So, for Trinity, 2024 has been the year of Romans. We began studying this NT letter near the beginning if January, and we are drawing to a conclusion this month: after today, what remains are Paul’s final greetings and benediction. And way back at the very beginning of our investigation, I suggested that Paul in this letter is seeking to reorient the readers of this letter to the true story that our lives are all about.

Because for us to live well and joyfully, we need to understand how our lives fit into the larger story. How can you make wise choices unless you know what you are meant to be pursuing? How can you struggle meaningfully unless you know what you are struggling for? How can you have hope unless you know the happily ever after? To live well, you need to understand what your story truly is.

A couple of decades ago there was a movie called “Stranger than Fiction,” about of an IRS agent named Harold Crick, played by Will Ferrell, who one day, as he brushes his teeth hears the voice of a British woman saying, “When others’ minds would fantasize about their upcoming day…Harold just counted brush strokes.” And it kept happening—minute by minute he hears someone narrating his life, as he lives it out. He realizes that somehow he is part of another author’s story. And so he does what anyone in that situation would do—he goes to a literature professor to try to figure out what sort of story he’s in.

He meets with this prof, played by Dustin Hoffman, and eventually convinces him that he isn’t crazy. So the professor comes up with a series of questions to help know what’s going on. He says to Harold, 

“Now, these may seem silly, but your candor is paramount. Question 1: Has anyone recently left any gifts outside your home…anything: gum, money, a large wooden horse?

What?

Harold, just answer the question.

Um…no.

Good. Do you find yourself inclined to solve murder mysteries in large, luxurious homes to which you may or may not have been invited? 

No. No. Listen…

Okay, on a scale of one to ten, what would you consider to be the likelihood that you might be assassinated?

Assassinated?

One being very unlikely, ten being expecting it at every corner.

I don’t…I…

Perhaps, let me re-phrase this. Are you the king of anything?

Like what?

Anything. King of the lanes at a local bowling alley.

King of the lanes?

King of the lanes. King of the trolls? A clandestine land underneath your floorboards? Anything?

No. That’s ridiculous!

Agreed. But let’s start at ridiculous and move backwards. Now…was any part of you now at one time part of something else?

Like, do I have someone else’s arms?

Well, is it possible that you were at one time made of stone, wood, lye, varied corpse parts or earth made holy by rabbinical elders?

No. No! That’s—No, I’m sorry, what do these questions have to do with anything?

Nothing. That’s the point.

What?

Harold, the only way to find out what story you’re in is to determine what stories you’re not in. Odd as it may seem, I’ve just ruled out half of Greek literature, seven fairy tales, ten Chines fables, and determined conclusively that you are not King Hamlet, Scout Finch, Ms. Marple, Frankenstein’s monster or a golem….Aren’t you relieved to know you’re not a golem?

He’s not a golem. But what kind of story is he in?

That’s not just Harold’s question—it’s ours as well. It’s what we’re asking when we are trying to figure out what it all means. It’s what we need to know when we’re trying to figure what we’re supposed to do. What story are we in? If God truly is in charge of the world, then we really are living in the story that he is writing. What is it? Is it a tragedy, or is it a comedy? And what role do we have in it? 

Romans offers us an answer to this. Paul is talking to Christians: most directly Christians in Rome, but also in a real sense also to those of us in our day who have believed in Christ, saying, “This is the story that you are in. And this is the role you have to play.” If we pay attention and truly come to understand it, this will play a key role in helping us to know how to live and what it all means. If you wouldn’t describe yourself as a Christian, I invite you to listen in—because this could be your story as well.   

This morning, if we understand what God is telling us, we will find the source of tremendous hope. I want us to see how this passage alerts us to two truths about our story. We are in a comedy. And we’re not damsels in distress.

We Are in Comedy

You know how Star Wars begins with words crawling up the screen to get context? Well, in the same way, to understand the story Paul tells in Romans, we need some background, words written hundreds of years before by the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah is a prophet with a whole lot of credibility. Just to highlight some of his greatest hits: He foretold that a child would be born who would also be called “Mighty God,” that a powerful warrior would come who would be known as the “Prince of Peace,” and that somehow this peaceful and powerful human who is God would bring life by dying and by going through the most unimaginable shame would enter into glory. All of which, of course, is what really happened. 

Now in the final chapters of Isaiah, God describes how this story is all going to end. The final things—the climax of it all. 

“In the last days,” God says, “I will do something extraordinary. I will perform a great sign that will change everything. And after I do, I will send out messengers from my people who will go into all the nations of the world, into all the places that have never heard about me or seen my glory. And these messengers, wherever they go, will tell everyone about me, and people will come—they will come to me. Messengers will bring people from all over the world and their hearts will be transformed, and they will be like offerings given to me. All flesh all of humanity will worship me.”

And then, the end will come, where I will make everything new. When it’s all done, people will no longer experience sadness. There will be no struggles with depression or loneliness or overwhelming grief. There will never again be any fear of death—no children dying way too early because of cancer; no sudden heart attacks; no school shootings or people taking their own lives. In my new creation, nobody will experience crushing shame or devastating failure. Everyone will have enough. Everyone will experience joy and satisfaction and connection with others. Everyone will know God and love God and know they are loved by God. The whole world will be at peace; by way of illustration Isaiah gives us a picture of a wolf just cuddling up with the lamb, side by side, with no predatorial attack, no fear. All will be well.  

This is the plotline of the story God is writing—this is where it’s going. A mighty sign takes place in Jerusalem that has significance for all the world. Messengers go out, declaring what they have seen, and people from all the nations come to God, like offerings presented to him, before all in the end is made right. The story of this world will draw to an end with joy and laughter. 

The story I am writing, God says, is a comedy.

Now that might all seem wildly optimistic, and, given how bleak things might feel in the moment, really, unrealistic story-writing. Hard to believe. Except for two things. First, as we have already mentioned, Isaiah said a lot of other ridiculously wonderful things, and all of those came true. He is trustworthy. And second, Paul tells us in Romans—that whole crazy scenario of a sign and messengers and then nations being gathered to worship? Yeah, that part is happening. Right now. 

Look at verse 16: Paul writes that God has called me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles” —a minister to the nations, “in the priestly service of the gospel of God so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit,” which, he later says, means bringing the nations to obedience. Do you catch that? This is the script set out in Isaiah. Jesus is the sign God was talking about: he has come and has died and has risen again. And now I, Paul says, I’m one of those messengers being sent out among the nations to declare to people the news of who God is so that people from every nation might come to worship him. It’s happening.

Do you know how ridiculous it was for Paul to believe that all of the nations would come to know and worship the God of Israel? Israel was a nation the size of Massachusetts and only 1/3 of its population, and for 1300 years, since the time of the Exodus, they were the only place in all the world that believed in the God of the Bible. This faith had never spread never gone anywhere for more than a millennium. But here Paul is claiming, “Now is the time of fulfillment. Now, just as God said, it’s going global so that people from all over the world will come to God, and I’m at the vanguard!” 

And he was right! Right now, by far Christianity is the most global of all faiths. Of the 2.4 billion Christians in the world, with hundreds of millions of believers are from Africa, and also from Asia, Latin America, Europe, and North America. What Isaiah prophesied, what Paul is saying here—it’s happened.

It’s happening all around us now. People are being changed. Members of every nation are being brought back to God, just like he said would happen before he makes all things right. And if all of this is happening now, then we know where it’s all going.

In this life we wonder: is it all a tragedy? Is it all ultimately senseless, where our own failures do us in and it all falls apart? Or is there a way, somehow, that it might turn out okay. Somehow that there might be a happily ever after? Let me tell you, the story we’re in is not a senseless tragedy. It’s a comedy. It’s the story where people are being brought back to God, and one day the wolf one day will lie down with the lamb. All shall be well. All shall wonderfully, beautifully, be well. That’s the story we’re in.

We’ve Become Active Characters

Okay then, what’s our role in this story? What part do we have to play? Let me ask a weird question: in this story, are we just damsels in distress?

If you know your fairy tales, you know how often times a mighty knight does battle against the terrifying dragon, all to be able to save a damsel in distress—a princess who in the story doesn’t do anything. She’s helpless. Her only role is to be trapped in the tower. 

And I want to ask, it that basically our role in this story that God is telling? Is Jesus the knight who has slain the dragon, broken into the tower and carried home the damsel, and are we completely passive, helpless, where our only role is to scream in terror and then faint? See, sometimes I think that’s actually kind of how we view our role within God’s great story. 

If you’ve been a part of us for a while, you know that we take very seriously the idea that we who are humans are stained by sin. We saw back in Romans chapter 1 what the Bible says happened to humanity. How when we turned away from God, we became hopelessly broken by our sin. Paul writes there that we became FILLED with all manner of unrighteousness and evil, full of envy and so on. We become incapable of fixing things, helpless. This is our fallen human condition.

And you might also have noticed that every week we confess our sin, because we believe that sin will be a part of us until we die or Christ returns, that until that day, we will always struggle with mixed motives and battle pride and selfishness.

These things are true, I believe in them. But if we’re not careful, it’s really easy for us who take sinfulness so seriously to fall into a trap: to believe that therefore, well things are not really going to get better for me. I will always have these struggles. I will always fail at the same things. Why do I can truly get any better? I’m sinful! I can’t change myself. So why even try? For that matter, let’s face it—there’s not anything I can do to make the world better, either. The best I can do is wait for Jesus to change me and change the world. This is what I mean: it’s easy I think, sometimes to believe that within the Christian story, we really don’t have any agency or any meaningful role. We’re basically just damsels in distress waiting for our knight. How boring that would be!

But here’s the thing. Did you notice what Paul says in verse 14? “I myself am satisfied—that is, convinced, brothers, that you yourselves are full of—full of what—full of unrighteousness, evil, envy?, like he said in 1? No, full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.” 

You are full of all goodness! What can he possibly mean? Well, he’s not telling the Roman church, “Hey, when I look at you, I’m really impressed. You’ve got it all together and you know everything.” We know that’s not what he means, because he’s just spent chapters trying to correct mistakes they’re making and helping them to deal all kinds of mess. Paul’s not grading their performance. He’s reminding them that something has happened to them.

It’s what he’s been talking about all throughout this letter. Remember, Paul is saying to them and, indirectly, to us: it’s not just that when you believed in Jesus you were forgiven. When you believed in Jesus, you became united to him. You became part of his body in a more intimate way than you can possibly realize. Jesus now dwells in you. His Holy Spirit fills you. Because of that, what Paul said to them he also would say to us: You and I, this church; we are full of goodness, filled with knowledge. Not because we’re awesome. But because Jesus is. And we have Jesus. 

• It’s not that right now we know everything—of course not. But we do know the one who knows everything—and that person who is himself truth and wisdom, he lives among us. 

• He’s not saying that now that we are Christians, we have it all together—obviously! No, but you and I now are united with the one who does have it all together, and it’s his Spirit who is actively working in us to make us more like him every day. 

Because we have Jesus, by his Spirit, “You are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge.” Which means we are not damsels in distress. In God’s great story Jesus, our true hero, makes us into something far more interesting.  

So in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” there’s this moment where after Aslan the lion was sacrificed, after he came back alive in victory, he invades the castle of the wicked Witch. This castle is filled with creatures who have been turned to stone by the power of evil. And so Aslan, after jumping over the wall, goes to each statue and breathes on them. And when he breathes on them, something happens. Lewis writes:

“I expect you’ve seen someone put a lighted match to a bit of newspaper which is propped up in a grate against an unlit fire. And for a second nothing seems to have happened; and then you notice a tiny streak of flame creeping along the edge of the newspaper. It was like that now. For a second after Aslan had breathed upon him the stone lion looked just the same. Then a tiny streak of gold began to run along his white marble back then it spread — then the colour seemed to lick all over him as the flame licks all over a bit of paper — then, while his hindquarters were still obviously stone, the lion shook his mane and all the heavy, stone folds rippled into living hair. Then he opened a great red mouth, warm and living, and gave a prodigious yawn. And now his hind legs had come to life. He lifted one of them and scratched himself. Then, having caught sight of Aslan, he went bounding after him and frisking round him whimpering with delight and jumping up to lick his face.”

The moment someone becomes a Christian, Jesus, like Aslan, breathes his Spirit on us who were once stone, the Spirit of life. Perhaps at first it is hard to see the difference. The spreading of this power can sometimes work slowly. But over time, bit by bit, all that was hardened and cold and dead begins to come alive. This is what’s happening to us now. His mercy is overcoming our hardened bitterness. His love is undoing our selfishness. His strong faithfulness is overcoming our fear. We are filled with goodness and knowledge. The power of Jesus is changing us, and we can expect it to continue to change us.

And as we are being changed, we also are given a meaningful role in this story.  

Returning back to Narnia, After Aslan’s breath has begun bringing these creatures of stone back to life, he calls them to join with him in the battle. Yes, Aslan is the heroic warrior the one who will bring about the victory; but all these creatures now rescued by him get to participate in his great work. Together they charge back to where the wicked witch and her servants are, and with the roar of Aslan giving them strength, they charge the enemy together and win. 

And even as Jesus rescues us, he invites us to join with him in his glorious work of making things right. We are not just helpless damsels: we have a meaningful role. Paul has been signaling this throughout: 

• Chapter 12 he says, “Now that you have known God’s mercy, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice—because this is where it’s all going. The nations being offered in worship, and you have a part.” 

• And then in these past verses he said, “Now that Jesus has rescued you, care for each other—build each other up, building the great temple of God, that all the world might join in worship—this is a part you have to play.” 

• And again, what does he say here in verse 24: “I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain and to be helped on my journey there by you.” how does he close here in verse 30? “I appeal to you brothers by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf.” In other words, even as I am one of those messengers being sent by God into the nations, you now can join with me, participating in this great work. Because you have a part to play.”

When Jesus saves us, he makes us characters with real choices who have meaningful parts in the story. You are part of Aslan’s army doing battle. You are part of God’s work of reclaiming the world and drawing people to worship him. Every time you and I seek to entrust a new aspect of our lives to Jesus; every time we do the hard work of loving others in service to him, every ounce of energy we give to helping others come to know him, all of that is us playing our part in this glorious story that will end in joy and laughter.

Let me say this as we close. I don’t believe you have understood Romans—I don’t think we understand the gospel, until we begin to see, to experience tremendous, powerful, hope. It’s tragic to me that Christians have sometimes become known for gloominess and doomsaying, more recently have garnered the reputation for being angry and fearfulness over all the terribleness of the world is terrible. Yes, there is sin, and yes things are hard. But there is a greater truth. We are in the final act of a glorious, joyful story. And in Jesus we are being given a meaningful, beautiful role to play. I can’t imagine any greater reason to hope for that. With this hope, let’s turn in prayer now.