3rd Sunday in Advent “A Light with a Special Purpose”
December 17, 2023 Romans 1:1-7
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Dear brothers & sisters in Christ, hear these vss from Romans 1 (1–7)
Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, …..concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared to be the Son of God in power …. by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, thru whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. To all those in Rome who are loved by God and
called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Our Christmas trees bring extra light into our homes; that’s what we’ve been thinking about for the last 2 Sundays. With our trees, we ‘put on the lights’, and ‘many lights together shine brighter.’ Those two things illustrate some things Paul talks about in his letter to the Christians in Rome. Christ is the Light of the World; we are to ‘cast off the works of darkness and put on His armor of light.’ When we do that together, in unity, the glory of God shines brighter to the world.
So, let’s continue with the next Christmas tree illustrations: One ornament my family has for our Christmas tree is a small ceramic church that has an opening for a light to be placed inside. That makes this ornament unique. When its unwrapped & hung on a branch, it first appears to be like the others; but then a little bulb is placed inside, & it takes on a new identity. Now that single light gives the ornament a special purpose. It lights up the windows of that little church & draws a person’ attention.
This relates to what Paul says in the greeting of his letter, when he says: “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.” As an individual, Paul has purpose. And this will remind us that we are all unique in the sight of the Lord;
we are lights set apart for some special purpose.
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Just as that little church ornament is filled with darkness until the light is placed inside, so also was the life of Paul. As a young Pharisee named Saul, he lived a strict life of obedience to the Jewish religious laws, rites & regulations, and there were many just like him.
And being very zealous for the holy God, when errors & false teachings & blasphemies popped up, they had to be squashed. The OT laws gave him permission to squash people hard.
Saul noticed that the followers of that certain Jesus-from-Nazareth were particularly troubling & resilient; they didn’t go away after their leader was put to death. So, he thought his special purpose was to root out that problem by threatening, arresting, & even putting to death anyone who proclaimed that Jesus was the promised Messiah. But then, as it turned out, Jesus abruptly stopped Saul, and gave him a new purpose.
What about YOU: Did you ever imagine your life’s purpose to be a certain thing – only to find out later that that’s not what God wanted it to be? And besides that, when you discovered your purpose, was it such a huge change that you decided to change your name? Some people do. Saul did; which seems appropriate, because he had been changed into a brand new person.
This zealous persecutor of Christ Jesus & His followers, first named Saul, became the great apostle Paul; who was the premier author of the majority of the NT explanation of the Christian faith. God had set him apart for a special purpose in proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ far & wide, planting many NT congregations. In knowledge, wisdom, & suffering, the Lord Jesus set apart Paul, in an extraordinary life, as a servant with a mission to shine the light of Christ into the whole Gentile world.
Like many before him, Paul did not choose to be a servant for Jesus of Nazareth. Even as Jesus has generally said to all of us in John 15: ‘you did not chose Me, but I chose you to go & bear fruit.’ Saul had chosen a life of shining his own light in the religious world, & was having success. But as Saul-the-pharisee, he never would’ve written these words in his greeting, when he said: ‘To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints.’
In his darkened mind & heart, Saul wanted to be a ‘saint’, loved by God; but to him that meant hard work, obeying every letter of the Law, & other regulations beyond the Law,
striving harder than all the ‘unwashed masses’ of ordinary people. Being a saint was like getting straight A-s, a 100% on all the tests, & having a long resume of holy achievements.
Only then would God take notice of you. That’s what Saul was trying to do by obliterating the name of that Nazarene Rabbi, & by silencing Jesus’ followers. He intended to be the greatest defender of the Jewish faith and ‘a saint.’
In the shadowy corners of our natural minds & hearts, we can make the same error, thinking that God will not notice or love us until we first have a good resume; we have to first prove worthy by being a ‘good’ person. At least we think we need to be better than the average unwashed masses of sinners = then God will love us. And yet, in this same letter to the believers in Rome, Paul will debunk Saul’s pharisee-error when he says: ‘But God shows His love for us in this: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’ (Rom.5)
Self-achieving sainthood and earning God’s love IS impossible. We might get praise from other religious people, but not from God; so what good is that? Paul writes the truth in chpt.3: ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,’ by nature, we are objects of God’s wrath. Therefore, God’s love, and the believer’s sainthood, must come from some other source; a source outside of Saul == and outside of us.
But God IS love. God had murderous Saul in mind, along with all sinners, when He set apart His own Son Jesus, for His most special purpose: to be The Light of the world;
the one light no darkness could overcome; the Messiah promised thru the OT. So the new person -Paul- declares the truth about Jesus from Nazareth. He writes: He “was descended from David according to the flesh, and was declared to be the Son of God in power …. by His resurrection from the dead.” (vv 3–4).
That’s a summary, but we know those nativity details: the source of God’s love is Jesus, who was conceived by a humble virgin named Mary, in the lineage of King David; born in Bethlehem & laid in a manger. Heaven’s Son was sent to fulfill God’s redemption promise to Adam & Eve: fallen man would need a Savior, the Seed of the woman, to rescue all mankind from sin. Jesus was born to live under God’s Law in our place, & without sin; and then to suffer & die with the burden of every person’s sin laid upon Him on the cross of Calvary.
He was born to share our grave.
But God’s love would not end there; there in every human’s dead-end of ashes-to-ashes & dust-to-dust. His rescue would include the promise of new life; which Jesus accomplished in power & victory by raising himself from the dead. For that old pharisee Saul, all that would become clear to him beginning that day, on the road to Damascus, when a ‘light from heaven shone around him,’ says Acts 9.
From that day, Saul’s own purpose to be an artificial saint faded away as the world’s Savior set him apart for a special purpose. By God’s grace, Saul’s dark, empty life received the single light of life in Christ Jesus. As Paul, his special purpose was to be another apostle,
to shine the Gospel for others to see. In our verses he said, “We have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including YOU who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.” (vv 5–6).
As his life changed in purpose & in name, so did his definition of the word ‘saint’.
Now Paul was not striving for sainthood; instead, he refers to himself as a ‘servant of Christ Jesus,’ a ‘dulous’ = a slave with a master. Paul no longer saw any value in being the best pharisee in the world; but, with new eyes of faith, he could now see the value of bringing the Light of Life to all who were living in the darkness.
How humbling it is to realize that all of US are the same, like Saul; no better, no worse. Apart from Christ, we are all falling short of God’s purpose. Because of sin, we are all plain ornaments, until the one light of Christ comes to us – to forgive, to save, & to live in us.
Paul wrote of the gift that changes all lives: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5:8).
And with that love in Christ, you & I have new purpose. Not quite like Paul; his purpose was unique in the whole history of the world. He translated the doctrines of the OT into the language of fulfilment for our NT Times. God had him do that to grow in us, he says,
an ‘obedient faith’, prepared to meet our King Jesus when He returns in all His glory. That’s why Paul was ‘set apart.’
And being loved by God with the same love shown to Saul, you are also set apart and called to be a saint. Your life may appear ordinary, and yet you also bear the Light of Christ toward others in the things you say and do. Because: if Christ is for you, that means that He is also for everyone you meet. This is the purpose that Paul puts into words in Eph.2 when he says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Eph 2:10).
In various places in Scripture, we’re told that being loved by God & called as a saint to shine the light of Christ on others is not easy in a dark, resisting, & tempting world.
The men’s bible study this week discussed the ‘cost’ of following Jesus in this faith; it costs us our old, worldly life. Our old nature clings to us, so that there will be shadows of doubts & fears, just like the OT prophets & NT apostles battled some doubts & fears of their own. The world around us tempts us to join in with the darkness of lies & greed, hatred & selfishness. Satan himself is the chief of darkness & offers a thousand excuses for us to do our own things instead of God’s right things.
So that we would not be swallowed up by the darkness, a promise was given. We hear it in Isaiah 60: “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you.” Saul-the-pharisee was thrown to the ground that day when a ‘light from heaven shone around him,’ and a voice said to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ Saul said, ‘who are you, Lord’. And he said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise & enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’
In a few days time, being baptized, the old Saul became dead in the cross of Jesus, and the new Paul was called to be an apostle, set apart for the Gospel, to bear the Light of Life to the world around him.
Paul wrote to the believers in Rome back then, and by the Holy Spirit, his words are for Christians today. He greets us as a fellow sinner, called out of the darkness and into the marvelous light of Christ. He greets us as fellow saints, redeemed by the grace of God in Jesus, the promised descendent of David. He reminds us that we belong to Jesus, who has called us to hear & believe the good news, & washed us in His baptismal promise.
Your new name is ‘child of God’, and whatever God has put in your life is with His special purpose, which Jesus taught in Matt.5: ‘let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works, and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.’
You are like that particular Christmas tree ornament that has a place for a bulb,
which sets it apart to shine light for all to see. That Light is Christ, who shines in the darkness; and the darkness cannot overcome it.
Amen