I will now move to a nutshell mini-thread on the individual Pauline letters in the New Testament.  I will be covering them in canonical sequence, including both the so-called undisputed Pauline letters, which I’m saying are “so-called” simply because scholars in every field dispute flippin’ everything (well, almost everything), and the disputed epistles, which, as it turns out are undisputably disputed!

The thirteen letters are arranged not in chronological (or alphabetical!) sequence, but by length: with Romans as the longest and Philemon the shortest.  Note: in this arrangement, letters to the SAME audience (two each to the Corinthians and the Thessalonians) are combined in order to determine their length.

And so, the sequence (with U meaning undisputed and D disputed) is

  • Romans (U)
  • 1 Corinthians (U)
  • 2 Corinthians (U)
  • Galatians (U)
  • Ephesians (D)
  • Philippians (U)
  • Colossians (D)
  • 1 Thessalonians (U)
  • 2 Thessalonians (D)
  • 1 Timothy (D)
  • 2 Timothy (D)
  • Titus (D)
  • Philemon (U)

In this four-post mini-thread, I deal with the letter to the Romans.  I begin by giving a 50-word summary.  If you know Romans well, have ever read it, have heard about it (!), try your own summary.  Tomorrow mine may be different, for now, here’s my first-ever attempt.

Paul’s writes his letter to the Roman church to garner their support for his missionary endeavors to the far west by explaining that salvation comes only through Christ’s death and resurrection on the basis of faith, both for gentiles and Jews, who are and always will be God’s chosen people.

I will now try to expand this summary by providing a still brief but larger nutshell summary of this long and complicated letter.

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The letter to the Romans is unique among Paul’s letters in that it is not written to a church he had himself founded to help them deal with their problems but to a church want to visit en route to his missionary endeavors in the western parts of the empire.  His goal in writing is to announce his visit and to secure the church’s support (moral and possibly financial) for his westward mission.  He is particularly concerned to clarify his actual gospel message, apparently because he knows (or thinks) it has been misrepresented and the Roman community is dubious about his teachings.

In particular, it appears Paul has been interpreted as saying that he is the apostle to the gentiles because God has rejected his chosen people the Jews.  In addition, since Paul preaches that salvation comes apart from keeping the law of the Jews, some of his opponents are claiming he is endorsing or at least indifferent to “lawless behavior” among his converts.

The letter to the Romans tries to set the record straight on both accounts.  Paul explains why he certainly does preach that “justification” – that is, becoming “right” with God comes to Jews and gentiles only through faith in the death and resurrection of Christ, not through keeping God’s commands.

But that does not mean he thinks God has abandoned the Jews as his people.  On the contrary, Jews have a great advantage as God’s chosen ones, and he is using them to bring salvation to the entire world.  Moreover, far from leading to a life of sin, this gospel provides is the only means for escaping from the “power” of sin to stand pure before God.

Because of this unique purpose for the letter – as an explanation of what he preaches and why, Romans is distinct among Paul’s letters.  Here he tries to provide a more systematic exposition of his thought, rather than deal with various problems that have arisen in one of his communities.   It is not that they letter is a kind of  “systematic theology” that explores distinct doctrinal ideas in sequencek the way theologians have provided expositions of the true faith over the centuries, for example, by laying out the correct view of God, of Christ, of the Spirit, of salvation, of the afterlife, etc. in clearly demarcated categories.  Paul is describing the message he preaches to gain support for his mission.  That is to say, it too is an “occasional” letter, written for a purpose.  Knowing that purpose can help explain much of what Paul chooses to discuss..

He introduces his exposition by strongly affirming his gospel message: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is God’s saving power for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.”  In this context, “Greek” means “non-Jew,” that is, gentile, that is “pagan.”   The “good news” Paul preaches is a manifestation of God’s power, it comes only by faith (to those who “believe”), whether Jew or gentile.

To explain this message, Paul provides a “bad-news/good-news” scenario  (1:18-3:20), explaining that all people are alienated from God because they have knowingly sinned against him.   Pagans, he claims, have always known full well from observing the world around them that there is only one God, the Creator of all; but they have willfully rejected this knowledge to worship multitudes of other gods.  Moreover, because they have rejected God, he has rejected them, which is why they lead such immoral and licentious lives (ch. 1).

He then argues that Jews are as bad as pagans, even worse: God revealed himself specially to the Jews and gave them his law.  But they regularly break it, sinning against God even as his own people.  They too are without excuse (ch. 2).

In sum:  all people have sinned and fallen short of what God demands; all are alienated from him, whether Jew or gentile.  No one is righteous.  Everyone, therefore, stands condemned before God (3:1-20).

After this very bad news, Paul gives the good news (end of ch. 3).  God has provided a way to be “righteous” (that is, “to be right” with him).  Christ’s death has brought an atonement for sin to all who believe in him, making it possible to be “redeemed” from sin by his blood and to obtain a “right standing” (“justification”) before God.  Moreover, this path of salvation – the only one provided by God – is available to both Jew and gentile, not based on law but on faith.

Paul goes on to argue that this way of salvation is not an innovation God dreamt up after the other options had failed, but had been his plan all along.  Scripture shows that as far back as Abraham, the father of the Jews, “righteousness” came by faith, not by doing being circumcised or doing the “works of the law” (ch. 4).  Faith is the natural and long-planned way of salvation that God had established at the beginning.

Paul’s view of sin and salvation, however, is even more complicated than he reveals in these opening four chapters. Another way he explains the bad-news / good-news scenario is far less familiar to readers (often not even noticed). The reason all people sin according to Paul is that sin is not merely an act of disobedience against God; it is also a cosmic power aligned against God that was unleashed against the world starting with Adam.  In this sense, sin is a kind of demonic force that has overpowered all humans and put them into subjection to itself, rather than to God.

Paul deals with this aspect of sin in chapter 5-8.  Everyone descended from Adam is “enslaved” to sin, and it is a far greater power than anyone can overcome on their own.  Having the law of God cannot help a person escape this power of sin, since the law indicates what God wants his people to do but does not provide the power to do it (ch. 5).  Everyone necessarily does what they do not want to do (ch. 7).  That’s the other set of bad news.  All humans are enslaved to sin and there is no way to break free.

But God has provided liberation from sin through the death of Jesus. When Christ died he took the power of sin upon himself and therefore put it to death.  Anyone who is united with Christ by being baptized into him has similarly died to sin.  Baptized believers have been set free from the power that alienates them from God (Romans 6).  They now have Christ and God as their masters.  And they no longer need to be dominated by the power of sin (chs. 5-8).

Again, this does not mean that God has abandoned his chosen ones, the Jews.  In chapters 9-11 Paul gets to the heart of the matter, one of the ultimate points of his book.  The gospel of God’s salvation has indeed now gone to the gentiles and will ultimately lead to their salvation.  But God has not rejected his own people.  On the contrary, in the end “All Israel will be saved.”

Paul’s arguments in these three chapters are notoriously difficult, but it is clear he believes God allowed (ordained?) Jews to reject their salvation in Christ in order to open up the door for gentiles to be brought into the community of faith.  Eventually, when Jews realize salvation has now come to those who are not physical descendants of Abraham, they would become of those now brought into the fold of God’s chosen people, and turn to Christ, and be saved.  This is God’s plan of salvation for the world..

Paul explains that even though Jews have advantages over gentiles – they were the ones given the covenant, the law, and the messiah – they do not have a superior salvation in Christ. Jews and gentiles who believe are equal before God.  That also means, though, that even though Jews originally rejected the messages of Christ, gentiles in Christ are superior.  All believers are of equal standing.

Paul then devotes our four four chapters to explaining that this gospel message of salvation by faith in Christ apart from the law does not lead to lawless behavior.  On the contrary, those who are in Christ, whether Jew or gentile, are now freed from the power of sin and can and should lead lives in total obedience to God.  Paul provides some advice of important ethical implications of what this salvation entails, and above all insists that everyone should “love their neighbor as themselves” (quoting Leviticus 19:18), because, as he says (in an echo of what Jesus himself is reported to have said, “Love fulfills the law” (13:8-10).

In the final chapter Paul greets a number of Roman Christians he personally knows (over 25 of them), most of them by name.