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"God Has Set Things Right" - John D. Painter
Last week I had a neat experience. Betsy Brantley contacted me to ask if I could substitute for her at the Wednesday evening Disciple Bible Study group. I readily agreed...I had been a sub for her once before and enjoyed the opportunity...and Betsy said she would turn over the materials to me on Sunday (March 12) at church. I saw her between the 9:30 and 11:00 AM services and retrieved the Student Book, Leader's Guide and DVD and asked Betsy which Session the class was working on for Wednesday (March 15). She said "Session 7," and we parted shortly thereafter.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Session 7 was Paul's ENTIRE Epistle to the Romans! All 16 chapters. In one evening...for roughly 1.5 hours. This really is "Disciple Fast Track!" What's more, the class members had six days to read the epistle...I had two. Thankfully, I had led a 12-week encounter with Romans at our Tuesday Morning Breakfast Group using Max Lucado's Life Lessons workbook on Romans about a year ago. At that time I had generously highlighted significant passages of the epistle in my Bible. So my two-day catchup re-reading was made somewhat easier. In the end, it was a rich experience to once again immerse myself in Paul's deeply theological ruminations in this letter to his Roman sisters and brothers in Christ.
The 27 books of the New Testament are not arranged chronologically. Rather, they are arranged according to importance and context, as determined by the canonical groups who worked through the process in the third century C.E. (I misspoke in a devotional earlier this month and said it was in the third century B.C.E., which would have been impossible, since Jesus had not even been born yet.) They determined that the most important books were the four Gospels, and that Matthew should go first in order, even though Mark was written first. And then The Acts of the Apostles, Luke's second volume describing the early years of the young church and Paul's missionary journeys. Then comes Romans...one of the final letters Paul wrote (between 55 & 60 C.E.). Had the canonical scholars chosen to order his epistles chronologically, the first one would have been 1 Thessalonians...written even before Mark or any of the other Gospels.
But Romans goes first because it is without a doubt Paul's consummate work of theological doctrine. The Christianity with which you and I are most familiar is largely based in the thoughts and writings of Saint Paul and, to a large extent, in the Epistle to the Romans. It is Paul's summa theologica, a masterful exposition of our human condition and our relationship with the God who chooses to redeem us from the broken condition in which we often find ourselves.
This passage for today is a clear statement of our human condition. Peterson translates it this way in The Message: "
Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us" (Romans 3:22-23). (By the way, the "us" and "them" Paul speaks of here are the Jews who have accepted Christ (us) and the Gentiles who have become Christians (them).) In some ways, I much prefer the Revised New Standard version of verse 23: "
...since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
;". That's pretty clear...and it is not very pretty, is it?
Paul is quite inclusive: "ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". Not much wiggle room there. No more than John offers us in his first epistle: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.... If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us" (1 John 1:8, 10). As Pastor LeeAnn pointed out in her Message last Sunday, the 4th Step in the 12 Steps of AA is, "Made a searching & fearless inventory of ourselves." That has often proven to be the most challenging of the 12 Steps (after the 1st one: "We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol (or whatever)-that our lives had become unmanageable.")
The truth is that we are sinners, and that we need to "own" that condition and be honest about it with ourselves and our God. Once we have claimed our status as sinners and named the demons that corrupt our souls, then we are free to receive the Good News that "
God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin.... God sets things right." Sinful we may be, but we are also deeply loved by a God willing to sacrifice his very Son on the cross for our salvation. And all of that is a gift of grace...not something we can possibly earn. Paul sums it up in Romans 3:24: "Out of sheer generosity [God] put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ" (The Message). Now that's the Good News of the Gospel!!
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Bible speak of God's grace, the Apostle Paul is especially known for emphasizing grace in the Epistle to the Romans.
