Words of Hope Daily Devotional

Called by Christ

Read: Romans 1:1-7

. . . including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. (v. 6)

Being a Roman citizen was the highest privilege during Paul’s time. But in today’s reading, Paul identifies a greater privilege for all those at Rome: being called to belong to Christ.

So, how did Christ call these believers in Rome? We learn that Christ called them through his gospel. The gospel is Christ’s invitation to sinners to repent and believe in him. The spreading of the gospel was entrusted first to the apostles of Christ because they were the eyewitnesses of the words, works, death, and resurrection of Christ. Then, as the apostles laid down their own lives for the gospel and the testimony of Christ, it was the first generation of believers who continued spreading the gospel to the Roman world.

The privilege of these believers in Rome wasn’t their Roman citizenship but that they now belonged to Christ and shared in the heavenly citizenship of the kingdom of God. To become a Roman citizen, you either had to be born to Roman parents or had to purchase citizenship (Acts 22:27-28). But to become a citizen of the kingdom of God, you must be born again (see John 3). In other words, you must believe in Christ who died and rose again for you.

It is Christ who calls us and makes us his own. And there’s nothing, not even all of Rome’s wealth, that can compare to the privilege of belonging to Christ.

As you pray, thank God for calling us to be citizens of heaven.

Gentian Dogani

Gentian Dogani is a pastor of two small churches in two different small towns in the southern part of Albania. He is married to Nikoleta, and they live in the town of Memaliaj. Since his conversion, Gentian’s desire has been to reach people and preach the good news 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” (Rom. 1:16).