Ted Grimsrud—March 7, 2022
More than a treatise on doctrine or a discussion preoccupied with the Christian religion and the Jewish religion, the book of Romans is a presentation focused on faithful living. And for Paul, faithful living meant embodying the way of Jesus. As I discussed in the first of this long series of posts working through the teaching of Romans, Paul begins Romans by setting up a contrast between the gospel of God as presented by Jesus and what we could call the “gospel” of the Roman Empire.
In the second half of chapter 1 of the book of Romans, Paul provides an analysis of the domination dynamics of the great nations of the world, which are the dynamics of idolatry that refuses to express gratitude to the Creator but instead puts trust in human creations (including empires and emperors). In trusting in creatures rather than the Creator, human societies inevitably ground their priorities in exploitation rather than gratitude and evolve toward injustice and violence. Without stating it explicitly, Paul seems clearly to evoke the awareness his readers in Rome would have of the particular injustices and violence of their city’s leadership class.
The gospel of God vs. the gospel of Caesar
As we continue to the following chapters of Romans, we will see that Paul’s focus in the book as a whole is not on a critique of Empire but on developing his alternative gospel. If the Empire’s gospel is a one of death, what does a gospel of life look like? If the Empire’s way of life leads to injustice, what is an alternative way of life that leads to justice?
Thinking Pacifism 