30a - I Also Am an Israelite

As soon as Paul appeared in Corinth, all was forgiven, and everything that had been held against him was forgotten. The community was uplifted by a great wave of love. Whatever harshness he had spoken was accepted as the sign of his devotion.

There were some who feared Paul, for it seemed to them that he could annihilate with the power of his look. Others remembered only the sweeter, tenderer words he spoke. As to those who denied Paul’s authority, they too were carried away by the congregation’s enthusiasm. They trembled at the new strength Paul showed, and their opposition melted.

Paul knew what arguments were needed for various groups. To the Jews he pointed out that he lived under the discipline of the Law of Moses, perhaps more so than they did. But to the Gentiles who’d been won by the messengers from James and were trying to live under the same law, he said flatly that taking on the burden of Jewish discipline was all in vain. So he was a Jew among Jews, and a Greek among Greeks. But in everything he strove mightily to maintain the unity of the congregation.

Aquila and Priscilla were no longer in Corinth, but Paul made his home with Gaius, and it was from there that he dispatched his letter to the congregation in Rome.


The letter to the Romans was more difficult to write than even the letters to the Corinthians. Weeks and months passed while he dictated and re-dictated to a certain Tertius. It was his desire to re-state and expand his doctrine of Christ as he had received it, revealed it in many cities, and expounded it to Apollos. In a hard exact style, with fine, hairsplitting distinctions of definitions, he set down his thesis, or rather, his interpretation of his mission. First he repudiates sharply the pretended wisdom of the Greeks.

“Claiming to be wise,” he says, bluntly, “they were fools. They changed the truth of God into a lie and worshiped the creature rather than the Creator. So God gave them up to vile perversions of lust. . . . they became filled with unrighteousness, whoredom, greed, malice, with unnatural lusts and unmercifulness.”

He goes on to make it clear that the Jews who had the law, but didn’t live according to the law, were no better than those degenerate pagans.

“There will be tribulation and anguish on everyone who does evil, the Jew first, and then the Greek. But glory, honor, and peace is given to everyone who does good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile, for God does not play favorites. He will punish the Gentiles who sin even though they don’t have the law and he will punish the Jews who sin by the law.”

Then Paul says something that almost sounds like it could have come from James.

“For it’s not those who listen to the law who are justified before God, but those who do according to the law.”

But, “You call yourself a Jew, and feel secure in the law, and boast of God. . . . For it is not outwardly that one is a true Jew, but inwardly, circumcised in the heart and spirit, not in the flesh.”

Paul doesn’t stop there. He goes further and abrogates the law in precise terms, even for the Jews.

“By the deeds of the law no one will be justified in God’s sight, for the law only gives knowledge of sin. But now God’s righteousness is manifest without the law, the righteousness that is by the faith of Christ.”

Christ personifies righteousness. It follows then that faith in Christ is the essence of the law, that is, of justification, which is the opposite of sin. And Christ is the only one who can bring salvation from sin, for it is through the law that we become sinful.

“The law awakens in man all manner of lust, for without the law sin is dead. . . . For though we know that the law is of the spirit, I, the man, am sold in my body to sin. . . . For I know that in me, that is, in my body, there is nothing good. . . . I have the will, but have not found my way to goodness. . . . I see another law in me, warring against the law of my mind, and making me captive to the sin that is in me.”

In these sentences Paul unfolds the tragedy of man’s inner struggle over his own destiny, for he sees man as the arbiter of his own destiny. Therefore he looks into the depths of his own heart, and cries out over man’s fate.

“Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death?”

He looks around him, like a swimmer in a dark sea, who sees a single ray of light to guide him. That ray of light is Christ.

“Therefore as by one man’s disobedience condemnation came on everyone, so by one man’s obedience justification came for all. . . . And all who were baptized in Christ, were baptized into his death. For he that is dead sins no more. . . . We are no more in the flesh, but in the spirit.”

Only by the power of faith can man break the chains of his own destiny, hammered and laid on him by his own lusts. What is impossible for the law to accomplish becomes possible through the spirit.

“When Jesus Christ is in you, your body is dead to sin and alive to righteousness. . . . And they that are led by the spirit of God are the children of God. You have received the spirit of children, by which we cry Abba, Father!”

Then, with the logic of a true Pharisee, Paul proceeds to demonstrate that the law had lost its validity not only for the Gentiles, but for the Jews too.

“The law has dominion over a man as long as he lives, even as a woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. Therefore, my brothers, you have become dead to the law by the body of Christ, and you should be wed to another (to the living Christ in the spirit) who arose from the dead.”

Throughout this long letter Paul again lives through all the torments of his own life. He clearly sees how he isolated himself from the traditional Jewish way and condemned himself to loneliness. He struggles bitterly between his longing for Christ and salvation on the one hand, and his natural affection for his people on the other. He fully understands that the knife he lays at the root of Jewish law is also laid at the root of his relationship to his people. But his love for Christ is stronger.

“Who can separate us from Christ’s love?” he cries. “Neither height nor depth, nor any creature, can separate us from God’s love, which is in our lord, Jesus Christ.”

So has Christ come for the Gentiles alone? In the streams of blood that flowed from Christ’s body to free man from the law and bring him into the grace of faith, is there not one drop shed for his own people, who suffered the torment of Christ and had conjured him down from heaven by their longing?

In agony, Paul asks himself who can fathom the depths of Christ’s heart? Is there not a corner for his people in it? This thought gives him no rest. In the sea of love Christ poured out on mankind, there must be enough water for Israel too. So he labors, in pain and frustration, longing to bring the whole world into the grace of Christ, and finding himself confronted by the obstinate will of the Jews.

In this labor he develops a fiery impatience that blinds him to the sense of justice, moves him to a sharp intolerance, and poisons his understanding of those who oppose him. In his letter to the Romans he expresses all his love, but also all his scorn, toward his own people. He alternates between benediction and malediction. One moment he rejects Israel like a broken pot. The next moment he exalts Israel as a precious vessel that alone is worthy of containing the oil of anointment for Christ. For Israel’s sake Paul is prepared to make the highest sacrifice of himself. He would destroy not only his body, but his very portion in Christ if only Israel will accept it for herself.

“I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers in the flesh, who are Israelites. Theirs is the adoption and the glory and the giving of the law, and the service of God and the promises. Theirs are the fathers from whom Christ came according to the flesh.”

He couldn’t have said anything higher of his people. And though he has just deprived them of the inheritance, saying, “Not all that are of Israel are Israelites, not the children of the flesh are the children of God, but only the children of the promise,” he now cries, “Brothers, it is the wish of my heart, it is my prayer to the God of Israel, that they be helped.”

But there is something in the way.

“Israel, who followed after righteousness, did not attain righteousness, because he sought it not by faith but by the works of the law. . . . For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to all who believe.”

But, “Do I say, then, that God has cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not cast away His people who He knew from of old.”

And, “If their fall has meant the raising up and enrichment of the Gentiles, how much more should the world profit by their fulfillment? . . . Perhaps I will move those who are of my flesh to imitate me, and some of them may be saved. For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what will the receiving of them be but life from the dead? For it the root is holy, so will the branches be holy.”

And to the Gentiles he says, “Don’t gloat over the branches (the Jews). Remember, you don’t bear the root, the root bears you. If you say, ‘The branches are broken off, so that I might be grafted in.’ True, they have been broken off by unbelief. . . . but if they do not remain in unbelief they will be grafted in again. . . . For if you were cut off from a wild olive tree (heathendom), and were grafted into a good olive tree, contrary to your (pagan) nature, how much more will the natural branches be again grafted into the good olive tree (Christ)? This is no mystery, my brothers. Blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in.”

God purposely withheld Israel from acceptance of Christ until the Gentiles caught up with the Jews in God’s election!

“But Israel will be saved, as it is written, ‘There will come out of Zion the deliverer, and will take away the ungodliness from Jacob.’”

The apostle’s inner struggle is deep and bitter. It’s like he’s tearing at his own flesh, and the blood streams from him, not from his people. Faithfulness to the Gentiles, passion for Christ, and love of his own people are all at war in him, and the strongest of the three is his passion for Christ. In the last torment of his separation from Israel he cries out to the Gentiles, “According to the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes, but concerning the election, they are beloved for the father’s sake, for the gifts and appointments of God are without recall.”

“And though you are free from the law, you are under the law of righteousness.”

Paul is proclaiming a new law for the congregation of Christ, a law rooted and blossoming in the fields of Jacob. The law of the prophets grows where he has uprooted the Law of Moses. The law is boundless, for its source is love, which is in Christ. Its deeds are boundless, for the law is not judgment, but grace. It’s like the sun in heaven and the dew at night. Salvation has been given freely, through the grace of God.

In the spirit of Christ, and in harmony with what he had taught in the byways of Galilee and the narrow streets of Jerusalem, Paul the Jew addresses himself to the Romans, “Therefore, brothers, I beg you by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living, holy, acceptable sacrifice to God. . . . For as we have many members in one body, and all members do not have the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and are all members of one another. . . . Be kind to one another, with brotherly love, each honoring the other before himself. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. . . . meet the needs of the saints, and practice the virtue of hospitality. Bless those who persecute you and do not curse them. Do not repay evil with evil.”

And in the spirit of Christ, he said, “As far as it is within you, live at peace with all men. Take no revenge on anyone, and leave no room in yourself for anger. . . . If your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him a drink. In doing so you will heap coals of fire on his head. Do not let evil overcome you, but overcome evil with good.”

And he continues with words that he’d undoubtedly heard from his teacher Rabban Gamaliel, for they were of the essence of the tradition and school of Hillel, “It is briefly comprehended in this saying, Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Toward the end of the letter he advises them of his plans to go to Jerusalem and begs them to pray for him that he might be delivered from the unbelievers in Judea and be able to come visit them.

Then he adds certain commendations and greetings. “I commend to you our sister Phebe, a servant of the church at Cenchrea. . . . receive her in the lord and assist her in whatever business she asks of you. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my helpers in the work of Jesus Christ, who have laid down their necks for my life.”

* * * * *

Slaves were forbidden to send communications to each other, so generally, when a family of slaves was broken up on the slave market, its members lost track of each other. But the slaves who had entered the congregations of Christ were able to re-establish contact through the congregations. Members of the Christian community maintained a close relationship with each other, so whenever a believer moved or traveled from town to town, he would carry news and messages with him. Through this constant flow of information brothers and sisters, parents and children, long separated, were able to communicate with each other.

It was also a habit of Christian congregations to send letters of introduction when a believer was moving from one town to another. Phebe had a great desire to go to Rome, for she had children there. One was a slave, and the other had been set free by his master for his performances as a gladiator. So when Phebe asked Paul for a letter of introduction, he thought it would be a good idea to send the letter to the Romans with her. Phebe was an elderly woman, of heavy build, and thick stumpy feet. Paul took the roll of papyrus, wrapped it in a linen cover, and using his own girdle, he bound the cover to the woman’s body, and told her to not allow herself to be separated from the scroll either by day or by night.

The journey itself took many days. Phebe lay on many decks, and slept in dangerous places, but she never undid the girdle. She went from ship to ship, from port to port, until she reached Puteoli. From there she went on foot to Rome, and arriving in the great city, found the Synagogue of the Hebrews on the right bank of the Tiber. She met a Christian there who led her to Aquila and Priscilla’s house. Only then did she unroll the girdle from her body, and deliver the letter into the hands of the congregation.