Wednesday July 1, 2015

Romans 4:13-25

Rules, rules, rules! – Why do we so often think that God is the great, stern rule maker, and the way to please God is to be careful to obey every rule in the book?  Our Scripture about Abraham for today assures us that it’s not like that at all.  Instead, it is God who takes the initiative to restore our relationship, who sets us right, and who blesses us.  God made huge promises to Abraham before Abraham had done anything; he certainly didn’t deserve any gift or blessing from God; Abraham didn’t even have any rules from God to obey.  All Abraham did was to believe God and live in trusting reliance on the wonderful promises God had given him.

From the beginning, from the origin of humanity’s disobedience and sin, God has always had a grand, unchangeable plan to restore humanity, indeed, to restore the whole world to what God intends, to set everything right, and to bring great blessing for all people and for the whole creation.  We first learn about God’s plan at the beginning of Abraham’s story in Genesis, and Paul reviews it in Romans. It starts with the promises to Abraham (Genesis 12:2-3):

“I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…. In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Some years later, God made the promise more explicit.  After Abraham questioned God about his childlessness, God brought him outdoors and said to him (Gen. 15:5-6, ESV):

“Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”   And he believed the Lord; and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness.

Since Abraham and his wife Sarah were childless and elderly, they had no idea how this promise could be fulfilled, but Abraham trusted God anyway.  It was even later (Genesis 17) when God made the promise into a covenant with Abraham and instituted circumcision as the mark of this covenant.  The actual law which Abraham’s descendants were to obey wasn’t given until more than 400 years after that.  So Paul in Romans 4 is on solid ground in emphasizing that God’s great promise to Abraham was not based on any law, any rule keeping, but only on Abraham’s faith, his simple trust that God was reliable.  Paul then importantly emphasizes (Rom 4:15-17, ESV):

It depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed … not only to the adherent of the law but also to the one who shares the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, “I have made you the father of many nations.”

Thus Paul emphasizes that all of us, Jews and Gentiles alike, are to regard Abraham as our father in faith.  Today’s Scripture is only a taste of the long, intense, and profound theological discourse Paul presents in Romans 1-11, certainly one of the most profound theological discourses ever written down by a human being.  In today’s Scripture, however, Paul concludes with a tiny preview (4:22-25) of where he is headed as the discourse in Romans continues:

[Abraham’s] faith was “counted to him as righteousness. But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

Old and New Perspectives on Paul

In reading Romans 4, you may notice that our discussion places more emphasis on Abraham as the recipient of God’s unchanging promise and as the father of all who share his faith than does the older, more traditional perspective, in which Romans is seen as primarily explaining how an individual person can be justified by believing in Christ.  Indeed, following the old tradition, the NRSV introduces Romans 4 with the title The Example of Abraham and places part of vv. 16-17 in parentheses.  Thus it downplays the importance of the whole chapter, treating it (and especially the parenthesized parts) as only an example, only an aside not essential to the main stream of Paul’s reasoning.

This older perspective on Pauline theology fits in with the kind of Bible study in which the reader or student first poses the questions (of interest to the modern reader but perhaps unimaginable in ancient times) and asks, “What does the Bible tell me in answer to my questions?”  In regard to Romans, this older perspective dates back at least to the Reformation, when Luther, distressed by sin and his guilty  conscience and wanting assurance of salvation, turned to Romans and discovered assurance and peace in the answers he found there for his questions and doubts.

During the past few decades, a growing number of New Testament scholars have adopted a new perspective, in which they attempt to be more historically aware by first asking what question(s) the original Bible author considered important and was actually addressing (whether or not these questions are of concern to present-day readers).  Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, has one fundamental question he addresses over and over in his epistles:  How, on what basis, is God reconciling Gentiles with Jews and building one united Church encompassing both Jews and Gentiles? 

Studying the Pauline writings, especially Romans, from this new perspective yields wonderful insight into what Paul actually intends to say.  We still find a great deal giving us personal reassurance about individual salvation, but we also discover a far grander vision in Paul – the restoration and reconciliation in Christ of all people, both Jews and Gentiles, and, even more exciting, the restoration of the whole of God’s creation to operate in the way God has always intended.  Our duty to care for creation is no add-on; it has been an important part of God’s great plan always.

Among the publications advancing this new perspective on Paul, I particularly like the writings of N. T. Wright.  Wright is the retired Bishop of Durham in the Church of England and is now Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity in the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.  He is one of the world’s most prolific New Testament scholars, writing, for example, the magisterial book Paul and the Faithfulness of God, which, in its 1660 pages, is perhaps the most comprehensive work on Paul ever published. 

At the same time, Tom Wright is a first-class expositor who publishes much easier books for ordinary readers like me.  For example, his book Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision (279 pages) clearly explains the old and new perspectives on Paul, surveys other relevant Pauline epistles, and finally turns to Romans as the magnum opus.  Wright comes to Romans with humility, even trepidation, as he begins (p. 177):

Never mind the old and the new:  how do we keep Romans in any kind of perspective?  It bestrides the narrow worlds of scholarship and church like a colossus, and we petty exegetes walk under its huge legs and peep about ….

Then Wright emphasizes the importance of Romans:

 All roads led to Rome in the ancient world, and all roads in biblical exegesis lead to Romans sooner or later—especially when it comes to justification.

Petty, tiny creatures walking under the huge legs of a colossus—that’s a good picture of the humility we all need as we approach Romans.  And, as we study Paul’s writings (not an easy task), we need to remember that all good theology culminates in praise to God.  The doxology Paul puts at the end of his greatest theological discourse is just the reminder we need, especially when we find the going difficult (Romans 11:33-36):

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things.  To him be glory forever.  Amen.

 – Robert Kruse