Romans 1: 1 - 17

1 Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God – ² the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures ³ regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, ⁴ 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. ⁵ Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake. ⁶ And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.

⁷ 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 from the Lord Jesus Christ.

⁸ First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. ⁹ God, whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you ¹⁰ in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.

¹¹ I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong – ¹² that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith. ¹³ I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.

¹⁴ I am a debtor both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. ¹⁵ That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome.

¹⁶ For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. ¹⁷ For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed – a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’

Righteousness by Faith.

When Paul wrote this letter he had not been to Rome. He did not plant the church, but he hoped very much to visit them some time. In verse 13 he refers to his readers as Gentiles, but as the letter progresses we see many arguments for the Gospel from a Jewish perspective, referring to Abraham and Moses. Most of the churches that Paul planted, visited and wrote to had both Jews and Gentiles in them, and clearly that would be the case in Rome, the capital of the Empire.

Chapters 1 to 3 of Romans are about the need for the good news of the Gospel. Chapters 4 to 8 expand on that, and discuss the working out of the Gospel in a person’s life. Chapters 9 to 11 form an interlude in which Paul pauses to talk about the Jews and their response to the Gospel. Then chapters 12 to 16 are about the practical working out of the Gospel in daily life. Between now and Advent we will go through chapters 1 to 8.

The last two verses of today’s reading shows how important the Gospel message is to Paul: ‘For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed – a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’’

This is definitely setting the scene for some of the wonderful, amazing teaching that will follow as we continue to read through Romans. ‘The Gospel is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.’ You and I heard the Gospel message for the first time, some time ago. Maybe you first heard it and responded to it as a child, and you can’t really remember not having heard the Gospel. Or perhaps you didn’t come across it until later in adult life. Whenever it was, you believed, and as a result of that, God brings salvation. Salvation means we are saved from sin, saved from death, saved from addictions and the pain that comes from living a selfish life. And Paul gives a clue to some of his arguments to come, when he also says that the message came first the to Jew, then to the Gentile.

In the Gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. God is perfect and right, and we see that made clear to us through the Gospel message. And when we have faith in God, we become righteous – not a righteousness of our own through being particularly good, but we gain the righteousness of God. We take on his pure, perfect, ‘rightness’ through trusting in him and being filled with the Holy Spirit. And to ‘prove’ it, Paul quotes from Habakkuk 2: 4 – “The righteous will live by faith.”

 

Prayer

Lord Jesus, I thank you for coming to live for me, to die for me and for rising again. I praise you for the salvation that I have in you because of your death. I thank you for the gift of faith, and I pray for more faith! Thank you for the righteousness that you give me through that faith. Amen.