First, I give thanks to my God, through Jesus the appointed king, for all of you, because your faithfulness to God is being reported all over the world. God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in the good news concerning his son, as I constantly make mention of you, always asking in my prayers if now, somehow, perhaps, at long last, by God\u2019s will, I will have a clear passage to come to you.<\/p>\n
I am longing to see you so that I may impart a spiritual gift to you, so that you may be firmly established. No, wait \u2013 that sounds as though I think that it is only I who has something to offer you. What I mean is that I want us to mutually encourage one another in faithfulness, for both your benefit and mine.<\/p>\n
I hope you are aware that I have intended on multiple occasions to come to you, and have always been prevented \u2013 until now, when I hope that I can finally have an impact in your midst, even as I have among the rest of the nations. I\u2019m indebted to Greeks and barbarians, the wise and the foolish, and hence my eagerness to proclaim good news also among you in Rome.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not ashamed of that good news, I\u2019ll have you know. It is God\u2019s power, at work to accomplish the deliverance of all the faithful \u2013 both God\u2019s people first, and also anyone else. In it, God\u2019s very own justice is revealed, from faithfulness to faithfulness, as it is written (in Habbakuk 2:4 \u2013 but I\u2019m paraphrasing), \u201cThe just shall live from faithfulness.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The only way for Christian readers to grasp the impact of one central theme of Paul\u2019s letter, which is introduced and summed up towards the end of this section, is to place themselves in the passage. Where it says \u201cto Jews first and to Greeks\u201d instead read the following: \u201cGod\u2019s power is at work to deliver all the faithful \u2013 both Christians first, and also non-Christians.\u201d That gives a sense of how the message sounded in Paul\u2019s time. He was taking the historical identity of God\u2019s chosen people, Israel, and throwing the door open through his adamant claim that it could include others.<\/p>\n
It is one of the greatest ironies that most Christian readers think that they embrace Paul\u2019s teaching. And yet they sound more like the view Paul was opposing \u2013 an attempt to maintain a special status and salvation for a particular group, as a privilege held by them and not others.<\/p>\n
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First, I give thanks to my God, through Jesus the appointed king, for all of you, because your faithfulness to God is being reported all over the world. God is my witness, whom I serve in my spirit in the good news concerning his son, as I constantly make mention of you, always asking in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,82],"tags":[1848,3872,5709,8815,8917,10537],"class_list":["post-14488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-paul-and-his-letters","category-romans","tag-christians","tag-gentiles","tag-jews","tag-paul","tag-people-of-god","tag-romans"],"yoast_head":"\n