The Wednesday Bible study group focused on Romans 10. Paul there talks about hearing the Gospel and responding to it in faith.
Some items:
A. The pastor gave a biblical history of the priority, nature, and
authority of God’s word for the people of God. In Genesis, God speaks
directly to people, though he sometimes communicates through dreams. The
sacrificial system was then set up, and God promised to meet God’s
people at a sanctuary: the Tabernacle and, later, the Jerusalem Temple.
There, people would receive forgiveness of sins from God. After King
Jeroboam in Northern Israel set up alternative sanctuaries at Dan and
Bethel, God communicated with the Northern Kingdom through prophets,
since God did not recognize Jeroboam’s sanctuaries. In the South, the
sanctuary was the primary place where people met God, but there were
still some prophets, including the official prophets in the king’s
court. With the destruction of the Temple in 587 B.C.E., Judahites
wondered how they would meet God. They could offer their own sacrifices
in their backyard, but there was no divine guarantee that God would
recognize or accept those sacrifices, meet them at those sacrifices, and
forgive their sins. In the Babylonian exile, the view emerged that God
meets people through God’s word, and synagogues and places of biblical
exposition were created. Because the Israelites did not want to bring
divine wrath upon themselves again, they shifted from seeing the Torah
primarily as God’s divine self-revelation, to seeing it largely as God’s
rules for them to follow.
B. Paul in Romans is trying to demonstrate that his Gospel is
consistent with the Old Testament. In Romans 4, Paul argues that his
Gospel that one becomes righteous before God by faith, not works,
accords with the example of Abraham. In Romans 10, Paul demonstrates
that his Gospel is consistent with Moses, another founding father of
ancient Israel. In Deuteronomy 30:11-14, Moses makes a point to the
Israelites about the nearness and accessibility of God’s commandment.
The Israelites do not have to search for it in heaven or across the sea,
for the commandment is near them, in their mouth and in their heart to
do it. Paul applies what Moses says about God’s commandment to the
Gospel. People need not go to heaven or to the underworld to hear it,
for Christ himself came from heaven and revealed God’s word in the
incarnation, and Christ went to the underworld and rose from the dead.
The proclaimed word of God creates faith in the hearer and penetrates
deeply into that person’s innards, such that it influences his
confession, profession, and life.
C. Was Paul misapplying Deuteronomy 30:11-14 by applying it to the
Gospel, when it originally was about God’s commandment? The pastor
seemed to address this in two ways. First, he interpreted the
commandment in Deuteronomy 30:11-14 as God’s broader revelation in the
Torah. What is said about the commandment can apply to God’s other words
in the revelation. Second, Jesus is the fulfillment of the
commandments, in that Jesus did the law on our behalf, died to pay the
penalty for our transgression of the law, and rose from the dead,
demonstrating the Father’s acceptance of his sacrifice. What is said
about the commandment is applicable to the Gospel, which concerns
Christ’s fulfillment of the commandment.
D. The pastor was asked about the soul, and he replied that the soul
in the New Testament is not so much a sentient spook inside the shell of
a body but is the breath of life. The physical is important. This makes
some sense, since I Corinthians 15 contrasts the present human body
animated by the soul with the glorified resurrected body animated by
God’s spirit. The soul there does not appear to be a person’s inward
person, for would not a resurrected body have that as well? At the same
time, what the pastor said raises a question in my mind. What about the
intermediate state, between death and the final resurrection? Are there
disembodied souls in the intermediate state? In that case, the soul
would appear to be a person’s inward person, not merely the breath that
gives life to the physical body.