Paul, a Servant of Jesus Christ
1Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Good News of God,
Romans is generally thought to have been written while Paul was staying in Corinth for about three months, after three years of ministry in Ephesus and a journey through Macedonia. The date is put at late AD 57 to early 58, near the end of his third missionary journey. Romans carries Paul’s sound faith. It makes the truth plain, not only to the people of his day but to us today. A letter like this, written by one who understood the gospel rightly and proclaimed it as the apostle Paul did, has the power to save, because it delivers the word of Christ without adding to it or taking from it.
In John 6:63 Jesus said, “It is the spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and are life,” and he declared that he had come to give life to the spirit. In Mark 13:31 he made another astonishing statement: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” Jesus said plainly that he came to bring the spirit to life and that the flesh profits nothing, yet people go on living for the flesh, because they are convinced that fullness of spirit is no help at all in real life. When their children go hungry for lack of money, when their bodies fall ill, when the wicked threaten them, they believe the holiness of the soul is of no use whatever. So they reject the word, even though Jesus told them the flesh profits nothing. But if it is true that heaven and earth will pass away while his words will not, then we must put what Jesus said first and live by it. Then the flesh, which leans on the world, will come naturally under the rule of the spirit, and because the spirit is ruled by God, we will gain the strength and wisdom to overcome the flesh.
Paul had once lived under the rule of the flesh, but after his conversion he humbled himself completely and showed the humility of a man who relies on the Holy Spirit. This is the faith of those who cast off the useless flesh and live by the word. To give up the worldly power he had enjoyed until then, and to count the world as refuse for the sake of the Jesus he had persecuted and mocked, is by no means easy. When the commanding officer who was escorting Paul to Rome boasted that he had bought his Roman citizenship with money, it showed that Paul, a citizen from birth, had lived with certain rights and protections. That same Paul gave up every privilege of his life for Jesus. For someone who had lived for the law, such a decision is hard indeed. Yet Paul, with the single resolve to become a servant who follows Jesus Christ, gave up every privilege he had been given, while still putting those privileges to fitting use for the gospel. For example, he wrote this to the Corinthians, who were contending with the Jews who maligned him:
“Are they Hebrews? So am I.
Are they Israelites? So am I.
Are they the offspring of Abraham? So am I.”
Knowing why God had made him a man of standing, means, and learning, Paul gave accurate facts to the Jews who criticized him and to the Christians who disputed with him. More than that, he used those very rights to proclaim with clarity and precision the atonement of Jesus Christ, who is the righteousness of God. Here we see that he had not thrown away his identity as a Jew; by the grace of God he had been born again as a Christian.
Born a Jew, he had lived by the law, but once he met Christ and understood what the law truly required, he could be born again as a Christian. Before he received the gospel, he himself had rejected Christ, who came to atone for the sins of humanity; now he grieved over the Jews who were rejecting Jesus in the same way, and he preached the gospel to them without ceasing. Think of an athlete who represents their home province at the national championships. If they perform well there, they are selected for the national team, and now they have the chance to compete for both their province and their country. From the athlete’s point of view, wearing the nation’s colors is far more glorious, and far more of an honor, than representing a province. In the same way, when Paul, who had kept the law, met Christ, he saw a greater unseen realm and came to know what an astonishing miracle it is to have one’s sins forgiven.
Until then Paul had believed that salvation was confined to the Jews, and for that reason he persecuted the Christians who believed in Jesus, the one who claimed to be the Son of God. Intent on rooting out the Christians who did not keep the law, he set out for Damascus with letters from the high priest, and on the way he met Jesus face to face. Paul was a man of such power that the high priest would issue him letters of authority. Breathing threats against the disciples of Jesus, he was sure that persecuting Christians was right, and he felt no guilt at all. He did not know how great a sin it was to persecute those who believed in Jesus, and so he pressed on toward Damascus with zeal, thinking he was being loyal to God.
Acts 9:3-5
3As he traveled, he got close to Damascus, and suddenly a light from the sky shone around him. 4He fell on the earth, and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 5He said, “Who are you, Lord?” The Lord said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
Saul, racing toward the Christians with letters in hand, was an extremely dangerous man, and every moment must have counted. Only Jesus Christ could stop such a man. Saul was armed with the law culturally, religiously, and from birth. So thoroughly was he armed with the law and with power that he could put Stephen to death, and it was utterly unthinkable that he would ever receive Christ. Who could have preached the gospel to such a man? Trained under Gamaliel, a rabbi much respected in his day, he regarded wiping out the Christians as faith itself, and as loyalty. The one who stopped this man, who felt no guilt in killing Christians, was none other than Jesus.
When a bright light surrounded Saul, he was so terrified that he fell to the ground. Then from heaven came the voice of Jesus, full of grief: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Because Saul did not believe that Jesus Christ was alive, he had felt no fear in persecuting the church; but the voice he now heard from heaven was terror itself. When Saul, astonished, asked who he was, the answer came: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” When Jesus had said that he was the Son of God, the Lord of the Sabbath, and the temple, Saul had taken him for a heretic who obscured the glory of God. Now he saw the light of that same Jesus Christ and heard his voice for himself. As it dawned on him that Jesus, who had died so wretchedly on the cross, was the living God, Saul must have felt that everything he had built his life on, the faith of the law he had kept and a life lived for the law, was collapsing.
Philippians 3:20-21
20For our citizenship is in heaven, from where we also wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; 21who will change the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working by which he is able even to subject all things to himself.
Paul received the Jesus Christ he met at Damascus as the almighty King. He had thought that keeping the law was his reason for living and the way to become one of God’s people, but he came to see that he had been wrong on every count. The moment he saw the light of Jesus Christ and heard his voice, he knew that the authority of Christ surpasses any power in the world. Until then he had been proud of being a Jew and of his Roman citizenship, but once he served Christ as King, he found that neither could compare with citizenship in the Kingdom of God.
Having met Jesus in person, he came to believe that the Kingdom of God is a real kingdom. When he saw how worthless in Christ were the things he had once boasted of, his knowledge of the law, his wealth, and his honor, he threw them all away like refuse. Later, as he preached the gospel, Paul realized that these same things were tools for reaching the Jews, and he used them wisely. And the Christians he had once thought heretics who should vanish from the earth he now believed to be brothers closer than his own flesh and blood; for their sake he gladly became the apostle to the Gentiles.
Ephesians 2:19-20
19So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God, 20being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone;
To the very Gentiles he had once looked down on, Paul said that they were no longer outsiders and strangers but brothers united with Christ, and that we have now become the household of God. No one was changed more by the gospel than the apostle Paul himself. Look at pastors and church members today: they say they believe in Christ, yet they live for the world more than for Christ. Every value and every standard they hold comes from the world, so it is the world they follow. If we cast off the worthless works of the flesh and live for the spirit, as the apostle Paul did, our priorities will change, and with them the direction of our lives and our final destination.
Acts 9:26-27
26When Saul had come to Jerusalem, he tried to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. 27But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared to them how he had seen the Lord on the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how at Damascus he had preached boldly in the name of Jesus.
Paul returned to Jerusalem after three years and stayed fifteen days. Having received Christ, he was likely eager above all to see the disciples. Yet although he went to meet Peter and the disciples, he did not get to meet them. In Galatians 1:18-19 he says that after three years he went up to Jerusalem to visit Peter and stayed with him fifteen days, but saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. The church in Jerusalem did not believe that Paul had been converted. Still, it is easy to understand why people kept away from him. Here was a man who had killed Christians, Stephen among them; if he now claimed to have been converted overnight and called to be an apostle to the Gentiles, they could hardly be expected to believe it. However hard Paul tried, he could not win their trust. He could say he had met Jesus at Damascus, but given what he had done, their reaction was only natural. Saul had been so trusted by the persecutors that the high priest gave him letters; now he was suddenly claiming to be an apostle, and that would have made people all the more afraid. It was Barnabas who vouched for Paul at that point, so that he could have fellowship with the church in Jerusalem.
Barnabas was full of the Holy Spirit and of faith, and he was zealous in caring for the poor and in spreading the word. Respected in the Jerusalem church, he introduced Paul to its leaders when the others suspected him and kept their distance, and he helped him serve as a worker in the church. Had it not been for Barnabas, it would probably have taken Paul a long time to be welcomed into the heart of the church. With his help, Paul was able to preach the gospel and plant churches in many lands along the Mediterranean, Asia Minor among them. Tradition counts Barnabas as one of the seventy disciples of Jesus. He likely stood near the cross and witnessed Jesus’ death; he is said to have founded the church in Cyprus and to have been martyred later at Salamis on that island. Humbling himself and lifting Paul up, he laid the foundation on which Paul could work as the apostle to the Gentiles, as Jesus Christ had commanded. Barnabas had gone ahead of Paul in the faith, and he labored so that Paul could do the work of God. That is the very faith God desires of his people.
God saw Paul kill Stephen, and he saw him serve the law with unwavering loyalty. He sees him, too, as he hurries off to persecute Christians. On the other side, he must also have seen the saints trembling in fear, praying that he would stop Saul as he came after them. Their prayers were answered not only by Saul’s path being blocked but by his becoming an apostle and a fellow worker in the gospel. Even as they looked at Paul after his conversion, they could not, it seems, understand why God had called wicked Saul to be the apostle to the Gentiles. Why? We can understand their bewilderment: why should Saul, who had persecuted them, become the apostle to the Gentiles, and not Stephen, who kept the faith to the very end? It is no wonder they needed time to accept Saul as an apostle. And this shows that God is fair. We too, before we received the gospel, lived apart from Christ without knowing that this was sin. We did not believe in Jesus Christ and lived only for ourselves, yet because so many people live that way, it never occurred to us that it was sin. But when we received Christ, we knew that a life without Christ is sin. It might seem better if only the faithful had air to breathe and water to drink, but God has made air and water freely available even to the wicked who persecute Christians. He gives sunlight and rain to everyone who lives in this world, and he has made all that he created theirs to use freely. Paul, too, had lived without knowing that all of this was grace, until he met Jesus Christ and realized it was the love of God.
The special gift God gives his people is salvation. Stephen received the blessing of meeting Christ, who stood waiting for him with open arms, and the Christians who were persecuted were granted entrance into the eternal Kingdom of Heaven. In his mercy God called Paul and made him a wise preacher of the gospel, and he gave him faith to give thanks through countless sufferings. So that Paul could work by faith, God poured out gifts on him and gave him faithful, well-prepared fellow workers such as Barnabas. People think it unfair when the wicked receive grace. But if we ask whether we ourselves are worthy to receive grace, we will come to revere the boundless love of God and the unchanging faith of Paul. God called us when we had fallen into death, made us someone’s parents, and gave us the ability and the means to live without want. For our salvation he brought us to meet someone he had prepared, and through that person’s sacrifice he caused us to receive the blessing of eternal life. Before we complain about Paul’s salvation, we must ask whether we are thankful for the salvation we ourselves received as a free gift.
When people threatened Paul’s life, Barnabas sent him to Tarsus. Paul stayed there fourteen years, teaching the believers and giving his faith a firm structure. Christ caused Paul to settle his faith while experiencing a spiritual world deeper than the law. Nearly everyone who receives Christ goes through a process like this, cutting away what is not needed as their faith matures. Just as Paul threw away the strength and power of the world as refuse, we too must train ourselves to forsake the world.
Acts 28:16-19
16When we entered into Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard, but Paul was allowed to stay by himself with the soldier who guarded him. 17After three days Paul called together those who were the leaders of the Jews. When they had come together, he said to them, “I, brothers, though I had done nothing against the people, or the customs of our fathers, still was delivered prisoner from Jerusalem into the hands of the Romans, 18who, when they had examined me, desired to set me free, because there was no cause of death in me. 19But when the Jews spoke against it, I was constrained to appeal to Caesar, not that I had anything about which to accuse my nation.
When he was first taken to Rome, he was not kept under strict confinement and could move about freely, so he was able to invite the leading Jews and preach the gospel to them. These Jews lived in Rome because Pompey had brought their people there as captives in BC 63, when he crushed the Jewish struggle for independence. Wanting to know what these Jews had heard about Christianity and about himself, Paul explained his situation: the Jews had tried to kill him, and he had been forced to appeal to Caesar. They said they had heard nothing about him, but they knew that the Christian faith he held was spoken against everywhere. Even so, Paul met as many people as he could and preached the gospel to them. In Rome he wrote Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. Once released, he went by way of Ephesus to Colossae and on as far as Macedonia, preaching the gospel. His next goal was Spain, but he was unable to go; in the end he seems to have visited Crete, left Titus there, and written 1 Timothy and Titus.
When Paul was arrested a second time and taken to Rome, his second imprisonment was nothing like the first. In AD 64, when the great fire broke out in Rome and the people’s anger turned against Emperor Nero, he laid the blame on the Christians, then a small minority. Peter is thought to have been martyred at this time. Held in an isolated place where he could see no one, Paul wrote 2 Timothy while he awaited the day of his execution, and he was martyred in the spring of AD 68. The Christians of the early church had to pay for loving Jesus with their lives, and they had to endure every kind of persecution to hold fast to their faith.
Paul longed to preach the gospel to the mighty Roman Empire, but because he was in prison, it was not easy. Rome was steeped in idolatry, worshiping Zeus and the gods of this world, so preaching Jesus Christ there meant being ready to die. To proclaim the King of heaven to people who relied on the kings of this world was a clash of whole systems of value, and conflict was inevitable. Because Paul had met Jesus Christ, who saved him, he would not have regretted it, even as he died cruelly at Nero’s hands. He was executed in Rome ten years after he wrote Romans. Nero’s brutal sentence closed the eyes of his body, but the moment the eyes of his spirit opened, I imagine he was filled with joy at meeting Jesus Christ standing before him. Perhaps in that moment Paul understood Stephen’s smile. Reading Romans, we see how much he longed for the church in Rome, which he had never met, and how hard he labored to teach its members the truth rightly.
Romans 1:6-7
6among whom you are also called to belong to Jesus Christ; 7to all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul said that those in Rome all belonged to Jesus Christ, because, like him, they were a people Christ had bought with his blood. He stressed that since our citizenship in the Kingdom of God is grace freely given, we, as temples of the Holy Spirit, must give glory to God. He knew he had no claim to be saved and no claim to be forgiven, yet through the love of God and the sacrifice of Christ he had become one of the saints. Redeemed by the love of God, who shows no partiality, he lived with the conviction that he must preach the gospel until the day his life ended. Knowing how great was the love that had called him, an enemy of Jesus Christ, and appointed him apostle to the Gentiles, Paul gave his life to Christ. This kind of faith is not for Paul alone, because if, like Paul, we are certain that by the grace of God we have been saved from sin and death, it is a calling every one of us must take up for Christ.
Just as Jesus Christ loved to the very end, we too must live owing no one anything except to love one another. If we desire to live by faith, we can come to understand, as Paul did, how deep is the love that atoned for us; then we can live as God’s holy people who repay his grace. The brother or sister in Christ beside you now is a servant of God and a fellow worker whom God has sent to make up for your weakness. Even if you cannot repay with your life, as Paul did, the grace you received freely, I hope you will strive to live by faith as long as you have breath.