Christ, the Heart of the Gospel
1Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the Good News of God, 2which he promised before through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, 3concerning his Son, who was born of the offspring of David according to the flesh, 4who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, 5through whom we received grace and apostleship, for obedience of faith among all the nations, for his name’s sake; 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.
The apostle Paul set out on his third missionary journey from Antioch in Syria around AD 53 and returned to Jerusalem some five years later. During that time he pastored in Ephesus for three years, then passed through Macedonia and stayed in Corinth for about three months. Romans is thought to have been written near the end of that third journey, between late AD 57 and early 58. Paul hoped to make Rome his base for carrying out his plan of taking the gospel to Spain, then called the ends of the earth. But a visit to Rome was not easy to arrange, so, caring for the church there, he sent a letter to teach them sound doctrine and a right understanding of salvation. Paul introduced himself as a servant of Jesus Christ. Christ means the anointed one, and it also carries the meaning of Messiah. In Matthew 16:16, when Jesus asks, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answers, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Peter’s confession makes it plain who Jesus Christ is: he is the Savior who rescued us from death.
When Joseph was troubled over Mary, who was carrying Jesus, an angel appeared and told him that the child had been conceived by the Holy Spirit and that he was to name him Jesus. The name Jesus means the one who will save his people from their sins. God sent an angel to explain what the name meant, and from this we learn that God bore the pain of forsaking his Son for the salvation of sinners. And as the name Yahweh shows, the event of the cross had been planned long before. Through many prophets of the Old Testament, God caused his covenant and the prophecies of the first coming of Jesus to be proclaimed. Through a long history and countless events he foretold that Christ is the true Messiah, and this tells us that salvation was not accomplished in a single moment.
The apostle Paul came to understand that Jesus was the Christ, God the Son, who set aside his throne and came into this world. So he declares boldly that he is a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be the apostle to the Gentiles and set apart for the gospel of God. In the Rome of that day slaves were held in such contempt that people said a slave and a donkey were the same, except that the slave could talk and the donkey could not. Slaves were put on display in the very markets where animals were bought and sold, which tells you how they were treated. And yet the apostle Paul calls himself a slave of Jesus Christ. A slave must obey the master’s commands and live according to the master’s will. To have no life of one’s own is the slave’s lot. A slave exists for the master and must endure a painful life with nowhere to run. Even if the master’s command means death, the slave must obey; and still Paul calls himself a servant of Christ. Seeing such mature faith in the apostle Paul, God perhaps called him up to the third heaven to give him even greater assurance. A servant who rightly understands the master’s will and works by it can be entrusted with the master’s authority and power. God must have thought that if Paul saw and experienced the third heaven for himself, he could overcome any hardship. Just as God overthrew the schemes of Satan, who labored to make Job stumble, and protected Job, so he showed the Kingdom of God to the apostle Paul to make him stand firm under the attacks of so many Jews.
As you live out your faith, you must have spiritual experiences. Take your many experiences as footholds for growth, and hold an unshakable faith. There are experiences like Paul’s, of the third heaven and of spiritual gifts, but you also need the experience of living by the word: of enduring, forgiving, caring for the poor, and giving yourself for others. The more such experiences build up, the more mature in faith you can become. Paul received many revelations and saw with his own eyes a heaven too beautiful for human words. So he repented of a faith that had lived for the law, which could not forgive the sins of the flesh. He had realized that his master was the great King of kings, and he resolved to live a holy life preaching the gospel. Having lived by the law with all his strength, once he met Christ and was called as an apostle, he decided everything by faith. With the authority of God he devoted himself to bringing people to life, and he labored to use his own life as a tool for bearing the fruit of salvation.
You too have been called by God, as Paul was. If you think back over how you were saved, you will see Jesus knocking at your heart through the many problems you took for hardships and through the people around you. With your free will, what kind of life are you choosing now? I hope you will ask yourself whether you are giving yourself to Christ of your own accord, as the apostle Paul did.
When God calls someone, he calls them with the task they will bear already in view. If he called you, it must be because you are needed. Treasure your calling, then, as the apostle Paul did, and fulfill it by faith. In the place where he has entrusted you with that work, you must give your utmost. You know better than anyone what God has given you to do. Your own sins, too, you know better than anyone; whether you will be faithful and whether you will repent is therefore your choice. If laziness, greed, or fear keeps you from taking up your charge, even God cannot help you. Only when you labor to fulfill your calling will the Holy Spirit help you with great power, so that you turn neither to the right nor to the left.
Because the apostle Paul had seen with his own eyes the saved at rest in the Kingdom of God, he did not fear the world that persecuted the gospel. Knowing that the glorious Kingdom of God truly exists, he wanted only to finish the work given him in this passing world. The apostles and saints who did not fear death denied themselves by faith, took up their crosses, and followed Jesus Christ. This is the faith that those who have been saved ought to offer to God.
Just as Paul declared boldly that he had been set apart, you too must declare that you have been set apart for the gospel. To say with confidence that you are one of those set apart, you must live out the teaching of Jesus Christ. Jesus, the prophets, the apostles, and the saints of faith have shown the way by their example; may you, like them, be people who proclaim the gospel.
Romans 1:3-4
3concerning his Son, who was born of the offspring of David according to the flesh, 4who was declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord,
The word gospel means good news, glad tidings. This gospel was not newly devised by the apostle Paul or the other apostles; it is the fruit Jesus won by laying down his own life. The salvation we receive through the gospel is the work of God’s long waiting, of Jesus’ sacrifice, and of the Holy Spirit, who leads us unceasingly in the way of truth. It may seem that we were saved easily, simply by believing, but for God it was never an easy process. The book of life spread open before him shows that God planned it over a long time and labored hard over it, for the names of those set apart are already written there.
Revelation 13:8
8All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been killed.
The book of life appears when Moses pleads with God to forgive the people of Israel who had made the golden calf. From his request that God forgive the people and blot his own name out of the book God had written, we can also see that Moses’ name was written in God’s book.
Philippians 4:3
3Yes, I beg you also, true partner, help these women, for they labored with me in the Good News, with Clement also, and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life.
Paul speaks of the book of life as though its existence went without saying. He said that the Lamb’s book of life records the names of the saints who believed that Christ became flesh, bore the cross, and rose again, and who lived by the word. The gospel, and salvation itself, is to believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became flesh to fulfill God’s promise.
Galatians 4:4-5
4But when the fullness of the time came, God sent out his Son, born to a woman, born under the law, 5that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of children.
Here the purpose of salvation is set down. When God’s time had come, he caused his Son to be born of the line of David. Through the Spirit of holiness he was declared to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead. God did all this so that we who believe it might receive the adoption of children, as Jesus is the Son. This passage tells us that he did all these things to make us children of God.
At the very center of the gospel is the Son of God, Jesus Christ. Jesus is both human and divine. Paul stressed that the heart of the gospel is faith in Jesus Christ, who was born of the line of David and rose again from the dead. The Word who was in the beginning became flesh and came to his own, but a sorrowful thing happened: his own people did not receive him. The gospel he completed while his own people persecuted him and put him to death reached the Gentiles before Israel. Jesus Christ called Paul to take this gospel to the Gentiles. He entrusted this charge to a man who understood both the law and the gospel. Paul insists that the Messiah the prophets foretold possessed both a human and a divine nature.
Let us look at Philippians 2:5-10 and the meaning it holds. “Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus.” We are to apply to our lives exactly what Jesus showed us by his example. “Who, existing in the form of God, didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped.” To fulfill God’s covenant, he set aside his throne. “But emptied himself.” When Paul threw away the world as refuse, he was following the very example of Jesus’ perfect obedience. “Taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.” God the Son became incarnate, coming in a sinner’s body to atone for sin. “And being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, yes, the death of the cross.” To fulfill God’s plan he obeyed to the moment of death and set us an example of lowliness. “Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name.” No name in the world can be compared with Yahweh, the name of God, because in that name God graciously recorded beforehand that Jesus would bear the cross and die. “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth.” In Daniel’s vision, God the Father gave Jesus Christ dominion, glory, and a kingdom, caused all the peoples, nations, and languages to serve him, and gave him an everlasting dominion that will not pass away.
Paul’s letters always have Jesus Christ at their center. Paul stresses that if we confess Jesus with our mouth and believe that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved, and so he wanted the church in Rome to know and believe the true gospel. The resurrection of Jesus means victory over death and the complete defeat of Satan. Becoming an atoning sacrifice acceptable to God, Jesus opened the way for sinners to come to God. Whenever Paul writes a letter, he makes clear that it rests on Scripture. Because the word he proclaims rests on Scripture, he says, he too is proclaiming the Jesus Christ whom the Old Testament prophets foretold. He is stressing the continuity between the word God gave Israel beforehand and the word he himself now proclaims. This matters enormously. Pastors and all of us in the church must, like the apostle Paul, always preach the word in that continuity. Had the apostle Paul spoken as though he were passing on something he had worked out for himself, the Christians in Rome would not have trusted what he preached. The gospel has been God’s plan since before the foundation of the world. Many prophets foretold the birth of Jesus, and their prophecies were fulfilled; we must therefore proclaim the word without adding to it or taking from it.
Isaiah 7:14
14Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
As Isaiah prophesied, Jesus came into the world at his first coming, bore the cross, overcame the power of death, and rose again. Proclaiming this, Paul feared no persecution of any kind. Because the gospel he preached was the truth, he could say boldly that he was a servant of Jesus Christ and the apostle to the Gentiles. It is vital for us, like Paul, to grasp that Jesus Christ is the truth and our wisdom. Experiencing this in life matters greatly, and to have that experience we have to actually live it. If we meet Jesus Christ in the way we live, our faith will not swerve to the right or to the left. Take the drive from Seoul to Busan. The expressway is fast and safe. But because cars travel at high speed, accidents can happen. With this in mind, guardrails have been put up along the road. They warn that the moment a car strikes one, a serious accident can follow. Since a driver’s mistake can end in disaster, they were built to protect the driver. Yet even with every safety measure in place, we see accidents caused again and again by inexperience, drunk driving, or drowsy driving. If people simply kept straight along the well-paved expressway, they would reach their destination safely, yet they lose their lives through behavior no one expected.
Let the guardrail stand for the law and the expressway for Jesus Christ. A guardrail is a warning: go beyond this and you die. Yet people leave Jesus Christ, who is as safe as the expressway, and bring on fatal accidents by trying to keep the guardrail of the law through their works. Those who know that hitting the guardrail of the law means death drive on the well-paved road of the word. But those who ignore the warning lose their lives because of their own sin. Just as guardrails are there to protect the driver’s life, the law was made so that we would realize we are sinners and travel safely with Jesus Christ.
However hard we try not to sin, human beings cannot escape sin. And the role of the law is to show us that no deed of ours can win forgiveness for that sin. The law has no power to forgive sin, and it tells us unceasingly to go to Jesus Christ and be forgiven.
Scripture is like someone telling children who are playing with paint that they must wash in clean water. But the children do not wash in clean water; they pour more water onto the paint and try to wash with that, and they only get dirtier. In the same way, the law tells us to go to Jesus Christ and wash away our sin, but foolish people try to win forgiveness by keeping the law through their own works. In the end, they never understood what sin is. To put it simply: on a road with no crosswalk painted on it, crossing anywhere is no offense. But paint a crosswalk in one spot, and from then on anyone who crosses anywhere else is breaking the law and is in the wrong. This is exactly the role the law plays.
Before God gave the law, people lived as they pleased without knowing it was sin. But once God gave the law to Moses, they came to know that failing to live by it was sin against God. Though they strive with their whole lives to keep the law, sinners cannot keep all of it. God has said that by the works of the law no flesh will be justified in his sight, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin. Human beings, then, being sinners, cannot deal with their own sin. Sin must be atoned for by a righteous one who has no sin, and so faith means looking to the Savior.
Hebrews 10:4
4For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins.
In the tabernacle animals were offered as sin offerings, but that way was not perfect. Even when people offered animals to have their sins forgiven, they went on sinning and had to bring sacrifices again; the remedy was never complete. That is why Jesus, who had no sin, came to fulfill the law. A person is justified not by the works of the law but by believing in Christ, who fulfilled the law. Paul longed to make this deep truth known to the church in Rome. With an earnest heart he told them that since they too had been called to belong to Jesus Christ, he wished them grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
In every letter Paul emphasized that Jesus Christ is the greatest of all, and he comforted the Gentiles with the assurance that they too had been called to belong to Christ. The church in Rome had not been founded by any apostle in person. Even so, the believers there were holding to their faith with strength in a Rome where idolatry was rampant. To such people Paul gave his blessing, telling them that they too belonged to Christ and were beloved of God. That is how precious Jesus Christ is to all his people. The heart of the message the apostle Paul wanted to give the church in Rome is this: whatever temptation comes, do not stray from Jesus Christ, because to live by faith is obedience, and it is salvation. May all of us who stand in the faith likewise go unwavering on the way of truth that Christ alone has given.