REFLECTING ON ROMANS (6)

 REGARDING HIS SON

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God – ²the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, ³regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, ⁴and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 1:1-4, NIV).

 

Every Christian knows that the Christian message is called ‘the gospel’ and every Christian knows, or ought to know, that the word ‘gospel’ means good news.  But just what is this gospel, this good news?  Paul gives brief answers to that question in two of his letters: in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 and in Romans 1:3-4.  It is vital to note that in both these passages, Paul talks about Jesus, and only about Jesus, for the gospel is all about Jesus.

 

Let me say it again: the gospel is all about Jesus. Martin Luther expressed it well when commenting on Romans 1:3-4 in his lectures on Romans: ‘Here the door is thrown open for the understanding of Holy Scripture, that is that everything must be understood in relation to Christ.’  And John Calvin expressed the same view when writing on these verses in his commentary on Romans: ‘This is a remarkable passage, by which we are taught that the whole gospel is comprehended in Christ, so that if anyone removes himself one step from Christ, he withdraws himself from the gospel.’ 

 

Let me say it a third time: the gospel is all about Jesus.  Evangelism simply means telling people about Jesus.  If we are not talking about Jesus we are not doing evangelism.  If we are talking about evolution, if we are talking about abortion, if we are talking about marriage, if we are talking about sexuality, if we are talking about worldviews, if we are talking about politics, we may be talking about interesting and even important subjects, but we are not sharing the gospel and we are not doing evangelism.

 

For the gospel is all about Jesus: his person and his work.  In his brief summary of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, Paul talks about the work of Jesus: he died for our sins, he was buried, he was raised on the third day, and he was seen. In his even briefer summary of the gospel in Romans 1:3-4, Paul talks about the person of Jesus, and he tells us three things about Jesus: he is God’s Son, he is the Messiah, and he is Lord.

 

First, Jesus is God’s Son.  When Paul calls Jesus God’s Son, he means that he is equal with God, having the same nature with the Father.  Paul was a Jew and in Jewish idiom the term ‘son of someone or something’ did not normally mean subordination to that someone or something but equality and identity of nature.  For example, in AD 132-135, during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, a Jewish leader named Simon ben Kosevah, led a revolt against Roman rule.  He called himself ‘Bar Kokhba’, meaning ‘Son of the Star’ in Aramaic, because he claimed to be the star prophesied in Numbers 24:17: ‘There shall come a star out of Jacob.’  The name ‘Son of the Star’ meant that he was the prophesied star.

 

We see examples of this idiom in the New Testament.  Thus, Jesus gave the disciples James and John the name Boanerges, which means ‘sons of thunder’ (Mark 3:17) because it seems that their natures were somewhat fiery (Luke 9:54).  And the apostles gave to Joseph, a Levite from Cyprus, the name Barnabas, which means ‘son of encouragement’ (Acts 4:36) because he was by nature an encourager of others.  So, for Paul and other New Testament writers, to call Jesus the Son of God was to identify him as ‘being in very nature God’ (Philippians 2:6).

 

This explains why, when Jesus called God his Father, the Jews sought to kill him, because they understood that he was claiming equality with God: ‘For this reason they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God’ (John 5:18).  Again: ‘His Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?” “We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God”’ (John 10:31-33).  

 

That Jesus is the Son of God, the second Person of the Godhead, is a pillar of the gospel.  This is indeed good news: that when we were enslaved under the tyranny of sin and death and could do nothing to save ourselves, God himself came down from heaven, in the Person of the Son, to save us and set us free.  In the words of the great Athanasius in the fourth century:

 

He could not bear to let death have mastery, to allow these creatures to perish, and his Father’s handiwork come to nothing, and so he took on a body, no different from ours. … Having taken a body like ours, because we were all under the penalty of death he gave his body up to death in our place, offering it to the Father. He did this out of love, so that we who are counted as having died in him might be freed from the law that meant our ruin. 

REFLECTING ON ROMANS (5)

 PROMISED BEFOREHAND

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God – ²the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures (Romans 1:1-2, NIV).

 

Paul, writing to the Christians in Rome, first introduces himself by telling them that he is ‘an apostle set apart for the gospel of God’ (v. 1).  Having introduced himself, we would expect him now to name those to whom he is writing, but Paul has just mentioned the gospel and he gets so excited by the gospel that he has to say something more about it.  So, he goes on to tell his readers a little about this ‘gospel of God’ that so animates and inspires him.  And the very first thing he tells them about the gospel is that it is not new.  On the contrary, he tells them that the gospel is something that God had ‘promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures’ (v. 2).

 

By ‘the Holy Scriptures’ Paul means the ancient Jewish writings that Jews call the ‘Tanakh’ and that Christians call the ‘Old Testament’ and he tells his readers that the gospel that he proclaims was promised in these writings.  It is true that the gospel was good news about certain events that had happened in recent times.  But while these events were recent, they had been foretold long ago in the Holy Scriptures.  The gospel was new in one sense: in the sense that the events it described had taken place only a few years previously.  But the gospel was not new in another sense: in the sense that these events had been prophesied centuries before.  These events were, of course, events concerning Jesus: his birth, life, deeds, teaching, death, resurrection, and ascension. But these events had not come out of the blue and they should not have been unexpected, for God had promised them through his prophets, and these promises were recorded in the Holy Scriptures for all to read.  

 

Whenever Paul preached the gospel, he loved to remind his listeners that his message was not something that he had devised himself, but something that God had promised long before.  So, when he preached in Pisidian Antioch, Paul told his hearers, ‘God has brought to Israel the Saviour, as he promised’ (Acts 13:23). And again, ‘We tell you the good news: what God promised our ancestors he has fulfilled for us’ (Acts 13:32).  And when he defended himself before King Agrippa, Paul declared, ‘It is because of my hope in what God promised our ancestors that I am on trial today’ (Acts 26:6).  Here Paul calls his faith in the gospel ‘my hope in what God promised our ancestors.’ 

 

We see this not only in Paul’s preaching but also in his writing.  He was always concerned that his readers should know that the gospel had been promised by God in the Old Testament Scriptures.  So, when he wrote to the Christians in Corinth, he summarised the gospel in these words: ‘Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and he appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve …’ (1 Corinthians 15:3-5).  Christ’s death for his people’s sins and his being raised on the third day were events that had happened in Judea just a few years before, but they had been foretold in the Scriptures many centuries before.  The gospel is neither an invention of Paul nor an afterthought of God.

 

In his repeated insistence that the gospel is promised in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, Paul is following the example of the Lord Jesus.  In the last chapter of his account of Jesus' life, Luke tells of two disciples walking at dusk from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus.  They were disheartened and despondent because they had thought that Jesus was the promised Messiah who had come to rescue his people from their enemies but their hopes had been dashed when Jesus had been arrested by the Romans and executed on a cross.  As they walked towards the setting sun, a stranger came alongside and talked with them.  They told him of their failed hopes, and he said to them: ‘How foolish you are and slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken.  Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?’  Luke continues: ‘And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in the all the Scriptures concerning himself’ (Luke 24:25-27).  After they recognised that the stranger was the Lord Jesus, he left them, and they said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?’ (Luke 24:32).

 

Two things stand out in these verses in Luke.  First, Jesus tells these two disciples that their problem is not that Jesus has been crucified, but that they are ‘slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken.’  Secondly, their hearts began burning within them, not when they recognised the risen Jesus, but when ‘he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.’  This is why Christians down the centuries have valued and studied and memorised the Scriptures of the Old Testament.  If we want to understand the gospel, it is important to know the Old Testament, and if we want to understand the Old Testament, it is essential to know the gospel, for the both the Old Testament and the gospel are all about Jesus.  While the Old Testament contains the gospel in promise, the New Testament, contains the gospel in fulfilment.  While the Old Testament looks forward to Jesus and promises his coming, the New Testament looks back to him and promises salvation to all who trust in him.

Copyright © Ronald Nugent 2021

REFLECTING ON ROMANS (4)

THE GOSPEL OF GOD

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God  (Romans 1:1, NIV).

 

During my lifetime, I have witnessed a strange and sad thing happening among those who call themselves ‘evangelicals’.  Over recent decades, instead of preaching the gospel,¹ evangelicals have increasingly been preaching different messages, which are no gospel at all.² This is strange because the noun ‘evangelical’ means one who believes in and holds to the Christian gospel.  And this is sad, because the world desperately needs to hear the gospel and through the centuries the world has heard this gospel from evangelicals.  Evangelicals need to recover the gospel. 

‘Gospel’ is a favourite word of Paul.  He uses it sixty times in his letters and he uses it in all his letters, except his letter to Titus.  In the first seventeen verses of his letter to the Romans, Paul tells us again and again how and why the gospel is important for him: he is ‘set apart for the gospel of God’ (verse 1); he serves God ‘in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son’ (verse 9); he is ‘eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome’ (verse 15); he is ‘not ashamed of the gospel because it is the power of God’ (verse 16); and all this is because ‘in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed’ (verse 17).

 

Our English word ‘gospel’ derives from an Old English word, gōdspel, which means ‘good story’.  It translates the Greek word euangelion, which means ‘good message’ or ‘good news’.  (We see the prefix eu-, meaning ‘good’, in several English words, such us ‘eulogy’ = ‘a good word’, and we see the root word angelia, meaning 'message, news' in our English word ‘angel’ = ‘messenger, bringer of news’).  It is from the Greek word euangelion, that we get our English word, ‘evangelical’. 

 

The word euangelion would have been a familiar one to both Paul’s Jewish and Gentile readers, for it had both Hebrew and Greek backgrounds.  First century Jews would have been familiar with the word from the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.  For example, in Isaiah 40:9-10 we read:

 

You who bring good news to Zion,

     go up on a high mountain.

You who bring good news to Jerusalem,

     lift up your voice with a shout,

lift it up, do not be afraid;

     say to the towns of Judah,

     ‘Here is your God!’

See, the sovereign LORD comes with power,

     and he rules with a mighty arm.

 

Again, in Isaiah 52:7-8, we read:

 

How beautiful on the mountains

     are the feet of those who bring good news,

who proclaim peace,

     who bring good tidings,

     who proclaim salvation,

who say to Zion,

     ‘your God reigns!’ …

When the LORD returns to Zion,

     they will see it with their own eyes.

 

In both these passages the word translated ‘good news’ is the Hebrew word basar, which is rendered in the Septuagint by the Greek word euangelion.  And in both these passages, the good news that is to be proclaimed is that God is coming to rescue his people from their enemies.

 

Paul’s first century Gentile readers would also have understood the meaning of euangelion for, in both Greek and Roman cultures, the word was used for the official announcement of the ascension of a new emperor, or of the victory of the emperor over his enemies in battle, heralding a new era of peace.  When Paul and the early Christians called their message the euangelion, ‘the gospel’, they were proclaiming to all who were willing to listen that the King of kings had come down from heaven to rescue his people from all his and their enemies and to usher in the long awaited age of peace and justice on earth.

 

The gospel, then, is not law; it is news.  It is not a list of commands that we must obey; it is an announcement of God’s victory over evil.  The gospel does not tell us what we must do for God; it tells us what God has done for us.  And this news of what God has done is very good news for God has acted in history to rescue humankind from sin and death.  I like the definition of the English Reformer, Bible translator, and martyr, William Tyndale (1494-1536), who wrote that the word ‘gospel’ means ‘good, merry, glad and joyful tidings, that make a man’s heart glad, and make him sing, dance and leap for joy.’

 

Copyright © Ronald Nugent 2021

¹ A note to my American friends: I am following the British and Australian convention of using ‘gospel’ (without a capital) for the Christian message, and ‘Gospel’ (with a capital) for each of the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

² I hope to will look at some of these ‘different gospels’ in coming months on my other blog, A Catholic Protestant. 

 

REFLECTING ON ROMANS (3)

 SET APART FOR THE GOSPEL OF GOD

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God (Romans 1:1, NIV).

Paul was a person with a purpose; he knew why he was on this earth.  In the opening verse of his letter to the Romans, Paul tells his readers, first, that he was ‘a slave of Christ Jesus,’ one whose whole reason for being was to serve his Lord.  He tells them, secondly, that he was ‘called to be an apostle,’ one whose great mission in life was to bear witness to the risen Christ.  In our first two reflections on Romans we thought about those first two terms that Paul used to describe himself.  In this week’s reflection we will consider his third term: ‘set apart for the gospel of God.’ 

What did Paul mean when he described himself as ‘set apart’?  The word that is translated ‘set apart’ in our English Bibles is the Greek verb aphōrizō, which means ‘to separate, set apart, choose, appoint.’  Thus, the sheep are separated from the goats (Matthew 25:32) and believers are separated (or excluded) by unbelievers (Luke 6:22).  When Paul describes himself as ‘set apart for the gospel,’ he means that he was separated from others for the service of the gospel, and he is making it clear that this was not his own choice or decision but that it was God who had chosen and appointed him.

It is interesting to note that the verb aphōrizō has the same root meaning as the word ‘Pharisee’ (Greek pharisaios), which is derived from the Hebrew verb paras, which means ‘to divide, separate.’  The Pharisees were ‘the separated ones,’ a sect of the Jews who lived in strict obedience to the Jewish law and who separated themselves from ordinary Jews, whose lives were less strict, and from Gentiles.  Before he became a Christian, Paul had been a Pharisee (Philippians 3:5), and some suggest that he may here be drawing a contrast between his former life as a Pharisee and his present life as an apostle: as a Pharisee he had been set apart for the law; as an apostle he is now set apart for the gospel.  The great Swedish Lutheran commentator, Anders Nygren, writes:

Even before his becoming a Christian he had been ‘set apart.’  As a Pharisee he had set himself apart for the law.  But now God had set him apart for something entirely different, ‘for the gospel of God.’ … Paul who had set himself apart for the law, is set apart by God for the gospel.  Thus in the very first verse of this epistle we encounter the letter’s basic juxtaposition of law and gospel which, from one point of view, is the theme of Romans.

Paul also speaks of his being set apart by God in his letter to the Galatians, where he says that ‘God, who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles’ (Galatians 1:15-16).  We can see here a comparison between Paul's being set apart to be an apostle and Jeremiah’s being set apart to be a prophet.  For, about 700 years before Paul wrote, God had said to Jeremiah, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations’ (Jeremiah 1:5).  Just as Jeremiah had been chosen by God before he was born and had later been called to be a prophet, so Paul was chosen by God while in his mother’s womb and was later called to be an apostle.  

The choosing of Paul, like the choosing of Jeremiah, was a sovereign act of the sovereign God.  That Paul had been born to Jewish parents in the Greek city of Tarsus, that he had grown up speaking both Aramaic and Greek, that he knew the Jewish scriptures and understood Greek culture, that he had sat at the feet of the great Jewish teacher, Gamaliel, that had been a Pharisee, zealous for the law of God: none of these things was an accident.  For God had set him apart from his mother’s womb and in all these things God was preparing him to be an apostle and a preacher of the gospel.

As Paul looked back on his life, he knew that even before he became a Christian and an apostle, God’s hand had been upon him.  He knew that he had not only been called to be an apostle while on the road to Damascus, but that he had also been set apart to be a servant of the gospel even before his birth.  Long before he was called to be an apostle, he had been chosen by God for the very task which he was now doing in writing to the Christians in Rome.  This explains why he can write with such certainty and authority, for he knows that the message he brings is not his own message but the ‘gospel of God.’

Unlike Paul, you and I have not been called to be apostles.  But, like Paul, God has chosen us to belong to him, even before we were born, and God has a purpose for each of us: ‘For he chose us in Christ before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.  In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will – to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves’ (Ephesians 1:4-6).  Paul was chosen and called for a purpose and so are we.  We need to remind ourselves daily of this wonderful truth: that God has loved us, chosen us, and called us for a purpose.  And we need to remind ourselves daily of this wonderful purpose: that, we who were once slaves of sin are now children of God and that we have been chosen to live holy and blameless lives in this dark and needy world to the praise of God’s glorious grace. 

Copyright © Ronald Nugent 2021 

REFLECTING ON ROMANS (2)

CALLED TO BE AN APOSTLE

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God (Romans 1:1, NIV).

With so many demands on our time, why should we spend time reading the letters of Paul.  After all, they were written nearly two thousand years ago to people whose cultures and circumstances were very different from ours.  They are not philosophical or moral treatises intended for all people of all time but personal letters addressed to particular churches or persons with their particular problems and questions.  They are certainly of historical interest but are they of continuing relevance?

I can suggest two answers to that question.  First, times may change but people do not.  Whatever their country, whatever their language, whatever their culture, human beings are much the same everywhere.  We in the twenty-first century struggle with the same problems, are tempted with the same sins, and wrestle with the same questions as those in the first.  ‘What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun’ (Ecclesiastes 1:9).  

The second answer was given by Paul himself in the opening words of his letter to the Romans: he says that he was ‘called to be an apostle.’  What was an apostle?  And why does Paul’s being an apostle make his letter important, not only for the Roman Christians in A.D. 57, but also for us today?

Our English word ‘apostle’ comes from the Greek word apostolos, which occurs seventy-nine times in the New Testament and is derived from the verb apostellō, which means ‘I send.’  An apostle is ‘one who is sent, a messenger, a representative.’  We may define an apostle as a person who is sent on a specific mission, who acts with the authority of the sender, and who is accountable to the sender. 

In the New Testament we see three marks of an apostle of Christ.  First, an apostle was personally chosen and appointed by Christ.  We see this in the case of the original twelve apostles: ‘One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.  When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles’ (Luke 6:12,13). 

We see this also in the case of Paul.  When Jesus appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus, he said to him, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. ... I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and a witness. ... I am sending you to them [the Gentiles] to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light’ (Acts 26:15-18).  After he had appeared to Paul, Jesus appeared also to Ananias and said to him: ‘This man [Paul] is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles’ (Acts 9:15). 

Secondly, an apostle was a witness to others of Jesus’ resurrection.  A witness is a person who has seen an event and is able to tell others about what they have seen.  An apostle must have seen the risen Jesus so that he could bear witness to his resurrection.  We see this when the apostles met in the upper room to decide whom Jesus had appointed to be an apostle to replace Judas.  Peter said to them, ‘One of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection’ (Acts 1:22).  We see this, too, in Jesus’ final words to his apostles before he was taken up to heaven: ‘You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8).  

Paul was also a witness of the risen Christ.  The risen Jesus had confronted him on the road to Damascus: ‘About noon ... as I was on the road, I saw a light from heaven brighter than the sun, blazing around me and my companions. ... And I heard a voice saying to me in Aramaic, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” ... Then I asked “Who are you Lord?” “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” the Lord replied’ (Acts 26:13-15).  And Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, ‘Am I not an apostle?  Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?’ (1 Corinthians 9:1).  And again, 'He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and ... he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. ... Then he appeared to James and to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me, as to one abnormally born' (1 Corinthians 15:4-8).

Thirdly, an apostle was given authority both to act and to speak for Jesus.  They were, for example, given authority to perform miracles.  So, when he sent out the twelve, Jesus told them, ‘Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons’ (Matthew 10:9).  Similarly, Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, ‘I persevered in demonstrating among you the marks of a true apostle, including signs, wonders and miracles’ (2 Corinthians 12:12).     

More important than authority to perform miracles, however, was authority to speak for the Lord.  The apostles’ message was not their own; it was the Lord’s.  So, Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica, ‘And we also thank God continually because when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it, not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is at work in you who believe’ (1 Thessalonians 2:13).  

Why then, should we read and study Paul’s letters?  Because Paul was an apostle and an apostle was one who was given unique authority by Jesus to teach others about him.  As Christians we are followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, and as Christ appointed apostles teach us about him, we read their writings with diligence and thanksgiving and take to heart what they teach us.  As we read Paul's letter to the Romans, let us pray, then, Thomas Cranmer's prayer for enlightenment in the Book of Common Prayer:

Blessed Lord, you have caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; grant us that we may in such a way hear them, read, mark, learrn, and inwardly digest them; that by patience and comfort of your holy word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.  Amen. 

Note.  As well as apostles of Christ, the New Testament also speaks of ‘apostles of the churches’, that is persons sent, not by Christ, but by churches, as representatives of the churches that sent them.  (See 2 Corinthians 8:23 and Philippians 2:25.  While the word used in these verses is apostolos, in our English Bibles it is often translated ‘representative’ or ‘messenger’, to distinguish these apostles of the churches from the apostles of Christ).  Some of those who are called ‘apostles’ in the New Testament, such as Barnabas (Acts 14:14) and Andronicus and Junia (in Romans 16:7), were probably apostles of the churches rather than apostles of Christ.  In this short article I am concerned only with apostles of Christ.

Copyright © Ronald Nugent 2021  

REFLECTING ON ROMANS (1)

 A SLAVE OF CHRIST JESUS

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God (Romans 1:1, NIV).

Ancient letters began with a common form: ‘X (name of sender).  To Y (name of recipient). Greetings.’  We can see this form in most of the New Testament letters, including Paul’s letter to the Romans, which begins: ‘Paul ...  To all in Rome who are loved by God ...  Grace and peace ...'  However, while Paul uses this common form of introduction, he expands each part: the sender’s name, the recipient’s name and the greetings are each amplified in interesting and instructive ways.  So, having given his name, he uses three different terms to describe himself: ‘a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God.’  In this meditation we reflect upon the significance of the first phrase, ‘a servant of Christ Jesus.’

Paul’s expression, ‘a servant of Christ Jesus,’ has two backgrounds.  First, there is the Greek background.  The word translated ‘servant’ is the Greek word doulos.  Although most English versions translate it as ‘servant’, it really means ‘slave’.  A slave differs from a servant.  A servant is free to come and go, a slave is not.  A slave is a person (1) who is totally owned by another, usually called the ‘Master’ or ‘Lord’, (2) who is totally available for the service of the Master, and (3) who is totally dependent upon the Master for all things.  The term doulos, then, expresses total belongingness, total availability and total dependence.  

Paul’s favourite title for Jesus is kurios, which means ‘Lord’ or ‘Master’.   For Paul, if Jesus was his Lord and Master, then he was Jesus’ slave.  In describing himself as ‘a slave of Christ Jesus’, Paul is saying that he is not his own man but that he belongs, body and soul, to Jesus Christ, that his life is totally devoted to Jesus’ service, and that he is totally dependent upon Jesus for all things.   We remember Paul as a great preacher, a great missionary, and a great theologian.  Paul saw himself as none of these things.  He saw himself simply as a slave of the Lord Jesus.  

What is true of Paul is (or should be) true of all Christians.  The basic Christian confession is ‘Jesus is Lord.’  If to be a Christian is to confess Jesus as Lord, then to be a Christian means to be a slave of the Lord Jesus.  If I am a Christian, then I belong totally to Jesus, I am always available to him, and I am utterly dependent upon him.  The title ‘slave of Christ Jesus’  belongs to all Christians.  Thus, in writing to the Christians in Corinth, Paul says, ‘For the one who was a slave when called to faith in the Lord, is the Lord’s freed person; similarly, the one who was free when called is the Lord’s slave’ (1 Corinthians 7:22).

In his book, Slave of Christ, Murray Harris tells of the visit of Dr Josef Tson, a Romanian pastor, in 1987 to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in the United States, where Dr Harris was a professor:

Dr Josef Tson ... had been arrested and imprisoned in 1974 and 1977, then exiled in 1981.  He forcefully expressed his preference to be introduced simply as ‘a slave of Jesus Christ’.  ‘There aren’t many people,’ he observed, ‘who are willing to introduce me as a slave.  They substitute the word “servant” for “slave”. ... We have replaced the expression ‘total surrender’ with the word ‘commitment’, and ‘slave’ with ‘servant’.  But there is an important difference.  As servant gives service to someone, but a slave belongs to someone.  We commit ourselves to do something, but we surrender ourselves to someone, we give ourselves up.’ 

This word doulos (‘slave’) has a second background.  In the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Old Testament) doulos (or its plural douloi) is used to describe the prophets whom God called to proclaim his word, for example:

From the time your ancestors left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again, I sent you my servants (douloi) the prophets (Jeremiah 7:25).

Surely the sovereign Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants (douloi) the prophets (Amos 3:7).

In calling himself, the ‘slave (doulos) of Christ Jesus,’ Paul is placing himself in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets who brought God’s word to his people.  He is saying that he is not writing this letter as his own man, but as Christ’s man.  The message is not primarily his, but Christ’s.  

In calling himself 'a slave of Christ Jesus,' Paul is also telling us something about Jesus. The word ‘Christ’ (Greek, Christos) is not a name but a title.  It means ‘Messiah’ or ‘Anointed One’, that is, the One anointed to be the King over God’s kingdom.  It is significant to note here that, whereas the prophets were called the ‘servants of the Lord’ (that is, Yahweh), Paul calls himself the ‘servant of Christ Jesus.’  He puts Christ in the place of the Lord (that is, Yahweh).  This is one of many places where Paul subtly affirms the deity of Christ. 

I am not sure why English versions of the Bible usually translate doulos as ‘servant’ rather than ‘slave’.  Perhaps it is because they see the term ‘slave’ as somewhat demeaning and degrading.  However, to be a slave of God or of Christ is to hold a great and glorious office.  It is to be a successor of the Old Testament prophets.  It is to belong to the best Lord and Master a person can have.  It is to serve a Master who is good and kind and loving and caring and faithful and trustworthy.  He is, to quote the Book of Common Prayer, a Master ‘whose service is perfect freedom.’

Copyright © Ronald Nugent 2021

THE GOD OF JONAH (4)

THE MISSION OF GOD
Please read Jonah 4

The story of Jonah and the great fish is one of the best known and most loved stories of the Old Testament.  But being well known and much loved does not mean that it is understood, for Jonah is one of the least understood books in the Bible.  When asked, ‘What is the message of Jonah?’ many people answer, ‘You cannot run away from God.’  This is indeed one lesson that we can learn from Jonah, but it is not the main message of the book.  The message of Jonah is much higher and greater than that.

To understand the message of Jonah, we have to understand why Jonah baulked at preaching in Nineveh. Why, when God commanded him to go to Nineveh, did Jonah instead sail for Tarshish?  Of what was he afraid?  Was he timid and afraid to speak in public?  Was he afraid that the people of Nineveh would not listen?  Was he afraid of being attacked or martyred? Jonah was not afraid of any of these things.  Of what, then, was he so afraid that, instead of going east to Nineveh, he headed west for Tarshish?  Jonah’s fear is one that every man and woman at the time would have understood for it is a very common and a very human fear.

The nature of Jonah’s fear is revealed in the opening verse of the last chapter: ‘But it was a very evil thing to Jonah, and he became angry’ (Jonah 4:1, literal translation).  What was it that Jonah considered ‘a very evil thing’?  The answer lies in the previous verse: ‘When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened’ (Jonah 3:10).   God had done just what Jonah was afraid he would do: he had shown compassion to the people of Nineveh.

Jonah ran away, not because he was afraid that the people would not listen to his message, but because he was afraid that they would listen; not because he feared that the people would attack him, but because he feared that they would believe him and repent.  For Jonah did not want the people of Nineveh to repent and be spared the wrath of God.  God loved Nineveh and wanted to save it but Jonah hated it and wanted it destroyed.

Though God had shown compassion to Jonah, Jonah found it intolerable that God might show similar compassion to the people of Nineveh.  There were boundaries around Jonah’s compassion and he wanted God’s compassion confined inside the same boundaries.  Centuries earlier, God had commanded the people of Israel, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ (Leviticus 19:31) but they understood the word ‘neighbour’ to mean one of their own people.  There were limits to their love; it did not extend to those of other nations.  In the same way, Jonah’s love was limited to Israel.

Jesus met the same attitude in his day.  When asked, ‘Who is my neighbour?’ he answered by telling the ‘Parable of the Good Samaritan’ (see Luke 10:25-29).  The lesson of the parable is the same as the lesson of Jonah: there are to be no limits to our love and compassion.  We are even to love our enemies (cf. Matthew 5:43-48).  God loves all nations and he desires all people to be saved (see 1 Timothy 2:4) and our love is to be like God’s.

What is the message of this well known and much loved book?  The message of Jonah is the great message of the Bible: God’s goal is that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.  Christ's commission to his church is that we make disciples of all nations.  Our God is a missionary God and he calls us to be a missionary people.  In the eighth century BC God called Jonah to join him in his mission to save the nations.  He ran away.  In the twenty-first century AD God calls us to join him in the same mission.  What will you do?

QUESTIONS FOR PERSONAL REFLECTION

• Is there a group of people that I hate so much that I want nothing to do with them?
• What can I do to assist God’s mission to save people from every nation on earth?

Copyright ©  2010  Ronald Nugent