Paul to the Romans

The words of Paul in the letter to the Romans are among the most beautiful and profound that he penned. Beginning with the depravity of humankind without God he moves to the fullest picture of an individual or community included in God’s life through Christ. Many of the verses in this letter are familiar to us today, but most of the time our understanding does not rise to the level of Paul’s thought.
In reality, the theme of the letter to the Romans is regeneration. Paul is concerned with how the life of God comes into the soul, energizing it and restructuring it for good– and then the ultimate delivery of God’s chosen people into eternity. “Justification,” for which the letter is now cited, is a key part of regeneration, but it is not the main show of Romans, nor of the New Testament for that matter.
To understand this letter one must look at the main questions with which Greco-Roman civilization was in need of answering in the first century, and then at the fullest flowering of the Hebrew worldview in the prophets and Christ Himself. Greco-Roman civilization had never been able to answer the question of how to get a good community. There were some strikingly good men that had arisen, such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cato and others, but none had mastered the question of how to deal with sin and break through to a happy corporate existence.
Very early on the Hebrew tradition had come to grips with the power of sin, and the various prophets and kings which had come forth had, with some success and some failure, brought the Jewish nation to a state of moral goodness at various times. Christ, of course, was named Jesus because he would “save his people from their sins.” A quick look at the Old Testament will show us how to interpret that.
For much of the biblical era there was little idea of immortality, as we think of it in the Western world. The various leaders, when they came on the scene to deal with sin, were thus not particularly concerned with preparing people for the afterlife. Instead, they saw God’s law as the only answer for life now; for an individual or a nation. Much of this was a matter of the structuring of society to be sure, but most of it was just a matter of connecting the souls of the people to God’s life. “In those days a fountain will be opened up to the house of Israel,” and “choose life that you may live,” were a characteristic part of their message. This life came at God’s initiation but was received willingly, if at all.
The Apostle Paul, standing as he did in both the biblical and classical tradition, saw in the teachings of the Old Testament and in the life and death of Christ the answer to how the Roman world (and in the long run, all humanity) could live. The Law had been given, he said, and those who knew it had not kept it. But now, in the first century, God had opened up the way for His life (the energy and order) to come to all people.
This is a difficult thing to see today, due to the contemporary “evangelicalism” which dominates the visible church, but once it is seen, the Bible never looks the same– and the possibilities for life in Christ are opened wide. In particular, it is the key to seeing that the messages of the apostles Peter, John, and Paul were focused on the same thing. In a series of posts I hope to open up the book of Romans to those who are listening. Perhaps after that we can move to the writings of John.