Simon Bowkett's Podcast

Romans - the POINT of it

October 23, 2022 Simon Bowkett
Simon Bowkett's Podcast
Romans - the POINT of it
Show Notes Transcript

Twenty-three minutes on the purpose of the biggest letter in the New Testament, and what that all means for us.

Support the show

Introduction

It’s a pretty well-worn piece of advice for anyone making a presentation or writing a treatise of any sort:

Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell ‘em, tell it to ‘em, then tell ‘em what you’ve just told ‘em.

And why should the Biblical authors plan to do anything different?

It’s a thought to bear very much in mind as we approach particularly the harder, more content-packed books in the New Testament.

Tae a book like Romans.

The big magnum opus of possibly the leading proponent of the Christian faith in the first century … the earliest and probably the greatest days of the Christian church.

If we are believers, we find it rich and rewarding with some tremendous bits in it about the central issues of our faith, spelled out and expounded to us for us to understand, and apparently the favourite book of preachers who are addicted to long sermons.

That’s Romans for you.

But what’s the POINT of it?

What’s he GETTING at, this Paul?

What was the purpose for which he wrote this book?

It MAY not be quite what you thought it was … if you’ve ever yet felt confident to attempt an answer to that question at all!

John Calvin said that when anyone understands this epistle, “he has a passage opened to him to the understanding of the whole Scripture.”

Martin Luther said that this letter “is really the chief part of the New Testament and the very purest gospel.”

Luther’s successor, Philip Melanchthon, referred to Romans as “the compendium of Christian doctrine.”

John Knox suggested that it was “unquestionably the most important letter ever written.”[But it hasn’t simply influenced the world of ideas.

It has revolutionised lives:

The North African rhetorician Augustine was converted by reading Romans 13:13-14 in the year 386. The German monk Martin Luther was converted 1200 years later after grasping the significance of Romans 1:17. 

Two centuries later, a clergyman by the name of John Wesley recounted what he experienced on the evening of May 24, 1738 as he heard the preface of Luther’s commentary on Romans being read: “About a quarter before nine, while [the reader] was describing the change wherein God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given that he had taken my sins, even mine; and saved me from the law of sin and death.”

Today, Romans is perhaps best known for clearly articulating key doctrines like man’s sinfulness, justification by faith, regeneration, union with Christ, adoption, and sanctification. Romans is known for its rich, deep, glorious, and at times unsettling theological assertions and implications.

What sometimes gets lost in these descriptions of Paul’s most beloved epistle is that Paul’s heart in writing Romans (as was the case for every letter he wrote) was primarily pastoral. 

He was not interested in writing a theological treatise.

Rather, Romans was intended to be what we call Practical Theology.

Paul opens the letter of Romans by introducing himself as a slave of Christ Jesus, an apostle set apart for the gospel (1:1). 

Just a few verses later, however, he states the over-arching goal as the person ministering to them through this book. 

The mission he’s been given is (literally transated) : “to bring about the obedience of faith” (1:5). 

Right at the outset, Paul makes it clear that his calling as an apostle is deeply practical; it is to bring about a particular kind of obedience. 

The phrase “obedience of faith” probably carries two ideas. 

First, Paul’s goal is to bring about the obedience that is faith among his hearers. 

The gospel he proclaims is something that is to be obeyed (10:16) by being believed such that not believing the gospel is an act of disobedience. 

Secondly, however, the “obedience of faith” probably also refers to the obedience, the proper conduct, that flows from faith. 

Whatever beliefs Paul wants to clarify for and insist on with his readers, his goal is still the obedience that flows from those beliefs.

And that’s what gets spelled out once the doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone and not by the works of the law has been spelled out and defended in chs. 1-11, as Paul begins to unpack the implications for life of that Gospel of justification by grace through faith alone in what follows in ch. 12-16.

It’s important here to see that for Paul, believing and obeying belong together and should never be pitted against each other. 

Similarly, theology and conduct belong together. 

What I’m arguing, then, is not that Romans is about conduct and not theology but that it is about both.

But we are running ahead of ourselves.

I’m just going to try to establish with you that this is the point of his book of Romans because Paul so clearly states his purpose in life and ministry in EXTREMELY similar terms both at the outset and at the conclusion of this letter as if he is declaring at the start and the finish what the point is that his whole life is making, expressed now in the things he’s writing in this book.

So … 

What’s the POINT of Romans?

Firstly we are told in the introduction, then we are shown in the main body and shape of the letter and then this purpose is underlined for us against in the conclusion of the letter.

         •        1. The Introduction to it, 1:5

Paul declares from the outset of this the longest and most well-worked theology he was ever inspired to write that he was a person with a purpose, in fact a herald and apostle of God … but as such a person on a mission.

A person whose purpose was established and clear in his mind.

A purpose he saw as long behind all that his life was both for and therefore about.

εἰς ὑπακοὴν πίστεως ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν

To call men and women to something to do with obedience that had something to do with faith, from amongst all the nations.

What is this about?

It’s an important question because right here as he STARTS this book of Romans Paul states the purpose he has in life which is being expressed through the writing of this book … it is right here in Romans 1:5.

In different transitions translate this REALLY important verse differently … which is confusing!

Now, it could well be that Paul has ‘done a John’ here, because John is a master of the art of using expression that can bear two or more meanings … both of which apply in the particular case … as the phrase that could mean more than one thing is just lobbed out there and left for you to think about it.

But that doesn’t mean that all the possible meanings are the intended ones!

(I imagine we’ve all heard sermons where the preacher meanders off down that sort of street … leaving his hearers peeling away from his guided tour as it seems increasingly mis-guided!)

So what’s Paul intending here?

Let’s review the grammatically possible meanings this verse and see which might be possible in this context.

There are four options in the grammatical range of possibilities for the meaning of the genitive in verse 5 …


            •          a) Objective genitive - ‘obedience to the faith’

The idea here would be that when Paul writes of ‘the obedience of faith’, he means us to understand that THE faith is what you give obedience to.

Now, there certainly is a sense in which we can speak of ‘the faith’ as the body of doctrine that Christians believe.

We speak of ‘the Christian faith’ when we mean the stuff it is the Christians hold to be true.

Certainly Paul is trying in this epistle to bring people’s minds into a good place by exposing those mins to the truth about God … but the idea is to also turn their feet into good paths as the result of that.

He is not actually rolling out truth and saying ‘OBEY’!

In fact, a good part of the epistle is to undo with our inability to outright ‘obey’ and I can’t think of any other part of this letter that encourages us t think Paul is writing to tell the Romans to obey the faith.

The practical application of the truths taught in this book starts in Romans 12 with an appeal for those who believe the the things in chapters 1-11 to offer themselves as living sacrifices … fleshed out in the following chapters in the appeal to bear with one another, to forgive one another as Christ forgave us and all manner of other challenging stuff but ‘obey the faith’ is not high on the list of exhortations there at all.


            •          b) Attributive genitive - ‘believing obedience’

So let’s consider the second grammatically possible option … that what Paul is stalling about here is believing obedience.

This would mean Paul is bluntly calling for the sort of outright OBEDIENCE to God that does believe but is actually a call to works of obedience not to the transforming grace that come to believers as they trust in and walk with God.

That not only clashes a bit with Paul’s theology elsewhere … in Ephesians 2, for example … but is also at variance with the sort of language Paul uses of ‘the righteousness that is by faith from first to last’ in (say) Romans 1:17

“For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed – a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’’

Well, that verse brings us conveniently to the first of our much more likely intentions that Paul wants to express by this phrase … reading this as a genitive of apposition which we’d translate as ‘to call all the Gentiles to obedience, namely faith, for His Name’s sake’.


            •          c) Genitive of apposition - ‘obedience, namely: faith’ 

‘to call all the Gentiles to obedience, namely faith, for His Name’s sake’.

If this is to be understood as a genitive of apposition … and both the Lord’s teaching about faith in the Gospels and the theology of this book of Romans would fit with that nicely … then the obedience God requires is not to keep every dot and comma of the Law (the religious rule book) because we know that’s impossible, but to believe in the One He has sent.

So the Lord answers the question of the crowd the day after the Feeding of the Five Thousand in John 6:28-29in this way:

“Then they asked him, ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’

29 Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’”

That doctrine is repeated and linked to something the Lord says later in John’s Gospel in 1John 3:23 “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.”

And it crops up in the theology of Romans later where justification … being declared by God to be righteous … is by grace through faith alone and NOT by the works of the Law.

So Romans 9:33 says:

“the one who believes in him will never be put to shame.’”

Faith is not exactly obedience … but obedience to God is credited as such once and for all when faith becomes the principle of life and (of course) leads to the life of principled obedience which flows from what is believed and from the trust that is placed in God for when trusting Him would otherwise be way too dangerous.

So Paul may well be wanting us to understand that obedience is expressed supremely by faith … and the would be consistent with what Romans teaches as well as what the Lord Himself taught as John records it both in the Gospel and in his first letter.

But then the most obvious intention Paul might have with this verse seems to be to take the verse as a subjective genitive … which would be saying Paul considered that this very point and purpose was to call the Gentiles to the obedience that faith produces or the obedience that faith requires.


            •          d) Subjective genitive - ‘the obedience faith produces/ requires’

The hinge in this book when its teaching becomes its call to action lies in Romans 12:1

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.”

Paul has spent a full eleven chapters talking about a range of aspects of God’s mercy which are accessed or granted … gifted … to faith, and then he switches across to spelling out the obedience that should come from that faith at Romans 12:1 summarising the life of principled and Spirit-empowered obedience that flows from faith as the believer presenting (continuously) their bodies … their life in the body … as a living sacrifice to God, which is described as our reasonable act of service and worship for the grace He has given to us by faith alone.

We are interrogating Paul’s letter to the Romans as to it’s point and purpose and Paul, the author of it, is writing this letter for us as one whose point and purpose in life is to call everyone from amongst the Gentiles  to ‘obedience to God: namely faith,’ and to ‘the obedience that comes from faith’.

So the point of the letter that comes from the one whose purpose in life is to do those things is going to reflect that over-riding purpose in life of its author.

And that is largely brought out by the shape of the book.

What clues does the structure of Romans give us as to its point?

         •        2. The SHAPE of it, 1:7-16:24


                        •           1:16-3:31 ALL have sinned and are reckoned righteous the same way

That is a stratospherically challenging issue for Jewish folks who have been fed the idea they are God’s special  people with their mother’s milk … all because they are the offspring of Abraham, according to the flesh.

So Paul goes there first.

•         4:1-5:21 What about being righteous because descendants of Abraham?

Yes, Paul seems here to be saying, you are physically children of Abraham by virtue of your DNA but Abraham was a child of God because of his faith and if you are to be his spiritual children you will only be so on the same terms that he was a child of God.

What terms were those?

Romans 4:3 “What does Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.’”

Paul illustrates this further through the example of Adam then concludes:

Romans 5:20-21 “he law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, 21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

•         6:1-8:38 Living by faith not the rule book doesn’t lead to lawlessness

The objection is obviously now going to be raised by anyone steeped in a shame culture and a rules-based religion (the way Paul’s Jewish readers were) that removed the rule book as the route righteousness is going to lead inevitably to the practice of unrighteousness.

Paul explains the you come to grace by faith alone along the road of the repentance which is the fruit of faith.

And furthermore Paul explains that faith and repentance at the cognitive level are accompanied by the Holy Spirit taking up residence in the saved heart, and He strengthens the repenting person of faith to enable then to resist the sin they now repudiate from the heart … as he writes in Romans 8:13 “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.

 

14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.”

There is SO much wonderful truth in these three chapters!

But we need to move rapidly on to preserve the thread …

Paul moves on to defend this central Christian truth that ALL have sinned regardless of our spiritual background and are all reckoned righteous before God the same way by dealing with the allegation that if this is the God must have proven to be unfaithful to the people of Israel that He made all those promises to.

           •           9:1-11:32 This doesn’t mean God’s broken His covenant with His historic people

Paul’s explanation of how that isn’t the case leans a lot on the illustration he uses from vine-growing - viticulture - in Romans 11 where the grafted branches are not bearing fruit so they get cut off and new branches that WILL bear fruit are grafted onto the old rootstock (which had nothing wrong with it) in their place … regardless of those new branches’ original place of origin or culture.

You can read about it at length in Romans 11 as those who are actually fruitful grafts onto the vine are the new redefined Israel of God.

Now WHERE does that all lead and WHAT is the crucial point Paul is making in this book?

        •           12:1-16:24 The upshot of being reckoned righteous by grace through faith alone …

The upshot of being reckoned righteous by grace through faith alone is that this who have been put right with God and declared righteous in His holy sight by virtue ONLY of the sacrifice of Christ for sin on their behalf is that those who ARE thus reckoned righteous in Gods sight will from sheer gratitude present their own physical bodies as He presented His) as now LIVING sacrifices in His worship and service.

Here’s what Christian worship IS … to present your body as a living sacrifice in thanksgiving and adoration to the One Who sacrificed His living body on the Cross for you.

And in chapter 12:3 - 15:13 Paul spells out in surprising ways to modern Western ears just precisely what that the genuine believer’s lived out living sacrifice is going to look like.

The remainder of chapter 15 and most of chapter 16 is personal stuff where Paul demonstrates, actually, what relating to one another as a living sacrifice looks and sounds like in the way he relates to the Romans.

And then he brings the point of the letter out again forcefully in the conclusion … it is ASTONISHING the way this clear expression of the point and purpose of this letter gets missed!

Here it is …

         •        3. The CONCLUSION of it, 16:25-26

The phrase that presented to us the very purpose in life of the guy who is expressing that purpose of his by writing this book way back in 1:5 is presented to us almost verbatim now again in Romans 16:25-26

Paul phrases this magnificent closing benediction to embrace the point and purpose of this great expression of his life and ministry in line with his personal point and purpose of his life and ministry:

“Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, 26 but now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God, so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith – 27 to the only wise God be glory for ever through Jesus Christ! Amen.”

What I proclaim is the message of the One who can establish you through this Gospel … the message Paul preaches about Jesus Christ … which was kept hidden for ages past but is now revealed through the prophetic writings at God’s command “so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith”.

THAT’s what it’s all about.

THAT is the point of it.

THAT is the point and purpose of Romans.

It is written to further Paul’s God-given commission which is to preach the God-given Gospel of justification by grace through faith alone “so that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith”.

         •        Conclusion - so here’s the point.

Paul opens the letter of Romans by introducing himself as a slave of Christ Jesus, an apostle set apart for the gospel (1:1). 

Just a few verses later, however, he states the goal of his apostleship, the mission he’s been given: “to bring about the obedience of faith” (1:5).  Paul’s goal is to bring about the obedience that is faith among his hearers. 

What is ours?

The gospel he proclaims is something that is to be obeyed (10:16) by being believed such that not believing the gospel is an act of disobedience. 

Are we CLEAR about that?

Refusing to trust God to be right in what He says in His Word is an act of creaturely disobedience whether it occurs in the Garden of Eden or on the bus to Llandeilo.

Secondly, however, the “obedience of faith” probably also refers to the obedience, the proper conduct, that flows from faith. 

Whatever beliefs Paul wants to solidify in his readers, his goal is still the obedience that flows from those beliefs. 

It’s important here to see that for Paul, believing and obeying belong together and should never be pitted against each other. 

Similarly, theology and conduct belong together. 

Romans is about conduct and theology.

The one leads to the other, and if it doesn’t it is fake and not real.

Properly understood the failure of obedience must lead to faith.

Properly understood and experienced faith will lead to obedience.

Romans is simply not all about the theology.

Neither is it about the life we live BY faith.

It is about the absolute and total interaction of them both.