“We have received grace and apostleship through Him to bring about the obedience of faith among all the nations, on behalf of His name, including yourselves who also belong to Jesus Christ by calling: To all who are in Rome, loved by God, called as saints. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (HCSB).”

There are a few statements in these passages that jumped out to me. The first is, “… bring about the obedience of faith …” In thinking upon this and asking God to show me what He means by this I saw that it is to obey based on our faith in Him. We don’t obey because He showed us the whole plan and therefore trust it is a good and successful one. We obey because we know that God is worthy of our trust and faith, that He has our best interest at heart, and that if He gives us a task to do He will be faithful to see it finished. Obedience of faith is going when He tells you to go, even though He didn’t say where. It is doing the first step even though He didn’t tell you the last step. Charles Swindoll says, “He wants them to cultivate lives so abundantly filled with grace that obedience becomes as natural to them as breathing (Insights on Romans).” It is a beautiful thought to have our desire and ability to obey God to be no different than taking a breath. When we hold our breath our body begins to scream for oxygen. Likewise, disobedience is like holding our spiritual breath and our souls are being starved of essential nutrients when we continue to disobey, and it is screaming out for submission to Christ. 

 The second is, “… belong to Jesus Christ by calling …” God spoke to your heart and called you out of the sinful life you once lived. We give ourselves over to Him knowing we are incapable of doing anything without Him. For the second time in a few short verses Paul reminds us that we were bought with a price and are no longer our own. We live to do the will of God. 

Lastly, “… called as saints …” I always thought of saints as these great pillars of Christianity, but here Paul calls Christians saints. He did not specify a specific group or type and he didn’t say only those doing great and amazing things are saints. We are all called as saints. Swindoll says, “The term ‘saint’ is the noun form of the adjective ‘holy’. … Something is kept holy when it is set aside for dedicated use, … to keep it pure, undefiled by the world (Insights on Romans).” Here we can see that we were called to be holy. We are set aside as people to be dedicated for God’s use. We are to keep ourselves pure. To be defiled is to be made filthy or polluted. So when he says we are to be “undefiled by the world” it means that we are not to allow a sinful world to pollute who we are as Christians. The filth of sin of this world is not to be a part of our lives. We can go into the world in order to be a witness to it, but we are not to allow the world to get in us.

~Sarah Misch~