Sermons

At the close of the letter, the names of the believers in the church at Rome follow one after another: Priscilla and Aquila, Junia and Andronicus, Rufus and his mother. Paul greets each of them by name, calling them helper, fellow worker, and mother.

He names them because they had served alongside him at the risk of their lives. They opened their homes to the church, risked their necks to protect Paul, and took him in when he was alone. At the same time, Paul urges the church in Rome to be on guard against the false teachers who had found their way in. Such people do not teach the truth but serve only their own appetites, and with smooth talk they lead the unsuspecting astray.

Believers are not shaken when they know the Word. Without the Word as their measure, they are taken in by plausible arguments and in the end are robbed of both their faith and their church. As in the closing confession, that glory belongs to God forever through Jesus Christ, God’s people must stand firmly on that gospel alone and offer their praise to God.

On the shore of the Sea of Galilee, where Peter and Andrew were casting their nets, Jesus calls them. They left the life they had known as fishermen just as it was and followed him at once.

This call shows the very purpose for which Jesus came into the world. To draw people out with the net of the gospel is the work of evangelism to which Paul gave himself, and it is like the priestly work of presenting the Gentiles to God as an offering. To help the church in Jerusalem, Paul sets aside his plan to go on to Spain and, at the risk of his life, turns toward Jerusalem instead.

Each time his plans did not go as he intended, Paul sought God’s will within them, and even when he finally reached Rome in chains, he went on preaching the gospel to the end. Helping a brother is not the task of one person but a work of prayer that the whole church shares, and kneeling before God in this way is the quickest road.

At Christmas, churches everywhere are full of joy and delight in having been saved. But Jesus, who came to atone for sin, lived each day knowing the day he would bear the cross had already been set, and along that road he was pelted with stones and mocked.

Those who are strong in faith must carry the weaknesses of the weak as their own burden, and instead of trying to lecture them or looking down on them, they must live it out in front of them. Yet even when love is given, it may bear no fruit if the weak do not make the effort as well, so the strong must not try to gather that result with their own hands but must look to God alone.

The sermon said that the problems of the church in Rome, where Jews and Gentiles, masters and slaves worshiped together, are resolved by knowing Scripture. It went on to say that the salvation of the Gentiles was God’s plan from the beginning, and that the strong living out their faith with joy is itself the wisdom that shows the weak an easy way to heaven.

An angel tells Cornelius to send for Peter, and Peter, while at prayer, sees a vision. A sheet let down from heaven is filled with unclean animals, and when a voice commands, “Kill and eat,” Peter replies, “I will not eat anything impure.” After this happens three times, Cornelius’s men arrive at the door, and the Holy Spirit tells Peter to go with them, doubting nothing.

Peter knew that salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ, yet he was still bound by the outward forms of the law. Later, at Antioch, he was sharing a meal with Gentile believers but drew back when the circumcision party arrived, and the apostle Paul rebuked him for it. In the church at Rome as well, Jewish Christians who kept the feast days and food laws and Gentile Christians who felt free of them were judging one another. Paul declares neither side right or wrong; instead he says that their quarrel has nothing to do with salvation.

Scripture forbids despising a brother or causing him to stumble over food and feast days. Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s, and so to wait for a brother until he grows for himself, holding him close in the meantime, is the maturity God desires. A church whose members build one another up in this way is not one he rebukes.

Paul says not to take revenge but to leave it in God’s hands, and, as far as possible, to live at peace with everyone. He goes on to teach that every person must be subject to the governing authorities, for those authorities have been established by God. These words were given even in the days of Nero’s reign.

To submit to those in authority does not mean surrendering to evil; it means seeking to understand why God set that authority in place. Just as Israel was able to cling to God precisely because Pharaoh was wicked, even an evil ruler is put to use for God’s purposes. The laws of the world are to be kept so long as they do not stand in the way of the gospel, but where they forbid the worship offered to God, they must be boldly resisted.

God’s people must cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Rather than trying to change the world, they need to find within it the brothers and sisters God has entrusted to them and bring them the gospel. To owe no one anything except the debt of love, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself: that is the way the whole law is fulfilled.

The passage speaks of giving food and drink to those who persecute. The world fights to pay back its enemies, but the church fights for souls, and so forgiveness and love become its way.

When injustice is patiently endured and answered with good, a time comes when the other person recognizes the wrong of their own accord. The same love was at work when Jesus would not give up on doubting Thomas, but let him touch his hands and his side. When repaying wrongs is left to God, and Christians go down to the lowly place, not counting themselves better than others, strife ceases and relationships are restored.

Blessing and cursing alike return in the end to the one who speaks them. To bless from the heart requires a high sense of self-worth, and true harmony comes when a person empties themselves and acknowledges others. Rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep: that is the life that overcomes evil with good.

The apostle Paul calls those who have received mercy to offer their bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. A living sacrifice means giving without holding anything back, yielding the right to decide to God, and laying no claim to one’s own rights.

In the offerings of Cain and Abel, God looked not at the gift but at the spirit of their everyday lives. Every one of us is born with an evil nature, yet as we live in patience, forgiveness and sharing, that nature is little by little covered over. Suffering is the process that softens and melts it, so that it can hold the likeness of God.

The church is one body. Its members have received different gifts, but they stand together in partnership, not in rank. Gifts, time and service all belong to God, so they must not be used to put oneself on show; when God’s people, each in their own place, put the work of God before the affairs of the world, the church, the family and the nation grow healthy.

Israel has been left hardened for a time, until all the Gentiles have been saved. In the end they too will turn back and be saved. This order of things is God’s plan, and it is beyond human understanding.

A shepherd puts up a fence to guard the flock, and if a sheep tries to get over it, he will hold it back, even if he has to tie it with a rope. That is love, not bondage. In the same way, when God shuts us up in our disobedience, it is because he means to keep us safe. The Jews thought of themselves as the chosen people and refused that fence, and so they ended up further from his protection.

Neither the Gentiles nor the Jews are saved as a whole. Those who respond in faith are the ones who are saved. God does not go back on his calling, and his grace never runs dry. No one can fully fathom his wisdom, and nothing is left but to praise him.

When a cultivated olive branch that the farmer has tended with care fails to bear fruit, he cuts it off, reluctant as he is to lose it, and grafts a wild olive branch in its place. When Israel treated God’s repeated love and every opportunity to repent as rubbish, God stripped away the grace they had enjoyed, and their life along with it.

This did not happen because God had failed; it came about within his greater plan. Like a mother who, when her elder child will not eat, ends up feeding the younger one instead, God saw the Jews reject the gospel, and the Gentiles were grafted into their place and received salvation. Yet a grafted branch that boasts about the root may be cut off just as unsparingly as the natural branches were.

Whether a branch is broken off or spared rests with each person. Those who remain in his kindness enjoy that kindness; those who grow proud meet his severe face. Not through striving but through love, with humility and gratitude, God’s people must bear the fruit of the cultivated olive tree.

Elijah defeated 850 false prophets and worked the miracle of bringing rain upon a land in drought. Yet when Jezebel threatened to kill him, he fled into the wilderness and, under a broom tree, prayed that he might die. God showed him a mighty wind, an earthquake and a fire, but was in none of them; at the last he spoke to Elijah in a still, small voice.

Elijah said, “I alone am left,” but God told him there were seven thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal. The miracles he had performed came not from his own power but had been entrusted to him by God, and he forgot this, seeing only his own zeal. Those whose eyes are fixed on outward events and miracles alone do not hear the still, small voice, and when people withhold their approval, they lose heart.

Neither the temple nor zeal is a human possession; both are the grace of God. Though Israel forsook God, he did not forsake his own people, and through the remnant he carries on his work of salvation. This is the word to be heard today: not to claim the grace received as one’s own, but to confess that, for all one’s shortcomings, one belongs to the remnant God has chosen.

When Jesus went up to Jerusalem, he went for the salvation of one person. Because he overcame the death God had decreed and rose again, we now have, through his resurrection, a reason to believe in God.

It is not right for those who have been saved to turn away from people still held in darkness. Faith comes from hearing, and there is no hearing without someone to speak. So Christians are responsible for sharing the gospel wherever they stand. Yet truth is not forced on anyone or drilled into them. It soaks in gradually, just as Jesus spent three years with the twelve disciples.

Whether a listener believes the message is that person’s own part, and it is God who bears the fruit. Those who bring the gospel have nothing to fear and need only speak as they have been commissioned. God has entrusted his people with a calling, as he once did with Israel, and he does not let those who do his work come to ruin.

The Jews sought to establish their own righteousness by keeping the law. Yet because no one can keep the law perfectly, Christ fulfilled the law and became its end on our behalf. The Gentiles, with no merit of their own, received that salvation by faith.

Zeal to establish righteousness by works can turn into a zeal that has nothing to do with God. Indeed, it is like tripping over the stumbling stone. By contrast, God gladly receives the faith that welcomes Christ like a newborn child, bringing no merit at all.

Salvation comes when we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths. The word is not far off; it is already near, on our lips and in our hearts. Whoever confesses Jesus Christ as Lord and trusts in his resurrection is saved, Jew and Gentile alike, without distinction.