Grace Unleashed

We Need Some Good News!

A Study of Romans 1:1-7

What a great day, everyone, to begin a new series of studies in the Bible. Let’s study Romans! It stands at the forefront of all of the other epistles and letters of the New Testament, not because it was written first but because it is foundational to everything else. The theme of Romans is the Gospel, the Good News shared by the God of Heaven to the people on earth. We need some good news. We’re afraid to turn on our televisions or log onto the news because of the next wave of bad news. We need Good News that will never stop being Good News—and that’s the Gospel. 

Introduction

Here is our starting point: I believe Romans is the amplification of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” In John 3, remember, Jesus had been talking about the concept of being born again.

One of the greatest insights I’ve ever received about the makeup of the New Testament came from T. D. Bernard’s book, The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament. Bernard writes in a way that’s somewhat difficult to follow, but in essence he said that Jesus, during his earthly ministry, primarily taught in proverbs and parables. He gave us truth in embryonic form. He did not present a lot of systematic teachings. What He said was very simple and elementary.

Then on the last night of His natural life, He said this to the disciples in the Upper Room: “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come” (John 16:12-13).

In other words, Jesus had much more He wanted to say to His disciples and to us. The words He spoke in the Gospels were germinal, introductory, and, in a sense, miniature nuggets that He wanted to expound upon later. So He said, “I have a lot more to say. I want to expand on what I’ve already told you. So I’m going to give the Holy Spirit the fuller version of My teaching, and He will pass it on to you through the inspired authors of the epistles.”

For example, Jesus gave us a one-chapter summary of the Last Days in Matthew 24. We call it the Olivet Discourse, because He preached it on the Mount of Olives, overlooking Jerusalem. Later He expanded it in the form of the book of Revelation. In the Gospels, He said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free,” but He expanded on that in the book of Galatians. In the Gospels, He said, “I will build my church,” and in the epistles He expanded on that in the book of Ephesians. So there is a sense in which the book of Romans is simply the full expansion and explanation of John 3:16.

Well, in the book of Romans, all the great truths and implications of those words are expanded and explained to us. Romans explains what it means to be born again. Jesus Himself gave this information to the Holy Spirit, who prompted the apostle Paul to write it as the Spirit inspired the writing. 

The book of Romans is Jesus explaining to us the implications of what He did for us. He is giving us theology to go with the history. He is explaining the significance of His own death and resurrection through the Spirit-inspired pen of the apostle Paul.

The theologian and pastor, John Piper, wrote that he has never been able to remember the exact time of his conversion to Christ. His dad told him he was six years old, and he prayed to receive Christ at his mother’s knees in a hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1952. But here’s what he wrote about it: “A lot of you in this room are in that position, and you sort of regret it because you don’t have any stunning testimonies to tell about how you were saved. However, I learned what happened to me from Romans. I’m going to tell you what happened to me. I don’t need to remember; I know from the Bible what happened to me…. even though I don’t remember what happened to me, I know what happened to me from the book of Romans.”

For this series of podcasts I’m not going to formulate sermons as much as teach through each passage, making comments along the way. I want to also tell you that my main commentary source is Douglas J. Moo’s The New Testament International Commentary: The Letter to the Romans-Second Edition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018). I highly recommend it, but I should let you know it is over a thousand pages long and costs more than the average book.

Let’s start with the prologue of Romans. The first seventeen verses of Romans comprise the prologue of the book, and the prologue divides into four parts—the salutation or introduction;  the thanksgiving; the occasion or reason for the letter; and the glorious theme. 

Scripture

Let’s read his salutation or introduction, which is the first part of the prologue—Romans 1:1-7: Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake. And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

1. We Need Authentic Good News

These seven verses constitute a remarkable introduction, first of all for its length. Romans is the longest of all Paul’s letters, and it has the longest salutation. In fact, the epistle of Romans has the longest opening salutation of any Greek letter we have from antiquity. Most Greek letters opened like this: Aralias to Apollos, Greetings. Paul’s salutation goes on for 92 words in the Greek. Again, it is the longest salutation of any extant letter we have from the ancient Greco-Roman world.

Let’s go through it phrase by phrase: Paul begins by describing himself in three ways, as a servant of Christ Jesus, an apostle, and someone who had been set apart for the Gospel.

The letter begins: Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God. Paul was claiming to be an apostle who was of equal rank and authority with the twelve disciples of Jesus. The Lord is full of surprises. When Jesus ascended to Heaven, He left behind eleven disciples, and one of their first actions was to appoint another of the close followers of Jesus to be the twelfth disciple, replacing Judas Iscariot. The twelve disciples in the New Testament harmonized with the twelve tribes of Israel.

Then unexpectedly, as the church began to grow, God reached down and converted its greatest opponent and made this man a special apostle of equal rank with the others and the chief writer of the New Testament epistles. We never know what God is going to do. Like C. S. Lewis said, the Lord is not a tame lion. 

Notice the last word of the verse: Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God. 

Douglas Moo believes, and I concur, that this is the theme of Romans. We sometimes hear that the theme of Romans is justification, and that topic does occupy an important place in the book. But all sixteen chapters of Romans lay out the theology and practicality of this message that Gabriel first introduced in Luke 1:19 as the “Good News.”

My professor at Columbia International University, James Hatch, explained that the essential part of God’s operation on this earth is what He did—His actions in history, especially as it involved the actual physical death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Those who lived in the Roman world saw crucifixions by the hundreds. After the rebellion of Spartacus, for example, about 6,000 captured slaves were crucified along the Appian way.

So in one sense, the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth was a horrific and grisly event, but in some ways an ordinary occurrence. It was an act in history, an event that happened on a particular day in the first century. The four Gospels are primarily the records of the historical happenings of one Jesus Christ.

But in the epistles, and especially in the book of Romans, God explains the significance, the implications, the logic, the theology, and the intellectual reasoning of that one particular crucifixion, as well as the subsequent resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

When you take the historical facts in the Gospels and combine them with the rational explanation in the epistles, you have the Gospel—the Good News, the Best News, the single most important information the world will ever hear with our ears, understand with our minds, believe in our hearts, and share with our tongues. 

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John tell us what happened; the book of Romans tells us why it happened and why it matters. There is rationale here. The Gospel is God’s logic about the state of our souls. It is logical, sensible, and accurate. It is the theological explanation of historical realities.

That’s why Martin Luther said, “This epistle is really the chief part of the New Testament and the very purist gospel…. It can never be read or pondered too much, and the more it is dealt with the more precious it becomes….”

John Calvin said, “When anyone understands this epistle, he has a [channel] opened to him to the understanding of the whole Scripture.”

William Tyndale said, and I’m paraphrasing his archaic English just a bit, “Since this epistle is the principle and most excellent part of the New Testament, and the most pure Evangelion… I think it is necessary that every Christian not only know it, but know it by rote and be able to quote it from memory, and to do so frequently, for this is daily bread for the soul.”

I have not memorized the whole book of Romans, but perhaps the Lord will lay it on your heart to do so. At the very least, we must become so familiar with these sixteen chapters that we can work our way mentally through the entire book. We should read it over and over until we have a terrific grasp on its structure and contents. It’s impossible to study this book too much. We need the Gospel as it’s presented in Romans—authentic, accurate, giving us the divine analysis of events He brought about on this earth in time and location.

2. We Need Anticipated Good News – Verse 2

The apostle Paul is also keen to remind us that the Gospel is not just the theme of Romans. It’s the theme of the entire Bible, including the Old Testament. Look at verses 1-2 again: Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures….

The “Holy Scriptures” referred to here are the pages of the Old Testament, beginning with Genesis and ending with Malachi. John Harvey, who taught Romans at my alma mater, Columbia International University, pointed out that in the sixteen chapters of Romans there are sixty-four—sixty-four!—direct quotations in Romans from the Old Testament. Harvey said, “Paul was intent on demonstrating that the entire Old Testament supported the Gospel he preached.”

It’s remarkable how Jesus fulfilled the entire Old Testament. 

I recently read a testimony by Kim Erickson, who is now an effective Christian writer and speaker. Kim didn’t grow up in a Christian home, and the idea of God coming to earth as a baby seemed ridiculous to her. She rejected Christianity on the basis of her own logic. She clung to that belief until her three-year-old son developed strep throat and died. Kim didn’t have a church, so she knocked on the door of a community church and asked if they would hold a memorial service for her little boy.

They reached out and embraced her and loved her. That’s when she began to rethink Christianity. But she still had a lot of uncertainty and doubts. Then she began to read the prophet Isaiah and she saw how frequently and fully Isaiah spoke of the future Messiah in terms that fit Jesus Christ to a “T.” 

She wrote, “Fulfilled prophecy, however, did more than convince me about the existence of God. It revealed the character of God. His nature, His love, His justice, His mercy, and His compassion….”

When Kim saw how God had fulfilled His predictions in Isaiah about Christ, she became convinced of something more. She wrote, “The absolute certainty that God keeps His promises lifted me out of the deep pit of grieving a child. I’ve learned to trust God, even during darkest hours. The promise of heaven helps me choose joy each day.”

This former skeptic has now written a book entitled Predicting Jesus: A 6-Week Study of the Messianic Prophecies of Isaiah, along with several other books. 

I can’t tell you how important the subject of fulfilled Messianic prophecy is to our apologetics and to our presentation of evidence involving the accuracy of the Gospel. It’s so important that Paul brings it up in the second verse of his book. He says, in essence, “There is good news, and the entire Old Testament anticipated it.” Now, Paul is going to give us the great subject of the Gospel, the one man around whom it all rotates.

3. We Need the Jesus-Centered Good News – Verses 3-4

Verses 3 and 4 continue:… regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. 

The Gospel is about Jesus Christ, and Paul explains we have a Savior with two natures. He is a human being—just as human and you and me—but He is also God. As to His earthly life, He descended from the line or lineage of David. He had a family tree, and He could trace His descendance back to David. He died, just as humans die. But He rose again and His resurrection demonstrated that He was also the Son of God, meaning that He was and is Almighty God Himself. 

Let’s zero in on that word appointed. Paul says that Jesus was “appointed the Son of God in power by His resurrection from the dead.” 

Other translations use words like declared and designated. Let me quote Douglas Moo: “What Paul is claiming…is that the preexistent Son, who entered into human experience as the promised Messiah, was appointed on the basis of (or, perhaps, at the time of) the resurrection to a new and more powerful position in relation to the world.”

This is the same truth we have in Philippians 2: “…being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:8-9).

Paul is giving us a chronology of the story of Jesus. This is so good. There are three stages in the story of Jesus Christ.

First, He was and is and always will be the Son of God, that is, God Himself. Verse 3 says, “Regarding His Son….” This enters into the mystery of our deepest doctrine—the Doctrine of the Trinity: There is one God who eternally exists in three Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.Second, this always-existing God the Son entered into the human family as a descendant of David, and He humbled Himself and offered Himself as a sacrifice for sin.Third, He rose from the dead and God the Father designated this God-Man to be Lord of all, over every name that can be named in Heaven, on earth, and under the earth. Jesus ascended to Heaven and now rules from His throne as our prophet, priest, and king.

And all this was to provide us with Good News! Verses 5-7 say: Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

This is the only message and the only Person who can truly change your life from the inside out. One of the blessings of being the author of some books is it gives me an opportunity to share the message of the Lord on various radio and television shows. Sometimes I’m on a program that also features another guest.

I was on a television show recently and the other guest was a man named Jay Lowder, who shared how he came to faith in Christ. He said that as a young adult, his life was falling apart. He was addicted; he dropped out of college; he lost his job; he lost his car; he lost his girlfriend. And he said, “I isolated myself.” At age 21, he became so depressed he decided he was going to kill himself.

He said, “My roommate worked for his father and was never at home during the day, so I sat on the sofa and pulled out a .22-caliber pistol. I was just about to pull the trigger when I heard a vehicle pulling into our gravel driveway. It was my roommate, who walked in and said his father had given him the rest of the day off with pay, something that never happened.”

 Jay buried the gun in the sofa and decided to delay his suicide. A couple of days later he went to his parents’ house to wash his clothes. The television was on, and there was a commercial about suicide prevention. A man was coming to town to talk about it. Jay’s mother asked him if he wanted to go and he decided he would. 

It turned out that man was a Gospel evangelist. When he gave the invitation, Jay wanted to go forward but hesitated. He was in the balcony, and he saw one of his old basketball buddies get up and go forward. Jay realized he wasn’t the only one who felt they needed to make a change in life.  So he went forward and gave his life to the Lord Jesus. Today Jay is a respected evangelist who travels the world telling others about Jesus.

You may be in as bad a shape as Jay or, or you might think you’re doing pretty well in life. But the world around us offers nothing but bad news. You and I need Good News that will never stop being Good News. It is authentic, anticipated, and centered around Jesus. It is the Good News that never stops being Good News. The Gospel is the Good News we need in this weary and war-torn world.

Thanks for digging into the riches of the Bible with me. 

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