Stuck in Romans 11
Romans is Paul’s theological masterpiece. He gets into it in Romans, and like the genius rabbi and Pharisee of the Pharisees he is, he puts out a challenge even Pharisee graduate student might find difficult. Paul’s Letter to the Romans can be heavy going, but that doesn’t say it’s not worth the effort.
Paul is white-hot passionate about his topic, the implications of a recent incident in Jerusalem involving a crucified Messianic contender, whose followers are going about everywhere “turning the world upside down.” That’s all this was to Paul, the Pharisee and persecutor of Christians—all it was till he himself was confronted by the Contender on that road to Damascus. Saying it was an earthquake of the spirit barely describes the impact of the experience. It was more like a theological asteroid colliding with his world and rearranging it, as well as everything he was as a person.
Later, and after years spent studying and gaining understanding of this new way of looking at reality, he began to see himself as dead!
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me,” he writes (Gal 2: 20 KJV). This is way beyond things are different now. What Paul the Pharisee, the persecutor had not done earlier was check out the claim made by Jesus of Nazareth, the one he now knew as the Christ, the one who rose from the dead.
Have you been confronted with the resurrection story? When was that? Three-year-old Sunday school maybe? Later, as a young adult? The resurrection of Christ can be tucked away in a mental file labeled DOCTRINES OF THE CHURCH.
Okay, let the church deal with that. It’s not my problem becomes an easy fix. Another easy fix is to ignore the whole thing.
But if Jesus rose from the dead, that means he’s alive. Right now. It that’s the case, he can be looked for . . . looked for and found. Paul could have checked out that “Ask, seek, knock” business Jesus talked about and expected actual answers, discoveries and opening doors.
But Paul was a Pharisee. To him, even the thought seemed blasphemous. Talk to the crucified man? The very notion would either have blazed a Pharisee’s indignation or caused him to write off the notion as nonsense. But then . . . Jesus talked to Paul.
In Romans 11, Paul is mining the implications of what all this means for his own people.
He’s plumbing the depths of his love for them, for God the Father and for God the risen Son, who has “apprehended” him (Phil 3:12). Paul doesn’t understand why his people reject the very one they’ve longed for for millennia. He’s asking the tough questions: “I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall, salvation has come to the Gentiles to provoke them to jealousy. Now if their fall be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fullness?” (Rom 11: 11-12 ~KJV).
Further, “For if the casting away of the Jews be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?” (Rom 11: 15).
Paul connects the saving of Gentiles (me, for example, and maybe you too) with the “stumbling” of the Jews! God “cast them away” to save us? Why not save us both, at the same time? Paul then answers his own question and ours, telling us: “For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God lest anyone should boast”(Eph 2:8-9). Left to us, to our law-abiding good deeds or humanly defined righteousness, salvation wouldn’t have happened. It has to be a faith thing. There would be no place for law trusting or DIY—not a hint, not a whiff.
And yes, Jesus can be talked to. He’s available. He hasn’t posted angelic secretaries, schedulers, and screeners outside his door. He answers knocks. Yes, and he does answer questions.
This one satisfies me:
We’ve been saved by grace through faith, both Jews and Gentiles.
from the Edgefield Advertiser, oldest newspaper in South Carolina
April 1, 2019
With thanks for the great images: columns, jan-zhukov-sbbKyhxgU_A-unsplash.jpg; dark doorway, isaac-quesada-7EboALfuzGE-unsplash.jpg; open door, diane-helentjaris-Pugbqi_FxIw-unsplash.jpg; open blue door, valerie-faiola-IEXVVwfj4pY-unsplash.jpg; star of David, david-holifield-TLZKlOBOsLs-unsplash; double green doors, maria-butyrina-907tpn1PpL0-unsplash.jpg; dyu-ha-nGo-UVGKAxI-unsplash.jpg; door with ivy and lion doorknocker, brian-fegter-gfQO8pXhX7I-unsplash.jpg.
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