October 4 we started our series working through Romans. My goal is to help our church see and respond to the majesty of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We’ll take a break in Romans for Advent and Christmas, then probably still in Romans when we break for Easter for a few weeks.
You won’t get here the Sunday night add-in from last night running through various resources on Romans for study purposes. Primarily I noted my preferred commentaries, such as the entry in the Story of God Commentary series from Michael Bird and C. Marvin Pate’s entry in the Teach the Text series. I also use both editions of IVP’s Dictionary of Paul and His Letters for reference purposes. I had forgotten about Jackson W.’s Reading Romans with Eastern Eyes, but I’m going to add that in this week.
Meanwhile, here are the sermon links from Sunday morning. Audio will be there first:
Then we have video:
Audio can be subscribed to here.
Video can be subscribed to here.
Oh, here’s the working text that I used while preaching:
Our Forever Debt
Doug Hibbard
RomansMOBC / Romans 1:1–15
Context: Where does this fit in the Big Picture of God’s Glory?
Romans: Paul’s letter to a church he’s never been to. More background tonight.
Comes right after Acts, so you’re in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts. Hit the “ians” and you need to back up. If you’re in the “iahs” go forward.
If you’ve somehow found a chapter on Chaos Theory, you’re in Jurassic Park. Put it away for later.
Overview: What’s going on here?
Romans 1:1–15 NET
From Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God.
This gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures,
concerning his Son who was a descendant of David with reference to the flesh,
who was appointed the Son-of-God-in-power according to the Holy Spirit by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Through him we have received grace and our apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles on behalf of his name.
You also are among them, called to belong to Jesus Christ.
To all those loved by God in Rome, called to be saints: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!
First of all, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed throughout the whole world.
For God, whom I serve in my spirit by preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness that I continually remember you
and I always ask in my prayers, if perhaps now at last I may succeed in visiting you according to the will of God.
For I long to see you, so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you,
that is, that we may be mutually comforted by one another’s faith, both yours and mine.
I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that I often intended to come to you (and was prevented until now), so that I may have some fruit even among you, just as I already have among the rest of the Gentiles.
I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.
Thus I am eager also to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome.
Overview: What’s going on here?
1. Identity
2. Gospel
3. Gratitude
4. Glorification
5. Intentions
Reflection: Why does this matter?
The Gospel of Grace creates a debt, an obligation, that our whole lives are spent repaying: to share the good news!
Expectations: What do we do about it?
Salvation: One more time: your sins have separated you from God. You can never buy, work, or sneak past the consequences. You either accept the grace of God through the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus or you face an eternity facing the wrath of God.
Believers: do you see the debt? Do you understand that we spend our lives gloriously sharing that? That we are in debt, under obligation, to the world that needs Jesus because we have what they need. We have the truth. We have the love of God.
We have this truth. We have this gift.
And notice that Paul isn’t satisfied with what he’s done so far. Neither should we be: a ship does not sail with yesterday’s winds, nor a Christian say yesterday’s disciples are enough. There is no time or generation that we get to write off as unsavable. He wants to share the Gospel with the Jews; the Greeks; the Barbarians (everybody else).
Who do you want to share the Gospel with?
How far will you go?
Paul won’t share the Gospel and God’s work in his life with the Romans until he arrives in Rome as a prisoner. He’s shipwrecked, nearly drowned, bitten by a snake...
So get involved. Teach a Sunday School class. Invite someone to come to Sunday School with you. Bring somebody to church. Be part of the outreach activities we do here like the candy giveaway. Share your creative ideas about how to reach unchurched people with the pastor so we can try those. No, telling someone else to tell someone or simply opining loudly “why don’t we ever do this like we used?” in hopes that I’ll hear it isn’t the same thing. And your Sunday School class can launch your own projects.
Much of what we do tends to be good, but it’s not Gospel-driven and reaching lost people. We can and should do good things but we must never substitute things that make us feel good with things that spread the Gospel.
Church
What are we organized for? We have limited resources: our budget will need to shrink going into next year because we just do not have the money. So where do we spend what we have? Old habits? Certainly, some of it has to go to building maintenance.
But must look at how we can prioritize our energies not into institutional preservation. The church that follows God into spreading the Gospel will be preserved in what needs preserved. We need to rethink why we do each thing we do.
We need to remember why we are here in the first place. We’re not a museum for saints.
We’re a hospital for sinners and a launching point for rescue missions.
Our comfort is in Christ Jesus not plush pews. It’s hard: the world is changing, there are boatloads of chaos out there.
But the real answer is the Gospel. Not something we enshrine here but good news that we all go out and proclaim.
Exported from Logos Bible Study, 3:31 PM October 5, 2026.