INTRODUCTION
And so we come to Romans! Paul’s letter to the church in Rome ranks high, not just in ‘religious’ literature, but by any standards of culture, intellect, and overall human wisdom. It is about God and the world; about what it means, and what it might mean, to be truly human; about the complex and contested place of Israel in the world, and in the divine purposes; about how to bring together and hold together a whole new way of being human. And it is about all these things because it is about Jesus, Israel’s Messiah and the world’s true lord; about the holy spirit, at work to bring all creation to new birth and to refashion human lives as an advance sign of, and means towards, that goal. A carefully planned and skilfully polished work of art, Romans ranges from arguments of Aristotelian density to rhetorical pathos that ranks with (and indeed draws on) the poetry of Isaiah. It is theology in the service of mission; biblical exposition (much of Romans is visibly rooted in Israel’s scriptures) in the service of the Christian gospel; a mixture of hard thinking and prayerful passion. It is not exactly a ‘systematic theology’, such as people have written in recent centuries, though it offers vast resources for such a project. It is more of an apostolic testament: in telling the Roman church how he understood the gospel, Paul leaves behind almost a formal record of how he had come to understand his own vocation.
Romans is the most wide-ranging theological statement of Paul’s views, displayed not as a list of topics to be discussed, but as a single, though many-sided, argument for a scripturally shaped vision of the church and its mission. Paul soars on scriptural motifs as he explains how God’s righteousness (that is, God’s creation-restoring justice and covenant faithfulness) is displayed in the gospel message of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and universal sovereignty.
Romans gives us an indication of what the gospel looks like when it takes root in multi-ethnic churches in the tenements of a pagan city. In Paul’s mind, justification by faith means fellowship by faith; baptism into the Messiah and reception of the holy spirit provide the necessary resources for moral transformation; and the lordship of Jesus must enable Christians from very different backgrounds to live together as family despite disagreements over inessentials. The long arc of Paul’s thought reaches all the way from ‘the just shall live by faith’ (1.17 NTE/KNT), through being ‘justified through faith, we have peace with God’ (5.1 NIV) and nothing ‘will be able to separate us from the love of God’ (8.39 NIV), through ‘there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, since the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich towards all who call upon him’ (10.12 NTV/KNT), all the way to ‘Welcome one another, therefore, as the Messiah has welcomed you’ (15.7 NTE/KNT).
Romans gives us a vision of what Paul thought he was trying to achieve by his apostolic labours. He was not an itinerant philosopher out to make a quick profit. Nor was he selling a kind of messianic faith as a ‘Judaism-lite’ option for gentiles looking for a new religious path. He was certainly not trying to add one more deity to the already overcrowded pantheon of Roman gods and goddesses. No, Paul believed that it was his vocation, a very Jewish vocation, rooted in Israel’s scriptures, to announce that the promises and purposes of Israel’s God had been fulfilled, overcoming the dark powers of evil and thus enabling idol-worshipping, sexually immoral, and ritually impure gentiles to come into the transformative ‘obedience of faith’. Thus, by fulfilling Israel’s scriptures, the ‘Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy’, while Jews like Paul himself could celebrate the world-changing achievements of Israel’s true Messiah.
CONTEXTUAL AND CRITICAL MATTERS
Rome
There were Jews living in Rome at least as early as the mid-second century BC, when the Maccabean rulers of Judea, still anxious about their more immediate neighbours, made an alliance with the Romans. There was a further influx of Jews into Rome as a result of Pompey’s conquest of Palestine in 63 BC, with thousands of Jews brought to Rome as slaves, many of whom were later set free, acquiring Roman citizenship and settling in or around the city. Archaeological evidence reveals several synagogues and funeral inscriptions, indicating a vibrant Jewish community in Rome in the first century. The fortunes of the Jews in Rome were positive under Julius Caesar and Augustus, who granted them special rights: freedom from participation in Roman religion, exemption from military service, and respect for their national customs.7 Relations deteriorated under Tiberius and Caligula with imperial policies towards the Jews being sometimes decidedly hostile. The reign of Claudius was less tumultuous, but not less problematic for Jews in Rome, and Claudius is known to have expelled many of them from the city on account of disputes involving someone called ‘Chrestus’, a probable Latinism (or simple mistake) for ‘Christos’.
The church in Rome may well owe its origins, at least in part, to Roman Jews who, visiting Palestine for feasts like Passover or Pentecost, learned about Jesus and then returned to Rome; and also to travelling tradespeople such as Priscilla and Aquila. The role of Peter in the founding of the Roman church, though strongly affirmed in later legends, is impossible to assess with any accuracy.
Paul wrote Romans from Cenchreae, a port-city directly adjacent to Corinth, probably in around AD 56/7. He had just completed an extensive phase of ministry around the eastern Mediterranean, particularly in Greece and western Asia. His plans now were to return to Jerusalem to deliver the collection taken up from the gentile churches, and after that to travel to Rome itself, as he had often longed to do, and then proceed further west to Spain.10 The three months of respite that Paul spent around Corinth gave him time and opportunity to reflect on his ministry, as well as on the forthcoming journey to Jerusalem and his impending expedition to Spain. He dictated the letter to Tertius (16.22), and entrusted it to Phoebe, his personal benefactor and a deacon in the local church, to deliver it to the Roman congregations. Paul felt himself to be at a point of transition, though it would turn out to be a different kind of transition from what he had expected. He was able to reflect on the past and look ahead to the future.
The purpose of Romans
So why exactly did Paul write this letter? Romans is many times longer than the average first-century letter; Philemon or 3 John would be more typical. It is more like a letter-treatise than a piece of personal correspondence.
From early times many have seen Romans as something like a theological treatise, or a summation of Paul’s beliefs. The Muratorian canon (late second century) described the letter as written ‘concerning the plan of the Scriptures, showing that their foundation is Christ’. Among the Reformers, Luther regarded Romans as Paul’s summary of Christian and evangelical teaching. Similarly, Luther’s friend Melanchthon, in his Loci Communes Theologici, labelled Romans a ‘compendium of Christian doctrine’. More recently, others have identified Romans as a summary of Pauline teaching drawn from his various letters, a theological testament to his life’s work, or even a dress rehearsal for his defence of himself in Jerusalem.11 There is at least a grain of truth in all this. Dunn suggests that
Paul’s primary objective . . . was to think through his gospel in the light of the controversies which it had occasioned and to use the calm of Corinth to set out both his gospel itself and its ramifications in writing with a fullness of exposition which the previous trials and tribulations had made impossible and which would have been impossible to sustain in a single oral presentation.
Given the situational nature of Romans, two main options have presented themselves for determining the letter’s purpose. (1) Was the letter occasioned by circumstances specific to Paul’s own situation and ministry? Or (2) was the letter occasioned by the perceived need to address some kind of internal problem in the Roman house-churches?
On the one hand, it is clear that Paul was writing to secure support from the Roman churches for a forthcoming mission to Spain. Accordingly, several scholars have regarded the letter as principally designed to induce the Romans to give material support for Paul’s ongoing mission. Luke Timothy Johnson goes so far as to call Romans, in essence, a fundraising letter.15 The problem, of course, is whether one would write such an elaborate and lengthy letter simply to solicit funds. Granted that, in order to get the support of the Roman churches, Paul would have had to lay out his gospel at length, to show how his vision of God’s overall plan worked out in relation both to the Jewish traditions and to the new dynamic of the gospel. But even that would hardly account for the whole letter. The latter half of Romans in particular demands explanation in terms beyond Paul’s own situation. It must be addressed to situations and sensitivities in Rome itself.
If that is so, on the other hand, it makes sense to suppose that Paul is indeed writing to address a particular situation of which he has heard through friends like Priscilla and Aquila. Some have supposed that Claudius’s expulsion of a substantial number of Jews, including Jewish Christians, from Rome in AD 49 had a significant impact on the shape of Christianity in Rome during that period. The vacuum created by the absence of Jewish Christians would mean that the churches were now almost entirely gentile. Many in Rome were in any case prejudiced against the Jews and would have been happy to see them go; it may be that some gentile Christians in Rome, anticipating Marcion by a century or so, drew the conclusion that despite its originally Jewish foundation this new Jesus-movement was now for gentiles only. (Ironically, this conclusion is matched by some recent scholars who, thinking to defend Paul from anti-Judaism, have suggested that his gospel was aimed only at gentiles since in their view Jews did not need it.)16 But when Claudius died in AD 54, and Nero became emperor, Claudius’s edicts were cancelled. Many Jews, including many Jewish Christians, then returned to Rome. There they may well have discovered that their gentile fellow-believers had not only taken over the house-churches but had implemented policies (on food, for instance) which might make it harder for Jewish Christians to belong or take part. According to this reconstruction, Paul wrote Romans to effect a reconciliation between the ‘strong’ (that is, gentile believers) and the ‘weak’ (Jewish-Christian believers).
The most likely scenario is that Romans was written for several overlapping and converging reasons. The Roman church may well have been predominantly gentile (see Rom. 1.13; 11.13), but Paul was keen to include the Jewish Christians among his addressees, and refers to his hearers as ‘those who know the law’ (Rom. 7.1). He is not only planning his trip to Spain; he is also, first, intending to go to Jerusalem with the Collection (Rom. 1.13; 15.24–25). All this implies that he wishes to do two things in particular.
First, he must win the Roman church over to his account of the gospel. This is itself many-sided, rooted in Israel’s traditions and promises and yet focused on the crucified and risen Messiah through whom the divine purposes had now spread out into the world. He nuances his account, making it clear both that those ‘in the Messiah’ are ‘not under the law’ and that this has nothing to do with what we might call a proto-Marcionite rejection of Israel, the Jewish people, and the God-givenness of Torah itself. Paul wants the Roman believers to exemplify a ‘faithful obedience’ among the gentiles (Rom. 1.5; 16.26).
Second, Paul is required to do some preventive pastoral care. Paul knows the dangers that the churches in Rome face. There might be anti-Paulinists arriving in Rome (Rom. 16.17–18). The house-churches might fragment over questions of Torah-observance, exacerbated by the expulsion and return of the Jews. The churches need to navigate the perils of living in a pagan society (Rom. 12—13). Gentile Christians must not imitate the vehement anti-Judaism of Roman cultural elites (Rom. 9—11). The church needs to understand the interlocking nature of Jewish and gentile missions (Rom. 1.16; 10.14–21; 11.13–33; 15.8–9, 27). Those who follow the Messiah will suffer for it (Rom. 8.18–39; 16.20).
THE ARGUMENT OF ROMANS
Romans, quite unlike any of Paul’s other letters, falls into four clear sections: chapters 1—4, 5—8, 9—11, and 12—16 (see box: ‘Outline of Romans’). The only debated point is the link between the first two: like Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, the first two ‘movements’ are linked, so that some have seen 5.1–11, or even chapter 5 as a whole, as belonging with and summing up chapters 1—4 just as much as they are introducing chapters 5—8. And, to continue the musical analogy, all four movements are linked in numerous ways, with particular themes, words, and scriptural expositions providing a rich, dense texture of interlocking ideas. The older popular belief that Romans 1—4 was concerned with ‘justification’ and 5—8 with ‘sanctification’ or perhaps ‘salvation’, leaving 9—11 as a detached treatise on the Jews and 12—16 as a practical conclusion, has been demonstrated to be too shallow by half. To look no further, the theme of God’s righteousness, expounded in chapters 1—4, with its accompanying exposition of the story of Abraham, continues not in chapters 5—8 but in chapters 9—11, with 5—8 therefore functioning both as a triumphant conclusion to one strand of argument in the first section and also as simultaneously heightening the problem to be addressed in 9—11 and providing the tools by which that problem can be addressed. Similar things could be said about the link of all the earlier sections with the fourth: to put it very simply, ‘justification by faith’ in chapters 3 and 4 must issue in ‘fellowship by faith’ as in chapters 14 and 15. This is just to scratch the surface, but such scratches may give an indication of the kind of document we are dealing with.
- Unveiling God’s righteousness (1—4)
The question of ‘God’s righteousness’ resonates through the second-Temple Jewish world. Daniel 9 draws the threads together: why had the exile happened? Because God was in the right and Israel had sinned. Why could Israel be sure that God would nevertheless rescue his people? Because, again, he was in the right. The theme goes back to Deuteronomy: God will be faithful to the covenant, but if Israel sins, exile will result, until God renews the hearts of his people and so rescues them at last (Dt. 27—32, a vital passage for Paul, not least in Romans).
‘What is so disruptive about Paul’s understanding of salvation is his challenge to us to hear the gospel in its vastness. The vastness of what God has accomplished is far larger than the word “salvation” usually suggests. Of course, God’s action in the gospel speaks to the lives of individuals, to what we often refer to as the “spiritual” life. And, of course, God’s action reaches beyond the “spiritual” to include the redemption of our institutions, the reconciliation of ethnic groups, and the confrontation of empires of all sorts. If we think that God’s power is restricted to the sphere of the “spiritual,” then we have a fairly small notion of God. What we also need to hear is Paul’s understanding that the gospel encompasses the cosmos, the whole of creation—all the way out and all the way down in human life.’
Beverly Gaventa, When in Romans, 46.
For Paul, the events concerning Jesus raised these questions in a different but equally acute form—and also answered them in an unexpected way, which turned out, so Paul believed, to be what Genesis, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, the Psalms, and many other texts had been indicating all along. The problem of human sin and what was to be done about it, which loomed so large in the sixteenth century in the Protestant Reformation, is extremely important, but for Paul it is framed within the even more important question: what is happening to the creator’s plans for his creation, and how is his covenant with Israel (to which he will be faithful) going to address that problem at last? Romans 1—4 is Paul’s preliminary answer.
BLAST FROM THE PAST: MARTIN LUTHER ON THE ‘RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD’
Martin Luther, early in his life as a monk, contemplated with dread the iustitia Dei (‘righteousness of God’) in Romans 1.17 of his Latin Bible, seeing it as God’s righteous judgment of sinners. However, in 1515 Luther happened upon a new way of understanding the phrase, seeing it as the divine righteousness that is given to sinners to acquit them. Luther noted years later:
I had greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and nothing stood in the way but one expression, ‘the justice of God,’ because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust. My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather I hated and murmured against him. Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant. Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just will live by his faith.’ Then I grasped the truth that the justice of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before ‘the justice of God’ had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in greater love. This passage of Paul became to me a gateway to heaven.*
- Martin Luther, ‘Preface to Latin Writings’, in Luther 1955–2016, 34.226–37.
(a) Introductions, greetings, and defence of Paul’s travel plans (1.1–15)
The letter opens with Paul’s self-identification as a servant of the Messiah and an apostle who was set apart for the gospel of God. Paul here defines ‘the gospel’ in terms of the scripture-fulfilling events of Israel’s Messiah, Jesus, declared publicly in his resurrection to be ‘son of God in power’ (1.1–4). Paul has received through Jesus the grace of apostleship to bring gentiles to the ‘obedience of faith’; the Roman believers are among those who have received this call (1.5–6).
Paul thanks God for the Roman Christians, because news of their faith is being reported all over the world. He has longed to see them, and explains that he had tried many times but had been inhibited. When he does arrive, he hopes to have a harvest among them, just as he has had elsewhere. He is, after all, under obligation to all people, Greeks and barbarians, wise and foolish alike (1.13–15).
(b) Thesis statement (1.16–17)
Romans 1.16–17 functions, in rhetorical terms, as the propositio, the central thesis of the letter. Paul is ‘not ashamed of the gospel’, because ‘it’s God’s power, bringing salvation to everyone who believes—to the Jew first, and also, equally, to the Greek’ (NTE/KNT). He is referring back to ‘the gospel’ summarized in the opening verses: the message about Jesus carries divine power. This is so because in that message ‘the righteousness of God is revealed’ (see ‘Blast from the past: Martin Luther on the “righteousness of God” ’).
(c) Gentiles and Jews condemned, God’s purposes remaining (1.18—3.20)
Gentiles and Jews, Paul explains, are all in the dock before God, guilty with no excuse. God’s purposes not only for Israel but through Israel for the world remain; God will be faithful; but how this can be so when all humans, Israel included, are sinful remains to be seen.
The fundamental charge of 1.18 is that all humans are ungodly and unjust. In stereotypical Jewish fashion, Paul sees the underlying problem not as ‘sin’ itself, but as the failure of worship through idolatry, which leads to all evil. Paul echoes Genesis 1—3: God’s purposes for humans have been aborted because humans have rebelled, resulting in radical distortions of the creator’s purposes (1.18–32). Many moralists, both pagan and Jewish, would heartily agree, but Paul turns the tables on them as well and declares that final judgment is on the way, with the Messiah himself as the appointed judge (2.1–16). In that judgment there will be some who are ‘seeking the life of the age to come’ by their patience in doing good, but Paul has not yet begun to explain how such people can exist, granted the blanket condemnation of all.
Was not Israel, however, called to be the means of putting the world right (2.17–20)? Yes indeed, but the prophets themselves declared (and virtually all second-Temple Jews would have agreed) that Israel had failed in this vocation, suffering the ongoing ‘exile’ spoken of in Daniel 9 and referred to by many writers in the period (2.21–24). In fact, if God were to create the sort of people spoken of in Deuteronomy 30 or Jeremiah 4.4; 9.25–26—a new-covenant people whose hearts had been softened so that they were able to ‘do the law’ in a whole new way—then that would fulfil scripture in a whole new way, even redefining the word ‘Jew’ in the process (2.15–29). That, however, might seem to call into question God’s faithfulness: did he not call Israel for a purpose? What if national Israel lets him down? He will be faithful anyway, replies Paul, without yet explaining how (3.1–8). This then leaves the dilemma, both for all humans as they stand guilty before God, with Torah witnessing against them, and for God himself (3.9–20). How will he then be ‘righteous’, true to the covenant and thereby to his whole creation?
(d) Covenant fulfilled through faith for faith (3.21—4.25)
God has done what he promised. This is now central. Paul explains what the cross has achieved (3.21–31) in order then to show that God has thereby been faithful to the covenant made with Abraham in Genesis 15. The result is that, as promised there, a single family has come into being, a sin-forgiven family consisting of gentiles and Jews on equal terms, with the only sign of membership being the ‘faith’ which, believing the gospel, matches the ‘faithfulness’ with which Israel’s Messiah had fulfilled, by himself, the vocation of Israel. The resonances of Isaiah 40—55 which many have heard in this letter, not least in a passage like 4.24–25, and indeed in the theme of ‘God’s righteousness’ itself, provide Paul with a central clue: the Messiah represents Israel, doing for God and thereby for the world what nobody else could do or had done.
In doing so, the Messiah has become the place where the faithfulness of God at last meets the answering faithfulness of the human race. Most ancient cultures saw the divine and human spheres meeting mysteriously and dangerously in sacred space, whether temples or other shrines. Paul, perhaps echoing an earlier formulation, refers to Jesus as the ‘mercy seat’, the lid placed over the ark of the covenant, the place where and the means by which Israel’s God had promised to meet with his people in grace.
The immediate result, vital for Paul’s whole argument, is that Jews and gentiles alike constitute the renewed family, characterized by nothing other than this Messiah-faith (3.27–31). Paul sees this as the fulfilment of nothing short of Israel’s celebrated monotheism: one God, one people (3.29–30). The law is thereby fulfilled—a paradox, since this unveiling of God’s righteousness is ‘apart from the law’, since otherwise only Jews would benefit from it (3.21, 31). This paradox, of God’s good law being simultaneously set aside and fulfilled, will recur throughout the letter.
The result, in chapter 4, is that all those who believe in ‘the God who raised Jesus from the dead’ constitute the single family promised by covenant to Abraham. Abraham’s own faith in the God who promised to give him this family despite his and Sarah’s old age becomes the paradigm for the faith by which the sin-forgiven family is now marked out.
- From new covenant to new creation (5—8)
Chapters 5—8 present a carefully planned summary of the way in which God’s action in the Messiah and the spirit provide ‘redemption’ for the world. ‘Redemption’ to ancient Israel often meant the exodus, and these chapters appear to retell that story. Thus chapter 6 echoes the rescue of the slaves, coming through the water of baptism; chapter 7 presents the paradox of the Torah, given by God on Sinai yet apparently serving only to increase the grip of sin; chapter 8 (one of Paul’s most glorious passages) expounds the saving work of God through the Messiah’s death and resurrection and the gift of the spirit, so that God’s redeemed people, like the Israelites in the desert, are being led through trials and tribulations to their final ‘inheritance’, which turns out to be the entire renewed creation.
All this is based on the unbreakable ‘love’ of God, that covenant love celebrated in scripture and now revealed in personal action in Jesus. Paul underlines this last point by rounding off almost every paragraph of this section with a reference to what God has done either ‘through Jesus the Messiah’ or ‘in Messiah Jesus’.
(d) The law and the spirit (7.1—8.11)
Paul then returns to the question of the Torah. Like the civil law binding a woman to a husband, Torah binds Israel—not to God, as might have been supposed, but to the sinful Adamic state. Torah reveals and emphasizes that Israel, the promise-bearing people, are also ‘in Adam’. But if ‘the old man’ has died, as in chapter 6, those ‘in the Messiah’ are free, not from ‘the law’ as an abstract principle (‘moralism’, and so forth—though there is truth there too) but from the Torah which, as in Deuteronomy 27—29, insists that the result of covenant disobedience will be exile.
Romans 7.5–6 sums up the sequence of thought: the old state, further expounded in 7.7–25, and the new, expounded in the whole of chapter 8. Paul then describes the arrival of Torah in Israel in terms which echo the ‘fall’ story in Genesis 3 (7.7–12), and the continuing state of Israel under Torah in terms which end in exile, in Israel being a ‘prisoner of war’ (see 7.23), seeing how wonderful Torah is but finding that embracing it merely increases the presence and power of sin. No doubt there are many analogies with different moods and moments in Christian moral struggles, but Paul’s fundamental point is to explain the work of Messiah and spirit within the larger historical narrative of God’s saving purposes.
Through Torah, sin has been heaped up into one place, namely, Israel itself (as in 5.20), but with a single purpose in view: that ‘sin’ could finally be condemned in that place, in the person of Israel’s representative Messiah (8.3). This is where Paul states most clearly how it is that the Messiah, representing Israel and hence the world, has borne in himself the condemnation of sin: ‘there is no condemnation’ for his people (8.1), because God has condemned sin in the Messiah’s flesh (8.3).
(e) Spirit and new creation (8.12–30)
The spirit, then, leads the Messiah’s people (8.12–14) to their inheritance, the renewed and reborn creation itself (8.19–23). They share the Messiah’s ‘sonship’, his inheritance, his suffering—though Romans 8 is one of the most joyful chapters in scripture, it is blunt and explicit about the suffering that will accompany the present journey—and his ‘glory’, which as in Psalm 8.5–8 refers to their sovereignty over the world.
(f) Nothing shall separate us from God’s love (8.31–39)
The final paragraph of the section is a celebration of the unbreakable grasp of divine love. God gave his son; he will give us all things with him. Divine covenant-love, the underlying and driving theme of Deuteronomy, the Psalms, and Isaiah (among Paul’s favourite passages, echoed again here), is not wishful thinking. The actual events of the Messiah’s death and resurrection guarantee it for all his people.
- God’s faithfulness and Israel’s unbelief (9—11)
Romans 9—11 is another extremely careful and balanced piece of writing. It is arguably a ‘chiasm’, with the different sections balancing one another and drawing the eye and ear to the central statement, which comes in 10.5–13.
Like some psalms, the section opens with lament and ends with praise, with meditation and petition in between. Also like some psalms, it retells the story of Israel from a particular point of view, bringing into focus the puzzles of Israel’s history and holding them within the overall divine promise. The section serves a theological purpose: can God really be trusted if he seems to have gone back on his word to his people? It also serves a sharply practical purpose, oriented particularly towards the Roman church: gentile Christians must not suppose that God has in fact abandoned the Jewish people, as though from now on the Jesus-movement would be for gentiles only. The whole passage has often been misunderstood by those who have seen the story of Israel simply in terms of advance examples of an abstract salvation and ethical code, for whom Romans could just as well have proceeded from chapter 8 to chapter 12 without this supposed ‘excursus’. That merely shows the shocking extent to which many generations of readers ignored what Paul had been saying in the first eight chapters themselves. A similar problem besets those for whom the passage was a discursive way of addressing abstract theological questions like ‘predestination’. These questions are not abstract for Paul. They concern God’s purposes for his historical people, focused on the Messiah himself who has brought those purposes to their unexpected goal (10.4).
(a) Paul’s grief (9.1–5)
Paul echoes the Israelite traditions of lament, not least that of Moses faced with Israel’s rebellion (Ex. 32.32).
(b) God’s plan in Israel’s history (9.6–29)
Paul tells the story of Israel, from Abraham to the exile, in order to make the point that God’s word has not failed.
(c) God’s covenant-faithfulness in the gospel (9.30—10.21)
Chapters 9—11 focus on Paul’s prayer in 10.1 (for Israel to be saved) and the answer to that prayer in 10.13 (all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved).
Israel’s covenant-story has come through the predictions of Deuteronomy 27—29 (rebellion and exile) but has now reached Deuteronomy 30 (renewal and restoration), through the Messiah.
(d) God’s abiding faithfulness (11.1–36)
This leaves Paul in a situation no Jew had faced before: what happens when God fulfils his promises, sending his Messiah to fulfil the ancient promises, and Israel as a whole looks the other way? This is where the incipient Roman anti-Jewish sentiment might kick in: supposing God has changed his mind, so as now to save gentiles only? No, says Paul: there is still a remnant of believing Jews, of which he is an obvious example (11.1–10), and since they are characterized by grace and faith this remnant can always increase (11.11–24).
- Faithfulness and fellowship in the wider world (12—16)
(a) The transformed mind and its effects (12.1–21)
If the fundamental problem of the human race was idolatry and consequent wrong behaviour (1.18), Paul will now show that true worship, offering one’s whole self to God, leads to genuinely human behaviour. The initial distortion sprang from the darkened mind (1.21); so the restoration of humanity will focus on the transformation which comes through the renewed mind, able now to think through and work out the will of God.
(b) Living between the times (13.1–14)
One of the reasons that vigilante vengeance is disallowed (12.19–21) is that it is the God-given role of governing authorities to keep the peace and punish wrongdoing. This belief, part of Israel’s scriptural heritage of creational monotheism in which the creator intends humans to look after his world, is not undone by Paul’s insistence on the universal sovereignty of Jesus. Governments are still important, and they themselves are answerable to God (compare the remarkable Jn. 19.11).
All this is set within the inaugurated eschatology of the gospel: though the world still seems dark, the day has in fact broken and Jesus’ followers must live accordingly (13.11–14; compare 1 Thess. 5.1–11).
(c) Growing towards unity (14.1—15.12)
Paul can now address the complex problems faced by what seems to be a loose and perhaps mutually suspicious network of house-churches. The problems, as we suggested above, are loosely connected to the different traditions and customs of different ethnic groups, particularly the Jewish Christians on the one hand and the gentile Christians on the other; but the connection is only loose, since some Jewish Christians will have followed Paul, himself a Jewish Christian (as he emphasizes in 11.1–10!), in recognizing a new gospel-freedom (1 Cor. 8—10), and some gentile Christians may well have been erstwhile God-fearers who had enjoyed coming under the rule of Torah.
In a classic move of Jewish-style conclusion, Paul quotes from Torah (Dt. 32.43), Prophets (Isa. 11.10), and Writings (Pss. 17.50; 117.1) to emphasize that what has happened in the gospel’s inclusion of gentiles is what scripture envisaged all along, so that the messianic community would have solid grounds for hope (15.4, 13). This concludes the main theological exposition of the letter with an allusion right back to the messianic gospel announced in 1.3–5.
(d) Missionary plans and closing greetings (15.13—16.27)
Paul explains his plans to go to Jerusalem to deliver the Collection (in connection with which he asks for special prayer), and then to head for Spain—the western limits of the Roman empire—by way of Rome itself. Romans 15.24 may well hint at his hope for financial support. Chapter 16 consists of extended greetings, quite possibly indicating Paul’s determination to greet all the different house-churches in Rome.
WOMEN IN CHRISTIAN SERVICE AND MISSION
Paul names a number of prominent women in Romans 16.1–6 who are servants and co-workers engaged in Christian service, including:
- Phoebe: deacon, benefactor (vv. 1–2);
- Priscilla: co-worker, church-planter, teacher, fellow-prisoner (vv. 3–5);
- Mary: someone who works hard for others (v. 6);
- Junia: missionary-apostle (v. 7);
- Tryphena, Tryphosa, and Persis: women who work hard in the lord (v. 12);
- the mother of Rufus: modelling mothering care for others (v. 13).
- John Chrysostom wrote about Junia: ‘O how great is the devotion of this woman that she should be counted worthy of the appellation of apostle!’* Origen could infer: ‘This passage teaches that there were women ordained in the church’s ministry by the apostles’ authority . . . Not only that—they ought to be ordained into the ministry, because they helped in many ways and by their good services deserved the praise even of the apostle.’
- ‘Paul’s colleague, Phoebe, probably carried the letter to Rome and expounded its theology on behalf of Paul, then provided oversight in the preparation of the community for the next phase of Paul’s missionary program.’ A. Katherine Grieb, Story of Romans, xii.
ROMANS AND THE BIG PICTURE
Studying Romans could be the occupation of a lifetime. We focus here simply on two themes: gospel and community.
First, the letter is gospel-centred. The noun euangelion and the verb euange lizō together occur a dozen times in the letter. Paul knows that the Romans have received a true gospel tradition; he wants to fill this out with his own rich gospel insight, emphasizing that gentiles are justified by faith without adopting the Jewish way of life. He offers a concise summary of the gospel (Rom. 1.2–4) and explains how the gospel unveils the ‘righteousness of God’ (Rom. 1.16–17), including both judgment (Rom. 2.16) and justification (Rom. 3.21–26). He displays the gospel as the content of missionary preaching (Rom 1.15; 10.15–16; 15.16, 19–20), and shows how, if the Romans imbibe all this gospel-centred theology, they will be strengthened in their faith (Rom. 16.25). In other words, Paul is doing his best to ensure that the faith, practices, devotion, convictions, and relationships of the Roman Christians are radically shaped by the good news of Jesus, the crucified, risen, and reigning lord.
Second, Paul urges an ethnically mixed and potentially fractious network of churches to welcome one another. At the climax of Romans, Paul exhorts the churches to ‘Welcome one another, therefore, as the Messiah has welcomed you, to God’s glory’ (Rom. 15.7 NTE/KNT). The church must not mirror the tendency in the wider culture to live in ghettoes. There is to be one church of Messiah Jesus, consisting of Jews, Greeks, Romans, barbarians—anyone and everyone. Just as there is ‘no distinction’ in sin (Rom. 3.22), so there is ‘no distinction’ in justification by faith (Rom. 10.12). The same lord is lord of all; Jesus died and rose to be the lord of all; all who call on the name of the lord will be saved. Justification by faith means fellowship by the same faith. To walk the ‘Roman road’ (as some have called the gospel presentation in this letter) is not only to discover one’s sins forgiven by the God of utter love and mercy, but also to learn that this lavish forgiveness was always intended to draw people of all sorts into a single family. Multi-ethnic churches should be the norm, not the exception. This is hard in practice and messy at times, as Paul obviously knew. Paul wrestled with the limits of acceptable diversity (not least in 1 Corinthians), and he is certainly not advocating an ‘anything goes’ style of unity. Unity and holiness both matter vitally. Either is comparatively easy without the other; the trick is to hold them together. Paul provides the house-churches in Rome with a map of how to get from where they presently are to the shared worship and witness which will glorify God.
The quotes above are taken directly from:
The New Testament in Its World
Copyright © N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird 2019
First published in Great Britain in 2019
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The Carpenter's Nail 