In which not everything in the Bible adds up.

7.13.18

Romans 5:1–5

Therefore having been justified out of faith, we have peace toward God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and boast because of the hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we also boast in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces endurance; and endurance, approvedness; and approvedness, hope; and hope does not put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

I’ve sung scripture songs set to these verses, so I could recite these to you, but I realized as I was reading over this chapter that in the singing, the semantic meaning of the word of God gets glazed over by the rhythm of the music. So I decided to possess these verses this time, phrase by phrase, fact by fact, and pray it back to the Lord.

By believing, we are at peace with God.

We also have access to God.

• We can enter into His grace.
• Not only can we enter, we can stand and boast in it.
• Why are we able to boast? Because we have been promised to inherit God’s glory.

Not only do we boast in the presence of God, but we can boast in our tribulations.

(bonus corollary: we can be both in the presence of God and in tribulations!)

• Satan, now I address these concomitant facts to you. Tribulations produce endurance.
• Endurance makes us approved in the eyes of God.
• As God approves of us, we have hope, even in the midst of tribulations.
• We have no shame in our tribulations. Quite to the contrary, we have hope! What’s more, our hope is the result of the love of God poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
• Each tribulation merely potentiates a further outpouring of the Spirit as love into our hearts, making us more God, and bringing shame to you, Satan.

The Bible is likened to the good land of Israel, on which we should labor, till the ground, and cause to grow. But my mind, an uncooperative zebu, just wants to charge off into the wilderness. So to lasso my bronco mind back to the plow, I tease out the facts from Paul’s interlacing sentences, and what do I find? Praises to God! Shame to Satan! Reserve stores for tribulation, and sustenance for the day.

I’ve enjoyed this exercise so much that I did it for the rest of the chapter.

In verses 12–21, Paul is trying to lay out these facts:

1. Adam’s transgression caused sin to enter into the world. It reigned there over every human, since each human came from Adam, until the law was established through Moses.
2. The law assigned such sin to our accounts. So not only did death reign, but now sin was our possession. All from one sin!
3. Fastforward, now there are millions (billions?) of men who have sin and death. One man without this sin and death dies, releasing grace as a free gift.
4. Q: But this is just one man of millions who died. Shouldn’t there be a 1:1 ratio of men dying for men forgiven? That is the case symbolically with sacrifices in Judaism.
   A: No. The one who died covers all men, just as Adam’s sin covers all men.
5. Q: Okay, all men covered. But how is this gift given? Since one sin passed on sin/death to all, does this grace forgive one sin only?
   A: No. This gift covers multiple offenses, indeed all offenses.
6. Not only does this death take care of all the sins committed, but it justifies, or proves to be righteous, every man under its purview. And that’s not all! Now, instead of sin reigning over people, now grace may reign through righteousness. What’s the result of such reigning? Eternal life through Jesus Christ.
7. How’s that for divine mathematics? Sucks to your 1:1 (eye:eye, cap’n) ratio, law! The infinite leapfrogs the finite.

Future me or past me may read these points and wonder, “what did I think was so special about this? Isn’t this old news?” Answer: God’s present presence.

As I read, my mind is trained from school to glean new information and squirrel it away, and adroitly scan through familiar material to make sure I haven’t missed any new nuance. The new facets I pick out from each new pass over the New Testament sometimes automatically become classified as something “I’ve enjoyed”.

At some point, God shone on this tendency of mine. I could search the Scriptures endlessly in this way, picking out new acorns and deeming them diamonds, but it is not novel syntheses or undiscovered continents that constitute life. It is the shining of God through His word into my spirit. In other words, I pass through God, and He passes through me. I had to repent. Seeing something “new”, is never a matter of the mind having never seen something in the past; it is a matter of the spirit of the mind being renewed by the very present, very real I AM passing through a truth, being newness itself and causing that truth to be in a way that it has never been before.

So yes, in this moment, Paul is blasting to smithereens old covenant accounting. Your inheritance of sin and death? Inexorably and utterly annihilated by the grace of God. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

I’ve been traveling with three lovely ecology researchers across Madagascar. We usually rise before dawn to tackle the adventure of the day, whether it’s catching sight of elusive humpbacks in a pirogue (verdict: seasickness is w-retched) or scuba diving to poke at enormous shy clams that suck in their eyelashes or mincing over slimy rocks in a canyon floor to bathe in hidden lagoons of various colors. We’re currently staying at a quiet bed-and-breakfast, bereft of even wifi to get between our gritty toes and the sun dissolving in the Mozambique channel. Highlights: making improbable foods, including sweet potato curry with naan, tamarind pad thai, and biscuits, from local vegetables; watching the sunset fade into the water and the milky way wink into existence simultaneously; picnicking on an unfurled sail on the beach; watching a lionfish blossom out from underneath coral; snapping pictures of dozens of hibernating tortoises arranged in neat lines at a sanctuary; freestyling to the back of a lagoon to touch the thin, tucked away waterfall, and hiking for the next few hours in a swimsuit through the desert. I had brought work with me, some data to enter, but somehow the present here has a magnetic pull, and even future me with future needs seems unimportant in comparison.