Purposes of Romans and the Gospel

Romans is a fuller revelation of the gospel than any other book in the Bible. 1:18-8:39 is pure gospel. And Paul continues to cover gospel-related issues all the way through the end of chapter 11. The purpose of this gospel revelation is not primarily to evangelize the readers of Romans, for the epistle is addressed to believers (1:7). I see three main purposes of this gospel revelation.

One purpose is that believers would be spurred on to serve their Savior and would be transformed into the image of Christ. Paul's transition from gospel to Christian living is 12:1-2 "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect" (ESV).

A second purpose of the gospel revelation is that believers would praise and glorify God. The conclusion to Paul's presentation of the gospel is 11:33-36 "Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 'For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?' For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen" (ESV).

A third purpose of the gospel revelation is to strengthen believers to evangelize the world. In Paul's introduction, he says that he and the other apostles "have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations" (1:5 ESV). "The obedience of faith" is the obedience to Christ that is produced by faith in Christ and the gospel. God had commissioned the apostles and graciously empowered them to lead the lost throughout the nations to faith in Christ and the resulting obedience to Christ. Paul speaks in chapter 15 of how he has been bringing about the obedience of faith among all the nations. "For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience--by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God--so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ; and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation" (15:18-20 ESV).

Then Paul's last words are a doxology in which he praises God for the strength He supplies to all believers for the task of bringing about the obedience of faith among all the nations. "Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith--to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen" (16:25-27 ESV).

This is a complex sentence. Let's break it down. The main thought is this, "Now to him who is able to strengthen you to bring about the obedience of faith, be glory." Paul says this is "according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ." In other words, the gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ compel and equip us to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations. Paul also says this is "according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations." This is a reference to the gospel just mentioned. Now that Jesus Christ has come, the gospel has been revealed. Our task of bringing about the obedience of faith among all the nations is of epic proportions, for God spent long ages preparing for this world-wide endeavor. Paul also says that this is "according to the command of the eternal God." In other words, our glorious God doesn't ask us to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations, He commands it! Paul's words are in the form of a doxology, thus giving God the praise and glory for the work He is doing through us among the nations.

So the purposes of the gospel revelation in Romans include our service & sanctification, God's praise & glory, and evangelism & missions.

When I Don't Desire God, ch. 2

Here are some quotes that struck me from chapter 2 of, When I Don't Desire God, by John Piper:

Piper discusses the relationship between desire for God and delight in God. "Desire would not exist if the thing enjoyed had not already been tasted. That's how the heart comes to feel something is desirable. Desire is awakened by tastes of pleasure. The taste may be ever so small. But if there is no taste at all of the desirability of something, then there will be no desire for it. In other words, desire is a form of the very pleasure that is anticipated with the arrival of the thing desired. It is, you might say, the pleasure itself experienced in the form of anticipation" (page 26).

"Finite creatures like us, who have a spiritual taste for the glory of God, will always want more of God than we presently experience--even in eternity. There will always be more of God to enjoy. Which means there will always be holy desire--forever" (pages 27-28).

"Our desires--no matter how small--have been awakened by the spiritual taste we once had of the presence of God. They are an evidence that we have tasted" (page 28).

"In the age to come, desire for more of God will never be experienced with impatience or ingratitude or frustration. All desire in the age to come will be the sweetest anticipation, rooted ever more deeply in the enlarging memories of joy and in the ever-gathering pleasures of gratitude. God will not take from us the pleasure of anticipated pleasures. He will heighten it. He will give us for all eternity the perfect intermingling of present pleasure and anticipation of future pleasure. Anticipation will be stripped of all frustration. Its ache will be a wholly pleasant ache" (page 28).

"Desire and delight have this in common: Neither is the Object desired or delighted in. God is. I make this obvious point because all of us from time to time speak loosely and say that the aim of our pursuit is joy. Or we way that we want to be happy. Those are not false or evil statements.... But the loose way of talking can be misleading. Both ways of saying it can be taken to mean: The object of our wants is ultimately a psychological expreience of happiness without any regard to what makes us happy. In other words, they may mean: the final object of our pursuit is joy itself, rather than the beauty of what we find joy in" (page 29). Piper quotes C. S. Lewis, who explains that seeking joy itself rather than God will leave you empty. "I had been equally wrong in supposing that I desired Joy itself. Joy itself, considered simply as an event in my own mind, turned out to be of no value at all. All the value lay in that of which Joy was the desiring" (Lewis, Surprised by Joy, in Piper, page 30).

"God is glorified in his people by the way we experience him, not merely by the way we think about him. Indeed the devil thinks more true thoughts about God in one day than a saint does in a lifetime, and God is not honored by it. The problem with the devil is not his theology, but his desires" (pages 30-31).

"I have found for thirty years that preaching and teaching about God's demand that we delight in him more than in anything else breaks and and humbles people, and makes them desperate for true conversion and true Christianity. Oh, how easy it is to think we are what we ought to be when the emotions are made peripheral. Mere thoughts and mere deeds are manageable by the carnal religious mind. But the emotions--they are the weathercock of the heart. Nothing shows the direction of the deep winds of the soul like the demand for radical, sin-destroying, Christ-exalting joy in God" (page 31).

Love Your Enemies

When Jesus commands us in Luke 6:27-28, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you" (NASB), He gives reasons why we are to live this way. Probably the most significant reason is that it shows us to be "sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men" (Lk 6:35 NASB). In other words, it displays His character in our lives. Every mere human being that God has loved has been His enemy at some point, for sin makes a person God's enemy (Rom 5:9-10), and "all have sinned" (Rom 3:23). One way that we are different from God is that there are human beings in our life that have never been our enemy. So it is not really our love for these people that make us like God (Lk 6:32-33), but our love for our enemies that makes us like God. What joy God has in turning His enemies into His friends! Let's follow His example!

When I Don't Desire God, ch. 1

I have started reading, When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy, by John Piper. I really appreciated the foreward and first chapter. Piper writes in an even more personal and pastoral style than usual. Here are some sentences that stood out to me:

"When all is said and done, only God can create joy in God. This is why the old saints not only pursued joy but prayed for it (Ps 90:15). To be satisfied by the beatuy of God does not come naturally to sinful people. By nature we get more pleasure from God's gifts than from himself. Therefore this book calls for deep and radical change--which only God can give. But if I didn't believe God uses means to awaken joy in himself, I would not have written this book" (page 9).

"Christian Hedonism is a liberating and devastating doctrine. It teaches that the value of God shines more brightly in the soul that finds deepest satisfaction in him. Therefore it is liberating because it endorses our inborn desire for joy. And it is devastating because it reveals that no one desires God with the passion he demands. Paradoxically, many people experience both of these truths. That certainly is my own experience" (page 13).

"My indwelling sin stands in the way of my full satisfaction in God. It opposes and perverts my pursuit of God. It opposes by making other things look more desirable than God. And it perverts by making me think I am pursuing joy in God when, in fact, I am in love with his gifts. I discovered what better saints than I have found before me: The full enjoyment of God is my ultimate home, but I am still far off and only on the way" (page 14).

"Conversion is the creation of new desires, not just new duties; new delights, not just new deeds; new treasures, not just new tasks" (page 16).

"The misunderstanding of this book that I want most to avoid is that I am writing to make well-to-do Western Christians comfortable, as if the joy I have in mind is psychological icing on the cake of already superficial Christianity. Therefore let me say clearly here at the beginning that the joy I write to awaken is the sustaining strength of mercy, missions, and martyrdom" (pages 19-20).

"I am addressing the question: 'How can I obtain or recover a joy in Christ that is so deep and so strong that it will free me from bondage to Western comforts and security, and will impel me into sacrifices of mercy and missions, and will sustain me in the face of martyrdom?'" (page 20)

Free in Christ and His Bondslave

In Galatians 1:10, Paul refers to himself as a "bond-servant of Christ" (could also be translated "slave of Christ"). The same idea is in Romans 6:22 "But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life" (NASB). A similar idea is in Romans 6:18 "having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness" (NASB). So every true believer is a slave of Christ.

Yet Galatians also teaches that the true believer is free in Christ. "For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another" (Gal 5:13). "But it was because of the false brethren secretly brought in, who had sneaked in to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, in order to bring us into bondage" (NASB). "It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery" (NASB).

How is it that Christ set us free, yet we are slaves of Christ? We can answer that question by finding out the sense in which Christ set us free, and the sense in which we are slaves of Christ.

Being free in Christ does not mean that obedience to God no longer matters. The rest of the New Testament indicates that it matters to God and affects our life. That Christ set us free means five things:

1. We once were a slave to the law, but now God has adopted us as His son (Gal 4:3-7; Rom 7:6). The change was from a slavish relationship with something other than God, to a loving father-son relationship with God.
2. As a slave we had good reason to live in fear of the Law's curse, but now as a son we live by faith in God's promise of blessing (Rom 8:15; Gal 2:20; 3:5-10).
3. As a slave we sought to fulfill the requirement of the Law, but now as a son Christ has fulfilled the requirement of the Law in us (Rom 8:2-4).
4. As a slave we walked by the flesh, but now as a son we walk by the Spirit (Gal 3:2-3; 5:16, 22).
5. Now as a son we are tempted to use our freedom to gratify the flesh, but we have been set free in order to love and serve people (Gal 5:13-14).

Being a slave of Christ means He is the one and only person we seek to please. This servitude is very different from our former one. We have a new Master--the rightful Master. And we are in a new type of servitude that is chiefly motivated by love and gratitude rather than fear, a servitude energized by the Spirit rather than self.

According to Galatians 1:10, an additional freedom comes with this servitude, freedom from seeking the favor of men! "If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond-servant of Christ" (NASB).

Love, Grace, and the Gospel

I was meditating upon Ephesians 2:1-10, which emphasizes that we are saved by God's grace. His grace is God's motive in saving us, which means that His motive has nothing to do with anything attractive or appealing in us. A parallel idea is found in verses 4-5, "God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ." Based on this passage, we could define God's grace as the great undeserved love (or favor) God freely gives to people who only deserve wrath from Him (2:3 “by nature children of wrath”).

Now let’s compare the reason we love God, to the reason He loves us so much to save us.

Our reasons are very different, in a sense. We love Him because of how attractive and appealing He is to us. But His saving love has nothing to do with anything attractive or appealing in us. We were in no way attractive or appealing to Him.

Yet there is a sense in which our reasons for loving each other are very similar. We love Him because of how attractive and appealing His grace is to us. And He savingly loves us because of how attractive and appealing His grace is to Him. Because we are attracted to His grace, we receive it, which is loving God. Because He is attracted to His grace, He gives it, which is loving us.

Praise God for the saving grace which He lavishes on His people!

McCain Info

I found an entry in Justin Taylor's blog helpful for understanding McCain better. I especially appreciated an article he links to by Gerald Bradley, professor of law at University of Notre Dame, regarding the strength of McCain's pro-life record. Here is the link:
http://theologica.blogspot.com/2008/06/mccain-pro-life-and-quiet-courage.html

Ryan Kelly Parenting Sermons

I ran across three very helpful messages on Christian parenting, preached by Ryan Kelly, pastor of Desert Springs Church. They were part of a larger series he is doing on the book of Proverbs.

I especially appreciated the first message, "The Wisdom of Parenting with Toughness." This was the first time I heard someone explain how, as parents, we should model God's righteous anger before our children. There is a lot of other material that, for good reason, warns against becoming sinfully angry with our children. Our anger tends to be sinful, and much harm is done to children when parents are sinfully angry toward them. We do need to show an enormous amount of love to our children, and we all are deficient in this. But there is still a need for righteous anger. There is more to the sermon than this. But this is the part that really stood out to me.

You can download the message here http://www.desertspringschurch.org/content_page.php?selectedCat=8&catName=Messages&subID=

The other messages are "The Wisdom of Parenting with Instruction" and "The Wisdom of Parenting Toward the Gospel." They can also be downloaded from the same page.

"Do not be angry with yourselves...for God sent me"

Joseph tells his brothers in Gen 45:5 "Now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life" (ESV). Joseph emphasizes this by repeating it in verse 7, "God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors" (ESV). Joseph knows that his brothers are now tempted to be angry with themselves for a bad decision they made in the past. We can completely understand such a response. Their decision involved sin against their brother and against God. We also have made bad decisions in the past that we are tempted to be angry about today--some that were plainly sinful, some that were foolish, and some that were neither of these but have nevertheless led to regret. But Joseph also knows that God was sovereign over his brothers' bad decision. God was in control, as He always is. God delights in incorporating our sin, foolishness, and bad decisions in His wise plan. And God's plan is good (Rom 8:28). Because God was sovereign over his brothers' bad decision, and used it to save the entire family from starvation, Joseph encourages his brothers, "Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves." And today God is saying the same thing to you if you are angry with yourself for a bad decsision you made in the past. May our thoughts not be filled with such regret, but may they be filled with prayer that God will gloriously fulfill His good purposes behind our past decisions.