May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ….
It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known…
Romans 15:5-6; 20
Paul’s apostleship to the Gentiles
In the second half of Romans 15, Paul explains his vision for the extending of God’s kingdom, through the unique calling and empowerment given to him. Even though Paul grew up as a strict Jew, he saw that he had been given a special task, to preach the gospel to those people groups seen largely by those in his own culture as un-redeemable: the Gentiles.
He describes himself as a “minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles” (Rom 15:16). This is the language of service in temple worship (Greek: leitourgon from which we get the word ‘liturgy’). He continues with this theme in the same verse, describing preaching the gospel as “a priestly duty”. Of course in Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles, he wasn’t evangelising them by bringing them into a special building to watch sacrifices being performed by men in robes. Rather he saw that ministry of mediation and cleansing for Jews by the temple priests as being fulfilled and replaced by going out and leading sinners of all tribes to Christ out in the world where they are.
Paul goes on to refer to his experience of preaching to the Gentiles, where the verbal witness to Christ, explanation of his work and call to repent and believe was often accompanied by “the power of signs and wonders through the Spirit of God” (15:19). While there’s no suggestion anywhere in the New Testament that the gospel is incomplete without supernatural demonstrations such as healing or deliverance from evil spirits, their powerful impact often opened up hearts to the gospel in the ministry of Jesus and the apostles.
Paul’s calling as an apostle drove him continually “to preach the gospel where Christ was not known” (15:20). He speaks later in the passage of his desire to visit the Roman church but not stay there – instead his plan was to pass through to Spain. In reality, his missionary journeys were often interrupted by stays in prison. Humanly speaking, it would seem as if the vision for ongoing spread of the church among the Gentiles would stall and die with Paul when his life was ended in Rome some years after this letter was written. But that’s not what happened, which proves that the apostolic ministry of itinerant gospel communication across the unreached peoples continued as other similarly gifted, called and equipped church planters took up the baton after him.
What about the local church?
Paul is confident that the church in Rome is strong in discipleship and with a culture of teaching and learning: once the foundations are in place and the people are “full of goodness”, they just need to be “competent to instruct one another” (15:14). Although he would love to visit them, he doesn’t need to be there permanently. Presumably there are pastors or elders (probably not salaried), buildings and administration, but he doesn’t mention them. In the previous chapter and earlier in chapter 15, Paul shows what his priorities are. For the world: pioneer mission to the unreached. For the local church: gospel unity in loving diversity.
Because an authentic church results from Paul’s biblical vision of Jews and Gentiles finding salvation in Christ, there will be people from different cultures, and so potential tensions. Unity comes from agreement on the foundations of faith, but there will be different approaches, often based on conscience, about “disputable matters” (14:1). Paul urges the Roman Christians not to argue over food; not to judge each other for their choices; to allow diversity; to seek to build each other up so that God can be praised “with one mind and voice” (15:6).
What about today?
In much of the church in the West, leaders have encouraged Christians to regard different opinions and lifestyles of sexual morality as legitimate diversity, and even in some cases have tried to suppress biblical orthodoxy in this area. However, verses at the end of the previous chapter make it clear that “gratifying the desires of the flesh” is the opposite of “clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ” (13:13-14). All Christians regardless of culture need to repent of sin as defined by Scripture, and seek to conform to the Saviour. As a result of major disagreements over this issue, faithful Anglicans are differentiating from those who have diverged from biblical truth in the same church, and are re-drawing boundaries of unity, based more around biblical definitions of first and second order issues rather than on membership of the same institution.
The unity being forged and sometimes rediscovered by these ‘alliances’ are an answer to prayer and good in themselves, regardless of whether they achieve particular outcomes for whole denominations. But as faithful Christians today we should heed Paul’s priorities which remain a challenge for us:
- Our disputes today are not about what food to eat, but they can be about, for example, whether to stay in or leave the institutional church. Are we insisting on uniformity, a “one-size fits all” plan, or should we be allowing for diversity within different expressions and jurisdictions of Anglicanism and outside according to conscience and context, loving and respecting one another, seeking to build one another up? (see Martin Davie and Anglican Futures articles under News and Comment below.)
- In recent history our churches have tended to concentrate resources and gifted people on the work of pastoring and teaching a settled believing community, with occasional evangelism of a fringe. Is this method meeting the needs of post-Christian Europe? How does it compare to Paul’s vision?
- How can the faithful church resource, develop and support pioneer ministries to the unreached, especially in our own geographical area? Can we look to Gafcon, not just for support for our programmes, but to learn from their ongoing sacrifices and success in taking the gospel to the nations?