Well, good morning. Turn with me, please, to Romans 15. We are going to read the first seventeen verses.
By the way, I think most of you know that we are closing in on the end of Romans after quite some time. We have one more message on chapter 15 to finish it—it is too long to do in one—and then one message on chapter 16, and then we will be done. My surprise is going to be in chapter 16, so make sure you show up.
But we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.
Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good, unto edifying.
For Christ also pleased not Himself; but, as it is written,
The reproaches of them that reproached Thee fell upon Me.
For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that through patience and through comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope.
Now the God of patience and of comfort grant you to be of the same mind one with another according to Christ Jesus:
that with one accord ye may with one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Wherefore receive ye one another, even as Christ also received you, to the glory of God.For I say that Christ hath been made a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, that He might confirm the promises given unto the fathers,
and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy; as it is written,
Therefore will I give praise unto Thee among the Gentiles,
And sing unto Thy name.
And again He saith,
Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with His people.
And again,
Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles;
And let all the peoples praise Him.
And again, Isaiah saith,
There shall be the root of Jesse,
And He that ariseth to rule over the Gentiles;
On Him shall the Gentiles hope.
Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Spirit.And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another.
But I write the more boldly unto you in some measure, as putting you again in remembrance, because of the grace that was given me of God,
that I should be a minister of Christ Jesus unto the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles might be made acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
I have therefore my glorifying in Christ Jesus in things pertaining to God.
Lord, we thank You for Your Word. We praise You that Your Word is living, and we look to the Holy Spirit to quicken us all, to have ears to hear, to have those eyes of our heart that see. Cause us to understand and enter into the reality of Your Word.
We tell You again, Lord, unless You speak, there is no value whatsoever in expounding just words. So may the Holy Spirit come upon us today and interpret to us what God has written through the apostle Paul. In Jesus’ precious name, amen.
Well, this is the last section in Romans. I have told you that before. It begins in chapter 12 and goes through chapter 16, and we are looking at the practical aspect of Christian living.
You remember, it begins in Romans 12:1: presenting yourselves a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service—or service of worship, depending on your version. But then it says something else: that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
So these last chapters—Romans 12 through 16—are the proving of the perfect will of God. That is the section we are dealing with. It does deal with individual Christian life, but if you look at it, you have to conclude that it is dealing with the testimony of God in a people. So it has much to do with church life, and today we will be focusing again on church life.
The title I have taken is from Romans 15:7: “Receive one another, as Christ also received you.” It is quite a clear command.
It looks back into Romans 14, where Paul was talking about a strong brother and a weak brother. Now, I will not put you in any category. I am sure you will put me in the weak-brother category. But nevertheless, we are to receive one another as Christ has received us.
This is a very practical command. Most fellowships, most testimonies, get in trouble over this matter of not receiving one another in the Lord—rejecting one another—and not seeing that this is what we are called to do to prove the perfect will of God.
We are going to look at three things. First, in Romans 15:1-7, endurance, encouragement, and hope. I think you probably know that to live in church life and to prove the perfect will of God, you need endurance. You need encouragement. And, after all, you need hope.
You cannot live together as the people of God and be the testimony of Jesus on the earth—His own expression—without these three elements.
The second part is the hope of the nations, from Romans 15:8-13. I think we see something very marvelous in those verses. Finally, Paul’s own explanation of his ministry—the offering up of the nations—is in verses 14-17.
With all the difficulties, trials, and responsibilities in church life, everything has been made available to you and to me so that we can receive one another and, believe it or not, actually build one another up and encourage one another in the Lord.
Everything has been made available. We cannot go to the Lord in eternity and say, “Lord, You did not make enough grace available. You did not give us enough to do that. We understood the command, but it was not enough.”
But if you look at this chapter, you see an inexhaustible supply given so that we can do this, and do this with joy in believing.
In the Lord’s inexhaustible provision, He has made it possible for us to endure. Endurance is so important. You see in it the practical expression given to us of great encouragement—not just encouragement. I am talking about tremendous encouragement, abounding encouragement. As it says, I think, in Hebrews 6:18, strong encouragement. How wonderful that is.
And finally, in addition, we have the highest hope that can be imagined—not a little hope, not some hope, but the highest hope. This is tremendous. God has given us the hope of hopes. There is no hope that can compare to what we have been given in the Lord Jesus Christ.
When I read the first seven verses, I came away with the impression that they deal with laws of fellowship. Now, you may not even like the word law. You say, “We do not live under the law.” Well, that is true. We live under grace, right?
But there are laws of fellowship that, if we violate them, mean we cannot receive one another as God has received you and me. You cannot do it. You need to understand what is behind fellowship. How does it work? What is the apostle Paul telling these strong brothers about how to receive weak brothers, help them endure, encourage them, and give them hope?
Romans 15:1 says, “But we ought”—notice the emphasis—“we that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.”
It is very clear who he is talking to: the strong brother. He is giving this additional obligation not to the weak brother. He is saying, “We ought, we that are strong, to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves.”
I like what Griffith Thomas says. He calls this the keynote and the profound obligation. This is to make fellowship real, to prove the perfect will of God. Brothers and sisters, this is an obligation laid upon you and me. It is for the strong in relation to the weak, and it is an added responsibility given to us in church life.
The first law of fellowship is not to please ourselves.
Oh boy, that is a tough one, right? Because I think most of us—be honest with me. You know me, but I am going to be honest with you too—we often live just to please ourselves.
But there is a divine law in fellowship that will change everything in church life. If this is seen and known, everything will be different: not to please ourselves.
This delusional, dying world says, “It is all about me. Me, me, me.” It is true for many Christians too. You know it. It is true for many of us. We live for ourselves. We live to please ourselves. We are constantly asking, “Lord, what will You do for me?”
But the first thing Paul lays down is that we ought not to please ourselves. That is a very important thing.
Romans 7, to me, is a very profound chapter. We have already been there, so we are not going back. Many do not understand it. They think Romans 7—what I call Paul’s spiritual agony—is Paul looking back to his days as an unsaved Pharisee of Pharisees. You would be wrong if you thought that.
He has been through and explained justification. In Romans 6 he is beginning to explain the sanctifying process of the Holy Spirit, and he is about to go into Romans 8 and explain our great end, which is glorification.
If you look at Romans 7 and read it carefully, you will discover what is wrong. The word I is in Romans 7 thirty times. Nothing like it. “I, I,” over and over again. The word me is in there sixteen times. And the grand finale is Romans 7:25, where Paul says, “Me, myself.”
I think a lot of us say, “Me, myself.” That is our whole concern. That was Paul’s problem.
Brothers and sisters, we all talk about the enemy, and we are standing against the enemy, and we should. We are often talking about sin and all of its problems, and we should. But few of us understand the problem of self, the problem of the self-life.
Those who live for themselves, really think about it, do as much damage in the church of God as anything else. Self rules.
Paul was finally delivered from himself. He said, “I thank God through Jesus Christ.” I was delivered. Delivered. This is what we need.
So this first obligation is very real and very important. We ought not to live for ourselves—not to please ourselves.
I will tell you again a story about a book that changed my life. Many of you have heard it, and Linda has heard it. She will begin to roll her eyes shortly if you look at her.
But I was a young Christian, and I will admit, as a young Christian, I loved the Lord, but I did not understand the Christian life that well. I found this book by a fellow—I think his name was David Brack—and the title was The Danger of Self-Love.
Boy, that changed my life. His whole theme was called other-oriented living. Do you understand how powerful that is?
This is the Christian life that will change everything in the church if we understand: not to just please ourselves, but to have the focus that the Lord Jesus had, which was other-oriented living.
I have never been the same since. Well, you may say, “Brother, you have a long way to go.” I would be the first to agree with you.
But this is an obligation we need in the church. If you are going to help the weak, if you are going to strengthen them to endure, if you are going to help them be encouraged in the Lord and go all the way with the Lord, if you are going to give them eternal hope, you must understand this first law of fellowship.
Verse 1 is negative: not to please ourselves. Verse 2 is positive: “Let each one of us please his neighbor with a view to what is good, with edification.”
Edification is building up, as opposed to tearing down. I think you will admit, just as I have to admit, that there is a lot of tearing down in the church. We need to edify one another. We need to encourage one another. We need to help one another. We need to give one another the highest hope that has been given.
This single motivation is so important that everything will be changed through it. Look at Romans 15:3. This is the source, by the way. Do you think you can do that on your own? Do you think, for a moment, you can live that way on your own?
Paul quickly erases that foolish thought: “For Christ also pleased not Himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached Thee fell upon Me.”
That is a quotation from Psalm 69:9. You think of the Lord Jesus. You think of that moment in Gethsemane, that dark hour. You remember the Lord said, “My hour has come.”
He asked the three in the inner circle—Peter, James, and John—to pray with Him one hour, and they could not. He fell on His face, and the scene is so graphic: sweat drops of blood poured from His forehead.
I have never seen anything like that. I am on a blood thinner, and I have to watch out. Blood could pour from anywhere if I get cut. I told my doctor—she was warning me of all these things that could happen—I said, “I get it. You do not want me to get into a sword fight.”
But there, in that garden of darkness, sweat drops of agony poured from His brow. He said, “Father, if it be possible, take this away from Me. But nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done.”
Now think about that. I think we often disparage the Lord. We like to comfort ourselves, and we say, “Oh, here is the Lord at His weakest moment, doubting, doubting.”
Can you imagine saying of the Lord of glory, who came and accomplished all the will of God, that He at one moment doubted? He did not. He was confirming the will of God. That is all He was doing.
Once He knew it, He set His face toward the cross, never to turn back, knowing it was the perfect will of God.
This is what we need to see. We cannot do this. You cannot do this. I cannot do this. The best of you cannot do this. Only the One who did not please Himself, who lives in you, is able to do this.
This is the secret. You always begin the New Testament not with law, but with source. Do you understand the difference? Very important.
The source in the new covenant is not more laws, even though I am talking about the law of fellowship. I have probably already confused you. But it is always source. The source alone is the Lord Jesus.
The Lord Jesus was always focused on others. He was always focused upon doing the will of God. He said, “I will not speak unless it is Your words. I will not do anything unless You are doing it, Father.”
Always, always focused on others. This is the Lord who lives in you and me. This is what makes it possible to encourage, possible to help ones endure, possible to give the highest hope that has ever been imagined.
How can we have endurance, encouragement, and hope? Romans 15:4 says:
For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that through patience and through comfort of the Scriptures we might have hope.
Brothers and sisters, listen to what this says very carefully. We have been given this Book as the ultimate encouragement. How marvelous that is. How wonderful this Book is. It gives us divine encouragement from beginning to end—the encouragement of the Scriptures.
I will tell you a little story. Linda probably does not even remember this story. We took our family one time to Disney World. I think people sometimes make it a mecca of something. I have heard of people who have gone ten times to Disney. I could not bear to go there and stand in those lines ten times. I would be a fool to do such a thing.
But one time we were waiting to get on a ride—I cannot even remember what it was—and I think it was an hour-and-a-half wait. Who thought of this idea to stand in a cattle corral with other human beings for an hour and a half to ride a ten-minute ride? Craziest thing I ever heard.
But I noticed something standing in that line. There was a little Hasidic Jewish boy—or a young man, perhaps a late teenager. He had the obvious black hat, the tassels hanging out, and all the black clothing. He was waiting in that line for an hour and a half, and he had the Holy Scriptures open.
I was so convicted. I was so pierced. I thought of all the hours I have spent in lines, in leisure, and in life when I did not have the Holy Scriptures with me. I did not have these marvelous words of encouragement.
I encourage you: get a pocket Bible. Next time, when you go to the doctor’s office early—and you are always late getting in—take a pocket Bible with you and read it. Forgive me, medical people.
I cannot tell you the number of times I have watched sports programs for hours and thought, “Oh my.” This is the source of encouragement.
The Guinness Book of World Records says that this is the number-one book sold for all time. In 1995, there were six billion of these sold. That was thirty years ago. Can you imagine how many there are now? What hope has gone out to the world, what encouragement, what secrets of endurance, through this one Book?
People are looking for hope. People are looking for how to endure. They are looking to this one Book because the encouragement of the Scriptures is a law of fellowship.
This most powerful Book teaches us how to endure the hardest difficulties. It teaches us how to discover the greatest encouragement. It teaches us how to have the highest hope. So I encourage you: read it often, over and over again.
I always think of 1 Corinthians 10:11 when I think of the Scriptures. Remember, Paul only had the old covenant Scriptures, but he wrote:
Now these things happened unto them by way of example; and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come.
All of this has been written for your edification. All of this is to teach you how to endure. All of this is to give you hope—and me hope. That is the encouragement of the Scriptures.
But there is something else God did. I think this is amazing. He did not just give us this precious Word; He gave us Himself. Look at Romans 15:5:
Now the God of patience and of comfort grant you to be of the same mind one with another according to Christ Jesus.
Do you notice the change? It is no longer just talking about the encouragement of the Scriptures. Paul wanted them to see something most profound: the God of endurance and encouragement Himself.
And Romans 15:6 says that we may with one accord and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In addition to the Scriptures, God gave Himself to you. I always think of 2 Corinthians 1:3, the Father of all comfort—the God of all encouragement. He is able to encourage you in no matter what circumstances, and then it gives the explanation: so that you might be able to encourage others in whatever circumstances they find themselves.
How marvelous. We were given the God of encouragement.
We were given the God who never fails. He is endurance itself. You may fail. I know this might upset a few people, but you may fail. I may fail. I will fail. I have failed. But He never fails.
In His masterful wisdom, God said, “I will not just give them a law. I will not just give them rules to follow. I will give them Myself, and I will be able to live through them.”
With that secret, we can endure, we are encouraged, and we have the highest hope.
The third law of fellowship is in Romans 15:7: “Wherefore receive ye one another, even as Christ also received you, to the glory of God.”
It is simple. Who do you receive? The ones Christ received. Who do you reject? The ones Christ rejected.
Now, I do not mean you do not preach the gospel to people, do not love them, and do not try to bring them into the family of God. But as to those whom you receive, it is a simple formula. It is not complicated calculus. If God has received them, you have to receive them. It is simple.
I do not forget the story of Jerry. We worked for the City of Richmond together. I was this young intern, the first one out of my class going to work for the City of Richmond.
Jerry once came into the office where I worked, came over, and asked me what I thought of the Bible. I do not know what possessed him to talk to me about that, but I said, “How can you believe the Bible? It is written by man, and it is full of contradictions.”
Those were my words. I am not exaggerating. This good Baptist shook the dust off his sandals as quick as he could and departed from the office. I am sure he thought, “That guy will never make it.”
A year later, he came back into that office in the structures department, and he heard me sharing the gospel on the telephone. You used to be able to do that in offices. This was many years ago, by the way.
He crept over with that suspicious Baptist gaze. He looked over on my reference table, where all my drawings and things were, and I had the Bible and tracts. He thought something happened.
Then he said, “Do you believe the Bible?” I looked at him and said, “Every word of it. It is the inspired Word of God.”
That day, he received me as a brother, and I received him as a brother. Receive one another as God has received you. Third law of fellowship. Do not ever forget it.
Do not take people and say, “What do you believe? What do you believe on the rapture? Are there two raptures or one rapture? What do you believe on the kingdom? What do you believe about healing? What do you believe about the gifts of the Spirit?”
I was charismatic, by the way. You can tell by the excitement I get. I am still a charismatic. You will forgive me.
But do not do that. Make one determination: Has Christ received them? Then you must receive them. This is the perfect will of God.
Let us go to the second point: the hope of the nations, Romans 15:8-13.
Romans 15:8-9 says that Jesus Christ became a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises of the fathers, and that the nations should glorify God for mercy.
This is about the hope of the nations. I do not know if you have read it enough to realize it, but the word hope occurs more in Romans than in any other book in the New Testament: seventeen times. If you want to see hope, read Romans. You see real hope there.
It says that Jesus Christ came as a minister of the circumcision. What this reveals, if you read Romans 15:8-13, is the twofold ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He first came to the Jews. Everybody knows that. Paul begins this wonderful masterpiece of the gospel in Romans 1:16: the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek—or the nations, or the Gentiles. They all mean the same thing.
The Lord Jesus came first to the circumcision, to the Jews. He had to do that. He came to confirm the promises of the fathers. If He had not done that, He would not have been faithful.
God made all these promises to the Jews, the Old Testament people of God. The Lord Jesus came first to His own. We read in John that His own received Him not, but as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God.
This is encouragement to us: God never gives up on His people. Is that not precious? Do you think if God gave up on the Jews, He could give up on us? Do we really believe He will give up?
He came to confirm the promises to the fathers. That was His first mission. He said to His disciples, “I was sent unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” When He sent out the twelve apostles, He told them to go to the lost sheep of Israel, not to the Samaritans.
How wonderful that He never forgets His people. I will read you Hebrews 6:18. It deals with the promise to Abraham:
By two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.
What an encouragement that is. It does not merely say God will not lie. God cannot lie. Not only can He not lie; it is impossible for God to lie.
This is our hope. This is the reason for hope. Everything we read in this Book—every promise among the tens of thousands of them—He can never lie. If He did, He would not be faithful.
But there is a second part to His ministry: “that the nations should glorify God for mercy.”
Even though His first mission was to the lost sheep of Israel, His ministry was also to the nations. Nations are the Gentiles. Let me solve a little mystery: when you read the Bible, you see the Jews, or the children of Israel, and then you see the nations—in some versions, the Gentiles.
God only sees you in one bucket or the other. You are either in the Jew bucket, or you are in the nation bucket. That is most everybody in this room.
Even though His first ministry was to the lost sheep of Israel, His second ministry is to the nations to show them mercy. Romans 11 says that because of their unbelief—the Jews—you now have become objects of mercy. How wonderful. What encouragement that is. What hope that is.
Paul then does something extraordinary. He quotes from the Old Testament Scriptures:
Therefore will I give praise unto Thee among the Gentiles,
And sing unto Thy name.
This is not just to the Jews that He came; this is to us that He came. In the Book it was written of Him that He would come to the nations.
You might think the Old Testament is only about the Jews, the Old Testament people of God. But Paul reads these four verses, and I believe he discovered them after he was saved on the Damascus road and went into Arabia for three years.
This Pharisee of Pharisees reread the Scriptures, poured over the Scriptures, and discovered a second ministry of the Messiah. This second ministry of Messiah was to show mercy to the Gentiles. It was always in His heart.
Sometimes we think we are an afterthought. Some people think, “Well, He tried it with the Jews, and they failed, so He gave up on them. Then the Godhead looked around and said, ‘Who else can we call? Let us call the nations.’”
That is not the way God thinks. What Paul is proving in these verses is that His heart was always toward the nations. Even to Abraham, before the children of Israel came into existence, He said, “In thee shall all the nations be blessed.”
What encouragement. You have always been in His mind. You are not an afterthought; you are a forethought. Do you understand the difference?
All along, in the promises of the Old Testament, there were promises that He would turn to the nations. His thought is that there will be one people—one people of God—under the Messiah.
Romans 15:10 says, “Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with His people.” We see God’s great heart to have one people: the nations and the Jews rejoicing together.
This has always been His eternal purpose. This is not a new idea for the new covenant. The new covenant is the fulfillment of the one purpose of God.
Then Romans 15:11 says, “Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles; and let all the peoples praise Him.” And Romans 15:12 says:
There shall be the root of Jesse,
And He that ariseth to rule over the Gentiles;
On Him shall the Gentiles hope.
How marvelous. Before I was saved, I always heard the expression, “The Jews are the chosen people of God.” I did not know any better. I even dated an Orthodox Jewish girl in high school. Linda will get me back for that one.
But I never saw until the day the Lord met me, the God of glory, that He is the God of the nations. In Him, the nations will hope. How marvelous. This has always been the heart of God.
When it talks about the root of Jesse, remember that Jesse was the father of David. The root of Jesse precedes Jesse. The root is there before the stem even comes up, which is Jesse, and then David. The root of Jesse is the One who is the hope of all nations. That is God Himself.
Look at Romans 15:13. Notice, again, the source. Paul always goes back to source. You think he is just talking about hope, the hope of the nations. We often think of hope as a thing or an emotion, but Paul did not see hope as a thing or an emotion.
He says, “Now the God of hope.” Is that not wonderful? Just as he said in Romans 15:5, “Now the God of endurance and encouragement.”
The apostle Paul saw that the whole hope for the world—Jew and Gentile—was altogether in the God of hope.
If you read 1 Peter 1:3, it talks about a living hope. If you read Titus, the second-to-last book of the apostle Paul, it talks about the blessed hope.
We have the One who is hope itself. Because of that One, we can help the weak to endure. Because of that God of hope, we can encourage those to press on with the Lord. And because of that God of hope, we have the highest hope ever given to mankind.
Now let us go to the last point: the offering up of the nations. Romans 15:14 says:
And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that ye yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another.
To me, this was a strange thing for Paul to write. He said to the church in Rome, “I am persuaded.” He uses that phrase often. It is a particular Pauline phrase.
At the end of Romans 8, when he is talking about the mighty works of God, he says, “I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life,” and he goes on with all those different things, “nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Nothing shall separate us. That is our hope. He says to this Roman church, “I am persuaded that you are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to admonish one another.”
I wonder if he did not make a mistake. I know you Pauline supporters are going to get furious at me even mentioning such a thing. But actually, Paul saw beyond their condition into the source that was in them.
Seeing the source of life abounding in the church in Rome, he could say, “I am convinced. I am persuaded. I am overwhelmingly convinced that you are filled with all goodness and filled with all knowledge.”
Why is that? Think about it. The God, the source, that is in you is goodness.
You remember the rich young ruler. All three Synoptic Gospels have the story of the rich young ruler. He came to the Lord Jesus, and you have to respect his earnestness and his desire to know the Lord. He said, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
You remember what the Lord said: “Why callest thou Me good? None is good save one, even God.”
The Lord needed to prove something to this man. He loved him. If you read it carefully, it says He looked on him with love.
This rich young ruler, possessed with wealth, thought he was good. I think many of us think we are good. There is no goodness in you. There is no goodness in me except that which is deposited by the Holy Spirit. That is from the source Himself.
The Lord cited five of the commandments. You can read it later on your own. The rich young ruler said, “I have kept all these from my youth.”
Do you think there is a chance he was deceived? Who would say that? He did not say, “I have done it.” He said, “I have kept all of these.”
But Paul saw something more brilliant glowing out of the church in Rome: the God of goodness.
The Lord was not punishing the rich young ruler. We do not know; this man may have come back and followed the Lord later. The Lord wanted to prove something to him. He said, “If you have kept all the commandments, do this: sell all that you have, give it to the poor, and come, follow Me.”
Do you think that is what the gospel teaches? Do you think the story of the gospel is, “Get rid of everything you own and come follow Me”? No. It was to convince this young man that he was wrong about his goodness.
He should have fallen on his knees and said, “Lord, I cannot do that.” Instead, he went away sad.
Peter made it very clear. He said, “Lord, who then can be saved?” Here is a man who had left all—his nets, his boat. Who then can be saved?
The Lord Jesus said those profound words: “What is impossible with men is possible with God.”
This is the lesson we need to see: in us there is no goodness except deposited goodness.
There is no full knowledge apart from Christ. Notice that phrase: “full of goodness” and “filled with all knowledge.” You might say, “Well, there is some goodness. Every once in a while I might even say a kind thing to someone.”
But Paul says, “Full of goodness you are,” and full of knowledge. The Greek word is epignosis, and it means full knowledge.
It is knowledge found only in the Lord Jesus Christ. That knowledge in the source, that goodness in the source, can cause us to be able to encourage one another in the Lord. This is the good and perfect will of God.
Romans 15:15-16 says that Paul wrote boldly because of the grace given to him by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the nations, carrying on a sacrificial service of the message of glad tidings of God, in order that the offering up of the nations might be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
Did you notice that in Romans 15:8, the Lord Jesus was a minister of the circumcision? Then Paul says, “I am a minister of Christ Jesus to the nations.”
Paul himself says in Romans that he is the apostle to the nations. God loved us so much that He not only gave His only begotten Son, a minister to the circumcision and One who would show mercy to the Gentiles, but He gave us our own special minister: the apostle Paul.
Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. He was to make known to the Gentiles the mystery of God. He was to bring the plan of God to the Gentiles.
It is no secret: he wrote thirteen of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. This man was on a mission, just like the Lord Jesus was on a mission, and that mission was to be the apostle to the nations.
How much encouragement that is. Half of the New Testament was written by this man to us, to help us understand how to endure. Forty-eight percent of the New Testament was given by this special messenger of the glad tidings so that we might be encouraged.
Half of the New Testament, written by the apostle Paul, was so that we might understand the hope that is God, the source.
How marvelous are His ways. It is hard to take in when you think about it—how much He loved us. It is hard to imagine that He would give His only begotten Son. It is hard to imagine that He would give, as Acts 9 says, this elect vessel who would suffer much, who would be the apostle to the nations and bring us into the whole purpose of God.
This is the encouragement in Romans 15. You have to see the degree to which God has gone. You have to understand how much He loved us before the foundation of the world.
Paul ends this in Romans 15:17: “I have therefore whereof to glory in Christ Jesus in things pertaining to God.”
Brothers and sisters, this is the only thing you can boast in. You cannot boast in yourself. You cannot boast in your knowledge. You cannot boast in your goodness. You cannot boast in the fact that you are strong unless He makes you strong.
You cannot boast in the fact that you have encouraging words. You cannot boast in the fact that you have any hope outside the God of all hope.
This is Romans 15:1-17. May the Lord cause us to really receive one another as He has received you and me.
We cannot do this unless we see the God of endurance. We cannot do this unless we see the God of encouragement. We cannot do this unless we know the God of hope.
This is the perfect will of God in Christ Jesus.
Father, we come and commit these words back to You, and pray that the Holy Spirit would write them upon our hearts.
Lord, write them deeply on our hearts. Cause us to see things in a way we have never seen things before. Cause us to apprehend all that You have made available for us in Christ Jesus, that You may complete Your work in us and have a living testimony in a people in this world.
This we ask together in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.