Third Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7) and Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19 | Exodus 19:2-8a and Psalm 100 | Romans 5:1-8 | Matthew 9:35-10:8, (9-23)
In a fascinating commentary on Romans, Sigve Tonstadt adopts some of the unique, apocalyptic interpretation of Douglas Campbell while focusing on some of the intertextual themes Paul seems to invoke.1 In the commentary, Tonstadt argues that Paul’s citation of Habakkuk 2:4 in Romans 1:17 helps us understand what Paul’s intention might be.
The quotation, “…but the righteous live by their faithfulness,” comes from God’s response to Habakkuk’s complaint – a complaint that the nations are making a mockery of God’s people, and the God’s people feel as though they have been abandoned and villainized by God. God’s response is a call to faithfulness in the face of injustice and oppression – the “righteous” – or the “just” – live by faithfulness.
But Paul makes a typical Pauline move; he tweaks the text from Habakkuk a bit, making it singular: “The one who is righteous will live by faith.” While I cannot claim interpretive priority over all others, it seems to me that this is a deliberate shift in Paul’s use of Habakkuk’s verse. Moreover, the shift to singular would suggest that the “one” who is righteous is not any “one” of us. Rather, it is Jesus, the Righteous One, whom God has put forth as a demonstration of God’s own faithfulness and kindness to deliver those who might feel as though they are enemies of God.
Why is this relevant to the present passage from Romans 5? Because Paul speaks from the far side of something that has already been accomplished. Notice the language Paul uses: “Therefore, since we have been justified…we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand (already)…God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” If there is perfection in the Christian life, it is the perfect tense in which Christ has accomplished in faithfulness that which we could not on our own merit or effort.
Paul is making a case for God’s love in the face of the misperception that God might be our antagonist. He uses “proof” language in chapter 3:25-27, when he says that God “put forward” Christ Jesus as a “sacrifice of atonement” for the purpose of “demonstrating” God’s righteousness. This is not to say that God is demonstrating justification for God’s actions for or against us. Rather, it is a demonstration of the kind of “righteousness” characteristic of God; it is a revelation of God’s righteousness (or “justice”), which is dramatically different from our own forms of justice.
In chapter 5, then, we return to the same “proof” language: “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” God is not in the business of retribution, pouring out wrath on sinners and the ungodly. When faced with sinful humanity, a humanity that perceives itself as enemies of God, the revealed disposition of God toward humanity is unequivocally and demonstrably loving and sacrificial.
Contrary to the popular “Romans Road” approach to this text, Paul is not offering a program whereby we can be “saved.” Rather, Paul is describing the means by which humanity has already been delivered from imprisonment to sin in the loving self-donation of God. The Spirit has been poured out, we have peace with God, we have obtained access to the grace in which we now stand. The work has been done unilaterally from God’s side of the table, and we are the dumbfounded beneficiaries of a gift infinitely beyond our creaturely grasp.
The Gospel is not a self-help program; the Gospel is the Good News that God has already accomplished what we cannot. God is not giving a hand-up instead of a hand-out; liberation from sin and death is a free gift to all who were once “in Adam.” There is no exchange or transaction; the Gift has been given.
Paul is describing the revelation of divine love that makes all things new. God is not our antagonist. God is our loving parent who has been revealed as our deliverer once again. This is reality despite every corrupted perception we might have. The church’s mission, then, is to live from this reality, seeing all of creation made new in the light of this revelation of the Gospel. God’s judgment on creation is that it is worth God’s own self-donation for the sake of communion with God.
We lose sight of the Gospel when we see our fidelity as anything other than a grateful response to the free gift of God in Christ. We lose sight of the Gospel when we imagine our lives to be caught in a transaction for our salvation. We lose sight of the Gospel when we fear God’s judgment to be anything other than the love that has already been revealed in Christ.
The church is neither the vendor of grace nor the arbiter of salvation. Rather, the church is gathered by the Spirit to bear witness to the reality of God’s profligate love for God’s creation. Christ has pioneered the liberated life through his faithfulness, and despite our imperfections, the perfect love of God dispels every fear we might carry as we follow the way Christ has shown. And when we see clearly in the light of the revelation of divine love, we will see that the way of Christ’s faithfulness is not our road to God. Rather, it is the way God has already made to us.