Proper 4, Year A
June 2, 2002
Christ Church, Covington

“For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law” (Rom. 3:28).


The early apostles were missionaries, not tenured professors of theology, or even settled clergy of parishes; their mission kept them on the move, and engaged with the nitty-gritty business of Gospel proclamation rather than the niceties of theological speculation. This was certainly true of Paul the Apostle, the crucially formative leader of the Church whose journeys back and forth across the Mediterranean on mission left him little time for publishing theological treatises. Yet in this case the heart of the missionary was married to the mind of the theologian; Paul the very effective administrator of the mission of the Church was also possessed of a profound theological vision of the Gospel truths he proclaimed.

The New Testament letters that we continue to read in Sunday worship reflect this tension. By and large, they are livres de circonstance, occasional pieces meant to address practical issues of Church order and common life. Yet there are also examples of profound reflection on the truth of the Gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection, mixed in as it were amongst the regular order of business. There are even examples of a more sustained reflection, when the busy Apostle has had a few moments with his scribe to take down ideas which have continued to shape Christian faith and life.

Paul’s Letter to the Romans is a case in point. Paul’s purpose in writing seems to have been practically inspired by his need to pave the way for a missionary journey to Rome. It ends with a laundry list of names, a “Who’s Who” of early Christianity which represents a primitive form of networking by the Apostle, a “list serve” in parchment. Yet this Letter is also Paul’s most considered attempt to set down systematically the meaning of the Gospel given to him.

This considered attempt, from which we’ve read this morning, brings out some familiar words: “faith”, “law”, “sin”, “justification” and “redemption”. Paul’s great theme in this Letter is the relationship between Jews and Gentiles in Christ, and it’s in that context that these words appear. Faith in Christ has made the two one, without the necessity for observing the Jewish Law. Gentiles, formerly pagans, are now included through faith in Christ in the covenant that God had made with Moses; like the People of Israel liberated from slavery, they too have been freed from slavery to sin and death. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but God has justified and redeemed them by the grace of his gift through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ.

Paul takes it for granted that Christians in Rome understand that through Jesus Christ, the basis of relationship with God is no longer obedience to the Law of Moses, but faith in Jesus Christ. “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law”, Paul writes; the “we hold” assumes that there is broad agreement and a shared world of values. Faith, for Paul and the Church in Rome, has the sense both of belief and trust, the wholehearted commitment of oneself in love to the person of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. To be redeemed is to be freed; to be justified is to enter into a new relationship with God. Relationship with God is not rooted in performance of God’s Law, but in the action of God himself. When Paul writes about “the righteousness of God” in our Letter, he is not talking simply about a characteristic that God possesses but about a right relationship with God that he will establish for us, and which really makes us the children of God.

Paul’s reflection has meaning for us. Incredible as it seems, Jesus Christ, the rather obscure prophet of a forgotten backwater province of the Roman Empire, is the central figure of time and history. The right relationship with God that is established by God’s self-giving sacrifice in Jesus Christ is a universal event, in spite of all appearances to the contrary. Empires may struggle; cultures may rise and fall; yet Jesus is the same, and remains the central point for the meaning of it all. Through him, all the peoples of the earth have been included in the Covenant with God. Salvation is from the Jews (as Jesus says in John’s Gospel), yet now salvation (that is, health and life) is given to peoples who are not of the family of Abraham.

The other point (which Paul assumes in those who hear him) is that Christian believing is rooted in trust in God; not in knowledge or insight, not in obedience or submission (which other faith traditions, perhaps, make decisive). Faith may include all those things, yet Christian faith says something more radical in assuming that God has worked in Jesus Christ, in whom we believe and trust. It is this faith, “working through love” (Gal. 5:6) as Paul says elsewhere in the Letter to the Galatians, that counts and is decisive for us as Christians.

The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.

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