Over the next period of time, I hope to do a series of teachings based on the the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans. This letter, or “epistle,” is the longest letter in the New Testament and contains some of Paul’s most mature and important theology. Even so, it’s worth asking why we are looking at Romans.
In fact, I have to say that I’ve been a bit “anti-Paul” for the past couple of years. Perhaps more positively, I have been “pro-Jesus,” especially since I’ve come to call myself a Mennonite or Anabaptists. Anabaptists tend to center their understanding of the Christian faith in the gospels, not the Pauline epistles, unlike many groups that started during the Reformation period of the sixteenth century. So, when we I have been teaching out of the lectionary passages, I have tended to teach on the Gospel passage.
But Paul is actually our first source for the teachings of Jesus: In 1 Corinthians 11, he quotes the words of the institution of the Lord’s Supper, which we repeat when we celebrate communion together:
23 For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is foryou. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. Cf: Mt 26.26—29; Mk 14.22—25; Lk 22.14—23.
Paul wrote this, scholars think, around 53 AD, making him the earliest witness to Jesus’s teaching. If we want to know what Jesus taught, it’s important to understand Paul.
And if Paul does nothing else, he preaches Jesus. In Romans 1, and in many other places, he calls himself Jesus’s bondservant; Jesus’s slave. I will probably never learn to love Jesus as much as Paul did, or follow him so faithfully. Paul again and again reminds us to follow the example of Jesus. The letter to the Romans was the first book of the Bible I ever studied after my conversion, and I learned so much about what it means to think and act as a follower of Jesus.
Romans is Paul’s major work. Thousands of books have been written on it. Thousands! In some ways, it launched the Reformation; we are “Protestants” because Luther read Romans 1:17. If we all spent all of our time for the rest of our lives, we couldn’t understand all of its ins and outs. Scholars don’t even seem to agree about why Romans was written.
So, what hope do we have? I believe that God’s Word comes through the Scriptures to all who read it faithfully and honestly. And I hope we can do so. I don’t know if we’ll get through the whole book — it’s such a rich stew — but let’s start on this journey together. All I ask is that we go together and listen carefully to what is said.
We are going to go through some deep waters together. Next week, for example, I think we will have to deal with what Paul says about male and female homosexuality, and I’m not sure we’re going to all come to the same place together. So, let’s pray that our little church doesn’t drown!
Let’s start by looking at Romans 16:1-16 (!).
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacona of the church at Cenchreae, 2 so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of myself as well. 3 Greet Prisca and Aquila, who work with me in Christ Jesus, 4 and who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. 5 Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convertb in Asia for Christ. 6 Greet Mary, who has worked very hard among you. 7 Greet Andronicus and Junia,c my relativesd who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was. 8 Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. 9 Greet Urbanus, our co-worker in Christ, and my beloved Stachys. 10 Greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus. 11 Greet my relativee Herodion. Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus. 12 Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa. Greet the beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord. 13 Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; and greet his mother—a mother to me also. 14 Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brothers and sistersf who are with them. 15 Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who are with them. 16 Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.
It’s clear that Paul is writing to a Christian community that already exists in Rome. It is unknown how large the community was, or how many assemblies there were, but some believe that most of the “greetings” here refer to individual house churches. Let’s go through the list, and see the likely number of assemblies. Tell me whether you think it is likely, unlikely, or unknown whether this is addressed to a house church.
So, that’s at least —
My point is that Paul probably wrote to churches much like ours, and I think it’s a little thrilling to imagine hearing from Paul in our little church.
Romans 1:1-17
Paul introduces himself and his themes in these first verses. As I said, Paul declares himself as Jesus’s slave. He also describes himself as an apostle, as one of the message-bearers of the gospel, the good news concerning Jesus. This gospel is about Jesus from first to last (verses 3,4):
Furthermore, this gospel comes through Paul to the Gentiles as well as Jews. NT Wright reminds us that Paul’s ministry to the Gentiles wasn’t just a job description or a spiritual gift (as important as these could be). That the gospel was being brought to non-Jews is a radical new step in God’s plan for humanity, and signals God’s next step in bringing about the kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of. The good news must be brought “among all the Gentiles” (as Paul puts it here) and Paul is the first one sent to these people — non-Jews, like us, of course.
The relationship between Gentiles and Jews is an important theme in Romans, and we will be coming back to it. The house churches in Rome have both Gentile and Jewish believers in them. In the roll-call above, we see names that indicate Jews and Gentiles. For example, according to the book of Acts, Prisca and Aquila were Jewish Christians who had earlier been forced to leave Rome when the emperor Claudius expelled all Jews (Acts 18), but were later allowed to return. It seems unlikely that “Narcissus” was Jewish by birth; “Narcissus” being a name from Greek and Roman myths. And so, on. Paul says he is indebted to both “Greeks and barbarians,” perhaps putting himself in the shoes of his readers, much like we might say something like “Western” and “non-Western” cultures.
It might be useful to think of our own situation. We have a of people in our church who might be considered “ethnic Mennonites,” that is, people who were born into Mennonite families with Dutch- or German-sounding names. Others of us married people like this. Still others have come to believe something like the “Anabaptist vision” as a good understanding of the way God wants us to believe and act in the world. Others appreciate the intimate fellowship of a house church, perhaps, or they just like soup. Is the gospel and the Anabaptist vision for both “ethnic Mennonites” and “new Mennonites”? Do “new Mennonites” have to learn to make quilts, sing a cappella, and become pacifists? Should “ethnic Mennonites” give up their Anabaptist beliefs and traditions to become more like others, whether the “others” are evangelical Baptists or mainstream Protestants? These actually are important questions for us, and it might be helpful to keep them in mind as we see Paul talk about Greeks and Jews.
Whatever the gospel is, it is for both Greeks and Jews, for “Greeks and barbarians,” for those who can play the Mennonite game, and those who cannot. What, then, is this good news? What is this gospel supposed to bring about? There are two key phrases that Paul uses in these opening verses.
First, in his opening remarks, Paul says he was called to be an apostle “to bring about the obedience of faith … for the sake of [Jesus’s] name.” Second, Paul quotes the prophet Habakkuk in verse 1:17:
For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The righteous will live by faith.” But, before we touch on these two verses, I want to talk a little bit about language and how it works.
I have a friend who has a weblog entitled “Deliberate Ambiguity,” and I really like that name. I think we have in our heads a notion that we got somewhere that language is supposed to mean exactly one thing. So, when we encounter a verse or text in the Scripture, our initial reaction is to try to figure out exactly the one thing it means.
Let me give you a very simple example from some research I did several years ago. We were working with NASA to build robots (well, simulated robots) to understand natural, human language. For example, you could imagine having a helper robot on the space station, and you could say something like, “Bring me the Phillips-head screwdriver from the toolbox in the other room.” What you want the robot to do is something like this: to think about whether it knows where the toolbox is, and whether there is a Phillips-head screwdriver in it, then trundle off to fetch it.
So, let’s consider the robot thinking about the Phillips-head screwdriver, and it decides that there is one. And, let’s assume that everything on the space station has a bar-code on it, so it thinks it knows that what it wants is item 5001; that is, the item with the bar-code 5001 (I’m making these numbers up, of course).
So, what happens when it opens the toolbox, and item 5001 isn’t there, but item 1432 is, and it is a Phillips-head screwdriver? We wouldn’t want the robot to return to you and say item 5001 wasn’t there. You didn’t ask for item 5001; you asked for a “Phillips-head screwdriver.” You were being deliberately ambiguous; you were giving the robot an ambiguous description that covers a bunch of items, and it should bring back item 1432 even though it wasn’t the item it thought was there in the first place.
One of the reasons why it takes so long to write computer programs is that computers don’t have much of a capacity for ambiguity, but human language is deliberately ambiguous at every turn, and this is a good thing in general. We can’t, and in general do not want to, pin down the meaning of something in a butterfly display—beautiful, but with all the life taken out of it. This is true for the language we use everyday, and it is true for the language of scripture.
With that in mind, we will now quickly look at these two expressions from Romans 1, which contain richly ambiguous terms such as ‘faith,’ ‘righteous’ and ‘righteousness’ and even ‘life’ itself.
In verse 2, Paul writes that his apostleship was meant to “bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the same of [Jesus’s] name.” This could mean several things:
Like the robot with the screwdriver, I don’t think we want to prematurely commit to one of these—or some other—more precise meaning. We know that Jesus brought good news, and that Paul handed on to others what he had received, and that the church and kingdom were founded on that good news. We know that God wants us to be his faithful, consistent people, obedient to God. We know that Jesus is both the place to start, and the place to end, so I want to squeeze all of the goodness out of this short phrase, and thank God that we have received the opportunity to exhibit the obedience of faith that will lead to the praise of Jesus.
Many commentators see verse 16 and 17 as summing up the main theme of Romans:
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, “The one who is righteous will live by faith.”
This is the key verse of the Reformation: many people have lived and died because of this verse. It was Luther’s starting point: he came to believe that it was through faith alone that he could please God, and this was touchstone of the Lutheran movement, and hence, all the Protestant movements.
But let me suggest that the deliberate ambiguity is at work here, too. We can understand “righteous” as being declared righteous, or as becoming righteous though a living faith. We can understand “life” as the new life that comes to people when they first come to trust in Jesus, or the kingdom life eternal that starts then, continues through our lives now, and continues through all eternity. And we can uderstand “faith” as belief in the promise of God, or accepting the truth of the Christian faith, or our need to faithfully live a righteous life, now possible because of what Jesus has done. God did a new thing in Jesus: This was a revelation by God of a new way to get and to become righteous. And all of these “deliberately amigigous” meanings are floating around in here.
Don’t worry if I’m not making sense about this — feel free to make comments and to disagree. Since righteousness by and through faith is a major theme in Romans, we’ll return to this in the coming weeks.
Here we sit in our little house church, just as the Romans did nearly two thousand years ago. The gospel comes to all of us, Jew and Gentile; birthright Mennonites and non-Mennos; male and female. I pray that we can be mutually encouraging this week to one another as we strive towards “the obedience of faith,” and I pray that God will take us through these deep waters together. Let me suggest that you make it a practice to read at least a portion of Romans each week. We’ll be looking especially at the first two chapters next week. But the whole book isn’t that long—perhaps spending the hour or so reading the entire letter will be a good discipline until we finish this study together.