A Hopeful Heretic

Romans 16:17-26 - Paul's Parting Words

In the last nine verses of Paul’s letter to the believers in Rome you can find the answer to the killer Bible trivia question of all time: who wrote the Epistle to the Romans? That guy Tertius must have just had better penmanship than the Apostle, perhaps due to multiple beatings, shipwrecks and time in dungeons. Or maybe after being on the road planting churches and fighting the good fight for thirty-some years Paul had acquired enough of a loyal following to have a secretary. After all, that’s when you know you’ve made it as a pastor, when you have someone to keep your calendar, screen your phone calls and write your letters. But I digress.

Paul’s style is apparent to me in these final lines of his letter. For example, it is characteristic of Paul to send greetings from others in his letters, often with a bit of praise and news for a church from the outside world. We see this in 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Colossians, 2 Timothy and Titus.

Likewise, we see Paul mention or warn about Satan in verse 20, something common to almost all his letters. This strikes me as worthy of notice but I am not qualified to explain it. I have wondered whether Paul’s concerns of satanic influence might figure prominently in his theology due in part to his conversion experience where the charge of Jesus included a call to turn people from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God.

Yet, key thing I see in Paul’s parting words is that he sees fit to return again to what I have called the central purpose for his writing: a call for unity. At this, the end of his letter, he makes this call specific by warning the believers in Rome against those who would divide them. Although he doesn’t refer to it explicitly here, we know from other letters that one of his primary concerns stemmed from Jewish Christians who spoke of requiring circumcision and other Jewish customs and rituals of Gentile believers. But regardless of specific concerns, his warning only underscores a core desire of Paul, a desire that the infant church overcome the all-too-human tendency to splinter apart when challenges arose.

Paul, where are you when we need you?

Romans 16:1-16 - Greetings from Paul

I don’t know whether to attribute any significance to the people to whom Paul sends greetings here at the end of his letter but it is probably worth it to investigate what we know about them.

• It is generally believed that Phoebe was the currier of the letter to the Romans. Paul asks that she be treated as an emissary of him. Some have made note of the Greek diakonos which the NIV translates to “servant” in verse 1. There may in fact be cultural and sexist bias in that Paul refers to Phoebe with the same word used to describe, for example, Apollos and himself yet when applied to a woman it is taken to mean a role of lesser significance.
• Priscilla and Aquila are mentioned several times in Paul’s letters and also in Luke’s accounts in Acts. They first meet Paul in Corinth, having been ordered to leave Italy with all other Jews under the restrictions of the Emperor Claudius. Acts 18 identifies them as tent-makers like Paul so they had this in common. They traveled with him to Syria where the couple parted ways with Paul, staying on in Ephesus while he made his way to Caesarea. Priscilla and Aquila are credited with expanding on the training of the teacher Apollos while they stayed in Ephesus. It is possible that they returned to Rome as the decree of Claudius was lifted and thus were there when Paul sent his letter. This looks all the more likely since Paul refers to “the church that meets at their house” in verse 5. There is more stuff to read about them here.
• Epenetus is considered by Paul to be especially beloved (agapetos), one of his first converts. Other sources say that he later served as Bishop of Carthage.
• The woman named in verse 6 shares a common name with other, more famous characters of the biblical story but there is no reason to believe that she is anything more than a faithful servant selected by Paul for this small recognition.
• Verse 7 is of special interest because it implies that Andronicus and Junias were apostles. An alternative meaning might be that they simply had a great reputation among the apostles. It also seems that they were blood relatives of Paul and had been imprisoned with him at some point.
• Ampliatus is mentioned only here in scripture but the Catholic Encyclopedia notes that tradition identifies his crypt in Rome as something of a work of art.
• Urbanus and Stachys mentioned in verse 9 are not famous for anything but Paul’s affection here although both seem to have names that have been used later. Apparently several popes have taken the name “Urban” and “Stachys” is a genus of about 300 species of annual and perennial herbaceous plants and shrubs.
• Apelles has no renown except that a 4th century painter was named for him. Likewise the Aristobulus seems to have no fame of his own but was apparently named for the Jewish High Priest who held sway in Judea in the century before the birth of Christ.
• Herodion is apparently another blood relative of Paul but not mentioned elsewhere in scripture and not much of fame except that a fortress in what is now the West Bank built by Herod the Great shared the same name. Narcissus seems like a common name shared by several characters in Roman history but is not mentioned anywhere else in scripture.
• The three women mentioned in verse 12 are of no other renown but for Paul’s recognition.
• There is another mention of a man named Rufus in Mark 15:21 as one of the sons of Simon the Cyrene who was forced to carry the cross for Jesus but there is no indication that this is the same man mentioned here in verse 13 (although the Catholic Encyclopedia says so).
• In verse 14, Hermes stands out because it is the name given to Paul himself by the people of Lystra as he performed a healing miracle there. Of course, Paul is not referring to himself in this verse. Consequently, all five characters in this verse are obscure. Likewise, the five characters in verse 15 are obscure.
• The “holy kiss” is a custom referred to by Paul in four of his epistles: First Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians and Romans. Peter calls it by another name in 1 Peter 5:14 – “a kiss of love.” Here’s a pretty good analysis of the custom and its meaning

Romans 15:14-33 - Paul's Plans

There is something eerie about reading the plans of a man who died nearly two thousand years ago, particularly when the man had no idea of the fate that awaited him. In the second half of what we know as chapter 15 of his letter to the believers in Rome Paul has great plans that he shares with his readers, plans that tradition holds would not completely come to pass.

Paul had it figured out pretty well. He would make his way to Jerusalem to deliver the contributions for the poor that he had collected from Gentile believers in Macedonia and Achaia. Then he would stop off in Rome on his way to Spain, a new land in which he planned to plant churches.

We can surmise from Acts 20 through 22 that Paul did make it back to Jerusalem albeit by a circuitous route. But Paul was right to be apprehensive about returning to Jerusalem (as he apparently lets on in verse 15:31) because while there he is apprehended by a crowd and beaten. He is hauled before the Jewish High Priest and the Council of the Sanhedrin and nearly torn apart in a brawl that would make a Jerry Springer episode look like a kindergarten class. It is only by the action of the Roman garrison that Paul is spirited away from the city.

Acts 28 tells us that Paul does make it to Rome (although not before having some high adventures at sea). While there he enjoys some relative peace for two years while he preaches from a rented house under Roman guard. That is all we can tell of Paul’s life from the bible. Christian historian Justo L. Gonzalez writes that while ancient writers agree that Paul was executed during Nero’s reign somewhere in the sixth decade AD, we really don’t know what happened in Paul’s life after the end of Luke’s records in Acts. It may be that he never made it to Spain as he had hoped.¹

But in the midst of Paul’s discussion of his plans there are two things that stand out to me. The first is that he writes that he feels he has nothing more to do in the regions from which he writes (Corinth). I find this so interesting because Paul seems to feel he had a limited mission. Once he had established the church in a region he left it to the local believers to make it a vibrant body. Moreover, Paul’s letters to the Corinthians seem to be so critical that it is hard to believe that he had clean up the town and was ready to move on. Perhaps it is just that Paul, the original evangelist, wasn’t really happy as a pastor. He longed to be on the edge of the faith frontier with people who had not heard of the kingdom of God. He may also have preferred fresh ears as he seems to indicate in 15:20.

But what also stands out to me is verse 14. There Paul tells the Roman believers that they are fully equipped to lead and instruct themselves. If we take the letter as a theological lesson as it seems that most interpretations are inclined to do this seems like a pretty odd statement. Why would Paul write 90% of the letter as theological teaching and then tell the believers that they already knew all that? This only underscores for me my contention that Paul has a single main purpose in mind for his writing, the purpose of admonishing the believers in Rome toward unity, particularly across the divide between Jew and Gentile.

It also strikes me as ironic that Paul writes at a time before the hierarchical leadership of the church is established. He writes at a time when churches in Rome are little more than gatherings of neighbors in homes. Yet Paul, one of the great pillars of the infant church, acknowledges that these amateurs are “complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another.” Are those talents lost to us in this age?

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¹Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity Volume 1 (San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco, 1984), p. 27.

Romans 15:1-13 - Full Circle

As Paul nears the end of his letter to the believers in Rome he returns again to his central theme of unity. In practice he calls the believers to an “other-centeredness” using Jesus as an example. However, once again, Paul refers back to a Psalm to support his argument and once again I am at a loss to understand why he would choose such a verse. It’s as if he’s using a computerized concordance to find verses that sound good regardless of their original context. In this case, he apparently refers to what we know of as Psalm 69:9 which, reads as a plea for delivery from enemies. In the context of the full Psalm I think that it makes more sense as a reference to the sacrifice of Jesus at the hands of his enemies. Without that full context, however, it seems like a real stretch, at least in the English translation.

Laying that concern aside, however, it seems clear to me that Paul has come full circle in his exhortations to the believers in Rome. He calls Jesus a servant of the Jews but the expressed purpose of this divine descent into servanthood is bring the Gentiles into the kingdom of God. Thus, says Paul, Jesus fulfills the covenants God made with Abraham¹ to be a blessing not just upon his own progeny but upon the entire world.

The response that the believers, Jew and Gentile alike, are to have is to accept one another as Jesus accepted them. This, Paul tells them, will bring glory to God. In our day, in our context, we should hope to do the same.

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¹ See Genesis 12:1-3, Genesis 17:3-8, Genesis 22:15-18

Romans 14: To Eat Meat or Not To Eat Meat

I find Paul’s instructions in what we know as chapter 14 of his letter to the believers in Rome to be one of the most useful bits of wisdom for Christians ever written. It isn’t simple to follow, isn’t that always the case? Yet, if we were better at this one thing, this living to love and not judge, it would change the face of the world.

Am I over-selling it? I don’t think so. Paul didn’t pull any punches. “Everything that does not come from faith is sin,” he says. “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification,” he tells us. “…the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,” he says, speaking of the kingdom as if he is echoing Jesus himself.

Apparently Paul is addressing a real problem for first century Christians trying to get by in the Roman Empire. As I understand it, the product of pagan sacrifice was pretty much the only source of meat in many places. Some believers would rather become vegetarians than “defile” themselves with meat from pagan temples. Others were quite sure of their faith and probably saw the meat as just meat, no big deal. Unless the believers in Rome were quite a different species from human beings today, there were probably people on both sides of that divide pointing fingers in derision at the other side.

Paul doesn’t exactly take one side or the other although he does frame the conflict in an interesting manner. He refers to a person committed to eating only vegetables as weak in faith while someone who eats anything is considered strong. The irony is that we would generally consider the more disciplined one to be the stronger. But Paul’s point is subtle. He’s not supporting the person who says, “Screw it, I really want a burger.” No, Paul considers a person’s faith strong when that person’s faith is unaffected by anything in the world. When he writes in verse 5 that, “one should be fully convinced in his own mind” he is not getting post-modern, relative, he seems to mean that spiritual disciplines that are practiced out of self-righteousness or not practiced out of convenience are hollow and useless.

In this instruction Paul echoes the gospel imperative of Jesus by challenging people not to stand in judgment of the spiritual practices of others. But it is verse 7 that seems to be the key to his whole message. It seems to me that Paul’s underlying point is really about community. Standing in judgment of others is a community destroyer and when community is destroyed, so too is our only chance to be reformed and redeemed.

Yet it is not as simple as claiming freedom to act according to one’s own measure of faith, Paul says. Love supersedes all personal freedom so acting in a manner that causes distress to another is, Paul would say, destructive.

Now that’s the hard part, isn’t it? I was once a part of a ministry that essentially barred anyone in a leadership role from consuming anything alcoholic in public on the oft chance someone would notice and take offense. I recently received a series of nasty email messages from a member of a ministry I lead essentially condemning some people in the group for seeing R-rated movies. Do we expect an entire community to restrict their spiritual practices and behavior based on the people of weakest faith in the community? Maybe! While practices regarding things like food and drink are essentially irrelevant in spiritual maturity, when we ignore them to the result of harming community we do so at the risk of the kingdom among us.

I think that Paul is intentionally ambiguous in his instructions exactly because this is not a simple black and white issue. We are meant to wrestle with the conflict between personal faith in practice and the needs of the community. When conflicts like this arise, and they surely will, people on both sides of the conflict must ask themselves whether they are acting in love. It seems to me that was the essence of Paul’s instructions.

Romans 13:8-14 - Law, Love and Daylight

It has been my assertion that the purpose for which Paul wrote his letter to the church in Rome was one of his greatest concerns, that the church would be a unified body, particularly across the divide between Jewish and Gentile believers. After taking the first two-thirds of the letter explaining why this should be so and exhorting both sides to understand and act accordingly, I believe that Paul turns to explaining how the “new pattern” they should follow will appear. In essence, this is Paul’s attempt to explain what Jesus spent so much time teaching about, the kingdom of God.

That is why it comes as no surprise to me that Paul chooses to echo the words of Jesus in what we know of as the later part of chapter 13. He does this in verses 8 and 9 when he writes:

“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Of course, we should not see this as Paul quoting the gospel writers since Paul’s letter actually predates their work. Still, it seems clear that Paul is quoting the teaching of Jesus, teaching with which the believers in Rome would probably be familiar. They would probably have stood around nodding their heads at the public reading of the letter thinking, “Yeah, that’s right. That’s what the Messiah said.”

Like Jesus before him, it was Paul’s purpose to explain to them the place of Mosaic Law in the kingdom of God. Agape love is to be the primary value of the new pattern of life to which they are now being transformed.

Yet, after making this point Paul issues some warnings whose context may be lost all these centuries hence. He does this first by identifying some specific sins: orgies, drunkenness, sexual immorality, debauchery, dissension and jealousy. I have to wonder why he chooses these particular infractions. It might be that there are some believers in Rome who want the best of both worlds, Christian community by day, pagan “freedoms” by night. Paul, writing his letter without having come to Rome first may be responding to rumors and reports he has heard of this kind of dual life. Could it be that hypocrisy is one of the oldest traditions of our faith?

In our day and culture one of the greatest roadblocks people have to coming to Christian faith is not the belief system, it’s the believers. We don’t need much of a translation of culture to apply Paul’s warnings to our own times and our own behavior.

Romans 13:1-7 - Blessed Authority

My exercise to give Paul’s letter to the church in Rome a fresh read hits a brick wall when I reach what we know of as chapter 13. There, Paul’s words seem to give license to unfettered power by urging believers to meekly submit to authorities because they have been divinely installed. I cannot help but wonder how much injustice has been excused, ignored or tolerated through the centuries due to Paul’s words here.

It would be nice to dismiss this thought as something culturally specific to the churches in Rome or simply a detail but submission seems to be a central theme for Paul. He seems to have similar thoughts in Ephesians 5:21 and Titus 3:1. Peter expressed similar thoughts about submitting to authorities as well.

If you’re dead set on being a biblical literalist you might want to try the word substitution exercise suggested by this author. If it doesn’t make you squirm in your belief system there is probably nothing that will. The thing is, rulers of our day really do hold terror for us, even for those of us who clearly do right, and many of them hardly seem to have been established by God, at least not for any clearly holy purpose. These few verses from Paul are enough to make me want to dismiss him, to wonder whether he could really be speaking for God.

Luckily, there are far wiser minds than my own that have wrestled with these lines and come to more reasonable conclusions. I find such a mind in NT Wright:

...Romans 13 is very far from being a charter for big bullying governments. On the contrary, it places the authorities of this world where they belong: accountable to the one who is Lord of all. In a world where there is still such a thing as great wickedness, we need a judiciary just as we need locks on our front doors but it must be seen to be accountable to something higher than itself. If is accountable to the God revealed in Jesus there will be certain quite specific things that follow about the way in which, and the ends for which, it exercises its power.

Wright, NT: What Saint Paul Really Said (Oxford, England: Lion Publishing, plc, 1997) p 156-157.

Wright prompts me to take a broader look at Paul the author of these words and it occurs to me that when Paul writes that “there is no authority except from God” he is not endorsing all human authority structures. In fact, that would be contrary to what we know of Paul the man. If there was anyone in the first century who had reason to question authority, it was Paul. He did so when he became a convert to follow Jesus, pushing back against the Jewish authorities to whom he was once an instrument. He pushed back against the Roman government in places and times when his work demanded it. He even pushed back against the other apostles, respectfully but with certainty.

We read these words and understand Paul to mean that God has ordained all authority on Earth. In other words, if someone is in authority, God must have put them there. It seems to me now that this is backwards; that what Paul really meant was that if human authority is not accountable to God it is not legitimate. So Paul’s exhortation to the believers in Rome would not apply to a dictator who rules with violence and injustice.

Of course this leads us to a completely different dilemma: how do we recognize human authority that is blessed by God? That, it seems, is a question for the ages.

Romans 12:9-21 - A New Pattern

It has been my premise that Paul has taken up the first two-thirds of his letter to the believers in Rome to address the challenges they have in becoming and staying unified, particularly in the face of Jewish and Gentile factions. I have also observed that the section of the letter that we know as chapter 12 forms a striking transition. The question is transition to what? What is the message Paul moves to once he feels he has made his case for unity?

At the beginning of the chapter Paul calls the believers to not “conform to the pattern of this world.” A few lines later he begins to tell them about a different pattern, the pattern of the kingdom of God that is based on sincere love.

The idea of sincere love and sincere faith seems to be common among the New Testament writers. Paul uses the Greek word anupokritos as an adjective with love here and in 2 Corinthians 6:6. He uses the word as an adjective for faith once in each of his letters to Timothy. Peter uses it as an adjective for love in 1 Peter 1:22 but he refers to philadelphia, as opposed to agape that Paul uses.

Here, it seems, Paul’s message is that you just can’t fake it. You can go through the motions of loving your Gentile or Jewish brothers and sisters across the divide but if you do that insincerity may just be the evil Paul is saying they should hate.

It is not for nothing that he spends the next eleven verses getting specific about how sincere love, the new pattern for the church, should look. He gives them 20 specific admonitions, 15 positive (do this) and 5 negative (don’t do this). The majority of these directives are relational in nature. In other words, they have to do with how believers are to relate to others if they are to follow the new pattern. For example, they are to be willing to associate with people of low position and they are not repay evil for evil.

However, I would be remiss if I did not also point out that some of the directives Paul records here are not relational in nature. This is something that I find generally maddening about the old Apostle, he has a tendency to wander around in his ideas as if he flunked freshman composition. It leaves me to wonder whether he had some underlying purpose that isn’t easy to discern or whether he truly was scatter-brained as many brilliant people seem to be.

If there is a reason for mixing directives about relationships with others and directives for relationships with God, I cannot see it. The trouble is that it doesn’t seem to form a logical sequence of thought, moving as it does from one to the other and then back again. Perhaps it is again something I have to attribute to my lack of understanding of Greek.

Still, it seems obvious that Paul intends to spell out a new way for the church in Rome, a way to replace the pattern of this world that he encourages them to reject. Application of Paul’s ideas doesn’t always come easy considering the gulf of time and culture that separates us from him. In this case, however, the new way, the new pattern that he proposes is pretty much timeless.

Romans 12:3-8 - Unity in Spiritual Gifts

The simple word allelon leads to a very interesting study of the NT. It is overwhelming (though not surprising) how many times we are told to:

• Accept one another (1)
• Be devoted to one another (1)
• Be kind to one another (1)
• Offer Hospitality to one another (1)
• Pray for one another (1)
• Serve one another (1)
• Speak truth to one another (1)
• Belong to one another (1)
• Carry one another's burdens (1)
• Confess to one another (1)
• Consider others above yourself (1)
• Honor one another above yourselves (1)
• Instruct one another (1)
• Be patient with one another (2)
• Forgive one another (2)
• Live in harmony with one another (2)
• Submit to one another (2)
• Greet each other with a holy kiss (4)
• Encourage one another (5)
• Love one another (12)

Here in the section of his letter to the church in Rome that we know as verse 12:5, Paul tells the believers that they “belong” to one another. To help them understand this, he uses a common metaphor for scripture describing the church as a body. Everyone has a body and understands it to some degree. Even if we had never had a biology class (Paul’s audience surely had not), we would know that hands are good for doing certain things and feet are good for other things and their functions are not very interchangeable. It is a simple teaching illustration but timeless in making his point.

Yet Paul’s observation that the body has members with many different functions has new meaning in light of his previous thoughts on the relationship between Jew and Gentile Christians in the community. Each group has a unique place in the redemptive process of the other. Neither would know Christ without the other.

But the interdependent nature of church doesn’t end there, Paul says. As he runs down one of his famous lists of spiritual gifts it is tempting to make a subtle shift in our minds and elevate some of these functions over others. We can’t help ourselves because our experience of church pretty much tells us that those who didaskalia and those who proistemi do so from the front of the room with rapt attention of everyone fixed in their direction. In contrast, those who diakonia, parakaleo, metadidomi or eleeo are supposed to do so invisibly, drawing no attention to themselves.

It seems to me that this is not at all what Paul has in mind. In fact, before he ever gets around to listing off spiritual gifts he makes a pretty clear point of demanding humility of all. In this he seems to extend his tandem exhortations aimed at the conflicting factions of Jewish and Gentile believers to anyone with any sort of gift (which would mean everyone).

I am dismayed to observe that the church in our contemporary western context has an unhealthy fixation on teaching and leadership. We fawn over witty speakers and writers as if they were rock stars and we hold annual pilgrimages to pay homage to leadership. It is a modern form of idolatry and I think we should take steps to counter it. What steps those might be, well, that's another discussion.

Romans 12:1-3 part 3 - Transformation and Will

Transformed. Now there’s a loaded word in the contemporary Christian vocabulary. It indicates that something has been profoundly changed, changed in its very nature. It’s tempting to build an entire theology around this word. It’s also frustrating that its Greek origin, metamorphoo, appears only four times in the New Testament. It would be nice if Paul had more uses for it.

In fact the only other place he does use it is in 2 Corinthians 3:18 where he writes critically of his fellow Jews noting that their understanding is “veiled” until they turn to Christ. Once the veil is lifted, he says, they are being “transformed” into the Lord’s likeness.

It seems to me that two observations are inescapable in the way Paul uses metamorphoo in both these instances. The first is that it seems to refer to a process that is projected into the future or at least is not to be considered complete. All major translations seem to render the word in 2 Corinthians 3:18 as “being transformed” and in Romans 12:2 as “be transformed.” I wonder whether Paul’s intent here is to give his charges a realistic impression of what they can expect in their spiritual development. It seems to me that he wants them to understand that this is neither something that happens instantaneously nor something that can be pointed to as complete at any time.

My other observation is that Paul’s use of metamorphoo seems to describe a process that is not under the individual’s control. They are “being transformed” or they are to “be transformed” by something or someone other than themselves. Their part in the process seems to be complete at its inception. In the Corinthians reference the individual’s part is (apparently) “turning to the Lord.” In the Romans use of the word the individual’s part to play is “renewing of the mind.”

Although Paul is sparse in his use of this word his concept of spiritual development as transformation is found elsewhere in his epistles. We can see this later in his second letter to the Corinthians and also in Ephesians 4:22-24 and Colossians 3:8-10.

However, I believe that looking at Paul’s understanding of transformation in the context of the Romans letter requires a reminder of how he spent the entire first two-thirds of the letter, calling on the church to let go of pride-based divisions between Jew and Gentile believers. When I recall this I read Paul to say that unity is the foundation upon which spiritual transformation is built. Once they have made the whole-hearted sacrifice that rejects the expected manner of relating to one another they can begin a process of renewing their minds that God will use to transform them into new beings.

But why should they? For that matter, why should we? It seems that the answer lies in the end of this verse: they will have the ability to know God’s will.

I can’t begin to count the number of times someone has said to me, I wish I knew God’s will on this matter or that. I’ve wondered about His will for me countless times as well. It seems that Paul would advise us that knowing God’s will is a process that begins with renewing our minds. It seems to me that this is what he spends most of the rest of the letter describing.