To Bring About the Obedience of Faith

Romans 16:25–27 – Romans: The Righteousness of God
Second Sunday of Advent – December 10, 2023 (am)  

It’s hard when you come to the end of a book you’ve really enjoyed reading. I remember my first time through The Chronicles of Narnia. I started the first book as I began Christmas break during my third year of college. I’d been told the series is good, but for some reason I’d never even heard of it until just a few months prior. So, I began The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (observing the only order in which this series should be read!) just a day or so into break thinking that, with the other things I needed to do during that time, I might be able to finish it before I returned to classes in three weeks’ time.

I had a weekend job during those days, sitting at a desk from midnight to 8:00 AM every Saturday and Sunday morning in the ornate, glass-and-mirror Lobby of a luxury high-rise condominium on Michigan Avenue. It was decorated elegantly for Christmas, as was all the Magnificent Mile, and the Christmas lights were the only source of illumination in the room during my work hours.

As I recall, I finished that first book of Narnia by the end of the shift on which I started it! It surely seemed there must be some passage into that land in my immediate area! The next night I read Book 2, Prince Caspian, feeling like it was just Chapter 2 of the same book I’d started previous evening. No drowsiness overcame me during those shifts, like I was used to feeling. And I continued reading after I returned to my room, even before sleeping.

I finished all seven books before the first week of break had ended! Then came that hard feeling I mentioned as we began. I wanted to find Book 8 in this series and just keep on reading! But at the same time, I never wanted to read another book again! I just wanted to find my way into Narnia and live there for the rest of my life!

I know I’m not alone in that feeling. Each of us describes our experience with these books differently, but somehow they also all end up sounding the same in many ways. It’s just hard to come to the end of a good book. But the answer is always just to take that book with you! Weave the threads of its storyline into the fabric of your life such that, in the most meaningful ways, you’re living it out in the real world! You’re living out Narnia right here on earth! Or, perhaps better, you’re living in this world like a citizen of that one, like a native Narnian! You’re fully engaged in this world, but you fully embody that one!

We’re having a similar experience this morning. I’ve wanted to preach Romans since I came here nearly nineteen years ago. Many among us have wanted to study it again through most of that time. Finally, 2023 was the year! We began on this first available Sunday this past January, the 8th. Now we’re finishing forty-nine weeks later, just in time to prepare for Christmas. But surely as much as any other book of the Bible, given the depth and significance of this one as the most detailed explanation of the good news that Scripture includes, we almost want just to go right back to the beginning and start all over again. Romans is like the biblical version of Narnia! You just want to move into that mindset and live there—enter into the aeon of Christ, we might say—righteousness and Spirit and life—and leave behind the aeon of Adam—sin and flesh and death.

And that’s so much more defensible with Romans than it is even with Narnia. But the response is the same. Just take this book with you! Weave the threads of its storyline into the fabric of your life such that, in every meaningful way, you’re living it out here in the real world. You’re living out Romans right here in Warrenville! Or, better, you’re living in the realm of Adam like you belong to the realm of Christ! You’re fully engaged in this world but you embody the one to come! Your citizenship is there! (Phi.3:20)

We get a taste of this very dynamic in today’s passage. Paul’s actual aim is to end his majestic letter with [an affirmation of] praise to the God who has revealed the climax of salvation history in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ (Moo 2018 953). And here at the end that’s just what we want to do! Our glorious God has provided a glorious salvation! Praise Him! But woven into this flourishing crescendo of a conclusion is also a present reminder of what we should do with it, how we should live into and live out the message of this letter that has so captured our hearts and so fired our imaginations! Addressing three questions will help us see it.

What Is Paul’s Central Purpose in This Closing Passage?

It’s not hard to see. It brackets the text if we merge the little word to at the start of v.25 with the one at the start of v.27. 25 Now to… 27 … the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen. That’s Paul’s central purpose in the closing words of this letter that drills more deeply into the good news of the gospel and explains it with more compelling clarity than any other passage in all of Scripture. He wants to identify God as standing entirely alone in the category called wise. He wants to affirm that God is worthy of glory forevermore due to all He’s shown us of Himself and His plan in this letter. And he wants us to see that it’s only through Jesus Christ, the propitiation God put forward by his blood to be received by faith (3:25), that we could possibly be transformed into ones who can hear and respond to this charge!

So, Paul’s central purpose is to call his readers to celebrate the glory of the only wise God forevermore through Jesus Christ.

Why Is This Paul’s Central Purpose as His Letter Ends?

Again, the answer is right here. We’re called to celebrate the glory of God through Jesus Christ forevermore because He has proven Himself 25 … able to strengthen [us] according to [Paul’s] gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages 26 but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God…. Perhaps more plainly, we’re called to celebrate God’s glory because He’s proven Himself able to reconcile us rebel sinners to Himself through Jesus’ sacrifice, a plan that couldn’t have been known apart from His revealing it, and a plan that couldn’t be understood until we saw it play out in real time and space, even though it was promised far in advance using specific and vivid language. It was just unbelievably impossible until we actually saw it happen!

And there’s no better time of year to be remembering and rehearsing the very truths expressed in these verses than right now during the Advent season. The revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages cannot be captured in one single event in the life of Christ—say, the crucifixion or the resurrection. But if it were one event, it wouldn’t be either of these, odd as that may sound. The Grand Miracle, in C. S. Lewis’ words, the central miracle [God accomplished] is the incarnation. … God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this (Lewis 108). In order to live a perfect life according to the Word of God and die on the cross in the place of all who believe and rise from the dead in victory over sin and death and return to the Father’s right hand promising to come again and welcome His faithful followers into their final reward, the eternal Son of God first had to be born into this world in human form, flesh and blood, finite and frail.

That event was the initial and inconceivable requirement that kept even faithful students of God’s Word from understanding what He had made known to all nations with such clarity through the prophetic writings.

What else in all of human history rivals the incarnation of Jesus as the fulfillment of Isaiah’s words: Isa.9:6 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord will do this.

What else but God coming in the flesh could provide what the prophet wrote that we’ve sung together this morning? Isa.40:1 Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. … 5 And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

What else but Jesus’ saving, cleansing work in His body on the cross is deserving of this description from Isa.53:3 He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one [of us]—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

All of this has been done according to the command—the sovereign decree, the saving purpose—of the eternal God.

So, why is it Paul’s central purpose in this majestic letter to call his readers to celebrate the glory of the only wise God forevermore through Jesus Christ? It’s because God has proven Himself able provide salvation, to declare it and then bring it about, to call His absolutely impossible shot then make it happen.

Baseball fans still stand in awe of Babe Ruth in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series right here in Wrigley Field. Allegedly he called his shot. In a fifth inning at bat, he pointed to the center field stands with his bat then proceeded to hit a home run to that spot. To this day it’s still not certain that’s what he meant when he briefly raised his bat toward center field. But that’s what we choose to believe. And we stand in awe! But I’d say we’re too easily amazed. I’m rather confident we could find a hundred hitters in the history of baseball who’d be capable of doing something similar under the right circumstances. But there’s no one in the history of humanity who could write an imaginary tale that would outdo what God has actually done in space and time through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus!

How Are We Best Able to Fulfill this Central Purpose?

How do we best bring glory to God forevermore through Jesus Christ our Lord, especially right here and right now before we’re fully and finally in His unshielded presence forever? How do we best take Romans with us, weave its message into our lives—live here in the realm of Adam as though we belong in the realm of Christ—all for God’s glory?

Paul gives us the language right here. He gives us just the guidance we need to fulfill his central purpose in this final paragraph. We do it by living in the obedience of faith—the obedience [that is born] of faith. We read a bit earlier from the opening greeting of this letter that the aim of God’s grace in sending Christ into this world, and accomplishing salvation through Him, was to bring about the obedience of faith… among the nations (1:5). Now, in its closing doxology we’re reminded of that very aim as the way we live into its central purpose.

Conclusion

And this is our bottom-line charge today. This is how we hold on to the captivating and compelling teaching we’ve received from this letter to the Romans. We offer worship to God for His salvation through our faith-enabled obedience to His Word, lived out to the praise of His glory. And if you listen closely to how this is stated, you might hear this passage calling you 12:1 … to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. And how does this work exactly? 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect—so that you may discern what is the obedience of faith.

Surely we could hear no better Advent message today than to be reminded of the central response at the close of the fullest presentation of the gospel that appears in all of God’s Word, and to hear that enabling our response was God’s central aim for us as He performed His greatest miracle of sending His eternal Son into this world in human form, fulfilling promises so grand that we couldn’t even understand them until we actually saw them take place!

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Resources

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Barnhouse, Donald Gray. 1952. Romans, four volumes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans

Beale, G. K., & D. A. Carson, eds. 2007. Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. Romans, by Mark A. Seifrid, 607-694. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

Carson, D. A., R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, & G. J. Wenham, eds. 1994. New Bible Commentary 21st Century Edition. Romans, by Douglas J. Moo, 1115-1160. Leicester, Eng.: InterVarsity.

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Moo. Douglas J. 2000. The NIV Application Commentary. Romans. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

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Sproul, R. C. 2005. The Gospel of God: An Exposition of Romans. Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus.

Stott, John, NT ed. 1994. The Bible Speaks Today. The Message of Romans, by John Stott. Leicester, Eng.: InterVarsity.

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NEXT SUNDAY: Because the Lord Has Anointed Me, Isaiah 61:1–2, Kipp Soncek