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Paul Is Debtor
Text: “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise” (Rom. 1:14).
Scripture Reading: Romans 1:1 – 16
Introduction
This epistle quotes the Old Testament some 57 times, more than any other New Testament book. It repeatedly used key words-God 154 times, law 77 times, Christ 66 times, sin 45 times, Lord 44 times, and faith 40 times.
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1991). Romans. Chicago: Moody Press.
John Gibson Lockhart, in his famous biography of Sir Walter Scott, said, “He was making himself all the time, but he didn’t know what he was until the years were past.” And such it is with every life. We grow up never quite realizing the influences that shape us until we look back upon our lives from mature years. Paul wrote to the Romans, “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.” What are these influences that shaped the life of the apostle Paul?
I. History.
First of all, it was the influence of history. Paul said, “I am debtor to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians.”
Paul was indeed debtor to the Greeks. Paul and the whole world owes much to those Hellenists! Under Philip the Macedon, the Greek states were united. After his assassination in 336 BC, his son Alexander, only twenty years of age, set out to rule the world. He conquered Persia in 334, then Babylon and Syria, Arabia and Egypt. With his armies came the Greek language, culture, art, and philosophy.
Rome and its Caesars took up where the Greek conquerors left off. Rome extended the empire from the Caspian Sea to the Atlantic, from Britain to the Nile, from Hadrian’s Wall to the Euphrates. What would this mean to Paul and the spread of Christianity? It would mean peace and safety. There were Roman governors in every province. Paul’s Roman citizenship saved his life often. From end to end of the empire ran the Roman roads. Travel was easy though travelers were often in danger of robbers. The whole world was joined under one law and authority. Before this time the world was not ready to receive the missionary message of the gospel. Now, by a common language and in the safety and protection of the Romans, Paul could take to all the world the message of redemption. What were the other influences that made Paul the man he was?
A quick look at any newspaper or passing glance at a weekly news magazine reminds us that in our world most news is bad and seems to be getting worse. What is happening on a national and worldwide scale is simply the magnification of what is happening on an individual level. As personal problems, animosities, and fears increase, so do their counterparts in society at large.
Human beings are in the hold of a terrifying power that grips them at the very core of their being. Left unchecked, it pushes them to self-destruction in one form or another. That power is sin, which is always bad news.
Sin is bad news in every dimension. Among its consequences are four inevitable byproducts that guarantee misery and sorrow for a world taken captive. First, sin has selfishness at its heart
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1991). Romans (p. 1). Chicago: Moody Press.
II. The influence of the Hebrew home.
The Jewish dispersion among the nations began with the forcible deportations under the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser about seven hundred years before Christ. By the time of Alexander there were colonies of Jews in every major city of the Greek world. While Jesus was still a boy, there was born in a Jewish home of Tarsus a boy who was destined to make the city’s name famous for all time. Both of his parents were of pure Hebrew lineage and, though they were living outside the land, the Jewish heritage was strong in their home. On the eighth day, at his circumcision, he was named Saul. Hebrew would be his native tongue, but he would be fluent also in Greek and Aramaic.
Paul was born into a home of means. By birthright, he was a Roman. He would be trained in the rabbinic schools. In paternal sternness, Paul was taught the law and manners of Israel. At the age of five, he began to memorize the Torah by oral repetition. The teacher would recite a sentence and the class would repeat it in unison. In this way Paul memorized the Jewish law. He would carry the lesson in his heart. He would need no copy book.
The education of the Jewish child was essentially religious. No one who had learned the elemental lessons of life could talk contemptuously of his first reader or teacher. At age ten, the Hebrew lad began learning the Mishna, the oral law. Many and sundry were the interpretations of rabbis concerning the law. There were more than 613 of them, all to be memorized and practiced. At thirteen the boy was initiated into manhood. No longer did he have to sit with his mother behind the screen or in the balcony at the synagogue, but now with the men on the main floor. He was more responsible, and he would practice the law.
In these years at home, Paul would saturate his mind and heart with the Old Testament Scriptures. He would know by memory the life and the writings of the patriarchs and the prophets. He could sing the Psalms. This boyhood knowledge would in later years serve him well. In the Philippian jail, Paul would remember the songs of his youth. In his arguments with the Judaizers at Antioch, he would be able to quote the Scriptures from memory. In his recitation before the philosophers at Mars Hill, he would remember the teachings of his youth. In his defense before King Agrippa, he would use well the lessons of his boyhood.
III. A third influence.
At age seventeen Paul left home for college. He would study at the time’s most famous Jewish school, the school of Hillel at Jerusalem. The headmaster was the renowned Gamaliel. In Acts 22:3 Paul writes, “I am verily a man which am a Jew, born in Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, yet brought up in this city [Jerusalem] at the feet of Gamaliel, and taught according to the perfect manner of the law of our fathers.” Paul was not only a “good Jew,” but was also schooled at the headquarters. He studied religion and theology with the greatest teacher of his day. In fact, he was one of the most zealous pupils of Gamaliel, so in the Galatian letter he said, “I outstripped many of my classmates in my zeal for the tradition of our fathers.”
Like many of his colleagues, Paul joined an extremist group on his campus called the Pharisees. They rebelled against any liberal cosmopolitanism. They jealously guarded a dogmatic traditionalism. They believed that Jewish tradition contained all the truth and that any other teaching was apostate and heretical. Paul believed that the only hope for the salvation of his nation was in obedience to the law and traditions of his father. So he developed an intense prejudice against all that was not Jewish. To persecute heretics was to do God a favor. A part of his daily prayers was to recite, “I thank Thee that I am not as other men.” Paul was proud of his “goody-goodness.” He was contemptuous in his exclusiveness and meticulous in his ritual and worship.
Like all good Pharisees, Paul determined to win God’s favor by good works. He was taught to carefully keep all the laws and traditions of his fathers. What is wrong with this kind of religion? First of all, it is a religion of redemption by human efforts. It is a religion of legalism, of righteousness through works. In this kind of religion, people are thrown back to their own resources. The law summons people to ceaseless toil at the hope of pleasing God. They must battle the world, the flesh, and the devil in their own strength. They must build their own highway to heaven. But what happens then? The building becomes a Tower of Babel. It reaches nowhere near to God. It ends in shame and confusion. People cannot save themselves by their own efforts.
This was Paul’s great discovery after he knew the gospel of God’s grace through Jesus Christ. In defense of this gospel, he later wrote, “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8 – 9). Paul discovered what Peter declared at the Jerusalem council recorded in Acts 15:10, the righteousness of the law is “a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear.” Paul was writing from personal experience when he said in his letter to the Galatians (2:16), “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.”
Many today, like Paul the Pharisee, are laboring for a righteousness which is in the law. They will never find it. Paul could not. For all his straight-laced righteousness, he cried out, “Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this bondage of death?” (Rom. 7:24). His outward life was exemplary, but his soul was torn by mortal strife. Like the young man who came to Jesus, Paul could say, “All these things have I kept from my youth up, what lack I yet?”
There was something else wrong with Paul’s religion. It was a legalism of negatives. The religion of Paul kept saying, “Thou shalt not.” The negative became the foundation stone of his creed. This indeed is burdensome. It is a religion that never sings or exalts. It is a dead weight that the soul must carry. It hounded and haunted the heart with its commands, “You must have proper meat, a proper drink, a proper bread.” It talked about a certain length to the border of the robe and a certain number of tassels on it. There was always the legalism of straining the wine so that not even the hair on the third left leg of the fly would defile. It speaks about tithing the stalk and the leaf as well as the fruit. It commands a counting out of just so many steps for a Sabbath day’s journey. One great rabbi spent all week writing down what he must not do in order to keep the Sabbath.
This yoke of legalism can never bring the peace of God to the heart of man. One of two things results — either there is a spirit of self-righteousness or of despair. For Paul it was the latter. The religion of his youth became a religion of utter despair. No Jew was so ardent, no Pharisee so punctilious, no rabbi so untiring in keeping the law as was the apostle Paul. He did not lie when he told the Philippians, “As touching the righteousness which is in the law, I am blameless.” Yet for all of this there was something wrong. For all of this Paul’s soul was restless. What was the matter? Paul tells us in Romans 7:18 – 25. Then again in 8:3 he says that what the law could not do, God sending his own Son could do.
There was only one thing left for Paul. That was to meet Jesus, God’s gift of grace. Paul must change his religion of works for a religion of grace. So it is for many of you. You will never be happy and you will never have peace in your religion of works. It is a yoke of legalism. The law may point to the way of righteousness, but it can never give power to walk in it. Paul discovered that the only way to peace of heart and happy living was through surrender to Jesus, who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6). There was one thing left for Paul: He must have an encounter with Jesus Christ.
