William Loader
Pentecost 3: 1 June Romans 1:16-17; 3:22b-28 (29-31)
These are some of the most influential and important verses in the whole New Testament. Paul with his back to the wall because of constant criticism from fellow believers, especially senior ones, finds himself planning to come to Rome. He knows that people talk. He also has to go to Jerusalem. There are bound to be people in both places who have heard reports that he has gone far too far in accommodating Gentiles and in the process abandoned the biblical law and betrayed his own heritage and nation. Not only had he been in conflict with Peter in Antioch as Gal 2:11-14 tells us. He had also faced the invasion of his mission area, Galatia, itself, from preachers declaring him renegade and calling his converts to a more sound understanding of faith. He has spent recent years trying to quell very personal and divisive attacks on his person in Corinth. His opponents could so easily have pointed to Corinth as proof that his preaching was unsound. That was why, they might allege, he was having such trouble there. His gospel amounted to a recipe for people to do as they liked without the control of God's Law.
Now he is in Corinth writing to Rome. He did not found the church there. He wants to work in Italy and then use Rome as a stepping stone to Spain. That could all crumble in a heap, as could his major symbolic act of gathering and presenting a collection of money to the saints in Jerusalem, an obligation he long ago took on himself when coming to terms with Peter and James. He even asks the Romans to pray it will be acceptable (15:30-33). It could easily not be. Paul could easily have compromised to save his own skin. Instead he takes a deep breath, as it were, and writes directly to the church at Rome. The issues are much bigger than his personal well being and identity. They go to the heart of who God is, God's identity.
Tactic plays an important role. He begins with common traditions in 1:3-5 to establish common ground. He assures them of his desire to visit - a standard feature of letters - and then announces his enthusiasm to impart something to the Romans (1:11) only to go back to the more modest restatement, that, of course, he means mutual benefit (1:12). The passion does not subside. It rises again on the verses immediately preceding our passage. Paul is under passionate obligation to proclaim the gospel (1:14-15). So "I am not ashamed of the gospel" (1:160 is something much more than: I am not embarrassed. It is forceful assertion. He will not be cowered by his critics. He is the bearer of something powerful, capable of transforming people's lives, liberating them ("salvation") and it is there for all, Jews and Greeks. Its central focus is nothing other than the goodness and generosity of God ("the righteousness of God"). He supports it with a favourite quotation on which he doubtless often drew, shaping it to his purpose (Hab 2:4). Real life comes to the person who enters a new life of being in a right and good relationship with God through the gateway of faith. For Paul faith means believing what God offers and staking one's life on it.
Our passage for the day jumps not inappropriately to the end of chapter 3. A better place to start is 3:21 rather than 3:22. There we see Paul returning to his great announcement in 1:16-17, using the same motifs: the manifestation of God's goodness; scripture fulfilment; faith; and availability for all. In between he takes his hearers on a roller coaster ride (1:18 - 3:20). Few would not have hailed his assault on human sin in the rest of Romans 1. This finely crafted attack moves from people's distortion of God's nature in idolatry to their distortion of their own nature in homosexuality and finally to a whole catalogue of sins. We see clearly that for him homosexual behaviour arises from deliberate distortion of one's true nature. The notion that some might be born with such an orientation is far from his mind. It was then as now a favourite target of moral outrage.
Just when his hearers are reaching a pitch of moral frenzy and perhaps even his enemies are nodding their heads in approval, Paul twists the knife. We are not far into Romans 2 before we realise that he intends to bring the critics low as well and to argue that no one has any right to claim goodness. With or without the biblical law only real goodness counts. The rest is privilege but counts for nothing without performance; and to rub it in, Paul declares than non Jews have as much of a show of making it as did Abraham, in God's eyes. He successfully collapses privilege and turns therefore with confidence in 3:21 to his opening declaration (1:16-17).
Our hope lies alone in God's goodness, not in our religious achievements or claims to special status (3:21-22). Paul is careful not to give the impression that this entails abandoning the tradition. To the contrary he emphasises as he did in the opening of the letter that he is speaking of something which fulfils God's intent and its expression in scripture (3:21). Paul sees that in God's goodness, particularly revealed in the event of Jesus. Its focus is the human condition. God acts to restore us to be what we were made to be, bearers of God's image and glory (3:23).. Alienation from God and the sin which expresses it have robbed us of our humanity.
Paul then repeats his opening ploy of citing what the Romans would probably have recognised as common early tradition. So in 3:24-25 we have a jungle of complex thoughts and imagery. Redemption derives from the practice of liberating slaves. It stands beside cultic language which portrays Jesus' death as an act of atonement. It is unwise to assemble such thoughts as if they were finely cut pieces of a jigsaw puzzle which can be smoothed into a coherent whole. They are rash and imaginative flights of faith grasping for ideas to express a deeper truth, not unlike the artistry of love and on the same continuum. For Paul, who may have known little of Christ's life, his death formed not only the climax but also the focal point of the transforming goodness which he declared. Its achievement was an explosion of love which broke through every barrier of prejudice to reach powerfully yet gently to every soul. It picked people up from their past failings and set them back in a right and assured relationship with God which bridged the alienation and restored the basis for goodness (3:25b-26). Paul thinks good relations and good performance together. His thinking bridges what traditionally seemed irreconcilable Protestant and Catholic positions: are we justified or made righteous? Paul embraces the whole cycle which flows from God's goodness and ends in bearing the fruit of goodness in each of us as good relations are restored. The constant repetition of goodness in 3:21-26 and the linking of God's goodness and God's setting us right in 3:26 make that clear.
This has not been a speculative adventure but an engagement of the heart of a conflict. This is why Paul returns to its implications in 3:27-31. We can abandon special claims based on our achievements (either the principle of achievements or perhaps achievements focused on the law; 3:27). God's goodness alone is our hope (3:28). Jew and Gentile are on a level playing field (3:29-30) and God's generosity is unlimited towards both. 3:31 touches on the sensitive issue at the heart of Paul's unpopularity. Does all he has said imply abandonment of the Law, in essence, the Bible? Of course not, he declares. It fulfils it. Hearers would only be happy with that claim if they could swallow the hidden assumption: we uphold the Law - except for those things which have been a basis for discrimination. Such divisions live on wherever people claim that parts of scripture discriminate and should give way to others and their opponents opt to stick with all scripture unmodified. It is as passionate today as it was then and sadly just as divisive.
Gospel Pentecost 3: 1 June Matthew 7:21-29
Return to Home Page