Friday, July 3
It is the end of the workweek (for most) and we continue our daily readings in the New Testament. Today we’re reading Romans 15:8 – 33. After you’ve finished your reading of the Scripture, I’d invite you back to ponder together what Paul is saying.
Having dealt with Christians in fellowship with one another, Paul begins to wrap up this monumental writing by sharing some final thoughts. What he has on his mind can be seen in three things: First, He recalls the words of Scripture that have guided his Missionary endeavors among the Gentiles. Paul did not seek to take the Gospel to the Gentile regions of the Empire because he liked to travel and go to different places on a sort of Gospel sight-seeing tour. Paul says, “I became a servant to the circumcised (the Jews) because of God’s truth that the Gentiles were to be included in God’s plans for redeeming his creation” (15:8-9, my paraphrase). How did he know this is what God wanted him to do? We know that Paul had received revelation from God – i.e., the direction coming from the Holy Spirit (Acts 16:6-9), to Paul, and his traveling companions, to go over to Macedonia. But the words Paul received were also confirmed to him from the Scriptures.
It is a series of Old Testament passages from the Psalms (18:49), Deuteronomy (32:43), Psalms (117:1), and Isaiah (11:10), that confirmed for Paul God’s will to take the Gospel to the Gentiles. The last one from Isaiah 11 is the final witness of God’s intended purposes. The “root of Jesse” (15:12) is the promise of the Messiah – a King that would arise from the family of Jesse, King David’s father, who would come to not only save His people (the Jews) but save and rule over the Gentiles also. Paul sees the fulfillment of his duties to God to declare the Gospel as completed, and in a short doxology of praise (15:13), he gives a blessing to those Christians in Rome he wrote this letter to. The revelation from God to Paul, and the words of Scripture are in complete harmony – an essential element of anything we think is coming from God.
Secondly, Paul revisits the past – what God had called him to do, and how he had done it. Paul had explained the entire Gospel to them and had made the application of that Gospel as both relevant and specific to them. He had given them both the Vertical dimensions of grace and the Horizontal dimensions of Grace, and we can see that He believes they are both intelligent enough and spiritually open to instructions to have received it all (15:14-16). While Paul had never personally met them, he writes to them as if they were close friends. As we will soon see, in all probability he had met some, if not many of them previously while he was ministering in Greece.
He had carried the Gospel and now written it to them.
The language of verse 17, might seem strange coming from Paul, who had consistently taken a posture of humility and serving in his efforts – “In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God (15:17). His pride in relation to his work is not a selfish “look at what I have done”.
In verses 18-21 we get an insight into Paul’s guiding principle for what he did, where he did it, and how he did it. First, it was “Christ who accomplished the work he did” (15:18). It was the power of the Holy Spirit that accompanied him (15:19) with signs and wonders at various times. It was the message of the Gospel that he proclaimed in regions that had previously no knowledge of Jesus Christ (15:19-21). Paul’s word of “pride” is put into a larger context - a realization of “look what God has done”, and not Paul himself.
He is clear – he has “fully preached the Gospel” between Jerusalem and Illyricum. We know where Jerusalem is in the southern part of Palestine, and we know that Illyricum is the northern-most extent of the Roman Empire in Greece. In our modern-day, Paul said he had carried the message of the Gospel from Israel to Turkey, from Turkey to the islands of the Mediterranean, from the islands to the mainland of Asia, and from Asia to Europe. In Europe, he had begun in the far reaches of the North in Philippi. He had gone south to the cities of Greece, ending in Athens. He had traveled back to the Western parts of Asia to Ephesus and the cities of that region. Paul had “fully preached the Gospel” and his duties were complete.
Having accomplished all this, he now turns towards the future. In 15:22-28, Paul explains that he has one last duty to fulfill before he shifts his attention to come to Rome and then go on to Spain. He first needed to deliver the gift offering that had come from the Gentile churches to the church in Jerusalem. This gift was more than relief money, it was for the poor Christians in Jerusalem who first received the spiritual blessings of the Gospel and made the way for the Gospel to be sent out to the rest of the world. Paul then remarks, “when I have delivered that offering, I plan to come back to you, and then on to Spain” (15:28, my paraphrase). We wonder, why Spain? Spain had only recently come into the Roman Empire’s control. His missionary heart was to keep on going to places that had not yet heard the Gospel message and Spain was the “new world” that had just been opened. He could have sent his gift to Jerusalem and head West on his own, but he knew that it was God who had opened the hearts of the Gentiles to help the Jewish brethren, and he knew that the unity of the Church was still a significant issue that the gift would help.
Of course, what Paul didn’t know was that His own thoughts and plans were not God’s thoughts and plans. They were reasonable plans, and in fact, spiritually they were brilliant plans; but they were not what Paul was to experience. Yes, he would make it to Rome – but as a prisoner of Rome. He made it to Jerusalem (you may want to look back at Acts 20:22-24 to recall this), but he was arrested, falsely accused by the Jews, and after several years of jail in Palestine, taken to Rome as a prisoner to stand before Caesar. He reached Rome, but not as he planned, and we have no knowledge –either for or against - that he made it to Spain. It is a reminder that we establish our plans, often with good intentions, and good works in mind, but it is God who sovereignly oversees His work and confirms our part in it.
Paul’s prayer requests are a lesson in how God works in and through our prayers. In the final verses of this chapter (15:30-33), Paul asks them to pray for him in three specific ways. First that he would not fall into the hands of enemies who hated Paul and the Gospel – it would not happen as the Jewish enemies of Paul would cause his arrest. Secondly, that the gift would be gladly received by the church in Jerusalem – it was happily received. Third, that he would be able to come to them in Rome and joyfully share their fellowship as he traveled on his way – which did happen in some way, but not in the way Paul hoped it would. The book of Acts ended with Paul under arrest – in Rome – and his continuing teaching on the Gospel and the Kingdom of God (Acts 28:30-31). Did he go west to Spain? We don’t know. We do know that he made his way to Rome – via the Romans themselves. We pray in hope, in faith, and yet, in the end, we must always pray in trust - "may your will be done..."
The last words are prophetically relevant to Paul: “May the God of peace be with you all. Amen (15:33). His vision for the proclamation of the Gospel was beyond the scope of any one person’s call. He had made three missionary trips over a period of almost 20 years, and there was no place in that part of the Empire he had not declared Christ. His efforts were tireless and he had to persevere through the various assaults on his health and life. We will eventually get to it in our readings, but peek ahead and look at 2 Corinthians 11:24-28, and see that he had courageously carried out the mission God had given him. Paul did not accomplish all of this alone, he had help from his companions and from the Churches that were established. Yet it was Paul’s singular vision of the Gospel that carried him forward.
He had begun the letter with the proclamation: “I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe – to the Jew first and also to the Gentiles” (Romans 1:16, my paraphrase). He had hopes and dreams of going further, but God was moving him into a different place. The last words to them – “may the God of Peace (God’s shalom) be with you all” – would also be for him. It was a great adventure and life that God was doing in and through this Man, we call Paul.
Peace
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