I’ll be studying
the book of Romans later this year when I head back to Durham, so I thought I
should read it through now and write about it – because writing helps me
articulate my thoughts. I hope to be posting up my thoughts on short passages as
I’m going through the epistle, since it is a relatively long one. I’ll try to
keep my references to external resources limited, and focus on observation. Hence,
what follows are my thoughts rather than definitive interpretation. (Also, I’ll
be making reference to the ESV version, and I’m still practising my
paragraphing.)
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Paul uses ‘called’
three times in this passage (v1, 6, 7) – the first time referring to himself, with
the latter two referring to the Romans – in regards to belonging to Christ. Knowing
that ‘calling’ can be a tricky term which is overused in modern Christian
circles, it would be interesting to see how Paul develops this idea throughout
the book.
In verses 2 – 4,
Paul expands on ‘the gospel of God’ (v1). It consists of two main ideas: 1)
this gospel was ‘promised beforehand through his prophets and in the holy
Scriptures;’ 2) it concerns his Son. Regarding point 1) it will be worth paying
attention as to how Paul fleshes out this idea. About 2), Paul then chooses to
highlight two aspects of the Son: 1) he was ‘descended from David according to
the flesh;’ 2) he was ‘declared to be the Son of God in power according to the
Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.’ We have two ‘according to’
and they seem to be contrasting – ‘flesh’ vs ‘Spirit.’ I’m not sure what
‘flesh’ means at this point, perhaps Paul will develop this idea later in his
epistle.
A few
interesting ideas in v4 hinge on Jesus being ‘declared to be the Son of God […]
by his resurrection from the dead,’ – we could ask: in what sense is this
statement true? Was Jesus not already the Son of God prior to his resurrection?
And what is the Spirit’s role? I don’t have answers, but I suspect they are somewhere
in the Old Testament (perhaps Psalm 2?).
Verse 5 picks up
from v3 ‘concerning his Son,’ where Paul tells the Romans that grace and his
apostleship are from Christ, and that his purpose is to ‘bring about the
obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.’ So the missionary’s
job description according to Paul here is 1) elicit ‘obedience of faith’ and 2)
for Jesus’ global glory. Paul doesn’t explain what kind of obedience this is, so
we’ll have to wait. With regards to point 2, this echoes the OT theme of people
knowing God (cf. Isaiah 49:26; Ezekiel 36:38 as examples).
To conclude an
already brief post, Paul establishes the nature of his apostleship (commission,
content –‘the gospel of God’ – and purpose) to Roman Christians. Everything seems
to centre on Jesus Christ. An obvious takeaway would be that Christ must be the
centre of any gospel message, because God’s gospel is concerning his Son. I
think it was Greidanus was said that it’s not enough that our sermons be
God-centred, they must be Christ-centred. That’s striking and I know not
everyone will agree. Also, another important point is that this gospel is not
about us; it is ‘for the sake of [Christ’s] name among all the nations.’ It is
easy to shift the focus of the Christian message from being Christ-exalting to
people-exalting, especially in our narcissistic culture. Let’s not fall into
that trap.
