Week 44 Romans 16
Paul ends his letter to the Romans with a dense & fairly complicated passage. But by simplifying the complexities I found a pretty helpful synopsis of the bible.
I counted 9 clauses that Paul combined in an intricate mix (but I figured that a few perplexing elements didn’t necessarily mean that I couldn’t make any sense of any of it).
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 complicated.
Q #1: could I uncomplicate them? A #1: I thought so.
Q #2: what did my simplified version look like? 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 tipped off OT prophets about the mystery – gave them some hints – he didn’t comprehensively divulge the specifics of the plan. But now (in the NT) the plan is fully revealed.
So getting down to the basics one very simple bible reader’s condensed version is: the OT is fairly mysterious. But the NT demystifies things considerably.
Note: quote from Romans 16:25-26 (21st Century KJV)