Romans Archives - Page 2 of 21

Logos Free Book of the Month for December 2020 – Philip Ryken, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Preaching the Word Commentary Series)

Logos partners with Crossway this month for December’s Free Book of the Month. You can get Philip Graham Ryken commentary on Exodus, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory for free. This is part of the Preaching the Word series. Ryken is a well-known author and eighth president of Wheaton College and former senior minister of Philadelphia’s historic Tenth Presbyterian Church.

The Preach the Word series is intentionally “theologically instructive and decidedly practical.” The series is edited R. Kent Hughes (DMin, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School), senior pastor emeritus of College Church in Wheaton Illinois. In this series, “experienced pastors exemplify expository preaching and provide practical applications. . . this series is known for its commitment to biblical authority, its pastoral tone and focus, and its overall accessibility.”

In addition to the free volume, other individual volumes of the series are discounted:

R. Kent Hughes and Bryan Chapel, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus—To Guard the Deposit, 99 cents
Philip Graham Ryken, Jeremiah and Lamentations: From Sorrow to Hope, $1.99
David Allen, 1–3 John—Fellowship in God’s Family, $2.99
Christoper Ash, Job: The Wisdom of the Cross, $4.99
R. Kent Hughes, Hebrews: An Anchor for the Soul, 2 vols., $6.99
Doug O’Donnell, Matthew: All Authority in Heaven and on Earth, $9.99

For about $28 you can add seven pastoral commentaries to your Logos Library. Not convinced?

There are 39 volumes in the Preaching the Word series (Hebrews is two volumes, so there are 40 physical books), If you ever choose to purchase the entire series from Logos, they will factor these purchase into your final price so you do not have to buy them twice.

As with all Logos books, these commentaries fully utilize the features of Logos Bible Software, including fully searchable text, links to other resources in your library, and robust note taking tools.

These Logos resources are available only until the end of December 2020. Be sure to get these books while you can!

Logos Free Book of the Month for November 2020 – William Hendricksen, Romans

Logos partners with Baker Academic this month for their Free Book of the Month promotion in November. Add William Hendricksen’s commentary on Romans for free to your Logos Library. Originally published in 1981 in two volumes, this commentary reflects a classic Reformed view of Romans and years of preparation. Hendricksen was Professor of New Testament at Calvin Theological Seminary from 1942 to 1952. After Hendricksen died in 1982 Simon Kistemaker (Reformed Theological Seminary) finished the series.

Logos is offering several other commentaries from Baker at deep discounts. The Understanding the Bible Commentary was formerly the New International Biblical Commentary, published by Hendricksen. When Baked acquired the series they renamed it and updated the covers, but as far as I know the content is identical. Although they are brief commentaries, I have always found them quite helpful.

The Teach the Text Commentary Series attempts to bridge the gap between exegetical and devotional commentaries “by utilizing the best of biblical scholarship and providing the information a pastor needs to communicate the text effectively.” Here is a video trailer for the series from Baker Academic.

Donald Hagner, Hebrews (Understanding the Bible Commentary), $1.99
Robert Chisholm, 1 & 2 Samuel (Teach the Text Commentary Series), $2.99
Craig C. Broyles, Psalms (Understanding the Bible Commentary), $3.99
William Hendricksen, John (Hendriksen & Kistemaker New Testament Commentary), $5.99
Edward Curtis, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs (Teach the Text Commentary Series), $7.99
Simon J. Kistemaker, James and the Epistles of John (Hendriksen & Kistemaker New Testament Commentary), $9.99

These Logos resources are available only until the end of November 2020. Be sure to get these books while you can!

The Problem of Sacred Days and Clean Foods – Romans 14:5-9

In Romans 14 Paul is trying to guide congregations to preserve the unity of the body of Christ despite having a wide variety of views on some practices. He mentions two in particular, considering some days sacred and eating some types of foods.

Esteeming one day over another may refer to when the Roman congregations chose to gather. The natural assumption is Jewish Christian congregations continued to worship on the Sabbath. Primarily Gentile congregations met whenever they could, apparently settling on Sunday, the day Jesus rose from the dead.

Eating and abstaining may refer to Jewish food taboos. Again, when a primarily Jewish congregation shared a meal, the food would have been purchased and prepared with attention to cleanliness (i.e., not meat sacrificed to idols, nothing forbidden in Leviticus), etc. Primarily Gentile congregations may not have adopted Jewish food laws, accepting all foods as clean after one gives things for the Lord for the food. However, it is likely some Gentiles did choose to avoid food sacrificed to idols.

What matters for Paul is living one’s life “for the Lord” and not for ourselves. This means the one who is in Christ (a living sacrifice, one who is living in a way that promotes unity in the body of Christ), ought to voluntarily set aside preferences in deference to others.

Voluntarily setting something aside is the key to understanding the principle Paul wants to establish here. Like Jesus, who set aside certain rights he had as a member of the Godhead in order to become human (Phil 2:5-6), so to the member of the body of Christ in the present age must set aside their privileges the may legitimately be owed in order to preserve the unity of the Body of Christ.

Paul is not discussion sinful practices, but what are often called preferences. He is not talking about Gentiles visiting a prostitute (as he is in 1 Corinthians 6), since that is a practice incompatible with being a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. This is the nature of the strong/weak in this passage: the person with weak faith considers eating food to be a mark of spirituality and therefore breaking those convictions would be a sin.

Does this only work one direction? A person who does not eat unclean food cannot “give up” their preferences and eat unclean food to make a Gentile feel comfortable? For example, if a person today is a vegetarian, can they “give up their conviction” and share meat with someone who eats meat? If I were to share a meal with a Seventh-Day Adventist, for example, I would have no problem eating any food they served. But they may have a serious problem eating something I serve. If I have a meal in an Israeli hotel, it is far easier for me to eat kosher than to insist on my rights and have the kitchen make me a bacon-wrapped cheeseburger.

It is far easier for the meat-eater to give up their conviction and eat only vegetables. This is certainly true on a physical level. But more importantly, with respect to convictions, the meat-eater is not violating a principle of their faith, but the vegetarian would be “sinning” with respect to their own world view.

There is a clear application of this principle for the modern church. I think there are some easy examples: If a member of congregation prefers one style of music for worship, they ought to be able to set that preference aside in order to reach people for Jesus Christ.

But I can imagine other situations which would make some Christians more uncomfortable. Could a pastor drink a beer with someone in order to not make a beer drinking member of their congregation comfortable? What about a pastor trying to reach a person in the south who is offered a wad of chewing tobacco. Could they accept the offer without violating their conscience? It is critically important to observe Paul is talking about practices which are not important for salvation in the present age nor is he talking about sinful practices (even if the weaker brother thinks they might be).

Both the weak and the strong are believers, and both are welcome in Christian worship and fellowship. For Paul, these are not matters to divide churches or break fellowship over. What are some problems you have encountered trying to find the right balance between preferences in local congregations?

Who are the Weak and Strong in Romans 14?

Although it is possible Paul includes this section as a general commentary on how Jews and Gentiles ought to get along in mixed congregations, it is likely he has heard something about a specific conflict in the house churches in Rome. He describes some of the believers as weak and others as strong and admonishes the strong to not pass judgment on the weak.

Who are the “strong and weak” in this passage?

Most commonly, the “weak” are legalists and the “strong” are those that are not trying to “earn” status by their good works. This view has been eroded by the New Perspective on Paul, since it may not be the case that Jews in the first century say themselves as earning their salvation.

After surveying several options, Cranfield concludes the weak are those who desire to continue to observe the ceremonial law of the Old Testament. If this is the case, it is a similar situation to the Gentiles in Galatia who are being encouraged to fully convert to Judaism in order to follow Jesus.

It is possible this weak/strong discussion is an extension of the “meat sacrificed to idols” problem in 1 Corinthians, as suggested by Mark Reasoner. If so, then the weak might be the Jew, and the strong the Gentile. This suggestion has some merit since Paul wrote Romans from Corinth after the period of conflict had come to a close (after 2 Corinthians). It is possible his experience with the Corinthian believers colors his comments to the Romans who may be struggling with similar issues.

Paul Jewett draws attention to a brief exchanged in Horace in which one character does not wish to speak on the Sabbath because he is “a small man of weakness, one of many” (Jewett, Romans, 834; Horace Sat. 1.9.67–72). Reasoner used this line to argue “the person excessively observant in a foreign religion who matched the ‘weak’ caricature was known to Horace’s audience.” (Reasoner, 54).

What has always impressed me about this passage is that Paul never really says the weak are Jewish and the Gentiles are the strong. That may be what Paul is saying, but our post-Reformation reading of the text tends to obscure Paul’s subtle rhetoric. It is possible a Jewish Christian might hear “we who are strong ought to bear the failings of the weak” (Rom 15:1) as meaning, “we Jews who are strong and keep the law properly ought not to look down on the weak Gentiles who have not fully understood the Gospel yet.” But it is also possible a Gentile would hear Paul saying “We strong Gentiles who fully understand the grace of God should not look down on these weak Jews who insist on Old Covenant practices.”

Regardless of the practices of the weak, their faith is sufficient for Paul to consider them to be Christians. He does not tell the Roman congregations to expel them from the church like the young man in 1 Corinthians 5, nor does he admonish them like he the wealthy in 1 Corinthians 11:17-22. Both the weak and the strong are Christians and equally a part of the Christian community. Both are equally welcome at a communal meal where the Lord’s Table is being celebrated.

This issue has important ramifications for Christian fellowship in the present church. Churches often draw lines where they should not, or fail to draw lines when they should. Are there people who are often excluded from fellowship because of some practice (or non-practice)?

Bibliography: Mark Reasoner, The Strong and the Weak: Romans 14:1-15:13 in Context (SNTSMS 103; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Romans 12:1 and the Scapegoat

Paul uses a metaphor for the Christian life in this verse: the “in Christ” people are to be like “living sacrifices” to God. This is a metaphor that a Roman, Greek, or Jew would fully understand. Typically a sacrifice is killed on the altar, but here Paul says that the sacrifice acceptable to God in the present age is to remain alive.

Nobuyoshi Kiuchi suggested that the background for this living sacrifice that is holy and acceptable to the Lord is the Hebrew Bible, specifically the Azazel-goat in Leviticus 16:10-22. As a part of the Day of Atonement ritual, two goats were selected. One would be sacrificed, the other was “presented alive.”

As the high Priest laid his hands on the goat he confessed the sins of the people and the goat was released “into the wilderness” or “for Azazel.” The Mishnah reports he would say to the goat: “Bear our sins and be gone!” (Yoma 6.4). As Kiuchi points out, this is the only sacrifice for sin in the Hebrew Bible that is a “living sacrifice.” The tradition that the goat was pushed over a cliff and killed comes from the Mishnah and is not found in Leviticus.

A potential problem for Kiuchi is that the Azazel-goat is never called a living sacrifice in Second Temple literature. In the Mishnah and other texts it is the “sent-away goat” since it represents the sin of the people being carried away into the wilderness. While Kiuchi suggests that Paul’s allusion to the Azazel-goat is intended to draw attention to Leviticus rather that contemporary practice (p. 259), it is hard to see how this is helpful for unpacking the metaphor since it is Jesus that bears away the sin of the believers. Jesus is the “living sacrifice” who solved the problem of sin and human estrangement from God. In this view of the metaphor, the sacrificed goat would be Jesus and the believer is the “living sacrifice.”

The solution is to see the sacrifice in Romans 12:1 as a reference to the new life of the believer in Christ. From a Gentile perspective, living a morally virtuous life is of more value than the worthless dead sacrifices happening in the temples. Even if the Jewish sacrifices are in mind, a life that is lived as a “spiritual form of worship” is better than the daily sacrifice in the Temple.

One aspect of this metaphor of a living sacrifice that is rarely mentioned is the fact that the early Church had virtually no ritual elements compared to other ancient religious movements. Christians did not go to a temple to sacrifice to their god like virtually everyone else in the world at that time. Paul says here that the acceptable sacrifices are not animals, but the worshipers themselves.

How would person living in the first generation of the Church actually go about being a “living sacrifice”?

How radical is this calling that Paul describes here?

Bibliography: Kiuchi, Nobuyoshi. “Living like the Azazel-goat in Romans 12:1B,” Tyndale Bulletin 57 (2006): 251-61.