Seeing Our Ministry and Mission Through God’s Eyes
Romans 1:7
Romans 1:7
If you are writing a body of believers to encourage them to be passionate about your mission to the unreached nations and peoples of the earth how would you approach it? How would you call them to actively partner with you?
What Paul does is point to the highest motivation of all – God.
Paul draws their attention to the incredible passion of God for the project. God is passionately committed to saving a people for Himself from all the nations of the world.
The mandate for this mission is the unequivocal determination of God to save a people for Himself from the nations.
Even in his greeting, what Paul emphasizes is the way that God has viewed them as a people and who they themselves have become because of God’s passion to save a people from the nations.
Seeing our mission and ministry from God’s perspective ought to focus our priority, encourage our confidence, and harness our energies to see God’s passionate desire realized for the nations.
The drive behind all missions is the conviction that God has a people that He has predestined to be saved from among all the peoples of the earth. Success in the most difficult places is guaranteed not because of our ability or their responsiveness but because of the loving determination of our God to save.
1. The Motivation for the Mission: God’s Love. God’s love is the cause of the mission and not the consequence of the mission: God loves them deeply – “to all who are at Rome, beloved of God…” For Paul this is an enormous part of His understanding of the drive for the gospel. God has set His love on a people from all the nations. What shapes their position and standing in the kingdom of Christ is God’s love for them. What propels them forward toward holiness is the fact of God’s deep love for them. Look for example at some of the verses in this letter:
a. God’s love is unconditional - His love precedes any good in us. Romans 5:8 – “God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 9:10-14 shows that God’s love is His independent and free act toward undeserving sinners.
b. God’s love is thorough - His love produces all necessary and subsequent saving acts towards us. Romans 8:29ff. – “For whom God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.” Foreknow means more that to simply know in advance. For God, foreknows everyone in that way. There is a special way that God knows His own. It is not God foreknowing their actions, choices, faith, or obedience. It is God so foreknowing them, that God predestines the outcome of their lives, and subsequently calls, justifies and glorifies them.
c. God’s love is unconquerable- His love guarantees complete salvation for those upon whom it rests. Romans 8:35 “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress or persecution or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?.... But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, no powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The starting point for mutual ministry and shared mission is a clear and solid conviction that those who are truly Christians are such because of the Self-initiating, and never-failing love of God toward them. Not because of their holiness – but because of Himself.
Mission to the Gentiles is driven by a conviction that God loves the nations and that the love that God has for the peoples is the cause of their salvation not the consequence of their salvation.
2. The Realization of the mission – God’s direct and effectual call. God has a people that belong to Him whom He effectually brings (calls) to Himself out of the nations.
Literally… “called saints”. The word “called” unequivocally refers to divine initiative. It is God’s call upon their lives that makes them saints. Leon Morris makes this comment: “At the same time their being saints at all is by virtue of their divine calling, not their own moral achievement.” He also adds “We should not overlook the plural. We sometimes speak of an individual man or woman as ‘a saint’ or rfer to ‘St. Peter’ or ‘St. Mary’, or the like. This is not New Testament usage. The word is never used of believers, and the plural points to believers as a group, a community set apart for God. Again the term does not convey the idea of outstanding ethical achievement which we usually understand by ‘saintliness’. While the importance of right living is insisted on and may even be implied with the very term, the main thrust is not there. It is rather the notion of belonging to God.”(P.53)
a. God’s Call is Personal – “Called as saints” speaks not of our initiative but God’s. (see Romans 1:1;8:28; 8:30). God has done the calling. God personally brings people out of the nations to Himself. They are saints because God has called them as saints.
b. God’s Call is Positional/Relational - “Called as saints” – speaks not primarily of a spiritual condition but as a relational position. “Saints” is not a future goal. It is a current reality. They are saints. They are set apart by God to be His own people. They are a special people belonging to God. (See Romans 9:23-26). Called as saints is the act of granting the position of being God’s own special people through Christ. God is not recognizing their already existing holiness (saints means holy ones or set apart ones) and naming it. God sets them apart as His own. He makes them his people and that becomes the motivation for their pursuit of holiness. (see Romans 15:25; 16:15; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 2 Corinthians 1:1)
Acts 18:9-10 “And the Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, "Do not be afraid any longer, but go on speaking and do not be silent; for I am with you, and no man will attack you in order to harm you, for I have many people in this city."
c. God’s call is Effectual. To be “called as saints” is the act of actually bringing people out of the world to Himself.
John 10:16 "And I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they shall hear My voice; and they shall become one flock with one shepherd.”
Acts 13:48 “And when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.”
What Paul is acknowledging here is that these people belong to God by God’s working and initiative. God’s love for a people leads God to work effectually to bring them to belong to Him as His own. This affirms the New Testament principle that God has an elect people who He effectually works to save out of the nations.
3. The Result of the Mission – God grace and peace - God grants to His people in Christ all that they need to live as the people that He has called them to be.
a. Grace – Is the active and continuous strengthening work of God in the lives of His people to enable them to become all that He has intended them to become in Christ. These are the blessings that come by the Holy Spirit. (Romans 6:14; 12:3,6)
b. Peace – Is the rest that God gives us not only from the enmity we once had with Him because of sin, but it is the calm assurance that we have regarding our circumstances and our future because it is in His hands and the guarantee of deliverance from all our enemies who threaten our soul. (Romans 5:1; 15:13; 16:20)
God has committed to saving, keeping and delivering us completely to Himself as His own special (holy) people forever.Paul’s passion and devotion to his mission to the nations is shaped by His conviction that this mission is something that God is passionately committed to Himself. God has determined to save a people for Himself through the gospel.
