The sermon, 'Profile of a Bondservant of Jesus Christ' by Scott Brown, delves into the first chapter of Romans, emphasizing the transformative power of the gospel and the grace of God as seen in the life of Paul. It explores five key elements of Paul's life: his identification as a bond servant, the evidences of the gospel, the grace provided to bond servants, the impact of bond servants on the nations, and the shared mission of bond servants. The sermon underscores that every believer is a bond servant, highlighting the dichotomy between servitude to sin or to God. Grace is depicted as the divine force enabling believers to fulfill their roles, whether in apostleship, motherhood, or any life calling. The sermon also emphasizes the gospel's role in separating believers from worldly ties and aligning them with God's mission. It concludes with a call for dependence on God's grace for personal and communal transformation, urging believers to live and minister by the divine strength supplied by God, ensuring that all actions glorify Him.

Welcome to the first exposition, the Book of Romans. We started out by reading the book, and last week we had an introduction to the book, and today we'll tackle the first five verses in the first chapter. And what we'll see in this first chapter is the power of the gospel at work, first of all, toward Paul himself, and he who is a bond servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. Then You see the power of the Gospel at work in the Romans, and as Paul speaks to them, you can just see the glory of the Gospel in everything that he says about them. And then lastly, in the last few verses of the first chapter, you see the power of God and the salvation for all men.

And that's kind of the bird's eye view of the first chapter of Romans. So here we are on the first day of September. It's Labor Day weekend where we celebrate the contributions of work and prosperity being done in America through labor. We won't talk about the sordid roots of Labor Day and socialism, the Haymarket martyrs, the unthankful, ungrateful workers of America, and many of them in that movement who are just nothing less than God haters who really brought this actual holiday toward us. So there is a certain blessing in it anyway.

But This morning we're not going to talk about labor. We're going to talk about one great thing that is in contrast to labor, and that is grace. We will talk about the grace of God. And in this brief introduction, these first six verses, Paul reveals the great secret of the Christian life. And that great secret is the operation of the grace of God.

Just look at this in quick movement for just a moment with me. Look in verse 1. Called to be an apostle. That's grace. Something happened to him that wasn't of his own.

He was separated to the gospel of God. That's something that happened to him. This is grace. It's a work of grace to separate one from the God to the gospel of God. Verse 5, through him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all the nations.

This is also grace for apostleship, or grace for anything. And There are five elements of Paul's life as a bond servant that you see the operation of grace. I'll give them to you. You have an outline in front of you. First of all, we see the marks of Paul's bond servanthood.

Secondly, we see the evidences of the gospel that are provided for bond servants. Thirdly, we see the grace of God provided to all bond servants, including us. And then we see the impact of bond servants among the nations. And then finally, we see the shared mission of bond servants. But the theme in all of this is the outpoured work of the grace of God.

The heartbeat of these first six verses in this letter to the Romans is a demonstration of the goodness of God in His grace toward Paul, in doing everything for him that he could not do of his own. And so, in verse 1, Paul speaks of the grace of God in his own life, and in verse 6, it ends with the grace of God at work in the nations. So that's how I want us to look at this passage of Scripture. It also discloses the answer to the question, Who is Paul? Because he talks about himself quite extensively here in these first five verses.

Now, if you don't understand grace, you can't understand Romans. If you don't understand the goodness of God outpoured toward sinners, toward people, toward God-haters who are redeemed, You can't go any farther in the book of Romans without understanding grace, and so grace is on every page of this book of Romans. So the first element of Paul's life as a bond servant is an explanation of the marks of Paul's own bond-servanthood. Verse 1 opens, Paul, a bond-servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God. So there are three aspects of Paul's life that we should cover here.

First is his life as a bond servant. He is under someone else's service. His time is not his own. He does not have his own possessions, for they all belong to Almighty God. He is working for a Master.

He is prepared to work, and that is exactly what he does. Now when we discuss the subject of servanthood, our bond-servanthood, there's one thing we have to understand before we go further, and that's this, that everybody is a bond-servant. There's not a person on the planet who is not a bond servant. Human beings are either bond servants of their father the devil, or they are bond servants of their father in heaven. And To think that there is one square inch of freedom from bond-servanthood is a heresy.

It contradicts everything in the Bible. There is freedom in Christ, but it is a freedom under the bond-servanthood of a disciple of Jesus Christ. So this picture that's painted by this word bond-servant illustrates a person under slavery, first of all slavery to the world and serving the world and then being bought off the slave market through redemption, through the purchased blood of Christ, where the anger of God toward our sin was propitiated and made happy toward us, so that we could become sons of the living God. The term bond-servant implies servanthood, bondage to the world, and then purchased by a price and made a bond service of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we are always slaves to what we love.

There isn't anything that makes us free except the Lord Jesus Christ, but our freedom is ordered under His authority and His fatherhood. He is a bond-servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. One thing that you notice about these first five verses is that Jesus Christ is exalted in every verse. In five verses, the Lord Jesus is mentioned five times. You see the same thing in Paul's letter to the Ephesians.

In the first fourteen verses of Ephesians, Christ Jesus is mentioned fourteen times. He follows that same pattern here. He is exalting Jesus Christ. He is praising Jesus Christ and his authority over him as a bond servant. Paul's whole life revolved around Jesus Christ.

Everything is sorted out underneath his name. And Paul himself said, you are not your own, you are bought with a price. And that's what Paul is communicating when he uses this term, bond servant. And so the question should always be raised when we read this word. Whom are we serving?

Are there elements of service continuing to the Prince of Darkness? Of course there are. Absolutely there are. In all of us, we are being redeemed, we are being sanctified by the work of the Holy Spirit. Yes, we have been judicially bought by the blood of Jesus Christ, but that doesn't mean that sin doesn't exist in us, which is why it's so appropriate for us to hear the Apostles Paul say to us, do not let sin reign in your mortal body.

You were bought with a price. So I just want to throw that out to all of us, including myself. Is there sin reigning in your mortal body that needs to be dealt with, even right here? Would God apply His good church discipline to us this morning, that in our hearts we would be convicted of any sin. We would confess it to Him and be free to take communion, not in an unworthy manner, but in a worthy manner, because we've acknowledged the lapses that are there.

Let's let this word right here, bond servant, take us into just a moment of repentance, just washing over all of us together, that we would see the ways that we have failed our wives or our children, as I know I have many times in the last 24 hours or one another or whatever, but that we would come before God as bond servants, recognizing the price that was paid to put us under His great care and His great fatherhood. So the first thing we learn here is this whole concept of being a bondservant. And then second, He is called to be an apostle. Notice called. The voice comes from outside.

The voice doesn't rise up from within. The voice is from God. It's God who rescues. It's God who takes a person and gets him off the slave block and into heaven's quarters. So, grace comes from outside of us.

One author that I was reading said, Paul's mission does not come from within, but from the outside. And it is from the grace, it's from a call of the grace of God. You would think that the most important thing you could do is to look within to find the solution to your problems. Forget that. The answers to our problems are not found within.

They are found without. They are found in the call of God. He says, called to be an apostle. Paul identifies himself as a bond-servant and that his apostleship is a result of this call, of this extending of the grace of God toward him, and He is made an apostle. He was entrusted with a mission to carry it out and given special powers to do it.

It was the grace of God that made him an apostle. When we get to the end of this section, we're going to end up saying, it's the grace of God that makes us anything that we are. And so what Paul says about apostleship is the same thing that you would say about motherhood, is the same thing you'd say about any role that you have been given in this life. It's been given as a result of the grace of God. So he is called to be an apostle, and then he is separated to the gospel of God.

Separated to the gospel of God. You see that there. These three terms are so critical. Called to be an apostle and separated to the gospel of God. So this is a picture of the gospel causing a separation in your life, the Gospel always draws lines.

The Gospel is constantly setting us apart in some way. And if you don't want to be separated from anything in this world, then stay away from the Gospel. Because the Gospel will constantly separate you from the world and the works of the devil and everything that's raised up against Christ. If somebody embraces the gospel, they've set themselves separated to the world in some ways, and those ways are defined in Scripture. We ought to let Scripture separate us with a fine line as much as we can.

We should spend the rest of our lives being separated to the gospel of God. You can be syncretized with culture or you can be separated by the gospel. And Paul is saying that he was separated to the gospel of God. This also was an act of grace. This is also something God did.

It was a work in his life that caused this separation to the gospel. He didn't even do it on his own. It was action that came from without. You see, we've just read this first verse and there's nothing of man in it at all. It's all God doing something for a man.

Paul hasn't done any of this. He doesn't claim any action, but he is claiming grace and rescue from God. Now, We should pray that God would continue the work of our separation to the gospel of God. That there may be areas still left hanging out there that are not separated to the Gospel of God. You know, the Gospel has a way of separating people from their money, sometimes even their family members, most of the time separating them from their own subtle ways of thinking about life, maybe their personal style, maybe even the way they like to dress, or maybe even the things that they like to do.

The Gospel, the Gospel intends to separate from worldly things to godly things. This is the intention of the Gospel. And Paul says that God has done that in my life. Now, remember this, it's a work of God. It's a work of the Holy Spirit that causes this.

It's not my work in your life, it's the Spirit of God's work in your life. God separates His people for Himself unto the Gospel. And we're completely in the Church. Isn't it amazing how dependent we are on the work of the Spirit of God to make us the kind of people we should be. What kind of people should we be?

We should be a holy people, but how will that happen? Well it won't happen by writing a bunch of rules down. It won't happen by man's effort. At least it won't be a godly thing if it did. It only happens by a work of the grace of God, by a calling and a setting apart.

See how dependent we are? How well can I work to change myself? I don't think I can. I think I'm dependent on the grace of God, as all of us are. Think of how all of us are dependent on your sanctification and yours.

We're dependent on what God would do among us. And we don't force it, but we should pray for it. This is why Paul says, pray for all the saints. He says, I do not cease from praying for all the saints. Why?

Well, all the saints need so much help, and we're just like that. And Paul here acknowledges that it is the grace of God that has separated him unto the Gospel. And, you know, Romans ends with an amazing statement Romans 16 25 it ends with a prayer now to him who is able to Establish you according to my gospel. He's the only one able to do it. We should be crying out to God this morning for help, really.

We should. We should be urgent about this. We should not let this lie and have a nice little moment in this nice little barn and then go away. We should be crying out to God that He would do this for us, that He would establish us in the Gospel, all of us together. Do you think I could do it?

Do you think the power of some personality here in this room, maybe God would raise up a spursion or somebody to do it. And it wouldn't happen. It would only happen if the grace of God would be mighty in us, and that we would receive it. So we are, as the Apostle Paul was, very dependent. He was separated unto the gospel of God.

Does anyone in here need help? Does anyone in here require assistance to change anything in their life? Absolutely, we do. And this is what Paul is getting at. I was thinking last night of this song that I love so much that Philip Dodridge wrote, a great Puritan, a contemporary of Matthew Henry, Oh happy day that fixed my choice on thee my Savior and my God.

Well may this glowing heart rejoice and spread its rapture all abroad. Happy day, happy day, when Jesus washed my sins away. He taught me how to watch and pray and live rejoicing every day. Happy day. Happy day.

You know, there's no way that the church can ever be happy unless the grace of God does the work. It's not going to happen if somebody's pointing their bony finger at you. The Spirit of God must do the work. And so we have this great dependence. And of course there's no greater happiness than to be separated for the gospel of God.

It's the most wonderful thing in the world. Okay, so the second element of life as a bond servant is found in verses 2 through 4. And that is the evidences of the Gospel that are provided for bond servants. And Paul launches into this explanation of how salvation works. And he says, which he promised before through the prophets in the holy scriptures, concerning his son, Jesus Christ our Lord, born of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." So he's explaining what evidences there are of the Gospel.

And these are things that have come from God from time immemorial. He promised these things through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures. And so Paul's story here, as he tells it, is defined by the providences of God, promised by the prophets, and listed in Holy Scripture. He's saying here that Christ is the fulfillment of all the promises of the Old Testament, that the Old Testament was fulfilled in the New. Notice again as we see over and over again, Paul's not saying that there are two religions.

There's the Old Testament religion and the New Testament religion. Paul has nothing of that. It's all one. One casts forth and is fulfilled in another. Christ was prefigured, he was predicted, and He was fulfilled from the Old to the New Testament.

Now, were these prophets far-sighted men? Were they just these marvelous men? No, they were carried along by God. It was the grace of God that gave them the message, and that it was fulfilled by his own power. And Paul sees himself as just being rescued by the great promises of God that were given Back at the beginning, at the dawn of time, in Genesis chapter 3, verses 16 and 17, where the promise of the seed was made.

And he sees the seed going on to the seed of David. And the seed of David is now given fruit in his own salvation. And he speaks of Christ Jesus, our Lord. He's speaking of Jesus Christ as salvation. He calls him Lord.

This is a dangerous thing to do in Rome to call Jesus Lord. Very dangerous. You end up in the Colosseum when you call him Lord. You end up skewered by Nero in Rome when you call Jesus Lord, because Caesar is supposed to be Lord. Caesar doesn't like anything raised up against him, and so Paul just boldly says that Jesus Christ is our Lord, and he does it boldly.

He's not afraid to speak against the powers and principalities of the day. He's not afraid to contradict the party line of the government regarding what's what in life, and neither should we. He says here that he was he was spoken of in the Holy Scriptures. The term Holy Scriptures I think is important to camp on. This establishes, along with so many other places, the authority of Scripture.

The Scriptures are regarded as holy. God pronounces the Scriptures here as set apart above oral tradition, above everything else. The scriptures are holy. And he's speaking of the inspiration of Old Testament scripture. That's what he's talking about.

He's talking about the Pentateuch. He's talking about the law. Now there are people in the church today who, they despise certain things about the Old Testament. They don't like them. They are difficult for them to agree with.

And so they, sometimes even believers will actually disagree with things that are written in the Old Testament and say, well, I don't really believe that. Here, let's just make this really clear. Paul says they're holy, okay? Every word of the Old Testament is holy. And Let's not allow one another to think wrongly about Holy Scripture.

There are so many people in the Church who despise elements of this holy thing that the Apostle Paul has declared here. And I trust that we would be bold enough to point it out that there is a view of Old Testament scripture in the New Testament that is consistent with this term, holy scriptures. And, You know, we should just be very careful if we find ourselves not liking something in the Old Testament. Can you imagine that? Something that God has called holy and we say we don't like it.

Well, that should be a wake-up call for us, first of all. That our thinking somehow is, either we're not thinking rightly, or there's something wrong with the way that we're looking at this thing. We don't understand everything about it. Maybe that's part of the problem. But we should be very careful not to call something unholy that is holy.

So that's the second element of this life of a bond servant, are the evidences of the Gospel. In Holy Scripture, the words of the prophets, everything that God has said leading up to the salvation that Paul experiences for himself. And then the third element of the life of a bond servant is the activity of grace. And this is the grace provided to bond servants. Now, if this isn't the heart of this text, well maybe it's another verse that we'll get to in a minute, but I think that what is right here in verse 5, the beginning, is the heartbeat of the single idea that carries through every verse in these first six verses of Romans.

Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations. So he's saying that he's received grace and apostleship for obedience. So what Paul is saying here is that his life, all of it is the result of grace. His whole ministry is the result of the grace of God. Paul talks about the grace of God all through the book of Romans.

Remember, when we get to chapter 5, we're going to hear Paul talk about the amazing truth that we have access to God by faith into this grace in which we stand. Okay? This grace in which we stand. This is the most critical part, I think, of this whole section. That God is blessing mankind with grace.

He brings a man into it. He puts him under it. It's like a shower to him. A man can receive nothing unless it's given him from heaven. There's an emphasis on grace and why.

Why? It is for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name. That's why First of all it tells the truth that God alone is to be glorified in the reception of His grace, and secondly, only God can do what He wants to do in the nations through that grace. And it is for obedience to the faith among all the nations." And so he's talking here about the power of the grace of God at work in the world, and that God is at the beginning and the end of it all. You know, Peter spoke of this idea.

He said, as each one has received a gift, minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If anyone speaks, let him speak the oracles of God. If anyone serves, let him do it with the ability that God supplies." I'm just going to say that again. Let him do it with the ability that God supplies. We are a people that are dependent upon the ability that God supplies.

That's what he's saying. And he continues, he says, according to the ability that God supplies, Why? That in all things, God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. That's what grace is about. It's so that God would be glorified in the church.

It's not so that men shine themselves up and go from an 8 to a 9 in holiness. It's not for that at all. It's so that God would be glorified. If anyone serves, let him serve in the ability that God supplies. Paul says, I'm an apostle because of the grace of God.

He says it so plainly here. He says, through Him we have received grace and apostleship. Why? For the obedience of all nations. That's why.

But you just can't miss The lack of pride in Paul for anything that he's done. He's full of humility. He has no self-confidence. He has no self-congratulation here. He's talking about the glory of God in the church that is expressed through the grace of God, so that everybody in the church does whatever they do according to the ability that God supplies.

Paul was an apostle according to the ability that Paul supplies. But there's every single person in this room is supplying something. And where is it coming from? Is it coming from some legalistic guilt trip that you have? Is it coming from something else?

Well, Paul says that the energy and the life of the church comes from the strength that God supplies, or the ability that God supplies, or how Paul says it here in verse 5, the grace that was received, that's His argument. You know, the one thing I hope to communicate today is the same thing that Peter said when he said, grow in the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ our Savior. To Him be glory both now and forever and ever. Amen. That's the heartbeat of this.

That the grace of God would be everything to us, that in everything we do or say, everywhere we go, we are people crying out for dependence upon the grace of God, and that we would be compliant, dependent, wide open for him to work in us in the midst of all of our situations. I went to bed last night, and I said something to Deborah. I was just groaning. She was just falling asleep. And I said, you know, Deborah, there are so many patterns that I need to change in relating to my children.

And we had a neat day yesterday working together for part of the day, but there were a number of things that I said and did that were not from the Spirit of God. I'll just have to tell you that for sure. And they did not come out of the outworking of grace in my life. It was the flesh. And so I'm just expecting that we all need to grow in the grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that to Him would be glory forever and ever.

The fourth element of this life as bond servants, number four, the impact of bond servants on all the nations. He says, through Him we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among the nations for His name. It's interesting that God desires the nations to be obedient. Yes, filled with grace, but also obedient. It's not one or the other, it's both and.

And this working of grace in the Church has a purpose, and that is for the transformation of the people and the nations. So he says, through him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among the nations. So, think of it like this. Put your own name in here. Put your own gift.

Put your own function in here. For through Him we have received, I have received grace and something else. Whatever you do. You're not an apostle, at least not in the sense that Paul was, but you've received grace for something, and the reason you've been given that is for obedience in the nations. Obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.

That every knee would bow before the throne of God. That's the purpose of our lives here, is to preach the Gospel so that there would be more souls in heaven bowing their knees before God at His throne. And that's the purpose of the gift. God has spread out His gifts in an array, and we're all different. But the purpose of the gifts are the same, and that is for His glory among the nations.

And that's why Peter was able to say, as each one has received a gift, minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. It's the manifold grace of God. There are so many ways that the grace of God is expressed through all kinds of different people, from little ones to big ones to every kind of person. And if anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability that God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. So why all of this?

It's so that God gets the glory. God gets the glory for the work that's done. It's not your work. It's the work of grace. God gets disciples from all the nations.

And how did he get them? He got them by calling them and separating them from the gospel of God. He gets all the glory for everything in the universe. And then lastly, the fifth element of life as bond servants is the shared mission of bond servants. And verse 6 reads like this, among whom you are also the called of Jesus Christ.

You see the logic here? This is the second most important piece in the text. Paul starts talking about himself, okay? I was called an apostle, I'm a bond servant, I was called as an apostle, I was separated to the gospel of God, among whom you also are the call of Jesus Christ." He's saying the same thing goes with you. Everything that I've said about me applies to you.

That's what he's saying. So it's the shared ministry of the saints. We all share in the same thing." And then he ends it with, 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. And that's the verse that we'll pick up on next week when we move into this next section. Okay, let me just give a couple of points of application and then let's spend some time speaking about it in more detail.

The first thing that jumps out at me here is that our usefulness is dependent on the grace of God. The quality of life that we have in this Church is dependent on the grace of God. We are very subject to what God might do. You know, we are so connected with one another. We are members of a body.

Romans 12 says, We are members of one another. Now, why is that important? It's important because my faith has an effect on your faith, and your faith has an effect on her faith, and your faith has an effect on his faith. And your faith is not just done in isolation, you are part of a body. We are so dependent on the grace of God working in one other's lives.

And I just, I want that to be sobering to us. I don't want us walking in here and thinking we are just individuals in our own cone of silence, living and moving and doing whatever we have independently and it has no effect on anyone else. That's a lie! We have a tremendous effect on one another. And that's why we're here to speak the truth and love to one another, and to be tender-hearted and forgiving one another.

I mean, we have a tremendous effect on one another's lives. You know, To think that my sanctification has an effect on everyone else in this Church is pretty staggering. I will be judged for that. I will absolutely stand before God. But I won't be the only one.

We will all stand before God. And we will give account for the way that we held our vessel, whether in sanctification or honor or whether in dishonor. How we handled our minds during the week, how we spent our days, what we read, what we allowed to go into our hearts, it'll affect everybody in the church. If somebody was looking at pornography last night, it'll affect everybody in the church that that person relates with today. If someone spent their evening in silliness, they will bring that silliness right back into the church here this morning.

If you want to feed your mind on silly things and irrelevant things, just know that you will make silly and make irrelevant your conversations and your life in the church. That is a sin against the body of Christ. We affect one another so much, and I just want to appeal to us to be sober about it, that we would conduct ourselves in such a way that the glory of Jesus Christ would be going out from us. It was maybe a couple of years ago, I had read some text out of a sermon that a pastor preached, and here's what he said. He said, the reason that you are listless today isn't because you're not giving.

So I'm not going to talk to you about starting to give. It's not because you're just looking to get. He says it's not that. He says because many of you spent the evening last night doing silly things and thinking silly thoughts, and now you've come in here and you're dead to God. That's what he said.

We should be so careful, because we affect one another. The grace of God working in me has an effect on all of us together. That's the tension, isn't it? Yes, it is God who is at work, but we also have a responsibility in the way that we conduct ourselves so that we would be full, full of the Holy Spirit, and ready to speak, and ready to impart, and ready to be a blessing to one another. So, our usefulness is dependent upon the grace of God, and at the same time God would have us be connected to one another.

We can resist the Holy Spirit, and that's the danger that we have in front of us. And then there are the implications for Church life here. Since the purpose of everything is to declare the glory of God, then everything that we do here in the Church, all that we say, should be for the purpose of giving glory to God. That's our lot here in this life, in this Church. So, you know, as leaders of the Church, our heart's desire, Even though I know that we can't perform in it perfectly in any way, but our desire is to be constantly pointing toward God and the Word of His grace.

To constantly be singing God-word, reading, saturating ourselves with God, that God would be the center, that God would be the King, that He would be glorified in everything that we do. We're constantly doing what Paul's doing here, praising God for His grace. That's just one implication for church life, that we have a church that, as much as we know how, as much as we can, to focus on the glory of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. So, just to sum it all up, if anyone ministers, let him do it according to the ability that God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's why Paul said what he did in the first six verses of the book of Romans.

Would you pray with me? Oh Lord, we thank you for your grace that called, that separated us, your grace that activated the prophets, that spoke the words of salvation, Your grace that can move through us to rescue men and women among the nations for Your name. Lord, that Your name would be great among us. Would You help us with this, Lord? We are poor and wretched and naked and blind and we do though know our great need for the name of Jesus Christ which is above every name.

Amen.