Today I can share with you by kind permission of Monarch the second chapter of my friend Phil Moore\u2019s new book Straight to the heart of Romans.<\/em><\/a> The third will be made available to those who subscribe to my email newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n IT\u2019S PERSONAL <\/span><\/strong>(1:1-7)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201c\u2026 the gospel of God \u2026 regarding his Son.\u201d (Romans 1:1&3)<\/em><\/p>\n Romans may be brilliant, but it isn\u2019t easy reading. It is the sixth of Paul\u2019s thirteen New Testament letters and the only one he wrote to a church which he had neither planted nor visited,[1]<\/a> which often makes it feel more like a lecture than a letter. Paul livens up his monologue by heckling himself with questions, and tries to build bridges by naming lots of mutual friends in chapter 16, but none of this can stop Romans from feeling like a theological essay. It lacks the intimacy of 1 Thessalonians or the tailor-made teaching of 1 Corinthians. But don\u2019t let that fool you that this letter isn\u2019t personal.<\/p>\n Romans isn\u2019t primarily about sin or righteousness or justification or the role of Israel. It is about \u201cthe gospel of God \u2026 regarding his Son\u201d<\/em>. In case we miss that Paul\u2019s message is primarily about a person, he also urges Timothy in another letter to \u201cRemember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel.\u201d<\/em>[2]<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n We need to note this as we start Romans, because so many people read the letter as a Gospel formula that sin plus the cross plus repentance equals justification<\/em>. Unless we grasp that the Gospel is about a Jewish man, descended from King David, who was revealed as God\u2019s Son when he raised him from the dead, then we will misunderstand Paul\u2019s teaching in 10:9.[3]<\/a> We will treat it as a call to respond to the Gospel by following a formula, when in fact it is a call to respond to the Lord Jesus as a person.<\/p>\n Paul was not saying anything new to the Romans. This was, after all, how the Roman church began. Its earliest members had been there on the Day of Pentecost to hear the first Gospel sermon in Acts 2. After eight verses which responded to the crowd\u2019s immediate question, Peter launched into a message which began with \u201cJesus of Nazareth\u2026\u201d <\/em>and which ended fifteen verses later with \u201cGod has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n Other church members had been there when Peter preached a Gospel sermon to a crowded room of Romans in Acts 10. Cornelius gave him carte blanche to preach anything he wanted \u2013 \u201cWe are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us\u201d<\/em> \u2013 and Peter chose to give a ten-verse biography of Jesus which recounted his baptism, his experience of the Holy Spirit, his healing ministry, his death and resurrection, and his post-resurrection appearances. He told them Jesus was Lord and that unless they received his forgiveness they would face his judgment.<\/p>\n So when Paul tells the Roman Christians that the Gospel is personal, he is not telling them anything particularly new. What is new is that he clarifies for them why conversion means more than assenting to certain Christian doctrines. When the Gospel is presented as a series of propositions by which listeners can escape God\u2019s judgment and go to heaven when they die, it creates stillborn, self-centred \u2018converts\u2019 who are very different from the ones which Paul describes in these first seven verses.<\/p>\n The Gospel we share affects how converts see themselves<\/em>. The essence of sin is to act as if the world revolves around us, so an impersonal gospel fails to deal with the root of the problem. It tells us that we are so precious that God sacrificed his Son because he couldn\u2019t bear to see people like us die. It pleads with us to accept God\u2019s salvation with a promise that he will improve our lives if we ask him to come into our lives. Those who respond to this \u2018gospel\u2019 rise from their knees thinking that God just made a transaction with them<\/em>, so they can sit back to see whether he makes good on his promise to make their lives better. In contrast, those who respond to Paul\u2019s Gospel that Jesus is Lord rise from their knees understanding that they just made a transaction with God<\/em>. They repent of acting as if the world revolves around themselves, and accept nothing short of a Copernican Revolution in their thinking: they confess that they are mere planets and that they must now revolve around God\u2019s Son.<\/p>\n To stress this, Paul begins his letter with a Greek phrase which was very offensive in Roman culture: \u201cPaul, a slave of Christ Jesus\u201d<\/em>. When Tacitus, the great historian of Nero\u2019s reign, insults people he tells his readers they had \u201cthe mind of a slave\u201d<\/em>,[4]<\/a> but Paul says that this is the essence of what it means to follow Christ. Praying a prayer cannot help us unless we accept that we now \u201cbelong to Jesus Christ\u201d <\/em>and authenticate our prayer with \u201cthe obedience that comes from faith\u201d<\/em>.[5]<\/a> Responding to the Gospel means surrendering to King Jesus.<\/p>\n The Gospel we share also affects how converts see their mission<\/em>. If they respond to a message that God wants to meet their needs, they become Christian consumers. They share testimonies which focus on what caused them to cry out to God and on what their decision has saved them from<\/em>. They do not echo Paul\u2019s humility when he says three times in these seven verses that it is God who calls us, or his excitement over what this means he has been set apart for<\/em>.[6]<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n The Gospel we share also affects how converts expect God to use them<\/em> to fulfil his purposes. If they are told that the Gospel is a message all about them, their involvement in mission will lead to either pride or despair because they will assume that success depends on their own hard work. They don\u2019t grasp that it is \u201cthe gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets\u201d<\/em> countless centuries before they were even born, or that Jesus makes us successful \u201cthrough him and for his name\u2019s sake\u201d<\/em>. They cannot understand Paul\u2019s confidence in verse 13 that he will always be fruitful wherever he goes. They forget that when Paul finally made it to Rome he simply \u201ctaught about the Lord Jesus Christ\u201d<\/em>.[7]<\/a> They think the Gospel is a set of propositions, but Paul insists it is a person.<\/p>\n John Piper puts it this way: \u201cW<\/em>hen we ask about God\u2019s design we are too prone to describe it with ourselves at the centre of God\u2019s affections. We may say, for example, his design is to redeem the world. Or to save sinners. Or to restore creation. Or the like. But God\u2019s saving designs are penultimate, not ultimate. Redemption, salvation, and restoration are not God\u2019s ultimate goal. These he performs for the sake of something greater.\u201d<\/em>[8]<\/a> <\/em>He does it for his own glory through King Jesus, our Lord, as Paul tells us in this deeply personal letter about God\u2019s Gospel regarding his Son.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> He had not visited the Colossian church either, but at least he had planted it through one of his converts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [2]<\/a> 2 Timothy 2:8.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [3]<\/a> Paul stresses that Jesus is both man and God by two similar phrases in verses 3 and 4: kata sarka <\/em>and kata pneuma<\/em>, or according to the flesh<\/em> and according to the Spirit<\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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