Before we needed to be away
for a little bit, we were looking at Paul’s letter to the Romans quite a bit.
Today I want to review a little bit of what we have spoken about and look at
some of the broad themes, ideas and context of the first seven or eight
chapters: especially about the Law. First some questions:
·
Who wrote Romans? (Paul)
·
When was it written? (Mid to late 50s CE)
·
Who was it written to? (Holy People / Saints in
Rome – ‘Holy People’ / ‘Saints’ means Christians)
·
Where is Rome? (Modern day Italy)
·
Who is Paul? (an Apostle, a Roman, a Pharisee
from Tarsus in modern day Turkey)
·
Where and how does Paul die? (executed in Rome
– probably beheaded)
This is important. Paul writes
these words probably realizing that he is nearing the end of his life. He is
respected by the letter’s recipients, and he wants them to be aware of many
things. Now this is a very long letter. I have never written a letter this long
– even my sermons aren’t near this long! - even in the days when I wrote
letters to put in the mail – way back before email and social media, remember
that? I never wrote letters this long. Now because this letter to the Romans is
so long, it covers a lot of stuff. It is sort of like – do you remember the old
days? – Did you ever have a friend or family friend who only sent you a letter
once a year – maybe at Christmas – and it would go on and on for pages telling
you more than you could ever possibly want to know about their life, children,
family and pets, etc.
When
Paul writes his letter, he has some things he expects that we will know before
he even starts writing. When I used to teach, we would often give students
vocabulary sheets of words they needed to know as they read. If the Bible was a
Ginn Reader and we each had vocab sheets, words like these may be on them:
·
Law – rules the demarcate
the people of God (separate out / reveal). Given to the Hebrews through Moses.
·
Circumcision – a
sign that specific males are part of the people of God. This was given to the
world through Abraham (hundreds of years before Moses was born). Looking around
the room, all of us seem old enough that I don’t need to explain how that is
done.
·
Flesh – our own body, our own
self, our own thoughts, our own mind, as compared to ‘Spirit’ which is of God
·
Sin / Trespass - In
Romans this refers to anything destructive that erodes holiness, peace, wholeness
and/or life itself. Paul also uses the word to refer to things we do to hurt
and decay ourselves and others (often translated ‘trespass’). He also uses the
word ‘sin’ or ‘sin nature’ to refer to a desire or compulsion to do something
we know that goes against peace, wholeness, and holiness. This is like
addiction. We know what is right, we resolve not to do what is wrong but… and
Paul spends a lot of time explaining the ‘but’.
·
Faith – this is a key word in
Romans. The word faith (Greek: Pistos) also means faithfulness. It is a
reciprocal word. Whenever you see it, you should probably read it as the faith
of one person (either the subject or the object of the sentence) and the
faithfulness of the other,
·
Grace – When one does what is
best for another regardless of merit or anything else they are extending grace.
Often a person experiences grace and mercy at the same time. You do something,
you are awaiting the results or consequences of that action and instead you get
a reprieve as grace is extended to you.
Romans in Review:
Chapter One:
Romans 1:16-17 can be read as a thesis of at least the first part of the letter:
“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings
salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. 17
For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is
by faith[fulness] from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous
will live by faith[fulness].”
Chapter
Two:
The Hebrews were given the Law but still they weren’t able to do what it said
any more than Gentiles and others who were not given the Law.
There
are good things in the Law that we should know about and let other people know
about for their own benefit, because if they know in advance, they can be saved
the consequences of these things such as: don’t murder, covet, lie, etc. These
truths that are written down are all a very good standard for our life that warn
us about what not to do to keep us out of trouble.
Chapters
Three and Four explains the weakness of the Law. One of the
weaknesses mentioned is simply temptation. Sometimes we would never even have
considered doing something wrong, if someone hadn’t come up to us and said ‘no,
don’t do that’! I remember I got in trouble a few times in elementary school
because I just had to try whatever it was that the Teacher had told us not to
do, because I had never even considered that before she told us.
This
is like the Law: a teacher gives her class a rule, ‘no walking on the street’.
She gives the class this rule because she doesn’t want them to be it by a car:
if they get hit by a car they might be hurt, injured, die, and also, in so
doing, emotionally hurt their friends and family, the driver of the car, etc. –
so here is a good rule: don’t walk on the road
Now
there are some bad things to come out of this good rule: some people tattle. Some
people tell the teacher every time a classmate walks too close to the road,
every time a classmate accidently touches the road, every time a classmate
walks in the direction of the road. Some people are so concerned about the rule
– ‘don’t walk on the road’ – that they abuse their classmates with it. That
rule which is made to protect people’s lives is now being used to make their
life miserable. This is legalism: when we care more about the rules than the
people who the rules are there to protect, when we care more about punishing
people who do ‘bad things’ than helping people to ‘do good things’ and to be
safe – which is the reason the law is there in the first place.
And
then, of course, there is that almost uncontrollable temptation, as well. Once
the teacher tells Johnny not to step on the road, he wants to try it even
though he has never even considered walking on the road before: he will walk as
close beside it as he can, then he will put a foot on it. Then he will pretend
to fall on it – all the while he is testing to see why this rule is here. And then
Cindy Lou Who telling on him all the time doesn’t help either. This all makes
him want to break the rule, which makes him vulnerable to the natural
consequences of breaking the rule, which is getting hit by a car.
Now if
you look at your vocab sheets, you will notice that Paul talks about
circumcision. Circumcision is a sign that people belong to a group: the ancient
Hebrews, the descendants of Abraham. It is like when classes of children are
walking near the road how they all have brightly coloured pinnies or t-shirts
on. These are the kids that have been told specifically not to go on the road.
Now, it would be best for us all not to go on the road, but only the kids in
the class wearing the pinnies have been given that rule for their outing: so
the Law is the rule not to go into the road (which could result in death and /
or other things) which was given to the children wearing pinnies (which is
circumcision) but it really is best for everyone not to step on the road,
whether they were told the rule or not. Does that all make sense? There are
many ‘pinnies’ we have in the contemporary church to identify ourselves as
children of God like this today. In the modern/post-modern church I would say that
whenever you read ‘circumcision’ in the Bible, it may be valuable to read
‘baptism’ or any other pinnie that Christians put on to show we are God’s
children.
Chapter
5:
We have talked about a lot and I will speak more about too – but for today’s
purposes, it talks about getting back to the Garden of Eden, getting back to a
time before we needed rules to avoid doing what is harmful and to do what is
good: when we could just do that by being in a relationship with God.
Perseverance through the suffering of life brings us back to the garden.
Chapters
6 through 8, which we will look at soon enough, wrestle
with sin: the desire of the children in our school/pre-school analogy, to walk
in the road, those telling you to (or not to sometimes) walk in the road, and
-of course- the act of walking in the road itself. Basically, what Chapter 6
says is that if you just follow your teacher you won’t walk in the road. These
days preschoolers, as well as wearing pinnies, often hold a rope to help them
follow their teacher. Chapter 6 says just keep holding the rope and follow your
teacher – if you accidently step on the road or if someone else does, don’t
dwell on it, just keep looking at the teacher, holding the rope and walking –
it is when you stop and focus on the road, or your friend who is on the road,
or the one who is nagging you about walking on the road, that you run into
trouble (that is not to say you shouldn’t help your friend up if they fall on
the road) but you just need to keep on keeping on following the teacher.
Chapter
7
always reminds me of AA. Anyone here who has ever attended AA meetings will
know just how valuable they can be. AA’s step one paraphrased, “We admitted
that we were powerless over sin [alcohol] – that our lives have become
unmanageable.” Chapter 7 speaks of Sin as that force, that temptation, trying
to draw us into that which leads to destruction, into the peril of the open
road; Sin in Chapter 7 is the Odessey’s siren song calling us to some imagined
pleasure that in reality will just wreck the ships of our life on the rocks: death
and destruction. Sin is calling the preschoolers away from the safety of the
path towards certain doom in the road. In Chapter Seven, Paul sounds like Odysseus
strapped to the mast of his ship, “I do not understand what I do. For what I
want to do, I do not do, but what I hate to do, I do” (7:16) “So then, I myself
in my mind am a slave to God’s law but in the flesh a slave to the law of Sin”
(7:25)
Chapter
8
offers us hope. The teacher sees us on and near the road and still “there is no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”. (8:1) The teacher pulls us
aside, kneels beside us and offers us much comfort. She tells us that we don’t
need to worry about all the do’s and the don’ts of the rules. We don’t need to
worry about getting into trouble, taunting others, or even telling on them. We
just need to follow our teacher along the path she is leading us and we will be
okay, Romans 8:14, “for those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children
of God.’
So
that is my wish for us today. Let us just keep our eyes on Jesus – nothing else
can save us from sin or death. Nothing else can make us whole or holy. Let us turn
our eyes upon Jesus, for us we turn our eyes upon Jesus, and look full in his
wonderful face, all the temptations of life will grow strangely dim, in the
light of His glory and grace.
Let us
pray.
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