If you have your copy of Scripture, go ahead and turn to Romans chapter 16 this morning. We are finally in the last chapter of Paul's great letter to the church in Rome, and we started this series October 20th of last year, so just a little over a year in Romans, and I feel like we have rushed through it in many respects. There's so much that we didn't touch on. so much we haven't gone over. This is our second to last sermon in this series, and then after a few sermons on the Incarnation, we will be heading into Genesis in the New Year. So if you want to start reading ahead in Genesis, that would be a good thing to do. I think that you'll find that helpful. That'll be the first time I've preached through an Old Testament book. We've taught through them, but that'll be the first time we go through a book in the Old Testament. It's fitting that it would be the first one that lays the foundation theologically for us. And this morning, we're gonna look at Romans chapter 16, beginning in verse one. We're just gonna read down to verse 16, that list of greetings from the Apostle Paul. And before we do read this, let's again go to the Lord and let's pray together that the Lord will bless this to our souls, that we'll be built up and edified in Christ and that we will become better worshipers of our God on account of it. Let's pray. Our Father, we are thankful for every word that you have breathed out, every word you have inspired, every word you speak to us when the scriptures are read. We thank you that this is not the word of men, but it is in truth the word of God, which also works effectually in us who believe. And so, Lord, we pray that we would hear your voice this morning. We pray that you would make us to hear the voice of the Son of God and come forth and live. that you would accomplish all of your purposes in our lives through what is read and proclaimed. We pray that you would make us attentive. We ask our Father that you would sanctify us and build us up, that you would open every blind eye and unstop every deaf ear this morning, that you would give all of us hearts that understand that we might turn and be healed in the Lord Jesus and by your grace. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be pleased to minister to us, we pray. For we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Romans 16, beginning in verse 1, and the Apostle Paul bringing this great letter to a close, now says, I commend to you our sister Phoebe. a servant of the church at Sancria, that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need from you. For she has been a patron of many, and of myself as well. Greet Prisca, who you'll also know as Priscilla, and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risk their necks for my life. to whom not only I give thanks, but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Eponidas, who was the first convert to Christ in Asia. Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me. Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord, greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and my beloved, Stachys. Greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ, greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus. Greet my kinsman, Herodian, greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus. Greet those workers in the Lord, Triphina and Triphosus. Greet the beloved, Persus, who has worked hard in the Lord. Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well. Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobus, Hermes, and the brothers who are with them. Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus, and his sister, and Olympus, and all the saints who are with them. Greet one another with a holy kiss, all the churches of Christ. Greet you. The grass withers, the flower fades. But the Word of God endures forever. Well, one of the things that keeps people from coming to the Lord Jesus, one of the things that is common, a common reason why more people don't turn to Christ in repentance and faith, is that they know that once they do, they will be abandoned by their friends and their loved ones. I have two friends. One is in this congregation. who grew up in a Unitarian home, who when he was converted, his father said to his mother, we've lost our son. We've lost our son. I have another friend who is the missionary we pray for every week in Italy, who was converted out of Roman Catholicism, and when God opened his eyes to see the grace of Christ, and that it wasn't on the basis of his merits and his works, but merely what Jesus had done at the cross, his father said to him, you are a dishonor to me, you are a disgrace to me. Didn't talk to him for years. And that's a common thing. That happens time and time again. And there are multitudes that will not leave their families to go to Jesus Christ. This is why Jesus had to say to his disciples, whoever loves father, mother, wife, son, daughter, sister more than me is not worthy of me. And it's also interesting when Peter and the apostles who had left all and who had given up everything, had given up lucrative businesses in the fishing industry, had given up homes, had left their families to follow the Lord Jesus when he said, follow me, had given up everything. And Peter in that one instance when he says to Jesus, Lord, we've given up everything because others were turning away because they found the calls of Jesus too difficult. And Peter said, Lord, we have left all. What will you give us? And Jesus said that there's no one who has left fathers and mothers and houses and lands and sons and daughters who will not in this life receive back a hundredfold and with persecutions and in the life to come eternal life. And there's something beautiful in the scriptures that you see happening as men and women are brought to saving faith in Jesus that they are brought and probably unaware that it would be such a great family, they are brought into an even greater family than the flesh and blood family that they had valued so much. They are brought into a family that comes from every tongue and tribe and nation and language. They are brought into the greatest family this world has ever known. And the Apostle Paul was one that knew what it was to give up all. In that list in Philippians 3 when he says that he counts all things loss and counts them as rubbish that he may be found in Christ, I think that Paul is including in that all of his old companions, his family that had rejected him, his own countrymen that had rejected him, everything he had found his identity in before he lost, and yet Paul gained the greatest family that this world has ever seen. And it's interesting when we come to a portion of scriptures like this, and the early church theologian John Christostom said that most people foolishly want to rush over this, and they think that this list of names is, he says, superfluous and has no great weight in it. And listen to this, Christostom said, yet gold diggers This is the one time you can use gold diggers properly, spiritually. Gold diggers, he actually says that, are careful about even the little fragments of Scripture. They don't pass over such great cakes of gold, such great bars of gold. And What we're going to see this morning is that the Apostle Paul is telling us about the family that he loves, the family that he's a part of, a family that spans several churches. He's not just writing and telling one church in Rome to greet other people in that church. two or three churches at least mentioned in this passage. And Paul is listing different people from different stages of life. He mentions a woman who serves as his mother spiritually. He mentions his brothers and sisters. He mentions a widow who gives of her money and her time and pours her life out. He mentions a married couple in this portion of scripture that give of their travels and their time in giving all of their service and energy to the Lord Jesus and to the good of his church. I want to read to you something that Eric Alexander notes about this as Paul, and just as a way of preface as Paul is listing these names, one of the things that ought to immediately jump out to you is that Paul is writing about a great family of people God has knit together, and yet it's a family of people that are all very different. Eric Alexander says, what this passage demonstrates to us is that the letter that Paul is writing to the church in Rome is not designed for theological experts or linguistic scholars. That would mean a lot more to you if you read all the commentaries written on Romans. What Eric Alexander says is that when you read this list of names, you realize the letter to Rome was not written to theological experts. It was not written to linguistic scholars or people who are highly trained in theology. The epistle that Paul writes to the Romans is indeed intended as a pastoral letter to the most ordinary people you could have found from every area of society, every sort of background as these people clearly came from. And what Paul is doing is acting as a faithful, diligent, careful pastor to ordinary people. So at the outset, as we come to this, and we see that Paul is talking about his family in Christ, he's talking about all those who he is knit together with in one glorious family in the Lord Jesus. He is writing to very ordinary people. He's not writing to the upper echelon. You'll note if you did a study through this passage that there are 26 names listed. None of them are women. That teaches us that the Lord knits us together in the body and he makes us useful both men and women, slaves and free, widows, married, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, Educated and uneducated, if you say, how did you get that out of this passage? I would note that one of the man's names that I had struggle pronouncing as I read through in verse 15 is Philologus, which means lover of wisdom, probably a very educated person. And then you have other people with names that come from the rural areas and that denote that they were probably growing up on a farm somewhere. You have people from the city and people from the country. You have this massive worldwide body, this massive family of believers to whom Paul is writing, and they come from every walk of life, and many of them are very ordinary, and yet all of them have several things in common. We're gonna see three things this morning that Paul kind of knits together and weaves into the fabric of this final greeting, and those three things are the affection that he has for believers and the believers ought to have for themselves, the identity of believers, from which that affection is derived, and the labor of believers for which that affection is amplified. We'll notice that as Paul starts to talk about the affection that he has for his fellow believers, you'll see down in verse 16 as he gives this greeting, and there's no need for us to talk about what it means to greet someone or to tell someone else to greet other people, but as he tells this church that he knows that there are all these Saints in all these areas of Rome who have come from all different parts of the world. And Paul says to this church, greet them, give them my love. Notice what he says in verse 16, greet one another with a holy kiss. Now there has been much ink spilled over whether we are to go around kissing each other. And I know, I know that many of you revolt at the idea of me coming up and kissing you with a holy kiss. I want to say, if you're one of those people and you are a germaphobe in a highly germified culture as our own, that you'll be happy. The J.B. Philpott, the great paraphrastic translator of the Bible, translates this, a firm handshake. So, a firm handshake. Without getting bogged down about whether we are to obey a holy kiss and whether we can translate that to a firm handshake in our culture, the point is simple. Paul is a man of deep affection for the people of God. Now that's important because some of the people that I know who are most deeply learned and who are given to the deepest theological study are oftentimes the coldest, most austere, and most aloof people I know. I remember as a young Christian, I would go to theological conferences, and one of the things I noticed, and having come out of the world where many people in the world who will hate you and will wish you harm and who don't really care about you, were kinder than ministers that I met. It's a bad testimony. It's a bad testimony to be in the world and to be greeted and welcomed by people in the world that hate Christ, and who really don't care about other people in any true sense of the word, and then to be ushered into the church and to arguably the most biblical manifestation of Christ's church in the world, only to meet ministers that were aloof and cold and standoffish. And I used to tell my friends when I was young, I used to say, I know I know that if we met Paul and John, they would be affectionate. They would be warm. The Apostle John was the Apostle of love. He was the one that said, little children love one another. He was the one that felt so comfortable that he could lay back on the Lord Jesus in brotherly affection. The Apostle Paul was such a man. He was not cold. He was not stern. He was not legal in his spirit. As strong and bold and outspoken and tenacious as he was in the calling to which he was called, he was gentle and humble and meek and warm and loving. Only a man who has that kind of affection can say, greet one another with a holy kiss. And then notice how he speaks with affection about each one of these. He talks affectionately about what each one has done and how it's benefited others and how it's helped others and how grateful he is. There's an affection in the gratefulness. You know, one of the things that serves to make us affectionate people is to recognize how much we've been benefited by others in the body. And I actually think that those who live in the body and who are in the church who are least affectionate are the most unthankful. They're the most turned in on themselves. And they fail to see all the ways that they've been blessed by others, all the ways that others have ministered to them and served and the ways they've been partakers with others in this glorious fellowship. And so the first thing that Paul tells us and the first thing that we learn as we look at this section is that there is a warmth and an affection. Notice that Paul will go down and he will talk about it in the sense of them being a family. And he'll talk about my kinsmen. He personalizes all of these things. Notice that he says in verse 11, greet my kinsmen, Herodian. Notice in verse 13, greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well. Paul has personalized his role in the body in relationship to others. You know, it's interesting to me that I often feel like I have to preach to myself and to others that we need to be living together. We need to be living in community with one another because we've been joined together in community with one another. And that's odd because we don't have to do that with our families. No one has to tell you, you need to be living with your wife and your children. No one has to tell believers generally, you need to be spending time with your family. There's a naturalness, there's something, and I read a list like this, I read the apostles setting out these things, and these things are things that have seemed to have naturally surfaced. that the Apostle is saying all these things have been happening and all of these Christians from all these different walks of life and all these different locations who have nothing in common except the Lord Jesus, they are all serving one another and he is longing to express his love and affection for that. He's not chiding them. He's not telling them to do more. He's not telling them, why don't you want to be together? There is an endemic problem in our day in the church in America where we are so individualized and we are so bent on going whatever direction we want that we cannot enter into this experience. We cannot enter. This experience is rare and it should be the norm. It should be the norm. We shouldn't even be saying, why is this not normal? We should be saying, think about this church over here and the way the saints have ministered to us and the way these saints have ministered to these saints in this body and the way that gospel ministry has been fueled by these churches and happening time and time again because that was the norm and it happened naturally and Paul is thanking them and expressing gratitude. He's sending his greetings. He has no agenda. He's not trying to get a greater hearing from anyone. He is saying, pass on my love to all those who have loved me and loved each other. It's a glorious picture of the Christian church. I actually think what Chris Ostrom says in that second to last sermon in his Roman series about these nuggets in this section, that's one of the big ones. It's one of the big nuggets. It's one of the most beautiful pictures of affectionate life together in the body of Christ. Secondly, Paul will weave together in this section, as you look at this list of names, he will weave together the identity of believers. This is something that years ago I was reading through Romans, jumped out at me, and I thought, isn't that marvelous? I had never seen it before. You're tempted, I think, to just read through it. It looks like a catalog of names, and let's just get on with these names. And people read it the way they read the genealogies. They read it thoughtlessly. They don't think there are theological depths here. And while Paul is not giving us propositional truth. He's not teaching us propositional truth the way he did throughout the rest of the letter. Paul is teaching us remarkable truths about our identity as those who have been redeemed by Jesus through his death and resurrection. Now note what Paul does. Paul mentions 10 times in 26 references to individuals the words in Christ or in the Lord. Notice there he tells us in verse 2 that the church in Rome was to welcome Phoebe in the Lord. Notice verse 3, greet Priscilla and Aquila my fellow workers in Christ Jesus. Notice verse 6, Mary who worked hard for you, greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles and they were, here it is, in Christ before me. Notice verse 8, Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. Notice verse 9, Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ. Verse 10, greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ. Almost every person that Paul greets in this letter, he greets on the basis that they are in Christ. They're in union with the Lord Jesus. They have believed into him. I think verse 7 is very telling. Notice what he says there. Greet Andronicus and Junia. They were known to all the apostles. And then notice this phrase. They were in Christ before me. Now, the Bible talks about union with Christ in three ways. The scriptures say that God chose us in Christ before the foundations of the world, that before you ever existed, before you ever breathed one breath of air, you were in the eternal decree of God the Father, and he chose his people in Christ, Paul says, Ephesians 1, 4, before the foundations of the world. So union with Christ begins with God the Father choosing his people in the Son before the foundation of the world. And then the scriptures tell us that when Jesus died, we died in union with him. Paul will say in Romans 6 that you died with him, you've been raised with him. That when Jesus walked the face of the earth, Every one of His people who were chosen in Him were represented by Him. When He hung on the cross, we hung on the cross with Him. That's how the death of the Son of God 2,000 years ago can impact your life today. That's how Paul can say you died with Him on the cross. When He died, you died if you were chosen in Him. I've told you that story about John Gerstner reflecting on the hymn, were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? And Gerstner said, you bet you were there. You were hanging on the tree with him. It's the only way that you can have your sins forgiven is if Christ was punished in your person. Calvin will actually use that language that Jesus Christ was punished in your person on the cross. And so union with Christ is happening every second that Jesus walks the face of the earth. And as he ascends to the Father, he brings us with him. He's representing us as the great high priest took the names of the children of Israel into the most holy place with him, representing them. Jesus takes all those united with him in his life and death and resurrection into the presence of the Father. But here's what Paul says in verse 7. He says that Andronicus and Junia were in Christ before me. That means that in time and space, when someone is not a believer, even if they are going to believe, they are not in Christ until they repent and believe. It means that at some point in time, something has to happen for you to be united to the Lord Jesus. It means that at some point in time, you have to repent of your sins and believe into union with Jesus. The language of believing in the Lord Jesus Christ doesn't carry with it in the New Testament the idea of just believing on something out there that happened. It's actually, and I think would be better translated in some places, believing into union with Christ. That when I believe, I believe into union with Him forever. I am forever united with Jesus. Everything that is His is now mine. One of my best friends tells his congregation a story about my wedding. The day before my wedding, Anna had gotten a new car not long before, and all of my groomsmen were outside with me, and I had driven the car to the church where we were having a rehearsal. And my friend asked me, whose car is that? And I said, mine tomorrow. And he tells his congregation, that's how you should think about union with Jesus. All that's true of Jesus is yours if you are united to him. Husbands and wives are united. All that they have, they share. It's theirs together. It should be theirs. All that Jesus has is yours. This is why the Apostle Paul wrote the letter he wrote to all these people, because the most important thing about every one of these people was that they were in Christ. It's remarkable. It's as if Paul can't even list off these people. It's remarkable that Paul can even list all these people. If you realize how far and wide they're coming from and he's never been to this church. He hasn't even met some of these people personally and yet he knows all of them. He tells us later that he's praying for them. He's praying personally for them. What would lead a man to pray for people the way he does? What would lead the great apostle to list off all these things in writing to this church except he understood that to be in Christ was everything. It's everything. To not be in Christ is all loss. You're either in Christ or you're in Adam. To be in Christ is everything. It means everything. And all that Paul is doing is driven by the fact he can't list one of these people hardly without saying, she's in the Lord, she's in Christ Jesus, he's in Christ Jesus. Notice also that he lists other identities of the believers in this list, and I think this is remarkable. After listing that they are in Christ, Paul refers to believers in this section on numerous occasions as servants. Saints, fellow workers, beloved, approved, chosen brethren. If you go through, that would be a good exercise. Look at all the different titles he gives them. And he's not giving them the titles and saying, well, this one over here, he's a servant, and this one over here, he's chosen, and this one over here, she's beloved. He is randomly scattering all these titles by which the believers should be thinking about themselves. Paul thought about every believer he knew. under the rubric of what these titles meant. He thought about the saints as servants of God. That's how he listed himself at the beginning of this letter. He said, Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ. He repeatedly says that they're servants. Notice the first verse, I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church. in Sancria, that Paul saw that there was bound up in the Christian life is a life of serving the church the way that Christ did. You know, we love that verse that we read this morning during the time of meditation where Jesus says, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many. I love that verse. It's one of the clearest explanations of the gospel from Jesus himself. His death is a ransom for many. But the point of Jesus saying that was actually not to teach that first and foremost. It was to tell the disciples that they ought to become servants as he became a servant. It was actually a rebuke, a corrective, to them arguing who was the greatest and who was going to be the greatest. And Jesus tells them in a sense that the whole of the Christian life is summed up in this. It is a life of self-sacrificial service. I love the way that Paul talks about Priscilla and Aquila in verse 4. Notice this. And I want us to think this morning. Could this ever be said of us? They risked their necks. They risked their necks. They put their life on the line for the Apostle and for the churches. They risked their very lives in service. And so Paul is letting them know all these different identities. They were servants, and then he says they were saints. That's one of his favorite statements, that anyone who believes in the Lord Jesus is a saint. They are not patron saints. It's funny, there's actually a patron mentioned in this section. Phoebe was a patron. She used her wealth very freely in service to the church, but they were all saints. Anyone who is called by the name of Christ, anyone who's been sanctified by Jesus, anyone who's died with Jesus and risen with him are saints, holy ones, set apart. Paul says that they are saints. He says they are fellow workers. He says they are beloved. They are beloved. He says they're approved, they're chosen, and they're brethren, they're family. Now, The application of this is simple. When you wake up in the morning and you think about your spiritual condition that day, and you think about all that you have to do, and you think about all the work that you have to do, and you think about those things that tend to tempt you to anxiety, and you think about all the relationship strains that you have, and you think about making ends meet, and you think about all the things that might rush through your head in the morning, do you stop and think I am a servant, I am a saint, I am a worker in Christ's church, I am beloved of God, I am approved by God in Christ, I have been chosen by God, and I am one of the brethren in a great multitude of brethren in the church of Jesus. I think Paul would have us think, I need to think of myself in these ways. I need to think of others in the body. Now, whenever I start to come to a list like this and I think, how do I view others in the body, the first thought I have is that I'm ashamed. I don't look at every other professing believer in Bible-believing churches, in gospel-preaching churches, as these things. We tend to see the flaws. We tend to see the things we don't like. We tend to fixate on the things we would change in other people if we could. We tend to think, well, what is this person's motives? And we dissect. By the way, we dissect everybody. We do. Now, if we're going to spend all that mental energy, and a lot of times sinful activity, dissecting other people in the body, let's dissect them the way God dissects them and says, this is what my people are. This is what a church is. This is what believers are. That's how Paul viewed people. It was so natural. Paul viewed believers under all of those things. Well, thirdly, notice that what Paul does is he sets out the laborers of a lot of these different individuals. Notice what he says about Phoebe there first. I commend to you our sister, Phoebe, a servant of the church of Sancria, that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need for you, for she has been a patron of many, and myself also. Now, most scholars and most commentators believe that Phoebe was taking the letter that we're reading, the letter we've been preaching through for a year, she was taking it to the Romans from Corinth, where Paul was writing, to the church in Rome. She is the letter carrier. Paul calls her a servant. Some people have made a big deal and said she was a deacon. John Calvin, I think rightly, points out that Phoebe was probably one of those widows who was wealthy, who held sort of an office of widow that Paul seems to intimate. There was an office. Women could be taken into the number of this office of women that had time and energy to commit themselves fully to the work of the Lord. And what he tells us is not just that Phoebe has been a servant and that she's poured herself out in Sancrea, maybe opening her home and ministering to the saints, but she's willing to make that long and arduous journey all the way to Rome. She's willing to put herself in harm's way to get this letter into the hands of the Romans. And notice what Paul says, she has been a patron of many and myself also. It's interesting, Paul's essentially saying here is an extremely wealthy woman who has just given her money generously to ministry. She has used her wealth generously. How much every one of us in this room needs to hear that? I need to hear that. All of us need to hear that. It is so hard for us to give our money generously. It is so hard. I had a conversation with someone this week who, in the course of our conversation, and someone that's not very well off, said that they could not come to church because they make too much money working on the weekends. And as I listened to that person, I thought, well, they didn't have a tremendous amount of possessions. They had a heart they couldn't let go of what they deemed to be their strong tower. That's what that betrays. It's not too harsh of me to say that that betrays that. Their strong tower was, I need this money. And the Bible is everywhere saying your life doesn't consist in that. Use it for the Lord. Use it to bless others. God will provide. Trust the Lord. Here's a woman, Phoebe, who gave generously with her time and her travels and her finances. Notice secondly that Paul tells us about Priscilla and Aquila. He calls them my fellow workers in Christ Jesus who risked their necks for my life. to whom not only I gave thanks, but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well." Here is a husband and a wife, and interesting, it leads with the wife. I've always found that fascinating. It's Priscilla and Aquila, and in Acts, when they're teaching Apollos more accurately, the way of the baptism of Christ in comparison to the baptism of John. They are teaching and it seems that maybe the juxtaposition of the names shows that the wife is the one leading in some ways in zeal in encouraging them as a couple to be involved in ministry. We are told about this couple that they went from Rome to Corinth to Ephesus back to Corinth and now they're back in Rome. They've traveled, they put their neck on the line for the church. They have not thought of their own safety and protection. This is a remarkable couple. God actually highlights them a number of times in the New Testament to be an example to us. A remarkable couple. And then notice what Paul says, and I'll spare you all the things that are taught in here, but notice finally I'll just point out that Paul talks in verse 13 about the mother of Rufus. Now, almost everybody's agreed that Rufus is father. Here's a riddle for you. Why is Rufus named in the book of Mark and in the letter to the Romans? Well, his father was Simon the Cyrene, who carried the cross of Jesus behind him. He was an important man in the church. His dad had carried the cross and helped the Lord Jesus to the place where Jesus had been crucified. And notice what Paul says, he doesn't tell us much about Rufus, except that he was chosen. Maybe he had a debate with Paul about election and finally came around to the truth of the scriptures. And Paul says, he's chosen in the Lord. And then notice he says, and his mother, who has been a mother to me as well. One of the great questions that we all have to ask is, besides being a father or a mother to our own children, who else are we fathers and mothers to? Here's an example of a woman that was not the Apostle Paul's flesh-and-blood mother, but she had so cared for him that Paul could say, she has been a mother to me. The only mother we ever hear Paul had. We don't know anything about Paul's biological Jewish mother, but we know that Rufus's mother had become a mother to him as well because they had the same Lord, the same Christ, the same Heavenly Father. I'll spare you all the other nuggets of gold that you can dig out of this on your own. But what I want to say to us this morning is that we are to emulate what we see in this final section in Romans. We are to pray that God gives us hearts of affection for anyone who is truly in union with Jesus. We are to long to be an affectionate people. To all believers, no matter where they're from, no matter what their backgrounds, no matter who they are, we are to honor them. You know, one of the things I find very interesting is that the Apostle Paul is the one who says that only men can teach and only men can be elders, but Paul is anything but chauvinistic. Paul is honoring women in this chapter. He is honoring them. He is exalting them for their service in the church. He is essentially saying, without them, the church is not the church. Without their labors and their service and their labors of love, the church is not the church. He is showing affection by honoring the saints for their labors. We ought to be a congregation that ought to be able to say, look at how this person's labored for Christ. I'm grateful for this person, for all their sacrifice, for all their time, for all their giving, for all their energy. We ought to be people of whom that's said. We need to ask ourselves if others viewed us. in this church and neighboring churches, would they say about us any of the things that they say about that catalog of individuals in Romans 16? Secondly, we need to remember our identity, that we are in Christ. We have been united to Jesus Christ. We have died with him. We have been raised with him. Everything that's his is ours, that we ought to think of ourselves properly. I want to challenge you this week to start asking yourselves when you get up, how do I think about myself today? Is my identity my job, what I'm going to accomplish, how much money I'm going to accrue for myself, how many experiences I'm going to gain, or is my identity that I'm in Christ, beloved, I'm approved, I'm chosen, I am a servant of God? That is my identity. And we are to look at each other that way. Finally, I want to challenge all of us to think through this list of laborers and ask how we are laboring in the body. How are we risking our lives and our necks for the sake of the gospel? Oh, that it would be said of us that we risked our necks. You know the hymn, take my life and let it be. We sing that and we like a lot of those verses until we come to that last line, take my silver and my gold. Not a mite would I withhold. And no matter how many times we sing that hymn, there are those lines in that hymn. And we know in the deep recesses of our hearts, this is not true of me. I have not truly said, Lord, take my life, take my hand, take my days, take my time, take all of it, take my silver and my gold, let it be used in sacrificial praise and service for the sake of your name. Let him who has ears to hear, let him hear this morning what the Spirit says to the church. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we are humbled under this glorious list of godly women and men who you raised up in that first century to be examples and to be servants, to pour out their lives and their time and their bank accounts in service for you. And Father, we are humbled because we know how often we have failed to labor in self-sacrificial labor. We know how often we have failed to think of ourselves and others in the body properly. And we know, our Father, how much lack of affection and love we have had. And so, Lord Jesus, we ask that you would stir up in us all of these things, that you would be renewing our minds and our hearts, and that you would be transforming our lives. We pray that you would send the Holy Spirit to take these things. and to apply them to us this morning. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.