Above you can find a 6-minute AI-generated podcast based on my essay about Romans 8, faith, and assurance for the early Christians.
In sum … Paul’s thought is elegantly captured by N.T. Wright: “Those who follow their Messiah into the valley of the shadow of death will find that they need fear no evil. Though they sometimes seem sheep for the slaughter, yet they may trust the Shepherd, whose love will follow them all the days of their life.”
We need to appreciate how Paul’s words in Romans 8 would be a consoling message for the Gentile-majority house churches in Rome, meeting in tenements and shops, some of whom had associations with Jewish communities and may have continued to observe some Jewish rites and customs. These Gentile Christ-believers consisted mostly of slaves and freedman, laborers and artisans, living on or beneath the poverty line, where death filled the streets, poverty was only one illness away, a dense urban life that was cut-throat, and full of rivalries. These believers very probably faced opposition on several fronts, perhaps chastised by family for neglecting the household lares, ejected from professional guilds for failing to honor the emperor, neighbors gossiping that they had drifted into Jewish ways, or had been ostracized by former Jewish friends for association with a rogue messianic cult.
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Paul writes to Gentile Christ-believers in a world where no-one was ever certain of divine favor, where good fortune was desperately pursued but never guaranteed, and Paul assures them of divine favor. God is for them, Christ died for them, and the Spirit intercedes for them. Paul assures them of divine patronage, and more than that, declares that they are part of God’s holy people, and they can take solace in God’s love for them as they welcome each other in the Messiah’s name.
Paul discourses on assurance but not without some conditions or agency. The Christ-believers are instructed to not allow sin to reign over their bodies, to obey its desires (6:12-14), they are told to fulfill the law (8:4) by walking in the Spirit and giving no quarter to the flesh (8:12-14), and by loving their neighbor (13:8-10). Paul himself can make grave warnings about the dangers of falling away (Rom 11:21-22) and he can warn of dire consequences if the Christ-believers in Rome yield to the desires of the flesh (Rom 8:13).
Yet Paul brings together both divine promises of deliverance with exhortations towards faithful perseverance. Paul knows that salvation, eschatological salvation, is certainly conditional. However, Paul always anchors salvation not in human action as the decisive condition, but rather, in God’s constant faithfulness, scandalous mercy, and enduring love.
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