Over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to turn a corner and focus on something actually biblical. When I was at Regent College in Vancouver, I was fortunate to take classes from Dr. Gordon Fee, one of the foremost experts on the apostle Paul. Since then, I have taught Paul and his letters numerous times, albeit at the high school level. It is one thing to take classes on Paul, and it is quite another to have to turn around and teach Paul. The good this is when you teach anything, you inevitably end up learning infinitely more about that subject then you ever could just sitting and taking everything in.
In any case, over the next few weeks, I’m going to share my own mini-commentary on Paul’s letter to the Romans, heavily influenced by Dr. Fee’s class. This is basically the unit that I taught high school seniors. It was my attempt to take what I had learned at the graduate school level about probably the most influential document in western civilization, and make it accessible to high school students. Don’t worry, though—if you’re not a high school student, I’m sure you’ll be able to get a lot out this as well.
Paul: The Man
When you think about it, next to Jesus, Paul is the most important man in the history of the church. More than any other early church figure, Paul is the man who impacted Christianity the most. After all, nearly half of all the books in the New Testament were written by Paul; he planted numerous churches throughout Asia Minor and Greece; if it wasn’t for Paul, Christianity might never have taken hold within the Gentile world. Because of all this, it should be quite obvious that before we tackle the book of Romans, we should take a brief look at the life of Paul and learn a bit about him. His life could be divided into two parts.
Before his conversion Paul was a Hellenistic Jew. His thinking was thoroughly Jewish. He called himself “a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee” (Philippians 3:5). Luke even recorded that Paul trained under Gamaliel, the famous Jewish rabbi. At the same time, though, Paul knew all about the Greek-speaking world. He used Greek fluently and understood Greek ways and customs.
His conversion, though, had a tremendous impact on his thinking. If his basic theology came from his Jewish roots, his essential Christian theology comes directly from his experience on the Damascus Road. His two basic theological statements stem from this experience. First, there is the centrality of the resurrection of Christ. It wasn’t some sort of vision or hallucination—it was a real appearance. Therefore, this encounter completely gave Paul a new understanding of the cross. Whereas Paul used to that Jesus was cursed by God because he was “hung on a tree” (Deuteronomy 21:23), he now saw that the curse was actually on mankind. Mankind had said “No!” to God and rejected Him—hence they crucified Christ. But God had said “Yes!” to Mankind’s “No!”—hence the resurrection of Christ. And it was the resurrection of Christ that demonstrated that Jesus was Lord over creation itself.
Secondly, there is Paul’s theology of grace. After all, when Paul came face to face with the risen Jesus, Paul realized that all his devotion to Judaism and all his zealousness for YHWH had gotten him to the point where he was actively fighting against Christ and his people. Therefore, there was absolutely nothing he could do to impress God or to make himself righteous—all his Torah-keeping had made him an enemy of God. The only way he could be saved from God’s wrath was through the grace of Christ. And it was the transforming power of grace that got Paul to realize that grace meant the end of the righteousness based on the Torah. Therefore, if the only way he, a Torah-observant Jew, was an enemy of God and could only be saved through grace, then the same must be true of Gentiles. The thing that made you righteous was not Torah observance; it was faith in Christ.
Needless to say, Paul’s life took a dramatic turn after his encounter with the risen Christ on the Damascus Road. We actually know quite a few historical facts about what Paul did during the time between the Damascus Road and the writing of his first letters, I and II Thessalonians. After the Damascus road, Paul eventually made his way into Damascus and began to preach that “Jesus is the Son of God” (Acts 9:20). Yet in Galatians 1:17, Paul said he went immediately into Arabia (probably to Mount Sinai) and then returned to Damascus three years later. Paul eventually escaped Damascus in secret (Acts 9:25; 2 Cor. 11:32-33) and went to Jerusalem for two weeks. That visit to Jerusalem, three years after his conversion, was his first one as a believer.
After his brief time in Jerusalem, he went back to his home town of Tarsus (Acts 9:30, 11:25, Gal. 1:21), and stayed there for about seven years. Around 43-44 AD, though, he appeared in Antioch (Acts 11:25-26), and soon after that, around 45-47 AD, he went on his first missionary journey (Acts 13-14). After that journey, Paul traveled to Jerusalem to attend the Jerusalem Council around 47-48 AD. Two years later, around 50-52 AD, he went on his second missionary journey (Acts 16:5-18:19), and it was in Corinth where he wrote his first two letters: 1 and 2 Thessalonians.
Romans: Introductory Material
Romans is the most influential document, not only in the history of the Church, but in the history of Western Civilization; so it would be wise for us to take our time and make sure we understand just what Paul was saying as he was writing to the Church in Rome from Corinth during the winter of 55-56 A.D. Nobody comes to Romans with a clean slate. We in Evangelicalism think we know ahead of time what Romans is all about. The result is that we tend not to read the document on its own terms.
In other words, we tend to read Romans through the eyes of Martin Luther and the Reformation, and not through the eyes of Paul and the struggling first century Church in Rome. Although the Reformers’ theology concerning “justification by faith” is certainly true (i.e. you can’t “earn” your way to Heaven through works), the simple fact is that Paul was not talking about that issue in Romans. Luther’s theology may be correct, but his interpretation of Romans was wrong. To quote Gordon Fee, “The Reformation has taught us to read Romans badly.” It may sound startling, but we need to read Romans as if the Reformation never happened.
A Few Specifics
First off, Romans is an undisputed Pauline letter: there is no disputing that Paul was the author. Secondly, it was written during the end of his third missionary journey, probably the winter of 55-56 AD. Paul was in Corinth when he wrote it. We know this by a few things mentioned in Romans 16. We are told in 16:1-2 that Phoebe was the carrier of the letter—she was from Corinth. We also find in 16:23 that Paul sends greetings from his host, Gaius, whom be baptized (see I Corinthians 1:14).
Another thing to take note of is the situation of the various house-churches in Rome. Now, Paul did not found the church in Rome. Rather, it was begun when Jews who had been at Pentecost and who had accepted Jesus as the Messiah, moved to Rome. As Gentile “God-fearers” were coming to accept Christ, though, there arose in Rome among the Jewish community controversy over Jesus himself. Obviously, the Jewish-Christians were claiming he was the Messiah, while the traditional Jews were claiming he was not. Apparently, the controversy became so heated and volatile that the Emperor Claudius ended up issuing the famous Edit of Claudius in 49 AD, in which he expelled all Jews from Rome because of a conflict of a certain man named “Chrestus,” no doubt a reference to Christ.
That expulsion of all Jews from Rome had significant consequences for the Church—for a number of years, the only Christians in Rome were Gentile Christians. When Jews were eventually allowed back into Rome, the Jewish Christians also returned. But in those intervening years, the Gentile Christians had developed their own church culture that was decidedly different than that of the Jewish Christians. The result was that within the city of Rome, you had Gentile Christians communing together and Jewish Christians communing together, but each community had absolutely nothing to do with each other. They were “in Christ” in name only. Societal and cultural factors separated the two groups from one another.
Knowing the situation in Rome has a tremendous impact on how one reads and understands Paul’s letter. Why would he be writing a letter to believers in Rome, to people he has not met, to a church he has not founded? In other words, what was Paul’s purpose in writing Romans? No, contrary to what most Protestants who have been influenced by Martin Luther and the Reformation, the purpose of Romans is not Paul’s attempt to explain how one gets saved. After all, he’s writing to Christians who have already been saved—why would he try to explain how to get saved to Christians who already are saved? Instead, Paul’s purpose was to address the current situation among the Christians in Rome. He was attempting to get the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians to accept each other. For Paul, if they cannot worship together as the Body of Christ, then the Gospel has failed. EVERYTHING in Romans is directed toward this end.
In addition to this theological and ecclesiastical concern, Paul also had a very practical purpose to write to the Church in Rome: his upcoming trip to Spain. He had worked out of Antioch as his “home base” during his earlier missionary journeys; but with a planned trip to Spain, he was looking for another “base of operations” in the West that would be able to support him.
The Theme of Romans (i.e. what holds Romans together) can be seen in Paul’s “thesis statement” in Romans 1:16-17: “I am not put to shame by the Gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes; first for the Jew, then the Gentile. For in the Gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is from faith to faith, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’” What Paul does from this “thesis statement” is make a sustained argument that extends from Romans 1-8 that outlines the heart and soul of the Gospel he preaches, and the implications it has for Christians, particularly, how Jewish-Christians and Gentile-Christians should relate to each other. Therefore, we will be mapping out the structure of the argument of Romans 1-8 as we go through this study.
The Question that Paul is essentially dealing with involves “the Law” (i.e. the Torah). Basically, how does Paul believe Christians should relate to Torah? And then, to make it relevant, how do we relate this to our lives as Christians today? That is something we will also be considering as we go along. In reality, the situation Paul had to deal with in the early Church is strangely similar to the situation in many churches in America today. Most of us have grown up in church. Most of us would either say, “I’ve been a Christian all my life,” or “I accepted Jesus when I was five” (or whatever). The point is most of us have grown up “saved.” Consequently, we tend to view the world very much in the same way the Jews of Paul’s day would have viewed it: “We are special and saved—God like us! But those people in the world are just miserable wretches!”
Now there is a common misconception among Christians that the Jews of Jesus’ day were trying to obey all the laws of the Torah because they thought “keeping Torah” got them saved. But it is important to realize that the Jews did not observe Torah so they could get saved. Think about it, they already considered themselves to be “saved”—they were the people of God! God had already graciously chosen them to be His people! Consequently, the Jews didn’t view the Torah as something they had to do in order to get saved. They viewed the Torah as something “saved people” should do! The Torah marked them out from the Gentile world. It made them different—it made them look WEIRD! And the Jews took pride in looking weird to the Gentile world! Having the Torah made the Jews stand out as God’s special people.
And so, if you have grown up in church, when you think about it, there are a lot of similarities between then and now. As you consider the similarities, let’s point out a few more crucial things to know about the Jewish situation during Paul’s day. That will be tomorrow.
