In his sermon 'Not Ashamed of the Gospel of Christ,' Scott Brown addresses the tendency of some to be ashamed of the Gospel, exploring the consequences of such shame and the benefits of boldness in faith. He highlights the Apostle Paul as a positive example of someone who is unashamed, emphasizing the transformative power of the Gospel and its role in salvation for all believers, irrespective of their background. Brown discusses the importance of maintaining biblical language and practices in churches, noting that shame of the Gospel can lead to worldly churches and weakened ministry. He delves into the first chapter of Romans, exploring Paul's motives for writing to the Roman believers, his prayers, and his longing to impart spiritual gifts to them. The sermon underscores the necessity for believers to continuously engage with the Gospel, as it is the foundation of faith and community. Brown calls for a rejection of legalism and a renewed focus on the grace and righteousness imputed by Christ, urging believers to be bold in their witness and relationships within the Church. He concludes with a prayer for the congregation to embrace the Gospel fully and embody its transformative power in their lives.

This text has many elements to it, but it focuses down into the issue of being ashamed of the Gospel. What happens when you're ashamed of the Gospel and what happens when you're not? We get a positive example from Paul. What do you do when you're not ashamed of the gospel? And we live in a day and age where people are ashamed of the gospel.

They're ashamed to use the words of God on a number of different subjects. We live in a church era where the church is quite comfortable with replacing biblical categories, biblical practices, and like I said before, biblical language with things that are more palatable, more acceptable, you know, more easily put into practice in this life. We have whole churches and even denominations that have built great aspects of their ministries on what I'm just going to call being ashamed of the Gospel. And so we live in an era where this issue is challenged. Paul said to Timothy, therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner." He said, for this reason I suffer these things, nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed until that day." The Lord Jesus Himself said, for whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with his holy angels.

And I trust that our morning here would help us to perhaps identify any shame that we have in the gospel, to set it aside, and to be bold like Paul, according to his positive example that he gives us here in this passage of Scripture. Because there are many wonderful things that happen when a person sheds his shame of the gospel. The boldness, the love, the proactive nature, The care, the longing, the prayers just get unleashed when you're not ashamed of the gospel. And that's what we learn here from this passage. Now, during our time in this first section of Romans, Last time we concerned ourselves with verses 1-6, where Paul is describing himself as a recipient of the grace of God.

And so in almost every line in verses 1-6, we see the language of God's love toward Paul and his calling and his work to save him and to take him even though he had no will or motivation of his own. And he ends that section by saying, for him we've received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith. It was something he received. So this first set of verses, 1 through 6, focuses on Paul. Now in verses 7 through 17, Paul fixes his attention on the Romans themselves.

And we get two things here. At least, we get insight into Paul's relationships with the Romans, what they were like, the things that he was doing as he was a brother to those who were in Rome, even though he hadn't met, well, he hadn't met very many of them. We know that he had met some of them along the way, but he had never been to Rome. Even so, he had great love for them. And what we see here is the heart of the beginning of a godly relationship with other people in the Church.

So this section also speaks about our relationships in the Church, and it shows us what a passion for the gospel can do in our relationships in the Church. God is very concerned about how we feel toward one another, what we do with one another, how we speak toward one another. Here we find Paul speaking prayers toward the brothers and sisters that are in Rome. And then when you get to the end of the section, he explains why he was the way he was. He gives you his motivation.

Verses 16 and 17, they really sort of unlock everything that He's been saying up to that point. And those verses just explain why it is that He is prayerful. Why does He long to be with them? Why does He desire their fellowship? Why does He want to impart spiritual gifts to them?

Why does he want them to be established in the Gospel? Why does he want to obtain fruit from them? Why? And the reason is, he's not ashamed of the Gospel because it's the power of God. And so that's His overall answer.

So I want to give you seven motives that are revealed in this text of Scripture for his relationships with these people. And we're just going to take it verse by verse. So if you would look now at verse 7, and you'll see his blessing of the Romans. He desired to be a blessing to the Romans, and he says to all who are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is speaking the language of blessing.

First of all, he acknowledges that there are saints in Rome. This is a fulfillment of prophecy. This is a fulfillment that the gospel would go to the Gentiles, that the Pagan nations would receive the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. And of course, this would be very controversial for any Jew that would hear these words here. But the Gentiles have been engrafted in.

The worst sinners in the world can be engrafted in. It doesn't matter what kind of terrible culture you're from, you can be engrafted in. You might live in America. You might live in Pakistan. You might live in Africa in a pagan tribe.

But you can be grafted in. You can be grafted in instantaneously. You don't have to change very much to be grafted in instantaneously. God would change us over time. But this testimony here is that there are saints in Rome who have been grafted in.

And now they belong to Christ, they're in His house, they're in His sheepfold, they're drinking of the living water, they're eating His bread, they've gone through the door of the sheepfold, and now they're part of the family of God, they're part of the household. They are a flock in Rome. These people from this pagan culture are now a flock of the Lord Jesus Christ, very much like us. We're saved, we spend the rest of our lives trying to shed our own paganism, our own worldliness, but still God is patient with us and He carries us through day by day. We're all struggling with the pagan thoughts and lifestyles that we've all had, we should be patient with one another as well.

But here we have these Roman believers who are now in Christ, and they have been made righteous by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is speaking very tenderly to them. You notice that? What does he say? To those who are in Rome, beloved of God, beloved of God.

This is a term that we find in different places in the Bible. Paul is reflecting the heart of God toward the people in Rome. Do you remember when the Lord Jesus was baptized? This is my beloved. This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.

This heart of God toward mankind has now found its residency in the heart of the Apostle Paul, toward the people in the Church of Rome. Paul has a heart of love. He looks on his brothers and sisters as the beloved. If you ever lose a sense of the people and the Church being beloved, then it's time to wake up. It's time to realize that something has gone wrong.

But Paul here speaks of these in very tender terms. You know, the Jews had different words for the Gentiles, the dogs, the unclean. So Paul is having really a very countercultural treatment of the Romans, a countercultural regarding his Jewish heritage. So Paul is pouring out words of tenderness toward these, and he says they are called to be saints, called to be holy. He's speaking of the destination and the process that the Romans have engaged in by believing in Jesus Christ.

They're called to be saints, or they're called to be holy. God's people are to be a holy people, a set-apart people, not walking in the way of the Gentiles, but setting aside the filthiness and the bankrupt propositions of the day, and to be holy. The Bible says, you shall be holy for I am holy. And That's the calling of a believer. Now this is not the Roman Catholic concept of saint.

In the Roman Catholic scheme, you become a saint by performing certain duties. If you have a reputation of being just full of love and good deeds, and you load them up and they're reported widely enough, you can become a saint, and you'll be inducted into the hall of saints. That's not what's being talked about here at all. That is the wrong idea of sainthood. You don't become a saint by becoming good in these particular areas that other people around you appreciate, and then you get put on the saints list.

No. You get put on the saints list when Jesus Christ imputes His righteousness to you and declares you to be his son or his daughter, your righteousness has, your sainthood has nothing to do with your own personal purity or perfections of your lifestyle or how good people think about you. Your sainthood is a gift from heaven. And so he says that they are called to be saints. And then he offers this amazing blessing that is full of so many wonderful words and phrases that we could spend the entire time on this.

Grace to you and peace from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now again, that's a five or six point sermon right there, but we won't give that one. But just let it soak in. Paul is blessing the Romans. His manner of life among the Romans was for their blessing.

And of course, he forms for us a great example. Again, we see his motive for it later. Why? But, let's continue on. Look at verse 8, And notice his thankfulness for the Romans.

He says, first I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world. So now we come to his thankfulness for the Romans. And He's thankful for them because their faith has been spoken of throughout the whole world. They have a reputation. You know, churches tend to have strengths.

This was a strength of that church. If you read the letters to the churches in Revelation, you notice their particular strengths and weaknesses are part of those churches. Our church has particular strengths and weaknesses, with a capital W. And what are we going to do about the weaknesses? Well, what are we going to do about the strengths?

Well, we need to keep pressing on. But the Church in Rome had this great strength in that they had faith. They were a Church that was full of faith. Now, we should be a Church that's full of faith as well. That God would give us a lifestyle together where faith, faith is expressed.

That the little girls and the little boys and the old men and the middle age ladies are constantly expressing faith. That we are characterized by this faith. Well, this faith was being proclaimed throughout the whole world, and Paul was very thankful. You know, I expect that this is here because there were particular stories of faith. There were acts of faith that were taking place there in Rome.

And it was a marvel. People were just... Maybe there were some in the Church that had the gift of faith. And it was a very infectious kind of a thing. But what can happen in a church when the gift of faith is really active, when people have much faith?

Well, Paul is thankful for that faith. He's praying. Notice there's some really interesting language here that should teach us a lot about prayer. So we're going to have just a short mini course on prayer right now. He says praying through Jesus Christ.

He says He's praying through Jesus Christ? What in the world is that? How do you pray through Jesus Christ? Well, right here in this very simple phrase is an illustration of the dynamics involved in prayer. And that in prayer, one thing we know about prayer generally from the Bible is that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are all doing things in prayer.

So whenever we gather in prayer, we're not just left alone. We're not just left alone with our own weak prayers. I don't know if you feel like I do so often that my prayers are so weak, they're so ill-formed, that they even, you know, they don't have the passion that they should, or the wisdom and the insight that they should. But know this, that whenever a believer in Jesus Christ, whose righteousness has been imputed to him, and the Holy Spirit has been poured out, that there is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, all working in prayer. And that should really encourage us to pray more.

It should encourage us to have more faith in prayer. You know, when you pray with your family, Do you ever feel like, oh, our prayers just aren't really like what they should be? Well, hey, that may be true. But there's something that is going right with your prayers. There's the Father, and He has something to do with your prayers.

And the Son has something to do with your prayers, and so does the Holy Spirit have something to do with your prayers. In Romans 8, Paul speaks of this. He says, likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses, for we do not know what we should pray as we ought. But the Spirit makes intercession. So one thing we know about the Godhead is that the Spirit makes intercession.

We also know that the Father hears the prayers of His people and takes action. But what about Jesus Christ? Well, for one thing, He's our High Priest, and High Priests are also making intercession. You have the Holy Spirit making intercession, and you're praying through the Lord Jesus to the Father in Heaven. Because the Lord Jesus is your advocate on the earth, and He is taking your prayers and advocating before the Father.

So Paul says, he's praying through Jesus Christ. And so here we just learn something really wonderful about prayer. In Hebrews chapter 7 we learn that the Lord Jesus always lives to make intercession for us. So, Paul is praying through the Lord Jesus who is making intercession always. He always lives to make intercession.

That's pretty comprehensive, isn't it? That's enough time. It's like 24 hours a day. Every nanosecond of your life, the Lord Jesus Christ is making intercession for you. And me.

And your son or your daughter or your grandmother. The Lord Jesus is making intercession for you. So this is one reason why we should pray. We should always be praying to the Lord Jesus, sending our requests and our praises up through Him to the throne of God. He's sitting at the right hand of God, and He is also interceding for us as well.

Not only does He take our intercessions, not only do we pray through Him to the Father, but He prays back to us according to His own will. So he's praying through Jesus Christ. And then, verses 9 through 10, we learn something about Paul's prayers. We've just heard about him praying through the Lord Jesus, but then he expands it in verses 9 and 10. Look at this.

He says, For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers. Now, again, he's always praying. Now, you know, what is it? For one thing, he's not bragging, he's not overstating it. He's saying, God is my witness.

He's stating something that is true, that God can either contradict or not. He says, no, God is my witness, that I am constantly praying. Paul's praying for people he's never visited, people he's never met. You don't have to meet someone to have an effectual prayer. For a lot of times, because we have such a naturalistic worldview, that we think that prayer only works if we're with the person.

That is not true at all. And that's why Paul said to the Ephesians that they should be praying for all the saints. So there are people way outside of our circle. Now we had a time of prayer at the beginning here, And quite honestly, there were many things that should have been prayed. There are so many people we should be praying for.

I'm just going to offer a mild rebuke to us now. We should be praying for people. We should be praying for saints who need our prayers. We don't have to know them. They don't have to be part of our church for them to be legitimate prayers.

But Paul here, he is praying without ceasing for people he has never even met. That should just be instructive to us as a church. So here we are, We're a little church, fledgling church. How are we going to go forward with prayers? Well, let's just say this from now on.

We're not just going to pray for one another as a church. We're not just going to pray for our little families. We're going to pray for people we've never even met before in other places. That's what we should be doing. And Paul is patterning this for us.

There are two beautiful prayers in the book of Romans. I can't wait until we get there to really unpack them. We'll just have to wait. But you'll find them in chapter 15, and you'll find them in chapter 16. They're short prayers, but they are beautiful prayers that you can memorize and use as you're praying for all the saints as you go about your way.

So not only do we see Paul praying for the Romans in verses 9 and 10, now we go to his longing for them. Look at verses 11 and 12. He says, For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, so that you may be established. That is, that I may be encouraged together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me." Okay? So Paul now turns to his longing, and he longs for them for a number of reasons.

He says that he longs for them for what He would like to be to them when He shows up. Have you ever had a prayer like that? You're going to the home of your in-laws or something like that, and you're saying, Lord, we are going to impart a spiritual gift. We are there to be instruments of the Lord Jesus Christ. We've all gathered here today.

Why did you come here? Did you come here to impart a spiritual gift? Did the young ladies here in our church come to impart spiritual wisdom to whoever they would speak to? Or what about the men? Did we come here ready to rumble for God in this sense?

Ready to impart a spiritual gift? Now this can be taken a couple of different ways. There are instances where the Apostle Paul laid hands on and a supernatural gift was given. He did that with Timothy. The elders laid hands on Timothy and a spiritual gift, a literal spiritual gift was imparted.

It could mean that. It could also mean spiritual gifts generally, spiritual qualities. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He could mean that He's just coming to impart every good spiritual thing that He has. This was Paul's practice.

He would just pour it out. Whoever he was with, he was dialed in to impart some spiritual blessing. And he was longing to see the Romans for that purpose, to impart some spiritual gift. Why? So that they would be established.

That's why we do it. You know, why would we be prayerful when we're talking to one another? Why would we be passionate about biblical truth when we're talking to one another. It's so that we would be established. Hey, we should not be having a bunch of throwaway conversations in this life.

I mean, is it okay to speak about, you know, you know, cars and lawns and things like that. Yeah, yeah, it's okay to talk about that. But let's don't spend all of our lives just speaking about physical things that have no spiritual import at all. And Paul, though, he longed to see them for one reason that he lists here. And that is that he would have a spiritual ministry in their lives.

I just pray that God would help us to have the same orientation with one another. That we are a serious church about real issues that are important. And so Paul is longing to see them, and He has much passion about it. And then the fifth thing that we see here in verse 13 is that he planned to visit them so that he would obtain fruit. Obtain fruit.

Verse 13, Now I do not want you to be aware, brethren, that I often plan to come to you, but was hindered until now that I might have some fruit among you, as also with the other Gentiles. So Paul again, he's not beating without purpose. He's not beating the air. He has a purpose. He's there to obtain fruit.

And there's some really interesting things in verse 13 that we should just pause on for a minute. He says that he planned to come, but he was hindered. So he desires to visit Rome, but he's frustrated repeatedly. Is there anyone in this room who has tried to do something repeatedly and been frustrated and hasn't been able to do it? Have you ever wanted to go somewhere and you just, the situa...

The circumstances didn't work out? You had a vision for something and it just... The plans just kept getting beat up. It just wouldn't happen. That's what happened here.

Paul desired to go, but his plans to go were repeatedly hindered. And we can all understand that. You know, maybe you're carrying something like that. And these words here, I think are so helpful. First of all, we know that His motives were good.

There was nothing wrong in it. Even though His motives were good, God wasn't letting it happen. Sometimes you can be the purest, you can have the purest motives and the best ideas in the whole world, and the thing won't happen. Because God has something else in mind. God is sovereign, even, He is sovereign and will do His will, even though our motives are right.

A lot of times we think, if I was just good enough, if my motives were just right enough, then everything would fall in place. Wrong. Absolutely wrong. That's not the way it works in the Kingdom of God. Because, why?

Because it's the Kingdom of God. Alright? And so, if you think that the doors will open when you finally get yourself tuned up just right, forget that idea. That's wrong. So Paul, he's desired to go.

Now, notice a few things. I think this is really fascinating. He's been hindered repeatedly, but it doesn't stop Him from praying. Did you notice that? He hasn't just given up.

It was a good motive. He doesn't just throw in the towel because there have been several roadblocks to the thing. Maybe that's the situation you're in right now. You have a good motive. There's something that's a blessing that's in your mind if you've been blocked from doing it and you're tempted to just give up.

Well, don't do that. Don't give up. Paul didn't. He continued. It did not cause him to cease making the request.

He kept making the request. He resigns himself to do the will of God, but at the same time, he hopes that by some means, at last, he might find a way in the will of God to come." Do you get that? He keeps working. Oh Lord, Help me to find a way in your will to come to these people." Look at the words here. He says that he is looking for means, he's looking for a way in the will of God to come to them.

I think that's fascinating the way that he explains all that. And so just because there's a roadblock doesn't mean that we should stop desiring it. But we should be like Paul and continue to pray for it. At the same time, we should accept His sovereign will in all of it. And then lastly, we shouldn't think that it all depends on our righteousness, whether the doors will fly open.

If you were just more holy, the windows of heaven would open up and your pocketbook would be fuller than it ever has. You know, if you were just righteous enough, the blessings of God would flow over everything going on in your work life. Well, that is just a bunch of heresy. We just don't see any pattern really for that in the Bible. We just see promises of blessing that come from holy living.

But let's don't misunderstand what that means in real terms. OK, so he plans to visit the Romans. He has persistence in it. He has importunity. But his importunity is not incompatible with the improbability of the trip.

He just keeps on going. Here's another thing. Paul makes plans. He looks at maps. He looks at calendars and says, hey, let's go do this.

We should do that. We should be planning. Now we should be careful in our planning. James warns us in James chapter 4 verse 13, come now you who say, today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city and spend a year there, buy and sell and make a profit, whereas you don't even know what will happen tomorrow. So is James arguing against making plans?

No. He's arguing against godless plans. He's arguing against plans that are so exalted and idolized in us that we have no flexibility with them. That we make plans just out of our own head, and it's very naturalistic. James is arguing against naturalistic plans.

Paul does not have naturalistic plans at all. His plans are for the glory of God, and they're submitted to prayer, and they are sometimes frustrated and restrained by Almighty God. So, in all these plans to visit the Romans to obtain fruit, there really are some great insights, aren't there, about planning and resistance, roadblocks in your life. You know, If we listed all the roadblocks that we're experiencing right now in this church, it would be a really, really long list, wouldn't it? I know, you know, I'm looking at you.

We know what roadblocks we have, you know, generally, going on in our lives. But God is sovereign, you know, over the roadblocks. But what really is important to Paul is that he would obtain fruit. He would obtain fruit among them in the midst of whatever is going on there. And this is a role that God has given all of us as brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ to obtain fruit from one another.

Gathering fruit. I don't believe he means he went there to produce fruit. He is there to obtain it, to gather, to look at it, to see the fruit that's going on. That in the midst of our relationships we would see, we would have the kind of relationships where we could see the fruit of the Gospel that is being born in our lives. And we have, you know, we have here in this room many, many, many reasons to rejoice for the fruit.

There is so much fruit being born. You know, you can obsess about what's not happening or what's not going well, but let me tell you something. There's a lot of fruit being born. And so we're going to be here together, you know, for quite a while today. Let's obtain the fruit.

Let's share the fruit. Let's rejoice in the fruit that God has given. You know, it's legitimate to rejoice in the fruit. It's legitimate to say, hey, look what God is doing. Isn't this wonderful?

The Gospel is the power of God for salvation. So, you know, so the prayer here maybe could be for us. Lord, help me to obtain the fruit while I'm here at at Hope Baptist. And it's also, it's not necessarily prideful for a body of people to proclaim praises toward God for the fruit that's there. It's not prideful.

Anything can be turned into a sinful thing. But there is a legitimate time for rejoicing in the fruit, and we can obtain it when we look at it. Then, sixthly, we see his obligations in verse 14. He says, I'm a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to wise and unwise. I really like that statement.

Don't you like the barbarian part? I like the barbarian part the best because, you know, it just brings out so many images of, well, this should just speak of the different kinds of people that are out there. Our cultural flexibility that we should have, We should be a culturally flexible people. We really should. We should be able to express the love of Jesus Christ to the richest or the poorest and not be intimidated.

Why? Because the gospel is the power of God to salvation. It is so great, It can change anybody, anytime, anywhere. God is no discriminator of culture or sin or wisdom or stupidity. You might think somebody is so stupid, there's absolutely no way that they could ever receive the Gospel.

They are so stupid with a capital S. Well, that's absolutely wrong thinking. I mean, Paul says, I'm a debtor. In other words, he's saying, I'm obligated. I am obligated to the barbarians.

I am obligated to the Greeks. I am obligated to the wise. And I'm also obligated to the unwise. And this is, I think, just another way that Paul acknowledges the power of the Gospel to work through all different kinds of people and situations. Have you written off some barbarians in your life?

Don't do that. How many barbarians do you have on your list that you just know are so far beyond, or how many stupid people are there on your list? Well, take them off that list and put them on just the one list that goes under the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Paul was a debtor to all kinds of people. Wouldn't you have loved to be a friend of the Apostle Paul, who was so flexible?

He was able to deal with all kinds of sinners, with all kinds of character problems, all kinds of cultural issues, all kinds of baggage. Paul, he just, he was not proud. He was no respecter of persons, in terms of an unrighteous respecting of persons. And what a great friend he would have been. You know, That's the kind of friend that I want.

I want the kind of friend that understands that, yes, I am a barbarian. I am unwise. And what will you do with me? Well, give me the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's what I need.

And I trust that we would be that same kind of friend for one another. I'm sure we have all of these kinds of people right here in this church here today. And so Paul, though, he gives us such a great example for how we should approach that. And then finally, he gives us the key that unlocks the reason for all of this, all of these amazing things that he has been feeling and he has been doing toward the Romans. Here is the key.

It's in verses, really, 15 through 17. In verse 15, there's a fascinating phrase. Please look at it with me. He has just gone through explaining all of his thoughts and feelings about the Romans, and then he says, so? So what?

So? So as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you who are in Rome also, as much as is in me." I just get the sense that there's a raging bull inside of this man. As much as is in me, he is ready to go, Because he's not ashamed of the gospel. He is full of it. And he has no fear of it at all.

As much as is in me, I'm ready to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome also. And then he says, For I am not ashamed of the gospel. Now, notice his passion to preach the gospel. It's running high. He has great passion for it.

And then he tells us why he's ready to preach the gospel. He's ready because he's not ashamed of it. He's not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He understood the words of the Lord Jesus, whoever is ashamed of me, I also will be ashamed of him in the coming of the Son of Man. And he is ready to preach because he is not ashamed.

And then he tells us why he's not ashamed. He says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for, and now he's going to tell us why, for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe, to the Jew first, and also the Greek." So he's not ashamed because it's power. It's the power of God. And it's the power of God working through faith, from faith to faith, because the just will live by faith. And He says here that salvation comes to all who believe.

That means there are no obstacles of race, there are no obstacles of culture, and there are no obstacles of sin that can cause the restriction of the outpouring of the power of God through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And then he tells us why it's the power of God. And it's the power of God to justify by faith. And God is omnipotent in His power to save. He is omnipotent in this sense, that He imputes His righteousness to people.

He takes us, soured by sin, and He imputes His righteousness to us. And He doesn't say to us, if you just get these three areas fixed, then you're acceptable to me. He doesn't say that at all. He imputes His righteousness so that we don't have a righteousness of our own. Now we know that we don't have enough righteousness in our own.

That's a good thing. And so God, in His power, He does a transformation. And that's the power of God to salvation. And it's that injection, that imputation of righteousness that sets the ball rolling for our glorification in Christ. And He begins to sanctify us through faith.

And so this work is the power of an omnipotent God. Now, here's one thing that I think we should talk about here this morning. Why is it that Paul is preaching the Gospel to the believers in Rome? Why do the believers need the Gospel? I mean, aren't you supposed to preach the Gospel to the unbelievers?

Isn't that how your mind normally works? Well all through this whole section, Paul is bringing the Gospel to believers. Now that means a bunch of things, but one thing it means for sure, maybe most prominently, is the Church needs the Gospel. The Church should never move beyond the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There's this idea that you preach the gospel, you're saved, and then you can move on to the greater things of the Christian life.

Getting your marriage fixed, getting this or that tweaked. Well, of course, of course, that's part of sanctification. But to think for a moment that we ever in the Church should leave a focus on the Gospel, on the cross, on the blood, on the righteousness of God which is acquired only by faith, on the justification by faith, a judicial act that has nothing to do with any internal righteousness at all. This is something we must always be about in the Church. Why?

Because we can so easily lose heart. We can so easily lose heart with ourselves. And what's going on in my marriage, in the raising of my children, in my own heart, whatever. What in the world could keep us going? It's justification by faith alone.

It's the power of the gospel. Paul desired to preach the gospel to the believers who are in Rome. Can you ever get enough of the gospel? Can you ever get enough of the knowledge that you're a sinner, totally bankrupt, and none of your human righteousness can get you anywhere? You know, if you don't understand that, in the Church, here's what happens.

You have a bunch of high-minded people who think that they've tuned up this one area, and they're more superior than the other guy. A loss of the sense of the cross and the blood and the justifying work of the Lord Jesus Christ. A loss of that makes a bunch of prideful believers who think that all they have to do is fix up a few outward things. That's called legalism. You just get yourself worked up on the outside enough so you're acceptable and you'll be acceptable.

But that's not how the Gospel works. The Gospel really only has to do with sinners. Bankrupt sinners. And that's who we are. And that's who Paul was talking about in Rome.

We always need to be aware of imputed righteousness. We always need to be refreshed by the gospel. We should always be drinking the gospel in. We should be preaching it to one another. You know, I can't tell you how many times in the process of raising our children that gospel is the center of it.

Yes, we do want our children to be obedient, but that isn't even the most important issue. The most important issue is an acknowledgement of sin and righteousness and judgment and imputed Righteousness, which is only acquired by faith. If the child doesn't get back to the place of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, all you've done is created a little legalist. That's all you've done. And That's what happens in the Church.

We are all the children of God. And as children, we have that same tendency as well. We should never forget to nourish our souls on the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory." Glory of the only begotten Son of God, full of grace and truth. Whenever the church loses the sense of the Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of the Church, the one who is full of grace and truth, becomes a hard-bitten, and I'll just have to say, and I hate to use this word, a no-fun group of people, because they've lost the sense of the Gospel.

Of His fullness we have all received. Grace for grace. The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth was given through the Lord Jesus Christ. This is why Paul said to the elders on the beach in Miletus, the elders of the church of Ephesus. He said, I commend you to God and the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among all those who are being sanctified.

I commend you to God and the word of His grace." That's what Paul is going to do when he shows up in Rome. He's going to commend them to the grace of God, to the justifying power of an omnipotent God. Paul said that the Lord said to him, my grace is sufficient for you in all the myths of the trials and tribulations that you have. The grace of God is the heartbeat of everything in the Church of Jesus Christ and the Lord Jesus Himself. See, Paul said to the Galatians, he said, I marvel, I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Jesus Christ to a different gospel.

There's a different gospel that rejects the grace of God and exalts human effort. And that's what was happening in Galatia, in that church. And that can happen in our church too. It can happen in any church. It's a loss of a sense of the cross, the grace, the blood, the righteousness, the faith, the imputed glory of God into The soul of a sinner is what's on the table here.

That's why Paul said to Timothy, My son, be strong in the grace that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. We studied Hebrews a couple of years ago, and in Hebrews chapter 13, the writer says, It is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace. It's good for the heart to be strengthened by grace. In Jude, chapter 1, he says, for certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation. They were ungodly men.

And what do they do? They turn the grace of God into licentiousness or lewdness. They think the grace of God means that they can just go do whatever they want. And that's not what the doctrine of the grace of God should lead us to. Grace always should lead us to holiness at the same time.

Of course, Paul, when he speaks of the righteousness which is by faith, and the just shall live by faith, He's quoting Habakkuk. The Old Testament prophets and every Old Testament writer understood salvation by grace alone as well. This is just a continuity from the Old to the New Testament here, and Paul makes that very clear. Okay, so we've just come to the end of the introduction to the book of Romans. It started with the grace of God at work in the Apostle Paul.

And this next section speaks of Paul's motives for his writing to the Romans. And his motive is founded on the fact that he is not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe." There is a shame, there is a shame of the gospel that produces worldly churches. There's a shame of the gospel that produces households that are not founded on the gospel, and there's a shame of the gospel that causes us to be weak and reticent in our ministry to one another. And so I would ask all of us, if there's any shame of the Gospel in here, let's get rid of it. Because if we are ashamed of the Gospel, all these things that we've just covered will be so lightly handled among us.

And It is for us, it is for us to provide this kind of ministry in the world. A ministry of prayer, a ministry of longing, a ministry of imparting spiritual gifts, a ministry of obtaining fruit, a ministry of tenderness, A ministry of spreading love in the Church that's likened to Paul when he says to the Romans, Beloved of God. All of Paul's Passion for the Gospel can be summed up in that word, beloved. All of God's commands for the Church are summed up in love. And love is evacuated from the Church when people are ashamed of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, now you've given us such a powerful and beautiful example of what it means not to be ashamed of the Gospel. And we, Lord, need your instruction. And this life that you've presented to us here in this text is a beautiful life. We acknowledge it.

Your ways are pleasant ways, and All your paths are peace. In Jesus' name, Amen.