But let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No.' Romans Part 3 - Romans 1:1-9 - David Bercot

You maybe have forgotten even the introduction. It's been so while. I'll encourage you maybe to go back and— they're on the YouTube channel of Sound Faith if you want to go back and listen to them. But we're going to be looking at Paul's introduction today. It's a fairly short introduction, and then he gets right into his material. Now, he's got a really difficult job ahead of him. Imagine you're writing a church, probably— not necessarily— probably the largest church in the world. It's in the largest city in the world, the largest city that has ever existed in the world. And you have never been there. You haven't met most of the people. You know a few people because you've met them other places outside of Rome, and now they're living in Rome.

But most of the church, you don't know. You didn't found the church. It started totally independent of you. It was started by Jews and Jewish proselytes. We don't know what percentage of the church they made up when Paul wrote Romans.

Let's just suppose it's about half and half at this point. At some point, it would have been mostly Gentiles, but maybe at this point it's about half and half. But the Jews are the ones who started the church. And now you're going to be writing them a letter with a message that's going to be a very bitter pill to swallow, that it's wonderful that you're a Jew, but that gives you no advantage over the Gentiles, that circumcision, living by the Mosaic law, has nothing to do with salvation. There's no partiality with God, that the Gentiles are just as much— the believing Gentiles are just as much children of Abraham as you believing Jews are.

Now, like I said, that is going to be a bitter pill for most of the Jews in Rome to swallow. So Paul has to be very careful on how he approaches this, and he's very adroit at how he starts out.

Just think— put yourself in Paul's shoes. You're writing this church. You're giving them a message that for maybe half the church is like, "Hey, we like this message, you know, the Gentiles." And for the other half, it's like, "I don't know. I don't know if I like what I'm hearing here in this letter."

And of course, you want to be able to persuade everybody. So what do you think you would do if you were in Paul's shoes? You're writing this church. You're giving half the church a message that they probably are not going to like.

Well, what he did, probably we would all do if we thought of it, was, first of all, I want to convince them, "I really love them. I have their best interests at heart. I really love you brothers and sisters in Rome." Okay? So that's one of the points that Paul wants to get across in his little introduction.

And then the other thing is, "I am so eager to get up there and see all of you." Again, part of how much I love you. And you're probably wondering how come I've never come to Rome. The Romans called it the eternal city, the capital of the world. Here, Paul, you're the apostle to the Gentiles. This is the biggest Gentile city, the biggest city on earth. You've never come to us. Okay? You're going to explain, "Hey, look, I have wanted to come. It's not on my part that I haven't been there yet. I've been wanting to come for a long time." So you try to get those points across to them. And yeah, once you've done that, okay, maybe you've prepared their hearts to listen to the message you're about to share.

So Romans 1, verses 1 and 2. Now, I'm reading— as you know, I'm working on a commentary on Romans. And what I'm using for my text is I'm taking the King James, and then I'm putting it into today's English, but trying to stay fairly close to the language, to the structure of the King James, unless the early Christians were understanding the Greek totally differently. And then I follow how they are understanding the Greek. So what I'm reading isn't going to follow exactly. If you're using the New King James, it won't follow exactly. If you're using the King James— I mean, you'll be able to follow along, but you'll see the words are just slightly different.

Okay? We start off verse 1 and 2. "Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God, which he had promised beforehand by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures." Now, one of the wonderful things about an inspired letter is that every word, every phrase counts.

A person could easily read the first half of chapter 1 and think, "Oh, Paul is kind of just making small talk," because it's a bit informal. He doesn't get into any heavy doctrine at the beginning. But yeah, he's setting the stage. He is working towards an end. He's very careful with everything he says.

Let's just look at that first word, Paul. Now, as far as we know, his birth name was Saul. It's possible his parents gave him two names, Saul and Paul. But more than likely, he was born of Jewish parents. More than likely, his name was Saul.

When Jesus called him, he called him Saul. In fact, the first part of Acts, when you're reading about Saul and his conversion and his initial ministry, he's always Saul all the way through. It isn't until chapter 13 of Acts that Luke, who's writing Acts, suddenly says, "Saul, who was also called Paul."

And then from that point on, it's always Paul. He doesn't go back to Saul again. So a lot of the early Christians conjectured that his name was Saul and that Jesus gave him a new name, Paul, just like he gave Peter, or rather Simon, the new name, Peter, and that he gave Saul the new name, Paul. That's certainly a good hypothesis, but we don't know. Like you say, he may have been born being given a double name. Paul would have been more a Roman name. Saul is Jewish. Paul in Latin would have been Paulus.

Yeah, that may have been a second name given to him. Okay. He says, "A slave of Jesus Christ." That might sound a little strange. It would to a lot of Christians today, the thought of being a slave to Jesus Christ, because what we normally hear about is our freedom in Jesus Christ. In fact, in this very letter, Romans 8:15, don't turn there, but I'm going to read it to you. He says, "For you have not received the spirit of slavery again to fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, 'Abba, Father.'" So why does he start off a slave of Jesus Christ when he tells them, "Hey, you're free from bondage later on"?

Well, there's two different kinds of slavery. There's two different kinds of bondage. When he says, "We're free from bondage," he is talking about the Mosaic law. We are free of that. That has been put behind whether you're Jew or Gentile. That bondage to the law is over with. Now, if you're a Jew and you want to keep living by many of the customs of the law, you're free to do that. Paul didn't forbid that. And he tells the Gentile Christians, "Hey, don't look down on somebody because they want to keep these Jewish practices." But they're no longer required. You're no longer under bondage to them.

But at the very start, by saying a slave of Jesus Christ, Paul wants to make it very clear that even though we're free of the bondage of the Mosaic law, we aren't free from obedience to Jesus Christ. We are owned by him. He told the Corinthians, I'm going to read to you 2 Corinthians 5:15. He says, "He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again." So we aren't our own. The fact that we have been saved by grace doesn't mean it's now a free picnic. We get to do whatever we want to do. He died for us and redeemed us so that we no longer live for ourselves, but we live for him.

In 1 Corinthians, he said, "He who is called while free," meaning that you're not a physical slave, "is Christ's slave." So in one sense, we're brothers with Christ. In another sense, we are Christ's slaves. Both are realities. We have the liberty of Jesus Christ, but it's the liberty of serving the Lord of the universe.

The truth of the matter is, everybody on earth, I don't care who they are, you're going to be a slave. You're either a slave to sin or you're a slave to Jesus Christ. There's no middle ground in between that. You are a slave one way or the other. You might think you're free. You're out there in the world, "Man, no one's going to tell me what to do. I can do whatever. I'm going to take drugs. I'm going to live this way and that way and all of that." You think you're free, but you're a slave. You're a slave to sin. You are in total bondage. You can be made free in Jesus Christ, but then you become his slave, not a slave of somebody whose foot is always on you, a slave of serving somebody who says, "My yoke is gentle, my burden is light."

It's translated different ways. Okay. Next, he says, still in verse 1, "Called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God." Now, he's going to be giving the Jews and the Gentiles a lot of instructions. And so he sets forth his qualifications at the beginning. These aren't human qualifications. He doesn't say, "Well, I was educated this place and that, and I've got a degree from this."

No, he says, "I was called to be an apostle." In the book of Acts, we see this call was directly Jesus Christ appearing to him supernaturally and calling him to be an apostle. He didn't make this decision, "Hey, I'd like to be an apostle. I'm going to go out and start preaching to churches and traveling around." No.

Jesus called him to be this. So this is where his authority comes from as an apostle.

Jesus in Acts 9, he told Ananias, Ananias was the brother who Jesus said, "You go and find Paul," and he tells him to baptize him. He says, "Paul, he's the one who's Saul, he's the one who's persecuting us."

And Jesus says this, "Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel." So Jesus is the one who called him, who made the decision he was going to be an apostle to the Gentiles. Now, most of my life, I guess almost all of my life, I've read that in Acts 9. I never caught the last part of that, actually, until last night. I probably had read it and seen it before, and then it slipped my mind. He says, "To carry my name before the Gentiles," I've always remembered that. And the kings, yep, we know he appeared before kings. But he says, "And the children of Israel."

I had forgotten. Oh, that was part of his commission. And of course, his letters are always to congregations that are made up of Jews and Gentiles. Some of them were mainly Gentiles. Some of them may have been mainly Jews. But yeah, he was called to both, even though specifically he was the apostle to the Gentiles.

Now, in his letter to the Galatians, Paul brings out that he was actually separated from birth. In other words, Jesus didn't just decide when he was on the road to Damascus, "I think I'm going to choose this man to be my apostle." Now, he could have done that, but this was decided long ago. He was separated, he says, from birth. God had already decided when he was born, "Okay, this is the man I am going to use to go to the Gentiles."

Now, for a lot of my life, again, I guess most of it, I mean, I'm learning a lot going through Romans, things I should have learned long ago, but the Bible is such a rich book. Every single time I read it, I notice new things that had slipped my mind before. I'm sure you all have the same experience as well. But most of my life, I had the wrong idea. I thought it's interesting that God uses Paul to go to the Gentiles, even though Paul was a Jew of the Jews. I mean, he's a Pharisee. He's extremely zealous for the law. He's trained under one of the most respected rabbis.

And all of that was a waste of time because God sends him to the Gentiles. And then I realized last night, "No, no. This was God's wisdom from the very start." Because he realized that the message Paul was bringing, the message that God shows no partiality, that Jews and Gentiles come in on an equal basis.

Now, he's not only preaching that to the Gentiles, but he has to go back and explain that to the Jews. Now, if God had chosen a Gentile to be this apostle, well, how do you think the Jews would have received that?

They would have thought, "Oh, well, sure, you're saying we don't have to live by the law. You're a Gentile. Of course, you're saying that." But see, it's Paul, a Jew, saying it. They can't say, "Well, you're a Gentile." And they can't say, "Well, yeah, you're a Jew, but you've always been just a loose, liberal Jew." He's a Pharisee, the most conservative of all the Jews, the strictest of all the Jews.

They can't say, "Well, yeah, but you're a half-hearted Pharisee." He's so zealous, he's out persecuting the Christians. And they can't say, "Well, yeah, but you never really got a lot of training. You never understood things." I sat at the feet of the most respected rabbi, Gamaliel. Hey, he's taken away, God has taken away every excuse they could put forward. They can't say anything. This is a Jew of the Jews telling them, "Look, you are not saved by the Mosaic law. You are not saved by circumcision. The Gentiles are just as much children of Abraham as you are."

And God shows very wisely. Okay. Next, he says, "Which he had promised beforehand by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures." It's easy to read that part of verse, are we still in verse 1? No, that's in verse 2. Okay. "Which he had promised beforehand by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures." Again, I've usually just read that, "Yeah, yeah, we know that, blah, blah, blah." Well, Paul isn't just throwing it out haphazardly. Okay.

Because he's presenting this clarification that the gospel is open to everybody. This is no longer an exclusive thing for the Jews, that it's a new covenant. We're not under the old covenant anymore. That he starts off, it may just sound like an innocent thing, which he had promised beforehand by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures. When he says Holy Scriptures, when he's writing to the Romans, the Holy Scriptures meant the Old Testament. There wasn't a New Testament yet. It was being written. Some of the letters were circulating. It was beginning to form. But when Christians thought of the Holy Scriptures, they thought of the Old Testament. So he's saying, "All of this was promised beforehand."

Look, I know the unbelieving Jews think I'm preaching something new and different. But all of this is right there in the Jewish Scriptures. It's right there. Your prophets had foretold all of this beforehand. It's not anything new. For example, I'll read to you Isaiah 52:7. "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news." Now, in the Greek, that's the exact same word as gospel. So we should probably read it, "Are the feet of him who brings the gospel, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings." That's maybe the same word again, gospel, of good things. "Who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, 'Your God reigns.'" So he's saying, "No, all of this was foretold by the prophets.

This isn't anything new. If you're going to embrace the law of Moses, if you're going to embrace the law and the prophets, then you have to embrace everything I'm sharing as well because this was all included in it."

All right, let's go down to verse 3. "Concerning his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead."

Now, he says that he is the seed of David according to the flesh. A couple of things, again, it sounds like he's just mentioning some things haphazardly, but he's not. Every word he has thought about, every word the Holy Spirit has put into his mind, okay? That first of all, for the Gentiles, he's calling to their mind that Jesus was, according to the flesh, a descendant of David. He was a Jew, okay? So keep this in mind that our Lord Jesus was born as a Jew and born in the kingly line of King David.

But he says, "According to the flesh." Now, he's going to be explaining to the Jews that there's two kinds of ways to be the seed of someone. There's the flesh, and then there's the Spirit. That you can be a fleshly descendant of Abraham, but you can also be a seed of Abraham according to the Spirit. And so he's suddenly introducing to them this concept by bringing out Jesus according to the flesh is the Son of David, but according to the Spirit, he's the Son of God.

There's two different ways of being a son. And he's not a Son of David in eternity. In eternity, he's always been the Son of God. It's only according to the flesh that he's the Son of David. But eternally, he's been the Son of God. So he has both things, just like in the church, you have both kinds of children of Abraham, the flesh and the Spirit.

Okay, he says he's declared by the resurrection from the dead. Now, Jesus was the Son of God before he was resurrected from the dead. Like I say, he was the Son of God before he came to the earth.

But it was in the resurrection that it became clear to everybody beyond doubt that this is the Son of God. I mean, they acknowledge it. Peter had acknowledged that you are the Son of God. Other people acknowledged that. But then they wavered.

Okay, I believe it. I know in my mind you are, but yeah, other times I have doubts. And when Jesus is walking with the disciples on the road of Emmaus, they're saying, "Well, we thought he was going to be the Messiah. We had all these hopes, but then he ends up being put to death."

But then when he miraculously disappears, they suddenly realize, "Oh, this is Jesus. He's come back from the dead." And the same with the apostles. I mean, there is no more wavering after his resurrection. Once they see that he was raised from the dead, they have no more doubts that he's the Son of God. Plus, from that point on, he's no longer in the flesh. He has a resurrected, glorified body. I mean, it looks like a human body, but it can walk right through walls. It can just disappear instantly, appear instantly, and all of that. So yeah, no more doubt that he's the Son of God. Verse 5. "By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all the Gentiles for his name."

Again, he emphasizes that his apostleship was something he had received. It's not something he took on himself. And he says, "We have received grace." So grace means favor. It means several things. Can also mean a gift. In this sense here, I think he means it in the sense of favor. We have received God's favor as a gift. It was received. It's not something that we earned or that we deserved. Okay?

For obedience to the faith. Now, a lot of people, an awful lot of people, particularly since Martin Luther, have thought there's this conflict between faith and obedience. And here, Paul puts the two right together, obedience to the faith. You have faith, and you've got obedience. They're right there together. And he's going to be talking about that throughout Romans. He's going to show you're saved by faith, and then he's going to be talking about salvation through obedience as well. He's going to show, "Hey, both things work together," and we're going to see as we go through Romans how that works. He just hints a bit here, "For obedience to the faith among all the Gentiles." So since he's been called to appear before all the Gentiles, well, that includes Rome.

You're under my authority as an apostle because you're a Gentile city. All right, verse 6. "Among whom you also are the called ones of Jesus Christ." So we are called. No one can come to the Father unless the Father draws them. But the Father wants to draw everybody. But Jesus calls us. Okay? He says, "You also are the called ones." Now, I would have never caught this. The early Christians, it seems like they all do, that he says, he's talking to the Romans. Okay? This is, again, the greatest city on earth. The Romans call it the capital of the world. And he says, "Oh, you also are the called ones."

Not, "Now, you're the called ones, but these people over here in Ephesus and Galatia, they're called also." He puts it the other way around. He says, "Oh, you in Rome, you're also the called ones." He wants any pride they might have had about, "Hey, we're Romans." He wants to kind of squelch that. He says, "Yeah, you're among everybody else. Don't think because you're a Roman that you're somehow ahead of the other Christians." Okay?

Now, he says, "To all who are in Rome who are beloved of God." He's not writing to everybody in Rome. He's writing to the ones who are beloved of God. Called saints. Now, the King James and a lot of modern Bibles, they say called to be saints. If you look, you'll notice that to be is put in italics, meaning it's not there in the Greek.

Not only is it not in the Greek, it's not in any Bibles until the first I've been able to find is the Geneva Bible, which was sometime, I don't know the exact date. I think the 1500s, it might have been, yeah, I think it was definitely in the 1500s, preceded the King James by several decades that they decided to put in the words to be saints. But he says, "Called saints." Most of his letters, he says, "To the saints in Ephesus, to the saints in this place and that."

Never, never does Paul address his letter and say, "To the sinners in Ephesus, to the sinners in Colossae." It's always to the saints. He's not writing to sinners. He's writing to people who have been saved, who were sinners, but are now living as slaves to Jesus Christ.

Do any of you know what you probably all do. Can anyone tell me any of the brothers, what does the word saint mean? What does it mean? Where does it come from?

Yes, Lynn. Holy one. Right. So it means holy one. So when we're called saints, it means we're called holy when we are designated as saints. And that means a lot. We are holy. If we're living unholy, then of course we have no right to call ourselves a saint or that. But there's no other way to be a Christian. It's not like, well, yeah, some of you are saints. And then of course, yeah, I'm writing to the rest of you who aren't. No, they're all saints. Now, later on, when the church got all totally united with the world, and you end up with just all these pagans coming in, and they get baptized, but they really haven't changed.

There's not true conversion. Yeah, then the Catholic Church starts calling the godly ones, well, they're saints. Like Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis, Saint this or that. Well, we're all saints. But I mean, they were doing it rightly because they recognized, "Hey, I can't call all of these heathens in here saints because they're living wicked, ungodly lives." But yeah, the problem is those people needed to be put out of the church. The church is for saints. I mean, we reach out to the lost. You don't have to be a saint to be sitting here in church. We welcome sinners to come. This is what the church is for. But when we are baptized and give our lives to Christ, yeah, then we are to be transformed through his power into saints.

All right. He says, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." That's Paul's favorite greeting. If it's not at the beginning of his letters, it's at the end. It's a nice way to greet people. Grace to you means God's favor on you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus had told his disciples, he said, "When you go to a house," he said, "When you enter it, first say peace to this house." So he's giving an actually following up on Jesus's directions there. Okay.

First, verse 8. "I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world." Okay, so Paul, because he's going to be giving some hard counsel, he starts off by praising them. And this is quite an amazing praise. Now, Paul never flatters. I mean, you won't find a more frank person than the apostle Paul. If he pays you a compliment, you know it's genuine. It's not going to be just idle words. It's not flattering. So when he says, "Your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world," wow. I mean, what would you think if you heard if we got a letter from an apostle and said that about our church in Chambersburg, boy, your faith is spoken throughout the whole world.

I mean, that would be astounding. I mean, you would want to listen to the rest of the letter. It's like, "Really? Man, that would really lift you up." And again, if he's saying that, it's true. I mean, Rome was the largest city on earth. People were aware of what was going on in Rome. And obviously, this was a very godly church. If the whole world, now the whole world, he means the Roman world. He doesn't mean here in the United States, the Native Americans and all that. He's talking about the Roman world. That, yeah, your faith is spoken about. People are talking about it everywhere. So that is quite something to be praised for. And so we know he's writing to a very godly church.

Okay, we're going to do one more verse. I know some of you need to leave here in 10 minutes, and I think this will be a good stopping point. Verse 9. "For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit and the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing, I always make mention of you in my prayers." Again, he's trying to demonstrate to them how much he loves them. He says, "I pray without ceasing about you."

I have a couple of people who have texted me or emailed me, communicated to me from time to time that they pray for me every day. And I can't tell you how that makes a person feel. I mean, I think, wow.

If that person came to me with some admonition, I would probably be pretty ready to receive it. It's like, "You pray for me really every day." So if you want to share something with me that you feel needs some correction, yeah, I'm a whole lot more apt to receive it than from somebody, "Well, yeah, I never think about you, David, or pray for you. But hey, I got some words I need to tell you that you need to straighten up."

Yeah, I would probably still listen, but I don't think my heart would probably be quite as receptive. But yeah, Paul, he's first complimented him, "Your faith has served throughout the world, and I pray for you without ceasing." I mean, he told all of us to pray without ceasing, and he puts it to practice. Now, important thing here, "For God is my witness."

I can't tell you how many times I have been confronted with this by people who say, "No, it's all right to take a note. It's all right to swear." And they say, "Paul, look here." He says, "For God is my witness." Have any of you ever been has anyone ever thrown that out to you?

Okay, a few hands. Well, you maybe haven't had enough discussions. You discussed it enough. People are going to throw it out to you. I can guarantee you.

Well, this is not an oath. I mean, Jesus said, "Do not swear." James makes it very clear. Above all things, do not swear. Paul doesn't go against Jesus Christ, okay? So he's not taking an oath. He's not raising his hand and, "God is my witness." He's making a statement of fact. He says, "I pray for you without ceasing." Well, Paul, again, follows Jesus' instructions. He doesn't get on the street corners and pray for the church in Rome so everyone can hear him. He goes into his closet. So who knows that he's praying without ceasing for the people in Rome? Nobody knows except God. So he's saying, "Yeah, God is my witness." He knows what I'm about to tell you.

God and God alone knows that I pray for you without ceasing. And Origen points to a very interesting verse, Isaiah 43:12. This is only in the Septuagint. It doesn't read this way in the Masoretic text. In the Septuagint, it says this, "You are my witnesses." It says that in the Masoretic text. But then it says in the Septuagint, "And I also am a witness," says the Lord God. So we're his witnesses, meaning we testify to him. But he says, "But I also am a witness. I'm a witness to my people. I know what you're doing, and I will testify on your behalf before the angels, before whomever, that God is our witness." And so Paul is correctly making this statement.

But now, he never does this in a secular sense. When he's before a court of law or something like that, you never hear Paul saying, "For God is my witness." So I think we can say for certain, if you're writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, you have the right, when you're talking about spiritual matters, to say, "For God is my witness."

But none of us are writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And there's no place in the New Testament, no place in the early church where you find people saying, "For God is my witness," when they're in a court of law or when they're selling goods and someone says, "Is that really pure silver? Well, God is my witness." No, you don't find that. So yeah, this is not a way to get around Jesus's instructions about oaths. Okay.

As I mentioned, "Without ceasing, I make mention of you in my prayers." He practiced what he preached and a good lesson for us to pray without ceasing. It doesn't mean that we never stop or else we couldn't have church, we couldn't eat, we couldn't do anything else. But it should be throughout the day that we should be praying. And we should remember each other without ceasing. We should pray without ceasing for our church. If Paul prayed for other churches, we should certainly be praying for ours, but for the whole body of Christ as well. Okay.

Any questions through verse 9? We'll pick up next week with verse 10. I think I have to say, as I was just impressed with the diligence that you see in Paul's life, is how much he cares about the Romans, how much he prays for them. And that daily thing I just recently was reading, kind of a secular thing, but people that this guy was writing a bunch of books and how he accomplished, I forget he wrote 73 books, but he did it every day. And I was just thinking, if Paul did something every day, that is their success behind that. If you have that kind of discipline and love and care for the kingdom, you will accomplish what God has asked you to do.

I think Paul's an example of that. Yes. We don't have the kind of results Paul, God, of course, none of us have been called to be an apostle, but very few of us pray like Paul. I mean, you can't expect to do these sort of things with a prayer life that is haphazard or that. I mean, he's a man. He's so busy, you think, "Well, when did he ever have time to pray?" Well, I guess he filled in all of the other time when he wasn't doing all the things he was doing, then he was praying. Making tents, you can pray while you're making tents. And a lot of our jobs are that way that some jobs aren't.

Some jobs take your whole mind and you can't pray while you're working. But if you're blessed with a job that allows you to do that, take advantage of it. But yeah, Paul was successful for a reason. Mike. Yeah, another thing, I like how you pointed out the fact that he stressed that he was called to be an apostle. This wasn't just something he was grabbing for himself because it might not be as obvious to us, but in the early Christian idea of holding up the 12 apostles, well, he wasn't one of the 12. So it's kind of showing that I have merit too because I was specifically called. I'm not just trying to grab that glory for myself.

I was called by Jesus Christ to be an apostle. So it gives him that credibility in their eyes. Right. Even though he wasn't one of the 12. That's right. The 12 didn't have to they didn't have to keep contending on that. Paul, yeah, a lot of people questioned his credentials. And so he had that, along with so many other struggles, he was dealing with that. But so he is bold to mention that. And he mentions it at the beginning so that there's no question he's writing with apostolic authority when he tells them what he's going to be telling them.

Okay. I can tell that I'm going to really enjoy this series. I enjoyed it very much this morning. Well, thank you. I'm enjoying it. I'm learning so much working on this commentary. Like I say, so many verses that I've read and they just seem like, "Okay, they're haphazard. Yes, I get that. That's true." And I never thought about why is Paul saying this here? And he's always got a reason why he's mentioning specific things and he's leading up. And like I say, I see his tact.

He's like a general. He's got a strategy. Okay, I'm tackling something difficult. I need to approach this with care. But of course, it's not put on fake care. He genuinely loved the Romans. I mean, you're praying for someone every day. I mean, you feel a lot of love for them, even though you haven't met most of them. You're aware of them. You know people who've come from Rome. You've heard about the church and that. And people can tell when you genuinely love them and your words have different power when they sense that.

All right. Well, why don't we stand then for prayer?

See, Daniel, are you in a position to pray?

Let's pray together. Our Father, who is in the Lord, amen. Hallelujah to Your name. Your kingdom come, Thy will be done. On earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thy is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

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