Blessings of Who We Are in Christ
Romans 1:5-7 · Roger Henderson · Dec 11, 2022
Romans (2022-25), No. 03
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261929374704

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We started a couple weeks ago with a book of Romans and Mike did an overview and then we had sort of had an interlude there one Sunday and then I started last week on the first four verses of chapter one and of course you know Romans is as Mike pointed out is kind of overview message it's an incredible book It's been looked at many different ways, but if you think about it, it's the foundational truths of the Christian life. And what's also amazing is that these first seven verses kind of are a peek into what the rest of the book's going to be about.

It's going to be about these wonderful truths of who the Lord Jesus is, and then along with that, who the believer in the Lord Jesus is in his Christian life. So it's fundamental stuff. It's Christianity 101. It's the fundamentals of our faith. So with that said, look at this as an opportunity to understand again what the Lord has for us in our Christian life. Okay, so I've borrowed a title from my brother Hal. the blessings of who we are in Christ. So today we're going to focus on the believer, right? Who we are in the Lord Jesus Christ.

But first I want to do a little review. But let me give you, and I borrowed heavily from our brother Hal. He gave a message back in 2006, shortly before he became ill. And this was in actually a Sunday school lesson. And actually Bob Beckel was there, so was Margaret. So I'm sure they remember all this.

Okay, so here's I like this this is the first 17 verses outlined Paul starts off it's it's and how how has it kind of in the idea of blessings the blessings that Paul received will review those again the blessings of the gospel the blessings of our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ and then the part for today and blue there the blessings that we have as a believer and And the subsequent weeks, we'll go on with the other topics here. So let's look at... I created an outline last week, and let's just kind of use that outline, just the first four verses.

So it starts off, Paul, the first blessing that Paul received, he was a doulos, or a bondservant of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we talked about that idea of doulos, and it kind of has two parts, as I kind of have come to understand. Think about this, we were douloses, Sin to the sin nature in our before we became a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ We were enslaved to that sin nature, but now We have been separated from that sin nature, and we're slaves well actually we're willing slaves because we by faith we accepted the Lord Jesus and we became do losses or bond service to Jesus Christ that's the first point second point is And Paul himself was called, or set apart, we'll see that shortly, he was a sent one. He was a sent one for Jesus Christ. And then he's also set apart, or separated, to particular ministry. And this ministry is a wonderful message of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So those are three attributes that Paul... So Paul starts right off, and I mentioned last week that If you look at other books on the New Testament that Paul wrote, he doesn't have quite as long an introduction about himself. This is a lengthy introduction. And in the introduction, he tells us all these wonderful things he's going to expand on later on in his writing in Romans. So now, he kind of changes gears a bit.

He says, He introduces himself these three points, and he says which referring back to the gospel of God now He's going to tell us about the gospel of God He the gospel of God he promised beforehand through the prophets and you know you look at the Old Testament is full of prophets particularly Isaiah and He it was in the holy scriptures point two was in the holy scriptures and Isaiah says in Isaiah chapter 53 he says who has believed our message and we and we connect that back with the writings of Paul later on in Chapter 10 verse 16 and we see that the writings he's talking about our message is this wonderful gospel message You know what?

I've kind of understood as I've gone through this the gospel is a central and we're going to see it's a central the essential gospel I'll call the core gospel and which Paul delineates in chapter 15, which we're going to review shortly, is the core, is the diamond, if you will. And around that diamond are all these things that the rest of scripture talks about. And Isaiah talks about the suffering servant, right? Just beautiful, how he suffered for us, how he died for us, and how we didn't deserve it.

So around that core gospel, we see all these other descriptions that really amplify that. So the third point here, it was concerning, or surrounding, and I kind of got a little bit ahead of myself, surrounding our Savior, the Lord Jesus. So those three points. Then he digresses even another step. He says, okay, I talked about the gospel, those three points, through, in, and concerning.

Now I'm going to focus on the Savior, the Lord Jesus. His Son, who was born, or better, became flesh. He came into a new state of being, something he never was before, but he was a descendant of David according to the flesh. Then he goes on, he was declared, or he was marked out, that's the idea, like a perimeter, he was declared, I'm sorry, it's not, it's marked out to be the son of God with power by the resurrection of the dead. Okay, according to the Spirit of Holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord, and it's really speaking there, if you look at that carefully, it's not speaking so much about the Holy Spirit, it's speaking more about the Spirit of Christ in that passage.

So that completes the first four verses. So now, I thought it would be appropriate just to say, well what is, I talked about it, what is the core gospel? And Mike talked about it yesterday, but it never, I'll repeat it again, that's what I'm trying to say. Okay. Interestingly enough, Paul introduces the core Gospels, which are basically 1 Corinthians 15, 3, 4, and 5. 3 and 4.

He introduces it and he tells us why it's so important. He says, Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you also stand. That word stand is going to be important. You know, we talk about this a lot here at Holly Hills. We have a standing or a position before God. Well, here's a verse that talks about that. We stand in the gospel. And we're going to see more about it. We stand in that truth by which we are saved. And that's what our salvation is based upon. So here's the core gospel.

For I delivered to you of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried and he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. So in summary form, Christ died for our sins on our behalf. He was our substitute. Christ was buried and that validated. You only bury a dead man. And then the third point then, he was raised. God raised him up again. And it says, since it was impossible for him to be held by his power. And there's even a fourth point even, and he was seen by men. So that's the core gospel. And like I mentioned, that's the diamond, if you will, at the center of all that we... all about the center of the gospel.

Okay. So, today's verses. So I'm just going to put them up here quickly. Jim read them already. I'm just pointing out that it starts off, and this is going to kind of change the focus from our Savior to what we are, or who we are in the Savior. So it says, through whom, the Son of God, we, notice there's a lot of we's in there, we have received, later on it says, among you also are called, a lot of personal pronouns here, all who are beloved of God in Rome. So we're going to see things about our Savior, or things about our Savior, and things about ourself, who we are in Him. Okay, so let's go on here. So then I outlined that again. Actually, I didn't outline it, Hal outlined it.

So the blessings of who we are in Christ. First point, we receive grace and apostleship. It's an interesting verse we're going to see shortly here. It talks about we have received grace and apostleship. Well, obviously Paul is the only one that received apostleship, but he says that in the same context. So we need to understand that better, and we will.

We are called or elect ones. Every believer is a called or elect one. Every believer is a beloved of God. Every believer are called as saints. Now, they're not just special ones out there. The world would have you believe they're special saints. Well, every Christian is a saint.

And that's not because we earned it. That's because that was a wonderful gift we received. And we have grace and peace continually supplied by God to us. So we're going to see, this should be a very encouraging message. This is going to show us our wonderful place, our wonderful position, if you will, in our Savior. Okay, let's start off with verse 5.

Through whom we have received grace. Through whom, based upon what focuses back, it's taking the place of what was said before. The Son of God, through whom the Son of God, God the Father is the source. Jesus Christ is the instrument. We have received. So that's the Aorist tense. It's an event. It happened in the time past. We can count upon it. We have received. We've received this grace. Grace is charis. Unmerited favor. God's unmerited favor. So here's a list of things that are based upon that. A gift bestowed upon all believers.

We see that in Ephesians 2.8. We have perpetual access into grace by faith. We stand entrenched in God's grace. That's our eternal position. And we're going to see this kind of over and over again. We're going to see a truth proclaimed by Paul. We have received grace. And then we can expand that by looking at other verses that validate that or give us more information.

Okay, so I thought it would be appropriate, and this is, I have two or three, not two or three, maybe two or three hundred favorite charts by Hal. And this is one of my, one of my two or three, one of the ones of the two or three hundred I like. That's an exaggeration a bit, but anyway, I have a lot I like.

Okay, so position. You guys all know this. Position. In scripture it's talked about, we saw it in a verse there earlier. It's in the grace in which we stand. We stand in this position. This position is who we are in Christ. It's our resume. It defines who a Christian is.

It's an eternal thing. It's eternal, unchangeable. We can't change it. We can't lose it. It's ours eternally, based upon the work of Christ on the cross and our faith in that. But then there's our day-to-day walk, what's called our condition. This is how we act in our Christian life.

And you know, we don't always act like who we are, right? Remember you tell your children, act like who you are, right? Act like you're a McBride. I'm sure your mom may have said that, your dad may have. Act like who you are. And we don't always act that way. But that is the admonition amongst all of scripture. Act like who you are. And the condition is a moment by moment walk with our Savior. Temporal, changeable. Okay, that's just review. Okay, so let's go back to our verse.

So it's interesting here, it says, through whom we have received grace and apostleship. So obviously we haven't received apostleship unless you're Unless you're a cult thinking that you have a there's apostles in your body Nobody has stood up to said they're an apostle in this body.

Thankfully Anyway, so so so what is the end about and I liked I only like this because I struggle with this first for us I mean, I don't know do I divide it in half? Do I get do I know you don't divide it in half Paul was Paul had grace, right? He had him. He was blessed with amazing grace, but he also had the grace of being apostle.

So it's sort of like a It has the force of, and in particular, we have received grace, and in particular our brother Paul has received apostleship. So that's kind of the flavor here. And I think if you look at this, it kind of validates that. Paul kind of talks about himself here. He says, because of the grace that was given to me, That's grace, right?

From God to be a minister of Christ to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God so that my offerings of the Gentiles may become acceptable. So he was given this grace in an apostleship with a special point that it was to the Gentiles, to the non-Jewish people. Apostleship is the idea of being sent on a mission by God And I found two things I you know I haven't spent much time with Newell Romans Newell is a great book if you if you want to a book to look at if you if you're if you're a reader I'm not much of a reader believe it or not. You know I got through I'm an engineer and I read with a mission right I read to Understand something and I read the Bible with a mission, so I'm not I'm not a casual reader Newell's Romans is a book that is great, and I've only read bits and pieces I kind of jumped in here, so I jumped into Newell's for this little section and Personal grace must come before true service.

So what he's saying is you must basically know God. You must be a believer. You must know Him and receive His grace. The grace Paul had received concerning his personal salvation and his service are great examples of this divine favor. So I like this because it points out the dual aspect for Paul. He received grace for salvation, and he received grace for his service to the Lord.

OK, so let's go on. to bring about, and this is a neat phrase, this is a really neat phrase, to bring about the obedience of faith. So bring about is this word, ais, in the original language. It's the idea in order that there may be, that something may happen, or unto, you can translate it that way. Here's another translation from Weist. It's a preposition, ais is a preposition, often speaking of a purpose or result Here it's used in the sense of the words, in order to bring about.

OK, so what does that all mean? How does that affect all this? So it means to bring about. It's in order that we may bring about the obedience of faith. And I would say most of you, if you think about obedience, maybe you think about your children, if you have children. You think about, you know, you have rules for your house. The McBrides had rules, right? They had rules, lots of rules probably. But is that the picture? Is that the picture of the New Testament? Are we to obey a bunch of rules? Is that the picture that God presents in the New Testament? And it's not.

So we have to look at this, and it says, obedience of faith. How do obedience and faith connect? Well, let's start off first with the definition of obedience, or the Greek word for obedience, which is the definition. It's really cool. It's a listening under. It's from the word akuo. It's to listen under. It's to listen under God's word. Obedience is to listen to His Word.

So how does that work together? How does obedience and faith work together? So a couple of statements from our brother Hal, which I liked, and I'm going to add a couple more. Obedience proceeds out from faith, or as a direct result of our faith. Genitive to the source. A little bit technical there. Chronologically, faith comes first, then obedience. So you could say, And I think this is good to remember. You could say, faith is the source of my obedience.

If you think about that, as you walk with the Lord, and you come to know Him, and you come to trust Him. First of all, you trust Him for salvation, right? And then you trust Him for what He says about you, about how you're to live your life. As you trust Him, then what do you want to do? listen under him, right? You want to listen to what he says, and that's what scripture talks about, is obedience.

So that's the connection here. And actually, I have a picture, another picture from Hal, that I want to show you, that kind of maps out this obedience of faith. But faith is sourced in obedience, has its source in obedience. It's faith first, then obedience, if you will.

And it's among all the Gentiles for his namesake. So the first point is among the Gentiles, the ethnos, the nations. That's the first point. The second point is it's on behalf of or for His namesake, for His glory. So it has a two-fold process, this obedience of faith. God is glorified as we listen under His word.

So here's Hal's picture from 2006. So I had to redo it, because he had it as an object. If you guys are familiar with PowerPoint, you've got objects, and you can't break them up. Anyway, that's another PowerPoint thing you don't want to know about. But anyway, so I redid it. So here we are as believers. This includes Paul.

So believers have received God's grace, right? We just talked about that. And Paul's received God's grace in apostleship. So believers have received that. As they walk by faith, I put that heavy arrow there. It said they bring about, as they walk by faith, they bring about a listening under God's word. As we walk by faith and we listen under God's word, that's what listening under, that's what obedience is about. And that produces two things according to this verse. It produces faith among the Gentiles, or understanding among the Gentiles and the nations, and it glorifies God. So two things happen as a result of our walking by faith, listening under God's word.

Okay, so let's go on. Okay, so now we go on to verse 6. Among whom you are, and that's this word amy, the state in which something continuously exists. So we're going to see all these positive statements about the believer that can't be altered. You stand in this state. You are in this state. Present tense continuous action.

It's a positional truth which applies to all believers We're the called ones So now we're going to get into the to a really Interesting area area that what we always kind of rack our brains say, how can this be? We're going to get into this dilemma We are called but we're to exercise faith. How does that work out? I'm not going to be able to totally explain it, but I'm going to take a crack at it here.

Okay, so we're This verse is going to tell us we're called ones. And the word called is an invitation, a call, an appointment. God has called us. And we're going to see it from eternity past. He called us from eternity past. It's an adjective that describes who we are in Christ. We're the called ones. And it's of Jesus Christ. We're called of Jesus Christ. He is the source of our being called.

And so that kind of ends the introduction But I didn't want to kind of leave it there hanging. I wanted to spend a little more time on called ones. So let's go. I have some more points from my brother Hal here. Key points of being called ones. The calling or appointment doesn't depend upon human acceptance. We don't beg God to be, God, please call me. We never, a believer can't do that. That's never talked about in that domain.

The called ones are called or elect That's who we are. That's our resume. We have this long resume of blessings we have in our Savior. Caper has these riches of God's grace. Well, that's one of those riches of God's grace. We're called ones. That's just who we are. That's our resume. That's who we are. Being a called one is never referred to for unbelievers. It never says a believer or unbeliever is a called one. He's not. He only becomes a called one until he trusts in the Lord Jesus.

And that's where the rub comes. You think, well, that doesn't make any sense. How can that be? Well, I'm not going to... We'll keep going here. Okay. We are called before the foundation of the world, it says in Ephesians, verse 3 and 4. Ephesians 1, 3 and 4. God's calling is the fulfilling of His eternal purpose in us. We see that later in Romans 9.

So here, another Hal picture. OK, here we go. It was an object. It was an object. Again, I couldn't. And this one, I couldn't break it down. And I didn't want to redraw it, because I'd be up all night. And I was doing stuff for your guys' memorial service. Anyway, so here's part one of the object.

So here we talk about, and this is highlighted upon the fact that we're called before the foundation of the world. And it points out that every believer, he was a saint, is called. And that's God by God's sovereign grace. It's something he purposed from eternity past. And that's our resume. And we can have confidence in that, that we are called.

But that's not the whole picture. You say, well, what's the picture for the unbeliever? What's the relationship of this to being an unbeliever? And here's the other part of it. The other part is that the message to the unbelieving world is, whosoever will may come.

John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That's the message to them. That's the message they're to believe.

Once they believe, they move from the unbelieving camp, if you will, to the believing camp, and they can count that they were called from eternity past. Now you're going to ask me, how can that be? How can I explain that? And the best way I've found is that I accept both as being true. God works that out. I'm an unbeliever, I respond to whosoever will may come, and then I become a believer and I see, oh, I was called from the foundation of the world. Send me an email, talk to me, talk to Mike.

Mike has used a similar chart, I know for, he's used it several times. It's, it's, how do you explain that? And I don't think we can explain it here in, on this life. Alrighty. So let's go on. And actually I could spend some more, more time with this chart. It's, you know, I love to have all kinds of details. I'm not going to go much beyond that. Okay. So let's carry on. Okay.

So now he finally gets to the recipients, right? He spent six verses talking about himself, talking about the Lord Jesus, talking about the gospel, and talking a little bit about who we are. He's going to continue that theme into the two part of this, the two part, and then to the greeting. He says, two. So Paul will now talk about the addressee and describe who they are in Christ.

To all who are beloved of God in Rome, called saints. So I want to use the interlinear because it kind of brings out some aspects that you couldn't quite see in the New American Standard. So the interlinear, which is just a word-for-word translation from the Greek, it says, to all the ones being in Rome, loved of God, called ones, saints. All right? So even though this letter, this is the two-part, even though it's addressed to the believers in Rome, we can look at that and believe that as being addressed to us, because it's addressed to believers. So there's two attributes that are true of all believers.

From the inner linear, it says, being loved ones of God, beloved, that word we say, and there's a song, Beloved, Love One Another, from 1 John. So that's that loved one, loved ones of God, beloved. And again, it has this neat Greek word, eimi, It's a state in which we exist, a continual state. It's a position we have. We exist as beloved of God.

And I thought yesterday when I've been studying this, and I thought, wow, she's a beloved. She was a beloved. You guys are all beloved. You're all beloved, whether you feel like a beloved or not. I don't feel like a beloved. I feel like I've got problems. You're still a beloved. You're still loved by God. And actually, that's a little bit in contrast. And I'll show you a little. I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. But it's such a key point.

We see that, like the unbeliever and believer picture, God loves all mankind. And that word agape talks about the fact that's a verb. He's taking action. God took action to love the whole world. His Son died on the cross. But this talks about, this is an adjective. It describes the relationship between us and our Savior.

So I've jumped ahead a little bit. And then secondly, we're called ones to be saints. So I've gone through this first part here. I apologize. So being loved of God, agapio, is an adjective. It describes this wonderful, tender relationship that we have with our Savior. So here's some additional points I didn't make. Or maybe I made them. We'll see.

This is how the father refers to his son. The father refers to his son as being a loved one. The same tender word refers to us as believers. We're reading our resume. We're peeking into the resume that God holds in His Word for us. This is the resume that talks about us. We can rejoice and rest in this intimate love for us.

Only His children are His beloved. I got a little bit ahead and unbelievers are loved by God because he took action God wasn't Inactive he was active. He his son died on the cross so that the same Greek word Agape is used in two ways. That's a verb in his adjective Nothing can separate us from the love his love.

We're beloved. We always will be beloved Okay, now we get to the two-part wax the last part of the two-part called his saints and Calling is calling on an appointment. We've already solved one aspect of calling. We're elected or called. Now he's going to tell us that we're called to be saints.

Haggaios. One who is set apart. What's neat is, in the New Testament, in the plural, it's always in the plural when he talks about believers. He's talking about believers. It's a designation for a believer. So your designation is a saint. And it's not because you have an exceptional holiness. You're not exceptionally holy. It's because this is another one of those wonderful attributes of who we are in Christ. So more uncalled saints. Every believer is called or appointed by God as a saint. Every believer is set apart to God and by God.

Sainthood is not an attainment. We don't attain to be a saint. And the world shows that they make people saints. Well, that's not the picture at all. We are saints. Sainthood is a position into which God calls every believer. And here's the point. We saw it in Corinthians. We spent two years in Corinthians and we saw this man who was a saint, but he was in sin. And believers, saints can be in sin. God doesn't desire them to be there, but they can be.

Okay, so let's go on now the last part of seven here's finally gets to the greeting I think as was pointed out This is a pretty typical greeting that Paul Paul makes grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ But there's some cool things about this This is agreeing to the church grace and peace.

It's the church at Rome and to all the believers. I The only source of grace and peace is from God the Father and His Son. We see that in several places. Grace and peace is constantly supplied to you as a believer. God desires that we walk in grace and peace. God abundantly supplies His grace and peace for His glory. And then lastly, God's abundant peace guards our hearts and our minds.

A very familiar passage in Philippians 4-7. Okay, so summary thoughts. Constable had a really good summary here, I thought. So what Constable says here is that you look at the salutation, the first seven verses of Romans chapter one, and it kind of has the germ ideas of what's going to be developed later, all these wonderful truths about the believer in the Lord Jesus. And we see it in other epistles as well, but not this one.

It's just like on steroids. I mean, it's just amazing. So Paul, so far, he shows the message of the gospel that was in harmony with the Old Testament. We saw that. It was about the risen Christ. It was for all the people, the ethnos, for the entire world.

And then lastly, that it should lead us to this obedience of faith, a listening under, exercising faith in him, a listening under God's word. All right, so let's close in prayer. We thank you, Father. We thank you for your many blessings. We thank you so much for the Book of Romans as we start into these messages. We pray that as we go through this, that we would see more and more of who you are, what our Savior has done, and we would see our relationship to that and who we are as we live the life through Christ. And we thank you for that. We ask in His name. Amen.