Commentary on Romans 4:1-5, 13-17

I hear daily, both in person and in the media, about people’s heartache over the current divisions in American society. According to recent polling, societal division is alternating with economic distress for the top concern among American voters. Coupled with other high-level worries, the current degree of animosity can feel singular, as though we are the only culture ever to experience such a tearing of the social fabric. But sadly, we are not singular in this affliction. 

Over history people have suffered from divisions at many times, and one of them was in the earliest years of the church. Fault lines among the Roman house churches, exacerbated by the Roman political situation, were uppermost in Paul’s mind as he wrote to the Roman assemblies, both the Gentile-Christian and Jewish-Christian churches.

The social context of Romans 4

Paul wrote this letter to gain financial support from Roman Christians for his mission to Spain, and in order to do that, he needed both to defend his Gentile-centric Gospel to this mixed group (Romans 1:1–6) and to show that he understood the internal divisions among the assemblies scattered over the capital city.

• The thanksgivings at the end of the letter are evidence of how many Roman house church leaders Paul had come to know personally during the time when Jews were expelled from Rome under Claudius in 49–50 CE (see Acts 18:2).
• By the time of the writing of Romans, the Jewish Christians have largely returned, possibly exacerbating the antagonism between the Jewish and Gentile house churches.

As a scholar, I have become convinced of Paul’s ongoing Jewishness during his entire ministry,  and his appreciation for all things Jewish—including the law—at the same time that he felt specifically called to bring the Gentiles into right relationship with the Jewish God (see Jeremiah 1:4–5 for Paul’s prophetic model). 

• In order to understand Paul’s strategy for bringing together the Gentile and Jewish churches in Rome, we need to develop ears for the complexity of his stance and the emotions of the communities in Rome who received the letter.
• And perhaps we need to send up a prayer of thanksgiving for the deacon Phoebe, who appears to be the person tasked with reading and interpreting this letter to its first recipients (Romans 16:1–2).

The literary context of Romans 4

Paul approaches the division among the churches by spending most of the first three chapters presenting the clear evidence that all people have sinned, “both Jews and Greeks” (Romans 3:9).

• At 3:21–26, Paul daringly uses the metaphor of the Yom Kippur sacrifice of atonement to describe how God chose to receive the crucifixion of Jesus as a holy sacrifice for the reconciling of all people.
• All—both Jews and Gentiles—are now reconciled to one another and to God. This is the new reality that Paul wants the Roman churches to acknowledge in their life together.

Romans 4:1–5, 13–17

The reading for this day then picks up at the beginning of chapter 4, when Paul pulls out yet another cornerstone of Jewish tradition.

• Here Paul dares to describe Abraham (the quintessential ancestor of all Jews) as also the patriarch of Gentiles who have chosen to believe in, or to entrust themselves wholly to, Jesus and his life of trust in God’s will.
• The passage circles around and around certain Greek terms: faith/faithfulness, law, and righteousness/justice. The words are discussed below not to include in preaching, but for the preacher’s own understanding. 

Faith (Greek, pistis)

For Paul, faith is an active entrusting of oneself to Jesus and his way of life. It is not a belief in certain things about Jesus, but a deep internalizing of Jesus’s values and patterns of life. It comprises both faith and faithfulness.

• Paul uses the word in three ways in this passage and elsewhere in Romans, which expose the active dimension of faith: the faith of Christ (Greek, pistis Christou, 3:22, 26, translated in the New Revised Standard Version as “faith in Christ”); the faith of Abraham (4:16); and the obedience of faith (1:5; 16:26).
• Abraham and Jesus Christ are models of the obedience of faith, of entrusting themselves completely to God’s ways.
• Having faith, or believing (the verb form of pistis: pisteuō) is not a mental assertion but an embodied way of life in right relationship with God and neighbor.

Righteousness/justice (Greek, dikaiosynē)

A second Greek term that is repeated in Romans 4 is dikaiosynē, which can be translated as righteousness or justice, or both simultaneously.

• Entrusting oneself wholly to God spills over into the living of a righteous life, living in right relationship with both God and the neighbor whom God loves.
• In New Testament Greek, there is no way to raise the subject of righteousness without simultaneously raising the subject of justice, as there is just one word for the two English concepts.

Law (Greek nomos)

In Romans 4, Paul contrasts law (which likely means certain teachings of Torah) with faith.

• This is a place where paying attention to Paul’s intended audience is crucial.
• Many scholars have come to believe that Romans is primarily addressed to Gentile Christians, with whom God has chosen to reconcile through the cross of Christ.
• Jews are reconciled with God through faithful lives shaped by Torah and temple; Gentiles are reconciled with God through faith in Christ, entrusting themselves to the moral patterns of Christ’s life, internalizing Christ’s way of life.

Addressing divisions

The letter to the Romans is concerned with reconciliation across differences that will remain (see Romans 15:1, 7). From the beginning of the letter Paul sets up a vision of salvation “to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). Jews and Greeks are still distinguished from one another, but are united by their faithfulness, exemplified by Abraham’s deep trust in God’s call.

• In Romans 4, Paul seeks to bring Jewish and Gentile Christians together as children of a single patriarch, Abraham.
• In Paul’s view, faith is a common requirement of both Jews and Gentiles, and he particularly wants Gentile believers to have complete confidence that their faith/faithfulness is sufficient for salvation.
• For Jews, faith/faithfulness grounds their adherence to Torah and temple.
• Saving the Gentiles, who have lived apart from God’s vision of justice, is God’s way of saving the world from the effects of injustice.

Paul has a hope that the Jewish community as a whole will come, in time, to recognize how God has made a way for the Gentiles to come into relationship through faith/faithfulness alone. But that saving reconciliation with God, “to the Jew first and then to the Greek,” will be a “harmony” (Romans 12:16; 16:5), not a monotone.

Resources

Robert Jewett, Romans: a Commentary, Hermeneia (Fortress 2006). Jewett’s is an exhaustive study of the on-the-ground realities of the people Paul was writing to in Romans. The size of the book is daunting, but I have found that people are riveted by getting a glimpse into the possibilities for describing the people who were drawn to Paul’s teaching in mid-first-century Rome.

Mark Nanos has many books on the Jewishness of Paul. Pick one and read it! It can take some time to develop an ear for hearing Paul’s letters in a “Jewish key,” but it is well worth it for understanding how the earliest Christian communities developed theologically within Judaism.

Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (Yale University Press, 1994). Stowers asserts that Romans was written with a Gentile audience in mind, challenging the long-held assumption that he was addressing Jews and Gentiles universally about sin and salvation. This was a pivotal book for my understanding of Romans, and I continue to unpack its insights 30 years later.