19
Additional Comments on the Concluding Material
Romans 15:14–16:27
Outline
- Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles (15:14–33)
- A Diverse Community (16:1–23)
- Glory to God! (16:25–27)
Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to
- Describe Paul’s special sense of calling and apostolic ministry and relate them to the purpose of Romans.
- Understand the purpose and significance of the greetings in Romans 16:1–16.
- Appreciate the significance of Paul’s references to women in Romans 16 for the ongoing debate about women in ministry.
Readers tend to lose concentration when they come to Romans 15:14. Here Paul starts talking about the specifics of the letter: why he has written, what his travel plans are, greetings to various individuals. None of this seems very relevant to contemporary Christians. We have already dealt with much of this material in the two introductory chapters. We have seen that the specifics Paul gives in the concluding part of the letter are valuable for understanding the occasion and purpose of Romans. Our purpose here, then, is simply to touch on several passages and issues that we did not pay attention to in those earlier chapters. As we do so, I hope to show that the material in this part of Romans does have something to teach us.
Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles (15:14–33)
Paul’s discussion of his ministry and travels falls into two temporal categories: his past ministry (vv. 14–22) and his future plans (vv. 23–33). In chapter 2, we surveyed these plans and estimated their significance for the occasion of the letter, but we did not look at what Paul says about his own ministry. Paul is concerned, at least briefly, to establish his credentials. He must have a good reason for addressing the Roman Christians as “boldly” as he does (to use his own word), and he makes clear that it is because of a special manifestation of God’s grace that he can do so (v. 15). As Paul emphasizes in Galatians 1:1–7, his ministry is not the result of human appointment or self-advancement. God himself, through his Son, chose Paul to be an apostle—and to be a special apostle. God prepared and selected Paul to be the one through whom the gospel would be brought to the gentiles. Much of Romans focuses on the way God has planned salvation history to include gentiles ultimately in the people of God. Paul is the perfect person to write about this, because he was the one God used to accomplish much of his purpose with the gentiles. As Paul puts it in verse 16, he was given “the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” The priestly allusions in this verse are striking. Paul, of course, is not claiming to be a priest. He is simply using the language of the priesthood to make his point. He portrays himself as the one offering up the gentiles as a sacrifice to God, and he suggests that he is fulfilling scriptural prophecies in this ministry. Verse 16 alludes to two Old Testament texts. The last phrase, “sanctified by the Holy Spirit,” alludes to Ezekiel’s prophecy that God will sanctify his name among the gentiles in the last days (Ezek. 36:22–28).1 And the reference to the gentiles as a sacrifice recalls Isaiah 66:20: “And they will bring all your people, from all the nations, to my holy mountain in Jerusalem as an offering to the LORD.”2 Paul therefore sees his own ministry as a fulfillment of prophecies about the last days. Contributing to this emphasis on the unique significance of his own ministry is Paul’s allusion to the “signs and wonders” that accompanied his ministry to the gentiles (v. 19). This language is especially prominent in Old Testament descriptions of the exodus (e.g., Exod. 7:3, 9; 11:9–10; Deut. 4:34; Ps. 78:43) and in the book of Acts (e.g., 2:22, 43; 4:30; 5:12; 14:3; 15:12). Once again, the special place that Paul’s ministry occupies in salvation history is accentuated.
As Paul writes to the Roman Christians, therefore, he writes from the consciousness of an authority that few others could claim. He is not simply an apostle but “the apostle to the Gentiles.” Despite the fact that he has not founded the church in Rome or ever visited it (cf. vv. 20–22), Paul has every right to address the Roman Christians “quite boldly” (v. 15). And, of course, it is this same authority, under the inspiration of God, that gives Romans its special importance yet today.
In verses 19b–22, Paul briefly describes how his apostolic authority, exercised in the power of the Spirit, has enabled him to plant churches throughout the eastern Mediterranean. But his gaze has now turned to the west. After delivering the collection to the saints in Jerusalem, Paul plans to initiate a new evangelistic enterprise in Spain. On his way to Spain, Paul intends to stop off in Rome to enlist the aid of the Roman Christians in this new enterprise (vv. 23–29). As we noted in chapter 2, Paul viewed the collection for the Jerusalem Christians as a significant step toward Christian unity. He therefore asks the Romans to pray that he, and his collection, might be received favorably in Jerusalem (vv. 30–33).
Mosaic map of Jerusalem, the earliest depiction of the city
A Diverse Community (16:1–23)
Most of the matters that Paul touches on here are ones that Paul typically mentions at the end of his letters:
commendation of a Christian fellow worker (vv. 1–2)
greetings to Christians in Rome (vv. 3–15)
exhortation to greet one another (v. 16a)
conveyance of greetings from other Christians (v. 16b)
warning about false teachers (vv. 17–19)
eschatological promise and grace word (v. 20)
greetings from fellow workers (vv. 21–23)
But two of them are a bit unusual. First, Paul does not normally break into a tirade against false teachers in the midst of his closing remarks (vv. 17–19). We cannot be sure why he does so here. Perhaps he has a last-minute qualm about these teachers and wants to make sure that he gets in a word of warning before he closes. We cannot know who these teachers were or even what their agenda was, but Paul makes clear that they were typical of false teachers in creating divisions and distracting Christians from their true purpose. Second, while Paul often greets people in the conclusions of his letters, he never elsewhere comes even close to greeting as many people as he does here in Romans 16. What leads him to do so in this letter? He probably has two reasons. First, Paul has never been to Rome. He does not know all the Christians there but knows only some of them—people he has met in the course of his ministry in the eastern Mediterranean. So he is able to single out those believers for special mention. And the reason he has encountered so many is that the Roman emperor Claudius had expelled all the Jews, including Jewish-Christians, from Rome in AD 49 (see chap. 1, above). Second, Paul greets as many Christians as he can think of in Rome to establish common ground with the church. Writing to a church that he did not found and has never visited, he wants to make clear that many of the believers there already know and trust him.3
Ruins of a temple in the Roman forum
What are Christians who read Romans today supposed to learn from these seemingly irrelevant epistolary conventions and greetings? How is this part of God’s word profitable to the believer? I offer no definitive answer to this question. But one of the things we learn indirectly from these verses is that the early Christian community was very diverse. In Paul’s day, as in ours, people tended to gather with people who were like themselves. Greek men went with other Greek men to the gymnasium; Jews gathered at the synagogue, men together and women together. But the church, as far as we can tell from passages like this one, was quite a mixture of men and women from different ethnic backgrounds. Two aspects of this diversity are suggested in Romans 16.
First, the church in Rome seems to have been diverse ethnically and socially. We can surmise this from the many names that Paul includes in Romans 16. While not very interesting to the modern reader, these names are a gold mine for the social historian, because names in the ancient world were highly significant. People in our culture often choose names simply because they sound good or remind the person of a movie star or athlete. But in Paul’s culture, the names that people were given usually said something about their origin, profession, and/or social class. Peter Lampe has done a careful analysis of the names in Romans 16.4 Several, of course, are Jewish names—Priscilla and Aquila (v. 3), Andronicus and Junia (v. 7), Herodion (v. 11a). But most are names that would have been given to gentiles—for example, Hermes and Olympas, which refer to Greek mythology (vv. 14, 15). Furthermore, many of these gentiles seem to have been freedmen, a social class made up of people who had been released from slavery. And some were slaves still. To belong to the “household” of a certain person meant to be a slave of that person. Thus, those belonging to the households of Aristobulus (v. 10) and Narcissus (v. 11) were slaves. The names of Romans 16, then, imply a community made up mainly of gentiles, and gentiles from the lower strata of Greco-Roman society. Of course, these names are not necessarily representative of the entire church in Rome, nor can we assume that they are representative of the early church as a whole. Other studies of the early church, however, have tended to confirm these findings.
Second, women were prominent in the Roman church, not just as attenders but as workers as well. Ten of the twenty-seven Christians whom Paul greets are women (more than one-third). Six of them (Phoebe [vv. 1–2], Priscilla [v. 3], Junia [v. 7], Tryphena [v. 12], Tryphosa [v. 12], and Persis [v. 12]) are specifically commended for their labor in the Lord. The presence of these women fits with what we know of the early church in general: it fostered an open atmosphere in which women participated alongside men. This was unusual in the ancient world. Both Judaism and most of the Greco-Roman religions focused on men and often strictly segregated men and women. But what degree of prominence did the women in the ancient church hold? The answer to this question is important for the bearing it has on the ongoing and often volatile contemporary debate about the role of women in ministry. We can learn very little from most of the references to women in Romans 16; “work[ing] hard in the Lord” (v. 12) could take almost an infinite variety of specific forms.5 Two passages, however, are more specific and therefore have prompted considerable discussion.
In verses 1–2, Paul commends a Christian from Cenchreae, the seaport next to Corinth, who shortly will be traveling to Rome. He calls her a “deacon of the church” (v. 1) and claims that she has been “the benefactor of many people, including me” (v. 2). The NIV translation “deacon” represents a Greek word (diakonos) that can also mean “servant” (see the NIV footnote and, e.g., ESV). All Christians are servants, and this may be all that Paul means here.6 But the addition of the phrase “of the church” makes it more likely that diakonos here is an official title, designating Phoebe as a “deacon.”7 The deacon in the New Testament church is a bit of a shadowy figure; we simply don’t have much information about what those who held this position did (see 1 Tim. 3:8–12; Phil. 1:1). Probably they were involved especially in the financial affairs of the community and were active in visiting the ill and administering the church’s works of charity. This idea receives support here from Paul’s claim that Phoebe was a “benefactor” (prostatis). This word (contra some scholars) does not mean “leader” but refers to the important ancient custom of patronage. People seeking to get ahead in the Greco-Roman world usually needed a sponsor—someone who could provide logistical and financial backing. Phoebe apparently was a wealthy woman who used her resources and clout to defend and sponsor Christian missionaries. The second debated text is verse 7, where Paul sends greetings to “Andronicus and Junia.” “Junia,” which most modern English versions have here, is a feminine name. But some versions have the form “Junias,” which is a masculine name (RSV; NASB; NJB). The problem is that the Greek word, Iounian, can be a form of either of these names. But the masculine name is much more rare than the feminine one, so it is likely that “Junia” is the correct rendering.8 Andronicus and Junia are probably a husband-and-wife team, similar to Priscilla and Aquila (v. 3). What makes the debate about the name so important is that Paul goes on in verse 7 to claim that Andronicus and Junia were “outstanding among the apostles.” This translation implies that both were apostles. However, another possible reading of the syntax is “well known to the apostles” (NET; cf. the NIV footnote). Nevertheless, the former is the more likely rendering. What, then, does Paul mean by calling Junia an “apostle”? Again, some interpreters see this as evidence that women attained to the highest office possible in the early church—an apostle of Christ. However, it is quite unlikely that these two, never mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament, were “apostles” in the sense that Paul and Peter and John were apostles. The Greek word apostolos has a variety of meanings in the New Testament; the one that best fits this text is “commissioned missionary.”9
Both Phoebe and Junia, therefore, stand as clear examples of the prominence that women had in the early Christian church and in its ministries. Neither example, however, can prove that women in the early church held positions that put them in “authority over” men in the early community (cf. 1 Tim. 2:12). The debate about whether it is appropriate today for women to hold such roles cannot be settled on the basis of these texts.
Glory to God! (16:25–27)10
Many scholars are convinced that Paul did not write these verses, that they were added to the end of Romans at some point after Paul wrote the letter.11 However, the case against the authenticity of these verses is not compelling. The vast majority of manuscripts of Romans include these verses. They form an appropriate and natural conclusion to the letter.12 Paul seems deliberately to have alluded to as many themes from the letter as possible in this brief doxology (see the sidebar “A Fitting Conclusion: The Doxology and the Rest of Romans”). Especially noteworthy are the reference to “my gospel” (v. 25) and the statement of a “two age” contrast between “mystery hidden for long ages past” and “now revealed and made known through the prophetic writings” (vv. 25–26). Salvation history provides the structure for the theology of Romans. Paul views Christ as the one who inaugurates the new and decisive age in the history of God’s dealings with his people. Also characteristic is Paul’s emphasis on the importance of this revelation for the gentiles. Its purpose, Paul says, is “that all the Gentiles might come to the obedience that comes from faith” (v. 26). This phrase takes us directly back to the very beginning of the letter, where Paul says that his mission is to “call all the gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith” (1:5).
The deep theology and practical advice found in Romans have as their ultimate purpose the glory of God. It is when readers of Romans seek to understand that theology and to live out its consequences that God is glorified. May each of us reflect this doxology as we read and live out the message of this great book of the Bible.
| Doxology (Rom. 16:25–27) | Rest of Romans |
| who is able (power) | 1:4, 16 |
| establish you | 1:11 |
| my gospel | 1:1, 9, 16; 2:16 |
| revelation | 1:17; cf. 3:21 |
| prophetic writings | 1:2; cf. 3:21 |
| all nations (gentiles) | 1:5 |
| believe and obey | 1:5 |
| only God | 3:29–30 |
| wise God | 11:33–36 |