A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [73]
But Paul isn’t rousing his readers into a moral frenzy against “those people.” No, he’s setting a tender trap for them, and at this moment Paul springs it: “Therefore, you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things” (2:1). Unlike many contemporary preachers on Romans, he’s not trying to create a blacklisted out-group who do things he’s just enumerated in contrast to a righteous in-group who don’t do those things. No, he’s doing the very opposite: putting everyone in the same boat—all are sinners. (Again, it’s tragic how often his clear intent has been subverted by preachers using the Bible in constitutional ways.) Shortly after this, Paul mirrors his brutal litany of gentile sins with an ironic litany of the “righteousness” of members of his own religion. “So,” he says, “you’re the experts in the Law, are you? You’re the guide of the blind, the light for those in darkness, the instructor of the foolish, the teacher of children, are you?” Once again, he turns on them. “No, the truth is, you’re just sinners like everyone else. The more you claim to know, the more guilty you are for failing to live up to your knowledge.”
So, in his first move, Paul asserts that God doesn’t play favorites. All human beings are on the same level, whatever their religious background. All violate their own conscience, all fall short of God’s glory, all break God’s laws. None can claim an inside track with God just because they have mastered a body of religious knowledge, avoided a list of proscribed behaviors, or identified themselves with a certain label. In this way, Paul renders every mouth silent and everyone accountable to God (3:19). There is no us versus them, no elite insiders and excluded outsiders. There’s just all of us—Jews and Gentiles—and we’re all a rather pathetic bunch of sinners, united in our need of grace.
Second Move: Announce a new way forward for all, Jew and Gentile: the way of faith (Rom. 3:21–4:25). Having convicted both Jews and Gentiles equally as sinners, Paul now points both Jews and Gentiles toward the way out: not a new doctrine, not a new religion, and not trying harder at the old religion either, but faith. Religious laws and practices are inherently exclusive; you’re either circumcised or not, and either you keep kosher or you don’t. But faith—having reverent confidence or dependence on God—is an option available to everyone. So, Paul concludes, God is the God of the Jews and the God of the Gentiles, and God has chosen, freely, through grace, to put everyone who believes in the same two categories: guilty sinners (in move one) and liberated/justified by grace through faith (in move two).
Paul now traces the role of faith back even farther in Jewish history. What’s more primal to Jewish identity than the Law of Moses? Circumcision, which began with Abraham. And what’s more primal than circumcision? God’s original call to Abraham. And to that core identity Paul now appeals. Abraham’s relationship with God didn’t depend on Law or circumcision, since neither Jewish distinctive had yet been given. All that was expected of Abraham was that he believe—or have faith in—God’s promise. So, Paul says, you may not be a Jew carrying the mark of circumcision, but you can still be a child of Abraham if you are marked by the same kind of faith Abraham had when he responded to God’s call. On this common road of faith, Jew and Gentile can walk together in the gospel of the kingdom of God.
Third Move: Unite all in a common story, with four illustrations: Adam, baptism, slavery, and remarriage (Rom. 5:1–7:6). At the end of the second move and