Epistle to the Romans

Romans 13:1-7 – Paul and Occupy Wall Street (Part 2)

In the previous post, I showed that Paul commands obedience to the government.  I pointed out that the Roman government at the time was as oppressive as any in history and permitted any number of practices that we modern American Christians would not put up with more a moment.  Yet Paul said quite clearly that the Christian was to submit to the government because it was God’s appointed minister of justice!

I think that over all the Occupy Wall Street is a law-abiding and legal protest.  Most of the time the people involved work with city officials, obtain permits, etc.  The issue that they are raising is important as well – America is incredibly rich and ought to do more to care for the less-wealthy.  There is no way anyone in America should be hungry, malnourished, uneducated, or lack access to health care.

Despite the fat that Paul says to obey the government in Romans 13, I am not as happy with the  solution offered by the OWS, that the government do something to spread the wealth.  It is not a capitalist / socialist issue, it is a matter of responsibility.  The responsibility party for caring for the poor in a society is not the government, but rather the Church.  As I read Romans 13, I see nothing about the government providing a social safety net, only that they ought to enforce law and keep the peace.  The church is to care for the poor and needy, so that there are no more poor and needy.

I hinted at the end of the last post that Paul did in fact have rather subversive plan to reverse the evils of the Empire.  Like Jesus, Paul is interested in transforming people from death to life.  These members of the new creation will then transform society.  Paul was interested in caring for the poor and underclass, and the followers of Jesus modeled their meetings after the table fellowship of Jesus himself.  All shared food and fellowship equally.  That all are equal in the Body of Christ is amazingly subversive in a society which was predicated on social strata and inequality.

An example of the sort of subversive action which had an impact on poverty in the early church is found in 1 Clement 55.  In this letter written at the end of the first century, Clement praises Gentile Christians who have risked plague in order to save fellow citizens, allowed themselves to be imprisoned to redeem others, and sold themselves into slavery in order to feed the poor.   I cannot imagine anyone in the twenty-first century taking out a second mortgage and donating the money to a local inner city ministry that cares for the poor.  Someone may have done this, but it is exceedingly rare.

I think the church does a good job on social issues, but given the wealth flowing through most American churches, so much more could be done.  I am not necessarily talking about throwing money at the problem.  There are many creative low-cost efforts to relieve the conditions which cause poverty.  What would happen if the Church dedicated itself to solving poverty in the inner cities of America instead of building big glass churches? What if a single mega-church dedicated their offerings to poverty relief rather than building improvements?  What if we spent as much on helping African orphans as we do on the sound systems for our churches?

What Paul started in Acts 13 brought down the Rome.

Romans 8:1-13 – The Power for Sanctification

According to Romans 8:1, “There is no condemnation for the believer in Christ Jesus” because God himself has met the righteous requirements of the law through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.  Paul has already used the noun κατάκριμα (katakrima, an intensification of the more common noun κρίμα) in 5:18, the trespass on one man led to the “condemnation” of all men, but now “in Christ” there is “no condemnation.”  The word has the sense being under a judgment for breaking the Law and is often translated “justice.”  To “do justice” is to treat people fairly with respect to the law, usually the word has a negative connotation.  To “bring someone to justice” means make them face the penalty for breaking the Law.

But for those who are in Christ, there the Law no longer condemns because the “Law of the Spirit of life” sets the believer free from the “Law of sin and death.”  I think Paul is intentionally using language which evokes the coming New Age of the Spirit anticipated by the prophets.  The Old Covenant was broken by God’s people, so in the coming age God will make a New Covenant and enable his people to keep the New Covenant through the Holy Spirit.  Texts like Jeremiah 33:31-33 indicate that the messianic age would be an age of the Holy Spirit.  By combining “no condemnation” and the “Law of the Spirit,” Paul is claiming that the future, messianic age in some ways began with the death and resurrection of Jesus.  The Spirit of God is at work in the ones who are “in Christ” so that we are the beginnings of the eschatological age.  I do not think this exhausts those prophecies, rather, we live in the “already” and look forward to the “not yet” of the consummation of God’s plan (Eph 1:20-22).

In fact, the requirements of the law are met in us (8:4).   This is done through the death of Jesus Christ, who was the perfect God-Man.  His voluntary death on the cross fulfills the requirements of the law.  In the present age, Paul says, we participate in a state of “no condemnation.”  This is a foretaste of what God was planning from the very beginning when condemnation first came upon the human race.  “Paul deliberately recalls the once-for-allness of the eschatological indicative, the opening of the new epoch effected by Christ.” (Dunn, Romans, 1:415.)

How one lives by the Spirit is the subject of the rest of Chapter 8.   There are therefore two “mind-sets” possible, the believer ought to have the mind-set of the Spirit (8:5-8).   The mind of the sinful nature is set on what that sinful nature desires; it cannot submit to God’s law, it is hostile to God, it cannot please God.  The result of this mind set is death.  On the other hand, those that walk by the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires, and by implication they are able to submit to God and they are able to please him.  The result of this mind set is life and peace.

What is “the Righteousness of God”? Romans 1:17

The original meaning of the δικ- word group was “that which was customary,” but was used to describe what was right in judicial cases.  It was used in the sense of “judgement, lawsuit, trial, and penalty.”  In the Greco-Roman world, the word was used for fairness in a court of law.  One was “righteous” if one behaved in accordance with Roman Law. One is righteous in the Greco-Roman usage of the word.

Judge's GavelBut the Greek Old Testament regularly translates the Hebrew word צַדִּיק (tzadik) with δικαιοσύνη.  This word can refer to both behavior and administrative justice, and to both individuals and to groups.  Occasionally the LXX translates חֶסֶד (hesed) with righteousness (Gen 20:13, for example).  It is hard to overestimate the importance of hesed in the theology of the Hebrew Bible. The word refers to the covenant loyalty of God who keeps his promises and does “loving kindness” toward his people.  The word “righteous” in the Hebrew Bible therefore refers to a proper relationship rather than a legal status. One does righteousness in the Hebrew Bible use of the word.

Is Paul using the word as a Jewish writer might, in the light of the Hebrew Bible, or is Paul using the word the way a Greek or Roman might?  The classic view of Paul is that he is developing a legal metaphor for salvation.  Justification means that the believer is “declared righteous” legally in God’s court; legally he is made righteous.  For example, according to Cranfield, there is “no doubt” that Paul means “to acquit” rather than moral transformation by this word group (Romans 1:95).

For many representatives of the New Perspective on Paul, however, this is a good example of a case where Paul’s Jewish background is important (for example, James Dunn, Romans 1:40). Paul does not necessarily want to evoke a Roman Court scene in the minds of his readers at all.  What he wants them to hear in the word is the character of God in the Hebrew Bible as righteous and faithful.

This is far from an arcane argument among biblical scholars hoping to sell a few books. This verse is the main theme of Romans – God’s righteousness is being revealed from heaven in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The rest of Romans is going to be an exposition of the righteousness of God.  If the traditional view is correct, then the focus of the gospel is on our legal declaration of righteousness. If Dunn and others are correct, we might read this line as saying “God’s covenant loyalty and faithfulness is being revealed.”  The Gospel is therefore about God’s character, the focus is on how he has acted in history to reveal his character.

Romans 4 – Abraham, Faith, and Obedience

In a paper read at the 2010 Regional ETS Meeting in Cincinnati, Tim Gombis described Romans 4 as the “last holdout against the new perspective.”  Since I have recently given a brief overview of the New Perspective on Paul I will not repeat that material here.  Briefly, the New Perspective thinks that most of Pauline scholarship has missed Paul’s point by assuming that Judaism was a “works-for-salvation” religion.  Paul’s emphasis on grace not works, so the traditional Reformation view of Paul is that one is justified, or “declared righteous,” by faith, not by works.  Gombis made the point in his paper that an unfortunate legacy of “our reformation heritage” is “faith versus obedience.”  This is a good point, faith and obedience ought not be polar opposites.  In fact, in Paul’s letters, these faith and obedience are finely balanced.

Paul uses an analogy from Genesis, a story that would have been familiar to all his readers, the life of Abraham.  Cranfield says that the purpose of chapter four is to “confirm the truth of what was said in the first part of 3:27, that men are justified by faith and not works” (Romans, 1:224).  Abraham is used as an example because he was a paradigm of faith for the Jew, but he expressed that faith prior to circumcision.  He is therefore also a paradigm of faith for the Gentile.  If the faithful Abraham was not justified by his works, then no man could possibly be justified by works.  Abraham is the most obvious possible objection to the teaching of 3:27, that there can be boasting because one is keeping the Law.

Paul points out that Abraham was considered righteous before he was circumcised, and therefore could not be said to be righteous on the basis of works of the Law.  Genesis 15:6 may be the exact verse to which a Jewish opponent would appeal to try to show that Abraham was an example of one who could boast in their own righteousness.  Paul’s point is that with Abraham’s faith was “reckoned” to him as righteousness long before the Law was given.

The verb λογίζομαι (logizomai) has the meaning of reckoning or evaluating, and was used for determining the amount of a debt (Demosthenes Or. 27, 46).  But this meaning dates well before the New Testament era and may not be the background Paul has in mind.  More fruitful is the use of the verb in the Septuagint.  The LXX uses λογίζομαι to translate חשב, which is normally translated as “think, account,” but usually with the sense of “hold in high esteem.”  In Genesis 15:6 (quoted by Paul in Romans 4:3), the word is use to say that Abraham’s faith was considered to be as righteousness. The word is occasionally used in a “legal” context – Psalm 32:2 is perhaps the best example, but 2 Sam 19:20 has the same sense.

Heidland makes the point that there was nothing intrinsically good about the faith of Abraham, it is only because it please God that his faith was considered to be righteousness.  This is in contrast to the view of the Jews of the first century who saw Abraham’s faith as meritorious (TDNT 4:284-92).  For example, 1 Maccabees 2:51-52 says “Call to remembrance what acts our fathers did in their time; so shall ye receive great honor and an everlasting name. Was not Abraham found faithful in temptation, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness?”

It is Paul that gives the word a theological meaning in the New Testament.  Paul uses the word in Romans 4 and in Galatians 3:6 to described God’s declaration on the believer in Christ, making him righteous.  This is the crux of salvation, moving the believer from death to life.  But this does not mean that Paul did not think that obedience was not necessary.  On the contrary,  like most Jews in the first century, Paul thought that one was right with God because God has done a gracious act  of salvation.  But the natural response to that salvation was obedience.  Since Abraham believed, he was declared righteous, and the only response possible was total obedience to the will of God.

I think that this balance may help to temper legalism or total libertine freedom in the church today.  Neither is particularly helpful, nor are they scriptural.