The local church is not some abstract idea with nameless members—it’s a family of real people who are personally connected with one other. That’s what we learn in Romans 16. After all the great doctrine in Paul’s letter, he greets real people with real names and commends the real labor they performed in the Roman church. His words read like a family photo album as he illustrates what grace looks like in a local church body. This is what God intended for church life—that it be alive and fruitful, like a family. 

Sermon: https://churchandfamilylife.com/sermons/696dc90a6dae751850c3cffa

Here we are at Romans 16, 1-16, getting near the end of Romans, and this section reads like a family photo album. After all the great doctrine, Paul greets real people with real names, with real labor that they performed in that Roman church. It really, it's a picture of love And it really is an illustration of what grace looks like when it takes root in a local church. What you see here in this passage are men and women. There are single people.

There are families. There are sisters. There are mothers. There are people who host. There are laborers in this church.

Single people, their families, their sisters, their mothers, their people who host, their laborers in this church. In fact, so much of Paul's greetings are for those who labored. But here's what is striking. These people are unknown to history, but they are known to God. Perhaps the best known is Phoebe.

She is called a servant. She's called a helper. She's a faithful sister. She's the one that took Paul's letter from Corinth 750 miles to Rome. You have this inspiring husband and wife team, Priscilla and Aquila.

Let's just say this was a load-bearing marriage. They risked their necks, they opened their home, they strengthened the church in their home. Then You have Mary, she labored much, says Paul. And then you have Appellis, approved in Christ, a fellow worker, what in the world did he do to prove himself? The text says He's beloved in the Lord.

Even in the midst of this consumeristic church that we live in today, the church is not a crowd of consumers. It's a body of servants. And that's why Romans 16 just shows us what a healthy church looks like. There's affection, there's participation. People aren't spectators.

Families are serving together. Saints are laboring together. The people are loving one another. This is public Christianity at a very, very personal level. This is the kind of church that's always making room, it's always expanding, it's building for a harvest.

Because God never intended the Church to be static. And that's why the Lord Jesus said, by this all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. That's what was happening in Rome. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Scripture Applied is a production of Church and Family Life.

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