As an example, a few weeks ago as we were finishing up with Romans 11, for the hundredth time we touched on the subject of “grace” – God’s unmerited favor. Let me reiterate something that I said: Even though Paul’s study of God’s grace was coming to an end, he wasn’t abandoning the subject. “Charis” is found 15 times in the first 11 chapters, but it is still used 5 times in remainder of the book. Early on it was explained – sometimes in great detail – but as in our text this morning, the rest of the time it is mentioned only in passing. And yet that passing remark is not stripped away from the doctrinal context in which it was born. The study of theology should always flow over into the practical living and even the general thinking of the people of God, and Paul is a perfect example of that. When we use the terms of the Bible, they should always be in the context of Biblical truth.
We had a salesman come to our home on Thursday, and in our conversation, I mentioned that God was very gracious towards us in regards to our new house. I had never met the man before, so I don’t know whether or not he is a child of God, but a few minutes later he was talking about his own new house, and he tried to say that God answered his prayers as well – but the words came out backward. I thought at the time that this was not his usual manner of speech; he was only trying to impress me. “Grace” should be a part of the Christian’s usual conversation, because our hearts and minds are filled with the theology and the reality of God’s kindness towards us – as undeserving as we are.
This morning, rather than move along with what Paul is saying, I’d like to consider what he is implying. Rather than deal with the practical, I’d like to return to the theological. I’m calling this message: “The Authority of Grace.” Without some explanation, that might be a very confusing pair of words.
Despite the many glorious victories given to him by the Lord, Paul never forgot what he had been. When he called himself “the chiefest of sinners,” I believe that he meant every syllable. When he said, “I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God,” it was with genuine tears in his eyes. But there he was nevertheless, called to be an apostle – an “apostolos” – a messenger of the Lord. He was as well equipped to be the Lord’s ambassador as any man ever has been. His heritage was as a Jew, as a foreign-born Jew, and as a citizen of Rome. He had been as well-trained as any Bible school graduate could ever be trained. Then he spent months in the desert alone with the Lord and the Word of God. And then even his history as a rebel and enemy of God added to his qualifications. But ultimately it was because of the grace of the Lord that he became an apostle of God.
Reversing that logic, I look at myself, comparing myself with some other Chrsitians who are not in the ministry. I know men whose backgrounds and qualifications are far, far greater than mine, but here I am and there they are. It is by the grace of God that I am blessed with you and with this privilege to teach you God’s Word. And I bring this up to encourage others: You may think that you don’t possess the qualifications to be a pastor or a missionary. Forget those things, so long as you haven’t destroyed your life or potential ministry through sin. It is the grace of God which puts a man into the ministry, and it is the grace of God which can make that man useful to the Lord. If the Lord says “go,” then go, and don’t worry whether or not you have nice shoes on your feet.
I hope that you don’t think that I’m reading more into these words than Paul intended, because Paul intended every bit of this. Over and over again, he directly attributed his apostleship to the Lord’s grace. Ephesians 3 – “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, If ye have heard of the dispensation of the GRACE of God which is given me to you-ward: How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel: Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the GRACE of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power. Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this GRACE given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ. To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God, According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” I could take you to other scriptures, such as I Corinthians and I Timothy, but I hope that you have already gotten my point.
Of course, this gift of grace falls far short of that more important gift of grace – salvation from sin. There is only one remedy for sin – Romans 3:24 – “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” “For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.” “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.” “Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;).” “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.”
Neither Paul, nor any other Christian, has ever been delivered and forgiven of his sin because of anything that he has ever done, whether we are talking about personal service, or even repentance and faith. Salvation from sin is through the unmerited, unearned, undeserved kindness and favor of God. “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.”
Paul was a Christian through the grace of God, and he was an apostle through additional grace. There never has been a true Christian who has not become so by the mercy and grace of God. But that doesn’t mean that we are all apostles in the sense that Paul, Peter and John were apostles. Every Christian ought to be a self-sacrificing priest of the Lord, as in verse 1,but the call of God to the ministry is a special gift of grace, and the ministry of an apostle was an even more particular and special calling. This leads me to my second point:
Even though various aspects of the ministry of Paul and other apostles are still on-going, when John, the last of the apostles died, so did that very special office. Don’t ever let anyone convince you that there are apostles today, and more importantly, never let anyone trying to convince you that he is one of those apostles. Eventually that kind of person is going to do is try to become a dictator over your soul. Sooner or later, like the Pope of Rome, he is going to try to give you some doctrine or some command which supercedes the Word of God. That self-proclaimed apostle is not a servant of God and doesn’t really want to become a servant of God. He wants only that you become his servant in one fashion or another. What Peter said in Acts 1 about the qualifications of an apostle has never been divinely overturned, except in the very special case of Paul. Each of the apostles had been disciples of Christ, directly taught by Him during the days when He pastored the first church. Second, they had been baptized by John the Baptist, who had authority from God for that special ministry. And third, all the apostles had seen and been blessed by the resurrected Christ.
The gift of apostleship was in some ways like the gift of tongues, the gift of healing and raising the dead. It was directly related to the gift of prophesy. And I am convinced from I Corinthians 13 and other scriptures that upon the completion of the written word of God, these kinds of gifts would no longer be necessary or given by God. We do not need apostles giving us divine revelation which no man has had before. The Bible is all the revelation of God that we need in order to serve Him, until that day that Christ Jesus is revealed before our eyes in ultimate glory. We do not need to see people raised from the dead to know that the preacher is telling us the truth. We know that he is telling us the truth if he is preaching the true Word of God. The fact of the matter is: the False Prophet of the Tribulation will appear to raise the dead, and with that should come great fear when anyone else claims to have it today. Except in the case of your loved ones, I am glad that I can’t miraculously heal the sick. I fear that it would distract, not enhance, the preaching of the gospel.
But getting back to Paul, he was one of twelve or thirteen men, who could speak to the early church with the authority of God. Not only could the apostles do so, but I believe that they actually knew when they were speaking by revelation. Again I go back to what he said to the Ephesians in chapter 3: “For this cause I Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, If ye have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which is given me to you-ward: “Dispensation” means “stewardship” referring to the”ministry that God had given to him. “How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words, Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ) Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel: Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power.” There was no doubt in Paul’s mind that he had been raised up by God and prepared by the Holy Spirit to be a conduit of the mysteries of Christ. The Lord was speaking through Paul to you and to me.
There were occasions, when Paul was aware that he was expressing only his opinions. And in this he and I can run parallel for a little while. The only revelation that I have to share with you comes out of this Holy Book – the Bible. Paul’s revelation sometimes came directly from the Lord, but more often it was what everyone already had in the Old Testament. There are times when I will give you my opinions about this or that, because either the Bible doesn’t say anything about that particular subject, or the Bible isn’t clear enough for my feeble mind to cut through it. And there were occasions when Paul declares that he had no direct revelation on a particular subject, but still he wanted to state his opinion. I am not unconvinced that since those opinions were divinely inspired and recorded in the Bible that they aren’t still the Word of God, but I don’t know that we want to go to that subject this morning.
Here is my point for today: Paul was for all intents and purposes a prophet of God. He was a prophet by the command, the commission and the causation of God. Even though he says it in the kindest and most inoffensive fashion, “I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you…” you and I don’t have the right to neglect, edit, criticize, or mutilate what he has to tell us. This is the inspired Word of God. These are the words of the Holy Spirit Himself. II Peter 1:19-21 is as true of the New Testament as the apostle meant it of the Old Testament: “We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” Peter himself told us that the letters of Paul were at times difficult to understand, but they were the inspired Word of God nevertheless.
The ministry of Christ is all about grace and authority. It is a conveyance of grace through the authority of grace. But it is carried on by the command and authority of Christ Himself. Looking into the Old Testament and bringing these things forward: No man has a right to burn the incense of God in or outside the Tabernacle, but those whom God has ordained to burn incense. No man has a right even to make that incense or to carry the fire of God without divine authority. Only priests after the order of Melchizedek have authority to present their bodies as living sacrifices. And no man can pretend to utter new revelation from God – that man is a false prophet.
This carries over into the work of the Lord’s churches. First, Christ Jesus established a single church, and authorized it to do the work and service of God. It was created by the Lord Himself, during His earthly ministry, and its power and authority lay in Christ. But then after Jesus’ ascension, that church became empowered differently – by the Holy Spirit, beginning on the Day of Pentecost. That church – the Jerusalem church – with Christ’s authority and the Holy Spirit’s power, and with the first apostles as its primary servants, is the source from which all the Lord’s church descend. But then the Lord’s authority was passed on to other churches which were formed out of the ministry of that first church. For example there was the church in Antioch, Syria, from which the apostle Paul was sent and served. The authority evangelize, to disciple, to baptize, and to accept the thanksgiving offerings of God’s saints, lay solely in the church which Jesus established and in those which came from that first church. Any religious society started by man, subsequent to the apostles, and outside the Lord’s true churches, has no divine authority to serve or even to exist. I am convinced that statement relates to more than 95% of so-called “Christian” churches in our world today. No man today ought to say, “I say, though the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you,” unless he is serving the Lord under the Lord’s authority through one of Christ’s churches. And again – it is by grace that any man alive can say that.
It is the understanding that this church, the Calvary Independent Baptist Church of Post Falls, is a direct descendant of those first churches. Your pastor doesn’t have the authority of an apostle, like Paul. But as your representative, I can act under your authority to preach, to administer the ordinances and carry on the work of the Lord.
And as such, I beseech you as Paul does here. Please listen and obey what God’s Word has to say. And particularly, her me – God “commandeth all men every where to repent,” and to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Are you living in humble trust of Saviour? As you a child of God with the characteristics that the Bible describes of the children of God? Have you repented of your sin and is your faith for salvation in Christ Jesus?