|
|
|
Home
About Us
Spiritual Growth
Training and Support Store
Donations
Contact Us
|
Romans 1:1-7:
The scripture for today is Romans 1:1-7. This is the salutation of this letter to the church in Rome. Like all standard salutations of letters written in the Greco-Roman world at this time, it includes the three basic ingredients: the name of the sender (“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ” – vs. 1), the recipient’s name (“to all God’s beloved in Rome” – vs. 7a), and a brief greeting (“Grace to you and peace” – vs. 7b). But Paul transforms this conventional form by turning the salutation into a summary of the contents of the letter, a mini-treatise on God’s providence as manifested through the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Paul states that he has been chosen by God to be the means of bringing the gospel to the Gentile world. But the gospel he is bringing is not something new. It is the old gospel that is conveyed through “holy scriptures,” (i.e., the Old Testament) about God’s redemptive work in our midst through his son, “Jesus Christ our Lord”. The appropriate response to Jesus – the response God wants from all people – is “obedience of faith”, especially “among all Gentiles”. Saving faith is therefore a life lived in submission to God.
The entire greeting, though, reaches its climax in its closing verse (vs. 7). “To all God’s beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
The words “grace and peace” have become a greeting and a fond wish to people that I and many others use in our letters and e-mails. But it is rich with meaning. “Grace” (“charis”) is comparable to the Hebrew word “chesedh”, which we explored in Isaiah 54:1-17 (Wed., March 9). Chesedh, of course, means “redemptive, unconditional love” – the saving work of God. And “peace” (“eirene”) means “shalom” – society as God intended it to be, living in justice, unity, prosperity and freedom from conflict. Thus, when Paul wished the Roman Christians “grace and peace”, he was wishing for them to be living in God’s shalom community as God’s redeemed, blessing and caring for each other, and working for the transformation as “Christ-ones” of the world of Roman imperialism!
Romans 5:1-21:
Today’s scripture is Romans 5:1-21. In this passage, Paul expands much more fully on the concept of grace he introduced in 1:7. In 5:12-21, he points out how God’s forgiving, redeeming grace has come upon us through “the one man, Jesus Christ”. He then concludes his exposition of grace with the powerful words, “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, just as sin exercised dominion in death, so grace might exercise dominion through justification leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (5:20b-21).
But I particularly want to concentrate upon the opening lines of Romans 5:
Therefore, since we are justified y faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. (5:1-2)
Paul begins by stating, as an accomplished reality of life, that we are already justified by faith. The Greek tense used here is stating a completed state of action – something that God had already done even before we chose to believe. The work of redemption has already been done by Christ on the cross, and has been accomplished once and for all. It never needs to happen again. It is an accomplished act, a completed state of action in which all believers can be fully confident.
Because God’s act of redemption is already done and need not be done again in order to be efficacious to us, then “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ”. The text is not saying that we, as those who have received God’s mercy, are responsible to make peace, to build the shalom community. It is instead saying that “peace”, like “grace”, is an accomplished act on God’s part, and we become “peace-makers” by becoming “peace-absorbing”, accepting shalom as a gift of grace from God to be both received by us and allowing that peace to so permeate the infuse us that we become “peace-makers”, “peace-distributors” to the world!
Romans 14:1-23:
Today’s scripture is Romans 14:1-23. This chapter deals with the conflict in the Roman church between Gentile Christians and Jewish Christians over dietary regulations and restrictions. Paul’s basic position is that the divisions of Christians over diet or religious days or any other regulation is missing the whole point of being Christian. It is majoring in the minors while minoring in the majors! Worse, to judge other Christians over such issues is intolerable. Paul’s argument concludes with these powerful words:
The kingdom of God is not (about) food and drink, but (about) righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. The one who thus serves Christ is acceptable to God and has human approval. Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbringing. (14:17-19)
Paul is saying that what Christian faith is all about is being right before God and each other (“righteousness”), living in and as the shalom community of justice, economic equality and relationship with God and each other (“peace”), and being filled and used by the Holy Spirit for the purpose for which we have been created (“joy in the Holy Spirit”). It is only compromised by quarrels over food and drink (or whatever are the differences of the day). Christian ethics is about being “pleasing (the NRSV translates the word as “acceptable”) to God”. Therefore, if one is not being responsible and loving in his actions, then such contention about the “minors” we see as major is not even permissible, and is the opposite of acting in faith!
2 Corinthians 13:5-12:
Our scripture for today is II Cor. 13:5-12. It divides into two parts: closing instructions (vss. 5-10) and final greetings (vss. 11-12). In vss. 5-10, Paul reminds the Christians that they are the body of Christ, indwelt by Jesus. Therefore, act like Christ’s body! Make both your actions and your relationships with each other consistent with whom you claim you are. What Paul prays for is that these Christians “may become perfect” (i.e., more Christ-like in their treatment of each other and in their living out of their faith).
Paul’s final greeting is built around one central statement: “live in peace and the God of peace will be with you” (13:11b). Paul is not simply saying, “Just get along with each other.” Using “eirene” to capture the full meaning of “shalom,” what he is actually saying is, “Live as people of God’s kingdom – maintaining a vital relationship with him and each other, working for justice in public life and exercising your finances in ways that center on the empowerment of the poor and the elimination of poverty from your society.” “Live in peace”. And if you do, then “the God of love and peace will be with you!”
Galatians 5:13-26:
Our scripture for today is Galatians 5:13-26. At first, it seems to be two “grocery lists” of the fruits of the flesh and the fruits of the Spirit. But it is actually far more than that.
The passage begins with Paul’s call to the Galatian Christians (and to all of us) to live in the responsible freedom to which we are called by God. His argument goes like this. As long as you lived under the Jewish Law, you were enslaved by the strictures of the Law. But whereas the Jewry of his day was tied up in the observance of all the “jot and tittles” of the Law, in reality the Law can be summaried in just one statement: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). All the regulations and strictures of the Law that end up binding a person were all created in order to enable people to justly “love their neighbor as themselves”.
So why not just cut to the quick? Don’t allow yourself to be tied up by all the Law’s rules and regulations. You have now been set free through Christ’s embrace of you and your returning embrace to simply live life centered on your neighbor and his shalom! And by being so centered, you are creating with him or her a new community – the shalom community.
So, live in that freedom! Act out that freedom in your life together. You have been liberated from the Law, but that now brings you new responsibilities toward your neighbor. And that is true freedom – not freedom from, but freedom to, not simply liberation but the assumption of a new responsibility to build God’s community.
Then Paul gets very, very specific (5:16-26). The bottom line to Paul is that the freedom we receive in Christ is for the purpose of building the new community of Christ (see above). The “works of the flesh” that Paul lists – fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, ange4r, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing – all of these destroy the fabric of community life. Allowing any of these actions or attitudes in the Christian community will begin to destroy that community if not confronted and dealt with immediately by the community.
But the antidote to these “works of the flesh” is to live in harmony with God’s Spirit (5:22-26). In contrast to the many works of the flesh, any one of which threatens the well-being of the community, there is one work of the Spirit (note that it is not plural but singular – verse 22). That work is the Spirit invading, claiming and shaping our lives. That work of the Spirit in you and me manifests itself in nine ways – through our actions and attitudes of love toward each other and all humanity, through joy, the acting out of shalom, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Thus, Paul concludes, “If we live by the Spirit (and the Greek implies, “and of course, we do”), let us also be guided by the Spirit” (5:25). And such guidance will be manifested in the works of the Spirit he has just listed both in each of our lives and in the community itself.
Ephesians 2:11-22:
Today’s scripture is Eph. 2:11-22. The word “eirene” is used four times in this passage – in verses 14, 15 and twice in 17. In essence, Paul is declaring here that Gentiles and Jews were irretrievably divided by a “wall” of “hostility” – eternally separated from one another. What Paul is likely making reference to was the literal war in the Temple that separated the Court of the Gentiles from the Court of Israel. On the Gentile wall, a sign was affixed warning Gentiles that to enter the Court of Israel would mean death! Paul is taking this very literal barrier and using it as a means to examine the deep division that lies between Jew and Gentile that is even greater than the division between male and female, slave and free.
But now, Christ Jesus “has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us, . . . that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making shalom” (2:14-15). This, God has done by “reconciling both groups to God in one body through the cross” (vs. 16). Thus, it is in Jesus that the two eternally hostile powers on earth have been made through Christ’s atoning work into one new creation, the Church – the community of faith or the shalom community!
So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. (2:19-20)