Romans 16:25-27

Gospel Strength: To God's Glory (Part Two)

by Pastor Jim Lincoln on July 29, 2007

I love these doxologies because they have a way of lifting your soul above the battles of life. They lead you to consider things from the perspective of God's nature and good purposes for His children. They make whatever is competing for your soul's attention seem small by comparison. Listen to them for moment.

"Now to Him who is able to keep you from falling and able to make you stand in the presence of His glory, without blame and with great joy...to Him be glory forever and ever. (Jude 25)

May the God of all peace sanctify you through and through so that your spirit, soul, and body may be preserved without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls you and He will bring it to pass.

"Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways...For from Him, through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever amen."

The word doxology comes from two Greek words: doxa which means glory and logos which means word. Doxologies are words of glory about God. Technically, they're prayers, prayers of adoration and invocation.¹

Romans 16:5-27

This doxology is the longest with about seventy words in one sentence. Paul makes us wait almost sixty words before he gives us the main verb at the end of verse 27. Actually it's an incomplete sentence. But, Paul's too full of the Lord's praises to worry about grammatical technicalities. So, like cars on a long train he links up reason after reason why God deserves glory. Now, these aren't random thoughts. They're key words and phrases that tie together all that he has been saying about God and the gospel up to this point. He wants the last words these Christians read to be words that glorify God and leave His praises ringing in their ears. OK, how does he do it? What does Paul say about God and His gospel that brings glory to God? Let me offer three ways God gets glory in this doxology.

1. God is glorified by the way he seeks His glory (25).
2. He is glorified by being faithful to His word of promise. (25b-26)
3. He is glorified by giving His people a heart to obey him. (26b)

First, God is glorified here by the way He seeks His glory. We spent some time on this last Sunday. However, it is so encouraging that I want us to think about it again. Instead of naming God here Paul characterizes Him with, "To him who is able to make you strong." (v.25)

Many rulers of this world seek their glory by keeping their people, uneducated, weak, and poor. Rulers of nations like Kim of N. Korea, Brashirs of Sudan lead at the expense of their people not for the strength of their people.

It happens in business: In the nineties, business leaders of companies like Enron, Tyco, and World Com lead by exploiting their workers and ruining their retirement accounts so that they could become gloriously rich. Some men seek their glory by attempting to keep women weak. Some women seek their glory in mocking men. Beloved, all of us are capable of doing this and we all do it to some degree or another. All of us are capable of seeking our glory by reducing someone else whether we try to get glory because of the superiority of our race, gender, social status, education, good looks, the car you drive or the clothes you wear. There are an infinite number of ways we try to get glory. Paul writes that God doesn't seek His glory in keeping people weak.

God seeks His glory by making His children strong in the faith. As David said, "May your young men be mature plants and may your young women be as corner pillars (weight bearing not ornamental, weak, and delicate)." Ps.14:11.

The original word Paul uses here for strength is the word sterizo. It's where we get our word steroid from. Steroids can make you strong and healthy. And they can be abused as the sports world is learning.

What kind of strength is Paul referring to? Paul is talking about the strength that comes from faith in the gospel. He says, according to "my gospel namely the preaching of Jesus Christ." God gives us all kinds of strength. He gave Samson and Jael strong bodies. He gave Solomon and Abigail strong minds. But here he's referring to the strength that surpasses all other kinds of strength: Here he writes that it's the strength that comes from the gospel.

This is the strength that anchors you and carries you when every other kind of strength fails you. Strength of body and even sound mind may escape you (They have escaped me more often than I would like to admit) but not the strength of Jesus Christ. The strength of wealth, success and prosperity may fail you. The gospel won't. The strength of reputation, popularity, and friendship may fail you but the strength that comes to us from the gospel will not.

The gospel is secure and eternal. It stays with us and carries us when nothing else can or does. Each time I'm asked to oversee a funeral service, I'm reminded that there are things death can't take from you. As Martin Luther wrote, "The body they may kill, God's truth abideth still" The recent Christian martyrs in Turkey lost everything here on earth and as quickly as they did they were ushered into the presence of the One who loves them perfectly and forever. As a believer in Christ, the devil may kill you but that only brings you into the presence of Christ. George Herbert said something like this to the devil, "Go ahead do your worst, that will only bring me closer to Christ." Listen to the strength God gives us in the gospel from Romans 8.

"What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died-more than that, who was raised to life-is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:

"For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom 8:31-39

There is a strength that is stronger than death, life, the heights of great fears, the depths of depression, distress, peril, demons, things present, and anxieties about the future, any created thing or any other power. And that strength is the strength of the gospel that says, "In all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that not any of these things shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." God is glorified by seeking His glory in making His children strong He loves it when his children are secure in Him and confident in Him. We are safe and fortified behind the walls of His fortress... tucked away under His wings, and held and inscribed in the palms of His hands.

All the threats in the world and out of this world can't fill a thimble compared to the oceans of God's power committed to keeping his children. Jesus said, "No one can pluck you out of my Father's hand." I love the opening words of Jude,

"To those who have been called, who are loved by God the Father and kept by Jesus Christ" Mercy, peace and love be yours in abundance."

God is glorious in the way He seeks His own glory by making His children strong in the faith.

The second way God is glorified here is by His irrevocable faithfulness to His word of promise. Now Paul says it this way. At the end of vv. 25 and 26.

This gospel strength comes to us namely in the...

"proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, 26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God," NIV.

This is just like Paul. He uses five prepositional phrases and three adverbial clauses to speak of God's faithfulness to His word.

You can hear echoes of chapter one, where Paul said that he was "set apart for the gospel which He promised beforehand through the revelation of His prophets in the Scriptures concerning His Son Jesus. "

By mystery he doesn't mean an Agatha Christy mystery where you have to wait until the end of the story to find out who done it. Here, a mystery is something that was once obscured that has now been made known or manifested. What was revealed in the Scriptures but was obscured or hidden until the coming of Jesus.

Now, we would have expected him to have said that it was manifested through Jesus or the other apostles. But He says it was "now revealed and manifested through the prophetic writings. He's reminding us that this gospel didn't begin with the coming of Jesus. It had its origins in the promise of God or command of God in eternity past.

God promised the coming of Jesus as early as Gen.3:15 when God told Eve that a child of a woman would prevail over the enemy of our souls. He said, the serpent will "bruise His heal but He will crush his head."

He promised Abraham that through his seed all the nations would be blessed. He promised David that he would have a Son who would rule forever. In Isaiah he promised that a child will be born and a Son will be given to us and the government will rest on His shoulders and His name shall be called "wonderful counselor, mighty God eternal father prince of peace. The zeal of the Lord will accomplish this."

And he said surely our griefs He Himself will bear and our sorrows he will carry and yet we esteemed Him stricken of God and afflicted. But he was pierced through for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities and the chastening for our well being fell upon Him. ..All of us like sheep have gone astray but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him...He will justify the man as He will bear their iniquities.

These are God's covenant promises. And these promises are for all nations not just Israel. It's for all who believe in Jesus for there is no distinction for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

This gospel was about laying hold of righteousness. Apart from the law, a righteousness has been revealed that all of us can receive by faith as a gift from God. Paul writes in Rom.1:16 that this gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. To the Jew first and also the Greek for in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.

If you are ever tempted to become jaded and cynical about the prevalence of unrighteousness in the world...well you're thinking straight...at least with reference to the unrighteousness in the world. There is no righteousness in the world apart from Christ! You are merely seeing things the way they are. Yet, because of God's faithfulness to His word, He has revealed a perfect righteousness. And that perfect righteousness is in His Son the Lord Jesus Christ. If you are looking for perfect righteousness, you can find it in Jesus. He is the only one who can claim that record. Jesus is that One. He is the perfect righteousness our hearts yearn for. And I think we all are looking for that. Listen to the complaints in the world. I think they reveal what we are yearning for. God has been faithful to His word to give His Son the Lord Jesus to a sin sick world to be for us, to see righteousness, and then receive it by faith.

God is glorified by being faithful to His word to give a righteous Savior to the world. God the Son joyfully and willingly lived the life we should have lived for us and gives us who believe the record of that perfect life. He died the death we should have died and bore the penalty we deserved on our behalf so we won't have to. Paul says here that God has been good and faithful to the word of His promise. Therefore, He is glorious like no other.

Listen, we live in a world of broken promises. We have all shared in that to some degree. But beloved, God will never break his promises. And those promises are for anyone who will believe this gospel.

God is glorified by the way He seeks His glory He is glorified by His faithfulness to keep His word of promise about the gospel.

Lastly, God is glorified by creating in believer's hearts that desire to obey Him (27)

This gospel has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith; This is the goal of our faith... to bring glory to God by obeying Him from faith. Real faith in Jesus Christ produces obedience and obedient lives make God look glorious. That's what Jesus said in Matthew 5:16 "Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."

Here's the purpose of God strengthening us. To make us obedient by giving us hearts that believe He is worthy and obedience to Him is good for us. He has made us able to obey Him. By His word and the present help of his Spirit we now can.

In this gospel he has forgiven us and accepts us. He commanded this before He invented time as we know it. We don't obey him out of doubt about His love or insecurity. But out of confidence that He loves us and wants what is best for us. We don't obey him to merit His love. Jesus has already done that for us.

Faith without works is dead! Disobedience proves that our faith is not alive. When you get saved you're not only acquitted by grace you are also transformed by grace. Grace not only forgives you it changes your heart. It changes what we value, cherish, prize and treasure up in our hearts. This is the word of God's promise in Ezekiel. He says,

"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you and I will remove the heart of stone (hard and unresponsive) and give you a heart of flesh ( living and pliable) I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statues and you will be careful to observe My ordinances."

Salvation is not an initial spasm followed by chronic inertia. It is becoming a new creation in Christ with a new heart that has been turned by the Holy Spirit of God to holiness...to desire to obey God by believing all that Jesus is and has done for us. And of course this is the way Paul began his letter.

"We have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations." 1:5

And if you wonder what kind of obedience he has in mind, listen to some of Romans 12:

"Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. . . . Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

When Paul begins and ends his letter with the goal of "the obedience of faith," he means for us to live in the joy and the assurance of the first five chapters of Romans, where he shows that we are "justified by faith apart from works of the law" (Romans 3:28). And then out of that faith and peace and assurance and boldness, a new mind and a new man emerge and the fruit of obedience grows. The reality of justifying faith is made manifest through the changes God has made in us in Christ.

May you know that it is God's will and desire is to make you strong in the faith. May you know that this is how He seeks His glory at the greatest sacrifice of love. May you know that God has forgiven you so that you can glorify and honor Him through the obedience that comes from faith, confidence and trust in Him. May you know all of this for His glory and your joy!