Transcript
CRAWFORD: Our guest this morning in worship is the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley, California. He is himself a Golden Bear, having come from the University of California to Princeton Seminary, from which he was graduated in 1956. Mr. Palmer has served as a minister at the University Presbyterian Church
in Seattle, Washington, as pastor in Manila, in the Philippines of the Union Church, and in our midst today are some of our brethren who knew him there where he also taught at the theological seminary. He then returned to a different Berkeley than
the one he had as a student. He is a trustee of Princeton Seminary but I know him too well to call him distinguished. I'd much rather call him beloved friend, exciting companion, valued preacher,
and very helpful counselor. If I had a wand, I would knight him, but he's already an Earl and if I were to express in words my appreciation for the way in which he combines passionate scholarship with loving care, I could come up with no better
word than that he is an exceedingly frank man but that's his middle name. So, there's no gift that I can bring to Earl Palmer that he has not received, but he brings many to us and we are grateful that he is here and will be here throughout today and tomorrow morning. This afternoon, in the main lounge of the Campus Center, at 1:30, he will bring a Bible study in a very informal
setting, and tonight at supper time he will be with the residents of the Princeton Windsor Campus, and then at 10 o'clock tonight, he will be in Erdman Hall at their Wednesday night Bible study. After the singing of the anthem, the Reverend Earl Palmer will bring our morning message.
(music)
PALMER: The seminary has put up with Dave Crawford for a long time. I appreciate some of the things you said, Dave, very much. I don't have to tell you it's a great honor to be here at Princeton and to speak in this chapel and speak from this tremendous pulpit.
I take it very seriously. I want to present to you this morning and then also in a more informal setting this afternoon two studies in the "Book of Romans." As you know, "Romans" begins with a preamble. It's really the only letter of Paul's that has a sort of opening thesis statement. It's his most thoughtful
letter. It's the letter he writes with the greatest care and that thesis sentence comes in the 16th and 17th verses, very famous verses or sentences from the Apostle Paul. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it the righteousness of God is revealed, breaks forth, literally, through faith,
for faith." It's probably a play on words, a play on the word "faith." As you know in the Old Testament, the word "faith" or "amen" means "faithfulness," so it might -- Paul might be implying through faithfulness, the faithfulness of God, for faith, our response, "As it is written." Here, he quotes the prophet Habakkuk, "He who through faith is righteous shall live." The just shall live by faith. This is a complete thesis sentence. It has a -- even a rabbinic proof text at the end.
It seems to me that the whole letter of "Romans" can be seen as Paul's commentary on this thesis sentence. He is going to endeavor to defend it. In effect, in this sentence, he says, "I am not embarrassed about the gospel," or, to put it positively, "I respect the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the power of God for salvation for the whole world." Now, that's a pretty hefty thesis and Paul
devotes the entire book to a defense of that thesis. It's more like an offense than a defense but that's what the "Book of Romans" really is. As I see it, there are five main parts to the "Book of Romans." Part 1, Verse 18, the very next sentence through Chapter 3:20 I'm going to call "the prosecution section." Paul is no fumbling prosecutor like Perry Mason meets every day in some TV station around the world but
who never wins a case. They ought to at least have the prosecutor win one case in "Perry Mason" to make it honest. But, Paul is a far better prosecutor and the opening section of this letter of "Romans" is a prosecution. Paul strides back and forth in some great, universal courtroom, charging that everyone is guilty. It has a sort of building crescendo in that opening part one. He starts with "they;" "They have no excuse," or "They are guilty." Then, he says, "You, Jews, are no better off.
No, you are guilty, whoever judge anybody else." Then, finally, "We -- we Jews are no better off." Then, in one, poignant sentence, he says, "I -- why am I condemned?" That's part one. Then, almost in the middle of a sentence, Paul breaks, in the third chapter, into the defense, strides across the courtroom, switches mantles, shoves Perry off the chair, and becomes the defense attorney. That's the great section portion of the "Book of Romans," Chapter 3:21 through Chapter 5; magnificent.
In this afternoon session, I'd like to work with that second courtroom scene, the great defense. "But, now, the righteousness of God has been revealed, apart from the law, though the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ." Then, in Chapters Six, Seven, and Eight, I don't need to tell you all this but I've got it in my notes I wrote before you -- in Chapters Six, Seven, and Eight, Paul, it seems to me, gives a portrayal of the Christian
life. Then, in Chapters 9, 10, and 11, he grapples -- it's the only place really in the New Testament where you have this serious grappling with the relationship of Israel -- old Israel -- Israel and disobedience, with Israel, the Church, the new Israel. Then, finally, in Chapters 12 through 16, Paul spells out the implications, almost, you can say of that last part when Paul is saying, "If it's all true, what difference does it make?"
and that's the 5th part, except for Chapter 16 which is the New York phone directory where Paul shows, in some list of 35 names, how many people he knows at Rome. It gives you one hint as to the mobility of the early Church. I want to talk to you this morning about the first part, the hardest part. In the first part of "Romans," Chapter 1:18 through 3:20, I'd like to talk about that this morning. Paul is this
courtroom prosecutor, stalking back and forth, pointing his bony finger -- in, at least, Rembrandt's painting, he has a bony finger -- pointing it from person to person, drawing a net, endeavoring to compound our guilt, trying to make us feel guilty, to prepare us for part two. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his letter to Eberhard Bethge says, at one point, "I've been reading the Old Testament a lot lately," and he says, "You know,
I've come to realize that you cannot hear the last word until you've heard the next to the last word," and that's what Paul feels, too. He starts the "Book of Romans" with the next to the last word so that we can really hear the last word, and that's part one of this book. It's negative. It's brooding. The strokes are hostile for this reason, I think; in the Victorian era, the "Book of Romans" was not very popular. I just spent the summer reading every commentary I could get my
hands on in "Romans," and the 19th century commentaries are very embarrassed about this opening section. In the 20th century, it's a different story. We've all seen "A Clockwork Orange." We're not so embarrassed. We're now ready to consider this finger of prosecution in a whole lot -- a different ballgame today than in the 19th century when everything was so optimistic and getting so cozy. The Titanic sank and that ended the Victorian era,
then, World War I, then the "Roaring '20s," but underneath the "Roaring '20s," haunting famine, poverty among the underdeveloped nations and among even farmers in this country, then the Depression, then World War II, then the Cold War, then insurrection movements, then the "Reign of Terror," the [Pax Terrora?]. These are new days and man is a whole lot more willing to consider the prosecution of the Apostle Paul
in the "Romans", part one, than he ever was, perhaps, before in the history of western civilization. All right, what does Paul teach in this opening section? As I see it, there are three main lines of thought that Paul develops. The first is that he seeks to describe the origin of the crisis. Secondly, he shows the cumulative nature of the crisis, and thirdly,
he points up the failure of every solution on our part to solve the crisis. That's Paul, the prosecutor, and if you don't feel guilty after he gets finished with this section, we haven't heard him because Paul really makes me feel guilty when I read this section. He is a masterful prosecutor. Günter Bornkamm says that this is not so much an argument
as an accusation and that's the way Paul decides to begin his book. I'd like to trace through those three lines of thought if I can this morning. First, the origin of the crisis and, for that, let's turn to the text. This is Verse 18. There's a play on words. He started in his great thesis sentence, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel for in it the righteousness of God breaks forth," and he'll start part two with repeating or repetition
of that sentence. "But, now, the righteousness of God breaks forth." Verse 18 starts with a repetition of that sort of line. "But, now, the wrath of God breaks forth," and that's our signal that this is to be a prosecution that Paul is going to level at us. Listen to the words. I'd like to interpret them. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of man, who by their wickedness suppress the truth," for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation
of the world, His invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So, they're without excuse. See, this is an accusation he's making; not so much an argument. It's an accusation. He is calling us guilty. He's calling us into accountability. Here, in a reverse sort of sense, we get the doctrine of the freedom of man, taught from -- with negative lines. Ever since the creation of the world, His invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in all the things that have been
made, so they're without excuse for, although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him but they became feudal in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. I told you it was hostile. It really is. Claiming -- and notice it's in the vague, which makes it all the more hostile -- claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, animals, or reptiles. Then, he summarized. There are
three little summaries here at the beginning of this section. "Therefore, God gave them up to the lust of their hearts, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves," and then here's his important sentence. "Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie," in other words, man was swindled, Paul says, "and worshipped and served the preacher rather than the Creator who is blessed forever, Amen." Well, that's his opening thesis. What's
he trying to say? For Paul, the origin of the human crisis consists in the breakdown or the distortion of the essential relationships of the human person. Paul decides to portray the human crisis on human scale. Mankind's crisis, for Paul, is seen in human terms and that crisis, he sees it, is the breakdown or the distortion of the essential relationships of man.
Now, in this part, we have the first essential relationship that Paul chooses to describe. Paul's bias is that man -- you and I -- get the meaning for our life by our relationship with God, the Creator. It's the Creator's relationship with us that gives us our true humanity and is the essential relationship for our lives. When that relationship is distorted or broken, and Paul's analysis is that when we break that relationship, we establish idols. We shift. In
this sense, we exchange. There is an exchange that takes place and we worship no gods; images resembling man, birds, animals, snakes. Paul says that when that swindle occurs or that exchange occurs, this is the nature of -- this is the crisis. It's almost like a commentary on Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel portrayal of the Creation. He has man magnificently painted in the Sistine Chapel. Some critics have maintained it's the finest painting of man there is;
a matchless human creature. Yet, he's knowingly incomplete. Michelangelo's man has his hand above his head, sweeping the sky and, of course, the other half of the painting is Almighty God, touching him. There's a gap between man and God. But, Michelangelo is teaching us in that painting that man becomes fully human when God touches him. In other words, without his Creator, without a relationship with the one who made him, man is not fully human. Paul's teaching that. But, he's not
finished in this analysis of the origin of the crisis. The origin of the crisis is the breakdown or distortion of man's essential relationships, not only with God but with himself and with his neighbor. I suppose in Paul's anthropology here, there are three basic relationships with the human personality; his relationship with God, the Creator, with his neighbor, and with himself. Paul's argument proceeds this way. He teaches us here that when the relationship with God is distorted or broken, then man --
the first result is that man loses understanding of who he is himself, and for that purpose, Paul -- the only place in all of Paul's literature where he discussed homosexuality, it's interesting, is in this passage. He decides, long before Freud ever thought that the -- you know, Freud taught, really, that the sexual resolution of a person's life was the basic clue to understanding their personhood. Well, Paul is doing the same thing. I don't think he's singly out homosexuality as if it were the worst of all possible sins. Oh,
no, he's got far worse sins he's going to point out later. But, what he's using homosexuality for in this next paragraph, it seems to me, anyway, is to show that when man loses his relationship with God, he loses the sense of his own identity and whatever else homosexuality is, it really is most of all not so much a sin as an identity crisis. That's what it really is and Paul is saying that when men exchange or women exchange their relationship with God, they lose a
sense of their own identity. There is a confusion of identity. That's how I interpret that next, very difficult paragraph where Paul says, "For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions." Literally, this is the Greek description to describe homosexuality. "Their women exchange natural relations for unnatural. Men, likewise, gave up natural relations with women, were consumed with passion for one another." This is what he's talking about; a confusion that occurs
when I lose my relationship with God. In other words, for him it's sort of a symbol that when the upward vertical is distorted or confused or broken, the first result is that man loses his own self-identity. But, that's not all. Paul has a third relationship which the next paragraph goes into with a great deal of detail. He loves these lists and Paul decides here, instead of saying "And, as a result of this, men became," not homosexuality, "but as a result of this break with God," and he reviews his
whole thesis to make that clear. We became corrosive or wicked toward others. Paul decides to make it a little more detailed than that. He gives us a long list. I think the reason is that he wants to draw the net and catch us somewhere. I'll read that passage, too; Verse 28. "Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God," see, he recounts the whole thesis, "God gave them up to a base mind and improper conduct. They were filled with all manner of wickedness." Now,
he has a list of sins that are interpersonal, of sins that have to do with the neighbor; that essential, horizontal relationship in life. Here's the list. You've heard it. "Filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity, their gossip, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents." He's now throwing everything in it. He decides --
this next section, he decides to be poetic and has a few words that all have the same sound to them; "Foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless." That was clever and further pulls the net in. Then, of course, the last rung of his ladder -- "Though they know God's decree," again, regathering his original thesis, "Though they know God's decree, those who do such things deserve to die." They not only do them but they approve those who practice them.
That's Paul's opening line of thought. Paul, first of all, is concerned to describe the origin of the crisis, and for him, the origin of the crisis is the breakdown, distortion of these three relationships. Paul is teaching, as I see it, that when man loses his vertical relationship, it will inevitably affect the other two relationships of his life, and I suppose you could work in a reverse fashion with Paul, too. When the horizontal relationship is distorted or confused with my neighbor, it will inevitably
affect the vertical relationship with God. You can work this argument of Paul's in all directions. When I'm confused inwardly, it will affect the way I relate to my neighbor. When I don't know who I am, my neighbor loses his meaning to me. This is his argument. It is stated not so much argumentatively as in accusative fashion. It's his anthropology. That's the origin of the crisis. But, Paul has more to say than that. He is saying this -- that the tragedy
of man for Paul is compounded in the fact that this crisis is cumulative in nature. That is to say, for Paul, the origin of the crisis may be the breakdown of relationship, but for him, the crisis itself cumulates by nature. Pascal has a sentence in the "Pensées" that -- where he says, "Nothing stays put for man." Nothing stays for us and that really is what Paul also sketches in in this passage.
Our sins cumulate in nature. They build on us and our idols deteriorate. We've already read that passage of the sins. You can see a kind of progression. It starts with the description of wickedness and all but it ends with not only sins that are perpetrated against a neighbor but he even says, "Yet, those who do these sins approve of them." That's a kind of moral
evil that's even worse than just the sin itself. So, the sins tend to cumulate. This is the way it always is in our lives. It's true of the history of man. There's a cumulating effect in what we do that's wrong. A person starts just to sort of clear the air and tell a little story about somebody else. It may be a kind of innocent gossip but by the time it comes back to him and he hears it
and sees what's happened to another person's life, it has cumulated. We've seen this in the 20th century escapades of modern man. What we thought was a police action ends up with a kind of runaway brutality that we never expected. We never intended to have it go to that extent. Yet, the tragedy of man from Pascal's statement is that nothing stays for us. It cumulates and that's what Paul's teaching here. The sins cumulate.
The idols deteriorate, too. It's interesting that he has this very little list of idols. He said, "When man did not worship God, he chose to worship something else," and he gives man credit. "If you're not going to worship God, the best thing to worship would be man." Paul says, though, that when I worship man, no human being can bear the weight of worship. If I worship somebody else, they -- finally, I would discover they have clay feet. If I worship the movement, some cause which is really made up of people, finally, I realize
the frailties within that movement. If I try to get meaning from my life from the worship of something other than Almighty God, Paul is saying, it will deteriorate on me. My idols give way. That's been the history of man, too. I worship another human being. He lets me down so I shift. Paul says we shift to the bird. Every culture, through the history of man, has worshipped the eagle or the condor at one time or another. But, the eagle, the dove, whatever bird I choose finally gives way.
Then, I worship, he says, the animals. Think of Diana, the goddess of the Ephesians. You think of the great bulls in Egypt that were worshipped. That was a big letdown when I went to Cairo a few years ago to see that most of those pyramids outside of Cairo were built for bulls and cows; not even men. The worship of animals -- it finally gives way, and the irony of this list is the last idol on the list. Paul says that when I worship something other than God, my idols
will deteriorate on me and I finally end up worshipping what I fear, and I think that's the significance of the snake -- the serpent. Man ends up worshipping what he fears. He worships what he hates. He never intended to but when he finally analyzes the cause that he gave his life to, he finds himself doing things that would never have won him to the movement in the first place; his movement, his cause, his idol deteriorating. That's
also in Paul's analysis. Our crisis cumulates. Our sin builds. But, still more, Paul reminds us what we already know. He reminds us that our own solutions have miserably failed us. Every solution that we choose lets us down. Our own culture right now is using up -- I heard a
speech the other day by Margaret Mead where she was commenting. She was commenting that our culture uses up solutions about once every 12 months. They're all in about 12-month cycles. I live in Berkeley and this is one of the standard phenomena we live with in our own South Campus culture. Movements have about a one year span. It takes about a month for somebody to get the idea. You get out your first PR release. "Time"
magazine does a cover story on it and then it's dead the next month. The electronic media age allows this rapid build-up of an idea, a panacea, a motif. It has its moment and it falls away fast. Idols only confuse us. Paul says that when we worship anything other than God, though that idol makes all kinds of claims to help us, yet it ends with --
it ends by confusing who we are. He even goes further. In the second and third chapters, Paul, in a very intricate argument, makes the point that even the Old Testament law which was meant to bring us to the Messiah cannot itself be the Messiah. So, even for the Jew of which he's one, the law itself is unable to be the solution for man. For Paul, the law is a boundary. It's a mirror. It helps us to understand. It does bring us.
It's the next to the last word but it is not the last word. It brings us to ourselves and to God but it is not the Messiah. It bears witness to the Messiah. So, even the law cannot resolve the crisis. We have a cumulating crisis and Paul, in this opening prosecution section, points up the breakdown in the failure of solution after solution. I want to illustrate, if I can, with an original parable that just
might help. Supposing there were four of you on a ship -- you were on your way to Southampton. You got out of New York and there is an enemy on board. You didn't know about it. But, he comes up to you and says, "I'd like to take your picture." The four of you are standing there. You don't know that he's removed the railing on the ship. This is a terrifying illustration. You don't know that he's removed the railing. He's put margarine on the deck.
You're standing there and he says, "Just step back a little bit further. You're not quite in focus," you know. It's an old Red Skelton clown act. He's got a tremendous act on this. You step back a little further. Finally, you fall in the water. Now, this is where I want to examine your position philosophically. There are four of you now in the water and, at that point, instead -- now you really know the guy's an enemy because he -- instead of ringing the passenger overboard alarm he goes and he puts the railing back and joins the buffet line
and forgets that -- nobody knows you're in the water. The ship is going off in the distance. All right, I just want to examine one question. Now that you're in the water, the four of you, we know some things that won't help you. I just want to examine what won't help you because that's what Paul, really, it seems to me, poses that kind of crisis for us in this opening section. We know what won't help. Your idols won't help. If you had a little statue of Diana, you know, you were
so glad while I was having my picture taken that I was holding my Diana statue. It's 38 pounds but I'm so glad I've got it. You drop it in the water and the four of you -- after a little while, you realize that statue is of very little value. There are a lot of Old Testament -- cynical Old Testament passages to this extent where the people who worship idols are mocked. They say, "Let your idols speak to you." It can't speak to you. It's static. You see, the problem you have is a cumulative problem. Let's look at some of the cumulative
nature of it. You've got ice-cold water. You've got sharks. I don't know about sharks out in the Atlantic but there probably are some; whales, certainly -- mean ones. You have icebergs. Your own energy is sapping away. You have a -- the ship is getting further and further away. You have a cumulative crisis and the idol is a static solution for a cumulating crisis. So, it's of no help. So, we know that won't help. Paul
mocks our idols. He says we worship man, birds, animals, reptiles, even the things we fear. Supposing you decide I'm not going to worship Diana anymore. I'm going to worship the ocean and it will gobble you up. It is a static solution for a cumulating crisis. Another solution that won't work that Paul also copes with in this opening prosecution is a sense of moral superiority. You know, I can just see one of the four saying, "You know, Joe, it was your vanity.
You wanted our picture taken. I didn't want it in the first place. I don't like pictures and you said, 'Come on. Let's have our picture taken.' You're so vain and now look at the situation we're in." All right, so, you get a sense of moral superiority. I'm not as guilty as Joe or somebody else who happens to be in the group that got us there on the edge of the deck. It's your so-called friend who wanted to take our picture. The moral superiority argument that one person is better than another person is
overshadowed by the immensity of the crisis. This is Paul's teaching in this whole section. Paul's teaching that the crisis is so immense, it's so wholescale that for one person to claim a kind of superiority over another person or for one person to say that he's not as guilty as another person is foolish. It's a static solution. It doesn't cope with the immensity of a cumulating crisis.
Of course, the last thing that won't help is the fact that one is a stronger swimmer than the other. You know, one guy's been going to the YMCA and he says to the other three, "Well, I'm glad I've been working out. You fellows are sorry now. I tried to get you down there. You wouldn't come. It's too bad for you. I will give you one piece of advice as I swim off. Sidestroke is best for long-distance swimming. He gives a little advice, you know, because of his experience with the law, and he's mastered
his ability to swim. But, again, this is facetious because 1000 miles to swim to Southampton or, I guess, Ireland, wherever is the closest point, Iceland, with all of this cumulating crisis in front of you, this -- the immensity of the crisis overshadows the performance in the law and this is what Paul is teaching in "Romans" 3. He says, "I put it down that all men are guilty before the law." There is none that is
righteous -- no, not one. Then, he gives a list of about seven proof texts from the Old Testament to try to seal that point with his Jewish audience. No, the crisis is cumulating. It's a dynamic crisis; therefore, the solution must be dynamic. It cannot be static. We need a solution for the human crisis that can outdistance the problem. If the problem is building, then we need a solution that can outdistance, that can outrun a building problem, a cumulating
crisis. We know some things that won't work. Our idols will not work. They're static, whatever else we say of them. Our ability with the law -- it won't work. It's static. The law is a line that actually, Paul says, further cumulates our guilt. Listen to Paul in the fifth chapter. He has something to say to this. "Law came in," Verse 20 of the fifth chapter, "to increase the trespass.
But, where sin increased, grace increased all the more." Sin cumulates. That's Paul's argument in the prosecution. But, where sin cumulated, the grace of God is able to outdistance our sin and that's our only hope.
That's the power of the gospel. What is that grace that is able to outdistance my sin, your sins, the sins of our generation, the crisis of mankind? It's not static. It's a moving point. It's a person for a problem. In the Bible study this
afternoon, I'd like to work with that second great part of the "Book of Romans." But, where sin increased, Paul says, the grace of God was able to outdistance it, and that's the gospel. Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We thank Thee for its power that it is able
to outdistance our sins. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.