A Servant of Christ (Belonging to Christ) - Mr. Brock Page
Our Scripture this morning comes from Paul’s letter to the Church in Rome. We will be looking at the opening of the letter, Chapter 1:1-6, so please turn there with me.
Before we read the passage, it will help us to have a little background on Paul’s epistle to the Church in Rome. The faith of the Roman Christians was well known, and it indicated that the Christian faith had been established in the capital of the empire for some time. So Paul’s audience was in some ways a mature Christian congregation. That may explain the theological diversity found in the book of Romans. The book of Romans is one of the most, if not the most, theologically rich books in all of the Bible. It is not more important or more inspired than any other of the canonical books, but it has a certain depth to it that in some ways sets it apart. James Montgomery Boice, a renowned Reformed pastor, author, and theologian, has called Romans “the most basic, most comprehensive statement of true Christianity.” It has been called the pinnacle of all the epistles of the New Testament. Romans has also been described as Paul’s fullest, grandest, most comprehensive statement on Christian doctrine.
Throughout church history, the book of Romans has had a profound impact on church leaders. The 4th century scholar and bishop Augustine was converted while reading Romans 13:11-14. Reformer Martin Luther understood justification by faith alone for the first time while reading Romans 1:16-17. Countless other titans of the faith throughout history have spoken of the strong influence of this book on their faith, including John and Charles Wesley, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards. This is how Romans is described in the Reformation Study Bible: “From the vantage point given by Romans, the whole landscape of the Bible is open to view, and the relation of the parts to the whole becomes plain. The study of Romans is vitally necessary for the spiritual health and insight of the Christian.” The epistles' highest concern is to set forth the righteousness of God as we see it in the gospel. It is a righteousness that we lack, but it is a righteousness that God is pleased to accomplish and to give in Christ.
Knowing this about Romans, is there any better way, as we get ready to begin the new year, than by looking afresh at the beginning of this grand letter from the pen of the apostle whose heart was fully devoted to Christ and whose goal was to proclaim the gospel at all costs? So, we join the apostle Paul in Romans 1, starting with verse 1. Paul writes and God says, “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ”. My friends, the Word of the Lord. Let us pray.
As I was working on the sermon and reflecting on these verses from Romans this past week, God brought to my mind an illustration that I hope will help us transition into what God would have us to think about this morning. I trust almost everyone here, if not everyone in here, will be able to relate. Most everyone has had P.E. at some point in school, correct? I think for some of us it was one of our favorite classes. I remember at LV Elementary we had an awesome P.E. teacher, Mrs. Robin Moody. She always had us outside playing fun games like kickball, or soccer, or softball. I loved those things. Can y'all relate? No writing, no studying, no classroom (usually), you could yell and cheer; it was great!
But P.E. could lead to some pretty heartbreaking and spirit crushing experiences as well. I am thinking specifically about playing games when it came time to pick teams. Remember the feeling of being picked last? Or even worse, the feeling of not being wanted at all? Maybe you didn’t experience that. However, I am sure there have been times in your life when you have felt left out or not wanted. All you wanted was to be included. You wanted to belong. You see we have this deep sense, or more accurately this deep need, to belong. This is not an accident. We were created with a desire to belong to something, or more accurately to someone. Yet, we look for it (this belonging) in all the wrong places. The desire to be a part of, and accepted by the culture, for many of us, is an irresistible itch. We can’t help but to chase it. It drives us to strive to gain all that the world has to give us, even at the expense of our souls. However, the words of Jesus in Matthew 16 echo in our ears, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”
That is why we need the words of the gospel found throughout the book of Romans and the whole Bible for that matter, over and over and over. We need Christ. Only Christ can rescue us from our vain pursuits, which is how the book of Ecclesiasties describes them. Only Christ can rescue us from our lust after the things of this world. Only Christ can make us belong. Much like America does now, Rome needed the gospel. The Roman church needed to be reminded of the gospel. And that is why God inspired Paul to write this letter to the church in Rome. They needed to be reminded, as we do, of the glorious riches that can only be found in Christ.
And that is what we find in Paul’s epistle to the Romans, even in these first verses. We were created to live in a relationship with God as His worshippers. We were created to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever, as we live in communion with the Triune God. In the Trinity, we see this sense of belonging in its highest form. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons in one God, live in perfect unity and harmony with one another. It would follow that a creation of the Trinity, such as mankind, would be made to experience the same unity and harmony in our lives. The key is, that unity, that belonging, can only be realized as we belong and experience fellowship with the Triune God. And that can only happen because of what Christ did on Calvary. Any other source, albeit a “good” thing, we try to belong to or attach ourselves to will ultimately fail us.
It will disappoint us. It will not fulfill us. So why then? Why do we search to belong to anything and everything but Christ? It is because we are sinners. We are broken. We are radically depraved, such that our depravity affects all of our faculties and our desires including our search for belonging. Passages like Psalm 14 (there is none who does good, not even one) and Romans 3:23 (for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God) tell us as much. We know we are supposed to belong to God but because of our sin, we have lost communion with God. The Westminster Shorter Catechism Q#19 explains this by stating, “All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.” However, we can experience communion with God again. There is One who came and lived in perfect communion with God, perfectly belonging to God, so that as we belong to Him, to Jesus, we again can experience ultimate joy and satisfaction as we are reconciled to God.
As we look at the first verses of Romans, we see that Paul realized this. Paul understands who we are supposed to belong to, namely Christ. In fact he identifies this for himself in the first verse. He calls himself a servant of Christ Jesus. And just a couple of verses later, in verse six, we see that we too are to belong to Christ Jesus.
We see here in verse one that Paul introduces himself with three descriptions: a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, and set apart for the gospel of God. With these three phrases, Paul is setting forth his ministry, authority, and purpose. He starts, not coincidentally, by calling himself a servant of Christ. Another way to think about a servant of Christ is someone belonging to Christ. The Greek word Paul uses for “servant” is “doulos.” And servant or bondservant is a fairly good translation of that word. However, a more literal translation of doulos would be slave. And there is a slight difference. You see a servant may or may not be a slave. There could be some freedom for a servant to come and go.
But not so for a slave. A slave is a person who has been purchased to become his master’s possession. As a slave, you are truly possessed by someone. In 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, Paul says, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” Purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ, Paul knows that he is no longer a slave to sin and the flesh. He is totally at the disposal of his new master. And this is true of anyone who has been purchased, or redeemed, by God.
Now to our American ears, this idea of being a slave does not sound appealing. One of the “rights” that we claim is complete personal freedom, being enslaved to no one. We think that autonomy is the greatest state of being we can achieve. Evidently God, through the words of Paul, does not agree. You see no one is truly free. We all belong to something, even if we think we don’t. Ultimately we either belong to Christ or to sin. It would appear that God’s will for us is to belong to Him and Him alone. From a spiritual standpoint, we were made to be owned. That is why He put it in Paul’s heart to identify himself as a slave to Christ before anything else. We have been purchased by the blood of Christ (Acts 20:28). R.C. Sproul, in his commentary on Romans, states, “There is a paradox here: When the New Testament describes our condition by nature, as fallen people, it describes us as slaves to sin. We are by nature in bondage to sin, bondservants of the flesh, and the only remedy for that, according to the New Testament, is to be liberated by the work of the Holy Spirit. For “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17).
Everyone born of the Spirit is set free from slavery to sin. You see we, like Paul, do not naturally belong to God. In our fallen state, we naturally belong to sin. So we try to find our sense of belonging in things that we are not designed to belong to, that will not bring fulfillment. Dr. Sproul continues, “There is also irony here: when Christ sets us free from slavery to the flesh, he calls us to the royal liberty of slavery to Him.” He is the Lord of our lives. We are not our own. We are not autonomous or independent. We were designed to be servants, to be worshippers. And the heart that is truly captured by this truth experiences joy and peace that no false interpretation of freedom can provide. Remember last week we saw Paul describe in 1 Timothy 1:12-17 the one to whom he attributed his salvation and service. It was Christ. While he was yet a deplorable sinner, Paul received mercy and grace through Christ.
Look around for a moment. Everyone you see here, at this moment, belongs to something. Or to say it another way, every person on Earth is enslaved to something. And as long as we live, that will be the case. The question is, what or who do you belong to? Either you are a slave to sin and the trappings (trappings is just another way to say superficial allurements) of the world, or you are a slave to Christ. There is no neutral. There is no middle ground. It is either/or. Now there may be many headings under being a slave to sin: slave to money, slave to power, slave to your job, slave to your phone, slave to self, the list goes on and on, but it all comes back to sin. It comes back to belonging to something other than Christ.
I was watching a documentary, oh about a year ago now, called Free Solo. Some of you may be familiar with it. I think it won some film awards a couple of years ago. Anyway, it profiles rock climber Alex Honnold on his quest to perform a free solo climb of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. If you aren’t familiar with the sport, it is basically rock climbing with no rope or other safety equipment. You are completely free. One small mistake and you die, essentially. It is a pretty fascinating film. However, I must warn you, that watching it will give you a panic attack, guaranteed. But what I found interesting is that it would seem that someone like Honnold would be as close to completely free as possible, at least in terms of worldly trappings. I mean he basically lives in a van and drives around, doing what he loves, free climbing different mountains.
In a real sense, however, he belongs to his passion of rock climbing and the thrill of adventure. And the experience itself would seem to be extremely liberating; climbing these mountains completely untethered. But part of what the documentary reveals is his motivation for free climbing, and by his own admission it is driven by his childhood experiences. He said it came from a desire to belong, to be loved as a child. He recalled how he had to teach himself to hug when he was 22-23 years old because he was never hugged by his parents. He said he never heard the words I love you as a child. He was/is trapped, enslaved by these feelings. He was not free. He was driven, as he puts it, by these deep feelings for acceptance and approval and perfection, for belonging. And these are but a few of the things that hold us captive. So how do we break free? What accomplishes this in us? What bids us to come and die to self and in turn truly live?
At the end of verse one and thought the next several verses, Paul lays out the answer. How and why was he a servant of Christ? What does it all center around for Paul? Well he writes that he was set apart for the gospel of God. He was to preach the good news of Christ to others. It is the gospel that frees us to belong to the one we are supposed to belong to. It is the gospel that bids us to die to self and become a slave of Christ. Matt. 16:24 states, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me”. God separated and called Paul to proclaim the good news of Christ, and he was wholly devoted to the task. So what is the gospel? Or how do we summarize the gospel? Simply put: it is the good news of the fulfillment of God’s repeated promise throughout the Old Testament to send a Savior. It is the facts about the Person and work of Jesus Christ. Christ lived and died in our place so that through Him we might have the righteousness God demands of us and provides through him. He was raised from the dead as a pledge of our hope and resurrection. Christ lives, Christ reigns, and He will come again. That is the gospel.
Paul will spend the rest of Romans plumbing the depths of the gospel of Christ. He will write of the unrighteousness of man and the righteousness of Christ. For Romans is, at its heart, a letter about the gospel. It is written by a man whose life and work revolved around the gospel, showing the difference brought and worked by the gospel. Paul belonged to God through Christ. Not perfectly. But fully. How about you? Does your life and work revolve around this truth about Christ? When you wake up on Monday morning, does the gospel affect how you begin your day? When you go to your job tomorrow morning, does the gospel affect how you work? Does it? Who will you serve while you work? Will you serve the Lord Jesus Christ, or will you serve man along with the trappings of this world? If you serve the world or the creation, God calls you to repent and turn in faith to the righteousness offered in Christ. To belong to the Lord Christ, you will (Eph. 1:18) need to have the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe. Ask yourself this question: Have your eyes been enlightened? Do you dwell on the riches of His glorious inheritance, an inheritance purchased by the blood of Christ on the cross? You should. We should. For as we dwell on the glory of Christ and His sacrifice, He becomes more and more precious to us. It is there, only there, that we find our true King, the one we were designed to serve, the one we were designed to belong to.
I remember the first time I really understood who I was supposed to belong to. You see I grew up about 45 minutes from here in a little town called Lake View. I was the son of a tobacco farmer and high school teacher. My mom was a strong Christian woman that made sure my brother, sister, and I were always in church. However, that did not mean that by default I was a Christian; the fact that I grew up in church. I grew up knowing about Jesus, but here’s the thing; for most of my childhood and youth, I did not know Jesus. Knew about Him – yes. Knew Him – no. Knowing Him meant being surrendered to Him, a slave to Christ. It meant having a personal relationship. It meant belonging to Him. I did not have a personal relationship with Christ. I did not belong to Him. J.I. Packer once wrote, “There’s a difference between knowing God and knowing about God. When you truly know God, you have energy to serve Him, boldness to share Him, and contentment in Him.” Isn’t that it? Especially that last part, “contentment in Him”? Is that you? Do you find contentment in Him? Are you surrendered to Him? That is what it means to belong to God in Christ. Up until I was 16 years old, I didn’t and I wasn’t. And in a little chapel in Garden City, SC in the spring of 1994 at an FCA state rally, God helped me understand that I didn’t truly know Him and He snatched me out of the darkness and brought me into the light.
So, why do we need the gospel? Because of sin. Because again, as Question 19 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it: “All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and are so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever”. We are cursed. We are broken, and we cannot fix ourselves. And the end result is eternal separation from God. But thanks be to God, there is hope. Only through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross can we be redeemed from the curse. We need the redemption that comes only through Christ. That is why Paul was surrendered to Christ. That is why Paul calls himself a slave of Christ. As Christians, we need to belong to Christ as well. So the question to answer this morning is “Do you belong to Him?”
Let’s pray.