THE JOURNAL
September-October  Vol. 4 No. 5


 
 
 
 
Rom. 12:9-13   -  A Comment

'Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of thesaints; extend hospitality to strangers.' Rom. 12:9-13

In chapter eleven of Paul: The Mind of the Apostle, A.N. Wilson writes the following:

Romans has been called the Gospel According to Paul... And the reason that Romans is so important is that, unlike any of the Gospels, it sails straight into the heart of the deepest metaphysical questions: what is God like? Why was a Christ necessary? How does it make a difference to life- to the individual human life and to human history- whether you believe in Christ or not? What is religion itself and why has it led the human race into deeper depravity and fouler wickedness than no religion at all? How can God be worshipped in a world so full of darkness and muddle? What is the role of 'revelation'- are we really to suppose that God 'revealed' himself on Mt. Sinai when he gave the Ten Commandments to Moses and then left it to the Jews to interpret the Divine Law for the rest of history? If not, how can God be known? Romans, one should emphasise, is not a work of philosophy. It is more like a poem than it is like a work of logic, but it touches upon the deepest metaphysical questions which any of us could ask, and it posits some truly revolutionary and extraordinary answers. That is one of the reasons why it continues to exercise a fascination upon anyone who is interested in religious questions. That is why, if you go to a theological library, you will discover shelf upon shelf covered with commentaries on Romans. For it the most interesting, as well as the most impenetrably difficult, book about 'religion' ever written.

In fact, of course, it is not about 'religion' at all, if by 'religion' we mean Judaism or Islam or Taoism or Seventh Day Adventism or Roman Catholicism. Romans is one of the most devastating pamphlet attacks on 'religion' ever penned. No one who read it and absorbed its profound messages could feel happy with membership of 'a religion' ever again. Jesus might or might not have gone into the temple in Jerusalem and said that he would pull it down and build it up again in three days. The letter to the Romans pulls down the temple at Jerusalem and the temple at Ephesus and the temple at Piraeus and the altars of Athens and every other altar and temple ever built by human hand. 'St. Paul understood what most Christians never realise, namely, that the Gospel of Christ is not a religion, but religion itself, in its most universal and deepest significance.' (W. R. Inge, Outspoken Essays, p 229)   Paul speaks to the Romans of their direct experience of the love of God in Christ, which enters the confusion and sorrow of human experience at the very moment when it is most vulnerable, most abject... those who are 'in Christ' know him not as the old worshippers revered their distant God, but as a presence in the midst of all their experiences, all their sins as well as their sorrows. 'For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Rom. 8:38

 


 
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