Week 44 Romans 16
Paul ends his letter to the Romans with a dense & fairly complicated passage. I counted 9 important clauses. It was an intricate mix but I figured I could make some sense out of it. And as it worked out I ended up finding a pretty helpful synopsis of the bible.
I itemized the verses like this:
1. Now to Him who has the power to establish you
2. according to my Gospel
3. and the preaching of Jesus Christ,
4. according to the revelation of the mystery
5. which was kept secret since the world began
6. but now is made manifest,
7. and by the Scriptures of the prophets,
8. according to the commandment of the everlasting God,
9. made known to all nations for the obedience of faith.
So now I had these 9 linked-statements that together are pretty tangled & complicated.
Q #1: could I uncomplicate them? A #1: I thought so.
Q #2: how would I simplify the passage? A #2: something like this: the Lord had a plan from the beginning. But he kept it quiet. It was a mystery. Even though the Lord did tip off OT prophets about the mystery and gave them some hints he didn’t comprehensively divulge the specifics of the plan. But now (in the NT) the plan is fully revealed.
Then I whittled it down even more and got this one very simple bible reader’s condensed version: the OT is fairly mysterious. But the NT demystifies things considerably.
Note: quote from Romans 16:25-26 (21st Century KJV)