Reading Romans Backwards (Scot McKnight)

    This book review looks at why Scot McKnight calls us to read the early chapters of Romans in light of the concluding ones.

    After two weeks’ vacation driving the South Island of New Zealand, I’m feeling overwhelmed by the natural wonder: majestic mountains, large lakes, fantastic fjords, and glistening glaciers. Each day we began by setting the GPS coordinates to where we needed to end up, and then took our time to enjoy the stunning scenery on the way.

    Scot McKnight suggests we read Romans like that. Begin with where Paul wants the church to end up, the destination spelled out in Romans 12–16. That’ll help us make sense of the route he takes to get them there.

    Romans is a magnificent presentation of the gospel, setting out all God is doing in Christ to set the world right. But it was never intended as armchair theology. It’s lived theology. That’s the term Scot uses 100+ times in Reading Romans Backwards: A Gospel of Peace in the Midst of Empire (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2019).

    It’s only January, but this is the best book I’ve read so far in 2025. Here’s why.

    Scot starts by drawing us into Paul’s relationship with the believers in Rome (Romans 16). From there, he examines how Paul calls them to live out the message of his letter (Romans 12–15). This section reveals the struggles they were experiencing to live together as the people of God united in Christ — the difficulty addressed in Romans 9–11. Scot then uses this background to make brilliant sense of what God has achieved for us in Christ — the message of Romans 1–8.

    The point of reading backwards is this:

    To read Romans 1–11 well, one must know the context, and that context is mostly portrayed in Romans 12–16. [p. 57]

    Romans 14–15 is a protracted discussion of how believers are to share life, including table fellowship. One group (the “weak”) had scruples about what they could eat and wanted to impose their expectations on the others (14:1-2). The other group (the “strong”) are warned not to look down on the weak or please themselves (15:1). The issues of kosher food and Torah observance turn up in Paul’s other letters too (especially Galatians), and these issues were particularly acute in Rome where Emperor Claudius had ordered all Jews to leave Rome (Acts 18:2).

    Scot deduces that the weak refers to Jewish believers who think Torah observance should be required of the Messiah’s followers, while the strong refers to those who follow the Messiah by faith without adding the requirements of the Law. This practical issue — the gospel/law divide — is at the heart of the theology of Romans. In Scot’s words:

    The instructions to the Weak and the Strong are the core of Paul’s lived theology, and the aim of the entire letter. [p. 15]

    Lived theology for the Weak means Torah observance; for the Strong it means liberty. They are fully convinced and completely at odds with one another. [p. 20]

    What matters to Paul is his mission to spread the gospel about Jesus in the Roman Empire and to bring into one unified family both Jewish and gentile believers (15:7–13, 16–31; 16:25–27). [p. 22]

    Paul’s biggest and best question for the Strong as well as for the Weak is this one: With whom did you dine last night? He’ll press it further: Are you the Strong dining with the Weak or not? Yes or no? That’s the question, and the whole book rides on that question as the heart of lived theology. [p. 41]

    If lived theology is the goal, Paul means conformity to Christ and not conformity to the Law:

    Genuine Christoformity … is not self-status and self-pursuit but other-status and other-orientation. [p. 37]

    The fundamental core to Christoformity is that because you are in Christ, you are not to act according to Privilege and Power but instead to love God by offering your entire body daily to God, to live as siblings with all other Christians by welcoming one another and eating at the table with each other and indwelling one another, and to love your Roman neighbor as yourself with civility and intentional acts of benevolence. That, for Paul, is lived theology for the Roman Christians. That lived theology gave rise to Romans 1–11. Turned around, Romans 1–11 are designed to form the lived theology of Romans 12–16. [p. 50]

    The issue in this letter, especially once we learn to read Romans backwards, is that the Weak assert their privileged position in God’s redemptive history while the Strong assert their dominance in the history and social status of Rome. [p. 64]

    One question haunts the Weak: Is God being faithful to Israel? If faith, not works, upgrades gentiles before God to the level of Israel, has Israel lost its privilege in the plan of God? Put bluntly, has (not) God rejected Israel? [p. 77]

    God’s faithfulness is therefore the heart of the theology of Romans:

    It is about God’s faithfulness to his covenant promises to Abraham. The theme is not how to get saved, or even who is saved, but God’s covenant faithfulness. Paul reconfigures Israel’s story to form a narrative about God’s surprising faithfulness in the missionary movement to include gentiles into the one family of God, Israel. That inclusive narrative promotes peace among the Strong and the Weak. [p. 61]

    This theology of God’s surprising grace and election does not disprivilege the Weak, nor does it wipe out or replace God’s covenant with them. Rather, it proves it, and it expands it. [p. 80]

    All of this provides context for the opening chapters of Paul’s letter. The “you” (singular) whom Paul confronts in Romans 2:1 is not an abstract representative of Judaism but a Messianic Jew who judges gentile believers for not following the Law:

    I contend reading Romans backwards makes that more explicit and suggests that the Judge represents the Weak judges of Romans 14–15. [p. 106]

    Here is a summary to keep the whole of Romans in view and to anticipate what is to come: Paul’s polemic in Romans 1–4 with the Judge/Weak arises only because the Weak believe the path to moral transformation for the Strong can be achieved only by adopting and observing the Torah. Romans 1–8 occur then in two blocks: the argument against Torah observance as the path to moral transformation, and an argument in favor of union with Christ and Spirit-indwelling as the true path to moral transformation. [p. 106]

    So, what indicates that Romans 5–8 has a different audience than Romans 1–4? Both the content (traced back to Adam) and the number of the Old Testament quotations:

    No matter how one reads Romans — backwards or forwards — the reader observes a dramatic lack of citations of the Old Testament in Romans 5–8. Both Romans 1–4 and 9–11 are loaded with citations, while Romans 5–8 are noticeably not. [p. 141]

    To read Romans 5–8 well, one must grasp its comprehensive cosmic vision. The comprehensiveness of this vision is in fact key to understanding each passage in the entire set of chapters. We discover in Romans 5–8 a sketch from Adam to the glorious kingdom, from creation to consummation, from sin and Sin and Flesh and Death to salvation, redemption, rescue, and both present and future transformation of both humans and all creation. Those in Christ are being transformed into Christoformity, a transformation that begins now but that is completed in the eschaton. Our set of chapters opens on the note of peace with God and closes with the sense of being conquerors because of the permanence of God’s love for us, and everything in between is aimed at God’s commitment of love to his people toward glory. [p. 143]

    Scot’s understanding of Romans 5–8 is formed by noticing the pronouns Paul used:

    There are four modes of conversation in Romans 5–8: sections that are Generic or for All (5:12–21; 8:1–8), You sections (6:11–23; 8:9–15), We sections (5:1–11; 6:1–10; 7:1–6; 8:16–17, 18–39), and one long I section (7:7–25). To map to whom Paul is speaking in each — Weak, Strong, others — requires that we look at each of the four modes separately. [pp. 143-144]

    This approach yields refreshing insight into themes such as original sin, what it means for the Torah to be captured by sin, and how those who are brought to life in Christ fulfil the righteous requirements of the Torah.

    The critique of the Weak was that the Strong lacked moral transformation; the solution of the Weak was Torah observance. Paul says, no, the solution is not Torah observance but God’s grace in Christ through the Spirit that awakens participation in the way of Christ. [pp. 168-169]

    If we read Romans backwards (and not just forwards), we see that the fundamental pleas of Paul in chapters 12 through 16 for unity, for peace, for love, for reconciliation are the mirror opposites of the sins he has in view in the Generic, You, and We sections. Furthermore, a Spirit-prompted life (so clear in the You section) produces the kind of life marked by devotion and slavery to God, which sounds like 12:1–2, as well as obedience, righteousness, and holiness. Hence, for the Weak and the Strong to work for mutual “welcome” is at the heart of what Paul means with sanctification, obedience, and righteousness. Peace in the heart of the empire flows from the Holy Spirit. [p. 170]

    In the end, Scot encourages us to read Romans forwards in light of how the concluding chapters clarify what it looks like to live out this theology:

    To read Romans well, all of Romans must be read in light of the context in Romans 14–15. Once one lets that context shape one’s reading of Romans, some of the interpretive problems are resolved, and new nuances are achieved in that reading. I think especially of reading Romans 1–4. Those chapters — so often taken to be simply a soteriological scheme of proving that all are in sin so all are in need of the Savior, which in some senses is true for these passages — are not best read that way. Once one reads Romans backwards, one finds that the entire passage is aimed at the Judge, a Christian and not a Jew in general, who sits in judgment of the Strong for their lack of Torah observance.

    To read Romans well, the solution to lived theology is to be found in Romans 5–8 as the theological underpinnings for the lived theology of Romans 14–15. The relationship of Romans 5–8 to Romans 12–16 is not theology and practice but lived theology and theology for that lived theology. Romans 1–8 is not abstract theology that can be plopped down as the preface to any of Paul’s letters but a theology designed because of the lived theology of Romans 12–16. [p. 180]

    The message of Romans is that the Weak and the Strong of our day — and I say now what I have not said, that everyone thinks that they are the Strong and that the other is the Weak — must surrender their claims to privilege and hand them over to Christoformity. [pp. 180-181]

    That concluding comment gives serious pause for thought as an application of Romans.

    This is an important book on living the theology of Romans. It’s accessible. In each section, Scot repeats his understanding of the “strong” and the “weak” so someone who reads only part of the book still gets the message. But beneath its simplicity is a depth of scholarship. For example, the adjectives Scot uses for grace are the ones defined by John Barclay in Paul and the Gift (Eerdmans 2015), reviewed here.

    In one sense, Scot is doing nothing different to those commentaries that begin by identifying the author, audience, and the occasion of the letter. But few have applied that approach to how believers are to live out the majestic work of Spirit who is regenerates us in Christ.

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