Responding to grace
Responding to grace
Everyone who obeys God's plan of salvation experiences a chain of events —and it's so important that Paul in Romans describes it in three different ways, aiding our understanding of the process in which we receive salvation.
Every expert has a “jargon” or technical terminology essential to describe and discuss the matters the expert deals with. Paul is an expert theologian —one who studies and reasons about God and his word. (Theologian from Greek theos God, and logos word, reason, discourse). So Paul uses theological terms to describe the chain of great events involved in our salvation. Paul is expressing the chain of great events from God's eternal perspective.
Take for example Romans 3:23-25 and Romans 8:29-30. Paul uses words like redemption, justification, propitiation, predestination, calling. We will not tackle theological terms like these in this particular lesson, but rather notice how Paul expresses the same thing in other ways much easier to understand.
There are certain important events in our lives that most of us experience and remember. Paul says, in effect, "Look, you experience special events in your cultural life. Think of these as analogies of your spiritual relationship to Jesus Christ. This will help you to understand your salvation."
One or two of the events that Paul mentions are not part of our general Australian culture —but most of us have read enough books, seen enough documentaries, and rubbed shoulders with enough ethnic groups here and overseas, that we can imagine well enough the scenes which Paul evokes.
Paul uses analogies drawn from circumcision (Rom 2:25-29, 4:11), burial (Rom 6:3-4), birth (Rom 6:4), liberation (Rom 6:17,22), marriage (Rom 7:2-4), divorce (Rom 7:2-4), adoption (Rom 8:14-16), and inheritance (Rom 8:17). We discuss these briefly in part 2 of this lesson.
Paul goes even further, and describes the chain of great events in plain language — six simple steps (see box) which Paul lays down in his letter to the Romans. This is just another way of expressing the same process that Paul has expressed in theological terms and in cultural metaphor.