Dr. Kevin DeYoung | The Very Purest Gospel

Sunday Morning, January 18, 2026
Given by Dr. Kevin DeYoung | Senior Pastor, Christ Covenant Church

The Very Purest Gospel

Romans 1:1-7

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Transcript

Let's pray. 

Gracious heavenly Father, we ask – knowing that we are needy people, and this is a needy preacher – that you would give us your Holy Spirit in fuller measure, both for the preaching of your word, that it might be clear, true, faithful, forceful, and to the hearing of your word, that you might give us open hearts, good minds, wills ready to obey. We ask all of these things for Jesus' sake. Amen. 

Romans chapter 1, verses 1-7. We read from God's word, beginning at chapter 1, verse 1:

“Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“This epistle is really the chief part of the New Testament and the very purest gospel and is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word, by heart, but occupy himself with it every day as the day daily bread of the soul. It can never be read or pondered too much, and the more it is dealt with, the more precious it becomes and the better it tastes”: those words from Martin Luther at the beginning of his preface to Romans. May that be your prayer and mine during this series on Romans, that it would be daily bread of the soul, knowing that it cannot be read or pondered too much. I hope that by the end of this series, you agree it cannot be pondered too much and that the more it is dealt with, the more precious it becomes and the better it tastes. 

This book has been called the greatest letter ever written. And so it is. It is the longest of Paul's letters as well as the most theological, the most difficult, the most comprehensive, and also the most consequential. Beforehand praying, Nathan said in his prayer that this letter has changed the world, and that's not an exaggeration. You can just think, perhaps off the top of your head, of how consequential the book of Romans has been in the life of the church. It was that instrument that God used to convert Augustine as he heard children playing and saying to each other tolle lege, tolle lege – pick up and read, pick up and read. And he picked up a Bible, and he turned to the book of Romans – it was Romans 13 – and that convicted him to the heart and was the instrument of his conversion in the fourth century. Or, just as famously in the 16th century, Martin Luther – his famous tower experience, as he recounted it later, and we'll have much more to say about that in the weeks ahead. It was his wrestling with the book of Romans, and in particular that phrase “the righteousness of God,” whereby he came to see and to taste the sweetness of the gospel, that it is that good news whereby we who are sinners can have a righteousness not our own. And then, in the 18th century, John Wesley was converted famously hearing – overhearing – someone read from Luther's preface to the book of Romans, and John Wesley wrote later in his journal that he felt his heart strangely warmed and trusted in Christ alone for salvation. From Augustine to Luther to Wesley, this book has been the instrument of great work in the world. 

You can think of it as the Mount Everest of preaching – at least that's what it feels like to me. It's not the longest book in the Bible, but it is perhaps the deepest and maybe takes us up the highest, in particular for reformed preachers. James Montgomery Boice preached four volumes’ worth of messages on Romans, totaling 239 sermons. John Piper did an eight-year series on Romans, preached 225 sermons. Before both of them, not to be outdone by almost anyone, Martyn Lloyd-Jones preached on Romans – he did so on Friday nights in London for over 12 years, a total of 366 sermons, and he retired before he finished the book, in chapter 14. Now, I do not anticipate 366 or 225 or 239 sermons. I think we will go at a faster clip than that, but we will try not to be rushed either. As I've mentioned in these weeks leading up to the start of this series, I have not preached through the book of Romans. I’ve preached a number of times from different texts in Romans and studied it, of course, but I always had in my head that it just seemed like I ought to put in 20 years of ministry before I try to climb Mount Romans. I don't think I feel ready for it. I'm in my 24th year of ministry, but let's start it together. 

At the start of this series, we would do well to orient ourselves just a little bit to the book as a whole. I don't think we need to spend a lot of time with all of the themes, because the themes will come out through the preaching of the book, but a little bit by way of introduction will at least help orient you, lest you think that this just floated down from the sky, this letter. So, quickly, five questions: who, to whom, when, where, and why? 

So, who wrote this? It's the easiest one to answer. It's right there in verse 1: Paul. This is Paul, also called Saul, and it's very likely that Paul was not a new name. That's not his converted name. Maybe he used it more as an apostle to the Gentiles, but likely, just as Simon Peter had the name Cephas, he had two names – Saul, now known to most as Paul. He was a persecutor of the church. He famously met the Lord Jesus in a vision on the road to Damascus, was converted, called to be an apostle. Everyone agrees, even the most liberal scholars, that this letter was written by Paul. So that's the who. 

To whom? Well, that's also a simple question. We see in verse 7: to all those in Rome. Rome was the largest city in the world at the time, around 1 million inhabitants. It was the first city in the world to reach 1 million inhabitants, and, by some estimates, it was the largest city in the world for over 500 years. So, this really was not only the heart and the capital of the Roman Empire, but it was the largest, most impressive city in the world, and Paul is writing to the church at Rome. Paul did not start this church. In fact, one of the unique things about Romans is that Paul had never been to this church. If you let your eye drop down there to verse 13 – “I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I've often intended to come to you, but thus far have been prevented” – so, he has never been to this church. He did not plant this church. The only letter to a church not planted by Paul or by his associates. We don't know exactly how the church was established in Rome. We know, fairly certain, that it was not founded by Peter. There's no biblical evidence that Peter went to Rome, and as Paul says in Romans 15, his desire was not to build on someone else's foundation. It's really unthinkable that if Peter had planted the church, and Peter was now the bishop in Rome, that Paul would have written a letter of this length and depth to try to strengthen the church there. He would not have built upon someone else's foundation if Peter was the bishop of Rome. So, how did the gospel come to Rome? Well, our best guess is that it came by those who were there at Pentecost. In Acts 2:10, we read that on that day of Pentecost, there were some Jews who were in town for the festival, and when the Holy Spirit came and Peter's sermon there, some were from Rome. So, likely these Jews came to Christ, returned to Rome, and perhaps that dates the founding of the church maybe around AD 30. As we'll see, there are both Jews and Gentiles in this church. We have both Jewish names and Gentile names in chapter 16. He often seems to be addressing Gentiles in particular, helping them not to take a position of pride relative to the Jews, but other times he turns and he's talking to the Jews. So, there seemed to be a mixed congregation of both Jews and Gentiles. 

When? When did Paul write this letter? Well, we can piece together with a fair amount of certainty the historical situation surrounding this letter. There are a number of clues. If you keep your finger in Romans 1, and you turn for a moment to the end of the book, Romans 15, the second to last chapter, Paul gives us an indication of where he is and what he is planning to do. He says in Romans 15:22, “This is the reason why I have so often been hindered from coming to you. But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions, since I've longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you, once I have enjoyed your company for a while. At present, however, I am going to Jerusalem, bringing aid to the saints. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem.” So he says – what is he thinking? He wants to go and first deliver aid to the church in Jerusalem. Then he's going to travel – head back west on his way to Spain, where he wants to minister the gospel where there is no foundation yet, and he is first going to stop in Rome. Now we know fairly well when this took place, because there are details of this kind in the book of Acts. We read in Acts 19:21, “Now after these events, Paul resolved in the Spirit to pass through Macedonia and Achaia and go to Jerusalem, saying, ‘After I have been there, I must also see Rome.’" Well, that sounds just like Romans 15. Same plan. And in Acts chapter 20, we read that he departed for Macedonia, and “when he had gone through those regions and had given them much encouragement, he came to Greece. There he spent three months and when a plot was made against him by the Jews as he was about to set sail for Syria, he decided to return through Macedonia.” And then after he meets with the Ephesian elders, he is on his way to Jerusalem. So right there in chapter 20, those three months – a layover in Greece, not a bad place for a layover – is when, very likely, he wrote this letter. So at the end of Paul's third missionary journey, estimate about AD 57. So he has received a collection from Macedonia and Achaia, and he's in Greece, and he's there for three months, and he writes this letter when he wants to go back to Jerusalem, deliver the offering, then he's going to go to Rome on his way to Spain, around 55-58, but best guess is 57 AD. 

Now, where? So, he wrote it from Greece – very likely from Corinth. There are a number of clues that tell us this. In Acts 18, we know that Paul had a fruitful ministry in Corinth. And if you flip to the end of the book once again, Romans 16, there are a number of names here. At the end of the book, he gives personal greetings. So, he hadn't been to Rome. He hadn't visited this church. He didn't plant the church, and yet, he knew, personally, many people who were connected with the church. And he mentioned several names here that have some connection to Corinth. Erastus is likely one of them. Gaius – if you look at chapter 16, verse 23 – Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church. So this is probably the same Gaius that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians, that he baptized Gaius, so it seems that Gaius is a man of some provisions, and he hosts the church in his home at Corinth, and he's hosting Paul, who's staying with Gaius in Corinth. Right above that, verse 22, “I, Tertius, wrote this letter” – very common in the ancient world, you have a scribe to dictate, so you have a secretary. So Paul – I don't – I'd like to think this took a little bit of editing. This just didn't flow out in the first chance, but Paul is dictating this letter. Poor Tertius has a lot to get down here. So, he writes it, Tertius, as Paul dictates it, as he's staying with Gaius. And then here's another clue. Look at verse 1 of chapter 16: “I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchreae.” That's a sea-port relatively close to Corinth, so it's almost certainly the case that he's staying with Gaius in Corinth, in Greece – 57 AD – he's dictating the message to Tertius, and this Phoebe is carrying the letter – a servant. That's why he says, "I commend her to you, that you may welcome her in the Lord." She's the one who's going to be carrying this letter from Corinth, the sea-port of Cenchreae, over to the Roman church, and find these greetings from Paul. 

Why? Why this letter? There's not just one reason. We'll find many. He wanted to address typical Jew-Gentile controversies. He wanted to establish unity in the church. He wanted to stir up and encourage support for his own mission on his way to Spain. There were specific controversies and confusions. The fact that he has all of these personal notes in chapter 16 lets us know he knows a lot of people, so they're no doubt telling him what some of the issues are. And then most fundamentally, he wants to strengthen the church in Rome. Chapter 1:11, the beginning, and chapter 16:25 at the end – both use that verb, that he is writing this letter to strengthen the church. There are many specific issues he may want to address, but his overarching concern is “I want you to be strengthened with the truth of the gospel and the depth of this theology and the height of this doxology.” And if it isn't too self-serving to just make a little apologetic for your pastor here, lest at any point in other sermons I've preached or in these in Romans you say, "I don't know. You're giving us a lot of meat to chew on" – well, blame Paul. Paul wrote this in a letter. Somebody, the leader in the church, read it all in one sitting. Now, take some comfort that later in 2 Peter, it says some of the things our brother Paul writes are hard to understand. So we're not the first. Almost everyone would have been illiterate. And Paul thought, you know what that church needs? They need the best theology. They need the highest heights of the glory of God and they need the deepest depths of the truth of God's word. That's what Paul wanted to give to the Romans, and that's what God wants to give to the saints in Matthews, North Carolina. 

Go back, then, to Romans chapter 1. It's a letter. Letters were common in the ancient world, as they are today, and they had familiar patterns, just as our letters do. But this is obviously no ordinary letter. Many – very few letters had any kind of length like this letter. They were closer to your texts than they were to the book of Romans. This is longer than any typical letter in the ancient world. There are, in Greek, 7,114 words. It's the longest letter. It's the longest opening to any of Paul's letters. He gives, in these opening seven verses, a description of himself, a description of the gospel, and a description of the Romans. Those will be our three headings, and we will spend almost all of our time on the middle one, so just don't panic. The last one will be very, very short. Three descriptions: Paul, the gospel, and the Romans. 

Paul. Now, unlike our letters, which sign at the bottom – “Sincerely, Kevin,” warmly, best, you put your name at the bottom. Why? Because they already can see what phone it's coming in on, or the envelope in the mail has the return address. You have some idea who this is from, or there's letterhead, or there's an email address. But of course, if Paul had signed his name at the end of these letters, people would be waiting with bated breath. Well, who is this? Why should we listen to this? Is this somebody important? So, the convention in the ancient world is to put your name first. And usually it's just your name, greetings. But here, this is maybe the most theologically dense greeting in the history of all letter-writing. You imagine how excited this church must have been to receive a letter from Paul. Do you get excited to get the mail? I've told you before, that is – I almost said the highlight of my day, but family, I love seeing you. That's the best part of coming home. But I do love to go to the mail. I don't know why, because you get to be an adult and you get boring things in the mail to either throw away, and the number of times people want your money versus people giving you money, it's no comparison. But I have always liked to get the mail. And you can imagine as the man stood up and read this letter and the very first word was Paul. We're getting to hear from the great Apostle Paul. And he tells us three things about himself. First, a servant of Christ Jesus. The Greek word doulos could be translated a bondservant or even a slave. It is someone in subjection to a master. Now, this is an aspect of Paul's humility, that he would describe himself not first as an apostle, but first of all as a servant or as a slave. But not only is it a statement of humility, it does also command attention. If you said, "I am the personal assistant" – there's not a lot of excitement – but then you said “to Steph Curry” – oh! “I am the Uber driver" – good – “for Taylor Swift” – some of you might be excited. “I am on the kitchen staff, and I wash dishes for President Trump.” I mean, it's the connection to the person. So, he is a servant, a slave, of Christ Jesus. There's a humility to it, and it also commands your attention. 

Second, he is called to be an apostle. This is a unique calling. The prerequisite for being an apostle was someone who had been with Christ from the beginning, was a witness to the resurrection. That's why Paul is in a very special case. He calls himself “one as untimely born.” He is the least of all the apostles, in his mind, because he received a special commission. He was a persecutor of the church, but then he saw the resurrected Christ in a vision. When you hear the word apostle, you may think of many things. Here's one of the words you ought to think of. You ought to think of the word missionary. The Greek word apostéllein means “to be sent.” Our English word missionary is just derived from the Latin missio – to be sent. So, people say, well, the word mission or missionary is not anywhere in the Bible. That's true. The English word is not in most translations, but it's just a Latin derivative that's equivalent to this Greek word, “one who is sent.” So, he is a missionary. An apostle. There is unique authority behind what he writes. 2 Peter 3:16, Peter says, "Some people twist the writings of Paul as they do the other Scriptures.” You ever notice that verse before? That's an amazing thing to say at the end of your letter as a kind of throwaway comment, which tells us it must not have been controversial. Peter doesn't make a grand argument to therefore conclude that Paul's letters were Scripture. Think of how holy the sacred Scriptures were, and yet, from the very beginning, it was understood intuitively. The four gospels, the letters of Paul, there were some other books, but that's the bulk of the New Testament, as they do the other Scriptures. They intuitively understood. Nobody had to take a vote at a council. Yes, it would be an organic process before the church would formally adopt the canon, but from the very beginning, it wasn't as if people were sort of debating – “you like that? You want that in the Bible? You want that in the Bible? – alright, come up, and let's hear your best case. They got a letter from Paul, and they knew this is not just a nice church leader or another letter to read, this is Scripture. This is a word from God. A servant, an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. That third characteristic really explains the first two. What is his work as a servant? What is his work as an apostle? It is to attend to the preaching of the gospel of God. 

Second heading, then: he describes himself. Remember, the last one's going to be very, very short. Here's the big one. He describes the gospel. Now, this is a book all about the gospel, and here at the beginning, we have a beautiful, tightly packed summary of the gospel, interrupting Paul introducing himself and the formal greeting. Before he even gets there, he puts in this amazingly intricate, theologically robust description of the gospel. Now, Martyn Lloyd-Jones would probably deal with these verses in ten sermons, and I'm going to try to do it in ten-ish minutes. We can see in this description of the gospel five things: the origin of the gospel, the authority of the gospel, the subject of the gospel, the aim and the scope of the gospel. 

First, the origin. It is called the gospel of God. Now, bear with me just a moment. This is going to serve you well throughout this series to know a little bit about Greek grammar. You had that on your Romans bingo card. You can cross that off. Are we getting Greek grammar? Yes, you are. This is why it's so good that many of you study Latin, have studied Latin or Greek or some other language. Of course, the New Testament is written in Greek, and you know in English we conjugate verbs, but our nouns – how nouns relate in the part of the sentence all has to do with the word order. But in many other languages the nouns have declension. So, the nouns have different endings to tell you how those nouns relate to other words in the sentence, and that's what Greek is like. Greek has four cases. They're called – Latin has these and then another one – four cases, basically: the nominative, the genitive, the dative, and the accusative. And then on rare occasions there's the vocative, which is like, “oh!” – you know, when you really want to say something to someone. So this, here, is the genitive. It might be helpful to think of sort of the genetic, the connection. The genitive case has to do with how it's connected, and you can think of it broadly as a possessive. A genitive often turns a noun into an adjective. So, like here, the gospel of God – God there, in the genitive, it turns it into an adjective. You could say God's gospel. A genitive is most simply translated with the word “of,” like it is here. Now, why do I tell you that? Because there are lots of these – there's some others in this passage coming up and then others that often are translated ambiguously, and the ESV does a good job of carrying over the ambiguity from the Greek into the English, so, you have to make sense of it. So, what does it mean? The gospel of God. That's a genitive. That's how those two nouns – gospel and God – are related, and it's translated with this simple preposition “of.” Because a genitive can mean a source – that's how I'm taking it here, as an origin – but it can also be the subject, and sometimes a genitive may want to capture a number of different relationships. So, is this the gospel about God? Well, it is a gospel about God. Is it the gospel that comes from God? I think it's that too, and that's probably the primary meaning. I say that because the next verse talks about “promised beforehand,” so there seems to be a sequence in Paul's mind. You know where the gospel started? It didn't start in the New Testament. It didn't start with Abraham or the Exodus. The gospel started in eternity in the mind of God. This is God's idea, God's plan, God's good news. The origin of the gospel: it is about God, and it is from God. Do not lose sight in all of the difficult theology that will come in this book. If someone were to ask you, "Well, you're studying Romans. What's that about?" You can say it's about God, and you'd be right. In fact, if you look at a count of the most common words in Romans, other than “and,” “the” – those sorts of words – God is the most common word. You want the top 10 list? I thought you did. God, law, Christ, sin, Lord, faith, Jesus, righteousness, Spirit, Gentile. That's a pretty good summary of what this book is going to be about. God, law, Christ, sin, Lord, faith, Jesus, righteousness, Spirit, Gentile. When you take all of the words for deity – God or Father or Lord or Spirit or Christ or Jesus – three out of every four of the verses, 75% of the verses in Romans, contain an explicit reference to either God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit. This is a book about God. And it's the gospel that originated with God. 

Authority. We see the authority of the gospel from the prophets, verse 2, and the holy Scriptures. Paul will call this, on occasion, like at the end of the book, “my gospel.” Now, think about that. Paul says, "my gospel," but lest anyone think, "Oh, yeah, Paul, that's your story. You made it up. This is your invention," Paul is saying, "My gospel that I'm telling to you, that you've received, that I'm explaining to you, is nothing less than the fulfillment of the gospel that had been predicted and promised in the Old Testament.” So the God of the Old Testament and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ are the same. There's no place for, you know, a later church teacher, some heretical inclinations – Marcion, who had a kind of anti-Jewish view of the Old Testament. Well, that won't work. Paul says those Old Testament Scriptures are holy, and that God is our God. My gospel, Paul says, is this gospel that has all the authority of the prophets and the Scriptures of old. 

And then we come to the subject, the grand subject of the gospel. The origin is God; the authority, the prophets and Scripture. The subject is right there in verse 3: “concerning his Son, who was descended from David,” or it could be more broadly translated “who came from David according to the flesh.” Now that little line there, “descended from David”: so, the Son, who then is manifested to us according to the flesh as a son of David – the fact that this Son is and then descends, or comes to us as a son of David, speaks to the pre-existence of the Son. The Son did not come into existence on Christmas. The Son took to himself a human body, a human nature, but that's not when the Son came into existence. There never was when the Son was not. So, the fact that the Son descended – came – from David tells us of his pre-existence. Look also at that word, the beginning of verse 3, the preposition “his.” Why is that important? “Concerning his Son” – whose Son? God's son. God the Father's Son. Later, there will be a heresy that's often called modalism, which says that God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are just different modes of existence. Sometimes it's called Sabellianism because that was the chief proponent of this heresy. And you even see this, sometimes, in Jehovah's Witnesses or Oneness Pentecostals that the Son is just another name for God. There's no distinction of persons. God can appear, and he can be Father, he can be Son, he can be Spirit. That's why the infamous trinitarian analogy – water, ice, vapor – just strike it from your mind and from your kids' minds, and bury it in the sea of oblivion. Don't use it, because that is different modes of being, that the same chemical formula can appear as water, ice, or vapor. Well, that's not the Trinity. It's not that God sort of comes out, and now I'm Father, and I got to go back, and now I'm the Son. That preposition tells us it's not just God the Father now is showing himself as the Son – it's his son. So, there's a distinction to be made between these divine persons, the Father and the Son. Did you notice in verse 3 and 4 this parallel sentence structure: “concerning his Son, descended from David, according to the flesh.” So, in one column here you have the Son descended from David according to the flesh. Son, David, flesh. Verse 4 now is saying “Son of God in power, according to the Spirit, by his resurrection from the dead.” There is a deliberate parallel in Paul's mind. Now, it's not so much that verse 3 speaks to his humanity and verse 4 to his divinity, though that's not a wrong conclusion to reach, but you might think of it, rather, about the two states of Christ, that verse 3 is about his humiliation. He was born as a human according to the flesh. He looked just like a human being, because he was a human being descended from David. So he's an eternal Son. But now verse 4, speaking of his exaltation, says he was also declared to be. Now, which is it? You were a son, but now you need to be declared a son? “Declared” is an okay translation, but it really is the idea of “appointed” or “determined” or “fixed,” or you might say “constituted” according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. So what's going on here? He is an eternal Son – never was when the Son was not – there's no Adoptionist Christology. That's another heresy, which says that he was just adopted – he became the Son. He was a Jewish boy, and later he was adopted, and he became the Son of God. No, he always was – he's the Son. But he is, by his resurrection, constituted – notice the different language – the Son of God in power. Now, it's not that he was devoid of power, but in taking on human flesh, for a time, his full glory was hidden. And though he did not divest himself of any attributes, they could not be seen for a time. So, at his resurrection – and you see the Trinity at work here? God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit – in his resurrection, he is declared, or constituted, or you could even think he is enthroned (this is speaking of his exaltation), he is declared now – he was the eternal Son, now related to the world, he is demonstrated to be – the Son of God in great power that you were meant to see in his resurrection and his ascension. Who is this man? He's no ordinary man. He is the son of God. Remember at the crucifixion, the centurion said, "Surely this man was the son of God." The resurrection not only revealed Jesus was the son of God in power, it established this rule as Lord over all. Constituted him, just as a prince might return victorious from the field of battle and be invested with new power and an honored position, even though you say, "Well, he's always been the son of the king.” Yes, but on returning from his great triumph in victory in the battlefield, he is now declared or made or appointed to this princely realm. That's why Paul can hardly contain himself at the end of verse 4. Jesus Christ, what is he? He is our Lord. The subject of the gospel is the Son. 

The aim is the obedience of faith. Verse 5: “we have received (and I think it's the royal we; Paul is thinking of himself) grace (to forgive him, to save him, to change him, to appear to him) and apostleship” (a gracious commission). And what was Paul's ministry about? It was to bring about the obedience of faith. Here's another one of these tricky genitives. How do we understand the obedience of faith? Does it mean the obedience that flows out of faith, that when you believe then you show and demonstrate that faith in obedience? Well, that's a true statement. Or is this, as most commentators think and I agree, that it is chiefly saying “the obedience that is faith,” that is to say we obey the gospel. Now, those categories can be confusing. Well, how do you – the gospel is news; how do you obey it? Well, here's how you obey it. You believe it. Charles Hodge says, “The obedience of faith is that obedience which consists in faith.” John Calvin describes faith as “that by which the gospel is obeyed.” Faith always involves obedience. Obedience always involves faith. Therefore, the chief act of disobedience is unbelief. Now, we don't think of that. We think of – if you talk, if you were to talk about all the great sins and all the things that might make God angry, you'd probably think of unbelief as just sort of a mental category, just a mental mistake. But not so in the mind of the Apostle Paul. Obedience is faith, and disobedience is unbelief. Imagine a parent telling a child, "I love you." And the child says – you ever had a child say this to you? – “no, you don't.” Parent says to the child, “I will help you.” The child says, "No, you won't." The parent says, "I want what is best for you. My ways are good for you. I am the one who cares for you most and can care for you best." And if the child were to say, "All of it – lies," we would recognize that attitude from the child to be profound disobedience. Scarcely could conceive of a worse disobedience than a parent to say, "I love you. I'm for you. I will help you. You can trust me. I love you more than anyone. My ways are good. If you will but listen to me, things will go well for you." And the child says, "You don't love me. Your ways are not good. You cannot help me." Now, has the child done anything? They may be just – you may say, well, that's just words, but that is a reflection of a heart darkened by sin. And so, when we say that to God, it is the great sin of unbelief. The aim of Paul's gospel is the faith that is obedient – to hear that gospel and say “yes and amen” with every part of your heart. That's, you might say, the proximate aim. But notice there's an ultimate aim. He continues: “for the sake of his name.” See, it doesn't stop with you or with me. It doesn't stop there, that you would obey the gospel. That is good news, and he loves us, but it goes even beyond that. It's for the sake of his name. Proximate aim: you and your faith. Ultimate aim: the glory of God's name. 

And then notice, finally, the scope of this gospel: “among all the nations.” All the languages, all the cultures, all the peoples. That's the aim. Sinclair Ferguson says, "The goal of the gospel is to lead to the international honoring and glorifying of Christ." You could do much worse than making that the mission statement of this church or any church. What is the mission of the church? There's a lot of things. You say, “We got to we got to save this civilization, we got to save this country” – there's all sorts of things you might want to do. Here's the mission, however, as given by Paul to the church: to lead to the international honoring and glorifying of Christ. John Stott summarizes the truth here of the gospel in one brilliant sentence, as only he can do. He says, "The good news is the gospel of God about Christ according to Scripture for the nations unto the obedience of faith for the sake of the name.” You think about how Paul – he's not even said hello yet. He has heaped up titles upon titles. The son of God, the seed of David, the Christ, the Messiah, the Lord overall. Never lose sight of what Romans is about. It is about God's gospel about God's Son. You ought to think, what is the message coming from this pulpit? What do we sing about in Christ Covenant? What do we pray about? What are we most passionate about? We can't control how others see us, but if they were seeing us accurately, what would people know and think? Christ Covenant Church. What's that church about? Because there's a lot of big churches here. Some of them are known for this, and some of them are known for other things. I hope that it would be that church – yep, they're Presbyterians, and I like that or I don't, and they certainly don't do everything right, and they're not perfect – but that's a church, in their message, in their mission, in their preaching, in their singing, they are about God's gospel, God's Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. That's what this book is about. I hope that's what our church is about. 

And then finally, I told you it would be brief. The Romans. He gives a typical greeting. The Greek word usually is chairein – just means greetings. Paul tweaks it to the word charis, which means grace. If there's any Carissas here, that's the origin of your name. And then he adds “peace.” Grace and peace. Here's what I want you to notice in closing. That beautiful description in verse 7: “To all those in Rome (to all those in Matthews, North Carolina) who are loved by God and called to be saints.” Now, Paul could have said “to all those who love God and are striving for holiness.” Those are good things, but he doesn't say that. He doesn't reflect on what you do. He reflects on your status according to God. Those who are loved by God, called. I want you to remember that throughout this series, however many weeks and months it is, whatever hard things are here that you may not like at first, however sins are exposed, whatever difficult doctrines we have to get our mind and hearts around, know this: the whole point is that you and I might know of God's love for us, and we might make progress in our lives as his holy ones. Don't lose sight of that. This is a book about the gospel of God concerning his Son and the power of the Spirit in the work of God's people, whom he loves. So, when something in this book lands on you, you're not sure you like it, you're not sure you understand, remember this is coming from a God who says, "I love you. You're my beloved, and I've called you to be holy. Would you trust me? Would you believe me?” And if you do, he will open up to us an unimaginable treasure. John Calvin says, "If we have gained a true understanding of this epistle, we have an open door to all the most profound treasures of Scripture.” Let's pray. 

Father in heaven, thank you for your word, the gospel of your Son. Open to us in these days and months ahead these deep, glorious treasures. May they satisfy our souls. In Jesus we pray. Amen.