MONDAY November 13th
Romans 1:1-6
‘Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.’
Over the next few weeks, or longer—depending on how long it takes I am going to take us in our devotions through a journey with the apostle Paul. Even as I am preparing this first one, I don’t know what direction it will take, but these few verses give us a clue.
We see that he was man who was transformed by the gospel and as a result he spent his life after meeting with Jesus consumed with the task of sharing the gospel.
It will probably mean that as we go through these devotions I will revisit some things that we may have already looked at, and I will repeat some content in my Friday evening studies which I am taking us through from the book of Acts, but, what I want is that as we consider Paul, we will have the desire grow within us to become more Christ centered and gospel focused and that we too will be eager to share Jesus to those who we come into contact with on a daily basis.
In our text today Paul says that he was ‘set apart for the gospel of God’, in other words it was the gospel that was to be his priority, and in Acts 9 after he met with the Lord Jesus Christ on the Damascus Road, the Lord said that he was to be a chosen instrument to carry the name of Jesus before the Gentiles (Acts 9:15)
Here in Romans 1, he has already been fulfilling his mission, he says that he had received grace and apostleship for the sake of his name, that is the name of Jesus which he was to take to the nations.
We will go on a journey with him, seeing how he lived in obedience to the call of God upon his life.
May we learn to, so that as we have been called by the grace of God, we too must be obedient to the claims of the gospel upon us.