Into the Heart of Romans, page 11
That gives us the outline framework for 12–17: we are in debt to God because, being his heirs, we are to live in the present time as his sons and daughters, the people at whom the world looks to get an impression of who the father must be.
Thus being God’s sons and heirs (in the Exodus 4.22 sense of ‘Israel is my firstborn son’) is not just a matter of ethical obligation (‘so now you must behave like this’, though that is true as well). It is a matter of calling, of vocation. In Exodus 19.6, Israel is called to be God’s royal priesthood, standing between him and the whole world. That is part of the preamble to the Sinai covenant. So Paul is going to expound in verses 18–30 what it means for us, as God’s inheriting children, to be faithful to that larger vocation in the present time, in relation to the suffering and groaning creation.
That answers our first exegetical question, the outline framework. The second question is then, what about the little connecting words? Here again, as in 8.1–11, we have from verse 12 to 15 a string of gar clauses, digging their way down to the basic point in verse 16; and then in verse 17 we have a de clause building up from that point. This is the case because this because this because this – and then, ‘but if ’, or if you like ‘well then, if that is so then this is going to follow’.
Here’s how a literal translation might read, emphasizing the connecting words albeit in a rather wooden fashion:
12So then, my family, we are debtors: but not to the flesh, to live in accordance with the flesh. 13For [gar] if you live according to the flesh, you are heading for death; but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14For [gar] those who are led by God’s spirit are God’s sons. 15For [gar] you didn’t receive a spirit of slavery, leading back again to fear, but you received the spirit of sonship, in whom we cry, ‘Abba, father’. 16[When that happens], the spirit is bearing witness with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17But if [ei de] [we are] children, then [we are] heirs: heirs (on the one hand) of God, but (on the other hand) fellow heirs of the Messiah, assuming we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
Translation, as always, is tricky, partly because in today’s English the word ‘for’ sounds quite stilted, which Paul’s Greek is not. That’s why sometimes the more fluent English is to make the causal connection simply by juxtaposition, as I’ve done in verse 13. Technically I could there have written, ‘For if you live in accordance with the flesh you will die.’ But in English we often just put two things side by side and leave the reader to infer the connection, whereas first-century Greek rather enjoys adding the little words that make the link explicit. Or, as in verse 14, where once again the Greek word is gar, which students learn to translate as ‘for’, we in modern English might say ‘you see’. But the meaning is the same.
(As an aside: this highlights the dilemma of all translation. Strict word-for-word accuracy is great, but sometimes it results in the new text feeling very stilted and awkward, which means it is not accurate because Paul is seldom, if ever, stilted or awkward. The translator is always compromising between words and moods, trying to get both right but realizing it’s often impossible.)
Here, then, is how this little passage works. Verse 12: We are debtors, but not to the flesh; because (gar), verse 13, the flesh leads to death but the spirit to life; because (gar, verse 14, translated here as ‘you see’) the spirit-led people are God’s sons; because (gar again, verse 15, translated here by the idiomatic ‘did you’) you didn’t receive the spirit of slavery (did you?) but of sonship. This is further explained in the tricky but vital second half of verse 15 and then the whole of 16. That’s the heart of this little passage: our present vocation as God’s children and heirs is to be the people in whom God’s spirit, bearing witness with our own spirit, prays the prayer that Jesus prayed in Gethsemane. Then, having reached that deep point, Paul builds up to the new conclusion, here in verse 17, with the de, as we watched him do in verses 9 to 11: But (‘well then’, as we might say) if that is true, then this is also true. This is where the whole paragraph was going: if we are children, we are heirs. And that is why we are ‘debtors’, not in the sense of owing God a grudging or uncomfortable obedience, but in the sense of discovering our vocation to be God’s agents, his prayerful stewards, in the present task, within the groaning of the old creation, of witnessing to the promise of the new.
So, putting the paragraph together, we see why we are in debt, and to whom. Paul, to be sure, writes allusively. Sometimes he skips over bits of argument he assumes he can take for granted. But the sequence of connecting words helps us to find our way through.
So, moving to the third vital question, what happens when we try to read this passage with first-century eyes?
Let’s imagine we are in one of the Roman house-churches, listening to Phoebe, who has been entrusted by Paul with taking this letter from Greece to Rome, reading out what he’s written. What would his hearers be thinking? The great theme of sonship – being sons of God – would undoubtedly resonate with some of the listeners. Inheriting a great empire was a well-known theme. A hundred years before, Julius Caesar had adopted Octavian, subsequently known as Augustus; when Julius was deified after his death, Augustus styled himself ‘son of the deified Julius’. He was the adopted son, inheriting the empire and being loyal to the memory of Julius Caesar himself. So it continued with Tiberius and the others. In fact, the first five emperors (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero) weren’t related as father to son; they were chosen and adopted, groomed for the job. Then, when the old emperor died and was divinized, the new one would be ‘son of the deified one’, inheriting the empire.
So now Paul is claiming here, as he did right at the start of this letter, that Jesus is the true son of the true God – and that all Jesus’ people share that sonship. Jesus’ people are God’s adopted royal family. The sons are what they are, not simply so that they can feel good about their relationship with the father, but in order to carry out the father’s project. To rule wisely over God’s empire, which is the whole world – the inheritance he promised to Abraham, as we saw before in a backward glance to Romans 4.13. So, as in 5.17, those who receive God’s gift will reign in life. This is indeed a counter-imperial claim, if ever there was one – though, of course, for a very different kind of empire, with a very different modus operandi. As we will see later, this is part of what Paul means by ‘glorified’: set in authority over God’s world.
The other obvious echo of ‘being sons of God’ is in the Exodus-narrative. This may help to explain why I have followed Paul in speaking in some places of ‘sons’, not just of ‘children’, despite the (to us) uncomfortable gender specificity. Thus, on the one hand, Paul is echoing ‘Israel is my firstborn son’ in Exodus 4.22. On the other hand, he is confronting the emperor’s claim to be ‘son of God’. He broadens it out into ‘children’, because of course he has in mind females equally with males, but those resonances matter as well.
I therefore suspect that Paul’s reference here to the key theme of sonship, hyiothesia, is deliberately designed to hold together in characteristic fashion two specific things. First, there are the Jewish roots of the idea, in the Exodus-story where the slave people of Israel are given this amazing royal dignity. Then there are the pagan targets, in this case Caesar’s arrogant claim to some kind of worldwide empire. New Testament theology regularly has that dual focus (Jewish roots and pagan targets), exactly in line with the Psalms, Isaiah and the rest. What often happens in the New Testament is that we notice a theme growing out of Israel’s scriptures; the theme then gets reworked around Jesus and the spirit; and then, in line with the intention of Israel’s scriptures themselves, it turns out to confront rather sharply the claims and pretensions of the pagan world, not least of pagan empire. That is so, actually, with the powerful word ‘gospel’ itself: euangelion is an Isaiah-word that confronts a Caesar-word.1 And it’s so in this instance of ‘sonship’. That word here seems to refer to the status of being sons rather than to the process by which someone might arrive at that status, that is, ‘adoption’ or some equivalent. Thus we find that in verse 15 the ‘spirit of slavery’ refers to the status of being a slave and the ‘spirit’ that goes with that, not the process by which someone becomes a slave.
This gives us at least a start towards a larger historical framework within which to glimpse the meaning of ‘adoption’ and/or ‘sonship’ in Paul’s world. Scholars continue to debate the details, but the biblical and Roman contexts, which I’ve briefly sketched, seem to me decisive.
So how does that biblical context work? What is Paul affirming in this passage?
We have already noted that, throughout Romans 5—8, Paul is working with a kind of large-scale exodus-story. In Romans chapter 6, the slaves come through the water to freedom. In Romans 7, they arrive at Mount Sinai, where Israel recapitulates Adam’s sin, resulting in exile and death. But the gospel events provide the necessary rescue, and as Torah is strangely fulfilled through the work of the spirit, so the spirit is to be seen as God’s own glorious presence coming to dwell amid the people, as in the wilderness Tabernacle. That’s in verses 9 to 11. But now the story continues. In verses 12 and 13, Paul is echoing Moses’ stark challenge to the people on the verge of their crossing over Jordan: here is death, here is life – so choose life.2
The rhetorical force of all this is that Paul is saying to his hearers: fancy getting within sight of the promised inheritance and then deciding to quit, or even to go back to slavery! Fancy preferring slavery in Egypt to the land flowing with milk and honey! Yes, there will be challenges ahead, but they will lead to the inheritance. After all (following his underlying train of thought), you are here in the first place because, as Moses said to Pharaoh in Exodus 4.22–3, ‘Israel is my firstborn son . . . so let my son go that he may serve me.’ Israel is to worship God, in other words, to be God’s priest; and, as God’s son, also God’s royal priest, to be set in authority over the world. That had been Israel’s vocation. It is now supremely fulfilled in Israel’s representative, Jesus the Messiah. And it is now shared, by the spirit, with all his people, Jew and gentile alike. This is central to all that Paul is now saying.
It should by now be clear that this vocation, to be the royal priesthood, is itself actually the fleshing out of the vocation to be God’s image-bearers. Humans were designed, created and called to reflect the praises of creation back to God, and to reflect God’s wise rule into the world. That is why Paul’s argument ends up in verse 29 with Jesus’ people being conformed to the image of the son. The status of sonship is not simply a generalized sense of close familial relationship, in this case of the filial relationship with the world’s creator – though it certainly is that. It is the status given to Abraham’s people as they are brought out of Egypt, called to worship the true God and to be his agents within the world. The gospel then focuses this vocation on the Messiah himself, and then through him on his larger family. As such, they constitute the true royal family, even though Caesar will naturally regard them as an irritating nuisance.
The exodus-narrative is clearly visible in verse 15, where Paul contrasts sonship and slavery. You were slaves; you are now called to be sons; so don’t even think of going back to Egypt! Recall how, as early as Exodus 16.3, the Israelites lamented the loss of all the good food in Egypt. They did the same, when they were thirsty, in Numbers 20.3–5. In between those two, in Numbers 14, the spies saw what they would be up against in trying to take possession of the promised land, and most of them were all for choosing a leader and – yes! – going back voluntarily to slavery in Egypt. That repeated theme is what Paul is here picking up. No, he says: that would imply that you were possessed, not by the spirit of sonship, but by a spirit of slavery (perhaps Romans 7.13–25 is still in mind here). He is, in other words, still thinking in terms of ‘sons of God’ as an exodus-shaped Israel-designation: we are the people of the new exodus. When today’s Bible readers forget the rich scriptural heritage on which Paul was drawing, it is all too easy for the present passage and others like it to be interpreted simply in terms of ‘our relationship with God’ – which is itself important; but the force of what he’s saying comes directly from the eschatological challenge, to recognize where one is standing in God’s great story of redemption, and to embrace the consequent vocation.
God’s response to the cowardly spies in Numbers 14, who want to turn back from going on to the inheritance, looks all the way forward to Romans 8 itself: As I live, says YHWH, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of YHWH, none of the cowards will see the inheritance.3 God is not simply able to bring them into the promised land; that is only the first stage of what he intends. The land is itself a signpost to the far greater reality, the entire creation which will in the end be flooded with God’s knowledge and glory.4 The journey that follows, with the people being led by the presence of God himself, is pointing on to God’s intention to fill the whole creation, not just one small tent, with his glorious presence.
All this enables Paul to change gear swiftly in verse 17 and link up Israel as God’s ‘son’ with the Messiah as God’s ‘son’ – the firstborn son as he will say in 8.29. That phrase ‘son of God’ is a messianic designation, all the way from Psalm 89.27 to Colossians 1.13. The deep structure of Paul’s thought brings together Israel as God’s people with the Messiah as the embodiment of Israel: the corporate ‘son’ and the messianic ‘son’.
So if we are indwelt by God’s spirit, as in 8.9–11, on the model of the wilderness Tabernacle where the divine glory came to reside, it’s no surprise that in verse 14 Paul speaks of being led by the spirit. This picks up another aspect of exodus-language, where the people of God are led through the wilderness to the promised land. That’s the language Deuteronomy uses about their journeys, which is picked up later by Isaiah and Jeremiah. The prophets were looking back to the original exodus in order to point on to the new one, the return from exile. That is where Paul is positioning himself and his hearers.
When Israel’s scriptures speak of God’s presence with his people in the wilderness, they sometimes envisage this in terms of God’s spirit. Haggai 2.5 explains that when God says ‘I am with you’, this corresponds to his indwelling at the exodus: ‘my spirit abides among you; do not fear.’ Isaiah 63.7–14 likewise looks back to the exodus, when Israel was designated as God’s children, and when God put his holy spirit within them (63.11, 14) even though they then grieved that spirit (verse 10). Nehemiah, in the great prayer in chapter 9, refers back to God’s leading the people in the wilderness, giving his good spirit to instruct them (9.20). These references were picked up in various second-Temple writings, including the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is classic new-exodus language. It grounds both the hope of the inheritance and the holiness required to attain it in the ancient promises of God which are now fulfilled in Messiah and spirit. And, as I’ve said, it confronts the pretensions of Caesar’s empire with the reality of a new people, those who hail not Caesar but Jesus as kyrios, Lord and ‘son of God’.
So, in verse 16, the indwelling divine spirit provides the assurance that ‘we’ – the Messiah’s people – are indeed ‘God’s children’. The ‘we’ here is clearly the whole messianic people, extended not just to Jews but also, in line with the original Abrahamic promise, to believing gentiles. The ‘we’ here, in fact, means all those who are en Christō, all baptized and believing Jesus-followers. There was, in Rome, a tricky and delicate relationship between Jewish and gentile Jesus-believers, and Paul addresses that in chapters 14 and 15. Here, he assumes that he is talking to all the Messiah-people. If there is any doubt about the status of gentile Jesus-followers, any possible challenge which, as in Galatia, might have demoted them to second-class status, it is the presence and work of the spirit that provides the necessary assurance that they are all ‘children of God’. They all, together, form the one new-exodus family.
One other exodus-motif that doesn’t appear here but comes later in the passage is the groaning of the people as they await their redemption. We’ll come back to this when we’re looking at verses 22 to 25. But this completes the set of exodus-references, encouraging us to see the whole passage in this light.
So to the ‘inheritance’ – which, to say it one more time, is not ‘heaven’. It is the entire creation. Here the key text, lying not far beneath the surface of verse 17, is Psalm 2, one of the most popular psalms in the early Christian writings. Remember how that psalm works: the nations rant and rage against God the creator, but God installs his king in Zion and addresses him as his son. ‘Ask of me,’ he says to the king, ‘and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the world for your possession’ (see Psalm 2.8). This is in line with those other great messianic psalms, 72 and 89.
Psalm 2 encapsulates a vital move in biblical eschatology. Just as the promises to Adam in Genesis 1 become commands to Abraham in Genesis 12 onwards, so the small-scale promises to Abraham – one family, one particular land – become worldwide promises to the Messiah. The ‘inheritance’, from Psalm 2 through to Romans 8, is no longer one strip of territory in the Middle East. The whole world is now God’s holy land. What God does in and for Israel is what God is going to do through Israel, specifically through Israel’s anointed king and his spirit-filled followers, for the whole world. Paul doesn’t use the word ‘kingdom’ (basileia) at this point, but he is none the less picking up the kingdom-of-God language which he had set out in Romans 5.12–21, retrieving the relevant themes from Isaiah, Daniel and of course the Psalms. And now this ‘kingdom’, this messianic inheritance, is to be shared with all the Messiah’s people. If we are God’s heirs, and thus indebted to God (picking up verse 12, as we saw), then we are fellow heirs with the Messiah.
