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The BibleTexts.com Bible Commentary Copyright 1996-2005 Robert Nguyen Cramer PAUL'S LETTER TO THE ROMANS (including Romans chapter 16, which was actually a letter written to the church in Ephesus) |
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No feature of pagan society filled the Jew with greater loathing than the toleration, or rather admiration, or homosexual practices. Paul is entirely at one here with his compatriots; but his disgust is more than instinctive. In the obscene pleasures to which he refers is to be seen precisely that perversion of the created order which may be expected when men put the creation in place of the Creator. That idolatry has such consequences is to Paul a plain mark of God's wrath.
The passage fundamentally concerns the relationship between God and humanity; it is not primarily a passage about homosexuality... Since the passage as a whole revolves around the issue of creation (God as creator, humankind as created by God, the creature-creator relationship), Paul chooses homosexual behavior because, as he sees it, homosexuality runs counter to the creation of male and female and their roles in the ongoing created order. Since sexual relations between men and women are fundamental to God's creation, expecially as the narrative of Genesis depict that creation, Paul regards sexual relations that contradict that patter as unacceptable.
As contemporary readers grapple with conflicting information and volatile viewpoints regarding homosexuality and with the complicated question of how the Bible plays a role in contemporary decision making, it is important to acknowledge forthrightly that Paul understands homosexuality to be a violation of God's intention for creation. That acknowledgment, however, must be coupled with an awareness that in Rom. 1:18-32 Paul begins an extensive examination of the nature of human sin. Persons who are heterosexual and conclude from this passage that they are justified in judging or condemning persons who are homosexual will find themselves condemned in turn by Paul's statement in 2:1: "Therefore you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others, for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge are doing the very same things." If, in Paul's mind, homosexual behavior is a symptom of rebellion against God, so is self-righteousness. To use this passage to justify the exclusion of persons who are homosexual would be the grossest distortion of Romans and its claims about God's radical and universal grace.
Paul's own words now become clear. That means that, whosever you are (Jew or pagan moral philosopher), whenever you act as judge you are without excuse, for in judging someone else you condemn yourself, since you who judge practise the same conduct as he. The last clause is fundamental to the argument. The judge is without excuse if he does wrong, because ex hypothesi he knows the law -- he of all men cannot plead ignorance. In fact, says Paul, he does the same things as the man he judges. This cannot mean that the critic also practises homosexual perversions and the like. The moral purity of the Jews was their legitimate boast, and moral philosophers such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius may have been prigs but were certainly not hypocrites. Paul's point is that in the very act of judging (en ho krineis) the judge is involved in the same conduct as the man he condemns. Behind all the sins of i. 29 ff. lies the sin of idolatry, which reveals man's ambition to put himself in the place of God and so to be his own Lord. But this is precisely what the judge does, when he assumes the right to condemn his fellow-creatures. All alike fall under God's judgement, and before him all are without excuse..
To further explore the issue of same sex relationships and the application of Jesus' and Paul's teachings, see http://www.bibletexts.com/qa/qa133.htm.
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"In hope" is the beginning of a prepositional clause that begins in Rom 8:20 and continues in Rom 8:21. Unfortunately, the KJV punctuates these verses poorly. The comma should precede "in hope" rather than follow it. And the Greek word hoti <Strong's # 3754> should be translated "that" instead of "because". This was a case where the KJV translators had the correct Greek text, but the translators themselves apparently did not understand the meaning. (When reading from the KJV, one should feel free to change the punctuation to reflect the originally intended meaning.)
The original 1611 edition of the KJV read exactly as follows:
20 For the creature was made subiect to vanitie, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subiected the same in hope: 21 Because the creature it selfe also shall bee deliuered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious libertie of the children of God.
(There are no typographical errors in the above quote. The 1611 KJV used different spelling and punctuation than our current versions of the KJV. In some cases it also used different words than our several current versions of the KJV. For further details, see http://www.bibletexts.com/kjv-tr.htm.)
The TEV translates these two verses:
[20] For creation was condemned to lose its purpose, not of its own will, but because God willed it to be so. {See Gen 3:17-19} Yet there was the hope [21] that creation itself would one day be set free from its slavery to decay and would share the glorious freedom of the children of God.
The NRSV translates these two verses:
[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 bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
Regarding this passage, the Harper's Bible Commentary (Edited by James Luther Mays, New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1988) writes, "The world’s futility and 'decay' (i.e., its vulnerability to the ravages of time), two of its most characteristic marks to Hellenistic thinking, are not the result of anything it has done; there is no 'fall' of creation. Rather, they are part of the created order and fall under God’s own 'expectation that the creation itself will be set free' to share in the glorious liberty of God’s children (Rom. 8:20-21), so bearing their own testimony to God’s transcending future."
This passage may be better understood in light of 1Co 15:22-24,45-58. S&H 566:1 also sheds some significant light on this, as do S&H 288:31-290:2 and S&H 316:3-7.
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1.... Even Rome's imperial authority comes from God, though Rome may be reluctant to admit it. Indirectly, Paul acknowledges the Father as the source of all the welfare and peace brought by imperial Roman rule.
2. anyone who resists authority opposes what God has ordained: A general principle is deduced from the foregoing. Obedience to civil authorities is a form of obedience to God himself, for the relation of human being to God is not limited to the relation of human beings to God is not limited to the religious or cultic sphere. The supposition running through vv 1-7 is that the civil authorities are conducting themselves rightly and are seeking the interests of the community. The possibility is not envisaged either of a tyrannical government or of one failing to cope with a situation where the just rights of individiaul citizens or of a minority group are neglected or violated. Paul insists on merely one aspect of the question: the duty of subjects to legitimate authority. He does not discuss here the duty of civil authorities.
4. for they are God's agents working for (your) good: This is a reformulation of v. 1, stressing the delegated character of civil authority; it envisages only a civil government properly fulfillling its functions. The civil government properly fulfilling its functions. The phrase eis to agathon, "for the good," expresses the finis of civil activity. they do not carry the sword for nothing. The sword is introduced as a symbol of penal authority, of the power legitimately possessed by civil authorities, to coerce recalcitrant citizens in the effort to maintain order and strive for the common goal. God's agent to execute (his) wrath on wrongdoers. The context shows that the wrath is divine, as in 12:19; otherwise such authorities would not be God's agents.
5. for conscience' sake. Another motive for obedience is introduced. Paul realizes that fear of punishment will not always deter citizens from violating civil regulations His appeal to conscience suggest a moral obligation for obedience to civil laws, and not one that is simply legal or penal. It links human reaction to civil rulers with the divine origin of civil authority itself.
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Rom 14:1 - Rom 15:3 - abstaining from meat and alcohol
Rom 14:1-12, Jewish and Non-Jewish Observance Before an Impartial Lord.
Paul’s terminology bears careful observation. The person who is “weak in faith” (14:1) is one who does not “have the confidence to eat everything” (v. 2), but Paul does not put a premium on the degree of such confidence each one is able to demonstrate (he does not call anyone “strong” until 15:1; see commentary below on 15:1). Instead, it is apparent that differences of religious observance in matters of diet and holy days are under discussion because they occasion reciprocal disdain and contempt within the community (v. 3). The recurring tensions created between Jewish and gentile converts to the Christian movement by such differences in daily religious routines constitute a running theme through the nt (e.g., Mark 2:13-17, 18-20, 23-28 and parallels; Acts 10:9-16; 11:11-18; 15:6-11; Gal. 2:11-14), testimony to the long struggle to find effective bonds to transcend pluralistic practice. At first the issue in Romans 14 does not look like one created by this difference between Jew and non-Jew. Abstaining from meat and alcohol (vv. 2 and 21) are not themselves characteristic Jewish observances. They could become so because Jews (and Jewish Christians) would prefer abstinence to partaking of either in the urban settings of the empire in which both were regularly dedicated to pagan gods before being sold in the market (see Food Offered to Idols). So one is tempted to read Romans 14 in the same terms as Paul’s advice to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 8:1-13; 10:12-33). But closer reading demonstrates that Paul is modulating his Corinthian experience to fit the argument of Romans (cf. commentary above on 12:3-8). At every point here the issue is the redefinition of values (cf. 12:2), and never, as in 1 Corinthians, the use or abuse of Christian freedom (the words “freedom,” “conscience,” and “knowledge,” so central to 1 Cor. 8 and 10, never occur in Rom. 14:1-15:13; cf. 15:14).
Paul’s fundamental appeal is to “accept” (jb, neb), to take to oneself and into one’s own community, the person of contrasting, even opposite, religious practice (14:1 and 15:7); his desire is to break the cycle of mutual condemnation that regularly results from religious zeal when it is lacking in trust or faith (14:3-4). A person’s “standing” (v. 4), that intangible worth so fatefully linked to public religious identity and usage, is determined by the Lord to whom each belongs—a direct practical application of what Paul wrote in 2:28-29. The confidence that counts is not the confidence to eat everything but the certainty that comes from integrity in each person’s life-embracing relation to the Lord, whatever the practice that accompanies it, and it was to establish that integrity that Christ’s death and resurrection took place (v. 9). Jew and Gentile stand on an equal footing before God, alike dependent upon his vindication of all human religious practice (v. 4b; cf. concluding remark on 7:13-25 in commentary above), alike beholden to his gift of life to all through their inclusion in Christ’s own pattern of death and life (v. 9; cf. 4:25; 5:18; 6:10-11; 8:11; 2 Cor. 5:15), and alike accountable to the God they must all eventually recognize (vv. 10b-12; cf. 2:6; 3:4, 19).
14:13-23, A Definition of “Right” and “Wrong.”
In this paragraph Paul clarifies the issues raised by eating and drinking in a religious context. Verse 13 plays on different nuances of the verb “to judge”: one sense is to assess the worth of a fellow human being; another is to arrive at the settling of one’s own values, the criteria by which those assessments of others are made. What is at stake is what one holds to be “the good” (v. 16; cf. 12:2b) or “right” and “wrong” (vv. 20b, 21a, rsv). These, along with their equivalents in the ritual law of the ot, “clean” and “unclean,” are measured first by what violates the personal integrity and religious conviction of the fellow human being “for whom Christ died” (vv. 13-16). In v. 15 sparing such “injury” (rsv) to the other is the specific form of “accepting” (14:1) the religiously different person; it is a concrete instance of “loving one’s neighbor as oneself” (13:9). Verses 17-19 generalize this process of definition by appealing to more conventional qualities associated with the kingdom of God, to what is “well-pleasing” to God or passes the test of human experience, and to what contributes to the common good. But vv. 20-23 return to the narrower subject at hand. Freedom is not the issue. Conceding to the one side that food does not defile (v. 20b; cf. v. 14; Mark 7:19), Paul nevertheless restates his earlier test, whether an action violates or reverses “the work of God” (v. 20a; cf. 15b). It is wrong for one to eat when one really believes one should not (vv. 20c and 23a), and right to abstain when not to do so would strike at the sensibilities of others (v. 21). The foundation of right action in every case is a right relationship to God, of trust (vv. 22a and 23). In the only use Paul makes in his Letters of the common ancient beatitude form (Rom. 4:7-8 is an ot quotation; see Beatitudes), he pronounces that person blessed whose standing before God is not itself at stake in decisions about right and wrong (v. 22b), for whom that anxiety-producing link between diet and salvation has been subordinated to secure trust in God—a kind of ultimate practical application of the Letter’s argument concerning justification.
15:1-13, Christ the Paradigm for Jew and Gentile.
Those who are “strong” and secure in the sense just referred to, Paul goes on, have an obligation not simply to put up with the failings of the less strong but to support them (cf. Gal. 6:2). This is the only time Paul ever distinguishes some Christians from others as “strong” (a word not used in 1 Cor. 8-10; cf. 2 Cor. 13:9), and he includes himself among its referents. But he does so only to elucidate such “strength” with the model of Christ; Christ is the suffering righteous one of Ps. 69:9, who remained obedient while enduring the ultimate derision that could be carried out in the name of religion. (For the role of Ps. 69 in the passion narrative, cf. Mark 15:23, 36 and parallels; John 2:17; 15:25.) This is the Christ Paul’s readers are to “put on” (13:14). Such commitment to “please” the other rather than oneself requires the endurance and encouraging support that come from God (v. 5a; cf. 5:3-5), that give life a dimension of hope, and that the Scriptures just quoted are intended to provide (v. 4).
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Copyright
1996-2004 Robert Nguyen Cramer
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