Welcome to Marscast, the official podcast of Mid-America Reform Seminary, where faculty and friends explore the depths of faith, unpack biblical truth, and engage with the critical issues of our time. I'm Jared Luchibor, Director of Marketing. Thank you for tuning in. We're continuing our series highlighting past plenary sessions from the Center for Missions and Evangelism as we look forward to our 2025 conference on October 3 through 4. And so today's episode is going to feature a message from our 2023 Center for Missions and Evangelism conference. Dr. Marcus Menninger challenges us to see Paul's epistle to the Romans not only as a masterpiece of theology, but also as a missionary manifesto. Written to prepare the Roman Church to become a sending base for Paul's mission to Spain, Dr. Minninger will help us see how Romans calls us to recognize that deep theology and faithful mission are not rivals, but partners. Here's Dr. Minninger now. Privileged to have a diverse group here, seminary students who thought they were getting out of class, but you will be examined on this material later. but area pastors and members of congregations and even people from a broader distance than that, some alumni, lots of folks together. It's wonderful to have this time to step back and think about a crucial topic, the outreach of the church. I'm going to do so from a little bit of a different angle this morning. teach about the whole letter to the Romans, so we have a little bit to cover. We won't cover all of that, of course, but I do want to reflect with you on this letter that is of such crucial importance to Reformed faith, used constantly. We'll reflect on that a little bit. But something about it often neglected, that being its relationship to missions. Let's open this morning's time together with reading some of Romans. We're going to read together. I'll use the Pew Bible since it's there, that particular translation. We're going to read Romans 1, 1 through 17, and then we're going to read part of Romans 15 as well. These are such crucial parts of the letter, even though they're often not the focus of people's time in Romans. So I'm going to read Romans 1, 1 through 17 first. This is the word of our God. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God, the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures regarding his son who, as to his human nature, was a descendant of David and who, through the spirit of holiness, was declared with power to be the son of God by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him and for his namesake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. To all in Rome who are beloved by God and called to be saints, grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness. How constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times, and I pray that now, at last, by God's will, the way may be open for me to come to you. I long to see you, so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong. That is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I planned many times to come to you but have been prevented from doing so until now in order that I might have a harvest among you just as I have had among the other Gentiles. I am obligated both to Greeks and to non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome. I'm not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith. From first to last, just as it is written, the righteous will live by faith. Let me just comment one thing very briefly. This translation in verse 14 says, I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks. It would more literally read Greeks and Barbarians. We'll come back to that later. And then if we turn with me over to chapter 15 of Romans, after all of the great content that Paul labors through for 14 and a half other chapters, we come to this in Romans chapter 15 beginning at verse 14. You'll see a number of common themes here, which is what we'll want to reflect on together. In other words, a number of things that Paul says here that he also said in the passage that we just read, so you can listen for those. I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness and complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another. I have written you quite boldly on some points, as if to remind you of them again because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles, with the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done, by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit. So, from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation. Rather, as it is written, those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand. This is why I have often been hindered from coming to you. But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have been longing for many years to see you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to visit you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there after I have enjoyed your company for a while. Now, however, I'm on my way to Jerusalem in the service of the saints there. For Macedonia and Achaia were pleased to make a contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem. They were pleased to do it, and indeed they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews' spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings. So, After I have completed this task and have made sure that they have received this fruit, I will go to Spain and visit you on the way. I know that when I come to you, I will come in the full measure of the blessing of Christ. I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there so that by God's will I may come to you with joy and together with you be refreshed. The God of peace be with you all. Amen. Well friends, this morning our text for consideration in some ways, as I said before, is really the entire book of Romans. Because what we're going to be reflecting on here together is really the relationship between the content of Romans in general and the purpose of that letter which is reflected in what we just read. The stated purpose. Why was Romans actually written? Now the first of those, the content of Romans in general, is very familiar to those of us who are in the Reformed tradition and of course other Christian traditions as well. This fact, how constantly we use Romans, stood out to me when I was doing my dissertation work in Romans. And virtually every Lord's Day, when I went to hear someone preach, they would make reference to Romans, which then, of course, would send me back in my mind to my week's work. There was no rest for the weary on the Lord's Day when you're working on Romans, because everybody keeps using it, and maybe misusing it at times. We're steeped in it often. It's one of those parts of Scripture that we traverse for many different reasons. Surely Romans is one of the books that we cite most often in our theological tradition, and of course for good reason. Yet at the same time, as familiar as the content of Romans itself is to us, its exact occasion and intended purpose, I think, are significantly less familiar. And that's why I had us read the passages that we read from Romans 1 and Romans 15. Those two passages frame the entire content of the letter. The body, the meat that's there. And they tell us why Paul wrote that meat. Why he formulated that particular content in the way that he did. In this way they place the whole of the letter in a context. Why does Romans exist at all? Why does it say the kinds of things it says rather than other things? Rather than the things that are said in 1 Corinthians or 2 Corinthians or whichever other book of the Bible. Now let's do a little mental exercise here. The book of Romans is so familiar to us. I wonder what most comes to your mind when you think about it. I'm sure many of us here could scan through a good deal of the content of Romans in our minds. From its opening announcement of the gospel as the power of God into salvation for all who believe, we read that part in 116. It's very memorable, distinctive description of natural or general revelation as well as God's wrath upon unbelief in 1.18-32 Of course, often cited these days on topics about homosexuality Key proof texts throughout 1 through 3 about total depravity, about universal sinfulness of all mankind, about the propitiation of God's wrath climaxing there in a particular way in Chapter 3. Key proof texts about justification by faith alone, not least in Chapter 4. The federal theology of the two Adams in Chapter 5. The insistence that justification should not lead to antinomianism or lawlessness or disobedience in chapter 6. And yet, of course, paired with that, the insistence that the law itself, in itself, is not able to sanctify us in chapter 7. A well-known conflict between flesh and spirit in chapter 8, as well as such wonderful, rich reflections on Christian sonship and Christian assurance, Christian hope in that same chapter. Paul's depiction of God's sovereignty in both election and reprobation in chapter 9, his insistence on the one way of salvation for both Jews and Gentiles, and his discussion of the relationship of God's promises to Israel of old to the work of the New Covenant ministry all throughout chapters 9 through 11. Probably the clearest description that we have are one of them of the legitimacy of civil government. In chapter 13, Christian submission to it, and also probably the clearest description we have of the topic of adiaphora, or topics about which Christians have freedom, things on topics about which we're neither directly commanded nor forbidden to do certain things, right? Chapter 14, foods, days, Paul talks about the freedom that we have in Christ there. on into chapter 15 as well. These, I would suggest, are the kinds of things that we often go to Romans for that tend most readily to come to our mind when we think of this letter. All of it wonderful, rich content for Paul's original audience and for us. Yet I want to ask you today if when you think of Romans, you also typically think of another topic that I didn't mention in that survey of its contents, which is the topic of missions. Do you think of Romans and missions together? There's a good chance that you do not, but we're here today to reflect on the great missionary task of the church, both at home and abroad, How we can be more faithfully involved in that task in a confused world, an increasingly confused world. There are many, many challenges that this confused and hurting world poses to us as we reach out to it with the gospel. As we think about those challenges, I want us to reflect together on how Romans provides some antidotes to some of the problems or challenges that we face. in the task of missions. Particularly in this way because Romans as one of the most theologically robust books in all of scripture is also indelibly and throughout all of its pages a missionary document. A document written in order to prepare for, make possible, motivate, and guide a new missionary effort to an unreached part of the ancient world. That is what the passages we just read said. As we think about this, I hope we will be impressed by the raw dimensions and characteristics of this letter as a missionary document. what its very nature and design as a letter teach us, how this rich, nuanced, profound, lengthy theological document is all of those things precisely for the express purpose of facilitating missions within the Church of Jesus Christ. It's important to appreciate how Romans joins Two things that the church over the centuries and certainly the church in our own day has often had a difficult time joining or even seeing a relationship between or to be honest has seen in conflict with one another. Deep, nuanced, carefully, painstakingly worked out theology and missionary outreach to a depraved world. With the exception of verses 16 and 17 in chapter 1, the parts of Romans that we read earlier are generally not among the most well-known or well-used texts in Romans, are they? On reflection, though, they are still some of the most important passages in Romans. The parts we read are some of the most important for understanding the document in its entirety. We would all generally agree, I'm sure, that knowing who wrote a document, when it was written, whom it was written to, why it was written, all these things affect how we understand it, how we even get what was said, not misinterpret, And then why it was said. What's the intended impact of what was said? Yet despite our knowing that, perhaps nowhere else in Scripture are those sorts of things about context more frequently and sort of even systematically overlooked than when people read Romans. Part of the reason for that is Romans is often taken to be something of a treatise, something of a systematic theology unto itself. an abstract summary of theology, a treasure trove, therefore, of theological proof texting. But as the last five decades of Romans scholarship have emphasized, and I think correctly so, viewing Romans as a generalized, situation-unspecific document is inadequate. In fact, it goes against what the document itself tells you. Romans is theologically extremely deep, but it is certainly not context-free. To the contrary, Romans itself says in so many words that it is written within and designed to address a very specific people, within a specific context, and as such the entirety of it, including the central body of it, is pastorally shaped for its audience. their circumstances, Paul's circumstances, and what immediately lies before them in the task of the Church of Jesus Christ. And it's shaped for that audience, as Paul shows, particularly because he wants them to help him in a new missionary endeavor in Spain. Paul wants to come to the Romans. stay with them for a time, impart a spiritual gift to them as he says, meaning his own teaching, establish a relationship with them through that teaching so that they will then be comfortable and in fact want to be the administrative center and the supporting church for him to go to a difficult and distant land, Spain to the West. Now the fact that Romans is a missionary document is indicated by many, many things in the letter, but especially by the parts we read in Romans 1 and 15. And when we look at those sections, we're going to just dive in a little bit here. We can buckle up for some exegetical stuff. We need to notice as readers of those sections, Romans 1 and Romans 15, the portions that we read, an extended set of similarities between the passages, an extended set of verbal and thematic parallels, where Paul says the same thing or a very similar thing in both places. Let me list nine things for you that he says. Nine things that echo from chapter 1 to chapter 15, and you're meant to see the connection. Paul, in both places, uses the phrase, the gospel of God, which is a very unusual way of speaking for him. He doesn't usually use that phrase. He uses it in 1.1 and 15.16. Secondly, he talks about the distinct grace given to him specifically to serve the Gentiles in 1.5, actually several other places as well, as well as 15, 15, and 16. He talks thirdly about the specific purpose of that ministry to the Gentiles, to bring about the obedience of faith. He talks about, fourthly, his awareness of the strength of the Roman churches in both places. Fifthly, he talks about his desire to visit Rome. Sixthly, he talks about reasons for his previous absence from Rome, gives some explanation why that has been so. Seventh, he talks about his desire to impart something to the Romans, but also to receive something back from them. He sort of tiptoes into that topic in chapter 1, verses 11 and 12. And then he comes back to it in 1515, 23, 28, and 32. And to be honest, some translations make that a bit clearer than the translation that we read this morning. But it goes from an emphasis that is a little bit veiled to an emphasis that is very, very clear. Paul is seeking to establish a partnering relationship that the Roman churches come to have zeal for what he's about to do and be the ones who help enable him to do it. Eighth, he talks in both sections about the hope of salvation for both Jews and Gentiles and a defense of God's uprightness or justice in giving salvation to both. Ninth, in both chapters, he talks about his commitment to minister to all kinds of people, including the barbarians in 114, including the Spanish, named specifically in 1524 and 28. And just to be clear, the Spanish would be a chief example in the ancient world of people that the Romans would consider barbarians. A cultural backwater of uneducated and uncouth people. Taken together, these and other parallels between Romans 1 and Romans 15 create what we call this elaborate, multifaceted inclusio. For those of you who want a Latin term, inclusio, or to put it differently, it puts big brackets around the whole thing. In other words, it has a context. It says everything in between 1, 1 through 17 and 15, 14 and following. And then there's three subordinate goals that he has that feed into that one purpose. And I want to explain these to you. Firstly then, the one main purpose is, as I've said, Paul's desire to go to Spain after Rome. and his understanding that he needs administrative and financial support to do that. And Rome is perfectly positioned, geographically and financially and otherwise, to be the ones who do that. Many statements in Romans 1 and 15 communicate this purpose, but just to go back to one of them, or two of them, rather, in chapter 15, 23, and 24, in case you missed it. But now, since I no longer have any room for work in these regions out in the east, and since I have longed for many years to come to you, I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain, and to be helped on my journey there by you once I have enjoyed your company for a while. And then 1528. when therefore I have completed this trip to Jerusalem and have delivered to them what has been collected, I will leave for Spain by way of you." That's why Paul writes. That's the big purpose. On the other hand, along with that, As we read Romans, we see that there's several other subsidiary goals that Paul has and has to have if that one big purpose is going to be achieved. There are three major obstacles that Paul faces as he tries to win the Romans' support for a cause, for a mission to Spain. If he truly is to win their support and if that support is actually going to pan out to be helpful in the way that it's needed, there are three big problems to overcome. These then comprise the subordinate goals of Paul's writing to the Romans that support the one big purpose. The first problem is this. The Roman Christians lack clear and accurate knowledge about Paul's own message. How are they going to want to send him out if they're unsure or maybe even have doubts about his message? This lack of knowledge is partly due to the fact that he hasn't visited them before, as he mentions several times, so they've not heard him preach. But it's more than that. This issue of lack of clear and accurate knowledge about his message is compounded by the clear presence of unfair criticisms of Paul's preaching that the Romans are quite evidently aware of and tempted to believe or be drawn in by. Paul talks about this directly in chapter 3, verses 7 to 8, and so Paul then has to bring about clarity, clear up the confusion. There's been some summaries of his message that he calls blasphemous or untrue and unfair. But if the Romans believe those summaries of his message, then they wouldn't be very motivated to send him out. And so Paul sets out in this letter to introduce numerous aspects of his teaching. enabling the Romans to have a clear, accurate understanding of the message that he would send, that he would give, while there or elsewhere, and hopefully then get behind his work. This helps explain this particular goal. Paul introducing his message in various ways helps explain Romans' systematic nature, its logical progression, and its breadth of topics. Paul does hit on a very wide-ranging set of teachings in Romans for this reason. Let me tell you in a fairly widespread way what it is that I teach and preach. Along with that though, he's not just introducing himself, he's defending himself. Notice how somewhat negative, in a sense, the opening of the body of the letter is in 116. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. Why would Paul be ashamed? Evidently, he has to clear this up. Am I not going to preach in Rome yet because I'm hiding something, or there's something sketchy going on, or I know my message wouldn't go over well there, and so I back off, right? Paul says, no, I'm not ashamed. Romans then introduces much of Paul's teaching. Secondly, the Romans not only lack clarity about Paul's message, but they also lack internal unity with one another as a church. This is very clear in chapters 14 and 15, the parts that we did not read. And that lack of unity internally would make them a very poor sending church for missions if it's not rectified. Chapters 14 and 15 make quite plain that the Roman Christians are experiencing internal division. You might remember that. The weak Christians, so-called in Rome, are judging the strong, and the strong are despising the weak. There's all this division. Paul says, basically in so many words, it's not a necessary division or good one. But regardless of exactly what's happening there, a significantly divided church is certainly not a stable sending church. More than that, though, the specific topic that divides them, which has to do with what foods to eat or not, what days to observe or not, probably revolves around a Jew-Gentile question. That the weak are observing certain Jewish strictures on eating and on days and believe everybody should do that. And so in the midst of all that, they don't have a, they and the strong both, lack a proper view of Jews and Gentiles in relationship to God's own new covenant work. But if they're divided in that way, then how are they really going to want to go to an even worse group of Gentiles in Spain and bring them into the body of Christ also? So Paul needs to clarify his message, but he also needs to seek to bring about greater unity within the Roman congregations themselves. Thirdly, there's another problem. The Roman Church not only lacked clear information about Paul's message and also was divided within itself, but it was steeped in its own culture in some very diabolical ways, ways that undercut the Gospel. Specifically, as you read its pages, you see the Roman Church was steeped in an externalism, looking on outward appearance, and a competitive hierarchicalism about greater and lesser kinds of people. Here we need to think not only about the Romans' relationship to Paul, which was the first problem, or their relationship to each other, which is the second problem, but their prospective relationship to the Spanish colonies. We can remember that Paul's not only concerned for the topic of Jew-Gentile relations in Romans, but he also clearly announces his concern for Gentile-Gentile relations in Romans. We read that in chapter 1, verse 14. Paul says he's under obligation to take the gospel not only to the wise Gentiles, meaning Greeks, but the foolish Gentiles, which he calls barbarians. I should note here that the wisdom in the ancient world is always correlated with ability or power. Wisdom gives power, strength. And so the Romans, who were at the center of power in the first century world, the capital of the ancient world, would naturally, of course, see themselves as wise, even just because of that. occupying a position of superiority compared to all the others in the empire, and especially superior to the ignorant and unsophisticated people in the uneducated, uncouth provinces that Rome had subjected militarily. Roman military conquest showed Roman superiority. And that was not lost on the Christians in Rome. And so if the Roman Christians cannot even accept each other without major division, how could they be in a position to reach out, to accept, to have fellowship with converts from the unwashed masses in a provincial backwater, a seedy backwater, an undignified place? Spain. Well, they had to learn to give up external comparisons and hierarchical competitive ways of thinking and acting and living. And if they can't give that up, why would they even want to go to Spain or for Paul to go to Spain? What would they do other than bring more condescension and division once they got to Spain and once there were converts in Spain? They're divided amongst themselves. Is that going to get better when they deal with people even lower on the social and economic totem pole or ladder? And so we see that we cannot read Romans, we need to read Romans rather in relationship to both this one large overarching purpose of missions to Spain and these three subordinate goals that help support that purpose. And when you do that, you can see topic after topic after topic in Romans itself that makes more sense. Why Paul talks about the particular things he talks about there, you think about another letter like Ephesians. Ephesians definitely summarizing a lot of doctrine, right? Read Ephesians, read Romans, they're very different. Paul can summarize the gospel in a lot of different ways. So why does he say the particular sorts of things by way of summary and defense that he does in this letter? Well, there's all kinds of depths that we can go into here. Let me give some examples just to give you a sense of what I mean. If we think about Paul's first goal of introducing and defending his message, we not only note how he begins on that defensive note, 116, I'm not ashamed, But he also then goes to great lengths subsequently to show that his message does not implicate God in unfairness. There's a major topic of theodicy in Romans, defense of God. Not because God needs our defense. It's really defense of Paul's message in relationship to God. In other words, what Paul's message says about God. God's fairness, His consistency, His faithfulness between what He's doing now in the New Covenant period and what He's done before in the Old Covenant period. The propriety of God as He reaches out to both Jew and Gentile and offers both free grace in the Gospel. Is that okay? Paul defends the Christian gospel with regard to the topic of obedience and the necessity of obedience. We're not bringing these Gentile unbelievers, sinners, scandalous sinners, some of them, into the body of Christ in order for them not to be transformed and changed, in order for them not to learn to obey the Lord, but in order for them to learn it. We do not say, let us sin in order that grace may abound. Far be it from us to say that. Paul defends his gospel regarding God's faithfulness to his covenant promises to Israel. These and other things designed to defend against misperception. And so again, as you look at that defensive note, that clearing up confusion note, it makes a lot of sense of a lot of what you find in the letter. Or again, if you read Romans with regard to concern for internal unity among the Romans themselves, You notice lots and lots of things. Paul not only says that the gospel is God's power and salvation for the Jew first and also to the Greek, which we read in 116, but then he goes on to show God's equal treatment of Jews and Gentiles in both sin and salvation very, very clearly in Romans 1-3. He addresses the peculiar place of the Jewish people within redemptive history, Romans 9-11. He enjoins unity among the diverse parts of one body in chapter 12. And of course, he directly addresses the weak and the strong in 14 and 15, and those are just a few of the ones I had time to put in here. And then thirdly, and this is probably the most pervasive, if you think about the topics of externalism and hierarchicalism, right? That third problem. And you say, why is Paul saying what he says? You see its connection everywhere. I have a great book that I could sell you about that in Romans 1 through 3. But really the book is about the topic of revelation in Romans 1 through 3, and one of the things it's talking about is the key category of what's hidden and what's visible in God's purposes right now, in our era of redemptive history, And the hidden part is what will only be revealed later. And the hidden part includes saying that what is essential both to the true identity of a Jew who loves the Lord and to a Christian more broadly, meaning a Gentile Christian, is hidden. Read chapter 2, 28 and 29. It's not flesh circumcision, but heart circumcision that properly defines a Jew whom God praises. In other words, a Jew in right relationship to God. It's something hidden. You read chapter 8. The sons of God, meaning Christians of any ethnicity, will only be revealed in the future. We will only become visible because What is essential to God's people in the present era is not something visible but hidden that would just be a small piece of that theme. Or to get more concrete, God doesn't really care very much in one sense whether you eat certain things or not. You have freedom in that. Why? Because as chapter 14 verse 17 says, the kingdom of God is not of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and joy and peace in the Holy Ghost. And you should read that and you should, among other things, say the kingdom of God is not about external divisions between people groups, but about a spiritual reality, righteousness, joy, and peace in the Holy Spirit that unites them all in the gospel. These and other ways then detail after detail of this letter makes clear that we understand its content best when we read it as an effort to transform the Roman Church's relationship to Paul, to each other, and to the dominant culture around them, all for the sake of a mission to Spain. And it's so intricate and detailed the way that he pursues it. Nobody reads through Romans and says, oh, that was easy. Theology, light, what a wonderful pamphlet. Clearly then, this is what Paul thinks the church needs to do missions. I want you to let that sink in because we're here at a missions conference, if you didn't notice. Certain people, types of people, tend to come to missions conferences. Romans is what Paul thinks that we need in order to do missions. To become an effective part of supporting a Spanish mission, the Roman church would need to think differently. It would need to think rightly. It would need, in fact, as Paul says directly in Romans 12 to, to be transformed by the renewing of their minds so that they can test and approve what the will of God is. Without sound, carefully constructed theology, the mission that Paul planned to Spain would either never start or it would soon become imperiled. And so Paul demonstrates how the missionary endeavors of the church ought to be motivated and guided by just the kind of deep, nuanced, precise theological understanding and formulation that this letter as a whole labors to provide to us. Why? Why is that needed? Can't the church just skirt around theological depth for the sake of this urgent practical purpose? Now anybody that knows the history of missions knows that that's a very key tension on the mission field or in the sending churches. Can't we agree on a very minimalistic platform so that we can just get moving? In truth, the church cannot do that actually and should not seek to do that because, among many other reasons, missionary efforts are something that we ourselves must be engaged in actively. And everything we do, brothers and sisters, and how we do it is always predicated on our view of ourselves, our God, our sin, salvation, the world itself. Our view of all these things are directly implicated in what we do or don't do on the mission field, as well as at home, or in our families, or in our secret closet in prayer. Whether or not we do missions, how we do missions is inescapably and deeply theological, and so we need a full-orbed, well-crafted theological understanding to motivate us to missions and to guide us as we do it. And Paul demonstrates that for us in this letter. Our options are to be acting out a theology that is insufficient, reductionistic, un-nuanced, or just plain wrong, and therefore not to be able to have proper unity internally in our churches because of that theology, or not to have proper sorts of engagement with unbelievers outside the church because of that bad theology. Or our option is to be more thoroughly and deeply biblical in our beliefs and our theological understanding, seeking to have and to make use of all of the resources that Romans and the rest of Scripture provide in order to know how to be the church internally. What matters in our church and what doesn't? The Romans were not getting that right. Paul does not write them particularly briefly about that. And honestly, he doesn't mainly write them about foods or days or weak and strong. He mainly writes them about many, many other topics that feed directly into that, right? The coin drops in chapter 14 where he comes full circle and says, you know all of this theology and all these ethics I've been setting out for you? All right, here's a very practical application. except one another in Christ when it comes to these matters. These matters that you're divided on don't matter. Well, how do you know? How do you know the difference? Because some matters matter a lot, right? Some controversies must be engaged and fought over. To serve the gospel of God properly, our theologizing should have clarity and precision and depth for the sake of proper relationship to God, proper relationship to one another within the church, proper expansion outward. It's not a coincidence that the single greatest missionary of the Apostolic Church was also one of its single greatest and most profound theologians, the Apostle Paul. We can also be thankful as we reflect on our context today, the many great theological resources that we have at our disposal, especially as Reformed Christians. Many ecclesiastical traditions are far more minimalistic than ours. We certainly have a heritage of theological care that goes before us. Thank God. And it ought to be not despite that fact, but because of that fact that we are motivated and enabled to do missions here and around the world. I want us to be encouraged then this morning about the synergy, the necessary synergy between theology and missions. The missionary endeavor is always, among other things, a conflict of worldviews. The Christian faith going out and encountering and confronting various forms of unbelief with all of its own counterclaims. How will we navigate that? How will we address it? Will we do so in a shallow way that leaves many of the claims of unbelief in place, unchallenged, unaddressed? Or will you bring the full-throated, full-orbed gospel and the whole counsel of God in Scripture with it? Not picking and choosing. Who are we to pick and choose, brothers and sisters? If it's part of what Scripture teaches us, we need it. And the people that we're going to evangelize will need it too. Not necessarily right away. I'm not saying you hand them Bob Ink as your Immediate first step, right? But we need to understand it, cordially appreciate it, be guided by it. We need to remember that missions always requires great sacrifice from the church, as has been talked about already. It requires us to love others who are outsiders, who are foreigners to our own experience. How will we want to do that? How will we know how or how not to do that? How will we know what's essential? What's optional? Romans shows that that's not an easy thing to do, to understand. A question that we can easily go astray on. We need the depths. of Romans theology and of scriptures theology as a whole. To be properly informed, to be properly equipped for a challenging yet a crucial task. We need to see that what the broader church sees in competition or tension, theology and missions are things that we ought to see as intertwined and interdependent. We need to challenge ourselves afresh in every generation whether we have embraced this relationship between theology and missions. Do you do your theology without any interest in missions? Do you do your missions without very much interest in theology? Truth be told, many of us fall into one of those categories or another. In fact, all of us tend to want to fall into one of those categories or another. I'm going to ask questions about our ecclesiastical bodies. I think it's fair to say that my own presbytery, the OPC's Presbytery of the Midwest, OPC Orthodox Presbyterian Church, my presbytery called the Presbytery of the Midwest is, I think, known for effective outreach and expansion, praise the Lord, planting churches. Is it also equally known for its interest in theological depth? Not sure that we could say that. So we have to challenge ourselves. And then we can ask the same question about every other presbytery or classus or denomination. We have OPC presbyteries of which the exact opposite would be said, right? Lots of theological this and that and not lots of missions. I'm sure you see patterns in your own ecclesiastical bodies as well. Does beautifully detailed, deep, nuanced theology fuel and direct missions? Does a desire for missions sponsor careful efforts to articulate and defend beautifully detailed and deep theology, just like it does in Romans? Brothers and sisters, there are many, many forces at work in the world that would try to undermine our commitment to both, to both in tandem. We live in a day of unparalleled distraction, technological distraction, other kinds of distraction. It's easy to feel that we don't have time for deep theological controversy. We live in a day where people outside the church are increasingly unfamiliar with even the basics of the Christian message, and that makes outreach and discipleship even more energy intensive than in any time in recent memory in at least the U.S. It is easy to feel wearied, overwhelmed about what this engagement of unbelievers is really going to entail, because it is a lot. The depths of the sin patterns that people are immersed in feel overwhelmed about even trying. We live in a day of increasingly aggressive and high-profile opposition to the Christian truth, can challenge our resolve about both theological topics and about letting your light shine before men, lest they take you to court. Yet in the face of these and other challenges, brothers and sisters, I pray that the magisterial letter of the Apostle Paul to the Romans will encourage us afresh to remain committed to, even to relish, the essential God-given synergy between profound, nuanced theological formulation on the one hand, and God's own mission to a lost and dying world on the other. And may we continue to value and to dig deeply into our rich theological heritage as we should, and then to zealously pursue missions motivated and directed by that same theological content, understanding how it enables us, and may we particularly be strengthened even this morning by the gospel itself, as Romans and other parts of Scripture describe it and defend it. A gospel about a Savior crucified and resurrected for us, who is received by faith alone, who transforms lives with a heavenly hope, and is indeed this gospel the sole power of God into salvation for all who believe. A power that can even bring hedonistic, profligate, willful Gentiles like most of us to the submission of faith. The assurance of sonship, the transformation of ethics, and the giving ourselves over to the ultimate glory of God that awaits his people also in the future. May we be strengthened, unified, motivated, and directed by Romans as we engage the theological task of the church and the missionary task of the church together. Let's pray. Our Father and our God, we give you praise that your wisdom is not our wisdom. Father, we greatly need a different and better and greater wisdom than all that we could bring to the table. And so we thank you that in your mysterious providence, you have done things we would not expect. That even the very documents that we have in scripture attest to your higher knowledge and wisdom. We thank you for the Apostle Paul's ministry, for his diverse collection of letters. Well, we just only looked at one here. Particularly for the Savior that he served. Pray that you would help us, guide and equip us, refine us, Lord, that we too would be transformed by the renewing of our minds through your word, guided by your Holy Spirit as we read it. and therefore give ourselves over more fully. Offer our bodies as living sacrifices to you, which is a reasonable service. We ask these things in Christ's name. Amen. Thanks for joining us for today's episode. Don't forget to mark your calendar for the 2025 Center for Missions and Evangelism Conference, Gossiping the Gospel, Everyday Evangelism, on October 3 and 4. It'll be a weekend of great teaching and encouragement, so we'd love for you to be a part of it. You can find more details and register at midamerica.edu slash CME slash conference. In our third installment, we'll hear from our 2024 conference, where Rev. Paul Murphy addresses what R.B. Kuyper once called the forgotten office of believer. He'll explore how equipping everyday believers to share the gospel in their neighborhoods, workplaces, and networks can transform both church health and gospel outreach. You won't want to miss it. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or colleague who might find it helpful or interesting. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. And if you have a moment, leave a rating or review. I'm Jared Luchibor. This has been another episode of Marscast. Thank you for listening. I'll catch you next time.