Romans 1

Text Box: CHAPTER ONE
The evangelical succession
Paul is unashamedly Evangelical. The British Evangelical movement is usually traced to the Wesleys although the 1881-2 lectures at St.George’s Free Kirk Edinburgh paint in the greater world picture including the following names:
Paul, Augustine, Columba, Anselm, Bernard, Wiclif, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Henderson, Rutherford, Leighton, Baxter, Zinzendorf, Owen, Bunyan, Boston, Edwards, Wesley,Carey Viney and Chalmers. Since then we may add C.T.Studd, William Booth, D.L.Moody, Martin Lloyd Jones, Amy Carmichael, Watchman Nee , CorrieTen Boom, Janani Luwum and others like Billy Graham who still minister the gospel in our time.( Separate series in preparation)
It was AD57 and Rome had a new boss or Caesar-Nero. The new armed forces chief was Burrhus, and the moral leader was Seneca. Within a year of Phoebe’s arrival at Rome with this letter to the Roman Christians Nero had emerged from petticoat rule and he was soon to produce a 120 foot high statue of himself which , on account of its height, gave its name in after years to the Colisseum.
Paul took his humble place as a “slave of Jesus Christ” with the multitude of slaves in the empire-even though born a Roman citizen. He said he was “mortgaged” afwrismenoV to the gospel. He considered his whole life to be a repayment of the love of Jesus-although no sacrifice could repay the cross-characterized by the atoning moral power of the perfect Christ and the divine substitutionary act of mercy of the judge who became the victim.
Paul opens with four majestic evangelical themes. Grace, soul-winning, Faith righteousness, and divine judgement
THE GRACE OF GOD WHICH ALONE BRINGS SALVATION
1.He opens Romans and indeed most of his epistles with reference to the blessing of Christ our Melchisadek. The reference is in Numbers 6 and as he phrases it reads (verse7) “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus”. The chiefest blessing is Grace.He sees the Lord as ascended enthroned and still blessing his church as Aaron blessed Israel. He sees the church endued with like spirit and holiness pulling down the strongholds of Satan and in contest and relentlessly at war with our enemy. “Your faith is the battle-cry in all the world” v8. It is GRACE that makes the ministry of Christians acceptable(15.15); it is grace that enables the labours of believers(1Corinthians 15.10); it is grace that reveals Christ in the life of the Christian so that he can “walk the talk” (Galatians 1.15)
THE VALUE OF THE ETERNAL SOUL
2. He longs for the souls of men as any evangelical should. Study verses 9-17.Paul’s literature records him praying with thanks for 5 churches and his lists register 39 people for whom he would pray that they might adorn the glorious message by holy lives. Paul was absolutely sold on getting to Rome to witness. He wanted to bring them “something more” His epipoqew means literally “the sweet after the main meal”. He talks about what we would call a “conference”sumparakalesiV. The delay he believes will prune his ministry to produce greater fruit later when he eventually arrives in Rome. He is an evangelical soul-winner.
RIGHTEOUSNESS BY FAITH
3. Paul is a proponent of a liberating theme-the “righteousness of God”. As he travels it is everywhere on his lips as it was on the placards of Habakkuk long ago in the form “My just man shall live my life by my faith” (Habakkuk 2.6-my freestyle from the Hebrew). Faith –God given faith-takes hold of Christ so He is enclosed in the heart as a jewel is enclosed in its setting. Whoever rejects confidence in his own righteousness goodness and exercises consummate confidence in Christ as God’s Son and what he did atoningly on Calvary’s cross so that he or she calls Jesus Lord in very truth -God will accept as righteous.
THE JUDGEMENT O F GOD
4.Paul warns of the wrath to come. Vv18-32. The world is not wholesome. The terrible downgrade of sinful man is registered in these verses. The kindred spiritual reality is that the man of the world under the power of the Evil One is “evangelical and passionate for sin”.Here is another attitude than love-hatred of and suppression of truth; here is another end than God’s glory-idolatry-Satanism; here is another fullness than that of the Holy Spirit-the fullness of iniquity. For such reasons wrath must fall upon mankind continuing in sin. There is here the dark and dizzy heart. The catalogue of sin is precise and includes unthankfulness profanity idolatry gross indecency homosexuality and willful evil. Here in v.24 God gives man over to evil yearning in which they wallow until unfit for and uninterested in cleansing.
This descent of man is instructive to read. From figuring the body unholy and changing the truth of God into a lie -creature worship takes the place of reverence for God. The further descend leads into same sex practices with what Paul calls paqh atimia-”pain and stigma” until participants burn out in orgies exekauqesan so that men “in” men “boil over” like pots on the fire and earn the wages of vagabondage antimisqian -wandering like men in a labyrinth. God finally gives them up to a counterfeit mind-ie with a bad substitute coinage of morals. Man in this state easily becomes as the NIV(verse 31) translates “senseless faithless heartless ruthless”-so we must pray as evangelicals that the warning of scripture will be heeded-precious lives rescued from sin and Satan’s trophies become forfeit to the King of Covenant love by rejecting the life of self-ruin and sin and exercising God -given Faith in the all -atoning Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
SERIES TO BE CONTINUED