The Thursday After

Today’s service is here and the notes are here, the beginning of a 5 part series on the book of Romans.

I’ve experienced Romans as dense, long run-on sentences spawning arcane theological debates (ok, slightly unfair), or at least filled with words I don’t use elsewhere like righteousness, justification and sanctification. Lets see if that’s true.

Some background on Romans:

• The Jews and non-Jewish factions in the church of Rome are really fighting. Paul’s primary purpose in writing is to unify the church.
• Its written late in Paul’s career, so he’s got a lot to say.
• Paul has not been to the church in Rome yet, and can’t refer back to what he said when he was there. So he’s taking extra care to lay it all our clearly.
• Its a really long letter, probably the longest “letter” from the era. At the time, you dictated rough notes to a scribe who would take rough notes on slate. When you were happy the scribe would use neat, small letters to write on parchment. Parchment was made from animal skins by specialists. It was expensive and so you were careful with your words. Paul would have had to have a “sponsor” to financially underwrite the scribe and the parchment (more in the Pen, Parchment and People podcast).

So Paul’s desire for unity is the reason he wrote Romans (and many other letters):

God’s plan is to unite all things in heaven and earth under the banner of Christ (Eph 1:11). If this is the case, then it must be that one of the Devil’s greatest objectives is to produce division.

That is why so many of Paul’s writings have the aim of unity. Galatians, Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Romans all revolve around themes of unity, specifically with regards to the Jew-Gentile issue.

from Bible Project blog: Paul’s Magnum Opus: Romans

Romans has been given big descriptors. This morning Shawn compared it to Mount Everest. The Bible project blog calls it Paul’s Magnum Opus and John Piper calls it The greatest letter ever written.

John Piper was a pastor in Minneapolis for 30+ years. On April 26, 1998, after 15+ years pastoring at a church in Minneapolis, Piper said he felt ready to “climb the mountain” and started to preach a series on Romans, not knowing how long it would take. It took 224 sermons and he finished on December 24, 2006. So the Romans parchment must be dense: it takes about an hour to read Romans, and apparently it takes about 150 hours to explain it adequately. I’ve listened to maybe 20 sermons and there’s good stuff in there. The best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.

What if you don’t have 150 hours?

Check out the Romans overview videos 1-4 (8 mins) and 5-16 (9 mins), masterful as usual. Apparently I am going to have to get used to those hard words like righteousness and justification. Also check out Paul’s Magnum Opus blog.

I was a little overwhelmed this morning, so I wanted to pick one small item: Paul saying he was not ashamed. This felt weird: he’s been doing this a long time, why would he feel ashamed? And for this, I point you to the first of Piper’s 3(!) sermons on Romans 1:16 where he says:

“I am not ashamed” — “in spite of all the cultured Greeks who mock me as preaching foolishness and all the unbelieving Jews who deride me as preaching a false Christ — I am not ashamed of this gospel. Why? ‘For it is the power of God unto salvation.’”

Finally, as an antidote to the experience of Romans I began with, a question to ponder:

The gift of righteousness that Jesus offers cannot be earned, only received. So Paul asks, “Why would we boast?” Consider one way we boast about how “right” we are. How does this dishonor the gift and the giver? What is one way we can practically honor Jesus instead?

from Romans1-4 overview, go deeper question 4

Blessings to you this Lenten season.