Reading Romans backwards

I set myself the task of reading Romans backwards the other day. Well not literally, but by focusing on how the application of chapters 12-16 followed from Romans 1-11. One thing that struck me doing it this way is how running through the whole book is the question: who judges?

All the judgment language in Romans (Justification, Righteousness etc) is often brought to a point with one of two questions:

• How do we receive a favourable judgment (Legalism v. Grace)? Or
• How do we know who has received a favourable judgment (Jew v. Gentile)?

Both these questions are important to Paul writing Romans, but seem secondary to the larger question of who does the judging.

Romans 1 dwells on the judgment made by God (on all humanity, Paul does not start with Gentiles in chapter 1 and then move onto Jews in chapters 2-3)

Romans 2 questions those who take on judgment for themselves how they will stand in God's judgment.

Romans 3 is again about the universal and condemning nature of that judgment.

Romans 5 talks about the two judgments available, one belonging to Adam and one to Christ.

Romans 12 says that the Christian should "think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment" and should leave judgment (vengence) to God.

Romans 13 talks about God's judgment being invested in the proper authorities.

Romans 14 at length teaches how we should not judge each other, and in particular the weak.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this? To me at least this has been a bit of an epiphany.

More musings on the differences between the Reformers and Evangelicalism

Further to my recent musing on the difference between Evangelicals of the eighteenth century onwards and the Reformers of the sixteenth here, I am now thinking that the root difference was that the Reformers looked for 'revival' through a top-down reformation of theology and worship, where as the Evangelicals looked for the change in hearts of individual Christians which would then lead to the reformation of society. [Phew long sentence]

So a monarchal compared to a democratic approach.

This is no doubt partly a result of the Enlightenment but also other factors.

The Puritans may form a bridge between the two in England.

Goldsworthy MP3

• "The Necessity and Viability of Biblical Theology" (SBTS, 18 March 2008)

Evangelicalism and the Enlightenment

Lots of interesting books coming out of IVP at the moment. One of them includes the following in the blurb:

David Bebbington's Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, published in 1989, offered an intriguing hypothesis regarding the genesis of this movement. He argued that evangelical religion had emerged as a substantially new entity through trans-Atlantic evangelical revival in the 1730s, and had taken a collaborative rather than antithetical stance towards the Enlightenment. In both respects, Bebbington distanced himself from older interpretations that had held the opposite view. (Source)

I wonder if Bebbington is right or not....

Anyway, I can't stop, I should be writing an essay on Land Law.

Mealtime

OT sacrifices can often be thought of offerings of food for God to 'eat'. Graciously in the OT God allows the priests especially, but the rest of the people as well, to share in these meals.

In the NT we don't bring offerings of food to God, instead God presents us with food to eat. Food that is greater and also more expensive than the spotless lambs offered by Israel to their God.