Romans: Obligated to the Plain Gospel

Here is a reminder about why we're calling this class the plain gospel. It is because we don't want to change it in any way. Paul talked about this in I Corinthians 1:17:

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void.

And so to emulate that, we also want to preach the gospel in just its plain form. We're not adding anything. It's not about our cleverness or our ability to do well. We're letting the gospel be the gospel and not changing anything, just doing exactly what the Bible says.

In this class we will look at the book of Romans and how it explains the gospel and how we are obligated to the plain gospel. When I preach, I like to stick with one book. That's just kind of a style that I've developed. I work a lot with non Christians and young Christians and jumping around from book to book is very confusing for them. But the advantage of that is when we study a subject like the gospel and we just stay in one book, each book has its own theme.

And I notice these passages that talk about the gospel in Romans has this theme of this obligation, a feeling of I'm obligated to this gospel. I want to make sure that I protect it and proclaim it the way that it should be proclaimed. So we're going to look at 3 main points.

A. Set Apart for the Gospel

Let's look at how Paul was set apart.

1. Paul was set apart as an apostle and bond servant of the gospel.

¹Paul, a bond-servant of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, ²which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures, ³concerning His Son, who was born of a descendant of David according to the flesh, ⁴who was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead, according to the Spirit of holiness, Jesus Christ our Lord, ⁵through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name's sake, ⁶among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ;
- Romans 1:1-6

Paul starts off, he says, I have been set apart. I have a special place, something that I do as an apostle. Now Paul was one who was not an apostle in the sense that he traveled with Jesus. He did not become a follower of Christ until after Christ was already resurrected and Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus. He describes the events after Jesus' resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.

⁷then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; ⁸and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also. ⁹For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
- I Corinthians 15:7-9

So even though Paul was apostle, he didn't feel worthy to be one. But an apostle is one who is sent forth, one who is called to a special purpose. So he says, I am that, and I'm also a bond servant, he says in the same verse.

A bondservant means a servant by choice. There was servanthood in the Old Testament slavery. The Hebrews had slaves, but they could only keep their slave for 6 years. On seventh year, called the year jubilee, they had to set their slaves free. They were free to go. But there was an exception (Exodus 21:5-6). A slave who as he comes to the year jubilee, if he loves his master he could decline his freedom. He could say, I don't want to be set free. I want to stay in servitude. I want to continue to serve this master. And if that was the case, they pierced his ear, gave him an earring, and he was known as a bond slave or a bond servant.

And so that's what we see in the opening of this letter in Romans 1:1, Paul calls himself a bond servant. It's interesting also, James opens his letter in James 1:1 calling himself a bondservant. And Peter, in II Peter 1:1, refers to himself as a bondservant. And Jude, in Jude 1:1 refers to himself as a bondservant. And finally, John in Revelation 1:1 says that he is a bondservant.

All these church leaders, these men said they were bondservants. What they meant by that is that they served Christ as if he owned them, and they did so willingly. And of course he did own them.

What's fascinating about that is he owns us as well. If you think about it, we should be bond servants of Christ. We should be serving Christ by choice because Christ owns us. I Corinthians 7:23 says, "You were bought with a price." So if Christ has redeemed you, if he has bought you with his blood, then you are his and you are his servant.

Another side point before I leave this verse, you notice the word scripture in verse 2.

which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures,
- Romans 1:2

This is a Greek word, graphē. Graphē means writing, graphics, you can kind of hear that. But it never ever means common writing. It always means inspired by God writing. In other words, holy writings or the scriptures. The word only appears 51 times in the New Testament. Every single time, there's not an exception to this rule, every time it means inspired writing. And so that's something to watch for. Normally, the word is translated scriptures, but if you see that word, it does not mean common writing. It means this is a message that is directly from God. It is inspired by the Holy Spirit.

2. The gospel is about the resurrection power of Jesus which permits us to receive God's grace.

Romans 1:4-5 talk about how he was declared the son of God with power by the resurrection. And so the resurrection is where the power comes from, and that allows us to receive God's grace in verse 5, through whom we have received his grace and apostleship. And he brings about the obedience of the faith, and that's what we're striving for.

3. This is the plain gospel of God's Son. We serve Him by preaching it.

⁸First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world. ⁹For God, whom I serve in my spirit in the preaching of the gospel of His Son, is my witness as to how unceasingly I make mention of you,
- Romans 1:8-9

Paul is talking about how he says, I'm so proud of your faith. Now keep in mind, Paul has never been to Rome, but the reputation of those Christians and you can just hear the buzz as people are saying, "boy, the church is doing well, but I wonder how it's doing in Rome." I mean, that's right there where Nero is, and things have got to be tough there, and they were saying, "oh, no their faith is really strong. Those brothers are doing great." And Paul was part of that. He was saying, I'm talking you up too. I'm really proud of how great your faith is.

Because of the gospel which Paul was preaching, this plain gospel, he says, I serve God by preaching it. When Paul was preaching the Gospel (verse 9) how did Paul serve God? By preaching the gospel. How do we serve God today? By preaching the gospel. And preaching doesn't mean standing in the pulpit and saying, it just means proclaiming or speaking the gospel to someone, anyone, one person or a thousand, it doesn't matter. If you are gospelling, if you're preaching the gospel, you're speaking the gospel, then you are serving God by doing so.

B. Nothing to be Ashamed of

1. It is God's power for salvation.

¹⁶For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. ¹⁷For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, "But the righteous man shall live by faith."
- Romans 1:16-17

As Paul is talking about this gospel, he says, why would I be ashamed of God's power for salvation? Why would I be ashamed of love? This gospel is great, And and shame on us when we're ashamed of the gospel, when we are reluctant to proclaim it.

There is nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to be embarrassed about when we are sharing the gospel reluctance at all, this preaching of the gospel.

2. The gospel has to do with judgment and it has an impact on where we're going to stand on Judgment Day.

¹⁴For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, ¹⁵in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them,
- Romans 2:14-15

The church in Rome had Romans, Gentiles who were there, and they had Jews both in the same church. And Paul is speaking somewhat to the Jews and he's saying, What about those Gentiles? Now they didn't have the law, and that was always the thing that the Jews would put in the face of the Romans, "you guys never had the law, you don't know how you should behave."

He says, What about those Gentiles? They didn't have the law, but they knew instinctively that some things are right and wrong. Even a person that's never read the Bible knows that murder is wrong, knows that cheating on your wife is wrong, knows that stealing is wrong. These are things that are just inherently within us we know right and wrong. And he says, Those become a law unto themselves, they're accountable for these things. And then he goes into talking about our thoughts, our conscience, which alternately, sometimes it's accusing, sometimes it's defending us.

Can you relate to that? Sometimes our conscience is accusing us. You did this, you did this, and you did this. Sometimes it's defending us, but it alternates. The conscience comes and goes. But the real judgment on judgment day is going to be based on the gospel.

on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus.
- Romans 2:16

I love the fact that Paul says, this is my gospel. He's not saying exclusively because Paul was constantly sharing the gospel, but he's saying, I've made this my gospel, my good news. He's going to say the same thing in Romans 16:25 and II Timothy 2:8. He calls it "my gospel."

And then in the second half of that verse there is an aspect of the gospel we need to understand. It has to do with judgment. It's going to be involved in the judgment process. And we could look at a lot of other scriptures, but basically the role that it plays is it's the standard by which we will be judged, is the gospel. That's how important it is. I'll tie that in a little later on with some other scriptures. But know this, that if your understanding of the gospel is that it has nothing to do with judgment, you need to change the way you think about the gospel because that has everything to do with the judgment day and the judgment of god.

3. The gospel response is dying to sin and being buried in baptism.

¹What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? ²May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? ³Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? ⁴Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
- Romans 6:1-4

In this passage, Paul says, should we keep sinning so that we get more grace? Those of us who sin more need more grace. If you don't have very much sin in your life, you don't need as much grace. Somebody has a lot of sin, wow, they need a lot of grace. But that doesn't mean we keep sinning so we get more grace. We don't abuse grace that way. And his argument against that, he says, is we died to sin, vs. 2. We died to it. If you're dead to something, you don't respond to it anymore. Maybe you used to respond to sin. Yes. But if you're dead to sin, that means you're no longer responsive to it. You've cut that off. And I'm not talking about perfection here.

I'm talking about a decision. I don't want sin in my life. I hate it. I want it out. I'm not going toward sin anymore. I'm going away from it. That's what it means to die to sin. What do you do with something that's dead? You bury it. Right?

Verse 4 explains that we've been buried with him in baptism. So when we die to our sin, then we're buried in the waters of baptism. This is a response to the gospel. And the thing that happens there at the end of verse 4 is we are raised to walk in a newness of life, a new life. We're born again, we start a new life.

So when we die to sin, we're buried in baptism, then and only then are we raised to this new life. And a new life means God gave us a life, we're born into this world, and what did we do with that life? We messed it all up. We went out and we sinned and we did things we weren't supposed to do, and we ruined it. God comes along and says, "Forget that old life. That doesn't even count. I'm going to wipe that slate clean. Here's a brand new life." No mistakes. Completely clean, completely pure.

Now when you receive that new life, what do you want to do with it? Go out and mess it out again? No. I'm going to do it right this time. That's the idea of being born again. I've died to my sins, I've put sin away from me, now I've been buried in baptism, I'm raised to walk in new life. This is the response of the gospel.

Now tell me in all of that, what is there to be ashamed of? What in that message do we as Christians have to be ashamed of when we are telling that to unbelievers? We should never be ashamed of the gospel.

C. From a Gospel Perspective

We want to look at things from a gospel perspective. Sometimes when things don't look right, it's a good idea to change your perspective. Well, we're going to back up and we're going to look at things through the lenses of the gospel. And notice in these remaining verses that we're looking at how the perspective of the gospel, how that changes things.

1. The plain gospel projects good news for anyone who is willing to see it.

¹⁴How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? ¹⁵ How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written, "HOW BEAUTIFUL ARE THE FEET OF THOSE WHO BRING GOOD NEWS OF GOOD THINGS!"
- Romans 10:14-15

You may recognize that Isaiah 52:7. We used that in our first class.

¹⁶However, they did not all heed the good news; for Isaiah says, "LORD, WHO HAS BELIEVED OUR REPORT?" (Isaiah 53:1) ¹⁷So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
- Romans 10:16-17

So we're looking at this from the perspective of the gospel, back up and look at this and look at the salvation. A person has to believe, in order to believe they have to hear, in order to hear they have to have a preacher, have to have somebody that comes and brings them this message. And this message is a beautiful thing. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news of good things.

However, he says, they did not all heed the good news. Now the word heed comes from the Greek word ὑπήκουσαν. It means to hear, but it means to hear from the perspective of a subordinate, like a slave. How does the slave listen to a master? How does he hear? Well, he's hearing to get instructions so he can go do it. He's not hearing saying, I don't know if I want to do that or not. No. To be a servant means you're hearing with the intention of obeying. And what is it that we're supposed to obey? The good news, or in other words, the gospel.

So this is a passage that is talking about obeying the gospel. So does II Thessalonians 1:6-8, and so does I Peter 4:17. I'm not going to talk about those at this time. We're going to talk about those in our tenth class.I really hope that you're going to be here for that because we're going to talk about what does it mean to obey the gospel. We're going to look at all three of these passages and tie them in with some others that we've been looking at.

But for now, understand that we need to heed the good news. We need to do something with it. This class is on the plain gospel and what we're supposed to do with it. We don't just hear the gospel, we do something with it, and that's what we're going to look at. Look at it through the lenses of the gospel, we're looking from that perspective.

3. When you look through this perspective of the gospel, is looking at people from the standpoint of the gospel helps us to distinguish between friends and enemies of the church.

From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God's choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers;
- Romans 11:28

And he's talking specifically again about this whole Jew and Gentile issue and how the Gentiles were not part of the kingdom. The Jews, some of them accepted the message of Christ, some did not, and they made themselves enemies of Christ. And, of course, the Romans were seen as enemies. But he says when you clear away all that stuff and just look from the perspective of the gospel, that will help you to see who's really with the church and who is not.

In other words, who has obeyed the gospel like we just talked about? Who is in the gospel? Who is serving the gospel? Who's preaching the true gospel of the bible? That helps us to make some discernment, some distinguishing of who is with us and who is not with us.

4. Every minister has this priest-like duty to share the plain gospel of God.

Sometimes we look at ministers or preachers from a very worldly point of view, or we have this projection of what they ought to be doing. Really, a minister should not worry about what everybody else is thinking about them. They should be seeing what does the Bible say.

¹⁴And concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able also to admonish one another. ¹⁵But I have written very boldly to you on some points so as to remind you again, because of the grace that was given me from God, ¹⁶ to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, ministering as a priest the gospel of God, so that my offering of the Gentiles may become acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
- Romans 15:14-16

He starts off with this encouragement in verse 14. He says they are able, they are competent to admonish or to instruct and counsel one another. This is where the idea of counseling within the church and being able to give each other advice comes from. We should be seeking advice from people who are spiritually minded. He says we're capable of doing this.

Verse 15 has an interesting parallel. When we look at the priests of the Old Testament they were workers. They worked hard.

In Matthew 12, Jesus was accused of breaking the Sabbath by working on the Sabbath.

Or haven't you read in the Law that the priests on Sabbath duty in the temple desecrate the Sabbath and yet are innocent?
- Matthew 12:5 NIV

You talk about working on the Sabbath, but what about the priest? They work like dogs, he says, on the Sabbath day. And that's the comparison he's making. A minister should be willing to work hard. And when you look at it from the perspective of the gospel, that helps us who are ministers to put that in perspective. We need to take our duties very seriously, just like a priest did in the Old Testament.

When they're working around the temple and in the presence of God, they were very serious, very dedicated to what they were doing. We should be no less so under the new covenant, under the superior covenant in our perspective of the gospel.

5. All credit for the lost coming to Jesus needs to belong to the gospel and not to us.

¹⁸For I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me, resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles by word and deed, ¹⁹in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the Spirit; so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. ²⁰And thus I aspired to preach the gospel, not where Christ was already named, so that I would not build on another man's foundation;
- Romans 15:18-20

When people come to Christ, because we're studying with them, across the kitchen table, at the coffee shop, wherever, and you're just sharing the gospel, and you're watching their life blossom, the light bulb's coming on, and they're saying, yeah. This is the way to live. Don't take any of that glory.

Oh, I commend you for what you're doing, amen, that you are sharing your faith. But the ability is not from you. The ability is from the gospel. All you're doing is sharing the gospel. You're preaching the gospel. You're gospeling. I've mentioned that word several times. I probably should explain. We don't use that word, gospeling, anymore. I found it in some old literature that used to be somewhat of a popular word. We don't say it anymore. I like to use it because this is one single Greek word. Preaching the gospel equals gospeling. And so that's what we're doing. We are just sharing the gospel, but the power comes from the gospel, not from us. And so the credit really needs to go to the gospel and not to us, and that's an important perspective for us to have.

6. The gospel is able to establish us resulting in the obedience of faith.

²⁵Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, ²⁶but now is manifested, and by the Scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith; ²⁷to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, be the glory forever. Amen.
- Romans 16:25-27

And that's how Paul closes out this wonderful letter to the church in Rome. "This gospel establishes us." He says that in verse 25. The gospel is what establishes us. Also, it brings about a result in an obedience to faith. Now this was in Romans 1:5, but I glazed over that earlier because I wanted to save it for the end. Here, he talks about obedience of faith. A great thing that comes from the gospel is it leads us to be obedient to the faith, and you want that. Believe me, you don't want a faith that's not obedient.

James talks about this in chapter 2 where he describes a man who has faith, but he has no deeds. And he asked the question, can such a faith save him? The answer to the question is no, it can't save him. Our faith needs to be backed up by our works. Now the works don't save us. It's the grace that we receive through the faith, but works shows that we are obedient.

For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.
- James 2:26

And so looking from the perspective of the gospel, one of the beautiful things that it does is it helps us, it leads to obedience of the faith. What a beautiful blessing. Are you starting to see how wonderful this plain gospel is?

When we get back to the basics and we just look at what does the Bible say and and not what we thought the gospel was about, the gospel is really something that we should be obligated to and that we should understand the world. We should look at the world from through the lens of the gospel, and that will change you in a wonderful way.