# Wright on Romans > [!abstract] About the source > Wright's *Into the Heart of Romans* (2023; first given as lectures at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, in 2021) is mainly a verse-by-verse study of **Romans 8**, which he calls "the very heart of Romans". He covers the rest of the letter only as it feeds into or out of chapter 8. So the chapter-by-chapter part below is uneven: **Romans 7 and 8 are covered in depth, and the other chapters only as far as Wright discusses them.** Quotations are Wright's own translation (NTE) or his own wording. He writes "spirit" and "father" in lower case on purpose, and usually translates *Christos* as "Messiah". > > **Added source:** Wright, ***Paul: A Biography*** (2018), ch. 12 "Corinth II", which surveys the whole letter. Material from it is tagged **(Bio)**. It is most useful for **Romans 1–4 and 9–16**, which *Into the Heart of Romans* only touches. > > **Added source:** Wright, ***Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 2 (chs. 9–16)*** (SPCK/WJK, 2004). It is Wright's passage-by-passage commentary for ordinary readers, and material from it is tagged **(PfE)**. **Chapters 9–16 are now covered passage by passage.** Wright's translation there often renders *dikaiosynē* as "covenant membership / covenant faithfulness / covenant status" depending on context. > > **Added source:** Wright, ***Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 1 (chs. 1–8)*** (SPCK/WJK, 2004). Also tagged **(PfE)**. **Chapters 1–6 are now covered passage by passage**; for 7–8 only what PfE adds to the fuller treatment is included. > > **Note that Wright's views developed:** PfE (2004) is almost twenty years earlier than *Into the Heart of Romans* (2023). The biggest shifts are on 8.28–30 (see the ⚠ note in the Romans 8 section). --- ## Part 1 — The letter as a whole ### Wright's method for reading any passage in Paul Wright's approach isn't an order for reading the letter. It's three questions he asks of every paragraph, and they work well for leading a study: 1. **Look at the start and finish.** Paul "regularly draws together the threads of a paragraph or chapter in his opening and closing statements." Get your bearings there first. 2. **Watch the little connecting words**: *gar* ("for/because"), *de* ("but/moreover"), *hina* ("in order that"), *ara/oun* ("so then/therefore"). A string of *gar*s means Paul is "digging more deeply" into a point. Then a run of *de* ("but if that's so, then…") "builds back up" to the conclusion. "When you see a 'therefore', ask what it's there for." 3. **Think into the first-century world.** Read Paul as "a well-taught Jewish thinker" living under Rome, not as someone answering medieval or Reformation questions. "We don't have to help Paul to get it right." Wright also suggests keeping two or three English translations open, because "no single English translation – certainly not my own! – can do justice to all his hints and allusions." The "biblical taxi-driver" image: Christians often know Romans like a tourist knows London by the Underground. They jump from one famous verse to the next (3.23, 5.1, 8.28, 8.39, 12.2) without knowing how the streets join up. The church needs people who have "walked the streets" of the text until they can guide others around it. ### Three "trigger warnings" 1. **Romans tells a bigger story than the "Romans Road"** (I'm a sinner → Jesus died for me → I believe → I go to heaven). The problem Paul addresses is "the crisis of the whole cosmos, within which human beings were from the start designed to play a vital role." *"Salvation is not just God's gift to his people, it is God's gift through his people."* 2. **Israel's story is not optional.** A common telling (God made the world → humans sinned → God sent Jesus → "that's OK then") leaves "a big hole in the middle." God did not scrap a failed "Israel plan." The covenant with Abraham always needed a faithful Israelite, and God provided one in Jesus, Israel's Messiah. *Christos* "is not just a proper name." It means the anointed one "who sums up Israel's vocation and destiny in himself." 3. **"We have got our story of salvation upside down."** Paul "never once mentions 'going to heaven'" (the word appears only twice in Romans, and never for where believers go after death). The hope is **bodily resurrection into a renewed creation**, where redeemed humans have a real role. The Bible ends "with the new Jerusalem coming down to earth," not souls going up. *"We are saved, not from the world but for the world."* ### Structure: a symphony in four movements - **1–4**: God's covenant faithfulness revealed in the Messiah, creating one forgiven family of Jews and gentiles - **5–8**: the "map of God's purposes." Chapter 5 previews the whole section, chapters 6–8 retell the exodus, and chapter 8 circles back to 5.1–11 - **9–11**: God's faithfulness to Israel - **12–16**: "the God of hope" The argument builds, so chapter 8 is the conclusion both to chapters 5–8 and to the whole first half (1–8). It is also the platform for the second half. Each part of chapters 5–8 ends with a statement about Christ: 5.11, 5.21, 6.11, 6.23, 7.25a, 8.39. ### How Paul composed it (Bio) - **"Romans itself was new, but every idea it expounded had been tried, tested, and worked out in detail."** Paul had "expounded it a thousand times" in synagogues and house-churches. He was "not… thinking things through for the first time." - **Four sections, one line of thought:** four sections, "each of which has its own integrity, underlying argument, and inner movement," which together "form a single line of thought." Paul pours "this distilled essence of his biblical and Jesus-focused teaching into these four jars and place[s] them in a row where together they will say more than the sum of their parts." - **Unlike his other letters:** Romans is not like 1 Corinthians, where "one thing follows another in something more like a list." It has "a quality of literary artistry attempted nowhere else by Paul." *"It should be listened to in the way one might listen to a symphony – not simply for the next big tune, but for the larger whole to which all the tunes contribute."* Paul returns to the same topics "each time… in a different key or with different orchestration." - **Not a systematic theology:** there is "more than a grain of truth" in that idea, but there are "significant omissions" (for example, no mention of the Eucharist), and "despite the 'divisions' and 'headings' in some translations," it does not move from topic to topic. - **Not a later draft of Galatians:** Galatians is "written in haste and heat to say, *Under no circumstances must you get circumcised and take on the Torah*." Romans is "written at more leisure and with more compositional care to say, *You must work out the gospel-shaped balance of Jew and Greek*." It isn't that Paul is "'anti-law' in Galatians and 'pro-law' in Romans." - **Chapters 1–8 are foundations, not the whole building.** "Romans 5–8 (and indeed Romans 1–8) have often been allowed to stand by themselves as though they constituted 'the gospel' and the rest… a mere succession of appendixes." Though they "have their own integrity, they are in fact designed as the foundations for a building of a very different sort." Chapters 9–16 are Paul's direct appeal to his Roman audiences, and "knowing that this was where he was going has colored and shaped chapters 1–4 and 5–8 as well." - **"Romans is not written to explain how people may be saved."** It describes that "vividly and compellingly," but "in order to highlight the faithfulness of God and, with that, the challenges facing the covenant people." - **Read it straight through.** It was first heard read aloud by Phoebe, who probably expounded it and answered questions. Then it was copied, read again straight through, and studied section by section by the teachers. *"That discipline, of reading straight through and then studying section by section, all bathed in the praying and worshipping life of the community, remains essential to this day."* (A useful pattern for a study group.) ### Wright's summary of the argument of Romans 1–8 From his closing chapter: - The gospel reveals God's covenant faithfulness (1.16–17). - **Humans failed** as image-bearers through idolatry and injustice (1.18–2.16). **Israel also failed**, as the prophets said (2.17–29), which leaves everyone "in the dock" (3.10–20). - **God stayed faithful** (3.1–9) and came in the Messiah as "the one faithful Israelite." The result is a single Jew-plus-gentile family of forgiven sinners, "marked out by the faith that resonates with Jesus' own faithfulness" and declared in the right (3.21–4.25). - **Chapters 5–8** set out what follows: justification leads to glory, along the path of suffering and hope, held up by the love of God. ### A letter about God *Theos* ("God") occurs "far more, in proportion to the letter as a whole, than anywhere else in Paul or indeed the rest of the New Testament." Romans is "a full-dress exposition of God's plan… focused on his covenant faithfulness and rooted and grounded in his love." ### Justice and love belong together - *Dikaiosynē* (usually "righteousness") translates the Hebrew *tsedaqah*. Wright often renders it **"covenant justice"**, because "'righteousness' means anything and nothing these days." - In the Old Testament, God's **justice** is "the creator's utter determination, faced with his creation in a mess, to put it all right." God's **love** is the covenant, the close relationship with his people, "as the means by which he will put the world right." - *"God so loved his world that he determined to put it right."* Never play God's justice and God's love off against each other. - **Justification** in this frame: "God has promised to put the whole world right… Through the gospel he puts humans right – so that they can be part of his putting-right project for the world." *"Justification and justice go closely together."* ### The big biblical story behind Romans - **Abraham was called to undo the sin of Adam.** Adam: "be fruitful… look after the garden." Abraham: "I will make you fruitful… give you the land." The land promise expanded to the whole world (Romans 4.13: Abraham would "inherit the world"; also Psalm 2). - **New creation always comes through new covenant.** Isaiah 40–55 is the pattern: God returns to Zion (40, 52), deals with sin (53), renews the covenant (54), then renews creation (55). - **The exodus is the template.** Exodus has three stages: liberation from slavery, Torah at Sinai, and God's glory filling the Tabernacle to lead the people to their inheritance. The Tabernacle is "like a new creation: a micro-world where God wants to come and dwell." **Paul follows this sequence in Romans 6–8:** - **Romans 6**: through the water (baptism) to freedom (Red Sea) - **Romans 7**: arrival at Sinai. The law arrives, with its sad effects, "all the way to exile" - **Romans 8**: God comes to dwell in his people by the spirit (the new Tabernacle) and leads them to the inheritance, which is "not 'heaven' but rather the whole renewed creation" - *"The whole world is now God's holy land."* ### "Glory" has a double meaning Glory (*doxa* / Hebrew *kabod*, "weight") basically means **dignity, worth, status**. It is often a royal word. It does not mean luminous brightness or "heaven" ("gone to glory"). In Romans it means two things at once: 1. **God's glorious presence dwelling in his people** by the spirit, as in the Tabernacle and Temple. 2. **The human vocation of Psalm 8**, "crowned with glory and honour," set in wise, healing authority over creation (see 2.7, 10; 5.2; 5.17). The two "converge – as they did, and do, in Jesus himself." Irenaeus: "the glory of God is a human fully alive." ### The Roman setting - The letter was carried from Greece to Rome by **Phoebe**, who read it aloud to small **house-churches**, "squashed into someone's tenement attic or the small room behind a shop." Wright estimates "perhaps a couple of hundred Jesus-followers" in a city of about a million. They were already seen as troublemakers. - There were tensions between **Jewish and gentile believers**. Jewish Christians expelled under Claudius had returned under Nero, and some gentile believers may have read their troubles as divine displeasure (addressed in chapters 11 and 14–15). - Within ten years **Nero** made Rome's Christians scapegoats for the fire of AD 64. Romans 8 reads "almost like a prophetic warning, coupled with the assurance." - **Imperial propaganda.** Caesar was "son of the deified Julius." Emperors were adopted heirs who inherited the empire. "Good news" (*euangelion*) was a word used for Caesar's achievements. Virgil and the *Ara Pacis* announced a returned **golden age** of peace and plenty under Augustus, and Nero's poets repeated it. Paul's gospel is a counter-claim: "*euangelion* is an Isaiah-word that confronts a Caesar-word." Jesus is the true Son of God and true *kyrios* (Lord). New Testament theology usually has "Jewish roots and pagan targets." - A possible wordplay: Rome's secret name was reputedly **Roma spelled backwards, *Amor*** ("love"). At the letter's climax, Paul may be reclaiming "Love" as "the deepest truth about the creator God" (8.35–39). **From the biography (Bio):** - **Caesar's "gospel" in detail.** From Augustus on, an emperor's accession and birthday were "good news" (*euangelia*). With Caesar as *Kyrios* (Lord) and *Sōtēr* (Saviour), a golden age of *dikaiosynē* (justice), *sōtēria* (salvation) and *eirēnē* (peace) had supposedly arrived, secured by his *dynamis* (power). The fitting response was *pistis*, "loyalty," "believing obedience." **"Paul's *euangelion* used the same terms, but meant something quite different."** Compare Rom 1.16–17: gospel, power, salvation, justice, faith. - **But Jesus is not just a better Caesar.** "It was never a simple matter of a single scale with Caesar at the wrong end and Jesus at the right end." That would pull Jesus down to Caesar's level, and could lead the church to think "allegiance to Jesus meant disobeying, on principle, the divinely appointed civil ruler" (compare 13.1–7). Jesus is "not only the true Lord, but also a different kind of Lord." This is Paul's *cursus pudorum* ("course of shame") against Rome's *cursus honorum* ("course of honour"). - **The frame of the letter.** The introduction (1.1–5, 16–17) and the conclusion (15.7–12) "look Caesar in the face." Both are built on David's true son, raised from the dead and "the root of Jesse… who rises up to rule the nations." *"The resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of a genuinely Pauline political and social theology."* - **Why Spain, specifically (Bio):** Spain was "the western edge of the world," "a major center of Roman culture." Seneca came from there, and Galba (briefly emperor, 68–69) had governed it from **Tarragona**, which "boasted a large temple to Caesar" and would probably be Paul's first target. Paul wanted "to announce that Jesus was the true Kyrios right under Caesar's nose." ### Key terms as Wright uses them - **Sin (capital S)**: not just wrong acts but "the dark power that lies behind all human idolatry, injustice and immorality," "almost the equivalent of 'the satan'." - **Flesh (*sarx*)**: not physical matter as such. It means corruptible, decaying human existence, and also ethnic "Israel according to the flesh" still "in Adam." Paul is "a robust creational monotheist" and the body is good. "Plato is a delusion." - **Body (*sōma*)**: the whole public person. It can still give in to sin (8.13), but it is the "living sacrifice" (12.1), and **the body, not the flesh, is what is raised**. - **spirit (*pneuma*)**: not "non-material". God's spirit, and sometimes the human spirit (8.10, 16). Paul never speaks of an immortal "soul." - **"In the Messiah" (*en Christō*)**: the Messiah "sums up his people in himself, so that what is true of him is true of them." - **Heaven**: in biblical thought heaven is not far off. Heaven and earth "are meant to work together." Heaven is "the CEO's office… the place from which 'earth' is run." --- ## Part 2 — Chapter by chapter ### Romans 1 - **(Bio)** 1.1–5 and 1.16–17 form the letter's frame against Caesar: "David's true son, marked out as such by the resurrection and hence exalted as Lord over all human authorities, inaugurating a reign of true justice and salvation for all who would be loyal." Psalm 2 stands behind it: the kings of the world are challenged to come humbly before God's son. - **(Bio)** "To the Jew first, and also, equally, to the Greek" (1.16) was Paul's practice everywhere. He always began in the synagogue, which "had given no opportunity for any idea of a Gentile-only Jesus community." - **1.2**: the Old Testament is foundational to the gospel. - **1.3–5**: Paul's first definition of the gospel. It is news about God's son, from David's line, "marked out" (*horisthentos*) as son of God in power by the resurrection. The resurrection is "the very heart of the gospel," and it is sent to a Rome that "already had a 'gospel' about a 'son of God'." (The same root returns in 8.29, "marked out in advance.") - **1.16**: "not ashamed of the gospel", probably echoing the Servant in Isaiah 50. - **1.16–17**: the thesis. The gospel unveils (*apokalypsis*) God's righteousness, his covenant justice. "The righteous shall live by faith": life and righteousness belong together. Romans 8.9–11 is "a kind of QED" to 1.16–17. - **1.18–32**: human idolatry and injustice, the failure of the image-bearing vocation. This is also the source of creation's "out-of-jointness." In **1.32**, *dikaiōma* is the "decree" that those who do such things deserve death. Paul turns this around in 8.4. #### Passage by passage (PfE) **How Wright frames the whole letter (PfE, on 1.1–7).** Many Western Christians find Romans "as much of a mystery as Mars." The Protestant tradition "has only colonized certain parts of the great planet called Romans… But there are other parts which have remained a mystery – not least the parts about the coming together of Jews and Gentiles, which Paul comes back to again and again." "We still need the old maps and roads… we shall find that we get more out of them by seeing and using them within… Paul's own larger picture." **1.1–7 — Good news about the new King** - *Image:* the opening is the **launching pad** for the rocket that is Romans. It is the usual letter greeting ("Paul… to all in Rome… grace and peace") expanded "almost beyond breaking point." - **Writing this to Rome was a daring act.** Caesar's titles included "son of god," his birthday was hailed as "good news," and he claimed the world's allegiance. Verses 3–4 seem "almost designed to stake a claim which puts that of Caesar in the shade." Jesus comes from a royal house (David's) "far older than anything Rome can claim." His resurrection, "the beginning of 'the resurrection of the dead'", "trumps that of tyrants… Death is their final weapon, and he has broken it." - **The Messiah as God's son:** Paul picks one strand of Jewish hope, the coming king who would be God's son (2 Samuel 7.14; Psalm 2.7). "It has happened! God has done it! The king has come!" - **Apostles are "sent-out people,"** the king's ambassadors. - **The gospel is news, not an offer.** "The 'good news' is not, first and foremost, about something that can happen to us… but… about something that has happened." It is "not like an advertisement for a product we might or might not want to buy… more like a command from an authority we would be foolish to resist." Caesar's heralds didn't say "if you feel you need a Roman-empire kind of experience, you might want to submit to him." **1.8–13 — Paul longs to see the Roman Christians** - **Where they lived:** the rich lived on the seven hills (Augustus's palace; Nero's palace across the Forum). "Most of the first Roman Christians lived" in the low-lying, flood-prone poor districts "just across the river from the seat of power." The letter was probably first read "in a crowded room in someone's house in the low-lying poorer district." - **Faith** is "belief and trust in the God who raised Jesus from the dead" (4.24, picking up 1.4). You needed it "to be a Christian in the ancient world, as in the modern." - **A church Paul hadn't founded.** "According to early memories recorded in the second century, Peter had gone to Rome after his narrow escape from Jerusalem (Acts 12)." So Paul is "in a somewhat delicate position" and thanks God for their faith rather than implying they lack anything. - **"Forget St Peter's and the Vatican!"** There were "probably not many more than a hundred Christians in all" in a city of at least a million, meeting in houses, "quite likely… groupings of Christians from different backgrounds." - **The Claudius backstory** (six or eight years earlier): Romans saw Christianity as "doubly strange… a kind of Jewish religion that made other Jews angry!" The gentile-only church may have thought the Jewish world "left behind… All those rules and regulations… all of it was gone." Then the Jews came back. Some Jewish Christians shared Paul's view; others were "deeply suspicious," and "suspicion… might easily turn to hostility." "Hold in our minds a historical picture of the Romans' church… rather than imagining that it was a church just like one of ours." - *For leaders:* "When you hope to visit a person, or a town, the best possible preparation is that you should pray in advance." **1.14–17 — Good news, salvation and the justice of God** - *Image:* an "exploded diagram" for a model aeroplane. Take the four verses apart, then reassemble them. - **"Not ashamed"** is not about embarrassment in a secular culture. Caesar claimed to rule the world and the gospel claimed Jesus did, so the question was whether to "practise the faith in private in case it offended someone? Certainly not." (Compare Psalm 119.46: "I will speak of your decrees before kings.") - **"Greeks and barbarians" teases Rome.** To Greeks, Latin-speaking Romans *were* barbarians. Paul's main division, though, is Jew and Greek. Many in Rome, "including most of the early Christians," were Greek-speaking immigrants. - **The parts of the diagram:** - **Power:** announcing Jesus as crucified and risen Lord makes "the new world which was born when Jesus died and rose again" come to life in hearers. "This isn't magic… It is God's power." - **Salvation:** "The meaning we normally assume is 'going to heaven when we die'. But the New Testament in general, and Paul in particular, have almost nothing to say about that." It means rescue of the whole creation and new bodies. It is past, present and future: "They were saved; they are being saved; they will be saved." - **Faith:** "faith is the opposite of doubt, not just of sight! It means a settled conviction that God has raised Jesus… Lord of the world." - **God's justice / righteousness:** God, faced with a world gone wrong, "calls out a single family and enters into a loving, binding agreement… 'covenant'… not… the only people God loves… Rather… the way God has chosen to bring his rescuing justice to the world." Wright translates it **"God's covenant justice"** "to hold all these ideas together." - **"From faithfulness to faithfulness"** + Habakkuk 2.4: God's faithfulness is answered by ours. Habakkuk too "had to learn to hold on and trust God, to have faith in his faithfulness." **1.18–23 — Humans reject God and embrace corruption** - *Image:* a 200-year-old copper beech that looked healthy but was rotten inside from the roots. "The tree in question is the human race." - **The rot starts in the roots:** suppressing the truth about God, then "distorted thinking and a darkened heart," and only then behaviour. "By itself, human reason can no more be guaranteed to tell us which way to go than a compass in a room full of strong magnets." Humans "claim to be wise while in fact being foolish." - **Idolatry is the failure of worship.** Modern idols: "money, sex and power." It is "the human race as a whole," not every individual. - **God's anger is not temper.** "God… cares passionately… if there are types of activity which deface, damage and destroy the world and human beings, God will not let them go on for ever… if he were not [angry], he would not be a good God." - **Two mistakes about evil:** thinking the world is wholly wicked, or that evil "isn't really as serious as all that." The modern West tends to the second. - **Link to ch. 4:** Abraham's faith reverses this (see 4.18–25). **1.24–27 — Unclean desires, dishonoured bodies** - *Image:* a violin bow is baffling until you see the violin. Male and female "made for one another," with the caveats Wright adds himself ("all illustrations are incomplete"; a single person can be complete, "as Jesus himself was"). - **The background is Genesis 1–3, not the Ten Commandments.** Paul traces violations of "the very structure of the created order itself." Male-plus-female complementarity is to "make, with God, the music of creation." - **Why same-sex practice comes first on the list.** Wright says it is not merely Jewish disgust, nor only a jab at Nero (though Nero was known for it), nor because ancient relationships were always exploitative ("Homosexual 'marriages' were not unknown… Plato offers an extended discussion"). Paul's point is **"this is not what males and females were made for."** - **Wright's cautions on reading it:** Paul is *not* saying each person with same-sex attraction got there "through committing specific acts of idolatry" or "by a deliberate choice." That would be "modern individualism." Paul "is talking about the human race as a whole… a sign that the human world in general is out of joint." - **"God gave them up"** (vv. 24, 26, 28): "When God gives human beings responsibility he means it." Worshipping the true God makes you "more fully and truly human"; idolatry diminishes "that essential humanness." - "This is not, of course, the last word on the subject… two verses… hardly enough for us to deduce more than a little." What the New Testament offers is "not a set of arbitrary rules, but a deep theology of what it means to be genuinely human, and a warning about… self-deception." - *(Handle this passage with pastoral care in a group. Wright's framing, "the human race as a whole", is the key to reading it without singling people out.)* **1.28–32 — Darkened mind, darkened behaviour** - "The line between good and evil runs, not between 'us' and 'them', but down the middle of each of us." - **"Would you want to live in a village where all the people were like that?"** (compare C. S. Lewis on hell as people moving ever further apart). - **"An unfit mind"** matches "did not see fit." "Evil is what you get when the mind is twisted out of shape and the body goes along for the ride." - **v. 32 is the worst part: approving of evil.** *Image:* two murderers in prison, one penitent and one saying "the judge should have given me a medal." "Is it not much, much worse to live in a world where evil is praised and good is scorned?" - **God's "decree" is not arbitrary**, like Caligula posting laws too high to read. It is "built into the fabric of creation itself. Evil behaviour is inherently destructive." Romans 1 shows "future death casting its dark shadow forwards into the present." ### Romans 2 - **2.1–16**: the final judgment, when God will judge justly. This leaves anxious believers asking whether it could still go against them, a question Romans 8 answers. - **2.7, 10**: the promise of "glory and honour", Psalm 8 language, anticipating chapter 8. - **2.17–29**: Israel, too, has failed. **2.25–29** already anticipates the argument about the spirit. #### Passage by passage (PfE) **2.1–11 — God's coming judgment will be impartial, the same for all** - *Image:* a foreman who pleaded for "one more chance" for a hot-tempered young worker, who then used the chance to make matters worse. - **God is "kind – not 'kindly' in the sense of indulgent, a sleepy old uncle."** "If… God was essentially mean… we would all have been blown off the planet long ago." Kindness is meant to lead to repentance (v. 4). - **"Judgment is an 'Old Testament' idea, whereas in the New Testament you find only mercy": "This isn't even a caricature; it's simple fiction."** "Part of the logic of love is that it can always be rejected." - **Aimed at the pagan moralist** (Seneca was caught breaking his own rules). "The moral law… is like a sheet of glass. If it is broken, it is broken." - **Greek and Roman religion had no final judgment.** It was central to Judaism, and Paul "does not unsay any of this." "Christians have imagined that… 'justification by faith'… means the abolition of a final judgment according to works, but Paul never says that." **2.12–16 — How God's impartial judgment will work** - **"The law" = the Jewish law, the Torah**, given to Israel through Moses. It is Israel-specific, "not… a general moral law to which all humans are subject." - **Two tenses of justification.** Justification by faith is about **the present**: "how you can tell in the present, in advance of the future judgment, who God's people really are." The **future** judgment "will take place on the basis of the entire life a person has led" (2.7–10; 14.10; 2 Corinthians 5.10). It is not a theoretical system God abandoned. "It is the contrast between the future judgment… and the present anticipation of that verdict… on the basis of faith." - **"Justified" = "declared to be in the right"** in a lawcourt. Like "I pronounce you husband and wife," the declaration "creates a new status." The Messiah as coming judge was standard Jewish expectation (Psalm 2; Isaiah 11). - **vv. 14–15 are "a puzzle"** Wright admits he is unsure about. Either conscientious gentiles who partly keep the law, or gentile Christians with the law written on their hearts by the spirit (vv. 26–29). - **Good news:** "True justice – the sort that people long for, plead for, thirst for around the world to this day – true justice will be done." **2.17–24 — The claim of the Jew, and its problems** - *Image:* a police force losing public trust through corruption, even though most officers are honest. - **Israel's vocation was real:** to be "the light of the world" (Isaiah 42.6). Before his conversion Paul saw this as "the rock on which he could stand firm." - **A crucified Messiah turned Paul's world upside down.** "This was how God had fulfilled his ancient promises: by having his anointed one killed by the pagans!" - **"God's name is blasphemed among the nations" (Isaiah 52.5; Ezekiel 36)** comes from the heart of the prophets' critique. Isaiah 52 leads on to the Suffering Servant, and Ezekiel 36 to the new covenant. Paul has both in mind. - **The exile's worst aspect** was "foreigners, pagans… ruling over God's people," still true in Paul's day (Daniel 9). - **The point is not that all Jews steal or commit adultery.** "If even some Jews are doing these things… this completely undercut Israel's boast that, as a nation, it was still the light of the world." - **"Paul never denies the claim of Israel… National Israel had failed in its vocation… But God has not failed."** **2.25–29 — The badge, the name and the meaning** - *Image:* a supermarket own-brand dressed up to look like the real thing. "Labels can mislead." - **A lawbreaker's circumcision "becomes uncircumcision"** (compare Jeremiah 9.26). - **Gentiles who "fulfil the law" while uncircumcised** is deliberately "darkly funny" (compare 1 Corinthians 7.19). They are **gentile Christians** with the law written on their hearts by the spirit (Jeremiah 31; Ezekiel 36; 2 Corinthians 3.1–6). - **Paul redefines "Jew" itself.** A gentile in whom the spirit fulfils the law "is to be called 'Jew'." Circumcision of the heart comes from Deuteronomy 10.16, 30.6 and Jeremiah 4.4. - **The Hebrew pun:** "Judah" (whence "Jew") means **"praise"** (Genesis 29.35). Such a person gets "praise… from God." Paul is "thinking in Hebrew" while writing Greek. ### Romans 3 - **3.1–9**: God remains faithful. - **3.10–20**: all humankind "in the dock with nothing to say." - **3.21–26**: the verdict "in the right" is already announced over all who have faith in the Messiah. **3.24–26** speaks of Jesus' sacrificial blood, "not far away" from Paul's thought at 8.34. - **3.23** "all sinned, and fell short of God's glory": one of the well-known "Underground stops." - **(Bio)** **"But now" (3.21)** is "one of Paul's favorite phrases." God has revealed that his covenant purposes always involved "the 'putting forth' of Jesus the Messiah as the means of establishing a new reality, a single family whose sins are forgiven, a Jew-plus-Gentile covenant family, as he always promised to Abraham." - **3.31**: Paul insists, "cryptically," that the law will be vindicated through the gospel. #### Passage by passage (PfE) **3.1–8 — God's determined faithfulness** - *Image:* carrying a friend's valuable necklace to New Zealand. **"Entrusted"** means the thing isn't for you, it's for the person you deliver it to. - **Israel was entrusted with God's "oracles"** for the whole world, but "kept the message all to themselves… as though a postman were to regard his bag of mail as a sign of what an important person he was, and therefore to refuse to deliver it." - **God's faithfulness is not cancelled.** "What he needs, and what he will himself provide, is a faithful Israelite who will at last carry out the commission." - **Paul has not abandoned Israel's chosenness.** He can't yet explain it all, and returns to it in ch. 9. - **God is not a party in a lawsuit with Israel** (this was the mistake of Job and his comforters). God is the judge. - **"Romans is like a great symphony. The present passage is a little flash of music which looks ahead to a much fuller statement"** in chs. 9–11. - **Three lessons:** think things through ("love God with our minds"); Paul will answer fully later; and being a Jew was never a side issue. "The Messiah is the messenger who finally delivers the message." **3.9–20 — Jews as well as Gentiles are guilty of sin** - **The lawcourt scene:** the prisoner covers his mouth, or is struck on it (compare Jesus in John 18.22; Paul in Acts 23.2). "Every mouth… stopped": the whole world is in the dock. - **"Sin"** is not only an act but "a power with… a life of its own" (developed in ch. 7). - **The Psalms chain** (Psalms 14, 5, 140, 10, 36; Isaiah 59): in almost every source passage, the charge is framed by "the promise that God will act to rescue those who are helpless." Paul hints at the solution even in the indictment. - **"Works of the law" cannot justify.** "Appealing to the law is like appealing to the policeman who caught you in the act." Israel's boast "would actually count on the other side." **3.21–24 — The unveiling of God's covenant justice** - *Image:* the last-minute rider galloping in with a reprieve. "**But now!**" - **God's dilemma**, pondered by Jewish writers of the day: Israel, "the bearers of the solution to the world's problem turned out to be themselves part of that problem." The covenant itself (Genesis 12) was meant to undo Adam (ch. 3) and put creation (chs. 1–2) back on track. - **"Apart from the law" yet witnessed by the law and prophets.** Otherwise only Jews would benefit. "God does not change his mind. His word does not fail." - **"The faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah" (v. 22).** Wright reads the Greek as Jesus' own faithfulness to Israel's vocation (compare "obedient unto death," Philippians 2.8), with believers' faith following. "The Messiah represents his people, so that what is true of him is true of them… one of the secret springs of all Paul's thinking." - **"Redemption"** is not just one metaphor. "The death of Jesus is indeed the New Exodus, the moment when the slaves are freed." - **"Freely declared to be in the right"** means more than being "let off": it is being "given the status of being God's covenant people… far ahead of the great verdict on the last day." **3.25–26 — Jesus' death reveals God's covenant justice** - *Image:* sorting a desk piled with papers. Some things to answer in prayer, some to file for later. - **Three ideas in one image:** 1. God "put Jesus forth" like the shewbread (Leviticus 24.8) 2. as the **"mercy seat,"** the place where God meets his people 3. by his **blood** "Instead of the Temple and its symbolism… Jesus himself is now the place where, and also the means by which, the God of Israel has met with his people and forgiven their sins." Isaiah 53 is in the background. - **Propitiation.** God had "passed over" earlier sins in patience, but was "obliged… to act decisively with sin – which means, to punish it." The same root word signals a sacrifice that "turns away the wrath of God… God's righteous verdict against sinners has been meted out against the faithful Israelite." *(Compare how Wright handles this more cautiously in NTIIW, where "mercy seat" is cleansing, with penal substitution kept for 8.3.)* - **"The final judgment day has been brought forward into the middle of history,"** twice over: on the cross (sin condemned) and in justification (the verdict announced now). - **Justification** has three senses at once: lawcourt ("knowing the verdict before the case has even been heard"), covenant (who are the true children of Abraham), and "the future coming into the present." - **God shown to be in the right on four counts:** dealing impartially with sin, being faithful to the covenant, dealing properly with sin, and rescuing those who call in helpless faith. - "There are many times, in reading Paul, when the right reaction is to kneel down and give God thanks. This is one of those times." **3.27–31 — The God of both Jew and gentile** - *Image:* "the right hymns to the wrong tunes" (British and American hymnals). **Paul sets "law" to a new tune, "faith," instead of "works."** - **"Justification by works of the law"** in Paul's world meant Torah-keeping as the *present badge* of those God would vindicate. See the Dead Sea Scroll **4QMMT** ("Some Works of the Law"). It was always restricted to Jews, and further restricted within Israel (Pharisees, the Qumran sect). Paul calls this **"boasting."** - **Most translations render "law" in v. 27 as "principle."** That "succeeds in making some kind of sense, at the huge cost of making Paul sing a different hymn altogether." - **Three points:** 1. **Justification by faith:** "when people believe… that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead… they are assured in the present time that they are part of God's family. This is not because there is anything meritorious in that belief… Rather… this faith is the sure and unfailing sign that the gospel has transformed the heart." It "doesn't mean… 'anything goes'… doesn't mean that God… lowered the bar." 2. **Jews and gentiles on the same footing**, so boasting is ruled out. 3. **Monotheism, the Shema** ("YHWH is one"), used "to devastating effect": one God, one people. (Note "on the basis of faith" for the circumcised and "through faith" for the uncircumcised, v. 30.) - **"Do we then abolish the law?… we establish the law."** "It was always designed to be sung to the tune called 'faith'." ### Romans 4 - **(Bio) Abraham versus Phinehas.** In Paul's boyhood tradition of "zeal," Phinehas killed the idolatrous man, "and it was reckoned to him as righteousness" (Psalm 106.30–31): God made a covenant with him. Paul now sets **Genesis 15.6** against that: *Abraham believed God*, "believed, that is, the promise that he would be the father of an uncountable family that would inherit the whole world," and *that* was reckoned as righteousness. The former zealot now points to faith, not zeal, as the covenant badge. - **(Bio) Faith is the only badge of Abraham's family.** It could not be created by circumcision ("added later than Gen. 15") or by the law ("added hundreds of years afterward"), but "only by a fresh act of God's grace, received by faith." - **(Bio) A warning about common teaching:** using Romans 1–4 to declare universal sinfulness and justification by grace through faith "is fine as far as it goes," but it "routinely shrinks what Paul is actually saying," because these chapters "do not make full sense without the material that then follows." - **(Bio) Why Abraham matters:** "the call of Abraham was the divine answer to the sin of Adam." That makes a natural bridge to chapters 5–8. - **3.21–4.25**: God has kept his covenant promises to Abraham by creating, through the Messiah, "a worldwide family whose sins were forgiven." - **4.13**: Abraham would **inherit the world**, not just the land. This is the key to what "inheritance" means in chapter 8. - **4.19–22**: Abraham and Sarah believed God would give new life though their bodies were "as good as dead." This is the pattern for resurrection faith. - **4.24**: faith in "the-God-who-raised-Jesus-from-the-dead", echoed almost word for word in 8.11. - Paul parallels **Isaac's birth with Jesus' resurrection** (life out of death). Jesus is "handed over," the same verb as 8.32, which alludes to Genesis 22. #### Passage by passage (PfE) **4.1–8 — God's covenant with Abraham** - *Image:* a war orphan about to be adopted, asking "what kind of family is he about to join?" "Justification" is being declared adopted into the family. **Romans 4 asks: what kind of family is it?** - **Why Abraham?** Not because opponents liked him, or as a proof-text, or as an example of someone justified. "All of these are ways of not taking seriously Paul's larger world of thought." Abraham is the start of the covenant family. - **v. 1 is mistranslated in most versions:** there is nothing about Abraham "gaining" or "finding." It reads: **"Have we found Abraham to be our ancestor in a human, fleshly sense?"** No. - **The climax is v. 17: "father of many nations."** - **Genesis 15 is the backbone.** "Abraham believed God, and this was the basis of the covenant which was then established." For Paul, "'being in the right' with God is much the same thing as 'being a member of the covenant'." - **Abraham began "ungodly"**, a pagan, "where pagans, non-Jews, start. That was where God met him. It wasn't where God left him." - **David (Psalm 32):** "the covenant… was established to deal with sin." Forgiveness is what God intended when he called Abraham. **4.9–12 — Abraham the father of both uncircumcised and circumcised** - *Image:* a wedding ring, "a sign and seal of the covenant." (Wright: "it is many years since I was last able to take my ring off.") - **The new argument (not in Galatians): Genesis 15 comes before Genesis 17.** Abraham was reckoned in the right *before* circumcision, so circumcision can't be required. - **Abraham's family is redefined in two directions:** - It is **opened** to believing gentiles. - It is **narrowed**, so it "no longer includes all Jews automatically." Jews are welcome, "but the badge they, too, must now wear is that of Christian faith." - "Many people resist this conclusion, but it is in fact inescapable." It is not anti-Jewish. Paul "belongs on the same map as other Jewish movement leaders" who saw God "redefining Israel." - **For today:** the church's door must be "wide enough open to let in people of every ethnic group, every type of family… every sort of moral (or immoral) background," while keeping the one defining badge: "the faith that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead." **4.13–17 — Abraham is the father of all believers** - **"He would inherit the world"** (v. 13). Genesis promised Canaan, but "for Paul… the idea of a holy land, in terms of one strip of territory over against all others, has simply vanished." The whole creation is God's holy land (Romans 8). "One of the most breathtaking revisions of standard Jewish thinking… as important as the decision not to require circumcision." "The Holy Land was… a kind of advance metaphor." (Wright relates this to a sharp email about the Middle East.) - **The law "stirs up God's anger"** because its job is to show up sin, and "there is quite a lot of sin to show up… not least within the covenant people themselves." If the law defined God's people, "God would quite simply not have a 'people' at all." So there must be "a law-free zone" where gentiles can belong on equal terms. - **"By faith… according to grace"** (v. 16), so that the promise holds for the whole family. - **"Gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not exist":** Jewish conversion is "life from the dead" (11.15), and gentile conversion is "fresh creation." - *Question:* "Not many Christians… make much of the fact of being children of Abraham… Is it not time to get this theme out of the cupboard?" **4.18–25 — Abraham's faith, and ours** - *Image:* the first winter of pioneers in Canada. "Hoping against hope" (v. 18) is where that phrase comes from. - **Abraham's faith deliberately reverses Romans 1:** | Romans 1 (humans) | Romans 4 (Abraham) | |---|---| | ignored God the creator (1.20, 25) | believed God as creator and life-giver (4.17) | | knew God's power but didn't worship (1.20) | trusted God's power (4.21) | | didn't give God glory (1.21) | gave God glory (4.20) | | dishonoured their bodies (1.24–27) | body "as good as dead" given power to father a child (4.19) | "God called Abraham to undo the sin of the human race, and this is how it has happened." It fulfils Genesis 1's "be fruitful and multiply." - **Christian faith is the same faith:** Abraham believed God would give life where there was none. We believe God raised Jesus. Neither is "a cunning calculation." - **4.25 "handed over… raised because of our justification":** the cross dealt with human evil "as it deserved, in judicial condemnation (3.25; 8.3)." The resurrection said "he really was and is my son" and also **"all those who believe in him really are my people."** Isaiah 53.11 is underneath. - **The first great section ends:** "the prophetic promises have come true; Abraham's faith is at last vindicated; the law has been fulfilled; human idolatry, sin and death have been decisively challenged… the single worldwide family promised to Abraham." - *Questions:* "Do we share Abraham's faith?… Have we learned… to live as one family with all those who share this faith and hope?" ### Romans 5 - **(Bio)** Chapters 5–8 tell "the story of the human race from Adam to the Messiah and on to the final promise of renewed creation," "an astonishingly rich and multilayered account of the new Exodus." Its paragraphs "almost all… lead back to Jesus the Messiah." - Chapter 5 is the **overview of 5–8**. Its two halves (1–11; 12–21) preview where the argument is going, and chapter 8 comes full circle back to it. - **5.1–5**: hope of the glory of God (5.2), explained by "the love of God poured out in our hearts through the holy spirit" (5.5). This is the first time the spirit enters the argument, deliberately delayed until here. - **5.6–11**: God's love shown in the Messiah's death. God's love isn't mentioned again until 8.35, where it turns out to have been the "subtext, the deep-level theme, all through." **5.10**: calling the one who died God's "son" only makes sense "if God himself is personally involved." - **5.12–21: Adam and the Messiah.** The Messiah "came to the place where Adam had ended up." He didn't start over with a clean slate. - **5.17**, "a verse often ignored": those who receive the gift of righteousness will **"reign in life."** The word is royal, *basileusousin*. Chapter 8 expands this. - **5.20**: "the law came in alongside so that the trespass might abound… where sin increased, grace increased all the more." Torah acts like a **bright light behind a small photograph, projecting Sin onto a large screen**. It magnifies Adam's sin in Israel so it can be dealt with there. #### Passage by passage (PfE) **5.1–5 — Peace and hope** - *Image:* a famous comedian estranged from his father, and then from his own son. "A vast number of human beings live exactly like that in relation to God." The centre of justification is **"peace with God"**: "a loving, welcoming personal relationship… with the creator God himself." - **The God of the Bible is not "just like us only a bit bigger."** Because "his very nature is love, it is… completely natural for him to establish personal, one-to-one relations with every single one of us." - **But the relationship enlists us in his service,** which brings pressures. "We mustn't imagine that our feeling of being close to God is a true index of the reality. Emotions often deceive." - **"Access… into this grace"** is Temple language. "Grace" is "almost a shorthand for the presence and power of God himself." **"The hope of the glory of God"** is the glory lost in 3.23, the vocation of true image-bearers (8.21). - **"We celebrate *in* our sufferings"**, not the sufferings themselves: patience, then character, then hope. "We live in a world that wants everything immediately; that has no stability of character except a hollow media image." - **Hope "does not make us ashamed"** because, like Abraham, we "hope against hope." - **v. 5 read as our love for God:** Wright takes "the love of God poured out in our hearts" as *our* love for God, the fulfilment of the **Shema** ("love YHWH your God with all your heart"), marking out the true covenant family (compare 3.29–30). - **How to read chs. 5–8:** "Paul is not writing simply a few short essays… Learn to follow the sweep of thought, and it will leave you breathless." **5.6–11 — Jesus' death reveals God's love and guarantees final salvation** - **"John is about love, Paul is about law":** this passage "challenges such a theory head on." - **v. 8 only makes sense if Jesus is God incarnate.** "It doesn't make sense if I say to you, 'I… love you so much that I'm going to… send someone else to help you out of it.'" Jesus "embodies God's own love, God's love-in-action." Divinity is "one of the key elements which tied everything else together." - **Chs. 5–8 are "all about hope,"** the assurance of final salvation. How can God announce the future verdict now, when believers still have their lives to lead? The answer begins here: it rests "on what God has already done in the death of Jesus." - **"How much more":** if God did the hard thing (died for enemies), he will do the easy thing (save friends). *Images:* climbing the sheer rock face and then not giving up on the grassy stroll to the summit; driving through snow to a friend and not turning back at their garden path. - **v. 11 "celebrate in God"** (the same word as "boast," 2.17; 3.27). The false boast in ethnic privilege is replaced by the true boast: "this God is our God for ever and ever" (Psalm 48.14). **5.12–17 — The big picture in shorthand: Adam and the Messiah** - *Image:* a statue of a heroic coastguard smashed by vandals, then **remade in tougher material and even finer.** "What God has done in the one man Jesus the Messiah is far, far more than simply putting the human race back where it was before the arrival of sin." - **Paul starts a comparison in v. 12 and breaks off** (the "…"). He must first explain two things: 1. vv. 13–14: people went on sinning and dying between Adam and Moses even without law. 2. vv. 15–17: the gift is **not** equal and opposite to the trespass. - **"Paul allows his mind to go at such a pace that he seems only to write one word for every four or five he really needs."** - **v. 17:** we'd expect "the reign of life," but Paul says those who receive the gift "will **reign** in life." God's rule "will be exercised in the future… through the fully redeemed human beings" (compare Revelation 20.4–6; 22.5; 1 Corinthians 6.2). - "Look back at verses 15, 16 and 17 and see how often the word 'gift' occurs." **5.18–21 — The triumphant reign of grace** - *Image:* two statues facing each other across a town square: a grim death-mask figure, and a figure "all life and excitement." These are Adamic humanity and Messiah-humanity. *Question:* "At which side of the town square are we living?" - **"God" isn't named in vv. 18–21, but "grace" is "the one whose hidden name is 'grace'."** - **Sinners are "not… basically good people who sometimes do bad things, but… basically flawed people whose flaws reveal themselves."** - **Jesus' "upright act" and "obedience"** (compare Philippians 2.8) sum up 3.22: he embodies both God's faithfulness and the obedience Israel owed. - **v. 20, the law "came in alongside":** Jews (Paul's former self included) saw the law as the start of the new humanity. Instead it "merely intensified the problem of the old type." *Image:* a tiny colour slide put in a projector with a bright light and a big screen. "Superabounded" may be a word Paul coined. - **"The life of the age to come," not "eternal life."** The usual translation "gives most modern readers the quite wrong impression that Paul is talking about spending 'eternity' in a world beyond space, time and matter… Paul never mentions such an idea." - **Almost every paragraph of chs. 5–8 ends with Jesus:** 5.11; 6.11; 6.23; 7.25; 8.11; 8.39. ### Romans 6 - The **Red Sea** stage of the new exodus: enslaved sinners come through the water of **baptism** into the Messiah and find freedom. - Baptised believers are **already "resurrection-people,"** on "resurrection ground." This grounds the present moral life ("no excuses") and the assurance of 8.34. - The "reckoning" of 6.11 (reckon yourselves dead to sin, alive to God) is the same faith-act as "reckoning" in 8.18 and "reckoned as sheep for slaughter" in 8.36. #### Passage by passage (PfE) **6.1–5 — Leaving the state of sin through baptism** - *Image:* the Prodigal Son, a year later, thinking: "supposing I did it again? Maybe I'll get another party!" This is the modern idea that "God will forgive me; that's his job!" (a famous philosopher two centuries ago), and that the church's only word is "God accepts you exactly as you are." - **Paul turns the objection to his advantage** "as a wrestler uses the force of his opponent's attack." - **Romans 6–8 retell the Exodus:** - **ch. 6**: Red Sea (baptism), leaving slavery - **ch. 7**: Sinai and its problems - **ch. 8**: God leading his people to their inheritance, the whole redeemed creation, with a warning against grumbling ("You don't want to go back to slavery, do you?", 8.15) - **Why Paul does it this way:** 1. **Genesis 15** (Romans 4) promised Abraham that after slavery God would bring Israel home, so this *is* what God promised Abraham. 2. **Many Jews expected a "new Exodus."** Paul agrees, but translates it into "the ultimate freedom: the liberation of the whole cosmos from sin, corruption and death." 3. **It shows the gospel fulfils Israel's hope,** which is exactly why ch. 9 must then ask about ethnic Israel. - **"In the Messiah":** "since the Messiah represents his people, what is true of him is true of them… You cannot substitute the name 'Jesus' for 'Messiah' in sentences like that." - **Baptism** draws on the Exodus, on Jesus' baptism by John, and especially on Jesus' own "baptism" of death (Mark 10.38). - **It is a change of status,** like marriage or an eldest son becoming head of the family. *Image:* "planted" in a soil, you must grow there. "What you can't do is get unbaptized again. Don't even think of trying to go back to Egypt." - *Question:* "If you have been baptized, what does it mean to you?… If you haven't… is it time to think about it?" **6.6–11 — Dead to sin, alive to God** - *Image:* someone with amnesia, or a child raised by animals, who needs help discovering who they really are. - **"The old humanity was crucified."** "When Christians say… they did something wrong because of the 'old Adam'… still at work in them, they are going against what Paul states explicitly." Once dead, "sin has no more claim on you." - **Not a no-man's-land:** Jesus is not like Lazarus (raised to the same life) but "through death and out the other side into a new bodily life beyond the reach of death." "The Christian stands on resurrection ground." - **"Calculate/reckon" (v. 11) is a bookkeeping word,** not "a fresh leap of faith" to sinlessness. Adding up the till doesn't change the takings; it shows what is true. Faith here is "not… shutting one's eyes and trying to believe the impossible, but opening one's eyes to the reality." - *Image:* **the bullying landlord.** You've moved out, the final bill is paid, and he turns up demanding money. "Remind yourself of the paperwork… Resisting temptation isn't a matter of pretending you wouldn't find it easier to give in. It's a matter of learning to think straight." **6.12–14 — The call to holy living** - *Image:* a medieval smallholder who moves from a warlord's estate (who made him beat ploughshares into swords) to a lord who builds schools and hospitals. **"A change of master."** - **"You've gotta serve somebody"** (Bob Dylan). There is no neutral ground. Sin is "a supra-human power… like a tyrannical landlord," with threats: "you're missing out on real life… people will laugh at you." - **Luther's *Baptizatus sum!*, "I have been baptized!"**, was "the ultimate basis for the new stand." - **Limbs, mind, memory, imagination, emotions and will are "implements"** put at God's disposal. The work we do now in his service "will turn out to be part… of the new world he will have brought into being." - **"Not under law but under grace" (v. 14):** "Shockingly, God's law appears to be part of the Adam-world rather than the Messiah-world" (explained in ch. 7). The God we serve is the God "whose middle name is Jesus… whose very character is grace." **6.15–19 — The two types of slavery** - *Image:* a columnist's idea to channel young offenders' energy into cricket. "All the energy and initiative which at present is going into crime needs not to be squashed but to be channelled." *Question:* "Are you using that same energy… in working for God's kingdom?" - **Freedom comes with new frameworks,** like "the freedom of the road" after a driving test. "Freedom is not a moral vacuum." - **"Righteousness" again** is translated "final vindication," "covenant purposes," "covenant justice." God is putting the world to rights, and his children are part of the work. - **"Obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching" (v. 17):** a change of heart has happened. Early Christian traditions set out "a family code of practice" (1 Corinthians 15.3–8; 11.23–26; 1 Thessalonians 4.1). **6.20–23 — Where the two roads lead** - *Image:* shortcuts that lead into cul-de-sacs, flooded lanes and unfinished bridges. **Christian ethics are "the rules of the road, and it matters which road you take."** - **Not carrot and stick.** Destructive behaviour "already shows the signs of its destination. It has the smell of death already upon it." Punishment is "more like what happens when someone drives recklessly over a cliff." Life is like the reward of "a father… when the child he has rescued is his own beloved daughter." - **"The life of the age to come"** again: not "sitting on clouds playing harps" but Romans 8.18–25, the new creation. - **Wages versus gift (v. 23):** you earn death, but life "remains a free gift." Judgment is "in accordance with" our life "in the same way that a symphony orchestra playing Beethoven at full blast is 'in accordance with' my feeble attempts to whistle the tune." - "Romans 6 is a bracing chapter… It gives us the framework for thinking about why Christian behaviour matters." ### Romans 7 - **(Bio) In one line:** Israel arrives at Sinai and receives the Torah, "which promptly declares that Israel has already transgressed," and which, as Deuteronomy warned, brings Israel "to the place of exile, of a new kind of slavery." The lament that closes the chapter is "the lament, seen with gospel hindsight, of 'the Jew' who rightly celebrates the Torah and longs to be loyal to it, but finds that loyalty thwarted by the dark Adamic strain that runs through all humans, Jews included." Wright treats Romans 7 as the necessary build-up to 8.1. Without it, the "therefore" of 8.1 makes no sense. His four points: 1. **The whole chapter is about the law, the Jewish Torah.** Not a general "principle." It is the whole Pentateuch, Israel's "covenant charter," not just a moral code. It is framed by two questions: "Is the law sin?" (7.7) and "Was the good law responsible for my death?" (7.13). Both answers are no. Sin used the good law to bring death, and the law showed Sin up "in its full colours." 7.8–12 is in the past tense (the arrival of Torah at Sinai). 7.13–20 is in the present tense (Israel's ongoing situation). 2. **The "I" is Israel**, from before the law, through Sinai, to Paul's own day, told in the first person so Paul doesn't distance himself. It is **not "Paul's spiritual autobiography."** It is his present analysis, from "in the Messiah," of his former position. 3. **Israel re-enacts Adam's sin.** 7.11 (sin "deceived me and killed me") echoes the serpent in Eden. Israel's plight is the whole human plight brought into focus in one people. The frustration of 7.15–19 also matches what pagan moralists from Aristotle on admitted: they could see the good but not attain it. 4. **The villains are Sin and flesh, not the law.** Torah is "holy and just and good." It really promised **life** (7.10), but working on sinful flesh it could only produce death, in the form of **exile** (*aichmalōtos*, 7.23, meaning "the Exile", not just "captive"). So Torah seems to split in two (7.21–23): "God's law" versus the "law of sin and death." The tension is that of Psalm 105 (look what God did for us) against Psalm 106 (and we rebelled, again and again). Also: - **7.1–3**: the marriage illustration. **7.4–6**: belonging to the crucified Messiah involves a break with Torah. The next nineteen verses clarify that this doesn't make Torah bad. - **7.13** is the key verse: God's purpose (*hina*) in giving Torah was that **Sin should "become very sinful indeed"**, luring Sin "into one place, namely Israel," so it could be dealt with once for all in Israel's representative, the Messiah. - 7.24–25: the cry "Who will rescue me?", the thanks "through Jesus our Messiah," and then 7.25b "left to my own self…". The "therefore" of 8.1 then works like this: here is the situation (ch. 7), so there is no condemnation (8.1), because here is how God has dealt with it (8.2–11). Wright's analogy: *"I am heavily in debt… I am therefore free of all financial obligations, because the bank has agreed to write off all my debts."* - The Deuteronomy background: chapters 28 and 32 warn that Israel will rebel and suffer exile. Many Jews, reading Daniel 9, believed the Exile was still continuing in Paul's day. #### What PfE adds on Romans 7 *(The fuller treatment is above, from IHR. These are PfE's distinctive points and images.)* - **7.1–6, the marriage illustration.** It "doesn't work as well as it should" at first sight. The key is 5.20 and 6.6: **the law bonded Israel not to God, "as one might have supposed, but rather Adam."** Death to the law (6.6; Galatians 2.19) frees us to be "married" to the risen Messiah and bear "fruit for God" (compare Messiah as bridegroom in 2 Corinthians 11.2–3 and Ephesians 5.25–27). - **Why ch. 7 exists:** not as a portrait of the struggling Christian (the main subject is the law, and Christians are "not under the law"). Paul wants to explain "what the law was given for," how it is fulfilled by Messiah and spirit, and why "the law itself could not give the life it promised." It is compressed into "something like a characteristic Jewish poem of complaint." - **7.7–12** - *Image:* a neighbour who helps install a new burglar alarm, and so learns how to burgle the house. "There was nothing wrong with the alarm system." - **The "I":** ancient writers often used "I" for something general. It is **Israel**, and Paul's own story, "still grieving over it." There is a direct line from this "I" to Paul's tears in 9.1–5. - *Image:* looking out of a window and seeing the garden and the reflected lamp at once. Sinai and Eden are overlaid: "when God gave Israel the Torah, Israel copied Adam by breaking it." - **The chapter's purpose:** "exonerating the law from blame… while simultaneously demonstrating its inability to give what it promised" (life, Leviticus 18.5; Deuteronomy 30.15–20). "Evil is real and powerful… We dare not trifle with it." - **7.13–20** - *Image:* a choirboy made to read this aloud at an Advent carol service: "There ought to be child protection laws against that kind of thing." - **It describes Israel's actual situation, not "felt experience."** It is **not** an attack on "work-righteousness." Paul exonerates *both* the law and the "I": "it is no longer I that do it, but sin." - **The clever point:** Israel under the law ends up exactly where "every puzzled pagan moralist from at least Aristotle onwards" was. They could see the good and not do it. "So this is the height to which God's chosen people attain… the same height as the puzzled pagan moralist!" - **Symphonic cross-links:** Romans 7 is "a longer version of 2.17–24." Romans 8 is "a greatly expanded version of 2.28–29." "Which is why Paul must ask, in Romans 9, the same questions as he asked at the beginning of chapter 3." - **Why God wanted sin to grow "very sinful"** (7.13; 5.20; Galatians 3.22): "in order that in the person of Israel's representative, the Messiah, sin might be drawn onto one spot and condemned once and for all." - **7.21–25** - "This is what I **find**" is the language of a mathematician's or judge's "findings." "Law" in v. 21 has the article and means **the** law. Translating it "a principle" is "determining to misunderstand the passage." - **Echo of Cain** (Genesis 4.7, "sin lurking at the door"). - **The paradox** is like light as both wave and particle. The law develops "a shadowy copy of itself" fighting for sin. - **"Who is going to rescue me?"** God, through the Messiah, "who sums up in himself both Israel according to the flesh and the God who comes to the rescue" (8.3–4; 9.5). - **Why this matters today:** Christians are children of Abraham (1 Corinthians 10.1, "our ancestors"). The Torah was "not a kind of 'first attempt' at teaching human beings… the first principles of morality… topped up with the Sermon on the Mount." God's purpose "was about rescuing the world from sin and death." ### Romans 8 — overview - **(Bio)** *"Romans 8 is the richest, deepest, and most powerfully sustained climax anywhere in the literature of the early Christian movement, and perhaps anywhere else as well."* It is "the matchless answer" to "Adam's problem… magnified enormously in the rebellion of God's own people." The paradoxical "glory" of suffering and prayer echoes **2 Corinthians**, "written so recently before Romans." - Wright calls it **"the chapter of assurance"** and "the very heart of Romans," with "a claim to be near the heart of what the Bible, and Christianity itself, is all about." It is written to anxious and persecuted believers: their future salvation is "rock-solid secure." - **Shape:** - **1–11**: introduction. No condemnation, because of the Messiah's death and the spirit's life-giving power - **12–30**: the long middle, the **vocation** section (12–16 spirit and sonship; 17 a bridge; 18–27 suffering and glory; 28–30 the conclusion to Romans so far) - **31–39**: celebratory conclusion, "a musical coda" - Verses 1–11 and 31–39 give the **objective** grounds (the son's death, resurrection and ascension, and the gift of the spirit). Verses 12–30 give the **subjective** work of the spirit, conforming believers to the son's image and death, "and thereby giving humans the dignity – the 'glory'! – of God's image-bearers." (1 Corinthians 15 has a similar eleven-verse opening and nine-verse close.) - Assurance is not the whole point. **Vocation** is its heart. Like Jesus with Peter in John 21, God's answer is not only "you're forgiven" but "feed my sheep." - It is "one of the greatest ever statements… of what became known as the doctrine of the Trinity": father sends son and spirit; the spirit groans; the father searches hearts; the church is conformed to the son. - It draws together Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms and Isaiah, and looks ahead to Revelation 21–22. #### 8.1–4 — No condemnation - **Start and finish:** v.1 "no condemnation" and v.4a "the right and proper verdict of the law is fulfilled in us." The law is fulfilled, so there is no condemnation. It is *not* that "the law is abolished, so there is no condemnation." That idea "owes much of its force to the sixteenth-century protestant reaction." - **Connecting words:** why no condemnation? Because (*gar*) of v.2. Because (*gar*) of v.3. God has done two things: **the son's death (v.3)** and **the spirit's work (v.4)**. The *hina* in v.4 shows the spirit's work is the *purpose* of Jesus' death. - **v.2** is a dense "rosebud": "the law of the spirit of life in the Messiah, Jesus, released you from the law of sin and death." Paul names the law itself, in a newly revealed sense, as the agent of liberation. The spirit "comes in alongside" Torah and lets it "do at last what it really wanted" (compare Galatians 2.19, "through the law I died to the law"). - **v.3, what the law "couldn't do":** not condemn sin (it had no problem with that) but **give life**. - **"God condemned Sin in the flesh."** It is "obviously 'penal'" and "obviously 'substitutionary'." Wright calls this "the clearest New Testament statement of what can be called 'penal substitution'." But he stresses that **Paul does not say God condemned Jesus.** "God condemned Sin – in the flesh of the Messiah!" It only makes sense inside Israel's story: the Messiah, as Israel's representative, draws Israel's vocation and the heaped-up sin of the world onto himself, "outside his capital city." Without that story, critics are right that it looks like "God… wanting to kill someone and taking it out on his own innocent son." "I grieve that it is missing from many popular gospel presentations." - In Paul, **victory over evil, penal substitution, representation and sacrifice are "held tightly together."** Later thought has played them off against each other. - **"His own son":** the title holds together Israel (Exodus 4.22), the king (Psalm 2.7; 2 Samuel 7.14), and "God's own second self." - **"In the likeness of sinful flesh"** echoes the "image and likeness" of Genesis 1. The Messiah came to the very place where Adam, and Israel under Torah, had ended up (2 Corinthians 5.21). - **"As a sin-offering"** (*peri hamartias*): in Leviticus the sin-offering **cleanses the place where God will dwell**. It doesn't punish an animal. It is specifically for **sins of ignorance and unintentional sins**, exactly the plight of 7.15, 19 ("I don't understand what I do"). - **v.4** *dikaiōma*, as in 1.32 but reversed: Torah's **verdict of life** ("those who do these things deserve to live") is fulfilled in the spirit-led. - **"Now" (*nyn*)** is both logical and temporal. The future verdict of the last day (Romans 2) is announced in the present. 8.1 brings to a climax the doctrine of justification begun in chapters 2–4. - **For the study:** "Whenever we sense in our hearts the dark whisper of accusation… we should go back to Romans 8.1; we should pray through verses 2, 3 and 4." (Charles Wesley: "No condemnation now I dread.") #### 8.5–11 — The spirit gives life - The structure is a chain of *gar* digging down (vv.5–8), then a chain of *ei de*, "but if…", building up to v.11, "the QED." - **Flesh and spirit are not material versus non-material.** In Galatians 5 the "works of the flesh" could mostly be done by "a disembodied spirit" (jealousy, factions), while the fruit of the spirit is bodily (kindness, generosity). Paul means a **basic orientation, a *phronēma* (mindset)**, the habitual focus of the mind. - **v.5–6:** the Deuteronomic choice, "choose life." Christian living "doesn't just happen." It takes "the thousand regular and difficult choices" until they become "second nature." "The reward for climbing one moral mountain is to be given a steeper one next time." "Life **and peace**" echoes the covenant with Levi in Malachi 2.5. - **vv.7–8:** the Christian life includes **submitting to God's law** and **pleasing God**. This is the last mention of Torah in the argument: "It has handed on the baton to the Messiah and his spirit." Against a "post-Reformation spirituality" afraid of the idea: *of course* spirit-led people please God. - **Ethics is "inaugurated eschatology."** The spirit comes from God's future so we can live as already-renewed humans now. - **vv.9–11, Temple theology:** "dwells" (*oikei en hymin*, three times) echoes God dwelling in the Tabernacle and Temple. After the return from Babylon the glory never visibly returned. With Jesus and the spirit it has. Believers are "new-Temple people," joining heaven and earth, "signposts" to the new creation. If God has already dwelt in these body-temples, "he will certainly rebuild that Temple" (resurrection; compare Ezekiel 37 and 40–48). - **v.9:** the spirit is named as "spirit of God," then "spirit of the Messiah," then simply "the Messiah in you." A warning: without the spirit, one does not belong to him. - **v.10:** "the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of covenant justice" (here the *human* spirit). Wright speculates about the **intermediate state**: God's spirit holds us "in the multi-track life-giving memory of God's own spirit, until the time of resurrection." - **v.11:** Paul deliberately moves from "**Jesus**" (the man from Nazareth) to "**Messiah**" (the representative of his people). "This is where God's purpose for Torah has ended up." - **For the study (Wright's own question):** Eric Liddell, "God made me fast, and when I run, I feel his pleasure." *"What has God made you? What is it which, when you do it in the power and joy of the spirit, enables you to feel God's pleasure?"* #### 8.12–17 — Led by the spirit - **v.12, "we are in debt… but not to the flesh":** Paul leaves the positive unstated, but the paragraph shows **we are indebted to God the father, as his heirs**. It is "a debt of love that only love can repay" (G. B. Caird). - **A new category: vocation.** Western theology "Platonized our eschatology" (salvation = heaven) and so "moralized our anthropology" (ethics = keeping a code in the meantime). Paul's category is **vocation**: "Who are we called to be, standing perhaps uncomfortably at the overlap of the ages?" - **Exodus echoes throughout.** v.13 is Moses' "choose life" on the edge of the Jordan. "Fancy getting within sight of the promised inheritance and then deciding… to go back to slavery!" (Exodus 16; Numbers 14, the spies). "Led by the spirit" is the pillar of cloud and fire, God's spirit in the wilderness (Haggai 2.5; Isaiah 63.7–14; Nehemiah 9.20). - **Sonship (*hyiothesia*)** has "Jewish roots and pagan targets": "Israel is my firstborn son" (Exodus 4.22), and the Caesars as adopted "sons of the deified one" inheriting an empire. Jesus' people are "God's adopted royal family." The word refers to the *status* of sonship rather than the process of adoption. The "we" includes gentile believers fully, so the spirit's witness ends any second-class status. - **The inheritance is the whole world**, from Psalm 2.8 ("the nations for your inheritance"). "The whole world is now God's holy land." - **Three strands in 12–17:** 1. **A spirituality of holiness and hope.** Pilgrimage (Psalm 84; the Psalms of Ascents). Holiness matters "not because God is a killjoy" but because we are to become fully human. The body is good and will be raised, "but only if it learns to die." Mortification: Galatians 5.24; Colossians 3.5; the boxer of 1 Corinthians 9. Beware "authenticity" and "going with your heart" as "Christian versions of the easy-going moralisms of the world." 2. **The vocation to be God's children.** In vv.15–16, the "Abba, father" cry is the sign the spirit has come. The holy spirit "fus[es] with our own deepest inwardness." "Abba" probably comes from early teaching of converts, modelled on **Jesus in Gethsemane** (Mark 14.36), the only place he is recorded using it. 3. **Sharing the Messiah's cross-shaped path to his rule.** Psalm 2 alone suggests conquest. Jesus' way to glory is through suffering (Mark 8; Luke 24). - **Pastoral caution:** experience varies with personality. Casual attenders may wrongly assume they're "all right," while sensitive souls wrongly agonise. The way through is "prayer and gentle active listening." #### 8.17–21 — The liberation of creation - **v.17 is the bridge**: "fellow heirs with the Messiah, as long as we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him." Verses 17–21 are about the glory. Verses 22–27 are about the suffering. - **What "glorified" means here:** not going to heaven. It means **creation rescued from corruption, when God's children are given their "sovereign stewardship."** Psalm 8, Psalm 2, Psalm 110 and Daniel 7 are the background (spelled out more fully in 1 Corinthians 15.20–28 and Philippians 3.19–21). - **The King James problem:** "the creature was made subject to vanity" makes readers imagine "a small animal admiring itself in a mirror." *Ktisis* means **creation**, and *mataiotēs* means **futility or frustration**. - **Connecting words:** v.19 explains v.18 with *gar*. That only makes sense if the coming glory concerns creation, not an escape from it. - **Roman context:** Virgil's and Nero's poets proclaimed a returned **golden age**, with "Nature" as a placid, fruitful matriarch. Paul answers with biblical **creation**, "groaning in labour pains, longing to give birth to the real new age as opposed to the glossy fake one." Wright extends the point to modern parodies of the gospel: modernity's progress "without God" and postmodernity's "original sin… without any hope of redemption." These parodies appear inside the church too, going back to the golden calf. - **v.18:** *logizomai*, "this is how I work it out." Paul has "done the maths" (compare 2 Corinthians 4.17). The glory will be unveiled **"upon us" (*eis hēmas*)**: we will be clothed in it, not just spectators. - **v.19:** creation "on tiptoe." Note the explosive consonants of *apokaradokia… apokalypsin… apekdechetai*. **"We normally think of Christians waiting for the Messiah to be revealed; but here it is the cosmos waiting for the Christians to be revealed!"** Creation "mostly wants… its proper steward." - **v.20:** Genesis 3. Creation was "a project, not a static tableau," frustrated without obedient human stewards. "**Not of its own volition**" rules out any Platonic idea that matter itself is futile. It was subjected **in hope**. - **v.21:** creation will "enjoy the freedom that comes when God's children are glorified." The "freedom" is creation's. The "glory" is the human authority over it. It is *not* "the glorious liberty of the children of God." - **Relevance:** this is "one of our primary resources for a theological response" to ecological crisis. It stands against Platonic detachment and "rapture" eschatology that "welcomes signs of the imminent destruction of Planet Earth." - **"But we're not raised yet, so what can we do?"** Wright compares this to someone saying "one day God will give me a moral makeover, so I don't need to worry about my sin now." New creation has begun. "No excuses." - **The "big chill or big crunch" objection:** "God promises to do for the whole creation what he did for Jesus at Easter." Believing in cosmic renewal takes the same faith as believing in Jesus' resurrection. #### 8.22–27 — The groaning of the spirit - Wright calls this passage **"the dark but vital heart of the chapter,"** and claims its ideas are unique in scripture. It is **not an aside.** It is the climax of what the chapter says about the spirit: in vv.5–8 the spirit directs the mind; in vv.9–11 it will raise us; in vv.15–16 it assures and leads us; here it groans in us. - **The key word "groaning"** occurs three times, only here in Romans (*stenazō*, *stenagmos*): - **creation** groans in labour (v.22) - **the church** groans awaiting resurrection (v.23) - **God's own spirit** groans within us (v.26). This climax should not be split off into a separate paragraph, as some translations do. - **Background 1, the "messianic woes":** God's new world comes through suffering like childbirth (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea; John 16.21). This contrasts with the imperial "serene matriarch." Labour pains are "simultaneously horrible and full of hope." - **Background 2, the exodus:** the Israelites' groaning in Egypt, which God heard, remembering his covenant (Exodus 2.23–25). "Now and not yet": we have left Egypt but still groan. - **v.23:** "first fruits of the spirit." Pentecost was the feast of first fruits, a down payment that makes life in the old world "all the more painful." "Adoption, the redemption of our body": *apolytrōsis* is exodus language. **Our resurrection will be our exodus.** Jesus too had to wait between his baptism, when he was declared son, and his resurrection, when he was vindicated. - **Pain within pain.** The church struggles over authority, sex and gender, and multiculturalism just as the world does. Partly this is disobedience, but it is also where we are sent: "As the father sent me, so I send you." - **vv.24–25:** saved in hope, which means waiting both **eagerly and patiently**. "Getting the balance… is a tough call. But it is our call." - **v.26:** *synantilambanetai*, the spirit "comes alongside to help," with us and in our place. It is the word Martha uses in Luke 10.40. *Hyperentyngchanei* ("pleads on our behalf") may be a word Paul coined. This is not about speaking in tongues: tongues are articulate, and not all Christians speak in them. - **v.27:** "the Searcher of Hearts" echoes Psalm 44.21, the psalm quoted in 8.36. It is "a matchless image of the Trinity: the spirit calling to the father from the depth of the world's pain." - **The vocation of lament.** "Part of our primary calling as followers of Jesus is to lament: to stand in the place of pain in humility, sorrow and hope" (the cancer ward, the asylum hearing, the graveyard). This is **how the "glory" of human rule is exercised now: through prayer, especially lament.** It is "our own Gethsemane moment." Wright's first response to COVID was lament. The Psalms must be "part of our bloodstream." Happy, bouncy worship alone fails the calling. But avoid a "martyr complex." - **The problem of evil:** philosophers ask a "one-dimensional question" about an all-powerful, all-loving CEO-God. Paul gives "a three-dimensional answer": the God who grieves, who is revealed as the crucified Messiah, and who by his spirit stands "at the heart of the pain of the world so that the world may be healed." - **The Durham Pentecost story:** a new liturgy said "The Spirit of God fills the whole world." Wright's sermon replied that if so, "what the spirit is mostly doing right now is grieving. And groaning." - (See also [[Capon on the Problem of Evil]].) #### 8.28–30 — Justified and glorified - **v.28 retranslated:** not "all things work together for good to them that love God" (King James), which Wright once understood as "a sort of automatic jigsaw puzzle." Instead: **"God works all things together for good *with* those who love him"** (following the RSV, Haley Jacob, and Keesmaat & Walsh). His reasons: - **God**, not "all things," is the subject. A Stoic-sounding "all things" would be odd in a letter about God, and some early manuscripts add *ho theos*. - *Synergeō* + dative means **to collaborate with** someone (1 Corinthians 3.9, "God's fellow workers"; 2 Corinthians 6.1). - This is **not "synergism" about how salvation is achieved**. The passage is about the **vocation** of the saved community. - **"Those who love God"** is a standard Israel designation from the **Shema** (Deuteronomy 6). It looks back to 5.5, and here it refers to those in whose hearts the spirit is groaning to the father (v.27). (See [[Paul's Shema Prayer]].) - **"Called according to his purpose"** means called *for a purpose*. Paul's Damascus call was God revealing his son "in me" (Galatians 1.16), "not so much the moment Paul was 'saved' as the moment he was *sent*." "God's loving purpose for Israel always involved God's loving purpose *through* Israel." - **The background is Isaiah 40–55, the Servant.** "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified" (Isaiah 49.3). **Isaiah 45.25 LXX**: all the seed of Israel "shall be justified and shall be glorified," which is exactly 8.30. - **v.29, "foreknew… marked out in advance":** a prophetic call like Jeremiah 1.5, and God "knowing" Israel (Amos 3.2). **"This is not about 'predestination to salvation' – or indeed its opposite."** The puzzles "from Augustine to Calvin" are problems "of which the first Christians were innocent." - **"Conformed to the image of his son… firstborn of a large family."** Firstborn is used of Israel (Exodus 4.22), the Messiah (Psalm 89.27), and Jesus (Colossians 1.18). Believers become "Jesus-lookalikes," and the ones looking are "the hostile and puzzled unbelieving world." The Davidic promises are "democratized" (Isaiah 55.3). - **v.30, "those he justified, he also glorified":** "the crashing chords at the end of Sibelius's fifth symphony." It sums up the letter so far. Justified means "they can hold their heads up, now in their rat-ridden apartments." - **Jesus' own story follows this pattern:** called at his baptism, justified (vindicated) at his resurrection, glorified at his ascension to world rule. - Paul keeps the letter messianic from here on: 9.5 introduces 9–11, 12.5 introduces 12–16, and **15.12** (Isaiah 11.10, "the root of Jesse… who rises to rule the nations") closes a circle with 1.1–5. #### 8.31–34 — If God is for us - **A change of style:** after the step-by-step argument ending at v.30, Paul switches to "high-register writing" to celebrate: 1. a string of **rhetorical questions** 2. **three scripture allusions, one from each part of the Hebrew canon**: Torah (**Genesis 22**), Prophets (**Isaiah 50**), Writings (**Psalm 44**). This is a rabbinic "three-legged stool" Paul uses only at great climaxes (also 15.7–13; Galatians 4.21–31) 3. **two lists** of dangers, seven and ten - It contains Paul's only complete mini-summary of the Jesus story: son, not spared, died, raised, ascended, interceding. - **The passage is not about forgiveness of sins.** Sins aren't on the list of threats because "that has all been dealt with already." It encourages believers facing opposition, including opposition "within the church." A word to clergy: keep this passage "within easy and prayerful mental reach." - **v.31, "What shall we say *to* this?"** means "what do we conclude," not "*about* this" (NRSV). The "us" is specifically those "in the Messiah," not anyone at random. "Who can be against us?" doesn't mean no one will oppose us. - **v.32:** echoes **Genesis 22** (the *Aqedah*, the binding of Isaac). The LXX wording is almost identical. God "did not spare his own son." Rabbis linked the Aqedah with creation, Passover and the Day of Atonement, and Romans covers all three. **"All things"** = the inheritance, the renewed world (1 Corinthians 3.21–23; 2 Corinthians 6.10). - **vv.33–34:** **Isaiah 50.8–9**, the third Servant song: "He who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me?… who will declare me guilty?" Justification lets God's people "stand unafraid before the Pontius Pilates of the world." Compare Jesus in John 8: "Has nobody condemned you?" - **Atonement is bigger than the cross alone.** As in Hebrews, Paul sees Jesus' **death, resurrection ("much more"), ascension and ongoing intercession** together. In Levitical terms, blood cleanses so the divine glory can stay among the people. - **The ascension** is Jesus installed as God's "right-hand man" (Psalm 110.1; Daniel 7), **standing to intercede** (compare Acts 7.55–56). "There is already a wise obedient human being at the helm of the universe." The father and son are not the "stern and angry father and a rather wet and feeble-looking son" of medieval paintings. - **An aside on the church calendar:** "We already have a feast of Christ the King. It's called Ascension Day." Moving "Christ the King" to the end of the year implies Jesus' lordship "hasn't really happened yet." #### 8.35–39 — Nothing can separate us from God's love - **Frame:** "the Messiah's love" (v.35) → "through the one who loved us" (v.37) → "the love of God in the Messiah Jesus" (v.39). This loops back to 5.1–11, where love was "woven into the music throughout." - **"*Amor, ergo sum*" — I am loved, therefore I am.** This is Wright's answer to Descartes (and Newbigin's joke "*Tesco, ergo sum*"). The gospel offers "an epistemology of love." "I am persuaded" (*pepeismai*) is addressed to the philosophers as much as to Rome. - **Penultimate assurance:** in Paul's world, as in Job's comforters', misfortune was read as divine anger. Paul says suffering is **not a sign of God's displeasure**. It is sharing in the "messianic woes." This is assurance "every Christian group and individual must give to every other." Faithfulness may bring trouble, and compromise often brings an easier life. - **v.35, the seven threats:** suffering, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword. The *machaira* is the executioner's short sword, meaning deliberate execution. - **v.36, Psalm 44.22:** a psalm of complaint from people who had *not* been unfaithful. "For your sake we are killed all day long." "As sheep for slaughter" echoes **Isaiah 53.7** (the Servant, "like a lamb to the slaughter"). "This is where the wounds of Jesus meet the wounds of the world." We are "reckoned" as sheep for slaughter, just as we are reckoned righteous (ch. 4) and reckoned dead and raised (ch. 6). - **v.37, *hypernikōmen*, "completely victorious":** not just surviving, but being the means by which "the pain and anger of the world may itself be exhausted and overcome," as Jesus conquered death by dying. Compare Philippians 4.13: "The Messiah's power in Philippi; the Messiah's love in Rome." - **vv.38–39, the ten powers,** mostly pairs: death and life; angels and rulers; present and future; then "powers"; height and depth (astrological ideas of a star's high and low points); "any other creature." It is "the cosmic equivalent of saying 'north, south, east, west'." All of them are *creatures*, and the gospel is "the incarnate love of the creator himself." - **"The Messiah's love" is a radical innovation.** No Old Testament or Jewish text says the Messiah would act out of love. Wright gives three reasons why the early Christians said it: 1. They read the cross and resurrection as the new exodus, so as YHWH's covenant love (*hesed*) in action. The Messiah is "the personal embodiment of Israel's God." 2. They remembered Jesus' own love (the rich young ruler, Lazarus; John 13.1). 3. They experienced his present, loving presence. This points to "Paul's revolutionary theology of incarnation." - "Covenant" and "apocalyptic" are a false opposition. The exodus itself was a sudden in-breaking *because* God remembered his covenant. - **Assurance rests on the resurrection.** London taxi-driver: *"If God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, then everything else is just rock 'n' roll – i'n'it?"* "That is Paul's doctrine of assurance in a nutshell." #### What PfE (2004) adds on Romans 8 *(IHR above is Wright's fuller and later treatment. These are PfE's distinctive points, images and differences.)* - **8.1–4.** - "When I was teaching undergraduates, I sometimes used to ask them to find a passage which seemed to be right at the centre of Paul's thinking… the verses now before us have as strong a claim as any." (He notes that Bach set this passage to music.) - The same **rosebud-to-rose image** as IHR: v. 1 is the shoot, v. 2 the bud, vv. 3–4 open it, vv. 5–8 widen it, and vv. 9–11 are the full rose. - "No condemnation" only carries force for someone who has pondered "the seriousness of sin and the reality of God's judgment." - "The weight of the world's sin was focused on Israel; the weight of Israel's sin was focused on the Messiah… with 'King of the Jews' written above his head." Isaiah 53.5 is in the background. He "does not say that God condemned Jesus, but that he condemned sin in the flesh of Jesus." - *Suggestion:* "You might even want to learn them by heart." - **8.5–11.** - *Image:* an old **gas lamp** found in an attic and plugged into the electric mains. The law ("spiritual") run through "fleshly" humans only produces an explosion (7.14–25). It must run through "an appliance of the right sort," people who are "spiritual." - **The spirit answers the question left from 1–4:** how can the future verdict be announced now? The spirit generates faith, then the life of vv. 4–6, then resurrection. - **Jewish ways of speaking of God present in creation** (wisdom, spirit, glory, word, law, son) are used by Paul for God's rescue. "He already possessed all the elements that would later be known as trinitarian theology." "If the church could hoist its sails and catch this wind, there is no knowing what might happen." - **8.12–17.** - *Image:* modern personal and national **debt**, which "dominates your mind." - "Wouldn't it be fine if all Christians were as much in awe of the fact of the spirit's dwelling in and with them as the Israelites learned to be with the presence of God in cloud and fire." "Don't be surprised if the way is hard and stony. It's always like that when you go from Egypt to Canaan." - **The spirit's voice:** "sometimes we find other thoughts, which seem to come from somewhere else… A key part of Christian discipleship is to recognize that voice." - **Glorification** "doesn't mean that we shall shine like human electric light bulbs… It means that we will share the Messiah's glorious rule over the world" (as in 5.17). - **We are debtors**, and "God's gift and call to us are not for ourselves alone, but for the purpose of working through us to bring about the transformation of the world." - **8.18–25.** - *Image:* an overgrown path in a wood with a half-hidden sign reading **"VIEW"**. Most readers hurry past, busy "with theories of individual justification," and "the King James… 'creature'" hid the signpost. "From the top of this hill you can see for ever." - "Glory… unveiled **for** us. Not 'in us'… Not 'to us'." - **Creation's present round of growth and decay** is like Israel in Egypt. It is "like a caged buffalo: all that energy, and it's not achieving anything." The wolf and the lamb are "not a dream. It's a promise." - This is "a positive, world-affirming view, without any of the risks associated with pantheism." - **"The church is not to be apart from the pain of the world; it is to be in prayer at precisely the place where the world is in pain."** - **8.26–30.** - **"The Searcher of Hearts":** someone with a torch in a dark room, listening for "the sound of the spirit's groaning." "Prayer beyond prayer, diving down into the cold, dark depths." - **Personal holiness and prayer anticipate our future rule:** holiness is responsibility now for "that part of the created order most obviously under our own control," and prayer is "taking responsibility for that larger world itself." - ⚠ **Wright's view changed on 8.28–30.** In **PfE (2004)** he translates v. 28 conventionally: *"God works all things together for good **to** those who love him."* He reads vv. 29–30 as God's choice: "They did not choose God, but he chose them, in a mystery which Paul does not attempt to penetrate." In **IHR (2023)** he revises this. It is "God works all things for good **with** those who love him" (co-workers), and vv. 29–30 are "not about 'predestination to salvation'" but about vocation, read through Isaiah's Servant. He credits Haley Jacob, and Keesmaat & Walsh, for changing his mind: "One of the frustrations of being an elderly exegete is to find the text refusing to say what you thought it said sixty years ago." **Worth telling the group:** a leading scholar changed his reading, and why. - **8.31–39.** - *Images:* Lebanon hostages after mock executions, and the woman in John 8 looking up to find her accusers gone ("has no one condemned you?"). - **Four questions, four "No one"s:** who is against us, who will bring a charge, who will condemn, who will separate us? - **"Justification by faith is after all the ground of assurance, not of justification itself. We are not justified by faith by believing in justification by faith; we are justified by faith by believing in the gospel."** On the last day God "will reaffirm the verdict already issued on the basis of faith." - **Jesus' present intercession** is not mentioned elsewhere in Paul (compare Hebrews 7.25; 1 John 2.1). - **"God will save his people, not despite their sufferings but through and even because of them"** (compare Colossians 1.24). - **John Donne likened God's love to a circle,** endless. We have come full circle to 5.1–11. ### Romans 9–11 Wright doesn't expound these chapters, but he makes connections: - They take up **God's faithfulness**, and specifically "Israel according to the flesh" (ethnic Israel). Romans 7 "appears to lay the groundwork" for this. - Reading 8.3–4 as Israel's story reaching its climax in the Messiah "leaves us precisely with the questions of Romans 9–11." Wright counts that as evidence for his reading. - **9.5**: a summary about the Messiah that introduces chapters 9–11. - **9.6–29** retells Israel's story, pointing to **10.4**, *telos nomou*. That is "not 'the end of the law' in the sense of abolition," but its **goal**: what Torah intended but could not do, God has done in the Messiah. - **10.3**: the theme of Israel's "ignorance," matching the sin-offering for sins of ignorance in 8.3. - **Chapter 11** addresses gentile believers who might look down on returning Jewish believers. #### Passage by passage (PfE) **A caution before starting (PfE, on 9.1–5).** Christians must read these chapters "in sorrow and humility," remembering that "for many centuries anti-Semitism flourished across large areas of Christendom, and the church not only did nothing to prevent it but added fuel to the fire," for instance by claiming "the Jews killed Jesus, despite the insistence of all four gospels that it was the Romans." But Paul does not support the idea "that all faiths are of equal value" either. He holds together two things people find hard to combine: God really chose Israel, and Jesus really is Israel's Messiah. "Indeed, the second depends on the first." **9.1–5 — The privileges and tragedy of Israel** - Paul is "like someone driving in convoy who takes a particular turn in the road and then watches in horror as most of the other cars take the other fork." - His language (vv. 1–3) is like that of "the depths of grief, or… severe depression." The glory of Romans 8 casts "a dark shadow." - **Every privilege in vv. 4–5** (sonship, glory, covenants, law, worship, promises, patriarchs) "is something he has already mentioned in the first eight chapters." These now belong to all in the Messiah, most of whom "are not ethnically Jewish." - **Chapters 9–11 are not "a kind of bracket, an appendix."** "That only shows how badly Romans as a whole has been misread." - **v. 5, the fault line:** the Messiah comes from Israel "according to the flesh," yet is "God over all, blessed for ever" (Wright's translation, reading it as a statement about the Messiah). He belongs to Israel "in the 'fleshly' sense," and to the whole world as its Lord. - Paul offers "not an easy answer… rather, a way of thinking, which is rooted in a way of praying, which is rooted in love and grief." **9.6–13 — Abraham's two families** - *Image:* Paul goes "back to the beginning of the map." The map, meaning scripture, God's word, cannot be wrong. Accusing God of blunders is like "a drunkard stumbling into a ditch and accusing the road-makers." - **God works by selection within the chosen family:** Isaac not Ishmael, Jacob not Esau. This was uncontroversial for the first generations. Paul's point is that the principle "goes deeper and further." Selection continues through Israel's history "right down to the point where the Messiah had carried Israel's destiny all by himself" (10.4). - **Selection is "without regard for the moral character"** of those chosen. This counters the Jewish idea that Abraham was chosen for his virtue. - **"I loved Jacob, but I hated Esau" (Malachi 1.2–3):** the prophet's point was Israel's greater *responsibility*. "God's choice never results in easy, arrogant, automatic superiority. Much is expected of those to whom much is given." **9.14–24 — God's purpose and justice** - **The potter and the clay** is not a general statement about humans as "lifeless lumps of clay." It comes from Isaiah 29.16, 45.9 and 64.8 and Jeremiah 18. These passages are about "God struggling with rebellious Israel, like a potter working with clay that simply wouldn't go into the right shape." - **Two stages of pottery:** shaping, then firing. Israel's rebellion happened "at the moulding stage," so the potter "has the right (indeed, if God is the potter, he has the obligation) to rework and remould it." "What would we prefer? That he would throw the clay out and start again with entirely new clay?" - This continues Israel's story: from the patriarchs (9.6–13), through the Exodus (Moses and Pharaoh; Exodus 33 after the golden calf, v. 15), to the prophets and exile, where "the potter remoulds the clay." - The questions in vv. 6, 14 and 19 match those in 3.1–9. God's purposes are "not only with Israel but, much more importantly, through Israel." - **v. 24 is "startling":** God has called vessels "not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles." - **"Vessel of mercy"** is not so much "a vessel which receives mercy, but a vessel through which God brings mercy to others." **9.25–29 — God calls a remnant** - **Hosea (2.23; 1.10), "not my people" / "my people":** the prophets promised that Israel would pass "through a period of judgment in order then to come out into salvation." - **Isaiah 10.22 and 28.22:** even if Israel is as numerous as the sand (echoing Genesis 22.17), "only a remnant shall be saved." - **Isaiah 1.9:** without "seed" they would be like Sodom. Paul changes "remnant" to "seed" to tie back to 9.7–8. - **Paul's remnant differs from Qumran's.** For the Dead Sea Scrolls, the remnant was "a small minority… somehow spared the judgment." For Paul it is those "brought through the judgment and out the other side." - **Conclusion:** "God's word has not failed. On the contrary, it has come all too uncomfortably true." - **Israel's strange role** is "being apparently cast away in order that God's powerful plan of salvation can go forwards." This mirrors "the 'casting away' of the Messiah himself on the cross." **9.30–10.4 — Israel, the nations and the Messiah** - **The stumbling stone (9.33)** combines Isaiah 28.16 (the foundation stone of the new Temple, the coming King) and Isaiah 8.14 (a stone to trip over). *Image:* a foundation stone laid at ground level before the building goes up, tripping someone walking past at night. - This passage is "more or less central to the whole of chapters 9–11." - **One word, four translations.** Wright renders *dikaiosynē* as "covenant membership" (9.30), "covenant faithfulness" and "covenant status" (10.3), and "covenant membership" (10.4), because the word "really does mean all of those things and more." Three points follow: 1. God has been faithful to the covenant. 2. Membership is "marked out by faith alone, not works of the Jewish law." 3. Paul's fellow Jews were using the law "as a badge of covenant membership," as he once had. "But the law was never meant to work that way." - **"The Messiah is the goal of the law" (10.4)**, not its end in the sense of abolition. "This is one of the crucial moments in all of Paul's writing." - Don't miss Paul's personal prayer (10.1) at the centre. **10.5–13 — The fulfilment of the covenant** - *Image:* Elgar's *Enigma Variations*. **Deuteronomy 30 is the "tune."** Deuteronomy 28–29 foretell blessings and curses, disobedience and exile. Chapter 30 promises that God will rescue Israel *in* exile and transform their hearts, and the word "will come and find them!" - **Two other Jewish "variations" on it:** - **Baruch 3**, which reads it as *wisdom* - **the Dead Sea Scroll "Some Works of the Law" (4QMMT)**, which reads it as special Temple laws that mark out God's people Both share four ideas: Israel is still under the curse of exile; God now provides the way back; that way is a fresh gift "like the original law only now in a new way"; and those who embrace it are marked out now as those God will vindicate. - **Paul's variation is Jesus himself.** "You don't have to go up to heaven – because the Messiah has already come down to you… down into the depths – because the Messiah has already been raised." - **Mouth and heart (vv. 9–10)** are the "circumcision of the heart" (Deuteronomy 30.6; Romans 2.29), the present badge of those God will save. "This is where Paul's famous doctrine of 'justification by faith' meets several of the other main themes." - **Confessing "Jesus is Lord"** was said at baptism (compare Romans 6). In Paul's world "'Lord' was a title for Caesar. Saying Jesus was 'Lord' meant, ultimately, that Caesar wasn't." And "Lord" in Joel 2.32 (v. 13) is YHWH, so Jesus is "the personal embodiment of Israel's God." - "If Jews want the salvation now provided in their own Messiah, they must… share their Messiah… with a much larger company." **10.14–21 — The call to the world, and the failure of Israel** - *Image:* a house-restoration consultant who kept designing the house his own way, not the owner's. Israel tried "to design God's people and God's plan the way they wanted." - **Paul proves from all three parts of scripture that this was foreseen:** - **Prophets:** Isaiah 52.7 ("beautiful feet"), 53.1, 65.1–2 - **Writings:** Psalm 19. Creation's silent message went out, and at the resurrection a message ran "like an earthquake through the whole created order" - **Law:** Deuteronomy 32.21, God will make Israel **jealous** - **Jealousy** is the key to chapter 11. It is like "the older brother in Jesus' parable" who stays away from the party. Gentiles "found themselves enjoying a banquet they hadn't even known was being prepared." - *Question for today:* "Is that what happens with the preaching of the gospel today? If not, why not?" **11.1–6 — The remnant of grace** - **Elijah (1 Kings 18–19)** is "a textbook example of depression" after triumph. Paul, after chapters 9–10, could easily have sunk into the same state (compare 2 Corinthians 1.8–9). "When you hit rock bottom, and perhaps only then, you are ready to hear the message of resurrection." - **Has God switched to a gentile people?** "Many Christians… have believed something like that." "We who live with the memory of the Nazi wickedness… cannot look at such issues with calm detachment." - **Paul himself is the sign:** an Israelite of Benjamin, one of the two tribes that survived. The quotation "God has not abandoned his people" (1 Samuel 12.22) comes from the choosing of Israel's first king, **Saul**, Paul's own Hebrew name. - **This remnant is "chosen by grace."** They are not the faithful few for whom law-keeping worked. They were those who, "once those props had been kicked away and they found themselves in the dock," were called "by sheer grace." **11.7–15 — A stumble with a purpose** - **The older and younger brother stories** of Genesis: Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Joseph and his brothers (only the last ends in reconciliation), and the prodigal son. Paul tells the story "through to a fresh and positive conclusion." - **Deuteronomy 29.4 and Psalm 69.22–23:** the blindness, and Israel's "table" (its solidarity meal) becoming a stumbling block. - **Like Joseph** ("you meant it for evil, God meant it for good," Genesis 50.20), Israel's stumble has been used "to bring Gentiles flooding in." Had Israel as a whole embraced the Messiah, gentiles might have been "permanent second-class citizens." - **"My flesh" (v. 14)** echoes Romans 7 and 9.3: "left to my own self." - **The breathtaking move:** Israel's story is "nothing short of an acting out of what happened to the Messiah." Cast away for the world's reconciliation, then accepted, "life from the dead." "He sees in their rejection the face of the rejected Messiah." This fulfils 5.20. **11.16–24 — The two olive trees** - **The first fruits** make the whole lump holy, so the Jewish people "cannot now be regarded as 'unholy'… unreachable by the gospel." - **Grafting wild shoots into a cultivated tree** is "against nature" (v. 24), the reverse of normal practice. - **Four points:** 1. Unbelieving Jews really are "cut out." They return only "if they do not remain in unbelief," with no other route: "He is not for a moment suggesting… a way back which did not involve believing in Jesus as Messiah and Lord." 2. The church "remains an essentially Jewish family into which non-Jews have been welcomed." 3. It is "much easier for God to graft Jews back… than to graft Gentiles in from the outside." 4. **The real thrust is a warning to gentiles.** They must not think they have "replaced" the Jews, or that the church is "a 'Gentiles-only' family." That would be "the same mistake in reverse." "There are no promises of salvation for those who think it's their birthright." - *Rome context:* Jews had just been allowed back, many Romans "distrusted and disliked the Jews," and "Roman society was always open to new kinds of religion!" - **v. 22, "God is both kind and severe":** some need to discover his kindness, others "just how much God hates evil." **11.25–32 — Mercy upon all** - **"Brothers" (*adelphoi*, v. 25):** Paul has not gone back "for a split second" on the equal standing of gentiles. (Wright's illustration is *He's My Brother*, the story of a former racist murderer reconciled to a black man.) - **The "mystery"** is God's plan unveiled *in the Messiah*, not a separate private revelation. - **"All Israel shall be saved" (v. 26).** Wright reads it this way: "A hardening has come upon Israel, allowing time for the nations to come in; and *that is how* God is saving 'all Israel'." It is not a fresh event afterwards. "All Israel" means "all the family of Abraham – and that includes believing Gentiles as well as believing Jews" (compare 9.6; Galatians 6.16; Romans 4.16). "All Israel shall be saved" was already a Jewish slogan, and Paul widens it. - **The hardening:** God "stays his hand and creates a space of time" for blessing to spread. - **The quotations** (Isaiah 59.20; Jeremiah 31.33–34; Isaiah 27.9) speak "not of special privilege… but of God working for the benefit of Gentiles through the fulfilment of the covenant with Israel," and of the new covenant's forgiveness. - **"Enemies… beloved" (vv. 28–29):** "God's gifts and God's call… cannot be undone." God yearns "as a father for a long-lost son." The sequence runs: gentiles disobedient, then Jews reject and space opens, then gentiles receive mercy, then Jews become jealous and find mercy. And this happens **"now"** (v. 31), not just at the end. - **v. 32:** all shut up in disobedience "so that he may have mercy upon all… Only so could grace be grace." - *To the objection "couldn't there have been a simpler way?":* "Can we solve, better than he has done, the dilemmas of a good creation, universal sin and unbreakable covenant promises?" **11.33–36 — To God be the glory** - *Image:* standing on a cliff ledge where a great suspension bridge will span a gorge, with "theological vertigo." - The passage echoes Job 5.9, 15.8 and 36.22–23, and quotes Job 41.11: "God is never in anyone's debt." We cannot claim God "by our birth, our beauty, our brains or our behaviour." - "The architect has designed it. The foundations are securely laid… The final completion is not in doubt." ### Romans 12–16 - Their theme is **"the God of hope."** **12.5** is another summary about the Messiah, introducing these chapters. - **12.1–2**: present your *bodies* (whole selves) as a living sacrifice, "transformed by the renewing of your minds." This is how the "mindset of the spirit" (8.5–8) shows in bodily life. - **13.8–10**: love is the fulfilment of the law, consistent with "submitting to God's law" in 8.7. - **14–15**: the delicate relations between Jewish and gentile Jesus-believers in Rome. - **15.7–13**: the "ultimate climax of Romans," using the three-part scripture pattern again. **15.12** quotes Isaiah 11.10 (the root of Jesse ruling the nations; Isaiah 11 is the passage where the wolf lies down with the lamb), closing a circle with 1.1–5. - (Phoebe, the letter carrier, is commended in Romans 16.) --- **From the biography (Bio):** - **"The third and in many ways decisive section of the letter."** It is "one of the most careful and sustained arguments anywhere in Paul's letters." Paul is not "just winging it… trying out ideas, only then to modify or reject them." - **Structure:** it is "framed, in classic Jewish fashion, in prayer. Like many psalms, it opens with lament and closes with ringing praise." The long opening section (9.6–29) is matched by the long closing section (11.1–32). The heart is **9.30–10.21**, focused on the closing chapters of **Deuteronomy** (warning of exile, promise of restoration). - **The Torah's story as the "gold standard."** The five books of Moses tell Israel's story from Abraham to exile and restoration, and Paul retells it as many Jewish writers did. At the vital point: ***telos gar nomou Christos*, "The Messiah is the goal of the law"** (10.4), "so that covenant membership may be available for all who believe." - **Paul's grief (9.2):** "great sorrow and endless pain." It is a lifelong "torture of the heart," from the rejection he met back in Tarsus to anger and violence "in one synagogue after another" (compare John 1.11). - **The centre, 10.9:** "If you profess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." - **"Jesus… had not started a 'new religion.'"** Either Jesus was Israel's Messiah, which means God was "reconstituting 'Israel' around him," or he was an impostor. "There was no middle ground." - **The case for apostleship (10.14–15)**, "how will they hear without someone announcing it?", is Paul in effect saying: "This is why I do what I do, and why I want you to back me… all the way to Spain." The chapter then proves it from Psalms, Isaiah and Deuteronomy (Writings, Prophets, Torah). - **Romans 11 heads off a gentile-only church.** "Paul will have none of it." He is himself a Jew and part of the **remnant**, "marked out by grace and faith." A remnant defined by grace, not national privilege, "can and will grow": "If they do not remain in unbelief, they will be grafted back in" (11.23). - "**Unbelief**" here is "more or less a technical term for 'not recognizing Jesus as Israel's Messiah'." Paul knows they have "a strong faith in and zeal for the One God," as he once had. - Romans 11 does **not** predict the Jews' return to their homeland, which "at the time of his writing they had not left." "Paul is not trying to second-guess what God has in mind." - The core message to a church "in danger of Marcionism": ***"Don't boast over the branches"*** (11.18). God can graft them back in. - The present fate of unbelieving Israel is "the long outworking, as though in a shadow, of the messianic vocation itself" (11.11–15: their casting away means reconciliation for the world). - Paul is not telling the Romans to evangelize their local synagogue, but "Jews are always to be part of God's faithful family," and God can and will bring "some of them" to faith (11.14). - The point throughout is **God's faithfulness**: "God has shut up all people in disobedience, so that he may have mercy upon all" (11.32). **From the biography (Bio):** - **12.1–2:** worship "the true God with their whole selves" and "learn to think as people who live in the new world." The general exhortations "home in finally on love" (13.8–10), balanced by "the bracing ethic… of living now in the light of the day that has already dawned" (13.11–14). - **13.1–7:** the "normal Jewish view of civic authorities." "A robust monotheism knows that the Creator wants there to be such authorities, and they are themselves responsible… to God himself." The gospel sanctions neither "the apolitical spirituality of gnosis" nor "the one-dimensional revolution for which many of Paul's countrymen were even then preparing." Zealotry was "not based on knowledge" (10.2). Paul had been a zealot himself. - **14.1–15.13, the central point of the final section:** Paul's "appeal for unity within the scattered and quite possibly mutually suspicious churches in Rome." - Paul **never names the underlying Jew–gentile problem**: "Some of us prefer to do this… some of us prefer to do that." Things were probably more complicated anyway: some gentiles may have wanted the Torah, and some Jewish believers, like Paul, took the "strong" position. - **How this differs from 1 Corinthians 8–10:** in Corinth there was one church with differing opinions. In Rome "the groups were already separate… already developed different codes of practice… would not be able to worship together… probably used different songs… might well speak Greek with very different accents." - **The limits of "tolerance":** this respect across differences "does not extend to all areas of behavior, as the closing lines of chapter 13… make abundantly clear." - **Why unity mattered:** Paul "could not simply align himself with one or two of the Roman house-churches and ignore the rest." Unity was "vital for the coherence of his own mission." And *"if it was all differentiation and no unity, Caesar need take no notice; they were just a few more peculiar eastern cults come to town."* - The goal is united worship, which "will shake Caesar's ideology to its foundations": "with one mind and one mouth, you may glorify the God and father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah" (15.5–6). - **15.19:** "From Jerusalem around as far as **Illyricum**" (north-west of Thessalonica), not mentioned in Acts. Paul asks for prayer that his service in Jerusalem "may be welcomed" (15.31), "a hint… of new anxieties just around the corner." - **Ch. 16:** Paul greets "around thirty people in Rome – covering the bases… of all the different house-churches," and sends greetings from eight friends, including "Erastus the city treasurer" and "I, Tertius" ("We may detect a sigh of relief from Tertius"). An early copy at Ephesus omitted the greetings list. The closing benediction "goes on and on a bit like the end of a Beethoven symphony." #### Passage by passage (PfE) **How the second half fits.** "People sometimes suppose that the 'theological' part of Romans is finished with chapter 11… Paul is seldom as unsubtle as that." The appeal for unity "grows directly out of everything Paul has been saying… about the coming together of Jew and Gentile in the Messiah." Wright's section boundaries: **12.1–15.13** is the fourth movement, and **15.14–16.27** functions "as a kind of personal conclusion." **12.1–5 — The living sacrifice** - *Image:* a new company chairman who realised he had let everyone else's expectations "dictate the shape of my work." - **"Don't let yourselves be squeezed into the shape dictated by the present age."** "The present age" versus "the age to come," which "had already begun in Jesus." - Christians are to be "counter-cultural – not in all respects… but at least in being prepared to think through each aspect of life." - **The mind is the key.** Christians who hope "to live up to something like Christian standards while still thinking the way the rest of the world thinks… It can't be done." This reverses the darkened thinking of 1.18–32. It is maturity, not immaturity: "it is the way of life of 'the present age' which often involves the real human immaturity." - **The body** (the whole self) is laid on the altar, but unlike a sacrifice it is "all about coming alive." Compare 6.1–14 and 8.12–17. "Christian living never begins with a set of rules… It begins in the glad self-offering of one's whole self." - **"One body in the Messiah"** is not "a random illustration." The Messiah is the truly human one, and his body is renewed humanity. The unity rests on "the same faith." **12.6–13 — Living together in the Messiah** - *Image:* seven friends starting a garden centre, each finding their role. - **Gifts come by grace.** Sometimes they enhance natural temperament, sometimes they are new. Warnings run both ways: against people insisting on "my ministry," and against churches that stay "blind and deaf" to someone's gifts. - **No "ordination" labels.** Prophecy is "the spirit-led interpretation of scriptural truth," regulated "according to the pattern of the faith," not mere "inspiration," which would be capitulating to the Romantic movement. - **A "get-your-sleeves-rolled-up" passage.** Christian service "isn't a hobby." "Nothing undermines Christian work so instantly as a gloomy face. Or, for that matter, a false smile." - **"Love must be real" (literally "unhypocritical").** For Paul, love "is more about what people do than about how they feel." Act in love and the feeling often follows. - **"Hate what is evil, stick fast to what is good"**: Christians are not exempt from basic human moral standards. **12.14–21 — Living alongside the world** - **Revenge is ruled out.** This is "not 'going soft on evil'": evil is real because creation is good. - God's answer to evil is the cross (5.6–11). "Revenge keeps evil in circulation" (the Middle East, Northern Ireland). - **Can you forgive someone who isn't sorry?** Full reconciliation may not be possible, but we must rid ourselves of the desire for revenge and do "uncalled-for acts of kindness." The "burning coals" (Proverbs 25.21) mean bringing them to remorse. We also refuse "to allow our own future lives to be determined by the evil that someone else has done." - **"Allow God's anger room to work":** private individuals are distinct from rulers (13.1–7), who must act. - **"Bless those who persecute you"** is "a major step beyond the accepted norms" (compare Luke 23.34). Be good neighbours who rejoice and weep with those on the street. **13.1–7 — The divine purpose, and limited role, of ruling authorities** - The passage has been "used – and abused" (for example under apartheid). Theories that it was inserted later, or that Paul changed his mind, "are not convincing." - **In context:** private vengeance is forbidden (ch. 12), but God does not want chaos. Everyone wants good police when a murder happens. - **Christians were "regarded as the scum of the earth in Rome,"** so they must not add a reputation as "crazy dissidents." "They are indeed a revolutionary community, but if they go for the normal type of violent revolution they will just be playing the empire back at its own game." - **Rulers are put in place by God.** "This would be news to Nero." It "does not validate particular actions of particular governments." Paul himself told officials their proper business when they acted unjustly (Philippi, Acts 16; Acts 23). - **Taxes:** Rome's indirect taxes caused riots about this time, and **Nero promised to abolish them** (he didn't). Believers might have used Jesus' lordship as an excuse to withhold tax, and Paul says no. - **The Jewish tradition behind it:** God works even through pagan rulers (Assyria in Isaiah 10, Cyrus in Isaiah 45, Babylon in Jeremiah 29; compare John 19.11). Wright calls for reviving older Christian political thought beyond the "left/right spectrum." **13.8–14 — Love, the law and the coming day** - *Image:* waking early on a summer morning while others sleep. - **"Put on the Lord Jesus"** is the Christian's clothing and "armour of light." Some pray to "clothe themselves" with Jesus' character through a gospel story, or by remembering their baptism. - **The list of vices** includes bad temper and jealousy, "just as much forbidden as drunkenness… though you wouldn't think so from many churches." - **Did Paul think the world was about to end?** No. The Day of the Lord in Thessalonians "cannot have involved the end of the world." The new world is "the liberation of the present world, not its abolition." What was due within a generation was the fall of Jerusalem (AD 70). The point is that the day *might* come at any time, because the resurrection has already happened. "The sun was already rising." - **Fulfilling the law through love** has "nothing whatever to do with… earning God's favour." It is the fitting response to God's mercy (12.1). "Don't get in debt to anyone" is "a warning our present Western society has done its best to ignore." - **Love is not lust.** *Agapē* copies Jesus' self-giving, and "in that self-giving love there is no room for… cheating in marriage… however much it tries to disguise itself as 'love'." "For another century at least it was one of the proudest boasts the early church could make… that Christians were not sexually immoral. Would that we could make that boast today." **14.1–6 — The weak and the strong** - **Why vegetarian?** Not for animal welfare, but because some could not guarantee properly slaughtered (kosher) meat in their part of the city. This goes a step beyond 1 Corinthians 8, which was about meat offered to idols. - **Paul never says "Jewish Christians do this, Gentile Christians do that."** Paul himself was a "strong" Jew, and some gentiles embraced Jewish rules. Naming the groups "would simply have been reinforcing the barriers." The real agenda only surfaces at 15.8. - **This is "the direct consequence of Paul's doctrine of justification by faith":** everyone is marked out solely by confessing Jesus as Lord (10.9–13). - **Unlike Antioch** (Galatians 2.11–21), the Roman groups may have been "not even attempting to come together for meals or worship." - **"Weak in faith"** does not mean thin devotion. It means they had not yet worked out the consequences of God as creator and Jesus as Lord (compare Mark 7.19). - **Holy days** are a matter of indifference, but "someone… who lounged in bed on a Sunday morning, claiming that Paul said it didn't matter, would… get a sharp retort." - *Question:* "At what points in today's church are we in danger of judging one another because of things that Paul would declare to be indifferent?" **14.7–12 — The final judgment is the only one that counts** - **Two portraits:** the strict-conscienced believer who *condemns*, and the freer believer who *despises*. "Each grows out of a firm grasp of one part of Christian truth," but above both stands the truth that "there is one Lord." - **How to tell what is "indifferent":** - *Extreme example 1:* using "all things are yours" to justify stealing is **not** indifferent, because stealing is forbidden. - *Extreme example 2:* picketing shops over mixed fabrics (Leviticus 19.19) is **indifferent**. - To tell the difference, you must weigh each case through the New Testament, "and, equally importantly, the reasons why it is said." "We cannot and must not use the 'Let's agree to differ' line as a way of avoiding the challenge of… Romans 6.1–14, 8.12–17 or 12.1–2." - **Final judgment through the Messiah** (Isaiah 45.23) stays in force. No free grace, justification or mercy "undermines it." - **Mutual respect is "one vital aspect of the doctrine of justification by faith itself."** God has already declared this person and that person to be his people. **14.13–23 — The way of love and peace** - *Image:* a boy shovelling snow off his own path onto the neighbour's. "Don't force them to walk through your snow." - The joke: "don't pass judgment on each other – but do use your judgment in not tripping each other up!" - **Things "become unclean"** when people regard them so. They become "evil" when eating trips someone up. This principle applies specifically to food and drink in that setting, not to all ethics. - **This passage is addressed to the "strong,"** probably gentiles, asking them to hold back so that returning Jewish Christians aren't driven to curse the movement and abandon the faith. That would offend against "nothing less than the death of the Messiah" (v. 15). - **v. 17:** the kingdom is "justice, peace, and joy in the holy spirit," not food and drink. - **v. 23** ("whatever is not of faith is sin") is aimed at the strong: *don't put others in that position.* **15.1–6 — Unity: modelled by the Messiah, encouraged by scripture** - *Image:* Venice's bell tower, which collapsed and was rebuilt on deep piles. The hidden foundations here are the Messiah and scripture. - **Psalm 69** is not a random proof-text. It is the suffering righteous one of Israel, summed up in the Messiah (compare 11.9–10). - **How to read the Old Testament (v. 4):** "It isn't that some parts of the Bible are valid and others aren't." The whole of it is "the God-given story" of the covenant people called to bring salvation, which necessarily involved suffering, climaxing in the Messiah. It is "the earlier part of the story we ourselves are living in." (And "Christ is the end of the law" read as abolition would have "horrified" Paul.) - **The strong must not please themselves**, like the Messiah (Philippians 2.6–8; 2 Corinthians 8.9; 1 Corinthians 9). - **"Of one mind" (v. 5):** agree "about mutual submission." The goal is not just peace but *building* "the common life of praise and worship": "with one mind and one mouth." **15.7–13 — United praise under the Messiah's universal rule** - *Image:* **Sibelius's Seventh Symphony**, four movements woven into one, ending in the home key where it began (compare T. S. Eliot, "arrive where we started and know the place for the first time"). Readers who stop after the early chapters are "like someone listening only to the first ten minutes… and then… walking out of the concert." - **"Home key" = 1.1–5:** Jesus as son of David, son of God, risen, Lord of the world. - **vv. 8–9 are "as concise [a summary of the gospel] as anywhere in all his writings."** The Messiah became a servant to the circumcised, to prove God's truthfulness (see 3.1–9) and confirm the patriarchal promises, so that the nations would praise God for his mercy. - **Scripture chain:** Psalm 18.49, Deuteronomy 32.43, Psalm 117.1, Isaiah 11.10. The "root of Jesse… who **rises**" uses one of the early Christians' two words for resurrection, matching 1.4. "Jesus is the reality; Caesar is simply a caricature, a sham." He rules to bring *hope*. - **v. 13** is "worth learning… by heart… and turning… into prayer." **15.14–24 — Coming to Rome at last** - **Paul the pioneer.** His priestly service is to bring "the Gentile nations themselves… as an offering" (v. 16). "No pagan had ever imagined such a thing… No Jew had ever thought of it like that." - **Tact:** v. 18 is cryptic in Greek, a double negative quietly acknowledging that others (perhaps Peter) have worked in Rome. Paul won't build on another's foundation. - **Rome's size:** "at least a million inhabitants," with "probably no more than a hundred or so Christians." - **Spain** was "the western limits of the world" (compare St Patrick and Ireland). Rome may have been meant as his **new "home church"**, replacing Antioch, where the Jew–gentile problem had flared (Galatians 2.11–14). - **Did Paul reach Spain?** "There is no evidence whatever that he did." But "as part of his plan to go to Spain, he wrote Romans. We should never underestimate what God will do through things which we see as small steps to a larger end." **15.25–33 — Aid for Jerusalem** - **Money** is the hardest Greek in the New Testament (2 Corinthians 8–9). Paul worked with his own hands, yet taught that churches must pay gospel workers. - **A triple irony:** 1. Jerusalem was poor partly because of its early common purse and a famine. Paul's model of looking after one another from within communities now helps them. 2. **The opposition to Paul came from Judaea**, yet these are the people he now serves at risk. There is a lesson for "those tempted to use financial muscle to exercise theological influence." 3. The collection "does in severely practical terms what the doctrine of justification by faith does in theological terms." Paul expects opposition from non-Christian Jews, who see him as a traitor, and from Jewish Christians who might find gentile money "tainted." **16.1–16 — Commending Phoebe, greeting friends** - **Twenty-four names**, plus Rufus's mother. Aristobulus and Narcissus were heads of great houses, probably not Christians themselves. Narcissus was Claudius's favourite, who killed himself after AD 54, and his household evidently stayed together. - **Only Colossians has a comparable greetings list**, and it too was written to a church Paul hadn't visited. - **Five house-churches:** 1. with Prisca and Aquila 2. in Aristobulus's household 3. in Narcissus's household 4. with Asyncritus and others (v. 14) 5. with Philologus and others (v. 15) At a maximum of twenty each, that makes "only… a hundred… It may well have been fewer." - **The holy kiss** shows "one belonged to the same family… redefined in and around the Messiah." - **Junia is an apostle.** "Well known among the apostles" means they *are* apostles (she and Andronicus, probably wife and husband, saw the risen Lord). "Don't be put off by some translations which call her 'Junias'." - **Phoebe:** a deacon at Cenchreae (Wright once swam underwater to see the sunken site) and a **benefactor**. That was a public honour: "the emperor himself claimed to be the state's supreme benefactor." She was "a person of substance and leadership," probably travelling to Rome on her own business. **16.17–23 — Warnings and greetings** - **"Wise… and innocent" (v. 19)** echoes Jesus' serpents-and-doves saying (Matthew 10.16). "God will crush the satan under your feet" (v. 20) echoes Genesis 3.15. - **False teaching is real,** though people can also "imagine false teaching where there is none." The touchstone is "the teaching you learned," the agreed apostolic standard of 1 Corinthians 15.3–8. Not every idea is a "matter of indifference." Beware teachers "pandering to their own appetites," especially where there is money. - **Tertius** is the only scribe in Paul's letters who adds his own name. **Gaius** was host to "the whole church." **Erastus** is known from an ancient inscription: early Christians already held civic office. **16.25–27 — Final blessing** - *Image:* a children's human pyramid in a pool that collapses with a splash. The sentence "gets top-heavy and falls over." - **Its structure:** God can strengthen you through the gospel, which fulfils the age-old story, spread for "the obedience of faith" (as in 1.5), through the prophetic writings and by God's command. It is heading for "To the only wise God be glory," until Paul adds "through Jesus the Messiah." - **"Was the glory going to God, or to Jesus?… Paul would certainly have said… it doesn't [matter]."** "High Christology… doesn't have to wait for later centuries." - **(v. 24 is a later scribal addition.)** ## Wright's one-line takeaways - "We are saved, not from the world but for the world." - "Salvation is not just God's gift to his people, it is God's gift through his people." - "God condemned Sin – in the flesh of the Messiah!" (not "God condemned Jesus") - "Here it is the cosmos waiting for the Christians to be revealed!" - "Part of our primary calling as followers of Jesus is to lament." - "God works all things together for good *with* those who love him." - "*Amor, ergo sum*." - "The 'good news' is not, first and foremost, about something that can happen to us… but… about something that has happened." (PfE, 1.1–7) - "Faith is the opposite of doubt, not just of sight!" (PfE, 1.14–17) - "The line between good and evil runs, not between 'us' and 'them', but down the middle of each of us." (PfE, 1.28–32) - "What you can't do is get unbaptized again. Don't even think of trying to go back to Egypt." (PfE, 6.1–5) - "We are not justified by faith by believing in justification by faith; we are justified by faith by believing in the gospel." (PfE, 8.31–39) - "God's choice never results in easy, arrogant, automatic superiority." (PfE, 9.13) - "The Messiah is the goal of the law." (10.4) - "There are no promises of salvation for those who think it's their birthright." (PfE, 11.16–24) - "Revenge keeps evil in circulation." (PfE, 12.14–21) - "Don't force them to walk through your snow." (PfE, 14.13–23) - "Jesus is the reality; Caesar is simply a caricature, a sham." (PfE, 15.7–13) - "If God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, then everything else is just rock 'n' roll." [[ministry-of-paul]]