Grace Be with You (Romans 16) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

0:00 God willing, this evening should be a watershed moment for us because I'm hoping within the providence of God tonight to complete our study of Paul's magnum opus, his letter to the Church of Rome. Now, you may think it's strange that I plan to finish Romans this evening by looking at an entire chapter, but if you're familiar with chapter 16, it is a chapter that more or less includes Paul's Christmas card list where he is sending his greetings to friends in the church at Rome, greetings from his co-laborers, and greetings to his co-laborers. And so the apostle has finished, for all intents and purposes, the instructional content of this epistle, and it is winding down now in his customary manner of sending greetings.

1:03 But even in these greetings, I trust that we can learn something of value for our souls as we know the promise of God that all Scripture is given by inspiration and is profitable for us for correction, reproof, and training in righteousness that we might be made complete in Christ. So having said that. And I'll direct your attention to the 16th chapter, beginning at verse 1, and ask you to stand for the reading of the Word of God. I commend to you Phoebe, our sister, who is a servant of the church in Sancria, that you may receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints, and assist her in whatever business she has need of you, for indeed she has been a helper of many and of myself also.

2:10 Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risk their own necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. Likewise, greet the church that is in their house. Greet my beloved Aponitas, who was the firstfruits of Acacia to Christ. Greet Mary, who labored much for us. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my countrymen and my fellow prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me. Greet Amplius, my beloved in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and Stachys, my beloved. Greet Apelles, approved in Christ. Greet those who are of the household of Aristobulus. Greet Herodian, my countrymen. Greet those who are of the household of Narcissus, who are in the Lord.

3:18 Greet Tryphena, Tryphosa, who have labored in the Lord. Greet the beloved Persis, who labored much in the Lord. Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine. Greet Asencretus, Phlegon, Hermas, Patrobus, Hermes, and the brethren who are with them. Greet Philologus and Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympus and all the saints who are with them. Greet one another with a holy kiss. The churches of Christ greet you. Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offensive, contrary to the doctrine which you learn, and avoid them. For those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly. And by smooth words and flattering speech deceive the hearts of the simple.

4:17 for your obedience has become known to all. Therefore, I'm glad on your behalf, but I want you to be wise in what is good and simple concerning evil. And the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. Timothy, my fellow worker, Lucius, Jason, and Sassipater, my countrymen, greet you. I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, greet you in the Lord. Gaius, my host, and the host of the whole church, greet you. Erastus, the treasurer of the city, greet you. And Quartus, a brother. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. Now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began, but now made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith, to God alone wise, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen.

5:34 Please be seated. And let us pray. Again, O Lord, as we stand before this Thy Word, we ask that You may edify us, not only by its hearing, but by understanding those things that are contained within us. Thank You, Lord, for this entire epistle and for our opportunity to spend so much time digging at the treasure that is found within it. Lord, we thank You for this in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. This lengthy list of greetings and mention of people quickly in passing begins by a special commendation to a woman who is known here by the name of Phoebe. She's described as a servant of the church in Sancria that is on one of the coasts of Corinth, that you may receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints, and assist her in whatever business she has need of you, for indeed she has been a helper of many, and of myself as well. So Paul begins these greetings with this special apostolic commendation to this person that stands at the head of the list, whose name is Phoebe. I should note in passing that this brief commendation by the apostle has received no small amount of attention by those trying to glean from the New Testament an understanding of the role of women in the life of the church. First of all, a word about her name. Her name is taken from a pagan goddess. And we note that in the early church, Christians

7:44 who were formerly named by common names derived from heroes of the divine pantheon of deities in paganism maintained and retained those names after their conversion because their Their origins no longer had any religious or theological significance. We need to bear that in mind as sometimes disputes arise in the church over the fact, for example, that we call Easter, Easter, and it sounds so close to the pagan deity Ishtar, and you hear the controversies about the celebration of Christmas when people point out that in history, the church began to celebrate Christmas on December 25th, which was the time of celebration in Rome for the pagan god Mithras, and they sort of had a Roman holiday for that occasion. Well, what the Christians did was, if we're going to have this holiday, we're not going to have it to worship a pagan deity, but we will spend that time celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, a noble endeavor altogether, but some still are scandalized by the historic relationship to the Mithras cult. But I think it's understandable that there are many things in the world and in our culture that have its roots in paganism, but that those roots have long since been overlooked, then we don't have any great scruples about it today. Which day, I am speaking, is Sunday?

9:30 Tomorrow is the word named after the moon, moon day. We get the Wednesday in honor of the Scandinavian Norse god Woden. It's Woden's day, followed by the celebration of another pagan deity, Thor, on Thor's Day, and so it goes all the way to the celebration of the Roman god Saturn on Saturday. But when we use these designations, we don't attribute to the names of the days of the week any particular religious homage to the gods of the Norsemen or of the Romans or any worship of the sun or of the moon. That's just a point in passing. More important here…

10:24 You think I'm going to get through this whole chapter tonight. Phoebe is identified as our sister, that is, our sister in the faith, faith, who is a servant of the church there in Corinth." Now, this descriptive term, servant of the church, comes from the Greek word diakonia and is rendered by some translations by the term deaconess. And there are churches organized in our day that have elders, ministers, deacons and deaconesses, female deacons. I grew up in the Presbyterian Church, USSR, in the north, and in that denomination, we had an ordained office of deaconess.

11:25 When I transferred my membership to the PCA denomination, I discovered in the PCA, there was no office of deaconess following the tradition of the old Southern Presbyterian Church out of which the PCA was formed. And so there have been these disputes, even within Reformed communities over the years, about whether the office of deaconess should be an ordained office. Early on in the founding years of the denomination in which I hold my credentials now, the Presbyterian Church in America, I was asked to write a theological position paper with respect to the role of women in the church and with specific reference to the meaning of a church office. And in that paper that I submitted to the General Assembly, I pointed out to the church that there is no connotative description of the term church office to be found anywhere in the New Testament, but rather the concept of a church office is something that is extrapolated from the examples that are given to us biblically. And the basic, most generic term for a church worker in the New Testament is that term diakonia, which describes a position of service to which all of us in ministry are called to perform. I pointed out in that paper that the New Testament is replete with examples of women being deeply involved in the life of the church as well as in the ministry of the apostolic expansion of the church, though no woman was selected to the office

13:37 of apostle, and there are restrictions to women that Paul gives in his letters to Timothy and to Titus, but at the same time we see that women were profoundly involved in the biblical narrative in the life of the church. It's been said that the women were the last ones to remain at the cross when the men fled, and the first ones to greet the risen Savior in the garden at the tomb. And so here in these greetings we see throughout them Paul's profound appreciation for the assistance that he received from women who were serving the cause of Christ and the church in a very significant way.

14:35 Now, what the church does today in terms of ordination is a different matter that's not addressed here, but I think it's a very serious thing that we not underestimate the very important role that women have in the life of the church of Christ. Paul directs those Christians in Rome to receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints, that she is to be aided and assisted in whatever she needs because she has been bestowed a high honor, being called a helper of many and of Himself. This term, helper, is a very weak translation of the Greek. The Greek indicates one who has a more specific office of important assistance to the apostolic ministry. And because of her role as an assistant to Paul and part of his apostolic ministry, he directs the people in Rome to receive her with all honor and with all assistance in a way that would be worthy of the saints there.

15:54 Then he adds his greetings for Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risk their own necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. Likewise, greet the church that is in their house. We hear of Priscilla and Aquila in the book of Acts because of their ministry along with the apostle in Ephesus. Apparently, they had been in Rome and had to flee Rome when Christians were banished by the emperor Claudius, and they went from Rome to Ephesus where there they met with the apostle Paul and assisted him in his ministry on that occasion. We don't have any specific record of their risking their necks for the life of the apostle, but if you recall the book of Acts, record of Paul's sojourn in Ephesus, we know that it was a tumultuous time, a time in which his life was in danger more than once. So probably in one of those occasions where Paul barely escaped with his life in Ephesus, where he later said he was fighting with the wild beasts. It was in some measure due to the heroic courage of the assistance of Priscilla and Aquila, fellow workers in Christ Jesus. Likewise, Paul says to greet the church that was in their house. We know that in the first century community there were not only the ecclesia, the churches, or ecclesiae, but ecclesioli, which were little churches that met in homes. They do not represent the same thing that we encounter today in the so-called home church movement, which the home church movement today generally, though not always, tends to indicate a disenchantment with the organized visible church where a handful of

18:04 people withdraw from the larger body of Christ and simply meet in a very small group within their homes. The reason for home churches in the first century was because there weren't any other places to meet, and people who had larger homes would open their homes as the place where the people could assemble together for worship and for instruction in the apostles' word. And one such family that did that was the family of Priscilla and Aquila. Greet my beloved Eponidas. Here's a little bit of a controversy. He's identified as who is the firstfruits of Acacia to Christ. Elsewhere, Paul sends his greetings to Stephanus, and he was called the firstfruits of Paul's ministry in Acacia. Now, there's a textual variant here that could explain that tension, and it would say that this one was the first fruits of Paul's ministry in Asia rather than Acacia. But even if it was in Acacia, presumably the firstfruits would not include just one person, but perhaps members of his family or his group.

19:23 But in any case, greetings are to be given to Eponidas. Greet Mary, who labored much for us. Greet Andronicus and Junia. And Junia could be a man or a woman, depending on how you render the Greek there. My countrymen and my fellow prisoners, who are of note among the apostles, who also were in Christ before me. Apparently, these believers who had been part of Paul's entourage had suffered imprisonment at some point with the apostle, and he gives tribute to them for their fidelity and also points out that they were Christians before Paul was, that they were older in the Lord than he was. Greet Amplius, my beloved in the Lord, Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, Stachys, my beloved, Apelles, approved in Christ. Greet those of the household of Aristobulus.

20:25 Greet Herodian, my countrymen. Greet those who are of the household of Narcissus, who are in the Lord. Again, this is just a list of people who are mentioned in passing. Greet Tryphena, Tryphosa, who have labored in the Lord. Greet the beloved Persis, who labored much in the Lord. All three of those people were women. And so again, we see Paul's concern to give his apostolic good wishes to those women who labored with him in the Lord. Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother and mine. Verse 13, greet Rufus, where have you heard his name before? If you were in church here this morning as we considered the narrative of the crucifixion of Jesus, you will recall that we looked at the passage wherein Jesus' cross beam was carried by Simon of Cyrene, who is identified as the father of Alexander and of Rufus. And I mentioned that it was unusual for Mark to insert that kind of a detail in his narrative, and you wonder why he did it, but we recall that Mark's gospel was sent to the church at Rome, and he probably was aware that Rufus, who was greeted here and probably his brother Alexander, were members of the church at Rome when the gospel of Mark was sent to them, and so Mark, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, honored these local church members who were the sons of the man who carried the cross of Jesus. Rufus is described as chosen in the Lord, and in this context it is unlikely that Paul means that he's one of the elect because all of them were elect, but rather would indicate that he had a particular

22:34 role and influence with the apostle and the apostolic community in Rome where Paul says to greet his mother, which presumably would be the wife of Simon of Cyrene, who Paul calls his own mother. Not that Paul is literally saying that Rufus' mother was Paul's mother and that Rufus was Paul's brother, but rather she was a mother in the faith, as it were, to Paul. Being a minister, one thing I can say that I have had in common with the Apostle Paul, one of the few things I can say I've had in common is that when you're a minister in the church, every woman older than you and many younger than you believe that they're divinely appointed to be your mother. And so I'm sure that that wasn't much different with the Apostle Paul in his day.

23:36 That's a good thing, not a bad thing. And then he says, greet Asencretus, Phlegon, Hermos, and a bunch of other people. And I'm not going to get into them and just mention that they are numbered among the saints. Then he says, greet one another. After you greet all these other people, then greet one another with a holy kiss, which was the custom. It was celebrated particularly in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, that upon the completion of the Lord's Supper meal, the people would greet each other, and the customary form for to do that would be to kiss each other on the cheek, and which you see that form of greeting still present in the Middle East in our day. We don't know when or why that custom passed out of the practice of the church, but it's one of those practices which indeed was a custom, not a principle. It was not something binding upon the church in every location and in every age, but in the Middle East in that day, that was the customary practice.

24:53 the churches of Christ greet you. Now Paul does turn his attention to some serious apostolic admonition. He said, now I urge you, brethren. This perhaps is the latest apostolic entreaty that we find in the book of Romans. He urges them to note those who cause Divisions and Offenses Contrary to the Doctrine which you learned, and avoid them." Notice those people who are the troublemakers in the church. Watch out for those who sow seeds of dissension, particularly those who disrupt the body of Christ with false doctrine. Again, you've heard me say that it is decried in the church today that doctrine divides, and because of the power of doctrine to divide, we ought not to give much concern to doctrine, but to focus our attention on loving, peaceful relationships, forgetting that we don't know what a loving relationship is supposed to look like except as it is described by the truth of biblical doctrine. But Paul doesn't say avoid doctrine here. What he's saying is avoid heretics.

26:37 Avoid those who would come into the church teaching false doctrine, teaching doctrine other than that which had been delivered to them by apostolic authority. Note them and avoid them. Note them and avoid them. Stay away from them. For those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly. That is, they're in it not for the building of the kingdom of God, but for their own gratification, for their own wealth, for their own pleasure, for their own status in the community. And Paul is quite critical of them, he said, by smooth words and flattering speech, they deceive the hearts of the simple.

27:47 You know, the apostle elsewhere, not this one, but the Bible warns that not many should become teachers, for with teaching comes the greatest judgment. I can remember when I first started my teaching career, which vocation was acknowledged by the church, and it was the office to which I was ordained originally, not to the pastoral ministry but to, at the time, university teaching in theology. And I can remember that one of the things that I had to struggle with, my own conscience in my classroom was that when a student would raise a difficult question, a very difficult, troublesome question, I knew that they were novices in the field in which they were asking questions. And I knew that I had at my opportunity the possibility of giving them an answer that would satisfy them. But I also knew those answers were not sound. I knew I could dazzle them with my fancy footwork, and gain their respect and admiration by giving them incorrect teaching.

29:33 I knew that. And I have to tell you, sometimes it was tempting when they have you backed up to the wall on a tough question that's very difficult to answer, to not engage in that kind of tomfoolery, because even though they were college students, they were still simple in terms of their education. And they could have been seduced easily by flattering speech. And we have to watch out for that every minute, because it would haunt me that if I do that, I'm just setting myself up for judgment at the hands of Christ. And so I had to keep and still have to keep examining myself and say, is what I'm teaching here the unvarnished truth of the Word of God, or is it my favorite hobby horse? And that is the question that every minister of the gospel has to continually face and examine himself in the light of that, lest we be guilty of deceiving the simple. Because most people in the congregation, even if they have PhDs in unrelated fields, are still simple with respect to the things of God.

30:59 And Jesus warned that it would be better to have a millstone tied around our neck and thrown into the abyss than to cause one of the sheep or one of the little ones to stumble. And so, Paul's last admonition here to the church is, watch out. Don't be seduced by smooth words and flattering speech, but I want you to be wise in what is good and simple concerning evil. I've mentioned this before, that those who don't want to be engaged in any laborious study of the Word of God or of the things of God, they don't want to be held accountable for a disciplined study of the truths of God, say they want to keep their faith simple, that they want to have a childlike faith. And I remind you that there's a difference between a childlike faith and a childish faith. We are to be childlike in terms of our acquiescence to the authority of God. But elsewhere Paul says, in evil be babes.

32:22 Don't be pros in wickedness. Be amateurs in your sin, but in your understanding be men. The Christians of the New Testament were admonished and rebuked again and again for being satisfied with spiritual infancy, being satisfied with milk, where they were enjoined to seek after the deeper things of God, the meat of the Word of God. And what we've been looking at in these last many months in examining the book of Romans was not pablum. We've been looking at the weightier things of the Word of God, that we may not be simple in our understanding of them.

33:25 for your obedience has become known to all. Therefore, I'm glad in your behalf, for I want you to be wise and simple, as he says, and the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly. I don't know what that prophetic statement referred to. It may have specific reference to the destruction of Jerusalem that would take place shortly after this letter was received, where the great threat of the Judaizing heresy would be removed from the church as the temple would be destroyed, and those who were persecuting the early church would be dispersed throughout the nation.

34:20 And that could be an example of Satan being crushed under their feet. Or it could refer to something altogether different that Paul does not tell us here, And in any case, he gives a preliminary brief benediction saying, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. This was the most simple and common summary of his benediction or good saying was that what he hoped the most is that the people would continue to have in their presence the grace of God. Because remember he told us earlier that we move from faith to faith, from life to life, from grace to grace. Our Christian pilgrimage begins in grace, it is sustained by grace, and it is finished by grace. And so Paul wishes here in this preliminary benediction the presence of that grace with these people. Then he continues with his final greetings in verse 21, Timothy, my fellow worker, you know a lot of him, Lucius, Jason, Sussapatter, my countryman, greet you. Then we find out who really wrote Romans. It wasn't Paul after all.

35:44 In verse 22, we read, I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, greet you in the Lord. So after all of these greetings are communicated by the Apostle Paul to his friends in Rome and from his co-workers with him in Corinth, now Tertius adds his personal greetings, identifying himself as the one who wrote this epistle. Now, we know that in the vast majority of the cases of Paul's writings, he did not write with his own hand. We know that he had significant problems of vision. On one occasion when he did write his own letter, he said, see with what large hand I write, but normally it was his case as well as others to have a private secretary who was called an amanuensis.

36:47 That dates way back to the Old Testament prophets such as Jeremiah who had an amanuensis who who would take down the words dictated by the prophet to be sent to the people of God. Likewise, Paul here has been dictating the letter of Rome to the church at Rome, and Tertius, which means the third, has been dutifully, carefully, and under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, as well as the deliberation of the apostle Paul, has been recording this magnificent letter. But he said, I, Tertius, who wrote this epistle, greet you in the Lord. Gaius, my host, and the host of the whole church, greet you. Erastus, the treasurer of the city… Now, not many of the people in the early Christian community were in positions of honor, of authority in the culture, but there were some, and in this case we hear of one who was the treasurer of the city, and he was giving his greetings along with Cortus, a brother. And again, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Now comes the final benediction for the epistle. Now, to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel. Let me stop right there.

38:24 Paul frequently uses the term edification, and it is a term borrowed, of course, from the building industry, where edifices are erected. We have the teaching of our own Lord in the end of the Sermon on the Mount, and where He warns against building your house upon the sand, because those who build their house upon the sand will find that when the floods come that their house will be swept away, because the edifice that they have built has not been established. And Jesus, by the same token, said, the wise man is one who builds his house upon a rock, so that when the storms come and beat against it, the house stands. Why? Because it's established.

39:34 And we are warned not to be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine, but that as we grow in grace, as our sanctification proceeds, we are to be edified, to be built up to that point in which our faith, our character, our devotion is established.

40:01 And in this benediction, the apostle reminds the people at Rome who it is who is able to make that happen. Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ. That's the first thing, that we are to be established according to Paul's gospel. Do you realize how many essays, articles, and books have been written in the last ten years in our culture about the gospel? Do you realize how severely the biblical gospel is under attack in the church today? That this doctrine of justification by faith alone, which we if examined in so much detail in Paul's letter, has been attacked and is being attacked in the church today, not just from the so-called liberal wing of the church, but from the evangelical and even the so-called reformed wing of the church. And at the heart of the dispute is whether or not our salvation rests upon the imputation of the righteousness of Jesus. Beloved, without the righteousness of Christ, you and I are finished. Without imputation, there is no justification. And without any justification by faith alone, there is no gospel. The only gospel there is is Paul's gospel, that is, the one that he was authorized and set apart to proclaim. And being established in the Christian life is to be established according to that gospel, that gospel that the apostle proclaimed to the Romans. Just the other day I was engaged in a teaching environment where this question came up, and I said for the

42:12 thousandth time, learning the doctrine of justification by faith alone intellectually is easy as can be. It's not rocket science, but to get it in the bloodstream. is something that takes a lifetime. And Paul is giving his final benediction. He's saying that God would establish them in that gospel and in the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery kept secret since the world began but now made manifest, that this divine revelation of the full measure of the gospel which in many ways was hidden throughout the ages from the day of creation, has now been made plain. And by the prophets and the prophetic Scriptures, it has been made known to all nations according to the commandment of the everlasting God for obedience to the faith.

43:22 And the final portion of the final benediction of the final line of Paul's epistle repeats in succinct terms the quintessence of the message that he has labored to communicate throughout this epistle, the principle of solidea gloria. To God alone, to God, and to God alone is the glory. To God alone, who is the alone wise one, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. Amen.

44:19 In that final benediction, Paul gives his good saying. He expresses his heart's desire that these people be established according to the gospel and according to the preaching of Christ, according to the revelation of God that has been kept secret but now is made manifest. Thank you. that this God who spoke through the Old Testament prophets and now has made known to all of the nations the gospel of Jesus Christ, He's saying that to God, the only wise God, be glory through Jesus Christ forever. In every generation, in every part of the world, the gospel that Paul lovingly, jealously, passionately sets forth here in his magnum opus, the letter to Rome, That gospel is obscured, attacked, and brought almost to ruin.

45:40 But Paul's prayer that people would be established in that gospel forever is borne witness by the history of the church. that despite all heresies, despite all persecutions, all distortions, the gospel that was revealed here keeps manifesting itself by the wisdom, the power, the establishment of God, who alone receives the glory? We look at the final word of the Apostles' letter coming from the Hebrew Amut, which is translated, truth, and the word is, Amen.

46:47 And so all the people says, Amen. Let's pray. Father, thank You for this pilgrimage that we've had to go through this magnificent epistle, offered first to the converts in Rome, but by extension to the church of all ages, and even in these days to us. Oh God, we pray that in Your singular wisdom, transcendent power, and for Your ultimate glory that You would establish us in the gospel we've been studying. for we ask it in Jesus name