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Romans 1:1
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome tonight. If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, welcome. My name is Jeremy, and I'm one of the people who hang out here. And it is great to have you here with us this weekend because we are starting a new series tonight. And we are doing something a little bit different, something we haven't tried before in this series, and that is to begin a conversation that is going to take us at least a few years to finish.
Speaker 1:Now before you get too panicked about that, let me explain. We wanted to look at the book of Romans, but this is a big, thick, heavy letter packed full of theology. And so this time last year, as I was planning out the journal for the coming year, I was looking at sections that I wanted to teach through, and I started looking at the book of Romans, and I just got really excited. I really wanted to tackle this book. And so I started working my way through and building the outline that I would teach from.
Speaker 1:But what I realized fairly quickly was that to do this properly and to do it the way that I wanted to and to really take our time with this letter to metabolize the content, this was gonna take a good solid fifteen or twenty weeks for us to do. Now we do some longer series in this community. We spent eight weeks with the story of Abraham this fall. We are going to spend ten weeks in the Psalms this summer. But let's be honest, twenty straight weeks of Paul hammering his way through to the letter to Rome, that might be a bit much even for me.
Speaker 1:One of the reasons that we create the journal every year is because we believe that a healthy spiritual journey needs a balanced diet. We spent time in the Old Testament with Ruth in January. We spent time in the words of Jesus, the gospels for the months of February and March leading us to Easter. And we looked at lament and lamentations for the last couple weeks. Today, we will switch gears to begin to look at Paul's teaching, but here's the plan.
Speaker 1:Over the next six weeks, we are going to work through the first three chapters of the book of Romans. And then we will pack it up, and we will move on to something new. I'm actually really excited for the series that comes up after this one. But then next year, around this time, we will bring Romans back out. And we'll recap what we did this year, and then we will pick up, and we will start where we left off to cover the next few chapters.
Speaker 1:And we will just do this until we get through the book of Romans. And so if you enjoy this series this year, well, then this is our not so subtle incentive to stick around for a few years because you are going to need to do that if you wanna get through to the end of this letter. So today will be when in Rome part one, part one. But before we jump into that, let me just say this. Even though our last conversation was a really short two week conversation, it was a really important topic, because in a lot of ways, I think, that in our culture and even in our church culture in North America, I think we have often forgotten how to grieve well.
Speaker 1:So our thanks to Joel Roos from Collaborative Care Network for for providing his perspective as a professional counselor over the last two weeks and adding his voice into the conversation with Devin and I. As always, you can find all of our teaching online. Links are available at our website, commons.church. Hopefully, you can use that as a resource. Because hurt, loss, grief, and lament, this is an important conversation for us.
Speaker 1:Now before we pray, let me read you the opening words of this famous letter to Rome. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God. The gospel that he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures regarding his son, Who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David. And who through the spirit of holiness was appointed the son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him, we received grace and apostleship to call all of the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name's sake.
Speaker 1:And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people. Grace and peace to you from God our father and our Lord Jesus Christ. It's Romans chapter one verses one to seven. Let's pray.
Speaker 1:Our God and our father. As we pause to begin today, we welcome your spirit into this conversation that you might take words written thousands of years ago, words that have been debated and dissected and scrutinized for millennia. And you might make them come alive for us again. Not simply as they were, but as they are. As they speak and they interact with our world and our lives today.
Speaker 1:May we come to see in these words how you point us to your word. Your son who came and lived and died and lived again, and who invites us even now to begin to journey toward him. And as we do, would you help us to see ourselves in the light of that story? Would you help us to see ourselves infused with the purpose and the passion that you imagine for us? Would you help us to know that we are loved by God and that we are called to become your holy people?
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Okay. Now we read only seven verses tonight, and very likely we are not going to get through all of that today. Because here's the thing, this is a dense letter.
Speaker 1:John Piper calls it the greatest letter ever written. Karl Barth, probably the most influential theologian of any tradition in the last one hundred years, really broke onto the scene with his commentary on the book of Romans. And t Wright has made a living off of Romans for the last few years. Wright puts out some fantastic material at a popular level, but he also has just released a new three volume 1,500 page tomb called Paul and the faithfulness of God that focuses largely on Romans. I own it.
Speaker 1:One day, I might actually even open it. Martin Luther, he of the reformation, wrote that Romans is truly the most important piece in the New Testament. It is purest gospel. Now, I might take issue with that. I'm not sure that hierarchies of scriptures are useful.
Speaker 1:But if we were going to construct one, I can't imagine anything but the gospels themselves sitting at the climax of our scripture. But the point is, we are wading into some heavy material that heavyweight theologians have tread before. And that is exciting, if not a little intimidating, at least for a theology nerd like me. However, let me say this as a caveat before we jump in. Because of the well deserved reputation of this letter, there has been a tendency to sometimes treat Romans differently from other letters.
Speaker 1:That that is sometimes Galatians or Corinthians or the letters of John, for example. They are all assumed to have a specific context to which they were written. Romans, on the other hand, sometimes gets treated as if it tumbled forth from Paul completely uncolored by an agenda. I'll let James Dunn, another significant Pauline scholar speak here. He says, with each of Paul's letters, Romans included, it is impossible to escape their character as letters, communications from a known author to specific people in particular circumstances.
Speaker 1:And far from diminishing a letter like Romans, for me, this is part of what helps to bring it alive. Romans is not a systematic theology course. This is a real person, Paul, writing to real people in Rome who are wrestling with what it really means to follow Jesus in their world. And remember, Paul, as we meet him in Romans, is a guy with a pretty incredible backstory. If you're not familiar with his story, you can actually read it in Acts chapter nine.
Speaker 1:But basically, Paul is this guy who used to go by his Jewish name, Saul. And he was part of a religious faction known as the Pharisees. And he spent his time persecuting these poor Jews who had fallen under the spell of this charlatan named Jesus. The people of the way as they were known. And Saul thinks these guys are nuts.
Speaker 1:I mean, Jesus claims to be the Messiah, but then he is executed by Rome. Clearly, anyone who follows a dead Messiah is someone whose religious sensibilities have been diminished. And so Saul persecutes these early Christians with gusto. In fact, in the book of Acts, one of those Christ followers, a man named Stephen, is stoned to death. He is murdered for his convictions about Jesus.
Speaker 1:And Saul is there watching and sanctioning that violence. You can read that in chapter seven of the book of Acts. So this is a deeply religious man, but this is not a good man. But then in Acts nine, Saul is heading to Damascus. He's actually on his way to root out Christians there living in that city.
Speaker 1:And incredibly, he has an encounter with the risen Christ. So imagine this. His whole career has been about the absurdity of people who worship a dead Messiah. And now all of a sudden, that crucified Jesus is alive and in front of him and speaking to him. And for Paul, this changes everything.
Speaker 1:And so Saul switches to his Roman name Paul, and essentially, he completely starts his life over again. Now he spends time with the Christians learning from them. He starts planting churches all over the place to worship Jesus. He famously confronts some of the older Christian leaders like Peter when he sees practices that don't seem to line up with the teachings and character of Jesus as he understands it. This guy goes from enemy number one to the franchise player of early Christianity overnight.
Speaker 1:And we could talk all day about what happens when we really, truly, honestly meet the risen Christ. How nothing before that matters, how nothing after that moment is ever the same, how who you have been has absolutely no authority over who you could be in Christ. That would be an awesome sermon all on its own. But today, that is just the background. Because as we open Romans and as we turn these pages to see this mature, confident, older, powerful leader in Paul, We can't lose sight of this story that has brought him here to this place.
Speaker 1:The passion and the excitement. And to be frank, the overzealousness that we sometimes see in Paul. It comes from and it roots itself in this dynamic encounter he has had with Christ. The Jesus who changes everything for Paul. So Paul is not a theologian just because he loves theology.
Speaker 1:He is a theologian because he loves Jesus. And so whatever you have thought of Paul in the past, I know that some of us, including myself, have had a complicated relationship with Paul. Let's be honest. He can come across as a little bit brash and maybe just a touch arrogant. Paul will be the first to tell you that he is the best at everything.
Speaker 1:Sinning? Yeah. I'm the best of those two. But this is a man who truly deeply wants to know Jesus. And that kind of transparent passion, even if it rubs us the wrong way, it is a gift to us.
Speaker 1:And so with that as a background in mind, let's go back and start at the start in chapter one. Because this letter starts this way. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God. Now, couple things here. First of all, this is an introduction.
Speaker 1:And we're gonna see later in the letter that Paul has never been to Rome, or at least not met with this church that he's writing to. And so this is not one of those churches that he planted. He doesn't know these people personally. Likewise, they don't know him by anything but his reputation. And Paul certainly has a reputation, so this is an interesting dynamic here.
Speaker 1:What do you say about yourself when you introduce yourself? Now in our culture, a lot of us start with our jobs. Right? Especially depending on the social context. I'm Christine, and I'm a real estate agent.
Speaker 1:I'm Jared, and I'm a teacher. I'm Jeremy, and I impersonate Jesus for a living. You know, that's what we say. Right? Hopefully, it's not just the hair, I'm on you.
Speaker 1:But personally, I do actually hesitate to tell people what I do for a living sometimes. And it's certainly not that I'm ashamed of it. I actually love my job. I think it's incredible. But sometimes I do wish that people would get to know me at least just a little bit before they got that information.
Speaker 1:I mean, soon as you tell someone you're a minister, there are a lot of assumptions that come into play. I once met someone. This is a true story, by the way. I met someone for the very first time, and they asked, what do you do? And I said, I'm a minister.
Speaker 1:And they responded immediately, like a priest? Like you've never had sex before? And I thought, really? That's where we're gonna go in this conversation, is it? Alright then.
Speaker 1:You really wanna go there? You and I from zero to discussing our sex lives in two point three seconds. That is a ludicrous speed, and yes, that was a Tesla reference for the win. But how we describe ourselves, perhaps even more importantly, how we describe ourselves to ourselves. This says a lot about us.
Speaker 1:In fact, it actually says a lot to us. Seems like every week, there is a new article posted on Facebook, claiming to have the secret to a great marriage. Three easy steps for blissful relationships. And some of those articles are actually genuinely insightful and quite helpful. But do you want to know what has been the single most significant thing that has helped me to be present and healthy in my marriage?
Speaker 1:I work to assume the best of my wife. So she says something and has a tone to it. You know that unquantifiable, completely subjective, probably all in the back of my head somewhere quality that we call tone? I hear it, and I'm annoyed by that. My goal in that moment, not always successfully, but my goal is to assume the best of her.
Speaker 1:Now sometimes there was a tone, and sometimes she is trying to communicate something. Sometimes I can be oblivious, and so sometimes we do need to talk about that. But I work really hard to assume that she wasn't just trying to make me go crazy. That that there wasn't something left hidden and unspoken. I try to assume that she is just as honest and open and engaged in our marriage as I am.
Speaker 1:Here's the thing. The stories that we tell ourselves about what is going on between the lines behind the scenes, this shapes dramatically how we experience the world. And so when I assume the best about Rachel, I experience her in very different, more positive ways. Now that is true in your relationships. Try it.
Speaker 1:But this is also true in your personal self image. When you introduce yourself to someone, when you describe yourself for yourself, if you do that exclusively in the terms of your job, or if you picture yourself completely through your flaws, if you narrate your life as if it was one broken moment followed by the next painful memory, then this will become over time who you are. What's fascinating to me here in Romans is to know Paul's backstory. All of the complex narrative that has gone into shaping this man. And then to see how Paul introduces Paul.
Speaker 1:When Paul looks at Paul, what does he see? And there is this fascinating juxtaposition that he creates in his introduction. He says, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God. Now that's the NIV. But there are a couple interesting things going on here in the Greek.
Speaker 1:First of all, they tried to make this flow really nicely. In Greek, it reads much more like a straightforward list. Paul, servant of Christ Jesus, called apostle, set apart for God's gospel. These are the things that Paul thinks are important about Paul. But secondly, this list has been slightly neutered in English.
Speaker 1:When the NIV says, Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, which to be fair is what almost all English translations go with, this is just simply wrong. There is a word for servant in Greek. In fact, there are two very common ones. Pais, which would be like a servant or a child or a student, just anyone under the authority of another person. Or there would be diaconis, which would be like a servant in the sense of an employee or just someone who serves another person.
Speaker 1:Those are not the words that Paul uses here. What we read here from Paul is doulos, and this means slave. Now given the history that we have as a culture and a world with slavery, I understand the desire to stay away from that language in our bibles. But it's important that we recognize this was just as inappropriate then as it is now. The Stoics were a religious group who were around at the time of Paul, And they described themselves as the servants of God.
Speaker 1:Now they knew that it was their responsibility to serve God, to be stoic, strong, and trustworthy, independent. But just as any good Greek thinking Romans, they would still never describe themselves as doulos. You see autonomy and independence, the ability to chart one's own choices and commitments, this was essential to what it meant to be Roman. Now, of course, this is a foreign ancient long dead culture that has nothing to do with us. We, in Canada, would never put such importance on our ability to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps or to be independent and self sufficient and strong, And so I will just quietly move on to something else.
Speaker 1:But because of a status of doulos that involved the abrogation of one's own autonomy and the subordination of one's will to that of another, Greek thinkers, Romans felt contempt automatically, instinctively for the position of a slave. And yet Paul writes to Rome and he introduces himself not as a servant, a title of respect in religious circles, But as a slave, a term of contempt in the Roman imagination. In fact, if you open this letter in Greek, it begins Paul, slave of Christ Jesus. It's the second word. It's like you open this letter and you read Paul, and then you are immediately slapped in the face with doulos.
Speaker 1:This is not exactly putting your best foot forward. And side note here, our friends to the South may not be comfortable using the term slave in their bibles. And here in Canada, we may not be comfortable talking about our attempted colonialization of our first nations brothers and sisters in our churches. But you do not heal the sins of the past by burying them. And Paul may not have even been able to imagine a world without slavery, but he was not afraid to identify himself with the disposable victims of his society.
Speaker 1:And we should learn something from that. As Gordon Zerb says it, messianic loyalty cannot coexist with an equivalent zealous loyalty to any other dominion, human or spiritual. The notion of a coexisting dual citizenship, this is foreign to Paul's thinking. And so from the first word he uses to describe himself, Paul is making his allegiance clear. I may be a Roman citizen, he says, but my identity is not my strength or autonomy or self sufficiency.
Speaker 1:It is first before anything else complete and utter dependence on Jesus. That's who I am. But that is only the first item in the list. And part of what is so intriguing to me is the contrast that he now begins to create. Because he starts with the doulos, I am a slave.
Speaker 1:I'm nothing. Rome and her ideas of identity mean nothing to me. But then again, I am Paul called apostle set apart for God's gospel. Now apostle might be a term that we are most familiar with in a religious context. In fact, in English, apostle really doesn't have a meaning apart from that.
Speaker 1:In Greek, however, it does carry a more well rounded semantic range. Stolas in Greek is the word for journey. Apo in Greek is the prefix with or from. And so apostolos, at its most simplistic, is simply someone sent on a journey. So you could think of it this way.
Speaker 1:My son comes to me, and he tells me that he needs his diaper changed. I say, okay. Go and tell your mom. I send him on a journey. Right?
Speaker 1:I'm just kidding. I pick him up and I take him to his mom. That's also a joke. Please don't send me angry emails. Well, that's what the construction of the word originally meant though.
Speaker 1:Over time, however, in Greek, apostolos grew to mean something far more significant than just a sent one. And it started to mean someone officially designated to carry a message. In fact, it came to mean someone who carried the authority of that message. So you could think ambassador or delegate. That's actually much more in the vein of what Paul has in mind here.
Speaker 1:And that is a very stark and intentional contrast to the use of the word doulos in the immediately preceding context. A slave is not an ambassador. And you see that even more distinctly in the next line. Because Paul says that he is an apostle set apart for the good news of God. So he is a representative of God.
Speaker 1:He carries the authority of God in some sense. He is on a mission sent by God. And this is a fascinating way to think of oneself because it is a profound awareness of both humility and divine purpose all at the same time. Can you be driven and ambitious and successful and humble? Yes.
Speaker 1:Is it hard to hold all of that together in one person? Absolutely. But our tendency is to see ourselves through either lens, not both. And yet when there is a recognition that the passion and the stirring, the ability inside of us to change the world, that it comes from the creative force that sits behind the universe, then there is somehow a sacred energy to that mission. In Paul's mission, the unique challenge that God has for him in front of him is to take the story of this Jewish Messiah, Jesus, and to bring it to the Gentiles.
Speaker 1:That's what he says. That is literally everyone who is not a Jew. This is not a guy who thinks small. And yet he steps into that challenge from this place of deep recognition, of honest embrace of all of his limitations. I can't remember exactly when it was.
Speaker 1:It was about a year ago. I talked about a practice that originated with the teachings of the rabbis, where a student would be instructed to take two pieces of paper, parchment perhaps, and to write two phrases on them. The first, I am made of the dust. The second, the universe was made for me. And they would take those two pieces of paper and fold them up and put one in the left and one in the right pocket.
Speaker 1:And then they would be instructed to keep those aids, but then to pull out whichever one they needed to be reminded of in the moment. Perhaps, you need to be reminded that you are a slave. That you are not strong. That you are not self sufficient. That you are made of the dust and to the dust you will return.
Speaker 1:But then again, maybe today you need to be reminded that you are a sent one. That you have mission and purpose that only you can accomplish in the world. That you are commissioned and tasked and given the authority of the one who has sent you. That the universe, it was made for you. You see, this is what it means to tell good stories about ourselves to ourselves.
Speaker 1:And it's not arrogance. And it's not self delusional granger. It's also not mental self flagellation. It's about coming to see ourselves the way that God sees us. Limited and dependent and needy and yet, full of mission and purpose and design that sits behind your unique creation.
Speaker 1:To know that there is a task that you and only you have been given by God. That you have been sent. And it's okay to be scared by that. No one in the history of the world has ever raised your children. People have written books, but they never lived with your kids.
Speaker 1:No one else can fully understand the pressure to balance the books and make sure that your employees keep their jobs. No one in the world can feel the need that you have to create your art and to tell your story because it's yours. But to know that you are dust, and to recognize that you were not created to stand on your own, this is also part of how we come to know that the universe was somehow made for us. And so as we begin this journey into Romans, may you come to understand that you are a slave and that your story belongs to someone else. But that is because you have been chosen and sent into the world filled with sacred energy and divine adventure.
Speaker 1:So that your life might accomplish things that only God could do. That's Romans chapter one verse one. Next week, verse two. Let's pray. God, help us to tell good stories about ourselves.
Speaker 1:Help us to describe ourselves to ourselves, to introduce ourselves to the world in ways that make you proud. Not filled with hot air and praise and grandiose ideas that come from nowhere, but instead with this deep recognition of all that you have invested into us. Help us to recognize that we are weak. That we are not self sufficient. That we are not strong.
Speaker 1:And yet in the midst of that, once we know it and we turn to you and we lean on you, there is a profound strength that comes from inside of us. As your spirit fills and enlivens and empowers us to be the people that you created us to be. God help us to go out into the world fear fearlessly, to create, to tell your story, to bring renewal and redemption wherever we go, and to participate with you in the story that you are telling as you bring the world back to yourself. God, thank you for involving us in everything that you do. You are a great God.
Speaker 1:And in the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Now we'll end here as we always do with this. Love God. Love people.
Speaker 1:Tell the story. Have a great week, and we'll see you in here back next Sunday.