Paul’s Letter to the Romans: Chapter 1:1-17 (Part 3)

Today, I start actually going through Paul’s letter to the Romans. In order to really simplify things, I’m breaking this post into two sections: (A) Paul’s normal “introductory” material he uses in many of his letters (1:1-15); and (B) the “thesis statement” for the entire letter (1:16-17). So get ready to take some notes, we’re going to dive right in.

Romans 1:1-15: The Greeting, The Prayer Report, and Thanksgiving
Paul begins Romans as he does with all of his letters: with a standard greeting and prayer report. In his greeting (1:1-7), Paul identifies himself as a servant of Christ Jesus, and as an apostle for the Gospel of God. We should not overlook how Paul characterizes himself. He was, after all, met by the risen and glorified Jesus Christ on the Damascus Road—such an encounter is bound to change a person! And what was Paul like before that encounter? He was a zealous Pharisees, hell-bent on stamping out the growing messianic movement that proclaimed Jesus as the risen Messiah. But then, much to his surprise and horror, Paul encountered that very risen Messiah, and it became crystal clear to him that he was, despite all his zealousness for the Torah, in fact fighting against the very God he claimed to be fighting for. He found himself the enemy of God’s Messiah…and then Jesus extended his grace to Paul, redeemed him, and set him off on an entirely different mission in life.

Jesus was no longer Paul’s enemy, he was Paul’s Lord, and Paul was his servant. And how was Paul to serve Christ? By being obedient to apostolic call to take the Gospel of God to the Gentiles—the Gospel of God that was first declared in Genesis 3, immediately after sin came into the world, that God would work through the offspring of the woman to crush the head of the offspring of the serpent. It was then established in the covenant YHWH cut with Abraham: that through Abraham’s offspring would come a great nation through whom all nations would be blessed and all creation saved. The Gospel of God was the salvation of all nations and the re-creation of creation.

If that is what the Gospel of God does, the clear content of that Gospel is about God’s Son—Jesus. Paul first identifies him as a “descendant of David according to the flesh.” Simply put, Paul identifies Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. But then Paul also identifies him as “the Son of God with power according to the Holy Spirit by the resurrection of the dead.” Simply put, the term “son of a god” was often a pagan way of describing a king. Paul, though, takes that title to a whole new level: Jesus as the Son of God means he is the Lord over all creation—he has defeated death itself, and therefore rules over all creation. In Colossians, Paul calls Jesus “the image of the invisible God”—this is Genesis 1:26-27 language.

The power of the resurrection has shown Jesus to be the kind of humanity that God intended all along since the creation of mankind: the one in whom God’s Spirit dwells, fully in God’s image, and who rules over God’s creation as a king. And now, through that same Holy Spirit, Jesus had sent Paul to proclaim the “obedience of faith” to all nations. The New Creation had begun, and Paul was sent to spread the Good News to all nations, thus fulfilling God’s covenant with Abraham. For that reason, Paul is writing to all the saints in Rome, both Jew and Gentile. For the reunion of Jew and Gentile in Christ is the main reason why Paul is writing his letter.

In 1:8-15 we have Paul’s prayer report and thanksgiving. In it we learn that Paul had been wanting to visit Rome for quite a while, but had been unable to do so. It is worth noting that Paul did not found the church in Rome, therefore, he has no authority as the founder of the church. Therefore, he goes out of his way to emphasize that he wants to visit the believers in Rome, not only to “impart some Spiritual gift” to strengthen them, but to allow be mutually encouraged by them. Yet although he wants to come to Rome simply as a fellow-Christian, Paul also states that as an apostle who was sent by Christ to take the Gospel to the Gentiles, he hopes to have a part in the “Gentile mission” in Rome. In other words, Paul essentially is saying, “I know I didn’t start the church in Rome, but I would love to come and help you take the Gospel to more Gentiles!”

Romans 1:16-17: The Thesis Statement of the Entire Letter
The real beginning of Paul’s argument is found here in 1:16-17, essentially the “thesis statement” of Romans. If you misunderstand 1:16-17, you will probably miss the entire point of Romans. What lies at the heart of this “thesis statement” is the essence of the People of God. When one look at the entirety of the Old and New Testaments, one will find that, contrary to what some well-meaning Evangelicals have believed, there are no two peoples of God: (i.e. the Jews were the people of God in the OT, but the Christians are the people of God in the NT). The goal of God’s salvation has always been the same: the create one people for God’s Name. The difference between the OT and NT is to be found in the way entrance into that people of God was understood. In the OT, you were born into the people of Israel, and the sign of being part of that people was circumcision.

In the NT, though, it is a matter of being “born again,” through faith in Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. The sign of being part of the People of God is the Holy Spirit. What has been revealed in Christ and in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit certainly causes Paul to look back at OT Israel in a new light, but that does not change this fundamental truth about salvation and the People of God: God’s goal has always been to create a People (not two peoples) for His Name. In the OT, the outward sign of that people was found in circumcision; in the NT, the outward sign of that people is the promised Holy Spirit and the circumcision of the heart.

With that in mind, we can now begin to understand what Paul is saying in 1:16-17. Contrary to what Martin Luther taught, Romans is not about getting saved. It is about being saved. The question Paul is addressing isn’t “How does someone get saved, by faith or by works?” Rather, the question Paul is addressing is, “How does someone live, once he has become a part of the People of God? Does he live on the basis of faith or on the basis of Torah? Remember, Paul is writing to Christians who are already saved—he wouldn’t need to tell them how to get saved! Instead, the issue that confronted the early first century Church was one of identity and practice.

Simply put, when a Gentile accepts Christ and becomes a part of the People of God, since the People of God had been always understood to be the people of Israel, does that Gentile have to then “become Jewish” and start submitting to the Jewish Torah? Must that Gentile have to observe the Sabbath, obey the Jewish food laws, and submit to circumcision? After all, God had given the Torah through Moses for His people to live by—the Torah was the covenant for God’s people. So…does “Gentile Joe” who puts his faith in Christ and receives the Holy Spirit have to now become “Jewish Joe”? Paul’s answer throughout Romans is an emphatic “No!”

Paul starts out in 1:16 by saying, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel…” this is an unfortunate translation. Paul is not saying that he’s not embarrassed by the Gospel. Rather he is reflecting the Jewish concept of shame and echoing passages like Psalm 24:2, which states, “O my God, in you I trust; do not let me be put to shame.” It is not a matter of being embarrassed by the Gospel; Paul is emphatically stating that the Gospel of Jesus Christ will not put him to shame; it will not let Paul down. In other words, the Gospel is trustworthy and reliable—it will be proven to be right, and Paul (and all Christians, for that matter) can rest in that certainty. For he knows that the Gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, for the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”

Paul then continues in 1:17 to state that God’s righteousness is revealed in the Gospel regarding Jesus Christ. This leads to a fundamental question: “What is meant by ‘righteousness’? What does it mean to say ‘God justifies you/makes you righteous’?” Books have been written on this one question alone, so we will try to simply things. Incidentally, it is a shame that we have the English word “justification,” because one can see in Greek that the word we translate as “justification” (δικαίωσιν) or “to justify” (δικαιow) is essentially the same word for “righteousness” (δικαιοσύνη). We need to come up with a word in English to show the connection: perhaps we should use “righteousize.” So, what does it mean to be “justified/righteousized”?

Basically there are two ways to understand this. One way is to see the term as a moral term; the other way is to see the term as a forensic term. Ever since Martin Luther, who was influenced by Saint Augustine, “justification” has been understood in the Protestant tradition as a forensic (or legal) term. It sees God as the great judge and human beings as guilty sinners deserving the death penalty. God then sends his son Jesus, who lives a sinless life (and thus is not deserving the death penalty). Yet God then allows Jesus to be crucified, and thus lets Jesus suffer the death penalty that we deserve. Therefore, since Jesus “takes on” our sin and suffers the penalty we deserve, God can then transfer Jesus’ righteousness onto us, and thus declare us “righteous.” We become, as John Calvin put it, “snow-covered dung.” We really are filthy sinners, but Jesus’ sacrifice allows God to declare us righteous, although we really aren’t.

The other way to understand “justification” is more common in Orthodoxy and Catholicism. Now, to be clear, the forensic way to understand justification is certainly there in the Bible, and it is acknowledged in Orthodoxy and Catholicism. But our biblical literacy would be lacking if we failed to acknowledge justification as a moral term. Whereas the forensic term comes from the language of the law court, the moral term comes from the language of the hospital. This view sees God as the great physician and human beings as people who are suffering from the disease of sin that will inevitably lead to death if not treated. Jesus’ crucifixion and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, therefore, is seen (in modern terms) as an injection of antibodies into this sin-damaged creation and our sin-damaged lives. And therefore, as we continue to listen to the Great Physician and put our trust in his prescription and rehabilitation regime, He will, in fact, fully restore us to Spiritual health. He will, in fact, make us righteous as Christ is righteous, and not simply legally declare us righteous. And therefore, at the resurrection of the dead, and all stand before God’s throne to be judged, He will be able to look at us and truly declare us to be righteous, because we will, in fact, truly will have been made righteous.

As one should be able to see, both ways of understanding justification are present in the New Testament. In any case, when Paul says that the righteous of God is “revealed from faith for faith,” it should become quite clear that we cannot afford to understand justification in forensic terms alone. For again, Paul’s primary purpose for writing Romans is not to explain in some legal terms how one gets saved. His purpose is to emphasis how one lives a righteous life once one gets saved. Therefore, Paul is saying salvation begins with the faithfulness of Christ, and the righteousness that comes through that Gospel of salvation is made complete through our continued faithfulness to Christ and our continued faith in Christ. Hence, as Paul finished his “thesis statement,” he quotes Habakkuk 2:4: “The righteous will live by faith.” Paul’s focus in his entire letter is here: How does one live, once one is saved? Not, how does one get saved?

Because Protestants ever since the time of Luther have assumed Paul is explaining how one gets saved, the result is that Protestants tend to completely misunderstand Romans. And that is a shame. Hopefully, theses posts will help us to read and understand Romans the way Paul’s original hearers would have read and understood it.