Awakening

Romans 1:1-6 – BELONGING to CHRIST
The Gospel is introduced right up front. Quickly reveals and explains the overarching theme of this letter and the reason for this letter.
Paul - a servant of Christ Jesus – Belonging to Christ was something that Paul truly understood…before his salvation and his meeting of Jesus he was a devout Jew who believed he had a special revelation that the new Christians were deceived by following Jesus – so his belonging was defined by being well known in his religious circles. But once he meets Jesus, the people he would of belonged to disowned him and were now his enemies from their perspective. So where he once had a life defined by what he did and his status and belonging was dependant on being accepted by how many Christians he put in prison. Paul would of felt like an orphan, a child without a family, totally vulnerable and with no answers within himself.
His salvation experience was so full on he was even physically blinded by the light of Jesus. It’s like God wanted Paul to understand how much he now belonged to Jesus and no one else that he blinded him so he could see no one or nothing he used to belong to. All he could see was Jesus, nothing else, Jesus became his everything.
Paul gets radically saved by the sovereign will of God and his whole world is rocked, he loses all his old friends, his world is turned around 180 degrees and now he only belongs to Jesus. Even the existing Christians were not very accepting initially, understandably. So Paul has no option but to belong to Jesus. This is not a burden but Paul discovers that this is the greatest place to be in, to just belong to Jesus…a massive weight of pressure is lifted off of his shoulders.
If you remember when you first met Jesus and said you will radically follow Jesus you would most likely remember certain people in your world disowning you. Although this is painful it is also allowed by God so that we would learn to belong to Jesus and Jesus alone. Where before we belonged to the things and the people that surrounded us in our world we now belong to someone that is beyond this world, our heart awakens to our true belonging in our Father and creator through His son Jesus. Do not be afraid that when you meet Jesus that people that you used to hangout with disown you. Its not that you don’t love them or that they can’t also belong to Jesus it just means that you are no longer defined by people that love this world, but you are defined by someone greater. You may even go through a beautiful experience of being blind. Not physically necessarily but things that used to matter to you don’t anymore. It is not unusual to give away things, or give up things or quit things, because they just don’t satisfy anymore. This doesn’t mean all those things are necessarily evil, it rather means that the love of those things or belonging to those things are evil.
Therefore these first verses are not just good theology they are coming out of a heart that has experienced the feeling and reality of not belonging and then discovering true belonging to Christ. It reveals that Christ chose us before time began, we have been elected and now belong to Jesus. This changes everything. We live different if we understand that we belong to Jesus and not this world, we belong to someone who has paid the greatest price, he paid the price of Death for my sins, not his own sin, but my sin through shedding his blood. The penalty for sin is death so we must understand that through the death of Jesus we have been set free from the penalty of death and now belong to Jesus and has given us eternal life. Martin Luther calls this the ‘Great Exchange’.
What Paul is saying right up front is all we need is Jesus.
Romans 15:13 – May the God of Hope fill you with all Joy and Peace in believing…
It is believing that we belong to Jesus that we are filled with Joy and Peace.
We don’t need to try and belong to anything else but Jesus. We don’t need to prove our self in anyway. We can’t earn this belonging, we can’t prove to God that we deserve it by our good works, this belonging only comes through Jesus Christ.
This is freedom, this is peace, this is the great joy that we belong and we do not have to strive to prove ourselves any more, we can now live differently, we can serve with everything we have, we become humble through this revelation, we suffer and endure differently, the spirit of God gains access to our life through us belonging to Jesus.
This happens because Jesus lived the perfect Holy Life and gave his life up freely so now there is no separation between us and the spirit of God. This means we can now live out this belonging to Jesus through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit fulfilling the will of our Heavenly Father.
We now belong to the Family of God. This is not a family that will disown us, it is an eternal family motivated by true love, the head of this Family will never leave us nor forsake us. He will not divorce us, he will not disown us, he will not doubt us, he believes in us and eternally loves us. It is the greatest family that has ever existed.
Eph 1:4For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

So Paul reveals to us that this is the good news, the Gospel, that although we deserved to be separated from God for all eternity because of our sin we now eternally belong to Jesus through His Death on the cross. This is not sad news but the most freeing and joyous news. We can now enjoy this life that God has given us and freely give this love that we have freely been given.







BECAUSE WE BELONG:
• We can love our enemies
• We can love our Christian brothers and sisters as we are now part of the beautiful family of God.
• We can serve others and not ourselves
• We can bring justice to others because we understand we don’t anything else beyond belonging to Jesus
• We are righteous not through our own works but through Jesus
• We are therefore free from guilt forever
• We can live radically
• We are truly generous as we have been given everything we need through belonging to Jesus
• We are not takers in life but givers
• We can forgive others as we have been forgiven
• We can resist temptation because we have access through belonging to the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead
• We are victorious because Christ is victorious over sin and death itself
• We are fearless
• We are bold and courageous - because greater is he that is in me then he that is in the world
• We are secure
• We can live for His Glory, we can respond to this belonging and the amazing sacrifice of Jesus to give us access into the family of God by living for His Glory and giving all of our lives.
Food for thought and Discussion – Questions to Wrestle with this week and live out…

1) What does it mean to belong to Christ?
2) What security do we have in belonging?
3) How should we respond to this belonging?
4) How does our life speak that we belong to Jesus?