Romans – A Treatise
Chapter One
SAINTS
Scripture Reading: verses 5-7 (Darby translation)
JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD . . . BY WHOM WE HAVE RECEIVED GRACE AND APOSTLESHIP IN BEHALF OF HIS NAME, FOR OBEDIENCE OF FAITH AMONG ALL THE NATIONS, AMONG WHOM ARE YE ALSO [THE] CALLED OF JESUS CHRIST: TO ALL THAT ARE IN ROME, BELOVED OF GOD, CALLED SAINTS: GRACE TO YOU AND PEACE FROM GOD OUR FATHER AND [OUR] LORD JESUS CHRIST.
The words of God’s Book contain a sweeping excellence that is overwhelming to human intellect. The Bible is like a great fountain of truth gushing forth in such profusion that like a flood it breaks down every barrier of human limitation and to the renewed mind gives the sense of boundless waters in which to swim. The grandeur of the phraseology of Scripture, as well as its truth, leaves man puny and insignificant.
We sense this in the above passage. In this section of the inspired New Testament, Paul is describing the limitless fullness of what he calls “the Gospel of God concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord,” and we need to notice how the thought of God’s calling is emphasized.
In verse one Paul speaks of himself as a called apostle. In verse six those to whom he writes are in the nations “among whom also ye are the called of Jesus Christ.” Then in verse seven, “beloved of God called saints” These are the blessings that accrue from God's call.
“The gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” In other words, if, when God calls, we are obedient to His call, then we can be sure that He will never retract the call – He never goes back on His Word. This is the primary truth regarding the thought of God’s calling. The truth of God’s call is exemplified in Abraham. He was in a land of idolatry, in the Mesopotamian country, and the God of glory appeared and called him. God’s call was not an indefinite, ethereal affair like a dream or mirage; it was peremptory and to the point: “Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father’s house, to a land that I will shew thee.” Abraham heard the call and by faith he obeyed it, going out, not knowing where he was going. In embryo we have in these few statements the central truths concerning God’s call. This call comes to us in the proclamation of the Gospel. Paul speaks of it in Romans 10:
The word of faith, which we preach; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (vs. 9-10)
Today God is calling us out of this present evil world, out of our fleshly associations, out of our personal pride of heart and selfish pursuits. He is calling us to bow the knee in deep reality before the Lord Jesus Christ; “out of thy country, out of thy kindred, out of thy father’s house to a land I will shew thee.” It is the same test that was put to Abraham in Mesopotamia. It is proclaimed to us in the Gospel, and the one who surrenders to the all-impelling love of Christ finds that he/she is traveling on “to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” (1 Pet. 1:4-5)
Keeping these thoughts in mind regarding God’s call, we return to our passage in Romans 1. There we find that Paul is, first of all, a called apostle. He was definitely called from out the shadows of his own fleshly religion and religious pride to take his place as an apostle, or a “sent one,” a messenger from God to the nations. Christ himself is the one who selected the apostles and conferred upon them that name. “And of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles” (Luke 6:13). It is precisely in that strictest meaning of the title that Paul’s salutation and identification of himself as an apostle should be understood. He was a called apostle, not by men, but by Christ Himself; and he laid claim to the full authority of the office. That was his position by calling and in the Epistle to the Romans he was seeking to fulfill it. Then, in verse 6 he says to these Romans, “among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ.”
Up until the time of his conversion, Paul was known as Saul of Tarsus. Saul, the first name under which this great man appears in the New Testament, means demanded, and ranks among the great names in Jewish history, being the name of their first king. On the other hand, Paul means little, and could have signified Paul’s smallness of stature. However, the name is Gentile, and was the name of the apostle’s first distinguished convert, Sergius Paulus, proconsul of Cyprus. It has been suggested that the new Gentile name of the apostle may have been derived from that conversion. And, it was common among the Jews to mark some outstanding event in a person’s life with a change of his name, as in the case of Abraham (Gen. 17:5), Jacob (Gen. 32:38), and Peter (John 1:42). So, one might suppose it to be possible that in such a detail as this, Paul was “not a whit behind the chiefest apostles” (2 Cor. 11:5). The first use of the name Paul for this apostle is recorded in Acts 13:9 on the occasion of the proconsul’s conversion. However, it is significant that it appears to be a name that was already his, being mentioned before the conversion took place. Despite this, the dramatic switch from one name to another certainly took place on that occasion. Both names were appropriate for the great ambassador to the Gentiles, and it is certainly possible that his parents gave him both names, providentially, and that his great mission to the Gentiles naturally resulted in the shift of emphasis to his Gentile name.
Let us take a moment to consider apostles. The apostles of Jesus Christ constituted the most interesting group of men ever to live on earth. They were men of humble origin. They were men who, when measured by ordinary standards, would not be called learned or wise by the world. They were men who were never honored by any university with a degree, or elected to any learned society of intellectuals. They were men who never wrote popular books, as the term is usually understood, who were never elected to any pubic office, who never became wealthy, and who, with the possible exception of Paul, would never have been remembered by posterity, had it not been for their association with Jesus Christ. However, their relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ projected them into the spotlight and focal center of all subsequent history. For more than two thousand years (and counting), children have with eagerness learned the names of the Twelve Apostles, and gray-headed men and women have gone down to the grave repeating the blessed words these men delivered to the human race. It must be conceded that the apostles of Christ have exerted and continue to exert a greater influence on humanity than that which may be attributed to any other human source.
Who were permitted to serve as apostles? (1) Only those whom Jesus chose for this office were ever, in any real sense, apostles, this being a necessary deduction from Acts 1:24, “Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, show of these two the one whom thou hast chosen.” In that remarkable event, the apostles themselves had been able to narrow the choice for Judas’ successor to the two men alone who fulfilled the other qualifications for the apostleship; (2) only those having been companions of the Master from the time of John’s baptism until Christ’s ascension (Acts 1:22); and only those having been witnesses of the resurrection of Christ, that is, having seen Him alive after His death and burial (Acts 1:22). Paul’s apostleship was different because he had not been a personal companion of Jesus during the Lord’s ministry, as were the others; but, by special appearances to Paul, the Lord commissioned him as a true “witness” of the resurrection (Acts 26:16), that commission as an apostle being by Christ Himself and not by men (Gal. 1:1).
What were their powers? They were infallible teachers of God’s Word, being inspired in the highest sense of that Word, their infallibility being attested by the signs and miracles that accompanied their preaching (Mark 16:20). Peter raised the dead to life again (Acts 9:41); Paul suffered no hurt from the vicious bite of a deadly viper (Acts 28:5); and many other signs and miracles were wrought by them and all the apostles. They could convey the gift of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of their hands, which no doubt included the power of working miracles in confirmation of their mission. No apostle ever claimed that any perpetual office could thus be transferred; and the notion of any line of succession to such an office as the apostleship is illogical and opposed to the Scriptures.
Who were their successors? Only Judas Iscariot had a successor, i.e., Matthias, who was chosen by the Lord to take the office from which Judas “by transgression, fell” (Acts 1:25 KJV). The significance of this arises out of the circumstance that the death of two of the apostles is recorded in the New Testament, whereas only one of them required a successor. Nowhere is it recorded that any successor was chosen for James (Acts 12:2). The difference in there having been chosen a successor for Judas, but none for James, may be explained only by the fact that the Scriptures attribute the removal of Judas from his office to his transgression, and not to his death, which leads to the conclusion that death never removed, and indeed cannot remove, an apostle from his office. It is this tremendous truth that underlies the promise of Jesus to the Twelve that, “In the times of the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28). This promise of the Master established the principle that death could not remove an apostle, nor interfere with the discharge of their apostolic duties – their reign being co-extensive with that of Christ Himself.
Regarding how the apostles are reigning today, it appears that their word, i.e., the inspired message which they delivered and which is still preserved and binding on Christians of all ages, is the means of their continual authority or reign over the church. That the apostolic office was absolutely unique and limited to the Twelve plus Paul, is further corroborated by the apostle John’s vision of the foundations of the Eternal City, upon which are inscribed “the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:14). Therefore, it is impossible to believe the claims of any so-called successors to apostolic dignity and authority of the Twelve, whether in this age or any other.
Let us now return to our treatise of Romans 1:1. These Roman believers were by natural citizenship part of the great and proud nation that had practically conquered the known world of that day. They had every reason to be proud of their background, for by conquest of the Caesars the world had been laid low before the might of their national sovereign. But the Gospel had reached them, and they had been called out of all that into a new realm where the Lord Jesus was the Sovereign of their lives. They were no longer famous as Roman citizens, taking pride in the indomitable power of their nation. Now they were part of the kingdom of the Son of God’s love and they could look beyond the Caesars and see their true Lord – the Person, Jesus Christ, on His universal throne. All this had been brought about by the call they had heard from God Himself in the Gospel.
In verse 7, concerning these same Christians at Rome, Paul says they were beloved of God and were called saints. This is a great advance on that which he had hitherto been setting before them. This is not simply indicating that by calling they had become followers of the Lord Jesus. Now, in God’s estimation, they had been separated as a sanctified people from the entire course of this present evil world, called out of this world by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. As such they were saints or sanctified ones.
This word “saints” is much abused in the religious world. Men have all kinds of thoughts about the word itself. In the language of some religions organizations it is impossible for a person to be a saint until after death. However, one can hardly accept this as Scriptural, because Paul is writing to his brethren at Rome who were alive in the body – yet he insists they were already saints by calling. This truth is so frequently asserted in the New Testament that one wonders how anyone could misunderstand it. By calling, all the Lord’s people are saints, because they are sanctified in Christ Jesus. This is not what we are as men or women in the flesh; it is what God, in His reckoning, has constituted us to be in Christ. In other words, God has looked on mankind and by the Gospel has separated certain individuals and by the power of the Holy Spirit He has placed on them the mark of destiny. They are set apart for Him as fit companions for the Lord Jesus Christ in the day of His glory.
An example might be an army commander who musters his men before him. From their ranks he asks for a hundred volunteers to undertake a particular task to be performed at the end of the training period. The volunteers come forward, their names are registered, and the commander himself keeps the book wherein their names have been written. They fall back into rank and are trained with the other soldiers. However, within their hearts they carry the secret that they are “separated ones,” destined for special duty on a day yet to come. As the thousand men go through their training, it might be impossible to single out those who are separated and those who are not, but the commander knows all about it. In his reckoning, his hundred men are set apart.
God in heaven knows whether we have truly accepted the Lord Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior. In the Gospel He has asked us to do this. If we have done it, our name is written in the Book of Life, and we are destined for a world of joy and beauty hereafter. If we have not done it, the commander of the universe knows it and our name will not be found in that Book on the day of judgment. Briefly, that is the thought of saints by calling. May God enlarge our thoughts concerning these mighty truths set forth in His Book.
