the following resource is from desiringgod.org romans chapter 1 verses 8 through 15. first i thank my god through jesus christ for you all because your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world [Music] for god whom i serve in my spirit in the preaching of the gospel of his son is my witness as to how unceasingly i make mention of you always in my prayers making requests if perhaps now at last by the will of god i may succeed in coming to you for i long to see you in order that i may impart some spiritual gift to you that you may be established that is that i may be encouraged together with you while among you each of us by the others faith both yours and mine and i do not want you to be unaware brethren that often i have planned to come to you and have been prevented thus far in order that i might obtain some fruit among you also even as among the rest of the gentiles i am under obligation both to greeks and to barbarians both to the wise and the foolish thus for my part i am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in rome would you focus with me now on verse 14 for a few minutes i am under obligation both to greeks and to barbarians both to the wise and to the foolish or like the king james version has it more literally i am better i'm going to use that translation because i think the word debtor which is where i want to hang about 10 minutes worth of my thinking i think that word stirs up a lot of very very important thinking for us i am debtor both to greeks and to barbarians both to wise and to foolish so my question first of all is what's the debt what does he have to pay to the barbarians what does he have to pay to the greeks the foolish the wise so that the accounts are settled and i think verse 15 gives the answer you see the connection there so or thus since i am a debtor to them so for my part i am eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in rome so the debt seems to be the gospel i owe the gospel to greeks and barbarians and wise and foolish everywhere including among the romans including the roman christians now i think this word debtor makes us ponder how you get into such a debt how do you get into such a debt to barbarians and cultured greeks and everybody else and how do you pay it off now you might think and this would not be far wrong well look verse 1 says paul is called as an apostle he's called to be an apostle and it says he set apart for the gospel so clearly that's his duty his mandate his call and his set apartness is gospel preaching so you're obligated do it add to that verse 5 where it's clearly his mission i received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among the gentiles so if that's what your apostleship is for to bring about the obedience of faith by preaching the gospel among the gentiles do it it's your obligation your debt is to do that now pay it and you might think just in terms of authority jesus is lord the lord calls him to be an apostle assigns him to go preach the gospel when you get an assignment from your lord you do it right next point of the sermon now that's really true you should do what your lord says that's true but as i read this text over and over as i read the book of romans this text in particular the flavor of this text isn't that this isn't that you look at verse 5 he doesn't say i got a command from the lord he said we received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith paul is not cowering or trembling or or even gladly submissing mainly to a word of command and authority here he is stunned that he has been graced i received grace grace of salvation grace of apostleship to do this wonderful work that's a different flavor that's a different spirit and the question is how does that create debtors that's the question which causes you to go a little deeper than just he said do it do it he's your lord you're his servant you said so bond servant verse 1 servants do what their lord say that's your duty do it this is not the flavor of this text there's grace pouring down on this apostle he feels utterly unworthy he feels so glad to have received this grace of salvation and apostleship so how did he become a debtor well verse 14 notice very carefully says i am a debtor using the literal translation now not just i'm obligated but i'm a debtor to greeks and barbarians in other words i'm a debtor to people he's not talking about being a debtor to god here i am a debtor to people so how do you get into debt to people how do you get into debt to people i would guess that probably three-fourths of you are in debt to people in this room how many have mortgages raise your hand don't be ashamed i had one paid it off a little while back um you got into debt with the bank by borrowing money that's how you got into debt you get into debt from to people by borrowing from them they loan you something and you now are in debt to pay them back the barbarians didn't loan paul anything the greeks didn't loan him anything that's not how he got into debt with the unwise and the wise doesn't work that way the situation here is not that the nations the gentiles have loaned paul anything to pay back the situation here is allah verse 5 is that paul has received something freely from god namely grace grace of salvation grace of apostleship and when you receive grace from god you don't become a debtor to god you become a debtor to everybody who like you needs grace grace does not put you in debt to god you cannot and you dare not pay god back for grace or even try to lest you nullify grace if i this morning brought you a gift just because i am excited that i came into some treasure this week and i just feel so good about sharing it that's what happened when my mother died twenty eight years ago she left me an inheritance of about i forget seventeen thousand dollars or something like that i had the best time giving a wallop a lot of that money away and it enabled me to get into a mortgage too first house we ever owned we put a down payment from that money but what joy so if i came with some money this morning and i gave you a gift like a big box of something and and i say here's a gift and you quick reach for your wallet and start scrum and start pushing money into my hand i say it's a gift and you see you stick in my hands it's a gift you don't get it it's a gift you don't owe me meaning of gift g-i-f-t no o-e-o-w-e i respell o o-e-w grace is not a mortgage there are no installment payments to heaven when you get grace you don't go into debt with god through grace if you try to conceive of it as debt you nullify grace grace would no longer be grace if you could pay god back or even if you tried and there are a lot of people ruining grace by trying you know what the best thing about grace is it pays debts it pays debts oh i'm in debt with god matthew 6 12 lord's prayer forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors oh i've got a debt with god but it isn't created by god giving me grace it's created by my stealing glory you can get into debt two ways not just one way you can be loan something and have to pay it back or you can steal something and have to pay it back god held out free glory to be enjoyed we stole it off the wall of the museum sold it for a bag of lust and have been feeding off of our preferences not his glory ever since that's just a paraphrase of romans 1 23 they exchanged the glory of god for the glory of the creature or romans 3 23 all have sinned and lack the glory of god the essence of sin is the stealing of glory bartering it off for a preferable human pleasure and delighting in that instead of god then you're in debt and the only way you'll ever get out of debt is grace wonderful glorious free sovereign undeserved grace so grace when it comes to paul in verse 5 forgiving his sin and calling him into the apostleship does not make him a debtor to god it somehow makes him a debtor to barbarians how why well i think it goes like this if you're in trouble along with lots of other people you're in misery you're in a mega disease or some terrible catastrophe has happened and you're all imperiled and suddenly you find a remedy you find a rescue an escape and you receive it with singing and with joy it just came to you you didn't qualify for it and you don't look at the others in the calamity and feel indebted to share the escape and the remedy with them what you say in effect is i was qualified they aren't sorry and that nullifies grace that's the end of grace in your life if you know grace if you know what it is to have been freely approached by god called by god raised from the dead by god given the gift of faith by god brought into fellowship with jesus by god freely apart from any qualification on your part then when you walk out of here you will not be able to lay your eyes on another human being cultured or uncultured and say they don't qualify because you didn't qualify and since you didn't qualify they are no less or more deserving than you are and therefore you owe them the gospel you're a debtor two barbarians and to greeks i think that's why paul stressed the phrases greeks and barbarians wise and foolish what's he saying here why does he choose these these categories greeks the the paradigm of culture and knowledge barbarians everybody they else they viewed as couldn't speak the right language and they didn't think the right thoughts and then there's the wise and the educated and there's the unwise and the uneducated and he says culture intelligence and education do not qualify you for grace and being unrefined and uneducated and illiterate does not disqualify you for grace there are no qualifications for grace oh lord god let us get this at bethlehem what a life-changing thing this is there are no qualifications for electing regenerating calling converting grace freely you have received and now you are debtors not to god you cannot pay back freedom but to everybody else who stands in need of the same free grace paul is a debtor not because they qualify paul is a debtor to greeks and barbarians not because they qualify they don't qualify nobody qualifies there are no qualifications for grace it's the meaning of grace to the degree [Music] that at the front end of your christian life you conceive of meeting qualifications to get god on your side you don't understand grace yet paul is not a debtor because they qualify paul is a debtor because he didn't qualify either and grace came to him and he keeps on coming to him and if he keeps it from another he is saying and you are saying and i am saying i qualified they didn't and that's the end of grace in your life you don't get grace if that's the way you think or act oh that the lord might grip us with the reality of free grace in this church if we would be gripped by the gospel of free grace what a difference it would make in our racism would it not what a difference it would make if we were gripped by the awesome truth that we met no qualifications to be targeted by the converting grace of god what a difference it would make in our ethnic slurs what a difference it would make in manifold forms of self-righteousness so that we come out of our apartment and see the man we don't like and just turn the other way and with all of our body language make a barbarian out of him what a difference it makes to know grace to be gripped by grace to be held by grace that's absolutely free what a difference it would make in the demandingness of marriages a culture of demandingness in a marriage fed not by grace but by demands justice and art what a difference how many marriages would survive and thrive under this gift if it were known and welcomed now stop here a minute that's first point hang it on the word dinner what have i just done for the last 10 or 15 minutes i want to think about this what have i just done in this room the reason i ask you that question is because it's a puzzling thing when you get to verse 15 now i want you to hang the next point on the word gospel the first word is deader the second word is gospel when you read verse 15. so for my part i am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in rome [Music] what's odd about that verse what's odd about it is you don't preach the gospel to christians do you so my part for my part i am eager to preach the gospel to you you whom i have defined as the call of christ and the loved of god the saints of the most high i'm coming to you to preach the gospel to you you don't do that you preach the gospel to unbelievers billy graham preaches the gospel to unbelievers you preach the gospel on the streets you do something else in the church right wrong it's wrong verse 15 is right that's wrong so the reason i asked you what have i been doing for the last 15 minutes the answer is i've been preaching the gospel i've been unfolding for you the gospel of free grace that's all i've been doing and it terminated on racism ethnic slurs self-righteousness marriages in other words the obedience of faith verse 5 the obedience of faith paul's goal in his apostolic ministry is not just to get first-time professions of faith his goal is to get the obedience of faith something that shows in marriages something that shows in race relations something that shows on the streets next sunday something that shows downtown and in your schools and in your homes and in the neighborhoods because it's obedience it's outward and it's coming from faith that's his goal and so he says i'm gonna come and preach the gospel the gospel changes lives when you get the gospel when you get it when you cherish it when you love it when it grips you with real authentic saving faith in the gospel of free and sovereign grace that goes on and on and on lavishing itself on you when you get that and that's your treasure everything changes in your life and the only reason things don't change is that the gospel hasn't gotten to the core of your life yet and that's why i will always be i hope and i pray a gospel preacher a lot of people confuse the gospel with just a little outline and oh we need outlines we've got one called quest for joy there are other good ones there are usually four components god sin cross faith you need that in your head god is holy sin kills and destroys the cross bridges the gap faith gets you into christ that's the gospel but that's not all of it boy you can unpack that forever and ever the glory of the gospel is inexhaustible and we've got to have it we got to see it we got to know it it's got to get down into our hearts so we need to pray for each other right now those of you who know the gospel love the gospel cherish the gospel live in an ocean of grace and find it changing your life should right now be whispering prayers for others in this room for whom my language right now is absolutely unintelligible they are so fuming about what others have not given them that they're supposed to give them they are so angry that others haven't measured up to their expectations they can't even hear me you pray for those people right now because if that doesn't change they'll never taste grace you've been there turn with me to chapter 15 for just a moment chapter 15 verse 15 i have written very boldly to you on some points so as to remind you again notice remind that's what he does when he preaches the gospel to christians this whole book is gospel preaching he preaches it to christians and he calls it a reminder that's what i do sunday after sunday i just remind christians because of the grace that was given to me there it is it's grace that sponsors this thing called gospel preaching to be a minister of christ jesus to the gentiles there they are again that's his target he loves these barbarians and these greeks he likes people who go to opera and people who like country western and he likes them all he's a debtor to all of them ministering as a priest the gospel of god there it is that's what he ministers that's his instrument he has no other he has no other tool in his bag so that my offering of the gentiles may become acceptable sanctified by the spirit you see what he wants he doesn't just want ticks on his gun he doesn't just want professions of faith he wants a body at bethlehem i want a body at bethlehem sanctified by the holy spirit which is just another way of saying chapter 1 verse 5 bringing about the obedience of faith and according to these verses and chapter 1 the way the obedience of faith rises in a congregation is when the gospel of grace is understood received to the core of your being and grace grips you i did not qualify he loved me freely he chose me freely he commanded and then he created what he commanded that's my god and that's my grace i have no other hope if that's your hope you won't walk out of here and cut your eyes at anybody for what they wear or their hair or their pierced bodies or their anything and if you do if you turn away and don't greet anybody what do you know of grace what do you know of how you've been welcomed one last brief question is it enough for me to say this is it enough for me to preach this is it enough to have in one church a pastor who preaches the gospel of grace in order to bring about the fullness of the obedience of faith among all the people and the answer is no and that's what's behind verses 11 and 12. in chapter 1 i long to see you so that i may impart some spiritual gift to you so that you may be established that he's established in your faith so here i come i'm paul i've got grace on me in me apostleship preaching teaching those are my gifts i'm coming to you i'm coming with the gospel of jesus and i expect that you're going to be established through my sharing of my spiritual gift now if you'd stopped right there we might say well every church needs a paul that wouldn't be necessarily false but he doesn't stop there verse 12 very crucial here that is what i mean when i say i'm coming with a gift what i mean when i say i want to share a gift and what i mean when i say grace is all over me is i want to be encouraged by you i want it to turn around and come the other way together with you while among you each of us watch the mutuality here each of us by the others faith both yours and mine now let me try to paraphrase that for you as we close what i hear there for bethlehem is this there's a john piper and there are a few other staff members and there are a few key sunday school teachers yes yes and they're gospel people they're grace people but that's not the way god has designed this body to flourish that's not the way god has designed the obedience of faith to rise to its fullest expression in this church is to have john piper preach once a week and a few good other elders and teachers to do their thing in their bigger groups rather it's very clear from this text there's a mutuality in the church god has ordained that spiritual gifts be exercised in the church and what a spiritual gift is in a nutshell is this i get it from romans 12 3 to 8 and i get it from first peter 4 10 a spiritual gift is a stewarding of grace that's a paraphrase of first peter 4 10. we are to steward grace to each other there are as many gifts for this body as there are people in this body and for any person in this body not to mediate grace to the body is to nullify grace in your life there are only greeks and barbarians wise and foolish in this church and we are debtors all to each other it's not just that john piper has been saved by grace and been given the glorious grace of being a preacher all of you have been saved by grace who are saved and been given the glorious ministry of the body that's what verse 12 is all about here the apostle wants to say look if in the church of rome the obedience of faith is to rise let there be a system of small groups in rome in which the body can minister to each other with grace so here's the summary first everybody is a debtor to everybody else because everybody has received free grace and to look at another person and say you don't qualify for the grace that has been given to me in my particular personality so i will not exercise a gift toward you that person is saying to god i qualified for the gift they don't qualify for my gift and that's the end of grace in your life don't do that second point was what do you pay your debtor or your creditor you pay the gospel grace you extend the gospel of grace through all the manifold gifts and that's the third point gifts it isn't just john piper talking when you leave this room right now i'm calling you to do this your car is not your destination human beings are your destination you got that a man came to my house this week and he said to me i've been three times to your church i stand in the middle of the comments every sunday alone i've never been greeted this sermon was prepared before that happened i'm not responding to that it's already here in the text if we have tasted grace if we live on grace if it is our life path present and future we are debtors to everybody in this room debtors to everybody in the parking lot debtors to everybody who walks along the street debtors to every color debtors to the rich debtors to the poor debtors to be educated debtors to the illiterate and we look upon them with a sense of i must how can i not it's so free father as we go would you please make us a grace driven grace filled graced resting grace happy people the promises or of your grace are simply awesome and inexpressibly great minister to them minister them to your people now i pray as we go in jesus name amen thank you for listening to this resource from desiringgod.org if you found it helpful we encourage you to enjoy and share from thousands of resources on our site including books sermons articles and more available free of charge desiringgod.org exists to help you treasure jesus more than anything else because god is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in 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