“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.” Romans 1:7
The highest privilege in life is to be loved by God and to call Him father. No other distinction will matter on that final Day when God’s righteous judgment is revealed and all moral accounts are settled.
Let’s consider four points of this passage.
First, those loved by God are effectually called. No one is righteous but God. All of us are sinners and unless we’re called to Him we will stay in our sin. This verse, as were the previous verses, is unambiguous on the account of predestination. The entire matter at hand, and the controversy over it, is simply because we are more jealous of our alleged sovereignty, and our faulty idea of free will, than we are of God’s righteousness. If all have sinned – and that much is obvious, especially since all men die and death is the punishment of sin – then no one can seek God. Sin fractures our relationship with God. Sin is death. It is moral high treason. Thus, the controversy over predestination exists because we don’t accept the true horror of what sin is and does. To rightly apprehend sin is to see ourselves as unable to go to Him unless He quickens us. Salvation is from the Lord, not man!
The debate over predestination is, therefore, actually a symptom of the very thing that proves/makes it necessary: our insistence on thinking our will is a co-sovereign with God. But a co-god is no god. Sin is so terrible exactly because it insists upon reordering all the facts of reality in terms of itself. In this way, the sinner believes in his/her own version of predestination, putting oneself at the center and relegating God to the peripheral. Someone is sovereign, either man or God. One must react to the other.
Second, we can see all humanity as children of God. That is true. But in the full sense, as Romans later explains, the true family of God is in Christ alone. Sin is so horrific and God is so righteous that only through faith in Jesus can we have true fellowship with Him. To flippantly call unbelievers “sons and daughters” of the most high and holy God is offensive as it means that Christ died in vain and is a liar. Christ is the firstborn among many brethren, we learn later, because of His work on our behalf. We have access to God now in Christ. God’s righteous and completely logical anger toward sin is appeased by the atoning work of Christ on our behalf. To approach the throne in any other way is to approach on our own standard and alleged merit.
Third, this is why we’re called saints. Saints are believers in Jesus Christ, which means that we’re set apart in order to live a sanctified life. A sanctified life is one that’s progressively less sinful. Sure, there will be losses in the battle against sin now and again, but the mark of Christian living is progressive holiness. Our battle against sin may see some of us hit the deck. We might get a standing eight-count. But we, his chosen, will never be counted out. When that bell rings we will still be standing through the strength of Christ, our arm raised in victory over death and sin because of Him.
The cost of our sainthood was so high – costing God His Son on the cross for us and our salvation – that we will be inspired to live for Him. No longer will sin’s lies entice and beguile us. The gospel is not: I obey, therefore He loves me. It is: He loves me, therefore I will obey Him. Mix this up and we lose the gospel. Mix this up and lose the joy and power of Christian living.
Fourth, from this we have grace and peace. Everyone seeks inner peace and spiritual calm these days. Yoga studios insist that they offer it. People talk about “being spiritual” but, tellingly, never define it. Watch for that always. They never define it because they cannot, and they cannot because they dare not because at the bottom of it all is self-worship.
What’s the definition? Here it is: it’s peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. All attempts to face life’s difficulties and terrors absent the Lord are at best but wishful thinking. They’re self-delusion. How do I know? Because, lo and behold, all men die and this simple fact proves the veracity of Scripture. How? Because only the Bible explains this most elemental fact about life. We die because we sin. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Feeling spiritual because you’re sweating in a yoga class doesn’t change the fact that you’re going to die. Hiking in the woods and adoring nature and claiming that this makes you a good person, a spiritual one, doesn’t alter the verdict of sin upon you.
In point of fact, these actions only deepen our problem as they prove that we know this is a moral world. It’s all just a show of self-salvation. There are many “religions and philosophies” not because men and women are seeking God, but because they’re running away from Him. But the peace of God, which is true peace, is found in Christ alone. And not only that, we aren’t merely pardoned and then forgotten, told to stand off in the corner of the room, so to speak, but loved and adopted into His holy family. By grace we’re sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father.
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