J. R. Daniel Kirk - Romans for Normal People: A Guide to the Most Misused, Problematic and Prooftexted Letter in the Bible

ROMANS

for Normal People

A Guide to the Most Misused, Problematic and Prooftexted Letter in the Bible

J. R. Daniel Kirk

The Bible for Normal People Book Series

ROMANS FOR NORMAL PEOPLE

Copyright 2022 by The Bible for Normal People

Published by The Bible for Normal People

Perkiomenville, PA 18074

thebiblefornormalpeople.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of any license permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are the authors own. All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022916732

ISBN: 978-1-7364686-2-3 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-7364686-3-0 (eBook)

Cover design: Tessa McKay Stultz

Typesetting: Medlar Publishing Solutions Pvt Ltd., India

Printed in the USA

For Patrobas and Phlegon
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Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

Romans from 30,000 Feet

Getting Romans Wrong: A Confession

I would like to begin by thanking all of you for coming to my personal confessional, otherwise known as this book on Romans. I expect to be fully absolved of all my sins by the time we get these preliminary remarks out of the way. So lets jump right in.

First, there was once a time when I knew exactly what Romans said, and my main concern was getting everyone else to acknowledge it as well. Not unrelated to this, I used to have strict standards of judgment about Bible translations. Whenever I was trying to determine whether a Bible was worthy of my study and attention, I would turn to Romans 8:28. As a burgeoning Calvinist (actually, I preferred the term predestinarian or even Paulinist because I didnt learn this from John Calvin; I learned it from the Bible), the most important thing to me was that nobody malign the clear teaching of this verse. Specifically, it stated clearly to anyone who would listen, God predestined! Predestination. That was it. Basically, anyone who was capable of reading the Bible should agree with this theological point. I was quite the missionary about it. At the Christian summer camp where I worked during college, one of my co-counselors started joking about who the believers werethe people who believed in predestination.

Confessional Part 2: I didnt really care what the implications wereeither for God or for me. I didnt care if people thought this made God some sort of moral monster (side note: a lot of people do think so). I didnt care if swimming in this stream of theology made me come across as arrogant. As a friend of mine, a fellow believer, once said, Its hard to be humble when youre right.

If it was biblical, it was what I wanted to cling to. If it was biblical, it was right. If it was right, then we needed to conform our ideas of God around it, not vice versa. If it made us jerks, well, that was a separate issue altogether.

Glad I got that off my chest. Dont we all feel better now?

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

Well, heres the funny thing about my early dalliance with Romans: it was a colossal exercise in missing the point. How I was reading it and what my interpretation of Romans was doing to my character were nearly the opposite of what it was written to accomplish.

If I had attended more carefully, I might have seen that Romans was trying to show me a better way: a better way to read the Bible. A better way to be part of a Christian community. A better way to know if I am loving God with my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Romans: Being the Family of God

One method for assessing the faithfulness of any particular flavor of Christianity has developed deep roots over the past two thousand years. Its fruit has been particularly abundant since the time of the Reformation some five hundred years ago. It is the conviction that true Christianity is found among the people who think the right things.

We delineate the boundaries of the churchwho is in and who is outbased on creeds. We create thousands upon thousands of denominations based on beliefs that differ from one anothersometimes by a sliver.

And, paradoxically, those of us who are Protestants turn to books like Galatians and Romanswhose sole purpose was to establish unity among warring factions in the early churchto validate our various secessions.

I believe in predestination, so Im not going to listen to a preacher who doesnt truly believe in the unearned grace of God.

I believe in justification by faith, so Id never set foot in a Catholic church.

The only way to be buried with Christ in baptism is believer-baptism by immersion.

Accept one another as Christ has accepted us to the glory of God.

Wait. What did you just say? Accept one another. Thats Paul. Romans 15:7. Accept one another. Receive one another into your communities. Be like Jesus to one another.

So, you believe that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy God forever? Then glorify God here and now by receiving each other as Christ has already done. Imitate God by naming and affirming as your siblings those who call out to God, Abba, Fathereven as God calls them Gods own children. Thats Romans.

Romans is about the family of God. The family God has already created. The family with estranged members. The family God intends to reunite. The family that has its squabbles. And the family that so bears the likeness of God that observers can look at it and know exactly who God is.

Romans is not the place to search forlet alone find!justification that ours is the only Christian tribe that is exclusively right about everything. Nor is it the place to go to prove that every human is part of some big happy God-family. Romans resists being pulled in either of these directions. The one is far too narrow. The other is not too broad, exactly but it attempts to embrace humanity in the wrong way.

In Romans we discover what it means that Jesus is Messiah. Because Jesus is Messiah, God has recreated Gods people in and around him. And through Jesus, God is recreating humanity.

In Romans, the cosmic story of humanitys reconciliation with God is brought down to the mundane business of who you go to church with on Sunday. The nature of reality, reflecting the identity and character of God, is embodied in whom you have over for dinner and what you eat and drink together.

Everything that God has promisedthe creation of a people from every nation, tribe, and tongue; a body that consists of Jews and Gentiles together; a people who are holy and faithful, glorifying God under the lordship of the Fatherall of this is not pushed off to some indefinite future. It has been and is being fulfilled in the arrival of Jesus and the embodiment of his lordship here and now.

This is what Romans looks like from 30,000 feet.

The world map being redrawn by the person of Christ.

Peoples mixing and mingling across borders that have suddenly become porous.

Formerly desert lands now verdant.