Romans 15, verses 14 to 21 is our text, as I read earlier. Romans 15, the beginning of verse 14, and as always, let's go to the Lord. in prayer before we go to his word together. Father, again, we thank you for this opportunity that we have to now open your word together, continue in our worship as we worship and exult in you over the word that you have delivered to us by your spirit, the very word of Christ given to us for our maturity, given to us for our instruction, and given to us for our growth. And so we pray and ask for this blessing now that your spirit will work within your word and through your word to sanctify us and to conform us more into the image of Christ. We ask for this blessing now over the preaching of your word, in Jesus' name, amen. So this morning we transition into another important section of Paul's epistle that he writes to this Roman church. It is here in verse 14 of chapter five, that he begins his transition out of the main body of this letter that he writes, out of the heart of this letter that he writes, to more of the conclusion of the letter. He is now driven his point home in his defense of the gospel and his argument that every man, every sinner is in need of the glorious saving and transforming power of the gospel. And so now he is going to sort of begin to land the plane, if you will. He's going to start to wrap up this letter that he writes to these Christians in Rome. And he begins that part of this letter with a personal note. He turns his attention now to his own ministry and to his love and his care for these believers in Rome. He has so far in this letter been very straightforward with them and even sometimes forceful in his rhetoric. Remember those rhetorical questions that he asked earlier in the book of Romans and those emphatic answers that he gave to those questions. Shall we sin that grace may abound? By no means may it never be. God forbid that we should do such a thing. Just as one example. And if you're a believer in Rome, if you're someone who is reading this, perhaps we might even think this sometimes ourselves. You might get the impression, because of his strong rhetoric, that Paul is really laying it on thick. He's really kind of laying into them a little bit. Like, man, are we so far gone, Paul, that he's gotta yell at us and whatnot. Paul is really getting our goat, if you will, as he writes this letter. And so Paul doesn't want these Christian believers to think that about why he is writing to them or the reasons for the words that he's used. While he is jealous that they know the things that he's written to them, he's also jealous that they not be discouraged by his desire to remind them of it yet again. In other words, he knows that they know everything that he has been saying. He kind of makes it clear in the way that he talks about them in this particular passage. I know that you know these things, but you need to be reminded of these things because we all need to be constantly reminded of the gospel. We all need to be constantly reminded of the transforming power of the gospel because in our flesh, in our weakness, even us as Christians, we fall too easily into legalism. We fall too easily into the discouragement of works-based religion. We fall too easily into the discouragement of thinking that what we do or how we act can affect the way that God feels about us. Now to be clear, the way that what we do and the way that we act can affect our relationship with God in the sense of the freeness of the community, the communion that we have with him, but it doesn't affect whether or not God loves us. It doesn't affect whether or not we are God's children. The only thing that can affect whether or not God loves us and whether or not we are his children is the simple question, do you believe in Jesus Christ? And if you do, God loves you. If you do, you are in God's family. If you do, you are a child of God. And so Paul knows our natural tendency to forget that, and so he wants to remind them of that, and yet in the repetitive reminder of it, he doesn't want them to be discouraged that he's somehow getting on to them. And so we see in this moment Paul's own pastoral heart as he encourages them with words that would fill anyone with gratitude and with joy. He says down in verse 17, I have reason to be proud of my work for God because of their example, because of who they are. In that statement, when he says that, he is not talking in general terms. He is not talking in abstract terms. He is not boasting, generally speaking, about this wonderful life that he has given over to God. He is not talking about this wonderful sacrifice that he has given to God in order to obtain this ministry. He's not even really talking about what a wonderful ministry that he himself has built in service to God. His pride in verse 17 comes from the source of his satisfaction in verse 14. Although he has written sternly and strongly to them, he knows who they are. He knows that they belong to Christ. And in that, he takes great pride and great joy in the results of his ministry. not only to them but throughout his missionary journeys or throughout the areas of Asia Minor. This is not the only time in Scripture that we see this kind of sentiment shared about a church or about a people. In Hebrews chapter six and verse nine, he says, and this is where he's just said, you know, it's impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened and so forth, it's impossible if they fall away to restore them again. And then the writer of Hebrew says in chapter six, verse nine, now though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we are sure of better things, things that belong to salvation. Or Paul himself to the Thessalonians in first Thessalonians chapter two, in verse 19, what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus and his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy. Paul is proud of the Thessalonians and he's proud here of the Romans with the kind of pride that a spiritual father would have toward someone. And in these points of pride that he has for them, we see points of spiritual growth that we can take pride in as well. We don't have to, you know, people kind of think of spiritual life and walking with Christ as just this constant sort of self-abasement. this constant sort of holding yourself down and never feeling joy and never feeling pride and never being happy and never looking at yourself and feeling a little bit of, you know, hey, that was something that was good. That was something that was worthy. That was something that was worth doing or having or being or acting like. Like it's unspiritual to have pride. Now, of course, pride is a vice. We must be very careful when we speak of pride. But here I see Paul boasting in very specific things, a sanctified boasting, if you will. And in his boasting about the Romans, we see reasons that we too can look in our own lives and have a certain pride and boasting about our own walk with the Lord. Four points, in fact, of spiritual pride that we can have in the body of Christ. And the first one, First way, first characteristic of this pride that we can have is a pride in our spiritual maturity. We can boast in our spiritual maturity. It's okay to look at yourself today and look at yourself yesterday or the day before or 10 years ago in your walk with Christ and say, hey, you know, I'm a little better off than I used to be. I'm not quite the weak baby infant Christian that I was when I first came to faith. I've got a little bit more maturity than I used to have. It's okay to look at yourself and say, I've grown. You have to be honest with yourself and say, I still need to grow and we'll get to that in a bit. But it's okay to understand that, yeah, we're growing and it's okay to be proud of the fact that we are growing. He says of them here in verse 14 that he's satisfied, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness. You are full of goodness. Now remember, this is the same Paul, by the way, who said way back in chapter three that there's no one good. There's no one who does good, no one who seeks after God. And so how is it that now he tells them they are full of goodness? Why can he make this sudden shift only 12 chapters later? And here's the reason, because essentially he is telling them that they're saved. And he's telling them that he knows that they're saved. He's telling them that He's satisfied and knows that God has changed that heart, that same heart that did not seek good and did not do good that He talked about in chapter 3. He's looking at these believers and saying, I'm satisfied God's changed that. I'm satisfied the Spirit has given you a new heart. I'm satisfied that you have the Spirit of God within you. That's chapter 8 and verse 9. I'm satisfied and I know that just as Jesus has been raised from the dead, so also you have been raised from spiritual death to walk in newness of life. That's chapter six and verse four. He knows that they have presented their members not to sin and to be slaves of unrighteousness, but to God as instruments of righteousness. That's chapter 6 verse 13 and on and on. Everything that He has elucidated for them, everything that He has outlined for them in the previous chapters about what it means to grow in Christ and to walk in Christ and to walk in the power of the Spirit now in that simple quick phrase of I know that you're full of goodness and I'm satisfied that you're full of goodness is essentially to say I know that you are experiencing everything that I've talked about that you should be experiencing. So understand how much he is pouring here into their spiritual maturation and the reality of that by saying that they are full of goodness. They aren't perfect, of course. If they were perfect, they wouldn't have needed a letter. But they need a letter because they're not perfect. They are full of goodness, though, he says, and Paul wants to see that goodness continue to grow even more. He wants to see that goodness continue to flourish among them. This goodness is a certain moral excellency. They're known for good works. They are known for doing things that are pleasing to God. And he wants to see that continue. Don't stop it. Don't let it wane. Don't let it falter. But you keep being full of goodness and you continue to be filled with goodness by God's grace. Here's another point of their spiritual maturity. Not only are they full of goodness, he says, they are filled also with all knowledge. Not only are they filled with good moral character and kindness, they're filled with not just knowledge and not just some knowledge, Paul says, all knowledge. What's the import of calling it all knowledge? You know, to the Colossians, Paul had told them that part of the riches of full assurance and understanding is the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. We know that Jesus himself said, I am the way and the truth and the life. And so to say that they are filled with all knowledge here is essentially to say that they are filled with Christ. They are filled with the Word made flesh. So this is not to say they are filled with all knowledge. It is not to say that they are filled with just the mere academic information of what the Scriptures have to say. Paul's not talking here about Scripture memorization and vocabulary. These people are filled with every part of their being, with every part of their mind, with every part of their hearts. They are filled with the knowledge of Christ and with the knowledge of His Word. That is what it means to be filled. If a glass is full, there's no room for anything else. There's not a milliliter left for toxin. There's not a smidgen left for some pollution to make it into the cup. A cup's either full or it's not. You could be the pessimist and say it's half full, but a half empty cup is rife for all sorts of contamination. No, you are filled with all knowledge. Not only are they filled with it in the sense of they have it and are filled with Christ, it is also that they have it in the sense of they have received the Word of God. They have been filled and have received the Word of God. There's nothing, as far as these Christians should be concerned, there's nothing else really that they need in order to grow and mature and strengthen in Christ. When Paul is instructing Timothy in his ministry in Ephesus, he writes to Timothy and tells him in 1 Timothy that he should hold faith and a good conscience, which is essentially what he's saying about the Romans. The good conscience is the first part. They're filled with goodness. And the faith is the second part. They're filled with all knowledge. In other words, to Timothy, to the Romans, and to us even today, He is saying, know the truth and live the truth daily. That's really what the Christian life is. It's not that complicated. Know the truth and live the truth. That's what spiritual growth is. And he looks at these believers and he says, you know the truth. And not only that, as he previously said, you live the truth. And because those things are true, because they know the truth and because they live the truth, the third point of spiritual maturity that it has for them is that they're able to instruct one another. Since you know rightly and since you therefore live rightly, you are able to instruct one another. There is a competency of spiritual leadership among all of you. You can teach one another and you can grow together. And it's a really beautiful thought, especially when you consider Paul's own ministry and what Paul had given up to plant churches and to see people come to faith in Christ. Because essentially what he's telling these believers in Rome is, you've got this. You're full of goodness. You're filled with all knowledge. You're competent to instruct one another and to teach one another and to grow one another. You don't need me. You can handle your spiritual walk together on your own. So take the word, take this reminder in this letter, And keep growing. Keep fighting. Keep maturing. And don't let up. Don't ever slack off. Remember, spiritual growth is a war every day. It is a mortification of the flesh. And it is a clinging to Christ every day. That's what the spiritual walk is. It is knowing the truth and living the truth. It is mortifying the flesh and it is clinging to Christ. So come together, he is telling them, and together in your own competency and in your own ability to instruct one another, wage that war together. That's the exhortation underneath this point of boasting. Teach one another and grow together as you press on into more and more spiritual maturity together. First point then of boasting in the bride of Christ that Paul has is that he boasts in their spiritual maturity. Here's another point of boasting that we have in Christ. We can boast in our spiritual sanctification. That's number two, spiritual sanctification. Now this is mentioned at the end of verse 16, and I'll read through the rest of that in a second, but at the end of verse 16, he says, the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. And so here in this point, I'm not talking about sanctification in terms of our daily growth in godliness. That's one understanding of sanctification, is our progressive sanctification. But that's what the first point was about, spiritual maturity. Here I'm talking about sanctification in the sense of sanctified by the Holy Spirit, set apart unto God. That's the sanctification that Paul's referring to at the end of verse 16. When it comes to the first point and being filled with goodness and filled with knowledge and able to instruct one another, as we've said before, and especially in the previous passages, we're all on different journeys and we're all at different places of our spiritual growth and our progressive sanctification. But one thing is true of anyone who is in Christ is that all of us have equally been set apart unto God through Christ. We are all holy and sanctified in that sense in the exact same way. And that's what Paul is pointing to here. This desire to see people sanctified in the Holy Spirit, notice in the previous verses, is the entire ground and focus of his ministry, to see the Gentiles sanctified by the Holy Spirit. On some points he says, I have written to you very boldly, we've talked about that already, by way of reminder. Now why does he write this way? Because of the grace given to me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable. The focus of Paul's entire ministry in his own mind was to offer an acceptable sacrifice of the Gentiles. And what makes the offering of the Gentiles acceptable for God is that they are sanctified by the Holy Spirit. That's all that makes it acceptable. And what makes us sanctified by the Holy Spirit is whether or not we have faith. This is the offering that he wants to make to God. That's Paul's bottom line desire to present a bride to Jesus through his own work and through his own ministry. Bottom line is Paul wanted to see people saved. He wanted to see them saved. He wanted to see people come to know Christ as their savior, as the savior that he is. This is the work of Christ. Colossians 1.21 says that, you who were once alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. Now that's the work of Christ. Christ reconciled sinners by his death so that sinners could be presented before the Father holy or sanctified and blameless and above reproach. But then in Colossians 1, a little further down, Paul connects that work of Christ to his own ministry when he says, him, that's Christ, him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ. Paul says, this is the work of Christ. And so that's my work in my ministry, to bring people to Christ. and to bring people to faith in Christ because it's only in Christ that we're sanctified. And it's only the sanctified that are offered to God and accepted and considered acceptable. This is so important for Paul because his ministry to the Gentiles, it is his calling to be a minister to the Gentiles. and therefore seeing them come to salvation through his teaching and through his preaching. And here's why, here's the connection that he then makes in Romans 15. So he wants to see people saved, and it's his calling to be a minister to the Gentiles. But the reason that it's so important for Paul is because that's his calling, When he preaches and when he teaches the gospel and when he sees people coming to faith, that is his own act of spiritual worship. That is his offering. That is the way that Paul presents himself as a living sacrifice by being obedient to the calling that he's received to be a minister to the Gentiles. And for Paul, that spiritual worship, which is what he talked about like in chapter 12, for him, that was spent in giving his life to the ministry of the gospel in order to offer up the Gentiles as an acceptable offering because they're sanctified in the spirit. That's why it's so important to Paul. For Paul, his ministry was his worship. It was his offering to God because that was his calling. Now that does bring us back to ourselves in the sense of what do we offer to God as our spiritual worship? For Paul, it was the life of a missionary, the life of an evangelist, the life of a church planter, and someone who traveled around. and suffered for the faith, and suffered for the truth, and suffered for the gospel. And not all are called to be a Paul, obviously, but all are called by God to in some way minister, to in some way deliver the gospel, to in some way live their lives as a sacrifice. I have a calling and you have a calling. All have a calling. And so what is that calling for you? And then how are we maximizing that calling every day so that whatever we offer back to God is an acceptable form of spiritual worship for him? This is a part of what it means to be sanctified. by the Spirit, suddenly even the most seemingly mundane things of life are offered to God in an act of worship and in an act of praise. I mean, look, Jesus even taught us to pray for our daily bread, didn't he? To be sanctified in the Spirit means that all of our lives are offered to God as a sacrifice of praise to him. all of our life offered as a spiritual sacrifice. So what is our calling? What is your calling? What is your purpose? What has God placed into your life and into your heart and into your mind that you can then give yourself to and whatever that looks like for you, and then offer it back to him as a sacrifice of praise. That's what I think Paul's example here of boasting in their sanctification and in his own ministry to offer them in their sanctification would call us to ask as well. We can boast in our spiritual maturity, we can boast in our spiritual sanctification. Here's another one, and this just branches right off of what we've been talking about with Paul already, boast in our spiritual ministry. In Christ Jesus then I have reason to be proud of my work for God. And by the way, that is really what sanctifies this boasting and makes it okay. This is the same Paul who said in Galatians 6, 14, far be it for me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world was crucified to me and I to the world. I'm going to boast only in the cross. And so what makes the boasting in verse seven, what makes the pride in verse 17 rather, what makes that pride okay is that he is connecting it to the work of Christ. It is in Christ that I have reason to be proud. Not in anything I've done, but in Christ, I have reason to be proud because of what Christ is doing through the calling that he has given to me, I have reason to boast. He had told the Ephesian elders in Acts chapter 20, when he knew that he was going to depart from them, I don't count my life of any value or as precious to myself. If only I might finish my course and complete the ministry that I received from the Lord to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. This was Paul's whole life. was to fulfill his ministry. And it is our whole lives to fulfill our ministries, whatever that ministry is. If you're a father, you have a ministry. If you're a mother, you have a ministry. If you're a teacher, you have a ministry. If you're out in the corporate world, you have a ministry. If you're retired, I'm sorry, but you still have a ministry. We sing the hymn a lot of times on Wednesday nights. We'll work until when? Until we hit retirement age. And then we'll, like a sermon I heard years ago, then we'll go collect shells on the beach. No, we'll work until Jesus comes and then we'll go home. Then you can rest. little saying, I'll sleep when I'm dead, right now I got work to do. We'll rest one day, but now we don't count our lives of any value, if only we may finish our course in the ministry that he has given to us. This is exactly what he says here in verse 18, I will not, so he wants to testify to the gospel of the grace of God, so he says in verse because, verse 18, because I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience. That's why he can be proud. That's why he says it that way. I can be proud of my work for God because it is a testimony to what Christ has accomplished through me. Paul understood his ministry was a mercy. His ministry was a calling. His ministry was not his. Normal, everyday, non-spirit-filled, fleshly people are not going to choose the life that Paul chose in service to Christ. They're just not. Like I said, we take the path of least resistance, not the path of lashings and shipwrecks and danger at sea and danger in the land and danger among the Jews and danger among the Gentiles. Not that life. Not unless you're filled with the spirit and have a holy unction for the ministry that he's given you. Some of us You know, I'm reminded of it every day when I hear the stories at the end of the school day for Jennifer. I ain't built to do what she, and she's not the only one here that is a teacher. I ain't built to deal with what y'all deal with, I can promise you that. We all have our own ministries. He says here, what Christ has accomplished to bring the Gentiles to obedience. Now, how did Christ bring the Gentiles to obedience? How does God do this? Well, there's three ways that Paul outlines that he does this. He does it first by word and deed. He brought them to obedience by his word. It is in the truth of God that people are sanctified, John 17, 17, sanctify them in the truth. but not only by word, but also by deed. He brought them to obedience by works. And you say, well, okay, we're still talking about Christ. This is what Christ accomplished. He accomplished it by word and he accomplished it by works. And you say, what works? Well, the works are in verse 19, by the power of signs and wonders. It is through signs and wonders. How is it that that brings the Gentiles into obedience? It is because it is through the signs and wonders of the apostles that God himself testified to the reality of the apostles' apostleship. It is the signs and wonders of the miracles that authenticated the apostles as the messengers of God in this new church age. And this is how it's always been during times of new revelation. You look at Moses, for example, and you look at Elijah and Elisha. God has always authenticated his servants by the power of signs and wonders and by miracles. And now this is the period of time in which Paul's writing of the apostles immediately following the resurrection and ascension of Christ. And what immediately followed was a time of signs and wonders in keeping with the earthly ministry of Christ himself. And these miraculous works that the apostles were able to do validated that they spoke for God under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It validated that they were the writers of new scripture and new revelation. And then the third way that Christ brought them to obedience was not only by word and deed, not only by the miraculous signs and wonders, but also by the power of the Spirit of God. And I don't think this one is directly connected to the signs and wonders, but instead is better understood as the Spirit's work within the church, the people of God, to bring about their obedience to his word, both individually, as the Spirit conforms each and every one of us into Christ, and corporately as the Spirit of God within the body of Christ distributes gifts according to His own will and according to His own purposes. So all of us individually are being conformed into Christ, but then all of us Individually, as we come together corporately, each of us are gifted in certain ways, and those gifts are distributed by the Spirit according to His own purposes. So we're not all gifted in the same way, we're conformed to the same person, but we're not gifted in the same way. Hebrews 2.3. Explains this quite well. This message delivered by angels, he says, was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God bore witness by signs, wonders, and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. That's exactly what Paul's talking about here. The word, the miraculous signs and wonders, the gifts of the Spirit distributed according to his will. And all of that Paul did, so that, end of the verse, from Jerusalem and all the way around to Likrum, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. And so again, we ask the question, how are we fulfilling the ministry of the gospel of Christ in our own lives? Doesn't have to look like Paul's fulfilling of his ministry, but how are we fulfilling our ministry to the gospel of Christ? So spiritual maturity, spiritual sanctification, spiritual ministry, and really quickly, lastly, a spiritual ambition. He says, I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation. But as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see, those who have never heard will understand. He quotes there from Isaiah 52 and probably Isaiah 65 as well. Paul had a ambition to go. not just to see people saved, but to get the gospel as far and wide as one man possibly could. And it would not be a point of pride to go build where somebody else was already building. He wanted to go where Christ was not yet named. He wanted to go every well that he could. There was a holy unction and a spiritual urgency and a divine calling that gives a special energy to this ambition that Paul had. His ambition centered around the gospel and knowing that so many had not even yet heard of the good news of Christ. And you would think so many hundreds and thousands of years later that we'd be done at least with that part in this world. And we're not. There are still thousands of unreached people groups across the world. And there are still hundreds of them, 181 in fact, according to joshuaproject.com. There are 1,551 people groups in North America and 181 of them are unreached with an unreached population in North America of 17.6 million people. That's just in North America. And 98, by the way, of those unreached people groups are in the United States, accounting for 14.5 million of the unreached population in North America are in the US. Not somewhere in the Congo, where you gotta chop through jungle to get to them, because they're completely disconnected, but right in our own backyard, it seems. Paul had a holy ambition for the work of the gospel. So four points of boasting that we can have in the church as we think about our spiritual walk and our spiritual growth, a spiritual maturity, sanctification, ministry, and finally, an ambition. These are what Paul commended to these Roman Christians and commended them for. And these are what drove Paul in his own ministry for the sake of the gospel. May this spur us on as well as we seek to fulfill the ministry that Christ has given us to accomplish and fulfill in the power of his spirit. Let's pray. So Father, we pray that you would do this for us. We each know, I know that we've talked about this this morning in more general terms, but may this impress into each heart that's here. May we each do our own thinking, our own introspection, our own consideration as to what you have done for us and in us and what you have put in our lives and the kind of ministry that you have given to us. And then help us to fulfill that ministry as we seek to grow and mature and live out that ministry approach life with this kind of holy ambition for the gospel and an ambition to see people come to Christ, an ambition to see people saved and sanctified and become a part of that acceptable offering of a bride to you, a bride that is fit for heaven, unblemished and above reproach before God. Make us a part of this great plan that you have for the world, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.