Reading Romans Backwards: A Spirit Creating Peace (pt 2)
Notes
Transcript
Reading Romans Backwards:
Reading Romans Backwards:
12-16 A Community Needing Peace
McKnight begins with Romans 12–16, foregrounding the problems that beleaguered the house churches in Rome. Beginning with the end places readers right in the middle of a community deeply divided between the strong and the weak, each side dug in on their position. The strong assert social power and privilege, while the weak claim an elected advantage in Israel’s history.
To speak peace over this community of real people in a real place. Calling them to the gospel that will not only bring them redemption, but reconciliation. Bringing together the strong and the weak, the Gentile believers AND the Jewish ones.
What would it look like to walk through the book of Romans, keeping in mind that we too, with all of our varying viewpoints and different life experiences, can actually be part of the beauty of what the gospel brings.
Redemption AND reconciliation!
9-11 A Narrative Leading to Peace
big themes of Romans 9–11—God’s unfailing, but always surprising, purposes and the future of Israel—to reveal Paul’s specific and pastoral message for both the weak and the strong in Rome.
God chooses. God blesses. God is merciful.
Choosing, blessing and having mercy, all for the purpose of redemption and reconciliation.
1-4 A Torah Interrupting Peace
McKnight shows how the widely regarded “universal” sinfulness of Romans 1–4, which is so often read as simply an abstract soteriological scheme, applies to a particular rhetorical character’s sinfulness and has a polemical challenge.
Paul makes use of the Stereotype, a Rhetorical Turn and anticipated Questions … all addressed to those “dearly loved by God and called to be God’s people” - to the very people who are A Community in need of peace - in need of both redemption and reconcilation!
5-8 A Spirit Creating Peace
equally levels the ground with the assertion that both groups, once trapped in a world controlled by sin, flesh, and systemic evil, can now live a life in the Spirit. In Paul’s letter, no one gets off the hook but everyone is offered God’s grace.
These chapters in the middle of the letter invite us to take a cosmic look at the story that Paul thinks is the only one worth telling. A story that begins with Adam and stretches all the way until the kingdom is here in full. From creation all the way to the new creation.
There is really just one story Paul wants to tell.
One story that Paul keeps returning to over and over again. And insists that those who want to follow Jesus must make the central story for themselves as well.
In chapters 5-7, Paul tells the story he think matters most.
And then Paul suggests that his audience has already enacted and entered into this story in Baptism.
This week, we finish our journey through this letter with Romans chapter 8. A glorious conclusion at the heart of this letter. One in which Paul will present 2 realities.
Reality 1: In the death & resurrection of Jesus, everything in the universe changed. (already)
Reality 2: God, in Jesus, and by His Spirit, is reconciling all things. (in process)
So the work of God in creation is both complete and in process. It’s already. And it’s not yet.
And living in a world in which both of those things are true at the same time is challenging. And often, we are tempted to pick one of the two and go with that. But that will always be incomplete and will not solve the tension.
We are saved. We are also being saved.
We are redeemed. We are also being redeemed.
We are made holy. We are also (very much still in process) of being made holy.
Let’s let Paul speak for himself. Would you stand as we read Romans 8 together? Notice as we begin how Paul is addressing “all” - not just the weak or the strong, but all, and even using “we” language once he gets going.
Romans 8
1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. 6 To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. 7 For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed, it cannot, 8 and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
In this first part of chapter 8, Paul expands on what we heard him do last week… extending out the “two ways” - the way that leads to death and the way that leads to life. The way of Adam. And the Way of Christ…that is living by the Spirit.
But now there’s a shift. Paul will move from speaking about All and address You and We… moving from general “this is how it is” to “You. We…”
9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, then the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.
12 So then, brothers and sisters, we are obligated, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh—13 for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15 For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
You. We. You… all of you. Strong, weak. Jewish and Gentile believers, CHILDREN.
And not just children, but heirs. With Christ.
Suffering with Christ, that we may also be glorified with him.
He goes on…
18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God, 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its enslavement to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor, 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees?
25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? 33 Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?
Romans 8:36–39 (NRSVue)
36 As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”
37 No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Reality 1: In the death & resurrection of Jesus, everything in the universe changed. (already)
Reality 2: God, in Jesus, and by His Spirit, is reconciling all things. (in process)
We are God’s children.
We are heirs. Co-heirs with Christ.
To glory, and to suffering.
If we want to know how glory and suffering go together,
we study the life of Jesus.
We see how His life was lived.
We encounter Jesus, who reveals to us that
God has made a promise of redemption and reconciliation.
God decided from the very beginning to shape the lives of his children
along the same lines as the life of His firstborn Son.
People have sometimes used this chapter, especially vs 28, to avoid acknowledging the both/and of the two realities. When pain and difficulties comes, they put all their eggs in the “Reality #1” basket and claim that in Christ, everything is changed and so “it’s all good”… even when, very clearly, not everything is good.
What if this chapter, instead, is speaking about God being present IN us,
helping in our suffering
midwifing the birth of the likeness of Christ in us, which is our flourishing,
and midwifing the new heaven and the new earth
that we might see the flourishing of the entire creation?
Our deepest longing is for flourishing - and it turns out that is also God’s deep desire and COMMITMENT. To transform us into the image of Christ, and to redeem and reconcile the whole creation.
But so often, we distract ourselves by living as though suffering is avoidable.
We see this expressed in our culture’s obsession with having what we want, having it now, and even in that sense of “deserving” to have everything we desire.
But even more dangerous, we sometimes assume that being rendered wordless or inarticulate is somehow a signal of God’s absence or inactivity.
We fear that in our weakness or struggle we have been left alone.
That if God were present, that if God were active,
we would not be experiencing the difficult reality we face.
Have you ever experienced two conflicting realities at once?
A reality that is somehow already true, already real, but also not yet?
I cannot read Romans 8 the same way since giving birth to Mack and Brendan.
The metaphor of pregnancy and childbirth is found, not only here in Romans 8, but all throughout scripture.
Each of us does have personal experience with the metaphor of childbirth.
You see, whether we remember it or not, we have each been born.
None of us got here any other way.
So this metaphor belongs to all of us. To each of us.
So this morning, whether you’ve ever given birth yourself, attended a birth in some way,
or, whether you’ve entered into the mystery of birthing something new into the world in another way, seeing an idea through until it becomes a reality. A work of art, a book, an organization, a company...
We’ve all experienced this metaphor in various forms.
We experience it now because we live in the tension of two realities: a reality in process, an already but not yet.
Reality 1: In the death & resurrection of Jesus, everything in the universe changed. (already)
Reality 2: God, in Jesus, and by His Spirit, is reconciling all things. (in process)
And rather than collapsing these realities, or choosing just one to focus on, what if, we held onto the tensions that Paul has been holding all through the letter?
The tension of redemption AND reconcilition
The tension of Jewish AND Gentile believers as God’s dearly loved children, and co-heirs with Christ.
The tension the suffering AND the glory by which are being transformed into the likeness of Christ
The tension of God being present in our wordless struggle AND in the moments when we can articulate and joyfully engage and praise for the way we can see the goodness of God.
The tension of experiencing hard or even horrific things AND seeing the ways in which God’s hand has providing for us.
The tension of belonging to people with whom we disagree AND of celebrating the way God works through people unlike us.
Redemption AND reconciliation. Of us. And of all of creation.
God as redeemer and reconciler. God as companion, helper and midwife.
I love how Eugene Peterson paraphrases vs 26-28:
26-28 Meanwhile, the moment we get tired in the waiting, God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don’t know how or what to pray, it doesn’t matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.
This is the peace that Paul knows will bring about the redemption AND the reconciliation of the community of housechurches in Rome.
This is the message he sends with Phoebe, to deliver to the Weak and Strong alike.
That God is committed to making His children look like Jesus. And so whatever comes their way, including suffering, can all be used for that purpose. Nothing wasted.
No condemnation. No judging one another. But instead, inviting one another to the Table.
Living out of the new identity in Jesus, the story, enacted and entered into in their baptism.
Drawing on the ancient ways in which God chose Abraham and then celebrating how God has been choosing and blessing and showing mercy all along.
Redeemed yes.
And reconciled - not just to God, but also to one another.
As the Body of Christ.
And for the sake of the whole world. Just like our co-heir Jesus.
May God do in us what we have seen Paul describe God doing in the early churches meeting in Rome.
Romans 1:7 (NIV)
7 To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be his holy people: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I close with the words Paul finished his letter with… the last words Phoebe delivered as she visited each of the housechurches in Rome…
25 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 forever through Jesus Christ! Amen.
Prayer - as Barb and the team come… we’ll take some time to pray now, with silence, with song and with words… let’s sing together...
“Spirit of the Living God”