In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience–by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God–so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ; and thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written,
“Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.”
Within this passage, Paul writes of his powerful witness to the gospel of Christ to bring the Gentiles to obedience. From his powerful purpose statement to preach the gospel where Christ has not been named, Paul’s ambition led him to do ministry from Jerusalem to Illyricum which is today’s country of Albania.What is amazing is that we read that he fulfilled it, meaning that it is done.
We see this even clearer in verse 23 where he says “I no longer have any room for work in these regions.” The question that many asked here is how can Paul say that he has fulfilled his ministry and has no more room when there must be many people who still don’t know the gospel. The answer seems to be that Paul’s work was doing frontier missions and that once a church was planted, he moved on with the knowledge that the planted church would carry out the completion of his work by evangelizing the area. We see this to be the case when he writes to Timothy in Ephesus (same region) to “do the work of an evangelist” (2 Tim 4:5).
The point I want to make from these observations is that the church and the frontier missionary are about the same task. Since the command to make disciples of all nations has not been fulfilled as there are still many different peoples around the world who do not know Christ, we should as a church be praying that God would raise up frontier missionaries from our midst and that he would make the rest of us committed evangelists. Not all of us will wrestle with the call to frontier missions but as we saw in 3 John, we are to be involved in the missionary enterprise through praying, sending and caring for those who are.
Let us close with the benediction that closes Romans…
“Now to him who is able to strengthen you 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 now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith—to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.”
-Adapted from Desiring God, Piper sermon on Romans 15