Grace and peace to you.
For most of the summer, our epistles or New Testament readings will come from St. Paul’s letter to the Christian church in Rome. It is the longest of Paul’s letters, which is why it is the first one in Scripture. Scholars believe Paul wrote it between 55 – 58 CE while he was living in Corinth, and unlike some of the other epistles attributed to him, this letter’s authorship is undisputed.
While Romans is not one of the four Gospels in our canon, Martin Luther once called it “the chief part of the New Testament and the [clearest] Gospel.”[i] Luther wrote that a Christian finds most things one ought to know in this letter,
namely, what is law, Gospel, sin, punishment, grace, faith, righteousness, Christ, God, good works, love, hope, the cross, and how we are to conduct ourselves toward everyone.[ii]
A summary of Paul’s teaching to the Church, the letter
is about God's saving work in Christ for Jew and Gentile alike, both of whom fall short of doing the will of God yet receive grace and mercy from God.[iii]
Whenever we hear one of Paul’s letters it’s helpful to remember that we are not the intended audience. We are eavesdropping on a conversation he is having with another group of people.
Often Paul wrote to communities where he had planted churches and addressed specific conflicts that were happening in those places. In his letter to the Romans, while he knows some of them by name, he is writing to a community or congregation of Christians that are largely unknown to him; he is planning to go there and meet them but that hasn’t happened yet. [iv]
Because we are on this side of history, we know it never will. He will go to Jerusalem where he will be arrested and lose his freedom, and when Paul does go to Rome it will be as a prisoner of the state and not a free missionary. [v]
But that’s another part of the story.
In this letter, instead of counseling the Romans on a particular aspect of their life together, Paul addresses fundamental parts of their – and his and our – life in Christ.[vi]
And as if we found scattered pages laying on the kitchen table, we pick up the letter in chapter five.
Here Paul writes about new life in Christ and the fruits of that life.
He begins,
Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; (5:1-2)
I don’t know about you but, today, with our human sinfulness and brokenness on display throughout the world, in places of government, in intensive care beds in our U.S. hospitals and in places like Ghana where their public health officials have to fight COVID-19 with inadequate equipment, in the faces of hungry neighbors here and on the streets of places like India, this reassurance that we have peace felt like balm, soothing and restoring me.
And yet, if we only understand peace as a sense of calm and rest, we lose out on the fullness of what Paul is describing.
Peace with God is reconciliation with God. It is the peace of being in relationship with God, a relationship that only happens through Jesus Christ.
This relationship is only possible because of the grace - God’s favor or goodwill – we have received. It is never because of our works, or our efforts, but God’s own divine action upon us. Grace isn’t a transaction.
“This grace in which we stand” is the place where we are freed from sin and we are living in faith in Christ and Him alone.
Luther wrote, “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace.”[vii] Karl Barth wrote in his commentary on Romans that faith doesn’t offer us any shortcuts, but it does offer us hope that God will accomplish God’s purposes. [viii]
Continuing his letter, Paul wrote,
hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (5:5)
So maybe this peace with God, which is ours through our new life in Christ, is balm after all:
healing that comes from the Holy Spirit poured into us by God who abundantly loves us and gives us everlasting life;
and reconciliation – the restoration of relationship – that only happens when we see each other as God sees us, whole and beloved.
Let us pray…
Good and gracious God, Thank you for your Son Jesus in whom we have faith. We stand in Your grace that brings hope for our lives and our world. Show us how to bear your love into the world and see our neighbors as you see us, whole and beloved. Amen.
[i] Martin Luther. “Preface”, Commentary on Romans. Translated by J. Theodore Mueller.vii.
[ii] Luther, xxv-xxvii.
[iii] Arland Hultgren. “Summary.” Enter the Bible. Luther Seminary. https://www.enterthebible.org/newtestament.aspx?rid=6, Accessed 6/13/2020
[iv] Anders Nygran. Commentary on Romans. Translated by Carl C. Rasmussen, 1-8.
[v] ibid
[vi] ibid
[vii] Luther, xvii.
[viii] Karl Barth. The Epistle to the Romans. Translated by Edwyn C. Hoskins. 153.
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