Shortly after I became a Christian, in 1974, I was talking to our next-door neighbor and she asserted that Christianity was actually invented by the apostle Paul. She was very assured about this (as she was about pretty-much anything she said), and I really didn’t know enough at the time to argue with her (not that doing so would have helped anyway). And over the years since then I’ve occasionally heard this repeated by others.
Recently there was a post on First Things Journal criticizing the effects of the Sexual Revolution and one person commented “why are Christians so obsessed with sex?” I had to wonder whether the commentator had even read the article, since this was not in any way connected with the substance; but it reflects a common perception, that Christianity is about limiting our choice, keeping us from doing things we want to do. And I often hear Paul blamed for this concern about behavior. The idea is that people should be left to do what they want without all these unnecessary rules and limitations.
But Paul is saying something much different in these verses. Earlier in his life he had been a Pharisee, a strict observer of the Law, but that had all changed, not because of something he invented through his own ingenuity. In fact, he was violently opposed to Christianity and was committed to destroying it. He didn’t invent Christianity at all, and after his conversion he preached a message completely at odds with his former way of life. God called Paul in a surprising way, making changes Paul never could have imagined, and what he is saying in these verses is that God’s purpose in calling us to Himself is not to stifle our freedom but to enable us to become what we were intended to be from the beginning.
I want to call attention to three things in this passage. The first is that God has done something amazing in Paul’s life. He had been a strict Pharisee who hated Christianity and had even gotten authority to bring Christians forcibly to Jerusalem for punishment. But then Jesus had confronted him on the road to Damascus and completely turned his life around. So now, writing to the church in Rome, he describes himself as a servant, a slave, of Jesus Christ, one whose life is now given to the very thing he had opposed so strongly. He’s now become one of the people he was committed to destroying.
And he goes on to describe himself as an apostle who has been “set apart” for the gospel of God, a gospel that was promised beforehand by God. It’s not something new, as he had formerly assumed; and it’s not something that Paul invented but is rooted in the promises of God in Scripture. Jesus is “descended from David according to the flesh,” fulfilling God’s promises to David centuries before. The gospel Paul preaches is not something he came to after a process of reasoning, it’s something given by God and deeply rooted in His works in the past.
Before his conversion Paul was known as Saul, and when Jesus confronted him on the Damascus Road He said “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” Paul thought he was persecuting heretics and found that he was really fighting against the Lord of Creation. So he submitted and spent the rest of his life preaching the message he had tried to destroy. He came to the conclusion that he had been wrong about Christianity, that it was a message rooted in the Scriptures, in the promises of God.
The second thing to notice is how Paul describes the church in Rome. He says they are “loved by God and called to be saints.” He begins by emphasizing that they are loved by God. God loves them and wants the best for them; he calls them to be saints, or holy ones, people who are set apart and called by His name. I’ve sometimes heard preachers point out that what Paul says here is that they are “called saints,” since the words “to be” are not there in the original, making the point that all Christians are saints, in opposition to the Catholic Church labeling certain people in history as saints. But this passage really doesn’t support what they are trying to say. We are all, indeed, called saints, and God’s call is for us to increasingly live in a way consistent with that name, to live as people who have been set apart for God. The people who are called saints in the Catholic Church are just people who lived out that calling in an exemplary way.
But this calling is rooted in God’s love for them, not His desire to control their lives or stifle their freedom. The truth is that doing whatever we want leads us into bondage in the end. We can see abundant evidence of this in the world around us. God’s love motivates Him to seek what is best for us, and He, the One who made us, knows how we function best. I’ve often heard about Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI that if he hadn’t spent his life in church leadership he would have been a world-class theologian on the level of someone like Karl Barth. As it was, he wrote many wonderful books, but he also immersed himself in the life of the Church, which consumed much of his time. And throughout his life he sought to walk with Jesus and to Honor Him. I read, around the time of his death, that some of his last words were “Jesus, I love you.” God knew what was best for Joseph Ratzinger, and it wasn’t the quiet, scholarly life he might have chosen for himself but a life spent giving himself for the good of the Church.
The third thing here is that God has done this all through Jesus Christ, who was descended from David according to the flesh, but then was “declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.” The resurrection is a powerful declaration of Jesus’ divine nature, that He is both fully human and fully divine. This is the One who confronted Saul the angry Pharisee and turned him into Paul the apostle. Jesus is named four times in these verses: Paul identifies himself as a “servant of Christ Jesus;” after giving Jesus’ history he names Him “Jesus Christ our Lord;” says the people in Rome are “called to belong to Jesus Christ;” and also names Him, together with God the Father, as the One who gives grace and peace. Our calling is to “belong to Jesus Christ,” to be saints, people lovingly set apart by God to live our lives in His name, growing in “the obedience of faith,” an obedience rooted in faith.
As we give our lives to God, seeking to live in obedience to Him, we increasingly become the people we were created to be. And this brings glory and honor to God. May He enable us to offer ourselves to Him daily and repeatedly throughout our lives, to grow in His image and increasingly become the saints we are called to be. And may He enable us to grow in love for our Lord so that we may arrive at the end of our lives, as Joseph Ratzinger did, praying “Jesus, I love you,” waiting to be welcomed into His presence.
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