{"id":6088,"date":"2017-06-19T01:00:53","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T08:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ministryofgrace.org\/blog\/?p=6088"},"modified":"2017-06-17T16:52:27","modified_gmt":"2017-06-17T23:52:27","slug":"romans-15-working-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/romans-15-working-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Romans 1:5 &#8211; Working for God"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Through whom we received grace and apostleship to obedience of faith among all nations for His name,<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Truth to Learn<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Paul received his salvation and apostleship from Jesus.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Behind the Words<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Received&rdquo; is from the Greek verb lamban\u014d, meaning &ldquo;to take&rdquo; or &ldquo;to receive.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The word translated &ldquo;to&rdquo; is the Greek word <em>eis<\/em>, which means &ldquo;to or toward.&rdquo; The root meaning of this word is &ldquo;rendering something to or toward an end point or conclusion.&rdquo; It focuses the attention not so much on the process as on the end result.<\/p>\n<p>The word translated &ldquo;obedience&rdquo; is <em>hupoko\u0113<\/em>, which is made up of <em>hupo<\/em>, meaning &ldquo;under&rdquo; and <em>akou\u014d<\/em>, meaning &ldquo;to hear.&rdquo; So, literally it means &ldquo;to hear under.&rdquo; This is a picture of a student learning from his teacher. It carries the idea of one who is &ldquo;listening attentively and obeying what he is taught.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Meaning Explained<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Paul has been talking about the humanity and deity of Jesus Christ. He now says, &ldquo;Through whom we received grace and apostleship.&rdquo; This grace has been shown to all of us who are saved, as he tells us in <strong>Ephesians 2:8:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.25in;\">For by grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; <em>it is<\/em> the gift of God,<\/p>\n<p>Not only did Paul receive grace just as you and I did when we were saved, but he claims that he received apostleship from Jesus as well. We find this described further in Paul&rsquo;s letter to the Galatian Christians:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:.25in;\">But on the contrary, having seen that I have been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, even as <em>the gospel<\/em> for the circumcised <em>was<\/em> to Peter (for He working effectively in Peter for the apostleship to the circumcised also worked effectively in me toward the Gentiles), (<strong>Galatians 2:7, 8<\/strong>&nbsp; )<\/p>\n<p>The next phrase in today&rsquo;s verse is a little bit awkward in English: &ldquo;to obedience of faith among all nations&rdquo; In the original Greek text there is no definite article (the) before the word &ldquo;faith.&rdquo; Based on this and on our interpretation of the word <em>eis<\/em> (see <u>Behind the Words<\/u>), we should translate this as, &ldquo;resulting in obedience of faith among all nations.&rdquo; That is, God&rsquo;s plan for Paul&rsquo;s salvation and apostleship is ultimately to produce obedience and faith among all nations.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, Paul gives the credit and glory to whom it belongs, &ldquo;for His name;&rdquo; Paul recognizes that the whole purpose of the Christian faith is not our personal glory or satisfaction. It is not simply to obtain a free ticket into heaven. In the final analysis it really has nothing to do with us at all; it has everything to do with God! It is for the glory of His name. The whole purpose of our salvation&#8211;totally underserved and freely given to us by the grace of God&#8211;is to bring praise and glory to God Himself.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong><u>Application<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As Paul tells us in the Ephesians verse quoted above and the verses that follow, we have been saved by grace. Our salvation is a gift from God. We didn&rsquo;t do any works to deserve it. In fact, God&rsquo;s purpose for our salvation is that the works we do, we do for His glory.<\/p>\n<p>So our sole responsibility as Christians is to be hard at work for Him, and He will get all the glory. That should humble us all.<\/p>\n<p><strong>In God&#39;s service, for His glory,<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/images\/Signature.gif\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Copyright&nbsp;&copy;&nbsp;2017 Will Krause. All rights reserved<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Through whom we received grace and apostleship to obedience of faith among all nations for His name, Truth to Learn Paul received his salvation and apostleship from Jesus. &nbsp; Behind the Words &ldquo;Received&rdquo; is from the Greek verb lamban\u014d, meaning &ldquo;to take&rdquo; or &ldquo;to receive.&rdquo; The word translated &ldquo;to&rdquo; is the Greek word eis, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4436],"tags":[959,1730,689,100,1584,2733],"class_list":["post-6088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-romans-1-romans-ministry-of-grace-translation","tag-eis","tag-hupakoe","tag-lambano","tag-obedience","tag-received","tag-to"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd5geA-1Ac","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6088"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6089,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6088\/revisions\/6089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ministryofgrace.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}