Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Romans. Tonight is study 19 of Romans, chapter 1, and we are going to read Romans 1:5-7:

By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name: Among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ: To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

In our last study, we looked at the word “received.” It says, “By whom we have received grace and apostleship,” and we saw that we have received everything from God. All spiritual blessings are from God in heaven above. And they are all part of the gift of God’s salvation, including the beautiful and wonderful gifts of grace, faith and all kinds of spiritual blessings. We have received them, and we cannot say, “Well, I did my part in receiving them. I extended my hand and God gave them.” No – that is not Biblical. God tells us that the ability “to receive” is also part of the gift, as it says in John 3:7:

John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven.

The receiving of the things of Christ and the grace of God (and all that goes with it) are given by God. It is all part of the unspeakable gift of God’s magnificent salvation for sinners. So we have received grace and apostleship. Even apostleship is something we have received. To be an apostle is “to be sent,” and we were all sent forth with the Gospel, the truth of the Bible, in day of salvation. It is also true in the Day of Judgement as we are sent to “feed the sheep.” And to feed the sheep, we have to go forth with the truth of the Word of God, the Bible, just as we went forth with the salvation message in the time when God was still saving people.

We have “received” apostleship. This comes from God, given to us, following Paul’s example. He was an example to the believers in this because he was an Apostle, and he typified all the elect who are also apostles.

Then it goes on to say in Romans 1:5:

By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name:

And this gives us an example of why we need to check the original Greek because when we read this, it tends to direct us on a different path than the actual Greek tells us. When we read in English that we have received this grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith, it almost makes it appear as if it is our obedience, and that we are the ones that must become obedient to the faith. Many Reformed people like to talk about “the faith once delivered to the saints,” but they do not bother going to the Bible to define the faith. They just assume that it is speaking of the Reformed doctrines and the things found in their confessions and creeds. That is a very convenient assumption that identifies with everything they believe. That is “the faith,” according to them, but you do not define Biblical words that way – that is private interpretation. When you try to say that faith is the Reformed understanding of what the Gospel is during the last few centuries, you have to ask, “Does that qualify as ‘the faith once delivered’ to the saints? Were the Reformed teachings “once delivered?” And the answer is “No.”

Even the Bible itself is not “once delivered.” The Bible was delivered numerous times over the course of many centuries, as it was handed down and added to until its completion by the end of the first century. It was not “once delivered,” in the sense that God delivered it one time only.

The only faithful definition for “the faith,” as it says in that verse in Jude 3 regarding “the faith once delivered unto the saints,” is when we understand “the faith” is Jesus Himself, and He was “once delivered” to the saints at the foundation of the world. Remember what it says in Hebrews 9:25-26:

Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others; For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

We have to be extremely careful with this verse because what it is saying is that Christ was once offered to pay for sin (at the foundation of the world). And He entered into the world to “once” demonstrate what He had previously done at the foundation of the world. The delivering of “the faith,” who is Jesus, happened at the foundation of the world for the sins of His elect. Then one time He entered into the world. So it depends on what important truth you want to focus on, whether it be the actual payment for sin or the demonstration of that actual payment. But, in either case, it was just one time. He is the faith once delivered to the saints.

Even the word “delivered,” if we would look that up, would lead us to Christ. That is what we are also going to find in our verse in Romans 1:5 – that it is the faith of Jesus, the faith that Ephesians 2:16 says can justify the sinner. We are not justified by the works of the Law, but by the faith of Christ. It is Christ’s faith.

When we look at the Greek, we must start with the word “for.” This English word “for” is a translation of the Greek word “eis,” #1519 in Strong’s Concordance, which is found hundreds of times. It is translated as “into,” 583 times; as “to,” 281 times; and as “unto,” 207 times. Basically these three words are saying the same things, so there are about a thousand times that “eis” is translated as “into” or “towards” an object. It is translated as “for,” as we find it in Romans 1:5, only 140 times. So the meaning is certainly more correct if we understand this as “going into” or “going toward.” So it would say, “By whom we have received grace and apostleship, into obedience to the faith.” The word “to” was not a good translation either because the word “faith” is in the genitive case, and in genitive, it should be the possessive case, so it would be “of” faith: “By whom we have received grace and apostleship, into obedience of the faith among all nations, for his name.” Even the word “among” would have been better translated as “in,” so it would say, “in all nations, for his name.” So just keep that in mind.

Now we are going to look at the word “obedience.” Go to Romans 5:19:

For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

It was the obedience of one, who was Jesus Himself, and that is what makes the righteous “righteous.” It is what has saved people. It is His righteousness – not our own. It is the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, and His righteousness comes as a result of His obedience. Christ’s obedience produces righteousness. The obedience of Christ produces our righteousness. You see, He makes “us righteousness” through His obedience. That is why it says in Luke 1, concerning Zacharias and his wife Elisabeth, in Luke 1:6:

And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.

It was by the obedience of Christ that Zacharias and Elisabeth were made righteous and, therefore, God sees no blame or fault in them. They have no sin because their sins were taken care of and paid for. How? By the work of Christ performed at the foundation of the world, as it says in Hebrews 4:3: “…although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.” What work was that? It was the work of faith of the Lord Jesus as He was obedient unto death. That is what we read in Hebrews 5, where it is telling us about His demonstration at the cross (because He is already being referred to as the Son at that point), and it says in Hebrews 5:8:

Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered;

That would be the demonstration of the atonement, and that is what He did when He entered into the world and went to the cross. That was obedience on another level, because He was obeying the Father’s command, despite the fact that He had already accomplished the work of faith in obeying the Father at the foundation of the world. So as the Father laid the sins of the whole company of the elect on Christ before the world was, the Lord Jesus suffered and died and went to the grave or hell. Then He rose again, cleansed from all sin, having shown forth His obedience. It was His obedience to the Father that He, as the Lamb, was slain and which produced righteousness for all those He died for, the saints of God. And that is what Romans 5:19 says: “…by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.”

It says in 2Corinthians 10:5-6:

Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.

These verses are very interesting. Notice that verse 5 says, “…bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” Now be careful with the wording. It does not say, “…bring every thought captive by your obedience or my obedience to Christ.” I think, sometimes, that is how we might read it, but it is not telling us to produce the obedience. It is saying, “bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” Again, it is the genitive case. We are to bring the things going on in our minds to the obedience of Christ. That is unusual. It is basically saying the same thing as “the obedience of faith,” because Christ is faith, and they are both in the genitive case. So it is saying that we are to “go into the obedience of Christ,” or, in other words, “into His righteousness” that was obtained through His obedience.

That is how we deal with sin in our lives. It is not through our will or through our efforts to be faithful. The Bible tells us that we are still in the flesh and there is a law of sin that works in the flesh. But, by God’s grace and through His strength and through His obedience, we bring the body under to gain dominion over the things going on in the body. But we centralize our focus on the obedience of Christ and His righteousness and the things that He has done, and not the thing that we are doing. That is not the main focus.

It says in 1Peter 1:2:

Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.

Let me read it again: “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father,” and we know from other Scriptures that the elect were predestinated before the foundation of the world according to the foreknowledge of God. Our salvation can be traced back to a point before the world was, and we have learned that it was then that Jesus the Lamb was slain and paid for our sins, and so forth. So, again, “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”

It is a complicated thing for me (and, perhaps, for you) to wrap my mind around what God is saying about “the obedience of Christ,” but the idea is that we enter into His obedience and His righteousness. It is by His grace that He brings us into the obedience of the Lord Jesus. Maybe we will understand it better if we go to Romans 16, the last chapter of the book of Romans. (We may not get to chapter 16 for several years if we continue to do the Romans Series as only a summer-long course.) But it says in Romans 16:24-26:

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. Now to him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith:

You can see the similarity with the first chapter of Romans 1:5: “…for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name.” And, again, it says in Romans 16:26: “…made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.” I believe the word “for” is the Greek word “eis,” so it would be, “made known to all nations into the obedience of faith.”

And this verse also helps us to understand what is meant by “all nations” because in chapter 1 it referred to the faith among all nations, which kind of gave us the idea that out among the nations would be those that would receive that grace and enter into the obedience of the faith, or the obedience of Christ. So there is a scattering of the elect, we know, out of the masses of the world, and few were actually chosen to become served. But the Greek word translated as “among” is the word “en,” which is most often translated as “in,” so in Romans 1:5, it would say: “…into obedience of the faith in all nations for his name.” That is leading us, again, in a different direction and right to Christ and what He has done in His work of faith and obedience. It is the obedience of the faith or of Christ in all nations, that is, in the elect. We have mentioned this verse several times, but this is a very helpful verse to aid us with a number of other verses, as it says in Revelation 21:24:

And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.

“The nations of them which are saved” are all those God has saved whose names were in the Lamb’s Book of Life. It is the whole company of the elect. They are the ones God is referring to in Romans 16:26:

…made known to all nations for the obedience of faith:

That is, “…into the obedience of faith,” or into what Christ has done. They are the ones that are also in view in Romans 1:5, and this is how the verse should read: “…by whom we have received grace and apostleship into obedience of the faith in all nations for his name.” Then we realize, “Oh, yes, all nations are all the elect, the nations of them which are saved.” That is who God has operated upon. It is that group, and that group only, that are brought into the obedience of the faith. Then we have a good understanding. As we have discussed before, the Great Commission applied to the day of salvation (which is now past) and the command was to go into all the world, and preach the gospel to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Let us go to that verse quickly, in Matthew 28:19-20:

Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you…

That is, it must be the faithful teachings of the Bible, but all nations were to be taught, and all nations were to be baptized. And they were. They were! All “the nations of them which are saved.” And, therefore, the evangelization program of God saved all those that were to be saved out of the world during the church age and during the little season of Latter Rain during the Great Tribulation. It was successful. It was completed, which brings us to that statement in 2Corinthians 10:6:

And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.

The completion of the obedience, in one regard, was when all the elect had become saved.