Hi, church. Welcome back to this week’s Bible study video, where we bring the Bible home as you continue with the Scriptures, not just on Sundays but throughout the week as well. If you are new here, my name is Ryan Rench, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Temecula, California, and today’s video is the third in a series we are doing through the book of Romans. It is not really laid out like a sermon with one big idea; it is more like a lot of little talking points, a bunch of little thoughts from each of the individual verses. So I am going to go for about ten to fifteen minutes, then stop and save the rest for the next video. In the previous videos we talked about the main idea of the book being the gospel, and it is from Paul, in verse 1, to the Romans, in verse 7. In the last couple of videos we looked at the holy Scriptures of God; let me make this a little bigger so it is easier to read on the screen. We looked at the holy Scriptures, as we saw in those first couple of verses, the Lord Jesus Christ, and God’s grace to us. That got us up to verse 5.
The Called, the Beloved, the Saints
Verse 6 says, “Among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ.” There may be a big debate about that, but to me it is fairly simple. Have you placed your faith in Jesus Christ? If yes, then you are part of the called. You are His follower; you are saved. There are a lot of different words to describe what happens to us as Christians, but we are called to serve the Lord. And what else are we called? Verse 7 says, “To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints.” So we are beloved of God. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Let me back up here to some of these verses. Galatians 2:20, there it is: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” So we are part of that call to follow and serve and obey the Lord. “To all that be in Rome… called to be saints.” What else are we called? This word saints. That word just means holy ones. In my Bible it is hagios; this little pop-up describes the word saint as someone holy, set apart for a purpose. The thing itself is not what is holy. A goat can be holy. Dirt can be holy. An altar can be holy. The ground on which Moses walked was called holy ground. So if dirt can be holy, let us not make too much of the dirt. Sainthood is not some super-spiritual state somebody ultimately achieves. No, sainthood is a calling to God’s purpose for your life. As Christians, you are holy. You are in Christ. We are saints if we are in Christ. We have been made holy, not by ourselves or our actions, but by Jesus Christ. It is not the Pope who makes somebody a saint. Paul is not saying, “Boy, good thing Peter, the first Pope, came by and made all of you Romans saints.” No, he is saying, “You guys are saints.” This is not some incredible city full of super-spiritual saints. No, let us not make too much of the person. The position he or she is in, as a holy person, a saint, is all because of Jesus Christ. We are saints because of Christ. But our practice is the thing we work at, in light of who we are. Why are we trying to live holy? Because He is holy. We want to be like Him. We want to be holy like Him: “Be ye holy; for I am holy.” So we are saints positionally, and our practice should reflect our position, who we are in Jesus Christ. Ephesians 5:8 shows that very clearly: “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light.” Walk as children of light. That is what we do as Christians. We are saints, and we are called to walk. So we are the called, we are called beloved, and we are called saints.
Grace and Peace from God
Then it says we have grace and peace from God. Grace is God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense, as the acronym says. And peace: “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” We need peace with God because of how wicked we were before we were saved. “God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day. If he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready.” “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness.” Ephesians 2 says we “were by nature the children of wrath.” That is who we are, born in our sin nature. So even in this introduction to the book of Romans, chapter 1 gives little hints of what is coming in the rest of the book: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ,” Romans 1:7 says. I was in Isaiah 43 recently: “I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour.” In Romans 1:7 it says “from God our Father,” and that does not mean He is just our heavenly Father, as though He were one of many heavenly fathers out there on their own planets. No. Isaiah 43:11 says it very plainly. Isaiah 44:6 says, “Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.” Verse 8 says, “Fear ye not, neither be afraid: have not I told thee from that time, and have declared it? ye are even my witnesses. Is there a God beside me? yea, there is no God; I know not any.” Isaiah 45:5 says, “I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me.” So Romans 1:7 says, “To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.” There is an equality here between those two. “Grace unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” There is equal glory coming from the same God. If Jesus were not God, this statement would be blasphemy, equating Him with God. What if he had said, “From Paul: grace to you and peace from God the Father and from me, Paul”? No, there is no equality there. Peace from God the Father and from the apostle Paul? That is not equal at all; it would be blasphemous to make that statement. But since Jesus is God, he can make the statement here.
I Thank My God
In verse 8 he says, “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.” I think that is a good place for him to start, with thanks. This is a common Roman letter format, starting with a thanksgiving section. Here is this personal thanksgiving: “I thank my God.” He is a personal God. And he thanks Him through Jesus Christ, the great Mediator. We do not have access to God except through Jesus Christ; there is no access otherwise. Romans 1:8 says their faith was spoken of throughout the whole world. They were living this faith, living for their God, their personal God, through Jesus Christ. One of the recent issues of the Baptist Times magazine was about spreading the word through soul-winning churches doing the gospel work, showing everybody what is going on in the churches. They did not have a Baptist Times magazine to spread the word about what was going on at the church of Rome. They were just doing the gospel work, and it was becoming known because of how evangelistic they were. I look at that and go, “Man, are we known for that? Is our church known for that?” You think, “Okay, yeah, I think our church is a soul-winning church.” But how would we be known for that if you, the individual who makes up the church, are not a soul winner, not conscious of souls? Church is not just us corporately; it is you individually who make up the corporate group. So your faith affects the faith of this church. What was the church of Rome? It was the people who made up the church of Rome, and somehow those people were spreading their faith throughout the whole known world. Sometimes we can hide in a crowd, but we are the ones who make up the crowd. You are the one who makes up the crowd. You are the church.
Gospel Life and Prayer Life
Verse 8 says, “Your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world,” and verse 9: “For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers.” This was a service of his spirit, not just an outward service. No, it came from the heart. “God is my witness. I am not lying to you. God is my witness. I am serving with my spirit in the gospel.” Everything he does is about this gospel. That is the heartbeat of everything the apostle Paul does. And if your heart is for the gospel, that makes for an effective prayer life. So how is your prayer life? “Without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers,” he goes on to say, and that is connected to his gospel life. How is your gospel life, and how is your prayer life? They go hand in hand. If your gospel life is not right, your prayer life will not be right, and if your prayer life is not right, your gospel life will not be right. He says, “You are always in my prayers,” many, many prayers that he offers up to the Lord, not just a one-time thing. He was a praying man, and he was praying to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 14:15 talks about praying with the spirit; Ephesians 6 says praying in the Spirit. We do not pray to the Spirit. We pray to the Father, through the Son, by the Spirit or in the Spirit, but never to the Spirit. We involve all of the Trinity in our prayers, as the apostle Paul did here. So our prayers are not some inward mystical thing like the monks’ contemplative prayer. The apostle Paul is not emphasizing an internal prayer, as if there is some prayer inside myself. No, man, my prayer is to God the Father. The apostle Paul was praying without ceasing. He had an ongoing prayer life. Just as Jesus taught us to pray, we just keep on going and keep on praying without ceasing. Where does he say it? “Without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers.” He just makes mention. It does not have to be long. These kinds of prayers intercede for somebody else, and he was making mention of them all the time.
Making Request According to the Will of God
And the spirit of his prayer is in verse 10: “Making request, if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you.” He is just making request, with that little caveat, “if by any means.” He has his plans in mind, but it is fine by him if God changes those plans: “Fine by me, by any means, God, You want to accomplish these.” Do you pray with scriptural phrases like this? Verse 10 talks about praying by the will of God: “I want God’s will to be done. I am submitted to God’s will in my prayers. I am willing for God to say no. Whatever God wants to do with these prayers, I am not going to obligate Him to my idea of what I want done.” There is this charismatic idea that says, “Man, I demand that the devil leave this city. I demand that this sickness be made whole.” There is a book called How to Write Your Own Ticket with God, and Hagin says that Jesus appeared to him and gave him the formula for faith. He said that if anybody, anywhere, will take these four steps or put these four principles into operation, he will always receive whatever he wants from Me or from God the Father. The formula is: say it, do it, receive it, and tell it. That is his formula, and if you do that, you are guaranteed an answer from God. But that is not how the apostle Paul prayed. He just prayed, making requests. He gave specific requests, and he held them loosely. He was not gripping tightly, as if this is how it had to be done. He had specific requests. He was specifically praying for that church, not just a general prayer, “God bless all the missionaries, bless all the churches.” No, he had specific requests for them, and he prayed for them according to the will of God. I encourage you to pray like that, with specific requests. At our church we have a Wednesday night prayer meeting, and we make specific requests in those prayer services for our missionaries. It is present tense, just as it is here, an ongoing prayer request. His request was that he would have a prosperous journey. We pray for travel mercies for people at our church. It is not bad to pray for travels; that is how we often pray. But we want to pray biblically, so that we are praying by the will of God: “to come unto you,” if that is the Lord’s will. We want travel mercies on this journey, but it is not just for safety. The apostle Paul has more than that on his mind in verse 11: “For I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established.”
Established and Comforted Together
He is longing, yearning, to be there with them, but he has more than vacation on his mind. Man, he has spiritual desires for them. He longs to impart unto them some spiritual gift. Ephesians… I am sorry, Acts 20:32: “And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.” His constant prayer request is for people to be established, to grow from infancy to adulthood in Jesus Christ. “That is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.” His desire is to impart a spiritual gift, for them to be established, and for them to be comforted together. He needed that comfort, and they needed that comfort, “by the mutual faith both of you and me.” All of us are involved in this prayer request. Brothers and sisters in Christ believe the same; the faith is in line, and man, that is comforting. “And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” There is a beauty in gathering together and comforting one another. “But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” We want to gather together in God’s house with the family of God and comfort one another. “Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.” Romans 15:4: “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.” There is comfort in witnessing the repentance and obedience of the brethren. There is comfort and exhortation. There is comfort in the knowledge of the imminent rapture. There is comfort in the preacher and the people having the same faith. He says there is this “mutual faith both of you and me.” It is the same faith God wants the apostles to share with the saints. Paul says, “I want there to be comfort. I want to be comforted, and I want to comfort you.” Well, that is just a simple look at the first twelve verses of Romans 1. Actually, I think we started in verse 6, so that is verses 6 through 12, where Paul is saying, “Boy, I hope to come to you, church.” In the next video we will start in verse 13 with some of the things he wants to teach them, and man, these next few verses are absolutely jam-packed with theology and great doctrine about the gospel. So let us talk about that in the next video. We will see you then.
