One question we often ask in our attempt to understand a person’s thinking is, “Where is he/she coming from?” Taken literally, we’re asking if someone perhaps just travelled from Starbucks. But we rarely ask that question expecting, a literal answer. With that question we want to understand thought processes. What is the context in which one's words sit? What’s the background that shapes a person's thoughts? We want to know where one’s thoughts lay in the realm of all thoughts in order to understand a person completely.
In order to better understand a writer, it is imperative to intimately know the writer and his/her worldview. Just as a stage provides a background and a context from which to understand and interpret a play, it is just as important to understand an author’s worldview and thought process as a background and context to understanding and interpreting a letter written by that author.
In the letter to the Romans, the writer reveals basic background information about himself that locates him to a specific context. This context is extremely helpful to our understanding of the entire letter to the Romans. Understanding Saul’s worldview as the background and context of the book of Romans is critical to understanding the entire letter.
As one would drop a location pin on Google maps to identify a geographical position, Saul, in the letter to the Romans, drops three location pins that help readers identify his worldview position and new self-identify. These contextual pin drops tell us “where he is coming from” in his newly acquired worldview and background. If we were to ask the question, "Where is Saul Coming From," and expect a literal answer, someone would answer by saying that Saul was coming from Jerusalem. Figuratively however, we're asking how to understand Saul's thinking. In order to do so, we would need to look deeply behind every experience Saul encountered in the Jewish capitol and beyond to see how Judaism so powerfully shaped his life and thinking from his earliest years.
We see Saul dropping these three contextual pins in the first sentence of chapter 1, locating himself on the road to Damascus. The context and background to understanding Saul and his letter to the Romans is his transforming worldview experience one fateful day on that dusty road. Let’s look at these three worldview pins.
The first worldview pin that Saul drops is his reference to himself as a servant of the Messiah Jesus. Let’s not miss the importance of the phrase “Christ Jesus” as opposed to “Jesus Christ”[1]. Saul seems to intentionally use the emphatic reference here (the qualifying noun Christ before the proper noun Jesus), considering that its alternate use, “Jesus Christ,” is used four other times in this section of the first chapter. Why reverse the order here?
As a relentless and violent pursuer of anyone who believed the slightest notion that the man Jesus was the long-promised Messiah, seeing and speaking to the crucified, buried, and now risen Jesus of Nazareth on that road to Damascus, Saul, the persecutor of all things anti-law, underwent a life-changing worldview perspective experience in which he identified himself no longer as a man in search of destroying those who believed in Jesus as the Messiah, but on the contrary, rather there on that dusty road, Saul contrastively identified himself as a newly indentured servant who himself has now decisively chosen in favor of Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah.
This drastic worldview change is recorded for us in Acts 9, 22, 26 and Galatians 2, as taking place on the hot dusty road leading to Damascus.
More specific to the first chapter of Romans, we see Saul confess Jesus of Nazareth to be the Son of God (1:4). The phrase “Son of God” is a very emphatic Jewish reference to the Messiah. With the use of that term, no one would doubt Saul’s usage here that he is claiming the man Jesus to be the long-awaited Messiah.
It is interesting to note that in Acts 9:20, one of the very first activities that Saul begins to do after his Damascus road experience is to “immediately proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, ‘He is the Son of God.’” The Damascus road experience reoriented Saul’s thinking on who he believed the Messiah to be; and more to the point, who he believed Jesus to be. So, it seems that Saul’s emphatic use of “Christ Jesus” immediately in the first verse of the letter is a purposeful intent to proclaim the man Jesus as the promised Messiah of Judaic theology.
The second worldview pin that Saul drops is his reference to himself as one who had been “called to be an apostle.” The word apostle means "sent one." Formerly, as one who had officially been “sent” on behalf of the Jewish Council of leaders to travel to Damascus to arrest every Christian he could find and bring them back to Jerusalem in chains, Saul again, contrastively, identifies himself as “one sent” on behalf of Jesus of Nazareth the newly recognized Messiah in his newly formed worldview. Again, we know that this second life-changing worldview perspective experience took place on the road to Damascus as he meets Jesus face to face. We read in Acts 22:21, in Saul’s account of his Damascus road experience to the people of Jerusalem that Jesus specifically tells Saul, “I will send you far away to the Gentiles.” Saul also reiterates this fact to Agrippa in Acts 26:17 in his defense before the court. It is clear that Saul knew he was no longer sent to persecute Christians who proclaimed Jesus as Messiah, but now in contrast, he is sent by Messiah Jesus to the Gentiles to proclaim the message of the one sending him. The sudden change in Saul’s self-identity, newly acquired on the Damascus road is dramatic to say the least.
The third worldview pin that Saul drops is his reference to himself as one “set apart for the gospel of God…to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations.” Saul gains a new understanding of himself as being separated from his caustic Jewish legalistic worldview to a new free-bound worldview of victory and grace as a result of his witness to the resurrected Jesus. This is now the third reference to Saul’s life-changing worldview perspective experience on the Damascus road. With this third reference, we see the importance the Damascus road experience plays in Saul’s life as the background to understanding the psyche and self-identification of Saul.
These three pin drops provide a wealth of information that tell us “where Saul is coming from” as we attempt to understand his letter to the Romans. The context and background to understanding Saul and his letter to the Romans is his transforming worldview experience he encountered on that dusty road. The context of Romans stage left i.e. Saul’s, previous worldview full of stringent law-abiding religiosity contrasts significantly with the context of Romans stage right i.e. Saul's new freebound worldview of victory through grace as a result of the resurrected Jesus. So, what was it that really happened on that dusty road to Damascus that caused such an upheaval in Saul's worldview?
We will begin to answer that question as we look more closely at Saul’s experience on the Damascus Road and see how Saul finds his new self-identification there. We will compare Saul’s experience on the road to Damascus to his many more geographical location markers that he drops in the first paragraph of his letter to the Romans that confirms his experience on the Damascus road is indeed the location at which Saul undergoes an incredible life-altering worldview perspective which becomes the context and background of his letter.
In my next blog, we will look at, “Saul, The Man - Transformed ”
[1]When “Christ” occurs before “Jesus,” it emphasizes the messianic title. When “Jesus” occurs before “Christ,” the humanity of Jesus is emphasized. Notice in the first eight verses Paul uses the phrase Christ Jesus, emphasizing Jesus’ Messiahship, as opposed to the phrase Jesus Christ used four times emphasizing Jesus’ humanity. Paul begins his introduction with the more emphatic Christ Jesus for a reason.
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