Roman Reflections III: The Biggie

So far I've made two reflections on the Romans. The previous reflection was somewhat illicit in that I seemed to have got hooked up on one word in amid the bustle of Holy Week. I hope that's forgivable.

Howver, I suppose the big issue that results from Romans is the whole idea of Justification and the ructions that it brings out in Protestants. However I don't seem to be able to find this issue at all in the Epistle to the Romans.

What I principally see is St Paul making a very important observation. As human beings we are bean counters: we count every bean that comes in, and every bean that comes out. Following Newton's third law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If we do work, then we expect a reward, after all Holy Scripture does say that the worker deserves his wages.

So here then is St Paul's beef against the materialistic bean counters. We cannot go through life with the attitude that God owes us something. We cannot assume that we in any way deserve a reward for what we do for the simple reason that we are comparing the finite and coarse effects of our actions against the infinite and exacting specifics of our Divine Master.

Ours is not a worker-employer relationship with God, we cannot talk about earnings and wages. It is a slave-master relationship in which we realise that somehow we've ended up with a master who actually wishes us a great deal of love and respect. We cannot any longer talk of justification in terms of debt or reward or of rights, but only as a grace of God. If we live measuring everything in terms of credit-debit, loss-gain, earnings-owings, then that is precisely how we will be judged. The relationship with God, and with each other, has to be one of love, respect and acceptance.

This means that our justification does not come without our cooperation otherwise there is no such thing as free will and subsequently no love. We are slaves with the interesting position in that we choose our master. This position comes entirely from the desire of God for us to love Him as He is. Our chief sin is putting ourselves in the master position - self-worship. To whomsoever we give our allegience as master, we will be with that master for Eternity - where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

We do have to cooperate for our justification. Romans viii. 1 says "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." We need to be walking, exercising ourselves into the ways and means of Christ, finding Him out for ourselves, seeing Him in the others around us, fixing our heart on Him and allowing them to be opened. If we want to be saved, then we need to know the Saviour. This requires research and effort. In order to receive the Sacrament we need to find out where it is and walk to it, our hands outstretched, our mouths open in the full hope of the love of God. Are we going to be, as it says in Proverbs, so lazy that we do not put the food into our own mouths?