Zane Clark Hodges - Romans : deliverance from wrath

Romans

DELIVERANCE FROM WRATH

Zane C. Hodges

Edited by Robert N. Wilkin

Introduction and Selected Notes by John H. Niemel

Grace Evangelical Society

Corinth, TX 76210

Copyright 2013 by Grace Evangelical Society

4851 S I-35 E, Suite 203

Corinth, TX 76210

www.faithalone.org

940-270-8827

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Hodges, Zane Clark (1932-2008).

Romans: Deliverance from Wrath

Bibliography: p.

1. Salvation. 2. Faith. 3. Romans.

I. Bible. II. Romans

ISBN: 978-0-9788773-6-1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Editor: Robert N. Wilkin

Introduction and Selected Notes: John H. Niemel

Design: S. C. Lazar

Typesetting: Holly Melton

Translation of Romans by Zane C. Hodges.

Unless otherwise indicated, all other Scripture is taken from the New King James Version of the Bible. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982, by Thomas Nelson, Inc. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATIONS

FOREWORD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Zane C. Hodges went to be with the Lord in November of 2008, after suffering a major heart attack. He was 76.

As a young boy of around ten, living in Pennsylvania, Zane came to faith in Christ through the witness of his parents. He showed a zeal for the Word of God that led him to Wheaton College and Dallas Theological Seminary where he majored in New Testament Greek.

A few months after graduating from DTS, in the summer of 1958, Zane was hired to work in the DTS library. Less than a year later, he was hired to teach Greek, which he did for 27 years. For a short time he was the Department Chairman, but he decided that it demanded too much of his time and so he gave up that position to Dr. Harold Hoehner.

While teaching at DTS, Zane wrote and published three books: T he Hungry Inherit , The Gospel under Siege , and Grace in Eclipse . During those 27 years he also released his work on textual criticism, The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text , which he co-edited with the late Dr. Art Farstad. He was also the author of the commentaries on Hebrews and 1-3 John in DTSs The Bible Knowledge Commentary , published in 1983.

After leaving DTS in 1986, Zane lived for another 22 years. During that time he wrote many more books including Absolutely Free! A Biblical Reply to Lordship Salvation , and commentaries on James, Second Peter, and the Johannine Epistles. By the time of his death, he had nearly completed this commentary on Romans.

Zane ministered for fifty years at a small Hispanic Plymouth Brethren assembly in East Dallas, Victor Street Bible Chapel. There he honed his skills as a communicator and as a shepherd. Those skills are evident in this commentary.

ABOUT THE COMMENTARY

This commentary is the product of several years of daily labor. Zane spent four hours each weekday morning working on it. He rarely took phone calls during those hours. And every few weeks we would eat a late lunch together because he would work until nearly 1 p.m. each day.

Before he died, he had completed the commentary through to Rom 14:15. Despite it being a first draft, it was largely free from errors. Consequently, very little editing has been done on what Zane wrote except for correcting occasional typos and inadvertent variations in his translation and outline. The outline, the translation, and the commentary itself are all outstanding.

First, Zanes outline of Romans is remarkable. While it has similar divisions of other commentaries, his explanation of the sections is unique. His outline makes it much easier to follow the flow of the book. Zane had a gift for discerning the structure of an authors argument.

Second, Zanes translation of Romans alone makes the commentary invaluable. His translation choices are insightful and thought-provoking even without the associated commentary. As an example, consider his rendering of the Greek word katakrima in Rom 5:18. It is normally translated as condemnation : through one mans offense judgment came to all men resulting in condemnation. By contrast, Zane translates it as servitude to sin : through one offense judgment came to all men to produce servitude to sin .

The same word occurs in Rom 8:1, which Zane translates as: Therefore there is now no servitude to sin for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk in relation to the flesh but in relation to the Spirit. That leads to a significantly different understanding than one gets from There is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

Along with these subtle, but important, insights I should also mention Zanes understanding of the words save and salvation ( sz and stria ). Most commentators understand references to salvation soteriologically, as deliverance from eternal condemnation in the lake of fire. But Zane understood those words to refer to temporal deliverance from Gods wrath in this life . This impacts the way one understands practically everything in the letter. Rather than being an evangelistic tract, Zane believed that Romans was better understood as instruction given to Christians showing them how to have abundant fellowship with God.