Episode Transcript
Carey Griffel: [00:00:00] Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot, where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and in today's episode, I decided I would do kind of a second part to the episode that I did last week, because there was quite a bit that I didn't get to, and I'm not really sure that I ended it on as strong of a note as I wanted to.
I mean, I said what I wanted to say, but I think that there is a lot more that we need to go into in order to really make this case. The case that the coming of the Messiah was a cosmic event. It was something that was much bigger than humanity and our personal individual sin. And, to be honest, even after this episode, I think there's still going to be a lot to say about it.[00:01:00]
And so, I would invite you to think about it, and think of any questions that you might have that you would like me to address in particular. Because this is actually a really big topic. And as much as we talk about Jesus, and we talk about the Atonement, and we talk about what Jesus accomplished, To be honest, I think we kind of get blasé about it after a while.
We kind of start using the jargon and we start saying the things, but we don't realize the impact that is actually occurring in the world because of that event. We use our Christian language and we say the things, and, you know, of course, I think most of the time we have this Appreciation and understanding and you know, I think that a lot of times we are using these moments of reflection and praise as worship, right? Like it's something that is deeply coming from our heart and we're feeling genuine [00:02:00] gratitude and a real praise response in that. So I'm not trying to say that we don't, but it really can become something that's kind of rote. That we just kind of do. And part of that is because it's something that is beyond our understanding.
And part of the problem with that, in my mind at least, is that we systematize it. We've put it in this nice little box and we say, okay, here it is. We now understand it. And we don't understand just how westernized our thinking is. I mean, Western thinking is pretty cool, it's brought us a lot of things that have been really good and beneficial to the world.
We have logic, we have empirical science, those things stem from the fact that we have propositional thinking. And our propositional thinking puts things into little boxes. And I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong or there's anything bad about that, but [00:03:00] it's not Hebraic thinking. It's not really the thinking that is deeply embedded into the Bible.
Let me give you an example. We tend to think in terms of propositions here in the West, and this stems from ancient Greek thinking. The Greek philosophers of about 500 BC started looking at the world a little bit more logically or rationally. We've inherited this type of thought structure, and again, it's very helpful, and it's very useful.
It's just not the way that the Bible really thinks about things. Systematic theology tends to use things like propositional logic. It asks questions of the Bible, and then it finds answers to those questions. by looking at the Bible as a whole. So it asks, What does the Bible say about sin? What does the Bible say about God? What does the Bible say about atonement? [00:04:00] And so on and so forth. So a propositional type thought would be something like, Jesus died for my sins. Now, is that wrong? No. And some of the best propositional phrases will use words from the Bible in order to make the point. But that can be awfully close to proof texting, and not the good kind of proof texting.
Not all proof texting is terrible, because you have to make a point with scripture, right? You need to back up your points with scripture. But you need to do that with a combination of the text, and proper exegesis, and proper hermeneutics. And all of these things, you have to look at the context of the whole passage , you can't just lift that phrase up and plop it down somewhere else.
So as long as you're doing all of these other things in association with your proof texting, then okay. But if you're just going to the Bible and asking your question of the [00:05:00] Bible and lifting out the answer from a place that's not trying to answer that question or address it in any way, well that's a problem.
But anyway, this is the problem and the difficulty and the weakness of propositional logic and the way that we think today. And when we go to Scripture and we ask it these questions, and we're trying to get it to do the thing that we want the Scripture to do, then we're going to miss out on the actual context that's there. What is the text actually trying to address? What is the author trying to say? What are his points? We can't just insert our own questions and points that we want to see there and say that this is proper exegesis or hermeneutics.
Alright, so if that is Western Greek thinking, logical, rational type thinking, then what is Hebraic or Semitic thinking? [00:06:00] What kind of thinking is the Bible steeped in? Well, if you just look at the Gospels, Jesus isn't out there giving great theological discourses. I'm not saying he's not giving theology, but he's not out there explaining things in lecture format, right? What is he doing? He's giving parables. He's telling stories.
And he and the writers of the New Testament at large, they quote a lot of scripture, right? But sometimes the scripture they're quoting is not something that we really recognize because sometimes they'll take different pieces of different scriptures and mash them together. And we're like, that's not right. That's not how you treat scripture. But they did, and this is our revealed gospel truth, right? So, obviously that was okay for them to do that. But the reason they were able to do it was because they had the narrative and the actual [00:07:00] ideas of scripture so deeply embedded into their psyche. That they could do that.
They weren't proof texting in the way that they were trying to find little proof texts and evidence like we tend to try and find today. We want a defense for what we're saying. And while we might say that the various prophecies and things were a type of proof text for the Messiah, I think that's not really how they were looking at it. The way that they were looking at it was through the idea of narrative and story and story patterns, and things like that. So for us, in our propositional logic world, if we're not steeped in those story structures, then we're building our defense and our understanding of Scripture in a different way.
Now, that's not even necessarily a bad thing, because I think that the truth of Scripture can be [00:08:00] displayed and described across cultures, across time, across different languages, right? So, you can take philosophy And you can describe scripture from it. You can describe the reality of God using that new framework.
I think that's a legitimate way to interpret and to think about things. I think we have to do that because if we didn't, we'd be in big trouble because we aren't Hebraic thinkers. We can develop a lot of that, but that's not the way we're raised. That's not our natural tendencies. If you're an analytical thinker, You're not going to just suddenly stop being an analytical thinker.
And, you know, when we look at church history, this is why we see something like the Trinity described the way that it is. The Trinity needed to be hashed out and described in a way that was understood at the time. [00:09:00] And so it is much more philosophical than what we see in Scripture. So these are all fine and dandy, but if you want to properly exegete Scripture, That means to properly pull out the meaning of Scripture, then you're going to need to be able to switch your mindset over to a more Hebraic way of thinking.
Okay, so all of that being said, I want to show you how cosmic the work of the Messiah is, and how we can see this in Scriptures where we tend to look at it a little bit more propositionally. As I said, this is kind of coming off of my last episode about the reality of the gods. You don't need to listen to that episode before you listen to this one if you're just diving in here without listening to that one first.
But a very brief review of what I talked about there was the fact that atheism in the ancient world is not like the atheism of today. [00:10:00] And part of that is probably the way that we think. I also argued that the language of no gods in the Bible is either polemic, or comparative, or hyperbole, or it's talking specifically about idols themselves, which are worthless, and they don't actually do anything. And remember that idols can be worthless and the gods can be real. Both of those two things can be true at the same time. And then I finished up with the idea that Christ came not only to save us from our sin, but also to defeat the dark forces. And as far as the Bible goes, those dark forces are a complicated bunch.
It is not just Satan and his minions. It's not just Satan and his fallen angels. As if there was some time where Satan fell from heaven and took all of these angels with him.[00:11:00] That's not a story that we find in the Bible. It's just not. If you don't believe me, I have a whole lot of episodes about this, and I can point you to quite a number of resources on it.
And so the way that the Bible presents the dark forces of the universe, or the cosmos, is very complicated, and it's not gonna fit into our little systematic boxes a lot of times. Now, there is a way to kind of understand a lot of it and put it into some sort of a hierarchy, and there's various ways you can see different falls that happen in Genesis. So it's more than just Genesis 3. It is actually much bigger than that. But again, that's a different conversation, which I've already had before.
But when you're looking at the gods of the Old Testament, there are two ways people tend to run off the road. One of those ways is to say that the other gods of the nations [00:12:00] have no existence. The problem with that is that you usually then say that they don't have any relevance. And this is a problem because you end up missing out on contextual data And the connections that the Bible is making with all of these things, including viewing the Messiah cosmically. And that matters because we want to understand the Messiah and what he's done.
Okay, so the other way you can run off the road here is to say that the gods are real, and we need to figure out where they are, how they move, who is Baal today, what is Satan up to. And all of these other data points, we need to be tracking them on some sort of map. The problem with this is very similar to the previous problem. And here the problem is that we're not focused on where we should be. We're not focused on the work of the Messiah and what he's doing. Rather, we're a little bit too [00:13:00] focused on what the enemy is doing. And note, I do call them enemies. We are in a battle. There is something that is happening that we should be aware of. And that we should take seriously. But, it's pretty clear that the way we do that is through the work of discipleship, baptizing people, bringing people the gospel, and all of these types of things. So, it's very much a spiritual war. But it's not one where we're supposed to be tracking the enemy and finding out where they are.
Well, we already know where they are. It's pretty obvious they are where God isn't, or at least where God isn't being worshiped and proclaimed as God. There is a reason that the New Testament calls them powers, and we'll kind of get into that today. And the reason that I started out talking about Western thinking versus Hebraic thinking [00:14:00] is because we tend to not really place this kind of emphasis on describing things this way.
As an example, let's talk about the so called Roman's Road. This is a way that some people have described the journey of salvation or the need for salvation. Now, to be honest with you, I don't know if there's some standard set of verses from Romans that everyone always uses to describe this, but here's what I found when I looked it up.
I am going to be reading from the NRSV today. So these are all passages in the Book of Romans, and we're going to start with Romans 3, 23, which says, All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So, remember, we're talking about why we need salvation and the path of salvation. Earlier, in chapter 3, it describes humanity's sins, basically. [00:15:00] Gives a nice little list of what it looks like.
Then we go to the first part of the verse in Romans 6, 23, which says, For the wages of sin is death. So the idea here is that death is our deserved, just punishment because we're sinners. The last part of that verse says, But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We can go to other verses in Romans, like Romans 5, 8, which says, But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. But how do we access this? That's the question. In Romans 10 9 It says, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead You will be saved.
So we have our nice little logical progression here.[00:16:00] We are sinners The wages of sin is death. The free gift of God is eternal life. Christ died for us. And if we confess with our mouth and believe in our heart, then we'll be saved.
Then we get some really good benefits from doing all of that. In Romans 5, 1, it says, Therefore, since we are justified by faith, We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And I bet most people are going to hear that word peace and think that peace with God means that God's no longer angry at us. He's going to have a peaceful attitude towards us. And further, in Romans 8 1, it says, There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. In verses 38 and 39, it says, For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, [00:17:00] nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So that's the Romans road, and it typically kind of pairs with this idea that you say a prayer in order to be saved. And once you have said that prayer, then you are saved. Note that it doesn't mention a particular prayer or a way that you're going to pray that, but that whole idea of confessing with your mouth and believing in your heart, once you do that, then you're good. You're solid with God, you are in Christ, you are saved.
Remember that the problem here is that we are sinners, and that the wages of sin are death. So, the idea is that the law decreed that if you sin, You disobey the law, you deserve death, [00:18:00] right? That's the whole idea wrapped up here.
And usually the answer to why we don't die is because Christ took the wrath that we deserve. So I'm not going to do a massive deep dive right now into what wrath is and why God has it and who it's directed towards and what it looks like and all of this. That's not going to be my point and direction here. The fact is, it's very clear in Romans that God is wrathful, that God does have wrath, and that his wrath is directed towards sinners.
Okay, so we can all agree on that. Wrath shows up at least nine or ten times in the book of Romans, so it's definitely a theme there. It's definitely a part of what Paul is talking about. And wrath is definitely associated with punishment, punishment of the ungodly. Punishment of people who are [00:19:00] rebellious. Punishment of people who are breaking the law.
And we hear so very often this idea that Jesus took our wrath for us. Instead of God directing His wrath towards us, He is directing it towards Jesus, who is taking our punishment. And that is why we are forgiven. And that's the usual narrative. It's generally associated with the idea of sacrifice and death being that kind of punishment.
Like, you're not getting atonement without death. You're not getting atonement or forgiveness without God's wrath to be appeased. It's like God is bound by this law. Like, He cannot just forgive. He has to have this just punishment. And there is a lot to go into about that, and I'm not really going to unpack all of that right now.
[00:20:00] But I am going to show you something here in Romans that I think is going to be helpful in order to A. See God's cosmic work here in the Messiah, and B. Think a little bit differently about what this might be talking about in the Book of Romans. Before I do that, though, I want to take a jaunt back to the Book of Ezekiel.
Ezekiel chapter 33 talks a bit about God's justice and mercy. Starting in verse 10, it says, Now you, mortal, say to the house of Israel, Thus you have said, Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them. How then can we live? Say to them, As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why [00:21:00] will you die, O house of Israel? And you, mortal, say to your people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not save them when they transgress. And as for the wickedness of the wicked, it shall not make them stumble when they turn from their wickedness. And the righteous shall not be able to live by their righteousness when they sin. Though I say to the righteous that they shall surely live, yet if they trust in their righteousness and commit iniquity, none of their righteous deeds shall be remembered. But, in the iniquity that they have committed, they shall die. Again, though I say to the wicked, You shall surely die, Yet, if they turn from their sin, And do what is lawful and right, If the wicked restore the pledge, Give back what they have taken by robbery, And walk in the statutes of life, Committing no iniquity, They shall surely live. They shall not die. None of the sins that they have committed shall be remembered against them. [00:22:00] They have done what is lawful and right. They shall surely live.
Okay, we're going to stop there in verse 16, and we're going to talk about this for a second. Because what this is talking about is basically God's wrath. God's wrath is about punishment. And here we have the association with death, right? You do wrong, and you're going to die.
But here's the interesting thing to notice here. If the wicked person makes restitution and then he starts walking by the statutes of life, committing no iniquity from there, then he's going to live. He's not going to die. So, wait a second here. Did he just avoid wrath by himself? He didn't have to be punished for those sins? He could just make restitution and it would be okay? That doesn't make any sense. [00:23:00] Like, if we go down that road Doesn't that mean that we could be our own Savior? Doesn't that mean that we can save ourselves? The answer is no, we cannot. But, in order to see that, you have to look at the bigger picture that Paul is bringing out here in the book of Romans.
Turning back to Romans and the New Testament at large, my challenge to you, because I don't have time to go through everything here, is to look at the places where wrath is showing up, and ask yourself, Is it talking about Jesus, or is it just talking about wicked humans who are under condemnation of wrath?
A couple of hints here. In Romans 8, 3, it says that sin is condemned. It doesn't talk about our sins in particular, and we'll talk about this broader word of the word sin. It doesn't talk about [00:24:00] Jesus being under wrath. It's talking about sin being condemned, and that's really going to be an important point to what I'm bringing out here today.
I will also say that wrath is about punishment, and while that is often about death, it's not exclusively about death. And I think a lot of what Paul is talking about here in Romans about wrath, he's talking about the eschatological day of the Lord. And I think part of that fact should hint us into this idea that he's not just talking about the consequence of sin being our normal mortal deaths.
But that's just something to add to your little bucket of thoughts. But one more stop here about wrath. In Romans 5, 9, it talks about wrath in association with the death of Jesus. But let's look at what it actually says. It says, Much more surely, then, [00:25:00] now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God.
So this seems to connect Jesus death and the wrath that is owed upon us as sinners, right? In fact, I have at least one commentary that makes that direct claim. But let's look at the verse. There's two aspects here. We have justification through the blood of Jesus. That's not justification through the death of Jesus, but through the blood of Jesus. And blood here, it's not a metonym for death. A metonym is, you take something about something and you use it to refer to the whole. Like if I said the ABCs, and I'm talking about the whole alphabet. That's a metonym. When we're talking about the blood of Jesus, that's not a metonym for death. Because blood [00:26:00] has a specific purpose and meaning in Scripture. And as we've talked about in relation to sacrifice, and as I'm sure we will get to much more later, blood is about purification. So we can be justified by his blood without any emphasis on his death here at all.
And so, again, we have the two pieces of this verse. We have the justification by his blood. That's the greater thing. Then it says that there's a lesser thing. And that is being saved from the wrath of God. So, it's not that we're being saved from the wrath of God, that being the same as the justification by blood, but we are justified by the blood. And, oh yeah, that also means we'll be saved from the wrath of God.
And again, we should be thinking of this in an eschatological way. The Day of the Lord. [00:27:00] We're going to be saved from that wrath because we're justified by the blood, because we're cleansed. We are purified. So there seems to be a connection there between purification and being saved from the wrath. That's quite interesting, right?
And there's other places in the New Testament which tell us directly that Jesus delivers us from wrath. In 1 Thessalonians 1 10, it says, And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come. And note that phrase, delivers us from the wrath to come. The concept of deliverance is that there is an enemy that we are being delivered from. That enemy isn't God.
So let's talk about how Paul describes our enemy. Like, we really need to pay [00:28:00] attention to this language of deliverance, and we need to be a little bit careful as well, not trying to make it into this propositional thing, like we tend to think about, like I've already described before.
That's not saying that it's not describing some real reality or something that we can describe propositionally. But we need to be thinking primarily about the history and the stories of Israel, as well as the fact that we're talking about external enemies here.
Okay, so remember how the idea in Ezekiel 33 was that people could make restitution and they would avoid the punishment? And if the idea that Jesus came to take our punishment is the right way to be looking at things, then This passage in Ezekiel really knocks that on its head, kind of, and really causes a [00:29:00] big problem for us. If we can just pay for our own sins by doing some restitution, then why did Jesus even come? Like, sure, maybe not everyone is gonna do that, and so maybe some people need Jesus, but other people, maybe they don't actually need Jesus.
Well, this is the problem with an anemic gospel. This is a problem with the idea that the only reason Jesus came was because of our personal sin, to pay for it. It's simply not the only reason that Jesus came. Is it a reason? Well, let's see about what Paul actually says about it in Romans.
When somebody starts talking about the idea that Jesus didn't come just as a punishment for us, then a common response is often something like, Well, wait! The Bible says all over the place that Jesus died for our [00:30:00] sins. See, it's right there. See, it's right there. See, it's, it's everywhere. The Bible's very concerned with sin. And, yeah, it is. But like we've seen in Ezekiel, you can actually make restitution. And like we've described at least to some extent in the Levitical structure of the sacrificial system, that wasn't really about taking care of every little last sin, or at least it wasn't just solely about that. If that's all you're looking at it for, then you're missing a lot with the whole cleansing and the idea that sacrifice is a celebration. Like, those are big, big themes that you're just kind of completely blowing by.
At any rate, let's get into this topic of cosmic salvation. I am going to be pulling from a book called When in Romans, An Invitation [00:31:00] to Linger with the Gospel According to Paul. This is from a series called Theological Explorations for the Church Catholic, and it is written by Beverly Roberts Gaventa. Now, this book is very short. It is not long at all. But, in addition to the content of the book, it has a bibliography, so If you're interested in this stuff, go ahead and go check that out. Go ahead and follow the bibliography and everything. She has a few unique ideas, but most of it she's just kind of summing up what she's saying. And I'm not going to be really talking about the whole book, and some of what I'm going to say is going to be going past what she says. So don't go get the book and expect some in depth discussion about this in particular.
I'm just telling you what my sources are. And if you just want a short book to start thinking about the Book of Romans a little bit differently, then this [00:32:00] might be worth your while. But be warned that it is very short. I think it's like 129 pages or something. It's only got four chapters, and I'm just going to be pulling a little bit from the first chapter.
Part of the point of the book is to give you some ideas to read Romans a little bit more slowly. And to really think about it in a different way than you might normally think about it. In her first chapter, she says, A prolonged and careful study of Romans means finding that salvation is far more complex, more cosmic, more challenging, than we have usually imagined.
She doesn't mention the Roman's Road approach here in her book, but I do think that a lot of what she says responds to what the Roman's Road talks about. And, of course, a lot of what we talk about in salvation is often about individual salvation. When in Romans 1, verse [00:33:00] 16, it says, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is God's own power bringing about salvation for everyone who believes, the Jew first and also the Greek.
Commentators and scholars like Douglas Moo say that salvation is spiritual deliverance. And the assumption is that salvation has something to do with the individual human being who is being forgiven, who is restored to right relationship with God, and so then we're saved from the eschatological wrath, and we're able to live great Christian lives because we're saved. So it's a very individual thing. Now, more and more scholarship is noticing these days that Paul seems to be talking at least to some degree about corporate salvation. So, he's talking about people groups. Some people will even say that this means that it's the Gentiles who need the gospel, not the Jews, [00:34:00] because they already had a system.
But whether you're talking about individual salvation or corporate salvation, The idea remains a linear one, like, humanity has this problem of sin and death because of the wrath of God. Jesus comes and takes our punishment, and now, suddenly, we can repent and be forgiven.
Of course, remember that passage in Ezekiel 33, which kind of puts a little ranch into that whole idea. But, like I said, Ezekiel 33 doesn't actually pose any kind of a problem with what Paul is saying here. But, like I said, Ezekiel 33 doesn't actually pose any kind of a problem with what Paul is saying here. Because our problem is much bigger than a sin problem.
In her book, Gaventa says, All these models of salvation in general, and especially looking at it in Romans, they all fall short of Paul's unsettling and cosmic understanding of salvation. Although all [00:35:00] of them may be incorporated into Paul's view, at least to a certain extent, all of them reduce the transaction to something small. Either between God and a single human being, or between God and a specific group of human beings.
She also says if we move a little quickly and do not pause to ask a lot of questions, however, we can read Romans one through four as a straightforward account of a human problem, which God has solved in the death of Jesus Christ in order to save human beings from eschatological judgment end quote.
But here's the thing, when you look at Romans. And I don't think this is only a Romans thing, I think this is kind of across the board with Paul. Paul can talk about sin in different ways. Sometimes he talks about sin in plural, like our individual sins, our transgressions, the things that we do to cross the law and [00:36:00] that we do wrong. And untreated, we might say, those things deserve the wrath of God. But Paul also talks about sin in a
different way. He talks about it as if it is an active agent, as if it's something that has a will and a desire and that is actually our enemy. So in this sense, sin is a cosmic power. Both sin and death are described in this way in the Book of Romans.
And this is really important to notice because there is a difference between our individual Lowercase s, sins, and this sin as a power, sin with a capital s. You have to read pretty carefully in our English versions, and I suppose this might also be true in the Greek version, I don't know, because it's not like it's a different word here. It is the word sin, [00:37:00] but it's treated as if it's something active. And oh, by the way, do you remember that story of Cain and Abel? The first mention of sin in the Bible is with the story of Cain. And how is sin mentioned? In Genesis 4, verse 7, it says, If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it. So, immediately upon reading about sin in our Bibles, Because, remember, the word sin is not used in the incident in the garden. Sin is already described as an active agent. And we've talked a bit before, when we were reading through Genesis 4, about how the Hebrew word can connect to some ancient mythologies, and how sin can be seen as a demon.
So here in the book of Romans, [00:38:00] we have the same thing going on. So in Romans 5, verse 12, it says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin. Now, this is still connected to our actual actions and our sin, right? It continues on to say that all have sinned, but we have sin here acting like some kind of a creature.
Okay I'm going to start reading from Gaventa's translation that she gives in her book. In Romans 5. 14, she translates this as Death ruled as a king from Adam until Moses. In the NRSV, that verse says, Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses. So, her translation's a bit creative, but it's still, it's got this idea of dominion. How does death have dominion?
This word dominion is very [00:39:00] much associated with kingship. In verse 517, she translates that as, Death ruled as a king through the transgression of one person. Verse 20 says that sin multiplied. And isn't that interesting? We have multiplication and dominion. Both of those are supposed to be things that humans are supposed to do, right?
In verse 21, it says that sin ruled as a king through death. In Romans 6, verse 9, she translates this as death no longer lords it over Christ. Romans 6 12 says, Do not let sin rule as a king in your mortal body. In verse 13, Do not present your members, or your body parts, to sin as weapons of wrong. Verse 14, Sin will not lord it over you. [00:40:00] Verse 17, You were slaves of sin. Romans 7 8 says, Sin took the commandment as a ground of operation and produced in me every desire. Verse 11 says, Sin, taking a ground of operation through the commandment, deceived me and killed me through the commandment. Verse 14, I am sold under the power of sin. Verse 17, Sin lives in me.
So you see, all of these ways of speaking about sin, it's like it's an actual creature. Something with a will, something that can determine goals and work to act those goals out. We are seen as being slaves of sin. And I know that most of us have probably heard that before, right? And when we think about being slaves to sin, we're just [00:41:00] thinking about our own personal transgressions.
And I'm not saying that we shouldn't have that in mind, because that's what we're talking about, but there's an idea that there is a cosmic reality. That is also behind all of that. So, it's not just that we sin. It's not just that we transgress the law. It is that we are trapped as slaves to sin, and by association, death.
So, okay, cool, right? We have these cosmic powers, sin and death. Well, why can't we just see them as metaphors? Maybe Paul is just using these metaphorically, right? I mean, you know, there's a lot of metaphors in the Bible.
So, you have the Book of Romans, right? You have the first four chapters that seem pretty straightforward. It's talking about people who are sinful, and it's talking about the impact of [00:42:00] that sin, and kind of what it looks like, and how Jesus is sent in order to solve all of that. The idea then, for a lot of people, is you get into the next part of Romans, and it moves on from that, because this is supposed to be linear.
Except it doesn't really work out like that, because you remember when I was talking about the Roman's Road? None of those passages are actually linear, so that kind of breaks that apart. But, but it's like we have two different ways of talking about what's going on. In Romans 1 through 4, it's kind of this typical way of looking at it. Humans, are just sinful and the problem is that humans just sin again and again and again and we can't stop it and we're just always going to be sinful and so God has to send Jesus in order to take care of all of that. But Romans 5 through 7, it's talking about the same thing. But it's talking about it in relation to the idea [00:43:00] that humans are enslaved. We are enslaved to a power that is beyond us and that we can't do anything about. And so in comes this language of deliverance. We are being delivered from this cosmic reality.
Gaventa says, Paul takes what was already said in chapters 1 through 4 about sin and salvation and spins it in larger, more complex, even cosmic terms. No longer is the story one of humanity that persists in sinning until God sends Jesus as a kind of sacrifice, which we might think to be the case up to chapter 3. That story morphs into a story of conflict and enslavement and deliverance. The agents are not only God or Jesus or humanity, but the cosmic powers of sin and death.
Now, we have to keep in [00:44:00] mind that for the ancient world, even if the Israelites didn't see death as some sort of cosmic god, they did have Satan who had the keys of Hades, the lord of the underworld, and that kind of parallels the idea of the god of death of the ancient Near East, and we have to realize that the story of enslavement to sin and death and deliverance This is very reminiscent of what in the Old Testament?
It sounds like the Exodus. And the Exodus story is the formative story of the whole nation of Israel. God's deliverance was about getting them out of slavery. And they were in slavery to real powers. And those powers are described in real terms. Not only were the people being delivered from Pharaoh and Egypt, And the whole situation there.
But God [00:45:00] was literally pronouncing judgment on the gods of Egypt. Now, is God going to be pronouncing judgment to something that doesn't exist? That doesn't really make any sense. So, Paul here, he's not talking about the gods of Egypt because they're not in Egypt. They don't need to be delivered from the gods of Egypt because they're not in that situation anymore.
But they do need to be delivered from cosmic powers. And he's describing those in very real ways. And in other places, like later in Romans, as well as in other letters, Paul calls out these things as real things that can actually influence us and have power over us.
As Gaventa says, Paul's understanding of salvation is cosmic. Salvation concerns God's powerful action in Jesus Christ to reclaim humanity, individual and corporate, and [00:46:00] from the powers of sin and death. End quote.
In many, many places in the Gospel and elsewhere in the New Testament, Jesus coming is described as the New Exodus. For instance, you can look at Jesus baptism. In Mark chapter 1, verses 9 through 11, it says, And immediately as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens being split apart, and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.
That Greek word split apart there, that's the same word as the parting of the Red Sea. And then you have that happening here at Jesus baptism, which again, has water. And this was the sign that suggested to John the Baptist who Jesus was. Because before that, John the Baptist didn't know. They were cousins, so they knew each other. It's not like they didn't know each other. They had a relationship. But in the book of [00:47:00] John, John the Baptist says that he didn't know Jesus.
It's not like he literally had no relationship or no knowledge of him, but previously to that. It's that he didn't know he was the Messiah, and it was at the baptism that this whole thing was revealed. And so, when we're reading the New Testament, it's really incumbent upon us to look very carefully and notice all of these things that tie into The whole idea that Jesus is the new Exodus, that Jesus is here to deliver us.
Now, was that about punishment? The Israelites weren't being punished during the Exodus. There was the idea of God's wrath, and God's wrath was on what? The powers that were enslaving them. So, in Romans, what do we have? We have the idea that sin As an active agent, [00:48:00] and death as an active agent, those needed to be overcome. And that's what we see. It's not Jesus who's condemned, it's not people who are condemned, people who are in Jesus who are condemned, but it's sin who is condemned. That's what we have in Romans 8.
Gaventa says, this understanding of salvation in Romans suggests that we also need a larger framework for understanding the death of Jesus. What is it that the cross accomplishes? Or, more specifically, how does the cross play a role in this cosmic battle? End quote.
The usual answer to the cosmic battle of the cross is penal substitutionary sacrifice. Jesus dies in place of human beings as a sacrifice that addresses God's wrath. Or, sometimes even to appease or pay Satan.
[00:49:00] But we see in Romans 5 through 7 That Jesus's death is in this larger idea that it's not just an obedient sacrifice, which sacrifices were about cleansing and about celebration, but God was defeating cosmic powers by what happened with Jesus at the cross. Another way to see that is through the language of Jesus as being handed over.
We see this in Romans 4 25 when it says, That Jesus was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification. In Romans 8 32, it says, he who did not withhold his own son, but gave him up for all of us. Will he not with him also give us everything else? So I think here is where we might see that idea of a payment to Satan.
Like, God [00:50:00] owed Satan something in order to accomplish this. But this language of being handed over, it's not like a payment. If that were the case, then it's hard to see how death would be defeated. God did not pay Pharaoh or the gods in order to deliver the people from Egypt.
What this language should be making us think about is the story of Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22. Remember, that's not appeasing wrath there. It's not paying Satan. It's not paying anybody. When we look at the language in the New Testament, what we need to be doing is trying to see how that maps onto the Old Testament. This is why it is so crucial that we understand the Old Testament, that we become steeped in the Old Testament.
And here's another really interesting point that Goventa brings out. She says, no where else except for one mention [00:51:00] in chapter 2 the letter, does he say that humanity needs to repent, or has repented, or even that humanity can repent. And nowhere does he talk of forgiveness. End quote.
And that makes a lot of sense because a slave can't repent out of slavery. I mean, as much as we might turn to the language of debt for forgiveness and restitution and becoming right with God, usually what we're trying to tie this to is punishment, right? The idea of being forgiven from a debt. That does have its place in the New Testament. But, see, the problem with systematizing everything and trying to come up with one single view is that it becomes hard to impossible to understand the individual depictions for what they mean.
And if you're going to take pieces [00:52:00] from one thing and mesh it with pieces from another, well, it starts not making any sense real fast. And in reality, there's just all of these different ways that the work of Jesus is described. And this is one of them. So, salvation isn't just about being forgiven for what you've done.
It's about being delivered from sin's power. We, today, don't like to look at sin as a power that God had to defeat. We ask questions like, Where did that come from? Is this sinful power, is it an ontological reality? How do we take it seriously? Well, that's part of why I'm talking about the reality of the gods, and why it's important that we take what the Bible says and we understand it in this light.
Once we start doing that, things start making a little bit more sense. [00:53:00] And are we really sure that Paul wasn't just talking about a metaphor? Well look at the end of Romans 8, where it says, For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now, we can talk about what all of those different things are, and some of them are probably not spiritual realities. But definitely some of them are. So, we can't just say that Paul was just using this as a metaphor. It's too deep and rich and culturally embedded of an image for that, I think. And when you combine it with the idea that we have many places in the New Testament that talk about Satan and his power, Then it becomes even [00:54:00] more clear that there is a spiritual reality here.
And, of course, the tendency is to kind of lump it all together and just put it into one little box. But, again, I would caution us not to do that. And, really, what's the point in trying to simplify it that much anyway?
. And we can look at Ephesians for more language about spiritual battles. And then we might ask ourselves, why is Paul not very specific here? Because in the Old Testament, we have all kinds of gods and deities and prophets battling Baal in the book of Kings and all of these things. Why isn't Paul seeming to act like that? And the language he uses is, it seems to be much more vague, right?
Well, in part, I think by the time of the New Testament, the Jewish people are much more of a [00:55:00] cohesive body. They're not really being tempted by idolatry in the way that the people were in the Old Testament. At least, not as far as The types of idolatry that they are used to back then.
Paul does use the language of idolatry, and he uses it in multiple ways. First of all, he does talk about, you know, people actually sacrificing to idols in pagan temples, and things like that, because they certainly had that context. But Paul also uses the language of idolatry in other ways. And this is interesting to me in particular because, you know, I've heard so many sermons or stories about sermons where the pastor is talking about idolatry and he is talking about greed or money or, you know, power or our jobs and all, how all of these things can be idols, right?
And part of me [00:56:00] listens to that and goes, that's not what an idol was in the Old Testament. So where does this idea come from? To some degree, I do think that pastors tend to overuse this kind of idea. But to be fair, Paul does use this language in association with things that are not really idolatry in a technical sense.
Colossians 3, 1 through 5 says, So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above. Not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly. , fornication, impurity, passion, evil [00:57:00] desire, and greed, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things. Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abuse of language from your mouth.
Okay, we'll go ahead and stop there. Like, the context here is the types of things that people would engage with in their previous life, but before they were Christian. And now that they're Christian, they're supposed to not have all of these things. And Paul is associating those things, and greed in particular, with idolatry. So, here we have a connection with behavior and what we are worshiping. And I think this is a direct correlation, absolutely, to what we see in the Old Testament. Because part of the problem with idolatry was obviously the fact that they weren't being loyal to [00:58:00] God, but being loyal to another deity would cause them to act in different ways.
They would become like those other deities. In a sense, you are what you worship. And any other focus other than being loyal to God and living for Him, being a disciple of Jesus, any other focus is that of idolatry. But, you see, this isn't to deny any other aspect of idolatry. It's showing a parallel. Idols are worshiping creation, and anything that denies or neglects the lordship of Jesus is the same.
And such things lead to a life that is not Christian. It is not acting in the way that we should. We are not being conformed to the image of Christ. We're being conformed to the image of something else. So, of course, we can give our lives over to something [00:59:00] else. Anything else, really. And sometimes there are things that are genuinely behind those things .
I think that we have to say that that's the reality that we see. But the concern isn't really about unchecked, rogue spirits who wander about looking for innocent victims, although that might be the case on occasion. The problem is, living in and relishing the world of physical pleasure and comfort, that's also a problem.
That's a problem in and of itself. And this is the opposite of submission to Jesus. And submission to Jesus suggests and implies an acceptance of a life of discomfort and even suffering as opposed to the kind of idolatry and worship and greed and living licentiously that pagans would be living. So it's like there's layers of danger here. We have people being led by their own desires. People being led by external [01:00:00] spirits. People actively worshipping the creation and trying to get something out of creation that you're only supposed to get from God. And all of these things are kind of wrapped up into the same kind of idea. And just because one of those things is true, does not negate all of the other things.
There are things that are going on in the world and in the spiritual realm that are just beyond our understanding. But the important thing is, and the good news is, if we are following Christ, and we are in Christ, and we are participating with Christ, and no other spiritual reality, no other power in our lives, that's what matters.
Because I talked last time about how some of the Israelites, some of the kings, many of the people, they were worshipping Yahweh, and they were worshipping something else. So, that's what we need to be doing is examining our lives and letting [01:01:00] Christ defeat all of those powers, whatever they are. It is about deliverance from those powers.
So when Paul talks about how the wages of sin are death, he's not talking about how we are owed those wages because we sin. He is talking about how sin pays us those wages. So we have it kind of backwards there. Once you start reading the Book of Romans with the idea that sin is a thing in and of itself, and it's not just our little individual actions, then we can understand a little bit better, at least, to some degree, I think, that it's not just that our sin entered the world and broke everything and caused all of this problem.
If that was the case, it would just be these little individual things that we would need to fix. But rather, it is something a little bit greater than that, a little bit grander. [01:02:00] And so, I challenge you, if you think I'm kinda crazy and just going out on a limb here, take your Book of Romans, or take any letter by Paul, and start thinking in terms of these categories.
Think about something that is external to us, even though that might seem a little bit weird to you, and maybe you're more comfortable with thinking of it as just a metaphor. But either way, there is that base reality of something that we are being saved from, we are being delivered from.
And so, yes, can we say that Christ came for our sins? And can we say that there is wrath of God? Yes. But let's be very careful with how we talk about that. Let's find out how we can look at it from that biblical perspective and actually see what the biblical text is talking about. And it's these ideas of this external reality and these dark spiritual forces [01:03:00] that are genuinely something that God is battling, and those things are the things that are defeated.
And once those things no longer have power over us, , that's one of the ways it's described as us being able to defeat those things. It's not us defeating it. It's Christ defeating it, but suddenly. Now that that power has been defeated, we are able to live our lives in a way that we couldn't before.
This also answers questions like, what about when we're in heaven, or in the new earth, we might say better. Will we still sin? Well, we won't, because Christ has defeated that power, and by that point, it will be completely and utterly destroyed. The power of sin and death is clearly a real thing. It's a real reality, and it's going to be defeated.
So it becomes not about our [01:04:00] individual choices and what are we doing today? Am I going to wake up and be angry and be grumpy because I'm in a bad mood? Or is the problem a bigger one than that? And that once that problem is solved, then everything else kind of flows on. I don't know. It's hard to describe as a Westerner, because I want it to be this linear, chronological thing that I can just describe in a scientific reality.
But what we see in scripture is the story. It's the narrative. It's this pattern of us relying on God, and it's God's power that defeats our enemies. And so once we see that, it's less about this me centered kind of gospel where I need to be saved from my sins because I'm a bad person, and it becomes a bigger story about the action of God [01:05:00] and the action of Jesus.
I understand why people want to hang on to the idea of penal substitutionary atonement because it makes this logical sort of sense. Even though I don't really think it does, but to some degree, , you can convince yourself of it because we understand what a law is. We understand what a punishment is, and when you break a law, there should be a punishment that happens because of that law.
But the Bible is presenting a reality to us that is much more complex, much more nuanced, and it loops us all into the story that the Bible is telling and the story of Israel and the story of God's people.
At any rate, I think it's time to wrap up the episode here. Thank you guys for listening. I would love to hear if this impacted your reading of Romans in any way and your understanding of the work of Jesus.
Thank you guys for sharing my episodes, for rating the podcast.[01:06:00] Thank you especially to all of my Patreon and PayPal supporters. You guys are awesome. If anyone's got any questions or feedback for me, I would love to hear it. You can get a hold of me at my website at GenesisMarksTheSpot. com. I hope you all have a great week, and we will see you later.
