With today’s post, our long and winding road through Romans comes to an end. It’s time to look back the journey and pull together some final thoughts.
At the start of the series, I expressed some uncertainty about the situation into which Paul was writing. While I came in thinking he was writing to a church divided on ethnic and religious grounds, as I leave, I’m convinced that while, yes, that is the case, there was definitely one side that had more power in the situation and that Paul was writing primarily to confront them on their arrogance in dealing with the minority. Because the concerns of the less powerful group align more naturally with those of Jewish Christ-followers, the most commonly proposed context for the letter — a community struggling to reintegrate Jews returning to Rome following the Emperor Claudius’ death — makes a lot of sense.
As Ben Witherington III summarizes Paul’s intentions:
The character of the discourse, in both its theological and ethical dimensions and parts, is intended to persuade the Roman Christians to take a particular course of action —to unite and build up the body of Christ in Rome, which is composed of both Jews and Gentiles, and to see themselves as part of God’s eschatological plan to unite all peoples in Christ throughout the world by grace through faith, never forgetting that the Good News about the Jewish Messiah Jesus is for the Jew first, and also for the Gentile. (Witherington 328)
With this in mind, let’s look at how Paul does it.
Paul’s thesis is simple: that God has made humanity, Jews and non-Jews alike, right with God through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and this salvation is a demonstration of God’s justice (1.16-17).
First, Paul outlines God’s impartiality when it comes to humanity. No matter where one stands with respect to God’s ways — whether ignorant (1.18-32), knowing right from wrong (2.1-24), or following the Law of Moses (2.25-3.8) — every single one of us falls short of them. We all live in impaired relationship with each other and with God (3.9-20).
The good news is that by sending Jesus, God has provided us with the means of restoring us to right relationship. All we have to do is to respond to this with faith, entering into a good-faith, reciprocal relationship with Jesus (3.21-31). The idea of being made right with God by entering such a relationship is nothing new, but has been at the heart of the tradition ever since Abraham responded faithfully to God’s calling (4). Because all this is through a faithful response to God’s grace, we are all welcomed on the same grounds, so there is no cause for arrogance or boasting (5.1-11).
How exactly does Jesus reconcile us to God? By undoing the lasting impacts of Adam’s sin (5.12-21). The incarnate Jesus is God’s image, in alignment with whom we were created. As such, he restores humanity to its original programming. We therefore have a choice: either we can continue running the faulty ‘Adam’ programming and continue in the way of sin and death, or install and run the new ‘Jesus’ programming, living in his ways, participating in his death, in the promise of sharing in his resurrection (6.1-14). We can either continue in a state of slavery ‘in Adam’, or we can be freed from sin and death ‘in Christ’ (6.15-23). Because the Law of Moses was just a stop-gap to limit sin for people ‘in Adam’, we are freed from it ‘in Christ’ (7.1-6). It’s not that the Law is bad, but that it treats the symptoms (sins) rather than their cause (our misalignment from our created purpose); and sin could even use the Law, distorting it for its own purposes (7.7-25). But those who are ‘in Christ’ are freed from all this through the power of the Holy Spirit, which allows us to faithfully live out the Law’s good purpose — the law of love — without adhering to tits letter (8.1-13). This Spirit adopts us all as siblings in God’s family (8.14-17). Because of all this, we don’t need to worry about troubles or persecution we may experience, because God has fully demonstrated that God is on our side (8.18-30). The powers of evil can do a lot of damage, but they can never separate us from God’s love, revealed and embodied in Jesus (8.31-39).
But if all this is true, what does this say about God’s chosen people Israel, including those who have not accepted Jesus as their Messiah? Honestly, it doesn’t say much of anything. God has always remained faithful to Israel even when most of Israel went astray (9). Paul sees Israel’s rejection of Jesus as a misplaced zeal — a zeal for doing things their own way instead of God’s; proper zeal would be for them to join with Paul in seeing Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promises and join with him in blessing the nations by preaching the good news (10). But as much as he wishes his people would accept Jesus, Paul sees something of God’s providence at work in their rejection of him. For it was this rejection that spurred the Gentile mission to start with, speeding up the blessing of the nations. At any rate, Gentiles must remember that it is they who have been grafted onto Israel’s story, so they have no cause to boast or to scorn Jews. God isn’t finished with them yet: throughout Israel’s history, and now Gentiles’, God has used human faithlessness as an opportunity to show mercy (11).
This same mercy is to be lived out in loving relationships. In fact, we should offer our whole lives as a sacrifice to God, not conformed to this world and its unjust status quo, but transformed in our new, love-oriented humanity by the power of the Holy Spirit (12.1-2). This Spirit has empowered us with our own gifts and roles in the community of faith, just like the different parts of a body (12.3-8). Love is lived out in practice, in peace-making ways (12.9-21), which extend to society writ large, including civil authorities (13.1-7). Again, the only thing we owe to anyone is love: it’s past time to wake up to this truth, throw off any remnants of the old humanity and clothe ourselves in the new humanity of Jesus (13.8-14).
There will always be differences in community, people with different scruples about how to live faithfully. As hard as it may be, it’s important for the life of the community to set those differences aside. It’s more important to be loving than to be right (14.1-15.7).
Paul concludes the letter by interspersing a summary of the letter’s major themes with personal greetings (15.8-16.33).
So, we see that throughout the letter, Paul argues for unity and love within the community of faith, a true welcome that is not based in shared ethnicity, social status, gender, or even beliefs, but in our shared participation in the new life in Jesus.
For the last words in this series, I’ll defer to Paul himself:
Now to the One who is able to strengthen you according to the gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the gentiles, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith — to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen.
Matthew Root 