Friday, February 4
Romans 1.1-17: Paul introduces his theme: faith. At its deepest level faith is an act—and then a habit—through which the soul is joined to Christ. Perhaps my point will clearer if I employ the Greek word for soul, psyche. Recourse to this Greek noun prompts us to think of faith in psychological terms. Faith has to do with psychology. Faith is a psychological act and becomes a psychological habit. Faith is that through which I am joined to Christ by way of a transformed psychology.
There is a psychological difference in person who adheres to Christ in faith. Anscar Vonier calls faith a “psychic link” between Christ and the believing soul.
My soul, my psyche, is shaped, is altered by its relationship to Christ in trust, obedience, and gratitude, for these are essential components of faith.
Faith, then, is my foundational relationship to the person of Christ, and in giving Him my trust and obedience I trust and obey God. As my faith grows by serving as the basis of my decisions and choices in life, my soul is altered by faith.
The union of my soul with Christ changes my perspectives and alters my dispositions. I will begin to see things as Christ sees them, because of my communion with Christ’s human soul.
My soul will change by the sustained cultivation of faith, because who Christ is will begin to enter the soul’s activity. This is what it means to be saved through faith.
This does not mean that faith is a merely subjective state. On the contrary, faith constitutes a relational state, by which I am joined to Christ. The transforming force of faith comes the soul’s relationship to the soul to the soul of Christ.
Faith is a relationship of transforming grace. It is a not a merely juridical or declarative reality. It is a psychological reality, because it is an act and habit by which the soul permits itself to be seized and grasped by Christ.
Saturday, February 5
Matthew 10:34-42: The New Testament provides a number of stories in which entire households accepted the Gospel, which then became the basis of a whole new way of family life. These verses of Matthew, however, affirm that such is not always the case. The Gospel proclamation can divide as well as unite, and family unity has sometimes been destroyed by the Gospel’s acceptance by some family members and its rejection by others. This is a matter of history experience.
Consequently there is the principle announced in verse 37 about the priorities of love. This “he who” sentence becomes the first of a series of ten such sentences that close out the chapter on the more positive note of those who actually accept the Gospel. In this series of short sayings we particularly observe the emphasis on the first-person pronoun, “Me” or “My,” with reference to Jesus. It appears seven times.
The “little ones” in verses 40-42 are to be identified, not only as little children, but also as other Christians, those “babies” to whom the Father reveals His Son (11:25), and who welcome Christ into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday (21:16). It will be the thesis of the last part of Chapter 25 that the charity shown to these “least of My brethren” is actually shown to Christ. Here in Chapter 10 the context of this reference suggests that the “little ones” (mikroi) are especially to be identified as those who proclaim the Gospel.
Romans 1.18-32: In order to assess the “power” (dynamisI) of the Gospel, Paul now describes the human state without the Gospel. Neither Judaism nor classical paganism, the Apostle argues, whatever their other accomplishments, have been able to attain or preserve moral integrity. If the Jew, enlightened by God’s Law, has been unable to do this (as Paul will argue in chapter 2), much less could the Greek or Roman.
Paul begins with these pagans, providing a stunning description of the depravity of his age. This description is colored by Paul’s perception as a Jew (indeed, we note his interjection of a standard Jewish doxology in verse 25), because his comments coincide with the assessment that other Jews of antiquity rendered with respect to paganism. In these lines of the epistle, we hear the voice of the Maccabees two and a half centuries earlier. Paul, like most Jews of his time, regarded the pagan world as “abandoned,” “handed over,” “forsaken” by God (verses 24,26,28).
The moral depravity of the age was a revelation (apokalyptetai) of the divine wrath against idolatry (verse 18; Isaiah 30:27-33). Following the argument in the Book of Wisdom (Wisdom of Solomon) 13:1-9, Paul insists that “something” about God is knowable in the works of Creation (verses 19-20). Indeed, this something is not only knowable, it is also “known” (to gnostonI), so that man is inexcusable in not recognizing it.
Sunday, February 6
Matthew 11.1-6: This first verse brings Jesus’ second discourse to a close (Compare 7:28). Presumably the apostles now go out to do the ministry for which Jesus was preparing them in Chapter 10 (cf. 10:1). While they are gone, Matthew introduces a “John the Baptist interlude,” a literary construction (paralleled in the structure of Mark 6:7-30) to indicate the passage of time while the apostles are gone.
Romans 2.1-16: Having described the moral failings of paganism, Paul now turns to the Jews. Woe to them if they pass judgment (verse 1), because they too have failed to measure up. Jew and Greek stand before God on level ground, in fact (verses 9-10). The Jew’s possession of the Torah, in which God reveals His moral will, is no guarantee that the Jew is superior to the Greek (verses 12-16).
Here Paul twice addresses the Jew as “man,” anthropos (verses 1,3), indicating that he too is of the common clay, an heir of Adam, that first and fallen anthropos. Jewish blood is no guarantee of moral superiority over other men (cf. Matthew 3:8; John 8:39; Galatians 2:15). The Jew too, says Paul, is called to repentance, metanoia (verse 4; Wisdom 11:23), because his own heart is just as “impenitent” (verse 5).
In this epistle, the theme of which is justification through faith, the Apostle insists that the Lord “will render to each man according to his deeds” (literally “works,” erga—verse 6; Psalms 62 [61]:13; Proverbs 24:12), and he goes on to speak of “the patience of good work” (verse 7). Even this early in the epistle, then, Paul closes the door to any antinomian interpretation of it.
Those who do good works are said to be seeking (zetousin) “glory and honor and incorruptibility” (verse 7). This incorruptibility, aphtharsia, is to be contrasted with the corruption of death, introduced into the world by sin (5:12).
To those who are seeking salvation Paul contrasts those who are only seeking themselves, searching for some kind of self-fulfillment (eritheia) outside of God’s will (verse 8).
In verse 10 Paul returns to the importance of good works (literally “working the good”—ergazomenos to agathon). Salvation through faith is not for the lazy. Grace is free, but it is not cheap.
In chapter one Paul had spoken about the revelation of God’s existence through nature. Now he writes of the revelation of God’s moral law through nature (verses 14-15). His juxtaposition of Natural Law with the Mosaic Law does not mean that every particular of the latter can be discerned in the former; he means simply that the Natural Law can be known by man’s conscience and that those who have only the Natural Law will be judged according to that law, just as the Jew will be judged according to the Mosaic Law.
Monday, February 7
Matthew 11.7-19: There are two things particularly to observe in this story of John the Baptist. First, Matthew clearly relies on his readers’ familiarity with the entire career of John the Baptist. Although he refers here to John’s imprisonment, the circumstances of that imprisonment are not narrated until Chapter 14.
Second, the signs of the Messiah, listed here by Jesus in 11:5f, are not at all similar to those earlier enunciated by John the Baptist himself in 3:10-12. This dissimilarity may have been the cause of John’s evident misgivings, as he languished in his prison cell.
Romans 2.17-29: Paul continues talking to the imaginary “man” that he earlier addressed (verses 1,3). This man calls himself a Jew (verse 17). This man, whom he had earlier reprimanded for judging others, Paul now taunts with a series of claims that were commonly made by the Jews: knowledge of the true God and His will, confidence in the Law, a superior moral insight, and the consequent right to provide guidance to the rest of the world (verses 18-20).
Paul does not deny the validity of any of these claims, but they do raise in his mind a series of concomitant questions that he now puts to the Jew (verses 21-23). The latter’s behavior, after all, leaves a lot to be desired. Indeed, the bad conduct of the Jew, as Isaiah had long ago remarked, has brought reproach of the God of the Jews (verse 24; Isaiah 52:5 in LXX). Their defining sign, circumcision, has been rendered morally meaningless by their insouciance to the rest of the Torah (verse 25).
Now, asks Paul, how is the circumcised Jew who disobeys the Law of Moses morally superior to the uncircumcised Gentile who observes the Natural Law written in his heart (verses 26-27)?
Throughout this diatribe the Apostle is continuing the very argument that the Old Testament prophets had directed to the Chosen People ever since Amos and Isaiah eight hundred years before—namely, that a strict adherence to the prescribed rituals is no adequate substitute for the moral renewal of the heart and a blameless life pleasing to God. Far from rejecting the Old Testament here, Paul is appealing to one of its clearest themes (Deuteronomy 10:16; 30:6; Micah 6:6-8; Jeremiah 4:4; 9:24-25; Ezekiel 44:9).
The true circumcision is internal. This is the “secret” (krypton) that the Lord sees (verse 16). It is the heart that must be circumcised (verses 29-30; Acts 7:51). The true moral renewal of man, then, is not the fruit of a greater and more intense moral effort. It comes from the presence of the Holy Spirit in the circumcised heart.
Tuesday, February 8
Matthew 11.20-24: The people’s fickle resistance that John experienced 11:17) ass a sign of their lack of interest in true conversion. This becomes the theme of the following verses. In Chapter 8-9 Jesus was meeting the resistance of elite enemies, the spiritual leaders of the nation. Here in Chapters 11-12, however, we see resistance to the Gospel on the part of large numbers.
Just as the opposition to John the Baptist was total and unreasoning, so is the stand against Jesus. This opposition of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum will lead to the plot against Jesus’ life in 12:14 and the subsequent tensions of that chapter. These verses also introduce the image of the final judgment, which will be the theme of Jesus’ final discourse, Chapters 23-25.
The warning invoked against Capernaum here is taken from the cursing of Babylon in Isaiah 14:13-15; in the Book of Revelation Babylon will become, of course, the city symbolic of final unrepentance and eternal loss.
Romans 3.1-8: Paul’s quotation from Psalm 51 (50):6 in verse 4 is based on the Septuagint, not the Hebrew text, and its entire context, which is one of repentance, is worth considering here. David himself, to whom this psalm is attributed, had been unfaithful to God through the sins of adultery and murder, but his own unfaithfulness did not eliminate the faithfulness of God. Indeed, with an oath God swore that He would never be false to David (Psalms 89 [88]:35). This divine “oracle” bears witness to the very point that Paul is making—the fidelity of God to His pledged word.
On the other hand, when God manifests His wrath (orge, a word that appears in Romans twelve time, more often than in any other book of the New Testament), He can hardly be called evil for doing so (verse 5). In other words, God’s use of man’s sin as an occasion of manifesting the divine mercy cannot be thrown back at God as an excuse for continuing to sin.
It is most instructive to observe that even during Paul’s own lifetime, some Christians have already accused Paul of saying just that. In this text we learn that the Apostle’s earlier statements about justification by grace through faith (especially in Galatians, it would seem) were already being misinterpreted. His affirmation of the freedom of Christians from the precepts of the Mosaic Law were already being interpreted as a declaration of freedom from all law, all moral responsibility, all personal effort. Paul here bears witness to this distortion of his teaching by those who claimed him as their authority.
It was arguably to refute this misinterpretation of Paul that James insisted that “a man is justified by works, not by faith only,” and that “faith without works is dead” (James 1:22,26).
Wednesday, February 9
Matthew 11:25-30: In contrast to those in verses 20-24, who resist the Lord and reject the Gospel, are the “babies” to whom the Father reveals His Son, and the Son His Father. Because of its similarity to the Gospel and Epistles of St. John in the very terms of its expression, this text from Matthew is often referred to as the locus johanneus.
This custom is perhaps unfortunate, for it conveys the impression that these verses in Matthew would fit the Fourth Gospel better than they fit Matthew. In fact, however, these verses may be taken as the very key to the proper understanding of Matthew as a whole. They are the explanation of the Father’s voice in 3:17 and 17:5. God has hidden such revelation from the “wise and prudent,” such as the citizens of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum. Matthew’s use of these expressions, babies and little ones, to describe Christians, accentuates his teaching on the humility necessary to receive the divine revelation of the Father. Hence the invitation to learn of Jesus, for He is meek and humble of heart, modeling the meekness of those who will inherit the earth (5:5). This meekness of the Lord will later be noted when He rides into Jerusalem seated upon an ass (21:5).
Romans 3.9-30: After the diatribe that begins this chapter (verses 3-8), Paul returns to the theme introduced in chapter two, the alleged moral advantage of the Jew over the Gentile. Even though God’s fidelity to the Jews, in spite of their infidelities to Him, does ironically manifest the privileged position of the Jews in salvation history, from a moral perspective this fact hardly warrants any boasting on the part of the Jews. Indeed, it shows them up rather badly. In short, Paul is arguing, “we have previously charged both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin” (verse 9).
This is, in truth, man’s concrete position under God—he is “under sin” (hyph’ hamartian). Such is Paul’s repeated contention in Romans (verse 23; 5:5:12). Let us note he uses the word “sin” here for the first time in this epistle.
In support of his thesis about man’s subjection to sin, Paul quotes (along with other sources) the Book of Psalms 14 (13):1-3; 53 (52):1-3. These two psalms both begin with the fool’s assertion that “there is no God.” In citing these psalms, therefore, Paul is once again taking up, from chapter one, the denial of God by the “fools” (1:22), whose “foolish hearts were darkened” (1:21). The “fools” in these psalms, Paul is suggesting, are not simply Gentiles, because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (verse 23).
The totality, the completeness, of man’s sinful condition is indicated here by Paul’s scriptural references to the various body parts that contribute to the sin: throat, tongue, lips, mouth, feet, eyes (verses 13-5). Man is, in short, completely sinful, sinful in all his parts.
What “man” in this context? Well, the Old Testament passages cited by Paul seem to refer to the Jews, after all (verse 19), so the Jew can claim no moral superiority over the Gentile. In verses 19-20 the totality of man’s sinful state is accented by the triple use of the word “all” or “every” (pas).
In short, man is not justified before God by the works of the Law, because “by the Law is the knowledge of sin” (verse 20). This expression, “works of the Law,” does not refer to good works generally; it refers, rather, to those commandments (including, ironically, a certain abstention from “work” on the Sabbath) laid down in the Law of Moses. Paul is not contrasting faith with works; he is contrasting the Gospel with the Law of Moses. The latter, he says, does not justify man; it gives man, rather, the knowledge or consciousness (epignosis) of sin.
Thursday, February 10
Matthew 12:1-8: Matthew now picks up again the Markan sequence that he had broken off back in 9:17. He does this with two stories that he has taken from the series of five conflict stories in the second and third chapters of Mark: the stories of the standing grain and of the man with the withered hand.
These two narratives, both of which concern the observance of the Sabbath, appropriately follow the previous sayings about “rest” and the “yoke.” Matthew’s version of the first of these stories is longer than Mark’s, augmented by the reference to the priests who serve in the Temple on the Sabbath. The Lord’s reasoning here is as follows: If the servants of the Temple may work on the Sabbath, how much more the servants of the One who is greater than the Temple. The argument here is similar to that in 5:17-48; namely, Jesus’ superiority to the Mosaic Law.
Romans 3.21-31: The tone of this epistle has been negative hitherto, emphasizing man’s weakness and fallen state, “but now” (verse 21) Paul introduces the Christian hope, rooted in God’s righteousness and fidelity manifested in Jesus Christ. The “now” here is chronological and not just rhetorical, because a new era has dawned in Christ, foretold by the Law and the Prophets.
This reference to the present tense has been called the “eschatological now” (also in verse 26; 5:9,11; 6:22; 7:6; 8:1,18; 11:5,30,31; 13:11; 16:26), the era of the Gospel, which replaces the dispensation of the Law.
These verses, then, express the very essence of the Gospel, salvation through faith in the God who redeems us in Christ. The “righteousness of God,” which we just saw in Psalms 143 (142), is not a quality of condemnation, of outraged divine justice, but the source, rather, of divine deliverance from sin and corruption. Paul speaks of this four times in these few verses.
The pistis Iesou Christou (verses 22,26; Galatians 2:16,20) is literally the “faith of Jesus Christ.” It is not simply an objective genitive, “faith in Jesus.” This expression means, rather, “faith in all matters that concern Jesus Christ,” faith in the entire dispensation of grace through Jesus Christ, including the faith that Jesus modeled for us in the course of accomplishing our redemption (cf. Hebrews 12:2). In context it is perhaps better translated as, “the faithfulness of Jesus Christ.”
Just as there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile in sin, so there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile in Christ. After all, we all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (verse 23). This divine glory (doxsa) of which we fall short (that is, “miss out on”—hysterountai), is conveyed to us as we grow in grace (2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:6).
Although Paul uses the legal language of the Old Testament, it is inaccurate to interpret “freely justified by His grace” only in the sense of an outward, judicial, forensic pronouncement on God’s part. Such a view would render divine grace just as external to man’s heart as was the Law. This theory of a merely external righteousness effectively separates repentance from holiness, as though God would declare a man righteous without actually making him righteous, pronounce him to be just without causing him to be a “saint,” and convert him but without giving him a new heart. God’s righteous act, His deed of justification, does not remain external to the one whom He justifies. It alters him from within.
Friday, February 11
Mathew 12.9-14: This story continues the theme of the Lord’s relationship to the Sabbath. Rabbinical theory permitted acts of healing on the Sabbath only in danger of death; otherwise such actions had to be postponed. In this text, and generally throughout the gospels, Jesus ignores this distinction. In the present instance His enemies are completely frustrated, because Jesus does not do anything with which they can accuse Him. He does not touch the afflicted man; He does not speak one word that could be interpreted as an act of healing. He simply tells the man to extend his impaired hand, and immediately the hand is healed! In their frustration the Lord’s enemies take the action to which most of the narrative has been building up to this point — they resolve that Jesus must die. That is to say, they resolve to do what Herod had failed to do in the second chapter of Matthew.
Romans 4.1-12: In the present chapter the apostle illustrates and demonstrates that the principle of justification through faith lies at the heart of the Old Testament. He goes to this Gospel principle as illustrated in the lives of Abraham and David.
In the case of David, who had violated at least two articles of the Decalogue, justification came from the forgiveness of his sins. David had not observed the Law, but God had forgiven his lawless deeds and not imputed his sins unto him (verses 7-8).
In this non-imputation of sin, the verb employed is logizesthai, which Paul uses with respect to both David and Abraham. Such imputation is not some sort of legal fiction. This verb, in its normal and literal meaning, comes from the practice of accounting, bookkeeping, and the maintenance of ledgers. In the Greek Bible it is used metaphorically in the sense of a recorded account of man’s moral conduct, as though God and the angels were “keeping tabs” on him (Deuteronomy 24:13; Psalms 106 [105]:31; Daniel 7:10; Revelation 20:12). This figurative use of the verb in a theological sense seems to be an extension of its figurative use in a legal and forensic sense, such as in court records and similar official archives (cf. Esther 6:1-3).
Thus, when David writes that a forgiven man’s sins are not “imputed” to him, the meaning is that those sins are no longer kept on the ledger, so to speak. They have been erased or “whited over.” Our sins are removed from the divine calculation, as it were. Our sins are “covered” (verse 7), not in the sense that they still remain in the soul, but in the sense that God has put them out of His mind. They are over and done with. He remembers them no more. The blood of the Lamb has washed them away, and a man never again needs to remember things that God has forgotten.
In addition to David, Paul writes of Abraham, “our forefather according to the flesh,” which means “our biological ancestor” (verse 1; Matthew 3:9; Luke 3:8). Abraham lived in a period long before the Sinai Covenant and the Mosaic Law. Yet, he was justified in God’s sight, not by his observance of the Law, but through his faith in God’s word, a faith manifest in his obedience to God’s call (verses 2-5).
When the Sacred Text asserts that Abraham’s faith was “accounted [elogisthe] to him for righteousness” (verse 3), it means that God was never in Abraham’s debt. God did not owe Abraham anything. The initiative of salvation in the story of Abraham was entirely God’s. God sought out Abraham, not the other way around. Abraham’s task was to believe, to trust, to obey. In faith he left his justification in God’s hands.