Romans 1:3-7

We should remember that Jesus did not speak directly to the church, the body of Christ in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

He spoke so we, the church, would know who He was and what He came to this earth for but not instructions to the church.

However, He most definitely spoke directly to the church through Paul!!!

Paul recorded and published Jesus’s word just as faithfully as Matthew, Mark Luke and John did.

 

So, we now come to Romans 1:3-4, and I guess it would help get the flow if we read it in context with the first 2 verses.

Romans :1

Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God which He promised before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, 

And Romans 1:3-4,

concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. 

 

Notice we’ve left out the “to be” again and said, quote, “declared the Son of God” instead of declared to be the Son of God.

We already looked last time at Christ in associated with hundreds of years of prophesies and scripture.

 

What does Paul mean here with the phrase, “the seed of David”?

Well, back in Genesis 3:15 we have the reference to the Seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent. That was the promised line of redemption, the thread of salvation that starts with Genesis 3:15 and carries all the way through Scripture. So, the Seed of the woman was to crush the head of the serpent, Satan.

Then in Genesis Chapter 12 we have the Abrahamic Covenant, and Paul states in Galatians 3:6, the following,

Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “AND TO YOUR SEED,” who is Christ.

Christ is the Seed of Abraham.

 

We’ve got three seeds that Paul ‘s going to talk about.

The first goes all the way back to Genesis Chapter 3, as the Seed of the woman Who would crush Satan and now Christ the Seed of David.

From David would come Mary, and Joseph, who is the legal father of Jesus. He’s not the natural father of course, that’s God the Father and Jesus is His only begotten Son.

So now we have the Seed of the woman, Who is going to defeat Satan at the Cross, and we have the seed of David which brought Jesus to the world in human flesh to go the way of the Cross, and He’s the rightful Heir to the throne of David from where He’ll rule over kingdom on earth for a thousand years and then on for eternity.

Paul also talks of the seed of Abraham which brings us, the church, the Body of Christ, into the picture. When we believe in the Gospel, the Word of God unto salvation, we’re walking in faith and that faith, plus nothing else, makes us Gentile believers the seed of Abraham and because of that faith we are in Christ and Christ, being the Seed, is in us, making us also the seed when we’re in Christ.

 

Then we have Romans 1:4 and remember we’re still in this one sentence,

…and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead…

Paul uses this word “power” over and over when he talks about his Gospel. He calls it the power of God. God’s Word is power and that’s just what the Gospel is, God’s power filled Word about salvation. It’s our faith alone in that Word of God that saves us. It’s the same faith of Abraham.

 

Flipping for a moment down to Romans 4:20-21, Paul talks of Abraham’s faith, and we read,

He (Abraham) did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. 

What God had promised! What God had said! God’s Word. Abraham believed it!

Now, we can get what this verse 4 means if we temporarily take out the middle bit that reads “with power according to the Spirit of holiness”. Then we read the verse like this, “…and declared the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead…”

See it was the resurrection from the dead that announced and affirmed to the entire universe Who Jesus was, The Son of God.

 

Now we place the passage back together again where we have,

…and declared the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead…

Now we see the evidence that Jesus was indeed the Son of God through the power of the resurrection according to the Spirit of holiness.

This is not speaking of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus lived in Perfect holiness on earth, without sin, the One and only being in human form that ever did and ever could be sinless and therefore holy. To be holy is to be set apart, sacred and most of all, without sin. He had the Spirit of holiness.

He was raised from the dead because it was unjust for Him to die. Death is the wages, the reward, for sin you see, and it was therefore impossible for One without sin to suffer death.

This demonstrated that He was, and is today, the Son of God.

 

So many church goers today, along with many church teachers and pastors have no problem believing that Christ died on a Roman Cross, but have a big problem with His Resurrection.

It’s critical to realise that if we can’t accept the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead, we have nothing, we’re totally lost, because His Resurrection from the dead is the very basis of His power, it’s the most critical key to our own salvation from sin and our own resurrection.

If we don’t accept and believe in the resurrection we’ll die in our sin and it’ll be through our disbelief in the Word of God, The Gospel of Salvation!

If Jesus Christ was not resurrected from the dead, He was not God. He would have been a mere man. That would mean His death would have been no different then any human death, no different even than the deaths of our own relatives and friends.

And it wasn’t the method of death that made any difference either, crucifixion on a Roman cross. Thousands in that day were killed by that method and indeed to the two men who were crucified next to the Lord on that day could never had paid the price for sin for all mankind.

Human death could not pay the price for sin in our place. Why? Because all have sinned and as such all are subject to the wages of sin, which is death. That’s not physical death, just the body ceasing to function anymore, it’s what the bible calls the second death, eternal separation and eternal torment in which the sufferer will be aware of every aching moment for ever with no possible hope of the situation ever changing. The spirit, the real you will never simply cease to exist.

 

At the time of Jesus’s Crucifixion, the eleven disciples scattered and ran for their lives out of fear. But then something changed to make them fearless. What changed? The Resurrection!

After Christ rose from the dead, Peter never again would have kowtowed to a young girl and swore that he never knew Christ. As near as we can tell, all eleven of the apostles were martyred without fear. Why? Because of the truth of the Resurrection. And it’s the same way with us. We can say with Paul, that we don’t have to worry what men can do to this body because they can’t touch the invisible immortal part of us which one day is going to be resurrected. And this makes all the difference in the world as far as Christians are concerned, we have the hope of the power of Resurrection. First, in salvation out of deadness, as we see in Ephesians 2:1,

And you He (God) made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, 

How did He do it? The power of Resurrection!

 

Now onward to Romans 1:5,

Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name, 

 

Paul says here that it’s through Jesus Christ that he has received grace for his own salvation and through that same grace he has also received apostleship.

Apostles were specifically chosen and to spread the gospel. They were sent with a purpose, a mission, to carry out God’s message with authority and dedication. They were ambassadors of Christ.

With Paul, that apostleship was to all nations, Jew and gentile but specifically to gentiles.

 

Obedience to the faith.

He’s not saying I’m going to preach to the Gentiles, which is all nations, that they need to shape up and live right. That’s not what he’s saying at all.

The obedience is to the faith, not obedience to the law. It’s not an obedience to some standard of behaviour it’s to the faith.

In Romans 6:17 he’ll say the same thing where he writes,

But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. 

 

That’s faith. Faith in the doctrine, the Word, that was preached to them. Sometimes people who really emphasize God’s grace don’t like words like obedience because it seems like going back under law.

However, if we trust the gospel we’re obeying Christ.

In Romans 4:4-5 we read, talking about the keeping of the law,

Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt. 

But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, 

 

Does that sound exactly like Genesis 15:6 relating to Abraham? We read,

And he (Abraham) believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness. 

Paul reinforces this in Romans 4:3,

For what does the Scripture say? “ABRAHAM BELIEVED GOD, AND IT WAS ACCOUNTED TO HIM FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS.” 

 

Disobedience would be saying, “Well grace is wonderful, but I need to work the works of the law as well. I need to earn God’s favour. I don’t believe my salvation can be by simply having faith in the gospel.”

So, Disobedience to the gospel is actually trying to do something to prove to God you’re worthy to be saved even religious things.

Obedience would be not doing anything other than believing the gospel which seems almost impossible to many people, that grace is offered today freely totally apart from anything we can do.

Sure, good works should follow that faith and from Romans chapters 13 to 16 we have the standards with which we, as the Body of Christ should live by, however the critical point to understand is that we don’t try and keep those standards in order to get salvation.

Isaiah 64:6 says this,

But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags…

Then in Hebrews 11:6 we read,

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. 

Obedience is when we hear the gospel of salvation acknowledge and believe it and are, as a result, established in it and we do that by the obedience of faith. Faith is an obedience.

Disobedience is rejecting that gospel.

 

Now to Romans 1:6,

among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ; 

Who are the called?

Well, they’re those who’ve heard, acknowledged and believed the gospel of salvation.

It’s very simple. He calls, and we answer. If we’ve answered, we’re among the elect, one of “the called of Jesus Christ.” This is the same for every believer.

Paul assures the Roman Christians that they are called ones.

 

This verse finishes the parenthesis, or the detour Paul makes in this introduction to this letter to the Romans.

There’re four features of this parenthesis, this detour.

1. Paul has a message that’s in complete harmony the Scriptures.
2. That message is from the risen Christ.
3. The message is universal, for everyone, anywhere.
4. And the message is for the obedience to the faith.

 

Now Paul returns to the main introduction in verse 7 and we’re still in Romans 1 and his introduction to the book,

To all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

To all that be in Rome. Who are the “All”?

It’s not the Roman emperor or to the Roman senate and neither is it all the general inhabitants in Rome.

It’s to the believers there and God loved those believers.

 

Let’s take a closer look at the “all who are in Rome” because it’s going to come up again and again in the book.

Whether in Paul’s Ministry, Peter’s Ministry or Jesus’s ministry, we need to know who’s being spoken to. There’s times when Jesus is speaking to unbelieving Pharisees and there’s times He’s speaking to his disciples and so who He’s speaking to can change what’s being said. Mistakes and confusion can happen when we ignore the audience being spoken to.

We can think Jesus is talking to all of us all the time and that’s simply not true.

It’s the same with Paul in his ministry and his Epistles. It’s all there for our information and learning, but it’s not always written directly to us and for us to live by.

 

In the book of Acts for example we have many recorded sermons preached by Paul. In fact, the only recorded sermons we have of Paul are in the book of Acts and most often, in those sermons, he’s not talking to the body of Christ, to you and me.

He’s talking to people who’re in this dispensation of grace but they’re unbelievers.

However, in his Epistles he’s mostly writing to Believers, but there are other times when he’s specifically and other times specifically writing to Gentiles or talking about historical events.

We have to know who he’s talking to and what he’s talking about and so context matters a great deal.

So, it matters when Paul wrote Romans and to who he wrote it to.

We might say, “Well it’s Romans isn’t it? Isn’t that simple enough”?

Well not necessarily.

The book of Romans was believed to have been written in the 50 AD period; many say AD 58 but the exact year it was written is less important than where it is placed in the Bible.

We have Matthew Mark Luke and John and Jesus’s earthly ministry and then the book of Acts and then this epistle of Pauls to the Romans.

The book of Acts gives us a lot of insight into what’s going on between the end of Jesus’s earthly ministry and Paul’s ministry.

So, Acts is very perfectly placed right after Matthew Mark Luke and John and right before Romans.

Acts is this bridge between John and the Book of Romans. It’s a transitional book which shows us the movement between the preaching of the gospel of the kingdom by the twelve apostles and the preaching of grace and the dispensation of grace by Paul.

How did it get from Jerusalem where the kingdom and repentance and obedience to the Mosaic law were being preached to Rome where a new dispensation of grace where salvation is by faith alone, outside the law, and to both Jew and Gentile.

Well without the book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, we wouldn’t know.

The Acts of the Apostles is a very good to study or to just read through to see how that happened.

 

Legends and myths have been passed down through so-called traditional churches that say that Peter was given the keys to the kingdom. He was given the keys to further the kingdom message that Christ came to teach and in so doing Peter established the church in Rome.

That’s what Legend and myth tells us but there’s simply no evidence of that apart from traditions passed down without any documentation.

However, we have in the book of Acts the biblical record of what actually happened so we can compare what people say about it to what the Bible says about it.

We always need to examine which is our Authority, what people have said or what the Bible actually says.

Acts doesn’t record Peter going to Rome but Paul going to Rome and it tells us why he went there and when he went there.

 

So, who are the Romans?

We’ll see here he’s writing to are a group of churches not simply one, but a group of churches who apparently are having some problems establishing right and proper Doctrine.

That’s why Paul writes Romans to lay a foundation and to have a mutual faith to bring them into one mind.

He’s establishing them. Things are a bit unstable there, no doubt partly because of the political situation in Rome but also because there’s many different churches and different peoples and they were struggling with different doctrines.

We know Paul didn’t start the church in Rome because in verse 7 here he’s writing to all those that be in Rome to the church that’s already there, but in verses 11 to 13 of Romans 1, he makes it clear he’s never been there.

So, Paul didn’t start the church there and nor did Peter. We see in Acts that Peter didn’t leave Jerusalem.

Later Peter does go to Antioch which is outside of Israel but that’s the first time we read of Peter leaving the country and Paul has already been ministering with Barnabas and there’s Gentiles there.

 

In Galatians 2:11-12 Paul says of this trip of Peter’s to Antioch,

Now when Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; for before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles; but when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision. 

 

Paul rebuked Peter for keeping this law of separation among the Gentiles. See he can’t keep his Jewishness away from the Gentiles.

So how could Peter, who obviously struggles with mixing with gentiles, go to Rome and establish a church there where there’s hardly anything but Gentiles, yet history claims that Peter went to Rome and established the universal Church there.

 

Called to be saints, or called saints if we leave out the italicised “to be” added by the translators.

Saint is the name or rather the title of every believer. A saint is not one who’s been exalted to some sort of special status or a person who was perfectly good and given some, almost divine, position by man. A saint is simply one who exalts Jesus Christ.

A person becomes a saint when Jesus Christ becomes their Savior. We could say that there’re only two classes of people in the world: the ones that are saints and the ones that aren’t.

If we’re a saint we’re set apart for Him, Christ. As Paul said of himself in the beginning of this book, he was a bondslave of Jesus Christ.

Saints are saints whether we’re rich or poor, bonded or free, male or female, Jew or Gentile, there’s no difference. We’re all one in Christ Jesus, and, in this verse saints are described as beloved of God.

They’re called saints but they weren’t born that way.

Neither do they become saints through their own power, but only by God’s grace and everlasting love. People are first beloved of the Lord, and then called to be his saints.

They’re beloved of God not for any loveliness in them, or because of any love of God in them, nor on account of their obedience and righteousness, but through the free favour and sovereign will and pleasure of God, who loved them before he called them, even from eternity, and will love them to eternity.

This love of His is the source and the spring of all the blessings of grace that come from God.

 

Pauls introduction and salutation ends with “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”.

“Grace and peace” are included in the formal introduction in all Paul’s letters. Grace (or charis in the Greek) was the gentile form of greeting, while peace (shalom) was the Jewish form of greeting. Paul combined them.

This should indicate to us that he’s not preaching judgment and wrath, the opposite of Grace and peace.

Some may say, “Well he’s a Christian why would he preach judgment and wrath?”

Because in the Bible people preached exactly that.

In Acts 2 for example Peter preached the coming day of the Lord and wrath. In Revelation 19 verse 11, before the kingdom happens, Jesus Christ comes back in judgment and to make war.

Paul says I come in peace because God is preaching peace and Grace in this dispensation we live in today.

So, he writes very differently in his Epistles than say Malachi who wrote the burden of the word of the Lord. A “burden” is a judgment, a judgment from God, and it’ll be a very strong and terrible judgement that God’ll give to them.

This is the gospel, the good news of salvation.

This is Grace and peace, and which explains how God’s operating in the world today.

Grace here doesn’t mean some sort of ministerial gift, nor the Gospel, which was at Rome already, nor the love and favour of God, which these persons were already partakers of.

It doesn’t even mean the grace of God by which they’re saved because they’ve already experienced that. They’re already saved by God’s grace.

This is an increase of grace. You see those who have the most grace need and want more.

There’s such a thing as growing in grace as we see in 2 Peter 3:18,

but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and forever. Amen.

Also, we have this in 2 Corinthians 9:8,

And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.

 

Peace means peace with God through Christ. It’s a peace in our own consciences, and with one another. It’s not peace in the world between nations and people. That’ll never happen until the millennial reign of Jesus on the earth.

This is an inner peace that’s not affected by the turmoils of everyday life in this evil world.

God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

God the Father of Christ is spoken of as our Father here, which is by adoption. It should generate fear and reverence of him as Almighty God.

The Lord Jesus Christ” is the person of the Godhead through who, and for whose sake, all the blessings of God come to a person. He’s on the same level as the Father showing him to be equal with God the Father and therefore truly and properly God.

Peace between mankind and God became possible by the blood of Christ on his cross.

 

And there we have the opening salutation; the greeting and introduction Paul wrote to the Roman Christians.

As we close and before we begin Romans 1 verse 8, it’s worth noting that the modern-day organised church

Paul was the divinely appointed “minister” of the church of this present dispensation, which is called in Colossians 1:18-24, the Body of Christ.

No other Bible writer has a single word to say about the Church which is Christ’s Body.

None of the other apostles discuss it or even mention the Body of Christ of which believers today are members. But Paul, who wrote more books of the Bible than any other writer, deals constantly with those truths.

It’s sad to say that this great revelation and the glorious truths associated with it have been largely lost to the organised Church today.

 

The church today, the organised church, has become weak and ineffective, concentrating on outward flesh driven things. The beautiful building, the comfortable pews, the light shows and the emotional high so desperately encouraged by music that often resembles a Sunday concert are all outward displays.

Numbers flock to these modern churches to hear music and listen to life improvement messages, but because the modern organised church has moved further and further away from Paul’s church epistles, especially the book of Romans, it has become weak in communicating truth.

When the book of Romans ceases to become the foundational doctrine of a church organisation, and when the whole counsel of God is neglected for “live your best life now” messages, the people within grow weak in the knowledge of God.

One of the scariest passages of scripture relating to this is 2 Timothy 4:2-4 and we read,

Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort, with all longsuffering and teaching. 

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. 

When we fail to rightly divide God’s Word, as 2 Timothy 2:15 tells us to do, and we fail to understand what God’s doing in this particular age we live in, and we fail to separate that from what God was doing in previous or later ages, we fall into hopeless confusion.

We don’t know who or what we are as Christians, we lack knowledge of God’s

plans and purpose, and we constantly mix what God was doing before, in a different age or dispensation, to what He’s doing now.

This is the basis behind much of the error riddled concepts on social media today relating to the end times.

It’s the cause of fear and uncertain surrounding world events especially as those events are fed to us in the popular media.

This ignorance of the epistles to the church from Paul also leads us to an uncertainty as to where our own personal lives are going and none of this needs to be.

Friends we desperately need to go back to God’s Word. The we need to divide it correctly into what God’s doing today. We’ll find that when we look at the whole counsel of God and understand the foundation of the prophets, the history of sin and the person of Jesus Who was the Christ, the Messiah.

And then we look at Paul’s epistles to find out the message Jesus Christ has for the church, the Body of Christ today. The foundation of that message is the book of Romans.

Until next time friends, may God, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth be with you and keep you.