Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2320
“To all that are in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 1:7.
IN a few minutes we shall gather together as members of the Church of Christ to celebrate the memorial of His death. It is a memorable sight to see so many Christian people sitting together with the objective of observing this ordinance. Frequently, as I have seen it, I must confess that when sitting in the chair at the head of the table, I often feel overawed with the remembrance that it is the largest gathering of Christians anywhere beneath the sun, and that they have come there with one common objective, namely, to show our Lord’s death “till He comes.” The question then rises in our minds whether there is real fellowship in all this, for if there is not, it is a great sham, and the more numerous we are, if we have not fellowship with Christ and with one another, the greater is the deception—it is only having a name to live while we are dead. So I want, tonight, not so much to preach to you as to exhort you, who are about to gather to this holy festival, to think that your thoughts shall go out toward all your Christian Brothers and Sisters, and that you shall feel the power of that precious blood which makes us nearer akin than even the blood of Adam—that blood of Jesus which makes us truly Brothers and Sisters, yes, members of one body, and so united by living communion, the one to the other.
In this first chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, you see the spirit of communion in the Apostle Paul. He was, he says, anxious to do good to others. He longed to see the Roman Christians in order that he might impart to them some spiritual gift. While he is writing to them you can see that he is anxious that they may have the best things that they can have. All his desire is for their good—he is lovingly interested in their welfare. That is how we ought to be, the one to the other, not only the pastor to the people, but the people to the pastor, and the members of the Church to each other, all anxious for the good of the rest—no man living unto himself, but each one endeavoring to live for the benefit of the entire community in Christ Jesus.
Not only did the Apostle’s heart go out to the church in Rome, but to all the Gentiles. He felt himself, he says, a debtor to everybody, to the Greeks and to the barbarians, to the wise and to the unwise, to, the bond and to the free. Do you not think that our loving sympathies should go out towards all mankind? Oh, let them do so! While you have the nearest and closest fellowship with the saints, yet desire to recognize your kinship with the rest of men, praying to God that He would enlighten them and bring them, also, within the bonds of the Covenant, that your fellowship with them might be loving, and true, and deep.
However, the Apostle especially expresses his fellowship with the saints in Rome and, to prove that fellowship, he calls them by endearing names, by the highest titles which they could have, “beloved of God, called to be saints.” And then he salutes them with good wishes of the very sweetest, most tender kind, when he says, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.” While I am trying to talk on this text, will our dear Brothers and Sisters’ hearts be going out, the one towards the other, with a view to the increase of real spiritual communion in this Church, and also in every branch of the one Church of Christ throughout the world?
First, notice, concerning these people, their favored condition—“beloved of God.” Secondly, their sure proof of that favor— “called to be saints.” And, thirdly, their blessedness through that favor. Paul wished them to have what he was
allowed to wish for them, for it was truly theirs—“Grace to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus
Christ.”
I. First, then, notice concerning these people, THEIR FAVORED CONDITION. They are said to be “beloved of
God.”
I wish that I could hope that this was true of everybody here in the fullest and most emphatic sense, that we were all “beloved of God.” There is a sense in which it is true, for God has a love of benevolence, kindness and well-wishing towards all His creatures. He is kind to the unthankful and the evil, and makes His rain to fall upon the field of the miser as well as on the ground of the gracious. He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” God is willing that all should come to Him, repent of sin, believe in Jesus Christ and find eternal life! We are all, in some respects, partakers of the love of God.
But, dear Friends, there is a love to Peter which is greater than the love which Christ had to Judas. There is a love which He has to His own which is of peculiar character and differs very greatly from that common love which He bestows upon all the works of His hands, for there is a love of choice and it is in this sense that Paul calls these Roman saints “beloved of God.” God had chosen them—His prescient eyes had foreseen them and their condition—and He had selected them out of the mass of the Roman population that they might be His own. Whatever may be said about the Doctrine of Election, it is written in the Word of God as with an iron pen and there is no getting rid of it! There it stands. To me, it is one of the sweetest and most blessed Truths in the whole of Revelation—and those who are afraid of it are so because they do not understand it. If they could but know that the Lord had chosen them, it would make their hearts dance for joy! The Lord has a people in this world whom He has, Himself, chosen and given to His Son, Jesus Christ, and whom the Lord Jesus Christ has redeemed from among men, for Christ, “loved the Church and gave Himself for it.” These are the people of whom Paul speaks as beloved of God, those who have been, by Divine Grace, chosen out of the great mass of mankind!