Debts and obligations can be crushing and burdensome. Being driven by a sense of duty is usually not a pleasant thing, either for us or those around us. I remember flying from San Francisco to San Diego to begin my training as a Hull Technician in 1975. Seated next to me was an older man traveling for some kind of business, and very early in the flight he handed me some literature and said a few words about the gospel, but there was a grudging sense about it, like he didn’t want to do it and probably didn’t want to talk to me but was doing it out of a sense of duty. I was already a believer and told him that, but as we talked it turned out that I didn’t attend the kind of church he approved of. It wasn’t a very pleasant interaction, but fortunately it’s a short flight, so we didn’t have to talk for long. And maybe he thought he’d done his duty by witnessing to someone on the plane.
Paul, in these verses, is driven by a sense of obligation—he tells us so in verse 14–but it’s a joyful obligation, one that he is anxious to fulfill. He feels indebted to the Roman Christians, but he’s not grudging about it. He doesn’t have to drag himself but is driven by a sense of joyful obligation to preach the gospel in Rome.
The first thing here is that Paul’s sense of obligation is rooted in prayer. He talks about this in verses 8-10, emphasizing his gratitude for what God is doing among them. It strikes me here that Paul sees prayer as part of his ministry. He says “I serve with my spirit in the gospel.” We can get into trouble when we imagine that there is a conflict between prayer and work, thinking that prayer is something we need to do, but feeling guilty because when we’re praying we’re not “getting anything done.”
We often hear, when there’s been a mass shooting and people say they’re praying for everyone affected, the sentiment that “we don’t need your prayers; we need policy change to make these things stop,” assuming that changes in government are more effective than crying out to God. But I also think we can fall into a more subtle form of this thinking, because praying doesn’t take things off our “to do” list, and the pressure of things that need to be done can be overwhelming. I was once with a group of pastors when nearly all of them admitted to an unsatisfactory prayer life because they were just too busy doing the work of the church. Congregational expectations can weigh very heavily, and many members are not overly supportive of pastors spending substantial amounts of time in prayer when there are so many things that need to be done. But it’s important to remind ourselves that Paul didn’t see any conflict here, that he served with his spirit in the gospel both by praying and by preaching.
In the case of the Christians at Rome, the only thing Paul has been able to do so far is pray for them, since he has been prevented from visiting. But his prayers for them don’t seem to be occasional, passing things when he thinks of it. He says “without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers.” I have things I pray about when they come to mind, which is very different than what Paul is talking about here. He’s never been to Rome, never met these people; and, after all, he has all the churches he founded and fellow-workers that he prays for. How does he have the time and energy to invest this kind of prayer for the Christians in Rome? But his persistent prayers lead him to continue asking God to make it possible for him to visit them.
This leads to the second thing, which is that Paul perseveres in planning a visit despite repeated setbacks, because he believes God is calling him there. He is aware that God has given him something to offer them, something that will build them up in their faith. He could have said to himself, “well, I’ve tried to go there and God keeps closing the door, so it looks like He doesn’t want me to go.” Sometimes that’s a valid conclusion; but Paul seemingly couldn’t let go of it in this case and he persevered.
George Verwer, the founder of Operation Mobilization, died a year or so ago, but he had a huge impact on my life. Before I saw him the first time I had read a few of his books and listened to taped sermons, so I had some expectations of what he would be like. But the first time I saw him in person the thing that was overwhelmingly clear was that he genuinely cared about us. I was there as part of a summer program and he was preparing us to go out on our teams. But I could see clearly that he was more concerned about our growth and long-term survival as followers of Jesus than he was about whatever work he could get out of us. And he was aware that God had given him things that would help build us up as Christians. I’ve known pragmatic leaders who were so focused on the job they wanted done that they saw people as objects, or tools. George was not like that at all, and over the years I knew him it was very clear that he was more concerned about us than he was about the work we were doing.
I’ve also mentioned a man I met in North India, A.R. Fromman, a 92-year-old missionary my team stayed with. He was originally from England, and he invited me, together with the other American on the team, to eat breakfast with him each day; and while Ron and I were eating breakfast his own food would get cold, because he poured out his heart speaking to us. He wasn’t a compulsive talker; he was just conscious that God had given him much to offer. He saw himself as a steward of things that would help build our faith, and the week we spent with him made a lasting impact on me.
Paul is like that. He’s aware that God has gifted him in a way that can benefit the believers in Rome, but he’s also aware that this giving is not one-sided. He goes on to say “that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.” He is looking forward to fellowship with the Roman Christians and is expecting that being with them will build his faith as well as theirs. So, despite repeated attempts and failures to visit, he still believes God wants him to go to Rome.
Then, the third thing to notice is Paul’s eagerness. He believes he has something to offer, and the gifts God has given him put him in their debt: “I am under obligation both to Greeks and barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish.” But feeling a strong sense of obligation can lead us to do things purely out of duty, or even guilt, like the man I mentioned at the beginning.
It’s true, too, that obedience to God is obligatory, but if we think of it as something we have to drag ourselves to do this is something less than the kind of obedience Paul has in mind here. He’s not dragging his feet; he tells the Roman Christians that he is eager to preach the gospel to them.
Why is Paul so eager? This is more than a strong sense of personal motivation; it’s more than a matter of personality, although we can see in Acts, before his conversion, that he was a driven person. But someone who is driven with a sense of his own duty can be cold and indifferent to the needs and feelings of other people, which is not true of Paul. Listen to what he says to the Corinthians in his second letter: “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (5:19-20). Paul’s eagerness to preach the gospel is rooted in his awareness that he is speaking on God’s behalf, that he has been entrusted with a message that will reconcile them to their Creator. He’s not selling a product or trying to meet a numerical goal. He’s been entrusted with a message that is precious beyond imagination. He is in debt to the Romans because he has been entrusted with a precious message that they desperately need to hear. And he’s anxious to share it with them to help them along on the journey to eternal life.
If we want to be more like Paul, this is the place to begin. Not learning a new evangelistic strategy or technique, but cultivating an increased awareness of what the gospel is, spending time in God’s presence meditating on what it means to be people who are, by nature, “children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3) but who have now, by the free gift of God, been reconciled to Him.
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