CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 29
The Gospel According to Paul
1. Righteousness by faith
When paul, having completed the aegean phase of his ministry, sent a letter to the Christians in Rome to prepare them for his intended visit to the imperial city en route for Spain, he judged it appropriate to devote the main body of the letter to a systematic exposition of the gospel as he understood and proclaimed it. Although he had no thought of settling down in Rome and building on a foundation which he himself had not laid, he hoped to have an opportunity to preach the gospel in Rome during his limited stay, so as to “reap some harvest” there as well as elsewhere in the Gentile world. “for”, he adds, “I am not ashamed of the gospel” (meaning, I make my boast in the gospel): “it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek; for in it God’s way of righteousness is revealed through faith for faith, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live’ ” (Romans 1:16 f.).1
The words of Habakkuk 2:4b (“the righteous shall live by his faith”) had been quoted earlier by Paul, with this same emphasis, in Galatians 3:11: “it is evident that no man is justified before God by the law; for ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live’.” The words are quoted in Galatians in the course of a running argument, whereas in Romans they introduce Paul’s exposition of the gospel and serve as its text. The gospel which, as Paul insists in writing to the Galatians, is the only gospel worthy of the name, is the same gospel as he sets forth in Romans, but its presentation in Romans is more orderly and detailed, for now he does not write under the pressure of such passionate anxiety as he felt for his new-born children in the Galatian churches who were being persuaded to embrace, instead of the gospel which they had first accepted, a different gospel, which was in fact no gospel at all. The relation between the two documents has been summed up in frequently-quoted words by J. B. Lightfoot:
The Epistle to the Galatians stands in relation to the Roman letter, as the rough model to the finished statue; or rather, if I may press the metaphor without misapprehension, it is the first study of a single figure, which is worked into a group in the latter writing. To the Galatians the Apostle flashes out in indignant remonstrance the first eager thoughts kindled by his zeal for the Gospel striking against a stubborn form of Judaism. To the Romans he writes at leisure, under no pressure of circumstances, in the face of no direct antagonism, explaining, completing, extending the teaching of the earlier letter, by giving it a double edge directed against Jew and Gentile alike. The matter, which in the one epistle is personal and fragmentary, elicited by the special needs of an individual church,2 is in the other generalised and arranged so as to form a comprehensive and systematic treatise.3
In Galatians Paul has insisted that men and women are justified in God’s sight by faith in Christ, not by keeping the law, and that this justification is bestowed on them by God as a gift of grace, not as a reward of merit. In Romans he sets this teaching in a wider context but gives it the same fundamentally important position as it had in Galatians. The argument that the doctrine of justification by faith is a “subsidiary crater” in the volcano of Pauline theology, that it is a weapon first fashioned and used by him in his polemic against the judaizing invaders of his Galatian mission-field,4 is put out of court by his more dispassionate emphasis on it in the systematic exposition of the gospel which he now imparts to the Roman Christians.5 Indeed, as has been said already,6 the doctrine was implicit in the logic of Paul’s conversion, which revealed to him in a flash the inadequacy of the law, to which he had hitherto been devoted, as a basis for acceptance with God. In that same flash he was assured of his acceptance with God on another basis—the basis of God’s pardoning grace, blotting out the sin of one who was quite unfit for his service because, as he says, “I persecuted the church of God” (1 Corinthians 15:9), and calling him into his service. Only so was it possible for him to introduce himself to the Romans as one who had received through Christ “grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations” (Romans 1:5).
2. The universal need
He sets the scene for the exposition of his gospel by emphasizing the universal need for such a message if there is to be any hope for mankind. Mankind is affirmed to be morally bankrupt in God’s sight. In this respect Gentiles and Jews, for all the differences between them, stand on one level.
The moral bankruptcy of the Gentiles was not difficult to establish. Among the Jews a literary form had already been standardized, as can be seen in the Alexandrian book of Wisdom and the Letter of Aristeas, underlining the depravity of “that hard pagan world”. Paul takes up this form and adapts it to his own purpose, tracing in the pagan predicament the outworking of a process of divine retribution in history. The root of the trouble was idolatry, he says—the worship of created things instead of the Creator.7 Nor was idolatry an innocent error: the true knowledge of God was accessible to all in his works of creation, so that those who chose not to give him the unique allegiance which was his due had no excuse to plead. From idolatry sprang all the other forms of deviancy, including in particular those sexual perversions which in Jewish eyes were the most offensive feature of pagan misconduct. The principle of retribution8 is seen in God’s giving men up to the natural consequences of their freely chosen course of action, to a point where their conscience has become so insensitive that they not only enjoy such behaviour but actually produce moral arguments in support of it.
This picture is paralleled not only in other Jewish literature but also in contemporary pagan literature. Greek and Roman moralists could condemn current trends as roundly as Paul, but that does not absolve them from their share in the general guilt, as he sees the situation. In condemning others they condemned themselves, for they were guilty of practices and attitudes not so different in principle from those which they deplored in others.9 And if the moralist who sat in judgment on the pagan world was a Jew, not a Gentile, he was in no better case. His responsibility was the greater, since he had received the knowledge of God not only in the works of creation and the inner voice of conscience but in the special revelation given in the law of Israel. If he did not keep the law which he had received, he was the more guilty: Gentiles who regulated their lives by the limited sense of right and wrong which they had “by nature” would win greater approval than Jews who, having the much fuller unfolding of God’s will in the law, failed nevertheless to live by it.10 It was a matter of common report that the conduct of some Jews in the Gentile world brought the name of their God into disrepute (we may think of the Roman Jews whose embezzlement of a donation destined by a wealthy proselyte for the Jerusalem temple led to the expulsion of Jews from Rome by the Emperor Tiberius in A.D. 19).11 For all the religious privileges received in the course of Jewish history—privileges not to be despised by any Jew—Jews were as morally bankrupt in God’s sight as Gentiles: “there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:22 f.).
3. The way of salvation
If there is to be any salvation for either Jews or Gentiles, then, it must be based not on ethical achievement but on the grace of God. What Jews and Gentiles need alike, in fact, is to have their records blotted out by an act of divine amnesty and to have the assurance of acceptance by God for no merit of their own but by his spontaneous mercy. For this need God has made provision in Christ. Thanks to his redemptive work, men may find themselves “in the clear” before God; Christ is set before them in the gospel as the one who by his self-sacrifice and death has made full reparation for their sins. The benefits of the atonement thus procured may be appropriated by faith—and only by faith. Thus God, without abandoning his personal righteousness, accepts all believers in Jesus as righteous in his sight, regardless of whether they are Jews or Gentiles.12
The example of Abraham is instructive: it was by faith that even he found acceptance with God. “Abraham believed God”, says scripture, “and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:6). Nor is Abraham an isolated instance; David similarly proclaims the blessedness of “the man against whom the Lord will not reckon his sin” (Psalm 32:1 f.).13 As for Abraham, it is important to observe that his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness long before he was circumcised: this shows that the way of righteousness by faith is in no way dependent on circumcision, but is open to Gentiles as well as Jews. Abraham is thus the spiritual father of all believers, irrespective of their racial origin. And the testimony that his faith was reckoned to him as righteousness means that to all who believe in God, whose saving power has been manifested in the death and resurrection of Christ, their faith will similarly be reckoned as righteousness.14
So then, believers in God receive his gift of righteousness, and with it they receive also peace, joy and the hope of glory. Above all, they receive his Spirit to indwell and empower them, and by the Spirit their hearts are flooded with the love of God. With all these blessings, with God himself as their exceeding joy, they can cheerfully endure the afflictions that beset the life of faith. And as for the hope of glory, if God’s love, demonstrated in the self-giving death of Christ, has reconciled them to himself, much more will the risen life of Christ, and their participation in his risen life, ensure their salvation at the last judgment.15
Once they were involved in the old solidarity of sin and death, when they lived “in Adam” and shared the fruits of his disobedience. Now that old solidarity has been replaced by the new solidarity of righteousness and life, by which men and women of faith are incorporated “in Christ”. The old humanity is being dissolved; the new humanity, headed by Christ, the “last Adam”, is taking shape, and the obedience of the last Adam will accomplish more in blessing than the disobedience of the first Adam accomplished in disaster.16 “For certainly”, as John Calvin puts it, “Christ is much more powerful to save than Adam was to ruin.”17
The law of Moses has nothing to do with this change of relationship; it was introduced in order that man’s latent sinfulness might be brought into the open, expressing itself visibly in concrete transgressions of specific commandments. This in fact is what happened; the law brought about an increase of sin, “but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20).18
4. Freedom from sin
Let no one argue that therefore sin should go on increasing, even in the believer’s life, in order that grace might abound still more. (Paul had probably met people, even among his own converts, who argued like this.) Such an argument betrays a complete failure to grasp the meaning of the gospel and the life of faith. Believers in Christ have entered on a new life: “how can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:2). That is the practical significance of their incorporation with Christ by baptism: death with Christ to the old existence, resurrection with Christ to “newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Instead of being enslaved to sin, as they formerly were, believers are now emancipated from sin.
If sin be personified as a slave-owner, his slaves are bound to obey his orders while they are alive, but when they have died, these orders have no further relevance for them. Or, to change the figure slightly, when slaves are purchased from their former owner by a new master who sets them free, their former owner has no more authority over them. Sin has no longer any authority over believers; they now belong to God, who has liberated them from their former bondage. Sin was a harsh master who dealt out death as his wages; God, by contrast, bestows on his people the free gift of eternal life in Christ. For one who by faith has been united to Christ to live in sin is a moral contradiction in terms.
5. Freedom from law
The law might declare the will of God, but could not impart the power to do it or break the thraldom of sin. It was therefore possible to be under law, recognizing its divine majesty and authority, and under the control of sin at the same time. But the same act of grace that broke the chains of sin simultaneously freed those who were under the constraint of law. A dangerous doctrine, many must have thought; but Paul makes his meaning plain: the grace of God liberates those who are bound by sin, but law can never do so: paradoxically, law may serve to bind the chains of sin more securely on the sinner.19
The analogy of the marriage bond is evoked by way of illustration. Referring to contemporary code and practice, whether Roman or Jewish (but more probably Jewish than Roman), Paul points out that a wife is legally bound to her husband until death parts them. In the analogy of the slave-owner and his slave, the slave-owner was sin, the slave, now emancipated, was the believer. In the present analogy, the believer corresponds to the wife, set free through death-with-Christ from the tie which bound her to her former husband, the law. Now that this tie has been broken, the believer is free to enter into union with Christ. While the law stimulated the very sins it forbade, those who are united to Christ produce the fruit of righteousness and life. The analogy has its difficulties,20 but the situation which it is intended to illustrate belongs to real life; in particular, Paul himself had enjoyed the experience of liberation from the law so as henceforth to “serve not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit” (Romans 7:6).
With awareness of the law comes consciousness of sin. This fact is enshrined in the primaeval story of the fall: the first human pair enjoyed a carefree existence until the commandment came which forbade them to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge: the commandment was speedily followed by the temptation to break it and so, as Eve said, the tempter “beguiled me, and I ate” (Genesis 3:13). The same truth was seen by Paul in the history of the race: the giving of the law was designed to show men the path to life, but in the event (because of the weakness of the human nature on which it operated) it increased the sum-total of sin and so led to death. So also, in the experience of the individual under the law (dramatically described by Paul in the first person singular), life was carefree until the law was brought to his attention; then the awareness of such a commandment as “Thou shalt not covet” immediately stimulated all kinds of covetousness. The commandment is good, but sin exploits it to a bad end: as with Eve, so once again, “sin, finding a point of vantage in the commandment, beguiled me and by it brought about my death” (Romans 7:11).
Man under the law lives in a state of tension. He knows what is right; he approves what is right; but he lacks the power to do what is right. Another power at work within him, the power of indwelling sin, compels him against his will to disobey the divine law. He longs for deliverance from this uncongenial power, but finds none until it comes to him through Christ. Until then, “I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin” (Romans 7:25b).
6. Freedom from death
But when the deliverance through Christ is experienced, there is no need to continue any more in this condition of penal servitude. For those who are in Christ receive his Spirit, and the Spirit of Christ sets in motion a new power—the principle of life—which frees them from the dictation of indwelling sin. Those whose lives are directed by the Spirit are now able to fulfil the requirements of God as they could never have done under the law. In the very sphere which sin dominated—the sphere of human nature—Christ won the victory over sin and broke its domination, and this victory is made effective in his people’s experience by the Spirit. The Spirit imparts a new power, which triumphs over the old sinful propensities; the Spirit maintains the new life-in-Christ in being and action here and now, as on a coming day he will transform the mortality of believers’ present bodies into immortality. The Spirit, thus directing their lives, enables believers to live as the freeborn sons of God; it is he who prompts them spontaneously to call God “Father”. “When we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:15 f.).21 The day is coming when the children of God, liberated from all that is mortal, will be manifested to the universe in the glory for which they were created; and on that day all creation will be liberated from the frustration under which it groans at present and will share the glorious freedom of the children of God.
For that day all creation longs, as the children of God also do, but amid their present restrictions they have the help and intercession of the Spirit, and the assurance that he co-operates in all things for their good,22 since their good is God’s own purpose for them. God’s purpose, which cannot fail, is to invest with final glory all those who from eternity were the objects of his foreknowledge and foreordaining grace and whom, in the fulness of time, he called as his people and blessed with his gift of righteousness.
Paul concludes this phase of his argument with a call to confident trust in God. God is on the side of his people; the once crucified and eternally exalted Christ is their advocate in God’s presence, and from his love no power in the universe, here or hereafter, can separate them.23
7. Israel and the Gentiles in God’s saving purpose
At the outset of the letter Paul had said that God’s way of righteousness on the ground of faith was presented in the gospel “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). But it was a matter of common knowledge that Jews for the most part had not accepted the gospel, whereas Gentiles had embraced it in large numbers. Some might argue that the Jews’ refusal to accept it frustrated the divine purpose. But Paul rejects this conclusion. It has, he points out, been a recurring feature of Israel’s history that some members of the nation had responded to the call of God, while others (usually the majority) had been disobedient. The gospel had been plainly set before the Jewish people of Paul’s day, as the messages of the prophets had been set before their ancestors, so none could say that they had not heard it. Even so, there remained a chosen remnant of Jewish believers in Christ, and as in earlier days so now it was in the faithful remnant that the hope of the people’s future was embodied.
If the order of proclamation was “to the Jew first and also to the Greek”, the order of acceptance was “by the Gentile first and (then) also by the Jew”. Paul set a high estimate on his ministry as apostle to the Gentiles since through this ministry not only were the Gentiles blessed directly but the Jews would be blessed indirectly. The spectacle of Gentiles in large numbers enjoying the blessings of the gospel would one day stir the Jews to jealousy and move them to claim a share for themselves in those blessings—the blessings which indeed fulfilled the promises made to Abraham and the other patriarchs of Israel. Perhaps the sight of so many Gentile believers coming to Jerusalem with their gifts would precipitate this response at the heart of their corporate life. Their present phase of “hardening” or unresponsiveness to the gospel was partial and temporary—partial, because some Jews (like Paul himself) had already believed, and temporary, because in due course they would all believe. Through the bringing in of the full quota of Gentiles “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26).24
There may be in this discussion (as perhaps in other discussions in this letter) a more direct application to the circumstances of the Roman Christians than appears on the surface. The church of Rome was founded on a Jewish base. Probably up to the time of Claudius’s expulsion edict of A.D. 49 all Roman Christians were of Jewish birth. When, after a few years, the edict became a dead letter and Jews made their way back to Rome, the Christian community in the city was reconstituted, but now it included an increasing proportion of Gentiles as well as Jews; and the Gentile members may have tended to look patronizingly on their Jewish brethren as poor relations, mercifully salvaged from the wreck of Israel. Paul deprecates such an assumption of superiority, and describes the relation of Gentiles and Jews in terms of the analogy of an olive-tree—an analogy which may have been the more telling because one of the Roman synagogues was called the Synagogue of the Olive.25 The olive tree in this analogy is the true Israel, the people of God; the branches are its individual members. Because of unbelief some of the branches were cut out, and their place was taken by branches from a wild olive or oleaster—Gentile believers—who were grafted on to the stock of Israel to share its vitality and nourishment.26 But these newly engrafted branches had no cause for pride: by faith they had been grafted in, but by unbelief they would be cut out like many of the original branches. By now the analogy with horticultural practice has been strained to the limit,27 but the link snaps completely when Paul says that God can graft the original branches which were lopped off back on to their parent tree, to derive life from it anew. Paul seriously expects such a miracle of grace in the spiritual realm, and illustrates it by what would be a miracle in the natural realm. If Gentiles, by the grace of God, have become members of the true Israel, how much more may Jews, by that same grace, be restored to membership in it.
Paul’s own sympathies were manifestly engaged in this matter,28 but he does not present his forecast of Israel’s restoration as the product of wishful thinking but as the substance of a “mystery”29—an aspect of the divine purpose formerly concealed but now divulged. This “mystery” was in fact implicit in that “revelation of Jesus Christ” on the Damascus road by which Paul received his vocation to preach him to the Gentiles. The fulness of this implication was something which he could not have grasped at the time, but in the course of his apostolic experience it became increasingly plain to him. His own apostolic ministry was the means in the divine purpose for the accomplishment of this “mystery”. Isaiah in his day had been cleansed and sent by God to people whose hearts were “hardened” against his message by their very hearing of the message (Isaiah 6:9 f.);30 so Paul had been cleansed and sent by God, not directly to the people whose hearts were hardened against the message, but to convey that message and its saving benefits to others so that the people with hardened hearts might begin to covet those benefits for themselves and at last embrace the message with which the benefits were bound up. Thus the history of salvation would be consummated, and Paul had a distinctive part to play as God’s chosen instrument in bringing about this consummation. In the light of the initiatory revelation and its progressive unfolding in his ministry he knew himself to be, under God, a figure (as has been said already) of eschatological significance.31
Moreover, now that this mystery was revealed, it illuminated certain prophetic sayings which, as now became clear, were to find their fulfilment in this welcome dénouement. Quoting the Septuagint version of Isaiah 59:20, he says:
The Deliverer will come from Zion,
he will banish ungodliness from Jacob—
except that, where the Septuagint says “for Zion’s sake”,32 Paul says “from Zion”, deriving this perhaps from Psalm 14:7 (= 53:6), “O that delive`rance for Israel would come out of Zion!” Then he adds, echoing Jeremiah’s oracle of the new covenant, “and this will be my covenant with them, when I take away their sins” (Romans 11:26 f.).33
Paul, that is to say, associates the consummation of God’s plan of blessing for Israel, for which his own ministry was paving the way, with a manifestation “out of Zion” of Israel’s divine Redeemer—identical, perhaps, with the parousia itself. If this is so, then the “life from the dead” of which Israel’s acceptance is to be the immediate precursor (Romans 11:15) could be the resurrection harvest.
What is emphasized above all, however, is God’s good will towards all men, Jews and Gentiles alike. If, at an earlier stage of his argument, Paul has concluded that “there is no distinction, since all have sinned” and stand alike in need of God’s grace, now he concludes that “there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, … for God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all” (Romans 10:12; 11:32).
8. The Christian way of life
Paul follows up his exposition of the gospel with practical exhortations. In view of all that God has done for his people in Christ, their lives should be devoted to his service. They are fellow-members of the body of Christ, and should discharge their respective functions for the well-being of the whole. In all their relations with others, let them show the forgiving mercy of Christ. In this last injunction, Paul shows his familiarity with the teaching of Jesus which has been preserved for us in the Sermon on the Mount. Although these words of his antedate the earliest of our Gospels, yet he knew much of their content in an earlier form.
He next calls on his readers to render all due obedience to the civil authorities; in their own sphere they too are servants of God.34 This injunction may be a generalization of Jesus’ ruling, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” (Mark 12:17); but whereas Jesus’ ruling was given in response to a question designed to face him with a dilemma in the delicate situation of Judaea under Roman control, no such political delicacy was involved in Paul’s advice to the Christians of Rome. The very positive assessment of imperial administration which he expressed reflects his own happy experience of this administration in the provinces, as in the judgment of Gallio. Paul was not so unrealistic as to suppose that the established powers would always protect the interests of the gospel: he would have assented as readily as Peter and his companions to the declaration that, when they encroached on the things that are God’s, “we must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). There is no reason to suppose that he had abandoned the outlook of 2 Thessalonians 2:3–12, according to which the established order of government would one day be swamped by the force of lawlessness, demanding divine honours for itself.35 But while the established order prevailed, discharging its divinely conferred functions, protecting right and restraining wrong, it should receive the prompt obedience of Christians. The payment of taxes, for example, was part of their service to God—part, indeed, of their “spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).
The one debt that Christians should owe to others is the debt of love. Again following the precedent of Jesus, Paul sums up all the commandments of the law in the words: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Leviticus 19:18).36 “Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Romans 13:10). When law is summed up in these terms, the meaning of “law” has been transformed: it is no longer enforced from without but impelled from within, by the operation of the Spirit of Christ.37 The law of love is thus the law of Christ.
Paul warns of ominous times impending: it is the more necessary for Christians to keep alert in mind and live as befits their calling, to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14)—that is, to have those graces reproduced in their lives which were seen in their perfection in his.
Then comes a call for special gentleness and consideration to be shown to fellow-Christians, especially to those who are “weak in faith” and unemancipated in conscience. There are matters such as food-restrictions and the observance of special days on which Christians do not see eye to eye. Those who have no scruples in such matters should not despise those who have; and those who have scruples should not sit in judgment on those who have none. “Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5).38 It is to God that each believer must ultimately render his account, and it is to God that he is responsible for his conduct here and now. Christian liberty is a precious thing, not to be limited by any man’s dictation, but it should not be asserted at the expense of Christian charity. Christ, his people’s supreme exemplar, always considered the interests of others before his own;39 therefore his people, while subject to none in respect of their liberty, should be subject to all in respect of their charity.40
9. Final greetings
Paul then tells the Roman Christians of his impending visit to Jerusalem with his converts and their gifts and of his intention then to set out for Spain and stay a little time with them on the way.41 He asks them to give a welcome to Phoebe, a minister of the church in the port of Cenchreae, who may have been the bearer of the letter;42 he sends greetings to a number of friends whom he had come to know in various places and who were now resident in Rome;43 he sends greetings also from his companions who were with him as the letter was about to be despatched, including Gaius his host and Erastus the city treasurer, and from “all the churches of Christ” (Romans 16:16). “All the churches of Christ”—that is, the churches of Paul’s own mission-field—were represented by their delegates who had come to Corinth to join Paul in sailing to Judaea,44 where they were to deliver their churches’ gifts to their brethren in Jerusalem.45