Reading through the War in the Pacific

So I got this notion to read up on the War in the Pacific, and as a starter I chose Stanley Weintraub's Long Day's Journey into War, a 600 page account of the 48 hours surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Weintraub has collated the personal testimonies of thousands of people from every part of the globe and interwoven them in an hour-by-hour account. The cumulative effect is somewhat dizzying at times, as Weintruab skips across the globe among hundreds of characters, but the reader comes away with a sense of the sheer weight and fearfulness of that moment in our history. Be prepared for a long grueling read (one reviewer called it ("Long, long, long day's journey...") but this was a good book with which to begin my Pacific War Reading Series.

Candidates for the next book in the series: Scott Walker's The Edge of Terror: The Heroic Story of American Families Trapped in the Japanese-occupied Philippines. James Hornfischer's Ship of Ghosts, or Hampton Sides' Ghost Soldiers.

A Summary of Romans 1

I want to mention, just in case anyone is paying attention, that this series of posts on Romans, which bids well to stretch throughout the year, is not an attempt to dissect Romans or to present a blogging commentary on the epistle. I do not write as an authority of any kind, just someone who has been immersing himself in the book by re-reading it often. In these posts I try to capture my thoughts and internal responses to the text as I read (and re-read), and put them down in words. That's all.

I'm nearing the end of the first month of the reading plan. Here's my attempt to summarize the January passage (1:1-2:11).

Christ is the key here. Paul is his servant, preaching his gospel (the good news about who he was and what he accomplished). The purpose is to "bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of [Jesus'] name in all the nations." [1:1-7]

So we have Jesus/gospel/faith. And we have this wonderful and slippery phrase, "the obedience of faith." Keep these in mind.

The Roman Christians are world-renowned for their faith, so much so that even Paul longs to receive encouragement from it. The faithful are encouraged by one another's faith. Paul needed this kind of encouragement. So, I presume, do we. [1:8-14]

A word about encouragement here. Encouragement, in its Christian form, is not (judging by Paul's use of the word at v.12) mere positive thinking you-can-do-it pep talks. That kind is mostly irrational nonsense and has led many people into fruitless time-wasting and spirit-draining endeavors that they should never have begun. Real Christian encouragement contains the gospel. We are encouraged by one another's faith. Preaching the gospel is encouraging. For an example of this, you can jump ahead to Paul's use of the gospel as encouragement in the eighth chapter. Paul's faith is on display for the encouragement of people who are enduring the most distressing situations imaginable (see 8:35, for example).

So, Paul wants to be encouraged and he wants to encourage. His way of doing this is by preaching the gospel everywhere he goes, to all types, unashamedly. I take away this lesson here: faith needs encouragement. It seems that the "obedience of faith" is no quick and easy transformation in the one who believes. This is why the gospel needs to be frequently re-preached to believers. This is why Paul longs to preach it even to these Christians renowned for their faith. [1:15-16]

Set all this against the backdrop of a world de-volving in a downward spiral that begins with the refusal to acknowledge God (think, to begin with, of Adam and Eve) and a setting up of new Gods in His place. From all this follows every sort of sin, and Paul lists most of them. The one-word heading for all this is unrighteousness. It merits God's inevitable wrath. [1:18-32]

That's the human predicament addressed by the gospel. And you get the impression, reading this first chapter to the Romans, that Paul does not want the Christians in Rome to think they've risen above all this and can now feel safe from its contamination. We know from other passages in the epistles that Paul does not see the life of a Christian this way. See Philippians 3:12-14, for example.

Of course Paul is laying the groundwork here for much that is to come, but suffice it to say that the predicament of the world, caused by the failure of the human race to acknowledge God as God, is a gargantuan problem. Do not underestimate the problem, nor its potential impact on your own lives, Paul seems to be saying.

That's why, I presume, Christians need to hear the gospel again and again. That's why the Roman Christians, and Paul himself, stand in need of encouragement. For Paul, the encouragement is the gospel itself. The gospel reaps a harvest. The gospel is fertile ground for human flourishing. The gospel "acknowledges God" in the most clear and perfect way, and thus reverses in some sense the impact of the failure to acknowledge Him that is at the root of the world's problems. That failure produces darkened hearts and futile thoughts [v.21], but the preaching of the gospel reaps a harvest. [v.13]

Finally, in the last segment of the January reading [2:1-11], we learn that the religious person is not immune from this need of the gospel. His primary problem is hypocrisy. He sets himself up as the judge and jury, but is guilty of all the things for which he condemns others.

Here's the lesson I take away from this passage: Be very careful not to judge others. Don't claim the moral high ground because you're a Christian. This kind of behavior is deadly, and amounts to playing God, which is what started the whole crisis of sin to begin with.

The passage as a whole leaves me with this contrast of, on the one hand, futility and fruitlessness (as the result of the failure to acknowledge God), and on the other hand, the harvest metaphor used by Paul, and the phrase "the obedience of faith." Between these two contrasting pictures stands the "good news" about Jesus, who was the son of David according the flesh, but the son of God according to the Spirit, as proven by his resurrection from the dead. He is the Lord, and through him we receive grace, calling, faith. We go from futility to fruitfulness. The good news about Jesus changes everything, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

Patience in Well-Doing

My January reading for the Romans Reading Plan is Romans 1:1 through 2:8. So I've been reading that passage all month and occasionally blogging about it. But the last part (2:1-11) kind of bugs me, because of this:

to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life;

Now, if you try preaching a sermon at me about how I should be "patient in well-doing," I might just walk out. The Luther-ish thing to say here would be that Christ is my righteousness--that his righteousness is imputed to me--but is Christ my patience in well-doing?

It helps to remember that this passage comes in the midst of a long argument for the proposition that, in the words of the estimable Ray Ortlund, Jr., "God has consigned the entire human race, even upright people, to domination under sin." Which means of course, that Paul's talk of "patience in well doing" is intended to show us what is required, and also that it is beyond us. The good news (again channeling Ortlund) begins with the bad news.

I don't want to look too far ahead in Romans, but I know that Paul will address this matter more completely later on. So file it away for now. Patience in well-doing. It's a challenge.

My quotations from Ortlund are drawn from his meditative devotional, A Passion for God: Prayers and Meditations on the Book of Romans. In his meditation on this Romans 2 passage, he quotes William Beveridge (1638-1708):

I cannot pray, but I sin. I cannot hear or preach a sermon, but I sin. I cannot give alms or receive the sacrament, but I sin. Nay, I cannot so much as confess my sins, but my confessions are still aggravations of them. My repentance needs to be repented of, my tears want washing, and the very washing of my tears needs still to be washed over again with the blood of my Redeemer.

God and Morality

Over at Desiring God I found the following quote (from Doug Wilson's new book, Five Cities that Ruled the World):

Tyndale was willing to endure great trials because of what he believed about the gospel. C. S. Lewis explained that the “whole purpose of the ‘gospel,’ for Tyndale, is to deliver us from morality. Thus, paradoxically, the ‘puritan’ of modern imagination—the cold, gloomy heart, doing as duty what happier and richer souls do without thinking of it—is precisely the enemy which historical Protestantism arose and smote.”

The whole purpose of the gospel is to delivers us from morality! Although I suppose I might question the appropriateness of the word "whole" in that statement, I consider the overall point of the sentence to be true, and to be a great and essential insight that all who teach and talk about their faith or about Scripture should keep in mind.

Remember my post last week about the road from Eden? On this road that we all walk, some of us have forgotten God, choose not to honor him as God, and instead pursue what is by definition an "ungodly" or anti-Godly way (you can read Paul's nutshell description of that way in Romans 1:18-32).

But some, in an ostensible acknowledgement of God, devise another way, a way that they think may ultimately get them back to Eden (or, in other words, peace with God). That way is called "morality," and it is this way of morality that, according to Tyndale, it is the whole purpose of the Gospel to refute. The way of morality is one of the most commonly taken detours on the pilgrim road.

There is always a tendency to boil down Christianity to morality. I myself have often been a culprit in this. I'll give you an example. In Genesis 17, God speaks to Abraham:

“I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.”

Now note that God is promising fruitfulness, as the ensuing verses make clear, and fruitfulness is a key aspect of Garden life. In Romans 1 (and elsewhere) Paul indicates that fruitfulness is a key aspect of Kingdom living, while futility marks the way of the God-deniers.

But back to to God's word to Abraham. In my early days as a Christian (well, early and middle), I would have assumed that those words, "walk before me and be blameless," were a moral imperative, simply equivalent to "keep all the commandments perfectly." That's morality, and if it is God's plan to make moral people then Tyndale is greatly mistaken about the "whole purpose of the Gospel."

I heard a great sermon yesterday (as usual) at Missio Dei. The preacher talked about how "walk before me" is a term from shepherding. Picture the sheep walking before the shepherd, the shepherd following behind watchfully, and the sheep responsive to his voice or to his rod and staff. There is danger in straying from that place "before" the shepherd. The way that the shepherd leads is the good way, and there is ultimate safety in it.

Rather than "morality" (life in subservience to moral rules of behavior), we have life in relationship with the One who knows the way. A life of attentiveness on a road with a glorious destination.

Monday Whatnot

If you're a Jesus follower, tack this up where you can read it often. Important reminders.

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We can all stand to learn this lesson. BTW, doesn't Ray Ortlund have the most grace-drenched God-entranced blog in the whole dang world?

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Killer Spiders Invade Sydney!

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And your poem of the week? Richard Wilbur is in my opinion the greatest poet of my lifetime. Read his amazing Under a Tree.

This one's for Nancy

So long time reader Nancy invited me to join her Facebook group, Cunning Poets Society. I've been known to scribble a poem now and then, so I joined up. Now I'm a cunning poet, I guess.

Anyway, the problem is, I don't write much poetry these days. But that's not a good thing, thinks I. How about I write one poem a month, thinks I. Each one named for the month in which it was written. That shouldn't be too difficult. Well, okay then. So I sat in Starbucks on a sleety evening, waiting for a bus, and wrote "January, 2010."

1.

Maybe I'll never forget
all that stinging sleet on the 20th,
as I walked up Forest Ave,
having missed my bus,
and then all those crows by the hundreds
(by the thousands, surely), eager
and silent in crowding flight,
on their way to realms unknown,
dimming the wintry sky.

2.

Or the afternoon of the 14th,
and the taloned predator, new
to our suburban neighborhood:
may I never fail to remember
its slow imperturbable gliding
on broad white efficient wings--
and the crows (again the crows)
all in a mid-air uproar, circling and diving
as the ever-unhastening hawk
glides calmly through
their spiraling riot.

On the Long Road from Eden

We've been walking in the footsteps of Adam and Eve. All of us. Sent from the presence of God, banned from ever returning to Eden, and condemned to desperation, conflict, and futility. So we walk. We're not getting along, so we don't talk much. We're each blaming the other for what happened. And maybe we're each dreaming about Eden, remembering Eden, longing for Eden. And then after a while we get tired of that. It's useless. What good does it do? So we try to forget it. We try to put Eden out of our thoughts forever. There never was an Eden. We never walked with God in the garden. It was a dream. Life has always been what it is, dog eat dog from beginning to end. Never an Eden, never a Creator overseeing it all and responsible for it all. Never any of that. Just this dusty road. This daily blaming.

Still, you cannot forget, no matter how hard you try, the promise. The seed of the woman will crush the head of the snake. How distant and obtuse that must have seemed to them. Especially after so many years. What did it mean? When? It's not much of a promise to put your hope in, not much to stave off despair during the long, cold nights.

So the road goes on, generation after generation, and the collection of stories we Christians call the Old Testament is the story of that road, and the lives lived along that road. The road from Eden. And it is also the story of God giving ever more largeness and clarity to that vague promise in Genesis 3. As Eden recedes in the proverbial rear-view mirror, the promise grows and takes on greater particularity, greater distinction. Even as Israel spirals downward, the promise looms larger. But it is a long road from Genesis 3 to Isaiah 51.

I've been reading Romans 1 all month. The second half of that chapter, beginning at the 18th verse, is Paul's depiction of the road from Eden. It is futile, fruitless, and spirals downward. But the first half of the chapter indicates that something has happened to change the dynamic. The promise that began in Genesis 3 and grew in clarity of expression through the centuries, that promise has been fulfilled in Jesus.

I think we fail to understand how stunning that assertion is. We have on the one hand this depiction of a world in moral freefall. Like Adam and Eve, all humanity is "given up" by God to pursue its own path. But on the other hand, people from among that company are "called to be saints" (v.7) It is possible to speak of people having peace with God (v.7) and of being saved (v.16).

It's starting to look like there are two kinds of people in the world, according to Paul. There are, on the one hand, the "given up" by God (v.24, v.26, v,28). Eugene Peterson's rendering of that last verse is typically memorable:

Since they didn't bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose.

And then there are the called, the set apart. These folk owe it all to Jesus, the fulfillment of all the historic promises of God to Israel. It is a gift, clearly, since these set apart ones were every bit as "given up" as anyone else. And yet now, through faith, they speak of Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified son of a Galilean carpenter, as Jesus the Messiah and Lord (v.4).

All this begs many questions, which Paul will go on to address in later chapters, but that's all I wanted to say this morning. Those walking the long road from Eden have discovered hope. Not a new hope, but something promised to our parents, Adam and Eve, back at the start. Something big has happened, and it is changing everything.

Monday Whatnot

Guest blogging for the ailing Michael Spencer, Chaplain Mike has made a very good point about Jesus' phrase, "the least of these," found in Matthew 25:35-40. And of course, keep praying for Michael Spencer.

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Speaking of such matters, here are three reasons why you don't read your Bible. Good article, but I would have said, "three reasons why you struggle to read your Bible."

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Period, question mark, exclamation point, so why not a sarcasm mark.

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I love football, but then this is not really surprising: there are only 11 minutes of actual football playing in an average game!

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Here in our own solar system: diamond icebergs floating atop liquid diamond seas.

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David Murrary at the Gospel Coalition: Is our desire too weak?[HT]

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Don Miller has a blog. I didn't know that. His post on Pat Robertson's Haiti comment has 272 responses when I looked. Sheesh.

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This week's poem: The Truth about Public Transportation, by Allison Joseph

I think for a moment I see my father

Sometimes, at odd moments, I think I see my father. Well, the truth is, I see a man who reminds me of my father, and for a fleeting moment I think, wouldn't that be something if it was him?

For example, I see a tall gawky rail of a man, about 60, maybe (yes, definitely too young to be my father), and looking a little--just a little--down on his luck. He's got that hard to define way about him that makes me guess, former-Navy. Long time Navy. He's a tall wiry fellow with thinning gray hair, wearing a slightly worn corduroy blazer from Goodwill--one of those Western-style shirts that nobody wears in the East--baggy pants that make you wonder if he hasn't lost some weight recently, and of course deck shoes. His way of walking is straight-backed and yet easy and rolling. Like I said, former Navy.

He sits down to read the paper at the table across from me. He looks--how shall I say this--out of place. I think he's been on the road for a while, living out of the back of his truck. I think he's looking for somebody, a daughter or a son, somebody whose whereabouts he's not quite sure of. But I think he's patient. He'll keep looking. And I think he thinks he's got nothing to lose. He's got nothing left to lose.

He drinks his "tall" coffee without cream or sugar. Although he's still holding the newspaper in front of him, he's looking wistfully out the window. After a few minutes, he'll seem to get an idea. Forgetting his coffee abruptly, his eyes that had been seeing nothing are now focused and keen. He glances around the room, taking in every face, seeming to remember suddenly where he is and why. His eyes are a crisp blue color like the morning sky and you get the feeling he's a sharp fellow when he wants to be. He'd always guess which shell the bean was under. He'd never miss a trick.

Next thing I know, he's striding toward the door. Now he's into the street, dodging traffic. It's like he's on a mission. He's always been on a mission. All his life. He's heading back to his truck, I guess, parked in some grocery store parking lot, and he knows just what to do now.

And I think, good for him. I'm rooting for him. I hope someday he can say, mission accomplished. I lose him quickly in the crowd and the traffic. I'm still sitting here at Starbucks.

My father's been dead now twenty years almost. Yet every now and then I think I see him. It's as if for just a moment the world is not what it seems, and the things that are true, well, maybe they've been misinterpreted. I'm like a kid trying to guess which shell the bean is under.

It's just a trick of the mind, maybe of the heart. Anyway, I'm sitting here at Starbucks, and he walks in, looks around, sees me, and comes striding toward me with his arms wide. And I hear that word again, "Son." And he says, "It's been too long." And he says, "I thought I'd never find you."

Caveat Lector

Eugene Peterson said:

The words printed on the pages of my Bible give witness to the living and active revelation of the God of creation and salvation, the God of love who became the Word made flesh in Jesus, and I had better not forget it. If in my Bible reading I lose touch with this livingness, if I fail to listen to this living Jesus, submit to this sovereignty, and respond to this love, I become arrogant in my knowing and impersonal in my behavior. An enormous amount of damage is done in the name of Christian living by bad Bible reading. Caveat lector, let the reader beware.

Willie & Wynton

Let's break for a little doe-see-doe.

A Double Apocalypse

There is this double-apocalypse at the heart of Romans 1.

But first a word about that word: apocalypse. As Darrell Johnson makes clear in his book Discipleship on the Edge (which is about the NT book we call The Revelation, but which was once generally known as The Apocalypse), the word means something to us that it never meant in the first century.

To us it means catastrophe. It means end of the world. Think all the horrifying visions of the end that John was given. Think four horseman, three of which are famine, war, and death (as for the other, well, you can look it up). Apocalypse draws its meaning for us from these terrifying visions.

But in the first century the word meant something quite different. It simply meant a revealing (thus, the modern English title for John's vision, The Revelation). The verb is apokalupto, and the online NT Greek lexicon has this for its meaning: "to uncover, lay open what has been veiled or covered up, to make known, make manifest, disclose what before was unknown".

Which brings us back to Romans 1. The double-apocalypse. You find them at the very heart of the chapter, in verses 17 and 18, translated "revealed" in the ESV. Paul speaks of two revealings.

For in [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith."

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth . . .

That's all for now. I think in these verses we are close to the heart of Romans. 1) The gospel reveals the righteousness of God (God as the source of righteousness), and 2) the unrighteousness of man reveals (brings to light) the anger of God (which is just another aspect of his righteousness, by the way).

Bottom line: righteousness is a core concern of God, and should be for us as well. More in next post.

[The whole Reading Romans series is here.]

Humility, wisdom, trust, love, and receptivity

Richard Briggs wrote a book called Reading the bible Wisely. I haven't read it, but I like that title. Most Christians I know struggle to read the Bible, or they read it devotionally (small snippets chosen for their encouragingness), in which case context becomes of no importance, and many passages wind up being misunderstood. [For a lesson on context, see Chaplain's Mike's recent post at the Internet Monk, I am the least of these.]

Anyway, I forget where I read it, but some blogger quoted the Briggs book recently, saying that the Bible should be read with "humility, wisdom, trust, love, and receptivity."

So true. And it occurs to me that the Bible reader continues to benefit from repeated re-reading of the Scriptures because over time the reader, through that process, often grows in "humility, wisdom, trust, love, and [therefore] receptivity."

Monday Whatnot

This one might be good: Deliver Us from Me-Ville.

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Ever hear of Scum of the Earth Church?

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Not a bad idea: Read a book you think you'll hate in 2010.

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You know I'm big on annual reading projects. So are Darryl Dash and Tim Challies.

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Hmmm. Absurdist literature stimulates the brain.? I remember that all the smart kids in school were reading Kafka and Becket, but I didn't realize that it was Kafka and Becket that made them smart!

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45 Manly Hobbies.

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Poem of the week: let's try James Wright's A Blessing. It was the 13th most popular poem at poets.org in 2009.

Saturday Book Notes

I know I've come across Darrell W. Johnson's name from time to time, but it was this video that made me sit up and take notice:



So anyway, I looked up some of his books and was really taken by Discipleship on the Edge. It is a collection of thirty expository sermons on the Book of Revelation, and it is like no other book on that subject I've ever heard about.

I'm going to read this book very slowly and carefully over the next few months, sharing passages here from time to time. There's a very nice 9-page summary of the book here (pdf). For my first quote, the following comes from very early in the preface, as Johnson summarized why it it that if he could choose only one book of the Bible to read for the rest of his life, it would be the Revelation.

[I]n no other book of the Bible do we see Jesus as clearly and compellingly as we do in the last book. That is quite a statement coming from someone who has spent all of his adult life soaking in the Gospel of John! Yet I am convinced that no other book helps us see Jesus as he is right now as clearly and compellingly as the last book John wrote. No other book helps us see Jesus relative to the movement of history the way the last book does. No other book helps us see Jesus relative to "the powers" at work in our time the way the last book does. No other book helps us see him in a way that overcomes our fear and frees us for radical faith.

"You know you're reading the Revelation rightly if in the end you find yourself at the feet of Jesus Christ."

On frequently leaping into the same pool

So I really don't intend to write about Romans every day for a year, but it's definitely going to be a consistent theme in 2010. Of course I'm only one week into a 52 week plan, but I'm really enjoying it so far. You might have noticed I've also placed a link to the whole series at the top of the blogroll. I wanted to be able to look it over from time to time, so I put it in easy reach.

That's in a small bucket called "Top Drawer Odds & Ends." I'll probably toss a few more links in there. You see I've already put my early blogs there. It just occurred to me they ought to be somewhere. Just for the record. I've been blogging for over six years and 1600+ posts. What am I, nuts?

I've set myself several hefty reading assignments this year. I'll be spending the whole year with my face in a book! For one thing, I'm reading through the war in the Pacific, including all the major battles, some lesser known episodes, and a biography or two. I also intend to read Augustine's City of God this year if it's the last thing I do.

So beside this blog being all about Romans this year, it's also going to be all about books. That's why I made a point of updating my blogroll with some good book bloggers (they have their own section--scroll down, you'll find it).

OK, back to the Romans Reading Plan (if that ain't my new motto, what is!). Here's the gist (in case you missed it). I divided Romans up into 12 roughly equal segments, one segment for each month of the year. Each month I'll be reading the corresponding segment every day. Immersion reading, you might call it. The principle here is that frequent rereading of the Scriptures is very useful, and we don't do it enough.

But I also want to do justice to the context, a carefully wrought and multi-layered personal letter of sixteen chapters-so once a week I'll read the epistle in its entirety. This will help me to understand how themes struck in a particular passage are played out in the whole book.

That's it. When the year is over I suppose I will have read Romans about 80+ times.

Pray for fruitful reading!

Salvation from futile thoughts and darkened hearts

In the second part of Romans 1, beginning at verse 18, Paul paints a picture a poisoned-by-sin humanity sliding inevitably (it would seem) toward death. It's the kind of passage that tends to be discreetly overlooked in the typical Evangelical preaching cycle.

I can understand that. It's not a pretty picture, and one might even suggest it is too bleak, too unremitting. But Paul is diagnosing a condition that has been brought on by the rejection of God. Rejecting his truth, they turn to their own hearts and minds for understanding. But here's the problem: their thoughts are "futile," and their hearts are "darkened." In this condition they pursue their own way, but it all leads (as Paul will note in a later chapter) to death. Paul sums up the condition in verse 32 here, at the end of a long litany of sin.  The people are:

foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Paul's word for all this is "unrighteousness," and my word for it, drawing from a theme I find running throughout Romans, is futility. It leads to death. It produces no life, no harvest, no good fruit. Without the merciful intervention of the rejected God, it will end in justified judgement and wrath from that same God.

You can't understand salvation Biblically if you don't get the seriousness of humanity's situation. But it is not a hopeless situation. By way of contrast, look at what Paul says in the first half of the chapter about the gospel:

• He says that the gospel's purpose is to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of the name of Jesus, everywhere in the world (v.5)
• He says that those who belong to Jesus are called to be saints (v.7)
• He  expects that the preaching of the gospel in Rome will reap a harvest (v.13)
• He says that the gospel is the power of salvation for those who believe (v.16)
• And he says that in the gospel is revealed the righteousness of God (v.17)

Note the contrast between unrighteousness and futility, on the one hand, and faith in the gospel and a harvest of righteousness on the other.  From the former one would need to be saved (since "futility" implies you can't save yourself), and salvation, Paul says, is for those who believe the gospel.  The end result, the fruit, is righteousness, or as Paul says, "the obedience of faith."

So the key to this transformation from unrighteousness to righteousness, for Paul, is the preaching of the gospel, and the reception and believing of the gospel by those who hear it.  And it is clearly a continual need, even after the initial motion of believing, for does not Paul desire to reap of harvest among the Roman believers by preaching the gospel to them?  The obedience of faith is, apparently, something one grows toward, and the growth is engendered (watered?) by the continued reception of and trusting in the gospel.  By this means does growth in godliness continue.

The Gospel in Romans 1

So I'm going to be ensconced in Romans 1 all month. I don't know how frequently I'll blog about it, but pretty often I suspect. This is not a methodical dissection, but day-by-day listening to Paul and considering his words.

The greeting in Romans 1 is very rich. I've read this chapter four or five times in the last few days and a couple of things keep jumping out at me. First, Paul is hanging everything on the gospel. He lives for it, because he believes that through it the world will be transformed.

And second, apart from the gospel, we have sin leading to death, a portrait not only of the deeply entrenched sinfulness of our hearts, but of futility. When I read through the whole letter a couple of days ago I saw this theme recurring: on the one hand, talk of fruitfulness and harvest, on the other, futility and death. Very stark contrasts.

We see that contrast in chapter 1. More on this later, I suspect, but for now I just want to collect some of what Paul says about the gospel here.

• Paul is "set apart for the gospel" (v.1)
• the gospel was "promised in the holy Scriptures" (v.2)
• the gospel concerns God's son, "Jesus Christ our Lord" (v.3,4)
• Paul serves God "in the gospel of his Son" (v.9)
• Paul is eager to preach the gospel to the Christians in Rome (v.15)
• the gospel is "the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes" (v.16)
• in the gospel "the righteousness of God is revealed" (v.17)

That's it for this morning. There's pleny here to keep us busy all month!

Kindling for a Holy Fire

Yesterday I took delivery of Ray Ortlund's A Passion for God: Prayers and Meditations on the Book of Romans, a book published in 1993 and now apparently out of print. This looks like the perfect devotional to accompany my immersion in the Epistle to the Romans. Ortlund's method is simple. In essence, he is praying through the book of Romans, with the overriding desire for a closer and more intimate knowledge of God. He is yearning for "revival" within his own heart.

I want to offer a somewhat lengthy quotation from the introduction. Ortlund, who of course blogs at Christ is Deeper Still, wrote:

When you look at your Bible, what do you see? I have learned to see the Bible as kindling for a holy fire. Scripture is meant to inform us, and thus to inflame us. It is meant to illuminate our thoughts of God, and thus to ignite our affections for God. So in our personal Bible study, as we strive to think and learn, we are gathering kindling for devotion and worship in our hearts. And even more, we are amassing kindling for revival and reformation in the church.

Paul's letter to the Romans is of this explosive nature. Under the blessing of the Holy Spirit, it warms Christians with release from guilt, confidence in God, and certainty in their faith. It ignites Christians with joy and moral courage. It fires Christians with energy for bold new ventures of holy obedience. Let me put it this way. The more you understand, believe and love Romans, the more filled you will be with God's Spirit, the more you will walk in newness of life and the more your life will count for the great cause of the gospel.

Monday Whatnot

Steve Scott on the 20/80 rule. Right you are, Steve.

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The epic of the universe.

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24 Abandoned Cities.

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We live in a Genesis 3 world and not a Revelation 21 world.

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Profound:



Lots more incredible video at workofthepeople.com

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A new Whatnot tradition: we end with a lovely poem.

The Gospel Drama

Here are a couple of things I want to keep in mind as I read through Romans.

1. Octavius Winslow: "Search the Scriptures, my reader, with a view of seeing and knowing more of your Redeemer, compared with whom nothing else is worth knowing or making known."  [Thanks to the Foolish Galatian for this quote.] To know more of my Redeemer, then, is my highest priority.
2. Michael Horton defines the Gospel as the good news that "God has fulfilled his promise to the patriarchs and prophets in his son's death and resurrection." This is the epic drama that lies behind all correct doctrinal teaching, all true worship, all true living by faith and doing of justice and mercy, etc. [Thanks to Tim Chester for this one.]

The Gospel, then, is a story, a drama, with God as the prime mover, revealing the righteousness of God (in fact, the only righteousness in the universe) through the ministry, death, and resurrection of his son, Jesus. On our side, it is the drama of transformation, a kind of travail as in childbirth, as something glorious is brought forth from something fallen and paltry and ridden with sin. As the ESV Study Bible puts it:

[Paul's gospel] included not just a call to initial saving faith but Paul's entire message about Jesus Christ and how Christ's saving activity transforms all of life and all of history.

The gospel, again, is this story, this unfolding drama. The drama of the Christian life is the receiving of this good news, trusting it, and the transformation of life that results. This is the drama of God played out in the life of man, individually and collectively.

This transformation, clearly, is from unrighteousness to righteousness, and it is witnessed in the lives of the faithful. Faith then is our part in the drama. The unrighteous, having been served by God in Christ, accept and receive this gift, and this accepting and receiving, this faith, plays out in the midst of a perversely skewed creation: that is our part, our role, in the great drama. Like all drama, it is not without conflict, set-backs, and even tragedy. But in the midst of it all, the fact of what God has done remains unshakable. The news is good, indeed. He has entered into our situation, and accomplished what no other could. With excellent reason then Paul, as an apostle of God in Christ, can declare to the Romans, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."

The Year of Reading (and living) Romans

As I mentioned yesterday, I plan to read Paul's Epistle to the Romans once a week for all of 2010. This morning was my first read-through. I have read the epistle often enough, but usually focusing on the middle chapters, five through eight, which have always seemed to me to be sort of the highest peaks in the range. This year, though, is the year of reading (and living) Romans.

The plan will work this way. On Saturday mornings I'll read the whole book, start to finish. Between the Saturdays, I'll focus on discrete passages, prayerfully meditating on and journaling through the verses. Since I will have recently re-read the whole book, the larger context of Paul's argument will never be far from my mind and act a a guide in my thinking and journaling.

Well, that's the plan. It is fundamentally a devotional endeavor. I chose to do this with Romans and not some other book because of its length and content, and because it has always been a book that has ignited faith in its readers, from Martin Luther to John Wesley and many others. I do plan to occasionally read what others have said about a passage, in commentaries and the like, but always remembering that this is to be a devotional practice, not theological research.

Now, if Romans were 12 chapters long it would be easy to decide at what pace to read from day to day: one chapter per month. But it is 16 chapters, which means in my daily devotional journaling I will need to cover about one and a third chapters per month. Being a bit of a geek about such things, I decided to look more carefully at the matter. There are 433 verses in Romans. That means I should maintain about a 37 verse per month rate in order not to fall behind. This may seem a little obsessive, but here's how it might break down. In each month, I will devotionally read and meditate on the following passages of Romans, taking me through the entire book in the course of a year. I have tried to divide the monthly passages in a way that doesn't divide a paragraph or argument.

January Rom 1:1-2:11
February Rom. 2:12-3:20
March Rom. 3:21-4:25
April Rom. 5:1-6:14
May Rom. 6:15-7:24
June Rom. 8
July Rom. 9:1-10:4
August Rom. 10:5-11:24
September Rom. 11:25-12:21
October Romans 13 & 14
November Rom. 15
December Rom. 16

On Reading Projects

Reading projects. I'm a great fan of them. For some time now I've been on a personal quest to read through human history from the time of Julius Caesar to the present. Just now I'm reading Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower. It was Godlsworthy's book on Julius Caesar that got this reading project started.

Anyway, this is a long term project that may never actually come to and end. After Goldsworthy I will have to read something that takes place in the post-Fall-of-Rome world (sixth century), whether biography, straight history, or even historical fiction. Suggestions appreciated.

Speaking of reading projects, here's another. Not too long ago I read a book about the last large-scale naval battle in history, called The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. What an amazing story. There was at least one awestruck "wow" on my lips for each page, often several.

Anyway, I decided I would go back to the beginning of the "war in the Pacific" by reading a book about Pearl Harbor, and then reading through the war, island battle by island battle. This might be over-doing it a bit, but that's the plan for now. So the book of the moment is the meticulously researched Long Day's Journey into War, by Stanley Weintraub.

Now, I should mention that the true guru of reading projects is Sherry at Semicolon. She's reading biographies of all the U.S. presidents, for example. Great idea, and a great way to learn American political history. Her blog is an amazing compendium of things bookish.

I have one more reading project in mind of 2010, this one a little different than the others. In this project, rather than reading a series of books, I'm going to read the same thing over and over. I've chosen Paul's letter to the Romans. I'm thinking I'll read it once a week for the entire year. I'm going to center my devotional journaling around the letter. I'm also going to read Ray Ortlund's devotional book, A Passion for God: Prayers and Meditations on the Book of Romans. Expect much Romans-informed blogging around these parts.