Romans 1:5 Graced for the sake of His name
The Source of Grace
Having spoken of Jesus Christ Our Lord, Paul speaks of him as the source of grace: "through whom we have received grace." In other words, God's grace has come to Paul through the Lord Jesus Christ who was born as a son of David and was raised as Son of God in power. Grace was obtained for us through the obedience and death of the incarnate Messiah (Rom 3:24-25; 5:18-21); and grace is poured out through the risen and reigning Son of God in power. There is no grace toward sinners apart from the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God gives grace "through him," referring to "Jesus Christ our Lord" So grace is a reality that comes from God; and comes through Jesus and his work for us. It is not something we have a right to. Jesus obtained it for us. We get it freely because of the obedience and death of another. (Piper)
The Substance of Grace Grace is God’s favor toward the underserving, but it is much more than that. Grace is actually God’s favor toward those who deserve the precise opposite. What we deserve is hell. We do not even deserve a chance to hear the gospel, let alone experience the regenerating work of God within, which enables us to turn from sin to obey Jesus. We deserve God’s wrath. We deserve his fiery condemnation. But instead of wrath, we find grace. Instead of condemnation, we find the One who in our place bore God’s judgement and now lives to rule over us. (Boice).
Johnathan Edwards (Freedom of the Will) helps us understand grace. He presents the cases of two men who have offended the king by offending the prince and are in prison: 1) For the first man after a while the king comes to him, calls him forth; and tells him that if he will fall down before him and humbly beg his pardon, he shall be forgiving, and set him free and restore his honor. The prisoner repents . . . of his offense against the King (prince), is thoroughly disposed to abase himself and accept the king’s offer and is set free. 2) The other is a man is an unreasonable spirit, haughty and ungrateful. His heart is possessed with great enmity to the laws (and commands) of his sovereign king. For his rebellion he is also cast into prison. He stays there for a long time. The compassionate prince comes to the prison, orders the chains to be knocked off, and the prison doors to be opened wide: calls to him and tells him, if he will come forth to him, and fall down before him, acknowledge that he has treated him unworthily, and asks for his forgiveness, he shall be forgiven and set free. But he is so stout and full of haughty malignity, that he cannot be willing to accept the offer; his rooted strong pride have perfect power over him, and as it were bind him, by binding his heart: the opposition of his heart has mastery over him, having an influence on his mind far superior to the king’s grace and to all his kind offers and promises. So there is no difference to the unworthiness of blame in either of the prisoners. Both encountered the grace of the king, one received it one rejected it. (Edwards).
Paul was set apart for the gospel before he was born (Gal 1:15; Rom 1:1). Grace is not God's response to his or our deserving or meriting (Eph 2:8-10). Grace is God's free gift before we do anything good, and his enabling of us to do anything good. (Rom 4:4) Grace is not what you get when you work for somebody: that's what he owes you. Grace is never owed. It is always a free bonus from the overflow of goodness. Therefore grace is always received through faith, not earned by works. You can only receive grace as a gift and acknowledge that it comes to you freely; you can't work for it or earn it. (Rom 11:6) Grace would not be grace if you earned it by your works. We receive it through faith. By simply welcoming it as a gift and relying on it. (Rom 4:16). Grace is absolutely free and cannot be deserved or merited. When grace comes to you it is through faith or not at all. Grace has its own power. You don't work it up. Grace is not just forgiveness of our sin and mercy on our misery, it is also a divine power that comes to us through Jesus absolutely freely for the sake of ministry. (Rom 5:21), (Piper).
The Securing of Grace
Grace is received for salvation and service. It is received not just at the beginning of our walk with God but also it is what guides and sustains us in our Christian walk. Through [Christ] we have received grace and apostleship." The text affirms that both our conversion and calling are gifts of God’s grace. Paul’s conversion was by grace not works. As a matter of fact, Paul was an enemy of God, he wasn’t working for God, but against him (Acts 8:3, Acts 22:4, 1 Cor 15:9) . Paul’s calling as an apostle was also a gift of grace (Eph 3:7-10). He fulfils that ministry by the power of this grace. So that grace is not just God's clemency toward Paul's sin, but is also a power to enable Paul to do his calling as an apostle. It is not just the power for his conversion, but his calling as well. Grace is God's enabling for various ministries through gifts he gives, and Paul's gift includes speaking as an apostle. (Rom 12:6, 15:15b-16). God not only saved him from his sin, but he also gave him grace to be an authoritative spokesman for the risen Son of God in power. (Piper). Grace is a power from God for ministry (like Paul's apostleship). It is free and cannot be earned or deserved. It is received as a gift by faith, not merited by works. Apostleship it is given and enabled by grace. (Rom 15:18), Paul serves Christ by the grace with which Christ serves Paul. . . . this is the essence of how God means for you to live your life. God wants you to read verse 5 and in the end put your calling in the place of the word "apostleship." "Apostleship" is Paul's – not mine and not yours. You might put, "Through Christ I have received grace and the teaching role." Or: grace and singing. Or: grace and studentship. Or: grace and singleness. And what you should mean is: God has freely given me forgiveness and the power to do a calling, and fulfill a role which I accept by faith. There is not a role in life that can be lived the way God wants it lived apart from enabling grace. Being a godly mother or being an apostle is impossible without the power of grace. (1 Cor 15:10), All his apostolic labor is by grace. The decisive, enabling power for all ministry and all service is God's grace. God wants to be the Giver in this relationship. God wants to be gracious. God wants to be the fountain and the source of our service and our obedience and our ministry – whether apostleship, or pastor, or student, or mother, or any other calling. God intends to be the source of enabling, empowering, sustaining grace. Our job is to trust him and act in reliance on him. This is the essence of the Christian life. (Piper).
The Sequel of Grace to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations,
The Command to Obey to bring about the obedience of faith
"Through [the living Son of God risen in power] we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith." So grace is not just received by faith, it aims at faith. God gives gifts of grace so that we will be his instruments in bringing about "the obedience of faith. It means the obedience which is faith, because faith is what the gospel demands." It is not obedience that Faith produces, but an obedience that consists of faith (Lloyd Jones), or faith which is obedience (Boice). It is obedience which consist of faith itself (F. Godet).
The question is obedience to what? Obedience to the gospel. This idea effects how we understand the gospel and how we seek to obey Christ’s command to evangelize (Boice). In evangelism there must be a recognition that sin is not primarily a bad trait or even bad choices, but utter and complete disobedience to God and that God commands us to repent and repudiate it. (Acts 3:19, 26:19-20, Luke 24:46) (Boice) God commands all men everywhere to repent and believe the gospel. Nothing Less! (1 John 3:23). God commands you to believe in the son and if you do not believe in Him you are breaking the commandment; you are disobedient. You are not exercising the obedience of faith.(Jones). God gives grace as the power and the enabling for service, which means that grace is the power and enabling of obedience (Jones) All true obedience is the fruit of faith. (Rom 14:23) It's the fruit of faith because God's grace is given to enable obedience, and faith is the way we rely on that grace, and so obedience is the fruit of that faith. So all true obedience is done in the power of grace, not our own power. (Piper) It is the reception of grace that brings about the obedience of faith.
The Constraint of Sin
Sin is transgression to the law or commands of God (1 John 3:4-10). Sin is not just that which I do that is wrong and which makes me feel bad afterwards . . . not just that which spoils my life and makes me feel miserable and unhappy . . . not just that thing that brings me down and which I would like to overcome. It is refusal to listen to the voice of God and the word of God (Has God said? Gen 3:1-11). The original sin of man did not consist of murder or adultery or any of those things, it consisted in just this, they stopped listening to the voice of God. They stopped obeying God. (Rom 8:7) If sin is disobedience, what is right? Obedience If sin is refusal to listen to God’s voice then what is right? Listening to God. Sin is turning your back upon God and doing what you think. (Rom 3:23, James 4:17). (Jones). So when the gospel is preached, it must be preached not merely as an invitation to experience eternal life or to accept God’s invitation. It must be preached as a command. A command of the Lord of Lord, the King of Kings, the creator of the universe, the Sovereign ruler of all things. We are commanded to turn from our sinful disobedience to God and obey him by believing in and following Jesus Christ our Lord (Acts 17:30-31, Rom 6:17, Rom 10:3, 16; 16:25-27. By failing to present the gospel as a command to be obeyed we minimize sin, trivialize discipleship, and rob God of His Glory . . . . (Boice).
So the obedience of faith is obedience to the Word of God (Rom 6:17) Obeying the gospel means believing it, accepting it, submitting yourself to it. Everyone is so deeply ensnared by sin that even though the gospel is preached to us, apart from the grace of God we are not able to repent and obey God’s command. Apart from the enabling power of the Holy Spirit we have no ability to turn form sin, believe on Christ and pursue obedience to him (Rom 3:9-25, Titus 3:5).
The inability of man in his fallen state is not a physical inability, as if God were demanding that a paralyzed person get up and walk to him. It is not physical, but moral. We do not obey because we can’t do it physically, but because we will not to obey (Rom 1:18-23, Eph 4: 17-19), it is this that makes the command to obey so important and our disobedience so reprehensible (Boice). The miracles of Jesus attest to enabling grace. Lepers, the lame, the blind, the deaf, and the dead cannot heal themselves, but Christ can. Christ calls, enabling grace is provided and they respond in faith. (Matt 11: 2-6, Mark 2:1-12, John 11:14,-15, 17-44; Matt 9:27-31, Luke 18:18-25) Numbers 5:1-4: Diseased man Luke 5:12, Discharging woman Luke 8:40-48 Dead Child Luke 8:40-42, 49-56 Condemnation of Jesus Heb 13:12-13
The Cherished name For the sake of His name among the nations
Everything is dependent on his grace through our faith, for His name's sake." The ultimate goal of all God's dealings is that his name (or the name of Christ, who is his image) would be known and admired and cherished and praised above all other realities. (Rom 9:17) God's aim in history and in all that happens is that his name be known and worshipped. The aim of Paul's apostleship is "for the sake of the name" – that the name of Jesus (which stands for his character) might be known and loved and treasured and exalted and glorified. Now this is why God makes all our salvation and all our ministry and all our obedience dependent on his grace and makes all our salvation and ministry and obedience the fruit of faith in grace – because the giver gets the glory. If our ministry and all our obedience is by grace through faith, then God gets the glory and we get the help. If Paul relied on himself to serve as an apostle, and if the effect of his ministry was to bring about the obedience of works, not the obedience of faith among the Gentiles, then the name of Christ would not be praised, Paul would be. The giver of the power, the enabler of the obedience, gets the glory. (1 Pet 4:11) God gets the glory for our service if God gives the grace for our service, and if we serve by faith in that grace, in the strength of that grace and not our own (Piper).