The study of the book of Romans has made a lasting imprint on a number of people.

“There is no telling what may happen when people begin to study the Epistle to the Romans,”¹ says the noted scholar F. F. Bruce in the introduction to his commentary on the Book of Romans.

We must surely agree with the sense of expectation expressed by Bruce when we take a moment to reflect on the impact this book has had on men of the past.

History shows us that John Wesley, Augustine and Martin Luther …to name only a few, were changed from the inside.

This statement by John Piper is the one I think will “fire us up today (unless your wood’s too wet): “I have waited, wondering when the time would be for preaching through the Book of Romans. I have considered it over and over.

“I’ve walked up to the mountain and looked up into the clouds that surround the peak of this Everest and walked away to lower heights and contented myself with other things, because it is absolutely daunting to stand before these 16 chapters that have been so unbelievably used by God in the history of the church and think that God would give me grace and life to preach through this book.

“But in God’s patience and grace it seems to me that the time is right. The gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ is brighter to me now, and it gets brighter with every precious saint who dies.

“This book is the place where the gospel of Christ shines most brightly and most thoroughly in all the Bible — the Book of Romans.

“Romans is solid. Romans is durable. Romans is reliable. Romans is unshakeable. Romans is old. Romans is thorough. It fits where I am in my latter chapter of life.”

Martyn-Lloyd Jones preached from the book of
Romans weekly for over 20 years. Those manuscripts were put into book form…14 in all. (I have them in my electronic library and plan to read them this year).

Romans Road: Paul makes plain the gospel and the need and the glory and the sufficiency. He does it. There are four things:

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).

The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

Therefore, if you will confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and in your heart believe that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9).

The Book of Romans interprets life.

Interesting comment: ‘I like to preach at funerals more than marriages because at funerals, people lean on God. At marriages, idolatry can be rampant because everything goes right at wedding time and nothing seems to have gone right at funeral time.“

“The gospel is designed for people for whom nothing goes right. “

The transformation in Paul: Purchased, Called, and Set Apart

So here’s the question this morning. How did that happen? How did a former Pharisee who hated Christianity with all his might, breathed out threats and murder against it (Acts 9:1), participated in killing the first Christian martyr, and persecuted the church violently — how did that man come to write a 7,100-word letter, about 22 pages long in my Bible, that has changed the face of the world, and that every Christian leader for 2,000 years has lit his smoldering wick in for all these centuries?

How did a man like that come to write such a thing? The answer is given in verse 1 of chapter 1.

Romans 1:1 says: Paul, a bondservant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.

There are three phrases here. We’ll look at them. I want you to see the man, I want you to see his letter, and I want you to see his God.

I just have a feeling that the word that blurts itself out here is that what matters in this verse isn’t who Paul is; it’s whose Paul is. Do you see that in those three phrases? He’s a servant, bought by another; he’s a called one, called by another; and he’s a set apart one, set apart by another.

Paul looks like he’s what this verse is about, but this verse is not about Paul. It’s about the one who bought him, called him, and set him apart. There’s somebody lurking behind this man.

The big questions in life are not, ‘Who am I?’ Rather, the big question in life is, ‘Whose am I?’” And I told them to go home and ask mommy and daddy what that meant in order to force the parents to come to terms with it. So I just press this on you now. You have to answer that question: Whose are you? That’s the issue.

In the 21st century, we get bent out of shape about self-identity and stuff like that. We focus on who we are and our worth and esteem and value and all that. But when you read the Bible, the huge issue is being in right relation to the God to whom you belong. So let that be the question hanging over this verse.

Bondservant of Christ

The first phrase is “a bondservant of Christ Jesus.”

What does that mean to be the bondservant?

It means he’s bought by Jesus, owned by Jesus, and ruled by Jesus. I’ll show you where I get that. In 1 Corinthians 7:23 Paul says: You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men.

To be a slave of somebody is to have been bought by them, so he calls himself a slave or a bondservant of Christ, which means Christ bought him.

That’s what he says: “Christ bought me. And since he bought me, he owns me.” If you’re a Christian this morning, you are doubly owned by God. You are owned by virtue of creation and you are owned by virtue of purchase.

You are doubly not your own — doubly his. He owns you. He can do with you as he pleases, which leads us to the third thing it means, namely that he rules you and that what you want to do is please him.

Where do I get that? Galatians 1:10 says: Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.

That’s what Romans 15:2 is saying: Let us seek to please one another for edification that we might glorify God through bringing others to him.

But what’s driving this man is a radical orientation on Christ because Christ bought him, owns him, and rules him now. All of his thinking is, “How can I please him? How can I honor him? How can I magnify him?”

What we want to create in Farmerville is a church of people who are radically oriented on pleasing Christ, honoring Christ, magnifying Christ, and letting the chips fall where they will instead of being what most people are; namely, second-handers.

I get that phrase from Ayn Rand who wrote the novel Atlas Shrugged. She despised second-handers, which are people who have no vision and values of their own for which they live triumphantly and are always looking over their shoulder wondering, “I wonder what they think about this, and I wonder what they think about this, and I wonder what they think about that.”

They live their whole life in the place of a second-hander, always trying to get into other people’s good graces and be liked and stroked and praised and complimented and paid.

It’s a horrible way to live.

Paul said, “I am owned by another. I have been bought, I am ruled, and I have one person to please — Christ. He has revealed his Word to me and that’s my life.” Let’s be like that.

So we’re not dealing here with a man and his genius. Here in Romans, we’re dealing with a man and his owner, his ruler, and his God. This is no ordinary letter.

Called to be an Apostle

The second phrase is “called to be an apostle.” Notice the passive verb again. For every phrase here there’s somebody else at work.

He was bought and belongs to another, he was called by another, and he was set apart by another. Who is this other? It’s God in Christ. He’s the main actor here in verse 1.

We’re not dealing here with the work of a man. We’re dealing here with the work of God in a man. But what does apostle mean?

To be an apostle, you had to have seen the risen Christ with your eyes so that you could be an authoritative, authentic, firsthand witness. That’s the first qualification.

The second qualification is that you had to have been commissioned by Christ to be an authoritative spokesman and representative on his behalf. That’s what it meant to be an apostle, and Paul claimed to be that.

In 1 Corinthians 15:7 he says: [Jesus] appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

What Jesus did, breaking into Paul’s life on the Damascus road, standing forth and revealing himself in glory, was to enable him to join the 12 and be a latecomer in the apostolic band. He called himself “one born out of season.” Then Acts 26:16 describes the commission. Jesus says to him: I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you as a servant and witness to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you.

Then, on the basis of the seeing and the commissioning, Paul teaches that he and the other apostles are the foundation of the church (Ephesians 2:20). The church was founded on the apostles and the prophets.

The apostolic deposit was left behind, and they died. That is not a repeatable office — that authoritative seeing of Christ, being commissioned by Christ, speaking his authoritative word so that the church would be built on a rock. That’s over, and now we stand here as a church. If John Piper ever stands anywhere else than here, you go to those elders and get me removed fast.

Set Apart for the Gospel of God

Then the third phrase says Paul was not only bought, made a slave, owned, and ruled, and not only was he called to be an apostle, but he was also “set apart for the gospel of God.”

Now, when did that happen? When was Paul set apart for the gospel of God?

He answers that question in Galatians 1:15 like this: But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace…

Paul gives the answer to that in 1 Timothy 1:16, where he says: But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

Godward Focus

Well, we come to the end here of this verse and we see the phrase “set apart for the gospel of God.”

Leon Morris (The Epistle to the Romans [Eerdmans/Apollos], p. 20) points out, “The thought of God dominates this epistle. The word “God” occurs 153 times in Romans, an average of once every 46 words. This is more than in any other New Testament writing (except the short 1 Peter and 1 John). …

And not only does “God” occur in Romans more frequently than in any other writing, it occurs more often than any other theme in that book.

Apart from a few prepositions, pronouns, and the like, no word is used in Romans with anything like the frequency of “God.”

He concludes (p. 40), “God is the most important word in this epistle.” He also points out (ibid.) that Paul uses gospel 60 out of its 76 New Testament occurrences, the most being nine times each in Romans and Philippians.

The gospel is the ultimate good news, that although we are sinners, God made a way through the sacrifice of His Son to reconcile us to Himself. And although it was costly for Him, it is absolutely free to all who believe in Jesus Christ!

Everything Paul touches in this letter he relates to God. In our concern to understand what the apostle is saying about righteousness and justification and the like, we ought not to overlook his tremendous concentration on God. There is nothing like it elsewhere.

So you see that God is at the bottom of his life, God is in the middle of his life, and God is at the top and goal of his life, which all sounds like Romans 11:36 — From him, and through him, and to him are all things in Paul’s life and your life. To him be glory forever and ever.

This letter is not a tract to be put into the hands of the sinning man in order that, believing what it says, he may be saved. It is rather a treatise to be put into the hands of Christian men in order that they may understand the method of their salvation. —G.Campbell Morgan

GOD’S LOVE Whenever we think that God’s love for us depends on our behavior or spiritual success, we put ourselves in a hopeless situation because we can never be good enough to deserve God’s love.

As Paul later explains in this letter, God’s love precedes everything. All of our attempts to earn his love will fail. That’s because perfect love would require a perfect effort, clearly beyond us.

It is also true that when we think of God’s love as conditional, we unwittingly transform it into something much less than love. Conditional love is an oxymoron. God’s love is unconditional.

The first delightful surprise in the gospel is that “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, nrsv). When you’re feeling spiritually dull or anxious, ask yourself, “Have I begun to think of God’s love as dependent on my effort?” Thank God for his unconditional, perfect love, and respond by living for him.

The chief purpose of this letter is to magnify sin and to destroy all human wisdom and righteousness, to bring down all those who are proud and arrogant on account of their works. We need to break down our “inner self satisfaction.” God does not want to redeem us through our own, but through external righteousness and wisdom; not through one that comes from us and grows in us, but through one that comes to us from the outside; not through one that originates here on earth, but through one that comes from heaven. —Martin Luther

The author, date, recipients, and purpose: When Paul wrote his letter to the Romans he was writing to a church which he did not know personally and in which he had never been. He was writing to a church which was situated in the greatest city in the greatest empire in the world. Because of that he chose his words and thoughts with the greatest care.

Romans is one of the rare New Testament books where liberal scholars have not challenged the authorship. Almost all agree that Paul wrote Romans, although he used a secretary named Tertius (16:22).

He wrote it from Corinth (Acts 20:2-3), probably sometime around A.D. 56-58, just as he was about to go to Jerusalem with the gift for the poor that he had collected from the Gentile churches in Macedonia and Achaia (15:25-26). Phoebe (16:1-2), who was from a port city near Corinth, probably carried the letter to Rome.

After his ministry in Jerusalem, Paul hoped to pass through Rome, minister there briefly, and then be helped on his way to do further missionary work in Spain (15:24, 28).

Probably the church began when some Jews who were present on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:10) got saved and returned home. By the time Paul wrote this letter, the church contained Jews, but was predominately Gentile (1:13; 11:13, 17-31; 15:14-16).

He was a missionary to the Gentiles (vv. 5–7). The churches in Rome were not founded by Peter or any other apostle. If they had been, Paul would not have planned to visit Rome, because his policy was to minister only where no other apostle had gone (Rom. 15:20–21).

Perhaps, also, he anticipated that the Judaizers, who plagued his ministry at every step, would try to inflict their errors on the Roman church. To head off that possibility and to defend the gospel of grace that he preached everywhere, Paul felt it necessary to write out a longer treatise, expanding on many of the themes that he had earlier written in Galatians.

He also wrote to help resolve any conflict between the Jewish and Gentile believers in Rome over various food and Sabbath laws (14:1-15:13).