A Lamp to My Feet

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I thought that it would be good to start going through the letters of the apostle Paul. Paul definitely wrote Romans through Philemon. He may have written Hebrews also. That means that he wrote at least 13 books in our New Testament, 14 if you count Hebrews. Folks, that is ½ of the books of the New Testament.

The first letter we come to of Paul’s is the book of Romans. When Paul wrote the book to the Roman Christians, he hadn’t yet been to Rome. He was probably at Corinth when he wrote the letter.

We begin our study with Romans 1:1, “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God,” In this verse, Paul makes 3 very important claims: 1. “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, 2. “called to be an apostle”, 3. “set apart for the gospel of God.”

First and foremost, Paul claims to be a servant of Christ Jesus. This is the most important thing each of us must realize: We cannot be disciples of Christ unless we let Jesus be the Maser of our lives. We must surrender to Him, be His servants, and let Him be the one truly in charge of all that we say or do.

Second, Paul was called to be an apostle by Jesus Christ Himself. He saw and spoke to Jesus on the Damascus road. He obeyed the gospel and became the apostle to the Gentiles. The religion he tried to destroy before he became a Christian now became the religion he spread throughout the world.

Third, Paul was set apart for the gospel of God. The word gospel means good news, specifically the good news about salvation and the abundant life found only in Jesus Christ. Paul wrote in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”