Impact of Grace #8 - Gospel Ambition (Part 2)
Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund closes out a year in Romans with Romans 16, showing what a church shaped by the gospel actually looks like: radically inclusive, radically truth-oriented, and radically outward. Discover why resting in what Jesus has done—not self-justification—frees you to welcome others, speak truth in love, and live for something bigger than personal comfort.
Summary and Application
After eight months walking through the book of Romans together, Orchard Hill arrived at the chapter most people skip: Romans 16, a long list of names most of us are tempted to fast-forward through. But Kurt reminded us that after you've spent a year building the case for the gospel, you can't just skip the chapter where Paul shows you what the gospel produces in real, ordinary people.
Romans 1:16–17 sets the whole book's theme: the gospel is "the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes," and "the righteous will live by faith." That's the fork in the road every spiritual life eventually reaches — either I do enough to be acceptable, or God declares me righteous because of what Jesus has already done. Kurt pointed to Jonathan Edwards' famous seventy resolutions for holy living as an example of just how subtly good intentions can slide into self-justification — even resolving to try harder can quietly become "it's up to me" instead of resting in what God has done.
Romans 16 shows what happens when a church actually gets this right. Kurt walked through three marks of a gospel-shaped community.
We Will Be Radically Inclusive
In verses 1–16, Paul greets an almost dizzying list of people — Phoebe, a deacon; Priscilla, his co-worker; Mary, who "worked very hard"; men and women, Jews and Gentiles, the wealthy (like Aristobulus, connected to Herod's family) and the likely enslaved or working poor (like Epaenetus and Hermes). Kurt noted this reflects a phrase from Don Carson: the church is where natural enemies become united for Jesus' sake. That kind of diversity isn't a flaw to manage — it's what happens when the price of admission isn't "we all think alike" but simply "we all need Jesus." A church without some uncomfortable diversity, Kurt suggested, probably isn't a healthy church at all.
We Will Be Radically Truth-Oriented
Right after celebrating that inclusion, Paul pivots hard in verses 17–23: "watch out for those who cause divisions... keep away from them." Inclusion and truth aren't opposites — a healthy gospel community holds both. Kurt quoted a striking passage from Ernest Corbett on how the modern secular world, having removed the idea of sin and grace, is still stuck trying to "balance the ledger" through relentless self-justifying performance. Without truth, a church just becomes another version of that treadmill — everyone still striving, just with different metrics. A community shaped by Romans includes people freely, and it still tells the truth freely.
We Will Be Radically Outward
Finally, in verses 24–27, Paul's doxology turns outward: this good news is "for all the Gentiles," not a message meant to stay inside a comfortable circle. Kurt was honest that every church drifts inward over time — comfortable people start treating the church like a club, judging it by their own preferences rather than asking who's still missing. Paul, echoing his words in 1 Corinthians 9 about becoming "all things to all people," models a posture of holding personal preference loosely so more people can find their way to Jesus.
Resting, Not Striving
The thread running through all three marks is the same one that runs through all of Romans: none of this works if it's driven by self-effort. We're inclusive because we ourselves were included on Jesus' merit, not our own. We're truthful because the truth we're standing on is good news, not a new set of hoops. We're outward-focused because the hope we've been given isn't ours to keep to ourselves. As Kurt put it, this hope has no deadline — it's not just a nicer life now, but a hope that lasts, found only in Jesus Christ.
Questions for Reflection
Where do you find yourself relying on self-effort — trying to be "enough" for God, for others, or for yourself — instead of resting in what Jesus has already done?
Is there someone in your life who doesn't yet share your convictions, or doesn't yet know Jesus, that God might be asking you to include, welcome, or reach out to this week?
This post was developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence based on the sermon "Gospel Ambition (Part 2)" by Dr. Kurt Bjorklund (Romans 16, 8/29/2026–8/30/2026). While every effort has been made to faithfully represent the content and intent of the original message, readers are encouraged to engage the full sermon audio or transcript for the complete teaching.
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Jonathan Edwards (from his work 70 Resolutions)
Resolution 63: "To act just as I would do if I strove with all my might to be that one who would live in my time."
Don Carson (paraphrased)
“[Church is] a place where natural enemies become united for the sake of Jesus Christ.”
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Let's pray together. God, as we're gathered, Mike and Katie's story reminds us that many of us come here with disappointments, loss, a health crisis, or stress and imbalance in our lives. God, I ask that in these moments You would remind us that there is hope — hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ, Your message — and that in embracing that, we would find hope in the midst of whatever it is we're walking through. God, I pray that my words would reflect Your word in content, in tone, and in emphasis. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Today we are at the end of Romans. If you've been here throughout the year, we started in January, working our way through the book of Romans. At least for me, when you start something like that, there's a little bit of fear, because you're going to do something for eight months, and I worried about attention span — that most of you would say, "Well, maybe we'll come back when we do something else." But you haven't. You've kept coming.
In fact, the church has grown during this time. So way to go in terms of working through and hanging with Romans. I hope this has been helpful. But one of the challenges of teaching straight through books, which we do often here — sometimes we'll do topically arranged expositions, but when you work through a book, you'll come to a chapter like Romans 16.
After you've done the whole book of Romans, you can't just skip Romans 16. But when you start reading Romans 16, you see a list of names, so I want to do a group confession. How many of you, when you come to Bible reading and you come to a list of names, hit the fast-forward button? Now, that's what you do when you come to something like Romans 16 — you see all these names and you think, "He could have ended it at 15. Why is Romans 16 here?"
Romans is one of the most essential pieces of literature in the New Testament in terms of understanding what we call the gospel — what Paul calls the gospel. Now, the word "gospel" is sometimes heard as some kind of religious term, or a type of music, but what this word means is the good news — the good news of Jesus Christ. What Paul has been writing about is this idea of good news. In Romans chapter 1, verses 16 and 17, we get the theme of the whole book. He writes:
"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed — a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: 'The righteous will live by faith.'"
This is his key statement, right at the beginning, setting out what he's going to write about: the good news is that this gospel is for everybody. It's a movement of God for all people, and the righteous will live by faith.
Romans is so significant because when it comes to faith, spirituality, and church, there are really two general approaches. One approach says, "I need to do more, try harder, improve myself, so that somehow I'm acceptable — either to God or to whatever it is that gives acceptance." The other says God gives His justification because of what Jesus Christ has done, not because of what we do. I realize that can sound like church jargon, but here's how it plays out.
If you're unchurched, it plays out as, "I just need to live my life so that I'm enough for whatever is in front of me. And if there's a God, He'll somehow factor into my future — not really sure how, but I just need to be enough." And if you're churched — Christian church or otherwise — if you're part of a group that says you need to try harder and do better, all we do is transfer the self-justification angst that comes from life in general into our relationship with God. We say, "Now I don't just need to be enough in the world and the culture I live in — I have a whole new set of divine expectations about how I should live better."
You may hear that and say, "Well, the Bible is God's word. It's God's instruction. Don't I need to strive to live better?" The challenge is that very subtly, you personally, or a church community, can get to a point where the unintended message becomes the opposite of the gospel — that Jesus Christ has done it. It becomes, "Yes, I believe that, but now I need to do it," rather than resting in what God has done.
Jonathan Edwards is a well-known name — one of the early, prolific writers of American Christianity. He was the president of Princeton, and he famously wrote seventy resolutions for how he was going to live his life. You can find these online, and most of them, taken individually, are quite good. But taken together, what they subtly do is present the idea that this is about me and what I need to do. It reaches a kind of pinnacle in Resolution 63.
This is after he had said that no one has ever lived fully devoted to Jesus Christ. He then resolves: "To act just as I would do if I strove with all my might to be that one who would live in my time" — in other words, "I'm going to be the person who lives the perfect devotion to Jesus Christ." Some of you are thinking, "How is that a bad thing?" I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it misses what Romans is teaching.
Romans teaches us that all of our goodness will still come short. That doesn't mean we don't pursue goodness or righteousness or right standing with God, but it means there's a recognition that no matter how hard I try, I will still come short. When that becomes our default posture, we have what we've called a "gospel ambition." We talked about this individually last week; today we'll talk about it corporately — what it looks like to be part of a church that lives with the message of Romans as part of its DNA.
The idea is that we would be a movement for all people to help people find and follow Jesus Christ, because that is what Romans teaches. So here's what we see in chapter 16: if we're a church or community informed by the book of Romans, we will be radically inclusive, radically truth-oriented, and radically outward.
Radically Inclusive
This is where the names in verses 1 through 16 come in. There's a long list of names, and I say this points to radical inclusivity because when you actually look at them, you see a striking diversity among the people who made up the church in Rome.
First, he speaks of Phoebe, who was a deacon; Priscilla, his co-worker; Mary, who had worked to the point of exhaustion; and Junia, said to be one of the apostles — prominent names of women in his greeting. This is striking because in that culture, it would not have been normal to include the names of women, no matter how prominent they were. This shows that the church included men and women in significant roles and in significant ways; it was not an institution that leaned one way in terms of gender.
Many have made a great deal of the name Junia and her apostleship, trying to use it to prove something about apostleship. I understand that argument, but I probably wouldn't build a case on this particular passage, because the name Junia isn't entirely definitive — it would be like the name Pat or Gene today, where you're not sure which way it goes. So I wouldn't make that my definitive argument. But the larger point stands: both men and women were engaged.
We also see that there were people of great wealth and people who had none. Phoebe was a benefactor. In verse 10 we read about Aristobulus, a grandson of Herod, meaning he had wealth and opportunity in his background. There's Herodion in verse 11, and Narcissus, who was related to Claudius — people who came from wealth and power. At the same time, we see names that were common, even slave names, in that culture — Epaenetus, Philologus, and Hermes — people who were likely common people without power or access to wealth. The radical inclusivity of the church at Rome included people with great opportunities, connections, and wealth, alongside people who had very little of that, and they came together to form one community.
We also see racial differences — Jews and Gentiles who generally did not associate, and yet in the church they came together. And we see people with a long, deep spiritual history alongside people who were completely new to the faith. Verse 13 mentions Rufus, a descendant of Simon of Cyrene (Mark 15:21) — someone with a long history in the faith. Then there's Epaenetus, one of the first converts, in verse 5. Again, this points to the great diversity within the church.
You might ask, "When is there too much diversity?" Don Carson, a well-known professor and author, wrote that the church is a place where natural enemies become united for the sake of Jesus Christ. Natural enemies — people who don't see the world the same way, who wouldn't naturally align — come together anyway.
Here's why this matters. Some people start in a church like Orchard Hill that has some diversity of thought and action, and over time they say, "I want to be with people who think like I think." So they seek something more aligned, with less diversity around them — maybe a smaller congregation with more agreement. When they find diversity there too, they seek another place with even more alignment, always looking for a place where everyone is philosophically aligned.
What I want to say is that when you read the New Testament, there was diversity in the church. If you're not part of a church with an uncomfortable amount of diversity, you're probably not in a healthy church, because the church of Jesus Christ is a place where people who are not naturally aligned come together and align around something greater than the categories that would otherwise divide them.
This happens because of the gospel. In the first kind of church I described — the kind that says everyone here is striving to be justified — the price of admission is agreement, being right on all the key issues. You have to agree on everything, live the same way, and fit the mold in order to be "justified." The price of admission in a gospel-oriented church is simply admitting that we cannot justify ourselves, but that Jesus Christ is the one who justifies.
There's an article I read a while ago, out of Logos, part of a book called Theology for Saints and Sinners, written by a man named Ernest Corbett. He writes about the modern, secular idea of being justified and how it has lost its way. He writes:
"The modern individual feels a low-grade, persistent fever of the soul. We see this in the explosion of imposter syndrome — a psychological phenomenon where high-achieving individuals live in constant terror of being found out. We see it in the frantic need to justify one's existence through hyper-productivity, social activism, and the creation of a morally pristine digital avatar. We feel we are in deficit, but we are erased. We have erased the theology of sin, and we have lost the vocabulary to name the creditor. This is the great paradox of the secular age: we've removed the judge, yet the courtroom remains. We have boarded up the confessional booths, but the line of penitence stretches around the block, waiting for absolution from a silent sky."
"Forensic theology proposes that this anxiety is not a malfunction of evolution or a misfiring of brain chemistry — it is a sensor. It is a smoke detector going off because there is, in fact, a fire. The debt is not a feeling; it is an ontological status. The modern man feels guilty because, in a very real structural sense, he is."
A little later he continues: "The secular response to this infinite debt is performative justification. Having removed the atonement, the secular man must atone for himself... the engine behind the workism religion of Silicon Valley, the activism religion of the modern academy — this is what is behind it. We try to balance the ledger with the currency of a good personhood."
In other words: I'm enough because I'm active in important social causes, or because I'm productive. He continues: "We volunteer. We post the correct political opinions. We recycle. We work eighty hours — all to prove our utility. We are desperately trying to pay an infinite mortgage with monopoly money. This creates the exhaustion of the modern age. We're running on a treadmill, trying to outpace a debt that compounds faster than our righteousness can accrue."
"But the most critical failure of the secular court is the lack of a mechanism for restoration. In the Christian forensic system, there's a penalty — death — there's a payment — the cross — followed by restoration — the resurrection. In the secular court, there is only a penalty. Once canceled, there is no ritual for return. There is no blood that can wash the digital record clean. The secular sinner is exiled to the outer darkness, with no priest to bear their confession and no altar to absorb their guilt."
What makes a Christian community diverse is the very admission that anything we bring is not enough, but that it is because of Jesus Christ that we're united. When we try to make it about our own justifying works, we exclude people. Romans teaches us that if we're going to have a gospel ambition, we will be radically inclusive.
Radically Truth-Oriented
This is verses 17 through 23. After talking about this vast inclusion, Paul writes in verse 17: "I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them. For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naive people. Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I rejoice because of you, but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil."
Very simply, Paul is saying: watch out, because things will be promoted that are not true. He even says to have nothing to do with these people. So on the one hand he says radically inclusive, and on the other, radically truth-oriented.
What can happen is that we become so focused on inclusion that we're afraid to speak truth, or so focused on truth that we fail to include people. Paul is saying the church is made up of all kinds of people, and yet it continues to speak truth — because if it doesn't, it isn't functioning as a true church. There are some things significant enough to divide over; he even says to keep away from certain people. He is not lowering the bar of truth in the name of acceptance.
A healthy community will have some uncomfortable diversity, but it will also have the ability to say things you might not hear anywhere else. Paul says he wants believers to be wise about good things and innocent about evil. This is a place where you're going to hear things you may not hear — and may not want to hear — anywhere else, because truth, God's truth, is part of what the church traffics in. If you're never hearing anything that challenges how you think, how you see the world, or how you behave, you've gone too far into simply "accepting everybody."
But notice — it isn't that we don't accept people. It's that we accept because the price of admission is acknowledging our sinfulness, and yet truth remains essential to how we see the world.
Radically Outward
This is verse 24 through the end of the chapter. Verse 25 says, "Now to Him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God" — and then his phrase — "so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith."
At first, the church for the Jews was seen as "this is for us, not for everybody." Paul says, "I want this to be for everybody." If we get the message of Romans, we will be radically inclusive, radically truth-oriented, and radically outward in our focus.
Churches sometimes lose their way here, and it's easy to do, because over time any church becomes full of people who think, "This is what we already believe, so why do we need to keep looking outward?" The natural inertia of churches is always inward. If you pay attention to what's written about the church, or watch some YouTube videos on this topic, one thing that's often made fun of is what's called the "attractional church."
An attractional church is simply a place that says, "We want to do things people actually like when they come to church, so that more people want to come." To be fair, some things done in the name of attracting people are goofy, maybe even unbiblical — I once saw a video of a church doing a Super Bowl–themed weekend where the pastor set up a Bible and tried to kick it through a goalpost. That's just goofy; that's not what I'm talking about. But to say the church isn't about attracting people is to miss what Scripture teaches, because the church is to be a movement for all people, to help all people find and follow Jesus Christ.
Paul goes into this in great detail in 1 Corinthians 9, where he says, "I have become all things to all people, that by all possible means I might win some." He's saying he's willing to set aside some of his own preferences for how things ought to be, so that more people can come to understand and embrace who Jesus Christ is. When you and I are transformed by the good news of Jesus Christ, that becomes part of our heartbeat.
As a church, at different times of the year we try to be completely outward-focused — Kids Fest, Christmas, the Hill at Christmas — asking, "How can we be outward-focused?" But even in what we do weekend after weekend, our intention and hope is that the whole community can come and say, "I get this," and, "I hope it's true — even if I don't believe it, I hope it's true." Because in presenting the gospel of Jesus Christ and making that our ambition, part of our mission is not just to celebrate what God has done, but to take what God has done and share it with more people. That's part of why we have campuses all around Pittsburgh — because we want people to have a church that focuses on the message of Jesus Christ right where they live.
It's easy for any church to become more of a club than a mission — to simply become a place where you say, "I go, and I judge the church on how the music is, how the Bible studies are, how the community groups are" — like it's my club. But what happens in a club over time, especially one that started as a mission, is that the club mentality starts to overrule the mission mentality. Instead of saying, "We exist not just for ourselves, but for the community around us," we start to say, "My preferences matter more than what will help reach people in the broader community."
What the message of Romans teaches us is this: once we get the message of Jesus Christ, we will say everybody's welcome, because we're welcome — not on our own goodness, but on the goodness of Jesus Christ. We will speak truth, because truth — divine, revealed truth — is the currency of the church. And we will continue to say that we exist to bring people to Jesus Christ.
This is a call for you, and for us as a church. There's a lot that can compete for your attention. You can spend your time on projects for your home, on things that invest in your kids and their future — those are good things. You can work hard to build a nest egg so you can retire early and spend more time at nice golf resorts. There are many things you and I can do with our lives, but I don't think there's anything as significant as being part of a movement of God for all people that helps them find and follow Jesus Christ. Because without Jesus Christ, there is no hope. You can get a slightly better life here and now without Jesus Christ at the center, by arranging your circumstances — but your hope has a deadline if you don't have Jesus Christ.
It's the church that carries the message of ultimate hope — the hope of Jesus Christ. That is what we want to do and be as a church.
Before we close, let me just say — if you're here today and you're hearing this and thinking, "I don't know, I'm not sure" — what Romans has taught us very clearly is that you and I are sinful and need the work of Jesus Christ, and that this comes not through my improvement or your improvement, but through recognizing that it is Jesus alone. You can have that hope, as Romans says, by confessing with your mouth and believing in your heart that Jesus rose from the dead for you — that He was crucified and rose from the dead for you — and that this message is where our hope is found. I hope you want that to be one of the driving forces of your life — even of why and how you do church.
Let's pray together. God, today I ask that You would take the message we've been considering, in some ways for months, in the book of Romans, and seal it into our hearts and lives in such a way that we become radically inclusive, radically truth-oriented, and radically outward in our thinking. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Have a great day.
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This transcript was cleaned up (filler words removed, grammar lightly corrected) with the assistance of AI, based on an audio transcription of the original message. While care has been taken to preserve the speaker's words and meaning, minor discrepancies from the original spoken message may exist. Please refer to the original audio/video recording for the authoritative version of this message.
