J.I. Packer, the theologian, put it this way: “All roads in the Bible lead to Romans, and all views afforded by the Bible are seen most clearly from Romans, and when the message of Romans gets into a person’s heart there is no telling what may happen.”
A few hundred years ago, the message of Romans got into a man’s heart, and the world began to change. It was while Martin Luther was teaching through Romans and Galatians that he was transformed by the truth that we are made righteous by faith alone. It was this truth that sparked the Reformation of the church. This is how Luther put it:
“Then finally God had mercy on me, and I began to understand that the righteousness of God is a gift of God by which a righteous man lives, namely faith, and that sentence: The righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel, is passive, indicating that the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written: ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’ Now I felt as though I had been reborn altogether and had entered Paradise. In the same moment the face of the whole of Scripture became apparent to me.”
My hope and prayer is that you will have a similar moment as we study this book. If you have never understood that we are made righteous by faith in Jesus, then you will experience this rebirth just as Luther did, and the Scriptures will open up to you.
Paul begins the book of Romans this way: “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.” What we read as we open up this book is a greeting from a man who understood his identity in Christ, the message of grace he had received, and the purpose of his life. These seven verses sum up the Christian life.
We are set apart to serve Jesus. Paul identifies himself first as a servant, or a slave, of Christ Jesus. He belongs to Christ, and Jesus is his Lord. A servant does whatever the master tells him to do. He exists to serve his master. His life is not his own. This is Paul’s fundamental self-identification: a servant of Christ Jesus. Notice that his calling as an apostle did not come before who he is as a servant. Our identity is that we belong to Jesus.
We are set apart to proclaim Jesus. At the end of verse 1, Paul says he is “set apart for the gospel of God.” Every follower of Jesus has been set apart for the gospel of God. Peter wrote this to the churches: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” We are all priests to God. We are all chosen by God. We are all made holy by Christ, and we all belong to God — and it is all for a purpose: to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.
We are set apart to bring the nations to Jesus. Paul says that Jesus has given him a mission: “through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.” It is not about Paul — it is about the name of Jesus being glorified among all nations. That was Paul’s primary motivation, and we are called to have that as our primary motivation. We want to see Jesus worshiped in every nation on earth. This means we are called to love all people and care about all people. We have to lay down our prejudices against other nations or peoples. We are now first servants of Jesus Christ, and our first aim in life is to be his ambassadors and to share his message.
Paul ends his greeting to the Romans by reminding them of their identity in Christ: “To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
To be a Christian is to be loved by God. Don’t ever doubt it. Don’t ever let Satan steal the joy of being loved by your Father. This is who you are. You are loved by God, set apart to serve Jesus, proclaim Jesus, and bring the nations to Jesus. Let’s do this by the grace given to us by God.
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