Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him and for his name's sake, we received grace and apostleship to call people from among all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith. And you also are among those who are called to belong to Jesus Christ.
To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is a notable way to start out a letter to Christians in Rome. I can only assume that some would be Jewish converts, but that a larger share would be Gentiles. Would the Gentiles much care if Jesus had been promised and prophesied about many years before? Would they understand what it means that Jesus is related to David?
There is a common motif found throughout the New Testament that Paul also uses here. Elsewhere, when people talk about the flesh or the spirit, these are placeholders for the deprived state of human nature before God's grace, compared to the soul that has been renewed. Remember when Jesus is about to be betrayed, his disciples fall asleep when they should be praying, and Jesus says, "The spirit is willing, but the body is weak."
So what does Paul mean when he says that "who as to his human nature was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead"? The 'human nature' that Christ has that Paul is talking about is part of Christ's Humiliation: that period of time that Jesus gave up his full powers as God and became a man that ate, slept, cried, walked, drank, and talked.
The Resurrection, then, is part of his Glorification- those periods when Jesus is revealed to be the Deity he is. The NIV translates the word 'Spirit' in this passage with a capital 'S', that is, the Holy Spirit. This might be taken to mean that the Holy Spirit declared Jesus to be holy, or something. It's confusing. But it doesn't really show that Flesh VS Spirit motif very well. A WELS seminarian, who is much better at this stuff than I am, writes an alternative translation:
"He was by the resurrection from the dead designated as the Son of God in power, in full accord with his spiritual mode of existence, an existence characterized by holiness.”
Paul's Longing to Visit Rome
First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world. God, whom I serve with my whole heart in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you in my prayers at all times; and I pray that now at last by God's will the way may be opened for me to come to you.
I long to see you so that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to make you strong— that is, that you and I may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I planned many times to come to you (but have been prevented from doing so until now) in order that I might have a harvest among you, just as I have had among the other Gentiles.
I am obligated both to Greeks and non-Greeks, both to the wise and the foolish. That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."
This is an excellent statement of the gospel's purpose. God is using it in order to save everyone who believes. Whenever people complain that God doesn't do anything, you can show this passage. God is using the gospel as his tool to redeem mankind. Compare popular conceptions of Christianity to this. Jesus may well be nice and good and want us to treat other people with kindness and respect, but the entire point behind this story is salvation, not behavior modification.
Lastly in this section, Paul begins one of the biggest themes of his epistle: righteousness. Don't make the mistake I sometimes make after watching too much Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and think of righteousness as an all-encompassing generally positive modifier. It has a clear meaning: doing the right things. Following God's Will perfectly.
The Bible often uses the illustration of a courtroom, with God as the Judge. People come before him, and are accused of wrongdoing (The Accuser is a popular euphemism for Satan). If they are righteous, they don't have anything to be worried about. But if they are unrighteous (hint: this covers a LOT of people), they are in trouble. Paul is saying that there is some way to be made righteous before God, even if you are unrighteous.
God's Wrath Against Mankind
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
The first part of this section is cool because it deals with a variety of issues I've written about before: evolution, Creation, environmentalism, and the culpability of mankind.
Agnostics I've talked to bring up this point a lot: you are a Christian because your parents are Christian and that is what you have been taught. How is it fair for God to deny salvation to people who, through no fault of their own do not have access to Christian parents or the Bible or seminaries or missionaries?
Paul answers here that no one should be able to make that claim. The evidence of God's Creation is so powerful and manifest that "men are without excuse". All societies at one time had an understanding of God. Some threw that understanding away, exchanging an inconvenient truth for a lie.
Evolution and other sciences like astrophysics directly combat this point. The evidence of God's Creation is not convincing at all. We've looked and looked and looked, and our best answer is NOT that God made the universe, but that we exist as a cosmic fluke.
Environmentalism has a role to play in this, too. In this section, Paul says that the natural world testifies to the attributes of God. If we treat the natural world better, those attributes can better be seen. The restoration of the natural world would also be a great way to communicate the restoration of our place as children of God.
Now on to the homosexual stuff. You simply cannot maintain biblical integrity and claim that homosexuality is not a sin: it's condemned strongly here, elsewhere in the New Testament, as well as the Old Testament. Some people will actually try to do this, and tie themselves up in knots. If you accept only certain parts of the Bible, this is not a big problem: St. Paul was correct in his teachings of atonement, sanctification, and faith alone, but not this part about homosexuality.
I do not know why some American church bodies have reversed course on this issue. Which is more probable: the teachings of the church have been incorrect for thousands of years, or that modern churches are falsely changing doctrine due to social pressure? This may be one of the only times in recorded church history when churches have openly sanctioned activities that are condemned by scripture. Paul might have written today, "Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them."
