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September 10, 2014 By Fr. Spencer

Sermon for Trinity XII

“And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakes of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.” Romans 11:17 &18

You all are well aware that the epistle to the Romans is not a book for self-improvement; it is not even a book written to show men and women how to be saved. It is first and foremost a book about God. The epistle to the Romans is the mother of all meta-narratives. Paul essentially begins with the first thought of the first book of the Bible: Genesis 1:1 – “in the beginning God created,” and he keeps talking till he reaches the last thought of the last book of the Bible: Revelation 22:20 – “even so come (quickly) Lord Jesus.” Paul tells God’s story by reaching all the way back to creation and then all the way forward to a common future that we share with God when his Kingdom comes “on earth as it is in heaven.” This epistle is all about the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and how he determined to use Abraham and his family to save humanity and the material world. God did this by promising Abraham and children a piece of real estate, but as time went on it became clear that the little patch of sand we call Israel was the outward and visible sign of the whole wide world and so Paul wrote:

“For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.” Romans 4:13

“Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.” Galatians 3:7-9

St. Paul presents two ways of salvation and by that he makes it clear that he means two ways of being in the Covenant, in the Promise made to Abraham and his family – one way is true the other way is false. The false way was the belief that by being a Jew physically and following the Jewish way, either by birth or conversion, one is in the Covenant God made with Abraham. If one were born into Israel or if one converted to Jewish way (and for the males that means circumcision) then you are a child of the Covenant, a child of the Promise, a child of Abraham – you are in, you have right standing with God. All of Paul’s talk about the Law, about the “righteousness of the Law” or justification through the Law goes back to being a Jew either by natural birth or through conversion and circumcision. It is not a matter of gentiles keeping the Law of Moses; it is a matter of a gentile converting to Judaism.

The Mosaic Law was not an instrument for Jews to work their way to heaven, much less was it given for gentiles to work their way to heaven, but rather the Law was given as the identifying badge of Israel. What I want you to see is that when Paul writes about circumcision or the “works of the Law” he is not abstracting circumcision, nor the “works of the Law” – he is in no way abstracting those beliefs or behaviors and then turning them into universal concepts that apply to everyone. Conceptualists continue to misunderstand and they fail to develop because they are always abstracting concepts from objects in the concrete, relational reality they are embedded in because it is only in the concrete relation that the objects they attempt to abstract have meaning. St. Paul is not a conceptualist and he is always talking about being a Jew and staying a Jew when he speaks about justification. One will go on missing his point if one tries to understand the words justification, righteousness, or even circumcision out of their relational contexts. It is like trying to reduce the meaning of a automobile to the flywheel or it is like trying to reduce the meaning of a narrative to a plot. The Law is another highly misunderstood word: I think there is a common misunderstanding that folks have about the Mosaic Law that runs like this: the Law was given to show that no matter how hard you try, the Law is an impossible standard and one is always doomed to failure. Another mistake that follows is the flawed belief that we Christians know that the Law is an impossible standard and for that reason no one will carry out the works of the Law. That is only partially true. The assumption is that for Jews who were relying on keeping the Law to fail at keeping the Law was devastation. But it was the so-called impossible rigor of the Law that made it a false way. In fact St. Paul makes this very point in Galatians:

“Though I might also have confidence in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee… touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless.” Philippians 4:4-6

Paul believed that he had in fact achieved the righteousness offered by the Law. In fact he writes that his achievement the righteousness offered by the Law was flawless, but he did not say he was perfect. What we need to understand is that Jews like St. Paul knew perfectly well that the standards of the Law were impossible but there were provisions within the Law, that is, within Israel, for failure and sin – in other words there are provisions within the Law for forgiveness of sin and restoration. If one makes the rigor of the Law, its impossibility, its essential meaning one will not understand St. Paul. This is what I want you to understand: St. Paul is absolutely asserting that even if you could keep the Mosaic Law perfectly – I mean absolutely to perfection – even if, that would not put you right with God because the issue is not the Law. Being in the right with God begins with being in the Covenant – and that is not achieved by being born or converting to physical Judaism; furthermore no amount of Law keeping and no amount of zeal gets you into the Covenant.

So physical Israel declared that if you want right standing with God you have to be in the Covenant (that much is right) – but the way into the Covenant is through your natural birth as a physical Jew or through conversion and the first act of conversion was circumcision. Thus being right with God was reduced to being a physical Jew by birth or by conversion. Remember the distinction Paul made between physical Israel, his “kinsmen according to the flesh,” and what he calls the “Israel of God.”

The second way, the true and only way of salvation, of becoming a child of the Covenant, of becoming a child of the Promise, a child of Abraham – of being in the right with God is through conversion to Jesus Christ as the Messiah of Israel whom God raised from the dead.

“And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakes of the root and fatness of the olive tree…” Romans 11:17

Jesus Christ through his own faith in God the Father brought the Promise that was made to Abraham to maturity, to finality. The faith of Abraham is answered by the faith of Jesus the Messiah, the Promised Seed and the circle is drawn, the Promise is completed: Jesus embodies Israel and through his faith, the faith of Jesus, through his unwavering faith in his Father, he went to the Cross – not through mere obedience or any need to provide a legal satisfaction for sin – but through his faith in God at the hour of his betray, torture and crucifixion – his faith, the faith of the Seed of the Promise, Jesus the Messiah sealed up, perfected the faith of Abraham, brought the Promise to complete fulfillment. And his resurrection from the dead is God’s ratification of Jesus’ last word on the Cross: “It is finished” is God’s last word on sin and death: “It is finished.” It is not the end of the Promise it is the end of sin and death and now God’s Promise to Abraham will be filled up with the children he was swore both Jew and Gentile who will all bear the family mark of faith. The Church is the instantiation of the Abrahamic Promise comes to fruition and so by God’s amazing grace we Gentiles are grafted in.

I have spoken about this before. We are all born as branches upon the same Vine, Adam, the father of us all and when he disobeyed God, he died spiritually: he was deprived of the supernatural grace of God, and as we have seen, he suffered the four wounds of the fall. Our first parents were created to love God with their whole heart, soul and mind, but now not only can we not love God, we cannot love anything rightly without God’s help. Self-concern, self-centeredness, rebellion against God, and bias are never far off. We desire the good, but for the wrong reason and in the wrong manner. We are born as branches upon this dying Vine called Adam and though we receive from him true humanity, the true image of God, we also receive all the deadly consequences of the fall. But the good news is that there is another Vine, the Vine of the Church, the Body of Christ, and the New Israel, the instantiation of the Abrahamic Covenant. The Church is the Vine because Christ planted this Vine. To be a member of the Church is to be a member of the New Israel, the New Adam, a member of Christ, a child of Abraham. The Vine of Christ is living; in fact the Vine of Christ is true life. Christ who is Israel is the root of this Vine and we partake of that its life-giving fatness, which is the life-giving sap of the Vine. In Romans 11:17 St. Paul writes that we have been grafted into God’s olive tree — which is the true Israel, Jesus Christ — and we now feed upon the “fatness” of that olive tree. In other words God’s olive tree is saturated with the life of God himself according to the logic of St. Paul’s imagery. To be a member of the Israel, the Olive Tree that God’s has cultivated is to be a member of Vine of Christ, which is to have the privilege of feeding upon the life of God. So on the one hand we are born as branches upon the Vine of Adam and if we continue to feed upon him we are ultimately feeding upon death. On the other hand, we have the New Adam, the New Israel, Jesus Christ, who is full of life and the richness of all the privileges God has given his Son. Therefore the only question remaining is “How do we get ourselves attached to this new Vine of Christ?” The answer is that we have to be grafted in. That means that we have to be broken off the old Vine of Adam and grafted into the New Vine of Christ, which is his living Body the Church.

“And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakes of the root and fatness of the olive tree; Boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.” Romans 11:17 &18

August 11, 2014 By Fr. Spencer

Sermon for Trinity VIII

“And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakes of the root and fatness of the olive tree… And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins.”

Let’s say you have a very bright child and by the age of 5 she is curious about the reality of things and she comes to you and says, “Daddy I have made the most amazing discovery. I have found that if I take one of mom’s glass bowls and fill it with water and then if I take one of mom’s wooden spoons and put it into the water – guess what happens. The water bends the wooden spoon. I never would have guess in all my life that wood could bend but now I know that water bends wood. But that’s not all, as soon as I remove it from the water pot, I mean instantly, the air straightens the spoon out and it returns to what I call its ‘pre-aquatic condition.’ I mean I think it is instant, but I have admit the spoon is still wet and I have to admit that one time I thought I saw it quickly bend back but I couldn’t say that beyond a reasonable doubt.” You take a little time, Dad or Mom, to explain refraction and how light bends differently in water. Your daughter has pure love on her face as she wrinkles her brow and places her little hand on your shoulder and says, “Dad, I know what I saw with my own eyes.” And just then she pretends that her play cell phone is ringing and she jumps on the couch and says, “Kathy, guess what I discovered this morning…”

Why am I telling you this story? One point that I wish to make is that everything, all of experience, has to be interpreted which is to say that experience has to be understood. When the little girl said, “Dad, I know what I saw with my own eyes,” she was telling the truth because what she saw with her own eyes was in fact already out there before her. But she left reality when she thought that taking a look (even taking a very long, hard look) at what was before her meant that “water bends wood.” But children grow and develop. At some point our little scholar will grasp what her Dad meant about refraction – that light bends – and her world will never be the same again. At that moment she will experience her own personal Copernican Revolution – in fact that will be only one of many personal Copernican Revolutions and she will never be able to return to her original naiveté.

In Biblical studies the equivalent to “knowing as taking a look” is the belief that the Bible speaks for itself and it does not need to be interpreted. From this point-of-view interpretation is an intrusion of the reader into the texts – interpretation prejudices the texts, it permits you to read whatever you want into the texts and therefore it is best to leave all that out and just let the Bible say what it says. This is sometimes called “the principle of the empty head” which means that the less you know the purer your interpretation will be, the more objective your reading will be – if you decrease the text will increase. But you know that isn’t true. Our little girl ought to be evidence enough that the less you know the more likely you are to err in your interpretation of events. If you understand that light bends as it passes through our atmosphere and it bends in a significantly different manner it passes through water – if you have that information you will understand that the light is bending not the wooden spoon. The myth of the empty head does not assure the coveted “pure interpretation” and in fact it is a sure way to misinterpret the Bible – the less you know the more mistakes you will make.

This year I have had a lot to say about faith, justification, Abraham, the Promise, the Covenant, Participation and Jesus and it is my hope that some of you might wonder if what you have thought to be absolutely beyond dispute about faith, justification, and salvation may turn out to be somewhat analogous to the little girl’s misunderstanding of the curve of light and that would prod you to examine what you actually believe about faith, justification, and salvation and also prod you to wonder just what St. Paul and Jesus and the Church believes about faith, justification, and salvation. I think we will finish up Romans 9-11 over the next three weeks and I plan over those weeks to redefine faith, justification, and salvation from within the context of the New Testament, from within Israel’s context, Jesus’ context, from within Paul’s unconverted and converted context. When we read the Bible that way the narrative sounds strange and probably even dangerous and you are likely to feel some anxiety if you take it seriously, but that is exactly how a Copernican Revolution is experienced. I have to say by the way that I have not just made this stuff up – I’m not that smart. But I have spent a lot of time in the texts, saying my prayers, celebrating the Holy Communion everyday, and I have spent many hours collaborating with our clergy here at All Saints and clergy I know all around the country; and I, as well as our other clergy, have also spent many hours with the very best New Testament scholars living today – men and women, great teachers who spend their lives reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting the Hebrew and Aramaic Old Testament as well as the Greek New Testament – scholars like Ben Meyer, N.T. Wright, Ben Witherington, Richard Hays and many others.

That being said the text for today completes a circle we started tracing in the text of Romans nearly a year ago when we looked at what it means to be “in” someone, what it means to “participate” as in our participation in Christ. First, I will read two verses from Romans 6 and next a portion of our text from Romans 11:17:

“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death… For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection…” Romans 6

“And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakes of the root and fatness of the olive tree…” Romans 11:17

The upshot of both Romans chapter 6 and Romans chapter 11 is our participation in Abraham through our participation in Christ: we are baptized into Jesus Christ and to make the point even more exacting St. Paul say “we have been planted together,” that is we are planted with Jesus in his death and we are planted together, planted individually, yes; but also planted together as the Church with Jesus in his death. And then in chapter 11 Paul makes the same point again, but this time he completes the circle for us when he writes:

“And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partakes of the root and fatness of the olive tree…” Romans 11:17

The upshot of the two verses is that we have been grafted into Israel and now we feed upon the realized promises God made to Abraham. But first remember that we talked about the fact that we were in Adam – as his seed, his future children – when he disobeyed God and sin and death came upon this earth and since all humanity participated in Adam we too are “in” sin and death. Our world and we were lost in Adam. We have also talked about how God called Abraham to begin the process of bringing an end to sin and death not by giving him a set of commandments but by making a promise. God promised Abraham that He, God, would use his family to redeem all of creation and that would begin with a son from his own seed. Even though Abraham was well beyond fathering a child he believed God and it was “counted unto him for righteousness,” but it was not just reckoned to him as an individual person, it was reckoned to everyone who was “participating in” Abraham – that is all his unborn children. This is called the Abrahamic Covenant but Paul nearly always refers to as the Promise. Let me give you two more example of participation from the book of Hebrews:

First from the 7^th chapter of Hebrews:

“One might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him.” Hebrews 7: 9-10

The writer of Hebrews was having a discussion about the Levitical priesthood that is descended from Levi and the fact that they received tithes from the people of God, but did not pay tithes themselves because of their office. But the point he wants to make is that the priesthood of Melchizedek is superior to the Levitical priesthood that is demonstrated by the fact that Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek because he was in Abraham as his unborn seed when he paid tithes to Melchizedek. And here’s another example:

“By faith Abraham… sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the joint-heirs with him of the same promise… “ Hebrews 11: 9

What I want you to understand is that Jacob did not live in a tent with his grandfather Abraham and that’s is not what the writer of the Hebrews means anyway. What he means is that even when Abraham was all by himself, all his children, who are heirs to God’s Promise, were within him and in that sense Isaac and Jacob sojourned with Abraham, indeed in that sense, King David sojourned in the desert and so did Jesus because they were in Abraham’s loins.

The promise God made to Abraham was a promise made to his seed and by this promise God enlisted Abraham and his family to begin reversing the disaster that Adam’s sin had brought upon creation. That is the Abrahamic covenant, what Paul refers to as the Promise. Jesus is the Seed of the Promise and thus Jesus is focus of hope in Hebrews 11 and the faith of the saints of the Old Testament is the evidence of their hope, albeit their hope was not realized till the Incarnation:

“And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised…” Hebrews 11:39

Their hope was the coming of the Seed of Promise and much of Hebrews is about how Jesus Christ through his own faith in God the Father brought the Promise to maturity, to finality. The faith of Abraham is answered by the faith of Jesus the Messiah, the Promised Seed and the circle is drawn, the Promise is completed: Jesus embodies Israel and through his faith, the faith of Jesus, through his unwavering faith in his Father, he went to the Cross – not through mere obedience or any need to provide a legal satisfaction for sin – but through his faith in God at the hour of his betray, torture and crucifixion – his faith, the faith of the Seed of the Promise, Jesus the Messiah sealed up, perfected the faith of Abraham, brought the Promise to complete fulfillment. And his resurrection from the dead is God’s ratification of Jesus’ last word on the Cross: “It is finished” is God’s last word on sin and death: “It is finished.” It is not the end of the Promise it is the end of sin and death and now God’s Promise to Abraham will be filled up with the children he was swore both Jew and Gentile who will all bear the family mark of faith. The Church is the instantiation of the Abrahamic Promise comes to fruition and so by God’s amazing grace we Gentiles are grafted in.

But the good news is that there is another Vine, the Vine of the Church, the Body of Christ, and the New Israel, the instantiation of the Abrahamic Covenant. The Church is the Vine because Christ planted this Vine. To be a member of the Church is to be a member of the New Israel, the New Adam, a member of Christ, a child of Abraham. The Vine of Christ is living; in fact the Vine of Christ is true life. Christ who is Israel is the root of this Vine and we partake of that its life-giving fatness, which is the life-giving sap of the Vine. In Romans 11:17 St. Paul writes that we have been grafted into God’s olive tree — which is the true Israel, Jesus Christ — and we now feed upon the “fatness” of that olive tree. In other words God’s olive tree is saturated with the life of God himself according to the logic of St. Paul’s imagery. To be a member of the Israel, the Olive Tree that God’s has cultivated is to be a member of Vine of Christ, which is to have the privilege of feeding upon the life of God. So on the one hand we are born as branches upon the Vine of Adam and if we continue to feed upon him we are ultimately feeding upon death. On the other hand, we have the New Adam, the New Israel, Jesus Christ, who is full of life and the richness of all the privileges God has given his Son. Therefore the only question remaining is “How do we get ourselves attached to this new Vine of Christ?” The answer is that we have to be grafted in. That means that we have to be broken off the old Vine of Adam and grafted into the New Vine of Christ, which is his living Body the Church.

June 24, 2014 By Fr. Spencer

Sermon for Trinity I

Baptism of St. Paul - Cappella Palatina 1140 — Baptism of St. Paul – Cappella Palatina 1140

“Nay, for in all these things we are more than conquers through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:37-39

We live within, we inhabit a context, a total view of the world and things that is called a horizon. I have used this notion before and as I have said I did not make that word up and without getting into its long history in theology and philosophy this is what I am talking about: A literal horizon is the limit of my vision from a specific point of reference. What you can see from the top of a hill is more than you can see from the foot of the hill. What is inside your horizon has meaning for you, while you do not care about what is outside your horizon. You are who you are within a specific horizon. Your personal horizon is the limit of your experience, your knowledge, your understanding, your judgments, your loving, your caring and your valuing from a specific point of reference, that point of reference being you. It is your horizon. What I know, how I know, what I value, what I really care about, all my potentialities, possibilities, and actions make up my personal horizon. St. Paul was originally an enemy of Jesus Christ, but he experienced a conversion in which the resurrected Christ appeared and spoke directly to him leaving him blind and horrified and unable to eat or drink for three days. His narrative, which once was the story of a man named Saul whose life was driven by his love for the Torah and his enmity toward Christ, became the story of Paul, a man who loved Jesus Christ more than anything else in the world. It was Saul’s judgment that Christ and his followers were not in touch with reality in the most dangerous way because they were out of touch with the reality of the Torah. Remember that a personal horizon is the limit of my vision, my knowledge, my loving, my caring and my valuing from my point-of-view. Within Saul’s horizon the destruction of Christ and his Church was a noble and righteous devotion because they were leading other people to destruction, but his conversion shattered his horizon. In a manner of speaking the Church through a man named Ananias took Saul by the hand like a little child and gave him a new life:

“So Ananias departed and entered the house (where Paul was lodging). And laying his hands on him he said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’ And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptized.” Acts 9:17-18

Back in Jerusalem there was a Jew from Cyprus named Barnabas who knew what it meant to have one’s horizon shattered but he and other Christians who were in the original Church in Jerusalem were well on there way to rebuilding a new horizon piece by piece around the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Barnabas was the only Apostle willing to take Saul under his wing and there began the remedy, the remediation of Saul who later came to be known as Paul. But here is a point I want to make: For Paul high goods, noble and righteous purposes still existed, but rather than being the destruction of the Church, the most magnificent and righteous end became the very opposite – the multiplication of the Church through missions to the Gentiles. Here is another point I want you to see: every part Saul’s Jewish horizon was incorporated into Paul’s Christian horizon except that everything was radically redefined, realigned, transfigured, because Paul’s standpoint as a Christian was lifted higher and higher as he began to transcend his theological nationalism as a Jew. So for example in both horizons Paul experienced that which for him was noble and righteous, but the good changed from destroying the Church to building up the Church; in both horizons Paul experienced a deep, personal love for Israel, but in the horizon of Saul that love was manifested by action meant to eliminate Christians, while in the horizon of Paul his love for Israel was transformed such that he prayed and yearned for Israel’s conversion to Christ.

“I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and continue sorrow in my heart for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen (Israel) according to the flesh…” Romans 9:1-3

Paul was saying that he loved Israel so much that he would be willing to be separated from Christ for her sake. The word that we have translated accursed is anathema a familiar English transliteration of the Greek word, which means various things like accursed, set aside, separated and even a votive offering to God. And that statement is all the more distressing, heartbreaking because it follows what must be one of the most breath taking assertions of God’s love and fidelity in the whole Bible:

“Nay, for in all these things we are more than conquers through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:37-39

There was a time in Paul’s life when he would have said something similar to that concerning Israel; it was his judgment that God’s love and promises to Israel meant that she was God’s chosen, God’s elect nation, the bride of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The process of reconstructing a horizon, collective or personal, is a long and painful process and some Christians chose to drift through life rather than face the task responsibly. Drifting is cowardly and not really living at all. One’s horizon may slowly unperceptively change without one taking responsibility for it, which is living irresponsibly. Some Christians are drifters and drifters are not living out the image of God, which requires attentiveness to experience, understanding, responsible judgments, and responsible living congruent with one’s judgments. Paul was not a drifter; so in the epistle to the Romans and especially in chapter 9 – 11 we will discover the fruit of his hard intellectual, emotional, and theological work and it will be our task to responsibly study, understand, and appropriate his new, mature Christian horizon over the next few weeks. In these chapters Paul lays out the modifications that the Church and he as an apostle had made to their understanding of four fundamental realities in their life because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and their devotion to him: first the Church revised Israel’s monotheism, secondly the Church revised the identity of the true Israelite, thirdly and close to that the Church developed a new understanding of the Israel’s final cause, and lastly, the Church asserted plainly and decisively that faith, Jesus’ faith and the believer’s faith in Jesus, not the Torah, saves human beings.

First of all Paul asserts over and over again doxologically, in prayer and worship, that what we in our day call Israel’s monotheism is not an adequate expression of the Church’s experience of the God of Israel. Israel’s monotheism may be expressed in the famous verse from Deuteronomy 6:4:

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.”

The one God of Israel is Spirit and invisible and holy; no true Israelite would even speak his name out loud. But with the life and mission of Jesus Christ that has changed: It is true that God is one and it is true that God is Spirit and it is true that God is holy, but what is new with the Church is that there is a plurality in the Being of God, there are three Persons, and 2^nd Person has become a human being of flesh and the Church both prays to and worships that God of flesh. He is the center of their life; he is the one great devotion to rules life. This is the very kind of thing that would have driven Saul with a vengeance to destroy the Church of God; for Saul it would be unspeakable blasphemy. But at the beginning of the next chapter in Romans 9:5 Paul declares that Jesus Christ is not only a real Jew and not only the Messiah of the Jews, but he is also the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the flesh:

“To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.”

Paul is unmistakable in his revision of Jewish monotheism and he had no illusions concerning how his fellow countrymen will take this. Paul does not attempt to make this easy for Israel nor for anyone else and in fact he systematized the Church’s new revised understanding of monotheism by attributing all the glory and titles once attributed only to the God of Israel in the Old Testament, now applicable only Jesus, God made human flesh, the Messiah, the Shepherd of Israel, the true Husband of the Church. But Paul makes it impossible to separate the God of the Old Testament from Jesus Christ.

The reality of the Old Testament is not cast aside but rather it is assumed into the Church’s horizon, transfigured and re-presented as a mystery now unveiled in this new age by Christ. Where salvation, life, and real righteousness once meant being a circumcised Jew practicing the Torah now it means being a baptized believer in Jesus Christ and walking in the Holy Spirit. In our study over the next few weeks you will see just how painstaking, how meticulous Paul goes about presenting the new understanding of the Old Testament, sin and salvation, forgiveness, the Law, Israel, other nations, and the future of the world that makes up the Church’s collective horizon. But first and foremost he must put the right understanding of Israel before the Christians in Rome and he does that, as I have said, with careful, compressed prose in chapters 9-11 that reads more like poetry than anything else I can think of. N. T. Wright compares those chapters as a unit to the artistry of George Herbert. And right in the middle of chapter 9:1 and chapter 11: 36 is chapter 10, verse 9, the eye of the storm, the center of the circle, the exquisitely stated theme that holds the three chapters, indeed all of Romans, together:

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

Everything that Paul writes in these chapters either leads to or follows from this simple beautiful of what it means to be a member of the covenant that God made with Abraham. As early as chapter 2 in Romans Paul began to assert the Church’s revised understanding of Jewish identity based upon the faith of Jesus Christ:

“For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.” Romans 2:18-29

In order to have Abraham as your father, you must be baptized into Jesus and you must believe and confess verbally that Jesus is Lord and that God the Father has raised him from the dead. That means you are a member of covenant God cut with Abraham, a true Israelite.

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Galatians 3: 28-29

There are two nations that loom large in Paul’s epistle to the Romans: Israel and Rome. Rome was the one singe power that held dominion over the whole world. Israel’s national life would come to an end in less little more than a decade from the writing of this epistle. Nations like Rome, powerfully nations, came and went but Israel is different.

“They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed Romans 9:4-5

Other nations may come and go, but how are can it possibly be that Israel as a nation after having all these benefits from God would fall to pieces and be dispersed over the whole world. The Church of God is also a nation in a manner of speaking and Paul even refers to our citizenship high in heaven that transcends all other nations. It will be our task to understand how these three relate to one another.

“Nay, for in all these things we are more than conquers through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:37-39