I ask your permission to indulge in a brief digression, the purpose of which will become apparent below. Perhaps my favorite novel is Pêcheur d'Islande (Iceland Fisherman) by Pierre Loti, set in the 1890's. The main character, who lives in Brittany, spends his summers on a fishing boat that circles Iceland. There are poetic descriptions of a large sun which circles the horizon constantly, looking like a large balloon. Meanwhile, his brother is fighting with the French army in Vietnam, where he is hit by a bullet. As he travels back toward France on a hospital boat, he dies at the precise moment the boat crosses the equator as the evening sun dips into the horizon and darkness comes swiftly in that latitude. This happens at the exact middle of the novel. I later discovered that the best written novels usually have a centrally important turning point in the exact middle, give or take one or two pages either direction.
Now Paul, in his book-length essay divided much later into 16 chapters, begins chapter eight, the very middle of his book, with the resounding affirmation that summarizes all he wrote before and announces what comes in the remainder of the essay: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death" (NRSV) What can be more clear than that? The remainder of the chapter explores what that means and how it works. Several sections in this chapter are among the most quoted in books and from the pulpits, not always paying sufficient attention to the context.
As you read the remainder of the chapter, keep in mind what Paul has argued in the preceding portions of the letter: God takes the initiative to offer his grace, leaving us free to trust in such confidence that we respond in obedience. or to refuse to accept the offer of grace in order to live as we like. Those who respond in trust have their faith accounted as right relationship with God, as was the case with Abraham. If you read his story, you will see that God forgave him much.
Up through verse 17 Paul contrasts the flesh with the Spirit. The flesh is Paul's metaphor for our desire to disobey God, leading to all sorts of evil results. The Spirit is Christ, God himself, living alongside us and transforming us. He gives us the right to call God Father. Paul uses the Hebrew word, Abba. Preachers often declare that it means "Daddy," but we must be careful. Abba is the only word Hebrew uses for "father." Overinterpretation can be dangerous. The point is that we are God's children, if the Spirit is in us, and if so heirs of God, that is, joint heirs with Christ. God adopts the believers as God's own.
In verses 18 through 30 we see that the presence of the Spirit and the rightness with God that is thereby worked in us gives us faith in the future, a future which makes anything we suffer in the present worthwhile. The Spirit prays on our behalf when we do not know how or what to pray. The Spirit, that is God in us, knows us, loves us, helps us withstand the bad things that happen to us, and in God's time turns them into something good for us, something that makes us mature and experience joy in spite of what happens.
At the very end of that section, Paul affirms that God knew all along who would respond in faith and therefore prepared a purpose for them, calling them to be conformed to the image of Jesus, that is to be made more and more how we were meant to be and to fit us for glory (that is, living in the presence of God). Taken in the full context of the essay, this cannot mean that God decided beforehand who would be saved and who would not. That is overinterpretation taking a verse or two out of context.
Verses 31 to the end of chapter eight tell us what that means: that nothing the world can throw at us can separate us from God. Because God has already triumphed, we will triumph, if we respond to God in a total trust that issues in obedience.
Saturday, October 27, 2018
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Romans 7
In the section of the essay we know as chapter 7, Paul makes two final efforts to drive home what he has been saying: That everyone in the world is in the same condition before God. Obeying the Torah and the extensions of the law developed in the era following the exile of the Jews in Babylon cannot make God owe you anything. Conversely, being acquitted by the grace of God does not entitle non-Jews to live as they please.
In the first six verses Paul makes an analogy with marriage. An analogy is not an argument and seems strange in post-modern times but the intent of the writer is clear. It goes like this: A married woman was bound by the law to her husband. As a result she was not free to marry another. If her husband died, however, she was no longer bound by the law and could marry freely. In the first century C.E. the men were allowed to divorce their wives at will, but the wives could not divorce their husbands. Jesus pointed to a higher moral standard: keep to your marriage vows. Paul's point is that the death of Jesus freed all Jews from the condemnation outlined in the law (as the death of a husband frees his widow from the law) and the resurrection of Jesus allows to live a new life of freedom and of following Jesus (as though bound to a new husband).
The remainder of the chapter has puzzled interpreters for ages, with people staking out a position and verbally fighting those who assail it. But if we are right in reading Romans as a book-length essay, it becomes clear that at this point Paul is describing the common condition of all people: we cannot under our own power create the will to do what is right (if we can even know what the right thing is) and make it stick. In other words, we cannot justify ourselves, we cannot make ourselves right with God, we cannot make God owe us, and we cannot appease God. The mind may want to please God, but our human nature (what Paul means by "flesh") keeps asserting itself.
The first part of verse 25 gives thanks to God "through Jesus Christ our Lord." In a previous post I mentioned that the name God gave to Moses was "I will be who I will be" and that it is closely connected to "I will be with you." The word "Lord" is the Greek word Kyrios which is always used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures for "Yaweh". Jesus' last words to his disciples were "I will be with you to the end of the age." It is the God who is with us who acquits and brings us into the holy Presence.
In the first six verses Paul makes an analogy with marriage. An analogy is not an argument and seems strange in post-modern times but the intent of the writer is clear. It goes like this: A married woman was bound by the law to her husband. As a result she was not free to marry another. If her husband died, however, she was no longer bound by the law and could marry freely. In the first century C.E. the men were allowed to divorce their wives at will, but the wives could not divorce their husbands. Jesus pointed to a higher moral standard: keep to your marriage vows. Paul's point is that the death of Jesus freed all Jews from the condemnation outlined in the law (as the death of a husband frees his widow from the law) and the resurrection of Jesus allows to live a new life of freedom and of following Jesus (as though bound to a new husband).
The remainder of the chapter has puzzled interpreters for ages, with people staking out a position and verbally fighting those who assail it. But if we are right in reading Romans as a book-length essay, it becomes clear that at this point Paul is describing the common condition of all people: we cannot under our own power create the will to do what is right (if we can even know what the right thing is) and make it stick. In other words, we cannot justify ourselves, we cannot make ourselves right with God, we cannot make God owe us, and we cannot appease God. The mind may want to please God, but our human nature (what Paul means by "flesh") keeps asserting itself.
The first part of verse 25 gives thanks to God "through Jesus Christ our Lord." In a previous post I mentioned that the name God gave to Moses was "I will be who I will be" and that it is closely connected to "I will be with you." The word "Lord" is the Greek word Kyrios which is always used in the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures for "Yaweh". Jesus' last words to his disciples were "I will be with you to the end of the age." It is the God who is with us who acquits and brings us into the holy Presence.
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