Romans 5-8

 We’re covering Romans 5-8 this week.

This is the densest, most complicated part of the letter,  I think.

The Good Shepherd
From the catacombs of Pricilla
2nd Century

The most theological explanations from Paul,

who is already pretty long-winded.

It made my head spin at times.

Remember they read this aloud, so really I don’t know how they followed all this.

But I guess they didn’t have news 

papers or the internet or

Candy Crush saga to compete for their attention.

Last week we talked about Paul's letter to the Romans and the conflict between two groups within

the church in Rome: Jewish believers who had been exiled and later returned,

and Gentile believers who had remained and become the dominant group in the church.

 

Paul's message was that neither side could claim superiority.

Both had fallen short of the glory of God, and both had been justified by faith.

 

We also talked about how Romans has now been treated as a detached, theological treatise

and “justified” has only been about how individuals get into heaven.

While those themes are there,

Paul was writing to a specific group of people in a specific historical situation.

He was addressing a divided church and calling them into a new kind of community.

 

In this letter, justification was talking about belonging to a new family.

 

He was describing a new family created by God—

a family not based on birthright, ethnicity, social status, 

or heritage, but on faithfulness to Jesus.

 

To understand what Paul is saying, we have to remember

the world in which this letter was written.

 

One of the contexts is the conflict within the Roman church itself.

But another context that we cannot ignore is the Roman Empire.                                                      

 

The Roman Empire stands in the background of nearly 

everything written in the New Testament.

 

Rome was the center of an empire that stretched across much of the known world.                 

 

By Paul's day it controlled territories that included modern-day Spain, France, Greece, North Africa, and the land of Israel. Jerusalem itself was an occupied city.

 

The empire expanded through military conquest, economic exploitation, and propaganda.

 

Rome did not simply win battles.

 

It created an entire worldview that justified its power and convinced people that its rule was both natural and divinely ordained.

The city of Rome was a democracy before 27 BC before the first emperor.

But after that, the Empire of Rome was not a democracy.

It was an aristocracy.

 

A very small elite—perhaps only two or three percent of the population—

controlled most of the wealth, land, and political power.

They shaped the experience of everyone else in the empire.

There was no large middle class.

Life was very good for the elite and very difficult for most everyone else.

 

Rome was also an agrarian empire. Wealth came primarily from land ownership.

The elite controlled vast amounts of land and consumed the majority of what it produced.

Their wealth depended on cheap labor supplied by tenant farmers, laborers, and slaves.

 

The ruling class lived in luxury while most people lived with varying degrees of poverty. 

For the overwhelming majority of people, life was uncertain.                                               

Food shortages were common. Disease spread easily.

Cities were crowded and unsanitary.

There were ethnic tensions, economic hardships, 

and very little opportunity for social advancement.

 

And this description is of free people.

 

Slavery was widespread throughout the empire.

Most slaves had been taken from conquered countries.

They sometimes had their basic needs met, but they had almost no autonomy.

Physical abuse, sexual exploitation, and forced labor were accepted parts of the system.

Sexual abuse of women, and young girls and boys was common practice,

and the children that pregnancies produced,

could be sold as property once they were at a useful age.

 

The Roman system was built on domination.                                                                                         

And Rome maintained that domination through violence.

 

When Rome conquered a territory, it plundered resources,

enslaved populations, and imposed treaties favorable to itself.

If there was later resistance—or even the perception of resistance—

Rome could respond with overwhelming force.

Entire cities could be leveled and genocide was a warning to others.

 

The Roman historian Polybius, after witnessing one such scene,

wrote that these actions seemed designed "for the sake of terror."

Rome wanted people to be afraid.

 

Crucifixion was one of the empire's tools of public terror.

It was not merely a method of execution.

It was a public display intended to remind everyone

what happened to those who challenged Rome's authority.

 

But military force alone was not enough to maintain an empire.

Rome also ruled through propaganda: stories, symbols, and religion.                                                            

A lot of Christians now think that the Roman Empire’s problem was that it was polytheistic.

That it worshipped multiple gods. Well, most of the world was polytheistic at the time.

It was how they used polytheism that was the problem.

The emperors claimed the favor of the gods.             

Roman theology taught that Rome had been chosen to rule

the world and that its empire existed by divine will.

The emperor was celebrated as the recipient of divine blessing.

They circulated stories about signs, visions, and supernatural events

that supposedly confirmed the gods' approval of particular rulers.

Throughout the empire, temples, festivals, processions, statues,

and public ceremonies honored emperors and their families.

This network of religious devotion is called the Imperial Cult.

 

All this was to reinforce the message that Rome's power was sacred

and couldn’t and shouldn’t be challenged or taken away. 

It was Roman Nationalism. Religious nationalism was as dangerous then as it is now.

 

To give you and example of how this worked

and how they used the religion at hand to support the power:

This is a complicated, salacious  story, but I’ll give you the very short version:

Claudius, who was the emperor who had exiled the Jews from Rome,

was married to Agrippina, Nero was her child from a previous marriage,

and after they got married, she pushed Claudius to adopt Nero.

Then it’s assumed that she killed Claudius with poison mushrooms.

Nero becomes emperor, but he doesn’t have direct bloodline to the throne

and he was only 13 and obviously inexperienced,

so there’s some scuttle around the empire about him becoming emperor.

 

So the propaganda machine deified Claudius posthumously and linked him to Nero,    

in order to cement Nero’s position as the rightful, divine heir and to solidify his rule.

They made these coins with Claudius and Nero’s images on them to do that.

Then, after Nero’s reign was solidified, they satirized Claudius, to show

how much better Nero was than Claudius.      

Later it’s assumed that Nero would have his mother murdered but that’s another story.

It’s hard to even decipher history because it was written through

this propaganda which was made to keep the power centralized.

 

In some ways, Roman philosophy reflected what                                                                

we might currently call a prosperity gospel.

Success, wealth, and power were seen as evidence of divine favor.

Victory was actually a goddess that was worshipped.

Domination itself became a virtue.

 

The ability to control others, accumulate wealth, and exercise power                                      

was not something to hide—it was something to celebrate.

The elite viewed manual labor with contempt.

Wealth was displayed publicly and extravagantly.

Conspicuous consumption was admired.

Roman writers often expressed a sense of superiority toward conquered people,

viewing them as savages and saying that they were obviously  “born for slavery”

One scholar describes this attitude as "an arrogance born of luxury."

 

And these values did not remain confined to the ruling class.

They filtered down into society as a whole.

People internalized the contempt that the elites had for them.

People learned to compete with one another for status and security.

Suspicion, rivalry, and hierarchy became normal ways of relating.

Even among the oppressed, there was often a struggle 

for whatever small amount of power could be gained.

Imagine Jesus message and way of life coming into everyone's lives with this background.

 

This context of the Roman Empire also helps us understand some of the language                              

Paul uses throughout Romans  and the other writings of the New Testament.

 

The Imperial Cult claimed titles for the Emperor such as "Lord," "Savior," and "Son of God."

The reciprocal responsibility between the conqueror and the conquered was “faithfulness”

the Empire’s victory was “justice”,

Announcements of imperial victories were proclaimed as “evangelism” or "good news”

The peace established through Roman military

domination was called the Pax Romana, the “Peace of Rome.”

The emperor was praised as the one who brought that peace through his “grace”

 

So when Paul writes to believers living in the heart of that empire,

we should hear his words differently.

 

Here’s Romans 5:1-2

 

5 Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith,                                

we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ² through whom we have also obtained access into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory. 

 

Paul is using the propaganda words of the Roman Empire  

and is redirecting it to Jesus.

They have been declared righteous by faith, not by the emperor’s favor.

They have peace with God, not the peace of Rome.

They have peace through Jesus, not the emperor.

Jesus has given access into this grace, not the emperor.

 

Paul is taking the familiar words of the Empire, making them about Jesus.

And at the same time, it’s kind of a slap in the face of the Empire.

But not blatantly, because that could be dangerous for the churches in Rome.

 

Paul was announcing an entirely different kingdom,

where power is redefined.

 

The New Testament writers are doing this constantly .

 

One digression here:                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

The New Testament writers use the propaganda phrases of the Roman Empire to talk about Jesus.

Then those phrases become the phrases of the Christian Church

which originally are meant to be contrary to the Empire.

Then, when the Emperor Constantine and the whole Roman Empire converts to Christianity in 312,

they basically just laterally use this verbiage and dominance behavior of the Empire –

and transfer it to the church, without any of the Irony intended.

 

One could argue, and I will, that the church just took the dominance of the Empire

and applied it to the church,

without adopting the new Way of living that Christ, and Paul was introducing. 

end  digression.

 

Onto that other way of life that Paul was talking about.                                      

In chapter five, Paul by talking about Adam, the first human,  

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man,

and death came through sin,

and so death spread to all because all have sinned.

                                                           

I want to reiterate, as I said last week, Paul's Letter to the Romans

has often been used as a roadmap for a strictly

personal, spiritual understanding of salvation.

When we read Romans only through that lens,

we tend to understand sin as nothing more than

individual moral failure—a collection of bad choices that we personally make.

 

Too often through history, the church has narrowed sin

to a list of personal behaviors, especially around sex:

sexual activity, sexual thoughts, desires.

The result has been a permeating sense of shame.

Because the standards are often vague and impossible to fully meet,

people carry a burden of guilt that never seems to go away.

It’s been a cheap and easy tool of the church for a long time.

But Paul is talking about something much bigger here.

 

Instead of personal, moral failure,

what if we understood sin the way Paul actually seems to describe it here

in Romans 5:12:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man,

and death came through sin,

and so death spread to all because all have sinned.

 

Adam's transgression represents the accumulated

weight of humanity's brokenness—

the systems, structures, and patterns of injustice

which each generation is born into.

 

Adam's sin is not simply one bad choice made long ago.

And it’s not one or many choices we make now.

It is a symbol of the reality that we have inherited a world

already shaped by greed, violence, oppression, exploitation, and fear.

Sin is not only what we do; it is also what has been done before us

and what continues to shape the world around us.

 

Notice how Paul speaks about sin here

He talks about it almost like a disease or a contagion.

It spreads. It infects. It takes hold of human communities.

Sin is larger than any one person's choices and more invasive than just sex.

 

It’s like a current in a river.

No one person can determine the current.

None of us created it.

But as soon as we enter the water, the current carries us along.

We may try to swim against it, but it is always there, pushing and pulling us.

That’s the sin that Paul is talking about.

We are born into economic systems, political systems,

cultural assumptions, and historical realities that we did not create.

Yet they shape us, and often they benefit some while harming others.

We are a slave to it and cannot free ourselves.

 

I may not want to participate in systems that oppress people,

but simply by living within society, I’m entangled in them.

I don’t want to participate in a healthcare system that treats people’s

health as profits, and leaves so many people bankrupt, but I’ve gotta have health insurance.

I don’t want to create exhaust that poisons our air and

creates climate change, but I gotta have a car.

I do not want my tax dollars used to fund wars that

destroy countries and take innocent lives, but I gotta pay my taxes.

 

Besides all that, I do things without knowing it that add to people’s pain, 

suffering, and oppression.

And I internalize the racist, sexist, classist thoughts and attitudes that surround me.

By participating in society, I am connected to, and benefiting from,

decisions I did not personally make but I’m still a part of.

Whether it is the Roman Empire or the United States.

 

Some of us are victims of these systems and we feel the brunt of them.

And all of us, in one way or another, are both willing and unwilling participants in them.

This is why Paul says that all have fallen short

of the glory of God—not only individually, but collectively.

 

Humanity itself has become trapped in patterns of sin

that none of us can fully escape on our own.

 

But Paul doesn’t leave us in despair.                                                                           

Romans 5:18

¹⁸ Therefore just as one man’s trespass

led to condemnation for all,

so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. 

¹⁹ For just as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. 

Paul is talking about Jesus, of course.

But Paul isn’t just saying that the Christians

just need to behave themselves

That would be an awful lot of pressure to put on this

oppressed group of people in a powerful empire.

Nor is Paul saying that just because we become Christian

we suddenly stop sinning.

 

Paul is saying that something cosmic and divine happened

in Jesus death and resurrection which is making

this new Kingdom possible.

 

And in Romans 6:3-4                                                                                                            

 

Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.

(This is beautiful and we read it at funerals all the time, but I really wish Paul would just use less words)

 

Once We (and the Romans) followed Adam’s way of death,

but now we follow Jesus way of life.

We were slaves to sin.
Victims of it, and aiding and abetting it.

But now through our baptism, we’re now slaves to righteousness.

                                                                                                                                                     

 But thanks be to God that you who were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted ¹⁸ and that you, having been set free from sin, have become enslaved to righteousness. 

What I think Paul is saying here in two and a half chock-full chapters is this:

 

We live in a society that’s been developed by sin.

Sin is all around us in oppression, racism, violence, poverty.

It plays out in domination, greed, callousness

It’s been spread with humanity’s help and aid.

But it also spreads without our consent,

by a force outside of our control.

We’ll call that Adam’s original sin. (some would say Satan)

 

Jesus life and his death, was based on

sacrifice, forgiveness, love, service, healing, giving abundantly.

And that put him in direct conflict with the sin of the world.

And his death on the cross, was caused by that sin.

 

And somehow, through that event,

God has brought us into a new family,

and this new family is freed to live like he did,

and this freedom will usher in a new Kingdom that is

based on Jesus life instead of the sin of the world.

And that will be spread with our help and aid,

but will also spread without our consent.

By a force outside our control, which we call the Holy Spirit.                                      

 

Three paragraphs, Paul.

Then In chapter 7                                                                                                   

 

Paul tells us that

even though we’re a part of this new Spirit we still sin.                                             

 

 For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶ Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But in fact it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.

 

So even though we’re baptized and freed, we’re still going to sin.

Lots of Christians forget about that part. They think Saved once and done.

But we’re still a part of this sinful world.

 

Which brings us to chapter 8.

Chapter 8 is one of those chapters where every line

feels like it could be framed and hung on the wall.                      

 

8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

8:2 The Spirit of life has set you free.

8:22 The whole creation has been groaning."

8:31 If God is for us, who is against us?"

8:38 Nothing can separate us from the love of God."

It's Paul's greatest hits.

 

But if we pull these verses out and read them as individual inspirational sayings,

like is usually done, we can miss what Paul is actually doing.

 

Remember who he is writing to:

He is writing to a divided congregation in Rome.

Jews and Gentiles are struggling to live together.

They are living under the shadow of the Empire.

They are a small minority in a city that celebrates

 power, wealth, military conquest, and the glory of Caesar.

 

The Roman Empire taught its own version of the prosperity gospel.

Rome taught that if you were powerful, wealthy, and successful, the gods had blessed you.

If you were poor, oppressed, conquered, or suffering, then you deserved your fate.

The Empire always finds a way to tell the people at the top

that they belong there and the people at the bottom that they belonged there.

 

Paul rejects that entire way of thinking.

When he writes, 8:1 There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,"

he is not simply talking about individual guilt before God.

He is saying that the systems of judgment

that label people as worthy and unworthy have been broken by Christ.

 

The Empire condemns. Christ liberates.

The Empire divides. The Spirit unites.

The Empire tells people that the poor and unfortunate are savages

and only fit for slavery. Christ tells them they are beloved children of God.

 

And so Paul turns to the reality of suffering.                                              

8:18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time

are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.

Notice what Paul does not say.

He does not say suffering is good.

He does not say suffering is God's punishment.

He does not tell people to accept injustice because heaven will make up for it someday.

 

Instead, he says their suffering is part of a larger story.

Their suffering is not in vain.

Their pain is not evidence that God has abandoned them.

Their suffering is not proof that the Empire has won.

Something new is being born.

 

Paul gives us one of the most powerful images in Romans.

Labor pains.                                                                 

8:22 The whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor.

What an image.

Labor pains hurt, they are exhausting and frightening.

But labor pains are different from ordinary pain.

They have a purpose.

They point toward new life.

The pain is real, but it is not the end of the story.

 

Paul looks at the brokenness of the world—

the violence, oppression, division, poverty, and injustice—

and says creation itself is groaning because creation knows

it was made for something better than this.

The earth groans.

Human beings groan.

Communities groan.

And the Spirit groans with us.

 

in 8:19, Paul says that

creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.

Everyone is waiting for God's people to become who they were always meant to be.

The world is waiting for the church to become the church.

 

Because something new  is being born,

and the baptized faithful of Christ are going to

help bring that new life to reality.

It’s taking thousands of years, but I still believe that’s true.

Think about the Civil Rights Movement.

Today remember the sanitized version of things: the victories, and the speeches,

and the marches, and the laws that were changed. The end results of it.

But if you talk to those who lived through it,

they will tell you that it often felt hopeless.

 

Arrests, beatings, bombings, threats, failures, setbacks.

There were moments when many wondered if anything would ever change.

Yet beneath all that pain, something new was being born.

The suffering was not meaningless.

 It was the labor pain of a more just society struggling to come into the world.

 

That is the image Paul gives us.

Not suffering for suffering's sake.

But suffering endured in hope because God is still bringing forth new life.

Then Paul reaches his crescendo.

8:31 If God is for us, who is against us?

That doesn't mean Christians never face

opposition or that believers are guaranteed success.

 

It means that no power ultimately has the final word except God.

Not the Empire, or the Caesar

, or the Kings, or the Presidents,

or the bureaucracies, or the billionaires . . .

none of the systems that divide has the final word, not even our own fears.

And then comes one of the most beautiful promises in all of scripture:

                                                                                         

8:38  I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, ³⁹ nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Paul looks around at every force that threatens human life and dignity

and says none of them are stronger than God's love.

 

Paul doesn’t deny that these forces exist. He names them all.

he knows that they’re real.

They were real then, and they are real now.

 

But he tell us they do not define the future or eternity.

Only God's love does.

 

We’ll cover Romans 9-11 next week.