Wright’s Into the Heart of Romans– Part Three

Last updated on: February 9, 2025 at 1:53 am by Ben Witherington

Wright’s Into the Heart of Romans– Part Three 2025-01-27T13:26:44-05:00 Ben Witherington

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The modus operandi of Tom Wright in this book is absolutely commendable, and worth repeating by others. He divides his discussions into three parts: 1) after a fresh translation (including a parallel transliteration of the Greek) there is a looking at the overall structure of a passage, especially including the beginning and end to see where the discussion is going; 2) looking at the connective tissue in the arguments– the conjunctions, or other connections such as gar, de, oti, kai etc. and then finally 3) a verse by verse walking through the passage. This is a good way of avoiding missing something important. But of course Rom. 8.1.1-4 is a response to the dilemma and the cry for help at the end of Rom. 7– namely there is help to be found in Christ, for in Him there is now no condemnation for sin, because the ruling principle of the Spirit, has set you free from the ruling principle of sin and death. It is again important to remember that Paul is not just addressing Jews, but in fact the majority of his audience seems to have been Gentiles, to judge from Rom. 10, and it is right to doubt that they had studied the OT in any detail at all, unlike Paul. So, while Paul certainly draws on the OT, both with a few quotes, and more allusions and echoes, he also writes in a way that shows he is cognizant of his audience and their limitations, and this is all the more the case if the Gentile Christians were not meeting at all, or at least not regularly with the Jewish ones, some of whom would have known Torah pretty well, but not at Paul’s level.

In this paragraph, Paul makes clear that the objective means of being set free from condemnation is Christ’s death on the cross which seen as a sin offering, and then the subjective means is by the Spirit working in the believer. that set them from the ruling principle of sin and death. In the case of the Gentiles in the audience, who had never been part of Israel, or under the Mosaic covenant, the language here is deliberately more broad. As Paul says earlier in Romans, all have sinned and lack God’s glory. The death of Christ is said to be a sin offering, which interestingly, in Leviticus refers to sins or ignorance or unintentional sins, which could apply either to Jews, or to Gentiles. It is well to remember that Christ’s death also covered deliberate sin, even sin with a high hand, which Paul calls trespasses.

One jarring note in this section is here Tom calls Satan a ‘sub-personal force’. (pp. 55-56). I have to disagree with him on this one. Satan is depicted as a being with intentions and schemes, which makes him personal for sure. Whether we see him as a fallen angel or a demon, in either case those are not ‘sub-personal’ forces.

There is much more ground to cover, and we will do so shortly in further blog posts.

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Wright's Into the Heart of Romans-- Part Two

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