Week 43 Romans
I’ve read the letter to the people in Rome before.
So reading it this time I’m getting that old familiar Paul-is-all-over-the-place feeling.
Partly it’s his writing style. But there’ve also been some weirdly complicated things going on since the arrival and departure of the Lord.
One pretty obvious one last week reading Acts was that the original Jewish followers of the Lord couldn’t really exclude non-Jewish people from believing, couldn’t post For-Jewish-People-Only signs on the front doors. But the problem with being inclusive was that things got a bit more complicated.
What was happening was that there were basically three categories of people who were coming to belief:
Ethnic-cultural-religious Jewish people;
Non-ethnic, non-cultural, non-Jewish but religiously interested people (people who hung-around the synagogues); and
Non-ethnic, non-cultural, non-Jewish, non-Jewish-religion people (a sort of peripheral-rabble).
Three groups: bluebloods, border-liners, outliers.
And in Romans Paul was writing to a church group that was a mash-up of all three.
The congregation was a bunch of racially, culturally, ethnically, linguistically, religiously, socially and economically uneasily-compatible people. Of course the biggest issue was the OT law, but there were other balls in the air too. Paul had his work cut out for him.
Added Note: I think one of the bible-reader’s temptations is to dumb things down. Dumbing-down can be a handy Complexity Management Tool. And it can be useful in getting through Romans. But dumbing-down Romans too much can also be not too smart.