In Acts 26, the apostle Paul stands before King Agrippa and gives an account of his Damascus road experience explaining that Jesus had specifically,
“appointed him as a servant and witness to his resurrection and has officially sent him to the Gentiles to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in him.” Acts 26:16-18
After explaining the content of his commission from Jesus, Paul goes on to tell Agrippa that he was not negligent in fulfilling his new mission entrusted to him. He says,
“Therefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance. Acts 26:16-18
It is interesting to note exactly the differences in what Jesus told Paul and what Paul then told Agrippa.
First, Jesus told Paul to go to the Gentiles to open their eyes. Paul tells Agrippa that he declared (the gospel) to the Gentiles. Does Paul understand the phrase “open their eyes” to be equivalent to declaring the gospel? Is Paul making a connection between the declaration of the gospel and the resultant effect of the opening of one’s spiritual eyes? Is this an early case for another way of saying “faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ?” (10:17)
Second, Jesus told Paul that he sent him to the Gentiles so that penultimately, through faith, they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. Paul tells Agrippa that Jesus sent him to the Gentiles so that penultimately, they should repent and turn to God. The same question applies as above. Does Paul equate the phrase, “turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan and turn to God” with the phrase, “they should repent and turn to God?” Is repentance characterized by a noticeable and drastic difference in one’s life, as drastic a difference as light is to darkness?
Third, Jesus told Paul that he sent him to the Gentiles ultimately that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in him.” Paul tells Agrippa that Jesus sent him to the Gentiles ultimately that, as a result of their repentance, they should be performing deeds in keeping with their repentance. Once more, the same question applies as above. How does Paul equate what Jesus told him and what he tells Agrippa?
How Paul understands Jesus is critical to understanding Paul.
Does Paul equate “sanctified by faith” with “performing deeds in keeping with their repentance?”
We are assuming that Paul desires to is communicate exactly what he understood Jesus told him. So here, does Paul understand the phrase, “a place among those who are sanctified by faith in him” equivalent to “performing deeds in keeping with their repentance?” In Paul’s mind, is the idea of sanctification and performing deeds in keeping with repentance” the same ideas? Further then, in Paul’s mind are the ideas of repentance, forgiveness, and sanctification intricately woven together as almost one concept?
In any case, one thing is sure. Paul definitely understands that the Roman Christians, as a result of their repentance, should be performing (continuing present) deeds that demonstrate or validate their repentance. And it is with this clear understanding in his mind that he approaches the next section of scripture.
In this next section of Romans (1:18-32), Paul is concerned about those who “continually suppress the truth by their unrighteous deeds”. Is Paul referring to Jewish Christians who he expects to be performing deeds in keeping with their repentance, but failing to do so?
Paul opens this paragraph, as he did the last paragraph, with the connecting-word at the beginning of verse 18, “for.” “For” is a grammatical result-reason connector indicating a result-reason relationship between two connecting sentences. So, in this case, verses 1:1-17 and this paragraph (1:18-32) should be read together, with verses 1-17 as the result for which Paul says what he says beginning in verse 18 and following.
The reason (verses 18-32) for Paul claiming that…
“the gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek/Gentile”…
…is because God does not show partiality to anyone in the administration of salvation nor in the administration of judgment, nor in the administration of righteousness, to the Jew first then the Greek/Gentile. Paul begins his case to the Romans in this paragraph. God is not partial and he starts first with the Jews.
So, because the apostle Paul is aware that the true power of the gospel is salvific righteousness to all who believe, and because he is aware that “God's truth abounds to his glory”, as he says later in Romans 3:7, he now moves to a pertinent and relevant situation within the cultural context of Rome in which the opposite is happening, (salvific righteousness being suppressed, 1:18, i.e. only available to Jews) in order to pave the way for a good reason for him to preach the gospel to the Romans; i.e. because God is not partial in the administration of salvation by faith (salvific righteousness for both Jew and Gentile), nor in the administration of judgment for lack of faith, (for both Gentile and Jew).
Apparently, among those to whom Paul was under obligation to preach the gospel (1:14), (Greeks, barbarians, wise, and foolish.) the gospel truth (salvific righteousness) was not abounding to God’s glory; it had rather been “exchanged for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things (1:23). And instead of honoring God and giving thanks to Him for His “clearly perceived eternal power and divine nature," both the “wise and foolish exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (1:25). And since they determined that God was of no value to them, their intellectual rejection of God resulted in their inexcusable practice of dishonorable passions among themselves. Instead, they exchanged the soulfully passionate pursuit of God, with a "selfleshly" passionate pursuit of one another.
Paul understood that those deeds that they were performing were not “deeds in keeping with their repentance.” Those deeds were injurious to the gospel he preached. Since Paul had already told the readers that the Roman Christians’ “faith is proclaimed in all the world,” (1:8) Paul knew that God’s name would be blasphemed among the Gentiles (2:24) because of the "shameless acts" they were performing.
Could one reason be that Paul so eagerly wanted to visit the Romans (1:15) on so many different occasions was because he so much wanted to impart “some spiritual gift to them to strengthen them” in their conduct (1:11) because they were so much not “performing deeds in keeping with their repentance? So much so was this perhaps the case, that he had to make this final ominous pronouncement at the end of this section, “Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (1:32). Claiming to know God, calling themselves Jews who are instructed in the Law, and boasting in God, how irreverent might this behavior appear to be in the eyes of observers, and how insulting to God might it be?
So, it seems that perhaps Paul may have been under obligation to preach the gospel in Rome for more than one reason; not just because he had been commissioned by God to do so, but also because, like the Galatian churches, they began living and practicing a distorted version of the gospel and Paul felt obligated to bring the Roman Christians into conformity with the gospel of righteousness by faith which leads to repentance and a daily “performing of deeds that are in keeping with repentance.” If he did not visit them, perhaps "God’s name would continually be blasphemed among the nations.”
So the connections we have made thus far in the first chapter of Romans are as follows; Paul begins his letter (1:1-7) by acknowledging his Damascus road experience and the life-changing influence it had on him and his understanding of the gospel message. His commission as a servant of the Messiah, specifically as a chosen apostle of the Gospel of God concerning His Son Jesus, sent to the Gentiles to proclaim the message that God displayed his wrath and power to the world becomes the focus of his worldview.
Paul has focused his attention on God's wrath; revealing that he has laid the judgment of the sins of the world on Jesus’ shoulders on the cross. He has also focused his attention on God's power; in raising Jesus from the dead as validation that Jesus is indeed the Son of God, all in an effort to bring faith and obedience to the Gentiles. That gospel, Paul emphatically highlights at both the beginning and end of his letter, and it is that gospel that he consistently promotes throughout his letter because he now finds it distorted among the Roman Jewish Christians’ lifestyle.
And it is that Gospel of God promised beforehand concerning His Son Jesus that Paul eagerly wants to preach to the Romans. Paul lists ten ways that the Romans can identify how eager he was to visit them, (1:8-15). It’s Paul’s eagerness that is in focus and his eagerness becomes the result-section connected to the next reason-section of 1:16-17, the reason being Paul’s confidence in his claim that he is IN NO WAY ashamed of the true gospel, the message of salvific righteousness available to all; which the Romans have distorted as he describes in the next section in which we find ourselves now (1:18-35).
It is these Roman Jewish Christians (2:17) whose faith is being proclaimed throughout the world, those to whom Paul is obligated to preach the truth of the gospel because he knows that “God's truth ought to abound to his glory." Instead however, it is those very Roman Jewish Christians who have “exchanged the truth about God for a lie;” it is those very ones who have “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man”…and as a result of exchanging God’s truth and glory for things contrary to His character, they have also “exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature” and contrary to the gospel that Paul preached. So, it is for very good reason that Paul begins this last section of the first chapter with the ominous sentence,
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth (of the gospel).”
The “name of God was being blasphemed among the Gentiles” (2:24) because of the behavioral exchanges the Roman Jewish Christians made to the truth of the Gospel of God (1:18-32) that abounds to His glory (3:7).
Therefore, as Paul surmises in the beginning of the next chapter, “no one is without excuse” (2:1), repeating what he said in the previous chapter (1:20). And for that reason, Paul is eager to visit the Romans to preach the gospel to them all because “it is the power of salvation to everyone who believes” – because no one is without excuse.
And because the name of God was being blasphemed among the Gentiles, Paul is all the more eager to visit the Roman Christians to re-preach the gospel to them all specifically because “the power of the gospel to everyone who believes is salvific righteousness.”
In my next blog we will continue with Paul’s thought that because “no one is without excuse,” there is “salvific righteousness for everyone who believes” because “God Shows No Partiality.”
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