28. His warnings, messages and doxology
Some find Paul’s transition from greeting to warnings very abrupt, and the tone of his admonition so harsh as to be inconsistent with the rest of his letter, and especially with his gentle handling of the weak. They therefore wonder if verses 17–20 were written by someone else. But it is readily understandable that his mind should move from the Roman church’s unity in diversity (to be expressed in the kiss of peace) to the menace of those who were threatening divisions. Moreover, Paul’s conciliatory attitude to the weak reflected his respect for sensitive consciences; his severity to the false teachers was aroused by their deliberate mischief in disrupting the fellowship and contradicting apostolic teaching. Having said this, we still do not know who they were. Paul’s language is too indefinite to allow any certainty. All we can say is that, since they served themselves instead of Christ (18), they had antinomian tendencies.
1. Paul’s warnings (16:17–20)
Paul begins his appeal with the same words which he has used to introduce an earlier one: I urge you, brothers and sisters (17, cf. 12:1). He issues a threefold appeal: to vigilance, to separation and to discernment.
First, Paul pleads for vigilance: watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way, hindering your progress, that are [both of them] contrary to the teaching you have learned (17). Of course some divisions are inevitable, like those caused by loyalty to Christ, and so are some obstacles (skandala), especially the stumbling block of the cross (9:32f.). Paul urges the Romans to look out for those who cause them because they contradict the teaching of the apostles. He takes it for granted, even so early in the church’s history, that there is a doctrinal and ethical norm which the Romans must follow, not contradict; it is preserved for us in the New Testament.
Second, Paul calls for separation from those who deliberately depart from the apostolic faith. Keep away from them, he writes. There is no question of approaching them with a holy kiss, but rather of standing to one side, and even turning away. Why is this? What is the essence of their deviation? Paul tells us: For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites (18a). This is very unlikely to be a reference to the controversy over the Jewish food laws. It is rather a graphic metaphor of self-indulgence (as in Phil. 3:19, ‘their god is their stomach’). The expression is used ‘in the sense of serving oneself, of being the willing slave of one’s egotism’. These false teachers have no love for Christ, and no wish to be his willing slaves. Instead, they are ‘utterly self-centred’ (jbp), and also have a harmful effect on the gullible. By smooth talk and flattery they deceive the minds of naïve people (18b).
Third, Paul urges the Romans to grow in discernment. On the whole he is very pleased with them. Everyone has heard about your obedience, he says, so I rejoice because of you (19a). Nevertheless, there are two kinds of obedience, blind and discerning, and he longs for them to develop the latter: but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil (19b). To be wise in regard to good is to recognize it, love it and follow it. With regard to evil, however, he wants them to be unsophisticated, even guileless, so completely should they shy away from any experience of it. J. B. Phillips captures the contrast well: ‘I want to see you experts in good, and not even beginners in evil.’
Here then are three valuable tests to apply to different systems of doctrine and ethics – biblical, Christological and moral tests. We could put them in the form of questions about any kind of teaching we come across. Does it agree with Scripture? Does it glorify the Lord Christ? Does it promote goodness?
In verse 20 Paul adds an assurance to his warning. He has written about good and evil; he wants the Roman Christians to know that there is no doubt about the ultimate outcome, the triumph of good over evil. He detects the strategy of Satan behind the activity of the false teachers, and he is confident that the devil is going to be overthrown. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet (20a). That is, God ‘will throw him under your feet, that you may trample upon him’. He has already been decisively defeated; but he has not yet conceded his defeat.
It may seem strange that in the context Paul refers to ‘the God of peace’ (as in 15:33), since enjoying peace and crushing Satan do not sound altogether compatible with each other. But God’s peace allows no appeasement of the devil. It is only through the destruction of evil that true peace can be attained.
Probably there is a reference to Genesis 3:15, where God promised that the seed of the woman (namely the Christ) would crush the serpent’s head. But there is surely a further reference to humankind, male and female, whom God created and to whom he gave dominion. As the psalmist put it, God has ‘put everything under their feet’. So far this has been fulfilled only in Christ, since God has put ‘all things under his feet’. Yet still his exaltation is incomplete, for, while he reigns, he also waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. That this will happen ‘soon’ is not necessarily a time reference, but rather a statement that God has planned nothing to occupy the space between the ascension and the parousia. The parousia is the very next event on his calendar. Meanwhile, the Romans should expect regular interim victories over Satan, partial crushings of him under their feet.
Such victories would be impossible, however, apart from grace. So Paul adds: The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you (20b).
2. Paul’s messages (16:21–24)
Having sent his own personal greetings to twenty-six individuals in Rome (3–16), Paul now passes on messages from eight named people who are with him in Corinth. He begins with one extremely well-known name, followed by three apparently unknown ones. Timothy, my co-worker, sends his greetings to you, as do Lucius, Jason and Sosipater, my fellow Jews (21). If anybody deserved to be called Paul’s ‘co-worker’, that person was Timothy. For the last eight years Timothy had been Paul’s constant travelling companion and had undertaken several special missions at Paul’s request. The apostle evidently had a warm affection for his young assistant. Having led him to Christ, he regarded him as his son in the faith. He was now in Corinth, about to set sail for Jerusalem with the offering from the Greek churches.
From his fellow worker Paul turns to three of his fellow countrymen. We cannot identify any of them for certain, although many guesses have been made, some more plausible than others. For example, although there is nothing to link Lucius with the ‘Lucius of Cyrene’ who was in Antioch with Paul ten years previously, it is tempting to identify him as Luke the evangelist, since we know from one of his telltale ‘we’ passages that he was in Corinth at the time. The only difficulty is that Luke was a Gentile. But then ‘my fellow Jews’ could refer just to Jason and Sosipater. This Jason could quite easily be the Jason who had been Paul’s landlord in Thessalonica, and Sosipater could be the Berean church’s delegate to Jerusalem, whose name was abbreviated to Sopater, for he too was in Corinth at the time.
At this point Paul allows his scribe, to whom he has been dictating this letter, to write his own greeting. I, Tertius, who wrote down this letter, greet you in the Lord (22).
Next comes a message from Paul’s host in Corinth. Gaius, whose hospitality I and the whole church here enjoy, sends you his greetings (23a). Several men called Gaius appear in the New Testament, for it was a common name. It would be natural, however, to identify this one with the Corinthian whom Paul had baptized. Some scholars have further suggested that his full Roman name was Gaius Titius Justus, in which case he had a large house next to the synagogue, into which he had welcomed Paul after the Jews had rejected his gospel. It is then understandable that Paul would again be his house guest, and that the church would also meet in his home.
Two further people complete the series of messages from Corinth. Erastus, who is the city’s director of public works, and our brother Quartus send you their greetings (23b). Of Quartus nothing is known. Erastus, on the other hand, seems to have been a responsible local government official. Perhaps he was the aedile, the magistrate in charge of public works, whose name is still clearly legible in a first-century Latin inscription on a marble pavement close to the ruins of old Corinth. It is difficult to see, however, how he could at the same time have been one of Paul’s roving helpers who on one occasion was sent ‘to Macedonia’, although on another he ‘stayed in Corinth’.
3. Paul’s doxology (16:25–27)
Paul’s doxology is an eloquent and appropriate conclusion to his letter, for he takes up its central themes, summarizes them and relates them to one another. Although the grammar of the doxology is not easy to unravel, it contains profound truths about God and the gospel. It consists of four parts which focus respectively on the power of God, the gospel of Christ, the evangelization of the nations and the praise of God’s wisdom.
First, Paul writes of the power of God: Now to him who is able [dynamenō, has the dynamis] to establish you. Although this accurately translates the Greek, it is an awkward introduction, and jb does better to begin with a noun: ‘Glory be to him who is able . . . !’ It can hardly be an accident that Romans begins and ends with a reference to the power of God through the gospel. If the gospel is God’s power to save (1:16), it is also God’s power to establish. Stērizō (to establish) is almost a technical term for nurturing new converts and strengthening young churches. Luke uses it in Acts (or rather the cognate verb epistērizō) of Paul and his fellow missionaries, who deliberately revisited the churches they had planted, in order to ‘establish’ them. And Paul himself uses the verb in his letters in relation to making Christians firm, strong and stable, whether in their faith (against error), in their holiness (against temptation) or in their courage (against persecution). So the vision conjured up by the doxology’s opening words is of God’s ability to establish the multi-ethnic church in Rome, of which Paul has been dreaming, and to strengthen its members in truth, holiness and unity.
Second, Paul writes of the gospel of Christ. For God is able to establish you, he says, in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past (25), but now revealed (26a). The Greek sentence has three coordinate clauses, namely ‘according to my gospel’, ‘and [according to] the proclamation of Jesus Christ’, and ‘according to the revelation of the mystery’. But the first two are almost identical, since Paul’s gospel was essentially a proclamation (kērygma) of Christ. What Paul is affirming is that God’s power to establish the church is part of his gospel, of his proclamation. This reminds us of the first three verses of his letter, in which he described himself as ‘set apart for the gospel of God . . . regarding his Son’. Now he refers to ‘the gospel of God’ as ‘my gospel’ (cf. 2:16), because it had been revealed and entrusted to him by God, and the gospel ‘regarding his Son’ he calls ‘the proclamation of Jesus Christ’.
The third coordinate clause (‘according to the revelation of the mystery’) emphasizes the fact that his gospel is revealed truth. It is a ‘mystery’, that is to say, a truth or cluster of truths hidden for long ages past, but now revealed. What is included in the ‘mystery’ Paul does not explain here. But he does elsewhere. God’s secret, hitherto concealed but now revealed, is essentially Jesus Christ himself in his fullness, and in particular Christ for and in the Gentiles, so that Gentiles now have an equal share with Israel in God’s promise. The mystery also includes good news for Jews as well as Gentiles, namely that one day ‘all Israel will be saved’ (11:25f.). And it looks forward to the future glory, when God will bring all things together under one head, Christ. Thus the mystery begins, continues and ends with Christ.
Third, Paul writes of the evangelization of the nations. It is important to grasp that Paul is stating three truths about the mystery which are summed up by the verbs hidden, revealed and made known. It is not just that the mystery was long concealed but has now been revealed, namely through the life, death, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus. The third fact is that this good news must be, and is already being, made known throughout the world: made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith (26b).
Consider now four significant features of the universal ‘making known’ of the gospel mystery, which remind us strongly of the letter’s opening paragraph (1:1–5). Both passages (the introduction and the doxology) refer to the Scriptures, the commission of God to evangelize, the obedience of faith, and all the nations.
First, the mystery is being made known through the prophetic writings, which must mean Old Testament Scripture. But how can God be making known his mystery through the Old Testament now, when it has been in existence for centuries? The answer seems to be that, following the saving events of Christ, God has given his people a new Christological understanding of the Old Testament as bearing witness to Christ (cf. 1:2; 3:21). As a result, it is through the apostolic declaration that ‘the Christ is Jesus’ that the gospel is spreading.
Second, the clause by the command of the eternal God must refer to the universal commission to preach the gospel, for behind the risen Christ who gave it there stood the eternal God, whose everlasting purpose it is to save and unite Jews and Gentiles in Christ.
Third, the clause to the obedience that comes from faith comes next in the Greek text. It is identical with 1:5. The proper response to the gospel is faith, as Paul has stressed throughout his letter, but it is a faith which itself is obedient and which issues in a life of obedience.
Fourth, the contemporary ‘making known’ of God’s mystery is for all the Gentiles, so that they will believe and obey. No limit is placed on those who benefit from the gospel; it is intended for everybody.
So this fourfold scheme of the making known of the gospel through Scripture, by God’s command, unto the obedience that comes from faith, for the whole world, exactly corresponds to the letter’s opening, which refers to the gospel as being, among other things, according to the Scriptures, through the grace and apostleship given to Paul and others, unto obedience of faith, and for all the nations.
Finally, Paul concludes in praise of God’s wisdom: to the only wise God be glory for ever through Jesus Christ! Amen (27). God’s wisdom is seen in Christ himself, ‘in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge’, above all in his cross which, though foolish to human beings, is the wisdom of God; in God’s decision to save the world not through its own wisdom but through the foolishness of the gospel; in the extraordinary phenomenon of the emerging multiracial, multicultural church; and in his purpose ultimately to unite everything under Christ. No wonder Paul has already broken out in praise of God’s wisdom: ‘Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!’ (11:33). No wonder he does it again at the end of his letter. Indeed, God’s redeemed people will spend eternity ascribing to him ‘praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honour and power and strength’. That is, they will worship him for his power and wisdom displayed in salvation.
It is fair, then, to say that the major themes of Paul’s letter are summarized in the doxology: the power of God to save and to establish; the gospel and the mystery, once hidden and now revealed, which are Christ crucified and risen; the Christ-centred witness of Old Testament Scripture; the commission of God to make the good news universally known; the summons to all the nations to respond with the obedience of faith; and the saving wisdom of God, to whom all glory is due for ever.