“I linger over this because if you get it early, the book of Romans will open to you like a flower. And if you don’t get it, the book will not make sense. And I linger over it because this is the essence of how God means for you to live your life.”
What is this thing that Piper sees as the key to understanding Romans?
Grace.
Grace to both save and enable ministry.
Too often people only see grace as something that saves you, but Piper’s point is that “he means that God not only saved him from his sin, but he also gave him grace to be an authoritative spokesman for the risen Son of God in power.”
So, what is grace?
“So we have seen that grace is a power from God for ministry (like Paul’s apostleship). It is free and cannot be earned or deserved. It is received as a gift by faith, not merited by works.”
Piper draws an important connection with Romans 1:5 with Romans 15:18.
He says in Romans 15:18, “I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me [that’s the power of grace], resulting in the obedience of the Gentiles”—which is the same aim as 1:5.
And the best quote of the whole message:
“Paul serves Christ by the grace with which Christ serves Paul.”
How do we apply this message?
“God wants you to read verse 5 and in the end put your calling in the place of the word “apostleship.” “Apostleship” is Paul’s—not mine and not yours. You might put, “Through Christ I have received grace and the teaching role.” Or: grace and singing. Or: grace and studentship. Or: grace and singleness. Or: grace and widowhood. Or: grace and motherhood. And what you should mean is: God has freely given me forgiveness and the power to do a calling, and fulfill a role which I accept by faith. There is not a role in life that can be lived the way God wants it lived apart from enabling grace. Being a godly mother or being an apostle is impossible without the power of grace. So when Paul says, in 1 Corinthians 15:10, that all his apostolic labor is by grace, you insert your own calling: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me.” The decisive, enabling power for all ministry and all service is God’s grace.”
As Piper does so well, he asks questions upon answers to give us more insight:
“But how do we receive and rely on grace? The answer is “by faith.” So you can see why all true obedience is the fruit of faith. It’s the fruit of faith because God’s grace is given to enable obedience, and faith is the way we rely on that grace, and so obedience is the fruit of that faith.”
So, I’ll finish off this with a practical application for me:
“So what we have seen so far is that God wants to be the Giver in this relationship. God wants to be gracious. God wants to be the fountain and the source of our service and our obedience and our ministry—whether apostleship, or pastor, or student, or mother, or any other calling. God intends to be the source of enabling, empowering, sustaining grace. Our job is to trust him and act in reliance on him. This is the essence of the Christian life.”
God has used this sermon in a very insightful way for me, to help me see, how truly destitute that I am in ministry and how much I really need his grace. It’s all about grace. From start to finish. I can claim nothing on my own
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