Saturday, December 8, 2012

Romans 1:5 (the introduction) Part 1

"through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for His name's sake,"

This verse shows the fruit of the gospel: that trough the manifestation of Christ (His life, death, and resurrection) we who are in Him are justified which is to say found not guilty before a just and holy God.  That is what God's grace is: His unmerited favor to those who absolutely do not deserve it.  The emphasis on God's grace in our salvation should remind us that we can never be good enough to be justified (be found not guilty) before a righteous and holy God.  Unfortunately, the common thought is that if I do enough good deeds that will outweigh my bad deeds.  I am pretty sure that is the view of every other religion and anti-Christian cult.  The problem they and we run into is that God demands perfection and as it is written, "There is none righteous (without guilt), not even one;" (Psalm 14:1;53:1; Romans 3:10) and again, "for all have sinned and fall short of the gory of God," (Romans 3:23).  The closest I can think to being good enough is like going to the world's greatest long-jumper and asking him to jump from San Diego to Beijing.  It is impossible!  The good news is that God mercifully put the guilt of the sins of those who would believe upon His Son, Jesus Christ; so that in Him we are completely forgiven.

The next part it a bit more tricky.  There could be two ways of looking at it if we allow that the office of apostle ended with the twelve and Paul (which I personally believe)"...we have received grace and apostleship": the first carries the idea that the "we" that Paul is using refers to just the Apostles and him (and one commentator posits that God did them a favor by giving them their office); the second could use the word apostle more loosely insomuch that all Christian are commanded to preach the gospel to everyone, "Go therefore and make disciples of of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-19).  That, of course, is the great commission in which you could say that in a sense we are all sent ones (apostles) to share the good news (gospel) to all the world.  Of course the original apostles were granted sign-gifts which is to say that they could heal miraculously, cast out demons, and on on occasion raise someone from the dead.  This functioned in the same way God worked in the prophets of the Old Testament.  As an example of what people expected of a prophet in Jesus day consider, "Jesus answered and said to them, 'This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent'.  So they said to Him, 'What then do you do for a sign, so that we may see, and believe You?  What work do You perform?"(John 6:30)  It is interesting that they would say that after Jesus had just finished feeding the five-thousand with five barley loaves and two fish (although the total amount of people could have been closer to seventy-five hundred to ten-thousand to account for women and children) a little while ago but I digress. 

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