The Final Doxology – Romans 16:25-27
How does Paul end this
epistle? He does so in a doxology, which
is a word of praise to God. Paul ends on
this note of prayer and praise. Note
that the main idea here, the main verb, is found in verse 27 which completes
the thought began in verse 25 – “Now to him . . . to the only wise God be glory
forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.”
In other words, this is a prayer that God be glorified. That is really the only appropriate way to
end an epistle which is about God and his gospel. This God is the God from whom and through
whom and to whom are all things. “To him
be glory forever. Amen” (11:36). This is
the reason why God saves men and women.
He saves us for his glory: “in order to make known the riches of his
glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory”
(9:23).
I want you to hear that last
verse because a lot of people think that God being for his glory means that
makes him selfish and vainglorious in a bad way. But this is not the case. God is the only being in the universe for
which it would be wicked for him not to be for his glory. For he is God and we are not. As John Piper has put it, God is not an
idolator: he has no other gods besides himself.
But this does not mean that God being for his glory puts us at a
disadvantage. That is certainly the way it is when people are out for
themselves. It means that they are
willing to walk over you to get ahead.
But when God seeks his glory, he does so through the sacrifice of his
Son for the salvation of sinners like you and me. That is what Paul means in 9:23. God makes known his glory for vessels of
mercy (sinners) by bestowing glory upon them.
He makes us kings and priests to God.
This of course does not mean that
we are made into gods. There will always
be an infinite distance between the creature and the creator. God will always be the only one worthy of
worship. The creature being bestowed
with glory means that we are restored by grace in a relationship with God so
that we can truly enjoy seeing his glory and his experience his
fellowship. That is where the truest
happiness and joy and satisfaction and peace and contentment is found. It doesn’t happen by making much of
yourself. It happens by making much of
God, by knowing him, and seeking him.
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God” (Mt. 5:8)! How are we blessed? Be seeing and knowing and experiencing the
love and mercy of God.
“The chief end of man is to
glorify God and to enjoy him forever” (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question
1). To glorify God and to enjoy him are
not things at odds with each other. They
are complimentary. God is not a cosmic
killjoy, as some like to represent him.
No, my friends, God calls us to enjoy him and to glorify him. And that is what Paul is calling us to do
here.
The reality is that because you
praise what you love, it is inevitable that the gospel will lead us to
praise. The gospel tells sinners like
you and me how to be saved, and about the God of grace who does this through
his Son Jesus and his life and death and resurrection, through his ascension
into heaven and his ongoing intercession for his people. And if you really believe this message, you
are going to fall in love with the God of the gospel, this God of glory. And if you love him you are going to praise
him. Doxology is the inevitable
consequences of theology. It is the
natural response of sinners who have been saved by grace alone through faith
alone in the work of Christ alone – for the glory of God alone.
Do the truths of the book of
Romans lead us to this? It is an important
question to ask ourselves. Does the
gospel create within us a heart of praise to God? Does it cause us to love him and therefore to
worship him? Do its truths resonate in
our hearts? Because if they don’t, there
is something very wrong with us. It certainly
means that we are in a very poor spiritual condition. It might even mean that we are not yet
saved.
Now that is the main idea. This is a doxology. But this is not like so many “praise songs”
that are sung in churches today. There
are songs out there which call people to praise God but don’t really give much
reason to do so. Many times, it seems to
me, the praises of the people are carried by the tune or the instrumental
accompaniment instead of by the message of the song itself. But that is not the case here. It is not the case with any of Paul’s calls
to doxology. There is a rich theological
content in these verses and we need to understand this if we are going to join
the apostle in true praise to God.
So what does the apostle say
about God here? To see it, I want you to
trace with me the flow thought in verses 25-27.
Paul begins in verse 25 by saying, “Now to him . . .” (remember, this
thought is completed in verse 27). What
follows is a description of God. Now
what does the apostle say about God? The
chief thing he says here is that God is the one “who is able to strengthen
you.” What follows that is a description
of the way God does this. He does
it “according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the
revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has not been
disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all the
nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the
obedience of faith” (25-26).
When you step back and consider
the structure of this doxology, it becomes clear that the main thing here that
causes the apostle to break forth into worship and doxology is the fact that
God is the one who strengthens us and establishes us. He does this through the gospel and through
faith in its message. So by believing
the message of the mystery, which is fully revealed and manifested in the
gospel, we are strengthened by God. It’s
interesting, isn’t it, that the apostle began this epistle by expressing a wish
that the Roman Christians might be strengthened and established (1:11). He ends the epistle by commending the Romans
Christians to God who is able to strengthen and establish them (16:25).
Now it may be a curious thing to
you why the apostle would focus on this particular thing in these last verses
as he closes his epistle to the Romans.
Paul is praising God that he strengthens us by the gospel. That begs several questions, which I want to
explore with you. First, why does
Paul praise God for this? Second, what
is it about the gospel that it leads to our being established?
Why does Paul praise God for
this?
I think the reason Paul picks
this particular thing, that God is able to strengthen us, is because the
apostle understood the need not only to grasp and believe the truths as some
point in our lives, but the necessity of persevering in them. It’s fine if you like what Paul has written
up to this point. But you don’t want to
be a person who enjoys one book but then goes on to another and forgets what he
read in the first book. You don’t want
to be the person who rejoices in the truths of Romans only to find something
else more compelling later on. You need
to persevere in these truths. And that
is what the apostle is commending to the Romans here: he is commending them to
the God who is able to strengthen them so they don’t give in and don’t give up.
But do I really have the right to
make this connection between being strengthened in the faith and
persevering? I think so. This is what the New Testament scholar Thomas
Schreiner says about this verse: “The strengthening envisioned is the ability
to resist temptations and trials with the result that they do not forsake and
abandon the Christians faith.”[1]
And if you look at other passages where
this word “strengthen” is used, it is often used in this very connection. For example, when Paul is writing to the
Thessalonians, he talks about how he sent Timothy “to establish [same Greek
word] and exhort you in your faith, that no one be moved by these afflictions”
(1 Thess. 3:2-3). The apostle was
clearly worried that the trials they were going through might cause them to
have second thoughts about their commitment to Jesus. This is why he sent Timothy to them: “For
this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith,
for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in
vain” (5). And so he prays for them:
“Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you,
and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for
all, as we do for you, so that he may establish [again, same Greek word] your
hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father, at the coming of our
Lord Jesus with all his saints” (11-13).
This is a strengthening for perseverance.
In order to really appreciate
this doxology, therefore, you need to understand two things. First, you need to understand the absolute
importance of persevering in the faith and the danger posed to those who
don’t. Second, you need to understand
that all the resources we need for persevering – the strengthening – don’t come
from you but are found in God through Christ.
So how important is this need to
persevere? Well, let me put it this way:
there are no promises for those who do not persevere. Our Lord put it this way: “But the one who
endures to the end will be saved” (Mt. 24:13).
When you hear his exhortations to the seven churches in Asia, given to
us in the second and third chapters of Revelation, everyone of them ends with
an exhortation and a warning like this: “To the one who conquers I will grant
to eat of the tree of live, which is in the paradise of God” (2:7; cf. 2:11,
17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21). This is not a
promise that if you persevere (this is implied in the language of conquering)
you will have a rich spiritual life this side of heaven. Of course that’s true as far as it goes. But that is not what the Lord is saying
here. He is saying that if you persevere
in the faith you will be saved. And
there are no promises for those who do not!
In fact, this is what the apostle John has to say about those who fail
to persevere: “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had
been of us, they would have continued with us.
But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of
us” (1 Jn. 2:19).
Or consider how Paul put it to
the Corinthians. He writes: “Do you not
know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?” (1
Cor. 9:24). By the way, what is the
prize here? It is “an imperishable
[wreath]” (25). Now note the word “all”
in verse 24. Then drop down to 10:1,ff. Not all who get in a race cross the finish
line and win the wreath. Paul
illustrates this with the story of the Israelites coming out of Egypt: “For I
do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under
the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized
into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual
food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that
followed them, and the Rock was Christ.
Nevertheless, with most of them God was not pleased, for they
were overthrown in the wilderness” (10:1-5).
Not everyone who came out of Egypt entered the Promised Land, an example
for us (10:6,ff). Indeed, “let anyone
who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (12).
Do you see the obvious
application here? Just because you call
yourself a Christian doesn’t mean a whole lot if you don’t persevere. Not everyone who gets in a race finishes
well. Not all those who came out of
Egypt entered the promised land. It’s
not just a matter of starting well, but of finishing well. It’s a matter of being able to say with Paul,
at the end of his life, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the
race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth
there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the
righteous Judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to
all who have loved his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:7-8).
But this leads to the next thing
you really need to understand about persevering in the faith. It is this: you don’t have the resources to
get you to the end. But God does. And he will keep you! He is able to strengthen you. Yes, you!
You with all your weakness and sins and mistakes and limited
vision. It is in our weakness that we
are made strong by God’s grace (cf. 2 Cor. 12:9). That is what this doxology is all about. It is about God’s power to keep his people. It is a fact that we persevere only because
God preserves us. There is no real
difference between the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saint in faith
and the doctrine of the preservation of the saint by God. The latter secures the former. It is what the apostle Peter was getting at
in 1 Pet. 1:5, when he reminds the believers that they “by God’s power are
being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last
time.”
We need to be reminded that we do
not live the Christian life in our own strength but in the strength which God
provides. We all probably have the
tendency sometimes to fall back on our own reserves. But we don’t just have grace in the
forgiveness of our sins but we are given grace in the daily living out the life
marked out for us by Jesus Christ. We
are to look to Jesus (Heb. 12:1-2). We
are to remember the blessed truth in another great doxology: “Now to him who is
able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the
presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus
Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time
and forever. Amen” (Jude 24-25).
In commending them to the God who
is able to strengthen them, Paul is in effect showing us how to pray. We are to pray that God will strengthen
us. And we are to pray with the
confidence that he will answer this prayer.
I tell you, if it weren’t for truths like this, I would have given up on
the pastorate a long time ago. But knowing
that God is able to keep his people is what keeps me from quitting. He loves his own and he loves them to the end
and he will keep them (cf. Jn. 13:1). As
the hymn puts it so well, “He will hold me fast.” It’s a truth worth exulting over! It means that God really is willing as well
as able to answer such a prayer.
How does the gospel work to
strengthen us?
We noted earlier that Paul not
only praises God as the one who is able to strengthen us but also tells us how
God does this. He does it through the
gospel, which the apostle goes on to describe as “the preaching of Jesus
Christ” and “the revelation of the mystery.”
It is the preaching of Jesus Christ – there is no gospel apart from him. It is the person and work of Jesus that is
the gospel. The gospel is not a new
law. It is not a self-help manual. It is the announcement that God has come to
earth in his Son, has kept the law that we broke and has paid the penalty that
we deserved. It is the good news that
all who believe, who put their trust in Jesus Christ, will be saved because of
what he has done for us.
In describing it as “the
revelation of the mystery” the apostle is not saying that the gospel is
something “mysterious” in the sense that we can’t understand it. Rather, he is saying that it is a mystery in
the sense that we would not have known it on our own. That is why Paul calls it “revelation.” The gospel is not a merely human attempt to
understand God. It is God speaking to us
and telling us how we can be saved.
Then Paul connects the gospel
with the Old Testament: “through the prophetic writings has been made known to
all nations.” The gospel is not
something brand new, but the outworking of God’s plan of salvation from the
very beginning. It goes all the way back
to the promise in the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve, down to God’s promises to
Abraham and David and the prophets.
Jesus, in fact, is the culmination of all God’s promises to us: all the
promises of God find their yes in him!
But how does the gospel work to
strengthen us? It strengthens us because
God meets faith in Christ with strength.
He loves to glorify his Son by strengthening those who look away from
themselves to his Son for salvation and grace and empowerment. The apostle himself illustrates this attitude
of a life by faith in his letter to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with
Christ. It is no longer I who live, but
Christ who lives in me. And the life I
now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). It is what
our Lord himself pointed to by saying, “I am the vine, you are the
branches. Whoever abides in me and I in
him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (Jn.
15:5). On the other hand, as Paul puts
it “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13). This is why Paul connects the gospel to
faith: it has not been made known to all the nations for the purpose of
admiration merely or as an item of curiosity, but as an object of faith: it has
been made known to all the nations “to bring about the obedience of
faith.” That’s how the gospel
strengthens us.
In other words, you are not
strengthened by looking to yourself, to your resources, to your goodness, to
your merit, to your works, to your accomplishments. You are strengthened by looking to Christ and
to his resources, goodness, merit, works, and accomplishments (cf. Rev.
3:17-18). That is a gospel-centered
life.
And this is a fitting conclusion
to the book of Romans. It is fitting
because the doctrines of this letter are meant to be believed and loved
throughout our lives from beginning to end.
Paul could have concluded this letter by a long soliloquy on the sovereignty
of God or justification by faith or the oneness of Jew and Gentile, but
actually these doctrines are most magnified when they are lived out in lives of
believers. What Paul is saying here is
that the most fitting conclusion is that which is reflected in a life-long
commitment of faith and love and obedience to Jesus Christ. Words can never match a life of
faithfulness.
On the other hand, apostacy is
the worst kind of reflection on the gospel that one can give. And how sad and heart-rending it is that
someone will take the treasure of the gospel and sell it for things that cannot
ultimately profit! But when people do that, others see and think that the
gospel is not the treasure that it really is.
So if we want to honor the doctrines of Romans, we will do it by a life
lived out in faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In doing so, we are not only
honoring the doctrines but we are honoring the God of the doctrines. For in doing so, we are declaring that the
only way we can live is by grace, that we are cast upon the grace of God from
beginning to end. In doing so we magnify
the grace of God and the power of God and as we loo into the mystery of God and
behold its riches we come to magnify the wisdom of God. And hence verse 27: “To the only wise God, be
glory forevermore through Jesus Christ.”
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