book. So grace is foundational in our Christian walk. Understanding it is foundational. If we're going to have a good grasp of Romans, we have to have a good grasp of what grace is and then what grace accomplishes for us, right? We have to know that. You will not be able to comprehend this book if you do not comprehend grace. We'll see it again and again. It is at the heart of Romans, and honestly it's at the heart of the gospel, and more importantly it is at the heart of God. But I'm afraid that the word doesn't communicate really how precious of a reality this word is for us today.
I would guess that even in our midst the average person would say "grace" and they would say it's a beautiful movement, but they would say grace in terms of a ballerina. As Brook said earlier this week, we were talking, that a ballerina is graceful, or maybe an ice skater, they skate with such grace.
This is how we often use it. They might say grace before dinner. That might be how we view grace: it's something we utter so that we can get what we've been waiting for. We'll see it again and again, and it is at the heart of Romans and the heart of the gospel. But what is the biblical reality of grace? And I feel like this is really hard to do, and I feel like I'm going to lay this out pretty well and some of you are still going to have questions. When you reflect back to the grace, you're going to have to go back and study some more, because there are people who've been in the church a long time who cannot fully extrapolate the depths and the magnitude of what grace accomplishes in our life.
Paul begins to introduce himself and speak of his being a bondservant of Christ and of his calling as an apostle and his consecration for the gospel of God. Then in verses 2 through 4 he talks about what the gospel of God is. He said it's planned long before it happens.
People, that's important. It's about God's Son. It's about the fulfillment of the Old Testament hopes and the arrival of the messiah who fulfills those hopes, the Son of David, and it is about the risen Christ who came forth triumphantly from the dead and reigns as the Son of God and the king of kings, in full power and authority over all mankind. So it's a picture of a great God triumphant who reigns as Messiah and Lord. Before us, Paul can now talk about grace on its proper basis, and then he says in verse 5, now that we understand what grace is and what it does, it says "through whom we have received grace." How do you receive grace? Through Jesus. Through belief, through trust in Jesus. Through belief and trust. This specifically is important, because a lot of world religions, they don't throw this part in. They believe and trust Jesus all the way up to this part, who resurrected from the dead and is sat at the right hand of the Father and is God. That's important, because a lot of people trust Jesus, but they don't trust the Jesus of the Bible. And that's pertinent, that's important. So in verse 5 he says this: "through whom we have received grace." In other words, God's grace has come to Paul through the Lord Jesus Christ, who was born as a son of David and was released as the Son in power. We may say, from what Paul writes later, that grace was obtained for us through the obedience and death of the incarnate Messiah. Here's where he says this, and you can write this down and go back and read this will help you: Romans 3:24-25 and Romans 5:18-21. So he builds on this idea that grace comes from the resurrected Lord, and grace is poured out through the risen and reigning Son of God in power.
There is no grace towards sinners, listen to me, this is good, there is no grace towards sinners apart from the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 18:28
All that remains for them from God is wrath. You're like, God's gracious to all people.
No, God's gracious to those who have faith in him. To those who do not, they are not Christians, they are sinners who remain in sin, and if they do not have faith in the God of the Bible, the Lord Jesus Christ of the Bible, all that remains from God is not grace but his wrath, unrolled on them for all eternity. Like, listen, people, this is important, because the church preaches a god that we have fashioned that makes people comfortable, so we never really call them out of a life of sin.
We empower them to stay in it. This is important. No grace to sinners, just wrath. Now this part's important, because in all of our evangelistic efforts, some of us have remained, when we talk to people who are far from the Lord or those who have questions or those who are trying to live for the Lord or whatever, we present the gospel or God in a neutral way. In any way our doctrine becomes so neutral that we risk running off cliffs, right? All that's required is a strong breeze to blow your neutral tail right off a cliff. And so we even remain doctrine, doctrinally neutral, right? So there are churches today that have taken a neutral position in regards to doctrine, these difficult subjects about sin, about holiness, about grace, about faith, about unholiness. We've remained so neutral, so that for the purpose of what we call evangelizing lost people, that they might understand that God loves them, and so that we will say, so neutral in regards to sin, we don't preach about sin, we don't preach about the consequences of sin, we don't preach and try to call people out of sin, because that makes people not want to be in our fellowship and that makes people not receptive to the proclamation of the gospel. But when we evangelize from a doctrinally neutral position, we're not showing we love people.
We're showing we love ourself, because we don't want to offend. I don't think the goal should be offend, but if you love Jesus with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, I'm pretty sure you're going to be offensive. All right, some people have converted the natural offense that comes from loving God to becoming a professional offender.
That's not Christlike either. We've got to be careful about remaining neutral. Verse 5 plainly says that God gives grace through him, referring to Jesus Christ our Lord at the end of verse 4. So grace is a reality that comes from God and comes through Jesus. Grace comes from God. It comes from God through Jesus, and Jesus worked for us in the death and resurrection. Grace is not something we have a right to. Grace is not something we have a right to. Jesus obtained it for us. We get it freely because of his obedience and his death and his resurrection.
You don't have a right to have grace, and it ain't free. Jesus earned it for you.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 22:45
Why is that important, Shawn?
Because if you think that grace is free, you won't value what Jesus paid for it. It's important that we value it.
Now one of the things, when we talk about grace, and I'm gonna talk about these two things, one of the things we talk about when we talk about grace is we talk about being justified by grace, or specifically that when we put our faith and trust in him we receive grace and that we are saved of our sins. So God has grace even though we're a sinner, and we get that through belief and trust in Jesus Christ, right? So we understand that grace provides and protects and protects us from God's wrath because we're a sinner. We understand that, so that's easy. But there is another type of grace that actually Paul is talking about here, and
Point 2Grace also empowers us for our calling
Actually he spends most of his energy directed towards this grace, another way grace serves us.
Yes, we're saved from sin by grace, but listen to what Paul says in Romans 1:5: "through Christ we've received grace and apostleship."
That's important. This means that his calling as an apostle was actually a gift of grace. Now I don't want to go off on a rabbit trail about callings today.
Let me just summarize this way for you. When you think of callings, most of us in the house today think of vocational callings. This apostolic gifting is a vocational calling, so we tend to just only go to the vocational route. In Bible college, one of the things that we would learn when we think about callings, there are three types of callings that we read about in the Bible. There's actually more, but they can mostly be summarized in this, and it's WEV, or WEFF, however you want to say it. The first one is worship. God calls us to worship, and we call out on his name through worship. So when you see "calling," sometimes the word "calling" could be applying to us worshiping, calling on Jesus' name, calling on God, calling out in God's name, also God calling us to worship him. We see it used that way. That's the W. Another way that we see it, and we're going to talk a lot about this in the book of Romans, and some of you are going to be totally disturbed, but you know, so am I about it, is election. Now, we don't like talking about election, because we can't imagine God choosing, and we feel like it's playing favorites, and God kind of sovereignly picks certain people to do certain things, and he moves them and shifts them into position, and it is not by anything they do or any choice they make, right? God just does what he does through certain people because he decided to do it, because he's God. That's not just vocational either. There are the elect who will be saved. Do what you will with that. Actually, we're going to talk about that, but just to disturb you. That's callings. I don't have time to go into the calling thing today. We're going to extrapolate that as we go on. The V, actually, forget vocational. Vocational calling, so that is part of it, but when we talk in the church, all we really focus on in regards to the call is just the vocational. You know that you couldn't even come to God and be saved unless he first called you. That's important. That's what makes that grace: not that you chose him, but that he called you, and his call empowers you to say yes. That's grace. You're like, what about free will? Yes, I'm not talking about free will, I'm not saying free will isn't. I'm saying God calls all people to himself, so you couldn't even have faith unless he called.
The call simply enables you to do it. So when we think of calling, we think of these three things, mainly vocational, but one of the things Paul's saying is that I am empowered by grace to be an apostle. In other words, I could not be an apostle and my words would not be valid nor could they be trusted if God did not grace me with the words to say and that I obediently say them through my apostleship. I could not be an apostle. I would still be killing Christians if the grace of God wouldn't knock me off my mule and blind me so that I could see who he was, and it changed my life. He literally called me to something different. By the grace of God I can do that. By the grace of God I changed my life occupation. By the grace of God I changed my belief. By the grace of God I change what I trust in. By the grace of God I'm able to preach and write letters and plant churches. By the grace of God, if not for the grace of God none of this could happen. That's why he gets set off when the church begins to compare him and Apollos, and I would probably, if I were to do a Cliff Notes version of how he deals with that, he says some do this, some do that. He's basically saying everyone who does anything, regardless of what they do in the kingdom, is a part of the body of Christ, and nobody could do anything unless they were graced to do it, and you're trying to value an individual based on something that doesn't come from them. It comes from God. You've placed your value in the wrong thing. This is important as we talk about this, because we're going to come into the picture a bit, and he doesn't want you to be filled with pride and make this about you. It's about God.
If you have a gift today, God gave it, and you should be excited about it, but it ain't yours. God gave it. It's God's. Actually it says in the Bible you better handle it properly, and you better not take glory from his name, because he can take it away. He has. That's disturbing, right?
A little bit. This means that his calling as an apostle was a gift of grace, and he fulfills his role by the power of that grace. So the grace we read about here is not just God's forgiveness of Paul's sin, but is also a power to enable Paul to do his calling as an apostle. Shawn, what do you base this on? Other verses in Romans. Let me tell you what they are. I base this on what Paul says about the relationship between grace and ministry, specifically in chapter 12 and in chapter 15. For example, in Romans 12:6 Paul says, "We have gifts that differ according to the grace that was given to us."
Let me stop here and say, have you ever heard someone say, "I don't have grace for that"? Have you ever heard that? Oh, only like one person here. Like, okay, yeah, so "I don't have grace for that." Where does that come from? Some people are graced with certain things that other people are not graced with.
Let me read it to you again so you can hear it in the words of Paul in chapter 12: "We have gifts that differ according to the grace that was given to us."
So you trying to be what somebody else is graced with, you trying to do what somebody else was graced to do, is failing what God graced you with and what he graced you to do. It's important. And then Romans 12:3 he says, "For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you." In other words, grace is God's enabling for various ministries through gifts he gives, and Paul's gift included speaking as an apostle. Similarly, in chapter 15, verses 15 through 16, Paul says, "Because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles." He was graced to do it.
Somewhere you were graced to have five kids. I was graced to have two. Sometimes I wonder, like, if my grace portion's large enough to just have two. But if I have to, God graced me to have two, and he gives me. Have you ever felt like he gives you just enough grace to do what he's called you to do? Like just enough, there's no extra portion, like just enough to do it? You know why he gives you just enough? Because he didn't want you to use what he gave on something that he didn't give you that he didn't give it to you to do. He didn't, he didn't give it to. I don't really know how to say that again, but he gave you just enough grace because he doesn't want you to use the grace he's given you on something that he didn't give it to you to do, and if you have just enough, you'll make sure you use it on the right thing. Now, I know we live in a "he's going to give us more and we're the head, not the tail," and there's so many total Scriptures that are used out of context for our good pleasure, and we're very acquisitional in America, but I came here today to tell you God is a God of just enough. He meets our needs, not all of our wants, and his riches in glory. Are you with me today? So if you need just so much grace to accomplish it, he's not a God of waste. Like, there isn't landfills in the kingdom of all the things he's given us that we've mishandled. He gives us what we need.
We're a part of a landfill society, but that's not like his kingdom. When God gives it's not wasted. He didn't discard stuff, he uses every part of it. I love watching shows where we see the West invading Indian territory. I love it because you see this disgusting display of them slaying buffalo after buffalo and just peeling the skin off of them and leaving everything else, when you have the Indians praying over the buffalo and being just brokenhearted because every part of that buffalo was not used. How much does the American, do the American people, and then the American church, mishandle and devalue what God provides for us, and we just want more?
So here's the thing: how do we get grace? I think it's important. We talked a little bit about what grace is. It's from God, it's by God.
But how do we get it? Does it mean that he gave it in response to good works? Paul says no.
Galatians 1:15 or Romans 11:6 says grace is not God's response to our deserving or our meritorious behavior. Grace is God's free gift before we do anything good, and he's enabling us to do anything good. So it saves us and it enables us. Grace, I think this is really cool and you're gonna write this Scripture down, I found this week, I think it's really cool: grace actually has its own power.
It literally has its own power. You don't work it up.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 34:34
It is in fact part of the power referred to in verse 4. Listen, don't miss it, where Paul says in the Scripture we just read that Jesus was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. In other words, grace is not just forgiveness of our sins and mercy on our misery, it is also a divine power that comes to us through Jesus, absolutely free, for the sake of ministry. So this idea that you can get grace for your sins but serve ministry from the flesh is foreign to the gospel.
That's important. That's really important, because listen, you want to see what people have faith in?
You want to see what people have faith in? Watch how they serve.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 35:48
Now we don't do this perfectly. Amen? How many even know that sometimes we trust God and have faith in God, and sometimes we have faith in ourselves? But it's so evident when people serve, because people don't serve in God's grace and power, they serve in their own strength. They use God's grace and power to be saved, but they discard it for service. This is important. So this is what Paul's lining out for us, and now he, this is essential. If you don't get this, you miss the rest, the whole Bible, you miss it, and you'll run the risk of trying to serve in your own strength and burn out, burnout, because you're not functioning in his power.
The most burned-out people are not the most godly people.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 36:30
The most burned-out people are the most misdirected people, because if we're empowered by God to do it, we should not burn out. We only burn out when we trust in ourself. Now that doesn't mean you're a terrible person, but it just means we're focusing on the wrong thing, and we trust God for salvation but we don't trust him to be empowered for service. Paul's trying to help us with that. Grace has its own power. We're empowered to do the things. Grace is not just forgiveness of sin and mercy on our misery, it's empowerment for Christian service. Romans 5:21, it's on down, we'll read this later, it says this: "as sin reigned in death, even so grace reigns through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Here's how I would say it: grace is the power of a king. It reigns and leads mightily to eternal life through Christ Jesus.
What reigns in your mortal man? Grace that empowers or pride that destroys?
Pastor Shawn Gray · 37:37
So we've seen that grace is a power from God for ministry like Paul's apostleship. It is free and cannot be earned or deserved. It is received as a gift by faith, not merit or works. So what does it do? The effects of grace.
The book of Romans will open up to us like a flower if we can get this one thing, and I want to stay here for just a minute and I want to talk about it. God wants you to read verse 5 and in the end put your calling in the place of the word "apostleship." I believe that to be true. I might be wrong, it's possible. Some people smarter than me might argue with me on this. They're saying it's a little bit of eisegesis or narcissism, Shawn. So, you know, they might, I might even if I heard this out there, but I'm just going to say this and we'll just see here. I think it will be okay with God to put what he's called us to in place of "apostleship," and understand we're graced by God for that. You might put this: "through Christ I've received grace and the power to teach," or grace and empowered to sing, or grace to be a good student, or grace to be single, or graced to be a widow, or graced to be a mother. And what you should mean when you say this is, God has freely given me forgiveness and the power to do what he has called me to do. Some of you are like, wondering what the one thing is here. Let me answer it for you from the Bible: do all things by the grace of God. By grace Paul was an apostle, by grace some can sing, by grace some can parent, by grace some are students, by grace some are women, by grace some are women. What is a woman? By grace some are women, by grace some are men. I don't need to do. I need to. Are you with me? It's important. See, we're going to see in our generation, in our lifetime, generations to come after us even, but in our lifetime we're going to see that when people don't live by grace but they choose something different, how destructive that becomes for lives.
There's a reason we're in the most medicated, depressed society the world has ever known. There's a reason for that. We don't live by grace.
We're trying to be everything that God did not design us to be.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 40:48
That's important.
It's important. There's not a role in life that can be lived the way God wants it lived apart from his enabling grace. Being a godly mother or being an apostle is impossible without the power of grace. So when Paul says in First Corinthians 15:10, write that down, I want you to go back and read that all his apostolic labor is by grace, you can insert your own calling. In other words, "By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." The decisive enabling power for all ministry and all service is God's grace.
There is not one role that can be lived apart from God's enabling grace.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 41:56
Point 3True faith bears the fruit of obedience
Second thing: through faith, quite specifically the obedience of faith. That's the way Paul puts it. He puts it that way because it's important. He puts it that way because he doesn't just want us to think about faith absent of obedience, right? He didn't want us to just talk about faith without also attaching it to obedience.
Now we have to understand grace, because we don't want to go off the rails and think that obedience obtains grace, but rather obedience is the fruit of faith by which we receive grace. That's important. That's important. The grace to obey.
Faith causes us to receive grace. Faith is trust in God. Faith in God, faith in Jesus, helps us receive the grace of God, and once we receive the grace of God we are empowered to obey. If you're a disobedient child of God, you never have faith in God, because faith helps us receive grace, which doesn't just save us from sin but empowers us to obey. Are you with me today? So this is why in the Bible, and specifically Paul will say, we can judge one another by the fruit. What is he talking about? The fruit of faith. What is the fruit of faith? Obedience to his Word. In other words, we can tell whether someone really had faith, because if they had faith in Jesus, they received grace not only to be saved from sin but to be empowered to obey.
So you can judge the fruit of their obedience and tell whether they're really a believer or not. Are you with me today? Does it make sense? I've said it like four times, four different ways, so this is really important. I'm gonna say it again. Let me say it again. We have faith and we trust that Jesus is who he says he is and he did what he says he would do, and by that we receive grace, which doesn't just save us from sin but also empowers us to obey.
If someone is disobedient, habitually disobedient, and calls themselves a Christian, we can know by their fruit, or lack thereof, that they're not a Christian, because they didn't have faith, because if they had faith, they would have been graced not just to be saved but empowered to obey. That's what he's saying. That's important.
"Through whom," the living Son of God risen in power, "we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith." Don't miss it.
It brings about the obedience of faith. It doesn't, it didn't, maybe it brings about the obedience of faith. He didn't say that it brings it about. So grace is not just received by faith, it actually aims at faith. Grace gives gifts of grace. God gives gifts of grace so that we will be his instruments in bringing about the obedience of faith. This is what I call the effect of grace. Now what does the phrase "obedience of faith" mean here? Here's what commentators say. You can write these two things down. What does he mean by "obedience of faith"? The two main choices that most commentators, theologians land on are these. First one being the obedience that comes from faith, or the obedience which is faith. Number one, it's either the obedience that comes from faith, or number two, it's the obedience which is faith. So either faith is obedience or obedience comes from faith. I tend to align with the first of the two, although both could work. I just think the second one runs the risk of us running off into theological landmines, so I choose one: that obedience comes from faith.
Here's another way to explain it. You might say "acts of courage," acts that come from courage, or you might say "block of wood," the block is wood.
Are you with me? Is this too heady? You need to write it down? You want to go back and think about it? Because I've been thinking about it for a month. But you just, so it either comes from it, I have courage and so acts of courage come from it, or it is a block of wood, block of wood, actually the block is wood. I feel like that's kind of, so it's like both, and that's what Paul is trying to get us to understand.
Here's what Leon Morris questions. It's a good question. Remember, students, questions cut through the mystery of Scripture and help us find our way to the truth. If Paul only means faith and not the obedience of faith, why use two words to say it in the epistle to the Romans? In other words, if Paul only means we receive grace and apostleship to bring about faith among all the Gentiles, then why complicate matters and say "the obedience of faith"? This is what Leon Morris says: "I think the answer is that he really does want us to think not only about the obedience that faith is but also the obedience of love that faith produces." In other words, faith will produce the obedience of loving the one we say we trust in. Faith produces in us obedience to God.
All true obedience comes by one way: through faith, and grace enables us to do it.
All Christian obedience is a fruit of faith.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 48:24
We either have faith in ourselves or we have faith in God's grace, and this is made evident by either a life of obedience or disobedience. Faith in God is simply trusting and relying on him rather than ourself. The last and final one we talked about:
Point 4Everything is for the sake of his name
We are saved and empowered by grace through faith, and then for his name. Honestly, I get the most excited about this one, maybe because I feel like in my personal life this is the area that I struggle with the most. Oh, not intentionally, mind you, but if you're anything like me, much of what we do in life is for ourself. We say it's for God, or we can see this so plainly in our marriages, right, or our relationships with family members and friends. It becomes evident, it becomes immediately evident, of why we do what we do. Men, listen to me: clean the house every night for a week, have your wife never acknowledge it, and we'll see clearly who you did it for. Right? Brook and I were talking actually on the way, I mean, I was like, actually Ashton came in, I don't even know what ignited the conversation, I was getting my coffee downstairs and something happened about oh yeah, he was talking, I don't know how we got to the dishwasher talk around coffee before we came up here, but Ashley was actually saying there have been times that I actually felt like emptying the dishwasher, but then Mom would tell me to empty the dishwasher, and I'm like, no, I don't want to, and I'd go back upstairs.
And I was like, man, that's like every man on the face of the earth, because I'm not going to do it unless I'm seen doing it, because I want to get points for that. Right? Women, you can get men to do anything, just help them get points for that. Right? Like, just walk around with a tally sheet and be like, I saw you get two points. Give us a star board. I know it sounds crazy, but men would love that stuff. They would love that stuff. Actually, men, the goal is not to get a star on your starboard. That's not the goal.
The goal is to love your wife as yourself. That's the goal.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 51:12
But it's hard because of our attitude in regards to this, and it really is carnal in the way we function. I feel like even in the church, even as pastors, we don't give glory to God's name. We don't do it because we love God and his name, we do it because we love us and our name. How do you know that? How do you know that? Have somebody talk about you, say all kinds of horrible things about you, become your enemy, and then see whose name, see whose name people are concerned about being dragged through the mud.
You don't hear people say, "Well, this just makes a bad, this just ruins God's name, the people are talking about me like that."
You'll say, no, they're gossiping, they're lying about me, they're destroying my good name. There's nothing good about your name. There's nothing good about your name.
There's only something good about God's name.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 52:04
There's nothing good about your reputation. The fact that you are scared about your reputation being destroyed lets us know that we're more concerned about our reputation than God's, and also lets us know that you actually think you have a good reputation. Good reputation in regards to whom?
We should only care about what God sees in us. P.S., in the Old Testament, in the New Testament, God was busy, Jesus was busy, about giving people new names, because their name was not a good name. He gave them a better name. That's why you're hidden in his name, because your name ain't good, and it can't be trusted, and it ain't reliable, and it is not good, it's evil. His name is all that matters. So when you serve, make sure you do so after having faith and trusting in him, after receiving grace from that, after being empowered to do anything that he asks you to do, because it is only then will he get the glory, because it's by his strength, not yours. "By my strength," says the Lord. Why is that important? Why is "by my strength," says the Lord, why is that important? Why is that in the Bible? Why? Because it's his name and it's his strength. It's not yours.
Verse 5: "through Christ, whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations."
For the sake of his name among all the nations. The reason God makes certain that all of our salvation and all of our good works are dependent upon him is so that the giver of all those things actually gets the glory. Consider these two verses and then I will close. Romans 10:13, Paul says, "Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved." Let me, before I read these Scriptures, let me pose it with maybe possible questions that you might have.
Here's some questions that I've got recently and for years, even as a youth pastor: Isn't it selfish of God, or ultimately unloving, for him to want to receive the glory about everything? Can God really actually love us if he loves himself more than us? Here's two verses that answer that. I'll read them again, Romans 10:13: "everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved." Here's my answer after reading that verse: that is not selfish or unloving at all.
Jesus died for you, for his name, not yours. That's not unloving at all.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 55:28
When's the last time you died for someone who is an enemy of yours? "I don't deserve to be treated like that." Yeah, you do.
"I don't deserve to be talked about like that." Yeah, you do. "I don't deserve." Yes, you do. Yes, you do.
God doesn't, Jesus definitely doesn't, and even though he didn't, he was treated the way he was treated, and let me tell you, it wasn't for your name, it was for God's. It's for his name. Consider this, Romans 5:2. This you'll like, because we're acquisitional, you've been waiting to see what you're going to get. So here's the getting word for you, Romans 5:2. Paul says, when we live by grace through faith, "we exult in hope of the glory of God." So in other words, glorifying God's name and making his name great is where you find your hope, and because he knows how selfish we are and he knows how much we need hope, he hides it behind us glorifying his name.
It's the treasure you've been looking for, but the way you obtain it is by you becoming less and him becoming more.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 57:02
Are you with me today? That's important. God's glory is our hope.
And then why his name? I wrote a couple of these things. Have you ever had someone take credit for what you did as if they did it and been super happy about it?
Neither is God. How did it make you feel? Did it possibly make you feel stabby?
If it did, so does it with God. How do you think it makes him feel? Do not make a full-time occupation out of not understanding the grace of God, not understanding how to have faith, and not understanding that it will produce in us the strength to obey for the sake of glorifying his name. It always has, always is, and always will be about him. He gets the glory, not you.
So I can say with all certainty today, as I close, the good news of the gospel is not about you, it's about him.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 58:30
Why is that important, as I close? Because when we make the good news of the gospel about us, we stop in the definition of grace at the place of our sins being forgiven, and we never are empowered to obey God that his name might be glorified. Why? Because we believe a gospel that is about us and not about him, and so we do not then, in our definition of grace, really move into what all grace is. It's moving to the cross and stopping and never going beyond.
It's just, I need the blood for my sins, I got what I needed for me and for my name and for my eternity, but see, that's glorifying your name.
But when we glorify his name, we understand that grace does way more than just save us from our sins. It saves us in the way we live, in what I would call unrighteous and unholy living.
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