Romans

I’ve been thinking often over the last few days and weeks about the last three verses of the magnificent eighth chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome.

I loved writing Wearing God in part because it allowed me to rove around archives from more or less every century of the Christian past. The biblical images for God that most (American?) churches today largely ignore were decidedly not ignored in earlier eras.

I loved writing Wearing God in part because it allowed me to rove around archives from more or less every century of the Christian past. The biblical images for God that most (American?) churches today largely ignore were decidedly not ignored in earlier eras.

In Romans 7, sin seems to have at least as much agency as Paul does.

My roommate in seminary was and still is a vegetarian. I grew up eating, and still occasionally enjoy, Spam. Our understanding of food could not have been any more different, and those first few months of negotiating our shared kitchen posed some challenges.

We both agreed, however, that we loved to eat.

The household I grew up in did not have a lot of rules. My parents were first-generation immigrants who worked 12 hours a day, six days a week. So even if we'd had a lot of rules, they would not have been home to enforce most of them.

Church folks will not always agree—nor should we.

What comes first—your actions or your beliefs? Here's Paul's answer: neither one. What comes first is the love of God.

What comes first—your actions or your beliefs? Here's Paul's answer: neither one. What comes first is the love of God.

For this Sunday's Living by the Word column, I focused on the theme of hospitality in the reading from Romans.

For my own sermon on this text, I almost went with the title "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"

While this is not the exuberant rhetorical surplus we find in 1 Corinthians 13, love is still Paul's guiding principle.

The church is still uncomfortable with human bodies. It does little to promote the rich connection between bodies and Christian spirituality.

Paul uses "body" as a metaphor, and contemporary Christians do the same when we say "the body of Christ." This metaphorical usage generally takes precedence in the church’s practice.

Bodies matter for Paul. And they matter for Christian discipleship. Paul foregrounds the human body as critical for the Christian response to God's mercy.

It's an old saw: When Protestants say “the Bible” they mean the New Testament, when they say “the New Testament” they mean Paul, and when they say “Paul” they mean Romans. I was looking forward to this opportunity to write Living By the Word. Then I received the specific Sundays I was assigned, and I confess I rolled my eyes a little. I could be yet another Presbyterian to write on Romans!

I went with Romans anyway.

Our age is tremendously excited about the visual. Yet here is Paul, firm in the conviction that "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."

Our age is tremendously excited about the visual. Yet here is Paul, firm in the conviction that "faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."

Growing in prayer is not simply acquiring a set of special spiritual skills. It is growing into Christian humanity.

Bart Ehrman's conclusions aren't novel to anyone familiar with historical scholarship on Christology. But those aren't the readers he has in mind.