“Through him we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the Gentiles, including you who are also called by Jesus Christ. To all who are in Rome, loved by God, called as saints. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Let’s image you are walking through a field on a sunny day. And as you walk you stumble upon something you have never seen before. You genuinely don’t know what it is. Once you have determined that it is safe, you set about trying to figure out what it is. What is the first step in that process? There are perhaps many potential answers to that question. I submit that the most important answer is figuring out what it is for. Until you know what something is for—what its purpose is—you won’t know much about its identity. Purpose and identity are inextricably linked like that. As we finish off Paul’s opening statement in his letter to the believers in Rome, he offers a window into the purpose of our salvation. Let’s explore what he says here.

With his very first words in the letter, Paul declares the Gospel to be all about Jesus from start to finish. He also clarifies who Jesus is. Jesus is the second member of the Trinity, God the Son, who was sent to earth by God the Father at the direction of God the Spirit. The proof of this identity was His resurrection from the dead. As we mentioned then, and as Paul makes abundantly clear elsewhere in his writings, the resurrection is the linchpin for the whole of the Christian faith. If that didn’t happen, debating the rest of it isn’t a worthwhile exercise.

Here, as Paul’s introduction continues, he points to some of the purpose of Jesus’ coming by talking about what it has accomplished. Through him we have received grace. What is this? It’s the grace of salvation. And although you probably already knew this, let’s talk for just a second about what grace is. Grace is unmerited favor. Grace is something we don’t deserve, didn’t earn, and couldn’t have otherwise achieved on our own. If it is any of those things, then it isn’t grace by definition.

Paul makes this point rather emphatically in other places, but let’s state it here since we’re on the subject. Salvation is a gift of grace. And what do I mean by salvation? I mean the justification of our sins before a holy, righteous, and just God in such a way that leaves us able to be in a right relationship with Him both now and on into His eternal kingdom when this world has finally passed away. I mean the rescue from the grip of death that otherwise awaits all of us. Our bodies will yet expire, but our spirits will remain with Him permanently. And, as a part of this great package deal, we will receive new bodies in a grand resurrection of our own that will be modeled on Jesus’ resurrection body, and which will be fit for eternity in God’s kingdom. What these bodies will be like, we don’t know, but that we will receive them when the time is right is a promise God has made.

All of that is grace. We don’t deserve it. We certainly haven’t earned it in any way. We can’t obtain it under our own power. We can receive it, as we will talk about in more detail in a few months when we come to Romans 10, by faith when we accept the historical truthfulness of Jesus’ resurrection and declare Him to be our Lord in word and deed, aligning our lives with His authority. And we receive this gift of grace through Jesus.

If you’ve been a follower of Jesus long, and better yet, if you were raised in the church, you are used to hearing that part of the message. Come to Jesus and be saved. Salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus. In Him you can be born again, to borrow Jesus’ own language in John’s Gospel. But this isn’t the only thing Paul says that we receive through Jesus here. In the same breath, Paul says we receive something else through Him. Did you catch that?

Paul says that through Jesus we have received grace and apostleship. Now, let’s be clear that Paul’s “we” here is not a reference to the church universal, but to himself and his ministry partners. But I nonetheless think we are on firm footing applying His words more broadly than that. We can do this because Paul and his ministry team weren’t the only ones who received grace and apostleship. We’ve all received both of those, the first entirely, and the second to at least some capacity thanks to Jesus’ great commission. Paul understood very well his particular call to apostleship. Ours may not look like his, but we have it through Jesus all the same.

Okay, but what is apostleship. Well, what Paul says next spells that out, but more generally, apostleship as Paul uses the word here is proclaiming the Gospel in new places to people who either haven’t heard or received it yet. It is the act of obeying Jesus’ command to make disciples as we go, everywhere we go. It is the work of expanding God’s kingdom. It is bringing about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the Gentiles, that is, those who don’t yet know Him.

This apostleship is part of what we have received through Jesus. When we become part of His kingdom, when we set about adjusting our lives to follow Him, part of that adjustment means inviting others to do the same. This invitation to disciplemaking goes part and parcel with the grace we receive through Him. They are two sides of the same coin. To receive grace is to commit ourselves to following His commands, and one of the most important things He has commanded is for us to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything He commanded. We do this with His help and power, but doing it isn’t an option. If you follow Jesus, you are to be working to lead those who don’t follow Him and haven’t received His grace to do so. There are many ways of doing this, some more involved than others, but doing it isn’t optional.

And, if this thought is unnerving to you as it is to so many believers, then start simple. Invite someone to church with you. If you don’t go to a church that you would feel comfortable inviting someone else to attend, find a different church. If you aren’t connected to a church at all such that you could invite someone to church with you, then you’re not on the right track in your relationship with Jesus in the first place. Fix that first – you can’t follow Jesus faithfully without being connected to a church – and then you can start working on the rest. This is all part of what you have and who you are as a follower of Jesus. Embrace it and enjoy the life that comes by no other means.