Preliminary essay
Paul’s letter to the Romans is a kind of Christian manifesto. To be sure, it is also a letter, whose contents were determined by the particular situations in which the apostle and the Romans found themselves at that time. Nevertheless, it remains a timeless manifesto, a manifesto of freedom through Jesus Christ. It is the fullest, plainest and grandest statement of the gospel in the New Testament. Its message is not that ‘man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains’, as Rousseau put it at the beginning of The Social Contract (1762); it is rather that human beings are born in sin and slavery, but that Jesus Christ came to set us free. For here is unfolded the good news of freedom: freedom from the holy wrath of God upon all ungodliness, freedom from alienation into reconciliation, freedom from the condemnation of God’s law, freedom from what Malcolm Muggeridge used to call ‘the dark little dungeon of our own ego’, freedom from the fear of death, freedom one day from the decay of the groaning creation into the glorious liberty of God’s children, and meanwhile freedom from ethnic conflict in the family of God, and freedom to give ourselves to the loving service of God and others.
It is not surprising that the church in every generation has acknowledged the importance of Romans, not least at the time of the Reformation. Luther called it ‘really the chief part of the New Testament, and . . . truly the purest gospel’. He continued: ‘It is worthy not only that every Christian should know it word for word, by heart, but also that he should occupy himself with it every day, as the daily bread of the soul.’ Calvin wrote similarly, declaring that ‘if we have gained a true understanding of this Epistle, we have an open door to all the most profound treasures of Scripture’.
The same appreciation of Romans was expressed by British Reformers. William Tyndale, for example, the father of English Bible translators, in his prologue to Romans described it as ‘the principal and most excellent part of the New Testament, and most pure Euangelion, that is to say, glad tidings . . . and also a light and a way in unto the whole Scripture’. He went on to urge his readers to learn it by heart. For, he assured them, ‘the more it is studied, the easier it is; the more it is chewed, the pleasanter it is’.
1. The influence of the letter
Several notable church leaders have testified, in different centuries, to the impact which Romans has made on their lives, in some cases being the means of their conversion. I mention five of them, in order to encourage us to take our study seriously.
Aurelius Augustinus, known to the world as Augustine of Hippo, destined to become the greatest Latin Father of the early church, was born on a small farm in what is now Algeria. During his turbulent youth he was both the slave of his sexual passions and the object of his mother Monica’s prayers. As a teacher of literature and rhetoric he moved successively to Carthage, Rome and then Milan, where he came under the spell of Bishop Ambrose’s preaching. It was there during the summer of the year 386, when he was thirty-two years old, that he went out into the garden of his lodging, seeking solitude. ‘The tumult of my heart took me out into the garden,’ he wrote later in his Confessions, ‘where no-one could interfere with the burning struggle with myself in which I was engaged . . . I was twisting and turning in my chains . . . I threw myself down somehow under a certain fig tree, and let my tears flow freely.’
Suddenly I heard a voice from the nearby house chanting as if it might be a boy or a girl . . . saying and repeating over and over again ‘Pick up and read, pick up and read.’ . . . I interpreted it solely as a divine command to me to open the book and read the first chapter I might find . . . So I hurried back to the place where . . . I had put down the book of the apostle when I got up. I seized it, opened it and in silence read the first passage on which my eye lit: ‘Not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticism and indecencies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts’ (Rom. 13:13–14). I neither wished nor needed to read further. At once, with the last words of this sentence, it was as if a light of relief from all anxiety flooded into my heart. All the shadows of doubt were dispelled.
In 1515 another professor was overtaken by a similar spiritual crisis. Like everybody else in medieval Christendom, Martin Luther had been brought up in the fear of God, death, judgment and hell. Because the surest way to gain heaven (it was thought) was to become a monk, in 1505 at the age of twenty-one he entered the Augustinian cloister at Erfurt, where he prayed and fasted, sometimes for days on end, and adopted other extreme hardships. ‘I was a good monk,’ he wrote later. ‘If ever a monk got to heaven by his monkery, it was I.’ ‘Luther probed every resource of contemporary Catholicism for assuaging the anguish of a spirit alienated from God.’ But nothing soothed his tormented conscience until, having been appointed Professor of Bible at Wittenberg University, he studied and expounded first the Psalms (1513–15) and then Romans (1515–16). At first he was angry with God, he later confessed, because he seemed to him more a terrifying judge than a merciful saviour. Where might he find a gracious God? What could Paul mean in Romans 1:17 when he stated that ‘in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed’? Luther tells us how his dilemma was resolved:
I had greatly longed to understand Paul’s letter to the Romans, and nothing stood to the way but that one expression ‘the righteousness of God’, because I took it to mean that righteousness whereby God is righteous and acts righteously in punishing the unrighteous . . . Night and day I pondered until . . . I grasped the truth that the righteousness 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 righteousness 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 into heaven.
Some two hundred years later, it was Luther’s own God-given insight into the truth of justification by grace through faith which led to the similar illumination of John Wesley. His younger brother Charles had with some Oxford friends founded what came to be nicknamed ‘the Holy Club’, and in November 1729 John joined it and became its acknowledged leader. Its members engaged in sacred studies, self-examination, public and private religious exercises and charitable activities, apparently hoping to win salvation by such good works. Then in 1735 the brothers Wesley sailed for Georgia as chaplains to the settlers and missionaries to the Indians. Two years later they returned in profound disillusionment, which was softened only by their admiration for the piety and faith of some Moravians. Then on 24 May 1738, during a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate Street, London, to which John Wesley had gone ‘very unwillingly’, he turned from self-confidence to faith in Christ. Somebody was reading Luther’s Preface to . . . Romans. Wesley wrote in his journal:
About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.
More recently, two other Christian leaders may be mentioned. Both were Europeans, one Romanian, the other Swiss. Both were clergy, one Orthodox, the other Protestant. Both were born in the 1880s, although they never met and may never even have heard of each other. Yet, despite their different countries, cultures and churches, both were transformed by their study of Romans. I am referring to Dumitru Cornilescu and Karl Barth.
While studying at the Orthodox Theological Seminary in Bucharest, Dumitru Cornilescu longed to experience a greater spiritual reality and depth. During his search he was introduced to some books by evangelical authors, who themselves directed him to the Bible. So he determined to translate the Bible into modern Romanian, began the work in 1916 and completed it almost six years later. Through his study of Romans he came to believe truths which previously had been unfamiliar and even unacceptable to him: that ‘There is no one righteous, not even one’ (3:10), that ‘all have sinned’ (3:23), that ‘the wages of sin is death’ (6:23), and that sinners may be ‘justified freely’ through Christ (3:24), because God presented him as ‘a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his blood – to be received by faith’ (3:25). Through these and other texts of Romans he came to see that God through Christ had done everything necessary for our salvation. ‘I took this forgiveness for myself,’ he said; ‘I accepted Christ as my living Saviour.’ ‘From that point on,’ writes Paul Negrut, ‘Cornilescu was assured that he belonged to God, and that he was a new person.’ His translation, published in 1921, became the standard Bible Society text. But he himself was exiled by the Orthodox Patriarch in 1923, and died some years later in Switzerland.
Switzerland was also the home of Karl Barth. During his pre-war theological studies he came under the influence of some of the leading liberal scholars of the day and shared their utopic dream of human progress and social change. But the horrific carnage and bestiality of the First World War, and his reflection on the message of Romans, were enough in combination to shatter the illusions of liberal optimism. Even while writing his exposition, he said that ‘it required only a little imagination . . . to hear the sound of the guns booming away in the north’. The publication of the first edition of his commentary in 1918 marked his decisive break with theological liberalism. He had come to see that the kingdom of God was not a religious brand of socialism, achieved by human prowess, but a radically new beginning initiated by God. In fact, the bedrock he had come up against was ‘the Godness of God’, that is, ‘God’s absolutely unique existence, power and initiation’. Simultaneously he came to perceive the depths of human sin and guilt. He entitled his exposition of Romans 1:18ff. (Paul’s exposé of Gentile depravity) ‘The Night’, and wrote about verse 18:
Our relation to God is ungodly . . . We assume that . . . we are able to arrange our relation to him as we arrange our other relationships . . . We dare to deck ourselves out as his companions, patrons, advisers and commissioners . . . This is the ungodliness of our relation to God.
Barth confessed that he wrote ‘with a joyful sense of discovery’. For, he added, ‘the mighty voice of Paul was new to me: and if to me, no doubt to many others also’. But his uncompromising emphasis on the sinner’s absolute dependence on the sovereign, saving grace of God in Jesus Christ created what Sir Edwyn Hoskins (his English translator) described as a ‘hubbub and commotion’. Or, as the Roman Catholic theologian Karl Adam put it, using appropriate wartime imagery, Barth’s commentary dropped ‘like a bombshell on the theologians’ playground’.
F. F. Bruce, who drew attention – rather more briefly than I have done – to the influence of Romans on four of these five men, wisely added that its impact has not been confined to such giants, since ‘very ordinary men and women’ have been affected by it too. Indeed, ‘there is no saying what may happen when people begin to study the letter to the Romans. So, let those who have read thus far be prepared for the consequences of reading farther: you have been warned!’
2. New challenges to old traditions
It has long been taken for granted, at least since the Reformation, that the apostle’s chief emphasis in Romans is on God’s justification of sinners by grace, in Christ, through faith. For example, Calvin wrote in his introductory essay on ‘The Theme of the Epistle of Paul to the Romans’ that ‘the main subject of the whole Epistle . . . is that we are justified by faith’. This is not to deny that Paul goes on to handle the further themes of assurance (chapter 5), sanctification (chapter 6), the place of the law (chapter 7), the ministry of the Spirit (chapter 8), God’s plan for both Jews and Gentiles (chapters 9 – 11) and the varied responsibilities of the Christian life (chapters 12 – 15). Nevertheless, the assumption has been that Paul’s main preoccupation was with justification, and that he developed those other topics only in relation to justification.
More recently, however, this thesis has been challenged. In 1963 an article by Professor Krister Stendahl, who later served as Lutheran Bishop of Stockholm, appeared in the Harvard Theological Review, entitled ‘The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’, which was subsequently incorporated in his book Paul Among Jews and Gentiles. He maintained that the traditional understanding of Paul in general and of Romans in particular, namely that their focus is on justification by faith, is wrong. This mistake, he continued, is due to the Western church’s morbid conscience, and specially to the moral struggles of Augustine and Luther, which the church has tended to read back into Paul. Justification, according to Bishop Stendahl, is not ‘the pervasive, organizing doctrinal principle or insight of Paul’, but ‘was hammered out by Paul for the very specific and limited purpose of defending the rights of Gentile converts to be full and genuine heirs to the promises of God to Israel’. Paul’s concern was not his own salvation, for he himself had a ‘robust conscience’, claimed to be ‘faultless’, and experienced ‘no troubles, no problems, no qualms of conscience, no feelings of shortcomings’, but rather the salvation of the Gentiles, that they could come to Christ directly and not through the law. Consequently, ‘the climax of Romans is actually chapters 9–11, i.e. his reflections on the relation between church and synagogue, the church and the Jewish people’, and chapters 1–8 are ‘a preface’. Romans is ‘about God’s plan for the world and about how Paul’s mission to the Gentiles fits into that plan’.
To some degree this is a necessary shift. For justification is certainly not Paul’s exclusive preoccupation, as we have seen. Nevertheless, Romans 1 – 8 cannot be downgraded to the status of a mere ‘preface’. Bishop Stendahl seems to have set up an unnecessarily sharp contrast. Paul was indeed deeply concerned, as the apostle to the Gentiles, about the place of the law in salvation and about the unity of Jews and Gentiles in the one body of Christ. But he was also clearly concerned to explain and defend the gospel of justification by grace alone through faith alone. In fact, the two concerns, far from being incompatible, are inextricably interwoven. Only loyalty to the gospel can secure unity in the church.
Whether Paul’s pre-conversion conscience was as cloudless as Dr Stendahl makes out, and whether we in the West have unduly introspective consciences which we have projected on to Paul, only careful unpacking of the crucial texts can settle. But in 1:18 – 3:20 it is Paul (not Augustine or Luther) who establishes universal and inexcusable human guilt. And Paul’s own claim to have been ‘faultless’ in law-righteousness must have referred to an external conformity to the law’s demands. For in those revealing autobiographical verses in the middle of Romans 7 (if that is what they are) he tells how it was the commandment against covetousness, being an internal sin of heart, not action, which provoked in him ‘every kind of coveting’ and so brought him to spiritual death. Professor Stendahl does not refer to this passage. Besides, it is not necessary to polarize between a ‘morbid’ and a ‘robust’ conscience. A truly healthy conscience disturbs our security and shames our pride, especially when the Holy Spirit comes to ‘prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment’. We should not therefore expect any unconverted person to have a completely clear conscience.
In 1977 the major work of the American scholar Professor E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, was published. Describing the prevailing picture of Palestinian Judaism as ‘a religion of legalistic works-righteousness’, and of Paul’s gospel as self-consciously opposed to Judaism, he declared that his purpose was to ‘destroy that view’ as being ‘completely wrong’ and to show that it ‘is based on a massive perversion and misunderstanding of the material’. He conceded that his thesis was not altogether new, since, as Dr N. T. Wright has written, G. F. Moore ‘set out substantially the same position’ in the three volumes of his Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era (1927–30). Nevertheless, Professor Sanders went further. He surveyed with immense erudition the rabbinic, Qumranic and apocryphal literature of Judaism from 200 bc to ad 200. And the religion which emerged from this study he characterized as ‘covenantal nomism’. That is, God had brought Israel into a covenant relationship with himself by his grace, and had then asked for obedience to his law (nomism) as their response. This led Professor Sanders to portray Judaism’s ‘pattern of religion’ in terms of ‘getting in’ (by God’s gracious election) and ‘staying in’ (by obedience). ‘Obedience maintains one’s position in the covenant, but it does not earn God’s grace as such.’ Disobedience was atoned for by repentance.
Part 2 of Professor Sanders’ book is simply headed ‘Paul’. Even though it is only about a quarter of the length of Part 1, it is of course impossible to do it justice in a single paragraph. Highlights of Professor Sanders’ thesis are as follows: (1) that Paul’s starting point was not the belief that all human beings are guilty sinners before God, but rather that Jesus Christ is Lord and Saviour of both Jews and Gentiles, so that ‘for Paul the conviction of a universal solution preceded the conviction of a universal plight’; (2) that salvation is essentially a ‘transfer’ from the bondage of sin to the lordship of Christ; (3) that the means of transfer is ‘participation’ with Christ in his death and resurrection; (4) that the reason salvation must be ‘by faith’ is not to remove human pride, but that if it were ‘by law’ the Gentiles would be excluded and Christ’s death would have been unnecessary (‘the argument for faith is really an argument against the law’); and (5) that the resulting saved community is ‘one person in Christ’. Professor Sanders calls this way of thinking ‘participationist eschatology’. It will readily be seen, however, that in this attempted reconstruction of Paul’s gospel the familiar categories of human sin and guilt, the wrath of God, justification by grace without works, and peace with God in consequence, are conspicuous by their absence.
In his second book, Paul, the Law and the Jewish People, Professor Sanders replies to some of his critics and seeks to clarify and develop his thesis. He is surely right, in general, that Paul’s ‘argument concerns the equal standing of Jews and Gentiles – both are under the power of sin – and the identical ground on which they change that status – faith in Jesus Christ’. But he then insists that ‘the supposed objection to Jewish self-righteousness is as absent from Paul’s letters as self-righteousness itself is from Jewish literature’. That is a much more questionable statement. At least five issues need to be raised.
First, the evidence is plain that the language of ‘weighing’, that is, of ‘balancing merits against demerits’, does not occur in the literature of Palestinian Judaism. But does the absence of this imagery of the scales prove the absence of the concept of merit? Cannot works-righteousness exist even when it is not ‘weighed’? Paul was not mistaken to describe some Jews as ‘pursuing’ righteousness and not attaining it (9:30ff.), and others as ‘trying to be justified by the law’.
Second, in Judaism entry into the covenant was understood as depending on God’s grace. This is hardly surprising, since in the Old Testament itself God is seen to take the initiative in his grace to establish his covenant with Israel. There could be no question of ‘deserving’ or ‘earning’ one’s membership. Yet Professor Sanders goes on to show that ‘the theme of reward and punishment is ubiquitous in the Tannaitic literature’, especially with regard to gaining life in the world to come. Does this not mean that human merit, while not the basis (in Judaism) of entering the covenant, was yet the basis of remaining in it? But Paul would have rejected this strongly. To him, ‘getting in’ and ‘staying in’ are both by grace alone. Not only have we been justified by grace through faith (5:1), but we continue to stand in this grace into which we have been granted access by faith (5:2).
Third, Professor Sanders concedes that 4 Ezra was the one exception to his thesis. For in this apocryphal book, he writes, ‘one sees how Judaism works when it actually does become a religion of individual self-righteousness’. Here ‘covenantal nomism has collapsed. All that is left is legalistic perfectionism.’ If one literary example has survived, may there not have been others which did not survive? May not the lapse into legalism have been more widespread than Professor Sanders admits? Besides, he has been criticized for reducing the complexity of first-century Judaism into ‘a single, unitary, harmonious, and linear development’. Professor Martin Hengel makes the same point. He writes that ‘in contrast to the progressive “unification” of Palestinian Judaism under the leadership of the rabbinic scribes after ad 70, the spiritual face of Jerusalem before its destruction was a markedly “pluralistic” one’. After listing nine different groups he concludes: ‘Jerusalem and its environs must have presented the contemporary visitor with a confusingly varied picture.’ Again, ‘perhaps there was no such thing as this one Palestinian Judaism with the one binding view of the law’.
Fourth, the case developed by E. P. Sanders and others rests on the meticulous examination of the relevant literature. But is it not well known that popular religion may diverge widely from the official literature of its leaders? It is this very distinction which leads Professor Sanders to write:
The possibility cannot be completely excluded that there were Jews accurately hit by the polemic of Matthew 23 . . . Human nature being what it is, one supposes that there were some such. One must say, however, that the surviving Jewish literature does not reveal them.
A parallel could be drawn with Anglicanism. The Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles, that is, the official literature of the Church, insist that ‘we are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings’, and that we may not ‘presume’ to approach God ‘trusting in our own righteousness’. Nothing could be clearer in the literature. Yet is it unfair to conjecture that the actual faith of many Anglicans remains one of works-righteousness?
Fifth, it is clear that Paul had a horror of boasting. This has traditionally been taken as a rejection of self-righteousness. We are to boast in Christ and his cross, not in ourselves or each other. Professor Sanders, however, interprets Paul’s antipathy to Jewish boasting (e.g. 3:27ff.; 4:1ff.) as being directed against pride in their favoured status (2:17, 23), which would be incompatible with the equal standing of Jews and Gentiles in Christ, not against pride in their merit, which would be incompatible with a due humility before God. But I wonder if this distinction can be maintained as neatly as Professor Sanders does. Paul seems to bracket them in Philippians 3:3–9, where he contrasts ‘boasting in Christ Jesus’ with ‘putting confidence in the flesh’. And the context shows that in ‘the flesh’ (what we are in our unredeemed self-centredness) Paul included both his status as ‘a Hebrew of Hebrews’ and his obedience to the law: ‘in regard to the law, a Pharisee . . . as for righteousness based on the law [that is, external conformity to the requirements of the law], faultless’. In other words, the boasting which Paul had himself renounced, and now condemned, was a self-righteousness compounded of both status-righteousness and works-righteousness. In addition, the apostle twice writes of a righteousness which can be described as our ‘own’ either because we think we ‘have’ it or because we are seeking to ‘establish’ it. Both passages indicate that this righteousness of our own (i.e. self-righteousness) is based on law-obedience, and that those who ‘pursue’ it thereby indicate that they are unwilling to ‘submit’ to God’s righteousness. In Romans 4:4–5 Paul also makes a sharp contrast between ‘working’ and ‘trusting’, and so between a ‘wage’ and a ‘gift’.
Finally, I am grateful for Professor Sanders’ reference, quoted under the fourth point above, to ‘human nature being what it is’. For our fallen human nature is incurably self-centred, and pride is the elemental human sin, whether the form it takes is self-importance, self-confidence, self-assertion or self-righteousness. If we human beings were left to our own self-absorption, even our religion would be pressed into the service of ourselves. Instead of being the vehicle for the selfless adoration of God, our piety would become the base on which we would presume to approach God and to attempt to establish a claim on him. The ethnic religions all seem to degenerate in this way, and so does Christianity. In spite of the learned literary researches of E. P. Sanders, therefore, I cannot myself believe that Judaism is the one exception to this degenerative principle, being free from all taint of self-righteousness. As I have read and pondered his books, I have kept asking myself whether perhaps he knows more about Palestinian Judaism than he does about the human heart.
Certainly Jesus included ‘arrogance’ among the evils which issue from our hearts and defile us. In consequence, he found it necessary in his teaching to combat self-righteousness. For example, in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector he emphasized divine mercy, not human merit, as the proper object of justifying faith; in the parable of the labourers in the vineyard he undermined the mentality of those who demand payment and resent grace; and he saw little children as models of the humility which receives the kingdom as a free, unmerited gift.
As for the apostle Paul, since he was well acquainted with the subtle pride of his own heart, could he not sniff it out in others, even when it hid under the cloak of religion?
In the end, however, it comes back to the question of exegesis. It is universally agreed that Paul’s gospel in Romans was in response to some alternative. But what was this? We must allow Paul to speak for himself, and not make him say what either old traditions or new perspectives want him to say. It is hard to see how any interpretation of Paul can explain away either his negative conclusion that ‘no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law’ (3:20), or his positive affirmation that sinners are ‘justified freely by his grace’ (3:24).
The debate about Paul in general and Romans in particular is now focused on the purpose and place of the law. A note of pessimism characterizes the writing of some contemporary scholars, since they are not persuaded that Paul knew his own mind on this topic. Professor Sanders is prepared to concede that Paul was ‘a coherent thinker’, while adding immediately that he was ‘not a systematic theologian’. Dr Heikki Räisänen, the Finnish theologian, is a good deal less complimentary. ‘Contradictions and tensions have to be accepted’, he writes, ‘as constant features of Paul’s theology of the law.’ In particular, Paul is said to have been inconsistent about the present status of the law. On the one hand, he states ‘in unambiguous terms that the law has been abolished’, while on the other he claims that it is fulfilled in the lives of Christians. Thus Paul contradicts himself, asserting ‘both the abolition of the law and also its permanently normative character’. Also, ‘we find Paul struggling with the problem that a divine institution has been abolished through what God has done in Christ’. Most of Paul’s difficulties are attributable to this. He even ‘tries to hush up the abolition’ by insisting that his teaching ‘upholds’ and ‘fulfils’ the law. But how can it be fulfilled by being set aside?
The difficulties which Dr Räisänen finds, however, seem to be more in his own mind than in Paul’s. It is true of course that, when Paul is responding to different situations, he makes different emphases. But it is not impossible to resolve the apparent discrepancies, as I hope will become clear in the exposition of the text. Our deliverance from the law is a rescue from its curse and its bondage, and so relates to the two particular functions of justification and sanctification. In both areas we are under grace, not law. For justification we look to the cross, not the law, and for sanctification to the Spirit, not the law. It is only by the Spirit that the law can be fulfilled in us.
Professor James Dunn seems to have accepted the main theses of K. Stendahl, E. P. Sanders and H. Räisänen, and has sought to develop them further, especially in relation to the law. In a famous paper entitled ‘The New Perspective on Paul’ (1983), summarized in the introduction to his commentary, he portrays Paul in Romans as being in dialogue with himself, the Jewish rabbi with the Christian apostle. When he declared that nobody could be justified ‘by the works of the law’, he was not referring to ‘good works’ in a general and meritorious sense. He was thinking rather of circumcision, the sabbath and the food laws, which ‘functioned as an “identity marker” and “boundary”, reinforcing Israel’s sense of distinctiveness and distinguishing Israel from the surrounding nations’. Further, this ‘sense of distinctiveness’ was accompanied by a ‘sense of privilege’. The reason Paul was negative to ‘the works of the law’ was not that they were thought to earn salvation, but that (1) they led to a boastful pride in Israel’s favoured status, and (2) they fostered an ethnic exclusiveness incompatible with the inclusion of the Gentiles, to which he was committed.
There can be no doubt that Paul saw these two dangers clearly. But Dr Stephen Westerholm is right, in his fine survey Israel’s Law and the Church’s Faith (1988), to question aspects of this reconstruction. For Paul, he argues, used ‘law’ and ‘works of law’ interchangeably, so that his reference was wider than to particular Jewish rituals; it was boasting in good works, not just in favoured status, which Paul opposed, as is clear from the case of Abraham (3:27; 4:1–5); and ‘the fundamental principle affirmed by Paul’s thesis of justification by faith, not works of the law, is that of humanity’s dependence on divine grace’.
Clearly the last word has not yet been spoken or written about these controversial issues in Romans. We may not feel able to agree that Paul’s pre-conversion conscience was as cloudless as is now being claimed, or that he was as muddled over the law, and as preoccupied with its ritual regulations, as some are arguing; or that first-century Judaism was completely free from notions of merit and of works-righteousness. But we can be profoundly thankful for the scholarly insistence that the Gentile question is central to Romans. The redefinition and reconstitution of the people of God, as comprising Jewish and Gentile believers on equal terms, is a critical theme which pervades the letter.
3. Paul’s purposes in writing
The older commentators tended to assume that Paul was providing in Romans what Philip Melanchthon termed ‘a compendium of Christian doctrine’, somewhat detached from any particular socio-historical context. Contemporary scholars, on the other hand, have tended to overreact to this, and to focus entirely on the transient situation of writer and readers. Not all have made this mistake, however. Professor Bruce called Romans ‘a sustained and coherent statement of the gospel’. Professor Cranfield has described it as ‘a theological whole from which nothing at all substantial can be taken away without some measure of disfigurement or distortion’. And Günther Bornkamm could refer to Romans as ‘the last will and testament of the apostle Paul’.
Nevertheless, all the New Testament documents (the Gospels, Acts and Revelation as well as the letters) were written from within a particular situation. And this situation concerned partly the circumstances in which the author found himself, partly those of his intended readers, and usually a combination of both. It is these which help us to grasp what prompted each author to write and why he wrote what he did write. Romans is no exception to this general rule, although Paul nowhere spells out his reasons in detail. So different reconstructions have been attempted.
In his helpful monograph The Reasons for Romans Dr Alexander Wedderburn has urged that three pairs of factors need to be borne in mind: both the structure of Romans which reflects the fact that it is a letter (its beginning and end) and its theological substance in the middle; both Paul’s situation and the Roman church’s; and both the Jewish and the Gentile sections of the church, and their particular problems.
What, then, were Paul’s own circumstances? He is probably writing from Corinth during those three months which he spent ‘in Greece’ just before sailing east. He mentions three places which he is intending to visit. The first is Jerusalem, taking with him the money which the Greek churches have contributed for the poverty-stricken Christians in Judea (15:25ff.). The second is Rome itself. Having been frustrated in his previous attempts to visit the Christians in Rome, he is confident that this time he will be successful (1:11ff.; 15:23ff.). Third, he plans to go on to Spain, in order to continue his pioneer missionary work ‘where Christ was not known’ (15:20, 24, 28). His most obvious purposes in writing were related to these three destinations.
Indeed, Paul thought of Rome, being situated between Jerusalem and Spain, as a place of refreshment after he had been to Jerusalem and a place of preparation en route for Spain. In other words, his visits to Jerusalem and Spain were of special significance to him because they expressed his two continuing commitments: to the welfare of Israel (Jerusalem) and to the Gentile mission (Spain).
Paul was evidently apprehensive about his forthcoming visit to Jerusalem. He had invested much thought, time and energy in promoting his collection, and had staked his personal prestige on it. It was to him more than an expression of Christian generosity. It was a symbol of Jewish–Gentile solidarity in the body of Christ, and of an appropriate interchange (Gentiles sharing with Jews their material blessings, having first shared in their spiritual blessings, 15:27). So he urged the Roman Christians to join him in his prayer struggle (15:30), not only for his personal safety, that he might be ‘kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea’, but especially for the success of his mission, that his service might be ‘favourably received by the Lord’s people there’ (15:31). Humanly speaking, its acceptability was in doubt. Many Jewish Christians regarded him with deep suspicion. Some condemned him for disloyalty to his Jewish heritage, since in his evangelization of Gentiles he championed their freedom from the necessity of circumcision and law-observance. For such Jewish Christians, to accept the offering which Paul was taking to Jerusalem would be tantamount to endorsing his liberal policy. The apostle felt the need of support from Rome’s mixed Jewish–Gentile Christian community; he wrote to them to solicit their prayers.
If Paul’s immediate destination was Jerusalem, his ultimate destination was Spain. The fact was that his evangelization of the four provinces of Galatia, Asia, Macedonia and Achaia was now complete, since ‘from Jerusalem all the way round to Illyricum’ (approximately modern Albania) he had fully preached the gospel (15:19b). So what next? His ambition, which indeed had become his fixed policy, was to evangelize only ‘where Christ was not known’, so that he would ‘not be building on someone else’s foundation’ (15:20). Now, therefore, he put these two things together (the fact and the policy) and concluded that there was ‘no more place’ for him ‘to work in these regions’ (15:23). In consequence, his sights were set on Spain, which was regarded as part of the western frontier of the Roman Empire, and to which, so far as he knew, the gospel had not yet penetrated.
But he could have decided to go to Spain without either visiting Rome on the way or even telling the Romans his plans. So why did he write to them? Surely because he felt the need of their fellowship. Rome was about two-thirds of the way from Jerusalem to Spain. He asked therefore if they would ‘assist’ him on his journey there (15:24), presumably with their encouragement, financial support and prayers. Indeed, he wanted ‘to use Rome as a base of operations in the Western Mediterranean, much as he had used Antioch (originally) as a base in the East’.
So Paul’s intermediate destination, between Jerusalem and Spain, was to be Rome. A church had already come into being there, perhaps through Jewish Christians who had returned home from Jerusalem after Pentecost. But who the pioneer, church-planting missionary may have been is not known. If Paul’s planned visit seems inconsistent with his policy not to build on another’s foundation, we can only guess that Rome was not regarded as any one person’s territory and/or that he was influenced by the balancing truth that as the specially appointed apostle to the Gentiles (1:5f.; 11:13; 15:15f.) it would be appropriate for him to minister in the metropolis of the Gentile world (1:11ff.), although he tactfully added that he would visit them only ‘while passing through’ (15:24, 28).
We still have to ask why he should write to them, however. It was partly no doubt to prepare them for his visit. More than that, because he had not visited Rome before, and because most of the church members there were not known to him, he saw the need to establish his apostolic credentials by giving a full account of his gospel. How he did this was determined in the main by ‘the inner logic of the gospel’, but at the same time he was addressing his readers’ concerns and responding to criticism, as will emerge in the next paragraphs. Meanwhile, with regard to his own situation, he sent them a threefold request: to pray that his service in Jerusalem would be acceptable, to help him on his way to Spain, and to receive him during his stopover in Rome as the apostle to the Gentiles.
Paul’s purposes in writing to the Romans are not traceable only to his own situation, however, and in particular to his plans to travel to Jerusalem, Rome and Spain. His letter also arose from the situation in which the Roman Christians found themselves. What was that?
Even the most casual reading of Romans betrays the fact that the church in Rome was a mixed community consisting of both Jews and Gentiles, with Gentiles in the majority (1:5f., 13; 11:13), and that there was considerable conflict between these groups. It is further recognized that this conflict was primarily not ethnic (different races and cultures), but theological (different convictions about the status of God’s covenant and law, and so about salvation). Some scholars suggest that the house churches in the city (see 16:5, and also verses 14 and 15 which refer to the Christians ‘with them’) may have represented these different doctrinal positions. It may also be that the ‘disturbances’ made by the Jews in Rome ‘at the instigation of Chrestus’ (probably meaning Christ), which were mentioned by Suetonius, and which led to their expulsion from Rome in ad 49 by the Emperor Claudius, were due to this same conflict between Jewish and Gentile Christians.
What then was the theological issue which lay beneath the ethnic and cultural tensions between Jews and Gentiles in Rome? Dr Wedderburn refers to the Jewish Christians in Rome as representatives of ‘Judaizing Christianity’, since they regarded Christianity ‘as simply part of Judaism’ and required their followers to ‘observe the Jewish law’, while the Gentile Christians he calls ‘supporters of a law-free gospel’. Moreover, he and many other scholars have also seen in the former group ‘the weak’ and in the latter ‘the strong’ whom Paul addresses in chapters 14–15, although this may well be an oversimplification. The ‘weak in faith’, who scrupulously observed the ceremonial regulations like the food laws, condemned Paul for not doing so. They may also have regarded themselves as the sole beneficiaries of God’s promises, and were not at all in favour of Gentile evangelization unless the converts were prepared to be circumcised and observe the law in full. To them Paul was both a traitor to the covenant and an enemy of the law (that is, an ‘antinomian’). The ‘strong in faith’, on the other hand, who like Paul himself were champions of a ‘law-free gospel’, made the mistake of despising the weak for being still in unnecessary bondage to the law. So the Jewish Christians were proud of their favoured status, and the Gentile Christians of their freedom, so that Paul saw the need to humble them both.
Echoes of this controversy, in both its theological and its practical implications, may be heard rumbling throughout Romans. And Paul is seen from beginning to end as an authentic peacemaker, pouring oil on troubled waters, anxious to preserve both truth and peace without sacrificing either to the other. He himself had, of course, a foot in both camps. On the one hand, he was a patriotic Jew (‘I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people . . . the people of Israel’, 9:3–4). On the other hand, he had been specially commissioned as the apostle to the Gentiles (‘I am talking to you Gentiles . . . as I am the apostle to the Gentiles’, 11:13; cf. 1:5; 15:15f.). So he was in a unique position to be an agent of reconciliation. He was determined to make a full and fresh statement of the apostolic gospel, which would not compromise any of its revealed truths, but which would at the same time resolve the conflict between Jews and Gentiles over the covenant and the law, and so promote the unity of the church.
In his ministry of reconciliation, therefore, Paul develops two dominant themes, and interweaves them beautifully. The first is the justification of guilty sinners by God’s grace alone in Christ alone through faith alone, irrespective of either status or works. This is the most humbling and levelling of all Christian truths and experiences, and so is the fundamental basis of Christian unity. In fact, as Martin Hengel has written, ‘although people nowadays are fond of asserting otherwise, no-one understood the real essence of Pauline theology, the salvation given sola gratia, by grace alone, better than Augustine and Martin Luther’.
Paul’s second theme is the consequent redefinition of the people of God, no longer according to descent, circumcision or culture, but according to faith in Jesus, so that all believers are the true children of Abraham, regardless of their ethnic origin or religious practice. So ‘there is no difference’ now between Jews and Gentiles, either in the fact of their sin and guilt or in Christ’s offer and gift of salvation (e.g. 3:21ff., 27f.; 4:9ff.; 10:11ff.). Indeed, ‘the single most important theme of Romans is the equality of Jews and Gentiles’.
And linked with this is the continuing validity both of God’s covenant (which now embraces Gentiles and demonstrates his faithfulness) and of his law (so that, although ‘released’ from it as the way of salvation, we yet through the Spirit ‘fulfil’ it as the revelation of God’s holy will).
A brief overview of the letter and its argument will throw further light on the intertwining of these related themes.
4. A brief overview of Romans
Paul’s two main themes – the integrity of the gospel committed to him and the solidarity of Jews and Gentiles in the messianic community – are already apparent in the first half of the letter’s first chapter.
Paul calls the good news ‘the gospel of God’ (1) because he is its author, and ‘the gospel of his Son’ (9) because he is its substance. In verses 1–5 he focuses on who Jesus Christ is – David’s son by descent and powerfully declared God’s Son by the resurrection. In verse 16 he focuses on what Jesus does, since the gospel is God’s power for the salvation of everyone who believes, ‘first to the Jew, then to the Gentile’.
In between these concise statements of the gospel, Paul seeks to establish a personal relationship with his readers. He is writing to ‘all in Rome’ who are believers (7), irrespective of their ethnic origin, although he knows that most of them are Gentiles (13). He thanks God for all of them, he prays for them constantly, he longs to see them and he has tried many times (so far unsuccessfully) to visit them (8–13). He feels under obligation to preach the gospel in the capital city of the world. Indeed, he is eager to do so, because in the gospel God’s righteous way of ‘righteoussing’ the unrighteous has been revealed (14–17).
a. The wrath of God (1:18 – 3:20)
The revelation of God’s righteousness in the gospel is necessary because of the revelation of his wrath against unrighteousness (1:18). The wrath of God, his pure and perfect antagonism to evil, is directed against all those who deliberately suppress what they know to be true and right, in order to go their own way. For everybody has some knowledge of God and of goodness, whether through the created world (19f.), or through conscience (32), or through the moral law written on human hearts (2:12ff.), or through the law of Moses entrusted to the Jews (2:17ff.).
The apostle divides the human race into three sections: depraved pagan society (1:18–32), critical moralizers whether Jews or Gentiles (2:1–16) and well-instructed, self-confident Jews (2:17 – 3:8). He then concludes by accusing the whole human race (3:9–20). In each case his argument is the same: nobody lives up to the knowledge which he or she has. Even the special privileges of the Jews give them no exemption from divine judgment. No, ‘Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin’ (3:9), ‘for God does not show favouritism’ (2:11). All human beings are sinful, guilty and without excuse before God. The picture is one of complete darkness.
b. The grace of God (3:21 – 8:39)
The ‘But now’ of 3:21 marks one of the great contrasts of the Bible. For into the universal darkness of human sin and guilt the light of the gospel has shone. Paul again calls it ‘the righteousness of [or from] God’ (as in 1:17), that is, his just justification of the unjust. This is possible only through the cross, in which God has demonstrated his justice (3:25f.) as well as his love (5:8), and it is available to ‘all who believe’ (3:22), whether Jews or Gentiles. In explaining the cross, Paul resorts to the key ideas ‘sacrifice of atonement’, ‘redemption’ and ‘justification’. And then, in responding to Jewish objections (3:27–31), he argues that because justification is by faith alone, there can be no boasting before God, no discrimination between Jews and Gentiles and no disregard for the law.
Romans 4 is a brilliant essay in which Paul proves that Abraham, the founding father of Israel, was himself justified neither by his works (4–8), nor by his circumcision (9–12), nor by the law (13–15), but by faith. In consequence, Abraham is now ‘the father of all who believe’, irrespective of whether they are Jews or Gentiles (11, 16–25). The divine impartiality is evident.
Having established that God justifies even the wicked by faith (4:5), Paul affirms the great blessings enjoyed by his justified people (5:1–11). Therefore, he begins, we have peace with God, we are standing in his grace, and we rejoice in the prospect of seeing and sharing his glory. Even suffering does not shake our confidence, because of God’s love which he has both poured into our hearts through his Spirit (5) and proved on the cross through his Son (8). Because of what God has already done for us, we dare to say that we ‘shall be saved’ on the last day (9–10).
Two human communities have now been portrayed, the one characterized by sin and guilt, the other by grace and faith. The head of the old humanity is Adam; the head of the new is Christ. So then, with almost mathematical precision, Paul compares and contrasts them (5:12–21). The comparison is simple. In both cases the one deed of one man has affected enormous numbers of people. The contrast, however, is much more significant. Whereas Adam’s disobedience brought condemnation and death, Christ’s obedience has brought justification and life. Indeed, Christ’s saving work will prove far more successful than Adam’s destructiveness.
In the middle of this contrast between Adam and Christ, Paul introduces Moses: ‘The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more’ (20). Both statements will have sounded shocking in Jewish ears, because they will have seemed hopelessly out of kilter with God’s law. The first appeared to blame sin on the law, and the second to minimize sin by magnifying grace. Did Paul’s gospel both belittle the law and encourage sin? Paul answers the second charge in Romans 6, and the first in Romans 7.
Twice in Romans 6 (verses 1 and 15) we hear Paul’s critic asking whether Paul meant that we may go on sinning so that God’s grace may go on forgiving. Both times Paul responds with an outraged ‘By no means!’ For Christians to ask such a question shows that they have never understood the meaning of either their baptism (1–14) or their conversion (15–23). Did they not know that their baptism indicated union with Christ in his death, that his death was a death ‘to sin’ (meeting its demand, paying its penalty), and that they had shared in his resurrection too? By union with Christ they were themselves ‘dead to sin but alive to God’. How then could they go on living in what they had died to? It was similar with their conversion. Had they not decisively offered themselves to God as his slaves? Then how could they contemplate lapsing into their old slavery to sin? Our baptism and conversion have both closed the door to the old life, and opened a door to a new life. It is not impossible for us to go back, but it is inconceivable that we should. Far from encouraging sin, grace prohibits it.
Paul’s critics were also disturbed by his teaching on the law. So he clarifies it in Romans 7. He makes three points. First (1–6), Christians have ‘died to the law’ in Christ, just as they have ‘died to sin’. Consequently, they are ‘released’ from the law, that is, from its condemnation, and are now free not to sin but to serve in the new way of the Spirit. Second, writing (I believe) out of his own past (7–13), Paul argues that, although the law reveals, provokes and condemns sin, it is not responsible for sin or death. No, the law is holy. Paul clears the law from any blame.
Third (14–25), Paul describes in vivid terms a painful, continuing, inner moral struggle. Whether the ‘wretched man’ who cries for deliverance is a regenerate Christian or unregenerate (I take a third position), and whether he is Paul himself or somebody Paul is impersonating, his purpose in this paragraph is to demonstrate the weakness of the law. His defeat is due neither to the law (which is holy), nor even to his true self, but to ‘sin living in me’ (17, 20), and this the law has no power to control. But now (8:1–4) God has done through his Son and Spirit what the law, weakened by our sinful nature, was unable to do. In particular the remedy for indwelling sin is the indwelling Spirit (8:9), who has not been mentioned in chapter 7, apart from verse 6. Both for justification and sanctification we are ‘not under the law, but under grace’ (6:14–15).
As Romans 7 is full of the law, so Romans 8 is full of the Spirit. During the first half of the chapter Paul describes some of the very varied ministries of the Holy Spirit – liberating us, living within us, giving us life, leading us into self-control, assuring our spirit that we are God’s children, and interceding for us. The fact that we are God’s children reminds Paul that we are therefore also his heirs, and that suffering is the only road to glory. He then draws a parallel between the sufferings and glory of God’s creation and the sufferings and glory of God’s children. The creation has been subjected to frustration, he writes. But one day it will be liberated from its bondage. Meanwhile the creation is groaning as in the pains of childbirth, and we groan with it. We also wait with eager yet patient expectation for the final redemption of the universe, including our bodies.
In the last twelve verses of Romans 8 the apostle rises to sublime heights of Christian confidence. He expresses five convictions about God at work for our good, that is, for our final salvation (28). He outlines five stages of God’s purpose from a past to a future eternity (29–30). And he flings out five defiant questions to which there is no answer. He thus strengthens us with fifteen assurances of God’s steadfast love, from which nothing can ever separate us.
c. The plan of God (9 – 11)
Throughout the first half of his letter Paul has forgotten neither the ethnic mix of the Roman church nor the tensions which kept surfacing between the Jewish Christian minority and the Gentile Christian majority. The time has come for him to address the underlying theological problem head-on. How is it that the Jewish people as a whole had rejected their Messiah? How could their unbelief be reconciled with God’s covenant and promises? How also did the inclusion of the Gentiles fit in with God’s plan? It is notable that each of these three chapters begins with a personal and emotional statement of Paul’s love for Israel: his anguish over their alienation (9:1ff.), his longing for their salvation (10:1) and his own continuing Jewishness (11:1).
In chapter 9 Paul defends God’s covenant loyalty on the ground that his promises were not addressed to all Jacob’s descendants, but to Israel within Israel, a remnant, since he has always worked according to his ‘purpose in election’ (11). This can be seen not only in his choosing Isaac rather than Ishmael, and Jacob rather than Esau, but also in his having mercy on Moses, while hardening Pharaoh (14–18), even though this was a surrender of Pharaoh to the wilful hardening of his own heart. If we still have problems over election, the way in which God makes his choices, we must remember that it is always inappropriate for human beings to talk back to God (19–21), that we must let God be God in his resolve to make known his power and mercy (22–23), and that Scripture itself foretold the calling of Gentiles as well as Jews to be his people (24–29).
It is plain from the end of chapter 9 and from chapter 10, however, that Israel’s unbelief cannot be explained simply by God’s purpose of election. For Paul goes on to affirm that Israel ‘stumbled over the “stumbling stone”’, namely Christ and his cross. This is to accuse Israel of a proud unwillingness to submit to God’s way of salvation, and of a religious zeal which was not based on knowledge (9:30 – 10:4). Paul goes on to contrast ‘the righteousness that is by the law’ with ‘the righteousness that is by faith’, and to emphasize from a skilful use of Deuteronomy 30 the ready accessibility of Christ to faith. There is no need for anybody to go in search of Christ, since he has come and died and risen, and is close to any who will call on him (10:5–11). In addition, there is no difference in this between Jew and Gentile, since the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him (12–13). But, for this, evangelism is necessary (14–15). Why then did Israel not accept the good news? It is not that they had not heard it or understood it. Why then? It is that all day long God had stretched out his hands to welcome them, but they were ‘disobedient and obstinate’ (16–21). So then, the unbelief of Israel, which is attributed in Romans 9 to God’s purpose of election, is attributed in Romans 10 to her pride, ignorance and stubbornness. The tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility is an apparent contradiction which the finite mind cannot resolve.
With chapter 11 Paul looks into the future. He declares that Israel’s fall is neither total, since there is a believing remnant (1–10), nor final, since God has not rejected his people and they will recover (11). If salvation has come to the Gentiles through Israel’s fall, Israel will be now made envious through the Gentiles’ salvation (12). Indeed, Paul sees his evangelistic ministry in terms of arousing his own people to envy, in order to save some of them (13–14). And then Israel’s ‘full inclusion’ will bring ‘much greater riches’ to the world. Paul goes on to develop his allegory of the olive tree, and teaches two lessons from it. The first is a warning to the Gentiles (the wild olive shoot which has been grafted in) not to presume or boast (17–22). And the second is a promise to Israel (the natural branches) that if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted back in again (23–24). Paul’s vision for the future, which he calls a ‘mystery’ or revelation, is that when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, ‘all Israel will be saved’ as well (25–27). And the ground of his assurance is that ‘God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable’ (29). So we may confidently expect the ‘full inclusion’ of both Jews and Gentiles (12, 25). Indeed, God will ‘have mercy on them all’ (32), meaning not everybody without exception but rather both Jews and Gentiles without distinction. It is not surprising that this prospect leads Paul to break out into a declaration of God’s glory, in which he praises him for the depth of both his riches and his wisdom (33–36).
d. The will of God (12:1 – 15:13)
Calling the Roman Christians his ‘brothers and sisters’ (the old ethnic distinctions having been abolished), Paul now addresses an eloquent appeal to them. He bases it on ‘God’s mercy’ which he has been unpacking, and he calls for both the dedication of their bodies and the renewal of their minds. He sets before them the stark alternative which has always and everywhere confronted the people of God, either to conform to the pattern of this world or to be transformed by renewed minds which discern God’s ‘good, pleasing and perfect will’. The choice is between the world’s fashion and the Lord’s will.
In the chapters which follow it becomes clear that God’s good will is concerned with all our relationships, which are radically changed by the gospel. Paul treats eight of them, namely, our relationship to God, ourselves, each other, our enemies, the state, the law, the last day and the ‘weak’. Our renewed minds, which begin by seeking God’s will (1–2), are also to assess ourselves and our gifts thoughtfully, and not to have either too high or too low an opinion of ourselves (3–8). Our relationship to one another follows naturally from the mutual ministries which our gifts make possible. The love which binds members of the Christian family together will include sincerity, affection, honour, patience, hospitality, sympathy, harmony and humility (9–16).
Our relationship to our enemies or to evildoers comes next (17–21). Echoing the teaching of Jesus, Paul writes that we are not to retaliate or take revenge, but rather to leave the punishment of evil to God, since this is up to him, and meanwhile to seek peace, serve our enemies and overcome evil with good. Our relationship with the governing authorities (13:1–7) may well have been suggested to Paul’s mind by his reference to God’s wrath (12:19). If the punishment of evil is God’s business, one of the ways in which he does it is through the state’s administration of justice, since those in authority are God’s ‘servants’ to punish the wrongdoer. The state also has a positive role to promote and reward good in the community. Our submission to the authorities is certainly not unconditional, however. If the state misuses its God-given authority, to command what God forbids or forbid what God commands, our clear Christian duty is to disobey the state in order to obey God.
Verses 8–10 return to love, and teach that loving our neighbour is both an unpaid debt and the fulfilment of the law. For though we are ‘not under law’, in the sense that we look to Christ for justification and to the Holy Spirit for sanctification, we are still called to ‘fulfil the law’ in daily obedience to God’s commandments. In this sense we must not set the Spirit and the law over against each other, since the Holy Spirit writes the law in our hearts. And this primacy of love is the more urgent as the day of Christ’s return approaches. We are to wake up, to get up, to dress, and to live as those who belong to the day (11–14).
Our relationship with the ‘weak’ is the one Paul treats at greatest length (14:1 – 15:13). They are evidently weak in faith or conviction, rather than in will or character. They must have been mainly Jewish Christians, who believed they should still observe both the food laws and the feasts and fasts of the Jewish calendar. Paul himself is one of the ‘strong’ and identifies with their position. His educated conscience tells him that foods and days are matters of secondary importance. But he refuses to ride roughshod over the sensitive consciences of the weak. His overall appeal to the church is to ‘accept’ the weak as God has done (14:1, 3) and to ‘accept’ one another as Christ has done (15:7). If they welcome the weak into their hearts and their fellowship, they will not despise them, or condemn them, or damage them by persuading them to go against their consciences.
The most notable feature of these practical instructions is that Paul grounds them on his understanding of who Christ is, and in particular on his death, resurrection and second coming. The weak are brothers and sisters for whom Christ died. Christ rose to be their Lord, and we have no right to interfere with his servants. He is also coming to be our judge; so we should not play the role of judge ourselves. We should also follow the example of Christ who did not please himself but became a servant – indeed a servant of both Jews and Gentiles. So Paul leaves his readers with a beautiful vision of the weak and the strong, Jewish believers and Gentile believers, who are bound together by ‘the same attitude of mind toward each other’ so that ‘with one mind and one voice’ they glorify God together (15:5–6).
In his conclusion Paul describes his ministry as apostle to the Gentiles, together with his policy to preach the gospel only where Christ is not known (15:14–22); he shares with them his travel plans to visit them on his way to Spain, but first to take the offering to Jerusalem as a symbol of Jewish–Gentile solidarity (15:23–29); and he asks for their prayers (15:30–33). He then commends Phoebe to them, who is assumed to be the bearer of the letter to Rome (16:1–2); he sends greetings to twenty-six named individuals (16:3–16), men and women, slaves and free, Jews and Gentiles, who help us to grasp the extraordinary unity-in-diversity enjoyed by the church in Rome; he warns them against false teachers (16:17–20); he sends messages from eight individuals who are with him in Corinth (16:21–24); and he utters a final expression of praise. Although the syntax here is a little complex, its content is marvellous. It enables the apostle to end where he began (1:1–5), since the letter’s introduction and conclusion both refer to the gospel of Christ, the commission of God, the outreach to the nations and the summons to the obedience of faith.