The True Light

John 1.6-13

Light changes us.

We’ve all heard of seasonal affective disorder, that thing many people have that makes them depressed and exhausted during the dark winter months. If you know someone like that—first of all—give them a gift and buy them one of those lamps that simulate UV light, to help trick their brains into thinking the sun is out for longer. (I got one for Loanne a few years ago, they really do help.) And secondly, watch what happens to them when spring rolls into summer, and the days get longer, and the weather gets clearer.

The change that comes over them is often staggering. They’re happier, they’ve got more energy, there’s a spring in their step…

Light doesn’t just help us see; it actually does change us.

This year during Advent we’re focusing on John’s prologue to his gospel, where he introduces us to Jesus Christ. If you remember last week, we saw the first five verses of John 1, where John presented Jesus first as “the Word”, God himself, the perfect expression of God’s person and character. He told us that Jesus is the Creator of all things. He told us that in him was life, and that life was the light of men. The “life” he was talking about is physical life (because Christ is the Creator of all things), but most especially spiritual life; and the “light” is light that does two things—it exposes, and it illuminates. We’ll get back into that again today.

The Herald of the Light (v. 6-9)

Let’s pick up where we left off, in v. 6. We start with a bit of an aside, but John has a reason for it. (In today’s English manuscript I’m using the Christian Standard Bible.)

6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. 9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

So this may be confusing, but the “John” mentioned in v. 6 is not the “John” who is writing this gospel. The man writing this gospel is the apostle John, and in v. 6 he’s talking about John the Baptist.

John the Baptist was actually Jesus’s second cousin, the son of Mary’s cousin Elizabeth. John was the last of the great prophets, whose job it was to proclaim God’s will to his people.

This was actually a very big deal, because there had been no prophets in Israel for four hundred years. So John’s coming made massive waves. He was a bit of a weirdo (as the prophets often were): he lived in the desert, wore animal skins and ate bugs—he was the kind of guy you’d avoid if you passed him on the street.

But God sent John with a purpose, and gave him the power to accomplish that purpose—when John spoke, people listened. What he spoke of was repentance: that is, God’s call that people turn away from their rebellion against God, their sin, and obey God. John baptized those who repented for the forgiveness of their sins.

That often struck me as odd when I read about John as a young man. I’d been told that Jesus came to save us from our sins, by taking those sins away. But it seemed to me like, before Jesus even got a chance to do that, John was already there offering repentance—as if it was another, different way of being saved from sin.

Of course, that’s not what was happening. John was preaching a baptism of repentance because he was getting the people ready for Jesus—as he says in v. 23, “I am a voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord,—just as Isaiah the prophet said.” Before anyone will accept the salvation Christ offers, they have to believe they need saving. John was putting their sin in front of their eyes, showing them that it is not possible to continue in that sin, but that God is willing to forgive. And how would that forgiveness come, once and for all? Through Jesus Christ.

All this is to say that John the Baptist was pointing to the light, but he wasn’t the light himself. As we see in v. 9: The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

There’s one more important thing to note in v. 9: John says that this “true light” that is in Christ “gives light to everyone.” Everyone. Light shines indiscriminately. If you turn on a light in a dark room, anything it comes into contact with is illuminated. Unless you’re a black hole, you can’t not be affected by light.

Every time someone shares the good news of Jesus Christ, his light shines on the people who hear it, whether they want it to or not. The question isn’t whether or not the light shines on you; it does. The question is rather, how do you respond to that light?

The Rejection of the Light (v. 10-11)

There are only two possible ways, two possible responses. The first of those responses is rejection.

V. 10:

10 He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

Usually when the Bible talks about “the world” in the sense of “the people of the world,” it’s referring to those people who don’t belong to God, who aren’t members of his own people—and that’s what John’s doing here too. Although the world was created by Christ, the people of the world don’t recognize their Creator.

But John is saying this, not just to say how bad the world is, but also to accentuate an even more surprising point: the world rejected him, but that’s not all. Members of his own people rejected him too.

Jesus was born a Jew, to a Jewish family. And by and large—with the exception of a small handful of people before his death—the Jews rejected Jesus. They called out for his death. Now thankfully this didn’t remain the case (the first several thousand people to believe in him were mostly Jews), but you would think that the one group likely to accept the Jewish Messiah would be the Jews themselves.

But no. The world rejected him, and his own people rejected him. The question is, why?

We briefly talked about it last week. We see it a little later, in chapter 3, verse 20, when Jesus says that everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed. The light shows us what we really are, so we naturally reject it. We saw this multiple times when we were in the book of Romans: we are all sinners, we all naturally reject God, so we all naturally stay away from the light. We don’t naturally like to hear someone share the message of the gospel, because the first thing we find out in that message is that we’re guilty before God, and no one wants to hear that.

You can see this happening if you keep reading Jesus’s story. Nearly every time Jesus taught, you had some people who were interested, and some who believed (we’ll get to them in a second). But you also had plenty of people in the crowds who were going, “Nope—sorry, I’m out.” His teaching was shedding light on their own sin and their own inconsistencies, and they didn’t like it. So they called him a blasphemer, and ultimately they killed him for it.

Anyone who has shared the gospel with several people knows this is the case. You’ll get as many rejections as you do interested conversations—sometimes even more. Even when you just try to talk about what the Bible says about other things, people reject it. As long as you just talk about the love of God and the grace of God, people can usually get on board with that, or at least appreciate that you’re saying something nice. But if you’re going to be faithful to the Bible, that can’t be all you talk about. And the second you start putting your finger on more specific issues—issues of what God says is best for us, what he calls sin and what he calls righteousness—that conversation often gets shut down pretty quickly.

He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.

The Transformation of the Light (v. 12-13)

Naturally, this is the response every one of us have. So v. 10-11 shouldn’t be surprising.

What should surprise us is that some people did receive him. Some people do. Many people, in fact. And I’d suggest that the real question we should be asking is not, Why don’t more people receive Christ? but rather, why does anyone receive Christ? If we are all naturally sinners who resist the light, what makes someone want to go towards Christ, rather than run away from him?

That is the question John answers in v. 12-13.

12 But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, 13 who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.

We’ll need to do a bit of work here, because this part of the passage is tricky.

I said before that the light that shines through Christ exposes. It exposes us for what we really are, it exposes sin for what it really is.

But that’s not all it does. The light also illuminates, and those whom it illuminates are transformed. They become children of God.

How does this happen? What are the steps in this process?

We see the first two in v. 12: to all who did receive him; to those who believe in his name. That’s what we need to do to be declared children of God.

But why do we believe in him and receive him, rather than reject him? We see that in v. 13: because we were born of God. Not because we were born into a certain family, not because we were born into a certain culture, not because our parents decided they wanted to have kids. If we believe in him and receive him, it’s because we were born of God.

Now if that sounds confusing to you, you’re not alone. Just a couple chapters later, in chapter 3, we see Jesus speaking with a religious leader named Nicodemus, and he’s talking about this very subject. The first thing we see Jesus say, in John 3.3, is:

“Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Nicodemus’s response is excellent, because it’s so human—it’s exactly the kind of thing any normal person would ask. He says (v. 4):

“How can anyone be born when he is old?… Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?”

Gold star for Nicodemus—that’s a great question. So Jesus goes on to explain that he’s not talking about physical birth, but spiritual birth. He says (3.8):

The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.

In other words, babies who are born don’t understand how they were born, and they certainly don’t decide to be born. The decisive element of our birth escapes us; it’s something that happens to us, not something we participate in.

In the same way, being born of God is his work, not ours. We don’t understand it, we can’t predict it, we can’t make it happen—it’s something he does in us. We hear the truth of the gospel—the light of Jesus “shines” on us—and that light changes us. It transforms us from the inside out. We might even try to resist it, but if God chooses to shine that light on us, we can’t help but be changed. We may not understand it, we may not even be comfortable with it, but once it happens, we can’t deny it.

That was my experience. I realized that I believed in God at work one day. I had a job when I was nineteen, silk-screening t-shirts, and I worked in an old barn in the middle of the woods. I was out there all by myself one day, listening to music, and suddenly I just realized: I can’t deny that I believe in God. I’d tried to deny it for a long while, but I realized that I couldn’t—although I couldn’t wrap my brain around it, I believed this was true.

But I wasn’t happy about it. Not at first. So I tried to just ignore it—to go about my life, to ignore that little voice in my head saying that I needed God and Jesus really had done all this for me. I did that for almost two years. But finally, I couldn’t do it any more. So finally, I did what I should have done years earlier and I started to read my Bible. I started to take it seriously. And I realized that not only I couldn’t resist the life he was calling me to, I wanted to live that life. I wanted to be his child.

So finally, I gave in, and I accepted him.

When God causes us to be born again, when the Holy Spirit gives us new life in him, we may try to find a million ways around it, but sooner or later we’ll realize we’ve only got one possibility that will satisfy us, only one option that seems remotely plausible. And that is to believe in him and receive him.

If God gives us life in Christ, it always ends that way. It’s what we refer to as irresistible grace. If God shines his light in our hearts, we will believe in him, and we will receive him.

And those who believe in him, those who receive him, are given the right to be called children of God. And in case you’re wondering, the formal way this happens is through baptism: those who are born again place their faith in Christ and receive his salvation, and they say it. They profess their faith in Christ. At that point, the church baptizes them, as a symbol and a seal of that truth. Baptism doesn’t save, but it formalizes the truth that this person has been saved. Baptism is the moment at which the new believer declares before the church, and the church officially recognizes, that this new birth has happened to them.

What’s The Point?

Now, you might be wondering what the point of all this theological rigamarole is.

Here’s the point—here’s the big thing John wants us to see, and it is absolutely vital to understand. John wants it to be crystal clear that if we are saved, if we have been forgiven for our sins, if we belong to God and look forward to eternal life in him, that is entirely God’s doing.

We don’t think often enough about how incredible this is. Nothing that we’ve seen today was an obligation for God. He didn’t have to send John the Baptist to prepare the people for Christ’s coming. He didn’t have to send Jesus Christ: the true light that gives light to everyone. Christ didn’t have to come into the world; he didn’t have to come to his own people, only to be rejected by them. He didn’t have to cause us to be born of God, to be born again.

God owes us absolutely nothing.

Christ didn’t have to give us the perfect life he lived.

He didn’t have to take our sins on himself and be punished in our place.

He doesn’t have to be our advocate before the Father.

He doesn’t have to intercede for us, he doesn’t have to care for us, he doesn’t have to live in us by his Spirit, he doesn’t have to grant us a single spiritual blessing. None of that is an obligation.

God did this, and he still does this, because he is just that good.

The point of this entire prologue, which we’ll conclude next week, is to use very simple and beautiful language to overwhelm us with God’s goodness.

Conclusion

Preachers usually like to end sermons with what’s called an application—it’s the part where we talk about how we as people are called to respond to the text we’ve read, because all Scripture drives us to a response.

In short, after reading the Bible, people want to know, Okay—so what do I do?

The thing is, sometimes we don’t do anything. Sometimes the Bible simply calls us to sit under its weight, to see, to realize the immensity of what God has told us. In those cases, the only proper response is to pray that God would help us do that. And how we pray will depend on who we are.

Some of you here haven’t yet been born again; you haven’t been born of God. You don’t believe in him, you haven’t received him. And this might be the first time some of you have been exposed to these things.

But if you’re here today, if you’ve spend the last few minutes listening, that probably means that at the very least, you’re looking for something. So here’s what I’d invite you to do. We’re going to put a prayer up on the screen; it’s a prayer for those who are still asking questions. We’ll leave it up for a few minutes; I’d invite you to just read that prayer, and make it your own—actually speak to God, and ask him to convince you of the truth that he really is as good as he says he is. Ask him to change your heart, and to convince you.

Some of you—and what I’m going to say may come as a bit of a shock—have been born again, some of you have been born of God…but you don’t know it yet. You might suspect that something is going on in you, but you haven’t yet recognized that God has done something in you that you can’t undo. You haven’t yet admitted to yourselves and to God that you actually do believe. You haven’t verbally professed faith in him, you haven’t actively received him.

If this is you, the second prayer is for you: it’s a prayer of faith. I’d invite you to do the same thing I said before: if you want to receive him, pray this prayer and make it your own. Place your trust in Christ, and tell him you’re doing it. Ask him to forgive you for your sin, to help you turn away from that sin and follow him. There’s nothing else we must do to be saved.

But a lot of us here are probably in a slightly different situation. You believe in him, and you have received him…but you’ve spent so much time in church that these realities don’t really do anything to you anymore. You’re used to the truth of the gospel, to the point where you’ve almost become hardened to it.

Over the next few moments, I’d invite you to keep your Bibles open and read over John 1.1-13 again. Ask God to stir your heart again, that you might not take for granted his incredible goodness to you.

And still others here are absolutely overwhelmed by God’s goodness. You’ve read these words and you can hardly contain yourselves.

If that’s you, spend some time simply thanking God for his goodness, and for the fact that you feel the weight of it. Then I’d encourage you to ask him to help you—to keep seeing it, to keep feeling it, and then to help others see and feel the weight of his goodness for us as well.

We’re going to spend the next few moments in silence before God, after which we’ll pray and take Communion.

Jesus Is...

John 1.1-5

Not far from here, on the rue Saint-Denis, there’s a cool little place called the Musée des illusions. Basically it’s a museum filled with nothing but optical and auditory illusions, and it’s endlessly fun to see how easily your mind plays tricks on you and convinces you that you’re seeing one thing when in fact you’re seeing another.

It’s fun, but it’s also a little unsettling, to see how inaccurate our perception often is. And if that’s true for something as clear and objective as vision, how true must it be for things that are less tangible, like our way of looking at the world around us and really understanding what’s happening?

It might be surprising to know that this is one of the reasons why we celebrate Advent. We celebrate Advent because we want to celebrate seeing the world rightly.

Advent is a Latin word that means “coming”. It’s the period in the year when we reflect on Christ’s coming, but before that, on what it was to wait for his coming. God’s people waited for centuries to see the fulfillment of his promise to send them a Savior—and we’re waiting too. We’re waiting for that same Savior to return. So we need to learn how to wait.

But our waiting is much easier than that of the people of Israel, because he’s already come once, so we know what to look forward to. And for all the joys of heaven that are promised to us, the main joy we look forward to isn’t the joy of perfect health, or eternal life, or perfect peace. The main joy we’re waiting for—the source of every other joy we will enjoy forever—isn’t a thing at all, but a person.

So we’re going to spend the next few weeks thinking about the person whom we celebrate at Christmas: Jesus Christ. We’ll be doing this in the first chapter of John’s gospel, the prologue in which John explains in great depth exactly who Jesus Christ is, and why he is worthy of being celebrated.

And very simply, in today’s passage, John 1.1-5, we see four things: Jesus is God, Jesus is Creator, Jesus is Life, and Jesus is Light.

Jesus Is God (v. 1-2)

When John writes his gospel, he’s writing to a mixed audience. It’s clear that he’s writing both to Jews and Gentiles, because he often takes time to explain Jewish customs, or translates terms from Aramaic to Greek. He intentionally begins his gospel by speaking to his readers in a way they will all understand—although for different reasons, depending on who they are.

V. 1:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God.

So let’s think about how Jews would read this for a minute. The Old Testament was the Bible the Jews had at this point in time, and if you know the Old Testament at all, you might be familiar with its very first verse, Genesis 1.1, which says, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. So this is an obvious callback to the very first verse in the Bible: In the beginning, God did something—and we’ll get to that in a second.

But first: why “the Word”? In the beginning was “the Word”.

John is doing more than one thing at the same time, which he will do over and over in this gospel. If you’ve never read the gospel of John, it’s a fascinating book, because on the surface it’s not a difficult book to understand. Jesus says some hard things, but usually what he’s saying and what he’s doing is clear. But with almost every passage in this book, if you take a harder look, and study it a bit more deeply, you realize that there’s a lot more going on underneath the surface. John’s often doing several different things at once when he writes.

And that’s what he’s doing here.

He speaks of “The Word”, first of all, because the Jews would have been familiar with this idea. The main way God always spoke to his people in the Old Testament was that he spoke to them. He spoke to Abraham, he spoke to Moses, he spoke through the prophets. Speaking of “God’s Word” was a way of referring to the message God wanted to send to his people: what God wanted them to see and know about him.

But this term wasn’t only significant for the Jews.

For the Greeks, it meant something too, though it was something different. At the time, there was a concept in Greek philosophy called the “logos”, which translated is, “the Word.” For them, “the Word” was an impersonal principle of Reason that gave order to the universe. It was the force driving everything in existence, the animating energy behind all things.

Now of course John doesn’t mean it in this way— “the Word”, for John, isn’t impersonal at all, but very personal—but since he’s writing to a mixed audience which would include both Jews and Greeks, he decides to reappropriate these ideas, common to both groups and summed up in the same word, and deepen it.

To the Jews, he says, “God’s Word isn’t just an expression of God’s wisdom or his will; God’s Word, as I’m using the term, is God himself.”

To the Greeks, he says, “You’ve heard of the Word. But this ‘Word’ that you imagine gave order to the universe is in fact much deeper, much greater, than you think.”

Now I’m going to skip ahead a minute just to clarify where John is going, because we won’t get there for a couple weeks. In v. 14 and 17, John says this:

14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

In this prologue, John wants it to be clear that when he speaks about “the Word”, he’s not talking about a message, and he’s not talking about an impersonal force: he’s talking about Jesus Christ.

So when John says, “In the beginning was the Word,” he’s saying that beginning in the very first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1.1, when he says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” Jesus was there. The Word was with God.

And he goes even further; not only was the Word with God; the Word was God.

Jesus Christ is God himself.

Now of course if you think about this even for a moment, you’ll run up against a logical problem: how can Jesus be both with God, and God? I don’t say “I’m with myself,” I say, “I am myself.” The Bible says that God sent Jesus Christ; how can Jesus Christ be sent by God, and yet still be God himself?

It’s a tricky question, and one that doesn’t have an easy answer.

Basically, it’s this. God is one God, and this one true God has for all eternity manifested himself in three distinct persons: the Father, the Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. The Father is not the Son; the Son is not the Father; the Spirit is neither the Son, nor the Father. But at the same time, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God.

Do you follow me? Yeah, neither do I.

And that’s okay—we don’t need to understand how that’s possible, but the Bible clearly says that not only is it possible, it’s true.

That’s the concept that John is introducing here. This “Word” is eternal; in the beginning (that is, before the creation of the world), the Word was with God—and not only that, the Word was God. The Son has always been with God, and the Son has always been God. Jesus Christ is God. That’s the first thing we see here.

Jesus Is Creator (v. 3)

The second thing is an extension of the first, and it’s another callback to the creation story in Genesis 1. V. 3:

3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

Every single thing that has ever existed or will ever exist owes its existence to Jesus Christ—why? Because he made it all.

To put it another way, when we read Genesis 1, and we see God say, “Let there be light,” Jesus is the one who turned the light on. When God says, “Let the dry land appear” out of the water, Jesus is the one who made the dry land appear. When God says, “Let there be animals of all kinds, on land and in the water,” Jesus is the one who made the animals. When God says, “Let us make man in our own image,” Jesus is the one who made the first man and the first woman.

Everything that exists—including you and me—was made by Jesus Christ.

One of the things we celebrate at Christmas is the fact that the Son of God came to earth in human form, as a human baby. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and the virgin Mary carried him in her womb for nine months.

Think about this for a minute. For nine months, Jesus is a fetus, growing in the womb of a young woman he himself created. When he’s born, he’s delivered by a young woman through a process he himself designed. When she changes him for the first time, the hands that change him are hands that he himself made.

The Creator God comes to live amongst his creation—even to be dependent on his creation to live. It’s the most incredible event in human history.

And not only did Jesus Christ make all things; he maintains all things. Hebrews 1.3 says,

[Christ] is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

EVERYTHING. From the greatest to the smallest, from the most significant to the most mundane. The first time Mary nursed him, she could do it because Christ was telling her body to make milk.

If your heart is still beating in your chest (and I presume that it is), that heart beats because Jesus is telling it to beat. If the world is still turning on its axis, it’s because Jesus is telling it to turn. When the sun rose this morning, it’s because Jesus told it to rise.

Jesus Is Life (v. 4a)

The fact that all things were made through Christ brings us to an obvious truth—not only did he create all things, not only does he continue to maintain his creation, but he brings life to that creation. V. 4:

4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men.

Now there are obviously two aspects to this verse, and we’ll look at them separately. First: in him was life.

A minute ago we said that Christ sustains the world he created. And he does this indiscriminately: he sustains our lives, but he also sustains plants and animals and mountains and oceans. Every human being that has life has it through Christ, and Christ does not demand that we believe in him to keep our hearts beating.

But there is another life that he brings, and it is mainly this life John is referring to here. (It’s this life to which he will return over and over in this gospel.)

We can see what he’s talking about by looking at its opposite, which we also see early in the book of Genesis. If you remember, in chapter 2, God creates human beings, and he tells them they can eat from any tree that he has created except for one. He says in Genesis 2.17: “…of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

Now of course that’s not immediately true: Adam and Eve continued to live long after they ate from that tree. But in the moment when they disobeyed God by eating from the tree, they suffered a different kind of death: a spiritual death—a poison which changed everything about them, and everyone who would come after them.

Here’s what we need to see: Jesus’s coming is the antidote to that poison. It was the reversal of that spiritual death.

Paul said it this way in Ephesians 2.1-2a, 4-5:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked… 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ…

Christ gives us life. He keeps our hearts beating, he keeps our lungs beating. But he was already doing that before he took on a human nature; he did that from the very beginning of creation.

When he came to this earth as a human being, he came to make us fully alive. Not just physically alive, but totally and eternally alive. Outside of faith in Christ there is temporary survival—but there is no true life outside of him.

Real life—the real, abundant life Jesus promises—is only found in him.

Part of that life is, simply put, salvation. It is the gift that Christ gave us, by living a perfect life and being punished in our place for our sins, and giving us his life so that we can be declared righteous by God and live eternally with him. That is the life he has promised us, for all eternity, when he returns: life in a world where there is no death, no sickness, no pain, no mourning, but only joy and peace in him, forever.

Jesus Is Light (v. 4b-5)

But that can seem awfully ethereal to us, can’t it? It’s hard to even imagine it, much less benefit from it today. And that’s why I said that this eternal life is only part of the life that we find in Christ.

The other part—the part John focuses on in this passage—is very much for today: it is the ability to see the world rightly, as God sees it.

V. 4 again:

4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

So again, this is a callback to the creation narrative—the first thing God says at creation is, Let there be light. And Christ makes the light.

But again, that’s not all he is doing. This isn’t just a reminder that Jesus is God the Creator. There is a reason John uses the word “light” to describe Jesus, as we see again and again in his gospel, and the reason is obvious.

A couple years ago we were on vacation near Bordeaux, and one day we went to a corn maze with the whole family. It was great fun: we found our way through, there were some puzzles to solve, it was great. Now we also had tickets to come back later on and do the maze again at night. So Jack and I did that. It was a very different experience, doing that maze after the sun had set. It was pitch black—we were in the middle of nowhere—and all I had was the little flashlight on my phone. It was a little unsettling.

There’s a reason why kids are afraid of the dark: you never know what can be hiding in the shadows when it’s dark. But whatever scared us at night doesn’t usually scare us so badly in the day, because the sun illuminates everything, and shows us what’s there.

Or think of it this way. We’ve all had the experience of walking through the house in the middle of the night, and seeing something that looks exactly like a person standing near us. We jump, we spin around, we turn on the light, and with the light on we see that it was really just a coat hanging from the coat rack.

Light shows us the world as it actually is.

The Bible reminds us over and over again that we do not see well. And it’s not just because we have poor vision; we don’t see well, mainly, because left to ourselves we are walking in darkness (figuratively speaking). Ever since the first man and woman rebelled against God and sin entered into the world,  every human being that came after has had something like spiritual cataracts. We can see the world, but we don’t see it well; sin covers our eyes, keeping us from seeing the world as it is. Not only that, but the world itself has been corrupted by sin, plunged into darkness. On our own, we’re like people with cataracts trying to find our way through a corn maze in the middle of the night with no light.

And that is why the coming of Jesus Christ is so significant. The promise of a Savior is the promise of light. Eight centuries before Christ came, the prophet Isaiah wrote this prophecy (Isaiah 9.2, 6-7):

2   The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light;

those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,

on them has light shone…

6  For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

7  Of the increase of his government and of peace

there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

to establish it and to uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

from this time forth and forevermore.

God promised light in the darkness. Light to show us the world as it really is. And he said that when this light came, it would not come in the form of mysticism; it wouldn’t come in the form of vague philosophy; it wouldn’t come in the form of an intense feeling or an emotional experience or intellectual rigor. He said that when the light came, it would come in the form of a King. A King whose goal is not to amass wealth and power for himself, but to establish justice and peace, to care for the people under his reign. A King both good enough to show his people the right way to live, the way he created them to live, and a King who is powerful enough to keep the darkness at bay.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

(The word translated “overcome” in the ESV is most often used to convey understanding or acceptance, as in the French: les ténèbres ne l’ont pas accueillie, or in an alternative note in the NIV: the darkness has not understood it.)

This is a truth many of us have a hard time with. We like the idea of illumination. We like the thought that we are able to see things as they are. But we don’t like the truth of the Bible, that in order to see things as they are, in order to be “illuminated,” we have to submit to a King. Jesus will later say (in John 3.19) that left to their own devices, people love the darkness rather than the light, because their works are evil, and the light exposes that evil. The light that allows us to see the world as it is also forces us to see ourselves as we are.

So we have a choice—a choice not dissimilar to that given to many characters in many stories throughout history. Seeing things as they are might be frightening, because we may not like what we see, at least at first.

But we still want to see, because we all know deep down that seeing things as they are is better than continuing in the darkness of ignorance. So if we want to see things as we are, there is only one place we can go.

If you want to see things as they really are, look at Jesus. He is the light that shines in the darkness. Much of Jesus’s teaching in the gospels consists of Jesus correcting misconceptions about the world. We remember the Sermon on the Mount, the number of times he said, “You’ve heard it said that… But I say to you, the problem is even deeper than that. You think one thing is going on, when in fact there’s a lot more to it.” If you want to see the world rightly, look at Jesus.

If you want to see yourselves rightly, look at Jesus. The image that always comes to mind when I think of this is a bit crude, but I think it’s appropriate; it’s the idea of quality control. When you’re making something, you need to take stock of how well the work is going; that’s quality control. The foundation of all quality control is the established standard of what the thing you’re making should be. There is a norm you are meant to adhere to, and it’s by comparing the thing to that norm that you can know how it’s going.

Well, the standard of humanity’s quality control is Jesus Christ. The standard we had to follow was first given by God in his law, and then Jesus came and showed us that the Law was even more demanding than the people of Israel had imagined.

He is the only human being who has never sinned, who is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature (Hebrews 1.3). So it is only in comparison to Christ that we can see what we are truly like. We might think we’re “good people”—but how does that idea stack up next to the perfect standard Jesus sets? Not very well: no human being who has ever lived will pass that quality control. We need something else. We need a Savior to right our wrongs.

And a Savior is exactly what God sent, in the person of Jesus Christ. Which tells us what kind of a God he is. If you want to see the world rightly, look at Jesus. If you want to see yourselves rightly, look at Jesus. And if you want to see God rightly, look at Jesus.

This God is a God of perfect righteousness and perfect justice. He would have been right to punish every human being throughout history for our rebellion against him, for all eternity. But that’s not what he did. He sent his Son, the light into the darkness, holiness into sin, life into death, so that he might take the punishment instead of his people.

The reason we talk about sin so much in the church is not to make us feel bad; it’s not to show us how horribly wicked we all are. The reason we talk about sin so much is to remind us how incredibly good God is. He didn’t have to show us this grace. He didn’t have to redeem and reclaim and forgive people he created.

But he did, because he is good. He is life, and he is light. Light cannot do anything but shine.

So the fundamental call on each and every one of us today is to turn our eyes toward Jesus.

Maybe this morning you’re doubting whether you can come to him or not. You can; that’s why Jesus came. Look to him.

Maybe you’re reading this text and realizing you have taken his grace horribly for granted, treating it as normal when it is anything but. Look to Jesus; remember the gift he is.

Maybe you’re reading this text and you’re simply overwhelmed by God’s goodness to us in Christ. If that’s you, you’re where you need to be. Keep looking.

No matter where we are, no matter what’s happening in our lives, this is our call. Look to Jesus—God himself, our Creator, our life, and our light.

Elders

1 Timothy 3.1-7

As you may or may not know, last week we had a general assembly in the church, where we sat down with our members and discussed important things going on in the life of the church. And of course there was a lot to talk about.

But one of the most important things—even more important than the change of venue—was the discussion of a man going through the process of being trained and assessed to become an elder in the church. The man in question is Eduardo, whom most of you know. We wanted to clarify where we were in the process with Eduardo, and what our plans were going forward.

As you know we finished our series in Paul’s letter to the Romans last week, and we’ll be going into our Advent series next week; we had a week in the schedule where we weren’t sure what to do. So the elders decided that it would be a good idea to jump on the subject we just addressed in the assembly last week, and take some time to teach on eldership—in other words, to talk about what an elder is, what we do, what you should expect of us and how you should respond to us. And by extension, what you should be keeping an eye out for in Eduardo over the next few months.

Now there’s a whole lot I’d like to say this morning that I don’t have time to say—particularly regarding our position on men and women in leadership in the church. If you’ve been coming to the church for a while you know our position. We believe that in almost every aspect of the life of the church men and women can and should serve equally: we need the gifts that every member of the body of Christ brings to the table, and we cannot only grow if we have the men on one side and the women on the other. That’s why we have women deacons (like Phoebe, whom we saw two weeks ago in Romans 16), women who serve in the church counsel, women who hold positions of responsibility in every area of ministry in the church.

There is only one role in the church that God, in the Bible, explicitly reserves for certain, qualified men—and that is the role of elder, or overseer, as it is translated here. There are a lot of places on our website where we talk about this—if you have any questions you can go to our sermon series on 1 Timothy or the series called “Distinctives,” in which we cover this subject at length.

But to give you a five-second summary: the Bible is clear that God desires for the initiative for leadership in the church and in the home to be taken by men who live their lives sacrificially, in the image of the man Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who gave himself for his people. He is the model, and that model is made visible when a godly man sacrifices himself for the good of his church, for the good of his family, to help them become holy as Christ is holy.

That is the goal, and if you want to know more about that, like I said, there are plenty of resources on our website.

But that’s not the subject we’d like to talk about today. We’d like to get into the details of what an elder should look like—what should characterize an elder in the church. Before we see that, however, we need to take a moment to define exactly what it is an elder does.

What do elders do?

In today’s passage Paul doesn’t lay out all the details of an elder’s tasks, but we do know from other places in the Bible what the elders are called to do.

Firstly, Paul summarizes the responsibilities of elders a little later in this same book, in 1 Timothy 5.17:

Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in preaching and teaching.

There are a lot of things we can see just here, but briefly, and first of all, elders rule, or govern, the church. This means it is their responsibility to lead the church in the way the Bible would have them lead it. The elders are the ones responsible for the spiritual health of the church: for making decisions related to that spiritual health, for exercising church discipline, and praying for the Spirit’s wisdom to guide the church faithfully.

Secondly, elders preach and teach. It is their responsibility to preach the whole counsel of God to the people under their care. This is why at Église Connexion you’ll hear lots of different voices in lots of different contexts, but the preaching of the Word during corporate worship is always done by an elder or by someone in training to become an elder.

Next, it is their responsibility to care for the church of God. Paul says to the church in Ephesus (in Acts 20.28):

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

This is why, although we are all called to care for one another in the church, there are many cases in which the elders will be called to exercise a particular care towards our members, particularly in regards to spiritual matters. We can’t solve every problem, but we are called to pay careful attention to you, to care for the church that Christ has obtained with his own blood.

And the Bible also tells us how elders should do all this. In Luke 22.26, Jesus says,

Let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.

In 2 Corinthians 13.10 Paul says that God gave him authority over the church for building up and not for tearing down. So the authority God gives to pastors or elders in the church is a servant authority: it is not an authority which allows the pastors to dominate those in the church, but rather which will free them to serve them out of love.

The elders have a responsibility before God to do these things, and it is an incredibly serious responsibility. The author of the letter to the Hebrews tells the Hebrew churches (Hebrews 13.17),

Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account.

That reality is a weighty and frightening thing for an elder to shoulder. So given the seriousness of this call, the question we’re asking today is, how do we know that a man is fit to do this work?

What are the qualifications for elders?

V. 1:

The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

So first off, this term “overseer” is synonymous with what Paul means when he says “elder” or “pastor.” In Acts 20.17-35, Paul refers to the elders of the church of Ephesus as “overseers.” In 1 Peter 5.1-2, elders are encouraged to “shepherd” the flock of God, which is of course the role of a pastor. J.B. Lightfoot wrote, “It is a fact now generally recognized by theologians of all shades of opinion, that in the language of the New Testament the same officer in the Church is called indifferently ‘bishop [overseer]’ (Gk. episkopos) and ‘elder’ or ‘presbyter’ (Gk. presbyteros).”

Secondly, many people who feel called to the pastorship hesitate to move forward with it for fear of appearing arrogant or prideful. But Paul encourages us to realize that it’s not a bad thing to aspire to this office: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

But there is a big “but”—simply aspiring to the office of overseer is not enough. There are conditions. Every man who is elected to the role of elder must meet certain criteria. These are the characteristics that I was evaluated on when I went through assessment by Acts 29 before planting this church; these are the characteristics that Paul and Arnaud and Joe were evaluated on; these are the criteria we are assessing now in Eduardo. So what are the criteria?

2 Therefore an overseer must be above reproach…

This is a kind of summary term for everything that follows; it basically means that this man should be free of major character flaws that would be damaging for the church. It doesn’t mean he’s perfect—no one is, not even Paul—but he should be known for living a godly life.

…the husband of one wife…

Now, he’s not just referring to polygamy here—he’s not saying, for example, that as long as you only have one wife, you can do what you want with her and with your own heart and mind.

A modern equivalent of this term would be to say that he is a “one-woman man.” His heart and his mind are entirely devoted to his wife. She is his standard of beauty, inside and out, which means he’s not going to be looking around at other women like a farmer at an agricultural forum looking at cows. He’s a one-woman man.

(So what about single guys? Arnaud isn’t married. Eduardo isn’t married. Even if you’re not married, remember this: most of you probably will be one day, and when you are, that woman is your woman. You will have no other. So single men are exhorted to guard your heart and mind carefully, as if they were already married; God calls you to only have eyes for the woman he will give you.)

…sober-minded…

This word speaks to the emotional life of the man. He’s a man who is not easily excitable, not easily provoked, but rather is poised enough to be led by the Spirit, and not his emotions.

…self-controlled…

This means that he should be able to focus, to not be easily distracted. He should be able to control his mind, control his tongue, control his behavior, to reflect the Spirit’s work in his heart.

…respectable…

This means that his life is well-ordered; it’s not characterized by chaos. Have you ever known someone whose car was always a mess, who’s always late, whose conversations are always rushed, who always seems to be thinking about a million things at the same time, who’s just generally disordered? This is one area where I struggle (ask my wife). It’s not easy to respect a guy like that.

To be respectable means that this guy has a good handle on his priorities, to the point that other people can see that even if he’s not perfect, he’s able to bear the weight and complexities of his life, which means he can bear the complexities of the church he’s called to lead.

…hospitable…

I’ll admit that this word bothers me, because it’s the qualification I have the hardest time with. I’m naturally clumsy on the social front, quite shy, and I have a hard time speaking to people I don’t know. I’m getting better, but it’s a struggle.

One thing reassures me, though, and that’s Jesus’s own behavior. Jesus didn’t necessarily seek out everyone—it’s just not possible—but he never refused anyone who came to him. It is this welcome that is most important, it seems to me. Whoever it is, whatever the need, the elder must welcome everyone the best he can, without playing favorites.

…able to teach…

Every elder should be able to teach. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that every elder will preach on a regular basis; but every elder should be able to teach. And this doesn’t necessarily mean teaching by standing up in front of people and laying out a sermon. My first boss was Philip Moore, who taught me immensely in informal settings: by inviting me and my wife to come to his house and watch him interact with his wife and kids, or by talking me through the gospel implications of whatever situation I was going through. Being able to teach means being able to sit down with someone and say, “Now how does the gospel come to bear on this situation?”, and being able to answer that question.

…not a drunkard…

So this is someone who isn’t addicted to outside influences—whether alcohol, or drugs, or entertainment, or whatever. God gives us good things that can be release valves for us—playing with our kids, playing sports, whatever… But our main release, our main need, our only addiction, if I could put it that way, should be Christ, and Christ alone.

…not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome…

It’s amazing to see how many men are prone to ridiculous outbursts of anger. Now, I believe this extends to not just violence done with our hands, but also with our mouths. Remember what Paul said to the Ephesians (4.29)?

29 Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

This is the kind of man he’s referring to. This kind of man can sit down with an unruly person, or wife, or child, and rather than reacting on his anger, can help that person see the root of his sin. He is gentle. His goal is not to beat down, but to help the person in front of him.

…not a lover of money…

This is another kind of addiction, and there are few things that will ruin a man more quickly than a love of money. Why? Because it shows where his treasure is. Jesus said in Matthew 6.19-21,

19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Next, v. 4:

4 He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, 5 for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?

He knows how to love his wife as Christ loved the church; he knows how to sacrifice for her and provide for her; and he knows how to raise his children well.

Now, I believe this is more than merely being able to keep your kids in line. I believe it because of what Paul said in Ephesians 6.4:

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

In other words, kids may well obey their parents, but the kind of obedience we’re working for is joyful obedience, glad submission.

I’ll never forget one of the greatest lessons in parenting I’ve ever learned. A couple years ago we were hanging out with some. We were walking to the park with them, and one of the kids (he must have been six or seven at the time) kept on running when Del, the dad, said to stop. Finally Del had to raise his voice a little to get his attention, and the kid threw a tantrum. And what Del did was amazing.

He squatted down in front of his son, calmed him down and said, “Jeth, do you think God loves you?” (This got my attention—it was not the kind of question I would have thought to ask a six-year-old in that context.)

Jeth said, Yes.

“Do you think God knows what’s best for you?” Yes.

“Who did God give you as a daddy?” You.

“Okay. So I want you to think about this. When you throw a tantrum because daddy told you not to run, you’re basically telling God he made a mistake and gave you a bad daddy, a daddy who tells you not to run because he doesn’t want you to be happy. God gave me to you as your daddy because you need someone to take care of you, to help you learn what’s dangerous and what’s safe. And when you throw a tantrum when I tell you not to do something, you’re saying that I’m wrong to tell you no, and that God was wrong to give you a daddy like me.”

(Jeth was very quiet—you could tell he was thinking this through carefully.)

Del said, “Now, is that what you really think? That God gave you a bad daddy?” He didn’t say anything, just shook his head.

“So how can you show God that he was right, that you know he gave you a good daddy who loves you and wants you to be safe?” I can obey you.

Now, Del could have simply said, “Don’t run because I said so!” and then spanked his son. But he didn’t; he took the time to explain to his son what was at the root of his sin, and directed his gaze to Christ. He is not provoking his children to anger; but rather he is bringing them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. He is keeping his children submissive, with dignity; he managed his household well.

6 He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil.

So it’s obvious (at least I hope it is) that an elder should be a converted Christian who manifests evidence of his faith in Christ. What he should not be is a recent convert. John Stott writes, “Although the modern western custom of ordaining people in their twenties straight from college has much to commend it, it also has its dangers, if they have had insufficient time since conversion to put down roots and to grow up in Christ.”

The danger, according to Paul, is pride: that he may become puffed up with conceit. This pride was the reason why Satan rebelled against God, so if we continue in that pride we may well share in his consequence, and prove the reality (or no) of our faith. An elder should be mature enough in his faith to have grown in humility, and to have proven that humility in the way he interacts with other Christians: he should have shown that his desire is not to further his own interests, but those of others.

7 Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.

Lastly, an elder must have a good reputation with people outside the church. We all represent the gospel to the world around us, and the pastors even more so. If they fall into disgrace, at least in the eyes of outsiders, so does the gospel. This is the snare of the devil—he works tirelessly to discredit the gospel in the eyes of unbelievers, and this is one of the main ways in which he does it.

Now you may or may not have noticed this, but if you go back through the list of qualifications Paul gives here, they are of a very particular sort. With only one exception, they concern the elder’s character. Only one qualification—the ability to teach—has anything to do with the man’s competency. Every other thing we see here concerns his holiness, his character, the way he lives.

This is shockingly counter-cultural, because it means that, according to the Word of God, holiness is more important than skill. Godly character is more important than talent. A church would be better off with an elder who has few visible skills, but who is holy, than with an elder who is incredibly skilled, knowledgeable and talented, but who doesn’t live in obedience to God. Incompetence is preferable to sinfulness.

Why does God want qualified elders?

So those are the things we look for in potential elders; it is on that basis that we assess them. Now, I’d like to take a step back for a moment and consider not only what the qualifications are, but rather the fact that God gives qualifications in the first place. This is not a role anyone can simply assume; biblically, no one can simply assert authority over the church to lead it.

The fact that Paul gives qualifications for eldership is incredibly significant.

First of all, it means that God wants the church protected—everyone in the church. The fact that there are qualifications for eldership means that you, ladies, are protected. Paul never suggests that women should generally submit to men. When we hear a word like “submission” used to speak about women, we hate it, because we’ve seen how often women have been abused by irresponsible, prideful, cruel men.

Paul shares our concern. This is why these qualifications concern the man’s character, and not his skill: if Paul is going to tell anyone to submit to a man, he wants to make it absolutely, crystal clear that this man should be a man worth following. And he wants it to be clear that the other men in the congregation submit to the elders in the exact same way.

Secondly, God wants the church to approve. The fact that there are qualifications means that an elder should not merely be called by God to this responsibility, but he should be elected and approved by the church.

Think of God’s grace in this: you, the church, are never expected to simply take a man’s word for it that it really is God calling him to be an elder. I’m sorry, but the fact that you may feel a calling on your life doesn’t mean that your calling is legitimate—you might be wrong! It may not be God calling you to this work, but simply your own ego!

And one of the safeguards God puts in place to make sure someone doesn’t lead the church by a mistaken calling, by pure charisma, just because he wants to, is this list of qualifications. You may say you’re called—great! Prove it. You are still subject to the church, who should be able to examine your life and see whether or not you’re actually equipped to do the work. So elders in Christian churches are not merely called, but elected and approved by the church.

Next, God wants the church holy. In 1 Peter 5.3, Peter tells the elders of the churches,

Do not domineer over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock.

So both men and women, this is for you. You may have heard everything I said about the qualifications for elders, and thought they don’t concern you because you’re not a pastor, and maybe you have no intention of ever being a pastor.

That’s just not the case—these things do concern you. The elders of the church are not merely leaders, but are meant to be examples for the Christians in their church to follow. In other words, our qualifications are your qualifications too. With the exception of the ability to teach, the qualifications listed here are not related to talent or ability, but to character. And those character traits are things God calls us all to.

What does God call you to do?

First of all, expect much of your elders. These qualifications are quite specific, and they don’t so much describe things the elders are to do, so much as what kind of men we should be. So hold us to this high standard; expect us to be this kind of man.

Second, pray for your elders and their families. The weight on your elders is immense: it is their responsibility to guide and direct and care for and teach all the people under their care. It’s a lot to take home with you. And inevitably, some of this burden will fall on our wives. Our kids will have to sacrifice their daddies on many weekends and evenings. The elders need your prayer; the elder candidates need your prayer; their wives need your prayer; their children need your prayer.

Third, trust your elders. This list of qualifications for elders is quite extensive, and like I said, they have very little to do with actual ability. The qualifications listed here are, for the most part, character traits, and this is telling. The Bible places a higher premium on obedience than skill; a man who is uncharismatic and unskilled, but who resembles Christ and is mature in his faith, is better equipped to lead the church of Christ than the most charismatic and skilled orator who doesn’t resemble Christ. So if the candidates for eldership have been found to meet these qualifications, then you can trust them. By their lives, they prove that they know the Word of God and are equipped to lead.

Fourth, submit to your elders. I’ll say it again: if the men who are appointed as elders are the kind of men Paul describes here, and if they faithfully do all that the Bible calls the elders to do, the people in their congregation will have nothing to say. They’ll have no complaints, and no desire to undermine their authority; they’ll be thankful for it, and gladly support it.

God is not calling us to dominate or to selfishly manipulate you; rather, he calls us to serve you and work for you. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1.24,

Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith.

If your elders live in a way which is contrary to the qualifications God has given for them, then their leadership should be called into question; but if they live according to these qualifications, it is easy to submit to such a man.

One more thing. Trust God to lead your church well. Ultimately it is no one elder, or any group of elders, who leads the church, but Christ. The buck does not stop with us; Christ is the head of the church, not the elders. And this is our ultimate assurance. Men, no matter how qualified they are, are imperfect, and even the best of elders will do their work imperfectly. But Christ is perfect, and he is the head of the church, and he always leads perfectly. God remains 100% sovereign over his church, and he is a good God, so you have nothing to worry about. We will sometimes make mistakes, but he never does.

Romans: Unity & Trust

Romans 16.17-27

If you’re joining us for the first time today, we’re happy you’re here, but you’ve come on an unusual Sunday: today we are ending a series we’ve been doing for the last year and a half, on Paul’s letter to the Romans. That might sound like a bad thing for you, like you might be lost because you haven’t followed the last thirty-eight messages in this series, but it’s actually okay. For all its theological depth, Paul’s letter to the Romans actually has a fairly simple and unified message.

My wife and I have two children, Jack and Zadie. Jack and Zadie are very different from one another, but one way you see that difference is through the way they progress.

For the most part, Jack progresses through encouragement—he’s like me. Most of the time, he needs to be able to see that he can do something before he even attempts it. So he needs to be encouraged, he needs us to explain to him why the task in front of him isn’t actually insurmountable, that he really does have all the tools he needs to accomplish a task. And I’m the same way.

Zadie’s like her mom: she progresses through challenge. The best way to get Zadie to do something is to tell her she can’t do it. “This is really hard, kiddo, I don’t know if you’re up to this.” And she’ll go: “Okay, watch.” And she’ll do it. Sometimes if we ask her to do something, she’ll get this look in her eye (that frankly scares me a little) and say, “Tell me I can’t do it.” And when we say she can’t do it, she does it, or at least tries.

Challenge and encouragement are both important motivators for us. Challenge gives us a realistic portrait of where we are today; and encouragement gives us hope that we can be more than we are today.

That is essentially what Paul gives us in this letter—challenge and encouragement. He lets us know what’s actually going on in our lives as Christians today, so we can clearly see the challenge in front of us. But he also gives us incredible encouragement that what we are today is not all we will be tomorrow. That we actually can scale this mountain in front of us.

So that’s what we’re going to see today. We’re going to spend some time reviewing this letter before getting to the final text at the end of chapter 16, because this is where Paul has been going this whole time: it’s not just a final greeting, but a crescendo.

Summary

The first thing that Paul establishes in his letter with absolute clarity is that we are all sinners. All humanity has been plunged into chaos by sin; no one naturally worships God for who he is, but rather we seek to pursue our own desires, to be our own gods. That is what we mean when we talk about sin.

In the first three chapters, Paul levels the playing field. He’s speaking to a very mixed church in Rome. There are Jewish Christians—who were born into the people historically known as “the people of God”—and Gentile Christians, who would have been known as pagans to the Jews. But everyone is in the same situation: we are all sinners, we have all fallen short of God’s glory, and as a result, we are all naturally under God’s wrath. God hates sin, and he’s right to hate sin: he cannot allow sin to go unpunished.

And yet, because God loves his people, he refuses to allow them to continue in their sin. So he comes to save us.

And that’s what we see starting at the end of chapter 3: God’s salvation comes to us all in the same way, and that is through faith, not works. He gives the example of Abraham, the patriarch of the Jewish faith, who was declared righteous by God before he actually obeyed any of God’s commandments. Why was he declared righteous? Not because he was obedient, but because he believed in God. He trusted that God is who he says he is, and that he is deserving of his obedience. After that, Abraham did obey—but it’s not his obedience that saved him. It’s his faith that saved him.

And through faith, Paul says starting in chapter 5, we have hope. He gives us two very large categories for every human being who has ever lived: we are either “in Adam,” or we are “in Christ.” Naturally, we are all “in Adam”—we all inherit the sin of the first man, we inherit his rebellion against God, and we inherit God’s wrath against our sin.

But God gives faith to his people, takes them out of Adam, and places them “in Christ.” Christ lived the perfect life none of us lived, and took on the rebellion of his people, and was punished for that sin, in our place. Now, through faith, we live in Christ’s righteousness, which we wear (like a coat). God looks at us, sees the perfect life of his Son, and declares us righteous. That’s how he can punish sin while saving the sinner: he places our sin on Christ and punishes Christ for that sin, and he places Christ’s perfection on us and declares us perfect.

And Paul says in chapter 8 that no matter what our struggles are, no matter how much sin we still see in our own lives, it’s already been taken care of: nothing can separate us from his love. Because of this, we have hope. We have hope for eternal life—the promise that because of Christ, we will live forever in perfect joy with him. And we have hope for our Christian lives, today—the promise that through faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit who lives in us actually does give us the power to learn to obey him and become more and more like Christ in practice.

Then in chapter 9, Paul widens the scope, showing that God’s salvation has come to all peoples in the same way. The Jews have received the Savior God had promised them, and the Gentiles have been brought in to the salvation this Savior gives.

As a result, these very diverse groups of people can truly live in unity—and that’s what Paul insists on in chapters 12-15. He shows us how we are to live together within the body of Christ (our church), in our cities, in our world. He shows us how we are to take care of one another, and work together to bring the gospel to all the nations.

And now, in this final passage of the letter, Paul gives the Romans a final exhortation, which summarizes the implications of everything he’s said, and reminds us of the true unity he has established amongst his people in Christ.

Fight Division (v. 17-20)

If you remember last week, in v. 1-16 Paul gives a long list of greetings to members of the church in Rome. And then, instead of continuing on to the other greetings he still has to give, he interrupts them with this exhortation: fight division at all cost. V. 17:

17 I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them. 18 For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naive. 19 For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil. 20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Some people have wondered why Paul breaks up his final salutations to give this warning against those who create division in the church, but it’s not hard to understand. He’s doing it because he’s literally just finished his list of greetings that celebrates the unity this church enjoys in Christ, and his unity with them. He’ll come back to that unity in a minute, so this warning pops up here in the middle, accentuating the very point he’s trying to make.

Romans, if you wanted to, you could find a million reasons to be divided amongst yourselves, but you haven’t. You’re one body, with many members, and despite the multiple points of tension in your church, you’re doing well. So protect that unity at all costs.

Paul says to watch out for those who cause divisions and who create obstacles contrary to the doctrine you have been taught. Not just people who say wrong things, but who incite others to act in ways that are contrary to sound doctrine.

Now we don’t know specifically what false teachings (or teachers) Paul was talking about here, and we don’t need to, because Paul doesn’t identify them; he describes them.

He says in v. 18 that they draw people away from right doctrine, as we’ve seen. He says that they don’t serve Christ, but their own appetites—no matter what altruistic impression they give, their goals are ultimately selfish. Paul says they deceive the naïve through smooth talk and flattery: “Come on, you’re smart. You love the Lord. You can see this is right.”

Paul says these people are convincing; they’re compelling, because they tell you what you want to hear. But just because you want to hear it doesn’t make it right, and if you learn to know the Bible, you’ll learn to see that.

But sometimes even the most knowledgable Christians can be taken in by a convincing false teacher. In the end, the false teaching will reveal itself,  because the end result of false teaching is always division.

Now we need to be careful to not accuse someone too quickly of trying to create division. “Division” is not the same thing as “disagreement.” We can disagree frequently, and we can do it well—we saw this in chapter 14. We talked a few weeks ago about secondary issues, which aren’t central to the gospel, on which we can disagree and still consider ourselves brothers and sisters in Christ—and even still be part of the same church.

Division comes when we place our disagreements on such a level of importance that it makes communion with one another impossible, when our opinions on secondary issues are so important that they keep us from brotherly love.

Paul is very clear concerning people who provoke these kinds of situations in a church: he says to avoid them. A lot of us won’t dare going this far, for fear of being impolite. Paul’s not afraid of being impolite—if you seek to divide this church, our command from God is to avoid you.

Now, Paul’s not warning the Romans about this because they are currently being divided. He says it in v. 19: For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you. Like Joe said a couple weeks ago, they were doing well. And their disagreements over secondary issues related to their diversity were being handled in the right way. But, Paul says, I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil.

And this warning, this reminder, is coupled with assurance. V. 20: The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

What he says here is incredible, and it’s subtle enough that we might miss it. The God of peace will soon crush Satan—not under his feet, but under your feet. How will he do this? He will do it by giving us everything we need to live united to one another, many members of one body, living out the gospel amongst ourselves and bringing the gospel forward to those outside the church.

We went through a divisive situation in our church last year, many of you will remember it. You remember the pain it caused, and how worrying it was. It was a scary situation to be in.

But God did not allow that situation to gut the church. You resisted the division, you saw it for what it was, and you said no. You loved each other well, and protected each other well.

What God did in our church last year is proof that we don’t need to be afraid. Christ has won the victory over Satan, and Satan will not stand. Even if he seeks to divide, he will not stand. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.

Live United (v. 21-23)

And it is to this unity in the body that Paul returns in the following verses, when he comes back to his formal salutations. It’s like the second piece of bread on a sandwich. He began by celebrating unity within the church of Rome (v. 1-16, last week), takes a step back to contrast it with those who create division (v. 17-20), then comes back to hammer in the nail even further by highlighting unity again (v. 21-23).

But this time, it’s slightly different from what we saw last week. These greetings are not to specific people in Rome, but rather from specific people who are in Corinth with Paul. And in these greetings, like we saw last week, he encourages the Romans to rejoice in the unity they have, in the midst of diversity—not just unity with one another, but also with other Christians in other places.

V. 21:

21 Timothy, my fellow worker, greets you; so do Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen.

22 I Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord.

23 Gaius, who is host to me and to the whole church, greets you. Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother Quartus, greet you.

So first we see Timothy. Timothy is Paul’s young protégé, a Gentile to whom he wrote two letters we have in the New Testament. He eventually became a pastor in the church in Ephesus; he’s a sort of spiritual “son” to Paul, and probably his closest collaborator.

Next, we see Lucius, Jason and Sosipater. These men are Jews—Paul calls them his “kinsmen,” and he himself is Jewish. We’re not sure who Lucius is, but Jason is surely the Jason we see in Acts 15, and Sosipater is probably the man called “Sopater from Berea” in Acts 20.

So already we see ethnic diversity: Jewish and Gentile Christians greeting the church in Rome together.

Next we see Gaius. Gaius was probably a Gentile, given his name, and he was almost surely a man of wealth, because he was able to give Paul a place to live in Corinth, and host the entire church of Corinth in his home.

We see something similar with Erastus. Erastus is the city treasurer, essentially the Minister of Finance. This was a man of great influence, an elected official in the city of Corinth. He’s a man who would have been known to almost everyone in the city.

So that’s one side of the socioeconomic scale.

On the other side, we find two men: Tertius and Quartus. Notice v. 22: I Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord. Obviously, Tertius isn’t asserting that he is the author of the letter (Paul is identified at its author at the beginning), but rather that he’s the one who was holding the pen. Tertius acted as secretary to Paul, at least in this instance, and took dictation from him.

So we have Tertius, and then we have Quartus, at the end of v. 23.

You don’t need a degree in Latin to identify what these names mean. Tertius means “third,” and Quartus means “fourth”. What does this mean? It means that these men were very likely born into slavery and not even given names at birth, but rather were simply called, “Third” and “Fourth.”

And yet, Paul calls Quartus “our brother.” Not my brother—our brother. Although Quartus and Erastus would have had no conceivable reason to even look at one another, much less be found in the same room together, even less speak to one another, here they are: brothers. Tertius and Quartus were considered, and accepted, and seen, by men who had no reason outside of Christ to do so.

Why? Because now, in Christ, they are no longer defined by their ethnicity, or their power, or their socioeconomic status; they are defined by who they are in Christ. So they all have the same value, and they all have the same privilege. Andy Crouch said, “Family is a place where you can’t hide; and it’s a place where you can’t get lost.”

What an encouragement these greetings would have been to the Romans! It’s proof that what was happening in their midst—this unity in the midst of tension and differences that ordinarily would have divided them—was happening in other places too. Paul’s saying, “You see, Rome? Everything I’ve just spent fifteen chapters describing, God is doing it, not just in your church, but throughout the Roman empire!” What an encouragement!

Strengthened with such encouragement, the Romans leave the reading of this letter with a renewed motivation and power to live united to one another as Jewish and Gentile Christians, members of one body.

Doxology (v. 25-27)

As is his usual way, Paul ends his letter with a doxology, which serves as a reminder of the assurance the Romans have in Christ, in the light of all of these massive truths he has laid out for them. V. 25:

25 Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages 26 but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— 27 to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.

Remember, Paul has given the Romans some monumental tasks here. Living in unity in a context in which division would be very easy—even (humanly speaking) inevitable. Taking to heart the need for peoples in other places (namely, Spain) to hear the gospel. Living out in practice the earth-shattering realities he laid out in Romans 1-8. This is a heavy load he’s placing on their shoulders, and ours.

But the good news, which he has stated over and over again in this letter, is that it’s not up to us to make it happen. We don’t need to muster the strength in ourselves to get this work done.

God is able to strengthen us, by anchoring us in the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is how he has always strengthened his people—see what he says in v. 25-26, when he reminds the Romans of the revelations given by the prophets that have now been made clear in the gospel of Christ. This too, he has done over and over again in this letter, to remind us that everything he describes here was always God’s plan. He has never once deviated from his plan, and he won’t do so now.

Which is very good news for us, because God’s goal and his intention, which Paul already stated back in chapter 1, verse 5, is to bring about the obedience of faith.

God gives us faith to obey; God gives us strength to remain united and to help one another grow in obedience; God gives us faith to undertake God’s mission to bring the gospel to the nations. He is the one who does all of it, through his people and for the good of his people.

Joe mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but Paul likely didn’t make it to Spain. We know he made it to Rome, but we don’t know for sure what happened to him after that.

And it doesn’t matter. The gospel made it to Spain, because God brought it there. And he brought it much further than that—all the way to us, two thousand years later.

God performs this glorious work in his church, according to his wisdom, for his glory, through Jesus Christ. We can trust him.

Because of what Christ has done, God saves sinners.

Because of what Christ has done, God causes imperfect people to grow to be like his Son.

Because of what Christ has done, nothing can separate us from God’s love.

Because of what Christ has done, God will make his glory known to the whole world.

Now, what does this mean for us, today, in Paris in 2023?

It means that we can trust him.

If you are feeling dubious about your own salvation, and whether or not you think God will keep on loving you over time (because you know how unlovable you really are), you can trust him.

If you are worrying about what your place in this huge story might be, you can trust him.

If you’re burdened by the thought of your family members or friends or neighbors not knowing Christ, you can trust him.

If you’re bothered by the idea that you don’t get to reign over your own life, you can trust him.

If you’re worried about being part of the church, worried about getting too close to people because of how often you’ve been wounded in the past, you can trust him.

If you’re hearing all of these magnificent things about God’s plan and worrying that they just might be too good to be true… They’re not. You can trust him.

We can trust him, brothers and sisters. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under our feet. His plan, kept secret for long ages, has now been disclosed to us in his Word. He is able to strengthen us in the gospel and in Jesus Christ. He will bring his good news to the nations, to bring about the obedience of faith. He will be glorified, forever, through Jesus Christ.

And we will be there to see it. We will be there to work with him, and be served by him, and love him, and rejoice in him, forever.

A Real Church

Romans 16.1-16

I love this picture. It was taken during our church retreat last June. We’ll look at it in a few years, and what will we see? A moment frozen in time: a picture of a particular church (ours), at a particular moment in our life together.

In a lot of ways, Romans 16 is the same type of picture.

Last week Joe described the book of Romans as a monumental defense of God’s mission on this earth, and he’s absolutely right. Last Sunday’s text was the climax of this entire letter—it’s the inevitable, final application of his gospel. If you’ve understood and embraced the gospel, you will be mobilized for the mission of the gospel.

But here’s what I love about the Bible, that we can see particularly in Paul’s letters: although Paul can write with such force and eloquence about these huge, earth-shattering truths, he never forgets the very real individuals, the real men and women, to whom he is writing: in Paul’s writing, as throughout the entire Bible, truth is never divorced from love.

So we’re going to do something a little unusual today. We’re going to just go through the text all at once, to try and simply get a grasp of who these people were and why Paul is addressing them like this—to get a kind of picture in our minds, like the picture of our church at the retreat. And then we’ll take a step back and talk about some things God wants us to take away from that picture, because this is a lot more than it looks like on the surface; it’s a lot more than a list of names.

Before we read though, let’s remember the context a little—I know we’ve talked a lot about this over the last year and a half, but it’s really important for this text, and for next week’s as well.

Remember, the church in Rome was a church comprised of Jewish and Gentile Christians who are trying to figure out what it looks like to be followers of Christ together. And we have multiple passages in Romans in which Paul warns one group or the other—Jews or Gentiles—against judging the other group, or entertaining the idea that one group is more favorable in God’s eyes than the other because of what they do or don’t do. These passages show that while there may not have been any open conflict over these issues, there was at least a good deal tension there.

Now, more than one person came to me this past week after hearing Joe’s sermon last Sunday, going, “Didn’t he sort of contradict you?” Joe said that Paul’s goal in writing this letter was not to correct the church in any way, because he says they were doing very well—full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct each other (15.14). Rather, he was writing to mobilize the church for the mission. I was expecting some questions on this, because after thinking about it I realized I probably haven’t been clear enough in past sermons.

I want to go on the record as giving a hearty amen to what Joe said: Paul wasn’t writing to correct the church, and throughout this series I never meant to suggest otherwise.

Here’s what I mean when I talk about tension. Tension is not division; it’s actually inevitable in any healthy relationship, and it is often a sign that things are going well—there is no tension if you’re not working hard. How many healthy marriages are there that have to work through points of tension between husband and wife? The answer is, all of them. Tension is something that stretches you, that needs to be worked out, in order to make you stronger.

Paul didn’t write everything he wrote about salvation and the Law of Moses in order to correct the church in Rome; they didn’t need correction, they were doing well. But this tension between Jew and Gentile was indeed present in the church, because there were Jews and Gentiles there, who were coming at their deep-seated understanding of how God works from very different angles. So Paul said in 15.15, You’re doing very well… “But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder”.

Why were these reminders necessary? Because given their particular makeup, the church in Rome was a church that, from a human point of view, could have been incredibly easy to divide. There was so much natural separation between the different members of this particular body that no one would have been surprised if this church ended up splitting into two different groups—a Jewish church on one side, and a Gentile church on the other, with maybe even more subgroups after that. Such a division over these secondary issues would have been completely unsurprising, but it would have been detrimental to the mission of the gospel.

Greetings (v. 1-16)

And that is why chapter 16 is so beautiful: despite all of the numerous reasons why this church could have been divided amongst itself, in this seemingly uninteresting list of greetings Paul shows us the beauty of the sort of church he describes in chapter 12: one body, with many members.

So let’s look at the greetings together, starting in v. 1:

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchreae, 2 that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a patron of many and of myself as well.

We’ve mentioned Phoebe once or twice before in this series. She was a deaconess of the church in Cenchreae (a port town just east of Corinth). Paul was likely writing from Corinth, and sent Phoebe from there to Rome in order for her to deliver this letter to the church. He goes out of his way to commend her to them, saying, she has been a patron of many and of myself as well.

This more than likely means that Phoebe was a woman of means and of a particular social standing, who put her wealth and her resources and her time at the services of ministers like Paul, who needed support. The missionaries in our church, I think without exception, are living off of the generosity of people back in their home countries, who give them money every month in order for them to fulfill their ministry.

Same thing here: Paul and the apostles were traveling around, bringing the gospel to places that hadn’t yet heard it, and they needed money to do so. Phoebe was one of these people funding their ministries. This service is invaluable to gospel ministry; the mission of the church is impossible to maintain without it.

And as was usual when someone would transmit a communication in this way at the time, since Phoebe had delivered the letter to Rome, she was likely reading the letter out loud to them as well. Which might have made for an awkward moment for her, when she got to this part, because Paul commends her to the Romans and asks them to give her whatever she needed. (“I promise, Paul’s saying this, not me!”)

Next, he says (v. 3):

3 Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, 4 who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well.

Now if you’ve read the Bible, you’ve seen these two before. We see them in Acts 18, where they meet Paul for the first time. Remember, we talked about how this particular context in Rome likely started: the Jews were exiled from Rome by the emperor Claudius and had only recently returned home to this church which was now being run by the Gentile Christians who’d been left behind. Prisca (or Priscilla, as we see her called sometimes) and Aquila were among those Jews exiled, and now they’ve come back home.

They worked in the same trade as Paul (they were tentmakers), so that’s how they got to know him, but Paul also calls them “fellow workers”. We see them doing not just manual labor, but gospel labor; they’re the ones who sort of tutored another important gospel minister at the time, Apollos. They pulled him aside, recognizing his wisdom and his gifts, but also his need for further instruction in the gospel; so they taught him.

Paul says that they “risked their necks for my life”. We don’t know the exact circumstances of this event, but it’s an example of what we saw last week. The church does not need attendees, but Christians who devote themselves entirely to the work of the gospel. This couple devoted themselves to the gospel to such an extent that they risked their own lives to make sure Paul was able to continue his ministry.

He also says at the beginning of v. 5,

Greet also the church in their house.

So here we can see a bit of the organization of the church in Rome: it wasn’t one church that met in one big building, like we do, but several small churches that met in homes, and that likely congregated occasionally and worked together. (That’s the way things were done at the time, and it’s similar to what we try to do today in our community groups—this was one church which usually met in several houses.)

Next we see (v. 5b—we’ll go a little more quickly through these):

Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in Asia. 6 Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you. 7 Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me.

So we have several people: Epaenetus, the first convert in Asia (likely a more recent convert than many others in the church); Mary, whose work may have gone unnoticed, as service in the church often does; and Andronicus and Junia, probably another Jewish couple, who were apparently in prison with Paul for their faith, whom the other apostles know, and who have been Christians longer than Paul himself.

V. 8:

8 Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. 9 Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and my beloved Stachys. 10 Greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus. 11 Greet my kinsman Herodion. Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus. 12 Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa. Greet the beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord. 13 Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well. 14 Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brothers who are with them. 15 Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who are with them.

Paul sends greetings to various people whom he knows, or at least knows by reputation. I’m terrible at remembering names—if you know me at all, you know it’s true. Paul has never visited the church in Rome, but he’s met several of the people there, and he remembers them. For others, he knows of them, and approves of them. He talks about the work they’ve done, how they’ve helped the cause of the gospel, and how they’ve helped him (he even mentions the mother of Rufus, “who has been a mother to me as well”—what a precious gift to have older men and women in the church who can act as surrogate mothers and fathers to those younger than them, even ministers of the gospel like Paul).

These greetings are slightly less personal than the earlier ones (and we’ll see why in a minute), but the overwhelming feeling that comes from these greetings is genuine affection. He’s not just saying, “Say hi to these folks.” These greetings were expressions of unity and affection from Paul and the other churches around him.

In other words, the church in Rome wasn’t anonymous for Paul. He wrote earlier in the letter about how the Romans should view the other Christians in their community as members of one body. These greetings indicate that on a wider scale, Paul sees all of them of members of the body he belongs to as well.

A Real Church

There are several reasons why this list of greetings is remarkable, and worth reflecting upon. But if I had to sum them all up under one heading, I’d say that the list is worth remembering because it helps us remember that this entire letter to the Romans is not a theological treatise. It wasn’t a book that Paul intended for publication, at least not first and foremost. It was a letter that he wrote, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to a real church.

A Real Family

We have to remember that Paul is greeting real people. Paul uses real names to designate individual he knows, whom he has heard of, with whom he has spent time, who each have their own distinct characteristics and gifts.

One of the things that helps us see these are real people—and not just a list of names Paul pulled out of a hat—is the remarkable diversity on display here. It’s a diversity that would have been shocking in any other context.

First of all, we see a great amount of ethnic diversity. We have Jews mentioned—Prisca and Aquila, Andronicus and Junia, Mary (probably), Herodion (these are Jewish names). The rest are names that are not of Jewish origin; they were Gentiles, people like many of us who were “grafted in to” the family of God, as Paul explained in chapter 11.

We also see a great diversity of gender here. Among the names Paul lists, there are nine women, which already would have been surprising in that cultural context. But what makes it even more shocking is that five of these women—Prisca, Junia, Tryphaena and Tryphosa, and Persis—are commended for their labor. And that’s if you’re not counting Phoebe. (Only two men, Aquila and Urbanus, receive a similar commendation.)

Ministry in the early church was never restricted to men; women played a vastly important role in almost every single aspect of the life of the church, and Paul wants the women in Rome to know that he knows how important they are.

In this list is something else that is probably not immediately evident, because you’d need to be familiar with Greek names and phrases (and to be clear, my Greek is not good enough for me to have discovered this on my own). We’ll see this again next week too, but we see in this list an incredible socioeconomic diversity—notably between slaves (or former slaves) and free men and women.

“Those who belong to the family of Aristobulus” are probably slaves belonging to the household of a man of that name (who may not be a Christian himself). Similarly, Ampilatus, Urbanus, Narcissus (and those in his household), Tryphaena and Tryphosa, Persis and Hermes were likely all slaves or former slaves. So these slaves would have been members of the same church as all of these other free men and women, and Paul has taken great pains in this letter to display why they should consider themselves, not as two different classes of people—slaves and free men and women—but as brothers and sisters. It’s an incredible leveling of the playing field.

We also see prominence given to people in different social situations, notably singles and families. Several married couples are mentioned, as well as individuals whose families are never mentioned. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul makes a case for the importance of singleness in the life of the church, and in Ephesians 5, he makes a case for the value of marriage in gospel ministry. Both are good, both are blessings, and both are necessary.

Lastly, we see a diversity of ages here, or at the very least, ages in the faith. He mentions at least one elderly person—the mother of Rufus—as well as someone who would have been at least a comparatively recent convert: Epaenetus, the first convert to Christ in Asia.

Here’s the point of all of this: outside of the grace and work of Jesus Christ, there is no realistic reason why these people should ever have been in the same room together. In Rome at the time, all of these people hanging out together would have been unthinkable. But here we see it: the church is gathered, listening to Phoebe read the letter, and as they look around, they see it. Jews sitting next to Gentiles, slaves sitting next to free men and women, old people sitting next to young people, men sitting next to women.

They should not have been together. But through what Christ has done, these people with nothing in common suddenly find themselves side by side, working together and living together, not just as acquaintances or colleagues, but as family.

The next thing we see is that life in the church is never less than real work. Paul mentions a number of co-laborers in this list, and there is a good deal of variety to their work. We see deacons, prisoners for the faith, itinerant missionaries, and ordinary Christians working hard alongside ordinary Christians.

The Christian church is not filled with acquaintances, and it is not filled with mere friendships. On top of those things, the church is a place of meaningful partnerships. We cannot accept the idea that church is less than partnership, less than work, for the sake of the gospel. It’s much more, but not less.

Thomas Schreiner, in his commentary on this section, says this: “Paul was not a ‘lone ranger’ kind of missionary. At every point in his ministry, Paul depended on a significant number of others who were working along with him. And if Paul needed such help, how much more do we. There is no room in modern ministry for the lone ranger approach either.”

These people did not come to church to have a good time. They didn’t come to church to be entertained. They came to church even though they knew it would likely soon cost them everything (and already had cost some of them a great deal), because God chooses to send the gospel forward through the diligent labor of his children, and this work is good.

The Romans’ work is finished; now it’s our time. We have to get rid of the idea that church is just a community. Church is work: not mainly for one another, but for the sake of the gospel. God has given us a mission, to bring the gospel of Christ to our families, to our neighborhoods, to our city, and to the ends of the earth.

And we are called to be all in—totally committed and given over to the work before us. Like Phoebe, like Prisca and Aquila, like all of these people who gave themselves over (their time, their resources, and themselves) to the work of the gospel, we are called to work sacrificially, in the same way.

But of course Paul isn’t reducing everything down to a kind of business transaction, as if they were all simply colleagues working together for a common goal. He’s not just saying, “Greet these people because they worked hard.”

He’s asking to greet these people because he feels real love for them.

We cannot accept the idea that real, fruitful partnership can be present in the church without real brotherly love.

Multiple times, he specifically calls out this love: “my beloved Epaenetus,” “Ampliatus, my beloved”, “my beloved Stachys”, “the beloved Persis.” He expresses genuine affection for these people, and lest we imagine that he was only singling out his love for these people, he says this in v. 16:

Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.

In other words, your affection for one another should be visible. It should be plain and easy to spot. So make visible signs of affection—I would add, in culturally appropriate ways. A kiss was a common way of greeting someone at the time; at least since Covid, it’s become slightly less common to kiss people. And that might actually be a good thing: for the longest time, the “bise” wasn’t actually a sign of love, but just of salutation. At least with members of the opposite sex, when you meet someone—a friend of a friend—you give them a kiss. (Between men, you’d shake hands.) That’s not necessarily a sign of love.

Paul is saying to greet one another with a holy kiss—that is, express your affection in a way that reflects the real and holy love that exists between you as brothers and sisters in Christ. What that looks like may vary wildly, but it should be visible.

For example: How often do we simply say “I love you” to a brother or sister in Christ? Not in an ambiguous or a romantic way, but in a familial way? If I say it to my wife and kids, if I say it to my parents and brothers and aunts and uncles, why wouldn’t I say it to you?

We mustn’t neglect our love for one another, and we must find ways to express that love, to make our love for one another clear and visible.

And this affection shouldn’t just be for the Christians in our church—as he says at the end of v. 16,  ALL the churches of Christ greet you. You are united to one another, but you are united to these other churches as well. They love you, and you should love them.

Paul is speaking to real people, in a real church, with real concerns just like we have, with real differences just like we have. But in this letter Paul has presented a case for believing that it isn’t just possible, but necessary, that these people, and we, see ourselves as one body: essential members of the family of God.

The question is, why? How can these disparate people, with so little in common, consider themselves one body, with a common mission, united by a genuine love for one another?

It is because their very real unity is found in Christ. Look at how many times Paul repeats the same words.

• V. 2: Welcome Phoebe in the Lord.

• V. 3: Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus.

• V. 8: Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord.

• V. 9: Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ.

• V. 10: Greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ.

• V. 11: Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus.

• V. 12: Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa.

• V. 12: Greet the beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord.

• V. 13 : Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord.

This reality that these diverse people are “in Christ” is what makes all the difference; it’s why these people can be in the same room with one another, and actually love and depend on one another.

Think all the way back to chapter 5, which we saw around this time last year. In chapter 5 Paul reminds us that the separation that defines the human race is not fundamentally a geographical or ethnic separation. There is one separation that truly matters: every human being who has ever lived or who will ever live is either “in Adam,” or “in Christ.”

We remember that Adam, the first man, sinned against God and plunged humanity into sin and death. Left to our own devices, we are all naturally “in Adam”—we suffer from the same weakness, the same sickness, the same sin. And, in the end, left to our own devices, every human being is naturally going in the same direction: towards condemnation, and eternal separation from God.

But now, because of God’s grace, we have been transported into a new register. If God has given us faith in the work of his Son, we are no longer “in Adam”; now we are in Christ. His victory is our victory. His obedience is our obedience. His righteousness is our righteousness.

Despite our many differences, we are in Christ. This is what defines us now, and this is what unites us to one another. If you look around this room you’ll see a remarkable diversity—not so much of age (we’re still working on that), but of origin and background and gender and, perhaps, socioeconomic status. Yet we are all in Christ. We are many members of one body.

That is what defines us now, and that is what defined these men and women to whom Paul was writing. Think of it: they were in Christ, and we are in Christ. We will see these people in heaven. We will get to talk to Phoebe, and ask her if it was weird to read Paul’s commendation of her to the church in Rome. We’ll get to see Ampilatus and Epaenetus and Andronicus and Asyncritus and Phlegon, and laugh together at how many churches throughout history had a really hard time reading their names aloud during church. We’ll get to rejoice together in the presence of God, forever.

What a gift to see that what we’ve been praying for Connexion since before we planted the church, God has been doing in real, individual churches for two thousand years. These greetings to the Romans are the proof of this. So let us live as who we are: real people, with real diversity, forming real partnerships for the mission of the gospel, supported by real love for one another—and all of this, on the foundation of the real unity that we have with one another, and with our brothers and sisters, all over the world, in Christ.