Suppose that we could fully instruct twenty intelligent people concerning God and His purpose without letting them know of the Bible, and then ask each of them to write down his or her idea of how God would be likely to convey such information to men. What a diversity of ideas would be expressed! And we may be sure that none of them would be like the method that God has chosen. Such a fanciful thought may help us to realise the magnitude of the task that God faced in devising a message that would appeal, not merely to the diverse temperaments in one community, but to people of all kinds, in all countries, and in all ages. Is this the reason for the great variety in the Scriptures?
It comprises History and Prophecy, Poetry and Philosophy, Narrative, Biography and Letters—but nowhere a list of doctrines to be accepted or rejected. And yet no writing was ever so uncompromising in its claim to set forth a system of positive Truth, and its demand that this Truth must be accepted. The unique feature of the Message, and much of its power, lay in the fact that it was not wholly spoken or written, but “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory”. For us in later years the record of the living Word must needs be conveyed by the written message, but the Gospel narratives, so simple that a child can understand, still hold a transforming energy. When Church missionaries have gone into Darkest Africa and the Cannibal Islands, and persuaded savages to turn from their vile practices and live decent lives, the main influence, probably the only true element of their teaching, has been the pure story of the life of Jesus.
With the beginning of another year, most of us have a feeling of pleasure in reading once again how the purity and the love of God were revealed in the life of His Son. The Bible Companion makes full use of the variety of Scripture by interweaving the Gospels and the Epistles. From the simple narrative of Matthew we pass to Paul’s Epistle to the Roman Ecclesia, which has been called the profoundest book in the world. The “chosen vessel” was given a truly profound task, to formulate the philosophy of the Truth, to state the principles and the lessons which had been shown, as we might say, in pictorial form, in the work of Christ, and especially in his sacrificial death and his resurrection to life eternal.
Most of the devout Jews who joined the community of the disciples seem to have accepted Jesus as the last and greatest of the prophets of God in the sense that, even more than other prophets, he sought to clear away the “clutter” of tradition that had well nigh made void of the Word of God, and the hypocrisy which had displaced the sincere and humble spirit of worship. They saw that he led them back to the true spirit of the Torah, and this may have confirmed their ingrained belief that this was God’s unchangeable institution, and that it was through the practice of the law that men must attain to God’s promises to the Fathers. The new brotherhood was to them just another sect of Judaism. The idea that the law had run its course and that Jesus had ushered in a new dispensation was unthinkable; but that was the lesson that Paul had to teach them.
Gentile converts were subject to other influences. In the great commercial cities, like Corinth and Ephesus, where Paul preached certain cults had become popular, such as that of Zoroaster the Persian. Some of those who heard Paul saw in his teaching some resemblance to the ethical precepts of Zoroaster. The Persian philosopher, who lived in the times of the Jewish captivity in Babylon, probably had contact with some of the Hebrew sacred writings, especially the book of Isaiah. The influence of these writings may account for the fact that the teaching of Zoroaster was free from much of the grossness found in the pagan religions of Greece, Rome and other countries. The widespread knowledge of Isaiah’s writings is indicated by the belief of classical scholars that the great Latin poet Virgil, who lived in Italy in the first century B.C., was influenced by the beauty of the prophet’s language.
It was natural that converts from Zoroastrianism and other false systems should try to blend ideas from these teachings into the Christian gospel, or even to think of Paul’s message as a further development of their former beliefs. There were both Jews and Gentiles in the Rome Ecclesia, and Paul’s letter to them provides the corrective for the errors into which both classes were liable to fall. He shows that, while Christ brought in a new dispensation, he did not make a new beginning. He took away the Mosaic covenant to give full effect to the Abrahamic covenant which had preceded it. Paul utterly rejects also the idea that his teaching had developed from any human philosophy. He was able to say later on that his preaching contained none other things than those that were already on record in Moses and the prophets. His message was not a mere system of philosophy, some new thing to satisfy the searching human intellect; it was a way of salvation for repentant sinners. Jesus had said, “Follow me”. Paul shows how much more this involves than the following of an earthly leader.
One of the main themes in Romans is the necessity for personal faith in those who wish to find favour with God. It may seem strange to us that so obvious a truth should be emphasized. Most likely, however, it is our familiarity with Paul’s writings that makes us see it as an obvious truth. Such a faith was not demanded by the Pagan religions; and it is evident from the Gospel narratives that the religious leaders of the Jews had, in their obsession for the fine points of the law, quite lost sight of faith and the other “weightier matters”, for which Christ rebuked them in Matt. 23. 23.
God, in His providence, had fully prepared Paul for his work. By his upbringing he was well versed in both Gentile and Jewish learning, and, under inspiration in later years, he clearly saw the weaknesses of both. What a world of meaning he develops from the statement in Genesis, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness”. The prior need for faith as a foundation for acceptable works was clear even in the life of the revered founder of the Jewish race, but his descendants had forgotten it.
And then, beginning from the entrance of sin in Eden, he shows how the God’s plan of redemption in Christ. Even the reaction of the Jews in finding in him a stumbling-stone was foretold. He shows that the development of saving faith involves a transforming of the mind (Rom. 12. 2), a replacement of the “thinking of the flesh” by the “thinking of the Spirit”, or, as he expresses it in other epistles, the putting on of a new man.
For a real study of Paul’s reasoning in Romans, we have available a great help in Brother John Carter’s book on this epistle.
Meanwhile, with Paul’s example, we may be encouraged to look for deeper meanings involved in some of the apparently simple sayings of Christ in the Gospels. Our readings in Matthew, with the Sermon on the Mount and the parables figuring so prominently, provide ample scope.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One