3/10/98 Tuesday 6:55 AM Back on Romans. chapters 1 and 2 seem to make a lot of sense (although I need to reserve judgment still on the "righteous gentile" of chapter 2). In 3 we see that God was planning to send Jesus and was waiting for the fullness of time, presumably when it would make sense, presumably when the Jews had been conquered and living at home under the dictatorship of another law, i.e., the Roman law, and would come under the influence of the rampant sexuality of that society and its supreme maxim of pleasure above all.

So Jesus comes in Romans 3, but this leads to the faith of Abraham as an icon (Romans 4). What is the point? that while we are unable to become acceptable to God on our own, he will make us that way if we will believe. Abraham comes into renewed life (sexually) and we too shall come into a new life where Christ lives in us.

Now the result is not the cessation of pain and problems, but a new attitude toward them, for we are now being shaped by God and we have the evidence of his Holy Spirit by virtue of the love that we find. For this is the same love that brought Jesus to die for us, even when we were no count. this is the mark of the love of God, i.e., the capacity to love the unlovable. [Paul would have added Barabbas here except that the disciples had been asked by Jesus not to mention his name for fear of embarrassment, even as they would have said nothing about Judas if he had returned to the fold.]

Now we come to the comparison of Jesus and Adam. What is the point of this?

This is an argument against the Jews who would laugh to think that the righteousness of a single man could make other people righteous in the eyes of God, for Abraham's faith did not make other people righteous, but merely bound God to a promise (in Jewish thinking). So what's the point? the Jews were asking.

Adam reveals a defect called: me first, and then others. Jesus' nature is: everyone counts. Now this Adamic defect mars us all. But the Christ perfection will be ours through faith. So then Abraham's faith worked only for himself, and not for others, and the adamic defect remains, but now in Christ the faith of each individual continues to work for one's self, but also for others, by example(?--I am not sure yet here), and so in Christ many are made whole, and by the love of the unlovable, the world shall be transformed.

???

The purposes of the law are taken care of in chapter 6, for we see that what the law can achieve only cumbersomely and through reluctant, hating hearts, the spirit of Christ attains readily and eagerly. So the law is retained in its spirit, although it is dispensed with with regard to its letter.

The analogy is the wife of a husband (chapter 7). She is bound as long as he is alive, but then she is free of the restraint of the law. So is it with the Christian, it is free from the restraint of the law, for now he follows the spirit of the law (even as Jesus did when he healed Jews on the Sabbath, for the purpose of the law was the sacredness of the Jewish people, and that is precisely what Jesus did; except: he loved the Jews because they were people and not really because they were Jews).

Here Paul (Chapter 7) inserts what is probably more of a foot note, namely how the law is perverted in the hands of sinful man, for we are even enticed to break the law precisely because it is a law, which is our Adamic nature and which will not be done away with because we are made in the image of the sovereign God who does as he "damn well pleases" and refuses to be instructed. This is the problem with any forced system, such as the Jewish law in the hands of the Jewish rabbis, namely: we hate the law and seek to avoid compliance in every legal way,i.e., in every way that we can truly get away with.*

[* in the words of the father of Francis of Assisi: why do more than you have to?!]

But then we turn and look at ourselves given this penchant for sin, and we find that it permeates out bodies and our flesh, i.e., that we are sin itself, conceived in sin and attracted toward sin. There is no hope, except: we have Christ.

The effect of Christ (chapter 8) is that our acceptance is guaranteed by God. And this means that our faith in Christ alone works this salvation. This does not mean that we continue in sin (as was expounded in chapter 6), but only that we will be made holy in fact in the time that God allots to us, i.e., we shall be made morally perfect and we have the evidence of that process and grace within us now as we are able to speak to God as Father, Abba, Daddy.

The logic is very simple: by virtue of our faith in Christ God will indeed and in fact and in truth make us perfect, but only in accordance with our own understanding and our own capacity and totally in accordance with the time remaining to our lives. But he sees us as perfect now, for he sees apart from time, and therefore sees as we shall inevitably become, and all this by virtue of our faith in him.

Thus the Wesleyan motto: while I am far from perfection, I am not as far as I once was, and I am on the way.

So absolute is this promise of God that we do not even need to fear an inability to pray the right prayers or say the right words. For God, in spirit, is able to inspect our hearts and look beyond our words.*

[* This consideration was absolutely imperative for the universalized gospel, for the slaves in Rome had to understand that the power of Roman might could not separate them from God, and even if they were forced with torture, of their children perhaps, to deny Christ with their mouths, this would not affect their relationship with God, for he sees the heart and the true meaning of all things. A very, very, very powerful assurance!**]

[** But which does not touch on the question of free will at all, for there is nothing to suggest that a person cannot separate himself from God in a conscious, willful decision, perhaps a la Demas. (This touches on the latter part of Romans 8.)]

The completion of the conception requires a consideration (in Romans 9-11) of the Jewish question, since they were children of promise. And they will enter into the kingdom also, but at the tail-end, for they must become the laughing stocks of the Christian world, having held out for the deal rather than the gift, and therefore getting the short end of the stick, for no deal, even with Abraham, could match the priceless gift of the spirit of Christ to possess our hearts.

The remainder of Romans (12 forward) exemplifies the spirit of Christ. In chapter 13 we see that we obey Roman laws only because they are good laws, and not because they are laws per se (e.g., decrees and fiats of a strong power). In 14 we go on to see the freedom that accrues to the Christian in the most illuminating chapter in perhaps the entire Bible (equal, in this regard, to the entire book of Galatians).

And Paul ends with admonishments to individuals and greetings and expressions of love and prayer.

7:32 AM Reconsideration of the "righteous gentile" of chapter 1.* Here we are dealing with inclinations which are at odds with the adamic nature. But this only holds true as long as the inclinations are what they are. This will not work as a solution, however, for what is needed for the grace of God is our own willingness by virtue of a maxim or principle. I.e., we must not go about merely doing good and thinking that we are holy because of that (even if our conscience is clear), for that would mean that we would go around doing evil if our inclinations should every change, and so that we would be dependent upon, and controlled by, our inclinations; and that would be us in the same boat with Tiberius, Caligula and all the others of Chapter 1.

[* This discussion will now take on a decidedly kantian cast.]

No! what is required is the commitment to Christ that comes through acceptance of his leadership.

The reason for the commitment is that we become one with Christ. But it is the faith that must precede in making us believe that Christ will accept our commitment as the accomplished fact of perfection. The reason (again): by virtue of this willingness (= commitment coupled with faith that we are loved and desired and that God will work in and through us) God will in fact transform our hearts (immediately*) and our flesh (gradually) into a facsimile of Christ.

[* This is essentially the commitment itself, and not that we will emotionally be one with Christ, for the emotions are part of the flesh. Our commitment is to Christ with all our hearts and therefore, when we sin, we are ashamed now in our own eyes and are not concerned so much with our looks in the eyes of God, for his own love and support we never doubt. We are now ashamed of ourselves, and that is the mark of God within us, the assurance of our salvation, for the sinful are only worried about their appearance in the eyes of others, e.g., in the eyes of God.**]

[** At the communion table, therefore, we come due to our own weakness in our own eyes and take our supper in that imperfection, even as we accept the others at the table in their own imperfection, and we pray for God to increase our strength and purpose of will so that we will not fail or fall again, but we never doubt our acceptance in the community call the Kingdom of God.]

Note: it is important for the Wesleyan to avoid "holy habits" and instead to focus on "discipline" for the latter implies a consciousness that is denied in the former, and with the former we would not be able to achieve to the flexibility depicted in Romans 14.